They built a Shoppers Drug Mart near the entrance of our cul-de-sac.  They started digging the week June died.  It used to be a concrete square with a bench and a garbage can, but when I rode my bike past on the way to her wake it was a gaping brown hole six feet deep.  I’d never seen the earth in this part of the city before.  Our lawns are rolled out before we move in, and stitched together seamlessly by skilled hands.

We staged the wake at her mother’s house.  It was very organized.  The refrigerator photos were arranged just so. The floors had been scrubbed clean and smelled like lemons.

I felt too large for the space, standing dumb with a beer in my hand while her boyfriend cried.  The blanched faces of finger sandwiches stared at me from the kitchen table. I was overwhelmed by every mundane thing she had ever touched: the microwave, the back door, the carpeted staircase that lead to the basement bedroom.  Forever dark and messy and childish.

Each time I drained my drink, a hand reached out with a new one.  It seemed like they were all one beer, full and cold, no matter how many sips I took.  I lost track of the kitchen. Later I became dimly aware, smoking a cigarette in the grey light, that I had wandered away from anyone I knew.

A circle of aunts and cousins sat quietly in folding lawn chairs, pretending not to see me. They spoke in respectful murmurs.  I finished my cigarette and, feeling my way through the house with raw eyes, found June’s mother.  She sat primly alone in the living room with a cup of tea, wearing her daughter’s mittens.  I told her: “I can’t go home to my mother like this” and went downstairs to the basement, as if nothing had changed.

In the following weeks, every time I rode past the Shoppers they’d put up a new wall. Our houses were built fast like that.  They look vulnerable now that I’ve seen the process, like the gingerbread houses my family used to make, with walls that slide apart whenever you let go.

I woke up in her bed that night, tucked in against the wall as though she were beside me. By then, the wake was over and the guests had left.  I knew right away that the sheets had not been changed.  I knew that the pillow had not been moved, and that the pink diary beneath it had not been retrieved.

Since then, I often awake to the sensation of her blankets draped over me.  I try to wipe it off by pressing my skin into the sheets.  I make snow angels, trading the memory of her bed for my own pulse and tangled linen.  I think, I am alive and this is my dirty laundry; maybe somebody will search it for clues when I go.

The act of memorializing is inane when her skin cells still line those printed sheets.  I could round up the indented lipsticks, and empty liquor bottles stashed in the back of her closet: they’re better proof of her life than my account in words. She didn’t spend her time wrestling with the Canadian landscape, fishing wire dragging her back to the old country by the hem of her dress.  She was ignoble and aimless.

We traipsed down smooth development roads, leading us to drowsy suburban bungalows, lights low and no car in the driveway.  We spent our time on games of spin the bottle, and then a trudge back home, always coughing up smoke and sputtering with laughter.  We insisted we knew one another; we proved it with heads on shoulders, kisses on cheeks, her head in a toilet

and my hands stroking her back.

One night, miles from any harbor, the carpeting of her basement floor became an ocean. We tossed and turned, spilled drinks, crunched a smattering of lost pills and potato chips beneath our feet.  Those nights can be like an ocean in November, riding out waves of nausea,

depression, and boredom with illicit secrets, drinks, rebellion.  The party was treacherous, and we thrashed at one another while our waves rose.

When she fell, nobody noticed.  It wasn’t until much later, sitting around with the stragglers, that I saw her face.  She was blue and still, and her eyes did not understand the magnitude of the moment.

I go into Shoppers on the day that it opens; the draw of new fluorescents and un-scuffed linoleum is too much for me.  Rows of lipstick tubes stand at attention.  Everything is so white it’s like the dentist’s office, or heaven.  I buy an iced tea and sit in the parking lot.  They’re digging a hole across the street and I wonder what will grow there.

The night of her wake, my mouth breathing her pillow warm, the door opened and her mother sat on the edge of the bed.  I closed my eyes.  She put her palm on my head, and I counted out my breaths.

“I miss you” she whispered.

She gives her daughter’s things away to girls who make the pilgrimage down.  They go through June’s bedroom, searching for artifacts that tie themselves to her.  I do the same thing, stake claims.

The problem is that she keeps buying more.  June’s personality lives on in clothing she’s never seen, distilled down to frills and buttons and peter pan collars.  They populate the city, these girls who have been fashioned to look like her.  Maybe that’s a memorial too.  It’s kinder

than anything I can write.  The fabric is more flexible, contours a soft image, it doesn’t lie or add depth but sits gently on top: she was exactly what she looked like.

Ferron Guerreiro is currently completing an MA in English at Dalhousie University. Her research focus is female virginity in early modern drama.

My mother warned me not to. I rarely heed sound advice.

A week too late, I dress for what should have been my wedding
Gown, veil, garters, and shoes – all in white
My friends excused themselves from what they insist is merely an exercise in futility or folly
Taken as an excuse to burn calories, they are indeed correct
Taken as an activity for my well-being, only I stand without blemish in this assessment

Now, I walk from the bottom the spiral staircase in both literal and figurative fashion. Today, only the latter suffices.

With each step, bouquet in hand
I ponder what might have been said
What might have been accomplished
What might have come to be
But, what never came to pass

Up the spiral staircase, I am using borrowed time I can never reimburse to make whole.

I scoffed at the adage of not seeing or being seen
The night prior to the nuptials
Weddings are for the bride
And this one
Might have been as proposed

Unless quoted, history (unfortunately) bypasses Jacques Necker.

I had nerves, concerns, anxiety, and reflections
He had the strength for two
I wanted an immediate respite
He wanted an immediate future
Our argument included all that should never be remembered

Except how he concluded it, “You are a nice place to visit, but I wouldn’t want to live there”.

The staircase has but one more spiral
One more turn to think
Not about the last sentence I ever heard him speak
Only about how I needed to reply
And how I failed to do so

Andy Betz has tutored and taught in excess of 30 years. He lives in 1974, and has been married for 27 years. His works are found everywhere a search engine operates.

The lake spread out before him in a liquid pool of ink.

This small island that his boat was headed for was no longer a piece of imagination.

Two years ago, it hadn’t even existed. Not even as a passing thought.

Things had been going well back then. Money had stopped being a concern. His wife was everything a man could want. And business had never been better.

And yet what had taken twenty years of hard work to achieve, took only five short seconds for its cables to snap, its brakes to fail and for it to crash headlong into emergency wards, liquidation and trauma.

After his release from hospital, he wandered far and wide in search of something. What that was, he didn’t know. And no matter where he went, he couldn’t find it either. Not in the bullshit of bars, not in the cleansing beach sunsets, nor on the long cold mountain retreats.

But now he had found what he was looking for.

Now he was here, bringing the boat in to land.

He’d found the location on a torn piece of paper in a small hut in the woods.

There was no map. There was no photograph. There were only some words.

They read:

“People eat dirt, dirt eats people.

No matter what you do, you must return to this earth.

None of this is real, everything returns to this.

If you see through this world and let go of it, this is wisdom.

If you see through it but don’t let go, that is just ‘talking Chan’.”

Sat on the bank of the island, he nodded to himself and smiled. Kicking the boat away, he watched it drift across the lake and dissolve into its liquid pool of ink.

J H Martin is from London, England but has no fixed abode. His writing has appeared in a number of places in Asia, Europe and the Americas.

Website: acoatforamonkey.wordpress.com IG: @jhmartin72 / Twitter: @acoatforamonkey

On graduation night we skip out on the dreaded ceremony with its foldable metal chairs and grandparents dabbing sweaty necks with lace handkerchiefs and walk single file along the dirt road to Cormack Beaver’s farmhouse. Ellis walks up front with a BB gun tipped against his bare, tanned shoulder, tobacco spit dribbling down his chin. Every so often he spits to his right and August flinches and curses. August always walks too close behind his twin brother, hovers in his shadow.

            Ellis can shoot a tin can off a tree stump from thirty paces. He rides horses bareback and sometimes barefoot, too. There’s a rumor that girls will run across the Quebec-Ontario border late at night in their jean shorts and flip flops if they hear Ellis will be at an Ontario party that night. Then Ellis will charm them in his broken French, and they’ll laugh because he has a good-looking face.

            “We’re going to get killed by Beaver,” moans August. August did not inherit the looks or the charm that his twin brother is graced with but instead an affinity for bugs and no hearing in his right ear. He often squats down in the dust and dirt and sticks his finger in the ground, admiring an ant or a spider or a fat caterpillar. At school people lean into his deaf ear and whisper “freak” and “queer” and “creeper”.

            At school people buy Ellis slices of pizza and offer to lend him their dirt bikes. August squats in the dirt and smiles and doesn’t hear what people whisper in his right ear.

            “Shut up, August,” I say. “Cormack Beaver’s dead.”

            The sun is almost down but the heat is smothering. Crickets are popping in and out of the dry yellow grass along the road. The sound they make is like a high-pitched whine.

            Cormack Beaver’s farmhouse is a long walk outside of town. Ellis wanted to shoot out the windows instead of getting his high school diploma. He brought me along because he knows I’m a good shot and I don’t talk much. I have my dad’s hunting rifle with me. The weight of it feels powerful, the butt of the gun bumping against my thighs as I walk. Once Ellis said that he’d want me on his team for the zombie apocalypse. I grinned like an idiot for the rest of the day.

            “People say that if you shoot out the windows on Beaver’s house then he’ll haunt you in your sleep.” August walks with his head down, his glasses nearly sliding off his face. The tips of his ears are sunburnt.

            “Then go home, August.” Ellis doesn’t turn when he speaks.

            An old pick-up truck grumbles along the road towards us. It is shiny silver and reflects the late evening sun in white flashes. We all stand and squint at it as it approaches.

            “There’s no hunting here, boys,” says an old man’s voice from the window.

            I stand with August as Ellis goes to speak with the driver. August points out a wasp nest a few feet away, nestled in the gnarled branches of a magnolia.

            “That’s a nice spot,” he says.

            Ellis walks back to us and the truck drives off, leaving behind a cloud of yellow dust.

            “Old asshole,” Ellis says. He spits a wad of black grime and wipes his mouth with the back of his hand.

            “He’s reporting us?” I ask.

            “He bought the property beside Beaver’s place. He said he’ll call the cops if we don’t leave.”

            “What the hell are we gonna do?” I dig my shoe into the dirt. This was supposed to be a good time. The old man has ruined everything.

            August is staring off at the magnolia tree, hypnotized by the lazy hum of wasps.

            Ellis raises his BB gun and aims in one fluid motion. He fires ten times at the wasp nest and smiles when it hits the ground. 

Issie Patterson is a writer from Toronto. Her fiction and reviews have been featured and are forthcoming in untethered, Prism, Gargoyle Magazine, and Vancouver Weekly. Her stage plays have been performed on both coasts of Canada. She is a recent graduate of the University of British Columbia’s MFA creative writing program. She lives in Nova Scotia.

“Frank, Brian is moving more of them.” Arlo stopped mid-chew when he heard the familiar sound. He abandoned lunch and moved closer to the ridgeline.

            “Where do you think he’s taking them?” Barry asked, though it was barely coherent through his mouthful of food.

Frank said nothing, chewing his lunch slowly. The entire crew turned to him—it was the habitual response—but nothing in Frank’s expression told them what he was thinking. Arlo was the first to look away from him and back to Brian.

            “Don’t know,” Bob chimed in. “Don’t care. I say farewell and ado and see ya later!” His large lips smacked obnoxiously after he took another bite.

            “But we won’t see them later.” Arlo raised his head a little higher to see over the ridge to the bottom of the hill turning golden with the onset of the cooler weather. He especially liked the smell of it up on this ridge. Arlo watched for a few minutes as Brian loaded the trailer. The smell of the grass turned rancid in his large nostrils. “That’s why we care.” Arlo’s voice languished but it made Saul jump. Silence had taken over the group and Arlo’s voice, regardless of its hushed tone, had broken it abruptly.

            “Okay, boys,” Frank said, walking over to join Arlo. The cooler air made his breath visible as it rushed from his nostrils. Frank felt the responsibility heavily some days. He surveyed the land from their lunch spot. He always enjoyed this view. “I think it’s time. Brian’s got to go.” His voice was steady and calm, just like it always was.

            Arlo swung his head to look at him, his eyes even bigger than usual. Frank met them with his own dark brown eyes. The pair were a mirror image of each other except for Frank’s larger, more muscular stature. It commanded respect. Frank held Arlo’s gaze, only interrupting it with a slow blink.

Arlo backed away from the edge no longer able to watch the scene below. “Moo,” he acquiesced. He tore the grass nearest to his feet and chewed, but he didn’t taste it.

            Another moo rose up from the herd. Then another rose to join it, again and again, until all of them melded into a chorus.

            Brian looked over his shoulder. It wasn’t like the cows to carry on that way. The rancher shook his shoulders to get rid of the chill that had settled in, somehow piercing his rugged work coat. Their song stopped all at once. Brian looked up. The sky was blue, but a storm was rolling in from the west over the hill. His biggest bull stared at him from the top of it. A chill ran down Brian’s spine. He laughed it off as he shoved the last cow into the trailer. He needed to get to the slaughterhouse before the weather came in.

L.C. Hill spends every waking minute writing, thinking about writing, reading about writing, writing in her car via voice memo, writing in her head and forgetting the brilliant thing she just wrote in her head because she didn’t write it down, and writing down brilliant things that she later can’t read because her handwriting is terrible. She lives in Denver, Colorado with her American Bulldog, Ernest Hemingway.

She is a board member for the Literacy Coalition of Colorado and the content editor for their newsletter and social media.

All the family came—even Declan who’d treated his eighteenth birthday as a family holiday emancipation—and, despite advance grumbling about Bev’s vegan holiday meal, all ate well. Properly sated, they took possession of every sofa and loveseat cushion, the recliner, and the mixed chairs around the penny table. Lights were dimmed. The tradition film was started. Moved by the increasing rareness of these congregations, Bev took a moment of private appreciation: all whom she loved joined in the cozy dark of her living room, the television playing unwatched, every head down as if in prayer, each face lit by the mysterious glow of their own private screen.

M.C. Schmidt holds an MFA in Creative Writing from Miami University. He is the author of two novels and his recent short fiction has appeared in Litro, Every Day Fiction, Rumble Fish Quarterly, Dime Show Review, Cleaning Up Glitter, and The Books Smuggler’s Den. He has work forthcoming from Abstract Magazine.

The dog barks on the other side of the fence. We can’t see it, but my brother and I think it’s big, the kind with drool forever swinging from its black lips. It growls deep and idle like the exhaust from our father’s car. My older brother kicks the algae coated fence, rattles it, and laughs when the dog goes berzerk. I laugh with him. I laugh with him because he is my brother, and the fence our father built was solid.

            “Look, hurry,” he says.

            A rabbit has found its way into the yard, and as soon as I see it, I try and hit it with a muddy rubber ball I found lying in the grass. It must have had one way in and forgotten where. The rabbit dashes from corner to corner, to the center of the yard, then under the deck. We try to hit it with pebbles. We can’t see him, but we can hear him.

            “I have an idea,” my brother says, and grabs the garden hose, turns it on, sprays everywhere under the deck to flush the animal out.

            The rabbit scampers out between us. We jump and shriek, pretend to be knocked over and roll on the grass. I grab the nozzle and chase it around the yard, never empathizing. The rabbit finds a spot to squeeze under the back fence and flattens itself, hind legs kicking in a fever, small brown plumes of dirt. Then he’s gone.

            The dog on the other side of the fence erupts. We can only hear the beast chase him. The barking fades and returns and fades and returns until there is nothing but silence. 

            My brother presses his ear up against the fence and says, “I don’t hear anything.” I press my ear, as well. “He probably went inside.”

            For a while, we walk the circumference of the yard armed with one branch each; a walking stick, a sword, a rifle, a scepter. Whatever it may be, mine is mine, and his is his.

            When we navigate near the rear fence again, the dog bark returns. Its white paws dig at the ground where the rabbit had escaped. My brother grabs the garden hose and sprays the dog’s paws, trying to shoo it, but he only makes the animal filthy. He sprays again, and this time, the water washes the ground, and the hole deepens. The dog thrusts its head through the space. It is our first time seeing the animal, his long white snout streamlined with muddy snot. He growls and shows his teeth and gums matted with rabbit fur. My brother isn’t laughing, so I am not laughing. I don’t laugh because he is my brother, and the fence my father built might not have been as sound as we had thought.

            “What do we do?” I ask him, and he doesn’t answer me. He always answers me. He always answers questions, my older brother does. But he stands still and numb, eyes fixated on the snarling animal working the hole in the ground. Its paws burrow for a while, and then it thrusts its maw farther in each time in revolutions. It shows us its teeth again, yellow crescent moons slick with saliva.

            When the dog digs far enough to show us its eyes, we’re both surprised that its eyes are blue just like mine, not like my brother’s. The dog’s irises are black and focused. There’s a pause when eye contact is made. It seems forever. Then the dog thrashes in a frenzy, and my brother jumps backward, stumbles, and drops his stick on the ground.

            “Pick it up,” I say.

            He glances at me as if he hadn’t heard me.

            I repeat it the way dad would, “Pick it up.”

            He picks it up. He waits for me as I have always waited for him. I have never seen him make the face he makes when I grin. It must have seemed a menacing expression soundtracked to the growl of the beast, a beast with both eyes now past the bottom of the fence. I grip my branch with both hands, baseball grip the way dad showed us, and I strike the animal between the eyes that are just like mine. The dog yelps and whimpers off. An old man yells at it from a distance. A door closes. I turn to my brother and raise the stick high above my head, a triumphant warrior, a field general, a guardian of our yard. And I laugh and then he laughs. He laughs with me because he is my brother and because these branches are strong.

Salvatore Sodano is a writer and member of the English honor society Sigma Tau Delta at Southern New Hampshire University, where he earned his BA in creative writing with a summa cum laude distinction. Besides being a writer of dark fiction, he’s a husband, father of two boys, and an FDNY firefighter since 2003. This flash piece “A Call to Arms” is inspired by his two small sons as they navigate the backyard during the quarantine orders from Corona Virus.

Illych had to warn people.  How bliss could turn to devastation.

It only took three words, “I’ve found another.”  When Sonya betrayed him, his life and soul dissolved. 

He intended his artwork from the ruins of their passion to alert similarly blind lovers.  Sonya’s shriveled heart and dried blood were grotesque on the silver platter.  Illych adorned it with the tokens of his undying love: the gold ring; their embossed wedding vows; a pearl necklace anniversary gift.  He pierced the inconstant organ with the ornate knife that he’d given her ‘for protection’, and had used to cut the heart from her chest.  Each item had been beauty for his unfaithful beast.

He sent it to the dark Croatian Museum of Broken Relationships in Zagreb.  Illych hoped the display would save others from this pain.

Bill Diamond lives in the Rocky Mountains of Colorado and writes to try and figure it all out.

It was four months into the final semester of my high school career and I didn’t even know the name of the girl who sat in front of me, but when I walked into Spanish class I noticed something was different: she had gotten a haircut. The weird thing about this was that I could not seem to remember what she looked like with long hair. Did it touch her shoulders? Did it reach the lumbar region of her spine? I realized I couldn’t even picture the front of her face until she turned around to view the clock and I saw how gorgeous her cerulean eyes were.

This realization reminded me of Jordan. Well, everything these days reminds me of him. But not being able to remember what she looked like before now… That’s what it felt like to fall in love with him. He brought so much joy to my bland and boring life. And maybe it was a nice life before I met him, but I can’t picture it now without him in it. The second he walked into my life, it turned cerulean.

I suppose I should back up a second, as you probably don’t understand the irony of that statement. You see, I watched Jordan die two Saturdays ago. We were celebrating our one year anniversary in Grand Haven, Michigan, when the waves swept him under. I saw his head bob up every few seconds like God was fishing for his soul as I frantically tried to swim to him. When I finally reached him, it was too late.

Just hours before, we were sprawled out on the warm Midwest sand looking at the clouds and talking about how one of them looked like a wedding ring. He told me it was a sign, and that we were going to get married here someday. Like every other millennial girl, I have my fair share of trust issues, but I believed him with every ounce of my being. I swear I heard the wedding bells the rest of that day until I reached his dead body in the salt-less water and they went mute.

When the bell rang, I rushed out of class, as I always do, but accidentally bumped into somebody at the door.

“Oh sorry!” I looked up and was met by a pair of cerulean eyes.

“Oh, no worries. Hey, you were Jordan’s girlfriend, right?”

“Yeah, I… was.” I’m still getting used to using the past tense when I talk about him.

She turned around and walked away.

“Hey, wait,” I shouted.

She looked back and said, “Yeah?”

“I like your haircut.”

Jessica is a communications manager for a local non-profit in Grand Rapids, MI. She enjoys playing guitar and writing in her free time.

Dad was a stoic veteran.  So it was no surprise that he didn’t offer me much marriage advice.  He knew such parental guidance usually fell on deaf ears.  The most Dad told me was, “Never marry someone unless you’ve camped in the cold rain with them.”

Of course, this sounded very silly and strange when you’re blissfully and blindly in love.

Years later, I know the experienced wisdom of those words.  Adversity reveals true character.

I’ve just repeated that advice to my daughter who is contemplating getting engaged.  Alas, she is just as in love, and just as deaf.

Bill Diamond lives in the Rocky Mountains of Colorado and writes to try and figure it all out.