Jesus didn’t save me, Lester Bangs did. When Creem put Kiss on the cover in August 1977 I stole a copy from the 7-11. I studied the text like runes and felt the scales fall from my eyes. I carved the words on my heart, especially the ones I didn’t understand; I wanted everything. After that I never missed an issue. While other kids were getting baptized I got a new name. Kids called me gay, ugly, gross. I called myself punk. They didn’t know what that was. I was ten.

It was starvation season, the middle of nowhere (Lubbock, Texas, check a map), long before the internet. The chain stores didn’t carry the records and radio stations didn’t play them. Most of the bands I loved I’d never heard.

I didn’t find a house of worship until 1980, when Ralph’s, a used record shop, opened on University Avenue. My first time there, and my second, I stared drop-jawed at records I’d only read about, never seen or heard—the Slits, Big Star, Sex Pistols and Clash bootlegs. The punk section at the back became my place of peace; I spent hours meditating on the sleeves and reading the fine print.

Ralph’s was a place of hope, rows and rows of hope, thousands of records, each one a chance for joy. It’s where I first found records by Television and Patti Smith, Richard Hell and the Velvet Underground, bits of guitar like shards of glass and voices that made me feel, not whole, exactly, but less alone.

Ralph’s was where I’d spend my last dollar after buying weed before I realized I could tuck records up the back of my shirt, under my jacket, and walk out with them. Ralph’s should’ve gone bankrupt on my thefts alone, but somehow it survived. The old location was razed years ago; now the shop carries on in a strip mall south of the Loop.

Out front, the lot’s empty. The odor of neglect, dust and mildew, greet me when I go in. The space feels cavernous, hollow, absent even ghosts. Behind the counter, two clerks watching football don’t acknowledge me. Besides the clerks I’m the only one there.

Three walls of shelves are packed floor to ceiling, too tight and suffocating. I pick a likely spot and begin. R—Reed, Ramones, Rolling Stones—and find nothing. I jump around the alphabet and search through hundreds of albums, straining for the ones above my head. I’ve never seen so many records in one place. No Kiss, no Thin Lizzy, no T. Rex, not even Bad Company, but countless records by Chicago, Kansas, and Three Dog Night. It’s a gathering of the unwanted, like any record with dignity fled long ago.

An hour in I find something, a Johnny Thunders twelve-inch. A quarter of the cover is ripped off and the vinyl’s exposed; it looks unplayed, pristine. On the cover, Johnny is dressed to kill, his expression forlorn.

A man walks in and heads for the counter. Do they have “Little Wing”by Jimi Hendrix? One of the clerks walks down an aisle and grabs a greatest hits CD. After the sale they go back to the game.

One says, “We need a coach who wants to be in West Texas.”

As if.

I hate this town.

My heart aches for the records. I save a handful—Johnny, the Kingsmen, Burt Bacharach. Back home in Austin, I wipe the dust off their jackets and add fresh inner sleeves. I hold them up and read the liner notes. I listen to each one through and file them alphabetically.

Robin Storey grew up hearing “Hitler was right” at the dinner table. She ran away from home and was adopted by a Black spiritualist church, where she spent the next decade. When it became impossible to stay, she had to find her way alone in the world.

Brian and Allen were brothers but they didn’t look it. Only separated by a year, Brian was short and skinny and Allen was tall and fat. Like I had been at the time, Allen was intent on becoming a priest. They had a corner lot with a yard that wrapped around their house on three sides, like a cupped hand holding an egg which would have been the house, only the house was of red brick, one story with a basement. I played with Brian, throwing an undersized kiddie football. We played a simple game where each of us tried to make the other drop the pass by throwing as hard as we could at close range, maybe fifteen feet, each targeting the chest, daring the other to let the ball slip through hands into the body. I didn’t have a good arm, but for a small kid Brian did. But I had beautiful soft hands, and caught pass after pass from Brian, frustrating him no matter how hard he threw, until he threw straight at my face in an effort to intimidate. My hands, however, proved impenetrable, perfect. Not a thing could get beyond them. I dreamed of being an NFL tight end, catching passes from Bart Starr, when I wasn’t blessing my congregation, or presiding over the miracle of transubstantiation. I had the body for either, long arms to raise the Eucharist and a thick trunk for blocking linebackers. I threw a little off balance, maybe two feet to the left of my target, and Brian tipped the pass incomplete, then accused me of cheating. “No, no,” I said, “I won. I won.” Allen popped his head out the screen door and invited us into the basement. “It’s time for Mass,” he said. I didn’t know what he was talking about.

            In the basement, he’d set up an altar, complete with a tablecloth that hung down over each end of the fold out table and a chalice he’d decorated himself out of a goblet. His mom had made him a vermillion vestment that he pulled over the top of his head, and with his long sleeved t-shirt, he did indeed look like a priest as he set about his interpretation of the sacred ritual. At the end of Communion, he drew actual hosts out of the goblet and placed them on our tongues. Where he got them I’ve no idea: They tasted the same, looked the same, broke the same. He must have asked our pastor or bought them from a catalogue or from the Diocese. For the wine, he used grape juice, and he drank several times in between invocations, the way he’d seen Father Ray do after the distribution of the hosts. He said we could do this whenever we wanted, but I never returned to his basement. I still consider it sacrilege.

            There was a kid who lived a couple blocks away, more Brian’s size, shorter, thinner. I’d go over to Brian’s house and his mom would tell me he was off playing with the new kid. She instructed me to go to the new kid’s house. I finally went and found them rolling marbles up a sharply pitched driveway up toward a crack that was their target. They were playing Old Fashions with irregular clay marbles, spotted and of various colors, first one into the hole got to keep the opponent’s marble. But Tomas, the new kid, wouldn’t let me play, said he didn’t like me. Walking home, I thought of Brian. Why didn’t he stand up for me, insist I played, at least give me a chance?

            One night over the Summer I heard that Brian and Tomas were heading off Okauchee Lake to fish. I said a prayer over and over. I closed my eyes and wished as hard as I could for God to intervene. I thought of the water, of sharp winds, perhaps a storm. When Brian came home, I heard Tomas had been underwater for twenty minutes and been shipped off to the Emergency Room. Days later we learned he had died.

            I didn’t tell Brian about my prayer, but when I asked him to play catch in his yard, he refused, said he didn’t want to play with me anymore. Years later, after we’d both grown and started dating a pair of twin sisters, he explained to me he’d been offended because I’d started calling him Brian the Brain. Apparently he didn’t think the transposition of letters had been clever at all. I remembered Tomas and my prayer. The stigma of God’s intervention still played upon my conscience. Was I responsible? Had God granted me the accident and the opportunity to experience shame? I knew I hadn’t caused Tomas’ death but had willed it, willed it when my own insensitivity, not his intervention, cost a friendship. I resolved to have a place for selfishness, inside the box in the basement with the ghost that wanted to kill me, the ghost I’d met when I was six, who chased me in and around a white maze in my dreams. Every six months or so when the box got too big from the ghost beating on it from the inside I’d shrink it down once again inside my head to a pinhead size and hide it in the corner of the basement where the floor was broke out in the dirt among my fears. After thirty years we moved away and I forgot about it and the ghost escaped. But by then I was too big. The ghost couldn’t smother me. I smothered the ghost, and the shame I consumed, digested and incubated into respect, forgiveness and remembrance. I remember Tomas now and wish him well where he may be.

Mark Putzi received an MA in Creative Writing from the University of Wisconsin — Milwaukee in 1990. He has published fiction and poetry in numerous small press magazines including The Cape Rock, the Cream City Review, Queen Mob’s Teahouse, Meniscus and Griffel. He lives in Milwaukee and works as a retail pharmacist.

King Silva had problems.  The first problem was the Queen had now been deceased for 15 years. His second problem involved his only child, Princess Katarina.  She would be of age in three weeks and had not a single suitor to woo her.  His final problem indirectly involved the Princess.  Without an heir from her, his Kingdom would last only as long as the two remained alive.  Upon their deaths, the land would turn to ruin under a series of inevitable civil wars.  It was his duty to ensure an heir, but the Princess was of a frail state and no one believed she would live much longer, let alone find a Prince, marry him, and give him a son.  If the Princess could, the King would only need to arrange a marriage to one of the second or third sons of a friendly king, thus insuring the State continuity.

King Silva consulted the royal physicians and kept close watch on his daughter’s health and the degenerative nature of her illness.  By the time of the Harvest Dance, the King and the Princess hosted the royals of all nations to participate in the celebration.  While not expecting a proposal of marriage, the Princess found sufficient strength to attend and mingle with the eligible bachelors.  By the next morning, all agreed on the success of the celebration.

Two months later, the royal physicians announced the motherly nature of the Princess. Both doctor and lawyer began a race against time to bolster the health of the Princess and to identify the father of the child.  And while a certain inheritance of a hearty Kingdom weighed in the balance, the unknown suitor failed to identify themselves as the rightful claimant to the title of Father of the Heir.  

Scandal always follows intrigue and the King averted neither.  The press wanted information. The adjacent Kings (and their Princes) demanded information.  Even King Silva became stymied by the lack of additional topics of conversation throughout the Kingdom.

With each passing day, the birthdate drew closer.  With each passing day, the health of the Princess fell. Exactly nine months after the Harvest Dance, the Princess’s health took a turn for the worse as she underwent labor and a heart attack simultaneously.  Only an immediate C-section saved the male heir. No such treatment could save the Princess.  At the cost of one heir, the Kingdom now had a new healthy heir.  Such was the price for regal continuity.

But what of the new Prince?  Who was his father?  Was it a royal at the Harvest Dance or a commoner from a village?  If the former, King Silva had his salvation.  If the later, plowshares to swords.

On his deathbed, King Silva permitted a DNA test on the new heir.  Scientists proved he was of true royal blood.  The Prince received his mother’s DNA from his mother.  He also received his father’s DNA from his mother’s father.

Heavy is the head that wears the crown.

Andy Betz has tutored and taught in excess of 30 years. He lives in 1974, has been married for 27 years, and collects occupations (the current tally is 100). His works are found everywhere a search engine operates.

Before she arrived, there were cars — so many cars! — switched out often, like diapers, the owner so seldom seen, they might have moved themselves. 

Amir had lived for more than a year on his own.  We watched his carport from our kitchen window, wondering who he was, why he seldom spoke to anyone.  We never found out what he did with all those cars, but we shamefully provided our own explanation.  A single guy from Afghanistan, solitary habits, and vehicles coming and going.  We were friendly but kept our distance.

Then one day, a female emerged from the carport.  A Muslim man with a kept woman?  Not likely.  It was his new wife, of course, brought over from the home country.  She arrived when we weren’t looking, the car between cars, so beautiful she stopped traffic.

Adeela brought with her the wish to drive a car.  She wished so hard you could imagine little wheels sprouting beneath her, spinning as she folded the laundry, rolling her over to us with trays of food she cooked herself.  Food we felt guilty accepting, kindness undeserved.  She would point to each item as we learned restaurant Farsi:   Korme Kofta.  Chalow.  Mashawa.

When the day came to take the test, she dressed for the occasion.  Black hair shining on an uncovered head.  Face made up boldly.  Jewelry flashing like high beams.  She returned so quickly I wondered if the agent at the DMV had passed her automatically.

Now she runs the wheels off that thing.  Drives it around the neighborhood like a Hot Wheels pedal car.  Runs it so fast I imagine her speeding to Kabul overnight, flaunting her new freedoms then gunning it home, leaving a shimmering exhaust of spices and silk in her wake.

Michele Rappoport is living the small life in Arizona and Colorado. She travels in an RV, creates tiny art, writes poetry and other short pieces, and has a certification in small-animal massage. She wishes she were taller, but she is 5’3” and shrinking.

I opened another bottle and sat down at the keys.

I nod. I have started now.

I am in a single room on the third floor. Magnolia walls. Magnolia carpet. A small bathroom. A single bed. A desk. And this chair.

From the hallway, I hear female laughter and the passing click-clack-click-clack of their stiletto heels. Up on the fifth floor, the ‘Social Bar Club’ must have now closed for the night. It must have. I cannot hear that dwarf’s voice on the microphone.

I am being serious. He was there when I was at the club earlier. Sat in my own booth. Two small green leather sofas. I played dice with a lady named Lucky. That’s right. A very bad name. I didn’t stand a chance. I was up against a pro. And I was drunk inside of thirty minutes. Cracking up at the savage state of me, Lucky slapped her hand on my upper thigh.

“Look at you, brother,” she laughed, “You’d think you’d never played dice before. Always losing. Very bad. Always lying. Terrible.” She laughed, “I can see why you are sitting here on your own.”

“Really?” I nodded –  raising an eyebrow in her direction – unsure of how much Lucky knew about my situation. “What do you mean by that?”

Lucky stroked me on the shoulder.

“Don’t worry, brother. It’s alright. Me and the other girls, we all know you from the TV. And we all know that this is all very unfair on you…”

She looked at me but I am not there now.

Cut to my dim lit single room.

The sound of a drunken argument in the room above me.

The woman is furious. She doesn’t like where her husband’s been. And she hates the state he’s in. It’s happening too often. She wants him to shower. But he tells her – in no uncertain terms – that he doesn’t want to. He is a dragon. He is a – something-or-other – I don’t know every word – And he is also something else – but I cannot find the word for that either.

“Fuck off…”

I pick up my cigarettes and shake my head. The argument grows louder.

Yes. That’s right. I could go out. But it is 3 AM. And I don’t feel like eating any barbecue. Not with the cameras on me. Not now I have become an unwanted celebrity. Can’t forget that “brother”.

No. I can’t forget yesterday morning. It will not leave my thoughts. 

6 AM. The fuckers.

Nearly smashed up half the empty bottles lying on the floor. Not that they cared, of course. The local media with their big ass cameras and their bloody smart phones. Shoving them in my face and throwing questions at me. The moment I was stupid enough to open the door to my room.

“Brother, when you met her, did you know she was married?”

“Brother, do you have any comment?”

No. I do not. I have three packets of cigarettes. An ashtray. Two litres of cheap vodka. And in the drawer beneath the keys, I now have a one-way ticket to the country next door. I don’t know how I’m going to use it though. Her husband is a high-ranked member of the local military. So it would be safer to assume that he has contacts at the airport.

That’s why an explanation is not important now.

Plans and decisions need to be made. And that is why – blah blah blah – I cannot concentrate on anything. And that is why I keep on giving out excuses.

My apologies.

I didn’t even tell you about the dwarf and his gold-lamé suit.

I’m sorry.

Maybe next time.

Right now – I hear shouting in the corridor

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

Older sister Nancy and I make our own Thanksgiving. We finagle a turkey, just like Mother did. Of course, we burn it. Same with the biscuits, which fall apart, like homes. Empires.

Next we try to arrange the table, Mother and Dad’s chairs. Empty, yet elegant.

When we try to give thanks, words won’t form, emptiness stuck in our throats. The world’s demanded bills, seduced parents with wanderlust. Forced us to survive when we should live.

We laugh at the idiocy of it. Mother and Dad would, if they were here.

Of course, mentioning them, laughter turns to tears.

Nothing holds.

Yash Seyedbagheri is a graduate of Colorado State University’s MFA program in fiction. His story “Soon,” was nominated for a Pushcart and he has also had work nominated for The Best Small Fictions. Yash’s work is forthcoming or has been published in journals such as 50 Word Stories, Silent Auctions, City. River. Tree. and Ariel Chart.

Harold arrived at the front door dressed in death, the soles of his tobacco, suede hunting boots wrapped in grass and sticky mud.  Sweat trickled down the sides of his face, leaving a trail of oily dew on his wife’s memory. 

Myrna shook her head in disgust, knowing the weekly ritual had begun.  Out came the thumbtacks and corkboards. 

“So, how many flies did you catch today?” 

Pollen infested eyes cut through her sarcasm; she covered her wounds with a crochet sweater. 

As he laid the net down, she saw one butterfly trapped inside.  Its moss-brown wings lay lifeless like a swatch of silk that she wanted to caress and stow away for safekeeping.

“Why must you kill something so beautiful?” 

Harold told her to hush and pinned the creature to its grave. “It’s just a butterfly,” he groaned. 

“And you’re just plain ugly,” she snapped as she stomped upstairs to the bedroom. 

He shrugged his shoulders and grinned, admiring the specimen on display. 

Myrna sat on the bed and wept, hot tears falling like Summer rain. She glanced at the bedroom walls, eyeing dozens of butterflies in dead repose.  Their glass coffins coated in dust and death. She sprinted to the bathroom, opened the medicine cabinet. The bottle of sleeping pills a beacon in a sea of medication.

She rushed downstairs to the kitchen and prepared a glass of lemonade, dropping half the bottle of sleeping pills inside. Hurry up and dissolve. She peeked towards the living room. He was stretched out on the recliner, one hand lost inside his shorts.

“Harold, I don’t know what came over me earlier.  You must be so tired from the hunt. I’ve brought you a refreshing glass of lemonade,” she smiled.

He looked at her suspiciously. 

“Go on. It’s not going to bite you.”

He took the lemonade and quickly gulped it down. “Bring me another glass. You know I hate those dainty looking glasses you insist on using. Bring me a man-size glass.”

“Of course, Harold. You just rest and I’ll be back in a second.” She prepared another glass, dropped more sleeping pills. Then, dashed back to the kitchen and waited.

An hour later, snoring emanated from the recliner. Myrna knew what she had to do. With all the strength she could muster, she dragged his body onto a large piece of plywood that had been hidden behind the buffet for months.

Out came the hammer and some nails. The sound of pounding and screaming echoed throughout the house.

Wiping bloodied hands on her apron, Myrna frowned, then shrugged her shoulders. “Tsk. Tsk. So much for beauty. You’ve got to be the ugliest butterfly I’ve ever seen. You won’t do to display. My only option is the basement. You can discuss beauty with the spiders and roaches…for eternity.”

Sandy Benitez writes lyrical poetry and short fiction, sometimes dark, magical, or mysterious. Her most recent poetry chapbooks include Cherry Blossom Days and Petal Storm.  Sandy currently resides in Southern California with her husband and two children. She can be reached at https://sandysbenitez.blogspot.com or on Goodreads.

The way I remembered it my father woke me in the night. “I’ve got something to show you,” he said and I was wide awake at once, hearing the excitement in his voice. I was a big girl, could have walked, but he wrapped me in blankets and carried me, holding me close, out to the sidewalk in front of our house.

All week the air had been heavy with unfallen snow. Too cold to snow, the TV weatherman said. When my father and I looked up there was no loft to the sky. We couldn’t see past the street lights, couldn’t see the moon and stars glittering cold in the dark.

The moisture in the air had frozen and formed crystals. When the light from the street lamps came through them the crystals became prisms reflecting tiny rainbows, as far as we could see, the lovely colors spilling into each other, over and over. Neither of us had seen the Northern Lights and we thought that was what we saw. “It’s as if the sky came down,” I said to my father who held me closer, asked me if I was warm enough.

I was. The cold, like the shimmering lights, was just out of reach. I told my father it made me think of Moses, how the Lord had allowed him to look upon the Promised Land but never let him go there. “That’s so sad, sweetheart,” my father said, smiling because I’d said something clever.

He took me back inside when the lights faded in the early dawn. When I woke again he was calling us down for breakfast, confusing me. In sleep, I’d thought I was still safe in his arms.

But it was my mother who took me out in the night, not my father. She’d seen the rainbows when she took the dog out, she told me later, and came up to get us, my younger sister Suzie and me. We were in bed but we hadn’t fallen asleep yet and we put our boots and coats on over our pajamas and went out holding her hands.

Jane Snyder’s stories have appeared in The Writing Disorder, X-Ray Lit, and Manque. She lives in Spokane.

Shouldn’t have tried a shortcut. I slap the navigation again, but the screen remains dark. Shoulda charged my phone at home. Shoulda bought a car charger. Shoulda shoulda shoulda. Now I’ll miss the start of the game

I hurry into the Easy Mart and ask the lady how to get back to the highway. She tells me to bear right at the drowning man.

… I creep along for about five minutes till I see him. Fortunately. His head barely turtles above the surface of a river running alongside the road. There’s a left curve and both a soft and hard right. Which right do I take? I pull over and go to the river. “Can you hear me?” I shout, noticing the flow rippling around his ears.

Tilting his head back so his mouth is clear of the water, he says something I can’t make out.

I yell more loudly and punch each word. “Which … way …  to … the … high … way?” No response. I stand tall and stretch my arm left, a little right, then far right. The man starts to speak, but, just my luck, goes under. I don’t have time for this. I turn to go, but hear him sputtering.

The drowning man works his mouth, but only a stream of water comes out.

“Say again?”

He gasps one word. I think it’s “Left.”

“Left? The woman at the Easy Mart said bear right.” The man’s eyes look glassy.

I have to make a choice. I read you can believe a dying declaration, so I opt for left. I give the man a thumbs up and white rabbit myself to the car. 

As I go along, the asphalt smithereens to gravel. The road snakes and narrows. Maybe I misheard the drowning man, or he wasn’t thinking clearly. Gravel becomes dirt. Ruts wrench me to a crawl. I’ll be lucky to catch half the game. Tree limbs claw the car. There’s no place to turn around. My arms throb from squeezing the steering wheel. I gasp for breath. My head spins. I’m about to pass out when I break into a clearing, and the road widens. I tell myself to hold on. After a few minutes I’m back on asphalt. Still dizzy though.

I stop and notice the river alongside the road. I hate to lose any more time, but could use a splash on my face. I stumble to the bank, lose my balance and tumble in. The current pulls me out and slams me into a rock. Too hurt to swim, I can barely keep my head above water. My life flashes before my eyes. Suddenly a man appears on the bank. I’m saved!

I cry for help.

The man stands tall and faces left, a little right, then far right.

David Henson and his wife have lived in Brussels, Belgium and Hong Kong over the years and now reside in Peoria, Illinois with their dog Annabelle, who likes to walk them in the woods.

“This is everything I can’t say to you,” he gently presses the crumpled notebook paper into my palm. His eyes are furtive and unfocused, greasy hair drooping down his forehead like an ungroomed Lhasa Apso. He hurries away when the bell rings and I am left standing here. I have never seen him before.

I uncrumple the note and read. Your scar is like poetry on your skin. It makes me want to tell you every terrible thing I’ve ever done and every lie I’ve ever told.

I finger the scar on my cheek. Then I throw the paper away.

Vanessa Capaldo teaches middle school English in Texas. She is a voracious reader of young adult novels and is currently writing one.