Caleb Hipple 

David closed his eyes hard enough to see colors. All stimuli. Almost no presence. Measured breaths between sips of lukewarm tap water. The heat of vomit rose from the sink and worked into the sweat ringing his neck.   

The vault opener had marked the coffin’s end with mud to indicate where her head pointed. The pipe behind the faucet grunted.  

  The motor whirred. His wife lowered into the ground. He pressed his finger against a nick on his chin. Behind a sweating pane of glass, the sky, a slate sidewalk, beckoned the idea of slick steps, of falling down the hill and rolling until his neck could not unturn. He poured the cup into the sick. His sick formed a ring at the sink’s edge.  

  The pastor hemmed and nodded. “Give her, o Lord, your peace and let your eternal light shine upon her.” David flipped the switch and darkness snapped back in. Lightning severed the sky.  

  When their daughter died, almost two weeks ago, she was barely noticeable beneath the daisy-addled sheet. While Leah sobbed, David smiled and pursed back the tears; he needed everything to be a joke, for her to jump from beneath the covers and try to scare him. He had watched the attending physician stare at the clock and write on a chart. His ears beeped less as he exited their house.  

Light bled through the sky like wet charcoal. Helicopter seeds flitted from a red maple. He reached for one and past his fingers and the horizon, he saw the back of his head. The dry mulch crunched and frayed around his feet as he propped a photo, edges fluffed with wear, against the tree. Heat wrapped around his bare ankles, yet he felt immensely cold. In the picture, Leah held an impossibly large stomach, with Madeline inside and then something smaller than an eye’s sparkle in her. He’d wrap his arms around her from behind, squeezing her hand three times. Rub her belly to produce a kick. Maybe he’d brush his teeth and wide-mouth blather through a conversation, or nod minutely at her while shaving. Razor blades from his subscription service sat open by her, and she laid open by him. He adjusted a kitchen chair beneath the tree’s largest limb.  

A few steps forward; they weren’t real, just tests. His toe lost the pressure of earth beneath it—is this one tight enough, giggle. Sitting on the chair, he held his phone and watched a video on how to tie a noose. He struggled, even after clicking through the multiple suicide hotline warnings, to make an efficient knot. If he jumped up from the height of two chairs, he’d maybe reach the branch. Tie the knot. Throw it; an adventurer exploring bravely into the new world. History in the making. Mosquitos buzzed. The loop felt like a child’s arms around his neck, and he felt like dying so he stepped off.  

Peacock-brilliance. Like welder sparks, like struck matches, veins in the back of your eyes. All David could think of was how to justify what he had just seen pierce the sky, something beyond a super-heated lump larger and larger as it tailed towards his house, his tree, him, but at the same time, just that, and the oxygen jammed in his neck and rushed through him, anywhere but his lungs. Everything squeezed. He held his own hand. Whatever it was came crashing, shining like a snowball locked in a sun’s ray, grazing the rope and David’s leg. He fell, and a few teeth dislodged into the soil.  

Each synapse fired, comprehending something he hadn’t seen in all the thirty-four years. A cannonball, then a child splashing; frightened pigeons with puffy wings, smoke rising from where it shouldn’t be. Memories paraded his head in infinite speed to mark what he had seen. So, he breathed. His chest pierced itself with a fear not unlike falling. The dewy grass steamed, vapors escaping and screaming.   

His arms could do nothing but hide his head. Chemically blood, salt and heat in his mouth and the fright of no stop in bullet-speed; oh, he hated himself for killing himself without even a real try. Leah’s death had a purpose, had some thought behind it. He regretted ever being a father, regretted that thought, and wished his daughter would be behind an open eyelid, that she was swinging from a tire attached to the rest of the rope and unafraid. These thoughts leaked out from his lips, from the gash in his leg. The piss soaking into the wound.  

He coughed, a tooth dangling in his mouth. Motes of ash rose and smeared against his face. The heat wavered from the meteor’s surface and like a pressed hand on television static, stopped. Around a blob. A clump of seafoam, mossing the photograph that drifted at its surface, gathering scum. The air thickened with heat yet thinned without oxygen. Seagulls hovered nearby. Heat lightning cracked against large stones, miles away. The birds fled. He stood and thunder ricocheted along the cape and his eardrums throbbed and blood stuck to his leg hair.   

His stomach made no movement, no feeling came but for the superheated queasiness surrounding his organs. His house is 2560 square feet. He has a Honda Civic with 170 thousand miles. His wife and child are dead. Why is Madeline where the blob was. “No.” No.  

  It crawled lizard-like, arms and legs working on sides rather than upper and lower halves, up the tree and wrapped the limb. No belly button. Her hands pawed at her stomach as she struggled to stay put, but no scratches surfaced; the creature lacked fingernails. Her breasts, the size of daffodils, bared no nipples, and her eyes registered only fear. With shoulders broader than an eleven-year-olds. Hair tangled around wafer-thin seeds and the burgundy leaves. It smiled without teeth, then strained its neck so hard, forceful enough to make other facial movements, oh it flicked between every emotion he could register and ones David had only ever felt, had been unable to show. It looked scared.  

David fell to his backside, and the child struggled to stay in the branches. The sky crackled. She screamed and dropped against a rock, stood slowly as if to test her asleep limbs, her knees unbending until the rigidity lessened. Crawling from the all-surrounding sound and now a few paces from David, she leaned in and reached for a gash at his head, twitching forward with minute motions. Looking side to side, full-faced and stiff, she flinched as David met his face with her palm.  

Deerlike, mouselike, whatever animal David thought of was and was not this thing, but she removed her bloody hand at the same pace she had approached, and squeezed her eyes shut; up close, both eyelids, vertical, rotated to horizontal as her proboscis snaked and wrapped her hand. He could not tell if she looked like Madeline or if that’s what he wanted. But wasn’t it just close enough…? From her collarbone, the torn edge of a photo poked from inside her skin. She did not see the rock David picked up with his other hand to crash against her skull.  

She nursed her palm. No resistance when David scooped her up. In the dark of a tarp, tied close with a charred rope, this was when David realized as he carried her to the kitchen table, he had felt the bundle lighten until she was the size of Madeline. The Before Madeline.   

After Madeline?  

  Red brine leaked from within and onto the wood. Inside her head, he imagined nuclear reactions occurring at the speed of light within and without one another, green tadpoles chasing each other and nibbling Polaroid fragments and oh-negative donuts. What had he bore witness to? Created?  

Blood pasted his legs together. He undid the noose but did not open the bag; if she was awake, she’s old enough. Jesus Christ. Her skull cracked, the sound low as a campfire. The little helixes wriggling, filling her body like solemn nurses do hospital rooms. He hoped she knew that the darkness wasn’t something to be afraid of. Her shoulders had narrowed. Her hair reached her belly button. David took a knife from the kitchen sink and slit his palm, holding it over the bag and waiting until he had dripped enough blood to make an alien human.  

The tooth in his mouth had ceased bleeding, and David didn’t know whether to worry about that or not. He watched himself in a homemade-knickknack mirror atop the mantle and plucked the nerve like a harp, then ripped the fucker. His head hit the coffee table’s edge as he fell. On the rug, in a pooling warmth, he allowed himself to rest.   

The daughter-thing peeked from the table, leapt, then straddled his chest. She took the tooth and placed it in against her tongue and swallowed, grinning far too wide. Tongue-proboscis wrapping the inside of her mouth like cucumber ivy. She grinned and shifted her cheeks side to side, finally spitting something between the spots in David’s vision. His mouth felt hot and wet again. Teeth pushed through her gums as she studied his face, most likely continuing to even after his eyes shut.  

He dreamt about a cat burglar coming into the house and stealing his daughter and his cat. Everybody laughed in the end. Sensations role-called. His temples pounded him into alertness: a mouth on his. He pushed her from his chest and wiped his lips, expecting blood but seeing only black spots, like confetti. The blood must have dried into little fish food flakes.   

“Daddy,” she said, tilting her head to the left. It cracked eight times. “Can I have some milk?”   

  David nodded, for his own sake, and crawled behind the couch then ran to the basement.  

With the door pressed against his back, he slid and pounded his fists against his skull. In rapid movements he slammed his thighs and balled his muddy shirt, biting and sobbing into it. Blades of grass rubbed into his sore gums. Footsteps, creaky ones from the hallway, so he ran down the stairs and paced, focusing on the dryer, all he could think about was the loose change that had rattled inside the day prior because that was the only thing that made a fucking iota of sense in this situation. It didn’t. He should have just died, right?  

His tooth. In crime documentaries, they find you with your dental records. How much information is in a tooth? How much of David is in his molar—in the daughter-thing? He shook while filling a laundry detergent cup with water, then dashed it lethally to the side: it hadn’t died in the atmosphere, so a splash of water to its face wouldn’t fix anything. Knock. This isn’t a movie. He skirted to the other side of the room, clutching a claw tooth hammer.   

“David?” The doorknob at the stair’s top jiggled.   

A half-window, one that Leah snuck through in their early years when they couldn’t remember keys, framed the wall above the sink. David knew he couldn’t fit. “Yes?” He scrubbed his face into the shirt. “Yes, honey?”  

“I’m sorry I asked for a drink.” He listened to her press against the door and slide to the ground. “When are you and… Mommy, gonna make dinner?”  

David bit into his knuckle and rocked against the dryer. “I don’t know.” He repeated this to himself, faster and quieter each time. He knew he could never hurt her, running upstairs to watch her through the crack.   

“Oh. I’ll wait.” Her fingers wiggled beneath the door, and before David could move his foot, her pinky tapped his shoe. She giggled.  

David left, and opened the cabinet, and poured some Borax, beating the box to loosen the clumps, into a cup. He mixed this with water and stirred it with two fingers, then swallowed it. His throat burned and he gagged.  

“Daddy,” she said, inquisitively. “Dad?” She tapped the handle, then rattled it in a rhythm. Slow, then. Little locks wriggled in the door. She made no more sounds because the door opened.  

David retched into the sink. Outside, the sky had cleared some but oily darkness spread in the clearest parts. His eyes closed, throat burned and blood fringed the bile. Madeline hugged his leg.  

She squeezed him tight enough to make his knee crack. Each cough took away more and more until an overwhelming neutrality settled into his chest. Within this, hangnails of thoughts boomeranged, and David wondered why he couldn’t be with his daughter again. She whimpered into his groin. He listened to her inhale.  

“I’m here, Madeline.” His jaw tightened around her name. “Here.” David bent and took her into his arms, ready to live or die.  

“Madeline? Madeline.” She smiled. Her teeth all reached the same length. She looked behind him. “My clothes.”  

“Your clothes.” David hesitated, reaching above, on top of the dryer, to the pile he never thought he’d search. “Get dressed.”  

“Okay, David.” She licked her canines and clapped.  

“Please call me Dad.” Then, “I’ll get you a bath.” The lights in his head hummed. He took her hand, clammy but smooth, and guided her upstairs at a distance. She sat on the toilet lid while the bath filled, and David pressed into the wall. He wanted to ask her, like a stranger, where she was from. “I’ll be out for just a bit.”  

“Why?” She was in front of the door. A spider dangled down from the ceiling between them. David instinctively clapped it.  

“Why would you do that?”  

“What? Oh. I, I don’t know. We just… we do that. Kill bugs. Not anything bigger than a bug, though.”  

“Oh.” She smiled and grabbed his hand with more strength than needed and licked off the guts. He opened her mouth immediately and scraped it off her tongue, then fell to the floor. This is not Madeline; I can’t treat her like this.    

“We don’t kill bigger things, but farmers and hunters do. We eat those, like chicken. Not spiders. You remember that, right?”  

Her stare felt empty, and behind it a desire to be full.  

“But there’s nobody big that kills us.” He felt like he was lying. “So if, if you’re worried I’m going to leave somehow, don’t be worried.” She twitched her lips until frowning. David took her hand, clasped it, and kneeled. “If you think I’m going to leave. If, you think I did leave, or that you left… I’m going to be around. We will.” He realized this moment was real, very much so happening, and the water trickled over the tub’s edge.   

With the drain unplugged for a moment then stopped, she settled into the water until only her nose broke the surface. From the wavering lens of dirt and blood inking towards the top, he watched her. Steam hid the mirror and David felt scared without his reflection. Within the space between her fingers, a filament, billowing like sediment in tea, stretched across the gap and formed a web. Water poured down her nostrils. He felt sick, imagining the swishing of water within his own stomach. She paddled and sent small waves against the faucet, then traced the outline of her hips.  David left to give her privacy.   

  

In the backyard, smoke billowed from the porous surface of the meteor. Something between spent charcoal briquettes and well-used pumice stones, sitting on the tub’s edge in mildew, by an almond-scented shampoo.  

He gave it a wide gait. Through an orifice, the inner core, blinking like the lapse after a yellow light. The tarp from inside fit almost halfway over its top. He washed his hands and the scummy sink. He heard a shower running upstairs and, of all things, worried that Madeline had flooded the upstairs, found some way to ruin things like kids do. Like trying to shave.  

Droplets clung to the plastic liner. Behind it, a figure much larger than Madeline pumped a bottle and reached for its head. David pulled the curtain open, afraid to be fast or slow.   

Leah stared back at him.   

He shut the curtain and left. From his, his, bedroom, he heard the water stop and the rings travel the curtain rod. It entered the room wearing Leah’s clothes and fell on top of him. It placed his hands on its breasts and squeezed control of his hands. David struggled enough to move away but hopefully not to insult. He wanted to know why she looked wrong; she smelled exactly the same. This was the worst part.  

She did not relent. Beneath her sundress was skin as smooth and malleable as an earlobe. David grazed the line where her thigh and groin met, and it too was indistinguishable from the surrounding flesh, the texture unchanging. Images of his daughter’s Barbie came to his mind. He pushed her and rolled to the bed’s edge, flexing his calves enough to induce a Charlie horse, pressing his legs together. The lamp beside them illuminated a picture frame. He saw his wife. The creature grabbed his crotch and squeezed. He felt heat, choking pain of teary God-awfulness in his throat rising against his tingling brainstem. He no longer wanted to die except for the small part of himself that enjoyed this.  

“Now, I’m Leah.” Her eyes flitted across him as if a teleprompter were there, checking him for an understanding. “You want this. I don’t know your thoughts, I am them.” She fell forward against his shoulder, her cheek brushing his. “This is love. I am love. I am yours. I am you.” She rolled in the sheets and waited, burrowed in the duvet.   

She frowned, her face shifting in parts: somewhere, Helen Hunt met Lucille Ball, her lips for a moment Marilyn Monroe’s then tight as Dreyfus’. “I watched you, David.” The alarm clock by the bed crackled. The indicator diodes matched its solid red hue. “I watched everything, for a moment.”   

Behind the eyes she had taken from David, that David had taken from Leah, stars fought their way forward. “What you saw when I crashed, I saw. Your world is, our world is… I can’t be her, exactly. I’ve been trying, though.” An over-boiled pot of expression, she simmered into Leah. She inched towards him, and with teary eyes, smiled. “There’s these little thoughts. Smaller than big ones, and they wriggle around until I give them attention, David, they’re bubbles that gather but won’t pop. I can’t stop thinking, and what I’m thinking is how much you, in human and in animal, want her back.” She traced the veins of his arm.  

“I know.” He didn’t and did, angrily, then fell into her arms. “I know.” He didn’t fear her and couldn’t place why. “We could make this work, though.”  

With her face pressed into his hair, she inhaled.  “Let’s pretend, David,” she whispered.  

A pillow-fort future, but it could be reinforced with the ends of couches, coffee tables, outstretched arms. “Pretend. Even… what all do you know? Remember?” His vision couldn’t steady itself. “You were Madeline, and that’s okay.” David ran his fingers through her hair, the shampoo slick. “You’re okay, you’re okay, you’re okay. You can learn. Did you learn about Leah from my tooth, or the blood, or what—”  

“Leah. I could really be, I really could. There’s much more than man in you, David. I was nothing hours ago, but with your help, your guidance, oh, David, I am her.” Her neck twitched.   

A clock downstairs chimed. “Do you think I deserved what happened?”  

Smiling, smiling smiling smiling; she grinned as if that could be an answer, then opened her mouth and looked down at him with her arms spread in a lack of knowing. In doing so, she knocked a bottle of perfume from the nightstand. To think by himself, at least feet away, he mopped the spill with a pair of underwear. The smell of alcohol and roses made him vomit.   

Inside the pile of undigested church cookies, ink-black tadpoles wriggled. One screamed like boiled lobsters as he pressed it into the floorboard. Leah rolled in the bedsheets and looked at him. She shook her head, and stood. Stepping on the glass and next to David. “What the fuck is wrong with you?” Pressed a finger to the nape of his neck. “You killed our kid, David.” He fell into the mess and gave himself permission to go away.  

  

Sunlight settled on the staircase’s landing. Around the corner, she fried bacon on the stove. Clicking the tongs around a flimsy piece, trying to flip it, she worked but each attempt was unsuccessful. She turned toward the table and reached into the pan; her skin sizzled as she adjusted the slice. Satisfied, she sucked her fingers and faced David.  

“Oh. I didn’t even see you there.” She placed her palm on the counter, under a kitchen towel.  

“I don’t remember sleeping.” He settled against the fridge and slid to the floor. “Did you? You did. Well, did you sleep well?” He tucked his foot under his thigh, stomach bulging from last night’s dinner. Couldn’t remember things too well. Backyard Mount Rushmore. Madame President peeling fatback off cast iron. His nose ran.  

She fell beside him, uprighting, then forced her face into his shoulder. “I can’t believe you forgot what today was.” The words ran muffled through his veins as she spoke into his skin.  

David ventured his hand up her neck. The edge of her hair felt like milfoil, slick and fibrous. She hadn’t dried from the night before, the shampoo still oily. “I think we need to talk. Nothing major, just need to go over some things.”  

“It’s not your birthday, is it?” She smiled. When he didn’t return, she tilted her head and smiled larger. “And it’s not my birthday!” She leaned in, kissing him. Pill-like objects rolled from beneath his tongue.  

“What the fuck was that?” He spat onto the floor. “Oh. Oh oh oh.” Notes of vomit worked through his throat. Roses. Screams. His neck ached.  

“David, dearest, dearest David. You need to calm down, you’re right. Let’s talk. Honesty is important in a marriage.” Each word felt tailored. “I didn’t mean that. I know I’m not quite Leah but I’m trying, goddammit, and that’s what marriage is really about, isn’t it David?”  

“No, no. No. I, I never fucking married you. This isn’t you, isn’t cute, you were a ball of fucking slime—”  

She pushed off his chest. “We take offense to that. Those, what did you think, tadpoles? Yes, those are almost near-perfect combinations of your DNA and your perception of”—her face shifted to Madeline’s for a moment—“us.”   

David walked around the counter, Leah opposing him. He ran his tongue against the back of his teeth and felt holes lining the inside of his gums. “That doesn’t matter anymore. I didn’t ask to have kids. I didn’t ask for a second chance, I really didn’t.” His throat hurt for too many reasons. “Even if I did, she wouldn’t do this to me.”  

Her lashes, full, caught tears, yet nothing else changed.  

  “You aren’t even good at being her.” His teeth throbbed. “What the fuck did you do to me? I don’t”—he sucked in breaths—“deserve this.”    

Leah leaped to the countertop. “And why would you say that?”  

David stared at her, and for a moment, it really was Leah. She could be waiting for breakfast as he finished the eggs, contributed to the family… He knew if he just accepted whatever happened now, he could maybe make it out. “She knew things. More than that. Things change. And she knew I changed with them. I sometimes like my bacon chewy.” The smell of burning meat continued to increase. “I am not the same as I was yesterday, but I bet you need to suck the life out of me to figure that out. Some sort of backwards, update? You need me to be anything and pity you. I didn’t let go but I should have.” He felts his bowels loosen.   

“You and I aren’t very different, David.” She sat on the counter, legs spread. “I need a child, too. And you—” She grabbed his throat, pulling downwards. Oblong masses worked through his neck and blocked enough air to scare him. “You got your kid. And you wouldn’t let go. You got your wife back and wouldn’t even sleep with her. You could just accept things as they are. I know what you’re thinking, and I mean that more than others do. I know what you’re thinking. At all times I’ve operated with a David in the back of my head, like… a tumor.” She stepped back. “You can’t get to the knife that fast. I put them in the dishwasher.”  

The green light on the rinse cycle said about twenty-eight minutes left. She shook her head. “David, this all happened so suddenly. So very sudden. We could have made this work—I was willing to make it last. You could get me, and I’d get a chance at having a family. I don’t even want to hurt. I just want to spread. You aren’t some bug that I’ll kill. Your body won’t rupture. It isn’t going to be pleasant.” She clicked her tongue. “And that’s honesty. You’re going to shit your whole insides out, and I can fix that! You have water, hydrogen dioxide, enough for me to fucking bathe in! The things I can do, the magic I can create.  I’ll take care of you, ways people on your planet can’t. You have a cold, dark place just downstairs for us to snuggle up and work through this pain, together. Though, it can’t be worse than what us women go through.”   

David hated how she tried to be some bastardized version of Leah, a woman, fading further and further as much as he tried to hold the photos and make them talk back, but this was the plug to be pulled, goddamnit. The veins in his neck thickened. The smoke alarm went off, and the sound pierced through him but halted at the now egg-shaped mounds in his chest. A cookbook caught fire on the back burner. The open window sucked fluttering ash towards it. “Why can’t we go back,” he coughed, pivoting on one leg.   

She saw this and looked into his eyes, shaking her head. Veins rose to her skin. “You did. Oh, David. I get it now. All humans do is fake, and pretend. I learned from the best pretender there is, the one who pretends he can work the courage up to even kill me. To kill himself.” She tipped the pan to the floor, and grease splashed into his pant legs. The scream reached the bottom of his throat and burst one of the things within him. “You didn’t die last night. This isn’t… what, heaven or hell? I think that’s what you thought.”   

“I can try again.” He scratched the floor. A page tore off and rubbed against the wall. The fire spread to the curtains.  

 “David, you’re dying. Here and now. Want to know why things would have been easier if you did just kill yourself?” The rest of the polyps burst inside him like overboiled eggs. She stood over him. “Because I wouldn’t have had to take a rock to the head. Rather, I’d be in your basement using your body as my breeding ground. I wasn’t lying, by the way. You could have made it. We could have.”   

His veins wriggled. A fire raged at the stove, wallpaper peeling from the room. Sirens blared across the city.  

“Could you stay with me?” He knew something moved inside his chest. “I don’t want to die alone. I don’t want to, want to, want.” The smoke burned in his throat, and the skin from his neck hung.  

She laughed and stopped smiling. Shook her head. Knelt and brushed his hair. “No, David. You’re coming with me.” Before she could lift him, David used everything in him to pull the fridge onto both of them. His ankle cracked. Her’s burst.   

“You. Oh, oh you you you David, we could have been different and better and I’d be her her yes and you’d be David Daddy Dad dead. Stay at home dead.” Flames from a smoldering rug seared her cheeks, which grew back to only liquefy again. “This was all too rushed. Kid back and me back and you a crisp—” She wheezed. Fat streamed from her skin and she lost shape, seeping into the cracked floorboards. “I never lied to you. I wanted so many things, everything you wanted. Fall is coming closer, with trees breaking apart but they come back.” She stared at something he couldn’t see. “I don’t want to die either, David.” She held his hand. “I never did.”   

  

When Leah, Madeline, and David had moved into their new home, their first actual house, they finally had reason to unpack all of the things they neglected to do between each move. In one box, Madeline found a dead mouse but protested it could still be saved. When David elected to bury it, she watched in silence. He pressed a hand to her shoulder and squeezed. A lump on her collarbone. Leah looked at it, too. That night, Madeline took a hot shower and cried, though David could never tell if it was over the mouse or what they had convinced her was as normal as a skin tag. A dimple. Something we could worry about tomorrow.   

A week after the doctor’s appointment, test results showed the mass to be cancerous. Then, the lump left and reappeared twice-fold. While Leah stayed with her in the hospital, David went to church after twenty-three years of absence. He prayed for her to die soon so that she wouldn’t suffer and immediately recanted. She died after eleven months, without thought.   

In David’s arms, in the heat only burning homes can produce, she died again. Inside David, pollywogs swam and waxed into themselves. Each one fought his DNA which only boiled. He continued to stroke Leah’s hair as her body melted, benign as lard, even when his arm stuck to the floor. Leah burst open. The house topped in on itself and oxygen poured over its skeleton, the flames pricking the indigo sky. One last creature wriggled out of her stomach, and David held it against the floor as it shrieked, until docile as a child’s hand. Men yelled in at the front door. The fire crackled, whistled, orangish-reds falling over the family, leaf-like; David fell into the pile and waited to open his eyes again.  

Bianca Valentin 

Serenity Walker 

Spiked with caramelized 

tipped hair, the lead singer 

sat at cherry countertops. 

The jukebox sputtered, 

sharp overtones rising 

like a Sunday-school church choir. 

I slid on the stool beside him. 

A bead of sugar stained 

the rim of his drink. Caked rock’n’roll red,  

my head thudded against my palm. 

“Would ya order me a drink?” 

Riddled with rings 

he drummed, knuckles 

to the bar. He waved at the bartender. 

“The usual.” 

Tattoos peeked from rips 

in his jeans. Chains 

snaked from his pockets 

and through his belt loops. 

I bounced my foot against his stool. 

Would we have an Elvis impersonator 

with tin cans sounding like broken church 

bells in a Disney movie? I’d wear a busty, 

white jumpsuit while he would flaunt 

his leather jacket and laced boots. 

The bartender returned 

with our drinks. The singer handed 

me the tall glass, our fingers touching. 

“One tall glass of tap water for the lady.” 

Shruti Bhunjun 

 

Shruti Bhunjun

  

  

Areesha Mian 

Colt Walker 

Preacher man told O’shua there was a spirit in Creek Town. It had moved in and driven all the people away. They hadn’t seen hide nor tail of it, but they knew it was there, sure enough. Its thirst was unquenchable.  

O’shua was a spirit hunter with a long steel sword, and when they answered the notice Creek Town had put out for help, what they saw concerned them.  

The entire town had packed up and moved out from the hills onto the wide salt plains. The sun was merciless in the center of the valley, and water was scarce. The crying of thirsty children populated the hasty camp the people had set up. The noise went up to the heavens, but there was nothing to hear their prayers.  

Creek Town was a half day’s ride from the camp. The minimal recommended distance to put between yourself and a spirit. O’shua had no mount, so it took them a bit longer to walk. They arrived in the dead of night.  

Now they stood on the town’s outskirts where the buildings ended abruptly, where human shelter gave way to vast and yawning open space. The moon rendered the world in pale colors. Everything was amplified out here in the desert: sunlight, midnight, drought, and cold. It was a land that hadn’t yet been pared down by the blades of men. It was still wild, subject to wild whims. Though wells were being drilled and rails were being laid, it was slow, painful work, and the desert disdained the efforts at every turn. Mankind hadn’t yet discovered how to make the desert bow its head, how to turn it soft and pliant and usable for their purposes. And until they did that, they were in danger. The unpredictable qualities of the dead lands were an adversary few could stand in the face of.  

O’shua admired the sentiment. They liked a good fight, understood the necessity. But this is the truth about the nature of conflict: there’s always something set against you, and it’s your job to win.  

Metal rasped on metal as they drew their sword. The edge was sharp, the hilt soft and gleaming with oil. Blade at the ready, they paced forwards into the rotting town.  

Creek Town had only been empty for a few days, and at first, it looked like there was nothing askance. The doors were steadfastly shut, all the windows unbroken. O’shua had seen the work of destructive spirits before. There was no sign of that here. In comparison, this was clean.  

Then they heard a soft knocking noise, hollow like the beating of a drum. They turned up their collar against the cold desert wind and followed it to where a pail was knocking against a wall. It was the kind often set under eaves to catch rainfall when the sky blessed the dusty earth, but when O’shua picked it up and set it upright, they saw it was bone dry.  

They looked up at the fading storm clouds from yesterday and frowned.  

The sound of bleating and breathing drew their attention, and after tracing it to its source, they found a pen filled with goats that stared at them with terrified eyes. O’shua had never seen an animal left alive in the wake of a spirit. They examined the goats and found not a single scratch on them. And there was no sign of blood or bones or rotting fur anywhere in the area.  

But the water trough was bone dry.  

O’shua pinched the neck of one of the goats and saw how the skin slowly returned to its normal position. They had an idea of where the spirit might have hidden itself.   

The creek in Creek Town came from the mountains and wound its way slowly along the bottom of the valley. It was the reason people had gathered there in the first place, seeking the precious minerals that settled between the rocks along the bottom.  

O’shua could hear faraway rushing water, but when they found the creek, it was bone dry. They held their breath as they stepped around the bodies of fish and riverweed that had festered in the sun and now chilled in the night.  

They followed the sound of flowing water upstream, into the foothills of the mountains, until finally they found the spirit. In the light of the moon, its fur seemed gilded with silver. It was lying on its side in the creek bed, its mouth stretched open as wide across as a man knocked prone. The creek gushed down its throat. O’shua stood and watched a minute, sure that it would burst at any second, but the spirit must have had a hollow leg. Or maybe it was secreting the water away through the trick of some strange spirit magic. Or maybe it was just plain thirsty.  

Preoccupied, it did not notice them, so O’shua readied their blade and charged. They slashed at the spirit’s leg. It jumped to its feet with a watery wail, liquid cascading from its overextended mouth. The creek, now unhindered, flowed back into its normal path. O’shua fell back as water crashed against them. Their elbow cracked painfully against a stone.  

A shadow blocked the moonlight. O’shua rolled out of the way as a clawed paw came down towards them. Water found its way into their nostrils. They scrambled to their feet. They parried with the flat of the blade as the spirit swiped again. Then drove forward towards its heart. The spirit struck a glancing blow across their shoulders. The air left their lungs in a surprised whuff. They stumbled on the loose river stones, but they ducked under the spirit’s arm and spun to face its back. They drew a deep slash across its side as it turned towards them. Instead of blood and intestines spilling out as they expected, muddy water poured from the gash in the spirit’s skin, mixing with the clear creek.  

It wailed angrily, its wide snout curling back to reveal splintery teeth. On all fours it snapped at them, but it was already deflating, water gushing from its side like a contaminated fountain. O’shua backed up into the shallows to avoid its bite. They grabbed a handful of pebbles and hurled them at the spirit. The momentary distraction was enough. They darted forward and sliced open the spirit’s hairy neck. More muddy water flowed freely forth, and this time it pulled gristle and bone out with it.  

The spirit’s lifeless skin folded over and was washed away down the creek to wherever all water eventually meets at the end of the world. As the moon began to set and the sky rolled over from night to day, O’shua knelt in the creek and washed the spirit blood from their blade.   

There was no longer a spirit in Creek Town, and the land was no longer bone dry.  

Caleb Hipple 

We sit around my lack of medication 

and a bonfire begging to be pissed 

out. Can’t even prop my feet, my decision— 

the desire for warmth somehow a discussion. 

I ignore how my parents dismiss

 

change, unless it’s in a foot. 

The fabric sky pinholes over 

as I leave, long enough to visit 

their kitchen to investigate 

where the wine corkscrew is, CBD tinctures,

 

pill cups, the ongoing KidsPeace bills— 

my younger self earned us a diagnosis: depression 

in a psych ward, and the anxiety is general. 

Back then, my parents fed me steak with a pill 

and the two frothed like nuclear fission 

from me to the toilet. What’s a choice 

without options, sour as vomit? 

I’ll flush my mind and eyes and voice, 

and clarity ever-fleeting will be my sole vice, 

I’ll live kneeling and submit

 

to a decade defined 

by adverse head and stomach motions. 

Drawer closed, back outside, I recline 

to watch them watch the outline 

of my foot grazing the fire of undoctored revelation. 

Liz Shaffer 

I tip-toed up the wide staircase to my bedroom across from Aunt Freddie’s, the dark wood creaking under my calloused feet. Aunt Freddie and I had sleepovers every week. We would start with a game of pirates or fairies outside, eat dinner, have a nice bubble bath, and end with a story before bed. The narrow hallway led to another banister curving down the secret spiral staircase. Victorian sconces lit the hallway, crystal beading falling from the light. The hallway felt interminable, and each gap in the floorboards left room for spirits to pass through. I would dangle my feet through the spindles of the staircase, teasing death.   

It had been a month since I was last at Aunt Freddie’s. Her house carried something dark, and in my last attempt to spend the night, something woke me near midnight and my mom picked me up. I loved Freddie and her home, and tonight I was going to stay the night. The whole way through.  

A large, stained-glass window in the front of the house stood tall, looking over the expansive field surrounding the home. The glass depicted a gray tree with hues of blue surrounding the dark clouds and hiding the yellow sun. Perched atop the branches sat an unkindness of ravens. When I reached the end of the hall, above the stairs, I caressed the uneven window. The cool touch sent a shudder down my spine. I stepped into my room.   

The bay window across from the bed and the bookcase behind were my favorite features of the room.  A great chandelier hovered over the center of the room.  My bubble bath was “absolutely splendid” as Freddie would say in her self-taught British accent. I sat down at the vanity and brushed my hair with the heavy boar bristle brush. A pewter handle. I think. I felt like I lived in the era of the home, or at the very least, belonged there. Freddie knocked on the door, and I set the brush down to skip into my bed. I was committing to the night as I tucked my toes under the three sets of sheets. Freddie pushed the door open and crouched to my level.  

“You ready for a story?”  

I squealed, “Yes!”  

She grabbed a classic: A Complete Collection of Works by Edgar Allan Poe. I pulled close to Freddie who sat atop the sheets at my head. She smelled of rosehip and lavender, and though her hands were rough, she turned the pages as if holding an ancient text. The chandelier above flickered as she exhaled into the first words of my favorite story, “The Black Cat.”   

I sat up to hear Freddie’s version of the tale. She read with a soft confidence as if she were spilling a secret. She spoke gently until the narrator described gouging out his cat’s eye. There, she sped up and spoke of the narrator’s “damnable atrocity.”   

After crescendoing to a peak, Freddie lowered her voice to talk about the almost identical cat the narrator met and how he hated it. His wife, however, loved the cat. I laid my head on the down pillow, closed my eyes, and listened while Freddie rubbed my head. As her fingers relieved each pressure point on my scalp, she continued. Freddie carefully approached the part where the narrator goes to kill the cat and misses.  

“I withdrew my arm from her grasp and buried the axe in her brain. She fell dead upon the spot, without a groan…”  

Her scalp massage had put me to sleep.  

I woke up to a meow coming from the hall. The hair on my arms rose as I noticed the window adjacent to the bed, cracked open. The moon shone behind the clouds, and a damp, heavy breeze crept through. The clock read 3:00. My feet grazed the floorboards, and I took light, lengthy strides to the window, watching for anything lurking on the ground waiting for a chance at my ankles, and slammed it shut.   

Before I made it into the safety of the bed, I heard a smack and jumped. Another meow, sounding more like a cat in heat, traveled to my room. Contrary to what the horror movies have taught me to do, I remained in my bed. I wrapped the sheets and pulled the down comforter close to my face, careful to close any and all entrances to the outside air. I wedged my head between the mattress and pillow and waited. After minutes of silence, I took in a full breath, exhaling slowly. Mom would probably get mad if I called her at this hour. I wondered if Freddie heard anything. Very slowly, I lowered the comforter to my nose, then my neck, and finally, below my feet. I donned my slippers and opened the old door. The creak of the door broke the silence. Peering beyond the doorframe, I witnessed the dim glow of the moon, casting shadows of ravens onto the floor. The light glittered off the beads mirroring the dew setting outside. I peered down the hall.   

Something glittered on the distant floor. A bead perhaps. Then it moved; I crawled towards the glass. I couldn’t make out the small figure, but I slid towards Freddie’s room to hide behind the rocking chair placed outside her door. My perch overlooked the staircase below and the hallway in front. The glint soon appeared to be two glints, the second dimmer than the first. Scratching screamed into my ears as claws shredded the hardwood floors. Then a thud, thud. There was a second noise.  

I pulled the knit blanket hanging off the back of the chair and wrapped it over my head and around my knees. The woven cotton scratched my arms and legs. Feeling the fringe hit my toes, I recoiled, as I had to be fully covered. Absolutely unseen. I pulled the fringe under my feet.  

A whisper from the opposing banister called out, “Here, kitty kitty.”   

I’d read about intruders, murderers like Lizzie Borden, and the unsolved Villisca Axe murders. Maybe you accidentally ate something. You were playing outside, and you didn’t wash your hands before dinner… What plant could cause this?  

“Psst. Psst. I know you’re here.”  

The thumping diminished to the creaking of floorboards and the settling of the old home. The voice rasped and struggled to exit his phlegmy throat. His. The voice of a man. I peered beyond the cotton fringe and saw a dim glow, different from that of the sconces ornamenting the walls. A man, stringy and pale, sneaked behind a one-eyed cat. The story was familiar. I pulled the blanket around my shoulders, removing the tight grip from my face. I then wiggled from behind the chair and felt the wicker cling to me. The chair lifted and the three-inch crash to the floor sounded like three feet. Thud. I sat there, a staircase away from the apparition, and eyes wide, I didn’t dare move. I thought as a deer does. If you don’t move, it can’t see you!   

With the pits of olives for eyes, an axe in hand, he stared back into my eyes. I surveyed my surroundings quickly, spotting the iron fireplace set consisting of a poker, a broom, and a small ash shovel. It sat in the opposite corner behind him. I moved towards him. Inching.   

I shuffled as he lifted the axe to an active, ready stance. The lights buzzed, gradually getting warmer and brighter. The incandescent lightbulbs heated my bones, and my heart picked up pace. I continued to shuffle, my socks sliding on the wood. Until they stuck. The loop of my knit sock got caught on a nail that sat just above the floor. He took a step forward, axe in hand. I ripped the sock from the nail’s grip and fell. From the ground, I looked up to an underlit man: his face ghastly and his teeth yellow. I was just feet from the iron poker. He growled and his lips raised, nose scrunched, and eyebrows furled. He raised the axe above his head.   

He turned. An equally raspy but more gentle voice spoke from the staircase  

“Poe. Poe. You’re here.”  

A woman’s voice. A third glow scaled the staircase below me. His wife, I thought. But as the blush fabric skimmed over the final step, he spoke.   

“Mildred! My Milly!”   

I scrambled across the floor, my arms reaching and clawing, as my legs pushed my body forward. My hand gripped the cold iron poker, and the air left my lungs. Blood skidded from the nail to the corner opposite my perch, and I could feel the itching pain radiating up my foot. He stepped on my foot. I was trapped. Like a mouse caught in a trap, I waited for my death.   

Accepting my fate, I longed for my mother’s hug, but Mildred reached him. She set her ghastly fingers around the base of his forearm, and his face turned to meet her gaze. My fate was not set. My eyelids clenched hard, and I launched forward, poker in hand.   

I unclenched one eye then the next to see a green, luminescent fluid coming from the body of the man, Poe. His hands held the post as he looked into my eyes. He grinned, the green fluid slowly falling down his chin. I crab-walked back to the wall as he fell. His body made no sound hitting the ground; only the clang of the poker and hit of the axe made noise.   

Mildred let out a silent scream. Her eyes went wide, and her jaw unhinged, yet no sound escaped. She next to Poe, and while her hands caressed his fading face, she wept. She wept tears of green that faded with Poe’s entire body. I could see the light leaving him, the supernatural life going with it. As his body dissipated, the lights on the wall reverted to their yellow haze. The black cat walked back down the hallway, tail raised, and disappeared as he pranced down the spiral staircase.  

  Mildred laid her head on the floor where Poe once laid in silence. The sun turned the black sky to a blue. The blue light shone through the ravens in the glass. I hadn’t moved in minutes, and lacking adrenaline, my arms finally gave under the pressure of holding my torso up. With the bump of my head, Milly turned to me. She pulled her middle upright and silently placed her knees under her meek body. Her blush dress kissed the floor as she grabbed the banister for stability and rose. Each step she took, I heard her labored breath and faltering step. She made her way down the staircase silently.  

I walked towards my room, amazed the noise hadn’t woken Freddie. I entered the doorway and looked to the right. The window was still closed. Good. I tiptoed back into bed and pulled my white sheets far above my face. I laid there till I heard Freddie descend the stairs.  

  

I sat at the kitchen table while Freddie cooked up pancakes and bacon. I smelled the sweet batter on the griddle while I watched our favorite TV show, Charmed. The willow outside the kitchen window swayed in the July breeze. Freddie brought my breakfast to me on heavy pottery dishes. The weight reminded me of the iron poker, but it must’ve been a dream.   

“Who lived here before?” I asked.   

“A woman. She was single and beautiful to the standards of her time.” My curiosity needed more.  

“Aunt Freddie, what time did she live here?”   

“Sometime in the mid-1800s. Her name was Mildred, but most folks called her ‘Milly.’ She died with no children, and”—she got close to my face and whispered—“now, I don’t know this for fact, but most people around here said she had a lover.” She wagged her finger at me. “No, not the legal, accepted kind. The kind that could get you in a whole lot of trouble if someone found out. Before anyone had the chance to reveal her lover, she died. Fell down the stairs and broke her neck. Absolutely haunting.”  

My chest tightened, and my fork fell to the floor.  

“Oh honey, just blow it off, my floors aren’t that dirty. And listen, I heard her lover was Mr. Edgar Allan Poe. Wild story, but it’s fun to believe.”  

My dream was something of a dream within a dream. My foot ached, and I looked down to see the bottom of my cotton sock was ripped. Beneath the hole, my foot beat hot and red. As I set my foot down, my gaze drifted toward the window. Outside, a black cat sat. Not meowing or pawing at the door, just sitting. One eye stared while the socket of the other glistened in the morning light. It caught my eye, just to walk away moments after seeing me. His tail stood tall as his hind end bounced back and forth.   

“Why haven’t you touched your pancakes, Izzy?” asked Freddie.   

“I think I ate too much at dinner or ate something funny yesterday.”   

She nodded and wrapped my plate to eat later. Instead of heading to my room, I walked to the living room between the kitchen and the grand staircase. I ran my fingers against the grain of the velvet couch and sat. At the sound of a record playing, I lifted my head to see Milly. The record player hummed the final verse of “Ave Maria.” She stood at the wall, waving goodbye. Her head turned away from me, and she walked through the wall to the outside. I raced to the window to see, but she was already gone, a part of the wind.  

Freddie approached the room. “I didn’t know you liked this song.”  

I shrugged and laid down on the couch as the old upholstery tickled the space behind my ear. I made it all night. I stared at the stained glass from the comfort of the chair to see the unkindness of ravens now shone on the entryway, somehow kinder than before.

Abigail Mooneyhan 

The Kit-Cat clock’s tail swung back and forth on the paisley print wall. Its classic smile, painted in thick, black paint, had chipped edges. Alyssa Jean gave the old relic a new home in her upscale Pittsburgh apartment; she managed to snag it when they cleaned out her dad’s house when he passed two years prior. The quiet hum of the city reverberated against the tightly closed windows of the fourth-floor loft. Softly trickling rain raced on the windowpanes.   

The silence is nice, Alyssa Jean thought. She let herself sink into the plush couch and kicked her feet up onto the coffee table. She pressed her fingertips to her temples and slowly moved them in circular motions, careful not to push too hard. Long days in the office proved to be taxing, just like she anticipated. She pulled her hair up above the back of the couch and let it rest, and the salon perm no longer weighed her down.   

Her peaceful silence came to an end as the telephone shrilled in the air. Groaning, she forced her tired body off the couch and trekked over to the hanging touch-tone phone beside the Kit-Cat. The clock read a little past nine.   

“Hello?” she asked, holding the cold plastic in her hand.  

“Hey, Alyssa Jean. It’s Buck.”  

“Oh, shit. How you been?” she asked. She hadn’t heard from her brother in nearly two years. They hadn’t acknowledged one another’s existence since their dad passed, not since they went through the old house.   

“Just fine…uh, look. I’ve got some bad news. Aunt Barb passed away,” Buck said.  

“Jesus Christ,” she said with a sigh, “what happened?”  

“She was sick for a while. They told me it was painless,” he said. His voice, cold and stoic, lacked agency. The only indication of life came from soft movements on the other line from his dog, the pitter-patter of her nails on the hardwood he worked so hard to install. The corners of her lips tugged upward a little. Thank God he’s not completely alone back home.  

“That’s good, I guess,” Alyssa Jean said, twirling the telephone cord with her fingertips. Aunt Barb died of the same cancer her dad did. Unlike her dad, Aunt Barb caught hers in stage two with enough time to seek treatment and fight it off for ten years. A twisting, knotting feeling churned in her stomach, and sweat sprang onto her palms. She wanted Buck to tell her he’d meet her at the diner and then head to their childhood home just to see how much it had aged. She wanted him to tell her he’d pick her up from the airport with her favorite soda in the passenger’s seat.   

“The funeral is this Sunday at two p.m. where Dad had his service,” Buck said with a pause. “She wanted to be buried with her brother.”   

Buried with her brother. The detail to start their own existential crises. As if their dad had divinely intervened from Heaven saying, “If you two assholes don’t figure it out yourselves, I’ll figure it out for you and take Barb while I’m at it. I’m bored up here.” She could envision the exact look her dad would give her—pursed lips with a cigarette hanging out of the corner, wise old eyes zeroed in on her, and a slow, judgmental blink to bring it home. Her dad would always holler at them when they’d bicker. He’d be beside himself if he could see the state of their relationship. She wondered if Buck could still picture their dad like she could.  

“Well, I’ll be home the morning of,” she said. “Are you going to be there?”  

“Yes.” All she could hear were the dog’s nails clicking on the hardwood floor.   

“All right.”  

“Look, don’t fly out. There’s heavy snow storms out this way. It’ll probably get delayed till past the weekend. Just drive.”  

Click. Not even a “goodbye.” Just the hollow, plastic click of a phone nine hundred miles away. She shut her eyes and pressed the phone back up to its holder on the wall. Here we go, again.   

The drive consisted of winding roads and desolate highways surrounded by nothing but cornfields, snow, and cows. Images of her Aunt Barb laughing and smiling filled her head as if she were sitting next to her, taking a drag from her cigarette, and pointing at the calves. She could hear the way her aunt’s laugh hopped up an octave when she thought something was really funny. “Quit driving too fast, AJ! You’ll miss out on the scenery.” Aunt Barb’s voice, clear as day, stuck in Alyssa Jean’s mind.  

Her dad always had something kind to say about Aunt Barb. “Barb’s a woman of strength. That’s the kind of woman you want to be, ’Lyssa Jean,” he’d say with a boozy grin. Alyssa Jean loved her aunt, of course, but she rarely spent time with her. When she did, Aunt Barb would give her a big squeeze and slip a twenty-dollar bill in her jeans pocket. As a generous woman, she took care of her family, especially her brother. When Alyssa Jean’s dad’s battle with alcoholism reared its ugly head in her middle school years, her aunt sent checks to the house for groceries and bills. When her dad went through the mail and received a check from his sister, he’d slam it onto the dining room table and shout, “Another round on Barb!” Buck would sneak downstairs after their dad passed out for the night and cash the checks for grocery money. Alyssa Jean always told herself she’d pay her aunt back for all those years of financial support. It was too late now.  

The rosary beads hanging from her rearview mirror swayed back and forth, letting her know she’d made it to the turbulent roads of home. She slowed her car to a stop at the stoplight, pausing to check her curly hair in the rearview, and adjusted the mirror. Out of the corner of her eye, she caught a glimpse of a speeding truck just a few thousand feet behind her. The truck had a rusty hood and faded red paint chipping off every inch of the metal heap. Thick, gray smoke billowed from the back of the rusty parts.  

Whoever makes that much noise while driving is a douchebag, she thought. Curious to know the identity of the driver, wondering if it were some kid she went to high school with, she lifted her foot from the brake. Slowly inching forward, she peered at the driver. A tall, brown-haired man with the same nose as her father sat perched in the driver’s seat with a cigarette hanging from his lip. Buck.   

She whipped her head back to the road and placed both of her hands on the steering wheel, pretending she hadn’t seen her own brother. “Fuck,” she said, gripping the wheel. The blood ran cold in her head and a pounding sensation made its way to her temples.   

As soon as the light turned green, she slammed her foot on the gas and sped off down the road. Maybe he wouldn’t recognize her car, maybe he didn’t see her. She felt like he somehow heard her comment and that he would start a fight right off the bat, her chances of fixing things blown to smithereens. Despite her resentment, she loved her brother and wanted him back in her life. Her life wasn’t the same without a chipper phone call at six a.m., her favorite snacks stocked up in his apartment, and a father-figure who knew her better than anyone else.  

Whipping into the driveway, she slammed the car door shut and ran up the stairs of their old childhood home. She huffed as she leaned up against the vintage siding to appear nonchalant should Buck arrive. An old Victorian home with a gabled Mansard roof, a cream-colored wraparound porch, and a battered tire swing that hung from a weathered apple tree stood tall behind her. She spent nearly eighteen years of her life in that house, and never once had she been so anxious to see her own older brother.   

The pickup truck pulled into the gravel driveway. She crossed her arms over her chest and stared out onto the lawn, observing the dead grass bustling in the Midwest wind. She couldn’t bear to look him in the eye or see how skinny he’d gotten, or if he was wearing one of their dad’s old suit jackets.  

“Hey, ’Lyssa Jean,” Buck said. He shut the truck door and broke ground onto the gravel with his work boots.   

She swallowed her pride and studied his stature—skinnier than two years ago, somehow still managing to fill out one of their dad’s old coats, a pair of dirty Sears work boots that somehow matched his funeral attire. Maybe just Buck could pull it off. She still worried about his weight; he always struggled to fill out his clothes ever since grade school. She took a deep breath and shoved her clammy hands into her Limited wool coat pockets.   

“Hi,” she said. Her voice, meeker than she anticipated, made her cringe.  

“How was the drive out?” he asked.   

“Just fine. What’s with the truck?”  

Buck chuckled. He looked out at the road as the bright white sky of clouds reflected off his freckle-covered face. They could both feel it in their bones—impending snow. She could remember all those times when their dad was too sick or drunk to watch them outside in the piling snowstorms. Buck would kick up the biggest snow-hill he could muster at just nine years old, lift little Alyssa Jean onto the top with a bright orange sled, and push her down into the endless sea of white. A tiny smile crept onto her face at the memory. Those were the days she’d rush inside to hug her brother for warmth, taking in the smell of his wooly sweater knitted by Aunt Barb. She missed it.  

“It was actually Dad’s. Aunt Barb’s been living here, and when I went to see her, I’d work on the truck a little bit. It was buried in the garage under all that shit,” Buck said, motioning over to the garage just a few hundred feet from the porch. “I’ve spent days working on that engine. I finally found the top dead center and got the piston working again.”    

“Hm. I don’t remember Dad having a truck,” Alyssa Jean said, crossing her arms over her chest. She could only remember their dad’s old Lincoln Continental she reversed into the garage door in ’81.  

“Well, there’s a lot of things you weren’t here for. The truck was one of ’em. He got it after you left.”  

She rolled her eyes at his dig. Buck’s favorite guilt trip: she went to college and left him back home to take care of their dad. Her dad played a big part in her decision to leave. She grew tired of his excuses, shitty parenting, and lack of remorse for any of the things he’d done to them both growing up. She didn’t want to find herself downing Long Island iced teas in the pub down the street every night like him.  

“It’s a truck,” she said. “It’s not like I missed his funeral.” She looked over at him, noticed the shift of his jaw, and knew she’d pissed him off.  

“Didn’t see him in the hospital, though.” His eyes flickered over to her.  

“I couldn’t make it back in time, Buck.”  

“That wouldn’t have been a problem if you hadn’t left—”  

“Buck, I’m not gonna fight with you,” she said, laughing in disbelief. She rubbed her temples with her cold fingertips and shut her eyes.   

“The funeral is in an hour. We need to leave now so we can be there early enough to see everyone.”  

He took off down the wooden steps and made a beeline for the truck. Before she could even say a word, he yanked open the passenger’s side door and stared her down.   

The truck rattled down the cracked pavement road on the way to church. Alyssa Jean held onto the grab handle above the window for dear life and tried to drown out Buck’s rock radio station he cranked to full volume. She sighed as she looked out her window at the passing dead shrubbery.   

“Can you turn it down a little?” she asked, trying to make herself heard over the music.  

Buck ignored her. His tired, brown eyes remained on the road. The same brown eyes her dad had. She found herself resenting every feature of his that resembled their dad.   

“Hey!” she said.  

Finally, his eyes snapped over to her. He turned down the radio to complete silence.   

“What is your problem?” she asked. The truck sputtered.  

“My problem? You wanna know what my problem is?” he asked in disbelief. He reached around in the center console furiously, looking for a cigarette. She ignored him and stared out her window. She could hear him open the small, crumpled box and pull out a Marlboro.  

“I’d love to know what your problem is. Because your attitude is unbearable,” she said, folding her left leg over the other and leaning away from him.   

Buck struggled to light the cigarette and lifted his knees to manage the steering wheel. She immediately reached out to hold onto the wheel and glared as he finally managed to get a light. All that for a cigarette.  

With a lit cigarette hanging from his mouth, he scoffed. “Y’know what, ’Lyssa Jean? My problem is that you think you’re too good for where you came from.”  

“Oh my god, Buck. I went to college and moved out, so what?”  

His grip on the wheel tightened as the truck jerked. “You left when Dad was sick—”  

“Dad had been sick forever. He was an alcoholic with cancer. He got sick all the time.”  

“That doesn’t mean you leave anyway.”  

She finally looked over at him. “What was I supposed to do? Wait around until he died? I came home. I came home for the funeral and mourned like everyone else. Just because you stayed around and took care of him doesn’t mean I was any less of his daughter. You knew how I felt about Dad and everything he’d done. It was never your place to judge me for that.”  

“How do you think that made me feel? I raised you, Alyssa Jean. Maybe you didn’t love Dad’s choices, but I was there for you your entire childhood.”  

The truck lurched forward as the hood rattled and made a deep, guttural sound. Panic spread across both of their faces as thick, billowing smoke erupted from the hood. Buck swerved the truck off the road and into the emergency lane and shut off the engine. Without a word, he got out of the truck and slammed the door behind him.   

Alyssa Jean groaned and threw her head back on the headrest. This stupid-ass truck. They were parked only a few hundred feet from the exit for the church. Nothing but snow-covered fields and scraggly trees surrounded them. Small snowflakes began to fall onto the windshield and spread into tiny pools of water that slid down the glass.  

Minutes passed, for what seemed like an hour, until Buck finally lifted the hood. “Can you give me a hand?” Buck’s voice sounded muffled from the outside of the truck. She got out of the truck and slammed the door as she walked over to him. He hunched over the inside of the truck with his hand holding the hood up. His face flushed red; the pain of the cold was enough to rush blood to his cheeks. He motioned her over, and she placed her hands on the open hood and held it up.  

“What’s wrong with it?” she asked.   

“It’s the engine. It overheated. It’s fine.”  

“Christ. This truck is a piece of shit.”  

Buck remained silent as he unscrewed the cap of the coolant tank. He paused for a moment before he spun around to face her. His eyes were wildly searching her face as he slowly shook his head.  

“Do you know what Dad said when he was in the hospital right before he died?” he asked. “He asked where his ‘little girl’ was. He didn’t want to go without seeing you. It was the only thing he talked about. I told him you’d be there in just a minute…but you got there too late.”  

Alyssa Jean’s head snapped over to her brother.  

“What?”  

“I never told you because I knew it would hurt you. But I think you deserve to know.”  

Her eyes filled with cold tears as she took in the words. She could picture her dad with breathing tubes and a tired, sunken expression saying those words to her exhausted brother’s face. He must have felt so shitty having taken care of him for so long for Dad to ask for me.   

“Is this why you wouldn’t talk to me?” she asked.  

“I think a part of me resented you for doing what I couldn’t do. I couldn’t leave Dad by himself. I felt too guilty. But you were able to push through it and go pursue what you wanted,” he said. “At that moment when he laid there dying, he asked for you, not me. I was angry that you had what I wanted. It was stupid and selfish, and I’m sorry.”  

Buck reached up and grabbed the hood from her. She let her eyes shut, the corners of her mouth turned down, and cried. As much as she felt angry that he kept those details, she knew why he felt so angry and disregarded.   

“I wish you had told me sooner.”  

He let the hood down and locked it. He finally turned around to face her with small smudges of black all over his hands and a pained face. “I do too. I knew how you felt about Dad. You had every right to feel that way,” he said.  

“I should have thought of you more, though. It wasn’t just Dad I left.”  

“I know. But it wasn’t fair for me to judge you for going to college and being smart. I’m so proud of you, ’Lyssa Jean.”   

Back in the truck, Buck turned the key in the ignition and held his breath, praying it would start without a hitch. As the engine roared with life, the chain from the key swung back and forth. The snow began to lay a little heavier and the flakes froze to the glass. Alyssa Jean watched the fields begin to rush by as the truck made its way back onto the highway.