October 2024 | fiction, Pushcart nominee
I was in line at a fast-food restaurant with which you are familiar, standing behind a software engineer who, like all software engineers, had a touch of the –tisms. He was tall, of course, neatly muscled, and odd, all of which was already apparent but became clearer when he turned to me, as if surprised to find me standing behind, and said,
I redesigned my points app so that it randomly chooses a food item from the menu within my points price range.
You must like variety, I replied.
Not really.
The person in front of him, who was ordering from this well-known menu ploddingly, as if she had never heard of fast food, asked time-consuming questions to the minor in the uniform, some of which the minor, helpful but baffled by this line of inquiry, passed on to the tired manager who expedited both dine-in and drive-thru lines.
If not for variety, then why adapt the app?
Because you get what you get, the tall man explained.
He turned back around and, as if studying the selections somehow mattered to him despite the app, resumed his prior gaping, over the head of the astonishing newbie, at the menu, which suddenly appeared, mounted over a Bunn and two soft-serve machines, as if it might fall from the wall and crush the harried manager and the uniformed minor.
You are entitled to what you ask for, I told the tall man, who turned at the waist and looked down at me another time.
You get what you get.
Because of the app, which you made!
Correct.
Therefore, you like variety.
I would not say that.
Then you like surprises.
No big surprises on this menu, he said.
Then you do this, why? Because you ascribe to the philosophy in the Rolling Stones song?
I would not say I am dissatisfied.
I mean the other song, the one with the children’s choir.
John Lennon’s X-mas song?
No, I mean…
You do not seem to comprehend that you get what you get.
Because you have asked for it, I insisted.
He turned back around to check the progress of the menu, which was irrelevant to him.
By redesigning the app to deliver unnecessary variety, I added, you are essentially getting what you want.
Previously, the tall man had turned at the waist to look down at me over his left shoulder. Now, as if alternating for sake of variety, he turned to look over his right.
The app randomizes my order.
There has never been a question about that, I replied. The question is why you have randomized the app.
Because I can, the tall man said. And because you get what you get.
####
At this point you interrupt me and ask why I started this story with the words “of course.”
What? I ask.
In your exposition, you remind me, you said “He is tall, of course.” Why “tall”?
“Was,” I correct you. I said “He was tall.”
Matt Wanat
Professor of English at Ohio University Lancaster, Matt Wanat is co-editor of Breaking Down Breaking Bad and The Films of Clint Eastwood. Wanat has published critical essays, encyclopedia articles, reviews, and book chapters on various authors and filmmakers. Wanat’s fiction, poetry, and creative nonfiction publications are available or forthcoming in The Wayfarer, Coffin Bell, The Wax Paper, and Pennsylvania English. Wanat resides in rural southeastern Ohio.
October 2024 | fiction
The thing about meditating with other mental patients is that they are mental patients. Yeah, you’re a patient too, but I get it, they’re annoying.
The woman beside you sucks on a baby pacifier.
Helpful Tip: Breathe in and out at the same rate as she sucks.
Your group counselor says, “Now think of a conveyor belt and put your thoughts into boxes that go down it….”
You breathe in and out and wonder where do the boxes go? Do they spill onto the linoleum floor?
Helpful Tip: Distract yourself by squinting at the pacifier woman, commend yourself for not needing one to suck on. Do not ponder that this is a very low bar. Instead, imagine the conveyor belt turning and turning….
Do not think of your thoughts strewn across the linoleum floor like limpid half-dead octopi or like spilled magnetic refrigerator word tiles. I see you open your eyes. The man sucking his thumb stares at you. There are bars on the windows reminding you, reminding all of us, that we’re in a mental institution. A nice one, but still people try to escape. The weird man stares at you; he has a Calvin and Hobbes tattoo on his neck.
The therapist says, “Now imagine boats going down river, and put your thoughts into each boat….”
Oh, Jesus, what kind of boats? Rowboats? Tankers? Skiffs?
The woman smacks on her pacifier. Smack, smack, smack.
Put your thoughts on a damn boat, any kind of boat will do.
Dig down deep, Patient 89. Remember the story you told us in group, how you were on a real boat a month ago; this was back when everyone thought you were okay. You’d straddled a gunnel, one leg in the Dominican ocean. You’d breathed in and out, fishing line cast until the mate hurled you into the boat because he saw a water snake—beautiful, many colored— so venomous it could have killed you in fifteen seconds. It hadn’t seemed such a bad fate to you. The sky was a perfect blue, your tears made no sense. At least that’s how you described yourself on that boat that afternoon.
Breathe in and out, Patient 89. Soon they’ll give you a capsule, a sip of water. Patient 89, you’re no different than the pacifier woman, the Calvin and Hobbes man, than me. Your brain can’t be trusted any longer, so breathe in, breathe out… And know that I’m watching your every move.
Signed,
Patient 52
Laurie Lindop
Laurie Lindop holds an MFA in Writing and Literature from Bennington College. She has published nine non-fiction books with Lerner and Simon and Schuster. Her short fiction has been published by Redbook Magazine, Tupelo Quarterly, The Beloit Fiction Journal, and elsewhere.
October 2024 | fiction
We just had sex. But I wasn’t thinking of you.
When you pulled me to your chest, your head resting on my hair, I was thinking of my old physics professor. Wondering how he’d have fucked me if given the chance. When you breathed a sigh over my face and whispered, That was amazing, I wondered how he’d have spoken to me in an after coitus-glow, if he would have noticed that I wasn’t feeling it with you because there was still so much hurt tangled in the sheets of our shared bed. You kissed me, but it wasn’t gentle.
I think that guy from the record store would have kissed me softly, with his fingers playing silent songs along my spine. Perhaps then he would have pulled me closer if I tried to move away. But you just let me roll over to my side of the bed. It’s a familiar position for me, my back turned to you, and I wonder how you can bear not to see my face. Aren’t you curious about what’s running through my mind?
My friend from the restaurant would be. He would have been tugging my hair and saying, Please let me into your head, and I would’ve said, Of course. Because I’d want to let him in, to feel that intimacy with someone who doesn’t want my back turned, who doesn’t let me turn my back. Is that so much to ask?
But you would say, yes, it is actually, because there is nothing more that I need to know about you. I have checked all of the boxes and seen the necessary disclosures. But what you don’t see are the men shuffling through my head like a deck of cards, or the ones I swipe on when I hide in the bathroom with my phone. You don’t know about the people I kissed, and how they tasted sweet after we shared a chocolate souffle. Although none of that matters. We just had sex, and you’re not thinking of me. But I’m thinking of you.
Sophia Carlisle
Sophia Carlisle is a creative currently living in the Midwest. Her work appears or is forthcoming in Diet Milk Magazine, Erato Magazine, Crow & Cross Keys, and elsewhere. She enjoys wistful stories of all kinds and has a particular soft spot for the ghosts we let linger.
July 2024 | fiction
The blond man in front of her is too tall. European of course, Dutch perhaps. It’s claimed the Dutch are the tallest people in the world. She’ll find out if it’s true soon enough. Amsterdam is their next stop. Kyoko stands on her toes. She can’t even get a glimpse of the woman with history’s most mysterious smile, only the right upper edge of the gold-varnished, renaissance-inspired frame. How she’d love to see a friendly face, even if it’s just a painted one.
***
She planned the ten-day Euro trip with her daughters right after the divorce. A chance to forget, at least momentarily, to “make new memories together”, which was what the travel brochure said, “while admiring artworks with a lasting impact”. Now, she’s standing here alone. She’d already booked three tickets and didn’t want them all to go to waste. Her teenagers preferred shopping on the Champs-Élysées, without her. She just wants her daughters to be happy again. It already means the world to see the girls getting along. That hasn’t always been the case, but a common enemy unites.
She’s the guilty one, the instigator. She’s not even sure why she did it. She simply didn’t have a choice but to leave their father. If she has to describe the reason, the feeling when growing out of her favourite dress at the age of thirteen comes closest, the blue one with ruffles. She still loved it, but it didn’t fit anymore.
***
She had expected the Louvre to be busy, but not like this. Crowds are a strange phenomenon. Each has its own distinct character: some fierce and loud, others dumb and dangerous. Though obstructing her vision, this one seems kind, rocking her softly from left to right, holding her tight, making it impossible to fall over.
Josje Weusten
Josje Weusten, PhD (she/her), is a writer of (auto)fiction and a senior lecturer in literature and creative writing at Maastricht University. She is a Faber Academy London alumna. Josje aims to write fiction that stays true to Oscar Wilde’s words: “A truth in art is that whose contradictory is also true.” Her shorts have appeared in Litbreak Magazine and Flash Fiction Magazine. Her work has been nominated for Best Small Fictions 2023. Her first novel, Fake Fish, a near-future story on the devastating impact of fake news, will be released on November 14, 2024, with Sparsile Books (Glasgow, UK).
July 2024 | fiction
Claudia was done. She told her husband of twenty years, her three boys, and pet hedgehog Igloo that she was going to take a nap. The dishes stayed dirty in the sink, and the meat loaf and potatoes she cooked for dinner cooled on the supper table. She was tired and she was done. So, she marched up the creaky stairs, passed the shoes tossed at the bottom, shirts and sweatshirts hanging on the railing, water guns, and muscle-bound figurines. She kicked some dirty laundry strewn across the bedroom floor and plopped face down on the snagged comforter.
When her youngest son came to wake her, he nuzzled her cheek with his snotty nose. But, she didn’t move. Didn’t even lift an eyelid. She kept her eyes shut, face down.
Hours later, when her husband finally came upstairs, she stayed on top of the blankets. Her youngest boy sat on her back, turning her into a horse, using the strings from her sweatshirt as the reins.
“Claudy, wake up,” her husband mumbled. “Claudy?”
He touched her shoulder—the first real touch in months—and gave her a shake.
“Hey, wake up already,” he said. “Matty has to go to bed.”
He sighed.
“Your son needs to go to bed,” he shook her again. “Come on.”
His voice grew sharper, less patient. Claudia didn’t budge. Yes, she heard him. Yes, she was awake. She was just done and did not, could not open her eyes.
This continued into the next day—no, she did not wake up to take “her boys” to school or pack their lunches or vacuum or make her husband’s breakfast or pull his clean clothes out of the dryer and give him a requisite kiss on his way out the door. She kept her eyes shut and listened to the chaos around her, content not to move.
She did not open up eyes when the ambulance came and EMTs checked her vitals.
“There’s nothing wrong with her,” they proclaimed, ripping the blood pressure cuff from her arm.
Still, she was rushed to the hospital to have specialists stick needles in her. She didn’t flinch or flutter. Nurses crept into her hospital room at night, with one especially weary nurse whispering, “You stay asleep, girl. I don’t blame you one bit.”
So, she did, dozing in and out of the world around her. She grew used to seeing the inside of her eyelids and not having to see anything or acknowledge anybody.
Not even after she was sent back home. Not even years later when her boys grew and graduated, married and moved away. Not even after her husband stopped asking her to wake up.
Not even at the visitation they held for her and awkward eulogies from a childhood friend and distant cousin.
Only after they lowered her into the ground did she feel an urge to sit up, but she was used to the darkness and craved that silence, so she ignored the pain and slept on.
S.E.White
S.E. White teaches English and Honors classes at Purdue University Northwest. She has her BFA from Bowling Green State University, MA from Iowa State University, and MFA from Purdue University. She has published with The Smoking Poet, Ginosko, Toasted Cheese, Prick of the Spindle, Niche, 100 Word Story, and others. Her novella A Murder of Crows is available in paperback and Kindle versions. Her work can also be found in the Best Ohio Short Stories collection. She owns two of the best dogs around–Oscar Woolf and Daphne du Furrier.
July 2024 | fiction
That day at the airport on the way to my hometown best friend’s funeral, when you couldn’t keep the newsfeed of the fiery midair collision out of your phone, even as you waited to board.
I tried to choose my seat wisely, but it was 5 a.m., and I hadn’t been home in twelve years, that suburban Ohio life not focusing: I had remade myself into an Angeleno who hung out not at the local dive bar with high school friends, but at a coffee shop in Los Feliz, an exhibition at the Getty. I slumped into a window seat when a woman and her teenage son eyed me.
I sank deeper into my seat and put on headphones, but she had me.
“Good morning!” She smelled clean and crisp, like hotel soap.
My polite nod only encouraged her. “Too bad, isn’t it? About the pilot.” She pointed to her phone’s image of the two jets colliding in midair. In the next frame, a young aviator smiled at the camera, a helmet under his arm. “So young. So handsome.”
She leaned in, whispering, “He had a bad feeling. He didn’t want to go.”
I knew the images: here he was, alive, about to climb into his cockpit. Still alive as he began his final descent with contrails blooming flames. The news stories began with the planes engulfed – images out of order. That upset me yesterday as I packed.
“Where are you headed?”
“Home,” I said, but it tripped on my tongue. We’d tried to keep up through the years, but texts and calls were no match for the pull of hometown husbands and the needs of small children.
“Where is that?”
But I backtracked. “He didn’t want to go? The pilot?”
“No, he told his wife something felt wrong. He tried to stop it.”
A week before she died, I had a strange cosmic nudge to call my friend, a sense to check in after so much radio silence.
I didn’t call. When I heard that she was gone, I couldn’t let myself grieve, as if it was my fault. I’d known, just like the pilot.
The lady patted my hand. Soon she was snoring.
It would be a long time before we landed. I closed my eyes, but I kept seeing the pilot, and he was smiling at me, waving one last time as he took off into the perfect blue of morning.
Sharon Lee Snow
A Pushcart nominee, Sharon Lee Snow earned an MFA in Creative Writing from the University of South Florida. Her short stories, creative nonfiction, and poetry have been published in Jelly Bucket, South 85, Gulf Stream, and other journals. Connect with her on Twitter and Instagram @sharonleesnow and her website www.sharonleesnow.com
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