American Horror

January 2021 | fiction

When I pressed the button it stopped beeping, clicked and spun and a tired sound came into the room. “Hello, this is Frank,” it said. “I wanted you to know that my son, Johnny, died from an overdose of heroin last night. I didn’t want you to hear it from someone else.” There was a long uneasy pause, the dial tone burred, and went silent.

He hadn’t left a phone number and I felt a sudden sense of panic. I didn’t know any Frank. I pressed the button again and tried to recognize the intruder. “Hello, this is Frank. I wanted you to know that my son, Johnny, died from an overdose of heroin last night,” it said, but somehow the voice had changed. There was a vacant tone of relief in it as it repeated, “I didn’t want you to hear it from someone else.”

The cold burr of the dial tone returned and the whirr and click of flashing plastic was ready to do it all over again. I pressed the button a third time and the flashing clicked and beeped, sending out its horror from a voice I would never forget.

J.S. Kierland

J.S. Kierland is a graduate of the University of Connecticut and the Yale Drama School. He has been writer-in-residence at New York’s Lincoln Center and Lab Theatre, Brandeis University, and Los Angeles Actor’s Theatre. He’s written two Hollywood films and rewritten several others but refuses to talk about them. Over 100 publications of his short stories have been published around the country in Collections, Reviews, and Magazines like Playboy, Fiction International, Oracle, International Short Story, Trajectory, Colere and many others. He has also edited two one-act play books, and has “15” of the best of his short stories published as a collection from Underground Voices, along with a novella ebook titled HARD TO LEARN.

Heaven

January 2021 | fiction

At first they were delighted when the Enochville Swallows came from behind and won the game. The team had struggled all season. It felt good to cheer. A decisive victory on the following day was even more surprising.

They finished the season with eleven straight wins. This unexpected turnaround kept everyone talking all winter, basking in the warmth of new heroes. Photos appeared in bars and diners.

The following April, Mayor Davis threw out the first pitch and the Swallows won again! After four more victories, demand for tickets soared and there weren’t enough seats to accommodate the newly-minted fans. That was when the mayor lobbied successfully for eminent domain and the destruction of the nearby Walton apartments. The wrecking ball threw up clouds of dust; the additional grandstand beyond the outfield ensured that everyone could view the action.

How did Jerry Mercer make that incredible flying catch in the ninth? What accounted for Felix Romero’s uncanny curveball in his two consecutive perfect games? Who could explain Bobby Sheets, the light-hitting second baseman, stepping up to the plate and jacking a tie-breaking home run that sailed over the astonished faces in the new grandstand before landing in Walter Schmidt’s vegetable garden and bouncing over his hedge and splashing in Rose Kindley’s birdbath? The ball was brought back to Billy for an autograph and charitably auctioned off at a price to pay the city’s operational budget for schools, police, and fire department. Mayor Davis held a press conference and announced, “We shall abolish all taxes.”

On the Fourth of July, the Swallows were still undefeated, the longest winning streak ever. Families put out blankets on the grass to watch the fireworks show, recalling with incredulous laughter the previous season when Felix Romero had blown a game by walking in a batter with the bases loaded, or when the team had squandered a six-run lead and Bobby Sheets took a called third strike for the final out, whereupon he ducked his eyes amid the boos and slouched dejectedly off the field. A few people, though, claimed that he’d ripped off his helmet in disgust and dashed it to the ground, cursing the umpire. People enjoyed disputing different versions of that debacle.

But this season offered no such controversy: it was unstinting victory, game after game. One night near the end of July, the Swallows fell behind by nine runs in the first three innings, and it appeared the streak would end. Spectators leaned in closer, their throats going dry. The air was sticky, expectant, still.

Then gale winds descended upon Enochville, a thunderstorm with sheets of rain. Lightning struck the scoreboard and the roof of the concession stand got blown off. It was a wash-out.

The next day, skies were blue, the air pure. Wise folks who’d saved their rainchecks redeemed them that afternoon at a make-up contest where, starting afresh, the Swallows won. That evening they went on to take the regularly-scheduled game, to sweep the double-header.

By August, it was easy to spot empty rows in the grandstands. Ticket prices dropped, though the team’s record was still unblemished. In local bars a new fashion emerged for blindfold billiards. Conversations turned to cooking shows and dialectical materialism. Business was generally down as many patrons traveled to watering holes in other towns.

When school resumed in September, local teachers succumbed to pressure from Mayor Davis to organize field trips to the ballpark to watch the undefeated Swallows, whose example offered pupils lessons about life and success. These outings also helped to fill the empty seats. Kids grumbled that the games lasted an eternity, and numerous parents wrote them false notes of excuse in order to relieve them of this burden. People were sick of baseball.

Charles Holdefer

Charles Holdefer is an American writer currently based in Brussels. His work has appeared previously in the Burningword Literary Journal, as well as the New England Review, North American Review, Chicago Quarterly Review, and the Pushcart Prize anthology. His most recent book is AGITPROP FOR BEDTIME (stories).

To the River

October 2020 | fiction

As the nights grew longer, more children appeared at the swimming hole. Except they weren’t children, not anymore. Months of solitude had hardened their bodies, as if loneliness were tougher than skin. Yet inside, they softened from the relief at finding others who were lonely too. We can say they knew more than they should. But that’s only part of what came of their gathering.

I went down to the river
Before the break of dawn
I went down to the river
But now the river’s gone.

Down to the river, her phone lighting the path through the woods, Hollie wondered how many others she would find this time. Every night since the problem began, more were congregating at the water’s edge. With the town in lock-down, they had nowhere else to loosen their fear except among these dank shadows, drifting first to one cluster, then another, like moths drawn to broken flames. Distances were breached, breath expelled too close in illicit sighs from mouths unmasked. They believed the danger couldn’t follow them there. The river would keep them safe.

Beyond the trees, the half-moon hit the obsidian pool as the revelers held hands to jump from the bank above. The cold took their breath away before they rose to the surface with screams of laughter. After months of self-restraint, they craved spontaneity. They did it for kicks, just like kids had been doing for decades in this very spot, the clock turned back to a time when the biggest threat was gossip. Now, no one cared. Clenching and unclenching, they cleaved to each other in the night’s unburdening.

I jumped into the river
To the place where I was drawn
I jumped into the river
But now the river’s gone.

Hollie looked for friends but saw only unfamiliar faces. It didn’t matter. They were all here for the same thing—the ritual of water and the cleansing it could bring. Since entering the river was required, she shed shirt, jeans, phone, and shoes, bundling them at the bottom of a tree, not worrying whether they would be there when she returned.  

Watching for an entrance into the current of bodies, her mind rewinds to a time when women in white were dipped backward, their unbound hair mingling with mud. As if all it took were water and prayer to cleanse a transgression. If she listens, she can hear the murmur of hymns promising salvation or heartache, with no guarantee as to which would be given.

 I crossed the river
And found my way was wrong
I crossed the river
But now the river’s gone.

Hollie wades out until the water reaches her chest. She raises her arms, takes a breath, and dives. Going under, she swims away from the pack before surfacing toward the pale light.

In five days or fourteen, she will know: has the river washed it away?

Kayann Short

Writer, farmer, teacher, and activist Kayann Short, Ph.D., is the author of A Bushel’s Worth: An Ecobiography (Torrey House Press), a Nautilus award-winning memoir of reunion with a family’s farming past and call for local farmland preservation today. Her work appears in Midwest Review, Hawk & Handsaw, The Hopper, Pilgrimage, Dash, Genders, Mad River Review, and the anthologies Dirt: A Love Story and Rooted: The Best New Arboreal Non-Fiction. Dr. Short organizes community writing events and teaches digital storytelling and ecobiography at her own Stonebridge Farm on Colorado’s Front Range. More on her work can be found on Instagram @kayannshort and at www.kayannshort.com.

Autumn in Paris

October 2020 | fiction

Sixty in September, autumn of your life. You think, What if I die without seeing Paris? Like that meme making the rounds some years back, a middle-aged woman in a business suit, her hand over her mouth in an expression of horror, saying “I forgot to have children!” You go to Paris. You record every sight, every step. The art, the gardens, the food. You stroll along the Seine with a pain au chocolat buttery-fresh from the oven at a corner boulangerie. Sip Beaujolais in the land where the grapes are grown. At Le Flore en L’Ile on the Ile Saint-Louis you taste your first soupe a l’oignon gratinee. Bliss in a bowl—rich bay-and thyme-scented stock, sweet-smoky-slow-cooked caramelized onions, a blanket of nutty gruyere that cascades, bubbly and crusty, over the side of the bowl, atop croutons that absorb broth from below and cheese from above. You’re a vegetarian, and that pungent base is beef stock. You feign ignorance. You’ve happily ordered vegetable entrees and fish, not tempted by cassoulet or duck a l’orange, boeuf bourguignon or coq au vin. But this is different. You sample the soup everywhere, like Goldilocks going from bowl to bowl: “This one’s a little bland,” “This one doesn’t have enough cheese,” “This one’s just right….” The first bowl remains the gold standard. Back home you resume your meatless ways. And you treasure your secret—what you do in Paris stays in Paris.

Alice Lowe

Alice Lowe’s flash fiction and nonfiction have been or will be published this year in Hobart, JMWW, Door Is a Jar, Anti-Heroin Chic, and Sleet. Her essays have been cited in the Best American Essays and nominated for Pushcart Prizes and Best of the Net. She writes about life and literature, food and family in San Diego, California and posts her work at www.aliceloweblogs.wordpress.com.