ISSUE 19 - SPRING 2025

FICTION

When Did the Leaves Begin to Grow?

James Marley

I have come to realise that I cannot remember how long I have been here. I remember a time when I was not, but I do not remember exactly the events that lead me to this place or precisely how long ago they happened. It’s been several years, at least.

Now the days drag and I can scarcely tell day from night. That is, until I come out here onto the balcony. Nothing gives me more peace now than coming here and seeing how the sun shines off the plain white surfaces of the two towers. However many times I see it, it is always beautiful.

The two sister buildings are positioned just far enough apart that there is always a time in the day when the sun can hit the balcony.

The building opposite is a mirror image of the one I am in now. It is a tall, rectangular tower with the only visible feature from the one side I can see being the balcony opposite ours. The balcony, too, is geometrically simple; a square-shaped indent in the side of the building. There are no objects or furnishings on the balcony, nor any sort of barrier to keep a person from falling off.

Far down below on the ground, there is naught but grass, and to the left and right, the grass extends up hills and nothing can be seen behind them.

My days consist of spending long periods of time inside, and when I get sick of that, sitting out here and watching the sky, until I get sick of that too and go back inside.

Ofttimes this monotony begins to weigh on me and I begin to hate this place. That is until a storm comes, and I become grateful for these sturdy walls.

Perhaps I ought to thank this place that protects me so well.

As I sit out on the balcony and watch the clouds, I notice that they have become long and wispy. This would be the first sign that a storm is coming.

The most potent emotion I ever feel these days is my fear at the idea of being left out here with the shutter closed tight in the middle of a storm. It is a mortal terror. Absolutely hopeless. A situation I can never allow happen.

Promptly, I leave my perch and come inside, closing the shutter behind me. No one asks any questions. Everyone knows what this means.

This is the only room I know that anyone lives in, and I have hardly seen anyone leave it, except to go out on the balcony.

It is a massive room; the size of a large field. The walls and roof and floor are all the same blank white as outside, and there are soft yellow lights in the ceiling which never turn off. Much like the balcony, it is empty, apart from the five hundred or so people.

We never talk to each other anymore, but the room has such a great echo that any slight movement is amplified, so it is never silent. There is always sound.

I sit down at the wall and listen to the wind pick up outside as the storm begins.

It sounds furious. Remorseless. It sounds like it could tear a person limb from limb. It seems to call out for me. It seems to be searching for me. The storm wants to kill me. I may not leave these walls.

They’ve gotten worse. Before I came to this place, they were less frequent and far more manageable. I remember being able to go out into the storms. I used to love doing that. At that time, they were really only periods of heavy wind and rain.

I remember we would walk out in shorts and t-shirts and let ourselves freeze and get soaked. Under the sound of the wind she would laugh and so I would laugh. And she would say something but I didn’t hear her so I would shout “what?” and she would laugh again. When we got inside again we would dry off and change and warm ourselves up again. She would shiver under her blanket so I would give her hot tea. I wonder if she remembers my name, even now.

By right I should cry now. But that time and that person are so distant now that what happened in the past no longer seems real. That is how much this place has taken from me. I feel nothing anymore. There is nothing here to be felt.

The noise of the storm outside is overwhelming me now. I’m too close to the shutter. I stand up. I’ve got to get away from it. I walk to the far end of the room, but I can still hear the storm.

I can’t be here anymore. There have to be better places than this one damn room. I just want to be away from the storm.

There is another passage leading out of this room, at the opposite side to the shutter. It leads further into the building. It is unlit and so swallowed by darkness, but I think I’ll go down there. There is nowhere else to go.

I will not be the first to walk down here, but those who have gone before haven’t ever come back. Perhaps they have found a haven far from the storms and from the dense oppression of these all-white rooms.

At a certain point down this hall I walk, I begin to lose all sense of the light and am engulfed by darkness.

A way down this hall I come to see an electric light ahead of me on the wall. It illuminates a sign, which reads “Storms’ End” with an arrow pointing further down the corridor.

Not long after, I come to another visually uninteresting room. As I walk across it, I suddenly feel myself being pulled up by some unseen force. I immediately think something had grabbed me, and I wriggle to free myself. But when I hit the roof on my back, I notice that I hadn’t been pulled, but rather I had fallen, and I was now standing on the roof, and what was up is now down and what was down is now up.

This is odd, but I don’t want to dwell on the oddities of this place. There is a doorway leading forward, and it I will follow.

Coincidentally, the doorway is also labelled “Storms’ End”.

The next room I come to is unnaturally brightly lit and it hurts my eyes at first. The floor and the bottom half of the wall are painted a luminous green and the top half of the walls and the ceiling are painted sky blue. There is an audio recording of a person walking through a forest playing and looping over some kind of speaker.

Something about this room makes me feel sick, and I can still hear the storm outside, so I quickly leave and continue on my way.

In the following room I find more paintings, three ovals of different sizes standing lengthwise, each with a circle on top. There are three recordings that play with intermittent pauses between them, which each feature a different person saying the world “Hello”. Once a woman, then a man, then a girl. There is also a marked X on the floor before them.

I cannot stand this room either and I wonder how many of these I’ll have to go through before I reach this “Storms’ End”.

I go through a great number of these rooms in my passage, each one uniquely strange and eerie.

There was one room with nothing but a book on the floor titled “Yamashita”. The book appeared at first to be the biography of a general in the Second World War, but on further inspection I noticed that the first page simply repeats itself for the entire 900-page length of the book.

In another there is just a hammer and an anvil. In another a sickle and a clump of grass.

Many of them portrayed pale imitations of everyday activities. Some of them portrayed complete fantasies.

Above all, the storm still rages outside. I can’t get my mind off it.

All of the corridors between every room have a sign pointing to “Storms’ End”. And yet, it feels as though I was getting no closer. There seems to always be another room in my way.

I can’t remember the last time I ate.

I haven’t eaten recently. In fact, now that I think about it, there is nothing for me to eat here anyway. I mustn’t have eaten at all since I first came here. How have I gotten by without eating? How am I still alive?

A massive pain erupts in my stomach. It shocks my head and makes me fell dizzy and nauseous. I have only now realised how hungry I am.

I have to ignore the hunger. There is no food to be found here. I just need to escape the storm.

It takes me a while to push through the pain and continue on.

It seems now that I am coming to the end.

The corridor has split off in two directions and each side is lined with innumerable doorways each leading to their own room.

There is only one, however, with the sign reading “Storms’ End”.

I’m hobbling now as I go down the final corridor. I don’t know how long I’ve been walking and the pain in my abdomen has only gotten sharper. I cannot wait for the sound of the storm to be over. At this point, I would be happy to die here, so long as I could not hear the storm.

I come into the final room.

This is the smallest room of all of them, only a few metres wide and long. By the entrance, there is another sign pointing inward saying “Storms’ End”. Under the sign, I see the first of the bodies.

On the far wall there is another sign saying “Storms’ End”. This one is pointing right. There are two bodies under it.

On the wall to the right, another sign, pointing right.

On the wall closest to me, there is another sign, pointing right.

The signs point in a circle around the room.

I fall against the wall and slide down to the floor. This has taken the last of my strength. I cannot pick myself up. I feel nothing.

I think I always knew there was no end to the storms. I never worried about them before I came here.

When I heard that there was a place that could provide complete protection against them, I was curious. The first time I came here was just before a storm, and after it had past, I left again.

But I eventually started coming more frequently. Not just before a storm, but at the very first sign.  After that I would become paranoid and come even without any sign of a storm but just because I was feeling anxious. The storms were getting worse. At some point I decided to stay here permanently.

There was a point when I ascended the tower for the last time. And I had no hesitation in doing it.

Now the sounds of the raging storm are all my mind can focus on. There is wind, and rain, and the occasional rumble of thunder.

I think I remembered it wrong. It wasn’t the two of us who would go out into the storm together, I would go out alone. She would disapprove of this and urge me to come back inside. And I wouldn’t listen and she would come out and pull at my arm. She felt the cold a lot more than I did and so when we got back in it was her that would shiver even though I was out longer. I wish I hadn’t done that to her.

When I come back into the present I notice that I am crying. The pain in my stomach has gone, my heart is aching, and I am crying.

I never used to fear the storms. I used to go out into them, make others come and get me. I never used to hide from them.

The storm is still raging. I get to my feet. I walk back out the way I came.

I notice that as I come back into the hall of endless doorways that the sign is no longer above the one I came in, and a different passage now reads “Storms’ End”. But I haven’t an interest anymore.

I track back through all the bizarre rooms I had seen before, and I pay them no further notice. I come back to the room where up becomes down, and I expect the switch this time.

When I arrive at the hall before the balcony, there is no longer anyone there. My footsteps echo as I cross.

I open the shutter.

The wind blows me to the ground, and the raindrops are like needles, but I get back up.

I struggle my way to the end of the balcony.

Looking down to the grass below, I consider the danger of descending. But I cannot trap myself here forever.

I put one foot over the edge, and I let myself fall forward.

The tower bears me on my axis, and my foot lands safely on the wall below the balcony. I descend the wall, crouching low and shielding my face. I find that I’m surprised at how quickly I reached the bottom.

As my feet touch the grass, I think about what to do next. I suppose if I’m going to die in this storm, it doesn’t really matter

As I walk around the other side of the opposite tower, a tree sitting on a hill in the distance comes into view. Something about it attracts me, and I begin to approach.

As I climb this hill, I notice that I no longer feel the rain stabbing into me, nor the wind jostling me about.

I look up at the tree I see it juxtaposed against a clear blue sky. I feel the sun’s warmth on my skin. I don’t know where the storm went. The tree is in full leaf. When I left to come here the trees were bare. When did the leaves begin to grow?

James Marley was born and raised in the Irish countryside, where he grew an appreciation for nature, and a particular admiration for the colour green. In school, he was disheartened by the lack of these things around him. He is currently pursuing a BA in Creative Writing in the University of Galway.

Celebrity Source

Christopher S. Bell

There’s a lot more dust in the air since last time. You’re unsure of its source considering a lack of lobby foot traffic. It used to swell like a madhouse, voices and limbs fidgeting past monitors, thirsty for dirt. You’d watch them get agitated or excited, basking in a singular assumption. If these people didn’t want so much attention, they wouldn’t be famous.

“So who are you here about again?” The receptionist is too young to care; a rose hidden by bleached blonde dreads, typing with one hand and swiping with the other.

“Don’t you read the profiles?” you ask.

“No point,” she jaws. “Nothing in there they really want me to see anyway.”

“That a fact?”

“Huh?”

You struggle to pull a clunky model out of your pocket and ask for the Wi-Fi password. She obliges, but it doesn’t work, so you change an eight to a B and type it in again. All the while, she doesn’t look up, scrolling and clicking, making you earn this moment.

“How’s this grab ya?” you plant your cracked screen in front of her pupils.

“Yeah, he was in that rocket movie, right?” she coughs. “Big whoop.”

“Big enough whoop to be here,” you reply.

“Here isn’t anywhere particularly worth being,” she finally looks up. “You can sit until they’re ready for you.”

“Any idea how long?”

You already know the answer. It’s a game from this point, and they’re positive they’ll break you. It’s getting harder out there; not as many trustworthy sleazebags to dilute the full truth. There used to be snacks on the glass table and highbrow magazines as if to say to the competition: “Hey, we dig what you do, even though you’ve never been all that fond of us.” It was once a pastime for quiet gentlemen, but then “middleman” became a dirty word.

You’re too high to give a shit anymore; the morning mimosas barely washing down that chalky aftertaste. You need to find a better guy but can’t remember how you found this last one, or did he come to you? That’s usually how these things happen, right? One party knows who to contact to make a transaction mutually beneficial. You don’t need to feel dirty or passively ill. Just sit calmly with a full battery and battle through the rounds, earning stars and bonuses.

62% when they finally send for you. The new girl looks like a mango daiquiri, orange moon hoops bouncing with loose thread. You scan the desks, past glazed lenses and mandatory lip rings, erratic fingertips flowing to oblivion. One of them will eventually ruin you, but only after connecting the dots. Just walking past makes you nostalgic for the early days, back before you realized people will continue to suck the marrow.

And here we have the worst of them. “Phil, so sorry about the wait out there. It’s been crazy today. Please, come in. Sit down. Can Elsie get you anything?”

She leans, nearly disgusted, as you let go of his dry hand. “I’m good, thanks.”

Damon Branson hasn’t shaved in at least three days. It used to be an electric razor in-between calls, fine-tuning his morning stubble, but it’s everywhere now. A casual cloud of naïveté; gossip-loggers spread like pox and finally Elsie’s reluctant grin as she gently shuts his office door. “So let’s cut past the bullshit since you and I have been here before.”

“Yeah, but it’s been long enough for to me to almost forget what a complete piece of garbage you are,” you glance around the room. “Gotta say, Damon, I love what you’ve done with the space. Ya know, a lot of the other offices I’ve been to this morning at least tried to look presentable. A plaque here, an award there.”

“You haven’t been anywhere today, Phil,” he calls your bluff with ease. “I’m the only one who still picks up.”

“Obviously that’s not true.”

“What do ya got for me? Everyone knows there’s trouble in paradise, so unless you’ve got the goods, I might just say good day.”

You’ve almost missed this crosstalk, even if Damon’s the worst at it. The good ones are all dead now, no doubt smirking as the bugs chew them apart. They never thought much of you but were quick to kiss your ass before an opening weekend. Anything to feed the machine: fresh or slightly spoiled.

Damon’s always been clear how little he cares but still can’t refrain from spasm at your first offer. Outrageous! No one cares that much and even if a few do, their sharing won’t make the news any less practical. You laugh at his counter before the room melts. He can’t admit how much he needs you making his life difficult; how these tiny jolts used to feed him, but now they’re all fickle and cheap. Nothing’s earned. The words write themselves but can be read numerous ways regardless of how many facts are strained past the point of recognition.

You settle, but don’t feel much when he salivates at the photograph. Your recollection’s foggy, while Damon merely nods with each bullet point, scribbling the check and reminding you to wait twenty-four hours before cashing it. Elsie’s half asleep at her desk next to his office, glancing over just long enough for you to make the mistake of speaking. “Well this just may be goodbye forever.”

“Whatever, dude. I don’t want you to buy me dinner or any of that shit.”

“Can I ask why you’re here? I mean, I know why I am, but you don’t look like the type to stay on a sinking ship.”

“Hmm…” Elsie nods. “You should heed your own advice.”

“Oh believe me, I do. Every day.”

On the elevator, you make sure the check’s still in your wallet. It’s either a nervous tick or general memory loss. Your bones ache at different intervals; that old subway stench clogging up passages before you cough and spit in a classier part of town. Here where the lights stay on and the doorman almost knows your name, where some camgirl steps out into the world for the first time all day and then quickly back in after her miniature mutt pisses in the middle.

You try not to stare as she takes a selfie then deletes it, ample cleavage for an otherwise cold day. Her leashed companion doesn’t pay you a second sniff but turns back just as the doors close as if to ask why you’re here. It’s a look you’ve been getting all day, but you never thought it would cross species.

“Weren’t you supposed to bring back something?” Sami still hasn’t showered, but the room is starting to blend.

“Was I?”

“Food or booze?”

“I don’t think I have the strength for either.” You step past and consider the best place to sit. “When did the other vultures leave?”

“It was just Kyla. She had something with her kid. I don’t know. The husband couldn’t handle it.” Sami immediately looks down at his phone.

You sit in the Neapolitan armchair. “Was she the only other one here when I left?” you ask.

“I don’t know. I was on the phone with Harland.”

“How’d that go?”

“He’s not backing off this Legacy jargon.”

“Did you read that one?”

“I thought you did,” Sami glares a moment. “Said something like I’m above this franchise shit.”

“Is there a guarantee of a franchise on that?”

“Kids love the books, but fuck if I know. Does anyone actually read anymore? Either way, I don’t think I’m ready to play a villain after everything.”

“It may be good, though, just to let it all out in front of the camera,” you suggest.

“Think that’s gonna translate, Phil?” he snaps. “How my insides are all but shredded after Joye left me for Margie Lowenstahl? How’s that gonna go over with them rural Christians do ya think?” The southern accent could use some work.

“They probably don’t even know who Margie Lowenstahl is,” you suggest.

“But they’ll Google her and tweet about how they don’t understand her art, and how I was so good in Shipwreck 2”.

“You were the hero.”

“But it doesn’t make sense for me to be anymore, right?” Sami leans against the wall and glances at his screen. “At least not with anyone who was hoping this would work out.”

“And who are those people?”

“Not you, right?” Sami says. “You’ve never been in my corner.”

“I’m in your corner right now,” you smile, raising your hands to let fingers graze both walls.

“Yeah, but you really shouldn’t be. I’m fine, and I think I want to be alone for the first time in a long while.”

“Oh yeah, how long? Hours? Days? There’s a machine that starts to malfunction if you don’t oil it properly.”

“I’m gonna take care of everybody for a little while so I can have some peace, and then I’ll come back, and they’ll all be at a loss.”

“What are you thinking, some indie bullshit?”

“Award show cocaine.”

“You’ll probably have to throw in a good chunk of change if you want it to be good.”

“You mean if I want control. I don’t think I do.”

“With this hypothetical movie that doesn’t exist, but it’s gonna bring you back from the brink of wherever you think this is gonna leave ya?” Your pulse rises to match a voice he hasn’t heard in some time.

Sami doesn’t flinch. “I’ve already thought about how a lot of people love her more than me, and that this is going to make me look bad, and that being away from everything will only make them favor her for whatever she’s doing because I know it’s going to be incredible.”

“Yeah, maybe. I don’t know. She was really terrible in that penguin movie.”

“Jesus Christ, Phil! Are you not getting any of this?”

“What’s that?”

“I don’t give a shit what the demographics think or what this means for my career or hers, or how we supposedly bounce back. I’m not as chewed up as I thought I’d be when this first happened, but maybe if I’m away from it for a while and really watch how all of these bastards turn against me for no reason other than not being in their lives… Maybe then I’ll feel something again… something close to human emotion, and then turn it into something real, but right now, I don’t have it, and it has less to do with Joye and I, and more to do with me being me right now.”

You can’t remember if you’ve read something similar, maybe right before the climax, but Sami could never memorize such an elaborate speech. “Okay, but what if it doesn’t come back after everyone turns on you?”

“Then I’ll do something else.”

“Do you just want me to leave so you can go see her?”

“What?” His reaction is a surefire tell; eyes wide, head half-shaking, just like when you were kids. “I’ve been explaining things I have no control over all day to people who depend on me for pretty much one thing. I don’t think it’s too much to ask to be alone.”

“You know if you go to her and shit gets fucked up, it’s going to be really bad.” It all plays out in that deliberately dramatic fashion you’ve learned to accept in this life. Reality-based spectacle as two people shout then laugh and cry, holding each other before letting go. Or maybe it really is a competition; a way to get above and save face with all those fatheads rebooting and fabricating until the re-run looks brand new.

“We’re not violent people by nature,” Sami says as his phone rings. “It’s Dad.”

“You think he heard something?”

“I don’t know how, considering I haven’t talked to him in a week.”

“You going to answer?”

“If I don’t, he’ll call you, right? Has he called you already?”

“Last time Dad called me, I was watching porn on my phone; it was the worst.”

 “What?” your brother smiles “When was this?”

“A couple days back.”

“Before all of my bullshit, huh?”

“I believe so.” You hear Sami’s voicemail in your head as the buzzing stops.

“Did you finish or answer?”

“I’m taking the fifth.” Standing, you consider the distance from there to home.

“Yeah, I don’t think I need much evidence on this one.”

“Guilty of perversions so profound and disgusting that decorum prohibits listing them here.” Your Neidermeyer is still spot on.

“So where are you going?”

“I’m leaving you to it, Samuel. Call Dad back, watch some TV, jerk-off, go see your soon-to-be ex-wife. Whatever it is, it isn’t my place to interfere. Now when you want some company again, feel free to give me a call, and I’ll swing on by to see how much worse the smell’s gotten.”

“I’m gonna get my shit together just as soon as you hit the sidewalk.”

Sami’s a bit unbalanced, leaning against the same wall as you step past. “Well, I certainly hope so.”

“So how much did they give you this time?”

“I thought we weren’t going to talk about that anymore.”

“Yeah, but what if this is the last time?” Sami believes it could be, and you’re not sure how to process his dysfunction.

“As long as people care, they’ll be a place for us in this world.”

“Eventually no one will, though,” he claims. “We’ll be lucky to get a day on the ticker with this one. Actors are always getting married and divorced.”

“You sure you don’t want me to hang for a bit? Maybe distract you from your head.”

“Once you leave, I’ll stop talking about all of this and just let it wash over me.”

“Okay.” You’re somehow nervous stepping out, a chill in your chest as Sami holds the door.

“So can you at least give me a ballpark on this one? I mean, didn’t I earn it by fucking all of this up?”

“It’s gonna cover Mickey’s tuition next semester, and that’s about it, I think.”

“Okay, good enough,” Sami nods. “How’s he doing?”

“I don’t know. He barely talks to me.”

“I should maybe give him a call. It’s been a while.”

“Yeah, he’ll probably tell you some shit he won’t tell me.”

“Or some shit he wants you to know about that he won’t tell you,” your brother smirks.

“But everyone will know about it eventually, right?”

“Only in this family.”

“So I’ll see ya tomorrow?”

“I’ll be here all week.” Sami closes the door as you consider your path.

Down the elevator, pop a Xanny then subway or maybe a cab. Uber will take too long, and you’ve still got some running around to do. More appointments with men wondering how to stomach whatever direction everyone’s leaning. If you all do it in unison, maybe the bus will flip over, or the sphere will go flat, and the rush will slow as people stop, look around and wonder: where did it all go right?       

Christopher S. Bell is a writer and musician. His work has recently appeared in The Word’s Faire, Random Sample Review, and Paper Dragons. Radio Reruns, his latest album under the moniker H088Y_FARM, is now available everywhere. He currently resides in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.

Like a Dog

Alexandra Persad

The homes they entered were filled with a silence so sterile Lena’s stomach lurched. It required significant intention to ignore along with the staticky buzz of white noise in her ears, coldness spreading across her chest like a rash in the darkened space.

Around them, furniture lined the room’s perimeter in ambiguous, oblong shapes. Lena’s eyes had not yet adjusted, everything seemingly one-dimensional. There was a slickness to her hands when she turned the deadbolt, nearly losing her grip.

“Hold on.” Dimitri was ahead of her, leaving her behind as he often did, his footsteps already muted from the immediate removal of his shoes. Lena did the same, following his shadow, large and stuttering as he scrambled to uncover the elusive mechanism operating the blinds. Sometimes it was a button hidden behind the thick covering of a drape or a remote tucked neatly in a basket on a bookshelf or a simple chain corded along the pane of a window.

Locating it had become automatic, like muscle memory, the first item on an unofficial checklist learned through practice. No different from the paced braking of a bike or dodgy scrawl of amateur cursive letters. An action that Lena now categorized as common sense in the private scrabble of her thoughts, although she couldn’t string anything coherent together before the windows were sealed, no outside eyes to notice they were where they were not meant to be.

After the slats were downturned, they drew the curtains as an additional precaution, flicking only the dimmest lighting on. Spindly lamps hovering above arm chairs, unglobed bulbs illuminating oven tops, strips tucked flushly beneath the undersides of breakfast bars.

“That was easy.” Dimitri looked satisfied in the mild darkness, a sheen of sweat over the plumpness of his face. He was sunken into the couch, at home already, his arm draped across one of the many throw pillows sprinkled across it. Even in the dim lighting, all the fixtures were golden and spotless, ready to reflect riches.

This particular house had been on the market for months, troves of people touring with an interest in studying the innards worth millions, unable to afford anything even close to the price. Lena guessed it was the details they wanted to see, the moldings along the wall, the shiny backsplash encircling the basined tub, the refrigerator disguised as cabinetry.

Dimitri flicked on the TV, playing it at a low volume with the subtitles flashing along the bottom of the screen.

“Hey, it’s actually hooked up,” he said. Overly saturated frames of a game show appeared, everyone in an obscure costume, spinning colorful wheels and accepting compact silvery boxes labeled with question marks.

“Oh my god, look at that guy,” Dimitri sat up slightly, pointing to the screen with the remote. “He’s dressed up like a steak. I didn’t even know they made shit like that.”

Lena glanced in the general direction of the TV, studying the wall behind it. Framed faces of nondescript families posing in naturescapes, exuding a general aura of happiness.

The entire house had been staged with startling precision. Even the books packed tightly on the shelves were real. A compact row of Shakespeare, a leathered line of Lord of the Rings. Along the sill, Lena had pressed her fingertips into the potted plant’s soil, surprised, when they sunk in, moist and damp.

“This place feels like a real home, doesn’t it?”
“Huh?” Dimitri tore his eyes from the screen, now displaying a commercial for an antidepressant, couples holding hands and smiling gently at one another.

“There’s even food in the fridge.” She recalled the stalks of celery and kale tucked in the vegetable crisper, the chilled bottles of wine lining the door.

“There’s food?” Dimitri perked up.

Lena opened her mouth then shut it, melting into the background as he strode past her with intention in his gait.

“Oh, shit, there is food in here.” His body was half hidden by the refrigerator door, the sigh of the cold air as he rummaged inside. “Did you want anything?”

He looked at her fleetingly before swinging his gaze back to the shelves.

“No. No, that’s okay.”

He pawed through the rest of the kitchen, producing a bag of chips and a wine cork. He drank directly from the bottle, bringing it back to the same spot on the couch, still imprinted with his body weight. He refocused on the screen, the man in the steak costume jumping up and down excitedly.

Dimitri’s comfort was unmatched, reaching into his chip bag with poised consistency, laughing in spurts at the TV, while Lena watched him modestly from the room’s center.

It was a glass box with a lock that housed the keys. Dimitri’s mother was the one who showed Lena where they were, hung up on the wall in the real estate office. Lena averted her gaze when she entered the code, despite that she didn’t pose any threat. Her day was strung together by simple tasks—reformatting brochures and brightening photographs of empty homes. She made an effort to look more important than she was, dressing her teenage frame in drag as an adult. Pencil skirts with slight wrinkles, blouses that came untucked when she moved her arms too freely, a mist of body spray smeared on both wrists as if it was perfume.

The idea to visit one of the homes had seemed unserious at first, something Lena giggled girlishly at when Dimitri mentioned it, misinterpreting the frenzied excitement on his face as part of the joke. Then, stopped promptly when he didn’t return her laughter.

“I mean think about it,” he sat his phone face down beside him, a foreign stillness between them. Ordinarily, he looked for something to avert his gaze to, as if his attention needed to constantly be split. “My mom’s gone on the weekend, we could just grab some keys and go check it out, then bring them back the next day.”

“But,” Lena paused, swallowing nothing. “Why?”

His face instantly darkened, a tangible disappointment wedged between them. “I mean, if you don’t want to, I could just do it by myself,” he said, re-sidlining Lena as he opened his phone once again.

 There was a tightening of desperation within her. Dimitri, the first boy who had ever sought her out, diluting the sudden uptick in his visits to the office as an excuse to see his mother, dropping lunch off and hovering around the bulletin board Lena pinned pamphlets to. It was the regularity of his gestures that was particularly captivating. Walking her out to her car and even bringing her an iced coffee once, the flimsy plastic shining like a trophy on her desk. She hardly drank it, just ran her fingers along the cold edge, imagining the mundane inconveniences he encountered to deliver it.

Dimitri’s interest coupled with her first summer internship seemed significant, denoting a transition to her real life, away from the lockered halls of school. For the first time, she could clearly visualize what her adult life would look like, but the end of summer was already on her mind, an inevitability of the future curdling with the present. Lena imagined her being cleanly removed from her desk at the office and placed back into the cold metal of classroom chairs, the water-stained ceiling panels above her. At least, she would still have Dimitri, an inkling that she was not back to her old life completely, but enough of a person to now have someone want her.

“No, I want to,” she corrected, clearing her throat. “I’m just kind of worried, that’s all.”

He looked at her pityingly. Life was a game to him, one that Lena didn’t know how to play yet. His mere existence held an immunity to punishment, the buffer of parental wealth and boyish arrogance.

“It’ll be fine,” he palmed her leg with a firm grip. “I’ll protect you.”

Lena changed clothes twice, pulling on a skirt then replacing it with a pair of jeans that left mangled marks on her stomach. She considered wearing black, but the gesture felt embarrassingly deliberate, inviting jokes from Dimitri. Was she planning on bringing a ski mask also?

When Dimitri pulled into the driveway, Lena scurried out of the house, planning to duck into the car in one fluid motion, as if a crime had already been committed, but stopped. The seat was filled by Hunter, Lena’s least favorite of his friends. A gangly, teenage boy whose wardrobe never deviated from ill-fitting basketball shorts, regardless of the season.

He grinned at her. “This one’s taken, sweetheart.”

Surprise leaked onto her face. She felt it go slack, looking at Dimitri for direction, but he was busy on his phone, the song changing rapidly as he tapped the screen with astute quickness.

Silently, she conceded, slipping behind them. The backrest of the seat pressed against her knees, Hunter’s pimpled neck visible through the gap of the headrest.

They were boisterous in the front, Dimitri occasionally turning around to pat her knee.

“How’re we feeling back there?”

Hunter snorted under his breath. “Christ.”

“What? I have to check on my girl.”

Lena pressed her hands beneath her thighs, compacting the space she inhabited. The affection that Dimitri showed was exclusively saved for when other people were looking. When they were alone, her presence was merely a placeholder, awaiting an audience to make her matter.

Lena studied the green smear of trees through the window. “I’m fine.”

Privately, she withered. The suggestion to break and enter had never appealed to her, frightened her even, but Dimitri asking her to accompany him felt significant. The secrecy of it all seemed so intimate at first, an appreciation that would continue to burn and lengthen in the correct conditions. But she had misread it all. There was no secret, no appreciation, just her in the backseat, Hunter in the front, and the stolen keys in the cupholder. 

It was a child’s bedroom that seemed particularly specific. The quiet cream of the walls was the only part that matched the rest of the house, every other corner embroidered with femininity. Lilac sheets and a ruffled bedspread, dolls shelved in neat rows, shoeless feet dangling freely over the edge.

She caught sight of her reflection in the mirror, ghostly butterfly stickers spotting the edges, faded from sun. Lena looked out of place in the middle of it all, the grandeur of even a small space, the pitched ceiling and tulle draping above the bed. She felt a pull of sadness, the girlish innocence she had too quickly detached herself from, trampling into adulthood without even considering what pieces of herself were abandoned.

She sat on the rug, running her hand along the tufts of fuzz. Intentionally, she chose to avoid the muddle of nostalgia for the life she had when she was a girl.

Instead, she considered the other houses they entered, which were nothing like this one, always varying levels of furniture, depending on the price. Random, inanimate objects speckled different rooms, mimicking the whispers of daily choreography. An empty wooden bowl beside the door, a wire rack suspending a bundle of artificial bananas, waxy plant leaves cemented in styrofoam.

The first home they ever visited was particularly unremarkable. Her eyes glossed over it all in one quick, underwhelmed swoop, while Dimitri and Hunter explored each crevice, pointing to different rooms as they passed each other quickly in the hallway. Opening walk-in pantries and side closets, unearthing compacted ladders to attics and poking their heads in the splintery, triangled space.

Their immediate whirl of excitement subdued Lena, a sizzle of agitation underscoring her movements, hollowly following Dimitri from room to room, hovering near the doorway. Dimitri only paid her any mind once the initial luster had worn off, each space explored and Hunter removed entirely, making a run for pizza. The beer he brought was already stocked in the fridge, slightly depleted, a handful of empty cans on the table.

It was unnaturally hot in the house, the air conditioning not on, humidity swelling in each room. Collectively, they had decided to leave it that way, as if it was a test that they were certain not to fail. Lena fidgeted with her hair, moving it from one side of her neck to the other, fanning her exposed skin with a free hand.

“Come here.” Dimitri was only one cushion away from her on the couch. His hand grasped at her leg, clammy even through the denim.

His breath was replaced by the scent of cheap, muddled beer. She imagined it texturing hers, how they would converge, his lips cementing onto her own.

The sex was uncomfortable and frantic. Dimitri’s hands moved with forced quickness, requiring a fluidity he didn’t have, his fingers fumbling with the button of her jeans, shoving her bra above her breasts without attempting to unclasp it. 

Lena waited for it to be over as she typically did, less complicated than making excuses. There wasn’t anything about sex she that was particularly pleasurable other than the fact she had it with regularity, like an adult purchasing weekly groceries.

They finished in the bathroom, staring at their reflections in the mirror. The fluorescent lights washed her face clean of any color, while his hands grasped at her hips with whitened fingertips, leaving streaky red marks after he released her.

She pulled her jeans up from the puddle at her ankles, rebuttoning them away from Dimitri and facing the unevenly torn toilet paper.

“I’ll see you back out there.” Dimitri winked, leaving the door open behind him.

“And where were you?” Hunter had already returned, his voice slightly altered, a mouthful of pizza from the living room.

“I was being a good host, giving her the grand tour, you know.”

“Oh, I bet you were.”

Then, a smacking of hands, echoing loudly, even from rooms away.

Lena stared at herself. The bathroom was suddenly a very slanted, lonely place.

Dimitri was clicking around the channels absently when Lena came back downstairs.

She joined him at the opposite end of the couch, not indulging in the cushions behind her. The buckle of fabric beneath her felt slightly worn, comfortable and broken in, despite its newness. “What do you think about this place?”

Dimitri raised the wine bottle to his lips, a slight red tint to his teeth after he swallowed. He looked around briefly, assessing the vastness of the space. “It’s cool.”

Lena gnawed on the inside of her cheek, gazing at the photographs again. Were the images that came in frames always so detailed? There was an unsettling cohesion to the wall, the faces pictured within them.

“It just seems like they staged it a lot. I mean, a lot. Did you see everything upstairs?”

“I poked around.”

“Well, what did you think?”
“I mean yeah, they did a good job staging it.”

He changed the channel once again, and Jeopardy lit up the screen, bathing the room in blue. Such a vibrant wash it drowned out the blue flashes from outside, only red bleeding through the blinds, seeping in between the shut slats. Then, a violent slamming of car doors and deep voices.

“Holy shit.” Without hesitation, Dimitri’s body moved in a blur, strobing against the surge of sirens and disappearing down the hallway. The wine bottle had shattered, an open wound on the floor.

Lena felt her blood moving through her veins at an alarming pace, a thrumming in her ears so consuming she worried she would never hear another sound again. Mechanically, she followed Dimitri’s path, the lights he had flicked on, the back door thrown open and cold night air billowing in. She hurled herself into the darkness like a dog, searching for an owner that had already left her behind.

Alexandra Persad is a Pushcart-nominated writer, who studied creative writing at West Virginia University and now lives in Ann Arbor, Michigan with her cat and partner. Her writing has been featured in Flossy Lit Mag, Lit, Glint Literary Journal, Blaze Vox Journal, Barren Magazine, the Potomac Review, Half and One, and Better than Starbucks, where her essay was nominated for the Best of 2020.

Long Time, No See

Audrey-Anna Gamache

“Do you still write?”

“Not as much as I used to.”

“I remember when you used to read me your poems.”

“Poems, ha! That’s generous. They were only ramblings from a sad little kid.”

“You were a sad little kid.”

“You weren’t much happier yourself. I remember our conversation in the cemetery.”

“The night that Jared left us in the Burger King parking lot?”

“We had to walk all the way back to your house in the rain. And your dad was so pissed at us for being out late that he threw his fist through your bedroom door and tossed all your CDS out the window.”

“Dad was always a mean bastard.”

“I regretted asking to go to your house that night. We should have walked the extra few blocks to stay at my place. My parents wouldn’t even have noticed we came home.”

“It wasn’t your fault. Besides, it was a long time ago, and he’s dead now. Heart attack.”

“I’m sorry.”

“Don’t be. I’m not.”

“Shit, I can still remember the look on his face when we walked through the front door sopping wet, our ankles bleeding through our Converse sneakers, mud all through our hair. I thought he was going to kill us.”

“It wasn’t as bad as the time we found your mom with that guy, whatshisname?”

“Paul.”

“It wasn’t as bad as the time we caught your mom fucking around with that asshole Paul.”

“You thought that was worse?”

“Yeah, man. The way she burst out crying, begging you not to tell your father. She looked so desperate. I had never seen an adult act so.. vulnerable. And then Asshole Paul had the audacity to convince her to leave your dad and start a new family in South Carolina.”

“Yeah, fuck Paul.”

“Fuck Dad.”

“Shit, our childhoods were pretty fucked up.”

“That was something Dad used to say. You have to have thick skin. It isn’t easy being young. So we wrote shitty poetry and ran around in the rain to cope.”

“You seem to be doing better now.”

“So do you.”

“No thanks to them.”

“Growing up is realizing there are no heroes coming to save you.”

“Your dad was still a prick for not trying.”

“Can I tell you something, though? That night in the rain, when it was just us under the streetlights, dancing in the puddles, and you took my hand-”

“-Because you kept falling on your ass and muddying up the back of your dress-”

“-And we thought the Bicycle Man was following us-”

“-So we pretended to be zombies to scare him away-”

“-And we laid in the cemetery talking about dying and living and the moon. I remember you said the moon looked like the inside of an oreo.”

“Hey! I was hungry.”

“That night was one of the best nights of my life.”

“Mine too.”

“I don’t think I would have ever made it this far without you.”

“I don’t know what I would’ve done with you, either.”

“We were just two thin skinned kids-”

“-Keeping each other warm, despite the rain.”

Audrey-Anna Gamache is a writer based in New England. Her work has appeared in Chestnut Review and Filling Station. When she isn't writing, she likes watching low budget movies with her cats and scouring flea markets for bizarre knick-knacks. She can be found on X @ScoutyLynch.