Issue 13 - Spring 2022

fiction

Facts in Peoria 

It didn’t matter that her hands were small, nor that the park was full of strangers that morning: men on benches reading the obituaries of other men, women carrying grocery sacks who looked like the women on TV shows, the same celery leaves protruding, the same weary expressions. She had come to choose wildflowers to give to her mother on her birthday, and mornings were best. Drops of dew still clung to the Arrowhead asters and Blue Flag irises. Her mother loved flowers, and all of her vases were empty, had been empty since her father’s accident two years before. He was confined to the couch or his wheelchair, and did little but watch game shows and fill in the squares of the crossword puzzle in the Peoria Journal Star.

The accident hadn’t been his fault. One couldn’t blame the falling pig, either, as harmless in death as it was while living. Just a weighty thing. No, that distinction went to his co-worker at the meat processing plant, Jim Stillwater, who often showed up drunk for second shift. That afternoon he’d been too drunk to operate the crane mechanism that brought the beasts down for final inspection prior to slaughter. Final inspection meant the sniff test, the look-over, the injection in the abdomen, and the purple stamp that read PASSED. This particular pig—in life—had responded to the name Fritz at a farm down in Cairo. Fritz had paralyzed her father from the waist down. But Fritz was not the culprit, and her father and Stillwater were still tied up in court after two years. Her father wanted two million dollars. Stillwater was bankrupt. The plant had fancy lawyers from Chicago. The lawsuit might last years, they all suspected.

So, with Fritz long turned to sausage, her father tuning into Hollywood Squares, Stillwater probably sipping the day’s first beer over at Hodge’s, and her mother checking groceries at the Peoria Get-n-Go, she went to pick flowers. The next day—a Saturday—would be her mother’s 35th birthday, and she wanted to make it special. She had no money to spend, of course, but there were numerous empty vases strewn around the house and she figured she could fill at least two of them. That would give her mother solace, and solace—and perhaps a good massage after standing up for eight hours at the Get-n-Go—were exactly what her mother needed. I can’t do much for her, but I can do this, she thought. Her father’s workmen’s comp check would cover the cake, and maybe the neighbors would bring over casseroles and Pepsi. There was going to be a party. A party needs flowers.

Among the strangers arrayed around the park that summer morning was one who looked familiar. The school janitor? No. Uncle Eddie from Omaha? No. Redd the Plumber who fixed the bathtub on Easter? No. Then she recognized him. It was Stillwater, wearing his plant shirt with the strange slogan on its pocket: “Live High on the Hog.” He carried a coffee thermos in one hand and a steel lunchpail in the other. He called her over. “Hey, Missy, c’mon over here and say hi to Uncle Jim.” Her name wasn’t Missy, but she went over anyway. “Pickin’ flowers for your pretty mother, I suppose. Well, what a fine little lady you are for that.”  

“Tomorrow’s her birthday.”

 “I know that. What I don’t know is why your daddy ain’t here helpin’ you out. A little thing like you might get lost in a park this size. Mind if I give you a hand?”

The girl didn’t know what to say, so Stillwater hovered around her for five minutes as she plucked and nestled, nestled and plucked. The air was beginning to warm up. Thunderstorms were in the forecast for later that afternoon.

“Irises mean hope, you know, and these little asters mean faith. Every flower has a meaning, just like every body has a soul distinct from all the other souls of all of the other bodies. Even pigs have souls. You daddy’s the only person I know who ain’t got one, and that’s a shame. It’s the God’s truth and it’s a shame.” Stillwater was warming up, though he didn’t appear to be drunk. Maybe a little tipsy, that’s all. “I never meant for that pig to fall. It was faulty machinery and the damn plant knows that too. I wouldn’t harm your daddy. Your mother’s too fine to lose a fellow like him. You just go back home and tell him that. I meant your daddy no harm at all, swear by Jesus. Swear by my mother’s old Bible. No, little girl, I ain’t no killer.” She was about to run away, but he continued. “It’s the damn plant. They don’t give a rat about what happens on the floor. It’s all the meat to Arizona, New Mexico, that’s all they care about. You tell him that. You tell him.”

Back home, her father kept his eyes dead-set on Bob Barker and The Price Is Right. He looked pitiful to her, with a half-eaten plate of eggs on the couch and his arms curled up in a pillow obtusely. She wanted to tell him what Stillwater said, but she had other things to do. She had to call Maude’s Bakery about the cake and tell the neighbors about the party. There would be a party because there had to be. There’d be a party because her mother deserved it. She was turning 35, and that was a fact. She was going to drink a glass of Pepsi with ice cubes and have a plate of green bean casserole. Those were facts. That’s what was going to happen.

—Carl Boon

Sunny Sundays 

Ava opens the blinds to let the light in because that’s all that makes sense to do. What her mother Rose always did. Does. She looks at her mother now, pallid skin fading into the chintz fabric of the chair, that hideous chair.

Can something so ephemeral, teetering on the edge of consciousness, be described in present tense?

A cascade of dust particles rain down as Ava pulls the blind slats slack. She watches them spin in late afternoon sunlight across the floor, attempting to fill some of the empty spaces in a house that has always been too big for the two of them. Ava can almost see Rose’s large hands throwing various curtains open with one, violent jab, darting from room to room until she had attacked each one. Sunlight, Rose used to say to a tiny Ava once the snot on her face had dried and the sobs became whimpers, cures any ailment. You could go mad from the darkness. Ava used to wonder if it was as simple as that, if they had left New York because the tall buildings too often blocked the sun from hitting their Brooklyn stoop. In their oversized Connecticut house, the sun knew no bounds. On summer days it felt as though the sun never set, burning through the spotted windows, saturating the house with a sticky heat, leaving the floorboards swollen like overwatered plants. Ava would dance through the many rooms tinged yellow-white.

She waited to feel happy.

“Mom,” Ava says loudly as the last of the dust hits the floor. “It’s Sunday.” Ava wonders if she’ll be caught in this lie, or if the two women are floating so far from reality that the days are starting to tumble backwards over one another.

“Get me my purse,” the body that now inhabits Rose says to no one in particular. Yet the phrase rings with the smallest bud of familiarity, as if she were misremembering a line she once had to utter in a school play.

Sundays were for them, like they are for most people, steeped in rituals. Ava remembers the slow drip of the mornings; the sunlight first filtering in, followed by the smooth warble of a Sinatra album coming in distorted through the scratchy speakers of their old stereo. A lazy spiral of coffee steam would eventually drift through the air. Rose would dress in her version of “Sunday best”, donning crisp pantsuits in harsh colors and unforgiving stilettos that screeched against linoleum. Ava would grumble her way into a dress and quieter shoes. The pair would stand out among the throngs of sweatpants and starchy jerseys, pacing the hospital-white corridors bathed in a faint neon glow from the various store signs that surrounded them. They would squeeze through the narrow spaces between department store clothing racks, Ava trying to escape her mother’s lectures on different fabric types. They would pause at the little glass jewelry cart because Ava loved to hold the glass beads up to the fluorescent lights, watching their shiny translucent surfaces expand with beams color. They would lick cinnamon sugar off soft pretzels while creating backstories for the other families that, like them, passed large chunks of time away at the Bradford Mall. They would, in these moments, feel normal.

Ava wears sweatpants today, waiting for Rose to say something in protest. She doesn’t. Even Rose is only dressed in a plain skirt and a pale blue sweater. They drive to the mall in silence, enjoying the emptiness of what is, in a distant reality, Wednesday afternoon streets. When they enter the overly air-conditioned mall, Ava misses the pairs of eyes that would pause over their formal attire.

It had been a false Sunday once before. Ava remembers hands digging into her shoulders and white stars cartoonishly popping in front of her eyes. Being shaken. There was an awful taste in Ava’s mouth, like dried, curdled milk. She could not tell if it was the early morning, right before the sky wears its navy blue silk, or still the middle of the night. She fumbled for her lamp, the one that swelled with floating red balloons when turned on. She then saw her mother’s face being worn by someone else, her blue eyes rimmed red and looking hollow, her mouth just a violet slash in the middle of her face, nostrils flared, chest flushed.

It’s Sunday. Bradford’s having a huge sale, and we have to beat the crowds, Rose insisted, her eyes flying in their sockets like windshield wipers.

It’s Tuesday, Ava said softly, I have my presentation on Teddy Roosevelt in the morning. Go back to bed, Mom, the mall’s closed.

No, Rose yelled, stamping her foot. Car. Now.

Ava didn’t get dressed, didn’t brush her teeth. She padded down to the driveway in fleece slippers and a matching set of dessert-themed pajamas, the rancid acidity still in her mouth. Her head buzzed against the incessant chirping of crickets. Rose touched the printed chocolate chip cookie on Ava’s shoulder. I’ll get you a new matching set, she smiled, and in the light of the car, Ava could see mauve lipstick stuck on her teeth.

When the kind police officer, arriving after Rose’s yanks at the locked doors set off the mall’s alarm, found the two of them milling in the floodlights of the parking lot, he pulled Ava aside. He crouched down, making himself much shorter than Ava, who was tall for her age. He smiled gently. How old are you, Ava?

I’m ten, Ava said, straightening. Double digits.

And has this happened before? Your mom taking you places in the middle of the night?

Not a lot. Just to the town’s fall harvest festival before the lights had come on. And to a school holiday concert that had already happened months before.

Do you feel safe living with your mom, Ava?

Ava paused, wondering whether this was a trick question, like the multiple choice questions where the answers were A, B, C, or “All of the Above.” Ava’s teacher told her to stop choosing only “All of the Above” as an answer, though it was the most tempting answer choice for all the questions. Her teacher, after hearing where the cops found Ava and Rose at four in the morning, would tell Ava she could do her Teddy Roosevelt presentation next week.

Of course I feel safe. She’s my mom.

Ava looks at her mom now, vacantly staring at their pretzel stand, no recognition at all. Ava wonders if it was easier for Rose to transition into fading memories when she already had a fractured mind.

The thing Ava always hated about Bradford Mall was that it lacked a large fountain, like they have in malls in the movies. She reaches into the comically large pockets of her sweatpants, feeling for loose change. She extracts a penny and a dime and tosses them into the trough of the drinking fountain. Rose says nothing of this strange activity, and instead walks ahead, walking toward something she doesn’t know. The coins sit lamely in the shallow basin, un-wishable.

—Melissa Feinman

The Waiting Room  

The clock says I’ve been here for two hours. Past the sliding doors leading to the emergency ward, everything is covered in plastic. The doctor hasn’t returned. In the back corner by a six-month-old pile of Pottery Barn, a chunky little white kid slides halfway off his chair and taps his tiny feet without any music. He isn’t tapping to a set rhythm, and there isn’t much purpose unless he’s trying to get more steps to register on an old-school pedometer clipped to his belt buckle. But who wears those anymore? I can envision an elderly man with high blood pressure doing the same, shaking away at it while waiting for a triple-cheeseburger with a side-order of truffle fries at the corner diner. These two images—boy and man—conflate into one.

I see him returning home and lying to his wife about how he thinks these walks are getting easier. In my daydream, this elderly boy-man is three-and-a-half feet tall, wearing an oversized flannel shirt, yet maintains a geriatric, patchy hairline, and lifts himself on a stepping stool to peck his wife on the cheek as she finishes loading the dishwasher. He kindly refuses one of her kale smoothies for lunch—doesn’t have the appetite—while showing her the 5,000 steps he fabricated. The daydream falls away, and I’m back in this waiting room, looking around at all the worried, tearful eyes, and can’t help but feel ashamed for being so absent.

Everyone is scanning each other, knowing that since they are here and not in the other room, they’re waiting for somebody to come out—or not. Everyone takes assessments of each other’s emotions; all in the eyes since we’re all wearing masks now. We, myself included, are all determining what might be the appropriate demeanor to perform—should we let our worries bubble over? Turn over some chairs? Yell at the desensitized front-desk nurse? Or should we keep everything to ourselves since everyone else seems to be doing that? I can’t be certain because, as I said, we’re all wearing masks. Some are kind enough to nod, give a squint implying the tight curl of a smile. I look away, slightly embarrassed for staring too long, yet grateful for their perceived kindness.

I’m sure every one of us at some point today caught ourselves staring at this chunky little white kid dissociating from what’s going on, drowning out the cries, the gasps, the do-somethings flying around this emergency waiting room with his tap-tap-tapping. I am sure we’ve given him many lives to distract ourselves. A dance number for a grade school talent show. A village idiot hopping over a bonfire to ward off pestilence. A doctor coming through those sliding doors with better news.

—Matt Gillick

Club Cherry

If she walked through the door, she would no longer be a teenager.

OK, she would be. A glass door leading into a humid roller rink wouldn’t suddenly age anyone, not physically anyway, not by more than a few seconds, but Shauna was pretty convinced that the entryway in front of her was a portal to adulthood.

Her outfit had been planned for weeks, a smiley face turquoise tube top and ripped, light-wash jeans with red-and-white stripes racing down each side. This was the night she doused herself in Gap Dream body spray and slipped her older sister Becky’s tattoo choker around her neck. This was the moment she had been waiting for since eighth grade started.

This was Teen Night at Club Cherry. 

As soon as they got to the club, Shauna’s best friends, Jenny and Jane, bounced through the door, self-assured as any two girls who had turned 14 with three sophomore soccer players’ numbers in their backpacks would be. Shauna was still 13, four months shy of Teen Night’s 14-18 policy, but as far as she knew, no one carded at the doors of Club Cherry. What would she show them anyway, her Thomas Jefferson Middle School ID?  

What she would do, she decided six days ago, was walk right onto the dance floor with her head held high as “Barbie Girl” blasted on the speakers and her lip gloss gleamed under the club’s ceiling of unevenly placed disco balls. If they weren’t playing “Barbie Girl”? Then she would sing Aqua songs in her head. It didn’t matter because she was doing this and everything was going to be perfect.

By day, the Cherry Lane Roller Rink was like every other suburban skate complex: worn-down carpets butting up to a cement-walled, slick wooden rink, faded neon paint clinging to the walls, sugary slushies and greasy French fries served next to the counter where kids borrowed skates, or rollerblades if you could balance like a normal person, which Shauna could not. Jenny and Jane owned matching rollerblades, dark gray with bright pink-and-turquoise triangles and swirls and purple wheels. Shauna borrowed Jane’s pair exactly once. While attempting to skate in a straight line to the end of Jane’s block, she shook in a sort-of forward direction for seven seconds, then fell down. She scraped both her knees and her right elbow and Jane laughed and Shauna immediately vowed to never rollerblade again. 

There were no roller skates or rollerblades or any other wheeled objects for Shauna to make a fool of herself with tonight, because on weekends, the complex transformed into Club Cherry, a teen nightclub frequented by every eighth grader and high schooler within a 10-mile radius. Becky had been a regular at Club Cherry, which meant Shauna wasn’t allowed to go near the place. But then three weeks ago, Becky didn’t close her bedroom door all the way, and Shauna snuck peaks at her sister lying on the floor, her feet propped up against her bed. Becky was twirling the cord of her hamburger phone around her hand, and she wouldn’t stop whining to one of her friends, complaining that the club was so over because the only people who showed up anymore were losers who didn’t have fake IDs and wouldn’t go into the city to the real clubs. Or eighth graders.

With no sister there to publicly question her existence, Shauna felt free for the first time to step onto the hallowed floor of Club Cherry. She looked around the parking lot to make sure no one was paying attention to her, which of course they weren’t, and squished her forehead against the front door. It was cloudy inside from fog machines and cheap cologne, but she spotted Jenny’s outline talking to a couple of short freshman guys from their neighborhood. Jenny and Jane walked with the confidence of girls who knew every inch of Victoria’s Secret by heart. Shauna was better acquainted with Wet Seal’s layout. This also explained why she was the only one currently wearing pants, which for the evening housed her school ID, her and Jenny’s lip glosses, two quarters, and the number to a taxi company, in case it was too dark or scary to walk back home later.

Shauna squeezed her arms against her sides to keep her tube top from slipping down and stared at the neon sign hanging above the front entrance. Only the “Cherry” part blinked red with a sad hum, like it was biding its time before fading into oblivion.

The door swung open and Shauna jumped back to avoid getting smacked in the face.

“Get your ass in here!” Jane yelped.

Jenny edged around Jane and bounced into the parking lot. She grabbed Shauna by the elbow, nearly tipping her over. 

“There are 10th graders inside,” Jenny whispered.

Before she left the house, Shauna ditched her Adidas Superstars in favor of her sister’s matte, maroon Doc Martens. These boots were made for ass kicking and melting into the cement, either of which would’ve come in handy as Jane left the safety of the door frame to fix Shauna. It felt like Jane was staring into her soul, but Shauna was pretty sure her soul consisted of nothing but Teen Beat and Buffy the Vampire Slayer, so there wasn’t much to see.

“Chill,” Jane said, brushing a hair off her Shauna’s shoulder. “You definitely look 14. Maybe even 15.”

Shauna doubted that. Maybe a deep breath would help. That’s what people always said, right? And what better time than the present to test that sage advice out. Shauna sucked a shallow breath in through her nose and exhaled hard enough to scare Puff the Magic Dragon. She linked her hands through her friends’ arms and flashed her best fake smile.

“Let’s do this,” Shauna declared.

As soon as the air conditioning hit them, Jane and Jenny shook their arms free, waved to the bouncer, and bolted for the dance floor. Shauna stood in place, praying the bouncer believed she was 14. Blinking the room into recognition, she spotted a manager in his office to her right, chewing on a pencil as he smirked at two blonde girls sitting on the other side of his desk. The bouncer kicked the bottom of his stool, keeping the beat to Ace of Base’s “Beautiful Life.” Straight ahead, Jenny twirled her hair and Jane bit her lip as the short dudes from before held their hands out towards them like acne-scarred Frankensteins. To Shauna’s left, three boys fought over the Bart controller on The Simpsons arcade machine, and a group of giggling girls in ringer tees, patchwork flares, and Puma sneakers sat next to them on the skating checkout desk, kicking away any underclassman who skirted their territory en route to the bathroom. 

Shauna squinted her eyes, aiming her gaze at the redhead in the group. She recognized the cherry-covered baby tee the girl was wearing, and the cobalt Pumas attached to the blonde next to her, with soles covered in heart doodles, had definitely been strewn across her family’s entryway last week. Those were her sister’s friends, and in the center of the iron-on patches and denim and hairspray was her sister Becky, an unlit cigarette dangling from her mouth. 

Shauna beelined for the rink just as Becky titled her head towards the door. She hopped off the counter and her pack followed her outside, obedient as always.

Becky was supposed to be at the movies tonight and she claimed to hate this place and she definitely, definitely didn’t smoke. Shauna’s eyes darted around the dance floor, hunting for Jenny and Jane. They had moved on from the Frankensteins to a couple of soccer players whose numbers they didn’t have. They were like ninjas, if ninjas only had eyes for hot, older boys to make out with. Stomping towards her friends, Shauna wondered if she too could become a boy-catching ninja.

She screeched to a stop behind the guys and tapped them on the shoulders. “Super sorry, but I need to borrow these two,” Shauna said, grabbing Jenny and Jane’s hands and dragging them towards the exit.

“What the hell, Shauna!” Jane squeaked.

“Yeah, they were cute! Like, really cute!” Jenny added.

“I promise they will still be cute in, like, two minutes, but we’ve gotta go outside,” Shauna said.

“Are there cuter boys outside?” Jenny asked.

Shauna twirled around to face her friends. “Jenny! Becky is here and she has a cigarette and it’s freaking me out and I need you to not be like—” Shauna flailed her arms around. “—this.”

Jane looked shocked and amused. She patted Shauna on the head. “A cigarette, eh?”

Shauna pushed Jane’s hand away. “Yes. So, let’s go.”

“Let’s,” Jane said, stepping in front of Shauna to lead the way. Jenny quickened her stride to catch up with Jane.

At the edge of the parking lot, a row of coupes was lined up along the gravel, pointed towards the narrow row of trees that separated the property from an old folk’s home. Becky commanded the group, leaning against a white Mustang, cracking jokes at the expense of everyone still inside the rink. Shauna tip-toed towards them as best as she could in clunky boots, getting a few feet away before yelling her sister’s name. Becky’s eyes opened wide like an anime cartoon. Her cigarette fell out of her mouth and into a shallow puddle.

“Are you fucking kidding me?” Becky grumbled, picking up her wet Marlboro Light. She clenched her mouth, trying to shake the cigarette dry. Jane and Jenny flanked Shauna, eagerly eyeing the soaked butt. 

Becky slowly lifted her head, one eyebrow raising as she laser focused on her little sister. “You’re not supposed to be here, Shauna!”

“And you’re not supposed to be smoking, Becky!” Shauna yelled back.

“I’m not,” Becky said, whipping out a fresh Marlboro and lighting it. Shauna had never seen an episode of The Twilight Zone, but she was pretty sure she was in one. That or she was about to become an after school special. Maybe Jennifer Love Hewitt would play her. That was something to look forward to when she was grounded for the next six months, because there was no way Becky wasn’t getting to their mom first. She wasn’t sure exactly what she had done wrong, but she knew it was something.

“You want one?” Becky’s redheaded friend asked, flashing three cigarettes in front of the eighth graders.

“She doesn’t,” Becky answered.

“We do!” Jenny grabbed two cigs before Becky could say no again. Jane scrounged through her minuscule purse to find the pale pink lighter she could finally use on something other than incense. 

Shauna plucked the last one from the offering hand. Her very first cigarette. Health class VHS tapes filled with images of disgusting lungs and tracheotomies flashed through her mind. Jenny and Jane coughed and giggled with the older girls as Shauna rolled her cigarette back and forth across the palm of her hand, her fingers burning in anticipation.

Becky blew smoke out of the side of her mouth like the coolest girl Shauna had ever seen, which she was, despite fiery eyes wishing they could bore a hole through the center of Shauna’s skull. A lighter appeared in front of Shauna, softening her features with a yellow glow, and her grandpa’s image flashed through her mind.

Shauna and Becky’s grandfather smoked a pack a day. He coughed after every third sentence and his sweaters smelled like mothballs caught in a campfire. Becky never smelled like burnt mothballs. She smelled like Baby Soft and cherry Lipsmackers.

Becky cracked her neck from side to side. Jenny and Jane hadn’t hesitated like this. Orange embers glowed at the end of their glittery lips. 

Jane snapped at Shauna and waved her lighter.

“Now what?” Shauna asked.

“Stick the cigarette in your mouth and breathe in,” Jane said. Becky’s friend nodded behind her.

Shauna looked at Becky and inhaled. Before she could wonder if she was supposed to hold her breath or exhale quickly, Shauna doubled over, coughing her way to what she assumed was a quick, early death. Becky took the cigarette from her hand.

“You guys go inside. I need to talk to Shauna,” Becky told her friends. “Take Jenny and Jane with you.” 

Rather than protest, Jane flicked her mostly full cigarette onto the gravel, suffocating the lit end with her chunky platform heel, just as she watched Becky do. She straightened out her faux leather skirt before pulling Shauna’s top up a centimeter. Jane nodded, admiring her work before she and Jenny tailed Becky’s friends into the club.

Becky pulled Shauna by the belt loop towards the last car in the row, mostly hidden from plain view by rock piles from the demolished building across the lot. She stepped back and looked her sister up and down, taking in every item Shauna had stolen from her room.

“Why are you here, Shauna?” Becky asked.

“It’s Teen Night!” Shauna said. She was feeling a little dizzy, but a good kind of dizzy, the kind she imagined was just like being blissfully high.

“This place is lame. You shouldn’t be here,” Becky said.

“But you come here. Why can’t I?” Shauna asked.

“You’re too good for Club Cherry.”

“You calling me a snob?”

“No, I’m calling you smart,” Becky said, scoping the parking lot. Spotting a trash can two cars down, she tossed her whole cigarette pack in gracefully, like a seamless foul shot, then cracked Shauna’s cigarette in half and let it join its brothers. Shauna’s lips parted in confusion.

“I won’t tell Mom if you don’t,” Becky said, wiping her hands on her thighs.

“Tell her what? I didn’t do anything wrong!” Shauna said.

“Doubt that’s how Mom’ll see it. Look, I’m gonna grab my friends and go to the diner. I’ll be home by midnight. Watch Jenny and Jane, OK?”

“Seriously, what did I do wrong? You were the one smoking first!”

Becky leaned in and gave her sister a hug. Shauna’s arms stayed at her sides. “I’ll see ya at home. And if you get any dirt on my boots, I’ll kill you.”

“This isn’t fair, Becky!” Shauna yelled at her sister’s back. Becky threw up a middle finger and swaggered through Club Cherry’s doors with a confidence that didn’t come from the two of them growing up under the same roof.

Shauna walked over to the garbage can and peered down. Becky’s Marlboro Lights seemed to be glowing. She reached in and snatched the pack, squishing it down in her back pocket, safely next to her school ID and the taxi company’s number. Aqua seeped through the windows, the bass getting louder and louder as she got closer to the entrance.

There was no need to hesitate this time, not really. Shauna had already stepped through the front door once. She had made her way to the dance floor, granted without actually dancing or even smiling at a single boy. She even managed to keep Becky’s boots spotless, despite the parking lot dust and the drinks and the sweat splashing all around her.

Shauna reapplied her lip gloss, or maybe she swiped on Jenny’s; they all tasted like imitation vanilla bathed in glitter. She took in the neon sign once more, buzzing like the inside of her head, and cracked open the door. 

She nodded at Becky and Becky ignored her and she slid next to Jenny and Jane, whiffs of smoke hitting her nose as she whipped her head around, her throat burning as she tried to scream along to “Barbie Girl.”

—Emily Krauser

The stars, baby, the stars.

I have always looked up at the stars. I can grasp the science. Burning spheres of plasma, held together by their own colossal gravity. Visible electromagnetic radiation beaming down to become pinpricks of light in the void. I understand that people have tried to assign significance to their presence and patterning, making myths and drawing astrological shapes between the dots. Thinking that the light shining through the cracks in the crystal spheres will give our existence and mortality meaning. Believing that when we die the stars, or what is beyond them, will become our home. I once read that the iron that’s bound to every hemoglobin molecule in our bodies was once part of a star. That all elements that make us up, from the carbon to the oxygen to the trace elements of rare minerals, are all products of our starry universe. I imagine when our planet is obliterated by the eventual expansion of our sun, what makes up our bodies will return to the blackness, swallowed up and spat out to swirl and eddy in the cosmic streams like so much space dust. Like a return.

But I can’t see any stars in here. In fact, I can’t see that much. There’s the walls of my room. Painted a calming taupe. The machines I am plugged into, their blinking lights. A few photos in frames. Some flowers, wilted in a vase. There’s a window, high above my bed. It is light in the day and black at night. When the sky is cloudy the square I see is grey, and when it’s clear it’s blue. But at night, with the light pollution of the building, all I can see is a black square. No stars. On sunny days sometimes the nurses open the window. The pane leans backward from the top, pushed back against the bracket. If it’s still I can hear the waves in the distance. Even though I only saw the beach from the car the day I was admitted, I still remember what it looks like. A long thin strip of white leading to a rocky headland. A grassy foreshore with palm trees. When I hear the waves I imagine them crashing into the rough promontory of weathered stones, slowly wearing away the softer rock until all that is left is the cratered pools. I see water churning up the sand with every rolling heave, dark rips and sand banks and a murderous undertow.

I am going to die soon. I accept this as a reality rather than a concept. I think that I am the only one at peace with it. Every day I undergo a succession of treatments that are designed to prolong my life. I find it ridiculous as on a long enough timeline we all meet our end at some point. We are all returned to the earth or atmosphere, the particles and elements that make up our bodies breaking down to become something else. The only thing that will be missing, of course, is our consciousness. Our sense of who we are.

Whoever I am is not going to die in this room. I have quietly decided that this is the case, and before I am too weak to move I will leave this space. I will see the stars again. I will see the sea.

Before I was sick I would slip out of the house after my parents were asleep. Silently unlatching the front door, slipping my shoes on my feet, I would walk away from the house into the home paddock. In winter the dewy grass would wet my shoes, my toes quickly numb from the cold. In summer the dead grass would crunch under my soles. Our water tank was cut into the hillside below the house. In the darkness I would climb its concrete walls and then lie back, my legs dangling over the lip into the void. The milky-way would be spread out above me, its galaxial cloud a haze of light, the individual stars burning into the night sky. Staring up into the emptiness, the cold roughness of the concrete pressing into my skin and bones, I would imagine that there were other people looking at the stars as I was. Even if they were in a different place or in a different time zone, we were threaded together by the constellations above. Stargazers in the company of other stargazers.

I have planned my escape assiduously. Because I am legally under the guardianship of my parents I am unable to refuse treatment. I begged to be allowed to say no to the drugs that make me feel nauseous, woozy and tired. When I asked my mother if I could stop she rested her head on the bedcovers. Her body shook. My father left the room. I heard something bang outside in the corridor. I have not asked again. From what I have been told the only hope I have of surviving my illness is to go onto a clinical trial. It has not been tried before. I would be the crash test dummy, so to speak. I have no desire to have chemicals whiplash my blood stream, wrenching my cells and catapulting me through a burning shattered windscreen of pain. So I have decided to leave.

To begin there is the timing. I have studied the rotation of nurses and have decided that the best time to leave is just before the midnight rotation, when one team is packing to go home and the other is setting up their work. Then are the machines. They need to be turned off in a very specific order so as to cause the least disturbance, and even then there will only be so much time before someone is alerted and comes to check on me. Then there is the CVAD. The central venous access device. I won’t bore you with the details of my treatment, but given that it has been going for so long the tubes feel like they are part of me.  Sometimes I imagine the whole thing as an internal game of Pacman, the treatment running around madly trying to clean up all the dots, only to be swallowed up by something new that comes around the corner.

So I begin. First the nasal cannula. I sit up. Then I disconnect the IV line, leaving the picc still attached. I swing my legs over to the edge of the mattress. Then the machines. I have rehearsed this so many times in my mind it feels automatic. Three switches. Then the electrode patches. Free.

I look down between my legs. My feet hang bare over the blue grey floor, scored by scratches from heavy equipment. I shut my eyes and concentrate on my lungs and try to find the moment of silence between breathing in and breathing out. I open my eyes to the fluorescent light, and gently slide down off the edge of the bed. I know I probably have a minute before someone comes to see what it going on. My feet touch the surface. It is cool under my naked soles, and then I am walking. Looking at the floor in front of me. Through the door to the corridor. The glowing green exit sign in my vision. The diagram that signals a staircase. Hand and shoulder on the wall, lurching to the fire escape. Push down the bar and into a floodlit stairwell. And down the stairs. One at a time, holding the bannister. My field of vision focused and small. Stars dance on the periphery. The edges are hazy, but I descend. I know that by now they would be looking for me. The concrete floor feels like it is about to rush up and swallow me. I am on the ground. I vomit onto the stairs, take a moment and step over the mess. I feel better.

Time passes and I am at the end of the staircase. I push the exit door and it only partially opens. I lean my shoulder into it, and close my eyes. The black swims like plasma and it gives before me. A dark carpark underneath the building, mostly empty. I can see a street light, and head towards it. Even though it is dark it feels like a new day.

Out in the street the air feels warm on my skin. There is a wind blowing through the trees above. I look up at and see their palm shapes black against the darkness. The light given off by the hospital renders the sky an orange charcoal.   

The sound of the waves in the distance lead me to the beach. Every now and again the swell strikes with a deep thump, and as I get closer the sound of each set becomes more distinct and clear. I can hear the waves hiss onto the sand and there is wind in my ears. The whistling makes it sound as if I am under water. The concrete gives way to grass, which then becomes sand.  Up and down the beach it is completely black. I am alone. I don’t look to where I have left, and place one foot in front of another as I walk towards the headland, away from the light. The sand is coarse and hard and wet. There are crunches of shells under my feet, made soft by my time in the hospital. It hurts when I step on them and l like the pain.

I walk for what seems like a long time and then stop. The rocky shelf is a black shape just away in the distance. I take off my clothes and sit down, naked and exposed in the dark. I look to where I have been. The beach curves away. The hospital is just a distant haze behind the trees. There is a sheen of light on the sand, the sluicing, hissing water and scrabbling shells. My footprints have already become indistinct as the rising waves erase my passing. I close my eyes and lie back, lying my palms flat to the beach. Inside my eyelids it is utterly black. The wetness of the sand soaks into my skin. It is cold, but not unpleasant. The sound of the crashing swell and the fizzing surf fill my ears. I can feel the granules of beach sticking to the pads of my fingertips. So many larger things broken into smaller things. A strip of sand made up of trillions of grains, all unique, and all at the whim of the water and the currents.

I open my eyes. The stars, baby, the stars. Exactly where I thought they’d be and exactly where I left them. Spread out above me, the constellations and ungrouped pinpricks, all drawn across the sweep of the night sky. The crystal domes illuminated by the countless points of light, burning eons away, expanding and contracting, sending streams of space dust across the universe to land where it will. I could be anywhere underneath these stars, but I am here.

As the stars circle so the tide rises. The water reaches my feet, my hips, my shoulders, my head. I have never felt so fearless nor so calm. The water closes over and the stars disappear.

Star light, star bright, first star I see tonight, I wish I may I wish I might, have the wish I wish tonight.

—Martin Toman

contributors

Carl Boon is the author of the full-length collection Places & Names: Poems (The Nasiona Press, 2019). His writing has appeared in many journals and magazines, including Prairie Schooner, Posit, and The Maine Review. He received his Ph.D. in Twentieth-Century American Literature from Ohio University in 2007, and currently lives in Izmir, Turkey, where he teaches courses in American culture and literature at Dokuz Eylül University.

Melissa Feinman is a published writer, teen advocate, and mental health professional from New York City. She currently works as a teen programmer, bringing creative spaces and creative outlets to young people so that they can express themselves in safe and healing ways. She believes that telling stories that shed light on experiences around mental illness not only illuminates such experiences for readers, but also, helps writers feel in control of their own narratives.

Matt Gillick is from Northern Virginia. He received an MFA from Emerson College in 2021. most recent work found in The Manifest-Station, Land Luck Review, and New Square. He is the editor at-large of Cult, a new literary journal.

Emily Krauser is an MFA candidate at the University of North Carolina Wilmington and an entertainment and craft beer journalist. Her non-fiction pieces have appeared on ETonline, HuffPost, Bust, VinePair, and more. A Jersey girl through and through, she currently resides in Delaware.

Martin Toman is a writer of contemporary fiction who lives in Melbourne, Australia. He studied at the Australian National University before becoming a teacher of English Literature. Martin has been published online and in print, and recently in publications such as Big City Lit, Minute Magazine, Across the Margin, Anti-Heroin Chic, Fresh Ink, The Raven Review, Haunted Waters Press, Trouvaille Review, Abstract Elephant Literary Review and Literally Stories. He is currently writing his first novel. Martin can be found on Facebook at: MP Toman Author.