FINGER SPELL — CHASE BURKE

I went out for a run in the late night, after midnight, maybe after two a.m., when my neighborhood was darkest, the streetlights brightest. This is what I did sometimes.
            At work, hours earlier, I saw a friend shred her fingers in the swiftly spinning blades of a garbage disposal. Her hand went in the disposal and an oblivious coworker turned the machine on. She yanked bleeding slivers from the drain.
            My neighborhood was in a good part of the city but I still wondered whether it was safe to go for runs at night. Then I would wonder if my assumptions about the safe-or-not qualities of my neighborhood were sound, or based on some misunderstood aspect of demographics. I might have had all of the angles wrong.
            My friend, when she pulled her fingers from the garbage disposal in the large sink in the kitchen of the restaurant where we worked, she was screaming, and every thought I had then while holding an order of chicken-fried ribs related to horror films, to the implied, and maybe you thought of that too. Instead of retching in the nearest trashcan I walked out of the kitchen and served table 6, and even there in the restaurant I could hear my friend’s voice. She was a tough kid. We shared a cigarette later that night, after she taped up her fingers, after the bleeding stopped and you could see that the cuts were minor, were only small slices.
            I don’t know what this has to do with my running in the middle of the night, but sometimes I can’t keep still, and sometimes I can’t settle down, and sometimes I think about where I might be—as a person, I mean, as an event participant—if my hand were in the proverbial garbage disposal. Nothing’s wrong with me. I like the feeling of lukewarm semi-humid night air on my skin.
            Outside by the dumpster while stubbing out her cigarette, my friend, always the trooper, said that the next time this, the disposal, were to happen, after I had moved on with my life to the real world of dreams realized, she would send me a postcard and sign it with stub blood, because you can only escape the implied once. After the first time you’re fair game.
            I went running with my eyes closed.

---

Chase Burke has lived in Florida for most of his life. He is a graduate of the University of Florida and has taught English abroad. His short fiction has appeared in Gigantic Sequins, SmokeLong Quarterly, The Literateur, East Jasmine Review, Tupelo Quarterly, and others.

DRESS UP — MATT BELL

Because of the father's overwhelming love for his younger daughter, he carried her away from her mother and her older sibling, and in a distant land he held her in a series of towers and caves, castles and keeps. As the younger's childhood waned he began to suspect that her most beautiful day was soon to arrive, and by his unlimited resources he commissioned great dresses, one for each day, but without the fashionable girdles that might confuse her shape or give it to him falsely—he wanted, he said, only to see her exactly as she was. In each consecutive dress she was more lovely than in the dress before, a terror he soon could not stand, because while each day's showing had brought him more joy, he knew there would come a day when the next would bring him less. And because he could not live with this knowledge he sent her away from him, or else not away but up, but down, into taller towers and deeper keeps, where the showings would continue without him, held before flawless mirrors bought at the younger's demand, for she too had come to love the lace and the stockings, the heels and the necklaces, was almost stupid with vanity, her father thought—but where he also thought he would not have to watch her as she learned, one day, to lessen.

---

Matt Bell is the author of In the House upon the Dirt between the Lake and the Woods.

THE WOOD AND THE BLADE — ANNA PRUSHINSKAYA

He said that the wood came from a cuckoo clock. She nodded. What she knew about cuckoos: her elementary teacher had explained that the birds counted life with their calls. She sat at recess instead of playing games. The playground was next to a forest. The bird was arboreal, her teacher had said. They rarely occurred in pairs. They laid eggs in other nests. She asked the bird to predict her age at her death. She went back to the bird plenty because she wanted to live longer. The clocks made sense with the birds. They counted lives in living rooms, hour to hour, day to day. She thought the bird was propelled by springs, but he said weights. Oh, she said. They all come from one place. The weights? The clocks. In Germany. He wrapped the knife in an old t-shirt. She asked, and what about the blade?

---

Anna Prushinskaya's writing has appeared in Redivider and Sonora Review, and on Two Serious Ladies and The Millions, among other places. She lives in Ann Arbor, Michigan, and she is also the Midwest editor of Joyland Magazine. Find out even more about her here: http://annavpru.tumblr.com/.

PROJECTION — LISA MECHAM

Tonight, driving away with our girls, leaving you at the restaurant curb after a stilted dinner (our broken family at the table like compass points), I remembered another time. Driving to you with a bag of crossword puzzle books, The New York Times, sundry items allowed on the hospital floor (nothing to cut, puncture or maim, please). The girls were little and I had no one to watch them (alone as we were in that dreadful, Connecticut town) so they came too. I parked near the entrance, said stay here, and went inside (through two locked doors) to give you the bag. You'd been there (involuntarily) for two weeks. Facing each other in the common room of tattered couches and tables (no edges, all round) I leaned in to kiss you but you turned away. It wasn't me you wanted (you hadn't wanted me in a long time) so I said do you want to see them? Your eyes pooled, you whispered hoarsely please, and pointed to a window at the end of a yolk yellow corridor of shut doors, trees outside flapping green (with their smug sense of serenity). So I drove around to that side of the hospital. Late afternoon, the downing sun cast its pallor over the glass but you were there. Palms pressed against it. Unshaven jaw, eyes hollowed, scrubs low on your hips (no strings, no ties). I stopped the car to point. Girls. There. There he is. Do you see him? I know they did, because one gasped and the other wept. 

---

Lisa Mecham's work has been appeared in Juked, Carve and Barrelhouse Online, among other publications. Her non-fiction work has been nominated for The Pushcart Prize and she's a regular contributor to The Rumpus. A midwesterner at heart, Lisa currently lives in Los Angeles. More at lisamecham.com. 

TEMPT YOUR RETRIBUTION TONIGHT — JUSTIN LAWRENCE DAUGHERTY

Jeremiah been struck three times and wasn't asking for no more. He stood at the doorway, all whiskey-drenched and stumbling, watching his girl just go. The thunder and lightning just tearing up that sky. There she go, I say. You best go on and chase after her, you want her to stay. Emma Mae knew the lightning was just the time to leave, but Jeremiah putting his lips to another woman's was the thing that made her stuff a suitcase full to brimming in the middle of that party and walk on out. 
            He asked where she'd go after she rabbit-punched him, made Jeremiah curl up. Maybe on past the county line and maybe on past that, Emma Mae said. 
            We all stood there behind him at the door, hootin' and hollerin' about this or that, egging the boy on, and he just stand there, stuck in his fearful way. That sky lit up again and again. And, Jeremiah, he says, dear God if I ain't trying to tempt your retribution tonight. 
            First time Jeremiah was struck by the lightning was the first time he met Emma Mae. She was the paramedic that picked him up. He always said he hadn't believed in angels until that moment, and that's a thing heartsick men say, but there it was. 
            Second time, he was working on the roof of the house and the lightning hit and he flew off and landed on the hood of his 1990 Geo Prizm. Emma Mae, who was living there at the time, came running out, crying and asking if Jeremiah's okay, and he just holds her face, looks at her sweetly, says, honey, you look haunted. Come close, closer, never let go.
Third time, Jeremiah's drunk and hitting golf balls in the rain, the deluge flooding the valley, and I'm out there, too, and I tell my brother we shouldn't be out there, but this was the first time Emma Mae'd left him and he'd lost about all he could lose, so a man like that ain't afraid of what's coming. 
            And, so, Jeremiah standing there like a forlorn hound, and he's just calling into the night, and all these partygoers telling him to go. And, I feel him. I see him heart-hurt and fearful. I want for him to find his way. I place my hand on his shoulder. I says, brother, what's good ain't going to last forever unless you willing to sacrifice yourself for it. And, he looks at the sky and all that flash and we hear that earth-shaking din. We all start calling to the night like wretched ghouls and stomping our feet and Jeremiah looks back, shakes his head. He looks out and takes a step. And, there he goes, tempting the fire and brimstone. Out he goes, lightning flashing, and we all hollerin' after him. He goes and goes. Emma Mae got that head start. He'd keep going 'til the lightning ran out.  

---

Justin Lawrence Daugherty misses lightning in Atlanta. He wrote a little chapbook called Whatever Don't Drown Will Always Rise, from Passenger Side Books. He runs Sundog Lit. 

HEAT WAVE — AKI SCHILZ

When he turned up, I thought it was a joke. He tapped me on the shoulder and I turned to see a row of crooked teeth smiling at me from a wide face rough with dirt and stubble, and before I could say, Excuse me, sir, but aren't you a bit close for comfort? he said, 'Marley?' and held out a bunch of daisies with the dirt still on them. This was summer. My dress was stuck to my legs and he sidled onto the bench next to me before I'd said a word and dropped the flowers right onto my lap, then peeled my summer dress from my knees, raised his eyebrows, winked at me with blue-sparkle eyes, and lit up a cigarette. Just like that. 'You Earl?' I scowled in the way that guys usually find sexy but he didn't bat an eyelid, just looked at me coolly and blew out a line of smoke, real slow. Then he nodded. Already I was thinking, who the hell meets a girl for a blind date at a gas station with a bunch of ripped-up daisies anyway? He wasn't tall and handsome like Jen said he would be, but medium height and kinda funny-looking, like the world had squashed him on one side. He didn't go to college to major in Philosophy (Jen told you that? Well she's a liar then, a damn pretty one but a liar all the same.) but he did like Catcher in the Rye which was kinda like philosophy really, he reasoned as he rolled his second cigarette. Which is when I accepted one and puffed away on it furiously. The daisy dirt had stained my dress and I was piping mad at Jen. He bought me a beer, even though I asked for a lemonade, if you please. He mocked me, If you please, he said, and snarled in a way that made me think of a wolf, slick and dangerous and curled tight as a spring. That's when he kissed me. Maybe that's when I should have stopped him except by then we'd been sitting on that goddamn bench with tension crackling like smoke-fire between us, and maybe it was the beer or the heat, I don't know, but I kissed him back something fierce, fiercer than I've ever kissed a boy, and he tasted sweet and he said my name again, but softer, like a question, and I leaned in like I was falling into him and then I did. And we both fell then, tumbled and tumbled through the hottest summer and we kissed and drank beer and jumped into the river with all our clothes on and lay panting on the banks and peeled them off each other with our teeth. And for a moment I thought I might have loved him. Jen and I didn't talk for the whole summer. Which is a long time. Summer lasts longer than daisies. But not as long as all that. Not really. 

---

Aki Schilz is a writer and performance poet based in London, England. Her fiction has been shortlisted for the HG Wells Prize, longlisted for the Fish Prize, and has appeared in various online publications. She is the winner of the inaugural Visual Verse Prize, supported by Andrew Motion, and is currently working on her first poetry pamphlet, and her second novel. She is also Editorial Services Manager at The Literary Consultancy, an editorial assessment service working with writers internationally. Aki tweets micropoetry here: @AkiSchilz.

OH MY DARLING — MATT SAILOR

It had been winter for so long, it seemed like, and I was ready for the clementines. In Georgia that year there had been no autumn. It was 89 degrees one day, 40 the next, and snowing inside of a week. Since the beginning of November it had been scarf and hat weather, soup and space heater weather, whiskey in the coffee weather. 
            "Let's get some now before they are gone," I said to him, and he smiled at me and said, "There's no rush," and I said, "Yes, there is," because he didn't understand. Soon the season would be over, and there had been early icing in Spain that year, so they'd already had to destroy half of the crop.
            So we went to the store, even though he reminded me how packed it would be two days before Christmas. We went to the Whole Foods around the corner. I'd read on a blog they'd be getting a shipment of organic clementines from Valencia. The Spanish are the only real clementines, as anyone who knows will tell you. I imagine they must have fallen in love, the conquistadors, on their first journey to the Americas. 
            "Just imagine, pushing your way through the equatorial heat. Splitting mangrove saplings with your machete, pulling palm fronds apart with your hands, swatting at the mosquitoes, and coming upon this perfect orange globe, glowing there in the sun."
            He was adjusting the baby bjorn, trying to tighten it around his waist while holding Parker's head gingerly in his hand. 
            "Are you listening?"
            He looked up, frowning so tightly that you couldn't make out his mouth beneath his beard. "Hmmm?"
            "Do you ever listen?"
            "I was," he said. "But you know, citrus originated in Asia."
            "What?"
            "Yeah. You know, Persian limes? Mandarin oranges? They were cultivated in China thousands of years ago. The Spanish would have already known about them...and I don't even think they grew wild in Florida. Most likely they were brought over and cultivated later." He hitched the baby up on his chest and made for the cart rack. For some reason, it was a crushing blow.
            We ate the clementines that night, an old Christmas special on the TV that I'd seen a million times, with commercials I'd seen a million more. My hands were sticky, but I didn't want to get up to wash them. They were hard to peel. One of them, unaccountably, was full of seeds.

---

Matt Sailor is a writer living in Portland, Oregon. He holds an MFA from Georgia State University, and is a 2014 National Endowment for the Arts Creative Writing fellow. He works as an associate editor of NANO Fiction. His writing has appeared or is forthcoming in AGNI, Five Chapters, and Hobart, among others. He is currently at work on his first novel, 1985.

CERULEAN — KENNETH NICHOLS

The bartender fell in love with the blonde in the black cocktail dress because of her cerulean eyes, the blue the ocean takes after a hard winter snow, the hue that takes its name from the Latin word for Heaven.  She gulped one Hemingway daiquiri and softly asked for another, explaining that she was nervous to meet her fiance's parents for the first time.  He comped the second drink, luxuriating in her gratitude.
            The bartender's heart broke when his better arrived in a thousand-dollar suit, parents in tow, braying, "She's smart and loving, but wait'll you see those green eyes..."

---

Kenneth Nichols received his MFA in Creative Writing from Ohio State.  He teaches writing at two colleges in Central New York and maintains the writing craft web site Great Writers Steal, accessible at www.greatwriterssteal.com.  His work has appeared in a wide range of publications, including Main Street Rag, Skeptical Inquirer and Lunch Ticket.