SUPERHERO — GARY BERG

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The waterway narrowed and they passed a dock with agricultural warehouses on the left side.  At the end, the river opened wide.  The father pulled the houseboat over to a dock on one of the islands, and tied it up.  The island stood out on the horizon because it was one of the few places with tall trees.  The two filled a backpack with sardines, crackers, apples, and two bottles of water.  The boy followed his father as he took a familiar route up a slight hill to the grove of pine trees.  At the base of one tree they ascended.  The father pushed the boy up first with one hand.  “That’s far enough,” the father said as the boy reached a clearing in the branches.  They put their backs against the trunk and stretched out with a view of the mouth of Delta in front of them, and their houseboat docked off to the side. 
            “I don’t understand why you can’t just stay together?” the boy said.
             “You are too young to understand.”  The father looked at the boy, and continued:  “It’s not about you.”
            “But I’m the one who has to live in two different houses.”
            They silently ate the sardines in thick olive oil dripping off the crackers, and then finished with tart green apples. 
            Back on the houseboat they set out further across the Delta with the sun going down.  The father released the anchor off of Tinsley Island, and then set up the boat for the night.  He rolled up his sleeves and started dinner while the boy positioned himself on a bunk bed and played with a Wolverine action figure.  “His bones are metal.”
            “Must be nice,” the father said flatly with his eyes fixed on the grill of the stove. 
            “He’s my favorite.”

Gary A. Berg has an MFA in Screenwriting from UCLA, and is the author/editor of eight non-fiction books.

PAINT JOB — TATIANA RYCKMAN

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I saw an old Doritos truck pulling out of the Farmer’s Market parking lot last weekend. By old I mean re-purposed, I mean no longer traveling for the marketing and distribution of salty snacks. The yellow triangles that once floated down the side of the truck as if to say, “Snacks are casual and fun!” were painted over with white. The paint wasn’t opaque enough, though, and didn’t match the white of the truck. Even more conspicuous were the wide, straight strokes someone had used to paint over them. Tapering rows of stripes that made me think of whiteout that comes on a little roller were piled in the shape of chips across the side of the vehicle, and I had to wonder how many people it would have taken to hold such a large whiteout roller. And where did one purchase such a thing? There was an Office Max just a few blocks away, but I’d never seen a whiteout dispenser that big at one of those stores. Maybe they are kept in the back? Maybe you just have to know? 
            Maybe someone really just paints that way? Maybe they were sick of conforming, so instead of tracing the chips with their brush and filling them in the way patient third grade girls color, they went with stripes, like pyramids of brush strokes. Maybe they had limited shoulder mobility and could only move their arm in a straight line across the front of their body? Why didn’t they ask for help? Why didn’t they hire someone? Or was this person hired? Was someone hired to paint in this specific and obvious and not at all subtle way? Maybe it’s exactly what they wanted? Maybe the goal wasn’t to hide the fact that this truck once carried suspiciously colored snacks to pimpled teenagers all over the country, maybe it was a commentary, a riddle, a statement about the evolution of our culture and our values and our needs and the way some needs never leave us, no matter how we cover them up. How even if we stop watching Wayne’s World (both I and II) every few months, we can’t escape the fact that it shaped us. Shaped us into the equilateral triangles of something mass-produced but iconic, a tiny piece of our cultural geometry. 
            I went back to the vegetable stand where I work. I thought: forget about it. But there it is, white-washed across my memory. Maybe forever.

Tatiana Ryckman was born in Cleveland, Ohio. She is the author of the chapbook story collection, Twenty-Something, and assistant editor at sunnyoutside press. Tatiana leads Creative Writing workshops through The University of Texas at Austin and her local library.

WE HAPPY FEW — TIMSTON JOHNSTON

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Tucker. Rusty. Calvin, Connor, Cooper. We have names that once belonged to Golden Retrievers. 

Everything about us comes together like chalk and weeds and clay. We’re separated only by fence posts. We share our mother’s crushed geraniums, their yellow garden trowels in half-dug holes, red checker-print tablecloths, flies and oniony potato salad, hammers and drills on pegboards, the smell of paint and grass clippings and stilled hose water dripping without sieves, birthing the puddles that draw millipedes and catch cottonwood seed.

We bored. We Cat’s Cradle gazes. We silent five. We breathless nothing. We pebble-kicking misfits of our own alley.

Ants rain from the oak that hangs over home plate. They crawl behind ears, underneath collars, line the brims of our hats. They bite, but we do not take our eye off the ball’s stitching. We swing. We miss. We curse and search the weeds behind us. We’re at fault. We’re our own catchers. We hate the curve, the knuckle. We love the slider but always call for heat.

We joke that Calvin jerks it to Rusty’s sister. He pictures her Keds—virginal white soles, pink laces, red tongue. We say we don’t masturbate at all. Until one of us admits it. Then we all admit it. It’s every day. It’s our morning coffee. Our afternoon tea. Our bitter nightcap.

Connor’s heart palpitations eat him, gnaw his ribs. He says it feels like the frog’s croak, the slide into second base, the catch, grip, and grind on gravel. He beats his sternum, the one-and-two-and-one-and-two, reminding the heart of its rhythm. We stomp our feet with him, accent the two, grunt the and. We remove our gloves and slap mosquitoes to our chests. The one. The one. The one. We taste dust. We count red dots and mashed wings.

We chase strays as they bark and nip, run in circles, round bases from third to first to right field to left. We never conceived the rules. We never established a way to win. We are speed and torque and centroids. We are nature, unleashed. We wield the club, our ancestral tool, and we strip ourselves of civilization. We territorial. We one. We aim. We swing. We maim. We kill. We pant. We breathe. We won. We scatter. We howl.

Timston Johnston received his MFA from Northern Michigan University and is the fiction editor of Passages North. His work appears in Midwestern Gothic, Ghost Town, and Cartagena. He likes Reese's Pieces. 

THE SHREW — JANE LIDDLE

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The shrew told her husband for the millionth time to shut off the light in the bathroom. The shrew had been telling her husband to shut off lights for forty-eight years. She had also been telling him to close drawers all the way, and to quit doing that thing with his mouth. But for the past few months the husband’s forgetfulness and self-control had gotten worse. The husband was sick. He experienced a great deal of pain every second of the day. The shrew would feel bad about nagging him but couldn’t help it. Even if the husband had all the sudden started to shut off the lights, close the drawers all the way, and stop doing that thing with his mouth, the shrew would still probably yell at him about these things. One day the husband asked the shrew to help him kill himself. The shrew dismissed this idea and even admonished the husband for thinking such a thing. The husband requested her help in dying with the same persistence the shrew had asked the husband to shut off the lights and close the drawers all the way and to stop doing that thing with his mouth. The shrew went for a very long time ignoring the husband’s requests until one day she stood outside the kitchen and watched him struggle to open a can of soda until he broke down and cried. When he was done crying he put the can of soda back in the fridge. The shrew set to work to procure the proper drugs. She did this through her sons, who normally avoided interactions with the shrew, but complied because they were delighted to fulfill such a strange request from their strict, tight-laced mom. Maybe the shrew was finally lightening up. The shrew did not tell them the real reason. The shrew waited for the husband to bring up helping him die again and she didn’t have to wait long. When he did she said that all was settled and that he could die anytime he wanted. He wanted to die that very day. The shrew set up the bedroom to be lovely with flowers and candles. It looked romantic. The husband took the pills at sunset. The shrew and the husband waited for the effects to take hold. The shrew watched with irritation as the husband did that thing with his mouth, but she didn’t say anything.

Jane Liddle grew up in Newburgh, New York, and now lives in Brooklyn. She has recently completed a short story collection and a flash series about murder. Other murder stories have appeared in NANO Fiction, Vol. 1 Brooklyn, and Everyday Genius. You can find her on Twitter @janeriddle or at liddlejane.tumblr.com.

NOMINATIONS — BEST OF THE NET 2014

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We are pleased to announce our nominations for Best of the Net 2014:

"Two Thousand Miles Running" by Anthony Martin
"Jellyfish" by Zara Lisbon

We owe everything to all of our wonderful contributors, and it was a challenge to select just two, but we felt these pieces really highlighted our focus and drive here at CHEAP POP.

We wish Anthony and Zara good luck, and if you haven't already, now's a great time to read these stories. 

YOU'VE GOT YOUR RESOLUTIONS, WE JUST GOT RESERVATIONS — JUSTIN BROUCKAERT

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In better days, we used to lie in bed together and quiz each other about the world. Sveden, you’d say. Svitzerland. Just to hear the sounds. You’d grab my tongue with your fingers and make me say it wrong. Because I don’t know shit about geography, I asked who you would fuck if you could fuck someone famous. No one, you said. You shook your head. You smiled your smile. It made you so happy and it made me so mad. I couldn’t take you seriously when you played the game all wrong.
 
Now you say it goes back to alignment, but I disagree. And really, shouldn’t I know? I’ve climbed every step in the ladder of your spine. I played you song after song on my sternum and you kept rhythm with your finger between my ribs. You shed that skin already. I see it now in a glass case on a shelf next to a card from your mother. Remember that? I ask. The card? you ask.

I’m on your couch eating pancakes when you tell me you’re sorry, but you’d probably take a crack at him if you had the chance. You point to the TV, some smooth-faced German kid who can sing. You’ve got your other hand on my knee and it dawns on me that you’ve been waiting for a punch line. I try to whistle instead and the sound makes your small white dog scream out the window. Sorry, I say. I guess you never taught me. You smile, and it means something. Taught you what?

Justin Brouckaert's prose and poetry has appeared or is forthcoming in The Rumpus, Passages North and Hobart, among other publications. He is a James Dickey Fellow at the University of South Carolina, where he serves as fiction editor of Yemassee. 

SHELTER IN PLACE — BRENT RYDIN

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Wolf Blitzer was on the muted TV, a block away from our building again. The news-ticker ran across the bottom of the screen, “…shelter-in-place. City of Boston has issued a shelter-in-…”
            “You don’t have work,” my husband said, smoking a cigarette at the window. I’d noticed him getting out of bed in the night, but hadn’t noticed him not coming back, and I woke up to dusty spring light whispering later morning than it should have. I  panicked at my lateness and nausea snagged my stomach as I tripped, tangled, from the bed. “Christ,” he said. “There’s a tank parking at our corner.”
            “What?” I said, not even sure what I was responding to.
            “Or, I don’t know. A hummer with a bunch of guns and shit.”

I remember being a kid and sitting on the carpet, feet from the screen, watching bombs fall in Kosovo in the night-vision TV light. I asked if we’d need to buy gas masks, and my father laughed, and my mother scowled at him. “Just imagine,” he said, like I wasn’t there, as she hugged her knees and bit her fingernails, “our little girl riding her bike through the neighborhood in a gas mask.” He crouched down to me. “No sweetie,” he said. “We’re safe here.”

Daniel got up and held his arms out wide and wrapped them around me. Anytime I smelled cigarettes since we’d quit, it was like burning tinfoil, but the tobacco mixed with his deodorant and coffee and it had this feel of home, more home than we already were.
            “I missed your hair like this,” he said, and kissed my forehead. I’d dyed it last week, the night before we went to City Hall and cried in the clerk’s office and stuck a mini bride-and-groom into a cupcake. “I’m going to shower,” he said.

I watched the bombs on the TV, in backpacks down the street and hurled from cars across the river. I imagined a glittering yellow bicycle, a rainbow of beads spinning in the spokes, a little girl giggling in a gas mask. I hugged my knees and bit my nails, and my stomach cramped and churned, deep down, like a sheath of paper clumsily balling up. I failed to choke down sobs at the picture of that little boy on the TV again, with his crayon sign. No more hurting people, it said. He had this beautiful, goofy little half-smile. Peace.

They released the lockdown for a while that night. The only store open was this gourmet place down the street, and he came home with champagne and brie and crackers and pepperoni. “Fancy night,” he said. “There was no real food left. No bread, no milk, no chicken. People smarter than us, I guess.”
            “Or something.” I turned back to the window and put out my cigarette. He put the groceries on the table and wrapped his arms around my neck. I leaned into him. “Are we safe here?”
            "I love you," he said.

Brent Rydin lives and works in Boston. He is the founding editor of Wyvern Lit, and has work published or forthcoming in Pithead Chapel, The Island Review, Cartridge Lit, and WhiskeyPaper. He has a website at brntrydn.com and tweets at @brntrydn.

URBAN EQUINES — E.B. BARTELS

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In the red of night, I float between places. The neon sign across the street fills my dark room with a sharp scarlet light. I live in a neighborhood called Hell’s Kitchen. There’s a bar up the street named Perdition, and a demonic mural on the corner, but it’s only in the middle of a restless night, in the bloodshot glow, that this place feels an inferno, and in those moments, when I can’t sleep, I count the bright stripes on my blinds and listen for horses.
            I once lived in St. Petersburg, on that hook of Russia reaching out towards Finland. Time was hard to track so far north. In June, the nights were white. At two in the morning there would be a dim dip – dusk and dawn together – but besides that almost a full day of sunlight. But in winter, the darkness was perpetual. Even the daylight hours between ten and two were gray and thick with snow. I took vitamin D pills and looked for other markers of time.
            I rented an apartment on Karavannaya Ulitsa. The street runs along the Fontanka Canal and perpendicular to the busy avenue Nevsky Prospekt. Karavannaya spills into the Bolshoi Saint-Petersburg State Circus—full of bicycle-riding bears and trained cats and horses. Late each night, almost morning, at three or four, a trainer walked the horses down from the circus and along Karavannaya, so the equines could stretch their muscles, and when I was up late reading or writing or in a drunken fight with my boyfriend or rolling with insomnia, I heard their hooves on the pavement. I would notice the rhythmic sound. I would hear the beating of minutes like clock hands. I would breath in pace to their steps. I would count each clip and clop. I would realize the time, that I was up too late, and I would think that maybe it was time to sleep, and the horses, four-legged sandmen, would lull me into a dream.
            There are horses in New York. They pull carriages up 10th Avenue by my apartment toward Central Park, and many live in the stables two blocks over on 48th Street. I hear them in the mornings, and the afternoons, though then their sounds are less sharp – buried in sirens and horns and groaning buses. They clomp by, lethargic, in the evenings, tired from pulling tourists. And sometimes, I hear them late at night, just like I heard the horses in St. Petersburg, at two in the morning, as I lie in the red glow.
            Soon, though, the horses might be gone. I agree with the mayor. Horses don’t belong in a crowded city. Pavement is hard. Space is cramped. Tourists are heavy. But I, selfish, want the horses to stay: my fellow out-of-place creatures, a comfort to an American in Russia, a New England girl in New York.
            I lie in the red dark and hope to hear them.

E.B. Bartels is from Massachusetts and writes nonfiction. Her work has appeared in The Rumpus, Ploughshares, Fiction Advocate, Agave Magazine, Vitamin W, The Wellesley Review, Wellesley Underground, and the anthology The Places We've Been: Field Reports from Travelers Under 35. She is finishing up her MFA in Creative Nonfiction from Columbia University’s School of the Arts, and she was the 2013-2014 Online Content Editor and a Co-Founder of Columbia: A Journal of Literature and Art’s literary blog, Catch & Release. You can visit her website at www.ebbartels.com, tweets at @eb_bartels, and read her haikus about strangers’ dogs at ebbartels.wordpress.com.