JK — ROB H. DAWSON

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Logan's mom smoked with all the car windows up. I had always thought you were supposed to roll a window down, if you smoked in a car, but when I asked, Mrs. Morales said that the noise from the highway was too loud. She kept the windows up and tapped her ashes into an empty McDonald's cup for the entire ride up to the Dells, singing along to every song that played on the country station.
             The smoke was inescapable, but Logan had gotten a headphone splitter for his fourteenth birthday along with an iPod. It sat in the middle seat, and we took turns picking songs, a long thin bridge of cord connecting us as we leaned on opposite windows, staring at cornfields and inexplicably still-extant porn stores.
             An hour and a half in, without warning, Mrs. Morales took a sharp right turn off an exit to get gas. My whole body jerked to the side, and Logan's head bumped hard against the glass. I thought, if there had been no splitter, then maybe, we would have had to sit right next to each other, to share one pair of headphones. And if we were to be sitting right next to each other when the car took a turn like this, I still would have been thrown by the force of it, but thrown, this time, potentially, into Logan, and the skin on our arms could possibly, just for a moment, make contact, maybe, and my leg would press into his leg, his bones and fat and muscle, tightly wound and mine at last. And there would be tension, just a little tension, and I would have to make a joke, to break it, and I would lean over and put my head onto his shoulder, only for a second, before pulling away and laughing it off.
             And maybe Logan would laugh, too. It could be our inside joke: "Mark Leans On Logan Like They Are In Love, Ha Ha Ha." I had been thinking about the jokes Logan told around his new friends, and there were, I decided, three categories: mean things about girls, quotes from movies or TV shows that I didn't like, and pretending to be gay.
             So this would be the third kind, then, for sure, if it could happen. Which it couldn't, because Logan had gotten the splitter and because I was sitting on the far side of the car, an empty seat preventing our thighs from touching for the entire ride, and probably the entire trip, and then also the rest of my life, actually, which was at that moment almost calming to imagine, a whole life without any jokes to make that I did not think were funny.
             I took a long, deep breath, letting Mrs. Morales's smoke inflate my lungs. At the gas station, I bought a bag of corn nuts, which I didn't even like, just to have something to do with my hands.

Rob H. Dawson lives and works and sings songs to his cat in New York. His work has appeared or is forthcoming in WhiskeyPaper and The Rumpus. You can find him at @robhdawson.

INTRODUCING CURTIS — RAVI MANGLA

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I’d like you to meet Curtis. He works with me in accounting.

~

Say hello to Curtis. He has a fantastic weather app on his phone. It’s accurate almost half the time.

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Have you met Curtis? His insoles are custom-molded to his feet.

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Please welcome Curtis. He collects foreign currency. Mostly Canadian.

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My friend, Curtis. His pants once tore performing the chicken dance at a wedding and he spent the rest of the night in his car.

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It’s my pleasure to introduce Curtis. He keeps a photograph of his ex-wife in his wallet.

~

Give a big warm greeting to Curtis. His mother accompanied him to junior prom and left with his guidance counselor.

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Meet my dear colleague, Curtis. Please don’t serve him any peppery foods, as they irritate his bowels.

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Do you know Curtis? Last week he invited his neighbor over to watch television, but she declined, indicating she had a set at home.

~

Curtis, everyone. Everyone, Curtis. His online backgammon exploits are legend.

~

May I present Curtis. Sometimes, when ordering takeout, he’ll use a name other than his own. It’s a lie he’s grown accustomed to telling.

~

Hi, this is Curtis. Can you believe he didn’t want to come here tonight?

Ravi Mangla is the author of the novel Understudies (Outpost19). His stories have appeared in Mid-American Review, The Collagist, American Short Fiction, Barrelhouse, and Corium Magazine. He lives in Rochester, New York.

CELEBRITY — BROOKS REXROAT

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She was brunette back then, doing the same thing I was: escaping family to walk down the beach. At some point we fell into step together and I did the sort of uncharacteristically adventurous thing 15-year olds do only on vacation: I spoke. Some dumb thing about the nice weather. She followed my dumb thing with an unexpected thing: she smiled. Every time I saw her smile after that, I judged it against that first one, that one which seemed so genuine. I never saw her smile like that again.
             “It’s always beautiful here,” she said. “Peaceful. We come every year.” She acted like she didn’t notice adult men snapping their necks for a double-take, or their wives glaring and elbowing. Even then, people couldn’t help but gawk at her. 
             There were lots of things I could’ve told her, but she seemed the sort who’d heard enough of football or honor rolls or youth groups, so I told her I played music. What I meant by this was that I owned a guitar and had a spiral-bound notebook full of melodramatic scribbles about heartbreak I thought I’d known.
             “Really?” she asked. “Me too. Who’s your agent?”
             I went red, told her I was still working on that.
            She turned at the pier, too. On the way back, we walked so close our shoulders touched once—a shock of soft warmth. She laughed a lot, though her laughter wasn’t predicated on anything being funny. It was more a vocal smile.
             “How long are you here?” she asked. “Tonight,” I told her, and she looked sad, didn’t say anything else.

•

“What are you doing?” Dad asked when I dutifully sat down between my folks.
             “I said I’d come back.”
           “But—” Dad was flushed and speechless. “You were walking with her and you stopped? Go!”
             But of course, she was gone, a trail of craned necks left in her wake.

*

MTV’s name was not yet a lie, so I was sofa-watching videos the next time I saw her. It was October, and I went pale as her face filled the screen. The camera zoomed out to her whole figure, to that pleated skirt, then she danced. I was excited—and then crushed because the song was terrible. I hated it, but couldn’t help wanting to see her again and again. The song went into overdrive rotation; I think my cat memorized the melody.
             At Sonic Boom, I ignored the clerk’s incredulous brow when I bought that CD. I flipped it over so the cover faced downward but the clerk pointedly flipped it before she scanned. “That’s 15.98.”
             Every time I went back into the shop, the same girl was at the checkout. She knew what I’d bought, and she deemed me unworthy to browse the row of bins labeled alternative. She crinkled her pierced nose and half-snorted every time I brought the Vaselines or Sonic Youth to the register, and I just smiled back, because what did she know, anyway? 

Brooks Rexroat lives and teaches in Huntington, West Virginia. He holds a Master of Fine Arts degree in creative writing-fiction from Southern Illinois University Carbondale, and his work has appeared in such publications as Day One, Weave Magazine, The Montreal Review, Matchbook Literary Magazine, and Midwestern Gothic. Visit him online at http://brooksrexroat.com.

2015 FLASH FICTION CONTEST...IS HERE!

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We're so excited! We're partnering with the excellent Great Lakes Commonwealth of Letters (GLCL), a literary nonprofit located in Grand Rapids, Michigan, to host our 2015 Flash Fiction Contest...and that contest is here!

—SUBMIT HERE—

Starting on August 1, 2015, submit your 500 word (or less) pieces to us, for a chance to win prize money and publication with CHEAP POP! Not to mention, all pieces will be read and judged by author Phillip Sterling.

Details:

Submission Period:  August 1 – September 30, 2015
Announcement of Winners:   Friday, October 30, 2015  
Prizes:  $500 for 1st place, $250 for 2nd place, and $100 for 3rd place. The three award winners, along with three honorable mention entries, will be published with CHEAP POP.

Read more about the contest here.

—SUBMIT HERE—

LA MESA, CALIFORNIA, 1953 — RON DAVID

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The San Diego suburbs expanded into East County where we raised chickens for eggs and meat, and taking avocados and persimmons from neighborhood yards was not called stealing. The post-war boom paved our gravel road. Driving with my father when I was six, I looked out the passenger window at the fresh asphalt and thought to myself that black is never really black unless it’s in a shadow. I peeked at my father’s dogged family-man face, at his tight lips and eyes that never shifted from the pavement to me, even in the absence of traffic.  I told him the priest said the most important thing to him was saving his own soul. My father had converted after seven children to please my Catholic mother. He said, “I’d say my family is the most important thing to me.” We drove on past fruit groves that would soon surrender to asphalt and concrete. I’d never be closer to him.

Ron David lives in Detroit. He is a UAW-Ford hourly retiree. He is a social justice and union activist who contributes to labornotes.org. He teaches EFL/ESL part time and helps raise a 13 year old daughter.

SAUDADE — ZAIN SAEED

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Every time I think of her now I think of the word “pungent”. It didn’t immediately come to me, the word. I spent ages looking for it in places in my mind I could get to only by climbing over things that weren’t pretty. I needed it, desperately. I needed it to describe the smell of her shawl because indescribable things were known to ruin lives and people. Her shawl was black. The first word I came up with for the smell was “sweet”. I came up with it as she sat by my side on a bench talking about clouds and how she woke up that day to the sound of a storm whooshing by her ears which she later found out had been the sound of the rumbling of her stomach made evil by a tired brain. That was the first day I’d seen her wear the shawl, the first day I smelled it as she threw it over herself and wafted towards me a smell that reminded me of a fruit I used to love when I was a child. I didn’t remember its name, but it was clear that I’d been thinking of her since a time when I wasn’t even old enough to think inconsequential things.  She sat there saying things like “violence is necessary” and “what do people who die for love think after they’re dead?” I sat there listening but really only trying to figure out what to call the smell of her shawl, and whether it smelled the same as the rest of her. The second time she threw it over herself was when she laughed out so loud that the ants toiling away in the grass at our feet stopped dead in their tracks and looked incredulously up at her. It was sharp, acidic, the smell and her voice. It made me want to run away but not just yet, or maybe to never run away. It made me want to ask her what she did in times of utter happiness, if she did anything at all, and whether she wore her shawl outside even in the rain. What seemed like years later we talked about things like books and music and other things that made us feel but somehow could not feel anything themselves, how selfish. The shawl had black lace on its edges, and it was blacker in sunlight than in the dark. It got cold and she asked if I wanted some of the shawl. I said yes. When it was covering both of us I smelled it, I smelled a word. For the rest of that night and the years that would follow till they stopped following and we went our separate ways, I kept on looking for that word. Years later, now that I've found it—“pungent”—it’s all I ever think of, all I ever smell. It’s not the best place to be, because now she’s nowhere to be found.

Zain is currently studying linguistics in Freiburg, Germany. He was born and raised in Pakistan. His work has appeared in The Freiburg Review, FLAPPERHOUSE, Bird's Thumb and Eunoia Review and is forthcoming in Third Point Press, Bahamut, Apocrypha and Abstractions, and others.  He is just getting used to tweeting at @linguistictrain.

PEANUT BUTTER AND BACON — KATIE CORTESE

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In Umbria, they have peanuts and butter, but never together. Instead: pork sliced, baked, fried, cured, and ground into fat salciccia; truffles in the spring; and boar in the fall, during hunting season. It is tough and gamey, though. Aria warns him not to expect too much.
          Last year, his parents visited them in Perugia where he is studying, huffing uphill with their big Midwestern smiles, windbreakers tied around waists. They’d eaten homemade tagliatelle con funghi, pizza with gorgonzola and noci, and risotto with pomodori and peperoni, laughing over the way “pepperoni” in America meant little round salami slices, but in Italy it’s bell peppers only. Something got lost in translation, his mother said at dinner, and though he knows Aria understood every English word he will pretend to translate so he can tell her in his getting-better Italian that this is brave for his parents, eating in an honest-to-God Italian restaurant with no pictures on the menu. Reciting her guidebook Italian, his mother had told the waiter, Prendo il pizza con quattro formaggio, per favore, then blushed when he’d asked in English what they wanted to drink.
         Aria said, during that dinner, in Italian, They are very sweet. She’d said, in Italian, I want to fuck you in the bathroom. Now, please and thanks. After she excused herself, he told his parents he’d be right back but had to make a call. The restaurant bathroom was unisex. The stall door went to the floor.
            This year, he flew with Aria to Detroit, then drove to his parents’ in Lansing. He showed her his childhood bedroom, left her poring over high school yearbooks, saying, When I come back, you are in for a treat. He was thirty minutes in the kitchen, and when he returned with a plate of finger sandwiches, she was doubled over laughing with his freshman photo trapped under her thumb. That’s before my braces, he said, but that bowl cut? There’s no excuse for that. She kissed the picture; kissed his knee; reached for the plate in his hand.
         Not so fast, he said, setting it between them on the sea-green deep-pile rug. First, a classic. Peanut butter and strawberry jelly, he said, pointing to one crustless triangle. Then, in a circle: Peanut butter and banana. Peanut butter and honey. Peanut butter and bacon.
          Pancetta e peanuts? she asked, wrinkling her perfect nose.
            Just trust me, he said, lifting it to her mouth. She let it sit on her tongue before chewing. Salty, she said, in English. Sticky. Savory. Sweet. He said, I want to fuck you on my childhood bed. Now, please and thanks. It still had a baseball comforter. They had the taste of salt and sugar in their mouths. After, she said she liked it. Peanut butter. It was like a Norwegian cheese she’d had once. Brown and sweet and grainy. She polished off the crumbs and licked her fingers, growing used to the taste.

Katie Cortese is the author of Girl Power and Other Short-Short Stories (ELJ Publications, forthcoming 2015), and her work has appeared or is forthcoming in Gulf Coast, Blackbird, Day One, and elsewhere. She teaches creative writing at Texas Tech University in Lubbock where she serves as the Fiction Editor for Iron Horse Literary Review.

 

THREE MILKS — DAVE PETRAGLIA

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The fat European was cheating. He kept his Mojito on a stack of Euros, the glass sweating the bills in the Cancun sun. 
             This was his third day there. He sat facing Palencia, the main building Sun Temple. His opponent always faced the ocean. The cards lasted for hours. 
             ‘It’s Goldfinger!’ Juan Cruz thought. 
             Juan looked up. On an upper terrace, off-limits to guests, he thought he saw something. 
             The towels high on Juan’s shoulder earned him the honor ‘Tres Leches’, a wildly popular dessert from the kitchens of Sun Temple, though a‘Three Milks’ was the lowest honor at the three-acre Big Lagoon. 
             His load, damp with pool water, spilled juices and liquor and beer, topped sixty pounds. The towels were the feathers of the headdress of a Mayan warrior. As each was added, his strengths grew. 
             After his shift, Juan rode his bicycle well beyond the world of the paying guests to the employee dorms. His roommate was away. After a cold shower and a meal of rice and beans, Juan called his mother, then watched American cartoons. 
             Later he dressed in dark slacks and shirt and headed back to the Resort. Juan sucked a flake of pepper through his teeth: the night would be good. He would be welcome at Palencia, but his movements would be confined to the lobby. Juan used his employee badge to access a short hallway with restrooms used only by employees. A door lock at the end of the hallway yielded easily, and he turned onto a stairway that led to the roof. 
             Juan disabled the light alongside an upper terrace door, and slipped into the night air. 
             He checked the time. The face of his thin, fine gold watch, a gift from the Saudi Minister of Export, glowed warmly in the moonlight. 
             He bent down at the spot where he’d seen something earlier. The finish of the railing was freshly scratched. 
             Something slapped over his head. By the nap of the terry, a towel from resort’s Vivir Grande. As he stood, a massive weight clamped his shoulders. 
             Juan’s arms were held across his biceps. He spun, and a sharp point pricked his neck. The heavy embroidery of the ‘VG’ logo had deflected the weapon. Juan Cruz lunged and pitched his foe over the railing. 
             Juan was impressed that not a sound was uttered during the descent. Still, he couldn’t help himself: 
             ‘Rookie move, amigo’. 
             The shadowy shape below rustled among the Oleander and Gardenia and finally stood, unsteadily. 
             A few feet left or right, and stands of Agave would have been his attacker’s resting place. 
             “Rookie move, Juan.” 
             Juan’s wound was covered by his shirt buttoned tightly as he made his way through Palencia’s lobby. He studied the faces of all he saw all the way to his bike in the employee lot.
             Was this a conclusion Interpol could have anticipated? 
             It would be important for Juan to appear normal now. He would have no problem with that.

A Best Small Fictions 2015 Winner, Dave Petraglia's work has appeared in Agave, Apeiron Review, Arcadia Magazine, Cactus Heart, Chicago Literati, Crack the Spine, Dark Matter, eFiction India, Far Enough East, Foliate Oak, Gambling the Aisle, Gravel, Jersey Devil Press, Loco, Marathon Literary Review, Mud Season Review, Necessary Fiction, NewPopLit, Olivetree Review, Petrichor Review, Prick of the Spindle, Stoneboat, Storyacious, Thought Catalog, theNewerYork, Utter Magazine, Up the Staircase and Vine Leaves. His blog is at www.davepetraglia.com