HOW TO MAKE A GOOD CONFESSION — KRISTEN ROUISSE

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1.     After dinner, your parents drop you off in front of trailer C. It loops off the side of the church alongside A and B like some kind of tail. Find Ronnie crouched on the stairs. He’ll probably be clawing at an engorged mosquito bite on his calf.

2.     Don’t look startled as the trailer door swings open. It’s just Mike, your teacher, followed by the rest of your Confraternity of Christian Doctrine class. Note Mike’s stained polo, his junky car parked sideways in the grass. He’ll comment on your lateness. Ronnie will ask, What are you gonna do about it, send us to Sister? Mike will reply, Don’t be such a smart-ass.

3.     Follow Mike into the main building with the others. Clomp down the hallway edged with with framed pictures of the Virgin Mary and line up for confession in the belly of the church. Press your back flat against the manila-colored wall that slides open on Sunday to make room for everyone.

4.     Take inventory of your surroundings and your place in them: The other girls wear spaghetti straps—exposed shoulders freckled like pears—and rings from Clare’s that leave turquoise circles around their fingers. The boys have shaggy bowl-cuts that lay just below the tops of their ears. Ronnie doesn’t have a bowl cut; he has a wide nose that looks like it has been broken before. You wear your hair in a ponytail and your eyebrows too close together.

5.     When it’s your turn to confess, slink inside the room. Try not to puke.

6.     This church is nestled behind a Walmart and an Albertsons grocery store. Note that the priest doesn’t sit inside a screened, wooden cubbyhole; he sits behind a giant desk. When you spill your sins here, it feels and looks like a job interview.

7.     Confess. Be sure to think up your confession ahead of time—that part is important—and give it at least three parts. Say the first two quickly, but stumble with he last one so it looks like you’re really doing it on the spot. Something like, Bless me father, for I have sinned. I said a bad word. I lied to my mom. And I ... I was mean to the cat. I am sorry for these and all of my sins.

8.     Before the priest can finish assigning your penance, scurry out of the room and into the darkened nook full of those red, glass candles that remind you of the plastic cups at Pizza Hut. Say a Hail Mary or two, for good measure.

9.     Note the life-size crucifix hanging over your head; Jesus’ puppy-dog eyes, the vibrant lines of blood that slither from the nail's puncturing his palms and feet. Stare into his ribs pulling beneath the plastic flesh like fishbones.

10.   Forget Jesus; think about Ronnie instead. How in a few minutes, he’ll kneel down beside you and you’ll get to smell his drugstore cologne.

Kristen Rouisse holds an MFA in Poetry from the University of South Florida. Her work has appeared in Thin Air Magazine, Hobart, Watershed Review, and elsewhere. She’s a former poetry and nonfiction editor for Saw Palm: Florida Literature and Art and currently lives in Florida with her husband and two cats.

THIS IS AN OPPORTUNITY — NATALIE FILKOSKI

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I'm told I should take advantage of my time here in this city. Because, well, I guess "not many people get these kinds of opportunities".

They don't? I think to myself. Are you sure? Opportunities never seemed like opportunities to me, rather they were things that happened to me because of a series of steps I took.

This particular day I've had too much coffee, and thus, I'm immobile. Heart racing and panic setting in, I lie on my back under the covers and stare at the design. Brown, black, and cream flowers swirling together in a never-ending pattern. My left foot is tapping on the bed, up and down, up and down, up and down, all my excess energy channeled to that one foot, going up and down, up and down, up and down.

But I'm lucky to be here in this situation, because It's special, they say. It's an opportunity, they say.

I say it's just a thing that happens to be occurring at a particular time in my life. Like the up and down, up and down, up and down of my foot tapping on the bed. An excess of energy looking for a host. 

Natalie Filkoski holds a B.A. in English from Michigan State and an M.S. in Publishing from Pace University. After spending two years in Brooklyn buying overpriced gluten-free cupcakes from Whole Foods, she’s now back in Metro Detroit.

A SMALL, HALTING NOISE — BEN SLOTKY

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In the atrium on H1, there is a 3D printer. It’s shooting lines of glue, Ron says. Ron has a parrot named Sinbad. Ron can ride a unicycle. That’s how it works, Ron tells you, pushing up his glasses. It’s not hard.

Ron is glad to talk. His shirt is purple and tucked into his jeans. His tennis shoes are white. New Balance. There is a guy you call Ron’s Fat Nephew. You usually see him on M3. He looks like Ron, except younger and fatter. You told your team about that once. Everybody laughed. You’re thinking this while Ron doesn’t blink or budge. Ron doesn’t move. He’s waiting to explain this. It’s not that hard. You can see yourself in his glasses. This what you’re doing, in Ron’s glasses and in real life.

You watched The Friends of Eddie Coyle last night. Robert Mitchum, 1973. You think about how you are now a person who can say that. You can ask somebody if they’ve seen The Friends of Eddie Coyle and if they pause, you can go Robert Mitchum, 1973.

As if to clarify, as if to explain.

You never saw that coming. You are also the kind of person who can say, “I’m going to stop you right there,” in a conversation. That is a line from a book you will never write, you think about saying to Ron’s glasses but don’t.

You read the book before you saw the movie. You didn’t know there was a movie until you were looking for movies to watch. Now when you can’t sleep, you watch movies. Before when you couldn’t sleep, you wrote. You are watching movies now. Your friend gave you illegal screeners to watch. He used to be a nurse. His brother died of a heart attack. You didn’t know he had a brother until he told you that he died.

You may watch The French Connection. You are thinking about a scene in Dial M for Murder where the detective pulls out a mustache comb and starts combing his mustache. That’s the last scene of the movie. A guy combing his mustache. You feel like asking Ron’s glasses something about this, but don’t know what ask.

It’s adding things up, Ron is saying now. Ron is pushing up his glasses again and you lose sight of yourself for a second. You are gone and then you are back.  He’s explaining things. He leans forward. You can see yourself again. You wonder if you look horrified. You can’t tell. Ron is explaining 3D printing to you. It’s something about the accumulation of layers, the layering upon layering. A 3D printer shoots lines of glue. It adds up, it does. A thing on a thing on a thing. Rows and rows. An accumulation of layers. You make a small, halting noise. You tell Ron you’ll see him later and you head to your 1 o’clock.

Ben Slotky is the author of Red Hot Dogs, White Gravy and An Evening of Romantic Lovemaking. His work has appeared in Golden Handcuffs Review, McSweeney's, Largehearted Boy, Clackamas Literary Review, Requited, Juked, and other publications. "A Small, Halting Noise" is from his new novel, The Hill I'm Going To Die On. He lives in Bloomington, IL with his wife and six sons. 

FLIGHT — JILLIAN MERRIFIELD

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I take my wine out onto the terrace. The boyfriend sits there, next to the leering telescope. “It’s so quiet,” I say. “Where are all the birds?”
             The boyfriend turns to look at me. “They’re up there.  Just…way up there.”
             “Where?” I say. “Why can’t I hear them?”
             “Way up there. Since the sky fell, there’s nothing to hold them down by the world.” He smiles. “They’ve just been drifting higher and higher all day.”
             Mr. Beakers takes up a song in his cage by the chair. His song is loud in the darkness. “You couldn’t send him with?” I ask. I notice that there’s a feather on the eyepiece of the telescope.
             “Just think, that’s what every other sad sap with a bird is doing right now. ‘Be free! Go join your friends!’ And their birds are going up.” He smiles. “Pretty soon, Beakers will be the only bird left on earth.” There’s a pinion feather between his fingers.
             I don’t mention penguins and cassowaries. I look into the tall steel cage. I notice that there are feathers in the cage. There are feathers on the ground. Without his emerald robe, Mr. Beakers looks disgusting. He flaps his wings at me.

Jillian Merrifield has an MA in Writing and Publishing from DePaul University and is currently pursuing her PhD in English Studies at Illinois State University. Her work has previously appeared in Curbside Splendor, Midwestern Gothic, Eclectica and NEAT.

FITTING — MARVIN SHACKELFORD

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Jay wanted to know if I thought he was the right fit for Abby. I guess because I’d known her longer. I’d known Abby since fourth grade or so. I still have a picture she drew of a castle, some mountains, pine tree, and two very happy-looking pigs. She tried to show me how to draw those pigs, once, all sorts of animals. Abby saw the shapes of bodies and knew how they joined together to make a whole. I never could catch on to it.
             Jay was also a Junior. He’d been a JJ and just J for a while right out of high school. Never went on a date with a girl more than twice. Then his dad left his mom and moved to New Jersey, and he was just Jay again. Those were awful long roads for him to travel. I thought of Jay shooting pool in the community college’s rec room. I’d seen him fistfight a guy who stole the 8 ball one day to make a knob for the gearshift of his pickup. Jay fought and had been through women, guess sums it up. We didn’t have conversations about fitting.
             We had driven to the river, and we were drinking beer while boats turned rich and pretty out on the wide part of the water. I watched the clouds, sometimes thought I caught things in them. I started to point shapes to him, images, but then decided against it. He didn’t say anything else.
             Earlier that morning we’d stood outside the middle-school gymnasium and listened to Abby’s choir sing to old folks bussed in from churches, homes, I didn’t know where. They sang of altitude, the high and the low, and how wings picked a body up and set it down both. Abby had joined not too long ago, didn’t have a solo or anything but said she enjoyed it. I couldn’t pick her voice out, standing and smoking outside the big double doors, but Jay said he could.
             “Right there, when they all come together,” he said. “They’re pretty.”
             Yeah, they were pretty.

Marvin Shackelford is author of a poetry collection, Endless Building (Urban Farmhouse). His stories and poems have appeared or are forthcoming in Epiphany, NANO Fiction, Southern Humanities Review, Folio, FiveChapters, and elsewhere. He resides in the Texas Panhandle with his wife, Shea, and earns a living in agriculture.

A CURE FOR MY HANGOVER IS YOUR HANGOVER — SHANNON McLEOD

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At the concert I felt out of place, so I stood at the periphery and watched the audience like a movie. A girl with long red hair and glasses held herself up by clutching the sleeves of a young man, a boy really. She swayed to the electronic beat, the operatic voices. Her eyes appeared to be filled with tears, but it could have been the glare of spotlights against her glasses. Though the boy had clearly brought her here, their paths must have parted somewhere along the bar. He might have been her boyfriend. She might have only thought he was her boyfriend. The musicians onstage, sisters wearing painted mustaches, began my favorite song. I turned to the girl beside me. She was still attached to the boy and yelling, “yesss!” Her head lurched forward. The boy took a step toward the stage. The girl’s body buckled. She pulled herself up by his forearm. He bobbed his head as if there weren't a human-sized barnacle seizing beside him. She sang along, “I just want to be your housewife.” She grabbed both of his biceps and tried turning him towards her, “I’ll iron your clothes,” but he kept looking at the stage. I wanted him to love her because she felt so strongly that she needed it. She continued singing, “I’ll make your bed.” She ignored the musicians’ sad sarcasm and swapped it for melodic shouting. She was looking up to where she thought his eyes were gazing at her own. But she couldn’t make out his line of vision because of her tears. Or her glasses-glare. I imagined the next morning she might wake up alone in her own bed, and, later, beside a mug filled with coffee, or smoothie, or raw eggs, compose an email to her best friend about her boyfriend and their amazing night together.

Shannon McLeod teaches high school English in Southeast Michigan. Her writing has appeared in Hobart, NEAT, Gawker, The Billfold, Cheap Pop, and Word Riot. You can find her on twitter @OcqueocSAM or on her website at www.shannon-mcleod.com.

CIRCLE YES OR NO — LIZ BREEN

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Be my boyfriend?

Circle Yes** or No.

**There’s a few things you should know. For starters, I’m an irregular person. I have an irregular heartbeat—which isn’t really a problem most of the time—and an irregular menstrual cycle—which also isn’t a problem unless you consider thinking you’re pregnant all the time a problem. I buy a lot of pregnancy tests. The Walgreens lady knows me, probably thinks I’m a giant slut, but joke’s on her because I’ve never had sex. I was just raised Catholic so I know all about Immaculate Conception. I also have a job working at my uncle’s bait shop, which is how I pay for all the pregnancy tests. It’s pretty much selling worms to old, toothless guys, but it defies gender stereotypes, and that’s important. It’s not like I don’t shave my pits or anything; I just hate when people tell me what to do. Besides, Victoria’s Secret bras don’t fit me right because I have a broad back, so there’s no point in working there anyway. If you like fishing, I can get you a discount on bait is basically what I’m saying. Something I will never say, though, is the word ‘moist.’ And I don’t want you to say it either. Ever. Other words you can’t say around me include: kumquat, fiddle-faddle, phlegm and Halloween. I won’t tell you why you can’t say that last one until I know you a little better, but let’s just say I pretty much have PTSD when it comes to Halloween. I looked up the symptoms for PTSD online, and I have at least six-and a-half out of ten. I like the Internet, which isn’t too strange, I guess. Lots of people like the Internet. My favorite thing to do is look up different kinds of dating websites—UglyBugBall.com, STDmatch.net, AmputeeDate.com. Those are all real, by the way. I’m not a liar. I’m really honest, super duper honest. Probably because of my Catholic upbringing, which I think I already mentioned. But back to the dating sites, I like looking at them because I like knowing that there’s someone out there for everyone, even if you’re an absolute freakazoid.  Which I’m not. I’m just a little irregular. I think I already mentioned that, too. Long story short, I like that you don’t pretend to hate Shakespeare when all the other boys in Mr. Hoffacker’s class do, and I remember we had cupcakes for your birthday on May 3rd, which makes you a Taurus. I’m a Cancer. If you don’t know anything about zodiac signs, that means we’re compatible. I’m not sure I’ve listed every reason why we should date, but I think I’ve hit all the important ones. I hope you say yes, but if you say no, I’ll still give you a one-time discount at the bait shop for liking Shakespeare. It’s the one on Laurel Ave. Even if you don’t fish, it’s kind of fun to have a cup full of worms.

Liz Breen is a writer living in Boston whose work has appeared on such shows as Sesame Street, WordGirl and Phantom Gourmet and in magazines including Columbia's Catch & Release and Cleaver Magazine. She holds an MFA from Vermont College of Fine Arts. You can find her online at lizbreen.com. 

ON A PARK BENCH IN BROOKLYN — TIMOTHY SCHIRMER

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Michael said, “Do you know that when you read your mouth moves.” And I said, “Yes, I know.  Other people have mentioned that I do that.”  He had just handed me his cell phone and he had asked me to read a text his boss had sent him.  He wanted to know if I thought he was going to get fired.  Michael put his hand on my shoulder and I thought he was going to say or ask something about his boss or his job, but instead he said, “You can’t read like that, it’s a sign of low intelligence.” He looked scared or embarrassed for me.  It was just us sitting on a park bench in Brooklyn.  “Says who?  Who says it’s a sign of low intelligence?” I asked.  “Trust me,” he said, “it is.”  And I said, “I think you’re going to get fired.”
             I had always read that way.  I could not not read that way.  My sister had pointed it out years ago.  She would laugh and say, “You look stupid!” and I always thought she meant silly, but now I wondered if she meant dumb.  When I tried to read without moving my mouth, it was like nothing got in, the words were like birds flying into closed windows.  Or the sentences were like sinks that didn’t have drainpipes and the water just poured through the basin and splashed onto the floor.  I told Michael I hadn’t learned how to read until the third grade.  I had had a string of bad teachers and the result was that I read slowly and I had to mouth the words, but I didn’t mind it, and it didn’t mean I was stupid.  I told him it wasn’t something that would end, and he said it was something I should work on, and I said I wouldn’t know where to start. 

Timothy Schirmer currently lives in New York City, where he sleeps through all the sunrises. His writing has recently appeared or is forthcoming in Passages North, Hobart, Crab Creek Review, Rattle, Word Riot, JMWW, FRiGG, The Monarch Review, The Adirondack Review, Rust + Moth, Bluestem, and in other fine places. He lives online at: timothyschirmer.com