THINGS NO ONE EVER TOLD ME BUT I FIGURED OUT ANYWAY — JACLYN GRIMM

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8. When I turn eight I skate figure eights in garden soil and bury my baby doll four inches under.

10. My best friend’s baby brother cries and vomits and and I tell her mother she should’ve bought a pet lizard instead. My mom and her laugh and tell me one day I’ll understand.

13. My older sister starts babysitting the kid next door and can’t stop talking about babies and babies and babies and at night I hear her say baby, baby, baby real quiet in her room.

14. My mom tells me about sex but all I can think of is how this compares to the other advice she has given me: stick a wire in a light socket and you will get stung; catch a bee and get electrified; bite a bottle and it will break your teeth and slit your throat from inside out.

16. I am a chicken scratch dancer, drunk on cheap beer and cheaper dreams. My skin is short short and blood red and the girls call me a whore but the boys don’t call me anything. The steak knife stares make my hands skim my waist and stick-out ribs and when we play cards someone else’s hands skim my left breast, but all I think of is my hand of cards. Ace of Spades. 

18. When he leads me to his room he wraps one hand around my wrist and I think how easy it would be for him to break it. It’d snap like a wishbone, a part to me and a bigger part to him. He wins. If this was Thanksgiving he would get the first piece of turkey but it is February and freezing so I give him myself instead.

20. I trace my handprint on a map and drive to the tip of my pinkie. I end up where I always do. My mother confuses sex with love and children with happiness and isolation with loneliness and I don’t think she understands and I don’t know if I do either. 

Jaclyn Grimm lives in Orlando, Florida and is a rising senior at Lake Highland Prep. Her writing has been published in the Adroit Journal and decomP.  She likes using lower case letters way too much and thinks she's funnier than she actually is.

IKE & BENNY — ADAM VAN WINKLE

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Ike Dyson sittin’ on a schoolyard fence.
             Benny Tulip comes walkin’ up and puts a flash of a rundown green and white trailer in Ike’s head—the one he’d seen in a couple of Polaroids.
             Ike’s dad had to talk Ike’s mom into the til-we-have-a-family-to-save-money trailer cuz she swore she’d never be trailer trash.
             Ike’s folks sold the trailer once Ike was conceived there and his mother swore she’d burn it down before she’d be there and be fertile.  Ike’s folks sold the trailer to Benny’s folks who too just conceived a son.
             Benny Tulip was raised in a trailer of disdain.
             Benny got shot.  Benny stole a car.  Benny got taken from his folks.  Benny got fostered with the weird smelly lady science teacher.  Benny wore donated shoes we’d all already seen in the church clothing-drive bin.  Benny got hardknocks.
             Benny pushed Ike off that rail for all the horrors of his life.
             Ike Dyson felt his head concave and convex as the concrete first dented then swelled his gourd.
             Benny swears at everyone gathered to see that it was all a joke and, whether it is or it ain’t, Ike Dyson gets it.

Adam Van Winkle was born and raised in Texoma and currently resides with his wife and two dogs on a rural route in Southern Illinois. Van Winkle is founder and editor of Cowboy Jamboree Magazine, a bi-annual online rag dedicated to western and rural stories with rough edges. His short fiction and creative nonfiction have been published in places like Pithead Chapel, Dirty Chai, and The Vignette Review. Excerpts from his novel-in-progress, Abraham Anyhow, appear in Steel Toe Review and Crack the Spine. Van Winkle was named for the oldest Cartwright son on the television series Bonanza.  

STRICKEN — CHLOE N. CLARK

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We buried our dead but first we wrapped them tightly in white. The shrouds kept the souls locked up, tight, and comfortable. The plague-dead, we called them, as if they were so much different from all the other dead.           

Bodies are bodies. The earth will return them to dirt just the same.  Shrouds keeping them longer maybe. Or not.  

The dead rise and white cloth hangs from the body.

Our ghosts are tricks:  sheet-swaddled children trundling from house to house, asking for treats. Something good to eat. Mothers hold the hands of their children tight, the grip loosening only at doorways, when it’s safe, when they are asking for gifts, baskets outstretched. Mothers breathe out and watch their breath hover in front of them. The cold bites as the sun dips low, children dressed as the dead turn back to smile at their mothers.

Caskets were too needed to bury, they carried the bodies over and over; the dead in their shrouds would be protected enough.

The grave is cold, the cloth clings.

So many we buried, one by one by one by one by one by one by one, and there was no time for rites, for prayer, and the dead in their shrouds, shook and shuddered beneath the earth. No rest for the wicked, no rest for the good.

A mother finds the drawings later, of ghosts hovering, like sheets filled with air, and she traces the image with            her fingers. The indentations make the drawing seem fresh. She can feel them. The sun has a smiling face. Her daughter’s hands did this.              

The shroud memories are carried, like the dead themselves were carried, into the present.  These ghosts drawn in sheets, white shrouds rippling around shapes that once held life. Children come to think of ghosts as white and bright.

Children who survived the plague, years later, remembered the images of skeletons dancing with the rotting dead—sheets covering bodies, but not the death itself.

The mother sinks to floor, digs fingernails into palms of her hands, imagines her child dreaming of ghosts and the dead smile in her dreams; they are so welcoming, so open, so ready to love another, willing to cradle the newest of their number.

We buried our dead. We bury our dead, wrapping them tight, hoping to keep them warm.

Chloe N. Clark's work appears in Apex, Booth, Sleet, Wyvern, a previous issue of CHEAP POP, and more. She writes for Nerds of a Feather, and Ploughshares, For her thoughts on cake and magic, follow her @PintsNCupcakes

MIRROR BALL — RON GIBSON, JR.

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An old man leans forward, hugging a hand-hewn fence rail against his chest, sun bombing down the hillside behind him, and says to his shadow, "Remember that girl I was madly in love with?"
             His shadow remains silent, a film negative on yellowing grass amid flickering leaves from trees.
             "Remember that girl I made love to, and felt my body lifting out of itself to float in an ocean of night, wreathed in her beautiful light, stars like teeth devouring me whole, until I was nothing?"
             His shadow mirrors the old man's shoulders in a sigh, and finally says, "I do."
             The old man sofly smiles, and says, "Let's moon over her for a while."
             His shadow says nothing, wind scattering rags of shade across the land like wild Appaloosas in full stride.

**

An old woman leans forward against the kitchen sink, peering out the window, sun wreathing her in light, when her shadow asks from the linoleum tile, "Remember that boy you were madly in love with?"
             The old woman is silent, lost in the flickering light of a film projector in her mind.
             "Remember that boy you made love to, and showed your magic and the stars to, holding onto one another, naked, shivering on the moon of Europa, until you became whole?"
             The old woman's shoulders mirrors her shadow's sigh, and finally says, "I do."
             Before the shadow proceeds to speak, a soft smile materializes on the old woman's face, "He's mooning over me again, isn't he?"
             Her shadow says, "He is."
             "Let him moon for a while. He does so like to moon."
             The old woman adjusts her glasses, watching time scatter around the old man and his shadow like wild Appaloosas in full stride, before adding, "Then tell him supper's ready and he'll stop."

Ron Gibson, Jr. has previously appeared in Pidgeonholes, Maudlin House, The Vignette Review, Ghost City Review, Word Riot, Cease Cows, Spelk Fiction, Firefly Magazine, Ink in Thirds, Gravel Magazine, Unbroken Journal, etc…, forthcoming at Foliate Oak Magazine, been included in various anthologies, and been nominated for two Pushcarts. @sirabsurd

SOFT HISTORY — TAYLOR BOSTICK

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I step over Maggie and sit down at your desk. You have two e-mails from someone named Steve. The first one says: “If you can come, come.” The second is blank. I wonder if it was eventually meant to say something, whether you have an artifact of an infinite brainstorm, a sliver of reality frozen before revealing its brilliance—a photograph of a child’s face just before the punchline of a joke (or at any point in her life)—or a simple mistake. I get the same feeling at museums sometimes, looking at ancient things. That carving on a satin pillow behind bullet-proof glass: proof of the prominence of religion in society? Or: had bone, had chisel, liked looking at animals and imagining them with wings? I get it lying next to you sometimes, too. Your words, your promises, the key to your apartment: proof of my prominence in you? Or: had extra pillow, had extra key, needed a pair of shoulders to stand on to make you feel like you can fly?
             I hit REPLY ALL to the second e-mail and type: “If I can, I will. If I can’t, I might. If I’m dead, you’ll know by the smoke.” I press SEND. Almost. I’m not the kind of person who’s brave enough to say things. I mark the e-mails as unread and close your computer and walk over to your window, tapping Maggie on the head as I go, and she stirs, though I can’t say for sure she feels anything. I wonder sometimes if I’m more than a dream to her. I open your window and lean out until my feet are off your floor and I’m balancing on your sill. I wonder if I should have responded. I wonder if you know who Steve is. I wonder if I should have more answers at this point in my life. I decide you don’t know Steve but that I should have responded, that he meant to e-mail you, you and me and everyone, wanted us all together to tell us in person he’s figured it out, solved religion and hunger and peace and learned everything about history and not just the hard things but the soft things too, the skin and paper and dance and love things. The things that don’t survive a thousand years in the dirt. The things I’m not sure will survive in you. Maybe Steve is our savior. If not some guy named Steve on the internet, then who?
             Outside your apartment, a cardinal is singing. There’s always a cardinal singing. They have three or four different songs, and just when I think I’ve heard something new, they appear from the trees in a burst of red as if to say, it’s me, it’s always been me.

Taylor Bostick is from Alexandria, Virginia. His degree from Virginia Tech is in civil engineering, though his parents can’t help but notice he likes to write more than the other engineers. His fiction has previously appeared in the Rappahannock Review, and he’s currently working on a biography of someone you’ve never heard of. 

A FIVE-POINTED FAILED PAPER LOVE WEAPON — BETH GILSTRAP

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You wear your hair down and your brother’s jeans the day the only boy you date freshman year staples himself in the chest. You are still sticky from gym because you can never bring yourself to shower in front of people, but you hope the perfume you stole masks it enough. You blot your cheeks, nose, and chin before you see him on the path to yearbook.
             When you try to speak to the boy, to tell him you want to take his boots home to your room to eat, to put your forefinger on his eyelids and absorb the image you know can’t be unseen, the one of his friend hanging by a chain from a dogwood, how the gravel sound of his voice makes something in your hipbones crack, how the pain in your chest at night after he finally hangs up must make you the youngest person in the world who suffers heart attacks. But all you can do is touch his skull earring, ask where he got it.
             As he leans you up against the locker, you notice the dust mop smell of the hallway, doors clicking closed, and a few straggling runners trying to make it to class. You are late. You squirm away and dig a knuckle into your sternum. He pulls his own hair.
             Fine. Whatever. I thought you loved me.
             You try to give him the love letter you folded into a star, but he flicks your arm away, sending it sailing to the floor—a failed paper love weapon you lift off the linoleum by two of its five points. In yearbook, you cut pictures and wax them onto mock-up pages. Candid shots of Emily and Allison and Farrah all branded up like race car drivers and lording over each other. No one’s permission ever given or granted to separate. An image of the math nerds lined up eating bag lunches on the floor at the back of the cafeteria. The full page memorium for his friend’s suicide his parents said was an accident. You snip your open palm and watch as your own blood beads. When you see him again after school, he is halfway to his car. You run, your backpack thumping so hard it hurts your shoulders.
             Wait for me, the girl who knows how it feels to bruise herself.
             He turns after he unlocks his car door. On the white lettering of his Black Flag t-shirt, red spots soak through, spaced the width of staples. Seventeen staples equal thirty-four holes. You ask what’s wrong. He tells you you don’t love him. You touch his knee and take a cigarette from the dash. Before he drops you home, he pulls off into an adjacent field. Amid swaying weeds and broken bottles, you kiss all thirty-four of his wounds, wishing he were the first or the last violent man in your life. 

Beth Gilstrap's fiction and essays have appeared in the minnesota review, Literary Orphans, WhiskeyPaper, Synaesthesia Magazine, and Bull, among others. Her work has been nominated for Best of the Net, storySouth's Million Writers Award, and The Pushcart Prize. She is the author of I AM BARBARELLA (Twelve Winters Press, 2015) and NO MAN'S WILD LAURA (forthcoming in 2016 from Hyacinth Girl Press. She thinks she's crazy lucky to be Fiction Editor of Little Fiction | Big Truths. When she's not writing or editing, you might find her on her porch swing, with a book in one hand and a drink in the other. She lives in Charlotte with her husband and enough rescue pets to make life interesting. 

I HATE EVERYONE IN THIS FAMILY — DYLAN BRIE DUCEY

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Miranda slams the bathroom door so hard that the full length mirror falls onto the floor. Shatters. A million shards of glass. Rage, pain, hate. The problem was that you told her to eat. You wanted her to eat and she didn’t want to eat and you made that outrageous request. That demand.
             “I hate everyone in this family!” she screams, and you want to slap her but you can’t because she has locked the bathroom door. Now the hallway is a mess and the dog is sniffing around with interest. You throw a shoe at the dog. You watch the dog yelp in pain and skulk away, tail tucked between her legs. Miranda will never come out of the bathroom, and if she does the soles of her narrow feet will be sliced to ribbons.
             Miranda’s younger sister cowers in the bedroom. You cannot see her, but through the walls you can feel her fear. She is probably hunched under her desk, blond hair falling over her eyes, and if spoken to she will not respond, she’ll stay mute for hours, days even. Some of us lash out in fear, others fold in upon themselves. Miranda is one who lashes out.
             While you sit helpless in the kitchen, Miranda rages on inside the bathroom. “No one in this family understands me, no one even cares! I hate you, Mommy!” You should get up, get the broom, get the dustpan, but you cannot move. Your ass is cemented to that chair. Maybe if you are quiet this whole fucked-up situation will evaporate, maybe you could take the keys and slip out the back door and maybe you yourself could evaporate. But while you are thinking this shameful thought, the younger one slips noiselessly from her room and appears before you. She points at the broken glass. “Mommy,” she whispers, and her voice is weighted with anxiety. “Mommy.”

Dylan Brie Ducey's work has appeared, or is forthcoming, in The Pinch, whiskeypaper, Pear Noir!, decomP, The 3288 Review, Foliate Oak, and elsewhere. She lives in California.

A MURDER OF CROWS — JACQUELINE DOYLE

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She lumbered down the hillside, clutching her enormous belly, then veered off the path and into the woods, stepping over tangled tree roots, half sliding in the mud as she descended to the river. Her water had broken. It was time. The river was swollen with spring rain, so loud she could barely hear the birds twittering in the trees, the raucous cries of a flock of crows that swooped through the sky. When she reached the riverbank, she tugged off her shoes and socks and sodden underwear. She was covered with goose bumps. Shivering from the cold, she lay on her back and spread her legs wide, feet planted in the soft silt of the riverbed. Two crows were fighting on the opposite bank. They pecked aggressively at something on the ground between them. The pain was unbearable. She imagined crows in her womb tearing at her, preparing to fill the skies, a dark cloud. The crows were an omen, she was sure of it. She was about to give birth to a lie.

Jacqueline Doyle's flash has appeared in Quarter After Eight, Sweet: A Literary Confection, [PANK], Monkeybicycle, Vestal Review, The Rumpus, Café Irreal, Literary Orphans, and Corium. She has a flash sequence in the anthology Nothing to Declare: A Guide to the Flash Sequence (White Pine, 2016). Her work has earned two Pushcart nominations, a Best of the Net nomination, and Notable Essay citations in Best American Essays 2013 and Best American Essays 2015. She lives in the San Francisco Bay Area.