MONSTROUS, CHAOTIC THINGS — MAUREEN LANGLOSS

Sarah gave me an ornithology guide. I didn’t even know what ornithology was. We’d just decided to stop her chemo once and for all; the last thing I needed was some dumb bird book. I’d never shown interest in a bird our entire twenty-three years together. Not one fucking bird. So I asked her, is this the part of the story when you start to go crazy? Her skin was already gray, but she turned even grayer, like I’d made her sick to her stomach again. Sometimes I could still joke with her the same as before. We could tease each other and say true stuff. As a couple, we were big into teasing. But not that day. That day was a cancer day. You’ll understand in a month or two, she said, and wrapped her college sweatshirt tight around herself. It was dingy and frayed at the cuffs, but I remembered when it was new, how I wanted to tear it off her during late-night study sessions.
             The kids and I have seen purple sandpipers and grasshopper sparrows, tundra swans and common loons. Little Bess is the best at spotting them. She tells me to keep my breath quiet and listen for the bird noises. Yank-yanks. Trills. Burbling, bubbling blips. Don’t blink so much, she says. Care more. You have to care more. If I keep still, sometimes I can sense the slightest motion outside myself. Flutters of color, of sound. Miniscule shifts of weight. When we find a piping plover or a kingfisher, the big kids write the date and time and take notes in the blank lines of the ornithology book. Wears blue hat. Lonely-looking. Beak like Uncle Stu’s nose. Where the book says “paste photo here,” we paste a photo—if we catch one. We splurge on a long-range lens for Sarah’s old camera. Bess gazes at treetops through 8x power. She says she wants to be an osprey because they spread their wings wide and mate for life and build enormous nests way up high. Closer to heaven. She’s always drawing osprey strongholds—monstrous, chaotic things with sticks and bits of litter pointing out in all directions. Sometimes, late at night when I can’t sleep, I study her sketches. I add a twig or two, then erase them, afraid of what I might damage.
             Before she gave me the guide, Sarah drew circles in red ink around the tufted titmouse, the bobolink, the vermilion flycatcher. We don’t know why. The kids think it’s because of their funny names, but I believe Sarah was on to something more. We still haven’t come across these species. But we’ve taken long trips from home, climbed switchbacks up hills covered with blueberry thicket and candy wrappers. We’ve passed binoculars back and forth, walked in slow, silent motion through valleys split by streams. According to Sarah’s book, we might find them there.

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Maureen Langloss is a lawyer-turned-writer living in New York City. She serves as the Flash Fiction Editor at Split Lip Magazine. Her writing has appeared in Gulf Coast, Jellyfish Review, New Delta Review, Pithead Chapel, Sonora Review, Wigleaf, and elsewhere. In 2017, her work was nominated for Best of the Net, and she was a finalist in the Glimmer Train Very Short Fiction Contest, as well as the Gigantic Sequins Flash Fiction Contest. Find her online at maureenlangloss.com or on Twitter @maureenlangloss.

WELCOME, ASSISTANT EDITORS DUSTIN & NOA!

It was an intensive search, and we can't thank you all enough for your interest in the Assistant Editor position, but we're excited to introduce our new Assistant Editors, DUSTIN PETZOLD and NOA SIVAN!

These two bring with them a wealth of experience, and we are so excited to welcome them to the CHEAP POP family. 

Get to know about them below! 

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Dustin Petzold is a writer and editor based in Houston, Texas. He is a graduate of George Washington University's creative writing program and has assembled various combinations of words that are floating around somewhere on the internet. 

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Noa Sivan was born and raised in Israel and is currently living in Granada, Spain. She is a graphic designer and a writer. In 2016, she started writing in English. Her first story, "Plaza Trinidad," was published in Jellyfish Review and was nominated for the Pushcart Prize. She read for R.kv.r.y. Quarterly and was a guest editor for Formercactus on their 10th issue. Her little words appear in Jellyfish Review, Lost Balloon, Wigleaf, FRiGG and more. She has a soft spot for well-chiseled micro-fiction and indifferent dogs. You can find her here and here.

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SAYING GOODBYE TO ASSISTANT EDITOR LETISIA CRUZ

Since 2016, we've had the honor of working with Letisia Cruz. Since coming on board, she's been such an integral part of CHEAP POP. Her talent, insight, and kindness have allowed us to grow stronger, both as a journal and as a team. 

We're sad to see her go, of course, but we're so excited to see what she accomplishes next.

For starters, you can purchase Letisia's book, The Lost Girls Book of Divination, here. 

Letisia—thank you so, so much for your hard work and dedication to CHEAP POP. You'll always be a part of our family. ❤❤

Love,

Rob, Elizabeth, & Hannah

THE FOURTH KIND — EVAN NICHOLLS

Our cane’s thick, like almost Supernatural. The soil plays big into it. At least, that’s what my Old Man said. He said, ‘Part clay, part blood.’ Said our family’s in the cane field.
             Which, I don’t doubt we have more than a few bodies back there, graves unmarked. I’m old enough to understand that we’re all just feed– the sugar-stalks two, three persons high. Life’s just a game of Indian-giving. I’m old enough to understand that.
             But my Old Man, when he said what he said, he meant ‘blood’ like ‘lineage.’ I’d always thought ‘blood’ like ‘shed’.
             ‘Cause my Old Man and his Old Man and the Old Men that came before them, they were all heavy-handed. To say the least. More precisely, they were heinous kiddy-beaters. Mine had a horsewhip dedicated to acts of discipline. Didn't even ride. He was the most fattest, drunkest, fake-jockey terror-farmer I’d ever seen in my life.
             So that night. The last time I’d seen him.
             You’re asking, but you’re not gonna believe.
             It was Mom’s anniversary, the consequence being he got especially boozy. He started chasing me through the crop like a wild pig.
             We both had our parts. Me, animal-boy—wailing, squealing—and him, camp-butcher. Wanting to stick me. What a game. Maybe after, he’d roast me on the campfire, chew me down to my flame-cracked bones. Like out of one of those tired, horrific fairy tales. That’s how I’d always imagined it going down when I was a kid. How I imagine it now, too.
             So like a thousand times, I pounded my feet and heart through the sugar. Runaway. He screamed after me, drunk-howling—‘BEHAVE BOY, GIVE IT UP, I’M FAMISHED’—again and again. Like a beagle-hound after fox. Tearing through plants, hollering loud all hunt long, all scent long, direct, calamitous, bullet—
             And our farm was alone by miles. Backcountry. Silent. You know what could happen back there. I did. That cane was thick. You couldn’t see up at the stars, and even in the parts you could they just looked bare and false on you. Cold infernos. Like Supernatural.
             In all that dark, I crashed into a clearing in the middle of the sugarcane. A perfect circle, carved from nowhere, nothing. But I didn’t hesitate. My Old Man ripped in through the crop behind me.
             He grabbed me, started going to work. Put my ass onto the clay, hard. Laid into me with the horsewhip, the hessian boots, the gloved knuckles into my head. I saw nothing. Just hot blood on my face. Then my eyes got violent.
             He had his gun with him. Cold Ruger in my back.
             And that’s when. Supernatural.
             There was this sound—BANG. And the black sky stopped being so black. The horsewhip stopped coming so down. Then this beam.
             Visitation.
             Thank god, or whoever.
             ‘Cause when that light waned, my Old Man was gone. Away from the sugar. Away from the farm.
             Indian-giving. That’s the way it went. No other way.

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Evan Nicholls attends James Madison University (‘20) and is from Fauquier County, Virginia. He is involved in JMU’s literary magazine, Gardy Loo, and has work appearing in CHEAP POP, Penny, and formercactus, as well as forthcoming in The Jellyfish Review and Lost Balloon. Follow him on Twitter @nicholls_evan.

RAN OUT OF MONEY — DAN CRAWLEY

On the first trip down Lombard Street, the dad said, We’re gonna crash. We’re gonna crash. Over the cheering, the mom said dumbfoundedly, Would you look at all those colorful flowers in front of those beautiful houses? After the sixth trip winding down Lombard Street, the roller coaster effect waned and even the dad let out a yawn as he took a sharp curve, only his thumbs pressed at the bottom of the steering wheel. So it was off to Fisherman’s Wharf, grabbing handfuls of chocolate samples and barking back at the sea lions sunbathing on the tiny piers. The dad said, Too bad we don’t have our BB guns. Over the clapping, the mom said restlessly, Precariously perched on petite piers. From a brown paper bag came liter bottles of warm soda and sour dough bread and gobs of butter, all laid out across the wide hood of the station wagon like a holiday dinner. It was getting late. Out on the bay, the bridge’s soft lights were fuzzy fireflies. At the airport parking lot, the dad said, We’re having a secret rendezvous with someone. He wouldn’t say who, but maybe Aunt Jen and the cousins Heather, Henry, and Augustine. No, maybe it’s Bud and his seeing-eye dog, Buddy, Jr. No! It’s Marv and Shelly from Indiana. Over more guessing, the mom said tiredly, Maybe I’m being dropped off to fly to Bermuda. At one of the gates, the dad and mom stretched out on a row of chairs. An all night gift shop’s clerk peeked around the corners of magazine racks, her humongous red Afro giving advance warning every time. The drinking fountain water tasted mossy. The enormous bathrooms echoed back yelps and singing and bangs of stall doors like mortar rounds. When the dad was woken up to find out how soon Aunt Jen and Heather, Henry, Augustine, Bud and Buddy Jr., and Marv and Shelly would finally arrive on the plane, he whispered, Go sit in front of the gate so we don't miss them. Over the whining, the mom said longingly, I was having such a nice dream about laying in flowerbeds. By morning, no one arrived. The dad said, They flew over the Bermuda Triangle, and poof! Over all the screaming, the mom said irritably, I want to get back into that station wagon like I want to jump into the freezing bay.

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Dan Crawley's stories have appeared or are forthcoming in a number of journals and anthologies, including Wigleaf, Jellyfish Review, New World Writing, The Airgonaut, matchbook, and North American Review. He is a recipient of an Arizona Commission on the Arts creative writing fellowship and has taught fiction workshops at Arizona State University, Northern Arizona University, and other colleges. He is a fiction reader for Little Patuxent Review. Find him at https://dancrawleywrites.wordpress.com/

LOOKING FOR: ASSISTANT EDITOR (2018 edition)

Some exciting news: CHEAP POP is seeking a volunteer Assistant Editor! 

What are we looking for? Ideally, someone with experience working on a lit journal/magazine (or in publishing of any kind)—although, we're not at all opposed to a newbie with little experience but the passion of a thousand burning suns. Social media experience is not required, but please let us know if you're familiar (it would be a bonus). 

What does the job entail? Assistant editors will help us read and vote on submissions (your voice will 100% matter!), reach out to authors and schedule accepted pieces to be published on the website. 

Send us a cover letter/resume to cheappoplit@gmail.com. Tell us why you'd like to work here, why we'd like working with you, why you like flash fiction...all that good stuff. 

Looking forward, looking forward!

END OVER END — JAMES FIGY

Erskine had been caught before, but never with a jumbotron showing him and a blonde and the word “CHEATER,” and not with an entire stadium’s booming laughter and boos, so he tells Kari they should leave, to which she says her name is Shari, and someone shouts, “Nice job, big boy,” either for his philandering with the beautiful woman or for his prolonged struggle to rise from the too-small seat, so he bumbles alone down the row, smashing others in blue and white uniform, and because his hands hiding his face also hide the vendor in the aisle, down go the men and the beer, cans bursting golden foam, ice bouncing off concrete steps, spinning end over end like Erskine toward the glass railing that earlier, while noting the precipitous drop, Kari/Shari had leaned her weight on, and he’d joked, “If I did that, I’d bust right through”; stairs hammering his back, Erskine tumbles past the rival wearing yellow and black who when Kari/Shari passed before first pitch had hollered, “Hot damn,” the rival whose amazed face when Erskine cussed and threatened resembled his father’s upon discovering the bastard anagram nicknames (Erik and Rex and Kin) his son used in middle school—“You were named after a legend,” dad scolded—before he grew tall as a forward and husky as a linebacker, for nothing since his father demanded the son play America’s pastime, just as he demanded the son reconcile with Patricia (whom Erskine two-timed after she left for college) because he was “in her league,” which proved false, she being smart enough to discover the chatrooms he used to attract attractive, semi-damaged women (“Sending pictures of yourself from high school… it’s sick,” Patricia shouted, knocking trophies from their home office’s paneled walls, breaking the fit golden men on top that Erskine believed to be him), and smart enough to tally a dozen dates since opening day and to retaliate if he continued, and cruel enough to ask why, why he would do this to her, and when Erskine didn’t answer, she’d shouted, pained tones that Erskine thinks he hears again as he rolls, though maybe it’s Kari/Shari or the crowd, watching the jumbotron and yelling for him like some foolhardy player stealing home to stop—so his hands reach for railings, for seatbacks, anything to grab at, to stop his speedy somersaults down stairs he’d strained to climb many times to seats he’d supposedly bought to reconnect with his father over bats cracking and hotdog scents wafting sweetly, not burnt like at the family cookout when Patricia asked her father-in-law about the games, and the elder warned Erskine, privately, about playing with fire, to which the son replied, “Big deal,” since he’d been caught before without cost or consequence, which he now regrets as he rolls faster toward the ledge—yes, regrets even the times he was not caught—because, he realizes, nearing that thin glass partition, there is no one there to catch him.

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James Figy is a writer from Indianapolis and MFA candidate at Minnesota State University, Mankato. Find his creative work in Hobart, Midwestern Gothic, Punchnel’s, and the anthology Bad Jobs & Bullshit. Follow him (@jafigy) and check out the Fail Better interview series he runs for Fear No Lit.

Increments of Time — Niles Reddick

for Jennifer

Richard Bach once wrote in his best seller Illusions that the creature, tired of clinging, let go, and went with the current of the water while those creatures downstream still clinging believed he was a messiah come for them, and this flashed when I got word an old friend from childhood had taken her own life in her tub. 

I imagined there was no current in the tub, where her elderly mother and emergency medical technicians found her lifeless body already blue and wrinkled from soaking in the tub--the bottle of vodka sat upright on the rug from Target, an empty plastic bottle of prescription Valium from Walgreens lay on its side, and the water was stained crimson from blood leaking from sliced wrists. The tub water looked like the Nile River in an Old Testament Egyptian plague. As the EMT pulled the stopper, the blood-stained water formed a miniature tornado and spiraled down the drain into the pipes and mixed with all the other citizens’ sewage until it was purified and recycled for them to drink later, though they’d never know. 

Facebook stalkers sent private messages back and forth about Lisa’s death, concerned for her soul since she’d killed herself, but on the news feed, they wrote about her infectious laugh, her bubbly personality, and how sweet she’d been. They only knew her for a time, like we all know each other, and even then, it was increments of time. It was like I heard one aunt say about my uncle after he’d had a stroke: “I don’t even know him. It’s like I’ve been sleeping next to a stranger for the past fifty years.” They didn’t know her any more than they knew Ken who’d fought cancer, asked for prayers and donations for treatment, and posted about it the past two years before he finally let go and joined a current of air in the Hospice House, where he’d screamed, sweated, and prayed for weeks. It had been thirty years, after all, and no one from our high school class had heard from either of them, just like the others who had died in between graduation and the thirty years that had passed: one shot by police for stealing a car, one from A.I.D.S., one from melanoma, one from a drunk driving crash, and one from a heart attack.

No, Lisa had suffered with depression and alcoholism the past thirty years and had tried to get rid of the disease more than once. Everyone knew it at parties, when she kept downing rum punch until she couldn’t walk and her friends would get her home and to bed to sleep it off, but all of those increments of time added up to the sum total of a scene best played in a B movie showed in an old theatre in a university town and supported by existential philosophy students eager to offer conjectures of free will.

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Niles Reddick is author of the novel Drifting too far from the Shore, a collection Road Kill Art and Other Oddities, and a novella Lead Me Home. His work has been featured in over a hundred literary magazines all over the world including Drunk Monkeys, Spelk, The Arkansas Review: a Journal of Delta Studies, The Dead Mule School of Southern Literature, Slice of Life, Faircloth Review, among many others. His website is www.nilesreddick.com