BLOOD/LOVE — LEON HEDSTROM

The news is good. The doctors have looked inside of you and inside of you is a good place to be. Good.
            We sit, hunched into the miniature chairs of the office. In the gap between the corrugated plastic, we keep our hands clutched tightly together. You’re clammy. I’m clammy. I can’t quite look at you and you can’t quite look at me. And yet the news is good. The news is good and I want to look at you and you want to look at me but we don’t look at each other. We sit and we look instead at the doctor as she flips excitedly through some papers, telling us just how damn good this news is. So damn good. Impossibly good. 
            It makes me feel good. I hope you feel good too. 
            On the drive home, when I’m navigating us back through the fields of traffic on the interstate, you’re sitting there with your forehead pressed against the window, watching the other cars and the other drivers swerve out towards their exits. 
            You look good—your hair’s a big tangled mess that falls nicely over your forehead, your shirt clings tightly against you. But I am trying to look past you, into you, see what you’re thinking, see the cogs and gears of your insides working and turning.
            I wonder if, maybe, you’re looking out at the world trying to see the insides of everyone else—what everyone around us is feeling, what every other citizen of this city has within themselves. Some of them are doubtless better than us, some of them are probably worse. But they’re all alive. They’re all alive and driving in sync with us down this interstate—right here and right now. It’s amazing, it’s awesome, it’s good. We’re completely surrounded by the sick and the well, all of them breathing. All of them are just as human as us, with just as many things growing inside of them. 
            When we get home, you grab my hand in the stairwell as I’m fumbling with the keys. I ask you how you feel. Do you feel relieved? Do you feel good?
            “I’m fine,” you say.
You feel fine and you smile softly. 

---

Leon Hedstrom has poems and short fiction published in or forthcoming from numerous magazines, including 3Elements Review, Bodega, WhiskeyPaper, and Four Chambers Press. He currently makes his home in Minneapolis, Minnesota.

HOT — JACQUELYN BENGFORT

She makes coffee for horny men. The sign above the service window is a noble gas twisted in glass and electrified, reading 

Hot Stuff Here 

in curlicues. She wears tassels and a thong. Her hair looks good, like she eats really well or takes special vitamins, though neither is true.
            There is a scald mark on her thigh from steaming milk. There is a draft under the door. There is no toilet.
            She licks whipped cream from between a coworker’s breasts to encourage generosity. The pay is abysmal. The tip money is good. She doesn't think she’s damaged enough to work here and says so to all her friends. She has no plans to leave.
            The woman on the next block has a sign with movable plastic letters, reading 

TASTY
WITHOUT
PASTIES, 

and wears heavy sweaters even in summer. “Let’s put her out of business,” says our heroine each morning, as though the territorial battles of roadside coffee stands serving too-sweet mochas outside Seattle were her personal civil war, and she a general in hotpants and lipstick.
            She pees at the gas station around the corner. She buys gum for the privilege. She slips sticks of it to her favorite customers, the ones who don’t request change on tens and twenties. “Let’s stick together,” she says in a Mae West voice she borrows from old movies. The men peel out of the parking lot in their sensible cars, spilling coffee, trying to impress her. She pretends it works.

---

Jacquelyn Bengfort used to drive warships for a living and was actually pretty good at it. Now she’s a writer in Washington, DC, and doing just ok. Her work appears in or is forthcoming from Tirage Monthly, Storm Cellar, District Lines, Postcard Shorts, and Labyrinth. There’s more at www.JaciB.com.

PING AND PONG — DANNY RENDLEMAN

Not having played it for some time, the old friends were rusty and a little drunk, but always on the look-out for some competition, so they said, What the hell, and headed for the basement where the landlord had left a battered table, a couple beat-up paddles, and one good ball out of four, and the first friend said, Boy, I don’t know if I even remember how to serve this thing, but the second friend said, Look, you go like this, and he did, and so they played for six hours, each of them remembering in turn how to add a little English, or how to deftly get the long shots—or at least the ones that didn’t go in the cat litter or the sump pump hole or way back behind some left-over 2 x 4s, when they’d put the cat back there, too, and hope she’s knock it back to them, and sure enough, it happened enough times they would smile every time, and they  both got sweaty and forgot about their beers or else knocked them over going for a wide shot near the chimney where they’d put  them to be safe, and soon the games got so close they stopped keeping score, since each game went to deuce anyway, and it wasn't long before they were in top form once again, or so they thought, and each was full of admiration for nearly every shot the other made, and the first friend got really good at back-spin so that the ball would die on the edge of the table and fall off, and the second friend got really good at pulling impossible shots out of his ass, as it were, so that the first friend was laughing so hard in disbelief  he sometimes couldn't return the ball, and this went on for, as I said, six hours, until their wives came downstairs and wanted to know what was so funny and what were they supposed to be doing while the men played around down here like a couple goddamn kids—but, no, that’s not the way it happened, I made that up as an easy resolution—what really happened was, after a few hours of this, they began to realize that it’s difficult to be friends if you never do anything together, if you only sort of talk about things, share views, as they say, and maybe have an occasional lunch once in a while, no you gotta do something together, like jog, or play tennis, or Jesus, even play ping pong once in a while like they were doing that very minute, and each felt closer to the other, and they knew each of them felt that way, but they didn’t talk about it, just kept playing and having fun, and then when they decided to call it a night, the beer was gone, the first friend said, You know, I really enjoyed that, and the other friend agreed, and said, You know, let’s start doing this more often, sort of have a ping pong night once in a while, get together, have some beers, relax, get away, and, you know, have some fun.
            But, of course, they never did again.

---

Danny Rendleman's last book of poetry was Stepping Into the River Once. He has a new book due this fall from Kelsay Books, Continuo. His poetry and fiction have been published in a gob of mags, from Clown War to American Poetry Review, from Happiness Holding Tank to Field.

JR — SCHULER BENSON

On the fifth day, his counselor gave Lajon an egg for accountability. 
            “Draw a face on it. Name it,” his counselor cooed.
            Lajon drew a frowny face on the egg, then wrote “jr” on the other side.
            “This egg is your baby, Lajon.”
            “Yeah,” Lajon said, eyeing his counselor’s absent scribbling as he palmed the permanent marker to use later that night in his bunk. 
            “Accountability.”
            That evening Lajon left jr alone and unsupervised when he went to shower before the prayer meeting. He wrapped jr’s base in a dirty sock and left him frowning on the particle board dresser he shared with his roommate. 
            Lajon returned to a note:
            “ALRite bitCH I GOT Yo Egg
            If u WANNA SeE it AGAin
            U gotTA dO MY CHORES for 3 MOTHER FUCKeN DAYS
            If YOU say fuck that oR GET A COUNSELLER I WILL smash
            This Mother fuckEr I will TELL you whO I Am tommorrow”
            Lajon laid the note on his dresser and ground his teeth. He weighed his options like cellophane baggies as he stared at the framed crochet above his bunk. 
            Let go and let God.
            “Fuck this egg,” Lajon said. 
            After dressing, he shuffled down the men’s hall and out of the facility to the van that waited to tote inpatients to First Assembly’s prayer meeting. Lajon drank seven cups of the church’s free coffee. As per the group’s laminated guideline sheet, he made his way to the kitchen’s refrigerator to replace the creamer he’d used.
            Amid a debris field of crusted condiment packets on the fridge’s middle rack sat an egg carton. Lajon slid his thumb between cardboard lips, yawning open the carton’s hinge. One egg. Just one. He retracted his hand to run a finger along the permanent marker bulging beneath his denim.
            Lajon forgot what he was clutching in his other hand, but whatever it was, he let go of it.

---

Schuler Benson lives in Fayetteville, Arkansas, where he recently completed his bachelor's degree. His fiction and poetry have been featured in Kudzu Review, Hobart, Thunder Clap Press, The Fat City Review, and others. His first book, a collection of short stories titled The Poor Man's Guide to an Affordable, Painless Suicide, is forthcoming from Alternating Current in June 2014. 

RITUAL IN MIAMI, MAY 1980 — NICK MAINIERI

We are a junior college baseball team gathered on the crushed brick of the warning track in the right-field corner, waiting for our first baseman, who seeks something in the dark beyond the fence. We chant his name.
            He combs the Bermuda grass with his fingers. We knew him in high school. We all knew each other. Our first baseman played for Carol City, and he liked to pummel you with the tag on the pickoff, no matter how close the play. Call it bush league because it is, but he is ours now, here, where sometimes you need a little grit. The rest, we came from Columbus High, South Miami, Coral Gables. Only one, our shortstop, grew up in Liberty City. And while we chant, wondering what our first baseman will find, our shortstop’s mind goes elsewhere—downtown, his family and his neighbors march in protest.
            We chant. The air draws taut. A siren blips. Through the column of floodlight insects rise and tumble. Lumbering palmettos, juking moths, some of our first baseman’s favorites. The starting lineups tone from the loudspeaker, ping against the empty bleachers. He appears in the corner gate. Tall, slightly walleyed. Hands cupped together.
            We chant and encircle him.
            Eighteen games ago, he found an earthworm while we stretched. Some of us recoiled, so he slurped it and chewed. Eighteen straight wins, and we have seen mashed grasshoppers on his tongue and moth wings pasted to his upper lip.
            We cease to chant on the same beat. He pops his hands to his mouth, and the lower half of a lizard hangs from his lips, tail flailing. This is something new.
            A sharp crack, now another, from downtown.
            He lifts his fists, growls, and chomps. A meager jet, oblong and dark, beads and vanishes into the warning track. We howl. We sound savage. We know it, we like it. In a spot of blood the severed tail clings to his chin and spasms, snapping like a green nerve.
            Our shortstop drops in a heap. We roll him onto his back. His skin has paled to gray. Flecks of crushed brick stick to his cheek. His eyelids tremble and he mumbles.
            Our first baseman kneels, wishing to help. The tail jerks and threshes. Our shortstop drums a finger on his own chin, wishing to communicate.
            The sirens bleat. We hear them now, and huddle around our shortstop from Liberty City.

In the coming days the riots explode. Our shortstop sees his brother’s scalp split by a hurled bottle. He sees a car, overturned and burning. Others see much worse. We never understood how bad things could get. All the possible and violent reflexes. Rituals often require blood. We finish our season with the city around us raw and wounded. We await the Major League draft or we transfer, and some of us leave, but most never do.

---

Photo credit: Jackson Beals

Nicholas Mainieri lives in New Orleans. His prose has appeared in various online and print journals. You can find him at www.nicholasmainieri.com.

FLAWED — LEE L. KRECKLOW

She woke in the morning and knew she still wasn't ready. She called the office, as she had the morning before, and explained that she was still ill, very ill, which wasn't entirely untrue. Then, for the next few hours, she twisted in bed, tried to block out the cold light from outside, warred against her own will and uncontrollable urges, until she was finally able to make the thick, tired movement from the bed to her couch.
                She curled into the days-old nest of blankets and ate cereal and smoked cigarettes and drank too much coffee. She watched mindless daytime television and read trashy magazines she'd taken from a neighbor's recycling pile. There were moments when she felt she should do something of more value: play her piano or read something not bound with staples, or maybe exercise, but that was only her mind taunting her, making her feel guilty about wasting away for days while refusing her the drive to overcome it. And she knew if she continued as she was, she would break again.
                Now she was surely feeling how every day was darker and colder than the last, and as the sun set on this notion of gloom and the gray light that reflected off the adjacent building dimmed, and as more snow began to fall, she felt the waning day cast a terrible judgment on the crusted dishes on her coffee table and the mess in her kitchen and the smoke that hung in the air. Somehow, the darkness outside shined a light on her filth, and she saw it on her skin and on her couch and strewn across her entire home, and she went to the bathroom to wash.
                She dropped her clothing to the floor in a heap and looked in the full length mirror behind the closed door. She looked at her hair, snarled and unwashed. She looked at her face: pale and freckled and without make-up, tiredness pulling beneath her eyes, dryness like white dust on her lips. The running shower filled the room with warm steam and she could feel the wetness on her skin. She ran her hands over her hips and over her stomach. She arched her back and pulled the skin flat and tight across her belly, flatter than it had been in years, or ever would be again. She slid her hands up further and lifted her breasts high on her chest and held them there so that they were round and full. She watched herself for a moment before letting them fall again. She turned and looked at her backside, sliding her hands across it. She pulled a leg up in the air and watched the skin tighten, the dimples disappear, but she immediately lost her balance and had to set it down again. And there she was. Uncovered. Unmasked. Flawed. Alone. She stopped looking at herself only when the mirror completely steamed over.

---

Lee L. Krecklow is a fiction writer living in the Milwaukee area. His work has appeared or is forthcoming in The Madison Review, Midwestern Gothic and Pantheon Magazine, and he recently completed work on a novel titled Fiction. You can find him socializing at www.facebook.com/leelkrecklow.

THE HEART IS THE SIZE OF A FIST — JAMES YATES

The heart is the size of a fist. It’s a lesson that everyone learns in second grade science. And everyone has made a fist, stared at it, and held it to his or her chest for the sake of context. Sometimes I clench and unclench my fist to mimic the pumping valves. Or does the aorta do that? All I remember is the size. 
            Robin Williams had that line in one of his stand-up specials: “God gives man a brain and a penis, but only enough blood to operate one at a time.” Actually, God gives us enough blood to operate many things at once. Hearts, fists, dicks, you get the picture. 
            Susan and I had some of our best sex the night before last. I was intense and focused, yet caring and receptive. I started gently, and toward the end, we locked eyes and she demanded more. When we finished, she smiled, kissed my shoulder, and asked where that came from.
            She had left her e-mail open last Thursday. I wasn’t mad, and I’m still not mad. Really. There were entire threads with her co-worker Tom. Innocent stuff, generally, but the more they communicated, the more smiley faces and winky entendres there were. He supplied most of them, but she didn’t write anything to discourage his flirtations. But it’s not like I blame her, I’m not exactly husband of the year. But I have a role to fill, even if that’s one of my lesser qualities.
            On April 5, 2:34PM Central Time, she had confided to Tom that I fly off the handle sometimes. It must have weighed on her mind, since she e-mailed it even though they were likely just down the hall from each other. In a way, that’s more intimate. She could have gotten up, filled her coffee mug in the common area, then stopped into his cubicle to share her concerns and frustrations. But she had to take the time to type and compose it—the emotions couldn’t wait for a forty second walk. 
            I sit outside their office and wait. I’m expecting them to leave together or alone, but that doesn’t matter. I hold my fist up to the rearview mirror and clench and unclench it. My heart is dictating to my fist. They’re not physically close, but they’re the same size, working in harmony, and even with that in mind, you expect me to explain myself?

---

James Yates is an MFA Candidate in Creative Writing (Fiction) at Roosevelt University in Chicago, Illinois. He also serves as a Fiction Editor for Longform.org. James' fiction has appeared in Hobart, and his nonfiction has appeared in The Fanzine and Necessary Fiction. He lives in the Rogers Park neighborhood of Chicago.

REVERBERATE — MAGGIE VIDAL

The seeming reverb of tips of fingers folding paper. The scratching of unforgiving construction paper bowing to the force of the pinch and glide of finger tips along its length. I can’t imagine the sound of nails on a chalkboard, but I imagine it incites, excites, a similar feeling of dislike from those who hear it. But dislike leaves a strong impression. It is why I can still hear my elementary school art teacher systematically folding and stacking and tearing sheets of construction paper. 

Paper is my ears’ first memory. Paper left a stronger impression on them than the leaping, sorrowful cries of Céline Dion in my mother’s car, or the ca-ching of the register in my father’s restaurant, or the Ya wanna go ta Bostin, ya wanna go ta Lynn, look out ‘ittle Maggie or ya gonna fall iiiiiiiiiin game my grandmother liked to play. The first time I was unsettled by the noise I don’t remember. But the first time I remember being unsettled by the noise, I had maybe four or five years’ experience hearing. 

Before bed my mother was reading to me. It was a kid’s book, something short and easy, but with a good number of pages. And while she was reading to me I was listening not to her voice, but instead to the sounds of her licking her fingertip and sticking it to the top of the page, pulling it forward and turning with a flick of the wrist. It was irritating, somehow disturbing. When she stopped reading for the night she reached for the top corner of the page and gently folded it, dog-eared. Small imperfections in the paper that we can’t see made smaller waves of intensity in the sound of it folding.

Ffffsssssffsssffsst.

Dreadful.

---

Maggie is a graduate student in Rhetoric and Writing Studies at San Diego State. She grew up on Pokémon, Poptarts, and My Little Pony, and hopes that both her food and entertainment palates have been refined since. Loves wine, whiskey, wum waisin ice cweam, and thinking she's funny.