LET ME DIE TOO, PLEASE — HANNAH SLOANE

When we let the demons in it’s almost impossible to chase them away. 
            It’s written on the piss-ridden wall. I watch the letters bleed from one to the next. For too long apparently. A chick with a bladder the size of a walnut hammers on the door, twists its handle. 
            We’re in a Russian-themed restaurant. The service is surly. The pierogi is luke-warm. The vodka is putrid.
            “Russians don’t do pastel shades,” I say indignantly, pointing to the baby blue tablecloth. “Everything should be smoldering red, the color of bloodshed, of young men named Vladimir who died for an ideology we mock and despise.”
            “You have a bizarre preoccupation with death,” Tom’s girlfriend mutters before a hand flutters to her mouth, her face and neck turning a deep shade of rouge that’s fascinating to watch. “Sorry.” 
            All three of us fall silent. 
            “He was a great man, a role model,” Tom says. 
            He was funny and generous to a fault. He invited strangers over for impromptu barbeques (it drove my mother insane). He patiently coached the local softball team, misfits whose hand–to-eye coordination was laughable. He was polite. He taught me to always hold the door open, to always say please and thank you. He gave bear hugs that squeezed the final breath from my lungs. I reach for my tin box. It rattles. That’s good. When the rattling stops I worry. I wash it down with a gulp of wine, then another.
            “Easy there buddy,” Tom says.  
            “Me? I’m just on high on life!”
            This is a lie. I am barely functioning. The good news is if I pop enough of these, laced with enough alcohol, I’ll see bizarre things, like my father dressed as David Bowie in Labyrinth. I sink a vodka shot and my memory dives behind a duvet of darkness. 
            “What happened to the tap dancing dwarf?” I ask later. Nicole shrieks with laughter. “Really, what happened?” 
            There is no laughter this time, simply a table of blistering stares.
            When I return to the restroom the words aren’t there, nor are the piss stains. I touch the pale wall. Gradually elements of his life will be white washed over, erased entirely. I’ll struggle to recall his mannerisms, the intonation of his voice, the reasons I idolized him.
            It happened quickly, the deterioration of his body as the cancer entered the bloodstream, the hasty goodbyes. The priest asked us not to question the actions of the Lord. Not everything can be explained, he said. Not everything will or should survive, he added. 
            I don’t have the strength to survive him, I decide. I’d prefer to fade away, to wilt like a delicate flower as the harshness of winter approaches. I’d like to melt into this wall, into a milky-white glare of nothing that lasts forever. Please.

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Hannah Sloane lives in New York. More of her essays and fiction can be found at: www.hannahsloanewrites.com or say hello @hansloane.

WEDNESDAY — BRITT MELEWSKI

The steam pipe drained, torturously, at a higher pitch than a wounded cat, higher than his hissing nervous system.  He was afraid for a moment that he was in danger.  But he dropped it, because, really, what was he going to do?  Where was he going to go?  And who could he call?  At least it was still early.  Nobody else had arrived to the office, it seemed.  His eyes hurt.  He felt that when he slept he must have been choking. Or he was never truly asleep.  One channel was switched off in the dark and that was enough.  He peered into the computer screen.  The numbers were all in order and flagged where they needed flagging.  He made a phone call and placed his voice onto a recorder.  I am housed somewhere else, he thought, inside of a little black cubby.  He expected no calls, not ever.  More numbers came in and had to be hung properly in the spreadsheet.  He placed them there neatly.  More numbers were on their way.  He could hear them being forged like chain—link by slow glowing link, slammed from the fire.  He stood up, stretched his back, and gave way to a slow exhalation.  He decided he’d take a walk.  Why does everything look so bare?  Why’s everything so hidden, he thought.  It could be 1966.  It could be 1988.  It could be 2001.  The computers are the only objects that mark time and even these checkpoints beg to be verified.  He walked the long O of the 14th floor, nobody—no one sinking into his chair, grabbing with his numb butt for the sweet spot; no one standing over the coffeemaker with her hand at her hip.  When he was at the ¾ mark of lap one, he heard the water running in the sink of the pantry.  The stream was deliberate and slow.  He told himself to ignore it, to walk past, but he had stopped before he came to the threshold.  It was Rindder, a frighteningly slender analyst he tried to avoid for reasons he wasn't comfortable sharing with anyone.  Rindder was there, rinsing the tomato sauce off of a Glenrych South Atlantic Plichard.  Sardines.  He watched him.  The can sat there open, looking like a weapon with its sharp tin top still connected to the can’s body.  He felt nauseous, but the kind of nausea he would feel when he would sleep, when the important channels were switched off.  He watched Rindder’s thumb massage the fish’s belly.  Red water fell away from the thing like blood or rust.  Rindder took the fish to his mouth and bit into it at the gut.  He slurped like he was dying of thirst.  He thought about how wide his eyes must be as they hang over the sink and almost collapsed.  Jesus Christ, he said, turned, and walked back toward his desk.  It wasn't even noon.   

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Britt Melewski’s poems have appeared in Puerto Del Sol, the Philadelphia Review of Books, Sporkpress, Heavy Feather Review, and are forthcoming in Tidal Basin Review, among others.  Melewski received his MFA at Rutgers-Newark in 2012.  He lives in Brooklyn.

APRIL 10, 2002 — SCOTT DAUGHTRIDGE

Ally gave me a hit of acid in art class today and told me to wait until the weekend to take it. I took it right after class ended. I took my shoes off in Ms. Cardin’s class and Brendan started throwing paper at me from across the room. Ms. Cardin yelled at him to stop but he didn’t. She said something to me, but I couldn’t understand her. She kicked us out of class and when I was in the hallway Ally walked by, took one look at me and said, “Holy shit, you’re tripping.” Her eyes looked really dark, like she had been putting on more and more eye liner throughout the day. Maybe she thinks her eyes can’t be dark enough like the skinny girls think they can’t be skinny enough. Brendan got mad at me for not giving him some of the acid but I told him I only had one hit and that it wasn’t very strong anyway.
            When Ms. Cardin came into the hall she said she didn’t know if she wanted me to come back to her class again. The top of my head was disconnecting. The floor was a river of shining metal. She looked sad and I couldn’t help but think how last year her name was Mrs. Casper, but that she changed it over the summer, after her and her husband divorced because she caught him having an affair. She doesn’t have any kids and I think she wants us to be her kids, her family. I don’t want to be her kid. I already have a family and I don't like them much. I figured the least I can do was show her some respect, though. I went back to my seat and wrote he not busy being born is busy dying over and over until the bell rang. 

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Scott Daughtridge was educated in the back room of a thrift store in Acworth, Georgia. Most recently, his work has been featured in Midwestern Gothic, Everyday Genius, Dogzplot, Necessary Fiction, Curbside Splendor, and other places. His chapbook, I Hope Something Good Happens, will be released this summer through Lame House Press. You can find him online at www.notmuchisreallysacred.com.

JELLYFISH — ZARA LISBON

I walked over to something shining in the sand and uncovered it with a twig.  The thing was a dead jellyfish—bloated, coming apart at the seams—and it made me realize something.  I started to cry.
            “What is it, angel face?” my dad called out to me.
            “I’m not young anymore,” I told him.
            He laughed, “You’re eleven years old. You have decades left of being young.”
            If you think it is funny that an eleven-year-old would believe she isn’t young anymore, then you’re looking at the whole thing wrong.  You’re thinking about how she’s never had to pay a bill, how she’s never had to bother with words like Mortgage or Equity or APR.  You’re thinking about junior high school and high school and college where she has yet to learn all the ways she is unworthy.  You’re thinking about the wedding she’s yet to have, the man who will love her and the weight of silver and diamond she’ll feel pulling on one finger as she goes about her day, maybe buying flowers. You’re thinking how she has no arrests or traffic tickets or failed marriages on her record, thinking she has never hit someone with her car and heard the crunch of bone.  You’re thinking about how she’s never used her own body as a means of making money in a moment of desperation, never aborted a fetus or decided to grow a human being and give it a life it never asked for.  You’re thinking she’s never known somebody to die.  You’re thinking her teeth haven’t gone soft or fallen out, thinking that her cells haven’t amalgamated into murderous structures in her blood.  You’re thinking that her blood is pure and fresh.  You’re thinking she’s a clean slate.
            You are not thinking about how tired she is in the morning, the way her muscles have turned to stone ever since she learned that she won't go to heaven, or anywhere, when she dies.  You’re not thinking about sitting alone at the back of a school bus when suddenly it’s as if a balloon has popped behind your chest bone releasing gray, plasma-like fluid that rolls in beads around your heart, slipping into your blood stream and radiating outwards, drawing attention to your soul, which is now wet and wilted, and the feeling is so intense that you have to close your eyes.  You’re not thinking about how a fifth grade boy is unafraid to reach his hand up a girl’s shirt, even if there is nothing yet to reach for, in the back of the music room when no one is looking.  You’re not thinking about what shame feels like when you feel it for the first time.  You’re not thinking about the picnic table on Fourth of July where a peach, half eaten, became black with fruit flies working soundlessly. You’re not thinking about what it means to look at a dead Jellyfish washed up onto the shore and think “that is me.”

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Zara Lisbon grew up in Venice Beach, California, and finally realizes how lucky that was.  Some of her stories appear in Attic Salt and LA Miscellany. Currently, she is working towards her MFA at Vermont College of Fine Arts.  If only you knew how often she wants to retweet porn star tweets but doesn't because then everyone would know she follows porn stars on Twitter.

WARNINGS — GENE KWAK

“Keep an eye on Cudi,” my wife always said. But it became part of our everyday banter, faded into the background: the AM chatter I played on my shower radio while I jerked off. That particular morning I should’ve really heard her. Paid heed. But I’m sure had she been in my position, she would’ve ignored any of my daily protestations: buckle your seat belt, don’t forget your keys, go first-class on the stamps.
            Cudi or Cudahy was a rare breed of boy. Nothing scared him. When met with all the typical fear mongering tactics of older ilk, anyone approaching post-pubescent brain development, he didn’t blink an eye. Waited on you to flinch first. He growled at 3-D animated sharks with their digitally rendered mouths full of sharp teeth. Dad, his granddad, dangled him upside down from the second floor banister. Not a squeal, not a yelp. That’s why he didn’t react like most when the pitbull came barreling down on him. This was in the park: a big, jowly pit with no clear owner ran free toward whatever softest was in its path. Cudi’s lack of fear doomed him. His wiring buzzed fight. He had no flight in him. Instincts are one thing. What to do with them is another. A one and a half year old, no matter the chest puff and brave face, does not know how to defend himself. The dog skinned him easy: peeler to a potato.
            With the next bite, it crushed something vital in him. He rag dolled while the pit continued to snuff him into the dust. I was close, five, ten feet tops, turned away to attend to a mundane thing: the dialing of a number. I screamed so loud, my voice cracked. Frightened the dog into stopping, into fleeing. It was able to pick up on some innate sense that had it not gotten out of there grave danger was headed its way. I would’ve done everything to gouge out its eyeballs with my hands. Fingered its skull liked a bowling ball. For a second, I was split. Go after the animal, or stay with my baby boy. I stood, weirdly posed, not like a real person, but more a life-size action figure of a man minus the action. I cradled Cudi. Called the cops, my voice hoarse. Barely there. An ambulance whirred up in what seemed years, decades, epochs and eons gone by. And all the time my baby boy had been wet and limp, insides outside. Bits of his scalp here and there—a burst red balloon. Blood all over.
            When I called my wife, I couldn’t get the words out. Sobbed them. Cudahy. Dead. Dog. I heard her scream on the other end. She never mentioned the early morning warning. We both ignored it. Background chatter. Forgotten rituals. I’d like to say we got closer. But that’s not true. We grew apart, both so afraid to move, no warnings were necessary.

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Gene Kwak is from Omaha, Nebraska. 

DEEP END — LARA PRESCOTT

The bet was to touch the drain at the bottom of the deep end. The stakes were simple: if you didn’t do it, you were a pussy. The only snag was that some little girl drowned in the pool last week, her red hair tangled up in the drain.
            I didn’t know her or anything. Just some kid on vacation with her family. The newspaper ran a photo of her taken at Disneyland the day before—mouse ears and all. Anna Horowitz.
            The hotel drained and refilled the pool, but no one went in all week. We’d walk by the fence on our way to the public pool and laugh at the tourists on the sidelines staring at the water like a chlorinated car wreck.
            We went at night and scaled the fence. 
            Rock beat scissors, so I was first. I lingered at the edge. 
            The water was black and still.
            “Water looks different,” I said, dipping a toe.
            “Come on, asshole,” my older brother Dan said. His two friends snickered and sipped from paper-bagged beers.
            I dove in. My ears popped. I thought of Anna. Did she think this was it? That someone would come for her? Did she feel alone?
            I reached the bottom and touched the white plastic cover they put over the drain after the fact. Then I pushed off with my feet. Just as I was about to surface, something drove my head back down. I gasped and caught a mouthful of water.
            When I came up coughing, Dan was toweling himself off, his idiot friends snorting.
            I climbed out like it was nothing, but as soon as Dan’s head was turned I tackled him back into the pool. We thrashed around a bit. I got him good once on the chin. Then he ended it by ramming my face into a metal rail.
            “Motherfucker,” he said, spitting. He got out and left with his friends.
            I slumped over the pool’s lip. I took a deep breath. Then I let go.

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Lara Prescott's work has appeared in the 2014 Twitter Fiction Festival, The Rumpus, and BuzzFeed Books. Hailing from Western Pennsylvania, she'll always say "pop" wherever life may take her. Follow Lara on Twitter at @laraprescott.

THE BURN — SELIN GÜLGÖZ

See that building up there? Used to be a match factory. The whole country’s matches used to be manufactured there, you know? With this new tunnel, the land gained value. So, they’re demolishing the factory and building project homes instead.
            A lot of people living in Sariyer are retired from that factory. They still have burn marks on their hands. Some this big. It was an old factory. When filling the boxes, if a guy accidentally strikes just one match, the whole box catches on fire. Horrible burns. But the factory had a special cream. A secret formula you couldn’t find anywhere else. Ask anyone around, the miracle cream. It’s white and grainy, like labneh. You put it on immediately after the burn, heals in just a few hours. I swear to Allah. You can’t find it anymore though. Whenever there is a burnt wound, people say, "Wish we could use the factory cream." 
            You see this bracelet? I used to have it in gold, then I went and had it made in silver. You know why? You know Fatih? Some weird-looking people there, wearing jubba and beards. Mullahs. One day, a mullah got into my car. He sat next to me, and I asked him where to, and we were just going. Suddenly, he held my bracelet. Just like this, he stuck his finger under the bracelet, and just like this, held it between his two fingers. I felt weird, you know?  I said, "What’s going on, brother?"
            "Gold?" he said.
            "It’s gold." 
            "Don’t wear this, son."
            "Why, brother?" 
            "Don’t wear it; gold belongs to Satan," he said. "It will burn you very badly in the other world."
            "Come on, brother, no such thing," I said. 
            "There is son, just don’t wear it."
            Two days later, I’m washing the motor of the car. And you see how this bracelet is a bit loose? I wasn’t paying attention and the bottom touched the differential. Then, I moved my hand, and the top touched the shaft. One has negative charge, the other positive. The gold got stuck, just like a magnet. So strong. Before I knew it, the gold turned red on my wrist. Never seen anything like it. Bright red.
            I yanked my arm from the motor, yelling for an ambulance. Meanwhile, I’m careful not to move my arm, so the bracelet can only burn the same spot. Bright red—both the bracelet and my wrist. There is a doctor, Mehmet Bey, a wonderful man. I called him. So, you know what he did? I had a blister wrapping around my wrist like this. Look, you can still see. Here…and here, so he… you should let me tell it. Are you sure? 
            Well, anyway, I swore never to wear gold. It happened two days after the mullah. What a coincidence! It can’t be a coincidence. I don’t know if there is a real connection, but I’m being safe. I went and had the same bracelet made in silver.

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Selin Gülgöz is a full time Ph.D. student in Developmental Psychology at the University of Michigan, and a part time creative writer. Her writing has appeared in The Millions and Bant. She is also a cofounder of the blog, Fictionnon.

I'D LOVE YOU AS A WOMAN — CARLOTTA EDEN

Grayson once painted me as a woman. Short red hair, hips like butter swirls. And ever since Grayson painted me a woman I’ve felt my chest tighten in this shirt and my waist swell like dry dirt in the earth. Grayson loved me like no man ever would. “These skies are like old photographs,” he’d say, and he’d lift his shotgun and fire. 
            I loved Grayson. He needed me like an artist needed white space—I were his colours, from the moment he looked at me and said, “I’d love you as a woman,” and tied a pretty scarf around my neck, kissed my nose and painted me red, gave me breasts, hips and smudged out my beard. But Grayson was a maniac. He painted hedges with blood-soaked petals, threw pony hooves from window ledges. Said he wished for war and peace. I said there was no such thing. He put a finger to my lips and cupped my chest. Told me I’d have perfect breasts. 
            One day I asked Grayson to paint me as a man, and I held him as he cried. I chose a field near old Dyson’s Hill, and he brought his paints, and I brought my old clothes, his clothes, my daddy’s clothes. Grayson cried when he saw me, buttoned up in a suit, bolo tie loose. He painted me in front of a sepia field; painted the sky like sweetcorn, shotgun ready. I’d never seen him look so sad, painting me a man. When he finished he took the gun outta my hand, fired six shots straight into my painted chest.

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Carlotta is a writer and editor living near London. She co-founded and edits Synaesthesia Magazine. She can be found (or will be found) on WhiskeyPaper, Visual Verse, Fifty Word Stories and The Bishop Otter Gallery Anthology. She likes writing stories from photographs or paintings. "I'd Love You as a Woman" was written from a photograph taken by Grayson Perry.