TUESDAY'S QUESTIONS — LUKE WIGET

I remember asking my mother about the puddles in the sky.
            Clouds? she says.
            Yeah, clouds, I say. I knew that they rained and that the rain puddled. I understood that much.
            But what is a cloud? I say.
            Well, a cloud is water before it’s water, she says.
            I don’t understand and she sees my face say so. We both look up. The sky is so simple sometimes. It’s so simple this way, only blue along with these uncut sheets of white. It had rained the day before and all around us are puddles as thin as glass and my feet are still dry. I look up at her, about to ask again how it all worked, when she says, Okay, a cloud is a puddle. I suppose you’re right in a way. A cloud is a kind of puddle before it’s a puddle, she says.
            I told you so, I say.
            So it really was one puddle pouring into another and could the clouds quit and what makes them come and go? And was the moon involved with the clouds as it was with the waves? Or was that after? Was that something I asked after that one Tuesday or Wednesday or whenever it was when she and I talked about the rain for so long? Either way, she understands and says how God would never let the clouds quit. We would be just fine because God waters the world’s crops and people, and the ocean would speak water back to the sky for as long as she and I would be around. But what is it that God drinks? I say, and she just laughs.
            That day there were clouds everywhere in the world and we just happened to be looking at ours, our oblivious clouds. I was only beginning to learn how water worked. I didn’t know then that those closest to death look driest. I couldn’t have understood her lying in bed while we watched M.A.S.H. for the millionth time and she looked as cracked and sad as an old and unused tennis court.

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Luke Wiget is a writer and musician born and raised in Santa Cruz, California, who lives in Brooklyn, New York. His stories have appeared or are forthcoming in decomP, Hobart, SmokeLong Quarterly, Heavy Feather Review, and H.O.W. Journal, among others. Luke is co-curator and host of drDOCTOR (drdoctordrdoctor.com), a reading series and podcast in Brooklyn. Twitter: @godsteethandme.

CHERUB WINGS — PETE STEVENS

This was after my husband told me that he was a cherub, when my fingertips read the shape of angel wings inked on his back. 
            These were still the days of the clove and the spearmint, when the television kept telling us to prepare for war. 
            “Not angel,” he’d said. “They’re cherub wings.” 
            And they were, their size now appearing too slight, the intricate layering of feathers now 
seemingly insignificant. 
            We sat together eating M&M’s one by one. We had them spread on the table like pills. My husband’s fist hit the table, the candied shells dancing in the light. I’d read Adler, knew that the manifestation of physical frustration stemmed from feelings of inadequacy. 
            “My mother always rocked me at night. She’d whisper that I was her precious little cherub.” 
            These were the words he spoke, words that fell like dead birds onto our hardwood floor. 
            My husband wasn’t the type to fix a leaky faucet, his shoulders and spine not strong enough to hoist me up over his head. In heels I’d bend low for a kiss. 
            He held a green M&M, another crunching between his teeth. “Why is it that the green ones are so sexy?” 
            I didn’t respond. I watched the sky flex silver, blue, then pink, like candy sucked long beyond recognition. 
            These were the days of loose thread, the unraveling of string from a spool, when the smallest of cherub wings were unable to lift us from what held us. 

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Pete Stevens is the fiction editor at Squalorly. His most recent stories can be found at Pear Noir! and Blue Earth Review, while forthcoming at BULL. In the fall, he will be starting his MFA in fiction at Minnesota State, Mankato. More at petestevensfiction.wordpress.com.

HOOD ORNAMENT — BENJAMIN WOODARD

As a child, my father lived at a curve in the road and often woke to the grinding of automobiles against maples. He says the death of James Dean had inspired everyone to race. Most of the smashups resulted in bloody noses, bruised ribs: minor injuries. But one bastard hit the trees so hard he sheared his One-Fifty in half. When the police arrived, they discovered his right arm twenty yards from the wreckage, lodged in a wayward passenger’s seat. His hair had shocked itself a faint alabaster. My morbid father snuck out of bed to clip a lock of this hair as a souvenir, and he showed it to me forty years later on the day I received my driver’s license. It was bound by brittle twine and resided in his sock drawer with other valuables. He walked out to our station wagon, looped the twine, and let the hair dangle from the rearview mirror. A safety reminder, he said as he handed over the keys.

Guardrails now silhouette that Maple Hill bend. The trees are protected. Still, last summer, Mrs. Sullivan died there while unloading groceries. Heart attack. The story goes, she lay out of sight on her driveway for two days in the hot sun until the paperboy found her, lobstered and crisp. 

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Benjamin Woodard lives in Connecticut and holds an MFA in writing from Vermont College of Fine Arts. His recent writing has appeared in Vol. 1 Brooklyn, decomP magazinE, and Cleaver Magazine. He is a staff member at Numéro Cinq Magazine and a regular contributor to Publishers Weekly and Rain Taxi Review of Books.

WHITNEY HOUSTON: HOW WILL I KNOW (4:36) — BRIAN OLIU

And that’s the thing: there is no way of knowing, not when there are words that exist beyond words and ways to say everything but. Once, I heard that this world cannot be trusted: that we are lovers in the eyes of a deceptive god, that the prayers on every heartbeat go skyward to someone that laughs them off. And somehow the math gets done—the counting down of percentages, the numbers meaning more than what they are, the concept that this all means something, that when I wake from dreaming all that will be left is the time left before I am told that this is really love. If we are to believe the whispers as something more than the tapping of fingernails on glass—things said before alarms go off in the morning and we part ways, you, still sleeping, me, clumsy in my waking, dry mouthed, hair wet from the expulsion of smoke between the strands, we need to believe that nothing is real but the shaking—the rattle on long afternoons that keeps me wondering.

Once, I dreamed I was a butterfly. Once, I dreamed you here. Once, I dreamed you gone. Once, you dreamed us characters in your favorite show: you, the heroine, me, a small part, a face that could be cut from the credits and never talked about again—a trivial fact, a do you remember. You dream about heart attacks, about blood, about slowing, about stopping.

Later, I will run. My foot will curl outward like tea spilt on the edges of the book by your bed. My breathing will change—the heartbeat will quicken. I will skip the prayers and I will lie to myself: my head in my heart like the blossom of a dying flower closing in on its stem.

It ends with counting: the pulling of limbs from our bodies, the making of a propeller, the making of an umbrella, the making of gods and death and the hope that there is something to be bargained for here: that if I said the right thing I would know, that knowing is something that needs to be known. That what I need to know is if you’ve ever asked yourself this question, if you’ve ever seen these eyes and knew that the answer was yes, that the answer was always yes, that my dream after your dream was me dead and you gone and the reality of if you love me not.

Suddenly you wake up and I wake up and we wake up and here we are, solid and unmistakable, silent as the afternoon.

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Brian Oliu is originally from New Jersey and currently teaches at the University of Alabama. He is the author of So You Know It’s Me, a series of Craigslist Missed Connections, Level End, a chapbook based on videogame boss battles, and Leave Luck to Heaven, a collection of lyric essays about 8-bit Nintendo Games.

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.