WHISPER — AARON J. HOUSHOLDER

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She said, “It tickles a little.”
            Yes, that’s what she said. Now of course you’ll want to pause there and consider what was said before that sentence and what tickles and what part of her is being tickled. Fine, do that. Try to create some context, and do it quickly, before your mind gets carried away and takes you places that might prove to be dangerously wrong or scandalously right.
            Ask yourself, “Who is ‘she’?” That’ll help. This is a different story if “she” is three years old or twenty-four or seventy-eight.
            And what is “it”? Really, “it” could be anything.
            Is there disappointment in “a little”? As in, it should tickle a lot. Or is there disappointment in “tickles,” because “it” should do more than that, or less, or something different?
            What if the words carry no disappointment? Maybe they’re a statement of fact, an observation. Can they be neutral?
            Are we done now? Good. Now forget all that. What matters most is to whom the words were said, and when. You should have known that. Check this out:
            Maybe it was last night. That adds some urgency, doesn’t it. And maybe those words were said to me. Maybe they were whispered to me. Yeah, that’s the good stuff.
            Now let’s push it a little, just for kicks. Maybe they were whispered last night by someone at the carnival, someone – come on, push it further, blow it up – someone too old to be waiting in that line with all the kids but doing it anyway. Someone waiting to sit on the clown’s lap, say, waiting to make a request for a balloon animal and a birthday surprise. Someone who sat there a few seconds longer than necessary and then whispered those words we’ve been wondering about.
            So as I said: maybe those words were whispered to me.
            And maybe I responded.
            And maybe I’ve tucked my response away somewhere safe.
            And maybe now you should stop wondering about things that don’t concern you.

Photo (C) Jamie Miles 

Photo (C) Jamie Miles 

Aaron J. Housholder teaches writing and literature at Taylor University in Upland, Indiana. His work has appeared or is forthcoming in Relief Journal, Wyvern Lit, Chicago Literati, River Teeth, and elsewhere. You can find him on Twitter @ProfAJH.

THAT THING THAT KILLED RITA HAYWORTH — DYLAN SMEAK

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There's too much turquoise in my apartment for it ever to be attractive again. The blue-tumored stemware, the lizard lamp in the living room, the three-piece candle set I bought myself. All birthday presents. A tradition my dad started doing until he started forgetting things instead. The first gift, though, was from my mother: a faux-Navajo pattern blanket that hangs over my living room couch, tussling with the lizard lamp for notice. She left me in the blanket, wrapped like a womb, and then split the day after I came home from the hospital. My dad, he remembers none of this. I tell him he married Rita Hayworth and left her because the sex was bad. I tell him how they're building condos on Mars, but the weather's too shifty. I tell him to wear pants. I tell him my name. I tell him I could leave and he'd never notice. He nods, smiles.
            Every Sunday I pick him up and bring him to my apartment for freeze-dried Stroganoff. I let him brown the already cooked meat in a skillet over no heat and turn on Hannity in the kitchen while I cut tomatoes. I tell him the story of how, when I was little, he and I would lay on the back porch, looking for constellations that I couldn't find on my own. At 14, I was finding Perseus before he could put on his glasses. "Tell me about Mom" I would ask, adjusting my back on the concrete.
            After dinner, I walk him to the bathroom and turn mute the TV so I can listen for the flush. It comes, so I grab the turquoise blanket to share against the cold winds and we go out to the porch. No matter the weather, we always sit on the porch and I look up and we point out the constellations we can make out through the glow of the street lights. I point out the Big Dipper. I make him point it out, make him say the name. "The Big Dipper," he mumbles "the Big Dipper." Through the stretch of street lamps and legislation-stunted billboards, you can make out the blinking taxiway lights of the airport and if you squint a bit, the runway bleeds into the horizon line.
            We sit on the porch, slack-eyed and wrapped in dyed cotton, both waiting, but for different things.

Dylan Smeak lives in Brooklyn, New York where he is an MFA candidate at The Writer's Foundry. His fiction is forthcoming in New World Writing.

DEEP-SIX — MATT TOMPKINS

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Why else would you have found yourself awake at 3 am, your pupils bathed in bluish glow, perusing (and erasing) search results for how to self-induce a fatal heart attack, if not to spare your busy wife and teenage son the hassles heaped on suicide survivors—endless, dim what-ifs and whys and what-could-I-have-dones—if not to give them (and yourself, post-mortem) all the benefits, the dignities, accruing to a “natural” demise—in light of which they’ll be allowed to feel their shock and sadness unalloyed—their righteous, cleansing anger leveled at the universe (and/or at their respective gods) unsmudged—and spared unhappy, fruitless speculation as to what exactly might have been so awful in your quiet, privileged life that you’d be eager to engage that everlong ejection seat, to jettison your soul and end your days before your stamped expiry date—and plus, the nuisance of insurance claims investigations: best to spare them that as well, if possible, and see that they’re provided for without the contestations, protestations, probate snags and such (and yes, of course, there could be other ways to go—like maybe in an “accident” instead—a certain gawkish, bleak allure; a grim and somber flair—but don’t those single-car collisions, don’t those arcing falls from shaky ladders, don’t those skydive/hang-glide/parasail “mistakes” just always strike you as a little fishy—don’t they leave the faintest whiff of doubt—and so, so much the better if it looks as if your body turned against you, mutinied, because who’d ever will that fate upon himself—who even could—and so, who’d ever even question (question, even for a moment, ever) whether there was any cause to cast suspicion on your tragic, early death?)?

Matt Tompkins lives in upstate New York with his wife, daughter, and cat. His stories are forthcoming in H_NGM_N, Post Road, and a couple of other places. You could read more of Matt's writing, if you feel like it, by visiting his website: needsrevision.com.

SUMMER BREAK 2015

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Last winter we decided to give ourselves a break—we're only human, after all—and with the summer being what it is, so much business abounding, we decided we'll be doing the same thing so we can recharge our batteries and hit the fall running.

We do hope you'll pardon us as CHEAP POP takes an oh-so-quick break from August 1 - September 7 (still summer, believe us), so we can retool, refresh...all that jazz.  Starting then on Tuesday September 8, new stories for the rest of the calendar year (well, until our next mandated winter break, that is).

Thanks, again, to you all for supporting this endeavor. Lots of good stuff coming your way.

Best,
Elizabeth + Rob

THE COLOR OF CALIFORNIA — ALEX NYE

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When she yells at me, I feel as if I am in Wyoming, wasting away in gutless yellow.  My Rand McNally United States map hangs on the wall and I place my girlfriend in salmon-colored-California.  Her lungs fill with insecurities of our relationship before she exhales them on me.  She never raises her voice, but my lack of words give hers more power.  They sail easily through the open passages of the Rocky Mountain’s valleys while mine struggle up their tallest peaks.  When they get close to the top, about to tumble down onto her, my words stall.  They come crashing back to me and shrivel inside.  The elevation of the Rockies, with its thin air, don’t let her words reach me. I can hear them, but cannot process what they mean.  The less I say, the higher the range between us builds.

The color of Illinois is turquoise, but I don’t remember seeing that color during my drives through its southern cornfields and farmlands.  The summer is slipping by and in the days to come she will be studying abroad thousands of miles across the ocean.  On the bottom of maps are scales to measure distance.  One inch can represent hundreds of miles.  Picturing this, the distance doesn’t seem all that bad.  Vienna to Marquette is two palms away, but that’s the worst thing about maps, they often lie. 

Have you ever pondered the scent of another human being, their chemical make-up, their natural odor?  When my girlfriend leaves me in the terminal alone I notice her smell has changed, it is different.  A turbulence reaches my core and disrupts a balance in me.  It turns my insides the color of the Atlantic Ocean, a place few words are written, because even the map can’t describe how I am feeling.

The color of Michigan is burnt orange, and this is believable, like in fall.  The pumpkins get fat and the chlorophyll in leaves are dried out by an autumn pallet.  The smell of spice and pleasantries are all I can imagine.  This was what it was like when I first met her.  I fell in love with her smell.  I wanted her to sweat and not take a shower because her chemicals and my chemicals lined up, and photosynthesis was alive and covered up the true colors of her leaves.  She wore too much perfume when we met, gotten good at masking her natural odor, doing this many times before.  Or maybe I put my senses on hold, losing myself in her bottled scented beauty in order to lose my virginity. 

Desperation isn’t a color on the map, it’s just a lens to see it all through.  When winter came and the snow buried me deeper and it was hard to navigate the icy passages of the Rockies, I lost her scent entirely.  When spring comes and she returns, her smell isn’t the same and my yellow no longer feels gutless.  It’s confident now, courageous, and I am finally ready to end this year long fight.  But what is the color of leaving?  Is it the smoky grey of Canada?  Or is it the color of South Dakota?

An unexpected blue.

Alex Nye is a MA student at Northern Michigan University in the quaint city of Marquette, Michigan, positioned right on the shores of Lake Superior. You can find him on twitter and instagram @alexnyeguy.

SPEED LIMIT — JeFF STUMPO

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When Amber got that ticket in the mail, with its photo of her old Firebird and a $50 fine, she crunched it up like her little brother crushed ants, threw it across the room, and fumed, fumed, fumed. Nobody had been in danger. Hell, she'd been on her way out of town, just shy of where the speed limit made its climb from 55 to 65, when the new camera grabbed her. If it'd been Sheriff White, he would've told her daddy but let her go. If it’d been Jake, just five years older than her and still called her Bamber, he would have let her go and not told her daddy either. But that camera didn't think, didn't know her, not for real, just like the town, the damn town, that tacked beer guts and "good old" on to all the boys sooner or later and made last year's beauty queen into next year's new mama, that rotted from the ground up like Old Man Badger's front teeth, that dragged on Amber like a cigarette, and that's what that camera did, dragged on her, wasn't meant to stop nobody from driving fast into town, was facing out of town, 2 miles past the nearest intersection, just daring her to try and get out faster than it wanted to let her, didn't want to let her out at all, and Amber walked across the room and picked up the piece of paper and uncrumpled it and crumpled it and uncrumpled it again like she was maybe going to make one of those origami birds she never learned how to, and she crumpled it up one last time and threw it back down. Damn that ticket and damn this town. She wasn't going to keep paying, no sir.

JeFF Stumpo owns Wonderland Books & Games in Martin, Tennessee, where he has taught classes for the English and Honors programs at the University of Tennessee branch there. His wife is the smart one. His dogs, until recently, numbered four. His daughter is three going on thirteen. He has a website at www.jeffstumpo.com.

EVERYBODY LOVES THE BOY DETECTIVES — CATHY S. ULRICH

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In this story, we’re amateur detectives. We solve a crime that has baffled the entire police department. We’re heroes, shaking hands with the mayor and getting an honorary key to the city. The key to the city is large enough that we can hold it together, both of our hands clasped round it.

In this story, someone says And I’d have gotten away with it, too, if it wasn’t for you meddling kids.

In this story, there’s an unmasking and a criminal with gnashing teeth.
             How did you figure it out? the reporters ask. They all wear hats with the word press tucked into the brim, and the lady reporter who believed in us all along will smile knowingly.

In this story, you and I wear matching neckties and our shoes are spit-polished. Your parents aren’t divorced, and mine don’t mind my low grades in algebra.
             He’s a genius detective, they say. Who cares about algebra?

In this story, you and I can hold hands all we want, and none of the older kids call us faggots or flush your socks down the toilet.

In this story, your mother doesn’t take you away because she caught us kissing, just once, to see.

In this story, we’re best friends for always. We’re the boy detectives. We’re the heroes. The town holds a ticker tape parade in our honor, and you and I ride on a float, and wave, and wave.

When Cathy S. Ulrich was a little girl, she wanted to be a detective like Sherlock Holmes or Nancy Drew. Or a race car driver.

PERCY'S GRIEF: A FRAGMENT — JAMES DIAZ

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In the part of the room that she crosses there is a change brought to things by only the shift in a state of mind, so small, sudden, that what has been transformed is not really a noticeable artifact. She has often found herself going to the window like this, with no expectations or complicated intent buried beneath her movements, only the dull attenuated physical effect of setting aside a portion of the curtain, and looking out into, what exactly? It is, suddenly, that everything was bothering her, the discomfort that recalling certain memories of the past most often brings with it, an indescribable itch, a bitterness, a steely, stubborn sadness.
            A childhood friend of hers had been found murdered, it had been a home invasion, the details of the whole tragic thing in the paper that lay face up on the counter top, next to her untouched coffee. Jessie, her closest ally since they had first met in middle school, Jessie with the blond hair and look of a girl who never noticed her own beauty, who just walked around all of the time with the simplicity that such things shouldn't matter, at least not in the way that people always thought it should.
            What do you do when you loose someone, not something, an actual person who used to be one of the most important parts of your life. Are you supposed to call up all of the good memories, omit all of the bad ones, and cry over it all until you become hungry or tired? Out in the field that was peppered with a heavy morning frost, she watched as the black birds pecked into the earth, searching for sustenance, and suddenly, she thought to herself that what she wanted most in that moment, was to be just like these birds, to be able to just go out and peck into the earth and find what you need, so simple, so un-awkward, unassuming, without pain.
            What she needed to pull out of the earth was something that is given to none of us in times like these, something that instead requires hard, long, unending work. A sitting and screaming with the pain, a looking out the window, and most of all, a not knowing what to do or how to remember or mourn in all of the right ways. That was the human sustenance, though harder to find, it was all the earth could afford us, and all that we could expect, all that we deserved, perhaps.

James Diaz lives in New York. His poetry has appeared in Pismire, Epigraph, Ditch, Collective Exile, My Favorite Bullet and most recently in The Idiom Mag.