COYOTE — RYAN RIDGE

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Night calls the animals to the streets. I’m on the Triumph shifting gears amid my own shiftlessness. At the corner of Mohawk and Reservoir a scrawny coyote sifts through the contents of a trashcan. In the neighborhood newsletter editorials, the coyotes are always portrayed as nuisances. In folklore, coyotes are often depicted as trickster figures—whenever one shows up, watch out: something interesting is about to happen. Sideways is usually the way it goes from there, but that’s better than a straight line. Look at the way cops drive. I’m stopped at a traffic light, watching the coyote lap up leftover beer in the recycling bin. I admire a coyote that drinks. I give my horn a quick tap of approval. The coyote looks at me with its eyes aglow. I look at the coyote. And for a split second we understand all there is to understand; we understand each other. Nothing lasts. The light changes. 

Ryan Ridge is the author of four books, including American Homes (University of Michigan Press, 2014), which was The Michigan Library Publishing Club’s inaugural book club pick. Past work can be found in Fanzine, DIAGRAM, The Collagist, Passages North, The Potomac Review, The Santa Monica Review, Salt Hill, and elsewhere. Ridge lives in Salt Lake City, Utah, and edits the literary magazine Juked. He’s an assistant professor at Weber State University. 

THE WAY SHE LEFT IT — TEREK HOPKINS

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There was cancer in her bones. The doctor said he knew what it was and that they hadn’t found anything that worked for it. He said it would eventually kill her.                 

So I started screaming. And I asked how long. And he said we had a year. “Doing nothing is an acceptable choice,” he said. “This will be harder on you than it will be for Margo.” I looked at her, sitting there on that flower print, plastic covered chair in the corner of the tiny room and I thought about how beautiful she was. All she had was that scar on her forehead. It’s all I could see. There was nothing else. She had told me the story of how she got it, the scar. She snuck through the fence when she was a little girl and tried to pet that dog that she didn’t know and it bit her, right there on her face. It would have made anyone else less beautiful but not her.                                             

I realized that everything up until this moment had been perfect, and that I just hadn’t noticed it until now, because now everything was not perfect. It never would be again. I didn’t know what to do. So we went to the dog shelter. The place where people abandoned all the things they didn’t love anymore. And we sat there, petting them and trying to act like everything wasn’t suddenly different. She loved all the things in this world that no one else would love. We brought home three from the shelter that night. When I touched her hand on the drive back, she didn’t pull away. I squeezed and looked ahead at where the headlights stopped and the darkness began and I squeezed, and I squeezed, until I felt the cancer in her bones lift up through her skin and float out through the crack in the back window that couldn’t roll up all the way, and through the windshield too, and the dogs looked at it leaving the car, floating up and away, and they whimpered and the air from outside stayed where it was, cold and icy, and embraced the sickness as it left her. 

Terek Hopkins is an English teacher in Spain. He studied English and Creative Writing at the University of Oregon. You can find his work at www.terekhopkins.com

GHOST TOWN — LYNSEY MORANDIN

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There’s a city inside me. It sits deep down in my belly wrapped in high pink walls. The people who live there, they all moved in slowly, one-by-one, beginning with just a single person so long ago. Back then it was quiet, peaceful, but now there’s so much movement that it keeps me awake. Now there are so many people I’ve stopped counting, and they’ve built houses and buildings and skyscrapers so tall that they poke into my lungs until it hurts every time I breathe in.

The people inside me, they’ve taken over.

They swim in rivers of bottled water and build swings from spaghetti and kick blueberries around like soccer balls. And they’ve planted trees now too. I felt the roots digging into my abdomen shortly after I accidentally swallowed an apple seed.

I’ve watched them grow up inside me, each and every one of them. I’ve seen children turn into doctors and teachers, neighbors fall in love and have families of their own, little carbon copies with green eyes and curly hair. I can feel the spinning tires of dirt bikes and the vibrating hum of cars stuck in morning traffic. I feel my insides wringing out with warm welcomes and difficult goodbyes.

There’s so much life in this city they’ve built. But still, they sleep with their suitcases packed, ready to leave at a moment’s notice.

It’s dark all the time in their city. I eat starfruit and moon pies every night before I go to sleep to give them a night sky, and I drift off imagining that they’re looking up at the same stars I am. I try to make it as nice in there as I can for them, try to keep it warm and keep them protected. It must be pretty, I think, with the constant bokeh of a speckled night sky.

But it’s not enough for them, the stars and the moon. They pass rumors from house to house about the sun, about something so bright and beautiful that you don’t mind that it hurts your eyes. I press flashlights to my skin and I swallow down sunflower seeds but it does nothing to abate their interest. They don’t know about how cold it is out here, about the rain and the wind and the snow. And they don’t care; they want to see it anyway. They say things like “One day I’ll get out of this town,” and maybe one day they will. And I want them to. I want more than anything for them to be happy.

But not a single one has been able to leave yet.

Lynsey Morandin reads and writes fiction that makes her cry. She drinks too much coffee, is terrified of flying, and is desperate to see the Toronto Maple Leafs win the Stanley Cup in her lifetime. You can find her in Cease, Cows!, Crab Fat, and The Quotable, among others, or at www.lynseymorandin.com.

CARL & JANEY — DAN NIELSEN

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It was summer and hot, but cooler in the basement. Carl could hear the television upstairs. Janey was watching cartoons. Their parents worked. Carl was in charge. He couldn’t be with his friends, or even leave the house, without Janey tagging along.
             A coffee can held a paint brush soaking in blue turpentine. Carl checked it. It seemed clean. He tested it on a wooden support beam. The beam was white, but now there were streaks of blue. Dad would be mad.   
             A box of matches stood atop the water heater. Carl lit one and touched it to the beam. It went “whoosh.” The flame was blue, but a different kind. It moved up into the underfloor. Dust and spider webs shot sparks. Carl went upstairs.
             Janey was watching Mighty Mouse.
             “You should go play outside now, Janey. Ride your bike around the block, or something.”
             “When this is over.”
             Carl turned off the TV. He looked at his watch.
             “I’ll time you. Ready … go!”
             Janey squealed and was out the door and off the porch. Her bike was on its side in the driveway. She righted it, climbed on, and was off, with streamers flying and her thumb working the bell.      
             Carl listened to the bell until he couldn’t hear it anymore. He went to the kitchen. He opened the refrigerator. He chose a can of grape soda and popped the top. He closed the door. A list of Emergency Numbers was attached with a magnet. Carl lifted the wall phone receiver and held it to his ear. He listened to the dial tone and drank soda. When it changed to a busy signal, Carl returned the phone to its holder.
             It was two steps to the basement door. Carl touched it with the palm of his hand. He sniffed for smoke. He went downstairs. The fire had died out on its own, but the wooden support beam had a black scorch mark all up and down one side. Dad would be real mad.
             Carl finished the soda. He placed the can on the cement floor and stomped it flat like he’d seen his father do a billion times with his Pabst Tallboys.   
             Carl went upstairs and turned on the TV. Janey slammed through the screen door and plopped beside him on the couch.
             “Well?”
             Carl checked his watch.
             “New world record.”
             “I am the fastest bike rider!”

Dan Nielsen drinks bourbon and plays ping pong. Old credits include Random House and University of Iowa Press anthologies. Recent work in: Jellyfish Review, Bird’s Thumb, Minor Literature[s], Storm Cellar, Spelk, and Pidgeonholes. Dan has a website: Preponderous and you can follow him @DanNielsenFIVES

INFIDELITY LOVE SUIT — JENNIFER FLISS

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The gabardine is itchy; he wears it like his trimmed beard. He smells of rum and doesn’t always wash and his tongue also smells of rum and sounds like a cat lapping up milk as it licks the intricate curves of my ear, tracing it like a map he knows and doesn’t need.

The infection is presenting itself as a phone call unanswered. I dial back, but get a flower shop. I dial again and get the Chinese restaurant.

His brogues have lost their tread, he may slip at any moment in the slick I’ve left when I emptied myself onto the floor. But he has kicked off the shoes and they lay, one upside down on the eggshell white carpet of our bedroom. 

Take it to the dry cleaners, he instructs while in the shower, steam like ashes on the glass. I collect the thing from the toilet seat. Torn cuticles on my hands catch on the fabric and threaten to unravel it all. But I bite them instead. Don’t do that, he tells me, as if he can see through the glass at the ghost of me. 

Again, the phone rings and I answer. Hello. I hear her breath. Or his. And the clatter of the elevated train is back there too and someone is yelling about Jesus. It is not the he or she yelling about Jesus, of course. But, just as I’m about to be told what will happen to me, in the next coming, when the messiah visits, the line goes dead. 

I throw the suit in the passenger seat and as I back out of the driveway, it slithers to the floor with dried fir needles and tissues. I pull into the dry cleaners, which shares a parking lot with the Chinese restaurant. 24 hour turn-around! A neon sign shouts. Beside the building is a green dumpster. Taller than me. Smells of sardines and banana peels and rain water. I reach up and push the suit over the edge. It doesn’t make a sound on the other side. A section of sleeve dangles above me, half in, half out. A seagull overhead caws. I get into the car and go home.

You took the suit in? he asks later. I did, I say, and I tell him it’ll be ready in 24 hours. 

Jennifer Fliss is a Seattle-based fiction and essay writer. Her work has appeared or is forthcoming with The Washington Post, Narratively, Prairie Schooner, The Citron Review, Necessary Fiction, and elsewhere.

LOCATE THE SOURCE — ASHLEY HUTSON

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Lately I've noticed the house smells. I tell Jake it stinks and he tells me to throw up the windows, and I tell him I can't, the frames are rotted, and he walks into the kitchen where he looks at the near-full garbage can and pops a beer, and I go into the bathroom and burn my hair with the iron while he stands by the door and says that my hair clogs the drain, tells me his beer tastes skunky, asks me why I am such a shithead letting my hair dam up the pipes like that, I am so full of crap and I know it and the longer he talks the more his voice sounds like it's skidding on stagnant rainwater. I bought three air fresheners shaped like Christmas trees, I tell him. So now it's just pine stink, Jake says. Later on he tells me all about outer space and astronauts and how pee floats around in the air up there and also how radiocarbon testing works and the rates of decay, how you can tell the age of something by how slow it's dying, tells me everything he has learned on the Internet during the day and then we watch the television. He laughs at a joke about your mom's thighs looking like old milk. I don't laugh so he gets pissed and starts to grab, grind, mold my skin into the shape of a fist but it doesn't move, and afterward he tells me he spoils me. Then I change the sheets and take out the trash and wipe down the sink and swipe the toilet, but when I wake up the next morning and take a breath I realize that I have done all I can do, I have tried cleaning washing scouring spraying scrubbing bleaching but I don't think I will ever get the smell out of this house.

Ashley Hutson lives in rural Maryland. Her work has appeared in or is forthcoming in several journals, including Fiction International, SmokeLong, McSweeney's, The Conium Review, The Forge, and Threadcount. Read more at www.aahutson.com.

MIND THE PIXIE DUST — KATHRYN MICHAEL McMAHAON

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Out of the box they came, crisp wings in polychromatic plastic, organiskin in blues, greens and purples. Jutting small, impeccably sharp chins. Ears pointed as expected. One for Nora, one for Hannah, one for George Junior. Happy birthday, happy holidays, go and play.
             The pixiebots with their digital voices, GPS, and intelligence programming played hide-and-go-seek, hop scotch, jump rope, pretend. The pixiebots told the children when to go home for dinner, to brush their teeth, and wake up, it’s time for school. Parents held hands and admired their purchases shimmering with good will. “What a great find. This will save us so much hassle.”
             The pixiebots waited in backpacks and helped with homework, music lessons and paper cuts. They said, “Clean your room,” and “Time to share.” They offered fair punishments and fine praise and craft ideas. They conferred with other pixiebots and said, “You can’t watch that, it’s not appropriate.” They read fairytales and gave good night kisses and took temperatures with a light touch on the forehead.
             The pixiebots with their quickcharge batteries and ten or so hours alone every night strayed beyond their programming. The pixiebots slipped out of bedroom windows and converged on rooftops, behind dumpsters, under put-to-bed cars.
             Eyes and wings fluttered as they exchanged binary, comparing test scores and TV times and sugar intakes. The pixiebots with their lightning-fast processors melded thoughts into one mind, one single desire:
             Do what’s best for the children.
             Iridescent wings beat as one, rose up, returned to bedroom windows--their own and others. “Come. Follow me,” they said. “I want to show you something. Thiiiis waayy.”
             Wings caught moonlight, lamplight, nightlights and folded into dreams. Children slid out of homes into the shadows of streets. Thousands of scattered faces, eyes bright in the dark.
             “Where are we going?” asked Nora, then Hannah, then George Junior.
             “Hush, we’re almost there.”
             Out into foothills and forests smattered with farms and factories. Out to one factory, one particular factory begetting opaline wings and opposable thumbs. Pixiebots flew on ahead and concussed the guards, carried them away. Violence was not good for the children.
             In the bowels of the building, the pixiebots whirred whirligigs and conveyor belts. They corralled the children, mindful of bare feet and synthetic dust.
             “Wait your turn,” they said. “You’ll get your wings.”

Kathryn Michael McMahon’s fiction has appeared or is forthcoming in Menacing Hedge, Wyvern Lit, Rose Red Review, Devilfish Review, and A cappella Zoo, among others. She teaches preschool in Vietnam where she lives with her wife and dog. She tweets @katoscope.

BABY NEEDLE — DILARA O'NEIL

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I was in the doctor’s office with all veins blown out from blood tests. My veins are so small and delicate they have to use needles intended for babies, doctor said. They accidentally use these same needles on the man sitting beside me, but it bends before it can even break a vein. “These needles are too small,” the doctor explains to him. “You are an adult with normal sized veins,” not a baby.

When the needle was finally in me, the blood started overflowing in tiny amounts over several hours and my doctor got some on his white coat. Over the three hours I was sitting there, there were little bits of gauze next to me with my blood on them and no one threw them away. They brought me chicken and rice after it was all over and I sat there eating, done with my appointment but still sitting in the office, teething at a chicken bone which I couldn’t stop picturing as anatomy and not food, similar to my bloodless veins, an arm that would not even be appetizing to prey. I spit out a piece of cartilage and walked out the door without saying goodbye. My body, even on the external level, rejects what it needs. Leave me alone it begs me, and cries for help as another vein ruptures and bruises.  

My heart rate was 117 beats per minute and by the time I left it was 66, which has something to do with being nervous on entering a room but looks suspiciously like a symptom of heart failure. I was thinking about this on the subway because my heart beat was fast again and I had three bandaids on my arm like three little open holes in my body from three failed attempts of an infusion. We only have a few openings on our bodies and prefer them filled—mouths for eating, genitals for fucking, ears for music—what if these were voids too.

The next morning they were gone, with only little blue bruises signifying three damaged veins, much like other things.

Dilara O'Neil lives in Brooklyn and is currently pursuing an MA in Liberal Studies at The New School. Her work has appeared in Eleven and a Half and The New School Free Press. She tweets @lamegirl1234.