When we started brainstorming ideas for our summer break, it seemed like such an excellent chance to highlight the talented artists who make up the other half of publication and ask some questions about what goes in to illustrating a Short Story, Long piece. Hope you all enjoy this little peek behind the curtain with some of the artists who make SSL so visually striking, and do such a bang up job of complementing some really lovely and weird stories.

—Jessica Dawn
Assistant Editor, Short Story, Long

We love asking the writers about where their story ideas come from, and you have such a different task in drawing from a story that’s been written and shared with you but I’d love to know how you begin when you’re presented with a story!

Everin Casey (art for “The Writing on the Walls” by Natalie Wolf): My favorite part of reading has always been being able to visualize the world laid out in words before me. It just so happens that I have the ability to recreate what I see in my head to share with others! I start with that first gut-punch mental image, sketch it out, then I reevaluate the details of the writing. For example: if the author spent time describing a person I want to draw I will try to line up that description to my depiction, same with the environment, lighting, or any other details. Then I go in and reevaluate the tone of the writing to see if that can fill in any details I didn’t find the first read such as what they were wearing, or the way they hold themselves. I ask questions like: are they shy? Are they scared? I want to make the reader see what they feel so it’s important to try to capture the emotion. That’s if I’m drawing from a scene. Sometimes I like to draw more basic iconography from the story rather than “scenes” of events. I do this when the story is larger than the scenes and/or the meaning feels more abstract to me. It’s a bit nerve wracking because I never know if what I interpreted will line up with the author’s intent or the “vibe” of the story itself but I think those discrepancies are part of the innate individuality of artistic process be it in words or images.

Matthew Austin (art for “Geminids” by Andrea Cavedo & “War Games” by Jonas Myers): Short stories by their nature have a limited scope in terms of characters, setting, and things that the characters interact with. After finishing a story, I start to think, “what is the crux of this story? What person, place, or thing did the author keep coming back to?” Usually that’s where the conceptual heart of the story lies.

Erin Dorney (art for “The Ecstasy of Marv” by Ross McMeekin & “Whippomorpha” by Jessica Dawn): I have a pretty straightforward approach to this type of commission. I read the story once. Then, I print the story out (on real paper!) and read it again with a marker. I am looking for images and highlighting words–things that pop up over and over again, things that strike me, objects/feelings I perceive could have good tension, visually. At the end, I separate the highlighted words out from the story by writing them as a list in my notebook. I carry that around for a bit, thinking about it. Then I dive into my massive collection of collage books and bins, and start cutting out images and ripping scraps of paper. Sometimes, I have to do a wider search for images — for “Perhaps Even Celebrity Chef Gordon Ramsay Cannot Save My Marriage” by Brandon Forinash, I realized I didn’t have a lot of food books. For that story, I visited the Saranac Lake Free Library and pulled some books from their Collage Collective boxes. There were some great kids cooking books and some of those images made it into the final collages. In general, I do a ton of arranging before I glue anything down at the very last minute. Often, the collages are sitting on my desk unglued for a week or so before I glue, scan, and submit.

Aubrey Hirsch (art for “Cloisters” by Danny Goodman & “Man Next Door” by Jennifer Savran Kelly): I always come to the stories as a reader first, just enjoying being pulled into the world the author has created. When I finish that first read, I make a list of significant objects, images that stayed with me, and moments where the story felt especially emotionally resonant. Usually there are 2-3 things on that list that I’m excited to turn into art!

Nikita Andester (art for “Home is a Relative Term” by Christopher Gonzalez & “National Dish” by Thomas Mixon): My first step is always reading the story for pleasure first. I set myself up without distractions and take it in. Afterwards, I let it marinate for awhile — up to a day — and think: which moments struck me? Which ones could I picture the most vividly? When I’m ready, I re-read the story, taking notes on possible moments to illustrate, then winnow that list down based on my own vision and the relative spacing between each image, so the readers get a balanced experience of the art.

Pancho Muñoz (art for “Dipshits” by Kirsti MacKenzie): I usually read the story and take a few notes. Particularly when a clear image comes to mind as I read. I think I have a bit of a tendency to think about the art I make for these as “scenes.” Which comes with it’s own set of pros and cons. But it makes it easier for me. I try to think about pivotal moments in the story and what those could look like. Especially for the main illustration.

Zoë Petersen (art for “A Love Story Told in Nine Lives” by Anna Vangala Jones): Usually at Short Story, Long Aaron will send over 3 or 4 stories he thinks will be a good fit with my work. I’ll read through them and pick the one that most resonates with me, then I begin the illustration process without communication with the author. I work as a distant collaborator. But, one time I did have the joy of working side by side with the author of one of my projects. I illustrated “Cat Valhalla” by Todd Petersen, my dad. For this project, the work flow was different. We had many conversations about what moments could benefit from artwork and what moments should be left to the writing. It’s important to let the words be in the driver’s seat guiding the readers’ imagination. You don’t always want to reveal the monster. I got to check in with my dad along the way to see if my work was aligned with his vision, and I got to see his surprise or excitement in person when I got it right. This rare workflow was a delight.

We talk a lot about a story surprising the writer being an important element in writing. Did you encounter anything like surprise in your process?

Matthew: I prefer self-imposed constraints when making illustrations for short stories, not just because of the quick turnaround, but because that’s usually when something unexpected happens when I’m sketching out ideas. Reducing forms to their simplest shapes helps tease out deeper meanings.

Erin: Definitely — sometimes I have an idea of the style of the collages I plan to create as I go along, but then a word or image will pop up that’s totally out of line with my imagined plan. And sometimes, that small surprise ends up being one of the big elements of a collage or two. For the story “The Ecstasy of Marv” by Ross McMeekin, I initially thought the art direction would be images of wine, the shape of wine glasses and bottles, fluid/loose... But more than the literal images in the story, I was drawn toward the sacred, supernatural elements, and I think that shows in the final work.

Aubrey: Yes! My drawings always surprise me! Because drawings come through the body, what ends up on the paper is never exactly what I had pictured in my mind. But I’ve learned to embrace that part of the draft and lean into the things that surprise me!

Nikita: As a writer, my characters often shock me – sometimes I’ll laugh out loud when I realize what’s about to happen next in a story! But with visual art, a lot more pre-planning goes into the initial sketches. By the time I sit down to paint the thing, I usually have a pretty firm idea of where I’m headed.

Pancho: I think that I am equally surprised when I manage to “stick the landing” and create an illustration that *feels* close to what I envisioned in my mind, but I am also just as surprised when something different comes out. The color aspect of my illustrations for SSL is usually something that I leave a bit more wiggle room for though. Digital workflows allow me to tweak this aspect more than others and I try to take advantage of that.

Zoë: I love the challenge of working within the world of the story that has been created by the author. It’s my job to consider how I can stay aligned with the voice and mood already present while adding my own perspective. The best illustration is in conversation with its written companion. Rather than restating exactly what is written on the page with a picture, there should be some contrast. When I get started with a project, I read the story looking for moments I can be a collaborating author with my pictures. Can I add something new to what is being said?

Do you have a favorite illustration / collage / element of your pieces?

Everin: My favorite illustration I’ve done so far was for “The Writing on the Walls” by Natalie Wolf. It’s the image where it’s the shadow in the doorway over the scrawled upon wall. It was so fun to make, and the words I wrote on the wall of the image are directly from the story, just spliced up and out of order so that no one could possibly spend time reading them but so that they feel familiar if you choose to look so closely. I wanted to make sure no one spent the time inspecting those words rather than reading the story so I tried to make them hard to read. But it was really fun to do! And I’m a big fan of drawing with moody lighting and high contrast. This story was spooky and that’s a really fun genre to illustrate.

Matthew: The postcard-style designs for “War Games” felt like they went beyond illustrating the story and were a conceptual response to the narrative. I thought it would be ironic to present the violent scenarios as fodder for mid-century postcards welcoming outsiders to a nightmare world.

Erin: I really like the collages I worked on for “Whippomorpha” by Jessica Dawn. I love the blues, the ripped paper, and the texture that came through on some of the scans (like the edges of the water in the first piece). The waves with the clocks was a fun one, too, although pretty fragile to compose.

Aubrey: I still think about the corporate centaur I drew for “Infinite Possibilities Outside the Screen.” That was such a fun one.

Nikita: I loved the opening image I did for “National Dish.” The story was such a mix of wild and earnest, and the surrealist bent of those clown shoes at the edge of the cliff where someone’s falling to their death was both so fun to paint and represented the darker themes I thought underpinned the story.

Pancho: I really like the illustration of the ghost embracing his gf in “Dipshits”. I feel like I really channeled some personal emotions I was going through at the time and I think it feels very candid and tender. In Mexico we have a long tradition of contemplating death and the memories and spirit of those who die. I wonder how much of that background seeped into this piece.

Zoë: For “Girl Meets Bird” by Gemma Kaneko, I drew a feather caught on the surface of a glass of water. There is a meeting of magic and mundane, ordinary life in Kaneko’s writing that is brilliant. I loved the challenge of making artwork to carry on that feeling.

If you could ask the writer of the story you were paired with any question, what would it be?

Everin: Writing is so far away from me. I actually personally dislike the process of writing, save for the occasional poem. The rules of grammar and correct sentence structure evade me and I write exactly like how I speak more often than not. If I could ask a question to any one I’ve illustrated for it would be: how do you not get tangled up in what you want to convey versus what you have to write to actually convey it? It seems to me the idea is so much larger than what the words themselves could ever possibly convey! I suppose that’s the art of it, but I would be interested to know how that process works. Is it like trying to talk about a crazy dream you had? Or is it more like cutting a circle of paper with the scissors in your offhand?

Matthew: So many of the short stories I’ve illustrated are a tiny slice of a much larger world, so I always wonder, when does the writer know when to stop?

Erin: I really need to know more from Ross McMeekin about where that story idea came from. It’s the first short story I’ve read in a while where I just kept gasping and laughing (non derogatory) as things happened.

Nikita: I think I’d ask them both what scenes were most vivid to them — what images were they hoping I’d draw? For “Swans,” did I get those pillows right? And specifically for “National Dish”... how did you personally picture the texture of those clown noses in your mouth?

Pancho: Honestly, and I know this is a big ask, but I would love to ask any of the writers I’ve made illustrations for if they could write something based on my art. Reversing the roles sortof. I think that would be fascinating.

Zoë: I’m curious what moments or interesting phrases the author is holding onto that haven’t found their place in a story yet.

1. Reminder: submissions are open right now, until the end of the month.

2. Not to use this as personal blog or whatever, but I’m doing a very quick little midwest reading “tour” with my buddy Dave Housley. If you’re anywhere near Morgantown, WV, Pittsburgh, PA, or Columbus, OH, I’d really love to meet and see you!

   • JUNE 10 — MORGANTOWN, WV

     Monkey Wrench Books

     with Renee Nicholson and Jake Maynard

   • JUNE 11 — PITTSBURGH, PA

     Stay Gold Books

     in conversation with Jake Maynard

   • JUNE 12 — COLUMBUS, OH

     Two Dollar Radio Headquarters

     with Michael Nye

   

*

As noted in the last few updates, we’re taking the summer “off,” not publishing any new stories (and thus no accompanying interviews with the respective stories’ authors) for June or July. We are going to keep trying to share something every week though (which perhaps negates at least one or two of the benefits of taking a “break”; so it goes1), with a variety of bonus material. In the coming weeks, we’ll have some interviews — with the artists who contribute the art that we pair with the stories; with the authors of the stories we’ve published in the last twelve months, via questions from the SSL submission readers, with the authors of some of our favorite short stories and collections, and maybe more! — as well as some essays or other reflections recommending, raving about, and generally celebrating short stories.

For today, I thought it would be fun to get some peeks behind the curtain from the team who have helped read submissions this last year. For the first year or two, I pretty much read every submission and did everything myself, and in the last year I finally asked for and brought on a small team of volunteers and it’s been a huge help… and also just really fun, widening the scope to a team, even if the “community” of that team has mostly only meant very occasional group emails. Perhaps even more fun and interested than those group emails was getting to read their responses to these handful of questions I threw at them, trying to get into some reflections about reading submissions. (A few answers to the first question mention me, in ways that feel a little awkwardly self-congratulatory to include as part of a post I’ve organized and am overseeing the publication of, and my kneejerk response was to maybe edit them out, but that felt maybe even a little weirder, so I’m leaving them as is. So it goes.)

If you have any follow-up questions — for any of the readers, about anything specific here, or just more generally; or for myself — maybe drop them in the comments, a kind of AMA (?), and if anything interesting comes of it maybe we’ll have a follow-up nearer the end of summer?

Thanks!

—Aaron Burch
Editor, Short Story, Long

Can you describe a little your history with reading and writing? In general, but maybe especially as aimed toward getting you here to reading for Short Story, Long?

Thomas Mixon: The number of books consumed was rewarded, when I was a kid. The summer reading programs meant well, but I grew up in a family of competitors. I thrived on competition. I “read” so many books, and remember so little, by the time school started up again. I’ve been trying to outgrow this mentality, over the years. The internet allows so much writing to be published now — part of my interest in reading for SSL was to see what wasn’t making it online, because the same quality I’ve attempted to extinguish in my too-fast uncomprehending reading, as a child, I’ve also run up against, while writing, as an adult. I’ve found, even with stories that are not close to being fully-formed, I can’t get through them quickly. Even if I can make it through one, in a single sitting, it stays with me.

Tyler McAndrew: I’ve always been a reader, since I was a kid. I went on to be an English major, fiction MFA, etc. My first book came out last year, and for the past 20 years, I’ve been the sort of writer who sits down to the desk every day (though my wife and I had a baby last year, and I’ve been on a major hiatus since then). I teach fiction writing both at the high school and university levels, so my job is mostly to read my students’ work and help them become better writers… I think Aaron has been the guy behind a lot of the internet’s most interesting literary journals of the recent history, and so I’ve always tried to keep up with at least a few of the writers that he’s publishing. As both a reader and writer, my passion has always been for short stories, and working with SSL has been a really satisfying way of enjoying that passion with other people in a way that feels collaborative and communal.

Jim Cuene: I read a ton of fiction when I was in undergrad and grad school but my reading shifted to history and non-fiction during my career years (mgmt consulting / marketing/ biz owner). Fiction — and especially short stories — is what I want to focus on going forward as I restart a writing practice after such a long time away. I am reading widely, from a lot of the more “established” sources. However, I was noticing the consistently great stories coming from Short Story, Long (and then I found HAD and the old Hobart) and I hoped a role as a reader would give me a lot of exposure to talented, passionate writers. And, I wanted to be part of the process that goes into a journal. I’d love to be part of a publishing/book team someday from the editor and publisher side.

Michael Pershan: Is this a good place to say how much I liked Tyler’s collection?2 My reading journey is pretty straightforward, but my writing life is a huge mess. I wrote short stories when I was a kid, then spent a bunch of years getting into humor, guys like Jack Handey, Woody Allen, Steve Martin. As an adult I kept writing short humor and eventually got involved with this awesome print humor magazine, The American Bystander, and for a couple years did editorial work including reading for them. But professionally I’m a math teacher, and I also write about education and teaching. (I wrote a pedagogy book for math teachers back in 2021.) Basically, I’m all over the place, and this is maybe a problem in my life, but the last few years I’ve been mostly focused on fiction. Part of what brought me here is I don’t feel particularly connected to art or literature in my daily life as a teacher. Plus it feels good to be involved with SSL, because Aaron publishes so many of my favorite authors and I think a good story can do so, so much.

Jess Dawn: I’ve loved reading and writing since I was a little kid and started making up weirdo stories about as soon as I figured out that was an option. I did a lot of writing in college and in my 20s, spent some time in journalism in particular, but then life happened and I sort of let it go, or only wrote in weird bursts to share with friends for a laugh. I got back into it during the pandemic because I was only working part-time and I can’t bake bread for shit, and the first creative writing I’d had published since maybe high school was in HAD. I feel like there’s a HAD to SSL pipeline, or at least a lot of familiar names and community that’s grown up around the two. When Aaron said he was looking for readers I volunteered pretty quick because SSL is just stellar, but also because I wanted to be part of the publication process beyond the submission / acceptance / rejection cycle. I love and appreciate that I found my way back to writing and there’s a part of me that’s afraid that I’ll lose it again, especially working in a job that has absolutely nothing to do with reading or writing fiction. Writing and submitting can feel like lonely work sometimes, and helping out with SSL has been a great reminder that we’re all in this vulnerable place together.

How might you describe reading for SSL for these last 6 months?

Jess: I have had a great time reading. My day job is in a non-profit vet clinic, so VERY far away from the lit world. It has been an absolute joy to come home, change out of scrubs, and read stories that people have been brave enough to not only write but send out into the world. It makes me feel more connected to other writers, which is so gratifying, and I love being able to have an inside view of what goes into publishing some cool ass stories. Reading is like playing story roulette, too, when I open up my queue I don’t know if I’ll have horror, surrealism, something with sci fi hints, a wildly emotional breakup story, or some combo of all of those things. It’s wild seeing the range we get.

Christine Gainer: Reading for SSL has been eye-opening. Some stories have left me in awe, wondering where the authors have come up with their ideas (looking at you, Joe Baumann, with your protagonist’s inner organs floating outside his body!) or astounded by their lyrical prose. But most of the stories I’ve read make me question whether the author has ever read SSL before submitting. There are beautiful, honest stories out there, but they aren’t a fit for this publication. I feel badly about voting them down and hope the authors are submitting to more appropriate journals where their words can find a home.

Thomas: Going off Christine’s comment, I do wonder if we, should we feel inclined, provide the name of another journal or two, for writers whose work we enjoy but don’t think is right for SSL?3 Is this presumptuous? I often wonder about whether a rejection should end at a simple no thanks, or if there are other ways of helping writers who we think would be interested in such advice… I think it’s hard to know where people are coming from, when they send work in… have they been reading SSL for years? Tone in one’s own writing is hard enough to capture, let alone reading for tone in a journal across all published pieces. I’ve read some lit mags for years, and think I understand what they’re about, only to have my pieces passed up, so this question of “fit” is eternally fascinating to me.

Jim: The last few months of reading have been so much fun. I’ve loved it, even when it was hard, boring, or frustrating. Mainly, I’ve been profoundly inspired by all the folks that have the urgent need to get their stories out there, to tell the world something important or to simply entertain the reader. I’ve been amazed at the ideas I’m seeing, and fascinated by how not-great some of the submissions are. Mainly, though, its made me feel less isolated as a new/baby writer who is struggling with the foundational stuff while aspiring to find an audience someday. There are so many others like me banging away out there, one word at a time, trying to find their readers.

Tyler: I do sometimes get disheartened by the fact that I vote down the vast majority of submissions that I read. To be honest, I sometimes get really bored or frustrated when I hit a streak of submissions4 that don’t do anything for me! In the few months that I’ve been reading, I think I’ve only voted “yes” on one story. But there’s something valuable in all of that frustration, I think. It keeps me honest. It’s like a daily process of confronting my ideals as both a reader and writer. It’s also always a nice reminder of my own struggles when I’m submitting work: I have a couple stories that racked up 100+ submissions before finding the right home. There’s something humbling about both sides of the process.

Do you think reading submissions has had any effect on your own writing, and/or the way you think about your own writing? If so, how so?

Michael: I don’t think it has, not yet, but after this last reading period I am officially paranoid about backstory. Right now I’m feeling crushed by the end of the teaching year, but in a week or two I’m going to start opening up old documents to get them in shape for resubmission, and I am terrified that I’m going to find blocks of backstory that show up in the second paragraph and continue for a page or two before drifting back to the initial action. I hereby declare on the internet, where everybody can see, that I will try very hard to fix this, to keep action moving, to make sure the gravity of a story is inescapable before looking back.

Tyler: I’ve read for other journals in the past, and I know the common wisdom is that reading for journals is one of the best things you can do for your own writing… I honestly don’t know if reading submissions has ever really had much effect on my own writing! When I’m reading subs, I often am usually attracted to work that is patient and sure of itself and doesn’t feel like it’s trying too hard to wow me with any sort of pyrotechnics (i.e., cheap hooks, overwhelming voicey-ness, humor that feels too easy or obvious). So I guess reading subs often makes me feel more sure of myself in trying to keep my writerly compass aimed toward those things.

Jess: I actually think it has changed the way I think about writing, and also about editing my own work! Paraphrasing a thing Aaron has said repeatedly, I think it’s become so, so clear that surprise really can push a story into greatness and I find I not only give myself more permission to chase down these weird little side thoughts that pop up, but also see them as more the point. That’s the stuff that can really only come from us, right? The little daydreamy bits. Reading submissions has really helped me appreciate how magical those moments are. They’re so hard to describe but so recognizable when reading, and it’s fun to be surprised by these little moments! It’s cheesy but if anything, I feel like I have a lot more fun while writing by leaving a lot of room for this kind of spontaneity.

Jim: The reading has had a significant, immediate impact on my writing. Specifically, it’s helped me stay centered on my main job as a writer: Entertain and engage the reader, hopefully so they look at things differently. It’s kind of obvious, but easy for newish writers to forget. Otherwise, it’s helped me to develop better critical reading and analysis skills. And, that's translated into me being better at editing my own work. Previously, most of my reading has been mainstream books, well known journals and stories that were anthologized as award winners. They helped me see what “great” can look like. But, reading for a journal I can see how a lot of stories that aren’t quite ready (yet) miss the mark: Too much “voice”, gimmicky plots, flat characters, cliches, scenes not stories. Then, I can go back and read my own work and see where I’m doing the same things. Meanwhile, I get a mini-MFA as I see how beautifully other writers do the good stuff: restraint, voice, lyrical prose, pacing, deft use of details, surprising revelations. They’re showing me the techniques that I can learn from.

Andrew Huffman: Genuinely, I think it is humbling to see the depth of creativity that is out there, even in stories that ultimately are a “no” or aren’t quite there yet. It helps me remember to get out of my comfort zone and try something new. On a specific craft level, often as I am reading for SSL I will begin to see what is or isn’t working in the story and start to make connections to a piece of my own I’ve been struggling with and I pause to take notes for my own revisions.

What about reading submissions has surprised you?

Thomas: The variation, and elusiveness, of voice. I’ve found myself stumbling on the very first page, trying to read aloud to make grammatical sense, on about half of submissions. This is certainly in part due to my own limitations, figuring out how to get out of my own rhythms, and give myself over to the arrangement of unfamiliar dangling clauses. But I also think there’s something many writers are reaching for, and maybe I just default to calling it voice, that liminal space between clarity, cohesiveness, and evocation. And it makes sense, to reach for it. But so often that reaching turns me off in its obviousness. Esp. at the start of a story — readers are in space, we have no idea what’s happening, we resist being overly-grounded, but we don’t want to skyrocket into the void. Maybe it’s all solved by providing a fun kind of floating, pleasantly just above solid Earth.

Jess: I mentioned this a bit in another answer but I am floored by the variety in submissions. Not all of them are a good fit or seem like the author is familiar with SSL, but it’s wild to read a really genre-y true crime submission and then switch to a quiet story about a couple breaking up. I read a comic that was submitted today! The variety I see in voice and style is just incredible stuff, it’s such a concrete illustration that two people could probably have the same idea and write entirely different stories. I loved reading SSL in the first place because of how distinctive the published stories are, and yet I’m still constantly surprised by what I read in the queue. Also, I’m surprised how much some of the stories have stuck with me. There are two stories that we didn’t actually end up accepting that I think about all the time (Aaron, I don’t know if you want to get this behind the scenes5 but one is “Basking in Glory” by Daniel Miller). As someone who’s also writing and submitting, that’s been a weirdly comforting thing, that a story doesn’t have to be accepted to be remembered.

Any observations on what makes a story feel like a “no,” (in general, but maybe especially something you hadn’t thought about before reading so many submissions)? Any takeaways on what makes a story especially pop and stand out (and above) the rest?

Michael: I never exactly judged a story for ending with “END,” or “THE END” — that would be a weird reason to vote “no,” right? — but, as it happens, I haven’t liked any stories that ended like that. Why end with “END”? On account of there not being any more words, it’s usually clear when a story’s over. Maybe it’s a writerly celebration, like spiking a football or popping champagne: I finished this thing! Hell yeah! (If so, yeah, I get it.) Enough stories ended this way that I wondered if I was the weird one for thinking it was weird. Is “THE END” more common in other genres? Maybe it simply points to writers who aren’t reading stories in magazines or collections, because published stories almost never end like that.

Tyler: I mentioned this above that I often find myself rejecting work that feels like it’s trying too hard to wow me with what I think of as pyrotechnics: cheap hooks, overwhelming voicey-ness, humor that feels too easy or obvious. Which isn’t to say that stories shouldn’t have hooks or be voicey or funny. But a lot of stories assume that they can sustain your attention with those things alone. Often, these are stories that are crammed with drugs or sex or cynical narrators who drop a dozen swear words just to describe someone drinking a cup of coffee. I think those sorts of pyrotechnics are usually masking shortcomings in other more difficult areas: emotional depth, imagery, narrative structure… A lot of “no” votes also come from work that feels like the writer never really surprised themselves in any way—they had an idea and they executed that idea and there was never any mystery or discovery in the process… The stories that grab my attention are usually ones that are a little bit more patient in their storytelling. This doesn’t mean they’re slowly paced. Rather, it’s that they don’t take stylistic shortcuts—they do the work to draw their characters and develop their stakes. One of my old teachers always used to describe workshop stories that weren’t totally there yet by saying they hadn’t yet “touched bottom” (as in diving and touching the bottom of the pool). A lot of stories are good, but whether they’ve touched bottom—that is, whether they’ve found whatever depth they’re after—is often the determining factor for me.

Christine: My “no” votes are usually due to the story not aligning with SSL, but I’m also turned off by authors who submit work riddled with typos and grammatical errors. The former editor in me wants to stop reading as soon as I stumble upon something sloppy, but I try to be fair and continue reading if the story manages to grab my interest. The stories that make me stand up and say yes have clear, thoughtful prose and surprising story twists. There are pieces that I immediately want to read through a second time, because they were either so brilliant or because a second read helps me better understand the story. Those usually turn into yes votes.

Thomas: I don’t think I’ve ever voted yes on a piece where the first half is boring, but then gets interesting toward the end. BUT I do think a piece that starts off strong, and goes in the wrong direction, can be saved. This probably speaks to my attention span, which I’m working on, but I identify with writers who come into a narrative on fire, and then burn out, or weirdly like light a random birthday cake, and turn into something else, asking for an unwise wish. That initial spark, maybe it can’t be rekindled, but its most attractive arc, I think, can become evident over time.

Jim: I’m drawn to stories that are a little weird (in a good way) but also pay off, emotionally. I have learned, after reading a lot of stories, that I’m drawn to stories that move pretty fast. I’m a sucker for bold and confident first person (or plural/ collective) narrators. A lot of the “no” votes are because I don’t feel they’d fit in next to the great string of stories that have already been published. The main reasons tend to be voice, or genre/style (i.e. historical fiction, highly speculative, fantasy or mystery). I tend to vote down stories where the main characters don’t evolve or change by the end. Or, where the outcome is pretty obvious from the beginning.

Jess: Something that really sours me on a story is when it feels like the writer doesn’t actually know much about what they’re writing. A lot of times it’s on an emotional level, like reactions feeling disingenuous or forced, but sometimes it’s missing the mark on pop culture references. I remember getting some harsh but very good writing feedback when I was young to the tune of “if you don’t know anything about living a specific experience what do you think you could contribute by writing about it,” and while I don’t think that’s universally true it does knock around in my head while I read. If I get that “I don’t believe this” feeling it’s pretty much an instant pass from me.

Andrew: As others have mentioned, looking for a fit for SSL is a big one, but the other is that I’ve really come to see as I’ve been reading for the past six months is that the length of a longer short story makes it quite technically difficult to hit the right pace. For me, a “no” tends to come when the pace is a mismatch, which usually means no or not enough change has happened, or too much. On the flip side, a “yes” almost always pulls me in because the pace, whether slow or fast, feels deliberate and crafty, like it’s tricking me into getting lost in it. Maybe my answer is: they feel fun to read, even the tougher content.

• Submissions are open now, for all June!

• As mentioned last week, we’re taking June and July “off” from our regular publishing of a biweekly short story. During that break, we will be featuring various bonus material… including today’s interview between two Short Story, Long authors!

Read Chloe’s and Anna’s stories we’ve previously published:

Thanks!

—Aaron Burch
Editor, Short Story, Long

Conversation Between Chloe N. Clark and Anna Vangala Jones About Every Galaxy a Circle

Chloe N. Clark’s Every Galaxy A Circle is a heartfelt and wondrous journey that takes us to space and the depths of the ocean while exploring the human mind through memory, ghosts, speculative leaps in technology, and dreams. Her writing crosses the boundaries of genre in a way that feels completely natural and necessary to each of the beautiful stories in this collection. I got the chance to have an illuminating conversation with her about her process and approach to her characters and their relationships to each other as well as to the vast unknown. I hope you will enjoy reading her book as much as I did. — AVJ

Anna Vangala Jones: As someone who never tires of exploring the themes of memory and loss and the role of technology in how we navigate these givens of being alive in my own fiction, I was excited to read your collection, especially the stories touching upon those questions. I love reading stories, poems, and books and watching TV shows and movies that try to grapple with this enduring subject of retaining or removing beautiful memories turned painful after separation or death. What struck me about your stories like “All of Your Others” and “Bring Out Your Dead, We’ve Been Waiting to Talk to Them” is how they still managed to be so original, fresh, lovely, heartbreaking, and human. How do you go about balancing the inventive and speculative with characters and relationships that feel real, singular, and meaningful?

Chloe N. Clark: First, I also love when art integrates memory and its place in our lives. I think, in a lot of ways, memory is where we spend most of our lives so it’s a deeply important subject as well. For me, I always start with an image when I write and I think that forms a bedrock for characters and relationships. Why is this image important? What does it say about the people in it or thinking of it? I’ve been called “high concept” by a few people and I really take that as a compliment--I like creating imagined tech and futures. But I also think that for me high concept also refers to characters. I need to have something that the concept is grounded in or it doesn’t feel tangible. And, for me, that balance really comes down to trying to understand my characters as deeply as I can. Why does this tech or speculative element mean something to them? I think asking that question early in my process of writing is really important to me.

AVJ: Can we talk more about your writing process? I love this idea of the characters being as important to the development of the story idea as the imagined tech and futures. Are there any exercises outside of what makes it to the page that help you get to know and understand your characters more deeply or intimately? Or do you discover them through the telling of their stories?

CNC: I don’t necessarily do exercises, though there will be a lot of extra writing that doesn’t make it into the final story. I like writing flashbacks or dreams for characters and often those either won’t make it in full to the story or will be cut completely. In addition, there are a few key things I like to always know about a character going into the story. The first is: what do they do for their livelihood? We spend so much of our time bound to jobs that I think that’s an important element of a character. The second is: who do they love? If I know the people and animals that make up a character’s soul then I think I have a good grasp of who they are on a fundamental level.

AVJ: I agree that the speculative and fantasy elements in your stories teach us something about your specific characters but I think they also speak to the world we live in now. Do you set out for your fiction to impart some kind of wisdom or statement on current events and the ongoing human condition or are they more meant to raise meaningful questions for the reader to explore?

CNC: Oof, I feel like this is a hard question to answer in a meaningful way. I don’t think I set out to make a statement about current events, but I also find it hard not to make a statement. In that, so much of our lives are absolutely subsumed by all of the noise of the world—for example, if I’m horrified by technology that promises to “end grief” then, of course, it’s going to filter into my imagination. Do I think all art needs to have a message? Probably not. Do I think all good work does make a statement or make a reader (viewer/player/listener) think about the world in some way? Absolutely, yes.

AVJ: I enjoy the unique blend of nostalgia and looking forward in your stories—do ghosts and dreams act as a way in to illuminate the reality of the present?

CNC: I do think nostalgia can illuminate the present. It can also illuminate what we want to avoid thinking about as well. The things we’re nostalgic about are often so rose-colored in our eyes because we’re not thinking about the issues that were happening around them. Any point in history that you look back on fondly had something horrific happening. Conversely, forward-looking is equally important because that’s where we find warnings and what not to do’s and it’s also where we find hope. Our realities are all just dreams and ghosts, and how they measure out for us ends up determining where we take our next steps.

AVJ: Like you said, anything promising to “end grief” is disturbing—grief is inherent to being alive and loving and losing and all of it. So much of your writing captures this beautifully like the story “Stone Fruit”; that image of Shelley waiting in the diner will stay with me. Do you think there is a part of Shelley that hopes her sister won’t walk through the door because her absence keeps some hope alive? How would the dead being able to visit alter grief or the concept of missing someone if they’re never really gone?

CNC: Oh, absolutely, I think there is a part of Shelley hoping that. I think if the dead were able to visit, it would ultimately reshape the ways we grieve. A visit isn’t a life together, so there’s still an absence but I think it also allows you to stay stagnant within your grief too. It’s a suspension without the chance of healing. I do think there is a big distinction though between if it was the actual dead/ a ghost visiting someone and a tech version of that!

AVJ: Oh yes, an enormous difference. I meant you captured the immense intensity of grief so well and how it gets complicated by these moments with the dead that are still a form of absence. Could you talk a bit more about this idea of it being “a suspension without healing”? I love how you put that.

CNC: I think that any time we aren’t facing the truth of something, it holds us in a kind of stasis. Obviously, every experience of grief is different, but I do think there’s importance in approaching things.

AVJ: There is such a dreamlike quality to stories like “The Rushing Waves” that travel deep into the ocean and the many stories that take us to space. What is it that draws you to the vast unknown of these places in your fiction?

CNC: On a purely selfish writer level, I love space and the ocean. Even as a child, I found myself deeply entranced by imagery of those two things. I think the idea of something being unexplored is so deeply hopeful? Like we have this chance to discover so much more and, even beyond discovery, it’s nice to think that there are things we can’t possibly know. And it’s also, conversely, terrifying because of what might be out there. I want my stories about space or the ocean to hold those two feelings at the same time.

AVJ: The stories in this collection refuse to fit neatly into just one box according to genre or theme but they all complement and challenge each other in wonderful ways. What do you see as being the threads that tie these tales together?

CNC: I’m very careful with how I construct collections, so one of the first things I consider is some kind of thematic thread that holds pieces together. In this collection, memory and community were essential ideas. What do our memories give us and what do they keep us from? How do the people around us shape how we act and who we become?

AVJ: We talked about your writing process as it relates to generating these ideas, images, and characters and the questions you want raised or answered by a story, but I’m curious now how you go about crafting the endings of these beautiful meditations on memory and community. How do you envision endings of short stories functioning maybe versus in a longer work and how do you know when you’ve landed on the right closing moment or image or question to leave the reader pondering?

CNC: I wish I had a thoughtful answer to this! In honesty, I am very much a “I know the ending when I see it” writer. For me, endings rely on some kind of change (whether that’s for the character or for the reader). I have definitely written stories past where they should have ended because I thought they needed some more closure—and every single time, I’ve erased that extra bit of ending in edits because it feels like it doesn’t need to exist. To paraphrase Gandalf “An ending is never late, nor is it early, it arrives precisely when it means to.”

AVJ: You said that you are very careful and intentional when building a collection and I think that very much comes across to the reader in Every Galaxy a Circle. Could you speak to the order of the stories and how you arrived at this particular set and how they’re presented?

CNC: So, all three of my collections were written over the same period of years (give or take a year or two). In each one, I thought about the themes that were meaningful to the collection and the “cinematic arc” of the collection (what emotional beats are being hit, where does this collection need to rise and fall, etc). Then I’d select stories from the ones I’d written that fit this. For Every Galaxy a Circle, I think I had about 40 stories to start that I was considering and then really spent time narrowing that down to the ones that ended up in the collection. Once I had the stories, then I worked on ordering them. This is really just me rereading and rereading and rereading to find where they connected. It’s like a puzzle where I know what it should eventually look like and it’s a question of fitting in the pieces right. There should be a sense, when reading the collection from start to finish, of momentum and of continuation (repeated images, things that seem to be recalling a memory of another story, etc).

Now, originally, there was one more story in the collection. However, my amazing editor, Juan Martinez, thought the ending was stronger without it. And he was completely right. The story served as an epilogue of sorts and I think the collection now ends where it actually needs to.

AVJ: Thanks so much for this conversation. Is there anything I didn’t ask here that you’d love for readers to know about this collection or you as a writer?

CNC: There is a secret recipe for every one of the stories in this book and if I ever have time I will write these up and post them somewhere.

Anna Vangala Jones is the author of the short story collection Turmeric & Sugar (Thirty West, 2021). Her writing has appeared in Wigleaf, Short Story Long, Craft Literary, Berkeley Fiction Review, Rejection Letters, Terrazzo, XRAY, and The Bulb Region, among others. Her stories have been selected for Longform Fiction’s Best of 2018, the Wigleaf Top 50 longlist, and nominated for the Pushcart Prize and other award anthologies. Find her online at annavangalajones.com.

Chloe N. Clark is the author of Collective Gravities, Escaping the Body, and more. Her most recent book is Every Galaxy a Circle.

That said… not totally off-off. We have our now annual update of journal “stats”; submissions will be opening next week; and, throughout the rest of summer, we’ll have some interviews with our authors as well as the artists we’ve worked with this last year, some thoughts from our readers reflecting on reading submissions, and a bunch of other fun bonus material celebrating short stories.

And so, some of those updates…

*

Submissions!

Submissions will be open all June (meaning they’ll open… Monday!).

*

Stats:

I don’t know if people find this stuff interesting or not, but I always enjoy transparent peeks behind the curtain, and so I’ve been sharing updates on SSL “by the numbers.” The last couple of years, that looked like this:

The 2025-2026 Short Story, Long stats:

• 20 stories published (2 solicited)

• $4900 paid to contributors

  • $2200 ($100 each to 11 writers & artists in 2025)

  • $2700 ($150 each to 9 writers & artists in 2026)

• 970 submissions (379 in September ’25, 591 in January ’26)

  • 11 acceptances (6 from Sept. ’25 call, 5 from Jan. ’26)

  • 58 withdrawals (25 from Sept. ’25 call, 33 from Jan. ’26)

    • (assuming mostly accepted elsewhere? if so: congrats!)

• 3304 Substack subscribers, 91 paid

  • $5082 “gross annualized revenue” (per Substack)

A few notes:

• 20 stories is, to my mind, the perfect number for the year. As noted last year,

  A story every other week would be 26 stories in 52 weeks, but then take a month or two off. I think shooting for an even 20 in a calendar feels even more right. Something I’ve been brainstorming is publishing a limited run print anthology of those (20) stories. A kind of Best American Short Story, Long Short Stories. Make that a gift for subscribers. I’ve been in some kind of informal talks about the logistics of figuring that out. I wonder if people would be into that?

• If those money numbers are right ($5082 gross, $4900 paid out), Short Story, Long more or less broke even this year? Which is the goal! Doing this stats check-in last year made me notice that there’d been enough of an uptick in paid submissions that the site was making a little money, and so we increased contributor (writer & artist) payment from $100 to $150. It feels good — in general, but maybe especially in 2026! — to pay artists!

• The acceptance rate numbers probably look… disheartening? 11 acceptances for 970 submissions is barely more than 1%. Oof! A couple thoughts on that:

  • I really only accept stories that I love. We receive a lot of submissions that are really strong, but don’t quite feel like a match for us, or just fall into that admittedly frustrating and mysterious zone of “I really, really like this, and can’t put my finger on why not, but I don’t quite love it.” A lot of these have been accepted and published in many of our favorite journals, and it has been exciting seeing them find their perfect homes!

  • I think that 1% acceptance rate is at least a little misleading. The January call got >50% more submissions than the call before it, and yet one less acceptance. That is, of course, always a little random, but I think the spike in submissions represents a growing awareness of the journal, but I also think being a paying market (and increasing that pay this year) means being mentioned in a lot of writer “resources,” which, it turns out, puts you on the radar of a lot of writers who are enticed by the payment but don’t have much familiarity with the journal… or even lit journals at all? I couldn’t begin to estimate the percentage, but a lot of these submissions are just not even close to the kinds of stories or writing we publish.
    
    

This year felt like a real success, in numerous ways. As mentioned above, the goal was to be able to pay writers and artists, and to hopefully break even doing so, and we reached that goal enough to even be able to increase payment. I’ve never said as much out loud, because I didn’t want to jinx it and also because outside validation shouldn’t ever really be a “goal,” you can’t control that, but I’d be lying if I didn’t confess that something of a dream was to get a Short Story, Long story into a “best of” anthology, and this year, Amy Stuber’s “Swans” was selected to be included in the coming Best American Mystery & Suspense 2026! And, finally, this year the journal grew and I want to end with a thank you to all of you for reading and sharing stories, and especially to the growing SSL team — Jessica Dawn, Christine Gainer, L. Andrew Huffman, Tyler McAndrew, Thomas Mixon, and Michael Pershan.

Thank you!
-Aaron Burch
Editor, Short Story, Long

Here’s the last two:

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As has also become our annual tradition, we’re going to take the next two months (June and July) off from publishing new stories (and their accompanying interviews). It helps keep us a little more fresh and excited about everything, reading submissions through rested eyes, only having to accept the stories we really most fall in love with, being able to give our most devoted time and energies to those stories we so fall in love with.

That said, we’re not totally taking the months off. We’re going to keep posting every Tuesday, only for these next couple of months, it’ll be all “bonus material”! We’re going to publish some interviews between our published authors, and some features with the artists we work with to commission original art for every published story, and some reflections on submission reading, and hopefully some other behind-the-scenes material and fun and interesting ways to celebrate writers and artists and short stories.

*

Finally, a note:

Submissions will re-open in June!

If you have a 3k-8k word story that you think might be a fit, we’d love to read it! If you’re in the middle of working on one that feels like something we might love, try to finish it in the coming weeks! If you have friends who write longer fiction and are wondering which journals they should know about, tell them about us!

(If you have a story still under consideration, you should be hearing back very, very soon (before June).)

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As always, thank you everyone!
—Aaron Burch
Editor, Short Story, Long

If you haven’t already, read the story now… then read our short interview about the story:

Jessica Dawn: We typically start by asking about how the story came to be, so! What can you tell us about the genesis of this story, where did it come from?

Ross McMeekin: The opening scene shows rain cascading down a steep hill, overflowing the gutters, then flooding the basement of a gentleman’s home. This is drawn directly from two family members who live on a similar hill in Seattle; the same thing happened to them when a storm got really nasty. I felt the urge to write about it, so I started a story and it went sideways from there.

I was really drawn in by the simple and delightfully weird idea of finding a big cave full of wine under your house, and how Ruben just sort of takes this discovery in stride. Near the end of the story you mention that Ruben still has his exercise room over the wine cave, like he hasn't really adjusted his physical day-to-day around this discovery. How did the wine cave come to be as you were writing, and did this evolve over time or was it one of those fully-formed ideas that just sort of drops in your lap?

Read more

—Jessica Dawn
Assistant Editor, Short Story, Long

“The Ecstasy of Marv”

The old, ocean-blue, Cape Cod-style house in decline—a property passed down to somewhat lonely, semi-retired periodontist Ruben Cole from his rumor of an aunt—stood near the bottom of a steep hill descending to a saltwater bay, and when Seattle was blessed with precipitation, the rainwater cascaded down the long, twisting street past the house, gathering mass, pouring a bit of itself into each gutter like how a showy bartender might line up coupe glasses and fill them all with champagne (without stopping the pour). But during rare, fitful, complete-and-utter downpours like this one, when the clouds bulged like Ruben’s belly over the top of his belt, the rain gathered such speed as to hop the gutters to find new routes. One of those routes was over the edge of the Cape Cod’s sloped driveway and down the steps toward the house.

At the bottom of the steps, the rainwater bottlenecked and streamed toward the basement window-well, which filled like a waiting-room aquarium. When the well was three-quarters full, the window cracked and broke altogether, and the water poured down the wallpapered walls into the exercise room, which was fit with a stationary bike, barbells, weighted vests, and so on. More and more water poured in from the street, and the carpet soaked it up like moss would a spring shower. Finally, the rain tapered and the waters returned to their regular course, and the house cat sniffed the soaked carpet but wouldn’t set foot on it.

It was then that Ruben arrived home from physical therapy.

~

Tearing up the wet carpeting was a pain in the ass. He went through four Exacto-knife blades and left the remnants of the carpeting piled haphazardly beneath the raised deck out back. But when he pulled up the final pad, Ruben was surprised to not find the same cold gray foundation concrete as the rest of the room. Instead, he found a perfectly round, five-feet-in-diameter plug of wood, fit tight and flush with the concrete. Its color was tan like Ruben’s hair, but not uniform—it looked a little like particle board. He touched the circle and found it was indeed some kind of wood, but there was the slightest cushy give to it, and its texture was like cork.

On a whim, he went upstairs for his corkscrew and came back down and tried screwing it into the wood. The material was easily pierced, and the corkscrew soon became embedded. He tried yanking and pulling it up, but he couldn’t make any headway, and didn’t want to force the issue and potentially throw out his back.

Partly inspired by having the same name, Ruben’s childhood hobby was making Rube Goldberg machines, in which a series of physical chain reactions allowed a small metal ball to coast and hop down fantastical courses toward a satisfying finish. Building these machines and watching the strange logic of their execution gave Ruben the feeling of pleasure—this was important, because he rarely felt any significant emotions at all, other than the aforementioned loneliness and now, as an adult, the occasional guilty thrill at the pain he caused his patients when doing their dental work.

As his childhood moved from his twenties and thirties and on to his forties and fifties, Ruben’s skills at making these machines developed, and he was able to build more extravagant Goldbergs, in large part because he’d begun exploring metalworking. So now, with the question of the floor cork before him, he decided to use his metalworking skills to fashion a giant corkscrew so he might unplug the hole.

~

It took one week to build and outfit the giant corkscrew. He brought it downstairs and began the slow, difficult process of twisting it into the cork. Once he was satisfied with the degree to which it was embedded, he used a hydraulic jack to slowly lift the lever, pulling the cork out inch by inch. Finally, it popped, and the room was filled with a tart scent.

A flashlight revealed that the hole gave way to a chamber filled with some kind of inky liquid. A twenty-five-foot tape measure couldn’t find the bottom of the chamber, so he used a five-ounce mooching weight borrowed from a neighbor’s salmon fishing gear and attached it to a roll of twine and lowered it in. He found that the chamber was just short of fifty feet deep, and who knew how wide.

He removed the mooching weight from the twine and attached small plastic bucket partly filled with weights removed from an exercise vest. He sunk it beneath the surface and pulled it back up. To his surprise, the liquid looked and smelled like wine. Afraid to taste it, he sent a vial to a friend’s sister, who worked as a chemist, for analysis. It was indeed wine, fit for consumption, Syrah to be exact, and though its vintage couldn’t be determined with complete accuracy, the chemist hazarded a guess that it was at least twenty-five years old, which meant the chamber had been filled when his rumor of an aunt lived there, in the fiftieth-or-so year of her life—when she was roughly Ruben’s age. There was an anomaly, though, the chemist said. The test revealed slightly elevated levels of calcium in the wine, which was peculiar, but benign in terms of drinkability.

Ruben drank his first glass that night, alone. It was smoky, full-bodied, peppery on the palate, but went down smooth. He wasn’t a wine enthusiast, but he drank a half a bottle of middle-shelf merlot with his once-a-week red meat dinner, so he could immediately tell its quality was higher than any he’d tasted before. There was something different in the taste, something he’d never noticed in any other glass he’d drunk. He couldn’t quite place it. The only word he could find to describe it was mournful—if mournful meant joy because one had loved but sadness because the loved one was gone. In the days following, he would close his eyes as he drank it, taking deep breaths and feeling the bittersweet tears form in his eyes, which he wiped every so often with a paper towel.

He thought it over and decided not to tell anyone, because he had no reason to, and having a fifty-foot-deep cavern in the foundation of the house might cause it to be condemned. Plus, he didn’t want the attention the mystery would bring. Furthermore, there wasn’t enough wine to sustain a business selling it, so he decided to simply enjoy it himself in moderation, giving the occasional unlabeled bottle to friends and family, telling them a non-existent college roommate—who wished to remain anonymous so as not to be pestered with requests—made it as a hobby and gave Ruben a case or two every year as a kindness for letting him cheat on his physics homework all those years ago.

Ruben began the task of fashioning the various mechanisms needed to remove and prepare the wine.

Six years before, when Ruben was contacted with the news of his inheritance of the Cape Cod house, the lawyer understood nothing more than what the probate documents provided: essentially, the outcome of his rumor-of-an-aunt’s decision but not the reasons for it. Ruben had only met Florence twice, both times in his childhood. The first detail he could remember was at a family reunion, when Florence—chin-length black hair, flat affect, drab sundress, worn Asics—had asked Ruben his favorite popsicle flavor, and he’d answered grape, and the answer seemed to really, really delight her. Then, the second time, when he went to use her bathroom, he sneaked into the den and saw a framed 1930s comic of a Rube Goldberg machine with an exact replica below. He’d picked up the ball, placed it at the top, and watched it go down, over and over, until he felt a nudge to his shoulder. He turned to find Florence squinting at him and tapping on her thin lips.

“For some reason you remind me of Goldberg,” she said. “I don’t know why…maybe it’s your aura.” She reached out her cold hand and held his jaw and turned his head from side to side. “Or no, maybe it’s your chin.” She then ushered him out of the den, and after that, they never spoke or saw each other again.

Florence was sister to Ruben’s father, Fred, but the two were never close. She was twelve years Fred’s junior, so they didn’t develop the rapport that siblings closer in age often do. To boot—his father Fred said over the phone from Sacramento, his voice breathy from years smoking menthols—Florence was mousey and evasive and tough to get to know. Furthermore, she was more than a bit of a luddite, so contact between her and Fred was sparse to begin with and sparser as they aged. However, Fred did know that she was an atheist, deeply interested in farming, an able mechanic, and that she’d spent most of her adult life in a small, isolated farming community east of the Cascade mountains, surrounded by the rolling grasslands of the Palouse—but that was about it.

It took Ruben very little effort to track down her second husband, Gabriel Diaz, who’d run Florence’s farming operations for many years, and whose Facebook profile revealed he played bass guitar in a classic rock cover band and wore dull red cowboy boots. He’d retired across the state border in Lewiston, ID, and lived in spacious rambler with an abundance of lawn ornaments, which he posted pictures of next to silly captions.

Gabriel couldn’t shed much light on the situation, either. He said Florence had never talked about Ruben, and that, like Ruben, he’d only discovered the existence of the Cape Cod house after she’d died. But nothing about her surprised him, Gabriel said. She was cagey and she was weird—in a positive way—but still. He could have found out she’d been sister to the King of England and he wouldn’t have flinched. Florence didn’t share Gabriel’s need to, as she would have put it, bare her soul to the world. She would rather just do what she wanted and not be bothered.

Ruben did learn from Gabriel that along with her wheat, Florence had a small vineyard, and that winemaking was her real passion. Her vineyard produced offbeat varietals, most of which she couldn’t sell—after all, this was before the wine craze that flooded the forgotten heartland of the Pacific Northwest—so instead she bottled it herself. Gabriel hadn’t been to the vineyard in over a decade; it was managed by a collective, and he simply deposited the income checks every six months and signed tax papers when necessary.

Any news of the current whereabouts of Florence’s first husband, Bruce Quimby, was nonexistent. Gabriel had met Florence ten years after she and Bruce had separated, and—no surprise, considering Florence’s displeasure in talking about anything not related to plants—all she’d shared about Bruce was that he was a religious fanatic who one day got it in his head that his calling in life was to find his way to Tibet and climb Mount Everest solo, after which he would return, garner a following, and start a new religious movement based on the vision he assumed he’d experience at the peak. So, one day, Bruce left without notice, and she never heard from him again. When asked whether Bruce’s departure had caused her grief, Gabriel said it was impossible to know for sure. Maybe, maybe not.

There the search ended. Ruben wasn’t satisfied, but neither did he want to take it any further, especially to Tibet. His life had other concerns. The house was his, as was the wine, and that was enough.

Ruben bought a prefab, climate-controlled shed to store the cases of wine he planned to fill, and spent a somewhat contented, hobby-filled month building the last of the necessary instruments to bottle the wine. On a cool, crisp, winter Saturday, after finishing the preparations, he embarked upon the task of siphoning the entire chamber, filling and corking each bottle, and storing them. It took him a full week to complete the task. When the siphon began coughing—chamber emptied—and the last of the bottles was corked and stored, all that was left to do was close up the chamber and re-carpet the exercise room. But he wanted to try to see the nature of the chamber before sealing it shut.

To do this, he fashioned a fifty-foot-long collapsible steel rod with a power adapter and fastened them to his iPhone and a small, LED flood light. He lowered the contraption and found that, below the opening, the chamber broadened to ten feet square. The walls were oak-paneled and dyed dark by the wine. But as his contraption sunk toward the bottom, he noticed there was some kind of object resting below, upon what looked like a black sediment. As the iPhone drew closer, it revealed a rib cage and then a skull, stained purple, glossy in the glare of the flood light.

~

There was the question of how Ruben should respond to this discovery:

Should he call the police and potentially solve a crime of a missing person? Was he morally and legally obligated to do so?

Should he dredge up the bones himself and bury them?

Should he buy more grapes and begin fermenting more wine, using, for lack of a better term, the same recipe?

Should he just seal it up and try not to think about his new, well, roommate?

And so on. In the end, regardless of the cause of the skeleton being at the bottom of the chamber, his desire to live a peaceful, semi-retired life won out. Going public with the discovery would cause a hullabaloo unlike any seen before, and Ruben would be at the center. A possible murder in a hidden wine chamber below a house? His life would be taken over by it all, he’d have to move, and reporters, filmmakers, and the law would come calling, maybe for the rest of his life. Plus, he figured, the body had been in there twenty-five years, and whatever family it belonged to had probably long since given up finding this person—to cause them to rehash old sorrows and be thrust into a heinous, fantastical murder investigation would be cruel. And don’t forget, there was still the possibility that the person had died well before being thrown into the chamber; the skeleton could be a ten-thousand-year-old Cro Magnon for all Ruben knew. Did he really want his home to become an archaeological site?

He spent two years drinking the perfect wine in moderation, tracking his remaining bottles on a spreadsheet, and sharing it here and there with friends and family, as was the original plan. Whenever he drank it, he thought of the skeleton, and even when not drinking it, he sometimes thought of the skeleton, but he discovered that it didn’t bother him as much as he thought it would, both when tasting the wine and when donning a weighted vest and working out in the exercise room above the chamber.

For all intents and purposes, Ruben was an atheist, though he respected religious people, and in some cases was attracted to them, more so than to people with a viewpoint resembling his own. In his mind, they had an illogical passion, which deep down he wished to have himself. So, when he met Marvin Garvey-Chen in the cereal-and-granola-bar aisle at the Albertson’s near his home, and they began flirting with each other, it didn’t bother him when, later that night, they made out in Marv’s Volvo, which had an array of religious symbols hanging above them from the rearview mirror.

Marv was indeed a very religious person—he went to various services throughout the week, prayed a lot on his own, gave much of his spending money to the poor, and spent most of his vacation time in Tijuana building houses for people who needed them. More importantly, he was the most attractive man Ruben had ever seen: his skin was pale as tissue paper, he only wore white, and with his crow-black eyes, hair, and goatee, one could imagine him playing the part of a wizard in a fantasy movie.

Their relationship grew quickly, in part because Marv’s apartment had burned down, an unsolved arson that Ruben didn’t commit but nonetheless was grateful for because it allowed him to casually invite Marv to stay with him at the Cape Cod until he found a new place. In the interim, they discovered their relationship living together to be stable and satisfactory. The Cape Cod could comfortably house a family of six, so there was plenty of room. They got into a rhythm: breakfast together—work—dinner together (sometimes)— romantic interludes (sometimes)—bedtime. It was a wonderful change for Ruben, but he could tell that Marv still had his eyes out for something more, because he occasionally made remarks that Ruben’s outlook on life lacked depth, and—though Marv never said it—their lovemaking was well short of euphoric. So, though initially Ruben felt it best not to share his skeleton wine with Marv—so as not to have to answer any uncomfortable questions—on a red-meat Friday, Ruben gave in and took out a bottle to share, if only to see if it might lead them both to a deeper connection.

While Ruben was used to Marv discussing matters of spirituality after he’d had a couple glasses of mediocre merlot, the skeleton wine seemed to open an ecstatic doorway to his soul. He paced, preaching love to Ruben, and knelt before him to pray, tears in his eyes, voice shaky, with insight and gentleness that astounded Ruben. Then, after the last dregs of the bottle had been finished, Marv entered some kind of trance and begin speaking in rapid-fire mishmash of prophecy and adoration toward all beings, spiritual and otherwise. The evening ended with sweat-drenched sex of a tenderness and ferocity that neither Ruben nor Marv had ever experienced before—it was nothing short of transcendent, and that night of the first skeleton bottle, they slept in the same bed, curled around each other for the first time like clasped hands.

Ruben was in love, and being in love, for Ruben, meant he felt things like yearning and saw patterns that he’d never seen before. There might, just might, be something larger at work, something pulling people together, something that meant for Marv and him to meet at Albertson’s. During his daily walks around the neighborhood, he stopped to chat with neighbors and praise their flower beds. He left large tips whenever he went out for coffee or food and wrote friendly notes for the servers on his receipts. He put Marv’s water glasses in the freezer so that when he was thirsty, they would be ice cold. When drilling into someone’s teeth, he no longer felt a cruel joy, only a satisfaction for ultimately bringing about better health. He rehearsed versions of wedding proposals to Marv and made blueprints of tiny metalwork Rube Goldbergs he could fashion for table decorations at their reception—only instead of metal balls they’d use mints, because the guests would need them, because their wedding reception would be so romantic that every single guest would end the night making out with a stranger.

Months passed. They talked of marriage, but Marv didn’t feel the need to formalize what couldn’t be conceptualized; their relationship was beyond understanding, so to give it a matrimonial definition shared by so many who loved far less was an affront to the nature of true love itself. This frustrated Ruben, and he even suffered bouts of pure sadness, but he didn’t argue the point, over fear that doing so would push Marv away and cause him to seek someone else’s arms. Feeding this fear was the uptick of Marv’s charisma and enthusiasm, which had led him to lead late night vigils around the city. On most nights, Marv would still drink the skeleton wine with Ruben, and they would still make love, but instead of immediately falling asleep together like they used to, Marv would drive downtown or to adjacent neighborhoods and walk the streets, finding outcasts to pray for, giving out money and hope to the poor souls who needed it. Ruben never went with Marv because he was never asked. He had no choice but to accept it as being a part of the overall delightful package that was Marv, who now described his calling as to be not just a lover to Ruben, but an offering of love to the entire world.

~

While they drank one bottle—no more—of the skeleton wine every night, soon Ruben began to fear that when the wine ran out, their passionate relationship might disappear as well. His spreadsheet showed that the stores would last three years at the current rate of consumption. What would happen if they no longer had the skeleton wine to fuel their relationship? Would Marv grow restless and leave? And what about himself? Would he return to being that somewhat lonely, somewhat retired, somewhat everything man?

He made the calculations of how many grapes he would need, then called Gabriel Diaz, asking if he might buy some of the Syrah grapes from Florence’s vineyard. Gabriel said no prob—he’d even give Ruben a family discount. Ruben made plans to rent a cargo truck and drive east of the mountains to pick up the grapes after harvest that fall. In the meantime, using his metalworking skills, he would fashion the equipment to crush and press the grapes in the garage and then and transport it to the cavern. No rush. He had until fall.

~

Though Marv sometimes asked, Ruben never told him about what was in the prefab storage unit, nor about the true origins of the wine, the cavern, and the skeleton, nor his plan to make another batch. Sure, Marv probably suspected the storage unit held the wine, but Ruben didn’t engage. He didn’t want to complicate things unnecessarily, and Marv was not a man who responded to life with simplicity—even less so now that he had his nightly skeleton wine. Marv’s eccentricity seemed to grow by the day, and it wouldn’t be out of character for Marv to call the cavern a miracle and tell the whole world about it, effectively bringing an end to what was left of their quiet life together.

In the end, Ruben didn’t have to tell him of his plans, because Marv informed him of his own plans to travel south for six weeks, for what he called a mission, driving from city to city through Oregon and California, spreading the news about the universe, all its blessed inhabitants, and the gentle hand that held it all. His absence would be all but unbearable to Ruben, but it would give him time to craft the wine in secret.

It took nearly the full six weeks to process the juice and siphon it into the aging chamber below the exercise room. As the last drops fell in, he received a phone call from Marv, who had just arrived back in town, three days early. Marv asked Ruben to meet him at upscale Olafsson’s on the Pier downtown for lunch. I have something very important to tell you, Marv said. Ruben couldn’t help but thinking this might be the moment he’d been waiting for: Marv had realized while away so long that he couldn’t live without Ruben, and he’d bought a ring and wanted to propose over a fancy meal. They never went out for food—why the sudden change? Ruben tried to temper his hopes, but still felt anticipatory joy. He donned his best suit and drove downtown.

~

At Olafsson’s, the host led Ruben to a table overlooking the calm salt waters of Elliot Bay, but something was wrong. There was a younger man—sharp jaw, brown-spotted beginnings of a beard, ratty faux-vintage Rolling Stones t-shirt—he was gorgeous—sitting at the table with Marv, who wore his typical white polo, trousers, and shoes. The young man wasn’t sitting across from Marv, he was sitting next to him, close, closer than any friend would sit. Both stood up when Ruben approached, and they shook hands. Ruben made sure his handshake was firmer than the young man’s.

“Ruben, my love, this is Peter.” Marv put his hand on the young man’s shoulder and gave it a squeeze—you could see the young man’s t-shirt bunch as he did it. “But his new name is Wharf because that is where we found each other in San Francisco. Wharf, this is my roommate, Ruben.”

Roommate. “Hi…I…”

“Something wonderful has happened,” Marv interrupted, gesturing for them to sit down. “A miracle.”

The miracle was this: during the mission down the coast, Marv had found Wharf, who had been sleeping on couches after a series of unavoidable mishaps and a resulting fentanyl addiction that wouldn’t quit. On a hunch—a holy intuition, Marv said—he’d shared the wine he’d brought along with him, and Wharf’s cravings had stopped completely. What’s more, the two of them had fallen in love—a different, more insistent love than he had with Ruben, but no more profound because of it.

“Ruben, my love, I want to invite Wharf into our fold,” Marv said. “He can come live with us at the Cape Cod, and the wine will keep him off drugs.” He reached over and held both Wharf and Ruben’s hands. “Here, you guys hold hands, too.”

Marv did so, reluctant but obedient. He looked at Wharf and felt the urge to drill into his teeth and gums.

“There,” Marv said. “Can you feel it? Can you feel the energy? We can learn what it means to love each other as a trio. Maybe there will be more believers to add as the days go on. This is the will of the all-powerful—we shall expand, just like the universe. I know I wasn’t supposed to share the wine, but Ruben, we can reach people like Wharf. Who knows how many of the lost shall be found? We know this. We’ve known it all along. We can heal the world with it!”

Ruben looked at them both and, like a screw piercing cork, it occurred to him that the skeleton in the chamber could be none other than Bruce Quimby, religious fanatic, drowned by his wife Florence all those years ago. The trip to Tibet was a ruse—plausible, but nearly impossible to confirm or deny. Ruben nodded and spoke, “I see…it’s what’s meant to happen.” He thought of Rube Goldberg machines, and how the ball inevitably at some point comes to rest until another soul lifts it back to the top to start again. “I have something important to show you when you get home. You’ll have to see it to believe it.”

A few hours later, Ruben lay sprawled on the floor of the exercise room in the downstairs of the Cape Cod, sweating, having just finished pulling up the carpet again. A bottle of the skeleton wine lay empty near the elliptical. He wept, feeling crushed, like the grapes from the vineyard, and empty, like their skins left behind to be thrown into the compost. Wharf, who’d gone to visit a friend on Cap Hill before coming to the Cape Cod, might succumb to fentanyl without more of the wine, but in the end, it didn’t matter enough to Ruben to change what he’d planned.

The door squeaked open above him, then, after a moment, thumped shut. “Ruben?” asked the voice of Marv. “Where are you, my love?”

Ruben rose from his knees, wiped his eyes, and called out, “Come down to the exercise room. I have something to show you.” He lifted a weighted vest from a hanger on the wall. Above, footsteps creaked. In his mind Ruben could see Marv ducking beneath the low ceiling, graceful and austere, then making his way down the stairs. As he was descending, Marv said, “Wharf said that he so, so appreciated…” But then, there in the doorway, Marv—dressed in all white, face glowing like an ice-winter moon—stopped short. He looked around at the bare foundation floors, empty of carpeting, and the large corkscrew and hydraulic jack. Then, near the middle of the room, was the five-feet-in-diameter plug resting halfway in the hole. “What is this, love?”

“You’ll never believe it. Here, take this and put it on backward.” He held out the vest. “Trust me. It will all make sense here in a minute. Our next journey together awaits.”

Marv took the vest in his hand and laughed. “Your workout vest? Why, my love…”

“I had a vision at Olafsson’s,” Ruben interrupted, “like the one you had with Wharf. I finally know what’s meant to happen. You are a gift to me, and will be so until the end of my days.”

Marv pulled on the vest backward and Ruben zipped it up from behind.

“There,” Ruben said. “Perfect. Now go, pull back that cork. Take a look.”

Marv did so, rolling the cork aside. The juice rested inside, as still as a mournful pond. “What is this?” He leaned over the cavern to look then took a deep breath.

STORY:
Ross McMeekin is author of the novel Pepperleaf (Thirty West), as well as a recent story collection, Below the Falls (Thirty West, 2024). His short fiction has appeared in publications such as Virginia Quarterly Review, Vol.1 Brooklyn, Shenandoah, and Redivider. He’s a recipient of writing fellowships from Hugo House and Jack Straw Cultural Center in Seattle.

*

ART:
Erin Dorney is the author of Yes I Am Human I Know You Were Wondering (Autofocus).

Next Tuesday, we’ll feature a bonus interview with Ross about this story.

If you haven’t already, read the story now… then read our short interview about the story:

Jessica Dawn: We usually start by asking about where the idea for this story came from, and you've already given us a hint in that this story was inspired by some real moments from your youth. Can you tell us a bit about the journey from those memories to this story?

Andrea Cavedo: This story was initially inspired by two real-life experiences. A few years ago, I was driving home to visit my parents in Wisconsin before Christmas. It was dark, the kids were asleep in the backseat, we were on a two-lane country highway maybe 20 miles out from my hometown (right in the middle of the state, so kind of in the middle of nowhere) and I saw a huge blue-green meteor. I know it was real, because my husband caught a glimpse of it too. I have seen many falling stars, but never anything quite like this one. And then up ahead, the road was closed — very unusual, a big temporary flashing sign and detour on even smaller county roads. In doing some Googling later that night about the road closure, I read that that night was the peak of the Geminids meteor shower, which I assume the meteor was part of, and which shook loose an older memory. When I was in high school, I really did watch this same winter meteor shower with a group of friends way out in the country. The guy who hosted had a hot tub, though I have a stronger memory of sitting in sleeping bags on the deck and staring up at the sky. I started working on this story after that trip back to my hometown, and the characters and narrative emerged in the writing. Maisie’s arc also owes a great debt to my being a hapless teenage horndog.

What an experience! Have you ever chased down more information about that specific blue-green meteor or does it feel better to leave a little mystery to it? I love that it brought back that older memory, too, and the way both experiences were pulled into this story. Aaron has this idea that I’ve really gotten attached to that surprise is an important element in a good story, specifically the writer being surprised by places the story goes while writing. Were there instances while writing that brought up specific memories like the genesis you told us about, or places the story took unexpected turns while writing?

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Of course, adolescence also comes with an awful lot of awkwardness and disappointment. I’ll let you go on that journey with the hapless and occasionally oblivious Maisie, let you enjoy your own little connections to a past you may appreciate without wanting to live again.

—Jessica Dawn
Assistant Editor, Short Story, Long

“Geminids”

She told her parents where she’s going, of course she did. She is a good girl, so the way she told them was by asking them permission, rather than coming out with it directly. She saw her mother’s face go quite still and her father’s hands work against his placemat. He flattened his palms, then tented them together, then half-folded, half-pointed his fingers, then tented them again. Here is the church, here is the steeple, here is the church. The doors do not open. The people remain hidden.

“It’s a meteor shower, the big winter meteor shower. You know we can never see the stars well here in town. There isn’t as much light pollution where Blake—where Blake’s family lives, so the view is better,” she said.

She is good at making persuasive arguments, or so her English teachers have always claimed. She is regularly praised in red ink for her authority and maturity. She used that authority as a mask of confidence with her parents, since she herself only heard of these meteors, these Geminids, that very afternoon during lunch over the cafeteria’s molded plastic trays, the rotini with marinara and hot rolls with a palette knife-smear of butter the lunch ladies assume you want, even if you don’t ask for it. Even if you are trying to finally shed your puppy fat, as her grandmother calls it, before senior year. Some people ask for two rolls, and sometimes the ladies give out two without being asked, especially to well-known student athletes, like Blake.

“My homework is already done,” she added, hazarding a glance at her mother.

Through a sigh, her mother said slowly, “Be back by nine.”

She forked another bite of lean, flavorless chicken and then boldly said, “Well, the peak of the shower is closer to ten-thirty. And curfew for minors is actually eleven, so…”

“Fine,” her father said and she had to steel herself from snapping her head up to check his face as he said it, from tipping the hand of her excitement. “Eleven.”

She carefully, astutely, did not mention Blake’s hot tub at any point in this conversation.

Charles picked her up from her own driveway twenty minutes ago, that’s how far into the cornfields Blake’s house is located. The snow here is powdered glitter, pristinely white, so cold it has crystallized into the sparkling air. It squeaks like styrofoam under her boots when she steps out of Charles’s dusty sedan. The night is sharp, knife-edged, and she is shivering with the awareness that she has never been to this house before, that Blake is not even a friend of hers, not really—she was just in the right place at the right time for this invitation.

Blake’s house is grand but austere, an old farmhouse that rears up like a brick-and-shingle butte on the snowy plain. She sees it has a satellite dish and a wraparound porch, and while she cannot see it yet, she knows somewhere there is also the hot tub, which Blake calls a spa bath. The only other thing she knows about the house is that somewhere within it is a nude photograph of Blake’s mother. She doesn’t know anyone who has actually seen this photo, but everyone knows it is there. She doesn’t know what it might do to a person to grow up with a nude photograph of their mother in their house.

Charles does not ring the bell or even knock. He just lets himself in through the front door with the same proprietary ease he has in the yearbook room. And just as she does there, she follows him like a shadow. The house is bright and warm, and even before she slips her boots off onto the mat, she finds herself searching the walls for the photograph, her heart clanging. Instead, she sees large, dark-hued paintings of familiar landscapes. Empty fields studded with poplar stands and winter wheat—the same kind they passed in the car.

Charles calls down the hallway, “We’re here!” So loud, she thinks, should they be so loud? But his voice is absorbed into the whitewashed plaster and dark-stained trim, the ornate rugs covering the floors, the enormous leather sofa next to—she has to look twice—a stuffed porcupine. Blake’s parents are doctors. Her father is also a doctor, they are all colleagues at the large clinic that makes their otherwise rural town noteworthy. But she wonders now what kind of people Blake’s parents are.

Blake bounds into the entryway in a cloud of aftershave and toothpaste smells. He allegedly has younger brothers to go with those doctor parents, but any other family members who might be home remain invisible as he pulls them swiftly down the hall, into his bedroom.

Blake is delighted to see them. Charles, of course, because they are good friends. Lanky and studious in his threadbare, shrunken sweaters, Charles is the editor of the yearbook, and Blake works on the sports pages. She covers clubs—that’s how she knows Blake. Charles and Blake know each other differently, more deeply. She’s not sure how. They speak to each other in a ratatat shorthand of movie quotes and in-jokes that she loves to listen to, loves to absorb when they are all working in the yearbook room together during fifth period, but it is a language she cannot really understand, like how she felt when she covered the Latin club’s dramatic scenes for an article. Charles and Blake are a nation of two, while she is at best a distant ally.

Blake is tall and broad, a two-season athlete. He has dark eyelashes and a mouth that smiles more on one side than the other, and he once bumped into her in the doorway to the yearbook room and had to put his hands on her arms to steady her, and she has never quite forgotten the pressure of his fingers against her biceps, his thumbs brushing the ticklish undersides of her arms. He has the dark, liquid eyes of a deer. When she watches him talk to Charles, when she stares at his lopsided lips, she sometimes feels possessed by an urge to press her face against his, to feel his eyelashes whisper against her cheeks, to match her breaths to his. And now, here she is, sitting on his bed, in his half-darkened bedroom, and she can see that his sheets are navy and dark green plaid, and his laundry is overflowing from a tall-sided linen basket, and he is glad to see her too.

A hulking desktop computer dominates one side of his room—a luxury she feels she can’t even fully take in, and she doesn’t want to stare. A blocky, winged toaster bounces around its screen until Blake pulls up an article on CD-ROM about the meteor shower. As he and Charles debate the right moment to go outside, the acceptable ratio of falling stars to degrees below zero, her attention wanders shyly over the walls, where Blake has tacked up movie posters, woven scarves for what she thinks might be a soccer team from another country, black and white photographs of friends. Charles is in several, always in close-up, always looking away from the camera. She feels like she is not only sitting inside Blake’s room, but within some code of his thoughts, or feelings. She’s never thought of his feelings before.

“Do your parents know I’m here?” she asks, staring at the closed door, straining to hear any signs of life beyond it.

“Yes,” Blake snorts. “My mom insisted on it. Three’s a good crowd, she said.”

His mom? His nude mother wants her here? She feels a little dizzy.

“You have your suit?” he asks her.

She runs a thumb under one strap, pulling the swimsuit out from the collar of her sweater so he can see the black lycra before it snaps back into place.

“Same,” Charles says, without demonstrating.

“Well, well,” Blake says, and does something with his eyebrows that nearly levitates her right off his bed. “Let’s go, then.”

She wonders if this is just a typical Thursday night for Blake. There is a canvas tote full of towels and blankets next to the sliding patio doors, ready for the deck and tub beyond. Maybe this family is just deeply at ease in their own collective skin? Maybe they all take a spa bath every night, shocking themselves with alternating heat and cold to build character in some sort of ritual celebration of their Scandinavian heritage? Maybe Blake’s are the kind of parents who are loose and free and buy their son a Playboy subscription to encourage his budding sensuality? She’s heard of such things. She sees a metal flask glinting within the tote. She isn’t sure if she should notice it, and doesn’t want to get too excited about what it might contain, so she pretends she doesn’t see it at all. She just shivers in her swimsuit at the crack in the sliding patio doors, blocking the cold from going into the house with the front of her body, absorbing the warmth from the family room with her back, as Blake and Charles pull the thick foam cover off the hot tub. They are momentarily lost behind a wall of steam.

They lower themselves gingerly into the water. She watches the air freezing into a misty aura around their bodies as the hot water seethes over their toes, their calves, their torsos, the soft thumbprint of Charles’s belly button, the tight rosette of Blake’s, wreathed with dark, brambly hair. When she darts out of the house to join them, they have disappeared up to their shoulders. The water slops around her stocky body as she tucks herself into it. Her skin pinks and prunes under the roiling surface as her hair slowly freezes above it. Charles and Blake seem utterly at ease leaning against the sides of the tub, bodies buoyed by the water and jets, knees knocking gently into each other, and her, from time to time. Her muscles loosen slowly, almost imperceptibly as they sit, but she cannot relax.

She studies their bodies shimmering under the water. They look like porpoises. Like heat mirages. In the shifting upward flow of the bubbles, they are by turns sleek and sexless as children, and then chiseled as if from quartz, all shining planes. She can’t stare too much or they’ll notice, though they are watching the meteor shower overhead, not her, which gives her more leeway to watch them. She longs for them. She burns for them. She is here with them, amazingly, so close to them, separated by just a few thin layers of synthetic fabric. She wants so badly for them—either of them, both of them, she is not picky!—to notice anything about her beyond her keen copyediting abilities. She regularly indulges in involved, lengthy fantasies about them—often Blake, but sometimes Charles, sometimes both of them at once—kissing her, undressing her, running a hand down her naked body and whispering against her neck. She embroiders these details over and over in her mind: what she might wear, where this illicit touching might take place, what their fingertips and lips and throats might feel like against her own. But she cannot quite imagine what might happen beyond that moment of first contact. Surely they would know what to do, would be better at touching her than she is at touching herself? Whatever they wanted to do to her, she knows she would submit to it.

She has tried so hard, this year. Carefully explained the haircut she wanted to the stylists at the only salon in town; taken the full-length mirror from the upstairs hallway and installed it (with permission) on the back of her bedroom door so as to practice flouncing and pouting in the privacy of her room. But these boys never seem to see what she wants them to see. And yet, here she is. Here is the miracle of this night in the spa bath. Her body is illuminated by the lights embedded in the tub, glowing in a color palette she associates with swimming pools and spring break, and she also feels herself glowing. She is floating like an egg, and some core of excitement deep under her belly is round and taut and full of gold.

The sky is so full of stars. Not the marquee twinkles she can sometimes see from her bedroom window at night, the Big Dipper, Orion. This is a spray with depth and variation. There is no moon, and beyond the deck the lawn and then the fields stretch into a pale void, not white, but not dark either. The first shooting stars are like needles briefly laid against the blackness of the sky. Once they start, they keep falling and falling, hours of stars. They are impossible to count—almost impossible to see. They seem more obvious, more solid somehow, when she isn’t looking directly at them. Charles says this has something to do with the cells of the eye, rods and cones, and then she cannot stop thinking of rods and cones, rods and cones. Rods when she looks over at them in their billowing swim trunks and cones when she looks down at herself. She is blushing, and looking away, and seeing the stars fall almost by accident.

At some unspoken signal, Charles and Blake rise out of the water and spring to the deck to grab towels and blankets, any barrier they can find to keep the sting of the air at bay. She sloshes up as well, but before she can haul herself up over the lip of the tub, Blake is stopping her.

“Where are your boots?”

She left them back by the front door.

“No, no, your feet will freeze to the deck without boots. Hang on, I’ll go get them for you.”

He disappears into the house with Charles, and she is left, jaw tightening, alone, half-submerged in the roiling water. She lowers herself back into the bubbles and stares at the quiet house, its curtains drawn like the closed eyes of a corpse. Nothing moves, nothing happens. The house is a still-life now, and she must look away.

She is staring out over the empty fields when she sees the meteor. It is enormous, nothing like the white filaments they have been tracking all this time. Brilliantly teal, like a Hollywood special effect. It slides across the heavens like a roadside flare from another dimension, falling down instead of up, green-blue instead of red, smooth and smudged instead of sparkling. She has seen the northern lights before. When they first moved to this town, her father woke her up one night in early winter, carried her out into the front yard as if she were an infant, and pointed up to the murmuration of light dancing over their heads. The memory of that glowing curtain of pink and green has always felt otherworldly—while she is sure it happened, it retains the quality of a dream. That shifting brightness, viewed from her father’s arms, cannot compare to this glowing seam in the sky. The star falls and falls for what seems like minutes, finally devoured by a distant fringe of trees on the horizon, though she is certain there must be an impact she will hear or feel at any moment, sound and vibration speeding back to her across the empty, frozen fields.

“Maisie!” Charles is shouting at her from the doorway. “What are you doing!”

She is standing in the middle of the tub, frost growing on her limbs, her chest and thighs steaming.

They run to her with rosy cheeks and mussed hair, robes and blankets flapping salaciously as they each take one of her arms and lift her straight out of the water, so easily, like they’re moving an awkwardly placed chair.

“Did you see it?” she asks them. “Just now?”

They wrap her in two towels, one around her shoulders and one tucked around her waist, and Charles is holding her tight while Blake turns to get something from the bench. Her teeth are clenched against the aching cold, but her heart soars beneath the numbness of her chest and she can almost hear the throbbing song of blood running through her body. Blake turns back to her with the flask in his hand, and she leans back into Charles as she lifts her face up to Blake, her lips parting. This is it, she thinks. She has been bathed in magical, otherworldly light, anointed by starfall, and now they can finally see her, and Blake is dropping to his knees, kneeling before her as if she is some kind of queen.

He is pouring something hot from the flask onto her toes, which have, in fact, frozen to the deck.

“I’m sorry, I looked, but I couldn’t find your boots. I didn’t see them inside. We didn’t—I didn’t mean to be in there for more than minute,” he is mumbling, shaking out the last warm drops.

Her toes are free. Her heart is frozen. Charles tugs her toward the house, and then, when she doesn’t move, lifts her right off her feet, scooping one arm under her legs in a way that makes her feel like a survivor of some calamity, the last person rescued from a house on fire.

They settle her onto the couch and pile blankets on top of her.

“What were you looking at?” they ask. “What did you see?”

She tries to describe it. The color. The flooding field of its light. She talks and talks so she doesn’t have to think about her exit from the spa bath. Doesn’t have to think about whatever she thought was happening.

“What color?” they ask her, incredulous.

Every shooting star they have seen has been white. A thread against a velvet sky. A scratch in the vinyl. She reaches back to long afternoons coloring by herself in her childhood bedroom. It was sea foam. Robin’s egg. Aquamarine. She can see they don’t believe her. She shakes her head and the stiff locks of her icy hair lean angrily away from her skull.

“You looked like a Valkyrie out there,” Blake tells her. The lower-level English classes have been reading mythology this quarter. She isn’t sure how to tell him that despite being in the honors section, she isn’t quite sure what a Valkyrie is.

“Breastplate of ice. Your hair looked like a helmet!” Charles adds, even though he is in the honors section with her.

“All you needed was a spear. Or a sword,” Blake says.

She warms at the word breastplate, but their healing attention is fleeting. They are soon laughing about her meteor; scatting about aliens, nuclear attack, the end of the world.

“I always thought the apocalypse would have more explosions,” Charles says.

“That reminds me—!” Blake leaps up from the couch to pull a movie box down from the bookcases that frame the widescreen television. He presses it into Charles’s hands and they are off in their own country again. They are not ignoring her exactly, but since they are not looking at her, she dares to brush a fingertip against her wet feet and then brings it to her lips.

Water. The flask was full of hot water.

“You should change,” Blake says, startling her. “Your lips are still blue. Like, navy.”

“Indigo,” Charles adds. “Cobalt.”

She considers this and stands, pushing the pile of blankets to the side, dropping the towel still wrapped tightly around her shoulders. “Where should I…” she says. She hesitates for just a moment, but then thinks of herself in a breastplate, sword in hand, taking what she wants. She begins to unwind the towel from her waist.

“You can use my parents’ room. Come on, I’ll show you,” Blake says, darting past her out of the room. Charles looks away as color flames back into her face.

She mutely grabs her backpack—which is right next to her boots, right where she left them both by the front door—and follows Blake up a hushed staircase. He knocks on a door, then opens it for her and hurries back down the stairs before she can say thank you, or anything else.

She leaves the door open several inches and pulls her clothes out of the bag. Since she left home with her swimsuit already under her clothes, her bra and underwear are wadded into the bottom of her schoolbag in a chilly little bundle, somehow unwarmed by their hours in the house. She lays them out with her sweater and jeans on the bed, which is as wide as a boat—wide enough for at least three people. She lets her remaining towel sop onto on the thick-piled carpet and catches her own reflection in three panes of a vanity mirror. Her lips really are blue. Purple, even. She looks sickly. She pinches her cheeks and rubs her knuckles against her lips, then peels the clinging swimsuit from her body and stands back to see herself. Even though she feels warmed, she is still covered in goosebumps, her arms and thighs peppered red and white, but she is not unlovely, she thinks. There is something if not beautiful, then, respectable about her tidy frame, her damp, dark locks. She could probably be appreciated, if not adored.

She hears something outside the room—not quite a noise, a shifting somewhere in the house, an exhalation—and remembers herself, whose room she is in. She shimmies quickly into her clothes, almost falls over pulling on a sock that sticks against her clammy toes. She combs her hair with her fingers, provoking a frizz of tangles. There are now angry red blotches on her cheeks, and her lips are chapped and raw. A little sob escapes from near her sternum, surprising her with both its volume and trailing emotional confusion. She sits at the vanity for several deep, steadying breaths. And then she sees it.

The photograph is small, much smaller than the image that had developed in her mind—a mere snapshot of a woman posed against a valley, as if she has just reached the summit of a mountain. It rests in a raw wood frame right here on the vanity top, next to a brush that needs to be cleaned of a nest of salt-and-pepper hairs. Without really thinking about what she is doing, she lifts the brush and draws it slowly through her own damp hair. The color in her cheeks is going down, she can see the change already in the mirror. She glances at the photograph as she carefully brushes the tangles from her hair, then sets down the brush and picks up the frame.

The woman’s face is turned to the camera, but her body is pointed away. The shot is candid, a fleeting glance back over her left shoulder. She is laughing, her mouth wide, eyes squinting nearly shut against a bright afternoon sun. The photo is faded, but Maisie can tell the woman is tan and healthy, easy in her surroundings. Her back is bare, all the way to the base of her spine, where a line of blue is visible just above the edge of the photograph. Her body is pointed away from the camera, but a soft curve of breast is intimated along her left side.

Blake’s mother. Nude in her hands. She brings her face even closer to the photograph. She sees something—just there, under the blond ponytail forever frozen mid-swing, something green, something small and angular. A strap, or a tie. And there, laid against that whisper of skin, that shadowy suggestion of bosom, a slim green line.

She sets the photograph back down. This woman is not nude. She is wearing a blue and green halter top. Yes, the photo is faded, and yes, her pose makes her unadorned skin a focal point of the frame, but the woman’s smile is clearly the photographer’s subject. Maisie stares into her own eyes in the mirror and tries to remember who first told her about this supposed nude photograph, and where they had heard about it; whether the root of the rumor was a boy, or a girl. Whether they’d have known what they were seeing. People only see what they want to see, she thinks.

She pads back down the stairs and returns to the foyer just as the boys emerge from Blake’s bedroom, where it appears they have been changing out of their swimsuits as well. They are flushed and glassy-looking, suppressing soft giggles. She wonders if they refilled the flask with something other than water. It is after eleven now and she makes a pleading look at Charles, though she also knows she would stay here all night if he chooses not to understand her. But he nods, and they all shrug back into their coats and scarves and hats, even Blake, who follows them out into the driveway.

“They’re still going,” he says, looking up at the sky.

They pause, all three of them in a line, chins up to the falling stars. She is in the front and her head knocks against Charles behind her, but he doesn’t move out of her way. He lets her lean lightly against him for a minute, for a few minutes more. Maisie’s hair is still wet, and she can feel it freezing again, solidifying in the brutal air, so cold it makes her cough when she dares to breathe, which breaks the spell. They break apart. Blake and Charles shake hands, a lingering forearm grasp she has never seen them exchange before, but that feels secret and masculine and very grown-up. Blake gives her a clumsy hug as well and mumbles a final goodnight over her shoulder to Charles.

She feels sleepy, and joyful, and disappointed in some way she cannot name. Once the car warms, she cannot keep her eyes open. Her head lolls. When Charles guides them to a lurching stop in her own driveway, her hair has frozen to the window. She plucks it free, marveling at the frost it leaves glittering on the glass in rigid lines, a map of an unknowable land.

“So what will you tell people? About tonight?” Charles asks, pronouncing his question carefully.

She shrugs. It has only been the most magical night of her entire life, that’s what she will tell people. And yet, still not as magical as she had hoped it would be. That’s what she would like to tell Charles. But how can she, without revealing what she had wished Blake’s unexpected invitation had promised for her? She has been alone, for hours, in a hot tub, with two boys and their two perfect bodies, and yet she has nothing to tell. No claim to either of them. She mumbles a simple thanks, and opens the car door, and then feels Charles’s hand on her arm.

“Maisie. They’ll never believe you,” he says.

His voice is warm, and his touch sends a thrill up her arm, but his eyes are wide and hard.

She thinks, what’s to believe? She thinks of the flask, the photo of Blake’s mother, the impossible blue-green torch of the falling star.

“Never,” says Charles, insisting on something she doesn’t understand.

“I know,” she says finally, because what else is there to say. “I know.”

STORY:
Andrea Cavedo has taught high school history and government for the last decade. Her writing has appeared in McSweeney’s, Chestnut Review, HAD, CRAFT Literary, and more. She lives just outside Chicago with her husband, two children, and a cat who is frequently in trouble. She can be found online at www.andreacavedo.com.

*

ART:
Matthew Austin is an artist & designer from Maryland, he can be reached at www.matthewaustin.net.

Next Tuesday, we’ll feature a bonus interview with Andrea about this story.

If you haven’t already, read the story now… then read our short interview about the story:

Aaron Burch: I’m kinda always curious where stories came from and what the seeds of idea were. Can you tell me a little about the genesis for this story?

Joe Baumann: So this story actually spins out of a larger project, a novel about a family of five brothers and their father and what happens after, as is retained in the story, their mother dies unexpectedly. In its first iteration, the story was actually a pretty traditionally-oriented novel (in terms of structure, chronology, etc.), but I figured out pretty early that trying to contain the experiences of each of five siblings as they processed their mom’s death didn’t work. In that original project, each brother experienced a uniquely surreal event or series of events in the aftermath of the mom’s death. I shelved the project after I’d made pretty serious headway--about thirty thousand words--when I finally knew it was beyond salvaging, at least in that iteration. I tried again about a year later with the same concept(s) but a slightly different structure, and that was actually worse; I only made it about half as far through before it fell apart. Then, a little over a year ago, I was working on building a course on writing interconnected stories as part of my teaching job, and had a realization: I could probably, with far greater success, tell this family’s story in a sequence of vaguely-connected short stories.

It all kind of fell weirdly into place, structurally, once I recalibrated. So this story is part of a collection of fifteen stories (each brother is the central character in three of them). For this particular story, I had started with the image of someone waking up to see their arm floating near their ceiling, and I immediately thought the story would fit the character Peter from this family (I’d already written one of his other stories), and that’s how I got started.

I think a lot of us have probably scavenged or repurposed pieces of novels that didn’t work into stories!

This is kind of vague, and pretty open-ended, but can you talk some about that process? Was this story already a single chapter, and so you were reworking that to work as its own story, or was there more collaging together from different pieces of the whole? And maybe just even more generally, how did that go?

I’m also curious, when this was a piece of the novel, did it not then have that speculative element? Maybe I’m misreading, but if that’s the case, I’m wondering about what it was like grafting this more magical premise onto something that was maybe originally more realist?

Read more

That metaphor I just used — the beating heart of the story — feels especially apt for today’s story from Joe Baumann.

On the morning of his mother’s death, Peter Glory wakes to find his heart floating halfway between him and the ceiling fan.

Right from that very first sentence, it pulls us in and tells us what is important. The protagonist’s mother has just passed away, and — since he was little, we find as we continue to read — he has had a… condition (?) where his body comes apart, detaches, leaves itself. From there, it continues to be my favorite kind of read — equal parts funny and sad; at times familiar, while always unique and surprising.

Incredibly excited to get to share this one!

—Aaron Burch
Editor, Short Story, Long

“Vivisection”

On the morning of his mother’s death, Peter Glory wakes to find his heart floating halfway between him and the ceiling fan. He grunts, sits up, reaches out, and grabs it. The flesh is slick and warm, thumping, the beat of his heart in his fist the same rhythm as the blood still flowing cleanly through his body. Although wet, none of the glistening blood on the surface of Peter’s heart stains his hands. With a tiny wince, more from the disconcerting visual than any actual pain, he pulls open his chest and stuffs his heart back in place, all the tiny connections reasserting themselves; the sound is like a plunger sucking at a clogged toilet many times over. When his skin stitches itself closed, Peter takes a deep, full breath, holds it, and then exhales until his lungs feel flat as paper. Nothing feels lost, but who can really say. He’s never quite sure what it means to know whether something is really gone.

*

At the gym, the first thing Clark says to Peter is, “What was it this time?”

They’re sitting on the bench in the locker room. Clark likes to ask these things; he writes them down in the battered notebook he hauls around from bench to machines to squat racks, keeping track of Peter’s detachments in the same way that he records every set, every weight, every rep count, both on his own and Peter’s behalf, insisting, with every workout, that something change: heavier dumbbells, an extra 2.5 pound plate on the bar, one more rep, another set. Progressive overload, he calls it. Peter has to admit that Clark is onto something: four months of Clark’s way of doing things have produced better results than Peter’s years of flying solo.

When Peter tells him about his heart, Clark frowns. He’s a big man, with veins visible in his deltoids that are always on display thanks to the billowy tank tops he wears. Peter is pretty sure the point is to show off the spectral tattoos that line his left arm from shoulder to wrist.

“That’s strange,” Clark says. “Has it ever been a major internal organ before?”

“Sometimes.”

“Not recently,” Clark says, flipping through pages bloated with ink.

“I’m sure it’s nothing,” Peter says, then stands, shoving his bag in an open locker. He pats his chest, the noise and pressure the same as usual. “Nothing worth worrying about.”

*

After the gym, Clark and Peter go their separate ways, Clark back to his loft apartment where his boyfriend Jude awaits, sets of bench presses and skull crushers not quite his thing; he prefers twilight-hour runs through a nearby park, which sometimes Clark goes on and sometimes he doesn’t, to which sometimes they invite Peter and sometimes they do not. Peter drives to his own much smaller apartment, where he wolfs down a protein bar and then takes a shower. He logs in for work, ready to review timesheets and approve payroll for the east coast company that has hired him to manage their salary system, but then his phone rings: his father, which is unusual. Peter is about to let it go to voicemail but then his heart starts thumping harder than normal and his breathing goes shallow, as though he’s having a panic attack. But Peter feels fine.

Until he reaches for the phone, that is.

Peter, en route to his parents’ house, feels as though he’s falling to pieces. His father has told him not to hurry. That it’s too late. That an ambulance is coming but that there is nothing to do.

“How can you know?” Peter managed to ask. He felt like his tongue was loosening, lips melting, jaw unhinging.

“Anyone would be able to tell,” his father, a fellow accountant, said. “Don’t speed. Don’t be stupid.”

“I’m on my way.”

Peter’s fingers feel like they’re coming unscrewed when he tightens his grip on the wheel. His ankles feel like they’re disintegrating when he presses the gas. When he glances up at the rearview mirror, his eyes feel extra lubricated, ready to slip out of their sockets. Checking for cross-traffic, he can practically feel the vertebrae of his spine unfastening, a zipper coming apart.

He manages to arrive at the house whole. As he crosses the yard, his toes feel like loose keys in his shoes. His wrists are flapping shutters battered by a cyclone. But when he reaches the front door, he is one single piece.

Inside is too quiet. The house is open, airy, the first floor a single large room made up of the living-kitchen-dining space to the right, his father’s office behind French doors to the left, a staircase leading up to a row of second-story bedrooms past that. Late afternoon sunshine blasts through a row of windows looking out on the back yard, the westward-falling sun piercing all the way through the house. For a moment, Peter wonders if he is dreaming. If the phone call, the strange calmness in his father’s voice, the clanking, jittery drive over, this stunning, terrible silence, is all happening in his head. Peter even tries pinching himself, and the little blurt of pain tells him he is awake.

“Dad?”

“We’re up here,” calls a voice. Not his father’s, but one of his brothers.

Peter climbs the stairs. Are his knees uncorking?

The upstairs hallway is dark, all closed doors and looming bookshelves. His mother is a voracious reader, a bibliophile of the highest order even though she teaches science to uninspired—though, in his mother’s words, “never uninspiring”—rural high school students who never manage to correctly memorize the basics of the Krebs cycle. She is rigorous in most components of her life, keeping the pantry and family bills well-organized, always cognizant of social events on her or their father’s calendars, keeping straight which of her five sons will be where and when. But her books are a different story: scattered about the house on shelves in all sorts of places, none of which match one another. Up here, the narrow hallway feels even more catacomb-like thanks to the shelves dotting the spaces between bedrooms and bathrooms, books of all shapes, sizes, genres, and content crammed about.

Peter slinks to the end of the hall. He finds his brother Dallas and his father in the master bedroom, standing in front of his mother’s bureau. They’re staring at a photo, or maybe the bowl of rings she accessorized from every day. When they turn to look at him, Peter almost falls apart completely.

*

Later, when Dallas and Peter and their father move downstairs, after Dallas has explained to Peter what happened, how their mother complained of a terrible headache while standing in the kitchen chopping vegetables for a summer gazpacho, how the pain in her skull was strong enough that she laid down her knife—which is still on the counter—and then dropped onto the sofa and passed out, how what was happening wasn’t a headache but an aneurysm, silent and sneaky and unseen, how her brain flooded with blood from the burst vessel and killed her immediately, how there was nothing to be done, nothing at all except call 911 and let her be taken away, after all of that, Peter drops onto the other sofa and stares at the cushions until Michael and Cal, oldest and youngest, arrive.

None of his brothers come apart at night. Once he could sleep on his own, without waking and wailing to be fed, Peter was moved into Michael’s bedroom, his little car-shaped twin bed across the room from his older brother’s simpler platform-style. The first time Peter remembers waking with a part of him missing he was six years old, fresh out of first grade. Morning summer sun was beaming into the bedroom through the window between the two beds. It caught on the rotation of his left forearm, which hovered two feet above Peter and spun like a dial, slowly, slowly, pushed by an invisible wind that Peter couldn’t feel. Despite his age, he was not afraid. He understood, intuitively, that all he needed to do was reach up with his still-attached right hand and grab his arm, then arrange it against his empty shoulder socket, and it would reattach, which is exactly what happened. When he glanced around, he saw Michael, eight, staring at him, top sheet pulled up to his chin. He didn’t look afraid—Michael never looked afraid—and he didn’t look disgusted—Michael never looked disgusted, either—but he did look as though he now understood something about his brother that he hadn’t before.

Peter spent months forcing himself to wake up before Michael. For a few weeks, he barely slept at all, observing the lump of his sleeping, sometimes snoring, older brother as he tossed and turned at night, mouth open, saliva pooling in the corners of his lips, little bits of mucous and snot hovering at the edges of his nostrils. Michael rolled around in his sleep a lot, sometimes sucking his thumb, sometimes pressing his hands down into his pajama pants, sometimes mumbling. But never did a part of him detach itself to swim up into the air. Not once was a pinky finger or a toe or a kneecap, much less a whole leg or arm, a hand or his lips or an ear or one of his gunky nostrils, separated from his body the way that Peter’s parts liked to make themselves scarce, seeking some kind of doofy freedom.

When he asked his mother why this was, she said, “We’re all built different, hon.”

Peter has his other unique qualities, of course. They all do. Michael’s athleticism, still alive in his late thirties, and middle child Nicky’s innate understandings of the human body and its strangenesses—not Peter’s strangenesses, but those that occur at the cellular level, blood disorders and cancer and such—and Dallas’s way with words, his knowledge of etymologies and linguistics, language acquisition and speech therapy, Cal’s artistry, his penchant with paints and styling pencils and clay, in his hands turned from dry lumps into animals of bizarre shapes and sizes, tigers with wings, lions with forked tongues, bears with outsize claws. Giraffes with blue dots. Peter, besides his floating limbs, with his organizational skills, his tendency toward leadership and delegation.

Peter and three of his brothers sit in unsure silence (Nicky, a traveling nurse, is out of state, somewhere in the Pacific Northwest, Peter’s pretty sure, but who can ever keep track; he’s left three messages already, exhorting Nicky to call but not saying why because Peter can’t bear to leave the horrible news that way). Their father is stationed in his recliner. There’s no sound except their breathing and the air conditioning. Reposed like he is, Peter feels likely to unhook and unhinge, for his body to disassemble and ride up toward the ceiling, bonking the unmoving blades of the fan.

There is much to be done, Peter knows. There are tears to be shed. But for now, no one knows quite what to do, what to say, how to penetrate the terrible silence.

“We should eat,” Peter says eventually.

No one moves, and so Peter, swallowing a sigh, pulls out his phone and orders a pair of pizzas. He tries Nicky again, the call going straight to voicemail. Peter feels the eyes of his brothers on him. Briefly, he wishes they would crumble to pieces, their bones to piles, their flesh to flappy tarps, their muscle to unspooling thread. He can picture them all in disarrayed heaps.

But then, no, he realizes. If everyone else falls apart, the only person left to put them back together would be Peter.

Peter wakes to a familiar sight: his childhood bedroom, with its popcorn ceiling and robin’s-egg blue walls. And his intestines ribboned in the air like a dragon wheeling in the sky. His guts are slick with brownish-red blood, though they do not smell. Peter sits up. He thinks of his mom, but he is surprised by how distant her death feels, the sorrow muted, as though she’s been gone for a long time. His innards float higher; he has to stand on the bed, mattress squealing beneath his heels, to grab them. Peter grimaces as he pries himself open, sets them back where they belong. He is thankful that everything fits into place easily enough. Suddenly, thoughts of his mother crash with vicious closeness, her absence an invisible punch. He remembers the day he shared his acceptance letter from the university of his dreams—a local state school; he did not dream high—and how strong the vanilla and lilac of her body lotion was as it filled his nostrils when she hugged him, how firm her body was, how powerful the muscles of her arms from years of lugging around science equipment at school.

His brothers are waiting for him downstairs. Someone has managed to make coffee, the bitter smell sharp and unpleasant in Peter’s nostrils; he’s the only one that doesn’t drink it. They’ve gotten no further along re: breakfast or anything else, and their father is missing in action; Peter did not think to check on him before coming downstairs. He shoots a text to Nicky—Call me, please—and then looks from one brother to the next, each of them focused on their coffee mug, refusing to meet his eye, as if they’ve all done something shameful.

“What?” Peter says.

“Your ear,” Cal says.

Peter reaches up with his right hand, feels the familiar balloon of flesh with its hard curves and soft dangle.

“Your other ear,” Dallas says.

Peter reaches up with his left hand and finds nothing.

“Oh,” he says.

Still, no one quite looks at him. Peter’s brothers don’t particularly like to talk about his wandering parts, which has always puzzled him, bemusement mixed with a certain amount of frustration. He came out as bisexual when he was sixteen, when maybe Dallas and Cal, who were twelve and ten, were too young to really understand what that meant. But Michael and Nicky, and definitely his mother and father, had no trouble comprehending, and they had no trouble accepting. That was easy, somehow, in a way that Peter’s floating body parts were, are, not. Even in the wake of what’s happened to their mother, this is still a clunky road block between them.

“I didn’t realize,” Peter says, and then before anyone says anything else, he excuses himself and goes back upstairs to find the missing ear.

*

“How weird,” Clark says. “Two parts.” He scribbles in his notebook. “Has this ever happened before?”

Peter shakes his head. He knows it’s ridiculous that he’s at the gym when he should be doing anything else, but throwing heavy weights around, feeling the depletion in his muscles, is the only thing with any appeal. After he got his ear reattached—it was hovering above his bedroom door frame like it thought it was a crucifix or dreamcatcher—he went back downstairs and laid out plans for his brothers and father, who in the interim had appeared downstairs and poured himself a cup of coffee. Peter made himself point person for calling the funeral home and contacting the hospital, connecting with the morgue. No one objected. Dallas and Michael agreed to take their father to said hospital to handle any required paperwork, and even though Peter wasn’t sure that was how things worked, he nodded affirmation. Cal agreed to work on externalities: obituary, social media announcement (which felt crude but necessary these days), contacting extended family that none of the brothers had thought to reach out to last night.

Clark lets out a low hmm but asks no more questions. He slaps the journal shut before standing and leading the way into the gym proper. Peter follows him past the rows of ellipticals and stationary bikes and the army of treadmills occupied by mid-morning cardio enthusiasts, the backs of their shirts blooming with sweat, forearms and shoulders and calves glistening. They pass the rows of exercise machines, retirees flinging handles up and down, left and right. The free weights, where Peter and Clark spend most of their time, are on a lower level like a sunken living room, down a short set of stairs. They claim the last remaining bench and each do a warmup set of presses without saying a word to one another.

Peter is unsure how to break the news. How can you say, My mother died, if it isn’t the first thing you say? How can you say it standing in a gym, spotting your friend as he goes for a PR, when the last thing you should be doing, after your mother dies, is standing in a gym and spotting your friend as he goes for a PR? Clark needs no help from Peter; he hardly ever does, somehow fully aware of what his muscles can and can’t handle, always adding a few more pounds to the bar on the exact right day in the exact right amount. When instead of the thirty-pound dumbbells his arms are ready for the thirty-two-and-a-halves. It’s a certainty, an exactitude, that, today especially, leaves Peter cratered with jealousy.

When he does his own lifts, he’s sure he’s going to collapse. That everything inside him is going to come streaming out, through each pore and orifice, his bones and viscera turned to a tubal mush that will spew onto the rubberized floor.

None of that happens. Instead, Peter feels a deep well of power somewhere inside him. He presses and presses, set after set, rep after rep. He feels winded deep in his lungs, and his forehead and back are slathered in sweat, but he keeps on lifting: endless bench presses, a dubious number of triceps dips, dumbbell flies that last minutes. By the time they’re onto pushup pyramids, Clark is staring at him like he’s a lunatic. He actually asks if Peter has started taking something.

“I don’t care about legality. We’re not, like, prepping for a competition.” Clark raises an eyebrow. “Unless you are, and didn’t tell me?”

“No,” Peter says.

In the locker room, changing out of their sweaty clothes, Peter can tell Clark wants to say something. He has a way of pursing his lips and squinting off into the distance that gives him away. But he remains silent. His tattoos twitch as he stuffs himself into a fresh t-shirt. Another, similar tattoo is drawn across his left leg, swallowing the lower half of his thigh, his entire kneecap, and his calf. When Peter asked how painful it had been to get done, Clark said, “Well, I had it done over several sessions.”

“And?”

Clark poked at his thigh. “Mild.” Then his calf. “High.” He tapped his kneecap. “Like hell.” Peter hasn’t ever asked what any of the tattoos mean; it’s always seemed like a silly, unfair question, for some reason. And if Clark has ever wished to share, he’s never let on.

As they’re leaving the building, Clark stops.

“If you need anything,” he says.

Peter nods.

Clark lowers his sunglasses. “Seriously. Otherwise, tomorrow?”

“Tomorrow,” Peter says.

Peter finds his left lung, wet and wrinkly, hovering a few feet from his face. He reaches out but then stops. He lets it hang there as he takes a morning piss, brushes his teeth, fries an egg with wilted spinach. He pictures the lung while he calls the funeral home to discuss details of his mother’s memorial, which he does with a cool detachment, as though he’s taking care of just one more work task. When he goes to put on socks, Peter realizes that one of his toes is missing, the pinky of his left foot. He scans his bedroom like he’s examining the night sky and sees it tucked in the far corner near the window.

He decided to leave them.

At the gym, he tells Clark, who looks aghast. “We were going to do intervals.”

“We still can.”
Peter, in fact, feels refreshed, barely winded. He doesn’t think of his mother at all. Clark, on the treadmill next to him, face flush and body heaving for air, looks at him in half-delirium, confounded by Peter’s poise.

Peter goes to sleep that night with the toe and lung still hovering. The next day he feels refreshed, and his grief over his mother is nothing more than a dull ache at the back of his teeth, in the small of his spine. His right tibia has evacuated, leaving his leg to flop. He sends a picture of his leg to Clark, who, when it becomes clear Peter has no plans to reattach the bone, writes, Rest day, I guess? And then, moments later, What is up with you?

He leaves the bone and hobbles around. Michael writes, wondering if they should make their father some meals. Sure, Peter writes back. Go for it.

I thought we could make a schedule.

You mean that I could.

Only if you want to.

Peter does not, but he takes care of it anyway. He sends it off to his brothers, who reply with various thumbs-up emojis and words of too-serious thanks. Then he puts in several hours of work and answers a few email inquiries from the funeral home.

He takes a nap and then finds two of his ribs dancing above the living room sofa. They look vaguely like an animal’s teeth after eviscerating prey.

Will someone speak at the service? Dallas has written.

Peter doesn’t write back.

He walks to the bathroom, empty leg dragging. The lung and bones are hovering in the hallway near the closet containing the water heater and air filters, looking like they’re kids tucked away in the corner of a party, afraid to mingle. The pinky is nowhere to be seen. Peter parks himself in front of the bathroom mirror, where he pulls off his shirt and stares at himself, leaning against the vanity for balance, having not quite gotten the hang, yet, of managing to stand with one withered leg.

Peter scans his torso. His muscles are plump with power but he’s also sleek, his midsection a pleasant crunch of muscle. He flexes his arms, feeling silly—he’s always found the influencers who pose in mirrors or for selfie videos mildly absurd—but also impressed by the size of his bunched-up biceps.

Then, curious as to what will happen, Peter pulls himself open. As usual, he feels no pain, the sensation more like when the dentist tells him to open wide, stretchy and vaguely uncomfortable at first but easy to acclimate to. His insides glisten under the hard bathroom light. His heart thrums its steady, low-rep (thank you, intervals with Clark) beat. His stomach has its own gurgly pulse. Behind his peeled-aside abs, his intestines are like a clogged train depot.

Peter doesn’t touch; he only looks. His innards give off a weird heat, like an oven starting to cool from a long cook. He takes a deep breath with his one good lung and watches. Then Peter closes his eyes and pictures his mother. He sees himself sitting next to her at a soccer game, cheering on Michael, their mother consoling him after his team loses. He sees her taking him out to dinner, just the two of them, when Peter landed his job, refusing to let him pay for a meal of steaks and fancy red wine that was surely too expensive. These memories are blurry, vague, hardly meaning a thing. Then he pictures the various tasks that must be done, still, in preparation of her memorial service. He snaps his eyes open and grabs the lung, which has floated into his periphery. He reattaches it, and the burden of grief starts to fill him like a tub receiving rising water. Peter plucks out his liver, releasing it like a balloon freed to the sky, and the hurt subsides again.

He pictures his mother in her favorite denim jacket. He pictures her with a fresh, sharp haircut, her favorite short bob that accentuated her precise jawline and her expressive cheekbones that scooped up light in any bright room. He feels the slightest pinch of hurt at these images. He finds the nearest missing piece of himself—the toe, magically bobbing at chest-height above his toilet—and reattaches it. The sadness increases incrementally.

Peter hesitates. He glances down at his deflated leg. His lower back is tight, slightly off-kilter from his hobbling gait. If he isn’t careful, he knows, the pain will flare, and then spread, and become unmanageable; his father has referenced sciatica that plunges his back and hamstrings into untenable discomfort if he sits for too long.

Peter thinks of all he loves about his mother: her unshakeable support of him and his brothers and all of the choices they’ve made, smart or stupid, good or bad. The way she talked about her own students, slouchy high schoolers destined for trade schools, lives on farms, HVAC work and mechanics shops. How proud she was of them despite them not always being diligent with their biology labs and their unsteady grades on human anatomy quizzes. How she danced through the house, running her fingers along every bookshelf like she was playing a piano. How she filled the bookshelves not only with books but tchotchkes of her sons’ lives: trophies, artwork, diplomas, photographs. How she spent over two decades shuttling boys to soccer practices, band practices, dance lessons, painting lessons, after-school math programs, never seeming to tire or lose energy despite how often she must have been running on empty.

Each remembrance is a weight. But each one Peter balances by reaching in, pulling something out, letting it float around him. Spleen, kidney, his other lung—air still fills his blood vessels, feeds his brain—his heart, once again, shimmering and shining. He imagines pulling everything he has, thyroids, stomach, lymph nodes like wet grapes. Soon enough he would be a sagging, empty bag. He is already shaky, everything quaking. His reflection in the mirror is blurry.

His phone, which he’s brought with him, vibrates: a message from Nicky, finally, the last missing piece.

Thank you for handling this.

Someone—not Peter—has told him. This knowledge tightens Peter’s chest. His liver comes bobbing into view, and Peter snatches it, pries it back into place. He grabs another piece and then another, slowly screwing himself back together. With each bit, the sorrow washes back in. Memories of his mother cut like knives, leaving invisible streaks. Despite how much he wishes to unburden, he won’t let himself collapse, after all. He will live, because he knows his mother would want that. More than anything, he must be here. For his father, for his brothers. For his deceased mother, who would never abide him falling apart, wasting away into a saggy heap. Someone must remain to clean up, to carry, to catch and keep everything, and everyone, whole.

STORY:
Joe Baumann is the author of six collections of short fiction, most recently A Thing Is Only Known When It Is Gone, from University of Wisconsin Press, and the novels I Know You’re Out There Somewhere and Lake, Drive. His fiction and essays have appeared in Third Coast, Passages North, Phantom Drift, and many others. He possesses a PhD in English from the University of Louisiana-Lafayette. He was a 2019 Lambda Literary Fellow in Fiction and currently directs the MFA in Writing at Lindenwood University. He can be reached at joebaumann.wordpress.com.

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ART:
Phil McAndrew is an illustrator, a cartoonist, and a writer. His work has been published by The New Yorker, MAD Magazine, The Nib, Popula, and many other publications. He is the author and illustrator of CRYING IN FRONT OF YOUR DOG AND OTHER STORIES (Uncivilized Books, 2013). Phil has also illustrated a handful of books for kids like the CAVEBOY DAVE series of graphic novels written by Aaron Reynolds (Viking Books, 2016 and 2018), MONSTER SCIENCE by Helaine Becker (Kids Can Press, 2016), and YOUR MIND MAKES THOUGHTS LIKE YOUR BUTT MAKES FARTS by Todd Strauss-Schulson (Wisdom Publications, 2023). Phil lives in the Buffalo, NY area and has taught in the illustration program at Syracuse University.

Next Tuesday, we’ll feature a bonus interview with Bill about this story.

If you haven’t already, read the story now… then read our short interview about the story:

Aaron Burch: I’m kinda always curious where stories came from and what the seeds of idea were. Can you tell me a little about the genesis for this story?

Bill Capossere: This story actually grew out of two other works. I drive cross-country nearly every summer for our annual hiking/camping trip, and over the years I’d noticed that I needed to clean my windshield far less frequently because there were so few insects now (there’s actually a Scandinavian scientist who has been driving his car the exact same route and speed and counting windshield bugs for nearly two decades as an experiment). I found that incredibly depressing and wrote an essay that braids the loss of insects, my mother-in-law’s recent death, and the reaction of our town and neighbors to our wild, naturalized lawn. I’ve also been working on a new play, influenced by my love of fantasy, focusing on a support group for people who years ago entered into another world (a la Narnia) for a while and just can’t get past their sadness at being back in our own mundane one. At some point, I thought, “hmmm, what if I combined (kinda sorta) those two ideas and had the insects, and other vanishing creatures, pass through portals out of our world with us left in a depressing, dying one?”

I love that as origin story! And kinda funny timing... I’ve had these two tiny little ideas for stories kinda rolling around in my brain, wondering if either might have any juice, and just this morning had the idea, maybe they’re the same story?!

Something I’ve been asking about here and there in these interviews is about moments of surprise — when something happens in a story while drafting (or revising!) that came as a surprise and how that might have pushed the story into new terrain. Can you talk some about what happened when combining the idea and/or in that transition from nonfiction to fiction?

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I hope many of you get as swept up into this story and its world as I have!

—Aaron Burch
Editor, Short Story, Long

“The Long Departure”

As I turned into my mother’s long driveway I slowed to avoid kicking up too much gravel. I still had a spiderweb crack in the windshield from last time. Nothing to do about it; hard to get replacements for anything nowadays.

Through the dust I could see the front door swing open and my mom exit onto the porch. One hand clenched the cane she’d taken to using, while Bobby McGee’s leash dangled loosely from the other, threatening to entangle her legs with every step as she slowly crossed the porch’s canted expanse. I parked quickly, before she reached the steps, and jumped out of the car, yelling, “Mom, hold on!”

“Oh, I’m fine!” she yelled back, making a dismissive motion. But she stayed where she was. She didn’t move either when I put my foot on the bottom step and made to head upward.

“You can come in after you look. I’m worried he might be hurt. There’s been a racoon around, and you know how nasty those can. . .”

“Did you see a raccoon, Mom?”

“The other night, Bobby was barking out the sliding door, then the next ...”

“But did you actually see one?”

“Well, I can’t say definitively, Michael. It was night after all, and my eyes don’t see that well even in the daytime anymore. Maybe it was a possum. Or —”

It wasn’t a racoon. Or a possum. Leaves in the wind, if it was anything. But if I let her, she’d go on naming possibilities-that-couldn’t-be-possibilities until afternoon passed into night.

“It doesn’t matter, Mom”

She looked down where Bobby would usually be pushing gently against her legs.
“Fifteen years I’ve had him. Since he was a pup. He wouldn’t leave me.”

That’s what everyone says, I thought.

She held out the leash. “You’ll need this when you find him.”

“If I find him, Mom. You—”

“Don’t tell me you can’t do something until you’ve tried, Michael.”
I flashed back to fifth-grade piano lessons, seventh grade track, my first year at college.

“Fine.” I took the leash. “I’ll take a look, but—”
“Check the back woods first. He likes to run out there, likes to chase the rabbits.”

Bobby McGee hasn’t run anywhere but his dreams for some years, which is also the only place he’s likely to have seen any rabbits. But I just nodded.

“I’ll start there then,” I told her.

“I’ll make some tea,” my mom said as I turned away. “And there’s apple pie.”

I spun back. “You have apple pie?”

“Didn’t I just say that?”

“Real apples?”

“Of course.” As if it were the most natural thing in the world.

“Mom, how did you afford—”

She huffed impatiently. “Not now ,Michael. Go find Bobby and then we can talk.”

“All right. But I’m holding you to that pie, Bobby or no Bobby.”

“It’s pie Michael, not ransom money.”

I let it go and began to walk away, heading for the woods round back. Behind me I could hear her halting steps moving back to the house, the thump of her cane on the wooden slats thrumming a slow, echoing beat in the empty space below.

It was there, beneath the porch just about four years ago, that I saw my first one close up. I’d crawled under to try and figure out what it would take to shore up the porch and get it back to at least something approaching an even keel. I hadn’t told my mother, but I also wanted to look at the feasibility of adding a ramp. While she’d adamantly refused to even consider selling the place and move into someplace more manageable, not to mention closer to both me and her doctors, I thought a ramp might be one of the few battles I could win, given the two replacement hip surgeries and the cane she had just begun to use when going out.

They were all over the news by then. It’d been several months since the first was discovered, though scientists are still arguing over how long they’d been around before Marcy Langerham’s now-famous bee cam. At the time, a host of theories were offered for what was causing the colony collapses threatening the entire bee industry: pesticides, climate change, parasites, fungi, some toxic combination of all the above. But it was a tiny 84-year-old former English teacher turned beekeeper in North Carolina who finally solved the puzzle. She’d installed tiny cameras in her half-dozen boxes to track her bees’ activity and monitor their health. Little did she know when she woke that morning in May to find her hives empty, that her little minicam video would soon join the Kennedy assassination and the Moon Landing as one of the most widely seen and scrutinized recordings in history. Like Zapruder’s, it became known simply by her name: the Langerham Footage.

The video itself is unimpressive. Dim. Grainy. Obscured much of the time at the start as bees clamber over and across the lens in a wriggling mass. It looks like nothing so much as some middle schooler’s science project. Until the number of bees begins to diminish and you notice a series of coruscating flashes to the upper right. As more space opens up, you can see that the bees are disappearing into the same corner those flashes are coming from. More precisely, it looks like they are disappearing into the flashes.

There’s no queue. Bees aren’t lining up like patrons outside a popular bar, but it isn’t wholly random either — there’s a definite pattern, a wave of movement by the bees toward where they’re exiting.

One might chalk it up to a crack or a hole. Except the video feeds from her other hives showed the same phenomenon. Sometimes the flashes were to the left, sometimes lower down or higher up, but in each of Langerham’s six boxes, her bees, one by one, disappeared into, what? Langerham and her son inspected and then disassembled her boxes just to make sure of what they already knew — that there was no hole or crevice or crack for the bees to escape from (nor would such a hole explain the colony’s complete disappearance, just how they exited the hive).

At a loss, she gave her footage over to a local college biologist, Linda Carrol, and it was she who figured out the bees were not disappearing into the flashes so much as the flashes were occurring as the bees disappeared. Into what still wasn’t clear. It looked on the enhanced video like a dark arch-shaped discoloration in the wood, reminding her, the biologist told Langerham, of the kind of arch cartoon characters would draw on walls before stepping through them to make their escape. Langherham’s bees seemed to be entering the “archways” and disappearing in a burst of light, almost as if they were being incinerated, though there was no indication of heat.

With the permission of other beekeepers in the area, the biologist set up high-definition video feeds in dozens of hives and, within a few months’ time, had evidence of similar phenomena in all those that had suffered colony collapse during the observation time. But by then it didn’t matter. By then, people were starting to see the archways everywhere. And they weren’t all small.

It had been weeks since the last rain, and the next decomp spray wasn’t for another two weeks so the leaves were dry underfoot, their brittle crackle the only noise in the otherwise silent forest. The trees—mostly oak and maple now that the beeches and ashes had gone the way of the elm and chestnut—were wide spaced, letting a good amount of light through, and I wandered so as to keep the sun on my face, killing time until I could return and tell my mom I’d given it my best effort.

I gave a few full-throated “Here Bobby! C’mon boy!” calls for my mother’s benefit, sure she’d be listening for them. But as I roamed aimlessly farther afield, they dwindled in volume and frequency, until I finally let them peter out altogether.

Bobby McGee wasn’t out here, after all. I’d known that before ever leaving home. And so did my mother, though she wouldn’t allow herself acknowledgement of that truth. Not that I blamed her. Fifteen years is a long time, and Bobby had become an even closer and more necessary companion after my dad’s death seven years ago. Bobby’s departure couldn’t feel like anything but a betrayal. One that would leave her even more alone out here.

Perhaps now she’d finally accept the inevitable and move in with me. I could use some of the Consolidation Subsidy to get her a Robodog to keep her company while I’m working. A combo model that acts as a medical alert and vacuum cleaner. If she ever took another fall, it could give me and the hospital a call and then clean up the place while I and the ambulance sped over. My ex-wife got one for the kids after Dag left and swears by it, says you can barely tell the difference, especially now that you hardly ever see a real one in the flesh, and they’re a lot less demanding — no feeding it, no walking it on freezing cold nights. You don’t even have to remember to charge it; it just curls itself up on its charging plate at night. Even walks around the plate three or four times before settling down, she says. Just like Dag used to do. My mom’ll fight it of course, just like she did the cane, the non-existent ramp for the porch, or moving in with me.

I didn’t tell her about the archway under the porch, knowing I’d be there all day boarding the bottom of the porch up to ensure Bobby couldn’t get under, no matter the arch was far too small for him. It was probably a mouse that had gone through, causing the flash that caught my attention. Otherwise I never would have noticed it.

They’re hard to see even in good light. And we get headaches if we stare too long at them. Scientists still don’t know why, they say. They say that a lot when it comes to the arches, which have proven themselves impermeable to investigation. You can’t probe a door or what’s beyond it if the door doesn’t seem to even exist. Push a stick into an archway, something everybody’s tried by now, it just stops against whatever surface the archway appeared on: a wall, a rock. If the arch appeared in water or mid-air, the stick goes right through. No flash, no severed tip. Release it, and it just drops or floats. Scientists’ fancier attempts fare no better; high tech, low tech — the archways defeat all attempts to enter.

Or all human attempts. As more archways appeared, it became evident that any animal could enter and disappear: rabbits, snakes, dogs, birds, fish. Whether they hopped, slithered, ran, swam, or flew, the archways opened to them all.

So Scientists tried sheathing probes in organic matter, and when that didn’t work, tried using living creatures — radio-controlled cockroaches with cameras attached to their bodies or dolphins trained to return to their handler. The bugs went through; the cameras didn’t. As for the dolphins, well, we always thought they were smart. Why would they come back?

While the scientists were debating the ethics of sending a human through, some fifteen-year-old live-streamed himself riding his BMX into a mid-air arch, even adding a 360 spin for flair. He simply came out the other side, no worse for wear. Though I’m guessing that changed after his parents saw the footage.

After that everyone gave it a try, starting with a finger and, when nothing happened, their entire body, eyes squeezed shut. Nobody felt anything, no resistance, no temperature change. Nothing. Eventually, most just shrugged and moved on with their lives. If an archway shimmered into being as people were stepping into a store or onto a subway car, they just walked through.

Institutions presented a calm face if not explanations. Politicians proclaimed scientists were on it, answers were forthcoming, while organized religions offered up only a “God works in mysterious ways” and otherwise stayed mostly mum.

Nature abhors a vacuum, though, and others began to fill the silence. The Church of New Eden preached God was cleansing the world to create a purely human paradise on Earth; Heaven’s Door said that God was raising creatures into heaven, with humans going last in the place of honor. Other groups removed God from the equation entirely, maintaining the arches led to alien planets, different time periods, parallel Earths, Narnia, or Middle-Earth.

Conspiracy theorists hit the streams to rant about governments ridding the world of excess populations, military experiments gone awry, or alien invasion, while grifters claiming to have “returned” from the other side were happy to share their experiences for the right price.

For all the reassurances from on high and through the din and clamor of the carnival sideshow, despite all the jokes about how much nicer it was without mosquitoes, a creeping dread slowly began to pervade the human psyche as the world methodically emptied. The already threatened animals disappeared first—rhinos, gorillas, tigers and cranes all gone less than a year after the Langerham Footage hit the streams; wolves, whales, and polar bears shortly after. Soon, it was impossible not to notice there were fewer birds in the sky, fewer ants crowding the sidewalk cracks, fewer rats scuttling along the alleys. Even the bugs in the International Space Station disappeared, before NASA plunged it into the ocean two years back due to lack of funding.

And then it literally hit home. Wild animals were one thing. Livestock were worrisome in practical terms. But pets. They were something else entirely.

People tried everything: locking their pets in rooms, chaining them to poles, sedating them, even trying to keep a hand on them at all times. Nothing worked. Cats, hamsters, guinea pigs, birds and fish: all vanished one by one. Dogs stuck around for a while, always the loyal ones, but with the disintegrating structures of society, the food shortages, the riots and energy outages, they could probably sense what was coming; in the last six months, they too had begun vanishing in ever-increasing numbers.

That was a blow. Nobody was surprised by cats’ early exit. They were out of here just a step behind the rhinos. But dogs. That one hurt.

Figuring I’d been out long enough to earn some pie, if not gratitude, I headed back, working over in my head the conversation I was going to need to have. Not just about Bobby. It was time she faced up to reality: she couldn’t stay out here anymore. It would have been hard enough in normal times. But now, with the outages, the fuel and food rationing, it was becoming impossible. She needed to move while the government was still offering the subsidy, before consolidation becomes mandated rather than incentivized. What was left for her here anyway at this point? Nothing but the wind and the trees.

I could hear her reply already. “My life. My memories.”

As I tried to come up with an answer, a shadow crossed over the ground. I looked up instinctively, already knowing though what I’d see. And I was right. A drone of course, what else? But still, I couldn’t help sighing. I tried to think of the last time I’d seen a bird. Seven, eight months, a year even maybe. A quick flit of blue at the corner of my eye, then tracking its climb, even as it aimed at the sun, my eyes searing but refusing to look away until it disappeared. Into the glare? A portal? I couldn’t say. I’d seen spots for days afterward, but it was worth it.

Even now the memory burned my eyes. I tried to blink the wet away, and when that didn’t work, wiped the back of my hand across them. It was then that I saw him.

While the politicians were publicly reassuring an ever more panicked populace, behind the scenes, governments and scientists were desperately trying to stave off the apocalypse.

Food was the obvious and immediate issue. Thirty billion chickens. Billions more cows, sheep, and pigs. Countless fish. All gone in under two years. Suddenly everyone was a vegetarian. Except, of course, the pollinators were disappearing as well, taking most fruits with them, along with cabbage, broccoli, and other crops. And while the disappearance of livestock had freed up more space for agriculture, even as countries frantically pivoted to using more of the land for food crops it was rapidly becoming less farm friendly without any worms to till the soil or animal waste for fertilizer.

Manhattan Project level funding was poured into ways to compensate: lab grown meat, robot pollinators and earthworms, drones to drop decomposition chemicals, human waste reclamation. For a while things looked dicey, riots broke out inside some countries, wars between others, starvation ran rampant for a while in some areas, but things have stabilized. Ironically, between new tech, heavy rationing, stringent distribution regulation, and a depleted global population, fewer people actually go hungry nowadays than before. All in all, the scientists pulled off a miracle.

Still, I miss coffee.

I miss a lot of things.

Bobby was curled up under a tree, unmoving. I was sure as I moved toward him he was dead, but then a branch snapped underfoot, and he lifted his head weakly. I stepped closer, talking in a hushed voice: “Hey Bobby, hey Bobby, good boy.” He whimpered as I knelt beside him and lay a hand lightly atop his flank. I dangled my other hand in front of his face, giving him a chance to sniff at it then nuzzle wetly into my palm. “I’ll be damned,” I whispered.

He’d gotten himself entangled in what looked like a makeshift snare; lots of those were set up in hopes of catching something, anything, before the food situation got under control. Not all pets that vanished had walked into a portal. He whined again, his foot scrabbling against the ground as I carefully unwound the wire. His leg was caked in dirt and blood, some from the wire digging in and probably just as much from his attempts to chew himself free.

It took a while, the air beginning to cool by the time I was done. He must have been freezing out here last night. I kept talking as I worked my hands and then my arms under his thin body. Like all of us, he’d lost weight.

“Ok Bobby, here we go. Let’s go home, hey?” I rose to my feet and cradled him against my chest, heedless of the dirt and blood. He half-heartedly licked my upper arm, then sagged downward with another barely audible whimper.

“Yeah, me too boy. Me too.”

I expected my mother to greet me with a sharp “I told you so,” but she just held the door, then hovered while I cleaned Bobby up and bandaged his leg, occasionally reaching past me to stroke his fur or lay a wrinkled hand atop his head.

Washed free of dirt and blood, the leg actually didn’t look all that bad, and the fact he didn’t snap at me or try too hard to pull away as I manipulated it told me nothing was broken. He’d limp for a while, a mirror version of my mother and her cane, but he’d be fine after that. Or what passes for fine nowadays.

I moved his bed into the kitchen and lay him in it while Mom and I each had a slice of pie. She still wouldn’t tell me where she’d gotten the apples or how she’d afforded them — “Don’t ask questions you don’t really want answers to Michael” — but I can’t say I cared much. It was apple pie after all.

Later we sat and drank tea on the porch. When we’d stood up to leave, Bobby had raised his head and whined, so I carried him and his bed out, putting it between the two Adirondack chairs. I went back in for a blanket to drape around my mother, then settled into my chair, holding my mug in one hand and letting my other drop down to scratch behind Bobby’s ears. He leaned into my fingers, and I felt bad for my earlier doubting of him.

It was a beautiful evening and for a while my mother and I just sat there, sipping our tea and watching the sun go down below the low hills to the west. I’d forgotten how peaceful it was out here.

“They say the sunsets are worse because there isn’t so much pollution in the sky now,” my mother said. “But they look just as pretty to me.”

I looked over at her, small in her chair, the blanket wrapped around her shoulders and legs. How old would she be in a few months? 84? 85? How many sunsets did she have left in her? How many did any of us?

Right now we were in a holding pattern, but everyone knew we were playing a losing game. Appalling as it had been, with millions dying of hunger or in the multitude of food riots and wars, dealing with the food crisis was the easy part of this slow-moving apocalypse. Mainly a matter of scaling up things we’d already known how to do.

But in the long run, we know what’s coming. The land ever less arable, the climate more unstable, an increasingly inhospitable world for humans. We won’t die out, but a die-off is coming. Someday, the last animal will walk, fly, crawl, or slither through, and we’ll have what we’ve been arrowing toward ever since we climbed down from the trees — a planet to ourselves.

My mother pulled her blanket tighter around her.

“You want to go inside, Ma?”

“No. Not yet. If you’re OK.”

“I’m fine. Just don’t want you getting too cold.”

“You don’t need to worry about me.”

“No. But I do.”

“Well, I suppose it’s only fair, all those years of worrying I did over you.”

“You saying you’re done with that now?”

“It’s never done.”

“I suppose not.”

A moment’s silence.

“You know I’ll not be going with you, Michael. To your place.”

“Tonight?”

“Ever.”

“I know, Mom.”

“We’re good here. Bobby and me. It’s a good place.”

The last waning rays of the sun diffused weakly through the spaces between the hills. She had left the rest unsaid, but I knew what she meant. There were worse places after all to wait out the end. The three of us, Mom, myself, and Bobby, sat quietly then, our tea slowly cooling as the silence gathered around us.

STORY:
Bill Capossere’s work has appeared in multiple journals and anthologies, including Colorado Review, AQR, Short Takesand Brief Encounters, and been recognized in the “notable essays” section of several Best American Essays. His full-length plays have received readings through GEVA Theatre’s Festival of New Plays and the Durango Playfest, while shorter works have been performed at the Rochester Fringe Festival. He lives and teaches in Rochester NY.

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ART:
Aya Borucki is a Seattle-based illustrator known for their colorful, nature inspired work. You can see more art at Ayaborucki.com

Next Tuesday, we’ll feature a bonus interview with Bill about this story.

• This interview is a week late, after taking last week “off.” AWP + work + life knocked everything off schedule a bit. But we’re back, and I’m excited to share this interview and for the coming weeks of stories!

• We’re slowly working through submissions from our last open call in January. Maybe halfway through? Trying to get back to everyone as timely as possible. And then looking at reopening submissions again in… May?

• Not to turn this into personal announcement time, but… my book, Tacoma, was released last month! I’m incredibly proud of it, and early responses have been very kind and seem to be especially responding to how fun it is. Maybe you’re needing a short, fun read full of magic & beauty & wonder in your life?!

OK, back to our regularly scheduled programming!

–Aaron

If you haven’t already, read the story now… then read our short interview about the story:

Aaron Burch: I’m kinda always curious where stories came from and what the seeds of idea were. Can you tell me a little about the genesis for this story?

Russell Brakefield: My wife and I did take a trip through the Southwest last year, which provided the genesis and backdrop for this story. Though most details here are invented/imagined, the “Woman In White” is a popular ghost legend that I encountered several times on that trip. I was especially interested in the way local people we met (or even the people who’d moved there and made themselves local) talked about the mysteries of the desert and the Canyon with such reverence and conviction. Some of the lyricism in this piece intends to capture that conviction— a steadfast belief that one’s perspective, if not one’s life, can be radically altered by visiting a giant, ancient hole in the ground.

I know this is usually mostly intuitive and trying to explain and reverse-engineer can feel like a fool’s errand, but I wonder if you can locate or talk through how Grand Canyon as setting and “Woman in White” as image or conceit or whatever get built out into a story. I think I ask in part because I read so many stories and so often it feels like stories don’t work because they are too one-note or one-dimensional, they have the one thing they are about or that started as the genesis but they haven’t complicated themselves and filled out and become more than that. Does that make sense? Is that possible at all to talk through?

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Russ is one of my favorite poets and just one of my favorite people, and has kinda sneakily across the last handful of years evolved into one of my favorite short story writers. His stories often feel classic, recalling an almost kind of “dirty realism” vibe from the 80s that I can be a real sucker for, while also always feeling incredibly contemporary and fresh and new. A little familiar and also always uniquely Brakefieldian.

I love getting sucked into the worlds of his stories — spending time with his characters, his sentences — and I hope you all enjoy this one, too.

—Aaron Burch
Editor, Short Story, Long

“The Woman In White”

They had just passed the Four Corners when the snow hit. Big flakes smacked the windows like someone was dumping flour across the desert. The sudden spray of starlight over the hood might have been beautiful, had it not been Brad’s decision to pass over the motels in Cortez and keep on driving through the night.

They were talking again about having children, repeating the same conversations they’d had for the last half-decade. Brad was making his usual arguments about love and connection and purpose. Robyn was making her usual arguments too. She was just wrapping the one about imminent environmental apocalypse when the storm came on.

“I give it a decade,” she said, staring out the passenger window. “Ten years and we’ll all be sucking water off jellyfish in state-sanctioned camps. Ten years until the start of the end. Why bring a new human into that?”

Brad tightened his grip on the wheel, ten and two like he hadn’t done since high school. The storm had snapped to white-out conditions, and one of his wipers was shoddy, bent so it left a football-shaped swath of windshield untouched. He should have replaced them before they left. He should have gotten a tune up. He should have just let Robyn pay for a rental car like she’d wanted. And he definitely should have agreed to stop when they’d had the chance.

“This is nasty,” he said, squinting through the snow. “I think we should pull off.”

“Pull off?” Robyn swiped at the condensation inside the front window. “Pull off where?”

They’d stopped an hour before at a travel center on the reservation where Brad had peed and Robyn had bought a cherry flavored pickle out of a tub at the register. He could still see the neon red stain on her lips, even in the dark of the car, even in a snowstorm. Since then, they hadn’t seen a single gas station or town or truck stop.

“I told you we should have stopped in Durango,” said Robyn. “You always do this.”

This was the part of their argument about having children that usually went unsaid, and though Robyn didn’t say it now either, Brad could feel it in the car with them, snuggled up next to her ideas about climate disaster and overpopulation: Brad’s competence never quite matched his confidence. His optimism about the world, which was nearly spiritual, vastly outmatched his actual ability to navigate that world. In other words, words that Robyn had never said but that he knew she thought, he was sort of a loser. A screwup. A deadbeat. Even this trip—Robyn’s suggestion of a winter getaway to the Grand Canyon—was actually, Brad knew, meant to be a distraction from the fact that he’d been out of work for eight months. It was her way of trying to get him off the couch, and perhaps her attempt to restart their relationship as well.

Brad tried to focus on the road. Snow and ice whipped across the windshield. He set the image of the Canyon in his brain, drew a straight line and willed them there. He had wanted, more than anything, to see the Canyon at sunrise. Now it was looking like they wouldn’t make it at all. If we could just see the sun come up, he thought, just sit for a moment at the edge, then everything would realign. All would be set right again.

*

When Robyn poked the map on the dash, it showed nothing but grainy green desert in front of them. No towns or landmarks. Not a single icon for gas or fast food. She shifted in her seat and watched the two bars of reception blink in and out. Brad was still talking about the weather report he’d heard on the radio. “Clear sailing all the way. I swear that’s what I heard.”

Robyn picked up her earlier argument where she’d left off, anything so she didn’t have to focus on the snow battering the windshield. “I’m just saying, the world is already becoming less hospitable every day. I can’t imagine ten years from now.” She leaned and gripped the dash. “Air quality alone is reason to stop populating. I read a study from Mexico about how all the birds are falling out of the sky. Because of the smog. The bad air. A few years from now kids won’t even be able to go outside. They’ll suffocate on their way to school—”

Robyn stopped talking mid-sentence. “Shit. I’m sorry.”

Brad had fallen silent at the wheel, squinting into the squall.

“Really, I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to go there.” Robyn put a hand on his shoulder. “Just nervous talking. I wasn’t talking about Brynn. Really.”

“Enough,” Brad snorted. He had never raised her voice to her before, but these two terse syllables were as close as he might get. “Just let me focus on the road.”

Among the things that went unspoken in these conversations about forecasted climate collapse and hypothetical eco-catastrophe was the all too real devastation that had marked Brad’s childhood. His younger sister Brynn had drowned while the two of them were swimming in a reservoir when they were kids, Brad having to run the two miles back to his parents’ house to tell them that Brynn had gone under the cold water and had never come back up. Brad had been twelve at the time. Brynn only nine.

For Robyn, the senselessness of this tragedy was such an obvious tally in the “don’t have kids” column. This was not how Brad thought about it of course, and not a position Robyn could argue in good faith. What resulted was a muteness on the topic, an avoidance that tipped their conversations always back into more conjectural territories, back to microplastics and population growth, to childcare and finances and the state of global politics.

Now, in her corner of the car, Robyn held her breath, picturing a smaller version of Brad submerged in a bottomless lake, his skin running a deep, inky blue. “I’m sorry,” she said again, though she wasn’t totally sure she needed to be.

*

The snow kept coming, the windshield getting dirtier, the wheels spinning on ice. Brad slowed and punched his high beams, searching desperately for a lane. He tried to tune out Robyn’s voice, tried not to think about his sister’s lungs filling up with dirty snow.

“Robyn, we’ve gotta stop. I can’t see a thing.”

Robyn was staring into her phone like it was a crystal ball. “We can’t just stop in the middle of nowhere. The shoulder’s a mess.”

Brad knew she was right. If they pulled off now there was no guarantee they’d make it back onto the road. He grasped the wheel tighter and kept driving, nearly blind, into the snow.

It was here, in the quivering eye of this blizzard, that Brad saw something. In front of him, suddenly, appeared an apparition, a swirling figure that took the shape of a woman in a white gown or swirling white robes in the middle of the road. Her figure emerged suddenly, her white contours popping from the icy backdrop as in one of those magic eye posters Brad had on his wall as a kid. He smashed the breaks and skidded. The car lurched right then left, then launched into a spin. Robyn screamed and braced herself against the side of the car. Brad pulled the wheel, trying to stay on the road and avoid the woman at the same time, and sent the car careening, Robyn’s side first, into a snowbank in the ditch.

In the eerie quiet after they skidded out, Brad patted himself down, feeling to make sure he was still there. Then he grabbed at Robyn in the passenger seat, checking her too, touching her shoulders and torso and face to make sure she was unharmed. “You’re hurt? You’re ok? What hurts?” He was shouting, even though the only other sound was the low hum of the engine and the uneven thwack of the windshield wipers. “You’re ok?”

“I’m ok,” she choked. “I’m ok.” She was sobbing but seemed uninjured, shivering as he pulled her close. He held her, feeling his own body rocking with adrenaline. Then, just as his breathing began to slow, Brad remembered the woman. He let go of Robyn and stepped quickly out of the car, scanning in both directions. Robyn was shouting at him, but he ignored her and turned in circles, searching for the woman in white. The snow was still coming down, the silver strip of highway behind them interrupted only by their woozy skid marks. Just as quickly as she had appeared, the woman in white was gone. Brad stared into the darkness for a long time, his brain humming with the sound of squealing tires, snow sucking across the desert. When he drifted back into himself, Robyn was still yelling his name.

“Brad!? Get back in the car. What are you doing?”

He got in and blasted heat on his bare hands. “There was a woman,” he said, but his voice was feeble beneath the blowing hot air.

“A what?” Robyn stared at him. “A woman?”

“I saw a woman in the road,” he said. “A woman in white robes. Sort of floating there.” He tried to describe the woman, but even as he talked, he realized that he probably hadn’t seen a woman after all, that it was more likely he’d reacted to some other spark in his eye or in his mind’s eye, some shift in wind or weather that had nearly killed them both. “I’m sorry.” He pushed his palms to his yes. “I thought I saw something. Must have just been the snow.”

In response Robyn simply shook her head and got out to fetch the shovel from the trunk.

It took the two of them nearly an hour to dig the car out, Robyn behind the wheel and Brad pushing from behind. They worked in silence, apart from Brad shouting occasional instructions. It wasn’t until Robyn wedged the floor mats beneath the wheels and shifted into second that the tires caught and sent the car back onto the highway.

“I’m sorry I didn’t think of that,” Brad said when he got behind the wheel again. Robyn stared out her window in silence, radiating with anger, or perhaps something even worse, worry or frustration or simple disappointment.

Back on the road, Brad throttled down so that they were barely moving at all, as if the desert wind and not the overworked engine were pushing them through the night. Finally, mercifully, after they’d limped another twenty grueling miles, both of them tensed to utter silence, a light appeared. What first looked like a moon cutting through the storm turned into a flickering gas station neon, hovering in front of them like an angel’s dirty halo.

Brad pulled in and parked under the awning beside the pumps. His jaw ached from clenching. His collar sagged with sweat. When he clicked off the car, they both sat listening to the ticking of the engine.

“Should we talk about it?” said Brad. “I feel like we should talk about it.” The cold bumper echoed in his palms, the weight of the car in his back and shoulders.

“There’s nothing to talk about,” said Robyn.

In front of them, the empty gas stations sat like a mirage, a flickering shelter in the storm. One lonely street dog huddled by the doors gnawing a hot dog wrapper, its black coat slicked with snow.

“Dog,” said Brad, pointing. “Unless I’m seeing things again.”

Robyn shook her head. “No.” She unbuckled to get out. “That one’s real.”

Robyn was still shaking when she stepped inside, her body still regulating, still moving between fits of bone-deep shivers. Her anger had fallen away, but in its place cut a sharp adrenaline edge, like a needle being thread beneath the skin.

“Hey,” said the cashier, as if this were any ordinary gas station at any ordinary time of day.

The overhead lights flickered as Robyn studied the young woman standing behind the counter. She was young, seemingly too young, a skinny white girl with one side of her head shaved, a row of garish stitches arcing in a jagged U shape above her ear. Gauge earrings. A honeybee tattooed in thick black lines above her right eyebrow. Her eyes were rheumy and bulging, but a baby-face hung somewhere behind the scars and thick blue mascara. A bolt of steely recognition ran down Robyn’s spine.

In appearance, Robyn actually shared no similarities with this young woman. Not in hair or eye color, not in height or build, not even in complexion. But there was something else—something in the way the young woman carried herself, in the way she slouched and slightly swayed, and in the desperate threads of rebellion she’d woven into her clothes and hair and face—that made Robyn feel as if she was looking into a broken mirror.

“You ok lady?”

Robin had been staring. “Sorry. It’s been a long night. The weather…” she motioned outside. “We skidded out back there and had to dig through the snow. I thought we were going to freeze.”

“Yikes,” said the girl, but did not change her expression. She stared at Robyn, her mouth slack, a wad of blue gum hanging. “There are a couple hotels not far. Tuba City. Cameron.” She looked out the window, then behind her at a security camera mounted on the wall. “You can’t stay here long though. Company policy. It’s a safety thing.”

“No. I get it.” Robyn moved closer to the counter, and they stood in awkward silence.

Robyn couldn’t put a finger on exactly what it was she recognized in this young woman. Though avoiding the tragedy of Brad’s childhood took up an outsized amount of the couple’s energy, Robyn did have her own past, and there were things from that past that she too worked to keep off the table. She had no untimely deaths to contend with, no prolonged years of bereavement as a young person. From the outside, her life had been perfectly privileged and pedestrian. But of course there are ways that privilege and pedestrianism can form another sort of sadness, perhaps especially if you are wired a certain way, perhaps especially if you are a young woman, pressed by the terrible constructs of the world, constructs that men like Brad are not bothered by.

Outside, Brad was still fumbling with the gas pump.

“Not sure what’s taking him so long,” said Robyn.

The girl shrugged

Robyn searched for something else to say. “Do you spend much time in the Canyon? Being so close?”

The girl brought a hand to her mouth and bit at one of her nails. “Haven’t in a long time,” she mumbled. “I work third shift mostly. Plus…” She paused, and her face blanched. “My father used to guide there when I was young. I don’t go there anymore.”

The girl let her statement mix with the humming lights and rotten gas station air, the past tense of her father pulling at different strings in Robyn’s brain. Dead? Estranged? Lost to the mysterious winds of the desert? She thought about her own parents, who she hadn’t talked to in years, and about all the ways they’d tried and failed to speak to each other when she was a younger woman. She thought about the way Brad’s family had been torn apart by the shrapnel of their loss.

“Frankly, I don’t really understand the appeal. It’s just a big hole in the ground right?

The girl shrugged again.

“I wanted to stop earlier, but my husband has this thing about seeing the Canyon at sunrise. Then the accident. He thought he saw something in the road. I think night driving is getting to him. And the snow.”

“Not the snow,” said the girl as she tapped at her phone on the counter.

“What?”

“Maybe not the snow. People always see things on this road. No matter the weather.”

“What, like animals?”

“No, not animals.”

Robyn waited for the girl to elaborate, but she kept staring at her phone. “Like ghosts?”

The girl shrugged. “Could be ghosts. If you want. Or spirits. Ancestors. Aliens. Messages from beyond.”

“Omens?”

The girl shrugged again. “Omens are bad right? So not just omens I guess.”

Robyn forced an awkward laugh. “Now you sound like my husband. He’s always looking for signs.”

The girl shrugged again, like it was automatic, like it was the only movement available to her. “People see these glowing orbs out there sometimes, spheres sort of floating around. Tourists are always crashing out in here.”

Robyn felt a flush rise on her cheeks. “Sorry,” she said. The cashier shrugged again.

Brad walked in then and put his hand on Robyn’s shoulder. “Says the card reader’s down.”

The girl punched some buttons on the register in front of him. “Should be good now,” she said. “I was just telling your wife that there are some hotels not far.”

Brad nodded. “I think we are going to try to make it to the park tonight. Snow seems to be slowing down.”

The girl looked behind her again at the security camera mounted on the wall.

“Thanks,” said Robyn, and led Brad back out to the car.

By the time Brad had gassed up and cleaned the windshields, the snow had lightened to a thin mist.

“You ok?” said Brad, getting back behind the wheel. “Still up for this?”

By “this” he meant the trip they were currently on, and his obsession with getting to the Canyon for sunrise, but of course he also meant all of it—their relationship, their endless conversations about the future, the future.

As they pulled back onto the highway, Robyn worked the image of the young cashier over and over in her mind. Where would she sleep that night? Who would be waiting for her when she got home?

“She was so young,” said Robyn.
“Who?”

“That girl. She was so young.”

“I worked at the gas station in high school,” said Brad, giving the car some speed now that the roads had started to clear.

“All night? Alone?”

“Well, no,” said Brad. He was still wet and disheveled from bailing the car, but a new spark sputtered in his eyes now that he’d recalibrated his mission. He turned on the radio and picked up speed. “She seemed ok to me.”

In the darkness they passed a farmhouse and a scattering of low outbuildings, stables and barns rotting into the earth. Beyond, a few white horses moved through the mist. Probably just ranch stock, penned and saddled like any others. Still, a part of Robyn wanted so badly for them to be more, wanted them to be wild stallions loping untethered across the frozen desert. Ghosts of horses past or specters of an earlier age walking out to greet her. But just then, she couldn’t quite bring herself to believe.

They got to the park just before dawn, so early that the ranger station gates were still lifted, no one inside the little booth to take their toll. Another sign, thought Brad, that this was a consecrated journey, even with the near catastrophe the night before. Robyn had fallen asleep beside him in the passenger seat, and he didn’t wake her as he eased through the park’s winding roads out towards the Watchtower, the viewing stage he’d been holding in his mind for the last several hundred miles.

When Robyn suggested the trip, Brad had seen that as a sign as well, and he’d agreed to it without telling her that he’d been to the Canyon before, that he had visited as a boy. The memory surfaced again now, sharp in contrast to foggy pre-dawn light. Sitting beside his sister and his father on the Canyon’s edge at dawn, eating the most delicious, smashed, car-warm peanut butter sandwich. It was a memory that Brad had held close, had protected so ferociously his entire life, he couldn’t bring himself to tell Robyn, couldn’t add it to the pile of mysticism and cosmic trauma he’d brought to every other aspect of their relationship. If he said it aloud, he was sure it would drift away, scatter like dust into the Canyon’s gaping maw and disappear forever. But also, he had convinced himself in the leadup to this trip that if he could recreate this moment with Robyn, it would surely mean something. For weeks he’d been imagining them walking to the edge and casting their problems into the Canyon, holding hands and aligning together beside the wonders of time and nature and geology. He had also imagined, if he was honest with himself, his sister walking up from one of the Canyon paths to greet them, still wearing her orange striped bathing suit. He imagined putting his hand in Brynn’s and squeezing it lightly, then letting her go, for good, and turning back into his life utterly renewed.

But when they finally got there, when they parked and he woke Robyn and they bundled up and followed signs out to the Watchtower’s viewing stage, there was nothing to see. The snow had stopped, but a thick fog had set down on the Canyon at dawn so that everything around them was cast nearly invisible. Brad’s hand, when he extended it in front of his face, disappeared completely.

“We can come back tomorrow,” said Robyn, taking his arm. “Maybe it will be better tomorrow.” Her voice still wobbled with sleep.

“For sure,” said Brad, but by the time they got back to the car he felt pummeled by waves of shame, angry at himself for putting stock in this pilgrimage, just as so many times before he’d put too much weight into this or that gesture or journey or symbol or guidepost, all the answers he’d found that were not really answers at all. Of course there’d been no woman in the road. Of course Brynn was not waiting for him here in the desert. Of course seeing the Canyon at dawn would not actually change the trajectory of his life, or the relationship he had to his past, or the way he was with Robyn.

“We came here with my Dad once,” he said, staring down at the keys in his lap. “When I was a boy. Just my father and Brynn and I.”

“You never told me that. Why didn’t you tell me that?” said Robyn, though she did not look surprised.

Brad shrugged. “She was obsessed with geology. With rocks and things. She used to carry so many stones around that her pants would sag. My dad got her one of those things…” Brad cupped his hands in the shape of a barrel in front of him and twisted.

“A tumbler,” said Robyn.

Brad nodded. “A tumbler.” He put the keys in the ignition but did not start the car. “Maybe I’ve conflated things again. Our stuff and my stuff.”

Robyn pushed her arm around Brad’s neck in the darkness, stroked the back of his head, and for a brief moment he thought about their earliest days together, steamy sessions in his car or in Robyn’s tiny studio apartment. But then Robyn merely pushed her hand against his head, sweeping his hair back as if he was a feverish child.

“You would be good at it,” Robyn said. “It isn’t that.” Her hand pressed his temple, and he felt a faint pulse reverberate there. “You’d find a way to be good at it. We would.”

Brad pulled away slightly and straightened in his seat. Through the window the foggy horizon looked like its own geologic specimen, its own canyon wall, the fossilized surface of a trilobite or the inside of a webby agate.

“You’d at least be good at the rock tumbling part.” Robyn smiled. “And the ghost stories.”

*

When they finally backtracked and found a hotel, Robyn couldn’t sleep. She lay awake for two hours before she eventually gave up, got dressed and went down to the lobby instead.

The lobby was still clouded by a sticky-sweet syrup-and-coffee smell from the meager continental breakfast in the corner. All Robyn wanted to do was walk, to put her body in motion in a way that made sense biologically, rather than in service of Brad’s cosmic quest, but when she stepped outside, the cold wind beat her back, and she was forced instead to walk laps in the lobby until her fatigue caught up with her.

“You ok?” the lobby attendant asked on her sixth or seventh lap. “Anything you need?”

Robyn began to apologize, trying to explain about their long night, about the walking and the cold. She was aimlessly spinning a rack of postcards as she talked when something caught her eye. In a row of cards printed in faux sepia, she flipped to one featuring a woman in billowing white robes floating above a silver strip of river. The card had been badly photo-shopped, the woman’s photo clipped from some other time and pasted sloppily on a more contemporary print of the Canyon from above. But there she was anyways, the woman in white, the woman Brad had swerved to miss in the snowstorm, hovering in robes and a wispy flower crown.

“What are these?” asked Robyn.

“Oh just old ghost stories,” said the woman. “I think there’s a price here—”

“This one though,” said Robyn, holding the card in front of her. “What is this one?”

The woman stared. “I think there’s a little blurb on the back there. Probably says ‘The Woman In White’ or ‘The Wailing Woman.’ That’s what we called her in high school at least. Lots of different stories about her. She died in the Canyon or she’s an angel watching over others who died. Sometimes she’s a guide for lost people. Or lost souls. Sometimes she ushers in fertility. But then sometimes she’s a herald of death, so who knows.” The woman smiled now, as if she was remembering an old friend. “People tend to see her more on the North Rim though I think, so you might be spared a visit.” She laughed. “Unless you are meant to find her, I guess.”

Robyn felt as if she’d been punctured, all the nervous energy from the night siphoning out of her and being replaced by something else, a heavier feeling, a feeling of dread, a feeling of her reality being split open like soft rock. She thought of Brad upstairs asleep, his dreams filled with hopeful spirits. She thought of the girl at the gas station, her nights filled with sleepy premonitions. The woman was still talking about The Wailing Woman when Robyn dropped the postcard back in the rack and hurried upstairs to her room.

The next day, they drove back into the park, this time stopping at the gate to pay the fee. The fog had lifted, and Robyn watched eagerly as they drove through the trees and as they walked the path from the parking lot. A few families wandered near the Watchtower, but Robyn and Brad were mostly alone as they made their way to a bench beside the edge. As they approached, and as Robyn peered for the first time over the brink, her stomach lurched into her throat. She had a sudden, strange feeling that she was being buoyed, being pulled by some elemental magic towards the rocks and river below.

“Wow,” she said, which felt idiotic and insignificant. She had not anticipated being so moved. Brad, for his part, stared ahead, perhaps as stoic as he’d ever been in his life. Robyn thought about the postcard in the lobby, and how she might form some sort of all-encompassing apology to Brad. “I’m sorry we didn’t see the sun come up,” is what she came up with instead.

“It’s ok.” Brad began to apologize himself, but Robyn cut him off.

“Tell me how it was, when you were here before. With Brynn.”

Brad talked about waiting in the darkness with his father, about the dramatic colors and light falling onto the rocks, about the long, ghostly shadows, about how the cliffs warmed beneath them as they sat in silence and watched, about the incredible quiet of the canyon at dawn. He talked about Brynn and about peanut butter sandwiches.

“I’m not doing it justice,” he said eventually, and waved the air in front of him. But Robyn was seeing it clearly in her mind, as clearly as anything. And as she formed the image of the three of them, she saw herself there too. In her reverie the four of them sat on the edge in silence, the horizon slowly brightening. And as the darkness faded, the sun tipped up and poured buckets of pink paint into the Canyon. And somewhere below them in the reaches of the Canyon, Robyn imagined the girl from the gas station, following her father down the winding trails. She too was made young, in this imagining, a young girl, but still with her shaved head and her stitches and her thick-lined tattoos. And of course Robyn saw The Woman in White, The Wailing Woman floating across the surface of the river, guiding them along the endless bottom of the Canyon. And the Canyon was singing, singing to Brad and his sister, singing now to Robyn as well, singing for a thousand dead sisters and fathers and mothers, a thousand wild horses, a thousand lost dogs. A thousand children, born and not. A thousand ghost orbs and wailing women in white. But singing too another song, not just an elegy, but something else, a chorus of the dead, voices calling across time to the land of the living.

Robyn leaned her head against Brad’s shoulder. “I feel like I’m floating,” she said.

Brad nodded and exhaled, as if he had just finally, after all the miles they’d travelled together, caught his breath. “Maybe you are.”

STORY:
Russell Brakefield is the author of the poetry collections Field Recordings, My Modest Blindness, and Irregular Heartbeats at the Park West. He received his MFA from the University of Michigan’s Helen Zell Writers’ Program and is Assistant Professor in the University Writing Program at the University of Denver.

*

ART:
Nina Semczuk’s writing has appeared in the Los Angeles Review, Sinking City Literary Journal, Coal Hill Review, and elsewhere. Her art, pottery, and comics can be found online and around the Hudson Valley.

Next Tuesday, we’ll feature a bonus interview with Russell about this story.

Aaron Burch: I’m kinda always curious where stories came from and what the seeds of idea were. Can you tell me a little about the genesis for this story?

Caelyn Cobb: This story came from a couple of places: Hilary Leichter’s novel Temporary; the story “Who Will Greet You at Home?” by Leslie Nneka Arimah, and a unionization drive at the publishing house where I'd had my first real job about a decade prior to writing this story. Temporary had me thinking about the world of work in whimsical, but ultimately a bit darkly comic ways, and the story by Arimah, which takes a speculative look at the pressure put upon women to become mothers, had me thinking about the mysticism of spaces created and run by women. And then, in the unionization drive, someone shared a junior staff member’s complaint that mentioning a too-high volume of work to higher-ups was met with seminars about time management. And my reaction was: do you mean, like, how to create more hours in a day? Labor in publishing is always an issue; the thin and unpredictable profit margins of the business pressure us to have as lean of an operation as possible while publishing more and more books. You could work 24/7 and still not get everything done to your satisfaction. On top of this, the amount of extra work you do becomes a badge of honor. I remember, in that first job, we had developed such a culture of competitive overwork amongst ourselves. It was like the first season of Industry with comically lower stakes. So the story comes from that place: how a push to do more for your own ends becomes a way to take back the work for yourselves, and assert your power as a worker.

I love this answer! Love that it came from kinda triangulating three different inspirations. I think that is often true for the strongest stories. With so many stories, you can almost feel like a one-directional inspiration/“idea,” and that often leads to it reading flat and not as complicated or messy as I want a story to be.

I love, too, your note of “do you mean, like, how to create more hours in a day?” and how that then becomes literalized in this story! One of my fave uses of the speculative of a story is exactly this.

Maybe your answer kind of already touches on this, but my own responses here remind me of the comments already on the story. “An engaging corporate fable,” and “Yes, this reads like a fable, minus the lesson that often comes at the end,” and “about time too, that the corporate world started to inspire fairytales.”

I think I often don’t love contemporary “fables” or “fairy tales” because they end up feeling a little more one dimensional than I prefer in my stories. They can too easily fall into the trap of ending with a “lesson” or “moral.” I wonder how much you thought about any or all of this... while writing, in general, but maybe with this story, specifically?

Read more

Right away, the voice pulls me right in. “Our girl,” the story tells us, over and over, to such hypnotic effect. It makes me wonder who the narrator is, and why this protagonist is =“our girl”; it makes me feel like we’re picking right up with a story already in progress, and it has me rooting for her, right from the start.

And then, and I don’t want to give to much away, but it introduces this relatively small speculative element that turns the story a little sideways in the most fun and perfect ways. It really hits my sweet spot for what I so love that a short story can do. I’m excited to get to share it today and for you all to read it!

—Aaron Burch
Editor, Short Story, Long

“Time Management”

Once there was a girl who wanted to be a part of something bigger than herself, and so she moved to a big city and tried to get a job at a company everyone else had heard of before. That didn’t work, but she did land a job, and that job, she was sure, would lead to a better job, one at one of those aforementioned heard-of-before companies. As far as decisions go, it wasn’t the worst one. Some people searching for community end up living in weird New Age compounds or following musicians around to every concert they play for the rest of their lives. Our girl just wanted to work, and for the work to give her meaning.

The office for the job was full of other girls just like her, with the same dreams and the same longings. None were women: in this city, you were either a girl or a crone with nothing in between, and at the office it was no different. Row after row of girls sat at identical desks, with matching half-walls separating them into their own neat squares. They swished in each morning in their fast-fashion work attire, carrying iced coffees with cubes that clacked on the plastic sides of their cups. They sat, and they typed, and they furrowed their brows. All of them were firm-cheeked and slim and had eyes shining with youth.

The work appeared like most work did, on papers of unknown origin, passed from hand to hand in an order little understood but followed religiously. Sometimes the Boss came down to supervise and give out tasks of his own making. The Boss stood straight and broad and blonde and dashing, and to the girls, he was like the sun. He smiled and waved at them as he strode through the aisles, and they waved and grinned back. It was hard not to admire him, so lit up and supercharged as he was.

When the Boss came to our girl’s desk for the first time, she bloomed up at him, happy to be in his glow at last. He handed her a stack of papers to work on. She asked when he wanted her to finish the task. “As soon as you can,” he said. “Right now, if you can swing it. Yesterday, really!”

The other girls around her all laughed and so did the Boss. But when he walked away, the girl sitting next to our girl leaned over her half-wall. “He is not really joking,” she whispered.

Our girl tried mightily to comply with the Boss’s request. She wanted to finish the task as soon as she could. But the stack of papers was so high. And worse, the next day brought another, waiting on her desk when she arrived, and there were more papers each day after that. She couldn’t keep up.

The Boss did not smile at her when he came by. Instead he frowned. “You need to work on your time management,” he said.

“How?” she asked. She could barely see him over the papers piled in front of her.

“Beats me,” he shrugged. “Ask That Girl over there.”

That Girl. She sat a few rows over, at a desk surrounded by walls that actually went up to the ceiling, almost. She did not wear fast fashion; she wore vintage cardigans, pilled at the sides. She drank her coffee black and burned from the office’s ancient pot. Once she had been one of them. Now she stared into the middle distance in her corner, surrounded by piles of paper, guarding the history of the company with her unfathomable mind. Some of the girls wanted to be like her, to sit behind real walls and be trusted with important things. Others thought her a cautionary tale. They didn’t want to be That Girl, they murmured to each other. They wanted to be the Boss, even though the Boss had never been one of them.

For the most part, our girl found That Girl a little intimidating. When she plucked up the courage to peek around the corner and ask about time management, she thought perhaps she had been right to be scared: That Girl just laughed. “No such thing,” she said. Her laughs continued as our girl slunk back to her own desk. None of the girls around her looked up. Nor did they offer any solution to our girl’s problem. At the end of the day, it was every girl for herself.

That night, our girl had no place to be. She went straight home as soon as she became too tired to keep working. She ate cereal for dinner and then she set out to do laundry during the hours when the rest of her neighborhood was likely to be elsewhere, having fun. She had resigned herself to the fact that this was the only foolproof way to ensure she got any machines.

The laundromat was still, alarmingly, full—though not of customers, she saw with relief, but with workers. Women. Or, in the uncharitable parlance of the city, girls well on their way to becoming crones, with smile lines at their eyes and silver streaks in their hair. One at the front desk with the cash register and a supply of quarters. Three at the machines, doing wash-and-fold orders for pickup. Another in the faded blue plastic seats by the door, minding a set of three young children playing with dolls and trucks.

“Hello,” the woman at the register said to our girl as she walked in.

“Hello,” the woman with the children said as our girl wheeled her house cart of laundry past her. She looked just like the woman at the register, down to the same gray three-quarter sleeve shirt under the same purple floral apron. Both had a mole on their right cheek and a small scar cutting through the left side of their upper lip.

“Hello,” said the woman emptying a washer full of clothes into a dryer at the back, an exact match to the others, too.

“Are you guys…related?” our girl asked. They really looked like sisters, or quintuplets, or whatever ‘tuplets’ for the number of them that they were.

The women looked at each other. “Sort of,” said another woman with the same mole and scar and clothes loading coins into the machines on the opposite row.

Our girl, feeling stupid, just nodded, face heating up. She started to put her dirty clothes in a washer. But the women saw the clothes: fast-fashion, coffee-stained, shiny in the way that only cheap polyester can be. They saw our girl’s tired face. They saw the tote bag she used instead of a purse.

“Ok, you caught me,” the woman at the machine to her left said. “We’re actually the same person.”

“There was so much work, and not enough machines, so we found a solution to get it done when no customers are around,” said another.

Our girl looked up from her laundry. The women had kind smiles on their faces. They had among them an air of shared understanding. She thought: time management.

“How?” our girl asked.

They each reached into the front pocket of their aprons. From inside, they all withdrew their own tiny brass bell.

“Go to the thrift store at the corner,” the woman at the register said. “Ask for Helga.”

The thrift store, which had no sign out front, was in our girl’s mind (and many others’) barely deserving of the name. She passed it twice daily, on the way to the subway and then back again. Each morning, a stout crone of an indeterminate advanced age dragged out bins of books and notebooks and tiny decorative boxes, and she laid them out on foldable tables outside the door. Each night she re-boxed everything and brought it all back inside again. The door to the place was always ajar, though it was near impossible to see inside. Racks of clothes and shelves full of various accessories jammed both sides of the narrow shop, piled high to the ceiling and leaving only a small, dark aisle by which to pass through. Our girl always wondered if that shop really sold anything it had on display. Never once had she seen a customer.

Our girl squeezed herself into the thrift store and asked, as advised, for Helga. The thin man at the front desk pointed at the back of the store, not saying a word.

Our girl pushed aside sweaters and scarves and muumuu dresses someone had definitely made in bulk from the same pattern, and she wound her way to the back. There, behind a beaded curtain, wedged in the corner, sitting at a tiny desk that looked like it came from an elementary school, was Helga. She was the one our girl always saw setting up the boxes out front. She was a crone through and through: stooped and wrinkled and gray-haired.

“Ah,” Helga said. “You’re here for the bell.”

Our girl was not sure how she knew. Perhaps the woman at the laundromat had told Helga to expect her, she thought. In front of her, Helga was holding out another brass bell just like theirs—gleaming almost golden, about the size of a grape.

“How does it work?” the girl asked.

“With each ring, it transports you back in time one hour,” Helga said.

The girl took the bell by its chain and studied it in the air. She asked if she could give it a ring before she bought it. Helga shrugged like it was of no importance one way or the other. The girl shook the bell. For a second the air stilled, and she felt a light static pressing all along her skin. Her vision went a little fuzzy, like she’d stood up too fast. When it cleared, she could see she was still standing in the corner by the old school desk, but that the store around her was dark.

Someone peered around the beaded curtain. Helga. She held a paper to-go cup of coffee in her hand. At the sight of the girl she clucked her tongue. “You rang it too many times,” she said. “You’ve got to flick it with your wrist real fast, and then wrap your fist around it.” She pulled out her own bell and demonstrated. For a split second after she finished the ring, trapping the bell in her hand to muffle the sound, her eyes went glassy, but then she was back to staring pleasantly at our girl.

“What do I do now?” the girl asked.

“Whatever you want! You have three extra hours. You’ll feel it when the other you rings the bell.”

Our girl paid Helga for her bell. The sum was large, especially for someone who worked at the company where our girl did, but she decided to see it as an investment. Then she went out to breakfast at a diner. She sat there with her coffee and pancakes, reading amidst the gentle early morning din. Our girl couldn’t remember the last time she had such a luxurious weekend. Usually she only had time for sleep, chores, and staring at the wall until it was time to go back to work. Forget applying for those other jobs that her current job was supposed to lead to.

In the diner, she read slowly and chewed even slower. At last, she felt a fuzzy zap behind her eyes, a zap that she could only assume meant her other self had gone to the thrift store and then back in time. She inhaled the scent of her coffee, the mug cooling in her hand, and she grinned.

The following Monday, our girl got to work at the customary time. The streets were crawling with girls, as always, iced coffees in one hand and smartphones in the other. They streamed into her office building and the other buildings just like it on the block. They chattered as they rode up the elevator and parted on their respective floors. Inside, though, instead of going straight to her desk, our girl strode into the bathroom. There, she locked herself in a stall and rang her bell, just once, in the way Helga had shown her. When her vision cleared, she was still in the bathroom. Outside it was slightly grayer. The office itself was hushed. The morning rush had not yet begun. Our girl gave a little jump of elation and strolled over to her desk.

When she got there, she found herself already sitting there, sorting papers into piles.

“Good morning,” her other self said. “You’ve got about thirty minutes until you ring the bell. In the meantime, want to start on our filing?”

And so it began that our girl made the most of her mornings. She rang the bell once, twice, sometimes three times. She stopped feeling the zap behind her eyes. She got through each task faster and faster. As the months wore on, there were days where she actually ran out of tasks to do before the day was out.

“More?” the boss gasped when she asked for another project. He was pleased all the way up to his golden eyebrows. Our girl basked in his approval. It was the warmest thing she’d felt since coming to the city.

The girl in the next cubicle over did not like it. “You’re making it harder for the rest of us,” she hissed.

“I can’t help it if I’ve figured out my time management,” our girl replied, her voice going a bit sing-songy. She turned away from her neighbor, whose face was harsh and stormy, and smiled to herself a little.

The following morning, the girl from the next cube over came to work before the customary time. She had seen our girl already at her desk every day when she arrived, and thought she had guessed what her secret was. Then she saw two of our girl standing in the cube working.

“Oh, hello,” the two versions of our girl said pleasantly.

The girl in the next cube over could only stammer in reply. “How are you doing that?” she asked, finally, when she could get her mouth working again.

Our girl thought about not telling her. She had been enjoying her few weeks of winning the race against her neighbor. The Boss’s smile flickered within her chest even when she was at home, making soup from a can for dinner and watching pirated episodes of prestige TV shows that came with Chinese subtitles. But in the fluorescent lights of the office, standing face to face with the other girl, she saw the exhaustion in the dark circles and flaking dry skin of her face, and she gave in. She really didn’t have it in her to live an every-girl-for-herself life, deep down.

“I have this bell,” she said. Then she gave the other girl directions to the thrift shop.

Our girl and her neighbor in the next cube over did not become friends. They still wanted to outdo one another. When our girl rang the bell three times, and then two, and then one, the other girl rang hers four and then three and then two times. Sometimes the sound of our girl’s bell alone was enough to cause her neighbor to jump up and ring her own, even though all her selves were taking care of her work and she didn’t need more. Our girl rolled her eyes and made her other selves laugh and roll theirs in reply.

And yet, without meaning to, the two girls became teammates. One self would drop a folder and the other’s selves would help her clean it up. The neighbor needed a pen and our girl would hand her one over the half-wall. When one started to drag a bit by mid-afternoon—all those extra morning hours did take quite a bit out of them—the other would nudge her awake, even bring her a fresh mug of subpar office coffee to keep her going. They wouldn’t admit it, but both found it to be rather nice. When the Boss came by and beamed at their clear desks and fast progress, the two of them shared a smug grin.

“You must tell me your secret,” he said. The two girls caught each other’s eyes. They could easily read the emotions hidden there. Their productive mornings were special. Their own little thing. A source of private revving joy. There was the Boss, though. How they longed to make him smile at them even more brightly than he already did. And what about the other girls, distressed and alone, in the cubes that surrounded them? What right did they have to deprive their colleagues of the opportunity to work smarter?

“We can show you,” our girl said.

“Come tomorrow, before the customary time,” the girl in the next cube over added.

They already had their other selves hard at work when the Boss arrived. He stared and gawked and then he grinned. He laughed when they demonstrated the bell for him, both ringing theirs in sync.

The Boss was thrilled at this development. He told all the other girls to talk to our girl and her neighbor about time management. Some already hated them quite a bit for being so efficient, and so they stayed away. Other girls, newer girls, came as soon as they could. “I always thought there was something weird about that thrift store,” confided a girl who lived in the same part of the city as our girl did.

The girls at the company got very good at time management. Our girl and the girl in the next cube over let their other selves work during the customary hours, instead of only in the morning. Their secret was a secret no longer. Eventually even their enemies gave in and asked for directions to Helga’s shop. Due to high demand, she had raised her prices, which the enemies blamed on our girl too. Not everyone would become your teammate, she and her neighbor realized. It still didn’t stop the enemies from getting their own bells, though.

The only one of them that didn’t use the bell was That Girl. “Hell no,” she said, when one of the girls asked her if she wanted to get her own. She just started handing her piles of paper over to the other girls when she noticed a girl wandering around with nothing to do.

The Boss couldn’t come up with new tasks fast enough. He now seemed a little sweaty when he patrolled the aisles. His light was a bit dimmer. The office brimmed full of girls—so many that there weren’t enough desks. Girls sat on the floors. They sat on the aisles. They perched side-by-side on the ledges of cubicle walls. They passed each other pens when they needed them and papers when they dropped them. They shared smiles and laughs. They came in when they were ready to work and left when the work was done. They’d be crones before their time if they continued on as they had been, and who decided what hours were the customary ones, anyway? The office became something else. It became theirs. Our girl thought of those other jobs, and she decided that maybe this one was the one, at least for now.

One day, a quite normal day, really, our girl sat at her desk typing, and on her floor filing, and on top of the photocopier, making copies for herself and for anyone who needed them. The girl next to her had a self out on a coffee run and another bringing out bottled water and snacks. The Boss came down and everyone looked up to smile at him: rows and rows of girls and girls and girls, grinning as if one single entity. The Boss couldn’t smile back right away.

“Great job, girls,” he said. He swallowed. “Can I—can I get you anything?”

The girls turned to look at him. It was a long stare: thousands of eyes, pausing. Then our girl, the one of her at her desk, stood up. She held out a stack of paper to him. “If you don’t mind, we could use some help with this,” she said. “As soon as possible, of course.” He could borrow one of their bells, if he wanted. He had been so excited when the girls first brought them to the office.

She glanced over at her compatriots. There was something else they had been meaning to say. “And a raise too, while you’re at it,” she added, her voice ringing out loud above the din.

“It’s only fair,” our girl, the one on the floor, said, standing up to join her self at the desk.

“We’re working so hard,” the girl the next cube over added.

“This company wouldn’t be what it was without us,” someone else piped up. The others and their other selves all clapped. They were ready. They knew this was coming.

The Boss for a moment said nothing. Then he nodded, stiffly, as if it caused him pain. He reached out and took the papers. His hands were shaking. He no longer smiled. If he still glowed, the girls paid it no mind. As soon as he looked down at the papers, they turned back to their work. They chattered and typed and laughed. All around them was the sound of bells ringing.

STORY:
Caelyn Cobb is a writer and university press editor living in Queens, NY. She is the author of the short story collection Saturn Return, forthcoming from Whisk(e)y Tit Books. Her writing has appeared in Passages North, X-R-A-Y, HAD, and elsewhere.

*

ART:
Vicki Xu is a writer and illustrator living in New York, NY.

Next Tuesday, we’ll feature a bonus interview with Caelyn about this story.

Jessica Dawn: This is such a personal and intimate story, where did the idea originally come from? What was that initial spark that started it off?

Maria Poulatha: So the genesis of my story is embarrassingly unoriginal. I wrote it way back during the Covid lockdown when much of the population was likening their confinement to the challenges of living in space, pondering if astronauts secretly wished to kill their partners in their sleeping pods the way earthlings did their spouses in their beds. Realizing that this was a popular metaphor at the time, I decided to shove the story into a drawer and wait it out. And then Orbital was published and I thought, ‘aaargh, wait some more.’ And here we are now.

Maria, it’s very funny that you started this story wondering if astronauts wanted to kill their shipmates, I also started a “what if two people got on each others’ nerves in space” story during COVID that is still sitting in a drawer. You took this story to such beautiful places from that starting point! You said you decided to wait it out. Was there any particular spark or idea that made you want to revisit the story? How do you think time helped you develop it further?

Read more

But where this story really got me is the slow transformation from an antagonistic relationship to a loving one, the way the two finally embrace each other because they’re all they really have. In the world we find ourselves in today isn’t that a lesson that we keep learning over and over, that all we really have is each other?

—Jessica Dawn
Asst. Editor, Short Story, Long

“Humankind”

I tend to my rose with the devotion and precaution of a lion tamer. Sasha looks on with scorn, a speck of sauce pooling in the left crease of his mouth, a speck the size of a sunflower seed. I want to lick it off his face, not because I want to lick his face but because it is the last drop of sauce in our ample stretch of universe and it is carelessly, tauntingly, resting on his face instead of in my mouth.

I exhale, hold my breath, and slowly lift the glass dome above my rose. Then I inhale. She is divine. Almost otherworldly. Sometimes I wish I had chosen a potato plant instead, a living thing that swells underground, skulks in the earth, a thing that I could sink my fingers into, curl around and clench like a lover’s member in the dark. I sigh and inject 2oz. of H2O near the roots of my rose and replace the dome. When I think he is not looking, I kiss the glass cover.

*

We really do drink filtered urine in space.

But only our own.

*

It is a sure thing that orbits, a predictable thing, even in vast spaciousness. I follow no orbit, that invisible trail, the cinched belt that designates the seasons, the tomorrows. A predetermined route identifies and shapes you, but I am weightless and vague like all meandering things in the universe.

*

Everyone knows I had an affair with the custodian back at the labs. He had a thin mustache and an accent of unknown origin. I only knew that he was from Queens, NY and that was exotic enough for me. When I unzipped his jumpsuit in the recycling collection room, I discovered two different women tattooed onto his smooth chest. “Who are they?”

“Baby Mama,” he said, accenting the last A, “and Mama.”

The Baby Mama had long legs and breasts like melons placed high on a grocery shelf. His Mama was just a floating head with eyes narrowed in a protective scowl as if she were straddling her litter. I hissed back at her and stretched open his Jockeys. “This is good,” I said, as I worked my way into the bulging bundle.

“You make it do good,” he muttered and I wasn’t sure if it was a compliment or a command but he moaned appreciatively. Around us, torpedoes were being mounted, rockets were firing, worlds were being discovered and I was coming loudly beside a pile of cardboard boxes that used to contain petri dishes with smooth unsullied agar.

When I told my husband, because it was the right thing to do, he found the custodian and punched him right above the polished mustache, because it was the right thing to do. “What is affair?” he protested, smoothing down the tips of his distressed facial hair. “We just do it three times behind ‘Organic Waste. ’ Up-standing.”

When you are a woman you call it an affair, a liaison, an intrigue, an involvement, something complex and consequential and intertwined with other elements on the physical and emotional plane. When all the other guys in this place do it, it is an occasion for a quick high-five, as inconsequential to the greater scheme of things as you dropping your keys through a gutter grate or rolling a good hand in craps.

My husband did not leave me then. He left me later, when I had an abortion. I told him about it immediately afterwards. It was only three months before lift-off.

*

I can’t stand the smell of Sasha. It is like grapes grown maudlin at the end of the season, vinegary and stale. Although I imagine that our smells have become one, like the smell of a family whose members lose their individual odors and share a common scent which they take with them wherever they go. It sickens me to smell what must be our mutual household odor.

If he were dead, I think, he would smell different.

*

I groom my rose with manicure tools and speak to her in soft cooing tones. I utter nonsense like Sweet Pea and Bunny and I pour adoration and affection onto her like precious sunbeams. I wish my ex-husband could see me now. He didn’t leave me because I aborted our child. “Actually,” he said, “I was relieved that you did. When I learned that you were pregnant, that you might become a mother, I panicked.”

Sasha wears a sneer. “You religious?” he grunts.

“Of course not,” I say. I am a scientist.

“That dome is like a shrine.”

“Well maybe it is.”

“So you are religious.”

“Not in the conventional manner.”

“There is only one manner,” he snorts.

“That is narrow thinking.”

He pokes me in the chest. “You are narrow to think you are above convention.”

I turn away from him and pretend I am unmoved but that night, as he sleeps, I pee into his urine collector.

*

The next morning, bleary-eyed, he reaches for his “toilet water” as I like to call it, and takes a sip. His sleepy eyes bulge and he spits out the liquid, creating thousands of transparent orbs that bob in space. He looks at me through the suspended golden shower with murderous rage. “How did you know?” I ask, my lips trembling to hold back laughter.

“I am a vegetarian, remember? Your piss tastes like dead pig. You taste like dead pig.”

“Is that what my piss tastes like? I thought it just tasted like piss.” And then I float away, to the toilet, to make more drink.

*

My rose was very beautiful today. Was it the light of the moon, making everything wet and silvery like the tender undersides of seals? A hot tear sprang from my eyes. I scooped it into my mouth and relished the salty tang.

*

“Honey, I’m home!”

Week 2. Sasha would come into the “kitchen” after changing a few light bulbs, cleaning the filters and polishing a few knobs and I would laugh. “Well, you just put your feet up while I stir you a drink,” I said as I fetched his bag of purified urine.

“Shaken, not stirred, darling.” He put his feet up, lounging without a lounger beneath him. These Russians love being Bond.

*

Last sunrise on earth: I rose at 4am to climb up Walton’s Peak and watch the sun rise between two reddened crags of limestone that looked like gigantic raw steaks. I had packed sandwiches to enjoy at the top but no one else made the climb with me, so I ate all five myself.

Here the sunrises come in waves and it reminds me of when I was little, trying to sleep in my pink room that was grey in the dark, and the hours passed and now and then a truck would drive by, projecting its headlights onto my dreamless bedroom wall.

I don’t want to see another sunrise ever again, I think. And then we fall out of grace. Which is to say, we fall out of orbit.

*

Our mission: Colonization.

Our desire: The prevention of human extinction.

The only thing we could really hope for is the postponement of human extinction but we were not allowed to say this to the group of third graders who waved bye-bye from a roped-off platform at the launch. Most of them held their parents’ expensive phones and one of them yanked his pants down and posed with his moon exposed and all of them clicked gleefully. Perhaps human extinction would not be so awful, I thought. In fact it could be the greatest gift to the universe. No more entitled brats. No more colonization. No more patriarchy. No more matriarchy. Only the lyrical hum of heavenly bodies swiveling uninterrupted through never-ending space.

I’ve heard astronomers say, “I just want to know if we’re alone.” As if eight billion is not enough, as if discovering more of us, aliens created in our image, will make the universe less vast, will fold it toward us like mirrors within a box.

So, yes, it was me. I made it all go wrong. I didn’t fudge it purposely, it was going wrong on its own. I just didn’t fix it when I could have. Months later, some will blame it on hormonal imbalance and they will argue once again against women and their capacity for space travel and some will say it was space fever or the effects of prolonged solitude. The tabloids will blame my infidelity and subsequent abandonment that left me in tatters. They will quote my therapist who will flippantly and expertly label me a narcissist. Who else but a narcissist would sign up for something like this?

*

I dropped some food near the oxygen vents. The food didn’t stick but it left a greasy smear and Sasha flashed a light onto it from different angles to display the full effect of the oily reflection. “Can’t you clean up after yourself?”

“I thought I did.”

“You thought you did?” He turns so that his light is flashing into my face. “You really think you can act on a hunch here? That you can you be so careless? Do you actually care about anything?”

“I don’t care about anything? How did you jump to that conclusion?” I clench a handle on the wall to look sturdy.

“Oh I know all about you. No wonder your husband left.”
“What? Because I’m not a good housewife?”

“Good wife,” he chortles. “Not even worth a trip to the recycling room.” He laughs uncontrollably and I cannot throw something at his head, can’t even slam a door behind me. So instead I smirk and say something I regret immediately. “You’re just jealous.”

*

Mars, Saturn, Neptune…

Even the heavens are colonized by male gods; war-mongering, triad-thrusting, child-eating, raping gods. One Venus amongst them, hot, blue and alluring. And then there’s Jupiter: dangling from the belt of the greatest of them all, bound and carried by his merciless pull—his lovers, his daughters, his victims and other unfortunate, unlawful offspring. How funny of the astronomers to tidy them all up, 79 of them, with the great mob daddy, the godfather of all licentious trespass.

Leda, Mneme, Europa, Sinope, Io…

Drag, little Sinope, claw away, irregular and retrograde, fiery little revolutionary and elusive love of the god. “Anything you wish!” he spouted, lust overflowing, “Tell me your greatest desire!”

“To remain a virgin.”

At least, daughters of Zeus, you have been seen. Imagine the endless droves of heavenly bodies, stretching out toward infinity, that have never been known, never gazed upon, never even wondered about. And may never be.

Do you pity them?

I envy them.

*

“Stop humming!” Sasha hollers.

“I wasn’t humming.”

“Yes you were. You always are.”

“I do not hum. I am just breathing deeply.”

“Then stop breathing!” His nostrils are flared with volatile gas and they look deep and dark and dangerous.

We are finished with our experiments, there is no more data to collect. Sasha still connects himself to electrodes to observe the waste of a body suspended here, like a chunk of pineapple in unnaturally tinted gelatin. “Useless information,” I tell him.

“Humans may have to live like this one day.”
“We are not human without Earth,” I say, looking out the window at the shrinking blue globe.

“Now you are a philosopher.” He removes his glasses and his eyes appear smaller, more menacing without them.

“Who would want to live like this? Useless! We are useless.”

And this is what does it for him. What makes him hate me more than piss in his drink.

*

“Urra!”

Week 4: Sasha performed a triple axel turn in the air and “landed” with majestic flourish, his palm upturned like he just served a tray full of overflowing champagne flutes. He used to be a figure skater back in Russia but was forced to quit because his family wanted him to be a scientist, but he won’t admit to this concession. He insists he had an ankle fracture that refused to heal.

I applauded enthusiastically, pretended to lift one of the champagne flutes and saluted him, “Za Vas!” like I was already drunk. He performed his favorite routine, the one he did to “Eye of the Tiger,” and this often lead to a mini dance party, me kicking and bucking line dances I’d learned in country western bars and Sasha hopping like a Cossack. When the third graders who followed our course asked to see how we pass our free time, Sasha put on “Eye of the Tiger” and performed his powerful routine with exceptional bravado and a grin so full of conceit that it overshadowed the glow of his invisible partner. The real partner must have despised that grin, that swashbuckling flourish after every manly twirl. “Urra!” he shouted.

“You mean, ‘Hurrah.’” I corrected. I did not applaud or pretend to have the hiccups from too much champagne.

He frowned and let his hands drop. “No, in Russian it is ‘urra.’”

“Whatever, Tiger.”

“Tiger?”

“Do you prefer Bear?”

His face twisted and the air of dejection quickly transmuted into a look of loathing.

*

I wake early, just to visit my rose. The bloom will not last much longer and I want to spend as much time with her as I can. But as soon as I exit my sleeping pod, I sense that something is wrong. My head bumps into her glass dome, floating empty and untethered like a bottomless bubble.

*

“How do you feel today?” asks the psychologist back home.

“I feel like ramming a screwdriver into his neck.”

“You feel sad.”

“No, I feel bitter. Furious, in fact. Irate. Incensed.”

“You feel loss. It’s natural. Don’t forget to do the things that bring you joy.” The resolution on the screen has decreased miserably and I can see the fat pixels that compose her. She is reduced to her basic cells, giant Lego blocks of mitochondria. Still, I can see the sky-blue kaftan she always wears and the drop of quartz suspended before her heart.

“My rose was the only thing that brought me joy. He destroyed it at the roots. Decimated it. Devoured it. He’s a cannibal.”

“It’s ok to grieve.”

“Is it ok to get satisfying revenge?”

“Channel your grief into something more productive.”

“I want to murder him. Are you listening?”

“There are many roads that lead to peace.”

“Is this a playback? Are you even there?!” I hit the screen a few times, make faces.

“One solution,” she pauses for effect, “is to try sex.” She is saying things like ‘surpasses any attempts at diplomacy, soothing for the body and mind, ease tensions,’ but I am furiously fumbling with the buttons to switch her off. She says something about birth control as the screen twitches before it goes dark. I look around to see if Sasha has heard anything, but he is still in the toilet, trying to poop into a vacuum.

There are two injections hidden away on board. Only HQ can release them if it is deemed necessary for the travelers to put a merciful end to their journey. Astronauts talk of ways to crack this container. I could penetrate him, gently, in his sleep.

You lose muscle mass in space, no matter how much you exercise. You also lose bone density and your limbs grow softer. I have taken to massaging mine, slowly, gently sculpting the forearm into a wide crescent. One day I will be able to hook myself to the ceiling or the wall without holding on. If I am diligent, I can transform my arms into wings, although they will be purely decorative. “I can sculpt your bones for you, too, if you like,” I say, imagining bending his limbs inward like a pill bug that rolls into itself and never unravels.

“You can massage this bone,” he says, thrusting his pelvis toward me.

For the first time in months, I feel a tingle of arousal.

*

He slams open the bathroom door and tries to grip something but misses several times. His face is glistening with sweat and his pants, undone, should have dropped to his ankles. “Wow, you really do need roughage,” I say. He tries to respond but merely dry-heaves on his own venom. I chuckle but then see his eyes glaze over and his grip floundering. “What is it?” I whisper, feeling my throat tighten.

“Not good.”

“A little too much space fever?”

“Bad fever.” Saliva is shining on his lips and from the way his eyes roll back, and his arms float upwards, I figure he has just fainted. I dart closer and put my arms around him, instinctively guarding him against a fall. His eyes open and he looks up at me as I sweep the soaked hair from his face. “Probably a bit of bacteria in the food,” I say and he nods. “Antibiotic?” He shakes his head profusely. Sasha is a medical doctor. “Electrolytes? Aspirin?” He nods.

I release him to retrieve the medicine but he clutches me weakly, shaking and swearing in Russian. His eyes flood with tears and resignation as I wipe sodden hairs and shape them into forests on his head and mutter, Alexander, Sasha, Sashenka, Sashulya, Sweetpea and Bunny and massage the soft calcium of his skull but he stills my hands with his and holds them there until he falls asleep.

*

Sasha takes only electrolytes and aspirin for three days. When the medicine wears off, he shakes and clasps my wrist and mumbles things I can’t understand about a blue racecar, his grandfather’s belt and a certain lake full of ducks. I mutter back lullabies, Joni Mitchell, the Beatles, which he adores. At night I tie him into my pod and murmur, “Hey, Jude, don’t make it bad. Take a sad song, and make it better.” He hums to sleep and I kiss the space between his bushy eyebrows. He tastes salty and animal.

*

The next day there is a rose under the glass dome, an intricate origami blossom folding and unfolding in an impossibly miniscule ballet of geometry. I hold my breath, lift the dome and inhale. It smells like rose perfume. I gasp. “How did you?” I turn to ask him but he is already gone.

*

I am running out of tampons. I could have chosen to retard my menstrual cycle but the hormones only contribute to the swelling of membranes, to decreased vascular function. It will look like a bloody massacre here next month. I ask Sasha, as a medical doctor, what he suggests. “What can I do to stop my periods?”

“Besides putting a ‘bun in the oven?’ Nothing.” And then he floats away.

*

I have just enough juice and just enough lab bacteria to ferment it. It is ready in ten days. I prepare a meal for us, put on music. “Remember, to let her into your heart…” I hand him his bag of ‘wine’ and smile. “Cheers.” He smiles back quizzically then takes a gulp. His face twists with disgust but then he laughs and raises his baggie in the air before he swigs it all down in one motion. “There’s more,“ I say. But we are already drunk.

We unzip our clothes and let them float beside us, tangled together like ghostly lovers. He cups my breasts with both hands and grins, “They are so perky without gravity.”

“They always are. They’re full of silicone.”

“Sshh,” he says, covering my mouth with his as he repeatedly squeezes and unsqueezes.

Weightless sex is like making love to a cloud that is lined with thunder.

*

He knows I am pregnant even before I do. He holds my hips like he is carrying a birthday cake and a dozen candles light up his face. He wears his stethoscope half the day and joins the mouth with my belly and then with my own heart, again and again, jots down data and sends it off in the wishful direction of Earth.

I have stopped trying to sculpt my bones; I only massage my belly, marvel at the roundness, brimming with precious promise. I float naked these days, my body stretched and shiny, twisting like a trophy, and Sasha floats in and out of me, making love sometimes two, three times a day. The 34^th time the stethoscope finds its way to my belly today, I seize it and pull it to my lips and whisper. Sasha looks up, unsurprised, and repeats my words.

*

The birth is long and painful with no gravity to assist but Sasha and I handle it like ultramarathoners chugging through snow and sleet to land at the finish line in the sunshine. I feel like one of my limbs is being amputated without even a swig of whisky. I bite my lips and look out the window and just then something gold and fiery streaks the dark space and I feel a smile spread across the entire universe. Look, a sacrifice. An offering. Sasha grins, “A comet.”

“If it’s a girl, let’s name her Comet,” I splutter.

“And if it’s a boy?”

“Let’s name him Comet.”

He smiles and kisses my sweaty brow. Hours later, I am with Sasha in the sunshine, clutching our little Comet and weeping.

*

I haven’t thought of sunrises or meals with forks or hot baths in months. I feed and feed the child from my breast all day and night and it is growing fat and happy and I am hungry all the time, hungrier than I’ve ever been, even though Sasha has been feeding me his vegetable portions and he is thinner than a rake. After little Comet satisfies himself, his head rolls back and his lips part and I put my nose near his mouth and inhale the entire Milky Way, sweeter than the Earth and all its smells.

“I think Comet is growing a rose inside him!” I say and Sasha smiles back at me, in a sad way, his eyes drooping and unfocused and I realize that he is transparent, that I can see stars behind him, cotton nebulae of dust and helium, asteroids streaking within and beyond him. I reach out but my hand goes right through him.

*

“The only thing that makes me sad,” I say to Sasha, “is that Comet will never learn to walk.”

Sasha ties small weighted sacks to Comet’s feet and they reach the ground as the rest of him floats upright, swaying like a clown advertising deals outside a mattress store. Both of us laugh as we slide his feet, one by one, across the floor and he chuckles with delight. But soon his face twists in anguish and he cries and we quickly untie his feet to watch him float upwards like a puff of smoke, twist and flip as gracefully as a slippery marine animal that has no need for legs. Sasha’s eyes glisten with wonder and adoration. “Evolution! At the speed of light.”

“Record-breaking velocity.”

“I told you. Man is indestructible.”

“Man is abominable. Love is indestructible.”

He laughs and pulls me to him. “Who taught you such nonsense?”

*

The merciful injections had been released at some point, broken free from their safe and made available, but when? They lie empty, like used tubes of face cream no one bothered to throw away.

Sasha concocts an elixir from his remaining store of medicine. “Painless,” he promises.

We each hold a syringe gingerly in one hand, I hold Comet in the other. A droplet escapes from Sasha’s left eye and I scoop it up and brush it onto the baby’s forehead. “Comet,” I whisper, “son of Alexander and Eva.”

“I knew you were religious,” he says.

I smile at him. What if we’d all spent our time like this, like now, instead of looking out and up toward the heavens, for something higher, something better?

We embrace, inject one another, and save some of mine for little Comet who only whimpers a tiny protest. Sasha ties the three of us together before we grow drowsy and our arms disengage, our hands unclench, my son’s mouth grows slack at my breast and our home shuttles onward, toward a soft, familiar darkness, much like the very first darkness, blessed with pulses of light. The last few months: love, sex, birth, Comet: all a dream, condensed into a seed. This is how we’ll be found, tangled tenderly, like those innocents marooned in the Blue Lagoon. After a violent throb of radiance, great galactic arms will reach down to envelope us like a hot bath, like cleanliness, like a song.

STORY:
Originally from New Jersey, Maria Poulatha lives in Athens, Greece with her husband and daughter. Her stories have appeared in Split Lip Magazine, SmokeLong Quarterly, Copper Nickel, Pithead Chapel, The Offing, Southeast Review and other lovely journals.

*

ART:
Pancho Muñoz, or @greenpotion, is a mexican artist said to be born from the ashes of a cursed playstation 1 controller.

Next Tuesday, we’ll feature a bonus interview with Maria about this story.

Jessica Dawn: This is such a personal and intimate story, where did the idea originally come from? What was that initial spark that started it off?

Danny Goodman: The spark for this story was deeply personal and transformative. I began the first draft over a decade ago as a way to navigate the aftermath of an infidelity—an experience that gutted me and shifted my entire perspective. “Cloisters” was born as a search for clarity, from a need to both understand and process my grief. And though the narrative has evolved and matured over the years, I hope those initial sparks, and the flames that resulted, still resonate in this final version.

I love that you started this story to process something that happened in your own life. I feel like so many of us skirt a line between fiction and non-fiction when pulling from our own lives, in the years you’ve been writing this story, has it always been a fiction piece or did you experiment with writing it as non-fiction / essays?

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