Untitled

Untitled by Nicole

It was the fourth of July in Nederland, CO. One of the biggest days of the year for the town. Every year my husband and I liked to have a party. People always drive from miles away to enjoy fireworks over the reservoir. The reflection provides another view of the spectacular event. We invited Mike to come. He said he would bring the fireworks but we didn’t realize exactly what he meant. The fireworks from our deck were the town’s sideshow. We had a hose to make sure we didn’t burn the house down. Some people were surprised that the cops didn’t come. But it was Nederland on the fourth of July.

***

Glare by Lyle

The bamboo rustled and glowed brightly. Sean moved quickly to light the second “flare bomb,” a concoction of his own devision (we knew there was alcohol in it and maybe magnesium). We all knew that it would end badly someday, but no one ever even protested his, “All right, check this one out” or its inevitability just before the parties broke up. The flinty flick of the lighter and then the glare. Sometimes they were too bright to look at directly, like life itself. So we watched the bamboo flare up, dance and die down. Someone took a picture. Sometimes we conjectured about our presence at his next party. We hummed and hawed, but always ended up going. For all of its absurdity and repetition, there was a certain allure. I found myself particularly drawn to the tail end of these “experiments.” The ebbing of the experiments, the party, the night. The burning out of our lives always left us quiet, listening to the bamboo rustle, the remnants of color in their leaves.

***

Measurement by Forrest

Can’t earn bitemarks yet. Magnesium settles that, Bill. It’s only two traps sprung same place. You run off and I search anyway—even if that is your car. When Dina slummed, I’d figure when to stop asking. I got, you realize, moods flouting me. A fucking blue aura taming her. She insisted. Loved hands. What are still called hands. And I know she’d known our Bill grinning easily for us. I think you might pose courageous in the dark as well.

***

Maker by Bill

Here is how it opens: yawling collapse. Earplugs become necessary. The application of knowledge come round, butts against edge of the pit. Stick your hand in, tip over. This is how it sticks: neo-agent orange. Where would you like it to burn if not in your dreams? Do recover gasping for breath without knowing the shore and wake unsure whose bed you want to be in, sweating, shaking, feverish?

***

Soon, You Will Have to Worry by Beth

The night has chilled enough for sweatshirts, sweaters, fleece jackets, after a long, cloudless afternoon in which you lay on the grass with Sean and Sam and Mike and Josh, arms spread out and fingers almost close enough to touch.  Mike grabbed one of your flip flops and wedged it beneath his head for a pillow, and you were glad it was new enough to smell more of Wal*Mart than of bare feet.  Looking up at the sky through the high branches tossing in the breeze, you knew how lucky you were.

Now the wind swishes through the pines above the back deck where you are drinking a glass of wine and smoking a clove cigarette so slow that it keeps going out.  This afternoon, everyone was still, and you could imagine that they were imagining their bodies sinking into the grass and the dirt, like you were, and when Josh said, “what was that poem where the bodies become part of the ground?”, you said “Thanatopsis” without even having to think.

This afternoon you didn’t have to think too hard about anything, hold on to anything, but now Mike is doing that thing again, that frenzied thing, and even though you can smell the pines and see the stars overhead when you lean back in your lawn chair, you can also smell the lighter fluid, the hair Mike burned on his arm, you can see the bright flashes of the fire.

***

Alone in the Woods by Alan

Once upon a time, alone in the woods thought it was alone. Alone in the woods believed that every single thing is alone, ultimately, until it is not. Alone in the woods took this philosophy with it one day to a secluded area in the country of red. It brought some friends with it. Drink was one of these friends. Think, fire, and smoke were the others.

They decided to have a conversation. Alone in the woods suggested that they not use words. This was tacitly approved by all the parties present. On the deck of a state within the country, all the borders were called into question. One by one, they appeared and took the stand. So it went like this for several hours. It was alone and then not alone. Alone in the woods in the woods and alone one moment, then alone in the woods in the woods and not alone in the next. This went on for a very long time. The end.

***

The Last Bonfire by Johanna

The sky was full of tiny night dust, flaming stars falling to ash. Resounding putter and proceeding puffs before the last gliding cascade into infinite nothing.

After the alcoholic frenzy, after the insane tirades, after the sophomore orgy, after the naked dancing, bodies sprawled about, their consciousness having left them hours before, the fire still burned. The smoke had weakened to a bitter thick and noxious gray, a scent which would stick to our flannel shirts and jeans until laundry day. Someone had to snuff it out. We turned our backs to the struggling flames and began to unfasten our buckles, only slight turns of the neck to ensure we were united, no movements that may suggest doubt. Pants down, bending at the knee as if in a deep bow of reverence, we could feel the dim flames still hot enough to penetrate our skin, imagining the possible singe of hair. Quickly, a mass release of urine, a splashing yellow cascade with the odor of beer, left our bladders causing the fire to scream and hiss as if calling out for help. Dripping dry, we pulled up our pants, turned back to the smothered pit of warm coals and laughed. Dark then, and chilled, we returned to the distant light of the dormitory, hoping not to step on anybody.

Aftermath

Aftermath by Johanna

There are no canyons to cordon neighborhoods or rivers to divide regions. In Kansas, a town is a place along a road where houses converge. Everything else is empty, fields of empty. Not even a uniquely shaped boulder to name a street after. It is as if someone decided this would be a lovely place to plant a town, just over here, and seed a border of shops, service stations and government buildings.

My daughter asks me what sound wind makes. She is singing Old McDonald and at the moment Old McDonald has wind on his farm, eeii, eeii, ooh. I tell her it says, “whooosh” and bend my voice low. “With a woosh, woosh here and a woosh, woosh there,” she continues. My husband: “Old McDonald had a wind farm?”

Wind only makes sound when it is pushing up against something or traveling through; it lacks autonomy. This makes the wind feel unloved, invisible so to speak. It craves attention. The wind also hates Kansas. In the spring, it likes to spin itself into a hissy, throw a tantrum, and thrash down upon the randomly strewn gardens of towns. Sometimes, it gets carried away. Sometimes, it carries everything away.

My daughter is out of the car now, stretching her legs while we watch the construction underway to rebuild the town. Running off, she trips precariously close to the rim of a pit. I yell, “Get over here, right now!” She cries, “I want to run! I just want to run!”

“I'll count to five and you better get your behind back here. 1.... 2.....3....

***

Top 10 Things to do in the Aftermath by Nicole

Top 10 Things to do in the Aftermath

wrap up in a blanket in cold weather.

play “I Spy” and notice the red and the rusty.

practice using PVC in a recycled sculpture.

redeem copper for money.

kick the debris but only while wearing boots.

wear gloves in case you must pick up the plastic.

disregard the plastic

keep the tires.

don’t inhale around the pipes.

burn the wood only if it’s not been stained or painted.

***

Graygray by Lyle

They looked for bones amongst the rubble. Beigebeige. They hunted for muscle and fat. They rummaged for hair and nails and sinews. They searched for mass. Redred. Picked through and strung out, the people investigated themselves for blood. The Qassam rockets landed near by. The MATADOR missiles landed near by. I pretended that I was dead and that you were dead and watched the twisted metal and rubber smoke. There was something red in the jumble of nothuman remains. Everything was human. Everything was dead. An object in motion is not proof of life. Silhouette against the blueblue sky. Maybe a bird. Maybe another rocket. It's black and falls into the sun, but reappears. Nothuman. The rubble is bones. The rubble is muscle and fat. The rubble is rubber and metal and wire and plastic. Graygray. I don't have to pretend anymore. Blackblack.

***

Redacted Item From Progress Report By the “Little Bobby” Macauley Search Party at the White Sulfur Landfill, November 21, 2009, Later Restored in a Secretly Taped Conversation at DiGentillo’s Tavern, February 14, 2010 by Forrest

Have problems feeling some kind of the rightest way with him leaving all the personal shit there when everyone dreams about his old man’s outboard motor instead.

***

Unforced by Bill

part of you, a small part of you, wants to make all of this into a weapon, and you want to be angry because you are still kind of angry most of the time when you lift it onto your shoulder, strapping it around your waist a slump in your shoulder just hopes to leave all of this mess alone that right eye you keep rubbing with the ball of your palm has gone looking for a shadow in the shape of a tiger taking your legs with it you feel a small grit of skin scratching above your ear flake off beneath your fingernail and laugh to yourself that you should find a belt to cinch around your waste part of it reminds you of the season 5 finale’ in Lost and you’re still circumambulating around this pile like all those other piles you have circled in your absent-minded asceticism or you remember the piles of dirt the county trucks used to leave across the road from the house when you were little you used to climb even after that time you got scabies because the electricity was shut off and there was no hot water

***

Evan’s Roommate by Beth

The sun was just starting to shine bright on my desk when I read the email about what had happened. You’d think they’d tell his roommates first, but I found out the way everyone else did. I’d gone to bed at three, just to get a couple of hours of sleep before getting up to finish my paper for English, the one class he and I had together. I had been dead tired, but now I wasn’t.

I knew I should wake Mark up and tell him, but I also knew he’d do the drama kid thing and act like it was a big loss, like we were really close to him. Later I’d be glad he could do that, act devastated around Evan’s parents, around the counselor they eventually sent to talk to us, but not now.

I went on Evan’s facebook to see what people were saying. Only a couple of his high school friends had posted so far. Then I checked for news reports, but I didn’t need to read them to know what had happened. Evan was from DC. He didn’t know anything about driving in the snow, and worse, he thought he did. He could probably tell you everything about how a car works in snow, the mechanics of it, but all that kind of knowing would just get in the way. He wouldn’t know how to feel the car, make little corrections, not panic, let go.

The sink was still full of his mac n cheese bowls, which had been bugging Mark & me all weekend. Evan only liked food that was bright orange and smelled bad. I got up and just stood there looking at the dishes, wondering what I was supposed to do. I guessed his parents would show up sometime to get his stuff, and I tried to see the room like my parents would. The back of our door, which was covered with beer bottle caps that Evan had stuck on there with gum or plasta tack. The swimsuit edition photos that I had torn out and put up all around my desk. They wouldn’t be impressed that we had three TVs stacked up together, and that we sometimes watched different shows on each at the same time.

I thought about Evan, how he leaned back in his chair in English, arms crossed, scowling, how he said nasty sexual things about the teacher whenever her back was turned, how he cheated off me on quizzes, how he never did any homework but still got B’s in all his classes. How he stole my high school girlfriend, how he stole my gloves out of the back of my car and then kept insisting they were his, how he spilled strawberry milk between the couch cushions and just let it dry.

Because I couldn’t feel sorry that he had died, I washed his dishes.

***

The Jump by Alan

Like barbells hurled in a tornado, the thinking about it is both fascinating and dangerous. We’re not the prize fighters we used to be, that’s for sure. But what isn’t for sure, what still is missing, is the reason why she attempted the jump in the first place. With so few miles to go, why veer off and seek a new kind of adventure? She made sure that no one was watching, but our sources say one man (the proprietor’s cousin) watched the whole thing go down. She undressed the air in those seven or eight seconds. She unfolded the paper nightgowns of our minds, the ones we lie down with during the late shows. She made a pact with gravity, the stray dog who always follows us home. Grow wings, she cried. God, let this beast grow wings. And the rest was a photo in a textbook near some words about something you can’t or won’t memorize. In a school. On a desk. The promise of something more but suspended. Forever.

A

New Year's Day by Alan

When he awoke, one thing was over and a new one just begun. There was a quiet in the city not unlike the silence associated with some forests or an empty house. He noticed this because the window was open. Besides the accelerating rush of a car’s tires every so often, the only sound was the sound of memory. There was a burning house, a friend in distress, the possibility of tenderness in a kiss high above the gargoyles in the architecture. All faint hums now, all neon outlines of a life slipping into the past.

There would still be villains. He knew that for sure. But there would also be new imaginers to meet them whenever they appeared. For every action there’s a reaction, for every urge there’s a remedy, and for every canvas there’s a stroke. Perhaps it would be his neighbor in the new year. Perhaps it would be an out of towner with grand ambitions. Or perhaps, like him years ago, it would be some suburban kid with city roots looking to make a difference who walks into a closet after the signal is made and emerges caped, inspired, able to leap tall buildings for a taste of the sky, resolution.

***

Middle by Lyle

“A” glowing haphazardly in the night. But it wasn’t how I remembered it starting. Though at this point I can’t remember what did start it — only the glowing “A” that didn’t. Until the sun eclipsed it’s majesty. Here we disagree. Here is where you said that the sun actually made it more majestic by dimming it to ashing coal, somehow vertical, somehow sitting harmlessly on the wooden wall instead of burning right through it. This is when I said “haphazard” haphazardly. This is when I started the story. And for some reason, now that I’ve begun, I can’t remember what might have come before I began. On this point you are silent — mooting the point. I write this poem to you in anticipation of when we will begin again before it all started and before it all ends:

A fang, arsy-varsy hangs, starts
facts and acts days far away — avant-
past, say. What can a lad and lass crack
at? Past? Gray alarms? Halt! Days slap
fast at lack and stars lad and lass. A
stars wall. Lad stars lass.
Fail.

I show it to you and you say, ahh. I don’t know if you understand. But then, you must have such a storied past while mine begins and ends in “A” — such a middle.

***

Anti-An by Forrest

A attempts acquiring An’s audition as appropriate aubade against aloofness. Angry and assailing afterwards, A admonishes An about average age at agnostic altitudes, accidentally advancing another An agenda along, aforethought agreeable, aggravating, almost aloft. An answers agog, “Ah.” Alternately, A analogizes apostasy. Agitation abounds afar as altruistic. Ambivalence. “Amazing An!” announces A, albeit acerbic. Always askance. Achingly anticlimactic also.

***

We Call Him Don by Bill

Finger tips against grit, and the pads worn down. Olden breaths, knee bends creaking at the edges, frame bent into shape and done up on a jig. Gotta take a jog. Burn out the lights and the soot from our lungs and just blast the whole fucking mountain down along the way. Reams of the stuff. Get your glory out and rub yourself on all that marvelous shit buried in the earth.

***

Adolescence by Beth

The barn burned in January, on a night cold as shattered glass, a night when you could see stars between the stars. It didn’t mean much to anybody anymore. Farley had sold off most of his land, and the barn was left to itself, sliding down from its roof-ridge, the ridge twisting like the back of an old man. The inside was full of broken things, things that might be worth saving but weren’t worth keeping in the attic or the basement and cats that were wild and not worth keeping inside, either.

The barn meant nothing to anybody anymore except for me and maybe Jed. Jed must have cared about it once, I think, but I don’t know if he still does. He’s not the sentimental type, not like me. Maybe he doesn’t even remember anymore, the hot bored afternoons when we went in there together and he wrestled me down on the floor and I pretended to fight back but didn’t try too hard. Every afternoon I felt the weight of him, more and more solid and dry and warm as the summer went on. We lay there on the pine boards, still and saying nothing, and then after a while, always after not long enough, he would get up and I would get up and he would run off somewhere and I’d try not to follow.

***

Felted Bad by Michael

This was in a dive. A real dirt-trap. Called the Scarlet Letter, big red neon "A" outside. Fuckin' tacky. I been stabbed there twice, but this time around I did the cuttin'. My scissors moved real smooth through that felt. Hell, when I was done, you couldn't see that big red "A" worth a damn. But you still knew it was there and that kind of made you feel horrible. I still smile thinking about it. The implications. Like it had gone somewhere, maybe inside you, and you could feel it burning your insides, like maybe one of your organs. And I know who you are who deserve that, so I made it happen. I made it happen for me and everybody like me. It doesn't absolve you anymore because now you only see it when you close your eyes. Try sleeping like that, with a big neon "A" on the back of your damned eyelids. I can promise that, unless you are a champion sleeper, or like, really exhausted, you will not be able to fall asleep looking at that thing. They won't ever figure out how to put that light back on the outside. I got it in you good.

Go Research! Go!

Singular Reciprocity by Boyko

You can’t really say we were faking it. You wouldn’t tell the guy who stuck the AI chip in the android that he was faking human intelligence, would you? You’d say he was trying to make progress. We were doing that, but with history. You bury something, and then dig it up, and who’s to say if, in that time between burying and digging, it hasn’t become authentic? Look at time capsules. Same principle, really. When you live as long as we do (and it wasn’t us who made our batteries rechargeable, pal, it was you), you come to realize that people need some connection with their past. So you build bridges, backward, through history, and you restore the severed connection. Just like attaching a cybernetic arm. No, it is not the real thing, but doesn’t it, in many ways, work better? It’s satisfying to you to harvest what we have planted so skillfully. We’ve seen it. Just as it is satisfying to us when you make a small upgrade, debug some of our systems. This isn’t the goddamned Singularity, friends, it’s just Reciprocity. We don’t know how you guys do it, and you don’t even know that we do. But c’mon, it’s a closed system, and it works. So who gives a crap?

***

Confession by Alan

To dig is to receive, they say, but for me the day is not long enough for excavation. I want to look it right in the eye and hold the thought, get lost in the process till I’m weak in the knees and get lost some more. But a thing like this is not easy. Too many distractions, I suppose. And the weight of holding.

Flash forward like twenty years, and I’m still right where I left off. The limbs have stiffened from all the indecision. The back aches, but no one can tell. If I’d only dug a little deeper…well, if only I had dug at all.

I want to remember us as a kind of civilization that almost made it. I want others to remember too. They could try digging if they’re into that kind of thing. Or they could freeze in the moment like I did, like you never could do but ending up doing anyway. Hopefully, I didn’t cause your freezing. If I did, I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to make you wait all these years for something that was never there in the first place.

***

The Truth of the Matter, We Swear by Lyle

Our primary forays into the field of archeology were not very successful. The first time we started digging in the back yard, we hit a water main quite quickly. We left equally as quickly, so as not to avoid contact with the inhabitants (an important cultural sensitivity --that we did not interact -- toward the people of the country at the time was vital to our research). There were several other incidents, one involving a drive-in diner, which almost landed our intrepid group of **pologists in "jail" (that's what they called it and our interaction with them clearly jeopardized the science of our project).

Our secondary forays concluded much more successfully. Above is a picture of the first (and last as it turned out) in our second foray. We dug in and observed without interacting. Everyone was pretty damn sure it was something important (Jack says that it might even be Hansel and Gretel's home -- something about the train tracks, I'm not sure), though I think it all looks pretty staged. I mean, look how polished it all is. Still, we were being optimistic about our second foray. It had to go well for us. Funds were drying up and investors were getting antsy.

Our third foray turned out to be a disaster. It was our foray into the publishing stage and when the site was revealed as an obvious fake (the headline read: HOAX, you dummies), the whole community felt duped by our work (ultimately entitled: Android Deconstruction Site). Critics reviled our paper ("they're miniatures, fucking idiots" -- not really constructive criticism, we felt) while a small group of people claimed it was a parody, but only a parody of ourselves. We, of course, went underground (literally).

Our communication is now short and truthful. We wish to apologize for any consternation, but we also wish it to be known that it was an accident. The whole thing. A train wreck, so to speak. Unavoidable and calamitous. That is all.

***

At Independent Site by Forrest

Day Twelve

Party has learned too late plasticine excavations in mild afternoon weather spur another’s geophagy. Like before, toast-squares applied to solid tea at breakfast, washed ourselves down in miniature wheelbarrows suddenly extant. Dug without fear and satiety. Research should not nauseate when substances continue materializing. Yesterday mud cascades, unexplained filling-ins afforded one of us escape. Tiny rumblings of trains in the night! Profanity withheld at deserter’s tent. Cot sat empty, save field journal. Kettle on heater filled with liquid plaster (he always claimed it was solid coffee). Tasted grainy. Not professional. Same his journal. Numerous passages highlighted. Sipped liquid plaster on his cot and read, Stones are really pebbles, Culture had access to Euclidean geometry, et al. Indecipherable. Baseless, shoddy, agreed. We burned his tent. Threw boulders on train tracks—likely will be moved somehow by tomorrow morning. Party morale low, but new discovery of cardboard at site keeps us from being dismayed by whistles in the distance.

***

Untitled by Bill

Daniel caught the scent in his bucket – Fenton must have wandered out here drunk last night and used it to vomit into. Daniel pushed the bucket away from him and bent back to the screen. He glanced backwards under his elbow at Mol, faggy scarf on her head, sketching out the contours of the site on the edge of the pit, holding the arms out away from her but resting the pad on her knee. That piece of shit Rocher just watching them. Daniel hated to be watched while he worked, hated doing work while someone else stood around and watched. He stood up and stared at the scientist, grinding his teeth. He pulled off his gloves, walked across to where Henry pulled up with the wheelbarrow next to Rocher and past them down the tracks back into town. Let them make the casts themselves if they needed them right away.

***

Apnea by Beth

At night she dreams of wet passageways. She dreams the smell of wet iron, the beam of her flashlight shining on wall after wall, moving forward with no promise of an end. She wakes and wakes.

She has promised Carl that when she goes home she will see the doctor. Carl worries. He says sometimes he lies awake and listens to her sleep, wills her to start breathing again, wonders if he should wake her and remind her to breathe. Carl sleeps warm against her, and sometimes the warmth loosens the strained muscles in her back, and sometimes she just wants to shake him off like a heavy blanket, although it gets so cold in the tents late at night. Maybe she sleeps fine, breathes fine, in her bed at home. She doesn’t remember ever waking so often.

Every day the sun streams down as they crouch and pick, brush and blow the dust around. From time to time she looks up at the cloudless sky, tries to rest her eyes. She wishes she could see the sky pure blue, without the little hairs and bits of dust floating in her eye fluid. She wants something that simple.

Day of the Dead

The Living by Beth

We’d been together a month when she took me out to the suburbs to see her mother’s grave. First she drove by the house where she grew up, pointed out where the new people had changed the fence, replaced the picture window with a bay. She looked for so long the car started to veer onto the other side of the street. I felt bad for not warning her before she bumped the curb, but at least there were no other people around.

The graveyard was huge and the grass was still green, scattered with red and yellow leaves. I’d never seen graves like that, rows of pink or gray granite with granite vases stuck on top of them. I expected her to lead me to one of those, but instead we went into a building with glass doors like a mall and a room with walls of gravestones piled on top of each other like mailboxes.

“I never feel her here,” she said, and I could see why. I couldn’t wait to go back out into the bright sunshine, where at least the graves had different flowers in their vases.

On the way home we were mostly quiet until she said, “I’ll never love anyone like I loved my mom. She was the love of my life.” I rolled down my window then, slowly so as not to make it seem like a comment, and turned my face toward the wind.

***

In Chambers by Michael

There was something too austere about the place, and I was looking for the right handle to pull. Places like this aren’t made without trap doors. I got wondering just then, maybe someone else had the hand on the lever. I might find the trap door alright, but it wouldn’t be through my own accident or cunning. The atmosphere spoke to that, told me that I should pop in to see my maker sometime. He was missing me and might want to see me home safe and sound. Well, not yet. I’m not done here, so don’t try to overwhelm me with your sacred aspects. The only awe I feel is toward my limitless rage. It has no bottom, and cannot be contained. Tonight I find what I am looking for. Solace in blood on the temple floor, on the temple walls; everywhere but the on altar, for that is where I will sleep.

***

How to Remember by Alan

The man who lit the candles lived not too far away. Up maple, and then a left onto…I forget the name of the street. His house was the only one on the block. There are old bikes in the front yard, overgrown shrubs, and a kind of warm smell of neglect when you stare into the photographs of it. That’s one way to remember. Another way is to repair his favorite ladder. They still have it at Rose Hill – the caretakers never use it though. Someone said it would make a great gardening design tool. Lay it down on the ground and dig some holes for flowers, herbs, and plants. The geometry of memory…all lined up and preserved for eternity. Then the plants would grow and grow and wave in the gentles stroking of night wind. Or even breathing, I guess, if one were really close to it...as breath is wont to do to a flame.

***

Language by Lyle

When I found the one I was looking for, number 223, I realized that it was only a number. The candle was lit, but flickered like a moth. Odd that the others were so still. Directly above it, the space had been filled in. I looked around and then knocked on it. Solid. I took a photo — the lights blurring together. I put my hands in my pockets. Voices susurrated down the corridor, along the walls, impossible to understand. I bent down to look closer at the candle. There was writing around the base, tiny, black writing. It looked like Cyrillic or maybe Sanskrit. The corridor moved down in either direction while people studied the numbered spaces. The night outside must have been dark and silent. The dead were nothing but dead.

***

Silence at the Last Place They Find Guiomar by Forrest

Returning visitors withhold silence at the last place they find Guiomar Hector de la Rosa. The guide will take them to the fourth catacomb in the western hall, marking off the twelfth row, then counting up six columns: there remain de la Rosa’s two shin bones. By then, they have already seen his empty sockets peering in the famous Skull Room (confirmed by his well-documented abnormal cranium), his rib cage dawdling in the Hidden Antechamber (a fair chance—five had been broken by his uncle’s design on separate occasions), and his pelvis languishing in the Old Clock Room (supposedly). Scattered unmarked in the three previous catacombs, the rest of de la Rosa. Only these shin bones granted eternal proximity at the fourth next to his beloved Azucena in the adjacent tomb. She often kicked them, the guide has been trained to say, while they slept. The guide will shrug. Perhaps she did not mean to kick his shins, or de la Rosa never complained to her noble face. It has been speculated that he accepted the punishment for this special violation of her family’s patronage. He had studied many such tribulations beforehand. And his personal diary shows, at least, he knew what would fall upon him in the tenuous customs of this region. Today, when the visitors’ shouting commences at the tormented shin bones of Guiomar Hector de la Rosa, they understand they also wake Azucena as well. The guide will not mediate. It is a regrettable interment. She is a poor lady anyway, the visitors will profess as they stand catching their collective breath, waiting for the guide’s further instruction.

***

Untitled by Bill

Shame shame shame you dying, like falling rocks dwindling into silent space like the hidden faces of lovers we hate, of marriage beds we would see burned. On lifeless planets, where little tinkling grains of metallic sands whipped by the wind, shining like stars on the horizon as they race toward you to pick apart the flesh on your skull and the softness of your eyes, can you hear the chants of the believers of a loving god calling for the blood of the abomination. And whose breath motivates those winds? What thoughts awake in gasping dreams? Are you scared, confused, sitting in a tent on the wild-west show looking out at the poor starving children of the people that buried your heart at wounded knee. What do you feel when they grip the lions by their manes to yank back the head, in that instant, tense with friction as a knife to skin before the jerk across?

Let My Window Open the Door

Construction Equipment by Bill

I feel I must almost throw myself up through that window, to get in there, off this street, out of this open vulnerable air between steepled buildings smelling of incense and a burning, hollow shore lined with drums of fuel. Eyes following me while I have none. I only feel the window, the wind on the panes, the stones under my feet connected to the structure of the frames, the mountings in the wall. Nervous shaking licks of saliva pool on the tip of my tongue and I rub them against the back of my teeth, which I will use to bite them if they come near, the saliva working to keep my teeth cool, from heating up too much while it infects them. I have to get out of the open before I infect them.

***

Through the Never by Beth

A door slamming, the sound of the shot.  This kid Hollis, prom committee president, found the body later in a dressing room next to the stage.  He got Mr. Harrison and Mr. Harrison saw it too. Months later, Mr. Harrison read us this thing he wrote about it. After that I couldn’t stop picturing the body, slumped against the wall, pale.  Veronica said how could we enjoy the prom now, after what happened, but Veronica didn’t know him and neither did I. Neither did Hollis, who smoothed his eyebrows all the time with his fingertips. We could barely even picture him because nobody went to wrestling meets and he didn’t do anything else.

But a lot of kids went to the funeral. They said the casket was plain wood and people wrote messages on it in Sharpie. They said people put bottles of alcohol in there with him, and joints, and Metallica CDs. They said he definitely knew before he did it that they weren’t going to cut the wrestling team after all. But he still did it.

Sometimes the doors slammed like that, made that noise, when it was windy and the language teachers left the windows open.  But I think I heard the shot.

***

The Trajectory by Michael

If he is right, then the science, the physics, and the biology will all work themselves out without him having to do anything after initiation. So he sits there and looks up at it from his car, waiting for the right moment, wondering if it will ever come. Maybe later, he'll just drive away, without having done anything. Go back. Except, he realizes, it won't be back anywhere, just a different direction forward; a different initiation. As this idea takes root, and the branches spread in his mind, he places his hand on the ignition key, and leaves it for just a moment, savoring his own indecision and the infinite causes of it. Then he removes the key from the ignition and scratches at his scruff with it. He'll come back tomorrow, and play it again in his mind, and see if this time, it doesn't branch out. He exits the car and stretches. and goddamn it feels good just to stretch out.

***

Window Talk by Alan

“I want to let a little air in.”

“Why?”

“Just because…”

“You realize you’re always doing this.”

“What?”

“Finding ways to subvert the situation…move things around…furniture, books, whatever…feed the plants…you know what I’m talking about.”

“That’s not subversion.”

“Of course it is…”

“I may be doing a little avoiding but definitely not subverting.”

“You’re doing it again.”

“It’s really hot in here.”

“It’s fall in New York. We’re having a warm day. It’s definitely not hot.”

You notice their poising themselves on respective sills, each body a kind of bird - pensive yet remarkably alert.

“Do you realize we’ve known each other for…”

“Don’t say that. Don’t ever say that.”

They shift a bit to get more comfortable, prepare the curtains for intuited vicissitudes of uncertainty and sun.

A bus passes; you lose track of the conversation, move on.

***

Apologies by Lyle

It wasn’t that only two windows hung open, or that the curtains fluttered just so, obscuring a form — you. It was that the glass panes each had a slightly different quality, a different transparency. I knew it was mostly because of the angle — each one a fraction of a degree different from the ones next to it — but I thought maybe there was something in the age of each pane. Maybe some were new and other were older, the glass sagging slightly like an overripe plum (sorry I ate those, by the way). Gravity never loses. Still seeing you wrapped in that fulvous curtain so lightly made me think of birds. I thought you might alight on the thin metal window frame and disappear around the next building before I could get inside to say that I’m sorry. Gravity is just a fancy way of saying death. But still the birds fool gravity for a while — just like our temporary reprieve from it. Maybe reprieve isn’t the right word. We can still feel its weight, only it hasn’t entirely flattened us out yet. You disappear from the window with hardly a disturbance and my reverie is over like that. There is only my self-reflective guilt flowing out of open windows.

***

Open Windows Opening by Forrest

opening one window opens the window opening to the next window now closing by one open hand that opens them or closes them later or sees later that hand seeing the next open window by opening one window with a closing hand not waving above nor waving to a hand below waving above later at the open window it sees which opens next to the closing window closing the open hand closing it and not seeing the next open window below open the one hand closing over to wave and ask the closing hand below which window to enter later and close the opening window as entering they now see waving does not open windows closing nor waves open hands closing them when seeing below the one hand that does not wave above to enter open

File Cabinet

Oak Burrs by Forrest

As though led into a true archive, find the paper nest receiving an almost filial attention: common field mouse filing itself away inside the cabinet, the detritus cozy where pointed out. And even it had a name. Fine. That’s fine, the caretaker beams, and, really, the records almost keep themselves. It’s a stone age technology. But it all gets uncovered processed and ascertained. Everyone stays home. This knowledge after six o’clock would seem akin to making peace with leashed demons. Fine checks out. So reach in. Try piercing hardened mold. Lift a card with worst prospect. It’s likely any everyone—just don’t expect the everyone sought. Or do and be faint about it. Be that reasonable.

***

At Least Read the Card, to Remember by Bill

Where NAME, the NAME remains un-spelt. Pen-tip touch, line. Unfaded. Incomplete. No mark there. Music somewhere, a series of strings and a few tooting horns, then a long thin line out towards the side, drifting slowly off center. Corners folded. “Don’t fold the corners please Philip." Philip, an idiot put to work entering information in the front office. Mild mannered. Penchant for bending the corners of papers. Will work for an hour or so in unbending dedication transcribing information without a crease. NOK. Unknown. COUNTY EXECUTOR: Line Line Cross. A. Line Bloop Bloop. B.ABERNATHY, H. PLOT 172 DOB 4/1/1892. “Janice, when he is done, have him sort the county admissions.”

Now, the office, waiting. Cedar limbs in the window, moldering bats on the floor.DOD 9/8/1---. MARKER: 172. DOD nothing so much, unreadable, stained. Capillary desecration.

***

Pareidolia by Beth

In her long days alone in the rented house, she searches for company. Faces of deer in the knotty pine walls, fat ducks in the kitchen canisters, a bent-backed man in the curve of the stairs.

More tangible signs of people come and gone – a filing cabinet stuffed with index cards, worn-out chairs that bear the imprints of bodies, a small handprint low in a kitchen corner.

She sleeps as late as she can each morning, then lies in bed watching the voile curtain move in the breeze. When it rains she breathes in the smell of wet pines and spruces. She waits until the curtain is darkened with drops, then shuts the window and tries to sleep again.

Afternoons she sits in sunlight on the kitchen floor, next to the handprint. She makes herself small again, trying to see the room with a child’s complete attention. The way the light moves across the linoleum. The way an ant drags a dead comrade. The bloom of cream in her coffee. If she can keep track of things, if the details matter…maybe.

***

The Files on Me by Michael

It probably would've been good to include something true in there. All those identities, mixed up together, they can't have got far looking for me there. But now I wonder why I wanted so much to be lost in that shuffle of paper. It might have been good to leave some hints. A bread crumb paper trail. Now it would seem my only legacy is to be a labyrinth. I got no strings to hold me down, and so off I float, a homeless helium balloon. Looking down, looking back, there's no one looking back. Not at me, but I catch their profiles, catching the shadows I set to play against the translucent rap sheet that makes up what I did in my time here. Or there, I guess, now.

Invisibility was part of it, but it became all of it. Then there was nothing. I didn't exist. That was it.

***

Nishant and the Beach by Alan

Remnants of the blast had Nishant laughing for days. First it was the fat end of a ubiquitous Garcia tie that just appeared one day not too long ago after Greg and Arto rehashed their younger days in southern Jersey, the edges frayed and darkened. Then, continuing down memory lane, he came across several boxes of large binding clips emptied like machine gun cartridges. He could only think of Susanna. Oh beautiful Susanna…how he never made her smile. Not once.

In fact, he stayed on the beach in fairly good humor for over three weeks, during which he came across three swivel chairs, incandescent lighting, the hot water knob of a water cooler, and the company file cabinet. Though a bit worse for wear anyway – and significantly worsened because of the IED – old reliable held up pretty well and almost smiled back at Nishant as he held up his iPhone to block the sun.

The mobile post: Almost a month after the attack. Why do I feel so free? Where r you?

***

Card Weevils and the Clerk by Lyle

The clerk, if you could call him that, filed the photo of the burr oak filing cabinet in the burr oak filing cabinet and left it open.

A worn shoelace against the back of his head held the tortoise shell glasses on the tip of his nose.

Beside the burr oak filing cabinet was another burr oak filing cabinet, the bottom drawer open a couple of inches and the third drawer open nearly a foot. The card weevils had been in it and cards shredded out littering the floor.

The “clerk” put his tortoise shell glasses into their shagreen case, but removed the shoelace before he did. He formed the end into a noose and put himself in between the two burr oak filing cabinets, the noose loosely laying on top of the cards in the open third drawer.

Burr oak filing cabinets spanned the narrow hall, which disappeared into slits at either ends (one end a black slash, the other a white one). The card weevils had chosen CT-07739 to infest. The clerk did not understand why.

And so the clerk spent his evening waiting for the weevils.