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Cat speaker sings a funny song (hometown smile)

The talking cat sings a very funny Arabic song

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Short Story Once upon a time… …there was only war. She leapt up in triumph, blood dripped from her sword as she swung it down on the beast’s neck, hacking in a frenzy. She laughed. The taste of blood and sweet revenge urged her on in her manic slaying of the creature that had… No, no that wasn’t right. Once there was a girl who… …who had a monster in her, clawing at the surface every waking moment she… No! Not that either. There was once a little girl who… Who what? Tearing the page away and crumpling it into a ball, he threw it over his shoulder to join its growing mass of brethren on the floor. It was dark in the office, the curtains shut to block out the intrusion of the light. He worked by a single lamp, its artificial brightness casting shadows about the room. Shadows were better than ghosts, he supposed. He licked his dry lips, ignoring his thirst and the beginnings of a headache. When last had he drunk anything? No, that wasn’t important. This was. On the book shelf behind him, the row of his best sellers stared down mockingly at him. They were not stories like the one he was trying so desperately to write. These were horror retellings of traditional fairy tales. Stories where the wolf ate the girl, the evil queen became the fairest in the land and giants ruled the world below. There were no good endings there. ‘Why can’t you write a happy story?’ a childish voice whined in his ears. He turned, almost expecting her to be standing behind him, but there were only the shadows and his books. Those books that had taken so many hours. So much time. Why had he wasted so much time? “I’m trying,” he whispered, pushing the thoughts of wrath and pain away. A long time ago, in a kingdom far, far away, there lived a girl who… He got up, reaching for the first book on the shelf, his first novel. The snarling face of an undead Cinderella stared up at him. What had he missed writing this? Her first birthday? Her first word? He couldn’t remember just now. Opening it, he peered down at the dedication, the only indication he had remembered her at all. Who dedicates a horror book to a baby? He was such an idiot. He tore the page out and then the next…and the next….and the next. One by one, they fell to the floor like snow until his movements became erratic, gripping handfuls at a time and ripping them out. He grabbed another book, a cannibalistic Gretel greeted him, her brother’s severed head grinning at the reader. This one too joined the flurry of paper on the ground. “Stupid! Stupid! Stupid!” he chanted to himself, almost screaming the words out. Book, after book, was torn apart, helping him vent his rage in that dark room. He finally collapsed on the floor, exhausted to his bones. The blank pages of his notebook waited for him. He put his head back and closed his eyes. ~.~ The world was bright. Sunlight dabbled down through the leaves of the trees in the forest as he road out on his white horse. It had been a long and treacherous journey. He had faced dragons and monsters. He had climbed mountains and ventured deep underground. His adventures had taken him far and wide; he had seen places he couldn’t have dreamed of, but it was worth it. All to get to this point. He had finally found her. The princess had been stolen away from them suddenly by a wicked fairy who cast a terrible curse on her. The cure to this curse was almost impossible to find and many times the brave king had come close to giving up hope. The path led him deep into the forest, past whispering trees and sweet song birds that heralded his coming. A gilded, glass coffin lay in the centre of a clearing. As he approached, he could see her sweet face through the opaque glass, gently dreaming. He got off his horse and approached, the cure, a magical flower in hand. He stepped forward, his boots sinking into soft moss as the perfumed scent of the forest hit him. Lifting the lid, he laid the flower, its golden petals gleaming, onto her little chest and waited. And waited. “Darling,” he whispered, “it’s time to wake up.” Her angelic face, framed in the golden halo of her hair, remained impassive. He bent down, pressing his lips to her cool forehead and feeling his eyes sting. “Please princess,” he begged, “Please wake up.” The gilded coffin faded to crisp white sheets, the forest to the stark walls of the hospital room. The sweet smell was the acrid scent of chemicals used to clean the floors and the gentle bird song became the slow beep of the heart monitor. He sat crouched over her bedside, holding her cold hand in a death grip, eyes red from crying all night. His little girl lay still on the bed, her usually plump cheek sallow and the glow lost from her skin. Her beautiful, golden hair was all gone now and she wore a cap to keep her head warm. She was connected to more wires and tubes than he thought possible for such a tiny human being. Her eyes remained closed, trapped in her dream world forever. “Please,” he cried, “Please wake up!” ‘Why can’t you write a happy story, Daddy?’ ~.~ “Paul? Paul!” the voice was coming to him from far away, slowly dragging him out of the dream, “Honey, wake up!” His eyes opened blearily. Someone had opened the curtains and window, letting the sunshine leak in. A mess of paper covered the floor and his wife was peering down at him, her gaze worried. “You need some water,” she said softly, coaxingly, “And some food. Come on, love.” She tried to pull him up, but he gripped her by the arm, gaze searching. She looked so much like their little princess, with the same golden hair and sweet face. There were bags under her eyes, betraying how tired and sad she was, a mirror of his own face. His heart clenched painfully. “I said I’d write it,” he mumbled out, it seemed important she know, “I was trying to write a happy story. I promise.” She leaned forward, wrapping her arms around him and bringing them close together. He shuddered in her arms, letting himself get pulled in by her warmth. Hot tears found their way down his face as he clutched close to her. “I know,” she soothed, “She’ll really like that.” Once upon a time, in a kingdom far, far away, there lived a little girl… …who was loved, very, very much.

I’m not sure how long it was before I realized that the shuttle train never stopped, probably about the time it dawned on me that the people who had gotten on with me were gone. The train is supposed to run from Grand Central to Times Square, one stop, five minutes at the absolute most. But it had been… how long had it been? I don’t know, I was reading my book. I can space out pretty bad sometimes. Family lore has it that I slept right through a freak tornado that ripped off our roof. But the bluish fluorescent lights on the train flickered out with a hum, and when they turned on again, I realized something was amiss. The windows were turned into mirrors by the underground darkness, and in them was a face with a mischievous grin, complemented by a rakish light in the eyes and a tumble of curly brown hair. Samill, the trickster. He materialized from the window. “It’s been some time since we’ve seen each other.” “I can’t say I’ve missed you much, Samill,” I replied, sighing and putting my book down. He laughed heartily in response. “All of the wonders I’ve shown you and you don’t even have a smile to spare for me?” He had a note of mock offense in his voice. “I guess I’ll have to take this little adventure to someone else.” “Go ahead. I won’t mind.” He smiled, more broadly still. “Just kidding, it has to be you.” “Why?” “You’re the only one who’s done it before and let’s just say I need you to survive.” He meant that I’m the only mortal to travel to the realm of the gods and return both alive and a mortal. I did it when I was a girl; it was a whole thing I can’t get into now, but Samill was behind that, too. He damn near got me killed. “I don’t need anything from you this time, Samill. And I’m not a kid anymore. Why would I take this risk?” Samill appraised me. “Indeed, you are no longer a kid.” He turned his head to the side and held his fingers to his eyes like a camera lens. “A fine young woman, might I say. Are you in want of a companion?” “No,” I replied flatly. “Alright,” he said, smiling. “No need to be testy, just asking. Anyway, I need you to get something that was stolen from me.” “Get it yourself.” “Oh no, I can’t show my face there. But you would be able to slip right in and out, unnoticed.” “Surely there’s some other mortal in this world or another, aching for adventure or in need of your favors. I don’t need anything.” I looked down at my phone to check the time, but the screen displayed Samill’s mischievous face in profile. Samill looked at me seriously for some time, calculating something as he always did. “How is your sister, Stella? She must be twenty-seven years old now, am I right?” The air went out of me. What was he planning to do to her? He narrowed his eyes, a playful grin forming in one corner of his mouth. “Don’t worry, love. Your sister is fine. I kept my end of that bargain.” “And I paid a huge price. We’re even.” He crouched in front of me. Up close, I could see the glow of his skin and smell his hair; unearthly and unfathomable. “I can give you your magic back. You and Stella.” I froze, not daring to breathe. Samill took our magic in exchange for Stella’s life. We’d lived more than ten years without it. Sometimes, I wonder if I dreamed that I had it: a memory of fire dancing on my fingertips or chasing Stella on the surface of a lake; ephemeral, slipping from me like water in a palm. A gnawing, gaping longing opened up in me. “Ah,” Samill said, standing up smiling. “You’ve missed your magic. I do wonder sometimes how any mortal can bear life without it.” “Magic attracts the gods and all mortals are better off without that.” Samill grabbed his chest. “My poor heart. Come, let me show you something.” He beckoned me to the front of the train. It had stopped moving. With a dramatic swipe of his hand, the front of the train melted away, revealing the damp entrance to a long tunnel. “I need you to find the goddess Badha and retrieve the emerald she’s guarding. She’s blind and can only sense the gods. You will be able to go without notice,” he looked down at me out of the corner of his eye. I shot him a sharp look. “The underworld? Last time was different it was the heavenly gods. This is the realm of the dead, I won’t make it out. They won’t let me cross back into the living.” “If you speak your secret name to the guardian, he will let you pass alive. And if you give me the emerald, I’ll return your magic to you and your sister.” “But my secret name is for my passage into the afterlife. I can’t speak it twice.” “That’s just superstition. Encouraged by the gods, mind you, because your secret name has power and the gods know it. But you can speak it more than once. I give you my word.” I faced him and looked defiantly into his eyes. “No, sorry. I don’t need the magic, neither does Stella. Find someone else.” Samill laughed. “Well, Phoebe, I’d hoped you’d come around on your own. But barring that,” he shoved me through the front of the train and I landed right on my face in the rock and the mud. Before I could stand up, he smiled at me and waved his arm, making himself and the train disappear over my head. I made a hearty effort to bang on the now closed wall where Samill had thrown me through, but it didn’t work. If I was going to get out of there, I knew I’d have to descend this tunnel to figure it out. I pulled up my phone. Dead. Technology didn’t really work in the magical realms. The gods are terrified of it; Google is better at reading our minds than they are. It took some time for my eyes to adjust to the darkness, but when they did I noticed tiny dots of light embedded in the rock. I hit my face on the occasional tree root that was hanging from the top of the tunnel. I can’t say how long I walked, but at some point, minutes, hours or days later I arrived at a dried up river bed that I knew I’d have to cross to continue. Water is powerful and even its absence can be a trap set by a sorcerer or a god. I crouched down and put my ear to the ground. The whoosh of running water filled my ears. Some kind of underground river. I pressed my finger into a spot of soft mud beneath a rock and pearly liquid that looked like a cross between clouded water and honey emerged. I recognized it from old stories my grandmother told Stella and me, the River of No Name that runs through the center of the earth. It would expect payment of some kind, I reckoned. All enchanted crossings did. But I had nothing on me. I was unprepared. I tried my phone, since it was the most expensive thing I had. I placed it gingerly on the rocks, but moments later the phone launched itself back at me. Ok, that wasn’t going to work. I thought for a few minutes and then realized: the river would want my name. I leaned over to the rocks and whispered “Phoebe,” but the rocks let out an agitated hiss and rumbled. I wiped my hands on my jeans and looked up, cursing Samill. The river wanted my secret name. I was forced to trust what Samill said about my secret name not losing power if I say it more than once. I bent my face even lower this time and said, in as low a voice as possible, the name spoken to me once by my mother the day I was born and written on my heart, Efweth. Water coursed through the rocks, gold and white and pleasant. It leveled off when it was a few inches high and pulled itself to either side, allowing me to pass over the rocks. Eventually, I came to the end of the tunnel which was a large, circular cavern with walls made of rocks and mud. The light in the rocks was brighter here, so I was able to see more easily. It seemed I was alone. I walked around the room, my hand on the walls, feeling for some exit or hidden door, but I came up empty. I looked up, but whatever was above me was either too high or too occluded by the darkness for me to see it. “Ok, Samill. What am I doing here? Help me out?” Just then, an enormous woman descended from the ceiling; twenty-feet tall with a tangled mass of hair falling over her shoulders. She seemed old, older than the earth, but also ageless. As soon as I noticed something that would indicate her age, a wrinkle, a grey hair, it would fade away before I could be sure it was there. This must be Badha. “Samill? Are you here you nasty little imp? I told you if I ever saw you again I’d rip you to shreds and it would take you three millennia to stitch yourself together.” I pushed myself into the wall and held my breath, not wanting to make a sound. The goddess moved a few steps forward and backward, shaking the cavern as she did. “No it can't be Samill. He couldn't be... But who said your name? Why would anyone speak of you here?” She moved her arm around the cavern to feel. I pressed myself further against the wall. “Make yourself known, whoever you are. Another useless goblin? Be gone, goblin. I’ve nothing for you here.” I looked all over her for some sign of an emerald, nothing on her neck, nothing on her fingers or in her hair. She made herself some kind of beverage and after she was done, she sat down with her great legs out in front of her. I was standing next to her massive calf, I could have reached across and grabbed it if I wanted to. She sipped from her cup and paused, putting her ear up like a curious dog. She sipped again and got on all fours. I had to run toward the entrance of the cavern to avoid her as she changed positions. Then she put her ear to the ground and knelt up. “Mortal, I know you’re here.” Damnit, Samill. “Tell me why you’re here, mortal.” I neither replied nor moved so much as an eyelid. “The river told me mortal. I’ll say your secret name if you don’t answer me. I don’t think you want that.” I wasn’t sure what the consequences of that would be; should I call her bluff or answer her? Everyone in my culture is given a secret name at birth, whispered in their left ears by our mothers at the moment of birth. We are never to speak it until we die. We were told to always guard it as the name possesses great power that could be used to harm us or someone else. “Did Samill send you?” “Yes,” I croaked out. I was very thirsty. She laughed, quietly at first and then so forcefully the walls shook. “Tell me, mortal, what did he tell you to get?” “An emerald.” She laughed again, this time wiping tears from her cheeks. “My sweet child, Samill knows I don’t have that emerald. What did he promise you?” My stomach dropped. What had he set me up for? “Eternal youth? Love? Please, tell me.” She was still laughing and occasionally broke into wheezing coughs. “He said he’d return my magic.” She stopped laughing. “Who took it?” "He did, Samill.” “Why?” “In exchange for my sister’s life.” “And you believed him, when he said he’d return your magic?” “I don’t know. I refused him. But when I refused he threw me down here.” She brought her hand to her chin like she was thinking very hard. “I don’t have the emerald, dear. Samill knows that.” “Ok, then, I’ll just get out of your hair.” She cackled. “You’re in the realm of the dead. You can’t return. You must know that.” “Samill said…” “Samill lied,” she said, still wiping tears of laughter from her blank eyes. “You can’t return. And I’m hungry, come here.” She swiped her arms out again, narrowly missing me. I ran again to the entrance of the cavern and had nearly managed to get away when a tree root ripped from the floor and pulled me back. “I told you, there’s no returning for you, mortal. Samill as good as killed you. I don’t know what you did to piss him off.” I had no weapons. No magic. No way out. I closed my eyes and readied myself for my fate. I wondered what death would be like if I died already in the underworld. Then I got an idea. Lining the walls of the cavern and up into the ceiling were tree roots, the ones that brought me back into the cavern when I tried to escape. I escaped from the root holding me and ran across, another root shot out and chased me. I ran back and forth around the cavern, narrowly avoiding the roots as I did. The whole time Badha was laughing. “Mortals always fight so hard. So entertaining. Well, I’ll be back in a minute when you’re dead.” She stood up but fell right away as the roots pulled her back down. I’d trapped her in them. She pulled and grabbed at them, breaking a few, but they held. I knew they wouldn’t hold long, so I made one final move. I leapt up onto the roots holding Badha, the tips of new ones chasing me as I did, and ran headlong into her chest, dodging out of the way at the last second. The root didn’t find me, but did find Badha’s chest, shooting straight through it and out the other side. She gasped and choked. “No, no. This isn’t possible.” She weakly pulled at the root in her chest, but then she started to disintegrate into the dirt below her, her flesh and hair and clothes falling into so much dust. I was stunned. I thought I would incapacitate her, not kill her. I had no idea what the tree was made of that it was strong enough to kill a goddess, but I ran out of there as quickly as my feet would carry me. The River of No Name parted for me, it did not expect a second payment. I clambered back up the tunnel as fast as I could, falling and tripping as I went. I reached the end of the tunnel, still closed off. “Samill! Let me out of here.” I could see the tunnel starting to fall away too. Soon the ground beneath my feet would be gone. “You feckless bastard let, me, out!” Nothing. "Damn it,” I said, realizing that this wall was the Guardian and I needed to tell it my name or I’d fall into the creeping oblivion below. “Efweth,” I said as quietly as my adrenaline would allow. I was back on the shuttle train. Samill sat jauntily across from me, legs crossed, smiling as though he could hear a distant good tune. The only evidence I had that anything had happened was that I was covered in dirt. “I’m going to KILL you,” I shouted and ran over and started battering him with my fists. “Kill you. There was no emerald.” He restrained me easily, smiling. “I know. I needed her killed. I knew you could do it.” My jaw fell open. “Why? Why didn’t you just kill her yourself?” “This is the problem with all of you magical mortals who chose to integrate into the larger society. You missed all of your lessons. Celestial gods cannot descend into the underworld. Only humans can. I would immediately evaporate if I stepped down there.” “Why me?,” I asked, crying now. “Why? It could have been anyone.” He shook his head. “No, not anyone.” He sat back down the seat. “It had to be someone with your talents.” “I don’t have any talents,” I wept. My shoulders were shaking. “I was just trying to survive.” “And yet, most would not. Just as most children would not have survived the ordeal you went through. No, it had to be you, I’m sorry.” He stood up again and walked to the door of the train, which I realized was moving again. “Here,” he said, reaching into a pocket in his garment. “Your magic.” “No! No, please,” I begged. “I don’t need it. Keep it.” He smiled again, larger than before. “I need you to have it. I’m not done with you yet, Efweth.” The loudspeaker called out, “Stand clear of the closing doors, please,” and he snapped his fingers in my direction, stepped out and disappeared into the crowd. People filed into the train and I wiped the tears from my face and tucked my hair behind my ears, but people still avoided sitting next to me, covered as I was in mud and dust. I held up my left hand, cupping it around my right forefinger as though to protect it from the wind, and produced a dancing blue flame from the tip of my finger. I couldn’t stop myself from smiling

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Short Story: Hugo- Day one, the hottest day in July. The kind of hot that makes the neighbors forgo underwear and plant themselves in front of oscillating fans. Feet planted in small kiddie pools filled with tepid tap water, topped off with bagged ice from the corner market. The breeze from the fan casting across the iced pools does nothing to diminish the warmth from their radiating bodies. Instead it pushes the sweat further across their faces and thighs until they are all shiny with sweat. It’s nearly impossible to forget day one. You try, yet day one is the day you’ll scramble for breath. You’ll put on the bravest of faces to give your daughter Thea oxygen as you hold the side of her head to your chest. She will appreciate the firm pressure you apply to her quivering body. The grief inundating from her youthful frame, forcing you back- one, two, three, steps until you both collapse onto the couch. Sweat and tears, they’re all the same. How can a girl live without her mother? How will I breathe without her modeling what a strong exhale looks like? It will be all she can say. You wonder in your emotional greed, Where does she keep all of the passwords? Thea’s birth certificate? Is she allergic to anything? Raeann- Their day one is polar opposite of your day one. The body that carried you through life for the past four decades decided the narrative of living a nice long life is a lie. To find out that you’re going to die is far less painful than hearing that you are dead. The dead don’t hear pain. The dead don’t feel it either. It’s terminal, you have weeks at best Raeann. I’m so sorry. You are sent home with instructions of getting your affairs in order. Pamphlets titled, “How to tell your loved ones that you are dying,” as if there is a simple bullet point plan to button up all of your affairs before you go. Step 1, I’m dying. But I left a few lasagnas in the freezer for busy nights. Hugo- Planning a funeral is foreboding. The weatherman says to expect more heat hazes. You don’t know exactly what that is, but you’ve already spent hours on the internet searching for a cure. What's another few minutes? Heat haze: also called heat shimmer, refers to the inferior mirage observed when viewing objects through a mass of heated air. Relief floods your body, panic eases up. This isn’t the end, it’s all a mirage. It has to be. Raeann- Everything after the first day is now called the in between, and that’s just how you’ve come to accept it. Call your mother more, but not so much that she suspects that there is something to be worried about. Mothers know. Revel in the fact that the word hug happens to be the first three letters of your husband's name, as he is the best hugger you’ve ever met. Hugging him a little bit longer feels like a possible cure for the incurable. Forget the pamphlets, your family deserves a better send off than that. The blogs online say to leave a video diary for your daughter because she might forget the way the dimples tucked into your cheeks are deep enough to hold a cat's eye marble in each of them. Don’t let her forget. The idea of a camera taping your face not looking like your face is unsettling. It is then you decide on cassettes, they’re the happy medium. Even if cassette tapes are “so out of style,” they might be even more treasured due to the rarity of them. Nothing screams a mothers legacy like antiquated methods of communication. Might as well break out the typewriter and ribbon of ink. Hugo- In-laws, they’re a mixed bag. Naturally they have known your beloved Raeann for the longest. They created her so there is ownership there. Let them visit and call and video chat. It’s all that they will get of her. You’ll be left with the daughter you share, and the smell of her lilac shampoo on the bed linens you agreed to buy at the big box store. The in-laws won’t get to smell her again, but you will, at least a little longer before the next load goes in the wash. Raeann- To make a mixed tape you have to consider two things: Who you’re making the tape for and the occasion. Remind yourself that this isn’t a John Hughes movie, and Thea won’t be walking away with the love of her life but rather losing you. Of course there are times when you hear a little melody on the radio and think to yourself, Thea would love this song. Then, add bits of wisdom and sayings to the playlists, for days when she needs advice but you aren’t there to give it. A mother knows exactly what kind of music will make her daughters eyes sparkle, even if it is followed by a tiny eye roll. It’s some kind of magic to possess this kind of knowing about a teenager even if she is your child. You wonder if anyone else will ever know your daughter this way. Hugo- She told you that there’d be tapes. That you’d have to give them to Thea, maybe one morning as you sip your coffee black and dark roasted the way that you like it. It’s important Hugo, it’s all I have left to give her. Well, and you of course. Those dimples, you won’t be able to say no to her and so you agree with a gentle head nod and deep hug. Through sickness and health was the vow? What about death and grief, what’s the vow look like after that? More haziness. Raeann- Your last day comes twenty-nine days after your first. Cliche, that’s what the last thirty days will be. Like a film reel, memories click and spin for one last viewing in your mind's eye. Not in black and white, but in vibrant colors of finger painted construction paper and alabaster hydrangeas in wedding centerpieces. Wait until Thea nods off in the corner chair of your room, wrapped in the blanket you both sewed together out of your old shirts. Absorb the tiny bit of warmth from Hugo’s hand wrapped around the frail fingers on yours. These hands spent many hours laced together over the years and now his hands will spend hours pressing play for Thea. It’s time for your strong exhale. Hugo- Pull the old cassette player down from the attic, blow off the decades of dust. Imagine the look on your daughter’s face when the carefully curated tapes are placed in her young hands with three freckles alongside the edge of her knuckles. The freckles lightly kiss her milky skin, and you breathe out a little in relief knowing that they look ordinary. She won’t want the tapes. Her eyes might brim with orbs of salted water. A sense of begging will slip past her lips, Please daddy I’m not ready yet. You stare at the dimples she inherited from her mother, pressing your warm thumb into one of them as you hold gently to her chin. Picturing the future, you wonder who will take her wedding dress shopping, and who will take her phone calls if she loses a baby. It will be you of course. Press play.

Content warning: terminal illness IMBIBITION: the absorption of water by a seed, stimulating the enzymes required for growth. They’re visiting the quiet grandparents when her father says, ‘One day, you’ll find me here, too. Nothing is forever.’ His voice sounds like it’s coming from under the ground, like he’s already training her for what’s to come. The girl is so small her feet dangle off the folding plastic bench. She stares at her grandparents’ names and oval photos in which they don’t smile, and then at the oak casting a shadow on their granite home. ‘What about that?’ she points at the tree. Her father ruffles her hair. His fingers are cold. ‘For your purposes, that is forever,’ he admits. She feels much warmer once they’re out in the car park, flat and hot like a frying pan, sizzling the metal boxes in the afternoon sun. A wave of heat so potent it distorts vision hits her when she opens the passenger door. She dislikes how chilly it feels at the graveyard, as if the marble slabs radiate frost out to visitors on sunny days, just to remind them of what’s in store. ‘Mama says you can be so morbee,’ the girl remembers out loud, fishing a lollipop out of the glove compartment, and her father laughs. ‘I think she means morbid.’ GERMINATION: the emergence of a plant contained within a seed. If trees are forever, the girl reasons, then surely, they ought to plant one so that it remembers them, so that it’s grateful for the gift of existence, so that it whispers of them when they’re gone. Her mother shakes her head. ‘Well done,’ she whispers to her husband. ‘You’re raising her some existential hippie without even trying.’ They collect rattling paper pouches from underneath an elm in the park. Her father tells her they contain seeds, and when they cut the bags open, tiny grains spill all over. She doesn’t believe her father when he says one of those will grow tall and proud in their garden. He keeps the seed in the dark between pieces of wet cloth, and she opens it to look every day when he’s not around to bat her curious fingers away. She’s the first to know when a little stalk of green breaks out of the seed and the sight makes her squeal so hard her father can’t pretend to be angry. SEEDLING: a young plant, especially one raised from seed and not from cutting. ‘But how will we know when to put it outside?’ she asks, stroking the tiny leaves on the elm. Her father rubs his jeans, uneasy with the excessive tugging, but he doesn’t have it in him to slap her hand away. ‘We’ll eyeball it.’ She sits for hours, watching the stem, trying to catch it in the act of growing. It doesn’t look like anything just yet. It could be an iris, it could be a rose bush, it could be an elm. The girl wonders whether the tree knows what it will become. She stares, but nothing ever happens. ‘It grows constantly, just very slowly,’ her mother tries to explain, taking the chance to braid her distracted daughter’s hair. ‘That’s very sneaky,’ the girl nods, her entire being focused on the tree so much that her mother’s poor combing technique doesn’t make her flinch and run away. The tree strives for sun, trying to catch light onto its leaves. ‘It needs all the sugar it can get,’ her father explains, ‘but it’ll grow crooked if we don’t give it a spin.’ The girl turns the single stem to face her again and waves her finger at the elm. ‘So greedy,’ she says. ‘Your teeth will fall out and you’ll be hunched like that old crow from across the street.’ The girl’s father stifles a chuckle into his open palm. SAPLING: a young tree, especially one with a slender trunk. When they plant the elm outside, the girl’s father erects a circle of planks around it. ‘Why would you surround it by its dead friends?’ the girl asks and the father is pensive. ‘It’s to deter pests. They’d chew right through the stem.’ He’s right. Rats stop by at night, curious of the new construction. They scratch a little, but nothing smells alluring on the other side, so they leave. Tiny paws shuffle away in the grass, and the tree shivers in the still, windless night. It grows as if fed by yeast, expanding in all directions, and so does the girl. ‘Can someone pass the salt?’ she asks at dinner. Her mother smiles. ‘Get it yourself.’ The girl stretches her hand over the table and reaches the shaker without getting up. ‘You grow so fast you don’t even realise how long your limbs have become.’ It’s a race, but no matter how much she wills herself to stretch when lying in bed at night, the tree towers over her. WITCH’S BROOM: a type of cancer on a woody plant, developing a dense mass with shoots growing out of it, resembling a broom or a bird’s nest. ‘And they said what?’ her father whispers and the girl listens on the other side of the door, squinting to see through the crack. She sees her mother’s breast like an ugly plasticine figure stitched onto her chest. The lump drags her nipple to the left and the girl sees some wiry, black hairs encircling the areola. ‘That we need to remove it,’ her mother replies finally between sharp inhales, and her father draws the shirt back over the breast like a pathologist covering up a dead body. The tree grows its own peculiar ball which disgusts the girl and reminds her of her mother’s deformed nipple. The mass is hard to touch and when branches sprout out of it, she remembers her biology teacher talking of a tumour which can grow hairs and teeth. Her mother dies at home a year later. The oblivious tree keeps growing like nothing ever happened, and the girl does, too. She now curls up in bed instead of spreading out, trying to remember what it was in her mother’s soft belly when she was a little seed. ULMUS PROCERA: a woody tree once popular in Britain, also known as the English elm. The sapling is a tree and the girl is a woman. The changes are as unnoticed as they’re irrevocable. She can rest in the elm’s leafy shadow away from the scorching sun, which dries her skin out like a crouton. Nobody asks her for ID when she goes to the shop to get a bottle of wine or cigarettes for her father. ‘I hoped I’d be the first one to go,’ he tells her at the table they’d placed under the tree. ‘You told me once mum thought I was morbid.’ The woman nods. There’s little to say. She sees wrinkles around her father’s mouth. One autumn, his face wears different shades just like the leaves on the elm. It looks a little yellowed for a while, then flushes red, and at the end, it turns ashen. If she stepped on him like she does on the pile she rakes up from underneath the tree, he’d rustle, too. They put him to rest over his parents, and the oak is gone, a large stump like an amputated thumb sticking out of the ground. She stops by the groundskeeper’s office. ‘What happened to the oak?’ she asks. ‘It got struck by lightning and the trunk split. We had to cut it down.’ She thinks she’ll go home and tell her father he was wrong about trees, but she suddenly remembers she can’t. She leaves the graveyard limping even though her legs don’t hurt. SCOLYTUS MULTISTRIATUS: a species of bark beetle known for spreading the Dutch elm disease. Why she never married? She doesn’t know. She saw her mother get eaten from the inside. By the end, she could swear she saw little tumours growing underneath her eyelids, pushing out like pinheads, but maybe it was just the exhaustion. That’s why she doesn’t sleep with men much, they ask too many questions. She’s like a suspect in a case of neglect of her own life. No children, no ex-husband, no baggage. They’re all tight on money with their alimony payments, always overdue, or mortgages they still keep up as part of their divorce settlements. She hates the mammography scanner, pinching and squeezing until her knees feel ready to give in. They find something, not anything major, but a round of chemotherapy would serve her right. It sounds like a diagnosis of a particularly bad cold. The doctor’s voice is as milky and soft as his eyes, and she can’t see any emotion through that veil. It’s inherited, he explains. She was always a vulnerable specimen. She’s fighting off nausea and combing her hair out, sat in the elm’s speckled shadow, when she notices a withered branch. In the middle of summer, just like that, a big branch, drooping and ready to fall off just like her eyelashes. She shrugs it off, but soon, there’s one more, and then another. The tree surgeon explains the mechanics to her, but once she hears the word terminal, she only listens with the tiniest part of her that’s not panicked. Bark beetles, he continues, carry a certain species of fungus, and when they bore into the tree, they spread it. The tree tries to defend itself and blocks off nutrients to its branches, one by one. ‘It’s like a blood clot, but self-induced,’ he explains patiently. ‘It’s a real plague. The way it’s going, we won’t have any elms left in this country in a few years.’ She turns to him. She would raise her eyebrows if she had any. ‘That’s a bit apocalyptic, isn’t it?’ He shrugs and takes her to the tree, where he scratches some bark off and suddenly, they stare at intricate, vaguely symmetrical lines running along the trunk, looping in on themselves like footprints of some mad ant colony. ‘See, it’s like the tree’s got gangrene.’ She runs her fingers on the smooth trunk. ‘Now what? Do we just wait?’ He must hear the despair in her voice. She’s barely standing, it’s hot outside and she’s sweating under the head scarf. ‘No,’ he replies. ‘I have to cut it down.’ She would sleep with him if he wanted to, she would drop off the clothes and lead him to bed, and she would do anything he asked for in there. She’d bat her eyelashes and flirt, but she can’t, because she doesn’t have those anymore, either. ‘Please,’ she says. Begging is the only option. ‘I can’t do it without the tree. I know it’s strange, but please, please.’ He brings up his hand and goes back out into the garden. He stands under the tree and she notices now he’s not bad-looking, and some years ago she might have slept with him if he wanted to regardless of the tree. ‘Fine,’ he says finally. ‘But nobody can know. I’m only doing it because…’ He stops there and adjusts his trousers. She knows she’s damaged goods, just like her elm. SNAG: a standing, dead or dying tree, often missing many of its smaller branches. At night, she often wonders what it would have felt like for the tree to catch the disease. When the first beetle bored into the trunk, did it sting like a mosquito bite? Or like an injection, like all those translucent liquids she has pumped into her? She admires the tree as it loses more and more branches. To gnaw off her own limb is something she ponders as well. What if she just got a kitchen knife and cut her breast off on the chopping board? She doesn’t want to be the crazy tree lady who keeps a carcass in her backyard when spring comes. Spring will betray them both, her and her elm. She’ll still have to wear a hat, even though it’s warm outside, and the tree will still look naked with all the greenness shimmering everywhere around it. Its few remaining branches will still comb through the impeccable blue of the sky like a rabid, skinny claw. The tree surgeon brings his tools into the garden and she cries silently, something she learned when her mother died. The man asks her to go inside, but she shakes her head. He looks almost too sad to bear. ‘If it makes you feel any better, many other people have lost their trees.’ She chuckles a little. ‘Is there a grief circle for it?’ ‘We could start one,’ he replies very seriously and the last words drown into the barking of the saw. Afterwards, he says he wouldn’t mind a cup of tea. The garden’s cleaned up and they sit at the table exposed to the sun again. He pulls something out of his pocket, and the rattle is so tiny she can barely hear it over the echo of the saw still bouncing from one ear to another. It’s a brownish pouch. ‘I found those under the tree. It’s a miracle it still produced some.’ Her sob’s audible this time and he lowers his voice. ‘Do you know how to grow a tree from seed?’ He passes it to her across the table and she grabs the thin packet and shakes it like an ancient rattle toy. ‘Yes,’ she whispers. ‘I do.’ ************************************** PEOPLE 'Too Hot To Handle' Star Carly Lawrence Talks Sex Behind-The-Scenes & 'Pooping On Camera' NarcityCanada I Am Putting My Money Where My Mouth Is Dan Bongino Show Clips

Short Story There are two things I have always wanted you to know about the house. Ever since you picked it out, in the middle of a recession, at a heavy discount, as you put it. As if it was a carton of milk about to go out of date. For us, you said, finally away from the hustle. And there are two things I have wanted to tell you. But I didn’t know how. 1. I hate the glass door to the back garden. It’s like a wound barely held by shaggy stitches. One measly screwdriver stuck into the lock would suffice to split it open, exposing the house’s organs viable to sell on the black market. The hall like intestines, dark and humid, slapped with some nonsensical paintings you were certain would triple in value sometime. The bathroom like a liver, maroon and old-fashioned, an old bonsai fig ruling over the windowsill. You always prayed it wouldn’t just drop dead, except trees don’t do that, you know, they die standing. ‘It will be worth a fortune one day.’ At night, it cast a shadow like a mad broom that developed an evil mind of its own and wanted to sweep us under the rug when we came in for a midnight pee. I wonder what our bedroom would be if it were a body part. The spleen comes to mind, an organ so forgotten nobody can remember what it does. I looked it up and the spleen filters bad blood as it turns out. That’s about right, more often than not, we argued in bed instead of, and then you bought the big TV. ‘Who puts a screen in their bedroom?’ I asked you. ‘Couples with,’ you replied, ‘You know.’ Or couples without. Prepositions were often missing their nouns in our relationship. So many people turned up for the housewarming party, old neighbours and new, and your colleagues from work, remember? You were a popular man, the best of. I was carrying a big pitcher of margaritas to the back garden. I wonder if anyone actually likes those, the snot-like mixture that smells vaguely of poison, acidic dreams and delirium. Through the glass door, I saw the backyard, plated gold by the setting sun, and your long shadow. ‘Oh, really?’ you said and it sounded so seductive I thought you had to be talking to me. How did you know I was there? Was it that smell of tequila? And then, a different shadow stepped into yours, and I couldn’t tell them apart anymore. I stared at the blinding concrete tiles until the shapes separated again, yours straight and simple, hers like an hourglass. No words were said. Your favourite co-worker came through and stood next to me until you split in two again as if by the hand of an invisible shadow puppeteer. No words were said. ‘Why were you hugging her?’ I asked you later that night, one of our first nights in the new bed, with lights off. ‘She’s going through,’ you trailed off. A dreadful divorce, I know. If I’d had a nickel for every time you said that, I could have probably been able to afford a packet of condoms for you. The sheets rustled as you turned away to sleep, and your outline became a shadow of a mountainous landscape. I guess you could only ever be straight with her, and I recalled your outline in the blinding sun, imagining stepping on it and bashing its head in. Time seemed to flow differently in the new house, leaking into all the new rooms which didn’t quite understand their purpose, and weeks were punctuated by new purchases like semicolons, separating one arbitrary chunk of life from the other. You brought another painting home that day and told me it would hang on the top of the stairs, and I nodded. You unwrapped it and stepped back to join me, but I wasn’t looking. There was a gold smudge on the lapel of your shirt. ‘What’s that?’ I asked. You turned your head to examine it, which gave you a double chin. ‘It’s eye shadow,’ I added, you looked away to the glass door, and your eyes drowned in light, extricating all expression I could have guessed from the size of your pupils. ‘Yes. She was crying today. Her ex is trying to take away,’ you explained and the missing part was substituted for a vague hand wave of a prestidigitator. What? The house? The kids? The chicken pad thai? If I’d said something then, it would have been the beginning of the end. But I didn’t, and some invisible line shifted closer towards me and I couldn’t inch away again. The shadows took on new colours every time and appeared on different parts of your wardrobe, cuffs, collars, and once, even your boxer shorts. She’d always worn a lot of makeup. I called your favourite co-worker, the one who stood by me and watched you intertwine once. ‘She is going through that divorce,’ he said, his voice flattened by the small speaker on the phone, and I didn’t cry to him. ‘Would you like me to come over?’ he asked, but his pitch didn’t rise at the end of the question, and he clicked off. I told you I’d be working late that day, but I ended up coming home for lunch. It’d turned out, you know what, never mind. It doesn’t matter. I saw her car in the driveway, so I entered through the back door, turning the almost symbolic, meaningless key in the lock. All I really needed was a hairpin to pick it. Did you secretly want someone to break in and steal all your paintings and your hag tree, so there would be nothing left but the two of us, pumping air instead of blood in the house’s hardened veins? I sat in the living room and waited on the desolate corner chair we couldn’t think of putting anywhere useful. You didn’t even spot me when you finally came in. I still like to think it was only because I was covered in a shadow so deep it felt like a blanket. But I know really that you couldn’t see me anymore, no more than you could see the works of art you so thoughtfully procured not for our viewing pleasure, but as a colourful investment. We didn’t argue and you only took half the things and I didn’t argue. I wanted to keep the painting at the top of the stairs, and you didn’t argue, and you instructed me to wait for a couple more years before selling and I didn’t argue. You asked about the tree and I told you to feel free to it and I didn’t argue at all. I was relieved it wouldn’t try to get me at night anymore. I’ve got rid of the glass door right after you’d moved out. It wasn’t cheap, but now, I can’t ever recreate that scene, the pitcher radiating cold, the concrete sparkling gold, the merging shadows staining my perfect garden floor. There’s now a wall where the door was, and the wound has closed, leaving no scar at all. I often think about the useless rooms now, and what they are, and I think the house is one big brain, mine only to think and feel as I please. I gave the living room chair away to charity. I never wanted to sit in it again. Each room is like a lobe of my mind, and I have no photos of you up on the walls. The wallpapers underneath where they used to hang are a little lighter and fresher, and I ask people to take pictures of me when we go out, when I holiday with friends, at family events, dates. I get given new frames for Christmas and the bald wall patches disappear one by one. 2. The second thing I’ve always wanted to tell you about this house is that I’d slept with your favourite co-worker in our new bed before we ever did, and when you said it smelled used and considered returning it, that was just his sweat and mine. And when you pointed out the rash I had on my neck and breasts, that was just scratches from his five o’clock shadow. ********************************************* Ep. 1554 A Massive Election Controversy Is Brewing - The Dan Bongino Show The Dan Bongino Show

Short Story “Sandwiches or Thai?” I ask aloud, out of habit. I can imagine Moira’s reply: You’re not on track with your calcium and folic acid targets today. Spinach is advised. Maybe a green curry? But today there’s no level, pleasant voice in my ear. Moira is, as they used to say, “in the shop” today for her annual updates and maintenance. I don’t know why they can’t just upload the stuff into them, but these maintenance days are a fact of life we all deal with. I guess even artificial intelligence is entitled to one vacation day a year. Most people just sleep through it. Sometimes I do, too, but this year I was curious. “I’ll be fine,” I told Moira before she went dark. “You’ve taught me well. I’ve probably absorbed you into my own interior monologue. I won’t ruin what we’ve worked for,” I promised her. And so I stayed awake and went to work. I made it just fine through the morning. I chose my own outfit—some fitted black slacks and a lavender silk blouse that Moira had pieced together before, but I hadn’t worn for a couple of months. Something that had inspired a co-worker to say, “You look nice today.” I don’t know, probably his AI prompted him. Still, it’s an outfit I trust. Most “choices” are a matter of habit, anyway. Routine. Moira had helped me form a healthy morning routine tailored to my metabolism, hormone levels, sleep patterns, life values, and five-year goals. There’s my two-mile run that follows the same bike path through my neighborhood every day, and my routine breakfast of hard-boiled egg with mashed avocado on whole-wheat toast, iced coffee with a dash of stevia, and an eight-ounce glass of water that my sink measures out. My shower is on its own timer so I can’t mess that up. Then feed the cat and out the door by 8:30. Getting dressed was really the most dangerous part of the morning routine without Moira—the most subjective. But I think I pulled that off. “You look nice today,” Andy Disung said as we walked into the office at the same time. He was the same person who commented last time. That’s when it got complicated. Without Moira to suggest an appropriate reply, I felt like I may as well not have been wearing anything at all. When in doubt, keep it simple, Moira would probably say, so I muttered a quick “Thanks,” while walking to my desk. “There’s something different about you…” Andy continued. His slow delivery and the hand he briefly rubbed through his dark brown curls gave me the feeling he was a little off-script himself. “Maintenance day,” I told him, without halting my steps. He chuckled. “Of course. I’ll just leave you alone.” He plopped down in his chair across the aisle from my desk and then, as if he’d changed his mind, stood up and raised the height of his desk. He looked over at me and smiled. “Better for the lymphs, I guess.” He paused only a beat before adding, “I’m surprised you’re here at all today.” I paused at my desk, wondering whether I should sit or stand. “Some things just can’t wait,” I said. “Like the Axonics proposal.” “Do you think you can do it?” I felt like Andy’s eyes were staring right into me. It was so rude, this inquisition, when he knew I was solo. I felt my muscles stiffen and decided to remain standing. “In my sleep,” I replied with a smile. “Good luck,” he said. “I’ll leave you to it.” It was not quite as easy as that. Without Moira I dithered over my word choices and sat down a while to try to remember the rules about semicolons. I lost track of time and hadn’t accomplished nearly enough by the time the co-workers around me began to stir for lunch. Cynthia and Erin paused by my desk on their way out. “Hey, Neoma, come with to the salad bar?” Erin asked, adjusting a large leather purse over her shoulder. “I shouldn’t,” I told them, and immediately wondered if they’d be offended at my declining. Would they stop at my desk the next day? “Maintenance day,” I quickly clarified with a shrug I hoped seemed friendly and casual. “Oh, got it,” Cynthia said, recognition registering as her brown eyes widened. “You’re so brave to be here. I would never!” “Say no more,” Erin said. “Next time, then.” I sighed in relief as the two women’s shoes clicked down the polished cement floor and I let my shoulders slump. I felt as winded as if I’d just completed my morning run. But I was confident I had handled the situation well. I imagined Moira’s reaction. Great! Eighty percent chance they’ll be back tomorrow. Ask them what they’re working on. Promoting friendly office culture is a productive step toward management. I was checking through my last page, ensuring no Oxford commas had slipped through my fingers against the company style manual and missing the red highlights Moira would usually send to my smart lens, when I felt a presence by my desk and looked up to find Andy again. “I know it’s risky,” he said, “but do you want to walk downtown with me for lunch?” I didn’t need Moira to tell me that my pulse was fast, or to remind me to take a deep breath before I answered. “Really? Today?” I tried to keep my tone even, but with a slightly accusing edge. I think it worked. There was his hand in his hair again. “Especially today,” he said. “If you’re going to live this day, you might as well really live it. You could order a cookie and your blood sugar would be back to normal by the time she came online again. She’d never know.” I didn’t mean to laugh. I guess it wasn’t a decision, really. Andy smiled. “So how about it? You’re not going to ruin your life in a day. And if you do, it’s your life, in the end.” This was the reason most people stay home on maintenance days. Some decisions matter more. Their effects ripple through life like a stone hitting the surface of a pond. I tried to replicate Moira’s quick analysis. If I went (did I want to go? I tuned in to my elevated vitals and admitted that I probably did), then I’d have a whole hour to fill with Andy, and no one to guide me through. I’d probably say something awkward five minutes in, or worse I’d be boring, fail to recall the interesting facts I’d picked up throughout the week, or freeze up entirely, and I didn’t know him well enough for companionable silences to feel comfortable. I would overcompensate and over-share. Chance of a successful lunch? I don’t know, two percent? Is that what Moira would say? Then rumors about my social ineptness would fly, I wouldn’t get lunch invitations, and I wouldn’t get promotions. And what if I declined? It wouldn’t be as tactful as with Cynthia and Erin. He knew this was my maintenance day. It was why he asked. Chances he’d ask again another day? Maybe forty percent? And is this a date? I wanted to ask Moira. Through my smart lens, she would observe his stance, leaning in to my desk slightly, and the tense smile frozen on his face. She would probably read his body temperature and heart rate and, though she couldn’t share the data with me, she’d turn it into an answer: It’s not advisable to date co-workers. “I could ruin your life, too,” I said quietly, keeping a pleasant smile on my face. He laughed—a nervous chuckle. “Your instincts can’t be that bad,” he said. “No, probably not,” I agreed. “Just boring. I’m afraid you’ll regret it five minutes in.” Yes, over-sharing. It was already a disaster. “Truman tells me the chances are only twenty-one percent. It’s worth the risk to find out.” I’m pretty sure I blushed. Moira would have had three to five witty suggestions for changing the subject. On my own, I said, “Truman? Is that his name?” Andy brought his hand to his head and said, “My AI. Yes.” “What did Truman tell you about asking me to lunch?” Maybe that question wasn’t a choice, either. I asked it without thinking. Andy laughed and shook his head. “Chances you’d go along were thirty-five percent. It was another risk I was willing to take.” “That sounds about right,” I said. “Truman is very honest.” “Yes,” Andy said. “It usually works for us. What about your...um…” he gestured vaguely around me. “Moira.” “Right. Is Moira honest?” It wasn’t a question I’d considered before. I might have called her incisive, motivating, accurate, responsible, ambitious. These were the life values she was programmed with. My solo brain scrambled to come up with an appropriate answer. Would an appropriate answer be the same as an honest one? “I don’t know,” I said slowly. The honest answer. “Listen, I think you and Truman are at an advantage, being a team today. And I’m sure Moira would like to join the party—” “Like is an interesting word choice. Assuming they can like anything,” Andy interrupted. I may have blushed again. “Right. I don’t think she would have had me say that. Anyway, could we do this another day?” I watched Andy’s shoulder shrug, and his cheeks deflate. “Sure,” he said, and I wondered if that was appropriate or honest. *** After my morning at work, a part of me wants to sink back into the comfort of habit. “Sandwiches or Thai?” I ask Moira out of habit, but another part of me is already thinking about the next step. Imaginary Moira tells me green curry, but when I pause, it doesn’t feel honest. I don’t feel excited about it. Without her pleasant voice in my ear, I walk under the sandwich shop’s blue awning and find an empty chair. The restaurant looks familiar, but somehow empty without Moira’s golden halo in my lens around the perfect chair. I wonder if the one I’ve chosen has the ideal sun exposure, the optimum sound isolation. But it’s empty. It will do. The server approaches my table with a warm smile. “Hi, Neoma. Would you like your usual?” The turkey pesto sandwich here contains the perfect balance of calories and nutrients for me. It’s what Moira would recommend, but if I listen to my own body, the pull in my collar bone tells me it’s not what I want right now. “Actually, can I see the menu?” I ask. This is why people go to sleep, the imaginary Moira says in my head. Ten choices come into my lens. Without Moira’s pleasant voice and golden halo, they all carry equal weight. The world feels so wide. And heavy. It makes my heart beat faster, like back in the office. I wonder if this feeling is the reason I stayed awake today, not the Axonics proposal. I have time—it isn’t due until Friday. But this rush is available once a year. Maybe, like Andy said, it’s worth the risk. Moira would tell me that the grilled cheese with tomato and micro greens on sprouted bread could make me sluggish in the afternoon and possibly lead to digestive disturbance, and the chocolate chip cookie would result in a crash around 4pm. Not optimal for productivity. I order them anyway, because Moira is on vacation and so, I decide, am I. *** Andy is at his desk when I return to the office after a slow walk back from uptown. He doesn’t look up when I sit down. “I had the cookie,” I say across the aisle. “It was amazing.” It feels less awkward. “And you’re still alive,” he notes with a smile that makes me think that maybe his “sure” really was honest. “Here I am,” I agree. “Though maybe not for long. I’m not at my peak today. I’m not even supposed to be here. I was thinking about skipping out and going to the beach.” “That cookie was the gateway to hell!” I laugh. Not a choice. “Maybe. Did Truman tell you to say that?” Andy nods. “Eighty-two percent chance of success.” “And what would Truman say if I asked you to come to the beach with me?” “He’s advising me very strongly against it.” Andy’s smile never wavers. “But I don’t always listen.”

short story Guest rooms were always hiding things. No one starts out wanting a guest room. It’s usually an office first, but then you got fired and can’t look at it anymore, so you throw a bed in it that you’ll never sleep in. Sometimes it’s a kid’s room, but they’ve moved out into a college dorm room. It used to be storage but then the divorce happened leaving it depressingly empty. A studio for recording music but the bass player was in a car accident, and the band broke up. Guest rooms are rarely ever intentional. It’s more of a ritual. Something society has deemed necessary. The presumption that someone wants to stay with you and your new husband. The poor friend grits their teeth trying to pretend they can’t hear you having sex, trying to make the stiff pillows into something they actually want to lay on, trying to breathe through the Yankee Candle Vanilla Wafer air freshener that’s plugged into the wall. The window sticks after an inch and they can’t get it up all the way. They unplug it after everyone is asleep, but the smell has been cloistered in the room for so long that it will never smell like anything else. They put the pillow on top of their face and try to sleep. I stood in the doorway to this guest room without entering it. Untouched rooms give you answers. They offer secrets. This one had last been occupied by a dead girl, lying face down in a pool of blood. * I found out about the case through the police. That never happened. We didn’t get along. “Yeah?” I barked into phone, a landline I had installed myself. Cell phones bothered me. “Is this Alma?” It was Detective Herbert Ross. He knew it was me. “What’d’ya want?” I said, trapping the phone between my ear and shoulder as I took a kettle of hot water off the stove and poured it in my favorite chipped mug with my favorite raspberry tea. If this was about the parking tickets I’d never paid, I still wasn’t going to pay them. If this was to call me in about the robbery I solved before them, I wasn’t going to tell them how I did it. “A girl’s dead.” I set the kettle down a little too hard. Hot water sloshed around inside. I stared at the swirling steam coming up from the cup. I wouldn’t be able to drink it now and I frowned. The cops never called for my help. I usually embarrassed them by figuring their cases out for them. As a PI, it was rare to get a call like this. “You need me?” “Yeah. Can you come?” I hesitated for only a moment. “Yeah. What’s the address?” “325 111th Ave, Blaine.” “I’ll be there in half an hour.” I hung up and reached for the tea, hoping I could snag one sip, burnt tongue be damned. The tea bag had broken. * Blaine was a little forgotten neighborhood thirty minutes from Minneapolis where I lived. The town used to be nice and neighborly where kids biked until dark and people shoveled driveways for the elderly. Now it was dirty. Every house had this gray dinginess to it, like everyone had collectively decided one year to stop taking care of things. Lawns were overgrown, cars were rusting away, big lilac bushes and weeping willows were being taken out or cut down. It was like an anti-Homeowners Association. Uglifying until everything was up to code. I showed up to the house where only one police car remained. There was yellow tape in front of the door. A crowd of people stood a few feet away, muttering. I looked the crowd over quickly, but no one stood out. I lifted the tape and went into the house. Herbert was standing right inside, apparently waiting for me. “Body has already been taken.” He grunted. “That’s fine.” I didn’t get much from dead bodies. I knew Herbert would tell me anything I needed to know because he had called me. Still, this was awkward. We both were uncomfortable, and it was obvious by how we refused to make eye contact, our hands shoved in our pockets. “Husband found her face-down in the guest room. Stabbed multiple times. Said the doors were all locked, no sign of forced entry.” “You ask the neighbors if anyone was skulking around?” Herbert nodded. “Nothing out of the ordinary. Seems like everyone keeps to themselves.” “What did she do?” “Who?” “The victim. What did she do for work?” “Oh. Her names Noelle Sharp.” “The writer?” I asked, bewildered. She was known for gritty romance novels-turned deadly. Not my thing, but I knew her name. “Yeah.” “I didn’t know she lived here.” He nodded again. “They moved here a few years ago.” “Jeez. Why?” Herbert shrugged. “Husband – names Magnus -- works for a painting company. She seems to make more dough.” “Where is he?” “Already down at the station. Guy’s pretty numb. Won’t say much.” “Yeah, well. His wife was murdered.” I wondered if Magnus had convinced Noelle to move here. If he had done that thing that men do when they feel like their wife – or any woman really – was doing better than them, so he tried to put her in a box, make her talents and abilities small and manageable. Easy to swallow. How many shouting matches had they been through before Noelle had conceded to move into this shitbox in the middle of shitsville. “Can I have a few minutes?” I asked. Herbert nodded. I surveyed the entrance area. Stairs right in front of us leading down into a dark, wet-smelling basement; a tiny hall leading into a kitchen. Living room to the left, dining room to the right. I gave the first floor a once over. Dirty dishes in the sink, magazines on the coffee table. The trash was empty. No bag. I went up the stairs and found the main bedroom, bathroom, and the guest room. In the middle of the guest room was a huge blood stain. It was flecked around the room, on the walls, on the bed. The stain was dark against the gray of the carpet. I surveyed the room. One bed, one desk with a small lamp and wooden chair, one plush armchair near the window, overhead light fixture/fan. There was a closet, and a nearly empty bookcase, short and pudgy – maybe something that one of them had been dragging around for years, couldn’t bear to get rid of. Some furniture held onto you. I walked in and thought about the room. The carpet was gray, the walls were white, but it was an off-white. It was like the white had been darkened by something. I sat down in the armchair and looked around, pretended I was staying there. I went over and turned the light on. The fan spun slowly above me. I sat back down in the armchair and looked some more. I realized; it had been blue. The walls had been blue, but they had been poorly painted over, once, in a hurry. I got up from the chair and went over to the closet. Inside there was a plastic bin full of wrapping paper. There was a broken vacuum, a box of empty bags to be used for gifts, and a stack of towels and blankets. For guests. I reached out and touched the unused things, linens that had never been unfolded. So, no guests. Or maybe guests slept on the couch and this room, like many guest rooms, was useless. I leant down at the carpet in the closet. I took a small pair of scissors I kept on me and cut off some of the carpet threads, slipping them in my pocket. I sat on the bed and it dipped, like it was trying to swallow me. The room smelt of dust and the duvet was covered in butterflies. I lay down and stared up at the ceiling. What was missing in this room? And then I bolted upright and stared at the blank walls and realized, there was less dust in a few places, sections where things had been removed. Pictures. There were no pictures. * Herbert was standing outside, trying to get the crowd to leave. I stormed out. “Are you sure this wasn’t a robbery?” I asked. Hebert looked over his shoulder, annoyance on his face at my outburst. It made the dispersing crowd turn, new interest compelling them to stay. “Nothing has been taken.” “How do you know?” I asked. “Husband confirmed.” “You don’t think – just maybe – he’s a little fragile at the moment?” Herbert shrugged. “I’ll have him do another walkthrough.” I told him I was going to need to come back to the house again. I needed to think. He told me to call him first before he did. We both knew I wouldn’t. * I looked up Noelle Sharp on the internet. I found relatives and close friends and I called and talked to them. Everyone had lovely things to say. I asked about her writing and her hobbies. When I brought up the husband, people also had nothing but good things to say. The mother was the only one who sputtered on and on about how that low life tricked my daughter into marrying him, worthless career, no family money, she could’ve married a Rockefeller. I didn’t tell her Rockefellers didn’t spend time in Minnesota. I found their bank information, social media accounts, insurance. He had taken her name. Previously had been Magnus Brown. He had a brother named Leonard. I called and talked to some more people and asked if they ever had parties. Who were the best friends? Who stayed in that guest room? No one had much to say. There had been a housewarming party but never another party after that. I called Leonard and asked him about Magnus and Noelle. Leonard was still shocked about Noelle’s murder, kept going on and on about how Magnus adored her. “Noelle was such a sweet girl. She was so kind to everyone, great cook. I never read her books, but I knew she was good. Magnus just loved her.” I told him to call me if he thought of anything else. I could see from their joint bank account that there was money trouble. There always was. I carefully read through credit card statements, but nothing interesting sprung out. Not even a transaction from a dirty website. I sat by the window in my apartment smoking until daylight. * I waited a few days before going back to the crime scene. I called Herbert on the way to the house and he told me basic things that I could’ve guessed. “Death due to blood loss, internal injuries, no fingerprints on the knife or around the house. Doors locked, nothing broken. Husband staying with a friend.” “Husband’s alibi checks out?” “Yeah, he was painting a town over, I have the address.” “I’ll take it.” I said. I could hear the frown over the phone. “I already cleared it with the homeowner.” “You called me.” I said with a shrug that I knew he could hear. He rattled off the address and I wrote it on a Walgreens receipt. * I stopped at a Home Depot and stood in front of the paint chip wall. I stared at the colors, the Veri Berri purple and Derbyshire green. I took out the carpet clippings and held them up over the grays. The carpet color was Rock Candy. * I was at a shabby, buttercup-yellow, run-down house that had not been painted in a long time. An old man in an old red sweater answered the door. He was hard of hearing and his eyes were swallowed up so far into his face that I figured he couldn’t see well either. I told who I was, Alma Savage, Private Investigator, and asked if he had made an appointment to have his house painted. He talked about how this nice fellow had painted his house, how they had drunk beer and talked about baseball. I was confused for only a moment before a young woman with a pixie face and curly hair interrupted us. “My father has Alzheimer’s.” She explained. “The house was painted a long time ago.” I asked her if either of them had talked to the police. She looked confused. The old man had been the one on the phone with Herbert. * I parked in front of the Sharp house and called people again and asked them to tell me things they remembered about Noelle and Magnus. Memories were precious and often wrong, but sometimes they were the only clues one had to go on. Cathy Green was Noelle’s best friend. She hadn’t been able to talk to me the first time I called. Now she was somber, and her voice wobbled, but she talked to me. “I had dinner with them every month. Magnus cooked the best meals.” “Magnus.” I repeated. “What about Noelle?” “Nope. Noelle didn’t like cooking. Whenever we were alone, we always ate out.” Cathy kept talking, clearly happy to have someone to talk to. “They wanted kids so bad, but Noelle had a miscarriage and they never tried again. Magnus couldn’t bear it. Had a vasectomy.” I asked her when this happened. She said four or five years ago. I hung up and went back into the house, walking into the guest room and staring at it, realizing it was perfect size for a nursery. The Schooner Blue walls that had been painted over with Acadia White. The missing pictures. Rock Candy carpet. * I lay on the couch in the living room and determined it was too uncomfortable for someone to sleep on overnight. No one stayed with the Sharps. I called Herbert, still lying on the lumpy couch. “I need you to check something for me.” “Alma?” “Yes. I need you to tell me if she was pregnant.” “Noelle?” “Yes.” “I’ll call you back.” * I went into the main bedroom and looked over the dresser, where receipts and change and dollar bills and earrings lay. I looked in their closet at all of Noelle’s comfortable writing clothes and Magnus’ paint-covered clothes. I found photo albums and thumbed through them. Nothing but happy smiles. I looked for medication in the bathroom – nothing. I dug into drawers and looked through cabinets. Finally, in the garage, I found boxes – unlabeled. I knew it was what I was looking for. I opened them. There were seven boxes, none matching, all different sizes. Each one had bright pink or bright blue toys, blankets, onesies, pacifiers. Each one contained a cross-stitched rectangle, homemade. Flora Sharp. Theodore Sharp. Maisey, Cooper, Rachel, Kevin. There were photos of the finished rooms. Walls different each time. Pinks named Azalea Flower, Teaberry; blues named Gentle Aquamarine and Breathtaking. I looked down at the boxes, at all the attempts. All the miscarriages. Cathy Green didn’t know about this. Her best friend status was weak, watered down because Noelle was too broken, or embarrassed, or just didn’t think it was anyone’s business. No one slept on the couch. No one slept in the guest room. I surveyed the rest of the garage, and saw some large framed photos shoved in the corner, behind a lawnmower that was covered with a tarp. I went over and pushed the lawnmower away. They were prints of Noelle’s book covers. The missing pictures. And there was a bloody thumbprint on the edge of one, her third book, Dangerous Illusion. My phone rang. I answered it, hands shaking. “Was she?” I asked, throat dry. “She was pregnant.” “Fuck.” I muttered. “What?” “Magnus had a vasectomy a few years ago.” “We’ll confirm that on our end.” “And if you do?” I asked. We both knew the answer. If he’d had the operation, it meant Noelle had cheated. It was motive. * I found Leonard’s apartment the next day. When he opened the door, he was in a wrinkled t-shirt and boxers. It was 3:30 in the afternoon. His eyes were red, and his hair was unkempt. I told him who I was, and he let me in. He gave me a beer. It was warm. I chugged half of it in one gulp. When I swallowed, I asked, “So how long were you sleeping with her?” Leonard pretended to look confused. I waited. Then, after four and half minutes of silence, he put his face in his hands and started crying. “I loved her. So much. Magnus was always complaining and I – she would come over and vent, and we’d drink, and – we never meant to – ” “Noelle was pregnant.” I told him. His teary eyes grew smaller, beadier. “Noelle had found out, that day.” I pushed on. “She left the pregnancy test in the trash and Magnus found it. You know he had a vasectomy – ” I didn’t wait for him to confirm. “ – Noelle was in the guest room, looking at the nursery she never got, hoping it would work this time. It could be you. And Magnus found her, killed her, and took down the photos of her books, couldn’t bear to see them, all her accomplishments. She had money, her name meant something, and now his own brother was fucking his wife.” “How did you know that…that we – ” “Magnus isn’t staying with you; he’s staying with a friend. He hates you.” “No.” He choked out, shaking his head like that would shake the words out. “She only cooked for you. When she came over here to vent and drink and fuck, she’d cook for you. She never did that with him.” “What do I do?” He asked, drowning in how much he hated himself. I looked around the drab apartment before turning my eyes back to him, shrugging. “Ever thought about painting the place?” *************************************** PEOPLE 'Too Hot To Handle' Star Carly Lawrence Talks Sex Behind-The-Scenes & 'Pooping On Camera' NarcityCanada

Short Story I wrap my fingers tightly around the clinging plastic of the trash bag, pull it open as wide as it’ll go, and watch him dump the remnants of our happiness into it. His large arms twist and flex unnecessarily as he shovels extra hors d'oeuvres and scraps of entree into the bag. His upper lip is a thin white line, stretched tight below frowning eyes. The faint and smoky gleam of the first stars illuminates our dining room. The windows are open to the still air, mingling the scent of grass and dew with the smell of recently extinguished candles. Near-empty glasses of wine sit with little pools of ruby liquid congealing at the bottom. I examine the imprints on the glasses, pink half-moons where lips lingered, small smudges from restless fingers. I clear the table and he rinses the plates, loading my great-grandmother’s delicate china into the dishwasher with a force that makes me cringe. I say nothing but plan to return later and wash it all by hand. Somewhere outside in the cool October air rings the plaintive, staccato song of an owl. Not long ago, I would have added my voice to the bird’s, smiling at the easy rhythm of the duet. But tonight, silence slices into the fading evening once more and I leave it to fester like an open wound. He leans backwards against the kitchen counter, glass of amber-colored whiskey in his calloused hand. I feel his eyes follow me around the room as I continue tidying up, returning the candles to their places, piling the used cloth napkins near the hall that leads to the laundry room. The starlight catches on the folds of my satin dress as I move. I haven’t worn a dress in ages. It feels foreign, out of place against my skin. “Some party,” he says. I nod, barely meeting his sharp grey eyes. “Surprised the Williamses came. I haven’t talked to George in ages.” I shrug. “I ran into Melanie at the store the other day and reminded her.” “Oh.” He runs his finger along the rim of his glass, staring at the chairs where George and Melanie sat only an hour earlier. “Did you see George at the store, too?” “No, just Mel,” I reply lightly. He stands, leaves the kitchen, and plops himself into an armchair in the living room, whiskey still attached to his hand like glue. I glance away, my gaze lingering on the neat bookshelves in the corner where George and I had chuckled over our mutual dislike of Great Expectations, reminiscing about wrinkly Dr. Barnum’s English Lit course. As we spoke, I realized George hadn’t changed much since college; his eyes still held that idealistic sparkle that made us instant friends. I, on the other hand, have faded. Dulled. George was too polite to say anything, but I know he noticed. “How long is your sister staying in town?” His voice is gravelly, starting to slur. “Just until tomorrow afternoon. We were thinking of getting coffee together before she leaves.” “You two didn’t talk much tonight,” he notes. “No,” I reply, wiping the table slowly. “She’s been a bit reserved since the divorce.” “That’s a shame. I liked Drew.” “I didn’t,” I say quickly, feeling my blood heat in my cheeks as I think of the man’s infidelity, of how broken Sarah was when she called and told me everything. “I never did.” He stills, musing and nursing the last of his whiskey. I watch the way it lingers on the fine line of his lips, which are pursed even more tightly together. “We can leave the rest for tomorrow,” he says, gesturing at the last of the mess. “Come sit with me.” I wipe down the last corner of the table, taking my time as I place the damp towel on the edge of the kitchen sink. I straighten the hem of my silvery dress, imagining for a moment that it is armor, cold and heavy and safe. When I approach, he pulls me onto his lap with one hand and rests his chin on my taut shoulder. His face is hot, burning against my skin. “Happy anniversary,” he whispers, wrapping his free arm a little too tightly around my waist. “Happy anniversary,” I reply. I watch the starlight glitter in the diamond on my finger, catch a glimpse of my dark eyes in the golden band. I try to remember when we first met, years ago, back before this sour taste hung in the air between us. All that comes to me is dim figures, specters and stains of who we used to be. Me, young and bright, full of the effortless weight of possibility. Him, tall and smiling, overflowing with confident infatuation. But I realize now that he’s always had a bitterness to him, hidden beneath a fine layer of cloying honey. And from the first time we kissed, we burned into one another like cheap vodka and called it love. He tilts his head, leaning into the curve of my neck. His soft waves of hair tickle my chin. “You’d never hurt me, would you?” he asks. It’s more of a statement than a question, firm with a small lilt of uncertainty in the final fatal syllable. I turn a little, forcing him to lift his head from my shoulder and meet my eyes. “Would you?” My voice is little more than a whisper. He is silent. Somewhere in that vast, unspoken space between us lies the answer to every question. I stand, watching his fingers cling for a moment to my hip before falling away, his hand wilting like a lily too long removed from the sun. The owl resumes its song and I cross the room to close the windows, shivering at the final gust of cold air. I see myself reflected in the glass, my face distorted by the angles of the windowpanes. His figure is little more than a streak of color in the reflection, distant and unremarkable. I glance over at what’s left: the garbage bag in the corner, crumbs on the table, empty wine bottles on the counter and the last bubbles of dish soap in the sink. “I’ll take the trash out in the morning,” I say, and head to bed without looking back.

Trigger warning: Talk of self-harm and suicide Have you ever had this feeling? Like you’re a helium balloon with your string cut. A rotting piece of wood adrift in the vast ocean. Does saying it like that make me sound too pretentious? Thinking I’m some kind of literary youth. Of course I’m not. I’m just sad. Sad people tend to be under the impression that they’ve been possessed by Li Bai and suddenly know the gruesome secrets of the universe through a few lines of poetry. Second year of university; my life is great. All the sad things from the past can be thrown to the back of the mind. So, my life isn’t sad. * I’m sitting in the library after hours because it’s raining outside and the librarian feels sorry for me. Lin Yu. My name. In Chinese, it’s written like 林雨. The first character is my surname – it means woods. The second character means rain. Don’t know whether my parents did this intentionally, but if you add three dots to the first character, make it 淋雨, and it means getting rained on. The pronunciation is the same. My brother’s name is Lin Qiu, written like 林秋 – the second character means autumn. Our names put together are autumn rain. Quite poetic, isn’t it? But it still makes me wonder why my parents couldn’t have just had one son named Lin Qiu Yu, rather than fracturing the name over two children. Because what happens when one is left without the other? Autumn rain paints an image of people walking with colourful umbrellas across a scenery of red, orange and yellow leaves. Rain on its own is only grey. * The library was my brother’s favourite place. The librarian also let him stay after hours. It was because she liked him in the way of a favoured son. Not because she pitied him. Well, maybe she did when she learned that he had to give up dancing to take care of our mum. Stage three ovarian cancer. Why didn’t our dad take care of her? Why didn’t I? Why him? Dad didn’t think that work was more important than mum – he wasn’t that kind of person. It was just that someone needed to be working for the money. I didn’t think that ballet was more important than mum – I’m not that kind of person. It was just that someone needed to be worthy of dreaming. My brother – Ge’ge as I called him, had gripped me by the shoulders in the hallway of the hospital. “Never give up on dancing, xiao’yu,” – it was a nickname; it meant little rain. “Please.” “You’ll start dancing again when Ma’ma gets better, won’t you?” I said. His face darkened, then he held my hand. “Come, it’s time to go home.” I understand now that he didn’t think mum was going to get better. That he could have started dancing again. That there were more roads to dancing than professional. But I pushed for that dream, our dream, until I lay each night with an aching body, but still dragged myself out of bed at four in the morning. Until the studio’s practice room became my almost-home, and the smell of sweat and huffs of exertion were perfume to my skin and music to my ears. * The rain beats louder on the glass. I look up at the highest shelf. I used to be able to put my leg up there. Bend my limbs in ways that would make you think they were made of rubber. Do you even have bones? People liked to ask me. If I do that now I might pull a muscle and not be able to walk for a week. My ballet teacher used to say: You don’t practise for a day and your body can feel it. You don’t practise for two days and you can feel it. You don’t practise for three days and everyone else can feel it. My three days have piled into months by now. * My brother was always gentle. I was always getting hurt. “It’s all right, just squeeze my hand. It’ll be over in a few seconds.” My eyes were already blurry with tears and my throat raw with swallowed screams. I could bear injuries. One time, I danced an entire concert with a fractured ankle. But for some reason, the moment my brother appeared before me, my cheeks gave way to rivers. The doctor snapped my knee back into place and I cried into my brother’s chest for fifteen minutes. “好了好了哭出来就好，回家哥哥给你做好吃的。” It’s okay, it’s good to cry it out, when we go home, Ge’ge will make you something delicious. * 我想哥哥做的糖醋排骨了。 I miss the sweet and sour ribs that Ge’ge made. I find that I’ve been thinking in Chinese more and more nowadays. Probably because I miss him. Miss how him and mum used to yammer at each other in Shanghainese. He spoke to me in Shanghainese on occasions. I understand it, but I never learned how to speak it. That’s not what I’m sad about. I pick up a book and try to read, but the lighting is too dim, and the words are just a blur of black. “Yu,” the librarian says. “The rain has stopped.” “Thanks,” I say, picking up my bag. Maybe she sees some tears in my eyes, or maybe I just look sad. “Are you okay?” she asks. I smile. “I’m good,” I reply. “Thanks for asking.” * The pavement has been washed clean. Are you okay? Can that question really change things? Is saving a life truly one question away? If so, I should have asked. Should not have assumed that my brother would be fine after mum was cancer-free. That under his long sleeves in summer there was smooth skin. That in his heart, there wasn’t an invisible darkness. Perhaps his name even foretold it. Add a heart, 心, xin, under the character for autumn, 秋, qiu, and it becomes 愁, chou – to worry. When worry builds up, the weight is crushing. Even when that worry isn’t needed anymore. All Ge’ge had done was worry. Worry about mum and her possible relapse. Worry about dad and the stress of his work. Worry about me. 哥哥最疼我了。 Ge’ge was the one who cared for me the most. 疼, teng, on its own means hurt, pain, but you add 我, wo – me, and it becomes to be looked after, cared for. 心疼, xin’teng. The first character is heart. The second character is hurt. It means to care about a person, feel that twinge in the heart when they are in pain. I care so much that my heart hurts for you. My heart hurts for him now, but he’s gone. I stopped dancing because the dream had shattered. It can’t be our dream anymore. Because he’s gone. Dead. Left the world, not with the comfort of being held, but with his final breath entrusted in a blade about to cause the most irreversible of damages. A cut can heal. A deeper cut can scar. But there is a point where deep becomes too deep. No amount of stitches and bandages can piece it back together. No amount of ‘are you okays’ and ‘I love yous’ can fix anything now. You are not alone. I am here for you. You are loved. More than you will ever know. 哥哥，就让我疼疼你吧。 Ge’ge, just let me care for you. It starts raining again, and I stand there. Being rained on. I close my eyes and listen to it. I think of autumn with its red, orange and yellow. My body moves with the rain as my music. My muscles are stiff, but my limbs remember the thirteen years of aches and sweat masked to move in a way that makes my body into art. My heart hurts. Because I hurt. And I dance. Because I love. Arms batting the rain. Reaching out for an umbrella, a warm body, someone to hold me in the rain. 你说你是哥哥我是弟，你要为我遮风挡住雨 You say you are the older brother and I am the younger brother, so you will block me from the wind, and shield me from the rain. 你说你是哥哥我是弟，我也为你遮风挡住雨 You say you are the older brother and I am the younger brother, so I too will block you from the wind, and shield you from the rain. Because when I dance, I don’t dance about autumn, I don’t dance about the rain. I dance about autumn rain. ********************************************** dog puppy tie job office pet animal canine friend playing playful funny nature outdoors agility bonding friendship videos

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Content warning: suicidal thoughts She waits with a watchful eye, staring at the pasta. It doesn’t boil. Pacing back and forth across the empty kitchen with the useless pots and pans still in the creaky cupboard, she adds another pinch of salt to the pasta. It still doesn’t boil. She thinks about putting on a bit of music while she waits, but the downstairs neighbors hate when she does that, and she can’t remember where she last left her headphones. They might be in her coat pocket or they might not, perhaps she left them on top of the back bed in the room with the leftover textbooks. Or maybe she didn’t, maybe she left them hanging off the tiny coat rack, right next to her keys. Wherever she left them it’s too much work to run and find them, especially when the pot might boil soon. As soon as it boils, she’ll put the pasta in. As soon as it boils. The tiny apartment is only temporary, and the only burner fizzles on her. She coaxes it, fights it, begs it to make a bigger flame but it does not, settling proudly for the dull little spark that it is. Blowing on a flame coaxes a campfire; she wonders if it’ll help the stove. Probably not. She watches the blue flame dance and stares right through it. Her phone lights up. She has a notification, another message she’s not going to read. Why bother, when she knows exactly what it will say? Still, she checks the name. She reads the first two letters and flips the phone over, wincing as it lands a bit too hard on the counter. Fortunately, it’s not cracked. Unfortunately, that part of the counter is still covered in uncleaned bacon grease from his disaster yesterday, and now her phone is too. The television buzzes a commercial from the living area, or whatever passes as such. She cranes her neck to check the ad, but it's not selling anything good, just some sort of medical plan for old people, the kind of thing she couldn't afford even if she chopped off both arms and sold them. When she left home, she swore up and down she wasn’t ever going to be the kind of person who left the TV on. She wasn’t going to eat in front of it, didn’t even need a good model really, just something to use to occasionally watch old cartoons and maybe a new show if he wanted to. Now, the TV is always on, always buzzing, always saying something, just a little too quiet to hear. The pot on the stove is still not boiling. She thinks she remembered to top the water off with cold water, but maybe she didn’t. She wonders if throwing in a tablespoon or two now will change anything. Probably not; her greasy phone buzzes again. She flips it over, checks the name, and turns it back down. He’s not going to write her. She knows that. Still, she checks, just in case. Banana bread would probably be a smart thing to make, if they are going to have the conversation they need to have. But banana bread has to bake for a minimum of forty five minutes, plus the time it takes for the oven to heat up, longer than it should with the awful rattling noise anytime she requests a temperature above 250 degrees, and there’s the cooling time to consider too. Pasta would do, pasta would work, if only the water would boil. If only. He’ll be home soon. Tiny bubbles begin to come up from the bottom of the pot, but not big enough, not hot enough. She waits, fidgeting with the coarse tips of her hair. When he comes home, she’s going to break their little routine and meet him in the living room. She’ll meet him in the living room and look into his eyes and wait for him to break first. He will. She'll make him. She glances halfheartedly at the little plant on the windowsill while she waits. One of them picked up the plant, where or when she doesn’t know, but one of them did and it’s always been there. It’s a tiny succulent with little round leaves, the kind that doesn’t need too much water, and is perfect for a household where two people forget basic things. Last week they forgot to buy toilet paper, and the group chat blew up with their friends lecturing them both on the ethics of self-care. If it was a college course, they would've failed it long ago. The tiny bubbles are a bit bigger now, and she adds a little dollop of olive oil to keep the pasta from sticking. It falls into the pot in one big drop, then separates as the bubbles break it, into one spot, then two, then four, then more. She watches the oil dance and fight itself, making clouds and sheep and spots, and wonders if she can get away with adding the pasta to the water early. Actually, she’s not sure if there’s any consequences in doing so. It’s pasta, she can’t possibly mess it up. If she does, she sure as heck doesn’t deserve to be amused by video clips of Hell’s Kitchen, which still pop up on her YouTube feed every now and again. She doesn’t add the pasta, not yet. There’s no rolling boil, and the phantom hands of someone bigger grip her impatient toddler ones. It’s not time yet, the phantom whispers, and she nods. She knows. Footsteps sound in the hallway, and she perks up, but she knows it’s not him, not yet. Those footsteps are too patterned, too heavy, too broken with intermittent pants. He walks like he plays basketball, dances his feet across the court, and even when he’s tired there’s still a light bounce to his step, as though he waits for a ball. The world won’t ever throw him a ball. Still, he bounces, and she waits in the kitchen for water to boil. The pullout couch in the living room is his, thrown in when they ended up in an apartment together, stuck somewhere with nowhere else to go. He had a couch and she had some money, and together they make do. The couch is lumpy and old, and only a single step up from the kind of couches people leave forlorn on the side of the road, but at least it's clean. She vacuumed it earlier, while she waited for him to come home. Usually they barter over who’s turn it is to do chores. Sometimes things make sense. He’s the better cook, she hates dealing in the kitchen. He would rather die than clean a toilet; as long as it’s decent enough she doesn’t think it’s so bad. It’s just a toilet, the porcelain bowel still relatively clean, and neither of them spend enough time in the apartment for it to be stained, for it to get dirty. She scrubs it like she scrubs everything else, fleetingly, jumping from one thing to the next, while she daydreams of being in a relationship, daydreams of owning a house. Scrubbing the toilet makes her nostalgic, and sometimes she wonders if the decisions that led her here were the right ones. The water finally comes to a boil that satisfies. She estimates with her fingers, then shakes the quarter box of leftover pasta into the pot. It’ll do, and if he’s still hungry there’s baby carrots in the mini fridge. Having a bigger fridge would be pointless. He only cooks once or twice a week, and the other days they thrive on lifting meals off of friends and fighting over which day serves which kind of takeout. The key sounds in the front door, and only years of practice stop her from startling. He pushes open the door soundlessly, and she wonders when he stopped tapping beats on the doorknob. “Are you cooking?” he asks, two backpacks balanced between his arms. “Oh just sit down.” He sits at the only table they own, under the other hanging plant that is definitely her fault. His fingers remain still, and he glances at the TV every now and then. She pulls out one of five mismatched forks and tests the pasta. Still not done. It’s too firm, too hard, and she has to chew the gritty piece between her teeth. She catches him looking at her, and shakes her head before he even opens his mouth. She is cooking tonight. He is sitting down and doing nothing except for talking. Finally, finally, the pasta finishes and four pieces come out clean and al dente. She dumps the whole pot into the strainer, and waits for the water to drain. It makes a horribly loud noise as it echoes down the sink pipes, and they both wince and imagine the face of their grumpy neighbor. She scoops it onto two plates and brings over the Parmesan cheese and some more olive oil, and dumps everything on the crooked table in front of him. “I could’ve made sauce.” “We don’t have any tomatoes, canned or otherwise, and you used the last of the pesto last week.” “Ah.” “Yeah.” She sits next to him and grabs her plate. He watches, slightly amused, as she dumps half of the container of cheese onto the noodles. It’s better with sauce, but alas. They sit for a moment in silence, except for the horrible buzz of the TV in the background, and she wonders when words got so hard to say. “So.” “So.” “I read the thing you told me to read.” “Yeah? What’d you think?” “It was pretty good. The one character sucked though.” She chewed her pasta thoughtfully. “Well he was going through a lot of stuff.” “Doesn’t give anyone an excuse to be an asshole.” “True. True.” The silence would be awkward if it weren't so well known. They sit and they eat and the television plays the same episodes, over and over and over. Then the pasta is gone, and she knows she has to ask. Still she hesitates over yet another thought. “I know a good therapist, if you wanna give that a shot.” He looks up abruptly and his eyebrows furrow all the way up in concern. “It’s not horribly expensive, and insurance would cover most of it.” She has his attention, that’s for sure. She has his attention, yet she can’t even look at his face. He continues to stare, and his left eye twitches at alarming speeds. “I’ve been going for about a year now. It’s not perfect, but it helps.” “What did you find?” he blurts out. “I’ve taken the liberty of booking you an appointment next week, on Wednesday after your last class. You’re going, even if I have to drag you.” “What. Did. You. Find?” Finally she dares to look at him. His hands clench around the table and under it, his knee bounces into the cheap crooked plastic. She draws in a breath. “Your note. Clearly you didn’t go through but, well, you still have it. I can’t imagine that’s a mistake.” He curses, once, twice, several more times, and brings his hands to wrap around his head and clench at his hair. On the stove, the pot of water cools down. She should put it in the dishwasher, before she forgets. “That was just one bad day,” he says, gritted teeth muting the protest. “I know what bad days are. It’s never just one.” “Why do I live with you? Remind me?” “You didn’t have anywhere else to go.” He waits. His hands clench a little less awfully, but they still linger in his hair as he stares at the table. “But we’re friends now, I think, whether you like it or not. Definitely not normal friends, but something along those lines. I’d hate to have to go roommate searching all over again.” He laughs, but it holds something strangled inside. “Oh heaven forbid you having to try to replace me.” She would chuckle, but she knows what he needs to hear. “Look at me.” He doesn’t comply. “Look at me.” He finally lifts his head, and she can see the way his eyes puff up and his nose twitches, once, twice. “As much as I joke about it, I do care about you. If you’ve got nothing else holding you back, let me do it.” He still doesn’t cry. She knows he won’t. He should, but he’s been told not to by the ghost of society, and so he doesn’t cry. She reaches forward, around the table, and almost hugs him. They sit in the kitchen for a while, sit in the almost hug, and watch the world outside the apartment get darker. The pot on the stove cools, and she forgets about it, pasta leaving her mind. A dog barks on the street, and something heavy sounding falls over in the upstairs neighbor’s apartment. The lights flutter and the world goes on. She goes upstairs later, to take a shower, and realizes he’s cleaned the toilet. ************************************ I Am Putting My Money Where My Mouth Is Dan Bongino Show Clips

short story He is like the jeweled light that dances on the sacred floors. I have tried to capture it before, the exact shade of his smile, the hue that sparkles in his laughter. I have tried to piece the glass together in a way that recreates the curl of his hair in the rain. The most glorious window in the world would not do him justice. But that does not stop me from trying. I form the feet of the crucifix first, always the feet, pinned to the deep brown shades of the beam, floating above my suggestion of Golgotha with a peculiar anguished grace. I form the feet first because that is where I imagine the color was the deepest, the shadow and the blood. He does not check on my progress often. I have made a name for myself amongst the stained-glass artists, to be sure, and I usually prefer to be left alone to my work. But the workshop has an empty heat to it without him there, which used to feel like home but now scorches me. I walk by the cathedral every day to watch as its pieces are maneuvered into place, to watch the vaults of his brilliance take shape. Each day, pale stones, carved and sanded by bloody hands, rise towards the heavens. The mechanics of it all astound me. He stands and monitors the dance of the beams, or he climbs the scaffold with a muscled ease. He laughs with the masons and the laborers, or he yells that a stone must be shifted before the whole delicate monument comes crashing down around them. I watch the empty places for the windows take shape, making note of the way they will catch the light. He deals in wood and stone, in structures that defy the earth and wind. I deal in color and sunbeams, in the scorch of the furnace that turns sand to glass. After I form the feet and the top of the hill, I piece together the sky. I am careful to follow the shapes I’ve traced, to mix the dyes into the glass with precision. This sky will be shades of violet and gold, interspersed with squares of deep, longing blue. Some days it feels as though the cathedral has always been, that its skeleton long predated the clumsy homes around it. He took it over when the first architect died of old age. The first architect was a withered man who thought in squares and triangles and uninspired towers. He thinks in arches, in the graceful shape of collarbones and the curvature of long necks bent into kisses. The day I finish the last of the sky, he comes in and tells me to stop. There is to be another war, he says, and there will not be enough laborers or lumber or stone. The cathedral must wait. We are both too old for war, with gray in our hair and lonely years tucked away in our hearts. We are old, but he is called upon to fight and I am left behind, my bad leg weighing heavily on my conscience, along with memories of the last war. He told me to stop, but while the world forgets to spin I work on the window and try not to think of his footprints on the bloodstained battlefield. After the sky is finished, I take a break from the crucifix and design the smaller windows. In one, I craft a dove with silvery feathers. In another, a vibrant tree. I set each image in the deep blue panes of my sorrow and imagine the end of the war. It is a strange thing to be alone in a time such as this. I sometimes wander down the village streets, avoiding the half-formed flesh of the cathedral. I limp past women and children, nod at the other infirm men who stayed behind. The world is dull, cast beneath a dark grey sky. We receive little news from the front. We hold our breath, or our families, or our bottles close. I do not pray. I see no merit in offering my half-cooled shards of hope to a distant Son. There is no god in war, and no glory. I return to the crucifix after nearly a year. I dye the glass for the broken body, mixing the shade into one that reminds me of him. The arms and legs fall into place quickly and I try not to think of the soldiers who will come home without them. The panes of glass I fix in place between thin bands of lead called cames. They hold the pieces together, bind each portion of the image as I go. I wish that I could bind the memory of him to myself, if only to cast a glimmer of brightness into this mere existence. As abruptly as it began, war is over. This is what the villagers say, a whisper passed from neighbor to neighbor under the shadow of the unfinished cathedral. There are new lines to trace on the maps of the world, lines that will surely change again before our lifetimes are done. No one will tempt fate by rejoicing. Not until the soldiers have come home. I finally bring myself to visit the cathedral. I begin sweeping leaves and dirt from the scaffolded corners, clearing the way for his return. It feels a meaningless task, but I breathe easier in the ceilingless walls of stone than I do in my workshop. The villagers take it as an act of worship. Some join me in clearing debris, others offer pious nods as they pass. Perhaps it is an act of worship, though my reverence is for someone else. In a slow trickle, the first of the soldiers return. He is not among them. Many of the villagers celebrate, others fold themselves into mourning like a tomb. I am patient and hold hope tightly, but each day I visit the cathedral the stones feel colder. A few of the laborers come by, skin and bones and colorless eyes, asking when the work will resume. I tell them I do not know. I save the face of the crucifix for last. I craft the crown of thorns, offset against a golden aureole and dark hair. The face is the hardest, and I realize as I set the eyes—honeyed brown ovals of the clearest glass I’ve ever made—that they look like his eyes. The crucifix is supposed to seem peaceful, serene in sacrifice. Mine weeps, tears of colorless glass and transparent sorrow. I see myself reflected in those tears, full of doubts. On a warm spring day, one month after the end of the war, he appears in the half-complete cathedral doorway. He is scarred and has forgotten what it is to laugh. But he is back, and my innermost heart sings. He throws himself into the work. The laborers left uninjured by the war join him, hiding from unseen wounds beneath a sheen of sweat and dust. The village begins to find its way into life again, after so long in the half-light. It takes months to repair the time-worn sections of stone and scaffold and begin new construction, but eventually the spires of the cathedral begin to rise. I finish the last windows, impossibly tall lancets, frame them in iron, and wait. We install the windows nearly a year later on a series of clouded days, the sound of distant thunder ringing in our ears. I watch helplessly as they maneuver my delicate glasswork, guiding each window into its place. The crucifix is the last to be installed, set in the largest south-facing window. When it is done and the sun returns, he and I enter the cathedral alone. The floors are unfinished, the sanctuary unfurnished, yet the space pulls the air from my lungs. Dazzling hues dance on the stone, illuminating the soaring vaults in ethereal shades. We pause before the crucifix, struck motionless by its glory in the early morning light. I am suddenly aware of his arm, hanging just inches from mine as we gaze at the most stunning window I have ever made. He is awash in violet and gold, dappled across his face like feathers. I have never seen anything so resplendent as the small smile of awe that pulls at the corner of his mouth. For a small, holy moment, he reaches out and we stand, hands clasped tightly together as the light stains its color onto our skin.

I am spinning slowly in my tank, suspended in doped-up air, buoyant, bobbing. Piano music (Beethoven?) plays softly in the background. My eyes are closed, but if I opened them, I would see only pale yellow light enclosing me in a warm glow. I like the piano music. It makes me feel calm. That, alongside the sedation. The Facility keeps mine light, because I prefer it that way, and because I am well-behaved. The Facility knows my ways, knows I don’t misbehave. I have been here for a long time now. It must be years, though there is no sense of time. No calendar, no clock. Only the pale light washing over me, keeping me warm. This morning, the Facility reminded me that my son will visit me today. He comes every week, at the same time. While the staff prepare me for his visit, they tell me he is good to me, compared to most of the others in here, at the Blessed Home facility, whose families have forgotten them. I nod and smile gently, murmuring the right response. They think my mind is feeble, like so many in here. I cannot see outside my tank, but the Facility can see inside, so I stay locked inside my mind. They cannot see inside my mind. In my mind, I am not suspended in a tank of gas and air. I go away, far from here. Where do I go? I go home, to my sprawling house in the countryside, with a red-tiled roof and ivy-covered archway, the mishmash of furniture and ornaments, collected over a lifetime, heavy with memories. For sixty years, my wife and I lived there, raised our child and grew old. We had a black cat with a white tummy called Cat Stevens. But then my wife died and my only son accused me of going senile. The bell that signals that my sedation has stopped chimes. Soon, they will come to collect me. I stop spinning as the air thins and I float to the bottom of the tank. I wait. A pop of glass opening, bright light seeps inside. A gentle hand the length of my body picks me up from under my arms and seats me in a dollhouse armchair. I watch as the giant girl in the Facility's uniform scrubs her hands in a sink as large as a swimming pool. She is a kind of nurse, I think. My wife was a nurse, though in our day, the Facility didn’t exist. I am handed a pair of sunglasses while my eyes adjust to the natural light. “How are you feeling today, Mr Donnelly?” her voice booms. I mumble something as she dresses me. When I first arrived, I was embarrassed by foreign hands touching my body, stripping me bare, clothing me in strange scratchy Facility clothes. But now, I am apathetic. Maybe it’s the drugs. When I am presentable, she brings me to the visiting area. I sit in an armchair, more comfortable than the last, watching vast visitors speak to their doll-sized relatives. I once heard a story about a family who brought home their shrunken grandma from the Facility, only to have her chewed up by her once beloved dog. My son comes into view, striding towards me with confident steps. I used to walk like that too, before I came to the Facility. He plants himself squarely in the visitor’s chair, launching into a nervous segment on his drive here, and the audacity of other drivers, and how isn’t it ridiculous that with all the technological advancements in the world, we still don’t have cars that drive the middle class from A to B? While he talks, I let my mind drift. I used to be angry at him for forcing me to come here. Of course, he needed consent, but the pressure, financial and emotional, forced my hand. He threw all kinds of arguments at me; overpopulation, nursing homes. I used to wonder if he wanted to punish me, if I was a bad father, if I shouted too much, if I pushed him too far, if he resented me. I don’t wonder anymore. I don’t do anything much. The end is coming soon; I can tell by the way my body submit to sedation. I asked them to lighten it, because I know I will sleep for a long time, soon. I want to comb over my memories of home, before I go on to whatever lies beyond. I wish I was going home. But I’ll never go home again. *** The thirty-minute drive to my father’s facility is the most inconvenient part of my week. I swear as I swerve around incompetent idiots, blaring the horn and flipping off scandalised old ladies who surely shouldn't have licenses anyway. It’s amazing with all the advancements in technology, I still have to drive myself to get where I need to go. I take my anger out on the road, so that by the time I get to Blessed Home, I am wrung dry of emotion. I first heard about it when my father was getting too senile to live at home, and we were looking at nursing homes for him. But the demand is competitive, the prices obscene, the facilities bad. I didn’t want him to be abused and neglected, and he flat out refused to go to a nursing home. Pulled the “what would your mother think?” line too. Someone told me about this facility. They had seen it on the dark web. I brought my father here for a consultation. They welcomed us warmly, offered us coffee, spewed us with medical jargon. We toured the premises as they explained the basics of the technology, how it was possible to reduce the size of a person using extreme heat pressure to the size of a ragdoll, while preserving their body and mind. They showed us to a vault, where little old people bobbing in silver containers lined the walls, sleeping. They described the benefits - fewer drugs needed, less food, less waste, easier to manage large numbers of people, easy storage. They were sedated the majority of the time, woken at various intervals to eat, to exercise, to excrete. He wasn’t convinced. But because the nursing home was a no-go, it was easier to convince him to try. That was all we needed. Left with no other option, he signed his life away. I promised to visit him every week. I have never broken that promise. The facility is spotlessly white. The receptionist flashes me an expensive smile. “Welcome to Blessed Home, Mr Donnelly. Go right ahead.” They always have him ready to see me as soon as I arrive. During his former life, he was a big man, looming, powerful. A blue-collar labourer who wanted a better life for his son. His presence, hell, his shadow, used to scare me. Now, as I walk towards him, he is miniscule, deflated. He looks tired. He always looks tired. I tell him about my week. He listens, or doesn’t. I can’t tell, because he nods and murmurs at the right times, but never asks me questions. I never ask him how he is doing. I know he does nothing. He goes back into the vat of drugged up air and bobs around for hours, days, left with nothing but his own fading memories and medicated slumber. Do I feel ashamed? I don’t dwell on it for long enough to feel anything but relief. I don’t have to sacrifice my life to look after him, or remortgage my house to fund his last years. I don’t feel guilty, because I’m not alone. Thousands of families send their elderly, dying relatives to these facilities, which have sprung up all over the country. It’s normalised now. So it must be OK. At the end of our hour together, I always turn away, so I won’t have to look at him being lifted like a baby back into the vault. I wonder if he ever misses his home, the old house with the rusty roof and overgrown garden, sold to pay the price to live in a tank. After drinking alone one evening, filled with morbid curiosity, I drove by. Bleary eyed, I noted a strange car in the driveway. The lawn was mowed, the roof replaced, the door painted a happy yellow. I wanted to stop and knock on the door. But I didn't. I looked away, eyes on the road, and kept driving. He must know that he will never see it again. He will die in this godforsaken place I put him in. The irony of naming this little piece of hell "Blessed Home" makes me shiver. I wonder if his mind is past the point of knowing, or if he knows more than he lets on. I could ruminate on whether I did the right thing, but what good would it do? The Blessed Home facility grows smaller as I drive away, and I forget, for another week at least.