A Journal of Literary Oddities
Philip Deal
When we’re done for good,
we leave behind an unopened box
of colored pencils, two brand new tubes
of cadmium red,
a set of new brushes
bought at full price,
a tube filled with
delicate silk paper, never tried.
This is not waste.
This is our final piece:
Optimism.
Gavin Bourke
Landed into the midst,
ensuing chaos.
Exaggerated connections,
heart-sink presence.
Cynicism and entitlement
Severed from the natural, human relationship.
Emotional shrapnel inside the urn,
carried by the pallbearer.
No longer to be ventriloquized,
alcohol seeping through the cracks
of the last few generations.
Induced Alzheimer’s in a mother,
cared for by her unmarried daughter.
He walked through the working life,
causing scars to bleed,
closer to savagery than those
in the vicinity.
A broken father stood in a doorway,
in the darkness, for over 20 years.
Carried the anger, through the social world,
harnessed by Valium’s touch,
carrying inherited darkness that
never was hers.
From father to son and so on,
throughout each new generation,
traits in common.
Knowingly and unknowingly bringing
the weight of unwarranted aggression
to bear on every situation.
Dysfunctional frameworks,
paradigms passed down from the rotting wood
of successive staircases.
Selfish emotional terrorism,
oft rewarded by the modern organization.
Emphasis on cute bureaucrat,
the enemy of statute.
The movement of the body and eyes,
mismatching language.
The departures of form from semantics
under well-dressed hides.
Privilege without responsibility.
Deeper into valleys of narcissism,
schisms of aggression, never contented,
mottled mind.
Couldn’t live with this anymore,
a father and blackening suns.
Barking in hallways,
through watering eyeballs,
with persistent rancor at everyone
and no one in particular.
Left blood on autumn leaves,
results of peculiar anger
and personalities disordered.
Ethanol breath,
condensation around brass pendulums.
Fell like the blackest slugs,
from stalactites to stalagmites
in darkened caves,
through the generations
on his father’s side.
In chain mail,
draining those in close proximity.
Killings with pens and phones and keystrokes,
the black filth of back-office politics.
Twisted in online abysses,
morbid self-interest, records amiss,
the stock in trade
of negative diatribes.
Philip Deal
Flat feet repaired by
pediatric shoes,
bowed legs straightened by
a heavy metal brace,
buck teeth reshaped by wire.
Where would I be without medicine? I ask my wife.
Single, she says.
One piece of broken heel, removed,
two fingers, snapped in games, surgically realigned.
A double hernia, held in place by gauze,
glasses for reading,
prescription cream to make my skin stop itching.
Six sets of stitches
in my head,
one daily pill for stomach acid,
another for a thyroid glitch
that runs in the family.
Four steroid injections
for joints that won’t unbend,
ibuprofen every time I decide to be a runner again.
Where would I be if I had been born 200 years ago?
Dead, my wife says.
I laugh, and throw out my back.
Jeffrey Hantover
Spectacle lynchings were preserved in photographs that were made into postcards sold openly in stores and city newspapers, sent through the mail, and presumably displayed in homes.
Bob,
Me on a postcard! Right there in front. Grinning like a cat with a bowl of cream. My new bowler hat and my red tie, though you can’t see the color. I’m not bragging, but I tie a good knot. My grandfather taught me. We sure were having a swell time. Show it to Connie—boy, will that give her a thrill. I didn’t have to ask Mr. Jameson for the day off. He closed the shop. Gosh, the whole town was there.
Your pal, Dexter
My dear Gertie,
We were packed tight as a barrel of salt fish. Shoulder to shoulder, you couldn’t move barely an inch. Just a sea of hats as far as the eye could see. Horace lifted up Constance on his shoulders so she could get a better view. I am somewhere in the back with the ladies in their bonnets. We didn’t want to get our going-to-church dresses crushed. I wore my Sunday best. Horace thought it bad taste not to. I got me a nice souvenir booklet with photos and postcards.
Fondly, Helen
Dear Sis,
Hope your lumbago has not been acting up. We’re all fine here. Get your magnifying glass out and look for your nephew Charlie there in the right-hand corner. He’s wearing his going-to-meeting hat—the one he keeps special for Easter services. He does love that straw hat. Kind of makes him look extra special handsome, don’t you think? Quite a crowd. Simon Lancaster, who runs the print shop on Elm, took the photo and printed these cards. Selling them for a quarter. Says he’s going to share the money with the Advent Methodist Ladies’ Auxiliary. I’m not holding my breath. That man squeezes his pennies till they holler. Running out of space. Hope you can read my tiny writing.
Love, Betty
Dear Aunt Ida,
I baked an apple pie before we headed into town for the excitement. It came out real good. Not as good as yours, but pretty good. I know, your secret is your secret. We did a double grace thanking God for his bountiful blessings and for our dear Ida for the best apple pie in all the world. We can’t wait to see you at Thanksgiving and sit around the table holding hands and bowing our hands in prayer for the blessings of our Creator.
Your niece, Beth
Lettie,
You can’t miss Glenda, right there in the front in the dress you bought her for her birthday. It is one of her favorites. She thinks herself quite the young lady at the ripe old age of eleven. Lou Smithers, our neighbor down the road, is standing right next to her in his straw boater—he is quite the looker. Twenty-five cents for one postcard seems like highway robbery, but it was a day worth remembering, and our Glenda smack-dap in the middle of it all.
Lizzie
Dear Lloyd,
“Service Above Self.”
Quite a crowd and a great many of us Rotarians turned out, didn’t we? Respectable men of good character have to stand up and be counted. Just a reminder that the next luncheon meeting of the Rotary Club will be held on Tuesday the 17th at 12:15 pm at the Sinclair Hotel. The featured speaker of the day will be Prof. Eugene Slater of Springfield College, who will speak on “The Promise of Eugenics and the Future of America.” Hope to see you there.
Your brother in service, R.J.
Dad,
I’m worn ragged, limp as an old dish rag, but business couldn’t be better. I’ve been in the studio ten days and nights. Gulping black coffee and eating slices of white bread slathered in butter. I’ve lost count of how many I’ve made. For sure, thousands. Twenty-five cents and folks can’t get enough of them. I hear they’re selling them all over the state. A friend in Terre Haute called to say they were in the windows of all the drugstores. Set up my tripod in a good place right smack in front of the tree. Give mom my love and tell her no more work in the garden till she feels better.
Love, Simon
Myrtle,
I tell you it was one special night. Hundreds of Kodaks clicking—you would have thought it was cicadas chirping on a summer evening in August. Owen Jr. hollered himself hoarse. But the wind was blowing the smoke everywhere. I had to wash my dress to get the smell of the smoke out. That’ll teach me. Next time I won’t wear a new dress. You and Dick come visit soon.
Love, Dot
P.S. Pardon if I brag, but Junior got first prize in the “I am an American” American Legion essay contest and won himself a $25 savings bond. One proud mother here.
Dear Margie,
Quite the crowd. They ran an extra train to handle us all. I packed ham-and-cheese sandwiches for Paul and the kids. Came back and we all fell straight to bed. A fellow had set up a printing press right there, and we got ourselves a bunch of cards before we left. Can you believe I’m going back to town tomorrow? It’s the annual Golden Rule Sale when all the downtown merchants reduce their prices. Hoping for some real bargains for the kids.
Love to all, Sis
Tom,
That’s what happens when they annoy our young girls.
Ben
Dr. Abraham Washington,
Stay in your place. We are watching you.
The Committee
James Reidel
The mild winter, the weak frosts, and an old, stale flu shot that still dispels the aches that flutter about my temples, the fits of it’s-nothing, my dizzy spells, and the like—they slackened the healthy fear of getting sick, that last fear on which today’s gods and empires would stand and fall. For the first time in years, there were no snow days nor any cancellations to heed any higher power than our own impulses. On the brown hillsides where the best sledding had always been in previous years, what good was that breakneck desire of the downhill run? When there was at last a dusting, every attempt suffered the halt of the exposed grass. What snow fell was barely worth the trouble of walking back to the top when it meant scooting like crabs all the way to the bottom again. And the tracks of our disappointment just scattered home, leaving trails of slush spots in the trampled turf. Sure, children still coughed and sneezed, but they did so into the crooks of bare arms instead of long sleeves. No one wears winter coats anymore—nor galoshes like they once did, with those black metal clasps found on no other footwear, which you had to press down with your thumb to stay put. Some of us, a dwindling few, an elephant’s memory really, will remember the pull-tabs, like hard light switches that bit the fingers, and the trouble they gave when you could just leave them all undone, with the black rubber uppers flapping as we ran to where we are now—to where there is no real effort to the season, no caveat, to where other things are taken seriously and no snow angel’s impression would like to stay.
Kaitlinn Estevez
Hold the V in forgive, find out how far its valley goes
Become a builder to carve it out, turn it over
make it the roof of our home
Bend my body to mold to its shape
making me easier to cradle
Remember, when hiding, its arrowhead
will jab me until I look
It’s only smooth when it hangs in my mouth
Sounding it out, hitting teeth then lip, hums
splitting syllables, the point to a needle that hems
I will hold it here, hidden in my cheek
for as long as you need
by Stephanie Mark
“How come my boss won’t make accommodations for me when I identify as an attack helicopter?”
I reconsider my policy of not putting a curse on men on the first date.
“He should really make accommodations for anyone whose comedy is stuck in the last decade,” I say.
He rolls his eyes. “I was just having a little fun. No need to get your panties in a twist.”
By the time the waitress brings us the bill, I’ve determined the closest vendor who’ll sell me the eye of newt I need to nauseate him for the next week. As his hand reaches for the black folder under the aureate light, I’d extend my card if he hadn’t been cruel, or if he hadn’t suggested a sushi restaurant any New Yorker should know is both overpriced and mediocre.
“Look,” he says, reviving the point, “I’m just saying, somebody wants to be called something else, I’ll go along with it. The same way I’m fine if girls want to kiss other girls. I just don’t want to see it, you know, considering they’re all purple-haired desk walruses with endless tattoos.”
“I don’t see how those appearances matter.”
“I don’t find them appealing.”
“But you’re coming to political conclusions based on whether you find something appealing.”
“All of us do shit because we want to be appealing. Would you have messaged me for a date if I didn’t have that picture of my abs?” He studies the runes tattooed on my arm, scoffing as if it were evidence supporting his theory. “And I suppose you wear all that makeup because you enjoy brushing it on, not because you’re ashamed of aspects of your face.”
“Perhaps I want to accentuate the aspects of my face that I like.”
He shakes his head like a teacher offered an outlandish excuse for unfinished homework.
“Keep telling yourself that.”
#
“He was an asshole,” says Vivien.
“Assholes can be right about things,” I say.
The snap of bramble beneath our feet punctuates the silence. Vivien left her car in the Hyatt lot at the edge of this sleepy Long Island park. Away from the trails, we cross into the dense woods, a radiant emerald beneath the full moon. Although the fetid stink of the overflowing lake wafts over the trees, the area is better than meeting in the last High Priestess’s expansive backyard in suburban Connecticut, the kind that was easy for snooping neighbors to access and record with their drones. Evidently our magic circle caused a meeting of the High Priestess’s HOA.
“If he’s an asshole,” says Vivien, “then he wants you to be pissed. Insulting someone’s appearance is the easiest way to do this. You aren’t deformed, hon. You’re a regular twenty-something woman trying to find a boyfriend.”
“I’d say my situation’s a little different than most twenty-something women.”
“All women have bad dates, Sophia.”
“That’s not what I meant.” I lack the time to explain, because we come to the circle formed where the ground becomes level and the grass abundant. The women sit comfortably, not on the twigs and moss and roots that I’ve just trampled.
The opening in the canopy allows the full moon to shine bright above us. Fortunately, nobody has suggested we perform this nude. The circle encloses a pit where a fire crackles, at this moment Prussian blue.
The High Priestess welcomes us as we show the runes on our body. The circle expands as we sit. After we position ourselves, the High Priestess rises, ambles around the gathering, and speaks.
“We women come beneath the moon, our symbol and our mother.” These words turn her pupils red.
“I know she’s a little old school,” whispers Vivien. “But she’s what you want.”
“The chaos that is magic, in contrast to man’s rational world,” the High Priestess continues, “is the sacred darkness that resides in the feminine, in every woman’s body.” She flicks her wrist to make the flame the same color as her own eyes. “Magic is done through sacrifice, through blood. Such is the blood of our flame or our own bodies, the cycles keeping pace with those of the moon.”
“Please tell me it isn’t all she talks about,” I say.
“It’s hokey,” Vivien says, “but I appreciate it too. Men shame us for our periods all the time.”
“That’s not my objection to it.”
The High Priestess snaps and twists her arms. Some of the girls raise theirs, shaping and shifting the flame, twisting it to the image they desire. Through the fire we see the insides of caverns, the bloom of flowers, the spread of arches. All of them excessively vaginal.
“There are men who tried to limit our feminine essences, our magic itself,” the High Priestess says. The flames shift into the images of various politicians who’ve enacted barbaric restrictions on reproductive rights. “And there we see our sisters fighting for all of us.” The flames shift again to show a series of women: bruised, bloodied, and bandaged from the skirmish that erupted between protesters and counter-protesters of the same bill. “Man’s medicine will be slow and costly to heal them. We must instead combine our powers to mend these wounds.”
I take hands with the girl beside me—a slight, mousy-haired creature with beady eyes and a button nose—and Vivien. We speak in tongues—French for the girl beside me, German for Vivien, Italian for me—as we work the magic. The runes of healing appear in the flame. I close my eyes and sway to the side. Alone, I struggle to heal more than a paper-cut. In a group, it feels like I might sew skin and connect bone. The heat and sounds vibrate around me. Healing magic is similar to eating weed gummies. It’s far better than, say, growth magic, which feels like being in a plane during takeoff.
When the magic is done, the High Priestess requests other healing from members of the coven. We remedy the bronchitis of one woman’s husband, the colic of another woman’s baby, and the leg muscles that a third woman has pulled while hiking. The High Priestess says her benedictions, breathes toward the fire, and recites a few lines in Latin. The flame turns amethyst, rose, and then dissipates like a fine mist.
Although Vivien and I approach the High Priestess as soon as everyone’s hands drop, a few women have already swarmed her. Vivien and I stand behind this throng, the last in line to address this woman of apparent wisdom, or at least power.
“It had a lot about feminine essences being tied to vaginas,” I tell Vivien.
“I told you she was old school,” Vivien says. “Going on about a woman’s body.”
“But the repetition makes the association absolute. When her magic is supposed to be for all women.”
The witch in front of us turns around. While she addresses me, Vivien peers over another shoulder to see what phantasmal animal the High Priestess is conjuring.
“I see,” says the witch. “So, you’d rather none of us cast wards and shields for those women who need to access abortion clinics? Or curse those doctors who refuse to perform operations their own oaths have obliged them to do?”
“Of course, we should,” I say. “The first spell I did was to protect my friend going to such a place.” Considering how the magic spectacle distracts Vivien, she does not turn around to bemoan men, specifically her ex-boyfriend David, who don’t know that condoms can expire. Because I can’t mention her as the friend, much less solicit her contribution, I must listen to this continued rant.
“Then you should understand. Men limit our rights because they fear a woman’s genitals. And so many of our sisters are swayed by years of this hatred, such that they cannot even appreciate their own body.”
I have no opportunity to answer her because the High Priestess calls her away.
Without anyone else primed to argue with me, I tell Vivien about the other men who I’ve messaged online until the women before us scatter. Vivien stands to the side as I approach the High Priestess.
At a distance, the High Priestess has maintained grandeur, mystique even. Now she appears more commonplace. Pale and plump, with an oval face and chestnut hair in a bob, she resembles a mom of high school children. She has runes on every stretch of visible flesh. These tattoos remind me of the aberrations on old photographs, a staining of the original minor enough for one to guess how it looked before.
I give her my name, my coven, and my praise. She accepts them all but admits she’s modest in power compared to the witches of the previous generation. She then asks the particulars of the complex magic I seek.
“I need to change something about my body,” I say. “I know such magic is complicated and risky. That’s why I’d only go to someone with your experience.”
“Well, you look like you’re in great shape, but I can definitely improve your mile time,” she begins. Her voice is husky and severe. “Strength, however, is a challenge for me to increase for women.”
“It’s about my appearance,” I say. “My face, specifically.”
“A woman’s face is her feminine soul laid bare,” she says. “To pervert that is to risk perverting the soul.”
“I’m willing to take that risk.” I don’t value metaphysics, anyway.
“It’s a shame. The damage women would do themselves in pursuit of beauty.”
“It’s not beauty,” I say. She crosses her arms. “I damage myself more if I don’t do this.”
Even Vivien, who has stood as if not listening, cranes her head forward. I hope for her intercession but receive her silence. As the High Priestess squints toward me, I feel less like a woman, and more like a fourth quarter proposal before a board of directions.
“A curious argument,” she says, “but one I don’t think I can accept.” Vivien nods faintly, unconsciously even, in assent.
With the faint glow swathing her hand, she reaches forward, drawing my face to her. She studies the contours, the edges, and the protrusions. Then she withdraws.
“You see?” I ask.
“I see that you’ve had a more difficult path than some. You have many traits you want to change or conceal. But this is no different from what any woman endures. I cannot work this spell. I cannot support this vanity.”
#
The light that shows my lack of mascara also slashes at my skin. My every flaw exposed, I run the wand against my lashes before I come again to loathe my other features. The same Italian heritage that’s given me witchcraft has also given me the perennial shadow of a moustache no matter how strongly I rip hair from root.
Returning to my table at the coffee shop, I extract my book on mystical women in the giudicati from my bag. The movement of my arm presents the ink on it to the man at the next table and he tilts his head toward me. His eyes scamper back to his phone when I glower at him.
I think nothing of the revealed tattoo as I continue to read. Most people think it’s a stock image, as basic and common as letters on the knuckles. A few think it’s an oblique Sailor Moon reference, which I don’t hate.
A new girl walking by, however, thinks it’s the mark of a coven.
I hear the rattle of her gaudy jewelry as she approaches. Her earth-toned flapping draperies, embroidered plainly, move even after she stops. Her makeup is confused: the bronzer for her contour falls over the attributes she ought to minimize; the clumping mascara and thick eyeliner make it seem like she has two pairs of false eyelashes.
“You practice?” she says, pointing a spidery finger from her knuckly, hairy, be-ringed paw. Her voice snaps at me, speaking about witchcraft more loudly than I think appropriate for the setting. Nonetheless, the man who stared at me has plugged his headphones into his phone.
“Yes,” I say.
She sits before I close my book. “You have a gorgeous face.”
Although I don’t see what that has to do with the practice of magic, I need this compliment enough that I don’t object to its relevance.
“Men don’t always think so.”
“It’s uncommon,” she says. “Striking. Not the traditional beauty myth that they enforce on us. They want women to look beautiful by looking the same, because that similarity strips us of our autonomy. It makes us an interchangeable object they can dispose of at random.”
While I don’t necessarily disagree, I didn’t want postmodern feminist theory to be the means to compliment my face. I say nothing.
“You know what’s going to happen with witches?” she says. “There’s going to be an infiltration.”
“By whom? Conservatives?”
“A far greater threat. It will be disguised men, foisting penises into women’s spaces, putting their masculine bodies among ours, destroying our inherent, female essences.”
I must scoff from how she clutches my hand. Her pewter rings dig into my flesh. “Be afraid,” she breathes hoarsely. “You need only look at all the offenses men committed against the Vestal Virgins, some of our most ancient sisters. The phallic essence has always wanted to penetrate the eternal feminine.”
“Wait,” I say. “Are you talking about phalluses or about men?”
She sighs. “There’s no reason for you to chide me about semantics because I didn’t say the word ‘male’ every time. Yes, I’m talking about phalluses. By definition, I’m talking about men.”
“By definition, you’re talking about phalluses. I don’t see how they impact the sacred feminine.”
She raises both hands and gasps. Her face scowls and her body contorts like a damp rag being twisted. I can count the bony ribs through the angle of her dress. “It’s infuriating that my fellow sisters could want patriarchal domination over something as feminine as magic.”
I think of Vivien’s brother, wheedling us as we stirred potions, asking if we could ensorcell the girl he wanted to date, until I cast a paling to protect us. “I don’t want that.”
“Evidently you do. You’re content with having men tear apart this sisterhood.”
“This sisterhood is the only one I have,” I say. “Piss off.”
#
I met my first witch by almost colliding with her. As I stomped across Willard Straight Hall, dodging all manner of Cornell students distracted by the ream of fliers and row of clubs beckoning to first years, spitting Italian curses—though not the literal kind—I didn’t hear her approach.
To prevent the collision, I recoiled, dropping all my books. She smiled as she helped me gather them. Her eyes didn’t linger on my facial defects. I knew that this woman, if I spent more than a few minutes with her, would become my friend.
“I’m sorry about what happened,” she said.
“You’d think a queer women’s club would be open to queer women.”
“Our coven is open. In case you’ve ever given witchcraft a try.”
She said this as if it were obvious that I had.
“I think witchcraft is very interesting,” I said. “The Apollonian and Dionysian, where the Dionysian is witchcraft, and other feminine elements. I read Caliban and the Witch. All interesting from a Marxist interpretation of–”
“You’re what we want.”
“I know there are neopagan movements that–”
She took my hand and closed her eyes. All the lights went out at once but returned before enough of the students shouted.
“You had it timed for someone else to turn them off.”
“Hey,” she said. “You can go back to your apartment and speculate about that by yourself. Or you can see how it happens with twenty other smart girls.”
That was more women in a space without men than any I’d visited. I thought of the room I’d just fled, in which two women lamented how the patriarchy tricked girls into wearing makeup while frowning at the smoky eye I’d practiced for two weeks to master.
“Sure,” I said. “If you’ll have me.”
“For the coven, we always need new girls. For me though, I’m curious about whatever book you mentioned. Marx and witchcraft: I haven’t heard that one. Grab coffee with me at Stella’s?”
I didn’t convince her regarding Federici’s argument about the witch-hunts as the accumulation of early capital, much less about dialectical materialism, but I did learn a lot about David, before his faulty usage of contraception. After an extensive discussion comprising drink refills and an invitation to the school’s rugby team—I refused—she turned to me before departing and said: “Should’ve mentioned this before, Sophia, but I love your eye makeup. Perfect for your face.”
#
The men sitting beside me are more inebriated and opinionated than I am; I can hear their entire conversation. The men on the left complain about the cocktails served in this hotel. The men on the right complain about women. The slurs begin: bitch, whore, cunt. The company at the Upper West Side bars I frequent are supposed to be trendy aesthetes and naïve sorority girls, not the ruddy middle-aged tourists that Midtown is supposed to imprison.
I try to finish my glass of wine quickly, without letting my mind dwell on their conversation. Of course, words like that are sudden and sharp: like the squeal of Styrofoam, they demand attention.
The next complaint about a “big dumb dyke,” causes me to tense. My body shivers, shrinks into itself. As his friends laugh about all the “unexpected queers,” he turns to me.
“I bet it’s no different for a nice girl like you,” he says. “Think you’re going out with a nice guy and he turns out to be some fruitcake soy boy.” The man is colossal; his friends are no different.
“I’m just trying to finish my salad.”
He either doesn’t hear this or doesn’t care.
“Sometimes it’s not a faggot, it’s some dumb tranny who wants you to treat him like a woman.” He notices me shudder at the slur. His face is accusatory as it studies me. His eyes survey everything. He’s drunk; I’ve done my makeup: I might escape. I reach for my bag, raise my hand to signal I want the check from the bartender, and gather my things.
As the bartender brings me the check, he turns on the television that rests above the counter.
The light streaks across my face. It strikes me, skewers me, reveals what the layers of makeup have not managed to hide. The man snarls as his eyes expand and his face reddens.
The fist pounds into my face. It’s not like burning, nor like a collision, but a sting, a pointed jab spread over the flesh.
“Please,” I wail. I struggle to think and move. Powerless, I can’t even speak the words of a spell.
A second agony blooms, scatters my senses. I crumple, curl into the fetal position. People yell, bodies move, feet tap. Another woman might pray for defenses. I have to fear reinforcements. They might’ve overheard what he said and find his reaction justified.
It’s only by twisting my fingers and the Italian language that I cast a meager spell to disrupt his balance, make him teeter from his chair and fall on the floor, that gives me enough time to escape.
#
I stagger past the few witches leaving the High Priestess. Vivien props up my bruised and bandaged figure as we wander beneath the trees.
“I’m sorry,” she says. Her words are apology rather than sympathy, about her will rather than the fates. “I didn’t think they’d be this bad.”
“I told you the things they said.”
“I figured they were all just rude or dumb, like David. I didn’t realize.”
Although the witches passing me can’t study the tableau of colors smeared over me, they notice the peaks and valleys, the swollen, bulging nose and shriveled eyes. They don’t gasp. They’re wise enough to understand and, as a result, regret. They lower their heads in solemnity.
But for the grace of the goddess went they.
“Some still won’t realize. Let’s hope it doesn’t include the women with the power to help me.”
The High Priestess attempts to address two other witches, but Vivien interrupts.
“Hey,” she shouts while snapping her fingers. “Yeah, you, bitch who didn’t help my friend.”
The High Priestess looks at me when she sees the vermillion stains over my eye, the maroon caldera sunken into my cheek.
“What tragedy has man’s world done to you, my sister?”
“Not the world,” I said, “but the men in it.”
“Such is the fate of all women.”
“I need you to heal me.”
“Of course, my sister.”
“And I need you to change my face. It’s for my own safety.”
She stares at the swelling where the fist struck the hardest.
Stephanie Mark’s writing has appeared in The Festival Review, Progenitor, and Hair Trigger 2.0, among other publications. A trans lesbian who grew up in a conservative and Catholic environment, she tends to write about the discrimination that queer women experience and that she knows personally. You can follow all her creative efforts at https://www.patreon.com/junesayers and https://twitter.com/JuneSayers1.
by Jason Wyvern
So I’m in the men’s toilets with my hands under the hand dryer. And for the record, I’ve been in the men’s toilets with my hands under the hand dryer for seventy-five seconds. My hands aren’t wet because I haven’t been to the toilet and I haven’t washed them, I just came in to warm them under the dryer. You see, I really like the feeling: warm, enveloping, safe. It’s motion-activated heaven. It’s the first draught of paradise. It’s Eden in waft form. It’s bloody ace.
As far as I’m aware, the longest amount of time anybody in the world has kept their hands under a hand dryer—one that is continuously blowing hot air—is six minutes. And that was me, a month ago. It was freezing outside and I got to work, chucked my stuff on a table in the canteen, and headed straight to the toilet to thaw my paws. I could have gone longer than six minutes, but I kept thinking about my unguarded rucksack in the canteen. Anybody could have messed with it. Taken out my packed lunch and played football with the oranges, or run around with a sandwich on their head. Or, and this is a speciality of the people I work with, filled my rucksack with screwed up paper or dirty spoons from the kitchen. Yeah, it happens.
Well, today I’m going to beat that six-minute record. I’m going annihilate it. But I’m going to do more than that: I’m going to smash ten minutes. I’m going to hit double digits. And my rucksack? Safe and sound in my locker, thank you very much.
It’s an Airforce hand dryer. Like the President’s plane, but without the One. I could get the exact same model, albeit second hand, off eBay for forty-five pounds. A new one would set me back three hundred and thirty-three pounds, or thereabouts. Then there’s the electricity needed to power it. Despite the boast on the casing about it being ‘low energy’, these bad boys suck up the juice. I know, because when I was a kid I had a fan heater in my bedroom, and I’d go to sleep with it whirring in my face. Wrrrrr! Until one night I lurched awake and my mom and dad were standing by the end of the bed, looking at me, looking at the fan, looking at me, and finally understanding why our electricity bills were so big. So it was sayonara fan, and nights with just my own hot breath under the covers to comfort me.
We crash into the fourth minute and I’m studying the Airforce again. It’s white, with a burnished chrome finish. It looks like a Stormtrooper’s helmet, as if somebody has decapitated a soldier of the Empire and nailed his (I’m saying his, but I’m sure there are lady Stormtroopers) head to the wall as a warning. Not that I could imagine the Rebels doing such a thing. A bit too certificate 18. A bit too Anti-Disney. Talking of Disney, wasn’t Walt’s head cryogenically frozen? For all I know it’s in a white burnished container much like the Airforce (but without the ability to dry damp hands).
What a sublime feeling this is! Like putting my hands back in the womb. Although now I come to think of it, that would be incredibly painful for my mom. Awkward too, for both of us. This insidious warmth, though. It’s alarmingly addictive. And you can only really do it at work. Stand in a public toilet with your hands under the dryer and you risk attacks from random loonies. ZOINK! Your trousers are whipped down. SCRACK! Your neck’s snapped. THWAP! Your head’s smashed into the hand dryer sending blood and tooth and tongue everywhere.
I’m not saying we don’t have random loonies at work—we do, at least seven—but they tend to stick to low-level cretinism, like stuffing paper or dirty spoons in unguarded rucksacks in the canteen.
Six minutes in and I’m looking at the Airforce casing again (well, it’s either that or a stainless steel mixer tap). It says World Dryer on the front. Imagine an actual World Dryer, hovering over the South Pole like a spaceship in a Roland Emmerich movie? Say goodbye, Antarctica, you’ve just been melted in a lovely balmy gust, causing floods and tsunamis and parts of Kent to drown. Or maybe not; it’s motion sensitive so unless the Earth has a couple of extendable tectonic hands to keep jogging the sensor, nothing’s coming out of that nozzle.
Old record, anyone? Six minutes: just been destroyed. Blown away like … well, a butterfly trying to fly under the Airforce. Which I hope never happens. The dryer would damage wings of said butterfly, and it would careen distressingly around the toilets before crash-landing into a sink or, worse, the urinal. Where it would die, with only stained deodorizer blocks for company. Nothing deserves that.
I try to keep my mind in the here and now, to stay focussed, but it’s wandering, thinking of bigger and better things. As much as I like this shiny white nubbin on the wall, your real hard-core dryer aficionado needs an adjustable nozzle. Yeah, you could dry your hands, or you could rotate that bad boy one hundred and eighty degrees and point it at your face. Now that, my friend, is cloud ten. Sure, I can always crouch and angle my face up at the underside of Airforce, but I’d lose something. Namely dignity, shortly followed by the feeling in my calves.
I’m making this sound like a breeze (ha ha! Hand dryer humour!), but there’s real skill involved in what I’m doing. For a start, there’s a lot of standing. This is my ninth minute on my feet. You heard correct: ninth minute. Knees. Thighs. Ankles. Back. Neck. They’re all tested in that time. They’re all asked tough questions.
Then I have to jink my hand every forty or so seconds, to make sure the hot air flow is continuous. You have to anticipate when Airforce is going to shut down and move your hand slightly to keep the blowing going, otherwise it shuts off and you’re just left holding your hands out like an overgrown Oliver impersonator. “Please, sir, can I have some more warm air?”
Then there’s your brain. How do you keep that occupied? How do you keep from…I won’t say losing your mind, let’s keep things in perspective. But you let your brain stray too far from the path and you’ve got a brain asking why exactly you’re standing in a toilet drying hands that were never wet. And nobody wants their own brain sassing them.
Oh, and let’s not get started on the health risks. Certain studies—I’m looking at you, University of Connecticut—tested thirty-six public bathrooms and found that hot air blowers were literally blowing shit around. Little faecal spores were gusting back and forth, making the air around them a whirling, swirling Petri dish of pathogens, spores and other words you used to hear on 24. But I’m willing to risk my health, mental and physical, to break this record. Speaking of which…
I’ve just gone over ten minutes. I’ve just gone over ten mother-fudging minutes! I’ve just done something that some people—cynics, naysayers, anti-dreamers—thought would never be done in their life time. I’ve Roger Bannistered. I’ve Babe Ruthed. I’ve Neil Armstronged. I could leave now, walk out that toilet door with my head held high, but why not carry on? Why not ride this wave to the end? Plus, the longer I’m in here the less time I’m working. Have I mentioned how mind-numbingly tedious my job is?
I’m warming (ha ha! More crazy hand dryer humour!) to the idea of thirteen minutes. It’s got a nice feel. That’s about how long it takes to run 5000 metres—and I like to think a lot of five thousand metre runners would really admire what I’m doing here. Mo Farah. Salvatore Antibo. Zola Budd. They’d all want to shake my very warm hand.
As the seconds tick by I try to work out how many circuits of the toilet it would take to travel 5000 metres. A lot, but it’d be nice having Mo Farah in here to talk to. We could support each other in our respective challenges, and also discuss Mo’s love of Quorn.
I’ve been lucky, nobody’s been in. Just low-level grunts, minimum wage monkeys who can’t do anything but look at me funny, furious that my rucksack’s in my locker, safe from their stuffing hands. But that just changed. It’s the twelfth minute of this world record attempt and a manager has entered the arena.
He’s clocked me, standing by the dryer, then gone to do his business. Not that I want to think about it, but I need that business to last at least sixty seconds if I want to crack thirteen minutes and set a record that I can carve in the rock-face of time.
A toilet flushes. Already! What is he, The Flash? A tap starts running on the other side of the partition. I can’t move, yet. A quick look at my watch: thirty more seconds. Thirty more seconds? It suddenly seems an eternity. The tap still runs as the manager sluices squirty soap juice off his hands. Ten seconds, and a rival hand dryer starts up. Shit, shit and more flying microscopic shit! I’ve got to move or else answer some really awkward questions about why I’m standing drying two hands that are clearly already dry.
Five Seconds. Four. Three. Two. One… Gotcha!
I swagger out of the toilets. I wonder if people can tell what I’ve done. Surely they can see I’m walking taller? That I have the bearing of a champion? The gait of a winner? And when I get home today I’ll know I’ve achieved something. Something tangible, something epic. Then I’ll pop a bit of moisturiser on my hands. They seem very dry.
Jason Wyvern currently lives in Shropshire. Since graduating with a degree in Government from Essex University, he has worked in a wide variety of jobs, including eBay seller, mail opener, call centre operative, and security guard. His work has appeared on the BBC, at the Manchester 24:7 Theatre Festival, and on the back lawn of a National Trust property. Most recently his stories have been featured in Ruminate, Ripples in Space, and The Martian Chronicle.
by Daniel Deisinger
“It’s standard going until we get to The Balcony. We’ll be able to watch…It’s where people would normally watch the sun rise. What it is now, I’m not so sure.”
#
Despite their heavy coats, thick boots, and clumsy gloves, the wind screamed out of the purple-tinted darkness and sliced them to the bone.
They pointed their headlamps at their feet. Each step, each placement of a climbing pole careful and deliberate, stabbing the ends into ancient ice and rock. Kiara led, retracing steps she had made a half-dozen times, though never under such conditions. Suraya followed her, laboring in the extreme altitude. Luke came next, and Brett brought up the end. Every few minutes he would turn and send his headlamp’s cone of light back down the mountain.
On Kiara’s previous climbs, the rising sun had thrown glorious pastels into the sky. The stars had faded against the power of the new day. Their going had gotten easier as the sun rose.
This time the sun never appeared. Dead stars can’t die. Past their headlamps, dark purple limned the edge of the mountain, and they stumbled over hidden rocks.
Hours later they reached The Balcony, and just like every other climber, they stopped to rest at the rock shelf. The other three huddled together against the wind, gasping at oxygen, but Kiara stood. She should have been staring straight into the glorious, bright sun.
Her toes peeked over the edge. Purple swirls and eddies splashed, far below, radiating up at them.
“This is where my husband proposed to me,” Kiara said, back to the other three. She kept her eyes on the rising purple tide. “It was the first time we climbed Everest. We came back on our honeymoon. We’d climb it four more times.”
Her hands hung at her sides like weights. Her eyelids dragged shut. In the unnatural dark she could have drifted to sleep and never awoken, content to let the universe unravel around her.
A glove touched hers. Brett led her away from the edge of The Balcony. “We’ve all lost something,” he said as he pulled her to the other two. “I’m sorry about your husband, Kiara.”
His headlamp bobbed, illuminating blinding white snow and sharp rocks. “I lost my wife. We’ve all lost someone. But we’re going to see them again. Once we get up there.” He pointed toward Everest’s invisible summit. “Now I don’t know about you three, but I’m ready to go.” He turned away. “I want to see my wife again.”
“We can see Antonio again,” Suraya said. “I wish we could have buried him.” She gazed down the mountain. “But he was right. His body became less than atoms long before we reached the summit.”
Luke reached over and squeezed her hand. She smiled at him under her oxygen mask and goggles. “You’ll be able to meet my parents,” she said. “I bet you’d like them. My dad’s brilliant.”
“And you can meet all my brothers,” Luke said.
“And my husband,” Kiara said.
Brett took a few steps up. “But not until we get to the top.”
Luke stood. “To the top then.”
They gathered themselves up. Suraya stared down the rocky slope, and her eyebrows came together. She lifted her goggles off, peering beyond her cone of light, as the wind dug frozen fingers into her eyes. The darkness rippled, like a huge black cape.
She turned to Luke. “Go!” She shouted. He strapped the oxygen mask over his face and grabbed her hand, dragging her up the slope.
Deep snow sucked at their legs. They slammed their poles into the ground. Oxygen hissed down their throats and sweat froze on their skin. Kiara pushed ahead, and Brett grabbed Suraya’s arm. She bent and focused on one foot after the other.
Luke looked over his shoulder. Amid the useless purple light, the Impostor’s face–a blurry dot, miles behind–scarred his vision.
He surged ahead and motioned for Suraya to speed up. She and Brett clawed forward, dislodging stones and ice. Kiara waited close to the first step.
#
“After that is the three steps. Rock walls. We’ll be able to get up them easily, thanks to ladders, climbing ropes, and natural stone stairs. Then we hit the South Summit.”
#
Their headlamps revealed a chunky, rocky wall, tainted in purple. Numerous ropes and ladders rattled in the wind; Kiara grabbed one of the ropes and pulled herself up, using the uneven rock as footholds. She reached a small resting section and pointed out the path for the other three.
Brett reached the wall first, but allowed Suraya to pass him. Her body trembled as if crumbling, but the young woman seized the rope and began to ascend, jamming the toes of her cumbersome boots into small crevices. Kiara grabbed her hand, pulling her up as Luke started to climb.
Brett cast his light behind them, waiting for the Impostor to appear out of the darkness, marching forward as it ignored the wind, altitude, and temperature. The rope smacked against the rock, a signal from Luke. Brett started up.
Kiara crawled over the edge, then reached down for Suraya. Another steep slope waited for the young woman, and her stomach turned to liquid. Luke reached the edge a minute later, and he rested on his hands and knees, chest heaving. Kiara pulled Brett up, and urged them forward.
Every swing of her pick chopped through deep snow. The other three traced the path, legs sore and raw.
They kept glancing back, and held their breath every time.
Kiara sped up. The other cones bobbed behind her.
They caught up when she reached the second step. Their headlamps illuminated a portion of the wall, and a metal ladder. Luke went first. His headlamp glinted off the ladder, and the light rose by half feet until it disappeared. A moment later it shined down at them from the top.
Suraya’s rapid breaths sucked down stale oxygen. One of the lamps fell over her, and Brett waved her forward, holding out his hand.
For a moment, her shadow became an immense cape of darkness. Down the mountain the encroaching purple gleamed. As the sea rose, the rock and snow they had just traversed unraveled into more nothing to fill the sea.
The last mountain floated down a river of drowned stars. It lacked lighthouse or captain, and soon it too would sink underneath.
Suraya’s boots slid over rock and ice. She grabbed the ladder and found it secured to the mountain. Her hands squeezed around each rung and each foot stomped down. Her headlight bobbed, shining up at nothing. Sweat crept down her neck.
Luke helped her at the top. Brett went up next, and then Kiara. As the others peered down at her, her cone stopped and turned.
A gap expanded in the rising purple, fluttering like a huge, never-ending flag. Brett rattled the ladder. Kiara didn’t turn away; the gap in the sea grew.
Footsteps crunched in the snow behind her.
Suraya took the mask from her face. Wind scoured her lips and cheeks and swarmed up her nose. “Kiara!” She placed it back and drew in a breath. She tore it off again. “Kiara!”
The universe spun. Stars spiraled around Suraya’s vision, and she reached for them. A pair of hands on her shoulders kept her steady as she shut her eyes and pressed the mask back, breathing until the stars disappeared again.
A few moments later Kiara appeared. Brett hauled her up, and she pointed the way toward the last step.
Brett stood next to the top of the ladder as the other three moved on. It rattled in the wind.
Maybe it didn’t need the ladder–perhaps the Impostor would just rear over him, fathomless cloak turning it into a black-static apex atop a flowing, empty pyramid. Like the first time it appeared before him, Brett stumbled and turned away.
He chased the others. Kiara pushed to the front through the snow toward the third step, and Brett focused on her. His lamp illuminated Luke’s feet, whose lamp in turn illuminated Suraya’s. Suraya kept hers pointed toward Kiara.
When they reached the third wall, their headlamps revealed a smaller obstacle than the first two steps. Kiara grabbed the attached climbing ropes, and Suraya followed. As Brett climbed last, the light shining down at him shifted, pointing behind him.
He leapt up, clinging to the wall and the ropes. He wedged his hands and feet into holds, straining, and when he got close the other three grabbed his coat and pulled. They didn’t speak or rest. The south summit, a small peak they had to pass to reach the top, came into view a few minutes later.
Kiara drove her pole through ice and snow, again moving beyond the other headlamps.
Suraya pushed her way forward. The space between each breath hurt her chest.
Luke, behind her, willed her faster.
Brett trailed them. He tried not to look back.
Kiara halted at the South Summit. She checked the oxygen left in her tank, as she had every other time she’d reached the South Summit, but it didn’t matter. Her heart pounded when the dome of rock came into view–they didn’t have too much left.
She panted until the others joined her. They found her resting, and gained a bit of energy.
#
“The cornice traverse. One step to the left and it’s an eight-thousand foot drop. One step to the right and it’s ten. After that we get to the Hillary step, a twelve meter rock wall. It’s worse than the first three.”
#
They stood on the knife edge of the mountain. A step in either direction fell off the mountain’s thin, sharp spine into advancing oblivion.
“Make sure to know exactly where you’re stepping,” Kiara said. “I know we all want to run, but it’s too dangerous. We have plenty of time.”
“I’m not so sure,” Brett said, pointing. The purple tide shimmered, closer than before–it spread beyond the edge of sight, and curled around no horizon. A whimper came from Suraya’s mask.
“Don’t panic,” Kiara said. “It can’t catch us if we keep moving.”
“It can’t,” Brett said.
Kiara’s heart beat in her throat as she led the way up the cornice traverse, chopping deep snow out of the way. She cursed the wind, checking on the other three every minute. Luke and Brett matched her, but Suraya lagged behind. The young woman kept glancing over her shoulder instead of watching her feet, and Kiara waited for a muffled scream to pierce the frozen air.
During Kiara’s first time to the summit, the height and driving wind had swelled her fear and almost forced her to retreat, yet the unadventurous young woman behind Brett didn’t stop. Kiara pushed a pile of snow and it tumbled down the mountain, melting to nothing.
They neared the Hillary step. Kiara took careful paces until the wall of rock appeared. Again her finger traced a path, indicating the numerous fixed ropes, rattling in the orphan wind, and pointed at Brett.
He edged past her and attached a carabiner to one of the climbing ropes, and dug his feet and hands into holds in the rock. Kiara and Luke huddled close as he climbed beyond their headlamps and Suraya’s ate into the darkness behind them.
And soon Suraya remained. Three lamps pointed down almost forty feet above her, and she looked back, finding dirty snow and cracked rock instead of a creature come to take her. The Hillary step blocked the wind. Her headlamp provided the only light besides an omnipresent purple tint. Sound, sight, and the feeling in her fingers slipped away, into the encroaching purple sea.
She stood motionless. A thin slice of ground shined white. Both sides fell away, and purple light glittered off the ice.
Someone approached. She backed up, pressing herself against the rock. She shut her eyes, and her stomach turned at the memory of the face and what hid inside the cloak. The rocks bit cold teeth into her back. It will stand before her, reach for her, and pull her into its cloak, and she will become less than atoms, like everything else.
Would it be so bad?
“Suraya!”
Three lights illuminated her. It had been Luke’s voice. He had held her, comforted her. She had tended his wounds. He had pulled her. She had pushed him.
She slipped a carabiner over the climbing line, and grabbed hold of the sharp rocks. Each inch pushed the air from her lungs. Her hand slipped halfway.
She landed on a small outcropping. Her chest heaved, her arms fell dead at her sides, and the oxygen spitting into her mouth deafened her. She closed her eyes–purple bloomed under her eyelids.
A hand grabbed her arm and she shocked awake. Kiara’s eyes burned in Suraya’s headlamp. “Up,” the older woman said, and Suraya shook her head.
“Tired. Can’t breathe.”
“I didn’t ask.” Kiara pulled. “I said up.” Suraya didn’t move, clinging to the climbing rope. “Are you going to fail Antonio? He brought us all the way to the base of this mountain. He told us to outlive the universe. Don’t you want to see him again?”
“I can’t do it,” Suraya said, gasping for every word. “Altitude sickness. …Barely see.”
“You don’t need to see,” Kiara said. “If you think I’m just going to leave you here, then you deserve a slap across the face. Maybe that’ll get the blood flowing to your brain.” She pointed her headlamp down the slope. “Look.”
The purple sea climbed closer. Violet waves crashed against each other. It swallowed matter, light, and darkness as it rose, mutating it all into void.
“You want that to catch you?” Kiara asked. “And let down all the people who helped us get here? Do you really want to make us see your face among the black static? No.” She shook Suraya. “Climb.”
Suraya nodded, forcing breath in and out. Kiara aligned her. Small handholds hid from her light. The ropes trembled. Hands pulled her over the lip, and Luke’s warm arms circled her.
They sat for a moment and made sure they all still existed.
#
“After that, it’s an open and exposed climb to the summit.
“We go as soon as we’re ready. As long as we’re rested, there’s nothing stopping us. Don’t conserve your energy. There’s no reason to leave anything for the climb back down. Like Antonio said, all we have to do is get to the center.”
#
Large, loose rocks and tangled climbing ropes bounced in the wind. “We’re almost there. There aren’t any more obstacles. We just climb. We’ve been doing it for days. We’re almost there.” Kiara grunted, stepping over a boulder. “Almost there.”
“Kiara….”
She expected four standing there instead of three. Brett, Luke, and Suraya pointed up.
Purple tinted the black far over their heads. A smooth surface, like the inside of a bubble, curled around them in every direction.
Kiara’s heart stopped. Her headlamp lit her feet. She’d worn her boots up and down the world’s mountains. She’d stood in this spot before.
She started climbing. “Ladies and gentlemen,” she said over her shoulder, “to the top of the universe.” After a dead moment, movement began behind her. Boots struck rock.
Later they called her name again. Luke pointed the way they had come, rigid in the wind. The purple sea had risen over the Hillary step, gnawing at the mountain; murky purple filled the air. She nodded, and resumed climbing, pushing rocks aside. The rocks thinned out, giving way to sheets of snow. The mountain’s knife edge narrowed, and the group’s movement slowed again.
The bubble of reality shrank, and angry waves tossed above them, like the surface of the sea below. Kiara tossed her head and charged forward. The large rock signaling the final rise to the summit came into view.
The other three found her triumphant, one leg propped on the rock, pointing the way to freedom, and they gained speed.
They reached the top of the universe a few minutes later. Their headlamps revealed a tightening purple void in every direction. A figure blocked them.
Its endless cloak merged into the sea around them. Within the folds black trees rose among red sky, trunks disappearing into space. Red leaves fluttered down from infinity, fading to nothing. White silhouettes, walking in a slow, dreamy parade, passed through it all, failing to disturb the sparse, crimson underbrush. They passed through each other, ignored each other; when they passed from view another always took its place, for all purposes identical–the same, without change, equal among the afterlife of universes.
The vision collapsed as the figure shut its cloak. Kiara and the others still stood atop Everest, mere feet below the summit.
It didn’t shake in the wind, and its black-static face outshone every other light in the universe. The bubble had shrunk farther while they stood entranced. Purple fists swung at their feet.
“Get out,” Kiara said, forcing each word, “of our way.”
They stared at the ground. The wind sliced across them. “You aren’t going to stop us. You can’t stop us!” Kiara said. “It doesn’t matter what you say! It doesn’t matter who you show us!”
“Look, then, Kiara Kasun,” her husband’s voice said. She squeezed her eyes shut as tears burned behind them.
“Luke, what are you waiting for?” Luke’s oldest brother said.
“Just get over here,” his youngest brother said. “You’re so close.” Luke pressed a hand over his eyes.
“Darling,” Brett’s wife said. “I am a queen here. I have power. If I speak, others listen. Join me. Rule with me.”
“Erika would never say such a thing,” Brett said, but his mind screamed to look.
“Suraya. Please.” Antonio’s voice struck her, and Suraya pressed her face against Luke. “I once said your name means star. There are no stars here. Be my star. Please.” She shook in Luke’s arms. Antonio had squeezed her hand as he died, gasping at thin air. “It’s not so bad, this place. There is only one possibility. There’s nothing to fear. There’s no dread. The universe lives your life for you.”
“Impostor,” Brett said. “It’s lying. It just wants to finish its dinner.”
“What do we do?” Suraya asked.
“What Antonio told us to do,” Luke said.
“I was a fool,” Antonio’s voice said. “We scientists–so foolish. We dismember astounding things into slush and scrap, and lay them behind glass for others to peer at.”
“We came all the way up here,” Kiara said. “And we’re going to do what we meant to do.” She snapped her eyes open, baring her teeth. The black static atop the Impostor crackled and roared.
Her husband’s face melted into Brett’s wife’s. It flashed between Luke’s brothers’. It became Suraya’s parents, the faces of their friends and family, and then Antonio’s, before cycling through all the humans it and the purple sea had taken, billions of faces, faster and faster until they blended to static.
A bubble expanded in her brain as she walked forward. “How could you think frightening us would make us do what you want?”
The black cloak swung over them; it swallowed their light. A moment later Kiara struck the Impostor, knocking it back.
Her fingers, her legs, her face all numbed. Her light reappeared as the Impostor pitched backward off Everest’s summit. Her fingers frayed at the ends, unraveling into purple strands.
The other three rushed to her. “Jump,” Kiara gasped. Air fled from her lungs. A long red path appeared before her, winding between dark trunks. “Jump! Jump!”
They jumped up, into the center of the bubble, as it collapsed onto them; they fluttered down forever. They fell through darkness until it turned to black trees, and they spun among other red leaves toward brilliant white figures.
Daniel Deisinger lives in Minnesota and writes for work and fun. His work has appeared in over a dozen publications, including Castabout Literature, Defenestration Magazine, Flash Fiction Magazine, Ripples in Space, The Book Smuggler’s Den, and Coffin Bell Journal. His twitter is @Danny_Deisinger, and his website is saturdaystory-Time.weebly.com.
by Julia Horwitz
