Category Archives: Issue 15:2

Volume 15, Issue 2

What this editor has to say about articles for writers will SHOCK you!

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The Snark Zone: Letters From the Editors
Stephanie “Baker” Lenz

Photo Credit: Michael Coghlan/Flickr (CC-by-sa)

Photo Credit: Michael Coghlan/Flickr (CC-by-sa)

  • “Every writer MUST do this!”
  • “Nine Rules For Your Novel”
  • “Thirteen Things You Must Write In Your Travel Journal”
  • “The Proper Way To Hold a Pencil”
  • “What You Need For Your Writing Space”
  • “Don’t Write Another Word Until You Visit These Sites”
  • “Never Do This On Your Social Media Accounts If You’re a Writer”
  • “Twenty Must-Read Classic Children’s Books”

Those are a few of the articles I found while browsing social media.

As a former journalist, I understand why these are the titles for these articles. They catch your eye. They command you to take a look and/or threaten that a terrible fate will befall you if you ignore them. The problem is that articles like these are so prolific, we assume that the articles that don’t make demands are, in fact, making demands—just like all the others.

I wrote our most recent Absolute Blank article, which gives writers ideas on how to use Pinterest and other platforms to organize your story electronically. The accompanying A Pen In Each Hand exercises encourage writers to do this. In the comments on the exercises, a writer named Joe said that he doesn’t use social media. I replied that the article is about using social media platforms as tools. Joe may not have seen the article first; he later commented “you convinced me” on it and said that he’d try some of the ideas. I truly look forward to hearing whether he found the suggestions useful (and whether he uses the social aspect of the suggested social media sites).

That’s what I like about writing articles and exercises for TC, as well as presenting older exercises in our Podcast In Each Hand: we have never said that you must do anything. Okay, we’ve said that you must write and you must read but that’s not the same as “you must write first thing in the morning” or “you must read a new-to-you book every month.”

It’s all well and good to provide a bullet point list of things a writer must do each day. It’s another thing when the writer reading it is working two jobs, cooking dinner for his family, helping with homework, and throwing in a load of laundry all while working out a scene in his head so he can jot it down his next day off. Adding an anxiety-inducing “must” list to his chores isn’t going to help him achieve his writing goals.

I get that clickbait headlines and numbered “must/never” lists are a way to be heard over the clamor (and get some money from it, if you have advertisers). Our titles aren’t clickbait. We have no advertisers to impress with a hit count. From our inception, we’ve been dedicated to being a site by writers for writers and supporting each other, our work, and our individual processes. One writer’s “must” is another’s “maybe” and another’s “never.”

Toasted Cheese’s articles and exercises have always been about tips, tricks, ideas, suggestions, prompts, and guides, a “take what you can use and disregard the rest” approach. Some of articles are deliberately broad in order to allow the reader to be liberal about what she disregards. Our article series is titled “Absolute Blank,” which (like all things TC) comes from “The Hunting of the Snark” but it wasn’t chosen by an editor throwing a dart at a copy of the poem. For me, AB is indeed an absolute blank: something that is complete in its openness. We get you started, provide an idea, inspire, answer a question, or give you a how-to outline. One of earliest articles presented “rules” and then told you how and why to break them.

We don’t provide a strict, narrow path. We’ll give you guardrails, path lights, and lots of forks to choose from but what you do on your writing path is your choice. You’re creative. You’re driven (how many other writers are devoting a few minutes today an editorial about their craft?) You’re the one who knows—or suspects—what will work for you on your journey. You know whether you have time for extra writing in your journal or whether you have money to spend on new objects for your writing space (and whether a cat or a kid will knock it down). Who is anyone in your online travels to tell you what you have to do to succeed? Who defines writing success in the first place, other than the writer herself? Of course these articles and lists provide a lot of inspiration and most of the people writing them only want the best for other writers. We’re just advising that you go placidly amid the noise and the haste.

Of course, you can take what you like from this editorial and leave the rest.

pencilEmail: baker[at]toasted-cheese.com

Temporary Champions by Darren C. Demaree

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Candle-Ends: Reviews
Salvatore Marici

Temporary Champions by Darren C. Demaree

Temporary Champions by Darren C. Demaree

Darren Demaree, a recipient of three Pushcart Prize nominations, arranged the poems in Temporary Champions (Main Street Rag, 2014) like a DNA molecule. The book centers on a historic boxing match. One side is the action in the ring and the other side is the crowd linked with other poems about the boxers’ lives, their families and a referee. This book is tension; the links tug, push the two spiraled strands.

At the fourth poem, “Two Right Hands His Head Could Not Bear,” I knew the boxer Kim was hurt:

the third blow
the kick back

of the skull
to the canvas
that took the pain

away from Kim,
took the light
from his lungs

but I sensed that I was missing needed knowledge so I went to Wikipedia. The boxing match that reduced the maximum rounds from 15 to 12 was Demaree’s muse for this book. The match was in 1982 between Ray “Boom Boom” Mancini and Duk Koo Kim. Mancini is from Ohio, his father was a top-ranked contender boxer and Kim lived in poverty in South Korea. Mancini won nineteen seconds into the fourteenth round. Mancini suffered a torn left ear, a puffed left eye, and his left hand swelled to twice its size. Kim died from head injuries four days later. Mancini went to South Korea for the funeral and fell into a depression. Kim’s mother and the referee committed suicide. After I learned about this match, I returned to the poems with a greater understanding of the whole.

The lyrical nature of the poems, because they are not a straight storyline or narrative, I see as a metaphor of the continuous beating the fighters give and take in a match. The poems between the “round poems” and “crowd poems” I call the one-minute breaks. These poems show Kim’s poverty in South Korea, Mancini’s life in Ohio, the fighters’ families’ hopes, and what lures the crowd to watch fights. There is even a touch of boxing mythology in the poem “Past The Teeth”:

If the fighter was a sparrow
& the lord of fighters was creating
sparrows in his own image

One other note, Demaree wrote “the crowd” poems in a block prose format. I assume he used that visual format to show the crowd’s impenetrable feelings.

Demaree blends statements into images. Poetry should show and not tell. However, his telling usually was the right proportion with showing and merged them into these:

  • The real fight is to remove / the boxing gloves from the bodies / without anyone knowing they were / used to cover the frightened paws / of a champion (“You Can’t Have More”)
  • demanding that his face be / made out of paper mache. (“The Crowd #1”)
  • it takes / hours for a good body / to tire, to become wispy, / crushable. Say his head / was a berry. (“Say It’s a Red Berry”)
  • you can watch their aged / shoulders mimic the fighters (“The Crowd #18”)

Demaree intertwines boxers as humans, their wants and the match laced with the sport’s brutality. In the poem “How Vital Sport?” he writes, “men / led around like horses, / beaten like horses.” He starts the spiral ladder at the beginning with the title of the book Temporary Champions and the first poem titled “Round 1”:

whose name will vanish
the same as moisture, in the air,
not in flight, not in direction.

Most poems work on their own, but the whole is greater than the sum of its parts.

The 72 poems on 73 pages is a poetic boxing epic. On HBO and ESPN we see many like Kim from developing countries in rings. Now, like in 1982, the crowd cheers when a boxer punches his opponent’s face into a berry. We hope that today the referee, ringside doctor, or the loser’s manager will stop the fight. This crafted poetry collection shows us why they should.

*

Darren C. Demaree is the author of As We Refer to Our Bodies (8th House, 2013), Temporary Champions (Main Street Rag, 2014), The Pony Governor (2015, After the Pause Press) and Not For Art Nor Prayer (8th House, 2015).  He is the Managing Editor of the Best of the Net Anthology. He lives in Columbus, Ohio with his wife and children.

pencilSalvatore Marici is an author of two poetry books. The first was a chapbook titled Mortals, Nature, and their Spirits (Ice Cube Press, 2012). His writing has appeared in several anthologies, magazines and journals including Toasted Cheese. He was the 2010 Midwest Writing Center’s poet-in-residence. He has won and placed in several poetry contests. Marici served as a Peace Corps volunteer in Guatemala and he is a civil servant retiree, who worked for the Army, mainly with the job title Agronomist. At both jobs, he managed natural resources. You can follow his poetry events at salmarici.myicourse.com and on Facebook.

Thirty Seconds by Heather MacPherson

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Candle-Ends: Reviews
A.R. Cook

Thirty Seconds by Heather MacPherson

Thirty Seconds by Heather MacPherson

Dystopian, dire and terrifying, Thirty Seconds by Heather MacPherson (Amazon, 2013) shows readers what the end of the world may look like, not with a bang but with “no noise at all.”

What would you do if one day, you were driving home from work, and in the blink of an eye all the electricity—as well as nearly all the world’s population—vanishes? Mae, thirty-year-old single mother of baby Holly, is thrust abruptly into a dark and depraved wasteland, finding herself stranded in a world where she, her twin sister Darlene, and a group of wayward strangers are on the run from a malicious gang of men with no refuge in sight. The only thing leading them forward is a mysterious blinding light in the distance, a light that none of them knows will be salvation or their destruction.

I don’t usually pick up a dystopian novel these days. I find myself tired of bleak, dismal futures in recent books, but I was intrigued by the premise of Thirty Seconds. The story begins from the first-person perspective of Mae, and we share with her the confusion, fear and fierce love for her daughter. I wish the novel had been written entirely from her perspective, or had the first-person narration trade off between characters throughout. However, the story constantly jumps between Mae’s first-person narration to third-person, sometimes even switching from first- to third-person in the middle of a chapter. I was confused with the shifting back and forth and didn’t see why it was necessary to do so.

The characters are crafted well, each with distinct personalities and backstories. Mae is independent, tough and relatable, using her intelligence (although more often, a strange supernatural ability that she develops) to get out of deadly predicaments. Darlene is sympathetic and likeable, a woman who has unwillingly been a sexual target for men all her life, and where she could have been easily portrayed as a two-dimensional pretty woman, she was well fleshed out and a strong person in her own right. There is also loving father Ash and his young son Michael, tenderhearted “Dolly Parton-esque” Olga, world-beaten Sarah, and sweet elderly couple Edward and Honey.

MacPherson did a superb job creating distinguishable histories for each of her characters, and in a way I wish these backstories had their own novel(s)—I actually wanted to find out even more about them. My main problem with these backstories, however, is where they were placed within the book. In the second half of the story, as the climax builds more and more, suddenly we get someone’s history smack dab in the middle of all the action, and it goes on for several pages. This disrupted a lot of the pacing leading up to the end and took me out of the action.

As much as I love the concept of normal people acquiring unusual powers, I am on the fence about the characters discovering their superhuman abilities over the course of their journey. They came across as little more than deus ex machina for the characters to escape from otherwise inescapable scenarios. When the characters really needed to save themselves, then “poof,” someone got a new power surprisingly convenient to that given situation. One character’s ability, which was so out of nowhere and only seemed to manifest so a bad guy could be trampled to death by an elephant, actually made me laugh. Given the serious nature of the plot, some of the superpowers came across as silly.

Maybe what was the trickiest part for me to handle with Thirty Seconds was the dichotomy of tones. On the one hand, you have good guys with superpowers, child characters with lively energy and endearing innocence, and the hints of what may or may not be extra-terrestrial involvement—this all would point to a sci-fi action adventure. On the other hand, there are major adult themes in this story—I have incredible difficulty reading about rape (to both women and children), gratuitous violence, and physical abuse to a baby, even in a fictional story. But what else would you expect if moral human society was wiped off the planet? Just be prepared for some uncomfortable, gritty moments, I warn any readers with gentle dispositions.

Thirty Seconds, while not without its flaws, did keep me reading at a brisk pace—one could read this novel in one sitting and be engrossed all the way through. It had enough twists to not be predictable, and while it may leave the reader with more questions at the end than at the beginning, I sense there will be more books that will continue this plotline to come. I would certainly like to see more of these characters and what else this author has in store for us.

 *

Heather MacPherson was born and raised in Newport, RI. She has a B.A. in creative writing from Roger Williams University. She is a wife and a mother of one. Her days are spent working in the non-profit sector but her passion has always been writing. She started writing short stories and poetry in the fourth grade. Her writing has also appeared in Toasted Cheese. Thirty Seconds is MacPherson’s first novel.

pencilA.R. Cook resides in Gainesville, Georgia, and is the author of The Scholar and the Sphinx fantasy book series from Mithras Books, the young adult imprint of Knox Robinson Publishing. She has short stories published in the anthology The Kress Project from the Georgia Museum of Art, and the fairy-tale collection Willow Weep No More from Tenebris Books. Several of A.R.’s short stories and short plays have been awarded first place in various magazines, such as Toasted Cheese Literary Journal and Writer’s Digest. From 2009-2013, A.R. was the book review columnist for the Gainesville Times in Northeast Georgia. You can contact her at scholarandsphinx[at]gmail.com or through her website.

The Scholar, the Sphinx and the Fang of Fenrir by A.R. Cook

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Candle-Ends: Reviews
Shelley Carpenter

carpenter

The Scholar, The Sphinx and the Fang of Fenrir by A.R. Cook

The Scholar, The Sphinx and the Fang of Fenrir (Knox Publishing, 2014) is the second book in A.R. Cook’s young adult series, The Scholar and the Sphinx.

In this installment, readers are reunited with young, scholarly protagonist David Sandoval and his companions, Acacia, the sphinx; Gullen, the Master Huntsman; and Tanuki, the shape-shifting Japanese badger from the first book, The Shades of Nyx (Knox Publishing, 2013).

The heroes face another epic adventure filled with danger and wonder inside and outside the “Magic Curtain” that separates the human world from the worlds of legend, myth, and magic. With new friends Babba, the old Russian witch and keeper of the iron forest, and Tyr, the Lawgiver from Asgard, David must gather his wits and courage to stop the giant world-eating-wolf Fenrir who has joined forces with a mysterious new adversary who has plans for David and Acacia.

Cook again borrows from world mythologies—Greek, Egyptian, Norse, African, Russian, and Japanese to create a host of protagonists and antagonists, alike. Giants abound as well as animals of colossal proportion such as Slepnir, Tyr’s eight-legged battle horse.

Most notably, Cook is an adept storyteller and mixes imaginative, vivid description with sparkling vocabulary much like a potion one of her characters might concoct. For example, meet Babba Yaga:

The other woman, round and squat, smoked a foot-long pipe, the bowl of which was carved to look like a crow’s head. Long tresses of silver flowed from her head and a long pointed nose protruded from the deep ravines of cracks on her face. She eyed David, not saying a word, and only puffed tendrils of white smoke in the air. The smoke curled into the shapes of birds and cats that danced around her wide-brimmed hat.

Besides their vividness, the characters are complex. Cook gives each a unique voice and manner. They are distinct and often humorous. Babba’s character in particular is a scene-stealer and compliments David’s seriousness and Gullen’s know-it-all-ness with her funny wit, her mannerisms, and voice. “What do I know? I’m just old lady.” An old lady is the least of who Babba really is and readers will enjoy getting to know this quirky character.

There is also a nice cadence and rhythm to Cook’s writing. I enjoyed the variety in sentence structure and punctuation that peppered each chapter, each page. I spied some lovely sentences like this complex sentence that utilizes both consonance and simile to describe the setting from chapter fifteen: “A drizzle drooled down from the overcast sky, the clouds as slate gray as the pillars around him.”

What’s more, Cook continues the exciting pace. Each chapter builds on the previous in a steep story arc that leads straight up to the last page.

The novel is structured in sixteen numbered chapters. It contains a prologue, a glossary of mythological characters and a section called Moments in History. The prologue was very interesting: a mystery narrator with three personalities relates the first book to the reader giving key information concerning character, setting, and plot—thus a reader new to the series could easily begin with the second book. The glossary and Moments in History were also helpful. I referenced them several times during my reading. These added appendices show forethought and that Cook really knows her readers and their needs.

*

A.R. Cook is the former book reviewer for the Gainesville Times in Northeast Georgia and more recently has written reviews for Toasted Cheese. Her first young adult novel is The Scholar, the Sphinx, and the Shades of Nyx (Knox Robinson Publishing, 2013). Her story “Derry’s Down, Deary” won the gold award in Toasted Cheese’s Three Cheers and a Tiger Writing Contest in the June 2013 issue. In 2011, she placed Honorable Mention in the Writer’s Digest 80th Annual Writing Competition for her play, Major Arcana, and in WD’s Science Fiction contest for her short story, “Psycho Babbles.” She has also written “Willow Weep No More,” published in the Tenebris Books’s Original Fairy Tales Anthology, and a short story, “The Saintly Stew,” published in the Georgia Museum of Art’s Kress Project anthology 2013. She likes sushi and sundaes (but not together). | Twitter: @ARCook_Writes | FaceBook: TheScholarAndTheSphinxSeries

pencilShelley Carpenter is TC’s Reviews Editor. Email: harpspeed[at]toasted-cheese.com

Spotless

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Three Cheers and a Tiger ~ Bronze
Tara Kenway

Photo Credit: Joshua Tabti/Flickr (CC-by)

Photo Credit: Joshua Tabti/Flickr (CC-by)

“I’ve told you a thousand times to clean up, Edward. We’re a hotel, not a train station. The lobby must be spotless. Spotless! Is that clear?”

I nodded.

It was true. Justine had told me many times. Maybe not a thousand but probably not that far off.

“Keep it pristine.”

Pristine Justine.

That’s what we called her. Justine with her perfect hair, perfect nails and perfect uniform. She wasn’t even the manager, although none of us doubted that it’s where she saw herself.

We just saw her as a pain in the ass. I was responsible for the lobby and reception, Sophie had the first floor, Elaine the second, and Roger was maintenance. Justine was on his case even more than ours.

“Quick, quick, Roger! I haven’t got all day!”

The girls got hassled too.

“How complicated can it be?” she’d say, wiping a critical finger along a window ledge or shelf.

“God, why doesn’t she get promoted or get a new job,” Elaine whined one lunchtime.

“There’s no use complaining about it. She’s been here for fifteen years. I’ve told you before, I doubt she’ll leave now.”

That was Sophie. She’d been here as long as Justine and probably knew the hotel even better than she did.

Roger smoked in silence.

“Nothing to add, Roger?” I asked.

“I wish she’d die,” he muttered.

“I say, that’s a bit harsh,” Sophie said.

Roger shrugged and lit another cigarette.

None of us knew much about Roger. A man of few words and many cigarettes.

And me. I was one of us too. Only here for the summer, but that didn’t make any difference to Justine, who was particularly obsessed with the lobby entrance.

“It’s the window of the hotel,” she said, squinting at the floor, bending down slightly to see everything in a different light. “You know, the eyes are the windows to the soul, and the lobby is the window to the hotel’s soul.”

I liked how she tried to make being a maniac about cleanliness poetic.

All of this would make some sense if we were talking about a classy hotel somewhere, but we weren’t. The only reason we had any business at all wasn’t because of our spotless lobby, but the fact that we were the only hotel around. All the tired tourists who’d spent the last five hours in the car with the air con cranked up knew if they didn’t stop here they’d have to drive another couple of hours before coming across another place to stay.

Did the fact the hotel was clean help? Sure it did. But if the lobby really was the window to the hotel’s soul, most people would keep on driving.

This particular day the hotel wasn’t very busy. The weather wasn’t too hot, driving conditions were good and people just kept on, trying to get home rather than stop yet again. Sophie was the first to notice it.

“Have you seen Justine, Ed?”

“Nope.” I glanced at my watch. “Maybe she’s ill?” I flashed Sophie my crossed fingers and she laughed.

“It’s odd. She’s never late.”

“What? You think she’s been kidnapped or something? Too much CSI, Sophie.”

She smiled but still looked worried.

“Look, maybe she had car trouble. Or she’s ill. She’s only half an hour late. There’s a multitude of reasons to be late.”

She nodded and walked over to the elevator.

“Can you text me when she arrives? You better clean that up before she arrives too.” She pointed at the lobby floor.

“Sure.”

Some bastard had traipsed mud straight across the lobby sometime during the night and Justine would kill me if it was still there when she arrived.

I took out the vacuum cleaner and started passing it backwards and forwards. This was a mistake as the mud wasn’t quite dry yet and just smeared and stuck to the vacuum cleaner. Dark reddish smears ran across the lobby.

“Dammit.” Now I’d need to clean the cleaner too.

I put the vacuum cleaner to one side and fetched a mop and bucket.

A few swishes of the mop later and most of the mud was gone. I squinted at the floor, and bent down slightly, trying to see it through Justine’s eyes. I didn’t especially care about doing a good job, but I did like an easy life and cleanliness meant no Justine on my back.

There was still some streaks of mud across the hall.

I went out back to the cleaning cupboard and had a look at the products we had.

*Industrial floor cleaner.*

That could be the bottle for me. I had a look at the label.

Removes all stains from wooden and tiled floors. Mud, oil, even blood!

Well, if that didn’t work, nothing would!

I went back into the lobby and started cleaning. Thank God there was still no sign of Justine. I scrubbed and scrubbed and then passed over the wood with the floor polisher.

I looked at the floor again. Squinted. Bent down.

“Damn, now that’s what I call pristine.”

I turned around.

It was Roger. He was smoking as usual. He went to tap the ash on my floor.

“Come on, man. Gimme a break.” I pushed the bucket of dirty water over to him and he tapped the ash inside.

“Don’t let Justine see you smoking here. You know it drives her crazy.”

“Yeah, well, the feeling’s mutual.” He glanced around. “She not here yet?”

“Nope. Sophie’s worried.”

“Sophie’s always worried.” He dropped the cigarette butt in the bucket. “Let me know if she turns up.”

He wandered off, leaving dusty footprints behind him.

I passed quickly behind him with the floor polisher.

*

The rest of the day passed by and still no Justine. Sophie called the manager and told him Justine hadn’t come into work.

“I’m just worried. It’s not like her. In all the time we’ve worked together she’s not been late. Not once!”

He tried calling her at home but there was no answer. He finally called the police and they went to her house. Still no Justine. That’s when they came to the hotel and started asking questions.

There were two officers. I got a young guy who looked about the same age as me. My mother always said that you knew you were getting old when the policemen started looking young. Jeez, I was only 22 and I was already thinking that.

“Have a seat, Edward. Can I call you Edward?” he said.

“Sure.”

“So, when did you last see Justine?” His pen hovered above his notepad.

“Last night. When my shift ended.”

“And what time was that?”

“Around nine p.m., I guess.”

“You’re not sure?”

“Well, my shift ends at nine p.m., but then usually I leave a little later than that. You know, the time to put everything away.”

“Sure. And you didn’t see Justine leave?”

“No, but then I never do. She always leaves after me.”

“Okay. Is she popular here?” He glanced up at me.

“You’ve already spoken to the others, no?”

He nodded.

“She’s not the most popular. She’s a ball-breaker.”

“Pristine Justine?”

I laughed. “That’s her. That’s why the lobby’s so clean. Windows to the soul of the hotel.”

“She says that?”

“All the time.”

He asked me some more questions about her routine, my routine, my colleagues.

“Do you really think something’s happened to her?” I asked.

“Don’t you?”

I shrugged. “I really don’t know. It just seems a bit crazy.”

“All these things seem crazy until they happen. Then they don’t seem quite so crazy.” He stood up. “Thanks for your time. This is the number where we can reach you?”

I nodded.

I got up and left the office and went back into the lobby. There was a guest waiting at reception. Seeing as no one was there, I checked them in and got their keys sorted out.

“Don’t you have someone to help with my bag?” the woman asked.

I looked around for Roger, but he was still in with the police.

“Sure. I’ll help you myself.” I smiled a big cheesy grin. All my grins were cheesy—it was why Justine didn’t want me working directly with the guests.

“Try sincerity, Edward!”

“This is it.”

“Well, just stop smiling then.” She’d turned on her heel and walked away.

I put my cheesy grin away and took the woman’s bags. God only knows what she had in there but they weighed a ton. I almost joked that she had a dead body in there, but seeing the circumstances I thought it better to say nothing.

I took her up to the second floor. Elaine was up there.

“Room 215?” I asked.

She led us down there and opened up the door.

“Ma’am,” she said, holding the door open.

I put her suitcase down with a thud. Elaine looked at me and I shrugged.

“Thank you. That’ll be all,” said the woman. Not even a tip.

Elaine closed the door behind us.

“Bit of a pain, huh?” she asked. “Who does that remind you of?”

“Have the police spoken to you yet?” I asked.

Elaine nodded. “Same as you. I didn’t see her after my shift ended.”

“It’s weird though, isn’t it? What do you think happened?”

“God knows. Maybe she was having a torrid affair that none of us knew about.”

“Really?”

“Edward, I don’t know! But, come on. Outside of here we know next to nothing about each other. Do you know where I live, or if I’m married? Have I got kids?”

I flushed.

“Don’t worry. I know nothing about you either except that you’re a student. And that’s fine. All I’m saying is that we could all have secrets or a dark side and we probably wouldn’t know.”

“Until something like this happens.”

“Exactly.”

We both stood in silence for a moment.

“So what’s your secret, Elaine?” I asked.

She smiled.

“Well now, if I told you, it wouldn’t be a secret.” She pressed the elevator button for me. The doors slid open. “Back to the lobby with you, Edward.”

And so Elaine had a mysterious side. Who would have guessed? Certainly not me.

When I got back to the lobby, Roger was just leaving the office. He nodded at me as he passed.

The police officers were talking to each other and looking at Roger.

“Do we have any news?” I asked. “I’m not trying to inject myself into an investigation, you know. I know you guys watch out for that. I’d just like Justine to turn up.”

“Well, you’ll know when we do,” one of them said.

And that’s what happened.

Three hours later Justine’s car turned up but still no Justine. The police came back and started talking about a timeline and alibis. All of us were suspects as we were all at work when she went missing, and we weren’t together. It was hard to find out exactly where she had been as she regularly went all over the hotel.

I saw Sophie in the corridor.

“They think it’s one of us!” she whispered, spitting out the words.

“Maybe it is.”

“Edward! How can you even say that?”

“Come on. We were all the last people to see her. And none of us were her greatest fan.”

“Well, I didn’t do it,” she said, looking around her as if someone might be listening.

“I don’t think they’ve bugged the place yet, Sophie.”

She glared at me and walked away.

The police were hovering around the lobby, bending and squinting at the floor.

“Can I help?” I asked.

“This floor is spotless,” one of them said.

“Yes, sir. Justine’s very particular about that. She says it’s the window to the hotel.”

“Does she now?” He kept looking at the floor.

“Did you clean it when you arrived this morning?”

I nodded.

“Of course. It’s always the first thing I do. Plus someone had left mud all over the floor.”

He stood up, and gave a quick glance at his partner.

“Mud?”

“Yes. I had footprints right across the lobby. A real pain in the ass to get out.”

“I’ll bet,” he muttered.

The day continued quietly until the afternoon when Sophie came rushing in.

“Have you heard? They’re questioning Roger and Elaine. Again!”

“Maybe they just had some other questions.”

“No, no. It looked like they wanted to arrest them. Maybe they just don’t have enough evidence for the time being.”

“Like I said before, Sophie—too much CSI.”

At the same time, it did look like the police knew something. There was an urgency to them that hadn’t been there before.

I glanced over at the office and could just see Elaine shaking her head.

“We could all have secrets.”

Wasn’t that what she’d said to me? So what was her secret? Maybe she bumped off Justine. I certainly wouldn’t blame her, although it seemed a bit of an extreme reaction. At the same time, I knew I could get out of here at the end of the summer. Elaine didn’t.

And what about Roger? He was kind of suspicious, but then we all could be.

I sighed. This is why I wasn’t a police officer and they were.

“Not my job, man,” I said to myself.

The police kept them in there for a couple of hours. I sat at the lobby, checking in a few people, watching them as they scuffed my floor, cursing each one of them.

Once everyone had gone I took out the floor polisher again.

It chummed across the floor, making my arms judder.

I was engrossed in the cleaning when someone tapped me on the shoulder.

“Edward?” It was one of the policemen. “Can you come with us for a moment?”

“Sure. Can I just finish up here?”

“No, leave it.”

“But Justine—”

“I don’t think it’s going to be of a concern to her. You know we found her car.”

I nodded.

“There was an awful lot of blood inside. It’s Justine’s.”

“Oh.”

“Just leave the machine.”

I followed the officers, Sophie peering out the office door at me.

“She’s going to say I did it now,” I said.

“Did what?”

“Kill Justine.”

“No one said she was dead.” They were both looking at me.

“What? You just basically said it. Two minutes ago!” I started feeling a little scared. I didn’t want to be a patsy.

“Have a seat, Edward. We need to talk to you about the lobby. The mud this morning.”

“Okay.”

“You’re sure it was just mud?”

“What else would it be?”

“Could it have been something else?”

“What? Like dog crap?”

He gave a slight smile.

“We’re thinking more along the lines of blood.”

I thought back to the smears.

“We have a theory that Roger and Elaine killed Justine. We found her body in the garden behind the hotel. She’d been hit with an axe and then buried. We found her blood in one of the rooms and some blood on the fire escape stairs. There would have been mud on their shoes. But blood as well. The footprints would tie at least one of them to the crime scene. Otherwise we don’t have much.”

“I guess it could have been blood as well. It didn’t cross my mind. It was just hard to get rid of.”

“Can you show us what you used to clean up?”

“Sure.” We left the office and went to the store room. I showed them the bottle.

“Shit,” one of them said. “That’ll have destroyed everything.”

“I’m sorry,” I said.

“You didn’t know, Edward.”

The police gathered their things and left. I guess to try and find a plan B.

We all watched them go.

Sophie sighed.

“The one time you manage to clean the lobby well. Nice job.” She walked away.

“Yeah, nice job, Ed,” Roger said, winking at me.

Elaine took Roger’s hand and smiled at him.

“Pristine.”

pencilEnglish writer and English trainer living in Lyon, France. Likes cats, cinema, reading and running. Has been previously published in TCLJ and has a story called “The Barber” in an anthology. Email: tkenway[at]gmail.com

Philip Knight

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Three Cheers and a Tiger ~ Silver
Urvashi Bohra

Photo Credit: Bill Bentley/Flickr (CC-by-nc-nd)

Photo Credit: Bill Bentley/Flickr (CC-by-nc-nd)

‘And this is the famous site where Mr Knight left his footprints before killing himself in the elevator. Any questions?’ the tour guide, Jennifer, asked a group of wide-eyed fans of Philip Knight, the famous but troubled author who was known for his fictional work and untimely death.

‘So you are saying these muddy footprints are his?’ a fan asked, looking at the footprints that had been preserved since the last ten years in the lobby of Hotel Marina West.

‘Yes,’ Jennifer answered automatically like a machine with recorded answers. ‘Please don’t touch it.’ She snapped as she saw the same fan trying to get his greasy hands on the unspoiled footprints.

‘Sorry,’ the fan whispered and got up to hide behind the crowd.

‘Now if you walk with me, we can go to the conference room where you can watch an interview of the last person who spoke to Mr Knight.’

The group of six immediately followed Jennifer as she led them to the darkly lit room. Once they all took their seats, a young man took to the podium.

‘Good evening everyone, my name is Larry and I am here to tell you about the movie you will be seeing now. Before we begin, I urge you to switch off your mobile phones and cameras because the footage here is private and not to be shared by anyone. If you do shoot and share the footage, you will be penalized heavily as mentioned in the contract you have signed.’

Slight tones of phones switching off were in the atmosphere for the next few seconds as Larry waited for them to get ready.

‘Philip Knight, as you all would agree, is this century’s greatest crime and mystery novelist and may forever remain so too.’

The crowd murmured their approval.

‘He had a way with words that formed an image so compelling that one would be hooked from page one. You could never guess how a story could end because Mr Knight had a way of surprising you with his twisted endings and this is the reason why he and his work developed such a cult following. The movie that I am about to show you is an interview with the then-manager of this hotel, Mr Highmore, who was a great fan of the novelist himself and equally saddened to know about his demise. Well, without wasting any more time, I will play the movie now and if there are any questions then we will keep them for the end.’

Larry signaled a man, hidden behind thick glass, to start the projector. The unseen man did so immediately and soon the room was completely dark and the movie started. All the people were now at the edge of their seats as they tried to listen to every word the interviewee said.

The movie started with a picture of Philip Knight sitting in room 505, his favorite room in the hotel that the group had seen at the commencement of their tour. He was sitting next to his typewriter, which is still present in the room along with his other belongings. The image slowly started to fade out and the voice of the interviewer filled the room as he asked his subject to state his name and occupation.

‘My name is Samuel Highmore.’ An old man started to speak as he looked into the camera with big vacant eyes. ‘Before I retired I served as the Manager of Marina West Hotel for 32 years.’

‘Is it true that this was the hotel where Philip Knight used to come to write his famous novels?’

‘Ah! Mr Knight.’ The old man’s eyes shined as he remembered the old days and a hint of smile touched his lips. ‘Such a great fella, always came to greet me whenever he saw me.’

Mr Highmore looked at the interviewer with great joy and the same was gone immediately as the interviewer continued.

‘And you were the last person who spoke to him on the night of December 16th before his demise?’ the interviewer asked unemotionally.

‘Yes,’ the old man said as he looked down in disappointment, which the audience could sense as they sighed along with the man in that square frame looking for words to describe his agony.

‘It was raining heavily that night and Mr Knight always stayed with us during that season. He would always go out in the day and come back late in the evening completely drenched and would go straight to the bar. I had to ask the bartender to keep an extra set of towels for Mr Knight every day.’ Mr Highmore chuckled as he shared that extra tidbit.

‘He would always enter with those muddy shoes that would really infuriate the owner of the hotel, Mr Flinch. But he could never say anything to Mr Knight as he was our most reputed customer. Instead, he would take out his anger on the poor bellboy, Jimmy, who was always forced to clean up after those footprints. Actually, Mr Knight liked aggravating Mr Flinch so he would deliberately dirty the carpets daily.’

‘That night like every other, Mr Knight came into the lobby leaving his muddy footprints everywhere and said hello to me. I asked him how his new novel was coming along and he said that it will soon be finished and he can’t wait for everyone to read it. He was very excited about it.’ Mr Highmore looked into the camera and the audience in the room felt like he was talking to them.

Of course they knew about Philip Knight’s last book, The Stolen Kiss. His unfinished work that sold like hotcakes even though it lacked an ending. People all around the world gave the story their own ending and perception but no one was actually satisfied because the legend himself did not write it.

‘I asked him what he would like for his breakfast the next day, to which he replied that he had not decided. That felt odd to me because Mr Knight always knew what he wanted but I did not take it seriously, unaware of what would follow next.’ Mr Highmore took a pause as he tried to gather the next few words.

The audience waited for the sad description of the events that soon followed.

‘He walked towards the elevator and while waiting for it he waved at Mr Flinch, who smiled back at him and came towards the carpet to inspect the latest footprints. Mr Knight watched Mr Flinch lose his temper once more and after enjoying his frustration he entered the lift. This would be the moment when Jimmy would start getting yelled at but thankfully he was nowhere to be seen. I started to walk towards Mr Flinch to calm him down and suddenly heard a thud noise. I turned around to see that the elevator Mr Knight was in had abruptly stopped. Mr Flinch had noticed the same and we both started to walk towards the lift. It stayed broken for six minutes exactly and in that time I asked the maintenance man what was the issue. He told me that the problem is not external and that it seems that the lift was stopped by Mr Knight himself.’

‘Six minutes later the lift started working again and we all took a sigh of relief. It went to the floor where the bar was and we all resumed our work. The maintenance man called the lift back so he could see what was wrong with it.’

‘I will get someone to clean the carpet, sir,’ I told Mr Flinch who just shook his head. “No, wait. Where is that boy Jimmy?” he asked in a curious tone and I started to look around to find him. Jimmy was standing near the main entrance but before I could call him, I heard a sharp yell coming from behind. I ran to see what had happened only to find Mr Knight lying in the elevator lifeless.’

Mr Highmore sighed deeply as grief took over him and made him feel like these events had happened just a few hours back.

‘I lost a great friend that night. We got his body out of the elevator and eventually it was declared a suicide when the police found a suicide note still in his typewriter. It is still a mystery as to why he killed himself. It seems like he just… gave up.’

Mr Highmore could not speak anymore as he broke down leaving many members of the audience to do the same. The movie then ended as the lights came back on and Larry was back.

‘Intriguing wasn’t it?’ he asked, to which everyone agreed in unity. ‘Any questions?’

A few arms were raised as Larry started with a weeping female fan.

‘Where is his suicide letter now? We did not see it in his room.’

‘The letter was taken by the police and it never was given back to us and since Mr Knight had no family, it remained there.’

‘Where are Flinch and Jimmy now?’ a middle-aged man who came with his wife asked without waiting to be chosen.

‘Mr Flinch, as you all can see, turned the hotel into a memorial of sorts for Mr Knight and Jimmy left soon after the suicide. Why do you ask?’

‘Just curious,’ the man replied while sharing a look with his wife.

‘Were there no cameras in the elevator?’ the wife asked.

‘No. The elevator is an old one and Mr Flinch did not want to ruin its old rustic charm. I think that the time is up and Jennifer will now take you to the last leg of the tour,’ Larry said and Jennifer came from behind as she got the group to follow her again.

This was the part of the tour that everyone was excited about. Their friends, relatives and virtual strangers on the internet had spoken wonders about this part of the tour, calling it the best and a curious ending to the tour. Sadly none of them knew what it was. As part of their tour package, every person was made to sign a contract with the hotel affirming that they would not reveal what they saw, found or heard at the hotel or take anything away from its place, in order to keep it a surprise for the next guests.

The group followed Jennifer with anticipation. They got out of the room and were soon faced with the footsteps of Philip Knight that ended right outside an old two-door elevator. Jennifer begins to address them.

‘This, as you all can already guess, is the elevator where Mr Knight took his own life. As part of your package, we now give you the opportunity to spend exactly six minutes in the elevator, stuck where Mr Knight did. Many have found those six minutes inspirational and spiritual and let’s hope the same for you all. If you could all please enter one by one.’

Everyone in the group got inside the lift immediately, hoping that somehow the ghost of Knight would speak to his one true fan. Jennifer asked the last person who entered the lift, who was evidently a student given his attire, to press the twelfth floor button and as he did so, she closed the outer door of the elevator.

The first few seconds as the rickety lift started to rise went in complete silence as everyone prepared for something divine to happen to them. Suddenly the lift stopped between the sixth and the seventh floor. Although everyone was prepared for it, when it actually happened, they could not help but gasp. A minute passed while everyone stayed quiet, some trying to talk to Knight, while some just looked around to see what all was there. The man who came with his wife was on his phone and suddenly yelled, ‘I knew it.’

Everyone jumped at his voice that now echoed the small space. The man’s wife asked him what happened to which he replied—

‘I put a search on the Flinch guy. He looked very fishy. It seems like he was about to go bankrupt before Knight died but was able to use his death as a way to earn some good cash.’

‘Does that mean what I think it means?’ his wife asked him curiously.

‘You guys seriously don’t think that, do you?’ the girl who was weeping earlier asked the couple in disbelief.

‘Come on, this is so obvious. Knight was murdered,’ the husband replied, not trying to hide his excitement.

‘How could he kill him if he was in the lobby the whole time?’ the man with the greasy hands asked him.

There was a brief silence, as everyone went to their own thoughts.

‘Jimmy,’ said the student who looked up at the husband sharing a look of agreement. ‘Jimmy was always bullied into anything Flinch said, why not this?’

Suddenly everyone started to panic in exhilaration as they all believed what the husband was already sure of.

‘This is what happened. Flinch forced Jimmy to kill Knight and also go to his room to type that suicide note. The police would have not found the fingerprints because he was wearing gloves.’

‘How did he kill him?’ the woman asked in anticipation.

Silence, once again. No one could answer that. The only guy who had not spoken yet about the subject was a 50-year-old man standing in the corner. But that changed now.

‘If we all know Knight and if what you are saying is actually correct then he would not have left without a fight. I am sure he would have left something here to reveal the truth.’

Everyone immediately started searching for clues. The student tried to put himself in Knight’s shoes and the first thing he did was go to the corner with the buttons and started pressing them frantically. When nothing happened he punched the wall in frustration and suddenly a note dropped from behind the socket. Everyone was shocked as the student started to open the paper gently.

The paper contained one word, which took everyone by surprise. There was no way of knowing if it belonged to Knight but they believed it anyway. The one word helped them solve the biggest mystery of their life and the worst part was that they could never tell anyone about it and had to keep it amongst themselves.

No one was ready to go to prison over a murder that happened years ago or pay a fine so huge that it would leave them penniless. Even though the truth was never to be shared, they were happy to be the only ones who knew about it. They felt special.

The note was folded and placed back behind the socket as the lift started to rise to the twelfth floor.

‘That’s why the bastard never got the footprints cleaned. He knew they would get him money and that is why we are made to sign that stupid contract, too.’

‘Shoes,’ the group whispered to themselves, trying to figure out what this word that they read in the note meant. But one thing that was sure was that Knight did not kill himself.

Jennifer greeted the group at the twelfth floor and asked them about their experience to which they replied halfheartedly. She then led them to Knight’s favorite bar spot and concluded the tour.

The death of Philip Knight has always been a mystery to everyone who ever visited the hotel. Many came across the note, and while some believed him to be murdered others claimed that he killed himself. Like the ending of his books, his own life’s ending was the biggest mystery they came across. No one knew why he killed himself, if he killed himself, just like no one knew that Knight never really died in that elevator.

When a writer known for his words finally realized that he did not find any comfort or familiarity in those same words, he knew that he was done. He was embarrassed to admit his failure and when he combined that with his love for mystery, he decided to become a protagonist in the stories of many who came to the hotel.

Now hiding behind a thick glass wall and a projector, Knight waited and saw how his fans enjoyed the one last mystery that he had left for them .

pencilUrvashi Bohra is a recent college graduate with a degree in mass communication. She wants
to live in a world where she can support herself solely through her words and create stories that inspire people just like her favorite writers inspire her. Every day she learns something new about the art of fictional writing and finds great joy in that and hopes to excel in it as much as possible. Email: urvashi.bohra6[at]gmail.com

Nothing Comes From Nothing

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Three Cheers and a Tiger ~ Gold
Sarah R. Clayville

Photo Credit: Alexa Clark/Flickr (CC-by-nc)

Photo Credit: Alexa Clark/Flickr (CC-by-nc)

Never, for one moment of your life, lose sight of those you love. —Belinda Grayson, Life Coach and Survivor

Abby didn’t promise she would stay in the hotel room.

Rather she promised she would stay out of trouble, and as many television shows and statistics proved, trouble could just as easily be found beneath a hotel bed as it could in the lobby or the courtyard or anywhere else for that matter. Abby’s mother had raised her from a young age to be fearless and stubborn, a terrifying combination for a nine-year-old, but it was a function of their nomad lifestyles. Abby’s mother gave speeches to others about how to pull their lives together, and on the few occasions she had been permitted to listen to them, she had marveled at how hypocritical the entire venture sounded. Nothing about their lives felt much together at all.

The elevator ride downstairs was smoother than others that usually bounced or shimmied up and down the cables. It smelled like cigar smoke and Abby regretted the chalky odor that clung to her when she exited.

Her plan had first been to sneak in and listen to her mother talking to the audience. They would be mostly women, mostly single, and they would all share an envious countenance because her mother wore the fanciest clothes and hired a professional to do her hair and makeup just on these occasions. Often these stylists, out of pity or amusement, would turn to Abby, fluffing her hair, painting tiger stripes on her nails.

“Are you going to grow up to make people feel good about themselves, too?” They would chatter at her, snapping shots with their phones, posting them to social media just the way her mother did. And as soon as the cloud of women would head down to the conference hall Abby would scrub away the colors, give herself one of those looks in the mirror, and flip through the papers scattered across her mother’s bed. Fan letters. Messages of devotion.

They always got two twin beds in their hotel rooms. In fact once her mother had howled at a concierge because he’d given them a king and after her mother Belinda remembered that she was a public figure and couldn’t get away with yelling, she’d said simply that Abby couldn’t be her own woman in someone else’s bed.

Except Abby wasn’t a woman at all, she was a child. And she never promised she would stay in the room, just that she would be a good girl.

You can trick the world, you can trick a camera, but you can’t trick a mirror. —Belinda Grayson, Life Coach and Survivor

Downstairs in the hotel, the women worshiped Belinda.

They arrived to the presentation with her book under one arm and tissues tucked in their purses. It was a well-known fact that no one left without shedding either tears of joy or jealousy, frustration or frenzy. Belinda had dragged herself through hell and back and now could prove to the world of hurt women that survival was possible. Pretty, even.

“And tonight you will go home and know that the morning is a gift, that you are a gift, and that I am sending my good energy to each of you personally.” Belinda emphasized the right words, swallowed the weak ones, and stood poised to take over the world.

The crowd erupted with cheers. Belinda started rotating her wrist because she would need to sign each woman’s book, and not just a signature. There would be a note of wisdom, stolen from somewhere else because all of the good things had already been said by people much smarter, much more compassionate, than Belinda. But the notes were part of her brand. And her brand meant everything regardless of what sacrifices and truths had to be played with.

An electronic whine distracted her momentarily, and she buried her phone in the depths of her bag, because Gregory had been texting the entire evening. The messages had started lengthy and desperate, but the more she ignored him, the shorter the texts became until he simply said I’m packed. I’m gone. Belinda smiled, tilting her head to the left because it bred trust in people. She’d taken psychology classes at the local community college to understand how to worm her way into their brains and make them feel special. Loved. Unfortunately this unintentionally worked too well with men, none of whom understood that if she were to marry or publicly date someone, her image would shatter into a million little pieces worth nothing. And she’d been worth nothing to many: first her alcoholic neglectful parents, then her lascivious college professor, and finally a philandering husband.

Worth nothing. Belinda would never hear those words again, and slowly, as her fans flooded her with gifts and emails, the words faded and blurred.

“Could you make this copy out to my ex, Bucky.” The woman wore an oversized jumper and too much blush as if she were unbearably hot or itchy. Her hands smelled of juniper. “Tell him to fuck off. Fuck off Bucky. Love, Belinda.”

This wasn’t the first anti-dedication Belinda had been asked to do, because these women wanted to siphon off just an ounce of the strength she’d used to leave her own husband. The secret to it was that Belinda had no choice, she’d known that deep down either she would leave him or kill him, and she didn’t want to go to jail and wear an orange jumpsuit and eat mushy green beans. Instead she told him one night that he was the nothing—after he’d drunk himself into a stupor—and then she lied and told the world that night he beat her and threw her against a wall and told her he’d do the same to Abby and so with every ounce of courage she’d packed up her daughter and herself and run away to protect them both from the inevitable. Other women took her lead. They tumbled down the rabbit hole with her, even though her story was rife with half-truths, and husbands came home to empty beds.

If you retrace your steps, you’ll only get a front row seat to all of your mistakes. —Belinda Grayson, Life Coach and Survivor

The police officer was terrified for the mother.

“These don’t lead anywhere. They’re a threat!” Belinda held Abby’s shoulders firmly as the police ushered them away from the crowd huddling by the muddy footprints. Abby’s feet were notoriously bare.

“It’s a prank. I’ve seen similar before, and often someone is just being ugly. But how did they get your daughter’s shoes?”

The officer knelt down and studied Abby’s toes one by one, as if there was a shred of evidence woven between them. Belinda knelt right down with him and refused to stop her own interrogation.

“Talk to me, not her. She’s clearly traumatized. Speechless.”

Abby nodded three times in agreement with all of her mother’s statements, as she’d been taught.

“It doesn’t matter how he got her shoes. Look at them.”

The footprints were disturbing. The feet were facing the wrong way as if the legs had parted ways and tried to run away from one another. And the mud was a strange dark copper color that made the police officer’s stomach turn because he’d seen mud like this before. Mixed with blood. But it was his job to keep Belinda and her daughter calm and somehow sedate the crowd that fiercely protected the two. A number of them were on cell phones with friends or the press, and he knew that in a matter of minutes things would become more complicated than they needed to be.

Abby sat down on the floor, crossing her legs and inspecting her own feet. The police officer noticed small cuts on the base of her heels and immediately pulled gauze out of his jacket pocket. Even though Belinda was quickly typing on her phone, he knew full well if he approached without her consent she would eviscerate him.

“Ma’am, her feet are bleeding. I need to wrap them, or would you like to?” He held out the gauze as a peace treaty, relieved when she motioned for him to do the job himself. Now Belinda was on the phone with her manager, demanding a private investigator immediately.

“Abby,” the police officer tried, “you look pale. Are you hungry?”

“I’m thirsty.” She broke her silence. “My throat hurts, and I only drink ginger ale or water.”

Her demand amused him, an echo of her mother’s behavior except she didn’t know how to be nasty about it and instead presented her feet for him to wrap. He did it quickly and thought better of asking her more about her shoes because he recognized the exhaustion in her voice, and frankly he was exhausted just watching Belinda let alone living with her. He asked the concierge to bring ginger ale because it was more interesting than water and procured a private room for the two behind the kitchen.

The throng of women tried to follow, but at this point more police had arrived as well as the media and they managed to block one another respectively. “We are investigating,” the officer announced to the crowd. “And the little girl is safe. She was never abducted.”

Somehow his statement made the crowd angrier. They only wanted to hear about the star.

“Tell Belinda not to let anyone threaten her. We support her,” one fan chimed in as if she had a megaphone.

“Those footprints look like blood,” another noticed, and the police officer slammed the door behind him where Belinda stood by a low window counting the vans in the parking lot. Abby was shaking in her chair and still hadn’t put on the socks or anything else brought to her but carefully sipped the ginger ale and watched the officer with the clearest eyes he’d ever seen. He brought the can over to her cup to pour more in, and with her lips still wrapped around the straw, she whispered to him from the side of her mouth this isn’t the first time.

The police officer was terrified for the daughter.

The truth cannot be sacrificed or perverted. It will always claim what rightfully belongs to it. —Belinda Grayson, Life Coach and Survivor

Abby and her mother looked at one another, with foreign eyes.

“This is not the first time someone threatened to harm Abby, but it’s the first time anyone did it publicly, and so I am forced to address it publicly. This is no coincidence.” Belinda turned to the crowd and exhaled, ready to reap the rewards of her stunt.

She had brought a chair up next to the podium, and Abby crossed her legs and hugged her knees tightly with bare feet still wrapped in the officer’s gauze, staying within arm’s reach of her mother. The little girl caught sight of herself on a shining tray tipped over at the end of one of the banquet tables and locked eyes with herself, counting silently in her head and forgetting the way the shoes had been pried from her feet.

“I had planned on waiting and announcing this at the gala, but I’ve just accepted a television offer, one that will allow me to spread my message globally. It is something I wanted since I was a little girl. Even though some might be… embarrassed at what I have to say. So much so that they thought threatening Abby would silence me.” Belinda also noticed her smile in the tray that had captivated Abby and couldn’t help admiring the red lips. The curved shoulders. Belinda dominated the room. She didn’t need to demand obedience. It was served to her freely.

The audience refused to stop cheering, despite the media frantically waving their hands to get Belinda to acknowledge them and answer questions. It was the remedy to all the ugly voices in her head, and she knew what she’d done, what had been required to do to get her there was all worth it. Borrowing Abby’s shoes and traipsing back behind the hotel through the mud where one of the stable horses had just given birth. Carefully coating them with a layer of the dirt and waiting until there was a lull in the lobby and the cameras craned their crooked necks away from the poster advertising Belinda’s latest engagement. It all delivered the perfect forum. Everyone in the room would be hinged on who was threatening Abby. The mystery would launch her show perfectly, and all Belinda had to do was keep up the ruse.

“I’m setting us up for the rest of our lives,” she’d whispered to her daughter just before bed, filling Abby’s head with hopes for the future rather than any happiness of the present. “But if you tell, if you let anyone know, someone will come take you away and then we’d both be wrecked. Abby, we are a team.”

Once the reporters were able to make headway through the applause, one man asked Belinda what she thought the footprints meant. Belinda’s heart started vibrating in her chest because she had known this question would be asked. Everything had been orchestrated flawlessly.

“You know, some with darker minds might conclude a darker meaning, but what I see are two paths, going forward or sliding back, and I…” Belinda moved to the grand doors nearby. “I am moving forward, and the truth will be told. All of our truths will be told.”

The officer frowned in the audience, noticing a piece of gauze had loosened and Abby draped it back and forth across the floor. The stains of blood actually looked pretty to her, scarlet butterflies tattooed along her feet, and she suddenly appreciated her mother’s instructions to keep her feet bare even though the air stung the unintentional cuts the glass she’d dropped in the room had carved into her skin. The room was fascinated with Belinda’s show, and the officer secretly moved to Abby’s side and curled the white bandage over her foot.

“Honey, your mom wants me to take you to get your feet washed up before they start taking pictures. You know how important those pictures are, don’t you?”

Abby nodded and liked the way the officer smiled right at her, never looking above or away.

“Mom told me how important it is to do what she asks, for both of us. Or else…” Abby’s voice trailed off, and the officer lifted her to her feet and slipped out the back exit with her to his car which wasn’t a police car at all, and once she sat down next to him in the passenger seat, a seat she was never allowed to sit in with her mother, she pulled the mirror down to smile and make monster faces.

“Abby,” the man said, unbuttoning his old Halloween costume and settling into the grey T-shirt he wore underneath, “what was the or else?”

Abby folded her hands in her lap and played with the frayed ends of her shirt. She trusted the man who had bandaged her feet and listened to every single word she’d said as if all of it was important.

“Or else I’d be taken away.”

The man reached into his glove compartment and handed her a bag of Goldfish and jelly beans because he wasn’t used to children and didn’t exactly know what she might like, but the combination made her smile and so content she didn’t bother asking why they were driving away from the hotel. It had almost been too easy for the man to take Abby with him even though his plan had initially been to confront Belinda and accuse her of the lies she spread, of the parents who weren’t actually alcoholics but just dismissive or the ex-husband who had been so dismissive she’d had an affair with a man she didn’t remember. The Goldfish and jelly beans were meant to be a gift, not a lure.

And Abby and the man looked at one another, with the same eyes, and he believed that if he retraced his steps far enough he’d find a way to keep his daughter and expose Belinda’s mistakes to the world.

pencilSarahSaysWrite. Email: sarah.clayville[at]gmail.com

Fat Peanut

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Baker’s Pick
Nancy Nau Sullivan

Photo Credit: Helen Haden/Flickr (CC-by-nc)

Photo Credit: Helen Haden/Flickr (CC-by-nc)

Ann raked through the dresses on the sales rack. A blue dress with a chain link pattern. A Pucci. Pucci’s back.

Most of the good stuff was gone. She remembered when this shop was a wood hut where the islanders—the real islanders—bought cheap beer, cigarettes and salami. Now Pine Avenue was turquoise and pink, with a designer donut shop and shop after shop of this stuff. Her hand dropped down the polyester sleeve of a yellow-and-pink top with swirls from neck to hem. My sister could carry that one off, I couldn’t.

The grizzled old Floridians were gone. The island was peopled with fat rich white northerners who smelled of expensive soap and talked, loudly, about nothing.

The woman standing next to Ann pulled a short white dress off the rack. “I like it but I’d have to iron it,” she said.

“No one irons anything any more. They like to look wrinkled.”

The woman was wrinkled and stylish with shiny blond-grey hair and liquid-blue eyes, so light they almost disappeared into the whites. She had diamonds in her ears the size of cocktail peanuts.

The woman twirled the dress back and forth. She hung it up and then took it out again. “I really like it.” She mostly talked to herself like Ann wasn’t there. The woman seemed to be used to an audience.

Ann decided to be nice. Sometimes she had to make the conscious decision. “A good cut on you. Jag.” It was more of a beach top with breast pockets and pearl buttons. Ann liked it, too. If the woman didn’t want it, well, maybe…

The sun was bright and warm on the porch of the shop where all the sales hung. Forty percent off.

“It’s 87 dollars,” the woman said.

She was a snowbird flown from the cold, landing on this island off the coast of Sarasota. Ann couldn’t place the accent. Boston? Maine?

The woman suddenly dropped the dress to her side, as if reading Ann’s mind. “Where are you from?”

“Chicago,” Ann said. “Originally.”

“My daughter’s in Indiana. At Butler. She’s there because she’s a professor,” the woman said. As if the daughter needed a legitimate reason to be in Indiana, which by the way, Ann was about to point out, is not Chicago.

Ann let it pass. Snowbirds were one thing, one irritation in life’s island cycle. As soon as the first Easter egg came out of the basket, they would all be gone up north to their lilacs and tulips. Ann couldn’t wait. She wanted the roads and grocery stores and beaches back. But she couldn’t have it all back.

“Where are you from? Can’t quite place the accent,” Ann said.

“Ohio. Hubby’s in cardio.”

“Oh?” Ann felt like a snowball had been stuffed down her back.

“Yes, We just love this island,”

Ohio, maybe Cleveland. Cardiologist.

The Cottage.

Ann had lost their beloved cottage to a cardiologist from Cleveland. He’d swooped in with more money than God and bought it out from under them. Ann’s uncle had been the instrument of destruction. He’d taken the matter to court, and under the laws of partition, he forced the sale of the cottage. He took $840,000 in the deal, making the most of real estate before the Crash of ’08. Ann and her brothers had tried to buy him out, but he wouldn’t have it. He worked on the cardiologist from Cleveland who hung in there with a slew of lawyers, pushing for the deal until it was done. Ann had looked over at her uncle in court, his white, bald head bent and shining, the orb of evil. She could not look Uncle Neil in the eye after that. She didn’t have to because he died. She used her share of the sale—$130,000 of Judas money—to pay off debts. She’d wanted to throw it in the Gulf. It would have made as much sense. But the money was gone, and so was the cottage. To someone like this woman, someone from Cleveland. She remembered the name. Hurley, or Huntley.

The woman took the white dress out again. “I’m going to try it on,” she announced brightly.

The first thing the cardiologist from Cleveland did was tear down the cottage. He built a tan McMansion with orange shutters and a green barrel-tile roof and filigreed balconies, leaded glass coach lamps and Tiffany glass in the front door. Hideous. The cottage had stood on two gulf-front lots, so there was plenty of room for the grand mansión, finished off with its trucked-in Disney-esque garden of hibiscus and palms. They called it The Condo, it was so big, towering over that little house on the corner next door that now was completely cut off from view and sunshine.

Her grandmother found the cottage on a sunny day in 1956. She’d been reading The Bradenton Herald, crinkling the want ads. She tapped the crumpled pages of the newspaper with a pencil. “Ha! Let’s go out there and have a look.” Ann didn’t know what she was talking about, but she was excited. In her six-year-old brain, she knew this had to be something special. “Out there” meant the beach. On the island.

They drove out to Anna Maria Island in her grandfather’s new hunter green Cadillac, the bulbous versión with the pokey little fins. Ann had her bathing suit wadded up under the front seat, just in case. Off they went, her grandfather with the cigar in his mouth and her grandmother with a frill of white hair blowing in the humidity, clacking over the wooden drawbridge, past the tall spindly palms and the mangroves, the Brazilian berries and the Australian pines, out to the white beach and turquoise wáter. Burning pitch wafted from the fireplaces in the new little stucco ranch houses at Key Royale, Sand Dollar Haven, Coquina Corners.

The cottage stood on the edge of the Gulf of Mexico on stilts, slightly crooked on the white sand. The logs were interspersed with swaths of white stucco; it was a striped house with a rusty-red shingled roof. The white-framed windows on either side of the faded green door, like two great eyes, saw right into Ann’s soul.

Ann’s grandfather laughed when they pulled up to it and got out. “Liz, the gulf is right up to the house!” She just laughed. She was falling in love, and so was Ann standing next to her, the two of them looking out at the wáter, while Ann held her silky fingers. She squinted up at the sun, yellow, soft, golden sun. She opened her eyes, and the turquoise wáter dazzled her from that minute on. Her grandfather chomped the cigar, paced the short street of crushed shell. He nodded at her grandmother, both of them grinning. She raised the edge of her floral housedress and waded into the foamy surf. Ann flopped into the waves beside her, bathing suit forgotten.

Her grandmother had saved “egg money,” tucked in her rubber stocking. She made the down payment on the cottage and four surrounding lots—most of them underwáter—for $5,000. The seller was glad to get rid of it.

Over the years, they piled in and drove out to the cottage. The beach changed, receding and advancing, until finally they ended up with a football-field-sized playground of sand like white sugar. They jumped into the fierce winter waves and rolled in the sand until they were sugar cookies. They hid in the sea oats and ran out in shrieks of laughter; they buried each other up to their necks, dug for coquinas and made horrible soup with shellfish (from an Old Cortez récipe). They scoured the beach for sand dollars and periwinkles. They watched dolphins and fed lettuce to the manatees and stale bread and cereal to the sea gulls.

All day they were on the beach, and at night, they watched the white edge of the gulf from the window. The wind creaked and sang through the cracks between the logs. Ann went to sleep, listening to the waves that rolled up close to the window, some nights, lapping against the cottage. The splash was thrilling. Her grandfather said the pilings under the cottage went down seventeen feet into the sand, and that they would be safe in the best place on earth.

It was magic, winter after winter, into March for St. Patrick’s Day and Dad’s birthday in the sun and under the moon, until it stopped. The time was gone, but Ann held on to it. It was there in the burning pitch, the musty sea, the sound of gulls. It all brought her back there instantly to the cottage. As long as there was memory, it would always be there.

She stood behind the woman, the blue dress looped over her arm. Ann saw the woman write Hurley on the charge slip. Hurley from Cleveland.

Ann felt the sharp twisting in her soul.

She wanted to strangle the woman, follow her out to her Mercedes, probably, and key the side of its impeccable paint job, maybe even trip the woman on her way out—before she strangled her.

The woman turned. “Well, you have a wonderful day. Enjoy your dress. That is a fabulous color for you.”

Ann’s lips worked as she plastered on the fake smile. She wanted out of there. “You, too. Have a great day, and a safe trip. Back to Cleveland.”

“Cleveland? Why would I go to Cleveland?”

“You said you were from Cleveland.”

“Lord, no. I can’t imagine why I said that. Ohio, yes, Cleveland, never.” The woman juggled the white shopping bag with the Jag dress in it. She shifted her Fendi bag to the other arm. “Didn’t you say you’re from Chicago? No, we’re not from Cleveland. We’re from Chicago. Just like you.”

pencilNancy Nau Sullivan is a Chicago area writer who recently returned from the Peace Corps in Mexico. Prior to service, she taught English, and for many years, was a reporter and editor at newspapers in the Midwest. She has a master’s degree in journalism from Marquette University. Amphorae Publishing Group will publish her memoir, The Last Cadillac, in February. Her stories have appeared this year in The Blotter, The Atherton Review, and Akashic Books online. Email: nabns[at]aol.com

Advice

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Creative Nonfiction
Ron Riekki

Photo Credit: Ashley Rose/Flickr (CC-by-nc-nd)

Photo Credit: Ashley Rose/Flickr (CC-by-nc-nd)

I want you to watch Buffalo ’66. I want you to read Sarah Kane. I want you to see Václav Havel’s Temptation. I want you to make out with people from every ethnicity on Earth. I want you to have a child if you want to have a child and I want you to have a child. I want you to read at least one of my poems; I promise they’re short. I want you to throw your guns in the garbage—or no, melt them into nothingness—and this includes your metaphorical guns. I want you to be brave and ask them out, especially if your hair’s a mess. I want you to understand how hot you are. I want you to wash your hands more frequently, because it really does help reduce how often you’ll get sick. I want you to be CPR certified. I want you to help somebody’s dream. I want you to write something that scares you. I want you to write black characters. I want you to write Native American characters. I want you to try to write in ways you never felt you could. I want you to learn a foreign language and live in a foreign country and make out for at least two hours with someone from that foreign country until you can walk away and still feel like you’re kissing them. I want you to wear condoms. I want you to find a center of peace in you. I want you to stop looking at your phone so often. I want you to tell your parents you love them more frequently, with real meaning to it, whether or not they’re around. I want you to forgive. I want you to volunteer at a prison. I want you to take an improv course. I want you walk more frequently. I want you to avoid any of those crazy diets that are meant to take your money and make you unhealthy. I want you to breathe when you start feeling any road rage. I want you to fasten your seatbelt. I want you to go to a concert and I want you to do it soon. I want you to take dance lessons at least once. I want you to watch Mitch Hedberg’s standup; I want you to realize he’d still be around if he didn’t do the stupid heroin. I want you to reduce the amount of porn you watch. I want you to understand that NASCAR is destroying the environment. I want you to cross-dress and I don’t care if it’s part of a comedy show as long as you do it. I want you to act. I want you to sing. I want you to be even sillier. I want you to memorize a quote from Speed Levitch in The Cruise. I want you learn how to juggle. I want you to thank a veteran. I want you write. I want you to write. I need you to write.

pencilRon Riekki has been published in Toasted Cheese, PANK, BluePrintReview, New Ohio Review, and several other journals. His book The Way North: Collected Upper Peninsula New Works (Wayne State University Press, 2013) is in its third printing. “Beautifully edited, The Way North is more than a collection. It is a collaboration of writers, each whom understands in his and her own way what is sacred about that utterly unique, fresh water peninsula known as the U.P.” —Stuart Dybek, author of The Coast of Chicago. Email: ronriekki[at]hotmail.com

The Convention

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Fiction
Bonnie Thompson

Photo Credit: Emily Rose/Flickr (CC-by-nc-sa)

Photo Credit: Emily Rose/Flickr (CC-by-nc-sa)

If Isabelle, she wonders, slipping into her black cocktail dress, gets cropped to Izzy, then does Ysabel become Yzzy? A laugh escapes her as she crosses the room and shoulders the heavy hotel window open, letting in the clamor of the cabs and buses below, and she leans out and breathes in the city’s smoke and steam. The name, she thinks as an ambulance races past, is a cipher, a rune from a lost civilization. A palindrome, even, the same in forward as in reverse.

She loops two slim silver bangles over her wrist, captivated by the glittering skyline, and it occurs to her that if she were to write it on one of those cheerful “My name is” stickers, people might not understand. Maybe they’d look from the hieroglyphics to her face in bewilderment, expecting a Kyrgyzstani or a Cardassian or a crone from ancient Sumer, come to fulfill a mythic curse.

Does it matter what bland Kathy or Ann or Susan she leaves behind? Her skin tingles as she applies eyeliner, sweeping it past the outer corners of her lids in a way that seems right for Yzzy. And then she heads down to the lobby and uses a black Sharpie to draw clear, straight capital letters on the white name tag, and raises her head and steps into the hubbub of the opening night festivities of the Convention of the Association of Organizations. In the Grand Ballroom she’s a stranger to everyone, excepting the five coworkers she shared an Airbus with.

She thinks that might be where the trouble starts, but it isn’t. Her officemates, every corporate-minded one of them strenuously swimming upstream, have zero interest in her presence here. After all, she is only support staff, appended at the last minute for her behind-the-scenes magic. She stands under a cut-glass chandelier, for a moment the one still figure in the bubbling crowd, the swirl of perfumes tickling her nose, the downy hair on her bare arms rising with the pop and crackle of the igniting party.

The man who calls her “Yizzie” begins it, unfolding a creased flyer and trying to win her interest in a patent he’s working on. A sheen of perspiration coats his scalp, a skinny tie garrotes his neck, and every time she says something encouraging, he answers, “Yes, but,” bobbing his head like a mechanical chicken. The roadblock, he tells her as the burgundy carpet drowns her dainty kitten heels, is that he needs funding.

She aims for the movable mahogany bar and wedges herself in up front. To her right, a woman with a smooth, assured voice is ordering a glass of pinot grigio.

“That sounds refreshing,” says Yzzy with a smile. “One for me, too.”

As the tide of thirsty conventioneers sluices them off to the side, the woman takes Yzzy’s elbow and segues into a jeremiad about the association’s illogical election procedures—having been, Yzzy gathers, repeatedly unsuccessful. Her wiry hair is tourniqueted into a bun the shape of an engorged tick, and when, in indignation, she shakes her head, the tick wobbles like it’s going to drop off. As the plastic cup of thin wine sweats into Yzzy’s palms, her mind ping-pongs between whether or not she should tell the woman about the coral lipstick smeared over her front teeth.

She is rescued from this quandary: a man who’s positive he knew her a long time ago folds her into a familiar hug, her nose flattened against the naphthalene scratchiness of his checked sport coat. Despite her name tag and her glass of wine, he keeps calling her Lisa and insisting that she let him fetch her a Manhattan. His jacket is tight under the arms, and his belt is on its last notch, the previous two holes marked with puckered crescents. “This bartender,” he confides, blotting the mist from his eyes, “is a diamond in the rough. No one here—” He glances around and is bumped by two men in a rush, and he stumbles and apologizes and turns back to her. “No one appreciates his gift. The elegant balance, the complexity he’s achieved,” he says, and as the ice cubes clink together in wordless chorus, Yzzy’s eyes, too, grow moist.

She extricates herself from one nutbutton after another, baffled. Is it off-putting, she wonders, the alias? Or perhaps it’s the eyeliner. Somehow, in this new, large group, no one but the oddballs will even meet her gaze.

So this, she thinks, edging her way around the jagged perimeter of the crowd, is probably the sum total of life for Liz LaMosca, the coworker everyone shuns: a stick insect who keeps seven cats in a studio apartment and speaks with a voice like Rice Krispies falling from a great height into a small hole. The regular people avoid you, and the misfits swarm like flies.

The fire door has been propped open, to bleed off some of the party’s cloying warmth; the exit leads to a narrow, unlit alley. Her spiky heels grind against the grainy asphalt, and in the damp night air, a chill ripples through her. Inside, the clumps of people divide and converge. She averts her head but still hears them gabbling and guffawing, the swish of wool against silk.

It’s self-segregating, she sees; it always has been. Human nature at its most fundamental: those people there, these other people here.

“Yzzy?” a woman’s voice inside peals. Her heart leaps like a rising fish, and she turns, her mouth open. The woman laughs with a sound like pearls scattering across a glass counter. “He isn’t! Is he?”

Yzzy turns away, her chin dropping to her chest. There is something wet on her bodice, and she whisks a hand over it. On her name tag, the Zs look the same upside down, but the Ys are as strong as little Eiffel Towers. Her shoulders draw back. Person by person, she decides, there’s a way to right the balance.

Wending briskly through the crowd, she returns to the tinkerer. She tells him that if he wants the patent, what he has to do is finish the invention. It’s not funding he needs, it’s a prototype and an application, and with new resolve, he admits that she’s right. Above his head, the chandelier’s glass teardrops sparkle with a hundred rainbows, and her smile is so wide that the corners of her lips crack. Then he taps her forearm twice and says, “But, Yizzie, here’s what you don’t understand.”

Scattered snippets from the crowd filter her way, and as he drones, she latches onto each in turn, seeking the key: “Bill, we’ll hook you up with…,” “…can count on Terry here,” “…folks in D.C.,” “…LaMosca, breath like kitty lit—”

In the ladies’ room, washing her hands just for the comfort of the warm water, she is joined by the woman with election issues. She keeps her eyes focused straight ahead, but the mirror makes the name on her sticker softer, more compassionate: Yssy. As the hand dryer sighs itself to silence, she gestures, showing her colleague the errant lipstick. “Oh my!” she says, cleaning the smears off her enamel with the corner of a Kleenex. Taking a deep breath, Yzzy mentions that her bun has begun to unravel, and the woman seizes it, tugs until it’s lumpy. Then she hunts in her purse for her tube of lipstick and lays on a fresh coat.

The guy with the sublime Manhattans is now too pie-eyed to understand much of anything. She leads him to the revolving door—the two of them caught in the same quarter slice, performing a clumsy cha-cha-cha—and flags him a cab. “You always were a doll, Lisa,” he says, his eyes streaming. He presses her thin hand between his bready palms, and deep in her chest, something delicate cracks.

In the dim and drafty hallway outside the Grand Ballroom, the festive conviviality on the other side is muffled to a nattering babel behind the big double doors. She blinks at the guard, her lashes as whispery as veined wings, and points to her name tag, but he shakes his head. She skitters back. He needs the official pass: the pricey little badge that gets you into the exhibition hall and all the panel discussions and, yes, the feeding frenzy of the big first-night open bar.

Her neck bowed, she unbuckles her purse and digs it out from the compartment under the flap. He carefully inspects the convention logo and her name, beneath the plastic sleeve, but she is already swiping with the heel of one hand, removing the exotic eyeliner. “Welcome back,” he says, his thumbnail flicking something dark from between his teeth, “to the convention, Miss LaMosca.”

pencilBonnie Thompson is a freelance book editor. Her fiction has been published in a handful of literary magazines, including the South Dakota Review and the Elysian Fields Quarterly. Email: bthompson.xyz[at]gmail.com