Tag: Fiction

Welcome to Writers Resist the Fall 2024 Issue

The collage by Kristin Fouquet is an apt introduction to this issue, launched in the final throes of the chaotic, often hateful presidential campaigning. How wonderful it would be if the joyful prospect of electing the first woman president of the United States could be just that.

Perhaps we can make it so by encouraging all our sisters and other beloveds to use our hard-won right to vote. As Kristin’s artwork warns us, “Suffrage or Suffer.”

But first, a very fond farewell to one of our founding editors, Sara Marchant, who has a few words to share:

In the last days of the late 1900s, I woke up underneath a beanbag chair on the bamboo floor of a thrashed house not my own, missing a shoe, cake-frosting in my hair, and with full awareness that hijinks had ensued. My first thought was: That was an excellent party.

Today, while reading this issue of Writers Resist, please picture me in my pajamas, bedhead resplendent, toasting you, dear readers, contributors and editors, with my second cup of coffee.

Writers Resist was born from worried dread about our future and righteous anger over our present reality, and there is still much work to be done, but I know I leave her in capable hands . . . and it has been an excellent party.

Now, this issue has a notable dose of dystopias, but—or because of that—you should find some kindred souls in the works of our contributing writers and artists—and if you’d like to join them for our virtual Writers Resist Reads, on Saturday 16 November at 5:00 p.m. PACIFIC, please request the Zoom link via WritersResist@gmail.com.

D. Arifah, “Watching Over the Horizon“

Linda Bamber, “Endless War“

Robyn Bashaw, “Beware the Homo Sapiens“

Cheryl Caesar, “Grass“

Chiara Di Lello, “Abecedarian for Billionaires“

Matthew Donovan, “I Believe Her“

Kristin Fouquet, “Suffrage or Suffer“

Ellen Girardeau Kempler, “Poem in Response to Mass Shooting Number 130 in the United States 2023“

Michael Henson, “The Dream Children of Addison Mitchell McConnell III“

Jacqueline Jules, “How I Feel About the 2024 Election“

Craig Kirchner, “The Coming“

Christian Hanz Lozada, “When I hear ‘migration,’ I think of ships“

Rasmenia Massoud, “Who We Are, More or Less“

Ryan Owen, “Breathe“

Kate Rogers, “Sisters“

Elizabeth Shack, “tree : forest :: ad : internet“

Angela Townsend, “French Kissed“

Rachel Turney, “Respect“

Diane Vogel Ferri, “Election Day“

Who We Are, More or Less

By Rasmenia Massoud

There’s no telling how long his 15 minutes are gonna last.

His raincloud-gray eyes stare out from thumbnails and video clips in news feeds. They’re surrounded by white impact font, memeified versions of him coming in from the left and the right. There he is. The conservative news hero du jour. The vigilante. The patriot. The murderer. Eddie.

Fucking Eddie. His back ramrod straight, his nods stiff and rigid as though that shiny blue necktie is the only thing keeping his bald head attached to his thick neck. The chyron at the bottom of the screen below his grin says he’s Edward now. All grown up. All business. All American flag pin stabbed into his lapel.

Anyone who knows how to look can see the skinny kid with a mullet and weak attempt at a moustache cowering beneath the surface. Anyone who grew up in our little Idaho town that no one else ever heard of. Anyone who was drinking Mickey’s Big Mouth around a bonfire at the reservoir when our soundtrack flipped from Mötley Crüe to Alice in Chains.

Another moment that didn’t seem relevant until it was gone.

The news personality leans in to show sympathy for Edward’s harrowing ordeal. Not a hair out of place in her crispy platinum mane. The defender of his neighborhood, Edward talks about his pride in the Minneapolis suburb where he grew up. Except he didn’t. Well, Eddie didn’t anyway. There are brief flashes where he seems like a different person, but as I lean on the table to close the distance between my eyes and laptop screen, I see that there’s just more of him now. The added flesh around the neck and eyes, the meaty arms and torso. Life and time have added layers, pushing that kid I once knew farther down.

I rub the thick scar tissue on my chest, a habit I developed after the double mastectomy. A transparent reflection of my face is a ghost hovering over Edward’s on the laptop screen. My hair is cropped short, the warm blonde morphed to shimmering strands of silver. Edward’s been piling on protective layers, becoming more visible. Stacking them up until he fills a TV screen. Me, I’m shedding them, cutting things away, fading to colorless invisibility. Distilling down to the essence of a person.

The blonde woman behind the desk blinks her heavily painted eyes. False lashes fluttering and pencilled brows furrowing to show the audience how serious, how life-and-death Edward’s experience was. Edward recounts the series of events. He talks about his neighborhood, his family, his unwavering belief that America is still the best country in the world, despite how bad things have gotten.

What he doesn’t say is the name Marcelo Chavez. Neither Edward nor the sculpted on-air personality mention that Marcelo was only 15 years old. It never comes up, how the kid was walking home from a babysitting gig when he dropped his phone on the sidewalk, at the foot of a driveway. Edward’s driveway, where he parked his precious SUV. What Edward tells the woman, and the rest of the viewing audience, is that the boy appeared to be messing around with his vehicle. Maybe vandalizing, slashing tires, siphoning gas, or worse. Who can tell these days? When Edward stepped out of his house, aiming toward the trespasser, Marcelo made the mistake of raising his hands while holding his phone and having skin a shade too dark for that particular corner of the city.

Edward at fifteen had been as awkward and gangly as Marcelo Chavez. At sixteen and seventeen, he started to grow into himself, taller and thicker, a brush of brown-blond hair beginning to appear above his upper lip. No matter how deep I plunge into the murky depths of my memory, I can’t recall when he’d begun sticking to the edges of our friend group. He was a few years younger than me, not someone I paid much attention to. But Eddie made his presence known. Younger and goofy, sure, but he had more confidence than he’d had a right to.

The skunky smell of weed mingled with the pine smoke. A crackling bonfire, popping wood, whooping, and chattering from all the shaggy-haired kids clad in denim and threadbare band shirts. Strawberry blonde down to my waist, c-cups beneath my Guns n’ Roses Use Your Illusion t-shirt, dancing and singing along with Tesla about signs, signs, everywhere the signs with my bottle of Mickey’s when that kid hovering in my periphery was right in front of me. Right in my face.

“Dude. No. I have a boyfriend,” I said. My boyfriend, what’s his name, who was old enough to drive and buy beer. Also, old enough to hang out at strip bars while I drank cheap malt liquor with the rest of my underage friends at the reservoir.

Eddie stepped closer until we were nose to nose, smirking. “Yeah?” He looked around. “Where is he?”

That confidence was five sizes too big for Eddie, but he wore it like a second skin and that was enough. That’s all it took. A few days later, we’re rolling around naked and sweaty in a bedroom that belonged to neither one of us. That’s when his protective armor left him, when I saw beneath and looked into the eyes of an insecure young man who desperately did not want to be seen.

“Were you a virgin?”

He glared at me. “Of course not. Why? Was it not okay?”

“It was fine.”

“No really. If it wasn’t okay, tell me. I can take it.”

I knew better. He couldn’t take it.

“It was fine. Really,” I said.

“Just fine?”

Now, on my laptop screen, that insecure kid is in there somewhere. Like a matryoshka doll, the years of doubt, decisions and bad habits all wrapped around and around until Eddie is concealed forever.

Somewhere behind me, Lupita tells our son to brush his teeth before bed. I inhale the smell of dish soap and eucalyptus as she sits at the table next to me, leans in and turns my face to hers. She kisses the tip of my nose. Her big dark eyes glistening like they always do, hair tucked up in her silk scarf so that I can see her entire face. The dimple on her left cheek, and the freckles dotting her nose. Somehow, she glows brighter more and more with every passing year.

Then my wife closes the laptop.

“You need to stop watching this.”

“I know. But I’m stuck on the fact that we came from the same time. The same place.”

“He’s not the person you used to know. You’re not the person he knew. People change. It happens to all of us. That time and place is gone.”

I want to tell her people don’t change. They evolve and erode. They become more or less of who they are. I don’t say any of this. Instead, I push my chair away from the table and take her hand. “C’mon,” I say. “Let’s go tuck him in.”

A daily, mundane thing, the bedtime ritual of telling our son goodnight. A tiny thing that might not seem relevant until it’s gone.

Rasmenia Massoud is the author of three short story collections and several stories published in places like The Sunlight Press, XRAY Lit, and Reflex Press. Her work has been nominated for The Best of the Net, and her novella Circuits End, published by Running Wild Press, was nominated for a Pushcart Prize in 2019. A second novella, Tied Within, was published by One More Hour Publishing in 2020. You can visit her at www.rasmenia.com.

Photo credit: Joe Wolf via a Creative Commons license.

A note from Writers Resist
Thank you for reading! If you appreciate creative resistance and would like to support it, you can make a small, medium or large donation to Writers Resist from our Give a Sawbuck page.

Beware the Homo Sapiens

By Robyn Bashaw

“Don’t!” Eeip closes his mitt over Swee’s, stopping her from placing the bone into the waiting psittaciforme’s beak. Eeip pulls the bone from Swee’s grasp, tossing it in the Trash Trench where it lands between a rusty fork with its one twisted tine veering right and a single brass earring with its post back missing.

There had also been a Trash Trench at the archaeology dig where Swee had interned, growing steadily taller, but it was better in the trenches than the oceans, decomposing slowly, as it was wont to do, with occasional help from the curious nibble of a fish or the tear of a passing crocodile leg.

Beyond the bone, Swee can make out colored rectangular cases holding deadened black screens, wires crisscrossing over black boxes of varying sizes, deformed plastics of every color, brown and green glass bottles perfectly preserved in black bags. The plastic reminds her of the wide-eyed skull of a sciuridae, whose skeleton she’d uncovered in her second week on her internship, throttled by a plastic ring that finally fell loose as she brushed aside the dirt by its neck.

“Never the homo sapiens,” Eeip scolds, and Swee nods her head, glistening silver under the sun. It had been a mistake, but Eeip wouldn’t believe that. Swee knew the homo sapiens were the ones responsible for the Trash Trenches, for the plastic-choked deaths they found below ground, for the entrapment of fantastical creatures. They hadn’t known what to call them when they first uncovered them, entrapped in wired boxes, giftwrapped for their convenience: a huge creature with two long teeth poking out from its head, an animal with sharp teeth bigger than a shark’s protruding from its lips, a short-armed creature leaning back on a long line of delicate bones making up its tail, a tail-less animal with a curved spine and long nails clinging tight to an echo of a tree.

When the linguists had cracked one of the written human codes, they had learned some of the names along with the homo sapiens’: Elephas maximus, Panthera leo, Macropus rufus, Phascolarctos cinereus. It was archaeology that told the tale of their final extinction where the homo sapiens held them captive: Trees were pushed and tossed about past the brick walls and glass windows that were tortured by the wind. Tiny flowers cowered in fear, trying to hide their bright little heads before they were snapped right off. Rain poured out over the Earth, sweeping coffins over cliffs to be splattered against the rocks below. When the storm finished stirring graveyards, churches, homes, and schools together to be poured out fresh across the globe, all traces of homo sapiens’ time upon the world were washed away, buried beneath the new rising ocean.

Millions of years later, the water receded once more, cooling back into mountains of ice that revealed beaches for the cephalopods to waddle upon.

The psittaciforme plants its all-knowing black pupil on Swee, highlighted by the amber iris, as he accepts the bone of a tiktaalik from Eeip. The psittaciforme takes to the sky, its red wings flashing between the blue and yellow of his brethren, each carrying a bone in its talons to the river’s edge where the scientists would sort them and harness any DNA still inside. The tiktaalik have strong fins like the cetaceans to support their body weight out of water, scales like a fish, head like a crocodile, and tail as powerful as the cetaceans. Swee knew it was the kindred features that had made the tiktaalik a prime choice to resurrect from extinction.

Eeip snapped his jaw at Swee. “I thought you were trained! Do you know the damage you could have caused, passing on a homo sapiens’ bone?”

“I am trained!” Swee held her ground. She could have told Eeip about the extinctions the cetaceans had mapped backwards: the storm and subsequent flood that had wiped out the two-legged homo sapiens, the homo sapiens’ entrapment of the multitude of four-legged life, the four-legged life’s emerging from the tsunamis and fires rippling after the asteroid, the giant four-legged dinosaurs tramping across Pangea after the red lava of volcanoes coated the large, lumbering lizards whose steak knife teeth and sail atop their backs kept rivals at bay. It was back another layer of lava that they had discovered the tiktaalik before facing fathoms of ice. Swee stares at the ground under her fins; this was not her mistake. Homo sapiens were more than five extinctions apart from the tiktaalik. Their bones should not have been here at all. Swee lifts her eyes. “Maybe it fell from the Trash Trench?”

Eeip let his eyes scan over the Trash Trench, its logged edges monitored by the loyal canis lupus familiaris, and Swee felt her stomach landlock. Of course, the canis would never permit any piece of trash, much less a homo sapiens bone, to slip past their guard.

“Sorry,” Swee sings sweetly, and Eeip allows her to move on with a final warning to not let the mistake happen again.

•  •  •

Swee does her best to work diligently, but, when the day is done, she finds herself wandering past the cetacean and tiktaalik races with their long-standing battle of wisdom versus brute force, to slip into the river herself. Kicking her strong flippers at the end of her legs, she follows the current to the ocean where her fins shiver to brush alongside a shark and her heart pumps in relish of her flying leaps across the surface. A cackling laugh erupts from her when she spots a seal, but, when it dives deep off a shelf, she lets it pull ahead, content in the chase alone. She swims back through the teeming life of the ocean, untroubled by the schools of fish that dart away from her passage.

She pulls herself up on the river’s bank, pleased to see the brachiosaurus stretching its neck out to pluck a branch free beneath the setting sun. The land had been too bare when the cetaceans had first emerged from the ocean, so the brachiosaurs, the triceratops, and the stegosaurs had been welcome additions to help manage the plants aboveground. The same pity that had sparked Swee to pass her sciuridae’s skull along to the scientists at her internship had led to the resurrection of some of the encaged mammals.

Elephas maximus had been the most pleasant surprise. Not only did they help dig out and build the bases for the Trash Trenches, but they quickly learned to bubble the waters alongside the cephalopods to gather fish from the river to distribute to feed the pod. Swee lifts a fin now to wave at the elephas called Hoount, who swings her trunk to toss a fish Swee’s way. Swee catches it in her flipper, closing her fin over the damp scales. When she slips into her mud bed, Swee bites into the cool flesh. She tears off a small chunk of scale, offering it to her hallucigenia, which grasps the offering in three of its spindly arms, bringing it to its first mouth to suck inside its tiny body. Its two beady, black eyes watch Swee to see if more is incoming, but she does not want to overfeed her pet.

Smaller than the bottle caps littering the first layer of soil, the hallucigenia curves its hair-like neck to the ocean floor while it processes its dinner. Balanced upon its seven legs, its antennae feel ahead as it returns to Swee, who runs her fin over the spikes across its back. The tiny prickles make her laugh, and the hallucigenia nuzzles close until Swee relents and tears loose another scale chunk, reasoning to herself that one more bite wouldn’t hurt it.

Her hallucigenia is a reminder of why she chose to go into archaeology. Many would have been satisfied to stop once they reached the fathoms of ice, but Ipip was a curious cephalopod and he continued to dig. Fathoms down, the sea levels dropped as they did today and whole new creatures, including the hallucigenia, were unearthed. The gecko-sized twenty-eight-legged centipede creeping its way to nibble on microbes at low tide was perfect to keep the ecosystem balanced, but, like the hallucigenia, the wiwaxia was resurrected for its beauty. Outside many mud beds, a wiwaxia sits with its eight rows of armored plates, shimmering like a bird’s feathers with flashes of blue, green, and yellow.

Swee’s fin rests on her hallucigenia’s spikes, and she stares down into its dark black eyes as it lifts one of its legs and places it on Swee’s smooth leg. Of course. Her hallucigenia only knows her as the bringer of food. Even if Eeip hadn’t stopped her today and the homo sapiens had been resurrected, her hallucigenia would be crawling on her, seeking out more treats and rubs.

•  •  •

Swee arrives at the dig site early the next day, bypassing the layers etched into the ground to walk straight to the Trash Trench. The canis lap the trench, but there is one brown canis in front who paces by where the trash is thrown. Swee stops before the brown canis. Knowing they can understand more than they can say, she takes a deep breath.

“Were you once a pet?”

The brown canis, naturally, does not answer, but he does whine.

Swee reaches out her fin, forcing herself to not pull away as she runs it over the canis’s scratchy fur. She had practiced her speech last night. “I bet your homo sapiens took good care of you—fed you, petted you—but all of them weren’t that way. We can’t risk bringing any back.”

The brown canis hangs its head and whimpers, so Swee strokes him again. She had gone over it every way, but she wasn’t sure how to make a canis understand the difference between how something cared for its pet and how it cared for the world at large. Pets have such a narrow focus of the world.

“You can’t slip any more bones in,” she speaks firmly, eyeing the canis so he will know she’s serious. “Understood?”

The canis whines once more, but he drops his body forward in an accepting bow. So, Swee pats him on the side and takes her leave. At the dig, Eeip is waiting. He lifts his fin in welcome, and Swee returns the gesture, assuring as she flops down with him that there will be no more mistakes today.

Note: The title is based on John Whitfeld’s Lost animals: Extinct, endangered, and rediscovered species. Welbeck publishing group limited, 2020.

Though Robyn Bashaw has graduated with a BFA in Creative Writing and published a piddling of stories, her greatest accomplishment to date is training her ball python to distinguish the fast taps of playtime and the slow taps of foodtime. Communication, however possible, is vital. Check out her work at: https://robynbashaw.wordpress.com/.

Photo credit: Debbie Hall, poet, photographer and Writers Resist poetry editor.

A note from Writers Resist
Thank you for reading! If you appreciate creative resistance and would like to support it, you can make a small, medium or large donation to Writers Resist from our Give a Sawbuck page.

Breathe

By Ryan Owen

When her husband lowers the newspaper and stops hiding his cancer, Stacy learns that their voting rights have eroded as quickly as his health.  

The front fold rests on his lap. “How?” she asks.

“With new laws.” He taps the headline with an ink-stained fingertip.

From the kitchen countertop, a screen’s colorless aura startles awake, its glow spilling onto the tan tiles of the floor.

“Let me explain voting rights to you,” a robotic voice replies from the countertop.

Their eyes go wide.

“They can hear us now.” Arthur mouths the words. A hoarse whisper.

A powdery crescent scars the wall where Stacy pitches the device. Black plastic thorns litter the tiles. She steps around them as she picks her way to the bathroom.

She stares at its dead screen as she closes the door. Arthur yells that it can’t hear their words anymore, communicate them to false protectors, misguided champions. Nevertheless, she’s cautious to act, resist . . . persist.

She can’t let them win, or they will silence her words and know her thoughts. Steal her voice. For a forever that feels like death.

She has already locked her smartphone into its metal box in the attic. When she exits the bathroom, she descends the cellar stairway to cut the power to the house.

“Flip the main breaker,” Arthur shouts his deathbed advice. 

He’ll be dead by the election. They both know this. Neither says it aloud.  

She comes up the stairs, following the smooth grain of the wood handrail. She sits at Arthur’s desk, harvesting the loose threads in her thoughts. An early-morning rain soaks the sounds drifting through the window.

Her fingers rest on the cool glass keys of the typewriter. Their smooth steel rings brush her fingertips.

She is safe here. No one sees her words, reads her thoughts, as she launches them at the page.  

Her inspiration comes alive.

She presses the keys. Like soldiers, the hammers rise, striking the paper, creating the letters, forming the message.  

Will it work? She steels herself against self-doubt.

Her finger slips. The word ‘vote’ has two o’s.

She sighs.

Arthur was a gardener once, and she finds a thick thorn like a dinosaur claw, in the desk drawer. She scratches away the ink of the extra letter. She finishes the word, vote, the t grainy on the rough parchment.

Her fingers shake.

The years have swelled her knuckles, her fingers unbendable rods, rigid stems.  

Her gray hair sways in the reflections of each of the forty-nine glass panes forming the keys.

Vote. Or you never vote again, she types. She breathes.

Arthur breathes beside her. He watches. It’s all he can handle.  

She adds the period. They exhale.

Arthur hands her a new sheet of paper. An eyelet on her sleeve catches on the carriage return lever. 

She inhales.

She begins the next letter.

Ryan Owen is a writer living among the glacial erratics and waist-high stone walls of central New England. Ryan resurrects antique typewriters and writes all first drafts from their glass-and-chrome keys. Ryan’s fiction has been recognized with an honorable mention in the Writers of the Future contest and has been published in Idle Ink, Litbreak Magazine, and Penumbric Speculative Fiction Mag, and is forthcoming in Literally Stories and Writers Resist. Find Ryan on Twitter/X, @4gttnNewEngland or on Bluesky, @iviesofinkribbons.

Photo credit: Ben Rogers via a Creative Commons license.

A note from Writers Resist
Thank you for reading! If you appreciate creative resistance and would like to support it, you can make a small, medium or large donation to Writers Resist from our Give a Sawbuck page.

Welcome to Writers Resist the Summer 2024 Issue

It’s summer and all kinds of things are in bloom—beautiful and ugly—but we’re happy you’re here.

We’re moved by the courage of those who give voice to their righteous struggles.

We’re determined to continue to be able to challenge the inequitable and untenable.

We’re hopeful climate leaders will be followed.

We’re particularly grateful to Dorothy and Rebecca for their extraordinary, generous support—thank you!

And, we’re delighted to give thanks to this issue’s contributing authors and artists:

Kayla Blau, “God in Hiding“

Anna Lucia Deloia, “In Florida“

Dameien Nathaniel, “Trans Joy: A Selfie in Five Parts“

Ell Cee, “Make a Splash“

Laura Grace Weldon, “Miss Suzie Had a Baby, She Named Him Tiny Tim“

Zhihua Wang, “2020“

Myna Change, “Suburban Survival“

Elizabeth Birch, “Come Mourn with Me“

Eduardo Ramos, “Shukran“

Micaela Kaibni Raen, “Death Equals Silence“

Michal Rubin, “Numbers“

Shieva Salehnia, “Baptism“

Dick Westheimer, “Inside the Serotonin Industrial Complex“

If you’d like to join them for our virtual Writers Resist Reads, on Saturday 27 July at 5:00 p.m. PACIFIC, please request the Zoom link via WritersResist@gmail.com.

A note from Writers Resist

You, too, can join the Dorothy and Rebecca donor club: Make a small, medium or large donation to Writers Resist on our Give a Sawbuck page.

Photo credit: K-B Gressitt

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Suburban Survival

By Myna Chang

 

My sleeping bag’s nestled in the drainage ditch where I used to play hide and seek. The new people living in our house don’t have any kids, so they don’t know the neighborhood’s good hiding places like I do.

I see them in our kitchen. Mom’s curtains are gone. The walls are blue now. They’ve painted over my height chart, too. Mom stood me against that door frame every birthday so she could mark my progress. She’d scratch the pencil into the soft wood and say, “Look how much you’ve grown, Timothy!”

– Age 6, 3 ½ feet

– Age 9, 4 ¼ feet

– Age 12, 5 feet

The door frame is clean white now.

I find my old foam football wedged in the holly bushes. Sun-bleached and ratty, it smells like mildew. I tuck it under my arm and saunter down Boxwood Lane like a kid who’s never had to sleep in an abandoned car. I toss the ball up, catch it, pretend to pass it downfield. I could be on the team, I could be the quarterback, I could be any boy heading to the park on a crackle-leafed fall afternoon.

“Timothy? Is that you?”

Mrs. Johnson sounds the same, all growly and sweet at the same time. My eyes blur.

The football was a birthday present, before Dad lost his job, before the bank took our house. Before I got lost in the crowd at the shelter.

Mrs. Johnson calls my name again. I hug the ball tight and run. Just like Dad taught me.

Our mailbox is filled with letters addressed to the new people. I take the envelopes, drop the boring ones in the gutter. I find one addressed to Mom, a form from my school asking if I’d be coming back this semester, if we had a forwarding address. I fold the paper with my name, keep it in my pocket.

A few days ago, I swiped a package from the mailbox. It had a wool scarf in it. Mom always tucked my old scarf into the collar of my coat, telling me, “Stay warm, sweetheart.” The new people’s scarf kinda itches, but it’s mine now.

•     •     •

The new man sits on the back porch tapping a laptop and scribbling on a pad of paper. His computer looks like the one I used to play games on. The woman calls for him. He sets his stuff by a computer bag and goes inside.

I duck under the loose board in the fence, race to the porch, shove his computer and pencil in the bag. I sling it over my shoulder and am about to run . . . but the door is open. There’s the kitchen. My kitchen.

I slip inside. Voices drift from upstairs. For a heartbeat, I imagine it’s Mom and Dad, that we’re still together, that we’re normal again.

I take the man’s pencil, step up to the door frame. Stand straight. Mark my height on the clean paint:

– TIMOTHY, AGE 14.

I can’t do the whole thing because I don’t know how tall I am now. “Happy birthday, anyway,” I whisper.

Then I run.

 

Myna Chang (she/her) is the author of The Potential of Radio and Rain (CutBank Books, 2023). Her writing has been selected for the Locus Recommended Reading List, W.W. Norton’s Flash Fiction America, Best Small Fictions, and Best Microfiction. She has won the Lascaux Prize in Creative Nonfiction and the New Millennium Award in Flash Fiction. She hosts the Electric Sheep speculative fiction reading series. Find her at MynaChang.com, and on Twitter & Bluesky at @MynaChang.

Photo credit: Michael Coghlan via a Creative Commons license.

A note from Writers Resist

Thank you for reading! If you appreciate creative resistance and would like to support it, you can make a small, medium or large donation to Writers Resist from our Give a Sawbuck page.

 

Suburban Median

By Myna Chang

 

We see the body on the way to drop our kids off at school. It’s in the median at the Parkway stoplight. We don’t recognize what it is, at first. Understanding comes in pieces: leg, arm, slender foot. Naked, of course.

We try to look away. But is it someone we know? Nestled there in the ragweed and road debris, snarled hair hiding her face.

We gather over coffee. Talk about what we saw, how we tried to protect our children from it. Close your eyes, baby. Blood pounding in our ears.

One of us admits her husband looked, driving past, looked and kept looking. His breath ragged. She doesn’t say any more, but we know. He liked it. That helpless curve of hip.

We expect the authorities to remove the body. Cover her with a blanket. Gentle the evidence from under her nails. But when we go pick our kids up, she’s still there. No police cars, no crime scene tape.

We steel our nerves. We go to the station. We file a report. We demand: Didn’t you see? Who was she? Who did this to her? We hope for help.

The police officers raise their eyebrows, say there’s no body. Maybe it was a trick of the light, they say, or a dead deer. Maybe you imagined it.

No, we say, we didn’t imagine a dead body in the median! It wasn’t an animal, it was a woman!

The men shrug. I don’t know what to tell you.

We still see her. The bend of her back. Tangle of limbs. Faceless. It could be any of us. We think it might be all of us.

 

Myna Chang (she/her) is the author of The Potential of Radio and Rain (CutBank Books). Her writing has been selected for Flash Fiction America (W. W. Norton), Best Small Fictions, and CRAFT. She has won the Lascaux Prize in Creative Nonfiction and the New Millennium Award in Flash Fiction. She hosts the Electric Sheep speculative fiction reading series. Find her at MynaChang.com, or on Twitter or Bluesky at @MynaChang.

Image credit: R. Nial Bradshaw via a Creative Commons license.

A note from Writers Resist

Thank you for reading! If you appreciate creative resistance and would like to support it, you can make a small, medium or large donation to Writers Resist from our Give a Sawbuck page.

 

Hi

By Rachel Rodman

“I’m just saying. I’m a nice guy. I just want to say HI. And you’re going to accept this greeting whether you fucking like it or not.”     —Elon James White, from a now deleted Twitter account

 

“Hi,” he demanded.

He waited, while everyone watched; he waited with a smile, because this awkwardness was his power, his, his, his.

And something else for me.

But I did not give it. Still I did not give the “Hi” that was owed, though I knew that it was the custom here, to smile for men when they told you to.

A smile that was something else to you.

I had been here long enough, so I did know.

But I was not from here.

“Take me to your leader,” I had said, the first time we had spoken. When I had missed my sisters so much, so much—already, I had missed them so much—though not as much as I would come to miss them.

“Your leader?” he’d said.

“Your leader,” I’d affirmed. I had spoken very badly then (far less well than now). That had been weeks before, right after I had arrived, and I had not yet learned.

“You’re looking at him,” he’d said.

“I do not think so,” I’d said, and the way I spoke was very bad. I would piece this together afterwards, just how badly I had spoken, how badly I had taught myself, even with the assistance of the computer in the cryogenics chamber.

“You’re looking at him.”

“I do not think so,” I’d said again, and the way I spoke was still very bad. I would understand even more how badly later, because he would volunteer to teach me that: the meaning of shame.

Even though he was not a shipboard dictionary.

In my homeland, I had known about leaders. I’d required no shipboard dictionary to learn how to identify them. But I’d known very little about what a teacher was.

So I let him teach me.

I had, however, come to this world for the purpose of reconnaissance. I had come to analyze the air and water. I had come to make maps. As I worked, I also came more and more to correct my most serious misapprehension upon landing: that there was a leader, somewhere, to take me to.

In reality, it was not that kind of world.

So in time I regained my focus. In time, I stopped attending his lessons—the private ones that, in the beginning, he’d insisted were essential.

By that point, in any case, I thought I’d learned enough about shame.

But he’d continued to seek me out in public places, wherever I went to make maps, and he found other ways to teach me.

Initially, I was even astonished by the nuance of these additional lessons: how powerful shame can be. How, in particular, by exploiting an audience, he could shame me into submitting to him.

After a long, lonely, empty journey between the stars, I had also been confident in my understanding of space. (I was intimately aware, in particular, of the effects that one might have on space by passing through it.) But he did things to space that I had not previously understood to be possible: legs spreading to possess more of it (though it was more than that); arms spreading to take the rest (though it was more than that). “Manspreading,” the shipboard dictionary had called it, at least in certain contexts, and the entry had been accompanied by a picture of a man sitting on a bench in a public vehicle, and doing so expansively.

At the same time, his actions on space also constituted a sort of language, even though the words were few. I could translate it like this:

Validate me.

I knew what it meant now; I understood absolutely. (For not even the shipboard dictionary had been so persistent a teacher.)

Validate me.

Validate me.

So eventually, even in public, I increasingly strove to stop participating.

Even as, with ever increasing passion, he continued to teach me.

“Hi,” he was saying now, and everyone was staring, because I did not answer.

“Hi,” he said, in order to accentuate my noncompliance.

“Hi, Hi, Hi,” he was saying, because now he was going to get his validation.

He always did.

Sisters, I had said, days before, when the nature of these lessons had first begun to do more than wear. Please come, sisters.

It was selfish to ask this.

This was not a good world. Even though the air and the water were good. Even though this would be a good place for our spores to grow.

But this was not a good world.

“Hi,” he demanded.

I was only asking them for me.

With the ansible, I had sent them a message: This is a bad world, the world where I am. But perhaps, if you come…

In the journey, my ship had been used up. Our ships always were, in passages like these. Most of what remained: the computer and the cryogenics chamber, had burned up in the entry, leaving, as was usual, almost nothing.

Just me. Just the ansible. And the capacity to send one instantaneous message.

Perhaps, if we are together…

On this world, it would take many, many, many rotations to grow another ship and more fuel, and perhaps weapons too. (As first conceived, it had not been that kind of mission. First missions never are.) Until then, I had only myself.

I had gone the long way, but now that I had made that path, long and lonely between the stars, it could be much quicker for them, no cryogenics chamber required.

That, at least, could be said of my journey.

Though the way back would be just as long.

It was selfish of me to ask. It was selfish, selfish to ask.

To maroon them with me for so many rotations on this bad world.

Would they come?

“Hi,” he said, and his face was close, and everyone was watching, in this place where people came to sit and where coffee was sold. (I needed coffee, I increasingly found, though I hadn’t on the ship; I needed it to assist my mapmaking.) And the shame—yes—was everywhere, but most of it came from me, from parts of myself that, prior to his lessons, I had not known existed, or ever imagined might be violated.

This was part of the lesson.

Validate me.

Validate me.

Validate me.

He was taking all the space now; he was manspreading, manspreading into it, and, in spite of the familiarity, there was also a nuance to the way he expressed himself that I still did not entirely grasp, even as I increasingly sensed that it lay at the heart of the matter: that he seemed to want it all the more—that he wanted it implacably—precisely because he knew I did not want to give it to him.

Is that what I still needed to learn?

In that moment, however, I sensed something else, something behind me. But in that moment I did not turn.

“H—” he started.

Then, in that public place, all the people were screaming and all the people running, and with the frantic exit of everyone went some of my shame.

At the same time, there was a blast of heat and light. And something else on the wall, too, in place of where he had been—a distributed smear of what had once been him:

Manspreading.

In that smear, that “manspreading,” I recognized a basic misapprehension of the language: subject and object switched, so that it had become something that was done to the subject, rather than something the subject did. The man, in this incorrect interpretation, was not the one who did the spreading, but rather the object that was spread (gory and thin, in this case, and on the wall of a public cafe). This kind of mixup felt familiar to me; it was the sort of error committed by someone who has fundamentally not learned to speak correctly.

It was incorrect.

But not, I thought now, so very shameful.

So I turned. And, as I did, I suddenly apprehended, more profoundly than I ever had before, a feeling that, in the first rotations of my existence, safe in my homeland, I had continuously experienced but had never had any need to express—a feeling that, in part, a long, long journey, alone among the stars, had been required to teach me.

“Greetings,” I said, but not to him.

For my sisters had come.

 

Rachel Rodman’s work has appeared in Analog, Fireside, Daily Science Fiction, and many other publications. Her latest collection, Art is Fleeting, was published by Shanti Arts Press. More at www.rachelrodman.com.

Image credit: By Diario de Madrid for the Madrid Municipal Transport Company, 2017.

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A Moon Is a Moon Is a Moon

By Mandira Pattnaik

Warning: domestic violence

Because you’re the moon, Mother thinks you’re full of circles and spots, and never consistent — rebellious and sulking, often hiding in hoodie jackets, known to break china even with a sponge scrubber, and mostly saying what is best avoided, making mistakes. Sister is better. She poses no troubles, hangs on the wall like a dish cloth, never speaks, never does anything at all. Then Aunt Cheema comes visiting, shepherding guests known to her, strangers to us, and you suspect it’s the same as two weeks before, one that’ll make your family smaller by taking one away. It’s Sister who goes first, her hair plaited, jasmine flowers in them, carrying a tray of sherbet in finest wine glasses, she greets and listens while they make plans, and speaks only in consenting nods even though it’s her marriage they’re talking about. You’re told to walk to the store, with a list of items that you’re sure aren’t urgent, but what can circles do when they’re rolled about, and it’s best to stay away— grooms are known to prefer one to the other, as if they were items on a shelf. When you get back from the store the guests are gone, the atmosphere at home is loud and vengeful, the conversation dents the walls. It emerges that when the prospective groom asked Sister if she could cook Bhindi-aloo-keema, or embroider, or tie bandhani threads (and you know the answer is no), Sister, being land unchanging, consented to all, and now it was a matter of truth versus dare.

Because you’re the moon, Sister suggests it’s the circles, well-rounded, that are the problem: that you’re likely a positron having a positive charge that attracts men of marriageable age, but that the men are repelled by her because she’s firmer and leaner, the nuclei within, a collision with annihilation. When you wonder how she’d know, because the grooms never came to meet you, she says it’s because of how their eyes rove and peek behind the drawn curtain.

Because you’re the moon, you’re still the moon when many months later Sister, like land, unchanging, cannot escape when the man she was married to is merciless to her while his family watches, like good riddance. Your Mother is told only a day after.

Because you are the moon, you make yourself small thereafter, waning, waning, waning, until you completely disappear, so men know you’re unreliable and they never come near.

 

Mandira Pattnaik is the author of collections Anatomy of a Storm-Weathered Quaint Townspeople (2022, Fahmidan Publishing, Poetry), Girls Who Don’t Cry (2023, Alien Buddha Press, Flash Fiction) and Where We Set Our Easel (forthcoming, Stanchion Publishing, Novella). Mandira’s work has appeared in The McNeese Review, Penn Review, Quarterly West, Citron Review, Passages North, DASH, Miracle Monocle, Timber Journal, Contrary, Watershed Review, Amsterdam Quarterly, and Prime Number Magazine, among others. She edits for trampset and Vestal Review. Learn more at mandirapattnaik.com.

Image credit: chiaralily via a Creative Common license.

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A Woman of Good Manners

By Nikki Blakely

 

It is a universal truth that a man of good fortune must be in want of a wife, and Jayne set her sights on Edward, despite his reputation for being of a most disagreeable character.

On their first date, they went to Possum Pond.

Jayne had always been told the way to a man’s heart was through his stomach. She smiled coyly at Edward as she opened the picnic basket and placed the food onto a red checkered tablecloth laid out under the shade of a large elm tree—ham and Swiss sandwiches with the crusts cut off, red potato salad with tiny cornichons and tart-sweet lemonade, freshly squeezed.

Edward ate heartily, while Jayne merely picked at her food, as was befitting a woman of good manners. Afterward, she slipped off her stockings, pulled her dress to her thighs and waded into the pond, beckoning Edward with the crook of her finger to follow, and follow he did.

He came up behind her, grabbed her tightly by the neck, then pushed her face into the muddy murk of the shallow water and held it there until her body stopped thrashing.

The next afternoon, it surprised Edward to see Jayne strolling up the cobbled stone pathway to his house, looking no worse for wear, though he thought he noticed a slight smudge of dirt around the cuff of her sleeve.

“Darling, it’s a beautiful day for a picnic,” she said, exactly as she had the day before, and indeed it was.

True, Jayne was not an overtly handsome woman, her countenance left Edward wanting, but her cooking skills were a credit to her housekeeping. And, well, it was lunchtime and he was hungry. Edward pulled his hat and coat from the rack, and once more they set off to Possum Pond.

Today she brought crispy fried chicken, golden buttermilk biscuits, and ice cold beer, and, for dessert, cinnamon-apple hand-pies. Jayne only nibbled—she was a lady after all—while Edward ate his fill. Afterward, Edward picked up one of Jayne’s stockings that she had taken off, twisted it tightly around her neck, and pulled sharply. Her hands clawed at her throat, her eyes bulged, and her body thrashed until finally falling limp.

The next day, Jayne was again on Edward’s doorstep, with only a slight reddening around her neck.

“Darling, it’s a beautiful day for a picnic,” she said, and off they went.

She’d made a salad with fresh greens, crisp bacon and soft-boiled eggs. Edward washed it all down with Southern sweet tea, then finished the meal with vanilla macaroons. Afterward, he pulled out a knife he’d hidden in his sock, and stabbed Jayne in the neck, watching the blood first spurt, then trickle, the red stain spreading like spilled wine across the checked tablecloth.

When Jayne once again appeared on his doorstep the following day, Edward noticed a crimson spot on her collar, and thought her smile waned slightly, but other than that, she remained nonplussed. They locked arms and set off for Possum Pond.

As usual, they sat down under the cool shade of the elm, and Jayne removed the food from the picnic basket: beef tongue pie, pickled beets, butterscotch pudding and sarsaparilla soda. After they had eaten, they lay down, and spent the afternoon picking animal shapes from the clouds until Edward at last leaned over and kissed Jayne on the lips. Then he placed his coat over her face and pressed down firmly until her arms stopped flailing about and she was completely still.

“Darling, it’s a—”  Edward was already waiting at the door, coat and hat in hand.

From the picnic basket, Jayne pulled cold roast mutton, deviled eggs, sweet mulled cider, and a raspberry tart. When Edward finished eating, he picked up a thick heavy log and smashed it over her head, once, twice, three times for good measure, until her body collapsed and crumpled to the ground in a heap.

When Jayne again showed up the next day, picnic basket in hand, it had been five days since their first date. She looked a little bedraggled, with the smudge of dirt on her cuff, a reddening around her neck and a drop of blood on her collar. Her bun hung askew to the left, and she walked with a slight limp.

Edward considered Jayne. She was not a great beauty, nor an accomplished woman. By her own confession, she did not possess any knowledge of the pianoforte, was not skilled in the art of conversation, and almost always lost at whist. Her prospects were most certainly limited. But her figure was slight and pleasing, she ate like a bird, and, try as he might, she would not die. What she lacked in physical attributes she made up for in tenacity. If he couldn’t kill her, he’d marry her instead. He decided to propose that day, directly after lunch.

That day, as Jayne had done every day before, she shook out the checkered tablecloth and spread it out under the shade of the elm. She slipped off her stockings, and Edward, impatient to see what new delights the picnic basket held, took haste to open it before Jayne had the opportunity, His countenance revealed his surprise at finding it empty, and he looked to Jayne for explanation.

“It is a universal truth that a woman of bad fortune might be in want of a good meal rather than a good husband, and there is a much faster way to a man’s heart.”

With one hand, Jayne grabbed Edward by the throat and plunged the other deep into his chest. She pulled out his heart, still beating, and bit into it like an apple, the blood dribbling down her chin. Then she picked up a napkin and dabbed daintily at the corners of her mouth. She was a woman of good manners, after all.

 

Nikki Blakely lives in the San Francisco Bay Area, with her partner and a precocious gray tabby named Tedz. She enjoys writing fiction of all shapes, sizes, and genres, crafting stories that evoke smiles, tears, laughter, the occasional eye roll, and sometimes even a scream. Her work has been published in Sundial Magazine, Bright Flash Fiction and Luna Station Quarterly, and others. You can find her on Twitter at @nblakely99

Photo credit: “Picnic Basket” by Paul via a Creative Commons license.

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Sunny Is Going Through a Depressive Episode

By Livvy Krakower

“The Manic Pixie Dream Girl exists solely in the fevered imaginations of sensitive writer-directors to teach broodingly soulful young men to embrace life and its infinite mysteries and adventures.”   – Nathan Rabin

 

When Sunny was eight years old her mother fell down the stairs. That doesn’t seem important now as you sit across from Sunny and run your fingers up her thigh. You can feel the goosebumps on her skin and you read them like braille. I want you, they tell you.

You see her outline before you see her eyes. You kiss her neck before you kiss her lips. You grab her hips before you grab her hand. Saturday nights always feel that same in the city. Outside the club, Sunny holds your hand as she explains to her friends that she is going to go home with you and that it is gonna be ok. You trick your brain to believe that her words are spontaneous as you watch a guy throw up in a corner. You hope that he will look up and see you with her. Sunny tugs your hand and pulls you back to her.

Let’s go, she says to you. Her words are soft and she smells of coconut rum. As you walk away you think that this girl is gonna change your life.

Sunny’s lips taste like blood. When you ask her why she tells you that she is addicted to biting her lips to the point where they split open and explode like a volcano. You play the floor is lava with your tongue. Her blood is hot and sour. You kiss her for an hour until she tells you that she is very tired and wants to smoke a cigarette. You walk outside with her. Sunny lives in the middle of nothing. Actually, she lives in Brooklyn, but when you are with Sunny it feels like you guys are nowhere at all. You watch her draw the cigarette from her mouth, and you see how the tip of it is stained with her blood. You look at her and she grabs your shirt, pulls you in and puts her open lips against yours. When she lets go, you exhale and you see gray smoke dance from your mouth—transported from her to you.

Sunny reads a book about the potato famine. It is a Tuesday morning when you kiss her. She tastes like lukewarm coffee mixed with vodka.

It was terrible, she tells you.

The famine? you ask her.

Yes of course, what else would I be talking about?

You are disappointed.

Sunny lies down on the table. Her yellow spring dress is hiked up. Her knees are up in the air and open. She looks like a skinny rotisserie chicken, the one no one buys from Costco. The speculum must be cold because Sunny squirms as the doctor puts it in. You stand by her side and hold her hand. The sweat from her fingers makes her grasp around you weaken. As you look at her, her face all red and squished like a rotten tomato, you can’t help but find her unattractive.

You will begin to feel some cramping, the doctor says to her. She responds with a gasp and a small ow. Her hand releases from yours. When she looks at you, you feel like a fish stuck in an aquarium staring at a human and wondering how this could be. She begins to cry. You have never seen Sunny cry. You always imagined that when she cried her green eyes would become even more vibrant, similar to how the taste of lollipops becomes crisper after you run them under cold water. But instead, her eyes remind you of dying grass. She asks the doctor if it is in yet.

Not yet, he says and mumbles something about her having a very small cervix and that it is very difficult to get the IUD in. She looks at you and another ow escapes her mouth before she passes out from the pain. She must hate you.

I want to scream. I want to scream. I want to scream. Sunny keeps saying to the air as she paces around the room.

Scream already, you yell at her. She is giving you an awful headache, she is constantly giving you an awful headache.

I want to scream. I want to scream. You look at her wandering around. She is reminiscent of a ditzy bird that keeps flying into the same glass door.

Just scream!

I want to scream. I want to scream.

Scream!

I want to scream. I want to scream.

Just scream already you bitch!

Sunny looks at you and slaps you hard in the face.

I don’t understand you, you say to her. She walks out of the apartment and you wait for her yell, but instead you hear absolutely nothing. You punch the closest window to you and glass cuts your hand. Sunny comes back in. You watch as she takes a pill out of her pocket and swallows it. She holds your hand and runs it under warm water until the blood is gone. After she sucks your fingers dry, she pulls off your shirt.

How many men have you been with? you ask Sunny. She lies down in your bed. She is very tired today she tells you—something to do with her increasing her dose of Prozac, something to do with her hormones, you are not really sure. All you want to be sure of is how many men she has slept with.

How many women have you been with? she asks you, you expected this.

Four, you tell her, and it is the truth. Number one was Gwen, who lived next to you in your freshman dorm. Number two was Eden, who you met at a bar. Number three was Fiona, who you met online. Number four was Jackie from work. Eden. Fiona. Jackie. Gwen. They were great, but they weren’t Sunny. Sunny was different from all the other girls.

Sunny closes her eyes, trying to avoid your question with sleep. You rub her arm softly to wake her up.

So tell me, how many? you ask again.

Twelve, Sunny says, not even bothering to open her eyes.

Twelve? you fail to contain your voice.

Why is that a problem?

No, you stumble, it isn’t a problem at all

You think I’m a whore, Sunny says to you and nuzzles closer to your chest.

No I don’t, you say unsure why you would even bother lying.

You used to count your steps and hate your father and jack off with the lights on and take Lexapro and read vintage pulp fiction and long to be a famous screen writer. You sit in the shower and tilt your head up. Hold your breath. It takes 40 seconds for an adult man to drown. 39, 38, 37. . . just before you hit twenty seconds—you breath—the gasp leaving your mouth like a deflating balloon flying in the air. You haven’t written since you were in college, but the night after you meet Sunny you open your laptop and begin typing for the first time again.

As Sunny speaks you hear nothing. In your mind you imagine her traveling the world. You see her going out dancing, her knees bouncing against each other. You see her reading in a park on her stomach, her bare feet in the air. SUN – NEE. You let the syllables rest light then heavy on your tongue. SUN – NEE.

Between kisses, she tells you that when she grows up she wants to be a mother and have two kids—a boy and a girl—the boy will play basketball and the girl will do art classes—for their birthday’s she will have them bring in brownies not cupcakes for their elementary school class to share—she hopes that they will have her green eyes, but not her mind.

You take her bra off ,and her words fade from your mind as you kiss her breasts—leave marks on her neck.

 

You can feel the vibration of Sunny’s leg shaking through the floor of the coffee shop. She drinks her coffee black. You find this poetic. Whenever she parts her lips, you believe she is about to break up with you, but instead she just takes another sip of her drink. She is constantly praying that the caffeine will work. The barista here knows Sunny’s name. She comes here every morning with you or without you. Sunny says that this coffee shop is the only thing consistent in her life. The barista is an old, round man and something about him makes you think of warm beer, microwaves, and minor league baseball teams.

I hope he is a kind man, Sunny once said about him, but the truth is he’s probably just nice to me because he wants to sleep with me.

Sunny’s leg is shaking even faster, the rapid bouncing of it transcending into you. Vibrating, bubbling, up and down and up again —a hurricane that only you two can feel—you are about to implode—spontaneous combustion.

You know I love you, you say to Sunny, not as a question nor a statement, but as something else.

You take her hand, the shaking has not stopped. She looks at you. Sometimes you wonder if Sunny is even human.

And you know I love you too, she responds in the same way. Whatever is between a period and a question mark is how you both speak to each other.

She finishes up her drink then stands up and walks over to the barista. She touches his wrinkled hand lightly as she hands him her cup. He refills it with no extra charge.

You watch Sunny in the morning. It is early in the winter and the outline of her naked body reminds you of fog. She gulps as she swallows Prozac and Valium and another pill that you do not know the name of.

Sunny?

She looks at you, she is so small.

You motion for her to come lie next to you on the bed and she does.

What is it?

You look at her. There really is so much that you want to know. You open your mouth to say something but she kisses you before you can speak. She pulls down the elastic of your boxers and you realize that she does not want you to talk—she doesn’t want you to talk at all.

 

Livvy Krakower is currently an undergraduate student at UMass Amherst. She has previously been published in Blue Marble Review, Roadrunner Review, Jabberwocky Journal, and more. She has pieces forthcoming in The Washington Square Review and Wrongdoing Magazine. You can find more of Livvy’s writing on Instagram @littlepenguinswrite.

Photo credit: Ion George via a Creative Commons license.

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Joelle Cantrell’s Fanfiction

By Holly A. Stovall

Until the paper that Joelle Cantrell wrote made it to the top of my stack of To Kill a Mockingbird essays to grade for sophomore English at Jackson High, I had been eating clean and feeling good. I was slouching deep into the couch, a pint of Clean Cream sugar-free-non-fat frozen balanced on a dictionary by my side. Only a few more papers were left in the stack, and then I would be free to hide away upstairs to write fanfiction. I loved to teach Mockingbird, but then I read Joelle’s first sentence, and an unease creeped up around my skin, like hives.

I’ll show you what Joelle turned in, and you’ll see why I’m unnerved, but if you love Mockingbird like I do, if you voted it the best freakin’ novel ever written, like the readers in all those fancy national polls, then don’t get too involved.

 

So Close to Her Momma in Heaven

By Joelle Cantrell

Last week, Bob Ewell held a pillow on his daughter’s face until she passed out. Sometimes he puts his hands around her neck, but means only to injure her, so he doesn’t squeeze as hard as he could, and he doesn’t leave bruises in front, where people would see, not that anyone would care. Sometimes, Mayella has to leave the house to run an errand in town, and folks might hate Bob even more if they saw bruises on his grown daughter’s neck, but their hate for him doesn’t transfer to protection for her. She doubts he’ll go to jail if she dies, because he didn’t even get arrested after he knocked Mayella’s momma’s head hard against the stove. He doesn’t know Mayella was watching that night. The sheriff came to investigate, Bob said it was an accident, and there was no murder charge. Weren’t ever any drama. Weren’t ever any trial.

Today, when Bob orders Mayella to chop up a chiffarobe, she doesn’t tell him she’s too tired. If she does, he’ll hit her. But it’s like the life is spilling out of her because last night all kinds of blood had been letting down, more than the monthly, more pain, bigger clumps. She would have loved her own baby to nurse, but it’s just as well it miscarried, as she can barely take care of the kids Daddy had with Momma.

Over a year ago, the little ones started begging Mayella to take them for ice cream, so she saved up, and then, finally, when she had enough for each child, she made them wash and put their shoes on and they were about ready to leave, when Daddy ordered Mayella to do some chore. He’d done this a handful of times, and the kids were disappointed when Mayella told them “not today” after all.

So finally, now, they ask again, and Mayella is fixing to take them, the thought of it cheering her up, but her daddy tells her to chop up the chiffarobe for firewood, so she just sighs and gives the kids the nickels she’d been saving and tells them not to lick down the ice cream too fast or they’ll get a headache, and to come straight home afterwards. There’s an extra nickel, the one for Mayella’s cone, and she keeps it.

The children leave and she’s inside swinging this hatchet into the middle of the chiffarobe, trying to splinter it, but it’s tough, hard wood. The hatchet gets stuck, and she lets it hang there while she catches her breath and rests her arms. She needs a nap, but her daddy will kill her if she don’t get that thing out the door before he gets back. He means to kill her dead. If not today, then tomorrow or next week. She needs to gather her strength, so she goes to sit on the front steps a moment, and that’s when Tom Robinson comes by and tips his hat.

She calls to him, asking if he’d please loosen up the chiffarobe into small enough parts that she can carry them outside.

“My daddy kill me if it ain’t done when he get back,” she says.

Everybody knows her daddy’s mean as a junkyard bitch.

Tom Robinson nods and turns to the house. Mayella goes in first and holds the door open for him to follow. She says, “Just chop it up small enough so it fits through the door. Then be on your way. I got a nickel for you.”

“I won’t take your nickel, mam,” Tom Robinson says.

She tells him he might as well take it, seeing she has no use for it now that the kids have gone on for ice cream without her. He says to save it for next time, and her eyes water, like she’s going to cry, because not since her momma died has anyone been kind. She knows she’s not supposed to like no colored man, but his voice is warm, like sunlight in winter.

Tom Robinson turns to the chiffarobe with the hatchet still stuck in it. Mayella gets a good look at his arms, how the one hangs there and the other pulls the hatchet out of the chiffarobe, like picking wildflowers in a field. He swings the hatchet with his good arm, and the wood gives way. He circles around the chiffarobe, moving his arm, high and low, and she watches chunks of wood splinter and fall.

She doesn’t know when her daddy’s coming back, and it wouldn’t do for Tom Robinson to be there when he does, so she says, “Thank you, I can take it from here.” She’s not sure that she’ll be able to finish on her own, but she’ll do her damnedest.

She stretches her hand towards him to take the hatchet, and then it just happens. She rests her forehead on his chest. “Just let me rest my head here a moment, Tom Robinson. Just for a moment,” she says, and he lets her. She closes her eyes and cries. Tears come when you don’t expect it and can’t explain it. “My daddy, my daddy does things to me,” she says.

Suddenly, Tom Robinson bolts out the door and leaves her standing, staggering. When she looks up, her daddy’s fist meets her face, knocking her to the floor. Then he gets on top of her and squeezes her neck, front and back. While he’s squeezing, she feels so close to her momma in heaven. She sees her momma’s face in a light. Her momma is the light. She passes out and when she wakes up, Daddy’s poking her with his thing, saying, “God damn bloody bitch.”

She hasn’t escaped this life yet, and it’s just as well because she promised her mamma she’d take care of the kids and the gardenias. Her daddy gets up and disappears out the door and Mayella lies there, trying to muster a drop of strength. When he comes back, the sheriff’s with him.

“See them damn bruises all over her neck and face. That’s what that colored boy did to her,” except Bob Ewell uses the vulgar term for colored people. Mayella’s momma told her the n-word was wrong, because Jesus says to treat your neighbor as yourself.

Weeks pass, then months. Mayella gains some strength back. Bob hasn’t beat her since that day. There’s going to be a trial at the fancy courthouse. Her daddy tells her she’s going to speak to a judge in front of an audience, and all she has to say is that Tom Robinson took advantage of her. He uses the word “rape,” and she figures that it means it’s when a colored man puts his thing in you. If her daddy does it, it’s just him being a daddy, and not a crime.

Her daddy takes her to town to meet with a man in a suit, Mr. Gilmer.

“Mayella, we’ve got to rehearse. Atticus is rehearsing with Tom Robinson, and you will practice with me. Now, pretend I’m the judge, and that’s Tom Robinson in that chair.” Mr. Gilmer points to an empty chair.

Mayella nods.

“Point to the man who hit your face, strangled your neck, and raped you,” Mr. Gilmer says.

Mayella slowly raises her hand towards the empty chair.

Bob Ewell stands and stomps his foot. “Ain’t nobody believe her! Mayella, you got to show’em. You been wronged, violated. You got to get upset.”

They rehearse until Mr. Gilmer and Bob Ewell are satisfied.

The day of the trial, Mayella finally steps inside the courthouse, with its towering ceiling, polished wood, and white paint. It has a balcony upstairs, like an opera house. Folks are dressed up, like they’re there for a show. Scout Finch, Harper Lee’s little narrator, paints Mayella as entirely uncultured and illiterate, but Mayella knows more than she lets on, and she’s read about opera houses.

The courthouse is packed, colored people upstairs and the white ones below. The white ones want to hear the lie her daddy is making her tell. The white folks, she thinks, ain’t never wanted to help her or her momma, even though she’s white like them, but she’s dirt poor, living at the edge of the trash dump and next door to the colored folks. She’s invisible to the people in town, with their sidewalks and porch swings, their living rooms with couches, their kitchens with tables. But they know how mean her daddy is. They know her momma’s death was never explained, and if they didn’t care that her momma died, they won’t care if she does.

Still, she don’t like to say anything against Tom Robinson, but if she doesn’t do what her daddy says, he’ll kill her. And he means to kill her dead.

They’re calling her over to a chair by the wooden box that contains the judge. Mayella’s daddy is staring her down with his most onery face, like a rabid dog. It makes her freeze.

•   •   •

Scout wasn’t there to witness the event in Bob Ewell’s house, but she was at the courthouse and can tell it from here.

Scout sees the court paint Mayella as an oversexed hussy. Today we call it victim blaming. Well, I’m sorry, but f*ck Harper Lee, because it’s not that simple.

Court’s a place for the men and their laws and punishments. It doesn’t have anything to do with getting to the truth of the danger Mayella’s in, only with the story folks want to hear and tell.

The essay assignment asks for evidence, but what’s the point of evidence if the wrong man’s on trial?

P.S. Dear Mrs. Raulston, I know you take off points for postscripts because “they take the reader out of the narrative,” so let me just say that this is the narrative. Look up. Did you know that more than three women and girls a day die from domestic violence? That’s every day, year after year. A fourth of all girls sustain gender-based violence before age 19, and more than a third of women during their lifetimes. The World Economic Forum calls gendered violence a pandemic. Also, like, 97 percent of the people who report rape are telling the truth, but you make us read about the one who lies. Do you want us to believe the girls who report are lying? We’re not supposed to believe Mayella or any victim? Is that why the principal didn’t take Kayla seriously when she reported to him that she was sexually assaulted in the band room? Are you teaching male superiority?

 

“No,” I said, though there was nobody nearby to hear me. The word “no,” irritating and itchy, vibrated in my throat. I’d told the class not to turn in fanfiction. I started to write “Re-do” at the top of Joelle’s paper but got only as far as “R” before scratching it out. Something about Lee’s novel now nagged at me, as if I couldn’t keep reading it as I had before. A murky sense of betrayal was sinking down from my throat and into my gut, hot and awful. I needed to sooth it away, but the melted Clean Cream was bitter.

I slid Joelle’s paper under the others, padded into the kitchen, and dug around the back of the freezer until I found a pint of Chocolate Chip Cookie Dough ice cream. Just one spoonful would be enough, but it soothed me so much that I wrapped my mouth around another and another. The cold sweet cream dissolved my momentary doubts about Mockingbird. I leaned on the counter, giving in, until only a puddle was left in the carton, which I then tossed in the trash.

I fished Joelle’s story out of the bottom of the pile and wrote “A” at the top, not for her, but for me, as in “A” for ancient history, meaning I didn’t have to think about it anymore, and I wouldn’t have to try to teach teenagers about domestic violence in literature. This way, Joelle wouldn’t protest her grade or complain to her mom, who would complain to me and then to the principal. The mom would write an Op Ed for the newspaper. There might be a culture war. Instead of all that craziness, I planned to go on teaching Mockingbird as I always had, not calling attention to the crimes against Mayella. It will be as if I’d never read Joelle Cantrell’s fanfiction.

 

Holly A. Stovall (she, her), a new editor at Writers Resist, is writing a thesis for her MFA in Creative Writing at Northwestern University’s School of Professional Studies. She has an MA in Women’s History and a PhD in Spanish Literature. For over a decade, she taught Women’s Studies at Western Illinois University, where she earned tenure, but her career as a feminist academic ended when a neoliberal governor starved WIU of funding. Despite being one of the most diverse and economically successful departments in the university, the Department of Women’s Studies was closed, and her position eliminated.

Since leaving academia, Holly has gone on to publish fiction and creative nonfiction in LitBreak Magazine, Writers Resist, and the Mid/South Anthology. For her MFA thesis, she’s writing a memoir about the grief of her layoff and the space she finally gave herself to fully grieve her losses. She lives in Macomb, Il, with her husband, son, and standard poodle, but visits Chicago regularly. Visit her website at HollyAWrites.com.

Photo credit: Jimmy Emerson, DVM, via a Creative Commons, license.

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Sticky Singles

By Jennifer A. Swallow

 

After several dozen first dates over beer and mozzarella sticks—none of which had led to a second—I decided to change the format. I planned to meet a guy in the park for a midmorning stroll. No pressure. Just a walk and a chat. I told him we could meet at the fountain, and I’d be wearing a felt cowboy hat and Stockman boots. He responded that that was hot and he was looking forward to meeting in person.

When Byron strolled up, he looked just like his Tinder photos—floppy blonde hair and ears that stuck out cute far, not dorky far. Okay, maybe dorky far. He was slightly overweight but in a cute way, like a teddy bear. He was wearing a red t-shirt and blue jeans, like he said he would.

He circled the fountain—looking around—and his eyes skimmed over me. He stopped about twenty feet away and examined the crowd more carefully. I remained still, waiting for him to recognize me. I was dressed for work, so I didn’t exactly look like my profile photo, but when I washed the paint away I would. All my profile photos were taken in the last few months. I couldn’t stand meeting guys in person and realizing all their photos were five years old. It was immediately obvious, and their mumbled protests about not having any recent ones were a huge turnoff.

Byron’s eyes swept the space around me again, not seeming to register my presence, but then they flickered back and looked squarely into mine. I struggled to not blink. He stared. I stared back. Recognition loosened his squinted eyes, his scrunched forehead, his tightened mouth. When he took a step forward and asked “Kate?” I finally broke character.

“Yup, it’s me!” I stepped forward and held out my right hand, forgetting it was covered in gold body paint until he raised an eyebrow at it.

“Sorry. Job hazard.” I turned around and grabbed my saddle bag from the ground. It was also covered in gold paint on the outside and contained about forty dollars in ones and fives. “Theft is another hazard. Gotta be careful.”

“This is your job? Your artist job?” He scanned my outfit from top to bottom. In addition to the promised cowboy hat and boots, I wore a plaid shirt with mother-of-pearl snaps, a denim skirt held up by a leather belt with a large brass buckle, and gauntlet style gloves with leather fringe. Every inch of clothing and even my blonde, braided hair was coated with gold paint.

“Yes, well, no. I mean, I also sketch. Images of the Wild West—bison, Indians, wild horses, things like that.” I smiled. “But this living statue act brings in the easy money. You’d be surprised how many people are impressed by the simple ability to be still for a really long time. Of course, there are the shitheads who—”

“Yeah, okay, um, this—” he outlined my whole body with his hand flat, palm open toward me, “is not what I expected.” His tone was flat, and he put extra emphasis on not.

I paused and then said, “I thought it would be fun.” I twirled the end of the rope that was slung over my shoulder and grinned. I’d been certain meeting like this would make me intriguing, or memorable at the very least. Better than my standard too-tight jeans and low-cut blouse first date attire.

“What’s fun about this? I get to walk around the park with a cartoon?” He lowered his eyebrows.

I dropped the flirtatiousness from my tone. “I’m not a cartoon. I’m a living statue.”

“Which one of my friends put you up to this?”

“Put me up to what?”

“This! Pretend to be interested in me and then put on this crap and make a joke out of it.” His voice had gone up an octave and he gestured wildly with both hands at my whole body.

A woman stopped and watched us, and a family hurried their small children around the other side of the fountain.

I lowered my voice and spoke gently. “I don’t know what you’re talking about, but if you don’t want to have this date, please leave.”

“You bitch.” He shook his head at me. He pursed his lips to the size of a raspberry. Those ears, which were absolutely not cute now, glowed bright red.

“I don’t know what your problem is or what you think is happening, but we’re done here and you should go.”

He snorted, folded his arms across his chest, and jutted out his chin.

I stepped back a few paces and set my saddlebag down with the strap looped under my right heel. I hooked one thumb under my rope and the other in my waistband. Finally, I exhaled my abdomen into a position where I could take shallow breaths with almost no movement through my core and I relaxed my jaw and eyelids into a position that was easy to hold. Byron was barely visible in my periphery. But he was audible.

“Fucking cunt.”

And then I felt the spit.

Inside, I shuddered. Outside, I didn’t even blink. I remained immobile, just like I’d trained myself to when morally deficient parents encouraged their children to kick me to see if I’d flinch. My face was hot, but I didn’t think anyone could tell beneath the gold.

Byron left. I couldn’t see where he went without turning my head, which I didn’t want to do since a crowd had gathered. I was in character again, ready to earn sticky singles from cotton candy eating tourists from Nebraska or Missouri. But maybe out of appreciation for my composure, or out of pity, they’d put something extra in my saddlebag.

 

Jennifer A Swallow is known more for writing about cybersecurity than imaginary lives, but that doesn’t stop her from filling notebook after notebook with ideas. Her creative work has appeared in The Courtship of Winds and Adelaide Literary Magazine. She lives the life of a digital nomad and finds inspiration everywhere she goes. When inspiration is lacking, she runs up mountains until it comes back.

Photo credit: Pete Ashton via a Creative Commons license.

A note from Writers Resist

Thank you for reading! If you appreciate creative resistance and would like to support it, you can make a small, medium or large donation to Writers Resist from our Give a Sawbuck page.

LipStick It Couture Du Jour

Because Extraordinary Times Require Extraordinary Adornment

 

By Tracy Rose Stamper

Welcome to RevlOff’s Lip Couture Counter, where science blends with art, topped off with attitude, to bring you colors to carry you through dizzying days.

Our makeup counter’s mission is to challenge the slippery slope into post-truth society. By offering an honest line of honest products, we aim to create an oasis in this world gone off its axis. Like you, we wouldn’t have made it this far without attitude, an ingredient as important as science and art. Sometimes, attitude shows up as color play therapy. Other times, admittedly, we’re throwing shade. Because today’s many shades of fustercluck require many shades of lip armor.

With science under attack, we begin with  highlighting our Scintillating Lip Science Line. Our distinct shades—Moderna Woman, Pfizer Fly, J&J Vim&Vigor Violet, and Fully Vixenated—are recognizable, helping take the guesswork out of navigating this partially vaccinated world. Thirty-nine percent of proceeds from this line go towards public health education.

Our Levity Line is curated for comic relief: Frosted Snowflake, Commie Bastard Berry, Cashmere Coastal Elite Crème, Scintillating Socialist, Luscious Lefty Lavendar Lustre, Flaming Liberal Lilac, Bleeding Heart Burgundy, and Radical Rosé. You will be called all the above. May as well dress it up!

Our LipStick It line’s Pop Off Pink, Ragin’ Red, and Apoplectic Purple coordinate well with feeling feisty. Piehole Plum works wonders when venturing places where you’ll wish to tell folks to shut it. Warm, inviting Pumpkin Smasher Spice is popular on Wednesdays when we smash the patriarchy. Another smashing shade is Vagalante Lavender. (We’ve been asked if that’s a typo. No, it’s not.) Our newest addition, Pro-Roe, is a bold blood red. Enough said.

Lip Armor Liquid Courage Collection comes to the rescue with extra oomph! Impressive science merges a lip stain offering 8-hour staying power with a satiny liquid look. These blends have you covered across the board, from situations where it’s best to just walk away, to those times when you’ll have to say something to maintain any semblance of self-respect. Talk for 8 hours straight ‘til you’re blue in the face, with lips remaining radiant, although we don’t recommend wasting breath trying to change minds committed to closure. Red&White&True, Pink Patriot, and Coral Compass encourage standing for what is real and right. Think insurrectionist thugs eager to decapitate politicians, thus threatening our democracy’s very survival. Consider this collection your armor against gaslighting claims that what you saw didn’t happen.

Lip Armor Liquid Courage Collection mainstays are Crimson Courage and Seeing Red. These trying days require courage. Liberty Lover Lapis invites speaking the truth, because asserting individual liberties can sometimes adversely affect the collective, and empathy always matters. True Blue is for those of us who have earnestly spent six plus years trying to understand hearts of loved ones living in an entirely different world, despite residing mere miles away. Googling “cognitive dissonance” is your clue that this one’s for you. Striking shades draw foci to lips, away from puffy eyes. We’ve all had moments of dissolving into tears, leaving us looking as weary as we feel.

On Second Thought All-Out Orange is our collaboration with the common sense gun safety movement. With a nod to the Second Amendment and law-abiding citizens’ rights to own guns, this also represents the rights of our children to simply survive an America riddled with epidemic gun violence. Deep orange emboldens the user to take on stale assertions that “the government’s coming to take away your guns.”

Our Glow-Getter Glam Line celebrates bright spots with shimmering finishes. We have Yes We Candied Plum, Georgia Peach, Blunami, and V(I)P Pearlescent, in honor of our first POC and woman VP. We wish to expand this line in years to come.

Our True Colors Collection reflects the revealing of folks’ true colors. Spiraling up each tube are the words: “We’re only going to get browner and queerer and witchier and louder and stronger and prouder (author unknown).” Top-selling Browner is a rich maroon that beautifully celebrates the browning skin tone of our country’s trajectory. Black Sheep comes with a gift enclosure that reads: “For the black sheep of families dangerously close to falling off the edge of their flat earth if they lean the tiniest bit further right.” Pussy Hat Pink is quite popular. Pride gloss features rainbow sparkles. #RubySlipperRed represents the dreams of a compassionate homeland that lives up to its ideals of democracy, equity, and unity for all.

Finally, for the end of those days that last for months, we have our Lip Therapy Line. Designed as therapeutic balms to soothe and restore lips overnight, many customers reach for these around the clock. One of our regulars dubs our therapeutics as the “Homebody Cluster,” since it feels less lonely given today’s isolating climate.

Whether staying home or venturing out into these most curious times, RevlOff has you covered. Though this concludes our makeup bar tour, it is just the beginning of the important work we will do, alongside customers like you, doing right by the world.

To thank you for being part of a bright future, our complimentary gift is a tube of bRight Side of History. Apply liberally.”

 

Tracy Rose Stamper dances with words. Her recently acquired middle name is the most significant word she has written lately during these days asking us to rise. She lives in a home on a hill in St. Louis with two beloved humans, two rescue beagle boys, and two whimsical wind sculptures. She is a contributing author of Anna Linder’s ‘The Book of Emotions,’ and has had work appear in New Feathers Anthology, Pensive: A Global Journal of Spirituality & the Arts, Dime Show Review, Drunk Monkeys, and borrowed solace, among others. You can find her dancing with words at Facebook.

Photo credit: he who would be lost via a Creative Commons license.

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Thank you for reading! If you appreciate creative resistance and would like to support it, you can make a small, medium or large donation to Writers Resist from our Give a Sawbuck page.

 

A Simple Act

By Erin Edwards

 

It is a simple act to stand in the middle of the road. Simple, but effective. A car either has to stop and wait or run you down—and it just wouldn’t do for a hearse carrying the body of a former government official to accelerate towards a woman in the middle of the street.

Making a scene wasn’t something I’d planned. I hadn’t even been paying attention when they’d announced the route for Eric Marshall’s funeral procession on the news. Events simply collided, leaving me the perfect moment. The universe implored me to do something.

The route intersected my walk to work. Barriers prohibiting pedestrian access to the road lined the pavement, except at the crossing. There, two police officers simply held up a rope, keeping us all back. We were expected to stand in silence. Once the cars passed, they’d let us through, they assured us. But Eric Marshall had never let us rest for one moment once he stepped into office. What right did he have to a peaceful forever?

I didn’t want to wait until the cars had passed.

I looked around at the people bowing their heads, waiting respectfully for the procession to drive by. But Eric Marshall had done nothing to earn my respect.

The police officer guarding the crossing looked the other way, and there was my chance. I ducked under the rope and bolted for the middle of the road.

The procession was forced to stop. The car of a prominent government official, even a dead one, hitting a woman in front of dozens of cameras was unthinkable. The funeral was being streamed to the nation, but it wasn’t Eric Marshall’s show anymore. I looked around and saw the policemen frantically discussing my presence. Tackling a woman to the ground on live television wasn’t an option either, but I knew it would only be a few moments before they had the cameras turned off so they could haul me away. I needed to make it more difficult for them, so I sat down and laid back, tucking my arms underneath me to make myself harder to grab.

The tarmac was warm, cooking in the sun. I rested my head, feeling the uneven surface through my hair, and ignored the commotion around me. No one raised their voice—this was a funeral, after all—but there was plenty of debate. It would probably only be minutes before I was dragged away.

If I’d planned it better, I would have worn a long red cloak and a white bonnet, just so my stance on Eric Marshall’s politics was clear. He had stood in the way of so many women and their health, their right to choose. He’d convinced everyone that criminalising abortion had saved the lives of hundreds of thousands of children, but no one thought to mention the women who died as a result of the bill. Some were lost to backstreet abortions. Some took concoctions the internet promised them would end a pregnancy but wound up ending their lives. And some women just couldn’t take it.

I had heard stories of women placed under house arrest, under twenty-four-hour suicide watch, because they were deemed a risk to the foetuses they carried. Eric Marshall would turn us all into handmaids, if he had the chance. It was only right that someone stand between him and eternal rest.

The sky was cloudless and far-reaching above my head. I wondered how long it would be before I got to see it again—I knew I’d be heading to a police station rather than work when they moved me. I was contemplating whether they’d give me a chance to contact my flatmate and explain my absence at home, when I heard a yell.

“Another one!”

Before I had time to register where the shout had come from, someone skidded across the ground and stopped beside me.

“Sorry,” they said with a giggle. “I didn’t think that through.”

I turned to see another woman. She was far closer than I’d normally be comfortable with, but I appreciated the show of solidarity. From my limited vantage point, she was dressed for work, in a pencil skirt and floaty shirt with billowing sleeves. I wondered if she’d shredded them during her shaky landing. Despite any damage she might have done to her clothes or herself, she was grinning.

“Hi.” I laughed, a little manic. “You know they’ll arrest us for this?”

“Yeah, I figured. But if there’s two of us, it’s harder for them,” the woman said, shrugging. “I’m Daphne.”

“Allyson,” I introduced myself. “Thank you.”

We were at rather an awkward angle to shake hands, but instead Daphne threaded her arm through mine and linked us together. If they tried to drag one of us away, they’d have to take us both.

I didn’t ask Daphne why she hated Eric Marshall. She could have just hated the way he had knocked over the first domino—there was already talk of having women of childbearing age assigned to a guardian, whether that be a family member or partner, to ensure she “acted responsibly.” It was only getting worse. There was always the chance her hatred was personal. She could have lost a friend, a family member or a loved one. It wasn’t the kind of thing you asked someone when you’d just met and you were lying on the burning tarmac in the middle of the road in front of a funeral procession.

They must have shut off the cameras, because a police officer came to stand over us. The sun shone behind his head, backlighting him so all of his features were sunk in shadow.

“All right, ladies, you’ve had your fun. Show some respect, get moving,” he ordered, waving his hands like he could waft us away like a bad smell.

“This is a protest,” Daphne said, her voice stronger than mine would have been.

“This is a funeral,” the officer replied.

“You see a funeral; we see a celebration of the loss of our human rights,” Daphne shot back.

She tightened her grip around my arm. Despite the sun, I stared right up at the officer’s face, jaw clenched. Leaving quietly wasn’t an option.

The officer huffed and walked away. The debate on how best to pitch us out of the road was growing loud. I could hear shouting and radios, as they called for backup and argued over strategy. They didn’t want to make martyrs of us, but every second we were left there was another moment that Eric Marshall was rotting in his coffin.

I turned to look at the hearse, only feet from me. The black paint was glossy enough that I could see my face in it. There was me, there was Daphne, and there was what seemed like miles of empty road. If I had planned any of this, I would have brought handcuffs to lock myself to the grill. We likely had mere moments before we were picked up and tossed into the back of a police car.

“It was nice to meet you, Daphne, I said. “Thanks for doing something stupid with me.”

“Oh, I don’t think it’s over,” she said.

I could hear a grin in her voice and when I turned to see what she could possibly be smiling about, I found her looking the other way. At the crossing where I’d originally snuck through, there was a whole group of women. There had to be twenty or thirty of them, all pushing forward against a row of police. The officers had abandoned the rope they’d been holding up and were trying to create a wall of riot shields.

Our anger had been building for so long. Layer upon layer of it, another spark added to the fire each time we felt the restraints of Eric Marshall’s policies: the men-only bars and restaurants we were banned from for our own safety, the TV adverts begging us to take care of our health to ensure thriving offspring, the poster campaign that screamed “A WOMAN’S PLACE IS IN THE HOME!” It was enough to drive anyone to rage. They say that a woman can display superhuman strength to save a child, but no one ever realised that she could do it to save herself, too. She just had to be pushed far enough.

I watched, sideways and half-blocked by Daphne, as the group of women burst through the line of police. Once one had breached the blockade, they all piled through the gap before it could be closed again. Shouts of victory and glee rang out as they ran towards us. Suddenly the empty road was a sea of bodies, clustering together and grabbing on to each other so no one was left vulnerable.

Information was shared through the crowd as quickly as people could speak the words. The official broadcast had been shut down, but social media livestreams had almost immediately started up in its place, shared by onlookers from nearby buildings. The world was watching.

Any lack of a plan on my behalf was immediately rectified by the women around me. They shared the number of a protest support line, reminders to go limp if someone tried to lift you, orders not to give personal information even if arrested. No one had any doubt that we would all be taken into custody, that Eric Marshall’s funeral procession would eventually continue, and he would be laid to rest. But first, we would make our stand.

 

Erin Edwards is a dedicated Londoner and compulsive writer, most often found in an archive or at the theatre. She is committed to providing the world with more queer content and is currently working on far too many different projects to do just that. You can find her Twitter at @EEdwardsWrites.

Photograph by Victoria Pickering via a Creative Commons license.

A note from Writers Resist:

Thank you for reading! If you appreciate creative resistance and would like to support it, you can make a small, medium or large donation to Writers Resist from our Give a Sawbuck page.

The Failed Real Estate Caper

By Sue Katz

 

The first thing Miriam noticed when the taxi dropped her off at Ruby’s house was the For Sale sign on the lawn. She took a magic marker out of her handbag and wrote “NOT” in capital letters, but it turned out too faint to be easily seen. “It’s the thought that counts,” she muttered with no small measure of anger.

Ruby had fallen and broken her elbow. That can happen. But Ruby’s son Lionel was trying to take advantage of the situation by insisting that Ruby move into assisted living while he sold her house out from under her. Despite his charm, Lionel seemed determined to crush Ruby at every turn. Her wealth was entirely tied up in her home—he called her “house poor”—and he couldn’t wait to get his hands on it.

Miriam let herself in by the front door, which Ruby had unlocked for her earlier. She found Ruby slumped in a living room chair. Ruby gestured with her head towards the bedroom, and Miriam went directly there. She found Lionel packing a suitcase. On the floor were a trunk and two large cardboard boxes. Clearly he had been hard at work. He looked up and, when he saw her, he bestowed the kind of flirtatious smile handsome men use to smooth their way through life, but it didn’t work on Miriam.

“Ruby doesn’t want to sell. She doesn’t want to move. And I’m wondering why you are forcing the matter, Lionel.”

“I think I know what’s best for my mother,” he answered without changing that smile.

“I think Ruby knows what’s best for Ruby,” Miriam said.

“With all due respect, this is a family matter.”

“With all due respect,” Miriam said, “it all depends on how you define family. Ruby and I have been close for over 65 years—a couple decades longer than you’ve known her.”

“As far as we’re concerned, you’re a nice lady, a good pal to my mother, and you’ve got zero to say about this situation. If you want to bring some soup around or send a card, feel free. As for this house, I’m going to sell it, and there’s nothing you can do about it.” He returned to stuffing Ruby’s things into the suitcase.

Ruby had quietly come to stand behind Miriam for this exchange. “Sorry, Lionel. It’s not your house to sell,” she said.

“You can’t take care of yourself with that dodgy arm, Mum, let alone this whole house. And you can’t really afford to bring in full-time help on your Social Security. I’d hate to have to force you through the courts.”

“The courts?” Miriam cried.

“Yes, if she’s making irrational decisions and putting herself in danger, there are things a son can do about that.”

The two women looked at each other. They made every effort to look somber, but they couldn’t control themselves. Miriam giggled while Ruby laughed out loud.

“What’s going on?” Lionel asked.

Ruby calmed herself enough to say, “I believe a wife trumps a son, dear.”

Lionel looked concerned. “Mum, you’re not making sense.”

“Tell him, Miriam.”

“Your mother and I got married a few months ago. We worried what you or the authorities might try to do to us someday. We’re old women each living alone, solitary, low hanging fruit, as they say. We figured we’re like an old couple who have been together a very long time anyway, so we decided to make it official.”

“Didn’t you notice my ring, honey?” Ruby waved her wrinkled hand in Lionel’s direction.

“Or mine?” Miriam said, showing off her identical gold band.

“And don’t worry,” Ruby said. “Miriam will be living here for as long as I need her. We’ll be just fine.”

She looked at Miriam. “Could you possibly take down that nasty sign in my yard?”

“Yes, and I’ll call the agent to cancel, as well. Shall I say I’m a member of your family?”

“Sure. Tell them you’re my spouse.”

The two women giggled and left the doorway of the bedroom, chatting happily. “Put everything back nicely, will you Lionel?” Ruby said over her shoulder.

His fading smile curled with anger, robbing him of his beauty, but his scowl formed too late for the women to notice.

 

Sue Katz’s business card identifies her as a “Wordsmith and Rebel.” Her journalism and fiction have been published in anthologies, magazines, and online on the three continents where she has lived, worked, and roused rabble. Her writing has appeared in such publications as Gertrude Press, Writers Resist, Brilliant Flash Fiction, and the Boston Globe newspaper. Her fiction books, often focusing on the lives of elders, include A Raisin in My Cleavage: short and shorter stories, Lillian’s Last Affair and other stories, and Lillian in Love. Katz’s first play was produced by the prestigious The Theater Offensive in honor of Stonewall 50.

Photograph by Alan Levine via a Creative Commons license.

A note from Writers Resist:

Thank you for reading! If you appreciate creative resistance and would like to support it, you can make a small, medium or large donation to Writers Resist from our Give a Sawbuck page.

Search Terms

By Holly Stovall 

 

I opened the search bar, typed in “middle-aged women support Black Lives Matter” and narrowed the results to “images.” Google spit out a white couple, on the stairway in front of their mansion, pointing guns at protesters marching by. It’s not what I was looking for, but Google taunted me—Aren’t you curious? I clicked on the link.

What?! So now I’m standing under a pixelated oak tree holding a sign that says, “Abolish the Police,” while across the lawn, a man and a woman are aiming guns at me. The man with a gun is shorter than the woman with a gun, but his weapon is bigger. Their faces are pink, like pigs. Everything is lit—back lit, front lit, inner lit, and I’m in a multidimensional screen. I turn my sign over to show daisies on tall stems.

The woman is looking at me, but tilting her head towards him. “Who the fuck is this?” she says, and then, to me, “How did you get in here with us?”

Her pistol is polished. Her top is a navy French boating chemise with a sequin appliqué on the breast pocket. It overwhelms the pixel compactor and spews out blinding rays of fluorescence.

“Didn’t your daddy teach you not to point guns at people?” I say. “Aim it at the sky.”

I scan the perimeter of my vision for the “leave” option, but find none.

The woman explains that this isn’t Zoom; there’s no exit option. Her name is Kelly, and she doesn’t know how she and her husband, Brody, got swooshed in. They had been in opposite wings of the mansion. Kelly wants to know what I was doing when the search engine sucked me in, so I say I was just browsing the internet, clicking on random stuff.

She lowers the gun and asks me about my search terms. Hers were “middle-aged women righteously threaten protesters with gun.” I don’t say what I’m thinking. First, that the adverb, righteously, is unnecessary. Also, that she’s the only middle-aged woman who rose to the top of Google results for waving guns at people practicing the right to free speech. Last, she embarrasses me.

I ask her if she has any theories about why Google generated me for her, but before she answers, Brody informs us that Google is an algorithm.

“Are you familiar with mansplaining?” I say, and then regret it because he’s wielding a fat automatic attached to a black strap slung across his hot pink Polo shirt. Even though we’re just pixels, the threat feels real, and I’m afraid. I don’t know the rules in here, but it seems I shouldn’t have pissed him off.

Kelly thanks Brody for his Google wisdom. “Hun,” she says, “go on up the steps. You should be above the rest of us.” He falls for that.

Kelly asks me if I was caught on video threatening nice suburbanites with BLM signs and causing Google to throw me out onto the first page of her search.

I explain to her that no, I live in a small town, west of the city, where we just stand on the edge of the park, next to the highway, and hold up protest signs for the delivery cars and hog carriers to see. There’re no mansion dwellers there who would aim guns at us.

I don’t tell her that I wrote an op-ed for the local paper, criticizing police for Kayla Montgomery’s death. Kayla was a blond woman who worked at the gas station and called me “dear,” even though I’m old enough to be her mom. A sheriff’s deputy pulled her over for what he claimed was “impudent driving” and shot her five times. She was unarmed. My column went viral on social media and generated pushback. That must be how I got on Google’s radar.

Brody descends to butt in again. “Did you hear me? Google results are generated by an algorithm. It’s just about how many hits a site gets. That’s all.”

His hot pink polo shirt contrasts nicely with the gunmetal of his weapon. His belt, though, is brown. Christ. He could have bothered to match his belt with his weapon. I tell him to Google “mansplain,” but I do it in a sweet voice, so I have an out if he gets angry.

“I’ll knock the lights out of you,” he says. He holds up his fists and lets the gun fall across his belly like a guitar. The pixels simulate smoke shooting out of his ears.

Kelly turns to him. “It’s a compliment, hon. Mansplain is what men do as an act of generosity towards women because our brains are small.” Brody turns and climbs back up the stairs.

Kelly wants to escape. She tells me that, before she got sucked in, she had a client who sent her an email saying she was trapped in a pixel compactor, and could Kelly please get her out and sue the search engine. The client claimed that when two people are Googling at the same time and their search terms intersect, the engine can get tangled, generate energy, and suck you in like a black hole.

I point out that she and I were each searching for middle-aged women who were involved in the protests.

“And we must have hit return at the exact same time,” Kelly says.

I ask her what made her enter “middle-aged women” in the search bar.

“I wanted to see women who look like me,” she says.

“Me too, women who look—” And before I finish my sentence, I’m swooshed back to the safe side of my laptop.

Later, Kelly phones me in this world, where things are soft, shadowed, cold and hot. I ask her what happened to Brody. He’s still in there, and she calls his current home the “mancompactor.” She claims he loves it because he can watch Fox News through the sight of his gun.

 

Holly A. Stovall has published short fiction, personal essays, literary histories, literary criticism, and scholarly research. Her creative writing appears in Writers Resist, Litbreak Magazine, and is forthcoming in Belle Point Press’s Mid/South Anthology. She holds a PhD in Spanish literature, an MA in Women’s History, and is currently an MFA candidate in Creative Writing at Northwestern University. She lives in rural Illinois with her spouse, teenage son, and standard poodle.

A note from Writers Resist:

Thank you for reading! If you appreciate creative resistance and would like to support it, you can make a small, medium or large donation to Writers Resist from our Give a Sawbuck page.

 

The Wizard of Roz

By Marleen S. Barr

 

“I thought the Donald would evaporate in a poof of orange smoke, ending a supremely screwed-up period of history. But the loudest mouth is not shutting up. And Republicans continue to listen, clinging to the idea that the dinosaur is the future.”

– Maureen Dowd, New York Times, May 9, 2021

 

Professor Sondra Lear, suffering from pandemic induced claustrophobia, stepped out on her Manhattan apartment roof in the early evening to get fresh air. She looked up and noticed an unidentified flying object careening toward her. Upon closer inspection, she realized that she was viewing a flying, chartreuse 1960s Lincoln Continental complete with silver edged tail fins and whitewall tires. The Lincoln landed on her roof. The door opened. A bleach-blonde bouffanted woman in her forties, wearing an A-line, pink-and-purple paisley knee-length dress, a three-strand beaded necklace, and white tennis shoes, emerged from the flying car. Although a feminist science fiction scholar and used to extraterrestrials, Sondra was baffled as to why this particular alien was a dead ringer for her dead mother.

“Why are you appearing as a replica of my mother coming to visit me at my 1960s summer camp?” Sondra asked as she tried to remain calm. “Who and what are you?”

“I am Rozie6812, an emissary from the planet Roz. We are controlled by the big giant head, an omniscient, omnipresent computer named Roslyn. We call Roslyn the Great and Powerful Wizard of Roz. As a card carrying Rozie, I have to follow the computer’s orders—and she ordered me to find you. She admires your academic interest in science fiction written by women.”

“My mother’s name was Roslyn.”

“All of the billions of Roz inhabitants are versions of your mother. We are interested in accomplishing two things. First, we want to know if you are married. Despite our ability to find out everything, we want the answer to come directly from you.”

Sondra felt dizzy.

“Steady yourself. Just answer the question.”

“Yes,” said Sondra as a sky-blue rotary phone materialized and floated in front of the Rozie.

“Excuse me while I call home,” said Rozie6812 as she picked up the receiver. “Hello. Roslyn. Sondra said yes. She is married.” The Rozie then turned to Sondra and said, “Everyone on Roz is deliriously happy and giving you a standing ovation. Now, turning to my second directive, I have come to put an end to President Trump. No one who spends her professional life writing about feminist superheroes should be subjected to his misogyny.”

“You’re too late. Biden is the president. Trump is tweetless in Mar-a-Lago.”

“Too bad. Since I cannot accomplish my second objective, Roslyn will order me to return,” said Rozie6812 as she opened the Lincoln’s driver-side door.

“Wait. Stop. Trump is not nullified. He’s perpetuating the Big Lie that he won the election, proclaiming that he will be re-ensconced in the White House, and threatening to run for president in 2024. Someone smarter and, I shudder at the thought, worse than Trump could succeed Biden. Help!”

“Roz is a very bureaucratic planet. But I’ll see what I can do. Let me apprise Roslyn of the situation.” Rozie6812 spoke into the telephone.

“I am afraid to ask, but what did Roslyn say?”

“She says that because you are married. she will make an exception even though I arrived too late to carry out the original Trump removal mission. But, according to Roz regulations, changed mission objectives impose additional requirements. Roslyn will not allow me to assist you unless you bring me Donald Trump’s broom. Her decision stands. Resistance is futile.”

“In order to save America from the Big Lie, an eventual Trump second term, or an even worse political fate, I have no choice but to comply. I’m off to Trump Tower on a quest to bring back Trump’s broom.”

“Good decision. I’ll drive around the Milky Way while I wait for you. When you have Trump’s broom in hand, return to your roof, and I will tell Roslyn that your mission has been accomplished.

Sondra put on her face mask and walked up Fifth Avenue to Trump Tower. She sat against the wall near the entrance, dejected and trying to discern what to do. A piece of straw fell on the floor nearby. As a lifetime New Yorker who grew up with myriad anti-litter bug campaigns, Sondra picked up the offending material and placed it on the seat beside her. Something that resembled a lime-green sea horse appeared and hovered above the straw.

“Thank you for rescuing my nesting component,” said the flying entity.

“You’re welcome. I am sort of afraid to ask, because I already did this today, but who and what are you?”

“I’m a dragon.”

“Aren’t you a little small for a dragon?”

“Size doesn’t matter. Just as a hummingbird is as much an avian as a Great Blue Heron and a chihuahua is as much a canine as a Great Dane, I am a bona fide dragon. I was in the middle of building my nest in one of the atrium trees when this straw fell out of my claw. Thank you for retrieving it.”

“The atrium is devoid of trees.”

“It was supposed to contain several 40-foot trees. But Trump chopped them down because he didn’t like them. His disrespect for nature made me mad. I restored all the trees and ensconced them within an invisibility cloak. Believe me, although you can’t see them, the trees are here.”

“I believe you,” said Sondra in the middle of having a brainstorm. “Could I possibly have some more of your straw nesting material?”

“I am happy to share, but why do you need it?”

“It could help keep Trump from having the ability to destroy swaths of the American natural landscape.” The dragon flew away and quickly returned with a bunch of straw.

“Thank you,” Sondra said. “I have one more request. Please bring me an atrium tree branch and make it visible.” The branch appeared next to the straw pile. “It was nice to meet you. I wish you well with your nest building and I hope you successfully raise your offspring amid the invisible trees.”

Sondra gathered up the straw and used the original piece to tie the bunch around the branch. Because the broom was made from materials garnered from within Trump Tower, she was certain that Trump, by default, owned the broom. She was ecstatic.

Sondra returned to her building’s roof and said to Roz6812, “Here’s Trump’s broom.”

“If it looks like a broom, and it sweeps like a broom, and you say it is Trump’s broom, thus it is,” proclaimed Roz6812. The rotary phone reappeared. “Let me clear this with Roslyn.” She spoke into the phone. “Good news. Roslyn says because you have fulfilled the quest, I am cleared to nullify Trump. As I speak, the Mar-a-Lago resort is being turned into a roach motel. Trump is permanently checked in and he can never check out. A cheeseburger and a can of soda will appear whenever he gets hungry.”

“Great job!” Sondra said as Rozie6812 flew off.

Sondra returned to her apartment and found a baby lime-green mini dragon flying loop-the-loops above her sofa.

 

Marleen S. Barr is known for her pioneering work in feminist science fiction and teaches English at the City University of New York. She has won the Science Fiction Research Association Pilgrim Award for lifetime achievement in science fiction criticism. Barr is the author of Alien to Femininity: Speculative Fiction and Feminist Theory, Lost in Space: Probing Feminist Science Fiction and Beyond, Feminist Fabulation: Space/Postmodern Fiction, and Genre Fission: A New Discourse Practice for Cultural Studies. Barr has edited many anthologies and co-edited the science fiction issue of PMLA. She is the author of the novels Oy Pioneer! and Oy Feminist Planets: A Fake Memoir.  Her When Trump Changed: The Feminist Science Fiction Justice League Quashes the Orange Outrage Pussy Grabber is the first single authored Trump short story collection.

Photo credit: William Warby via a Creative Commons license.

Five short stories by Amirah Al Wassif

Running away

My mouth is full of mice. I can’t talk or protest. I was born in the darkest spot of the world. My people hate the sun. They put the weight of the world on my tiny shoulders. When I was young, I was a great talker, but when I became 12 years old, they ordered me to shut my mouth up. My country is made of dust and sins. They don’t believe in girls’ voices. They say that when girls talk, the evil spirits spread.

I have to admit that I am not sure that my mouth is full of mice, but when my tribe circled around me like bees, they pointed to my mouth, shouting loudly: “Hide your ugly mice! Don’t speak! Don’t protest.”

Their anger showed me that I have to flush and run away for hiding. Instead of doing that. I made a hole in the wall and disappeared forever.

 

Hunger and satiety

At the same time when I was wondering, did my friend like my latest photo on the Instagram, a child died from hunger somewhere in the world.

We all bite our nails through watching the breaking news. We all recognize the fake ones. We all cry in front of war children posters. We all laugh at our mirrors.

My mother stands on a mountain of pillows for feeding my little brother. I am big enough to feed myself.

We have many delicious dishes. We are proud of our full plates. After finishing my own, I run in a hurry to bring another one, not because I feel hungry, but because we have a plenty of food. So it is a shame not to bring another one.

We never experienced hunger before. The first time we heard of it was when our neighbor’s daughter died. At her funeral, people said that she died because of hunger. Even when we all knew that, nobody cared.

 

Just a dream

Last night, I closed my eyes and I saw my mother and me sitting together in front of a brown oven, baking delicious bread in a clearing where some birds pecked our necks and backs.

My mother’s cheeks were colorful like a clown. I looked at her in a proud way. She was still beautiful, just like a young girl.

She had a dimple. A special one. One of those dimples that kiss the heart of the sun. You feel its warmth naturally, without trying so hard.

The dust that covered my mother’s eyelashes smelled of the ancient streets.

In the dream, there were grown mint leaves between my fingers. My mother grabbed one of them, trying her best to cut it off. I screamed. There was a lot of pain around my fingers.

We are farmers. We used to fill our pockets with laughs and stones, stumbling to the river to throw them. Our dearest friend, the river welcomes our greetings, competing with us to make the funniest jokes in the world. We are country people, so we and the river understand each other very well.

I have a music box within my chest. All my lifetime, I felt that I am the richest girl in the globe. We don’t have money, but we feel so wealthy. Our fortune is a mix of singing and giving. We sing for our folk. We used to give them. We used to plant for them, for us, for the whole world.

My mother kissed my right cheek in the dream. You are a winner, babe, she told me. You plant your land; don’t wait for the men to plant it for you.

I don’t have a father. My mother’s forever tale says that there is a toxic man, tricked her, married her and made her a pregnant child who suffered a lot because of this.

I don’t blame you for this, babe, my mother said to me. You are my blessed girl, I need you in my world, and we all here need your bravery.

The distant birds play hide and seek with my wishes. I pray for our land, I pray for getting stronger, I pray for the girls, for the poor mothers. I don’t pray for the abusive husbands.

Within my dream, the grace underneath my little feet, I am sinking in the arms of the universe, sipping the happiness water.

My mother’s milk isn’t enough now, I am trailing the buds with my fingers.

The sky breathes in and out through my hair.

I met you too, in my dream. You were smiling at me from your far land. I called you: “Lewis, don’t forget me, my love, don’t.”

You looked at me in your gentle way. Your eyes smelled of honey. I see a paradise lies inside them. “Don’t try to close them so much, my love.” I said to you, and you ran away behind the red sun’s reflection.

I understand how the sun was so jealous. I know that nature belongs to you.

I plant beans, tomatoes and flowers. You plant me like a poem inside your heart. How close we were in my dream! How far we are in the reality!

I still remember how many tears jammed in your eye, when I sighed and cried, telling you that I and my mother should leave this land. You still remember, don’t you? How I sobbed, how the sadness made a lake of salt in my heart.

That moment was the harshest moment in my lifetime, the words jumped in craziness from my mouth’s edge. You ate yourself in worry and pain.

In my dream, my mother advised me to stop crying. She told me that nobody deserves my tears. I pretended that I agreed with her, but in truth, I didn’t, because you deserve, my love, you aren’t them, you aren’t a toxic man like my father and like all those men who forced us to leave the land, who poisoned our plants, who stole our right to be women farmers.

In my dream, I shrugged. I felt like I lost my voice forever, but then, I woke up, half asleep, trying to hide my waterfall of tears.

I open my eyes wide: I am heading now to my mother’s graveyard, next to yours, where I am planning to plant a cactus, my love.

 

My dead husband’s secret

My dead husband plays hide and seek with me. I catch him every now and then playing guitar in front of our daughter’s framed photo. He also loves to act like a clown before our baby budgie birds. He believes they notice him.

I don’t say a word about that to my relatives. They won’t believe me. To be honest they will say that I am a crazy old woman who is looking desperately for a new man. I am not. I love my dead husband, and really, I see him wandering in our apartment all the time.

Every time I see him, I try my best to hurry, to follow him. I want to catch him. I am longing to kiss his cheeks. I dream of throwing myself into his arms.

But I can’t. As a disabled old woman who is sitting in her wheelchair, I can’t help it.

There is no one here to watch me. There is no one here to look after me. Only my dead husband shadow, dancing up there on the walls with the shadow of our dead daughter.

 

Injustice

I was born and raised in a box.

My body is a metaphor. I lost my voice when Adam planted a knife in my throat.

“Give up, Eve,” Adam said.

I pointed out to the Apple tree. I hopped from one corner to another inside the box. I was dying to shout. I wanted to announce my revolution. I was in trouble. A big one.

My voice is gone. I have no power, no words.

Adam was touching the apple curiously, tracing it with his fingers. The smile on his face. The sin on his hand.

He kept watching me from his place: I was moving in back and forth. He treated me like a monkey in a cage.

The last time I called Adam was a billion years ago, when he asked me what was the thing I see in my dreams that makes me feel good, although I’m imprisoned?

At that moment, I let him see the picture in my head. A magnificent photo of the apple tree, guiding me to the river of happiness.

When he saw the photo in my head, he sighed and smiled.

After a while, he sang and ran away to find the tree, and yes, Adam found it and owned it, before punishing me and cutting my tongue.

 

Amirah Al Wassif’s poems have appeared in several print and online publications including South Florida Poetry, Birmingham Arts Journal, Hawaii Review, The Meniscus, Chiron Review, The Hunger, Writers Resist, Right Now, and others. Amirah also has a poetry collection, For Those Who Don’t Know Chocolate (Poetic Justice Books & Arts, 2019), and a children’s book, The Cocoa Boy and Other Stories, published in February 2020.

Photo credit: Andrew Malone via a Creative Commons license.

The Woman in Elmina

By Nicole Tanquary

 

There is a coastal village called Elmina. An abandoned slave castle sits at the village’s highest point. The castle walls stand in stark white stone that burns in the sun, the paint achingly fresh—the castle is now a museum, and it has money to keep itself restored, more than can be said for the village spread out at its feet.

In Elmina lives an old woman. She dresses in traditional kente cloth her son bought for her long ago. On clear days she sits beneath a palm tree in the shadow of the castle, on a stretch of green lawn leading to the castle’s entrance, where the tourists tend to wander. A bowl carved from a coconut shell sits in front of her. She does not beg but rests with her eyes closed and her back against the palm tree. If you come up to her and speak, she will open her eyes and you will see cataracts, filmy as ocean clouds. Once, her son fed her, but he was a fisherman, and sometimes fishermen drown.

If you come up to her, she may nod to acknowledge you or she may not. If she does not, set some money, cedis or pesues, in her bowl. The clinking of the coins will bring her awake.

If you take out a bottle of palm wine and hand it to her, saying, “Madame, will you drink with me?” the numb will drain from her face and leave behind a thoughtfulness. She will take the bottle and uncork it with expert hands, pouring some onto the ground for the ancestors to drink. She will take a sip of it herself and then offer you the same. If you drink it, it will be tangy, not quite sweet but with a good, settling warmth in your belly.

She will make another offering to the ancestors, and the thirsty earth will drink it away. And then she will tell you a story.

“The castle guides … they tell lies.” A tiny headshake, the movement swaying in time with the palm leaves above. “They are Ashanti, the ones who sold the Ewe to the white men. The Ashanti are ashamed, they try to change history. But we remember. We listen.” She will look towards the castle, its white walls reflecting in her eyes. When she speaks again her voice will fall to a monotone.

“The white governors, they empty the women’s dungeon into the courtyard and pick through them, take who they want. Guides say that if the women have governors’ child, they be looked after.” The old woman will spit onto the ground. “Lies. If a governor pick you, you be washed up, sent to private room, and afterwards go back to dungeons—no treated special. If you a favorite, it not matter that you carry child. You still his slave. Always a slave.”

Her eyes will go wet, and she will take another long drink of palm wine to steady herself. You may want to ask her how she could know these things when they happened so long ago, but if you wish to hear the rest of the story—if you wish to see what it will call forth—do not interrupt.

“The Ewe people brought down from the north, they be scared, so scared. Never see white men before. Never see ocean. They not know how to swim. If they sick, they thrown off ship into water, and they not know how to swim.”

Then, in a quieter voice, one with a tremble to it, she will say, “You feel them if you go in castle—all the ghosts. I hear them come through the walls, chains still on they ankles, in one big line … no one see them. I not see them,” she will admit, “but oh, oh I do hear them.” The palm wine will shiver in its bottle as her hands tremble. “The worst be in the water. That is why I never go there,” she will say, nodding at the ocean. “That is why my son should never have gone there. So much anger.” Her voice might drop to a whisper, “It drag down.”

The palm wine might sour in your mouth. Keep drinking. Even as you see echoes of the ghosts over her shoulders, their sun-bleached bones picked clean of flesh, the slack jaws saying nothing but the eye sockets boring into you, boring deep. Keep drinking.  The woman will finish her story.

“Even when they no die … it is the same to us who stay. The Ewe who left on white men’s ships never came home. You,” and she might nod to you now, her eyes squinting to try to make out your face, “You, trying to find your history here, you the child of ghosts.”

Then she will start to smile, blearily. You will decide to leave her the bottle of palm wine because you think she will need it. Even when she does not tell you that she has dreams, terrible dreams of dead mothers and fathers and daughters and sons rotting together in the water … well, even if the ghosts have mostly left now with the end of the story, you can still see faint skeletal fingermarks, dug into the skin on her shoulders.

Before you leave the woman, stop long enough to pour your own offering of palm wine into the earth. Libations must be made to keep the ancestors at peace.

Especially the ones in the water.

 

Nicole Tanquary lives and works in upstate New York, although she will soon move to Pittsburgh, PA, to pursue a PhD degree in Rhetoric. She has over thirty speculative fiction short stories available from a variety of publications, some of the most recent being Crone Girls Press, Mithila Review, and The Society of Misfits Stories. When not writing or working, she likes to eat, sleep, follow mysterious trails into unknown woods, and play with her three adorable pet rats.

Photo credit: Stephen Johnson via Creative Commons license.