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<strong>Special</strong> <strong>Issue</strong> <strong>#13</strong><br />
<strong>ISSN</strong>: <strong>1547</strong>-<strong>5957</strong>
ISSUE <strong>#13</strong><br />
contributing writers<br />
MASTHEAD<br />
publisher/executive editor<br />
stefani koorey<br />
short story editor<br />
eugene hosey<br />
poetry editor<br />
michael brimbau<br />
humor editor<br />
sherry chapman<br />
photography<br />
shutterstock.com<br />
dollarphotoclub.com<br />
thinkstock.com<br />
cover image by doublebubble_rus<br />
publisher<br />
PearTree Press<br />
the literary hatchet is published<br />
three times a year. It started as<br />
a supplement to the hatchet:<br />
lizzie borden’s journal of murder,<br />
mystery, and victorian history<br />
(issn <strong>1547</strong>-3937), by peartree<br />
press, p.o. box 9585, fall river,<br />
massachusetts, 02720. contents<br />
may not be reproduced without<br />
written permission of copyright<br />
holder. the opinions expressed<br />
are of the artists and writers<br />
themselves and do not necessarily<br />
reflect the opinions of peartree<br />
press. copyright © 2015 peartree<br />
press. all rights reserved.<br />
literaryhatchet.com.<br />
aletheia adams<br />
ed ahern<br />
angela ash<br />
sue barnard<br />
sally basmajian<br />
jackie bee<br />
michelle bujnowski<br />
tyree campbell<br />
jack campbell jr.<br />
jim courter<br />
josh craven<br />
tim dadswell<br />
grim k. de evil<br />
michelle deloatch<br />
ashley dioses<br />
william doreski<br />
matt duggan<br />
e.m. eastick<br />
paul edmonds<br />
dustin farren<br />
joshua flowers<br />
shane fraser<br />
a.w. gifford<br />
lee glantz<br />
amelia gorman<br />
john grey<br />
joann grisetti<br />
stuart guthrie<br />
deborah guzzi<br />
alexis henderson<br />
mckinley henson<br />
gary r. hoffman<br />
a.j. huffman<br />
soren james<br />
michael lee johnson<br />
robin c. jones<br />
janne karlsson<br />
m.y. kearney<br />
mary king<br />
michelle ann king<br />
lee todd lacks<br />
jason lairamore<br />
edmund lester<br />
darrell lindsey<br />
fabiyas mv<br />
tim major<br />
daniel marrone<br />
denny marshall<br />
a.w. mckinnon<br />
rick mcquiston<br />
ray mears<br />
alan meyrowitz<br />
bradford middleton<br />
kevin mulligan<br />
ian mullins<br />
andrew nelson<br />
leland neville<br />
james nicola<br />
denise noe<br />
rory o’brien<br />
gregory palmerino<br />
robert perez<br />
t.c. powell<br />
nicholas powell<br />
joshua rex<br />
joyce richardson<br />
john roche<br />
wayne scheer<br />
wendy l. schmidt<br />
ada jill schneider<br />
josh sczykutowicz<br />
michael seese<br />
d.l. shirey<br />
phil slattery<br />
steve slavin<br />
stephanie smith<br />
daniel stern<br />
craig steven<br />
cameron trost<br />
deborah walker<br />
2 The Literary Hatchet
The Literary Hatchet is a free online<br />
literary zine. It is free for a reason—and<br />
not because we couldn’t make money if we<br />
had a price tag attached to the digital copy.<br />
It is free because we philosophically believe<br />
that the work of these artists and writers<br />
deserves to be read by the widest possible<br />
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We do sell print copies of each issue<br />
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order your copies today!<br />
You are reading lucky issue <strong>#13</strong>, by<br />
the way. So if you haven’t caught up on<br />
the other twelve issues, you can do so at<br />
literaryhatchet.com.<br />
If you read something you particularly<br />
like, or are moved by, or think is cool as<br />
hell, write us and we will pass along the<br />
compliment to the author. If you have<br />
a criticism of the magazine itself, write<br />
us, and we will take your thoughts under<br />
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input. All correspondence should be sent to<br />
peartreepress@mac.com.<br />
But if you would like to write for us,<br />
please submit your poetry, short stories,<br />
reviews, or interviews to our submissions<br />
partner at this address:<br />
peartreepress.submittable.com/submit.<br />
We really would love to read your work.<br />
Stefani Koorey<br />
Editor and Publisher<br />
The Literary Hatchet 3
TABLE OF CONTENTS<br />
SHORT STORIES<br />
demons<br />
wayne scheer<br />
the sandbox<br />
matt duggan<br />
joseph and killer<br />
jason lairamore<br />
listen to your mothers<br />
ian mullins<br />
the dead are alive!<br />
andrew g. bennett<br />
the last gift<br />
a.w. mckinnon<br />
black thumb<br />
michelle ann king<br />
writer<br />
rick mcquiston<br />
the taste of metal<br />
dustin farren<br />
jolene, sd, and her<br />
gary r. hoffman<br />
bad things<br />
stuart guthrie<br />
the middle box<br />
d.l. shirey<br />
solla rani’s stoic endurance<br />
fabiyas mv<br />
milk<br />
cameron trost<br />
absolving lynn<br />
lee todd lacks<br />
uncle tom’s theory<br />
sue barnard<br />
coma white<br />
craig steven<br />
the master’s duty<br />
joshua rex<br />
gnat<br />
daniel marrone<br />
the punishment of lily chandler<br />
denise noe<br />
character driven<br />
a.w. gifford<br />
8<br />
16<br />
26<br />
34<br />
32<br />
40<br />
46<br />
54<br />
60<br />
66<br />
76<br />
82<br />
84<br />
88<br />
98<br />
102<br />
112<br />
116<br />
124<br />
132<br />
142<br />
15 December 2015<br />
148<br />
154<br />
160<br />
166<br />
172<br />
178<br />
186<br />
192<br />
198<br />
208<br />
218<br />
228<br />
232<br />
240<br />
250<br />
258<br />
262<br />
274<br />
278<br />
284<br />
baby doll<br />
alexis henderson<br />
knowing<br />
robin c. jones<br />
assholes with guns<br />
jack campbell jr.<br />
pauline<br />
jackie bee<br />
problem solving<br />
m.y. kearney<br />
the larcenous mrs. lewis<br />
steven slaven<br />
no room for daisy<br />
tim dadswell<br />
all i can see are sad eyes<br />
tim major<br />
collaboration<br />
jim courter<br />
what friends are for<br />
josh sczykutowicz<br />
the parrott<br />
paul edmonds<br />
the man in the cat mask<br />
ray mears<br />
the witch’s flowers<br />
joshua flowers<br />
a scandelous bohemian<br />
rory o’brien<br />
snow load<br />
kevin mulligan<br />
night terrors<br />
michelle k. bujnowski<br />
a day like any other<br />
edmund lester<br />
a cave in the valley<br />
shane fraser<br />
brother, can you spare a dime?<br />
josh craven<br />
the fill-ins<br />
leland neville<br />
4 The Literary Hatchet
15 December 2015<br />
counting<br />
ada jill schneider<br />
in a quest to touch the line death crosses<br />
a.j. huffman<br />
note, one robot to another<br />
alan meyrowitz<br />
one of these jars is yours<br />
amelia gorman<br />
morning’s moon<br />
ashley dioses<br />
meat<br />
andrew nelson<br />
filled with broken daisies<br />
angela ash<br />
beneath it sleep<br />
angela ash<br />
picnic<br />
john roche<br />
city girl blues<br />
daniel stern<br />
zippers<br />
darrell lindsey<br />
mannequins<br />
darrell lindsey<br />
a villanelle for a villain<br />
deborah guzzi<br />
early warning<br />
denny marshall<br />
dolly bone dream<br />
deborah walker<br />
lots of poems<br />
soren james<br />
the london necropolis railway<br />
deborah walker<br />
earrings do not belong on a deer<br />
denise noe<br />
the adoration<br />
ed ahern<br />
perfect town<br />
e.m. eastick<br />
a new generation ride<br />
fabiyas mv<br />
TABLE OF CONTENTS<br />
15<br />
23<br />
24<br />
25<br />
31<br />
32<br />
33<br />
39<br />
45<br />
53<br />
58<br />
59<br />
65<br />
71<br />
72<br />
73<br />
74<br />
81<br />
87<br />
96<br />
97<br />
POETRY<br />
110<br />
111<br />
123<br />
128<br />
129<br />
130<br />
131<br />
141<br />
147<br />
153<br />
158<br />
159<br />
165<br />
171<br />
175<br />
176<br />
177<br />
185<br />
190<br />
195<br />
196<br />
evenings steeping in rum<br />
fabiyas mv<br />
mini dubai<br />
fabiyas mv<br />
the prepared piano<br />
gregory palmerino<br />
the noonday demon<br />
gregory palmerino<br />
i’m no captain<br />
grim k. de evil<br />
two gifts<br />
james b. nicola<br />
shadows<br />
james b. nicola<br />
cheru<br />
fabiyas mv<br />
two birds<br />
james b. nicola<br />
that skater in the park<br />
john grey<br />
a history of want<br />
james b. nicola<br />
the cat eye girl<br />
fabiyas mv<br />
the coconut leaf top<br />
fabiyas mv<br />
the world blasts everyday<br />
fabiyas mv<br />
warwick dungeon<br />
joann grisetti<br />
after the ball<br />
john grey<br />
buried love celebrated<br />
janne karlsson<br />
the breakup<br />
john grey<br />
my dad died today<br />
janne karlsson & aletheia adams<br />
am i alone?<br />
michael seese<br />
bedbugs<br />
joyce richardson<br />
The Literary Hatchet 5
TABLE OF CONTENTS<br />
i ride a train<br />
joyce richardson<br />
we will pardon the witches of salem<br />
joyce richardson<br />
le cirque<br />
lee glantz<br />
beach thing<br />
mary king<br />
only me<br />
mckinley henson<br />
barely a portrait, images, transitions<br />
michael lee johnson<br />
crossing the border divide<br />
michael lee johnson<br />
this isn’t a nightmare<br />
william doreski<br />
clay-colored<br />
william doreski<br />
the girl on the moor<br />
michelle deloatch<br />
red wave<br />
michelle deloatch<br />
a youthful old soul<br />
nicholas powell<br />
POETRY<br />
197<br />
203<br />
204<br />
205<br />
206<br />
207<br />
217<br />
226<br />
230<br />
237<br />
238<br />
239<br />
15 December 2015<br />
248<br />
249<br />
254<br />
255<br />
256<br />
272<br />
273<br />
277<br />
282<br />
283<br />
291<br />
292<br />
faust<br />
phil slattery<br />
hungry moon<br />
robert perez<br />
find shelter<br />
wendy l. schmidt<br />
eight arms to hold<br />
robert perez<br />
chop those mice<br />
sally basmajian<br />
mutual rape<br />
soren james<br />
a corporeal dilemma<br />
stephanie smith<br />
a thought and a violin<br />
stephanie smith<br />
the screams of winter<br />
stephanie smith<br />
what makes the man?<br />
t.c. powell<br />
me that was<br />
tyree campbell<br />
staying in on pay-day night<br />
bradford middleton<br />
REVIEWS & ESSAYS<br />
edgar g. ulmer’s detour into<br />
darkness<br />
denise noe<br />
292<br />
6 The Literary Hatchet
The Literary Hatchet 7
[short story]<br />
8 The Literary Hatchet
y wayne scheer<br />
Douglas Feiffer no longer expected much from his freshman literature students.<br />
He laughed when he read the title of Chandler Griffith’s essay, “Exercising Demons.”<br />
The student obviously meant “Exorcising.” He imagined the devil, wearing shorts<br />
and a T-shirt, doing jumping jacks while counting, “twenty-two, twenty-three ...”<br />
The assignment had grown out of a class discussion of Sylvia Plath’s poem,<br />
“Daddy.” Students were asked to write a short essay about dealing with their personal<br />
demons. Douglas circled “Exercising” in red ink, and jotted down the essay title to<br />
share with his colleague, Martha Foote, who had been teaching English even longer<br />
than he had. They kept a list of their favorite student malapropisms, like “She’s the<br />
kind of person who would stab you in the back right to your face” and “Elevators<br />
are so crowded, sometimes you can’t squeeze in like sardines.”<br />
Douglas remembered when he wasn’t so cynical, when he found teaching<br />
exciting.<br />
Now he felt like an over-the-hill athlete operating on muscle memory. He made<br />
the right moves, but with little passion.<br />
He tried blaming his burnout on his ex-wife. But he knew Sara was a good<br />
woman. He had hardly given her a choice. Obsessed with work was his excuse. But<br />
he knew better. He had been obsessed with himself. So busy with his students and<br />
showing off to his peers what a creative teacher he was, he hardly paid attention to<br />
his own family. Now, almost fifteen years after his divorce, he barely knew his sons.<br />
All Douglas had was his work, and he had grown bored with it although<br />
students still loved the show he put on. Ironically, in their evaluations, they praised<br />
his flexibility, his love for his subject, and his respect for their opinions.<br />
Tired and jaded, he knew it was time to retire, but he still needed three more<br />
years to collect full benefits. Then what? Retirement frightened him.<br />
The Literary Hatchet 9
So he sighed and began reading Chandler’s essay.<br />
“My imaginary friend, Octavius, is also my demon. I have to exercise him, keep<br />
him busy, or he gets me in trouble.”<br />
So Chandler knew what he was doing by using “Exercising” in the title.<br />
“Sorry,” he wrote, near where he had red-circled the word ‘Exercising.’ “My<br />
mistake. Clever pun.”<br />
Then he returned to the essay.<br />
Ever since I was a little boy, Octavius would dare me to do things I new<br />
would get me in trouble.” (Douglas circled “new.”)<br />
I would try to be good because I wanted my stepfather to like me, but<br />
Octavius would tell me to jump on the couch, even though my shoes were<br />
dirty. Or he would make me say something nasty. I would try to explain<br />
to my stepfather that Octavius made me do it, but he never understood.<br />
My mother would yell at him and he would accuse her of choosing<br />
me over him. I never wanted to come between them. Even though the<br />
therapist my mother made me go to said I did so subconsciously.<br />
Douglas circled the misspelled word. It broke his concentration, but he was<br />
impressed. This kid was really opening up, he thought.<br />
He tried picturing Chandler in class. Clean-cut and unassuming, Chandler<br />
was one of those students he hardly paid attention to anymore. He seemed neither<br />
bright nor dull. He sat in the back of the room, spoke only when called on, but<br />
usually seemed prepared. His comments, as he recalled, were often correct, but not<br />
particularly insightful. Douglas checked his grade book and saw that Chandler had<br />
a respectable B- average.<br />
He thought of his own sons. He hadn’t seen them since last Thanksgiving,<br />
nearly a year ago, when Sara invited him up to Maine to share the holiday with<br />
them. Ward, the older boy, brought his girlfriend. She seemed pleasant, Douglas<br />
thought. Eddie, younger by two years, appeared uncomfortable around him. He<br />
was a child when Sara remarried and moved to Maine.<br />
It’s hard to be a father when all you have are visitation rights. Again, that was the<br />
way he rationalized the situation.<br />
Douglas didn’t want to think of his own rumpled life, so he returned to the<br />
essay. Chandler wrote more about the problems Octavius caused, but none were<br />
particularly serious. He ended by saying that he learned to keep Octavius controlled<br />
by exercising him. He would take Octavius on long runs or work out with him after<br />
school in the gym. He joined the high school wrestling team and imagined that he<br />
and Octavius combined to defeat their opponents.<br />
Douglas wondered if Chandler had some kind of dual personality disorder—<br />
was this why his mother sent him to a therapist?—but he ended his essay by saying<br />
that he knew Octavius was imaginary and tried to make his demon work for him,<br />
especially in sports.<br />
The essay, itself, sputtered to a mechanical conclusion and ended at three typed<br />
10 The Literary Hatchet
pages, the minimum called for. Normally, Douglas would ask a question, like “Does<br />
Octavius still play a role in your life?” He’d make a comment about the weak ending<br />
and offer a positive statement, like “Original idea” or “I enjoyed this, just wish you’d<br />
have written more and proofread better.” He’d give the paper a B-, record the grade,<br />
and toss it in the Read pile as casually as tossing out yesterday’s newspaper.<br />
Instead, something about Chandler struck a familiar chord. Douglas recalled<br />
how he, as a freshman, managed decent grades but took the easy way out of most<br />
assignments until an English professor, Dr. Braun, showed an interest in him. It<br />
was a paper Douglas had written about The Catcher in the Rye. Professor Braun<br />
had singled out the essay and asked him to stop by his office. They worked on it<br />
together and submitted it to a college literary contest. It won Second Place and a<br />
prize of ten dollars.<br />
From then on, Douglas, who had floated through high school and found himself<br />
in college only because there wasn’t anything he’d rather do, began preparing for a<br />
career as an English teacher.<br />
Douglas felt energized for the first time in years. He wanted to mentor Chandler,<br />
help him find his way in life. He scrawled along the top of the essay: “See me.” He<br />
didn’t give it a grade, knowing that Chandler might otherwise not even read his<br />
comments.<br />
At the end of the next class, he returned the papers. Usual comments, ranging<br />
from “Sheeeiiittt” to “Yes” filled the classroom like white noise, as students took<br />
their essays and left the classroom.<br />
Chandler waited until the last student had gone. “You wanted to see me, Dr.<br />
Feiffer? If this isn’t what you wanted, I’ll do it again.”<br />
“No, no, Chandler. This is exactly what I hoped students would do. Write about<br />
something real. I was just wondering how Octavius was doing.”<br />
Chandler stared at the ground. “You probably think I’m crazy, don’t you?”<br />
“Crazy? The way you use your demon for your benefit. You’re probably the<br />
healthiest person I know. Plath wrote depressing poems and finally stuck her head<br />
in an oven. I’ve spent a lifetime ignoring my own demons. Or, at least, I’ve tried.<br />
You win wrestling matches and write fascinating papers that deserve an A.”<br />
Chandler smiled. “Did I get an A?”<br />
“Not quite.” Douglas wrote a B- in the grade book in pencil. “If you write more<br />
about Octavius, I’ll change the grade to an A.”<br />
“More?”<br />
“Extend this essay or tell me more about Octavius. Bring me up to date. What’s<br />
he been up to lately? Is he still getting you into trouble? How do you cope with<br />
him? I think this has real potential, Chandler. I think you have real potential.”<br />
Chandler shrugged. Douglas took that as a positive affirmation. He’d been<br />
around teenage boys enough not to expect Chandler to jump up and down and<br />
shout, “Yippee!”<br />
He told his colleague, Martha, that Chandler was why he went into teaching in<br />
the first place. “He reminds me a little of myself and my younger son, Eddie. I’m<br />
not sure why.”<br />
The Literary Hatchet 11
“I’d just say, be careful. Eighteen-year-olds who hear voices in their heads<br />
can be dangerous.” She looked up from the piles of papers littering her desk. Her<br />
upper lip curled into what, for Martha, was a smile. “If you’re not careful, Feiffer,<br />
you can influence him to become an English teacher. Do you want that on your<br />
conscience?”<br />
The next morning when he got to his office, Douglas found a typed story from<br />
Chandler slipped under his door. It told how Octavius dared him to run away from<br />
home as a child. Another, later that afternoon, described how Octavius encouraged<br />
him to set the living room curtains on fire.<br />
Over the next few days Douglas didn’t see Chandler, but stories about Octavius<br />
flooded his office. Some frightened him, like one where Octavius urged Chandler<br />
to hold a lighted cigarette to the inside of his thigh.<br />
After class, he spoke to Chandler. The boy appeared nervous.<br />
“Do you want to talk, Chandler? I don’t have a class for another hour.”<br />
“No, sir,” he said, staring at the ground.<br />
“You seem to have a lot to say about Octavius. He seems more demonic than<br />
you originally made him out to be. The, uh, one about where he dares you to burn<br />
yourself disturbed me, Chandler.”<br />
“It just ... well, I sort of exaggerated.” He offered an awkward smile. “The real<br />
Octavius never went that far.”<br />
Something about the way he said, “The real Octavius,” scared Douglas even<br />
more.<br />
Chandler left abruptly, saying he had a class.<br />
Douglas showed some of the essays to a psychology professor friend at the<br />
college.<br />
“The kid’s either playing with you or he’s deeply disturbed,” the professor said.<br />
“Or both?”<br />
“Or both.”<br />
Douglas checked Chandler’s transcripts and talked with some of his professors.<br />
Nothing seemed unusual. He called his former high school and inquired about<br />
him. He had graduated only a year earlier from a rather small school, but the<br />
guidance counselor had to check her records to remember Chandler. Although<br />
she made it clear she couldn’t say anything specific about him over the phone, she<br />
assured Douglas there were no red flags in his files. He asked to speak to Chandler’s<br />
wrestling coach, but she said according to his records, he never wrestled. In fact,<br />
there was no record of extracurricular activities.<br />
Douglas confronted him the next time he saw him.<br />
“You caught me,” Chandler said, grinning. “The truth is I made up Octavius for<br />
the first paper and since you said it had to be about a real personal demon, I just<br />
made up more stories. I’ve been straining to come up with crazy things to say about<br />
Octavius. I hope you’re not mad.”<br />
Douglas laughed, and gave him an A for creativity. He said he’d be happy to read<br />
more Octavius stories, fact or fiction. “You had me believing you. You may have a<br />
future as a fiction writer.”<br />
12 The Literary Hatchet
Douglas recalled the stories his son, Eddie, had written when he was about<br />
twelve. Sara mailed them to him. Strange, dark tales about superheroes who lost<br />
their powers and were defeated in the end. His seventh grade English teacher<br />
praised them for their originality. All Douglas could see was how poorly written<br />
they were. Eddie’s spelling was atrocious. Douglas had just moved in with a woman<br />
and he was adjusting to living with her and her teenage daughter, who had taken<br />
an instant dislike to him. Instead of encouraging his son, as he knew he should, he<br />
joked about his creative spelling. “We’ll talk when I see you this summer,” he said.<br />
“Keep writing,” he added as an afterthought.<br />
Eddie never mentioned his stories again. Until now, Douglas had forgotten<br />
them.<br />
In class, Chandler began participating more and his writing grew more<br />
sophisticated. He chose to do an extra-credit reading assignment on Sylvia Plath’s<br />
autobiographical novel, The Bell Jar. By the end of the course, he deserved the A<br />
he received. Douglas felt proud and urged Chandler to keep in touch, encouraging<br />
him to sign up for the course on Faulkner and Hemingway he was preparing for<br />
the following semester.<br />
Douglas found one more Octavius story in his campus mailbox during<br />
Christmas break. It told how Chandler had decided he had outgrown his imaginary<br />
friend. According to Chandler, he and Octavius went for a run in the woods, and<br />
he left him there. “Octavius won’t be coming back,” he wrote. “He has a lousy sense<br />
of direction.” In pen, he scrawled—”Thanks, Dr. F.”<br />
Douglas wanted to call his sons and tell them about his success with Chandler,<br />
but he knew they wouldn’t understand. He felt like he had done something<br />
worthwhile; he had positively affected a young man’s life. He hadn’t felt that in a<br />
long time.<br />
Just before the start of the new term, Chandler Griffith shot himself in his car<br />
while parked outside of Douglas’s office. The police found a stack of essays about<br />
Octavius with Professor Feiffer on them. They told about a troubled young man<br />
who wanted to be normal, but couldn’t live without his imaginary companion. On<br />
top of the pile of stories was a note to Douglas from Chandler.<br />
“I’m sorry Dr. Feiffer. I came by your office but you weren’t there. I guess<br />
Octavius found his way back from the woods and was mad that I left him.”<br />
Douglas attended Chandler’s funeral. He introduced himself to Chandler’s<br />
mother.<br />
“He talked about you, Dr. Feiffer,” she said. “My son respected you very much.”<br />
Sobbing, she added, “He told me he was thinking of majoring in English.”<br />
Douglas tried to speak. All he could do was gasp for air.<br />
Chandler’s father gave the eulogy. There was no hint of him being a stepfather.<br />
“We had no idea anything was wrong,” his father said before breaking down. “He<br />
seemed like such a normal kid.”<br />
When Douglas got home, he called his sons. Ward wasn’t home, but he left a<br />
message telling him he loved him and just wanted to say hello.<br />
The Literary Hatchet 13
He spoke with Eddie. The conversation stalled at weather and sports. Finally, he<br />
asked, “Do you still write short stories?”<br />
“Nah,” Eddie said. “They were just some crazy stuff I did as a kid.”<br />
After a long silence, Douglas said, “I love you, son.”<br />
Eddie said, “I gotta go.”<br />
Douglas sat at his desk, the phone receiver still in his hand. Without conscious<br />
thought, he turned to his computer and typed an e-mail declaring his intent to<br />
retire, addressing it to the president of the college, the academic dean, and his<br />
department chair. He hit the send button. He wasn’t sure if he felt relief or panic.<br />
“It’s time,” Douglas told Martha, who had stormed into his office the next<br />
morning having already heard the news. “Time for me to stop doing half a job.”<br />
“This is where I’m supposed to say, ‘It’s not your fault.’” She rested her arm<br />
awkwardly on her friend’s shoulder. “You know that’s true, don’t you?”<br />
“Of course. Chandler was troubled. I didn’t see it. His parents didn’t see it. But<br />
... ”<br />
“No one will hold you to your e-mail. In fact, I’m here as a messenger from our<br />
beloved Chair to talk you out of it.”<br />
Douglas shook his head.<br />
“But what will you do? As much as we both hate to admit it, teaching is our<br />
lives.”<br />
Douglas stood up from his desk and hugged Martha. It was the first time they<br />
had ever embraced. “I’m going to move up to Maine to be near the boys. I need<br />
to get to know them.” He took a deep breath and let it out slowly. “I may do some<br />
writing. Maine seems like a good place to exercise my demons.”<br />
]<br />
14 The Literary Hatchet
[poetry]<br />
How much time dare we hope for?<br />
Look how fast this past year has gone<br />
and here we are, six months into the next.<br />
I remember counting and crossing off<br />
the months and days leading to our wedding.<br />
I practiced writing, over and over, what was<br />
to become our new title, “Mr. & Mrs.,”<br />
on the cover of my college loose-leaf binder.<br />
Everyday I look at you and think, “He is here.<br />
Today he is here.” Carpe Diem.<br />
We delight in ordinary things: reading,<br />
watching TV, planning dinner, going dancing.<br />
We visit the oncologist—hand-in-hand,<br />
hands on handrails, hands in Purell.<br />
The earth turns and the calendar, in turn,<br />
flips to the next month so quickly we get dizzy.<br />
Once again, the pillboxes have been emptied.<br />
“How many refills do we have left?”<br />
we ask the pharmacist at Walmart.<br />
—ada jill schneider<br />
The Literary Hatchet 15
[short story]<br />
by matt duggan<br />
I am sitting at my desk with my pen hovering above this opened notebook.<br />
Time is such a thief, I think to myself as I look at the pages full of my history.<br />
And then I glance up, look out the window onto the long grassy slope of the back<br />
property, and there I see the young boy. He has made his way through the column<br />
of thick pine trees and he has managed to climb up onto the one well-worn branch<br />
that provides the only unobstructed view of my home and its hidden surroundings.<br />
The boy has fixed his stare on the centerpiece of my wide, well-groomed landscape:<br />
the sandbox.<br />
I set down my pen and take a deep, lamenting breath. Here is the little boy.<br />
It starts all over again. But, for the purposes of this story, I must start from the<br />
beginning.<br />
The beginning concerns another little boy named Gregory Baiston, who lived<br />
a quiet life with his mother and father. All were happy and, more importantly, all<br />
were healthy.<br />
Gregory was eleven years of age. He was reclusive by necessity because he was<br />
mercilessly bullied at school. He was also compulsively curious, like most other<br />
little boys.<br />
What most roused Gregory’s curiosity was the mansion at the end of his street,<br />
which nobody knew anything about because it was hidden behind an imposing<br />
curtain of tall, old pine trees that ringed the entire property. The thick rigid trees<br />
shot sky high and lined up shoulder-to-shoulder like a security force.<br />
Gregory passed one particular section of the pines each day on his way home<br />
from school. The sidewalk abruptly ended as the adjacent road veered left. The<br />
sidewalk became a dirt path, went on for about twenty yards, then met with the<br />
16 The Literary Hatchet
oad and became concrete sidewalk again. No cars passed along this stretch of road<br />
since it only led to a cul-de-sac. Nobody used this portion of sidewalk except for<br />
Gregory since his house was just up the way. It was his private little adventure trail.<br />
At first Gregory only slowed his pace as he neared this spot of pines to glance<br />
into the thick crowded darkness and gather whatever information he could: How<br />
far in did the pines go? Was there a fence somewhere back there? What if he just<br />
stepped into the first couple of trees?<br />
That last thought soon turned into a self-dare. Gregory rushed home, flung his<br />
backpack onto his bed, then quickly returned to the pines. He looked both ahead<br />
and behind, then he stepped from the path and into the woods.<br />
The young boy went from light to shadow immediately. The trees creaked as a<br />
cold wind rustled through their high branches. A deep chill crept over Gregory but<br />
soon he giggled. He was only a few feet from the path. What if he took two more<br />
steps into the pines? There was no danger; he could always run right back out.<br />
Two steps led to two steps, which led to two more steps.<br />
Soon Gregory was squeezing between trunks, his skin rubbing against the<br />
bark. Not only were the trees so closely bunched, but their branches all stuck out<br />
like bayonets. Several times a branch jabbed Gregory in the ribs as he pushed<br />
himself past another tree trunk.<br />
Just when his fears began to dominate his curiosity, at the moment when<br />
Gregory knew he’d gone too far, he caught sight of the pale blue sky peeking out<br />
from behind the trees up ahead.<br />
The trees here were so close together that there was no path through. Except<br />
for one individual branch. It wasn’t rough and gnarled and pointy like the other<br />
branches. This branch was smoothed and worn down like it had been treated with<br />
oil. Its end was dulled. And it was just high enough for Gregory to climb onto. So<br />
he did.<br />
When he stood on this first branch, he saw a second branch on the tree in front<br />
of him, just slightly higher off the ground and just as inviting.<br />
Gregory followed a succession of branches until suddenly he stood on one last<br />
branch, thicker and flatter than the others. He hugged the cold trunk of the tree<br />
and looked onto a beautiful enormous mansion atop a vast lush carpet of grass. The<br />
house looked like it had enough rooms to sleep the entire town.<br />
More beautiful than the mansion was the property on which it sat: the grass<br />
was greener than a crayon, without one dead blade. There were several bubbling<br />
fountains on the edges; brick walls lined the perimeter; an array of flowers and<br />
flowering trees were dotted throughout.<br />
But all of this was only set dressing for the star: In the center of the great lawn<br />
was a black-marbled sandbox. It was the most curious and inviting thing Gregory<br />
had ever seen.<br />
“Hey! Get down from there this instant!”<br />
A man barked up so suddenly that Gregory nearly fell from the branch. He<br />
froze, his heart punching through his chest like a fist.<br />
“Please. I didn’t mean to startle you. But you must come down. It’s dangerous;<br />
The Literary Hatchet 17
you might fall.” The man changed tone, spoke softly. Gregory turned his eyes<br />
downward and stole a look at the man: He looked the same age as Gregory’s father.<br />
He smiled up at the boy like a school teacher encouraging a child back to the<br />
classroom after recess.<br />
“You are quite an explorer to navigate through those old trees,” the man said<br />
as he took the boy’s hand and helped him down from the last branch. “What’s your<br />
name?”<br />
“Gregory.”<br />
A trusting warmth was felt in the man’s hand.<br />
“Would you like to take a closer look?” the man asked.<br />
“Oh, I didn’t mean to…I wasn’t snooping.” Gregory stammered, still nervous.<br />
“It’s quite all right,” the man replied. “I once did exactly the same thing as you.”<br />
The man knelt down on one knee and looked Gregory in the eyes.<br />
”My name is Robert, and it is a great pleasure to meet you. You are an impressive<br />
young man. You found the one branch that offers a view onto our private sanctuary.<br />
You are brave and curious.”<br />
Robert gave the boy a tour of the property: they walked through the Japanese<br />
garden, climbed along several of the old moss-covered brick walls and looked at<br />
the frogs in the small lily-covered pools of the water fountains. They passed a clay<br />
tennis court on the side of the mansion where a vigorous and youthful couple was<br />
in the middle of a heated match. They briefly stopped and enthusiastically waved<br />
up to Robert and the new visitor. Robert smiled and told Gregory that they were<br />
his parents.<br />
Robert intentionally avoided the sandbox, which only further piqued Gregory’s<br />
curiosity. At each stop along the way his attention turned back to the sandbox.<br />
Its black marble siding glistened like an eye; the sand looked like a virgin beach<br />
waiting for its first footprints.<br />
“Would you like to see it?” Robert asked and Gregory nodded his head “yes”<br />
with delight.<br />
The sandbox’s black marble edging was cool and smooth to the touch. I could<br />
invent so many fun games here, Gregory thought. How fun, and no other boys<br />
around to pick on me. He kneeled down for a closer look as he gazed at the sand.<br />
He stretched out his hand to touch it.<br />
Robert violently seized Gregory’s hand and stopped him. “No! Not yet.”<br />
Gregory looked up at Robert, frightened as startled tears formed in the corners of<br />
his eyes. Robert tightened his grip. “Listen to me, boy. And listen well. Your life and<br />
your parents’ lives depend on it. Do you hear me?!”<br />
Gregory’s wrist felt as if it were being broken and he couldn’t breathe; he was<br />
drowning under water. He choked for breaths.<br />
“This sandbox is alive. Each grain of sand is a tormented soul who needs to<br />
feed on life to ease its anguish. Your curiosity brought you here, guided you to the<br />
sandbox. You are to be its new guardian.”<br />
Robert paused. Gregory had closed his eyes but he could hear Robert’s deep,<br />
ferocious breaths. They sounded like horses galloping in his ears.<br />
18 The Literary Hatchet
“Look at me,” Robert demanded in a grave voice. Once, when Gregory was five<br />
years old, he had fallen off the jungle gym and landed on his head. For an instant<br />
he thought he’d broken his neck. A consuming fear shocked his body and mind. He<br />
felt that fear all over again as he looked into Robert’s narrowed eyes.<br />
“You’re too young to understand, so you will experience what I’m telling you.”<br />
And as quick as lightning Robert thrust Gregory’s hand into the sand.<br />
Immediately a thousand needled teeth bit into the very fingerprint of each<br />
finger. Razors were peeling back each layer of his skin with excruciating care.<br />
Gregory screamed with such force that he thought his eyes were going to burst.<br />
Blood began to run down his nose.<br />
Robert patted Gregory’s forehead with a wet handkerchief as Gregory lay flat<br />
on the grass, staring up at splotches of gray clouds skulking past. He had passed<br />
out.<br />
“You are now in charge of the sandbox. You are responsible. You must feed it.<br />
Human flesh.”<br />
Robert hoisted Gregory to his feet.<br />
“Time moves quickly, you must not hesitate. This is your responsibility. You<br />
must feed them. Once every three months on the full moon.”<br />
Gregory ran home in a panic but stopped two times along the way to vomit.<br />
His knees were about to crumble beneath him at any moment.<br />
He ran through the front door and zoomed past his mother who quipped,<br />
“Not even a hello?” Gregory ran upstairs and dived beneath his bed covers. He<br />
curled up in a ball and cried as he wished he’d never set foot into those pine trees.<br />
Gregory feigned illness for two weeks and wouldn’t get out of bed. He thought<br />
that if he stayed there, maybe everything that had occurred would turn out to be<br />
make-believe.<br />
After the first couple of days in bed the hours began to melt one into the other,<br />
and hallucinations developed. Real events were confused with imaginary events.<br />
Did the doctor visit and take my temperature? Gregory asked himself. Did mom<br />
make me chicken soup this morning? He soon convinced himself that perhaps it was<br />
all a terrible nightmare. Perhaps the sandbox was nothing.<br />
But then his father fell ill. It happened quickly, and it was severe. At first,<br />
Gregory’s father had become sick at work. He came home early one day with a<br />
harsh cough that he described as a painful dry scratching, as if his throat were lined<br />
with sandpaper. Soon after that, he was spitting up black clots of blood, and he had<br />
trouble breathing. He was taken to the emergency room and for two days tests were<br />
administered. Sections of his forearms began to dry up and flake, like animal skin<br />
curing in the sun. Soon all his skin was flaking and peeling off.<br />
Gregory’s father, Justin, was dying, and the doctors couldn’t diagnose the<br />
cause. He was brought home. Twenty-four hour hospice care was provided for him.<br />
Gregory heard all of this from his bed. Since he had no physical symptoms<br />
he was left alone. All attention in the house was on his father. Gregory lay hidden<br />
beneath the covers and listened to the nurses as they consoled his mother in the<br />
The Literary Hatchet 19
hallway, and the whirs and beeps of the medical machines keeping his dad alive in<br />
the bedroom.<br />
One afternoon the nurses were downstairs, chatting with Carole, Gregory’s<br />
mother. Gregory slipped out of bed, curious to see what his father looked like.<br />
It looked like a vacuum had sucked out all of his father’s blood; his skin stretched<br />
thinly across his face. Mr. Baiston’s arms, legs, and torso were all bandaged, but<br />
blood seeped through the dressings. A blue trashbag full of blood-soaked linens<br />
was next to the bed. Gregory stood there quivering as he stared at his father, and he<br />
could hear faint moans. With each struggling breath, Gregory’s father whispered.<br />
Gregory leaned close and placed his ear near his father’s mouth. With each breath,<br />
Gregory heard a pleading cry for help.<br />
It was too much; Gregory quietly stepped away. He needed to get back to his<br />
own bed so that he could return to an imaginary world where these horrors didn’t<br />
exist.<br />
Gregory stopped with a wince. He’d stepped on glass. Gregory looked down as<br />
he lifted up his bare bleeding foot.<br />
Beneath it was a small pile of sand.<br />
The next day Gregory’s mother was rushed to the hospital. She quickly fell into<br />
the same grave condition as his father.<br />
A feral cat used to live in the basement of Gregory’s house. She was fiercely<br />
independent and not at all interested in being petted or fussed with. Except when<br />
she was in the basement. Then a magical transformation took place. She would curl<br />
up on her little bed and let Gregory stroke the fur behind her ears. Gregory had<br />
named her Tabitha. She would crawl out from beneath a thicket of bushes on the<br />
side of the house, then cautiously prowl up to the broken dirt-covered basement<br />
window. She’d slink between the shards of glass then jump onto the washing<br />
machine inside and then onto the floor where she’d arch her back and walk over to<br />
the corner to a collection of discarded blankets. She would settle in and then gaze<br />
up at Gregory as if saying: “I’m ready for a scratch now.”<br />
Gregory hustled through the pine trees dragging the heavy laundry bag behind<br />
him. It bounced and jolted every step of the way. A horrible, terrified hissing<br />
accompanying each step. It made Gregory angry because he was so helpless; he<br />
knocked the laundry bag against the hard tree trunks as he made his way. He<br />
wished that it would be quiet. He wished that he’d never given it a name.<br />
As time passed, much was explained to Gregory. He slowly settled into his<br />
new reality and his new life. He accepted his fate. He had no choice. Robert was<br />
patient with him. “Animals do not do the trick,” he told Gregory. “In fact, they are<br />
an offense.”<br />
Gregory was standing at the edge of the sandbox, the empty laundry bag in<br />
his hand.<br />
“Human flesh. That is what they require.”<br />
Robert let Gregory cry until he was too emotionally exhausted to resist<br />
20 The Literary Hatchet
anymore. Time was invaluable, and Gregory was behind schedule.<br />
The lush landscape was turning brown. The trees were no longer blooming.<br />
The water fountains were dry.<br />
“The sandbox is just the door. Beneath the ground, the Tormented are<br />
everywhere. They were buried here from the earliest ages. When they are not<br />
satisfied, everything is affected. We feed them to keep them contained here. If the<br />
balance is broken they punish the living.”<br />
As Gregory listened, he felt eyes staring through him. He quickly turned and<br />
looked up at the Victorian home. On the third floor, peering out from behind a<br />
plush gold and red curtain was a gaunt and frail-looking woman. She bared her<br />
teeth as she pointed a crooked finger at Gregory, then she whipped the curtain<br />
shut.<br />
When Gregory dumped the cat into the sandbox he cringed at the events that<br />
unfolded next. Two worlds simultaneously appeared before him. One world was<br />
the ordinary world, the world of a cat landing on sand and then somewhat quickly<br />
sinking. But then there was the second world, the world that Gregory was privy to.<br />
Gregory saw each individual tormented soul in each grain of sand. A mother sees<br />
things in her child that no other person will ever perceive. It is an extra-sensory<br />
perception. This was the only analogy that Gregory could draw for seeing the<br />
unseen. Terrible twisted faces with thin razor teeth, gnashing and angry. Legions<br />
of these monstrous devils. The cat was pulled into the depths of the sand and was<br />
skinned alive as its body turned inside out. Sand forced itself out of the cat’s eye<br />
sockets and out of its ears. A bloody animal skeleton disappeared beneath the sand.<br />
But this did not suffice, at all.<br />
The first victim was a boy named Billy. He was two years older than Gregory<br />
and used to pick on him every morning before the school bell rang. Billy liked<br />
to circle around Gregory and beat him with a tennis ball, leaving him covered in<br />
welts.<br />
One day Gregory told Billy that he knew where there was a buried treasure.<br />
Gregory promised that he would show Billy after school but Billy had to promise<br />
to keep it a secret. As proof, Gregory opened his hand and showed Billy two pearl<br />
earrings and a diamond necklace. “There is a whole chest full of this,” he whispered.<br />
“I need someone to help me dig it up. I can’t do it alone.”<br />
Billy teetered on the black marble of the sandbox and was hyperventilating<br />
with excitement. Firstly, he was proud of himself for getting through the forest of<br />
pines, arguably his greatest fear. Secondly, he was now staring at a mound of sand<br />
that contained a treasure chest somewhere inside. He roughly pushed Gregory<br />
down onto the grass and warned, “I’ll deal with you later.” Billy picked up the<br />
shovel that Gregory had brought along, then he stepped onto the black marble and<br />
leapt into the sandbox.<br />
The screams were deafening and the whole process went more slowly than<br />
Gregory had expected. Tabitha was pulled under quickly compared to Billy. It<br />
The Literary Hatchet 21
excruciatingly slow. Billy cried as he outstretched his hand and begged Gregory to<br />
pull him out.<br />
After another several minutes, Billy was still sticking out of the sand from the<br />
chest up and his pitiful cries were beginning to distress Gregory, so he picked up<br />
the shovel and whacked Billy over the head. The metal crushed against Billy’s head,<br />
stunning him into silence.<br />
Gregory wound up the shovel for a second hit but Robert grabbed the wood<br />
handle and stopped him.<br />
“He must be alive.” Robert took the shovel from Gregory and set it aside.<br />
Robert was happy. He tussled Gregory’s hair and invited him inside for cake.<br />
But Gregory was so nervous about the screaming. It echoed everywhere and it was<br />
really loud. Robert took Gregory’s hand and explained that the pines soak up the<br />
screams. “That’s their job.”<br />
“Come, let’s have some cake and ice cream. I’d like to introduce you to my<br />
parents. They are excited to meet you.”<br />
Robert led Gregory up the stone walkway toward the big Victorian house.<br />
“One day this will all be yours.”<br />
Inside, Robert escorted his apprentice into the library and showed him the<br />
shelves full of notebooks. Each one contained essays and lessons on how to kidnap<br />
and murder without leaving a trail; others listed locations, areas, towns, and cities<br />
for searching out flesh. They were training manuals and guides for feeding the<br />
Tormented.<br />
I look around the library now, at the shelves full of notebooks. I glance out the<br />
window again. The boy is still there on the pine branch, transfixed. Just as I was<br />
that first day.<br />
I sign my name at the bottom of the last page of my notebook, “Gregory<br />
Baiston.” I close the cover and slide it onto the bookshelf right next to Robert’s<br />
notebook. I must go outside now. I will walk out the side door off the pantry and I<br />
will sneak up behind the boy to make sure that he doesn’t run away.<br />
I pause for one last moment before I leave. Time, I think to myself, the thief.<br />
I take one second to consider it all. From the dining room at the other end of the<br />
house I hear the faint sound of waltz music. My parents are dancing. They dance<br />
every day.<br />
It is time now to help that little boy down from the branch.<br />
]<br />
22 The Literary Hatchet
[poetry]<br />
My body slithers across a surface my mind dares<br />
not name. Its cold coarseness claims scabs of my skin<br />
they trail behind me: a blooded map to nowhere<br />
gold. I cannot turn [my head to look]<br />
back. A shattering<br />
steels my focus. I recognize the sound,<br />
a moment of lesser dark.<br />
That is not my desire. I pull myself forward<br />
taking a moment to scale the rest of this weathered cover<br />
ing from my bones. I welcome the stale<br />
smothering of wind inside. It ebbs me<br />
on. Over hours and worlds<br />
I cross, feeling<br />
for a stain to match my eyes.<br />
Finally, the flailing flanges of what is left<br />
of my hands find the ridge. That jagged point<br />
of exit. I breathe in the stagnancy that falls after<br />
eternity, and collapse. My eyes tumble; roll away<br />
from me, but still see me: victorious<br />
ly clutching the edge of the only moment<br />
that could ever matter.<br />
—a.j. huffman<br />
The Literary Hatchet 23
[poetry]<br />
Looking forward once again<br />
morning spent in pondering<br />
the purpose of our parts,<br />
delving into differences<br />
of our design<br />
afternoon a time<br />
for gentle exploration,<br />
conjecturing who programmed us<br />
and why<br />
by end of day,<br />
to kneel in grateful prayer<br />
We’ve not the curse of rotting flesh<br />
still massive through the city—<br />
one could do worse than have<br />
a shell of stainless steel<br />
—alan meyrowitz<br />
24 The Literary Hatchet
[poetry]<br />
The hush of the wonder theater is as loud as the ocean.<br />
You are drowning in the blue lights and collection climate,<br />
forgetting the touch of the sun,<br />
while fetal sharks and sepia rays<br />
and fossils the rest of the world lost a century ago circle you.<br />
A girl with no hands sings the nightingale’s song,<br />
better choose the jar with a vulture in it.<br />
All of these monsters were torn<br />
from the earth sliced<br />
from their skins ripped<br />
wriggling from the water<br />
or delicately cut from an egg.<br />
You were dropped here too<br />
and you look at your reflection in every vial<br />
in every butterfly case in every glass eye,<br />
hunting for the missing piece of yourself.<br />
—amelia gorman<br />
The Literary Hatchet 25
[short story]<br />
by jason lairamore<br />
He settled into an artificial leather armchair and whistled along to the opening<br />
song of The Andy Griffith Show that was playing on the television.<br />
A scratch came from the front door and he somersaulted from the room. He<br />
jumped through an open bedroom window and landed frog-like in the backyard<br />
then crabbed over the dead grass to peek at the front porch. A little, white dog<br />
stood there shaking, face intent on the door. He pulled out his silencer and shot out<br />
the porch light with a puff. Glass fell. The dog yipped.<br />
He returned inside the way he’d come. The TV provided the only light. He<br />
cracked the front door and grabbed the dog. It bit him and he smiled. He read its<br />
tag.<br />
“If you find this cat, call this number.”<br />
He dropped the dog, found the phone, and dialed the number. Blood dripped<br />
to the floor from where the dog had bit him.<br />
“Hello.” A woman’s voice. Rosy.<br />
He cleared his throat. “Found your dog. How do I find you?”<br />
She gave directions without a second’s pause. He tossed the dog some sliced<br />
ham he found in the fridge and left at a walk. The lady didn’t live but a few houses<br />
down.<br />
The house looked like the one he’d just left. A man answered the doorbell. He<br />
wore a smile and had a paunch sticking out from his lime-green sweater vest. His<br />
happy wrinkles ran deep.<br />
“Help you?”<br />
He stepped in close and snapped the man’s neck, and then used his forward<br />
momentum to lower the still smiling face to the foyer floor. A woman talked nearby<br />
… on the phone, in the kitchen. She didn’t turn at his approach. He grabbed her by<br />
the hair of her head and slammed her face into the marble countertop until she was<br />
a bloody mess, and then let her fall as she would. He hung up the phone.<br />
26 The Literary Hatchet
The dog sat and licked its near nonexistent snout as it watched The Andy<br />
Griffith Show from the arm of the imitation leather chair. He sat in the chair next<br />
to it and rubbed its bristly head.<br />
Breaking News: A series of brutal murders occurred this morning during a<br />
funeral for a young girl. More on this tragedy as details unfold.<br />
The dog gave him a questioning look. “No dog should be called cat,” he said.<br />
“I’ll call you Joseph.” Joseph snorted. “You can call me Killer.”<br />
Left the house soon after and ended holed up in an out of the way filler station<br />
that’d been left to pasture on the sidebar of a backwoods highway. It was January<br />
cold, but the mood was light. Still, Joseph wouldn’t eat the Spam he’d found in the<br />
pantry. The expiration date hadn’t even passed. He’d have to do some shopping.<br />
He opened an extra can and chunked it into an enclosed backyard where a<br />
rusted trash bin was oxidizing its way into the ground. Joseph might decide to dine<br />
out while he was away.<br />
“Take a break Joseph. You’ve had a long drive. I’ll go get us some supplies.”<br />
Joseph perked his ears at the words, but was busy sniffing out their short term<br />
home.<br />
He didn’t lock the heavy door as he left. Joseph couldn’t open it anyway. He<br />
walked to the car he’d hidden behind a leaning aluminum building with flaking<br />
timbers and climbed into it Bo Duke style. He revved the 6-cylinder then raised a<br />
few dust clouds on his way to the highway.<br />
He found a mom-n-pop store with its lights on about thirty minutes later.<br />
The man behind the counter looked like the walking dead. He couldn’t decide if it<br />
was age or boredom. It didn’t matter. He got his and Joseph’s food and set it on the<br />
smooth brown countertop beside the cash register. A blessed television distracted<br />
him from the cashier.<br />
News at 10:<br />
The reporter was interviewing Peggy Schmidt. She was one of the town’s<br />
gossipers. She had a big smile on her face.<br />
“That Herrmann boy walking around in decent society makes me nervous.”<br />
She didn’t look nervous. She looked happy. A senior class picture of a boy with<br />
crew cut black hair flashed on the screen.<br />
‘That boy deserves a slow death to what he did to his family.”<br />
A gruff voice rumbled out something. He felt a pull in the back of his shoulder<br />
and heard a gurgling sound. His traced his arms to the fingers. The old man was<br />
just starting to fall. His fingertips ached where they’d crushed the man’s windpipe.<br />
He bagged the groceries.<br />
Breaking News: A man wearing a suit stood outside one of the Herrmann family<br />
chicken houses. The army released medical records for the accused. The young man<br />
has an extra Y chromosome. Researchers believe this may be a cause for his heightened<br />
aggression.<br />
The drive back was dark and gloomy. These backwater highways were one of<br />
the most forlorn places in God’s green earth. He’d once felt a certain kindred pull<br />
to the rural roads, but now they just made him sad. Life could have been different.<br />
The Literary Hatchet 27
It should have been different.<br />
The army had been a good place for him. He’d felt comfort for the first time in<br />
his life within the bosom of the hard strictures of army life. He’d even had thoughts<br />
of going career. But, just when a smile on his face was becoming an everyday<br />
happening, he’d made a mistake. His sparring partner had goaded him. The man’s<br />
neck, so soft and available, was so easy to break. The army had sent him home<br />
charting the whole thing up as an accident. He’d thought himself lucky at the time.<br />
There were worst things than being dishonorably discharged.<br />
He’d returned home with a shrug. Days melted into weeks and the mundane<br />
world of chicken houses became a gray fog that settled over his mind. Ammoniafilled<br />
longhouses got mucked out every six weeks in preparation for the multitude<br />
of chicks. Chicks were laid out from the delivery truck. They ate the special feed<br />
and drank the special water. Six weeks and you had a healthy six pound broiler. The<br />
truck picked them up and the process started over.<br />
He’d carried a long machete to kill the huge rats that fed on the chickens and<br />
feed. Those rats looked like beavers. They scared most chicken house operators.<br />
He’d always liked killing them.<br />
Three days ago, a day like any other, with machete on hip and shovel in hand,<br />
he’d worked on the chicken liter caked to the ground of one of the longhouses. A<br />
sound, small and directly behind him, set him spinning with the shovel. Kim, his<br />
little sister, stared at him with round eyes and gaping mouth. He couldn’t stop in<br />
time. The thud of shovel on head sent a sick vibration through his hands.<br />
He remembered carrying her back to the house, but not how he felt. He<br />
couldn’t recall what it felt like to watch Mother and Father screaming. He explained<br />
what had happened and showered. The cops showed up, but they didn’t arrest him.<br />
They’d assumed it was an accident and that he was in shock.<br />
The morning of Kim’s funeral the entire extended family had crowded inside<br />
his parent’s house. Every face shot accusatory glances his way. He remembered<br />
each and every look. Something inside gave. It gave and started killing. He didn’t<br />
punch or fight. He didn’t make a sound. He retrieved his machete from his room<br />
and started hacking. Some of the younger ones made it outside, but in the end<br />
everybody died.<br />
The past three days had been a greasy dream of spotty occurrences, but Kim,<br />
surprise in her eyes and a little ‘o’ on her mouth, that would always stand out in<br />
sharp detail, blood and all.<br />
He parked the car behind the shed. The darkness surrounding the abandoned<br />
station held that special deep quiet unique to the time before dawn’s first light,<br />
when the dark was reluctant to depart the world. That abyss called to him from the<br />
bottom of his soul. It would be so easy to give in and just go where it led, but he<br />
resisted. Kim wouldn’t want him giving up.<br />
He crawled from the car’s open window and slipped around the side to get the<br />
plastic food sacks. The sacks’ crinkling sounded like fear. He had never realized<br />
plastic could be afraid. Plastic lasted forever, after all. It was a funny sound.<br />
Food in tow, he eased himself to the rear door and entered. The darkness was<br />
28 The Literary Hatchet
thicker here, suffocating. It was expecting something.<br />
There was no sound, nothing but the deep thud of his heart. He should hear<br />
Joseph’s breathing. Bile rose in his throat. Perhaps the dog was outside in the<br />
enclosure where he’d left the Spam.<br />
He went to the open door that led to the walled in enclosure and stood in the<br />
frame. There was nothing, not even a breeze. The darkness hung over and through<br />
him. Was that laughter? No.<br />
He turned and ran outside. He left the car and the food, crossed the road, and<br />
slipped into the trees.<br />
The forest was extensive this far out in the country. He ran until his mind<br />
caught up to his action then stopped and put his back to a large oak.<br />
They’d taken Joseph. The dog must have had a GPS chip under his skin. Joseph<br />
didn’t have a collar. They’d taken Joseph. Something slipped. Something he’d been<br />
holding his whole life and never realized. Joseph. They didn’t know, couldn’t know,<br />
what they’d done. They’d taken Joseph. They must have taken the dog with them.<br />
Joseph would be where they were. The first place to look was home.<br />
The darkness gave way. The world turned purple. A bird chirped nearby.<br />
This time was different from the funeral, more intensely non-intense. He could<br />
see and hear, but had no control over his movements. There was an overriding will<br />
that’d turned on like some unseen hand had flipped a switch. They shouldn’t have<br />
taken Joseph.<br />
He made it to his hometown sometime that afternoon. The ground was soggy,<br />
like it had rained. The sky was overcast. The world felt closed in.<br />
He moved with speed through the trees and rolling hills, always watchful.<br />
A sedan sat on one of the back roads. He’d seen more than one just like it. The<br />
government was out in force. People around here didn’t drive those unpractical<br />
things. Idiots. He struck at the car like a snake, running full tilt, pulling his silencer<br />
out and firing twice. He bet they’d been surprised when they died. They probably<br />
hadn’t imagined he had armor piercing bullets in his little gun.<br />
The sedan’s door was locked. There was no getting inside. He squeezed his<br />
machete’s handle. He couldn’t get the blade to them. His chest ached.<br />
A chopper was coming. He eased back into the trees. The noose was tightening<br />
on him. Good.<br />
He took out another couple sedans, avoided the chopper, and made it back<br />
home unscathed. The press was absent. The Feds must have made them leave the<br />
crime scene. They were expecting him then, probably.<br />
Joseph barked and Killer’s emotions rushed in his ears. The dog needed him.<br />
He’d see Joseph safe if it was the last thing he did. A tranquilizer dart zipped by and<br />
imbedded in a tree to his right. He smiled. It’d take more than that. He zigzagged<br />
through the trees and melted away. Joseph barked again. With the gun in one<br />
hand and the machete in the other he circled and approached from the opposite<br />
direction.<br />
They were fools for picking this place as a standoff. He’d grown to manhood<br />
here. Standing on the eastern edge of the woods bordering the lawn he could just<br />
The Literary Hatchet 29
make out the house. A large van, the chopper, and another black sedan sat in the<br />
driveway. He melted back into the trees. He needed a diversion and knew just<br />
where to get one.<br />
Five chicken houses sat north of the house. He followed the winding rat paths<br />
through the tall grasses, staying low and out of sight. He found a tow sack next to<br />
the feed barn then went rat hunting.<br />
The trick was to wrestle the things into the sack, alive. Their size still amazed<br />
him. He managed to get three of them into the large sack. A fourth would not have<br />
fit.<br />
He got as near to the house as he dared. The front door was open. He wondered<br />
if the welcome mat still rested on the doorstep. Smiling, he threw the bag at the<br />
opening then ran around as fast as he could within the cover of the trees to the back<br />
of the house. The government men had no idea what to make of the enormous<br />
rodents. Their surprise was loud enough to reach his ears.<br />
The back door was locked, so he used his key. He eased in and closed it back.<br />
“What the hell,” one of the men said. Killer peeked around a corner. Four men<br />
in suits were dancing around trying to shoot the rats with dart rifles. Joseph barked<br />
from one of the bedrooms.<br />
He rushed the room and took the first man cleanly with his machete. The<br />
metallic smell of blood filled the room. The other men tried to bring their arms to<br />
bear. He tossed the machete aside and grappled with them, breaking arms, necks,<br />
backs … everything.<br />
All done, he gazed down. It wasn’t enough that they were dead.<br />
They had white hearing aids with wires. More were on their way. Joseph<br />
needed to be safe.<br />
The dog yipped his greeting from the cage they’d put him into. Killer let him<br />
out of the cage and the dog jumped into his arms. Dog in hand, he walked out the<br />
front door.<br />
The town sheriff, Sheriff Bob, and his deputy, Travis, stood twenty feet away.<br />
Travis, a friend he’d known since grade school, screamed and started shooting.<br />
Killer turned his back to protect the dog. Something hit him and threw him down.<br />
The sheriff, a guy who Killer’s dad used to play softball with, rolled him over.<br />
He still clutched Joseph to his chest.<br />
“Sheriff … Please, Sheriff, take care of my dog. Could ya?” He coughed up<br />
blood and his muscled locked up for a second. “Call him Joseph, Sheriff. OK Sheriff<br />
… Joseph. Don’t let anybody get him.”<br />
Sheriff Bob turned his head away. “Travis, bring the car around.” Joseph licked<br />
Killer’s face. The sheriff turned back to Killer.<br />
“I’ll raise the dog like he was my own child.”<br />
“Yes …” Killer said and died.<br />
Sheriff Bob reached for the dog, and the thing bit him. Little Varmint.<br />
30 The Literary Hatchet<br />
]
[poetry]<br />
The waltzing spirits, once so pale and cold,<br />
Awaited new lives as they shed the old.<br />
Created awesomely, they each would soon<br />
Advance on or decline by morning’s moon.<br />
—ashley dioses<br />
The Literary Hatchet 31
[poetry]<br />
Juicy, tender,<br />
Salty, sweet.<br />
Meat is the meal that I like to eat.<br />
Beef, chicken,<br />
Or human flesh.<br />
The taste of meat is the absolute best.<br />
I like to eat it when it’s grilled,<br />
I like to eat it when it’s chilled.<br />
I like to eat all kinds of meat.<br />
I’ll eat it all from ears to feet.<br />
When it comes to people, I’m not too picky,<br />
But Clowns just seem to taste so icky.<br />
I find all meats but clown to be yummy,<br />
It’s all because they taste so funny.<br />
—andrew nelson<br />
32 The Literary Hatchet
Maybe I misunderstood,<br />
Head bowed low and fingers in my ears,<br />
Ever hoping to escape the undeniable<br />
Sound of laughter in the morning.<br />
Tears in eyes that have forgotten to sleep,<br />
I see only terror upon my face...<br />
A face so long hidden beneath the twilight<br />
That it must tell the dawn its name.<br />
How could I know that these things were real,<br />
And not just intermingled with the remnants<br />
Of a gray mist that flows from a bottle,<br />
Filled with broken daisies and week old cigarettes?<br />
Running far from what must be forever,<br />
I chase them all into the darkness,<br />
Clinging to what was once so easy to believe…<br />
And now so impossible to ever forget.<br />
—angela ash<br />
The Literary Hatchet 33
[short story]<br />
by ian mullins<br />
“Finished?” His mother slammed a bony fist on the bathroom door.<br />
“Almost.” Alan fumbled for his belt.<br />
“How much longer does my garden have to wait?” she demanded.<br />
“Coming.” He sluiced his hands with scalding water until they were as red as<br />
dying roses.<br />
“You always keep me waiting,” she complained, shoving past him as he opened<br />
the door. “God, what a stench.”<br />
“Dad said that was a sign of good compost,” he reminded her.<br />
“Your father knew nothing.” She pecked at the toilet bowl, fussing over the thick<br />
stool he’d dropped.<br />
Alan waited while she spooned up his turd and plopped it in a transparent<br />
plastic bag, where it seemed to writhe like a foetus in a womb.<br />
“I hope you won’t poison my roses,” she said, holding the bag at arms length, as<br />
though it was a dead rat.<br />
“Waste not want not,” he answered. It was one of her own favourites, but the<br />
invisible irony refused to deflate his shame. He was the only thirty-eight-year-old<br />
he knew who still let his mother know when he needed the bathroom. He was also<br />
the only thirty-eight-year-old he knew who still lived at home. The factory had cut<br />
his hours in half, and were threatening to cut them even more. He’d hated his tiny<br />
apartment, only half a mile away from the house he’d been brought up in, but at<br />
least it had been his. Now he shared his childhood bedroom with fertilizing flowers<br />
sheltering from cold winds.<br />
He stood in its window and watched mother spread his droppings around her<br />
34 The Literary Hatchet
oses. Winter was encroaching, and the garden was full of skeletons buried up to<br />
their knees. He shivered, licking the cold glass then inhaling cold coffee, just as he<br />
had when he was nine.<br />
She came for him while he sat at the kitchen table. “I need your blood,” she<br />
demanded.<br />
“Why?” he asked, folding the newspaper to hide the comic strips.<br />
“To mix with my bone meal. My bedding plants are dying.” She approached<br />
him with a suspiciously-long darning needle, gleaming in the late sun leaking<br />
through the window.<br />
“Why does it have to be mine?” he inquired, nervously afraid. But he was<br />
already baring his arm, offering it as a shield to ward off a blow from a sword.<br />
“You want an old woman to cut herself and bleed to death? Shame on you.” She<br />
jabbed deep, plastic spoon in her spare hand. “You’re not going to cry, are you?<br />
You always blubbered when I took you to the doctor. No matter what he did, you<br />
always cried.”<br />
“No,” he protested, feeling a single tear sharper than the needle escape from an<br />
eye.<br />
“I knew it,” she declared, carefully lifting the spoon’s thin blood to her nose. For<br />
a moment Alan thought she was going to drink it, but instead she tipped it into a<br />
pot of earth the texture of cookie-dough, stabbing down the spoon to crush the<br />
small white bones.<br />
“I’m thirty-eight years old,” he called after her, as she headed back to the garden<br />
with her new trophy.<br />
“Is that what you think?” she shouted back.<br />
Alan patched himself up and slouched back to his room. He seemed to be there<br />
all the time now, just as he had when he was sixteen and had painted the walls<br />
black. It had been worth it to hear her scream.<br />
Two days later she dragged him out into the garden at dusk to help her re-plant<br />
a small ugly tree with closed lips sealed in its bark. He’d been busy all day at work,<br />
packing shoes into boxes until his hands smelled of leather and laces, two odours<br />
he’d once enjoyed. His hands were dry and stiff, like unpolished shoes, but she<br />
made him grip the shovel and dig a deep hole into earth that seemed to smell of<br />
leather as she demanded he dig deeper and deeper, faster and faster. It was almost<br />
dark by the time he climbed from the hole, bathed in winter sweat, impaling the<br />
shovel in the pile of wormy earth he’d disturbed and dug. He turned toward the<br />
house, light from the kitchen window limping across the lawn.<br />
“Where are you going?” she demanded to know. “You think I can lift a tree all<br />
my myself?”<br />
“Bathroom,” he gasped.<br />
“Number one or number two?”<br />
“Two,” he confessed. “Are you coming? Bring your spoon.”<br />
“No time,” she answered, waving her arms like an autumn tree shedding leaves.<br />
The Literary Hatchet 35
“It’s almost dark and I need to get this tree planted before the rains tomorrow. Just<br />
unbuckle your pants and drop it right in.”<br />
“What?” Alan couldn’t believe what he was hearing. “Right in front of you?”<br />
Mother cackled, her false teeth shiny in the dusk. “Do you think this will be the<br />
first time I’ve seen you empty your bowels? I’ve been smelling your filth since you<br />
were inside me.”<br />
“I’m not doing this,” he declared, tightening his hands on his belt to stop them<br />
straying towards the buckle. “I’ll go inside and—”<br />
“No! The rains are coming. I need to beat the rains!”<br />
“The rains can wait a few minutes.”<br />
“But I can’t! I can’t wait.”<br />
“Why can’t you wait?”<br />
She looked at him squarely. “Because I won’t,” she said quietly. “Now get in that<br />
hole and give me your dirt.”<br />
Alan turned back to the hole he’d dug. He thought about throwing himself in<br />
and begging her to cover him.<br />
“Good boy,” said mother.<br />
Two little words were all it took. Feeling cold and immense, he added three of<br />
his own. “I love you,” he whispered, fingers already grasping for the shovel.<br />
She cracked like an old tree struck by lightning. He was surprised as how<br />
delicate she seemed, her bones snapping like dry twigs while he worked up another<br />
cold sweat. Though broken, she remained upright at the edge of the hole, like an<br />
old shrub bending softly into the winter wind. He shoved her gently; her bones<br />
collapsed, tumbling quietly into the grave she’d made him dig.<br />
Feeling alone, brave and beautiful, he covered her slowly with thick dry earth<br />
that smelled of leather. By the time he was finished he was weeping uncontrollably,<br />
but had no idea why.<br />
It was a cool start to the Spring, but Alan didn’t mind at all. He had just cashed<br />
his mother’s social security cheque and had filled the freezer with hot spicy food,<br />
burying his mother’s fat home-baked pies below the frozen vegetables he didn’t<br />
have to eat anymore. All the chili and ice cream he’d been eating had packed a few<br />
pounds on his skinny self, but he didn’t mind that at all. He took a bath at 3:00 p.m.,<br />
rooting through the jungle of unwashed clothes fermenting in the corner of his<br />
room to find a shirt that didn’t smell as bad as the rest.<br />
He still hadn’t conquered the washing machine. Nor the lawnmower, turning<br />
the garden into a blizzard of grass surrounded by lurching strangles of bushes and<br />
weeds. Looking down on it at 4:00 p.m., shirtless, finishing a bottle of half-drunk<br />
beer he’d left beside his unmade bed the night before, he thought he saw something<br />
stirring under a low shrub.<br />
He didn’t like the idea of having to deal with rats. It had been mother’s job<br />
to put out the poison and rake up the bodies. Maybe he could lay a trail of food<br />
leading to the neighbour’s garden.<br />
36 The Literary Hatchet
Outside, still shirtless, he thrashed through the lawn to the spot where he’d<br />
seen movement. The earth had been disturbed, as though a rat had been digging a<br />
nest. He searched the garden and found more disturbing signs. A small bone, like<br />
a skinned finger, thrust from the earth by the crab-apple tree. He tugged on it, but<br />
it refused to budge. Besides it was a small crop of weeds that looked like grey hair.<br />
Disturbed, he returned to the house to plan an attack. He was good at planning,<br />
even his mother had said so. It was putting them into action that upset him. All<br />
that flesh and blood on his fingers. He shuddered to think of it, though he often<br />
did. Usually late at night, when the house was too quiet for sleep. The lonely hours<br />
between bed-time and bed-rise, dusk until dawn, when his mother liked to knit<br />
him sweaters. He didn’t want her back, of course; what boy would? He just wished<br />
she’d cleaned up a little before she’d fallen.<br />
That was what he’d told the neighbours. ‘A fall,’ he said, as though that said<br />
everything. Gone to live with her sister in the north. Couldn’t say if she was coming<br />
back. Yes, they talk on the phone all the time. I’ll tell her you miss her. Best to write.<br />
She tires easily these days, her voice not as clear as it once was. I’m the only one<br />
who can understand a word she says. To everyone else it’s just gabble, gabble.<br />
He ate pizza in front of the new TV, but his heart wasn’t in it. All those shows<br />
he’d heard workmates taking about over mid-morning coffee were hardly worth<br />
watching. Too much fake paranoia. He could try the lap-top, but had barely<br />
watched porn in months. There was no edge to it when she couldn’t walk in at any<br />
moment, denouncing the filth in his head even more than the filth in his pants.<br />
She’d left him cold, grubby, and horny.<br />
Was that the rats again? They were coming closer to the house every day. He’d<br />
have to buy poison soon. Was that someone trying to turn the handle on the<br />
kitchen door? Not rats. Definitely not rats.<br />
Do something.<br />
He did nothing. He recognised this as his default position. Wait until the bullies<br />
get bored. Don’t laugh, don’t cry. Fold your arms when they pushed their fingers<br />
in your pockets. It would be over soon. Needles in his arms, fingers in his stools.<br />
Maybe he hadn’t buried her deep enough.<br />
He jerked himself to his feet and walked out into the kitchen. Half a shadow<br />
lurked though the glass in the kitchen door. But it seemed to be made of light,<br />
rather than dark. The night looked as bright as day.<br />
“I’ve got a gun here,” he whispered, so softly he could barely hear it himself.<br />
But the words seemed to work on the shadow, which fell back and doused itself<br />
in darkness like a firework in a bucket of water. Nervous, but oddly aroused, he<br />
strode to the door and gripped the handle, telling himself it was time to man up<br />
and take his mother’s advice. ‘Spit your fear in the eye,’ she used to say. Needing<br />
to feel brave more than he needed to feel safe, he turned the key and stepped out<br />
into the garden. Night settled on his shoulders like an old blanket. He waded out<br />
into the long grass, staring down at the trees at the bottom of the garden, where<br />
The Literary Hatchet 37
darkness seemed to coalesce into strange new shapes. The night is surprising itself,<br />
he thought.<br />
By the time he reached the trees the dark shadows had shifted. He could hear<br />
one shuffling behind him, pretending to be the wind in the branches. How could a<br />
shadow shuffle? He thought he knew how.<br />
Slowly he turned to face his mother’s shape, light from the kitchen windows<br />
shining through her eyes. “I’m sorry,” he said, knowing he didn’t really mean it.<br />
Her lips twitched as though worms lived inside them. “Don’t be,” said a voice<br />
like the wind whistling through a hallowed bone. “I rot with the roots; I bloom<br />
with the spring. I freeze in the winter; I shine in the summer. And so will you.”<br />
Alan shifted awkwardly on the grass, wondering why he could hear tearing<br />
sounds from all over the garden, as though multiple bodies erupted from the soil<br />
and found new roots in rotted hearts.<br />
“We’re all over this garden,” said his mother’s voice. Or rather voices, for the<br />
sound came in chorus from all around him. White shadows shuffled in plant-like<br />
formation. Mothers gathered themselves from the soil, brushing dirt from their<br />
bones. “And so are you,” they said as one. All raised what had once been hands; but<br />
only one, perhaps the original seed, struck down with the shovel and eclipsed all<br />
shadow and light.<br />
The seasons pass, the seasons grow. But anyone walking by the old house on<br />
a cool spring night could not fail to notice the beautiful garden, the impeccable<br />
lawn. Mothers and sons working through the twilight together. Digging, weeding,<br />
seeding. Watching the garden grow.<br />
]<br />
38 The Literary Hatchet
[poetry]<br />
The crouching darkness fills the night,<br />
Devouring that Thing that once was light.<br />
The trees seem to beckon, lest I be saved,<br />
From the dark, brown earth and a freshly dug grave.<br />
I tower above it, deep as six feet,<br />
From which I will beneath It sleep...<br />
To go with the mourning, erasing the sun,<br />
Yearning for slumber by the prick of Its thumb.<br />
Yet the moon wanes thin in the velvet sky,<br />
As those of the night spread their wings to fly.<br />
The leaves softly shriek, and the grass waits to bleed,<br />
As the stars seem to know that a beast has been freed.<br />
—angela ash<br />
The Literary Hatchet 39
[short story]<br />
by a.w. mckinnon<br />
Seven days before Christmas, a man appeared at my door with a package. A gift,<br />
he said. My name and address appeared in large letters on the colorful wrapping:<br />
Mr. Rudy Feeney, Feeney Tool Works, 23 West Grand Avenue. Inside the package<br />
I found a suit, a white shirt, and a tie. There were no markings to tell who had sent<br />
the gift, and when questioned, the man said he’d received fifty dollars to pick up the<br />
package from a park bench and deliver to my address.<br />
I do not give, nor do I wish to receive, gifts. My employees know how I feel<br />
about holidays and gift giving. I have no time for such nonsense. My money and<br />
time are too important.<br />
Mr. Brewster, my accountant, handles my money, counting it, recording it in his<br />
book, and depositing my funds in the bank. Brewster is half blind and walks with<br />
a stoop. He detests me, I realize, but he knows no one would hire him at his age, so<br />
he has no choice but to remain in my employment. He often reminds me he has six<br />
children and a sickly wife to support, no doubt hinting he is in need of a raise. Let<br />
him hint all he wants.<br />
Six days before Christmas an old woman appeared at my door with a box<br />
containing a pair of black, shiny shoes and a pair of socks. “A gift for you, sir,” she<br />
muttered, as she turned away, and with small, quick steps disappeared down the<br />
street before I could utter a word.<br />
Five days before Christmas, I received a letter from the Mountain View<br />
Cemetery. Someone had gifted me a burial plot, the letter stated.<br />
I found the letter as I sorted through the day’s mail. As a rule, I would not bother<br />
myself with such common duties, but I fired the mail girl, Abigail Cloverman. She<br />
had entered my office as Mr. Brewster and I were counting out the bank deposit<br />
40 The Literary Hatchet
for the week. It was a rude interruption. I instruct my employees never to interrupt<br />
me or ask for special privileges. Miss Cloverman had asked off for her mother’s<br />
funeral. I reminded her she had the weekend for such things, and that she should<br />
learn to schedule better. The fact she had violated two of my strictest rules left me<br />
no choice but to let her go. She dropped to the floor in tears, moaning and making<br />
such a fuss. The fact that she would be homeless, her pantry empty, and her father<br />
unable to get needed medical attention was none of my concern.<br />
“How,” she screamed, “will I be able to give my mother a decent burial?”<br />
“Such is the life of peasants,” I said, as I pushed her out the door.<br />
Four days before Christmas, a large truck parked in front of my shop. The<br />
driver and his helper unloaded a casket and carried it into my office. “A beautiful<br />
mahogany casket, imported, and very expensive,” the driver said, handing me the<br />
paperwork.<br />
“I do not want this thing,” I told the man. “Take it away.”<br />
“I’m sorry, sir, I can’t do that. It was a special order and cannot be return.<br />
Someone went to great expense to purchase this for you.” The driver and helper<br />
turned and headed for the door, ignoring my demands to take the casket away.<br />
The continued flow of the strange gifts infuriated me. I suspect one or more<br />
of my employees of being involved in the nonsense. I see them standing in small<br />
groups and whispering when I walk through the shop. How many times have I<br />
docked their pay for wasting productive time? How many have I fired on the spot<br />
for placing hand drawn pictures of me on the bulletin board? Terrible images. How<br />
they cry and drop to their knees to beg forgiveness when I fire them.<br />
I ordered my employees to gather around the platform from which I deliver my<br />
company announcements. Standing there, high above them, I can see the fear in<br />
their eyes, looking upward, waiting for me to speak. I play a little game, letting the<br />
minutes tick away, watching them fidgeting, the worry cut deep into their brows.<br />
I snicker as I enjoy the feeling of power. It is worth the long climb up the platform<br />
ladder.<br />
My message was short. “The ridiculous gifts must stop at once. I have received<br />
four unwanted gifts, so I will fire four people,” I shouted, banging my fist on the<br />
platform for emphases. They were milling around like lost sheep, fearful I would<br />
catch their eye and point them out as one of the four to lose their job. While I<br />
had their attention, I announced that quitting time on Christmas Eve would be<br />
changed from 5:00 p.m. to 9:00 p.m. There would be no exceptions. Lunch hour, I<br />
added, would be cut from thirty minutes to twenty minutes for the coming year. I<br />
paused for a moment, glancing over the upturned faces. “My gift to you, all of you,”<br />
I called out, as I climbed down the ladder.<br />
Three days before Christmas, a van arrived at the back of my shop. Two men<br />
unloaded a headstone on to a cart and pushed it to the door. The paperwork they<br />
handed me was from Sunny Side Monuments, the home of cheap headstones. A<br />
hand written card included with the paperwork read: a gift. Stamped across the<br />
The Literary Hatchet 41
paperwork were the words: Paid in full. When I mentioned there was nothing<br />
on the headstone, one of the men shrugged. “Guess there wasn’t anything worth<br />
putting on there,” he said, slapping his backside. Both men had a good laugh as<br />
they departed with their cart. Despicable men of no worth, I was sure.<br />
Two days before Christmas, I received a phone call from the Daily News. A Mrs.<br />
Williams introduced herself as the editor of the newspaper. She said she’d received<br />
a request to publish my obituary in her paper, adding the donor insisted it take up<br />
one full page of the paper. The donor had submitted the obituary with a rather large<br />
sum of cash, both being delivered by a cab driver. “What?” I yelled. “I’m very much<br />
alive. How can you have an obituary for me? What does it say?”<br />
“I’m not in the habit of having people scream at me, Mr. Feeney,” she said. “I’m<br />
sorry sir, but the person who purchased the space insisted I not release it until it has<br />
been published. It is just as well you don’t know,” she said, just as the connection<br />
was lost.<br />
Why were the gifts continuing? I thought I had been clear about my demands<br />
they stop at once. Further action on my part would be required. It occurred to<br />
me that many of the gifts were expensive. Where were the employees getting the<br />
money? That thought bothered me greatly.<br />
As I left the shop on Christmas Eve, I reminded the employees of the change<br />
in quitting time. The snow had started to fall, the wind brisk and chilling. The<br />
sidewalks were becoming snow covered, and darkness had fallen. Christmas music<br />
blared from the stores. People rushed about, no doubt wasting their money on<br />
gifts. Let them. They are fools.<br />
The tapping on my door was light but persistent. I never have visitors to my<br />
home, and peddlers have been threatened to stay away. Upon opening the door,<br />
I looked left, then right, pulling my robe close to soften the chill. There was only<br />
the darkness, a dim glow from the street lamp, the swirling of the snow. I turned to<br />
close the door, satisfied the tapping must have been caused by the wind. It was at<br />
that moment I notice the note pinned to the door.<br />
“From your window see your gift arriving.” The note was written on my<br />
company stationary. I crumbled the note up and threw it across the room. From<br />
the street came the sound of a car horn, just one short blast. I walked to the window<br />
and looked out. The snow was increasing, making it difficult to see the street lamp<br />
a short distance away. Then, I saw it, the amber parking lights glowing like two evil<br />
eyes. It was long and sleek, its black paint polished to a high luster. The exhaust<br />
drifted upward into the frigid blackness. Was I seeing things? A hearse?<br />
I shot out my door and raced toward the curb. I would force the driver to reveal<br />
who was behind the gifts. My robe was no match for the cold and windblown<br />
snow. My hands were beginning to feel the sting from the icy night as I reached<br />
the driver’s side and yanked open the door. I expected to find one of my employees<br />
behind the wheel. There was no one to be found. The fragrance of flowers drifted<br />
from the warm interior. I stood for a moment, looking about. Who had been<br />
42 The Literary Hatchet
driving? I glanced toward my front door to see it standing open. Had I failed to<br />
close the door as I rushed out? I hurried to the house, fearful someone may have<br />
entered while my attention was drawn to the hearse.<br />
Searching through the house, room by room, I was relieved to find no intruder.<br />
I glanced out the window to see if the hearse was still there. The amber eyes<br />
remained, and the exhaust from the idling engine sent white, ghost-like shapes<br />
into the night.<br />
I pulled the curtains closed and went to make myself a cup of tea. I would deal<br />
with those involved after the Christmas holiday. They would pay a pretty price.<br />
Tonight I would have my tea and spend the evening studying my bank statements.<br />
I keep a close eye on my statements, but I had let my unopened mail stack up on the<br />
table in the hallway. Business had been good, causing many late hours in my office<br />
at the shop, and leaving me too tired to bother with the mail once I arrived home.<br />
Tonight I would take the time to delight in my wealth, reviewing the unopened<br />
bank statements. As the hour neared Christmas morning, I was pleased no other<br />
gifts had arrived.<br />
I had settled in my chair with a warm cup of tea. Spreading the latest bank<br />
statements out on the table, I noticed something wrong. I sat for the longest time,<br />
unable to believe my eyes. All of the statements were the same, nothing but zeroes<br />
on the balance line.<br />
How could it be? There must be a mistake. I rushed to the hall to see what<br />
other mail lay on the table. I found it difficult to breathe as I sorted through the<br />
unopened envelopes. My legs were shaking, my heart racing.<br />
The bank had sent three notices requesting I come in to discuss my overdrawn<br />
account. There were five letters from the mortgage company, the first requesting I<br />
come in to discuss the missed payments, and the last letter informing me they were<br />
foreclosing on my home and on my shop for non-payment. I sat trying to figure out<br />
what had happened. Perhaps the bank had made a mistake? No, it was unlikely the<br />
bank and the mortgage company would make the same mistake.<br />
There could be only one answer. Mr. Brewster. The old man had cleaned out my<br />
account. How long had he been juggling the figures to make it look like my wealth<br />
continued to grow, when all the time he had been stealing my money? Had he<br />
spread my wealth among the employees? Had they used my money to buy the gifts?<br />
From outside came the sound of raised voices. I rushed to the window. Pulling<br />
the curtain aside, I looked out to see a crowd had gathered. Mr. Brewster stood<br />
shaking his fist at me. All of my employees stood behind Brewster, waving signs<br />
and shouting.<br />
“Christmas is near, Mr. Feeney, and we have gathered to thank you for the final<br />
gift you will be presenting to us for Christmas,” shouted Brewster. He turned and<br />
pointed to the hearse. “It waits for you Feeney. It waits for you.” The employees<br />
shouted and clapped their hands.<br />
What gift? Had they lost their minds?<br />
They had turned against me. My business, my home, my wealth had vanished.<br />
The Literary Hatchet 43
I would be homeless, without funds for the simplest of needs.<br />
The night was long. I tried to sleep, but I tossed and turned until dawn,<br />
nightmarish visions flashing before my eyes. As the first lights of Christmas day<br />
spilled into the room, I pulled myself from the bed. There was a chill in the room.<br />
It wrapped itself around me and penetrated my body, causing me to tremble.<br />
Throughout the night I had asked myself the same question, over and over again:<br />
What was I to do?<br />
The answer came to me. It had been there all along. Now it was clear. I knew<br />
what I must do.<br />
I walked to the closet and threw open the door. I began shoving boxes and<br />
clothing aside until I saw the thing I was looking for leaning against the back wall.<br />
As I sat down to have my last sip of tea, I was surprised to find, after so many<br />
years, the old shotgun still felt comfortable in my hands.<br />
]<br />
44 The Literary Hatchet
[poetry]<br />
In the light<br />
Darkbreak<br />
Picnic table in the<br />
low hung shade of<br />
evergreen<br />
Faceless forces<br />
surging toward bodyless<br />
motion in the<br />
springtime of the<br />
cabin’s dust<br />
Solar winds on flat<br />
planes<br />
lightbreak<br />
Dead cavities at a<br />
picnic table in the<br />
low hung shade of<br />
everything<br />
—john roche<br />
Previously published in Rolling Stone, #158, April 11, 1974<br />
The Literary Hatchet 45
[short story]<br />
by michelle ann king<br />
There’s something moving by the garden fence. Mice, again? Or worse, a rat?<br />
Debra puts the washing basket down and almost calls out for Stuart, but then she<br />
remembers.<br />
She edges closer. Curled around the cracked base of her abandoned flower pot<br />
is a huge slug, sleek and iridescent in the patchy afternoon sun. Once, she would<br />
have worried about how to get rid of it, but there’s no point now.<br />
“I wouldn’t stop here,” she tells it. “You’ll go hungry.”<br />
There’s nothing for it to feed on in my blighted garden unless it eats gravel and<br />
dry, yellowing grass.<br />
Once, she’d thought it would be different—she’d bought tools and pots and<br />
seeds, enticed by visions of bright flowers, plump tomatoes and aromatic herbs. But<br />
either the shoots withered as soon as they appeared, or the seeds never sprouted<br />
in the first place.<br />
“Black Thumb,” Stuart used to call her. She would chase him around the<br />
garden and he’d laugh and cringe away, saying, “Don’t touch me, Black Thumb. I<br />
don’t want to die.”<br />
She and Stuart used to laugh a lot.<br />
Your husband is a fool, the slug says.<br />
Debra gives a little gasp and jumps backwards. She kicks the basket over,<br />
46 The Literary Hatchet
spilling the washing onto the ground. Ellie’s dress flops into a patch of mud and the<br />
pale blue material blooms with dark swirls.<br />
Debra grabs for it, but she’s too late. It’s ruined, and Ellie will be furious with<br />
her. Again.<br />
Your daughter is a parasite, the slug says.<br />
Debra inches forward again, crouches down and rests her hands on her knees.<br />
She can’t say how she knows the words are coming from the slug—it isn’t like it<br />
speaks out loud—but she can heard it. Somehow, she can hear it.<br />
The slug is rounded in the middle and tapered at the ends, and at least a foot<br />
long. Every now and then a quivering pulse goes through it.<br />
It’s looking at her. Right at her. She couldn’t say how she knows that, either,<br />
because it doesn’t have any wavy eye-stalks. But she does.<br />
“Hello?” she says.<br />
Hearing her own voice startles her all over again. She straightens up, and her<br />
knees pop with an explosive crack. Ridiculous. Stupid. What on Earth is she doing?<br />
Wait, the slug says.<br />
Debra ignores it, snatches up the washing basket and runs inside. She leaves<br />
the dress in the mud.<br />
From the kitchen window, she watches a magpie land on the fence. It hops<br />
down and disappears behind the flower pot. It doesn’t come out again.<br />
She calls Stuart and asks if he can come over.<br />
“Why? What’s the matter?”<br />
“It’s nothing. Not really. I just—in the garden, there’s—”<br />
He sighs. It sounds very loud over the phone. “Debra, you’ve got to stop doing<br />
this. I can’t keep coming over every time there’s a tap dripping or a light bulb needs<br />
changing. You’re going to have to learn to deal with stuff on your own, you know?”<br />
Yes. She knows. She apologizes, puts the phone down and goes back to the<br />
kitchen window. There are no more birds on the fence.<br />
Hello, the slug says.<br />
Debra pulls the blind down and makes herself a cup of tea. As the light fades,<br />
she can hear the slug singing softly.<br />
She sits, listening, until Ellie comes home. The lights go on, the fridge door<br />
opens, bottles clink.<br />
“What are you doing still up?” Ellie says.<br />
“I didn’t realize it was so late,” Debra says. “I must have dozed off. It’s the song,<br />
it’s so restful.”<br />
“Song? What song?”<br />
Debra glances at the kitchen window. The melody soars. “Don’t you hear it?”<br />
“Hear what?” Ellie slams the fridge door shut again. “There’s nothing to eat in<br />
here, Mum, do you know that?”<br />
Debra goes to the fridge herself. “Oh,” she says. “I meant to go shopping, but<br />
there was the washing, and then—”<br />
“Whatever.” Ellie pulls Debra’s handbag off the back of the chair and roots<br />
inside it. “Forty quid? Is that all you’ve got?” She tucks the money into her jeans<br />
The Literary Hatchet 47
pocket and puts the purse back. “You’ll have to get some more out tomorrow, then.<br />
And get some bloody food, while you’re at it.”<br />
Outside, the slug stops singing.<br />
Food, it says.<br />
Debra shivers.<br />
“Mum? Did you hear what I said?”<br />
“Yes. I’ll sort it out. I’m just a bit tired, now. I think I might take one of my<br />
pills.” Ellie snaps her fingers. ”Oh, yeah. You’ll need to get some more of those, too.”<br />
Debra looks at the mug on the table in front of her. A greyish skin has formed<br />
on the surface of the cold tea.<br />
“I don’t think I feel very well,” she says. “Could you get me some water, Ellie?”<br />
There’s no reply, and when she looks up Ellie is gone.<br />
She thinks about her bed, but it seems such a long way to go. She puts her head<br />
down on the kitchen table instead, and the slug resumes its song. Debra closes her<br />
eyes.<br />
Her dreams are vibrant, but soothing. She wakes in the morning with a stiff<br />
and aching neck, but a clearer head.<br />
She takes the shed key from the drawer and goes outside. The shed is old and<br />
battered, the roof timbers sagging. She’d meant to waterproof it, but never managed<br />
to find the time.<br />
Inside it’s dark, and the air feels warm and stale. A large spider scuttles away<br />
from the light. Debra steps inside cautiously, and moves paint tins and dusty<br />
garden chairs around until she finds what she’s looking for: the rabbit hutch they’d<br />
bought for Ellie when she was little. The rabbits have been ghosts for years, but the<br />
hutch is still strong and sturdy.<br />
She locks the shed again and puts the hutch on the floor in front of the slug. It<br />
slithers inside and curls up. She can feel its approval.<br />
Debra takes the hutch into her bedroom. She sits on the floor and watches the<br />
slug eat a black-shelled beetle that was hiding in the old newspapers.<br />
“Sing to me?” she says, and it does. It sings to her of a different life, a brighter<br />
world. A better world.<br />
I can help you, it says. We can help each other.<br />
She sighs. “I’d like that.”<br />
It moves slowly, in a graceful undulating motion, to the front of the hutch.<br />
I know peace, it says. And joy. Do you know joy?<br />
“No,” she whispers.<br />
But you would like to?<br />
“Yes.”<br />
There must be change, it says. Growth. Sometimes this is painful, but it is<br />
always necessary. I am with you. We will change together. I will show you many<br />
things. It will be beautiful.<br />
“Yes,” she says. “Oh, yes.”<br />
She looks at the hutch. Why had she thought it would do? It’s very obviously<br />
too small. The slug is much bigger than a rabbit. It can’t be comfortable, confined<br />
48 The Literary Hatchet
in there.<br />
She lifts the latch and opens the door.<br />
As a child, Debra was never allowed to have a pet. Her father didn’t believe<br />
she would look after it properly. Good intentions don’t feed a dog, he said, as if that<br />
explained anything. He never had faith in her. Nobody did.<br />
It’s not fair. She means to do all the things people want, it’s just that there’s so<br />
much to remember. She loses track, sometimes.<br />
She asks Ellie to go to the supermarket for her. She gives her a shopping list<br />
and some money, but Ellie doesn’t come home. She calls Stuart, but he sounds so<br />
disappointed that she hangs up without asking him anything.<br />
She rings Ellie’s mobile and leaves another message.<br />
She will ignore you again, the slug says. It is what she always does. She will not<br />
help us.<br />
“I’m sorry,” Debra says. “I didn’t mean to let you down.”<br />
You haven’t, the slug says. I have faith in you.<br />
Debra vows to try harder. To be worthy. She has to, because the slug is hungry,<br />
and she’s promised to look after it. It needs food, if it’s going to carry on growing. If<br />
it’s going to carry on teaching her. And Debra wants that, very much.<br />
She sits on the floor and leans against the slug’s body. It takes her weight<br />
comfortably, buoying and warming her. Its skin has thinned lately, allowing her to<br />
see the play of light and colour underneath. It’s so beautiful.<br />
“Teach me how to sing?” she says, and it does.<br />
She wakes to slamming doors and blazing lights. Both send spikes of pain<br />
through her head.<br />
She stumbles downstairs to the kitchen, shielding her eyes. “Ellie? Is that you?”<br />
“This place is a tip, Mum,” Ellie says, looking into the sink. “It’s disgusting.”<br />
She opens the fridge, then whips her head away. “Gross. What the hell have you<br />
been doing?”<br />
Debra smiles. “Learning to sing.”<br />
“Right.” Ellie glances around the room and shakes her head. “You’ve lost it, you<br />
know that? You should get some help.”<br />
“I have all the help I need, now.”<br />
“If you say so. Look, I’ve got things to do so just give me some money and I’ll<br />
leave you to it. You want to live in a shithole, that’s up to you.”<br />
Debra feels the slug stirring, upstairs.<br />
The girl should not talk to you like that, it says.<br />
“No.”<br />
“No, what?”<br />
The girl is a parasite. Unworthy.<br />
Ellie looks around. ‘Did you hear something?’<br />
“Yes.”<br />
“It sounded like—I don’t know. Weird. Slithering. Have you got rats?”<br />
The Literary Hatchet 49
We need food, the slug says.<br />
Ellie walks slowly towards the stairs, her head tilted. “It sounds like it’s coming<br />
from up here.”<br />
There’s a snatch of song. “You should go and have a look,” Debra says.<br />
For once, Ellie does as she’s told.<br />
It takes Debra a while to realize the phone is ringing. She’s finding it harder<br />
and harder to hear anything other than the song, now.<br />
“Hello?” she says. Her tongue feels thick and furry. Unused to words.<br />
“Deb? Deb, is that you?”<br />
“Yes?” There’s a pause. She concentrates, tries to place the voice. After a while,<br />
it comes through in the song. “Stuart?”<br />
“Yes, it’s me. What’s the matter with you? Are you sick?”<br />
“Tired,” she says. “Working. Learning.”<br />
Another pause. “Oh. Okay. Well, I just wanted to—check in, I suppose. I haven’t<br />
heard from you for a while.” He gives a short, stilted laugh. “You got another man,<br />
now, to run all your errands?”<br />
“We have everything we need,” she says.<br />
No, the slug says. Not everything. Not yet.<br />
“Are you sure? You sound—odd.”<br />
We must grow.<br />
“What? Deb, what did you say?”<br />
“Nothing. I have to go now.”<br />
“Hold on, hold on. Is Ellie there? I haven’t heard from her lately, either.”<br />
Debra struggles to think. Ellie?<br />
Ellie is gone, says the slug.<br />
Debra nods. She remembers now. “Ellie is gone.”<br />
“Gone? Gone where? Do you mean--she’s moved out?”<br />
Debra takes the phone away from her ear and looks at it. It is ugly, and it<br />
doesn’t sing.<br />
“Deb? Did you hear me? Are you still there?”<br />
She puts the ugly thing down and goes back upstairs. She has work to do.<br />
Before, she would probably have thought the slug smelled bad now. But she’s<br />
learning how to use her senses differently and she can hear the slug’s heat, see the<br />
joy fizzing along its skin, and taste the colours that flow under its sleek surface.<br />
Every part of it is beautiful.<br />
Occasionally, the phone tries to interrupt their song with its shrill clamour.<br />
In the end, she throws it away. She throws a lot of things away, because she doesn’t<br />
need them anymore. All she needs is space. Space to grow.<br />
She flicks away a fly that tries to land on her face. The flies are starting to get<br />
on her nerves a little. All that buzzing.<br />
But she can’t afford to get distracted. She has to focus on her own transformation,<br />
now. There is so much still to learn.<br />
50 The Literary Hatchet
She’s forgotten about the doorbell, tucked up on a high shelf out of view, and<br />
the booming chimes scare her. For a long moment she can’t associate the noise with<br />
the cause; it’s been a long time since anyone came to the door.<br />
When the sound stops she edges into the hallway and listens at the door, but<br />
it’s hard to hear anything above all the buzzing. She closes her eyes and thinks go<br />
away as loudly as she can, but there’s no sense of connection. The slug hears her,<br />
though, and stirs in its sleep.<br />
“Debra?” says a voice, followed by an insistent rapping. “Are you in there? It’s<br />
Stuart. Can you hear me?”<br />
The voice is thin, reedy. Unpleasant. She prefers the buzzing.<br />
“Debra, open the door. I’m not going to leave until I see you’re all right. If you<br />
can hear me, open the door. Otherwise I’m going to ring the police.”<br />
She stiffens. Police. Outsiders. No, that can’t be allowed. It isn’t time, not yet.<br />
She turns the catch on the door and lets it open, just a little. Stuart is an<br />
irritation, like the flies, but she can deal with it. She is strong, now.<br />
“Thank Christ,” Stuart says. “I’ve been worried, Deb. I’ve rung you I don’t<br />
know how many times, left you messages. Ellie as well, but I haven’t heard from her<br />
either. What’s going on? Are you—”<br />
“I’m fine,” Debra says. “Ellie’s fine. You can go now.” She starts to close the door<br />
but Stuart puts the flat of his hand up against it and pushes back. A few flies escape<br />
through the gap.<br />
Stuart swats at them. “I told you, I want to make sure you’re all right.”<br />
“I’m fine.”<br />
“You don’t look fine, Deb. If you don’t mind me saying, you look like shit. And<br />
Christ, it stinks in there. What’s going on? You need to let me in.”<br />
“No,” Debra says. “I don’t need to do anything. I don’t need you. Leave me<br />
alone.”<br />
But then the slug speaks, for the first time in a while.<br />
Let him in, it says. We need to grow. We need food.<br />
Debra hears, and understands. She moves back, and lets Stuart come inside.<br />
“Good God Almighty, Debra, what have you been doing in here?” She closes<br />
the door behind him and locks it. In the kitchen, Stuart coughs and makes a<br />
retching sound.<br />
She finds him bent over, one hand on his thigh and the other over his mouth.<br />
His eyes are watering. He coughs again and stands up slowly. It looks like it costs<br />
him some effort.<br />
“What have you done, Deb?”<br />
“I have grown,” she says, knowing he won’t understand. Knowing he can’t hear<br />
the song.<br />
“Christ,” he says under his breath. “Jesus Christ.” He swallows, the muscles of<br />
his throat jerking, and looks around. “Debra? Where’s Ellie? Where’s our daughter?”<br />
“Ellie is here. We are all here.”<br />
Stuart holds his hands up, palms out. “You’re not well. You understand that,<br />
don’t you? You need help. You need to sit down, and I’m going to call the police.<br />
The Literary Hatchet 51
Then we’ll get this sorted out. I’ll help you. We’ll do it together. Okay?”<br />
A small, dim part of her responds. Stuart always knows what to do. She can do<br />
what she’s told, just like she used to, and let Stuart deal with things. Let Stuart fix<br />
things. It’s easier that way.<br />
That is how it was, the slug agrees. But not how it is. You have changed. You<br />
have grown.<br />
“Yes,” she says.<br />
Stuart runs his hands though his thinning hair. “Good,” he says. ‘That’s good,<br />
Deb.” He fumbles a mobile phone out of his jacket pocket.<br />
“I wasn’t talking to you,” Debra says, and starts to sing.<br />
The slug’s song joins hers. Their combined song is powerful, and it takes<br />
Stuart easily. Lifts him up and carries him up the stairs. A hot, meaty smell creates<br />
swirling patterns in the air.<br />
She worries, for a moment, when Stuart begins to scream—it’s a very discordant<br />
sound. But it’s quickly woven into the song, and becomes beautiful.<br />
Not all things are meant to thrive. It’s sad, but necessary. She understands,<br />
now.<br />
She reaches out for Stuart, and he cringes away just like he used to do. “Black<br />
Thumb,” she says, and smiles.<br />
]<br />
52 The Literary Hatchet
[poetry]<br />
In the heart of New York City<br />
searched a mother for her daughter;<br />
They found her, feeling darkened pity<br />
in the brackish subway water.<br />
The black mud caked beneath her nails<br />
her eyes filmed o’er and gray;<br />
Her frame a pose of the agony throes<br />
like gravity had lost its sway.<br />
They brought her home and planted her deep<br />
to conceal the ugly slaughter;<br />
and to this day that spot is gray<br />
like the brackish subway water.<br />
—daniel stern<br />
The Literary Hatchet 53
[short story]<br />
by rick mcquiston<br />
Before he knew it, Daniel had finished another page. The chicken scratch on<br />
the paper (a veritable mess that only he could decipher) was gradually coming<br />
together to form yet another chapter of his latest horror masterpiece.<br />
Well, a masterpiece to him, anyway.<br />
Ignoring the bias that so frequently accompanied any amateur author’s work,<br />
Daniel flipped the notepad to the next page. An intimidating stretch of blank lines<br />
greeted his eager eyes.<br />
“Come on, Daniel,” he said to himself. “Let’s keep the flow going.”<br />
In his story, the main protagonist had just broken into the burial chamber.<br />
Having escaped from the clutches of the huge spider guarding the chamber, the<br />
man, a heavily muscled hero with flowing black hair and good looks that would<br />
have made any movie star envious, pushed into the room. Vast treasures lined the<br />
chamber floor from wall to wall.<br />
With the maddening gleam of gold and jewels digging into his mind, the hero<br />
stepped past the threshold and began collecting what he could.<br />
Daniel looked at the paper. His pen dangled between his fingers, a seemingly<br />
useless tool that only increased his anxiety about the writer’s block threatening to<br />
attack.<br />
But he was determined. In the past when he had trouble with ideas he found<br />
that it was best to simply push forward.<br />
“If you come up against a wall, just break through it,” his dad would always say.<br />
A glint of light caught his eye. It vanished just as suddenly, however, fading<br />
into the dull shadows of the room.<br />
54 The Literary Hatchet
Daniel tried to ignore it, but found it impossible to do so. It festered in his<br />
mind like a pot of boiling water: a potential danger that could prove disastrous if<br />
not treated with caution.<br />
Standing up, Daniel set his notebook and pen aside and focused his attention<br />
on where he thought he saw the flash of light. He stepped forward, slowly,<br />
cautiously, silently. Excitement churned in his gut. His heart threatened to punch<br />
through his chest.<br />
As he approached the darkened corner, Daniel noticed it again: a brief but<br />
glaring flash of light, light that suggested something metal.<br />
He moved aside a small table, and then a rickety old chair.<br />
It glared up at him like a lost puppy begging to be rescued.<br />
Gold.<br />
Without hesitating, Daniel reached down and scooped up the treasure. He<br />
brought the items closer to his eyes, as if he needed to verify that they were in fact<br />
real.<br />
A golden box housed coins and loose strands of heavily-jeweled necklaces, as<br />
well as rubies and diamonds the size of golf balls. And gaudy rings, one studded<br />
with so many precious stones that he couldn’t tell if there was gold beneath, clung<br />
to the edge of his palms like freezing children around a fire.<br />
Daniel was at a loss for words. He lowered his hands, allowing some of the<br />
treasure to slip past his fingers and clank to the floor.<br />
“This can’t be happening,” he mumbled under his breath.<br />
Another flash of light caught his attention.<br />
And then another.<br />
Yet another.<br />
Soon he was surrounded by impossible riches, towering heaps of gold and<br />
precious stones beyond what any man could imagine.<br />
His mind scrambled for a possible explanation, but came up empty. Thoughts<br />
of simply grabbing as much of it as he could and retiring to a comfortable lifestyle<br />
on some island paradise bounced around inside his head.<br />
It would be so easy.<br />
A sharp crack against the far wall jolted Daniel from his swinging hammock<br />
and Margarita daydream.<br />
He spun around and faced the wall.<br />
Another crack shook the dusty photograph of his parents that hung there and<br />
toppled a small lamp.<br />
Daniel held his breath. Whatever was on the other side of the wall was<br />
obviously big and determined. It seemed to be moving along the wall, making its<br />
way to the one door of the room.<br />
Another hit, this time only a few feet from the door.<br />
Daniel thanked God he had closed it earlier.<br />
Then the door itself was smacked, causing a somewhat neat split to run<br />
vertically down its façade. The heavy oak bulged from the external pressure; hinges<br />
began to lift from their seats; the frame started to buckle.<br />
The Literary Hatchet 55
Daniel set the treasure he still held in his trembling hands on the floor. The<br />
sudden urge to arm himself danced across his mind, and he embraced the notion.<br />
I need to find something, something to defend myself with.<br />
He looked down and noticed a long blade on the floor, partially hidden by a<br />
chair. It hadn’t been there a moment earlier.<br />
Daniel picked it up. He held the sword in his hand, gracefully cutting through<br />
the air with the gleaming, forged steel.<br />
At that moment the door gave way. Shards of wood showered the room as the<br />
antagonist made its appearance.<br />
It was a spider, all one and a half tons of it. Soulless black eyes peered down at<br />
its puny adversary. A pair of needle-sharp fangs hung below its mottled head, foulsmelling<br />
venom leaking from the tip of each.<br />
Daniel leapt back. The sword nearly fell from his grasp but he hung onto it.<br />
Bolstered by its presence, he shouted at the beast: “Be gone, foul abomination, I<br />
have no quarrel with you. I only seek the treasure that this cursed place holds.”<br />
Daniel couldn’t believe his ears. Did he just say that?<br />
The spider paused in its slow, maddening approach. It seemed to understand<br />
what Daniel was saying. It studied him with its rows of glossy-black eyes.<br />
Then it charged.<br />
Furniture was smashed as if made of cardboard, the creature’s sheer bulk<br />
reducing all before it to shredded remains wholly unrecognizable as anything of<br />
use.<br />
Daniel sidestepped the gnashing fangs and flailing legs with relative grace and<br />
ease. It was as if he had faced such terrifying monsters before, and this one was just<br />
another threat.<br />
He raised the sword and brought it against the side of the spider’s head in a<br />
deadly arc. Black blood spurted out of the jagged crevice, splattering both Daniel<br />
and the spider.<br />
Rearing up on two of its legs, the spider raged in pain. It crashed through the<br />
ceiling, causing a shower of plaster and wood to cover the room.<br />
However, Daniel ignored the maelstrom. He simply stood back and watched<br />
the spider’s death throes.<br />
But the monster wasn’t done yet. With alarming speed, it tensed all eight of its<br />
legs and rushed forward. Blood matted its mangy fur, bristling ever so slightly from<br />
its frenzied movements.<br />
Daniel darted to his left, narrowly avoiding the beast, and with agility and<br />
strength he never knew he had, leapt onto its back and thrust his blade deep into<br />
its pulpy flesh.<br />
The spider collapsed into a lifeless heap.<br />
Pulling his sword from the carcass, Daniel stepped away from the mess and<br />
surveyed the carnage that used to be his living room. It hardly resembled the<br />
peaceful haven where so many great story ideas had sprung from his imagination.<br />
Plaster, wood, furniture, all were scattered across the room in sporadic abandon.<br />
Where the ceiling used to be there was now only a gaping hole, a disturbing chasm<br />
56 The Literary Hatchet
that revealed the darkened space of the attic. And the floor, once a smooth sea of<br />
beautiful hardwood, was now only a splintered collection of ruined boards, a sad<br />
reminder of the battle that had just taken place on them.<br />
Daniel walked over to his chair and fell into it. He felt the sword vanish in his<br />
hand, as did the treasure in the room. He watched the room repair itself, healing<br />
the terrible wounds that had been inflicted on it: shattered walls and furniture<br />
transformed into their previous, unblemished condition; walls and floors slid back<br />
to how they were before.<br />
And finally, the spider, its body already bloating with postmortem gases, began<br />
to fade, drifting into silent nothingness.<br />
Sitting in his chair, Daniel reached over and grabbed his notebook and pen. It<br />
felt good to have a writer’s tools in his hands again, and he felt a wave of excitement<br />
surge through his body at the prospect of getting that next page of the story written.<br />
And now he knew what to write next. He’d been given a deeply-personal inside<br />
glimpse into the main character of the story. Even though he himself had created<br />
the character, it still wasn’t enough to just write about him. He needed to be him,<br />
to think like him, to act and react like him.<br />
Taking a deep breath, Daniel began to write.<br />
]<br />
The Literary Hatchet 57
[poetry]<br />
Nights with teeth like zippers,<br />
& morning crows from skeleton skies<br />
again flying too close<br />
to these warped windows<br />
that you slowly painted shut—<br />
a brittle space<br />
where shadows hold no music<br />
& scattered brushstrokes<br />
poke at piles of winter bones<br />
in a wheelbarrow.<br />
—darrell lindsey<br />
58 The Literary Hatchet
[poetry]<br />
Mannequins walk through a snowstorm,<br />
try to imagine<br />
the swirl of thoughts<br />
of the bankrupt shop owner<br />
who tossed them into a ditch<br />
on a country road<br />
dressed in matching blue sweaters<br />
with moth holes.<br />
They talk about his pistol<br />
and the bottle of bourbon<br />
on the dash,<br />
the blur of penciled words<br />
on the yellow legal pad.<br />
They remember his resigned look,<br />
the yellow bow tie,<br />
the taillights like Goliath fireflies<br />
out of season.<br />
They wonder if he will want to apologize<br />
when they ring his doorbell,<br />
or if he will leap at them like flames,<br />
try to turn them into sticks of firewood.<br />
—darrell lindsey<br />
The Literary Hatchet 59
[short story]<br />
by dustin farren<br />
ale Kramrich peered uneasily at the fourteen-foot effigy in front of his<br />
company pickup. Rusty hunks of farm equipment held fast by gobs of slag and<br />
frozen spatters of molten metal imparted a man-like shape. The arms and torso<br />
hung from a high tree branch, a foot of open air between them and their lower<br />
extremities, which protruded from the damp earth. The supporting forces of the<br />
bisected man were simultaneously reminiscent of both the gallows and crucifixion.<br />
Albeit disturbing, it was a good sign for the scrapyard.<br />
Iron wasn’t what it used to be. The days of nuts and bolts had long given way<br />
to glues and fastenings of the plastic sort. Folks seemed to think hauling their junk<br />
metal to the scrapyard a waste of time, given the price of iron these days. For this,<br />
Dale’s boss had a solution.<br />
“If the miserable cunts are too remiss to bring their scrap to us, then we’re<br />
going to track them down one-by-one ourselves, Christ witness,” he’d said.<br />
Dale parked in front of the house beyond the statue and flicked off the<br />
screeching metronome that was the absence of his passenger-side wiper blade. The<br />
driver’s side had gone bad originally—he tossed it in the trash at the gas pump and<br />
switched the good one over when he could hardly see the road one day. If he could<br />
talk an old rancher or welder into letting go of half a ton of metal this week he<br />
thought he might ask his boss for some cash to replace the blade.<br />
He walked to the aluminum screen door and knocked. A chipmunk trilled<br />
somewhere high and deep in the woods, and then all was still—dampened by the<br />
October rain. No answer. He flipped up his collar and blew hot air into his hands.<br />
The company pickup sat in the mud with its missing eyelash, looking at him. What<br />
the hell are you waiting for? it seemed to say. Let’s call it a day.<br />
A noise came from behind the house. Dale shrugged at his truck and headed<br />
toward the sound.<br />
A dilapidated barn stood in a small clearing. The far end of the roof had fallen<br />
in some time long ago. Inside, Dale heard a motor humming and short buzzes<br />
60 The Literary Hatchet
The Literary Hatchet 61
of electricity sputtering intermittently. Probably an antique stick-welder running<br />
off some homemade generator. He approached the shop then stopped when he<br />
realized if he walked up behind some old codger with his head down wearing a<br />
welding mask he might give the guy a heart attack.<br />
“Hello there,” he called out. “Anybody home?” The motor hummed on. He<br />
reached the door and peered inside.<br />
An old man wearing round goggles stood under the hole in the roof. He struck<br />
a flint sparker in one hand and held a cutting torch in the other. The flint sprayed<br />
orange sparks over the torch’s nozzle and ignited a fierce red flame that lit up the<br />
man’s face. He spun the acetylene valve on the torch and the roaring flame shrunk<br />
and turned white as it approached a temperature near that of the surface of the sun<br />
and could only be heard as a low hiss.<br />
Dale anticipated a start from the welder upon spotting him in his barn door,<br />
but was surprised when the man looked up from his flame, cocked his head, and<br />
simply stared at him. His eyes were hidden behind black lenses; to Dale, he might<br />
as well have been wearing a full mask.<br />
“Hi there, mister,” Dale tried. “How are you doing today?”<br />
The welder stared a moment longer then turned away, setting the whispering<br />
torch in its stand and finding his stick welder.<br />
“I’m not interested,” he said, then sparked his stick on a length of angle iron.<br />
It looked like he was playing with lightning in his hands. Dale thought the project<br />
resembled a legless man holding himself off the bench with his arms.<br />
“No, sir I’m not peddling anything. I’m here to buy your iron.”<br />
“I saw your rig out front. You’re from the scrapyard. My scrap’s not for sale.”<br />
The silence was awkward. Dale thought a moment then quickly decided to try<br />
a different, impromptu approach.<br />
“No, sir. You see, we’re looking to . . . improve the aesthetic condition of our<br />
shop.”<br />
The man ignored him but seemed to grow tense as Dale spoke, like an electric<br />
charge building in a copper coil. “We’ve been having a hard time attracting new<br />
clientele, and our building ain’t exactly the Taj Mahal.” Here goes nothing, he<br />
thought. “Would you be willing to sell that large . . . erm, statue at the end of your<br />
drive?”<br />
The man stopped what he was doing. Dale continued. “It’s a mighty impressive<br />
specimen, sir. It’s just what we’re looking for.”<br />
The massive piece would take a whole day to cut up and sort through. There<br />
must have 900 pounds of good scrap on it. Dale thought the man might be more<br />
inclined to sell it as an appreciated piece of art, rather than a heap of junk metal.<br />
The man turned around and flashed gums. “You want to take Joe and set him<br />
up for everyone to see?” he asked.<br />
Dale felt bad for lying. He couldn’t see the man’s eyes, but his face seemed to<br />
light up at the thought of his work on display for the public.<br />
“Um. Yes, sir. I think our customers would get a kick out of old . . . Joe. We<br />
could set him up inside the front door to greet them—he’d be a real hit. I bet we<br />
62 The Literary Hatchet
could even find a spot for this fella,” he said, pointing at the unfinished project on<br />
the bench. “Once you finish him up, of course. What do you think?”<br />
The welder stared a moment then laughed. “It’d be my honor.” The tension<br />
seemed to ease in his body.<br />
“Really? Well, sir, would a hundred bucks do the trick?”<br />
“Hell, I’ll let you take it down for free,” said the welder.<br />
Dale couldn’t believe it. His boss would be pleased.<br />
“Long as I can come visit him sometime.”<br />
His hope sank. He would be ordered to cut up and sort the creation first thing<br />
in the morning. If the old welder ever came in and found out old Joe had been<br />
chopped up and re-recycled, Dale wouldn’t be able to forgive himself.<br />
“You’ve got a deal,” he said finally. Between possibly hurting this stranger’s<br />
feelings and keeping his job he didn’t have much of a choice.<br />
“Well, this one’s almost finished. You can load him up and take him today, too.<br />
Hand me that piece of angle iron on the hydraulic shear there.”<br />
Dale forced a smile. A fleeting hope that the man might soon forget this ever<br />
happened crossed his mind. He was reaching for the angle iron when he was<br />
suddenly knocked forward into the machine, and caught himself on its resting<br />
plate. Confused, he pushed himself back up, but then felt a tremendous pain in his<br />
right hand. He looked up to see the shear lowering into the back of it.<br />
It felt as if he were watching from a dream, as if it wasn’t his hand bending<br />
back or his bones snapping under the pressure of the jaw. He heard two bones in<br />
his hand break and saw blood pour out around his wrist before the thing came to a<br />
stop, resting on his middle finger bone. He let out a helpless wail as the pain set in,<br />
and then dropped to his knees.<br />
“Stop! Stop it now!” he screamed. “Let it up! Hurry! It’s crushing my hand!”<br />
He looked back and saw the old man standing a few feet from him holding a small<br />
yellow box which hung from the ceiling. His thumb rested on a red button directly<br />
below a green one. He was smiling.<br />
“Do you taste it?” he said, and grinned at Dale as he let go of the box and<br />
picked up a short length of flat-bar steel.<br />
“What! Jesus Christ, let this thing up I’m bleeding!” Dale shrieked. He started<br />
to feel dizzy, like he might pass out.<br />
The man flicked on a grinding wheel and pressed the steel to it. Sparks rained<br />
down and the wheel screeched loudly.<br />
“Let this thing up God dammit!” Dale cried and squeezed his eyes shut. If he<br />
looked at his hand again he would surely faint. The way the wheel began shaping<br />
the steel made him fight to stay conscious.<br />
On his knees, holding his forearm with his left hand, he stared at the ground;<br />
his vision blurred by tears. There he saw a foot-pedal at the base of the machine<br />
and moved away from it. If he accidentally kneeled on it the shear would only push<br />
deeper into his hand.<br />
“Do you know what a freight train will do to a car parked on its tracks?”<br />
“Please, sir I don’t know what you’re talking about. Please let this shear up,”<br />
The Literary Hatchet 63
Dale said, staring at the foot-pedal. He felt tired and short of breath. The blood<br />
from his hand made a considerable sized pool on the resting plate and was presently<br />
spilling off the opposite side.<br />
“It’s like an automobile munching a tin can in the road. Barely feels it. Now, do<br />
you know what a freight train will do to a man tied up on its tracks?”<br />
Dale heard the grinding wheel shut off and slow to a stop. He turned and saw<br />
the man facing him, holding the length of steel, which now ended in a slender<br />
point, firmly in his hand.<br />
“Like a pizza cutter through wet dough. Makes about the same noise, too.<br />
Just ask old Joe,” he said, nodding at the project on the bench. “He found that out<br />
first-hand the winter of ‘48. Woke up when he heard the Night Owl coming right<br />
on schedule. Started squirmin’ around like a fat little worm on the rails. He made it<br />
halfway off, too. Had me nervous. Anyway, the train passed over him like he wasn’t<br />
even there. Just kept chuggin’ on to Minneapolis, right through the night.”<br />
Dale understood now. He peeked at his hand under the shear and remembered<br />
the bisected effigy that had enticed him. Old Joe had been a real man, and now<br />
Dale was the one tied up on the tracks.<br />
“And do you know what his upper-half told me before his eyes went lost? He<br />
said he tasted metal.”<br />
The man was right. On the tip of his tongue Dale could taste bitter steel, like<br />
when he sometimes tasted the pennies in his pocket as he rubbed them between<br />
his fingers.<br />
“Of course he was gargling his own ferrous blood after he said it. But I<br />
wondered. Do you taste it?”<br />
Dale eyed the sharpened steel in the man’s hand, then reached into his pocket<br />
and pulled out a pencil and placed it between his teeth. He bit down hard, and then<br />
kneeled on the foot-pedal. The shear came down with ease and lopped off the rest<br />
of his hand. The pencil crunched and snapped between his teeth.<br />
He stood and spun quickly, hammering the old man in the jaw with his good<br />
hand, sending him staggering across the shop. Dale reached over and yanked the<br />
whispering torch from its stand. The man recovered but Dale moved quickly,<br />
kicking him squarely in the chest and toppling him over backwards. Dale jumped<br />
down on him and elbowed him in the nose. Then he rammed the torch into the<br />
man’s open mouth and pushed it deep into his throat, remarking the sick, slippery<br />
resistance of the esophagus to the torch.<br />
The man struggled and stared through his black goggles. A sharp pain came<br />
to Dale’s ribs as the man stuck him with the sharpened steel. Dale ignored it and<br />
pushed the torch deeper yet. The man’s grip slackened and the steel fell out of Dale’s<br />
side. He watched as the skin on the man’s throat began to melt and smoke. When<br />
he finally lay still, the white whispering flame could be seen through a charred hole<br />
in his neck. Dale lowered his mouth to the ear of the dead man beneath him.<br />
“Do you taste it?”<br />
]<br />
64 The Literary Hatchet
[poetry]<br />
Was I not too young, tell me truly, speak;<br />
the dew of life was still upon my face,<br />
when I chose to take that final leap,<br />
to loose my life, when not yet at its peak.<br />
I took a deadly kiss in his embrace.<br />
Was I not too young, tell me truly, speak?<br />
Unwise, unwise was I, or simply meek?<br />
How I mortally erred (a true a disgrace)<br />
when I chose to take that final leap.<br />
No life was this, no haven for the weak,<br />
for eternal hell be not a resting place.<br />
Was I not too young, tell me truly, speak?<br />
Existence now bares such a fetid reek.<br />
I’ve replaced the grace of heaven chaste,<br />
when I chose to take that final leap.<br />
I face nightmares now, hear the shrieks.<br />
Ah, remember there was once dew on my cheek.<br />
Was I not too young, tell me truly, speak<br />
when I chose to take that final leap?<br />
—deborah guzzi<br />
Previously published on Poetry Soup<br />
The Literary Hatchet 65
[short story]<br />
by gary r. hoffman<br />
66 The Literary Hatchet
“You don’t know jack-shit!” Jolene screamed. She grabbed the pan from the<br />
stove and heaved it across the room. Tomato soup splattered on the poster and on<br />
the picture of HER right next to it. The pan tore a hole in the poster, in the knee<br />
of the man pictured there. Jolene’s hands went immediately to her mouth and her<br />
fingers started to tremble. “Oh, my God. I’m sorry, baby. I’m so sorry.” She grabbed<br />
a roll of paper towels to clean the mess.<br />
The man on the poster smiled at her. “I’m probably sorrier than you are.”<br />
“Don’t say that you’re sorrier than I am, because I’m perfectly capable of being<br />
just as sorry as you are…” She stopped and kissed the poster. “I really am sorry,<br />
baby. You have to realize I just get emotional sometimes. I love you so much.”<br />
She carefully wiped all the tomato soup from the poster before starting on the<br />
picture of HER. She made sure she didn’t tear a larger hole in the poster. She taped<br />
the hole closed and tried to smooth it out. “You know I wouldn’t ever intentionally<br />
hurt you. Sometimes you just say things that rile me. You really shouldn’t do that,<br />
you know.”<br />
The poster pictured a Bob Marley wanna-be named Steel Drum Jackson. He<br />
played at a local club called Tropic Breezes. Jolene made the poster from a publicity<br />
picture of him. She had the picture blown up at Kinko’s and had them insert copy<br />
so it looked like a full-blown concert poster, even though Steel Drum had never<br />
done anything close to a concert. But Jolene thought he was the best thing since<br />
microwaves. She went to the Breezes every chance she got. The owners insisted she<br />
buy a drink while she was there, so she could only go when she had enough money.<br />
The picture of HER was another woman who always seemed to be at the club.<br />
Jolene took the picture of HER with a disposable camera one evening and had it<br />
enlarged. She kept it right by Steel Drum so she could admire those teeth. Jolene<br />
just knew HER was trying to take SD, as she called him, away from her. Jolene<br />
thought HER was very pretty, but she knew she was prettier. Sometimes, when<br />
she was getting ready to go to the club, she would try to decide which of her two<br />
dresses to wear. When she looked at herself in the mirror, she was much prettier<br />
than HER.<br />
Jolene was five-five and weighed over two hundred pounds. Her mousy brown<br />
hair had the consistency of well-used steel wool. Her brown eyes no longer held<br />
any of the sparkle of youth. They were flat and glassy from her constant worry and<br />
paranoia. Her teeth were crooked and yellow from lack of hygiene, which she told<br />
herself she couldn’t afford. Money had to be used to buy drinks to see SD.<br />
HER was closer to five-ten. She had long blond hair that curled picture-framelike<br />
around her face. Her green eyes held the sparkle of spring pools. Her teeth<br />
were perfect, at least to Jolene. White, straight teeth. They were teeth most anyone<br />
would kill for. Many times Jolene thought if she just had those teeth, her body<br />
would be complete.<br />
As Jolene was twirling in front of the mirror holding up one or the other of her<br />
dresses, she saw HER. She knew she looked like HER. Mirrors didn’t lie. All except<br />
for those teeth. Sometimes, SD would laugh at her when she did this. “Don’t you<br />
laugh at me, you bastard,” she would yell at him. “You know I’m better than her. I<br />
The Literary Hatchet 67
could be twice as good—no, ten times as good in bed as she is. If I had those teeth,<br />
I could have anybody I wanted for a lover. And not just you, SD sweetheart, but<br />
anybody. Hell, I could even have HER. I could get any man or woman I wanted.”<br />
She would then do another turn in front of the mirror and marvel at how much<br />
better-looking she had gotten since the last time she did this.<br />
Tonight, as she was getting ready to go to the Breezes, SD really started to get<br />
on her case. “No, I haven’t gained any weight. What would make you say that?”<br />
She stopped to listen. “My clothes don’t fit any tighter. You must be havin’ a hard<br />
time seeing tonight.” She walked over to the poster. “But don’t you worry, sweetie,”<br />
she said as she patted him on the cheek, “I’ll make sure you get a good view of me<br />
tonight. I’m going early so I can get a table right up front.”<br />
She started to walk away but stopped. “What’s that? Tonight might be the<br />
night to get those teeth? Boy, I would sure be a looker with those, wouldn’t I?” She<br />
walked to the kitchen table and sat down. “But you know she’s not gonna just give<br />
me those teeth. How am I supposed to get them?” She listened intently for almost<br />
a full minute.<br />
“Yeah, I could take my big purse. And, sure, it would hold the hatchet. I could<br />
just cut them out of HER, couldn’t I? That’s not such a bad idea, SD. Thanks, baby.”<br />
She went back to the poster and rubbed her hand over his crotch. “Someday,<br />
sweetie, someday. Just you and me.” She then kissed the lips of Steel Drum Jackson.<br />
She put a few things in her purse, a purse she had found in an alley behind a<br />
dumpster. The purse was dropped there by Fred “the Rabbit” Oldster. Rabbit made<br />
part of his living by snatching purses from unsuspecting women. After he took<br />
everything he thought was valuable from the purse, he dumped it. What Rabbit<br />
or Jolene didn’t realize was that the purse was designed by Ozenie. The purse was<br />
worth many times more than the things he took from it.<br />
The owner of the purse, a Mrs. Holly Regis, was taken to the emergency<br />
room at a local hospital because of a cut she had received on her head when the<br />
purse snatcher knocked her to the ground. The two policemen who brought her<br />
in took a report about the incident. One thing she noted about the purse was it<br />
was an Ozenie, and what many people who didn’t own one didn’t know was there<br />
was a secret flap under one of the straps. Each Ozenie creation had a secret flap<br />
somewhere in the purse. It was one of the things that made them unique. She had<br />
placed one of her business cards in there as a possible way of identification. The<br />
policemen complimented her on her resourcefulness.<br />
Jolene left early for the club. She had her large purse that held her money, a<br />
couple of tissues, a roll of paper towels, and a small hatchet. She stopped at a small<br />
market, and while the owner wasn’t watching, she stole a rose from a vase near<br />
the cash register and stuck it in her purse. Just as she planned, she got a table right<br />
in front of the bandstand. She ordered a glass of draft beer, because that was the<br />
cheapest drink in the place, and she could stretch it out. She made sure she kept her<br />
purse close to her. She didn’t want anyone to steal her money. She had begged on<br />
the street for over three hours to get enough money to come to the show tonight.<br />
68 The Literary Hatchet
The club was playing some music from some other steel band, one Jolene<br />
thought wasn’t near as good as SD. But the gathering crowd seemed to like it. In<br />
fact, some of them had started to dance. Then Jolene saw HER make her entrance.<br />
HER always made an entrance—she didn’t just walk into the club. Nobody else felt<br />
that way, but Jolene did. Two other women were with HER tonight, women who<br />
were just as pretty. They had to take a table in the third row. Jolene snickered at<br />
that. Teach them to get here late!<br />
HER and her friends settled at their table. They crossed their shapely legs<br />
so their skirts were way too high. HER looked around the room to make sure<br />
people were paying attention. It was then that she noticed Jolene. “Well, looks like<br />
Grandma Moses is here again.”<br />
The three women laughed.<br />
“Would you look at that?” one of them said. “Is that an Ozenie sitting on the<br />
floor by her chair?” They all looked. “Naw, couldn’t be. How could she afford one<br />
of those?”<br />
“Maybe she’s got a sugar daddy.” They all laughed, but HER continued to stare<br />
at the purse.<br />
“You know, if that’s not an Ozenie, it’s a damned good copy. Man, I’d kill for one<br />
of those.”<br />
“Maybe she stole it.”<br />
“Probably the only way she could get one.”<br />
Jolene saw them looking at her. HER smiled. God, look at those teeth. SD would<br />
marry me if I had those teeth.<br />
The lights in the club dimmed and an unseen announcer introduced Steel<br />
Drum Jackson, the next major star in the world of Caribbean music. Everyone<br />
applauded. Jolene stood, yelling and screaming. More attention was turned to her<br />
than to the man coming on stage. SD started into his first song and the crowd<br />
quieted. Jolene was still standing and swaying to his music. Halfway through the<br />
song, she approached the stage and laid a flower in front of SD. He smiled down at<br />
her. Her knees got weak. Her heart was pounding.<br />
HER and her friends were up dancing with men who had approached them.<br />
No one had approached Jolene and asked her to dance, but she was doing her own<br />
thing by her table.<br />
You know,” HER said to her friends, “a couple of times that crazy woman has<br />
followed me out of this place when I left. Maybe she’ll do it again tonight. If she<br />
does, I just might relieve her of that purse.”<br />
One of her friends giggled. “That’s really off the wall, you know.”<br />
“Sounds kind of exciting,” the other one said, letting some of the alcohol do the<br />
talking for her.<br />
When the three girls were ready to leave the club for the night, HER flashed<br />
Jolene a huge toothy-white smile and waved to her.<br />
Bitch. Look at her. She’s showing off now. But don’t you worry anymore. I’ll have<br />
those teeth tomorrow. Jolene got up, clutched her purse against her chest, and<br />
The Literary Hatchet 69
waddled out of the club.<br />
HER stopped by her car once she was in the parking lot. Jolene was surprised to<br />
see HER just standing there, like she was waiting for her.<br />
“Good evening,” HER said.<br />
Jolene then heard movement behind her. She turned to see the other two<br />
women standing right behind her.<br />
“What do you want?” Jolene stammered out.<br />
“Just your purse, little lady. Just your purse,” HER said.<br />
Jolene opened the purse and grabbed the hatchet. She raised it to strike at HER.<br />
Both of the women behind her screamed and ran toward the club. They had the<br />
bartender call the police.<br />
Jolene took a swing at HER, but she ducked and Jolene buried the hatchet in<br />
the hood of someone’s car. The hatchet stuck in the fiberglass, and she couldn’t free<br />
it. HER saw her chance and tried to run past her. Jolene stuck out her foot and<br />
tripped the woman. She was still struggling to get the hatchet out of the car hood.<br />
HER scrambled to her feet, grabbed Jolene’s purse that was now on the ground,<br />
and headed back into the club. Before she got there, a police car pulled up in front<br />
of the building.<br />
“She’s back there, in the parking lot,” HER yelled at the police.<br />
Jolene now had the hatchet free and was heading toward the club. The policemen<br />
saw her walking their direction. Both of them drew their guns. “Stop right there.<br />
Drop the hatchet.”<br />
Jolene stopped but didn’t drop the hatchet. She started to cry. “You can’t stop me<br />
now,” she blubbered out. “I don’t have the teeth yet.”<br />
“Drop the hatchet, lady.”<br />
“You don’t understand. If I don’t get the teeth, SD won’t love me.”<br />
“Drop the hatchet.”<br />
Jolene looked at the police and then at the hatchet. Her plan was almost<br />
complete. She raised the hatchet and went screaming towards the police. One of<br />
the policemen put a slug in her right leg. She dropped the hatchet and fell to the<br />
ground.<br />
Sergeant O’Malley took off his glasses and rubbed his eyes. “What in the hell<br />
happened down there tonight?”<br />
“We’ll probably never really know, Sarge. We arrested one woman for assault.<br />
We arrested another one for being in possession of a stolen purse. The woman<br />
arrested for assault kept yelling something about SD and teeth. The woman with<br />
the purse claimed she found it.”<br />
“Then we find out the guy who was playing in the club last night is a halfbrother<br />
to the gal with the hatchet. He said she was a pain in the butt. He was glad<br />
she was going to be out of circulation for a while. Just a weird group of people.”<br />
“More like a dysfunction jubilee.”<br />
]<br />
70 The Literary Hatchet
[poetry]<br />
From the sky, nightmares drip like hail<br />
Dreams fall softly as feather snow<br />
Bright lightning wooden ships set sail<br />
Long winding winds direct the show<br />
Thunder calls out across the way<br />
While clouds still gather, pile on thick<br />
Grow ears to what the heavens say<br />
Swirling motions move slow and quick<br />
Predictions unfold in the dark<br />
Climax pumps like blue beating heart<br />
Songs pour downward sing with a bark.<br />
Pictures below all ripped apart.<br />
Statue of truth we cannot make<br />
Rise from the deep sleep still awake<br />
—denny marshall<br />
The Literary Hatchet 71
[poetry]<br />
Bone-house, cut-price dolly.<br />
Desire is in your glazed, weak-tea eyes.<br />
With your wire-thin arms, stretching out to touch me.<br />
I close my mind to the wandering sounds,<br />
the murmur of many mouths that speak your name.<br />
You are not she.<br />
The wind blows paper-thin skin into my face.<br />
I cannot read your meaning.<br />
This could be an end game.<br />
This could be the fascination maybe-dream of<br />
love longed for, and lost.<br />
You are not she.<br />
You are a naked necroscope.<br />
viewed through my lens of prayer.<br />
You are not she.<br />
She is growing in God’s acre.<br />
And you, dolly-bone dream, are insensate facsimile.<br />
You will burn away in some reality’s flame.<br />
—deborah walker<br />
Previously published in Bull Spec 2010<br />
72 The Literary Hatchet
[poetry]<br />
The writer faltered on the path,<br />
when the way forward<br />
didn’t seem to be a way anymore.<br />
Turning to address<br />
the people<br />
reading behind him, he said, “Sorry,<br />
this doesn’t appear to be a poem -<br />
it has nowhere to go.”<br />
But nobody believed this.<br />
They gathered around<br />
to look for themselves,<br />
and there they saw<br />
lots of ways -<br />
as each person peeked<br />
down the lines of their own reading.<br />
So they told the writer,<br />
“There are lots of poems.<br />
Look!”<br />
But the writer didn’t believe this,<br />
he’d gone inside his head,<br />
where there was nothing.<br />
—soren james<br />
The Literary Hatchet 73
[poetry]<br />
First published in Tales of the Talisman<br />
By Kelda Crich<br />
From the glass roof where no shadow falls,<br />
from cool, arched, glazed London brick viaduct,<br />
from lavish-wrought iron gates opening like a mouth,<br />
from a temple to the modern.<br />
The train in insistent steam departs.<br />
Moves on.<br />
Walk with softest step along narrow corridors.<br />
Watch through the bevelled window<br />
a bubble frozen in the pane.<br />
The mourners jolting to the rhythm of the Necropolis Train<br />
are a puzzle needing completion,<br />
a missing piece, buried in your mind’s memorium.<br />
Move on.<br />
No coin pressed against your tongue.<br />
No taste of copper in your parched mouth.<br />
You have no obol for the ferryman.<br />
Instead you clutch the coffin ticket for<br />
your third class funeral.<br />
Move on.<br />
Here’s a lady dressed in lace as delicate as her<br />
breathless face. So still, she watches<br />
the children crying, unsoothed by the nurse maid,<br />
or their silent father.<br />
She joins you.<br />
Move on.<br />
74 The Literary Hatchet
Here’s a man, a likely fella<br />
You might have met him down the docks<br />
shared a drink, a laugh.<br />
There are no words left to be said.<br />
He joins you.<br />
Move on.<br />
Here are silent twins, old men<br />
dressed in rags or silk, street women<br />
still smelling of the Thames,<br />
shrouded girls and worn-faced men.<br />
Move on. Move on.<br />
There are no words to be said<br />
Move along the dark corridors, the vastly swelling hoard.<br />
You who never travelled beyond the Bells.<br />
Leaving all behind.<br />
It was a good life,<br />
yet you shrug it off like a worn coat.<br />
No tears or grief.<br />
All is past.<br />
There is no emotion for the dead.<br />
Move on.<br />
Take this journey from Waterloo Bridge Station.<br />
Take the London Necropolis to the Green Country.<br />
—deborah walker<br />
The Literary Hatchet 75
[short story]<br />
by stuart guthrie<br />
Man, I got this guilt on me from something I did when I was fourteen and<br />
I don’t know if it’s more or less than what other people’s got or where it falls on<br />
the fucked-up spectrum, but I’ve made it a long time without telling a soul. In<br />
eighth grade, I hung out with this kid Tommy. I was smoking pot with him on the<br />
weekends on the hill behind school, probably because no one else would hang out<br />
with me then, and in that way, I think the friendship was mutual. Don’t get me<br />
wrong. We were friends, I liked him. But we were friends out of necessity.<br />
I wasn’t quite sure who I was then. Middle school had forced me to come to the<br />
realization I wasn’t brilliant, and that sucked and damn my parents and elementary<br />
school teachers who led me to believe I was. I learned the word “disillusionment”<br />
that year and started rebelling from the bookish kid I had tried to be.<br />
I wanted to be a skater but couldn’t skate and my dad wouldn’t let me wear<br />
those baggy jeans. I quit playing sports out of this irrational fear I would turn into<br />
a dumb jock. All childhood friends that grew up in my neighborhood were nice<br />
kids, but I found myself bored with them. I was excited by the idea of doing bad<br />
things—stealing candy bars at the corner store, yelling nasty stuff at the elderly lady<br />
that lived down the street, calling her an “old bag,” and smoking pot and drinking<br />
warm beers behind the school with Tommy.<br />
By the time I was this age I had broken seven windows in my parent’s house, all<br />
with baseballs. My dad always used to tell me not to throw in our tiny yard because<br />
there was a park a block away. I never listened and whenever the window would<br />
shatter, he would storm out after me, ready to kick my ass. The last time I broke a<br />
window, I managed to make it to my room and was holding my saved allowances<br />
out to him, hoping my reparations would spare me a beating.<br />
Tommy had braces, freckles, a blond bowl cut, and wore a tight ringer T-shirt<br />
76 The Literary Hatchet
with those giant-legged jeans my dad wouldn’t let me wear. He was dumber than<br />
he looked. Sometimes he would stop what he was saying midsentence. It wasn’t a<br />
stutter, it was like the thought just flew from his head and he sat there with this<br />
moronic look on his face, waiting for it to float back. “Tommy,” I would say, “the<br />
mouse fell off the wheel again!”<br />
We took pleasure in causing trouble, stupid adolescent boy stuff—egging<br />
houses, shooting each other with paintball guns, ding-dong ditching, playing with<br />
gas and matches. Stuff we did because we hated everything and this made us feel<br />
better. I didn’t like it when Tommy would start in with the dog though. He would<br />
toss his Basset Hound around the house, flinging it by the ears, and he would kick it<br />
so hard it would go sprawling across the room. My father had told me that anyone<br />
who kicks their dog is a coward and really upset at something else.<br />
One time we were at the creek catching frogs and he wanted to bring them<br />
home with him. We each carried one frog back, held in the palms of our hands<br />
tucked in the pouches of our sweatshirts. He went inside and got some things from<br />
his house. He came out with two shoeboxes and put a frog in each box. He dug<br />
a small hole in his back yard and buried one alive, then stuffed the other with<br />
tissue paper and newspaper and lit it with his zippo. We sat on the picnic table and<br />
watched it burn. I’m not sure if he even knew why he was doing it because I think<br />
he hated it as much as I did. That frog screech echoed longer than I ever thought<br />
possible.<br />
When I was nine I broke my little brother’s leg. Did it with a pillow. Spun and<br />
launched it at him like a hammer. He tried to jump over it, came down wrong, and<br />
the bone snapped in half. I tried explaining to my mother that I didn’t break his leg,<br />
so much as facilitated him in the breaking of his own leg. She didn’t buy it. Guilt<br />
like that is a heavy load on the chest of a nine-year-old boy.<br />
Tommy started hanging out with this high schooler from his art class, Mike<br />
Zaner—a chubby, Private Pile-looking guy. We thought he was cool, because he was<br />
in high school, talked back to teachers, and could drive. He had this old, blue twodoor<br />
Firebird that we would drive around in for hours getting high while Tommy<br />
occasionally leaned out the window, shooting passing by cars with his paintball<br />
gun. I should have known that an older guy in a middle school art class was a loser,<br />
and there was a reason he didn’t have any other friends.<br />
That spring, we were hanging out in Zaner’s basement, getting high and<br />
watching Jerry Springer when Zaner’s sister Lori came home. She was in middle<br />
school too, but I didn’t know where she went, it wasn’t our school. She wanted to<br />
hang out, and after ten minutes of arguing with Zaner, him whining at her to get<br />
the hell out of there, we realized she wore the pants and was going to get what she<br />
wanted. She stayed and got high with us.<br />
You could tell that they were siblings because they both had the same ugly<br />
face, pudgy frame, and phlegm soaked voice. Only she had these heaving breasts<br />
that spilled over her tank top. This was at the age when I popped a boner every<br />
time I saw a pretty girl, bare skin above the knees or below the shoulders, a short<br />
skirt, a tight shirt, lace anything, the application of lipstick, a PG-13 movie, female<br />
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mannequins, two-piece bathing suits, fluttering eyes, the consumption of a popsicle,<br />
lollypop, or banana, or anything else that might of resembled the female body or<br />
sex. Unfortunately, this period of my life coincided with a perpetual glaze of sweat<br />
and a crackling voice. Sex wasn’t an option. Most of my school day was spent with<br />
my swollen dick either lifting up the desk like a tire jack, or propped up against my<br />
belly in my waist band. I was seriously considering restroom masturbation, and<br />
didn’t only for fear of getting caught and humiliated. Lori grossed me out but I<br />
couldn’t stop starring at her tits.<br />
In high school, I tackled a female friend of mine. I thought it would be funny<br />
but she had a drink in her hand and the glass broke and she gashed her thigh wide<br />
open. We had to end the party and take her to the emergency room. We spent most<br />
of the night waiting for her to get stitched up, and when she appeared in the waiting<br />
room she had a jagged purple scar across her leg. She never spoke to me after that.<br />
We got stoned and headed to the streets, Zaner’s sister tagging along, climbing<br />
into the backseat of the Firebird next to me. Zaner drove like a madman, screeching<br />
around corners and flying through stop signs in fifth gear. We were laughing like<br />
hell as Tommy hung out the passenger seat window, firing paintballs at passing<br />
cars. A few would whip around and begin a chase, but they needed a fast car and<br />
to abandon all vehicular laws if they wanted to make a go at it, and that never<br />
happened.<br />
Lori, either noticing my obvious glances at her chest or my massive erection,<br />
took my uncontrollable hormones as a sign of attraction. She placed her hand on<br />
my thigh and began massaging my leg, slowly working her way up, until she reached<br />
my penis. She began rubbing it through my jeans. I glanced over to her face and<br />
was repulsed. I know it wasn’t nice but I had to keep starring at her cleavage to stay<br />
hard, and I wanted to stay hard.<br />
Tommy motioned for Zaner to slow down as we approached a little brown boy<br />
bouncing a basketball in the street. He did, and Tommy called to him as we rolled<br />
up, “Hey, kid.” The boy turned toward us and Tommy fired the paintball gun point<br />
blank in his face, right in his eye. He dropped to the ground screaming. My dick<br />
went soft and recoiled into my stomach with Lori’s hand still pushed against it.<br />
Zaner floored the pedal, and we turned the corner and immediately hit a red light,<br />
the cars on 5th Ave whizzing by.<br />
“Let me out.” I said, pushing on the back of Tommy’s seat.<br />
Zaner was excitedly chanting, “Oh, shit,” to himself, and Tommy didn’t<br />
respond.<br />
“Let me out.” I repeated louder. I flung Lori’s mongoloid hand from my lap. I<br />
could see the other side of the light turn yellow and I wanted to get out and help<br />
the kid before it was too late.<br />
“No,” Tommy said.<br />
“Let me the fuck out!” I punched the back of the headrest.<br />
He turned and pointed the paintball gun in my face. “Shut the fuck up,” he<br />
replied, my best friend in my fourteen-year-old universe ready to blind me, and I<br />
knew he would if I said another word.<br />
78 The Literary Hatchet
All I remember from the rest of that car ride was feeling angry and helpless and<br />
sick. They wouldn’t let me leave, Zaner and Tommy, until well into the afternoon,<br />
making me promise to not say anything about it.<br />
The kid was on the local news that night. They called it a “random act of<br />
violence,” and said he had to be taken to the hospital for surgery. They didn’t know<br />
if he was going to regain sight in that eye, and he definitely would be wearing an<br />
eye patch for a while. Then they interviewed his mother. She said she wouldn’t<br />
press charges if the persons responsible stepped forward. She said she was willing<br />
to forgive if the guilty parties would just apologize. My stomach churned while I<br />
watched the report. I scribbled down the address and lay in bed, refusing dinner<br />
when my mom called me down.<br />
The following afternoon, I got drunk and high with Zaner. I was distracted all<br />
day at school, thinking about the kid, and thought some beers might help. I asked<br />
Zaner a few times if Tommy was coming. He said no. I didn’t want to look at him,<br />
didn’t want to talk to him.<br />
“It was on the news last night,” I said when I finally loosened up enough to say<br />
something about it.<br />
“Yeah, I know,” he laughed.<br />
“Do you think we should go there? Let her know we’re sorry?”<br />
“Fuck, no. I ain’t going to see that bitch.”<br />
“She said she just wanted the person to apologize.”<br />
“Yeah, I know. I told you I saw it.”<br />
We sat in front of the soft glow of video games for a couple of hours, turning<br />
off. Tommy ended up coming over after all and I listened in silent white-hot rage<br />
as he cracked a Budweiser and bragged about shooting the kid. My hands balled<br />
into fists and I thought about pummeling him, waiting until he wasn’t looking, like<br />
he did to the kid, and sucker punching him. I thought normally he could probably<br />
take me, but if I surprised him, using all that fury bottling up behind my eyes, I<br />
could explode and kill him. I didn’t hit him, left quietly, taking my time walking<br />
home.<br />
I wrote a letter but never sent it. It seemed too evasive. “My friend shot the<br />
gun. I had no clue he was going to shoot your son. I’m sorry that he did it…” I just<br />
felt like I was shirking all the blame. I had to say it was me. I was part of it anyway.<br />
I was the one who knew better. Maybe I couldn’t have stopped him in that split<br />
second when I realized he was going to shoot the kid, but I could have stopped him<br />
with the frogs and I could have told him to stop kicking his fucking dog before that.<br />
He was performing for me and I let him.<br />
So I went to their house after school one day that week. Shuffling down the<br />
empty avenues of our town I lipped the words: “I’m so sorry,” “I will do anything to<br />
make it up to you,” “I didn’t mean to hurt you.” I imagined that kid, answering the<br />
door with the patch over his eye, or the mother, and trying to look into their faces,<br />
and having no clue what to say. “May I come in?” Or get right out with it. “It was<br />
me that shot your eye out, kid.”<br />
Looking up at the front door from the bottom of the concrete stoop, I felt like<br />
The Literary Hatchet 79
I had broken a piece of their family, shattered a piece of their house. There were<br />
chips of black paint flaking off the iron railing that I picked at for the longest time,<br />
trying to muster the courage to pull myself up to the door. Certain I was going to<br />
get sick, I rushed over to their front shrubs, leaned over, and dry heaved. My tears<br />
welled up and my eyes bulged. Before the nausea subsided and I was able to stand<br />
up again, I realized I had pissed myself.<br />
I snuck home the long way, through the woods with a dark ring of pee on<br />
my jeans, the fabric clinging and chaffing my thighs. I made it back unnoticed,<br />
showered, and tried to watch TV. It was still daylight. My mom had gone for a walk<br />
and my dad was in the yard working. I flipped through the channels and couldn’t<br />
sit down. I just kept going back and forth between the living room, kitchen, and<br />
my bedroom. Finally, I set myself down in the middle of the living room floor with<br />
my ball and glove and started tossing at the black love seat against the wall. I did<br />
this sometimes when my parents weren’t around and the spring in that couch was<br />
so great, it would toss the ball right back to me. I lobbed it over and over, imaging<br />
the hollowed pop of the paintball gun being fired, the thin trail of cold compressed<br />
air leaving the barrel, the kid’s face, in a surprised wince, then screaming for his<br />
mother, lying helpless and blind in the middle of the street. I thought about this,<br />
and being hard when it happened, and Lori’s fat ugly face and fat ugly hands with<br />
her identically fat and ugly older brother just giggling “Oh, shit.” And I thought<br />
about Tommy’s face, mean behind his gun, daring me to tempt him, just a thin<br />
smirk on his face, and I wanted to go back and claw it off. I wanted to go back and<br />
take that paintball to the face just so Tommy would have to see it, deal with it. I<br />
would hop out of that bucket seat and into the front of the Firebird, smashing my<br />
face into his, making him taste paint, blood, and salty tissue remnants of an eye.<br />
These were the things I thought of as I threw the ball harder and harder off<br />
the back of the couch. It was shooting back into my glove with a thwack, and I<br />
looked up to the two heron watercolors my parents hung over the couch. Both of<br />
the heron’s eyes rolled back, looking up and backwards at the same time. They had<br />
long, sinister eyebrows, which I knew even then was a lie, and these menacing,<br />
tentacle claws. They looked stupid and mean at the same time, and the worst part<br />
about this set was the one heron’s head extended out of its own canvas, its piercing<br />
beak stabbing across the space of the wall and into the other frame, threatening the<br />
other heron’s lulled back and vulnerable neck. The white-hot rage returned and I<br />
flung the ball high, smashing the glass and hitting one of the herons in the neck,<br />
ripping the cheap poster paper it was printed on. The painting fell off the wall and<br />
onto the couch.<br />
I heard the back door open and slam shut and the quick footsteps of my father<br />
over the linoleum floor. I wasn’t retreating to my room this time. I waited for his<br />
giant open hands to strike down across my face. I clenched my fists, spit out red<br />
tears, and snarling, I stood up to wait for my punishment.<br />
]<br />
80 The Literary Hatchet
[poetry]<br />
A multitude of species share our complex terrestrial sphere<br />
but none more tenderly touch the human heart than the gentle deer.<br />
So it was that shortly after the fading of the hours of dawn,<br />
A woman all good and gracious spotted a delicate and frail fawn,<br />
By a busy road, full of fast moving cars, so alone and so forlorn.<br />
Oh! The woman feared for that four-legged babe could so easily be torn!<br />
She instantly felt that she must protect the tiny infant deer,<br />
She must shelter the innocent and tender creature from all fear.<br />
Full of kindly intention, meaning only goodness to abet:<br />
Pretty little deer, with earrings she would make it prettier yet;<br />
But her good intentions may have led to a criminal offense<br />
Piercing two fine soft ears that should have been left naturally dense.<br />
The kindly woman faced a charge of animal cruelty.<br />
There is a vital truth that she was sadly unable to see.<br />
For a deer, earrings are simply not a proper adornment.<br />
Thus, piercing those healthy young fawn ears left an infected rent.<br />
Like the other creatures who with humans share this globe,<br />
The ears of this lovely ungulate possess no lobe.<br />
Piercing is foolish because it can only futilely scar<br />
For the dainty ears of a deer are perfect just as they are.<br />
—denise noe<br />
This poem was inspired by a true incident. Bettie Phillips saw a fawn by the side of a busy<br />
road. She took the fawn in. She pierced the animal’s ears and put earrings in them. She<br />
was arrested for animal cruelty because the two-month-old deer’s ears were found to be<br />
infected and inflamed.<br />
The Literary Hatchet 81
[short story]<br />
by d.l. shirey<br />
A trick of light. The wafer-thin disk spins, a mirror dangling from a silver chain,<br />
reflecting the chocolate-brown iris back into her pretty, pretty eyes. The left one,<br />
now the right.<br />
“Concentrate on the color,” I say to the woman, none of that your-eyes-areheavy<br />
or you’re-getting-sleepy nonsense.<br />
The spinning pendant does not make her mind relax, nor the pendulum from<br />
one eye to the other. It’s the mirror and the vanity of seeing oneself, even for a brief<br />
moment. Appearing for an instant, then spinning away; reflected again, and gone;<br />
there, not there.<br />
Her lids flicker and fall, breath evens out. She is asleep at the hands of a perfect<br />
stranger.<br />
Names don’t matter. Call her Mrs. Dunmadder. The one stenciled on my office<br />
door is Dr. Spratt, weight loss specialist.<br />
Mrs. Dunmadder snores softly, her long, greying hair fanned over the pillow<br />
supporting her neck. The Victorian chaise on which she reclines was specially<br />
built, a bit wider than the store-bought variety, the leather upholstery plumper to<br />
accommodate the women who see me. Full-figured, curvy; Rubenesque, they were<br />
called, way back when.<br />
82 The Literary Hatchet
I love women of this sort. Even in their teens, when they were most active, they<br />
were hardy. Always longing to be like the popular girls, fighting in vain to achieve<br />
the stick-figure status of models in magazines. For who? Slack-jawed, TV-raised<br />
yokels who think large breasts atop tiny waists and hips are somehow anatomically<br />
possible?<br />
What do these men know?<br />
Mrs. Dunmadder has big curves up top, along with a generous undercarriage<br />
to support them. When she first walked in for consultation I nearly swooned. As<br />
much as I wanted to take in her bounties, I locked my gaze on her pretty, pretty<br />
eyes. Soon, they were all I wanted to look at, welling and sad, as she confessed her<br />
greatest concern: fear of joining ranks with the morbidly-O. Quite possible, if Mrs.<br />
D would let herself go. But she’s not a quitter, and everything looked exquisitely<br />
firm from my point of view.<br />
She’s perfection in my eyes: buttery skin, a touch of makeup, and fashionably<br />
attired to accentuate that décolletage. She’s concerned that her clothes fit too tightly.<br />
Balderdash, as we said back in the day. Tailored to show every buxom curve, I say—<br />
to hell with drapery that hangs to hide a womanly body. Despite my protests, Mrs.<br />
Dunmadder wants a bit of tending. At very least, those fleshy areas on the arms.<br />
And the thighs, she wants her thighs a bit firmer.<br />
“I think you’re beautiful already, but if you insist,” I told her. I didn’t tell her<br />
about the sedative.<br />
Beside the chaise is a nightstand. In it are three small, lacquered boxes. The one<br />
with the fleur-de-lis has the ampule I need. I crack the plastic capsule under her<br />
button nose and watch her chest rise with each inhalation. The box with the paisley<br />
has an ampule of smelling salts to undo the narcotization when we’re done. The<br />
middle box, a tiny jade sarcophagus, holds the leech.<br />
Brittle-looking now, it will reanimate when warmed by her skin. See there? It<br />
twitches to life, crawls to just the proper spot and bites through flesh; not for blood,<br />
it wants the delicious cream filling of subcutaneous fat. It starts shriveled like an<br />
unused party balloon, but look how it grows. Bulbous and pink, just like the stuff<br />
it craves.<br />
The bite will leave a mark, but not a scar. The blame explained by the laser, that<br />
useless prop lying on top of the nightstand. No need explaining my excitement,<br />
watching a dead sack fill itself with new life, almost to bursting after a second<br />
helping from her other arm.<br />
Time for all of us to rest. Mrs. Dunmadder will soon wake to the vague smell<br />
of ammonia in her lovely, little nose. It will be something she quickly forgets as I<br />
escort her to the full-length mirror. Her arms will be firm against toned muscle,<br />
skin radiant from the effects of our session. Beguiling, as we used to say.<br />
“Next week and we’ll do the legs?” I’ll ask.<br />
“No. Thank you,” I’ll say.<br />
]<br />
The Literary Hatchet 83
[short story]<br />
by fabiyas mv<br />
It is raining cats and dogs. Solla Rani seems dog-tired. Her eyes bulge. With<br />
each quiet moan, arrows of a severe headache pierce her son’s heart. He takes out<br />
his phone and dials “108.” The wail of an ambulance in the chilly morning wakes<br />
up the rustics, who rush to her hut, which was as serene as the Kanoli canal until<br />
yesterday night.<br />
Neeraj carries his mother on a stretcher with the assistance of two young guys<br />
from his neighborhood. She lies in a slough. Wet eyes. As the ambulance starts to<br />
move, people gaze at the vehicle—white in hue with a red revolving light on its<br />
head—and ponder over Solla Rani’s agility before the illness conquered her.<br />
She is admitted to Alpha Hospital in the city. “We’ve nothing to do,” Dr. Pranav<br />
declares while going through the ultrasound report. She is very haggard.<br />
“Maximum six months more,” the doctor added. He prescribes some capsules<br />
that are supposed to cure her brain tumor.<br />
Later, her wrinkled body is brought back home for keeping amidst the holy<br />
words. She has a pallid face. Neighboring women enter her bedroom—some of<br />
them hide their heads with the hanging ends of their saris—a kind of mannerism<br />
of the Kanoli women as they pass by men. She lies on a mat in her bedroom,<br />
frightened by a hundred staring eyes.<br />
Solla Rani had never gone to a hospital before. Even her delivery was at home-<br />
-a simple affair—Karthyamma, a middle-aged woman, performed the role of a<br />
gynecologist, while Velan her husband waited outside in the yard near the closed<br />
bedroom window, smoking a cigarette to alleviate his tension. He heard his wife<br />
84 The Literary Hatchet
shriek. He dropped the cigarette and ran to the door of the bedroom. Karthyamma<br />
stretched her head out, half opening the wooden door, and said, “Lucky man! It’s<br />
male.”<br />
Their hut, thatched with the coconut leaves, on the bank of Kanoli canal, had<br />
silently witnessed several squabbles. Sometimes, rum robbed Velan of his sense.<br />
Then he would scold his wife with muddy obscene words. The stale smell of the<br />
rotten emotions would spread in her mind. She was also a tough fighter and would<br />
retort furiously. Nevertheless, they could always forget the pandemonium of the<br />
previous night with a sound sleep. With the birth of their new baby Neeraj, new<br />
shades of joy appeared in their sky.<br />
Monsoon always brought poverty and epidemic onto the Kanoli bank. Heavy<br />
rain kept the coolies inside their huts. As the rain ceased and the clouds vanished,<br />
Velan took a blue towel and tied it around his waist. He stooped down, and kissed<br />
on the chubby cheek of his baby, who was sleeping serenely on Solla’s warm lap.<br />
They watched Neeraj smiling in slumber. It was the presence of some angels that<br />
made their baby smile so in sleep—they believed.<br />
Velan untied his black canoe from a coconut palm stump on the shore. Putting<br />
down the spade on the canoe, he took a wooden oar. The canoe moved on the silver<br />
wavelets of the canal nodding its head. Solla could eye it all from her yard. She<br />
never knew that was a tragic sail like that of Titanic.<br />
He didn’t return home to take the rice porridge for lunch. Solla walked along<br />
the sugar sand of the Kanoli bank in search of him. After a two-minute walk, she<br />
found the unmanned canoe on the canal. He did not hear her loud call, but her<br />
neighbors heard it. They came in large numbers and gathered around her. Most<br />
of them were simply staring at the canoe. Then a corpulent young man put off his<br />
beige shirt and white dhoti, and put on a bath towel around his waist. Looking<br />
around, he dove into the canal.<br />
A new widow was born on the Kanoli bank. Velan’s bloated body was brought<br />
onto the bank. His legs might have stuck in the mud at the bottom of the canal.<br />
Or it might have been a heart attack under the water. Seeing her husband’s lifeless<br />
body, Solla swooned.<br />
Though she got food and solace from her neighbors, their compassion ran out<br />
gradually. She had no one to fall back on. Now that the call of hunger toughened<br />
her mind, she woke up from her melancholic mat. In a village like hers, jobs were<br />
varied, and in plenty. She made up her mind to live for her son. She found her<br />
livelihood—weaving coconut leaves, sweeping the yards of the rich, picking up the<br />
black oysters from the canal. She practiced a “smart living.”<br />
Though a severe headache often attacked her, she never liked to consult with a<br />
doctor, for her mind and body could endure anything stoically. Her panacea was a<br />
cup of coffee mixed with some herbal powder.<br />
“Ma, you’re past seventy now. Why don’t you take rest?”<br />
Neeraj, who was employed in an automobile workshop, asked her once. But<br />
for a coolie woman like her, retirement is like death. She turned down her son’s<br />
The Literary Hatchet 85
suggestion with her typical stubbornness, and then she left home with a tiny net<br />
like a sieve to catch prawns from the canal.<br />
“Maximum six months more.” Solla racks her brains. The doctor’s words are<br />
growing in her subconscious mind. She can then make out only those words from<br />
the conversation between the doctor and her son. A doctor should never fix a<br />
patient’s life span before the open ears of his patient.<br />
She is down in the mouth. She lies on her mat looking up at her thatched roof.<br />
Visitors bring her oranges and grapes. She looks at the fruits with an aversion.<br />
Nothing is now palatable for her. As they return, the visitors leave behind a kind of<br />
plastic sympathy. This lengthy rest implants dark forebodings in her mind. She was<br />
never accustomed to such inactivity.<br />
Edavam, Midhunam, Karkadakam, Chingam, Kanni, Thulam . . . months<br />
die in her Malayalam calendar. Now it dawns on her that she is still alive. She is<br />
ignorant as well as illiterate. She makes herself believe what she does have is a mere<br />
headache. A doctor is not a God, she muses. She rises like a phoenix from the ashes<br />
of tension, takes a broom, and sweeps her floor.<br />
“Ma, No!” Neeraj calls out. He reminds her of the doctor’s advice to take rest,<br />
but she is adamant. She sweeps on with a cauliflower frown on her face. A fortnight<br />
elapses. Though there is an unhealthy pallor on her face still, her mind has regained<br />
its lost pizzazz. She is quite unaware of her malignancy. Such is her mind—where<br />
a brain tumor is as a headache.<br />
Now she weaves the green coconut leaves for thatching her roof, sitting under<br />
the peace of ignorance.<br />
]<br />
86 The Literary Hatchet
[poetry]<br />
There is a secret god I worship<br />
The abomination of light and air.<br />
She is the sacrament of coarse gods<br />
Of lust and war and greed.<br />
I genuflect before her<br />
Offering up my hate and envy.<br />
My adoration of her scarred visage<br />
Puckers me wizened and sour.<br />
And I would flee her temple<br />
Of acrid incense and unholy water<br />
But do not know where to seek<br />
The god who lives in her absence.<br />
—ed ahern<br />
The Literary Hatchet 87
[short story]<br />
by cameron trost<br />
Chelsea Bishop was obsessed with getting her impeccably manicured hands<br />
on whatever money could buy. A simple but clever balancing act of sucking up<br />
and backstabbing, refined over the years, was the key to her success. Her skills<br />
had enabled her to seduce and later marry Christopher Bishop, the wealthiest<br />
man in her expansive circle of friends. Likewise, in professional life, her tactics<br />
guaranteed that she never failed to get what she wanted. While many women in<br />
her superannuation firm wasted their time complaining about the glass ceiling,<br />
Chelsea was riding the lift all the way to the top floor. So far, it hadn’t really been<br />
all that difficult either. She had dug up enough dirt on more promising colleagues<br />
to ruin their careers while carefully safeguarding her own reputation and lining<br />
herself up for promotion after promotion.<br />
For the granddaughter of penniless Polish immigrants, she had done<br />
extraordinarily well. She was living the high life in a Hamilton hilltop mansion<br />
and she got a perverse pleasure out of driving her gleaming white Audi Q7 4x4<br />
as aggressively as possible. Her home loomed high above Kingsford Smith Drive<br />
and the Brisbane River, taunting the lesser elitists below. Her vehicle had been<br />
chosen to complement the residence. It was a rolling reminder to others of just<br />
how successful she had become.<br />
But of all the challenges Chelsea had faced to date, motherhood was going to<br />
be the most trying. Instead of mollifying her competitive nature, it provided her<br />
with yet another weapon with which to wage war. She felt compelled to make sure<br />
that her baby would be better off than anybody else’s child, and she was spending as<br />
much money as was required to complete the mission. She could afford just about<br />
88 The Literary Hatchet
everything she wanted for him; everything, that is, except for one very precious<br />
commodity.<br />
Chelsea was convinced that formula was inferior to breast milk, and so that was<br />
that as far as she was concerned. Breast milk was all that would be fed to her little<br />
George. The problem was that he had a phenomenal appetite. He would suck her<br />
dry and then cry until he went red. He was never satisfied.<br />
Her doctor thought she was exaggerating, quite simply because what she<br />
described was unheard of. All he did was assure her that the infant was getting<br />
all the nutrition required and point out that the fact he was putting on weight was<br />
obvious enough. He told her to either put up with it or switch to using formula. Her<br />
reply was to inform that the Bishop family would be changing doctors.<br />
Chelsea sought to distract George in all sorts of ways. She played soothing<br />
music after feeding. She took him for strolls in his Aston Martin Silver Cross pram.<br />
But nothing worked for more than a few minutes. The urge for milk was always<br />
there.<br />
She forced herself to endure his insatiability day in and day out for the first two<br />
weeks of his life but told Christopher that it simply couldn’t go on. It was torture. It<br />
wasn’t the child’s fault, of course, but it was unbearable all the same.<br />
“You’ve got to do something, Christopher. There has to be a solution,” she<br />
practically shouted at him one night. It was three o’clock in the morning and the<br />
pair had been woken up yet again by a wail that would have put the Banshee to<br />
shame.<br />
He drew a deep breath and thought about how to answer his distraught wife<br />
in a way that would prevent her from getting as agitated as George was. But the<br />
solicitor’s sharp brain wasn’t at its prime at such an ungodly hour.<br />
“There’s no other solution. You’ll have to follow the doctor’s advice and<br />
supplement his diet with formula.”<br />
“My baby will not consume formula! What an irresponsible thing to say!”<br />
“Well, what do you want me to say?” he pleaded. It’s not my fault your tits can’t<br />
produce enough milk for our son.<br />
“You have to get him more breast milk,” Chelsea mused as she got out of bed<br />
and went over to George’s cot. She could tell there was some milk in her breasts but<br />
doubted it would be enough.<br />
“Get him more breast milk? How do you expect me to do that?” he asked.<br />
“Forget it! Just go back to sleep!” she snapped as she held George to her left<br />
breast. His little mouth was agape, and when he felt her sore nipple brush his lips,<br />
he lunged for it.<br />
Chelsea winced as the toothless piranha started sucking.<br />
“I’m going to lie down in the living room,” Christopher said.<br />
“Go on then! Flee the torture chamber!”<br />
He hurried out, muttering under his breath, and stopped in the kitchen to<br />
pour himself a glass of water. As he sipped, looking through the window at clouds<br />
teasing the softly glowing surface of the moon, a thought occurred to him. Maybe<br />
it was the pale colour of the celestial orb that had given him the idea, or perhaps it<br />
The Literary Hatchet 89
was its perfect roundness. It was difficult to say. The idea was without a doubt the<br />
strangest he had ever had, but he was confident he could pull it off. After all, money<br />
was no object.<br />
Christopher placed the glass in the sink and continued towards the living room<br />
where darkness and the ticking of a clock enveloped him completely. He stretched<br />
himself out on the lounge as best he could, and while he waited for sleep to come,<br />
knowing that it would not come easily that night, he worked out the details of his<br />
plan.<br />
He woke up with a stiff neck but a clear head the next morning. Christopher<br />
Bishop never needed to jot notes down. He had an excellent memory, even when<br />
he was tired or distracted. As he made himself a coffee, he ran the plan through<br />
his mind and was satisfied that even in the cold light of morning, it still seemed<br />
completely plausible, despite its absurdity.<br />
Coffee in hand, he crept into the bedroom and found Chelsea and George<br />
sleeping soundly. She was lying on her back with the bedspread tangled like<br />
seaweed across her waist. Her pink and red striped nightie hung open and her<br />
breasts were splayed out. George was curled up between them like a leech at<br />
bursting point. Even in his sleep, his rosy lips which were barely visible between<br />
his fat cheeks rested upon one of his mother’s bloated and cracked nipples. They<br />
were both exhausted. They needed him to provide for them, and quickly.<br />
As soon as he had finished his coffee and got dressed, Christopher jumped into<br />
his golden chariot, a BMW X5, and punched a number into his mobile phone as he<br />
drove out of his garage.<br />
“Steve, how are things out your way? . . . Good to hear . . . So, the council is still<br />
in the dark about all that? . . . That’s great! . . . Actually, that’s the reason I’m calling<br />
. . . George has got one hell of an appetite. He simply can’t get enough milk . . . You<br />
can say that again! It will be a long time before I get anywhere near Chelsea’s tits<br />
again, especially if I can’t solve this problem . . . Yeah, I think I can, as a matter of<br />
fact. I know this is going to sound strange, but we’ve both made successes out of<br />
some less than conventional ideas before, haven’t we? . . . this one is even weirder,<br />
light years weirder . . . Listen. I’ll tell you what I want, and you just let me know<br />
whether it’s feasible, what it would cost, and whether you want in, all right? . . .<br />
Good.”<br />
“Good evening, sweetheart,” Christopher called charmingly as he stepped<br />
inside the house. But when Chelsea leaped into view at the end of the hallway and<br />
scowled at him, he realised that his attempt at cajoling his wife was futile.<br />
“Shhh!” she hissed at him like a threatened snake as she rushed forward. “I’ve<br />
just put George to sleep. Don’t come barging in like that!”<br />
Christopher kept his lips sealed. He wanted to tell the bitch that he was just<br />
trying to be nice, that he wanted nothing more than to get the evening started on<br />
the right foot. Instead, he said, “Sorry. I’m going to grab myself a beer and drink it<br />
quietly on the back deck.”<br />
90 The Literary Hatchet
He closed the door gently and started off along the hallway.<br />
“Hold on second,” Chelsea whispered urgently. “Aren’t you forgetting to tell me<br />
something?”<br />
“Just give me a couple of minutes to take a leak and get a brew from the fridge,<br />
and then I’ll tell you all about it, all right?”<br />
Chelsea nodded excitedly.<br />
“Try to calm down a little.”<br />
He regretted his words instantly. But there was no need. Chelsea had taken it<br />
well. She nodded again, more slowly now, and went out to the deck.<br />
Christopher joined her about three minutes later. The instant he had knocked<br />
the top off a bottle of Mountain Goat ale, she asked him again, “So, what’s your<br />
solution?”<br />
“It will take a couple of days to get into full flow, but once it does, life is going to<br />
be a lot easier for us,” he began.<br />
“Yes, yes. I can hold off for a couple of days . . . at most. Come on, tell me about<br />
it.”<br />
So, he told her, between sips of ale. He explained the plan in detail, and as he<br />
spoke, he watched her reaction. At first, her eyes widened and her jaw dropped, the<br />
sheer lunacy of his idea demanded such a reception. But Chelsea held her tongue,<br />
which was no mean feat for her, as he continued. The planning was remarkable, she<br />
had to admit that. Before long, her eyes narrowed mischievously and her mouth<br />
closed. Shock morphed to smug contentedness.<br />
Christian knew that she was sold before he asked, “What do you think about<br />
that then?”<br />
She squeezed her knees tightly together for a second, and Christian could have<br />
sworn that he noticed her shiver ever so slightly, despite the warmth of that typical<br />
Brisbane day.<br />
“Come on,” she said, biting her lip and taking him by the hand. “Put your beer<br />
back in the fridge, you can finish it later.”<br />
He hadn’t expected the news to have quite that effect on his wife.<br />
As she led him towards their bedroom, he decided that he would keep all the<br />
frustration he felt toward her bottled up inside a little longer, just until the right<br />
moment when the pressure would be so great he’d have to unleash it all.<br />
Annie Darrow wasn’t used to getting calls to the landline phone. All of her<br />
friends and family got in touch with her on the mobile. Whenever the landline<br />
rang, she hesitated to answer, not knowing who it might be. Already that morning,<br />
she had ignored two calls to her mobile from Darren, her ex-partner who now<br />
lived on the other side of town, the “other side” being about three streets away.<br />
Maybe he was trying to trick her into talking to him by calling the landline. He<br />
knew that she was doing it tough on government benefits and every now and then<br />
when he needed a fuck and none of his other slags were available, he would try to<br />
seduce Annie by rocking up to the house with plastic bags full of shopping or a<br />
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new pair of panties or pyjamas for her. He no longer tried to win her over with pot.<br />
Although it had taken him a while to really believe it, he now accepted that she had<br />
given drugs the boot once and for all. Having her third child, Shelly, had convinced<br />
her to go clean. If only Shelly’s father would contact her. He wasn’t too bad as men<br />
went. But Annie knew that he wouldn’t. Unlike her eldest child’s dickhead of a dad,<br />
he had moved on to greener pastures, and perkier young tits.<br />
“What the fuck do you want?” she asked the telephone as she got up from the<br />
plastic chair she always sat in when feeding. Her voice, despite the vulgar words it<br />
ushered and the weariness it portrayed, still held a hint of the sweet young girl it<br />
had once belonged to.<br />
The phone rang out before Annie could get to it and little Shelly cried with<br />
outrage at having been ripped away from the nipple of her mother’s swollen left<br />
breast. Annie shushed her and rocked her back and forth.<br />
“Don’t worry, Shelly honey,” she whispered. “Probably some fucking arsehole<br />
of a curry muncher trying to scam us.” Annie’s mangled nipple squirted milk into<br />
the baby’s eyes as she grabbed her tit and shoved it back into the searching mouth.<br />
When the phone rang again, little Shelly was having a nap and Annie rushed to<br />
answer it before it woke her daughter up.<br />
“Hello.”<br />
Annie frowned as she listened to the voice at the other end.<br />
“No, I can’t work. I’m a full-time mum. I’ve got three kids. That’s hard work,<br />
you know?’<br />
Her frown softened. “Good. I’m glad you realise that. Most people don’t.”<br />
She nodded patiently.<br />
“I’m listening.”<br />
Her eyes widened with disbelief. “Say again. How much?”<br />
She put her free hand over her mouth and almost gasped, but decided she<br />
needed to play it cool.<br />
“What kind of job is this?” she asked suspiciously.<br />
Her face screwed up as she listened. It was weird work but an easy way to make<br />
some cash, and serious cash too.<br />
“I don’t know. That’s a bit strange, and I’m not sure it’s even legal,” she said,<br />
hoping to push the pay up even higher.<br />
She drew a sharp breath, not happy with what she was hearing.<br />
“What do you mean I’ve already done illegal work before? Who says so?”<br />
She bit her lip.<br />
“Yeah, yeah, all right then. Yes, I accept the terms.”<br />
She smiled to herself.<br />
“No, I’m not.”<br />
“You can do a blood test if you like. I’m clean.”<br />
“No problem, I know a few others. How many more do you need?”<br />
“Do you want me to call them for you?”<br />
She nodded excitedly.<br />
“Three hundred per name and number? Sure, that sounds reasonable,” she tried<br />
92 The Literary Hatchet
to say as calmly as possible. “Call me back in fifteen minutes.”<br />
She hung up and put her hands over her face, rubbing it as though to make sure<br />
she was awake. The whole conversation had been like a strange dream, the kind she<br />
had often had back when she was still using. A peculiar feeling flooded through her<br />
tired body and numb soul, reminding her of the local creek during storm season.<br />
She felt privileged and lucky, but at the same time, so very cheap and dirty.<br />
Annie usually downed at least two cups of strong black coffee for breakfast,<br />
but the man on the phone had insisted she was not to consume any caffeine that<br />
morning. She drank a glass of orange juice instead.<br />
Once she was ready, she checked the address of the dairy farm again and<br />
grabbed the car keys. It was still dark outside and she was barely awake, but it was<br />
only a twenty-minute drive through quiet country roads.<br />
Her rusty Barina rattled as she drove over potholes that her headlights struggled<br />
to find in the gloom. Shelly had whined a little at first but was soon fast asleep.<br />
The sun was licking the horizon as she arrived. A dozen other rusty bombs were<br />
parked in front of the plain-looking milking shed. She recognised several of them.<br />
The white Fiesta with a dent in the driver’s side door belonged to Margie, who<br />
needed to make money by any means necessary in order to stay afloat and keep<br />
well away from Dazza and his nasty temper. Sal’s Corolla was there too. Annie was<br />
surprised the pile of crap was still rolling.<br />
Shelly woke up and started wailing as Annie brought her car to a halt.<br />
“Take it easy, sweetie. Mummy’s got some work to do.”<br />
Her pleading only annoyed the infant even more.<br />
Then, as Annie switched the headlights off and cut the motor, a figure appeared<br />
from the door to the shed and walked over to her.<br />
She got out of the car and unbuckled her daughter from the baby seat in the<br />
back.<br />
“Morning.”<br />
“Hello,” Annie replied unenthusiastically.<br />
The man had a bushy brown beard that covered his red and grey chequered<br />
shirt and stank of stale milk. He looked Annie up and down and grinned as he<br />
glanced at her ample cleavage.<br />
“The wife’ll look after ya littl’un,” he informed her, waving a sandpapery hand<br />
toward a plump woman who had appeared out of thin air. “She’ll take ‘er up to the<br />
house and look after ‘er. You can go to the loo if ya want, and then pop back down<br />
‘ere.”<br />
“I’m fine,” Annie replied.<br />
She didn’t want to leave Shelly alone but had no choice. There was work to be<br />
done and money to be had. She handed her daughter to the farmer’s wife and the<br />
child ceased complaining immediately.<br />
Annie was both relieved and surprised.<br />
“Got a way with young’uns, my girl.” The woman’s jowls wobbled as she spoke.<br />
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“I’ve ‘ad six o’ me own.”<br />
Annie nodded.<br />
“You ready?” the farmer asked.<br />
“Yeah,” Annie said, but didn’t sound too sure of herself.<br />
“You was told the nature o’ the job?”<br />
“I was.”<br />
He grinned.<br />
“You must be making a buck or two out of this deal,” she mused. “Who’s it all<br />
for?”<br />
“That’s none of ya beeswax!” he snapped. “You and me both are ‘ere to do a job<br />
and keep our traps shut ‘bout it. D’ja understand?”<br />
“Yeah, sure.”<br />
“Follow me then.”<br />
The farmer led Annie to the entrance of the shed. She could hear the humming<br />
of machinery and the chatting of women. There wasn’t a cow to be seen or heard.<br />
As she entered, Annie’s mouth gaped and her nipples hardened. She had been<br />
told what to expect but was still shocked to see it.<br />
Somebody out there, somebody with serious cash, needed a lot of human breast<br />
milk.<br />
“Hi, Annie!” several of the women called over the drone of machinery. Others,<br />
strangers, just glanced at her briefly and continued chatting loudly together.<br />
There were more than twenty women in the shed, all bare-breasted and hooked<br />
up to the milking machines like dairy cattle. Each nipple had a teat cup attached<br />
to it.<br />
Annie felt humiliated. She wanted to cry. She wanted to run out of the shed,<br />
grab Shelly, and drive off back home.<br />
“Sit ‘ere,” the farmer told her, and she found herself obeying him, taking her<br />
place between two strangers.<br />
They both looked happy and Annie found herself thinking that maybe, once the<br />
cups were attached and the milk flowing, it would all be just fine—almost natural.<br />
“Get ya tits out,” he instructed, staring at her chest.<br />
She took her cardigan and top off. She wasn’t wearing a bra. There had been no<br />
point in putting one on.<br />
Her nipples were already erect and leaking.<br />
The farmer took a teat cup with his right hand and grabbed a breast with his<br />
left. His palm and fingers were rough and Annie only just managed to resist the<br />
urge to slap the filthy creep.<br />
“Ouch!” she cried as he attached the first cup. It hurt like all buggery.<br />
The women beside her giggled.<br />
“What’s wrong with you freaks?” she hissed at them.<br />
The farmer took her other breast and pushed the nipple into the second cup.<br />
The pain was sharp, like needles.<br />
Annie was crying, but she kept thinking about the cash. She needed it.<br />
94 The Literary Hatchet
The cups throbbed at her nipples, tugging at them, inducing the flow of milk. It<br />
didn’t take long before the pain subsided and she started to relax.<br />
She looked at the women to either side of her and they smiled knowingly.<br />
“It’s not so bad after a few minutes,” the one on her right told her. “Just forget<br />
your self-respect for a while and think about the money.”<br />
“It’s our little secret,” the other woman added.<br />
Annie looked down at her nipples pulsing inside the teat cups. Her liquid gold<br />
was squirting into the receptacles and flowing along tubes toward a central cistern.<br />
The women were all the same. There were dozens of breasts being emptied. She<br />
told herself not to be ashamed or to feel cheap. After all, they were just doing a<br />
day’s work like everybody else. It was a case of supply and demand, or whatever it<br />
was called. She had milk to give and some rich bitch whose boobs obviously didn’t<br />
work had money to spend on it.<br />
She decided to take the advice of the woman on her right. She closed her eyes<br />
and thought about the money.<br />
]<br />
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[poetry]<br />
They say it existed for a thousand years.<br />
I say that’s ridiculous.<br />
They say it lives on in history.<br />
I say, keep it there.<br />
They say it was the greatest place on earth.<br />
I say nothing, just laugh.<br />
They said, ‘Evacuate.’<br />
I said, ‘Hurray!’<br />
They said they’d never seen anything like it.<br />
I said, ‘Bring it on.’<br />
When the dust devil hit,<br />
it flattened out the shanties,<br />
it dusted off the drunks,<br />
it cleaned out the sick beds,<br />
and whipped away the punks.<br />
It gobbled up the perverts,<br />
and stole the orphanage bell.<br />
It swept away this damn town<br />
And dumped it into hell.<br />
They say they’ll never forget.<br />
I say, get over it.<br />
They cling to the past.<br />
I greet the future.<br />
Goodbye perfect town, at last,<br />
There’s nothing left to say.<br />
—e.m. eastick<br />
96 The Literary Hatchet
[poetry]<br />
It’s a new<br />
generation ride –<br />
with her arms entwined<br />
around him like a grape vine.<br />
Pulsar, their bike,<br />
zigzags like a snake;<br />
sometimes it prances as<br />
a horse – yet a speed reduce<br />
both dislike – it’s a ride along the<br />
edge of the other world. Everybody<br />
startles and curses. Any urgency, they<br />
don’t have – it’s a fun. Really adolescence’s<br />
partially blind – it seeks the greatest pleasure in<br />
the highest risk. All the thunderous sounds – cracking,<br />
breaking, blasting, and so on – have been synchronized on<br />
a horrible track – silencer spits fire – all are odd alterations.<br />
Though our roads<br />
are acquainted with such<br />
rides, this one ends in the rear<br />
of a tourist taxi. Red liquid spreads,<br />
and an ache flows slowly to somewhere.<br />
—fabiyas mv<br />
The Literary Hatchet 97
[short story]<br />
by lee todd lacks<br />
“I’ve been waiting for you to come by for the past fifteen minutes! My halibut<br />
is overcooked. Given the cost of dining at this establishment, I shouldn’t have to<br />
pay for your inattentiveness.” Lynn regretted the flippant remark as soon as she had<br />
uttered it. Her shame swelled like a tide as she watched the server’s countenance<br />
wilt. “I’ll have them redo your order right away, ma’am.”<br />
Although her job at the insurance firm could be trying at times, Lynn Thompson<br />
knew that she had never worked harder than this beleaguered, young waitress, not<br />
even on her best day. She shuddered at the sound of her mother’s voice. “How<br />
could you be so rude to that poor girl? Get up this instant and head straight to the<br />
ladies room, before I take care of you right here, in front of God and everybody.”<br />
Lynn didn’t bother to debate with the voice. She knew her fate was welldeserved.<br />
Rising from the table, she ruefully proceeded toward an alcove at the rear<br />
of the dining room. Upon approaching, she could see that the door to one of the<br />
single-occupancy restroom was ajar. Sighing, Lynn stepped inside and switched on<br />
the light. In front of her stretched a pink granite vanity, with a large, rectangular<br />
mirror mounted just above the backsplash.<br />
“Bend over!” commanded the voice. “Yes, ma’am.” Lynn did as she was told.<br />
Moments later, Lynn noticed her modest linen skirt being raised and tucked above<br />
98 The Literary Hatchet
her hips. Unseen fingers reached inside her apricot tights, tugging them down<br />
just below her knees. The phantom extremities then lowered her panties till they<br />
bunched up against her hose.<br />
“Oh, Mom! Please! Not on the bare!!” Lynn pleaded.<br />
“Hush, or we’ll be here twice as long,” the voice admonished her.<br />
“No, no, no! Please!” Lynn cried, knowing full well that Claire Thompson had<br />
never issued an empty threat.<br />
“Not another word, then,” her mother warned.<br />
“Yes, ma’am.” Soon, Lynn could hear the unzipping of her handbag, followed<br />
by the rustle of a fairly sizeable object, extricating itself from an assortment of<br />
keys, coins, and lipstick. The next few seconds seemed interminable, as Claire<br />
Thompson’s daughter braced for what had become a routine ordeal.<br />
From an early age, Lynn learned that naughty meant sitting on pillows for<br />
the next several days. Whenever she chose to misbehave, Lynn’s mother spanked<br />
her with a hefty wooden paddle brush. For as often as she claimed to dread her<br />
mother’s hairbrush, Lynn found herself in need of its sore and searing grace.<br />
A loud crack reverberated within the tiled walls of the lavatory, stinging her<br />
backside like a dozen angry hornets. Lynn gasped, barely able to process the<br />
discomfort before having to endure a second, similarly painful sting, and another,<br />
and still another. It took all of her will to suppress the cries that desperately sought<br />
to escape her. However, being in a public place, she dared not let her voice betray<br />
the intensity of her pain, for fear that anyone who stood within hearing distance<br />
might become alarmed, and subsequently notify the authorities.<br />
Growing up, many of Lynn’s schoolmates discovered that her mother had no<br />
qualms about paddling her, in front, if not alongside, of them. However, not even<br />
her closest friends knew that she was still subject to maternal discipline as an adult.<br />
Despite her thirty-six years, Lynn knew to expect the brush whenever she neglected<br />
her household chores, or arrived home late without prior consent.<br />
When Claire Thompson passed away unexpectedly, Lynn inherited the small<br />
farmhouse, which had always been their home. As she struggled to function<br />
without her mother’s approval, Lynn gradually learned how to answer to herself.<br />
Within a matter of months, she bought several stylish dresses, which her mother<br />
would have surely forbid her from wearing, and she got into the habit of staying<br />
out after work.<br />
“Unnnnnhhhhh!!!” A thick wad of paper towels muffled what would have been<br />
a tile-rattling shriek. In these moments, Lynn often imagined herself attempting<br />
to explain her predicament to the investigating officer, who had been called to<br />
the scene, sounding rather dubious as he inquired about the brush. “Possessed,<br />
ma’am?” “Yes, officer! My deceased mother haunts my hairbrush, and she punishes<br />
me whenever I misbehave. She’s been tormenting me for over two years now!”<br />
Having said that, Lynn could see herself being transported to the nearest Acute<br />
Psychiatric Unit, where she would undergo a full evaluation. No. For as unpleasant<br />
as her present circumstances might seem, the prospect of having to explain who or<br />
The Literary Hatchet 99
what was causing her such audible distress in a public restroom seemed even more<br />
objectionable.<br />
Lynn had been living n her own for nearly six months when she first heard<br />
her mother speak through the brush. Initially, the voice came as a great relief. The<br />
brush seemed like a comforting reminder of her mother’s firm guidance. Over<br />
time, however, the admonishments became progressively harsher. The condition<br />
of never knowing when she might hear the voice caused Lynn to seem perpetually<br />
irritable, and the severity of the brush’s reprimands eroded her burgeoning selfbelief.<br />
That’s when it started.<br />
She had arrived home very late one evening, dazed and queasy from quite<br />
a few too many. Upon entering, Lynn wanted nothing more than to crawl into<br />
bed as quickly as her impaired judgment would allow. Various articles of clothing<br />
lay strewn about the hallway as Claire Thompson’s daughter stumbled into her<br />
bedroom. As she attempted to remove her earrings, one of them fell to the floor.<br />
Cursing, she bent over to pick it up, a startlingly painful impact struck her from<br />
behind. “Unnnnnhhhhh!!!” Just then, she heard her mother’s voice.<br />
“Lynn Marie Thompson! Did I raise you to be falling down drunk in your<br />
underwear at two o’clock in the morning?!”<br />
“N…n…no, ma’am,” Lynn stammered.<br />
“You seem to have forgotten yourself, young lady! Do you still need me to<br />
remind you?” the voice asked rhetorically.<br />
Lynn was slow to reveal her truth. “Yes, ma’am.”<br />
Nearly two years since that fateful night, Lynn still carried her mother’s<br />
reminder. As she struggled to bear it yet again, a sharp knock at the restroom door<br />
rattled her composure. Panicking, Lynn let the damp paper towels fall from her<br />
mouth, so that she could respond. “I’m almost finished!” she gasped.<br />
“Are you all right in there?!” asked an alarmed male voice.<br />
“Yes. Yes. I’m…I’m fine,” came her wavering reply. Lynn hoped that she could<br />
assuage the well-meaning stranger’s concern, at least temporarily, for she knew that<br />
her mother wasn’t finished yet.<br />
The brush pronounced its final sentence. “Ten more!”<br />
Lynn grabbed more paper towels, and bit down hard. The room echoed once<br />
again. “Unnnnhhhhhh!!!” She was shocked by the sheer magnitude of the pain. The<br />
thought of having to endure nine more seemed inconceivable. Then, for reasons<br />
beyond her understanding, the brush ceased to strike.<br />
“I can’t do this anymore, Lynn. You’re a grown woman. I can’t absolve you<br />
anymore.” It was her mother’s voice.<br />
“No, no…no, Mom! I need you! Please! Don’t stop! I’ll try harder!” Lynn<br />
insisted, in spite of herself.<br />
“No, Lynn. I’ve let you rely upon the brush for far too long. You need to form<br />
your own conscience.”<br />
The shaming voice only served to heighten her anxiety. “Mom, please! I can’t!<br />
I don’t know how!”<br />
100 The Literary Hatchet
“I know, sweetheart, and that’s my fault. I never taught you how to forgive<br />
yourself.” Her mother sounded regretful now.<br />
“Mom, please, don’t go. I still need it!!”<br />
“I’m not in the brush, sweetheart. I’m in you…always. Goodbye, Lynn.” The<br />
voice spoke to her reassuringly, as if for the last time.<br />
“Mom!” Lynn cried out, unable to contain her despair any longer.<br />
A moment later, she heard the sound of the restroom door being unlocked.<br />
“No…no…Oh, God! No! Please! Wait!” Lynn implored, sobbing.<br />
Just then, the door flew open, followed by the collective gasp of half a dozen<br />
stunned onlookers.<br />
“Oh, my God,” they murmured. “Someone call 911!” exclaimed the restaurant<br />
manager, unable to avert his eyes from Lynn’s frightfully inflamed bottom.<br />
Too mortified to speak, Claire Thompson’s daughter looked up at the mirror.<br />
Her face was flushed and wet with tears, as she stood fully exposed from the waist<br />
down, clutching a hairbrush in her trembling hand.<br />
]<br />
The Literary Hatchet 101
[short story]<br />
by sue barnard<br />
Until now, death was something<br />
which had only happened<br />
to other people….<br />
102 The Literary Hatchet
10:25 a.m.<br />
Helen desperately wanted to keep up her strength for the ordeal which was to<br />
follow, but she simply could not relax. For what felt like the hundredth time, she<br />
picked up the clock from the sideboard, put it down without registering what time<br />
it said, then walked across to the window, pulled aside the curtain, and peered out<br />
into the street.<br />
On the other side of the room, the telephone on the mantelpiece pierced the<br />
silence. She turned, let go of the curtain, and began to walk across to answer it, but<br />
the ringing stopped before she had even reach the centre of the room. She sighed,<br />
looked unseeing at the clock again, and then resumed her vigil at the window.<br />
The door creaked open to admit Jamie, carrying an acoustic guitar, and Luke,<br />
who had a battered copy of The Oxford Book of English Verse tucked under his arm.<br />
Helen suppressed a gasp at the sight of their incongruous dark suits and black ties.<br />
She couldn’t help noticing that Luke had still not properly brushed his hair, even<br />
today, but decided not to remark on it.<br />
“Ah, there you are.” She greeted them with a forced smile.<br />
Luke shivered. “Geez, it’s cold in here.”<br />
Jamie slumped onto the sofa. “I can’t say I’m looking forward to this.”<br />
“Nor I,” Helen agreed.<br />
“Me neither,” Luke grunted. He opened the book, and then let out a loud snort.<br />
“Geez, what kind of random stuff is this? Hail to thee, blithe spirit! Bird thou never<br />
wert,” he declaimed, striking up a melodramatic pose. “That from heaven or near it<br />
Pourest thy full heart…”<br />
Jamie looked up, shocked. “You’re not going to read that out, are you?”<br />
“God no. It just, like, opened at that one. The one I’m supposed to do is<br />
something about death not being proud.”<br />
“Thank goodness for that!” Helen heaved a sigh of relief (she had never been<br />
a great fan of Shelley) as Luke flopped into one of the armchairs and opened the<br />
anthology at another page. His lips moved silently as he perused the text, whilst<br />
Jamie picked up the guitar and fiddled with the tuning pegs. After a few moments<br />
his fingers moved to the strings, and the air was filled with the melodic strains of<br />
“Stairway to Heaven.”<br />
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The door opened again and Martin entered. Helen smiled. Despite the sombre<br />
occasion, her husband could still look stunning, even when dressed, like their sons,<br />
in dark suit and black tie.<br />
Jamie stopped playing, mid-phrase, and put the guitar down. “Sorry,” he said. “I<br />
don’t know if I’m going to be able to do this.”<br />
“And this poem!” Luke chipped in. “I mean, I know it was, like, one of her<br />
favourites, but—”<br />
“Don’t worry,” Martin soothed. “Nobody except us and the priest know about<br />
it, so if either of you decide you can’t go through with it, nobody else will be any<br />
the wiser.”<br />
Jamie shook his head. “But we’ll feel as if we’ve let her down. She always said—”<br />
Martin held up his hand for silence. “Like I said, don’t worry about it.”<br />
“You’ll both be fine,” Helen reassured them, as Martin seated himself in the<br />
other armchair.<br />
“Who was that on the phone?” Luke asked.<br />
“Somebody trying to sell us life insurance,” Martin answered. “At least, I think<br />
that’s what he was selling. He had an accent so thick I could spread it on my toast.”<br />
“They can certainly pick their moments,” Helen sighed, as their sons groaned.<br />
An uneasy quietness descended over the room. Jamie eventually broke the<br />
silence.<br />
“This feels weird,” he murmured. “Like—the calm before the storm.”<br />
“Mmm….” Helen nodded agreement.<br />
Luke pushed the poetry book aside. “How old were we when Grandpa died?”<br />
he asked.<br />
“Not very old,” Helen answered.<br />
Martin considered. “Well, he died in 2001, so you would have been…” he added<br />
up on his fingers, “five and seven. A bit young to go to his funeral.”<br />
“How old was he when he died?” Jamie asked.<br />
“Sixty-eight,” Martin said. “How well do you remember him?”<br />
“Not much,” Luke said. “I remember he had, like, lots of white hair, and he<br />
smoked those little cigars. And he talked funny.”<br />
Martin laughed. “That was because he came from ‘Zummerzet’.”<br />
The others joined in the laughter at his mock West-Country accent.<br />
Luke spoke again. “When he died, I, like, didn’t really take it in. Not like it was<br />
with Charlie.”<br />
Martin’s face became sombre. “How old was he?”<br />
“We were in, um, year eleven. So...fifteen. Or maybe sixteen.”<br />
“Did they ever catch the driver?” Jamie asked.<br />
Luke shrugged. “Dunno. If they did, I never heard about it.”<br />
“Tragic,” Helen murmured, turning back to look out of the window again. She<br />
jumped as Jamie let out a loud sneeze.<br />
“Bloody flowers.” Jamie glared at the massive floral arrangement which<br />
completely covered the coffee table, then looked anxiously around. “Where are the<br />
tissues?”<br />
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“Over there.” Martin pointed towards the sideboard. “You’d better take a few<br />
with you. It’s not the sort of day to go out without a hanky.”<br />
“That’s usually my trick,” Helen smiled, as Jamie blew his nose and stuffed a<br />
handful of tissues into the pocket of his jacket.<br />
“What will it be like?” Luke asked nervously. “I mean, like, we’ve never been to<br />
one before.”<br />
“Service in church,” Martin answered, “then to the crematorium. That’ll be<br />
quite short, I should think. Then back to the pub for the wake.”<br />
There was a pause while the two younger men took this idea on board. Helen<br />
couldn’t help thinking that they both looked very uneasy. Then Jamie spoke.<br />
“Dad, you believe in all that church stuff, don’t you? Do you reckon it helps?”<br />
Martin thought for a moment before replying. “It always has done up to now,”<br />
he said eventually, choosing his words carefully. “In a way it’s comforting to believe<br />
that you’ll see them again one day. Although, having said that, sometimes things<br />
can happen that can shake your faith.”<br />
“What?” Helen gasped. “But you’ve always—”<br />
Luke’s voice cut across hers. “You mean, like, ‘If God exists then why does he<br />
allow this?’” He made invisible quotation marks in the air with his fingers.<br />
“What sort of things?” Jamie asked, turning back to Martin.<br />
“Well… I remember years ago, when an aunt of mine died quite young, the first<br />
thing my grandmother said was ‘Why wasn’t it me?’ And it does make you wonder:<br />
Yes, why wasn’t it? If there is a God, then why did he let the younger woman die,<br />
rather than the older one?”<br />
“Why indeed…” Helen murmured, half to herself.<br />
“Yeah,” Luke agreed. “You kind of, like, come to expect it with old people, don’t<br />
you? Not like with—”<br />
“Natural selection, maybe?” Jamie suggested. “You know, survival of the fittest,<br />
and all that?”<br />
Helen raised her eyebrows thoughtfully, but said nothing.<br />
“Or fate?” Luke went on. “Like, predestination and stuff?”<br />
“Maybe,” Martin agreed. “Grannie always believed in that. So did Uncle Tom.”<br />
Luke smiled. “I liked Uncle Tom. He was quality.”<br />
“Yeah.” Jamie’s normal voice was suddenly replaced by a broad Cockney accent.<br />
“I wanted to be the Village Idiot, but I failed the exam.”<br />
Luke joined in, also adopting the unmistakable accents of the East End. “I speak<br />
two languages: English and Rubbish.”<br />
“Uncle Tom never talked rubbish!” Helen said, across their laughter.<br />
Martin chuckled. “He was a law unto himself! For what he said about eternal<br />
life, centuries ago he’d have been burnt as a heretic!”<br />
Helen glanced out of the window again, and saw the hearse and funeral car<br />
approaching.<br />
“It’s here,” she whispered.<br />
“Why?” Jamie sounded puzzled. “What did he say about eternal life?”<br />
Before Martin could reply, the sound of the doorbell stunned them into silence.<br />
The Literary Hatchet 105
Martin stood up and went to answer it. Through the open door into the hall, the<br />
others could see and hear the man in the black overcoat standing respectfully on<br />
the doorstep.<br />
“Mr. Blythe? Are you ready?”<br />
“Yes, just a moment.”<br />
Martin came back into the living room and picked up the flower arrangement.<br />
“Ready?”<br />
Jamie and Luke glanced nervously at each other, then nodded, picked up the<br />
guitar and the book and followed their father out into the hall.<br />
Helen watched them go, then drew a deep breath before moving to join them.<br />
“Here goes…” she whispered to herself. “Heaven alone knows how this will<br />
go…”<br />
10:55 a.m.<br />
As the cortège came within sight of the church, Helen gasped in surprise.<br />
“Geez, look at that!” Luke’s words mirrored her own thoughts. The path from<br />
the churchyard gate to the church door was lined with people, standing two or<br />
three deep in places. Several of them were already visibly weeping.<br />
The priest was waiting for them as they climbed out of the car. He gave a kindly<br />
smile to Jamie and Luke.<br />
“Are you all right for this?” he asked, nodding at the guitar and the book.<br />
Jamie squared his shoulders and nodded. Luke followed suit, but with rather<br />
less confidence, Helen noticed.<br />
“Very well, then. Let’s go…”<br />
The pall-bearers picked up the coffin, balanced it on their shoulders and carried<br />
it into the church. The mourners followed. The contemplative strains of Mozart’s<br />
“Ave Verum Corpus” filled the building, and Helen detected a faint smell of incense<br />
as the priest began to recite the familiar words of the funeral service:<br />
“I am the Resurrection and the Life, said the Lord…”<br />
Helen stole a quick glance at Jamie and Luke. Their faces were both fixed, as if<br />
hypnotised, on the coffin.<br />
They shouldn’t be having to do this, she thought. Not at their age.<br />
2:45 p.m.<br />
Helen was the first back into the house. She wandered aimlessly back into the<br />
living room and stared out of the window as the funeral car drove off.<br />
She turned as the door opened and Jamie and Luke came in, gratefully pulling<br />
off their black ties. They both looked tired, drained, and at least ten years older<br />
than they had done only a few short hours ago. She took a step toward them and<br />
smiled.<br />
“Well done. I was proud of you both.”<br />
Jamie sighed, sat down on the sofa and put the guitar down. “I’m glad that’s<br />
over.”<br />
106 The Literary Hatchet
Helen nodded. “Me too. What a baptism with fire…”<br />
She stopped speaking as Martin came into the room. He looked exhausted, but<br />
was clearly trying to keep going.<br />
Luke shivered. “It’s still cold in here.”<br />
“The kettle’s on for some tea. That should warm us up.” Martin sighed as he sat<br />
down in one of the armchairs. “Well done, both of you. You did really well.”<br />
Helen smiled in agreement. “Yes, you did.”<br />
Jamie managed a wan smile. “Thanks. I don’t know about tea, though—right<br />
now I could do with something a bit stronger.”<br />
He heaved himself up from the sofa, crossed to the sideboard, opened one of<br />
the cupboards and peered inside. Eventually he pulled out a strange-shaped bottle,<br />
about three-quarters full of dark red liquid. He held it up and squinted at the<br />
handwritten label.<br />
“What’s this? Blythe Spirit?”<br />
Luke looked up. “Hey, that was in that poem!” He grabbed the book and flicked<br />
through the pages, while Martin joined Jamie and studied the bottle label.<br />
“Let’s see—oh, it’s home-made sloe gin. Blythe spelled with a y. I think that’s<br />
your Mum’s idea of a joke.”<br />
“Oh, very droll,” Luke groaned, as Helen suppressed a giggle.<br />
“Shelley, isn’t it? The poem?” Martin asked.<br />
“Yeah. “‘To a Skylark,’ it says here.”<br />
Jamie wrinkled his brow. “Isn’t there a play as well? I vaguely remember it from<br />
school.”<br />
Martin nodded. “Yes. Noël Coward. I saw the film years ago. It’s about a ghost<br />
who can’t let go. It was supposed to be funny, but to be honest I found it a bit weird.”<br />
Helen opened her mouth to speak, but said nothing. Out of the corner of her<br />
eye, she saw Luke shiver again. Meanwhile, Jamie had unscrewed the top from the<br />
bottle and taken a cautious sniff at the contents.<br />
“Oh well, I’ll try anything once.” He started to pour the liquid into a small glass.<br />
“Anyone else?”<br />
“Yes please,” Martin answered.<br />
Luke hesitated for a moment, but agreed, albeit nervously. “Er—yeah, go on.”<br />
“No thanks.” Helen shook her head.<br />
Jamie poured out two more glasses and handed them to Martin and Luke. As<br />
Helen passed round the back of Luke’s chair, she noticed that he shuddered as he<br />
took his first sip.<br />
It’s probably a bit too strong for him, she thought. It’s pretty powerful stuff. Very<br />
good for colds, though. Kills ninety-nine per cent of all germs, and leaves the other one<br />
per cent too rat-arsed to bother.<br />
But the movement was not lost on Jamie either, who put down his own glass<br />
and turned to his younger brother.<br />
“You OK, mate?” he asked, as Helen walked back to the window. Luke relaxed.<br />
“Yeah,” he shrugged. “It’s—like—weird.” He stared into his glass, then took<br />
another cautious sip.<br />
The Literary Hatchet 107
“Yes,” Martin agreed. “It’s an acquired taste.”<br />
Luke opened his mouth to reply, but then appeared to decide against it. The<br />
three of them sipped their drinks in silence.<br />
“This is, like, the calm after the storm…” Luke said eventually.<br />
“Mmm….” Helen murmured.<br />
“What did it say on the death certificate?” Jamie asked.<br />
“Some fancy medical term, I think. Hang on, I’ll have a look.” Martin stood up,<br />
crossed to the sideboard and took out a piece of paper from the top drawer.<br />
“Yes, what did it say?” Helen asked. “I never saw it.” She walked around behind<br />
Martin and peered over his shoulder as he read aloud.<br />
“Cause of death: acute myocardial infarction. Heart attack to you and me.”<br />
“At least it was quick,” Helen remarked.<br />
Martin shivered as he folded up the death certificate and replaced it in the<br />
drawer. “You’re right, Luke,” he said. “It is cold in here.”<br />
Jamie stood up and switched on the electric fire. “What happens now?” he<br />
asked, as he sat down again.<br />
“We need to pick up the ashes from the undertaker,” Martin answered. “I think<br />
they’ll be ready tomorrow, or the day after.”<br />
Luke shuddered. “That’s, like, really creepy. What’s going to happen to them?”<br />
“She always said she wanted them scattered over the sea,” Martin said, sitting<br />
down in the armchair. “So I thought we might take a trip down to the coast on<br />
Saturday. We could have a pub lunch afterwards if you like.”<br />
“Mmm…” Luke sounded less than enthusiastic.<br />
That’s not like him, Helen thought. He loves his pub lunches.<br />
“Talking of ashes,” Jamie took a packet of cigarettes from his pocket, “I’m<br />
popping outside.”<br />
“Could I bum one off you, mate?” Luke asked.<br />
“What?” Martin looked up in surprise.<br />
Helen frowned. “I didn’t know you—”<br />
Luke looked sheepish. “I don’t usually, like, but right now…”<br />
“Sure.” Jamie offered him the packet as they headed for the door.<br />
“I’ll go and make the tea.” Martin stood up and followed them out. Helen stared<br />
after him, then moved away from the window and sat down in the armchair which<br />
Martin had just vacated. It still felt comfortingly warm.<br />
For the first time since the morning she felt able to think clearly, and tried to<br />
clarify everything that was crashing through her jumbled brain.<br />
Peter Pan said that to die would be an awfully big adventure, she thought. But so<br />
far, it’s been more like an awfully big anticlimax.<br />
She counted on her fingers. Heart attack. Well, at least it was quick and tidy.<br />
I think I was probably dead before I even hit the ground. And I’ve been spared the<br />
indignity of old age, or being a burden to anyone. That was what I’d been dreading<br />
most of all.<br />
Postmortem. Ugh, that wasn’t nice. She shuddered at the memory.<br />
Big bash in Church. Dear Martin—I might have known he’d give me a good send-<br />
108 The Literary Hatchet
off. And I was surprised at how many people turned up. Some of them I haven’t seen<br />
for years. They seemed genuinely upset. But then, if they thought that much of me,<br />
why didn’t they come to see me while I was still alive?<br />
Cremation…That wasn’t particularly nice either, but then, I wasn’t really expecting<br />
it to be…<br />
Bunfight at the pub. Then—what? I often wondered where I’d end up, but never in<br />
my wildest dreams did I imagine it would be back here.<br />
Is this it? Mrs. Blythe, welcome to the afterlife.<br />
They drummed all that Heaven and Hell stuff into us at Sunday School. For a<br />
while I even believed them, but I’d started to have doubts even before all that business<br />
with that loony fundamentalist, telling us we’d all go to Hell if we didn’t give the<br />
Church at least a tenth of our income. But if this is what really happens, then at least<br />
I’ve managed to prove him wrong!<br />
I suppose it started when Miss Muir was teaching us about Hitler. What was it she<br />
said? “Perhaps that’s what Hell really is—having to listen to what people say about<br />
you afterwards. And the more wicked you were, the worse it will be.”<br />
And then…Uncle Tom.<br />
She began speaking aloud, her voice slipping effortlessly into the tones of her<br />
uncle’s Cockney accent.<br />
“Eternal life ain’t about your soul goin’ on for ever, sittin’ on a cloud and twangin’<br />
an ‘arp. It’s them what’s left behind ‘oo keeps your memory alive after you’ve gone.<br />
And ‘ow much you’ll be remembered depends on ‘ow much you did, and ‘ow much<br />
you were loved, when you were alive. What d’you reckon, ‘elen my girl?”<br />
“So is that why I’m back here? To live on, as a memory? For as long as they …<br />
rememb…”<br />
The rest of the sentence was lost in a racking sob. She struggled up from the<br />
sofa, crossed to the sideboard and picked up the box of tissues.<br />
I’d no idea that in the afterlife I’d still be able to cry…<br />
As she wiped her streaming eyes, the door creaked open, admitting Jamie<br />
followed by Luke. Luke in turn held it open for Martin, who was carrying a tray<br />
bearing a teapot, a milkjug, a sugar basin, and three mugs.<br />
All three froze in their tracks as they looked across the room. The tray left<br />
Martin’s hands and crashed to the floor…<br />
]<br />
The Literary Hatchet 109
[poetry]<br />
Rum makes him a roadside dancer –<br />
his legs waver –<br />
waves of clumsy expressions on his<br />
countenance –<br />
his arm rises and falls in the air – an<br />
anarchic dance<br />
of intoxication. Brain loses control –<br />
tongue squelches<br />
in the obscenity. Though some issues<br />
die itself; some<br />
are to be fought with – but he flees,<br />
and hides in a<br />
dark bottle. Vapor from his glass casts<br />
dark clouds over<br />
his lean wife. His daughter loathes the<br />
wet peanut pack<br />
he brings. He doesn’t see *Gandhi’s smile<br />
on the currency<br />
he pays at the counter. As his evening<br />
steeps in stink,<br />
two moist eyes looks for the dawn again.<br />
—fabiyas mv<br />
*Indian currency bears the<br />
smiling face of<br />
Gandhi, the father of nation.<br />
110 The Literary Hatchet
[poetry]<br />
My town nicknamed, ‘Mini Dubai’, burgeoned and branched<br />
on the bank of Kanoli canal like a tamarind seed.<br />
Now the silvered canal sprawls on its death bed.<br />
Busy pedestrians walk down<br />
an ancient bridge built by the British.<br />
As the traffic light has lost its eye balls,<br />
a potbellied policeman dances and controls.<br />
Jalopies groan, and modern cars whiz.<br />
A long whistle: an ambulance with the wounded<br />
and a van with the wedding party halt side by side<br />
as the southern and northern hemispheres<br />
of emotions meet at a single point.<br />
Nostalgic smell of the canal sops in the sizzling tang from a cafeteria.<br />
The splurging women whirl in the hurry wind among the concrete<br />
buildings seething under the tanning rays. The stink of sweat and<br />
the aroma of the Arabian perfumes choke the air in shops, where,<br />
sometimes, the chicanery peeks through the glassed. The<br />
applications drafted in blood and salt scurry to the offices nearby –<br />
only to get the obsequies in the waste baskets. The sots creep like<br />
snakes in the yard of Snadra Bar.<br />
A crow sits on an electric post and watches all beneath<br />
with a smile of wisdom.<br />
—fabiyas mv<br />
The Literary Hatchet 111
[short story]<br />
by craig steven<br />
112 The Literary Hatchet
“Give me another one, pal,” the patron at the bar said to the man serving him.<br />
The bartender didn’t answer; he simply grabbed the bottle from the shelf and<br />
poured the liquor into an undecorated shot glass. He slid it back across the counter.<br />
The man caught it with a salute and downed it.<br />
“What’s got you so down tonight, friend?” the bartender asked, leaning against<br />
the counter. It was a snowy Thursday night, and nobody wanted to brave it. What<br />
had started as a gentle flurry was said to soon become the worst blizzard Cincinnati<br />
had ever seen.<br />
“Why do I gotta be down?” the man slurred. “Can’t I just like my drinks?”<br />
“I hear ‘ya loud and clear, man. Sorry to interrupt.” The bartender walked away<br />
to talk to the man at the other end of the bar, the only customer aside from himself.<br />
In truth, Camillo would have liked talking to the bartender about everything<br />
that was wrong with him. He would have been elated to lay it all at someone else’s<br />
feet and leave it there. To leave it all behind and pretend that nothing had ever<br />
happened.<br />
But that was impossible. Try as he might to push it to the back of his head, it<br />
was always there, waiting for him to come back to it. But the drinks helped. They<br />
made him forget, if only for a while.<br />
Camillo stood shakily and grabbed his coat from the stool. He caught his<br />
reflection in the mirror behind the bar—pale, gaunt, sickly, and tired. All of the<br />
friends and family he’d run into in recent months told him he looked terrible in<br />
the nicest ways they could muster. There was never a point where he thought he<br />
could disagree.<br />
“You outta here, buddy?” the bartender asked as he walked toward the door.<br />
When Camillo mumbled in reply, he said, “All right, but be careful. News said the<br />
heavy stuff is coming in a couple hours. By the time the sun comes up, it’ll look like<br />
the North Pole out there.”<br />
“You need a ride, buddy?” the guy at the bar asked. He was tall and darkskinned<br />
with a deep, resonating voice. Though it was nearly midnight and the bar<br />
was dim, he wore sunglasses to go with his attire, black from head to toe.<br />
“I’m good,” Camillo answered, buttoning his coat. “Thanks.”<br />
Camillo walked outside and exhaled, his breath misting in the open air. When<br />
he’d come here earlier for drinks, the snow had just started. Now, it blanketed the<br />
streets, unsullied save for the tire tracks. The sidewalks were empty. No one in their<br />
right mind would be out walking on a night like this. Camillo hadn’t been in his<br />
right mind in almost six months. He began walking down the street, headed for<br />
his apartment.<br />
The night was quiet but for the gentle crunch of his feet in the snow and his<br />
heavy breathing. A soft wind carried down the street, whistling through the narrow<br />
road. Camillo walked upright as best he could. He didn’t want to get picked up for<br />
public intoxication...again. The snow made it difficult, to say the least. I need to<br />
hurry up and get off the damned sidewalk before a cop rolls by and sees me. It’s not<br />
The Literary Hatchet 113
like there’s a lot of competition for their attention out here.<br />
Up ahead was the town’s cemetery, and it was a straight shot to his apartment<br />
building just on the other side. Not only would he be shaving a good ten minutes<br />
off his walk, but the risk of being seen by police, or anyone, for that matter, would<br />
decrease greatly.<br />
The fact that it was where his wife was buried mattered not; he was at her<br />
graveside every day anyway. Though this was an unplanned trip, he would stop by<br />
and visit her regardless.<br />
Camillo walked through the gates, open night and day. Normally, this would<br />
be cause for derelicts galore finding sanctuary within, but with the disastrous<br />
weather, there would be none. Not if they could help it, anyway. It was a beautiful<br />
sight, the way the snow fell slowly under the light of the full moon, gathering on<br />
the headstones and the grass around them. It was eerie, but it wasn’t a walk that<br />
Camillo hadn’t taken before. Only it didn’t seem so quiet when the sun was shining.<br />
He came upon his wife’s headstone. It read, “Melissa Lynn Hartford, 5/25/1981-<br />
6/25/2014, Loving Friend, Daughter, & Wife.” He sat in the porch chair he’d brought<br />
on the first day when he spent nearly half a day talking to the grass Melissa had<br />
been buried beneath. No one ever removed it, and for this, he was grateful. He<br />
sighed, staring down at her, knowing the weather would force him to leave earlier<br />
than he’d like. I’ll just say a few words and go home, where you won’t be, he thought.<br />
She’d gone into labor exactly one month after her birthday. It was the baby<br />
they’d been waiting for, the one they’d been trying to conceive since they’d<br />
gotten married. It was a dream come true until it came time to deliver. Due to<br />
complications, she’d died of maternal hemorrhaging. The baby was stillborn. In<br />
one fell swoop, Camillo had lost both wife and son.<br />
He didn’t know how he’d gone on since. Life was a blur. One day seemingly led<br />
to the next without notice. He didn’t pay attention. He couldn’t even go to work<br />
anymore. Melissa’s life insurance policy was enough to set him up for a few years,<br />
but that wasn’t the driving factor in his slump; he just didn’t want to work anymore.<br />
He didn’t want to live, either, but he’d found out shortly after his wife’s death that he<br />
didn’t have the brass to commit suicide. All he could do was drink himself to death<br />
each day and visit his wife’s grave in between stupors.<br />
A cold hand found itself on his shoulder, massaging his neck. He reached up<br />
with his own and caressed its fingers, thankful for their presence. He stood and<br />
turned the chair at an angle to stare at his wife, or at least, the ghostly image he’d<br />
been seeing since his first trip here. Then, he thought he’d gone insane. Had he not<br />
been wallowing in misery, he might have run away from her phantasm. He soon<br />
found that she was as gentle in death as she’d been in life.<br />
She never said a word to him. That was the most agonizing thing. Whether she<br />
couldn’t talk or didn’t want to, Camillo didn’t know. Every time she appeared like<br />
this was bittersweet. He could see her, look upon her for a while and reminisce on<br />
the love they’d shared.<br />
But she couldn’t join in. When he asked her what the afterlife was like, if she<br />
missed him, if their son was with her, she could answer nothing. She only stared,<br />
114 The Literary Hatchet
sadly, as if waiting for him to join her so he could answer those questions himself.<br />
“Why don’t you ever say anything, Mel?” he asked, tears in his eyes, face buried<br />
in his hands.<br />
She looked down at him in her black gown. She’d never worn that in life, but in<br />
death, it suited her perfectly. Her long, black hair was drawn in a tight bun, her pale<br />
face adorned with dark make-up, and her green eyes, wide, staring at her husband.<br />
In response, she rubbed the back of his head as he sobbed, as he was wont to do<br />
when he was so far in his drink.<br />
Camillo looked up from the ground to ask her once more. She was gone as<br />
quickly as she’d appeared. She’d do that. Sometimes she would sit with him for<br />
hours, sometimes only a few minutes, and sometimes he would simply catch a<br />
glimpse of her out of his peripherals. He wiped the tears from his face and the snot<br />
from under his nose, standing, preparing to leave.<br />
“Do you want to join her?” a voice asked from behind him.<br />
He spun around so fast that he fell to the ground. He landed on both knees and<br />
saw that the man at the bar, the tall, black man, was now here with him.<br />
“Did...did you see her?” he asked.<br />
“Of course I saw her,” he answered, hands in his pockets. His eyes bore holes<br />
through the man’s kneeling before him. “I’ve seen her before. This isn’t the first<br />
time.”<br />
“What do you mean?”<br />
Melissa’s hands were on his shoulders again. She gently turned his head so that<br />
he was looking at her. She was crouching next to him, smiling.<br />
“Mel, who is he? Who is this man?”<br />
She leaned forward, her breath tickling his ear, and whispered one word;<br />
“Death.”<br />
“Do you want to join her?” the man asked.<br />
Camillo put some real thought into it. He knew that he should have said no.<br />
There was always something to live for, even when you lost everything in the world<br />
that you held dear. You should never, ever give up hope. There’s so much to live for<br />
and you shouldn’t throw it all away.<br />
Camillo wondered if the people that gave that kind of advice had ever lost a<br />
wife and child minutes apart from one another.<br />
“Take me,”he said as he put his arm around his wife. “Take me. Please.”<br />
“Of course.” There was a swirl of wind, kicking up the snow that’d fallen around<br />
them and the leaves on the ground beneath it. When it had settled, the three of<br />
them were gone.<br />
In spirit, anyway. The snow fell all night, and it was four days later, when the<br />
first thaws came, that they found Camillo, frozen dead. The men who’d found him<br />
recall being immensely haunted by the all too calm smile upon his face.<br />
]<br />
The Literary Hatchet 115
[short story]<br />
by joshua rex<br />
Ralph got the puppy on the last day of third grade. He’d wanted an indoor<br />
dog, one that he could watch television with and sleep with in his bed at night—<br />
he’d seen such boy and dog combo on the TV, and this was part of his reason for<br />
wanting a dog in the first place. But his father couldn’t stand the mess that comes<br />
with puppies: the hair, the vomit, and the accidents. “Shit factories,” Ralph’s father<br />
had called them. Didn’t fit in with the new sofa, especially while his family was still<br />
making payments on it.<br />
So he and Ralph built a house for the pup under the huge weeping willow<br />
in their backyard. They got him a collar and tags and put a plastic bowl for food<br />
and a metal one for water beside the little shingled shelter, then chained him to a<br />
corkscrew stake just outside it. Fettered to its pole, the puppy yipped and yelped<br />
and licked Ralph’s face, recognizing its master. It also proved, just as Ralph’s dad<br />
had said, to be a never-ending supplier of excrement. Ralph cleaned up after the<br />
dog, which he named Prince, the best he could, but it seemed that every time he<br />
scooped one pile, another would appear. He kept up with the mess less and less as<br />
the weeks passed, and by the end of July, the ground around Prince’s house was a<br />
morass of feces and mud.<br />
Prince grew fast, and he was a leaper. His once playful puppy paws grew long,<br />
dull nails, caked with fecal grime that raked Ralph’s flesh and smeared filth on his<br />
clothes when the dog jumped on him. Consequently, Ralph spent less and less time<br />
with Prince, though he did buy the dog toys. But Prince would shred or pull them<br />
apart within minutes, and Ralph soon stopped wasting his precious allowance<br />
money on them. Having nothing else to play with, the dog moved on to its food<br />
bowl. He gnawed at it until the edges were flayed and pitted with teeth marks and it<br />
116 The Literary Hatchet
esembled the wreckage of a flying saucer shot out of the sky. Fortunately for Ralph,<br />
the game with the bowl always ended when Prince tossed it out of chain range,<br />
making it easy for the boy to retrieve it at feeding time without being trampled on<br />
with the dog’s shit crusted claws.<br />
Prince always did the same thing during the feeding ritual. He would crouch<br />
very low, face resting on his fore paws, eyes watchful, tail still as Ralph approached<br />
with the ragged bowl full of dry food pellets that resembled goat turds. In the<br />
beginning, Ralph had always set the food bowl beside the water dish next to<br />
Prince’s house, where the dog would chomp down the meal in seconds flat. But<br />
now, starved for attention (as well as the food, he was, after all, a puppy shit factory),<br />
the overexcited dog would leap at its master when the boy got within range, as if<br />
Ralph himself were the meal, knocking the food bowl out of his hands. Ralph had<br />
been disgusted to witness the dog, on several occasions, subsequently lap up every<br />
morsel from the foul quagmire. So Ralph started setting the bowl down just where<br />
the dog could reach it—arms splayed and snout fully extended—to lap up every<br />
speck. He let rain water fill the dog’s silver bowl, and when that got low, stood back<br />
out of range and filled it with the hose.<br />
Then one day Prince broke his chain, and during the summer cookout to boot.<br />
The dog had been barking incessantly all day as, just a few yards away, the master<br />
and his entire extended family had gathered, chatting and grilling and ignoring<br />
the dog that leapt and yowled from the edge of the filthy ring. It happened just as<br />
Ralph’s aunt was spooning macaroni salad onto his grandmother’s plate. There was<br />
a little audible plink, like a fingernail flicking a glass, as one of the metal links on<br />
Prince’s chain snapped, and the next moment the dog was on the table, scarfing<br />
everything in sight while Ralph’s aunt and grandmother and his cousins fled<br />
screaming. Ralph’s father, however, did not run. He rose, steadily, came around to<br />
the side of the table where Prince was nosing in the baked beans, grabbed him by<br />
the collar so hard Prince’s eyes bulged, and punched the dog in the head. Prince<br />
yelped and then he began to whimper as Ralph’s father dragged him across the yard<br />
and reattached the chain to the stake. Then his father went back to the table and<br />
wrapped everything up—plates, bowls, silverware, cups full of soda, even his own<br />
car keys (which he’d have to fish out later)—and tossed them in the trash bin on<br />
the side of the house. Finally he grabbed a beer from the cooler and calmly went<br />
through the back door while the rest of Ralph’s family eyed the dog angrily as they<br />
wiped food spatter off their clothes.<br />
Crying, Ralph crossed the yard and the barrier of shit, not caring now that it<br />
smelled and that it was getting on his shoes, and sat down beside the entrance to<br />
the dog’s house. Prince was lying in there (the first time Ralph had actually seen<br />
the dog go in the house) with his head resting on his front paws, still whimpering.<br />
Ralph noticed a rivulet of blood running from one of Prince’s ears and that the eye<br />
on the side of his face where his dad had hit him was half lidded and quivering.<br />
Nevertheless his tongue was still occasionally lashing out to lap up the remnants of<br />
ketchup and potato salad and relish which still clung to his muzzle. It made Ralph<br />
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smile despite his tears. He sat there stroking the dog’s face until his father called<br />
for him, once and sharply, and then Ralph got up at once and went in the house<br />
without looking back.<br />
The second time Prince got loose was far worse.<br />
It happened while Ralph and his mother and father were away for the day on a<br />
trip to the countryside. As they were returning, a big white van with wire over the<br />
windows pulled into the driveway almost simultaneously. Ralph’s heart sunk into<br />
his stomach as he read the words “Department of Animal Control” just below the<br />
official city symbol on the van’s white paneled side. The van’s driver, a burly, red<br />
haired man with aerodynamically shaped sunglasses, relayed the story of Prince’s<br />
“adventures” with his arms crossed over his chest like a club bouncer. Apparently,<br />
the dog had been running through the neighborhood with his chain and the metal<br />
corkscrew stake trailing behind him since early morning, digging in flower patches,<br />
terrorizing cats, and chasing after small children in the park who mistook Prince’s<br />
enthusiasm for aggression and had fled screaming in all directions. “There were<br />
numerous complaints,” the animal control bouncer scoldingly informed Ralph’s<br />
parents, including one in which the coiled stake on the lead swung into the corner<br />
shop’s plate glass window, shattering not only it, but the vintage neon “Lottery Sold<br />
Here” sign. Ralph’s father’s face turned dark red at this last detail, and Ralph feared,<br />
as the man unlocked the van door and handed a very-happy-to-see-his-master<br />
Prince over (as well as a violation ticket for a sizeable fine), that his father would<br />
hit his dog even worse than last time.<br />
But he did not hit Prince. Instead, he carried him into the garage, unspooled<br />
a length of the thick, heavy chain he used to tread the tractor tires in winter, and<br />
attached it to the dog’s collar. Then he hammered a piece of steel drain pipe a good<br />
two feet into the ground where the old steak had been and clipped the other end<br />
of the chain to it. He also took Prince’s house away. When Ralph’s father turned<br />
his back on the dog, Prince jumped at him. It had been innocent enough, but the<br />
dog’s claws still tore his father’s flannel shirt and knocked him to his knees in the<br />
shit mud.<br />
In a flash Ralph’s father was up again. He swung the hammer as hard as he<br />
could at the dog, but Prince was nimble and pranced backwards out of range in<br />
time, side stepping the blow. After this show of aggression, the dog bent low, bared<br />
its teeth and growled. Though he was technically still a puppy, Prince was a big<br />
dog now, capable of inflicting injury, and he knew it. Ralph’s father stood with the<br />
hammer held high for several seconds before seeming to realize this himself, then<br />
lowered the tool and walked back to the house.<br />
“Next time it gets loose, the Pound is keeping him,” his father said ominously<br />
that night over dinner, “and you’ll pay the damages.”<br />
Ralph answered a glum, “Yes sir,” and picked at his mashed potatoes.<br />
Later, as he did the dishes, Ralph watched Prince through the window over the<br />
sink which looked out onto the back yard as the dog nosed around in the muck for<br />
food scraps, pacing and sniffing until the weight of the big chain seemed to become<br />
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too heavy, at which point he gave up searching and laid down in the spot where<br />
his house had once been with his head on his forepaws. It rained hard that evening<br />
and long into the night. Ralph, cozy and warm in his bed, lay there listening to the<br />
storm thrashing the house while feeling sorry for Prince who, if he had it his way,<br />
would be lying right beside him, cozy and warm as well.<br />
The next morning Ralph woke up early to go check on his dog. He put a scoop<br />
of food in one of his mother’s glass mixing bowls (the dog’s original bowl had<br />
by now been chewed beyond usable bowl form), and even added a slice of the<br />
previous night’s roast beef on top and went out into the backyard.<br />
It was another sunny summer day. The grass was still saturated heavily from<br />
the storm, as was Prince. The dog sat near the base of the weeping willow with his<br />
face half hidden under one leg, drenched and shivering miserably. Ralph felt a pang<br />
of guilt when he noticed that the silver water bowl had been turned upside down<br />
and thus, hadn’t caught any rainwater. The dog didn’t move as Ralph approached,<br />
didn’t bark or whimper, only eyed him silently as Ralph crossed the shit ring with<br />
the bowl.<br />
“Here boy,” Ralph said, picking up the slice of roast beef and dangling it before<br />
the dog. “A nice treat just for you.”<br />
Prince glanced up at the meat, but still did not move. Ralph set the meat back in<br />
the bowl and inched closer. Prince immediately began to growl and Ralph stopped<br />
at once, sensing Threat, and that something had Changed. His brain said run, but<br />
before he could the dog lunged. Ralph felt something akin to being punched in the<br />
arm with a steel rake as his mother’s glass mixing bowl fly from his hand, the food<br />
scattering in the air like clods of dirt kicked up by an exploded grenade. And then<br />
he was running for the house, clutching his gushing arm tightly against his chest as<br />
Prince barked and snapped behind him.<br />
The bite was bad. It bled all the way to the hospital, and needed several stitches<br />
as well as the recommended tetanus and rabies shots. It all hurt, but the pain was<br />
nothing compared to the fear he felt for his dog when Ralph’s father found out what<br />
Prince had done. Later that night when Ralph’s mother told him, his father’s face<br />
had gone that angry shade of red, but again, he didn’t beat Prince. He went to the<br />
window and looked out at the dog, cowering under the willow tree, and said softly<br />
through set teeth: “You’re not to feed that dog anymore, Ralph.”<br />
Prince seemed to understand his transgression, and was silent for the rest of<br />
the day. But then at dusk, he began to bark. At first it was a slow, steady cadence,<br />
every few seconds. But as the hours and subsequent days wore on, it became<br />
constant and more frantic. Ralph’s father turned the TV volume all the way up in<br />
an attempt to drown out the racket; his mother set down her needlepoint every few<br />
minutes and rubbed her temples. Ralph played with his miniature cars, simulating<br />
collisions and explosions louder and louder<br />
This went on for a week.<br />
Ralph was astounded at the dog’s stamina, especially as he knew Prince hadn’t<br />
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eaten or drank anything since the previous Saturday before the trip to the ER.<br />
Maybe he lapped up puddle water, Ralph supposed. Then he considered the quality<br />
of the water pooled in the paw stamped pockets in the muck around Prince’s area<br />
and thought probably not.<br />
He’d looked out at his dog more often as the days wore on. Immediately after<br />
the incident he’d been angry and frightened of Prince. But now when he considered<br />
it, he decided that the dog had just been afraid and was trying to defend itself. And<br />
didn’t it have every right to? Wasn’t it in its nature to do what it had to in order<br />
to survive, just like people? Several times he thought about sneaking food out to<br />
Prince. But what if he got bit again? What would his father do then? Ralph guessed<br />
it would involve the shotgun hanging over the workbench in the garage.<br />
On the morning of the seventh day, Ralph could stand it no longer and asked<br />
his father if he could feed Prince. His father, sipping a Sunday cup of coffee and<br />
reading the paper, glanced out the window at the dog—now lying on its side in the<br />
mud yet still managing to let out an occasional series of pathetic shrill barks—then<br />
shook his head as he looked down at his paper again. Ralph noticed a smile in one<br />
corner of his father’s mouth.<br />
By that evening Ralph just wanted it to stop, and wished that his dog would<br />
die; die not only so that it wouldn’t suffer any longer, but also so that it would stop<br />
barking. As he lay in bed that night, trying to block out Prince’s incessant woof (a<br />
sound, he supposed, would be imprinted in his mind for the rest of his life), his<br />
mind seemed to be playing tricks on him. He knew it was crazy, but he began to<br />
think the dog was calling to him; each bark sounded less like ruff ruff and more like<br />
Ralph, Ralph. But soon even these faded. The barking weakened to a dry yelp, then<br />
a low miserable yowl as Ralph slept, and finally—silence.<br />
Prince was dead in the morning. Ralph supposed his father would bury the<br />
dog, but instead he let the body lay there for three days under a full August sun like<br />
some macabre science experiment. Then on the morning of the fourth day, Ralph<br />
woke to his father standing in his room.<br />
“Time to go clean up your dog,” he said. Ralph noticed his father seemed a<br />
little disappointed. He supposed it was his mother’s insistence that he remove the<br />
corpse which was finally making him act. If it was up to his father, Ralph thought<br />
grimly, the dog would probably have lain there until it was nothing but bones.<br />
He didn’t want Prince to be dead, and he certainly did not want to handle the<br />
putrefying carcass. He knew that if his mother had been back from her morning<br />
shopping, she wouldn’t let Ralph’s father make him help bury the dog. But then he,<br />
Ralph, was the master, wasn’t he? It was his responsibility.<br />
With a heavy heart, Ralph got up, dressed, and crossed the hall to the bathroom.<br />
As he brushed his teeth, he noted how dreadfully silent the house was now. He<br />
didn’t realize how accustomed to the sound of Prince’s barking he’d become, and<br />
since it had stopped, he’d felt relieved but also strangely sad. He spat white froth<br />
into the sink, rinsed his mouth and tossed his toothbrush into the communal cup<br />
120 The Literary Hatchet
along with his mother’s and father’s and then sulked down the hall. He thought his<br />
father would already be outside gathering the shovel and black heavy-duty lawn<br />
and leaf bag. But instead he was standing in the middle of the kitchen with his<br />
arms crossed over his chest, looking out the window at the backyard, face very pale,<br />
eyes wide, his mouth a narrow gap like a crack in parched ground. Ralph came up<br />
beside him and looked out the window too.<br />
For the last few days, Prince had been in this position: lying with his black and<br />
white face in the mud, ribs showing through his skin, the heavy duty chain draped<br />
across his body like a huge victorious snake. But Prince wasn’t lying down now. He<br />
was standing in the center of the small patch of remaining grass under the weeping<br />
willow where his house had been, ringed by the moat of shit mud. One side of him<br />
was coated in the mud which had dried to dirt on his scrawny flanks, the fur greasy<br />
with putrefaction, sticking up off his hide in all directions like splintered wood, the<br />
other furless and black like a rotten plum from where the blood had settled on one<br />
side. His head was lowered, though not due to the weight of the chain. Horrified,<br />
Ralph saw that Prince was no longer attached to the stake. His collar lay off to one<br />
side, still connected to the chain which was connected to the steel pole. Prince<br />
was free, yet he made no attempt to flee. He just stood there, staring at the house,<br />
through the window, staring at Ralph, and his eyes were hungry and his teeth were<br />
bared—not in a dog-like threatening way. Rather, Prince seemed to be grinning at<br />
him, and his eyes said You did this to me.<br />
“I’m going outside, Ralph,” his father said in his ominous way. “I want you to<br />
stay right here, and do not come out no matter what happens, do you understand<br />
me?”<br />
“Yes, sir,” Ralph said. His voice sounded small and embarrassingly baby-like<br />
to his own ears.<br />
He watched his father walk through the house and out into the garage. A few<br />
moments later the door to the backyard opened and close, and then Ralph saw him<br />
stalking across the yard, the single barrel of his twelve gauge buck shooter pointed<br />
at the dog. Prince turned slowly from Ralph to the man, now only a couple yards<br />
off. His father cocked the gun and Ralph looked away, eyes pinched tightly.<br />
But the shot never came, and when Ralph opened his eyes again, he saw his<br />
father lowering the gun and backing away, a look of unmitigated horror on his<br />
face. The dead dog was creeping towards him, the map of its skeleton plainly visible<br />
beneath its disintegrating coat. It stepped through the outer ring, and as soon as<br />
its paws touched the grass it lunged, knocking the man backwards and out of view.<br />
Ralph heard his father shriek, followed by a gurgled scream and then a sound like<br />
a chicken meat being ripped from a cooked carcass. There was a pause, then the<br />
squeak of the backdoor opening and the clack of long, blunt nails treading across<br />
the concrete garage floor and then finally, into the house.<br />
Ralph ran, down the hall to his room and slammed the door. It bounced off<br />
the frame before the catch could latch, but Ralph didn’t hear this. He was already<br />
hiding under the covers with urine running down his leg. The nails clicked across<br />
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the kitchen linoleum, and then the hinges on his bedroom door creaked. White<br />
terror ran through him as he heard the Prince approach the bed. A white muzzle<br />
crusted with mud and glazed with blood, nosed its way under the covers, and then<br />
Prince’s whole head slid under. Flies walked along the dog’s filmy, unblinking eyes<br />
as they fixed on the boy. It opened its mouth, the tongue extended like a worm,<br />
disgorging a wad of maggots along with a thick, yellowish drool that ran from its<br />
jaws like a slow running faucet and Ralph felt his bowels let go.<br />
The dog sniffed the air, rife with the scent of the boy’s feces and soft, sweet<br />
flesh. It was a simple arrangement, agreed upon millennia ago between man and<br />
canine. Prince knew his own duties, as well as his master’s. And his master had<br />
failed.<br />
So Prince ate.<br />
]<br />
122 The Literary Hatchet
[poetry]<br />
It stood an elephant of bogus weal,<br />
a cliché, I thought, a hulking carcass<br />
of dysphonic times forsaken en masse<br />
to dusty webs and dark entrails of steel,<br />
whose faded skin appeared to now conceal<br />
the mark of rings (beneath the years of frass)<br />
that mother’s grotesque pride and collins glass<br />
had laid on heavy bones each day with zeal.<br />
But time had not erased its deepest score<br />
of wretched sounds, the loud cacophony<br />
of tonic keys, whose last surprising roar<br />
blew out with wild ecstasy from me—<br />
when forty rounds of hammer axe all tore<br />
at ribs of wood and teeth of ivory.<br />
—gregory palmerino<br />
The Literary Hatchet 123
[short story]<br />
by daniel marrone<br />
It’s kinda like that feeling you get when you’re in a nightmare and you scream<br />
but no noise comes out, ya know? That’s how I feel right now. Frustration. The little<br />
fucking gnat that keeps flying into me, landing in my mouth or on my arms or in<br />
my hair. Hell, why am I telling you? You’re just a shadow, a gust of wind, a gnat<br />
buzzing around my face and dancing on my eyeballs; you’re there, but you might<br />
as well not be. I’m just bitching to water droplets in an ocean.<br />
I button up my flannel to hide my skeletal frame from sight and I turn my<br />
attention back to the worn out acoustic guitar in my hands and the notepad and<br />
pen on my lap. I’m sitting cross-legged on the floor of my apartment. It’s a very<br />
cold floor, hard wood. My feet are frozen and numb. It hurts a lot when I curl my<br />
toes in. It’s wintertime, early December. The building I live in doesn’t have heating.<br />
Only those Empyrean Point apartment buildings up the street have heating. The<br />
ones with clean rooms that have wallpaper that doesn’t peel and tenants that don’t<br />
scream and howl at the moon when they’re out of money and their Smack gauge<br />
is on “Empty.” I always wanted one of those apartments. Not because I want to<br />
live a luxurious lifestyle, I just want to hold something physical to say, “My art,<br />
the product of my thoughts and emotions, have earned me this key.” I know that<br />
sounds stupid. Why do I care what you think? You’ll just keep buzzing around my<br />
124 The Literary Hatchet
hair and landing on my face.<br />
I strum a few chords, they sound pleasant. It’s a melancholy sound, as if Sad<br />
met Happy one rainy afternoon day and eloped into a tragic romance. I scribble<br />
the words “tragic romance” on the empty sheet of notebook paper. I put the pen<br />
down and play the progression again. I look at the guitar, then back at the paper.<br />
Tragic romance? I tear the paper out and crumple it up into a ball. I throw it across<br />
the room and it bounces a little bit and slides underneath my couch. It’s a small<br />
couch, big enough for two people and maybe a small child if you make them sit on<br />
the armrest. I turn my head and stare at the broken TV on the tabletop parallel to<br />
the couch. I think about those Empyrean Point apartments down the street again,<br />
about how I want to sit down on a cushy leather sofa and turn on the TV and let<br />
it tell me how to feel, when to laugh and when to cry. I want to be just like you. I<br />
(try to) write about how much I hate that, but I love it. I don’t like this cage of an<br />
apartment. There are no distractions, ya know? There’s only me and my brain, and<br />
I’m not sure who scares me more. I hear a faded out, distant yelling: the familiar<br />
language of a junkie’s gibberish. Everyone needs distractions.<br />
Images of myself as a smiling child float through my mind. I used to sit with a<br />
guitar strapped across my shoulder and I’d write songs about love and hate and life<br />
and death, and I knew nothing of those things, but I wrote with such assuredness.<br />
I throw my guitar angrily off my lap and it lands with an echoing thud in front of<br />
the couch. I pick up the notebook and repeatedly slam it into the floor as if bashing<br />
in someone’s skull. I throw the notebook on top of the guitar. Veins pop out of my<br />
neck and my mouth is wide open, a guttural screech clawing its way up and out of<br />
my throat, but its stuck. Agonizing frustration. I’m in that nightmare again. Can’t<br />
scream, can’t breathe. Chest hurts. Tears are in my eyes but I wipe them away with<br />
my shirtsleeve.<br />
Three consecutive bangs come from the apartment below me and my floor<br />
vibrates. “Shut the fuck up!” A muffled voice yells up at me.<br />
I laid on the couch and stare at the vacant television screen. I can see my<br />
reflection as if it were a scheduled program, the cameras pointing at a miserable<br />
failure, staring vacuously with their lenses. There’s no empathy in a lens. The<br />
viewers would just change the channel, swatting me away like a gnat hovering just<br />
outside of their ear. The elderly would feel ashamed that this was the face of the<br />
new generation. The adults would turn to their children and explain to them that I<br />
was what happened if you didn’t pursue a career that promised an abundant salary.<br />
And all of them would surf through the river of channels looking for what they<br />
want to hear: a romantic story where two of Hollywood’s most attractive employees<br />
pretend to find love despite adversity? How about a nice human-interest story<br />
about a soldier successfully adapting to life without his limbs? Or a news report<br />
about a small town in Delaware that is having their yearly parade and the streets<br />
are filled with happy families and strollers and children eating ice cream cones that<br />
melt and run down the length of their arm like a chocolate vein. Anything with a<br />
nice happy ending, ya know? People like that. People prefer their distractions to<br />
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have a sense of closure. It’s the only time they’ll ever feel a sensation like that.<br />
I bet they get to watch a lot of TV at Empyrean Point. The kids come home from<br />
school and sit down at the beautifully carved wooden table and do their homework<br />
as mom begins preparing dinner and the kids laugh about what their teachers said<br />
and their friends who got in trouble. The TV is blaring in the background and dad<br />
comes home in a couple hours and they all sit at the table together as it gets dark<br />
outside and they all talk about how their days were and laugh about the funny<br />
things that happened. The kids go off to their rooms for bedtime and mom and dad<br />
read them fairytales with nice happy endings and when they are asleep mom and<br />
dad pour some wine and smoke a cigarette and turn on the TV so they can have<br />
something to talk about when they see their coworkers and friends the next day.<br />
I stare at the guitar and notebook on the floor in front of me but decide against<br />
picking them up. My creative reservoir is empty and dry as a desert. Was it ever<br />
full? I know there are pages in that notebook filled with half-finished songs and<br />
a couple riffs and lyrics that are worth a few cents, but nothing that would get<br />
me out of this apartment. Nothing that anyone would listen to as they sit in their<br />
cubicles and talk about their favorite TV shows and their kid who just graduated<br />
second grade and how the weather is pretty dreadful, looks like rain, doesn’t it?<br />
Expectations are a bitch, but I don’t know what is worse: expectations or reality.<br />
Frustration seems to be the child of both, and desperation the grandchild. There<br />
goes that gnat again, bumping into my skin, flying away, and then hitting me again.<br />
It just never seems to go away. Sometimes it flies away, distracted by some other<br />
enticing scent or body (was there ever another body in this apartment?), and just<br />
when I would relax myself and reassure myself that it was gone forever, there it<br />
would be, only it would hit into my eyes or nose or ears or mouth instead.<br />
I pick up a book off of the towering pile of paperbacks on the coffee table<br />
next to the armrest. I read a few lines. I try the next sentence but my brain keeps<br />
wandering off halfway through. Why can’t I create art like this? Why can’t I express<br />
myself? There’s that nightmarish feeling: can’t scream. How can I continue to live<br />
my life through others’ words? Why reach those two terminal words, “The End.”?<br />
My eyes fill with tears and the book slips out of my hands and onto the floor and<br />
I try to wipe my tears away but they fall faster than I can catch them. My hands<br />
tremble and quake. I look down at the pen and an idea hits me. Through the tears<br />
that block my vision, I grab the pen and notebook. I turn to a clean page and start<br />
writing. I don’t care if it rhymes, I don’t care if it’s sad, I don’t care if it’s beautiful.<br />
After scribbling a few lines on the paper, sporadically dotted with tears, I look at<br />
what I have written, and am so overcome with disgust that I rip the notebook in<br />
half, then in half again, then in half again. I throw the papers at the ceiling and<br />
watch them slowly break apart in the air and fall like snow onto the ground. I am<br />
sobbing.<br />
The air is cold and my stomach growls. I am hungry and need something to eat. I<br />
wander around my apartment aimlessly, my mind consumed in torturous thought.<br />
The sun is gone outside, replaced by a dark blanket of emptiness suffocating the<br />
planet. It is hard to see where I’m walking but I don’t care. I open the refrigerator<br />
126 The Literary Hatchet
and there is only an apple with a single bite taken out of it sitting on an otherwise<br />
empty shelf. The part of the apple exposed by the bite mark is brown, rotted by the<br />
outside world. I take it out and eat the rest of it. The texture is too soft and the taste<br />
is too bitter to satisfy my hunger, though it did stop the growling, at least for now.<br />
The tears on my face have evaporated and I need something to occupy my time.<br />
I forgot to pick up the newspaper this morning. I open the door to my apartment<br />
and find the paper on the ground at my feet. I pick it up and bring it inside.<br />
Lying down on the couch, I open the paper. It’s a local newspaper, so there’s<br />
nothing of any importance. I pictured a man slaving over his desk, editing this<br />
paper and piecing it together. He probably went home to his empty apartment,<br />
slept in his empty bed, killing time and waiting to return to the bitter cold office.<br />
I skip over the opinion pages. On one of the last pages an article catches my eye.<br />
“Empyrean Point Tenant Shoots Self, Wife And Son Find Body.” Empyrean.<br />
I pick up the pieces of notebook paper scattered around the floor of my room<br />
and throw them out. I put my guitar back in its resting place in the corner of the<br />
room. I lay down on the couch and drift off to sleep. In my dreams I drive in a<br />
car past my home, past Empyrean, and find a nice new apartment building. It has<br />
great reviews and the rooms are very nice and clean. The tenants are friendly and<br />
the televisions have all the good channels, not the ones with shows about World<br />
War Two or the stock market. The couches are comfortable and the heating always<br />
works. I want to live there someday. I wake up and a gnat is buzzing around my ear.<br />
It is the morning.<br />
]<br />
The Literary Hatchet 127
[poetry]<br />
Like troops advancing on a distant plain,<br />
Whose loud mortar blasts and sudden march drain<br />
A soldier’s heart, I seem to lose a mile<br />
Of sleep with each flash and thundering pile.<br />
Dreading the onslaught but cursing the heat,<br />
I count the surges by skipping a beat<br />
When two great hands like fists of angry air<br />
Begin to strike without warning or care.<br />
Their blows assemble insanity’s shout,<br />
Rending my mind and brain to turn about,<br />
Raise my fist to High Command and yell:<br />
“I curse this fallen life, this life of hell!”<br />
—gregory palmerino<br />
128 The Literary Hatchet
[poetry]<br />
I’m no captain<br />
you won’t see me<br />
going down with this ship<br />
I’m not one to run<br />
first into battle<br />
as death comes in swift<br />
There’s moments<br />
seconds on my mind<br />
that plague me for awhile<br />
I cannot live outside of<br />
this current time<br />
I’m now stuck in every moment<br />
and there’s a realization<br />
a thought of where I’m to be<br />
the future set to hopelessness<br />
I’m no captain<br />
and these passengers will<br />
sink this ship as I sit<br />
on my e’er-do-well island<br />
on my chance for solitude<br />
on my new found understanding<br />
I’m no captain<br />
I’m more akin to Nero<br />
as I watch this place burn<br />
burdened by these misanthropic<br />
wants and needs<br />
only to be alone to read<br />
—grim k. de evil<br />
The Literary Hatchet 129
[poetry]<br />
Looking at a mirror<br />
Without a grain of light<br />
Doubles but the darkness<br />
And thickens drowning night.<br />
Two gifts therefor I give you:<br />
This lighter, and this glass<br />
That you might spark a glimmer<br />
To multiply, and pass<br />
From blind gloom and the pity<br />
Of the self, which shroud a soul.<br />
When you can add a mirror<br />
Or two, or ten—or more<br />
And face with brave inspection<br />
You should begin to see<br />
An immanence of insight<br />
If not humility.<br />
—james b. nicola<br />
130 The Literary Hatchet
[poetry]<br />
I stared at my shadow today and saw<br />
the connection at our feet, and thought<br />
a shadow’s like the mind, always darker<br />
than a reflection, which looks, when lit, like flesh.<br />
My shadow, though, will improvise:<br />
it scratches its head when I scratch mine,<br />
like reflections, but varying my theme,<br />
like an animated cartoon, or a dream.<br />
And my shadow developed as the day got long.<br />
And as it became what it becomes,<br />
almost automatically,<br />
cast in a dark image of me,<br />
might I be a reflection<br />
or shadow of something that I<br />
can never know, or get to see?<br />
With more than a modicum of awe<br />
I thought on this, then thought I saw<br />
my shadow reach, and scratch its head again<br />
—james b. nicola<br />
The Literary Hatchet 131
[short story]<br />
by denise noe<br />
Lily Chandler closed her eyes and still saw it: three gray walls and black bars.<br />
Sink with stains like bruises. A light bulb within a thick glass casing. A toilet<br />
without a lid. The cot she sat on and the thin blue blanket.<br />
Slowly she walked around the tiny cell.<br />
In the life Before, Lily had been complimented on how fast she moved. As a<br />
waitress at The Big Barbecue, the other ladies envied her because she got the most<br />
tips.<br />
Occasionally Lily touched the wall, putting the palm of her plump hand flat<br />
against it. She made a game of it, picturing in her mind what every spot looked like<br />
while averting her head from it, then putting her hand on the wall. And got it right<br />
every time.<br />
She’d won! Then she shivered. The palm of her hand was dark with dust.<br />
She slumped down on her cot.<br />
Footsteps. “Morning, Chandler,” the guard said, as she unlocked Lily’s cell,<br />
then placed the metal breakfast tray on the open toilet seat.<br />
“Thank you,” Lily replied, picking the tray up and carrying it to her cot.<br />
“Welcome.” Guard Maynard was a tall black woman in her mid-thirties with<br />
medium brown skin and almond-shaped eyes. Not friendly, of course, but not<br />
hostile. Bland.<br />
Lily tried to catch Maynard’s eye—do you think you’re looking at a monster?<br />
Does it bother you to bring me a tray? Lily knew it bothered the other guards. But<br />
Maynard was only doing a job, like the prison doctors.<br />
Maynard was new, at least to isolation. She’d only been around . . . Lily wasn’t<br />
sure. Time was hard to keep track of.<br />
She did know that she had been in prison for seventeen years.<br />
The tray was rectangular with rounded edges. Bread, small carton of milk, a<br />
white plastic spoon, peas, meat. Methodically she scraped food up and put it in her<br />
mouth. Chew, swallow.<br />
132 The Literary Hatchet
No possibility of parole.<br />
She took the tray off her lap and placed it beside her on the cot.<br />
“You’re the prettiest girl I’ve ever been with,” he said.<br />
“No, I’m not,” she replied. Lowering her eyes and blushing.<br />
“Yes, you are,” he insisted. “You’re the prettiest girl I’ve ever seen.”<br />
Lily had had that conversation with every guy. Not just Duane.<br />
She went to the toilet. Her cell permanently stank with the odor of piss and<br />
shit. She unloosed a long stream of urine. Straining, she pushed out a turd.<br />
“Having fun?” Guard Collins taunted. Collins was a tall, auburn-haired white<br />
woman. Lily tore off tissue from the toilet roll, wiped herself front and back. She<br />
turned on the faucet as Collins opened up the door. Then Lily rubbed her fingers<br />
on the sliver of soap and let the water run over them.<br />
“Hand the tray to me, bitch,” the guard said. “I ain’t bowing down to pick up<br />
something of yours. Hurry up, Chandler. I ain’t got all day.”<br />
Lily held the tray out to Collins. “The stink’s worse than shit in here,” Collins<br />
said, then spat before she locked the cell door behind her.<br />
Lily looked down at the spittle, watching the bubbles of it pop until it was just<br />
a tiny wet splotch.<br />
Bending over, her face in her hands, she had a sudden spasm that was like<br />
crying in that she shook and hugged her knees but it was not crying because she<br />
did not make tears.<br />
“What’re you crying for, Chandler?” It was Collins.<br />
Lily didn’t say, “I’m not crying.” She didn’t look at Collins.<br />
“Sad ‘cause there ain’t no little kiss to strangle? No rapes to watch? Life must be<br />
frustrating when all the fun’s gone out of it.” The cell door swung open and Collins<br />
entered, flinging some magazines on the floor. “Gotta bring you these,” she said.<br />
“Don’t expect you to like ‘em much. None of the blood and guts pictures I bet you’d<br />
like, eh, Chandler?”<br />
Collins left, giving the cell door a resounding slam.<br />
Are you my woman, Lily? Cause if you are, you’ve got to be evil like me.<br />
Daddy’s mustache was “handlebar” because it was just like the handlebars on<br />
his bike. He only trusted Lily to wax it and make him the most handsome man in<br />
the world. Four-year-old fingers carefully applied the substance to the ends of the<br />
hairs, making them curl up just right.<br />
In the living room of the little duplex, father and daughter turned to the mirror<br />
hanging above the worn greenish-plaid sofa.<br />
“Perfect!” Dad pronounced it.<br />
Lily smiled proudly despite an absent front tooth. The odors from the kitchen<br />
where Mom was cooking soup teased the child’s belly, making her mouth water.<br />
She saw five-year-old Shawn’s reflection in the background. He was hugging<br />
Champ, their small long-haired dog. Lily stuck her tongue out at her brother. Swat!<br />
Dad smacked her soundly on the bottom and she burst into tears.<br />
“Bawl-baby, Lily!” Shawn taunted. “Bawl-baby! Bawl-baby!”<br />
The Literary Hatchet 133
Lily picked up a magazine. On the cover was a brightly smiling brunette with<br />
wide blue eyes, thick eyelashes (fake?), and an ivory complexion.<br />
The articles on the cover: FIGHT THAT FAT in large yellow letters, below in<br />
smaller letters “An M.D.’s Easy New Diet,” MOTHERHOOD AND CAREER in<br />
powder blue; below it, “How 10 Successful Women Combine Them;” WHY LOVE<br />
MEANS MORE TO WOMEN THAN TO MEN in black; nothing below it.<br />
She opened the mag. Table of Contents on one page, an ad for blue jeans on the<br />
opposite page.<br />
He’d liked her in jeans. He liked her best in cut-offs because they showed off<br />
the long slim legs he so admired.<br />
Lily turned the pages. There was a doctor’s column with a short item about<br />
treatments for some new venereal disease called herpes. Lily skimmed over it.<br />
She put the magazine down on her blanket, leaving it open. Her head pounded.<br />
She wondered what it was like for him. Did he regret it?<br />
You’re the strongest man in the world, Duane.<br />
Yes I am. Because I’m evil. Because nothing matters to me except what I want,<br />
Lily, nothing. Nothing at all.<br />
Don’t I matter?<br />
I’ve made you a part of me.<br />
That’s what I want, Duane.<br />
Lily thought Duane was so powerful that she imagined she could literally fade<br />
into him, getting trapped inside his pores.<br />
Did he ever think of her? Probably not. She was a woman. Just a convenience.<br />
The most a woman could ever be for a man. LOVE MEANS MORE TO WOMEN<br />
THAN TO MEN.<br />
Her breathing was heavy and labored. But at least she was breathing.<br />
Sounds of slaps and cries and blows through the wall. In the darkness, Lily<br />
stared at the ceiling above her top bunk bed. Shawn was crying. He was a bawlbaby<br />
even though he was trying to hide it by putting his face against the pillow.<br />
“Why does he do that to her?” Shawn asked, futilely trying to smother the<br />
sobs.<br />
Lily had wondered that when she was a baby but now that she was a big kid,<br />
already in the second grade, she understood it. “Dad’s a real man,” Lily explained.<br />
“They all do that. It’s nothing.” Deep down, Lily sort of still didn’t like hearing Dad<br />
hitting Mom but in another way she did—it was exciting like when another kid is<br />
getting a spanking but not you.<br />
“If I were big, I’d hit Dad back,” Shawn said.<br />
“Well, you’re not big and you probably never will be so shut up, Shawn.”<br />
“Shut up, Lily.”<br />
“Shut up, you.”<br />
There was a sharp scream from the other side of the wall and louder blows.<br />
Lily was smart so she knew Mom would be wearing dark glasses tomorrow because<br />
134 The Literary Hatchet
grown women aren’t like kids and it shows when they get punished because it goes<br />
on the eyes instead of their butts.<br />
She went to the toilet again and took a piss. Sat on it longer than she needed to.<br />
When Lily was back on her cot she again thumbed through a magazine. Came<br />
to the article about mothers and careers. Mothers. She had taken their children<br />
from them.<br />
Lily stared at the pictures. Smiling young moms with smiling little children.<br />
One of the children looked like—almost exactly like—the same large hazel eyes,<br />
the same round face, the grin with dimples (only the other child had been wearing<br />
braces on her teeth), the same brown hair (but the other’s curled more).<br />
Do you want a ride home, precious?<br />
Yeah, thanks ma’am.<br />
But this girl would grow up.<br />
Women of Today fell to the floor. Lily’s body shook as if electricity were running<br />
up and down it. Not her fault. His. He had killed them. She hadn’t. Or at least she<br />
didn’t want to. It wasn’t her idea. She didn’t want . . .<br />
I can’t do it, Duane.<br />
Then you’re not my woman anymore.<br />
Duane, I’ll do anything but—<br />
I want to do this. If you are mine, you want what I want and nothing else. I want<br />
what I want and nothing else.<br />
But I could get scared and screw it up.<br />
You won’t, Lily. You’ve got it inside of you.<br />
How do you know?<br />
Because you’ve had me inside of you. I’m in all of you all the time or you’re not<br />
my woman. You don’t have to be my woman.<br />
But I do.<br />
At Dad’s funeral, Lily and Shawn were dressed in their best stiff clothes just like<br />
for Sunday School. The minister was at the front like at grown-up church talking<br />
about Dad but not telling the best things about him—that he had been a real man<br />
and the most handsome in the world that would only let Lily wax his mustache<br />
and no one else.<br />
Mom’s hand was on Lily’s shoulder and Lily was crying into a Kleenex and<br />
then into another one because she couldn’t stop crying and neither could Shawn<br />
and neither could Mom.<br />
It was time to move now. Lily didn’t understand at first but then she did and<br />
Mom took her and Shawn to the front where Dad was lying there in that wooden<br />
box.<br />
“Say good-bye,” Mom said as Lily stood by the coffin, looking at Dad’s<br />
handsome silent unmoving face.<br />
Suddenly, Lily knew: you breathe the life back in. She’d seen it on TV. Through<br />
the mouth like kissing you put the breath from yourself into them. Lily leaned over<br />
The Literary Hatchet 135
the coffin and put her mouth on Dad’s.<br />
“Lily, what are you doing?!” Mom screamed, pulling her daughter violently<br />
away.<br />
“I got to breathe him alive again!” Lily explained. People in the church gasped<br />
but they didn’t know, they just didn’t know.<br />
“Don’t say things like that,” Mom said.<br />
Lily tried to get back to Dad to bring him alive again with her own breath but<br />
Mom caught her. Lily fought desperately as tears streamed down her already wet<br />
and swollen red face.<br />
“You don’t want him alive again!” Lily shouted above the crowd’s baffled hum.<br />
“You don’t want him alive again because you don’t want him to hit you like he<br />
should!”<br />
Mom slapped Lily across the face.<br />
She drew her legs up to her chest and hugged them tightly. “Dear God, please<br />
help me. I hate him. I hate him so much.” She spoke out loud. Long ago she had<br />
stopped caring whether or not anyone heard. Her tone varied from syllable to<br />
syllable, hoarse, then shrill; almost a scream, then a whisper.<br />
She didn’t believe in God though she “talked” to Him when she talked to<br />
herself. Believing in God would make it easier. Because then there would be help,<br />
someone who would forgive her. “Jesus loves you no matter what you do.” And<br />
believing in God would mean believing that what she had done was not so terrible<br />
because those children were now in heaven with the angels and Jesus. But Lily<br />
knew better: they were dead. They were not alive in any sense.<br />
She hated him. Him. Even his name, Duane Lop. Duane Lop and all his evil<br />
and meanness. His hate. Not hers.<br />
Lily put her feet down on the floor.<br />
Never hated?<br />
No.<br />
Not when you heard them scream? Slapped them?<br />
No. No hate.<br />
When you shoved a scarf in a little girl’s mouth and she choked? When you stood<br />
by as two girls were raped, a grown man shoving himself in them, ripping the tiny<br />
holes open with a penis like a knife?<br />
No. No. She had not watched. She had looked away: at the posters on the walls,<br />
at the pretty milkmaid figurines. She had stared at the rust-red shag carpet.<br />
But she had heard the sounds of struggling, grunting, choking. Then she had<br />
looked, but quickly, at a girl’s body that was lifeless as a doll’s.<br />
Then she had looked at Duane.<br />
I love you, he had said. His eyes could bore right through her, could see into her<br />
soul and grab it.<br />
I love you, Duane.<br />
Mur-der-er, he had said softly and sensuously, holding her like he could lovingly<br />
squeeze the life out of her, squeeze like a boa constrictor around her chest.<br />
136 The Literary Hatchet
Murderer! She had shouted in incomprehensible joy as her fingernails dug into<br />
the flesh of his back.<br />
Lily knew Champ would be dead as soon as she saw the big white car hit him.<br />
It sped away without even bothering to stop. She was on the sidewalk with Shawn<br />
and neighborhood kids Jill and Steve when it happened and she gasped but did<br />
not scream even as Shawn started sobbing so loud and embarrassingly, that dumb<br />
bawl-baby.<br />
“Oh, no!” Steve shouted. “Your dog!”<br />
The little group huddled around the small and furry bloodied corpse in the<br />
middle of the street, forcing passing cars to slow to crawls and drive around them<br />
in awkward curves.<br />
“That bad man,” Shawn said between sobs. “I hate him!” Shawn crouched<br />
beside Champ and grabbed his long hair in his fingers.<br />
People, grown-ups and kids, were gathering on the sidewalks.<br />
“I’m so proud of you, Lily,” Mom said, escorting her children back to the<br />
sidewalk.<br />
“Why?” Lily asked.<br />
“You’re not even crying,” her mother told the calm nine-year-old. “So many<br />
girls would be. But you’re so grown up.”<br />
“Oh,” Lily said, thinking, that’s right, of course. Lily weren’t no bawl-baby.<br />
Inside her chest, Lily felt something burning and stinging like a hive of bees.<br />
Everything Lily loved got taken away, everything.<br />
But she was not crying.<br />
She was not crying.<br />
Lily heard the footsteps of two guards. Time for her once-a-day walk outside.<br />
One of the guards was Maynard, the other was a tall, very dark black woman<br />
with acne scars on her cheeks and whose name Lily couldn’t remember.<br />
“All right,” the scarred woman said. “Let’s get going.”<br />
Lily got up and took her place between the two guards. The three walked down<br />
between the other cells.<br />
The shouting from the other inmates started.<br />
“Bitch baby-killer!” “Monster! Freak of nature!” “Should’ve given you and<br />
lover-boy the chair!” “Hell, no! Too good for ‘em. Should’ve killed them like they<br />
killed those kids!” “If I ever get my hands on that scum she’ll get what she deserves.<br />
I’ll shove her ugly face in a toilet full of my shit and drown her in it!”<br />
“Oooo . . . oohh . . . ahh . . .” This was a woman’s imitation of a child crying.<br />
“Ooooooh . . . oooohh . . .”<br />
The last sound was the most terrible. The name-calling she’d almost gotten<br />
used to but the sound like a kid crying—oh God in heaven, stop them, please stop<br />
them.<br />
Stop please stop! Ma’am! Sir! I gotta go home! I gotta see my Mom and Dad!<br />
Please! Please!<br />
The Literary Hatchet 137
Lily stared straight ahead and continued walking. The sounds followed her as<br />
they always did. But then, why shouldn’t the other women hate her? No matter what<br />
they had done themselves, even if they were killers, too, they were also mothers.<br />
Why shouldn’t they hate a woman who had offered other mothers’ children a ride<br />
in a car, seemingly helpful, seemingly friendly, smiling at them and . . . Children<br />
trust women. Duane needed her because of that.<br />
A locked gray door. Maynard opened it and Lily stepped into the office<br />
chamber.<br />
The head guard was on duty, a buxom bespectacled older white woman.<br />
“Number,” the head guard said.<br />
“8-7-G-3-5,” Lily replied. She automatically pulled off her dress and dropped<br />
it on the floor, took her cotton panties off, slipped out of her laceless tennis shoes.<br />
Maynard examined her clothes. Lily moved her legs apart and a guard shoved a<br />
gloved finger up her vagina. Then she bent over so the woman could stick one up<br />
her rectum.<br />
“O.K., Chandler,” the scarred woman said.<br />
Lily put her clothes back on. The guards escorted her out of the office and<br />
down the hallways.<br />
They walked pass the key station. Enclosed in solid brick at the bottom half of<br />
it, thick glass with wire mesh through it on the top half. A balding male guard was<br />
within it. Phone lines and the elaborate electric security system. And a big brass<br />
key. The master key. If that were in her hand . . . Oh God, to see it and not be able<br />
to touch it.<br />
Only forty-one. Still bleeding once a month. If she was out, she might still be<br />
able . . . to have a child. Of her own. She who had murdered children.<br />
But—no possibility of parole.<br />
They were out of the hallway and in an imitation of a backyard. A small<br />
rectangle of grass and shrubs and a cement bench.<br />
The guards stood. Lily sat on the bench.<br />
Grass. Children like to play on grass. She breathed deeply. Lily could not go<br />
insane no matter how much she wanted to. She could not stop remembering.<br />
You’re perfect for me. You’re the only woman on earth for me.<br />
How do you know? Her fingers grasped at his wavy springy dark curls as their<br />
mouths fused together, excitement rising. He was evil, pure evil, and she loved him<br />
so much.<br />
Because you’re mine, my puppet.<br />
All yours, Duane. All yours!<br />
She had bucked up and down so excited and so certain of his love, of having him<br />
completely forever. No one else ever could, she had thought joyfully as an orgasm<br />
shook every cell in her body.<br />
Lily went over to the grass and sat down on it. One of the bushes had flowers<br />
blooming from it. A pale, delicate blue flower shaped like a trumpet.<br />
“What kind . . . ?” She caught herself. She didn’t want the guards to tell her.<br />
138 The Literary Hatchet
Lily searched her memory. She stroked the flower lightly, lovingly. Suddenly she<br />
was certain.<br />
She turned to the guards. The smile radiated out from her heart.<br />
“It’s a Morning-glory,” Lily said. “Isn’t it?”<br />
“Oh, shit, what the hell should you care about what kind of flowers they are?”<br />
the scarred woman guard said.<br />
“They’re Morning-glories,” Maynard confirmed in her machine-like voice.<br />
Lily’s throat tightened as she gazed at a single beautiful flower. None of them<br />
can see flowers. None of them can see anything.<br />
“Time’s up,” Maynard said.<br />
Lily stood up and took her place between the guards. They walked back to the<br />
office chamber.<br />
“Number?” the head matron asked.<br />
Lily answered. Then she took her clothes off again, was strip-searched again.<br />
Put them back on again. Oh God, no. Panic seized her; she broke out in a sweat.<br />
Afraid she might pee on herself like she had a few times. Having to walk down that<br />
hallway. Hear the other prisoners. God, please no.<br />
“Straighten up, Chandler,” the head matron ordered. “You’re not the hunchback<br />
of Notre Dame.”<br />
It was only then that Lily realized how bent over she was. Her back was an arc.<br />
Facing straight down.<br />
She straightened up. You deserve it. No business feeling sorry for yourself. Lily<br />
was alive.<br />
Back in her cell. She sank onto her cot. I stink, she thought. Literally. She was<br />
only allowed to shower twice a week. The rough fabric stuck to her underarms and<br />
chest. It stinks worse than shit in here.<br />
Lily picked up a magazine at random, letting the pages fall open. Models<br />
showing off different hairstyles. Trying to view them just as pictures, nice colors<br />
and pleasing forms.<br />
Lily thought, I used to be as pretty as any of these women. Strange how every<br />
memory of that other time was edged in black. Self-pity. It was wrong. Showed how<br />
evil she was. Evil. She had once said that word like it was a compliment. Bitch babykiller!<br />
Kill them the same way they killed those kids!<br />
These women were ordinary, beautiful, clean. She wondered if they would<br />
have fallen in love with Duane Lop . . . ? You can’t help who you love. That’s what her<br />
mother had said. Her girlfriends. All the songs.<br />
“Hi, Chandler.” Maynard.<br />
“Hi.” Lily hadn’t heard her footsteps.<br />
The cell door opened and Maynard came in with her dinner. Sat it on the toilet.<br />
Look at me talk to me tell me who you are and what you live like. Talk to me talk<br />
to me, oh please God.<br />
Maynard turned around, left the cell, and locked it.<br />
Lily closed her eyes. The enormity of it—three deaths. Three little children<br />
who had not grown up and would never grow old. Three families grieving. But this<br />
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punishment was for only two. One had never been found. She and Duane had not<br />
been charged with her murder.<br />
A few years ago, Lily had confessed to the third child’s death so her parents<br />
would know for sure and they could find the body. There had been no trial for that<br />
murder; what would be the point?<br />
She opened her eyes. Happened to look down at her doughy wrinkled arm and<br />
saw blisters raised across it. She must have been scratching herself without being<br />
aware of it. She remembered other arms flailing in desperation.<br />
But worse than that—her hands grabbing those arms. Tying them cruelly.<br />
You’re the only woman on earth for me.<br />
Overcome with nausea, Lily fell to her knees and crawled to the toilet and<br />
pushed the tray off it. It clattered to the floor, the food making a mess. She lifted up<br />
the toilet seat. Just in time. She tore off some toilet paper to wipe her chin. Flushed<br />
the toilet. The odor of vomit was added to the other foul smells in the cell.<br />
She sat on the floor by the toilet. Exhausted.<br />
“Chandler.” Maynard’s irritated voice.<br />
“Yeah.”<br />
The cell door swung open. “Just what is the meaning of this?”<br />
Lily sat, mute. How strange. Maynard was talking to her like she was a child. “I<br />
just . . . I got sick. I had to throw up.”<br />
“Sorry, Chandler but you don’t look to me like you need to go to the infirmary.”<br />
Lily shrugged.<br />
“Clean up this mess.”<br />
On her knees, Lily put the tray right side up, and started pulling the food back<br />
into it with her hands.<br />
“I’ll clean . . . I’m sorry . . . I . . . I . . .” Lily struggled to her feet with the tray<br />
and handed it to Maynard.<br />
“There’s still some left.” The guard’s voice was now without anger. Just stating<br />
a fact.<br />
Lily tore off some toilet paper and knelt down again, scraping up the little bits<br />
and the milk that had leaked out.<br />
She looked up at the guard.<br />
“O.K., Chandler.” Maynard turned and left.<br />
She was alone again. Locked in and alone. She threw the food-dirtied tissue in<br />
the toilet. Flushed. Walked back to her cot, lay down, and waited for the light bulb<br />
to go out so she could get to sleep.<br />
She didn’t have that much trouble getting to sleep anymore. Almost as soon as<br />
the light was out she fell into that wonderful velvet mental quiet.<br />
Lily woke when the light came back on. Felt the need to pee but stayed on the<br />
cot staring at the ceiling.<br />
Her heart had not stopped during the night. She had not slid unconsciously<br />
and without fear into nothingness. She was still alive and sane. Still remembering.<br />
So another day in the punishment of Lily Chandler begins.<br />
]<br />
140 The Literary Hatchet
[poetry]<br />
Cheru’s the allergic emperor<br />
among the trees on the earth.<br />
Its dark violet nuts are<br />
rich source of itching energy.<br />
Though a single drop of sap –<br />
a hypocritical white in hue –<br />
could create an itching ecstasy,<br />
consequent crimson rashes<br />
frightened me with forebodings.<br />
Capsules complicated my condition.<br />
My body bloated like a python.<br />
My face transformed with<br />
an awkward look.<br />
Itching – I spent an anxious year.<br />
Browsing – I read a remedy for<br />
deadly diseases in the same sap.<br />
Wounding and healing forces pass<br />
through the same channel.<br />
Whether it be destructive, or be<br />
constructive, we decide.<br />
—fabiyas mv<br />
(Cheru is a vernacular name for a tree belonging to marking nut tree family. Its sap is<br />
highly allergic, toxic, and causes severe itching and swelling. It is medicinal too for<br />
diseases like tumors.)<br />
The Literary Hatchet 141
[short story]<br />
by a.w. gifford<br />
“My life is a sham.”<br />
The man who said this sat directly across the U-shaped bar from me. Standing,<br />
he brushed his greasy black hair out of his eyes, grabbed his beer, and walked over.<br />
I ignored him the best I could, that was until he sat on the stool next to me and<br />
placed his beer on my notepad. The condensation from the bottle left a wet ring<br />
on the page.<br />
“Do you mind?” I gestured to the notepad. It wasn’t like it mattered, the page<br />
was blank, a reflection of the current state of my imagination.<br />
He leaned toward me. “Did you hear me?” He smelled terrible, a sickening<br />
combination of body odor, grease, and stale cigarettes. He didn’t dress much better,<br />
black boots, blue jeans, a black T-shirt, and a black leather jacket. A man of little<br />
style. It was obvious that he’d seen too many bad movies, and pulled off the badass<br />
biker look poorly.<br />
“I heard you,” I said. “But if you don’t mind, I’m busy. I have work to do.” This<br />
wasn’t far from the truth. I did have work to do, but the cruel mistress of writer’s<br />
block had me in her clutches, and I had a deadline looming.<br />
“You’re not busy, and that’s the problem.” He took a quick chug of his beer.<br />
Some of the yellow liquid spilled down his stubble-covered chin.<br />
“I’m very busy.” I pulled my notebook toward me.<br />
“By the look of that notebook, Jeff, you aren’t busy at all.”<br />
“How did you know my name?”<br />
142 The Literary Hatchet
“Jeff Morris, spinner of tales of suspense and the supernatural.” He leaned back<br />
against the bar, propped his elbows on the granite top and took another chug of his<br />
beer. “Who doesn’t know you?”<br />
“I’m not that well known,” I said. “Most people don’t have a clue who I am.”<br />
“The important thing is that I know you, just as you know me, and we have to<br />
take care of some unfinished business.”<br />
“I don’t know you,” I said, though I did have a vague sense of recognition.<br />
He stood up, held out his arms, and turned around. “Take a good look.” He sat<br />
down and leaned forward, “Take a real good look.”<br />
“I don’t—”<br />
“You didn’t make me all that memorable, I know. Used every cliché in the book,<br />
but here I am, in all of your unimaginative glory.”<br />
“I’m sorry, but I don’t—”<br />
“The name’s Jack. Jack Smith. I’m guessing that deep down you wanted to name<br />
me Jack Shit, but you didn’t have the balls to put that on paper.”<br />
Jack Smith. That name I did recognize. I started a story a little more than a year<br />
ago about a biker named Jack Smith, but this guy was just messing with me. There<br />
must be hundreds, perhaps thousands, of Jack Smiths in this country, if not this<br />
city.<br />
“Granted,” Jack began. “My name’s not all that original, but then you’ve never<br />
been all that good at coming up with names for your characters.”<br />
“Give it a rest buddy. I have a lot of work to do. I don’t have time for your games.”<br />
He slammed his fist on the bar. “I’m not the one playing games, Jeff. You sit<br />
there on your computer or your stupid little notepad creating people, and when<br />
you get a block or you just can’t think where you want to take a story, you just cut<br />
them loose.”<br />
“I’m not God. I don’t create people; I create characters.” I finished off my drink.<br />
“I abandon stories all the time, every writer does. It’s the nature of the business.”<br />
As I stood to leave, he grabbed my shirt. “You didn’t abandon a story Jeff; you<br />
abandoned my story.”<br />
I pulled away. “Since you don’t understand when I say that I’m busy, I’ll use<br />
smaller words and say them slowly so you’ll understand. Fuck. Off.”<br />
Jack grabbed my arm and I felt him press something into my side. “You don’t<br />
remember giving me the Glock, do you? It’s one of the last items you gave me<br />
before you decided that my life was no longer worth writing about.”<br />
“Let me go,” I said. “I don’t know who you are or what you want. I don’t have a<br />
lot of money. I have no money, in fact, but I do know that you are not one of my<br />
characters. You’re just a thief, or some junkie who broke into my apartment and<br />
read a few pages of an incomplete story.”<br />
“I didn’t break into your apartment and I didn’t read one of your goddamn<br />
stories.” He turned his head to the left and pulled back his hair. The top quarter of<br />
his right ear was missing. “You know how I got this don’t you?”<br />
Impossible.<br />
The wound to his ear was just as I had imagined it, all gnarled and chewed, but<br />
The Literary Hatchet 143
I never put it on paper. “I have no idea how you got that wound. Looks like you’ve<br />
been in a bar fight.”<br />
“That’s right, I was in a bar fight. Some asshole bit the top part of my ear off.<br />
You thought of that.”<br />
He pulled me closer, his breath smelled like week-old garbage, and I nearly<br />
vomited.<br />
“You are my creator, Jeff. My god. You put me here. A biker with no bike, and<br />
nowhere to go.”<br />
I tried to pull away, but his grip was strong.<br />
“Now,” he said. “We’re going to your apartment and you’re going to finish my<br />
story. You’re going to give me the life I deserve.”<br />
“I can’t. I don’t know where the story was going. That’s why I stopped.”<br />
“You will, or I’ll kill you.”<br />
Yelling probably wouldn’t get me anywhere. I didn’t see the bartender and at<br />
three in the afternoon, the bar was empty.<br />
As if he could read my mind he said, “Don’t scream, or I’ll kill you right here.”<br />
I tried to rationalize with him. “If you kill me, then you won’t exist.”<br />
“That’s all right with me. I don’t exist much anyway.” He jabbed my side with<br />
the gun. “Move.”<br />
Jack pushed me out onto the sidewalk and I bumped into and nearly knocked<br />
over an attractive blonde woman in sleek business attire. “Sorry,” I said as I reached<br />
out to steady her and myself.<br />
“Asshole,” she replied and walked away.<br />
People scurried along the sidewalk, not unlike a colony of ants, all with places<br />
to be and problems of their own. None cared for, nor noticed the writer with the<br />
armed biker by his side.<br />
Less than five minutes later, I was stumbling up the three flights of stairs to my<br />
apartment. As I was fumbling with my keys, I began to wonder if I could change all<br />
this by just thinking about it. He did have the missing ear...<br />
Jack hit me in the head with the butt of the gun—hard enough for me to see<br />
stars, but not hard enough to knock me out.<br />
I stumbled into the door and rubbed the back of my head. “What did you do<br />
that for?”<br />
“I know what you were thinking. Remember, you created me. I know what you<br />
know and what you’re thinking.”<br />
I opened the door and he pushed me inside.<br />
He checked the hall. Satisfied, he followed me inside, gun pointed in my face.<br />
“Now write.”<br />
“I can’t just sit down and write.”<br />
“You can and you will,” Jack said. “Now sit.” He motioned with the gun to my<br />
computer, never really taking the gun off me.<br />
“Can I get a drink first?”<br />
“No. Sit.”<br />
“What if I refuse?”<br />
144 The Literary Hatchet
A shot winged past my left thigh, ripping the denim of my jeans and logged<br />
itself in the base of my computer desk.<br />
“I missed,” he said. No expression crossed his face.<br />
It was obvious that he didn’t care about alerting the neighbors with a gunshot,<br />
that’s if they were home or even cared.<br />
This charade had gone on long enough. I didn’t care if he shot me.<br />
Calling his bluff, I stood there, trying to show no fear. “Go ahead, shoot me.<br />
How is that going to solve your problems? You kill me; you’ll be doing me a<br />
favor. You think I like living in this shithole apartment, eating Ramen, and barely<br />
scraping by?”<br />
I didn’t hear the gun, but instead I felt a burning pain as my left knee exploded<br />
in a shower of blood and bone. This time he didn’t miss.<br />
I screamed in agony and collapsed to the floor. He pulled me up and plopped<br />
me into my desk chair.<br />
“Now write!”<br />
“I can’t,” I sobbed. “My knee. I have to go to the hospital. I’ll bleed to death.”<br />
After Jack turned on my computer, he took off his belt and wrapped it around<br />
my upper thigh. When he tightened it down, I thought my leg would pop right off.<br />
I felt ready to pass out.<br />
“Write. Or I swear I’ll blow your fucking head off.” He jammed the gun against<br />
my right temple.<br />
“I don’t care,” I tried to say. But all that came out between the sobs were a few<br />
feeble grunts.<br />
“Bring up my story.”<br />
I just sat there.<br />
He hit me with the gun again and this time I do believe that I passed out, but<br />
not for very long. He was still behind me when I came around, still screaming for<br />
me to write. But how could I write with this lunatic behind me, shooting me, and<br />
beating me with a gun?<br />
The blank computer screen mocked me just as the blank page of my notebook<br />
mocked me, but this time I had a blinking curser, reminding me of my incompetence.<br />
Pulling myself together, I placed my hands on the keyboard. I didn’t think about<br />
what came next; it sort of just happened.<br />
“About damn time,” Jack said, but I don’t think he was ready for what I wrote.<br />
They were the first words I’d written in more than three months. They were just<br />
four words, five syllables, but they were the most important words I’d ever written.<br />
Gun empty, Jack dies.<br />
When Jack realized what I wrote he acted quickly. He raised the gun to my head<br />
and pulled the trigger.<br />
Click!<br />
He pulled the trigger again.<br />
Click!<br />
“The gun’s empty,” I said. “Can’t you read?”<br />
The Literary Hatchet 145
He smiled. “It also says Jack dies.”<br />
“So it does.”<br />
I keep a letter opener on my writing desk and I was glad Jack was standing<br />
close. A letter opener isn’t much of a weapon.<br />
I moved as quickly as I could. Seizing the letter opener and using my good knee,<br />
I swiveled the chair around and plunged it into Jack’s neck.<br />
He screamed and on reflex pulled the blade out. Clamping a hand to his neck,<br />
he tried to stem the flow of blood.<br />
At the same time, he brought the letter opener down on me. The blade glanced<br />
off the side of my head as I moved out of the way, but it caught the bottom part of<br />
my ear, ripped it off, and plunged into my shoulder.<br />
Jack tried to pull the blade out, but he must not have had the strength. He let go,<br />
stumbled back, and collapsed to the floor.<br />
Climbing back into the chair, the letter opener still sticking out of my shoulder,<br />
I tried to write that my little encounter with Jack Smith never happened, that my<br />
knee was fine and that I was back in the bar having a few drinks. I wouldn’t say it<br />
was easy, but I knew I had to try. As I typed, nothing happened. Writing doesn’t<br />
always work the way we want.<br />
I didn’t have too much trouble explaining to the police what happened. I just<br />
told them the truth, leaving out the part about Jack Smith being a character from<br />
one of my stories.<br />
I spent two weeks in the hospital, had reconstructive surgery on my knee, and<br />
received one hundred and forty-seven stitches to close the wounds on my scalp,<br />
ear, and shoulder. The doctors all said I was lucky to be alive, that a few millimeters<br />
either way . . . but don’t they always say that?<br />
Since my encounter with Jack, I’ve been writing every day. In a way, I have him<br />
to thank for getting me out of my slump.<br />
I’m taking no chances. I printed out the page with the four words, framed it and<br />
now it hangs on the wall next to my computer. I also have a copy of that page in a<br />
safe deposit box so I’ll never lose it.<br />
Jack Smith is gone, and I want to keep him gone forever.<br />
]<br />
146 The Literary Hatchet
[poetry]<br />
Remember my wedding? How scared, how white<br />
I was. But even then I knew the kind<br />
of husband he’d turn into. Which he did.<br />
I take no satisfaction being right<br />
in my prediction. I would not have minded<br />
had he surprised me and turned instead<br />
into a charming prince. However, Prince<br />
Charming appears, in fairy tales, only<br />
when young and single, looking for a wife,<br />
and never as a husband. Ever since<br />
that day, he’s been—No, enough about me.<br />
Tell me about you. How is your love life?<br />
Wow. Any prospects in particular?<br />
What, you don’t want to…? Oh, I guess I’m not<br />
surprised. What about when your youth is gone,<br />
though? Pension?! What’s that? Goodness. My, how far<br />
you’ve come. I see. But no, I’d never thought<br />
the duckling should be gayer than the swan.<br />
—james b. nicola<br />
The Literary Hatchet 147
[short story]<br />
by alexis henderson<br />
The day my sister gave birth to her fourth child I cried in a rest stop bathroom<br />
for two hours with a can of squeeze cheese, a sheathe of stale crackers, and several<br />
copies of Vogue magazine. I was sick twice.<br />
I remember sitting there in the slit between the sink and toilet, clutching my<br />
knees to my chest and listening to the rattle of air conditioning and thinking about<br />
my first husband (dead) and my second (departed) and wondering if my being<br />
barren had anything to do with them and me and the ends of all the things I’d<br />
started. I also wondered if I’d put enough food down for my cats, and the condition<br />
of the waterlogged cacti I kept in pots on the back porch. It rained hard that day<br />
and I worried they might be drowning.<br />
I drove home like a drunk, hiccupping and making a mess of myself, weaving<br />
between lanes, forgetting to brake at stop signs, forgetting to yield. I kept the radio<br />
on loud, some folk station, screaming banjos and harsh percussion. Mourning<br />
music.<br />
Halfway home my phone rang—my sister Margaret, asking after me. “Nathan<br />
said you left, in a hurry. A little bit after the baby was born.”<br />
I licked my lips, listened to the drawl of the man on the radio, the twang of the<br />
banjo. He sang of redemption, the redeemed and the forgiven. The clean.<br />
“I’m sick,” I told her. “Desperately ill. Food poisoning, I think. It’s that hospital<br />
food, in the cafeteria, they keep it out too long. It’s no wonder everyone is sick.”<br />
I passed a dead deer on the side of the road, belly up with its legs at stiff ankles,<br />
like something you’d see in a taxidermy shop.<br />
“You can’t keep on like this,” she said, in a small child’s voice. “You’ll kill<br />
yourself trying to keep face. You know you will.”<br />
There was a long silence on the line.<br />
I told her I had to go.<br />
I made it home in the early hours, watched a few hours of infomercials while<br />
the sun crept up above the treetops. I am the sleepless sort, you see.<br />
I found her on one of those shopping channels that pander to bored housewives<br />
and lonely singles with insomnia, selling cheap diamonds on easy payments,<br />
148 The Literary Hatchet
knotted rugs, designer bags and shiny doo-dads like instant margarita makers and<br />
light-up alarm clocks that flash you awake in the morning.<br />
One of the hosts was cradling her, real close to her breast like she expected<br />
her to open her mouth and latch then and there. She was a pretty, fleshy silicon<br />
with alpaca hair rooted into her head (Irish red) and a battery-powered heart that<br />
thrummed in her chest, one-hundred and thirty-five beats per minute, standard<br />
for a newborn. She was nineteen inches, eight pounds, and four hundred and fiftytwo<br />
dollars, shipping included.<br />
I bought her on credit. I decided to call her Alice.<br />
She arrived in a cardboard box two weeks later, packaged in plastic with<br />
popcorn pieces all around her, a blanket folded beneath her head, a ribbon around<br />
her neck. She smelled of plastic and baby powder.<br />
I took her out, held her too me, pulled back the rubbery flaps of her eyelids to<br />
see the blue of her irises, black pupils swelled from all the time spent in darkness.<br />
She was prettier than my sister’s baby. Much prettier. Her mouth was firm and full,<br />
cheeks flushed rose red the way that baby cheeks are supposed to be. She had the<br />
weight of a real baby, the look of one, and when you put your fingers to her chest<br />
you could feel her heart beating, mechanical. Incessant.<br />
A few days later I took Alice out for a walk. Bundled up in scarves and blankets,<br />
in a stroller I bought from a baby shop downtown. The front wheels rattled over<br />
cracks in the pavement, and the wind blew through the trees hard. The pre-winter<br />
bite was in the air, the coldness that comes in the form of frost and streamline<br />
winds before the winter bursts into being with the first of the snowstorms.<br />
Kids played on the steel skeletons of the playground, swung from the monkey<br />
bars with their feet dangling high off the ground. They laughed and giggled and<br />
chased each other, tripping over loose shoelaces and ruts in the pavement. No<br />
parents with them. Only a few years off Alice’s age and already alone.<br />
I walked on. Past the duck ponds, beneath the naked canopy of oak trees past<br />
people with their dogs on leashes, cyclists and pigeon flocks, lovers striding sideby-side,<br />
hand-in-hand. Alice observed all of this with glassy ambivalence, her<br />
hands balled in her mittens, unblinking. She looked as though she were in another<br />
place, somewhere far off where I couldn’t reach her. Sullen and silent and entirely<br />
away.<br />
Alice fell ill a few days later, the cold was too much for her, I think. Her hair<br />
fell in tufts around her shoulders, her skin went cold. She would not sleep, in the<br />
night or the day. She would lie swaddled on the couch beside me, staring at the<br />
ceiling with her mouth closed and her little hands fisted, always fisted. I never saw<br />
her fingers unfurled.<br />
I paced around the house with her, watched infomercials on TV in the early<br />
morning, patting her back and cooing in her ear. She would not rest. She would<br />
not sleep. She would not take milk, warm or cold. She never blinked, never wept.<br />
Through the night, night after night, she would lay awake and I with her because<br />
The Literary Hatchet 149
that is what mothers do.<br />
They stay. They remain.<br />
No respite for them. No rest.<br />
I had another child before Alice. A cold stillborn I birthed on the bathroom<br />
floor in the dead of night, half asleep and screaming. I was alone when it happened;<br />
my husband was off with his other woman, only I didn’t know that at the time. I<br />
named him Isaac Joel. He was a beautiful little boy.<br />
A little after we buried him, my husband and I took a vacation down to this tiny<br />
resort town in Florida. My therapist thought the roar of the waves would be good<br />
for me. Something about synthesis, white noise, static. “It will help you overcome<br />
yourself,” she said, as though that’s what I needed to do, all that I needed to do.<br />
I remember one night, one of our last nights there. Wyatt and I were sitting on<br />
the terrace of the room we rented. He was drunk off white wine and I was smoking<br />
and a little ways down the beach a group of gulls warred over the spoiled remains<br />
of an abandoned picnic. Squabbling over stale crusts and shriveled slices of deli<br />
meat gone sour. Feathers falling.<br />
“It’s for the best,” said my husband and he took my hand in mine, patted it the<br />
way a mother might. Chiding me. “You don’t have the stomach for motherhood.<br />
You don’t have the touch. To be a mother is to be a sacrifice. You’re not selfless. You<br />
just can’t give enough of yourself.”<br />
On my fifth day awake I shook her. It was 4:00 a.m., and my eyes were<br />
bloodshot, the TV was off and the lights were on and Alice lay with her eyes open,<br />
ever-open.<br />
Her heart ticked in time to the crickets outside. The snow fell fast.<br />
No rest for the weary. No respite.<br />
Alice lay still as a corpse. Unflinching. Unmoving. Awake.<br />
So I shook her.<br />
I shook her violently. Shook her till her head snapped on its axis and her<br />
blankets fell away from her. Shook her till my arms ached.<br />
She didn’t blink.<br />
When you’re a little girl the world tells you what you want. A small suburban<br />
house that sits on a clipped lawn with roses in the front garden. You want a husband<br />
who goes to the city to work and comes home before the sun sets, drills you with no<br />
condom on while the kids sleep soundly. You want little girls and little boys to dress<br />
and bathe and send to school with kisses and packed lunches.<br />
You want rooms filled with fine furniture, couches covered in crocheted<br />
throws, pillow topped mattresses, shelves crowded with picture books and family<br />
photos. You want a slobbering Labrador in the backyard. A Jacuzzi bath beneath a<br />
bay window, stainless steel appliances, wood floors throughout. A baby to bear. A<br />
kitchen to clean.<br />
150 The Literary Hatchet
The angels of the house slept in the attic eaves. Nested in the pink fluff of<br />
insulation like fledglings, too shy to emerge. It was Alice who drew them, I think.<br />
When the sun set they came down, through the space between walls, emerging<br />
from behind mirrors and out of closets, the damp dark of the basement. For a little<br />
while they’d stand idle in the living room, all six of them standing there with their<br />
hands clasped behind their backs like good little school girls. Barefoot. Wide-eyed.<br />
Black bows cinched around their waists. Plaid skirts on, the hems high above their<br />
knees.<br />
They flocked to the nursery when darkness fell, hooked their fingers around<br />
the rungs in Alice’s crib, rocked her sick, singing lullabies, giggling. They took her<br />
blankets, her binkies, her bears, wooden trains and teething toys, hid her things<br />
around the house--baby booties beneath the kitchen sink, bibs in the trash.<br />
I once entered to find her ragdolls lying on the floor headless, stuffing all<br />
around the room. There was a bottle on the bedside table, filled with milk and<br />
bleach. Alice lay in the cradle prostrate. The little girls were gone.<br />
The night my mother left she entered my room with a cigarette and an<br />
overstuffed duffle bag slung across her chest. She told me she was leaving, flying<br />
the coop, setting sale to the faraway lands the figments could not reach her. She was<br />
slurring that night, she talked so fast, spitting with the excitement of it all.<br />
She wore a black dress with slits up the sides, a knit shawl caught in the crooks<br />
of her elbows. Her hair hung loose around her shoulders, tangled. Unkempt.<br />
Around her neck was a rosary. Blue beads. A wooden cross.<br />
She sat down on the foot of my bed, kissed me between the eyes and whispered<br />
her good-byes. My sister Margaret lay on the mattress beside me, tense and taut as<br />
a tuning fork, her hands clutched in little fists, eyes shut so tight her lids wrinkled.<br />
Mother kissed her too and pulled the sheets up around her shoulders, heavy<br />
handed.<br />
“I won’t be here when you wake up,” she said, and she pulled at her eyelashes, a<br />
habit of hers, an anxious compulsion. She was woman of no respite. Always picking<br />
at herself, worrying. If it wasn’t her eyelashes it was her nails and if wasn’t her nails<br />
it was her clothes and if wasn’t her clothes it was Margaret or myself but never our<br />
father. Our father never had the patience for her. “I won’t be here for some time. I<br />
have to go away for a little while.”<br />
“To the heaven?” I asked and she smiled at me. She smiled.<br />
“Farther than that.”<br />
I took Alice away at night. Strapped her into the backseat in the evening while<br />
the sun set, just before the little girls emerged. I filled the tank with gas and took to<br />
the highway, drove for hours with the music on loud and the windows down. Alice<br />
lying open-eyed in the back seat. Indolent.<br />
I popped pills to stay awake. Caffeine capsules downed with swallows of cold<br />
coffee and Mountain Dew. The occasional Adderall to keep me lucid. When the<br />
pills weren’t enough I’d pull off at rest stops. Sit on the benches by the vending<br />
The Literary Hatchet 151
machines, under the streetlights or the sprawling oak trees, near the sleeping semis.<br />
I’d hold Alice in my lap, bundled up with mittens on, and together we’d listen to<br />
the goings on of the midnight hours. The drone of the passing traffic. Windblown<br />
leaves rasping across the concrete. Crows calling too early.<br />
The night I killed her the little girls came down from the attic early and<br />
gathered in the living room. They stood hand and hand and stared at me. Their<br />
eyes like Alice’s eyes. Glassy. Unblinking. Insistent.<br />
I stood up. Left the bedroom with a silk robe on, shivering though it was warm<br />
inside. Alice was in the nursery with her eyes fixed on the ceiling as though there<br />
were stars up there. She lay swaddled to the far corner of the crib. She did not look<br />
at me.<br />
I lifted her. Coddled her. Put my lips to her lips. Pleaded. My hands shook<br />
when I cupped her head and the little girls gathered in the hallway and there was<br />
no noise but my breaths and my heart beating, and Alice’s clicking. Clicking like a<br />
little clock.<br />
I squeezed. I put my hands around her throat and I squeezed.<br />
She did not blink. She did not blink.<br />
So I pulled her hair till the tufts freed themselves from her head. Then I pulled<br />
her head till it freed itself from her shoulders and she hung suspended, wires and<br />
cords and cables and sinews.<br />
No blood. No blood.<br />
She did not blink.<br />
I thrashed her. I threw her. I fit my fingers into her sockets until her eyes<br />
popped out, rested in my hand like little candies. I tossed them. I tore her clothes.<br />
I tugged her limbs loose.<br />
The little girls looked on from the hallway.<br />
Alice did not scream.<br />
I carried her corpse to the hospital on foot. The swinging head. The torn limbs.<br />
The glassy eyes and heart that did not beat.<br />
I walked for miles with her and the little girls followed me. Singing dirges<br />
above the passing traffic. Walking the streets on bare feet. A funeral procession.<br />
I made it to the hospital in the early hours. As dawn broke and tinged the<br />
clouds pink. The little girls remained, waiting in the parking lot, between cars and<br />
behind park benches. Lurking. Humming lullabies. The songs of sleep.<br />
The glass doors slit open.<br />
I crossed the room, put the corpse on the front desk for the receptionist to see.<br />
I wanted her to see her. Everyone to see her. The beautiful body. My baby. My baby.<br />
She looked at Alice. She looked at me.<br />
She gave me a pen and clipboard.<br />
She did not blink.<br />
]<br />
152 The Literary Hatchet
[poetry]<br />
On the glistening ice,<br />
a young girl in gleaming satin<br />
swivels and spins.<br />
spirals descending from her hips<br />
like invisible hula hoops.<br />
It’s the perfect harmony<br />
of youth and limbs<br />
and beauty and blade.<br />
Then suddenly a great hand<br />
bursts through the ice,<br />
grabs her ankle,<br />
drags her down<br />
into the depths below.<br />
But even after she’s gone,<br />
and the surface refreezes,<br />
1 can still imagine<br />
the arc of her slender body,<br />
the poise of her throat,<br />
the pleats of pink dress<br />
like an out of season bloom<br />
cutting winter to the quick.<br />
On one dazzling loop,<br />
she skirts by me,<br />
pauses in mid-turn,<br />
bounds across the ages<br />
with an expression<br />
that will some day<br />
be desire for someone,<br />
but for now,<br />
mouths a panicked<br />
“Do something! Help me!”<br />
—john grey<br />
The Literary Hatchet 153
[short story]<br />
by robin c. jones<br />
My life is crap. The texture changes. The color spins from tan to black. Its<br />
odoriferous nature moves from gagging to merely revolting, but at its core, it is all<br />
excrement. All day, every day, year after year, until today. Today I’m doing something<br />
about it.<br />
I wake up in the tub with my clothes on. The water is running, spilling over<br />
the edge. It must have been running awhile; its heat is gone. I have no idea how<br />
long I’ve been soaking. Hours, days, forever maybe. I couldn’t say. Water’s got to be<br />
everywhere. Bill’s going to be pissed.<br />
I pull out of the tub like a boot out of mud, like a fly out of sap, like a sinking<br />
ship bobbing up one last time. I don’t dry off. My clothes aren’t nearly as wet as I<br />
expected. I walk down the hall to inspect the damage. The flood that should be<br />
lapping into every room and out the doors isn’t a flood at all. The floor isn’t even<br />
wet. Must not have been in the tub as long as I thought.<br />
Crap, I didn’t turn off the water. I sludge back to the bathroom. I must be<br />
losing my mind; the water is off. Of course, it is. Not even Mr. Life-Is-Crap himself<br />
would forget to turn off an overflowing faucet.<br />
I head to my room and fall on the bed, wet clothes and all. I stare at the ceiling<br />
154 The Literary Hatchet
and lay there thinking. I think a lot. I think a lot about why I’m here, why we’re all<br />
here. I think about purpose. I hope, against my own example, that there is one. If<br />
there isn’t why am I still wasting time trying to find it?<br />
There is only one real hope still plodding around in my head anymore. That<br />
hope: When I leave this world I will be enlightened. The Great and Almighty will<br />
stoop down and tell me, one of His millions of billions, what it all means; the pain,<br />
the suffering, the unending unfairness of the universe. All of it. If the Great and<br />
Almighty isn’t there my next hope is to find the Void. Then in a blink I no longer<br />
take up space in the universe.<br />
The thought of God is comforting and scary at the same time. I’ve mostly<br />
tried to do what is right, but reason demands I have no hope of attaining heaven<br />
by simply being good enough. A model human I am not. If I get past those pearly<br />
gates it will only be because a merciful Being allowed it. If the said Being is keeping<br />
score . . . well, I am already in the shite, aren’t I?<br />
The thought that there is no God offers no comfort at all and is just as scary.<br />
If every bit of suffering is wasted in waves of meaninglessness, how ridiculous it is<br />
that we to try and live through it at all. The void of oblivion is a more comforting<br />
idea than Hell, but not by much. In the core of the soul, which I may or may not<br />
have, I want purpose, a reason, some justification for why . . . there has to be more.<br />
There just has to be.<br />
I think until my mind is too heavy to conjugate the unknowable. I get up, still<br />
damp, not wet, but damp. Maybe Bill’s home. We are BFF’s and all, though we have<br />
a way of grinding on each other. That grind doesn’t change our brother’s heart,<br />
though we are good at keeping knees skinned.<br />
He’s not in his room, his perfect immaculate room. The place dust bunnies fear<br />
to tread. I think about playing one of his games, but it’s not worth skinning more<br />
knees. He’s not there, and I know he wants me out unless invited in. I humor him<br />
and leave.<br />
I walk to the kitchen and look around. I’m not hungry. Open the fridge, looks<br />
dull, tame, and uninspiring. Move to the living room. I sit there. Think about<br />
reading a little King or McMurtry or something but don’t. Too much effort, I guess.<br />
I wish my clothes would just dry out. Damp sucks. Damp is limbo, without<br />
the dancing or the stick. I suppose I could change into something dry, but why?<br />
Frankly, I’m not up to it.<br />
I’m forgetting something . . . something important . . . whatever it is.<br />
I walk around the apartment again. It’s a nice place, good dull colors, and<br />
clean walls. A truly boring bachelor pad. You’d think a couple singles like Bill and<br />
I would have a little spice, but it just ain’t so. He has his girlfriends. I have child<br />
support. How could it be anyway else? After all: My life is crap.<br />
Back to my room. Thinking, again. I wish my mind would go blank for an<br />
eternity or two. . . but no. My never sleeping thinker won’t slow down. These<br />
damned, damp clothes are annoying. Still can’t bother to change. Huh. My fingers<br />
are still all pruned and wrinkled.<br />
Something is tickling the back of my head. Sitting on the tip of my brain.<br />
The Literary Hatchet 155
Whatever it is it isn’t a nice notion. It’s no baby zit either. Not a little whitehead,<br />
pop, and all better, mom. It is the whole of the world weighed on my shoulders.<br />
When it pops another Hiroshima? IDK, but it won’t be good.<br />
Back in the kitchen, still not hungry. That’s not like me. Must be more depressed<br />
than usual. Sit in the living room some more. Bill should be here by now. Wonder<br />
what’s keeping him? He’s a big boy, I guess. He’ll get here when he shows.<br />
I ought to call George, cuss philosophy with him for a while. Maybe our<br />
favorite: God. Why I believe, why he doesn’t. I hate to admit how much sense he<br />
makes, at times. I’ve been adamant, and wrong, often enough I try to look at more<br />
than one side of a coin anymore.<br />
I’ve gotten to the point that what I am most interested in is The Truth. Not<br />
the dogmatic truths of youth but the honest-to-God ones. If God is real, I want to<br />
know Him, but if He is not I want to live life as best as I can figure out how. Much as<br />
I love talking to George it takes a lot of energy defending my beliefs. It’s too much<br />
effort, just more than I can muster right now.<br />
I break in to Bill’s room and do nothing except drip on his rug and skin a few<br />
new knees. Oh well, he’s a big boy. He’ll get over it, or he won’t. Seems like he’s got<br />
some new pictures since I last snuck in. A new girlfriend with a kid. Surprising.<br />
Bill’s not a “with kids” kinda guy.<br />
Still not hungry. All boring on the fridge front. The couch invites me to visit;<br />
I concede to its siren’s call. I sit there, then lay there and think. I hear the slow<br />
occasional drip of my eternally damp pants. I look at the TV, but don’t flip it on.<br />
Why listen to the heads tell me the what and wherefores of a day I just don’t give a<br />
damned tinker about?<br />
That little nudge—that all-is-not-as-I-think-it-is nudge—keeps pressing on<br />
my brain. I’m forgetting something, and it isn’t butter on the grocery list. It is a<br />
memory, an important one, maybe the most important. Stupid brain, get a move<br />
on, get your inner Sherlock in gear.<br />
Nope.<br />
Nothing.<br />
Once more around the ball. Still no Bill, still no call to George, still wasting<br />
the day away in damp clothes that I just can’t be bothered to change. As I past the<br />
mirror in the hall I look at my simulacrum and do a double take. At the best of<br />
times I ain’t pretty, but that fella looks rough, even for me. Looks like I spent the<br />
weekend soaking in the tub. Maybe I should, it might do some good. Look at that,<br />
my digits are still pruned up.<br />
When was the last time I got out of the apartment? Yesterday, it must have<br />
been. I had to go to work . . . What was yesterday? Saturday? No, it was Fri . . . no,<br />
it was Saturday. Wasn’t it? And not my weekend to work. Must have had it off. That<br />
seems too good to be true; they always call me in on my RDO’s, always.<br />
Can’t think of what day it is. Oh, well. What did I have for breakfast then? Huh.<br />
No idea. How about supper last night? Don’t I just wish I knew. I ate something. I<br />
didn’t get this Rubenesquely petite by skipping meals.<br />
156 The Literary Hatchet
No leftovers to clue me in. In fact, I’ve never seen the fridge so sparkling. Billy<br />
must of went nuts cleaning. What did I eat last night? Damn it. I should know. I<br />
shut the door and notice that kid’s picture on the fridge. The same little girl as in<br />
Bill’s room. I can’t imagine him getting close enough to anyone to put her brat’s pics<br />
up without letting his BFF know somewhere along the way. Maybe I’ve simply lost<br />
my mind and forgot when he spilled those beans.<br />
Well, if I’m going to lose hold on all sanity I might as well do it with some<br />
orange juice. I open the fridge again. No juice. I know I made some. I know Bill<br />
didn’t drink it, he hates the stuff. I search the fridge. Nothing. Crap. I pull the milk<br />
aside for one last look. Only I don’t pull the milk aside. I can’t. I make a fist around<br />
the handle but it’s like I’m holding nothing. My fingers pass though the jug.<br />
I look at my hand. It clicks. Oh, GOD NO, it clicks. This can’t be how it works.<br />
Maybe I’m wrong; maybe if I pinch myself I’ll wake up. I pinch hard, harder,<br />
hardest. Skin comes away saddled between my finger and thumb. I didn’t feel<br />
anything. I should be bleeding, not a drop. Not one drop. I should be crying at<br />
the pain, I ripped a piece of my own skin off. It should hurt. It’s supposed to hurt.<br />
Damn it, why doesn’t it hurt?<br />
I get back in the tub. It isn’t fair. It was foolproof, the meaning of life before me.<br />
That was the point. Get out of the poo and see God. Get out of the crap and become<br />
one with the void. Above all--just get out of my own excrement.<br />
I sit in the tub. I sit in the tub thinking about an EVP I once heard. When<br />
asked about God, the ghost, in the saddest, woebegone voice I’d ever heard said,<br />
“no God.”<br />
I wish I knew.<br />
]<br />
The Literary Hatchet 157
[poetry]<br />
What he wanted was all, that’s all, as others had wanted before him.<br />
What she wanted was for the poem not to have started with What he wanted.<br />
What he gave was all he could, or thought he could, that’s all.<br />
What she gave was all she was, and more, and that wasn’t all.<br />
What he said was You can’t give more than all you are or have.<br />
What she said was That’s the way it is with a poem that starts with What he<br />
wanted.<br />
So what she did was to file papers and leave the poem to found her own.<br />
What he did was: act surprised. I think he really was surprised.<br />
What she tried at first was to begin her new poem with What she wanted.<br />
What she got was what she wanted, which was to get what she gave.<br />
But now they’re discussing a new kind of poem<br />
That won’t start with What she wanted or What he wanted but something<br />
else—<br />
They’re in consultation trying to figure out what—<br />
And when they do, they’re going to rewrite the history of everything.<br />
And in the event that their trailblazing work<br />
Remain unpublished forever,<br />
You and I might read their draft,<br />
Hold hands in their new-age way,<br />
And with our free hands, take down the stars from the sky<br />
One by one<br />
And from their brilliance<br />
Build a tower<br />
To the moon—<br />
Together—<br />
If that’s what you want.<br />
—james b. nicola<br />
158 The Literary Hatchet
[poetry]<br />
My cat eyed girl stands by the bamboo<br />
thicketswhen<br />
a pair of water pots rest on the<br />
sugar sand -<br />
her ear-rings shine like my soul in the<br />
saffron light -<br />
finger tips of the summer wind play<br />
music of the<br />
earth on the bamboo stems - I remember.<br />
There were<br />
phrases and punctuation marks of love in<br />
her body language.<br />
My love belongs to an extinct species.<br />
It’s not<br />
your butterfly love flitting around the<br />
carnal honey.<br />
Certainly you’ll call it, ‘Oldfashioned’.<br />
Love keeps its virginity even after fifty<br />
years.<br />
It’s unfading charm’s in the reality I<br />
loved her,<br />
in the belief she loved me, and in the<br />
distance<br />
that shyness kept between us.<br />
—fabiyas mv<br />
The Literary Hatchet 159
[short story]<br />
by jack campbell jr.<br />
160 The Literary Hatchet
I revved my Rascal scooter with my good hand, racing through the parking lot<br />
of my local grocery mega-mart. For a moment, with the warm breeze on my face,<br />
I forgot the painful tingling that plagued my body. The automatic doors opened in<br />
front of me, and zipped in to the air conditioned store. I shivered. They kept the<br />
place so damned cold that the cashiers should’ve been penguins.<br />
Carol, the deli manager, waved from behind the hot foods case where I dined<br />
at least five nights a week. I stopped the scooter so that I could wave back with<br />
my good hand. Then I started toward the pharmacy at the far corner of the store.<br />
I would have sworn that the damn thing’s batteries would give out before I made<br />
it there. I remembered when grocery stores sold groceries. Now, they looked like<br />
goddamn theme parks. Bright signs advertised everything from ribeye steaks to<br />
Kansas City Chiefs T-shirts.<br />
We were a long way from Kansas City. Hell, we were a long way from most<br />
things. Despite that, with the pins and needles torturing my limbs, Kansas City<br />
seemed closer than the grocery store pharmacy. It was my fault. I let my medicine<br />
run out. Maybe, the MS fogged my brain. Maybe, I still wanted to be the tough guy<br />
that sat restless inside my wrinkled shell, the man I used to be. I rolled past families<br />
with carts full of toddlers and bagged breakfast cereal. Not one of them would have<br />
believed that this crumpled up old bastard was once the most dangerous man in<br />
New Jersey.<br />
Of course, that’s the way it’s supposed to be. I didn’t move out here to be<br />
noticed. Forty-five years ago, when my right hand began to fall asleep, I hopped on<br />
a Greyhound bus with nothing but a bagful of cash and a .44 magnum. I rode that<br />
sweaty fart-box west, feeling a bit like the guys in those old cowboy movies. Just<br />
another asshole with a gun.<br />
I pulled up to the pharmacy and cursed under my breath. The line stretched<br />
back past the reading glasses display. My medicine wouldn’t provide instant relief<br />
by any means, but knowing that it waited just steps away made the pain flare up.<br />
I tried to wiggle my toes, but for all I knew, they had been cut off by the sliding<br />
doors. I couldn’t feel a thing.<br />
Joey, the young pharmacy assistant saw me. “I’ve got your prescription ready,<br />
Mr. Martin. It will just be a couple of minutes.”<br />
I waved him off with my left hand. He was a good kid. Worked hard. Probably<br />
on his way to being a better man than I had ever hoped to be. Sometimes, I thought<br />
the infectious trembling in my body was a curse. God’s way of evening the balance<br />
on the terrible things that I did. It was like every person that I hurt took just a little<br />
bit of my body with them. I doubted He was done with me, yet. I hadn’t taken<br />
confession since I left Jersey. I was an alleged Methodist, these days, but I doubted<br />
St. Peter would buy that excuse.<br />
The Literary Hatchet 161
I made it to the front of the line and pulled up to the handicapped counter next<br />
to the cash register.<br />
Joey grabbed the large paper bag that held my medication and brought it over<br />
to me. “Mr. Martin, how are you doing today?”<br />
“Hit and miss,” I said.<br />
“Well, we’ll get you fixed up.” Joey punched buttons on the computer that<br />
served as their cash register. “I know this is stupid, but I have to ask if you have any<br />
questions about these prescriptions.”<br />
“I know them better than my doctor.” I tried to smile, but the right side of my<br />
face didn’t respond.<br />
“I’m going to miss you, Mr. Martin.”<br />
I fought to raise a paralyzed eyebrow. “Miss me? Jesus, I don’t look that bad, do<br />
I?”<br />
Joey went pale. “Oh no, I didn’t mean that. I got accepted to Nebraska. I’m<br />
heading out to Lincoln next week to get a head start on classes.”<br />
“Congratulations.” I meant it. I did. But at the same time, I’d gotten used to Joey.<br />
I didn’t like dealing with new people. I’d eyed them with suspicion for so long that<br />
they still made me antsy. The Feds and the family probably weren’t trying too hard<br />
to find me after all those years, but old habits and old grudges died equally hard.<br />
“I’m going to be a real pharmacist someday.” Joey scanned a barcode on the bag.<br />
“Coming back here when you are done?”<br />
Joey laughed. “No offense, Mr. Martin. But this isn’t the kind of place you come<br />
back to. Not by choice.”<br />
I smiled, at least on the inside.<br />
A large man stepped up next to me. I saw the automatic in his hand before I<br />
noticed the black ski mask that covered his face. Old feelings rushed back, dusty<br />
with cobwebs and nostalgia.<br />
Joey didn’t look up from the computer. “I’ll be with you in a second, sir. I’m just<br />
finishing up.”<br />
“You’d better be finished, now.” The robber spoke in a low, forced growl. At least<br />
he was smart enough to disguise his voice. There were so many goddamn amateurs<br />
out there.<br />
Joey looked up in to the blackness of a gun barrel two inches from his face. He<br />
shook worse than I did.<br />
I lifted my good hand, palm out defensively. “Now, take it easy, son. You don’t<br />
want to hurt anyone here.” My voice felt smoother than it had in years.<br />
“Fuck off, Grandpa. Go play bingo or something.”<br />
My hackles raised. Like I said—old habits. “Listen, kid, you’d better watch your<br />
fucking mouth. I’ll reach in to that mask and cut out your goddamn tongue.”<br />
Ski Mask smirked. He reached down and goosed my scooter’s throttle. The<br />
motor whined as I crashed in to a spinning wire rack of Mother’s Day cards.<br />
Joey’s face turned red. “Hey, leave him alone.”<br />
“If Grandpa minds his business, he won’t have any more accidents. I want all<br />
162 The Literary Hatchet
your painkillers—OxyContin, oxycodone, Oxy Clean, I don’t care. Throw them in<br />
a bag.”<br />
Joey crossed his shaking arms. He probably meant it to seem tough, but it<br />
looked like he was hugging himself. “I’m not giving you anything.”<br />
I cursed under my breath and struggled to free myself from a pile of pink<br />
stationary and wire mesh.<br />
“What did you say, motherfucker?” The guy shoved his gun against Joey’s<br />
forehead.<br />
“You heard me.”<br />
The problem with guys like Joey was that they always played the good guy. They<br />
didn’t work the angles. To a good guy, there’s right and there’s wrong. If you weren’t<br />
doing right, then you were wrong. Unfortunately, assholes with guns—like me and<br />
Ski Mask—don’t work that way.<br />
I swept the cards off of my lap, but my handle bars got caught in the wire rack.<br />
“Put the gun down,” I said. “Joey, just give him the drugs.”<br />
“Listen to the geezer, and give me the fucking pills.”<br />
“I’m not going to do that,” Joey stepped back from the gun. The red imprint of<br />
the barrel etched the pale skin of his forehead.<br />
“Listen, you little prick, I will fucking kill you right here.”<br />
He would, too. Some men didn’t have it in them. I could always tell. I could<br />
see it in their eyes. Ski Mask had the eyes of a man who’d seen war. Whether it was<br />
overseas or on the streets, this man had killed. I knew those eyes. They stared back<br />
in my shaving mirror every morning.<br />
Joey stood his ground, back straight and chin out. “You have a problem. You<br />
need help. Rehab or something. Giving you pills would be like putting a gun to<br />
your head.”<br />
Ski Mask jumped over the counter. Joey stumbled back, falling to his ass on the<br />
raised pharmacy floor. I fought with the handlebars, trying to free them from the<br />
card rack’s grasp. I heard a woman’s scream. The countdown had started.<br />
“Just calm down,” I said, my breath heavy with effort. “Joey, give him the pills.”<br />
Another scream, accented by the trembling percussion of fleeing feet.<br />
I could barely see Joey’s head over the counter. He looked up at Ski Mask. “The<br />
police are on their way. This is your last chance to get out of here.”<br />
I grew desperate in my struggle with the card rack. Joey wouldn’t have to answer<br />
to St. Peter. Good men didn’t have to worry about their sins. They just had to worry<br />
about assholes like me. Joey thought that the guy would turn and run. I knew he<br />
wouldn’t, because I wouldn’t. I would’ve shot Joey between the eyes and grabbed as<br />
many pills as I could before leaving.<br />
I reached back with my good hand in to the worn leather bag I kept slung over<br />
the back of my Rascal. I found the grip of my lightweight .38 special. I yanked it<br />
free and threw the dead weight of my body off of the scooter seat. I didn’t know that<br />
I could still feel the sort of pain that shot through my hip as my pelvis shattered on<br />
the tile floor. I gritted my teeth and pulled the trigger. I’d never killed a man with<br />
The Literary Hatchet 163
my left hand. It was a wonder that I could hold it steady enough to shoot. The gun<br />
kicked harder than I expected. My shoulder seized in pain right before the hollow<br />
point bullet entered the back of Ski Mask’s skull. His face blew apart in a spray of<br />
bone, blood, and insulated fabric.<br />
“Holy shit!” Joey screamed. He peeked over the pharmacy counter. Tiny redgray<br />
pieces of Ski Mask’s brain speckled Joey’s face. “Mr. Martin, are you okay?”<br />
I dropped the gun. A bright yellow deodorant advertisement spun above me<br />
like a miniature sun. The problem with good guys was that they couldn’t remain<br />
anonymous. Fuck it. It didn’t matter anymore. The Feds could haul me away. The<br />
family could send some young prick after me with nothing but a big ego and an<br />
equally big gun. At my age, one asshole with a gun was the same as another.<br />
Joey had 911 on the phone, but I could already hear the sirens. It was hard to<br />
breathe. The cold tile floor felt like ice on the back of my neck. For a moment, my<br />
body buzzed not with deadness, but with pain and pride.<br />
Maybe St. Peter would call it even.<br />
]<br />
164 The Literary Hatchet
[poetry]<br />
Faster I ran, faster it spun on a slender stem.<br />
My mom’s weaving magic was marvelous.<br />
Her hard fingers – with the knife scars and<br />
allergic rashes– worked wonders on green<br />
coconut leaves.<br />
Since I was always impatient to dash onto<br />
the ‘spinning ecstasy’, I forgot to admire<br />
her, yet she wove again and again for me<br />
with a smile.<br />
Many skills die in the kitchen as the chicks<br />
in omelets.<br />
Faster the leaf top spun, faster my experience<br />
altered.<br />
Speed’s a risky pleasure.<br />
The top and I withered – faltered to a pause<br />
by the evening.<br />
Now I sit musing, ‘Experience is void, unless<br />
there is movement’.<br />
—fabiyas mv<br />
The Literary Hatchet 165
[short story]<br />
by jackie bee<br />
She opened her eyes.<br />
Sunshine filled the room, illuminating the perfectly clean writing desk, the<br />
shining floor, the spotless bedside table. She turned onto her side, reached out and<br />
adjusted the small mirror standing in the middle of it. Then she tucked the bottle of<br />
sleeping pills into the upper drawer. She hadn’t needed them last night.<br />
She sat up and lowered her feet to the floor, fitting them straight into her<br />
slippers, and stretched. Things didn’t seem so bad in the morning.<br />
Then she heard the sound of a toilet being flushed.<br />
She froze. The sound in itself wasn’t scary, but added to the fact that she had<br />
been living alone for more than a year now, it certainly deserved attention.<br />
She sprang out of the bed and hurried about the room in a panic. Someone<br />
was in the apartment. That wasn’t supposed to be. That was wrong. She had no<br />
clear plan for this scenario.<br />
Police, she thought. You call the police when there’s an intruder in your house.<br />
She darted out of the room, aiming to reach the telephone, and at the same<br />
time, the bathroom door at the other end of the corridor opened. A man came<br />
out, wearing only his underwear, a folded newspaper sticking from under his arm.<br />
“Oh,” he said. “Morning.”<br />
“Jeff?” She breathed out, her fear draining away and her annoyance rising as if<br />
they occupied two interconnected vessels. “What are you doing here?”<br />
“Uhm,” he said. “Whatever people usually do in the toilets, you know?” He<br />
shrugged and headed to the dining room. She followed, gawking at him in disbelief.<br />
“I don’t mean that! What are you doing in my flat?”<br />
166 The Literary Hatchet
He frowned at her. “Like, I live here. Did you have a bad dream or something?<br />
You look out of sync.”<br />
“No,” she said. “I didn’t have a bad dream, and no, you don’t live here!”<br />
“Are you joking?” His frown deepened. He took the newspaper from under his<br />
arm and let it fall on the coffee table. The look of it there made her wince.<br />
“Get your freaking paper off the table,” she hissed. “How dare you?”<br />
“What’s wrong?” He raised one hand in a placating gesture and picked the<br />
paper back up. “You’re really not yourself today. Go get more sleep.”<br />
He turned and went into the kitchen. She saw him taking a cup from the<br />
middle of her neatly arranged line of coffee cups, and it made her wince again. He<br />
had to take one from the side, she’d fought hard to teach him that, back when they<br />
were still married, but there he was now, not only breaking into her house, but<br />
taking a cup out of the middle of the line. This was intolerable.<br />
“Put it back,” she hissed. “Put it back and get out!”<br />
“Cool down, okay?” he said, not looking at her. “I know you got your rules, but<br />
I live here, too, and you have to respect that.”<br />
“You don’t live here! Not since our divorce last year—remember?”<br />
“What are you talking about?” He opened the fridge. “We’ve never divorced.”<br />
“Yes we did,” she said. “And put that tuna back, I only eat it on Fridays.”<br />
“Well, I eat it whenever I want,” he said. “And what’s that talk about divorce?<br />
Did you go off your head?”<br />
She took a deep breath. “Are you on drugs?” she said. “Do you really think that<br />
you live here and we are still married?”<br />
“Of course not,” he said. “We were never married.”<br />
“What?” She gaped at him.<br />
“I mean, I’m your brother, so how could we be married?” He closed the fridge<br />
door and then turned to her, as if he’d had a sudden inspiration. “Wait—maybe you<br />
are on drugs?”<br />
“You’re not my brother!” she said. “I never even had a brother!”<br />
He looked at her, holding a tuna can in one hand, scratching the place where<br />
his chest hair stuck out from the neck of his tee shirt with the other. His green eyes<br />
expressed such genuine confusion that for a second a doubt crawled into her mind.<br />
She shook her head. This was ridiculous.<br />
“Look, I don’t know what’s your problem,” she said. “But I’ll call the police if<br />
you don’t leave right away. I don’t like this game. And put the tuna back.”<br />
“It’s peanut butter.” He waved the container at her.<br />
“It’s tuna.”<br />
“Don’t be silly.” He reached for the bread bin. “You really need to consider<br />
some treatment for your issues. You’re getting truly weird.”<br />
“All right,” she said, and marched straight to the telephone.<br />
It took three rings before a gleeful female voice answered.<br />
“Barton’s flower shop.”<br />
“I was calling the police,” Pauline said.<br />
“It’s a mistake, then,” the woman said and hung up.<br />
The Literary Hatchet 167
Pauline checked the number she’d just dialed. It was the police number all<br />
right.<br />
“What’s going on?” she muttered. “Jeff?”<br />
“My name is Gary,” he said from the kitchen.<br />
“Since when?”<br />
“Since, like, forever?”<br />
She slowly put the phone down.<br />
She’d been working for years to make everything in her life clear, structured<br />
and organized. There were times in the past they’d almost made her believe that she<br />
had been wrong about that. Jeff would make her do spontaneous things sometimes,<br />
which could be kind of fun. She’d had friends and she’d gone out.<br />
But as the years passed by, she’d come to realize they hadn’t been her friends<br />
after all. They had all been just selfish people who couldn’t maintain their life in a<br />
proper order, and had only been trying to reduce her to their level. And there was<br />
no place in her life for unorganized people.<br />
This morning, however, proved to be anything but organized. It was a mess,<br />
and she had to cling to whatever structure she had left, if she wanted to handle the<br />
situation. Perhaps the effect of whatever drugs Jeff must have taken would wear off<br />
soon, and he’d be out of her apartment and her life once again. For now, she had to<br />
remain calm and composed.<br />
“I’m going to work,” she said. “When I’m back, I hope you won’t be here.”<br />
“Sure,” he said, chewing on his tuna sandwich.<br />
She got dressed quickly, applied some mascara and just enough makeup to<br />
conceal the circles under her eyes. Then she brushed her hair into a ponytail and<br />
picked up her handbag.<br />
“I’m out,” she called, not daring to look into the kitchen, sure he’d messed it up.<br />
“Have a nice day, Sis,” he answered, and then she heard a porcelain cup fall on<br />
the floor, smashing into pieces. “Oh, shit!” he cried.<br />
She clenched her teeth and stormed out.<br />
A little boy was playing by the building entry. Pauline had been meeting<br />
him there almost every morning. The two-year-old would run around, while his<br />
babysitter, an elderly, big, apathetic woman, sat nearby with a box of chocolate<br />
cookies on her lap. Most people coming out of the house greeted the boy with<br />
smiles, but Pauline had never liked children, especially children who bumped into<br />
her on her way to work, their fingers sticky with chocolate. Therefore, she’d made it<br />
perfectly clear to both the boy and the babysitter that they should keep away from<br />
her.<br />
This time, as usual, the boy stopped once he’d seen her coming out, and<br />
ran to his babysitter for protection. Pauline walked by, relieved that something<br />
still worked the way it should. She even smiled at the boy to encourage his good<br />
behavior, but he winked at her, and it made her smile disappear.<br />
The post office she worked in was forty-eight steps from her house. She always<br />
counted steps as she walked, but today, the boy’s wink had put her off her stride,<br />
and she’d forgotten to start counting. She contemplated coming back to start again,<br />
168 The Literary Hatchet
ut that would have looked just weird, and she didn’t want to encounter the boy<br />
again.<br />
The post office had been opened already, and a few customers waited in line.<br />
Pauline’s coworker, Brenda, was talking to one of them through her window.<br />
Pauline walked up to the Staff Only door at the side of the counters and tried to<br />
push it open, but it was locked from the inside.<br />
“Brenda,” she called out. “Get the latch for me.”<br />
“Just wait in line, madam,” Brenda answered in her high-pitched voice, not<br />
looking at her.<br />
“It’s me, Pauline.”<br />
“Please wait in line to get your service.”<br />
“What service?” Pauline said impatiently. “I work here, what are you talking<br />
about?”<br />
At last, Brenda granted her a look. “It must be a mistake.” She sounded as if she<br />
were genuinely trying to help. “Perhaps you work in a different post office?”<br />
“How many post offices are around here? Are you kidding me?”<br />
“I think the lady here made it perfectly clear that you need to wait in line,” said<br />
the customer by the window. “Just wait for your turn and get your cheeseburger,<br />
like everybody else.”<br />
“What cheeseburger?” she said meekly.<br />
All the customers in the line were staring at her now.<br />
“Please, madam,” Brenda said. “Either wait in line or leave. Don’t make me call<br />
for security.”<br />
Pauline counted seventy two steps on her way back. It didn’t make sense, but<br />
not any more than anything else did today. All she wanted was to get home and be<br />
in a safe, protected, organized place once again.<br />
The boy by the entrance ran up to her, his arms outstretched. Before she had a<br />
chance to react, he had enclosed her legs in a tight embrace and looked up at her,<br />
grinning.<br />
“Mommy!” he shouted. “You got me the tractor? I want it!”<br />
“He’s obsessed with that tractor,” the babysitter confirmed. “All day long—<br />
mommy’s getting me a tractor, mommy’s getting me a tractor…”<br />
“I’m not his Mommy!” Pauline shouted, losing whatever composure she’d still<br />
maintained, trying to free herself from the sticky little hands that clung to her legs,<br />
but the boy seemed way too strong for his age. “Get this thing off me! He’s not my<br />
son!”<br />
Eventually, she managed to unclench the boy’s fingers and push him away. He<br />
stumbled and fell down—a little too theatrically, it seemed to her, like a football<br />
player pretending to be more hurt than he actually was—and burst into tears.<br />
The babysitter stood up heavily, looking at Pauline with disapproval, and at that<br />
moment, Jeff walked out of the building.<br />
The boy climbed back to his feet and ran to him, crying.<br />
“Mommy pushed me! She pushed me!”<br />
“Why would you do that?” Jeff picked the boy up and frowned at Pauline.<br />
The Literary Hatchet 169
“He’s not my son!” she cried. “What’s going on here? I don’t have any children!”<br />
“Of course he’s yours,” Jeff said. “Yours and mine.”<br />
“So, you’re my husband again?” Her voice came out way too shrill. “Not a<br />
brother?”<br />
“What brother?” Jeff said in confusion. “You never had a brother.”<br />
She locked the door of her apartment from the inside, and stepped away from<br />
it, panting, staring at it as if expecting someone to try and break it down. Then she<br />
looked around, listening, ready for another surprise, but the apartment sounded<br />
deserted, just like it was supposed to be.<br />
She put her bag on the small desk by the entry, took her shoes off and went to<br />
her bedroom. All was quiet. She sat down on her bad, clasping her hands tightly<br />
together. So, it had happened, she thought. They’d been telling her all this time<br />
that her orderliness was an obsession and not just a way of life, that she’d go mad<br />
one day, raving mad, and here she was, lost in this surreal morning where nothing<br />
seemed to be in its place. What was she to do now? Seek treatment? And what if<br />
they weren’t able to help her—would she have to spend her days in a locked room,<br />
together with her hallucinations?<br />
Too much, she thought. Life had seemed too much to bear just yesterday, and<br />
today it had crossed the line completely.<br />
She reached out and took the sleeping pills out of the drawer. She unscrewed<br />
the cap and peered into the bottle. It was empty.<br />
At first she thought it was another twist of her madness, but then, gradually,<br />
the memories began to come back. The night before, sitting on the bed, popping<br />
the pills one after another, watching some evening show, not quiet seeing it, pulling<br />
the blanket up to her chin, feeling cold, feeling hot, feeling sleepy at last, feeling at<br />
peace at last, feeling that if life has no order—then at least death must be able to<br />
provide some.<br />
She heard footsteps behind. The empty pill bottle trembling in her fingers,<br />
she glanced over her shoulder and saw Jeff standing in the doorway with a box of<br />
chocolate cookies in his hand.<br />
“Where am I?” Pauline said weakly.<br />
“But you know it,” he said in a low, unfamiliar voice. “You know suicides never<br />
go to heaven, don’t you? Here now. Have a cookie.”<br />
]<br />
170 The Literary Hatchet
[poetry]<br />
The world blasts in one nook or the other everyday.<br />
It writhes amidst the stink of the burnt emotions.<br />
Lullabies are mutilated in the roar of AK 47.<br />
A flock of black birds hovers in the sky.<br />
Waif dogs and vultures carve the sculptures<br />
on the scattered fragments of the innocence.<br />
Infants fumble for the nipples among the debris.<br />
Forlorn whimpering of the newest widow<br />
rises up with the smoke. Family men step into<br />
the death wagons with the bleeding thoughts.<br />
White doves shudder to sit on the roof of the worship.<br />
A hundred revenge kids are born in each blast.<br />
All ‘isms’ end in ‘revegisms’. Funeral of the peace<br />
is celebrated in the clattering of the weapons.<br />
As the emotions lose the buttress of sense and reason,<br />
the world blasts, then it bounces back.<br />
—fabiyas mv<br />
The Literary Hatchet 171
[short story]<br />
The car swerved. Tires shrieked and the metal of the vehicle groaned its<br />
displeasure while it spun and turned on the glossy black surface of the road. From<br />
the edge of his peripheral vision a guardrail slid into the man’s view, a bright<br />
shining bar against the night. The car tore through the barrier, filling the night<br />
with noises of shrieking and grinding metal on metal and jarring the occupant as<br />
the car plummeted into the murky water below.<br />
There seemed to be a pause before the car hit the water, as if it were a child on a<br />
diving board, committed to jumping but having just remembered an overwhelming<br />
fear of falling, drowning, imminent death, and looking the fool in front of others.<br />
But the pause only lasted a moment, and the car hit the water with a thunderous<br />
noise, splashing waves pushing out from all directions. To the driver, the vehicle’s<br />
impact with the water had a jolt similar to the hitting of the guard rail, and he<br />
was still recovering from the second impact when the water started lapping at the<br />
windows that he had cracked open to pull in some of the warm night air. By the<br />
time his mind was able to understand the concepts of “crashed,” “sinking,” and<br />
”trapped,” the car was already underwater and making its way to the bottom of the<br />
lake. The din of water never stopped as it continued to stream inside the vehicle like<br />
a swarm of deadly miniature waterfalls: water in, air out.<br />
While struggling against a sodden seat belt that had suddenly become more<br />
complicated with the addition of wet clothing and waterlogged fingers that were<br />
slowly going numb from the cold water of the lake, the man’s mind raced. The belt<br />
seemed unaware its job was done as it continued to fight with him as the cold water<br />
raised itself to tickle at his neck and caress his chin.<br />
Now adrenaline surged through his body. Mixed with the knowledge that death<br />
could be very close at hand there was a unique clarity of mind. His life became a<br />
line, all of the events that had influenced him became clear, all of his subconscious<br />
172 The Literary Hatchet
y m.y. kearney<br />
reasoning came to the surface, his goals defined themselves and the path to their<br />
accomplishment became blindingly simple. Even the problems that had caused so<br />
much pain and anxiety with their complexity became such tiny annoyances that he<br />
laughed at the sudden realization of how much time obsessing over them. The seat<br />
belt abruptly relented and easily popped open.<br />
Then the water was over his face and the only thing he could notice was how<br />
empty and focused his mind had become. He wasn’t immediately conscious of<br />
the moment, but a quiet and observant part of his mind took notice and filed the<br />
feelings and observations away for later examination. He fought with the door<br />
while the air bubble above him shimmered like liquid mercury, shrinking away as<br />
the water pressure equalized inside the car.<br />
He self-filed away the feeling of his hair moving in the water, flowing back and<br />
forth around his face in time with his more frantic motions, and how his once-light<br />
clothing became a rough and heavy straightjacket which clung to him tightly in all<br />
the wrong places. Who knew that his sneakers would be freezing bricks when wet?<br />
He curled himself up on the seat, his stiff jeans rubbing the skin off of his<br />
waist, groin, and knees, and barely managed to wedge his feet against the stick shift<br />
and center console. He shoved himself against the stubborn door. It finally yielded<br />
to his efforts, bringing an unexpected chill with the exchange of colder water for<br />
the slightly warmer water inside the car. He flowed out of the door with the warmer<br />
water and the last of the air, feeling like a poorly constructed metaphor involving<br />
drowning butterflies emerging from metal cocoons. Kicking off of the door frame<br />
he made his way to the sparkle and swaying image of the moon refracted through<br />
the swirling water above. He fought to keep the breath in his lungs as he swam to<br />
the surface, but the burn was too great. The stale air trickled out of his chest and<br />
was swallowed by the clutching, suffocating water. He was too soon empty and<br />
The Literary Hatchet 173
aching and longing for what wasn’t there. He needed to take a breath and ease the<br />
ever-growing burn, to let his lungs expand again.<br />
He wanted to live. He needed to breathe. But he had to wait.<br />
The surface was closer, unless the trickster moon was taunting him with an<br />
illusion. Finally breaking into the air, the water felt like freezing fingers trailing<br />
over his face. He was able to snatch a much needed and exhilarating breath. His<br />
head swam as his starved lungs took in great racking breaths over and over again.<br />
He tried to tread water while his heart thumped so hard that he seemed to shake<br />
with each beat and the frozen water continued to lick at the edges of his face. Once<br />
the adrenaline eased and his body started to ache and slow he angled himself<br />
backwards in the water and floated for a moment as he slowed his breathing and<br />
regained some situational awareness. He started swimming slowly for the shore.<br />
After about five minutes of swimming he was on dry land. He began removing<br />
the most waterlogged of his clothing. His shoes and socks came off with a struggle,<br />
his feet swollen to bursting with absorbed water and molded to the fabric. It didn’t<br />
help that his fingers were also pruned, numb, and shaking. After managing to<br />
free his feet from their encumbering vises his fingers had limbered up enough to<br />
manipulate too many miniature buttons and he divested himself of the rest of his<br />
clothing. He gave a grateful sigh at being released. He wondered at the difference<br />
in temperature between the water and the grassy shore as he was finally left to dry<br />
out in the warm night air. He rubbed his bare feet in the warm grass as he lay down<br />
for a moment and reflected at the sky. His cell phone was dead, a point that he had<br />
forgotten would happen, so he would have to wait for someone to notice the crash<br />
or make his own way to an emergency call box. For the moment all his worries had<br />
answers, his mind was clear of clutter, and the world was finally simple. Now that<br />
he knew how it felt to crash and almost drown, he would take his course advisor’s<br />
advice and write what he knew.<br />
]<br />
174 The Literary Hatchet
[poetry]<br />
Limestone walls twelve feet wide<br />
Five hundred years since they were hewn<br />
The prisoners soon lose their pride<br />
Crossing the courtyard at bright noon<br />
Then entering the passage gloom;<br />
Descending stairs by candle light,<br />
Darkness grows thicker and thicker,<br />
Reaching the bottom, turning right,<br />
The gaoler’s candle flame flickers<br />
Five collective hearts beat quicker;<br />
The door is closed, the bolt is thrown,<br />
Five men stand in utter darkness,<br />
Their surroundings a dread unknown<br />
Every step a stumbled guess,<br />
Every touch a frightening mess,<br />
For slime and damp and wet and mold<br />
Their new companions felt unseen,<br />
Every sound echoes round so bold<br />
That whispers transform and careen<br />
Through ears until the souls do keen;<br />
No bed, no chair, just damp stone floor,<br />
Food once a day, clean straw seldom,<br />
Despair weighs heavy, spirits sore,<br />
Rain, cold, they drizzled in tandem<br />
Dark certain, survival random.<br />
—joann grisetti<br />
The Literary Hatchet 175
[poetry]<br />
in basement digs,<br />
the passage of time<br />
sells useless tickets;<br />
invisible chess pieces<br />
move across a board of light;<br />
the hand that holds the emptiness<br />
rules the end of darkness,<br />
its rotting fingers cleaved by<br />
orange blades of meddling sun;<br />
in cockroach glands,<br />
the apostle’s creed of leftovers<br />
chants its delight<br />
at finding tongues<br />
to secrete its ravaging;<br />
music sours, sags in a sorry stereo arm<br />
that refuses to budge from the inner circle<br />
of an old 1.p.;<br />
dead dancers sprawl across<br />
the cracked linoleum,<br />
the gather of their dresses<br />
gagging forgotten joy,<br />
lithe muscle bled dry by<br />
its own trances,<br />
raw faces suffocated<br />
by the ghosts of heat;<br />
the conductor marks the spot<br />
with careless drool,<br />
a shattered glass puncturing his cheek;<br />
sewer-pipes cough<br />
worthless rhythm<br />
down the clanging rites of plumbing;<br />
death barricades behind<br />
the sunken window;<br />
the crocus wilts,<br />
every thought in its tendrils of witness,<br />
a cold snap;<br />
the insidious glow of<br />
morning on rancid flesh<br />
casts a bleary search-light<br />
on all and company;<br />
in the shadow of an empty bowl,<br />
a solitary cat<br />
licks all signs of life from its paws<br />
—john grey<br />
176 The Literary Hatchet
[poetry]<br />
—janne karlsson<br />
The Literary Hatchet 177
[short story]<br />
by steven slavin<br />
My name is Jim Lewis, and I have never been married. In fact, my longest<br />
relationship lasted just two months. And that one ended during the administration<br />
of President Jimmy Carter.<br />
Yeah, I know what you’re thinking: How old could this guy be? Well, you know<br />
that policy that President Clinton recently started with the military—“Don’t ask;<br />
don’t tell”? I love it! And the ladies do tell me I look good for my age.<br />
If you’ve even glanced at the personal ads, the chances are you’ve come across<br />
some like this one:<br />
Youthful, very successful businessman, late forties,<br />
looking for very attractive college educated woman,<br />
20-29. for serious relationship.<br />
I didn’t write this ad, but the guy who did could have been my twin. Because my<br />
ideal woman would be beautiful, smart, and in her twenties. Now I’m not claiming<br />
that women like that are busting down my door, but on the other hand, why settle?<br />
Older guys like me have often had trouble adjusting to the title, Ms., which has<br />
largely replaced Miss and Mrs. back in the day, when women married they proudly<br />
took not just their husband’s surname, but often his first name as well. For example,<br />
Miss Sheila Schlockowitz was magically transformed into Mrs. William Prescott.<br />
But on the downside, Miss Larisa Karamazov became Mrs. Colpepper Exum, the<br />
third.<br />
Not that any of this really matters, since I am not exactly marriage material. I<br />
178 The Literary Hatchet
mean, I like good-looking women—the younger the better—but I don’t expect to<br />
hear wedding bells any time during the next forty or fifty years.<br />
So you can imagine my surprise when credit card bills began to arrive in my<br />
mailbox that were addressed to Mrs. James Lewis. Clearly, there had been some<br />
mistake. Whatever else might be said of me, I am not exactly the marrying kind.<br />
It follows, then, that there is no Mrs. James Lewis living with me. You’re welcome<br />
to check for yourself, but please call first, because my apartment is usually a mess.<br />
Mrs. James Lewis had run up nearly two hundred thousand dollars of debt on a<br />
wide array of bank and department store credit cards. When I finally began calling<br />
some of these institutions, it was explained to me that a Mrs. James Lewis of 149<br />
West 9th Street was the owner of these cards.<br />
When the woman from the credit department at Macy’s told me that I was<br />
legally responsible for my wife’s debts I blurted out,“Wife! Listen, lady, I can’t even<br />
get a date!” She hung up on me, perhaps thinking that I was hitting on her.<br />
The bills kept coming, and I grew more and more desperate. I finally decided<br />
to hire a matrimonial lawyer. The first thing I told her was that I was not now, nor<br />
ever had been married. “Excuse me, Mr. Lewis, but am I missing something here?<br />
My practice is exclusively matrimonial law. Perhaps you would be better served by<br />
engaging a dating service.”<br />
“Let me start from the beginning.” For the next hour I poured my heart out to<br />
her. From time to time, she would ask a question. And when I finally finished, she<br />
provided an excellent summation.<br />
“Mr. Lewis, you are the victim of credit card fraud. But you are not legally liable<br />
for these debts because you are not married to the person who committed this<br />
fraud.”<br />
“So I’m in the clear?”<br />
“Well, not completely. First of all, your credit has certainly been ruined. And<br />
second, some of the creditors may take legal action against you.”<br />
“So what can I do?”<br />
“You can go to the police. Or, you can engage a private investigator. Or possibly<br />
both.”<br />
“What would you advise?”<br />
“Well, why not go to the police first. And if you’re still not satisfied, I can give<br />
you the phone number of a private investigator who specializes in this area.”<br />
I wasn’t sure if I felt better or worse after talking to the lawyer, but her advice<br />
did sound pretty good. The next day I walked over to the 6th Precinct, which was<br />
just around the corner. After an hour’s wait, I got to explain my predicament to a<br />
detective. He told me that he would share this information with detectives who<br />
dealt with consumer fraud, and that, if I really wanted to pursue this, he could<br />
set up an appointment for me with someone in that unit. In the meantime, he<br />
suggested that I make copies of all the bills I had received.<br />
A week later I met with Detective Michael Riley of the Consumer Fraud Squad.<br />
After looking over all the bills, he smiled at me. “Well, Mr. Lewis, I have some good<br />
news and some bad news.”<br />
The Literary Hatchet 179
Right! The good news would be that I was married to a beautiful woman half my<br />
age, and the bad news that she had bankrupted me.<br />
What he actually said was that I was just the latest of a series of victims of a<br />
woman who had been running this scam for years. So I was definitely not legally<br />
responsible for all these bills. In fact, he would see to it that all the credit card<br />
companies and department stores were informed of this, and that my credit would<br />
be fully restored.<br />
And the bad news? Although they had had dozens of excellent leads, they still<br />
had not been able to catch this person.<br />
“Well at least can you explain to me how she had been able to get all these credit<br />
cards without my knowledge?”<br />
“That I can do. She must have filed a change-of-address card with your local<br />
post office. All mail for Mrs. James Lewis of 149 West 9th Street was redirected to<br />
a post office box.”<br />
“OK, so that explains why I wasn’t alerted while she was running up these bills.”<br />
“Exactly.”<br />
“But why did I suddenly start getting the bills about a month ago?”<br />
“Well, after six months, the change-of-address order expires. The post office<br />
assumes that the addressee has informed his or her friends and family of the<br />
address change.”<br />
“So let me see if I understand this. This woman applied for credit as Mrs. James<br />
Lewis, filed a change-of-address card with the post office, and ran up huge credit<br />
card debts. Wow, that’s unbelievable!”<br />
“Not to us, it isn’t.”<br />
“Is there anything else I can do?”<br />
“As a matter of fact there is. Try to think of anyone you know—even a distant<br />
acquaintance—who might have done this. Very often the victim actually knew the<br />
person committing the fraud—a spurned lover, a jealous friend or relative, an old<br />
enemy or rival. You’d be surprised how many people you might have pissed off.”<br />
“Well, I can’t think of anyone off-hand, but I’ll go through my address book as<br />
soon as I get home.”<br />
“Good! In the meanwhile, there are several things we can do on our end. Why<br />
don’t you give me a call in, say, about ten days?”<br />
Ten days later, when I called Detective Riley, I hoped he had had better luck<br />
than I did. My search had not turned up even one person who might have done this<br />
to me. He had had a little more success.<br />
“We know from experience that when the scammer files a change-of-address<br />
card, she has the mail forwarded to a post office box. Each time she runs a new scam,<br />
she opens a different box. So we went to the postmaster in your local post office to<br />
find out where Mrs. James Lewis’ mail was being forwarded. The Postmaster told<br />
us that the scammer had a box in that post office.<br />
“We asked to see if she had any mail. There was a pile of credit card bills, all<br />
addressed to Mrs. James Lewis. The envelopes had been postmarked between forty<br />
to sixty days ago.”<br />
180 The Literary Hatchet
“Why wasn’t she picking up the mail?”<br />
“That’s a good question! She knew that the credit card companies and<br />
department stores must have been getting wise to her, and she may have even<br />
suspected that the police were watching to see who was taking mail out of her post<br />
office box.”<br />
“Were you?”<br />
“No. We don’t have the manpower. And even if we did—we probably would<br />
have been weeks too late to catch her.”<br />
And there was another thing. She must have known that six months after a<br />
change-of-address card is filed, the post office stops forwarding the mail. That’s<br />
why, six months into her scam, you suddenly began getting all those bills.”<br />
“Wow! She had that all figured out!”<br />
“Let me tell you: your ‘wife’ is one smart lady.”<br />
“Yeah, thanks a lot!”<br />
“Wait! There’s more! We opened each of the envelopes we found in the post<br />
office box. Would you believe that she had been making the minimum payment—<br />
about ten or fifteen dollars—every month?”<br />
“Oh, I get it! As long as she did this, she could eventually max out each credit<br />
card.”<br />
“Right you are, Mr. Lewis!”<br />
“Boy, Mrs. James Lewis has a much better head for numbers than her husband.”<br />
“Oh, and there’s one more thing. When you apply for a post office box, you<br />
are required to list not just your old address, but your new one. So even if you’re<br />
having your mail forwarded to a post office box, you still must provide your new<br />
home address.”<br />
“I guess that makes sense. In case there’s any problem with your post office<br />
box—if you didn’t pay your rent on it, or maybe you weren’t collecting your mail,<br />
the post office could get in touch with you.”<br />
“That is correct. So are you ready to hear what new address she put down for<br />
herself?”<br />
“What was it?”<br />
“Would you believe 149 West 9th Street?”<br />
“That’s my address!”<br />
“I know that! Usually the scammer will give a fictitious address, so we’re thinking<br />
that, as a joke, she used yours. Think about it! She files a change-of-address card.<br />
She wants her mail forwarded from 149 West 9th Street to her post office box. And<br />
then she lists her current home address as the place she’s moved from.”<br />
“That makes no sense.”<br />
“Well, I guess maybe to her, listing your address twice was a joke. But when we<br />
catch her, we can ask her about it.”<br />
“So how will you catch her?”<br />
“We’re working with the postal inspectors. She’s done this more than a dozen<br />
times, and she’ll probably keep doing it. They are alerting the clerks in every post<br />
office in Manhattan who handle box applications to be on the lookout. We’ll also<br />
The Literary Hatchet 181
continue to work with the credit card companies and the department stores, but in<br />
the past, neither has been very helpful.”<br />
I liked Detective Riley, but I didn’t really expect to hear back from him. About<br />
a month later when my phone rang around 5:00 p.m., I braced myself for still<br />
another telemarketer.<br />
“Mr. Lewis?”<br />
“Yes?” I answered warily. At least the guy did not have an Indian accent, but I<br />
just knew his next words would be, “How are you today?” At which point I would<br />
slam down the receiver. So you could imagine my shock when instead, the man<br />
said, “Your wife has been found!”<br />
For several seconds I had no idea who this was, or what he was talking about.<br />
And then it hit me!<br />
“Detective Riley? That is fantastic news!”<br />
“For you and for us!”<br />
“How did you catch her?”<br />
“Well, it’s kind of an interesting story. If you have time, why don’t you drop by<br />
tomorrow afternoon, say about 2:00? There’s another detective I’d like you to meet.”<br />
“Great! See you then.”<br />
When I entered his office, Detective Riley shook hands with me, and introduced<br />
me to Detective Johnson. She was tall, had long, very straight black hair that hung<br />
to her shoulders, and what I would call movie star looks. As we shook hands, her<br />
grip was strong. Then I noticed the wedding band on her other hand. When my<br />
eyes moved back up to her face, she smiled as if she could read my mind.<br />
“Detective Johnson conducted the investigation, and thanks to her, we have<br />
finally apprehended the celebrated ‘Mrs. James Lewis.’”<br />
“Mr. Lewis, let me tell you right off that your ‘wife’ was something of an old<br />
friend to our unit. She is a career criminal. In cases such as this one, we look for<br />
patterns or connections. Now we knew, of course, that ‘Mrs. James Lewis’—using<br />
various aliases—had been pulling this scam for years, and had never been caught.<br />
Many of her ‘husbands’ have been in touch with us over the years. And while there<br />
have been other credit card scammers, none has been doing this for so long.”<br />
“Well, from what I’ve learned from Detective Riley, the scam works for no more<br />
than six months, so that means she’s done this to a lot of guys.”<br />
“That’s right! Now we’re painfully aware that she’s never been caught. So then<br />
we asked ourselves: What kind of scam would she have been working before this<br />
one? Perhaps she had been caught doing something else. That way, we’d know who<br />
we were looking for.”<br />
“Let me see if I’m following. If she’s a career criminal, maybe before this she<br />
used to rob banks or something.”<br />
“That’s a very interesting theory,” said Detective Riley. “Because that’s exactly<br />
what she had been doing.”<br />
“She went into banks and gave the teller a note saying that she had a gun?”<br />
“Well,” said Detective Johnson, “she was a little more sophisticated than that.<br />
What she did was walk into a bank, ask to see an officer, and tell him that she<br />
182 The Literary Hatchet
wanted to open an account. Now are you ready for the really interesting part? She<br />
said that she had started a business, and needed to deposit $10,000 in cash. And<br />
that was a lot of money back in the late 1940s.”<br />
“Are you serious? That’s almost 50 years ago! How old is this woman?”<br />
“Maybe almost old enough to be your grandmother, Mr. Lewis.”<br />
“There goes my dream of having been married to a beautiful woman.”<br />
“Well, she certainly was a beautiful woman in her day. And she’s really quite<br />
nice looking for a woman in her early eighties.” said Detective Johnson.<br />
“So how did she scam the bank?”<br />
“She explained that she needed deposit slips for her account, because she would<br />
be making a large number of deposits during the next few weeks. But it usually<br />
takes the banks about a month to have deposit slips printed for new accounts. So<br />
how, then, would she be able to deposit all this money? Luckily the officer had an<br />
idea. He would assign her an account and provide her with a few hundred deposit<br />
slips. Each slip would have her account number printed on it. But would it be OK<br />
if the name of her business did not appear at the top of the slip? Of course it would<br />
be OK! And do you know why, Mr. Lewis?”<br />
“I don’t have a clue.”<br />
“OK, let’s just back up a minute. The bank officer really wants her business. So<br />
he’s willing to cut corners. When a customer opens a new account and wants to<br />
deposit money, he or she fills out a blank deposit slip that is found on the tables in<br />
the bank. Then the customer takes the slip and the cash or checks to be deposited<br />
to a teller.”<br />
“So if I’m following, these deposit slips have no account numbers printed on<br />
them.”<br />
“Bingo! You’re catching on fast,” said Detective Johnson. “So every morning<br />
she goes into the bank and places a few of her printed deposit slips on each table,<br />
and then leaves. Customers who have new accounts, or have forgotten to bring<br />
their deposit slips, will fill out one of her slips. And virtually no one will notice the<br />
printed account number at the bottom of the slip.”<br />
“That is amazing!”<br />
“And when the teller puts through the deposit slip, the money goes into the<br />
scammer’s account. Because the bank’s computer reads the printed deposit<br />
number—and not what the customer has written on the deposit slip.”<br />
“So how did she get caught?”<br />
Detective Johnson continued. “Her scam would work for just a month, because<br />
when depositors got their statements, they noticed that some of their deposits<br />
weren’t recorded—and their balance was too low. By then our friend had withdrawn<br />
all the money out of her account—in cash.<br />
“She may have even known that when a bank got scammed, its officers wouldn’t<br />
bother to warn the officers of other banks. I guess nobody wants to look dumb.”<br />
“But they did report this to the police, of course,” added Detective Riley.<br />
“Right,” agreed Detective Johnson. “And the police then visited every bank and<br />
warned them about her. One day, when she tried to open an account, an alert bank<br />
The Literary Hatchet 183
officer called the police. The tip-off was that she wanted to deposit $10,000 in cash.”<br />
“So then she went to prison?”<br />
“She was sent away for eight years,” answered Detective Riley.<br />
“So how did you make the connection between the bank scams and the credit<br />
card scams?”<br />
“Well,” said Detective Johnson, it was a combination of deductive logic, trial<br />
and error, and just dumb luck. You see, we were obviously looking for a woman.<br />
And then we thought, she’s pretty slick. Maybe she’s a little older, a little more<br />
experienced.<br />
“So far, so good. Then, another detective suggested that we look at some of the<br />
older scammer cases. We figured that since she was working with credit cards,<br />
maybe before that she had run some kind of banking scam.”<br />
“So how did you finally make the connection?”<br />
“Well, that was plain dumb luck.”<br />
“Really?”<br />
“Are you ready for this?”<br />
“I guess.”<br />
“The woman we were looking for was actually living in your building. So all this<br />
time, she was hiding in plain sight.”<br />
“That is truly amazing! But how were you able to figure this out?”<br />
“Well, she made two mistakes. First, as you know, she listed 149 West 9th Street<br />
as her current address on the change-of-address form she gave to the post office.<br />
And second, she didn’t bother to change her name. So when we checked the names<br />
on the list we compiled of old-time bank scammers, and then checked it against<br />
your apartment house directory, we had a match.”<br />
“Wow! That is truly impressive detective work! So can you tell me who she is?”<br />
The detectives looked at each other. After Detective Riley nodded slightly,<br />
Detective Johnson smiled and said, “Well, this may come as a shock, but she’s<br />
actually your next-door neighbor.”<br />
“What? Do you mean old lady Fletcher?”<br />
The detectives burst out laughing. “You are right on the money—so to speak,<br />
Mr. Lewis,” said Detective Riley.<br />
“Oh my God! Would you believe that she actually used to flirt with me?”<br />
“So you didn’t flirt back?” asked Detective Riley.<br />
“Yeah, right! I was always polite to her, but I’m looking for a woman half my<br />
age—”<br />
“Rather than one twice your age?” asked Detective Johnson.<br />
“Exactly!”<br />
“Well, Mr. Lewis, maybe if you had been more receptive to her advances, you<br />
might have made an honest woman out of her—and avoided all this unpleasantness.”<br />
]<br />
184 The Literary Hatchet
[poetry]<br />
We’re all night in the old house,<br />
lit by lightning through stained-glass,<br />
surrounded by thunder-jumbled skeletons,<br />
bothered bats and uptight spiders,<br />
skulls rolling across the floor like dice.<br />
We’re in the midst of nightmares<br />
while the raging storm outside<br />
bullies the mind, disavows sleep.<br />
Every sense bar touch is toxic<br />
and then I take your hand,<br />
and the flesh falls away<br />
like snow from a rooftop.<br />
You kiss me with lips,<br />
spliced and oozing.<br />
And that perfume -<br />
from the olfactory sewers<br />
of Parisian morgues.<br />
Weather’s breaking in.<br />
Malevolence is breaking out.<br />
The good’s been reduced<br />
to something quivering inside me,<br />
one last capsule of strength<br />
about to burst, dilute its seed.<br />
I clench my fists,<br />
throw my head back and scream,<br />
incite your bony arms<br />
to cling to me the more.<br />
We’re all night in breaking glass,<br />
distant fires, wings beating,<br />
breath hissing, insects crawling<br />
down my throat.<br />
I struggle to stand apart<br />
as you take on<br />
a ruined world’s emancipation.<br />
—john grey<br />
The Literary Hatchet 185
[short story]<br />
by tim dadswell<br />
186 The Literary Hatchet
Lifelong resident, Jeannie Stack, is driving into the city on a weekday morning,<br />
a business card on her dashboard. On the backseat of her car is a dog blanket,<br />
strewn with other cards and newspapers. She is listening to talk radio.<br />
“Hey Jay, I heard there’s a hunter’s moon tonight. Does that mean I can shoot<br />
any ol’ critter I like?”<br />
“Er, I don’t…”<br />
Jeannie angrily presses the off button.<br />
“I wonder if I’ve done the right thing, handing Daisy to a complete stranger.<br />
What if he gives her a squint? What if she looks terrible? I miss her so much.”<br />
Jeannie parks in the downtown area, much quieter since the recent opening<br />
of a highway. She is wearing a floral print dress and a fluffy, lemon cardigan. The<br />
year she allowed herself not to worry about her weight has just entered its sixteenth<br />
month.<br />
Her destination is a dilapidated store. Inside speakers are playing muzak so<br />
distorted it would be ideal for a gameshow reluctant to give prizes. On the wall<br />
behind the counter hung a certificate of advanced taxidermy, a dog calendar, and a<br />
large photo of a middle-aged woman dressed rather like Jeannie.<br />
The proprietor, Joshua Packer, has pale, oily skin, and an obvious toupee. He<br />
exudes a mist of bleach and preservative.<br />
“Good morning. It’s Miss Stack, isn’t it?”<br />
Joshua stares at Jeannie’s ample bosom. Unconsciously, she pulls the sides of<br />
her cardigan together.<br />
“That’s right. I’ve come to pick up my Daisy. I’m very nervous; she meant so<br />
much to me.”<br />
“No need to worry, Miss Stack; you’re in very safe hands. Give me one second.”<br />
Joshua goes into the back, brings out a stuffed Chihuahua and places it<br />
delicately on the counter. Studying her reaction, his tongue darts lasciviously over<br />
his lips.<br />
“Daisy! You look wonderful. Now you’ll always be with me. Thank you, Mr.<br />
Packer; you are a true artist! How much do I owe you?”<br />
As Jeannie rummages through her purse, Joshua eagerly rubs his hands<br />
together at the thought of settling another bill.<br />
Three days later, in front of a notice board in the public library, Jeannie and<br />
Joshua meet again by accident.<br />
“Good morning, Miss Stack. This must be my lucky day!”<br />
The Literary Hatchet 187
“Hi, Mr. Packer. I’ve just collected this cookbook. The writer has so much<br />
knowledge and experience and she doesn’t take any prisoners.”<br />
“I’m here for a new book on taxidermy. I won’t be answering the phone tonight,<br />
I can tell you! What notice has caught your eye here, if I may be so bold?”<br />
“It’s this one about an archaeology lecture.”<br />
“Yes, it does look interesting. What would we do without the library?”<br />
“I know. I can feel so empty sometimes.”<br />
“No man in your life, Jeannie?”<br />
“No. I have bad memories. I don’t like to talk about it.”<br />
Joshua moves closer, considers putting his arm around her, but loses his nerve.<br />
“I’ve just had the most wonderful idea.”<br />
“Have you? Tell me!”<br />
As they make plans, neither notices two young women at the end of a nearby<br />
bookshelf, looking their way and giggling.<br />
A while later, Jeannie finishes her last errand. Leaving a yarn store, carrying<br />
a full bag, she stops and stares across the street. Joshua has emerged from a store<br />
opposite, carrying a large, rectangular package. Jeannie crouches behind a mailbox,<br />
watches him head for his car, all the while chewing her lip.<br />
After attending the lecture with him, Jeannie has invited Joshua round for<br />
coffee. In the bathroom, she takes a pill from a bottle of prescribed drugs. Hearing<br />
the doorbell, she stares blankly into the mirror before flinging the pill into a bin.<br />
Joshua is standing on her front porch, accompanied by his Boston terrier,<br />
Felicity. Jeannie opens the door.<br />
“Hi Felicity, hi Joshua, you’re right on time. You can leave your jacket here. Do<br />
come through to the kitchen.”<br />
She brings a tray of coffee and cookies over to the table where he sits. Daisy<br />
stares down at them from the top of the refrigerator.<br />
“You have a beautiful place, Jeannie, very homely. My, doesn’t Daisy look<br />
happy up there?”<br />
She smiles and nods.<br />
“I should buy a new puppy, but I can’t face it yet.”<br />
She glances at Felicity, who is in the corner, sniffing the empty dog basket.<br />
“That’s an impressive oven you have there, Jeannie. Do you do a lot of cooking?”<br />
“Yes, I’ve got to make twenty-four cupcakes for the church bazaar next<br />
Saturday. I’ll bring some into the store, if you like.”<br />
“Ooo, that would be peachy! I’ve been deprived of home cooking since my<br />
mother passed. Ah, those heavenly pies and puddings.”<br />
Jeannie pushes the plate of cookies towards him.<br />
“Mmm, these are great. I’m getting cherry, coconut, maybe an herb. I’m so<br />
glad we’ve met, it’s not every day I find someone who shares my interests. Wasn’t<br />
the lecture fascinating?”<br />
He tries to put his hand in hers, but she pulls away.<br />
“Yes, it was. I’d like to visit the prehistoric sites he described. I’ve always been<br />
188 The Literary Hatchet
interested in the past and the way that people used to live. Maybe that’s why I’m a<br />
hoarder. You should see my attic! One day I must have a yard sale.”<br />
“Jeannie, I must ask. Why did you rush off like that, after the lecture?”<br />
“I can’t remember, I guess I had things to do. But today is so beautiful, I’ll show<br />
you around, if you’ve finished.”<br />
They put down their mugs and exit through the patio doors. Jeannie ambles up<br />
the path in front of him. High fences along both sides safeguard her privacy. In the<br />
sunlight, they pass a wooden bench, unpainted, with long, deep cracks. Next, they<br />
pass through a gate in the middle of a low fence. They reach the end of her garden,<br />
where a line of hickory trees marks the beginning of a wood.<br />
“My goodness, so many graves!”<br />
Joshua surveys Jeannie’s pet cemetery. Most of the graves have simple, wooden<br />
crosses, with names and dates daubed on them in paint; some older than Jeannie.<br />
“Yes, look, there’s Foo-Foo, there’s Binky, there’s Lady Belladonna, my pedigree<br />
chow. So many good friends, who’ve gone to Heaven. But there’s no space left here<br />
now.”<br />
Joshua stops, puzzled by one of the crosses, which reads: “Bad Boy Jones.”<br />
“Have you lived here long?”<br />
“Long enough. By the way, did I see you coming out of the gun store last week?”<br />
He looks uncomfortable.<br />
“Yes, I go hunting now and again—all totally legal.”<br />
“I hate what people do to animals. Drowning kittens in the river, beating their<br />
dogs, flushing fish down the john. It’s wicked!”<br />
She stifles a tear. Joshua puts his arm round her waist, leans in for a kiss, but is<br />
no match for Jeannie.<br />
“No!”<br />
She pushes him away and he falls awkward, breaking one of the crosses in two.<br />
“What have you done to poor Mungo?”<br />
Before Joshua can stand up, she picks up a shovel and hits him repeatedly over<br />
the head. His toupee falls into the dirt and he stops moving. Felicity barks twice<br />
during the attack, but stays on the path.<br />
Jeannie adopts a deeper tone of voice.<br />
“Lust and fornication! And he was a murderer! Come with me, Felicity. Be a<br />
good girl for your mommy!”<br />
Felicity trots obediently behind Jeannie as she collects an axe.<br />
An hour later, she retrieves Joshua’s business card from her car and tears it in<br />
half. Going outside, she tosses the pieces into an oil drum, from which smoke is<br />
billowing.<br />
Returning to the garage, she places a large glass jar on a shelf, next to two<br />
other similar jars. The new addition contains Joshua’s severed head, submerged<br />
in pickling vinegar. She cheerfully sings a nursery rhyme to her silent audience,<br />
knowing all the words by heart.<br />
]<br />
The Literary Hatchet 189
[poetry]<br />
190 The Literary Hatchet
—aletheia adams<br />
—janne karlsson<br />
The Literary Hatchet 191
[short story]<br />
by tim major<br />
Exactly one year ago, I turned and saw her waiting<br />
in the queue. I smiled, despite the coffee spilling from<br />
one cup and scalding my fingers. Didn’t I know her?<br />
From my office, or Miriam’s?<br />
Miriam had bagged a corner table and was<br />
already absorbed in a magazine.<br />
“Is that a friend of yours?” I said, gesturing as I<br />
deposited our drinks.<br />
Miriam scanned the queue, then shrugged.<br />
I shrugged too. “One of those faces. I must have<br />
just seen her about.”<br />
As the woman took her seat I stole another<br />
glance. Not unattractive, with her dark hair and sad<br />
eyes, but that wasn’t it. I felt sure I’d seen her in some<br />
other context. University, perhaps, or even school.<br />
Miriam turned her magazine to show me photos<br />
of a wedding. Shabby chic, cotton bunting, toddlers<br />
in waistcoats. Low in expense but rich with perfect<br />
moments. When I looked up, the woman had finished<br />
and left.<br />
I saw her again, only hours later. She stood at<br />
the opposite side of Iffley Road, cheering on the halfmarathon<br />
runners. My friends in the race hooted and<br />
jeered as they passed. I blinked myself awake and<br />
called out, too late.<br />
192 The Literary Hatchet
When I noticed her at the winter market, I raised my hand in an instinctive<br />
wave. How many times do you have to see a stranger for them to be no longer a<br />
stranger? There’s nothing wrong with acknowledging a familiar face.<br />
The woman only frowned, her features made strange by the glow of fairy lights.<br />
“You’re going to think this is weird,” I said to her, a couple of weeks later. I<br />
kept one arm around Miriam’s waist to demonstrate that I was no threat. “But I’m<br />
certain I know you.”<br />
The sad-eyed woman flinched. “Really? From where?” More guarded than<br />
interested.<br />
Miriam pressed into my side, tipsy and scanning the crowd for anyone yet to<br />
see the ring.<br />
I waved a vol-au-vent. “I thought maybe you’d know. Have you ever done any<br />
freelance work for Hargreaves?”<br />
The woman shook her head. She raised herself on tiptoes to look around.<br />
“Sorry,” she said.<br />
“OK. But how do you know Lil and Gary?”<br />
“Friends of friends. I don’t mean to be rude, but I think someone’s calling me.”<br />
When the woman left, Miriam spun to face me. “We’ve only six months to<br />
practise, otherwise we’ll embarrass ourselves in front of everyone,” she said. “So<br />
ask me to dance.”<br />
The next time was a month later, in a London pub, sixty miles from home.<br />
Drinks with Ryan, mock-pleading for him to go easy on arrangements for the stag.<br />
“What’s she doing here? It’s as if she’s following me,” I said.<br />
Ryan looked over, sizing her up. “Not bad. Sure it’s not the other way around?”<br />
The woman glanced up from her phone, then hurriedly down again.<br />
“We can’t,” Miriam said. “It’s insane.”<br />
“But in the best possible way,” I said. I framed the Holywell building with my<br />
joined thumbs and forefingers, making a photographer’s viewfinder. “And we knew<br />
a cancellation was the only way the place would become available.”<br />
“But this weekend? What about all our—”<br />
“They’ll make it, I’m certain. And you’ve already sorted the important things,<br />
the dress, the…” My joints cracked as I slid down to kneel on the pavement. “You’re<br />
perfect, Miriam. We are. And I want it to be as soon as it can be.”<br />
She was everywhere.<br />
“Look, I’m sick of it,” Miriam said. “What are you trying to tell me here?”<br />
I held up both hands. “No subtext. Promise. I’m genuinely weirded out, that’s<br />
all, and I wanted to tell you. Isn’t that what marriage is about?”<br />
Miriam squinted against the afternoon light to where the sad-eyed woman sat<br />
alone on a park bench. “She’s not your usual type.”<br />
“That’s not it at all. You’re my type.”<br />
Miriam puffed her cheeks. “It’s not normal, noticing other women all the time,<br />
when you’re committed. It shows me that something’s wrong.”<br />
“But it’s not other women. Just that one.” I paused, recognising the danger too<br />
late.<br />
The Literary Hatchet 193
“You’re saying you’re obsessed with her.”<br />
“I’m not. Anyone would be.”<br />
Miriam pushed me away. “Just go and talk to her, for God’s sake.”<br />
“What are you saying?”<br />
“You know what I’m saying.”<br />
She was everywhere though. Abruptly, Miriam was not.<br />
Hi. Is this the number for Citizen’s Advice? I don’t know if you can help. I have a<br />
few questions about my rights. I’m being followed, I think.<br />
A woman.<br />
I don’t know.<br />
No.<br />
I don’t think so. She seemed familiar at first, but—<br />
No violence, no.<br />
No, no threats.<br />
Yes, briefly, at a party. I did.<br />
I understand. But, you see, I can’t continue like this. Everywhere I turn, she’s—<br />
I see. I’m sorry. Thank you.<br />
She started to back away as I approached. I placed myself between her and the<br />
bus laden with colleagues waiting to be delivered to the office party.<br />
“You have to stop this,” I said.<br />
“Leave me alone,” she said, trying not to meet my eye.<br />
“I broke up with my partner of four years,” I said, “Because of you.”<br />
“I’m sorry. But I don’t see how it—”<br />
I thrust out an arm to prevent her from boarding the bus. “Why did you take a<br />
job here? Wasn’t it enough for you, following me around the streets?”<br />
Finally, she looked at me. I felt painfully aware of my stubbly beard and the<br />
clothes I had been wearing for the last three days.<br />
We both spoke as one.<br />
“You have to stop this.”<br />
A lot can change in a year.<br />
I tend not to go out a whole lot. Better to stay in the house. I’m not as bored as<br />
you’d think, even after cancelling the broadband. My Facebook feed had become<br />
filled with her face.<br />
Even though it’s a quiet enough street, people pass by more than I’d like.<br />
Sometimes they ignore the notices on my door. Their silhouettes shrink as they<br />
bend down. I shrink too, in the hallway, keeping out of sight.<br />
The letterbox opens and all I can see are sad eyes.<br />
]<br />
194 The Literary Hatchet
[poetry]<br />
Footsteps behind<br />
Or in my mind?<br />
Racing home...<br />
Am I alone?<br />
Something’s following<br />
Trouble swallowing<br />
My pace quickens<br />
Stomach sickens<br />
Nervous glance<br />
Shadows dance<br />
Grow and reach<br />
Owl’s screech<br />
It’s so late<br />
Cemetery gate<br />
Creaks and moans...<br />
Am I alone?<br />
Monster waiting<br />
Toying, baiting<br />
Its fangs bared<br />
Hell yes, I’m scared!<br />
Beads of sweat...<br />
Am I home yet?<br />
Did I hear screaming?<br />
I must be dreaming<br />
I want to cry,<br />
“I’M TOO YOUNG TO DIE!”<br />
Chilled to the bone...<br />
Am I alone?<br />
Nearly there<br />
Can’t... breathe...<br />
Air!<br />
Slam the door<br />
Fear no more<br />
Safe at home...<br />
No!<br />
Not alone<br />
—michael seese<br />
The Literary Hatchet 195
[poetry]<br />
As it happened, it wasn’t the bedbugs,<br />
though we were sure of it:<br />
our favorite couple<br />
scratching and scratching,<br />
blood on the sheets,<br />
telltale smudges in a line.<br />
They were so much in love,<br />
we thought, so pretty, until<br />
the bedbugs ruined everything.<br />
They couldn’t see them,<br />
but we could feel them,<br />
making wicked paths<br />
across the prettiness,<br />
tortuous lines<br />
right through the love.<br />
There was no escape.<br />
Budget motels had ‘em,<br />
fancy hotels had ‘em,<br />
our favorite couple had ‘em<br />
until they could no longer stand<br />
the scratching, the blood,<br />
the bedbugs,<br />
each other.<br />
196 The Literary Hatchet<br />
—joyce richardson
[poetry]<br />
I ride a train that’s called Despair.<br />
I smoke and smirk and breathe hot air.<br />
I ride this train without a smile.<br />
It clicks, I groan,<br />
and clock the mile.<br />
I ride a bus that’s called Chagrin.<br />
My face is red, though no one there<br />
knows of my past nor sees my sin.<br />
If I get off,<br />
they’ll point and stare.<br />
I ride a boat that called Despond.<br />
The murky slough takes me beyond<br />
all transpired, all that be,<br />
the crime, the shame,<br />
now lost at sea.<br />
When life seems dire, I join the choir<br />
of those who look to flesh for hire.<br />
No more Despair, Chagrin, Despond,<br />
I’m trucking on a different pond:<br />
I ride a streetcar named Desire.<br />
—joyce richardson<br />
The Literary Hatchet 197
[short story]<br />
by jim courter<br />
“What a waste!” A.J. Kraft said more to himself than to anyone in particular as<br />
he left the session entitled The Collaborative Experience. “I’m tempted to ask for a<br />
prorated refund.”<br />
“And I’m tempted to demand one at the point of a gun,” Bill Halloran said as he<br />
exited the room on Kraft’s heels. “In keeping with the genre.”<br />
As they walked, A.J. Kraft held up the conference program and read aloud from<br />
it, his voice full of sarcasm: “Learn the secrets of collaboration from the successful<br />
mystery writing team of Noah Franklin and Ed Weaver—‘Frank Eddy’—whose<br />
best-selling ‘noirvels’ have proven to be one of the most popular series of our<br />
times.” When he was done, he slam-dunked it into a trash receptacle.<br />
“Some secrets,” Bill Halloran said. “Self-congratulatory anecdotes and fluff is<br />
more like it. They hurried through that session like they were itching to get to the<br />
bar.”<br />
Having arrived at the entrance to that very spot, Halloran and Kraft, who had<br />
crossed paths at the conference in the past couple of days, agreed to stop in and<br />
compare notes. They didn’t find “Frank Eddy” there, but over drinks—beer for<br />
Halloran, cocktails for Kraft—they found in each other a common ambition and a<br />
common experience with rejection from publishers and agents that thwarted those<br />
ambitions.<br />
Halloran sipped beer and shook his head. “I’ve never been the same since<br />
reading a profile of Naomi Jordan,” he said. “Two bestsellers a year. Film deals.<br />
Multiple mansions.”<br />
“I must’ve read the same piece,” Kraft said. “And I remember thinking to myself,<br />
of all the ways to make a fortune, what could be better than sitting at a desk and<br />
stringing sentences together. How hard can that be?”<br />
“Hard enough,” Halloran said. “For me, anyway. What I hear from my writing<br />
group and from the few editors and agents who’ve bothered to give me feedback is<br />
198 The Literary Hatchet
that my plots are imaginative and compelling but my characters are flat and twodimensional.”<br />
“Interesting,” Kraft said, scratching his chin. “I get just the opposite. A friend<br />
I show my early drafts to says my characters are original yet believable, without<br />
being gimmicky, but that my plots are contrived.”<br />
They had entered the bar in late afternoon, done with sessions for the day. As<br />
they drank and talked into the evening, each spoke of his hope of someday making<br />
a killing as a mystery writer and, the liquor having loosened their tongues, even of<br />
the expensive pastimes that they hoped to bankroll by doing so.<br />
Halloran’s was for gambling; the problem was that his compulsion for it was<br />
in inverse proportion to his skill and luck, and he had recently found it difficult<br />
to maintain his habit on his pension. A.J. Kraft’s was for serial, and sometimes<br />
simultaneous, high-maintenance lady friends, whose expensive tastes he found it<br />
difficult to indulge on his income as an accountant at a bank.<br />
“Anyway,” Halloran said, “when I found out that the Great Lakes Mystery<br />
Writers’ Conference was here in town this year, and saw the blurb for that session<br />
by ‘Frank Eddy,’ it gave me the idea that collaboration just might be the answer.”<br />
“I went for the same reason,” Kraft said. “What the hell, shall we give it a shot?”<br />
“What have we got to lose?” Halloran said. “If it doesn’t work out, we’re no<br />
worse off.”<br />
They clinked glasses, and before parting, exchanged contact information and<br />
addresses. They lived only a few miles from each other on the north side of town,<br />
Halloran in a high-rise, Kraft in a bungalow. They made a handshake agreement<br />
that, soon after returning home from the conference, they would set up a working<br />
meeting to see if, between them, they might make one decent, publishable mystery<br />
writer.<br />
At their first meeting at Bill Halloran’s place, Halloran brought out the 300-page<br />
manuscript that he had sent to Kraft as an e-mail attachment in advance, the story<br />
of a private eye who had been hired by a United States senator to find his missing<br />
son. He plopped it onto the coffee table and said, “I could paper my bathroom with<br />
the rejections I’ve got for this in the last few years. “Did you get around to reading<br />
it?”<br />
“I did,” Kraft said. “Have you had any feedback on it?”<br />
“A couple of editors and one agent provided comments. I’ll give you one guess<br />
what they said. Tell me what you think, and don’t spare my feelings.”<br />
“Okay,” Kraft said, his tone carrying a note of warning. “First, the plot is terrific.<br />
I especially like the complication in which the PI finds out that the senator’s ex<br />
has lured their son to the Nazi skinhead compound where she’s staying, and the<br />
potential damage to the senator’s career if that gets out.”<br />
“But?”<br />
Kraft cringed. “I don’t want to spoil things on our first go at this, but I can see<br />
why people say what they do about your characters. Your protagonist PI is pretty<br />
much a stereotype. If you overlooked a cliché, I don’t know what it is. No offense.”<br />
The Literary Hatchet 199
“None taken,” Halloran said with a little twist to his smile. “I’m used to it. The<br />
question is what to do about it.”<br />
From a briefcase A.J. Kraft pulled out the fat notebook of character sketches<br />
that he had compiled over the years. He set it on the table and opened it to a tabbed<br />
section. “These are cops and PIs,” he said. “Physical description, background,<br />
tastes, habits, idiosyncrasies, strengths and weaknesses, skill sets, even samples of<br />
dialogue. I already have some ideas about which one might work in your story, but<br />
I don’t want to influence you. See what you think. If you don’t mind, as you read I’d<br />
like to check out the view from your balcony.”<br />
It was near dusk, and A.J. Kraft went out with the drink Halloran had made him,<br />
not exactly mixed to his taste—What can you expect from a beer drinker?—and<br />
stood at the railing, seventeen floors above the street. The view of the city center<br />
and beyond it the lake was terrific, but he reeled from vertigo when he looked<br />
down, which for some reason he couldn’t resist doing. After making sure Halloran<br />
wasn’t watching, he poured the drink into a potted plant and sat at a bistro table<br />
while Halloran read.<br />
“I’m impressed,” Halloran said when they were back together inside. “They<br />
manage to be distinctive yet believable, not with some cutesy, contrived set<br />
of interests like a lot of characters you see in mysteries these days. With a little<br />
tweaking, maybe even combining certain elements from two or three of them, I<br />
think we might be in business. And while we’re at it, I’d love it if you could maybe<br />
work on adding touches to some of my other characters.”<br />
Kraft tapped the side of his head with a finger. “Up here,” he said, “I’ve already<br />
started.”<br />
Over the next several weeks, they met once at Kraft’s place but mostly at<br />
Halloran’s, where, weather permitting, they worked out on the balcony. After<br />
ironing out some personal and artistic differences and sublimating others—each<br />
thought the other drank too much, for one thing—they arrived at an agreeable<br />
working system, joking that they complemented each other like yeast and flour,<br />
although they couldn’t agree on which one was which. A couple of months of<br />
dedicated work yielded a serviceable draft; a few weeks later they deemed it ready<br />
to send off. After some rancorous negotiation over the title that left each doubting<br />
the other’s judgment, they settled on Rhymes with Fool—a play on the name of<br />
the protagonist private investigator, Barry Pool—and on the collaborative nom de<br />
plume B.J. Hallcraft. Ignoring policies against simultaneous submissions, they sent<br />
it to about three dozen agents.<br />
The initial responses were form rejections of the kind both of them had long<br />
been used to. One had an encouraging comment that the piece was “well written<br />
and entertaining but not right for my list at this time.” Finally, just as they began to<br />
give up hope, a relatively new agent asked to see the whole manuscript. A month<br />
after they sent it to him, he agreed to represent them. Three months later they got<br />
news that he had landed the piece with a mid-sized press. The advance was $2,000,<br />
which of course they would have to split, after their agent took his fifteen percent.<br />
200 The Literary Hatchet
When they got around to celebrating, they were low-key about it, both being much<br />
more ambitious to make serious money. Now that they were to be published,<br />
neither considered half of two-thousand minus fifteen percent serious money.<br />
When the time came to work out a contract, one of the matters they had to<br />
settle was disposition of rights and royalties in the event of the demise of one of<br />
them. Bill Halloran, long divorced from a childless marriage, suggested that the<br />
surviving partner should inherit all that was due to the other. It so happened that<br />
A.J Kraft’s thinking on the matter had run along the same track. He had never<br />
married and had no living family, or at least none that he saw fit to leave anything<br />
to. Kraft was willing to indulge his expensive lady friends in this life, but not from<br />
beyond the grave. In the spirit of their collaboration, they agreed that the surviving<br />
partner would inherit everything. “What the hell,” Bill Halloran joked, “it’s chump<br />
change anyway.”<br />
Published to no critical notice or acclaim, Rhymes with Fool was granted limited<br />
shelf space at Barnes and Noble and sold a mere handful of copies. It merited no<br />
second printing and was soon consigned to the bargain section.<br />
By this time their partnership was strained. Each had begun secretly to blame<br />
the other for the failure of Rhymes with Fool to make a splash and to see the<br />
other’s weakness—Halloran’s for gambling, Kraft’s for the ladies—as signs of deep<br />
character flaws that had ruined the collaboration.<br />
And then it happened! They received news from their agent that someone<br />
connected with a Hollywood studio had picked up Rhymes with Fool—it seems the<br />
title had caught his eye—from the bargain shelf at a Barnes and Noble in L.A., read<br />
and seen in it what he thought was film-worthy potential. He pitched it to a studio<br />
exec and got the green light. No production plans were in place yet, but the studio<br />
wanted the rights on spec and was offering $100,000. Their agent recommended<br />
that they accept.<br />
For both of them, the news couldn’t have come at a better time.<br />
Bill Halloran’s losses at gambling—some of them online, some in smoky back<br />
rooms—had reached the point that his debts had grown to alarming proportions,<br />
and he was being shadowed by a couple of menacing characters. And A.J. Kraft, in<br />
a moment of weakness and gullibility, had been taken for several thousand dollars<br />
in the form of a “loan” to the most recent of his lady friends who, upon receiving<br />
the money, skipped town without leaving a forwarding address. In fact, so pressing<br />
was their respective financial need that each one had begun to think how fine it<br />
would be to fatten his bank account by $85,000—the $100,000 minus the agent’s<br />
fifteen percent—instead of $42,500.<br />
When Bill Halloran suggested that a champagne celebration was in order and<br />
that the place for it was on the balcony of his apartment, where the project had<br />
been nurtured, A.J. Kraft was relieved that he didn’t have to suggest it himself and,<br />
in doing so, risk giving away his intentions.<br />
“I feel like pinching myself to see if I’m dreaming,” Bill Halloran said between<br />
sips of champagne.<br />
The Literary Hatchet 201
“I’d just as soon you didn’t,” A.J. Kraft said. “If you’re dreaming, then so am I,<br />
and I’d rather not wake up.”<br />
They were out on the balcony under a starry sky on a warm night. A gentle<br />
breeze bore the scent of lilacs all the way up to them from seventeen stories below.<br />
Bill Halloran, standing with his back to the railing, fashioned a smile, raised his<br />
glass and said, “To success.”<br />
A.J. Kraft raised his glass. “And to much more of it.”<br />
Kraft stepped from the middle of the balcony toward Halloran, hoping that the<br />
vertigo he experienced before wouldn’t unman him at this crucial moment. When<br />
they grew close enough, they clinked glasses, drank, set the empty glasses down on<br />
the bistro table, and turned to take in the view.<br />
After a moment, Halloran stepped back and to the side to position himself<br />
behind Kraft. But as he did, he found Kraft trying to do the same thing with regard<br />
to him. They bumped knees awkwardly, looked at each other, and in that instant<br />
each saw his intention mirrored in the other’s face. Within seconds, like two<br />
wrestlers, they had locked arms and were engaged in a struggle for enough leverage<br />
to tip the other over the railing.<br />
The contest was about equal. A.J. Kraft, taller by a few inches, might have gone<br />
over more easily, but he was younger and stronger. After a brief struggle during<br />
which neither was willing to let go his grip, they found themselves face-to-face, still<br />
locked together, and rushing at sickening speed to the sidewalk below.<br />
As they fell, it flashed through Bill Halloran’s mind that if he had been better<br />
at character he might have seen into A.J. Kraft keenly enough to anticipate his<br />
intentions; through Kraft’s, the lament that if he had been better at imagining plot,<br />
he might have anticipated Halloran’s deception.<br />
Their being in extremis, however, those thoughts remained unarticulated.<br />
Instead, in the seconds it took them to fall seventeen stories—each the betrayer,<br />
each the betrayed—they howled animal rage and horror in each other’s face until<br />
they arrived at simultaneous, hideous impact and instant death on the unyielding<br />
concrete, very near some passersby out for a leisurely stroll in the mild, lilacscented<br />
evening.<br />
]<br />
202 The Literary Hatchet
[poetry]<br />
No longer will we see your shadows<br />
on the hill, darkening our history, blackening<br />
our suns. We called you “Witch” when<br />
you appeared on Sunday mornings<br />
promenading your toads on leashes.<br />
When does a kind lady, a strange neighbor,<br />
anyone with warts become a hag?<br />
We, so full of our own spidery dreads,<br />
break out in crimson rashes,<br />
grow boils on our bums.<br />
Because of you, Susannah Martin, we lay<br />
stricken in the kitchen: cream curdles,<br />
eggs break bloody, pudding fails.<br />
But soon the day will dawn when we wake<br />
without your demons; no more will we<br />
scream when rooster crows.<br />
We have loaded you on the cart and<br />
driven down the Hill.<br />
We have pardoned the witches,<br />
the witches in Salem.<br />
Tell me, darkling pagans, who will pardon us<br />
—joyce richardson<br />
The Literary Hatchet 203
[poetry]<br />
I read in the newspaper not long ago that<br />
twenty tiny ortolans were roasted and presented<br />
to diners at Le Cirque, a restaurant extraordinaire.<br />
Draped with large napkins over their heads<br />
to contain the aroma of the freshly roasted birds,<br />
blasé eaters held the tiny ortolans by their skulls.<br />
With lust glistening upon their lips,<br />
mouths working, mandables grinding little bones,<br />
tongues swimming in tasty, sweet broth,<br />
eyes closed under the fine linen napkins tenting<br />
the privacy of their high-priced gluttony,<br />
they gobbled down beaks and all.<br />
This main course at Le Cirque, the ortolan,<br />
belonging to the subfamily Emberizinae<br />
of the family Emberizadae, has a lyrical genesis.<br />
The diminutive birds perch innocently<br />
upon their multisyllabic family tree where<br />
they sing rich and haunting melodies.<br />
But life’s song is chaotic, atonal, and hurried.<br />
Sour notes hit haphazardly, otherwise,<br />
why would the ortolan migrate to France<br />
where they are considered a delicacy?<br />
—lee glantz<br />
204 The Literary Hatchet
[poetry]<br />
Some ate bread and cheese<br />
while others swam<br />
in the midnight sea<br />
calling out to each other<br />
from time to time<br />
as though to reassure themselves<br />
that they were still real<br />
A girl on the shore<br />
laughed, hiccupped, and laughed again<br />
and someone, tunelessly, whistled<br />
“Brown-Eyed Girl”<br />
Two boys buried a third boy<br />
neck deep in the sand<br />
and shook water droplets on him<br />
until the drops looked like tears<br />
on his upturned face<br />
A pair of lovers ran laughing into the dunes<br />
and others followed,<br />
pretending to search for them<br />
The bonfire, when they built it,<br />
burned bright with bits of their nightmares<br />
and pieces of things<br />
that their parents had told them were true<br />
Their hopes and dreams for the future,<br />
when added to the pyre,<br />
sent a shower of sparks<br />
racing toward heaven<br />
And orange reflections danced in their eyes<br />
until the last ember had faded<br />
and they slept<br />
—mary king<br />
The Literary Hatchet 205
[poetry]<br />
In this fantasy do I hold thee<br />
like a candy dream,<br />
where neither of us wake up.<br />
Bound so delicately, thee will be,<br />
by licorice ropes and rags,<br />
seated on sugar wood<br />
nailed to cotton concrete.<br />
To ensure thine love not flow so hastily,<br />
but gradually! With words and knives.<br />
My dearest! How much thy skin will<br />
bleed velvet hymns of red soft ribbons;<br />
I will kiss thy pain away.<br />
Quiet lullabies and verses will pass<br />
both our lips night after night,<br />
full moons our beacon,<br />
gray sunlight showering the wedding<br />
of thy moaned confessions<br />
by the chocolate trees and<br />
honey hued animals.<br />
The ocean will then lick the salt from<br />
our colorless faces; hands intertwined<br />
all the way to our casket.<br />
—mckinley henson<br />
206 The Literary Hatchet
[poetry]<br />
(Niles High School, Niles, Michigan)<br />
You will find her here blowing soap bubbles,<br />
chewing gum cigars, old time candy and toy ass radio player.<br />
Sara is still a cheerleader in mind,<br />
chest player beast bare in pink station wagon,<br />
front seats laded back.<br />
Everything exposed was pink in 1965, popular.<br />
Everyone high up was chest player academically,<br />
low-end checker players were at miniature golf,<br />
beneath blankets at US 31 outdoor theaters.<br />
High school is a status golden whore passing daily in the hallways.<br />
Sara flute blower in narrow dark and stashed in lover’s lane,<br />
the Junior prom never ended, the Senior prom never began.<br />
Shades off, make-up smeared past midnight,<br />
broken gold chains, class rings lost,<br />
class sweaters returned to sender, address unknown,<br />
sex a touch and feel, poetic review, times.<br />
—michael lee johnson<br />
The Literary Hatchet 207
[short story]<br />
by<br />
josh<br />
sczykutowicz<br />
208 The Literary Hatchet
The days are growing long and the nights are turning black. Summer has set<br />
in, the seats sticking to skin in the cab of Gary’s truck. I-75 runs southbound as<br />
you head toward St. Petersburg, fraying tires and a shaking frame passing along<br />
tired road suspended by trunks of concrete. If you were to make him pull over at<br />
the next rest stop, mosquitoes would cling to all exposed patches of skin, picking<br />
and chewing upon your pale flesh. For a Florida boy you sure see little sunlight,<br />
you think to yourself. This sunset is your sunrise; the evening is your morning. You<br />
have had nowhere to go and nothing to do for a length of time, the kind of length<br />
that blends and fades into one indeterminable blur. Days become weeks and weeks<br />
become months and months become ether of time indescribable, where the dates<br />
are useless and the hour hands unreadable in your blurring vision.<br />
“We are all controlled from the stomach down,” Gary says, words flowing from<br />
his mouth with non-filtered cigarettes, ash dropping onto his pant legs. “It’s all<br />
about feeding and fucking, my friend, just feeding and fucking. Let’s say you get<br />
a job, what are you doing that for? To get money to buy food and shelter and in<br />
that shelter you’ll be posturing, decorating, making it appealing to whoever you<br />
might bring back, probably someone you meet at that job or because of it, or<br />
someplace you can only get to because of the money you’ve made. It’s all appetites,<br />
conventional and sexual, informing our higher selves, now, isn’t it?”<br />
“What about religion though,” you say, the words dry and tired, and you<br />
wonder why you say it. The last time you set foot in a church, your hair was cut by<br />
your mother in the kitchen and your shoes were worn from playing outside. You<br />
have not played, let alone outside, in forever ago. But the mosquitoes were still<br />
there, their high-pitched whine only audible beside your ears which you smack at<br />
uselessly with a sleeve pulled up past your wrists and over your palm, wanting to<br />
hide all vulnerable skin from these insects that seek to feed on you.<br />
“Feeding and fucking still,” he says. “Maybe even more so, really. It’s about<br />
marriage, isn’t it? About procreation and parenting. The Ten Commandments<br />
mention sex and parents even, it’s so ingrained. You’re supposed to marry the<br />
opposite sex and have lots and lots of babies and teach them the same dogma that<br />
encourages the same things. That’s about it, isn’t it? Why do you think homosexuality<br />
is so frowned upon by the religious? It doesn’t conform to the procreating narrative<br />
they demand. And the feeding, well, c’mon, they eat their savior every Sunday eve,<br />
don’t they? At least the Catholics do—the old school ones.”<br />
In moments like these as the sun goes down and casts this state in an ethereal<br />
gloom, a world that exists between worlds, where the deep South tinges begin to<br />
come forth while the sound of birds and passing cars flood your ears, in moments<br />
like these you look at Gary from the side, look at the cigarette dangling from his<br />
mouth, the hands on the cracked pleather wheel and the windows rolled down<br />
because the A/C was broken long before he owned it.<br />
When you were a child you used to dream of the end of the world. When you<br />
look at him in these moments you realize where you have seen him before: he is a<br />
preacher of the apocalypse, cutting all down to the most basic levels, seeing things<br />
as mere bottom-line and bullshit. He stands at his pulpit and preaches doom, doom,<br />
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doom as the ash of the old world rains down like snow around his flock, falls to his<br />
pant legs, the embers fading fast as a new light’s born in the twilight of transition<br />
from a world of day to a world of darkness, of midnight stars and moonless eves.<br />
You never smoked, but the burning cigarette is somehow satisfying, your eyes<br />
burning as you catch the worse end of the deal between the two of you, secondhand<br />
smoke breathed in deeply.<br />
You have started running out of money, the one reliable constant of your life;<br />
however long ago it was it seemed that you had enough to last, it seemed that you<br />
wouldn’t even use half of what you had saved. You have always prepared for terrible<br />
circumstances. Unemployment could never last that long, really, and you would<br />
have a new job so fast you’d hardly remember this period of nothing. But that was<br />
long ago, and checking your bank balance has become a reliable way to induce<br />
anxiety.<br />
But while you have been emaciating yourself, eating nothing first out of<br />
depression and next out of a lack of money for groceries, Gary is always doing...<br />
something, but you never know what. You never think to ask Gary about these<br />
types of things, because you know the answers will amount to nothing of substance<br />
anyways. He is not concerned with normal priorities; he is not interested in your<br />
typical conversations. No, Gary is fascinated by other things. Things you do not ask<br />
about. Things that speak from swamps and the mud-smeared maws of alligators,<br />
climbing from the ocean and through the Everglades, dragging itself onto roads<br />
that are not maintained where overgrowth rises up from the cracked earth,<br />
pavement splitting as if a bomb dropped not too far from this place in a distant age.<br />
Gary is the kind of man you would have avoided once upon a time, but the fairy<br />
tale illusions of life have dissipated, and the very phrase “once upon a time” makes<br />
you want to leap from the truck onto the interstate out of disgust with yourself for<br />
using such words. Behind every cynic is a tarnished idealist of the highest degree.<br />
An hour ago Gary showed up at your apartment complex and told you he was<br />
going to the ocean. You knew this was his form of an invitation. You left the cup<br />
of coffee that you were holding behind on the kitchen counter, half-emptied and<br />
steam rolling off the top.<br />
You have never let him smoke in your apartment, not wanting the constant odor<br />
to cling to carpets and couches, your clothing already suffering this fate. He stood<br />
outside as he always does, ashes falling onto the walkway before he could hear<br />
you head toward the opened door. When you got outside, he was already down<br />
the staircase affixed to the corner of your building, the staircase where you have<br />
watched drug deals take place on empty Thursday nights and seen drugged out<br />
girls making poor sexual decisions with the buyers on desperate Saturday nights.<br />
You used to walk past this building beside the highway and wonder how anyone<br />
could let themselves end up in a place like this. You used to do a lot of things.<br />
You are not bothered by this place anymore. Maybe it was the dirt cheap rent<br />
that changed your mind; maybe it was your girlfriend moving out that made it<br />
acceptable, because anything would be acceptable then. Maybe it was all of the<br />
girls you tried to replace her with in your bed, girls who disappeared the next<br />
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morning or stuck around long enough to make it last a weekend that made it feel<br />
okay again. Or maybe it was Gary, constantly reminding you that everything is<br />
failing, everything is collapsing, everything is spiraling downward and at least your<br />
apartment is embracing it. Maybe that made it no worse than anywhere else in<br />
your mind.<br />
You looked at his truck sitting alone, the parking lot half-filled. You can never<br />
seem to recall a moment when it was ever completely full. Maybe it is because of<br />
the constant vacancies or maybe it is the fact that no one who lives here wants to<br />
remain, all spending as much time at parties in other counties found in the center<br />
of Florida where no tourist traveling to Disney World ever thinks to go; counties<br />
where people kill turtles with hooks and knives as entertainment and meet up in<br />
Walmart parking lots, following the convoy of trucks and used, over-clocked cars<br />
to whatever house is the night’s victim. You have gone to a few of these parties<br />
now, parties where girls are missing teeth and wearing as few garments as possible,<br />
where if you can get ahold of any amount of meth or weed, you can get laid, if you<br />
don’t mind getting tested the next day to quell your paranoia. Each time you have<br />
gone, you have been with Gary, where you never met a host and never had to make<br />
the usual rounds. People were simply there, and maybe no one was sure if anyone<br />
knew who anyone was.<br />
But tonight you know you are not going to one of these parties, and as you<br />
walk toward his truck you realize you have begun to see it in Biblical terms, not a<br />
vehicle but a horse of the apocalypse, a saddle built for two. Now as you drive along<br />
the interstate you watch as the marathon of trees begins to turn into dying small<br />
towns, gas stations and fast food establishments keeping their economies floating<br />
just high enough to gasp for air, doing nothing else particularly well. These towns<br />
that exist to push their children away and into other places or box them in and<br />
force them to die from heart attacks at forty, force them to have children at fifteen<br />
and become grandparents at thirty, begin to give way to pure road, road beneath<br />
you and road beside you, twisting as road runs above you and the sun fades from<br />
the horizon almost completely. Everything is a dull purple and red now, the jack-o’-<br />
lantern glow of streetlights causing all to look black and brown, the road the shade<br />
of sand and dirt. Headlights pass you by.<br />
“People are always waiting for the world to end,” Gary preaches to you, “What<br />
they don’t understand or don’t allow themselves to see is that it already has. It’s<br />
all sliding back. It’s all drifting aimlessly now. We are just passengers on a plane<br />
wondering why it is that the ocean beneath seems so much closer, trusting the pilot<br />
to pull us up if we get too close, not realizing that he already jumped out with the<br />
last parachute strapped to his back.”<br />
You cannot remember when it was that you first saw him. Long before meeting<br />
him, you had seen him, standing in corners with his arms crossed and smoke<br />
constantly trailing from his face, fingers jittering like the legs of an insect, the limbs<br />
of a mosquito trailing across your arm before it finds a suitable spot to sink its straw<br />
of a mouth into you and engorge itself on blood. You saw him smoking and leaving<br />
a trail behind, footprints of smoldering, coiling ash. He was the kind of person you<br />
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would ask your friends about in hushed tones, in backyards while drinking and<br />
staring at the water behind the house you were in, the only thing keeping you from<br />
wading out a dark green chain link fence that you could simply hop over, fall over,<br />
be pushed over at any moment.<br />
People would talk if you brought it up, but no one ever really added anything.<br />
“I think maybe Lydia brought him.”<br />
“No, no, it was Mark, right? He’s a friend of Mark’s.”<br />
“You’re both wrong, he’s Jenna’s boyfriend.”<br />
“Jenna’s a lesbian.”<br />
By the end of the exchange all anyone knew was that no one knew. You should<br />
have been off-put, and maybe you were, but like footage of car accidents and<br />
natural disasters you could not help but want to watch, want to see for yourself.<br />
If life were a horror movie this would be the scene where half of the audience has<br />
their hands to their faces, yet their fingers spread apart just enough to sneak brutal<br />
glances. You would be the one viewer facing ahead, popcorn still rising to mouth.<br />
It took a few of his mystery appearances for you to meet him, but you cannot<br />
remember when it was. You remember talking to him as he sold plastic baggies to<br />
a group of girls with cheap tattoos lining their backs that are visible in their strappy<br />
tank tops, tattoos they let you touch as you ask what each stands for, always trying<br />
to talk you into getting some of your own. You remember watching him get women<br />
to take their bras off in his truck for him, remember seeing him through the glass<br />
of his windshield moving as a shadow illuminated by the cherry-red light dangling<br />
where his mouth must be, has to be. But you do not remember when it was that you<br />
said hello to him, learned his name from him, shook his hand and worried what<br />
might be on it before heading to the bathroom shortly after and scrubbing more<br />
than you are accustomed to.<br />
But what you do remember is the desire you had to see him again. That sticks<br />
out still. You started going to more parties, calling more friends and asking what<br />
they were doing that weekend, pursuing more empty drinking and smoke clouds<br />
of marijuana from the people around you as you sought out the tall, looming man<br />
who always had on clothes nicer than you would think he could afford, a black<br />
military hat fitted against his head and above his glasses, and for all of his height<br />
and shoulder width was skinnier than you. You remember seeing him again after<br />
countless parties and sleeping with girls who you thought were attractive enough<br />
to hide their personalities. You have not met a girl you have really liked in a long<br />
time, not since Karen moved away. Maybe it was the shadow she cast over your<br />
life that made you seek out a man like Gary to attach yourself to, maybe she is<br />
the reason for everything, or maybe it was the lack of a father figure and need for<br />
approval that did it. Maybe you don’t really care what the reason is. Maybe it was<br />
inevitable, one of those certainties that some ascribe to fate.<br />
You remember talking to him again, breathing in his smoke, asking him<br />
questions he deflected in a way that from anyone else would tell you they did not<br />
want to talk to you, but for some reason coming from Gary seemed like his way<br />
of showing interest. The less he tells you about himself the longer you will want to<br />
212 The Literary Hatchet
know about him and that will keep you around. People who seem so larger than life<br />
rarely live up to it in their private moments.<br />
The end of the world followed him around as you met him again. He said he<br />
had to go buy a cup of coffee as you stood out on the lawn with him. He went to<br />
his truck and sat inside of it, his door half open, the cigarette glow that makes up<br />
his face in the dark pointed at you. You stood there, not drunk but well on the way,<br />
wondering why he wasn’t leaving, until you decided to walk toward him. His door<br />
shut. You tried the passenger side and found it was unlocked. This was when you<br />
discovered Gary does not ask if you want to go anywhere, simply announces his<br />
next destination and waits to see if you will follow.<br />
As his truck moved toward the highway and found a convenience store<br />
to buy cheap coffee, cop cars sat at the sides of roads with lights flashing. Fire<br />
engines barreled down streets, smoke in the air from someplace in the distance.<br />
Ambulances moved men and women and children to hospitals and morgues. You<br />
were in a town you rarely went to, simply for the sake of the party; your apartment<br />
complex was too far to go back to without a ride. You had never seen so many<br />
emergency vehicles, so many car crashes before. You would see a lot more of<br />
those in the near future. You begin to grow used to seeing the world through his<br />
windshield, emergency lights flashing, taking him up on his regular invitations<br />
lacking question marks.<br />
Now, here you are, passing the last rest stop for the next fifteen miles, the sun<br />
fully set and the darkness all-encompassing as another summer night begins to<br />
absorb all around it. You can see flashing cop cars in the city ahead, see all of the<br />
things that Gary seems to find or that seem to find Gary. You have never seen his<br />
home but you have always imagined it being beside a hospital or a prison.<br />
Rain begins to fall as it so often does here and Gary rolls his window up halfway,<br />
you mirroring his actions, not wanting the windows to fog up too much. The next<br />
fifteen miles are lost in a haze of torrential downpour, the kind that comes out of<br />
nowhere and passes soon after. If it were daylight, when the rain stopped, an hour<br />
later the sidewalks would already be dry, steam rising like ethereal hands reaching<br />
for the sun. But it isn’t daylight, not anymore, and you know that rain ditches and<br />
reservoirs and the back of the truck will be flooded until the morning comes. For<br />
now the windshield wipers are sliding back and forth, slower than they should be,<br />
yet Gary seems uninhibited, driving just as he always does, rain hitting him as he<br />
keeps an arm raised, smoke rolling out the window.<br />
He turns to the next rest stop, and without saying anything you assume he<br />
wants to wait for the rain to pass, wants to urinate or buy himself a cup of coffee<br />
someplace as he always does. There is a cop car busting a truck that contains a<br />
prostitute and driver. You find yourself parked closer than you wish you were.<br />
You get out when he does, shut your door as he does, walk into the Denny’s<br />
attached to the bathrooms as he does. There is a small convenience store attached,<br />
and you enter it. He buys himself coffee, you buy yourself one. You think of<br />
the half-emptied cup left on the kitchen counter by the coffee maker in your<br />
apartment, think of how it must have lost all warmth ten minutes after beginning<br />
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this seemingly aimless trip. It is getting late and you have to wonder why it is that<br />
you are going to the ocean at night. You may be running out of money, but two<br />
dollars and fifty cents is a vice you can fuel. Still, there is a hesitance in your hand<br />
as you swipe your debit card and Gary sees this.<br />
“Are you needing money?”<br />
“I’ll be alright,” you say, not even believing yourself as you say it.<br />
“We can fix that.”<br />
You don’t know what he means by this. You soon will. You walk outside and<br />
stand beneath an overhang, watching the rain accumulate. Thunder rolls in the<br />
distance. The both of you finish your cups within minutes of each other, tossing<br />
yours into the trash can with an ashtray that Gary is already taking advantage of<br />
attached to the lid. You cross your arms, hiding your fingertips from the cold air;<br />
it is funny to think that thirty minutes ago this air would have been hot and you<br />
would have been doing the same thing still, only hiding from mosquitoes rather<br />
than drops of rain.<br />
He finishes his cigarette and is walking away from you now, still holding his<br />
cup for some reason, no words coming from the hole in his face that never seems<br />
to eat but only inhales smoke, until he stops at the bathrooms and turns to see you<br />
standing in the same spot, simply watching.<br />
“Come on,” he says, and the apocalypse follows. Not your apocalypse, but<br />
someone else’s.<br />
You follow him, confused but too tired to care, too stressed and lost to feel<br />
much else. At least this is not your apartment. At least this is not your town.<br />
In the bathroom a man stands at a urinal, but not for long as Gary walks up<br />
behind him and grabs the back of his neck, the man starting to shout “Hey, fuck<br />
off ” but Gary doesn’t want to talk, he wants to shove his head into the porcelain<br />
protruding from the wall and he does so effortlessly. This is not the first time he has<br />
done this, you think, too stunned to react.<br />
As the man has his face brought down on the urinal and submerged in his<br />
own collected piss, Gary brings a foot down on the back of his head, repeating the<br />
motion like riding a bicycle until the bottom of the porcelain breaks off and dust<br />
powders the blood on the floor. He flips him over, looks at his face, his own calm,<br />
a still expression, the same as it always is. He rests kneeling down, his arms resting<br />
across his protruding knees, taking his hat off and wiping his forehead once before<br />
reattaching it. He stops staring and stands back up, turning and looking into a<br />
mirror, checking himself over, fixing the hat, grabbing a paper towel and wiping<br />
blood from his cheek and the back of his left wrist. He even wipes off the bottom<br />
of his shoes. He walks back over, kneels back down, pats the man over and finds<br />
a wallet inside of a leather jacket. He removes it and sorts through a stack of bills,<br />
keeps a few and hands the rest to you, the wallet in his own back pocket.<br />
“I don’t want this.”<br />
“C’mon,” he says, and smiles, his too-white teeth on display, “it’s what friends<br />
are for.”<br />
This is how Gary gets his money.<br />
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You want to panic and turn, run and find the officer who was harassing the<br />
lonely truck driver. This is more important than a man wanting sex and a woman<br />
desperate enough to give it for cash, this is a dead man whose name you do not<br />
know but could find out if you just took his wallet from Gary’s pants.<br />
But instead you take the money and pocket it, looking it over first. There is a<br />
lot there. More than you would have guessed. Whoever the dead man is, he really<br />
enjoyed carrying hundred dollar bills. This is rent. This is groceries. This is a new<br />
set of clothes that do not smell like smoke and booze, beer and pussy.<br />
But that would be wrong.<br />
“Thanks,” you say.<br />
“Don’t sweat it, buddy,” he goes, using the urinal beside the man. He flushes and<br />
picks up the Styrofoam coffee cup he came in with but dropped before attacking<br />
the dead man, pulling the lid off. He washes his hands and rinses the cup with soap<br />
and water as if he is doing the dishes and pulls a knife from his back pocket, the one<br />
opposite the wallet. He squats back down, holds the man’s arm up, pulls back the<br />
jacket sleeve. He makes a small incision surgically along the wrist and collects the<br />
blood in the cup, careful not to overfill it. He pulls it away, drops the arm, and lets<br />
the rest bleed out onto the floor with a drain set in the center. He fits the lid back<br />
on. The knife is rinsed off and put back in his pants. He walks past you and pats you<br />
on the shoulder, a way of telling you it is time to go.<br />
As you leave the dead man behind and follow Gary you look for the police<br />
cruiser but see that it is already gone. How can it be gone? The truck it was stopping<br />
is gone, too. You look back at the convenience store and the Denny’s and see that<br />
the only cars left in the wide parking lot are the employee’s, Gary’s truck and the<br />
truck of the man whose money sits folded in your front pocket beside your own<br />
wallet.<br />
You get into the truck, blood flowing to your head, a dull thud as you hear your<br />
own heartbeat in the back of your brain, your legs not wanting to work as you open<br />
the passenger door and sit back down, not noticing the rain that pours down onto<br />
you.<br />
As you strap your seatbelt on, a habit even this feeling you cannot name cannot<br />
keep you from acting on, Gary leans across you, opening the glove compartment<br />
with a key. As the light turns on you see into it for the first time. He places the<br />
wallet inside of it. It is filled with wallets.<br />
You continue your drive.<br />
He stops again. You do not know how long it has been. You have not looked<br />
at the time. Time is a flexible thing here, bending and contracting, folding and<br />
unrolling. The coffee cup sits in the holder beside your arm. You look around and<br />
see that the rain has stopped pouring; you see that you are on a road that runs<br />
above the ocean and leads to part of some city somewhere along the coast but you<br />
cannot think of any names right now. You think of all of the names that fill up that<br />
glove compartment, think of all of the bad driver’s license photos that accompany<br />
them.<br />
There are no cars in either direction, just Gary’s horse hitched to the concrete.<br />
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No headlights glow ahead of you. None glint off of the rearview mirror. He has<br />
exited the vehicle. You exit as well. He is getting a large high-powered flashlight<br />
whose plastic casing is the color of sun out of the tool chest in the back of his truck<br />
that is currently flooded with rainwater. He reaches back into the cab and comes<br />
out with the coffee cup. He walks to the edge of the road and stands at the waisthigh<br />
barrier. He motions you over. You follow.<br />
“Feeding and fucking, my friend,” Gary says to you. “This is the end of the<br />
world. We’re in it. We are the leftover children of the atom bomb blast. We are the<br />
remnants of civilization. These are the inheritors of our world.”<br />
He pours the blood into the ocean below. He waits a few minutes. He turns<br />
the flashlight on and points its beam into the ocean below, black surface now<br />
illuminated, if only for a few feet down. You see that the keys are still in the truck.<br />
You see that he is watching the blood swirl in the water. His face is dull and empty<br />
still, like that of a statue. Then they begin to flock. One at first, then more. Your<br />
brain is not thinking, simply interpreting whatever is placed in front of it and all in<br />
front of it right now is water, deep and glinting as the light reflects off of the surface<br />
and blood swirling in it, sinking into it, and shadows, shadows moving back and<br />
forth, until one nears the surface and your brain recognizes that there are sharks in<br />
the water, swimming back and forth, looking for feed.<br />
“There they are,” he says, and smiles, his teeth shining. How are his teeth so<br />
white, you wonder, and before he can open his mouth again your hand is on his<br />
back and pushing forward, all of your energy behind it, unthinking, not affording<br />
to think, and he is over the edge already, his waist bending and feet in the air and<br />
flashlight still in his hand as he twirls and falls, a loud splash as the feeding begins<br />
and you think about Karen, think about the fucking again. You look at the light that<br />
is swirling underwater and flickering as water causes it to die, and as the sharks tear<br />
Gary apart you think of the mosquitoes that will eat you alive as years go by.<br />
You look back and forth on the road again and look at the keys in the truck and<br />
climb into the driver’s side. You hope no one will miss Gary. You hope you can find<br />
a way to leave this truck someplace away from you, find a way to dissociate and<br />
forget any of this. You hope you can find a way to convince yourself this was just<br />
the man from your childhood nightmares, recurring as an adult, nothing more.<br />
Memory works that way so often. Things bleed together. Moments you remember<br />
from childhood end up being stories you were told; dreams you once had were<br />
actually reality. The reverse has to be true as well. You think of the cup of coffee<br />
in your kitchen and think of how good it will taste, even though it has sat out all<br />
evening. You look forward to the very last drop.<br />
]<br />
216 The Literary Hatchet
[poetry]<br />
Crossing that Canadian line on a visitor pass,<br />
that stretch across the border divide,<br />
that makes a torn war wound, torn man free.<br />
It made my feet new away from red cinder land on fresh grass.<br />
Back home the sirens of war keep sounding off,<br />
like common masturbation from one decade to another.<br />
All us wearing new/old bloodstains,<br />
poetry images of erections coming up, WW2, a real war.<br />
My dirty hands, on your hands, our memories shared red, white and blue justified, hell.<br />
Who does not have memories, bad cinder charcoal smoke screen in the dark flame?<br />
September comes early in Canada-October in the USA.<br />
Leaves fall early swirling in touchdowns both sides of the border.<br />
September north, but at least the bullets cease.<br />
Cast a poem South, you likely die in Vietnam or come back wounded.<br />
Cast a poem North, you likely suffers mental illness but come back on pills.<br />
Here comes again, thunder, in the rain, stroke by lightening,<br />
war bore crossing a border divide.<br />
—michael lee johnson<br />
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[short story]<br />
by paul edmonds<br />
The last time I saw my sister, she was living in a squalid apartment above an<br />
appliance repair shop. I’d just gotten divorced. My ex, Bruce, was the reason Tina<br />
and I hadn’t seen each other in over a decade. They’d been a couple when he and I<br />
got together. I knew when I met him that I would steal him away. It wasn’t hard. I<br />
was a couple years older than Tina, more developed in the places teenage boys care<br />
about, and I used those attributes to my advantage. It’s not something I’m proud of,<br />
but that’s what happened.<br />
Bruce was a musician. Not long after we hooked up he began playing bass in a<br />
band called the Abscesses. They started out small, gigging in dive bars and at town<br />
fairs around the Northeast, but eventually they hooked their raucous wagon to<br />
some pretty big groups. They did the opening-act thing for a while and over time<br />
pulled in enough fans to start headlining. They shook up every city they played,<br />
leaving it debased and with its ears ringing. All of this while I scored drugs and<br />
spread my legs and rode quietly in the back of the tour bus. But as the Abscesses<br />
blew up and Bruce perfected his rock star persona, he decided he needed a new<br />
girl, one with less mileage, and I got the ax. Our lawyers had a powwow, and I<br />
218 The Literary Hatchet
walked away with a good chunk of Bruce’s swelling fortune—severance pay for my<br />
years of service.<br />
Along with a husband, I lost most of my friends, and the few that stuck around<br />
kept trying to push me back into Bruce’s arms. I spent a couple months in Los<br />
Angeles, hanging around the old haunts, but the guilt trips got to be too much.<br />
That and I started to think about Tina. The lost years, the bitter memories. How I’d<br />
bagged on our mother’s funeral, ashamed to face my sister, the relatives who knew<br />
what I’d done.<br />
I decided to go back east, make peace, and try to reclaim a part of the life I’d<br />
sacrificed for six feet of jizz-fueled swagger.<br />
I found Tina’s e-mail address online and wrote her that I was flying back to<br />
Massachusetts. I asked if we could get together, have lunch, catch-up. A couple days<br />
went by and I didn’t hear from her. I figured reconciliation was a lost cause. But<br />
then she wrote back, said I could visit, and gave me her address, which I recognized<br />
as one of the dumpy apartment buildings in our hometown. I’d traveled the world,<br />
had eaten lobster on private jets, but she’d never gotten out, had settled down in the<br />
very place she’d always sworn to leave behind.<br />
I sat at the curb outside her place for twenty minutes before going up and<br />
ringing the bell. Along with a nasty drug habit, I’d picked up panic attacks while<br />
on tour with the band. The coke I’d kicked, but the anxiety stuck around, like a<br />
stubborn vagrant squatting inside a piano crate. I could feel it on the fringes just<br />
then, ready to creep in. I had my Xanax for emergencies, and considered popping<br />
one, but they made me loopy, and I needed a clear head if I was going to say all the<br />
things I wanted to say.<br />
As soon as I saw Tina, leaning in the doorway of that smelly building, I felt the<br />
power of my own flesh and blood. She’d put on a lot of weight, and her hair was<br />
thinning prematurely, but underneath she was the same sister I’d given piggy-back<br />
rides to, the one I’d baked cookies with, the one I’d taught to ride a bike. We hugged<br />
and then stood there looking at each other. She was wearing a pair of faded jeans<br />
and a gray wool sweater that looked itchy and hot. She had on some cheap jewelry,<br />
and I thought how after I left it would probably go back into an old cigar box or a<br />
coffee can. Seeing her broke and broken-down, was a splash of acid on my heart.<br />
We went upstairs, and the apartment was just as I’d envisioned it. It was three<br />
rooms, a living room, a bedroom, and a bathroom, with an open kitchen area<br />
along the back wall. There was a small stove and a refrigerator that made hollow<br />
knocking sounds, like someone was underneath it with a wooden mallet, banging<br />
away. Dirty dishes lined a short counter next to a tiny sink. There were broken toys<br />
all over the place, cars without wheels, army men that were missing heads and legs.<br />
It looked a lot like the house we’d grown up in.<br />
Tina led us to a folding table that was setup near the sink. I put my purse on<br />
the floor and took a seat in a stiff metal chair. She apologized for her husband not<br />
being there. He was seeing about a job up in Springfield. She’d told me about him<br />
in her e-mail. His name was Adam, and from the way she described him, he didn’t<br />
see much in the way of steady work.<br />
The Literary Hatchet 219
She went over to the fridge and pulled out a plate covered in foil. She set it on<br />
the table, went back for a pitcher of lemonade, and put it down next to the plate.<br />
Chunks of ice and slices of lemon tinkled against the thin glass.<br />
I wanted to spill my guts right then, apologize for everything, but I chickened<br />
out, said, “You always made the best lemonade. Remember how much sugar you<br />
used to put in it? I’m surprised we still have teeth.”<br />
She leaned against the counter, reached between some dishes, and grabbed a<br />
pack of cigarettes. She lit one, took a couple puffs. “Sure. Mom called it sludge.<br />
There was always that sludge in the bottom of the glass.”<br />
I laughed, and things got quiet again. The sounds of late-morning traffic came<br />
in through an open window. A small oscillating fan rattled back and forth, moving<br />
around the sour air.<br />
Tina picked ash off her sweater, and a chunk of gray wool came up with it. She<br />
wiped her fingers on her pants. “I miss her. She was my best friend after you left<br />
town.” She looked at me, smoke curling over her thin lips. “She missed you a lot.”<br />
She stubbed her half-smoked cigarette on a crusted dinner plate. “We both did.”<br />
I shifted in my chair. “I didn’t think you’d see me,” I said, not looking at her,<br />
staring at the lemonade, the bits of pulp floating in it. “You said—we said some<br />
awful things.”<br />
“They were just words, Janey.” She put a hand on my wrist. I looked up at her.<br />
“But we’re sisters, right?”<br />
I laid my hand over hers. “Absolutely.”<br />
Tina pulled away and poked her head into the living room. “Julian, come and<br />
get it,” she called, then sat down across from me.<br />
The bedroom door creaked open. A blonde boy came out, scratching his head.<br />
He wore a bleach-spotted T-shirt and underwear with yellow ducks on them.<br />
Julian, my nephew. Tina had written me about him, too—about all three of her<br />
kids. Julian was four. Her twins, Scott and Troy, were eight, and at school that<br />
morning. In my nervousness, I’d forgotten all about them. Or maybe it was just<br />
my memory of Tina that’d blocked them out. The last time I’d seen her she’d been a<br />
sixteen-year-old tomboy, and the thought of her as a mother was something I was<br />
still getting my head around.<br />
“Close the door,” Tina barked. Then, in a softer voice, “Close the door, baby.<br />
You’ll let the warm air in.”<br />
“You’ll let the warm air in,” Julian repeated, and smiled. He went back and<br />
pulled the door shut with a soft click.<br />
“Come here,” Tina said.<br />
“Come here,” Julian said, and padded across the thin carpet.<br />
Tina grabbed him by the arm and nodded toward me. “Do you know who that<br />
is?”<br />
“Know who that is?”<br />
“That’s your auntie. Auntie Janey. She’s my big sister.”<br />
Julian flapped his arms, giggled. “She’s my big sister.”<br />
I got on my knees. “Hi, big boy. Nice to finally meet you.” I gave him a kiss on<br />
220 The Literary Hatchet
the cheek, then another on the forehead.<br />
“Finally meet you,” he said.<br />
I hugged Julian, looked up at Tina. “He’s so damn adorable. Does he always do<br />
that?”<br />
Tina lit another cigarette. “What? The repeating?”<br />
“Yeah.”<br />
“That’s all he does. Repeats things.” She tapped ash into a plastic cup. “If he<br />
doesn’t hear it from someone else, he won’t say it.”<br />
“Oh,” I said, running my hands through Julian’s hair. “And it’s okay?”<br />
Tina blew out smoke. “We had him checked. The school sent us to this speech<br />
guy in Boston. Lots of kids do it. It’s called Echolella. Or Echolalia, rather. But<br />
Adam and I just call it his parrot. Like there’s a little parrot in his mouth.”<br />
“That’s cute,” I said. Julian started rubbing my tattoos, one arm and then the<br />
other. “So it’s normal?”<br />
“Look at you, all concerned,” Tina said, and grinned. “I guess it usually starts to<br />
wind down when the kid is two or three, but in some cases it can last longer. Julian’s<br />
one of those special cases.”<br />
Julian stepped over to Tina, and she took him onto her lap.<br />
“Well, he’s a special boy, I can tell,” I said, hoping to sound upbeat, but even a<br />
childless ex-groupie like me knew there was more than just a little something going<br />
on with Julian. Still, I didn’t want to press my luck. Things were starting to thaw<br />
between Tina and me, and it felt good.<br />
She peeled the foil back from the plate. Egg and tuna salad sandwiches, cut<br />
into triangles. I took one, laid it on a napkin, and then poured us some lemonade.<br />
Julian reached for a sandwich, and Tina gave him one. Then she sent him off with<br />
a pat on the butt. The television came on a moment later, and a familiar voice filled<br />
the room.<br />
“Mickey Mouse,” Tina said. “He can’t get enough of that goddamn show.” She<br />
picked at her sandwich. “Sometimes he’ll go on for hours, just repeating the lines.”<br />
“We used to act out episodes of Full House. Remember that?”<br />
“Sure. We’d fight over who got to be Uncle Jesse.” She shook her head. “We were<br />
a couple weirdos.”<br />
“Totally,” I said.<br />
Tina took a long swig of lemonade and sat back, wearing a queer little smile that<br />
hadn’t changed from when we were kids.<br />
I chewed my sandwich and peered into the living room. Donald Duck was<br />
juggling bowling pins on TV. Julian was sprawled on the couch, his face covered in<br />
egg. His lips were moving, but I couldn’t hear what he was saying.<br />
I scanned the rest of the apartment. A picture of our mother hung on the<br />
wall. She was in her wedding dress. The only other decoration was a half-melted<br />
candle on top of the television. Someone had crushed a cigarette in it. A basket of<br />
dirty laundry stood in a corner next to two narrow mattresses covered in tangled<br />
blankets. Scott and Troy’s digs, I figured. Julian must have slept in the bedroom<br />
with his parents.<br />
The Literary Hatchet 221
Beside the mattresses was a stack of long cardboard boxes. A couple were open<br />
at the ends, rolls of purple plastic sticking out.<br />
“Window tint,” Tina said.<br />
“Sorry?”<br />
She pointed. “Window tint. Adam thought he could make a fortune tinting car<br />
windows.”<br />
“Oh,” I said. “That’s a good idea. There’s a lot of money in that.”<br />
She scoffed. “Not for Adam. You know how many windows he tinted? One. And<br />
he did such a lousy job he had to give the guy his money back.”<br />
“That’s too bad.”<br />
“Yep, just didn’t have the patience for it. Same with the Amway and the magazine<br />
subscriptions.” She tore off a piece of bread and poked it into her mouth. “That fool<br />
was talking about buying a bunch of alpacas.”<br />
“He’s a dreamer,” I said. “There’s nothing wrong with that.”<br />
“Nope, nothing,” she said, and sipped her lemonade. She stared into the living<br />
room. “Bruce was a dreamer.”<br />
There it was. I could almost hear the tarp coming off the elephant, gathering on<br />
the kitchen floor in thick, rippling folds.<br />
“I suppose we should talk about that,” I said. “I know this visit isn’t all about<br />
sandwiches and lemonade.”<br />
“Water under the bridge,” Tina said. Her stare was level and cool, and again her<br />
lips turned up into that strange smile.<br />
“Is it?”<br />
“Yeah, what do you think, I’ve been eating my guts out all these years?”<br />
“Well, no, but I still think—”<br />
“Hardly.”<br />
“C’mon, Tina. There are things you need to hear from me. I’m sorry. About<br />
Bruce, about leaving.” I raised a hand to indicate the apartment, its stained ceiling,<br />
the drifts of soiled clothes, but then I caught myself, let my hand fall into my lap. I<br />
studied my half-eaten sandwich. “About everything.”<br />
“Seriously, I’m good.” Tina drained her glass, shook the ice cubes. “You were<br />
better for him anyway. I was too young. I didn’t know what I wanted.”<br />
“Are you happy?” I said. It came out sounding cruel. She glared at me. My<br />
cheeks felt tingly. I squeezed my arms, shook my head. “Fuck.”<br />
I slapped a hand over my mouth. I glanced over at Julian. He was still talking<br />
to the screen.<br />
Tina sat back, set her glass on the table with a loud clack. “Don’t worry, he<br />
doesn’t understand. We could be speaking pig latin.”<br />
I nodded, took a couple measured breaths. I scrambled for something to say.<br />
“Have you ever thought about taking him to see someone else?”<br />
Tina turned her eyes up to me.<br />
I took a long gulp of lemonade.<br />
“What, like a second opinion?” she said.<br />
222 The Literary Hatchet
“Exactly. It can’t hurt, right? See what another doctor has to say.”<br />
Tina pushed her plate aside. “Doctors don’t grow on trees, babe.”<br />
“Well,” I said, wiping my mouth. “Maybe I can help with that.”<br />
“Sure,” she said, and sucked her teeth. “Yeah, we’ll see.”<br />
“Okay,” I said, and refilled our glasses with a shaky hand. “Aren’t you going to<br />
eat anything?”<br />
“I’m not hungry. I need to lose weight.”<br />
We sat and drank and watched Julian fidget on the couch. A cramp took hold<br />
of my stomach. I wished I’d taken that Xanax. I felt worse that I had going in. Tina<br />
should have said more, should have torn into me. For stealing her guy, for living<br />
comfortably while she rotted away in a dingy apartment, her twins sleeping on<br />
the floor, her youngest son wearing stained clothes, all of them surrounded by<br />
cardboard boxes crammed with her husband’s failures.<br />
I faced her. She’d sparked a fresh cigarette. Her expression was hard.<br />
“Hell, Tina, we were kids. If I could do things over, I would.”<br />
She exhaled a plume of smoke. “Would you?”<br />
“Yes.” I folded my hands in my lap. I took a breath. I counted backwards from<br />
ten. It didn’t help. “Listen, I’m sorry I never called. Or sent you something to help<br />
out. That was wrong of me. But you left scars, Tina. Some things can’t be unsaid.” I<br />
bit the inside of my cheek. “You’re still my sister, though, and I failed you.”<br />
“Yes, you did. You went off and lived the dream, and to hell with me.” She<br />
moved her hand through the air; ash swirled around her head. “I’d see you and<br />
Bruce in magazines, on those stupid celebrity gossip shows. I wanted to puke. The<br />
way you left me behind. And Mom. You taking off the way you did—I think that’s<br />
what did her in.”<br />
“That’s not fair.”<br />
“What’s fair? Huh? What’s fair, Janey?”<br />
I was getting lightheaded. I checked my pockets for the Xanax, just to make<br />
sure I hadn’t taken it along; it wasn’t there. I downed some lemonade, tried to calm<br />
myself.<br />
Tina snorted.<br />
“What?” I said.<br />
“You took my shot. My one shot to get away from this town. This life.”<br />
“You have to make your own shots, Tina.” I dragged a palm across my sweaty<br />
forehead. “You might think Bruce and I were given everything, that everything<br />
was handed to us. But we worked hard. You weren’t there for the scummy hotels<br />
rooms, or arguing with dirt bag club owners to get paid at the end of the night. The<br />
mountains of shit we had to shovel along the way. It wasn’t luck. The whole idea of<br />
luck is bullshit. You just have to go for it.”<br />
“You sound like Adam,” Tina said, and chuckled. The sound of it slithered<br />
across my neck. “He says if you want something, you have to take it. I’m starting<br />
to believe him.”<br />
I poured another glass of lemonade. The cheery voices of Mickey Mouse and<br />
The Literary Hatchet 223
his friends crowded into my ears and seemed to multiply. It sounded like I was<br />
caught up in a sea of mice and ducks and dogs. Tina drew from her cigarette, blew<br />
the smoke at me.<br />
“It was a mistake coming here,” I said. I took another drink. My mouth was dry<br />
as laundry lint. “And you know what—I’m not sorry. Ignoring you all these years,<br />
it was the right decision. I can see that now.”<br />
“There it is,” Tina said, and smirked. “I knew you hadn’t changed. Just from<br />
your e-mail, I could tell.”<br />
“Then why did you invite me over?” I said. “So you could revel in what a<br />
horrible person I am?”<br />
“Something like that,” she said. Then, after a moment, “How much?”<br />
“Huh?” I rubbed my eyes. “What are you talking about?”<br />
“The divorce, dummy. A million?” She leaned forward. “More? It was more,<br />
wasn’t it? Cash?”<br />
“I’m done.” I stood up, holding onto the table. The chair toppled to the floor.<br />
“Just chill,” Tina said. She led me to the couch and sat me down beside Julian. I<br />
tried to get up, but she pushed me back. “I’ll get you some aspirin.”<br />
“Aspirin won’t help,” I said, but then I heard the bedroom door open and close.<br />
I looked down at Julian. His lips were still moving, but his eyes were half-shut, like<br />
he was getting ready to nap.<br />
The voices on the television seemed far away now. There was something else,<br />
too, a snapping sound from behind me, in the bedroom.<br />
Julian’s T-shirt had ridden up, exposing his white belly. I touched it. He was hot.<br />
“Auntie Janey,” I said, pulling his shirt down. My tongue felt too big for my<br />
mouth, but I was starting to relax a little. “Can you say that, Julian?”<br />
He turned to me, his eyelids fluttering. “Can you say that, Julian?”<br />
“No. Auntie Janey.” I picked a clump of egg off his chin. “I’m Auntie Janey.<br />
C’mon, now. Who am I?”<br />
“Auntie Janey,” Julian said, and closed his eyes.<br />
“Yes!” I said. “Very good, honey. What a smart boy.”<br />
“Auntie Janey. Cut that bitch.”<br />
I thought I’d misheard him. I pulled him close. “What? What are you saying?”<br />
Julian blew air between his lips. Spittle sprayed my arm. “Auntie Janey. Cut that<br />
bitch. Take what’s ours.”<br />
A second later he was snoring, his chest rising and falling slowly. I closed my<br />
hands into loose fists and felt something sharp in my palm. I opened my hand, and<br />
standing out in a smear of egg and mayonnaise was a little white jag. I brought it<br />
up to my eyes. It was a piece of a pill.<br />
Another noise from the bedroom, the clank of metal. I pushed myself up from<br />
the couch. Colors were beginning to meld together. I stumbled over to the kitchen<br />
table, searched for my purse. It was gone. I patted my jeans; my car keys were in<br />
my hip pocket. I staggered to the front door. It was hard to get a good grip on the<br />
doorknob. My fingers wanted to do their own thing. I got it turned, finally, and<br />
224 The Literary Hatchet
stepped out of the apartment. I fell against the wall. My legs were giving out, but I<br />
pulled myself up, started down the hallway.<br />
I got to the stairs, grabbed the bannister, and looked over my shoulder. I had<br />
a direct view into Tina’s apartment. Everything was losing detail, but I could see<br />
her bedroom door swing open. Through the darkness came a face, then another.<br />
Someone shouted, but I was already staggering down the stairs. I missed a step and<br />
fell on my ass and slid the rest of way.<br />
I made it to the sidewalk, barely, and bumped into a couple of guys moving a<br />
refrigerator out of the appliance shop. I heard a crash, then angry voices calling<br />
after me. I couldn’t make out the words. I got to my car and tumbled into the<br />
backseat. Then I fell asleep.<br />
I woke up in a small, uncomfortable bed. A fluorescent light flickered overhead.<br />
It sounded like flies were bouncing around inside of it. I let my head loll to the side<br />
and saw a long, thin tube hooked into the back of my hand.<br />
Just outside the room were a cop and a doctor. The front of the cop’s pants were<br />
streaked with something that could have been egg salad.<br />
“A little too much fun,” the doctor said, sliding a clipboard under his arm.<br />
“Looks the type,” the cop added, and they both smiled.<br />
I tried to sit up, didn’t have the strength. Stiff sheets crinkled beneath me.<br />
The doctor nodded to the cop, then came into the room, his stethoscope at the<br />
ready. His breath was all coffee and mint-flavored gum. I glanced over his bony<br />
shoulder and saw Tina lingering near the nurses’ station. We locked stares. She<br />
frowned and shot me the finger and walked away, and that was the last time I saw<br />
my sister.<br />
]<br />
The Literary Hatchet 225
[poetry]<br />
The church basement, cool and dim.<br />
In the bright outdoors a man flits<br />
through the shrubbery, approaches,<br />
presses his face to the window.<br />
He can’t see me crouched in the dark.<br />
But the locked door creaks. Something<br />
brushes me, then explodes in rage,<br />
wrestling with slippery tentacles.<br />
This isn’t a nightmare. It happens<br />
with a powerful odor of sea slime<br />
no dream could conjure. A light<br />
comes on. The creature I’m strangling<br />
is a colorless protoplasm<br />
too naked to cast a shadow.<br />
It deflates, puddles on the floor.<br />
The big room shivers in the glare.<br />
With mop and bucket I swab and pour<br />
the gelatinous slop down a drain.<br />
Folding chairs and tables filed<br />
for the next church supper rebuke me<br />
226 The Literary Hatchet
for my cowardice. Evolution<br />
doesn’t do well in dank basements<br />
of nineteenth-century churches.<br />
Usually it coughs up millipedes<br />
and silverfish. That slime monster,<br />
too puny for real harm, may suggest<br />
real trouble in the future.<br />
I look around the room. A stain<br />
on the concrete floor, so I scrub<br />
with Spic and Span and bleach it.<br />
The bleach fumes comfort me, tough<br />
old-fashioned toxin to revive me<br />
and propel me into the sunlight<br />
where I saw that man prowling.<br />
No one’s here; but when I turn<br />
and look back at the basement window<br />
there’s his face, inside now,<br />
pressed to the pane and watching me<br />
with a longing so transparent<br />
I can see his arteries throb.<br />
—william doreski<br />
The Literary Hatchet 227
[short story]<br />
I keep mulching.<br />
When I chose to do landscaping over the summer, I had no idea I would have<br />
to deal with obnoxious clients; especially ones as bad as Ms. Ferry. You see, Ms.<br />
Ferry’s husband passed about three years ago, leaving her an enormous fortune,<br />
and in our small community anyone with that sort of money becomes a celebrity;<br />
and she embraced every single second of it.<br />
“Mulch faster! Why else am I paying you?!” she keeps screaming out her back<br />
door at me. She is holding a large glass of sangria, her small dog tucked under arm<br />
as she is the one barking orders.<br />
“Ms. Ferry, it’s over 100 degrees. I’m going as fast as I can, I promise,” I respond<br />
through gritted teeth, wiping my brow. “If I could just get some cold water, I could<br />
probably go faster.”<br />
“Do you think I’m a charity case?” she yells back, the veins in her neck pulsing<br />
as she gets louder. “When you finish the job, then you get water. Until then, shut<br />
the hell up and finish my yard work.”<br />
With that, she pulls the glass door shut, and storms back into her kitchen to mix<br />
herself another alcoholic drink to have as breakfast.<br />
I keep mulching.<br />
If I could just go in there, this pitchfork would make such a perfect weapon.<br />
I throw the mulch angrily, trying to spread it faster and faster. The heat in North<br />
Carolina is finally taking its toll, however. I throw one heavy fork full, and then I<br />
have to take a seat to catch my breath. It is only 10:00 in the morning, but the heat<br />
and humidity are both around 100.<br />
Sitting on the mulch pile, I see Ms. Ferry waddling her overweight self around<br />
her kitchen. As the blender churns, she is shoveling cookies into her face and<br />
watching some cheesy morning talk show. She is totally apathetic to just how<br />
228 The Literary Hatchet
y ray mears<br />
terrible the weather feels to work in. As I catch my breath, I think of all the different<br />
ways I could end her pathetic life and get away with it. Eventually though, I shake<br />
my thoughts and go back to work before she has the chance to catch me on break.<br />
My mulching eventually leads me to the flower bed right next to the back door.<br />
Slaving away, I can hear her inside laughing at her television programming. As if<br />
on cue, her dog yips along with her laugh. I can only shake the annoying sounds<br />
away, hoping she will get drunk and fall over, cracking her head.<br />
A car door around front catches my attention. Probably just a pool boy, or some<br />
other slave for Ms. Ferry. The sweat now is dripping off me to the ground.<br />
The first odd thing I notice is the lack of sounds from the dog. Even when it<br />
wasn’t yipping you could hear its little feet pattering along the linoleum. I brush<br />
it off, thinking it had finally laid itself down. Then I hear a glass shatter inside the<br />
house, and the television programming clicks to a stop.<br />
Raising my eyes from the mulch to the door, I fall backwards with a scream of<br />
my own. In the door way is a man dressed in an expensive suit, all black with a light<br />
purple tie; from the knee down, the black dress pants are soaked in a dark liquid.<br />
Over his face, he wears a cheap plastic feline mask, resembling the old cartoon cats<br />
from the 50’s. In one hand, he is holding a fistful of diamonds and pearls. In the<br />
other, he has a long, bloody knife. I watch in horror as the vermillion liquid drips<br />
slowly onto the kitchen floor. Fearing for my life, I reach for my pitchfork next to<br />
me.<br />
The man simply shakes his head slowly, and makes a ‘shush’ motion with his<br />
finger to the mask’s mouth. I understand and nod slowly. As quietly as the man<br />
approached the door, he is gone. I hear one more quiet ‘thud’ of a car door, and<br />
then realize I am now alone with a dead Ms. Ferry inside.<br />
I keep mulching.<br />
]<br />
The Literary Hatchet 229
[poetry]<br />
Miranda steals shiny trinkets<br />
from the elderly and pawns them.<br />
When I reach into her bosom<br />
and extract my Timex watch<br />
her innocence recedes like a tide.<br />
A crowd gathers. Miranda<br />
in a pique of fury undresses<br />
completely, shedding jewelry,<br />
pill boxes, lighters, money clips,<br />
and enough watches to daunt<br />
every time zone on the planet.<br />
Naked, she glowers with fission.<br />
Her jaws creak as if a great scream<br />
has fossilized deep inside her.<br />
The crowd murmurs with pity<br />
and glowers at me, so I leave<br />
with my watch ticking on my wrist<br />
and a vision of Miranda’s<br />
clay-colored body brimming.<br />
The rest of the day discolors<br />
like an old bruise. The post office<br />
coughs up bills and circulars.<br />
The coffee shop’s too busy<br />
to prepare my mocha latte<br />
with the right shade of chocolate.<br />
The market offers weird cuts of beef<br />
crudely torn from celestial cows.<br />
Miranda will probably stalk<br />
and knife me in my sleep;<br />
and when police find my watch<br />
ticking in her bosom she’ll feign<br />
such guilt they’ll feel ashamed,<br />
and neglect to arrest her.<br />
—william doreski<br />
230 The Literary Hatchet
The Literary Hatchet 231
[short story]<br />
by joshua flowers<br />
232 The Literary Hatchet
Churned by pendulum-like waves, the wood of the dock had become swollen<br />
with water and age. Yet, still young compared to the lake it rested against. That lake<br />
had been there before anything else, home to old things and new. A girl lingered at<br />
the edge. Thin straps of her blue dress clung like wet threads to her bony shoulders.<br />
A pink flower bloomed out her chest, roots dug into her skin and heart. The flower<br />
was the loveliest thing anyone had ever seen; with soft petals, and twinkling golden<br />
anthers.<br />
The girl sat whistling a witch’s song for hours. An old woman living near the<br />
forest taught it to her. It was a song about a woman that traded for a thing of<br />
amazing beauty. Mist hid everything, dyeing the world gray. Like last time, the girl<br />
could not see the thing, but felt a wave ripple out and lick her toes.<br />
A sigh emerged from the center of the mist, words sinking into the flower like<br />
light. It’s you again? What do you want this time?<br />
“Please,” the girl said, her voice scared and frail like a child who knew they did<br />
wrong. “Could you please give me my name back?”<br />
Why, my little witch? The voice shifted cool breeze across the girl’s white skin. I<br />
gave you such a pretty flower in exchange.<br />
The girl fondled the thing growing out of her, touching the thick clothe-like<br />
petal at the tip, she felt her touch through the petal like it was hair; the feeling<br />
an invasion of space. “Please! I want my name back. No one knows who I am<br />
anymore! My mom and dad don’t recognize me! They threw me out and called me<br />
crazy! They won’t let me back in! Please! I just want to go home!”<br />
Of course they don’t recognize you. You don’t have a name! No one knows someone<br />
without a name. But you have such a pretty flower instead!<br />
She could feel the chill breathe across her bare skin like with a stalker’s glee.<br />
“Please, I’ll give you the flower back. I’ll give you anything! Just give me back my<br />
name! I’m cold and I want to go home!”<br />
There was a brief pause. The only thing I wanted from you was your name. Now<br />
go away, I no longer like talking to you, little witch.<br />
Silence exuded as the thing left. The girl pleaded to the empty air, hoping<br />
something would speak back to her. The voice was so excited when they first<br />
talked. It loved the way she whistled the old witch’s song, said she had the loveliest<br />
voice. The girl could never see the thing beyond the mist, but it saw her. It called<br />
her pretty and told her how beautiful she would look with a flower…<br />
The girl’s mouth became dry, and she could no longer whistle. The dark lake<br />
was indifferent to her, and she gave a sad whimper, tears falling onto the petals.<br />
Frustrated, the girl grabbed at the flower, trying to rip it out of her. With only a<br />
little force, she cried in pain. It felt like trying to rip out her hair. She looked behind<br />
her to the shore and the gray void hiding the road and town. No one was waiting<br />
for her on the other side, they had all forgotten. That loneliness was as terrifying<br />
as death.<br />
The Literary Hatchet 233
She jumped into the lake, desperate to swim to its center and get her name<br />
back. It was like a clasp of ice strangled her lungs. She flailed her arms in front of<br />
her, dragging herself forward with fistfuls of water. She could feel her flower choke<br />
and numb, as its petals became swelled like the legs of the dock. Waves attacked<br />
her, warning her to turn back, but she had nowhere to go. It felt like the world was<br />
trying to kill her miserable self, and her tears mixed with the infinite darkness of<br />
the lake. She was no longer cold, instead she was numb like the flower, and felt her<br />
body disappear. Her sight blurred and she no longer knew where she came or went.<br />
Her body was like a ship that had given up its course, prey to winds and tides.<br />
A floor of sand tripped her, causing her to stumble. Footing returned as her<br />
toes clung to the soft sand. She climbed forward, body rising above the lake’s heavy<br />
grasp. The girl found herself on a shore, a familiar grass lying beyond. She looked<br />
around, and was horrified to see the old dark dock sitting near her. Her breath was<br />
frightened away at the thought of all her suffering being for nothing. Then a voice<br />
called to her.<br />
Well done. I was sure you would drown!<br />
It did not come from the lake, but a little further up the shore, where grass<br />
reigned dominant. The girl walked; her wet body bare to the winds, sand clinging<br />
to her feet like moss. Something shiny lingered in the air above the grass.<br />
The girl came across a large piece of grass, as tall as hay. Sitting atop was a huge<br />
silver slug; it’s body long like a snake’s. The smell of the lake reeked from it, almost<br />
suffocating the girl. Four black tendrils stuck out from where its face was; they<br />
bobbed as it spoke. Your flower looks pitiful now. What a waste.<br />
The flower was soaked; its petals hanging down like a bundle of nooses. “I’m<br />
sorry! I’m sorry! I didn’t take good care of the flower, but please, I want my name<br />
back! I came so far! I’ll do anything, so please, I want my name back!”<br />
There, there. You have swayed me! I’ll give a chance to get your name back.<br />
“Really?” The girl cried, her heart vulnerable, willing to believe whatever the<br />
slug said.<br />
You merely have to find it.<br />
The girl looked around and saw a dozen flowers around her, standing up on<br />
tall stalks, glowing like candles. They lingered in the mist, like burning lily pads<br />
floating through the air.<br />
One of these flowers has your name. The others have nothing. You just have to find<br />
the right one. An easy task, surely you’d recognize your own name.<br />
The flowers all glowed different, their petals as varied as emotions. “How do I<br />
choose one?”<br />
Just go up and reach for it.<br />
The girl looked at them, it was like she was in the middle of a pallet of colors;<br />
one red with petals like a flurry of fire, one green and mellow like moss. But she<br />
knew which one was hers. There was a pink one; a glow like twilight, little anthers<br />
sparkling like gold dust. It was the same as the one, hunched down over her dress.<br />
“I’m sorry,” she whispered to her flower, hanging dead off her. She reached out<br />
to the vibrant pink. It moved toward her hand, as if it recognized the smell. The<br />
234 The Literary Hatchet
flower enveloped it, warmth from the petals caressing her skin. Chomp. The sound<br />
screamed up her bone, and the flower pulled away, tearing off her hand. The girl<br />
stared at the stump before a red flower bloomed painfully out of it. The girl cried as<br />
petals pushed past torn skin, and roots dug into broken bone.<br />
Too bad, the slug said. Wrong one.<br />
The girl panted, a pained stress existing in the empty space where her hand<br />
was. The red flower seemed to glow with heat. “But… but…” she stammered out<br />
between scared sobs.<br />
Your logic wasn’t bad, but the flower I gave you has nothing to do with your name.<br />
It was just a pretty flower that I had. And now I have a hand.<br />
The girl kneeled down, her body a series of violent shakes, the grass prickling<br />
and stabbing into her legs. “I’m sorry!” She prayed as if she said it enough all the<br />
bad things would go away.<br />
There’s nothing to be sorry about! It’s quite all right to be wrong every now and<br />
then. You just have to choose another. Here, the pink flower before her twisted up<br />
and dimmed. This way you won’t lose track. So go on, pick another.<br />
The girl hobbled to a tiny gray flower; inside it she saw a reflection of her sad<br />
soul, and reached out hesitantly, extending her outermost fingers, ready to snap her<br />
hand back. The flower was too quick. Chomp. It gobbled her pinky and ring finger,<br />
leaving an empty chunk in their place. She screamed out as another red flower<br />
blossomed from the torn spot; roots bruising and spasming her small wrist.<br />
She shambled to another flower, a red one with a violent threatening glow. Its<br />
shape and color matched the flowers that had spouted from her bitten body. The<br />
girl prayed the wounds sucking at her painfully were hints. She took her bare dirty<br />
foot, and stretched it out. Its petals wrapped around, sucking at her ankle. Chomp.<br />
The girl fell to the grass, a purple flower sprouting at her leg’s end, its petals pulling<br />
on the ripped ends of her skin. She tried to stand, tried to use her eaten leg, but<br />
when pressure brushed the petals, it was like her entire leg was boiling. Her chest<br />
quaked like a crumbling plain, shaking the slumped dead flower growing from it.<br />
She pleaded to the slug, “Please, stop! I’m sorry! I don’t want to do this anymore!<br />
I just want to go home!”<br />
Come now, you’ve come so far! Just nine more to go! Surely one of them has your<br />
name! Besides, you have nowhere else left to go. But if you want, I could just eat you<br />
whole now. A mound in the slug’s face started to open, a tiny black pip that grew<br />
slowly like a void.<br />
“No, I’m sorry, I’ll play!” The girl turned herself over, mindful of the flowers<br />
on her stumps, and lay on her chest. She heard the dead flower underneath her<br />
crumble, the sound echoing throughout her body. She dragged herself, feeling the<br />
pink flower cut apart as hundreds of blades of grass sliced away at it. The first<br />
flower didn’t hurt; it was as numb as her cold flesh. She went to a lowly black<br />
flower, casting a gloomy shadow on the ground, the petals flowed down like a bell.<br />
It looked as miserable as she felt. She reached out with the stump, hoping at the<br />
very least it would take the frightening red flower too.<br />
No cheating. Use your good hand. I already have that one.<br />
The Literary Hatchet 235
The girl did as the slug said with a whimper, and stuck out her half good hand<br />
to the flower. It flinched up, and the girl cowered, but the flower ignored her and<br />
stood upright, its droopy petals blooming out, a black light dancing over her lying<br />
body.<br />
Good job, you found it!<br />
The girl started to sob underneath the dark light. “I have my name again?”<br />
Yep. Now, stand up. The girl forced herself up, mindful of the flowery appendages<br />
that grew out from her. They did not hurt though, and she crushed their pretty<br />
petals against the ground. She looked back and saw a shredded trail of pink from<br />
where she crawled across. The flower on her chest was gone; in its place was a spot<br />
of crunched pink and gold, blood drizzling over.<br />
If you walk out that way, you will find yourself at the road again. Don’t worry,<br />
everyone will remember you now! Since you have a name, everyone will care again!<br />
The girl was crying with joy and lurched forward through the gray mist.<br />
Goodbye, my little witch! Thank you for all the fun! The slug whistled the witch’s<br />
tune as it faded away with the mist.<br />
Grass disappeared for road, and the girl peered around the familiar sight of a<br />
trees and houses. Excitement shook her as she recognized the old woman’s cabin,<br />
and knew how to get home. She stumbled, and felt warmth return to her body as<br />
the last pieces of flowers crumbled away, their roots being flooded out by her warm<br />
burning blood. She heard some shouts from behind her, but when she turned to<br />
look back, she toppled onto the dirt road. Two men ran to her torn up body.<br />
“Shit.” One of them said, “I think this is the Anderson’s girl. Mari? What<br />
happened to her?”<br />
The girl’s eyes lit up in a way that startled both the men.<br />
“Please,” she said, her voice both quiet yet intense like crackling embers. “Say<br />
my name again.”<br />
Unsure what to do, they merely said the word back to her in a hushed voice.<br />
“Mari?”<br />
Mari closed her eyes, letting the sound sink in through the blackness. She<br />
smiled, and spoke her name too. “Mari.” She was glad, happy to hear the word she<br />
too had forgotten. It was beautiful and soft. She let it linger in her mouth as she<br />
began to sleep, a faint dream in her ears, as she listened to her parents call out to<br />
her, telling her to come home.<br />
]<br />
236 The Literary Hatchet
[poetry]<br />
I saw a kindly man ahead,<br />
his face appeared quite stricken.<br />
As overcome with certain dread,<br />
his footsteps seemed to quicken.<br />
I walked across the verdant moor,<br />
fog lifting from the peat.<br />
A feeling that I’d walked before<br />
this land beneath my feet.<br />
I knew each craggy, rugged rock.<br />
I knew the purple grass.<br />
The shepherd herding docile flock<br />
with a little red-haired lass.<br />
I nodded as I passed them by,<br />
now feeling quite displaced.<br />
It seems I’ll never know just why<br />
they scurried off in haste.<br />
A while I watched as children played<br />
as ghostly tales they tell.<br />
They said they knew quite well the maid<br />
who walks this haunted fell.<br />
Over the low rock wall I scaled<br />
while in their tales engrossed,<br />
‘twas then their little faces paled<br />
as though they’d seen a ghost!<br />
Bent down over a clear cold stream,<br />
no reflection did I see!<br />
Is this a nightmare or some dream?<br />
The lost ghost girl is me...<br />
—michelle deloatch<br />
The Literary Hatchet 237
[poetry]<br />
He dashed all my hopes in the moonlight<br />
as I watched him conspire with her there.<br />
So gently he kissed her, then whispered<br />
soft and low as he smoothed back her hair.<br />
The night cast a glow as the moonbeams<br />
seemed to dance with the jewels that she wore.<br />
Her em’rald green gown, sleek and satin,<br />
made those lovely eyes shine all the more.<br />
Crimson hair, like a river, cascaded<br />
down her back in a flowing, red wave.<br />
This beauty she has without knowing<br />
makes a strong man a fool or a slave.<br />
My face, deathly pale as the night’s orb<br />
while her cheeks softly blushed like the rose!<br />
That flower he plucked for her sweetly<br />
while I watched there in silent repose.<br />
‘Twas then I indulged my dark visions,<br />
these visions then led to a dream.<br />
The dream, when I woke, seemed divining<br />
some plot which then led to my scheme...<br />
“I’ll dash all his hopes in the moonlight<br />
and he’ll watch me take hold of her there.<br />
I’ll pull her as close as a whisper,<br />
by grasping her mane of red hair!<br />
Together we’ll plunge to the dark sea<br />
below we’ll collide with the rocks,<br />
and down, down I’ll pull her there with me,<br />
still clutching those flaming red locks!”<br />
—michelle deloatch<br />
238 The Literary Hatchet
[poetry]<br />
Amber hair shades my hazel eyes,<br />
Bleak this dream of mine it cries.<br />
Cruel contradiction of cheerful ways,<br />
Devoted to only my darkest days.<br />
Eager to believe in all that I know,<br />
Fluent in death this poet woes.<br />
Guided by misery and all my regret.<br />
Heartbroken and depressed though not to fret.<br />
Insecure and irrational are such ideals,<br />
Jaded and lost is just how I feel.<br />
Kindness a monster so knavish indeed,<br />
Lunar true mother such pacts that I creed.<br />
Mindful of a world I want to forget,<br />
Novels of nightmares some take as a threat.<br />
Obsolete and a dream that doesn’t exist,<br />
Poetically poor the nightmares resist.<br />
Questioning death but I am it’s reaper,<br />
Rebirth in reticence oh darkness my keeper.<br />
Sorrowful words I ‘d rather not share,<br />
The illusions of life are rather unfair.<br />
Used and abused this ugly old soul,<br />
Vacant of kindness my embers to coal.<br />
Writing in vain this prison of dust,<br />
Xanthous of ivory’s dear prison of rust.<br />
Youthful and dead I could have been saved,<br />
Zestless and gone was this fate so engraved?<br />
—nicholas powell<br />
The Literary Hatchet 239
[short story]<br />
by rory o’brien<br />
240 The Literary Hatchet
Mr. William Gillette has made many startling and dramatic entrances onstage,<br />
but few could compare to that chill March evening some years ago when an<br />
unexpected visitor burst into his dressing room backstage.<br />
After a decade of starring in Sherlock Holmes: A Drama in Four Acts, touring to<br />
cities large and small and playing to packed houses and extended runs, Gillette was<br />
at the height of his fame. With his deerstalker cap, Calabash pipe, and melancholy<br />
scrapings upon the violin, he was the very embodiment of the Great Detective to<br />
the public at large. Small wonder that so many said that “Sherlock Holmes looks<br />
exactly like William Gillette!”<br />
The man who came unannounced that night was no stranger. Both Gillette<br />
and I recognized Mr. Harrison Thorne, the wealthy businessman and well-known<br />
patron of the theater, very much regarded as royalty up and down Broadway.<br />
Indeed, he was a major financial backer of the very theater which was to be our<br />
home for the next nine weeks. In person, Thorne was a giant of a man, well over<br />
six feet, with piercing blue eyes, a handlebar mustache, and the chest and limbs of<br />
a Hercules. He was ostentatiously dressed in a way meant to show off wealth rather<br />
than good taste.<br />
My employer, sitting at his table and wiping away his heavy stage makeup,<br />
turned and murmured, “Mr. Thorne! This is quite a surprise!”<br />
“I must speak with you immediately, Gillette.”<br />
“Call me Will, please.” He gave Thorne a swift, all-encompassing glance,<br />
smiled, and said, “I can see by the state of your tie that you have just come from a<br />
meeting; that Masonic charm on your watch-chain tells me what kind of meeting<br />
it must have been. And that gold-handled walking-stick—”<br />
“Dammit, I don’t have time for your tricks,” Thorne raised his voice. “This is<br />
important.”<br />
“Well, your timing is excellent, certainly. Osaki was just making coffee.”<br />
Our visitor threw me a glance that was both angry and dismissive at once.<br />
“I must speak with you … alone.”<br />
“Oh, I am afraid it is both, or none,” Gillette said with another smile. “Osaki is<br />
not only my dresser, but a valued friend and associate. Besides, as you can see, he<br />
is from Tokyo and I assure you he cannot understand a word either of us is saying.”<br />
“Very well,” Thorne muttered, giving me another look. Falling into my assigned<br />
role, I gave our visitor the curt bow he must have expected from a correct Japanese<br />
The Literary Hatchet 241
manservant. Gillette winked to me as the man took a seat. I continued making the<br />
coffee and was tempted to give both of them too much sugar.<br />
“You probably know that I am about to be married,” Thorne began. “Miss Lara<br />
Hunnicutt.”<br />
“Her father is the oil and steel magnate?” Gillette asked languidly.<br />
“Yes. She she’ll probably make a decent enough wife, if I can get the actual<br />
marriage done and out of the way. But there is a complication there, Gillette. And<br />
it is one hell of a complication. You know the name Gayle Pulver?”<br />
“I know of her, though we have never met,” Gillette leaned back in his chair<br />
and steepled his fingertips. “A dancer, I believe? Retired now, and a very private<br />
person, I understand.”<br />
“Very private,” Thorne nodded solemnly. “But not entirely cut off from …<br />
companionship.”<br />
“Ah!”<br />
“Perhaps you understand where this is going?”<br />
“Was there an entanglement with her? Are there compromising letters to be<br />
recovered? Legal papers or certificates?”<br />
“No.”<br />
“There can only be a photograph, then,” William Gillette smiled.<br />
“Yes. And with my approaching marriage, you can see how such a photograph<br />
could be compromising and embarrassing, if not outright damaging, and so it<br />
must be … taken care of. Destroyed or recovered. I prefer the latter.”<br />
“You have tried and failed?”<br />
“A number of times! She has been waylaid, her luggage has been re-directed,<br />
and her home has been searched, all to no avail.”<br />
“I can see why you have come to me,” Gillette rubbed his long nervous hands<br />
together. “But then again, perhaps I cannot quite see why?”<br />
“Your reputation is as a man of tact and discretion. You’ve been known to<br />
quietly handle such delicate situations before.”<br />
It was true. Often, the vast unobservant public confuses the actor with the role,<br />
and this was not the first time someone had asked for help in solving a problem<br />
or unraveling a mystery. In Chicago, we investigated the case of Mordecai of<br />
abominable memory, and in San Francisco, we became involved in the singular<br />
affair of the Three German Imposters. As important a problem as this may be, I<br />
don’t see how I can help you.”<br />
Thorne rose from his chair and glowered down at the actor.<br />
“You are aware of the financial support I have provided for your production,<br />
Gillette?”<br />
“I am, of course.”<br />
“And if I withdrew that support, and suggested that a few others should do<br />
likewise, you would find yourself in considerable difficulty. The management<br />
would kick you out tomorrow morning if I told them that had to choose between<br />
your play and my money.”<br />
Gillette was silent.<br />
242 The Literary Hatchet
“Well, I’m glad you see it that way then, Will. I am sure you will find a<br />
satisfactory solution, you’re so clever onstage. I expect you to have a result no later<br />
than the day after tomorrow.”<br />
He scribbled his address on a sheet of paper and slammed the door behind<br />
him as he went.<br />
The actor was quiet for a long minute, with his chin sunk down upon his breast.<br />
“My English is better than your Japanese,” I said to rouse him. “And we don’t<br />
need to do this; you don’t need his money.”<br />
“There are other reasons for taking this on. Tomorrow is Monday. We are<br />
dark,” he said with a smile.<br />
He was right. There was to be no show the next day, and I knew there was<br />
nothing else on his schedule.<br />
And William Gillette was bored.<br />
Early the next morning, on his instructions, I loafed up and down the block<br />
outside Miss Gayle Pulver’s Greenwich Village brownstone in the character of an<br />
out-of-work butler. I borrowed a threadbare suit from the costume department to<br />
look the part of a respectable manservant fallen on hard times. The house was on<br />
a quiet street in an artistic neighborhood, exactly where a Bohemian lady would<br />
live. I studied the house from every angle and saw nothing of interest, nothing<br />
that would be of any assistance to us in our attempt to recover this scandalous<br />
photograph.<br />
A small knot of men had gathered on a stoop across the street, smoking and<br />
drinking and laughing back and forth. Jobless men, passing the time. There is a<br />
kind of freemasonry among such men, and even I, an obvious foreigner, should be<br />
able to ingratiate myself in among them. I had come prepared with cigarettes and<br />
a hip flask, and offering them around and making idle talk, I soon had as much<br />
information as I could desire about Miss Gayle Pulver, and another half a dozen<br />
people in the neighborhood I was not at all interested in, but whose stories I was<br />
compelled to hear anyway.<br />
She had turned men’s heads all up and down the block, I was told. She was the<br />
daintiest thing under a bonnet on this planet, according to many of them there on<br />
the stoop. She lived quietly, had few visitors, and seldom went out, except for her<br />
daily drive each morning—I was told that she would probably be back shortly.<br />
“Who keeps her house?”I asked, looking across to the brownstone.<br />
“Why? You gonna get a job doing her laundry?” one of the men laughed.<br />
“She won’t hire a Chinaman, not even one that talks good like you do,” said<br />
another.<br />
I let these remarks go, partly because I was here on serious business, and partly<br />
because this was the sort of thing I hear every day. I have lived in this country for<br />
over twenty years, half my life, but am constantly reminded that I will always be an<br />
outsider. Cigarettes and a hip flask could only ever get me so far.<br />
My thoughts were interrupted by a cab rattling to a halt. Miss Pulver had come<br />
home from her daily drive.<br />
The Literary Hatchet 243
I crossed the street, pulling my hat down low on my face as I reached the<br />
sidewalk. I opened the cab door for her, tipped my hat, and thrust out my hand,<br />
murmuring, “Ma’am.”<br />
The men across the street had not lied. She was a striking woman, tall and<br />
slender with a face a man might die for. She wore her hair long and loosely tied back<br />
and moved with the fluid strength of the trained dancer. I could easily imagine her<br />
onstage. She pressed a penny into my hand as she went, never making eye contact<br />
at all. It’s New York, no one ever does.<br />
“Hey, pal,” the cabman called. “Move it along, huh?”<br />
I returned to the scene with Gillette a few hours later, just as the sun was<br />
setting. His sense of drama extended far beyond the footlights, and he was ready<br />
to carry out a plan.<br />
He appeared in the character of an amiable and benign clergyman. His<br />
broad black hat, his baggy trousers, his sympathetic smile, and general look of<br />
peering curiosity were perfect. It was not merely that he changed his costume. His<br />
expression, his manner, his very soul seemed to vary with the part that he assumed.<br />
With his bashful half-smile, his shuffling walk, and fidgeting hand-gestures,<br />
he might have been rehearsing the role for weeks, rather than only a few short<br />
minutes. He quickly added some dirt stains to his cuffs and knees, then, with the<br />
aid of a red grease pencil brought from the theater, gave his face the appearance of<br />
several cuts and scrapes.<br />
Once satisfied, he turned to me. “Ready?”<br />
“I am.”<br />
He leaned heavily against me and I half-carried him across the street and up<br />
the steps of Miss Pulver’s brownstone.<br />
“Help!” he cried in a high, keening voice, banging on the lion’s-head door<br />
knocker. “Please! Someone help!”<br />
A moment Miss Pulver answered the door, and when I saw her again I was<br />
almost ashamed that we were conspiring against her. She looked upon the injured<br />
man on her doorstep with grace and kindliness.<br />
“Madame! Your assistance, please! I have been set upon by a gang of ruffians<br />
and this Oriental gentleman—a stranger to me!—came to my aid. He has some<br />
knowledge of baritsu, and so drove them off. If you would please allow me a<br />
moment to recover before summoning the police ….”<br />
With a groan, his knees buckled and we pushed past the woman and into the<br />
front parlor of her home. It was a sunny, high-ceiling room, tastefully furnished<br />
in a very delicate and feminine manner and decorated with framed watercolors.<br />
Gillette collapsed onto her sofa with a pained cry. I stepped back and affected an<br />
attitude of somewhat confused concern.<br />
“Madame, I am sure I will regain myself in a moment. If I could trouble you<br />
for a glass of water ….”<br />
The lady of the house had followed us in silence as we barged into her parlor.<br />
Now she stood with folded arms and a wry smile upon her lips. Waiting a beat, she<br />
244 The Literary Hatchet
said, “Very pleased to make your acquaintance, Mr. Gillette!”<br />
He sat up on the couch with a sharp laugh. He tossed away his hat and wiped<br />
away the smears of makeup and was once again the handsome matinee idol, with<br />
a face well-known from posters and playbills. Gillette’s own wife had died young,<br />
just a few short years into their marriage, lost to a ruptured appendix. He had never<br />
looked at another woman since the death of his beloved Helen, but I could tell at<br />
once that this lady had impressed him deeply.<br />
“You have beaten me, Miss Pulver,” he said good-naturedly. “And please, it’s<br />
Will.”<br />
“Even in such a disguise, I knew you at once,” she replied airily. “I must admit<br />
I only let you I to see what you were going to do. And if your friend really has a<br />
plumber’s rocket hidden on his person, have him leave it where it is or I certainly<br />
shall call the police! Now, did you honestly think this ridiculous ruse of yours was<br />
going to work?”<br />
“It works six nights a week, to say nothing of the matinees,” Gillette chuckled.<br />
“But at least I gained entry to your parlor, where we can talk. You know why I am<br />
here, of course.”<br />
“The photograph.”<br />
“Yes. I am under considerable pressure to recover it, and have given my word<br />
that I will make every effort. So … please, Madame. Can’t we come to some sort of<br />
understanding here? Some sort of arrangement?”<br />
“I don’t know if I can trust you.”<br />
“More than you can trust Mr. Thorne, I think.”<br />
She bristled at the mention of the name.<br />
“That man!” she said. “You have no idea what kind of a brute he is.”<br />
“That is none of my concern, but sadly, the photograph is. Not by choice, mind<br />
you, but nevertheless … here I am, and there must be some sort of solution to this<br />
business.”<br />
“I do not think that Mr. Thorne has given you a very complete description of<br />
the situation, Mr. Gillette. You have been cruelly misled.”<br />
“How so?”<br />
The lady thought for a long moment, then silently went to the mantelpiece<br />
over the fire and, from a hidden compartment there, withdrew the photograph<br />
and placed it on the small table at Gillette’s elbow. Studying it thoughffully, he set it<br />
down slowly and said, “I see.”<br />
The next day, after making some quiet inquiries among the theater management,<br />
we took another cab to Mr. Thorne’s rooms uptown. The actor, with his eccentric<br />
love of machinery, never took a horse-drawn cab when he could take a motorcar.<br />
When we arrived, a concierge showed us upstairs and Gillette was obviously<br />
pleased to find Miss Lara Hunnicutt, Thorne’s fiancé, was there for a visit.<br />
Miss Hunnicutt was a striking young woman, with clear blue eyes that looked<br />
upon us with some concern as we entered.<br />
“Gillette!” cried Thorne. “Excellent! I was expecting you later, but if you have<br />
The Literary Hatchet 245
esults, so much the better. Lara, I am afraid that Will and I have some business<br />
to discuss, which is of course none of your concern, If you can give us just a few<br />
minutes to ourselves—”<br />
“Actually, Miss Hunnicutt, please remain, as the business I have come to<br />
discuss involves you quite intimately.”<br />
“Gillette!” Thorne raised a hand in warning.<br />
“Yesterday morning, I made the acquaintance of Miss Gayle Pulver. She is a<br />
remarkable woman indeed. Remarkable. But you knew that, of course. What you<br />
may not have known, Miss Hunnicutt, is that your fiancé had asked me to recover a<br />
photograph in Miss Pulver’s possession. A photograph which he described as both<br />
compromising and embarrassing … to him.”<br />
Miss Hunnicutt’s cheeks were a study in scarlet.<br />
“Of course, I expected the photo to be evidence of his liaison with Miss Pulver.<br />
But imagine my surprise when I finally saw the photograph in question, and<br />
discovered it was evidence of your liaison with that very extraordinary lady.”<br />
“You have no idea just how extraordinary she is,” Miss Hunnicutt whispered.<br />
“Oh, I have some idea, let me assure you. Now, Mr. Thorne wanted this<br />
photograph under his control, and placed some considerable pressure upon me to<br />
recover it for him.”<br />
“What kind of pressure?” she asked.<br />
“He threatened to pull his considerable financial backing from my play, and to<br />
convince others to do the same. You knew nothing of this, I take it?”<br />
“Nothing.” She cast a glance at her fiancé and shook her head slowly.<br />
“It seems that Mr. Thorne can be quite ruthless when he wants something. He<br />
has acted the scoundrel with you, with me, and with Miss Pulver. Now having met<br />
both Mr. Thorne and Miss Pulver, I cannot help but draw some comparisons and<br />
may I say that you love, and are loved, by far better than he. She and I spoke for<br />
some time yesterday and she tells me that, for her, you are the woman.”<br />
Miss Hunnicutt gave a small sob<br />
“What did you do with the damned picture?” Thorne growled helplessly.<br />
“I left it where it is. Where it belongs. In Miss Pulver’s possession, of course.”<br />
“Damn you!” he shrieked. His face contorted with rage, he snatched up the<br />
iron poker from the fireplace and closed in on the actor.<br />
No one ever notices the quiet, Japanese manservant.<br />
I took a couple of steps and stood between the two men and clapped my<br />
revolver to Thorne’s head.<br />
“Drop it,” I said.<br />
Whether he was more startled by my actions or my English, I don’t know.<br />
Nevertheless, he dropped the poker to the floor in surrender.<br />
“Damn you both,” he muttered. “Damn all three of you. All four of you. That<br />
damn play of yours will be destroyed.”<br />
“Hardly. I had some meetings with the theater management this morning. Not<br />
only is your money not needed, it is not wanted. You will not get a very warm<br />
reception if you show your face around the theater, sir. The show will go on without<br />
246 The Literary Hatchet
you. Now, we are happy to take you away from this place,” Gillette said, turning to<br />
Miss Hunnicutt. “We have a cab waiting downstairs.”<br />
“Why on Earth would you even consider marrying such a brute?” Gillette<br />
asked as the cab carried us back toward the theater.<br />
“My family’s expectations,” Miss Hunnicutt said, watching the city roll by out<br />
the window. “Society’s expectations. Single women do not go far, and two women<br />
together ….” She shook her head.<br />
After a moment, he asked, “Have you seen my play?”<br />
“It seems as though everyone has.”<br />
“The reviews call it buncombe and claptrap,” he said with a deep chuckle.<br />
“They say it’s trivial, of no lasting importance. But it makes me happy, and it makes<br />
my audiences happy. So the hell with the critics, Miss Hunnicutt.”<br />
We rode along in silence for a few blocks before she spoke.<br />
“We are going to your theater?”<br />
“Is there somewhere else we can bring you?” he smiled knowingly.<br />
“There is.”<br />
A few minutes later, we were once again in front of Miss Pulver’s brownstone,<br />
and she stood silhouetted in the doorway as though she had been waiting for us.<br />
Miss Hunnicutt gave Gillette a quick peck on the cheek, and then called over<br />
her shoulder, “Good night, Mr. William Gillette!” as she ran up the steps of the<br />
brownstone and into Miss Pulver’s arms.<br />
A week later, an item appeared in the society pages, stating that the Thorne-<br />
Hunnicutt engagement was broken, and that Miss Hunnicutt would be traveling<br />
to Paris with a companion and not expected to return to America for some time,<br />
if ever. Mr. Thorne offered to finance other productions, but always found that he<br />
and his money were strangely unwelcome. And night after night, audiences packed<br />
the theater to see William Gillette onstage as Sherlock Holmes.<br />
]<br />
The Literary Hatchet 247
[poetry]<br />
Quiet.<br />
All is damnably quiet.<br />
I can hear the spiders spinning in the darkness,<br />
the breath of a rat against the stone walls,<br />
a cockroach crawling through the sulphur-laden air.<br />
The roaring silence fills the air like the grumble of the sea.<br />
Pitiless Eternity.<br />
But a second ago he was here,<br />
he whose eyes glowed like falling stars in bottomless pools,<br />
he with the comforting voice of the practiced whore.<br />
My wounds still bleed, my sleeves are still wet.<br />
The rats have yet to smell the droplets on the floor.<br />
For what have I been sold?<br />
Square roots? Sines? Sums?<br />
Will I profit knowing winds are not the breath of God<br />
knowing the sun is not a chariot of fire?<br />
knowing mountains are not the bones of giants?<br />
knowing why the sound of pouring wine tickles the ear?<br />
why lovers’ eyes sparkle as purest silver?<br />
why cool grass and shade bring easy sleep?<br />
Did Da Vinci paint with a carpenter’s angle?<br />
Michaelangelo sculpt with a plumb?<br />
I will be reduced to monotonous lectures and boring sums.<br />
And should I escape eternal hell<br />
I nonetheless lose my soul.<br />
—phil slattery<br />
248 The Literary Hatchet
[poetry]<br />
We watched god die<br />
as a starved moon devoured<br />
our brightest star,<br />
stretching its maw<br />
to swallow it whole.<br />
In the stomach of the umbra<br />
we gazed into the sky<br />
at the black promise<br />
of mankind’s demise.<br />
Our shadows rebel<br />
in lunatic celebration<br />
with a violent dance<br />
of tooth and nail<br />
to a symphony of screams,<br />
last gasps,<br />
and a mummer of prayers<br />
uttered in vain.<br />
—robert perez<br />
The Literary Hatchet 249
[short story]<br />
by kevin mulligan<br />
250 The Literary Hatchet
Sheila leaned on the horn. Trapped by a mountain storm since the previous<br />
afternoon, she had run the engine occasionally to keep herself warm. Now she<br />
contemplated a gas gauge near empty as trees grew orange with approaching dusk.<br />
Unprepared for weather that now surrounded her, Sheila sorted the available<br />
options. Like a maddening shell game, possibilities rotated.<br />
Passive and logical, she could sit and wait. This strategy seemed best right now.<br />
Unfortunately, lifting that shell revealed a body safely frozen in her car.<br />
She could try to walk out. Risky, yes, but appealing to take charge nature.<br />
When she turned this shell over in her mind, it revealed a frozen body, bravely<br />
close to a busy road.<br />
Two possibilities, three shells. The one she could not reach held a solution.<br />
Until she could turn that shell over, the horn would have to do. She hit it again.<br />
Darkness had started to close in when she saw a man walk out of the woods.<br />
He was dressed in a large canvas winter coat and had a backpack of some sort. He<br />
held a flashlight, the beam shaking with his steps.<br />
Standing at the window now, he was saying something. The words were<br />
muffled by glass, the only thing between them. He turned, pointed at the woods<br />
and looked back, smiling.<br />
Fear of another night in the car overcame her fear of the man. Sheila opened<br />
the door. “Thank you, thank you. I thought I would run out of gas and die from<br />
the cold.”<br />
“You’re okay now. Glad you didn’t honk that horn too many more times. This<br />
is an avalanche toe.”<br />
Sheila’s face warmed, “Oh...Sorry. If I had known…” She wasn’t sure what an<br />
avalanche toe was, only knew it sounded unsafe.<br />
The man dropped his backpack and pulled something out, “Here, take this.”<br />
He handed her a blanket, thick and patterned with stripes. A Hudson’s Bay blanket.<br />
“Follow me,” he started walking.<br />
Sheila tried to follow in his footsteps, managed to miss them all. His stride was<br />
just too long for her. Eventually, she gave up and carved her own path.<br />
After a few minutes of walking, they came upon a cabin. It had a low sloped<br />
roof that was covered in heavy snow. Arriving first, the man held open the door.<br />
Inside, a woman walked toward her.<br />
“Oh my! Look at you, my dear. What in the world are you doing out here all<br />
alone?”<br />
“I came out yesterday morning to take pictures. There was nothing in the<br />
forecast about snow. I waited in my car all night, couldn’t sleep. I thought I...” Sheila<br />
trailed off.<br />
“Don’t worry, dear, you’re all right now. If we could see into the future, none of<br />
us would ever get to enjoy simple surprises.”<br />
“I suppose, when you put it that way. Still, I could have planned better.”<br />
An older man came in from back of the cabin.“Why, what have we got here?”<br />
he asked.<br />
“We found a stray,” she looked at the old man, “George, why don’t you radio<br />
The Literary Hatchet 251
the ranger and let him know we have...” looking at Sheila. “What was your name,<br />
dear?”<br />
“Oh, it’s Sheila. Sheila Frieze.”<br />
The old man laughed, “Well, I’m glad you didn’t get to live up to your name.”<br />
“George.” The woman gave him a look. “You stop that and get on the radio.”<br />
She turned back to Sheila, “I’m Lorraine,” taking Sheila by the hands, as if<br />
to warm them, “I think you need some hot chocolate.” Smiling, she left for the<br />
kitchen.<br />
Sheila looked at the man who had saved her, “Wow, she’s very nice.” she paused.<br />
“I guess you know my name, what’s yours?”<br />
“Oh, I’m Rick. I work out here taking care of the snow cannon.”<br />
“Snow cannon?” asked Sheila.<br />
“Ya. I set it off when the snow pack starts to get too deep. Prevents avalanches.”<br />
He continued, “George takes care of record keeping and stuff like that. Lorraine<br />
takes care of kids when they stay overnight.”<br />
“Kids?”<br />
“Ya, university types, mostly. This place doubles as a backwoods hostel. Cross<br />
country skiers, things like that.”<br />
“Oh, I see. Any of them here tonight?”<br />
“No, just the four of us. It’s been a little quiet lately.” Rick walked through the<br />
long room. “Come on, let’s go sit in the kitchen.”<br />
Sheila followed. The place looked old and rustic. There was a wood stove in<br />
one corner, flames visible through a small glass window. The cupboards were made<br />
of dark grained wood and the table had a carved top set upon a tall tree stump.<br />
Chairs with vinyl seats and stainless steel legs circled the table, functional, at odds<br />
with the backwoods decor. A window ran along one wall.<br />
Sheila sat down, asking, “Do you have cell coverage out here? I tried in my car<br />
but nothing.”<br />
Lorraine was back with them now. She exchanged a glance with Rick.<br />
“Oh, I’m sorry, dear. I’m not sure what you mean.” Lorraine turned a small<br />
towel in her hands, a flash of concern sweeping her face.<br />
“A telephone...phone call. My phone won’t work out here.” Sheila started to<br />
search pockets before visualizing her cellphone, still on the front seat. “I forgot it in<br />
my car. Maybe it would work here.” Puzzled, “You don’t have one?”<br />
Lorraine looked at Sheila,“You sound tired. Here, take this, it will make you<br />
feel better.” She handed her the hot chocolate.<br />
Rick restarted the conversation, “So, where do you hail from?”<br />
“Oh, I just drove here from Calgary.”<br />
“I see,” Rick paused. “Just wondered, don’t get many people up here dressed<br />
like that.”<br />
“Oh? I got this at The Gap.”<br />
Lorraine looked worried. “Rick, you make sure our girl stays warm with that<br />
blanket. I’m going to see how George is doing with the radio.”<br />
252 The Literary Hatchet
“Okay.” He turned his attention to Sheila, “Think you might have gotten a little<br />
colder than you think you did.”<br />
“I feel a lot better now.”<br />
“Well, that’s good. I need to go out later and push snow off the roof. Low pitch<br />
holds too much. If we leave it, it’ll come down all at once and make a mess.”<br />
“That doesn’t sound good,” said Sheila. She wondered why the men hadn’t<br />
cleared the roof earlier when it was bright and sunny.<br />
Suddenly something rumbled above their heads. The table shook. Snow<br />
started to come down on them. The roof seemed to be pulling apart at the timbers.<br />
Sheila screamed, looked up at the ceiling. It was bending inward as if a huge hand<br />
was pushing down on it.<br />
“Damn!” Rick jumped up.<br />
“George!” Lorraine’s voice echoed.<br />
Snow flew past the window. Sheila could barely make it out in the darkness.<br />
“You really should have cleared that snow. Now you’ll have to dig us out!”<br />
Sheila turned, Rick seemed transfixed, pale. She was about to say something when<br />
lights appeared outside.<br />
“Well, that was fast,” he said. “I’m going out back to see what’s up. I’ll just be a<br />
minute.” Rick left the room.<br />
Sheila made her way to the cabin door and opened it, ready to wave down<br />
whoever was out there. As she pushed it open, the door suddenly fell from its<br />
frame. This frightened her and she ran outside. Looking back, she saw the roof had<br />
caved in. Muffling a scream, she ran toward two men on snow machines.<br />
“Oh, my God, there are people in there!”<br />
They looked at her like she was crazy, “Nobody in there. Not for years, and<br />
what the hell are you doing out here?”<br />
“I got stuck. They called you on the radio.”<br />
The men looked at her, “No radio call. We’re here to set off the avalanche<br />
cannon.”<br />
Still confused, Sheila continued, “But they called. You have to do something.<br />
There are people in there. Look! The roof is caved in!”<br />
“Nobody in there now,” one of them said. “That place was ruined forty years<br />
ago. Roof caved in from the snow load. Took three people with it.”<br />
Silence.<br />
“But it can’t be.”<br />
Sheila drifted.<br />
“It can’t be.”<br />
Snow fell softly as she pulled the Hudson’s Bay blanket around her.<br />
]<br />
The Literary Hatchet 253
[poetry]<br />
It ends with the cold light of morning,<br />
winter winds seeping through,<br />
stealing under the door, chills us,<br />
to the very marrow and kills us,<br />
though, in final, frantic moments we try,<br />
to revive the failing dream,<br />
which dies a little more each day.<br />
And, I try to remember how once,<br />
fresh with dewy youth, we lay together,<br />
so close our bodies joined,<br />
the same two people who now sleep,<br />
in separate spaces and I weep,<br />
for that other life.<br />
Once I felt sheltered inside this warmth.<br />
The womb that was us would last forever.<br />
But people part and their worlds,<br />
separate, suspended for a time,<br />
in the slim chance of return.<br />
Morning light comes, bleak though,<br />
the blinding sun taunts us.<br />
We are strangers and we pack our books,<br />
and say goodbye to this chapter’s end.<br />
Nothing prepares us for the break,<br />
or the ice that forms so quickly.<br />
I stand naked in this winter wind,<br />
and search for shelter, again.<br />
—wendy l. schmidt<br />
254 The Literary Hatchet
[poetry]<br />
Inside the jagged mouth of a cave<br />
in a bleached coral graveyard,<br />
she waits to die.<br />
For thirty sunless days,<br />
she patiently starved<br />
protecting her young.<br />
Her eight arms cradle<br />
her hundred thousand children<br />
as they begin to emerge.<br />
From their translucent eggs<br />
they wiggle and jet;<br />
dart aimlessly.<br />
She loses them<br />
like teardrops to the sea,<br />
fragile and clear.<br />
Her tentacles stretch<br />
out to her departing newborns<br />
for one last embrace.<br />
They will only meet in death,<br />
and as she withers,<br />
her ravenous love consumes.<br />
Desperate to be one again,<br />
she pulls them to her center,<br />
and into her mouth they cave.<br />
—robert perez<br />
The Literary Hatchet 255
[poetry]<br />
As late autumn days turned bitter and cold,<br />
The heat-seeking mice invaded the shack.<br />
But Bethany Ann knew she couldn’t allow this,<br />
She grabbed a honed axe and went blammo-smack!<br />
Beth’s mighty blow missed the verminous pests,<br />
But still produced pools of gaudy, gross gore;<br />
She’d mistakenly cut off her brother’s left hand;<br />
Now the boy howled in anguish upon the floor.<br />
Surveying the scene, she made up her mind --<br />
Her bro’s epic pain could not be dismissed.<br />
Plus, this gushing was gruesome and not in good taste;<br />
So she tied rusty cable above his left wrist.<br />
He screamed and he screamed; he was such a brat.<br />
He’d always been spoiled. She knew this was true.<br />
Still, she wanted to help; he was kin after all,<br />
So she bloodily-dialed an ambulance crew.<br />
“Code Red. SOS. Dispatch your best men.<br />
My brother’s a mess. He’s minus a hand;<br />
He’s flailing and shrieking and being a baby<br />
He needs reassurance, you must understand.”<br />
256 The Literary Hatchet
I can’t wait all night, poor Bethany thought.<br />
Her brother kept leaking. He really might leave her.<br />
So she raised the stove’s heat to a piping red hot,<br />
And balanced upon it her scariest cleaver.<br />
It didn’t take long. The tool now glowed red.<br />
She held the hot steel to the raw, grisly lump,<br />
And while pipsqueak cast expletives at his big sis,<br />
She lovingly sealed up the spouting stump.<br />
“Well done,” she muttered. She patted his head,<br />
“Now to polish things off: Polysporin!”<br />
She lubed the whole mess with the glistening goo<br />
As the ambulance team kicked the door in.<br />
“Forgive Baby Bro; he’s kind of a wuss;<br />
All the same, do your best not to drop him<br />
Now go away; scram! I have rodents galore,<br />
Please take him away while I chop ‘em.”<br />
—sally basmajian<br />
The Literary Hatchet 257
[short story]<br />
by michelle k. bujnowski<br />
Getting enough sleep wasn’t normally a problem. Tonight I was an insomniac<br />
while my husband, Frank, slept on. He worked odd shifts at his company, Oswald<br />
Shipping, a business started by his father. I worked in the front office. When we did<br />
get the chance to sleep together, not a creature stirred...usually.<br />
Both in our late twenties, I thought it funny to be married to a Frank. My<br />
name contrasted by several generations with Lea. We didn’t have kids but were<br />
trying, taking it easy so we could save enough to get out of our apartment first.<br />
I lay awake worrying about the logistics of this very problem. I was late but<br />
hadn’t confirmed with a pregnancy test. I heard Frank moan softly.<br />
He moaned again as if having a nightmare. Words took shape as gibberish, he<br />
babbled like a baby.<br />
“So, this is what it’s going to be like,” I thought, thinking of my waiting<br />
pregnancy test. After a few minutes of excessive verbalization I glared at my clock—<br />
three-forty in the morning. Another minute passed and I pushed my pillow over<br />
my head when his voice took on a strange guttural tone.<br />
I looked over at his dark shape. His head turned away, he spoke intelligible<br />
words. I froze at the unfamiliarity in his voice.<br />
“Why can’t he dispatch the female?” His voice asked in a low growl, punctuated<br />
by a click in the back of his throat.<br />
“Resistant.”<br />
He answered himself? I listened in shock. The last word seemed an octave<br />
lower, equally raspy, but different from the first. I pushed myself up, torn between<br />
listening and waking him.<br />
258 The Literary Hatchet
“Overall…experiment…implemented.” The first voice came back, distant and<br />
interrupted. The answering response was garbled. I couldn’t make out the words.<br />
“We will speed up the time frame.” The first voice spoke, clear as a bell. The<br />
loudness of it startled me in my tiny bedroom. Time frame? Far from sounding like<br />
a bad dream and more like eavesdropping on a phone conversation, I wondered if<br />
Frank had neglected to tell me about a steel plate in his head.<br />
I jumped when Frank sat bolt upright, murmuring nonsense.<br />
“Frank, honey, wake up.” I tapped his arm and grabbed his hand.<br />
“What?” Frank’s soft voice replaced the previous ones, groggy and irritated.<br />
“You had a bad dream.”<br />
The next morning I sipped coffee and tried to deduce what I had heard a short<br />
time ago. Did Frank have some issues I hadn’t been aware of? Dispatch the female?<br />
Who talked like that and what did it mean? And why a second voice, if that’s what<br />
it was at all? How many people did he have in there with him?<br />
I went to work disturbed and grumpy. Soon enough the orders kept me busy<br />
enough to forget about the dream. My boss came up to me around four o’clock,<br />
right on time on a Monday, asking for a schedule I didn’t have figured out yet.<br />
“How’s the Sharp account coming?”<br />
“I’m working on it as we speak.”<br />
“Can you give me a good time frame by end of the day?” I shivered. What was<br />
going to speed up Frank’s so-called time frame?<br />
“I will hand the schedule to you before I leave today,” I said. He smiled,<br />
appeased. As if I had ever given him anything less.<br />
For the moment my schedule was in sync with Frank’s, which made me happy<br />
to not eat dinner alone, but as I chopped vegetables and looked at the clock I<br />
realized I dreaded bedtime. Surprised, I told myself the episode last night was a<br />
dream and that was it. People have crazy nightmares all the time.<br />
“What you cooking, baby?” Frank said. “Smells good.”<br />
“Chicken is baking, I’m roasting veggies and making mashed potatoes.”<br />
“Want help chopping?” He nodded to the knife in my hand. I grimaced.<br />
“Really? You never help.” I was again surprised at my reaction. Since when<br />
didn’t I want help?<br />
He chuckled. “Can’t a guy try to keep his wife happy? Come on, move over.”<br />
He hip checked me away from the cutting board. I moved to the stove and stirred<br />
potatoes as I listened to a steady chopping rhythm ensue.<br />
“You woke me up with that nightmare of yours last night,” I said. “Remember<br />
what it was about?” I decided to face the beast.<br />
“Can’t say I do,” he said, back turned. “Did I wake up? Don’t remember a thing.<br />
Did I say something?”<br />
For a moment I froze, trying to decide if I should tell him. I stared at the frothy<br />
bubbling water.<br />
“Nope.” I shrugged, feeling awkward. Who was I? I shared everything with<br />
this man.<br />
“Ready for the big finale?” he said as he stopped chopping vegetables but held<br />
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the knife raised and ready. I held my breath and spun toward him while moving<br />
away a foot. He brought the knife down along a zucchini lengthwise and furiously<br />
chopped it to bits in thirty seconds. He looked at my lowered jaw and smiled.<br />
“Food Network,” he said.<br />
At three o’clock in the morning I woke with a start. I lay awake, listening to<br />
Frank’s breathing. It became erratic, belabored. He moaned with such volume I<br />
jumped out of bed and clung to the wall.<br />
A low sound was coming from the back of his throat. It wasn’t quite a growl. I<br />
walked to his side of the bed. Leaning toward him, I tried to make out this constant<br />
noise. I took a step closer.<br />
Static. I stood, panting. Noise emanated from his open mouth, like our crappy<br />
television with four channels sometimes played instead of our shows. My heart<br />
thudded near panic. As I decided to wake him, he sat straight up, silent. I shrieked<br />
and stumbled into the wall.<br />
“We are losing our connection to the male,” Frank said, his tone brash, mixed<br />
with static.<br />
“Yes.” A distant voice agreed, nearly unintelligible. “He has had opportunity.”<br />
“I will plan for a manual override and contend with the female.” The voice<br />
became garbled. I shook at the words.<br />
“Yes, do it soon.” The second voice faded.<br />
“She…not sleep…” The voice cut in and out. “…elevated heart rate…” The<br />
voices and static stopped, Frank slumped in bed as if a channel had been switched<br />
off.<br />
“God, what is going on?” I started crying. Was this more than dreams? If it was<br />
real, something had decided to up the ante, whatever that was.<br />
“Frank, wake up!” I shook him.<br />
“What? Time for work already?”<br />
“Something… bad is happening!”<br />
“Someone in the house?” He leaped up and went to the safe. A moment later<br />
he produced his gun and handed me pepper spray. I shivered at the sight of the<br />
gun. I didn’t know what to think—was Frank the threat? Or was something coming<br />
from outside?<br />
What did manual override mean? Scanning the windows, I looked for lights,<br />
but how did I know what to look for? Tiny green men? Government workers in<br />
white coveralls?<br />
“Hon, did you hear something? I will go check the house, you stay here.”<br />
Typical Frank, he didn’t wait for an answer, but I was less than responsive. I wanted<br />
to yell at him to stop, tell me if he saw something in his dream, something to give<br />
us a clue.<br />
I waited, heard nothing. I crept to a window and moved the shade a centimeter.<br />
Dark bushes and trees surrounded the house under a star filled sky.<br />
It was too dark to see movement, but I screamed when a leaf fell in front of our<br />
window. I crawled along the floor, actually considered the space under the bed, but<br />
went for the door. Frank almost fell over me and picked me up.<br />
260 The Literary Hatchet
“Basement,” I mumbled, terrified. “Safer.”<br />
“I think we’re okay,” he said. “No one is here.”<br />
“You don’t know what I heard!”<br />
He wrapped me in a blanket before walking down the hall to the stairwell.<br />
Frank flipped the light switch as I started tip toeing down the stairs, cringing at<br />
every creak. The pepper spray shook in my hands.<br />
Once downstairs, he turned. “Lea, what happened?”<br />
I told him everything about both dreams. He stared as I finished, bug-eyed.<br />
As silence filled the basement and house, he doubled over suddenly and I jumped<br />
thinking the voices were back. Then I saw he was laughing.<br />
“This tops them all!”<br />
“Frank, this is serious.”<br />
“Aliens usually are!” He fell back on his haunches, gun limp in his hand. “Jesus,<br />
Lea!”<br />
“I know what I heard, static and voices, like you interrupted a transmission or<br />
something. The voices, so strange and eerie, they weren’t yours!”<br />
He laughed harder. I turned away to pace the floor. They were coming and<br />
I had a mad man protecting me. The laughing died down, but still I walked,<br />
trembling under my blanket on the cold concrete floor. From one corner to the<br />
next I pounded the floor in frustration. Turning back, Frank stood in my path.<br />
“Feel like taking me seriously now?”<br />
He stared in response, a little too serious. His eyes met mine, the gun in his<br />
hand. Mouth open slightly, I heard a low sound escape with his breath; static. I<br />
froze, blinking, heartbeat escalating. He opened his mouth wider and it was one<br />
of them.<br />
“Connection reestablished.” Frank raised the gun.<br />
National NBC News Report January 10, 2015 - Hundreds of reports across the country<br />
have been filed within the past year by spouses who claim they were not responsible for the<br />
death of their significant others in spite of evidence that leads investigators to believe they<br />
are in fact homicide cases.<br />
“I can’t remember shooting and killing my wife,” Frank Oswald said, who resides<br />
in Portland, Maine. “Before it happened, Lea told me I was having dreams and talked in<br />
strange voices. She thought we were going to be attacked by aliens the night she died. I<br />
thought she was losing her own mind or being paranoid. Now I know she was right—I<br />
would never hurt my wife. I was controlled by somebody else.”<br />
When questioned as to why aliens would control human beings, Frank Oswald<br />
responded, “What do people in power do to those with less? They take over, control their<br />
resources. Maybe our time is ending.”<br />
These eerie words are being echoed across the United States. Psychologists have<br />
interviewed Frank Oswald and many others with similar cases, and found that none<br />
remember killing their spouses.<br />
In spite of the memory loss, Frank Oswald is being charged with murder in the first<br />
degree and his trial will commence within one to two years. Despite similar scenarios<br />
across the country, each case will be treated individually.<br />
]<br />
The Literary Hatchet 261
[short story]<br />
by edmund lester<br />
262 The Literary Hatchet
The crack of the gunshot breaks the silence of the morning. A rifle you think,<br />
although it’s too distant to be certain. You don’t flinch. It’s become commonplace.<br />
You feel detached, separate.<br />
You continue brushing your teeth, the next step in your early morning ritual.<br />
Through the obscured glass of the bathroom window you see the sky lightening.<br />
More gunfire sounds, automatic pistol fire this time. You swill the remaining<br />
toothpaste from your mouth before exiting the bathroom.<br />
Your clothing and effects for the day are laid out in front of you on the<br />
armchair. Shirt, jacket, trousers, AK-47, boots, Kevlar helmet, armour vest, socks,<br />
tie, briefcase, gloves, shoulder and hip holsters, twin Glocks, cuff links, spare<br />
ammo. Everything you need for another day at the office.<br />
You dress quickly and head to the kitchen for breakfast. Two slices of bread in<br />
the toaster, coffee percolating and freshly squeezed orange juice in hand you switch<br />
on the TV and sit at the table. You hear more gunshots. For a second you don’t<br />
know if they were from the TV or outside.<br />
The picture focuses. It answers your question. The shots were from a news<br />
report. The screen shows a fire fight taking place downtown. The top right of the<br />
screen has the word “LIVE” in big bold letters. You recognise the area on the<br />
screen. It’s not near your route to work. You lose interest, not listening to the young<br />
blonde reporter trying to make a gun battle interesting.<br />
Breakfast over, you place the plate and cup in the dishwasher and head for the<br />
door.<br />
Fresh gunfire greets you in the outside world. It’s not close by. You don’t react.<br />
There’s no point. It’ll happen one day; you know that. You lock the door, set the<br />
security system to armed, before turning and walking down the path to the bus<br />
stop and the most dangerous part of the journey. You know standing still is not a<br />
good idea but there’s little choice—walking just isn’t an option.<br />
You think your luck might be turning. You see the bus as you approach the<br />
stop, no waiting today.<br />
You announce your destination to the screen that greets you on the bus and<br />
pay your fare. You move down the bus looking for a seat. The first few seats are<br />
empty. No one wants to sit at the front. You move farther back and spy a space. A<br />
teenage boy occupies the bench seat. He doesn’t look as though sharing is on his<br />
mind. His hand rests on the shotgun he has on his lap.<br />
You meet his stare. He seems unwilling to back down so you raise the muzzle<br />
of your AK-47 to back up your request. He recognises your strength and slides to<br />
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the side freeing up the nearest half of the seat. You sit. A glance tells you he is not<br />
likely to hold a grudge. You don’t fear a knife piercing your armour this trip. It was<br />
a simple ritual, nothing more.<br />
You watch your fellow passengers as the journey progresses. You never know<br />
who might be on the bus. It seems quiet. As you approach your stop you hear a<br />
loud explosion. Up ahead of the bus you see a huge cloud of smoke. Another bomb<br />
has gone off. It must be the fourth this month. The bus isn’t going anywhere soon.<br />
You decide that maybe walking will be best—the bus will be a sure target in a traffic<br />
jam.<br />
You’re not the only one thinking this way. Over half the passengers rise with<br />
you. As you move forward your elbow collides with an elderly lady’s back. She<br />
turns to you and starts mouthing off then reaches into her bag.<br />
When her hand emerges she’s holding a revolver. Your reactions are faster. In<br />
under a second a Glock is in your hand, smoking. Another second later the old<br />
lady’s body lies at your feet in the aisle of the bus. You quickly look side to side, in<br />
case others might join in. They don’t.<br />
You step over the body and move to the screen at the front of the bus. You<br />
press the maintenance button to the side and announce the killing. The teenage kid<br />
you sat next to joins you and announces himself as witness, describing the event<br />
as justifiable.<br />
The disembodied voice of the driver thanks you for your diligence and tells<br />
you no further action is required.<br />
You’ve been at your desk for half an hour—long enough for to drink your first<br />
coffee and read through your morning e-mail. You sigh at the amount of spam<br />
e-mails you’ve received. Surely there are only so many adverts for bigger guns a<br />
man needs. And as for black-market explosives, it’s cheaper picking them up at<br />
the discount supermarkets most of the time. If you are brave enough to enter them<br />
that is.<br />
You begin your day’s work. An hour passes—then two.<br />
Your desk phone rings. It’s your boss’s boss calling you into his office. He<br />
tells you it’s urgent and to drop everything. You stand and look at your weapons,<br />
considering the etiquette. Should you take the AK? It would show respect certainly<br />
but could it be considered too confrontational?<br />
You decide on caution and strap on the shoulder harness, placing the two<br />
Glocks into it and head from your cubicle to begin the long walk to the executive<br />
zone.<br />
Fingers point as you move past your coworkers. You guess the story about<br />
your morning shooting have circulated. You hope not to the point of challenge.<br />
Recent kills spur some on to seek more bloodshed. You unfasten the catches on<br />
your harness making the Glocks more accessible.<br />
Your message gets across. You are left alone and reach your destination safely.<br />
You are careful not to stand in front of the doors as you knock. The wood of this<br />
door would not stop a bullet. A voice calls you in.<br />
264 The Literary Hatchet
You close the doors behind you and move toward the desk and the machine<br />
gun mounted upon it. You figure he is likely to want to say something before just<br />
gunning you down.<br />
“Take a seat,” he says gesturing at the smaller chair directly in front of the gun<br />
barrel. You move the chair slightly to right and sit. The man behind the desk smiles<br />
and re-aims.<br />
“Let me get straight to the point,” he starts then proceeds to waffle on for about<br />
ten minutes. He talks about the goals of the company, the strengths he and others<br />
have seen in you and the current state of the world. You pay enough attention to<br />
make noises in the right places. There is a rather large gun pointed at you after<br />
all and your chair doesn’t look all that expensive—certainly not pricey enough to<br />
make a man like this worry about destroying it in a hail of bullets.<br />
He begins to get to a point. “…So we feel you might be the right man for<br />
the job.” He grins broadly. “Well to be honest out of the shortlist we made up last<br />
month you are the only one still surviving. I guess you can say you got the position<br />
in the truest Darwinian sense.” His smile broadens. You feel it would be a good idea<br />
to join in, pretend you felt his joke was good. Even though it wasn’t.<br />
“So do you want it?” He asks. “It comes with a raise of course, extra couple of<br />
mil a week. And you’ll get your own office complete with a full security system. Not<br />
as good as mine you understand but you’ll still have enough firepower built in to<br />
take out most attackers.”<br />
You feign happiness. To be honest it doesn’t even really interest you. What use<br />
is money anyway? The promotion will just make you a bigger target.<br />
You stand and extend your hand across the desk telling him you accept his<br />
offer. He takes it and shakes it firmly. He hands you a key to your office and a<br />
security pass and wishes you well in your new position. You understand his last<br />
comment to be an instruction for you to leave his presence so you turn and walk<br />
to the door.<br />
Part of you expects to feel bullets hitting your back as you leave his office. They<br />
don’t. You feel oddly disappointed.<br />
You turn your new key in the lock of your new office. You drop to the floor,<br />
a gun in each hand, as the door opens, in case the room contains a welcoming<br />
committee. It doesn’t.<br />
You regain your feet quickly, close the door and walk to your desk. It’s empty<br />
except for a sealed envelope and a telephone. You ease yourself into the chair<br />
behind the desk, slightly uneasy at turning your back to the large window.<br />
The letter is a suicide note, an interesting welcome to your new job. You read<br />
your predecessor’s words. He talks of his time in the office you now occupy, his<br />
achievements and hopes for the future. It seems odd to you to read of hope in a<br />
suicide note. He must have been a second lifer or some such nonsense. You have<br />
no time for distractions.<br />
You scan the note again for useful information and find none. You open the<br />
top drawer and drop the note into it.<br />
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The telephone rings.<br />
Your secretary asks if you need anything. You realise you have a secretary. You<br />
can’t help but smile at the thought. You ask if there’s a budget for equipment and<br />
stationary. She tells you to look in the bottom drawer.<br />
You thank her and hang up.<br />
Your bottom drawer holds a laptop computer and an office supplies catalogue.<br />
You lift them up and place them on the top of the desk.<br />
You open the catalogue at random whilst the laptop boots up. It opens at the<br />
office security section. From the hand-written notes on the pages you decide it<br />
must be a much-used part of the book. You skim through pages of wall mounted<br />
remote controlled anti-personnel cannons, desk-mounted armaments, video<br />
surveillance systems and so on.<br />
The post-it note attached to the cover of the catalogue had surprised you. You<br />
have a truly enormous sum at your disposal to equip this room. You start to make a<br />
list. The first item is the machine gun your boss had in his office. It impressed you.<br />
Your order placed, including a last minute inclusion of stationery, you begin to<br />
read through the e-mails awaiting you in your new e-mail account. You have a staff<br />
of ten. A staff! You never thought you’d live long enough to have a staff. Ten people<br />
now actually work for you. Well, nine soon. You realise you are expected to kill one<br />
of them before the end of the first week.<br />
You read through their personnel files. They contain the usual boring stuff—<br />
job roles, details of education, preferred weaponry, skill proficiencies, kill records,<br />
hobbies and interests. You check your watch. There’s less than an hour before you<br />
have to meet these people in the main meeting room. It’ll be your first time there<br />
on the protected side of the barrier.<br />
You turn your attention back to the files. You will need to know this information<br />
when the meeting starts. You already know what you are going to say to them. Now<br />
it’s just a matter of how they’ll take to a new boss. Past experience teaches you that<br />
the first few hours of being a manager are the most dangerous. Some people just<br />
don’t like change.<br />
Having completed your reading of the files you know who your main enemy in<br />
the department will be. For one thing you’re the younger man. For another he’s the<br />
only man there who’s actually applied for a promotion in the whole team. And he<br />
didn’t get it. Given that he’s still living he wasn’t even considered for your new job.<br />
You analyse his past kill record. He’s careful. No kills on his file other than<br />
justifiables. Either means he’s not overly ambitious (unlikely you feel) or he makes<br />
sure he leaves no clues. You need to find something on him quickly.<br />
The hour’s past quickly but you feel you are ready. You open the door to your<br />
office a fraction, enough to give you a view of the corridor. You’ll feel safer leaving<br />
the room once your video security system has been installed.<br />
No one in sight you leave the room and make your way toward the meeting<br />
room, Glock in hand as is customary for a member of the management. You enter<br />
through the executive door, new territory for you. Your old security access never<br />
266 The Literary Hatchet
even permitted you into the corridor to reach this door never mind opening its<br />
sacred portal.<br />
You look out through the bullet-proof transparent plastic shield. Your team is<br />
waiting. You scan the line looking for your main threat. His bright red hair is not<br />
hard to spot. He’s sitting dead centre with his shotgun slung over one shoulder. It’s<br />
a provocative first encounter. Etiquette should have demanded he keep his guns<br />
out of plain site. You, as manager, should be the only one visibly armed during this<br />
first meeting.<br />
You walk up to the dais and stand behind the lectern. You notice it has an inbuilt<br />
computer system, a screen in its sloped surface. You place your thumb on the<br />
login pad and your desktop appears on the screen. No wonder the bosses always<br />
seemed to know all the answers, they had them at their fingertips.<br />
A message flashes on the screen. “Place the earpiece in your left ear.” You see<br />
the device on the lectern’s small shelf and comply with the instruction.<br />
“Welcome, sir.” A voice says. “My name is Fargo. I am here to help you in<br />
any way you need during these meetings. Please do not acknowledge my presence<br />
aloud. Any requests to me can be entered through the keypad in front of you.”<br />
You type “Thank you, Fargo, pleased to meet you.”<br />
“And you, sir!” He replies. “I think you’d better begin.”<br />
You fire your gun into the ceiling to get everyone’s attention.<br />
The meeting seemed to go well. Some of the team actually seemed to accept<br />
you as leader. One of them, you feel, never will. You will have to be careful around<br />
him.<br />
You return to your office to find a maintenance crew fitting your security<br />
system. Too late, you realise, you should have announced your approach. The lead<br />
tech-guy pulls a small pistol and fires. You roll at the movement and the bullet<br />
passes harmlessly by you, lodging in the wall behind you.<br />
He quickly realises his error and drops his gun before lowering his head—the<br />
accepted sign that he will accept execution for his transgression. It would even<br />
count as a justifiable homicide. Someone of his station should not have fired at an<br />
executive.<br />
You decide not to kill him, instead firing your gun into the carpet at his feet.<br />
He nods his head at your mercy and returns to his work. You collect his dropped<br />
gun and walk past him sideways to your desk, never once taking your eyes away<br />
from him. You know some people would take your mercy as an insult. Fortunately<br />
he doesn’t.<br />
You notice his wedding band. He’s an old-wilder, believes in the old ways enough<br />
to marry. He’s no threat. It’s not a philosophy you can understand, committing to<br />
one person and caring enough to avoid confrontation when possible. But you try<br />
to be tolerant of others—except for when they try to kill you.<br />
He quickly finishes his work and gives you a demonstration of your new<br />
security system. He’s very thorough. He’s even made some improvements to your<br />
request at no extra cost, obviously grateful to you for not having ended his life. He<br />
bows his thanks and leaves. You look at his business card. He might be a useful<br />
The Literary Hatchet 267
contact to have, especially now he owes you a favour. A man like that is likely to<br />
have the key codes to a number of the offices in this building.<br />
Alone once more you realise you had better get on with the job you’ve been<br />
given. You know someone will be watching you. Slacking off on your first day will<br />
only get you a bullet in the back of the head. You’ve heard of the penalties for not<br />
passing your probationary period.<br />
The telephone rings. You look up from your laptop screen at the clock in front<br />
of you. The day officially ended ninety minutes ago. It never hurts to put a bit extra<br />
in on your first day. You pick up the receiver.<br />
You hear your boss’s voice in the small speaker. “Congratulations, my boy!<br />
You’ve survived your first day. And you seem to be doing well.”<br />
You thank him.<br />
“I’m sending your driver up shortly. He will be ready to take you home<br />
whenever you are ready.”<br />
You have a driver. That surprises you. You knew there were perks when you<br />
got to management level but this was one you didn’t expect. You thank him once<br />
again. You can almost hear his grin as he accepts your thanks.<br />
You save your files and close down the laptop before placing it in your briefcase.<br />
You know you’re going to need to do some more work once you get home. Some<br />
things never change—even when you get your own office.<br />
Your buzzer sounds. You look at the monitor to your left. On the screen you<br />
see a fifty-something man with a greying beard. From the corporate lackey uniform<br />
of liveried jacket, cap and hip-holster you guess he’s your driver and press the door<br />
release button.<br />
He enters the room and stands calmly in front of your newly fitted deskmounted<br />
machine gun. Your first visitor has made you glad you decided to have it<br />
fitted. It will no doubt come in useful sometime.<br />
You stand and let him know you are ready to leave. You ask him if he knows<br />
where your apartment is.<br />
“Apartment, sir? Don’t you mean house?” he asks.<br />
You tell him you don’t own a house.<br />
“Have you been working on your first day, sir? Most new managers spend their<br />
first few days reading through the company manual, finding out the limits of their<br />
new powers and their perks.”<br />
He seems surprised at your diligence. You make a note of this. It might not<br />
be such a good idea to appear such a corporate dog after all. Maybe it wouldn’t go<br />
down with the other managers. Moving away from the bottom level didn’t mean<br />
you are free of potential assassins.<br />
Despite the unease you felt getting into the back of the car, the driver manages<br />
to make you feel comfortable. He’s impressive. You didn’t expect to feel comfortable<br />
with someone else in control. Part of you expected to be gassed as soon as the car<br />
door shut.<br />
You enjoy being able to look out of the car’s windows as the car takes you to<br />
268 The Literary Hatchet
your new home. It’s not a luxury you’ve allowed yourself before. Public transport<br />
meant being surrounded by other people, anyone of whom might be a threat and<br />
pull a gun or a knife on you.<br />
This is different. You are alone behind bullet proof, obscured glass. No one<br />
can see you. You can see all. You watch the carnage of everyday life with a new<br />
fascination, one born of distance. You’re no longer part of it.<br />
Two young girls, no more than ten or twelve, are toying with an older boy.<br />
One had a gun pressed against his neck; the other is cutting the buttons from his<br />
shirt with a large hunting knife. The boy’s obviously terrified. He’s pissed himself. It<br />
reminds you of the childhood games you used to play with your classmates.<br />
The car approaches the gates to Green Zone. The gates open and you pass<br />
through. This is holy ground, a panacea. This is the Promised Land. You’ve passed<br />
these gates hundreds of times hoping one day to be allowed in but never expecting<br />
it. And now you’re here.<br />
You almost don’t notice the crack of pistol fire, lost in your thoughts. You<br />
realise you’d better not let your guard down just because you are in the Green<br />
Zone. This might be the place where all the high-ups of society live but it’s not that<br />
far removed.<br />
People are just as likely to shoot you down for looking at them wrong, or<br />
whistling, or not getting out of the way, or pretty much anything in here as outside<br />
those gates. It’s just they’d follow it by going for a latté or spritzer afterwards instead<br />
of beer.<br />
An old lady steps out into the road dragging a small dog behind her. Your<br />
driver slows down as she crosses in front of your car. You notice her scowl at your<br />
car, his disgust at your wanting to use the road obvious. As is the large handgun she<br />
carries and the belt of grenades strapped around her waist.<br />
The driver pulls the car into the driveway of a house nearly the size of the<br />
apartment block you left this morning.<br />
“Here we are, sir. Your new home.” he announces.<br />
You step from the car and look at the house. You can’t believe this is your<br />
home. You start walking toward the door. Your chauffeur steps in front of you.<br />
Your hands automatically head to the twin pistols you wear. He smiles and shakes<br />
his head.<br />
“Don’t worry, sir. You have nothing to fear from me. I’m just suggesting<br />
caution. The moving crew left here two hours ago having brought your belongings<br />
over from your old place. They reported it clean then but there’s no reason for you<br />
to take such risks. I’m paid to.”<br />
He smiles again. “Just wait here, sir, or in the car if you prefer. I’ll go check the<br />
door for booby traps and the house for intruders. Promotions like yours can make<br />
serious enemies.” He walks over toward the house.<br />
You watch his back, considering his words. He’s right, you know it. Nothing<br />
makes people unhappy more than someone else’s success. You just hope this guy<br />
isn’t one of them. You shake your head. You’re getting too paranoid. This guy seems<br />
harmless…<br />
The Literary Hatchet 269
Your thoughts are interrupted by a gunshot. It’s close by. Your Glocks are in<br />
your hands without conscious thought. You dive to the ground to make a smaller<br />
target. Your kindergarten classes still stick after all these years.<br />
The driver is lying on the floor in a growing puddle of blood. He seems alive<br />
though, moving. Through the remains of the house’s front door you see a redheaded<br />
figure. You recognise him—the threat you identified in your new team. At least<br />
your judgement there was spot on. Not that it’s going to help you in this gun battle.<br />
You fire both guns toward him, more laying down a cover fire than an actual<br />
kill attempt. He ducks back away from the open doorway toward the dark interior<br />
of the house. He’s good, knows when to take cover. So do you, you quickly scurry<br />
behind the car just in time to be covered in glass form the shattered windows.<br />
He’s got something seriously high calibre in there. That shook the car. You<br />
realise it’s not going to give you protection for long. His gun’s capable of punching<br />
a hole straight through this car, even given its armour plating.<br />
You only have one chance. You open the car door above your head and retrieve<br />
your briefcase, thanking your lucky stars you were vigilant this morning, and that<br />
his bullets haven’t hit the grenades it contains.<br />
You think two should do the trick and pull out the pins. You throw them<br />
through the open door and duck back behind the car.<br />
The force of the explosion blows out all the windows of the ground floor.<br />
Smoke and dust billows out of every opening.<br />
You jump up quickly, grab your AK from the backseat of the limo and run<br />
around the side of the building. It’s your turn to get the jump on this guy. You see<br />
him lying amongst the debris of the hallway. He’d taken cover behind the huge<br />
stairwell. That saved his life but didn’t protect him totally. He’s trying to get up but<br />
he’s in a bad way. Still armed though and so still dangerous. You decide the only<br />
safe action is to take him out before he gets in a good shot.<br />
You jump through the windows, tearing your jacket on the remaining glass<br />
and cutting your face. He turns at the noise and attempts to raise his gun. He’s<br />
too late. You have both Glocks levelled squarely at him and pull both triggers.<br />
Repeatedly. He drops the gun and falls back to the floor.<br />
You reload your guns and move to check the rest of the house. He might not<br />
have been alone. Your search completed you call in the cops and an ambulance for<br />
your injured driver. He tries to apologise for failing to protect you. You tell him not<br />
to worry, surprising yourself by actually meaning it.<br />
The police investigation is a formality. It always is. You call the office and<br />
report the attack and its result. They say to wait for your new driver. He’ll take you<br />
to a hotel for the night. Your house will be fixed up by tomorrow night.<br />
You walk back into the hotel suite’s lounge. The shower helped, almost made<br />
you feel human. You look into the mirror by the door as you straighten your tie.<br />
You grab your guns from the table. You’re ready to hit the hotel bar, maybe get a<br />
meal. You stop at the door and add two more grenades to your armament. You<br />
shouldn’t need them in a hotel like this but they make you feel more secure.<br />
270 The Literary Hatchet
You hesitate before pressing the lift button. Lifts are too much like buses—<br />
public confined places prone to raised tensions and regular violence. You consider<br />
the stairs but fifty-four stories are too much. You’d rather take your chances in a<br />
close fight than arrive in the lobby area too tired to defend yourself if ambushed.<br />
You press the button and take aim at the lift door.<br />
The numbers rise quickly. This is a fast lift—forty, forty-five, fifty, fifty-five,<br />
fifty-seven. The lift pings and the doors begin to open. You crouch slightly, getting<br />
prepared. It’s empty. You step into the lift and descend to the ground floor, gun at<br />
the ready for the doors’ opening.<br />
An argument is taking place at the check-in desk. You can’t make out the<br />
words but you understand the emotion. This is going to get real ugly soon. You<br />
head quickly for the bar, not wanting to get in the way of someone else’s fight.<br />
The waiter guides you to a table. You see the PPK at his hip. Nice, you think.<br />
You’ve always admired the classics. No fancy ceramic guns for you. The Glock has<br />
a certain something; it’s special. This guy obviously thinks the same way.<br />
He takes your order and heads for the kitchen. You look about the restaurant.<br />
It’s well designed, every table backs against a wall, no chairs placed where the<br />
occupant’s back would be to the entrance.<br />
You hear gunfire from the lobby. Obviously that argument at check-in has<br />
reached its conclusion. Shortly afterwards you see the clean-up crew wheeling a<br />
body bag out.<br />
You meal arrives. The waiter wishes you “Buon Appetito”. The food is excellent,<br />
truly astounding. You’ve never tasted anything this good. It should be though, the<br />
price of this place. One night here would have cost you a month’s salary before this<br />
promotion. Now it’s paid for by the company. This is a life you could get used to.<br />
You sip your wine. It has to last. You won’t have a second glass. No one who<br />
wants to stay alive would. You need your reflexes sharp.<br />
The couple at the next table start arguing. He slams his fist down on the table<br />
causing her knife to fall to the floor.<br />
“Walter, you don’t want to do this.” she says.<br />
It’s obviously not the right thing to say. He stands and waves his fist at her,<br />
asking how she would know what he wants.<br />
She just sighs and fires her gun into his left leg. He collapses, screaming, to the<br />
ground. She simply raises a hand to the waiter who nods before lifting the telephone<br />
receiver next to him. In less than fifteen seconds a medical team is treating the<br />
man. This has obviously happened before. You don’t let it ruin your meal.<br />
You look out of your hotel room window, a glass of cognac in your hand.<br />
You’re high up, fifty-seventh floor. You can see all over the city. You can see several<br />
explosions but this distance makes them mute—silent flashes of light. The TV in<br />
the corner of the room is showing a news report of the gun battle you watched<br />
“LIVE” this morning.<br />
You feel detached, separate. Nothing’s changed really.<br />
]<br />
The Literary Hatchet 271
[poetry]<br />
Mutual rape -<br />
that disaster-cooperation zone<br />
of purpose popping<br />
anger-exports<br />
and abuse-breathing<br />
screams<br />
in unfinished groans.<br />
Consenting fluids touch,<br />
while disgust creeps beneath these cold characters<br />
in mint-mental hopes<br />
(unbroken by testing),<br />
as they strive to uphold the painless machinery<br />
of their swim in warm emotive lies.<br />
The neural fever of mortality<br />
sustains a talent for sleeping beside cruelty.<br />
—soren james<br />
272 The Literary Hatchet
[poetry]<br />
Bodies falling<br />
one by one<br />
singing<br />
Che sera sera<br />
Ce’st la vie<br />
and life’s a bitch<br />
then you die<br />
which makes no sense<br />
to me<br />
and man cannot<br />
accept his fate<br />
nor will he even try<br />
—stephanie smith<br />
The Literary Hatchet 273
[short story]<br />
by shane fraser<br />
On a coffee table is a gun. In front of it, a man is sitting on a sofa. He is staring<br />
at it wildly—his eyes red and swollen, his face striped with tears. He reaches for<br />
the revolver but stops a few inches away. He changes direction and turns toward a<br />
large quadratic bottle opposite the gun. He puts it to his mouth and takes a long,<br />
obviously painful swig, and as he releases, gags aggressively. It takes all of his<br />
strength not to throw it back up.<br />
He puts the bottle back down and continues to stare at the gun. This persists<br />
for several minutes until he grasps the handle and carefully lifts the weapon off<br />
the table. He unlocks the cylinder and it swings out, revealing a lone bullet in the<br />
chamber.<br />
He begins to fiddle with the thing, swinging it in and out, transfixed like a<br />
teenager with a smartphone. He sets it on his lap as he takes another, longer swig<br />
of the whiskey, which seems to have gone down easier than before, but this could<br />
not be a good sign.<br />
For a moment, his gaze shifts to the wall at the far end of the living room,<br />
where a family picture hangs. This strikes a nerve and he resumes sobbing. He<br />
mouths, “I’m sorry” repeatedly, before returning attention to his lap. He goes to<br />
pick up the revolver, but it does not move.<br />
Minutes pass and his trembling hands are still hovering millimeters away,<br />
as if touching it would burn his skin. His cries are quiet but terrifying; a painful<br />
unearthing of so much emotion. He takes another swig, and without even a flinch,<br />
finishes the bottle.<br />
In one sudden violent motion, he grabs the gun and inserts the barrel in his<br />
mouth. His eyes are shut and his sobs have turned into unsettling whimpers, like<br />
a child anticipating a flu shot. He cocks the hammer and lets out a brief muffled<br />
274 The Literary Hatchet
scream—the clicking sound startled him. He rubs his index finger along the trigger<br />
guard and after a few heavy breaths, begins to pull.<br />
The doorbell rings. He does not move, his finger still precariously pressed<br />
against the trigger. A few heavy knocks are heard. He continues to ignore it.<br />
The doorbell rings. He grunts in frustration, slams the firearm on the table, and<br />
lifts himself off the sofa. He walks through the living room, turns toward the<br />
entranceway and opens the door.<br />
A man is standing there with his arm raised ready to knock again. He is short,<br />
fat and squirrelly looking, with a receding hairline and wearing a business-casual<br />
outfit. Realizing that a person has answered, he sets something down at his feet<br />
apprehensively before backing away. A few short steps later, he turns around and<br />
starts walking quickly down the sidewalk, looking back over his shoulder once<br />
before disappearing around the corner.<br />
Perplexed, he watches as the man darts away down his sidewalk. Unbeknownst<br />
to him, it’s his disheveled appearance that frightened the man; a long afternoon<br />
of crying, drinking and contemplating an unthinkable act can distort a face<br />
remarkably. He turns his attention to the concrete in front of him, where the<br />
strangers’ gift lay. It appears to be some sort of pamphlet, with the front page<br />
reading, in large bold letters: “Live a Life Worth Living!” Curiously, he picks it up<br />
to examine it further. He reads the text underneath the tagline, which says: “Vote<br />
Jim Vollman for your City Council.” It is accompanied by a smug photo of the man<br />
who had just scurried away.<br />
He takes the pamphlet inside, sets it on the coffee table, and sinks back into<br />
the sofa. He stares at the politicians face for a few seconds before sticking the barrel<br />
of the revolver back in his mouth, adjusting the muzzle for maximum success. He<br />
cries, but is hardly shaking anymore. His finger rests confidently on the trigger, and<br />
after a few minutes of serious rumination, it begins to move again.<br />
The doorbell rings. He shakes his head in disbelief. It rings twice more. He<br />
groans and eases off the trigger. It rings three times, in rapid succession. He rips the<br />
barrel from his mouth—which tears like Velcro—drops the gun on the table and<br />
gets up to answer the door.<br />
A tall, slim young man is outside his house. He is wearing an expensive suit<br />
and holding a clutch of papers. He does not seem startled or even concerned at<br />
the appearance of the man who has answered the door. Instead, he looks calm and<br />
happy; the smile on his face could illuminate the abyss. The young man hands him<br />
one of the papers—which is weighty, suggesting some sort of small magazine. Just<br />
as he begins to speak, the door is slammed in his face.<br />
Obviously incensed, the man runs back to his living room and throws the<br />
magazine on the floor. He kicks it a few times before collapsing on the sofa with his<br />
face in his hands. Several seconds later, he lifts his head and focuses on the spot on<br />
the floor where the misshapen magazine lay. He gets up, lifts it off the ground, and<br />
takes it back to the sofa. He reads the title on the front page—“Accepting God is the<br />
Key to Happiness”—and thumbs through the rest of the pages before closing it up<br />
and staring aimlessly at the table.<br />
The Literary Hatchet 275
His attention again shifts to the gun. He grabs the handle and inserts the barrel<br />
in his mouth without shaking or sobbing; he appears content. He reclines back in<br />
his seat, with his head braced atop the sofa. He positions the gun at the proper<br />
angle, closes his eyes, pulls on the trigger, and embraces death.<br />
The doorbell rings. He screams a most frustrated scream. He runs to the door<br />
but takes the gun with him. He turns the knob and quietly opens it about two<br />
inches. Through the crack, in the darkness of his home, he points the revolver at<br />
the unsuspecting person. Once he gets a glimpse of the visitor, his heart sinks, and<br />
he drops the gun.<br />
It is a young girl—no more than 10 years old. She jumps at the sound and<br />
peers around the slightly-ajar door, looking for its source. She catches the eye of the<br />
man, who reciprocates the surprised look, while carefully nudging the gun out of<br />
sight with his foot. She doesn’t see what falls, only the face of a horrified, disheveled<br />
man staring at her from behind the door.<br />
She is initially taken aback by the appearance of the man, but then she pulls<br />
something out of her satchel and holds it out in his direction. He does nothing.<br />
She inches it closer but he does not take it—he is still looking mystified at the girl.<br />
He finally composes himself enough to reach out his hand as well. She places the<br />
object in his open palm, and he peers down in bewilderment; it is a box of cookies.<br />
He looks up at the girl and motions with his other hand that he does not have any<br />
money. She just smiles—the most beautiful smile he has ever seen in his life—and<br />
pats him on the arm. She turns and walks down the sidewalk, onto the next house.<br />
Minutes pass and he is standing in the same position. After finally closing the<br />
door, he picks up the gun and carries it, and the cookies, back to the sofa. He puts<br />
both of them on the table and eyes each object intensively; from the gun, to the<br />
pamphlet, to the magazine, to the cookies. He laughs out loud, shakes his head,<br />
and then laughs again. He picks up the box of cookies, opens it up, sticks one in his<br />
mouth and walks away.<br />
]<br />
276 The Literary Hatchet
[poetry]<br />
Strings sing savagely<br />
like a storm turning<br />
over waves in the sea<br />
Breathing heavily<br />
Writhing. Sinew and flesh<br />
create composition<br />
decompose after a time<br />
I suspect. Who knows<br />
where the soul goes when we die<br />
if it reaches a coda of sorts<br />
doomed to repeat<br />
over and over<br />
‘til our tune ends<br />
—stephanie smith<br />
The Literary Hatchet 277
[short story]<br />
by josh craven<br />
“Brother, can you spare a dime?”<br />
“I’m sorry—come again,” Jake said as he looked down into a pair of tired,<br />
brown eyes with lids that sagged at the corners.<br />
“Buddy, can you spare a dime?” the old man asked.<br />
Clearly all the worse for wear, he stood stooped as if he had carried the world<br />
on his shoulders for decades. He was wringing his gnarled hands together like a<br />
starving man waiting for a slice of warm, freshly baked bread. His khaki suit was<br />
mottled with dark splotches and, like the hunched little man that it hung upon, it<br />
was thin and threadbare and frayed around the edges.<br />
“I, uh…”<br />
Jake shifted his briefcase from hand to hand as he fished in his pants pocket.<br />
Who carries change these days? But it was easier to turn a panhandler away after<br />
feigning a good-faith effort to find him a coin. Jake was practiced in the art of<br />
declining such a request; panhandlers often seemed to outnumber fare payers<br />
278 The Literary Hatchet
on the train platforms these days. On this particular Saturday morning, as Jake<br />
had entered the platform he saw only the old beggar and an Eminem wannabe<br />
gesticulating to a private tune coming from the red cinnamon buns on the sides<br />
of his head.<br />
Jake was about to utter his standardized refrain, Sorry, sir, I don’t have any cash<br />
on me, when his fingertips touched the flat metallic disc. He pulled his hand from<br />
his pocket, and extended it to the old man.<br />
“Here you go, sir. Sorry, that’s all I have on me.”<br />
“Praise the Lord! It’s a Roosevelt! Bless you, young’un. Al’s muh name.”<br />
Al’s dirt-colored eyes began to shimmer like a pair of tiny mud puddles.<br />
“You have a great day, Al,” Jake said with a smile. He thought it had been at<br />
least thirty years since anyone had called him a young’un. He continued walking<br />
toward the far end of the platform so he could sit in the first car.<br />
“You do the same!” Al said from behind him.<br />
Jake reached the area where he knew the front of the train would come to a<br />
halt and toed the yellow “Do Not Cross” line. He looked back to his left and saw<br />
the train peeking from around the curve like a snake slithering from behind an old<br />
tree trunk. He noticed Al shuffling over to the young man with the headphones.<br />
Good luck with that one, Al.<br />
The kid looked at Al with contempt, and it reminded Jake of the way his<br />
fourteen-year-old son looked at him when he told the boy to mow the yard.<br />
Electricity whistled and hummed in the overhead lines, and brakes squealed<br />
and moaned in protest as the train slid alongside the platform. The nose of the first<br />
car slipped past Jake by a few feet, and the train lurched to a stop with the door<br />
of the lead car almost directly in front of him. Jake glanced back to see if Al was<br />
having any luck, but the young man was shaking his head dismissively from side<br />
to side. Al was running his left hand over his head while his right hand fidgeted<br />
behind his back under his suit jacket; he was clearly anxious and agitated at the bad<br />
news he was receiving.<br />
The door to the train car trundled open and Jake boarded. There was only one<br />
other person in the car. She had salt-and-pepper hair, a hooked nose, and she was<br />
sitting a couple of rows from the front. The large hardback she was reading must<br />
have been a real page-turner, because she never looked up. Jake passed her and<br />
dropped into a window seat about halfway down the length of the car. He put his<br />
briefcase in the empty seat between him and the aisle, and he peered out the glass.<br />
Al and the kid were out of view. The train door closed with a whoosh, and Jake<br />
popped open his briefcase and pulled out his newspaper.<br />
The train jerked forward and began to pick up speed, and in Jake’s mind, Bing<br />
Crosby started singing a tired, Depression-era show-song with a somber tone. He<br />
checked his watch and wondered if this train could race against time. A minute<br />
later the door at the rear of the car opened.<br />
Unlike the passenger reading her book, years of riding the rail had taught Jake<br />
to be aware of his surroundings, and he stole a quick glance back at the door. Al<br />
The Literary Hatchet 279
entered the car and wobbled up the aisle. Jake thought there were more dark blots<br />
on the old man’s suit than there had been earlier.<br />
The weathered old waif heaved himself from one row of seats to the next,<br />
grabbing the shiny bars on the backs of the chairs as he made his way toward the<br />
front. He didn’t seem to notice Jake; the frail man with the slouched shoulders and<br />
hunched back was focused on the lady with the salt-and-pepper hair.<br />
Jake held his newspaper in front of his face, but he peered over top of the black<br />
and white pages to watch the goings on.<br />
“Sister, can you spare a dime?”<br />
The lady shook her head from left to right. She never looked up from her book.<br />
“Sister! Can you spare a dime?” It was loud, even over the rattling and roaring<br />
of the train, and this time she gave the elderly beggar her attention.<br />
“I said ‘no.’ Now go away.” She was looking back down at her book before she<br />
finished speaking.<br />
Al’s shoulders seem to sag a little lower as he inhaled deeply and then exhaled.<br />
He stood there in the aisle, facing the lady.<br />
“Can you please go sit down?” she asked, still staring into her book.<br />
Al’s tattered jacket flapped and bulged as he fumbled behind his back,<br />
underneath the beat-up old suit-top. When his hand emerged and reached upward,<br />
he was holding one of those heavy, framing hammers with a large, round face for<br />
pounding new nails and a long, straight claw for extracting old ones. Jake noticed<br />
that Al’s hand, the one that had accepted Jake’s dime a short time ago, seemed to be<br />
wearing a dark red glove that matched the end of Al’s jacket sleeve.<br />
The lady with the salt-and-pepper hair never looked up from her book, and<br />
Jake prayed it was a happy story. When the hammer came down, the little old man<br />
really put his back into it, like he was trying to ring the bell at the county fair.<br />
Jake heard the thunk when the flat face of the head punched into the woman’s<br />
skull. When Al raised the hammer back over his head, blood gurgled from the neat,<br />
round hole that the hammer had just knocked in her head, and an arc of spatter<br />
dotted the window and extended up onto the ceiling. Al’s knobby red fingers spun<br />
the handle of the hammer in his hand so that the claw pointed forward, and when<br />
the tool came down again, it plunged in deep and wet.<br />
Jake was paralyzed and wide-eyed as the little old man’s arm nodded up and<br />
down like the head of a pumpjack. When he stopped swinging the hammer, the<br />
side of the train car was awash in red, accented with what looked like little clumps<br />
of tofu.<br />
Al sat down in the aisle seat across from the lady he had just bludgeoned<br />
into oblivion and faced forward as the train rumbled onward. Jake stared at the<br />
neat swirl of thin, white hair on the back of Al’s head as it swayed gently with the<br />
rocking of the train.<br />
Jake felt he should do something, but his mind was tripping over itself, trying<br />
to put together a coherent thought. He was certain he could overtake the old man<br />
without much of a tussle, but the harder task was getting his body to obey his brain.<br />
280 The Literary Hatchet
Before he could move, the train’s brakes began to howl.<br />
Jake watched Al stand up, totter to the front of the car, and pause at the top of<br />
the stairs for the train to come to a stop. Jake could see that his face and the front<br />
of his suit looked like Jackson Pollock had gotten carried away with the red paint.<br />
When the door slid open, Al carefully stepped off, steadying himself with a<br />
gooey crimson hand on the handrail. His jacket fluttered in the wind and Jake saw<br />
the hammer was tucked into the frayed waistband of Al’s dappled pants.<br />
A corpulent man sat on a shaded bench on the platform with a magazine in his<br />
hand and a cigarette dangling from his lips. He looked at Al like one might look at<br />
an elephant that had just been birthed by a squirrel. As the train door snapped shut<br />
and the train started to groan, Al shimmied toward the man on the bench.<br />
Jake’s brain finally re-synched with his body, and he ran to the door.<br />
“Hey! Hey!” Jake beat on the window in the door with his fist.<br />
He watched as Al neared the man and began to speak. The man set his<br />
magazine to the side and patted his pants pocket as the train pitched forward. Jake<br />
ran down the aisle, past the wet mess with a hardbound book between its feet, to<br />
the back of the car. He jabbed at the button that opened the door to the rear car and<br />
sprinted to the back of the train. From the window that faced out of the back of the<br />
train car, Jake saw the man with the magazine shaking his head no.<br />
“Al!” Jake screamed, his forehead mashed against the glass. “Al!”<br />
As the train curved around the bend, and the platform was squeezed from his<br />
sight, Jake watched Al point his hammer to the sky.<br />
]<br />
The Literary Hatchet 281
[poetry]<br />
In these dangerous times of<br />
translucent dreams and heartache<br />
that seethes, a child screams for his<br />
mother upon Winter’s wake<br />
An open grave sighs<br />
The metallic sun sings a<br />
sonnet for the silver sky,<br />
breeds silence for the departed,<br />
cries of the damned,<br />
a purgatory of sorts<br />
in this land that’s fit for a pauper<br />
Perhaps Winter is our own private Hell<br />
of fake joy and contradiction<br />
Perhaps we play our part too well:<br />
A Grand Guignol on a broken stage<br />
where we recite our soliloquies<br />
to the mangled masses,<br />
this plastic audience<br />
—stephanie smith<br />
282 The Literary Hatchet
[poetry]<br />
The savage bought a suit<br />
It fit him really well<br />
The cuffs were linked<br />
The hat was tops<br />
It ended in a tail<br />
He stole a matching cane<br />
With iv’ry-crested head<br />
But gore and game his shirt did stain<br />
An’ all that’s white ran red<br />
—t.c. powell<br />
The Literary Hatchet 283
[short story]<br />
284 The Literary Hatchet
y leland neville<br />
“I’m Detective Beau Kellerman and I have a few routine questions concerning<br />
your wife.”<br />
Noah invited the slender gray man into his home.<br />
“A missing person report was anonymously filed online,” said Kellerman.<br />
“Ninety-nine percent of the time these reports turn out to be wrong.”<br />
The condo and its dusty furnishings felt familiar to the detective. How many<br />
interchangeable gloomy rooms had he visited the past month? At least ten. Maybe<br />
twenty. Even Noah was indistinguishable from the young man who recently bought<br />
the townhouse across the street from the detective.<br />
“Is Lauren okay? She lives in Florida.” Noah’s words were unhurried.<br />
“Lauren? Florida?” Detective Kellerman, confused, reexamined the report.<br />
“The missing person is definitely named ‘Olivia.’ But the emergency contact<br />
information is filled in with your name, your phone number, and your Baltimore<br />
address. It identifies you as the husband. There seems to be a problem. Perhaps I<br />
should return later with a corrected file.”<br />
“I think I can explain. Lauren worked at the Olivia desk.”<br />
“I don’t understand. Who is Lauren? What’s the Olivia desk?”<br />
“Lauren’s my ex-wife. When Lauren was hired at Infosystech in Florida nine<br />
months ago she must have inherited the name and the clients of her predecessor.<br />
That’s not unusual. It’s a business strategy that’s supposed to deliver a less disruptive<br />
service.”<br />
Beau Kellerman shrugged.<br />
“After Lauren left me and Baltimore for Florida and a new job I followed her<br />
on the Internet. She was determined to have a new identity. She got so caught<br />
up in her new life that she no longer wanted to be Lauren. Once I called her at<br />
Infosystech just to see how she was doing. I was certain it was Lauren, even though<br />
she denied it and insisted she that had always been Olivia. Lauren told me to never<br />
call her again at work or home. She threatened to notify the authorities, but I kept<br />
following her…” Noah’s voice trailed off.<br />
“Some courts consider that cyberstalking. I consider it cyberstalking.”<br />
“No, it wasn’t like that. I loved Lauren and was worried about her. Anyway,<br />
except for that one time, I didn’t engage her. I just observed what anyone with<br />
Internet access can observe.”<br />
“And what exactly did you observe?”<br />
“Initially the photos posted on the usual social media sites were those of the<br />
Olivia who Lauren must have been replacing. It was weird because Lauren did<br />
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ear a striking resemblance to her predecessor. They could have been, if not twins,<br />
certainly sisters. They both even liked the same romantic comedies. Soon new<br />
pictures began appearing, usually unfocused and distant. Then the images became<br />
sharper and Olivia became Lauren—or maybe I should say Lauren became Olivia.<br />
There were a few discrepancies. The Lauren I married had dark hair. The new one<br />
was almost blond, and her nose was a little thinner—but she was my Lauren. When<br />
we were married Lauren had mentioned wanting cosmetic surgery, even though<br />
there was nothing wrong with her. I always thought Lauren was perfect, but she<br />
didn’t care what I thought. She had self-esteem issues. She was never satisfied with<br />
her life. Lauren and I divorced one year ago. No kids. We’d been married four years.<br />
She said I was an uninvolved husband. Lauren just wanted me to disappear from<br />
her life.”<br />
Detective Kellerman closed his eyes; he had heard too many similar stories.<br />
Noah was another abandoned husband or boyfriend who couldn’t let go of the<br />
past. Everyday there were more and more of them. Most looked pitiful and lost—<br />
like Noah. Most didn’t seem to be employed. Where did they come from? How did<br />
they survive?<br />
“Oh, no,” Noah said. He closed his eyes and pictured Lauren’s prone naked<br />
body sinking into the warm thick black swamp. He could hear the exotic birds<br />
screaming and smell the diesel exhaust from an idling pickup truck. Noah had<br />
never been to Florida.<br />
“Are you all right?” asked Detective Kellerman.<br />
“She’s dead. The reality is finally hitting me. Women who go missing for three<br />
months don’t suddenly turn up alive. She was too trusting. She probably went on a<br />
date with the first man who asked her out without even doing a basic background<br />
check on him. Did I mention her self-esteem issues?”<br />
“Why do you think she’s dead?” Detective Kellerman yawned and prepared<br />
himself for a conspiracy theory.<br />
“Lauren was murdered three months ago. That’s when her Facebook photos<br />
started changing into those of another fill-in—Lauren’s successor. Additional<br />
cosmetic surgery and short bleached hair could not explain away the changes. I<br />
just knew she wasn’t my Lauren anymore.”<br />
“What other transformations did you observe?”<br />
“The movies this woman working at the Olivia desk claimed to enjoy were<br />
wrong. The new Olivia loved foreign films. French detective films. Spanish horror<br />
films. Lauren always hated foreign films. The new Olivia also claimed to speak<br />
Spanish. Lauren did not speak Spanish. I even called this fill-in at the Olivia<br />
desk a few months ago—I couldn’t stop myself—to ask her if she knew about her<br />
predecessor—my Lauren. The new Olivia sounded almost like Lauren, but not<br />
quite. I could tell. She told me to never call her again.”<br />
“Are you telling me that your ex-wife was murdered three months ago but<br />
someone just filed a missing person report?”<br />
“The missing person report in your hand is not about Lauren. My ex-wife has<br />
probably been dead for three months. The missing woman you’re investigating is—<br />
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was—the woman who replaced Lauren at the Olivia desk three months ago. Well,<br />
she is also missing and is most likely dead.”<br />
“Exactly how many women have you been stalking?”<br />
“I’m not a stalker. And I’ve only followed three women if you don’t count the<br />
Olivia my ex-wife replaced.”<br />
“Only three? That’s reassuring.”<br />
“There was Lauren and then there was the woman who took over for Lauren<br />
three months ago and just went missing. Now there’s a third woman who just<br />
replaced Lauren’s fill-in. That’s all. Three.”<br />
“And you continued to cyberstalk even after your wife disappeared.”<br />
“I kept hoping I was wrong about Lauren’s murder. I kept hoping that maybe<br />
Lauren would return. I even considered flying to Florida and demanding an<br />
explanation from Infosystech or the police, not that it would have done any good.<br />
I prayed that Lauren’s replacement was only a temporary fill-in—but now she’s<br />
also gone. You need to do something. No one was concerned when Lauren went<br />
missing. Fill-in murders are ignored by the police and the mainstream media. I’m<br />
surprised you took the time to investigate the disappearance of Lauren’s fill-in.”<br />
Detective Kellerman didn’t answer. What Noah had just said was true. Every<br />
day the police fielded more and more calls from people asserting that a relative<br />
or friend had been murdered and replaced with a not quite perfect substitute. It<br />
was Internet psychosis. Police departments across America were rightly labeling<br />
it fill-in hysteria. The Internet made police work more frustrating. Two years<br />
ago there had been daily sightings and YouTube videos of a paranormal slender<br />
man terrorizing children. Last year there had been e-mail attachments that, when<br />
opened, resulted in the recipient witnessing his own imminent and horrific death.<br />
What would next year bring?<br />
“Did you file this missing person report?” The detective waved a piece of<br />
paper in front of Noah’s face. “Is that why it is filled in with references to an Olivia<br />
but includes your contact information?”<br />
“Yes.” Noah averted his eyes from Beau Kellerman’s glare.<br />
“Did you also file a missing person report three months ago concerning your<br />
wife Lauren?”<br />
“Yes. No one responded. Obviously no one believed me.”<br />
“So you admit to filing two bogus reports concerning fill-in murders. Now<br />
we’re getting somewhere. You’ve just confessed to a felony. Do you have any idea<br />
how many police hours you have wasted? Baltimore does have a serious and real<br />
crime problem. There are no fill-in murders. There is no Olivia desk. There are no<br />
missing women in Coral Shores. Your wife left you and you can’t accept it. People<br />
change. They learn Spanish. They learn to like foreign films.”<br />
“You have to convince the Coral Shores police to investigate Infosystech. There<br />
must be fingerprints or handwriting samples. It’s too late for Lauren and her fill-in,<br />
but maybe there’s still time to at least warn the new Olivia—the fill-in for Lauren’s<br />
fill-in—the woman who just started working at the Olivia desk. There’s a serial<br />
killer on the loose, probably more than one.”<br />
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“Did you ever consider the possibility that your wife and the other women<br />
you’ve been stalking both quit working at Infosystech and moved on to something<br />
new and better?”<br />
“That’s not what’s happening. Haven’t you been listening to me?”<br />
“There is no conspiracy. You need to accompany me to the police station.”<br />
Noah briefly contemplated the fate of the newest fill-in at the Olivia desk. How<br />
much time did she have left? Where did all the new fill-ins come from?<br />
Melissa’s position as a sales representative at the largest call center in Buffalo<br />
was her sixth full-time job since graduating from high school. When she first spoke<br />
to a client in a New Orleans Yat dialect, her team leader, a dullard who had been<br />
in her high school class, gave Melissa an official warning. She ignored him and<br />
continued to assume the dialects of her clients. She was given a second warning.<br />
When the supervisors grasped that Melissa’s sales were better than her colleagues<br />
by a healthy margin, she was permitted to continue working in a flexible voice<br />
mode. Customers enjoyed talking to people who sounded like them. Melissa’s skill<br />
at dialects, honed by her appetite for films, television shows, and YouTube videos,<br />
began to pay dividends. She was employee of the month seven times. Each time she<br />
was given a $50 Amazon gift card. She soon grew bored. Melissa was twenty-fiveyears<br />
old and wanted a new life.<br />
The online job application was quick and painless. In the supplementary oneminute<br />
video Melissa simply stated that she was a dependable worker who enjoyed<br />
challenges and knew how to fit it. Neither friends nor family appeared distressed<br />
about her impending move to Florida.<br />
“You won’t like Coral Shores,” said Jackson, her predictable and remote<br />
boyfriend. “It’s being overrun by snakes and old people. Cottonmouths and cotton<br />
heads.”<br />
Jackson had once visited Florida and Disney World in middle school.<br />
“Do you speak Spanish?” her mother asked. “Most people in Florida speak<br />
Spanish.”<br />
“In high school I was president of the Spanish club.”<br />
“I don’t remember that,” said her mother.<br />
Her dullard team leader told her that there were eight overqualified applicants<br />
desperate for her old job. He didn’t say, “Good luck.”<br />
Her parents and Jackson predicted she’d return to Buffalo within three months.<br />
The Coral Shores office looked identical to the Buffalo call center. The<br />
employees also looked familiar. Ten percent of Melissa’s salary went to the Internet<br />
business that had assisted her in finding new employment, but it was worth it. The<br />
small apartment she found three blocks from the ocean was clean and reasonable.<br />
She could hear the ocean. Her life in Buffalo soon became a faded smear of<br />
grayscale images.<br />
“We have a lot of regular clients, and Olivia, the woman you are replacing,<br />
was very successful,” said her new team leader. “Many of our callbacks specifically<br />
request Olivia.”<br />
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“Why did Olivia leave?”<br />
“We don’t ask those kinds of questions here. Privacy is extremely important.”<br />
“I see.”<br />
“We also want you to continue to use the name Olivia.”<br />
“For how long?”<br />
“For a while.”<br />
“I guess I could do that.”<br />
“Also, according to you application, you have a talent for dialects.”<br />
“Yes.”<br />
“Can you do a Baltimore dialect?”<br />
“Would East Baltimore work?”<br />
“Perfect. When you talk to clients always speak in an East Baltimore dialect.<br />
And it wouldn’t hurt to use that accent here at Infosystech.”<br />
“You want me to stay in character.”<br />
“Exactly. You’re like an actor playing a role. And remember to continue to use<br />
Olivia’s social media sites. Our business has a lot of likes.”<br />
“All right.”<br />
Her team leader nodded and left. Another man, Jake from human resources,<br />
appeared.<br />
“Welcome to Infosystech,” said Jake. “Remember, my door is always open.”<br />
“Thank you,” said Olivia. The East Baltimore dialect already felt natural.<br />
There was a natural order to the murders. For a moment the universe felt right.<br />
When his hands closed around their throats he was contributing to the grateful<br />
escape of their souls. He was an essential player in a phenomenon he knew he<br />
could never understand. He was a foot soldier, following orders, making it happen.<br />
Sooner or later there’d be a sharp CCTV picture—instead of the grainy images<br />
of some vaguely familiar-looking man—and he’d be apprehended. But there were<br />
others waiting to take his place. He would live on through his fill-ins, just like those<br />
that had been captured, convicted, and sometimes executed were living through<br />
him. There was immortality.<br />
In New Orleans, six or seven years ago, he had been more anxious than the<br />
young woman. It was his first time so he did harbor a few stray doubts. There<br />
were many others who shared her pretty but indistinctive appearance. The human<br />
resources department was swamped with applications. Maybe she wasn’t the right<br />
one. Maybe the right one hadn’t been hired yet and he needed to be patient. He<br />
kept making excuses, hesitating. But their paths kept crossing. More than once<br />
he found himself sitting next to her in the cafeteria. It wasn’t a coincidence; more<br />
than one thousand people were employed at the call center. He learned about her<br />
interest in craft fairs from Facebook. She had been surprised to see him at the fair<br />
and agreed to help him find a suitable gift for his make-believe niece. She accepted<br />
his invitation for drinks. First, he had to check up on his fictional mother.<br />
“Were you raised around here, Jerry?” He was Jerry back then. “You sound like<br />
you’re from the Midwest.”<br />
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Privacy was never more than ten minutes away in Bayou Country. She didn’t<br />
scream, and her struggle was perfunctory. She too suspected the natural order was<br />
at play. His bones rattled when her liberated peaceful soul passed through his tense<br />
body. He quickly buried her in a shallow grave. The next day, after a deep dreamless<br />
sleep, he drove his pickup truck back to the scene of the crime. Her body was<br />
missing. It could have been alligators, but it was more likely the recalibration of the<br />
natural order. She would be replaced and he would hunt down her fill-in. It was his<br />
job to help clear out the old to make way for the new.<br />
He rotated identities. He became Jason and then Jake. He moved from city to<br />
city. That was difficult. He hated change deep down. He fantasized about settling<br />
down in a small city in Florida.<br />
Noah sat in Detective Kellerman’s compact office, alone. Could he be arrested<br />
for submitting two missing person reports? The police obviously did not enjoy<br />
being the target of what they believed to be Internet insanity. Noah knew he could<br />
never convince the detective that the fill-in murders were real.<br />
Noah stood up. The office was bare except for two chairs, a desk, a computer<br />
monitor, and keyboard. The police were of course observing him—but why? Noah<br />
had seen videos of suspects alone inside interrogation rooms confessing to crimes.<br />
Did the police imagine that he would suddenly scream, “Yes, I did it! I filed two<br />
bogus missing person reports!”<br />
Why, he asked himself, am I still here?<br />
Detective Beau Kellerman, sitting across the hall, studied the TV monitor. The<br />
man on the screen was not the man who had admitted to submitting the missing<br />
person reports. There was a different Noah on the monitor. His nose wasn’t right.<br />
Even his slouch was wrong. And this Noah had shorter and lighter colored hair.<br />
Beau Kellerman was obviously not going to mention the discrepancies to anyone.<br />
The detective’s retirement was less than a year away and Noah was never going<br />
to be arrested anyway. The detective had just wanted to read Noah the riot act.<br />
Kellerman needed to raise his voice and see Noah quiver and sweat. He needed<br />
to remind himself that all the Noahs in Baltimore were not bloodless nonentities.<br />
Beau Kellerman moved closer to the TV. The detective tried to convince<br />
himself that he was observing the same Noah. How closely did I observe him, he<br />
asked himself? Noah just looked like another neurotic, living his life inside the<br />
Internet. There had been no reason to memorize his appearance. All the Noahs are<br />
starting to blur. I just need to hang in there for one more year. Then I can retire to<br />
a small city in Florida.<br />
Kellerman refocused his eyes on the monitor. The room was empty. Did Noah<br />
just leave? Did another detective tell him to go home? Mix-ups happen. Noah had<br />
not been arrested and was of course technically free to go home. It didn’t matter.<br />
Beau Kellerman knew that every new day would bring more Noahs.<br />
]<br />
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[poetry]<br />
No friends, only competitors<br />
No sunrises<br />
Romantic walks at night in the park<br />
do not end well<br />
Nightly drudgery<br />
over and over,<br />
forever<br />
I could . . .<br />
or I could . . .<br />
But no matter what I do<br />
the song, as they say,<br />
remains the same<br />
I stare for hours at a faded photograph<br />
Mom and Dad, Billy & me . . .<br />
. . . sigh<br />
—tyree campbell<br />
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[poetry]<br />
It’s Thursday night and pay-day and all I can be bothered to do is sit at home,<br />
bored and alone<br />
The kids out on the beach look like they are having the times of their lives<br />
Whilst all I can think is it weren’t like that in my day<br />
Back then I’d have been in the pub just like I should be right now, getting drunk<br />
But this town and its many places for watering the thirst don’t offer me anything<br />
Not on a Thursday night, even when it’s a pay-day night<br />
I got my regular which I could go and hang out at but there’s music tonight<br />
When all I want is a quiet few pints and the chance of some pleasing<br />
conversation<br />
But with the blues blowing out loud it’s hard to think and I don’t want that<br />
Not tonight, not on pay-day, do I want to sit around and have to think<br />
Think about my life, think about my work<br />
All I want to do is get blotto and have a few laughs<br />
Not like those kids on the beach<br />
With their designer clothes, bedecked like an advert for a young person’s retail<br />
chain, and their STDs<br />
All I really want tonight is some company in a place I can get drunk and not<br />
worry<br />
About getting out of bed and going to work tomorrow<br />
Cos then it’s a long shift ending on a Friday, the night the undead come out<br />
Those who follow those labels but have no clue<br />
Those who drink in bars even I don’t go<br />
The undead, possessed by the consumerist mentality<br />
—bradford middleton<br />
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[review]<br />
by denise noe<br />
This essay is dedicated to the memory of actress Barbara Payton.<br />
Director Edgar G. Ulmer’s 1945 black and white Detour is an extraordinarily<br />
powerful movie. Its power is especially remarkable for a cheaply made film<br />
confined to a few sets and riddled with technical errors. However, Ulmer sets forth<br />
in Detour a vision of darkness that draws the audience in and haunts long after the<br />
credits have rolled.<br />
Released by Producers Releasing Corporation (PRC), a “Poverty Row” movie<br />
studio, Detour was chosen by the Library of Congress for the United States National<br />
Film Registry of films deemed “culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant.”<br />
The motion picture begins by showing an open road. Al Roberts (Tom Neal)<br />
trudges by that road. A car picks him up. We next see him sitting alone at a diner<br />
booth. A trucker tries to strike up a conversation; Roberts snaps out answers<br />
indicating he is in no mood to chat.<br />
When the trucker makes an order, he addresses a waitress (Esther Howard)<br />
as “Glamorous.” This teasing set the tone for Detour is a film that is deliberately<br />
anti-glamorous.<br />
The trucker has the jukebox play a song. An agitated Roberts shouts, “Turn<br />
that off! That music stinks!”<br />
“It’s my nickel,” the trucker retorts. The diner’s proprietor (Tim Ryan) reminds<br />
Roberts, “You can leave anytime.”<br />
Roberts settles down. From then on, Roberts narrates most of the film in<br />
flashback.<br />
294 The Literary Hatchet
The song that riled him? “I Can’t Believe That You’re In Love With Me.” The<br />
flashback shows him playing that song on the piano in the Break O’ Dawn Club in<br />
which he was pianist and his girlfriend, Sue Harvey (Claudia Drake), was a singer.<br />
Roberts says, “I was an ordinary healthy guy and she was an ordinary healthy girl<br />
and from that you get an ordinary healthy romance.”<br />
However, we soon learn that Roberts feels stymied. Harvey encouragingly<br />
asserts, “You’ll be in Carnegie Hall.”<br />
Roberts dryly comments, “As a janitor.”<br />
They exit the nightclub and Roberts mentions yearning for an ordinary healthy<br />
marriage. Harvey assures him she ultimately wants to marry him but adds that she<br />
intends to travel to California, saying, “I want to try my luck in Hollywood.”<br />
Roberts reminds her that many people travel to Hollywood for film careers<br />
and “end up polishing cuspidors.”<br />
Harvey heads west. Roberts is back at the nightclub. A worker hands him a $10<br />
bill, remarking, “You hit the jackpot.” Roberts thinks, “A piece of paper crawling<br />
with germs. Couldn’t buy anything I wanted.”<br />
Roberts telephones Harvey. He learns she works “as a hash slinger.” This seems<br />
to confirm his prediction that, like so many others who go to Hollywood to make<br />
it big, she would fail. However, since she is already in Hollywood, he changes his<br />
previous tune and assures her that the film industry will soon recognize her talent.<br />
Then he informs her that he will join her in Hollywood.<br />
“Fate Sticks Out Its Foot”<br />
Roberts hitchhikes. A talkative bookie, Charles Haskell, Jr. (Edmund<br />
MacDonald), picks Roberts up. When Roberts notices deep scratches on Haskell’s<br />
left hand, Haskell reveals he got them from the “most dangerous animal of all—a<br />
woman.” Haskell had picked up a woman, expecting her to be sexually available.<br />
“What kind of dames thumb rides? Sunday School teachers?” he asks. However,<br />
this female hitchhiker was not sexually available—thus, the scratches. Haskell<br />
then shows a scar on his arm. He recalls the story of that scar. Haskell’s father<br />
owned sabers. When Haskell was young, he and another kid dueled. Haskell got<br />
that scar—and he put one of the other kid’s eyes out! Haskell ran away from home<br />
fifteen years ago and has not been back since.<br />
During the ride, Haskell repeatedly asks Roberts to take out a bottle from the<br />
glove compartment so Haskell can take medicine. Tired, Haskell has Roberts drive<br />
while Haskell sleeps in the passenger seat. Roberts tries to awaken Haskell who<br />
falls out of the car. Roberts discovers Haskell is dead. Terrified police will assume<br />
Roberts murdered Haskell, Roberts leaves Haskell’s body in a desert gully. Roberts<br />
takes the corpse’s clothes, cash, and car.<br />
At a California’s border police stop, Roberts displays Haskell’s driver’s license.<br />
The cop does not notice the fakery. This oversight is credible since the two men<br />
were similar enough in build that Haskell’s clothes fit Roberts and they had similar<br />
features.<br />
Later, Roberts looks through papers left by Haskell and discovers that the<br />
The Literary Hatchet 295
ookie claimed to be a “seller of hymnals” in a letter written (but not sent) to his<br />
father.<br />
The next day, Roberts gives a ride to a hitcher. Vera (Ann Savage) has shadows<br />
under her eyes indicating she needs sleep. In keeping with the aforementioned deglamorizing,<br />
Roberts remarks that Vera “looked like she had been thrown off the<br />
crummiest freight train in the world.”<br />
Vera takes a brief nap. When she wakes, she exclaims, “Where did you leave<br />
his body? Where did you leave the owner of this car?”<br />
Rattled, Roberts insists he owns the vehicle. Vera snaps, “This buggy belongs<br />
to a man named Haskell and that’s not you.” She wants to know if Roberts “kissed<br />
[Haskell] with a wrench.”<br />
It turns out Vera is the woman scratched Haskell. Reflecting on his bad luck<br />
in picking her up, Roberts thinks: “That’s life. Whichever way you turn, fate sticks<br />
out a foot to trip you.”<br />
Roberts tells Vera what happened with Haskell. “That’s the biggest cock and<br />
bull story I ever heard,” Vera sneers. Convinced Roberts is a murderer, Vera agrees<br />
not to alert authorities. “I liked Haskell even less than I like you,” she explains.<br />
However, her silence comes with a price. First she takes the money Roberts lifted<br />
from Haskell’s corpse. Then Vera insists Roberts sell the car and give her the<br />
proceeds. Then the two will part.<br />
Roberts and Vera check into an apartment as a married couple. But there is<br />
no hanky-panky. Vera takes the bedroom while Roberts sleeps on a closet foldout<br />
mattress.<br />
The next morning, posing as a married couple, they go to an auto dealership to<br />
sell Haskell’s car. However, before they can get the car sold, Vera finds a newspaper<br />
that indicates that Haskell Sr. is dying and people are searching for Haskell Jr. She<br />
believes Roberts could impersonate the dead man since Roberts has a similar<br />
height and build (as noted, Haskell’s clothes fit Roberts) and has possession of<br />
Haskell’s car and some of his papers.<br />
Roberts realizes the scheme is hare-brained. “As Charles Haskell, I didn’t even<br />
know my mother’s name, where I’d gone to school, the name of my best friend,<br />
whether or not I’d had an Aunt Emma, whether or not I’d had a dog, or what my<br />
religion was,” Roberts points out.<br />
Vera refuses to recognize these obstacles. That stubbornness leads straight into<br />
another tragedy for her as well as Roberts. Detour ends on a note of despair.<br />
A Masterpiece Filled With Flaws<br />
As previously observed, Detour is cheaply made. It is also a film glutted<br />
with flaws. Respected critic Roger Ebert wrote, “Detour is a movie so filled with<br />
imperfections that it would not earn the director a passing grade in film school.”<br />
The Internet Movie Database reports, “In the first shots of Al hitchhiking, the<br />
film is reversed. The cars are driving on the wrong side of the highway and the<br />
drivers sitting behind the wheel are sitting on the right side of their vehicles.” Goofs<br />
296 The Literary Hatchet
include cigarettes appearing out of nowhere, Roberts moving his fingers over piano<br />
keys without pressing them, and eyelashes fluttering after death.<br />
Why has Detour become a classic? The straightforward story deeply resonates.<br />
Al Roberts is a normal, decent man undone by coincidences. When Roberts says,<br />
“That’s life. Whichever way you turn, fate sticks out a foot to trip you,” he sums up<br />
basic human fears.<br />
Another reason for its greatness is that Ulmer cleverly plays with audience<br />
expectations. At one point, Roberts says, “If this were fiction, I would fall in love<br />
with Vera.” Of course, it is fiction but he does not fall in love with Vera. There are<br />
moments Vera seems to be softening to Robert or even becoming seductive—for<br />
example, when she asks, “Do I rate a whistle?”—but those moments are fleeting.<br />
I believe a common mistake made by those discussing Detour is to view Vera<br />
as an especially venomous femme fatale. Although played by Ann Savage, a popular<br />
World War II pin-up, Vera is not a femme fatale. She does not manipulate Roberts<br />
through sexual attraction as a femme fatale would. The scratches on Haskell’s<br />
hand were dramatic evidence of what she did to someone who assumed her sexual<br />
availability. The way Vera snaps out dialogue, her waspish manner, is diametrically<br />
opposed to femme fatale behavior.<br />
There are other ways in which Ulmer plays with expectations. A couple of<br />
times, Vera is racked by what Roberts describes as a “wicked cough.” She says,<br />
“I’m on my way out.” But we never learn what is wrong or when she might die. We<br />
may want to see how Roberts’ fraud would be exposed if he poses as the long-lost<br />
Charlie but this never happens.<br />
Another reason Detour is a masterpiece is that Ulmer artfully crafts parallels<br />
and ironies into the film. Roberts hitchhikes and is picked up by a man who<br />
endangers him. Roberts picks up a hitchhiker who doubles that danger. Vera<br />
scratches the hand of a man who sexually harasses her. Roberts hurts Vera’s hand<br />
leading her to accuse, “You’re no gentleman!” Much of the film revolves around<br />
the road—supposedly a symbol of freedom. Yet that symbol of freedom leads to<br />
multiple traps.<br />
Real Life “Detours”<br />
In the decades since Detour was made, it may have gained in interest because<br />
of the way its plot resembles star Tom Neal’s life. Unlike the major characters of<br />
Detour, Neal was not “born in the gutter.” He was the son of an affluent banker<br />
and the product of prep schools. In college, he distinguished himself in boxing.<br />
Deciding on an acting career, he appeared in various B-movies. However, six years<br />
after Detour, Neal made headlines, not for acting, but for his private life. In 1951,<br />
Neal met the lovely Barbara Payton, who had acted opposite stars Lloyd Bridges,<br />
Jimmy Cagney, and Gregory Peck. She had made her biggest splash co-starring<br />
with Cagney in the tense crime drama Kiss Tomorrow Goodbye. However, she<br />
had long been plagued by negative publicity due to associations with low-level<br />
hoodlums and appearances in courtrooms. Thus, at the time she and Neal met,<br />
The Literary Hatchet 297
Payton was making a cheap film called Bride of the Gorilla. The campy film would<br />
attain cult status and become one of the films for which she was most famed, the<br />
other being Kiss Tomorrow Goodbye.<br />
Also at the time Neal met Payton, she was engaged to A-list actor Franchot<br />
Tone. Despite her engagement, Payton was instantly smitten with Neal as he was<br />
with her. Later she recalled, “I was hung on him. That Tom made hot peppers run<br />
up my thighs. When we made love, buds sprouted flowers and Cupid got a medal.”<br />
However, she also felt a strong pull toward the more refined, and more<br />
successful, Franchot Tone. Payton went back and forth between the men. They met<br />
one evening and tempers exploded. A fistfight resulted in which the former college<br />
boxer beat Tone, smashing his nose, breaking a cheekbone, and pulverizing him<br />
into a coma. Payton attempted to intervene and received a black eye.<br />
Tone pulled out of the coma. He and Payton wed. However, fifty-three days<br />
after their nuptials, Payton left Tone for Neal. Neal and Payton never married but<br />
stayed together four years.<br />
Tone continued enjoying a successful acting career in film and on stage. The<br />
careers of Neal and Payton faded away.<br />
After his movie career ended, Neal became a successful landscaper. He had a<br />
second brush with violence that ended in an even worse manner than the beating<br />
of Tone. In 1965, Neal shot and killed his third wife, Gale. Brought to trial, he said<br />
the killing was accidental. Prosecutors alleged it was murder motivated by jealousy.<br />
Like Al Roberts, Neal faced the possibility of execution. The jury convicted Neal of<br />
involuntary manslaughter.<br />
It is not known with certainty, but there were reports that Barbara Payton<br />
appeared in the courtroom audience during Neal’s trial. By that time, Payton bore<br />
little resemblance to the beautiful movie star she had once been but was a heavyset<br />
woman with blotchy complexion and missing teeth.<br />
Her last film was made in 1955. Her spirit appeared crushed by the film<br />
industry’s rejection. She sank into alcoholism. Her looks deteriorated and she<br />
ended her life as a cheap prostitute, performing sex acts for as little as $5.<br />
Payton was the first of the infamous Tone-Payton-Neal triangle to depart life,<br />
dying in 1967. Tone followed, dying in 1968.<br />
Tom Neal served six years in prison and was paroled in December 1971. He<br />
appeared far older than his fifty-eight years, a white-haired man with a deeply lined<br />
face. He died of heart failure in August 1972.<br />
Ulmer and Barbara Payton’s Cinematic Swan Song<br />
There is still another real-life Detour irony: Ulmer directed Barbara Payton’s<br />
final film, the 1955 Murder Is My Beat. Although not a masterpiece, Beat is an<br />
interesting film. Perhaps most pertinently to this essay, the film has significant<br />
parallels to Detour.<br />
In Detour, Tom Neal plays a discouraged nightclub piano player. In Murder Is<br />
My Beat, Barbara Payton plays Eden Lane, a discouraged nightclub singer. Detour’s<br />
298 The Literary Hatchet
Roberts fears being suspected of murder. Beat’s Lane is suspected of the murder of<br />
her married boyfriend.<br />
Payton plays Lane with a haunted ambiguity that puts an appropriate question<br />
mark over her character. Despite her denials, the audience cannot know whether<br />
or not Lane is guilty until the truth is revealed in a dramatic finale. The movie is a<br />
mystery and Payton does a fine job of keeping Lane mysterious.<br />
Although Payton’s acting in Beat is praiseworthy, her appearance displays<br />
problems. Payton’s facial structure was such that she needed to be slim to look<br />
beautiful. Just a small weight gain threw her beauty off. In her final film, Payton is<br />
not fat but neither is she slim. Her face in Beat is puffy. That round face is attractive<br />
but not gorgeous.<br />
The haunted Eden Lane that Barbara Payton played in Beat is a perfect<br />
complement to the haunted Al Roberts that Tom Neal played in Detour. Roberts<br />
observes, “Fate, or some mysterious force, can put the finger on you or me for no<br />
good reason at all.” In both their films and their lives, these people felt the awesome<br />
fury and bitter brutality of cruel fate.<br />
Bibliography<br />
Detour. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tap67KjjPu8<br />
Detour. Internet Movie Database. http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0037638/<br />
Ebert, Roger. Detour (1945). “Great Movie.” http://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/greatmovie-detour-1945<br />
Neal, Tom (1914-1972). Internet Movie Database. http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0623684/<br />
O’Dowd, John. Kiss Tomorrow Goodbye: The Barbara Payton Story. BearManor Media. 2015.<br />
Payton, Barbara (1927-1967). Internet Movie Database. http://www.imdb.com/name/<br />
nm0623684/<br />
]<br />
The Literary Hatchet 299
[advertisement]<br />
By the Naked<br />
Pear Tree<br />
The trial of<br />
Lizzie Borden in verse<br />
by Michael Thomas Brimbau<br />
$12.00<br />
By the Naked Pear Tree, a play in verse, was written in the spirit of Steve<br />
Allen’s unconventional television program, Meeting of the Minds.<br />
Our satirical performance begins outside a New Bedford, Massachusetts,<br />
court house. The year is 1893 and the trial of Lizzie Borden is about to<br />
begin. Dispatching his oration, the tragedian, Euripides, stands in the street<br />
preaching the merits of womanhood and relating the concerns he has for the<br />
outcome of the trial, and how it may corrupt the honor of the fabled heroines<br />
he has written about. Not long after we are introduced to Clarence Darrow—<br />
progressive attorney and respected member of the American Civil Liberties<br />
Union.<br />
Hired by Euripides to allusively defend Lizzie Borden, Darrow invites his<br />
colleague and adversary, William Jennings Bryan, to a challenge, giving the<br />
dubious Bryan a chance to play prosecutor—to change the course of history,<br />
and help convict Lizzie Borden of the murder of her parents. In doing so, the<br />
two men agree to a friendly game of poker. Winner of the ensuing card game<br />
gets to decide the fate of the accused. But the outcome is not what one would<br />
expect, and those who tamper with history are left to reap the consequences.<br />
Available NOW through createspace.com/5562219<br />
FOR WHOLESALE INQUIRIES, PLEASE WRITE TO:<br />
PearTree Press, P.O. Box 9585<br />
Fall River, MA 02720<br />
peartreepress@mac.com<br />
Get the latest news at<br />
bythenakedpeartree.com<br />
300 The Literary Hatchet
[advertisement]<br />
This Once-Only World<br />
poems by Ada Jill Schneider<br />
This Once-Only World is a collection<br />
of personal, yet universal,<br />
poems that dance on every page<br />
with gratitude and poignancy:<br />
poems that celebrate long love<br />
and reflect on family; poems<br />
that appreciate the world and<br />
plead for justice; poems that<br />
know what lies ahead for someone<br />
turning eighty but who<br />
insists, like Edna St. Vincent<br />
Millay, “I know. But I do not approve.<br />
And I am not resigned.”<br />
Available NOW through<br />
createspace.com/45404853<br />
$10.00<br />
FOR WHOLESALE INQUIRIES, PLEASE WRITE TO:<br />
PearTree Press, P.O. Box 9585<br />
Fall River, MA 02720<br />
peartreepress@mac.com<br />
Get the latest news at<br />
thisonceonlyworld.com<br />
The Literary Hatchet 301
[advertisement]<br />
Lizzie Borden:<br />
Resurrections<br />
A history of the people<br />
surrounding the<br />
Borden case before,<br />
during, and after the<br />
trial<br />
by Sherry Chapman<br />
$21.95<br />
Whatever happened to Lizzie Borden after the trial that accused her of<br />
bludgeoning her father and stepmother with a hatchet in 1892 Fall River,<br />
Massachusetts? It’s all in here, and it doesn’t stop with Lizzie. A plethora of<br />
persons were involved around her in some way. From her friends to her foes,<br />
from the doctors to the policemen; from her Manse to The Nance, at last comes<br />
the first book of its kind that tells what caused Officer Philip Harrington (who<br />
greatly disliked Lizzie) to die suddenly in 1893. What happened to neighbor<br />
and friend Dr. Bowen after the crime and trial? Why doesn’t Edwin Porter, who<br />
covered the trial then wrote the first contemporary book on the murders, The<br />
Fall River Tragedy, have a gravestone – and who is buried with him? Not by<br />
him. Actually with him.<br />
From original source documents, photos of the graves, obituaries and<br />
death certificates each on whom records could be found has their story told<br />
in details unknown until now. What were they doing before anyone much had<br />
heard of Lizzie Borden? What was their role in the case? When did they die<br />
and how?<br />
Some of the results may surprise you, whether you read this book for<br />
pleasure or research. There are no legends here, but a factual telling of the<br />
stories of these persons who are today all gone but need not be forgotten. And<br />
with this book they may be hard to forget.<br />
Available NOW through createspace.com/4876021<br />
FOR WHOLESALE INQUIRIES, PLEASE WRITE TO:<br />
PearTree Press, P.O. Box 9585<br />
Fall River, MA 02720<br />
peartreepress@mac.com<br />
Get the latest news at<br />
lizziebordenresurrections.com<br />
302 The Literary Hatchet
[advertisement]<br />
Lizzie Borden:<br />
The Girl with the Pansy Pin<br />
a novel by Michael Thomas Brimbau<br />
Lizzie Borden and her sister Emma lived<br />
a life of privilege and entitlement, with<br />
wealth and social status far greater than<br />
their neighbors. But it was not enough. In<br />
time, Lizzie and Emma grew restless, aching<br />
for a more opulent life—to reside on the Hill<br />
in a big house amongst their peers and Fall<br />
River’s finest families.<br />
But Father’s riches were window<br />
dressing, dangling just beyond their<br />
reach—quarantined by a frugal patriarch<br />
who was unable or unwilling to change his<br />
scrimping ways. Andrew Jackson Borden<br />
had no intention of moving to the Hill and<br />
abandoning the home he had purchased for<br />
his second wife, or spending the money he<br />
had worked so hard for all his life. Now he<br />
was planning to give it all away—to his wife, their stepmother.<br />
In time, discord in the family began to ferment and fester—and there were<br />
signs that things were not as they should be.<br />
On a sultry August morning, in the naked light of day, someone entered 92<br />
Second Street and brutally hacked and murdered Andrew and Abby Borden.<br />
Soon the finger of guilt pointed to Lizzie. But she loved her father. He meant<br />
everything to her. The gold ring she had lovingly given him and that he always<br />
wore said as much. She would never have harmed him. Or would she?<br />
The Girl with the Pansy Pin tells the gripping story of a desirable and<br />
vivacious young Victorian woman desperately longing for adventure and<br />
a lavish life. Instead, she was condemned to waste away in a stale, modest<br />
existence, in a father’s foregone reality, with little chance of ever discovering<br />
love, happiness, or fulfillment. Now they have charged poor Lizzie with<br />
double murder.<br />
Available NOW through createspace.com/4343650 $22.95<br />
FOR WHOLESALE INQUIRIES, PLEASE WRITE TO:<br />
PearTree Press, P.O. Box 9585<br />
Fall River, MA 02720<br />
peartreepress@mac.com<br />
Get the latest news at<br />
girlwiththepansypin.com<br />
The Literary Hatchet 303
[advertisement]<br />
Fall River<br />
Revisited<br />
by Stefani Koorey and the<br />
Fall River History Club<br />
Founded in 1803, Fall River<br />
changed its name the following<br />
year to Troy, after a resident<br />
visiting Troy, New York, enjoyed<br />
the city. In 1834, the name was<br />
officially changed back to Fall<br />
River.<br />
The city’s motto, “We’ll Try,”<br />
originates from the determination<br />
of its residents to rebuild the<br />
city following a devastating fire<br />
in 1843. The fire resulted in 20<br />
acres in the center of the village<br />
being destroyed, including 196 buildings, and 1,334 people were displaced<br />
from their homes.<br />
Once the capital of cotton textile manufacturing in the United States, by<br />
1910, Fall River boasted 43 corporations, 222 mills, and 3.8 million spindles,<br />
producing two miles of cloth every minute of every working day in the<br />
year. The workforce was comprised of immigrants from Ireland, England,<br />
Scotland, Canada, the Azores, and, to a lesser extent, Poland, Italy, Greece,<br />
Russia, and Lebanon.<br />
Available NOW<br />
$22.00<br />
304 The Literary Hatchet
[advertisement]<br />
The Sadness I Take to Sea<br />
and Other Poems<br />
by Michael Thomas<br />
Brimbau<br />
Putting pen to paper and allowing<br />
its ball tip to bleed and spill out is<br />
a good thing, and helps with the<br />
venting as well as needed healing.<br />
After all is said and done, following<br />
all the missteps and failings, to<br />
move on and search for lost love<br />
all over again is not only essential<br />
but the absolute specimen of a<br />
yearning and healthy soul—and<br />
the fundamental spirit conveyed in<br />
The Sadness I Take to Sea.<br />
Available NOW through<br />
createspace.com/4833228.<br />
$12.95<br />
The Literary Hatchet 305
[advertisement]<br />
Do Come In<br />
and Other<br />
Lizzie Borden Poems<br />
by Larry W. Allen<br />
with a new Lizzie Borden<br />
sketch cover by Rick Geary,<br />
famed author and illustrator of<br />
The Borden Tragedy.<br />
Lizzie Borden. For some, the<br />
name conjures an innocent young<br />
woman who bravely faced her trial<br />
with strength and fortitude. To others,<br />
she has become the icon of all<br />
things gruesome because of the<br />
bloody nature of the crimes for which she was charged. And yet others see<br />
Lizzie Borden as a woman who got away with murder.<br />
These 50 poems trace the life of this enigmatic woman—from the 19th<br />
through the 20th century. We meet her as a young adult and watch her develop<br />
into an old woman living alone on “the Hill.”<br />
Do Come In is a remarkable collection of poems entirely devoted to the<br />
Lizzie Borden story.<br />
So Do Come In, and meet Lizzie Borden and other characters as diverse as<br />
Jack the Ripper, Bob and Charlie Ford, and Rachael Ray, in poems that range<br />
from humorous to horrific.<br />
Available NOW through createspace.com/3354462.<br />
$14.00<br />
FOR WHOLESALE INQUIRIES, PLEASE WRITE TO:<br />
PearTree Press<br />
P.O. Box 9585<br />
Fall River, MA 02720<br />
peartreepress@mac.com<br />
306 The Literary Hatchet
Lizzie Borden: Girl Detective<br />
Introducing Miss Lizzie Borden of Fall River, Massachusetts, a most<br />
excellent girl detective and the most remarkable young woman ever to take<br />
on the criminal underworld in late 19th century New England.<br />
Many years before her infamous arrest and trial for the murders of<br />
her father and stepmother, Lizzie Borden pursued a career as a private<br />
consulting detective and wrestled unflinchingly with a crooked spiritualist,<br />
a corrupt and murderous textile tycoon, a secret society of anarchist<br />
assassins, rowdy and deadly sporting boys, a crazed and vengeful mutineer,<br />
an industrial saboteur, and a dangerously unhinged math professor—none<br />
of whom are exactly what they seem to be.<br />
In these five early tales of mystery<br />
and adventure, Lizzie Borden<br />
is joined by her stubborn and<br />
stingy father Andrew; her jealous<br />
and weak-chinned sister Emma;<br />
her trusted companion Homer<br />
Thesinger the Boy Inventor; and<br />
the melancholy French scion Andre<br />
De Camp. Together, they explore<br />
Fall River’s dark side through<br />
a landscape that is industrial,<br />
Victorian, and distinctly American.<br />
You have met Lizzie Borden<br />
before—but never like this!<br />
Available NOW through<br />
createspace.com/3441135.<br />
$14.95<br />
by Richard Behrens<br />
[advertisement]<br />
FOR WHOLESALE INQUIRIES, PLEASE<br />
WRITE TO:<br />
PearTree Press<br />
P.O. Box 9585<br />
Fall River, MA 02720<br />
peartreepress@mac.com<br />
Get the latest news at<br />
LizzieBordenGirlDetective.com<br />
The Literary Hatchet 307
Michelle DeLoatch lives in<br />
Georgia with her son and<br />
husband. She loves the poetry<br />
and short stories of Edgar Allan<br />
Poe and has been writing poetry<br />
since her early teens.<br />
Angela Ash wrote her first<br />
poem as a young girl, whilst<br />
in “time out” for something<br />
bizarre and unexplainable. She<br />
lives in Louisville with her ever<br />
understanding husband, where<br />
she continues to pour words<br />
onto paper, fueled by her muse,<br />
Kendyl Rae...who most decidedly<br />
walked through the looking glass.<br />
Wayne Scheer has been<br />
nominated for four Pushcart<br />
Prizes and a Best of the Net.<br />
He’s published hundreds of<br />
stories, poems and essays<br />
in print and online, including<br />
Revealing Moments, a collection<br />
of flash stories, available at<br />
http://issuu.com/pearnoir/docs/<br />
revealing_moments. A short film<br />
has also been produced based<br />
on his short story, “Zen and the<br />
Art of House Painting.”<br />
Wayne lives in Atlanta with his<br />
wife and can be contacted at<br />
wvscheer@aol.com.<br />
Denny E. Marshall has had art,<br />
poetry, and fiction published,<br />
some recently. dennymarshall.<br />
com.<br />
Robin C. Jones has worked as a<br />
muralist, sculptor, illustrator, poet,<br />
lyricist, recording musician, and<br />
storyteller. She thrives on artistic<br />
diversity and finds her greatest<br />
happiness in the act of creating.<br />
Rick McQuiston is a forty-five-yearold<br />
father of two who loves anything<br />
horror-related. His work has<br />
appeared in over 300 publications.<br />
He has written three novels, six<br />
anthology books, one book of<br />
novellas, and edited an anthology<br />
of Michigan authors. Currently, he is<br />
hard at work on his fifth novel.<br />
Sue Barnard is a British novelist,<br />
poet, shorty story writer, and editor.<br />
She is married with two grown-up<br />
sons.<br />
Ashley Dioses has been published<br />
by Hippocampus Press, Centipede<br />
Press, Weirdbook, Martian Migraine<br />
Press, Burial Day Books, and a few<br />
amateur ezines. She will have her<br />
debut poetry collection published by<br />
Hippocampus Press in 2016. She<br />
has also appeared on Ellen Datlow’s<br />
full recommended list for Year’s Best<br />
Horror Vol. 7 for her poem “Carathis,”<br />
published in Spectral Realms No. 1<br />
by Hippocampus Press.<br />
Alan Meyrowitz received his PhD<br />
in Computer Science and retired in<br />
2005 after a career in research. His<br />
poetry has appeared in California<br />
Quarterly, Eclectica, Existere, Front<br />
Range Review, The Literary Hatchet,<br />
Shroud, The Storyteller, and others.<br />
In 2012 the Science Fiction Poetry<br />
Association nominated his poem<br />
“Wishing It Were Otherwise” for a<br />
Dwarf Star Award.<br />
Joann Grisetti is an author living<br />
in Florida.<br />
Jackie Bee has had stories<br />
published in Phobos, Sanitarium,<br />
and Fiction Vortex.<br />
308 The Literary Hatchet
Fabiyas MV is a writer from<br />
Orumanayur village in Kerala,<br />
India. He is the author of<br />
Moonlight and Solitude. His<br />
fiction and poems have appeared<br />
in Westerly, Forward Poetry, The<br />
Literary Hatchet, E Fiction, Off<br />
the Coast, Anima, Structo, and<br />
in several anthologies. He won<br />
many international accolades<br />
including the Poetry Soup<br />
International Award, USA , the<br />
RSPCA Pet Poetry Prize, UK,<br />
Speaking of Women Story Prize,<br />
Canada, and The Most Loved<br />
Poet For March 2014 Award by<br />
E Fiction, India. His poems have<br />
been broadcast on the All India<br />
Radio.<br />
Michael Lee Johnson lived<br />
ten years in Canada during<br />
the Vietnam era. Today he<br />
is a poet, freelance writer,<br />
photographer who experiments<br />
with poetography (blending<br />
poetry with photography), and<br />
small business owner in Itasca,<br />
Illinois, who has been published<br />
in more than 875 small press<br />
magazines in 27 countries, he<br />
edits 11 poetry sites. Michael is<br />
the author of The Lost American:<br />
From Exile to Freedom, several<br />
chapbooks of poetry, including<br />
From Which Place the Morning<br />
Rises and Challenge of Night and<br />
Day, and Chicago Poems. He<br />
also has over 76 poetry videos<br />
on YouTube. facebook.com/<br />
poetrymanusa.<br />
Ed Ahern resumed writing<br />
after forty odd years in foreign<br />
intelligence and international<br />
sales. He’s had ninety short<br />
stories published thus far, as well<br />
as two books.<br />
A.J. Huffman has published eleven<br />
solo chapbooks and one joint<br />
chapbook through various small<br />
presses. Her new poetry collection,<br />
Another Blood Jet, is now available<br />
from Eldritch Press. She has<br />
three more poetry collections<br />
forthcoming: A Few Bullets Short<br />
of Home from mgv2>publishing,<br />
Degeneration from Pink Girl Ink,<br />
and A Bizarre Burning of Bees<br />
from Transcendent Zero Press.<br />
She is a Multiple Pushcart Prize<br />
nominee, and has published over<br />
2200 poems in various national<br />
and international journals, including<br />
Labletter, The James Dickey<br />
Review, Bone Orchard, EgoPHobia,<br />
and Kritya. She is also the founding<br />
editor of Kind of a Hurricane Press.<br />
kindofahurricanepress.com<br />
James B. Nicola, a frequent<br />
contributor to The Literary Hatchet,<br />
his second poetry collection, Stage<br />
to Page: Poems from the Theater,<br />
will be out in June of next year. His<br />
first, Manhattan Plaza, is currently<br />
available.<br />
Ada Jill Schneider is the author<br />
of This Once-Only World, Behind<br />
the Pictures I Hang, The Museum<br />
of My Mother, Fine Lines and Other<br />
Wrinkles, and several chapbooks.<br />
She directs “The Pleasure of<br />
Poetry” at the Somerset Public<br />
Library in Massachusetts. Winner<br />
of the National Galway Kinnell<br />
Poetry Prize, she has an MFA in<br />
Writing from Vermont College. Ada<br />
started writing poetry at the age of<br />
fifty-three, when she thought she<br />
was old.<br />
The Literary Hatchet 309
Jim Courter is a winner of an<br />
Illinois Arts Council award for<br />
short fiction and a Pushcart Prize<br />
nominee. His stories and essays<br />
have appeared in a variety of<br />
magazines and newspapers,<br />
incluiding The Chronicle of Higher<br />
Education, Smithsonian, Chicago<br />
Tribune, The Wall Street Journal,<br />
and numerous times in Downstate<br />
Story. He is the author of three sofar<br />
unpublished mystery novellas.<br />
Janne Karlsson is a widely<br />
published artist/author from<br />
Sweden. His books are available<br />
on Amazon and Epic Rites Press.<br />
Contact him at svenskapache@<br />
gmail.com. Website: www.<br />
svenskapache.se.<br />
Paul Edmonds’ short fiction has<br />
recently appeared in Freedom<br />
Fiction, Ruthless Peoples, and<br />
anthologies from Rainstorm Press<br />
and Horrified Press.<br />
Joshua Dobson likes to make his<br />
own fun, some of which can be<br />
seen at joshuadobson.deviantart.<br />
com.<br />
Sally Basmajian is an exbroadcast<br />
executive and has<br />
spent much of her professional<br />
life selling, marketing, acquiring,<br />
and scheduling other people’s<br />
artistic visions. Over the years<br />
she has started dabbling in writing<br />
and has found some success,<br />
winning prizes in 2014 and 2015<br />
Rising Spirits Award competition<br />
and placing in ScreaminMamas<br />
and Canadian Stories creative<br />
nonfiction contests in 2015.<br />
Rory O’Brien lives in Salem. His<br />
debut novel is a murder mystery<br />
titled Gallows Hill. roryobrienbooks.<br />
com.<br />
Grim K. De Evil is from Grand<br />
Island, NY. He moved to Central<br />
Florida in his youth and hopes to<br />
leave the state someday soon. He’s<br />
a graduate of the UCF with a BA in<br />
English – Creative Writing. He has<br />
also written the first novel in a series<br />
of twelve, Dedd Wright & the Lion,<br />
which is an eBook through Kindle.<br />
William Doreski lives in<br />
Peterborough, New Hampshire,<br />
and teaches at Keene State<br />
College. His most recent book of<br />
poetry is The Suburbs of Atlantis<br />
(2013). He has published three<br />
critical studies, including Robert<br />
Lowell’s Shifting Colors. His<br />
essays, poetry, fiction, and reviews<br />
have appeared in many journals.<br />
Michelle Bujnowski has been<br />
writing short horror fiction for over<br />
a decade. Previously, she worked<br />
as a geologist all over the country.<br />
Her work has been published in<br />
Dark Moon Digest, The Lightning<br />
Journal, and Dark Edifice<br />
Magazine.<br />
Matt Duggan is a writer and<br />
filmmaker based in Los Angeles.<br />
His first one-act play ‘Irish Spirits’<br />
was selected for Edward Albee’s<br />
Last Frontier Theater Conference<br />
in 2003, a career highlight. His first<br />
feature film “Inverse” premiered<br />
at the 2014 Boston Sci-Fi Film<br />
Festival, winning many awards. He<br />
had always had a passion for short<br />
story writing and his screenplays<br />
usually begin as short stories.<br />
Steve Slavin is a recovering<br />
economics professor and earns a<br />
living writing math and economics<br />
books.<br />
310 The Literary Hatchet
Josh Craven is an attorney and<br />
writer in McKinney, Texas. Josh<br />
grew up in rural East Texas, and<br />
enjoys reading and writing dark<br />
fiction and interacting with fellow<br />
writers via Twitter @thejoshcraven.<br />
His story, “For Better or for Worse,”<br />
was published in the July 2-15<br />
edition of Beyond Imagination Digital<br />
Literary Magazine.<br />
Tyree Campbell has seven novels,<br />
over a hundred short stories, and<br />
some three dozen poems published<br />
in the small press. He is a Rhysling<br />
finalist (third place, 2003) and<br />
a Darrell Award runner-up. He<br />
resides out in the boondocks,<br />
where it is easier to write.<br />
E.M. Eastick was born and raised<br />
in northern Australia. She travelled<br />
and worked as an environmental<br />
professional in Britain, Ireland, and<br />
the United Arab Emirates before<br />
embarking on the writer’s journey.<br />
She currently lives in Colorado.<br />
Jack Campbell Jr. has been<br />
published in Dark Eclipse, the Page<br />
and Spine Fiction Showcase, and<br />
Sanitarium Magazine. His collection<br />
All Manner of Dark Things was<br />
released by Bottle Cap Publishing<br />
in April.<br />
Daniel Stern has been writing dark<br />
poetry, splatter prose, creepy short<br />
stories and full-length horror novels<br />
for well over twenty years.<br />
Joshua Flowers is a short<br />
story writer born in Los Angeles,<br />
California and somehow living in<br />
Bangor, Maine. He also really hates<br />
moose and ice. Both are huge<br />
jerks. He’s been published in The<br />
Fictioneer, Inwood Indiana, The<br />
Cricket Online Review, and The<br />
Short-Story.me horror section. He<br />
occasionally tweets @Flowersisbrit.<br />
Tim Dadswell lives in Norfolk,<br />
England, and began writing when<br />
he retired from the civil service<br />
in 2013. His first short story was<br />
published in a British crime fiction<br />
magazine in summer 2015. He is<br />
working on stories for a range of<br />
competitions.<br />
Aletheia Adams is a full-time<br />
working mother of two teenagers,<br />
living in a suburb of Chicago. She<br />
loves psychology and typically<br />
writes poems about the human<br />
psyche. This is her first poem<br />
of this particular genre to be<br />
published under her pen name,<br />
Aletheia Adams. She also has had<br />
three other poems published in<br />
anthologies using her real name,<br />
Jenny Santellano.<br />
Denise Noe lives in Atlanta<br />
and writes regularly for The<br />
Caribbean Star of which she is<br />
Community Editor. Her work has<br />
been published in The Humanist,<br />
Georgia Journal, Lizzie Borden<br />
Quarterly, Exquisite Corpse, The<br />
Gulf War Anthology, Light, and<br />
Gauntlet.<br />
Gary R. Hoffman was born at an<br />
early age. Five years later, when<br />
he was five, he started school<br />
which lasted a long time. A college<br />
education supposedly taught him<br />
how to teach, but the only thing<br />
he really learned was that no one<br />
can teach a person how to teach.<br />
The teaching gig lasted twentyfive<br />
years, until he got tired of the<br />
federal government thinking they<br />
had the answer on how everyone<br />
should teach. He quit and went<br />
into business for himself. Later,<br />
like all good mid-westerners, when<br />
he retired, he moved to snowless<br />
Florida. So far, so good.<br />
The Literary Hatchet 311
Dustin Farren is an unpublished<br />
college undergraduate pursuing<br />
an engineering degree in beautiful<br />
Montana. When not writing stories<br />
and lab reports, he has been<br />
spotted flipping off treacherous<br />
cliffs, racing down double<br />
black diamonds, guzzling tasty<br />
local libations, and helping the<br />
occasional elderly take out their<br />
trash.<br />
Shane Fraser has been<br />
published in several online and<br />
print forums—this includes a<br />
local newspaper, which hosted<br />
a weekly column of his for<br />
five years. The majority of his<br />
publications have been nonfiction,<br />
though he has fiction upcoming<br />
in Beyond Imagination Magazine.<br />
He is completing a BA in English<br />
at the University of Regina in<br />
Canada.<br />
Lee Glantz, Batik artist and poet,<br />
was born in Kingman, Arizona<br />
and now lives in Barrington,<br />
Rhode Island. Her poems have<br />
appeared in Rhode Island Roads,<br />
Crones Nest, Newport Review,<br />
Traveling Poets Society, Literary<br />
Hatchet, Evening Street Review,<br />
Spillway 22, and the anthology,<br />
Regrets Only (Little Pear Press).<br />
Her book, A House on Her Back,<br />
was published by Premiere Poets<br />
Chapbook Series.<br />
John Grey is an Australian poet,<br />
US resident. Recently published in<br />
New Plains Review, Perceptions<br />
and Sanskrit with work upcoming<br />
in South Carolina Review,<br />
Gargoyle, Owen Wister Review<br />
and Louisiana Literature.<br />
A.W. Gifford is an internationally<br />
unknown author who gets many of<br />
his story ideas from the nightmares<br />
of his wife, Jennifer. She too is<br />
an author of dark fiction, but she<br />
refuses to write her own nightmares<br />
as she fears doing so will make<br />
them come true. Story ideas also<br />
come to him from his dogs, the dust<br />
bunnies under the bed and one<br />
very helpful garden gnome. He is<br />
an editor at Bête Noire Magazine<br />
and Dark Opus Press and his<br />
work has appeared in numerous<br />
magazines, anthologies and was<br />
once spotted stalking the woods<br />
of the Pacific Northwest. He, on<br />
the other hand, can be found<br />
stalking the woods in the northern<br />
suburbs of Detroit, while his wife<br />
and daughter huddle in the warmth<br />
of the house with his two dogs and<br />
the aforementioned dust bunnies.<br />
Amelia Gorman is a student and<br />
baker in Minneapolis, MN. She has<br />
a short story in Innsmouth Free<br />
Press’s She Walks in Shadows<br />
anthology and poetry in Nonbinary<br />
Review.<br />
Deborah Guzzi is a healing<br />
facilitator specializing in Shiatsu<br />
and Reiki. She writes for Massage<br />
and Aromatherapy publications.<br />
She travels the world seeking<br />
writing inspiration. She has walked<br />
the Great Wall of China, visited<br />
Nepal (during the civil war), Japan,<br />
Egypt (two weeks before “The Arab<br />
Spring”), Peru, and France (during<br />
December’s terrorist attacks).<br />
Nicholas Powell is eighteen<br />
years old. “I am always looking to<br />
improve and I encourage others to<br />
do the same.”<br />
312 The Literary Hatchet
Stuart Guthrie is an English<br />
teacher at The Taft School in<br />
Watertown, Connecticut, where<br />
he teaches creative writing<br />
and advises numerous student<br />
publications in the literary arts.<br />
His fiction has been published<br />
in several print and online<br />
publications, most recently<br />
including The Bread Loaf Journal.<br />
Alexis Henderson is a college<br />
student majoring in English. Her<br />
short story “Sin Eater” was featured<br />
in the literary magazine Beorh<br />
Weekly and her short story “Baby<br />
Doll” was a Writer’s Digest Annual<br />
Writing Competition honorary<br />
mention. When she’s not writing<br />
she likes to paint landscapes,<br />
wander used bookstores, and take<br />
long nature walks along the Low<br />
Country salt marsh.<br />
Kevin Mulligan has been writing<br />
for quite a while, only starting to<br />
send stories out in the last year. He<br />
enjoys watching his characters live<br />
their imagined lives. He also likes<br />
winter and snow.<br />
Andrew Nelson is writer who<br />
resides in Colorado.<br />
Ian Mullins slings his hook from<br />
Liverpool, England. He has<br />
published stories with Brand,<br />
Black Petals, Hellfire Crossroads,<br />
Massacre and The Literary Hatchet.<br />
His poetry collection Laughter In<br />
The Shape Of A Guitar is now<br />
available from undergroundbooks.<br />
org.<br />
D.L. Shirey is an author living in<br />
Oregon.<br />
McKinley Henson is a 19-yearold<br />
with too many thoughts and<br />
inspirations. He admires poetry for<br />
its limitless styles and formatting.<br />
He is described best as an<br />
indecisive paradox. No. Perhaps<br />
a “ghost” would be a more fitting<br />
term. Just like any amateur poet,<br />
he hopes he can create many<br />
beautiful works in the future.<br />
A.W. McKinnon resides in<br />
Southern Illinois with his wife and<br />
their Yorkie. He enjoys reading<br />
and writing fiction.<br />
Craig Steven has been writing<br />
since he was old enough to pick<br />
up a pen and do so. Though his<br />
interests lie mainly in horror, he<br />
never shies away from writing a<br />
good fantasy or mystery story.<br />
His fiction has been published<br />
in Sanitarium Magazine, Under<br />
The Bed Magazine, and assorted<br />
anthologies from Horrified Press.<br />
When he’s not writing, at the gym,<br />
or spending time with his wife,<br />
he’s also the editor for Beyond<br />
Imagination Magazine and<br />
Beyond Science Fiction Magazine.<br />
You can connect with Craig easily<br />
at http://www.writercraig.com.<br />
Soren James is a writer and<br />
visual artist who recreates himself<br />
on a daily basis from the materials<br />
at his disposal, continuing to do so<br />
in upbeat manner until one day he<br />
will sumptuously throw his drained<br />
materials aside and resume<br />
stillness without asking why. More<br />
of his work can be seen here:<br />
http://sorenjames.moonfruit.com/<br />
home/4580917876.<br />
The Literary Hatchet 313
M.Y. Kearney is a southerner<br />
transplanted into Alaska, where her<br />
aversion to being outside on frigid<br />
and windy days leaves a lot of time<br />
for writing.<br />
Mary King has read many things<br />
and written a few. Her favorite<br />
writers include Shirley Jackson,<br />
P.G. Wodehouse, and Ray<br />
Bradbury.<br />
Michelle Ann King writes science<br />
fiction, fantasy and horror from her<br />
kitchen table in Essex, England.<br />
Her work has appeared in various<br />
venues and anthologies, including<br />
Strange Horizons, Daily Science<br />
Fiction, and Unidentified Funny<br />
Objects 2. She loves zombies, Las<br />
Vegas, and good Scotch whisky,<br />
not necessarily in that order. Her<br />
short stories are being collected<br />
in the Transient Tales series,<br />
and she is currently at work on a<br />
paranormal crime novel. Find more<br />
details at www.transientcactus.<br />
co.uk.<br />
Ray Mears treats every day like<br />
it’s Halloween; trying to find the<br />
dark in the ordinary. He has been<br />
published in The Literary Hatchet<br />
before and enjoys writing horror.<br />
Daniel Marrone is a twicepublished<br />
horror writer, with one<br />
story appearing in <strong>Issue</strong> #6 of<br />
Massacre Magazine and the<br />
other in a paperback anthology<br />
entitled Creepy Campfire Stories<br />
For Grownups. He works as a<br />
receptionist at his local hospital in<br />
central NJ, and writes dark fiction in<br />
his free time.<br />
Denny E. Marshall has had art,<br />
poetry, and fiction published,<br />
some recently. dennymarshall.<br />
com.<br />
Lee Todd Lacks is a mixedmedia<br />
artist, music therapist, and<br />
clinical counselor, who tends to<br />
be informed by his experience<br />
of living with significant vision<br />
and hearing deficits. Lee Todd’s<br />
writing has appeared in Bop Dead<br />
City, Tincture Journal, Liquid<br />
Imagination, Crack The Spine, and<br />
elsewhere. His poem, “Durgin-<br />
Park,” won the Bop Dead City<br />
Beginnings Contest in July of 2015.<br />
This past October, his spoken word<br />
piece, “Holocaust Memorial,” won<br />
the Blue Monday Review Storytime<br />
Challenge.<br />
Tim Major is a 35-year-old<br />
educational publisher based in<br />
Oxford. His novella, ‘Carus &<br />
Mitch’, was published by Omnium<br />
Gatherum in February 2015. His<br />
short stories have been included<br />
in publications such as Interzone,<br />
Perihelion and Every Day Fiction.<br />
He blogs about writing and<br />
reading at www.cosycatastrophes.<br />
wordpress.com.<br />
Wendy L. Schmidt is a native of<br />
Wisconsin. She has been writing<br />
short stories and poetry for the<br />
last ten years. The Four C’s; cat,<br />
chocolate, coffee and computer are<br />
her chosen writing tools. Pieces<br />
have been published in Verse<br />
Wisconsin, Chicago Literati, City<br />
Lake Poets, Literary Hatchet, Moon<br />
Magazine and a number of other<br />
poetry and fiction anthologies.<br />
Joshua Rex writes scary stories<br />
in the Midwest, USA. His work has<br />
appeared in several anthologies,<br />
podcasts, magazines and on-line<br />
journals. He lives with his partner,<br />
the poet Mary Robles, and three<br />
gigantic cats.<br />
314 The Literary Hatchet
Bradford Middleton lives in Brighton on England’s south coast after<br />
being born and coming of age in south-east London from 1971. His<br />
poetry is about drinking, football, love, work and madness and can be<br />
read in many places online and from late 2015 in his debut chapbook<br />
Drink Drank Drunk from Crisis Chronicles Press. He has work at Empty<br />
Mirror, Zygote in My Coffee #144, PPIGPENN, Rolling Thunder Quarterly<br />
#11, Fuck Art Lets Dance #5, Dead Snakes, Word Riot, Electric Windmill<br />
#12 and a few issues of The Weekenders. He is also a contributing poet<br />
at the magnificent Mad Swirl where he one day dreams of being able to<br />
perform at their legendary mad session at the Absinthe Lounge. Make<br />
contact @beatnikbraduk on Twitter.<br />
Jason Lairamore is a writer<br />
of science fiction, fantasy, and<br />
horror who lives in Oklahoma<br />
with his beautiful wife and their<br />
three monstrously marvelous<br />
children. His work is both featured<br />
and forthcoming in over 40<br />
publications to include Sci Phi<br />
Journal, Perihelion Science Fiction,<br />
Stupefying Stories and Third<br />
Flatiron publications to name a few.<br />
Gregory Palmerino’s essays and<br />
poems have appeared in Explicator,<br />
Teaching English in the Two Year<br />
College, College English, Amaze:<br />
The Cinquain Journal, International<br />
Poetry Review, Courtland Review,<br />
Shot Glass Journal, The Lyric, the<br />
fib review, The Road Not Taken<br />
and The Society of Classical Poets.<br />
He teaches writing at Manchester<br />
Community College and writes<br />
poetry in Connecticut’s Quiet<br />
Corner, where he lives with his wife<br />
and three children.<br />
Stephanie Smith is a poet<br />
and writer from Scranton,<br />
Pennsylvania. Her work has<br />
appeared in such publications as<br />
Pif Magazine, Strong Verse, and<br />
Third Wednesday. Her first poetry<br />
chapbook, Dreams of Dali, is<br />
available from Flutter Press.<br />
Leland Neville’s short stories have<br />
been published in Ellery Queen’s<br />
Mystery Magazine, Bartleby<br />
Snopes, FLAPPERHOUSE, Blue<br />
Monday Review, Pulp Modern and<br />
The Barcelona Review. Non-fiction<br />
works have appeared in U.S. News<br />
& World Report and The New York<br />
Review of Science Fiction. He<br />
writes fulltime in upstate New York.<br />
Robert Perez lives halfway<br />
between reality and fantasy at all<br />
times, and becomes a doorway<br />
to nightmares when the sun goes<br />
down. His poem, “The Man Who<br />
Disappears”, was selected for<br />
publication in Volume II of the<br />
Horror Writers Association Poetry<br />
Showcase. Follow @_TheLeader<br />
on twitter to keep up with future<br />
projects.<br />
T.C. Powell starves full-time and is<br />
a freelance writer on the side. His<br />
poetry has been published by the<br />
Christian Science Monitor, Strong<br />
Verse, jerseyworks, and others. His<br />
woeful web presence can be found<br />
at http://tcpowellfiction.blogspot.<br />
com.<br />
The Literary Hatchet 315
Joyce Richardson is a mystery<br />
novelist, author of two published<br />
mysteries, and poet of three<br />
chapbooks of poems. She is a past<br />
fellowship winner from the Ohio<br />
Arts Council in fiction and lives with<br />
her husband-writer in Athens OH,<br />
where they are enjoying a very<br />
fruitful retirement and each other.<br />
Joshua Sczykutowicz is a young<br />
author from central Florida. His<br />
work can be described as dark,<br />
experimental, alternative and<br />
literary fiction. His writing focuses<br />
on tone, mood, atmosphere and<br />
specific experiences told through<br />
points of view via complex and<br />
complicated characters. His<br />
work has appeared in The Fable<br />
Online. He can be contacted at<br />
joshsczykutowicz@gmail.com.<br />
Darrell Lindsey is the author of<br />
Edge of the Pond ( Popcorn Press,<br />
2012), and has been nominated<br />
for a Pushcart Prize (2007) and a<br />
Rhysling Award ( 2014). He won<br />
the 2012 Science Fiction Poetry<br />
Association Contest ( Long Form<br />
category), as well as the 2014<br />
Balticon Poetry Contest. His work<br />
has appeared in more than 60<br />
journals and anthologies.<br />
Deborah Walker grew up in the<br />
most English town in the country,<br />
but she soon high-tailed it down<br />
to London, where she now lives<br />
with her partner, Chris, and her<br />
two young children. Find Deborah<br />
in the British Museum trawling the<br />
past for future inspiration or on her<br />
blog. Her poems have appeared in<br />
Dreams & Nightmares, Star*Line<br />
and Enchanted Conversation.<br />
Michael Seese has published<br />
three books, not to mention a<br />
lot of short stories, flash fiction,<br />
and poetry. Other than that, he<br />
spends his spare time rasslin’<br />
with three young’uns. Visit www.<br />
MichaelSeese.com or follow @<br />
MSeeseTweets to laugh with him or<br />
at him.<br />
Edmund Lester is a lifelong fan<br />
of science fiction and horror. He<br />
wrote fiction, articles and reviews<br />
previously under the name I.E.<br />
Lester, for publications including<br />
New Myths, Nossa Morte, Shroud<br />
Magazine and Andromeda<br />
Spaceways.<br />
Phil Slattery is a native of<br />
Kentucky. He has traveled<br />
extensively and currently resides<br />
in New Mexico. He currently writes<br />
horror and dark fiction, but started<br />
out writing poetry from about 1985-<br />
1995. Prior to The Literary Hatchet,<br />
his poetry has been published in<br />
numerous small magazines.<br />
Cameron Trost is a writer of<br />
strange, mysterious, and often<br />
rather creepy tales about people<br />
just like you. His short stories<br />
have been published in dozens of<br />
magazines and anthologies, and<br />
many of them can be found in his<br />
collection, Hoffman’s Creeper and<br />
Other Disturbing Tales. Cameron<br />
lives in Brisbane, Australia. He<br />
is the vice-president and QLD<br />
community leader of the Australian<br />
Horror Writers’ Association, a<br />
member of the Australian Crime<br />
Writers’ Association, and a member<br />
of the Queensland Writers’ Centre.<br />
Rainforests, thunderstorms, whisky,<br />
and chess are a few of his favourite<br />
things. www.trostlibrary.blogspot.<br />
com.<br />
316 The Literary Hatchet
The Literary Hatchet 317
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