tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-25647335391165116012024-03-05T01:55:34.334-05:00The Danforth Review21st century literature since 1999 ~ canadian ~ short storiesMichael Brysonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00816850668522214805noreply@blogger.comBlogger261125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2564733539116511601.post-37631128198872595742019-11-26T20:53:00.002-05:002024-01-16T19:02:40.347-05:00Thank You for Visiting<b style="font-family: georgia, serif;">The Danforth Review: An online short story magazine, founded in 1999 by <a href="http://www.michaelbryson.com/">Michael Bryson</a>. </b><br />
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<b style="font-family: georgia, serif;">Following Issue #78 (Sept 2018), we are on a long-term hiatus.</b><br />
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif;"><b>Please read through the archives, and thank you to all who contributed to TDR through the years!</b></span></center>
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<span style="font-size: normal;"><b>Fiction Issues</b></span></div>
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Issues <a href="https://epe.lac-bac.gc.ca/100/202/300/danforth/" style="font-family: georgia, serif;">1-27</a><span style="font-family: ";"> (archived at National Library and Archives Canada)</span></div>
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Issues 28-78 (archived on this site)<br />
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<a fiction-28.html="" href="http://epe.lac-bac.gc.ca/100/202/300/danforth/2009/no27/fiction/index.htm%3E1-27%3C/a%3E%20(archived)%3Cbr%20/%3E%3Cbr%20/%3E%3Ca%20href=" http:="" thedanforthreview.blogspot.com="">28</a>, <a href="http://thedanforthreview.blogspot.com/2011/10/fiction-29.html">29</a>, <a href="http://thedanforthreview.blogspot.com/2011/11/fiction-30.html">30</a>, <a href="http://thedanforthreview.blogspot.com/2011/12/fiction-31.html">31</a>, <a href="http://thedanforthreview.blogspot.com/2012/01/fiction-32.html">32</a>, <a href="http://thedanforthreview.blogspot.com/2012/02/fiction-33.html">33</a>, <a href="http://thedanforthreview.blogspot.ca/2012/03/fiction-34.html">34</a>, <a href="http://thedanforthreview.blogspot.ca/2012/05/fiction-35.html">35</a>, <a href="http://thedanforthreview.blogspot.ca/2012/06/fiction-36.html">36</a>, <a href="http://thedanforthreview.blogspot.ca/2012/07/ficton-37.html">37</a>, <a href="http://thedanforthreview.blogspot.ca/2012/08/fiction-38.html">38</a>, <a href="http://thedanforthreview.blogspot.ca/2012/10/fiction-39.html">39</a>, <a href="http://thedanforthreview.blogspot.ca/2012/11/fiction-40.html">40</a>, <a href="http://thedanforthreview.blogspot.ca/2013/02/fiction-41.html">41</a>, <a href="http://thedanforthreview.blogspot.ca/2013/03/fiction-42.html">42</a>, <a href="http://thedanforthreview.blogspot.ca/2013/04/fiction-43.html">43</a>, <a href="http://thedanforthreview.blogspot.ca/2013/06/fiction-44.html">44</a>, <a href="http://thedanforthreview.blogspot.ca/2013/08/fiction-45.html">45</a>, <a href="http://thedanforthreview.blogspot.ca/2013/09/fiction-46.html">46</a>, <a href="http://thedanforthreview.blogspot.ca/2013/11/fiction-47.html">47</a>, <a href="http://thedanforthreview.blogspot.ca/2013/12/fiction-48.html">48</a>, <a href="http://thedanforthreview.blogspot.ca/2014/01/fiction-49.html">49</a>, <a href="http://thedanforthreview.blogspot.ca/2014/03/fiction-50.html">50</a>, <a href="http://thedanforthreview.blogspot.ca/2014/05/fiction-51.html">51</a>, <a href="http://thedanforthreview.blogspot.ca/2014/06/fiction-52.html">52</a>, <a href="http://thedanforthreview.blogspot.ca/2014/08/fiction-53.html">53</a>, <a href="http://thedanforthreview.blogspot.ca/2014/09/fiction-54.html">54</a>, <a href="http://thedanforthreview.blogspot.ca/2014/10/fiction-55.html">55</a>, <a href="http://thedanforthreview.blogspot.ca/2014/11/fiction-56.html">56</a>, <a href="http://thedanforthreview.blogspot.ca/2015/01/fiction-57.html">57</a>, <a href="http://thedanforthreview.blogspot.ca/2015/02/fiction-58.html">58</a>, <a href="http://thedanforthreview.blogspot.ca/2015/04/fiction-59.html">59</a>, <a href="http://thedanforthreview.blogspot.ca/2015/06/fiction-60.html">60</a>, <a href="http://thedanforthreview.blogspot.ca/2015/07/fiction-61.html">61</a>, <a href="http://thedanforthreview.blogspot.ca/2015/09/fiction-62_23.html">62</a>, <a href="http://thedanforthreview.blogspot.ca/2015/10/fiction-63.html">63</a>, <a href="http://thedanforthreview.blogspot.ca/2015/12/fiction-64.html">64</a>, <a href="http://thedanforthreview.blogspot.ca/2016/01/fiction-65.html">65</a>, <a href="http://thedanforthreview.blogspot.ca/2016/03/fiction-66.html">66</a>, <a href="http://thedanforthreview.blogspot.ca/2016/04/fiction-67.html">67</a>, <a href="http://thedanforthreview.blogspot.ca/2016/06/fiction-68.html">68</a>, <a href="http://thedanforthreview.blogspot.ca/2016/09/fiction-69.html">69</a>, <a href="http://thedanforthreview.blogspot.ca/2016/10/fiction-70.html">70</a>, <a href="http://thedanforthreview.blogspot.ca/2017/01/fiction-71.html">71</a>, <a href="http://thedanforthreview.blogspot.ca/2017/04/fiction-72.html">72</a>, <a href="http://thedanforthreview.blogspot.ca/2017/06/fiction-73.html">73</a>, <a href="http://thedanforthreview.blogspot.ca/2017/09/fiction-74.html">74</a>, <a href="http://thedanforthreview.blogspot.ca/2017/10/fiction-75.html">75</a>, <a href="http://thedanforthreview.blogspot.ca/2018/01/fiction-76.html">76</a>, <a href="http://thedanforthreview.blogspot.ca/2018/04/fiction-77.html">77</a>, <a href="http://thedanforthreview.blogspot.com/2018/09/fiction-78-final-issue.html">78</a></div>
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<b><br /></b>
<b>Interviews with Canadian Writers</b></div>
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<br />
<a href="http://epe.lac-bac.gc.ca/100/202/300/danforth/2009/no27/features/interviews.htm">Interviews</a> (1999-2009, archived at National Library and Archives Canada).</div>
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<a href="http://thedanforthreview.blogspot.ca/2017/06/tdr-interviews.html">Interviews</a> (2011-2018, archived on this site).<br />
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<b style="font-family: georgia, serif;">Email</b><br />
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danforthreview [at] gmail [dot] com <i>(checked infrequently)</i></div>
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<b>Links to Canadian Literary Magazines</b><br />
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<a href="http://thedanforthreview.blogspot.ca/2015/02/links.html">Links</a><br />
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<b>TDR Complete Archive (1999-2009)</b></div>
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TDR's <a href="http://epe.lac-bac.gc.ca/100/202/300/danforth/index.html">1999-2009 archive is housed by the Library and Archives Canada</a>. TDR was on hiatus between July 2009 and Sept 2011. Sept 2011-Sept 2018 is on this site.</div>
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Michael Brysonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00816850668522214805noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2564733539116511601.post-13936624719853199462018-09-04T21:38:00.002-04:002018-09-04T21:39:19.995-04:00Fiction #78 (Final Issue)New fiction! Issue #78<br />
<ul>
<li><a href="http://thedanforthreview.blogspot.com/2018/09/fiction-78-leila-marshy.html">Winter, the Waiter, Water</a> by Leila Marshy</li>
<li><a href="http://thedanforthreview.blogspot.com/2018/09/fiction-78-don-mclellan.html">Ouch</a> by Don McLellan</li>
<li><a href="http://thedanforthreview.blogspot.com/2018/09/fiction-78-jill-m-talbot.html">The Documentary Channel</a> by Jill M. Talbot</li>
<li><a href="http://thedanforthreview.blogspot.com/2018/09/fiction-78-grace-march.html">Iced-Tea and Bruises</a> by Grace March</li>
<li><a href="http://thedanforthreview.blogspot.com/2018/09/fiction-78-lynda-curnoe.html">My Death</a> by Lynda Curnoe</li>
<li><a href="http://thedanforthreview.blogspot.com/2018/09/fiction-78-chelsea-la-vecchia.html">Antonina</a> by Chelsea La Vecchia</li>
</ul>
Plus:<br />
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<li><a href="http://thedanforthreview.blogspot.com/2018/09/final-tdr-editorial.html">Final TDR Editorial</a> by Michael Bryson</li>
</ul>
Extra special thanks to all who submitted and contributed ... since 1999!<br />
<br />
Enjoy. Keep writing. Never give up.danforth reviewhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02064152430492680561noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2564733539116511601.post-12575893627966281472018-09-04T21:27:00.001-04:002018-09-05T18:39:17.905-04:00Fiction #78: Leila Marshy<b><i>Winter, the Waiter, Water</i></b><br />
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Winters in a hot country are deceiving. The gentle morning sky entices a Canadian family out of their hotel and onto the busy streets. All around them the locals are wrapped in sweaters and scarves. Are they crazy, the tourists wonder, it’s so hot!<br />
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It is Friday and the family visits the Egyptian Museum, Coptic Cairo, and Khan el Khalili market. They are careful to never pay more than the “average Egyptian,” haggling and bargaining at every turn. The leather bag from Luxor cost 10 pounds and the shawl from Siwi only four. Emboldened, they take it up with the taxi driver. No native Egyptian would pay more than ten pounds for a cross-city trip, they tell each other. No six-day-a-week-wearing-the-same-shoes-for-years-and-five-children-he-can-hardly-feed Egyptian would pay more, so why should they? Watch and learn, says the father. But the daughter and son catch the expression on the taxi driver’s face and see that value and price are two different things. No matter.<br />
<br />
The family eats their dinner at the Ramses Hilton. Waiters in polyester tuxedos serve peasant food on porcelain plates. French fries extra. The sky darkens, a muezzin chants the Quran, the tourists write their postcards. <i>So noisy!</i> they scribble.<br />
<br />
They ask about the Nile boats that serve drinks and promise a belly dancer or two. Now wouldn’t that be a hoot. The waiter gives directions; advises that they bring their coats before heading out after sunset. His English is impeccable they generously tell him. Please, he insists, it will get cold, especially on the water. The waiter’s voice carries both authority and resignation. Looking up, the girl is surprised to see a boy her age. “Don’t be silly,” her mother says. “Do you know it’s snowing where we come from!”<br />
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Her father motions for the bill. Nudging his daughter, he clears his throat and addresses the waiter.<br />
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“What you say we knock off a few pounds from this bill, eh? Drinks on the house?”<br />
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“Dad.”<br />
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“Nick,” murmurs his wife. “This is a hotel restaurant, they don’t do that here.”<br />
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“Oh come on, of course they do.” He stares brightly at the young man.<br />
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The waiter shifts awkwardly. “You can pay me or pay at the desk,” he says.<br />
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“Dad, let’s just go,” says the girl. At this point she is not sure what is more mortifying: appearing poor or being impolite.<br />
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“No, no. This is what they do here, watch.” He looks up at the waiter and fabricates a challenge. “We ate a lot here, <i>yallah</i>. Good food, good food. So what do you say we fold in the desserts. Delicious, yes? Do we need to speak to the manager?”<br />
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“<i>Dad</i>,” says the girl, hitting her father in the ribs. Now she wants to give the boy <i>all </i>their money.<br />
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The exchange upsets the waiter. He catches the girl’s eye and, for a brief second or two, they share the universal language of adolescent embarrassment.<br />
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The mother gets up and opens her wallet. Credit card in hand, she walks over to the desk. The waiter follows, relief visible in the quickness of his steps.<br />
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*<br />
<br />
Blue patio lanterns dangle along the riverbank and the father wonders what holiday the Egyptians are celebrating now. Traditionally-dressed men escort them onto a boat deck where the vinyl seats shock their unsuspecting skin. They huddle together as close as is comfortable, which is not very close. A quartet of musicians wearing thick scarves and acrylic sweaters remind them of their warmer clothes back at the hotel.<br />
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“But we’re practically at the equator,” complains the father.<br />
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“Not really,” says the son. “We’re thousands of miles away.”<br />
<br />
Somewhere on the deck a tabla player begins with a dum-da-da-dum-da, then a violinist and clarinettist pick up the rhythm followed by an oud.<br />
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“Let’s dance!” says the mother. She’s going to enjoy this evening, it’s decided. “To keep warm, come on!”<br />
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“Are you kidding me?” asks the daughter. Whatever excitement the trip held is now gone. She drinks a hot <i>sahlab</i>, grimaces with every sip. “This is disgusting.”<br />
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The waiter notices, motions to the busboy to bring a mint tea instead. She passes back the sweet starchy drink without looking up. “Well that was horrible.”<br />
<span style="white-space: pre;"> </span><br />
Winters in a hot country means the waiter can eat meat on Fridays. Fresh lamb carcasses hang in the overleaf of a butcher’s shop. Carved directly off the animal, wrapped in newsprint, the meat is warm and comforting, bought with his Thursday wages. The Nile flows softly beside him almost the entire way home. On his left, vehicles of every sort assault the senses with a chemical distraction. He crosses the Corniche at Imbaba, the old camel market and poorest neighbourhood in the city.<br />
<br />
He sinks the meat in yogourt, cumin and salt then goes to sleep. The next morning, he arranges himself on his bed, sits up straight with a pad of paper on his lap, and writes. He doesn’t work on Friday afternoons but he cooks the mid-day meal and his mother ensures he is not bothered. Her son writes and the Quran is written; she recognizes the sacred even if she can’t read it. The meat simmers as he mixes his words. Then he spreads newspaper on the floor and lays out the stew and rice. He calls his mother, his three sisters, and his brother. There is much chatter but he eats quickly. He has shaped a delicate contour with his pen, filled in flesh with consonants, groaned with the shuddering of vowels. It waits for him.<br />
<br />
In the evening, like all evenings, he returns to the centre of the city, passing packs of dogs and barefoot children as he walks back along the river. The surface of the water undulates, a heave from a boat, a ripple from a fish. The furrows remind him of the ever-changing shape of letters and he wonders if the Arabic language was born from this shape-shifting river. The way an adrift baby became Moses, Arabic letters change their form depending on their place in the word. In the world.<br />
<br />
*<br />
<br />
He arrives at the boat, lights glowing in the early night, and pulls on the crimson galabaya and the Turkish fez, a costume for tourists. Tray in hand, he approaches a table. He has been doing this for a year and still he is surprised by their smiles. They are never happy, even when they are happy. Still, at the end of the evening, Adil will roll some bills into his hand. Happiness is beside the point.<br />
<br />
The girl slouches over the railing while the rest are dancing. Her mother pulls at her but is slapped back. The waiter waits for the mother’s reaction, but there is none. The girl finishes her tea and throws the gold-encrusted glass into the water.<br />
<br />
The waiter and the busboy exchange glances. Someone is going to have to pay for that glass. The busboy decides it won’t be him and turns on his heels back into the kitchen. The waiter leans over the side but the glass is gone. The girl frowns at him for a minute.<br />
<br />
“It wasn’t a person, just a glass,” she scoffs. Then she realizes he’s the same boy from the hotel.<br />
<br />
He is uncomfortable when foreigners look at him; he knows what they see. <i>Native Egyptian with fez! </i>But he recognizes her familiar eyes from earlier in the day. He is happy to see her. She mutters something that he doesn’t quite catch. She extends her hand. A shy flutter stirs inside his chest.<br />
<br />
“Can I try on your hat?”<br />
<br />
“Sorry?”<br />
<br />
She speaks up. “That’s really a crazy hat. Can I try it on?”<br />
<br />
He steps back, reaches up to his head. “No, no, sorry. No.” If Adil sees this he will send him to the kitchen, away from the tourists – and the tips. He is disheartened, maybe she’s drunk. That’s what tourists do. How else to explain the raised voices, the hard slaps on the back, the laughter that exits their throats like torpedoes.<br />
<br />
The girl sees she has come on too strong, said the wrong thing, pushed him away. But aside from English the only other language she speaks is bravado, learned from her father, and guile, learned from her mother. This is the best she can do with her limited skills.<br />
<br />
“Do you always wear it or is it just for work because sometimes I see people wearing them and sometimes I don’t. Like, it’s hard to tell what’s put on for tourists and what’s real. How’re you supposed to know what’s fake, eh? Have you ever been to Canada? Ha, well if you come make sure it isn’t January that’s for sure.” She exhales noisily and rolls her eyes.<br />
<br />
The waiter doesn’t know if he understood everything. What does she want with his fez? He searches through his English vocabulary, but not one word for what he wants to say. Adil is suddenly behind him, “<i>yalla ya homar</i>.” As if calling him a donkey is not enough, he slaps the boy on the back of the neck. The girl is startled by the casual cruelty of the gesture. She watches the boy’s eyes liquefy. Adil yells again. The waiter jumps and runs to the other end of the boat where a quiet group from Italy are watching a passing felucca off the stern. Inside it, a small propane light flickers in the darkness as a fisherman and his wife cook the day’s catch. The waiter hovers over the tables, picks up empty glasses, replaces napkins, wipes spills, calms down.<br />
<br />
But a sudden yelp bursts through the air and even the music stops. The busboy and Adil are screaming at each other. Adil looks strange, different, though the waiter can’t quite figure out why. The girl’s father is yelling to everyone, the mother is yelling at the father.<br />
<br />
But where is she? Alarmed, the waiter runs to the railing and leans over it. Something floats in the darkness and in one stroke he pulls the galabaya up over his head. He puts his right foot on the railing and is about to heave himself over when he is yanked back. Adil kicks him for good measure.<br />
<br />
“Son of a dog! Do you want to increase my humiliation?”<br />
<br />
“But the girl!”<br />
<br />
Just then, a husk of laughter pierces the commotion. He can’t quite figure out where she is but she is clearly not overboard.<br />
<br />
“I didn’t do it on purpose!” she protests. “It just flew away, there was a gust of wind.” The mother snatches her away from the rails and slaps her arm. The father stands with a hand hiding his forehead, muttering to himself. Her brother smirks.<br />
<br />
The waiter looks out on the water. A fez floats jauntily on the surface and he realizes why Adil looked odd. In a collective collapse, the family escapes to their table. The girl catches the waiter’s eye and shrugs conspiratorially. She leans over her brother and onto the railing. “It looked stupid on him anyways, not like on our waiter.” Her father reaches across the boy and yanks her back into her seat.<br />
<br />
“No more dancing,” Adil says. He calls to the waiter. “You. In the kitchen. Enough out here.”<br />
<br />
“But…”<br />
<br />
Adil tsks in the universal Arabic signal for<i> don’t bother me anymore</i>.<br />
<br />
“Please. I need my tips.”<br />
<br />
He hates to beg, but the injustice is too much. He knows how the night will end. Her parents will tuck a generous wad of dollars into Adil’s hand and say something about sunstroke, and that money will go right into Adil’s pocket. The busboy snickers and throws the waiter a towel. He spends the rest of the trip drying glasses.<br />
<br />
The boat docks with a bump. The waiter puts his galabaya back on, replaces his fez and leaves the kitchen to stand with the rest of the staff. Her family are the last to disembark, hands gingerly holding the velvet rope that leads to shore. He imagines the parents have already given Adil enough money to not only replace his fez but pay for his son’s education. Bitterness grips him. But just before the girl is off the boat she runs back and, smirking – kindly? unkindly? he cannot tell – presses something into his hands. Then she tears off down the gangplank and is lost in the commotion of the busy Corniche. It is money, he thinks. Suppressing a smile, he puts it directly in his pocket.<br />
<br />
*<br />
<br />
The walk home is long and the waiter is more tired than usual. He keeps one hand in his pocket around the dollar bills. He thinks ahead to his mother’s reaction, to his siblings clamouring for gifts, to the fountain pen he saw on Talat Harb street. The bowab is asleep at the entrance of his building. He climbs the stairs and, before entering the small apartment, decides to fish it out of his pocket before showing his mother. He unfolds it slowly so that when he sees it is only the boat’s menu, his heart stops with disbelief. But just before he tears it to pieces he notices the handwriting.<br />
<br />
<i>“the night is too big for –”</i> it begins. He is astonished: it is a poem.<br />
<br />
<i>small things: a glass, a fez, your face</i><br />
<i>long rivers, the waiter, my tea</i><br />
<i>this stupid girl acting drunkenly</i><br />
<i>when all I drank was the night</i><br />
<i>but it was too big for me</i><br />
<br />
He rereads the poem a dozen times before folding the paper up slowly and putting it back in his pocket. He goes back downstairs and sits on the front step of his building, quietly so the bowab doesn’t wake. He watches the moon fill up the sky and the clouds shredding it into small pieces. He fishes for a pen in his pocket, turns the menu around to find a blank spot, and writes.<br />
<br />
*<br />
<br />
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<i>Montrealer Leila Marshy is of Palestinian-Newfoundland heritage. She has been a filmmaker, a baker, an app designer, a marketer, a farmer, and editor of online culture journal Rover Arts. She founded the Friends of Hutchison Street, a groundbreaking community group bringing Hasidic and non-Hasidic neighbours together in dialogue. She has published stories and poetry in Canadian and American journals and anthologies. Her first novel, </i><a href="https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/40134653-the-philistine">The Philistine</a><i> (LLP Press) was published this year. </i><br />
<br />danforth reviewhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02064152430492680561noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2564733539116511601.post-66183965448541597952018-09-04T21:10:00.000-04:002018-09-04T21:10:32.209-04:00Fiction #78: Don McLellan<b><i>Ouch</i></b><br />
<br />
IT HAD BEEN a long and dusty day of hauling and pushing; of crawling into tight, dark places; of the irritable foreman cursing in a language most of the crew didn’t understand. He was waiting for a bus when a much-travelled Chevy lumbered to the curb.<br />
<br />
It was Matt, an old friend. <br />
<br />
“It’s your lucky day, man,” he said, dreadlocks hanging from the window, and indeed it was.<br />
<br />
There was also a sleeping bag rolled up on the back seat, a heap of smelly laundry spilling from plastic grocery bags. It was the 1960s; Matt, he recalled, had always been something of a nomad.<br />
<br />
“Moving?”<br />
<br />
“Temporary lodgings, man. I’m between jobs.”<br />
<br />
In the pub, a ball game flickered silently on the TV above the bar, a chunky peeler gyrated cheerlessly around her pole. Few of the patrons were paying attention to either. He’d skipped lunch, so after a few beers he ran across the street for some curry chicken. When he returned, the tabletop tinkled with empties. Matt’s sleepy blue eyes were glazed like the surface of a frozen pond.<br />
<br />
He offered to call a cab for himself; Matt wouldn’t hear of it.<br />
<br />
The heat of the day, the booze; he began to nod off. On Earles Road he felt the car leaving the macadam, its threadbare radials crackling on the gravel. He shook off his slumber just as the semi came hurtling toward them. The last thing he remembered was Matt’s head slumped over the steering wheel, those eyes dreamily sealed.<br />
<br />
The front end crumpled like a can of mushroom soup. His face slammed into the dashboard, scattering his teeth; a bracing foot burst through the floorboards, snapping an ankle. Matt was hurled through the windshield. He bounced off the road like a rubber ball. <br />
<br />
A cloud of dust appeared above the rooftops. A woman living nearby heard the collision and joined neighbours rushing to the crash site. She talked to her daughter that night of dogs howling at the keening sirens; of the bodies being loaded like crates of vegetables aboard the ambulance; of, after the wreckage had been towed, a man hosing blood into the sewer, a cigarette drooping indifferently from his lower lip.<br />
<br />
“People will always die, little one,” her mother said. “The rest of us go on. Until it’s our turn.”<br />
<br />
The girl made a detour on her way to school in the morning. She wanted to stand in the place where it had happened, to see if death made a place feel different, to see if death made her feel different.<br />
<br />
It did.<br />
<br />
She found five teeth in the grass on the boulevard, folding them into her handkerchief for later inspection.<br />
<br />
“I thought they were beads,” she told a classmate, “from a broken necklace.”<br />
<br />
*<br />
<br />
THERE WAS THIS chick, see, a real looker, a few years his senior; her name was Simone. She’d returned his smile as they passed in the hall, and that’s all it took. A boy his age can fall in and out of love in an afternoon, and fall for her he did, hard. Girls didn’t normally return his attentions, but Simone, he would discover, wasn’t normal. The scars zigzagged across his face like tire tracks seared into a lawn. <br />
<br />
He’d reinvented himself, as we sometimes must. Grew a patchy beard soft as cat fur, an aspiring intellectual. This was in the early ’70s; it seemed to be the thing to do. He got by selling pot, taking a few history courses at the college. He enjoyed reading about war, the battles, memorizing the death tolls. <br />
<br />
The first words out of Simone’s mouth were, “I’m an artist,” as though that explained all he needed to know. A month later they were shacked up, fucking like rabbits. She doodled abstracts and gave them gloomy one-word titles like Solitude and Despair, peddling them to fellow depressives for exaggerated sums. Their first fight was about him dismissing her “work” as “graffiti inside a fancy frame.” He’d never met a real artist before; he didn’t know they could be so sensitive. <br />
<br />
She could also be gloomy. <br />
<br />
“Just look out the window,” she’d say, in one of her moods, “all the fucked-up people. Give me two good reasons not to be blue.”<br />
<br />
“A cold beer on a hot afternoon.”<br />
<br />
“That’s one.”<br />
<br />
“You and me in the shower.”<br />
<br />
A premolar began acting up, but he was living on student loans and couldn’t afford a dentist. Simone seemed to know a lot about non-traditional medicine; she seemed to know a lot about non-traditional everything. Until her, he’d thought people wanting to be tied up were joking.<br />
<br />
One night she brought home a bag of cloves, a tropical spice.<br />
<br />
“It looks like mud,” he said.<br />
<br />
“It’s a painkiller. And don’t knock mud. Food grows in it.”<br />
<br />
He was riding the bus home after class one day when the tooth started throbbing. The pain was fickle and would occasionally subside on its own, but this time it didn’t, and he’d left the cloves at home. It was rush hour, the bus was packed. The discomfort, as medical professionals like to call it, became so severe he disembarked miles before his stop, running along the busy street frantically looking for a dentist.<br />
<br />
He found one above a row of retail shops, blurting out his predicament to the nail-painting receptionist. Dr. Murphy, cleaning teeth, overheard him. He leaned into the hallway, pulling down his face mask, a middle-aged man with kind, dark eyes and a caterpillar moustache.<br />
<br />
“I’ll be with you in a moment, young man,” he said. “Marilyn will give you a couple of Aspirin.”<br />
<br />
After probing and prodding the troubled premolar, he recommended a root canal; it would preserve the tooth. Dentists talk about “saving” a tooth like it’s a human life. They don’t mention the procedure costs more than a respectable second-hand car. That you can holiday at an all-inclusive in Mexico for less.<br />
<br />
“I’m a student,” he said. “I don’t even have bus fare home.”<br />
<br />
“You strike me as an honest fellow,” Dr. Murphy said. “If you’re willing to mow my lawn once a week for the summer, we can do an extraction. You’ll be out of here in a jiffy.”<br />
<br />
“What about the root canal?”<br />
<br />
“You’d have to paint a house. Mine is vinyl-sided.”<br />
<br />
“Is it a big lawn?” <br />
<br />
“I am a dentist.”<br />
<br />
Once the Novocain kicked in he felt a slight tug; his mouth filled with blood. Dr. Murphy dropped the premolar into a vial and handed it over. It looked like a Chiclet.<br />
<br />
“Marilyn will give you bus fare.” <br />
<br />
After he mowed the lawn, Dr. Murphy’s wife would feed him before driving him to the bus stop. The IOU was retired in September. The doctor also bought a doodle from Simone, who sometimes came along to help with the raking and because of the food. The doodle consisted of a few wiggly lines and an image that might have been a tooth. She gave the piece a title: Ouch. Though their relationship didn’t survive – he always thought of Simone as his Maggie May – Ouch still hangs above the fireplace in the Murphys’ rec room.<br />
<br />
*<br />
<br />
HIS FAVOURITE UNCLE had passed; there was an inheritance; he decided to travel. In Hong Kong, a bar in Wanchai, he got into a tussle over a girl. They took the quarrel into the alley. His opponent danced around him, making him dizzy. He remembered someone telling him that over there, after a few drinks, everybody becomes Bruce Lee.<br />
<br />
The guy’s shoe caught him flush in the mouth before he could throw a punch, taking out three teeth. He lay on his back a while, gazing up at a south China sky black as ash.<br />
<br />
The desk clerk at his hotel recommended a denturist in Oi Kwan Road. The stitches would be coming out in a few days, and the denturist would have to make an impression.<br />
<br />
“Tell them who sent you,” the desk clerk said. “You might get a discount, you might not.”<br />
<br />
He dropped into the last available chair in the waiting room, the only gweilo. It was the one Cantonese word he knew; the girl he’d fought for had taught him.<br />
<br />
“It means ‘foreign devil,’” she’d told him. “It also means ‘ghost,’ because to us, that white skin, you all look like one.”<br />
<br />
A Christian pastor clutching a bible sat to his left; the collar dug into his fleshy neck. He was accompanied by his wife, a plainly dressed but attractive younger woman. A schoolgirl – their daughter, he presumed – hunched over her homework. <br />
<br />
The receptionist addressed him in Chinese.<br />
<br />
“She wants to know if you have a health card,” the pastor said.<br />
<br />
He wagged his head, rubbing his thumb and index finger together: I’ll pay cash.<br />
<br />
“Do you speak any Chinese?” asked the pastor.<br />
<br />
He removed the bloodied cotton balls from his mouth, tossing them into a trash can and inserting replacements.<br />
<br />
“I’ve only been here a few days,” he said, “but ever since I arrived I’ve heard people saying this one word; I’ve been hearing it everywhere. The guy who did this to me was saying it.”<br />
<br />
“Maybe I can help. What’s the word?”<br />
<br />
“It sounds like, dyoo-lay-mo,” he said. “Make any sense?”<br />
<br />
The pastor flushed.<br />
<br />
“Well…I – ”<br />
<br />
The receptionist called the next patient – the man of the cloth. Patients to the right urged him to move into the vacant seat, as a lineup had formed. The pastor’s wife glanced up from her magazine and smiled. <br />
<br />
“Do you know that word?” he asked her. “Dyoo-lay-mo? I might be pronouncing it wrong.”<br />
<br />
“Your pronunciation is adequate,” she said, “but it’s not a good word. Nice people do not use that word.”<br />
<br />
Wanting to be thought a nice person, doubtful he was, he fell silent. After a few awkward minutes she leaned over and whispered, “It translates as…‘fuck your mother.’”<br />
<br />
“Oh,” he said, “I get it: ‘motherfucker.’”<br />
<br />
“No,” she said. “Fuck your mother.”<br />
<br />
“Sometimes people would say, dyoo-lay-mo see fat,” he said. “What’s that mean, the see fat?”<br />
<br />
The pastor’s wife looked as though something had caught in her throat; she scurried to the washroom. Everyone shifted seats again.<br />
<br />
“Hello,” the daughter said. She had sweet brown eyes, a fine row of teeth. It was 1987.<br />
<br />
He repeated the question: “I know dyoo-lay-mo means ‘fuck your mother,’” he said. “What about see-fat?”<br />
<br />
The girl put aside her schoolbooks.<br />
<br />
“In the ass,” she said.<br />
<br />
*<br />
<br />
HE’D ALWAYS KNOWN he’d eventually have to go to full dentures; implants were suspect in the early 1990s, and he didn’t have that kind of money. He’d squandered the inheritance in less than a year.<br />
<br />
“I have ten teeth left,” he was telling his drinking pals, Steve, Kim and Phil. “The rest are partial plates and bridges. I’ll be a new man with dentures.”<br />
<br />
“Like Brad Pitt,” said Phil.<br />
<br />
“You’ll be swarmed by pussy,” agreed Kim.<br />
<br />
There was a group of yahoos, half a dozen younger guys, at the next table. He asked the waitress to find them another, but there was a playoff hockey game on TV, and the bar had filled up fast. The yahoos were shaking their drinks, soaking anyone within reach. Everyone at his table knew something was going to happen because they used to be the yahoos. When they whooped it up, something always happened.<br />
<br />
“Settle down, fellas,” shouted Steve, who loved a scrap, win or lose. “We can’t hear each other talk.”<br />
<br />
“Then don’t,” the largest of the yahoos fired back.<br />
<br />
When the hockey game ended and patrons started filing into the parking lot, the yahoos slipped off their stools and came at them like an invading army. Another place, another time, he might have tried to broker an armistice. That evening, never certain why, he started swinging.<br />
<br />
In the morning he studied his bloodied mouth in the bathroom mirror.<br />
<br />
Two down, eight to go.<br />
<br />
*<br />
<br />
WE BEGIN WITH thirty-two. Those of his that survived had been repaired and refilled multiple times or filed down to anchor artificial replacements. Some partial plates were secured with metal wires, hastening the decay. Everything needed to be replaced, which would require another bank loan, and he hadn’t paid off the last one. And then his girlfriend told him they were going to have a kid. It was 2003. He was almost forty. Most nights he drove a taxi, twelve-hour shifts.<br />
<br />
He decided to have the remaining eight extracted surgically and get fitted for a full set of acrylic imposters. According to his calculations, over time, doing so would save him thousands of dollars. He’d never have to see a dentist again.<br />
<br />
A buddy, Lenny, said he knew a guy who could help.<br />
<br />
“If my arithmetic is right,” Lenny said, “the extractions are going to cost you the same as the dentures, am I right?”<br />
<br />
They were hoisting a few in a smoky joint on Kingsway.<br />
<br />
“The dental surgeon wouldn’t budge on price,” he said. “Whenever you question their fees, they tell you how many years they went to university.”<br />
<br />
“Tell them about all the shit jobs you’ve worked,” Lenny said. “The asses you’ve had to kiss.”<br />
<br />
They drove out to a place in Surrey one night in Lenny’s Merc, to a barn that looked like it should have burned down a long time ago. The guy who could help, Nob, was dentally challenged himself and looked as mangy as Sugar, the mongrel mutt lolling atop a bale of hay. Nob also had a pet goat, Shifty. It roamed in and out of the barn like a drunk in search of a vacant bar stool.<br />
<br />
A stall still smelling of former residents had been refitted with the equipment – pliers, a syringe, the works. A lamp attached to an extension cord hummed intermittently in the corner. <br />
<br />
“Nob your only name?” Small talk calmed his nerves.<br />
<br />
“It’s a nom de guerre,” Nob said. “Open wide, don’t move.”<br />
<br />
“You’re going to dope me up, I hope.”<br />
<br />
“I were you, I’d start with two Oxy. Some people need three. They’re fifty bucks each.”<br />
<br />
“I’m getting work done,” he said, “I usually ask for customer references. You have any?”<br />
<br />
“I do. Ask ’em anything you want.” <br />
<br />
Nob whistled, and both of them came running. <br />
<br />
*<br />
<br />
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<i>Vancouver writer Don McLellan has worked as a journalist in Canada, South Korea and Hong Kong. His debut collection of short stories, </i>In the Quiet After Slaughter <i>(Libros Libertad), was a 2009 ReLit Award finalist. </i>Brunch with the Jackals<i>, his second story collection, was published by Thistledown Press in 2015. More info at <a href="http://donmclellan.com/">donmclellan.com</a>.</i>danforth reviewhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02064152430492680561noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2564733539116511601.post-31206081145882323452018-09-04T20:57:00.001-04:002018-09-04T20:57:43.439-04:00Fiction #78: Jill M. Talbot<b><i>The Documentary Channel</i></b><br />
<br />
<i>“The truth will set you free. But not until it is finished with you.”</i><br />
<i>—David Foster Wallace</i><br />
<br />
<i>Thought Crimes: The Case of the Cannibal Cop (2015)</i><br />
<i><br /></i>
— How can you eat and watch that stuff on TV?<br />
— Why not?<br />
— His poor wife.<br />
— Spring roll?<br />
— No thanks.<br />
— They’re really good.<br />
— How can they film him while he’s cooking?<br />
— Everyone’s gotta eat.<br />
— Not on TV.<br />
— You’d rather live in a fantasy world where TV characters don’t eat?<br />
— You’re getting plum sauce everywhere.<br />
— The dog will lick it up.<br />
— You’re a dog.<br />
— Could be worse, I could be eating steak.<br />
— I’m going to vomit.<br />
— No you’re not.<br />
— Watch me.<br />
— After this show.<br />
— You should call your mother.<br />
<br />
<i>We Were Kings (1996)</i><br />
<br />
Michelle was a vegetarian. The smell and texture of meat made her sick, always had. Paul therefore complied and didn’t eat meat at home either. He splurged after a fight and went to a fast food joint. You could tell how bad the fight had been by the order. When Fat Burger came to Vancouver a few blocks away, it seemed almost perfect. He started to put on weight from all of his trips there.<br />
<br />
<i>Food, Inc. (2008)</i><br />
<br />
— When we met we had donuts from Tim Horton’s, leftover from some event. Food brings people together.<br />
— I don’t think our lives would have been different if we met over cigars.<br />
— Oh but it would have been. Tim Horton’s is a good start. A real Canadian story.<br />
— I thought you were going to say Real Canadian Superstore.<br />
— Looks like he has a thing for real Canadian bacon.<br />
<br />
<i>Born Into Brothels (2004)</i><br />
<br />
Paul’s parents visited once a month. Michelle’s never did, her mother was dead and her father out of the picture. Where she grew up fathers were like fairy tales and you showed off who had the best fairy tale father. Ethnic was good, mysterious, missing a part of himself. They could be fairy tale fathers because they were unknown.<br />
<br />
— Mine’s Spanish!<br />
— So what, mine’s Indian!<br />
— That word’s racist! You’re racist!<br />
— I mean from India, dumby, not Native.<br />
— You don’t look Indian or Native.<br />
— I am!<br />
<br />
Then a new girl one-upped them all. She didn’t know who her mother was. After that they stopped comparing fairy tale stories. And here she is making casserole. Maybe she had just wanted Netflix and a cat and dog. Maybe she didn’t really like being ethnic.<br />
<br />
She grabbed some celery from the fridge. <br />
<br />
Christ, I married a rabbit, Paul said, passing Michelle on his way to the bathroom.<br />
<br />
<i>Red Army (2015)</i><br />
<br />
— Why do the neighbors leave their laundry out there for everyone to see? I don’t want to see their underwear.<br />
— Better for the environment.<br />
— Not for my environment.<br />
— Why do I always end up with fascists?<br />
— Every woman secretly wants a fascist.<br />
— That’s stupid.<br />
— I know.<br />
<br />
<i>Taxi to the Dark Side (2007)</i><br />
<br />
If she wanted a perfect husband, one with a spark in his eyes, white teeth, cooking gourmet tofu, she was simply out of luck. A husband who wiped up and never reminded her of where she came from. Did he like it when she cooked and kept her mouth shut? Of course he did but she knew this. He bought her a Roomba and she cried for three days. There is no telling what will do it.<br />
<br />
He sang, if you can’t be with the one you love, love the one you’re with, to the greasy burger. He sat in his BMW in the parking lot, fat dripping down his chin, shameful as a middle-aged man getting a blowjob in a car where his wife had recently had the carpets cleaned.<br />
<br />
<i>Triumph of the Will (1935)</i><br />
<br />
— You didn’t eat your donut, just gave it a bite. Then when I took you to restaurants you only ordered salad.<br />
— Salad is good for you.<br />
— You were anorexic.<br />
— Everyone was back then.<br />
— I never knew if I was supposed to comment.<br />
— Now you have.<br />
— Do you think you can be a real Canadian and anorexic?<br />
— What the hell does that mean?<br />
— It just doesn’t seem very Canadian.<br />
<br />
<i>The Missing Picture (2014)</i><br />
<br />
Michelle bought picture frames that said CAT and DOG. There was one photo of themselves where they appear to be tourists in some forest. In truth it was the park down the street. The picture of Paul’s parents was also in front of some woody area. There used to be a photo of her mother but Paul said it was creepy, her mother’s glare made him feel watched—that photo is haunted, he said. She looks like Julia Roberts after a lobotomy, he said. It’s the only photo I have, she said. Get rid of it, he said.<br />
<br />
<i>Hoop Dreams (1994)</i><br />
<br />
— I read that eating disorders are a side effect of high expectations. Like middle class crack. So why you?<br />
— By read you mean you saw a documentary.<br />
— Answer the question.<br />
— I thought I should expect as much of myself as people expected of middle class kids.<br />
— How did that work out?<br />
— I’m making casserole.<br />
— Maybe you’re actually bulimic.<br />
<br />
<i>Finders Keepers (2015)</i><br />
<br />
Michelle played with keys, they sounded like a baby rattle. This was her guilty pleasure, collecting lost keys. People should really be more careful, she thought.<br />
<br />
She looked through her collection, there were many different keychains, mostly made up of cartoon characters. One Narcotics Anonymous, some business freebies. Michelle had eighteen keys in total, at least seven that had been legitimately found. How one could find seven legitimately seemed strange, but who was she to question the workings of the universe? Those keys were usually scratched, as if someone had thrown them out a window then drove over them repeatedly.<br />
<br />
She thought, if this were a TV show I would be a serial killer. She smiled. Her mother died before the oldest dog died. Before thirty. She was now nearly thirty and terrified of the gray hairs that keep popping up like pimples during adolescence. Maybe nothing actually changes. Is that what the dog thought the day he died—thirty years and nothing changes?<br />
<br />
<i>The War Tapes (2006)</i><br />
<br />
— The cat keeps bringing in half dead mice then letting them escape.<br />
— You’d rather he eat them?<br />
— Of course. Better than having mice running around half dead.<br />
— Get some poison.<br />
— It might kill the cat too.<br />
— See, we all have to eat.<br />
— I’m going to vomit.<br />
— He just wants attention.<br />
— You sound like he’s a child.<br />
— He sort of is.<br />
— The cannibal cop had a child.<br />
— Let’s never reproduce.<br />
— Were you really anorexic?<br />
— What do you mean, why would I make something like that up?<br />
— Wasn’t it just a fad?<br />
— I can’t talk to you like this.<br />
— Like not everyone who does coke is a cokehead.<br />
— You’ve been watching too many documentaries.<br />
<br />
<i>F for Fake (1973)</i><br />
<br />
The dog and cat had actual names but Paul and Michelle had taken to calling them the dog and the cat, as if they were living in a dollhouse where each item was only a generalization of the world. Dog. Cat. Kitchen. TV.<br />
<br />
She had taken a writing workshop but quit when they were asked to write about losing their virginity. Virgin. Whore. Husband. House. In-laws. Fat. Meat. Meat. Meat. Vomit.<br />
<br />
<i>No End in Sight (2007)</i><br />
<br />
— Crawl like you’re a dog.<br />
<br />
<i>The Sorrow and the Pity (1969)</i><br />
<br />
She noticed a bit of fat on her stomach. It stuck out in the most bizarre shape. She poked at it like testing vegetables in a supermarket. As if some lost and found objects were stuck inside her. This should’ve please her but it didn’t, it didn’t at all. She remembered as a child when they called it baby fat, a term that made her feel like livestock. Adult fat wasn’t much better. Was she an adult? Apparently. But when, exactly, had that happened? She felt like it had all been a game. She poked her stomach with a key and eyed her thigh gap. Perhaps she had never got rid of her baby fat. The gap was more of a sliver. Boys never have baby fat, of course, because the term implied that it would go away, and little girls needed this promise. It made it cute and only momentary. And now she was making a casserole. Christ.<br />
<br />
<i>Life Itself (2014)</i><br />
<br />
— Do you ever feel like your life is composed mostly of talking about your life, even if it’s just in your head?<br />
— Not really.<br />
— Sometimes I want a lobotomy.<br />
— Sometimes I want you to have a lobotomy.<br />
— The neighbour thinks you’re a serial killer.<br />
— Good. That woman doesn’t need a lobotomy but I’d give her one.<br />
<br />
<i>Deliver Us from Evil (2006)</i><br />
<br />
Paul didn’t know what was wrong with Michelle but knew that every suggestion that there was something wrong would end horribly. So he hoped that it would pass, would be a toothache that didn’t need a dentist but a few days without anything too hot or cold. He tried to be lukewarm but what could he do if even plum sauce sent her into rage? What could he do about any of it? He missed that young, lost, weak girl he first met, her snappiness more cute than cruel.<br />
<br />
<i>Control Room (2004)</i><br />
<br />
— When I was a kid I put ladybugs in jars of water.<br />
— That’s horrible, why are you telling me this?<br />
— I was just curious. I was like the cat. He doesn’t know what he’s doing. Eventually I felt guilty and stopped doing it.<br />
— Why ladybugs? Ladybugs are cute.<br />
— And that gives them some sort of a right to life?<br />
— Ladybugs don’t bite anyone or cause malaria or anything.<br />
— And they don’t pollinate the plants we need to live or kill the mosquitos either. Look, you refused to eat Tim Horton’s like a good Canadian, I put ladybugs in jars, the cat brings in half dead mice, this dude fantasizes about eating people, nobody’s perfect.<br />
— Sometimes I don’t know how we got here.<br />
— Television, probably.<br />
— I’m going to throw up.<br />
— Of course you are.<br />
— Your parents are visiting. I told them I’m making your favourite casserole. Maybe you should make it.<br />
— If you answer their questions.<br />
— I’m almost thirty.<br />
<br />
<i>The Imposter (2012)</i><br />
<br />
Michelle looked up employment ads, something in hospitality, something part time. She ended up looking up Craigslist personals, just out of curiosity. People were gross and desperate. Craigslist, at least, no longer had the erotic services section. There was a time when you could sell yourself on Craigslist. One man told her that she needed more baby fat, another told her that she was too pretty to be a whore. A few of them lost their keys.<br />
<br />
Paul had said, if anyone asks, we met at a party. Every story needs some consistency, some truth. You will say we met with donuts and you knew at first sight.<br />
<br />
<i>Nostalgia for the Light (2011)</i><br />
<br />
— Now eat meat. Dogs eat meat.<br />
<br />
He stuffed food into her mouth, she couldn’t see with the blindfolds on. She was relieved to discover that it wasn’t meat but bread. She struggled to swallow it.<br />
<br />
<i>Stories We Tell (2013)</i><br />
<br />
— Gina? Too strange. What’s your real name?<br />
— Birth certificate real?<br />
— That’s generally what real means.<br />
— Michelle.<br />
— That’ll do.<br />
<br />
<i>Wordplay (2006)</i><br />
<br />
Paul was disgusting, there was no way around it. He was getting chubby. He thought that love was something you buy—he got the previously loved euphemism mixed up with used. He thought girls should be like new china. He thought that if they never spoke of how they had met, it wouldn’t be true. Doesn’t every girl secretly want to be Julia Roberts in Pretty Woman? That’s what he asked. He lay on the couch mostly, every once and awhile he did some cocaine. He used to share until he discovered what a buzz kill Michelle was when she was high. She started talking about things on the list of things not to be talked about and she would panic. She was like a feral cat on cocaine. At first this gave Paul power as he tried to be the one to soothe her back, to let her rock back and forth in his arms, but fairly quickly she would turn on him. Michelle bit her fingernails as she thought of this—of the cocaine courage. Liquid courage was better. Or anorexic silence. That’s what anorexia was to her—silence. But now she has stopped caring and started snapping back at Paul. Once she had said that she preferred heroin to cocaine. When he looked shocked and disgusted she said, I’m joking, though they both knew that she wasn’t. She started to sing “Creep” by Radiohead and remembered how old she was.<br />
<br />
<i>Capturing the Friedmans (2003)</i><br />
<br />
— If our lives were reality television, the whole world would hate us.<br />
— Let them.<br />
<br />
<i>Waiting for “Superman” (2010)</i><br />
<br />
Paul got his greasy fat burger and unwrapped it, mouth watering. It was the smell of youth, of everything forgiven, forgotten, placed in a drawer somewhere. There was something unhealthy about wanting to vomit at the smell of pure protein. His hands were so greasy as if he had been lubricated to enter a small tunnel. It filled up his belly, made him feel like Superman. Made him feel so good that he ordered another. Later Michelle would question him on his eating habits but he didn’t care. A man needed some privacy, some protein, some dignity.<br />
<br />
<i>For the Bible Tells Me So (2007)</i><br />
<br />
— Are you religious? You think you’re a saint? Paul the disciple? Should I be washing your feet?<br />
— You should be washing your mouth.<br />
— Oh but that’s your job.<br />
<br />
<i>How to Survive a Plague (2012)</i><br />
<br />
Michelle went to the bathroom and puts the bath on. The bathroom felt like a sanctuary away from the world. She got out her hidden toothbrush and put on an audiobook. It wasn’t so much the story she was interested in but the soothing way of reading the actor had. It seemed that they always chose one with a generalization of the male voice rather than a real voice. She especially loved when he announced each chapter. She dealt with dinner between Chapter One and Chapter Two and then got into the bath. She turned up the generalized male voice so that she didn’t have to hear Paul’s documentaries.<br />
<br />
Documentaries used absurdly male voices, not generalized male voices. None of them, of course, used female voices. She liked Chekov because it was a generalized voice reading generalized words, such as The Lady with the Dog. Names—real names—were problematic.<br />
She stayed in the bath until the water was cold and her skin was wrinkled.<br />
<br />
<i>Inside Job (2010)</i><br />
<br />
— Can we watch something that isn’t a documentary?<br />
— You’d rather live in fantasy?<br />
— You were the one who wanted the fantasy.<br />
<br />
<i>Hot Girls Wanted (2015)</i><br />
<br />
She remembered watching porn with a guy where the girl had a huge scar across her chest, it made her sick to watch, as if the heart of the girl had been removed and consumed. And this was what he wanted to watch? She shivered. Paul had been friendly enough. Why do you pay, she asked him. Because I can, he replied. Doesn’t it ruin it? It makes it better, or makes you mine. I’m not a lost child for you to save, she said. I know, he said. Your taste in porn suggests otherwise, she said.<br />
She always thought he would turn on her at some point but it was more like he turned on himself. He no longer seemed interested in even owning himself.<br />
<br />
<i>Stop Making Sense (1984)</i><br />
<br />
They told Paul’s parents that they had met at a party, they practiced their lines until it was who they were, this method-acting version of real people. The truth was more like when Sylvia Plath met Ted Hughes and bit his ear, except darker, but Paul made it seem like Romeo and Juliet.<br />
He said that he had met Ghomeshi before but no one actually believed him. He also pointed out that Romeo and Juliet killed themselves, at least everyone from the Ghomeshi trial was still alive. For now, Michelle said.<br />
<br />
<i>The Invisible War (2012)</i><br />
<br />
One night a drunken Paul whispered, aren’t you glad you aren’t Gina anymore? Michelle answered with silence.<br />
<br />
<i>An Inconvenient Truth (2006)</i><br />
<br />
— Would the TV woman have been better off if she had never found out?<br />
— Probably.<br />
<br />
<i>Undefeated (2011)</i><br />
— I’ve gone all fifties housewife and they don’t even show up.<br />
— They hadn’t called, there must be an accident, how can you think about casserole?<br />
— That’s what wives do, isn’t it, think about casserole? Why did we get a cat and dog?<br />
— You wanted the cat, I wanted the dog, we decided that neither of us should limit the other.<br />
— Have you called them?<br />
— About a million times.<br />
<br />
Michelle dumps the casserole in the garbage.<br />
<br />
— Hey, someone might have eaten that!<br />
— I can’t, I can’t even look at it.<br />
<br />
<i>The Look of Silence (2015)</i><br />
<br />
One day a woman dropped by, arriving minutes after Paul had left the garage in his car. Michelle wanted to ignore her but the woman kept on knocking. When she finally answered the woman merely handed her a brochure—WIN: Women In Need. You are better than this, the woman said. Michelle’s head made the gesture of nodding only half way. Michelle shut the door. Moments later they discovered each other peering through their respective windows.<br />
<br />
Which is it, WIN or In Need, Michelle wondered. They should get their message straight.<br />
<br />
<i>This Is Not a Film (2012)</i><br />
<br />
— Mom called, dad had a stroke. Do you know where my keys are?<br />
<br />
<i>Blackfish (2013)</i><br />
<br />
Next to the keys were three birth certificates.<br />
<br />
*<br />
<br />
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<i>Jill M. Talbot's writing has appeared in Geist, Rattle, Poetry Is Dead, The Puritan, Matrix, subTerrain, The Tishman Review, The Cardiff Review, PRISM, Southword, The Stinging Fly, and others. Jill won the PRISM Grouse Grind Lit Prize. She was shortlisted for the Matrix Lit POP Award for fiction and the Malahat Far Horizons Award for poetry. Jill lives on Gabriola Island, BC.</i>danforth reviewhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02064152430492680561noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2564733539116511601.post-63740867761671840082018-09-04T20:44:00.000-04:002018-09-04T20:44:06.348-04:00Fiction #78: Grace March<b><i>Iced-Tea and Bruises</i></b><br />
<br />
I am sorry for the summer.<br />
<br />
You know the one. And I really am sorry. Kelsey brought it up again yesterday.<br />
<br />
I tried, I really—I did try. There aren’t any excuses good enough, and I don’t even want to make them, only I wish you had told me instead of Kelsey because I would have changed—not for the right reasons, of course; it would have been out of fear rather than affection or blank deference, but I would have changed nonetheless.<br />
<br />
You see, I was terrified of you. I still am. I can picture the blown fuse in Oma’s eyes if you heard me say that, or the cloud rising out of Opa’s features like condensation from the kettle spawns on the wall beside it. You would ask what you have ever done to make someone afraid of you, and the answer would be both everything and nothing, because I might understand it now but I didn’t in 1993. Now that I do know, it won’t change anything. You will still be communicating all your rage and confusion with your Merry Christmases, and I will still take two days working up the guts to send a polite email, because I think it would be better if we just forgot about each other entirely. I am never going to be able to do as you wish, and you are never going to approve of me.<br />
<br />
I still wish that we could have been friends. At the same time, I wish there were enough apathy between us that we could arrange a neat estrangement. Now, there cannot be, in part because of the summer of 1993 and in part because of how much everything has changed since then. It is almost as if the summer of 1993 was our last chance, and it was royally botched, and the whole carefully-gestated structure of our relationship was aborted, and now all we have between us is the knowledge that there was a life, once, but it is as gone as it was unrepeatable. The most we can do is to pretend that it was an involuntary miscarriage or that it didn’t happen, at all; the most we can do is plate squares for Sunday afternoon coffee in the same kitchen, process beans on the same afternoon, and compliment each other’s health because it seems to take a real talent to hang onto, after a while. You were so proud of your sunroom, the way the light danced across the table, the colour of iced-tea.<br />
<br />
What you did to make me afraid of you was done out of love. That was what Kelsey said. She didn’t say for whose love, just that, for whoever, you loved yourselves into debilitation and decay, until you were crotchety and impatient, northern Mother Teresas in sun-visors and plastic aprons. She said that you wouldn’t be as shrunken and hoarse-voiced as you are now if it hadn’t been for how difficult we were, my siblings and I, and we have always known that, but we also always figured it was your own fault. You were supposed to have been powerful enough to stop the bruises forming on our bellies.<br />
<br />
The way Kelsey explained it was: that you loved us, so you hated to see us so dirty, helpless, and socially-inept, and because you hated to see us that way, you became short-tempered, and maybe you were trying to help us become otherwise, by inserting little instructional moments into our conversation until the entire dialogue consisted of reprimands. Because you were angry, because you so obviously loved us that you could not imagine we would suppose you didn’t. But we were children, and we were frightened of you. Every time you sized us up and told us how much we were worth, we would rather you have told us that you didn’t love us, at all. You said that you loved us because of who our mother was; you meant it as an encouragement, because you do not think anyone could separate themselves from their family, but we, because of everything else that you didn’t know, would rather you have told us that you didn’t love us, at all. When you said the bruises were our own faults. Now that the bruises are gone, should the hate be gone, too, or is it me who should leave?<br />
<br />
There was so much that you did know. I knew nothing, and disdained you for what you knew and what you ignored and what you lied to us about. If you had, at any point, been honest, I would trust you less, and as you never were, I would have rather you told us that you didn’t love us, at all, at all, that you didn’t love us at all.<br />
<br />
Except for, Kelsey says, that you actually did, and that makes all the difference.<br />
<br />
Hence, I am sorry for that one summer. You know the one.<br />
<br />
What, exactly, are we supposed to do?<br />
<br />
Plate squares for Sunday afternoon coffee in the same kitchen.<br />
<br />
Throw packs of beans into the freezer.<br />
<br />
Compliment each other’s health.<br />
<br />
Drink nameless black tea from white ceramic cups.<br />
<br />
Eat pineapple pizza in sunlight the colour of iced-tea, watching for hummingbirds and squirrels, the life you are so proud of.<br />
<br />
Let everything stew quietly inside and never tell one another, only you will tell Kelsey so that she can tell me years later, and I will tell nobody that we both know, to spare myself the questioning and also to preserve, at all costs, your reputation. To make sure that nobody you know ever asks you why I should be afraid of you, because you will say that I shouldn’t have been—I didn’t know any better, I only knew that you were angry, and never asked why—because you were righteously angry, even if it was the only part of our relationship with any righteousness in it; because you measured us out like so many cups of water for boiling, and publicized our faults, in order to motivate change, however you knew how, as change was needed more than anything else; because when you say, “Merry Christmas,” and it carries the weight of two decades’ worth of disappointment and dismay, you are not saying that you would give up two decades if only to escape the disappointment. Because you actually did love us. That makes all the difference.<br />
<br />
That’s what Kelsey says, anyway.<br />
<br />
*<br />
<br />
<br />
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<i>Grace March is a writer from the prairies of Western Canada. Her work has been featured in Rkvry Quarterly Literary Journal. </i>danforth reviewhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02064152430492680561noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2564733539116511601.post-77668125146003458962018-09-04T20:32:00.001-04:002018-09-04T20:32:30.813-04:00Fiction #78: Lynda Curnoe<b><i>My Death </i></b> <br />
<br />
The very idea of their being witnesses to my death was outrageous to me. While I was in a great deal of pain from terminal lung cancer, the pain in my soul from these upstarts who insinuated themselves into my last days on earth was far worse and much more terrifying. I know they have been my wife’s friends for many years, but I have never considered them mine. Oh, I tolerated the dinner parties together and the odd theatre and concert evening, even the parties, since I was able to chat with people whose company I did enjoy.<br />
<br />
My wife has been a friend of Brooke’s since they were at university together at Queens. I did not meet my wife, Judy, until we were both working in Toronto. When Brooke married this chap Freddie (oh, how I hate that name, when he has a perfectly good name, Frederick or even Fred) my wife was the maid of honour and I was assigned an ushers job, even though I knew neither one of them. But I was by nature an easy going sort of fellow, enjoying the wedding and reception, dancing and flirting like the rest of them. Little did I know we were to become best friends as two couples for the rest of our lives.<br />
<br />
One thing that has been incomprehensible to me is how couples relationships begin and persist. I do not understand why it is assumed that when two women are close friends the husbands are expected to be buddies too. My wife has known all along that I did not particularly like Brooke and Freddie and merely tolerated them. Brooke and Judy’s relationship was solid, two friends who talked on the phone, discussed careers, children, all aspects of living as they lived their lives. There were times when we moved around with my work when we did not see much of them but, eventually, when we retired to live in Toronto 9 years ago we began to see them almost every weekend. I had many good friends of my own, but they and their wives always kept apart from us to a certain extent, although of course, we saw them at parties and the occasional dinner.<br />
<br />
Freddie and I found enough common things to talk about, I suppose, but generally he was too conservative for my taste and more the sportsman while my interests lie in literature, reading Shakespeare’s sonnets, for example, carefully so that every word shines out for me, revealing layers of meaning. Mind you I didn’t discuss my serious interests with my own friends either, but we did discuss literature in general, the books we read and so on. How I would love to have seen them more often as I reached the terminal stage but they stayed away, except for the odd visit or phone call. They were all at the funeral, though. Some of my old friends were weeping.<br />
<br />
Oh, what a terrible thing that I spent my last days with anger and hatred filling my mind. I lay there in my bed at home waiting for the next dose of pain medication, hoping that the dreaded doorbell would not ring and it was Freddy and Brooke again, with a little supper for us, some magazines for me or whatever. Their expressions so kindly with Freddie calling me old chap or some such kind of pseudo endearment. What I really wanted was to be alone with my wife and being able to read occasionally or watch old movies when the pain was not too bad.<br />
<br />
But I do understand that Judy needed them around, they made her feel alive just as surely as I made her feel that death was all around.<br />
<br />
I was always happy to see the children, and their phone calls would lighten up my day. Sometimes I wonder if they knew that. And to see the grandchildren, clustered around me, with their bright shiny hair and beautiful lips and eyes that I could gaze into until eternity. They were a little afraid of me, because I was so thin and I wonder if I had some bad smells perhaps from my mouth or from the many drugs that permeated my body and came out of my pores. But they did come as often as they could and these were always very joyful occasions to me. I would ask them to bring me the children’s books that we keep on a shelf in the living room and we looked at the pictures together while I asked them to tell me the stories.<br />
<br />
Brooke and Freddie often arrived Sunday morning after mass, bringing with them some homemade soup, squash or lentil or some other healthy variety, that Brooke had made for our lunch. I have to admit it tasted awfully good but, since they were not eating with us, they hovered around almost like parents tending to a child, making sure the bib was properly fastened around my neck and that the soup wasn’t too hot or too spicy for me, as I couldn’t tolerate spices those last days. And Freddie again calling me old chap, smiling as he did sympathetically as though saying “I know how you feel.” But he didn’t-because he was not dying.<br />
<br />
I tried to tell my wife how I felt and she would reply, “But they are our best friends.”<br />
<br />
“Yours” I would say “not mine.”<br />
<br />
Then she said, not too unkindly, “You don’t have any best friends.”<br />
<br />
“Does that mean,” I said, “that these are my best friends by default and because I don’t have any obvious ones, these best friends of yours must do.”<br />
<br />
But arguments were too exhausting we both realized, and we stopped this kind of nattering. I could never tell her how I really felt. Judy simply promised that she would tell Brooke and Freddie not to drop around quite so often, that they should call first and that perhaps they could speak more by telephone, as visits made me so tired.<br />
<br />
“Yes,” I agreed. But I kept getting worse with less and less control over how I would be treated and soon wished to see only my family as the disease progressed. I knew I would have to go into palliative care at some point, when my wife was no longer able to take care of me.<br />
<br />
My daughter drove me to see the hospice which looked like a comfortable hotel with large beautifully decorated rooms, reception areas with fireplaces and friendly staff. There were terraces outside, lined with flowers, and flowering trees, short walk-ways and landscaped lawns with large trees in the distance that you could see from the bedroom windows. How awful it all was. And I was told by a woman who came to our house, who specialized in such things that eventually I would begin to accept all of this and would not fight it anymore. That did happen.<br />
<br />
Upon arriving, I told the supervising nurse about Freddie and Brooke, that I did not want them to be around me in the hospice and apparently she told my wife but they came anyway, to comfort her. No one listened to me or understood my position. Oh they kept out of the way, but I knew they were hovering nearby, perhaps in the lounge. And my wife would often mention them in conversation so I knew they were still very much a part of her life.<br />
<br />
They were even there the night I died. I worsened quite suddenly early Saturday evening when my heart began to give out and unfortunately both my children were up at their cottages. They were called and wanted immediately to return to Toronto but my wife told them to wait until Sunday as she didn’t think they would be able to get back in time. There was simply too much to do with waking up the children and getting the car packed. She continued to call them every few hours throughout the night.<br />
<br />
I was in no position to do anything about protesting that my children were not there as, by this point, I was drugged up to my eyeballs which remained wide open throughout the hours it took for me to die. No doubt I looked appalling, as I could not blink and just stared uselessly at a point somewhere across the room. My body was totally emaciated and my face looked like an orange skin-covered skeleton. What with my shallow raspy breathing and my creepy eyes, you would think Brooke and Freddie would be horrified and want to leave. But they did not.<br />
<br />
They stayed there all night (I didn’t die till 6 am) alternately holding my wife’s hand, the one she was not holding my hand with, and, unbelievably, mine. I couldn’t see out of my eyes, mind you, as I was traveling in and out of my body throughout the night, sometimes hovering up around the ceiling, looking down on the horror that was me and the horror that was Freddie and Brooke trying to comfort me, and sometimes right inside my drugged unfeeling body as I worked on dying.<br />
<br />
Nowadays I occasionally visit my wife in our home, being very quiet as I think she might be frightened or think that I was there to give her some kind of message from beyond which would be highly unlikely as neither of us had ever gone in for that sort of thing, either on earth or where I am now.<br />
<br />
I never enter our house when Freddie and Brooke are visiting. I don’t even think I shall approach them when they come here, and I certainly hope they don’t recognize me.<br />
<br />
My, what a joy they have been to my wife, she tells all her other friends, and I'm not surprised to hear her add, especially during the time of my death.<br />
<br />
*<br />
<br />
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<i>Lynda Curnoe enjoys writing short stories and poetry and anything else that appeals to her. She lives in Toronto.</i>danforth reviewhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02064152430492680561noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2564733539116511601.post-523818243948160342018-09-04T20:20:00.000-04:002018-09-04T20:20:20.212-04:00Fiction #78: Chelsea La Vecchia<b><i>Antonina</i></b><br />
<br />
Antonina lived on high volume. She talked as though she always fought to be heard, because no one listened to the valid points she made. The kind who talked so intensely with her hands driving with her felt like you would veer into oncoming traffic any moment, her story a wayward cliff. The kind who burned as bright as a welder’s torch but worked with wood, incinerating every inch.<br />
<br />
I knew her as a girl. We grew up at the cross section of Mortimer and Coxwell or Woodbine, depending on how “street” or “classy” we wanted to be. Woodbine was where the poor kids lived, the ones who hung around in the high-rises and lit firecrackers in port-o-potties at Stand Wadlow Park’s Canada Day festival. The Coxwell kids would snicker under their breaths, turning away from their parents who shook their heads and claimed their children would never do something like that. The kids who could afford to go beyond select hockey at East York Arena, who played ball hockey at Withrow and baseball at Topham and soccer at Dieppe all in the same year.<br />
<br />
We were sandwiched in the middle.<br />
<br />
I was 13-years-old when I learned Antonina played with fire. It was Canada Day in East York, a working-class town-turned-neighbourhood in Toronto, and I was staying with her while my parents went to their friend’s cottage up north.<br />
<br />
That day I remember she stared out the window, wearing the red shirt her mother forced her into. “We’re proud Canadians,” her mother said, avoiding an envious look at me as her olive-skinned daughter pulled at the snug red shirt that was probably a hand-me-down from her Zia.<br />
<br />
I was the Canadian friend. The one born at East General Hospital to parents who could trace their lineage as far back as the original settlers. Antonina’s mother had escaped an abusive marriage back in Italy, her chubby daughter a tiny babe at the time. I didn’t know all this then. I only knew that my friend’s mother stayed silent each time Antonina brought up her father.<br />
<br />
“Mama, look!” Antonina pointed out the window of their apartment above the corner store. I heard the sound of laughter, people talking loudly and children joyously yelling the parade was coming.<br />
The two of us raced outside, ignoring the hurried calls of her mother, dashing down the stairs as though we’d fallen and pushing through the wall of parents on the outskirts of the festivities.<br />
<br />
The parade felt magnificent to my childish eyes. It was led by a marching band dressed in red, a group of five people holding a Canadian flag in the middle. Each float seemed to surpass the next in beauty; every community group from the school board to the police, organizations like the Shriners and the Greek Canadian association all sought to surpass each other in flagrant nationalism, red streaming from every surface imaginable.<br />
<br />
As the float for the Irish-Canadian society went by I looked beyond it and saw Tia Rubinovic across the way, nestled into the arm of her much older boyfriend. “Look.”<br />
<br />
Antonina took her eyes off the parade and saw her. I expected my friend to make a snide remark, to loudly state something about her appearance or the older boyfriend. She would with anything else. But Antonina—my loud and boisterous friend—stayed silent.<br />
<br />
Tia had come back from summer holidays the year before with a new look. Before she wore regular t-shirts and oversized pants, but when she entered grade eight it was all tight-fitting jean onesies and such grandiose gold hoops they looked as though her arms could fit into them. Everything was meant to accentuate her petite developing frame, plunging into a pool of hormones and growing quickly.<br />
<br />
The girls in our school gossiped behind her back, while the boys made rude gestures and called out to her in the halls.<br />
<br />
Tia looked comfortable with the guy. I recognized him from lunch break. He was one of the ones who hung around the pizza place across from East York Collegiate, his face almost a pizza itself. You’d never tell him that. The guy fought like an animal, and I’d definitely seen him carted away by the police who patrolled the area once or twice.<br />
<br />
He had his arm around Tia. She smiled up at him when she saw me looking, and I squirmed, embarrassed to have been caught. Tia looked back at me with sharp eyes, boring into my vision and making my face redden.<br />
<br />
When the parade was done Antonina and I went back inside to cool off before heading to Stan Wadlow Park for the carnival.<br />
<br />
*<br />
<br />
The place was alive with music and laughter, the creaking sound of cheap rides and auto-tuned carnival game music a symphony to my ears.<br />
<br />
Day waned, and the sky turned a soft cerulean. The whole neighbourhood flocked from the rides to the shallow hillside, awaiting the fireworks that would come as soon as it was dark.<br />
<br />
Antonina liked being further back, closer to the arena and sloped on the hill. I followed her, and we found a spot and put our blanket down.<br />
<br />
The sky got darker, and the crowd buzzed louder. The fireworks were coming.<br />
<br />
I turned to my friend, but she looked down, her head tilted to expose her ear to something in the alley behind us. The smile dropped from my face as I tuned in as well.<br />
<br />
There were voices speaking hurriedly, and then the sound of a muted cry.<br />
<br />
Antonina got up in a flurry. She waited a moment, then we heard another cry and she was gone, red shirt tearing slightly at the seams. I could hear her footsteps on the grass.<br />
<br />
I followed her around the corner and ran right into Tia and her boyfriend. It took me a moment to see what was happening. Tia was pushed up against the wall, mascara lined down her cheeks from crying, while her boyfriend stood a little further away with his pants undone.<br />
<br />
“Get the fuck out of here.”<br />
<br />
Antonina didn’t say a word. She walked up to Tia and grabbed her arm. I watched, mouth agape, as the boyfriend grabbed my friend and shoved her away from them. Antonina stumbled, but got right up and pushed the guy so hard he fell on his ass.<br />
<br />
The guy’s face paled, his oily acne leaving red dots on a blank face. I could see the rage boiling from below him, a flame to the pot. Antonina grabbed Tia by the arm and pulled her towards us as he rushed up.<br />
<br />
But he was dealing with welders’ fire.<br />
<br />
She turned to him before he could strike her. He froze in his steps, Antonina’s gaze bearing down at him like sunlight through a magnifying glass, and him caught in its blaze. His rage subsiding into a softened embarrassment, anger tucked away for another time.<br />
<br />
Behind us, the fireworks began.<br />
<br />
Antonina led Tia out of the alley and onto our blanket, where we calmly watched the show, Tia clinging to Antonina’s arm like a buoy, her mascara crusted onto her cheek and flaking off.<br />
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*</div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjk8ZM3fqyJEis1iawpcv5TTTtg49w2uu8_wsUfA6oe80oBGAxIEngrLowrnzjuPhS3Yz2qJ0U3BnitPrfCJ_1Wi4nbFEaQXTvMnBXRQV5NGP6Mp5OjrxtjXrgxz6eH5KAgG5xKlZ5x7ehW/s1600/chelsea.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1350" data-original-width="1080" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjk8ZM3fqyJEis1iawpcv5TTTtg49w2uu8_wsUfA6oe80oBGAxIEngrLowrnzjuPhS3Yz2qJ0U3BnitPrfCJ_1Wi4nbFEaQXTvMnBXRQV5NGP6Mp5OjrxtjXrgxz6eH5KAgG5xKlZ5x7ehW/s320/chelsea.jpg" width="256" /></a></div>
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<i>Chelsea La Vecchia is a writer living in Toronto, Canada. She has been working on her debut novel since graduating from the University of Toronto Scarborough in June, 2017, where she studied English literature and creative writing. Her articles can be found in Torontoist, SickNotWeak Society, and dandyhorse magazine. When not reading or writing, you can find her cycling from A to B, cooking, or taking a dance class.</i></div>
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<i>Twitter: @ChelseaLaVecch </i></div>
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<i>Instagram: @cheldawg7 </i></div>
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<i>Photo credit: Leanne Simpson</i></div>
danforth reviewhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02064152430492680561noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2564733539116511601.post-90902730369128463902018-09-04T20:01:00.000-04:002018-09-04T21:59:57.173-04:00Final TDR Editorial<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg7QTiu0-nHfj2BH4lYFEzGeQdJFNYxHppeldR97l49JhX2WislvcO9x_8RXBLGkqFl2YMydvBAJ8jJPUKxIidWJlAmhhx_s2aECbB0Q7_POzJ9MRTlnNrIRuwtMzmym2h7ewJRtgxdWk6f/s1600/danforth.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="959" data-original-width="959" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg7QTiu0-nHfj2BH4lYFEzGeQdJFNYxHppeldR97l49JhX2WislvcO9x_8RXBLGkqFl2YMydvBAJ8jJPUKxIidWJlAmhhx_s2aECbB0Q7_POzJ9MRTlnNrIRuwtMzmym2h7ewJRtgxdWk6f/s320/danforth.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
Pity the poor editor. Actually, don't.<br />
<br />
Seriously.<br />
<br />
I mean, it hasn't been easy. But that's not, now, what settles in the forefront of my mind when I consider 19 years of The Danforth Review.<br />
<br />
Nineteen years, holy smokes. (Okay, 19, minus a two-year pause, 2009-2011, but still.)<br />
<br />
What settles in the forefront of my mind is the gratitude that it happened at all, that it thrived, because others participated. Contributed. Edited. Submitted. Downloaded and read it.<br />
<br />
Without you -- you -- it wouldn't have happened at all.<br />
<br />
We experimented, we fiddled, we made mistakes, we carried on. And on and on.<br />
<br />
In 2018, much has changed; a new generation has ascended, and that's great.<br />
<br />
There are all kinds of new "small magazines." Many new writers demanding to be heard. And the range of the stories being published is broader than ever before. So nice.<br />
<br />
Looking back, reflecting, what to say?<br />
<br />
The first three issues of TDR were coded HTML in a subfolder off my personal website.<br />
<br />
It is archived here - <a href="http://epe.lac-bac.gc.ca/100/202/300/danforth/index.html">http://epe.lac-bac.gc.ca/100/202/300/danforth/index.html </a><br />
<br />
Then I started using Microsoft Frontpage to provide a templated structure, which made things easier. Easier to get bigger.<br />
<br />
Submissions came in from around the world. One came from a U.S. soldier in Faluja, Iraq. Others from India, Korea, the United States of America, the United Kingdom.<br />
<br />
Mostly, though, submissions came from across Canada. People found out about us by word of mouth, or following links.<br />
<br />
In the beginning, there was no Facebook, no Twitter, no social media or any kind. No smart phones.<br />
<br />
There was just the internet, its basic tool (HTML), and a desire to communicate. To bring the literary magazine online. To some, this was too radical. (As I canvassed for submissions for those early issues, some said they would never publish online.) Now, online publication is second nature, even intuitive, unquestioned.<br />
<br />
And the premises of the internet (hyperlinks, overwhelming volume of content, global reach, search functions) are taken for granted. Social media blew it up a billion fold.<br />
<br />
In the beginning, TDR was about "the small press scene." It was never about "Canlit" writ large.<br />
<br />
"Small press" was managable, right? Wrong. So wrong.<br />
<br />
The diversity available from Canada's small press has been large and diverse for a long time. Since before TDR. By running TDR, I learned so much. I learned there was more than my initial, meagre vision could contemplate.<br />
<br />
Then life intervened, and I pulled the plug, took a break.<br />
<br />
After the hiatus, TDR returned in 2011, using Blogger, and focused on being smaller. We focused on publishing fiction, my greatest joy.<br />
<br />
What a long series of pleasures it has been to introduce writers to a wider audience, especially to give writers their first publication.<br />
<br />
What was TDR looking for? What was our "thing"? I have struggled to articulate this.<br />
<br />
What I know is, I liked to find what I didn't expect. Which doesn't mean I looked for the odd or the weird, just the thing that didn't conform to stereotype (being weird can be a kind of stereotype).<br />
<br />
TDR published all kinds of stories, from all kinds of writers, some strongly traditional, others wildly experimental.<br />
<br />
I'm confident that short stories will continue to be championed by editors and publishers -- and sought out by readers. They are a barometer of our times, tracking the imagination, and the form is far from exhausted, as the writers who have submitted to TDR through the years have perpetually proven.<br />
<br />
They don't do it for the money, that's for sure.<br />
<br />
I hope we inspired many, as we kept doing what we do. What we did.<br />
<br />
If TDR is remembered for anything, I hope it is remembered for sharing peeks into spaces previously unknown.<br />
<br />
Where we have made errors, they are entirely mine.<br />
<br />
Enormous gratitude to all of the "staff" of TDR over the years. You made it possible: Geoff Cook, Dani Couture, Nathaniel G. Moore, Shane Neilson, Karen Press, all of the reviewers, all of the authors who agreed to be interviewed, everyone who ever contributed, everyone who ever submitted..... And Nathan Whitlock for editing an issue, back in the day.<br />
<br />
I met someone recently who told me she'd submitted something in the early days of TDR and I'd rejected her work. She's gone on to publish two novels (so far), both New York Times best selling.<br />
<br />
So what do I know? Keep writing, never give up.<br />
<br />
*<br />
<br />
<i>Michael Bryson, September 2018</i><br />
<br />
Photo by Michael Bryson, July 2018, at the memorial for the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Danforth_shooting">Danforth Avenue mass shooting</a>.<br />
<br />
<br />danforth reviewhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02064152430492680561noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2564733539116511601.post-37467621583867073642018-04-08T16:41:00.004-04:002018-08-08T21:13:48.234-04:00Submissions Closed for Final Issue<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; display: inline; float: none; font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; letter-spacing: normal; text-align: left; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;">The final issue is going to be in </span><b style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Times New Roman; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 700; letter-spacing: normal; orphans: 2; text-align: left; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;"><i>September 2018</i></b><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; display: inline; float: none; font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; letter-spacing: normal; text-align: left; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;">. Right here. Soon. Submissions now closed.</span><br />
<b><br /></b>
*<br />
<br />
The first issue of TDR appeared online in September 1999. At the time, I was 30 years old and just moving out of my parents' basement (again, and for the last time).<br />
<br />
I had been writing book reviews for <i>Paragraph Magazine</i>, which focused on Canadian small press books. Then it folded. At time same time, I was curious about starting an online literary magazine, as an experiment. The internet was new. Would it work? How would it work? Could we fill a need for commentary about small press Canadian books?<br />
<br />
Well, it did work, and it was a lot of work, and it was on top of my 9-5 work and my personal writing work, but it was fun and interesting and a challenge and found a niche, publishing fiction, poetry, book reviews, interviews, occasional essays and other features.<br />
<br />
It was exhausting and exhilarating. And I kept it going even after I married in 2007, become a step-father to two at the same time. But by 2009, I felt it had run its course (a decade was a good run, and I wanted to focus <i>my spare time</i> on being a family man, and we also got turned down for a grant, which made it harder to justify continuing (i.e., paying people to do what I had done for free)). So I announced the magazine would be taking a break, which it did.<br />
<br />
In 2010, my wife was diagnosed with breast cancer, and our lives changed forever. It will sound strange to hear it, but we often said the cancer made our lives specifically better, while making them generally worse. We meant, it made us focus on what was important.<br />
<br />
It became clear to me that one important thing I missed was being a fiction editor. Missed that engagement with writing and the surprises of reviewing submissions. So in 2011, I started TDR 2.0, a fiction only blog (with occasional interviews). <br />
<br />
Shortly after I re-started the magazine, doctors discovered that my wife's cancer had metastasized, which meant it had become terminal. Even so, we were determined to keep our lives so-called normal. What happened in those next months I will never forget; the spirit displayed by my super hero wife will remain with me until the end of my days.<br />
<br />
Which is to say, I kept up with the new TDR and stated that I would try to publish an issue a month. (It has slowed down to a new issue every two or three months.) In 2012, my wife passed away and the magazine continued. I took time off work, then went back to work. In 2014, I had heart surgery. The magazine continued.<br />
<br />
So why is the next issue the final issue? Well, let's say it's the final issue of TDR 2.0. I'm going to take an extended break. There may be a TDR 3.0; there may not.<br />
<br />
Lately, the number of submissions has dropped. I'm not sure what that means, but for a long time I have said to myself that I would continue as long as people kept sending me their stuff. That is slowing down, but it's also true that I am slowing down. And my step-children are growing up. And I have writing projects that I want to focus on without (too much) distraction.<br />
<br />
So that's where we're at.<br />
<br />
I'll have more to say about my reflections on two decades of online literary publishing at a later date.<br />
<br />
For now, <b><a href="http://thedanforthreview.blogspot.ca/2011/09/submissions-now-open.html">please submit</a></b> and let's do this one more time. <i>The final issue is going to be in <b>September 2018</b>. New writers are particularly welcome!</i><br />
<i><br /></i>
Thank you to all who have submitted over the years, and all who have been part of TDR, as writers or as staff. I'll have more to say about those fantastic people later, too.<br />
<br />
<i>- Michael Bryson, March 31, 2018</i><br />
<i><br /></i>
Michael Brysonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00816850668522214805noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2564733539116511601.post-5968954398565617602018-04-08T16:41:00.000-04:002018-04-08T16:41:01.020-04:00Fiction #77New fiction! Issue #77<br />
<ul>
<li><a href="http://thedanforthreview.blogspot.ca/2018/04/fiction-77-jw-burns.html">Before Breakfast</a> by J.W. Burns</li>
<li><a href="http://thedanforthreview.blogspot.ca/2018/03/fiction-77-jonathan-r-rose.html">A Nameless Night in Cambodia</a> by Jonathan R. Rose </li>
<li><a href="http://thedanforthreview.blogspot.ca/2018/03/fiction-77-linda-hutsell-manning.html">Balancing Act</a> by Linda Hutsell-Manning </li>
</ul>
Special thanks to all who have been submitting. <br />
<br />
Enjoy. <br />
<br />
<br />Michael Brysonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00816850668522214805noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2564733539116511601.post-46838939973651192662018-04-08T16:39:00.001-04:002018-04-08T16:39:39.950-04:00Fiction #77: J.W. Burns<b><i>Before Breakfast </i></b><br /> <br />
Balloons under his eyes burst.<br />
<br />
Inside one nostril the street was bitterly cold, deserted save for a small figure paupered in Dollar Store has-beens and struggling against a nomadic municipal wind. Each step warned of the agony locked in the next. Yet the form persisted, a yellowish haze sinking buildings in an almost putrid flood.<br />
<br />
Then the one in bed sniffled and the street cleared. First a stray cat frothed from the sidewalk, crossed the street in tail high triumph. Then two middle-aged woman, clicking, talking. The wind had trapped itself in a trash barrel which rocked once or twice. Then traffic, buses, a dump truck, cabs, SUVs, even a four door sedan. Pedestrians mixing on the sidewalks--<br />
<br />
Then he sneezed and the street was gone. Without opening his eyes he knew there was no friendly hand on his shoulder. And that he was alone, a discomforting catch under his ribs. Eyes open, gazing down the bridge of his nose there was another bridge, this one spanning San Francisco Bay. Walk across that in the wind holding your vital organs hostage; the pearl that is your face having been rubbed into existence now being rubbed away, oooh shit, something, please swallow me whole—his pillow watermelon rind, the bed covers gingerbread.<br />
<br />
'Good morning, way down at the tip of discards echo, I'll take three. Or can I take four/ Hell, yes!'<br /><br />Turned his head crushing goo on the slick, hard pillow, a moment of blurred vision giving way to a brown lamp with dancing pastel oysters on the shade, a black clock sheltering black on white digits, wallpaper faded pink flowers drying on gray. Eyes again closed there was the droll howling of Murray pinching perimeters.<br />
<br />
Wobbling, wobbling, one hand smuggled around his hard penis, seemed to cling like warm dew. There had been a a small choir of Eskimos. The Mall. A classical string trio provided the music, violin, viola and cello. The choir slowly sashayed about the stage outfitted in fur parkas, boots and mittens, their voices hopped gently back and forth, rabbits of the slightly paranormal variety searching for a place to find acceptance within the confines of the starched melodies. <br />
<br />
Though he couldn't understand the literal sense of what was sung, he knew the sounds reflected some kind of loss, orphaned letters strung together in chains of sorrow.<br />
<br />His wife was standing beside him and he asked her if it was Latin. She shook her head but said nothing.<br />
<br />Now the choir had procured a new voice: weathered, guttural, the canine wail added an avowed apotheosic flair causing the performance to render a broader expression of what all life could harbor in its quivering grab bag. As a slew of tiny pastel fishes fluttered from the triangular mouths of the singers, Murray was airborne, trying in vain to snap the wispy creatures from the numb light.<br />
<br />
His organ gone faint, the bathroom mystic quickly overpowered it and him. As the yellow bubbles expanded and burst, he saw a small turquoise airplane winging around the bowl. Strapped in the cockpit he could hear the splash and feel the wind spying out another soul for eternity. Then he was dizzy from the rolls, loop-de-loops, backassward sweeps, the earth full of uncanny angles, sequined sharp edges, billowing, stinging. He forced himself to focus, lining his aircraft up with an approaching glide path, leveling the wings and reducing his airspeed. Touchdown was achieved with hardly a thump.<br />
<br />
The flush receded in a gifted swirl. Down the hall through the den he heard his wife, Lisa, singing. He climbed out of the plane. Stood on his toes, danced four circles on the tile.<br />
<br />
Melted sky. Dry dusty sand. Around a bend and she was lounging nude near a pond crocheted with reeds and floating lilies. Beyond her gleaming breasts the stream feeding the pond seemed to be coming from solid rock. All at once her arms began to move forming what at first appeared to be shapes but then letters. He said each letter aloud but failed to attach them in sequence. No matter. Lisa smiled and waved him to her. Her black hair weaved a net to catch pollen free-floaters; before he touched her this pollen had imprinted both their bodies, settling in such quantity that his lips spit and his eyelids fluttered.<br />
<br />
Avoiding the kitchen, he went out the front door and around the house.<br />
<br />
Under a large oak impatiens trafficked with asparagus fern. Further on a sunlit patch of small exquisite roses. Even before he was visible he knew that Murray had begun his frenzied back and forth hop-skip-romp behind the fence of his enclosure, spewing an elliptical squeal tangled in a cavernous nasal huffing. When she was dying, his mother had made almost exactly the same sound, her bald head a steely rehash of the rocket ships in the 1950s Flash Gordon serial. He held her hand tracing the depressed purple veins until she was quiet. Several times he checked to see if she’d stopped breathing. When she finally did he put her hand on her chest, bent to kiss her forehead but drew back under the withering onrush of putrid last exhalation.<br />
<br />When he reached the pen Murray was mute, using all his resources to repeatedly launch himself off the worn dirt floor. From a liquid stream the dog became more of a woozy vapor before settling on his haunches in a feverish stupor. The echo left by the dog's bark played tricks here, there, everywhere, nowhere. When he knocked back the bolt, Murray's lowered head was a missile, splattering molecules in all directions as he charged through the open gate and out into the yard.<br />
<br />
Grass scattered. Murray blurred in front of scrubs, bushes, wooden fence. Then stopped, head shaking side to side. Running. Stop and start Stop and start.<br />
<br />
'Murray,' He looked up from rinsing a stainless water dish. 'Goddamit.' Telling tone, firm<br />
<br />
The dog froze.<br />
<br />
‘Come here.’<br />
<br />
Two elongated yelps carried Murray across the yard. He turned his back, refilling the water dish then watching a bumble bee hover above morning glory blossoms. Without hesitation Murray’s kaolin-colored snout found the man's hand, nuzzling the calloused palm, front paws prancing in place, hind legs affecting a submissive squat aided by the dog’s almost prehensile tail. A whimper brought the slobbery hand to rest on the canine skull. After receiving a vigorous scratching behind the ears, Murray was off on a second round of yard racing, biting the air with his exposed teeth. Dry food disposed in a second stainless dish.<br />
<br />
When he looked at the oaks, a single symmetrical evergreen, fortunate cherry, snowballs, iris, the fresh lawn, bright blue sky in morning crispness, he stole the benefits of breath from a corpse riding in an ambulance toward the wide crater on a moon other than the one which belongs to the earth. His vision went from shimmer to boil to his sister's voice talking to a member of the public in her official capacity. When she was finished they both gurgled laughter lingering like blinking neon.<br />
<br />‘Murray. Murray, come on.’<br />
<br />
The dog came quickly, stopped just short of the pen, the joy of freedom oozing in heaves and snorts from his mouth and nose. Harold rubbed the lowered head, lead him inside the enclosure, backed out and secured the gate. He walked slowly to the house, stepped inside the kitchen. Cups hung on hooks, knives comfortable in wooden block slots, springy green molding framing yellow walls.<br />
<br />
Lisa stood in front of the stove.<br />
<br />
‘Murray’s good.’ Words wanted to decompose before they left his mouth. ‘Take him for a walk later.’ Dispensing his breath in shallow bursts, Harold found a grin.<br />
<br />
‘He’ll like that,’<br />
<br />
‘You might want to come.’<br />
<br />
‘Sure.’<br />
<br />
She carried a plate loaded with pancakes and link sausage. After placing it in front of him she lifted each pancake to deposit pats of butter. His tongue was smart as a whip.<br />
<br />
*<br />
<br />
<i>J.W. Burns lives in Florida. Recent publications in Rivet, Sierra Nevada Review S/WORD, and Ginosko Literary Review.</i><br />Michael Brysonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00816850668522214805noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2564733539116511601.post-83274013318284432762018-03-14T20:54:00.001-04:002018-03-14T20:54:34.573-04:00Fiction #77: Jonathan R. Rose<b><i>A Nameless Night in Cambodia</i></b><br />
<b><i><br /></i></b>
The room was dark except for a series of constantly flashing red and purple lights. There was a mix of 70s disco and 80s pop music blasting out of large speakers, and despite the muggy air outside the air inside the room was cold, as air conditioners were positioned in every corner of the ceiling. I knew something was strange as soon as I walked in. There were only three men inside: a pair of much older men seated at a nearby table, and a guy beside me, leaning over the metal railing just as I was. Everybody else in the room was a young, attractive woman dressed in a tight skirt and halter top. All of the women were dancing with each other, but not touching each other. They were huddled close, but not too close, making it easy for anybody staring at them to see each one individually. <br />
<br />
I looked over at the guy beside me and he told me to just walk up and pick a woman on the dance floor.<br />
<br />
"What do you mean just walk up and pick one?" I said. <br />
<br />
"You can have any one of them," he replied. "All you have to do is walk over, grab her arm, and she'll be yours." <br />
<br />
I wanted to look back at him with disgust because I thought that was how I was supposed to feel, but instead I asked him to elaborate. <br />
<br />
He told me each of the women cost ten dollars for the entire night.<br />
<br />
"That's it?" I said. "But that's nothing."<br />
<br />
"It's Cambodia," he replied, "ten dollars is a lot of money here."<br />
<br />
The women on the dance floor started smiling at both me and the guy beside me. He returned the favor, before turning to me and saying, "I must have had half of them already. They really know what they're doing. I heard they just watch porn all day, learning how to please guys like us."<br />
<br />
I wanted to call him a pig, a pimp, a piece of shit. I wanted to burn down the whole bar and rescue every single one of the young women on the dance floor. I wanted to take them somewhere safe, a place where they wouldn't have to sell themselves. I wanted to be a hero, but all I did was smile back at them.<br />
<br />
"This place is paradise," the guy beside me said. "I'm from Los Angeles, but I keep coming back here. I'm going to build a house here, a big one, with four bedrooms and two bathrooms, and do you know how much it's going to cost me?"<br />
<br />
"How much?" I asked, unable to restrain my own curiosity.<br />
<br />
"Thirty grand, total, and that's having it built exactly the way I want it. Where else in the world can you have a big house built the way you want for a price like that?"<br />
<br />
I was in awe, thinking about how I already had nearly half that amount in my own bank account. I wondered if that meant I could build half the house he planned to build right then and there. Two bedrooms and one bathroom, built the way I wanted, all to myself, that didn't seem bad at all. <br />
<br />
As we continued talking, the guy beside me continued telling me about his plans, and about the experiences he had in Cambodia, particularly in the capital, Phnom Penh. At first I thought he was gloating, but the more he spoke, the more I realized he wasn't gloating at all. He was telling the truth. It just sounded surreal. <br />
<br />
I looked back at the dancing women and noticed one in particular staring at me, but she did not approach me. It was as if there was a barricade keeping her and the rest of the young women on the dance floor, an invisible barrier they were forbidden to cross.<br />
<br />
"They won't come to you," the guy beside me said.<br />
<br />
I turned to him just as he handed me a beer I didn't even ask for.<br />
<br />
"What are you talking about?" I asked, after thanking him for the beer.<br />
<br />
"None of them will come to you," he replied. "They can't. So that one over there, the one staring at you, you have to go to her, so there is no mix up."<br />
<br />
"Mix up?"<br />
<br />
"This is a poor country," he said, "so nothing is free, especially sex. And if they come to you that would give you the excuse to think whatever may happen is happening because they like you, which would then give you the excuse to not pay them. But if you go to them, there is no confusion."<br />
<br />
I stared back at what I believed was the most attractive woman in that room full of women doing all they could to be attractive. I didn't know what to feel, and I certainly didn't know what to do. But the more I looked at that attractive young woman, the more I felt drawn to her. <br />
<br />
Crossing that invisible wall onto the dance floor was easier than I thought after it became clear it was only one sided, and when I reached the young woman, she appeared even more beautiful. I turned to the guy leaning on the railing. He smiled at me. I turned back to the young woman. All I had to do was touch her arm, and from what I understood that would be it, just a slight movement of my arm and I would possess a person. It was a disturbing thought made all the more unsettling by its clarity as a result of my crippling sobriety. I started to feel shame crawling over me. It started weighing me down. My legs started to buckle.<br />
<br />
The young woman, perhaps sensing what I was feeling, came even closer to me. I could feel her breath and smell her scent. It was intoxicating. My urge to touch her arm became overwhelming. I looked at her face. She smiled wide. I looked back at the guy leaning on the railing. He raised his beer, congratulating me on something he seemed to know I was going to do before I did.<br />
<br />
The young woman came even closer, so close that despite the darkness and the flashing lights I could make out the faint creases in her lips. Under any other circumstance I would have already been kissing her, but on that floor, in that bar, the thought made me shiver. I took a step back and looked at the other dancing women. I noticed an expression of exhaustion on many of their faces. I started to wonder how long they have been dancing. I wondered if that's all they did, hour after hour, night after night, like those dance contests in the fifties where the last person standing won a price, except in this bar, the prize was sexually satisfying a man for ten dollars. I then started to wonder how much of the ten dollars those women would actually get. There was no way each one was representing themselves and was allowed to pocket everything they made. I didn't know much, but I definitely knew that much.<br />
<br />
I took another step back, followed by another and another, until I was back at the railing. I looked up at the guy leaning over it.<br />
<br />
"What's wrong?" he said.<br />
<br />
"Nothing," I replied. "I'm going to get something to eat on the other side of the bar. What are you going to do?"<br />
<br />
He smiled, gestured toward the dance floor with his beer, and said, "I think I'm going to explore the other half."<br />
<br />
* * *<br />
<br />
Sitting at a table on an outdoor patio on the other side of the enormous bar, staring at a giant screen playing an old Spielberg movie, I still couldn't believe the meal I was awaiting cost only three dollars. <br />
<br />
I looked behind me and saw several pool tables lined up beside each other. Nearly each one was occupied by a young man, about as old as me, and usually as white as me, along with at least two young Cambodian women who were dressed the same as the women on the dance floor in the other room. I could hear laughter from the pool tables, mostly from the men, but I also heard, and saw, the skill from which each and every young Cambodian woman played the game. The sound of their breaks had that unique crack you only get to hear in the corners of smoky pool halls where the pros play. <br />
<br />
Still waiting for my food, I looked at another area of the bar where there were several velvet couches, and occupying almost every single one was an old, fat, white man. And with those old, fat, white men were a pair of young Cambodian women huddled near them, touching and groping them, while the men fondled them in return. I noticed braces on the teeth of one of the women, which was a word I was feeling less and less confident using, as these were not women at all, but girls doing all they could to masquerade themselves as women.<br />
<br />
I glanced back at the Spielberg movie playing on the screen. It was showing one of those inspiring, hopeful scenes that usually come near the end of most of his films, but I couldn't watch it. I had to turn away. I looked back at the old, fat, white men on the couches.<br />
<br />
I wanted to get up and punch those men, and I wanted to help the girls tasked with tending to their perverted needs. I wasn't exactly sure how I could help those girls, but the yearning to help them nonetheless made me feel proud. The yearning started to grow, so much so that I actually started to get up from seat, but then my food arrived.<br />
<br />
The steam rising from the plate struck my face and immediately made it sweat. I took my first bite. The food was delicious. I took my second and third, but was prevented from taking a fourth bite when I looked up and saw a familiar face sitting in the vacant chair across from me.<br />
<br />
"Hello."<br />
<br />
It was the same girl I could have possessed on the dance floor just by touching her arm.<br />
<br />
I did not want to talk with my mouth full, so I chewed and swallowed my food quickly. Afterwards, I took a sip from the bottle of beer that accompanied my meal, and said hello back.<br />
<br />
"How are you?" she said.<br />
<br />
"I'm good," I replied.<br />
<br />
She leaned back in her chair and smiled.<br />
<br />
I looked at my plate of food, and despite the heat in the air, I knew it was getting cold, so I took another bite, followed by another. I looked up and noticed the woman not looking, but gazing at the food.<br />
<br />
"Are you hungry?" I asked.<br />
<br />
"Yes."<br />
<br />
Her answer was unabashed, so I slid the plate over to the other side of the small table.<br />
<br />
"Would you like a different fork?" I asked.<br />
<br />
She laughed, and considering the nature of the bar, it didn't take me long to understand why.<br />
<br />
The young woman ate ravenously.<br />
<br />
As I watched her eat, I started to realize that I was actually in the kind of place I read about in books and have seen on documentaries. But instead of doing what I always thought I would do if I was ever in a place like that I did nothing but nearly succumb to its temptations and get a meal. <br />
<br />
After she took the final bite the young woman thanked me so genuinely it made me feel like I had saved the world.<br />
<br />
She told me she was from Siem Reap, and had many sisters, a mother, a father, and grandparents who depended on her. She said she was offered a job as a waitress in Phnom Penh and it paid well, better than anything available in Siem Reap. She took the job, but as soon as she arrived she was met by two men who put her to work in the bar that same night and every night since.<br />
<br />
"How long ago was that?" I asked.<br />
<br />
She shrugged her shoulders and said, "I don't remember."<br />
<br />
I leaned back in my chair.<br />
<br />
She told me she made enough money to send back to her family, and that was all that mattered. <br />
<br />
"How much do you make a night?" I asked.<br />
<br />
"About ten dollars," she replied. "It's a lot."<br />
<br />
I pulled out my wallet, handed her ten dollars, and said, "Now you're paid for the night."<br />
<br />
She smiled, got up, and sat on my lap.<br />
<br />
"I'm all yours," she said. "Do you have a room? I can do many things I know men like."<br />
<br />
The thought was alluring, but the taste was bitter. I shook my head in an attempt to get the images of what I could do with her out of my mind.<br />
<br />
"No, no," I said. "Tonight, you don't have to do that. I actually just want to hang out with you and talk."<br />
<br />
She started looking around with an expression of confusion and surprise that made me question if what I was doing had ever happened to her before, or if it happened often and she was just doing what she had practiced in order to make me think it had never happened before. <br />
<br />
She got up from my lap and sat back on her chair.<br />
<br />
"Are you still hungry?" I asked.<br />
<br />
She pursed her lips and nodded.<br />
<br />
I looked at the menu and asked her what she would like, and considering the most expensive item was no more than five dollars, I did not care what she picked.<br />
<br />
She chose a chicken dish and told me it was her favorite, so I ordered the same for myself. <br />
<br />
When the food arrived she started eating like the meal I gave her earlier had never existed, and in between bites, we continued talking. She told me about her family, and how needy they were. She told me about the bar, and how girls constantly came and went, and how she didn't know where they came from, or where they ended up after they left.<br />
<br />
I told her a bar like this should be closed. I said it was wrong, horrible, disgusting. I said what she was going through, what many of the young women were going through, was slavery. I told her the chains needed to be broken. I felt better as the words grew more intense, but that feeling disappeared when I saw what looked like pain on her face, as if I were driving a knife deeper and deeper into her gut.<br />
<br />
"Why would you say that?" she said. "Without this bar, girls like me would have no way to feed our families."<br />
<br />
"But you shouldn't have to feed your family," I replied. "You shouldn't have to worry about that. You're so young. You should only have to worry about enjoying your life."<br />
<br />
I was about to ask her how old she actually was, but feared the answer too much to do so.<br />
<br />
She just smiled. <br />
<br />
I turned to the velvet couches where a different old, fat, white man sat, and two different young Cambodian girls in virtually no clothing sat on each one of his obese legs, rubbing his protruding belly like he was a perverted genie withholding their wish. He had both of his hands around their waists, squeezing them, exploring as much of their upper bodies as he could with his fingers. I shook my head and turned back to the young woman seated across from me.<br />
<br />
"Look at that," I said. "I want to go over there and punch that guy in the face. He is disgusting."<br />
<br />
"They will hit you," she replied.<br />
<br />
"I don't care," I said. "That will just give me more reason to keep punching him."<br />
<br />
She took another bite of her chicken, chewed it, and replied, "Not him, the two girls, they will hit you."<br />
<br />
"Why would they hit me?" I said. "I would have stopped him from groping them."<br />
<br />
"No," she replied in between yet another bite of her second dinner, "you would have stopped him from paying them money they would have sent back to their families."<br />
<br />
After we both finished our meals, she smiled at me and said, "I want to take you somewhere."<br />
<br />
"You don't have to do that with me," I replied, feeling good about the words and even better after I realized I genuinely believed them.<br />
<br />
"No," she said, "it's somewhere fun, a party. Do you want to come with me?"<br />
<br />
I agreed, but only after repeating she did not have to worry about satisfying me in any anyway, which made me feel even better.<br />
<br />
The bill came. I looked at it and shook my head. Two full dinners for what I made in less than twenty minutes at my job back home. I paid, and made sure to leave a tip that I thought was big based on the percentage it covered, but couldn't help but feel was small based on the amount itself.<br />
<br />
We left the large bar and took a taxi ride that lasted about ten minutes, and cost less than two dollars.<br />
<br />
We walked into a bar that was much smaller than the one we had just left, and as soon as I walked in the young woman darted off into the crowd. I lost sight of her after just a few seconds. <br />
<br />
Standing alone, I gazed at what looked like at least forty, maybe fifty young women who were all dressed like the one who had brought me there. They were all dancing, but not in a way that was intended for display. Instead, many of them were hugging each other, laughing with each other, and talking to each other in their own language as they danced. They looked like they were having a great time. <br />
<br />
There were few men in the bar, and of those few men, even fewer were foreign. I counted only two, and one of them was me. The other one was talking to a young woman who had distanced herself from the dancing group. I took a few steps to get closer, curious about what they were talking about.<br />
<br />
When I got close enough to hear the foreign man and young Cambodian woman, I was surprised to hear them both speaking Khmer. The man spoke so fluently that I believed he was either born there, or had learned the language after what had to be at least a few years living there. Either way, he was not as foreign as he seemed.<br />
<br />
I felt a tap on my shoulder. I turned, and the young woman I came with held up a big bottle of beer.<br />
<br />
"I bought this for you," she said.<br />
<br />
"You didn't have to do that," I said. "I could have bought it."<br />
<br />
I immediately regretted what I said after seeing an expression of regret appear on her face after I said it. <br />
<br />
"But you were so nice to me," she replied, "so I wanted to get it for you. Plus, it's a party, and a party is always more fun with beer."<br />
<br />
The night was hot and humid, and the beer was cold and refreshing, and went down like glacial water.<br />
<br />
The young woman and I danced, talked and laughed the night away. She introduced me to other young women who worked in the same bar as her, or bars just like it, and it quickly became clear that the bar she had taken me to was where young women like her went to unwind after work. I was flattered she had taken me there, and did my best to not make her look bad for doing so. <br />
<br />
By the end of the night my legs were achy. Meanwhile, the young woman started yawning constantly.<br />
<br />
"Where do you live?" I asked.<br />
<br />
"Very far," she replied in the middle of yet another yawn.<br />
<br />
"How far?" I asked.<br />
<br />
"About an hour outside of the city," she said.<br />
<br />
"You look tired," I said.<br />
<br />
She nodded.<br />
<br />
"Why don't you come back with me to my hostel? It's closer, and the bed is big and actually very comfortable. You can get some sleep."<br />
<br />
She smiled.<br />
<br />
"And don't worry," I said. "You don't have to do anything when we get there."<br />
<br />
I wasn't sure if I said that to reassure her or myself, but she agreed. We caught a taxi, and in about ten minutes we reached the hostel where I was staying. I wasn't sure if I was even allowed to bring people into my room, especially prostitutes, so we walked in quietly and quickly passed by the sleeping security guard.<br />
<br />
As soon as we entered my room, the tiredness from the long night set in. We both kicked off our shoes, I took off my shirt, and we fell on the bed. I turned on the air conditioning, and she fell asleep almost immediately. I was astounded at how deep her sleep was. It was the kind of sleep a person has after walking a hundred miles because they had no other choice. <br />
<br />
I turned toward her. Slightly inebriated, but by no means drunk, I nonetheless felt the kind of pleasant warmth those who drink know all too well, and in spite of the young woman's dancing and subsequent sweating she still smelled great. I inched a little closer to her. And just like in the first bar, on the dance floor, I knew all I had to do was touch her arm, and she would be mine. <br />
<br />
I wondered what it would feel like kissing her, touching her, and having her. I could feel myself getting aroused, but then shame crawled back over me. I knew if I did what a part of me wanted to do it would undo everything I had done up to that point. So I turned away from her and faded away into sleep, but not before questioning if I was a good man for resisting the urges I had or a bad man for having them in the first place. <br />
<br />
Hours later, we both woke up. She turned toward me and smiled. <br />
<br />
"Thank you," she said.<br />
<br />
"For what?" I replied.<br />
<br />
"For last night," she said, "and for letting me sleep. I was so tired."<br />
<br />
"I had an amazing time with you last night," I replied, "so thank you."<br />
<br />
She got out of bed. The room was still dark, so she looked just like she looked throughout the previous night. It wasn't until we both stepped out of the room and made our way out of the hostel that I finally got to see her, really see her, under the light of the burgeoning sun. She looked much different. Her skin looked rougher compared to how smooth it appeared in the darkness of the bar. And despite the deep sleep she just had, she still looked tired, so unbelievably tired.<br />
<br />
"Thanks again," she said.<br />
<br />
"You're welcome," I replied.<br />
<br />
She turned and walked away. <br />
<br />
Still tired, but knowing I would never be as tired as her, I returned to my room and thought about her. I thought about all she had told me, about all she had taught me. I thought about the beer she bought for me out of the money I gave her. I wasn't sure if she had played me for a chump, and I honestly didn't care. All I knew was that I gave a young woman at least one night where she didn't have to sexually satisfy a man who deemed her body worth no more than ten dollars, and that made me feel good.<br />
<br />
Hours later, I woke up, and the first thing I tried to do was recall the young woman's name, but I couldn't do it. Days later, when I left Cambodia and entered Thailand, where I enjoyed the beautiful beaches of the country's southern islands, her face faded from memory as well. And on the long flight home, when the young woman was no more than a story, I started to question if she meant as much to me as I originally thought, or if she only meant as much as the ten dollars I gave her that night in the bar.<br />
<br />
*<br />
<br />
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<i>Jonathan R. Rose was born and raised in Scarborough, Ontario. He has lived in Mexico City, Mexico for five years and is currently living in Buenos Aires, Argentina. He published his first novel, </i>Carrion <i>in 2015 with Montag Press, and has also published several short stories. "A Nameless Night in Cambodia," was based on an actual night in Phnom Penh that has stuck with him for many years and that's what compelled him to write about it, and he would like to thank The Danforth Review for helping him share it.</i><br />
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<i><a href="https://www.facebook.com/JonathanRRose/">https://www.facebook.com/JonathanRRose/ </a></i>danforth reviewhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02064152430492680561noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2564733539116511601.post-83418594216236712232018-03-14T20:40:00.002-04:002018-03-15T20:12:04.622-04:00Fiction #77: Linda Hutsell-Manning<b><i>Balancing Act</i></b><br />
<br />
Margaret is sure the place will be packed. A controversial film in its day Jan, the local librarian decided, with North Korea threatening nuclear war and Trump tweeting insanities, dusting off <i>The Day After </i>would be timely. In 1983, 100 million people watched the world end, making it the highest-rated TV film in history. Back then, Margaret was immersed in Beowulf and Whitman, too busy with graduate studies to watch TV, unaware of nuclear build up or the Doomsday clock. With no internet, it was a brief horror that came and faded into obscurity. Now, one click warns impending doom, the clock’s hands hovering, the librarian says, at two and a half minutes to midnight. <br />
<br />
So why is the turnout less than twenty? Jan says it’s about what she expected. <br />
<br />
No one speaks when it’s over. They file out quickly with only the odd whisper, nervous giggle. Margaret tries to remember why it is she came in the first place - her well-honed guilt over things she can’t control - acquaintances reminding her that, because she’s a writer and cares about the planet, she should see the film? <br />
<br />
Now she’s transfixed, impaled with facts and horrors about nuclear war - information she can do nothing about but feels compelled to act upon. Horrific possibilities, Hiroshima revisited. She’s always being told she’s too emotional, too sensitive. The published author of a number of successful children’s books, she writes whimsical stories that keep her demons and traumatic childhood at bay. She has chosen to ignore her past and it’s working. Most of the time. When violence directly confronts her, however, rationality peels off, layer by layer down to raw nerve endings. The film has pulled her into an emotional barbed wire tunnel, forcing her to crawl.<br />
<br />
A heady autumn afternoon greets her. Maple trees line the street, their brilliant colors splashing the landscape. She knows she must walk the horror off, like a drunk, one step at a time; concentrate on cars, houses, people, concrete objects that will disperse the black and white images of annihilation.<br />
<br />
A young woman and a small child approach - a cherubic blonde boy, his short arm held vertical in his mother's swinging hand. She carries library books; he chatters incessantly. His childish anticipation is obvious, infectious.<br />
<br />
It isn't until the two of them are in front of her that Margaret sees the bandage - a clean white patch over the child’s eye.<br />
<i></i><br />
<i>Red-leaved maple trees blaze even redder. The woman and child stand blackened and burned, the bandage filthy and ripped. They stared at her in mute horror, whites of their eyes multiplying into stricken eyes from the film.</i><br />
<i></i><br />
For an instant she thinks she’ll scream, but the Dantean instant is swallowed with their heels clicking on the sidewalk. Margaret clenches her fingernails into her palms until pain reminds her where and who she is: part of the human race, linked to life as a mother, wife, lover, one who has nurtured, comforted, protected. Gender binds her to approximately fifty percent of the human race, fifty percent who should resist what the film warns could be the world's approaching annihilation, the cold clicking of the nuclear clock. Her pain dulls slightly. She breathes deeply and concentrates on the side walk.<br />
<br />
Mundane but necessary details of her life filter in as a temporary haven. She’s a writer, has readings, deadlines to say nothing of the endless myriad of homemaking responsibilities. She set this morning aside, apart from career and family, only to feel now that the film’s prognosis could destroy both, the kaleidoscope patterns of her life shattering into small plastic-coloured pieces at her feet.<br />
<br />
In exasperation, she discovers she has walked full circle, past her parked car and around the block back to the library. By this afternoon, her children will be home from high school, full of anecdotes, impending deadlines, hopes, frustrations. As she retraces her steps and turns on the car ignition, the film narrator's voice intrudes. <br />
<br />
<i>You will be indeed fortunate if you are with your loved ones.</i><br />
<i></i><br />
The sound of the car engine pushes the voice back. Tonight is one of the few times they will all be together, the end of the school and work week.<br />
<br />
Turning into her driveway, their solid brick house seems suddenly frail. She ignores the relentless attention of two cats and an aging dog, retreats to her third floor office and types in Doomsday clock. Thirty years ago is not now. She needs to know. Google dutifully co-operates with an interminable list of articles and prophecies about current nuclear buildup and political unrest. She has less than an hour before her family arrives home.<br />
<br />
In a recent article in The Washington Post, Dan Zak tells her that “according to International Physicians for the Prevention of Nuclear War, the detonation of 100 nuclear warheads — there are about 15,000 on the planet right now — could kill 2 billion people.”<br />
<br />
Peter their eldest, will arrive on his motorcycle, tired and work-worn from a job he plans to endure until he can finance more education. He’ll harangue the cost of fuel, his perceived necessities, how they deplete his bank account, threaten his future.<br />
<br />
Hillary Clinton has warned that trigger-happy Trump is liable to press the nuclear button. According to Zac “there is no button. It’s a briefcase that follows the US president everywhere: onto Air Force One, onto the golf course, onto elevators. Inside is a manual for conducting nuclear war. A how-to in case of. The briefcase is aluminum, 45 pounds and clad in leather.”* <br />
<br />
Andy in grade twelve, will burst in, rapid firing the day's events, complaining about demands of his part-time job, wanting assurance about taking a year off to work before leaving for university and architecture.<br />
<br />
“Carrying the briefcase is a job shared among five military aides, one from each branch of the U.S. armed forces. The manual inside is more like a takeout menu, but instead of picking between numbered Chinese dishes, the president would choose cities or military installations in, say, Russia or China (or both) to attack.” <br />
<br />
Kathleen, the youngest, unaware of the beauty radiating from her youthful body, the power and perception of her own mind, will alternately ask advice and parade independence. No definite plans, only endless possibilities.<br />
<br />
“It’s more complicated in real life, but not less scary. To authorize an attack, the president would use a card of verification codes that is, ideally, on his person at all times. The briefcase is referred to as “the football,” the card as “the biscuit.”<br />
<br />
Margaret returns downstairs to peel potatoes, concentrate on oven temperature and table setting. Right on cue, all three children storm into the kitchen, depositing belongings in her work path, full of demanding chatter: vibrant glowing bodies, reflections of herself, her husband, their own uniqueness. Margaret drinks it all in, asks too many questions, hugs each once too often. One by one, they ask her quietly if she's had a bad day. Can they do anything to help? <br />
<br />
“At the president’s disposal right now are a little over 900 nuclear warheads deployed on various “delivery vehicles” around the planet. Some sit atop missiles buried in the ground in Montana, North Dakota, Wyoming, Nebraska and Colorado. Some are carried by submarines that are patrolling the North Atlantic and Western Pacific. Others are ready to be loaded onto aircraft in Missouri, North Dakota, Belgium, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands and Turkey.”<br />
<br />
Margaret has pushed her pain into a tight ball and secured it but, at the touch of a warm hand on her shoulder or the sound of a concerned whisper in her ear, it threatens to escape. She laughs a lot, rough-houses Kathleen, pretends she’s fine. Several times their youthful exuberance is almost more than she can bear. Self control may well be sanity’s bottom line.<br />
<br />
“Some of these warheads can be launched within minutes of the president’s order, hit anywhere in the world within a half hour, and deliver 20 times the explosive force of the bomb dropped on Hiroshima. The president can order this without consulting Congress, without being checked by the Supreme Court.”<br />
<br />
She locks herself in the bathroom and turning on both taps, sobs into a towel. Later, face splashed pain clean, she calls shakily up the stairs that she’s going to pick up Russell at the commuter bus, home after a week in the city. Andy's loud rock station provides a convenient diversion. She knows they sense her inner turbulence and have retreated to their respective rooms.<br />
<br />
The resplendent afternoon has dwindled into a dour grey evening. Russell is tired and says little on the way home. His 'how are you' and kiss on the cheek turns her instantly into a plastic mannequin whose tough exterior emanates anger masquerading hidden pain. Why, when she is turmoil, does she want least comfort? As if she needs pain and hoards it, embellishes it. Margaret translates Russell's silence into indifference. <br />
<br />
“There have been a number of almost mistakes. In 1961, a B-52 bomber broke up over North Carolina and dropped two warheads to the earth; each had the potential to explode with the force of 200-plus Hiroshimas.”<br />
<br />
Once home, the children rush down to kidnap Russell’s attention. Margaret bangs things in the kitchen, pretending she doesn't mind. She’s draining pasta when Kathleen bursts in with 'look what Dad's brought you'. Flowers from a street side vendor hidden in his briefcase. The lurch in her chest makes half the spaghetti slide into the sink.<br />
<br />
Kathleen hands her the bouquet and, steering her toward the cupboard for a vase, tells her she’ll take over in the kitchen. Margaret knows she’s close to losing control. She lectures herself with the ‘good home, kind husband, healthy children, successful author’ lecture. Once in the dining room with the flowers, she notices a bottle of wine on the table. Russell, outwardly unresponsive, is still wonderfully kind and generous. She hasn't even combed her hair or put on lipstick. She could still but, instead, pours a glass of wine and sits down. <br />
<br />
“In 1979, Carter’s national security adviser, Zbigniew Brzezinski, was told that hundreds of missiles were on their way from the Soviet Union; a minute before he called the president to coordinate a devastating response, he was told that the military had misinterpreted a training exercise.”<br />
In the living room, Russell and the boys carry on their usual frenetic conversation, Peter, on one side, into serious details concerning motorcycles while Andy, on the other, pontificates a Chemistry problem. Russell always seems to enjoy this, the back and forth bantering, a three way verbal fencing match.<br />
<br />
Kathleen calls from the kitchen that she needs assistance and, moments later, Margaret's family stream in around her gallantly bearing the feast. They never ask directly but they always seem to sense her fragility. Margaret can’t be sure whether it’s their astuteness or her transparency. The children have seen the film - Kathleen said she and Andy watched it at school earlier that week. They survived. Why can't she?<br />
<br />
“In 1983 and 1995, Moscow came within minutes of retaliating against false alarms — the first prompted by sunlight reflecting off clouds, the second by a NASA research rocket.”<br />
<br />
She knows she’s too quiet at supper but her quiescence lets Russell monopolize the children. She feels their energy wash over him, watches him drawn into spirited discussions and rivalry. It soothes her, a momentary respite.<br />
<br />
Afterward, Russell builds a fire in the Franklin stove and turns on the radio. On Friday nights, their ceremony involves sitting a guarded distance from one another, each recounting the week's events, putting out silent antennae to re-establish a relationship polarized by the week's separation.<br />
<br />
“In 2007, six warheads were mistakenly flown from North Dakota to Louisiana before anyone realized that nuclear weapons had been in the air over the United States.”<br />
<br />
Still Margaret says nothing about the film, and Russell, sensing her self-imposed distancing, retreats into the newspaper. She watches him, his strong features, large sensuous mouth - she’s adored him since they first met. Adored, and at times, hated him, often at the same time for the same reasons. He still has such a pull on her, even after thirty-three years.<br />
<br />
“The Doomsday Clock, a symbolic estimation of global peril, has ticked closer to the midnight of Armageddon since 2010. It was six minutes to midnight then. In 2012, the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists moved the clock to five minutes to midnight. In 2013, to three.” Since Trump and Kim Jong-un have begun sparring, two and a half.<br />
<br />
The fluid-voiced radio announcer says twelve cellists from the Berlin Philharmonic will play the Beatles' <i>Yesterday</i>, a taped concert with the audience clapping passionately as soon as they recognize the piece. She can see them - twelve cellists of international stature, alone on stage, twelve sets of strings in plaintive ritual, the voice of humanity. As the piece ends, audience response is tumultuous.<br />
<br />
Margaret stares at the crackling fire licking seductively at the blackening wood. Why are they clapping? Music is nothing but a drug to lull them, art a distraction from death’s reality. The artist, and she includes herself, is no more than a propagator of lies, lulling a humanity that could, within minutes, turn into indifferent gasses, mutilation.<br />
<br />
The cellos begin again. She drifts into their melancholy. A piece of wood snaps violently, sending a spark through the grate. Margaret jumps up to snuff it out and is impaled by sound and flame. <br />
<i></i><br />
<i>To be instantly dead. To be vaporized. But no, she would be burned and blinded, left groping through the rubble. Cold, sleet, wet snow. The sound of pain everywhere. Death dancing off to one side, mocking burned flesh, protruding bones.</i><br />
<i></i><br />
The cellos play on, tripping across notes until audience applause and the commentator's voice pull her back into the room.<br />
<br />
Russell looks up from his reading. "Going to sit down again?" His voice runs down her spine but the pain tells her that loving him right now is weakness.<br />
<br />
"Margaret?"<br />
<br />
She sinks down against his male presence, momentarily aware that the film's finality may not be inevitable, that this reality is still possible.<br />
<br />
He places his hand on her knee and runs it up the inside of her leg, turning her pain to instant lust. She wants to ravage him right there on the couch. Impossible, of course, as the children could appear at any moment. Lust snaps back to pain and a voice reminds her she is not worthy of enjoyment, happiness, that her purgatory has not yet played out.<br />
<br />
"Let's go to bed." He’s either unaware of the shift or ignores it.<br />
<br />
"I should let the dog out."<br />
<br />
As they stand, Russell grasps her shoulders firmly, gazes at her. "I love you," he says quietly, then disappears up the stairs. Numbness has set in, her body's reaction to anguish overload. She’s tired and it’s too heavy. <br />
<br />
Margaret stands in the doorway watching the dog sniff his way into the evening's damp grass. An over-ripe moon hangs low on the horizon, the sky star-speckled. From the doorway, she watches his dark form move along the front hedge, faintly hears TV sounds from inside. The children have stayed home this evening - must be a good movie. She whistles for the dog but he’s ignoring her, on nightly patrol. <br />
<br />
That a two hour film should have such an effect on her is irrational. Is she going mad? Middle aged women do that sort of thing - one of the escape hatches. To escape what: A wonderful husband, three talented vibrant children, continuing book sales, a good middle-class life with more love, more comfort than she ever dreamed of as a child?<br />
<br />
No. To escape herself, though at this point, she is not ready to admit it, that invisible line of black pain that shadows wherever she goes, whatever she does. It tags onto things, situations, people, wrenching her into knots, distorting reality. The film is exactly the kind of thing it feeds on. <br />
<br />
She turns on the porch light and steps outside, listening to the TV’s drone, the dog sniffing somewhere in a distant flowerbed. She imagines Russell's body outlined under the sheets, waiting. <i>You will indeed be fortunate if you are with your loved ones</i>. The pain snaps and she spins into it again. It would be best if it happened now while they are together in the house. They could comfort each other. Ridiculous because nothing is going to happen. She’s locked into a mental pattern that insists she must simulate pain in order to fully understand. Understand what and why?<br />
<br />
Physical pain for herself she can manage, being acquainted with its power, something to be endured, fought against, ultimately mastered. But this pain would be for everyone - her own beautiful children, almost grown, yet a mere breath from being infants gazing with trusting eyes. She thinks of children clustered around her feet at libraries and schools, so easily enraptured by fantasies she spins for them. <br />
<br />
<i>Thousands of faces watching, waiting. Their bones to litter a dead earth gone mad in pursuit of power.</i><br />
<i></i><br />
The sound of a piano sonata drifts now into the night air, Kathleen playing the piano. One of life’s miracles, watching talent spring from her children, abilities she can only dream of. Notes drift through the darkness to surround her, demanding she acknowledge the life flowing through them - Kathleen's young arms, strong fingers, the dip and scratch of a pen transcribing the original manuscript - all reborn through the yellowed keys of their old upright. Kathleen, woman-child sitting at the piano, nurtured and loved, waiting for life to begin. <br />
<br />
<i>Only the blackened ivories of the piano remain, askew against a projecting section of the stone foundation. The pen, the sound, the hand swallowed like the ozone layer, evaporated into a cold, dead earth.</i><br />
<i></i><br />
The wind picks up and a sharp gust chills her face, throwing dead leaves in drunken swirls across the light-streaked lawn. Calling the dog again, she moves into shadow, squints to locate his moving form. In the back corner of the yard where autumn-weary flowers lay flattened in their beds, she sees the dog’s tail thumping furiously. At the sound of her footsteps, he turns to nose her legs, his body rippling with anticipation. “What is it?” she says, giving his back a pat. “Find a treasure?” He dives forward again and she bends over to see he’s discovered a small lifeless form. “It’s dead,” she says, turning away. “Come on, now, time to go in.” The dog noses her again, bends toward the small lifeless shape.<br />
<i></i><br />
<i>A dead bird on the blackened earth.</i><br />
<i></i><br />
She stands impaled like a moth, staring at the thing. She could get a shovel and bury or leave it. What difference will it make? Drawn by the dog’s seeming urgency, she bends down to take a closer look and notices a slight opening and closing of its yellow-edged beak. She picks it up, cupping her hand around its faint heartbeat, a fall migration casualty, survival only for the fittest.<br />
<br />
Margaret has rescued birds before, more than she cares to remember, but always in the spring or early summer when baskets or boxes can be rigged on clothes lines or window ledges. She can't take it in the house, not with two cats, not this time of year.<br />
<br />
She walks toward bushes alongside the house, the dog following close behind. Light from the window spills onto the lawn, the branches black beneath. If she leaves the bird underneath this thick foliage, it will be out of wind and rain to survive or not. As she tips her hand under the bush, the bird, which to this point has remained perfectly still and listless, clamps its overly-long claws around her finger. She pushes gently with her other hand. The grip increases.<br />
<br />
"I can't take you inside," she says, pulling her hand back, staring at its small grey body. The bird opens hooded lids, staring back. Something snaps then, like a door opening unexpectedly, its back draft dissolving the afternoon’s apocalypse, closing to restore sanity. <br />
<br />
The bird opens and closes its beak again, more precisely this time. "All right," Margaret whispers, "you win," and only after she tucks the bird inside her open jacket, will it release its claws from her finger to rest in her hand. For tonight, she’ll make a place for it in the basement furnace room. With luck, tomorrow it will be able to fly. <br />
<br />
The visceral effects of the film have slipped back into the screen, the Doomsday clock’s ticking lost in the night wind. Just before reaching the porch, over Kathleen’s piano chords and the TV’s drone, Margaret hears a faint chirping that resonates into her fingertips.<br />
<br />
*<br />
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiCvTjydBMM5htPoMn53hxw0TPyuiEQihRSEC515J03FjcbZwa5Z4ZQbctuc6zgsBMWJdhRamicJW_A69DLDzYvCaKfPgrVGk8lgDdKe0-tyOFGIpnYM0Z1SwLKXL58CIFnZ3CHEqsmuuqf/s1600/Linda+Dec+2017.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="168" data-original-width="161" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiCvTjydBMM5htPoMn53hxw0TPyuiEQihRSEC515J03FjcbZwa5Z4ZQbctuc6zgsBMWJdhRamicJW_A69DLDzYvCaKfPgrVGk8lgDdKe0-tyOFGIpnYM0Z1SwLKXL58CIFnZ3CHEqsmuuqf/s1600/Linda+Dec+2017.jpg" /></a></div>
<i><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; display: inline; float: none; font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 16px; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; letter-spacing: normal; text-align: left; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;">Quotes from Dan Zak’s article “Nervous About Nukes Again? </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; display: inline; float: none; font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 16px; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; letter-spacing: normal; text-align: left; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;">Here’s What You Need to Know About The Button.</span></i><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; display: inline; float: none; font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 16px; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; letter-spacing: normal; text-align: left; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;"><i> (There is no button)” 3 August 2016 </i>The Washington Post. </span><br />
<div>
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; display: inline; float: none; font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 16px; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; letter-spacing: normal; text-align: left; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;"><a href="http://www.lindahutsellmanning.ca/"><i></i><br /></a></span></div>
<div>
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; display: inline; float: none; font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 16px; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; letter-spacing: normal; text-align: left; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;"></span><b></b><u></u><sub></sub><sup></sup><i><a href="http://www.lindahutsellmanning.ca/">Linda Hutsell-Manning</a> has eleven published children’s books as well as short fiction and poetry in Grain, Quarry, lichen, Litwit Review, Prairie Journal Trust & The Danforth Review. Her latest novel is That Summer in Franklin, Second Story Press. In 2017, a play, A Certain Singing Teacher, was premiered; “Finding Moufette”, a children’s story, published online, Common Deer Press and an excerpt from her memoir re teaching in a one room school in the 1960's, published in Hill Spirits III by Blue Denim Press. She is currently completing this memoir.</i></div>
<strike></strike><strike></strike><i></i><br />danforth reviewhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02064152430492680561noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2564733539116511601.post-71406119687701081962018-01-31T20:07:00.000-05:002018-01-31T20:07:37.243-05:00TDR's 2018 Journey Prize SubmissionsTDR has submitted three stories to the <a href="https://www.facebook.com/TheJourneyPrize/">2018 Writers' Trust / McClelland & Stewart Journey Prize</a>:<br />
<ul>
<li><a href="http://thedanforthreview.blogspot.ca/2017/01/fiction-71-sandra-maxson.html">The Fire</a> by Sandra Maxson</li>
<li><a href="http://thedanforthreview.blogspot.ca/2017/09/fiction-74-kathryn-mockler.html">The Job Interview: A Murder</a> by Kathryn Mockler</li>
<li><a href="http://thedanforthreview.blogspot.ca/2017/01/fiction-71-michelle-boone.html">Full Submission</a> by Michelle Boone</li>
</ul>
Fingers crossed! And best wishes to all involved in this process.<br />
<br />
<br />Michael Brysonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00816850668522214805noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2564733539116511601.post-13973296099950342802018-01-07T18:59:00.000-05:002018-01-07T18:59:29.212-05:00Fiction #76New fiction! Issue #76<br />
<ul>
<li><a href="http://thedanforthreview.blogspot.ca/2018/01/fiction-76-liz-betz.html">Afterimage</a> by Liz Betz </li>
<li><a href="http://thedanforthreview.blogspot.ca/2018/01/fiction-76-nick-rayner.html">A Hand Cuts Through The Smoke</a> by Nick Rayner </li>
<li><a href="http://thedanforthreview.blogspot.ca/2018/01/fiction-76-robert-lake.html">A Suture in Time</a> by Robert Lake </li>
</ul>
Submissions now open for #77!<br />
<br />
Special thanks to all who have been submitting. Enjoy. <br />
<br />
<br />Michael Brysonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00816850668522214805noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2564733539116511601.post-91463493957520478612018-01-07T18:54:00.002-05:002018-01-07T22:51:30.556-05:00Fiction #76: Liz Betz<b><i>Afterimage</i></b><br />
<b><i><br /></i></b>
It’s the middle of a moonless night in November when Yvonne turns off the yard light. The shabby farmyard disappears from sight, but the unspeakable afterimage remains. The only answer then, is to turn off her thoughts. But there are bright stars in the shroud of darkness that evoke an old memory. <br />
<br />
She’s sung good-night to those same stars for her son. <br />
<br />
Kev loved the bedtime game; his innocence sparkled. Twinkle, please twinkle. He would beg all day. Kev, of course, never understood how a person could go mad with twinkle, forever without end, twinkle. <br />
<br />
Without end, this madness is like a particular dream where she serves beer after beer to demanding customers. But it is no dream when she shows up for work earlier that day. <br />
<br />
Stan looks at her. <br />
<br />
“You haven’t had much sleep, have you? I’d close up and take you home, if it weren’t for the live music.” His voice suggests lullabies and flannel warmed slumber. <br />
<br />
Yvonne shakes her head and turns away. He’d better not go any further. He’d better not offer her a shoulder to cry on. Stan might want to be with her, but that means he would share her burdens. He has no idea what it is to parent Kev. Even Kev’s own father didn’t last. <br />
<br />
“I guess the band is a nameless wonder,” Stan says as Yvonne forces her eyes from the Christmas lights, her brain caught for a moment by the blinking, color changing cycle. Stan explains how the musicians want everyone to suggest names. <br />
<br />
“That’s why they have set up the decorated blackboard and provided chalk.”<br />
<br />
A squeal, like barb-wire stretching, comes from the amplifier. Yvonne shivers as if the sound is a prophecy.<br />
<br />
“Am I supposed to get people to participate?” She asks, unable to understand any new detail of the job, her sharpness worn away. Kev is still missing. It’s almost three days. <br />
<br />
“No. Don’t worry about it.” Stan says. “I’m glad you’re here. You shouldn’t be alone.” <br />
<br />
“Maybe I won’t be any use.” <br />
<br />
Despite her words Yvonne picks up a tray, wincing a little because of her wrist. She’s lucky it isn’t broken.<br />
<br />
“We’ll manage,” Stan says. “I’ll know soon enough what everyone is drinking.”<br />
<br />
Yvonne goes to answer a drinker’s wave. She knows these people, knows this place. After three and a half years, she can tell which patrons are alcoholics or those here for short term relief. The ones that she doesn’t want to think about; the ones that touch her soul, have this look of going under. A reality, she sometimes believes, close to her own. <br />
<br />
Once, to make her smile, Stan said ‘reality is a crutch for people who can’t handle their addictions.’ That’s Stan. His outlook always hearty, his manner kind, he’s done his best during Kev’s disappearance. She’s grateful but Yvonne is still as empty as last weekend’s beer keg. Overturned to drain. <br />
<br />
There is a group, friends of the band, who are close to the right age. They might know something of Kev. Her heart leaps and then collapses with pain sharper than no hope at all. Why would they know anything, even if they were her son’s classmates? These kids have no handicaps and no concern for anyone but themselves; to expect anything from them is a trip down hopeless avenue. <br />
<br />
She takes their order and starts back. <br />
<br />
“You look like shit.” <br />
<br />
Her brother would have to be here. Yvonne’s intent had been to pass by where he sat with his cronies. Maybe then she wouldn’t tell him off, or call him a useless bastard. When she doesn’t stop, Sonny calls after her. <br />
<br />
“What did you expect me to do? The police said Kev was all right.” <br />
<br />
At least she doesn’t have to explain why she’s pissed with him. <br />
<br />
“Really sis?” he says before she is out of earshot. “Kev’s legally an adult. That means he’s too old to be brought home by the police. If you don’t get that, maybe you’re the hopeless case.” <br />
<br />
Sonny looks to his table mates for approval but their attention is caught by something in their lap, or across the room. They don’t challenge his words but that non-action is a different thing than respect. <br />
<br />
At the counter, Yvonne listens as Stan explains a drink order but when he asks how she’s doing, hot tears gush into her eyes. Stan lips are tight as he looks out at the drinkers. <br />
<br />
“Forget your brother. It would break his mind to admit he’s wrong.” <br />
<br />
That is all he says but somehow his words move Yvonne on. No one is a hopeless case. It’s complicated being Kev’s mother. There is a snarl of guilt as she tries to protect and yet not kill his spirit. <br />
<br />
Sonny means to help. He is so sure he has the answer for them when the programs for Kev end. ‘Let him be a farmer, get some pigs, there’s pens at the old place, both of you can live there. Kev can hang around with me and learn the ropes. What do you say Sis? Do you have a better plan?’<br />
<br />
She hadn’t. But before Sonny does any real good he explodes with her and Kev; his way or the highway. The example seemed to unleash something in Kev; from then on his temper becomes worse. <br />
<br />
This assessment is true, but for now Yvonne needs to focus on her work. She arrives at another table. A hand reaches out and pats hers. <br />
<br />
“Have you heard from Kev? We’re all praying for his safe return.” The woman half stands, as though she’s going to give a hug. <br />
<br />
Yvonne blinks against her tears. She has long ago soured on such bungling kindness but this is unexpected. She brushes her eyes with her sleeve before she sets the bottles down. <br />
<br />
“I just have to hang in here.” She supplies the words that are the only ones she will take. “Or keep it together. Eh?” Then to distract she asks if they’ve a name for the band. <br />
<br />
Apparently someone has. Unknown Bandits is written on the blackboard. Yvonne sees Sonny stomping towards the band. His voice booms through the bar. <br />
<br />
“Ain’t no name for a band, because it ain’t no joke. Thieves are picking on this community. But here’s a name for you. Dead Men Tell No Tales.” Sonny smacks the corner of the blackboard. <br />
<br />
“I tell you, if the thieves come to my farm, I’ll give them both barrels and let them bleed out. That’s what they deserve, and that’s what they’ll get.” <br />
<br />
The guitarist responds with the opening notes of a popular song, at first hesitant then stronger with repetition as the other band members join in. The tense moment slides by. Yvonne lets out a held breath; her brother’s bluster is often a problem, but perhaps not tonight. He retreats to his table, his face stormy as he dares anyone who does not share his opinion. Someone pushes a beer in front of him and with that Yvonne feels she can return to her customers. <br />
<br />
“Last night two vehicles were stolen, and a bunch of tools.” The kind woman tells Yvonne, a breathy bit of news. “At least no one has been hurt. Sonny hasn’t any idea what might happen if the thieves were confronted. It could get ugly. I hope no one ends up dead.” <br />
<br />
Hope. All Yvonne can hope for is that Kev is not in trouble and will come home to her. Then she stuffs those wishes down to let her job occupy her. <br />
<br />
While the band might be nameless but they are in tune and their energy is appealing and the crowd seems determined to enjoy their evening. She delivers drinks. She passes Sonny’s table. Her brother informs all that will listen about his neighborhood watch. His one-man safety check-in with local farmers included Kev’s company more than once. That seemed to work. With Kev along people didn’t turn him away quite as fast. Sonny isn’t above using any advantage. He’s even asked her to let him know anything suspicious she learns at work. As if she wants to spy for him. <br />
<br />
She delivers another drink order for the group that came with the band when a young man tugs at her arm. <br />
<br />
“We need another option.” He tells her. <br />
<br />
Yvonne doesn’t catch the words over the music. “What?” <br />
<br />
“For the ‘name the band’ blackboard,” he says with precision, like she is slow-witted. Just as Kev’s workers would dumb their words so she would grasp their latest integration strategy or some experiment in behavior-modification. <br />
<br />
Yvonne looks at the blackboard. <br />
<br />
“We need another name,” He repeats. <br />
<br />
Lucky Bastards? Crushed Hopes? <br />
<br />
Yvonne shakes her head. “Sorry. Let me take your empties.”<br />
<br />
“Let Me Take Your Empties! That’s rich!” Laughter shimmers on their faces. <br />
<br />
They must be their parent’s pride and joy with friends and futures that they take for granted. <br />
<br />
Yvonne’s throat tightens. <br />
<br />
No such fortune for Kev. The system is useless. The programs and integration models are empty. Yet Yvonne went along thinking there would be answers. Swayed by the professionals, swayed by her brother’s farm raised ways. Even Stan, the daydream believer, would have her believe a solution could be found. But when there isn’t a clear Kev question, how could you expect an answer? No miracles workers ever found. No miracle. <br />
<br />
Still she does want a miracle. Just one, small, she’ll-never-ask-for-anything-else, miracle. To have Kev back home. To see love for his mother in his eyes. Her own eyes avoid the mirror behind the bar, she knows how worry has paled her skin, aged her. Her head bows and blinking back more tears she slips off one shoe to rub her foot. <br />
<br />
“Take a break.” Stan says with a nod at her cigarettes. <br />
<br />
A moment of calm with a cigarette is irresistible. She grabs her coat and heads out the exit. Maybe she can finally quit… if Kev comes back…when Kev is safe at home. <br />
<br />
Intent on her mission, Yvonne has the cigarette in her mouth and her lighter clicked before the door closes behind her. Then, beyond the glowing end of her cigarette, she sees moving figures in the parking lot. Doors being tested, a low call ‘this one.’ <br />
<br />
Yvonne yells. “What the hell are you doing? Get away from here.” <br />
<br />
A vehicle parked in the ally roars to life, as one person bolts towards it. Another figure grabs the arm of the third. <br />
<br />
“Come on Dummy, we have to move!”<br />
<br />
Yvonne recognizes the hesitation. It’s Kev. Her son is with the thieves. <br />
<br />
“Kev! Kevin Robert, come here.” Yvonne rushes towards her son. “This is wrong. Come here.”<br />
“You can’t stop me.” Kev brings up an arm, a tire iron in his hand. “These are my friends. They like me. You don’t like me.” <br />
<br />
He moves towards her; the tire iron swings. His shadow is huge. Then he brings his weapon down on the windshield of her vehicle. Then they are gone. <br />
<br />
If she had tried to stop him and grabbed his arm, would Kev have hit her? Yes. Yvonne knew. <br />
<br />
“Is everything all right?” Stan calls from the doorway. He sees the broken windshield. “What happened? <br />
<br />
“Thieves. They were about to steal a truck.” Yvonne’s arms fly wild, her cigarette end an arching point of light. Her breathing tears at the bottom of her lungs; her ribs deliver sharp jabs of pain. <br />
<br />
“We’ll have to phone the police. Tell everyone what happened.” Stan ushers Yvonne back inside. <br />
<br />
Yvonne knows that Stan is doing the right thing. But would it be all right, if she hopes the thieves get away? Would it be all right if she hopes they are caught? Would it be all right if she cried, or screamed, or wept? <br />
<br />
Inside, everyone talks at once. Sonny’s voice is the loudest.<br />
<br />
“The band is in on it,” he states. “Why else did the thieves hit here? Right here, when there was too much noise and we wouldn’t notice anything.” <br />
<br />
The band and their friends look alarmed at Sonny’s accusation, but mostly the patrons ignore him. While some put on their coats, the band begins another song. Yvonne moves close to Stan to tell him Kev was with the thieves. What his reaction will be, she doesn’t know, she just knows that she badly needs a kind word. She can smell his warmth, a waft of aftershave. But Sonny grabs Yvonne’s arm as he announces his intentions. <br />
<br />
Stan will have to handle the bar alone, Sonny proclaims. He’s taking his sister home. He’s the neighborhood watch person. He will drive around and see if he can find the bastards. Yvonne has no strength to overrule her brother; his grip alone makes her wince. <br />
<br />
In a few minutes they are on the road. They speed through the night, in Sonny’s truck, over the rough country roads as every pothole jars Yvonne deeper into her worry. The headlights bring fragments of the road into view so fast that she no longer knows where they are. Sonny’s mission of vengeance frightens her beyond any fear she has ever known but Kev, among the thieves, alarms her more. <br />
<br />
How did this come to be?<br />
<br />
Then Yvonne has her inkling. When Sonny took Kev with him, he pointed out how certain things could be stolen from neighboring farmyards. Kev could remember what was said. She guesses the next step would have been for the thieves to befriend Kev, to find out what he knew. Easy pickings. <br />
<br />
Unconsciously she rubs at her wrist as other aches echo in her shoulders and ribcage. The entire list of her mistakes, right back to Kev’s conception has to now include Sonny’s influence. <br />
<br />
Her regrets are like stones in her stomach but what will be next? Jail time for Kev? Her petitioning for mercy? Everyone knowing what her son has done? <br />
<br />
She stares as the darkness reaches in, withdraws briefly in the headlights then enfolds everything behind them. <br />
<br />
Then they are at their destination. Sonny lets Yvonne off at her farmhouse door and speeds away, her door barely shut behind her. <br />
<br />
She wants to search for Kev, even knowing she would be in danger. First she has to stop shivering; all warmth has abandoned her. First she has to get over this dizziness; the ground sways as she tries to take a step. <br />
<br />
She should have told her brother about Kev, but then she’d have to hear again how Kev is a hopeless case. What if Sonny is right? A whimper escapes her lips. She should go to Stan. But he deserves the whole truth. <br />
<br />
When the squeals grow louder and more desperate, she realizes the noise has been there since she got home. She reaches the pen to find a sow hung up in the barbed wire, broken legged and cut deeply. The blood has sent the other animals into frenzy. For a moment Yvonne rocks back and forth, her hands over her ears lest she join the mayhem. <br />
<br />
What is she to do? She forces herself to stop gulping air. If she were at the bar, she’d use whatever force necessary to keep the peace. A plan forms; good or bad. Shakily she retrieves the double barreled shotgun and loads it, just as she would get help to approach an unruly table of drinkers. She shoots the trapped and bloody sow with a single fatal round. The sow drops heavily, instantly inert and lifeless. <br />
<br />
The other pigs scramble away to the far end of the pen; they have no loyalty to their companion’s plight. Then Yvonne locks the sows away from the dead animal so they are away from the source of their distress. If only someone could do the same for her. <br />
<br />
“This was an escape plan. You must have thought there was a way out.” She faces the bloody dead sow. <br />
<br />
“Kev… he purposefully shoved me away from him.” <br />
<br />
Then she lets the memory come whole to her. She is on the floor and she was down. Her wrist fails her, pained and yet numb as she tries to get up. She hears Kev’s growl, she sees his ugly sneer and then his boot comes at her and her ribs send fireworks into her brain. As she curls up in pain, he walks out of the house. <br />
<br />
Was his get-away ride waiting? For his actions, she understands now, fit into a plan of the thieves. A plan he agreed to, and without regrets, as an image reawakens of how Kev brought the tire iron down on her vehicle in the bar parking lot. There was such force that it would have killed her had she been under it. This happened. His success. Her failure. <br />
<br />
She hears a vehicle drive into the yard. Sonny? Stan? <br />
<br />
No. The thieves! They are at her fuel tank. She steps out where they can see her, the shotgun like a third leg at her side. <br />
<br />
“Don’t do this Kev.” she begs her son. “Let him alone.” She beseeches the others. <br />
<br />
Someone laughs. Kev swings his tire iron, the way he used to swing his favorite toys when he was a child, his ears delighted by the swish of air. Those remembered toys and now the very real tire iron. Kev is coming fast, like an animal gone bad. His eyes alight with fulfillment, satisfaction. Energy. <br />
<br />
He bears down on her. <br />
<br />
She understands. She has to save him from himself. That answer is pressure on the trigger. <br />
<br />
This is how. The thieves running away. This ending. Kev’s whole sorry life is over. Her son silent and so still. <br />
<br />
Can the dead forgive? <br />
<br />
No longer able to look at her son’s body, no longer able to know what she has done, no longer able to explain anything, she turns out the yard light. All is silent. The stars overhead disappear one by one. <br />
<br />
What remains is the afterimage.<br />
<br />
*<br />
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<i>Liz Betz is enjoying her retirement pastime of writing short fiction which has been published in a variety of markets. She writes from rural Alberta. </i>Afterimage <i>was one of the most difficult pieces that she has ever written. Now she is extremely happy to have it published with Danforth Review.</i> <br />
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<br />Michael Brysonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00816850668522214805noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2564733539116511601.post-18854443341573160362018-01-07T18:47:00.001-05:002018-01-07T18:47:41.808-05:00Fiction #76: Nick Rayner<i><b>A Hand Cuts Through The Smoke</b></i><br />
<i><b><br /></b></i>
When they split the trees and walked through them like corpsified yawns, most of the cities were already abandoned. The concern of encroaching dust was still a dull vibration. I was the last of my kind to listen to the car alarms choke out. My name is Winston and I am an elephant. <br />
<br />
I spent my entire life in the metropolitan zoo before the skies within all the individuals cracked open, revealing baffling fractals. Every day was exactly the same. They gave me a tire. It was me, the tire, and the memories I had stacked neatly like obtuse bricks in a building that jarred and shook every time I tried to scan its perimeter. <br />
<br />
People came to see me, mostly children, and from what I understood I was viewed as different from the rest of the creatures there. I remember a time before I got there, staring up at the clouds through the half-light just before dusk and I could see the moon. Then down at the horizon there were thick pillars of smoke that solidified in columns near the bottom. There was water all around me. I can’t remember if I was coming or going. <br />
<br />
“He’s the only one we have left, and the only one we’ll have for a long time. The sanctuary’s not even taking anymore.”<br />
<br />
They came to me with reverence, their eyes tuned differently. I saw it countless times, I saw them walk over from the meerkats and switch out their faces along the way. Three faces in total. One boy in particular came by more than the others, around once a month. He had red hair and a round face, and he always wore fingerless gloves because he was ready for action. He always came with an older man who may have been his grandfather, and I got the feeling he came just for me. I would approach as close as I was able; he always had a blue shirt on, and I heard his name was Richard. I felt an indescribable connection to him. Something foregrounded him against it all like a cloudbreached wingtip. He didn’t care about the meerkats. <br />
<br />
Richard had been coming to my exhibit for 10 years until people found out. He wouldn’t come as often and by the end he was coming only once per season, but it was still good to see him grow up. We grew up together. I’m not certain how the discovery was made, but word travelled fast and within a week everybody knew. Researchers at Emaytee University discovered that my kind were reincarnated humans. They told everyone just like that, very plainly. They said “elephants have the consciousness of people who have died” and that was the start of it. <br />
<br />
“There’s no way we can communicate directly with them, but we’ve been developing a more nuanced pictorial system to see if we can see what memories they have.”<br />
<br />
I knew they were right. I knew the vague architecture of those obtuse bricks but I couldn’t get the full scope of it. More people came to see me for a while. Richard came to see me more often too, and they were all talking to me. They were all asking me questions. I couldn’t respond to them vocally. They left me gifts, ornaments, books. They were crying. There were hundreds of elephants in captivity in this country back then. I would guess it was the same everywhere. They threw letters and I read what I could, getting help from the caretaker who worshipped me. She had blonde hair and freckles all over her face, and of course her green uniform. She didn’t talk to me like she was lesser than me, I remember that the most. She would ask me questions that didn’t need to be answered, and then she would look into my eyes and interpret my reaction somehow. I saw her eyes change too. Three facial epochs, and then she stopped coming around. They all did.<br />
<br />
Later I would discover that this was forbidden knowledge. Humans were not supposed to discover this. By the time the first reports swept halfway around the world it was already too late. Everyone was talking about it and their minds began to fragment. A network of interlocked crystals cracked, separated, and adrift amid themselves like a broken ice sheet. The cost of learning forbidden knowledge is the mind breaks. By the end of the week everyone had skitsofrennya. <br />
<br />
“While not directly responsible it’s impossible to ignore the appearance of entirely new constellations in the sky and what random coincidence could possibly cause that.<br />
<br />
I watched them all change over that first week, I thought it was because of the excitement but it was something else. The letters started to change. Richard was there, I saw him high up looking down on me. His grandfather wasn’t there anymore. The letters were talking about how the forests – or the woods – were the only way to make sense of any of this. <br />
<br />
Everyone came to the same conclusion. Some of them included drawings. The caretaker showed them to me. She even interpreted them for me, in her own way. She added layers of meaning I didn’t grant them, before deciding that the letters were hazardous. She collected them and read them to herself and then took them back beyond the door. I never knew her name. I knew everyone else’s name except hers. She’s the one who helped get me out once they decided that being locked up was no way to treat her esteemed ancestor. <br />
<br />
Most of the other elephants in the country were being released around this time. Not all of them, but the majority of them by the end of that first week were out and walking around. All the ones that were my age had taken in enough second-hand information to know certain things, like elephant sanctuaries. It always came up at one time or another, so we knew they existed. Some were lucky and knew where they were, so they started to figure out how to get there. <br />
<br />
Skitsofrennya is like trying to solve a puzzle of something you’ve never seen before while someone you can’t see holds a gun to your head. I saw it in the letters, I saw it in the streets. I saw it in their missions. Undeniable facts collide with unknown circumstances and create unknowable fictions that have more truth at the end then when they began. There were sounds everywhere but nobody in sight; a thousand busy hands crafting solutions each tectonic in their breadth and umbilical in depth. A distant explosion, an enormous map sketched on the wall in chalk, the rapid gulping of a tire fire made to light improvised meetings. <br />
<br />
“I need to go out and find the darkness. True darkness, and the quiet. That’s where the answers are. I didn’t understand at first but it’s the only thing that makes sense.”<br />
<br />
I knew Richard was out there somewhere. Back then anything was possible. I saw a woman try to pull out a map from an infant’s belly and watched the morbid awareness frost her nerves before, unfortunately, thawing very shortly after. It wasn’t chaos in the streets, it was merely abandoned lives and the ways they kick up in the wind after days in the unreal coolness. Vehicles piloted by supervenomed half-decisions parked respectably in preposterous locations. Manifestos scrawled upon walls with fine attention to typeface. Whatever new death was indoors. The terms of the contract were scratched out but they still waved it above their heads with bolded importance. <br />
<br />
They say dormant familiarities fired back up with turgid flickers. Something deep inside the people was leading them away from the cities – away from the zoo I was born in– and into the outskirts. They were walking towards the trees; a slow trickle at first, but by the end of the second week there was mostly nobody. The violent ones remained, unable to decipher what was given to them. I had to tread lightly around them and the broadening horizons of their machinations. <br />
<br />
A man with long, greasy brown hair squatted on the curb and biting his finger, staring at a sunflower with a cigarette stuck in it and seeing a kaleidoscope of sensible architectures I’ve tried so hard to even witness. I was looking for Richard. Maybe he hadn’t left the city like the rest of them. Is what I told myself. <br />
<br />
“It’s just prisons and prisons, all the way back.”<br />
<br />
Out in the forests of the world, when the people were ascending into the pseudozone, there was a dank and total quivering. Prior to the grand exodus, a grand replacement was reaching the last stages of planning. <br />
<br />
Out in the forests there was an emergence. From the trees shunted thousands upon thousands of creatures not of this world, lying in wait as they were for hundreds of years up in the verticals. They took the forms of children, clean and clothed and spry as a spiral, and climbed out from the centres of the woodwork fingers first. They stepped foot to Earth and began walking towards the cities at the behest of magnetism what churned like leviathan wake. Their camouflage coughed and refined with every shadow cast upon them. Under the hypnotic shadows of branches in the wind, they passed through beneath as refractions wrestled into form. <br />
<br />
We would learn later they were extraterrestrials; colonists from an impossible crucible who were alarmed at the opportunity presented to them, and rightly so. They were cautiously delighted at how easy the colonisation proved to be, evidenced by their plan of attack which wasn’t altogether well coordinated. Who knows how long they’d been lurking beneath the barkwork. As the people of the world were losing their minds the aliens moved in disguised as the fuel the people ought never question. They convinced men and women they were their children, or their siblings, or their cousins. <br />
<br />
Their intelligence was a richer soil than ours and their horticulture was much more advanced. If they had tried to convince me I was one of them I wager they could have done it. I saw a girl with blonde hair convince a heavily armed woman that she was her deceased daughter. Within 20 minutes she was on her knees embracing her. Even when they weren’t talking their mouths were moving, mouthing conflicting syllables.<br />
<br />
“You’re right, if we don’t look out for each other nobody will. I’ll protect you.”<br />
<br />
As the people were leaving the populated areas as maddened scattershot into the wild, the doppelgangers were colliding into the lengthening tendrils. They found perfect stock to ingratiate themselves, and within hours each one of them had found either a host or community. They convinced some they were children, they convinced some they were cousins, they had so long to prepare for every scenario and still some were discovered. Staccato alarms, quickly a soft dissolve. It leads one to believe they had to improvise. I wasn’t there. I was looking for Richard. <br />
<br />
Richard was grown when I found him. He never changed his hairstyle over the years, it’s what stood out the most when I caught him networking a room full of computers together for some sourness no doubt. He had a friend, a younger boy who was standing nearby and supervising. Richard knew computers very well and whatever had him staying behind in that bombastic mausoleum must have been important. He had bigger fingerless gloves then, and he was so engrossed in his work he didn’t see me come up behind him. <br />
<br />
When he finally drank in the reality of the situation I could tell he was processing it, having at least the wherewithal to know his mind could be paying tricks on him. It was the first time we met as equals. He lifted his hand to touch me but pulled back at the last second. <br />
<br />
“Do you know this elephant, Richard?”<br />
<br />
The boy with him wouldn’t tell me his name and his pupils concaved into metaphysically horrid gorges. Over the course of the day he would speak almost exclusively about dreams. He never once said that they were dreams he had before, he just wanted to know what Richard dreamed about and would talk about some dreams in the abstract. Richard didn’t talk anymore. He would look at you and amplified emotion flashed across his face, but I couldn’t talk to him either. It was perfect. I’d always looked up to him, and he smiled down on me. He smiled to communicate – a robbed utility - but that was enough. I would watch him work and I would remember standing as still as stairs in an underground room, chains tied all around my neck and body. The door opened and on the other side was a wall of fire.<br />
<br />
It was another week before the lights went out. Long days of tinkering and reading books in silence, punctuated by Richard staring intently into nowhere. The boy never ate and he didn’t seem to notice. He listened, mostly. He listened to the boy talk about dreams as anecdotes, then as myth. He pretended I wasn’t there. <br />
<br />
We sat in a gutted electronics storefront and scanned the silence in unison during breaks in the unilateral conversation. The last newspapers before the exodus were unhinged at best, blowing down the street like sarcastic tumbleweeds. We made a fire every night even though we didn’t need to, right on the sidewalk. Without the artificial light everything was blue in the evening. How many had died since it started? <br />
<br />
Our boy took a special interest with the scene, standing just beyond the puddle of waste below the hovering sneakers. Another child – a young girl with olive skin in a horizontal striped dress – was standing there staring up at him. She never strayed far from the area and would return periodically to survey the latest ellipses in this run-on tragedy. Our boy approached her while Richard was busy with his work in the storefront. They stood so close their faces were nearly touching; their mouths were moving ever so slightly but they were blinking in frantic bursts. I couldn’t get close enough to see what they were saying, if anything. After they talked she stopped coming around. <br />
<br />
“There was a dream once, this one time, there was a cup of blood being poured into a cup of gold and the man wasn’t able to look away. He could tell there was a dog at his feet being put down with a needle. He tried to kneel down while looking at the cups but he couldn’t move. Isn’t that something?”<br />
<br />
The day Richard jettisoned his project was the day I convinced him to leave with me. The boy seemed pleased with this development. A rogue singularity blew a hole through his mind and his posture betrayed a reinterpretation of his size. He had it all figured out until he didn’t, and those moments of clarity where he would attempt to ocularly impregnate the ether happened with increasing frequency. The only thing I knew we could do was meet up with the others at one of the elephant sanctuaries in the South. I’d never been there before but I knew where to go, it all seemed so familiar. I remembered sitting on a long beach, untouched by humanity, a dead dog sitting before me in the tide. A fountain of water exploded somewhere to the right. <br />
<br />
Before the fall and recolonization I knew some were even being shuttled there with the assumption that if there were enough of us in one place something wonderful might happen. I was betting the same. The last of our kind milling around a charismatic necropolis; that had to make us special, somehow.<br />
<br />
To get to the sanctuary, we had to go through the Caliphant. In short, it was a destabilized warzone wherein warring elephant poachers fought each other for an unattainable supremacy. Guns and trucks, bombs and chains, I don’t think they wanted to kill each other so much as they wanted to win. Grand conspiracies governed some of the skirmishes, vendettas governed others. At one point the elephants were no longer targeted. The sanctuary was haloed by a pockmarked crust dotted with burned out vehicle husks and hacked up campsites. A murder of dirt bikes rev up behind a low hill, burning danked-up effigies to scare off wanderers; wicked tongues lashing against the retreating light along the horizon.<br />
<br />
“What do you think he wants with us, Richard? It reminds me of a dream I heard about, this village was built on the mouth of a dormant volcano that went right to the center of the Earth and all these bats started coming out of the pipes and bathtubs and wells. And guess what, they all had human faces!”<br />
<br />
It took us two weeks of walking to get there, my presence enthralling more often than enraging. Nobody had pieced together that the global mental breakdown was at all related to the knowledge of our shared history. All along the way, the boy held secret congress with other children whom nothing adhered to; after who knows how long out in the wilderness and the crash, they remained pristine. Camping out by a gas station converted into an artist’s colony comma armory, a group of eight of them had congregated around back, out there just beyond the lantern, out there in the half-light. Various colours but uniform height, the similarities came into sharp relief when standing side by side. Under the light of the full moon they stood face-to-face and communicated with whispers and coded blinks. They knew I was watching them and we knew they were watching us, the time soon came that we didn’t try to hide it. <br />
<br />
The closer we got, the more their numbers grew. By the time we arrived at the edge of the Caliphant, there was 30 of them skulking around in the refuse what spiderwebbed from each milestone. When we got to the narrow reach of the Caliphant, all we had to do was listen for engines and weave in-betweens the remnants of the effigies. We came across discarded rifles but Richard paid them no mind. I trusted his judgment. I remembered standing in a closet and looking through the crack as huge men draped in black leather stormed through the house, taking all the people from the village and gathering them outside. They pulled a woman out of the bathroom by the hair and she was screaming something I couldn’t understand.<br />
<br />
The sanctuary was a plain sheet of desolation, crumpled and flattened like cash. In the falling of dusk it looked like a desert in a costume. We searched every body of water for other elephants and found none. We found them collected together, betrayed by a lone infant elephant standing motionless by a cliff. It wouldn’t look at me when I approached, indeed as I tried to get its attention it stood inert. I wasn’t able to communicate with him the way I could with Lucy, my partner at the zoo who was taken away to a similar place. I could communicate in all the ways I couldn’t with Richard, through the memories. We could share and implant memories within each other, stamping out marks on them if we please. It’s a tremendous responsibility and can be truly uncomfortable, but is incredible for comedy. We found the rest of the group by following where it was staring. It was there I met Hugo, the de-facto leader working on how to solve the problem. The problem was that ever since the fall of the mind of the world, all the newborn elephants were coming out blank; no minds to speak of. <br />
<br />
Cornered as they were, they remained industrious. The corkscrew trails of goofed rockets defined the boundaries of their sandbox. The elephants – many of them recent arrivals - were aware of the madness plaguing the world and the bizarre behavior of the former emperors, our people. We were aware the knowledge was forbidden, although we could do nothing to control it. While the people of the world were still staked by the direness the elephants would die out within 2 generations at most. Total mind death, then total genetic death. And certainly everyone else would die, eventually replaced by the false child interlopers. There, gathered together around crescent of still water encircled by aerobic trees, they reasoned that the only way to fix it all was with additional forbidden knowledge. They came to this conclusion after looking at the facts. Like the omnipresent symphonic membrane of creation gathering in a single peak, it all came together, but I had to see it first. Richard tended to the empty elephant, staring intently into its eyes. <br />
<br />
They had created their own towering effigy, and it was unclear who was influenced by whom but I am clear on where my biases lie. It was a massive structure made from carved wood, an insurmountable task for those without thumbs. Standing 15 feet tall and constructed with the assistance of the cliff, it was a crudely cobbled rune which, reinforced by the carvings, could only be pieced together with the correctly tuned faculties. A giant symbol crafted to communicate one specific message to the witness with the punch of time collapsing into a palmed shell.<br />
<br />
The message was gleaned from secret observations of the extraterrestrials communicating with each other; they were so brazen about the colonization they openly spoke in a language they assumed nobody could hear or understand. Victory polluted their sensibility, apparently. They managed to interpret key phrases and concepts from the eye movements in conjunction with the lips. Some were captured and over time revealed unreal pressure points. Their speech was their greatest asset. Their language could wreak havoc on the uninitiated. They could convince anyone of anything. <br />
<br />
When Richard looked upon it I saw the dawn of a new epoch. Consigned to madness and thrust back again, he brought back a strange new energy. His condition allowed him to see patterns he could not see before, his damnation granting him the very key to his escape. I saw it in his eyes, a galaxy unfolding and fluttering in a cosmic wind of enlightenment. He came back stronger, just like they knew he would. Just like I had hoped. When he looked at me, we were back in the zoo. I looked down on Richard for the first time since we first met all those years ago. He placed his hand upon my face with tears rolling down his dirty cheeks. <br />
<br />
It’s how we would get them all back. Their ascendance back into the flawed and managed world would come from their own distant spirits pulling them through the fire. The burns would remain. The burns were necessary. When dawn crept across the deep and the Caliphant trickled in, the awestriking wave travelled fast and blossomed within them in minutes. Electricity exploding from alarming dimensions. Armed and wounded, the symmetries of reality became apparent. Emerging from the dream of the forest – a dream of the past, of the beginning – they might find a use for us relics what dream with more vivid palettes. <br />
<br />
Upon a nearby hill, the sky was backgrounded in a way I hadn’t seen for years. 30 of the children were gathered and looking on; hands clutched in unnatural configurations, their heads hanging forward as if too heavy for their necks. They were different, with gnashing teeth for eyes and jaws hanging open, loose. Thin red strings emerged from their throats and inched forward slowly like accusatory fingers. Dead faces. They were dry and cracked and the ground was wet around their feet. Their teeth moved independently, possessed by an abyssal rhythm. A library with the ground slaughtering itself beneath it. Everyone was quiet. <br />
<br />
The Caliphant readied their weapons. If it would come to war it would be an unfamiliar war, under an evolved lamplight with beams woven through with billowing insectoid curtains.<br />
<br />
Did you get all that?<br />
<br />
Now what shape would you draw all that as? <br />
<br />
*<br />
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<i>Based in Toronto, Nick Rayner is the Director of Rayner Marketing Consulting and former editor of online horror publication Tandem Region Times. His personal site is <a href="http://milliondollarcuffs.com/">milliondollarcuffs.com</a>.</i>Michael Brysonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00816850668522214805noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2564733539116511601.post-65535607489516766992018-01-07T18:40:00.000-05:002018-01-08T09:36:00.085-05:00Fiction #76: Robert Lake<b><i>A Suture in Time</i></b><br />
<b></b><i></i><br />
During the reading of stingy Aunt Hattie’s will by her corrupt lawyer, mouthpiece Alastair Capon, Pinocchio quivers like an arrow’s shaft in a dying deer’s haunch. His long needle-thin nose dribbles. He panics! He faces pitiful prolonged poverty. His dream of wedding and bedding Eurydice, so far above him in stature, social class and purity, her petite nose erotic, becomes road kill, a porcupine squashed by a Harley Davidson. Eurydice’s the widow of his best friend, Orpheus, who was shredded by furious women for making love to only men, although never to Pinocchio, who believes that Eurydice is a virgin. Maybe so, but Eurydice hides from Pinocchio that she has many lustful suitors. <br />
<br />
Nickel-nursing Aunt Hattie had been a repository of self flattering smug quotes “only an aunt can give hugs like a mother, keep secrets like a sister and share love like a friend” and left to Pinocchio only a factory, Tiffany Threads, in bankruptcy protection. Once Tiffany Threads, white, gold, black as an assassin’s heart, and red as fiery as Hell’s furnace, were found in homes everywhere women mended. Tiffany Thread catalogues had been collectors’ items. Now Pinocchio is liable for stingy Aunt Hattie’s estate’s debts. Alastair Capon recommends the services of Angus Heap, an Inuit descendant of Uriah Heap, Charles Dickens’ smarmy villain.<br />
<br />
Angus is tall, glib and spindly, despite gobbling large portions of Neapolitan ice cream. He’s constantly in heat, ghostly white, not at all like Pinocchio’s expectations of an Inuit from Greenland. Angus speedily identifies the hazards facing Tiffany Threads <br />
<br />
“Nobody sews or mends in our go go world. I shall call you Piny, rhymes with tiny, which you are, except for that ludicrously extended nose,” he says in a broth of Scotch accent, scrubbed of any stains of Greenlandic . “Fashionistas buy clothes they wear for two weeks and trash. The poor buy disposable clothes at Wal-Mart. Hand me downs are so last century.”<br />
<br />
“You mean mending’s passé?” asks a gobsmacked Piny, who hates being called Piny although Eurydice thinks it cute. Meadow, squat, swarthy, pig nosed and devoted to Piny, often asks if he loves Eurydice. “No!” he replies, his nose growing with each denial.<br />
<br />
“By the way, who is that hot babe?” wonders Angus.<br />
<br />
“Eurydice. Don’t call the purest women alive a hot babe!” replies Piny.<br />
<br />
“Pure? What a waste, “says Angus.<br />
<br />
“She’s a widow.” <br />
<br />
“Fantastic. She can’t be pure.”<br />
<br />
“Is so!”<br />
<br />
“Does she insist on rubbers?”<br />
<br />
“Rubbers? What are they?” asks Piny.<br />
<br />
“French letters. Condoms. Hate them,” replies Angus.<br />
<br />
“My goddess has no need of them,” insists Piny.<br />
<br />
“Oh, sure. Let’s move on. Garbage dumps overflow with castoff clothing. I recommend an advertising blitz to extol the virtues of thread, particularly candy cane coloured,” says Angus.<br />
<br />
“What if it doesn’t work?” asks Piny.<br />
<br />
“Failing means you’re playing. It will only cost three hundred thousand. If it works you’ll be rich. If it fails, what’s another few thousands to a bankrupt short man?”<br />
<br />
Piny, who still bears the scars of his aunt’s gibes that he’s a stunted dwarf, stifles his holy urge to head butt the scrotum of Angus, who promises the advertising crusade will exploit the time-fatigue of 21st century serfs of capitalism. “They’ll do anything to snatch a few minutes of free time. We’ll make them believe that buying Tiffany Threads’ stitches, particularly marigold yellow, will save them time. I’ve already got a slogan: a stitch in time saves fourteen!”<br />
<br />
“How about a suture in time saves thirteen?” replies Piny. Meadow thinks that correction classy<br />
<br />
“Yer bum’s oot the windae,” says Angus.<br />
<br />
“What’s that mean in English?” asks Piny.<br />
<br />
“You’re talking no sense, wee guy,” grins Angus.<br />
<br />
Once again, and not for the last time, Piny resists his righteous impulse to head butt Angus’ scrotum and pierce it with his long sharp nose. Angus surmises that Piny is thinking of sacking him and regains lost ground by saying, “Guid gear comes in sma’ bulk.” Piny no longer asks for translations, merely looking up Scots’ language expressions on the internet, where he reads that good things come in small packages. Meadow, who distrusts Angus like poison oak with autumn red leaves, suspects that’s where the phony Scot gleans Scottish lingo.<br />
<br />
Angus smacks his forehead. “A stitch in time save fourteen won’t work. Nor will thirteen or fifteen. They don’t rhyme. I’ve got, I’ve got it.” He hoists Piny over his head and gleefully whirls him on an extended arm. Meadow begs Angus to land Piny on solid ground.<br />
<br />
“Can’t set Piny down. Ye make a better door than a windae,” says Angus.<br />
<br />
“Stop whirling me like a sea sick helicopter,” pleads Piny, who wants to blow his long needle-thin nose, difficult under any circumstances, but impossible while being twirled by a spindly Inuit.<br />
<br />
“I’ve got it, I’ve got it. A stitch in time saves nine,” exults Angus. “We’ll swell the thread market to include not just women, but men and transgender sorts.”<br />
<br />
“Suture in time saves nine!” says Piny. Meadow thinks suture is terrific. <br />
<br />
“If she’s a Meadow, watch out for thistles,” warns Angus, who agrees to try Piny’s version and launches an advertising campaign on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and every social media thread buyers surf. Angus doesn’t ignore traditional media and buys two-page spreads in Vogue, Cosmopolitan, Elle and more. Soon the slogan “suture in time saves nine” prances brightly through the dreams of fashionistas and welfare freeloaders. Piny gleefully orders Tiffany Threads’ workers to labour overtime to fill the avalanche of sales he anticipates. They refuse. They haven’t been paid for months.<br />
<br />
“Fucking arsehole socialists!” says Eurydice. Piny’s shocked. Where was such vulgarity forced upon a pure goddess? Eurydice informs shop steward, Stuart Stuart, that she wants Piny to move Tiffany Threads to Pakistan. “Workers there don’t demand benefits, other than a daily bowl of rice with lentils.”<br />
<br />
“We may be arseholes, but not socialists, we’d vote Trump if we were Americans,” shop steward, Stuart Stuart, replies.<br />
<br />
“Hey, Piny, Eurydice wants to know what a suture is,” Angus interrupts. He’s bought her a kilt, a very short kilt, an immodest kilt, a tam and Highland dancing shoes, a vision that arouses Piny mightily. Meadow shudders with jealousy. <br />
<br />
“That Meadow’s going to seed,” observes Angus. <br />
<br />
“Angus, you bogus Scot, you’re fired.. Stuff those Scottish sayings and shun Eurydice!” exclaims Piny.<br />
<br />
“It’s a lang road that’s no goat a turnin,” replies Angus. “Scrap up another five hundred thousand and I’ll launch another advertising campaign using a stitch in time saves nine.”<br />
<br />
Piny has no chance of raising half a million, he confides to Eurydice, a canny investor. She buys a chunk of Tiffany Threads, despite Piny’ worries that this might eat into the insurance settlement she’d scammed from the women who shredded Orpheus. <br />
<br />
“I’ll chat up anybody I like, including Inuit Scots,” Eurydice saucily announces, inflaming Piny’s jealousy, reddening the tip of his nose, limping his erection and heartening Meadow. She naively believes Piny will finally see through the artifices of Eurydice and welcome her to his bed, despite her pig nose. <br />
<br />
Once again Angus posts ads on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and every social media thread buyers surf. Angus doesn’t ignore traditional media and takes two-page spreads in Vogue, Cosmopolitan, Elle and more. To attract male stitchers he buys time on the World Series and the Superbowl. He places ads in Frock magazine and in FTM magazine. Soon the slogan “a stitch in time saves nine” dances vividly through the dreams of fashionistas and welfare freeloaders, men, women and the transgendered.<br />
<br />
On line orders for threads, pink, purple, chartreuse, black, white, brown, and a new colour, Neapolitan, named by Angus after his favourite three-coloured ice cream, crash the webpage of Tiffany Threads. Fortunately, Meadow, a computer nerd with a nose like a snout, rescues the webpage, ignored by Piny who catches Angus sneaking Eurydice spools of Neapolitan thread and blowing her kisses. Surely, goddess Eurydice won’t be seduced by a Greenland Inuit, who is often short of cash and borrows from Piny to pay his credit cards. But canny Angus is raking in filthy lucre in buckets: he’s established with Eurydice a line of clothing, called MendMeNow, that needs urgent mending, jeans with knee holes, blouses with missing buttons, ripped leggings, Cardigans with dangling zippers and most enticingly blouses with ripped bodices. Fashionistas buy racks of MendMeNow clothes, which they need to use all their thread.<br />
<br />
Though now incredibly rich, Piny despairs. Angus and Eurydice flourish. Meadow in her melancholy brainstorms for projects to rescue Piny from his slough of despond.<br />
<br />
“Sutures! Sutures! Dissolvable sutures!” she exclaims. <br />
<br />
Piny has never heard of dissolvable sutures. <br />
<br />
“Doctors will call them absorbable sutures after you invent them.” Meadow urges.<br />
<br />
“Why doesn’t Eurydice answer my text message?” <br />
<br />
Meadow ignores Piny’s still simmering infatuation with Eurydice and explains the need for absorbable sutures. Sutures are stitches used in surgery to bind wounds and joints. But they require follow-up appointments to remove the stitches and robust stitches can hurt the wound. <br />
<br />
“If you could invent a stitch that would dissolve, you would be a benefactor of humanity,” says Meadow.<br />
<br />
Piny enlists the help of Stuart Stuart, shop steward at Tiffany Threads, who loathes Eurydice and her surveillance cameras that limit workers trips to the john for snorts of cocaine. She plans to wheedle Piny into agreeing to shift Tiffany Threads to Bangladesh, where workers don’t lodge complaints or seek raises. Stuart Stuart realizes that inventing dissolvable sutures might distract Piny from pining for Eurydice and finds a secluded area of the factory, free of Eurydice’s surveillance cameras. Piny works feverishly without success, still pining for Eurydice, who bombards him with email for his agreement to shift Tiffany Threads to Burma or wherever workers come cheap. Stuart Stuart intercepts these emails and deletes them.<br />
<br />
Meadow is struck by lightning, not really, just metaphorically. “Try silk thread!’<br />
<br />
“Why?” ask Piny and Stuart Stuart.<br />
<br />
“Silk is foreign to the body, which will produce toxins to dissolve the silk.”<br />
<br />
“Piny, you should marry this genius. Who cares about her snout?” says Stuart Stuart.<br />
<br />
*<br />
<br />
Eurydice and Angus, filthy rich scammers of fashionistas, live gleefully ever after. Well, except for a few abortions, Angus still refuses to wear rubbers. They live less and less happily until the consequences of self indulgent booze and diet ends their brief swagger upon the stage.<br />
<br />
Pinocchio and Meadow, contributors to human welfare in a minor way, live in the turmoil and torment of genuine achievement. Meadow accepts Piny will always pine for Eurydice, but never asks him if he still loves that petite-nosed erotic beauty. This prevents him fibbing and so his needle-thin nose gradually shortens. Meadow finds contentment in her twins, whose noses are normal, neither long nor snouts. Stuart Stuart is their godfather. The twins cremate Pinocchio and Meadow, mingling their ashes in a single urn, when their longish strut upon the stage skids to a halt.<br />
<br />
*<br />
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<i>Robert Lake emerges from senility frequently to publish creative nonfiction, speculative fiction and realistic fiction. He's not sure what kinds of fiction his scholarly articles and journalism are. He writes contentedly (somewhat) in Ottawa when not travelling. Alas, a jaunt last year was to hospital for 20 days, three of them on life support.</i><br />
<i><br /></i>
<i>Photo credit is Carolyn Lake</i>Michael Brysonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00816850668522214805noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2564733539116511601.post-23557751820100217342017-10-16T22:07:00.002-04:002017-10-17T20:12:28.695-04:00Fiction #75New fiction! Issue #75<br />
<ul>
<li><a href="http://thedanforthreview.blogspot.ca/2017/10/fiction-75-finn-harvor.html">Last Question of the Evening</a> by Finn Harvor </li>
<li><a href="http://thedanforthreview.blogspot.ca/2017/10/fiction-75-suzanne-bowness.html">Alternatives to Knitting</a> by Suzanne Bowness</li>
<li><a href="http://thedanforthreview.blogspot.ca/2017/10/fiction-75-mw-miller.html">The Foundational Banquet of the Four Cousins</a> by M.W. Miller </li>
<li><a href="http://thedanforthreview.blogspot.ca/2017/10/fiction-75-ed-morin.html">Black Currant</a> by E.D. Morin </li>
<li><a href="http://thedanforthreview.blogspot.ca/2017/10/fiction-75-robert-hilles.html">A Trick of the Brain</a> by Robert Hilles </li>
<li><a href="http://thedanforthreview.blogspot.ca/2017/10/fiction-75-tonya-walker.html">The Creative Planner</a> by Tonya Walker</li>
</ul>
<div>
Submissions now open for #76!</div>
<br />
Special thanks to all who have been submitting. Enjoy. Michael Brysonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00816850668522214805noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2564733539116511601.post-35211147714714231372017-10-16T21:52:00.001-04:002017-10-16T21:52:27.165-04:00Fiction #75: Finn Harvor<b><i>Author's statement</i></b>: <i>This story ("Last Question of the Evening") speaks, I hope, for itself. It is set in a call center during an election when a conservative party is in power … and wants to keep things that way. However, the story also exists as a movie and is part of a larger project entitled PLASTIC MILLENNIUM. Links to the movie version of this story are below. I'm hoping people will check out the movie as well as the story.</i><br />
<i><br /></i>
Vimeo links (two parts)<br /><a href="https://vimeo.com/126326733">https://vimeo.com/126326733</a> (pw: lastone)<br />
<a href="https://vimeo.com/126785622">https://vimeo.com/126785622</a> (pw: lastone)<br />
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*<br />
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<br />
<br />
<i><b>Last Question of the Evening</b></i><br />
<i></i><b><br /></b>
Fade in. <br />
<br />
An office comprised of cubicles, all of them lined in rows, as if the aisles of an airplane had been converted into office space. In each cubicle, a worker with a headset.<br />
<br />
"They're all liars," a voice through one headset says.<br />
<br />
The man conducting the interview, Anders, doesn't reply. He waits for the respondent to answer the question in the survey.<br />
<br />
"Eh?" the respondent says, his voice charged with a coercive energy. "Whaddayou think?"<br />
<br />
"A lot of people feel the same way you do, sir."<br />
<br />
"That's right!" the man from rural Saskatchewan says. "They all go to Ottawa, they promise you the world, and then they do nothing."<br />
<br />
Pause. Anders glances at the supervisors' station, eager to see if his call is being monitored. He can't make out the supervisors' screens.<br />
<br />
"Sir, if you could please answer the questions as they're phrased, we'd get through this much faster."<br />
<br />
Saying this is a mistake; not because the respondent is offended by Anders's chastisement, but because it suddenly makes him aware of how long he's been on the phone. "Good lord, mister! Lookit the time! We've been yammerin' for half an hour!"<br />
<br />
"We're almost done," Anders lies.<br />
<br />
"I can't be talkin' about all this sort of political nonsense for half an hour!"<br />
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<br />
<br />
"Please, sir. Would you just bear with me for another ten minutes?"<br />
<br />
"Ten minutes?! Listen, I don't have ten minutes. I think I told you enough."<br />
<br />
"Is there some time I could call you back at?"<br />
<br />
"No. I'm real busy. I said enough. You just fill in the rest."<br />
<br />
"I can't do that, sir." Now a note of pleading has entered Anders's voice. "I'll get through the rest of this really fast. If we don't finish it, then I'll have to throw the whole thing out."<br />
<br />
"Am I gettin' paid for this?"<br />
<br />
"Pardon?"<br />
<br />
"Are you sendin' me money? I give you a lot of my time, I expect something in return."<br />
<br />
"Sorry, sir, the company I work for hardly pays me anything, I don't think they'd be generous enough to start mailing cheques to all the people we interview."<br />
<br />
This attempt to establish a sense of camaraderie falls flat. "I'm serious, mister. I gotta go," the man says.<br />
<br />
The line is cut.<br />
<br />
Anders lets out a deep sigh and swivels around in his chair. He first looks at the supervisors' station, then the clock. It's twenty to ten. An incredible exhaustion, mitigated by the proximity of quitting time, washes through him. He rubs his eyes and stands up.<br />
<br />
Laura, one of the supervisors, casts him a condemning glance. Feeling guilty, then, an instant later, feeling with defensive pride that he does his fair share of work and deserves the occasional break, he walks over to the station.<br />
<br />
"Cheques in?" he says. The question is virtually rhetorical.<br />
<br />
Laura looks at him with her glassy, neutral eyes. "No," she says.<br />
<br />
"They were supposed to be here at five," Anders says.<br />
<br />
"Don't blame me. There was some screw-up with the payroll system."<br />
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<br />
<br />
"Yeah, well --." Anders bites his tongue. He simply says, "I need that money."<br />
<br />
"You're not the only one." Laura smiles tightly. "They'll be in tomorrow." <br />
<br />
"I'll be hungry tomorrow."<br />
<br />
Perhaps Laura feels a touch of compassion for him. She regards him with full attentiveness. But then she says, "You should plan ahead."<br />
<br />
Anders gives her a what's-that-supposed-to-mean? look, then turns away to make a trip to the washroom.<br />
<br />
On the way back, he notices one the senior analysts behind the glass wall that separates the executive offices from the hall that leads to the teleresearch room where the interviewers work. The analyst is a bulky guy who's shaved his head bald and clearly works out. He has the aggressively friendly, somewhat sinister manner of a doorman at a night club. In front of him is a woman in a power suit. <br />
<br />
Anders only glimpses all this as he walks down the hall. <br />
<br />
When he gets back to his work station, it's twelve minutes to ten. Generally, this is just around the time when one of the supervisors begins walking around and telling everyone who's not on a survey to log off. Anders feels a contented relief. He figures he'll find a way to feed himself until tomorrow. He fingers the change in his pocket: his clinking life's savings.<br />
<br />
At ten-to-ten, Jeremy, one of few consistently nice supervisors, begins walking down aisles. Anders stretches his arms. Then Jeremy's voice becomes audible. "Don't log off. We'll be working to ten. Even if you're not on a survey, keep dialling."<br />
<br />
"But Jer-emy," a whiny voice says. "This survey is super-long. If we get someone now, we'll be here to, like, midnight."<br />
<br />
"I'm just passing my orders along. I don't want to stay here any more than you do," Jeremy says. Then he adds, as if as an afterthought, "We're going to be starting another survey at ten."<br />
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<br />
<br />
"WHAT?!" a Jamaican woman named Celia says.<br />
<br />
"I'm sorry, but that's the way it is. We've got a rush job from The Policy Group, and everyone has to work till quarter past."<br />
<br />
The Policy Group isn't technically part of the company that Anders works for. Anders's company is called Windgate Research, and it's a pollster for the federal Liberals. The Policy Group has its office halfway down the hall between Windgate's executive suites and Anders's workplace. It in turn does polling for the provincial Conservatives. Both firms use the same interviewers.<br />
<br />
Celia says loudly, "I SIGN UP FOR TEN, AND THAT'S WHEN I'M LEAVING. YOU WANT PEOPLE TO STAY EXTRA HOURS, YOU TELL THEM IN ADVANCE." <br />
<br />
Anders listens to Celia with a distant kind of neutrality. He doesn't share her fury. Then he starts thinking about what's going on and gets angry not only because Celia has a point but because she isn't pin-pointing the exact nature of the way the truth is being spun.<br />
<br />
The description of this survey as a 'rush job' is a misnomer; while it's understood that some surveys are more urgent than others, all of them need at least a day or two of preparation. If nothing else, the analyst who wrote this particular survey would have begun working on it early in the afternoon. There is no way management could have 'just' discovered it needed this survey done.<br />
<br />
Then a more calculating, more cautious part of Anders's mind kicks in. He's been having trouble getting along with the supervisors lately -- even the normally genial Jeremy has been prickly. And Anders, a university student with post-grad ambitions, is too intellectually proud to put up with the low-level condescension which is routinely directed at the interviewers. He tends to snap back when criticized. He knows that he has a reputation for being difficult. If he were to stay for an extra fifteen minutes, it'd help him go down in the supervisors' good-books.<br />
<br />
"Everybody log off," Jeremy says to the whole room. He repeats his message a few more times, like a portly town crier walking down a street of computers.<br />
<br />
"You know what this survey's about?" Anders says to Michelle, the woman with no front teeth, who's sitting at a station opposite his. <br />
<br />
She shrugs. "Maybe the teachers' strike," she says.<br />
<br />
Anders realizes she must be right. It's early November, 1997 -- the strike has been dragging on for over a week. And the provincial government is starting to lose the battle of public opinion; simply that it has been holding off legislating the teachers back to work shows that it's scared. <br />
<br />
Despite himself, like a true political junkie enzymes of excitement begin coursing through Anders's blood. It's like being a sports fan at a playoff: He wants to see what the final match up is going to be.<br />
<br />
"The survey's number is 154," Jeremy announces. "This is manual dial. Please log on."<br />
<br />
Anders begins reading the new survey. Any anticipation he experienced a moment before is evaporated by the sheer length of it; it contains over eighty questions.<br />
<br />
"LOOK AT THIS!" Celia says. "THIS SURVEY LONG, JEREMY."<br />
<br />
There are murmurs of agreement from her section of the room. Laura rushes over to quell the problem. She speaks to Celia, her voice inaudible.<br />
<br />
"I DON'T CARE," Celia says. "THEM POLICY GROUP PEOPLE DO THIS ON PURPOSE. THEY DO IT LAST WEEK, TOO. AND WHAT ABOUT OUR HALF HOUR BREAK? WE WORKIN' FOR MORE THAN FIVE HOURS, WE'RE ENTITLED TO HALF ... AN ... HOUR ... BREAK."<br />
<br />
"It's only fifteen extra minutes," Laura says. "You'll be paid for it."<br />
<br />
Celia's tone lowers, but it's still adamant and clear with outrage. "That's not right. They're tryin' to nickel and dime us. They plan this." <br />
<br />
Again, Laura's voice slips under the threshold of hearing. Anders turns back to his screen. <br />
<br />
He's been phoning the West most of the evening. With its time differential, he hasn't had to worry about upsetting people by calling too late. With dismay he realizes he'll now be phoning metro Toronto, the most cranky and survey-harassed region of the country, at ten on a Tuesday night. He swears to himself. The questions keep appearing before him. Almost all of them are leading.... As was said earlier, the strike by the teachers' unions is illegal. Does knowing this make you more likely or less likely to support the provincial government's reforms to education?<br />
<br />
"It's just another fifteen minutes," the interviewer sitting next to Anders says. He's a skinny skateboarder named Lance. He once told Anders that he ate one meal of eggs and bread a day for a week.<br />
<br />
Anders looks back at Lance with an aghast expression. "Are you kidding?!"<br />
<br />
Lance shrugs. He slouches deeply in his seat. "Just phone a coupla numbers. Look like you're workin'. Make 'em happy."<br />
<br />
Anders's emotions shift very abruptly. Lance is right. Pretend to be a good employee. <br />
<br />
But at ten sharp, a mutiny breaks out. People begin rising from their seats, starting first, it seems, with Celia. "I got a connectin' bus to catch," she says by way of explanation.<br />
<br />
Hunger gnaws at Anders's stomach. He only had a can of sardines for supper. He was counting desperately on the pay-cheque. He figured after work he'd make a beeline to a bank machine, deposit his pay, then treat himself to dinner at a souvlaki place. Physical discomfort reminds him of how much he hates his company.<br />
<br />
Despite his resolution, almost involuntarily Anders finds himself rising from his seat. He makes an extra show of lining up his keyboard neatly on his desk and putting on his coat with genteel calm. <br />
<br />
"What are you doing?" Michelle says.<br />
<br />
"I'm not staying. This is ridiculous. What, we're supposed to phone people now, and ask them a bunch of propagandistic questions for half an hour?"<br />
<br />
"It's a job." <br />
<br />
"Barely."<br />
<br />
As Anders is walking towards the supervisors' station, the man who was in the front office -- the one with the bald head and fighter's build -- enters. He sees the mass of people huddled around the sign-out sheet.<br />
<br />
"What's going on?" he says loudly to Laura.<br />
<br />
"People don't want to stay. They signed up till ten o'clock, and they're leaving." <br />
<br />
The tough bald man looks around him. For a second his expression is so similar to that of a captain trying to give orders to soldiers who are on leave that Anders wants to laugh. Then the man composes himself, and his face becomes a managerial mask.<br />
<br />
"Everybody, could I have your attention!" he says loudly. "Everyone! Listen, this is a rush job. It's very important. We need you people to stay."<br />
<br />
A number of the people milling around stop. Everybody seems temporarily frozen by this man's voice. Then a few people move discreetly towards the door.<br />
<br />
"Listen, I know it's late, and I know you people want to get home. But we have to start getting results on this particular issue. Certain people -- important people -- need feedback, and they need something that they can start working with first thing tomorrow. So everybody, would you please ... just return to your stations. If we all pitch in, we can make a dent on this baby."<br />
<br />
Some people seem to have been convinced by this man's manner, but no one actually returns to a station. <br />
<br />
Seeing this, the man adds in a deal-maker's tone, "I'll give you a bonus."<br />
<br />
The man is standing right beside Anders. Although the man isn't looking right at him, Anders can practically feel tendrils working their way out of him, as if he has thousands of microscopic hairs waving gently in the air, picking up people's opinions chemically.<br />
<br />
"How much?" Anders says. His voice is steady, but he's surprised at how fearful he feels.<br />
<br />
"Come on," the tough bald man is saying to everyone, clapping his hands together. Then he turns to Anders, his body language like that of an adult irritated by a child.<br />
<br />
Anders watches as the man's eyes settle on his. They are disconcertingly focused; they are powerful and unblinking. When the man's mouth moves, there is the slightest of hesitations when he pronounces his first syllable. "Three bucks." <br />
<br />
The adrenalin that Anders experienced minutes before comes back to him stronger. "You've got to be kidding." <br />
<br />
The tough bald man holds his hands out from his pockets as if to say: hey buddy, that's all I got. <br />Then the man says, "You think you're worth more?"<br />
<br />
A voice in Anders's head tells him that he should back off. It tells him he's making a huge mistake, engaging in confrontation. Everybody else in the room knows this man's a jerk. Why say it to his face?<br />
<br />
So Anders, thinking he's being conciliatory, says, "I'll do it. But yeah, I think I'm worth more."<br />
<br />
"Let me tell you something about what you're worth," the man says. He holds up his hand, making a zero sign with his thumb and forefinger. "I could have you replaced like that." He snaps his fingers with startling volume. "Now you get back to your friggin' station or you take a walk out the door."<br />
<br />
This is too much. Anders glares. "Maybe more than one person will walk out that door."<br />
<br />
"What's that supposed to mean --?"<br />
<br />
"People here are pretty sick of working for eight bucks an hour. We get no raises, no benefits, no consistent hours, and the company rakes in millions." Anders feels as if his nerves are exposed. He's absolutely convinced the man is going to hit him. He's startled; he thought he'd left this level of fear behind in high school.<br />
<br />
"That's the industry standard," the man says. He narrows his eyes. "Pal."<br />
<br />
"You got people here who don't even get enough to eat. You think that's a fair standard?"<br />
<br />
The man looks at Anders -- he looks at the people nearby. He smirks. Most everybody is well-dressed.<br />
<br />
A schizophrenic electricity fills the room: Anders is completely alert but also more tired than ever. He feels that everybody's attention is on him and nobody is with him. The other people all stand around, waiting. A horrible sense of defeat hovers on the fringe of his consciousness. <br />
<br />
"What did you say your name was?" the man says. His voice is superficially polite, but it's edged with the appetite of an axe.<br />
<br />
*<br />
<i><br /></i>
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<i>Finn Harvor is an artist, writer, filmmaker, and musician. He lives with his wife in South Korea. His work -- literary and academic -- has appeared in several journals including Poetry Film Live, This Magazine, Canadian Notes and Queries, Former People, Eclectica, and others. His author-made movies have been screened in Korea, the U.S., the U.K., and Greece, with upcoming screenings at the Athens Poetry Film Festival and the Rabbitheart Poetry Film Festival.</i><br />
<i></i><br />
<br />Michael Brysonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00816850668522214805noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2564733539116511601.post-24770038568566376422017-10-16T21:25:00.002-04:002017-10-17T06:53:47.798-04:00Fiction #75: Suzanne Bowness <b><i>Alternatives to Knitting</i></b><br />
<b></b><i></i><br />
I hope I have enough room in my satchel. I’ve brought the pink patchwork bag, the one I used to store my wool when I tried to take up knitting. Stupid hobby. Takes days to make something you could buy for $10 at the store. Lainey tries to tell me that people hang on to the handmade things forever. I don’t believe in forever anymore. Roger, now there was a man who believed. Kept every ticket stub he ever bought. Every birthday card. And now who’s left to hang on to them? Me. He threatened to haunt me if I ever tossed them. So there they sit, in that stingy alcove they call a closet.<br />
<br />
I reach in to feel the space inside the bag, and my hand disappears into its silky pink lining. All you can see is the creamy lace cuff of my blouse. Definitely ample. Last time I took my old black leather bag. Inadequate. Close call—I know I’ve gotten a little bold with practise. Can you really blame me? I mean I expected this to be easy but not <i>this</i> easy. Hell, I could start bowling melons down the paper products aisle, smash all the glass jam jars onto the floor and they wouldn’t even notice. Wouldn’t notice except to say, “aw there she goes the poor dear,—bet she keeps her knitting in that patchwork bag.” <br />
<br />
As I pull my hand out again I avert my eyes and focus on the cottage cheese tubs in front of me. Cottage cheese: gross. The cafeteria ladies seem to think anyone over 60 must be crazy for it. In the mornings, it’s cottage cheese with yoghurt. Lunch is vegetable plate with cottage cheese. Dinner--well, let’s just say the lasagna is suspiciously cheesy. Most of them don’t give it much thought; they’re too busy gossiping or angling for the right table with the right people. Just because Gladys Earl wears those slimming pantsuits and by some miracle managed only to put on ten pounds to the standard twenty (okay, thirty) somehow she thinks that gives her dibs on the table near the window. And Hubert, always right there to pull out her chair, to slip her the Sudoku he clipped from his morning paper. <br />
<br />
I hate looking at my hands now that they are wrinkly and veined. Roger used to say that my hands were lovely. Elegant, he called them. “Rose, you have elegant hands.” I’m sure he’d hate to see them now if he were still around. The sad thing is, I’m sure he’d love to see them. <br />
<br />
Roger would not approve of Hubert one bit. But he’d approve of my walkabouts even less. Not that it gives me a pardon, but Roger never did like this store when we lived nearby. Too commercial. We’d only come here for the specials and staples: tuna and canned soup and deodorant. Otherwise we shopped at George’s, the local market around the corner. I think Roger felt a twinge of disloyalty to George even with the occasional visit to the supermarket; they had been friends after 20 years in the neighborhood. But there’s disloyalty and then there’s a third off sirloin. <br />
<br />
The light here is so sharp when it glints off the plastic. Burns my eyes. It’s almost blue, that light. My eyes lately aren’t what they used to be, well for that matter nothing is. Hair thinner, hearing harder, legs wobblier, boobs saggier. Even my wardrobe seems to be falling behind which vaguely depresses me, although not enough to spend a hundred and eighty dollars on a pantsuit. I heard that’s what Gladys paid. And just last week Sonia strolls in too wearing a powder blue ensemble. Just marched right over to Gladys for inspection. <br />
<br />
I’m glad I decided on the patchwork bag, besides being larger it also blends in well. Non-descript coat. Grey scarf. A bit of shuffle. Grey hair, curly. Really playing up the old lady here. Shuffle in; grab a flyer and a cart. Be sure to leave the cart in produce and wander by myself over to the dairy section. Fruit is beginner territory. First the occasional sample right in the store. Once I even heard them, just barely. “The old lady is eating the grapes!” Then, “Relax, Joe, in her day that was probably what they did in her time. What are you going to, bust some old lady?” <br />
<br />
After they walked away, I munched on a few more, then put a couple in my pocket. That was all that happened the first time. Two anonymous pale green globes rubbing against each other as I paid for my magazine at the front cash. Now, I know some would think I would have moved on to more expensive hauls by now: the pharmacy for instance. But it’s the anonymity I relish, the interchangeable objects, the green globes, the oblong nuts, the smooth brown discs with their sugary centres, all mingling in my pockets and my patchwork bag. Freedom. Liberated from their neat stacks and packages. <br />
<br />
My legs are a little sore from walking. This store is further from the bus stop than I remember. But it’s far enough from the centre that I won’t see anyone I know. Everyone I used to know around here is likely dead. I haven’t lived in this part of town since Roger died. Still the usual mid-afternoon crowd though. New mothers with their screaming toddlers. Older mothers with their bodies beginning to sag as they chase after their coughing school-aged children off sick. A senior or two. We blend in here. We try to ignore each other, too obviously members of the same grey haired, wrinkly skin and everywhere-sagging clan to really feel the need to associate. <br />
<br />
That man looks like Hubert, only thinner and without the moustache. If you squinted you could imagine that lady trailing him to be Gladys. Although she’s probably ten pounds heavier. And without quite the same look of smug judgment as Gladys. Bitch. The more I think of her the more irritated I get. Four months ago Lainey and I used to be good friends. Then Gladys moved in. Now it’s all, “Lainey, we need one more player for bridge. Lainey, why don’t you show me how to do the purl stitch.” And Lainey just eats it up. I say, Margaret would have seen right through that. Friends on the inside are just not the same as the friends from before. <br />
<br />
I look past the cottage cheese, locking in on my target. “She moves in.” That’s what Harrison would say, even at eight he’s already memorizing the scenes in those ridiculous cop movies his mother lets him watch. Harrison, what a nonsensical name, parents these days trying to outdo each other with their so-called creativity. But what do I know? I would never tell his mother, but those shows he tells me about are actually quite something. I don’t let on that I watch them but I’ve started tuning in to the program on Wednesdays with the blonde detective. I mean there are some real tricks revealed in those programs, places the ordinary mind does not naturally go. I wonder if real criminals study them too. <br />
<br />
There, it’s in. One quick motion is how you do it, really. First the hover, then the twist. The tag comes off in your hand, that’s the fussiest part. I like to pocket the tag as a souvenir. They’re all over my cutlery drawer. But things have to move quickly now. The quick reach. Three plastic cylinders. Cool. Pliant. Inside my patchwork bag the one bag is moving anonymously now, liberated from its siblings, free and rolling around. Untraceable. I imagine sipping tea later this afternoon, pouring it in and watching it swirls around, warming my insides. Maybe I’ll invite Gladys and Hubert over to sample a cup, listen for them to ask for just a bit more when I fail to fill the pitcher enough. I imagine Joe or his dairy counter equivalent coming along later and trying to figure out the mystery. Two instead of three. A mistake at the processing plant? This is the largest I’ve liberated yet, and it’s taken three afternoons to work up the nerve. The raisins from four weeks ago now seem amateur by comparison. Maybe next week I’ll try the crackers, crinkly packaging be damned.<br />
<br />
“But we’re not in the clear yet,” Harrison would say solemnly. Time to make my escape. As I head to the door, the middle-aged butcher nods his bald head indulgently and winks at me. I blush in a suitably old-fashioned manner. <br />
<br />
*<br />
<br />
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<i>Suzanne (Sue) Bowness is a freelance writer and editor who published her first poetry collection </i>The Days You’ve Spent<i> (Tightrope Books), in 2010. In 2006, she won the Ottawa Little Theatre’s National One Act Playwriting Competition. Sue is working on a collection of short stories and a novel. Keep an eye on her at <a href="http://suzannebowness.com/">suzannebowness.com</a></i><br />
<i></i><i></i><br />Michael Brysonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00816850668522214805noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2564733539116511601.post-90549803073343217872017-10-16T21:24:00.001-04:002017-10-16T21:24:41.406-04:00Fiction #75: M.W. Miller<b><i>The Foundational Banquet of the Four Cousins</i></b><br />
<b></b><i></i><br />
The original names of the four cousins were Fred, George, Dave and Leo. They hailed from the four intermediate points of the compass, the northeast, southeast, northwest and southwest, respectively. But understanding that every unraveling begins in the south they early on converted to a strictly southern direction and discipline, and at length found it natural to adopt new and more imposing southern names.<br />
<br />So Fred came to be called Acharya Sunya; George, Pandit Non-dual; Dave, Rabbi Einsof; and Leo, the Philosopher of One.<br />
<br />And each became expert in a dead or nearly dead language, mutually unintelligible with any other. For each is built around the core of not-any-thing, and each not-any-thing is uniquely itself, though this could make no sense. <br />
<br />
Now as fully realized sages, each in his own tradition, they sit down together at a last banquet, in a manner of speaking.<br />
<br />
They call it sitting at a banquet, though they might as easily call it standing, since their sitting is so precarious.<br />
<br />
And they call it a last banquet, though it might easily be called a first. But to call it a first would only invite speculation on the next, or controversy over whether this indeed was a first and not the reflex of some prior event. What they surely want to avoid is unnecessary argument, for they are all devoted to the one necessary. So they are radical in that respect, though they are all conservative in dress, right out of the oldest bazaar or the newest catalog.<br />
<br />
The robes of the four cousins are in contrasting colours: the Acharya in white, the Pandit in saffron, the Rabbi in red and the Philosopher in black. But they are identical in cut and in material of identical gauge.<br />
<br />
In the end, they cannot be distinguished, one from the other. And even to say that they either can or cannot be distinguished is a terrible diminution of who they are not.<br />
<br />
Yet the four cousins are all very distinguished in the sense of being dignified. Their dignity doesn’t consist in this or that quality (which can’t be distinguished) but in a remote clarity. Their opaque expressions and manners of speaking render them transparent and unobstructed.<br />
<br />
They trust each other, complicitly, but they don’t trust themselves. Everything they say or think can and will be used against them. Every sentence leads by some circuitous route to a snag in the river. The river clogs and the fields are flooded out of season.<br />
<br />
They sit teetering on rickety folding chairs at the corners of a square oaken table, delicately balancing paper plates on their laps. The table is scarred by knife cuts from repeated carving. It’s scorched by cigars and matches, and smudged with melted wax. But though they freely maintain that they sit at a last banquet, they hold none of these marks as evidence of any banquet prior. No evidence is truly evidence, they all agree. All evidence is sign, and all sign points elsewhere and nowhere.<br />
<br />
For they think it cruel to bind evidence down along a single axis, chaining one exhibit to the next against some thudding wall of fact, without adequate air and sunlight. They would give all evidence the freest range possible. And so they would give evidence its just due.<br />
<br />
The table is covered with a variety of crystal vessels, glasses, beakers and pitchers in green, gold and red, much like a table set in the tent of royal patrons before a tournament.<br />
<br />
Banners and pennants fly over such a tent, which is pitched between a small wood and the list. Sunlight pierces the tent as easily as it pierces the wood, illuminating the vessels on the royal table, as it illuminates the vessels here.<br />
<br />
But unlike the royal table, the table of the four cousins is set nowhere that can be named. Still, the vessels are filled, identically, with nectar and with soma, doubly filled and overflowing.<br />
<br />
The four cousins pour for one another as they pose their self-canceling arguments with an air of distraction. This air of distraction is the perfect medium for their purposes, communicating over space and time with little loss of intent or meaning, in the utmost cool.<br />
<br />
But their frail arms, making all signs and <i>mudras</i> as they lift, pour and pass along, badly negotiate the tangle of vessels, tipping some, chipping others, shattering a few and spilling <i>soma</i> and nectar across the table. Shards of glass glitter as they fall, sound like chimes, and from some nowhere two servants arrive to clean up and reestablish order.<br />
<br />
The servants are a former lady and her knight, recently fallen from their higher stations, but still a fresh and handsome couple who wield their rags with dexterity. They sweep up the shards and reset the table, though they jumble the original arrangement of the vessels they replace.<br />
<br />
The banquet temporarily and roughly reordered, they withdraw behind a screen at the foot of the table (which has no foot) and chastely undress. They produce a wicker throne. A peacock perches on its back. Intimately, they mount the throne, the lady astride the knight’s lap, fixing eyes to eyes and then lips to lips.<br />
<br />
The knight’s profile is strong, honest, and noble. The lady’s generous lips and true-hearted eyes are even more beautiful in the candlelight, framed by a nebula of black hair.<br />
<br />
Murmuring in the first language, or the last, they recall their long pilgrimage through a countryside of lakes, hills, heaths and unexpected deserts, through woods ruled by monkeys and bears, through villages of sly peasants and comical monks, through manor houses of masters, gurus, priests and holy courtesans.<br />
<br />
Their path is uncanny but clear through the woods, across the landed estates, through the villages, the inns and tea houses, through the multiform streets and neighborhoods of the capitol. They lose each other across the fields, down the streets, in the crowds, down the hallways, and find each other in disorder and disaster, in happy encounters by temples broken in sunlight.<br />
<br />
Wherever they come to stand or sit, in the woods, on the mountains, along the river, on the list beside the woods, a vast tent rises up unaccountably as a refuge, as now it rises over the table of the four cousins, next to the small wood by the enormous field, a tent secure against the rain but with openings all around for the peering in of sheep and cattle and, planted in support at each corner, a frailly-limbed willow tree.<br />
<br />
*<br />
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<i>M.W. Miller is a Vancouver writer. He lives inside a hat.</i><br />Michael Brysonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00816850668522214805noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2564733539116511601.post-86368499257077398342017-10-16T21:16:00.001-04:002017-10-16T21:16:18.148-04:00Fiction #75: E.D. Morin<b><i>Black Currant</i></b><br />
<b><i><br /></i></b>
We share a bus seat — me with my grubby backpack jammed against my knees, her with her Chanel knock-off tucked beside her. I have the window. She has the aisle.<br />
<br />
Where you from? she asks.<br />
<br />
Here, I tell her, skirting the truth. You?<br />
<br />
Up north, she says. Goin’ home.<br />
<br />
We say nothing for a while and the bus lurches past sun-reflected towers, up Edmonton Trail, past houses and apartments, past diners and a tire shop and that building painted a piebald cow pattern, past more houses and down into the industrial section. The driver hauls at a good clip — until a hard, controlled stop throws us both against the seatback in front of us and the air brakes blast.<br />
<br />
Bull nuts, my seat companion says. She rescues her bag off the floor.<br />
<br />
I smile and take in a little more of her. Early twenties? Nothing too remarkable, jeans and a ruffled sleeveless shirt that could have come from Sears. Decent haircut, smidge of eye goop and all in all more fashion sense than I’ll ever possess. Seems that no matter how often I go to the mall or thrift shops with the intention of buying something pretty, I always come home with cargo pants and another boring plaid shirt. Force of habit. Lesson drilled into me early. <i>Think you’re so special?</i><br />
<i><br /></i>
Turn and gaze out the window, and I realize how much dread I have about this bus ride. Or not so much the bus ride as the arriving at the other end. Home. Is. Was. At the other end hangs a series of tearful long goodbyes, the way my family prefers them. Inevitable is the gathering at my parents’ front entrance before one or the other of us departs, that momentary scuffle to retrieve boots or bags or coats from the hallway’s hard, red tiles. An embarrassing incident will be alluded to, something suitably squeamish. The time Maddy threw up at the kitchen table. The time Yvon baked his nefariously bad pound cake, the result of muddling the sugar and salt tins, and then confusing ginger with powdered garlic. Or when I fell off a chair waiting with our mother at the bank, and I bled all over the place.<br />
<i><br /></i>
<i>Up to her usual antics. Never could sit still, haha.</i><br />
<i><br /></i>
Good natured on the surface, yet somehow giving a sensation of ants crawling under my collar, ants up my sleeves. And this time, the goodbyes will be especially tortuous and drawn-out knowing that once I walk out our parents’ front door I’ll be gone for a long stretch.<br />
<br />
<i>Up north. Goin’ home.</i><br />
<i><br /></i>
Turn to my seat companion. I say, how far north you live? And by the way, I’m Clod.<br />
<br />
She squints. Clod is your name?<br />
<br />
Short for Claudine.<br />
<br />
Her eyes sprout crinkles. She puts out her hand, says her name is Paulina Georgina. Great grandma calls her Paulie, but only her. Usually, though, she goes by PG.<br />
<br />
Nice to meet you, Paulina Georgina.<br />
<br />
Tell me about it. And the crinkles spread. A charmer she is.<br />
<br />
How far north is home? I say.<br />
<br />
Pretty far. Fly in only. Hamstring Lake it’s called. You hear of it?<br />
<br />
I nod-shake my head, tell her I’ve heard the name, but don’t know much about the place. So — I continue, pausing to rearrange my thoughts, to consider my own complicated relationship with home — you live there now? Or just used to?<br />
<br />
Live, used to. Same difference. Can’t get rid of the place if I try.<br />
<br />
Paulina opens her purse, sifts inside and retrieves a pack of smokes, slides one out, holds the tip to her nose, inhales.<br />
<br />
She catches me observing her. — What?<br />
<br />
I can’t help it, I glance at the <i>No Smoking</i> sign above the driver.<br />
<br />
She shoves the cig back in with its cellmates. — You ever eat black currants, Clod?<br />
<br />
Think so? I say. My mind wanders to that time near my parents’ house, eons ago. The bushes along the ravine where I picked a handful of small, dark berries, so sour my eyes watered when I bit into them. Maddy freaked out, shouted they were poisonous. Said I needed to be rushed to the hospital and have my stomach pumped.<br />
<br />
Never did get sick, I tell Paulina.<br />
<br />
And I recall the perfume of warm berries. The sourness.<br />
<br />
Yup, that’s black currants, she says. It’s why I smoke these. Tobacco reminds me of the smell of home. The leaves do, you know? But I can tell you’re not a smoker, probably paid better attention to those cancer warnings. All that cancer talk didn’t go anywhere with me. Once tobacco gets a hold, it’s hard to smother the craving.<br />
<br />
I took up smoking when I was seventeen, I say. Only lasted one summer. The craving still comes occasionally. Bad habit in other ways though, since I bummed all my cigarettes off friends. Reason I quit is because people stopped lending me smokes.<br />
<br />
<i>Lend</i>, she laughs. Good one.<br />
<br />
I laugh too and my dread eases a bit. Paulina organizes her earbuds, fiddles with her phone and we ride along in silence. Out my window the fields are scattered with round hay bales wrapped in protective plastic that give the bales the appearance of supersize marshmallows. <i>Marshmallow fields forever.</i><br />
<i><br /></i>
Up north, high above the Arctic Circle, there’s tundra and coast and no marshmallow fields. My destination tomorrow. Leaving 0800 hours. In the baggage compartment of our bus is my massive MEC duffle bag, and the rest of my stuff? In storage bins at my ex’s. So this is it, my somewhat clean break. Renewable energy technician at a radar station up north, the pay outrageous, at least on paper, but when you factor in the high cost of living in the remote north, nothing to write home about. Still, a heck of a lot better than any unpaid internship, which is all I can get in Calgary in this stupid economy. Also, a lot better than my ex’s spare room with his treadmill and dumbbells.<br />
<br />
Stop gazing out the window, nose through my backpack, locate the book I brought.<br />
<br />
Trust me to want to learn about the next episode of my life from a history book. A report on the Distant Early Warning line, sixty-three radar stations extending high across the continent, high above the Arctic Circle. The DEW line, a doe-eyed, euphemistic name for a military defence tool intended to ward off hostile attacks — the hostiles of the day being the Soviets. The original stations were designed to detect incoming Soviet bombers, but then ICBMs came along. Intercontinental ballistic missiles. Adjustments were made, the stations brought up to snuff even as the paint was drying. All very informative. But what did people do up there?<br />
<br />
Who were the labourers who built the stations? The operators who maintained them? And the local Inuit — were they hired as guides? As operators? Next to me, Paulina gazes ahead, hums quietly, drums on her knees. A neon rainbow feather dangles from each ear.<br />
<br />
Chapters about the scientists who commissioned the DEW system, highfalutin members of parliament and rubber stampers who took all the credit. Chapters that focus on the science behind radar systems too, which is fascinating but hilariously old-fashioned considering today’s real-time satellite tracking and lightning speed data crunching capabilities. Another chapter deals with the cold war landscape long before Perestroika. And the northern climate itself, references to permafrost, frozen equipment and system failures due to extreme temperatures. Nothing about the Arctic Cordillera or coastal tundra or polar bear or caribou.<br />
<br />
I’m not running away. Everyone has a right to their opinion, of course.<br />
<br />
Paulina catches my gaze as we pass the Bowden refinery. Closed recently. She removes her earbuds, asks if I work in oil and gas.<br />
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Used to, I say. Embarrassed a bit, like it’s a dirty secret. I’d rattled a few guys’ cages taking that job, bilked some male out of his rightful position. And for a while it was perfect. Odour and grind of metal on grease, clean concrete floors, the orderliness of it all. But as much as I tried to shuck off my gender, even a tomboy like me could only rankle like a goose-egg. Certain of my A-hole fellow operators wouldn’t stop harassing me. They wouldn’t shut up.<br />
<br />
Good money? Paulina asks.<br />
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Good money, but I blew away most of it on big trips. New Zealand, South Africa, Patagonia. Let’s just say it was a good gig until it wasn’t. So, I quit and went back to school and shifted into renewable energy. Good move overall, easier to sleep at night, but I’ve yet to make any money at it. Course, oil and gas isn’t so lucrative anymore with these low barrel prices. It’s been, what, three years?<br />
<br />
Paulina gives me a funny look. Guess so, she says.<br />
<br />
Sensing I’ve strayed into chest-deep muskeg, I shift gears.<br />
<br />
Tell me about Hamstring Lake. What’s it like up there?<br />
<br />
She giggles. Paradise, if you don’t mind the black flies. Seriously, though, it’s way easier to grow a garden up north. Abundance of daylight. Cabbages as big as babies, bushes dripping with black currants.<br />
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What do you do with the black currants?<br />
<br />
Pie is best. You ever make a black currant pie? No, I can see you haven’t. Let me tell you, what a production.<br />
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I smile. How’s that?<br />
<br />
First there’s the crust, then there’s the dealing with all the tiny seeds. Paulina laughs. Honestly, the berries are too small to pit, so you gotta cook them first and mash them and then pick out the seeds one by one. Reminds me of trout fishing. So mind-numbingly dull you want to jump off the boat, but then you learn patience and after a while gain a rhythm. Enough people around, sisters, grandmothers, the occasional boyfriend, it’s not so bad.<br />
<br />
A pie party.<br />
<br />
Paulina nods. With everyone laughing and working, it’s easy to forget how many shitty seeds you’ve got to fish out.<br />
<br />
At the Red Deer off-ramp, we trundle east and then north to the local transfer point, a mandatory fifteen-minute stop. When we pull in, Paulina bounces off the coach for a smoke. I head to the restroom at the depot and splash water on my neck. My sister keeps asking me, why north? Since when is Nunavut on your radar? I know what Maddy wants. She wants me to stay in Calgary and patch things up with my ex.<br />
<br />
The bus rolls onto the highway and I flip to the last chapter of my book, all about the legacy of those radar stations. Contaminated soil, hazardous waste, toxins like lead, PCBs and asbestos. Released into the fragile northern ecosystem, persisting in animals, in fish stocks, in the ice. The clean-up process continues to this day.<br />
<br />
I close the book and stow it inside my backpack.<br />
<br />
My brother Yvon keeps emailing me facts about the north: which parka to buy, vitamin D supplementation, hydroponic gardening, setting up time-lapse shots of the aurora borealis. But what will I find when I get up there? What if it’s just more A-holes, more guys who think they have all the answers? What if I find I haven’t learned a thing?<br />
<br />
I blame my family. Even now, at family gatherings, it’s like we don’t talk about shit. We hide the ugly parts. We don’t admit how much pain we’ve caused. We’re stupidly ignorant, even as the evidence of our wrongs mounts around us.<br />
<br />
For the rest of the bus ride, Paulina Georgina and I don’t talk, and I’m envious all at once of those pie parties. Steady rhythm of that mundane act. Picking seeds out of the berry mash, little by little improving the pie for everyone.<br />
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<i>Lend</i>, I say under my breath. And she stares hazily past me out the window.<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEghImFEsVXPvF6qCVkP-0dTCySfNPLSMEvXgT-uT-jYR_9FWK1Gmvl0-Y-n23UTLfPjmViv72LY5Eo5hU8EG-nNDS-Mm96QKSkwhNi1ToWBF6Vfihuxkvomiq61a5lzXrcO2SkZSNJ_A4Y/s1600/Morin+Mug+Shot.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1582" data-original-width="1224" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEghImFEsVXPvF6qCVkP-0dTCySfNPLSMEvXgT-uT-jYR_9FWK1Gmvl0-Y-n23UTLfPjmViv72LY5Eo5hU8EG-nNDS-Mm96QKSkwhNi1ToWBF6Vfihuxkvomiq61a5lzXrcO2SkZSNJ_A4Y/s320/Morin+Mug+Shot.jpg" width="247" /></a></div>
<i>E.D. Morin is co-editor of </i>Writing Menopause: An Anthology of Fiction, Poetry and Creative Non-fiction<i> (Inanna Publications, 2017). For over twenty years, she's been exploring the intersection of science, wilderness and human shortcomings. Her writing has been published in </i>Pank Magazine<i>, </i>Rum Punch Press<i>, </i>Fiction Southeast <i>and </i>The Antigonish Review<i>, and produced for broadcast on CBC Radio.</i><br />
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<i>Photo credit: S. Wakefield.</i></div>
<br />Michael Brysonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00816850668522214805noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2564733539116511601.post-16090007985144371272017-10-16T21:05:00.000-04:002017-10-17T06:55:45.628-04:00Fiction #75: Robert Hilles <b><i>A Trick of the Brain</i></b><br />
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I was at the kitchen sink when my father lit his hands on fire. It looked like a trick at first. But everything moved so quickly. First my father’s hands were on fire and then I was on fire. And then the kitchen was on fire. My father had mistakenly used gasoline instead of fuel oil to light the stove. <br />
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“Jesus,” my father said, although not religious man. Then, “Robert hold the door open,” which I did.<br />
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An October gust blew flames everywhere. He and I were on fire and shook from the cold. <br />
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“Jesus,” my father said again and I screamed. <br />
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My mother hurried my sister, brother and I out the bedroom window. Then she went back to help my father fight the flames with coats and blankets. And for a few minutes my sister, brother and I huddled together outside terrified that both our parents would perish in the fire. But they got the fire out. My father’s hands were badly burned, but he drove us twelve miles to the hospital in Kenora. He didn’t say anything all the way there. My mother was silent too. Us kids sobbed in the back seat.<br />
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He carried that guilt for many years.<br />
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I never held him responsible and thought him brave in fact. But I never told him that and now I wish that I had. He would have liked to hear that. Would have liked to know that it made me love him more.<br />
<br />
For years I thought everything was held together. Whole. But now I see it’s always coming apart, never finished or complete. Chaos breeds more chaos and only the small details are orderly. Molecules, particles, yet they too burst out of control make fire, wind, and rain. Become dangerous one moment or veer off at some odd angle. Fire is caused by one molecule being attracted to another.<br />
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Later at the hospital we were sent to different rooms for treatment. Only my father and mother went home, his hands and her legs bandaged. He went to work in the next day. Every evening for the next two weeks he visited me in the hospital. He sat in the chair beside my bed. He’d already figured a way to hold a cigarette despite the bandages.<br />
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He said little between puffs but always rubbed my head with his bandaged hand before he left. When I think of my love for him I think of those visits and how we didn’t speak and yet we were as close as we’d ever be.<br />
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<i>Robert Hilles won the Governor General’s Award for Poetry for </i>Cantos From A Small Room <i>and his novel, </i>Raising of Voices<i>, won George Bugnet Award. His second novel, </i>A Gradual Ruin<i>, was published by Doubleday Canada. His books have also been shortlisted for The Milton Acorn People’s Poetry Prize, The W.O. Mitchell/City of Calgary Prize, The Stephan Stephansson Award, and The Howard O’Hagan Award. He has published fifteen books of poetry, three works of fiction (including </i>A Gradual Ruin<i>) and two nonfiction books. His latest poetry book, </i>Line<i>, will appear in the spring of 2018. He is currently working on a short story collection called,</i> Little Pink Houses <i>and a novel set in Thailand tentative called, </i>Our Silken Finery<i>.</i><br />
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<i>Photo credit: Rain Hilles.</i><br />
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Michael Brysonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00816850668522214805noreply@blogger.com0