Mercy Mercy Mercy Mercy Mercy Mercy Me

by Robert Long Foreman

Stan and Linda had to spice things up. They told Karen all about it. 
Karen was their marriage counselor. 
Stan said, “We have to spice things up, me and Linda. If we can’t spice it up in the bedroom I swear I’ll leave this shithead.” He stretched his arm and pointed at Linda.
“Stan,” said Karen, “could you not refer to Linda that way?”
“It’s okay,” said Linda. “It’s how we talk, now.”
Stan said, “It’s something new we’re trying out. We say the meanest shit we can think of to one another, so we don’t take it for granted when we say nice things.”
“Okay,” Karen said. “Don’t do that anymore. If your goal is to stay together, that is not a good practice.”
“Like you’re the expert,” Stan said.
Linda said, “Stan, you asshole. She is the expert. You complete fuck.”
“About this spicing things up,” said Karen. “Whatever it means, it sounds like adding some spice would be more promising than cursing at each other in front of therapists. Or in front of anyone. That only makes people worry about you.”
“We usually talk like that when we’re alone,” Linda said.
“Even still.”
Stan said, “What if it turns me on, when people worry about me? What if that’s the only way I can get hard?”
“Is it?” Karen asked.
“No,” he said.
She asked them, “Do you have ideas, for how you’ll spice things up?”
“Not really,” Linda said. “I mean, we talked about a few things. Clamps, for one. We could try clamps. We looked into dominatrices and found one that would penetrate Stan’s anus with different objects while I broadcast it live on Facebook. As long as I don’t film her face, she’s good with it.”
“Okay.”
“And we thought about hiring a couple of guys to tie Stan to a chair and make him watch both of them fuck me at the same time. I thought I’d wear, like, a bodice? Like it’s the sixteenth century?”
“We haven’t done those things yet,” Stan said. “We thought we’d discuss them with you first. You are the expert, I guess.”
“Good,” Karen said. “Don’t do those things. You need to stop getting spice-up ideas from porn sites.”
“Where do we get them, then?” Linda asked.
“Yeah,” said Stan, “are they on Pinterest?”
“I can give you ideas,” Karen said. “That’s probably the safest way.”
Stan said, “The Tyranny of the Marriage Counselor.”
“I’m sorry, Stan, what was that?” asked Karen.
“Oh, me? Nothing. It was nothing at all. Just the name of a book I’m writing in my head.”
“Why don’t we start simpler than the ideas you mentioned?” asked Karen. “You could try, like, putting on music when you’re in the mood.”
“Like Danzig,” said Linda.
Karen winced. “You might not want to dive right into Danzig sex. You could try Danzig IV, but even then I’m not sure. Making love to Danzig is for couples who are a little farther along than you two.”
“We’ve been together nine years.”
“I know. Why not start with Marvin Gaye?”
“That’s perfect,” Linda said. “He’s very sexy.”
“No kidding,” Stan said. “I’m getting hard just thinking about Marvin Gaye. Oh my god. I’m kind of precumming a little. Oh dear. Fuck!”
“Are you going to be all right?” asked Karen.
“This is great,” said Linda. “It’s exactly what we needed. I’m so glad Stan is precumming, because every time we go to have sex he gets introspective. And apologetic. It’s weird. But not this time!”
Back at the house, in the middle of the afternoon, right after marriage therapy, Stan and Linda went to change into something more comfortable. Linda was in charge of choosing the right song; they had argued in the car about who should do it, and she had won the argument, 3-2.
Stan emerged from his walk-in closet in leather pants, no shirt, and black leather boots, to the sound of guitar, bongos, cymbal, a little piano, a little bass, and the sweet, soothing tones of Marvin Gaye’s signature voice. Linda was on the bed in red lace panties, no bra, one of her ample breasts lying beside her on the bed, still attached to her body but sort of lumping down there, the other ample breast resting on top of it, if that makes any sense. 
Stan came close so Linda could smell the leather of his pants. He was so hard. 
“Mercy mercy me,” sang Marvin Gaye. 
It was like this was a sex wedding, like they were getting remarried sexually, and Marvin Gaye was the singing DJ who presided over their union.
Linda sniffed hard where Stan’s penis was in his pants, and she was so turned on. 
Marvin sang as she sniffed. 
“Fish full of mercury,” he crooned. “Radiation underground and in the sky.”
“Hold on,” Stan said. “Is he singing about pollution?”
“Yes,” gasped Linda, overcome by the smell of leather with a dick behind it. “Give it to me.”
“Linda,” Stan said, “I asked if this song is about the environment.”
“What? Yes. It is.”
“Why did you choose this song?”
“What’s wrong with it?”
“It’s about birds and fish.”
“And oil.”
“Yeah, but he doesn’t mean lube. He means crude oil, spilling onto birds. Making them sick. This isn’t turning me on at all.”
Linda sat up. She said, “I didn’t know you hated nature.”
“I don’t! I love nature. Birds are good. Especially the flightless ones.”
“Okay, then.” 
Linda descended, to sniff more leather.
“It’s just,” Stan said, Linda ascending again, “there are so many Marvin Gaye songs.”
“I’m not a DJ, Stan. I don’t know his whole discography.”
“That’s obvious. Babe, he has a song called ‘Let’s Get It On.’ The whole song is about fucking. There’s not one diseased badger in the whole thing.”
“He doesn’t sing about badgers in this.”
“I heard him mention ‘animals.’ And that includes badgers. And pandas. Do pandas get you hot? Is that what you’re about?”
“You’re overthinking this, babe.”
“Maybe I am.” He sat on the bed. “I’m so lost, all the time. My mind is a horrible place. I should buy a gun.”
“Oh, honey,” said Linda. “Not this.”
She tried to keep him sexual. She shouted at Alexa, demanded she play something highly erotic. 
Alexa put on “Graceland,” by Paul Simon.
It was the worst thing possible. “Graceland” was the song Stan’s father used to sing when they were in the car together. His father was dead!
Stan was crying, now. 
Linda sighed. She put her bra on, and her shirt.
Paul Simon sang the part about the human trampoline.
Stan wept so hard he choked. 
“Fucking Karen,” Linda said. “She’s sabotaged us again.”
“Why does she do this to us?” Stan wailed. “How did she outsmart us? Every time, she does this!”
“I don’t know,” Linda said, holding Stan. It would take him half a day to calm down. “I don’t know what that twisted psychopath has against us. One of these days, she’s going to get somebody killed. And I pray every day it won’t be you.”

Robert Long Foreman wrote Weird Pig and I Am Here to Make Friends. Learn more about him at www.robertlongforeman.com.

 Many Moons Will Fall

by Sophie Campbell

Mammy sent Isla and I outside to pick tatties from the garden. She handed us a bucket and told us to clean them before we brought them inside. She joked that if any of them were still dirty, she’d make us eat a spoonful of dirt. 

Over the fields, the sun was climbing and streaked the sky blood orange. The chickens were squawking to be fed and my cow, Elsie, was scratching her chin against the side of the house.

Isla had been telling me stories about the spaewife and, now Mammy was finally out of earshot, Isla carried on. 

“I’ve heard she can slice off men’s heads with a dart of her eye and she used to pickle babies in vinegar and poison people with herbs from her garden. She put a curse on Jeanie McLaughlin’s cows and it turned their milk black and then the black milk turned to cheese within the hour. And if you touched the cheese, your finger would drop off in the night. And I heard she caught her husband with another woman. So, she killed him and put a hex on the mistress and turned her into an old woman. The woman’s hair went from long and dark to a few wispy strands of grey, like a tattie that’s started to sprout.”
“Why would everyone in the village put up with her if she did those terrible things? She would’ve been run out of town. Or worse.” 
“Everyone’s too feart of her,” Isla said. “She promised she’d leave everyone alone if the favour was returned and she was allowed to stay in her hut on the outskirts of the village.” 
“And who told you all this?” 
“None of your business,” Isla said, pulling out a string of potatoes and tossing them in the bucket.
I brought my hands out from the dirt. “You’re always telling fibs. I don’t believe a word of it!”
Isla leaned over and took my chin in her hand. “Aye, ye do,” she said and blew in my face. 
I shoved her away.
“If you don’t believe me, let’s go see her for ourselves. We’ll tell Mammy we’re going to go to collect conkers but really we’ll go to the spaewife’s hut and I’ll prove it to ye.”
“No.”
“Scaredy cat,” Isla said.
“Am not!”
“Prove it then. Let’s go see the spaewife.”
“When?”
“Tomorrow.”

Mammy had Isla feed the chickens while I milked Elsie. I combed her tuft of her and gave her a cuddle when I was finished. She nuzzled her cold nose into my neck and I giggled and told her she was a silly girl. I watched her eyes blink. She had longer eyelashes than me. When we finished all our chores outside, Isla asked Mammy if we could go find conkers the next day and she said that was fine.

Later, I kneaded the dough for the bread while Mammy started on a pot of soup and sent Isla off to Mrs O’Brien to get some carrots. 

As soon as Isla was gone, I asked Mammy about the spaewife.
“Where did ye hear about her?” Mammy asked with a raised eyebrow.
“Just in the village, the other day. Somebody mentioned her.” I could tell Mammy wasn’t convinced. 
“Never you mind yerself with those stories.” Her eyes glanced over at the dough sticking to my fingers. “Add more flour.”

I couldn’t sleep that night. As soon as I could hear soft snores coming from everywhere else in the house, I tiptoed out of bed over to the window. The moon was high and milky and the stars glowed blue in a vast strip overhead like an icy breath, like a crack in the sky. Smoke still leaked out of a few chimneys. The woods to the east stood still. I used to stare at them until my eyes went out of focus, making it look like the roots were lifting up from the ground and taking steps. Mammy always warned me I had a wild imagination and it would never serve me. But I didn’t know how to get rid of it. 

Isla told me a story once about a time she went into the woods after dark and when I asked her how she could see without the sunlight, she said the path through the trees is lined with goblins. They come out at night and their eyes glow green and light the way. Goblins are cursed creatures but they can’t get you unless you talk to them. They try to lure people off the path by offering them fruit and vegetables. They’ll tell you they’ve got the ripest peaches, the juiciest apples, the crunchiest carrots, the sweetest strawberries. But you can’t say a word back to them because if you do, they’ll grab you and keep you in the woods forever.    

The next day, Isla and I started on our walk to the spaewife’s house and, like I’d been afraid of, Isla said we’d have to go through the woods. We passed through the village, out across the fields and into the entrance of the woods. 

After an hour or so, the trees thinned out and we saw a dirt road. Ahead of us, before the drop in the hill, stood a small crumbling cottage with ivy up the walls and over the roof. There was a short fence around it and the garden was overgrown and wild. Smoke was coming from the chimney.

“There it is,” Isla said. We were still standing at the edge of the woods, peeking out from behind a tree.
“How did you know where it was?” I asked. This whole time I’d been hoping she was bluffing. 
“Tommy Henderson brought me here one day,” she said. “I’d been asking him for ages to show me where it was because he’s been here loads of times. This is as far as he’s ever been though. He’s never been right up to the house.”
“Why would Tommy Henderson show you where it is? He’s a horrible boy. He wouldn’t do anything for anyone.”
“I let him kiss me,” Isla said as she stepped out from behind the tree. She never told me she’d kissed a boy before. I asked her what it was like and she said wet.

I wanted us to go back but I didn’t want Isla to think I was scared. So, I followed her. We walked slowly towards the house and she didn’t protest when I took her hand. The smell of woodsmoke grew stronger.

Around the door were hanging bells and charms, coloured jewels and hag stones. Isla put her hand on the gate and pushed it open. I grabbed her arm. “What are you doing? That’s enough, we need to go back,” I said in a voice barely above a whisper.
“I thought you weren’t scared?”
I opened my mouth to speak and closed it again, swallowing the words. Slowly, she pulled me along the stone path towards the door. My chest was pumping up and down.

The front door to the cottage was cracked open and, without knocking, Isla started to edge it open further. I gripped her arm tighter but she ignored me, pulling me forward. She pushed the door all the way open in one swoop and a small noise escaped from my throat.

Inside, the walls were lined with shelves filled with jars. Floating inside some of them were flower petals, others had animal skulls or teeth or herbs or mushrooms or pebbles mixed in murky water. The scent of lavender and woodsmoke filled the cloudy room. Charms and trinkets hung from the ceiling and bundles of plants were tied together with string, littering every surface. On some shelves, there were thick dusty books and ornaments of animals carved out of wood.

My eyes panned round and in the corner, sitting in a large wicker chair, was the spaewife. Green-eyed and burnt-lipped with dark half moons under her eyes, her long black hair streaked with silver tumbling down to her knees. 

Her eyes widened and she moved like a cat to pick up an empty glass jar by her side and threw it towards the door. We ducked out of the way and it smashed against the wall.

“What the hell do ye think yer doing? Walking in here like ye own the place?!”
“I’m sorry, missus,” Isla said. I quivered by her side and hid my face in her arm. “We were just looking to get our fortune.” Isla hadn’t mentioned anything about getting our fortunes read. She put her hand into her pocket and produced three coins she must have stolen from Mammy. 
“Are ye sure yer no just here to gawk at the witch? Looking for me to summon the devil for ye?” she said in a mocking tone. “That’s what the rest of the pests do from down your way.”
I tugged on Isla’s sleeve, desperate to get her attention. 
“I promise, missus,” Isla said. “We just want to know our fortune.”

I lifted my head to look at the spaewife and her eyes drilled into mine without blinking. She asked what our names were and we told her. I had to repeat mine because fear stole my voice the first time I tried to say it. 

She stood from her chair and I could see she was wearing a long dark green gown like nothing I’d ever seen before. She ushered us further inside and closed the front door behind us, making the room darker. The fire crackled by our feet.

The spaewife sat back down and gestured for us to come closer. She stretched out her hand, thin and blue with veins, waiting for the coins. Isla dropped the money into her hand and the spaewife put it into a small clay pot on a shelf behind her chair.

She closed her eyes and took a deep breath. As she inhaled, her nostrils flared, a breeze kicked up in the room and the air sucked towards her. Then she breathed out and the wind shushed past us again. This time, it was Isla squeezing my hand. 

The spaewife snatched our hands apart and took them in her own. They felt like leather. Her eyes were still closed but flickering and Isla and I looked at each other. The spaewife opened her eyes again and looked at me first.

“You’ll be a farmer's wife,” she said. “You’ll have five children, all healthy. You’ll have a quiet life, a peaceful life. No great tragedies. You’ll live until you’re old and grey, making toys for the weans in the village.”
“Will I have cows?” I heard myself ask.
The spaewife smiled like she knew I’d ask her this. “Aye, girl. You’ll have a field full of them.”
She turned her head to look at Isla. Her expression soured and her eyes hardened.
“You’ll cause trouble, girl,” she said. “You’ll be married too but barren. Or so your husband will think. And when you go seeking comfort in the arms of another, you’ll be cast from your home. Yer neighbours will spit at your feet. Until you’re taken away to a damp cell with no windows.” I watched Isla’s face, seeing the reflection of the spaewife in her wide eyes. “You’ll be painted as a scarlet woman. You’ll starve and fall ill in your stony prison. Waiting, praying, for the reaper to come knocking.” I looked back at the spaewife and forgot to breathe. “Unless…”
“Unless what?” Isla asked. Her voice was shrill and shaking. 
“Unless you do something now to change your fortune,” the spaewife said.
“What do I need to do?”
“Ye need to bring something to me and then I can bless ye and change the course of your life.” She looked at me. “But first, you must leave.”
Isla turned her head towards me. Her eyes bobbed around in fright. “Get out,” she told me and I didn’t need to be told twice. 
Isla was only in there alone with her for a few more minutes before the door opened. The spaewife was standing behind her.
“And remember, before sunset tomorrow,” she said to Isla, “or many moons will fall.”

Isla barely spoke the whole way home. I asked her several times what the spaewife said, what she had asked Isla to bring. But she said she couldn’t tell me or the spell wouldn’t work. 

The next morning when I got up, ready to help Mammy pick brambles, I noticed Isla wasn’t in her bed. I looked around the house, shouted her name, but nothing. “She’s probably playing with her wee pals,” Mammy said. “You know how she wanders. Come on. We’ll get started on the bramble picking.”

I went out into the garden. The chickens clucked and pecked around their pen, all four of them accounted for. Mammy’s flowers looked normal. But something was wrong. Something was missing. Elsie. 

I ran back into the house and screamed and cried to Mammy. I told her everything about the spaewife. 

“She’ll sacrifice the poor beast to the devil,” Mammy said, more to herself than to me. “Ye should’ve never gone along with Isla. Ye should’ve come straight to me ya wee besom! You should know better than to go meddling with witches. Especially that spaewife.”

Tears tumbled down my face. “I’m sorry, Mammy,” I cried. “But they’ve taken Elsie. We have to do something!”

She screwed up her face and shushed me. “Enough,” she said. “Let me think.”

Mammy stood for a moment and then put her shoes on and went for the door. I started following her and she didn’t stop me, so I trailed behind all the way after her through the village, through the woods, to the spaewife’s house. 

I tripped several times on the walk, trying to keep up with Mammy’s strides. I panted and sweat pulled on the back of my neck. But when we got to the dirt road, I saw Elsie standing in the spaewife’s garden, chewing on a great lump of grass. I ran up to her and threw my arms around her head.

“Aw, my Elsie, my Elsie,” I said. “You’re safe.” I planted kisses all over her face and she blew air out of her nose. Mammy stormed past me to the spaewife’s door and threw it open so hard I thought it would fly off.
“I’ll be back in a minute, girl,” I said to Elsie. “You enjoy the grass.”
I followed Mammy inside and there was the spaewife, holding up Isla’s chin, about to drop liquid from a tincture into her mouth. They both turned to look at us. 
“That’s enough, Iris,” Mammy said, her voice steady as the sea without a breath of wind. She stood tall and solid like Mrs O’Brien’s bull.
“You know her, Mammy?” I whispered.
“Quiet, girl,” she said, without looking at me.
The spaewife dropped the tincture to the floor and the glass smashed. None of us moved or spoke or took a breath. Then the spaewife let go of Isla’s chin.
“Here, Isla,” Mammy said, gesturing to her side. 
Isla hesitated for a second and then darted across the room to Mammy.
“I’m sorry, Niamh,” the spaewife said. Her body crumpled in on itself like she was a dog about to be kicked. “If I had known she was your daughter—”
“Enough,” Mammy said, low and quiet, through gritted teeth. She held the spaewife’s stare for a long time. “Home now, girls,” she said and gestured for us to leave. She followed us out and unhooked Elsie from the wooden post and marched us home.
“She won’t be bothering you two again,” Mammy eventually said when we were back in the village. “But if you two ever go to that house again,” she said, spinning around to look at us, “I’ll cut yer tongues out myself. Do ye hear me?” We nodded.  

I put Elsie back in the garden and hugged her tight, promising to never let her go again. 

Mammy would be angry with us for a long time. We made dinner that night in silence and I watched Mammy like a hawk, doing my best to anticipate her movements so I could stay out of her way. By watching her so closely, I noticed when she was stirring the pot, she would turn the wooden spoon three times then change direction and do another three. I looked up at her face and she was whispering under something her breath. She tapped the spoon on the pot three times and then her eyes darted to me. A jolt of ice went through my body. She winked and gave me a smile.

Isla never told me what the spaewife said to her, what she promised, what she planned to do to Elsie. I still don’t know how much of the stories about her are true. Eventually, I stopped asking Isla about it all. But that didn’t stop the nightmares.

One night, I woke up crying after dreaming that the spaewife had taken Elsie again and I went through to Mammy. She shushed me and scooped me up, wiping tears from my cheeks. 

“I hate always being scared,” I sobbed. Mammy picked me up and took me out into the garden. 

She sat down with me on the bench, overlooking the fields.

There were only a few hours of night left, she told me. “Many moons will fall in your lifetime, Mirren,” she said, pointing at the moon low in the sky. “See how the sky is getting lighter already? The Oak King always follows the Holly. Day always follows night. The darkness never lasts and the darkness is nothing to be feart of. Okay, sweetheart?”

I nodded and she hugged me before sending me back inside to bed. I hovered in the doorway for a minute and watched her as she sat on the bench, staring at the moon and bathing in its light.

Sophie Campbell is a fiction writer and holds a Master’s degree in Creative Writing from the University of Strathclyde. She enjoys writing stories about ordinary people and, occasionally, the supernatural. Sophie has had short stories published with Speculative Books, Razur Cuts, The Instant Noodle Literary Review, Aloe Magazine and others. She is currently working on drafting a novel. Sophie is also interested in counter culture, witchcraft and Scottish folk tales.

 Desire

by Kerry Anderson

An ant dilly-dallies across our avocado-green kitchen table. Dilly-dally, from the Old French, dalier, to amuse oneself. Across the scrubbed wasteland of the table, my lover’s chair is empty. He would have told me about dilly-dally and shilly-shally. He would have been slurping from a bowl of spicy-sweet coconut soup, waving fingers slick from buttery prawns. He would have been amusing himself. I would have been sitting, chin on my hands, watching him eat the meal I chopped, grated, seared, tossed, stirred. I would have swallowed up every word. 
The ant waves its antenna signaling there is nothing here. Nothing at all. My stomach growls its hunger. 

●

The table is perfect, said my lover, it’s whimsical. 
He squeezed himself into the little space between the table he had brought and the stove where I worked. He pressed his front to my back while I prodded the v’s of the chicken wings packed back-to-front in the glass dish, still sizzling in hot honey soy marinade. He reached around me to pick one up between forefinger and thumb, then hissed as the sticky sauce dripped onto his fingers and through to the floor. 
Whimsical, he said, his lips glistening with dark juice, from the Old English whim-wham, of unknown origin. 
Our whim-wham table, I said, savoring the words.

●

We were abundant.
From the French, abondance, to overflow, he said.
Abondance, I said, swaying my hips as I rolled slices of egg-dipped aubergine in flour, as his hands roamed over my hips and breasts, as he brought his lips to my ears and whispered words of many syllables and ticklish sibilance until the flour clung to my hands in clumps and fell to the floor in wafts. 
He called my puttanesca pasta salacious and winked and ran his hands over the curve of my thighs. From the Latin, salax, to leap with lustful intent. I fed him balls of milky-sweet Persian phirni and he told me that the word for paradise derived from the Persian and he breathed the sound of it like a wave into my mouth.
We overflowed.
Then one night, he pushed aside the bowl of thick pumpkin soup spiced with ginger and cumin. Burnt orange liquid splattered against the green linoleum of the table. 
I’m full, he said, his hands on his belly. 
I cleared the table, his bowl still full, the pan-fried tilapia surrounded by congealed patches of garlic butter, untouched. A trio of ants floundered in the fibrous soup spill. I scooped spill and ants up in a paper towel. I threw everything away.
Days passed. I steamed white fish until the flesh grew swollen and flaky. I squeezed fresh milk from tumid shavings of coconut. I drew swirly Milky Ways with butter in creamy opalescent sauce.
With his fork he traced furrows in fish flesh and dug holes in the mound of mashed swede. He set his fork down without even a nibble.
I asked him if he wanted something else. He shook his head. His lips parted. First one and then another beaded body appeared there. The ants clambered over each other, looping down toward his plate. 
I snatched it away before they could reach. I would not allow them to take away what I had made for my lover. I brought out the Tupperware. I sealed away the hardening fish and lumpy mash beneath airtight lids. I poured the browning soup into a bowl and covered it with plastic. I secured the leftovers in the cool of the refrigerator. I scrubbed the floors and bleached the countertops. 
By morning, ants wriggled inside the Tupperware, beneath the plastic cling film, their bodies bloated with pumpkin juice. A steady black rivulet leaked out of the refrigerator and down into the corners of the kitchen, disappearing into fissures and crevices.

●

He would not eat the meals I made him that once he had loved. He would not give me the words I craved. He pressed his lips together and shook his head. Ants fell from his eyelashes. He sat at the table, his head turned toward the window. Ants slipped out from the collar of his shirt, using the bristly stubble on his neck to reach his mouth. They probed it open with tickling antenna, long enough to slip in and out, gathering what he would no longer give me. 
Until finally he sighed and said it was enough, his words thin and light as husks. Not even the ants wanted them. I pressed my fists to my mouth, to my concave belly, thinking my hunger would swallow me whole. 
I didn’t see them carry him away though they must have because one day he was gone. I imagined a strange sort of millipede. I thought they must have carried him out the sliding door.

●

Tonight I dream of the ant queen, at the end of labyrinthine tunnels.  I dream of being engorged, filled with words that drip a mélange of provenances, geometry, symbology. My mouth waters with the demands they make of my tongue. I wake starving. I wake with my hand flung out, cold on the frozen wasteland of his side of the bed. In the moonlight I see their progress, an army of whispers streaming up the walls, trickling across the ceiling toward the pendant light. From the Latin, pendere, to hang, they whisper. They jostle their way down the chain link. They cling to the edges of the glass shade. The swaying light strobes my starved body. They quiver as they stand at the edges, heavy with words. Desire, they whisper, from the Old French desir, to long for, we have what you need, our queen. 
I stretch my mouth wide and they fall in waves.

Kerry Anderson is a fiction writer and uneasy entomophile living between South East Asia and Southern Africa. She completed her MFA at Hong Kong University. Her work has been published in ink, sweat & tears; sad girls club; flash fiction; writers.com; and others.

 Tenant

by Meghan Ritchie

Once consumed, they all fell — the Hendersons’ A-frame, the Sayers’ colonial, Ms. O’Luncy’s little Tudor cottage behind the rotted-open skeleton of the bowling alley, even the old green schoolhouse the Ryson twins converted to a bed & breakfast. Ashes, ashes, as they say. New homes rise in their wake. Everyone has had their scares in our little town.
I fell in love with my cabin at first sight; it took longer to admit but there was no turning back from that moment. It was a fixer-upper but something in its bones told me it was my fixer-upper, and the broker had been up-front enough about the peculiarities of the property. He had, of course, charmed me with pictures well before disclosing the location but I shouldn’t have been surprised. His job was to sell me the place. 
The woman who lived here before me was an heiress who’d left under short notice. She’d handled the place with as much care as you’d expect a 25-year-old with unlimited resources would. Cobwebs dripped from the rafters, the sinks were stained with years of filth, and one particularly revolting drawer was full of sunflower seed shells and scraps of dental floss. The burners on the stove only worked if you set them on high, then went so hot it wasn’t practical to use them at all. On the most scorching summer days pinecones dripped noxious, molten sap on my deck that was impossible to remove once it cooled. An overeager attack with a wire brush uncovered a stratigraphic study; layers of paint and sap crud and crushed-in, ground-up bits of organic matter amassed over decades of half-assed attempts to hide the problem. Still, the house had stood for the better part of a century and that was a rare and good thing in this town. I learned to yield to its patterns.
Hank and Lola would tell you — they survived — that they only made it out alive because they’d made preparations, and in doing so had purified their intention to endure in this world, and synchronized their hearts with each other and the divine. They were lucky — it was a fall evening, just as they were sitting down to dinner, lighting a candle. A draft blew the curtain — falsely labeled fireproof — into the flame, and the whole room lit up. All Hank and Lola did was step out the side door to the yard. It was hardly a heroic escape — and it didn’t save the house — but it was harder to argue it wasn’t a divine intervention. Many others weren’t so lucky, bless their souls.
The first winter was difficult by any measure. There was a blizzard, then the old barn by the pond burned down overnight, cause unknown. All that remained was soot in the snow and the curled husk of a cat preserved in his protective hunch, until the next front kicked up the wind and blew it, too, to ashes. The usual difficulties continued. It was tough as ever to make ends meet, and once the bad weather set in it felt impossible to keep up with my responsibilities to the cabin. No matter what I tried, the cold got in, froze my hands, and slowed my nerves until I couldn’t do much of anything. The heat worked, technically, but the warm air got sucked out by the draft that ran from the front to back door before it could fill the cabin. One Sunday, wound in a tight knot beneath every blanket I owned, I pondered the question of fire or ice and ordered a space heater, overnight delivery.
I knew the stories as well as anyone else. I thought about leaving. Sometime in the third month, struggling through a spell of anxiety brought on by the smell of distant campfire, I sat upright in bed and grabbed my guitar down from the wall in order to focus on anything else and out poured a sweet little song in one swoop. I played it over and over, and each time the end flowed back into the beginning a little bit of fear rose from the top of my head and left me lighter. A few weeks later I gave myself a shock pulling a plug out of the wall — minor enough that it took a second to register, but once it did my neck and scalp broke out in a thick sweat. I couldn’t stop picturing cartoon bolts of electricity arcing out of the socket and across the room to close the circuit through my skin until I strummed a wistful lullaby that materialized under my fingertips as if out of thin air. I knew I’d never find another place like this so I warmed to the risks.
By spring, I started to feel more settled and less afraid. Better things happened in the neighborhood — a new ice cream place opened, the clover started to bloom, and the postman reunited with his lost dachshund, who was found happily raising a family of ducks in a hidden corner of the golf course. The dog wouldn’t let the postman get close to the new brood so he ended up making weekly (distanced) visits instead of taking his companion home. It wasn’t perfect but it was still a happy story. 
The rainy season had always been hard for me — my wheels came to a halt in dreadful anticipation of danger that would never come, the legacy of a distant but difficult summer in the southeast — but in the cabin it became a season of enlightenment. Instead of hiding away inside I found myself drawn to the porch, where the raindrops were loudest. I set my chair up in the doorway, tucked under the safety of the eaves, and listened as the drips and drops connected in repeating figures that tallied the damage so plainly it brought me to tears. These rainy acknowledgements became my church; the melody a scaffolding to hang my faith on. One afternoon in late May there was a mist so fine it was more like a cloud walking, and I followed an impulse out onto the front steps to feel it on my face. I fell asleep like that and woke up to a sunshower, fat drops and clear skies.
Sometimes, shopping in the next town over, I’d overhear people spreading rumors about us. They didn’t know the things they said were untrue. You have to be selected to live there. You have to apply and have like, a terminal disease or something fucked up with you. It’s a military experiment. It’s run by the mob and is an elaborate, century-long insurance scheme. One day in the waiting room of the optometrist’s office I snapped and told one of them the truth: “Anyone can live there. You just stay.” She laughed at me.
Summer was wildfire season so everyone was on edge, but here it made things brighter to hum on alert all day. Six months into their romantic estrangement, Sam and Al found themselves face-to-face again as each turned their respective corners in the PTA hay maze; they laughed at the heavy-handedness of the universe but didn’t deny the message. Mr. Klein was heard announcing to the customers in line at the pharmacy that he would be closing up shop by October. His daughter in Tempe was expecting twins after years of trying and he was moving to be closer to the new blessings. There were fireworks over the pond every Saturday night that made me feel electric and blue at the same time, sick with an objectless desire and grateful to my eyeballs for the ferocity of the feeling. It wasn’t all good — the prom queen wrecked her car, the basement of the hospital flooded, and we found new little worms hanging from the trees at night that even the old-timers couldn’t remember from before. I can’t tell you what was going on with the cabin then, I was so buoyed up I hardly spent time there except to sleep. My negligence started to show in the dusty corners and creaky hinges but it was just proof I felt at home.
By September’s brutal end, I’d reached an equilibrium with the place. I was getting better sleep and I wasn’t afraid to relax and use the cabin as a home, as its architect had intended, despite all inherent risk. I cooked for my neighbors. I had a birthday party and blew out my candles. When the temperature dipped I tended a small fire. As always, the dog days set in as the season turned, and when the town gathered on the softball field for Mr. Klein’s farewell party we resembled a bunch of half-drowned pups, damp and drooping under the sun. We’d spared no expense — it was so rare to see someone leave — but there was strangeness in the air that in retrospect would look like a sign of things to come. 
Cranky and spread thin by the heat, people stopped paying attention to where they left their trash, and Cynthia slipped on a plate of melted ice cream cake and bruised her rear so badly she canceled her annual RV trip to Sun City. Whoever set up the coolers didn’t notice they had plugs that had to be shut, so the ice melted out into the grass and all the drinks were hot again by the time things got started. A kid — no one would say whose — left a puddle of cotton candy vomit in the bleachers so pink and fragrant no one could get close enough to clean it without gagging. Mr. Klein left the next day as scheduled but that night his vacant house burned to the ground. Detectives found traces of accelerant on the lawn and eventually arrested the next door neighbor, who insisted it was an accident and big misunderstanding, but couldn’t explain why he’d purchased so much kerosene in the first place. He didn’t need to look hard for an excuse — he was known as an artist and had legitimate reasons at his fingertips, but when the moment came he collapsed under pressure. He cried when they sentenced him to prison in another part of the county. 
Autumn was gone before it started. The snow returned early, just a few days after Halloween. Four inches fell fast and then it was a still night. I felt drawn outside to it. The dithering clouds had dropped a dome over everything so it felt warm even with my shoes off. I circled the cabin a few times to feel the snow crunch under my feet. I stopped on my third pass of the hose and rake to look at the puddle of light cast through the kitchen window, dancing like the shallow end of the pool. A drum inside me rolled a warning, but from here what I could see of the road out of town looked cold and my feet had started to sting. I pushed the curtain aside and climbed through the window toward the crackling swell; I moved towards the warmth. I was an animal who chose light over the dark.

Meghan Ritchie is a writer living in Berkeley, California. She studied fiction at Sarah Lawrence College, and her work has appeared in publications such as the Park Slope Reader and Rathalla Review. 

 Close to Me

by Alison L. Fraser

Choco Taco must be attracted to the scent of my period because when I get up at 6am to pee, the bathroom wastebasket is strewn down the carpeted hall, a trail of blood spotted toilet paper leads to the doggy door. I rush to pick the tissue up, hoping no one saw it. On my way back upstairs I see out the window, a dark brown labradoodle digging a hole. I never find the tampon.
“Don’t worry no one was up,” Arlo says in my ear at breakfast. 
She has dirt under her fingernails and she nods ever so slightly towards her dog, now panting placidly in the corner. 

●

“Gimme your gorgeous hair, I’m so jelly,” she says, hunched across her desk to pet the back of my head. I never let people touch my hair, but I let her. Arlo is one of those classic curly redheads with freckles, striking against the kind of pale skin that flushes at any amount of shame, or attention, pinking to reveal her feelings. She hates being an easy read.
Arlo is new this year. She grills me if my friends are mean, ever bully anyone, or me, if I am their victim, the outsider of the group. We’re all huge nerds, I assure her, but she continues to take my hand to draw me away to her locker, put on eyeliner in her magnetic mirror together, speak to me and me alone.
“Do you really think they like me, or are they pretending to be nice?”
“They don’t know you well enough yet,” is what I tell her, which probably doesn’t make her feel any better.
I can tell how annoyed they are by the way they block her out of huddles, the exasperated murmurs when we trade lunches, when she doodles her name on my arm in metallic gel pen.
The first time she invites me over her house to sleepover, before the Choco Taco incident, we watch all the Lord of the Rings movies in one night. Arlo looks like her mother, same red hair, pouty mouth. Arlo’s mother tells me she is grateful I am introducing Arlo to the right people at school. I don’t mention that Arlo sits with us at lunch, but if I’m talking to anyone besides her, Arlo won’t touch her food, waiting, sighing.

●

The hair lightening cream tingles the skin above my lip. I lie face up on my bed so as not to let the puffed up bleach fall onto my sheets. The ding of a message. It’s Arlo: wut up. I try to gather my thoughts from before I heard the ding, but can’t remember where my mind had wandered, or what I was up to.
When I was ten my mother showed me how to hide my dark upper lip hairs. I remember enjoying the burning immediately. It would be worth it, I told myself. This is better than the teasing. I wonder if the friends I have now would say the same, mustache girl, but with a kind of bent affection that teenagers can be so good at, poking each other, but lovingly, because we’ve since learned how to deflect in public. I wonder what Arlo would say. Maybe I’ll tell her someday, maybe I’ll tell her next time she asks what I am up to.

●

Arlo and I like the same things. I carry a sketchbook everywhere and get her into the habit of drawing too. Her sketches have a cohesion to them, where mine change style, as though there is more than one person filling the pages. Her’s are so decisively her. She outlines her drawings in archival ink pens; she doesn’t like smudges. She admires mine, smeared and scraggly graphite, with envy.
“I wish I had the guts to make it messy like you.”
I wish I could figure out a style and stick to it.

●

We’re messaging and doing a homework assignment together in between debriefing the day at school when she types, I wanna kill myself. I don’t type back that I have the same urge, because I don’t want to seem like I’m copying her, but every night I lie in bed holding my breath, or pinching the skin thin around my wrists, or stretching the neck of my sweatshirt up and back, tucking the sleeves in between the bars of my bed and pulling forward. Less so when I sleep over Arlo’s house, but the thoughts remain there, a viscous itch at the back of my brain. I don’t know what to say back to her, so I tell her she can talk to me anytime about it. She tells me I’m a good friend and signs off.
I have an Altoid tin full of pills under my bed, a mix of stuff. I take them out when those thoughts push to the front of my brain and I caress them in the palm of my hand, telling myself at least I don’t feel it as bad as her. The pills are pretty, blue, white, pink, a deep red. I’m not sure they’d do anything anyway. I forget what they’re for.
“I’ve been collecting pills for myself,” she tells me during class. I must look shocked because she smirks, wrinkles her forehead, as if she’s messing with me, mimicking me.
I tap a nearby friend on the shoulder, pretending I can’t hear Arlo because we are sitting in a group in the middle of a biology lab and it’s unnerving to be talking about pills at such a high volume, revealing my secret — I mean hers. The friend turns around and waits for me to speak. I shake my head, never mind.
A moment later I whisper to Arlo, “Me too.”
“Yeah, but I bet you haven’t ever done anything, like, close to me.”

●

We’re in English class. I have to recite a poem in front of everyone, some sonnet. I’m nervous as all public speaking makes me nervous, especially poems. I lose my place about halfway through the poem, paranoid I’ve skipped entire lines. My mouth continues moving but my brain replays the beginning, retracing my words for what I’ve missed. I speak too fast, trying to spit the words out before I forget them. This time my knees buckle and I slump to the floor.
My teacher hovers over me smiling his stupid smile. 
“Are you okay?” 
He’s nervous that if I’m not okay he’ll have to get help, and it would be a thing. I don’t want it to be a thing, so I say what would make the most sense without causing further questions.
“I have my period.”
“Oh, okay, well, do you want some water?”

●

“Take an iron pill when you’re menstruating.”
“I — I don’t actually have my period, Arlo.”
“I know. But when you do,” she leans over to grab a fruit cup from the serving line.
“Okay. I’ll think about it.”
“I have some in my bag if you want. So you don’t have to buy them.”
“Um, sure. Thanks.”
She smiles her braces smile, which she usually keeps hidden behind pursed lips.
“Happy to help a friend,” she says, reaching into her bag for a small, black pill box flecked with painted pink camellias, and a delicate clasp. 
“It was my Nonna’s,” she catches me eyeing the box and palms me a few iron supplements.

●

Choco Taco trots up to me lying on Arlo’s couch. He prods my knee, then he presses his nose to my crotch. I push him away. He pops up relentlessly, nose back in my crotch.
“Choco Taco, no!” Arlo shouts, holding a plate of pop tarts. 
“My mom said we could eat in here, don’t make a mess, don’t let the dang dog into the food. Yeah, you, you gross pup, stop sniffing her vag. I swear, he only does this when you’re around.”
I’m unsure if she realizes what she’s said and is pretending I don’t hear it that way. After all, it is both our post-sleepover morning sweatiness stinking up the room. She puts the plate down on the ottoman, hand hovering over the pop tarts, strawberry and wild berry. I wait to take one until she chooses which to eat first, watching Arlo’s focussed face. The short peach fuzz under her nose sticks upright, glowing in the sunlight behind her. She has some zits near her ear and jawline. I reach for the spot under my ear, feel around for the familiar bumps, a slight raw pain when I touch them. Arlo bites the corner of a wild berry.
I tell her, “You know, I used to make fun of this kid who said he only liked the unfrosted ones. Back in like, sixth grade.”
Arlo scoops crumbs from beneath her chin. Her face is blotchy, lips pressed together. She watches me for a minute, no chuckle, or nod in agreement, stuck in thought.
“But it turned out his mom wouldn’t buy him the frosted ones,” I continue to fill the silence.
“What kind do you like?” she turns on the TV.
“Brown sugar cinnamon.”
“My apologies your highness,” she says. 
I don’t know what I expect her to say, but it’s not that. I used to tell Arlo stories from before we met, but she’s been tuning me out recently. Maybe because they’re untoasted, but the pop tart is bland, beige mush. I work saliva around my mouth so I can swallow it.
“Aren’t they good?”
“So good.”

●

Arlo is flipping through her sketchbook showing me her drawings after school. I’m staying to do work on my portfolio.
“Isn’t it so weird, what I’m doing?” she asks.
“Uh, yeah, sure.” 
I unroll a piece of thick paper, the kind that’s so soft it’s close to cloth, from the fancy paper drawer I have my art teacher’s permission to use. Arlo looks on hungrily as I slide the metal drawer shut with my hip.
“There’s this one. See my weird art. Do you think I’m getting better? I won’t be as good as you, but look how weird it is,” she says.
“Arlo, I’m trying to focus.”
She flicks her wet paint brush at me, spraying dark blue water across my paper as I’m aligning it with my etching.
“Sorry, I didn’t mean to do that,” she stares at the spots not sounding sorry at all. I brush the water away as best I can, but the paper is ruined.

●

“You’re not meant to keep the friends you make in high school,” Arlo says to me over our school breakfast. “They’re all temporary. I’ll probably make better friends when I leave.”
“They don’t have to be temporary,” I say, a little offended.
“Do you think you’d be friends with them if you weren’t forced to be with each other every day?”
“I barely talk to them these days anyway,” I say, “what about us, you’re my friend, aren’t you?” I push one last speck of tasteless cereal around with my spork.
My mother finds sporks annoying. When I was in elementary school, I’d come home every day with a school spork and she’d dramatically throw her hands up. She banned sporks from the house. I think now it was more about the excessive garbage, the endless emptying of trash from my bag that she found aggravating. 
“What’s up with you?” Arlo asks.
“What? Nothing,” I say, distracted by my mom’s tantrum over sporks. 
“Tell me. What’s so funny?” Her face, urgent.
“Just realized something about my mom.”
Arlo grunts, she wants to move on.
“I wanna bang someone,” she says, tossing her drowned bowl in the trash. She combs her hair to the side with one hand, letting her fingers rest around her neck like a vice.
“Who?”
“You don’t have to love the first person you have sex with,” she glares past me. Lost.
That’s not an answer to who do you wanna bang?
“You got your braces off!” I yell, my legs slam to the floor from my tilted-back chair in a clatter.
“I was wondering when you’d notice. You’re a good friend,” she says.

●

I thought I’d be spending most of April vacation with Arlo, as we had in February, but she tells me she's going on vacation to someplace hot with her family over the break. On Monday, she’s different. I’m not sure the sun could do what it’s done to her body; her hair has lost its red luster, her skin is way dull now, sallow, her freckles replaced by scarred pimples. I assumed freckles became more visible in the sun, not vanish entirely.
“Not mine,” she sings, “and for once you can’t tell I’m blushing neither,” she pinches her cheeks. Nothing happens, but her skin behaves unlike skin, and more like a balloon deflating. She seems pleased with herself.
“Don’t worry, it won’t be like this forever. You have to let it settle.”
“Let what settle?”
“Oh, never mind,” she says.
I don’t tell her how I spent all of break alone. How I didn’t hang out with anyone, how no one else asked to hang out with me. I exist through double paned glass, a blur from everyone’s view. That’s so emo, ew. She would say something scolding like, those people don’t love you like I do. I get you.

●

“You smell that?” Arlo mouths to me during class.
It smells gross, whatever it is. The windows are open, since our English teacher enjoys the spring breeze and scent of budding trees, but the smell is overpowering and everyone is covering their mouths, or holding their noses. I don’t know how to tell Arlo it is coming from her, old sweat, the mold that forms in a wet bathroom, your towel from drying your hair and the hair products you wipe from your hands. She reeks of it. I shake my head, no, trying to be nice.
The stench is emanating from inside Arlo’s locker as we pass it on our way to lunch. I glance towards it and she notices me.
“You smell it?” she asks again.
I can’t deny it this time, she wants me to say yes, with her pleading eyes.
She scans the hall to make sure no one is watching and opens her locker, beckoning me forwards. Inside on the top shelf of her locker is a mason jar, a wooden spoon protruding from the rim. The odor is a full wave of swamp wafting towards us, as though a fan is blowing from behind the jar, a vibration. Arlo picks up the jar, the crook of her arm shielding me from what is inside.
“You have to swear you won’t tell,” she says severely.
“Okay.”
I lean in as she brings the jar to my face. Inside is a mess of dark brown goo, shiny like chocolate ganache. She stirs it, and as she stirs it, it glazes against the glass, a jelly. It is red, not brown. It is blood. 
“It doesn’t have to be period blood, if they don't get a period you obviously have to use something else. I’ve tried it with tears or sweat before. And scabs. Scabs are good.”
“For what?”
She puts the jar back.
“For me to be close to you.”
My thoughts and hers, as though we have been in on it together.
“That’s my blood.”
“I needed it to be more like you. I had to feel it.”
“But I really hate who I am.”
“A side effect,” she says.

●

Head bent down over my knees, my legs prickle from sitting on the toilet. I should be back in Bio, or my next class. I’ll have to go collect my bag from the classroom in front of other students I don’t know, who don’t know me. My thighs feel cold. I reach down between my legs and pull the tampon string, roll it in some toilet paper and shove it into the trash can on the stall wall. 
I know Arlo’s shoes as soon as she enters. They are covered in handwritten lyrics, one foot crossed over the other as she waits by the sinks. I can no longer read the lyrics I have sharpied on my own sneakers, the ink is smudged into the rubber, a blur. She watches me leave the stall, rinse my hands. I watch her enter my stall. I hear the wax paper liner rustle from inside the trash can.

●

There’s a new girl in our grade. She draws on her jeans in blue ballpoint so it looks as though words and doodles have been stitched into the fabric. She wears cut-off sleeve tees, smells of almond and marshmallow. When she gets called on in class, she lifts up her chin ever so slightly, baby hair sideburns, knows exactly what to say. She listens to people, like really listens and then gives these whispery, thoughtful responses. 
I approach Arlo at her locker, twisting her spoon inside a mason jar. The stink lingers. I search to meet her eyes in the mirror to let her know I’m there. A familiar face gazes back.
“Do you want me to show you how?”

Alison is a mixed and messy writer existing in Massachusetts. Their recent work has appeared in Gone Lawn, Dead Fern Press, and Dogzplot. Find them on twitter @catholicked.