Category: Issue 18 – 2025

by Patrick Adkins

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Jay lived in a slumped beige duplex just past the Watershed Glen train tracks—a place that looked like it had been built in one frantic day and forgotten the next. Mold ghosted the air vents. The front step clung to the doorway like a scab—too tender to tear away without drawing blood. Inside, a secondhand couch sagged under the weight of mildew and old bourbon. Jay had never tasted liquor that cost over thirty dollars, and even then, it was expensive in the way an oil drum is expensive—by volume, not value. Morgan, his girlfriend, sold weed from the bathroom vanity, calling it “small-batch botanical work” like she was distilling artisanal gin. But there was nothing small batch about it. Morgan got her weed from some old redneck who lived off Pauli’s Creek, and she always smelled like sweat and linen after every re-up.

Jay dropped out of Tideland Coast College twice—once for not showing up, once because he forgot he was enrolled. His memory wasn’t bad, just badly applied. He had a habit of drifting, sealing himself off from the world, its clutter, and the parade of assholes pretending to search for answers. Most days he lay on the floor in busted cargo shorts, watching closed-captioned cooking competitions. He didn’t cook. Barely ate. But there was a strange comfort in watching people pretend food mattered—like those assholes again, only these had found the answers, crushing them into pesto or shaving them into consommé, feeding envy into every crevice of Jay’s molars.

Morgan kept the machine wheezing along. She’d vanish for hours and return smelling like spearmint, sweat, and car upholstery. She once handed Jay a joint she dubbed Savannah Fog, promised it would “reset his perception.” He coughed for ten minutes and felt the same—just wetter. Jay didn’t think his perception needed any sort of calibration, but then again, maybe that was precisely the issue Morgan was talking about. So Jay just sat there. His cargo short seams bursting with ambition, and his lungs—heavy with intention.

Then came the clementines.

It started one limp Sunday at the Old Ashe Market, a half-collapsed farmer’s stand behind the ruins of a bowling alley off Highway 601. Jay had walked there on instinct, afraid if he didn’t leave the house, he’d dissolve fully into the upholstery or be swallowed by his cargo shorts, hands first. His phone was dead. Morgan was hosting a “Meditative Edibles” seminar in what had been a Chinese buffet. That’s where he saw them—clementines in a dented bin, left too long in the sun. Wrinkled, concave, their skin puckered like drowned hands. A few were split at the seams, leaking pale juice that pooled in the corners of the metal like sweat in a fever dream. Mold had begun to spider across their rinds—green-gray and delicate, like frost with a secret. One was almost beautiful in its ruin, furred over with a lacey bloom that seemed to pulse gently in the heat.

He stared, not in disgust, but with a quiet ache, as if the fruit had whispered something only he could hear. Something about being forgotten. Something about softening slowly while the world sped on. He felt it twist in his ribs. A kinship. He took two. No one stopped him. Nobody wanted them. At home, he placed them in the bathtub. Not tossed—placed. Gentle, like they were sacred or broken. He sat on the floor, half-pulled the curtain, killed the light. The fruit didn’t glow or hum or rot in fast-forward. It just was—softening, dimming, becoming. And that was enough.

He went back the next week. Stole five, then ten. By September, the tub held a heap of sunburned ghosts. Some sagged open. Others wept syrupy tears. A few bloomed with fine green mold, delicate as lace. The air turned syrup-thick—swampy and sweet like perfume worn too long.

Morgan eventually noticed.

“You running an experiment?” she asked, folding a hoodie that didn’t belong to her.

Jay shrugged. “I’m keeping track of time,” he said. “Sort of.”

She nodded, handed him a bowl of her bathroom weed, and asked if he wanted to try float therapy in Grimwood. Jay felt like telling her he had been floating and that he just wanted to be grounded, but just as he was about to express this, he was interrupted by a hollow knocking on the door. Mr. Wheeler. The other half of the duplex. Mid-seventies, maybe more. Always in a faded fishing hat, always cradling a plastic pitcher of sun tea, even on cloudy days. He knocked slow, like he was checking for a pulse.

“You growing rot in there?” he asked one Tuesday.

Jay shrugged. “Sort of.”

“Did the same. After Nam. Kept peaches in a cooler till they split like hearts. Needed to see something that didn’t lie.”

Then he turned and walked off, slow as a sentence you don’t want to hear the end of.

After that, Wheeler started leaving things on the porch. A cigarette lighter with a dolphin sticker. A cassette labeled STORM SERMON 1993. A crumpled lily wrapped in foil. Jay left clementines in return—always soft, always bruised.

Then he found the one.

Tucked behind a box of collapsing squash at the market. Small. Firm. Flawless. No bruise. No puncture. It sat in his hand with the weight of something that knew it had been found. He placed it atop the mountain in the tub.

And waited.

A day. Then three. Then ten. The others rotted as usual, sinking into themselves like wet lungs. This one didn’t blink. Didn’t sag. Held its shape like a lie. Jay started waking with orange shadows beneath his eyes. Quit watching the Food Network. His dreams swam with pulpy suns, sticky hands, citrus pulp pressed like communion wafers against his tongue. Morgan said he whispered in his sleep: “It hasn’t died yet.” And “I think it’s waiting.”

Then one morning, a note slid under the door. Crinkled. Orange-stained. Neat, narrow handwriting:

Don’t trust what stays the same.
The man next door once buried something that wasn’t fruit.
—W.

Jay stepped out, watched Wheeler kneeling in his hydrangeas, whispering into the dirt. He didn’t ask. Didn’t want to know. That night, Jay told Morgan he was leaving.

“Leaving Watershed Glen?” she asked. “Or, like, leaving?”

“I don’t know,” he said. “Both?”

“Okay,” she said, flicking lavender paint across a rolling tray.

As he passed Wheeler’s door, the old man was digging again. Elbows deep. Humming. Jay didn’t stop. Didn’t look back. But he heard him—Mr. Wheeler, muttering into the soil:

“Some things rot. Some things wait for you to rot instead.”

And Jay kept walking, unsure if the fruit was a miracle or a trap—
but knowing, finally,
that it was time to go.

---

Patrick Adkins was born and raised in Charleston, South Carolina. He now lives in
Aiken, South Carolina with his wife, Dr. Chloe Adkins, and their son, Ambrose. His
writing often blends the familiar and the surreal, exploring the strange edges of ordinary
life.

by Jacquelyn Markham

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Japanese plums, loquats, saffron clusters
pasted on palmish evergreen leaves
in breezes swinging.
Another spring blooms.
Let’s gather them & slice the fruit.
Each one a center of smooth seed,
a sculptor could carve a tiny face from.

Loquat in saffron clusters.
Let’s gather them & slice the fruit,
concoct a yellow cocktail with ice
stirred in. Laugh & toast
to love like days past.
Another spring blooms.
Fruit once fragrant blossoms.
Now, the loquats bunch in saffron
clusters. We laugh & drink the fruit,
cheers to days past with a tangy taste of sun.

---

Jacquelyn Markham, author of three chapbooks, including Rainbow Warrior (2023) and a personal mythology, Peering Into the Iris: An Ancestral Journey, has published in journals and anthologies, such as Archive: South Carolina Poetry Since 2005, Adrienne Rich: A Tribute Anthology, Fall Lines, Woman and Earth, High Window Review, & others. Markham’s awards include three Georgia Council for the Arts grants, a Kentucky Women’s Foundation Award, and a SC Arts Grant. A former professor, she earned an MA and a PhD in Creative Writing from Florida State University and in 2014 received the Adele Mellen Prize for distinguished scholarship for her research on the poetry of Charlotte Perkins Gilman. Markham lives and writes in Beaufort where she mentors poets and writers. 

by J.W. Gibeau

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“Jazzy, don’t throw that water out the door. You might anger the Watchers,” Mama yelled from the kitchen.

Jazmine rolled her eyes and stopped just short of the door. She set the bucket down. Only a few inches of saltwater remained in the bucket from carrying the blue crabs.

“I know,” Jazmine yelled back, and thought to herself, if the Watchers did exist, if they were really ghosts trapped on the island by the sea and time, why would throwing water out the door bother them?

“If we had good plumbing like the Shelman’s do, or like they do off the island, we wouldn’t have to worry about it,” Jazmine said out loud but probably not loud enough for Mama to hear. 

Jazmine left the bucket by the door and walked to her room. She shut the door behind her and walked to the corner shelf her older brother had built out of scrap plywood. He had found the wood down at the fishing docks and cut it into the shape of a violin with an electric saw he borrowed from the Shelman family, one of the wealthy families of the community. Wealthy in the sense that they had electricity, plumbing and a car to get around the island. Most everyone else walked or rode old bikes rusty from the salty, humid air. After Robbie cut the wood, he nailed two identical sections together at the corners to form a wedge, which would fit nicely into the corner of a room. Then he added three shelves. “One day, Jazzy, I’ll get you a real violin,” he said as he was hanging the violin shelf in Jazmine’s room. “Then you can take it down to the beach side and play for the dolphins. The shrimpers say the dolphins like music, and it’s true, I’ve seen them swim up to a boat to hear an old radio. They’re as smart as you and me, that’s what they say at least. And one day you can make music for them.”

Robbie was true to his word. Below the shelf, a real violin rested on a stand. It was a Christmas gift mailed from somewhere in Oklahoma. Robbie lived on the mainland now. He worked for Sunshine Bread driving trucks. Jazmine and Mama seldom heard from him. Jazmine missed him.

Jazmine never saw Mama cry when Robbie left, but she was quiet for three days, a sad quietness that seemed to spread through the older men and women of the island every time one of the young ones left. For years, Robbie had traveled by boat across the tidal river separating the island from the mainland and then got on a bus to reach the high school just like Jazmine did now, making the trip back and forth Monday through Friday except on holidays or when there was a storm. But after graduation, Robbie couldn’t find work. The shrimpers didn’t need help, there wasn’t any construction and the island only saw a handful of tourists. And when Robbie left, the population of the island dropped from 59 to 58. 

Jazmine looked up at the corner shelf. On each shelf ledge sat a marsh grass doll. The top one was named Sasha. Mama had made Sasha for Jazmine when she was little, still running around barefoot and without a shirt. Jazmine remembered the vanilla smell of the sweetgrass Mama used. The sweetgrass was special, it grew in sandy areas just beyond where the cordgrass grew on the river side of the island. The girls made dolls from the grass while some of the adults hand-wove intricate baskets. “A direct link to Africa,” a young anthropologist who visited the island while researching for a book had told Jazmine and her mother. “The coil-on-coil tan and green sweetgrass patterns are a direct link to Africa brought by the first slaves,” he explained further.

“We’re just doing what we seen our parents doing. That’s all,” Mama had said to the young man.

Maddie sat on the middle shelf. Maddie was one of the first dolls Jazmine made on her own. Poor Maddie had no eyes, and the grass used for her arms and legs was frayed and broken. When she was a child, Jazmine slept with that doll and carried her just about everywhere she went, except to the First African Baptist Church on Sundays. Mama wouldn’t stand for that.

On the bottom shelf sat Anaya, the last grass doll Jazmine made before she grew out of playing with dolls. Anaya was perfect in every detail, from the button eyes to the black thread glued on and styled for hair. Jazmine had tried to copy Anaya’s look from a magazine ad for shampoo in which a beautiful businesswoman hailed a taxi in some city, probably New York. Jazmine had hailed many imaginary taxis with the help of Anaya. Magical taxis that took them to all the big cities: London, L.A., Tokyo.

Jazmine reached up and pulled a white envelope out from underneath Anaya. She stared at the envelope, rereading the return address as if she still couldn’t believe it. The words Charleston Southern University appeared in the top left-hand corner in plain type, casually, as if it were a letter from an old friend. Jazmine pulled out the letter and carefully opened the folded paper.

It began:  Dear Ms. Walker,  We are happy to announce your acceptance into the English Studies Program at Charleston Southern University. Furthermore, we are very pleased to inform you that you have been chosen for the Destiny Hudson Aspiring African American Writer Scholarship based on your essay, “Where I am From and Where I am Going”. The rest of the letter included details on who to contact for further financial information and her academic advisor’s name, Dr. Sylvia Freeman. A real name of a real person hundreds of miles away who was supposed to help Jazmine register for classes. She couldn’t believe it. 

The last line of the letter asked that the enclosed acceptance/enrollment form be filled out and returned by May 1. Jazmine had completed the form the same day she picked the letter up at the docks. Charlie, an older man who retrieved the mail from the mainland by boat each weekday, looked at the envelope before he handed it to Jazmine. He must have read the return address because the sadness crept into his eyes as he said, “Well, Jazzy, you certainly have grown up.”

Jazmine lifted Anaya up again and pulled another envelope off the shelf. This one was sealed and addressed to the university. It was her acceptance form ready for the mail except for the stamp, which she would give Charlie money for when she asked him to mail it. She proofread the address one more time to make sure it was correct, and then she sat on her bed holding the envelope carefully, as if a single wrinkle would change the administrators’ minds about her acceptance.

She stared at the ceiling with the same question running through her mind as the day before and the day before that. How could she tell Mama?  Robbie was gone, and Daddy had been gone for years. It was just the two of them now. Mama had some younger cousins who would help her take care of the house if needed, Jazmine thought, and Mama’s house served as the island’s unofficial restaurant. Although to call using a kitchen to cook seafood eight or nine times a month for a few scattered tourists a restaurant was a stretch of the imagination, it did make Mama the small amount of money she needed to get by. Yeah, Mama would be okay, Jazmine thought, but okay wasn’t good enough for Mama.

Jazmine knew Mama would be lonely, and her mother deserved more than loneliness after the work she’d done raising two kids on her own. I’ll come home often, Jazmine thought. But that was what Robbie said when he left, too. He said he would come home often, and that he’d write even more often. That was a year and a half ago, and he visited once when he had to make an East Coast run. When he first left, he did write fairly often, but after the first year, the postcards and letters slowed to maybe one every couple of months.

Jazmine read the acceptance letter again. Dr. Sylvia Freeman. She liked the sound of the name. She said it out loud, “Dr. Sylvia Freeman.”  Then she said out loud, “Dr. Jazmine Walker.”  She liked that even better. 

Jazmine stood up with an envelope in each hand and closed her eyes. It was time. With determination, she walked out of the bedroom. In the hall, the familiar aroma of Mama’s kitchen enveloped her so completely that Jazmine stopped just short of the kitchen doorway. The earthy tones of rice, the sweet odor of okra and tomatoes, the smoky ham hock and the breath of the sea itself in the crabs and shrimp all mingling and rising together from the slow-cooked stew.

“You can do this Jazmine,” she whispered to herself and stepped through the doorway, hesitating again at the sight of Mama leaning against the sink. Mama was snapping the heads off shrimp to set aside for use later as vegetable broth flavoring, before dropping the shelled bodies and tails of the shrimp into the pot.

“Mama, I need to talk to you.” Jazmine forced the words out.

“Go ahead,” Mama said while her hands kept working at the shrimp. 

“Well, I’ve been thinking a lot about something.”

“All right.”

“I’ve been thinking about going to school. And I got something to show you.”  Jazmine held the letter out towards her mother.

Mama stopped and dried her hands on her apron. She turned and took the letter and unfolded the page. She read for a moment and then looked at Jazmine and refolded the letter.

“I am not going to read anymore,” she said. “Jazzy, if you’re going to tell me something, I want you to tell me. I don’t want to read it in some letter.”

Jazmine breathed heavily. She turned away from Mama, and the words flew out like panicky seagulls on a strong wind. “I’m going to school. Mr. Cartwright helped me get a scholarship, and I am going to accept it. I am going to Charleston Southern. It’s time for me to go. I need to make something of myself. I can’t stay here and do nothing. I can’t do it. I need to see something new, something different than crab traps and alligators and gravel roads and old men with tales of the Watchers. I got to take this chance. I got to.”

   Mama was quiet. Jazmine felt her confidence washing away like sand under your feet when standing in an outgoing tide. She stared at the letter in Mama’s hand.

“I knew you were leaving,” Mama finally said, setting the letter on the counter behind her, so that she stood between Jazmine and the letter.

“Mama, you couldn’t know. I didn’t even know for sure until right now.”

“Well, the island knew, and you don’t think this island here can keep a secret from your Mama, do you?  I’ve known this island too long, since I was born. I can tell if a storm is coming, and I can surely tell when my baby is leaving. And the Watchers—”

“The Watchers told you I was leaving?”

“Yes, ma’am,” Mama said. “They came into my dreams after old Charlie told me you got a letter from a university. The Watchers seen plenty of you young folks leave to know when it’s about to happen. They talk to us old folk. In our dreams, they say ‘keep ’em here’. They say ‘keep ’em here’ because the Watchers are family too.”

“But Mama—”

“And you’ve been so quiet, sneaking off to your room and just sitting in there. When the island gets quiet, that means there’s a storm coming or a heat wave or some other kind of change. I remember Robbie got real quiet for a couple of weeks, just like you’ve been doing. He was in his room flipping through those trucker magazines, finding a company that would pay to train him. Just like you’ve been doing with that letter.”

“I ain’t doing it to hurt you.”

“Robbie didn’t want to hurt me either. Didn’t want to hurt you just the same, but tell me how you feel?”

“I miss him. But I’m glad he left.”

“That’s not what you’ve been saying the whole time he’s been gone. That’s not what you said when he quit writing letters.”

“But it’s what I’m saying now.”

“Well, I ain’t going to stop you, but I ain’t going to pack your bags neither.”  Mama picked up the letter and handed it back to Jazmine. “You gotta do what you gotta do,” she said and then turned around, and her hands went back to work.

“But Mama—”

“I’m not going to give you my blessing to leave your home,” she answered without turning.

“Mama, I was hoping for your blessing, but I didn’t expect it. And I’m going. I just got to…”

“You got to what?”

“I got to know if you’re going to be okay when I’m gone.”

Now, Mama did turn around. Her eyes wide as she wiped her hands on her apron.

“I was a woman before you or Robbie was born. I was a woman alone before I met your father. I’ve been a woman alone before, and I ain’t scared to be one again.”

There was a silence before Mama continued, “Besides, I’ve told you, I left the island once myself for a full year. It wasn’t the same. So much noise you couldn’t hear nothing. So many cars and people you couldn’t hear the world talking. I missed the whistle of the marsh grass and the splash of the crab nets as the men threw them out in the water. And I missed the horn of the ferry as it pulled into the dock with supplies and the mail. Maybe you might miss these things, too. Maybe you might miss the island talking, and you might come home to us on that ferry.”

“Maybe.”

“And, Jazzy, you’ll always be welcome here as long as I’m breathing,” Mama said.

Jazmine looked at her mother standing there with her graying hair sticking out from underneath her yellow head wrap, her strong shoulders sunk slightly, her dirty apron tied around her waist. Jazmine walked forward and wrapped her arms around her mama.

“I love you, Mama.”

Jazmine turned to leave, both letters tight in her hand. She walked slowly just in case there was something else Mama wanted to say. Jazmine put her hand on the doorknob. Silence. She stepped outside.

The island was quiet, except for the rustle of the pines in a warm breeze and the low hum of insects. The evening sky was beginning to soften. Soon, the oranges and reds of the sunset would sink lazily into the mainland to the west of the island, pulling some of the humid air with them. It was Sunday evening, so the last ferry of the weekend would be leaving the dock at Marsh Landing soon. Charlie would be there for sure, loading any mail that had to get to the mainland post office before Monday morning. Jazmine picked up the bike Robbie had left her and climbed onto the seat. She put the letters in the wire basket attached to the handlebars and began pedaling towards Marsh Landing. It was done; she would leave the island. As soon as the letter was in the mail, her life would be in motion.

Jazmine had ridden a bike down this same dirt and gravel road countless times. But this time felt different. A kind of sad loneliness filled her belly, yet she felt like she wasn’t alone. She felt like she was being watched.

There was a noise at the edge of the woods to her right. Probably a raccoon or a deer, Jazmine decided, but she pedaled faster just the same. Though slight, the breeze seemed to fight against her, and she imagined it carrying her letters out of the basket and into the marsh tides on the other side of the trees. Jazmine reached down and put a hand on top of the letters while keeping her balance with the other hand. “You can’t have these,” she said softly to the island. When she rounded the last corner to Marsh Landing, Jazmine heard the ferry horn and saw Charlie leaning over to pull up the loading ramp.

“Charlie, wait!” she yelled over the sound of the horn. 

Charlie stood up and looked at Jazmine as she jumped off the bike and ran to the ramp.

“What is it, Jazzy?” he asked.

“I have a letter for you.”

Jazmine handed Charlie the letter, waiting until she felt it safely in his hand before letting go. Charlie looked at the envelope and then at Jazmine.

“Money for the stamp?” Charlie asked.

“Oh, no. I forgot it.”

“I’ll cover this one,” Charlie said. “Think of it as a goodbye present.”

Charlie tucked the letter into a large canvas bag by the rail. Then he smiled a soft smile at Jazmine as he pulled the loading ramp closed.

Jazmine watched the ferry pull away and turn towards the mainland. It was slow and beautiful. A few seagulls followed closely behind, diving into the wake where the engines churned up an occasional fish. Jazmine stood still and felt the warm salt breeze on her skin. She also felt them behind her, watching. But she did not turn to them. She kept her eyes on the boat as if her gaze kept it afloat and kept her letter safe. And when she could no longer see the boat, Jazmine closed her eyes and pictured the letter tucked safely in the bag.

“Make your way to Dr. Sylvia Freeman,” she whispered.

It was when she opened her eyes and found herself staring into the fading light of the day over the marsh grasses and distant pine trees that Jazmine caught a glimpse of the enormity of forever. She turned towards the woods with empathy for the Watchers. But they were gone.     

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Jason Gibeau is an award-winning writer who lives in Greenville, South Carolina, with his wife and three amazing kids. Jason’s first novel, The Duel, a historical fiction rich in magical realism, is set on a Lowcountry rice plantation at the dawn of the Revolutionary War and is scheduled for release on October 15, 2025. In addition to writing fiction, Jason has published several non-fiction articles in a variety of magazines and worked as a content editor for a health publication. Jason loves his primary job as an occupational therapist working with children with disabilities and plans to release several picture books for kids soon under the pen name Jase Wilder (www.jasewilder.com). In his elusive free time, Jason can be found playing guitar and writing songs, hanging with his family or looking for any excuse to make the drive to the Charleston area for pier or surf fishing. Visit www.jwgibeau.com for books and updates!

by Pell Williams

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I am no good at waking.
Still, I borrow Momma’s
mud-worn shoes
and sip hot paper cup coffee
as her van fills one by one
with artists of all mediums.
I guard the van while they slip
under the Widgeon Point gate,
the night’s bruise healing with light.
I’m no good at sneaking
through the young pine forests
to peek at the easels tucked
into swathes of marsh grass.
No good at balancing on fallen
trees stretched over the pluff mud,
their bark so pale I cannot name them.
I am good at clutching close
this paper vessel and filling it
with tiny markings, at relinquishing
the song I sang when I first woke
in favor of thrumming insects,
birds reuniting after the long dark.
I’m good at holding position
on this log in the shadows
and watching orange rise up
purple palmetto trunks.
For every morning I cannot wake
I hope to God I’ll dream in sunrise.

---

Pell Williams received an MFA in poetry from the College of Charleston and a BA in writing seminars from Johns Hopkins University. Pell served as the creative writing editor for Surge: The Lowcountry Climate Magazine, and was the 2019 artist in residence for the Dry Tortugas National Park. She is currently a marine science writer for the State of South Carolina. Her work has been published in The Good Life Review, Birmingham Poetry Review, and Grim & Gilded, among others.

by Dylan Hopper

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She found Cali standing barefoot on the landing of the rusted billboard again. This was their spot, overlooking a pond to the north and tall enough to peek over the trees that lined the  highway to the south. She was a vibrant oddity against the double-sided, sun-blanched  advertisement for Mac’s BBQ Farm. The grinning pig logo appeared menacing, colorless as a  skull, peeling from the bottom as if trying to reach out and caress her legs.  

Cali was dressed in the baby pink, silk kimono she had stolen from a vintage shop down  by the pier. It caught in the warm breeze and danced around her as she moved closer to the edge  and waved. She kneeled near the top of the ladder, pink silk rising with the wind and spreading  out behind her. Her floor-length skirt seemed an imitation of her mermaid’s iridescent fin, fitting  tight over her hips and tapering in at the ankles. She exuded kindness in her careful movements,  so deliberately fluid, it often seemed as if she was still moving through the water. In many ways,  Cali never left the observation tank, and in many ways, neither did Mara.  

When she reached the base of the billboard’s ladder, Mara climbed. Cali offered her hand  to her on the last two steps. On the landing, they moved to the edge closest to the pond and sat  side by side.  

Cali stared into the water below. A cypress knee poked through the center of the pond; a  white crane stood atop it on one leg. “Do you ever get that strange urge to jump?” she asked. 

“L’appel du vide,” Mara said. “It usually only hits me when we start to climb down.”

Cali scoffed. “Okay, you know I didn’t have a Cajun granny, so you’re going to have to  tell me what the hell that means.”  

“Means the call of the void,” Mara said.  

Cali laughed and said, “Trust the French to have a phrase for everything.” 

A bloated shadow moved beneath the surface of the water. Mara thought of David, of his  blank, fish-like eyes. The memory of his lingering gaze evoked a primal sense of dread and  though it was well over ninety degrees and muggy, her skin pimpled with goosebumps. She  knew Cali was thinking of him, too.  

“I feel the call of the void all the time now. It’s as if the universe is begging me to do  something reckless,” Cali said.  

“Like punch David in the face?” Mara asked, grinning.  

“I don’t know what I’ll do when I see him,” she said, pulling the sides of her kimono in  around her. “Can’t we just mail our resignation letters?” 

David had been particularly vicious with Cali lately. She had fallen from his good graces  ever since her hair became algae-tinted from the motel pool’s acidic levels of chlorine. Whenever  he spotted her, he called in a cruel, carnival-barker voice, Come one, come all! Witness Medusa  underwater! She can make a man hard with a single look! 

“We gotta finish this show,” Mara said. “Get our last paycheck from him. After that, I  promise we’ll get on the road.”  

Cali nodded. Below, an alligator bobbed and broke the pond’s surface. It opened its  mouth wide, as if in a yawn. It paused, jaws agape. Mara imagined its teeth more menacing than  its true nature, large and wicked sharp like pieces of glass.  

Mara felt Cali’s eyes on her, watching her watch the alligator below. She thought of  David’s sweaty palms and unabashed leering. 

“How much longer do we have?” she asked. 

“Not long. Show’s at two.” 

“We should go,” Mara said. 

Cali nodded and rolled her skirt up around her thighs before finding footing on the ladder  and starting her descent.  

Mara studied her, how easily her limbs acclimated to gravity’s pull and settled into that  sinking feeling. The wind lifted and her kimono fanned out behind her like a siren’s wings. For a  moment, she pictured an alternate reality, one where they covered their skin in feathers instead of  silicone scales, where they floated on air and never held their breath. A sudden urge to jump  called to her from somewhere below, the alligator or the shadow of a man reflected in the pond’s  surface. She gripped the warm, iron slats of the ladder and followed her, uneasy all the way down. 

The back window of Cali’s white VW bug was obscured by their duffle bags, stacked on top of one another.  

The car puttered to life, and they pulled out of the parking lot. The engine light flickered  on and off at the slightest rattle. In spite of the heat, December was a shell of a month, a  reverberation of Myrtle Beach’s typical activity. As they ambled along Ocean Boulevard toward  the aquarium in sparse traffic, Mara took in the strip malls of beach gear gift shops, seafood  restaurants, pancake houses, and mini-golf fun parks along the way as if for the first time,  knowing it would be the last. Though they only lived here for six months, Mara felt some  fondness for the cheap and desolate star-spangled charm of this town. She committed to memory  the amalgamation of stores with their American flags cradled in dark gravel parking lots like  oysters in a marsh-bed. The Pearl: Surf Shop had wrapped Christmas lights around the lobster  head mannequin in its display window. Even the local scammers seemed to be in the spirit, green  and red spotlights illuminated an advertisement for $20 Helicopter Rides!

The aquarium was visible from the main road, the far left side of the building marked by  a monstrous metal fin, the main entrance sheltered within the mouth of a reconstructed shark’s  head. During the summer, kids loved to run between the pillars of teeth lining its bottom jaw, but  today, the parking lot was almost empty. They pulled in their designated employee space and  locked the car. 

“Ready?” Mara asked.  

Cali nodded, twisting the tails of her kimono in her fists. Mara slung her arm around her  shoulders and squeezed. Together, they walked over the glimmering concrete and into the  aquarium. The shark’s glass-door mouth swallowed them whole.  

David was absent when they arrived in the lobby, but the sharp alcoholic scent of his  cologne lingered in the staff-only hallways and in their dressing room, a mist that promised a  full-bodied apparition. 

They sat at their vanities and applied their waterproof makeup. A ritual in transformation,  they fulfilled David’s vision for mermaids and became little Marilyn Monroes with fins. Cali  painted a beauty mark in the top right corner of her cheek. Mara stained her mouth bright red.  

On the observation deck, they sat and rubbed Vaseline on their legs. With skin slippery  against the grated, metal runway, they wriggled into their mermaid tails. The tank beneath them  was a perfect oval and reminded Mara of a great monocled eye peering up at them, as expectant  as the audience below. The void called to her here, too. The water smacked against the confines  of the tank, rippling in an eternal simulation of current and tugging at that reckless urge inside  her chest. She heard in the whining trill of the industrial water filtration system, in the hiss of the  exposed pipes, in the buzz of the overhead spotlights, an irresistible harmony calling, Dive, dive! 

With their legs bound in silicone, they slithered toward the water and lowered their  bodies into the overhang net.  

David’s voice boomed, omniscient from the intercoms above and from the speakers  below deck, “Please put your hands together and welcome our two real life mermaids!”  Submerging was as simple as walking through a door, now. The water, a warm and  uterine-like fluid, cradled their bodies, soothing them into a space between reality and void. The  fish, a haze of color, brushed across their armpits and exposed abdomens. They embodied myth,  suppressing the natural instinct to breathe, feigning serenity. With a practiced motion of their  poised fins, they shaped hearts out of bubbles, and with twin winks, pushed their hearts toward  the blurred image of a woman behind the glass. Mara imagined she was like them, in love with  the idea of being in a different world. 

In the dark of the observation room, the barrier between them seemed like a mirror.  Floating and posing together, their faces overlapped the woman’s in turn and perceptions  mingled. Without knowing who she was, they identified how she occupied the inside of her body.  They undulated their torsos, fluttered their tails. She knew what it meant to act in accordance  with the theatrics of living as a beautiful creature. They performed ease— low on oxygen, behind  passing sharks, even when the spectators could not see them.  

They knew she executed transformative rituals to resemble fantasy, too.  

Unable to speak, they fashioned their lips to the pre-recording and sang through David’s  loud speakers, gesturing to her, “Oh, we wish we could be like you!”  

Breaking through the water’s surface and into the glare of the overhead lights ruptured  the illusion. They skinned the silicone fins from their legs, squeezed their hair free of salt water, wrapped towels around their torsos, headed back to their dressing room. Whether it was due to  placebo effect or lack of oxygen, Mara couldn’t say, but stripping free of the fantasy always left  an ache. The joy they portrayed underwater was never real, and yet, a sense of loss lingered  whenever they returned to their bipedal bodies.  

Cali stared at her reflection in the dressing room mirror, adjusting and readjusting her  kimono.  

“Hey,” Mara said. “Listen, why don’t you wait in the car? I’ll get our paychecks, give  David our letters.”  

“No way, Mara,” she said, eyes wide. “I can’t leave you with him.”  

“I’ll be okay,” Mara said, not knowing if it was true. “He’s been on your case more than  mine.”  

She fisted the tails of her kimono, massaged over the thinning, silk fabric. “Are you  sure?” she said.  

Mara fished the keys out of her tote bag and handed them to her. “If I’m not out in  twenty, come in and get me?”  

Cali pulled her into a hug and squeezed tight before letting go.  

It was customary at the end of two weeks to stop by David’s office and retrieve their  paychecks, but Mara had never done so alone. The hallway seemed longer than usual. The  barebones nature of the linoleum tile and exposed pipes, the hissing and grumbling sounds of the  water filtration systems reminded her of the phrase in the belly of the beast. If the aquarium was the shark, David was its stomach acid. Corrosive is an understatement, one of the scuba divers  once told Mara. A shark’s stomach acid is strong enough to dissolve metal.  At the door labeled, MANAGER, she stopped and knocked.  

“Come in!” David called.  

She took a deep breath, as if preparing to submerge, and opened the door. 

“Ah,” he said, his mouth twitched as if repressing a frown. He rose from behind his desk  and gestured to the chair in front of him. “Just you today, honey? Where’s Medusa?” 

“She’s not feeling well,” Mara said. She remained standing and used the chair as a barrier  between them. She was hyperaware of her limbs, of the tension coiled in her trembling hands. 

“Seemed just fine to me when you gals were swimmin’ out there,” he said, opening a  drawer and sorting through papers.  

“We’re paid to seem fine, aren’t we?” she asked.  

He chuckled. “Speaking of pay,” he said, retrieving their checks and handing them to her. 

She took their paychecks from his outstretched hand and shoved them into the bottom of  her bag. “David, I’ve got something for you, too,” she said. “Here are our letters of resignation,”  she said, placing the letters on the chair in front of her.  

As if she hadn’t spoken, he stepped around his desk and said, “My first love, she was a  lot like you. She was a good girl, never wanted to say no to me.” With one foot, he nudged the  chair to the side. “Do you find it difficult to say no?”  

One of his meaty hands circled her wrist, the other curled under her shirt and caressed her  bare stomach. David’s mouth spread into an ugly and open maw, emitting muffled phrases. She  felt as though she was underwater again, the pull of the artificial current pressing incessant around her, her heartbeat a steady drum dissolving his words into void. Beneath the surface, a  hum like the hissing of the water filtration system, a call from deep inside her body to do  something reckless.  

“No!” she screamed, shoving him with all her strength and tearing away from his grasp.  His pot-bellied body wobbled and stumbled backward into his desk. Her legs carried her down  the hallway, the buzzing luminescence blurring the scene, her breath steady reverberations of no,  no, no. His heavy-footed gait echoed behind her.  

She broke out of the shark’s glass-door mouth and ran through the parking lot. It was  dark out, but she spotted Cali under one of lights, leaning against the trunk, mermaid tails  clasped in her hands. When Cali spotted Mara, she raised her arms and waved the tails.  “Mara!” she called, grinning. “Look! Look!”  

“Cali!” Mara said, panicked. “Get in the car!”  

Mara looked over her shoulder at the aquarium’s entrance. The figure of a large man  strode out from between the shark’s teeth.  

Mara grabbed the tails from Cali’s hands, yanked open the passenger-side door, and  shoved the tails into the backseat.  

“Theft! Theft!” David’s voice boomed across the lot.  

“We have to get out of here!” Mara said, climbing into the passenger seat and slamming  the door shut.  

“Fuck!” Cali said, closing the driver’s side door and cranking the ignition.  Mara turned to look over her shoulder. One of the lot’s lights illuminated David as he unlocked his Ford truck and climbed inside. Cali shifted the car into drive. The tires squealed as  their car sped out of the parking lot and pulled onto the main road.  

“What the hell happened?” Cali asked. “Did he touch you?”  

“Why did you take the fins?” Mara asked, then stared at the reflection of his murky truck  headlights in her sideview mirror. “Cali— He’s following us.”  

“I know, I know,” she said, making a sudden right turn without using her blinker. 

Mara’s breath shuddered between her teeth. Her body was still shivering. 

Cali made a sudden sharp left turn, narrowly escaping collision with oncoming traffic.  “Sorry,” she muttered, glancing again in her sideview mirror.

“I took the fins because  they’re part of us, a part of our lives I didn’t want David to keep.”  

Mara nodded. She wanted to tell Cali she understood, but before she could, a pair of truck  headlights appeared in their rearview mirrors, murky and unmistakably David’s. The truck  revved its engine, speeding up and riding so close to their bumper he nearly made impact. Cali  hissed and turned down another street before accelerating. Mara looked out the window. They  were on the highway along the marsh. Cali turned on her left blinker. He slowed. His truck’s left  turn signal blinked back at them.  

“We can’t risk him colliding with us,” Cali said, staring straight ahead. “We can’t afford  another car, and it’s too dangerous to wait around on the bus when he’s looking for us.”  Her voice was unlike anything Mara ever heard, deep and tranquil as a monk’s.  Illuminated by the moon, the billboard rose from the marsh as tall and ominous as the cross.  “Get ready to climb,” she said. 

A few feet from the base of the billboard, she yanked the car into park, ripped the keys  out of the ignition. Mara was the first to mount the ladder. She climbed, her limbs rising and  falling in a familiar mechanical motion. She stared and envisioned standing upon the platform  until she lifted her body onto it. She turned and peered down. Mara was right behind her, but the  unmistakable figure of David lumbered up after her. She reached out to her, and together, they  muscled Cali up onto the landing beside her.  

“Come on,” Cali whispered. Holding hands, they rounded the billboard and thinned their  bodies against the pond-facing side. She leaned over and whispered in Mara’s ear, “L’appel du  vide.” 

“Cali, no—”  

The platform shook, and Cali drew her hand over Mara’s mouth. His steps reverberated  beneath their feet. His panting gave his position away. They heard him amble along, coming up  on their left. Cali let go of her hand and moved closer to his side. He stepped around the corner.  His gaze swept along the landing. She raised her arms, her kimono spreading out behind her like  a pair of deadly and beautiful wings, and dove upon him. Her fingers curved into talons and  clawed at his face. David’s mouth emitted a breathless sputter, and he stepped backward on  instinct. His foot slipped into open air. His arms flailed. His hands clenched wildly and closed  around a piece of Cali’s kimono. He rocked back against the void before succumbing to its call  and falling.  

The thin silk stretched, and like the threads of a powerful current, pulled Cali toward the  edge. Time slowed, as if doused in buoyancy, the scene seemed to float around them. Mara  wrapped Cali in her arms and plunged them down onto the platform. She heard fabric tear free  from Cali’s body, an animalistic shriek. They peered through the spaces in the metal grates. 

David’s body twitched and convulsed, punctured upon the cypress knee. In a stain of moonlight  nearly as bright as the aquarium’s industrial lamps, the feathered remains of Cali’s kimono  pooled around him, mimicking the blood seeping from his body. Mara and Cali squeezed each  other. An unmistakable splash rippled across the marsh, a scaled creature submerged into the  water below. 

---

A queer writer and poet, Dylan Hopper (she/her) received her MFA from the University of Arkansas’ Program in Creative Writing and Translation in Fayetteville. Her poems are forthcoming in Querencia Press’ Scavengers. She once pretended to play bass in a punk band.

by Lorien Lucero

---

Drew climbs out of the truck and whistles as heat blankets him, sweat misting his forehead in moments.  He wipes it away. At least the sloped shoulder where he parked is shaded, though he wonders if the trees on either side only trap the sweltering air. He peers up and down the two-lane road, wary of traffic. There is none. Of course, there wouldn’t be. Evening is coming on, and this is no place to be caught after dark.

He would not be here for anything, save that it’s what Ray wants. Drew doesn’t even think he believes in ghosts, but if it will help his brother forget, he will oblige. For now.

A deep breath, then he plunges into the woods. He ducks under hanging vines, strays from the path to avoid ground still muddy from flooding last month. Dwarf palmettos nod in a breeze. He takes a last look over his shoulder, back at the truck. A single tress of Spanish moss wavers over the cab, gilt by fading sunbeams. He shakes his head and walks onward.

Ray had better be there already, Drew thinks. He doesn’t want to wait. Especially not by the marsh at the path’s end where, Ray told him on the phone this morning, you can see the old Marjorie Rutledge Home where the woman still roams the creekside, searching for lost love. He sighs. The whole thing seems a fool’s errand.

It hasn’t always been like this, Ray’s obsession with the paranormal. Though it’s understandable, considering what he has lost. It’s hard not to worry about him, but Drew calms his thoughts. It’s the first time he’s agreed to come on one of his brother’s “investigations,” but then again it’s the first time Ray has gone out on a forest trail, in pure darkness, in the middle of the sticks. He couldn’t let him go alone.

Why does Drew have to be the stable one? It’s a role he resents. He misses the way things were when they were young, both of them bold and reckless. Yes, it’s been worse since the accident. And no, his brother hasn’t been the same since Julia. But Ray, though older, has forced him to be sober and sane for them both.

Drew jumps as something unseen caresses his face. He laughs: only an orb-weaver’s web, likely the only ghost they will find tonight. A mosquito shrills in his ear, but its voice seems far away. As if the sound itself is a haunting.

Far ahead a flashlight beam waves. He can’t see the marsh yet, but Ray has seen him.

When blue hour comes the forest cools, though Drew’s body is still damp with sweat. Ray trudges beside him now, jittery—from coffee or excitement? Hard to tell. He’s had more late nights in recent months than Drew has ever known him to, so it could be both. 

Ray stops, stares off to the right where the roots of a fallen pine stretch, hopeless arms reaching in vain for heaven. “There,” he whispers. He leans toward his brother and points. “Straight past that is a shortcut to the best spot to see the house from. We can’t go on the grounds itself; it’s privately owned. Across the creek is the closest we can get.”

“I don’t think we should leave the path,” Drew frowns. “It’s going to be dark in under an hour.”

His brother waves him off. “It’s fine,” he says. “I have flashlights, and GPS if we get lost. Plus, I already came out here yesterday to check things out.”

This is new information. At night, or in daylight? Drew isn’t sure their excursion is entirely legal, since he doesn’t know who owns this land. There were private driveways on the road, but no houses to be seen, though none near the mile where they’ve parked. He shakes his head, imagines what Emma would say if she could see them now.

“Who’s this ghost we’re hunting now?” he asks.

“The Rutledge woman. I told you.” 

“Tell me again.”

Ray sighs. “Fine. Marjorie Rutledge. Lived before the Civil War. Had a secret affair with one of her neighbors, I think, who’d just moved in from Beaufort. Her father thought he had slave blood in his veins, though you couldn’t tell by looking at him. So Marjorie kept their love a secret. When her father found out, he had the man sent to the peninsula on an errand, but…he never returned.”

Drew waits, knowing his brother enjoys the drama of these stories. He cringes as a narrow vine catches on him, unseen in the gloaming. He swears below his breath.

Ray doesn’t notice. “So Marjorie, she went out to the creek to watch for him—back then they traveled by boat more than by road. She laid in bed for days, claiming to see his image in her fever, begging his forgiveness.”

“And?”

“And a few days later, she’s dead.”

Drew peers at his brother, frowns. There is no hint of grief or pain in his voice, talking this way about death. That’s a good thing, isn’t it? But it doesn’t feel right.

Would Ray be so detached if Drew were to mention Julia? He doesn’t think so. His tongue curls to shape the name, as if her memory wants to be given voice. For a moment its will seems irresistible, but he masters it.

The unspoken name still hovers in the air, though. Ray turns sharply and stares at him as if hearing it.

“What was that?” he says at last. Drew shakes his head. Ray does not break eye contact.

He crouches, brings out a small black device with a screen and lots of options. He presses the small red RECORD button.

“I didn’t hear a thing—” Drew answers. Ray hushes him. At last he puts the device away, apparently satisfied.

Not ten minutes later they reach the path again and soon see the darkened form of a house. It looks lonely from where they stand here, across the creek and the plain of golden marsh. White siding, black-shuttered windows; or the kind of green that’s almost black. An old plantation home. Late antebellum, maybe. Emma would know.

“Okay,” Ray says. “Let’s see if we can reach her.”

Three small flashlights emerge from his bag. Cheap ones, the kind you can find at a dollar store. He unscrews the handle of each just enough to get the battery loose, and flips the switches on.

“Hello? Is anyone here with us?”

Drew can barely see the flashlights on the forest floor, but he squints down at them anyway, wondering what to expect.

“If you’re here, you can turn on these lights by touching them. Two flashes for yes, one for no.”

Nothing happens. Drew waits, wonders what Ray is thinking. He begins to let his thought drift off, remembering how they’d kayaked creeks like this nearer to home with their parents. How once, when both were younger, Ray had rowed so far ahead that Drew could not see them past a bend in the marsh, and for what had seemed like hours (probably no more than minutes) they had sat in stillness watching a white bird stand still as a statue. “Hello, Mr. Egret,” Drew had sung out. The way he’d formed the words sounded like Mister Regret. Drew smiles, remembering how Ray had laughed at that for days after.

A slow yawn sneaks his breath away. He clears his throat, wonders how long they will stay here and wait—when the first bulb ignites. One, then another. The third, for whatever reason, remains off.

He watches, mouth gaping. Ray smiles and nods, reaches again into his bag.

“Are you looking for something?” he asks. “Or maybe someone?”

The light flashes twice.

“Did someone important to you disappear?”

Twice again.

Ray grins. His breathing quickens. He holds another device up and numbers blink on its pale screen. Drew doesn’t know what they are, but the numbers make him shiver.

“Hold this,” his brother commands, and Drew accepts a small camera. He watches a psychedelic array of yellows and oranges and purples form and shift, till he recognizes the shapes of trees and then Ray himself.

“It’s a thermal camera,” Ray sputters. “Measures heat differences. See if you can see anything in it.”

Drew squints into the mess of color as Ray queries on. “Have you been here long? Since the eighteen-hundreds?” Two flashes. Still nothing on the camera but the cold creek and marsh, a stray crab or two climbing in the stalks.

He looks up. The world is dim around them. Dark has fallen; he hasn’t noticed when. Something snaps in the marsh grass. He can see movement there, but no shape. His throat closes. A chill creeps over his sweat-damp back.

“Did you die of lost love?” One flash. Ray frowns. “Maybe it’s not her.” Another flash, weaker this time.

“Do you see anything on the camera? Point it at the flashlights.”

There is nothing to see on the screen, not even the now flickering beams.

“Damn,” Ray swears. “Nothing on the EMF, either.”

Nothing else happens after this. Ray makes a few recordings, takes more readings with his instruments. He doesn’t seem disappointed. He tells Drew this is how things usually go. A lot of work and little to show for it. But it’s the hunt that matters, he says.

Drew doesn’t see it. He’s never been a hunter. Nor has Ray, for that matter—not before his girlfriend died. He remembers his brother’s face when Julia’s father called him to let him know she was gone. The broken look that had swam in his eyes.

It’s gone now, that look, but something else has taken its place. Drew isn’t sure what just yet. This sort of chase, the relentless search his brother is caught up in—something about it unnerves Drew, though he doesn’t know why.

He walks Ray back to his sedan, a hundred feet or so ahead of where his own truck is parked. The road is still empty, but now it looks smaller, more remote. Its own little world in the dark, no street light at all. It’s an intimate loneliness. Does Ray feel it, too?

Ray climbs into his car. “Give you a ride back to your truck?” he asks. Drew shakes his head.

“What’s that?” he asks, catching sight of something red on his brother’s arm. Ray blinks, studies his inner wrist: a small constellation of red mounds.

“Damn bloodsuckers,” he says.

A phone call wakes Drew in the morning, a full hour before he’d planned to rise. He throws off sheets raveled around him, grabs the glowing screen, presses the glass to his stubbled cheek. “Hello,” he murmurs.

“Drew? Is that you?”

He sits up, eyes wide and alert. “Emma! I forgot to call yesterday.”

“I knew you would,” her voice creaks in that way he loves. “It’s fine. I had a great time Friday night.” She hesitates. “It’s been too long, Drew.”

He agrees. He thinks of her often. Even when they’re broken up, which is not infrequent, he wonders if she will come back soon. They know each other too well, after all, good and bad. He winces, catching an angle of sunlight glaring in through his window. It blinds him like her own image would if she were here now, her black hair, olive skin, darkened eyes.

“How did the thing go?” she asks.

“Thing?” He knows what she means, but makes her say it.

“With Ray. The ghost thing.”

“Mm. About what I thought. Tripping through the woods in pitch dark like a couple of moonshiners.”

Emma snickers. He pictures the tilt of her head, the smile lines that form when she laughs. He can nearly see it.

“I almost wish I’d been there for that,” she says. “I’m glad you went with him. How did he seem?”

He draws a breath to answer, but it sticks in his throat. He isn’t quite sure what to say. He’d seemed like Ray, for one thing—for one of the first times he can remember in a good while. And there’d been a light in his eyes that was new. A light Drew has never seen there before. It pulls at his mind, nagging.

“I mean,” Emma says, “These ghosts of his—”

“There was no ghost, Emma. The cake is a lie.”

She’s silent a moment. He wonders if his tone was harsher than he’d meant. “I’m just worried about him,” she says. “I mean, this isn’t something you just get over. They were made for each other. That’s rare.”

He seems to hear a wistfulness in her voice, one he almost resents. Then resents himself for feeling it. “I am too, babe. But I really think he’s fine. Or will be. Give him a while. It’s been, what, a few months? He’s coping in his own way.”

“That’s what I’m worried about. He’s not coping. What he’s doing, what y’all were doing—that’s not coping. It’s running away from things.”

Drew frowns. He knows that she is right, but doesn’t want to admit it. He remembers vividly how alive and present Ray was. Nevertheless. “Maybe,” he allows. “Maybe he is. I’ll talk to him.”

“Drew,” she murmurs. “Just look out for him, is all I’m saying.”

Her words stick in his head the rest of the morning. He wolfs down cold pizza, showers quickly, and sits under the fan on full-hurricane-blast at his computer. Pulls up Google, types:

ghost hunting debunked

172,000 results. He swears.

But Drew is patient. He can’t get these worries out of his head, nor the memory of last night. He sees lights flashing in his mind’s eye. Have you been here for long? Did you die of lost love?

An hour later he’s satisfied. He’d felt anxious before, but it’s amazing how quickly that fades when you have answers. It all came down to thermodynamics. Flashlights generate light and heat, heat causes expansion, breaking the circuit and cooling the insides. Cooling causes contraction, which pulls the insides together, forming a circuit again—and on and on. Basic physics. Not ghosts.

His phone vibrates. A text from Ray.

come rn

u need 2 c this

Drew stops for a cold-brew on the way, reveling as the caffeine enters his bloodstream. He would offer to buy Ray something, but the guy is probably jacked up enough. Traffic slows on the way over. His fingers thrum the wheel, then stop. He stares at them. Is he nervous? But what is there to be nervous about?

No one answers when he knocks at Ray’s apartment, so he lets himself in. Signs of neglect abound. It hadn’t been this bad when he was last here, a week ago maybe. Books lay stacked or left open, spines up, around the sofa. Empty beer bottles line shelves and tables. A smell wafts out from the kitchen: unwashed dishes, mingling with the vapor from his brother’s e-cig, faint and sickly sweet. He cringes.

“Oh, hey,” Ray stumbles out from the hallway. He seems surprised to see Drew.

“Bit distracted lately?”

“No, no. Just have a lot of things running through my mind.” His eyes flit here and there across the apartment, but if the mess embarrasses him it doesn’t show.

“I know what you mean. I forgot to call Emma yesterday.”

Ray shoots him a look. “Emma Flores? Y’all are back together again?”

“Yeah, we went out Friday night. Didn’t I tell you?”

His brother seems unsure for a moment. His eyes glaze over, his lips part. “Yeah. Yeah, I guess maybe you did.” He gives a playful smirk, and again he is the same familiar Ray. “Well, good luck to you.”

“Ray,” Drew warns.

“What? I didn’t say a thing.”

Drew sighs. “So what is it I need to see?”

“Well…hear, actually. Let me pull it up.”

Ray grabs his laptop from the coffee table and turns it on. “Okay, here it is. Listen closely.”

Drew listens. There isn’t much to hear. The laptop’s speaker sings the droning of insects, the faraway rasping of frogs. A breeze whispers, sounding like static. Then Drew hears his own voice. “I didn’t hear a thing—” Then the frantic hiss of his brother.

Ray closes the laptop. “Tell me you heard it.”

“I heard you and me, and some marsh sounds, but…” He shakes his head.

“What? No, no. There’s a voice! I’ll play it again.” He does.

Again Drew shakes his head, shrugs. “I don’t hear any voice but ours, Ray.”

Ray sighs, exasperated. “It’s there. You just have to listen. It says, ‘He will return’.”

Drew sits on the sofa’s arm. His lips tighten. “Listen, I’ve been reading about all this,” he begins. “They have different names for it. Matrixing, apophenia. It’s when the brain imposes order and meaning on something where there’s nothing there. And then there’s confirmation bias, when you cling to anything that fits your expectations, but reject anything that doesn’t as irrelevant.”

Ray’s features harden. “You don’t believe me.”

“I don’t hear anything, Ray. I didn’t hear anything that night, either.”

“But you saw—” He screws his eyes closed, touches his temples. “Confirmation bias, right? Isn’t it possible you’re doing the same thing?”

Drew looks away. He surveys the apartment again and suddenly blinks. “Where’s your Les Paul?”

He remembers it clearly, the ocean-blue electric guitar his brother had saved for for years, setting aside what he could from late-night coffee shop or bar gigs he’d scraped together, long before his graveyard shift job as night auditor at the inn. Drew had been one of the few to see him play it the first time. He and Julia and Emma. Normally it hung over the mantel, between a bookshelf and a potted cactus, but the space was empty now. 

“Sold it,” Ray grunts. “How else do you think I can afford all this equipment?”

It feels like a punch in the gut. Drew’s eyes flutter closed and he draws a breath, wishing this wasn’t happening. He glances at the mantle again, studies a photo of Ray and Julia smiling, her small hand pressed against his chest. Drew stands.

“I’m sorry, Ray,” he murmurs. “I’m not going to help you with this anymore. I can’t. I just can’t.”

Ray’s gaze rises toward his brother, pulling Drew’s own attention back to him. Neither speaks. A long span of time slips by before Drew takes the first step away, breaking the eye contact, and leaves his brother alone.

He feels guilty as soon as his brother’s door shuts, but there’s no help for that. Ray is set on a course Drew cannot stop, is living in a world he cannot reach. Nor had he ever had much luck in swaying his brother’s mind. When Ray is set on something, you either climb aboard or jump ship.

It’s fine, he tells himself. This ghost thing will lose its appeal and he’ll run out of steam eventually. And when he does, I’ll be there.

He shakes the thought from his head, turns on the radio. Traffic is heavy, more than usual. It’s going to be a long drive home.

For the next week or so he passes by Ray’s apartment when he can, and monitors his social media, which tends to be inactive. This isn’t unusual. Ray is more concerned with living life than documenting it, a trait Drew both admires and envies. Again he asks himself: why does he get to be impulsive, the free spirit? Why should I color inside the lines just because he never can?

His concern only grows when he speaks of Ray to Emma on Thursday night in his car, on their way to tacos at Santi’s.

“I saw him at the library yesterday,” he says, “but he didn’t even acknowledge my wave. He looked right through me. I don’t think he even saw me.”

Emma smiles. “I’m sure he’s just in his own head.”

“He’s been that way more and more. I don’t know, Em. Do you think I was wrong? Maybe I should fight harder for him, help him with whatever he needs me for.”

She studies him as his Nissan slows for a red light. “You’re his brother,” she says. “If you don’t stick close to him, who will?”

Drew doesn’t respond. His brow furrows, laden with the weight of his thoughts. “He’s never been like this. Unfocused, imbalanced.”

“No. Not before Julia. They were so happy.”

“And healthy. At the library, he was covered in bites again, more than last time. I think he’s been going back out into the woods without me.”

Emma is silent at this. It feels like she wants to speak, but no words come.

“Don’t worry,” he rushes, “I won’t let it happen again.”

“Drew, I’m not sure I want you out there, either. You could contract zika, either one of you. There’s been what, forty-some cases in the state this year? Up in Myrtle, then in Florence, even as far as the Upstate. It’s definitely spreading.”

Drew makes the turn onto Meeting. They are nearly there. He smiles. “Aww, that’s sweet, babe, but I don’t think you need to worry about that. It’s just a mild flu.”

“Unless we’re pregnant.”

He brakes, harder than he needs to, as they pull into a parking spot at the restaurant. He searches her face, half stunned. “Are you?”

“No,” she shakes her head. “But what if we wanted to?”

“Do we?”

She bites her lip. Thinks for a long time.

“Babe, I want to tell you something. Something I’ve never told anyone else. I don’t think even Ray knows. I don’t think she had the chance to tell him.”

He frowns, confused. “Okay.”

“Julia… When she died on that highway, she…” Emma swallows. “Drew, Julia was pregnant.”

It takes Drew a few days to find some pretext to visit again. In the end, he can’t think of one, and it is Ray who comes to him.

“Hey,” Drew greets his brother, finding him parked by his truck in the lot outside work. “I didn’t expect to see you any time soon.”

“You’re my brother,” Ray smiles faintly. “I’m not going to cut you off just because you ditched me. Besides, I need you out there. We have to go again—out to the marsh.”

Drew laughs, but feels no humor.

“Listen, I know we don’t see eye-to-eye on everything. But I’ve taken a page from your book. I’ve done some research. And I’ve found something.”

“You’ve found something,” he repeats dumbly.

Ray smiles. Drew can see the glow in his eyes even behind the Aviators. “A connection. Something real. It’s even documented.”

Drew is intrigued. He’s certain whatever his brother has dug up won’t convince him, but he shrugs. “Okay, let’s see it.”

Ray fishes a library book from the passenger side of his car, an old cloth-bound green tome with thoroughly yellowed pages and crabbed type. He flips through, finds the gas station receipt he’d used as a bookmark, and points halfway down the left-hand page. “Here,” he taps the book and hands it to Drew, who reads:

Drew reads on, but finds no further mention of Marjorie Rutledge. He sighs. “I’m not going to guess, Ray. What the hell does this prove?”

Ray shakes his head, grins. “She died of malaria,” he says. He waits a moment. “Don’t you see? It was her! The ghost. I thought it wasn’t, since she said she didn’t die of lost love. One flash when I asked, remember? But she didn’t. She was telling us the truth the whole time.”

“Telling us?” Drew’s eyebrow raises. “Ray, that’s a stretch.”

“Okay, maybe, but you saw. You were there, Drew.”

“Ray, I didn’t see anything. You know I don’t believe—”

“Don’t believe what?” There is a manic look in his eyes.

Drew throws up his hands. He doesn’t want to do this a second time. It’s not why he’s here, having this conversation when he could have been halfway home by now. No, he’s here for Ray.

He thinks: Malaria, huh? And now we have zika. With all the ways people have advanced in the centuries since Marjorie’s death, mosquitoes are still wreaking havoc on us. Only zika won’t kill you.

“You want to go out there again?” he asks. “Okay. But this time we’re bringing bug spray.”

They ride together this time, in Drew’s truck, with all of Ray’s things in the back of the cab. There is more traffic today, and the hour is earlier. It’s a concession Ray has made. “There’s no reason,” Drew had argued the day before, “why ghosts would be more active at night. And if they’re shadowy and pale like people say, why would you look when there’s no light to see by?”

Ray can see the reason in this. He sits back, lost in the hypnotic sight of tree after tree slipping by as they drive the narrow road. Drew glances at him, wonders.

Should he tell Ray? Emma didn’t say not to. Surely he has a right to know.

Then again, the loss of Julia has been painful enough. Is it right to add to Ray’s grief with the loss of his child as well?

Why is it Ray is obsessed with ghosts? Drew realizes he has never stopped to ask himself the question. Not to find proof of an afterlife, he thinks. Ray has faith in that already, though he seldom talks about it. It has to be something else. Something more.

They arrive at the path, and Drew parks beneath the oaks again. Their feet make muted sounds as they crush dead leaves and mats of orange needles. The air all but clings to them, full of damp fingers whose heat they can feel in their skin. They pass a palmetto, shaded and mournful, its trunk scarred.

Ray glances at him with appraising eyes and Drew smiles, reassuring him. Whatever it is he believes or doesn’t believe in, he believes in his brother. Or wants to. Is he doing the wrong thing? Is he helping at all, being here?

A black smear drifts across his face, and he ducks. A mosquito, bigger than the kind he’s used to seeing. He’s heard of them before, though he’s never seen one, these zebra-striped, feather-legged things. They’re subtle and mean, relentless.

Except when Raid is part of the equation. He smirks as he sprays and the insect falls away.

They are quiet as they make their way to the marsh. Ray stops every now and then, checks his EMF detector, makes a note in his Moleskine. Drew watches him. He doesn’t know what to say, how to contribute. He’s just happy, he realizes, to be here with his brother. To not have lost him when Ray has lost so much.

The marsh lies close ahead, brimming with scents of mud and silt and the effluence of life. The shrimp are snapping in the water. Frogs sing unknowable songs in their alien voices. Ray takes his voice recorder out, switches it on.

“Are you here?” he begins. The air is stifled, silent.

“Marjorie,” Ray tries again. “We’re waiting for you. We’re here to listen if you want to talk.”

Drew yawns. Then a motion catches his eye. At first he can’t see it. The air itself seems to move, but it isn’t the air, it’s a cloud of insects. Mosquitos. They gather in the space between Drew and Ray and take on a shape: a flowing, billowy shape, a figure half forgotten by the past. They hover there, holding their form. An arm swarms upward and gestures to Ray, who has just spotted it.

His mouth opens, wordless. He steps toward the shape. A single mosquito flees the beckoning finger, lands on his outstretched hand. Drew is just close enough to see it bite him, then fly away.

The swarm wavers. Ray steps closer. A breeze flits under the shade of the live oaks and strokes Drew’s brow. It seems to make the shape’s long hair flutter.

“Marjorie,” Ray whispers.

“Ray,” Drew warns. “Listen to me.”

The shape trembles again, then scatters. The insects vanish into the forest, drunk with their burdens of blood. “No,” Ray calls after them. “Marjorie. Don’t leave!”

Drew wants to reach out, to place his hand on his brother’s shoulder, but the shoulder is gone.

“Ray! Ray, no! Stop!”

His brother’s footsteps clatter off into the woods, ringing in Drew’s ears. And somehow Drew cannot move.

Then he does. He runs, spotting a flash of his brother’s orange shirt. His pace quickens. He can see motion now, ahead through the press of pines and palms, but no color. He is catching up, though. “Ray!” he shouts. “Stay with me! Ray, wait!”

Drew dodges a low-hanging oak branch, leaps over a ditch dulled with standing water. He halts. This is it. The place where Ray had been. He should be here.

Trees surround him. Trees and orb weavers and the slow singing of cicadas. But Ray is gone.

“Ray!” he gives a mournful shout.

Drew shivers with energy, and with something else as well. He is surprised at how cool the afternoon has grown. The heat has broken. He stops, calls again after his brother. “Ray!” There is no answer.

---

Lorien Lucero is a trans writer living in Charleston, South Carolina with her two dogs and her best friend. She has a BA in English Language and Literature from, with a double minor in Geology and Southern Studies from the College of Charleston.

by Abby Short

---

“Do you remember your dreams? I don’t recall mine either. The Eater-Eater probably got to them. You know, the Eater-Eater? He just eats. And eats. And eats. And eats, and yet can never seem to get quite enough. A single sugar grain, even an imagined one, is enough to trigger the inner workings of his brain, and he must consume. Gorging himself on little sweets in crinkly wrappers and then entire bags of candy, he goes on to find much greater confections, more delicious than anyone should handle. You seriously don’t know the Eater-Eater?”

The boy didn’t respond. His lips wouldn’t do much more than allow a string of drool to pass by them and slide down his cheek to his pillow. He could wiggle his toes as much as he could wiggle his fingers, which is to say none at all. Breathing had become more difficult than it ought to be, and that, the boy decided, was probably the demon’s fault, who was sitting on his chest.

This demon, with hair that crawled into her eyes like spider legs—eyes that were sunken or glowing, the boy could never tell—with a narrow waist and prickly legs, had visited him many times before in the early morning hours.

If the boy could, he would groan as the demon went on and on about how the Eater-Eater was consuming the figments of people’s subconscious, and maybe one day would devour the world. The boy had listened to this exposition for weeks now, had become bored by it, and said no when the demon asked, “Will you help me stop him? Normally, corrupting dreams is my shtick,  but I can’t do that if the dreams are eaten first.”

If he could get his mouth to move alongside his brain, the boy would tell the demon that she should find a different lucid dreamer, because why would he want to hunt down this Eater-Eater just because he was hungry?

Removing her hands from either side of the boy’s head and leaning back, the demon contemplated before asking, “What would it take for you to come with me this time? Drugs? Money?” The demon crossed her arms. “A cute hookup? A puppy? What?”

But the boy simply shut his eyes, willing the demon to go away as she always did when she grew tired of waiting. This time, however, the demon didn’t. Straddling his chest and crushing him under her weight to ensure he wouldn’t fall asleep that night, especially when she started to whistle and drum on his forehead with pointed nails.

After a long day with no rest, the boy was disheartened when the demon came back the following night, inquiring if he would come and defeat the Eater-Eater. The boy said no again, and again the demon stayed, stealing another night’s worth of sleep.

The night after, the demon pulled the boy from a dream of his teeth falling out, and asked him the same question. The boy gave the same answer: “No.”

He had the pleasure of spending the night’s remainder staring up at the monstrous creature above him, who glared back with impatience.

 Their meetings persisted for nearly a week, much longer than the demon expected it to take, before the boy’s willpower had all but dissolved as his sleep deficit grew. That night, when she shook the boy awake, he said yes.

The demon clapped her hands like a small child and told the boy to prepare himself for the dream of a lifetime. Instead of hauling the boy through the folding doors of his closet to a monster land or dragging him under the bed by his foot as he cried for help (the quintessential night terror thing to do), the demon pressed her mouth to the boy’s face. Finally, his eyes eased shut and he was able to fall away into a dark slumber.

At school, which was sitting in about three feet of water—a fact that everyone ignored as they trod through it—the boy realized he had forgotten to do his homework. Naturally, this meant he was going to die. His teacher, a blurry-faced woman with a bob and broad fingers, would punish him in front of the entire class. The boy didn’t want to stick around and see if she would drown him, flagellate him, or resort to a more unique form of discipline, so he ran out of the classroom, sloshing through the water until he found a bathroom. He locked himself in the stall furthest from the day, sucking in deep breaths (as he wondered if he was awake).

Before he could decide, the bathroom door creaked open and someone else entered. Instead of footsteps, the boy heard splashing. The water lapped more intensely at his shins as the person came nearer, pausing at every stall until they reached his. Then the splashing stopped, and the water became still again.

Through the crack in the stall door, the boy saw an eye that sat under a cruel brow, peeking back at him. Despite the boy locking it, the stall door opened the wrong way, revealing a girl in a skirt too short for the dress code with a cafeteria tray in hand.

“Do you really think the Eater-Eater would come here for this?” she said before chucking the tray at him. It hit him in the chin, and the different food slobs slid down his chest in chunks.

“Hey! Are you the demon that’s been pestering me?” the boy asked, cowering in the corner next to the toilet.

“Obviously,” this girl said with hair neatly trimmed into a lego-esque shape and bright eyes, before grabbing his hand.

Together, they ran out through the hallway. While shoving past students (with familiar-ish faces, the boy thought), the demon berated the boy, telling him that he needed to dream better: “The Eater-Eater finds academic stress dreams boring. Give him something he would actually want.”

They slammed into the main doors of the school and were let into a new plane of space: a race track for trains. All the trains had giddy faces and big doll eyes as they chased each other in the circle, and the sky was black, so everything was lit only by the gentle glow of the track laid with rainbow brick.

The boy could feel that the demon wasn’t pleased with this, but instead of arguing with him, she simply seized him and they floated away into the grey void between dreams.

After a few seconds, they emerged from the dark vacuum of no thoughts and drifted over a flower patch. As they sauntered closer to the ground, the boy noticed that the yellow, pink, and red dots were all small flower-headed women running about. “I’ve resorted to using your neighbor’s dream until you can figure yourself out. He’s currently reading Lolita,” the demon informed him, still dressed as a schoolgirl.

Maybe if we were having a picnic, the boy thought, the Eater-Eater would like to come. A checkered blanket bloomed up from the ground, and trays of dainty pastries and jams sprang up with it.

The two sat on the blanket, and the little flower women careened around them, a few settling on their laps as they waited. No one seemed to come, but when the boy looked back at the arrangement of sandwiches and goods, and saw that they were all gone.

“Aha!” the demon cried, jumping to her feet and tumbling a pink-headed flower child from her lap. “It’s working.”

The boy wanted to ask more, but the demon grabbed his hand and carried him away again.

From the void darkness, they appeared in a sort of candyland—a real, proper one, from the roads paved with Toblerone squares to the sky made of different colored cotton candy knitted together. The candy people had peppermint faces and laffy-taffy waists and were trouncing around all merry-like in their sugary utopia.

The boy was about to dip his hand into a pile of marshmallow fluff left on the curb of one of the houses like a trash bag when it was all violently snatched from him, and he fell down a purply-black abyss.

He jumped awake, back in his room. “What happened?” he asked the demon who was lying beside him in bed.

“The Eater-Eater, obviously,” the demon told him. Not only had the Eater-Eater guzzled the candy, but the entire dream too.

“Oh,” was all the boy could say before the demon knocked him out again.

This time, he was riding a unicorn around a carousel. The demon sat behind him on a mutated-looking giraffe steed. They took a few spins round and round with the fairground shining bright around them like a twisted Christmas come early.

The boy noticed that a bunch of tall figures with face-splitting smiles and gangly limbs started gathering around them. They were laughing so hard that their tongues lolled like socks from their mouths, and their eyes rolled so far back they were swallowed by their sockets. They’re laughing at me, the boy thought, and took to the sky on his unicorn, which now had chicken wings. The demon followed him on her bat-winged ride.

The fairground rides twisted from their foundations in the air like tendrils, as they tried to knock them to the ground, and the stench of fried food was everywhere. “Mmmm, elephant ears,” a deep voice crooned beneath them, and just as they were about to reach the eye of the Ferris wheel, the dream went dark.

“He’s following us now,” the demon said, excitement making her face all hot and rosy as she pulled the boy into new spaces with increasing succession. The boy witnessed different worlds of color and horror until they went black again, but his eyes couldn’t focus on anything because it was too hazy and vivid at the same time. It was like watching a movie with missing frames every few seconds and an ill-sequenced plot. However, it wasn’t a silent film type, and the boy wished to cover his ears to block the crunching sounds and yelping when he wasn’t swallowed by the pauses between dreams. He thought he saw a bulbous man in the distance, peeling back the corners of people’s suppressed thoughts to reveal nothing beneath, but he wasn’t sure. 

“How am I supposed to stop this?” the boy called to the demon.

“Just take us back to a candyland one more time. Picture it in your mind’s eye, but make everything a little more sour,” the demon yelled back over her shoulder as the subconscious jumping ran her ragged.

And there they were in another candyland of sorts. The sugar scenery looked old, like a forgotten window display in a rundown bakery. The candy people’s faces had been melted to remain in a frowning expression, with their eyelids pulled down to reveal too much of their insides and their lips downturned like hooks pulled on the corners of their lips.

Spent, the demon flung herself onto a birthday cake cushion, only for it to expel clusters of fiery ants. They started biting her all over, and when one bit the boy with its sharp jaw, a rumbling took to the earth with such force that everything started bouncing like it was on a trampoline.

“He’s nearly here,” the demon announced, her voice uncontrollably vibrating as she remained on the ground.

The candy people began screaming when they heard that and tried to hide in their houses, which collapsed into piles of crumbs since they were composed of soggy graham crackers.

The scene frightened the boy so much, he tried waking himself up to escape from this ensuing nightmare of the Eater-Eater’s making, but the demon grasped his ankle and wouldn’t let him go.

The Eater-Eater arrived, rising from the muddy chocolate lake like a hippo. However, he was not what the boy expected to see.

“He kind of looks like you,” the demon said, nudging him.

The boy looked at the Eater-Eater again, who had started sucking on the hairline of a particularly small candy child. When the Eater-Eater bit into the child’s brains and red mush splattered in all directions, the boy cried, “No, he does not!”

The boy had envisioned the Eater-Eater as a ginormous mound of a man that looks like tons of lard encased in sausage lining to make up the rolls of his body, but had been completely wrong. The Eater-Eater was no bigger than the child he had just swallowed. When the child’s little Peep feet disappeared down his gullet like she had gone headfirst down a slide, the Eater-Eater remained a mere wisp of a person with a pitted stomach and big, sad eyes.

The demon shrugged and told the boy to make the Eater-Eater go away.

The boy concentrated, trying to snuff out the Eater-Eater’s existence like a small flame or throw him down the garbage disposal of thought like he was a bad apple. But that didn’t work, and the Eater-Eater drank the entire chocolate lake in one gulp, even though it was of the 90% cacao variety.

The demon kicked the boy. “Try again.”

The boy closed his eyes and wished for the Eater-Eater to suddenly become full and fall back into a peaceful slumber he would never wake from.

In response, the Eater-Eater moved on from eating people and their things to the fondant foundation of the world beneath them.

Not knowing what else to do with the demon rolling her eyes and the candy people begging him to do something useful, the boy started taunting the Eater-Eater. “Greedy-greedy!” the boy called through cupped hands. “Everyone, look how greedy-greedy the Eater-Eater is!”

The candy people paused their panic and analyzed the Eater-Eater who had started mowing down the sour sugar grass better than any lawn mower they had ever seen. They found themselves agreeing with the boy and started pointing and laughing at the Eater-Eater.

The boy laughed and pointed too as they all chanted how greedy the Eater-Eater was being, but then the candy people began calling the Eater-Eater other names that were so hurtful the boy could no longer join in with them.

“Wait! You’re going too far!” the boy tried telling the candy people, but they couldn’t hear him over their glee as they formed a tight circle around the Eater-Eater. “Hey! Stop! He’s starting to cry now. This isn’t fun anymore.”

Big, fat tears rolled from the Eater-Eater’s eyes, and what he had eaten from all the dream worlds fell with them. Sweet dreams and midnight snacking exploded out from his face, and the demon used the boy as a shield so that it all hit him with full force instead. The boy was drowning in the waves of the Eater-Eater’s longing and despair amongst the glucose, and he found himself regretting taunting the Eater-Eater as some of it ran up his nose. He’s only a kid, like me, he realized.

Though the Eater-Eater didn’t stop crying, he had disappeared. Whether he had sprinted over the horizon with his hands covering his face or hid behind a building, no one knew. Yet, the sound of his crying remained even as the candy people cheered, bolstering the boy on their shoulders.

“Is this what you wanted?” the boy yelled at the demon as he was celebrated for his heroic fight against the Eater-Eater.

The demon only smiled and walked away.

The boy suddenly awoke and found himself standing at the fridge, eating peanut butter by the spoonful.  

---

Abby Short is an undergraduate at the University of South Carolina Honors College with a background in painting. With a passion for storytelling, she expanded from her painting major to combine visual art and short fiction to create experimental graphic novels that explore themes of origin and self-creation.

by Glenn Miles

---

North Augusta, SC

Patriotic bunting
and tricolored tinsel decor
hang from the ceiling
and the black vents above;

Green, then red,
then shimmering white
plastic against white ceiling.
White against red clay-colored
plaster walls,

Mother Mary
in a frame
strung with festive
LEDs,

Other paintings too,
of feather-capped warriors
and narrow village
streets.

I order Chile Colorado
in English,
too uncertain to try out
quiero or maybe
pido; afraid of sounding
like Peggy Hill.

It’s out in three
minutes: pork in sauce,
rice and beans,
and the namesake peppers
shoveled into tortillas
and then my mouth.

I use the pickled onions,
take pity and eat
a cucumber slice.
I squeeze the lime,

use white plastic spoons
to dip the green
and red sauces.
The green burns my mouth,
unclogs my nose.

As taco rises
to meet bared teeth,
the commentator on the TV
in the corner yells
like a tornado siren
and only stops|
to start again.

Goal!
I assume he says.

---

Glenn Miles is an eighteen-year-old studying English and Theatre at the University of South Carolina Aiken. In his free time, he enjoys reading, writing, and acting. He hails from North Augusta, SC.