by Mark JACOBS

Jones is walk­ing. All morn­ing and then across the af­ter­noon he walks as if he has a des­ti­na­tion. He is ex­plor­ing what peo­ple call the fed­er­al canyons of Wash­ing­ton, D.C. In mel­low Oc­to­ber sun­shine he tra­vers­es block af­ter gray stone block of mon­u­men­tal of­fice build­ings where gov­ern­ment em­ploy­ees go about their busi­ness. Jones has no clue about that busi­ness, which vague­ly both­ers him. Un­til yes­ter­day he was in the first se­mes­ter of his sopho­more year at George Ma­son Uni­ver­si­ty. That’s over now.

He can’t get a sen­tence out of his head. An in­ef­fa­ble sad­ness pierced the young man’s heart. He has no idea where the sen­tence came from, or why it lingers.

At the mid-point of the af­ter­noon, the day’s warmest hour, he comes to an al­ley on a num­bered street in South West. There aren’t many back­streets in this part of the city. He goes down it.

At the back end of the al­ley is a green Dump­ster. Next to the Dump­ster, out of view of passers­by on the street, a large, heav­i­ly built woman sits on a camp chair. The legs of the chair are so low that her own legs must ex­tend out in front of her to find ease. She wears jeans and a blouse with up­side-down flow­ers, un­der an Army sur­plus jack­et on one sleeve of which a pink heart is em­broi­dered. Her beefy face is a storm cloud. The brow is fur­rowed, her gray hair wild.  Her clear blue eyes col­lect the light­ning of her mind’s storm.

Next to the woman is a pile of be­long­ings in­clud­ing a sleep­ing bag rolled tight with a bungee cord. There is al­so an old blue suit­case with stick­ers on the sides an­nounc­ing ex­ot­ic des­ti­na­tions like Can­cún and Sin­ga­pore and Rio de Janeiro. There is a stack of DVDs, a Gideon’s Bible, a com­pli­cat­ed toothbrush.

“What are you look­ing at?”

“Sor­ry.”

You’d think Jones would have the ad­van­tage, stand­ing over the woman in her low chair, but the op­po­site is true. She is in con­trol and snorts at his apology.

“Think you’re so god­damn high and mighty, don’t you?”

“No. I don’t think that.”

“You might be part of the ma­chine, but you’re just a lit­tle tiny cog in a mi­nor wheel.”

“What ma­chine?”

“Don’t give me no lip, col­lege boy.”

“I’m not a col­lege boy.”

“Sure you are.”

“I was, but I quit.”

The in­for­ma­tion does not ap­pear to change her opin­ion of him. He wish­es she would ask him why he quit. That might help him fig­ure it out.

He asks her again, “What machine?”

“The ex­ploita­tion com­plex. Use any ad­jec­tive you like. Mil­i­tary, in­dus­tri­al, gov­ern­men­tal, tech­no­log­i­cal, they’re all part of it. It gets big­ger every year, and the space for free­dom shrinks.”

“I don’t know what you’re talk­ing about.”

An­oth­er snort, in­di­cat­ing he is be­neath con­tempt. He stands there wish­ing he knew what the right ques­tion to ask is un­til he feels some­thing hard and sharp in the mid­dle of his back. He pulls away, swings around fast to see a man as small as the woman is huge. The man is hold­ing a knife. Jones thinks it’s a switch­blade. He has a mousey look, as though he has been told to stand in a cor­ner one too many times. His brown­ish hair is wispy, his skin looks un­healthy, his ex­pres­sion has a kind of de­ter­mi­na­tion in it as though he’s nerv­ing him­self up to do some­thing scary. Like the woman, he wears an old Army jack­et. His has no em­broi­dered flower.

“Put the knife away,” the woman or­ders him.

He in­stant­ly obeys, grin­ning like a boy.

“This one don’t mean no harm, Reg­gie, he’s just a col­lege boy lost his way. What’s your name, col­lege boy?”

“Jones. What’s yours?”

“See how lip­py he is?”

Jones learns that her names is Do­lores. She likes to talk and has a lot to say. He’s a good lis­ten­er, or wants to be. Reg­gie pulls up his own camp chair and sits next to Do­lores, an in­signif­i­cant moon in her grand so­lar orbit.

It’s weird, stand­ing while they both sit, but Jones feels he has some­thing to learn. Why else quit school in the mid­dle of a se­mes­ter? Apart from Do­lores and Reg­gie, he has told no one. He’ll tell his fam­i­ly, he’ll have to at some point. Right now how­ev­er he can’t get past the plea­sur­able sen­sa­tion of dri­ving for­ward out of ignorance.

“Jones here claims he quit col­lege,” Do­lores tells Reggie.

Reggie’s turn to snort, but it’s a spindly im­i­ta­tion of his friend’s disdain.

“I had him,” he says. His high voice is squeaky. “I snuck up on him good. Like a pro­fes­sion­al. If I want­ed I’d a cut him.”

Do­lores ad­mits it grudg­ing­ly. That’s one way, Jones re­al­izes, she main­tains her pow­er over the man. He craves her ap­proval. This is bet­ter than any psych course he could have signed up for.

“This used to be a re­pub­lic of free in­di­vid­u­als,” Do­lores in­forms Jones, start­ing up out of nowhere. “Rare in the an­nals of hu­man history.”

“It’s not any more?”

“Hah! The big com­pa­nies, they bought it when we weren’t look­ing, then they sold it for parts.”

“Where are you from, Dolores?”

The ques­tion takes her aback.

“Why? You with the government?”

“No, I just would like to know is all.”

“I was raised in a cab­bage patch.”

This brings on a snig­ger from Reg­gie, who ad­mires her pow­er of in­ven­tion. Paw­ing through their stuff he comes up with a choco­late bar, which he un­wraps and bites with sur­pris­ing bru­tal­i­ty. He is the kind of man who is al­ways try­ing to prove him­self and nev­er succeeding.

“The cab­bage patch to which I re­fer was sit­u­at­ed on a farm in one of the New Eng­land states. I won’t go any fur­ther than that, thank you very much. They took the farm, didn’t they? The sons a bitch­es. They gave my moth­er a drug made her go crazy. Seeped right in­to her san­i­ty, which was pre­car­i­ous at the best of times. My dad had to stand there and watch his best beloved roll down­hill to obliv­ion. Any­body tells you a man can’t die from a bro­ken heart, that per­son nev­er met my fa­ther. Kelvin was his name, like the ther­mome­ter.” She stops to study Jones’s face. “We live in a so­ci­ety that lacks compassion.”

“I know that.”

He says it hop­ing to get on a wave­length with her; with both of them. But the at­tempt back­fires. With ze­ro warn­ing Reg­gie is on his feet, switch­blade in hand. He is en­thralled by the tiny click it makes when he press­es the but­ton with his thumb and the blade re­veals it­self, locked in place. One of life’s small plea­sures. He comes straight at Jones, who is eas­i­ly able to side­step him. Mo­men­tum car­ries Reg­gie too far, and he stum­bles, falling against a brick wall like a wind-up toy out of juice.

“Pa­thet­ic,” says Do­lores. She is hav­ing dif­fi­cul­ty breath­ing. It’s her state of mind. “You think you’re a full-grown man, Reg­gie? You think you’re a pro­tec­tor? Think again.”

He hangs his head, re­turn­ing the knife to his pock­et a sec­ond time. Jones feels what might be ver­ti­go. What he longed for, leav­ing George Ma­son, was some­thing dif­fer­ent. Here it is. Is this good luck?

Do­lores opens a plas­tic bag and takes out three bot­tles of cold-brew cof­fee. She hands them around. They drink the cof­fee, which has a strong chem­i­cal taste. Jones won­ders if she might be poi­son­ing him, cun­ning­ly giv­ing him the bad bottle.

The cof­fee, or the wor­ry, leads by a path he can­not fol­low to an ad­mis­sion: he quit school be­cause he was rest­less and bored, and be­cause liv­ing on cam­pus felt like be­ing in prison. There has to be more, is one way of putting it.

He would like to hear more from Do­lores about the ma­chine that ate Amer­i­ca, and she can­not help oblig­ing him. So­cial com­men­tary is her pas­sion. She takes pride in her point of view.

“They locked me up,” she tells Jones.

Reg­gie lis­tens rapt­ly even though he has heard the sto­ry who knows how many times.

“Where was this?”

“New Eng­land.”

“Why won’t you say which state?”

“What if you’re work­ing for them?”

“I’m not, I’m not work­ing for anybody.”

She shakes her head pon­der­ous­ly at his naïveté.

“They own you. With the very first breath your lit­tle lungs take in, they own you, Jones. The soon­er you ad­mit it, the bet­ter off you’ll be.”

“How long did they keep you locked up?”

“Six months to the day, and don’t ask me how I got away.”

“Why are you here, in Washington?”

She looks over at Reg­gie to make sure he is fol­low­ing the conversation.

“They won’t shut me up. They can try, but I’ll keep hol­ler­ing the truth at them come hell or high water.”

“Un­til?”

This ques­tion, which Jones asks in in­no­cence, strikes Reg­gie as a provo­ca­tion, or an af­front. In­stant­ly he’s on his feet with the knife at Jones’s throat, press­ing hard enough to score the skin. This time Do­lores does not call him off. She pro­nounces sentence.

“This boy is on the wrong side of history.”

That’s all Reg­gie needs. The knife im­ping­ing, he yanks Jones to his feet. He snarls some­thing hard to un­der­stand, then march­es Jones back down the al­ley to the street. Jones feels blood trick­ling down his neck.

“I’m not on the wrong side,” he in­sists. “I’m on your side.”

But Reg­gie won’t hear it. As they reach the street he re­moves the knife from Jones’s neck. He looks up and down the street, alert for en­e­mies. Then he says in a sin­is­ter whis­per, “She’s a hero. She’s fear­less. She’s all that stands be­tween us and catastrophe.”

“You love her. You’d do any­thing for her.”

Again his in­ef­fec­tu­al snort. “Wouldn’t you?”

Jones has had enough. He has learned some­thing and is ready to be shut of Do­lores and her acolyte.

“Lis­ten,” says Reg­gie, grab­bing him by the arm.

In his weak­ness, Jones re­al­izes, Reg­gie can be a nasty man. “What?”

“I want to take her out to din­ner. Tonight. Not to­mor­row, tonight.”

It’s an ef­fec­tive way to put the bite on him, Jones de­cides. He eas­es a twen­ty from his wal­let. Luck­i­ly, it seems to be enough.

“You were nev­er here,” Reg­gie says, fold­ing the bill by thirds and jam­ming it in­to his jeans pock­et. “You nev­er saw her, you nev­er even heard of the woman, right?”

“Right.”

Then Reg­gie is gone, ea­ger to hear more about the threat to Amer­i­ca. Jones wish­es he had a hand­ker­chief. He would like to wipe the blood from his neck. He walks, feel­ing pret­ty good as he reach­es the in­ter­sec­tion of the num­bered street with a let­tered street. It’s go­ing to be hard to top his first few hours as a col­lege dropout.

Filed under Fiction on December 6th, 2024

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Care to Share?

by Eli S. EVANS

A man be­came very pas­sion­ate about pulling weeds from his back­yard gar­den. For a long time he’d nev­er pulled a sin­gle weed, but his wife had been com­plain­ing that he was use­less around the house and just to prove her wrong, he went out one morn­ing to tend to the gar­den, there­by dis­cov­er­ing that noth­ing is quite as sat­is­fy­ing as yank­ing an un­want­ed shoot, sprout, creep­er, or bush right out of the soil — es­pe­cial­ly when you get it by the roots — and toss­ing it aside like so much chaff. And by the way, when I say this man be­came pas­sion­ate about pulling weeds, I mean he re­al­ly be­came pas­sion­ate about pulling weeds. For in­stance, in or­der to deal with a hand­ful of but­ter­fly bush­es that had been left un­tend­ed so long their stems had turned wood­en, he in­vest­ed in a bat­tery-op­er­at­ed hack­saw with which, in the midst of saw­ing down the afore­men­tioned eye­sores, he man­aged to lop off one of his own fin­gers, and all he did was shrug and say, “I guess that’s gone,” and go right on saw­ing away, which was all well and good since it wasn’t even a par­tic­u­lar­ly im­por­tant fin­ger, but then, a cou­ple of weeks lat­er, a whole hand popped up out of the ground right in the area in which the dis­con­nect­ed dig­it had dropped.

“I’ve got to pluck this mon­stros­i­ty,” the man said when he saw it there. 

“No!” cried the hand. “Please! I want to live!”

“Hmm,” said the man (since that was what he al­ways said when he was mulling some­thing over). And then: “I’ll tell you what — I’ll let you be if you promise not to repli­cate and spread. I can’t have a gar­den full of hands on my hands.”

“It’s a deal,” said the hand.

“Then shake on it,” replied the man.

The hand was more than will­ing to com­ply, since shak­ing on it was ac­tu­al­ly one of the on­ly things it could do, but the man dou­ble-crossed the gullible ex­trem­i­ty; in­stead of shak­ing it, he yanked it right out of the ground and tossed it on­to the com­post pile with­out so much as a sor­ry about this, friend.

The  big­ger prob­lem, how­ev­er, was that no mat­ter how many weeds the man pulled, it seemed there were al­ways more weeds to be pulled, a phe­nom­e­non for which there is an ob­vi­ous ex­pla­na­tion — noth­ing tech­ni­cal­ly dis­tin­guish­es what’s not a weed from what is a weed oth­er than whether or not one looks up­on it as a weed, and in his pas­sion for pulling weeds the man had come to look up­on every­thing that hadn’t yet been pulled as, pre­cise­ly in­so­far as he pas­sion­ate­ly de­sired to pull it, yet an­oth­er weed. In this man­ner, he even­tu­al­ly emp­tied the gar­den of its con­tents al­to­geth­er, in so do­ing turn­ing it from a gar­den in­to a big old mud pit. 

“Now what are we go­ing to do?” grum­bled the man’s wife when she saw it. “No­body wants a big old mud pit be­hind their house. Our prop­er­ty val­ue is go­ing to plummet!” 

“Hmm,” said the man. “But what if that big old mud pit wasn’t ac­tu­al­ly a big old mud pit?”

“How could a big old mud pit not be a big old mud pit?”

“Leave it to me.” With that, the man head­ed straight for the near­est live­stock store and bought him­self a six­pack of pigs. “Check it out,” he said to his wife af­ter de­posit­ing them in the for­mer gar­den. “Now it’s not a mud pit — it’s a pigsty. And con­sid­er­ing the way peo­ple are so in­to back­yard farm an­i­mals these days, our prop­er­ty val­ue is prob­a­bly go­ing to skyrocket!”

While his log­ic may have been bul­let­proof, it on­ly took un­til the fol­low­ing morn­ing for the man to re­al­ize he couldn’t stand that dis­gust­ing snuf­fling sound pigs con­stant­ly make. So, one by one, he loaded the pas­sel of pork­ers in­to the car and drove them back to the live­stock store.

“Noth­ing do­ing,” de­clared the pro­pri­etor when he saw him am­ble through the door, six­pack of pigs in tow. “Like it says on the sign, re­turns will on­ly be ac­cept­ed when the mer­chan­dise is in its orig­i­nal con­di­tion. These pigs, mean­while, are clear­ly all cov­ered in mud.”

“Damnit,” said the man. “Now what am I sup­posed to do? I could put them in a pil­low­case and beat them against the side of a tree un­til they stopped mov­ing, but I’m pret­ty sure that would go against my prin­ci­ples as a ded­i­cat­ed vegetarian.”

“You’re a ded­i­cat­ed vegetarian?”

“I sure am.”

“One hun­dred per­cent vegetarian?”

“If not more!”

Well, all this talk of veg­e­tar­i­an­ism got the pro­pri­etor of the live­stock store think­ing that the man’s dis­sat­is­fac­tion with his porcine pur­chase might be just the op­por­tu­ni­ty he’d been seek­ing to rid him­self of a cer­tain op­por­tunis­tic car­ni­vore he’d ac­ci­den­tal­ly or­dered from his whole­saler the pre­vi­ous fall, and which had since then eat­en nine­ty per­cent of his rab­bits and no few­er than one goat. “I’ll be right back,” he said, and re­treat­ed to the store­room, re­turn­ing mo­men­tar­i­ly with an al­li­ga­tor tug­ging ea­ger­ly at the end of a re­tractable dog leash. “As I was say­ing ear­li­er,” he told the man, “I’m not go­ing to be able to give you a re­fund for those mud­dy pigs of yours. How­ev­er, I would be will­ing to take them as an even ex­change for old Wal­ly, here.”

“Hmm,” said the man. “Okay, why the hell not? I’ve heard al­li­ga­tors ac­tu­al­ly make great companions!”

And in the weeks that fol­lowed, Wal­ly more than lived up to this rep­u­ta­tion. Among the many ac­tiv­i­ties he and the man who’d ex­changed him for six pigs en­gaged in to­geth­er dur­ing that hap­py time were:

1. Go­ing to the movies
2. Swim­ming
3. Hik­ing
4. Parcheesi 
5. Watch­ing TV
6. Prank call­ing num­bers se­lect­ed at ran­dom from the phone­book and ask­ing who­ev­er an­swered if their re­frig­er­a­tor was running
7. Smok­ing Dad Grass-brand CBD cigarettes 
8. Be­com­ing frus­trat­ed at­tempt­ing to learn the cello
9. Col­lab­o­rat­ing on con­tem­po­rary rewrites of tra­di­tion­al folktales
10. Elec­tric boogaloo 

Then one day, Wal­ly dis­ap­peared. Si­mul­ta­ne­ous with this dis­ap­pear­ance, the man’s wife un­der­went some pe­cu­liar changes. To be­gin with, her skin, which had pre­vi­ous­ly been gener­i­cal­ly Cau­casian, turned scaly and green, and her teeth grew sev­er­al cen­time­ters in length and in ad­di­tion ap­peared to have be­come as sharp as dag­gers. More­over, when the man asked her whether she’d seen his miss­ing croc­o­dil­ian pal, rather than an­swer­ing with the reg­u­lar hu­man words she’d al­ways em­ployed in the past, she in­stead let out one of those loud, throaty roars, al­so known as “chumpfs,” that al­li­ga­tors com­mon­ly em­ploy as a mat­ing call.

For a time, fol­low­ing these changes, their mar­riage con­tin­ued on as strong as ever. Then one day, the man disappeared. 

Filed under Fiction on November 22nd, 2024

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Care to Share?

by Javy GWALTNEY

Look, this guy Doug, he was ask­ing for it. His eyes zigzag­ging along your date’s curves as the two of you stood at the gar­den bar dur­ing the re­cep­tion, the bulbs of string lights danc­ing in a gen­tle sway above the wed­ding par­ty. The nerve of this ass­hole: a grooms­man as­sault­ing a guest — a vul­ner­a­ble woman, mind you — with his eyes like that. It was an in­sult to her, re­al­ly and the sanc­ti­ty of the wed­ding as a whole. This is why your fist is speed­ing like a train to­ward Doug’s stu­pid, squashed face, des­tined to be­come even more squashed in a moment.

What a shame it’s come to this, be­cause you know you’re not that guy. You’re ed­u­cat­ed. You be­lieve in diplo­ma­cy. But some­times a moth­er­fuck­er needs to be punched.

Sure, she was say­ing “Michael, don’t,” but let’s be re­al: she want­ed you to. Even though you’ve on­ly been on two (and a half) dates, you have this deep, in­trin­sic con­nec­tion that gives you the abil­i­ty to peek deep in­to the re­cess­es of her mind. Such is the pow­er of a mod­ern, per­cep­tive man.

And yeah, okay, you’ve nev­er been in a scrap and your dad nev­er gave you the low­down on how to prop­er­ly use your ham hands for the sake of harm in spite of a tem­per sug­gest­ing he was an ex­pert on the sub­ject, but that’s be­side the point. You are right­eous, and maybe a lit­tle drunk, but most­ly right­eous and that’s its own kind of virtue. Your hand is get­ting clos­er now, by the way, al­ready tight­ened in­to a death-deal­ing ball of knuck­les — but some­thing is off.

You think you should feel like Ray Li­ot­ta pis­tol-whip­ping that one guy in Good­fel­las. You do not feel like Ray Li­ot­ta. Doug’s eye­brow is raised. Your fist is no longer sail­ing through the air but do­ing this weird kind of wob­bly mo­tion as you re­al­ize that oh shit oh god you did not plant your feet and now the en­tire world around you is be­ing pro­pelled along­side your fist.

Your whole body is mov­ing and, broth­er, it is not grace­ful. In fact, you’ve nev­er been more aware of how clum­sy and heavy and pale and frag­ile and out of con­trol your suit of meat is than in this mo­ment. Oh god, you’ve missed. Doug is look­ing at you, not re­al­ly an­gry but more awed and con­cerned as you start to un­in­ten­tion­al­ly per­form a tip­ping, flail­ing pirou­ette that sees you spin­ning down to­ward the cold ground. You close your eyes to pre­pare your­self for the thud and en­su­ing dark­ness, won­der­ing if your date will spend the rest of her life trag­i­cal­ly celi­bate and in mourn­ing af­ter Doug stomps in the head of the most ed­u­cat­ed, sweet­est man she’s ever laid her eyes on.

But con­scious­ness re­mains. There are sev­er­al gasps. You open those peep­ers to dis­cov­er you are float­ing, hav­ing nev­er touched the ground, now soar­ing above the bar, the gar­den, the wed­ding en­tire. As the screams spread, more and more peo­ple look up. The best man is point­ing at you. The brides­maids are shriek­ing and laugh­ing as they snap pic­tures on their phones. Doug’s stu­pid donut of a mouth is agape. The bar­tender, who has seen some shit in his time, sighs and starts spin­ning a las­so out of the un­used string lights be­neath the counter.

Your date sul­len­ly turns back to her drink as the wed­ding re­cep­tion screech­es to a halt, every­one scram­bling to try and fig­ure out how to bring this mod­ern man back down to earth.

Filed under Fiction on November 8th, 2024

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