"An Underhand Serve in a Game of Singles," a short story by JoAnn LoSavio

                It felt like there had to be more to say. Yet, deep as Katie reached into herself she pulled out nothing but scrapings. “I’m glad it seems like everything is working out for you,” she said to Pete, the cheeriest smile she had hooked into place on her face.

            “Yeah, no, it is,” he said through his own plastered grin. Bland as her offering was, he accepted it. Neutrality, plain and inoffensive, was better than most people could hope for in this kind of situation. “It’s all working out, the job, the house, life… and stuff.” Pete cleared his throat and gestured to a stack of flattened cardboard boxes he had just brought in from the garage. “Yeah, so I got you some more boxes for your stuff. I mean, I know you brought your own, but just in case you need more.” Pete turned away from her, and started making one up for her. “No hurry, I mean. I’m not trying to kick you out or anything.”

            “Yeah, I know,” Katie said. “Thanks for helping me pack.”

            “Yeah, no, thank you for coming by to do it.”

            “Thanks for being available.”

            That was all that was left between them: a volley of thanks and gratitude, tossed across an invisible net, between lines drawn in the sand. Everything else was out of bounds. They were playing an easy game, a fair game, but Katie felt Pete wasn’t playing to win any more. Really though, she knew she couldn’t expect that he would. It had been a few months now since those two words had been uttered. She had said it first, but he agreed. It was a tie by mutual agreement, and the match, as it were, was over.

            Now Katie was here, in the space that had been their home, come to pick up her half of their split winnings. They had agreed they weren’t both losers; they were both winners even though neither of them would walk away with a trophy. Actually, Katie thought, neither of us had wanted it. The formerly pale circle around her fourth finger had darkened and the skin there was now indistinguishable from the skin around it.

            “So, shall we begin?” Katie asked. She referred to the piles of their stuff scattered all over the living room. There were clothes, towels, plates, DVDs, CDs, a few vases and the Christmas decorations. Pete had unloaded the material culture of their relationship onto the living room floor.

            “Yeah, I guess.” Pete sat himself on the floor, opposite Katie and waited for her to begin. Katie wasn’t sure how to. She thought she had made the first serve. She had said the two words, those long few months ago. The ball was now in Pete’s court. She stared him evenly in the eyes and did not move.

            “So how about the Christmas stuff?” she finally asked.

            “Wow, straight for the big one, huh? How many Christmases have we had?” Katie didn’t answer, so Pete went on. “Why don’t we divvy up the photographs first, and get that out of the way?” Pete’s backhand was an ace.

            “Okay,” Katie smiled and let out a short sigh between her teeth. “Why not? Let’s do it.”

            “You keep the ones with your friends in them, and I keep those with mine,” Pete suggested.

            “And the ones with both of our friends?” There were many of those. Pete and Katie stared at each other without blinking. Finally, Pete said, “Let’s set those aside for now.”

            “Fine,” Katie said, not feeling fine. She pointed to the other albums. “What about the ones with both of us in them?” There were lots of those too.

            “Well, you know I could just scan them in and we both could have copies of everything.”

            “Yeah, fine,” she said. “That sounds good.” This time, it did feel fine.

            Katie felt compelled to look at the photos, now that it was decided that neither of them would have to sacrifice the physical ownership of their memories. The photo album on the very top of the stack was their oldest. As she peeled it open the plastic sealant crackled. Pete said nothing, but leant forward to look, as if he wanted a reminder of what its contents were.

            “Hey, remember this one?” Katie asked. She held up the first page of the album. It was their first trip to Vegas. The very first vacation they had taken together, for the wedding of one of Pete’s college friends. The photo was of the four of them, two couples: one pair on the way into matrimony and the other, Pete and Katie, on the way into monogamy.

            “Wow, will you look at us then?” Pete said. In the photo Katie’s hair was pixie cut, wild and tipped with bright red. Pete looked up at her. That girl was gone; now Katie had long hair, parted down the center and brown. She had it tied up into a utile pony-tail. “That was a good trip, right?”

            Right? Katie thought. Had Pete forgotten how many times he’d told everyone the story of how she lost one heel at the taco place and walked back five, ten, fifteen – crazy dozens – of blocks back to the strip? Katie tried to search Pete’s eyes for the answer to his own question, but he had lowered his gaze back down to the photograph. He had forgotten that she had not enjoyed it quite as much as he had.

            “You know what?” he said, snapping his fingers. Pete had moved onto another topic. “So, Dan and Rachel are getting divorced.” The other couple in the photo.

            “Wow,” Katie breathed out a whistle. “Didn’t see that coming. What happened?”

            “Don’t really know yet, but I hear that they can’t even be in the same room together.” Pete laughed as though somehow Dana and Rachel’s marital dissolution were the most priceless joke ever. “Glad we’re not like that, right?”

            Another request for affirmation. Katie had a feeling Pete had begun to play another game, one she did not really feel like playing. She didn’t want to answer, one way or the other. Who was she to say whether Dan and Rachel’s passion – even in rupture of their union – was any better than the insipid politeness of theirs?

            Yet, Katie found herself speaking. Yeah, definitely,” she said, her voice light and clear. It didn’t sound like hers, but the words were coming out of her mouth. “Can’t imagine us screaming at each other like that. So not like us.” Then, her voice still detached from herself, Katie laughed, not feeling the hilarity.

            She envied Dan and Rachel their passion. She suspected their exchanges had an effusive ardor, agonizing and exhausting though they probably were. She and Pete had none of that left; their romance had been aborted with the utterances of two short words. Dan and Rachel had begun theirs that weekend in Vegas with two other short words, declared willingly, lovingly. Two other short words that Katie and Pete would never say to one another now.

            Katie sighed, thinking that perhaps she was not being fully fair. There had been other two-word declarations she and Pete had made. Her mind drifted away from the present involuntarily and the memory of those two-word volleys came unbidden. Love you. Love you. Come over. Stay over. We’re together. Be mine. I’m yours. Move in. I’m pregnant. Not now. Yes, now. Okay, now. I’m ready. Marry me. I will. You’re sure? Completely sure. Not ready. Okay, ready. Maybe wrong. Maybe right. I’m confused. You’re confused? Again, this. Yes, this. Why this? Hear me. Hear yourself. No more. I’m done. It’s done. It’s gone. Start again. Just us. I’m ready. I can. We can. I’m here. You’re gone. I’m done. I’m gone. No more. It’s over.

            Sadly Katie realized that through their entire relationship they had lobbed half-hearted, two-word serves back and forth. Had they always been so laconic? She was suddenly conscious that her answer to that question had been reduced to a single word: yes.

            “Yeah, bet they just let everything fly,” Pete went on, oblivious to the lifetime that had unraveled in Katie’s mind. “It’s gotta be hell to be in that room, man.”

            Katie didn’t know if she agreed with him, so she let the conversation lapse into silence as she retreated into the comfort of renewing her acquaintance with things they once owned. After a moment’s silence, Pete said, “Wonder what they fight about. I mean, what it was that made them split, y’know.”

            “I don’t know,” she said.

            “Yeah, but hey, you knew Rachel pretty well. What do you think it was?”

            “I don’t know.”

            “Yeah, I know what you mean,” Pete said, not having heard what Katie said. “I mean, who knows why love dies, right? I mean, it’s different for everyone, right?”

            Katie said nothing, but flipped another page. He still wasn’t listening, and there were no more points to be gained from speaking.

            “I think it’s different for everyone.” Pete said.

            Katie put down the album and looked at Pete. She was right. There was a new game Pete wanted to play, and the quivering expression on his face showed her he was hovering on the edge of inviting her. She didn’t want to play. It’s over, she had said three months ago. It seemed to her now that he had not really heard her – then or now, or perhaps, ever.

            “So when are you actually moving?” Pete asked her, edging closer to making an invitation. “Getting a truck, or what?”

            Katie didn’t want to be rude. “Yeah, a truck. I’m going to load it all up and just drive there at the end of the month.”

            “Wow, that’s pretty soon, huh?” Today was the twentieth. “You doing it all by yourself?”

            There it was. The question. The invitation. He asked it in a roundabout way, but the name of the new game was clear. He might have been more direct about it, she thought. Who are you going to be with? He might have asked that instead. Or, more plainly: who are you fucking now?

            “Yeah, I know, it’s only about a week away. I have so much to do until then,” Katie said. There were no more points to score. She didn’t want to play and she had run out of words to say. She declined his invitation with an apologetic smile and walked off the court.

After Ten Minutes the Noise Had Stopped -- Rhonda D.

The rain began with a trickle or so it seemed, because in a moment the clouds heavy and dark let loose bulleting droplets of steamy water onto the people and they were wet and angry and looking for relief in the streets. It is innate, the opposition of wills and the friction of egos rubbing violently to eliminate the other. Pain, sadness, anger, sorrow, they know no bounds and thrive in the heart of human beings. Waiting outside of her house his heart flailed in rapid beats and his chest responded in kind squeezing tightly to suffocate the pounding. And his thoughts ferociously nagged at him and he was not in control of his own self. In the infuriating heat of his own body, his arms drenched with sweat, he began to mumble out loud. He cursed his own existence and then cursed hers and then cursed her new lover’s. The car grew more suffocating as the rain blanketed it and he sat there across the street under that big oak waiting for a glimpse of her. He wanted to feel like he was a part of a scene from her life again, a life that he once lived in cozy co-existence with hers. He mumbled to himself, you are a damn fool, you never were good enough for her nor could you satisfy her. You were never man enough for her.

There they came into his view, running through the wetness, elated and overjoyed to be together. Even as the rain grew wild and streaks of light in the sky seemed perilously close. Even as the darkening night vocalized and screamed out in loud thunderous roars that seemed way out of control, there they danced and fell upon each other laughing as they slipped in the grass, and finally made it up the steps to her townhouse porch.

And so his heart was as the thunder’s, and he desired to lash out at the lovers and in that moment he felt compelled. In that instance he pushed himself from his enclosure, ran wildly through the rain and grabbed her precious lover, snatched him and fell upon him in the rain. Her screams and pleadings of mercy only fed his envious heart. In delight the night fell even darker and hid his deed as he pulled his knife from his pocket. In rage he sought to stamp out his pain. He pushed forward deeper and deeper with every plunge and as he rolled in blood he was cleansed, cleansed of all the hurt and pain of a lifetime. His demons bled out before him and he was healed and satiated. And the voices clapped and praised him and the thunder roared its approval. But after ten minutes, the noise had stopped, and the night had its sacrificial lambs and its joy. So, with all the culminating frenzy, and as the madness in the air rose to a crescendo it at once was soothed into gratified calm. It seemed that all was quiet and the night was at once bright and smiling. The rain had ceased as quickly as it came and all was still and he stood there and at once the scene in front of him came into view. The lovers lay at his feet slashed beyond recognition as if a monster had sought to devour them and he turned and raced back to his sanctuary, guilty, dirty and soiled.

Excerpt From "The Dream Apprentice" -- by Geanina

Don’t believe the clichés about dying. None of them were true for me. There was no picturesque slideshow of my life that flashed before me as my last breaths escaped. There was no bright light at the end of some long ominously dark tunnel.

 What there was, by the grace of God, was a complete and utter calm after the storm. As soon as I let go of the gripping fear, a wave of realization flowed over me like a warm ray of slightly tingling vibration. It was like finally letting go of the vicious tug-of-war rope, but instead of falling ungracefully; a slow motioned float-fall movement buffered the fear. “I Never Dreamed You’d Leave in Summer”, one of my favorite Stevie Wonder songs, seemed to play somewhere outside my head. I love that song. I smiled inside. If I could have started singing along I would have, but I no longer had control of my physical movement. I noticed my eyes closing involuntarily. I realized then that I was happy in that moment. Happiness. It was unlike any that I had encountered on the many days that mysteriously precluded my death.

 That’s when the separation started. Dying, similar to birthing, is a difficult process. When a baby first gets that gasp of unmitigated painful air to its new lungs, there is a shock to the system. Hence, the crying is inevitable. Accordingly, when my spirit started to detach itself, again, in another involuntarily motion, I found my body became a bit stubborn. However, I didn’t have lungs and there were no longer any breaths I needed to take. Instead, it seemed the contrary and solely important thing to do was to forget to breath and move. In my Psychology 101 class in college, I learned that this is called de-association. People who do this to themselves on earth can inflict dangerous harm to themselves, so not really fully understanding the idea of death, I scared myself quite thoroughly. I felt disorientated, and then, because I had no other smart alternative, I did what I thought was sleeping.

I was told later that this went on for about an hour. Then, suddenly, without “waking” and without warning, I rose. Pressure from fast air compressing me, made me open my eyes, and I saw a flickering light. It reminded me of a kid playing with the light switch. I was also told that this was me simulating the contrast light that my imagination associated with leaving the earths’ atmosphere. See, I didn’t really leave earth. I can’t tell you much about where I ended up, but it wasn’t as far from earth as I thought it would be. It is not a “place” in the sense of a noun, but more a plain. It isn’t in the sky or galaxy, or even in the universe. In fact, the universe, amazing as it is, looks very small from here. When I got here, I wasn’t sure there was a heaven or hell, or if this place actually fit into my definition of either of those. When I was alive, I had my vague ideas of what afterlife would be like, but so far, this was more real and tangible than I could have possibly imagined. It was not dreamlike at all.

I didn’t know how long I’d been lying on the couch, but I felt very good. Rejuvenated, actually. As I looked around, I realized I was in a blue room, lying on an old schlumpy, but comfortable blue couch. It didn’t smell so wonderful, but it felt great. I took this to be a good sign, as my favorite color is blue. I’ve always been a strong believer in the power of omens, good or bad. The rest of the room was bare, not a picture, or stick of furniture occupied it, and oddest of all, not even a door was present in this room. I dizzily rose to a sitting position with my legs folded Indian style underneath me. The decision to place my feet on the floor yielded a breathtaking view. The uncarpeted floor was actually a beautifully carved navy marble floor. I studied this curiously for a contemplative second, and then continued to cool my feet on its deliciously cold surface.

It was only then that I looked down at myself. I noticed how thin my wrists were. I looked down at my flat stomach, completely flabbergasted.  I never had had washboard abs or anything, but my stomach now had barely any fat on it. My usual kangaroo pouch was gone and my skin looked like that of an eighteen-year old. I jumped up and spun around, laughing. All the years of calorie counting and grueling personal training sessions at the gym were all for naught.  All I had to do was die! There wasn’t a mirror anywhere so I had to satisfy my curiosity by feeling my face with my hands. I moved up to my hair. It had been naturally curly as a child but as the years passed it had become courser and thinner. My vanity wanted to confirm these newly regained features, but my hunger demanded that I survey my surroundings and find a way out.

As I surveyed the medium-sized room, I observed the thickness and texture of the walls. They were paper thin. Actually, these borders couldn’t really be called walls. They appeared to be more like a huge-scale paper Mache project produced by a talented yet obviously large crew. There was nothing on them, but as I stared, I realized that these walls encompassed more shades of blue than I’d ever seen. It reminded me of the painter that they always used to feature on PBS who shows you how to blend colors when you’re painting a tree or the ocean. I was awestruck, and honestly, a tad bit dumbfounded. Only then, did I think to look up. There was no ceiling, just a huge blue tarp that looked as if it had been haphazardly slung over the room’s four walls. I was pondering who would take the effort to drape the tarp over such a large space as this, and how did they it. It must have taken a team of at least nine or ten people. I hadn’t started to worry yet, but how I would manage to exit the room did cross my mind. Standing on the couch wouldn’t place me anywhere near touching distance of the tarp.

 Just then, I heard a loud rustling above my head. This tarp was either being moved by a strong wind, or being moved by some other force. Or someone, I reminded myself, swallowing hard. Finally looking up, I saw a small slice of sky exposed. In contrast to my blue haven below, the sky was a soft lavender hue. It was not unrealistic compared to the many dusky smog clouded mornings I’d spent in LA. It was just a bit brighter. Then I saw her. Piercing blue eyes peered back at me curiously.

“How are you doing down there?” a squeaky voice echoed down toward me.

 What caused that echo? I wondered.

“Hi”. I squeaked back. I was nervous. Too nervous to form an actual answer to her reasonable question. Weird. Why was I nervous?

 About a quarter of the tarp was now pulled back. Amazingly, an adorable young girl jumped onto the marble floor from the makeshift ceiling. She landed in the space that was hidden from my view by the couch. I rushed around the couch thinking she had to be hurt from a jump that high. After all, that was about a ten foot drop. But she was crouched on her two feet with the hands she’d used to steady herself placed on the floor. As she looked up at my worried yet quizzed expression, she giggled. I took a sharp breath, a surprise squeal trapped in my throat.

She was quite beautiful. She had the epicanthic folds around her eyes that let me know she had some form of Asiatic heritage. Her skin, however, was as dark as mine. A warm caramel. But the eyes were what captivated me. They were bright blue and piercing.  Her frame was tiny, even for a small girl, yet she seemed to be very nimble.

“Are you okay?” I said.

“Why wouldn’t I be?” she replied smartly. This puzzled me even more. I glanced up again in attempt to calculate the distance of the tarp and the chilly marble floor. The distance had to be ten to twelve feet at least, floor to tarp, and the seemingly indestructible slate under my feet would in no way cushion a fall from that height.

“Well, that’s quite a jump,” I said carefully.

“Oh, that’s nothing,” she said, “you can do all kinds of things here.”

 “And what kinds of things…?” I said, quite baffled I might add.

“Anything you want. Perception is reality here,” she said with a giggle.

The words coming out of her mouth presented quite a conundrum for me. She looked like a young girl, somewhere between the ages of eight and ten, but she certainly didn’t talk like one.

“So…” I started, “how do we get out of here.”

“What do you think would be the most logical solution,” she said.

I looked around me. The walls, although thin, didn’t seem flimsy enough to push down. I tested one by pushing on it tentatively.

“That’s not going to work, silly,” she said, highly amused, I could tell.

“Well I don’t have a lot of experience with this kind of thing, you know. I’m used to rooms with doors,” I said under my breath.

“I guess what I should say is what do you think is the most illogical solution?” she said, another giggle just waiting to burst from her cute heart-shaped mouth.

Illogical? The possibilities were endless in a place like this. I guess I could turn into a bird and fly right out of here. That would definitely be outside my realm of what I knew reality to be.

“Well I guess flying would be something to consider, illogically speaking, of course,” I said.

“You mean like this?”

As she said it, she started to levitate. Just slightly, though, as if she was just testing herself. Almost as if she didn’t really know how to do it that well.  Her descent down to the marble floor was seamless.

 “Ok. Until now, I didn’t really believe it, but I know that’s not possible. I must really be dead,” I said with wonder.

“Yep! You are but don’t worry. From what I know, you don’t have much to miss, right?”

Stunned, I stared at her, unable to formulate a question or comment that would even make sense. Wait. She had just said thinking illogically was the only way we were going to get out of here.

 “I’m sorry. I’m being rude. I’m Aisha,” she said.

“Lola,” I said.

“Wow. That was my childhood friend’s name,” I said thoughtfully.

“I know,” she said, delightfully satisfied what I thought must be a coincidence.

“So is this some type of psychic plane? Do you know all my thoughts, or are you just privy to my past?”

 I wondered to myself if she knew what the word privy meant. Even twelve was pushing it for her size. But somehow I sensed that she did know what it meant, and that she could surpass me not only in vocabulary but volubility as well. She quickly proved my assumption was correct .

“You are right in a sense. This is a plane, but it’s not a psychic plane. It’s metaphorical plane, spiritual, allegorical even. It’s a place of your deepest desires and fears. It’s everything…”. She suddenly seemed as if she had ran out of words. “Don’t mind me though. I have a bad habit of talking too much.”

“So what do you want to do first?” she said, as if we were on a vacation planning our itinerary.

“Well, I guess the first question would be what can I do? I mean, obviously you can fly,” I said.

“Yeah, I don’t think you should try that,” she said, this time with an outright laugh. “It’s not easy,” she added.

“Well, to tell you the truth, I’m quite hungry. Which I don’t understand. Why would I need to eat if I’m dead? All carnal functions should die with my body, right?” I asked.

“Speaking of bodies, how do you like your new one,” she said with a small smirk.

This took me by surprise. Not because she knew that I was overweight in my living years, but because it’s just not a question that a nine, ten or however old she was would ask. I reciprocated avoiding her question with another of my own.

“How old are you?” I asked.

“In earth years?” Then she shook her head, self-deprecatingly. “Well, obviously in earth years, right? That’s all you know to measure by. I died twenty-two years ago,” she said matter-of-factly. “But to answer your other question, yes, carnal functions of the body are no more. It’s psychological. What you think is hunger is actually something else, but I’ll humor you. Let’s get something to eat.”

She put both of her arms around me and began to levitate. This time her ascent wasn’t so seamless. It was apparent that my weight, all though severely reduced, was difficult for her to carry. We were floating up to the part of the tarp that had been pulled back from the top of the room. Once we reached the top of the inside corner, she loosened her grip on my waist.

“You have to hold on to the corner, so I can jump down the other side,” she said.

“Uhh, I don’t think that’s a good idea,” I stammered.

“It’s the only way I can catch you. Unless you want to jump yourself,” she said with a hint of exasperation.

“Um, don’t take this the wrong way, but how are you going to catch me? I’m probably three times your weight!”

“Actually, it’ll probably be best for you to jump down yourself since you’re so paranoid. I hated when my dad used to throw me in the pool to make me learn how to swim. It’s best to go at your own pace.”

As she philosophized on my dilemma, I grabbed for the top of the inside corner near where the two walls met. I saw out of the corner of my eye that she was positioning herself at the apex of the wall, one bare foot on one wall and the other on the adjacent one. In one swift movement, she jumped out of the room onto whatever was out there. My curiosity was getting the best of me and I decided I wasn’t going to be a punk in front of this girl, no matter how long she had been here. I started to pull myself up onto the top of the wall. Although it was surprisingly thin, maybe only two to three inches thick, it was steady. I pulled myself up until I was able to place one of my feet on the top of the wall as she had. Then I pulled the other leg up between my arms, crouching down like a monkey on a tree branch.  I finally could see what was out there and there was ….nothing. 

The room we were in seemed totally detached from any other structure. We were on a hill that was populated with wild vibrant green grass. The hill, in fact, was so steep that I couldn’t see what lied on its other side.

“You don’t have to jump. Just let go. You remember gravity, right? It’ll do the rest,” she said. “You won’t get hurt, don’t worry.”

She was such a little smart ass that I started to argue with her and I let go of the wall unintentionally. I started to fall forward and my arms immediately flailed out, but I wasn’t falling the way gravity would normally permit, maybe at only a quarter of the normal speed. I hit the grass with a loud thump, flat on my belly.

“See, that didn’t hurt, did it?” she said smugly.

“Actually, it did sting a bit,” I replied.

“Well, then we’re gonna have to work on that perception of yours,” she said, helping me up with her tiny delicate hands.

I looked around again. This time without the bird’s eye view. There was nothing on the hill except the paper mache room. I looked up at the sunless bright lavender sky.

“Where are we,” I said with wonder.

“Some people call it the hereafter, heaven, or just the afterlife. I wasn’t alive that long so I call it home,” she said thoughtfully. She had a wistful look in her eyes so I decided to change the subject.

“So you said you’d humor me. Are we on our way to track down some food?”

“Yes. Most definitely. Actually, though, we’ll have to kill two birds with one stone. Don’t you like that phrase?” she said. “There’s someone you need to meet who will answer more of your questions and you can eat in the process over dinner.”

"Revelations for the Faithful," a short story by JoAnn LoSavio

            “Not forgetting is different from remembering,” my friend Darlie said, sliding a recent photograph of my parents and brother into a cheap metal frame she bought at Walmart just for me. It was from the last family dinner we had out. Our waitress was a teenaged flake and my mother didn’t trust her not to screw it up, so that’s why I wasn’t in it. It wasn’t a portrait masterpiece; their smiling faces seemed to be trying to push outwards from the finite, oblong boundaries of the photograph. My grey bearded, pink-roly dad in his red-‘n’-white table cloth matching shirt, my chipmunk-cheeked mother, her tanned skin mottled with freckles as it was every summer from her gardening habit, and my ever-long faced elder brother whose lips hooked into a smile, but whose eyes were devoid of feeling or thought, squished shoulder to shoulder, quick-snapped by who else? - over the fried zucchini and buffalo wings appetizers. After seeing the picture I had begun to criticize them for their plastered smiles, but then the entrees arrived and the conversation turned to the heated topic of the annual family vacation. The one I couldn’t be a part of because I had applied up for – and got – a full time summer internship in Palatine, two overly long hours drive from anywhere fun or remotely vacation-like.

 Darlie adjusted the glass in the frame and showed it to me. I averted my eyes from it.  “Shall we put it on your dresser or…” Darlie looked around my one-room studio. There weren’t a lot of flat surfaces, but not because there was clutter. Things had their place, and everything was always in its place. There just weren’t a lot of places to put pictures because I didn’t have side tables, or a coffee table, or any furniture of that sort. I liked my things in boxes.  Except my desk. My desk things were laid out in the open on top of it, in no particular design: my lap top, my pencil case, my binders for school, the books I was reading just then. Things I needed on a daily basis.

            I made the mistake of looking at my desk and Darlie caught my gaze.  “Right, then. Your desk,” she said.

            “No, not my desk.” I said firmly, not harshly, but Darlie looked at me as if I had stabbed her. “I don’t need photo frames taking up space where I need to put my books.”

            She looked so forlorn then, as if I had pulled a knife on her, my truest, dearest friend (as she saw it); the framed photograph of my family held up expectantly in her hand, waiting for a tiny bit of space in my studio to open up. I relented, but only slightly.

            “You can put it in the bathroom,” I said.

            Darlie’s eyes boggled out of her head. “What? No, we can’t do that. It has to put somewhere where it can be seen.”

            I sighed and rolled my eyes.

“Not forgetting is different from remembering,” Darlie repeated. Where had she heard that phrase? I wondered. That was the second time she had said it, and each time she looked down at that photograph of my family, as if they had been forgotten.

            “You didn’t even know them,” I said, my words coming out harshly this time, even though I hadn’t meant them to. I didn’t apologize, feeling that Darlie had overstepped the borders of friendship into my personal business.

            Darlie didn’t respond, but walked into my bathroom, a tiny, white-tiled glory hole. There were no flat surfaces there either, except for the top of the water tank on the toilet, where I usually kept extra rolls of toilet paper. She squealed when she discovered this, as though that were the most perfect place for a framed photograph of anyone’s family – even hers. “You will see it every day in here,” she said, smiling back at me. “Every time you poop.” Her head jerked a little as though that last distasteful word did seem to actually “poop” with a pop out of her mouth.

            Darlie was beginning to get tired of me. She was starting up with her cutesy voice now, sprinkling baby words like “poop” into her conversation. If she started saying “oopsies” I knew I was in big trouble. Whenever she thought I was being morose, Darlie would compensate for me by behaving as though the world were a paradise for toddlers where cupcakes of all flavors and icings fell like manna from the heavens and everyone wore overalls instead of jeans. I once asked her about this paradise of hers and she confided to me that overalls featured in this fantasy world as the most angelic attire “because your belly bulge made the outfit cuter, not uglier”. It didn’t matter to her that I brought up the point that if angels existed they probably did not possess belly bulges. It was her paradise anyway. Darlie never asked me about mine. No doubt, after all the years of knowing me, she assumed I had never bothered to imagine one.

            “I have more photos to put up,” she announced after arranging that family portrait – noticeably missing me – on top of the toilet.

            “There’s no more room,” I said.

            Then, again, she repeated that irritating phrase: “Not forgetting is different from remembering.”

            “Is that what this is all about?” I asked, pointing to the scattered photographs that took sliced scenes from my childhood. I stood over the shiny slips of paper, refusing to look at them. But being that there was nowhere else for me to stand in that miniature apartment of mine, I saw and recognized each of them. There was one of my mother propping me up to see my first birthday cake. She was looking right into the camera, smiling and trying to get me to do the same. Her mouth was forever twisted in words she was saying to make me do it. Instead I looked terrified of the camera or my father, who I assumed was the one taking it. In another my brother and I stood, in puffy winter coats, beside two enormous lumps of frozen grass in ice that was meant to be a snowman. There had been almost no precipitation that year, but I insisted that winter could not be without a snowman. So my brother trudged out with me and we hacked out chunks of ice from the yard and with hot water from the kitchen fused them together to form Frankensnowstein. My brother appeared to be proud of our effort, but I was sulking. I remembered thinking that he was such an idiot for believing that our miserable lumps of ice could even attempt to pass for a snowman. There were others too, photos whose vibrant colors and fluid shapes I knew from my various memories of making them.

            I looked at Darlie, coming out of the bathroom. “Are you trying to get me to remember?” I accused her. “If you are, you should know that I never forgot. And since I haven’t forgotten, I can’t possibly need to be reminded to remember.”

            “You haven’t cried,” Darlie said.

            “So what?” I exploded. I regretted saying that as soon as I had. Not because I was sorry for yelling at a concerned friend who was trying to help me through what she perceived to be a rough time in my life, but because now she was going to give me an answer to my question, a definition of  the “what”. I sighed, in anticipation of the long lecture I had sentenced myself to.

            “So what?” Darlie repeated. Her voice was full of incredulous pity for me. She came over to my side and put an arm around me. I refused to hug her back. I didn’t need one and seeing that it was my family who had died, I failed to see why she needed one. “So you’re holding all your grief in.”

            I looked directly into her eyes. Those watery pools reflected a sorrow that was welled up within herself.  Sure as hell, I knew I was dry as petrified bone. “I’m not grieving,” I said.

            “Of course, you are, silly-poopers. They’re dead.” She pointed to the photographs on the floor as though my dad and mother and brother were down there, fallen, flat, two-dimensional rectangles of shiny paper that were merely misarrayed and waiting to be properly allotted a final ossuary in my future life.

            “So? Death is the natural outcome of life. There’s nothing to grieve.”

            “You should cry. It’s what’s natural,” Darlie insisted. “This lack of feeling, of anything, is freaking me out.” And right there, she hit the coffin nail on its head. But Darlie didn’t seem to realize that she had sealed the box herself, and that its closure was hers.

            “Not forgetting is different from remembering,” she said again.

            I rubbed my face with the palms of both my hands, exasperated at this ridiculous phrase she kept saying, pretending that they meant something to her. “What does that mean, Darlie? Is that something you saw on a card at the Walmart? In the bereavement section?”

            She had no idea what those words meant and it infuriated me that she kept repeating them over and over and over, as if they would somehow prick a hole in my skin and a dam of tears would burst out and ta-da! my grief would be released and over. And then we could get on with life, and school and head over to the bar for dollar-you-call-it Thursday. I was saving her the trouble; I was telling that there was no dam to release, no built up pressure to relieve.

            “I’m only trying to help,” Darlie said, a petty sulk turning down the corners of her lips.

            “There’s nothing to help.” I said, still angry. If she wanted an apology, she’d have to wait a good long while. I wasn’t going to give her one for an error she was making.

The photograph she had chosen to honor must have been more potent in its evocative portraiture that I had thought when I pushed the shutter button. The three smiling faces had become to Darlie more than my own father, my own mother, my own brother. They had transcended, in death, to become representatives of another holy trinity; and it was this symbolic representation that Darlie saw in this photo. That was why my heresy felt so treacherous to her.

            “But don’t you want to remember them, to honor them and stuff?”

            I sighed and started to collect up the photographs she had printed for me. I put them next to the frames she had bought. They were for me, false idols, but I understood that Darlie could not grasp that.

 “I don’t need to remember something if they’re still here.” I prodded the side of my head. “You shoving their pictures in my face is guaranteed to make me never to forget them. But,” I gave her a wry smile. “Not forgetting is different from remembering.”

           

Jumpseat - Eve Kerrigan

Hilary and Jamie sat on the roof together in silence for a long time. They were strangers. They didn't know each other's names, but they sat like old friends who don't need to talk because they already know everything about each other. Neither wanted to break the silence. It felt sacred. It was the only monument they could find that appropriately honored what they were there to do. It was the medal they wore for their bravery, their experience and their choice.  They were afraid to speak. They were afraid words would break the spell and the world would be hell all over again.

And then...

Well, then,  they would have to do what they came here to do.

Hilary had rarely felt so connected to anyone in her life. Not her parents or Lionel. They had loved her and she missed them, but she never felt connected to them, really. The choices Hilary's mother and father made had formed her, but not in the way they hoped.

They brought her to New Guinea when she was just 3 and Lionel was 1. Hilary remembered her mother's pretty dresses and perfect hair, even in the feral heat and the mad winds of hurricane season. She baked cakes that could have graced the cover of Better Homes and Gardens Magazine. How did she know how to adjust her recipes for the latitude? Hilary's father kissed her on the head as she entered the little village church, singling her out, making her special for a moment. She held Lionel through their father's sermon. Her mother led the hymns in her hose and pumps and demure lipstick.

 Hilary remembered going to her lessons. She would have been in the first grade. She was late, so she cut through the field with the tall grass. She was not supposed to go that way, she knew. Her father forbade her to leave the road but she had seen older kids do it and it was better than being late for Miss Katie's class.

She thought for a moment she was looking at an angel. There, in the tree, was the dark silhouette of a man. He was still, but wings spread out and moved at his back. She walked slowly toward the vision. The wings moved, the shape grew distorted. This was no angel. This was a man, and he was dead – a dead man covered in buzzards and flies.

The man had been garrotted and hung from the tree with the wire that had been used to cut his throat. His head hung back and his neck opened like a hungry animal's mouth. Each time the birds and insects moved to feast on another part of the man, Hilary could see a fresh horror that he had been subjected to before his last breath. She stared for what seemed an eternity at the place where his genitals should have been. She had never seen a grown man's penis, but she knew the small, bloody crater there was wrong. She didn't know how long she stood there before Miss Katie found her.

She had seen that image in her dreams every night since then. Sometimes the gash between the man's legs spoke to Hilary. Sometimes the vultures did. She could never remember what they said, but it didn't matter. They talked in a language of blackness and pain, opening their mouths to give her a glimpse of worse sights within. After her parents died, the dreams got worse.

Not everything about New Guinea was bad. Sometimes she missed it terribly. She missed the sweet old ladies that gave her pieces of a cracker-like bread they made from drying tapioca mush in sheets on the roof of the house. She missed her friend Carson. He and his family went back to Texas the year before she returned to the United States. She wrote to him a few times but eventually he stopped writing back. Her mother said in the kindest way she could that Carson was “troubled.”

Well who wasn't? Isn't that what brought her here tonight? Hadn't her parents been troubled, if not in life, then in the manner of their death? Surely this person who sat beside her was troubled. He didn't come here to see the stars, she knew. She could tell.

Ah, but it was a beautiful night. She remembered nights like this as a child, but even clearer. She remembered the stars sparkling and twinkling so much that if you fixed your gaze on one spot in the sky, you would see every other tiny light in the firmament dance out of the corner of your eye. It made you feel lonely and small but part of something all at once.

It had been centuries since Hilary had felt anything. Her heart beat in chest. She could feel it was still there. She ran her fingers lightly over the small scars on her arms, feeling their thread-like relief. She moved her palm onto the coarse masonry of the wall where she sat. She inched her hand almost imperceptibly toward the person to her right. She held her breath. She sat for what seemed like an eternity this way, gazing into the blackness between two stars.

The cool weight of a hand larger than her own came to rest on hers. Again, lifetimes passed as they sat this way.

Hilary's voice was low and hoarse when she whispered the words.

“We could both jump.”

A pause, and then the weight of his hand was gone. She closed her eyes and tilted her body forward.

Gravity is huge when you are up high. It is a profoundly persuasive force. People with vertigo know this. Gravity lives in mass. Heavy objects want to pull you toward themselves. The heavier they are, the more they want you. They want to pull you so hard and fast that you are embedded inside them and they never want to release you. There was something comforting in that, but also something terrible.

Gravity was stroking Hilary out of her jumpseat now, coaxing her forward to fall into the black spaces between the stars and thud into eternity. She had no connection to anything now except the ground that was reaching up. The hand on hers had been removed and she was alone again. This was why she had come here.

Hilary flew through the air, the tiny hairs at her neckline smarting. And then she landed. But she was not inside the earth. She was not in blackness. She was lying on her back and she could still see stars. Above her was the silhouette of an angel,  a man's shape made out of darkness. It spoke to her.

“I'm Jamie” he said as he extended his hand to help her up. She stood and looked from the square of roof where she stood out over the wall she had sat on for so long. The night was breaking and the sun was hinting at its arrival.

It had been hours since she had stepped out there ready to jump and found him, already sitting in the spot she had intended to make her last purchase on earth.

“Hilary” she said.

He took her hand in his.

“Come on Hilary.Let's go.”

The rooftop door slammed behind them as they descended the stairs like mortals and made their way, together, onto the street.

I Had To Be The One Who Told Him - Rhonda D

I HAD TO BE THE ONE WHO TOLD HIM

            “Looking in your eyes… kind of heaven eyes… closing both my eyes…waiting for surprise.”

It was a classic city landscape filled with twinkles, not from the plum sky, but from bouncing glitters: reds from cars, greens from street lights, whites from buildings and reflections of them all. A breezy, only slightly humid Atlanta night wrapped the lovers …kind of California-like. But only these pretty people chattering on the roof-top hotel were filled with southern pleasantries and stories of fishing and farm vistas.

 “To see the heaven in your eyes is not so far… cause I'm not afraid to try and go it….”

            Awww Golden Lady a Stevie Wonder classic I thought. I was glittering and sparkling with dangling earrings, a gawdy pink flowered diamond ring, a neck line to my navel and hem above my thigh, along with the wildest gold knee boots I myself had ever seen.

It was a girl’s night out, with the exception of my boyfriend who I was sharing tonight, sharing with my sexy new girl-toy I simply called lil’ Sis. Lil’ Sis was brilliantly attired in her usual tight black something or other which was perfect as not to outshine me, Big Sis. And my boyfriend who tonight we called Daddy?, and at our request he had on a sharp black suit and tie and his ever present wide sexy grin and he came naturally equipped with all the ingredients which assured a summer night of fun. There we sat the three of us, entwined.

“And golden lady, golden lady I'd like to go there, golden lady, golden lady I'd like to go there take me right away…”

God that song made a girl’s heart believe the beauty of the melody and ladies in the crowd sang aloud and swayed. I lowered my eyelids to half mast and glanced over at the horn player, a handsome young stallion decades Daddy’s junior. He held the evening’s heart in his sway and no one could turn their eyes from his masculine loveliness.

“…To know the love and the beauty never known before, I'll leave it up to you to show it…”

I was entrenched in his being and in that moment I didn’t care what anyone thought. I wanted to dream of him on my death bed years from tonight and I wanted my story, my last memories to ring not of loss, but of conquer. I shifted and pointed my glossy thighs in his direction and stared unwaveringly at his eyes as they darted lovingly around the room. Lil’ Sis tried to draw my attention to her and she giggled out loud and warmed her hands on our dates shoulder.

Finally, His horn floated slowly towards our table and our eyes locked and I made sure to fasten him in. Surely, the other ladies who were balmy under the moon’s slithering glow would try to make their way into my line of fire. But, I had to be the one who captured his awareness; I had to be the one he blew for; and, I had to be the one who told him, he was quite simply… the most dazzling creature the cityscape had ever glimmered for and I stood up in declaration of what was soon to be mine. As His last hum was released nothing else existed; friendships, love-ships… nothing. I was determined to create the most beautiful golden evening I was ever to remember, a story that would electrify my memory even in my last breath.

The Knife Never Left Her Hand -- Rhonda Dove

     The knife never left her hand and Samuel never left her side. Why was she so frantic that evening? He had never seen that side of her, the manic side, the side that wanted to hurt. But she lay still now and he gazed at her chest to see it rise and fall. It relaxed him and gave him pleasure and to know she would sleep tonight and see another day. But, he knew he would have to be her protector and watch over her that was his role. 

     Natalie had a temper, but at times she liked to be a voyeur and see the other girls swoon over her Samuel. Then other days she was like a night watchman with a rifle cocked ready for a token transgression. Reckless eyeballing, where a girl stared too long in her man’s direction, was not tolerated.  A girl was never invited to sit and chat at her table while she chatted with her man, offense two. A cell phone vibrating, ringing, dinging while her man tapped at it, fondled it and put it back in his pocket, drove her insane. Samuel had committed all of the above and on top of that he had looked past her at a chick in a miniskirt while she spoke deeply about her feelings of loneliness and despair. 

     He saw the shift in her expression the twinkle of lunacy that deepened as the night fell drowsy. It was bizarre he thought, she often spoke of a desire for a pleasurable threesome, but she would turn sour when he even lingered in his speech about another lady. He normally did not try to please her whims. He got a rather sadistic pleasure in her self-inflicted emotional turmoil. He would coax her and lead her down this path of frantic despair. At the end of this road she would be so unraveled she would need him to pull the strings from the hard knots and soften her again. She needed him.

     Tonight their dance seemed perilously out of control. She shook him with her eyes that demanded to know why he chose to go against her wishes. And without prior discussion he decided to lecture her about the fact that she was not his master. In fact he had said if anyone is the master in their relationship it was he and he would not be told where and at whom he could look. In fact if he wanted to get up and go across the room and find the most beautiful thing in the place and talk to her for 30 minutes, it was her duty to sit happily in her seat and wait for his return. He knew at a point the Brandy was expressing these sentiments and not he, but it was too late and by the time he tried to explain, he noticed that her third glass had only a puddle of the purple stuff remaining.

     She had become ignited with a fury that neither of them could contain. He watched her in a slow-motion haze sing out a rhythmic barrage of insults at him that made the whole restaurant hush in interest. She told him he could in fact, ‘fuck all the ho’s in the whole damn place’ and she could care less. But, she would kick ‘somebody’s ass’ on the way out. 

     Samuel had never seen her so crazed. He instinctively grabbed her as she grabbed the knife on the dinner table and he held her tightly to him. 

     “Natalie baby relax.” That was all he could muster, but he held that wrist tightly indeed for dear life. He motioned to the waiter to extricate his wallet from his slacks and take out the 100 dollar bill and keep the change. He drug her as she screamed like a wolf who had been half paralyzed on a desolate road by some speeding nobody. 

     “Why do you do this to me Samuel…why….why….Why do you want to hurt me, when all I have ever wanted to give you is my love?” 

    He shushed her like you would a wailing baby. He kissed her neck and pushed her into the passenger side from the driver’s entrance, still holding that hand safely away from their harm. 

    “Everything is going to be okay baby, everything is going to be okay baby, everything is going to be…”

     And so they lay in his king size bed in their Friday night best. She looked so beautiful and was so beautifully flawed in her sparkling body hugging dress. Her golden brown thighs beckoned him and he wanted to please her, to sooth the pain he had disturbed inside her. This is crazy he thought and the knife never left her hand and Samuel never left her side.