By Lindsay Hunter

Image Credits: http://68.media.tumblr.com

There was a girl gone missing a few years back. Her mama standing
out front of the Dairy Queen, eyeing your cone like you was hiding
her child within. You seen Dee? Dee Switcher? You seen her? Nope,
was always the answer, but I’ll keep an eye out. And before you knew
it that cone was gone. That was the year that old bitch Miss Shane was teaching us algebra. Solve for x, children. Chalk dusting her dress like she had a ghost
dress on over her other one. Them arms like dough on a spit.
That missing girl used to do her eyeliner during class. Over and
over, underlining her eye like Miss Shane underlined them nasty
equations. Solve for x.

Image Credits: http://i.perezhilton.com

We all had plans for that girl. She had a chest. She smoked them
long thin lady cigarettes in plain sight of the custodian. When that
retarded boy ran into the girl and knocked her purse down a condom
spilled out, flashing there in its gold wrapper, looking for all the
world like a coin.The girl picked up her lipsticks and wallet and hair things and left
it there, left that condom on the ground and walked off. Us thinking
hard about ways to spend that coin.There was other girls of course. The entire cheerleading team could get you going, save for the chubby one, but she’d do in a pinch.
The majorette, Glenda was her name, rumor had it she’d drink too
much at parties and beg you to fondle her.

So it wasn’t like this girl was the cream of the crop or nothing,
there was plenty of girls. We wanted them all, Dee Switcher included.
Her mama was the town skank. Everybody knew. So you couldn’t
take her all that seriously when her girl went missing. Stay home all
night for once, our own mamas would whisper to each other, swat
each other on the arm. You so bad. I know it.Nobody ever picked up that condom. It got kicked around and pushed into corners, and once Dee went missing we all got scared of
it, and kicked it harder. Girls would shriek should they see it rocketing
toward them. Some boys too.Then one day we all realized it wasn’t there no more. Probably the custodian got it. Or it was somewhere no one cared to look.
Her daddy came to the school on a Monday morning. No one
had seen her daddy in years but here he was asking where was Dee,
why did the school let her skip so easy, where was the truant officer,
demanding to know who took her, who had his girl. We watched the
principal pet his shoulder like you would a sick animal, watched Dee’s
daddy get led to the door; it was a bright day and for a second he got
swallowed up by the glare. He didn’t come back.

There was a big homecoming dance a few months after the girl
went gone. We all paired up and parted our hair and wore suit coats
and danced slow when we were told to.Dee’s mama showed up at the dance in a fancy nightgown dress thing, asking could she chaperone. We watched the principal lead her
over to the punch bowl, but Dee’s mama wasn’t there for long; no
one came for punch and after a few songs she walked out with her
head so high you worried for her neck.
Some of us met at the diner after, eating pancakes while our girls
fiddled with our belt loops under the table, if you were lucky. Others
of us went to the after party at the Days Inn, but that turned out
to be a bust. The stereo ran out of batteries and Miss Shane’s freshman
boy showed up and puked into the trashcan and everybody went
home.

Dee had left school after fifth period, was the story. Snick out
while everyone was scrambling for their lockers. Rumor had it she
was going with an older boy, he might could even be called a man.
One day a skinny lady cop came and asked a few of us what we knew,
but really we didn’t know nothing.We skipped school all the time, was the thing. Sometimes it feltlike if you didn’t skip you’d close your eyes and die, right there in
the middle of Civics, so you did skip, and you’d go to the Circle K
to buy Slim Jims or over to a friend’s house to look at his dad’s titty
magazines. And nothing bad ever happened.
The lady cop seemed to find us not knowing nothing a relief.
That’s what I figured, she’d say in agreement with you. Which meant,
to us, solving for x really was an impossibility, a waste of time, so why
bother?

At Christmastime Miss Shane told us she had skin cancer, she
wouldn’t be back the next semester. We stared at that mole on her
cheek, as we had done for months. That’s what I figured, some of us
wanted to blurt. Miss Shane’s eyes went wet, we started feeling soft
toward her, but after she assigned two chapters of homework for over
the break we went back to hating her guts, which felt better, more
normal, than feeling sorry for her, so in a way you got to feeling
grateful toward her for being such a cooze.
Over the break we saw Dee’s little brother at the movies by himself.
We forgot all about him, but there he was with his money in a
wad, staring up at the listings like he couldn’t read. We went on in
and spent all our money on arcade games. Then later that night, in
your bed that smelled like socks and sweat and secretions and powder
Tide, if you weren’t careful you’d start thinking how when you came
out the boy was gone, and how maybe you should feel regretful about
not inviting him to man the firetorch gun, really the best gun to have
if you were playing Immortal Fear and you made it past the first two
rounds, which everyone did.
But he had gone.

Image Credits: https://img.buzzfeed.com

That winter someone found the girl’s yellow purse on the side
of the road. The strap was gone. One of us heard their dad saying
how you could use a strap to strangle someone, or at least tie up
her hands. Her perfume bottle was smashed. That girl ain’t coming
back, we told each other, shifting our nuts like we’d seen our dads do
whenever they said something serious. But really, we already knew that. You just had to say some things out loud.

During the spring semester Miss Shane’s boy got in a fistfight with
the custodian. No one knew why but we figured it was stressful,
having a bitch mom who had cancer. Then on Palm Sunday a dog
found a skull and carried it to his master’s doorstep. There was excitement
for a time but it turned out to be the skull of an infant, probably
buried by some of them country folk who can’t afford no funeral.
A rumor got spread that a girl tasted like a nine-volt battery down
there. It got hot, hotter than the last summer, and a old lady died in
her house ’cause she was too weak to open some windows.
We’d see Dee’s mama working as the greeter at the Walmart. If she
recognized you she’d say, Seen Dee? Dee Switcher? and most of the
time we just shook our heads, stared at our shoes till we got to the
magazines aisle. Guns and girls, we needed more info on both.
Some of us got for-real girlfriends. Some of us snuck in to their
rooms at night and made love, you had to call it making love or your
girl got mad, to these girls while you listened to their dads sawing
logs just to the other side of the wall, you biting your girl’s pillow
hard so you wouldn’t make no noise, you ignoring how sometimes
your girl just laid there, her fingertips on your back limp and uninterested,
you despite the dud your girl turned out to be feeling like
your bottom half was exploding up into your top.
Dee one time punched a girl in the mouth, she’d been crying hard
just before, her face ruined, black smears down her cheeks and her
upper lip all glistened with snot. By that time we knew girls sometimes
got ugly. Dee got sent home, came back the next day with her
makeup all set again. Lips all wet. Eyes so blue you got to feeling
indecent. See, we had seen Dee, we’d seen her a lot, but back then we
had our eyes on all the girls, and over time it got to be hard to see
how losing one was such a tragedy.

By Alexander Lumens

Image Credits: https://static.tumblr.com

When curious about the depth of a strange river, do you throw in a
nearby rock? If so, how long does it normally take you to realize the
futility of this supposed gauging? Do you ever? Do you run away
instead? Are you someone of the temperament who prefers to “go
it alone”? Is that the naked truth? Have you ever closed a wound
with hot glue? Is it the same moon every night? Will it rain today? If
it rained some object other than rain today, would you go out into
the streets to celebrate? What if it were raining down lobster claws?
Or Olympic gold medals? Or Japanese woodcuts of copulating butterflies?
What would you be willing to go out into the streets to celebrate
other than the wet wet rain?
Did you have any allergies that I didn’t already know about?
They’re explained as over-reactive immune systems—what’s akin to
firebombing an amateur sniper, or just an amateur whatever with a
gun out in the desert looking for asylum in the heavily walled city
of your body—does this sound true? When did the phrase “unconditional
surrender” migrate into our everyday lexicon? Are most crevasses
judged too short? Too far? Or just right? Should I sleep with
one eye open?

Image Credits: https://i.pinimg.com

Have you ever witnessed a butterfly’s first flight? Would you want
to? Would you, with me? In “silence, exile, and cunning” is a nice
way to go, no? Would you be honest with me, or would I have to ask
you to be honest with me in order for you to be honest with me? Is
there a problem here, officer? Are the graves ready?
When you “break up” with someone, doesn’t that phrase summon
the image of an Antarctic explorer’s ship foundering in a sea of pack
ice with the frostbite sinking in and the sled dogs baying at the moon
and the one football lost in the falling snow?
Are you coming back?
How many meters are we from the nearest bomb shelter? Is that
nearer or farther than the nearest white flag?
Was it my piano hands? My large feet? My lazy eye, the one I keep
open while sleeping? (Is it not possible that my other eye is simply
more alacritous?) Is the truth always naked? Could I dress up the
truth so ornately that it’s no longer said to be truth, dressed in, say,
a kimono or a lobster suit? If such were possible, then the truth is
clearly mutable, and therefore no truth at all, and so to change or to
come back to old loves is no crime whatsoever—so what about me
needs to change? Do you trust shamans?
Why not award gold medals for screaming? Do they even make
lobster suits? I imagine that if more celebratory items were made with
an eye toward actual proportionate sizes of anatomy, we would have
a much more educated populace, is that too much to ask? In a perfect
world, would you hot glue claws in place of these feeble little feelers
called hands? Alone, can you cook?
Wasn’t Ernest Shackleton an amazing fucking person?
Is your idea of a nice afternoon one spent in the company of sixteen
hundred butterflies in an artificial rain forest, or does that strike
you as a nice afternoon filled with sheer terror, one bound to end in
bloodshed? Butterflies taste with their feet, isn’t that frightening?
Would you, could you, opt for this transference of sense from tongue
to toes? Wouldn’t the day be filled with mostly the taste of sock and
sole? Would you walk into rivers to taste them, rather than to gauge
their depth? Or would it be best then to walk on your hands? Drop
stones and bombs with your lips?
Are you vexed by sorting recyclables? Do you keep an updated
travelogue? A running tab? A bird count? A wallet card listing known
allergies? Would you hit a nail with your Stradivarius in order to be
awarded another Stradivarius? Who’d take the fight: Shackleton, or
Jackie Joyner-Kersee? Is a gate not a gate unless it creaks?

In Goodnight Moon, why does no one say goodnight to the telephone?
What is a body pillow, if not a bed? Was poetry once a forte of
yours? Is Irish something you only claim to have in you? Did firing
your first gun confirm or refute your suspicions concerning the
danger of a loaded weapon in the home? When did safety equipment
not come with safety labels? Why must we turn the gun’s safety off?
Given a black-and-white photograph, could you tell the difference
between the Antarctic tundra and the Saharan desert? If I had a nice
large mirror, would you look into it?

Are you comforted or dispirited by the fact that we no longer live
in a time when lazy-eyed trolls under bridges are a daily concern?
Will “cool” ever not be cool? Urns: a treasure? A burden? Or a talking
point? If the moon could speak, what wouldn’t it say? Are you
being honest with me? Honestly, a man like Shackleton would not
have survived this lengthy desert crossing. Do you still not trust shamans?
What strikes you as the most advantageous to survival: the fear
of bridge trolls, the fear of foundering in pack ice, or the fear of
butterflies? If, in an imperfect world, I unknowingly awakened in
you an allergic reaction, would you be mad, even though I specifically
related to you the analogy of the amateur gunman storming the
body’s gates? Is there time for an unconditional surrender before the
bombing raids begin? What if I were that sniper, and you the target?
If I came dressed not as an amateur or as a gunman, but as a lobster
crawling over dunes on my anatomically correct claws, would you be
put off or intrigued by a large crustacean crossing the Sahara? If I
said, “I come in something, exile, and something else,” what next? If
I said, “I’m rain,” would you drop a rock on me? Or would you come
out into the streets to celebrate me falling from the sky?

By Matt Stewart

Image Credits: https://www.thenation.com

My mom is driving me to prison. She’s pretty drunk, but she’d know
the way coked out too, which she’ll be on the way back. I’m ditching
the last of my stash with her.
“Don’t fraternize,” she says.
“Ma, c’mon.”
“People talk. I know what happens in there.”
“I’ll be fine, Ma.” And I truly am a lot less jittery than last time,
having invested last year’s profits into buying protection from the
Aryan Brotherhood for the next six to nine years. “Pass the Scotch.”
She swigs a mouthful and sends it over. I take a sip, pour a little on
my hair, dribble a line down my back. Thirty years old from a craggy
island in Scotland I’ll never get to. “This is the kind of shit I should
do,” I confess. “Make something beautiful, that people have for their
last drink before prison.”

Image Credits: https://gfycat.com

“Scotch is basically cocaine for rich people,” my mom says, which
makes it clear that she doesn’t know cocaine that well, since cocaine
is really crack for rich people. I’d say Scotch is more like cocaine for
people too chicken to risk mandatory sentencing guidelines, but then
again here I am on the losing end of that one.
“Jerry will be done with school when I get out,” I realize.
“I hope he makes it,” she says, followed by her first swerve, dodging
an imaginary cyclist.
“Why wouldn’t he make it?” I wonder, helping myself to more of
the Scotch, dousing my nose, slurping from the bottle like Gatorade
after a basketball game.
“It’s right around the age kids go bad in this town,” she says, veering
to avoid an invisible chicken, a dog, then banking hard for the
mail truck. “Benjamin,” she says. “Daniel. Kerri. Caitlin.”
“Caitlin was a fuckup from the start,” I point out.
“That may be true, but fourteen’s when she got violent,” Mom
says. And I remember when Caitlin came back from her first taekwon
do class, all nunchucks and jump kicks, how she beat me purple
on the front lawn and still it was the most fun I’d had since Street
Fighter broke at the arcade and you could play all day on a single
quarter. I pass Mom the Scotch and she gulps it, spraying it back at
me in a tropical mist.

“But Jerry?” I wonder. “I hear he’s getting decent grades. Can
make a jump shot here and there. A good head of hair on his shoulders.
Where’s the trouble in that?”
“Crapohontas!” my mom exclaims, then yanks the wheel toward
the shoulder and up a small incline, braking hard at a scenic overlook
of a dung-splattered cow field and an assortment of decomposing
motor homes under a lemon-lime sun. She caps the Scotch and hurls
it into the backseat, then slaps her face into serious, frown tips hanging
limp like a pervert’s mustache. “Look, Jason. When it’s your own,
you don’t see it coming. One day your daughter’s helping clean the
toilet; two days later she’s out-dancing you at the wet T-shirt contest.
And I got five kids’ worth of statistical proof that the fourteenth
birthday is always the day in the middle. Present company included.”
“You too?” I wonder, and I suppose I can see it, the old pictures
of Ma with electric orange bra straps and hair styled like elaborate
topiary and puddles of purple and green makeup, PCP and stickups
radiating in her eerie yellow smile.

“Me too,” she admits, wiggling the steering wheel. “You too. All
of us. Makes you wonder if we were decent at sports or school, how
things’d’ve gone.” Translucent froth drips from her nose, leading
me to wonder if her brain has gone to mush and is leaking out her
orifices, finally, until I spot the coke clumps like unmixed sugar, her
headstart on the stash.

“Well, we’ve all been pretty good at the cop sprint,” I point out.
“There is that,” she agrees.
“Caitlin had her taekwondo blue belt. Daniel made the spelling
bee once. Kerri could draw bird pictures like they flew right onto the
page. And Benjamin, well,” and it is a reach on Benjamin, two years
younger than me and a life of canned chili and video games and Internet
futzing and silence, “he can stay up for two days straight if we
have enough Red Bull on hand.”

Image Credts: https://www.buzzfeed.com

She stays quiet. The engine chortles and traffic screams and bluegrass
pops and slides on the radio. “Danielle’s looking after Jerry,”
I note, “and I’d appreciate it if you could check in on him now and
then.”
“Danielle’s even loonier than Caitlin!” she exclaims, and I recall
why I divorced Danielle in the first place: how she drove motorcycles
blindfolded and threw dinner plates at mailmen and left the oven on
all night with the entire contents of the bathroom cabinet inside. “I
got two jobs and guardianship of three other grandkids and a suitcase
worth of snow to sell,” my mom continues, “now give back the
Scotch.”

Yellow-tipped fingers foxtrot over the armrest, itchy and devastated
like squished caterpillars. I dig out the Scotch from the backseat,
give it a shake like a Magic 8 Ball, except no answer surfaces and
I’m forced to take a long ruminative pull before I send it over. “Let’s
go see him,” I decide. “Jerry.”
I get the cowed look back, sorry and sad and too scared to say it.
“What time are you due?” she asks.
“I’ll be fine,” I tell her, and now it’s an order: “Let’s go.”
She points the truck off the highway and we backtrack down local
roads for twenty minutes, rolling through identical suburbs and past
identical strip malls until she tucks in at one of the identical Starbuckses.
“His school’s across the street,” she says.
“Good,” I say. “Here’s money for coffee.” I slip her a twenty and
catch her wrist, squeeze her palm, as close to a hug as I get.
“Be nice,” she urges, “and try to listen,” but I’m out the door
before I catch the brunt of her lecture.

The school’s done up like an old Spanish mission, with a wide
courtyard paved over and stocked with basketball courts, an audito-
rium doubling as a chapel, nifty white-arched classrooms offset by
grungy temporary units arranged like boot camp barracks. It is hideously
sunny, the worst kind of school day. I tip my baseball cap at a
custodian hosing down a pile of mats on the sidewalk and look over
at a ramshackle guard building carrying a hand-painted sign that
says off ice, a pride of bulky Hispanic women chitter-chattering and
a platoon of dazed students ambling in mindless orbits like penguins
on a hot day at the zoo.

I walk, fast, out, away, charged, striding beside a bashed fence
laced with hot-dog wrappers and soda bottles, waiting, waiting, feeling
time slip, time dripping like sweat, the hot stupid sun, pulling
down my cap, creating more and more distance, feet on top of miles
on top of months on top of years. Halfway around the block I hear
scrapes and murmurs, a wave of radio static. I creep up on a green
Dumpster in a secluded nook walled off by trees and a chain link
gate, perfect for trying out cigarettes and adventurous girls so long
as they can take the smell. Boys flip skateboards off a curb and swig
energy drinks, their backpacks piled in a trash heap, rap music fuzzing
from cell phones. Leaning on a guardrail a near-teen kid with
Jerry’s square chin and Danielle’s hazel eyes and my monstrosity of a
hairdo scrawls into a notebook held two inches from his face.
I step out from behind a parked van and it’s like I’m knocking
off liquor stores again, six sets of spooked eyes deciding whether to
pretend to be a tough guy or not. “Get out,” I tell them, and kick
the Dumpster hard twice for effect. They snatch their backpacks
and shoot out for the street, but when I jab a finger in Jerry’s sternum
he coughs hard and stays put, neatly folding up his notebook
and plumping his hair hedge and rubbing his hands on the back of
his jeans. The spot stinks of fry grease and fungus, and I’d bet all
the cash buried in my backyard that yesterday’s lunch special was
fish sticks.

“Hey, man,” I offer. Then, to be clear: “It’s me. Dad.”
He coughs, then spits, then frowns, staring at the Dumpster,
scratching his neck, his cheeks softening like water put to oatmeal.
“How you doing?” I ask, and he stands perfectly still for at least a
minute before I slap my hands together in front of his face.
“Don’t mean to be rude, but I don’t have much time,” I explain.
He’s hunched over and blank as a bus seat, waiting for me to lose
interest and leave, like usual. “Say something,” I order.
He grunts and shuffles and snorts before risking eye contact:
“Hiya, Pops.”
Which makes for the first time I have ever been addressed that way
seriously. Laughter pours out of me like the first beer of the night,
but when he tries to turn my handshake into an eight-part gangster
breakdance I clamp on to his shoulder instead.

Image Credits: https://www.viralviralvideos.com

“Good to see you,” I say, though I haven’t actually decided yet, the
kid’s sprouted from bungling toddler to life-sized human being since
the last time I tuned in, complete with a regulation-size basketball
taking up the entirety of his backpack and four wisps of hair on his
lip matted up to imitate a mustache. “Whatcha writing?”
He unfolds his notebook, shakes open a page. “Lyrics,” he admits.
“Nice. What kind of song?” I dredge up the pictures Danielle
posts online, mostly Jerry cowed around a birthday cake or leading a
fast break, though it’s possible I’ve seen him buried in the back row
of a marching band or church choir, hoisting a beat-up guitar around
a campfire, staring out a truck window singing along to Toby Keith.
“Hip-hop,” he says, with a salty sneer that says he’s proud of it.
“Ha!” I exclaim, though it’s less a laugh than an alligator bite.
“Well, let’s hear it.”
He glances straight at me, just enough waver in his eyelid to tell
me he’s scared. “It’s not that tight,” he says.
“I just want to hear it,” I insist. I pop onto a knee and build up a
grin, sequestering off the Scotch for a few seconds of good-natured
get-up. “I’d appreciate it pretty bad.”
He looks around for witnesses, flips through his notebook and
back again. He hasn’t gone bad yet, you can tell by the fluttery eyes,
the watery-sick breathing, the sweat bubbles amassing on his forehead.
His duct-taped sneakers begin heel-tapping and words spill out
of him, not a flow, not a river, not a babbling brook, nothing peaceful
or natural but rather human-made and purposefully ugly, like a sewer
or gutter runoff. He rolls through a list of profanity and sexual positions
and narcotics terminology laced with gibberish, made-up words
that don’t come close to rhyming, like a harsh and sickly Eastern European
language that’s relegated to long-distance phone calls and bad
memories. The number finishes with a massacre of thirty-five gangsta
enemies topped off with a seven-woman orgy back on his yacht, the
musical equivalent of running seashells through a lawnmower.
He looks up at me with a pink sheen over his eyes. Sour liquor
pulls my scalp, the first pangs of a world-class still-drunk hangover.
“That’s good,” I lie. “Real good. Dang!” I paste the smile back on,
shake out a wink. His teeth form a wobbly sliver, and it’s the best
chance I’ll ever have.
“Do you need any money?” I ask.
“What?”
But it’s not an offer I’m inclined to extend twice. And as Jerry
stands there wondering if he misunderstood, if I was serious, how
much—or, worse, not wondering at all but instead waiting, for me to
repeat myself, for somebody else to do something—I am seized with
a rare fatherly vision.
Running with the same bozos when he gets up to high school.
Landing his first bust doing somebody else’s dirty work, selling a
dime bag or fencing an iPod or riding shotgun on the wrong night.
Vacationing a few months in juvie before graduating to dropoutland,
revolving through lockup and small-time gangs, stealing old
clunkers, snorting battery acid, screwing insane women, and badrapping
his way to a pile of nothing, until the second strike hits and
he’s tracking down his kid on his way to federal prison without a
single thing to say.

“Stick to the music,” I tell him, “you’ve got promise.” I make a fist
and tap it gently to his shoulder, then spin out to the street, hulking,
enraged, dying of thirst. I will get the Scotch and drink it and then
I’ll call the police and turn Jerry in, I’ll plant cocaine on him, it’ll
be easy, he’ll go to juvie and the process will begin now, the crimes
will come and the prison cycles will rotate and he’ll be done with it
sooner, the stupid shaken out of him. Maybe he’ll uncover a mentor
along the way, a basketball coach or English teacher who puts him to
work sinking his free throws and learning to craft a bankable rhyme.
Somebody who would rather be honest than awesome.

A cop car glides down the road and I flag it down with both hands.
A bald patrolman hangs an elbow out the window, his sunglasses
tight enough to leave ear rash.
“Officer,” I state. “I think I may have observed some illegal activity.”
“Don’t pester the kids,” he says.
“What?”
“We got a couple calls about you harassing boys by the Dumpster.”
“They were skipping class,” I point out. And it strikes me that I
have never once in my life called the police, whereas at least two of
those kids called the police within the last fifteen minutes.
My third strike.
“That’s not your concern,” he says.
“One of them’s my son,” I press, “and I’m going away.”
“Take care of it at home.”
My mom jogs down the sidewalk with one of those new Starbucks
coffees the size of a bathtub, and it’s impossible not to grin at her
old-lady jiggling. It is a fine final memory. “I’m not going home, you
dumbass,” I tell him. He gets out of the car and I could hug him as
he puts me in the backseat, as he hears me out and calls in the request
and nods and drives, heading back out on the highway, the rest of the
way to prison.

By Mark Twain

Image Credits: www.giphy.com

By Tom Schmidt

Image Credits: www.imgur.com