Erika Cleveland
“The Kranken were as High as Our House and as Wide as Our Car”
Response

Laic
By Channie Greenberg
Inspiration piece

I hadn’t meant to muster the outworlders. I’m no astrophysicist or clergy member. Gary says I’m just his stupid, ten year-old sister.

I’m ten, but I’m not stupid. Gary’s stupid, especially for an eleven year-old.

Anyway, it was a frore night. Our parents were at their weekly bridge and beer game. Gary and I were home, alone, tasked with babysitting our sister, three year-old Samantha, and our elderly dog, Ruff. Truth be told, Mom and Dad were only two houses down the block and expected us to be asleep long before they got home.

They forgot that age helps people like me find a willingness to enter into dicey behaviors. Not all young daughters apply their resolve to surreptitiously eating ice cream from the bottom of the carton or to making peanut butter and marshmallow fluff sandwiches for their older brother after curfew.

If I were honest, I’d admit to having been bored. All the IEPs in the world didn’t and couldn’t make school fascinating. Teachers get mad when you know more than them. Parents, what’s more, have little patience for helping square pegs fit into round hole-based education systems.

To cut a long story short, that night, I was contemplating the flash point of the grasses that stood like soldiers in our backyard. Mom’s a horse whisperer, not a gardener, and Dad, who’s famously busy with his craft beer business (yes, he supplies the local bridge players), except on bridge nights and those early evenings when he and Mom retire for “naps,” chose to regard those weeds as “a biome for local fauna,” rather than to mow them regularly.

The funny thing is those stands of foliage were not ornamentals like Pampas or Feather Reed Grass, but the descendants of Tall Fescue and Kentucky Blue. That I had manipulated their genetics remained unnoticed. As I said, the parents are busy, Samantha goes to preschool, and Gary is all in with his group of preadolescent male friends who listen to music like Aaron Carter’s “Not Too Young,” and Helen Shapiro’s “Don’t Treat Me Like a Child.” I can always hear the bassline from those songs thumping through our bedrooms’ shared wall.

That night, it was not my intention to burn down the backyard or to successful signal to a nearby UFO.  I had, in reality, wanted to read up on phantom kangaroos. You see, I meant to “dissuade” my brother from blaring further horrible tunes by conjuring imaginary marsupials. At least the pulsations of those beasts’ feet would drown out Gary’s iTunes selections.

Nonetheless, beyond issues with my research’s scope, I had problems with its actualization. Basically, it’s nearly impossible to summon critters from the crypt if one lacks a belief in demons. I might be a bit of an arriviste, but I go to church regularly.

So, rather than continue to hurt my brain trying to figure out how to call those fictitious fiends to me, I opted to contemplate the autoignition temperature of grass. I maneuvered equations for a while, realizing early on that I’d have to compensate for the frost that covered our lawn. Eventually, two wonderful things occurred; either Gary fell asleep or had remembered to switch to his headphones, and I had solved the math.

Every the good boffin, I didn’t hesitate to test my work. Mom had forgiven me for melting her favorite curry comb and hoof pick, and Dad was nearly at the point of pardoning my absconding with his very best mash/lauter tun. What can I say? Since my parents forbid me to invest in cryptocurrency and since I am a minor, I source materials rather than buy them.

In any case, my calculations indicated that all I needed was matches. How was I to know that beings from another galaxy find the aroma of red phosphorus exhilarating? I was more concerned with successfully oxidizing leaves and stems in an exothermic reductive reaction than thinking about aliens. I admit, though, I syphoned off a bit of gas from our car as it was accessibly sitting in our driveway.

Our town’s fire department was able to contain the resulting fireball. Those brave men and women, however, hadn’t counted on contending with eight-legged creatures from far away. When the spaceship arrived, the firefighters scattered.

Meanwhile, the lights, sirens, flames, and odor had roused my parents from their card game. They weren’t happy. Had it not been for the invaders, I would have gotten punished. For months, Mom and Dad had been threatening to take away my electronic communication devices if I didn’t stop my research program. Thankfully, that night, I had bidden something truly ferly.

The kranken were as high as our house and as wide as our car. They reached, with what seemed like curiosity, into our windows, ostensibly caring little about breaking glass. I think they would have efficaciously kidnapped both Samantha and Ruff had they not been greedy and tried to abduct Gary, too.

It turns out that my brother was not asleep, but bespelled. He had been smiling until his attempted capture. Fortunately, the extraterrestrials’ move had knocked off his earphones and the entire neighborhood was suddenly subjected to the music of preadolescent boys’ angst.

I never saw a rabbit run so quickly to its burrow or a bird fly so speedily to its nest as I and the rest of our neighbors saw those weird octopi scuttle back into their vessel and zoom away. I guess they didn’t like my brother’s music, either.

Mom still rehabilitates horses. Dad still sells his brew to any and all comers. Samantha still adores running, kicking, and throwing, especially if her actions involve freshly cleaned laundry. Ruff still sleeps for most of the day. Gary’s still annoying.

As for me, I retained my Internet privileges and have been able to keep all my social media accounts. Then again, those rights are conditional on my forgoing further experiments until I’m at least twelve.

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Note: All of the art, writing, and music on this site belongs to the person who created it. Copying or republishing anything you see here without express and written permission from the author or artist is strictly prohibited.

Erika Cleveland
“I’m an Angel/Green Man”
Inspiration piece

Bionic Mushrooms and Sundry Other Things
By Channie Greenberg
Inspiration piece

Another miniature energy farm was not what Dr. Terry Sanders had been seeking when caviling to her husband about their marriage. Like earlier generations of women, she considered herself tormented by her partner, brothers, and sons. The latter groups appeared to be beyond her influence. The former, though, ought to be making her life less contentious.

All of Terry’s menfolk, akin to her, were researchers. Nevertheless, all of them seemed jealous of the cognitive leap that had enabled her to win a Noble Prize. More exactly, they resented that their beloved Dr. Sanders had led the team pioneering coating fungi with energy-producing, blue-green cyanobacteria while employing SD-printed graphene nanoribbons to catch any resulting flux.

Terry’s crew had meant to measure the microamps yielded by the head of a single mushroom. Amongst themselves, they had joked that if they failed, they’d count the angels dancing on that pileus. Unexpectantly, those scientists never had to involve themselves with celestial beings—they had been able, for an entire minute, to power a two-terminal, electronic component-based pencil sharpener with their toadstool.

Birgitta Bremer, a biologist who was a member of the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences, had read about Terry’s study. Accordingly, she had nominated Dr. Sanders and staff for the chemistry Noble Prize.

Terry Sanders smiled upon recalling the evening gown that she had worn to Stockholm. That teal, silk dress had been as comfortable as a bathrobe and as satisfying as applying chain terminator sequencing to fighting cancer. Terry had become a science princess!

Her happy event, though, had occurred months ago. Currently, Terry was back at her bench and back under the derisive glare of her kinsmen.

Truly, her older and younger siblings didn’t need to be aggrieved because of her achievements, specifically, or misogynous, for no reason at all, more generally. Sure, those relatives worked in corporate settings while she was a “mere” academic. Indisputably, they were paid well, by a giant pharmaceutical company, to manipulate ultrafine particles in fertilizers whereas her lower salary was typical of those granted to university employees.

Yet, her sibs oughtn’t have mocked her historic honor or baited her about her view on the ill-conditioned mathematics of selection in molecular dynamics simulations. Alternatively, they should have sought interpersonal “photosynthesis,” i.e., should have given her even minute resistive pulse sensing measures of esteem. Her brothers could have risen above intellectual brutishness, could have achieved familial concord, and could have bestowed civility upon their only sister. Yet, they did not.

As per Terry’s sons, one of whom was working on a postdoc in spectroscopy, in the realm of crystallographic studies, and the other of whom was engaged in graduate studies emphasizing circular dichroism, when they visited their parents, almost always bringing along their wives and children, not once did they also convey meals or components thereof. What’s more, those descendants never supervised their rug rats during their stays or gathered up their used linens upon leaving. Neither right nor left-handed cleanup of any sort was realized when those boys dropped in.

Most important, though, to Terry, were her issues with Hevel. Her spouse of more than forty years persisted in repeatedly changing her home computer’s screen saver.

Terry smiled whenever she saw her humorously exaggerated drawing depicting femtosecond pulse width. The again, she frowned whenever she saw the Arrhenius equation that Hevel kept putting in that cartoon’s place. If only her man would cease and desist performing that act, she’d reconcile with him over the roast beef that had gone missing scant hours before her troupe had popped in to rejoice over their Nobel Prize.

It was silly that her spouse begrudged her success. He had been awarded the Melchett Medal and the Welch Award for his work on the structure and function of fundamental subunits of chromatin. Although it was true that his acclaim derived from his application of some of the design parameters produced by Terry’s squad, Hevel had matchlessly integrated microbes with materials of tiny dimensions.

Namely, he had transformed a rose into a dynamo for a personal fan and had transformed a carrot into a source of heat capable of warming up a cup of tea. He was a formidable professor in his own right. Unfortunately, Hevel, who had intended his designer bio-hybrids to be an anniversary offering to Terry, had spewed about his wife’s investigations’ flaws concurrent with delivering those gifts.

Before he had completed his unsolicited critique, she had fled his presence and his presents and had locked herself in their bedroom. Behind their bedroom door, she had cussed, loud enough for the neighbors to hear, that molecules were easier to manage than men.

A week later, Dr. Terry, nonetheless, consented to sit with Dr. Hevel in a fancy fish restaurant and to celebrate their union. Her husband ordered broiled trout. She opted for grilled bass. Between their amuse-bouche and entrées, Hevel pushed a glittery package across the table.

Terry raised one eyebrow at him before ripping open the wrapping. She smiled. Hevel had given her a box of unsharpened number two pencils. The woman of science then reached into her handbag for a similarly parceled box (they owned limited types of decorative paper.)

Hevel, too, smiled upon opening his gift. His box held a collection of herbal tea bags.

Going forward, Terry’s brothers still snarked at her. Her offspring still treated her and their father like hotel concierges, not like parents.

Terry and Hevel, nonetheless, once more had taken up flirting. Until the end of their days, they seduced each other with talk of single-celled organisms, fungi, and small scale chemical reactions.

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Note: All of the art, writing, and music on this site belongs to the person who created it. Copying or republishing anything you see here without express and written permission from the author or artist is strictly prohibited.

Erika Cleveland
“Your Dog was Dead.
You, Likewise, Were Almost Dead.”
Response

Another Day
By Channie Greenberg
Inspiration piece

Minute upon minute, the days creep. It is not so much that looking out my window occupies me or that counting the cracks in my ceiling is wearisome as it is that sighing has become tedious.

More exactly, neither my cuckoo clock nor the mirror in my main hall resounds akin to the once rushing footfall of my elderly dog. That beast would lick my cheek, or, in the least, would sit on my feet while I used my keyboard.

“Bed,” to that critter, was wherever I was stationed. If I fell asleep on my window seat or on the toilet, Old Max would stand guard. If he drifted to sleep, the slightest change in my posture would rouse him to his sentry duties.

Whether I was robed in a housecoat or a fancy dress, that canine would look upon me with admiration. I could be surly. I could be grim. No matter: he’d make sure that I was never abandoned by him.

Anyway, on a day devoid of sunshine, when merely a handful of flowers had dared to bloom beneath my windowsill and when the birds sang angrily, only the newly hatched cicadas announced that they were thrilled with life. Timothy chose that point on my calendar to come calling.

Old Max had barked when Timothy had repeatedly dropped the front door’s knocker before letting himself in. Growling, my dog ran down the stairs, toward my home’s entrance.

“Madame,” Timothy had intoned as he presented me with a parcel. “I believe this was delivered for you.”

I stared at the sack containing beans, eggs, sausages, and mushrooms. That breakfast almost smelled good. “Thank-you for porting. Just lay it on the sideboard, please.”

“It will spoil.”

“That’s of no matter to you.” I arched an eyebrow at Timothy, hoping for a stout affect.

Instead, that square-jawed man shrugged and placed his bumbershoot in an appropriate receptacle. Rain was boorish. Foul weather, in general, was boorish.  Sir Timothy was the most boorish of all elements.

“Dear One, it has been so long since I laid eyes on you.”

It had been exactly three days.

“I beg you, please join me for a stroll.”

The man was daft, truly, entirely preposterous. I liked my room. I liked the home in which it was located. I liked my dog.

I did not like inclement weather. I did not like Timothy. In fact, it could be said that I despised him.

“Your breakfast is losing its heat.”

“Yes.” If only the same could be said about that man. With every word, he looked at me in a seemingly increasingly licentious manner. I was no pious vestal, but I did and still do despise men who assume that good looks and kind gestures will warrant them to draw closer. Besides, he had not cooked my breakfast, but had merely picked up what the delivery service had left on my stoop.

The rain within cast dark skies that were opaquer than the rain without. It was all I could do to feed Old Max and to take no notice of my visitor.

“Then I shall eat it.”

“Then you shall.”

Unfortunately, Sir Timothy failed to leave after taking possession of my breakfast. Rather, he made himself comfortable in my dining room.

I shrugged, walked into my kitchen, filled Old Max’s bowl, and took a somewhat stale pastry to the table.

Timothy continued to stuff spoonfuls of marmalade onto toast. The service had been thorough in its meal preparation.

“I thought you had a cook.”

“Indeed. A maid, a butler, a liveryman, and a gardener, too. None, however, are pleasant companions, unlike you.”

I harrumphed, shoved the rest of the pastry into my maw, and gestured for Old Max to follow me. “Let yourself out when you finish. Also, please tuck all of your waste papers into the bin.”

“My lady?”

“…is retiring. Good day, sir.” It seemed like hours, albeit it was only twenty minutes, before Sir Timothy shut the front door behind him. I watched from my window to make sure that he had left. Thereafter, I descended the stairs and threw the bolt across the door. It would be better to eat the bits and scraps left in my kitchen than to chance another encounter with that man.

Be that what it may, hours later, the knocker sounded again on my front door. For reasons known only to fey and demons, I screamed and continued to scream until the knocking stopped.

Old Max howled in response to my shrieks. It was of no surprise that the birds in my yard stopped chorusing.

Sometime later, I fell asleep on top of my duvet. Old Max lay curled at my feet.

I awoke, however, in a hospital ward, strapped to a bedframe. One of my wrists was enveloped by a cloth bandage.

The other residents of the ward were either laughing manically or crying shrilly. None of the women in that room seemed to understand the utility of silence.

After too much time had passed, a uniformed nurse, all starched apron and attitude, approached me with a tray of pharmaceuticals.

“What?” I muttered.

“Your brother thought it best.”

“Timothy?”

“Yes. He signed all the necessary papers.”

“That blackheart! That quisling! Eating my breakfast and making eyes wasn’t enough.”

“Dr. Norton will inform you of her assessment. Meanwhile, Lambie, please take your medicine.”

I would have hit the tray from beneath and watched its various pills and potions fly had I not been encumbered by restraints. That good nurse, in the meantime, fed me one capsule after another. I don’t remember much after that.

That same day, or, perhaps, the next, a woman with bright yellow hair and wondrous blue eyes came to my bedside. She seemed impervious to the cacophony in the ward.

“Sara Utive?”

“Alive, not, apparently, well.”

“Your brother was worried about you. He found you unresponsive and your dog dead.”

“Falsehoods! That wazzock depends on my income to maintain his fancy life. No greater mingebag exists. What do you mean my dog is dead?”

“Respiration ceased. The veterinarian’s report indicated starvation. You, as well, almost passed on from lack of nutrition.”

“Balderdash! Restore my liberties this instant! I want to return to my home and my dog.”

“Your home has been listed for auction to pay for your stay here. You dog has died.”

“I’m leaving, instantly. What’s more, my home is paid for, is not in arrears, and Old Max licked my face just his morning.”

“You are a danger to yourself. Your brother was right in bringing you here.”

“I have no brother. Sir Timothy is as nothing to me.”

“I’m sorry. Perhaps, if you become more peaceful, we can release you from your fetters.”

“I will sue you and my ‘brother.’”

“You may do anything you please when you are of right mind.”  Dr. Norton left.

In her place was the shepherdess to whom all patients were barnyard young.

A few days later, I was allowed to have my wrist belts loosened. A few days after that, my ankle bonds, too, were taken away. I was thankful to be able to use an actual toilet.

A long span of physical therapy, occupational therapy, group therapy, and individual therapy followed. Much later, I was permitted, under the supervision of a full-time care provider, to return home. I called Old Max.

My manager sighed and suggested that I take off my coat and scarf and seat myself in the dining room while she prepared our food.

I again called Max. There was no response. Could I really have been spelled? I sat at the dining room table. Cooking smells wafted in from the kitchen. As ever, I had no appetite.

On the table was an envelope addressed to me. It was from Timothy, who, it seemed was neither a knight nor a gentry of any sort. At least, his handwriting was legible.

“Dear Sara…” began the letter. I put it back in its envelope. Not only was there no response from Old Max, but there was neither the calming cry of my garden’s turtledoves nor the enchanting sound of its whinchats. The only noise that reached my ears was that of my attendant banging pots and pans in my kitchen.

I went upstairs, to my bedroom. It was musty; the window had remined closed for a long time. No Old Max waited there, either.

While upstairs, I changed into my favorite sweater set and skirt. Homecoming needed celebrating.

Downstairs, my place was set. A bowl, a cup, and a plate all were laden with attractive offerings. My keeper, though, was not in sight.

I peered out the front door, thinking, maybe, she had taken a smoking break. Only trees and flowers greeted me. The patio next to the side door, which was off of the kitchen, likewise, was unoccupied.

I sat down, again, and lifted a forkful of the scramble that she had made toward my face, but watched those bits tumble back to my plate. Similarly, I stirred the broth that my appointed guardian had left, but other than trying to force that liquid to go against the Coriolis effect, I left it alone. Just the tea called to me. I ought not to have sipped at it, though, given that I felt compelled to sleep after it was finished.

I woke up to Timothy’s face. It had lost its lecherous quality. He had pulled a chair near the sofa upon which I had slept. I glanced from the sofa to the ding room table. The bowl and the plate had been emptied, but not returned to the kitchen.

“Did you shoot my dog?”

“No, he was dead. You, likewise, were almost dead.”

I propped myself up and gazed at my shoes. It was a pity I had fallen asleep in them. Probably, my sofa was soiled. I next gazed at my wrist. There was a pucker where a fresh scar had formed.

“Did you read my letter? I am very unhappy that St. Martin’s was the only address.”

“You’re no ace. From this time forth, if I go to pot, leave me be.”

A tear dripped off of my brother’s non-aquiline nose. He blinked as more water filled his eyes. “You’re all I have.”

“You mean, I’m all that’s between you and the debt collectors.”

“Not true!”

“You tried to sell my house.”

“The hospital bills were outrageous. A salary advance, though, solved that problem. Notice that we’re in your home?”

“Where’s Old Max?”

“Dead.”

“Where’s Old Max?”

“I wanted to hire a private nurse, but you fire all of the employees I engage.”

“Like the newest warden?”

“She’s also lost?”

“I suppose. No loss; her cooking was appalling.”

“It’s been a long time since you voluntarily tasted food. Wait! I thought the hospital had helped you.”

“No. They helped themselves. They ate up my money. I ate up very little. End of story. Dr. Norton drives a fancy care. The head of the Nursing Department like gemstone rings. It’s a pity that you paid them. Why not just let me fade and then inherit my ‘fortune?’”

“You’re my family. If I could, I would restore you to health. You used to be vivacious, fun to be with. I don’t need your money. I have a good job.”

“Old Max used to be alive.”

“Regrettably, Richard Taylor also used to be alive.”

“?”

“Dr. Norton said you might never remember. That man. No, that depraved, vile, corrupt, pernicious lout…”

“You’re none too fond of him.”

“Sara, he raped you.”

For years, I had long wondered about the scars on my legs and had written them off as residuals from my having tried, somewhere, at some time, to climb through brambles.

“So why hospitalize me? You’re supposed to be a gallant. Why not hire the best lawyers or pay the police? For the right amount, they’ll perform unlawful acts.”

“It was horrific enough that you were hurt.” Timothy leaned forward me to hug me, but I shoved him away. I don’t like men (or women). He ought to know not to try touch.

“Sister!”

“Whatever. Please find Old Max and then return him to me. I miss him so very much.”

“After I ring up the agency and get you on a new minder. You’re not yet ready to be alone.”

“Whatever.”

My new minder’s name is Samantha. I bonded with her. After a few days in my home, she rolled up her sleeves and showed me the scars on her wrists.

She and I never discussed Richard Taylor. We say nothing of his forced intercourse with me nor of his death in a holding cell at the hands of other inmates. Instead, Samantha and I sit for hours listening to bird song. Sometimes, we take walks around the neighborhood.

Over time, I’ve learned to eat. I’m still underweight, but I can, now, put solid foodstuffs into my mouth, swallow them, and then keep them in my body. Under Samantha’s care, I’ve gained a stone.

Timothy doesn’t come around so much, anymore. He’s working full-time as well as has reenrolled in university for a graduate degree. He says that he’s begun to date, too.

I’ve accepted that Old Max died. I’ve accepted that I killed him from neglect. Still, most nights, I cry over him. Like me, he was an innocent. In his place is Petunia, a pit bull terrier with fawn and red markings.

Timothy says I should stop pretending that my furry companions are breeds of dogs forbidden by the Dangerous Dogs Act. Contrariwise, Dr. Norton, during a recent family consult, scolded my brother, suggesting to him that it doesn’t matter whether I own a “Bichon Frise” or a “Pit Bull.” After all, she thinks that Old Max was a “Papillon,” even though I knew him to be a Great Dane (my doctor’s still money-grubbing as well as delusional.)

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Note: All of the art, writing, and music on this site belongs to the person who created it. Copying or republishing anything you see here without express and written permission from the author or artist is strictly prohibited.

Erika Cleveland
“Things Weighing on My Mind”
Inspiration piece

The Weighty Decades of Yehudis Blau
By Channie Greenberg
Response

Yehudis sighed as she pulled at her cuticle. When she was a child, she used to chew that flexible bit of her flesh until her mother started doctoring it with Tabasco sauce. Later, as a teen, she became a nail-biter. Unfortunately, that latter behavior, i.e., her nipping at the flattish horns on her fingers, did less to alleviate her anxieties than had her former one of tearing the nonmineral covering situated at the base of each of her nails.

It was of little wonder that adolescent Yehudis felt so much tension. Her older brother, Asher, had drafted into the IDF as a lone soldier. Mere months after his enlistment, the Six Day War had erupted. Despite Israel’s air supremacy, too many soldiers died defending the Holy Land. Yehudis, like her mother, became very upset.

Providentially, at the time, Shlomo Errel was the chief of Israel’s navy. During the Battle of the Rumani Coast, he was instrumental in sinking of two Egyptian torpedo boats and in preserving the lives of all of his men. Shlomo was smart. He was confident. He was a great strategist. He was also Asher’s mentor.

In 1968, Shlomo retired from the IDF and moved to New York, where he studied at Colombia. Asher, likewise, left Israel to relocate to Gotham.

Shlomo married Sara, who birthed their children, Gilia and Udi. Asher married no one and fathered no children.

Rather, Asher applied to work at the help desk of Barnard College’s Information Department. Notwithstanding his acquaintance with many of that school’s collegians, he remained a bachelor.

On balance, Asher used his free hours to manipulate the school’s large, mainframe computer. When, in the early 1970s, Barnard invested in an Intel 4004, a state-of-the-art microprocessor, Asher was among the limited number of staff members permitted to use it.

Elsewhere, Yehudis aged. Her mother kept increasingly pressing her to marry and to produce the family’s next generation. Little was said about Asher’s singlehood. Contrariwise, Yehudis’ mother asked her to relocate to The Center of the Universe since the selection of “nice, Jewish boys” in New York, purportedly, was better than was the selection of “nice, Jewish boys” in their “out-of-town” city, Pittsburgh.

Yehudis set aside her mother’s protests and stayed put. The profit that she made on some stocks and bonds enabled her to leave her dull, management position at Westinghouse Corporation’s headquarters and to open a flower shop on Squirrel Hill’s main street.

To her great joy and her mother’s chagrin, Yehudis’ business became a terminus for party planners and locals. Her shop provided ambiance for bnai mitzvot and weddings, as well as for baptisms and confirmations—then, as now, Pittsburgh was largely a Catholic metropolis.

When Yehudis reached thirty, her mother hired a shadchan, i.e., a matchmaker. Whereas their family wasn’t Orthodox, Asher had been spending more time in hospitals, where he sought drug cocktails and other treatments for his recurring HIV complications, than in Barnard’s budding Information Technology Department. While, with great hoopla and little enthusiasm, Yehudis had at last agreed to date Boaz Haddad, then Netanel Weiss, then Hirsh Levy, and, finally, Shay Efron, Asher’s CD4+ count was hovering in the low 200s. An AIDs diagnosis seemed imminent. Thus, unless Yehudis soon wed, her mother would have no grandchildren.

Yehudis married Shay, but their union produced mixed mazel. On the one hand, he planted two sons and two daughters in her womb. On the other hand, their children grew up with a father who leaned on a cane, then relied on a walker, and, in the end, couldn’t ambulate unless someone pushed his wheelchair. Initially unbeknownst to Yehudis, two decades prior to their nuptials, Shay had been diagnosed with multiple sclerosis. The man who, in the past, had carried her over their apartment’s threshold, spent the remainder of their shared decades in decline.

In the first part of her and Shay’s time together, Yehudis and her children rallied, aiding him with eating, dressing, and using the bathroom. As those offspring grew into teenagers, all the same, that arrangement stopped working. One son flew off to Israel to enlist like his uncle had earlier. Another entered a graduated program on the West Coast. As for the girls, they objected, rightfully, to having to continue assisting their father with his bodily needs.

The younger daughter sought a “safe” escape. She applied for and was granted early admission to college. The older one moved to the commune that had been suggested to her by her Uncle Asher.

In due course, Yehudis hired aides. She drained all of her and Shay’s savings, investments, and other monies to paying for his care.

Within a season of her selling their house and moving them into a rental, Shay died of a pulmonary infection. At only sixty, Yehudis was widowed. She had no home, no nearby kin, and no flower store (her business, as well, had been sold to pay for some of Shay’s medical bills.)

Yehudis weighed moving to a senior community in Vallejo or sharing an apartment in West San Jose with a junior roommate, but the Bay Area’s cost of living, the lack of jobs being offered by eBay, and the commute between either of her dream locations and Stanford University forced Yehudis to give up on living near her son. Instead, she retired to Cape Coral, Florida, where she parleyed the accounting skills that she had developed as an entrepreneur into a part-time gig with the Fort Meyers branch of the IRA.

Yehudis spent over two hours getting to and from work, daily. In spite of that time sink, she reveled in the beauty of her canal-laced city, was happy when walking along Cape Coral’s beaches, and was thrilled by the Caloosa Bird Club’s activities. So, she stayed put in her light-filled, nearly affordable studio.

Her apartment stopped being within her means, however, after she underwent a hip replacement that necessitated her paying for help and after her insurance provider refused to cover the cost of replacing the items that had been stolen by her nurses. Yehudis began to contemplate her younger daughter’s suggestions that she return North to live in the unit adjunct to her daughter’s house. All that Yehudis had to do in exchange for the use of that residence was to babysit her five grandchildren every day, cook dinner on Tuesdays, Thursdays, and Sundays, and serve as the family’s laundress every Monday and Friday.

At the outset, it appeared that Yehudis had no better alternatives. Her son at Stanford was busy with postdoc research. Her once commune-bound daughter, that child who had meanwhile served in and then left a Peace Corp position in agroforestry, in Africa, was occupied building Earthships in New Mexico. Yehudis’ youngest had stayed in Israel. He had made aliyah, married a girl from Holon, and was pursuing a Technion degree in Education in Science and Technology (like his brother, he was proficient in math.)

What’s more, Yehudis’ mother was dead, having hung on long enough to behold great-grandchildren, but not any longer. As per Yehudis’ brother, Asher, he was still very much alive, still very much employed by Barnard, and still very convinced that his sister and his lifestyle ought not to intermingle.

Yehudis picked at her cuticle, again. Mandatory retirement had, essentially, been abolished by the ADEA. Even so, employers preferred to hire less expensive, less experienced kids than grandmas like her. Perhaps, in addition to her part-time IRA work, she could become a greeter at the local Walmart Supercenter. Perhaps, she could teach EFL online. Perhaps, she should take a short walk into the ocean during high tide.

Yehudis actualized none of those options. Equally, she did not move to the unit attached to her daughter’s house. In lieu of those schemes, she decided to get remarried.

Much as women considerably outnumbered men in her cohort, in the local dating pool, Yehudis successfully spent time with Barry Zangwill from Pine Manor, then with Yossi Felman from San Carlos Park, then with Yitzi Zander from Fort Myers Beach, and, eventually, with Avi Steingart from Burnt Store Marina. She hadn’t intended to swipe right on Avi as, unlike her other suitors, he was a divorcee, not a widower, but something about his self-description had made her smile.

Avi had referred to himself as “bald, aging, and possessed of a quirky sense of humor.” He had, moreover, indicated that regardless of the reality that his assets were generous, two sets of alimony payments left him with relatively modest day-to-day means.

Yehudis reckoned that anyone living in a yachting resort couldn’t be objectively poor. She agreed to date him, anyway.

During their House of Omelets first date, Avi stated that his wealth had been made from “investments,” e.g., from Topps Chewing Gum baseball cards. Later, he had progressed to buying precious metals and real estate. His last dealings had been with CDs and TIPs. Venture capital had never been on his radar. Further, he no longer dallied with his resources as he had no incentive to become richer.

Avi brought Yehudis to The Trading Post, for ice cream, for their second date. For their third date, he escorted her through the Imaginarium Science Center. For their fourth date, he joined her at Harbor View Gallery. For their fifth, he invited Yehudis aboard to sample galley-sourced cooking. That night, he proposed.

Subsequently, neither of them thought it necessary to seek their children’s permission to marry. Equally, they felt no need to delay their ceremony; they were getting more and more elderly each day. Their simple service involved a civil servant, and, as a witness, a pal from Yehudis’ birding club.

After a few kisses and cocktails, they returned to Avi’s boat. To create a fresh start for his new bride, Avi had had his vessel moved to a berth at Sanibel Marina. Correspondingly, he had given Yehudis an allowance to redecorate it. Its interior walls sported blue paint, not white. Its floor, which once had been covered with cork, was now carpeted.

For her part, Yehudis quit her IRA job; Avi deserved her full attention. She learned how to rub the cricks out of his neck. She learned, too, how not to complain when he asked her to dress and cook the fish he enjoyed catching.

A few months into their marriage, the pair made a trip to Israel so that Avi could meet his younger stepson and so that Yehudis could meet her newest grandchildren. Shortly thereafter, Avi was felled by a heart attack.

Following Avi’s death, for almost a decade, Yehudis lived alone on Avi’s yacht. Because venturing out meant the possibility of encountering the snakes that the local government had encouraged to breed, to reduce the area’s rodent population, she relied on delivery services for food and other staples. Likewise, Yehudis paid an excessive amount of dollars to have her garbage and gray water carted off and to have her tanks topped.

In the interim, Yehudis met and became friends with both of Avi’s former wives. Those ladies sincerely thanked her for befriending the man whom they had loved but had found impossible with whom to live. He had never been a womanizer, a drunk, or irresponsible with money, just extremely unconventional.

Neither of those other women had appreciated his insistence on using only complimentary medicine or on wearing only Hawaiian shirts. Additionally, each of them had detested his lack of involvement in local galas, specifically, and his refusal to sell his boat to live life ashore, more generally.

All things considered, the differences between Rachel and Sara, and Yehudis were unimportant. Rachel, Avi’s first wife, brokered peace between Yehudis and her now food forest-championing daughter. Avi’s second wife, Sara, coaxed Yehudis’ older girl to visit Florida unaccompanied by her husband or children. At Yehudis’ funeral, that offspring wouldn’t stop babbling about the wonderful, solo vacation that she had taken “at her mother’s behest.” Those triumphs aside, all of Rachel and Sara’s attempts to reconcile Asher and Yehudis failed.

At least, those three ladies enjoyed their cross-country trip. Together, they drove from Florida’s West Coast to Stanford and back.

In California, two truly proud aunties, Rachel and Sara, oohed and aahed over Yehudis’ boy’s accomplishment. They plied him with contact details for their friends’ daughters and for their own nieces. A few years after Yehudis’ death, that fledgling scientist married one of their nieces, a gal who had been working as a software engineer in Palo Alto.

Toward the end of Yehudis’ life, Rachel and Sara took turns supervising her nurses. Cancer had made her frail. At the same time as those women detested Yehudis’ home’s rocking and pitching, they loved her. In fact, both ladies were at her side when hospice care said it was time for “Viduy.”

Asher came down from New York for Yehudis’ funeral. All of Yehudis’ children and all of her grandchildren, too, made themselves present. Discretely, Rachel and Sara photographed her family.

Ultimately, those two silvered-haired ladies bought Yehudis’ boat from her family. After a long wait, they had found a good use for their stockpiled alimony payments.

They would remember Avi. They would remember Yehudis. Over and above those veracities, they would embark on a final adventure. A call to a nearby drugstore would supply them with dimenhydrinate and cyclizine. A call to a sea recruitment service would yield them a pilot and cook.

Before the ladies set sail, Asher asked for and was given a few of Yehudis’ stuffed animals and some of the vases that she had saved from her flower shop. Yehudis’ sons and daughters picked out paintings, tea towels, and other, miscellaneous bits and bobs that reminded them of their childhood. Weirdly, the four of them fought over the catheter that had been left over from their father’s care and that had been discovered at the bottom of Yehudis’ footlocker.

Conversely, none among them laid claim to Yehudis’ fingernail scissors or to her yellowed picture of Commander Shlomo Errel.

For that reason, Rachel and Sara donated those items and the rest of Yehudis’ effects to Good Will. They arranged taxis to shuttle her kin to the airport. Then, they opened a variety of nautical charts.

——————————————————
Note: All of the art, writing, and music on this site belongs to the person who created it. Copying or republishing anything you see here without express and written permission from the author or artist is strictly prohibited.

Erika Cleveland
“Night Vision”
Goauche and watercolor crayon in handmade book
Inspiration piece

Fecundity
By Channie Greenberg
Response

Amal, Carrie, Gertrude, Hilary, Joanne, Linda, Maribelle, Princess, and Suzanne became gravid at the same time. As they and their husbands were the sole participants in the Thursday Bridge and Cheddar Cheese on Crackers Club, the synchronicity of their expanded bellies was remarkable.

Initially, the fellowship’s members joked about “something weird in the water served alongside of the snackies.” They laughed, too, that Suzanne had gotten knocked up since she and Rudy were the club’s substitutes and as such were not always in attendance.

Subsequently, the men began to worry. Managing relocations and readjusting budgets were chief among their concerns. Not one among the bridge players was younger than sixty-five. All of them lived in Golden Days Retirement Community, a neighborhood that disallowed any residents under eighteen.

What’s more, whereas Rudy, Suzanne’s husband, and Thomas, Maribelle’s spouse, made a little pocket money consulting, respectively, on sustainability, and on human resources, the rest of the men, save for Lionel, relied on a combination of monthly social security checks and on their preprogrammed liquidations of stocks and bonds to get by.

Lionel had funds because he had been married before hitching to Carrie. His first wife, who had died decades earlier from ovarian cancer, had been the sole heiress to a rectal thermometer manufacturing empire, and had bequeathed all of her wealth to Lionel. It was rumored that Lionel and Carrie possessed enough moula to endow multiple chairs at Lionel’s alma mater as well as to provide an around-the-world tour for the entire Thursday Bridge and Cheddar Cheese on Crackers Club. Their actual fiduciary standing, though, remained a cypher seeing as Carrie wore clothing from Target and Kmart and Lionel drove a twelve year-old Honda Civic.

At the same time as their menfolk were fretting, the gals took action. They met doctors, avoided the media, sought new apartments, and shopped for layettes.

None of them had ever had children. Some of them had tried medical interventions. Others of them, who rejected excessive intercessions, had directly grieved their lost generations. Only Carrie, Lionel’s second wife, who was betrothed long after becoming perimenopausal, had never assumed that she might become a mom.

Regardless, fatigue, moodiness, and hunger sidetracked those gals from their assorted undertakings. They suffered the mental rust and nausea common to younger would-be moms, alongside of the heartburn, back aches, compromised knees, elevated blood pressure, and fatty liver disease more common to women their age.

Linda, the retired school teacher, and Gertrude, the retired chemistry professor, additionally, put up with constipation. The nipples of Hilary, the retired zookeeper, became uncomfortably sensitive and purple. Amal, the retired waitress endured a hairy belly. Carrie, the traditional housewife, and Princess, the former estate gardener, couldn’t stop burping and farting. Maribelle, the retired loan officer, and Suzanne, the retired meter maid, both squirmed from Bartholin’s Cysts. Only Joanne, the aerobics instructor, who still worked part-time, reported no special symptoms.

On their exclusive WhatsApp group, the ladies of the Thursday Bridge and Cheddar Cheese on Crackers Club debated the cause of their newfound status. Frequently, individual members had to excuse themselves from those chats to use the bathroom or to answer realtors’ calls.

Nonetheless, those gals rejected the possibility that they had shared an abrupt, profound hormone shift after collectively visiting the local zoo’s reptile house. Hilary had successfully persuaded them that their having stared at mating Komodo dragons could not have caused their common epigenetic shift.

The ladies similarly rebuffed the hypothesis that each and every one of them had been dallying outside of marriage. Only Antonio, Linda’s husband, was known to have prostrate issues. All of them, moreover, knew to avoid adultery. Most of the drugs available to combat STDs were incompatible with statins and beta blockers. The women might have wistfully giggled over the pool boy, the maintenance man, and the yard crew, but they limited their “trysts” to window shopping.

Amal offered a new conjecture. She suggested that the women had involuntary become medical guinea pigs. Weeks before she and her coterie had noticed their state of flowering, Amal had accidentally collided with a pharmacist. That pharmacist was walking through the locked hospital ward, where Amal’s sister was a nurse. Maybe, the drug doc had not meant to dispense medications, but to surreptitiously test a rare gonadotropin. Amal hadn’t thought it could be dangerous to her and her friends to deliver chicken salad sandwiches to her sibling.

The other gestating crones laughed Amal into silence. All the same, they provided no alternative theories in view of the fact that they were busy puking, shopping, and otherwise separating themselves from day-to-day life.

For instance, when not reshuffling the contents of her gut, Princess daydreamed about the fruit trees with which she used to work and about the orchids with which she used to fashion displays. She missed all kinds of blossoms and resented that she would have to continue to do so as Seymour had decided that they would rent half of his brother’s Bronx duplex. Their move-in date was two months away.

Linda, too, sidestepped reality to post, to Snapchat, pictures of her unrestrained belly and her pendulant breasts. Most often, her attempts got censored. Ever the feminist social sciences teacher, Linda insisted on celebrating pregnancy through “body positive” pictures. It seemed a pity that the social media insisted on showcasing the wonder of the female anatomy only in the case of young, lithe mothers-to-be.

Meanwhile, Gertrude seemed to have lost her mind when her nausea began coupling with paresthesia. She desperately wanted to return to her bench to find an easy cure for her woes and to determine why she and her buddies had become extremely elderly primagravitas in chorus. Yet, Gertrude lifted nary a test tube and centrifuged not one liquid into pools of differing densities; her professional sentiments only fired up when she was ill with low blood sugar around four most afternoons.

Suzanne, too, tripped the light fantastic to music only she heard. Accordingly, she urged her friends to improve the world’s status quo. She encouraged them, immediately, to: promote social ranking, purvey tertiary economies, convey norms, disseminate values, function as vehicles for the language of communal passions, and iconize popular ideals. Suzanne’s hormone swells gave her a loud voice.

In the interim, Zaccheus moved himself and his wife, Joanne, to a coop in New Haven. From afar, Joanne tried to continue her involvement with the other ladies, but those gals, who resented their inability to use facet time to quibble over Joanne’s opinions, barred her from their electronic clique. Those pregnant souls reassured themselves that it was okay to exclude her because Joanne was the prettiest, most symptom-free among them. The rounder they became, the more they relied on certain styles of logic.

Shortly thereafter, Maribelle determined that her peers needed to accept her heretofore hidden “ability” to engineer insights. Hourly, she pinged the other female bridge players to insist that they acknowledge her prowess with social architecture. She’d instant message them thrice daily, too, to warn them against all attempts to reify their former routines. Clinging to old ways was vexatious at best, unfeasible at worst, she cautioned. It would be better, she espoused, if, instead, they hoarded diapers and pacifiers. Likewise, her gal pals ought to cease trying to determine they destiny or its underlying causes.

Only fools believed pregnancy was synonymous with rejuvenation, she spouted. Her card playing sisters’ girth might be rising, but they remained a wrinkled, liver-spotted lot. More exactly, the study of human agronomy remained beyond their know-how; they should focus on basic concepts, like the nature of Kegels and of Braxton Hicks.

Wisdom aside, Maribelle’s expositions remained unpopular. That is, they went largely ignored until Hilary suddenly perished from a stroke. The women then texted each other that perhaps all issues associated with fecundity ought to be delegated to their doctors.

The ladies went this way and that way over Hilary’s death, but Jason was inconsolable. He refused to accept that a hemorrhage had cut off the blood supply to his wife’s brain. He had instantaneously lost both his life partner and his mind-boggling, new hope of becoming a father. He alone, among the bridge players, could remain in their retirement village.

A few nights after Hilary’s funeral, Jason hung himself from the clubhouse ceiling. No one had known that he had told Hilary, at the osprey and coyote exhibits, during the club’s private zoo tours, that like those creatures, he and Hilary were mated for life.

Despite Jason’s failure to understand the significance of Lionel’s second chance at happiness, Lionel paid attention to both Jason’s death and Hilary’s demise. Hence, Lionel insisted that he and Carrie skip all forthcoming Thursday night games. Hastily, he relocated himself and Carrie to their New York City pied-à-terre. There, a salaried nanny helped them decorate, supervise contractors, and in other respects prepare for their future.

The club’s spare pair, Suzanne and Rudy, had already permanently replaced Joanne and Zaccheus. Without Hilary and Jason, and Lionel and Carrie, the club no longer had full tables. The members were reduced to playing rubber bridge.

The problem was that half of the club, specifically, the temperamental, bun-filled ovens, loved only duplicate. Consequently, Princess and Seymour moved out a month ahead of schedule.

All of a sudden only enough couples remained in Golden Days Retirement Community’s Thursday Bridge and Cheddar Cheese on Crackers Club to set up a lone table of male players and a lone table of female players, plus a spare pair who could be put to use heckling. That plan barely lasted four days.

In no time at all, the bridge players were forced to choose between returning to rubber bridge or to playing mixed duplicate since both Gertrude and Linda had to be hospitalized. Gertrude’s uterus was hosting a private dance party and Linda had preeclampsia.

Allen and Antonio carpooled to the hospital. Allen brought thermoses of coffee. Antonio brought change for the meters.

Over tens and aces, Suzanne sobbed that she missed Gertrude’s diatribes about amanuenses and savants. She shed further tears over how wonderful it was that Rudy had married her and about how horrible it was that puppy mills existed.

Stuffing handfuls of Swiss and Gouda cubes into her mouth, Maribelle nodded in agreement about her own relationship to her husband, Thomas, and lamented her lack of access to Linda and that woman’s social advocacy. Maribelle whispered aloud that all animal shelters should be no kill, but Suzanne heard her and began blubbing anew.

Maribelle shrugged and then reminded Amal that when Linda was carried to the ambulance, Linda had shouted out apologies and had admitted that Maribelle had been right that the world, into which their children would be born, was dreadful. Linda’s last words, screeched as the attendants were shutting the ambulance’s doors, were that the bridge players being forced to leave the retirement community was bad, but bridge players being ridiculed for being “mothers of advanced years” was worse.

Suzanne kept crying. Amal shrugged and then piled her plate with water biscuits and oyster crackers.

A few weeks later, Suzanne was shipped to a New York City level six hospital. Very belatedly, her obstetrician had discovered that she was having twins and that they were trying to prematurely birth themselves.

Just Amal and Maribelle carried their pregnancies to term in the retirement village. Although they were under increasing pressure to move, their nesting instincts prevailed over their received legal documents.

Most days, those two visited each other to compare notes on the anchovy and apricot omelets they had taken to eating. Occasionally, they sniggered over new ways to increase the elasticity of an article of clothing’s waistline.

Thomas, Maribelle’s husband, answered the phone when Vili, Amal’s spouse called. His and Amal’s midwife had delivered their boy. Because of an accident on the New Jersey Turnpike, Amal, who was thirty-eight weeks and three days pregnant, never made it to the hospital. Fortunately, her labor coach, who was also a certified midwife and a wise woman versed in several cultures’ worth of birthing lore, had been in the car with them.

Maribelle stewed through her thirty-ninth and then fortieth weeks of pregnancy. At forty-one weeks, her doctors threatened to call Child Services if she refused to be induced. Child Services was never contacted, though because Thomas and Maribelle, too, birthed outside of the hospital.

A middle of the night bathroom break was quickly understood to be second stage labor. Thomas, tutored over the phone by local paramedics, caught his and Maribelle’s daughter.

The members of Golden Days Retirement Community’s Thursday Bridge and Cheddar Cheese on Crackers Club never learned why they, individually, and collectively, were gifted with late life pregnancy. All that they ascertained was: gated residences take unkindly toward young, squawky residents, the death of a spouse is tragic, but suicide is worse, pregnancy is hard on women, especially ones in their twilight years, duplicate bridge is more fun than rubber bridge, and people are never too old to love their babies.

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Note: All of the art, writing, and music on this site belongs to the person who created it. Copying or republishing anything you see here without express and written permission from the author or artist is strictly prohibited.

Erika Cleveland
“A Select Group of La Casa Nostra
Wives Had Aspired to Take Down ISIS”
Goauche and watercolor crayon in handmade book
Response

Do Good or Feel Good
By Channie Greenberg
Inspiration piece

Imelda Accorsi was a “change of life baby,” whom, after graduating from high school, had convinced her parents to fund a year-long transcontinental journey. Neither her mother and father nor she would have to pay tuition for her when she returned home as Imelda had already created a college fund. Simply, she had blackmailed her high school’s office staff by threatening to retweet certain of their indiscrete social media posts.

Imelda’s father, who bragged of his daughter’s extortion skills to his cronies, was unconcerned that she meant to hop among countries. As soon as she came home, he’d gift her with a lavish wedding. Already, he was negotiating her bride price. A wise Mafia boss, he knew that her type of ambition was best thwarted in the bedroom.

Oblivious to her father’s arrangements for her future, Imelda flew from Los Angeles to Tokyo and then to Beijing. From Beijing, she traveled to Dushanbe, where she lingered long enough to learn basic Tajik, a form of Persian. Thereafter, she settled in Manama to learn Arabic.

When living in Bahrain, Imelda had to be veiled and had to practice muhajiba. Despite those constraints, bit by bit, she was able to observe that significant numbers of highly educated females lived in her city. Correspondingly, she determined that the nation endorsed social organizations for women. Accordingly accommodated, Imelda remained in that Persian Gulf country for three years rather than for the lone summer that she had originally intended. She was actually contemplating enrolling in college in Manama at the same time as the Nonners summoned her.

****

A select group of La Cosa Nostra wives had aspired to take down ISIS. Bored with listening to their kinsmen’s accounts of gambling, loan sharking, protection racketeering, and fraud, and fed up with wasting hours with shopping, engaging in trysts, and planning parties, a number of those adventurous women embraced a greater challenge. They contacted their sisters-in-crime in Asia, in Europe, in Russia, and in Africa, and machinated seditious schemes together.

Relying heavily on intelligence gathered by: the young mistresses of Afghanistan’s patronage system, the matrons undermining the Pakistani Mafiosi’s child trafficking, and the grandmothers of men done up by Bulgaria’s organized cartels, those estrogen-driven conspirators got collectively busy fashioning stratagem for culling both ISIS’s lone wolves and the caliph’s more traditional loyalists.

Inspired by the likes of Gertrude Lythgoe, Thelma Wright, Marllory Dadiana Chacon Rossell, Raffela D’Alterio, and Griselda Blanco, those La Cosa Nostra gals aimed to thwart as many malevolent kaffiyeh-wearers as possible. If Middle Easterners took over the world, their syndicates’ self-respecting menfolk would lose their status, and they, their syndicates’ womenfolk, would be reduced to the equivalent of prey. Besides, engrossing themselves in dangerous work kept them perky.

Additionally, because most clans, theirs and Daesh’s included, boasted few empowered females, no one would suspect them. As a rule, girls governed by crime consortia never bother bidding for emancipation. For every la donna a capo di tutti I capi, there were hundreds of thousands of women who are mutilated, raped, or slain because some man has had a whim. Often the best that mob mammas can achieve is to resign themselves to being toys, slaves, or “partners” for their kinsmen. The most astute, most inventive, most courageous women get married. The rest suffer. Even the highest ranking “wife/moms” understand that their husbands “have to” retain pleasure women.

So, the Nonners reached deep into their tribes for proxies, skipped over sycophantic volunteers, and expended their decades’ of street smarts to disable “obstacles.” Those grannies played on other donnas’ belief that the best shelter from the darkest regime of the Middle East could be obtained in the shadows. More specifically, to fuel uprisings among the ISIS faithful, those elders: met with wine-sodden informants, sought the company of “scandalous women,” and appointed markswomen. Their ingathering included Imelda.

****

Upon being summoned, Imelda straightaway bought a ticket to Aleppo, the airport nearest Tartus. However, she nearly didn’t board her plane as she was struck, in the departure lounge, by the realization that her leaving Bahrain, over all, would mean abandoning the fractious Bahraini ladies, and, more precisely, would mean deserting those women at a time when they were contesting the ploys of their rulers.

All the same, in the end, Imelda took her seat. Her loyalty to The Family decided her; given that the local females’ assemblies were highly unlawful, and given that her being arrested alongside of other revolutionaries would expose her Mafia identity, it seemed wiser to return home than to stay abroad.

As it was, the grandmothers had expressly chosen to extract Imelda as she had already compromised her distinctiveness. That foolish girl had posted, to the Internet, pictures of both Bahraini insurrectionaries and ISIS soldiers (typically, Mafia children, who advertise their existence, post images of Porto-Pollo Beaches or of the Atacama Desert.)

Irrespective of that poor judgement, Imelda was encouraged to train hard. She did, excelling in her drills and at her initial assignment. Consequently, she once more found herself wiggling into an abaya and donning gloves, albeit, this time, divorced from social media.

Now and again, when Imelda was waiting to carry out an execution, she imagined herself to be part of a hive mind. She storied herself that she would intuit, within the world’s killing circles, other Mafia women, who, in the same way, were assigned to sleeper cells. Imelda smiled whenever thinking about her alleged “sisters.”

She considered, too, that the signal, which had to exist, and which would instantaneously summon all of the hidden Mafia granddaughters, would be an “anonymous” Amazon drop, via drones, of Deborah Wiles’ Revolution. Although she questioned how the Nonners would contact their agents in Iraq and Iran, places where young women were prohibited from possessing books that were not approved by censors or male guardians, Imelda perceived the supposed form of mobilizing the girls as brilliant.

Meanwhile, mistakenly, Imelda deduced that the Grandmothers had supplied her close relatives with her whereabouts. She similarly, erroneously, believed that her role as an eradicator would make her parents proud.

****

Elsewhere, Armanno, Imelda’s brother, became a sniper for a local don. That boy had been surreptitiously sent as a USA Navy Seal, on a third level destroyer, to decimate whomever his “commanders” pursued. As a result of the top secret nature of his place of duty, few of Armanno’s goings-on were ever recorded.

That sibling might have been an infiltrator and he might have been a murderer, but he concurrently regarded himself to be a gentleman. Especially, he knew himself to be an individual who was careful to avoid misogynous acts. Armanno stoutly rejected his parents’ emphases on gender inequality since the young, Russian woman, to whom Armanno was betrothed, unbeknownst to The Family, was an Assistant Professor of Feminist Philosophy. She had made clear to Armanno the world’s truths.

Marva was quite fond of regaling Armanno with her poststructuralist interpretations. Often, postcoitus, she would quote Jennifer Baumgartner or Amy Richards, or would parrot “feminist” excerpts from religious texts.

By and by, she also became obsessed with axiological writings. Increasingly, that is, whenever her fiancé had leave from his duties, Marva would draw him into disputes over “doing good” versus “feeling good.”

Mavra insisted that it was better to care for other people than to maximize pleasure. Armanno, contrariwise, suggested that people could take pleasure in aiding others. Simultaneous with articulating his counterpoints, he’d gestured lewdly at his beloved.

At some point, when skyping with Armanno, Imelda had laughed about their feud and had offered to compromise her positon if Armanno would merely wire flowers to her from every port at which his ship stopped. Unfortunately, Armanno neither backed down from his perspective nor sent posies to his bride-to-be. Instead, Imelda’s brother had begun to reason that shacking up with a non-Italian girl had begun to cost him his manliness. Let her yearn for feminine gifts. She would have to do so without him.

Serendipitously, shortly after emotionally abandoning Marva, Armanno was court-marshaled. He accepted his sentence stoically, neither attempting to identify which coworker had ratted him out nor seeking revenge against the judges who had sentenced him. Armanno trusted that The Family would find the right lawyer to release him from military jail.

****

All in all, it was not The Family, but Imelda, who importuned the Nonners on Armanno’s behalf, who facilitated his release. Certain Grandmothers convinced the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives to take Armanno into their custody to prepare him to be a Certified Fire Investigator, i.e. to help them stymie arsons.

Imelda, who had expected Armanno to praise her for obtaining his freedom, received no thanks. Whereas she appreciated that her brother’s new talents in fire dynamics, in evidence collection, and in scene reconstruction could make him useful, all over again, to The Family, and whereas she was conscious that any knife used to prepare braciola could likewise be used to slit carotid arteries, her brother did not share her view of his circumstances. More exactly, Armanno, who had formerly seen himself as a machismo Navy prisoner, who was protected by the Mafia, suddenly, at his sister’s behest, was experiencing himself as a pawn for the Nonners and as a partisan of the United States Department of Justice.

What’s more, Mavra, who had researched the ATF at the advent of Armanno’s transfer, had grasped that her bed mate would not be permitted to leave the ATF National Academy and that she would not be allowed to make conjugal visits. Those data, plus Armanno’s ongoing unwillingness to join her on a philosophical middle ground, let alone communicate with her, decided Marva against going forward with their troth. In an email, she stated that she needed to explore her brand-new gender fluidity and that, as such, she could no longer commit to fidelity.

****

Blaming Imelda for his romantic and career woes, Armanno unfriended his sister on Facebook and blocked her on LinkedIn. He no longer cared that she was an esteemed terminator. She was as despicable as was Marva, a woman who was entirely mistaken that females could be males’ equals. Boys, not girls, ought to be trigger men. Moreso, sisters shouldn’t meddle with brothers’ affairs. Because of Imelda’s intrusion into his life, he had been demoted. There was no status in being a Nonners’ mole.  Armanno subscribed to FEMAIL, MAIL-MEN, WON and WOMBAT. Those listservs willingly published many snippets of his unmodulated anger.  Nevertheless, a few years later, after too many quarrels with his fellow posters, Armanno come to terms that his work, while boring, abetted his longevity. He similarly reconciled himself with the fact that his sister’s work as a hired gun didn’t protect her from all predation and couldn’t expunge her from all of the guilt associated with her profession. Even during occasions when she “only” assisted with a dispatching, she remained culpable.  Thus enlightened, Armanno weighed emailing an apology to Marva. In spite of his new insights, after composing his letter, instead of pushing the button for “send,” he pushed the button for “delete.” More time and more information passed through Armanno’s life. He comprehended that: when people remain silent at the funeral pyres of innocent women, namely, at the pyres of wives literally chained to their dead spouses, when people are mute at the beheadings of females scapegoated for their menfolk’s’ indiscretions, and when people fail to object to acid assaults on ladies who deign to question authority, those witnesses are as reprehensible as are those terrible deeds’ perpetrators.  From the security of his office in a government building, Armanno felt a strange urge to champion victims. On balance, he was still owned by the Grandmothers and by The Family. He remained obliged to hit the mattresses on behalf of them. If only he could be in a relationship with a woman like Marva, he would be well.

****

Imelda, disguised as a sex worker, rendezvoused with hunted ISIS officials. Since those men were more violent than carnal, after a while, she had to be liberated by others of the Nonners’ agents. Imelda could have, single-handedly, liquidated the men who had beaten her, but then their allies would then have snuffed her out without penalty.

Imelda’s resultant hospitalization was miserable. She was desperate to convince the female leadership not to negotiations with ISIS deputies. Jettisoning the mannish, Mafioso thirst for Caliph deaths was not enough; the Nonners also needed to keep a protective space between themselves and their enemy. Yet, because Imelda’s bones mended and her burns healed in the company of unreliable keepers, she was unable to take her message to the Grandmothers.

By the same token, no exchanges were initiated by Imelda’s superiors. The hospital staff that tended her, whom Imelda suspected were hired by the matrons, merely smiled and nodded whenever they entered her room. Not English or Italian garnered their attention. Her only consolation was negligible; one of them replenished the vase of flowers on her nightstand daily.

Just before being discharged, Imelda discovered that isolation was the least of her worries; she had been blacklisted. The goombahs were making a point, “in public,” of being revolted by her. Apparently, The Family had verified that Imelda had been filling “male roles” for more than a decade.

It followed that when she left the healing institute, there was no safe house in which she could harbor. Even Imelda’s Madre e Padre, had made a show of dropping all connections to her. Most confusing was that no Nonner came to her defense.

Imelda knew that the bosses would not have liked the Grandmothers’ rhetoric, but would have given it an audience. She could not have guessed that the Grandmothers’ had a hand in the dons’ treachery and that they were sponsoring the growing number of cyberattacks against which she was defending. All that Imelda understood was that her favorite Zia had sent her a WhatsApp message cautioning her against carrying out private illegalities. While working in foreign lands, the young warrior had failed to consider that her ongoing, anonymous, but bloody, “assistance” to suppressed women had resonated sourly with her higher ups.

****

Moneyed, but highly vulnerable, Imelda paid a blacksmith to teach her new proficiencies. Likewise, she bettered her long distance running and made an effort to increase the amount of weight she could lift. Defiantly, she revisited the Nonners’ patronage as well as submitted herself, again, to her brother’s good graces.

Somehow, Armanno had been able to retire from the Department of Justice. He had more grey hair, but more confidence, than he had had the last time his sister had seen him. Plus, Armanno acted as though it was his good fortune that he had been positioned as a messaggero.

The two met for burgers and fries once or twice a month. They sneered. They argued. They were glad for each other’s company.

Under the table dealings, eventually, posted those siblings, together, to Lekeitio, Spain. They were tasked to “invite” a certain member of the Sacra Corona Unita to return Stateside with them. Imelda and Armanno sought him at venues abounding with money and tourists. It took some time for them to intercept him.

In the interim, they enjoyed measured leisure. In effect, on Antzar Eguna, The Day of the Geese, the two watched the festivities from a balcony overlooking the city’s main waterway. The brother and sister beheld the locals who were trying to decapitate a suspended waterfowl and the locals who were cheering them on to do so.

Imelda could envision knocking off humans, but could not dream of slaughtering defenseless creatures. Analogously, Armanno liked plum sauce when given roasted birds, but had no stomach for the aftermath of cruel butchery.

When one after another combatant proved unable to behead the fowl, and, subsequently, fell into Lekeitio Bay, the townsmen shouted approval. For hours, Imelda and Armanno saw people get dunked. Regrettably, just before dusk, someone managed to make crude hash out of the goose.

A few hours later, the Italian siblings dissipated that hatchet man.

A short span thereafter, Imelda’s body was sent back to the USA.

****

The coroner wrote that her death was caused by leg thrombosis in combination with dangerously elevated liver enzymes. That medico added nothing to his document about the multiple lacerations that the woman had received on her face and back or about the deep cuts that had been made where her vital organs had once been situated.

Days after filing his report, the doctor, himself, was found dead from an apparent overdose.

Multiple, new the foot soldiers were installed in Imelda’s stead. Inopportunely for the Nonners, those younger girls began to develop psychological alliances with their marks. Worse, not only did they forgive the slights that they had endured from The Family’s men, but they refocused their attention away from exterminations toward providing humanitarian aid. Ultimately, the Grandmothers were unable to take down ISIS.

As per Armanno, in due course, he hemmed in the cherry-picked Spaniard to whom he and Imelda had been assigned. However, he did not haul his target to the Stateside Family. Rather, Armanno succumbed to that man’s daughter, a true Mediterranean temptress.

Weeks later, he, too, was stumbled upon, face down. Whereas Armanno was discovered with all of his vital bits intact, he was discovered wrapped in a length of lace.

———————-

Note: All of the art, writing, and music on this site belongs to the person who created it. Copying or republishing anything you see here without express and written permission from the author or artist is strictly prohibited.

Erika Cleveland
“No More Pink Sea Cucumbers or Frilled Sharks, Please”
Goauche and pencil in altered book
Response

Owmapow and the Unsolicited Request
By Channie Greenberg
Inspiration piece

Dr. Own Brownstone:

I’ve read some of your short stories. I’d like to invite you to join my team for an exciting project.

Dr. Vincent Bianchi

****

Dr. Bianchi:

What type of project are you facilitating?

Dr. Owen Brownstone.

****

Dr. Brownstone:

I’ll tell you all about it when we talk. Give me some time slots.

Dr. Bianchi:

****

Dr. Bianchi:

Let’s try some time during between 11am and 5pm, Thursday. Would that work? Otherwise, I’m not available until next week.

Dr. Brownstone

****

Dr. Brownstone:

Noon, Thursday, suits me. My Skype id is Grandiose@gmail.com

Dr. Bianchi

****

Dr. Bianchi:

It was nice speaking with you. I believe that I could contribute meaningfully to your project on oceanic narrative. I like writing littoral stories.

Here’s a summary of the points I raised during our conversation;

 
* Joseph Campbell mentioned, in The Masks of G-d, that all narratives are variations of a single great story. 

* It would be helpful to hire professionals from that New Jersey-based digital entertainment company to supply images.

* Flash fiction-length tales use up very little audio time. For example, a short story of mine that was over three thousand words long took only seven minutes in audio form. 

* Narrative has a multitude of applications. Consider the YouTube video that I posted that compares and contrasts the mating habits of walpurtis with those of weedy sea dragons. https://www.youtube.com/oceanicspecies/mating/=seadragonsorwalpurtis. 

* Narrative is most effective when written for a particular audience. For whom am I making the templates? Investors? Screeners? Other? Are those persons wise about the ways of sea life? It would help me to know as much as possible about your intended audience.

*Format: maybe a dropdown box, or a similar interface with a hierarchy of topics, would be constructive. For instance, under “fish,” you could put the subtopics: “hagfish,” “lampreys,” “cartilaginous,” “ray-finned bony,” and “lobe-finned bony.” In turn, each of those subtopics could branch. More choices could create added consumer interest.

* I’d like a combination of a fixed fee contract and stock. On balance, “nothing is anything until it is something.” That is, I am willing to partition my remuneration for only a limited period. While you’re empire building, I still I have to pay bills. I’m willing to take time from others of my projects only if I can receive some upfront monies from you. 

Dr. Owen Brownstone

(Owmapow)

Something more to think about;

After your company goes public, thousands of scripts will be needed for folks who become “addicted” to your channel, i.e. to tinkering with wildlife narratives. Additional writers will have to be hired. I know many writers who could become good assistants. Let me know when you want to hire more folks.

****

Owmapow:

I got your email. Currently, I’m bombarded with sales targets, delivery issues, and prepping for my Russia trip. I can’t get into deep discussions.

I agree on your thoughts about advertising and demographics. However, our fish tales need to be mainstream. For now, I need to focus on broad-based entertainment.

Your requested a mix of remuneration. That’s tough since I don’t have the time to figure out a conversion from sweat equity to actual money. As soon as the prototype brings in funding, I can distribute funds. 

How long would it take for you to develop a few short-short stories as well as to develop a list of key words to use for blanks in those stories? What’s your fee?

Vinnie

****

Vinnie:

I grok brief emails and am okay with gaps between volleys. In fact, I’m entirely logged off most weekends. Please send me a more detailed set of specs for those short-shorts. What’s more, should I aim for texts that read for about a minute?

Orro (an Australian expression of closure used by an editor whom I adore),

Owmapow

****

Vinnie:

Attached, please find two scripts. Please advise if they are what you are seeking. 

Given introductory and closing music of approximately three to five seconds apiece, the stories, themselves, have to fill fifty seconds or less of air time. Please do not use soundtracks like those featured on Jaws. Most aquatic encounters are far less dramatic.

Nighty-night, 

Owmapow

****

Owmapow:

Thank you for your samples. I’m not sure that either of them suits me. The texts are a bit long and they lack a list of fillers. Also, they need to be simpler and funnier. Their reading level is way too high. I understand the challenge.

Also, for now, I want our prototype to focus on newscasts. See http://vimeo.com/67832415 for an example. That story about piranhas typifies what I am seeking.

Vinnie

****

Vinnie:

The broadcast was helpful. I better grasp your intended audience’s reading level and the role of sounds and images in your project. 

To wit, attached, please find new stories. The blank spaces among lines are meant to be filled in with music and pictures. These new stories are sufficiently vague as to be enjoyable to a wide array of people. Please let me know if I am approaching your concept.

Owmapow

****

Owmapow:

My initial reaction is that your work’s still a bit “out there.” I’ll get back to you.

Vinnie

****

Owmapow:

I steeped in your tales for a while. I’m confounded. Your writing is too stylized. Your language is too good. For my needs, plots and diction have to be more down to earth. I think you are still not grasping what I am seeking. 

Our users have to be able to relate to our narratives. Think species’ evolution. Think global warming or other climate change factors. Our consumers need to be able to drag/drop down events into your stories, and then to reshape them as their own. “Their” stories will include bits from Internet science sites, environmental broadcasts, and so on.

For starters, we need just a few plots, such as: fish meets fish, fish eats fish, or fishes spawn. The length of your examples is right, but your tales of tails (ha ha) still lack wide appeal. Later, maybe, can we aim for more particular audiences. For our prototype, we require mainstream.

Vinnie

****

Vinnie:

When I write up the next version, I will ask some of my college students to try it. I think they belong to the demographic you’re targeting.

Owmapow

****

Owmapow: 

No hurry. I am off the grid for a bit.

Vinnie

****

Vinnie:

The coeds say I should simplify my stories’ plots, that is, that I ought to make my samples more parsimonious. No matter, Version Three is attached. Please let me know if it is closer to what you are seeking. I dropped the complex language while retaining the narratives’ freshness.

Owmapow

****

Owmapow:

I had to take time to really get through this version, which is odd considering that the stories are brief. More specifically, any stories we use have to be more grounded. So, no more pink sea cucumbers or frilled sharks, please. Also, while I like your whimsical approach, that style doesn’t help our engineers transform stories into my prototype. Please write more plainly. Furthermore, your tales shouldn’t focus on marine geology or on chemical oceanography. Those topics are too high brow for our initial audience. Have a look at the newscasts, again.

Vinnie

****

Vinnie:

Version Four is attached. I test drove this version with my student “consultants.” This version worked for them as being sufficiently interesting and flexible (albeit, a handful of emerging adults is an infinitely small sample of the millions of available social media users.)

Owmapow

****

Owmapow:

This new version is definitely on the right track. Moving forward, I need your scripts to tie into events like those taking place between hatching and mating or between fighting off a predator and mating. You get the idea. Also, I need more blanks in each story so that we can add lots of music and images.

While you are rewriting, I will work with my software crew to provide Internet inserts. Next, we’ll merge your stories with those data.

Vinnie

****

Vinnie:

I’m back at the keyboard. Attached is a “rethink.” It contains six, not two, tales. Please let me know if I am getting closer to your vision.

Owmapow

****

Vinnie:

Any word?

Owmapow

****

Owmapow:

Your scripts are nowhere close to what I need. I don’t think you will be part of the team, going forward. Thanks for your donated time. 

Vinnie

——————————————————
Note: All of the art, writing, and music on this site belongs to the person who created it. Copying or republishing anything you see here without express and written permission from the author or artist is strictly prohibited.

Erika Cleveland
“Unlikely Partners”
Gouache and pencil drawing in altered book
Inspiration piece

The Bearded Lady and the Garbage Truck Driver
By Channie Greenberg
Response

Aya sighed as she pulled up yet one more file on her screen. She had applied to be a member of her town’s “dynamic environmental services department.” She hadn’t expected that she would be overseeing an army of trash trucks while attempting to develop cost effective means of acquiring dumping permits for outlying areas. Somehow, when she had interviewed, the position had sounded more socially valuable.

All things considered, hers was a good job. COVID-19 or no, her post enabled her to pay rent and groceries, and even to treat her son, Hillel, and her daughter, Miel, to new shoes and new shirts.

Although Aya had warmed those offspring against following her footsteps, they had not listened. More exactly, instead of becoming coders, supermarket mangers, airline pilots, or martial arts instructors, her children stayed married to the manipulation of words. One co-authored a few books with her and the other sought in the public relations departments of recording companys. To say it less politely, both were broke, hence both remained at home.

Fortunately, Aya, who, beyond being the destitute head of her household, was a prolific author, had taken advantage of a grant available to financial challenged women; she re-enrolled in college. Creative writing was nice, but utility bills, phone service, and her kin’s rice and beans cost real dollars.

Aya’s major had been Sustainability. Her minor had been Government Affairs. Her course load had included: Global Urbanism, Energy Systems, Advanced Water Management, Introduction to International Law, Public Policy in Democracies, Diplomacy Governance, Law in a Global World, Air, Water, and Soil Pollution, Climate Change and Society, Petroleum and Energy, and Environmental Justice.

That mom graduated debt-free and with honors. Yet, she had no job prospects. No one at her school had forewarned her that a graduate degree was necessary to work in her field. So, she was thrilled when her town had offered her the desk job in the waste management department.

However, Aya was less thrilled about her low status and about her building’s lack of employee cafeteria. To a greater degree, she lamented that trash collection was rife with misogyny. Her subordinates commented on her clothing, her hair style, and her figure. Baser was that her superiors had no compunction in literally cornering her in small hallways and in tasking her to work overtime so that they could make surreptitious overtures. 

Aya ignored most of her underlings, reporting only the worst offenders. As for her higher-ups, she photographed and recorded them on her cell phone and made sure that those aggressors saw her doing as much. In less than two months’ time, her supervisors began to leave her alone her. Her juniors, though, continued to cough aloud in her presence and to stage whisper snide remarks.

Nonetheless, that multi-strata contempt for women was not the greatest of Aya’s work-related concerns. The most awful was that her minions thieved.

In cahoots with a dishonest builder, one of the trucks under her auspices had been fencing stolen goods. Expressly, certain garbage collectors put appropriated items into clean bags and then hid those bags in their municipality-owned vehicle before driving those ill-gotten gains to people who transformed them into black market loot. Had one of her men not been hit by a car while on duty, Aya would never have been alerted to those illegalities. 

That is, one of her sanitation engineers had been struck while attaching a streetside waste holder to his wagon’s lift. It was his workmate who cried for long minutes in Aya’s office and who sputtered that just as the man was signaling for him to push the lift level, a sedan had come flying around the corner. Either that hit and run driver hadn’t mentally registered the garbage truck or he or she hadn’t mentally registered the worker. 

In any case, the garbage man had gone splat. Worse, since Aya’s people were tasked to scrub down biological waste after car accidents and fires, the man who was crying at her desk, along with some of his cohorts, had had to clean up the shattered bits of his partner. 

Blubbering like a child, that garbage man confided that it was karma that had brought about the fatality. Namely, his friend was a corpse because of the side business in which they, and a few of their associates, had been engaged; if they hadn’t been transporting “liberated” property, likely, there would have been no slaughter.

Suddenly, Aya’s job became interesting. After her guilt-ridden underling quit, she decided to mix it up with the reprobates. As opposed to forwarding her juicy information to the people in charge of her department or to contacting the police, Aya assigned herself the task of riding the truck servicing the neighborhood in which the pilfering was taking place. 

Her bosses, hitherto weary of harassment charges, looked the other way when Aya entered the office wearing overalls, a long-sleeved shirt, steel-toed boots, a helmet, thick gloves, and a reflective vest. Furthermore, they said nothing when she told them that she was going out on the streets for a week and that she would fulfill her paperwork duties later. 

Similarly, her son and daughter had said nothing to deter her from her ill-advised adventure as they knew her to exist, sometimes, in an imaginary universe, where benevolent protagonists succeeded and where evil antagonists failed. As far as Aya’s children were concerned, Mom was mouthing off about a new story idea, not about an imprudent, real-life undertaking.

While Aya had no idea how the bandits, with whom the trash collectors were in cahoots,  knew which families would be on vacation, at the office, or otherwise not present in their dwellings, she knew that contractors, like garbage men, go mostly unnoticed by the public. Elsewise, locals would have grasped that there were, amid their neighborhood, many innocent-looking piles of concrete in which single tiles had been arranged such that one among each pile pointed toward a potential target’s front door. To Aya, even “delivery” stickers “harmlessly” affixed to windows, constituted less odious criminal devices. 

Janey, the new hand meant to replace the expired driver, was bald, tattooed, and a grandmother of seven. She chewed snuff and used words that made Aya blush. In addition, she was an excellent source for meatloaf recipes and, allegedly, could concoct prize-worthy radish salad. Aya enjoyed their ripostes. 

On the third day of her atypical week, Aya “unburdened” herself to Janey. She told her that she had overheard that the fellows who had proceeded them on that route had been conveying stolen goods to a fence. She speculated, audibly, that she and Janey could earn extra money by likewise engaging in such pastimes.

It was good thing that no cars had been closely following their truck — Janey slammed on the brakes. She screamed at Aya, saying that it was bad enough that garbage collectors had to engage in heavy lifting, be aware of limb-eating gears, and stay alert to the needles and broken glass that frequently stuck out of garbage bags. Plus, the pet feces in their sacks reeked, and the lone squirrel that had jumped out of their truck, on their first day together, had unsettled Janey. That said, crime was not and would never be something in which she would engage. 

Janey continued to shriek, saying that if Aya disliked their respective responsibilities, she could drive, and Janey would jump on and off the truck. Janey would never, though, participate in law-breaking activities. After dabbing her eyes, she added that her late lover had been a cop. In the army, she had earned both her CDL and his heart.

She then shared that she had become a garbage truck driver because some silly technicality regarding her lack of a marriage license had made her ineligible to collect survivor benefits. She had also worked as an OTR, as a postal driver, as a tanker hauler, and as a driving instructor after her man’s death. 

Aya sighed. She articulated that she was not interested in committing felonies, but in deterring felons. She hadn’t gone to the town’s crime squad because she didn’t trust government officials, especially after her multiple, unpleasant encounters with the sanitation department’s bureaucrats.

Janey muttered something about “good cops,” shook her head, and then silenced herself. After exhaling loudly, she hugged Aya, rolled up one of her sleeves, and pointed to a long scar on her arm. Her disfigurement had come from the blade of a corporal who had mistakenly believed that women were of select, limited use. Janey had thought otherwise and had used her own knife skills to prevent herself from being raped. 

Afterwards, her commander had hushed up the offense. The corporal was transferred to a different unit, where he was rumored to have repeated his brutish ways. 

Meanwhile, Janey had garnered an unsavory reputation. On balance, it was that very standing that had intrigued her significant other to court her. Looking Aya in the eye, Janey whispered that decent men, albeit hard to find, do exist.

Later that day, Janey laughed instead of growled. She and Aya sniggered over the relative stupidity of criminals who employed cement squares to facilitate break-ins. As well, they sighed over the foolhardiness of garbagemen who persisted on risking jobs and liberty for a small amount of kickback and agreed that no quantity of boodle was worth jail time.

Equally, it was reckless to directly tangle with thugs. As a result, the ladies waited until the middle of the night to address the larcenies. Aya’s bosses and family remained clueless about her activities and goals.

Disguising themselves with fancy dress beards and garbing themselves in Janey’s dead companion’s clothes, the women drove to the periphery of the targeted neighborhood. They walked from block to block, righting each pile of pavers until no pile held protruding pieces. The local law breakers were not going to triumph, anymore, by using building materials to indicate hot spots for theft.  

Back at Janey’s car, the women high fived. The multiple, righted piles of cement were warning enough to the crooks that folks were privy to their goings-on. Hopefully, the burglaries would stop.

On their last day as coworkers, Aya assigned herself and Janie the cleanup of an illegal waste dump. In that copse of trees, the two sipped water and tossed back chips. The smell, the maggots, and the other unpleasant elements of their job had, over the week, lost much of their offensiveness. Just as trash collectors are invisible to the public, trash’s disgusting qualities quickly become imperceptible to its gatherers.

From her backpack, Aya pulled out the theatrical hair that they had earlier adhered to their faces. Janey took pictures on her cellphone. The women guffawed. Then Janey asked Aya why she was a garbage collector.

Aya admitted that she was really a desk jockey, that she had two kids, no husband, and a useless college degree, and that she preferred fashioning romance novels to supervising sanitation engineers. After her husband had left, she and her family had survived for more than a decade on a large inheritance that had been meant for her retirement. Until that money had run out, Aya had indulged in writing. 

Janey chortled and told Aya to quit her public service job and to seek work as an aide to the elderly. No nursing degree was needed for such employment and it paid well. Additionally, sweet, demented seniors, not randy men, could fill Aya’s working hours. 

In the months that followed, Aya did not quit her job. Conversely, she accepted a promotion to the position left vacant by the boss that Janey had reported for harassment and attempted battery. Rather, it was Janey who resigned.

She took a position helping golden agers at a local residence. When asked about that change, at one of Aya’s increasingly frequent potlucks, Janey had shrugged and said that a little spittle and urine in a setting abounding with consumer fraud seemed easier to deal with than  did raccoons, battery acid, pesticides, and a setting abounding with various types of property crimes. 

Aya had shrugged back at her and had then asked her to pass the dip. The skordalia was not to be missed.

——————————————————
Note: All of the art, writing, and music on this site belongs to the person who created it. Copying or republishing anything you see here without express and written permission from the author or artist is strictly prohibited.

Erika Cleveland
Drawing/collage
Response

The Yolk of an Egg
By Amy Souza
Inspiration piece

Text from A Dictionary of Psychology

Applied generally,
the experience of
pleasure is entirely
different from the
real condition

No human can avert
what is destined
to happen

The subject is
required to put
together a head
without being
informed of the shadow

All phenomena
are fundamental all
events predetermined

———————

Note:  All of the art, writing and music on this site belongs to the person who created it.  Copying or republishing anything you see here without the express and written permission from the author or artist is strictly prohibited.