i unclad the shroud from her face & my eyes falls on her beaming smile. even in death, it remains irrevocable. her face conjures nostalgia & memories i thought i had buried-unearthen .i am in her hands, held like a magnolia plant with frail skin, her fingers fidgeting as though maggots trapped in a garbage bag & her lips trembling like wretched hands on a walking rod. for her, a baby was the kaleidoscope of her dream & as much as she reveled in the iridescence of light reflected in her mirrored eyes, she feared this dream will crumble like a weathering rock from her [ ] eyes. that day, she couldn’t dam the rivers of happiness & sadness incastellated within her body & they crept out as tears through the crevice of her eye. she didn’t want to say goodbye & i had to watch her wrestle the talons of death as it struck deeper into her skin with every second. when death finally took her, I crawled out her cradled hands, went to a river & cried for days.
a boy swallows his loss
moves it through his gut
but finds it hard to digest.
Adesiyan Oluwapelumi,(he/him),TPC XI,is a Nigerian writer. His works are featured/ forthcoming in BRITTLE PAPER, Lumiere Review, CultureCult Press,Kahalari Review & elsewhere.He tweets @ademindpoems.
I come into love like a glistening fruit, blushing and rotting. A photograph depicts desire, Sontag writes on eternity, my face alit on a singular flame built in desire for your hunger. Our hunger built on stone houses, the peeling of my walls and your hands. The secrets of our desires. I am hung like the French, hungry for you, mouth-wide open mid-spelling. We are adults, no tears but I always cry now like a new-born child. All teeth and gums. Centaurs gaze as I pull our tarot cards out, one by seven, foretelling past and future. Where do we hide our secrets? There must be a magic hanging in the air watching us like hidden jinn. All mystery and fire I ask you to burn me in bed. It only takes three seconds before skin scalds to the third degree, I read, thighs starving. I theorise you page by page, hands and eye. Your mouth on my breast, desire embodied. You look so beautiful in desire. I memorise your gaze how your eyes turn black when we meet. Your burdens rest on my back, moving from your shoulders. Therapise with me. A cup of hot coffee, freshly rolled cigarettes. I shake you in a field. We play hide and seek, the prayer ringing when you touch me, our hands tracing each other. I become a concept, an abstraction of your determination. I don’t need an oracle for this, not for you. I’m overwhelmed in the presence of time with you. How you lull the strings of fate to patiently wait for us to finish with each other.
leena aboutaleb is an Egyptian and Palestinian writer, primarily searching for fruiting trees to sleep under. She can be virtually located @na5leh on Twitter.
He woke up in his usual seat at the back of the bus. A window seat, so that he wouldn’t have to look at the faces of the other passengers. But he couldn’t help but glance.
Five others.
An old lady clutching a ring.
Her young granddaughter. Couldn’t have been older than 6.
A teen girl with headphones plugged in but neither in her ears. Close to the door.
A fat, middle-aged man with purpling ankles.
A man with bags under his eyes, wrapped in a fur coat.
And finally, him. Simon. The grocery store cashier.
And on each of their faces was the same expression he wore. Confusion. Suspicion.
Terror.
The last thing he remembered, he was walking along a long sidewalk. Headed home in the dead of night, to family who didn’t particularly care for him. Yet, he felt some obligation to them nonetheless. The next thing he knew, he was sitting in this grimy seat. In the back. By the window.
There was nothing to look at out the window. The blackness only showed his own face reflected. No one spoke, and before long, the bus lurched to life. It rumbled along, but in the windows, nothing seemed to change.
A voice crackled through the PA system. At the front of the bus, the driver whispered into a microphone.
He chuckled first, though it sounded more like wet choking. “Welcome aboard, everyone. Hopefully you enjoyed your… nap.”
“I’ll cut right to the chase: you’re here cause you’re dead. You’re all dead. Congratulations.”
There were murmurs of worry all around the bus. The worker began hyperventilating.
The middle aged man would have none of it. “So, who does that make you, then? God? The devil?”
The driver rocked back and forth, more choking laughter emerging from his maw. “No,
no! No one so important. But I can tell you that where you’re going… well, let’s just say that it’s not all sunshine and harpstrings down here.” The bus fell silent. “Yeah, it’s Hell. Whoop-de-doo.”
“But hey!” He said with mock-enthusiasm. “I’m not so cruel that I won’t make this easier on all of you. So, here’s what’s going to happen:”
He held out both of his hands. The wheel kept turning on its own. He held up eight fingers.
“Six passengers. And six stops. Each worse than the last. Each one intended for one of you… from the ones who stole from the cookie jar… to the serial killer.”
The passengers tensed up. Looking at each other. The fat man grimaced. The daughter buried her face in her grandmother’s chest, sobbing. Any one of them could be the killer. Except for Simon, of course. He knew he didn’t deserve… whatever was the worst this place had to offer.
They all sat a bit further from each other.
“But here’s the catch!” The driver said with cruel satisfaction. “I’m not going to tell you which stop is your rightful punishment. At each stop, one person may leave, and only one! And then the bus will move on.”
“So that’s it, huh?” The teenaged girl asked, voice shaking. “It’s simple. We just walk out the first chance we get… and we’ll be better off.”
The driver’s head bent downwards and turned to face her. He didn’t have a mouth, but smiled manically with his eyes. She screamed, and turned away. There was no doubt now. This wasn’t just some lunatic kidnapping scheme. It was real.
“Yes,” He wheezed through the PA system. “Haha, yes, it’s thaaat simple. Of course, that is if you can bring yourself to leave…” He laughed again, and turned back around. “Now, sit tight, all of you. We’re nearing our first stop…”
The bus stayed relatively quiet. But the grandmother spoke out.
“How is this fair?” She spat, clutching her granddaughter close. “What is she doing here? She’s done nothing wrong.”
“She’s done nothing right, either, apparently,” The driver said in a matter-of-fact tone. “We’ve got very specific rules around here, and I follow them. To the letter. Speaking of which, we’re heeeere~!”
The bus door hissed open. Only blackness could be seen outside. “Who’s first?”
He expected there to be a pause. Maybe a moment of hesitation before someone stood up. But before the demon driver was even finished talking, the man in the coat stood up, ran to the front and dove out the door with an anguished howl. And as he vanished into the darkness, his voice was suddenly very far away, echoing for a while before disappearing entirely.
“Oh my god!”
“Is he alright?”
“What’s out there? Where’d he go?”
“Smart man.” The driver smiled and nodded.
Simon opened his mouth. With a bit of hesitation, he spoke for the first time since he woke up. “He… he was the killer, wasn’t he?”
“Right… you… are…” He said, retrieving something from his pocket. A flashlight. But its glow out the door only illuminated more darkness. A hole. “The Pit. Bottomless, naturally. A soft and cushy fate, by comparison. You should’ve been faster.”
Simon’s stomach turned. It hadn’t yet sunk in, until just then, that at some point, he’d have to walk through those doors. Into something even worse. And there he’d stay. For all eternity.
The doors closed, and they were back on the road again. Five of them now. All of a sudden, they were no longer just a crowd of passengers on the bus. They looked at each other with the same empty stares, then looked away. They should’ve been faster.
The bus stopped again. The doors slid open, and the air became cold as ice. Simon and the girl pulled their feet up to their bodies, and the man simply covered his legs as well as he could. But the elderly woman was the only one to stand, and she walked towards the door. Her shivering granddaughter followed.
“No! No, no, you can’t!” She screeched, tears freezing on her face. She pulled at the lady’s leg. “Don’t leave me alone!”
The grandmother was at the top of the steps now. Simon wanted to look away. She looked down, at the young girl, and picked her up, holding her close. Making her warm, one final time.
“Remember, Tiffany,” She said in a mournful voice. “Everything I’ve done, I’ve done for you.”
She just sobbed, puffs of air misting in front of her face. Her grandmother pried her tiny arms off of her… and threw her out. Into the darkness. Into the cold.
The driver shone a flashlight on the girl’s prone form. On a plain of ice. Her skin was already turning blue, like the countless others who lay shivering, curled on the ice.
“G-gramma…” She stuttered, trying to stand. But her hand froze to the ground. “It’s c-c-cold… I’m scared…”
The old woman said nothing. The flashlight switched off, and the door closed. She stood at the door until the bus had fully pulled away. Then she returned to her seat. The man glared at her, and he stood up and gripped her by the collar. She groaned in fear as the man nearly strangled her with her own clothing.
“What the HELL was that all about?! You’ve made a big mistake, lady!” He shouted, shaking her back and forth. Tears welled up in his eyes. Simon and the teen turned away, shellshocked by her actions. “You were the one… you said it wasn’t fair…!”
“Hey!” The driver yelled back, waving a fist. “No violence! That comes after you get off!” He made no attempt to stop them.
She steeled herself, and took a deep breath. “Use your brain, you idiot, before it rots in your grave,” She grabbed his hand with a shaking grip. “We’re all dead. She was dead. I was… sparing her,” She looked out the windows. Into the blackness. “My only mistake was not being fast enough for the pit.”
His grip loosened. But she smiled softly. “It’s only going to get worse. But I’m going to go last. So don’t worry your little heads about it.”
They both sat down again, though the man couldn’t keep his fists from balling up.The girl was shaking. “I’m… I’m going next. Don’t try to stop me.” The bus stopped again. No one raised complaint. But Simon was screaming on the inside. His mind was telling him to go, to push her out of the way and jump off the bus. But his body refused to move.
It’s only going to get worse… it’s only going to get worse… why doesn’t he leave now?
Before the tortures become unbearable?
She dropped her headphones and stepped out of the bus, onto a metal floor. She looked back at the driver expectantly. “What?” He asked, smirking cruelly with his eyes and patting the pocket with his flashlight in it. “Go on, don’t keep us waiting~”
“F-fuck you.” She said simply, and walked into the darkness. Her final act of rebellion.
Simon closed his eyes as she screamed and screamed, but her screams were soon drowned out by a ghastly metallic whirring that made the bus shudder. Simon closed his ears, but could not keep out the sickening popping noise that followed. Soon, the whirring faded, and Simon realized that they had moved on. Just like that, she was gone.
“What…” He tried to say to the driver. “…What did she do to get here?”
“I dunno, shoplifted a few times, maybe?” He said, scratching his head with one hand on the wheel. “I’m a bit hazy on the details.”
The man vomited. Simon gagged, but he managed to control himself. He gasped, then buried his face in his hands, curling up into a ball. He had never felt so small. So alone. All the regrets he had about his life suddenly bubbled up to the surface, but then seemed insignificant. A cashier? Why had he become a cashier? Why hadn’t he cared more? Done more? He had gone so slowly, so carefully. But it was all over.
The bus smelt worse than it looked now. Simon wanted to escape, but all around was blackness. Maybe if he left the bus and ran to the side rather than into whatever torment awaited him… but maybe what if it went on forever? Or worse, what if he stumbled into a torment far worse than what waited?
The bus lurched to a stop. “Alright, who wants to go next?” Simon lifted his face from his hands. The man was in the seat opposite to him, a dead, sick look in his eyes. One of them would have to go. The man shut his eyes, took a deep breath, and stood. He walked to the door, and stood before.
The driver laughed, taking out his flashlight. “Oh, you’re gonna love this…” He shone it outside. Both Simon and the old woman gasped, but the man simply stared in terror. Human bodies. Strung up by barbed metal wire. Hundreds at least, dangling and twitching, eyes, nose, and mouth all sewn shut. They hardly moved. Twitching was the most they could manage. “The Gallery. Probably my favorite attraction down here. Well, second favorite.”
The man didn’t move. He had gone stark white. Outside of the bus, waiting outside, was a strangely mundane table, with a few things on it. A spotlight shone down on it, marking its importance. Simon squinted, but he couldn’t make out exactly what they were. But the man shook his head, and returned to his seat. “I… I can’t. I can’t do it… I’m sorry…”
Simon’s heart leaped into his throat. The driver turned his gaze toward him. “Well, well…” He purred maliciously. As only a demon could. “If she’s going last… and he’s not going now… I guess that just leaves you, then, doesn’t it?”
His imagination ran wild. What could be worse than this? Could anything be worse than this? He wouldn’t go – he couldn’t go. “Am I going to have to start throwing people out?” He said, impatience creeping into his voice. “I have a schedule to keep, you know.”
Simon shook his head frantically, trying to plead with him. But he couldn’t speak. He felt like metal wires were around his neck, strangling him… but then, something in him broke.
“Please…” He turned to the old woman, tears streaming down his face. “Please…
leave. I don’t… I don’t want to…”
Sobbing, he curled into his seat. A hand landed on his shoulder, and then was gone. He looked up, through tears, to see her walking off the bus. “I’m sorry… I’m so sorry…” The man mumbled. The bus passed, and Simon saw the woman holding a metal wire… and something long and thin. “I could never handle needles…”
The bus continued. As it always did. If Simon wasn’t already dead, he’d swear that he was dying. His body felt hot and cold all over (Why did he still feel like he had a body? Maybe so he’d actually feel what was happening when his torture began), and he felt his sanity slipping.
“I don’t deserve this…” The man mumbled, anger rising in his voice. “I don’t belong here… I’ve been a good man… a good husband and a good father… I’ve been a devout man, my whole life… why…?”
“I couldn’t tell you,” Simon replied weakly. Since they were the only ones left, he felt… obligated to reply, somehow. “I’ve done nothing my whole life. Not really.”
The man chuckled. “Isn’t that typical… you kids. Think you can just lounge around and pleasure yourselves and leave the world to rot,” He spat at the ground, into his cesspool of vomit. Simon could swear there were maggots crawling around in it. “It was probably my hate that did it… my hate for you damned hedonists… but is that really so wrong? Is it wrong to hate what should be hated?”
He stared into Simon’s eyes. And Simon stared back. The bus stopped again, and the door opened. The driver tilted his head back and clapped twice. “So, who’s it gonna be? Who wants the worst, and who wants the second-worst~?”
Without changing his expression, the middle-aged man spoke. “You go.”
“But… what about you?” Simon asked, surprised. He was sure the man would’ve gone himself.
“I’ve realized…” He put on a crooked smile and raised his head up high. “God… would never allow someone like me to be in a place like this. This is a trick. A test of my faith. He wants to see… if I’ll sacrifice myself for others.”
“If that’s really what you believe… alright.” Simon said quietly. He put his hands on his knees. He was trembling all over. What could be through that door? Worse than the Pit? Worse than the ice, the grinder, the gallery? But he stood. Maybe it wouldn’t be so bad.
Walking towards the door happened in a blur. He was at the bottom of the steps, looking out. A click. The light spread slowly, weaving itself over…
The eyes. The vibrating eyes, belonging to bald, stretched grey heads. Jammed
together, stuck in a silent, still mass of bodies. All staring at him, mouths folded over with blackened flesh. Their limbs grew into each other, their spines weaved together until the great floating mass was a perfect sphere. And all their collected blood, tears, and bile mixed together, dripping off the bottom into neverending blackness.
“Go on, child,” The demon said. “Take your place among the dead.”
Simon howled in terror and scrambled up the steps, only to find the man waiting for him, livid expression on his face.
“Get out!”
“No!”
A boot smashed against Simon’s face. He saw stars for a moment, then those eyes. Those black pupils, seeing all but knowing nothing. He fought back. Pressed his face against the sole.
“I won’t let you take this from me!”
“Don’t… please… don’t let them take me!” Simon latched onto the rails, but the man’s stronger fingers pried his own up. His grip was loosening, his hand was bleeding. But he would die again before he would enter that mass.
“You deserve this! Wretched… damned… filthy…!” He punctuated each word with a kick. Simon felt his teeth knocking loose, his mind spinning…
Then, the man pitched forward, out of the bus, and into the pool of collected filth below the dead. The demon retracted his foot and waved to him as he pulled Simon aboard. “No violence on my bus! Have fun out there~!”
The doors closed and left the man outside. To rot.
Simon stumbled back to his seat, but slipped in the vomit and fell to the floor. But he pulled himself up, laying across the seats. For the first time since he boarded the bus, he slept.
And when he woke, things were not much different. They still traveled in blackness. So it wasn’t a nightmare.
“Hey hey hey… look who’s awake?” The driver teased. “We’re approaching our last stop. Aren’t you excited?”
Simon was silent. He had let his fear get the best of him again. And now that man was out there. He tried to tell himself that that horrible man deserved it… but maybe that kind of thinking was why he was here in the first place. Maybe HE deserved it. Maybe it
was right that he got the final punishment.
“You get to experience the worst we have to offer… you should feel lucky. Not many people make it this far. You’re either very brave… or the biggest coward in the world.”
Simon chuckled. Once.
“I guess that’s fitting though…” The demon mused. In the windshield, Simon saw a light, far in the distance. That was their stop, most likely. “The one who hasn’t done a damn thing their entire life… continues to not do a goddamn thing.”
Simon closed his eyes. Ignored the driver. It’s not like what he said mattered anymore.
He was dead. This was the end.
“I knew that you’d be the last one,” The driver said. The light approached. Simon could see it through his eyelids. “I knew this would be perfect. What better punishment could there be, for someone like you?”
The light engulfed them. But they kept on driving. There was a ripping noise. “Open your eyes, idiot,” The driver said, voice suddenly lacking its wheezy quality. “We’re here.”
Simon did as he said. His mouth gaped, and he put a hand over his mouth. He tried to scream, but his throat was shot. All he could do was squeak.
It was a beautiful day. Green hills, blue sky, lightly cloudy. Simon scrambled to the back of the bus. Behind them was wooden double doors, and within, only blackness. They were connected to a warehouse, a huge warehouse in the middle of nowhere. So huge that it could probably hold a city inside. Millions of people.
The driver dropped a flap of fake skin to the ground, and grinned at Simon with his rotting teeth. “You get the worst torment of all, Simon. Welcome home.”
And even as the bus doors opened to the front porch of his house, Simon could not speak. He would be in hell for the rest of his life.
I’m Joseph Hartman, better known as MkfShard on twitter and tumblr, and I’ve made a lot of short stories that I’ve mostly done for a small horror contest! Here’s one of those, if that’s alright!
We were seated in a corner table by an open widow, where we could watch the passers-by. A jogger who smelled of wet dog. A sweaty man in a suit gliding in the aroma of women’s perfume. A woman in a wedding dress with the odor of French fry grease.
A bouquet of flowers approached our table. “I’m Liza and I’ll be taking your order, Anything to drink?”
“Just water for me,” Maura said. Her breath was minty fresh behind a golden smile, teeth yellowed by years of neglect. I noticed a tiny white spot near her left canines – bread? rice? – and wondered if she had ever flossed a day in her life.
“Vodka rocks, please.” This woman’s stink was moving into my nostrils. I was so disgusted that I did not think I could get through the next hour without lubrication.
“What kind of vodka?”
“The cheapest you got.”
“You got it. Can I start you off with an appetizer?”
“I’m ready to order. Are you ready?” She was.
She had an animated way of speaking, arms swinging and body rocking back and forth. When she talked about her favorite movies, her eyes lit up and her skin seemed to glow in the restaurant’s incandescent light. The more excited she got, the stronger she reeked. I had to excuse myself for a break to retch in the bathroom.
We skipped desert. “It was nice meeting you.”
“You too,” she said. We turned to walk away. She stopped and called back out to me. “Can I ask you something?”
“Of course,” I said, wondering if somehow, after that spirited but mediocre conversation, she was going to invite me to her place.
“Is everything okay with you?”
“What do you mean?”
“I mean, I don’t know how to say this, but have you showered in the past few days?”
A breeze blew and the smell was like a smack in the mouth. I remembered the washing machine in my building with the broken detergent dispenser. “I’m so sorry.”
“It’s okay,” she said. “See you around.”
I looked back into the restaurant, ashamed of myself, alone again and awash in a world of fresh fish, automobile exhaust, a million different deodorants, and a fresh list of profiles to swipe.
Alex J. Barrio (He/Him/His) lives in DC. He is a Cuban-American who grew up in NJ. He writes poetry (@1001Tanka) and fiction (@AlexJBarrio). Links to other work at https://www.onwords.io/@AlexJBarrio.
I don’t like to choose. A plot generator wrote my life story. An eccentric hypnotist in a noir piece about crooked cops. A Magic 8-Ball decided if I married one of those crooked cops. Outlook good. A cootie catcher picked what I did for fun. Red, five, stamp collecting. The board game Life dictated if I had kids. Congratulations, it’s twins. A Facebook quiz selected how I died. Falling piano like a cartoon character. A coin flip decided heaven or hell. Heads. I wasted my life, but it wasn’t my fault. No, I just got unlucky.
He received an MFA from Minnesota State University, Mankato. His work has appeared in TIMBER, The McNeese Review, Tampa Review. Connect on Twitter at @Will_Musgrove or williammusgrove.com.
A phone is ringing in the back of my head. When the little phone in my head plays your ringtone, I try to do a thing we did together: I read your poetry, I bash some drums, I scroll through teenage inboxes and marvel at the sheer volume of words we dedicated to the simple concept of “don’t give up, kid.” I told you that sometimes that I felt like a fault line, a jagged unstable rupture on the surface of the world doomed to buckle and buckle and burst and you said babe, go bash some drums. And I said I didn’t play the drums. And you said go bash the drums of whatever it is you do. So I am bashing the drums of some words right now and missing you hard and wondering if, when the earth finally swallows me, my phone will ring in anyone. And whether I’ll have told them anything that helped even half as much.
Casey Lucas is an author, poet, and video game developer who has twice won the Sir Julius Vogel Award for Best Short Story, New Zealand’s highest honour in short form speculative literature.
We laughed hard heavy bellyfuls until tears streamed down our faces Little ashy boys So close to the ceiling of manhood that on our scuffed toe tips we could just graze Chin hairs and first kisses behind bleachers But still far enough away from that life that it doesn’t worry us yet We still untethered When our only worry was beating home streetlights and the girls in the neighborhood was as flat chested and knobby kneed as us We were free So we laughed Laughed so hard that tears streamed down our ashen faces
Disappearing clouds and the night filled sky with stars dancing across it.
Mountain Girl
“Take me to the place I love, take me far away.” – Red Hot Chili Peppers, Under the Bridge
Implant my ashes on top of the Sierra Mountain so my soul can be engraved in the dry soil watching cars pass by, while I wait for the stars to cover the night. Yes, this is where I’ll call home.
Hotel Chelsea
1978
Eyes darting from side to side us laying in the bed naked your tangled body still sleeping this quiet makes me nervous no wonder I like the sound of chaos like us fucking shouting you telling me I’m over emotional. I just want to feel yet I don’t want to.
Losing Faith
When I heard your feet creak from below I was hoping you’d turn back around. I whispered a prayer beneath the sheets I was covered in, but even then that wasn’t enough to keep you from coming in.
You cupped your hand around my mouth pushed up my nightgown, and told me everything was going to be alright. I tried to push you off as you hovered over me, but you managed to keep me in place and continued the game.
When you finished a tear crept down my check. While I was facing the crucifix planted on the wall with the feeling of despair.
Day Sibley is a writer and multidisciplinary artist from southern Nevada and the founding editor of Dream Noir magazine.
Gentle breaths, rustling grass. Blades as high as your knee, tall enough to swallow a mistake. Birds nesting in an antelope skull, feathers dressing teeth and sockets. Straw figures erected by a lunatic, arranging play corpses into a bonfire to dance under a black sky.
Starless nights cold enough to clutch a family in its tracks, upright ‘til the morning thaw.
You’ll see it all from this Yew, from these gallows. Centuries of sight in exchange for the impermanent years. Bathing in the red light at dusk, dancing in these gentle breaths.
I am a screenwriter and a producer, about to publish my first short story collection.
It starts with a deep breath, repositioning the self with fists on the bed, the knowledge that I’m clenching— a sigh with the legs apart, the face softened, the nose itching, and the fingers searching for words. It doesn’t have to be poetic, I just have to
Kristin Yates is an award-winning work in progress from Lewisville, North Carolina. Her poems have previously appeared in her head and other places. IG: https://www.instagram.com/beautefantasy/
Air whooshed into the car when Brian opened the passenger side door of my ’96 Ford Taurus and stuck his Doc Marten boot out above the moving pavement. Brian’s Doc Martens were hand-me-downs, scuffed and cracked and almost grey with age, the yellow laces laced all the way up and wrapped several times before being tied around Brian’s skinny leg just above the ankle, his cuffed jeans lifting as he stretched one leg out of the door.
Brian wasn’t a metaphor, or imaginary, or like a hidden aspect of my fractured personality or anything like that, he was just a kid that happened to have the same first name as me, because we were around the same age and a lot of people named their kids Brian in the early 1980s.
I was behind the wheel, sitting high in the fabric seat of the Taurus. Looming my body over the steering wheel like I like to do. My long thin fingers squeezing the foam of the steering wheel, the toe of my Converse All-Star pressing gentle on the accelerator, easing above 15 mph, coming quickly to the cul-du-sac end of Brian’s street.
Brian had picked up a summer job working construction at a place down-Cape, and since he didn’t have a car, he intended to hitchhike to and from work each day. The problem, as he saw it, was the number of creeps picking up hitchhikers to sexually assault them. The solution to this was to teach himself how to jump out of a car moving at highway speed. He was positive he could do it, he just needed to learn how. Our process was to practice jumping out of the car at low speeds and then work our way up. Start at 5 mph, then 10, etc. If you can learn how to do it safely at 20, 25 mph, all you would have to do adjust your calculations for 55, 60 mph.
I thought this was a great idea.
I volunteered to be the driver because of course I did. I’m an enabler.
Plus, Brian said he wouldn’t trust any of the other dudes with a thing like this.
This was our third run up and down the street. We had first tried 5 mph, was almost disappointingly easy. I was riding the brake, moving slower than the Taurus would have on its own, and Brian just kind of got out of the car and stood up. The next pass was supposed to be at 10, but I actually kept it more around 8. I guess my instinct to go a little easy was part of the reason I was chosen as the driver. That time Brian had to take a few steps, running alongside the car for less than a second before I pulled away.
Brian rubbed his palm hard against the blonde fuzz of his buzzed skull, a lopsided smile on his pinched and elven face. His voice was high pitched with a kind of nasal warble, “I think the move is, man, to like have one foot hit the ground flat, and then tuck into a roll as quick as possible. I just need to keep my dome from hitting the ground, if I can curl tight enough, I can totally land on my shoulders or back, and they can take the hit, don’t you think?”
“Makes complete sense to me,” I told him.
Brian let out a squeaking laugh, “although we Sterlings have notoriously thick domes!”
Brian Sterling was the youngest of the three notorious Sterling brothers, the other two of which had ambled out of the garage to watch the proceedings, along with Ben Castle. The eldest of the brothers was Dave, a kind of ogre of a man, who at turns was jovial and furious. He was tall and broad shouldered, with a square head and a firm jaw, short strawberry blonde hair and a patchy beard, and would’ve have been an arrestingly handsome man if he wasn’t so puffy from drink. Dave lived in the attic above his parent’s garage and rarely could be coaxed out of his hovel. When he was tempted to come out to a party, he was the type of guy who tore his shirt off and challenged people to punch him as hard as they could in his voluminous beer belly. I once saw Ben Castle smash a square glass Jack Daniels bottle on Dave’s head and Dave did not get hurt.
John Sterling was the middle brother, but no one called him John, he was Sterling. Even though Dave was older, Sterling was the ur-Sterling, he was cooler than his brother, had that kind of quiet vacant thing about him, chill, unimpressed, I don’t think I ever heard him say more than a handful of words in the time I knew him. He had a big, chiseled face with a prominent nose, which made him look a bit like Elvis Costello, and wore horn-rimmed glasses, which made him look even more like Elvis Costello. He was long and lanky where his older brother was thick and brutish. Sterling and Ben Castle had been friends forever, and Sterling was the drummer in every band Ben formed. The kind of music Sterling liked was that he only listened to the bands Slayer and Devo. This informed the way he played the drums, which was as fast as possible and as hard as possible, all of the time.
As cool as Sterling was, Ben Castle was perhaps the coolest human I had met, ever, or since. I desperately wanted to be his friend, I mean I already was his friend, but that feeling remained, even when you were around him, that you wanted to be his absolute best friend and around him all the time. Ben was a guitarist and a writer and poet, he chain-smoked and wore a blank black baseball cap low over his piercing blue eyes, bill of the cap curled into an upside-down U from being folded into the back pocket of his jeans and had the loose and sexy stance of a gas station attendant. When he was giddy and in a good mood his voice took on this faux-British accent, would exclaim “Most Excellent!” while wiggling his fingers. The rest of the time his voice was a sleepy grumble. Often, Ben seemed like he had just woke up. When he was listening to you, he would turn his ear toward your mouth, his eyes on the ground, the smooth skin of the back of his neck exposed to the air. Ben was the one that started calling Sterling Sterling, he was the reason the rest of us did.
Neither of us, Sterling or I, as much as we wanted, could be Ben’s best friend, because Ben’s best friend was dead.
His name was Grove, that was how everyone referred to him, and he had died of a heroin overdose thirteen months ago. He and Ben had been like brothers since they were little, had done everything together, up to and including their junk habit. As far as Ben was concerned, Grove was the coolest person he could imagine. Grove was Ben’s Ben. When Grove died the friend group had shattered, lots of people blaming each other, others clinging tighter, and in that vacuum I entered.
I hadn’t been friends with these guys long. Six months tops. This is what I did, floated from one group to another, changing who I was in the process. I had grown up a town over, and my friends from there simply hadn’t stuck. Or maybe I was the one who hadn’t stuck. Either way I had entered this vacant space in these people’s lives, and they took me on as one of their own. I knew everything about them. I didn’t know anything about myself.
His boot sticking out the open door, the world rolling under us, Brian’s light eyes bounced from the mouth of exposed air, back to me, back to the air. Brian was the youngest, which meant he was the cute one, the friendly one, easiest to get along with and the conciliator, the one who smoothed things over between his brothers. Also, as the youngest, he had something to prove.
Dave lifted his fleshy face and hooted into the air, shoeless on the scraggy yard. He was holding a Budweiser loose by the top of the can, low by his thigh. Sterling was standing with his shoulders high, hands tucked into his armpits, blinking and looking cold. He shouted, voice cracking, “fucking do it already!”
Ben held a lit Camel Light to his mouth and pulled it away with a snap of his hand, a sharp yank. His face was in shadow under the curled bill of his cap.
I crested the slight incline of the loosely paved street, speedometer needle twitching in the direction of 20 mph. Brian had done so well at the lower speeds, I was raising the stakes, it was time.
The problem was commitment. I was one who committed too easily, I was a sucker for a moment. I was there holding your hand through a breakup or your hair while you puked your guts out, I could promise and be vulnerable, be the person you needed on the worst night of your life, but I didn’t know how to stick. From the time Ben and I had met, I felt like I had been his friend forever, but I was scared of that too, scared of what that meant over time, if I would ever be able to stop myself from being the one who left. There was that balance, of knowing when to commit to someone, to be there for them, and knowing how not to go too deep too fast. Knowing that you won’t stay. Or perhaps, learning for once how to be there for the long-haul. You had to know yourself enough to be able to trust yourself, and I was not even close to a place where I could consider myself to be at the beginning of that.
There was sound, like a schurpt, and Brian’s body shunted out of the open door of the moving car, swirling air washing around me, now alone behind the wheel.
Brian Stephen Ellis is the author of four collections of poetry, with a fifth collection, Against Common Sense to be release from Limit Zero Press in 2023. He lives in Portland, Ore.
Unstamatic 