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She Who Enters

2/28/2016

 
BY TOTI O'BRIEN
​


I have heard the familiar drag, behind the door, just before she emerged through the corridor accompanied by those assigned to her custody. Now I see her from the bench where I’ve landed - after squatting on the floor of the E.R. for numberless hours. It is not the first time I’m struck by such vision. There must be a fast track, an open channel leading from the jail to the hospital. A very traveled path.

Each time, my throat squeezes with a feeling I can’t explain. First of all the shuffle embarrasses me: the piteous tug of the cuffed ankles. I ache for those ankles. Then the expression on her face hits me, though I’ve seen it before. There’s no shame… well, clearly there was but it has been juiced up, distilled and compressed so much it became something else. It morphed into defiance then into beyond-human dullness: her eyes, perfectly opaque, are one-sided mirrors, shields of darkness.


She wears the orange uniform meant to make her visible, should she try to run. I don’t know what she did in the first place. I don't know what brought her here and I shouldn’t care. My predicament should suffice me. But my heart goes to her. It leaps out of my chest. I would gladly spare myself such unjustified rush: my heart disobeys.
​
Then the tall boy with the handsome face is pushed in by his mother. In her language – that isn’t English but I happen to know – she wearily, almost hopelessly reassures him, while she relates the facts to the nurse sitting on the other side of the desk. 


The tall boy drools incessantly while another nurse, armed with a cup and several gauze pads, tries to free his swollen mouth of an impressive flow of saliva. Mixed with tears. The boy’s eyes are bright, restless, mad. He cannot speak – the mother says – since he has been accidentally slapped, a few days ago, during a police interrogatory. Yes, you heard me: he can’t speak since, and he can’t swallow. Maybe his jaw has been crushed – his tongue has been injured. I have never seen anything of the kind.


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Duck, Duck, Goose

2/21/2016

 
BY AMBIKA THOMPSON

​The new bank in town, Money Kennel, that I was thinking about signing up with really wanted to make their potential customers feel like they were all just old chummy childhood friends. Their bright idea, surely birthed by a disgruntled college graduate working a year-long, unpaid internship, was to play Duck, Duck, Goose with them. My theory was that he or she was just taking the piss.

Normally, I'm quite the reserved type. I like my body, and certainly the top of my head, to be considered private. Not public domain, that any yahoo can touch on a whim. However, I take my banking very seriously, and aside from this, they seem like they might be the best choice for me, but I'm cautious. I know better than to be spontaneous.

I'm especially weary of the elderly lady, who's sitting directly across the circle from me. She keeps making googly eyes in my general direction, which makes me feel like she certainly wants to goose me. Would it really be a good idea to have my money sitting next to her money in a sealed vault where it would be making it feel uncomfortable the whole time by staring at it?

I'm so engrossed in this idea of her money making my money out of sorts that I hadn't noticed that the bank manager is the first to be the fox and had already started the game until he's looming behind me for a time that's far more than I'm comfortable with. I'm afraid that he's going to tap my head. I can almost feel the static electricity from his fingertips, created by his Scandinavian flagged wool socks, pulling the hair on the top of my head up into his spidery fingers. I'm not sure why I find him so menacing. It's summer. Summer and wool socks equals menacing. But he doesn't make physical contact. I let out a sigh of relief as he moves on to torment the next head, a balding, middle-aged man who appears to be sweating his soul out in watery increments. He skips him as well, and he too, lets out a sigh.

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Hello, Mr. Sea Turtle

2/14/2016

 
BY IRENE McGARRITY

I’m not sure what a sea turtle looks like in real life, up close, but I’ve seen pictures on the internet. They look a lot like regular turtles, just in the ocean instead of on the side of the road, swimming instead of dead with big bloody tire tracks down the middle of their crushed shells.

“Are you even listening to me, Mr. Sea Turtle?”

It was her name for me when things didn’t work out. Sexually. My limp, sleeping unit rested on my upper thigh, less like a sea turtle, I thought, and more like a slug in a flimsy sleeping bag. Still, I liked the name Mr. Sea Turtle.

“What happened, do you think?”

Again,​ she was thinking. Or was I thinking it? Maybe neither of us were thinking it and it just hung there like a thought bubble not attached to anyone’s head. W​hy is this happening again?​

“I wish you would talk to me instead of staring at the ceiling.”

That angry­-scary thing was creeping into her voice and it was like she was channeling my mom. Sometimes the angry-­scary thing crept in when we were in bed together, when she whispered “Where are you?” or when she asked me to stop ramming her. Not all the time, but sometimes it crept in. And then I thought about my mom. And then it was lights out, hello, Mr. Sea Turtle. 


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Three Flashes

2/7/2016

 
BY KURT NEWTON

Ebola Phone

Hello?

Ah, finally. This is Dr. Peter Wellington with Doctors Without Borders calling. I seem to be experiencing--

Hello? Hello?

Damn this third world infrastructure! What good is an ebola alert system if the bloody system only works when it bloody well feels like it!

Bloody. Poor choice of words, I must say. I shall try again.

Hello? Is anyone there?

Yes, I can hear you. Can you hear me?

Good, good. My name is Dr. Peter Wellington. I'm calling from the--

Hello?
​

For god's sake!
​
My life hangs in the balance and this blasted phone is taking great pleasure in conspiring against me!

Deep breath. Back on the horse, ol' boy. Try, try again.

Hello?
​

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