“I have a great idea for a magazine!” says the woman to her friends as she cuts an apricot on the cutting board. “It’s called Baby Life! It’s going to be by babies, for babies! That’s going to be the slogan! Oh, how wonderful. 

“Each issue will feature several amazing profiles on babies.  Maybe there will be celebrity babies – that’s sort of obvious, don’t you think? Obvious, yes, but also shrewd from a sales perspective. Adult humans love adult celebrities, so it of course follows that baby humans will love getting to know all about the babies that have sprung forth from the birth canals of celebrities and celebrities’ wives. 

“Then there will be other features of the magazine, like an article called ‘Reaching the Mobile: Can It Be Done?’ or a sidebar called ‘Five Tips on How to Gain Five New Brain Folds in Five Short Weeks!’ And they’ll all be written by babies! We’ll have freelance babies, staff babies, and a baby-in-chief!” 

The woman’s friends do not respond because they are scented candles, not people.   

(Sung to the tune of “Beat It”)

MACBETH:
I’d rather fight than kill me with my own blade
I could’ve done things better with the life I made

MACDUFF:
It’s too late for remorse, you doth chose your own course
Have at it
Have at it

MACBETH:
I’m all for blood, by now it’s hardly a sin
Yet I draw back since I already killed your kin

MACDUFF:
Just think that thought through, ere you dare to rescind
Have at it
I’m-a cut you, Macbeth

MACBETH & MACDUFF:
Have at it, (have) at it

MACDUFF:
You’re about to be beheaded

MACBETH:
I’d give my life but, never my throne

MACDUFF:
It doesn’t matter, your life’s your own

BOTH:
Have at it, at it
Have at it, at it
Have at it, at it
Have at it, at it

MACBETH:
I hate to tell you, but you’ll die by my sword

MACDUFF:
Your prophecy’s a dud because I wasn’t born    
They cut me from the womb, now you’ll suffer my scorn
Beheaded, beheaded

MACBETH:
Those dirty witches played a hand in my end

MACDUFF:
The only hand at play was yours, ambitious friend

MACBETH:
I’d die before surrender…

MACDUFF:
…Then you’ll meet your own end
Beheaded, with your head on a pike

BOTH:
Have at it, (have) at it

MACDUFF:
You’re about to be beheaded
Your wife is dead and, so is your pride
Your life and hell are, due to collide

BOTH:
Have at it, have at it

MACBETH:
I’m about to be beheaded
With no more forecast, here at my side
I’ll take the fight as, I can abide

BOTH:
Have at it!

(They fight, exit stage left)

My latest short story publication is an urban legend/ghost tale. It’s the feature story in this week’s Piker Press. Check it out! :-D: http://www.pikerpress.com/article.php?aID=4654

For the first time, Joe found himself in a part of the city that could not afford to repair its streetlights. His feet crunched the gravel.  Sweat from his forehead threatened to encroach upon his carefully chosen tuxedo.  A bouquet of lilacs bloomed from his fist, tight with sweat.  Wading his way through the dark, he relied on two dying stars of solace: the indistinct outlines of buildings, and the hope that the local news had the tendency to exaggerate.  When night fell here, he understood, everything fell with it.  

Something caught his foot. He tripped. He sprung forward. He flailed toward the ground like a runaway train sailing through the air toward the bottom of a rocky trench.  In the split second that followed, he thought, “This is it…!  I’m dying…! Something’s got me…! And I’m dead.  I’m dead now.  Goodbye, sweet and unjust world.”

He landed hard onto his other foot, and the electric shock of gravity charged through his shinbone. He swallowed, regained his thoughts and posture, and realized his silver-buckled shoe had just caught itself on a sidewalk crack.

Silly. Silly Joe.  Embarrassed for himself, he patted his palm onto his forehead and kept it there like a cold compress.  His mother had never warned him about cracks. The superstitious woman had warned him against broken mirrors, stepping over objects, leaving the house while someone was eating, counting chickens before they hatched, giving rosaries as gifts, taking pictures with three people in them, and spitting of any kind. But she never warned him against something as practical as watching out for sidewalk cracks. 

With one hand, he brushed this curved lapel and then that.  He checked the lilacs in his other hand and saw with a tingle of relief that they were intact. Not one purple leaf had sunk to the ground. The flowers seemed almost oblivious, like an infant sleeping through a hailstorm.   Joe smiled at the thought of their recipient.

City? You can keep ya broken streetlights! he said to himself.

The lilacs were all he needed. 

He forged forth.

So I’m waiting at the bus stop the other day, you know, just reading, right? And this guy comes up to me - he’s probably mid-30s, pencil mustache, windbreaker, head like a pumpkin - and he says, “I have a disease, and the disease is you.” And then he walks away, just strolls into the nearby Indian deli. What is that! Right?

So I’m sitting there, fully unnerved, it’s daytime, it’s not like brooding darkness or anything, but I mean, how am I supposed to respond to that! But the worst part is is that there’s this chick standing next to me. She’s about my age, I guess, maybe a little older. Went a little heavy on the blush - made her look like an Irish barmaid or something - but otherwise she’s someone I’d hang with. She looks up from her book (some drugstore paperback, I didn’t see what it was), and she says, “Don’t mind him.”

“Don’t mind him”? Like, she knew him or something! Like she was some disaffected candy striper! Who was this woman to be so cool and collected in the face of such, I don’t know, such unwarranted disapproval? Such brief but horrifying social interaction? Who was this expert? And that’s the part that scared me more than anything. That maybe I’m the only one who’s still creeped out by the world.

Shortly after, the bus came, and when I took my seat I told myself not to mind her, and then everything was okay.

When we were five, I accidentally told Billy I could see his soul. He freaked. He screamed like death, poured sand all over my green-ribboned pigtails, ran back into his house, and locked himself in his room.  I followed. I knocked on his door. He yelled, “Never say that again!” So I never said it again. Kept it inside me. Kept it filed.

It’s still true, I’ll have you know. Thirteen years later, after treehouses, after spelling bees, after salami sandwiches, after prom, it has waned not a bit. Whenever I look at him, or near him, I see it. His soul, it’s there, and it’s bright, and it’s checkered. I see it because it interlocks, at microscopic niches, with mine. We are a planet, Billy and I.

earhustlermag:

Issue 5 is up! This one features our esteemed Golden Hustler, C.J. Arellano, whose story “Fantasia of an Eight Year Old Piano” wowed us with its emotional depth, technical proficiency, and unique approach to form.

This issue also features fantastic fiction by Thomas Cannon, Mike Sauve, Janice Soldering, and Graham Tugwell. Check it out now!

You feel wronged, like a spurned lover twisting apron strings in her reddening fists, when you hear that the brand you love is up to no good.

The restaurant = purveyor of ambrosial chicken pieces from your childhood = user of carcinogenic ingredients found also in bike tires

The computer company = touch screens, innovation, revolution = using overseas sweatshop labor in unlivable conditions to lower costs and drive production

The clothier = shirts in many colors = discriminatory employment policies that read like lyrics for a Jim Crow cover band

Oh company, my company!

You huff and pace the room, considering your options as if the heist has gone wrong and Plan C needs drafting in the next handful of seconds or else the axe falls.

“But I’m not complicit in the misery! I just wanted a nice pair of slimming dark washes.”  

No, you didn’t know.  You didn’t know.  You didn’t know.

They say you vote with your dollar, but you can’t help it! Who knows where that dollar goes after you swipe it through the— hold on, can you swipe it again?— hold on, no, let me just wrap your card with this old receipt and try it— oh, hell, I’ll just type in the card number — ugh, this is so annoying when this happens, I’m always telling the manager we really need to get new registers— sorry about that.  Thank you and enjoy your new product! It’s 100% organic and perfectly says “you” so you don’t have to.

Do you ever sit in a room and wonder about the states that some things never were?

I sit at the dinner table and look at the salt and pepper shakers, given to me by a long-ago aunt, who liked to collect ceramics, and also bobby pins she would steal from fresh corpses. She was a paramedic.

The salt and pepper shakers resembled a cat and a dog.  They were a murderous-looking Oriental Bicolor  named “S” and a judgmental-looking Great Dane named “P.” 

I know they have never said “meow” to each other, or “arf.” 

But they so look as if it is their only wish, to say “meow,” or “arf.”  So it goes with the man I see past the salt and pepper shaker, into the building across the yellow nighttime street, into his scratched window and past his torn curtains. He practices his violin.  He plays each yearning note with the diligence and hesitation of someone committing necessary transgressions, as if he hopes that no one hears, as if he hopes that everyone hears.

“You two know each other?” Alex asked.

Cole turned to Christy. “Forget this. I don’t care that you’re smarter than me. Your smile; God, I want to wake up to that for the rest of my idiot life. Will you marry me?”

She kissed him. A “Yes” kiss.

Alex cleared his throat. “Christy, you have the board.”

“Well, Alex,” Christy said, huffing her face into a burnished smile.  “I’ll take Volcanoes for 200.”