That alone could be her eternal thought as she shoved her fingers down her throat. Jose would be home soon and she prayed to Christ he could make this apartment look new again. They couldn’t afford to lose a single unit the way property taxes were escalating.
Whispering something under her breath as she slowly backed away into the hall, locking the door before she went to make her calls. Breathing in fresh air as her poisoned memories faded, replaced by those she understood: past lovers, dead fathers, failed dreams, all the things that made up a genuine life. That’s what she kept telling herself as the sickness she felt did not dissipate. Lingering hell. Taste of that gray milk in her mouth. No prayer of hers seemed to summon it away. Things were different, now, and the Word fell short. Such distances between her and the god she hardly knew: a raw, nagging feeling impossible to suppress. Jan felt it within herself as she sensed it in the civilized world. Consciously abjured with pestilential devotion, as their agendas piled up like so much shit. Bleeding dry interior lives with the incorruptible fealty of a towering diadem even though they are content to survive in fetters of pride and loyalty. A pain in her gut that mounted until it had nowhere else to go: bilious foam of pitch-black destinies retching out of her tiny, grandmotherly frame. It will get easier, Jan decided, picking herself up off the floor and bracing herself against a wall: strength returning, with moistness in her bones, uncoiling from once lost deposits of fecund anamnesis.
THE END
FEELING SORRY FOR ASSHOLES
By Donna J. W. Munro
Lucy’s mouth crusted with gems. A diamond mustache, ruby rosacea whirling on her cheeks, and nose sparking with spots of erupting wealth. Leaning toward her foggy bathroom mirror, she picked at them until one by one; they fell off, leaving bloodied pockmarks weeping in her skin.
Fucking wishes.
She dropped them all into a jar, the latest of many, filled with glittering stones. For the next hour, she filled the holes and covered the color of the erupting gems, making her face look more like a teen pizza face that humans wouldn’t notice other than to sneer at. Lucy didn’t mind. It kept most people from thinking nice thoughts at her.
She pulled on her dress, mindful of the lumpy scars on her shoulders. She’d had wings inked on her back, long before the current badass black-inked trend inspired by Darryl of The Walking Dead. Hers were there to remind her of what she’d lost.
With a deep breath, she pulled on a jacket and twisted open the front door, stepping out into the bright light of morning. Her wounds would fill with stones all day, but she couldn’t sit in her house forever. She had to eat. Had to pay bills. Had to get sun on her skin and wind on her face. Once, she’d tried to stay cooped up to avoid the wishes, but the human wishes still filtered in through the cracks in her house—under the door, down the chimney. Her mowing neighbor wished good health for his ailing friend, and a ruby implanted on the corner her mouth. A mailman, with such joy in his heart and a whistle that sounded like bird song, wished so many people so much good that she developed a nest of diamonds along her jawline so big they ripped her open. She sewed the flaps back together and had her doors weather-stripped to seal some of their wishes out.
But it was unavoidable.
She did the chores she had to do around town, inching away from those folks who proclaimed their goodness with every smile and thought. Like the smiling fools with kind words on the train. And serene church ladies, who nod and spout wishes for peace and protection, and lined certain streets in town like spiritual potholes. Little children at play were the worst. Swinging on swings or from barred jungle gyms, they all wished for their own moon, swathed up in innocence and joy. Walking past a playground might cover her face, neck, and shoulders in a sparkling rainbow of mineral scales.
Fucking wishes!
She kept to the dark side of town where pure wishes usually stayed inside, behind bolted doors.
Lucy pushed open the door to her favorite bar, Snake-Eyes and Pool Cues, a greasy spot with warm food, cold beer, and a bunch of lugs so drowned in regret that their wishes were a laundry list of greed and self-serving.
Not all of them and not all the time.
Lucy always stayed away from Jack, the regular in the corner whose alcoholism didn’t stop him from loving his poor abandoned kid and longing to do right by him. But the alcohol blunted his love enough that he didn’t manage to make his wish into a rock. When he wished, a glittering streak might form across her cheekbone like a vein of gold in a mountain.
Most of the others only wished for themselves or for things that didn’t hurt.
Besides, Snake-Eyes made a mean bowl of chili.
“Hi Lucy,” he said, sliding a piping bowl in from of her when she sat at the bar. “Get you anything else?”
She shook her head and dug into the meaty stew.
Snake-Eyes or Snake as she’d come to know him, was her favorite. He wasn’t bad, or good, or anything. Kind of an asshole, really. Back before she fell, she would’ve sought him out to repair his fractured soul. A would be project for the up and coming guardian. A perfect sociopathic puzzle with missing pieces she could find and knit together.
“How’s the chili?” he asked, faking concern, though she tasted his boredom, his self-involvement.
“Delicious,” she said, though she wasn't referring to the stew at all. How could he know her arched eyebrow and crooked smile had more to do with the state of his soul than the shape of his ass?
“Oh yeah?” Snake leaned in; gaze intense as he weighed her interest. His long brown hair fell across his face, shading it so all that glittered were his grinning teeth. His elbows rested on the bar and even though a couple next to her wanted his attention, he'd focused in on her. “You down tonight, doll?”
He’d tried before, not because he actually had feelings for her, but because his belt needed notching. She knew his wishes. They were all dirty as hell. Selfish. Nothing that might grow painful stones. She’d resisted so far, but…
“I’m down. When are you off?”
Snake shot a look at his waitress and back at his other bartender.
“We’re slow.” He hopped over the bar and strode toward the door, not waiting for Lucy.
That part of him was missing and it felt good to her. He hopped on his Harley and pulled on his helmet, balancing his bike between his muscled thighs.
“Your place or mine?”
“Mine,” Lucy said and got into her car to lead him.
* * *
The sex was good enough. Hot and hard. It left her breathless.
He lit a cigarette without asking if it was okay.
She smiled at that. So little care.
The pebbles of pain under her skin melted with his every selfish touch. The pain of eruption faded as each of the hard pocks smoothed.
“That was fun,” he said and smashed his butt out on the top of a beer she’d gotten him. “I gotta go.”
Lucy nodded, running fingers across her smoothed out face. “Yeah, see ya.”
The pain was gone.
No stones, no nothing.
As the door shut behind Snake and she listened to his Harley roar away, she wished for the first time since that fall so long ago.
“Let this be my life.”
Then she fell into a blissful, painless sleep on a clean pillow.
* * *
She couldn’t stay away from Snake.
He’d become the answer to her problems, and with every hard, thrusting encounter, Lucy found healing.
They’d been at it for months. At first only a couple times a week, sometimes in the bar bathroom or on his bike, in her car or at her house, it didn’t matter really. But soon he’d started coming to her every night.
“You are a drug, Lucy,” he said as he rubbed his hand across her wing tattoos, first the left and then the right. “I can’t get enough.”
His wishes were delicious. Wishes that she’d suck him harder. Wishes for more kink. Oh, so many selfish things to want, each
giving her another day's relief from the goodness that assaulted her all day long.
There hadn’t been one stone since she’d started fucking him. Not one.
Tonight, he’d had her three times. Each one rougher, more exposed than the last.
The hood of her car in the parking lot under the pool of a yellow streetlight didn’t even faze her.
“Why are you so cool with this? Most girls—”
“I’m not most girls.”
“Yeah, but—”
“Shut up, Snake. Are we going to do it again or what?”
He pulled away from her and leaned against the silver grill of the car. He reached up and pulled her skirt back over her ass and grabbed her hand.
“Listen, Lucy, I want to tell you something…”
She adjusted her sleeves back into place and turned to face him, nerves flaring, clenching up her stomach.
“I know that there’s something wrong with me. Been this way all my life.” He laced his fingers in hers and tugged her down onto the asphalt next to him. His knee brushed hers as he talked. “I never cared about nothing. Not my Ma, not girlfriends, not anything. Something’s missing in me that… that I wish was there.”
In Lucy’s soft pallet, a throb of pain stung needles up into her eyes until she was blinking out fat tears. Tears that Snake misunderstood completely.
“Aw, Lucy, I’m sorry I’m so useless. I just like you is all. More than I’ve ever liked anyone and…”
The skin sharpened with geometric ridges and her tongue ran across each line breaking through roof of her mouth. It was the crushing pain of a thousand brain freezes, wrapped in barbed wire, and trying to fit through a teeny, tiny hole. The gem he’d put in her, his damned first unselfish wish, struggled to be born, ripping her mouth bloody.
“I want to be with you, only I don’t know how. I wish… I wish I could be good for you.”
Lucy turned and started coughing, blood streaking the mucus of her mouth as she spat. She braced on all fours, jaw agape as the wish pushed out all points and edges, past her jaw, past her teeth, and onto the asphalt with a clatter.
A diamond the size of a fist.
“Don't wish anymore,” Lucy said and panted until her mouth knitted back together. “Please.”
Snake watched, paced, and kneeled by her, unsure what to do or say. Caring was new to him after all.
Lucy picked up the diamond and turned to face him. It had been so long since she’d finished a soul puzzle. When she’d lost her wings and fell, she gave it up. But he stood so close, worry laced in his features for the first time in his life. A little bird flying in a storm, lost.
If she gave him the stone that would make him whole, cement the wish and make it real, then she’d be giving away the only succor she’d known from pain since the time of her fall.
His wish sat in her hands, thrumming its own wish to heal him, and how could she not? How could she leave him broken?
“This is yours.” Lucy put the diamond in his hands and closed his fingers tight around the edges, pressing hard until the gem opened him up and made its way into the empty spot within. He stood gape-mouthed and vacant as he reset.
Lucy turned to leave, to get away before the kind wishes began, but he came to…
“I love you, Lucy,” he said. And he was whole.
Her back cracked open, though it felt like a shower of spring rain. The wings she’d lost unfurled from the tattooed ink, beautiful iridescent gem fragments as thin as mist. She lifted her face to the sun and felt the welcome waiting for her. Forgiveness. She spread her wings and—
“I love you, though,” Snake said, and in his words, chips of goodness fell away.
If she left, he’d fall.
If she left, he’d shatter.
If she stayed, she’d suffer.
An angel without the presence and voice of God is a damned one, indeed.
If she left, would she still be saved?
“It’s what I get,” she mumbled, tugging her wings back under the sleeves of her dress, “feeling sorry for assholes. Damned.”
THE END
THE BAPTISM
By Aron Beauregard
Erica had been acting more out of character by the day. When we’d first gotten the news that the baby was dead, it was devastating. It seemed to be likely and reasonable that her change in behavior stemmed from the calamity. I had never even heard of Patau Syndrome before Dr. Aguilar pointed out the telltale signs she was seeing in her scans. The fetus, Abigail as we’d named her, had been undoubtedly stricken with the rare chromosomal disorder. The news left us in shambles, venturing into the darkest corners of the mind, questioning everything.
As our conception and pregnancy advisor, it was Dr. Aguilar’s duty to convey the good news as well as the mortifyingly upsetting. She tried to mitigate the grave misfortune as best she could but made it clear that there would be no happy ending. We were told there were only two options available: The first (which she strongly recommended) would be to terminate the pregnancy. Flush the limp, unresponsive sack of flesh and bone out and move forward. She didn’t say it in those words of course but that’s what I was picturing and I’m sure that’s what Erica was picturing dispelling from her vaginal area. The second would be for Erica to walk around with our dead child in her womb for the next six weeks and deliver the ill-fated, lifeless cluster of deformities.
The choice seemed obvious to me but Erica didn’t make a rash decision by any means. The first few days after the news she remained silent, her motive unknown. I just tried to stay close and support her while she contemplated her future actions. I tried to talk with her but when she offered no response I took the hint and didn’t press it. I knew more than anything she needed my backing, not a surplus of stress.
I had never known her to be a religious-minded person during the span of our eight years together. Even when we had Sam, our firstborn, we never brought him to church or instilled a devout belief system around us. We respected those views, but stayed clear of inserting ourselves into them; instead, we aimed to be “good people” by the high-level definition. So, I found it quite bizarre when she confessed to me she’d begun seeking spiritual guidance by means of Saint Francis Church, a local Roman Catholic center of worship in town.
She began to spend inordinate amounts of time there, leaving Sam and I behind. Evening hours that weren’t practical for a woman in her condition, yet she continued and remained vague and private about what she was doing there or the eventual endgame she was pursuing from her involvement. She’d respond to me with phrasing like “Praying for life” or “I’m going for Abigail,” which to me made a little sense.
She was reaching outside of her comfort zone for help, praying for a miracle essentially. Often times when no earthly entity can solve an issue, people look for a more supernatural solution. Dr. Aguilar had already explained the grim, inflexible actuality of our circumstance. In Erica’s mind it must have been too sinister, too depressing and too unfair. It’s only human nature; when science or medicine cannot provide us a resolution, we then find ourselves in quest for a more extreme or irregular outside-the-box amendment.
In one aspect it was positive; her exhausted and dejected mind had found a way to swing her attitude and hope for a positive outcome. But there was no amount of positivity that was going to change the cold, hard fact that baby Abigail would miss her first birthday. She wouldn’t have a first or last meal and she wouldn’t meet her family. She would be plucked from a chamber of hot fluid to brandish her inhuman appearance briefly, only to be set down in a coffin so tiny it required customization. Or, alternatively, she’d be dumped into an inferno and burnt to a fine dust.
From another viewpoint, I thought Erica’s budding nebulous condition could be dangerous. She’d pushed away the scientific fact that there was a dead fetus inside her, that there was zero chance Abigail would take her first breath. Instead of focusing on making the tough choice, she was postponing it. Her procrastination was the mo
ther of my fears. I knew the possible reasons why she might be avoiding it but that didn’t change the fact that ducking confrontation or hiding from our reality was unhealthy. She’d also deferred telling Sam the reality, which would be a horrible task in its own right, but stringing him along would only make releasing the news even more crushing.
Instead of facing the facts, she was building a house of cards, facilitating a facade for her child and becoming obsessed with the Holy Ghost. Blurring her mind with biblical references and remaining idle. Yesterday I’d seen her walk up to Sam and put his hand on her stomach and, knowing full well that there was nothing alive inside her, she still asked what I found to be her most disturbing question yet.
“Did you feel that, Sammy? It’s your little sister kicking! She’s gonna be a soccer player, I bet. What do you think?” She sounded so sincere, as though she believed every single word of it.
“Really? I don’t feel anything, Mom. Are you sure she’s kicking?” Sam asked, a bit confused by her words in contrast to the reality.
“It’s really gentle, sometimes you have to wait awhile before you can feel anything,” she lied to him.
Her delusion was expanding and becoming increasingly more alarming. I knew I had to confront her again, I might need to press a little harder than before to get a serious reply out of her. Otherwise I knew I’d just be dotted with more bizarre phrases that weren’t even really responses. They would only create more questions instead of providing answers and the exchange would only serve to drag me deeper into the quicksand. I approached her while she sat reading the Old Testament in the parlor. Sam was upstairs watching cartoons in his room so I asked her to join me for a few moments in the den. That would get us out of earshot from our son since there was no telling what sort of fantasy she might be prepared to spew out this evening.
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