Milk Candy Review

            Things are functioning, but just barely. The AC is set to High, yet we sweat. We hear the fridge struggling, compressor kicking on and off. The lights flicker but hold. There’s no point in calling anyone. They charge us just to look at it, then tell us there’s nothing they can do.

            Friends call to talk about their illnesses, their procedures. They call to compare medications. The doctor no longer accepts their insurance, they say. Now there’s only the ER. They wait for hours with the magazines, eyes throbbing, tissue over their mouth.

            A man comes to the door, claims to be a neighbor, knows us by name. His daughter is in the hospital, he says, and he needs money quick, but the bank is closed. We’re doubtful, but we give him the cash in our wallets. The detectives tell us we are not the first.

            Bands of feral cats prowl the street. We hiss at them, hope to scare them off, but they only stop, stare. Who do you think you are? their look says. You should stay in your homes. The street is ours.

            Cars slither by, windows open, stereos thumping. Any delay in the traffic starts the honking.

            The things on our screens remind us we’re unremarkable, uninteresting, unattractive: we are not lounging on the beach, we cannot paint photorealistically, our puppies don’t behave adorably – they chew on our best possessions and drop their runny stools. It feels like a metaphor for something.

            On the TV, the program never changes: a naked woman dead in a creek. Then the hunt. Many appear guilty. Very slowly the monster is revealed. It’s one of us. Or: young people, the currently beautiful, scheme to win something they all agree is valuable. But is it?

            We take walks in the cement neighborhood. Odors of things rotting, vents venting gasses, a cloud of something from a construction site. A man revs an unmuffled car, inky smoke billows from the pipe. We are always dodging scooters. Police gather on corners, looking disgusted. Any inquiry elicits an impatient scowl.

            We want to go away, see something else, break the pattern, but we worry about removing the car from its parking space. One of us, upon our return, will have to stay with the vehicle, circle the block for hours waiting for someone to leave. The thought of it is a deterrent.

            We dream. We dream of leaving, of becoming citizens of elsewhere, of pleasant places we can afford, pure green places, where we can walk to anywhere, where our spirits can enlarge, our perceptions sharpen, where we feel exalted, and when we die, we die very old, or not at all.

***

K. A. Polzin’s stories have appeared in Subtropics, swamp pink, Wigleaf, X-R-A-Y, and elsewhere, and have been anthologized in Best Small Fictions 2023 and the Fractured Lit Anthology 3, and chosen for the Wigleaf Top 50. Polzin was a finalist for The Forge Flash Fiction Competition.

a woman from my neighbourhood posted a long ramble on her socials  about how she hadn’t slept a wink and how devastated she was to hear about what happened to me and about how she went to school with me and got the bus home with me and I thought it was really odd because I think I only spoke to her five times in my life, twice during sixth form  and maybe two or three times since then when I bumped into her in Tesco or at the park while our kids where running about mad or screaming down the chute slide, and any conversations I did have with the woman were superficial and a nod to the children: You have your hands full, how are they settling into the primary four? Oh, Mrs Pike? She’s a nightmare.  Don’t they have far too much homework? Like this woman wasn’t someone I was ever mates with because she’s one of those women that turned forty the day she actually turned thirty and was all about trying to look like she had her shit together and she was on the PTA  at our kid’s school but she got on like she was running the place when all she was doing was organising the BBQ at sports days, so I waited until my sister  was up because I knew she’d see the post or someone would screenshot it and send it to her and we’d roar laughing about what this woman was on, but then when my sister did wake up and read it she just clicked the button on the side of her phone to make the screen go black and then pulled the covers back over her head and didn’t laugh with me at all.

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Justine is an Irish writer. Her stories appear in journals and anthologies such as the Dublin Review, Banshee Press, Moon City Review, Bath Flash, Trash Cat Lit, Inkfish Magazine, Flash Fiction Magazine, Fish Publishing and Fictive Dream. She’s a Best Small Fictions nominee and her first collection of stories was shortlisted/ highly commended in the Bath Novella-in-flash Award 2025.

We recently published Jeanne Lyet Gassman’s searing “What We Bring to the Shelter.”

Here, we ask her two questions about her story:

1) I love the different perspectives we get in this story — each paragraph gives us a different character, a different point of view, and a fuller picture of the whole. How do you think these characters will interact with each other? How will their stories change?
In my experience of being evacuated to an emergency shelter, I noticed how quickly people reached out to help one another once they had recovered from the initial shock. I would imagine that the person who brought pillows and a blanket or a sleeping bag might offer their blankets/pillows to someone who was elderly or cold. Others might ask the person about her grandmother’s quilt, to share some stories and memories of her grandmother. The group huddled together reading from their spiritual texts might invite others to join their circle and offer their own prayers. A collection of old photos and scrapbooks could inspire a conversation with a stranger about the stories in the photos. People at our shelter did share the information they gleaned from their tablets and laptops about the ongoing disaster. They shared information about other lodging, the extent of the disaster, where to find food or refill a prescription, etc. It was very helpful. Finally, I think if a family brought games and snacks for their kids, they might offer to share with other children who were frightened and had nothing.

2) Are there characters whose stories are left untold? Whose belongings aren’t detailed here? Sitting quietly in the shelter, thinking of what they have lost?
I thought about this question for a long time, and I think the voices that are missing are the people who already know they have nothing to return to. These are the people who may have been renting property, or people who live in mobile homes or inherited houses–all directly in the path of the disaster. Most of them probably have no insurance. The only belongings they have are what they brought to the shelter. All of their possessions may be packed in their car. As they sit in the shelter, they’re probably worrying about where they will sleep in the months to come. Where will they find clothing? A new job? Unfortunately, not everyone in a disaster has a support system or family to help them out.

We bring only our wallets, purses, cell phones, and chargers because we had no time to grab anything else. We use our phones to text and call relatives so they won’t panic.

We bring our pets on leashes, in carriers and cages, and in our arms, but our shelter requires they go to another shelter, and when they leave, we worry they will be alone and afraid.

We bring our jewelry stuffed in a sock or crammed in the sleeve of our jacket, and we worry someone will find it while we sleep.

We bring pillows and a blanket or a sleeping bag because we have been through this before, and we know the cots are hard and the blankets are thin.

We bring Grandma’s homemade quilt. She died five years ago, but when we wrap ourselves in it, we can still smell her, and we feel safe.

We bring our wig and full makeup kit because the press is outside, and we want to look our best if they ask for an interview.

We bring our weekly pill counter, hoping we will only need our prescriptions for a day or two.

We bring our religious and spiritual texts, and we huddle in the corner, reading them aloud, because we find comfort from the familiar lessons and prophesies.

We bring our file box labeled “important papers,” but we have no idea what is in there and if it will be any use.

We bring the box of old photos stashed on the top shelf of our closet, and as we rummage through them, we’re swept away with memories of birthdays, anniversaries, graduations, holidays, vacations, and better times.

We bring our toothpaste but not our toothbrush because we forgot about it in our rush to get out.

We bring our emergency stash of cash because we’re worried credit cards and ATMs may not function during power outages.

We bring our tablets and laptops and spend most of our time doomscrolling for updates, but accurate information is slow in coming.

We bring drinks, snacks, and games for our children, hoping it will be enough to keep them quiet during the long night ahead.

We bring nothing but the clothes on our backs because we ran with the disaster on our heels. We bring our pieces of the past, our anxiety for the present, and our uncertainty about the future, and we hold them close to our hearts, a talisman attached, because when we leave we don’t know if we have a home to go to.

***

Jeanne Lyet Gassman’s first novel, BLOOD OF A STONE (Tuscany Press), received an Independent Publishers Book Award in 2015. Additional honors for Jeanne include grants and fellowships from The New Mexico Writers’ Foundation, Ragdale, and the Arizona Commission for the Arts. Jeanne’s work has appeared in or is forthcoming in American Writers’ Review: Buyer’s Remorse (San Fedele Press), The Sunlight Press, and West Trade Review, among many others.

Isabel is not one of us. When we see her, we veil our windows with pleated curtains and woven bamboo shades, snap our shutters and honeycomb blinds. We tug our dogs’ leashes and walk away, fold our hands and pray. Isabel owns the moose meat shop opposite the crematorium. On Fridays, our dead are burned—smoke mists the street and bakes into the moose meat sheets hung in the window display. If we visit her shop, we avoid eye contact and stare at the sausages snaked on the walls. We order shredded, minced, shaved and ground moose meat. Tenderloin, backstrap, ribs, tongue. Isabel fumbles the plastic wrap and jams the vacuum sealer. She is incompetent. We lower our expectations, yet she disappoints us when she forgets to trim the excess fat, when she drops a slab of moose meat on the floor with a splat. What a shame we love moose meat. If we knew her supplier, we would open our own shop and kill her business. Rumors say she hunts the meat herself, that’s why we never see her on Sundays, because she goes into the forest to shoot moose. We try to imagine her with a rifle, with a machete, chopping off antlers, peeling back skin. We cannot. Rumors say she buys beef and paints it with red acrylic to resemble moose meat. She is a fraud. We like to speculate: the crop circle in the corn field means aliens have come to collect her, the lightning storm means God wants to zap her, the month-long rain is her fault. So is the hurricane. Last winter, bird flu decimated the chicken farms and we blamed her. She hexed the priest and stopped his heart. Isabel doesn’t care that she is not one of us. She remains polite, delivers quiches and handmade holiday cards to her neighbors who throw them in the compost for the worms to feast upon. She offers her hand but we do not shake it. She says, “Have a good day.” What agenda lurks behind her pleasantries? Behind her giraffe eyes, does she plot murder? We protect our children. “You cannot play in the park behind the moose meat shop,” we say. “The swing set is rusty,” we say. “You’ll get tetanus,” we say. All lies. When our children grow up, they will realize Isabel is not one of us. They will thank us for our parenting.

***

Sagar Nair is from Sydney, Australia. His work is published in SmokeLong Quarterly, X-R-A-Y Literary Magazine, Vol. 1 Brooklyn, 100 Word Story, The Shore Poetry, The Suburban Review, Voiceworks, and elsewhere.

It’s our neighbor Manny’s 50th birthday and we are hosting his party even though he has a wife, who is sitting on our couch in her linen overalls laughing at something my husband Leif just said. She has bangs. I can’t decide whether I want to be her or kill her. I understand there’s likely a middle ground, but right now I can’t find it.

            Leif looks at me and tilts his head in a way that says, “I know you think I’m flirting but I’m just being social,” and I smile at him in a way that says, “I know you are thinking about her breasts,” and then he smiles back in a way that says, “I definitely wasn’t thinking about her breasts until you brought it up,” and I turn back into the kitchen to check on the crab lasagna, which is Manny’s favorite meal.

            I know it’s Manny’s favorite meal because sometimes he texts me late at night when everyone is asleep and tells me things that don’t matter. In addition to the crab lasagna, I know that he has a tattoo on his right thigh, that he thinks a side effect of climate change is that chipmunks are getting larger, that he wants to put a fence in his back yard, that cantaloupe is the best fruit, that he thinks his wife is having an affair, that there are over 40 cities in the world named Paris. In return, Manny knows nothing about me.

            The lasagna still has ten minutes to go, so I wipe my hands on my apron and tell Tina I’m all set, that I don’t need help, and I laugh at something Kelly says even though I didn’t hear it, and when Steven offers to fill my glass by pointing at me with a wine bottle, I nod yes and grab the first glass I see on the counter, which I don’t think is actually mine, and I hold it out to him and he fills it too much, but I don’t pull it away, and then I say “Cheers” to the room and then, “I’ll be right back!” and I say it with an exclamation point so everyone knows I’m happy and that everything is okay and that I’m having fun at the party and that I’m not at all worried or sad or furious that Leif is now touching Manny’s wife’s knee, casually, as if she is saying something profound, as if he wants to show her he’s really listening, and I go upstairs, run upstairs, but in a happy way, a light way, a way that makes people think I’m just popping up to grab something I forgot or to change my shirt or to get a photo I’d promised to show someone.

            “Be right down!” I yell, smiling so they will hear that in my voice.

            In the bathroom, I breathe in through my nose and out through my mouth. I drink my wine. I lean over the sink and look at my face. I take the tweezers out of the drawer and pluck a hair on my chin that is dark, long enough that someone should have pointed it out, someone should have noticed. The sting feels good. I pluck another just below my nose and my eyes water. I can hear voices downstairs but no words. I lean closer to the mirror and stare at my left eyebrow. I pluck a grey hair out of the middle. I know the timer is going to go off any minute now and that I will make it into the kitchen just in time to pull the lasagna out of the oven–pluck!–and everyone will say how great it smells and how hard I must have worked and how lucky Leif is–pluck!–and he will come up behind me and put his hands on my shoulders and kiss the top of my head and I will smile–pluck!–and smile–pluck!–and smile–pluck!

***

Emily Rinkema lives and writes in northern Vermont, USA. Her writing has recently appeared in Ghost Parachute, Okay Donkey, JAKE, and Frazzled Lit, and she won the 2024 Cambridge and Lascaux Prizes for flash fiction. You can read her work at https://emilyrinkema.wixsite.com/my-site or follow her on X, BS, or IG (@emilyrinkema).