Sometime after I died, I came back as a button. An ordinary, four-holed flat from one of my well-worn sweaters, buried inside the pickle jar of buttons my daughter kept on her bedside table. Co-mingled with so many elbowy fluteds, fleshy cloths, cold-skinned celluloids. My new purpose unknown to me except to wait. Sometimes my daughter dug a finger deep and grazed me. Sometimes she turned the jar in such a way we all tumbled like the innards of a kaleidoscope. Many times, she let the jar drop in anger and land with a thud on the carpet. Why did none of my fellow castoffs squirm or shift at the sound of her crying? Were there no souls in here but mine? Today, she shook the pickle jar like a can of whipped cream before plonking it down on the nightstand, leaving me splayed against the glass, my eyes and lips in damsel Os. I could see her, finally, in full. 

And she could see me back. 

My daughter had always made the world into faces. Appliance knobs, wall sockets, river rocks, sewer grates, water-stained plaster, rust marks on a bicycle, urine bubbles in a toilet bowl. The thread-hole buttons she snipped and horded were the most expressive of all things. They returned an infinitude of gazes. More than I could ever match or mimic, for all my trying. I’d catch her in animated conversation with her specimens arranged in small families on the ledge of the bathtub. And when I’d enter the bathroom, she’d look up at me and go silent. Still smiling, but distantly, as if she were mirroring what I couldn’t express. As if I were faceless.

One snowy night, I stayed with her anyway, filling the tub with warm water as it cooled, as she shivered from waiting for her father who wouldn’t be home for hours. Or days. I don’t remember. She let me watch her kissing games with buttons stuck to puckered fingers and thumbs. Her pretend car wrecks and ambulance runs on slick ceramic roads. Her tsunami waves pinwheeling the buttons to the depths. But at my time for bed, she pounded the water with her fists, dashing the mothers, daughters, fathers. She fought me as I raised the drain stopper, screamed as the tiniest collar buttons were drawn down and left juddering at the trap by the suction, dozens of tiny cries for help bubbling up into her ears and mine. She saw that I could hear them. She saw my terror. I lowered the stopper and together we scooped up the babes, toweled them dry—their eyelashes beaded, cheeks flushed—whispering there, there.   

On Kleenex beds beside her own, the buttons slept and slept. My daughter shushed my goodnight with a finger to my lips. They had earaches from all the water, she whispered. They needed quiet. Her finger stayed, tracing my features. The face that was there, a little less faceless. I watch her now through the thick glass. Her lids damp with sleep. Does she recognize her mother? I think tomorrow will be my rescue. She’ll reach in and scoop me out, or dump the jar and pick through the ocean of scowls till she finds my smile. She’ll feel a hint of warm blood, a human heartbeat. She’ll pull away the faint ghost threads still looped tight through my holes, like scales falling from my eyes. She’ll bring me to her ear so she can hear me whisper there, there.

***

Eileen Frankel Tomarchio works as a librarian in a small New Jersey town. Her writing appears or is forthcoming in The Forge, Longleaf Review, Pithead Chapel, Lost Balloon, Maudlin House, trampset, and elsewhere. 

at your mother’s funeral

your name is one of the things your father can’t stop thinking about. it is why street children see him, carrying a massive dusty hair with empty tins of milk clanking against the other around his neck, and run after him to clap and chant:

papa Gozie dance for us.
dance like your mama’s daughter.
dance like your papa’s daughter.
like your daughter’s daughter.

it is why his madness is bigger than the weight of his problems. your father’s madness began at your mother’s funeral. at the funeral, your father was the first to throw earth over her casket. to sit on the floor and tell the crowd of the names he’d thought of naming you. to cry. to wish you were with him. to throw himself at the foot of your mother’s grave and shout, ‘my Chiasoka, you were not supposed to die too.’ to hold the pastor by the neck. to spit on his face. to demand that he resurrect your mother like Lazarus. to ask the pastor the reason he could not move like Jesus, why could he not be like the son of God? why was he not God so his slaps could carry the weight of his grief off his shoulders. to chase away everyone who came to pay homage to your mother. to cane these people with the dried dogo yaro tree branches littered on the floor. to return home and make himself a hot cup of bland tea. to sip the tea. to throw the mug at the wall. to pack the broken pieces. to unpack the broken pieces. to call your mother’s mother over the phone—your grandmother—and call her a witch. to end the call. to call her back and apologize. to laugh at himself. to sleep. to wake up and go back to sleep. to trail the walls of your mother’s room, looking for signs from God, a writing on the wall. to find nothing except the last scan of you in your third trimester, fully formed, ready to come to life. to pack his clothes. to unpack his clothes. to write a note to your mother’s mother saying:

You should have left Chiasoka for me. My wife was coming to see you when she died. You took her and our daughter. You should have left Chiasoka for me.

to send the letter. to unsend the letter. to sit at the foot of your mother’s wardrobe. to flip through the photo album. to hate himself. to blame himself. to decide to unalive himself. at your mother’s funeral, your father was the first to never let go of the grief of losing you both. to never stop living in his imagination. so, he let his hair befriend dusts on the street. and marvel at the name he would have called you had you not died. and snarls at street kids who chant and clap for him. your name is one of the things your father can’t stop thinking about.

***

Mustapha Enesi is Ebira. His story, ‘Kesandu’ won the 2021 K & L Prize for African Literature, he was a finalist for the 2021 Alpine Fellowship Writing Prize, theme winner in Aster Lit’s 2021 Fall Writing Contest, shortlisted for the 2021 Arthur Flowers Flash Fiction Prize, and his flash fiction piece, ‘Shoes’ was highly commended in Litro Magazine’s 2021 summer flash fiction contest. His works appear in The Maine Review, Kalahari Review, Litro Magazine, Eboquills, The Story Tree Challenge Maiden Anthology, and elsewhere.

for Frances Glessner Lee

The teacups have roses on them, rims gilded. Loose tea leaves float at the bottom. A wedge of squeezed lemon tossed on a matching plate. Half-eaten scone. Lavender crumbs. The tablecloth is heavy, clean but with faded stains. An unopened letter sits next to the plates. A scarf hangs from the back of the carved wooden chair. Purple. The bodies are everywhere. Almost no room to walk. Looks like a child’s slumber party but there are no pajamas or sleeping bags. The house settles, little creaks and moans. A radiator clanks loudly, starting up. The ouija board is on a table next to the couch, planchette still clutched in the old lady’s hand.

***

Georgia Bellas is a writer/artist/filmmaker. Passionate about puppets and plants, she is a ventriloquist and plays theremin in the hypnagogic band Sugar Whiskey. Her teddy bear is host of the podcast Mr. Bear’s Violet Hour.

Inspired by Edward Hopper’s “Nighthawks”

There’s something about the night, the way it lays on my shoulders like a silk blouse. Like the silk blouse I was wearing the night we met, at that 24-hour diner down the block from the place I used to live. There were just a few of us, sitting alone in the same place, when you walked in. You sat next to me. I didn’t like it. You were a stranger and you were too close. I tried to catch the eye of the waiter, but he was elbows deep in the sink, glasses clinking in the soapy water. So I ignored you.

There’s something about the night, the way it makes people do strange things, things they would never do in the daytime. I drank coffee, I fixed my lipstick, I nudged my cup towards the waiter for a refill. You took out a cigarette but didn’t light it, just held it like you were waiting for something. Our hands brushed together—perhaps an accident. I turned then and looked at you for the first time; I have looked at you thousands of times since. Yesterday I looked at you for the last time.

There’s something about the night, how I can stand at a window in a brightly lit room, with people talking and laughing and clinking glasses behind me. All of us, alone in the same place. Or maybe it’s just me. I try to look out at the night, but the whole time the night is looking in at me.

Editor’s note: Prior to this story being published, we learned the devastating news that the talented Beth Moulton has passed away. We will miss her and her beautiful stories so much — it means the world that she has shared her work with us. If you would like to honor Beth’s memory, a scholarship has been established in her name via https://creativelightfactory.org/donate/. Thank you so much!

***

Beth Moulton earned an MFA in Creative Writing from Rosemont College, where she was fiction editor for the Rathalla Review. Her work has appeared in mac(ro)mic, Schuylkill Valley Journal, Milk Candy Review and other journals. She lives near Valley Forge, PA with her cats, Lucy and Ethel.

The apartment was advertised as a one bedroom. My last studio was more spacious. 

The front door is pearly white wood with long narrow rectangles embossed on the exterior and a bulbous bronze peephole. The hinge whistles when I turn the handle. 

Across the threshold, the walls of the vestibular front room are pomegranate. 

I will put the loveseat here, flush with the front door. I will call this purple red room the den. 

I will make a friend who has plants so I can get cuttings and put them in glass jars under the window in the den. When my friend visits, I will ask them to remove their shoes and tell them this is customary in my culture. I hope this will also be customary to my friend’s culture and I won’t have to ask. My friend will walk through the archway separating the den from the kitchen-bedroom. The bed will be tucked away in the west wing, as far from the fridge as possible. Thank god the fridge isn’t white. The black is sleek, better for mounting art. My friend will tell me they love how I have utilized the space, and I will put on a kettle for tea. The stove is slim and gas operated. “Fire is what separates humans from other animals,” my friend will say. We drink in the den, on the loveseat, and there will be a coffee table. My friend will visit regularly, preferring my apartment to their group house where they share a bathroom with their ex. After strangers stop trying to chat us up in bars, we will leave the city and move into a farmhouse. The farming will magically be taken care of and we will only have to worry about keeping the inside tidy. There will be animals, of course, this is a farm. Chickens, geese, cows, sheep, shepherd dogs, barn cats who don’t need litter boxes. There will be other human friends living with us on the farm too, other people who will have tea in this den. 

This time, I’ll keep coasters. 

***

Parth Shah is an MFA candidate in creative writing at the University of Wyoming. Prior to graduate school, he produced podcasts at NPR. His work is logged at parth-shah.com. 

I am not a ghost story, is the first thing she says each time I see her.

She is, though, a ghost. With the lank, dripping hair of a drowned woman, and a mottled green tinge to her bloated cheeks. Sometimes I catch her in the corner of my gaze and think, for a moment, she is still alive. This is where I should give you a detail that will make you care, make you love her; but I can’t ever maintain the trick of my seeing past that one moment, when I think her in the world and then realize my own wrong.

I need your help, she says, but because she is not a ghost story (or because she is) she cannot tell me how she needs my help. Instead she follows me into meetings and onto crowded buses and through the lunchtime salad lines. This is called haunting, I tell her. You are haunting me. But she shakes her head with a scatter of drops and says no, it is only that we are always headed in the same direction. We are still simpatico.

I want her to have a happier moment. Sometimes, when I catch her unawares, she is holding her own throat like she has forgotten how to breathe. She coughs a wet rattle and nothing comes up. She is in a bad way to be a ghost, locked in the worst moment of her life, and I want to pull her hands from her throat and tell her to leave.

The other thing I want to tell her is that I am not a ghost story either, I do not want to be in a ghost story; but the words feel even less true from me. I am nothing but a ghost story, colleagues and strangers edging away when they sense her at my side. I am nothing but a collection of places I will not go and words I will not say. When the leaves are turning I take her back to the lake and tell her I would slick gasoline over its skin and drop a match. I would burn it all, if such a thing were possible—I believe it could be possible. I point to each dropped red leaf and tell her how they are memories of the flame I’ll one day set, revenging her. This is what ghosts want, isn’t it?

I am not a ghost story, she says to me, though a ghost story is the only thing we are. But I’ll tell her she isn’t, I’ll tell her back her version of the truth, any truth, if it only means that one day I turn and she is gone. One day I turn and there is no patch of damp on a dry street. One day I turn, I have said the right words, there is no water clinging to my hem.

***

Ellen Rhudy lives in Columbus, where she’s an MFA candidate at The Ohio State University and Fiction Editor at The Journal. Her writing has been published in Story, The Cincinnati Review, and Cream City Review, and previously in Milk Candy Review. She’s working on a collection of stories and a novel. 

Somewhere in the country, on an empty cul-de-sac, is a five-bedroom farmhouse. The farmhouse has clean, straight siding, and the morning is foggy but the sun is white and shining on this day that could be any day but is a weekday. You are home from school for a happy reason. Maybe your mother is on an upswing, or it’s snowing, or it’s summer. Sunlight puddles around the small dogs on the beige carpet, it bounces off the steaming surface of the swimming pool. From the inside looking out, you don’t know whether it’s a very hot day or a very cold one. Your arms and legs are small. You are happy and afraid.

Your life will be made up of moments like this, when the house is quiet, when you can only hear the dogs’ deep breathing and the drone of morning television behind your mother’s closed bedroom door. If her door is closed maybe she’s not on an upswing. But you are happy today. Are you happy today?

When you are an adult and you are happy you will remember this exact moment in time but you won’t remember why.

There are many things a child like you can do on a day like this. If it’s snowing you can make a fort with tunnels inside. If it’s snowing and the sun is shining, you will remember a thing your father said about the devil beating his wife. If it’s snowing and the sun is shining, the snowflakes taste like sugar when you catch them on your tongue.

If it’s not snowing, it is very hot. If it’s not snowing, you are afraid. If you go outside, your skin won’t know if it’s hot or cold at first, not until the conditioned air evaporates off the ends of the thin hairs on your small arms.

There is no time like the present. You remember that from television, probably. No time. In the beige living room, you aren’t sure.

Your breath fogs the window. Who is the devil’s wife? You don’t remember. Does anyone remember?

You don’t know how long you’ll be small but it feels like no time. It feels like forever. It feels like this single day, this moment when you are happy and you are afraid. You can feel the bones growing in your arms and legs. You are changing and you always will be.

You wonder how your father knows that thing about the devil but you’ve also seen the veins in his neck straining, his face flushing pink, his open mouth like a cave of wonders.

Outside is the surface of the sun and a frozen planet. There is no time like right now.

***

Taylor Gordon is a writer from the Southeastern US who came to Wyoming for graduate school and never left. She has published sparingly, and is the 2021 recipient of the Wyoming Arts Council fellowship in Fiction.

They say we’re domestic terrorists.¹ History textbooks and historical fiction novels always describe it as “bombs raining down from the sky,” well, we rained out of our mothers like bombs, that’s why they say that their water breaks. Except we don’t explode right away. We plant ourselves into the metal of cities like Edison, New Jersey, and watch and wait for the right time. We read Because of Winn-Dixie in the second grade and ignore our white classmates when they make jokes about eating dogs.² We learn to accept (read: not love) being different, eating congealed white rice with fried tomato and scrambled egg out of a shame-scratched thermos. After school, our mothers drive us to a hole-in-the-wall ballet studio where we are the only Asian students. We watch ourselves in the monitors they set up inside the studio, carefully studying how to point our feet, how to angle our arms, how to assimilate.³ Absorbing, observing, watching everything. In 8th grade, our teacher passes out copies of American Born Chinese by Gene Luen Yang. Even though we’ve read it before, and all of Yang’s other works, we’d never admit it. Instead, we turn up our noses and bemoan its inauthenticity, although most of us can’t even read the Chinese characters. Not like we know anything about being authentic. Sophomore year of high school is when “STOP ASIAN HATE” breaks out. We attend a rally run by a coalition of Asian high school students and liberal white women.⁴ Juliet Chen, sophomore, gives a speech on how we’ve been wronged. We clap.⁵ We pose for Instagram, caption our pictures with generic notes of gratitude. I drive real slow on the way home. I tell myself that this is the explosion I was engineered for. It’s not true. But the bomb feels so sweet, so lovely, so I let myself pretend that it is.

¹: Nearly all reputable sources define “domestic terrorism” with the words dangerous and violent. It’s just a little ironic, knowing that we were always depicted as fragile, as quiet, as subservient. At our core, we are oxymoronic: they are scared of the violence that silence can hold.

²: Except, we’re in high school now, and we crack those same jokes to our white friends. They make those jokes, too, but only when they’re with us. Like it’s our dirty little secret. It’s confusing to think about, though. It doesn’t actually bother me if someone makes a joke about Asian people eating dogs. Isn’t humor supposed to poke fun? But what if I’m thinking about this all wrong? What if I’ve been conditioned to think that mildly racist humor is funny?

³: Nearly all of us drop out of ballet class at the end of middle school for a variety of different reasons: tuition is too expensive, the way that the men stare at your pink-tights-clad legs and the shape of your blurry body in the streetlights when you’re walking out of the studio is a peculiar pain, but it’s mostly because our parents say that the arts are useless.

⁴: Everyone looks exactly like how you would expect them to look.

⁵: But in the back of our minds, we are trying to think about what hate crimes we have experienced. We think about the playground crimes, where white kids smeared the edges of their eyelids with their fingers, where they said “Ching-chong” like a soundtrack from hell. We think about the bathroom crimes, where we are humiliated by the ubiquitous mean girls. In isolation, nothing is ever so bad. Everyone tells us to get over it. We can. But we’re dangerously close to detonation. One more misstep and we explode. Shrapnel everywhere.

***

Senna Xiang is a teen writer. Her work is published in Superfroot Magazine, Peach Magazine, and other lovely places. 

When the sky fell, the adults screamed. After all, they were hit the hardest. Stock prices plummeted and soared as they crawled around on all fours collecting their papers, adjusting their spectacles, and trying to make bear or bull of it.

The children, on the other hand, quite liked the way it fell. It made a wonderful whooshing noise as it brought everything within reach. The clouds were exactly like cotton candy, despite everything they had been told. On piggy-backs, they could graze the stars and even rotate the moon. They assured it that it was pretty there too upon seeing its other side. With lassos, they rearranged the planets, making Tycho Brahe stammer in his grave. But he stayed put and wiped the spittle off his noble Danish mustache, because they paid him no mind in their fit of playful laughter.

The children’s collective growth pushed the sky back up, though it never did return to its original height. And so the people lived in a world without billboards, one in which the trees snaked around like vines and the biggest problem that faced humanity was which lampshade to put on the sun in the evening.

***

Alex Grejuc is a Romanian-American writer who lives in the Pacific Northwest. He recently graduated with a bachelor’s from Oregon State University, which means he now has to pay general admission prices at movie theaters and museums. His sole publication is a poem in his alma mater’s student magazine, Prism.

He conjures her from the perfumed page of a vintage magazine…

She has a body. She can wriggle its toes and pinch a floret of belly, turning this way and that in a clouded mirror. But still, she is paper thin somehow.

In the burnished theatre where she makes her debut, he folds her into a cherrywood box; tucks her up his sleeve. She crouches in the dark, listening to the audience gasp and murmur, sharp creases deepening in her origami heart.

* * * *

In a warehouse full of mirrors, there’s a locked room…

She lies on a table of ice, its fanged breath frosting her back. She is learning how to freeze and thaw her molecules — or rather, how to expand the emptiness between the atoms, how to hold them a sword’s width apart. The secret, he says, is for the body to be as cold as the blade.

She nods, ready, and he saws her in half. She doesn’t feel a thing, though she can still wriggle her toes.

* * * * *

He takes her on tour in a suitcase made of glass…

In Monte Carlo, she becomes the rustle of satin as he’s sleeping, the parchment scuff of slippers sheathing feet, the tender click of a hotel door. She walks into the sea until his magic pulls her back, waves thickening around her like rope.

On the casino floor, she drifts between blackjack and baccarat, slots ringing in her ears. Here, she is already invisible: no illusions required. Here, their eyes are fixed on other tricks: the flick of red, the flash of black. Here, in smoke and shadows, she lingers, watching how Lady Luck is both everywhere and nowhere, how the Queen of Hearts hides in plain sight, how jackpots slip through fingers like water, how ice melts in bourbon, never to be seen again…

* * * *

He dreams of a mermaid, trussed in a tank…

When she curls into bed hours later, the ends of her hair are still wet – telltale tendrils inking dark sigils on the sheets. Only then, sparking with secrets, does her heart billow and start to beat.

***

Lynda Cowles writes fiction in small doses, alongside murder mysteries and video games. You can usually find her on Twitter @lyndacowles.