Today I’m the friend getting interviewed on Dateline because nobody in the family will actually do the interview.

Today I can tell you what was going on in the minds of the family members and my childhood best friend Amy, the one who… you know… went missing. 

And though I hadn’t spoken to her in seven years, I can still wipe my tears with the best of them. Just ask me to pull out our fourth grade year book or confirmation photos.

Or rather, today I am the second cousin.

No, today I’m co-worker.

Today I can say, That’s just how Trudy was. She’d give you the shirt off her back. She was the belle of the ball. She’d light up the room. She was a good Christian woman. She didn’t have an enemy in the world.

She never would’ve left her kids like that.

Today I can say that the Brad I know would’ve never done something so evil to Trudy. He was a good god-fearing man. He was the gentle giant. He used to cry when he saw stray cats. He loved Trudy more than anything in the world save his kids.

Today I can tell you this for sure: he never would’ve done that in front of his kids. 

I can say: he was just the most polite quiet neighbor you’ll meet.

Or: he was straight evil, I knew it from the start.

Or: he always waved when I’d walk by with my Rufus.

Or: you never can tell, can ya.

Or: oh I could tell something wasn’t quite right, I’ve watched them y’all’s show a time or two.

Or:

Today I can tell you what my aunt Maggie told me about her cousin Ginny who talked to her best friend Molly who used to cut her hair. 

I can tell you what their yearbook quote was and who they were voted most likely to be.

I can sit and talk and talk and swoon a little at Keith Morrison’s eyes and convince myself that I’m doing this all to keep the memory of my best friend from fourth grade alive. 

I’ll tell you this, I’ll tell you: that was me, you never would’ve caught me dead looking like that while behaving like that all the while the whole town knows good and well the way you been parading around this way and that way and thinking nobody’d ever dream of doing that to you.

I’ll tell you this, I’ll tell you I might not know much, but I know this much is true. 

Good people don’t do evil things like that to people they love. 

Good people don’t wind up dead/murdered/murdering/raping/molesting/raped/molested/kidnapped/etc etc unless they had it coming.

I know because today I’m a good person, just you ask anybody around here.

***

Drevlow runs BULL and writes books about mostly the same bull stuff. He lives in Statesboro, GA with his nonfiction wife and three trash dogs. You can stalk him online at thedrevlow-olsonshow.com or on twitter, insta, face, bsky, & threads @thedrevlow.

A locket shaped like a book, metal pages empty, tarnished black ovals where someone—my parents?—should have been.

The All New Fannie Farmer Boston Cooking School Cookbook, published 1962. In that same book, shoved between Jerusalem Artichokes and French-Fried Asparagus, a recipe card. Title in my mother’s cursive: “Green Walnut Preserves.” The rest, blank.

The satin heels I wore to prom, coffined in tissue paper.

My father’s funeral program, October 1988.

A letter my younger brother sent from summer camp in western New York, August 1988. From its folds, a curlicue of paper, soft with smeared graphite, falls to my feet. My brother always enclosed sketches. Birds, mostly: chickadees and yellowthroats. My mother pinned them to the cork board in the kitchen. Sometimes I’d catch her there, feather duster or garbage bag or limp rag in hand, eyes roving over the strokes of my brother’s pencil.

More sketches. I call to ask if he wants them.

“I don’t want any of her junk,” he replies.

That summer it had been my job to reply to his letters. My mother only learned English as a teenager; her grammar mistakes embarrassed her. “When you write him,” she enjoined, “don’t mention the news.” The sour smell of my father’s skin, the hard plastic of the kidney-shaped basin by his bedside. “I want him to have his camp.”

I gashed my drafts with red crosshatch, excising tumors until the page was blank. None made it to the mailbox. My mother has to break the news on the drive back from camp. We park at a rest stop. I sit up front. In the rearview mirror I watch my brother’s face curdle, his birds recast as evidence of exclusion from familial crisis, the first of many grievances to come. In a few years he will throw a platter at my mother and shout that he hates her. But now we pass the rest of the trip in silence. My mother drives the speed limit exactly, brakes before every turn—the slightest jostle could crack us apart.

***

Catherine Swanner is a writer in Michigan. She studied history at Rutgers University, and works as a UX researcher. Find her online: catherineswanner.com

We recently published Holly Pelesky’s charming “Working Class Date Suggestions.”

Here, we ask her two questions about her story:

1) I love these dates. These are wonderful dates. I want to go on these dates. Have you gone on any of them? I also want to go on these dates! The only one I’ve had with a romantic partner is Dan did break open his aloe vera plant to rub its goo onto my sunburn once. Although I haven’t gone on the rest of these dates as romantic dates with a potential partner, I do have a friend who is up for anything who has indulged me in some of these details. She and I have this enormous respect for each other that I would like to have with a partner one day; she is a catalyst for me to dream of the biggest love. 

2) Though we never really meet the characters here, we get a sense of their fondness for each other through the description of the dates they could go on. Do you think they will last? (I hope they will last!)  Oh they will definitely last. To me this is a construction of a very close couple, one who admires and desires each other. These two people live in the world together. They are not threatened by what it could bring their way. 

Let’s eat banana splits at the Dairy Queen that used to be an Amigos and let’s quarrel over whose better at quarters and challenge the other to a game, not because it matters at all but because we want to watch each other’s hands work.

Let’s dangle our feet in the pool while a quiet rain begins and we’ll riff off each other’s thoughts and birth deeper and more considerate ones together, the water whooshing between our toes as we swirl patterns into the water, the quiet rain landing on our skin delicate as sleep.

Let’s roll up a joint of Gouda and see how it inhales.

Let’s go to a diner and eat greasy eggs and suck down cokes and talk about what your tattoos mean, whose been to jail, what we never got caught for, the stupid drugs we did, the shady characters we knew and were and then let’s forgive ourselves and get tattoos that mean nothing and everything.

Or we could just eat quesadillas and watch sour cream drip down each other’s face.

Let’s meet at the coffee shop, share a scone, and make up stories about every person who walks in, shared in hushed excitement.

Let’s get high and listen intently to song lyrics while holding hands, commentate on the secret desires of these characters, our secret desires revealing themselves through the stories we tell each other.

Let’s go sit on the river bottom and watch the foam float by us while the moon brightens and the sun dims, wondering whether the motorboats speeding by are owned or stolen, crafting the particulars of how we’d pull off a boat heist.

But if you can’t swim, you should get in my car instead, turn up the music. We’ll sing along to every song—let’s see how far we make it until we run out of gas.

You’ll need a life vest if you were serious about the boat heist.

Let’s get high and write postcards to everyone we love, lick stamps and slyly leave some on each other without us noticing until we take our clothes off and there they are, little 51 cent I love yous, little you send mes.

Let’s lie naked together and listen to songs until they course through our bloodstreams, touch each other in just that way until our bloodstreams feel like just one, coursing through us both.

Let’s break open your aloe plant and smear the goo on our sunburns, it’s so cold, my skin is electric underneath your fingertips.

Let’s get corndogs and strawberry limeades and dip our feet into the river. I know it’s rising and there’s a flood warning but think what it would feel like to watch the banks fill to the brim like that next to me, both of us all hopped up on pheromones—everything more and more and more.

If you’re still squeamish of water—even after that time you were almost swimming—let’s sneak a charcuterie spread into the movie theater, spread soft cheeses on pffts of bread while we watch a story unfold on a screen, slide rolled up pieces of prosciutto into open mouths, lips wet with want to discuss the plot and dialogue and acting after—you are my favorite critic.

***

Holly Pelesky writes essays, fiction and poetry. She received her MFA from the University of Nebraska. Her prose can be found in CutBank, The Normal School, and Roanoke Review, among other places. Her collection of letters to her daughter, Cleave, was published by Autofocus Books. She works as a librarian for her first job, in a college writing center for her second. She lives in Omaha with her two sons and their indoor/outdoor cat. She is not dating at the moment, but vouches for all these ideas. 

You must remember these few things if nothing else. Pay attention. You are always drifting away.

Do not leave the house without a basket of fresh pastries. Stop to pick the flowers, but not if you’re wearing a short skirt. Bring a friend when you’re headed into the forest. Or at least set your phone to share your coordinates with others. 

Trust your instincts. If that guy seems to be a wolf wearing shorts with suspenders, keep moving. Look at his feet. Is he barefoot? Does he have claw-like toenails?

You should already know not to talk to strangers. Do you not pay attention at all? Where does this willful naivety come from?

You want to believe in magic, and maybe in your experience, a fairy godmother has appeared at just the right time to turn the mice infestation into a carriage and footmen, your rags into a gown, your knotted hair into a swooping bun with wispy tendrils. Don’t count on magic to save you. If you want out, make a plan that does not involve you singing and gazing out of the window. If you are stuck in a tower (and who of us has not been stuck in a tower), don’t focus on how long your hair is, and don’t, you know, throw it over the window for any old woodsman to climb up. Aside from being dangerous, that is so bad for your scalp.

Let’s face it, you have a tendency to fall in love fast, we know this about you, so take a step back, and ponder, Do you love him, or do you love how much he loves you? And does he love you or is he smitten by your beauty and kindness and beautiful singing voice? Your tight bodice, your locks of gold/black/never brown? The enchantment doesn’t last, my friend, so be sure before you accept his hand in marriage under the cover of night, hustled away by your father, lest you find yourself alone in a drafty stone bedroom with musty smelling sheets and an animal curled around you in the four-poster bed.

Consider the stepmother. We know she’s jealous, though if we could take a moment here: ask yourself why. She’s got your father as her husband; she’s got the house—what is her problem? 

On the other hand, you should also be wary of the witches, those with the shiny red apples. Someone should have taught you—there’s poison inside.

And what about these men? Yes, they can chop down a door with two swings of an ax, setting you free from the wolf’s stomach or the witch’s oven, but just because they saved you doesn’t mean you owe them anything more than a curtsy. Of course, they also have the castle, and probably horses (we know you like horses).  But they can be moody and mysterious, secretive, giving you access to all their riches save one room. 

Why is it you must always long to see behind the locked door, when you have everything else you could ever want?

You are meant to be more than simply a house cleaner for small miners. You are more than a figure for bluebirds to perch on. You don’t have to lie and say you can do something (spin straw into gold), be something (a princess instead of a house maid) or see something (clothes on a ridiculous man) when you cannot, are not, do not. 

Take stock. You’re young, strong, possibly brave. What other things might you want despite the man, the apple, the candy on the windowsill, the secret behind the door? 

You think it ends with “happily ever after,” but life continues. Your feet start to hurt in those shoes. It gets difficult to smile. You have thoughts—dark ones, mean ones, jealous thoughts, hope for bad things to happen to happy people. You are in danger not just of aging and dying, but of feeding those thoughts so that you become the stepmother or the witch.

Do not be only good, pure, thoughtful. Be also ruthless, greedy, cunning. 

Look to the wolf. What does it do? Follow the creature’s lead. In that way, you may prosper. 

***

Aimee LaBrie’s short stories have appeared in the The Minnesota Review, Iron Horse Literary Review, StoryQuarterly, Cimarron Review, Fractured Lit, Pleiades, Beloit Fiction Journal, Permafrost Magazine, and others. Her second short story collection, Rage and Other Cages, won the Leapfrog Global Fiction Prize and was published by Leapfrog Press in June 2024. In 2007, her short story collection, Wonderful Girl, was awarded the Katherine Anne Porter Prize in Short Fiction and published by the University of North Texas Press. Her short fiction has been nominated five times for the Pushcart Prize. Aimee teaches creative writing at Rutgers University. 

AS A BABY, his mother is the only one in history not to ponder the punishing freedom of the possibility of their child’s death. At thirteen, Jesus oscillates between becoming a great whittler and being the son of God. As a side hustle, his stepfather hawks animal sculptures at bazaars; the pufferfish—his prized commodity. At nineteen, Christ carves John the Baptiste a pufferfish, the latter holding it aloft with such amorous wonderment and gusto; even with all the miracles, this is the best it got. Years later, he makes the other John a pufferfish; John responds by asking if it is a prefigurement, an allegory. Make me understand, he implores. At twenty-seven, he makes Mary—not his mother, nor Magdalene—of Bethany a pufferfish, a rhinoceros, a honey badger, a perfume bottle with her initials, and a wallaby. Bathing in the sea with Mary, he resolves to give up whittling, God—to marry her, but he thinks too long of his father, how God made her, her little mouth, her nipplefruit breasts, how he’s seen her this way, too, and that is enough. During the crucifixion, Christ marvels at the monstrous ingenuity it must’ve taken to first design this thing. It is someone’s masterpiece. Since Christ was already perfect in the Militant realm, he is the same in the Triumphant. Jesus watches his Mary for a long time, then she dies, and he does not find her again. After his mother’s Assumption, he does not like seeing her—just the two of them body/soul with God nowhere/everywhere—a once absent father now gone. As saints become a thing, his mother finds a vocation. There are rocks and wood in Heaven if you want them. Jesus whittles pufferfish and little Mary of Bethanys, thinking This is what life could’ve been.

***

Nicholas Finch is a writer and teacher in Florida. Most recently, Finch’s translations of the Croatian poet Josip Pupapcic were published by Faultlines.

He was the one who performed the grandest tricks, climbed the tallest trees, vaulted the steepest rooftops, annoyed the most dogs at night bouncing like a firefly with the light of his GoPro always filming, always posting, garnering the most likes from subscribers, garnering the most frustration from neighbors who called him crazy, called him a hooligan, the one who wished he’d hadn’t been filming, hadn’t been posting for likes when his girlfriend lost her balance, lost her footing, the one who wished knew how to swim, how to act, how to do anything but stare dumbfounded like the other onlookers at the clifftop, pointing, shouting, insisting someone do something as he begged the helicopter to hurry, the one who later took swimming lessons at the Y, the one who climbed to the tallest tree the day of the hurricane, the one who vaulted across his neighbors’ rooftops in the downpour, the one who spotted his neighbor George in the rising water, the one who pulled George to higher ground, the one who insisted the helicopter leave, insisted there were more survivors, the one who the mayor called a hero, the one with the news segment that went viral, the news segment he would never see, the news segment that garnered the most likes from his subscribers.

***

Jennifer Lai has fiction in New Flash Fiction Review, Brilliant Flash Fiction, Scribes MICRO, and elsewhere. She lives in Washington state.

1. Any water can be living water. Be it in a strip mall church, or a river, or a lake, or the ocean, according to my father. Even if it was brackish and slimy and smelled of soggy dead leaves. My father never baptized me or my brother in any of the churches where he was a pastor; in the summer he would launch me off his thighs and shoulders into overbleached pools, I came up churning water, eyes red, lips blue and body numb, shouting again! again! until the end of the day.

2. A strong swimmer can still be pulled under by currents. The river was rushing and swollen after ten days of rain, and there were too many beginners in our group, including me. I didn’t drown, but when we tipped over, I was trapped under the canoe, which was wedged under a branch, and when I came up, my lungs were burning, and I was afraid of water in a new way.

3. The brain and heart are over 70% water. I fell in love with a girl in high school who loved to swim as much as me. We went so far out in Lake Michigan that nothing on the shoreline made sense, it dissolved into distant shouting. There we could cling to each other, treading water and making out where no one could see us. And that was the thing: we were both raised to be fearful of queerness, of this kind of baptism by women.

4. The surface tension of amniotic fluid can be measured. My mother, who was raised Catholic, and who I swam in so violently she vomited every way, taught me to wash dishes using water so hot it begs the skin to blister. I wonder if washing dishes this way ever makes her think of being scoured clean by holy water, which, forbidden to me, I once sipped from a font, the edge surely filthy from the touch of so many hands. I learned to plunge my hands in plate after plate after bowl after pan after cup after knife, fork, spoon, removing all traces of food or spit; she taught me to scrub things so clean my knuckles come out red and raw, so my skin dries out and cracks like a wilderness.

5. The opposite of baptism is funeral. We used to play Pentecostal baptism with our Catholic cousins at the beach the summer I was nine. I insisted on being the minister, tipping everyone backwards one after the other, saying I baptize you in the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost, then slapping them on the forehead. When it was my turn, everyone held me under, together, until my soft palate, throat, and nose were burning, even my brother’s small hands were a part of the net, trapping me until I was thrashing around, fish-like with panic. After, I let them bury me up to the neck in damp sand.

6. A car can hydroplane on one-tenth of an inch of rainwater. My brother died in a car accident on a rainy afternoon at sixteen. He almost drowned in a pool when he was two, and a few more times after that in lakes and ponds as he got older. It never made him afraid of water. I can picture the silvered sliver of scar on his forehead from careening into table corners, water splashing as we played, him veering towards the edge of the pool as if magnetized by danger. My dad pulled him out and beat on his back until he threw up a mouthful of water and undigested cheerios. After that, I dragged my brother around the shallow end, his arms around my neck, letting him half-choke me so he could kick his feet and pretend he was swimming.

7. If a person is drowning, they should try to keep their head up and try to breathe
normally. I learned the basic safety rules for swimming late, long after my parents dropped me in the water, long after it could have become muscle memory. I am too used to being flung out this way, backwards, no time to take a breath. I am used to no warning, used to hitting the surface hard, and used to sinking to the bottom, which is why I force all the air out and drop as fast as I can, because I am also used to getting it over with, and I am also used to coming up shouting again! again!

***

Ani King (they/them) is a queer, gender non-compliant writer, artist, and activist from Michigan. Ani is the first place winner of the 2024 Blue Frog Annual Flash Fiction Contest, a SmokeLong Grand Micro Competition 2023 Finalist, and has had work featured in Split Lip Magazine. They can be found at aniking.net, or trying to find somewhere to quietly finish a book without any more interruptions.

Before,

back when Blockbuster was a thing, when Fridays were family movie night, when Father still knew your name and Mother could still read the fine print, back when Sister linked her arm so tightly into yours her pulse screamed and you ran to the New Releases section in sync, back when the biggest argument you got into was which movie to take home – you, romcom, she, comedy – so you rock-paper-scissored to decide, when you knew her tell was a crinkled forehead so you were guaranteed the win, back when Mother’s keychain held the coveted membership card that made the purchase, back when you waited in line begging her to sink your teeth in fun dips and baby bottle pops and pop rocks and gummy worms and air heads and twizzlers, when your stomach didn’t protest when you started inhaling them, back when you asked to turn up the radio on the ride home, when Britney Spears’ ‘Lucky’ was a number one hit, when you thought you were a good singer and didn’t look around first to start belting, back when your legs didn’t know disability and were rooted the strength to sprint you to the couch, when you could shelter your entire self with a blanket Gram crocheted, back when you could fast forward through the previews but you couldn’t fast forward through the FBI notice that warned about copyright, back when you thought, why would anyone ever break the law?, when you thought the law was always right, when you didn’t have a reason not to question them, back when you watched a romcom where the guy was able to stop the love of his life right at the gate of the terminal, when you thought stopping someone from following their dream was a romance, back when the landline rang and you were all farthest from a phone, when you let the machine pick up the message, when you could hear your family’s voices say in one collective hymn this is the home of your last name, back when you all had the same last name, back when kindness seemed spilled and love was the laughter of your family in one room, back when you sprawled across Mother’s lap, head under the roof of her hand, feeling safe enough to dream and sprout and church yourself into the universe, you remember you couldn’t wait to grow up. You couldn’t wait to grow old. 

***

Aysha Mahmood is a Pakistani and Dominican writer, artist, and disability advocate based in Connecticut. She is currently the editor of a nonprofit organization and her creative work has been published in Salamander, Leon Literary Review, and Troublemaker Firestarter amongst others. When not writing, Aysha can be found binge-watching Bob Ross videos, eating an unhealthy amount of chocolate, or growing her vegetable garden.

We recently published Martha Keller’s nostalgic “Good Girls.”

Here, we ask her two questions about her story:

1) I remember those days — rushing out to the swings, hoping to beat the boys, being told to share, being pulled off, being knocked to the ground (we didn’t have a countdown like this). I love how the girls plan to fight for possession. How long do you think they can hold on?
 Yes! The swings were such a battleground. Weren’t they? I don’t know how long the girls will fight for the swings, but I think the girls’ relationship with the swings will unavoidably change. I love writing about liminal moments in time—the flash of a transition, the shift in the way the girls are viewed or the way the girls view themselves. The last line “holding hard and fast to everything they’ve come to take from us” has a defensive tone. Given everything that we’ve already read, there’s also a nagging question: What will they let them take? The swing itself hovers over a space in time. While on the swing, the girls stay in the same spot. Nothing has been decided yet. Nothing has been given or taken away. Throughout the story, I feel like the girls are fighting for power: power over the swings but also power to hold on to themselves. In that sense I hope the girls keep fighting to hold on forever.  

2) I love the way the countdown pulls the girls into the future awaiting them and then back to this moment on the swings. And in all these future moments, the boys are there. Do you think the boys will always follow the girls like this?
The boys’ role in their lives grows and swells until it nearly suffocates the girls and pushes them to find something new. But in the years that follow the girls have given the boys a greater role in their lives. They have followed the boys into a life they’re not sure they ever wanted. I like to think the girls reach a wiser and more hard-won sense of themselves and what they want and need. When they’re young, they’re too quick to accept what’s expected of them—to embrace (and enforce) restrictions on appearance, behavior, even their life goals. Their choices start to feel like they’re chasing someone else’s milestones.  I like to think the girls and the boys have the courage to stop following (or dragging) someone else down an unwanted path so that they can finally find something closer to a partnership and a life that truly belongs to them.