Milk Candy Review

This is a surely incomplete history of Imperiala Genevieve Beatrice Vinistasia Schitz.

Whose parents made up for her terrible surname with a truly superfluous quantity of first and middle names.

Whose father doted on her, the only living child after fourteen miscarriages and nearly giving up hope.

Whose mother had to fetch her out of the cherry tree at the bottom of the garden on the day of her wedding because the cherries were ripe and she loved cherries more than anything, even her intended.

Whose husband promised they would stay close to her parents but took a job in Austria then Tunisia then Ireland, where her shoes were never dry, and her parents refused to visit after that first trip.

Whose womb was home to so many babies, but unlike her mother she carried them to term, carried them even when she didn’t want to anymore, until she was fed up with babies and milk and crying and shit and crying and milk and more babies with no one around to help her and only her mama on the phone who told her she should feel lucky because at least they weren’t in the ground like all her brothers and sisters.

Whose soul shrivelled when the children refused to speak anything but English and she was the only one who dreamt in the language of heat and elsewhereness and, after her mama died and her papa followed shortly after, she had no one to talk to in the old tongue and it slowly died away except in her dreams.

Whose pocketbook only sometimes stretched to buying cherries, expensive, sad little things that tasted like water and the plastic they came in, but which she ate one after another hoping the next would be sweeter.

Whose guts yearned for the learning her children had, some so booksmart they were like whips of knowledge and they left one by one, even the girls, so free and flighty and powerful.

Whose house was an empty shell defined by broken promises and indenture, words she learned from the books she borrowed from the library now that she had time to herself, and which left her enough time to manage the problem that had plagued her for years.

Whose husband lay in a box carefully chosen by weeping children while she stood silent and sombre and everyone around her commented how brave she was, how foreigners always seemed to have to wail about everything, but she was so calm, so different from those others.

Whose travel back home brought her closer to her history and future, to where she would finish her days against the wishes of everyone except for herself, each step of the way carrying the promise of cherries.

***

Emma Burnett is a researcher and writer. She has had stories in MetaStellar, Elegant Literature, The Stygian Lepus, Roi Fainéant, The Sunlight Press, Fairfield Scribes, Five Minute Lit, Microfiction Monday, and Rejection Letters. You can find her @slashnburnett, @slashnburnett.bsky.social, or emmaburnett.uk.

When the branches of the willow, rutted and gnarled, break under the layers of brocade, chiffon, and lace that is Ophelia’s dress, she is neither surprised, nor unhappy. She tumbles down into the stream below in a flurry of delicate cream ruffles.

Some minutes pass but she remains afloat, buoyed by the billowing fabric. The ribbons and satin cords unfurl in the currents of the river like the tentacles of a jellyfish. The sky above is the blue and white of a perfect summer day and she stares up unblinking. From here on onwards she has four possible pathways.

She can drown. Eventually, the soaked textile cupola gives way and she is pulled down into the alluring deep. The water closes over her head with the softest whoosh. Caught in the cocoon of silk descending towards the dark benthic currents, she can no longer see the way up. There is a moment of intense fear as her mind wakes from slumber, and then the water rushes into her lungs putting an end to everything.

She can thrash and scream, hitting the water with tight white fists in a way she has never hit anything in her entire life. A farmer, passing by on his way to the market or some such mundane affair, fishes her out of the stream. He takes Ophelia back to the Elsinore castle where he gets a generous reward and she is locked up forever in the tallest tower like that unfortunate cousin of hers that spoke up too much during family dinners.

Since thrashing and screaming appears to be a viable strategy of survival, she can stick with that a bit longer, leaving the farmer behind to reach a bend in the river where a handsome knight comes to her rescue. In this version of events, she can feign shock and memory loss and pretend she has never set foot in that grand castle up on the coast. The knight gets to take her back to his own, somewhat smaller estate, where she whispers the words of the marriage vows before a small domestic altar. Then she is locked up—yet again—this time in the boudoir, to remain there forever, bearing children and completing endless embroidery patterns.

Ophelia finds none of these appealing, and as the water of the river reaches for her, pulling her down into the dark, she reaches back, daring to grasp and embrace the power hidden in its flow and ebb.

The river laughs with a thousand voices. One playful current tugs at the end of Ophelia’s sash and it unwinds, setting her free, the tasseled ends wavering with newly found joy. Bubbles pour from her mouth in an endless stream, and as she walks across the riverbed paying no mind to the undertow, there is a definite spring in her step.

She makes it back to the Elsinore castle just before the dramatic finale. Takes the swords away from the boys, turns poison into so much benthic gunk. Tumbles the cheap theater decorations down from the battlements.

Hamlet is pale, his lips a dark ruby red, and he is looking at Ophelia as if he sees her, properly sees her, for the first time. “I love you like forty thousand brothers could not,” he says, and his words carry an echo of a thousand different voices booming against proscenium arches in the theatres of past and future.

Ophelia sighs. Leaning forward, she kisses Hamlet lightly on the tip of the nose, and says, “It has never been about you, silly.” She turns on her heel and walks away, carmine and gold carps playing in the air around her head.

***

Laila Amado writes in her second language and has recently exchanged her fourth country of residence for the fifth. Instead of the Mediterranean, she now stares at the North Sea. The sea still, occasionally, stares back. Her stories have been published or are forthcoming in Best Small Fictions 2022, Cheap Pop, Cotton Xenomorph, Flash Frog, and other publications. Follow her on Twitter @onbonbon7.

The house is full of ladybugs like it is every spring, and I haven’t killed any yet. They are everywhere. One tangled itself in my hair in the dark last night. I saved two drowning in the shower this morning. They vibrate the warm air inside the light fixtures and knock themselves against the glass in all the windows and yes, I still don’t like them at all. But don’t worry. I am saving the silly soggy dizzy things. I’m trapping them like I promised I would last year after your second-grade class learned that they eat aphids and are good luck and something about fate and a complicated story from Japanese folklore that you couldn’t remember most of. I’m your mom, and I promised.

There are sixty-seven now, trapped in every shape of cup and glass. Mostly caught at the windows where they gather to watch the frozen dew melting in the sun, and the dandelions turning gold into exploding white puffs of reverse alchemy. You aren’t here to pick the flowers so they are taking over the backyard and Mrs. Wheeler next door is worried that the sea of fluff will blow in her direction and infect her perfect lawn and I hope they do. I haven’t mowed since you and your dad left to transfer to the better hospital. It hasn’t seemed important.

I did think about vacuuming, but there are too many inverted glasses full of bugs to weave between now, and all I want to do when I get home from my shift is check in to hear any updates about you. There are six cups on the living room floor – all pint glasses, mouths to carpet, sealing in the gentle bugs. There were four in the hall before I kicked one over on my way back from the bathroom last week (I’m not sure where the captive went, but he is probably fine). There are five rocks glasses and two highballs in my bedroom. In fact, every room is littered with glasses except yours because I haven’t gone in there. Every windowsill in the house is full, crowded with the stemware, bottoms up, trapping the fizzing crowd there like spotted champagne bubbles. Mugs were scattered throughout the house too, but I felt like a monster keeping the poor things in the dark, so I switched them all out for shot glasses and consolidated the inmates. They are crowded but happier, frozen in light.

Please keep your half of the promise like I’ve kept mine. I’m gently trapping each one so you can let them go safely in the rose garden. When you are well enough to come home maybe I’ll be brave too and help you release the buzzy prickly-legged things to fight the aphids that munch my flowers. The rosebuds are swarming with the tiny pests already. When I ran low on cups, I started collecting more insectariums from yard sales and ladies at church and resale shops. My backseat is full of mismatched drinkware wrapped in newspapers and I won’t run out. I may have to figure out soon what to feed them all – it’s been two weeks since you were admitted. I’ll work my shift and sleep alone and catch bugs until your father and you come home. The bugs will wait too, for you to get well and save us all from this lonely house, where we are stuck until you free us.

***

Steven Hage is a writer, artist, and interloper living in Indiana. Steven studied photography and design at Goshen College, enjoys flash fiction for breakfast, and helps companies tell stories through marketing. To say hello and find out more, visit StevenHage.com.

I called you ‘anda’ when we first met. The pink shell of your mouth made a pearl of an assalamualaikum for me.  Our husbands were in the front room, and we went to the kitchen, sitting cross-legged with our feet tucked away for respect. I brought us a plate of piping hot jemput-jemput and you ate the sugary fritters, blowing through your mouth, using your hand like a fan. Your fingers seemed plump, juicy, like the succulents in my garden. I wondered if they would feel as soft and pliant to touch.

When we met at that satay place in Kajang, the air full of the smoky, earthy smell of roasting meat, I called you ‘awak’. I said, awak tak bosan? You said, no, you weren’t bored when your husband was away so much for work, and I wondered if I was a particularly ungrateful kind of wife. You said, can I try? pointing at my glass of pink bandung gently sweating in the humidity. You pursed your lips perfectly around the straw, taking greedy gulps. After you left, I fitted my mouth as closely as I could to the ring of bright red lipstick on the straw.

When I invited you to Port Dickson, I called you ‘kamu’. We bought rambutan from a roadside stall, and I made a joke about how the hairy fruit looked just like testicles. You frowned and swatted my arm, but your dimples peeked out anyway. We took a mat down to the beach, our bare feet crunching into the sand. I shelled the rambutans, handing them to you one by one. You popped the oval fruit, translucent like lychees into your mouth, making throaty sounds of pleasure. You pulled out clean seeds which you gathered in a pile on the sand.

I called you ‘engkau’ when you invited me to your place for lunch. We ate assam fish and rice, your right hand making a perfect bud when you gathered a mouthful together. Your food tasted like everything – spicy, sweet, tart, buttery. You called me ‘engkau’ then too. We reached for the dish at the same time, our hands brushing together, warm and soft. You didn’t snatch your hand away. You didn’t say the word ‘haram’. What you did say was, it’s beautiful, the Malay phrase for pronoun, ‘kata ganti diri’. A word to replace yourself.

***

Sumitra writes in Naarm/Melbourne. She travelled through many spaces to get there and writes to make sense of her experiences. She’ll be the one in the kitchen making chai (where’s your cardamom?). She works in mental health. You can find her and her other publication credits on twitter: @pleomorphic2

Anne sleeps on a grave every Tuesday. It’s a standing date, because Blake works the overnight shift, and there’s nothing good on tv. She wanders four streets over to the hidden cemetery on Glendale Avenue. The grave is old, and the dirt is unforgiving. She brings a blanket, two pillows, and a thermos of warm milk because a cemetery is not the easiest place to fall asleep.

In the morning the apartment building gossip waits like a gargoyle by the front door as strangers forced to be neighbors buzz through. She’s the gossip, but she’ll always tell you the truth.

“You’ve got a leaf or something behind your ear,” Diana remarks.

Anne returns home Wednesdays smelling like the outdoors. She waits until ten because she doesn’t want to run into Blake after an overnight. He’s sleepy and thoughtless. He says unkind things he doesn’t remember.

Tuesdays take forever to roll around. Wednesdays are taco and movie night. Anne hates spicy food, and Blake picks horror flicks where the girl never lives. Thursdays are a waiting game for the weekend. Fridays and Saturdays whir by in a rum-fueled haze. Sundays drip with regret for all the things Anne meant to do. Monday always slides in with a vengeance. Anne holds her breath until she’s back on the grave. Not in it. Ever since she started visiting the cemetery, she no longer wishes she was in the ground.

Anne only dreams on Tuesday nights when she’s lying on top of a dead body, separated by soil and mahogany. This is an intimacy she finds nowhere else, even though she only knows his name from the granite headstone. Ezra O’Reilly. Everything else, she makes up because he died in 1924. Ezra wore pinstriped suits, she thinks. He’s read every Sherlock Holmes book and loved a woman who didn’t love him back.

When she sleeps in their bed, Blake drags Anne towards him, towing her like a ship out to sea. He is the anchor, the barge, and when they’re finished, she showers because his sweat is a certain brand of sour. She wants to be like Diana the gossip and tell the truth. That she can’t stomach his smell or the way he tangles his fingers in her curly black hair. That she can’t forgive him when he’s never apologized. And she can’t leave, because no one taught her how.

Tuesday nights, she presses her lips into the dirt and confesses her secrets to the pile of bones beneath her. She imagines Ezra’s eyes are still intact. They are blue and endless, peering up. Anne wants her heat to transfer down to him. She pretends these are his favorite nights of the week, if time matters to the dead. He is gone below the ground. She is gone above the ground. Really, there isn’t a difference.

Blake and Anne’s anniversary falls on a Tuesday. Blake’s taken a rare night off and bought Anne a dress and heels for the occasion. He’s booked dinner at her favorite restaurant, the table by the fountain. He’s left her a handful of pennies on the counter – I’ll let you to make all the wishes you want. Normally, he knocks the pennies out of her hand and calls her a child. Still, Anne feels ungrateful. He is sometimes kind and warm. Flesh and blood pulsing, his eager eyes attached to her whenever she enters a room. He is a swarm, a hive surrounding her, but the ache for the cemetery bruises her heart.

She wears the new dress, spiked heels, and takes an uber because a steady rain beats down across the city. The driver is silent. When the car stops, he double-checks his navigation.

“Here? You sure?” The driver’s teeth are yellow from smoking. He wears a tweed cap and clicks his tongue against his teeth.

“Yeah. Thanks.” Anne hands him a tip. A twenty wrapped around Blake’s pennies, save one.

The heels aerate the ground as Anne sinks in with every step. No one thinks to put lights in a cemetery, because at night the graves are private. It doesn’t matter. She could find Ezra with eyes closed. Eleven steps past the gate. A sharp right at the angel statue missing her wings. His is the first headstone in the ninth row along the eastern field. She has forgotten her pillows, the blanket, a thermos. The earth is hard as ever. She lays there, one penny remaining in her fist, ready to make a wish.

***

Sarah’s work has been included in several dozen journals online and in print (including Milk Candy Review). A teacher, mother, and freelancer from central PA, her first middle grade fantasy novel, Delilah and the Cracked Cauldron, was released in June.