Milk Candy Review

The women at the graduation party, mothers of the graduates, wore hot-pink dresses and mint-green dresses and caftans, midis and lace and leather dresses, dresses that The Wall Street Journal and Vogue had declared to be warm-weather essentials, that sold for $1,599 or $59 (cheap-chic is smart-chic) and blended into the garden of the Wellesley home, which was studded with New Guinea impatiens in rainbow colors, the home itself featured in a recent issue of New England Homes, the hostess in a white chiffon with asymmetrical hem, her figure fit, her nails done in coral (the new red); in truth, all the women had had their nails done the day before at appointments made weeks earlier in anticipation of the party, done in French manicures and pastels, their hair too done that morning, in sleek or bouffant styles, and though their skins, beneath tinted foundation and loose powder, spanned a range of shades from pink-and-white to brown and browner, they all spoke the same language and said the same things: congratulations, what a beautiful evening, what a lovely house. That is, they blended in with the New England home, and if they made an effort—if they concealed Dr. Scholls in their high heels or downed anti-anxiety pills or Googled “garden party etiquette in America” and “what do Americans like to talk about”—it was not obvious; they did fit into the house with the lawn and pink-and-white hostess and new outdoor kitchen—yes, they fit in—but underneath their words (which fit in) you could discern traces of accents—a few rolled rrrrs, some lahs, a ze for the or f-ah-st for fast—Singaporean and Russian and Indian accents. One mother, in a straw hat and sunglasses she did not take off even when the sun went down as if she wanted to hide the strain in her eyes, revealed more than she meant to when she said, “This is the best country to grow up in, so many colleges, such good healthcare,” upon which the hostess turned pale blue eyes on her and looked puzzled: Were there other countries in the world? Another mother with a round apple figure beneath whose skin you could almost see the stacked pooris, the greasy ghee, kept pulling her tight dress over her round knees—she’d really have been far more comfortable in a salwar kameez in a hot, humid flat in Mumbai, fan turning lazily, masala tea at hand—and went on and on about her graduating son. In truth all the women talked about was their children, their past worries about their children (vaping, smoking, failing) and their future worries about their children (hazing, drinking, failing), and they all said, in those voices with faint accents—if only he had a friend at college, if only he knew someone—that is, underneath their clothes and skins and accents, they were all just worried mothers, who each managed to find another mother with a child in the same college to whom they talked and talked until they inevitably became hungry and, one by one, wandered to the outdoor kitchen and downed burgers and chips with an urgency brought on by stress—oh, how hungry they were!—they forgot their party manners and picked up the food with fingers and opposable thumbs, like they might a piece of roti, and popped it in their mouths and chewed with jaws and teeth adapted for cooked food only recently—twenty thousand years ago to be precise—because underneath it all, they were all warm-blooded primates that needed to capture energy in the form of grain and protein to keep warm, keep talking, keep living. Then they went home, calmed with food and talk, each clutching the number of a mother, thinking warm thoughts about her, thinking—now I have someone, now I don’t have to worry alone; that is, underneath the clothes and skins and words and accents and jaws and teeth and fingers, they were clusters of warmth-seeking atoms, they were beating hearts, they were the same.

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Anu Kandikuppa’s short stories, flash fiction, and essays appear in Gone Lawn, Jellyfish Review, The Cincinnati Review (miCRo), Colorado Review, and other journals. Anu worked as an economics consultant in a former life and lives in Boston. 

The lady across the street spends six weeks fashioning wings, or so she tells us. Threads of fine gossamer woven with stardust. Her voice is like honey, sweet and pouring slowly from her open mouth. We think she isn’t beautiful, but was once, long ago before she married Captain Blake. We watch her sitting on her crooked front porch, right hand poised, raising and lowering a darning needle in the air, graceful as a ballerina.

Our father calls her Lady Blake, and we understand this is a mean joke, because although she is elegant she is very poor, like everyone else in our neighborhood. Our father tells us to stay away from her, but once he’s had his third cup of whiskey and his eyelids start to droop we slip carefully out the front door and dart over the fissured road to stand on her front lawn.

We’ve heard that Lady Blake’s son jumped out a window, but it was only the second story, so instead of dying he ended up with two broken legs. When his bones healed, he disappeared to the other side of the world and was never seen again. Captain Blake died at sea like a hero in a novel, and we imagine that when the giant octopus that ate him wrapped its slimy, tentacled arms around his ship, he laughed and dared it to come closer.

Lady Blake tells us she is sewing wings specially made just for us, and we count the days until they are finished. When they’re ready, she holds them up in the sunlight for us to inspect, but we can’t see a thing. She tells us solemnly to turn around, and gently places them upon our tiny shoulder blades. We glance at each other but keep our lips sealed because we love Lady Blake. She whispers in our ears that we can do anything now, go anywhere, that nothing is impossible. We dance across the patches of dry grass sprouting from cracked earth, barefooted. We feel like if the wind changes it will carry us up into the atmosphere and we will float away, and we don’t care at all because somehow, we are sure we can fly.

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Sara Dobbie is a Canadian writer from Southern Ontario. Her stories have appeared in Fictive Dream, JMWW, Sage Cigarettes, New World Writing, Bending Genres, Ghost Parachute, Ruminate Online, Trampset, Ellipsis Zine, and elsewhere. Her chapbook “Static Disruption” is available from Alien Buddha Press. Her collection “Flight Instinct” is available from ELJ Editions. Follow her on Twitter @sbdobbie, and on Instagram at @sbdobwrites. 

The story ends with a boy, leaning against a barn door, squinting at the sun.

He steps out of the dark barn, his hair buzz-cut fresh, overalls hand-me-down big, one strap sliding off a bony shoulder.

The boy does not smile as he checks the cloudless sky. Does he notice the photographer taking his picture?

The boy in the photograph looks like someone you know. All cheekbones and pointed chin. Father? Uncle? But how can that be? He is young and you are old.

You lift the photograph from the box under your bed, careful to first remove a nickel and a leather-bound book. You could rub the coin’s smoothed ridges for hours, the weight of the book keeping you safe on the bed. But touch the black-and-white photograph and you float, not sure where you are.            

Holding the photograph, you scan the sky above the boy for a clue. Maybe a falcon will break the endless space, opening the story before it flutters away. But the sky remains indifferent to the scene below.

Why does the photograph scare you? It’s only overalls. A haircut. A boy. A barn.

Something you cannot stop is in the barn, in the picture that the boy will lock away long after the photographer opens the camera’s eye and lets the light in.

You count ten, nine, eight and come back, dropping the photograph to the floor.

The story begins with a boy, leaning against a barn door, squinting at the sun.

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Phebe Jewell’s work appears or is forthcoming in numerous journals, most recently Across the Margin, Fiction Attic, Pithead Chapel, *82 Review, and Drunk Monkeys. A teacher at Seattle Central College, she also volunteers for the Freedom Education Project Puget Sound, a nonprofit providing college courses for incarcerated women, trans-identified and gender non-conforming people in Washington State. Read her at https://phebejewellwrites.com.

Evan Dando is haunting me, which makes this not only a ghost story, but also science fiction, for it’s a story about time travel, but only for ghosts, because he’s not dead yet, but someday he will be. Evan Dando is chasing me and he falls into my arms in a ghostly, terrifying, tender way, that’s where it’s safe, he sings, that’s where it’s warm, he sings and sings and he never gets me actually, he falls right through my arms and into the void, because that’s what ghosts do, they go through things, through matter, through flesh, they travel back and forth, in time and space. The ghost of Evan Dando is haunting me and I feel scared, but I feel flattered too, which makes this not only a ghost story, but also an eerie romance, like Wuthering Heights, a toxic love story people find romantic, about love lost and never found, about love doomed to die, only to come back stronger. He brings back my past, back when he stood by me, when I was taught how to adult, how to make the world tick, and now we’re both full-blown adults, with teeth problems and white hair, and we’re sick and tired of making the world tick, of making this world tick, tick-tock, tick-tock, closer and closer to the final boom, closer than ever to that last explosion. He brings me back to when I missed home, a safe place, or someone to whom I’d say, take me out of here, when things got rough, and they would, and they’d take over.

Evan Dando is haunting me and opens his ghostly heart to me and tells me I haunt him too, he’s haunted by many people, like I’m haunted by everything I ever loved and loved me, which makes this more than a ghost story, it’s also a philosophical story about the urge to immortalize everything that we love, the human urge to love, be loved, be seen, remembered and somehow stay here forever. His words are waves that travel forever, not fading out, they’re always loud, no friction can erase them, no law of physics can touch them, and I still hear them, they speak to me, like when I was young and the world made sense or didn’t, but someday it would eventually. He frowns sometimes, like he’s disappointed, like he wasn’t only a rock star, but also the Catcher in the Rye, and he speaks to me in a ghostly, terrifying, tender way, he says he failed, he couldn’t save us, but still that’s all he wants to do, to be an angel, protecting souls from disillusionment, like the Catcher in the Rye but for older people too, not just for kids.

The Ghost of Evan Dando is haunting me, although he’s not a ghost yet, or maybe he has always been a spirit, a soul above all else, and I haunt him too, at least a part of me that died long ago, only to come back stronger, a part of me that has already turned into a ghost, or has always been a ghost, the spirit of youth, of a world that once made sense, or didn’t but someday it would eventually. They say you’ll meet the same person in different bodies for eternity, until you learn enough to break the pattern and I did, I found someone who would jump into my arms to get home, which makes this more than a ghost story, it’s also a love letter, but he’s a ghost and he falls right through my arms, into the void, for that’s what ghosts do, they go through things, through matter, through flesh, like bullets but slower, like bullets that don’t kill, like bullets we carry inside and keep us together.

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Mileva Anastasiadou is a neurologist, from Athens, Greece and the author of “We Fade With Time” by Alien Buddha Press. A Pushcart, Best of the Net, Best Microfiction and Best Small Fictions nominated writer, her work can be found in many journals, such as Chestnut Review, New World Writing, trampset, Lost Balloon and others.

i) How quickly time flies on a council estate and I tell you it’s a kind of freedom because you can have a fight and a baby sleeping in a crib in the same scene, or a polar bear and a sinking ship. It can all be both ethereal and real. The heroine grows up pretty. I wish the director would hurry and juxtapose her, in this chilly, crisp, almost scene, with a boa or a fox. Woman, fox, woman, fox. The audience thinks: Aha, woman! Therefore foxy.

ii) The waitress in the diner, burger and fries. Someone has lived this moment before, a million times in this scene and the ketchup has dried at the edge of the table. Can I take your order? Your order is here. She hates being told, a sudden quagmire, she’s nervous in her mini skirt. Close-up of a wolf whistle. Wolf whistle, spot of ketchup, wolf whistle, spot of ketchup. The implication is: He kills her. The blood, the blood of it, the bloodiness of it.

iii) A fairy-tale forest. Mushrooms, leaves, a quizzical silence. A bushy tail the colour of henna, dream, dream, a sort of dream. A bushy tail, a leaf, a bushy tail. There is a house, a grandmother, police. But when she left the house she was a girl, says the grandmother. The mouth of the wood where she lives is pursed and stubborn and silent. Were there any witnesses? ask the police. Question, silence, question, silence.

iv) Over and over in the story the girl was a fox, was a creature, was a colour, was wild, was devious. When the man stroked her she bit his hand, when he tried again, she bit it again. The blood was courageous and the girl was relieved when he walked out pressing his hand to stop the gash of it. The owner of the diner sacks her: Too fierce for my liking.

v) The girl gets home and the grandmother says: The police said you’d gone missing.  The grandmother cries and hugs her with relief, her chest rising and falling. With her high cheeks and pointed chin, the white patch under it on her glossy thick fur, the girls looks almost different, the girl looks almost the same.  

*The Kuleshov Effect is a film editing effect invented by Soviet filmmaker, Lev Kuleshov. It is a mental phenomenon where the audience derives more meaning from the interaction of two back-to-back shots than from one shot in isolation.

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Nora Nadjarian is a poet and writer from Cyprus. She has been commended or placed in numerous competitions, most recently in the Mslexia Poetry Competition 2021 and Live Canon International Poetry Competition 2022. She was chosen to represent Cyprus in the Hay Festival’s Europa28: Visions for the Future in 2020. Her short fiction has appeared, among others, in the National Flash Fiction Day anthology 2020, Reflex Fiction, FRiGG, MoonPark Review, Ellipsis Zine and was selected by Kathy Fish for Wigleaf‘s Top 50 Very Short Fictions of 2022.