Milk Candy Review

A magician removes their head during their final act. After the curtain falls, they leave the head on a stool on the stage and walk home. It is raining outside and each drop feels to the magician like swallowing used to feel. Only now it is as of their entire body is swallowing. Meanwhile, the head is packed up with the rest of the stage equipment and placed in a bucket of water in the storage room, hair growing like a spider plant in the low light.

***

Erik Fuhrer is the author of Not Human Enough for the Census, forthcoming from Vegetarian Alcoholic Press. His work has been published in Cleaver, BlazeVox, Softblow, and various other venues. His website is erik-fuhrer.com.

The women are on their backs, splayed in Fish Pose, when Layla’s pregnant belly lights up.

She is envisioning the raging blaze in her home state when heat spreads across her stomach. In the yoga studio’s gloom, she alone glows like an oven light in a dark kitchen.

“Shh. Phones off, Layla.” No one believes that Shanti is the prenatal yoga instructor’s real name. She seems ex-military. With her hands on her wide hips, she glares down at Layla. Angry Sarge Pose.

Meaghan’s belly lights up next. “It’s not my cell. It’s my baby.” She’d been imagining shelled peas, the tender little balls in one bowl, their protective shells in another. How at the U.S.-Mexico border one is the children, and the other the mothers from whom they’re separated. Now tears escape into her scrub of hair. She rests her hands over the light growing from under her ribs, which floods her with warmth and something else it takes her moments to identify. Peace.

The women’s bellies switch on, one by one, like two dozen porchlights. Tamar’s flickers. Her nephew had been at a club when shooting broke out. He’d hidden in a dark corner while others died. But he was alive, the young man she’d once held as a newborn. She remembers his birthmark that had eventually disappeared. How it had been on his left cheek and shaped like a mouth. How her lips had met it in a kiss. How the magic of a love like that still can’t protect someone. As Tamar falters, her light comes back on. Grows strong. Like the other women, she smiles, even as Shanti clutches her phone, dialing 9-1-1.

Only Nan’s belly is dark—the sun behind a raincloud. “Is my baby okay?” she asks no one, or maybe everyone.

“Where’s my light?” Nan is curled in a ball. Her husband left her in her fifth month. She has told the women that somewhere within her, her baby knows and is broken-hearted, too.

The other women roll onto their sides, then struggle to sitting. From there they crouch and stagger to standing, as Shanti has taught them. Some help up others.

Shanti has put on her aviator sunglasses; the room is that bright. She rubs Nan’s back too vigorously, until Tamar stills her hands.

There is so much to anguish over, so many daily poses to assume as though everything is okay in the darkening world. But right now they gather around Nan. Their babies shine on her insistently, like flashlights searching for a tiny object, until in response Nan’s belly switches on and they all clap and cheer.

The women put their hands on their illuminated wombs. They luxuriate in the warmth. Even as the familiar wail of a siren draws nearer, they let go of all that is broken and of the threats they can’t yet see. They hold on to something made with so much hope that they want to believe it might actually light the way.

***

Lynn Mundell’s writing has appeared most recently in New Flash Fiction Review, Atlas and Alice, SmokeLong Quarterly, Thread, and Monkeybicycle. She is co-editor of 100 Word Story and its anthology: Nothing Short of: Selected Tales from 100 Word Story (Outpost19). Learn more about her at http://lynnmundell.com/.

Once, Mona’s little sister Maribel almost touched the moon. Maribel pumped her legs harder and harder, sailing higher and higher on the playground swing, until the sky turned to ash and the rain pummeled down. Mona watched Maribel’s toes inch closer and closer to the moon, their little shirts and shorts stuck to their little bodies. Mona tipped her head back, stretched her mouth open, and fed on the rain. They knew they should head home, but Maribel chanted Almost…Almost…Almost and pumped her legs harder. Mama would be asleep on the couch anyway, one leg slipped to the floor, her hands opening and clenching in her sleep, like she was grabbing for something bigger than she could hold.

Once, Maribel’s big sister Mona pulled her into their closet, tucking a blanket around their bodies. She told Maribel to sing any song she could think of. Maribel sang Katy Perry songs, mixing up the lyrics, while Mona braided her hair. They switched, and Maribel sang sweet softness at Mona’s neck, roping Mona’s hair over and around to the tips. But they could still hear their mother’s faint mews—Stop, Brad, oh Brad, please stop. That surprised them. They thought this guy’s name was Brian.

Once, Mona’s and Maribel’s real dad came through town and took them to Burger King. He asked them if they liked school. Yeah. He asked them if they’d liked the Christmas presents he’d mailed to them. Yeah. He asked them if their mama was being good to them. Yeah. He said he wished things could have worked out differently, that he missed them to the moon and back, that he gave what he could but he had new mouths to feed now, too. They wanted to ask him if they could live with him and his other family, but it came out sounding like Can we have more fries?

Once, Mona and Maribel found their mama sitting at the kitchen table in the dark, a cigarette ember casting a faint glow along her jaw and cheek as she raised the cigarette to her lips. They shared a glass of water as their mama told them how bone-deep tired she was, how stuck she felt. How she tried so hard and just spun her wheels. How she wished their lives were different, that all it would take was just one good one to come along. Mona and Maribel hugged their mama and told her they loved her. Oh, girls, it’s just not the same kind of love, now, is it? They guessed not.

Once, Mona’s little sister Maribel whispered she wished she was old enough to run away. They could go to the moon for real and eat the expensive Kraft Mac & Cheese whenever they wanted, until their tummies couldn’t hold another bite. Their real dad would buy them little pink fishing poles and take them fishing with the boys he called their brothers. Where they wouldn’t have to remember which one was Brad or Brian or Chet or Marvin or Glen. Mona took Maribel’s hand and they tiptoed past mama on the couch, down the cinderblock steps that tilted a little deeper into the dirt every year, around the tree that pushed the sidewalk higher and higher until it broke open, roots rising to the stars. Mona whispered back, This way…This way…This way.

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L Mari Harris splits her time between Nebraska and the Ozarks, and works as a copywriter in the tech industry. Her fiction, nonfiction, and poetry have been published in or are forthcoming in Bird’s Thumb, cahoodaloodaling, Gravel, Lost Balloon, MoonPark Review, Silk Road Review, among others. Follow her on Twitter @LMariHarris and read more of her work at www.lmariharris.wordpress.com.

Dear whoever you are—

You know I think about you often. The way the edge of your coat was caked with mud. Mud that reminded me of chocolate icing and then I instantly felt stupid for the thought. Because what was going to happen next would be a lot more serious than chocolate cake. You left soggy footprints on the wool rug and I winced. I winced, and then I ran. At least I tried to. But you already know all this. I don’t know why I’m explaining it to you. You know. I should tell you what you don’t know.

Like, when you told me you only wanted money, you promised you wouldn’t hurt me, your throat closed up and your voice cracked. Not the most flattering tell, but that’s when I knew you were a liar. I heard you rummaging through my kitchen drawers looking for a knife.

I knew that when I sat mute and motionless on my couch for two hours you were still in the room with me even though you wanted me to believe you were gone. When I whimpered, you exhaled. I felt your hot breath brush across the back of my neck.

I knew when you closed the bedroom window you had opened to get in that you planned to kill me. You were afraid the neighbors would hear my scream. And it was a signal for me to move.

I knew I’d get out of the handcuffs because I have double-jointed thumbs. Lucky me, right? I waited until you left the room—for a glass of water you said—and fear and adrenaline, like an animal thrashing inside me, took over. You did not see me, even as I passed you in the hall as close as a ghost, and walked right out the front door.

***

Jules lives in Arizona. She likes to smell old books and drink red wine. Her chapbook ALL THE GHOSTS WE’VE ALWAYS HAD is out from Thirty West Publishing.

I’m sorry I can’t find the tiny hole in the metal contraption in the back of your mouth. Even with a flashlight and your head tilted back, I still can’t make contact. The opening disappears. I’m sorry I keep stabbing your gums with the key that is meant to turn the device, to expand your palate.

Ow, you say each time I miss. Other parents don’t hurt their kids, you say.

I won’t tell you what my friend shared the night before at dinner. A carving knife laid beside an uneaten red velvet cake.

Each time I see a knife, my friend said, I imagine picking it up and slicing my tongue. I can’t stop having this vision.

I nodded because I understood. I’ve had such visions with other objects, or with you, when you were a baby. I imagined how easy it would be to snap your tiny arm in half. Another friend back then confided she fantasized about throwing her screaming baby out of the window. Not that we’d ever do any of those things, but those of us who were honest shared our darkest thoughts.

When I finally get the key to stay in place, I take a deep breath and push it up. They say turn the key as if you’re unlocking a vault, but really it’s more like opening a garage door. As I push it back, I imagine you getting smaller, younger, shrinking back to that helpless baby who couldn’t talk back.

Ow, you say again, your voice deeper — closer to my tone than a baby’s squeal.

I’m almost finished, I say.

Your eyes look in mine, as if searching for a different key. Maybe you wish I would turn it the opposite direction. To speed things up, to give you a growth spurt.

But that’s what I’m doing. I’m widening your jaw. I am making you bigger.

There was another time I remember sitting in a window seat in my bedroom nursing your baby brother. You were playing with a ball outside, and I heard the squeal of rubber trying to stop on pavement. I ran outside and saw that your ball had rolled down our steep driveway and into the center of the road. You’d run after it. A man driving a pick-up truck had pounded on his brakes hard enough so that he’d just missed hitting you.

I could have killed her, he yelled.

I know, I yelled back.

You held tightly on to your ball and we both stared at the thick black skid marks that the tires had made on the road. Your baby brother cried by himself inside, and I couldn’t wait for you both to grow up.

Have you ever looked at a person’s face, you ask with your hand covering your sore mouth, and seen exactly what they’ll look like when they grow up?

I nod. I have.

That happened to me yesterday, you say, with a boy at school while we were doing math.

I wonder what that means.

It doesn’t mean anything. It was just weird.

Then why did you bring it up, I want to ask as you turn away, as if you’ve turned a key in my mouth that caused me to regress to your age.

Instead, I shrug and tuck the thought away. I stare at your face and try to imagine you as an adult turning a key inside the mouth of your child.

What are you looking at, you ask.

Nothing, I answer, and pull you towards me so I can kiss the top of your head.

Though you squirm, you lean in to me and say: Don’t lose the key again.

***

Liz Matthews received her MFA in Writing from Vermont College of Fine Arts and her writing has appeared in The Rumpus, Brain Child, Quality Women’s Fiction, Brevity, and is upcoming in Spelk and The Tishman Review. She teaches writing at Westport Writers’ Workshop in Connecticut.