Friday, December 11, 2009

Letdown Doomsday by Neil Maneck

Our parents had it so good. Thermonuclear war between two superpowers is a catastrophe you can be proud of. Now we're legitimately afraid that SUVs will end the world.

Only This and Nothing More by Neil Maneck

I wander through my apartment, a few degrees brighter than perfect black. My headphones are loud, a failed play at subtlety like a whispering drunk, but my roommates are snoring corpses and notice nothing. I stare out the window, expectant. For what? A movement of moonlight to direct me, perhaps. I slump into a couch, exhausted yet anxious, hungry for salvation from aimlessness.

Rocking Horse by Neil Maneck

I ride this rocking horse through a mirror maze in search of my lost pen. Somewhere, it is bleeding split, spilt ink onto silk, reminding me of a Rorschach card, reminding me of my thoughts, reminding me of a Rorschach card. I can move in any direction but forward, and if I could get my bearings straight, maybe I could get somewhere jerking sideways. In the mirror to the right, do you see the shorter me, strangled and blinded by the ash-white python? His pen isn't just hard to find, the snake ate the damn thing! I ride on, compelled by an ancient prophesy I just invented: if I can find words in madness, then I can find them anywhere.

Vanishing Point by Jonathan Bridge

“You sometimes snore at night, and it disturbs my sleep,” she began.
“And you sometimes toss and turn, which wakes me in the middle of the night,” he added.
“So this new arrangement is the sensible thing to do,” she concluded.
“And pragmatic,” he said.
“We both work long hours, and need lots of rest.”
“And we can sleep together on weekends still.”
“Oh yeah, of course,” she reassured.
That was their justification for sleeping in different rooms. They both knew deep down that there was much more to this, but they stayed away from that dangerous topic. Allowing themselves to reason this out rationally meant that they did not want to deal with it emotionally. Focus on the practical side of things. As time passed, this more pragmatic weekday arrangement spilled over into weekends.
As David crawled into his bed and rolled around in his sheets to form a makeshift cocoon, he thought about Eliza, and how they used to be in the beginning. Before the marriage, the engagement, even the first official date. Back when he had long shaggy blond hair hanging over black sunglasses, and she let her long brown hair flow freely in the air, matching her beautiful brown eyes. Back when Eliza’s father had outlawed her from dating any guys, period. He was the warden, sheriff, and deputy when it came to his “baby angel”. But you can only keep the long-sleeve plaid button-up, hair combed over Romeo from the sun-dress, double pig-tailed Juilet for so long. Eventually they were sneaking around together behind her father’s back, which only added more excitement to the arrangement. At first they were content to see each other once or twice a week when her father went to bed early. But their relationship developed, and they needed more. They enjoyed spending time together, not just making out on the swing sets in the park, and by the monkey bars, in the slide, and under the jungle gym. Eventually Eliza joined the non-existent Community Service club at school, which met frequently on the weekends. David joined too.
He thought back to their first kiss, the first time they had sex, their official first date with her dad’s approval, and yes, they occurred in that order. But soon these thoughts faded, dimmed, and were slowly pushed out of his mind to make room for television. It was his brain’s way of protecting itself. Just focus on the detective show, it was telling him, worry about Eliza another time. And sure enough, David was fast asleep with the TV still running, snoring only slightly.
******
The alarm clock did what alarm clocks are supposed to do, and David rolled out of bed, revving himself up for another day at work. Shuffling straight for the shower, David looked around and noticed something was different. He wasn’t in the bathroom at all, but instead in the guest room, which was separated from his bedroom by the bathroom. It was no big deal though, as his sleepy eyes weren’t fully adjusted to the light yet, and he must have overstepped the route to the bathroom. But as he stepped out of his room, he realized that the door next to the guest room was not to bathroom, but in fact his bedroom door.
What the hell? David thought to himself. He tried opening and closing all the doors again, took a look around to orient himself, then tried it again.
Fully awake now, he realized that in fact his bathroom was gone, like Houdini, if it had been a lavatory instead of a person. David did what any normal person does when faced with something unexplainable: call in someone else to make sure you are not crazy.
“Eliza, are you up?” he called out as his voice trailed off, leaving a lingering feeling of uncertainty.
“Something wrong?”
She approached him cautiously, studying his expression for clues. She followed his eyes to the opened doors of his bedroom and guest room.
“Where is the bathroom?” she asked.
“I have absolutely no idea,” he replied, “but thank God.”
“Why thank God?”
“Because for a minute there, I thought you were going to have to call in a couple of buff men to put me in a white jacket, toss me in a comfy room, and throw away the key.”
“They wouldn’t need to be buff,” Eliza chimed in.
Following in David’s footsteps, Eliza went into both rooms, checked the doors and walls, and came back to the hallway.
“Is this some trick?” she asked as she stepped in and out of both rooms, double-checking to make sure for herself.
“The weirdest thing is that neither the guest room nor your room looks extended,” she said ignoring his sarcasm, “how is this possible? Pinch me.”
After they traded pinches, David on the butt and Eliza a little extra hard on the arm, they stood in the hallway, not sure of what to do next. They tried going into opposite rooms and knocking on the walls. Even though they both clearly heard knocks from the other side, David wanted to drill a hole through the wall, just to be sure.
“David, I just painted these walls.”
“If a man’s got tools, honey, he needs to use them.”
“Well you do look rugged with that tool belt on, Mr. Handy-man.”
After the hole, perfectly drilled David would add, confirmed that the bathroom had vanished, Eliza went to turn on the TV to see if they were not alone in this unexplainable phenomena. It was all over the news. The headline at the bottom of the screen read: Unexplainable Phenomena: Items or Entire Rooms Gone Missing. David turned up the volume to hear about a reporter discussing how his garage had vanished. Flipping through the channels, he realized that it was on every channel. The only channel not covering the phenomena had a marathon of Without a Trace reruns.
Everything came to a standstill, as if the world was stuck at a red light. Everyone found themselves tuning into whatever media form suited them to see if someone, somewhere, had an explanation. A variety of different people were being interviewed on different networks, from scientists, priests, politicians, to acclaimed psychics. Scientists were dumbfounded, unable to cite any past events that shared any resemblance to this. Priests were talking about how God was angry at how materialistic we had become, and He was punishing us. Politicians were saying not to panic. The psychics were saying they felt something like this coming. David switched to his favorite local news team, Daily-Low-Down, where renowned news reporter Jimmy McMaster was in mid-interview with a psychic from the local Tarot shop.
“Did you know that this is vanishing was going to happen?”
“Oh yes, yes, my dear. It was all in the cards.”
“And what did the cards say?”
“They told me that a great evil was going to fall upon us all.”
“Can you tell us why this is happening, or if it is going to stop?”
“It is different for everyone, Jimmy. But if you out there would like to know your own future, you can call me at 1-800-FORTUNE, and for a small fee, I can show you the cards that lay out your destiny.”
“You heard it straight from the source. This is Jimmy McMaster signing off. Remember, keep your heads up, and we’ll give you the low down.”
Eventually the news was no longer new, and David turned off the TV after listening to another politician telling the public not to be alarmed, and that it was best to remain calm, and that everything would be “alright”. It was late in the evening, and he looked over at his wife who was curled up in her favorite spot on the couch, with one leg stretched out on the futon and the other one curled in to support her salad bowl. He found himself half zoning out and half staring at her, and after a few seconds she felt his gaze upon her.
“What is it?” she asked.
“I was just thinking…”
“About what?”
“About this whole vanishing business,” he stated, “I wonder if it will happen again tomorrow.”
“Who knows,” she said in a tone as comforting as she could manage, “I want to think that it was just a onetime thing, but something inside me says that this is far from over.”
“I have that same feeling.”
“David…I’m scared.”
“It will be alright,” he began, but then realized that he wasn’t a politician. There was no reason for him to try to protect her. Sure he was the man and by society’s norms the protector of the house, but she was a woman, not a child. “We have each other,” he concluded as he walked over, leaned awkwardly over the couch, around the salad bowl, and gave her a light kiss on the forehead.
“Good night.”
“Night.”
*****
In the morning the alarm clock in David’s room did not go off. Well, it may or may not have gone off, but David would never know. When David eventually awoke, he found that his entire dresser was missing. He looked at where it had been the night before, but once again, there was no sign that it had ever existed. No indentions in the carpet where the base had placed all of the weight of the dresser, no clean area on the carpet where the dresser had prevented stains and dust from accumulating, no outlet on the wall behind the dresser where the alarm clock had been plugged into.
“David, I have searched the house and nothing seems to be missing!”
“Don’t get too excited,” David said. “Come in here and tell me what you see, or rather, don’t see.”
Noticing its absence, she looked at the blank area as if the dresser were still there, then to her husband, then back to the blank spot. Watching his wife look back and forth reminded him of when he used to pretend to throw the tennis ball with his dog, only to amuse himself as the dog looked out into the field, back at him, and then back to the field. I guess it’s only funny from one side, he thought to himself.
“Anything new on the news?” David asked.
The networks didn’t have much to report. ABC and CNN were both down because some of the essential equipment needed to broadcast had disappeared overnight. What they did say, however, was that witnesses reported from all over saying they saw different objects disappear right before their eyes. The Local-Low-Down had Jimmy McMaster back on, urging people to go onto a new website created by brilliant scientists, whathaveyoulostandwhatdoyoustillhave.com, to list what you know you have lost, and what you still have, in hopes that they can determine some kind of pattern to this randomness. “If there is a pattern, we’ll find it!” they exclaimed. Jimmy was demonstrating how to do it from a network computer. He was listing all the things that had vanished, and he was doing it with his head up.
David and Eliza decided that they, like Jimmy, should go into work, to take their minds off what was happening. Yet as they drove off, they both knew their offices would be closed. It may have been partly intuition, but mostly from the fact that everything along the way, even the 24-7 convenience stores and food markets, were closed. For some reason, however, they both decided to drive all the way to their work, just to make sure, before turning back.
That night, as David turned off the TV in his room and snuggled under his covers, he thought about the situation. As he laid there, he mind drifted and a picture of Eliza emerged.. It was her, the day before their wedding, in a pair of sweats and a tank top. Most would describe what she was wearing as nothing special. But to David, he remembered thinking how naturally beautiful she was, and this image of her ousted the one of her in a wedding dress every time. He couldn’t even explain to himself why this was, and never really tried to. He almost got up to go check on Eliza, make sure she was okay, maybe even keep her company. He flipped off the covers, but that was as far as he got. She is probably already asleep, he told himself, I wouldn’t want to wake her.
****
Two days later, and two rooms smaller, David awoke not to the backup alarm clock, but instead from the sun shining directly into his eyes. His room had been the mystery’s latest victim. The bed and sheets were there, but it was as if he had put a bed in his front yard. The unfamiliar sight of waking up to the sunrise, combined with the notion that he would never figure this out, caused David to fly into a rage. It wasn’t terrible timing, however, as the only things in his front yard were his bed frame, mattress, sheets, and pillows. The pillows, sheets, and mattress were soft enough to do very little damage as he threw them violently through the street, and the frame was heavy and bulky enough to prevent him from doing anything more than simply tipping it on its side and back. If he had not been swearing loudly to himself, or to God as some of his phrases suggested, he wouldn’t have even woken up Eliza.
“David! Come inside the house right this instant!” Eliza demanded from the doorway.
“That was actually very therapeutic,” David replied as he dropped the mattress, “you can use my bed and pillows to relieve tension if your bed is next.”
“I don’t think that is going to be happening anytime soon. Come inside and check out the news. Scientists have found some things out.”
Dr. J.M.Richards was on two different channels, which was impressive, as only three stations were still broadcasting. David stayed with Local-Low-Down, even though they were just taking the feed from a national network. He claimed that after much research on what people lost first and what people still had, he had discovered that beds are always the last thing to go. Upon a more in depth analysis, once again he discovered that if you fall asleep touching something, it will be much less likely for that thing to go missing. His main evidence was that no beds, sheets, or pillows that were in use had reportedly gone missing. He also stated that the vanishing always occurred sometime between sunset and sunrise. He closed by thanking everyone that went onto whathaveyoulostandwhatdoyoustillhave.com and posted their own lists, and that this website had the most up to date findings and discoveries.
***
Two weeks had gone by, and while scientists had not yet figured out the how, why, or where objects were disappearing to, they pursued the predicament persistently. Many had begun to support the “reverse big bang theory”, others working diligently to refute that, and others searching for even more abstract theories. Some priests were saying to pray and ask God for forgiveness and you would be saved. Others were saying that this was a modern day flooding, and like Noah and his family, God would save those that were good and smite the sinners into nothingness. Politicians asked the public for ideas and possible solutions, no matter how crazy, as they were just humble servants doing the people’s will. Psychics were foreseeing good and bad omens, depending on the particular client’s nonverbal signals.
The sun set quickly, reaching the horizon and leaving just enough light to show rows and rows of beds where houses used to be. Left with only two beds and their essentials, David and Eliza tried to create a plan of action. They decided that it would be better for them to each sleep in their own bed, so it would take longer for all their things to vanish. Each evening before the sun set, one of them would throw something off their bed, essentially giving that item a vanishing sentence. Eliza still held onto hope, clinging to it and making herself believe that this predicament was something that she could “ride out”. David had given up on the scientists, priests, politicians, and psychics when the Local-Low-Down channel went down, and was instead wondering about where all this stuff was vanishing to. He imagined a giant junkyard in heaven, or at least in the clouds, where all this stuff was piling up to form a great mountain. It was kind of like Olympus, if it had been made out of shopping carts, refrigerators, and toys. David had not become obsessed with the vanishing as most people had, as no human had reportedly vanished. Yet he hated thinking about this, as if even thinking about could cause this phenomenon to realize its mistake and start taking people too. He knocked on wood, even though superstition was not in his nature.
**
The next morning David almost felt guilty when he found out that the Goodfellows down the street had supposedly vanished in the middle of the night. Yet he knew he wasn’t to blame for all of this. At least that is what he hoped.
“Maybe they decided to run away,” Eliza said not wanting to believe it.
“Why would they do that?” David interjected, playing devil’s advocate, “Richard said that people with a lot more stuff just lost it at a faster pace than someone with less stuff. It is likely that Bill Gates and the Queen of freaking England are sitting outside on beds like we are right now.”
The argument was put to rest when a young man came down the street, wearing dark pants, a white button up, and a Bible in hand. Since David and Eliza were on the corner, he came up to them first.
“Hello brother and sister,” he began, “I come to you in this time of peril to give you relief, as God is watching over all of us. The Lord only asks that you repent your sins, and His love and mercy will save your soul, as our life on this Earth is limited, as you can see from the vanishing that is occurring all over the world.”
“Isn’t God the reason for all of this?” David retorted cynically.
“We do not understand God’s intention, that is our flaw as humans, not His. We must always remember, however, that when God closes a door, he always opens a window.”
“What if a guy is crippled?” David replied. “A crippled could roll out of an open doorway, but I doubt he could manage to get his body up and out of a window. And even if he did, he would still be without his wheel-chair, stuck outside and forced to crawl.”
“It is a metaphor, sir. It symbolizes God’s compassion for us, all of us.”
“What if he is metaphorically crippled?”
The priest in training was too flustered to even attempt a comeback, and so he mentally labeled them as “sinners” and walked to the neighbor’s beds. David found the argument, which he viewed as a win, to be very therapeutic. Eliza did not share this view. She didn’t say anything however, but instead got under her covers and laid there like a mummy, silent, still, and stoic.
As the last rays of light gleamed over the horizon, Eliza began to whimper. Her tears rolled down across her cheeks, falling softly onto the pillow. At first David did not hear her light sobs, but just before darkness engulfed him he looked over at his wife, tucked in under the sheets with watery eyes. Beautiful, brown, watery eyes. At that moment David really looked at his wife. He saw more than just a pirouette, curled up under covers. He saw her as his companion, the one with whom he had shared the greatest experiences of his life. Even though she was crying, without make-up or a shower, and covered from the neck down by a navy sheet, David saw the beauty that was radiating from the other bed. He couldn’t explain how he saw it, just like he could not explain how she looked more beautiful to him in sweats than in a wedding dress, but he saw it. Her beauty had been there the entire time, he had just been missing it, slowly letting it slip through his fingers. Now he had to grab it back before it completely slipped away.
Getting up from his bed, David began to walk over to Eliza’s bed across the front yard.
“What are you doing David? The sun will set any second now and you’re out of your bed!”
“I don’t care about the bed. It can go ahead and disappear right now for all I care.”
Getting into Eliza’s bed for the first time in weeks, David ripped off the sheets, began kissing her and caressing her like he did back in high school. He began ripping off her clothes and she returned the favor, as if the same passion had been bottled up inside of her this entire time too. David didn’t care about the bed, the family heirlooms, or the “valuables” across the yard. He did not care about vanishing or dying, or if there was even a difference, as long as in the time he had left, he shared it with Eliza.
*

Hats For Sale by Nina Malanga

The Great Balloon Magician by Jonathan Bridge

When people asked him why he chose his profession, he would tell them it’s because he loves kids. That wasn’t really the answer, it’s just what he was told to say during training. He was told to say a lot of things that weren’t true, but it was what the customers wanted to hear, and the customer is always first. He was by no means fulfilling his childhood aspirations by becoming a balloon artist, but at the same time not cynical about it either. The job fulfilled the purpose of what a job was supposed to do, and that was enough for him. He felt the disappointment of falling short of childhood aspirations and dreams, but only slightly. Overall it wasn’t a big deal, because with this job there were no strict deadlines, no reports to hand in first thing Monday morning, no shirts to button up and no ties to tie, no rush hour traffic jams, no phone conferences with corporate, and definitely no cubicles trying to consume his soul every day from nine to five. But for now let’s just say he did it for the kids.
*****
It was a typical Saturday afternoon and he had a gig at a little boy’s birthday party. Upon arrival, he rang the doorbell and entered, as if the doorbell served to announce his arrival rather than ask for permission to enter.. Letting his feet lethargically drag him in, he didn’t even look around, as it was always the same thing: balloons hanging from chairs, ribbons coming down from the ceiling, party hats everywhere, oversized presents stacked arbitrarily on the table out front, and a giant HAPPY BIRTHDAY sign hanging in an easily visible spot.
Mrs. Wilkins came over to him, showed him where to set up, and handed him the check for $75, all while maintaining that smile people force in an attempt to always make a good first impression. The balloon artist reciprocated a similar facial expression, obviously. As he sat down and began pulling out balloons, a few kids timidly stood their distance, close enough to satisfy their curiosity but far enough away to quench their apprehension. A small boy with light blond hair and a collared shirt hidden by a sweater vest shuffled his feet over a little close than the others. The boy didn’t look happy, simply standing in front of him pouting. The balloon artist couldn’t really blame the boy though, as he would have been pissed too if he had to wear that stupid sweater vest in the middle of May.
“What kind of balloon animal would you like little fella? How about a dog, or maybe a bear?”
No answer. He just stood in front of the balloon artist, with a look on his face like he had been told a week ago that Santa was not real, and just figured out that the Tooth Fairy must be fake as well. Finally he just shrugged his shoulders.
“Well a dog it is then!”
Blowing up the necessary balloons in advance, he looked at the boy’s face to see if there was any improvement, any sign of happiness. None. It didn’t really bother him though. In fact he felt just the smallest smidgeon of envy that this boy was able to show how he really felt with no apprehension, while he had to sit here with this phony grin on his face. It was if a camera man was saying “cheese” every second he was on the job. A smile on your face puts a smile on their face was the line in bold print on page two of his training manual.
He tied the balloons together to make the body and head. Then he moved onto the legs, no problem. Now all that was left was the tail. Just as he finished tying the tail to the body, he realized that it was no longer a balloon dog. There was no tail, no head, no legs, and no body. Instead, it was a balloon bicycle! It had balloon wheels, balloon handle-bars and all. Struck with awe, the balloon artist just sat there with a bicycle in his hands. Yet he was quickly snatched back into reality when the little boy grabbed the bicycle from him with a giant grin on his face.
“Wow a bike! Thanks a lot this is rocks!”
As the little boy got on his bike and pretended to ride around, the balloon artist was left there flabbergasted, looking around the room this way and that, straining his neck left and right to see if anyone else saw his balloon bear turn into a bike. No one noticed.
The next kid in line stepped up and announced, “I want a spaceship!”
“Sorry, little fella. But I don’t know how to make a spaceship.”
Dejected, the little kid turned to walk away, but was stopped by the forceful hand of a mother. She pulled him aside by the arm, whispered what must have been stern words about being polite to adults, and firmly pushed him back in the balloon artist’s direction. The kid’s confusion was understandable, as it must have been difficult to take a man dressed up in rainbow colors and sporting a silly hat seriously as an adult? Nevertheless, the kid walked back over and asked him for an animal. Whatever he knew how to make, to be specific. So the balloon artist began to make a giraffe, with long yellow balloons and a few short brown ones. Upon making the long neck and attaching it to the body and head, he began to finish it off with the four balloon legs. Yet once again, just as he thought he was about to produce a finished balloon giraffe, he realized that in his hands was nothing short of a balloon spaceship! This time however, the balloon spaceship has colors that he didn’t even use. There were also realistic looking decals on it, such as NASA and USA.
“Whoa a spaceship! Now I can fly to the moon, and to Mars…where I can shoot aliens!”
As the balloon artist watched him turn his fingers into pretend lasers as he ran around shooting the adults he saw as Martians, he strained his neck a little less to see if anyone detected something out of the ordinary. Once again no one noticed, and now he began feeling confident. He felt like he was on a hot streak in a Casino: the roulette ball was landing on his lucky number 33 like it was a magnet, the slots were coming up with three gold bars every time, and the river card was always completing his flush. By no means could he even begin to fathom how, or why this was happening. On the inside it could have looked like the monkeys escaped from the zoo, but on the outside he stayed cool and confident, as if he had been expecting it the entire time.
The game was fast-paced and able to change quickly though, as this time a woman approacheed. He noticed that she was the mom who had pulled the boy aside. She was very attractive, with blonde hair that stopped just past her shoulders and beautiful green eyes that would make any blue-eyed girl jealous. As he took in her gorgeous body like a sponge, he could not but have helped to notice that there was no ring on her finger.
“Wow you are rather impressive. It seems like you can make just about anything.”
“I am just here for the kids, doing whatever it takes to make them happy Miss…”
“Williams, but please, call me Mindy.”
“Well, Mindy, would you like a balloon animal too?”
“Sure…surprise me.”
He began to make his newest creation, a teddy bear holding a heart in his hands, hoping that this magical hot streak would not fail him now. After making the bear and beginning the heart, he looked at his progress and became upset with how it was turning out. The bear was not deformed, but it looked more like a brown alien than a bear. Nevertheless, he was banking on this magic to continue. And just as he finished putting the heart in between the two balloon paws, he realized that it was not a teddy bear holding a heart, but instead a bouquet of flowers. A bouquet of daisies, to be more precise. And not a balloon bouquet either, but real daisies!
“Oh my, daisies are my absolute favorite! How in the world did you do that? I didn’t know you were a magician too.”
Instead of trying to answer this time, he just smiled, winked, pulled out a daisy, broke off most of the stem, and gently put it in her hair behind an ear. And with that, she picked up a napkin, kissed it, leaving bright red lipstick on it, and wrote her number with that same lipstick. Once again he reeled in the winnings with that cool and confident look on my face. Feeding off the excitement of the crowd like a jet being fueled before take-off, he fully embraced this “ability” and accepted it. He still had no reason as to the how or why, but these questions must have slowly faded away to make room for the fact that he was turning into the life of the party. He seemed set on riding the curtails of this magic all the way to the end. No more questions asked, no more neck straining, He was all in.
By the time Mindy left to go put the daisies in water, everybody had stopped what they were doing as if it were a fire drill. The video games were left playing on without anyone handling the controllers, the cake knife was left halfway in the ice-cream cake, and the face paints were left out to dry as the last girl ran inside with a half painted butterfly on her cheek. Even the adults circled around and sometimes “accidentally” pushed in front of kids to watch what one girl called “the Great Balloon Magician”. The fitting title instantly stuck.
Another woman was the first to speak up.
“If you can make daisies magically appear, can you do the same with roses?”
“You will just have to wait and see Ma’am. Now let’s see what the Great Balloon Magician can do”.
He started making a funny balloon hat that a lot of kids love. Just as he was about to tie the last balloon in place, he realized that once again he no longer had in his hands what he had set out to make. This time, however, his hands slipped as he could not hold the weight of this newest creation. It was not a bouquet of roses, but instead a strange man. This stranger, who looked like he had jumped right off the Ralph Lauren magazine on the coffee table, got up from the floor where he had been dropped. Even though he looked nothing like the great balloon magician, their facial expressions of utter confusion and astonishment were identical. The silence that had just engulfed the room was violently broken with cheers and applause, as this man was the woman’s pool boy.
Everybody praised the great balloon magician, as they assumed the pool boy and he had been in cahoots the entire time. Yet the cheers quickly died as the pool boy walked over to his employer and starts making out with her. The passion and intensity they exhibited seemed almost unreal, like they were characters in an over the top romance novel. As the great balloon magician sat their dumbfounded, he must have noticed a ring on the woman’s finger. Alarms went blaring off in his head, as his facial expression revealed that he realized that what she wanted most was not a bouquet of roses, not her husband, but instead the pool boy.
Before the great balloon magician even got a chance to step back and let the angel and devil on his shoulders plead their cases, a man pushed a little boy up to the front.
“Make something for my son Joey now. It is his birthday party.”
It was an order, not a request, so the great balloon magician decided to let this magic continue on as he began to make a basic bunny. Everyone watched on as he blew up the pink and blue balloons, twisting and tying them together. The crowd was as quiet as a church during silent prayer, but filled with more anticipation than a group at the top of a rollercoaster, waiting for that first plummet. The great balloon magician was a little more uneasy, as he wasn’t sure if this rollercoaster was safe, as he had no idea if the track was intact, if the seatbelts were securely fastened, or even who was controlling the ride. He could have only sat back and wondered: what did Joey want most at this exact moment? Just as the great balloon magician was about to finish attaching the pink ears to the blue body, his hands slipped once again as he could no longer hold the weight in his hands.
The crowd’s first thought was that it was another man, very similar to pool boy. This time, however, the body hit the floor and didn’t get up. This guy, who looked nothing like a model from a Ralph Lauren magazine, wasn’t moving or breathing. The great balloon magician had never seen a person die before, so a part of him wanted to believe that this man was going to get up. But deep down he became vulnerable to the truth that was about to plague the rest of the room: this man was dead.
As the great balloon magician sat there frozen, the kids started clapping and laughing as the plague had not reached their innocent and naïve hearts. To them, one man was still “the Great Balloon Magician” and the other was another member of the supporting cast. To them the great balloon magician could do no wrong. But the claps slowly stopped as the parents hushed their children, and turn them away. One man becomes the shepherd and moved all the children to another room, trying to protect them from whatever had just occurred.
Once the children were gone, all chaos broke out. If the children were the innocent sheep being herded away, then the adults could only be a pack of wolves.
“Murderer!”
“Don’t think your hands are clean of this death! We know it was you!”
“Why in front of the children? You heartless bastard!”
“I’m calling the cops right now!”
“Murderer!”
As the great balloon magician took on the barrage of threats and accusations, he slowly realized that another bull’s-eye had been placed on another man’s chest.
“I know you were in on it too!” a member of the crowd blurted out, pushing Joey’s father with his index finger.
“Yeah, you are the one with the motive here,” another man chimed in.
“I had nothing to do with this!” Joey’s father replied forcefully, knocking the man’s index finger away.
“You hated his guts for what he did to you!” the man that jumped in retorted.
“I won’t deny that, but I could never kill him. You have to believe me!”
Based on what little else the great balloon magician could pick up over the shouting and brawl that almost erupted in the living room, he found out that the man dead at his feet was Joey’s father’s former partner. The word former was used not because he was now dead, but because he somehow cut Joey’s father out of some business and left him with almost nothing.
Enough was enough. The great balloon magician jumped out of his seat and made a break for the door. He anticipated that some of the men would run after him, but underestimated how intimidating he came off as. Who would chase a man that may have just killed a guy out of thin air, with balloons as his weapon of choice?
Running past his car and down the street, he didn’t stop until he found himself deep in the woods and out of sight. Alone, he pulled out some balloons.
“I am not going to jail,” he stated authoritatively to himself, or maybe the woods. “If I make a balloon animal for myself, then I should get whatever I want most.”
So he began making a dog, because it was the quickest to make. Just as he was about to tie the tail to the rest of the body, he paused.
“No time to quit now,” he told himself trying to gather the courage to make that leap. It was only a moment’s hesitation, a slight exhale, before he tied the balloons together to complete what should have been just a simple balloon dog.
*****
That was the last that was ever seen of the great balloon magician. Through the woods the police followed his trail, only to find his tracks come to a dead stop at a small balloon dog lying on its side. Stumped, as it appeared that he vanished from this spot, they called in for the best search dogs and trackers in the area. The reinforcements did no good, however, as the dogs never picked up a scent and the trackers were dumbfounded. The police checked with the company that employed him to find that his name was William Bryant. They put out a warrant for his arrest, created fliers with his name and face on it, but no one ever responded. Upon doing a thorough search of William’s entire life, they only found out that he had unpaid parking tickets, lived in a one bedroom apartment that contained nothing unusual, and worked as a balloon artist. Nothing to suggest that he was a murderer of any sort, much less a skilled hit man. Furthermore, they could find no correlation between William and the victim. It appeared that had never met, and did not have one mutual friend. They interviewed every person at the party, but took special interest in the pool boy’s story. He claimed that he had been taking a nap during the day at his house. He thought everything was part of his dream, all the way from hitting the floor at the great balloon magician’s feet to kissing his employer. It was not until later that he realized he was “not in Kansas” as he stated in the police report.
All of the other testimonies were the same. Each in their own way explained how the great balloon magician could make your wish come true, whether you told him what you wanted or not. Even Joey’s father admitted that he may have subconsciously wished for his former partner to drop dead. Since wishing alone was not a crime, Joey’s father was shortly released from custody. As for William Bryant, the police did not know what to do, as there was no protocol to follow for a situation such as this. Lacking motive, a murder weapon, and a cause of death, as the autopsy indicated that the otherwise healthy middle-aged victim died of natural causes, the police were forced to close the case. They were already overloaded with case files anyway, and it was not long before they let this mystery fade into the back of their minds, some unconsciously, others consciously, until it was almost completely forgotten. Almost being the key word there, as each time they saw another balloon artist, or a piece of his work tenderly held in a young child’s arm, they were forced to think back to the great balloon magician and wonder: what did he wish for?

Kanchanamango by Nina Malanga

Staunch the Blood by John Whalen

“Yeah,” he sighs absently. A splotch of blood begins to leak softly through his bandana as chuckles to himself. “You were right, after all, Ma; you were right after all.”

Still propped against the wall, he stares distantly at his hands for several minutes. His shaky legs make their own effort to stand; his sneakers flop around ineffectually as they plead with the gawking, pitted tar.

“For me?” he jokes to himself in a childish voice, feet still rolling pathetically. He sees how large his hands have grown, how they’ve hardened and scarred and cracked; he wonders how they got that way, all on their own. “Well, ok,” he grumbles, “but they’ll take some getting used to.” His hands lower, then, and his eyes lose focus for a moment.

A sudden, gagging cough bends him over—the strain of it draws out the cords in his neck and pushes a thick gob blood out from under the bandana. In one sticky strand, it swings and drools from his eyebrow down to the pavement. He wipes at it distractedly, noticing how the sun is swallowed by the decaying skyline at the end of the lot. He’s taken by the way all the stucco and the dirty glass, all the rusted dumpsters and the glinting pipes interact with its fleeting light. The air is dusty, and each ray is described individually by the particles that lie, forgotten, along its path—each one incinerated minutely, voiceless and surprised, as the retreating beams refuse to turn, refuse to acknowledge the nearness of the impending night.

Yes, this is nature—in its glory and its brutality. If a bird’s nest can be nature, how could this place not be?

And he did feel rather nested, then, as the dimming sky began to silhouette each of the squat tenement buildings that pushed in around him. They cupped him like a palm, a bowl, a nest, a cage; he leaned his head all the way back and stared straight up, bemusedly, at the one against which he sat. They gathered around him like a protective herd, leered over their spectacles like disapproving relatives, or tipped back their heads like bullies. He rose slowly to his feet and straightened his back, one hand pushing off a knee and the other pressing into the wall for balance.

He swayed for a moment, allowed the head-rush to clear, and began stitching together a clumsy gait. He swayed with each step and another line of blood was shaken loose, messily joining the last on the back of his forearm. As he dragged his fingers tenderly along the wall, his mind centuries away and unconcerned, one of the bricks handed him a chip of clay in apology. He stopped for a moment, surprised, and considered the way that it fit in the palm of his hand.

“It’s ok,” he said, “I never blamed you.”

Untitled by Jordan Jez

French Queens by Kenneth Decker

On seeing me naked
waxed poetic the photographer:
“Beauty celebrated,
I envision you
naked
running through an aspen forest
outside Montreal
lean animal, long streaming hair,
and chased, yes, chased
by sixty mad French Queens”

To screams of freedom and equality
desecrated were their sacred tombs,
their bones cast to the sunlight,
and their crowns torn
from their dead, anointed heads
for cut stones, metals,
the idea to violate
the persons of the Queens:
they awoke their spirit souls
to haunt the earth
the modern age.
…ancient ermine robes shot gold,
the embroidery of silver stars
and golden suns, the virgin lilies
of the garden gowns of paradise…
…and the blackened tarnish
of their silver laces
filigrees their powdered faces.
Tiny shoes of calf and gold,
the tiny heels of Chinese red,
structured to a Mozart tempo
and a corset choking etiquette…
golden shoes familiar with Savonneries
and fine parquet, the marble stairs
ambassadors ascended, bended kneed…
enchanted suddenly and violently
to new world mad terrain,
New France, New Earth,
New Age, liberated
from the dual prisons: life and death
to chase the naked god-man
through the golden aspen glen…

oh…
not those Queens?
Black leather. I see.

Untitled by Jordan Jez

Lesbian Tea Party by Christine Stoddard

Prim Carolyn never claimed 'bellehood' in this beauty imbued neighborhood where all
the pretty girls steal away to lewdly kiss their select cutie boys in deep gardens after school.
She, the bull (with hair that tufts out like horns, and cool lips, and nostrils unsuitable for ringing)
prefers to remain unknown, despite her penchant for quietly singing to herself, as she walks
to the corner store, where she always steps in, nearly chiming, "Back for more of that Earl Gray!"
And the shopkeeper pushes up his eyeglasses and sniffs, "Oh, you're back again today, Carolyn?"
Five minutes later, Carolyn is brewing tea in the shade of her cramped little kitchen, still singing.
She does not pretend to spend her afternoons holed up in azalea bushes, bitty breasts bouncing
at the hurried hands of masculine fervency that never distinguishes between whispers and whooshes.
Carolyn awaits the lacquered nails tapping at the window, the ones so undeniably feminine in grooming.
Carolyn awaits her chance at swooning and spooning, her chance for the quivering flower within her
to begin blooming at the sight of--not sunlight--but fingers tipped with rhinestones and magenta polish.
Never does she imagine her desires for love and romance being demolished--not now, not anymore,
not after a thousand-and-one girls have denied her India ink letters and pressed dandelions before.
Rejection could not blossom in an eternity, not between a lace-and-pigtails hungry teacher and a
shy and willing child just beginning to analyze the black mystique of womanhood, in any case.
"Miss Church loves me. Miss Church loves me. Miss Church loves me now and forever and--"
Never does Carolyn expect to turn around at the sound of nails attacking the glass and not see
the lady who first spoke to her about Toni Morrison and Sula or the lovely Princesse de Cleves.
Never does Carolyn expect to turn around at the sound of nails attacking the glass and not see
the lady who first sipped her tea and exclaimed at its deliciousness instead of calling it a joke
or complaining about the latest laddy who broke her heart before Christmas or Valentine's Day.
Never does Carolyn expect to turn around at the sound of nails attacking the glass and not see
the lady who promised her that their lesbian tea parties were really, oh, really more than okay.

Our Little Johnny by Christine Stoddard

I am staring at the porcelain doll, the one with a paper moon face,
the one bound in gaffer tape and strands of black, black lace that
Johnny collected from his dead grandmother's dress during one of
his Saturday corpse raids, the ones that cause his auntie distress.
We never say that Johnny is 'sick,' despite his penchant for peeling
roadkill off cement or giving small creatures a blood-drawing prick
with one of the hundreds of needles he stores in his desk drawer,
things other people would hide behind bolted and locked doors so
as not to stir suspicion within the curious mind and even curiouser
heart of the suburban housewife, the kind of wife and mother that
Johnny's own mother once was--that is, before Johnny became
the boy who scooped marrow from the bone for an art project.
We never say that Johnny is 'mental' or 'morbid' or 'plain wrong.'
We never question that chilling song he wrote and always sings,
the one about murdering the neighbor child and splattering his
red, red blood across his room's walls, the walls he, the wild one,
painted in celebration of finally cracking a sparrow's neck in a
single twist, one flick of his pasty wrist, while dancing on the deck.
Remember what he built on that deck, that Halloween eve two years
past, the year he dressed as "what Steve will look like after I kill him"?
After stowing away mouse skeletons since he was just four years old,
Johnny rubbed his pale hands together and decided to be really bold
by constructing a giant mouse skeleton out of all the ones he scraped
from his attic, where he draped traps with the same flair that one pulls
a dark, dark cloth over the cold face and hair of the recently deceased.
No, no, no, despite Johnny's obsession with life after death and despite
his habit of mentioning the ways he'd like to rupture someone's breath;
despite the fact that he has never even picked up a crayon that was not
crimson or ebony to lay on one of his brusque, devil-worshipping drawings,
Johnny--oh, our tender, impressionable, angel of a boy Johhny--is not sick.

Blue Shadow by Christine Stoddard

Southern city streets are silent on Sundays. Churches shake with the sounds of heaving organs, fervent clapping, and tearful screams of praise, but the roads remain deserted. Even the squirrels rest from collecting their acorns. Sunday, the Bible reminds Virginia through Texas, is sacred. Only atheists, Jews, and Candy Loo ignore this.
Candy Loo parked himself on a rickety bench just facing Sacred Heart Cathedral. The final bell rang as a five-member family scrambled inside, the mother dragging the smallest and most reluctant child by the hand. The father held the door open for them all. Then the five of them disappeared into the house of wafers and wine. Candy Loo popped an unsalted peanut into his mouth. The salted kind cost too many pennies extra. He would rather spend that money on the outside of his mouth.
The mouth boasted full lips, the kind that even saltiest peanuts could only slightly deflate. The lips looked soft and smooth. And for all the time Candy Loo spent exfoliating and applying strange, European creams to them, it was no surprise. Candy Loo colored his lips the most tempting shade of red—not vampishly red or red light district red. It was a lush red, like fresh fruit syrup. His lips deserved to be kissed. And you wanted to kiss them.
You did not, however, want to kiss the rest of the face. The small eyes gleamed black and nasty, even when Candy Loo smiled the sincerest of smiles. Nobody could trust those eyes under any circumstances. The large, crooked nose craned over the fruity lips. A blue shadow darkened the cheeks and chin. Shaggy, bleach blonde hair hung straight down the sides of Candy Loo’s face, making it appear even longer and thinner. It was a witch’s face, minus the unfortunate warts.
As one’s eyes traveled downward, they noted the thick neck that also bore a blue shadow of stubble. Nothing about it alluded to the white and slender neck of a swan. The Adam’s apple protruded as if Candy Loo himself had gagged on a bite from the Tree of Knowledge. The broad, bony shoulders nearly burst out of the women’s extra-large blouse the man usually wore. A stray hair or two poked out from the holes in the blouse’s delicate lace. The chest was a man’s, the hands were a man’s. The invisible waist, the narrow hips…they all belonged to a man.
Yet Candy Loo never identified himself as a man. At least not anymore. Ever since high school, he shaved his legs, pulled on pantyhose, and wore the biggest stilettos you ever saw. So desperately did he want to shed his birth given sex and shine at his senior prom in a taffeta gown. He dreamed of a shimmering silver dress with a luxurious train. And in his dreams that gown remained. His parents said he would either go in a tux with a nice neighborhood girl or not at all. Candy Loo made his choice and, thus, did not attend his prom.
Then, the day of graduation, he dropped his birth name and became Candy Loo, the most pathetic drag queen in all of Richmond. When the school principal called out “Harvey Lomax, Salutatorian” during the ceremony, Candy Loo remained seated. The auditorium’s mood fell from celebratory to horrified. The Valedictorian extended his speech on the whim as a quick cover-up but nobody listened. They only peered over at Harvey, with their confusion slowly evolving into pure disgust.
His father never forgave him. His mother skipped the graduation reception afterward and walked to the car, crying. Candy Loo’s parents revoked his college tuition and told him to pay his own way. So Candy Loo decided not to go at all. Instead, he hitchhiked across the country for a few years, supporting himself as a dancer for gay bars and a waiter for straight ones. Every drag queen he saw surpass him in their glorious femininity. Fatigued and thoroughly jealous of all the she-men stars that outshone him, Candy Loo eventually returned to Virginia. No one asked where he had been because no one remembered him. Only Harvey Lomax existed in their minds.
But Candy Loo was no longer Harvey Lomax. Harvey Lomax wore cool Levi’s jeans and impeccable polos, with his hair gelled back, just as his mother expected. Harvey Lomax made out with tittering girls to convince his father that he had a libido. Harvey Lomax was a track star and Honor Roll student because that’s what his older brother had been. Harvey Lomax was a liar and a huge disappointment only to himself.
Candy Loo abandoned polos and girls and conventional education and organized sports. Rather, Candy Loo embraced thrift store duds, sloppy men, his public library card, and walking around city streets for exercise. That may have worked for him in Baltimore, New York, Philadelphia, Portland, Seattle, and San Francisco, but it would not work for him in Richmond. Not if he wanted a roof over his head.
“I’ve had a roof over my head long enough,” Candy Loo hissed when the twelfth potential landlord with whom he had scheduled an apartment tour slammed the door in his face.
Two facts existed: 1) No respectful Christian Southerner would tolerate a drag queen in his building. 2) Candy Loo would not change.
So Candy Loo begged during the day and slept in the park at night. He carried around a coffee can he had painted pink, shaking it at all passersby and putting on his best falsetto:
“Ma’am, mister—ya got some change ta spare? Anythin’! Anythin’ will do!”
People either responded with pity at his crooked fake eyelashes and overwhelming perfume, or they condemned him for pretending to be what they believed he was not.
“Such a sick man.”
“Look at him. He think he a woman.”
“Couldn’t he at least shave the hair off his face?”
“Faggot. Fucking faggot.”
Sometimes, after a long day of begging, Candy Loo would walk past his childhood home and wonder about his family. Had his father finally retired from the university? Had his mother started up that catering business like she always hoped? Was his brother married, living out in the suburbs somewhere? Maybe they had all died and Candy Loo was the only surviving member of the Lomax clan. Yet he was no longer a Lomax.
On this gray Sunday, Candy Loo had already been awake for hours as pious Richmonders scrambled into church. He had already surveyed all of the empty stores with their richly adorned windows, reapplied his lipstick sixteen times, and gone through two bags of plain peanuts. Since the public library was closed, the only thing left to do was beg. People, he knew, usually exhibited vain generosity on the Sabbath.
At noon, the congregation scuttled out of Sacred Heart, filling the street like James River crabs in the summertime. Candy Loo threw his empty peanut bag on the ground and picked up his pink can. Time to go crabbing.
“Ma’am!” he called out in his high-pitched drawl. A short, middle-aged woman sporting a garish lavender hat spun around.
“Can I help you?” she asked through tightly pursed lips.
“Got any change to spare, please?”
The woman instinctively clutched her purse. “I just gave to the church.”
“The church doesn’t help me, ma’am.”
“If they don’t help people like you, who do they help?” The implication being, of course, that people like her did not require help of any kind.
Before Candy Loo could respond, the woman’s bald, sharply suited husband put his arm around her. “Is this…creature…bothering you, Coretta?”
“It asked for money.”
The bald man snorted. “It thinks money can help it?” Then he paused and looked directly at Candy Loo as he spoke. “Let’s go, dear. We have to get to the country club.”
The couple turned away from Candy Loo just as he turned from them. Globs of mascara streamed down the drag queen’s powder-caked cheeks. He walked back to his bench and pulled out another bag of peanuts. It was not the first time such a nasty episode had transpired, nor would it be the last.
“To be a peanut,” Candy Loo sighed, “To grow up with only one path and no options. But at least it’s a path nobody objects to. After all, there’s a whole industry that supports what you grow up to be.”
He sucked on the peanut until all he could taste was the fleshiness of his tongue. Then he crunched through the nut, scraped the sticky skin off of his teeth, and swallowed it. He shoved another in his mouth, grew bored with it, and resorted to pouring an entire handful into that black hole of teeth and gums.
The peanuts now gone, Candy Loo scooped up his can and delved into the Fan District, the nearest residential neighborhood. Victorian era townhouses lined the narrow roads. Flowers sprouted from the contained gardens. Trees appeared eloquently reserved. Cars were perfectly parked. Paint did not shed and grass did not fade in the Fan.
Candy Loo rapped on the first door he came to. An art student answered and jammed a few $1 bills into Candy Loo’s can.
“Don’t get drunk,” the skinny man muttered. He had on some hip band T-shirt and balanced a cigarette on his bottom lip. Billows of smoke partially obscured his chiseled chin and flapping ears.
Candy Loo cleared his throat. “I don’t drink, but thank you.”
The man nodded and closed the door, shutting Candy Loo out of the house that smelled of a dozen cats and cookie dough.
Candy Loo proceeded to the next house and then the next one, and the one after that. Most of the houses he tried were occupied. People came to the door, often gave him change to appease him, and possibly made a disapproving remark. That constituted the extent of their interactions. Nobody asked Candy Loo for his life story or even a tiny explanation. They did not care about the human behind the gaudy clothes and make-up. All they saw was tacky glitter and bad nails.
This did not particularly offend Candy Loo. He accepted it as part of his lifestyle. Only the most golden of souls would inquire about his health or happiness and perhaps invite him in for a warm cup of tea, perhaps even dinner. If Candy Loo shed a tear or two, it was involuntarily. His body reacted when his heart felt nothing. No one could offend him after all these years, he reasoned.
The drag queen adjusted his velvet skirt. The top button kept popping open. Once certain that he looked his most presentable, he continued knocking on doors. He had to compensate for his lackluster earnings outside of Sacred Heart, after all.
Hours passed before Candy Loo found himself strutting around Jackson Ward, one of the scariest neighborhoods in that part of the city by all too many accounts. Yet reputation does not deter a truly hungry man.
Weaving in and out of streets renowned for sins both archaic and modern, Candy Loo fixed his black eyes to the ground. It was safer than catching a gangster’s gaze. When a pimp greeted Candy Loo, he mumbled hello but kept going.
“Wait!” the pimp cried.
Candy Loo froze, prepared to say he would not sell his body at any price. He bit his red lower lip.
“You need a buck?”
Candy Loo hesitated but pivoted around to face the pimp. The pimp reached his ringed fingers into his deep pockets.
“I don’t like carrying around change,” the pimp said. “Too heavy.” He dumped a clump of quarters into the can. Like rain on a tin roof, the quarters plinked.
Candy Loo half-grinned. “Thank you.”
“Sure. Have a nice day, ya hear?”
The pimp rounded the corner and vanished. Candy Loo shook his can just to hear the coins jingle. The sound pleased him, as did the thought that even a pimp could be kind. Suddenly the drag queen’s blouse did not feel so tight.
Candy Loo stood slightly taller. He thrust out his chest, in his mind a buxom D-cup. He would buy a beautiful dinner at a stylish restaurant in Carytown, one of the fanciest parts of Richmond.
“No peanuts tonight,” he whispered to himself. The corners of his lips curled up.
Renewed, Candy Loo knocked on the next house along the street. It was a naked brick, single-family home with a porch. Two wicker chairs and a table displaying pots full of ferns adorned the porch. A dirty Welcome mat was situated before the door. The stench of mothballs hovered in the air.
Nobody answered when Candy Loo knocked so he rang the doorbell. A dog began to bark. Candy Loo waited a beat before he heard the keys on the inside of the house dance around. Someone was attempting to unlock the door.
Finally, that someone cracked the door open.
“Git!” a man’s voice shouted at the jumping dog. The dog whined and scampered away. The man opened the door full, completely exposing himself to Candy Loo.
“Afternoon,” the man said. He was heavy-set and missing a finger or two.
“Good afternoon, sir.”
“What you need?”
“Could you spare any change, please? I need some—“
“No, I got it,” the man murmured as he looked Candy Loo up in down with a voracious curiosity. “I got it. I mean, I have a daughter.”
Candy Loo raised his eyebrow.
“I know what you pretty things like and need.”
Candy Loo laughed a nervous laugh, still perplexed.
“Matter of fact, my daughter—Forrest, that’s her name—was just cleanin’ out her room today. Found a bunch of stuff she didn’t need or want anymore. Let me go and see what I can bring you.” He pointed to the inside of his house and softly closed the door.
The breeze rustled Candy Loo’s stiff hair. He tapped his foot and hummed a tune his mother used to sing. Never did she imagine her son singing the same song while dressed in drag, though. She must have imagined him singing it to his newborn child as he crouched over the baby’s crib, no doubt holding his wife’s hand. Harvey Lomax would have a comely wife and a flawless son or daughter.
“Okay,” the man of the house said as he opened the front door again. “I got just what you need.” He extended his arm and gave Candy Loo an envelope.
“Thank you kindly, sir,” he said as he took the envelope. He was too shy to open it right there.
“Not at all. God be with you.”
The two men looked at each other for a moment. Then Candy Loo thanked the man again and left the porch.
Once Candy Loo made it off the street, he sat down at a bus stop. The envelope was new, the whitest of whites. Candy Loo dug his index finger into the back flap to tear it open and revealed a piece of pastel-colored paper. It brandished elaborate curlicue script that Candy Loo had trouble deciphering. He squinted his eyes.
It was a gift certificate to a local beauty salon.
Candy Loo crumbled up the paper, tossed it to the ground, and spat on it. Then he waved down the approaching bus and headed to Carytown. He would order something French and expensive, even if he could not pronounce its name. Better than the greasy cheeseburger Harvey Lomax always fell back on in times of stress or disillusionment.

Untitled by Jordan Jez