AND HARMONY

A HOUSE OF VLAD PRODUCTION

© 2024 by House of Vlad Press

All rights reserved. No part of this content may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission from the publish­er, with the exception of excerpts used for critical essays and reviews.

These are mostly works of fiction. Any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental. 

Release Date: June 13, 2024

Guest Editor: Troy James Weaver

Cover design: Percy Hearst

Cover photo taken by Andrew Chadwick of a painting by an unknown artist

Author photos © the authors

Founder and editor: Brian Alan Ellis 

Contributors:  Joshua Hebburn, Graham Irvin, Corey Lof, Michael McSweeney, Crow Jonah Norlander, Ryan Ridge, Zac Smith, Don Television, MD Wheatley 

Thanks for reading.

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AMERICAN BEAUTY

I once walked down this street and saw a topless woman walk through her living room. She was totally unselfconscious. It was as if we were both taking a walk. Now, when I pass, I have to decide whether to look at her windows or not.

*
 

I’m walking down another street, exercising after a large dinner, and trying to make fresh observations of my neighborhood to write down. I’m a writer sometimes. I see a man approaching from the opposite direction. The man’s clothing is all flesh tone. It’s that beige that’s often associated with office professionalism issued from retailers like Old Navy, J. Crew, and Banana Republic. Because of the dim light, because of the similarity of the color of his clothing and his skin, I can’t tell where it ends and his face begins. I can’t tell if he’s wearing a scarf around his mouth. I can tell he’s wearing a coat, and maybe a sweater. It’s a cold night. Maybe because of the large meal I just had, I believe momentarily that he may have no face. I don’t slow down. I want to. Something in me tightens. It’s like a plastic bag being twisted around a large soft fruit. We pass with a nod. He’s a normal man in nice clothing, also out for a walk. I live near a suburb that’s architecturally notable, on a historical register, occupied by people with professionally de-foliaged swimming pools and Roth IRAs, people who always have a layer of pleasantness on top of whatever they are when I meet them at barbecues or in Starbucks, because that’s what wealthy means most of the time. He can tell I’ve been looking. I feel bad for a block. I turn right. I try to think of how to put this encounter into language and begin composing it in my head. After a few moments of unsuccessful mental composition, I scold myself for using the cliche of the faceless or uniform office worker, for perceiving this cliche. I worry about what I’m becoming. I feel anxious that cliche has somehow become my nature. Maybe I have encountered my doppelganger and suffered the consequence.

*
 

When I think of the word “lifestyle” I think of the time I was walking and saw a man in a big cowboy hat drive past with a big aquarium tank in the bed of his big clean navy-blue Ford truck. How big was big? I could imagine the man lying in the aquarium with his arms crossed on his chest. I couldn’t imagine the hat on his head while he lay in the aquarium. The brim wouldn’t fit. I had to imagine the hat sitting far above his head, the brim set on the rim of the aquarium. He would be staring up into the empty hat.

*
 

When I walked down this one street, I looked at a window to my right and saw a man hit a woman. Then the two walked away from one another and I walked past the house. The sight of this, lingering in my mind’s eye, replaying, was unreal in the way things often seen dramatized many times through movies and plays are. Realized, vivid, but without a context. The movement doesn’t look like a punch so much as the least habitual and considerate way I’ve seen somebody touch another’s face. It’s unlike all the other ways, all wrong in speed and reception. There’s a blurriness to it. I started to doubt if it had happened. Now, I have to decide whether to avoid the street or not.

*
 

I’ve been out. I went to the bookstore. I went to the grocery store. I went to the single serving of coffee and waxed cardboard cup store. I’m walking back. I’m counting the segments inside the little oranges as I eat them. They came with the twig and leaf still green and attached. My resolution this year was to notice more. I like the leaves. They have a hard shine to them, a deep unvarying green. It’s January 4th. I notice the number of segments to each of these oranges varies. I think of clovers. I wonder if there’s a lucky number of segments. A voice enters my head like the voice of another—prompt, responsive—and I immediately think of a number that’s correct for an orange. Where did that come from? I take a sip of water. I take a sip of coffee. I touch the cover of the book I’m about to begin. It’s a Penguin Classic. It’s The Haunting of Hill House by Shirley Jackson. The illustration is a house at an angle with an orange-y filter.

I’ve made this resolution, given myself this imperative notice, most likely out of a desire to be more present in my relationships. The people who gave my early life structure and stability are entering a period in their life where they cease to understand. They may require me to provide them with the things they provided. There are signs of this. I’m being abstract out of self-defense. I eat a segment of orange from an orange with five segments. Like the acts of a play. This period is at the end of two long, complicated sentences that can, and likely will, grow more complicated until they come to their full stop. What is most likely is a phone call. I think about the implication of the statement. Do you have a few minutes? Minutes in the palm of my hand, minute. I have an orange with five segments, three consumed. I’m not noticing. I’m not resolute. I’m doing something else that’s related.

*
 

I walk around once a day and try to have sentences instead of ideas, or beliefs, or plans, or suppositions, or propositions. I usually fail. I try to fail better. I’m an anxious person. It makes me feel better. If I fail to have an idea or belief or even a sentence, I feel better. Sometimes I have a sentence but it’s usually better if the sentence isn’t too much of a sentence. Nothing can be the matter if there’s no matter, no subject matter. All of that said, I owe you one for listening. Here’s one: It seems to me like a miracle how sometimes it seems there’s no miracles anywhere. Next, I think about how much I like the acoustic qualities of the brand name Ore-Ida. I wonder about its origins. I think about how they’ve never hurt anyone except in the passive way everything and everyone hurts the same. I think I’m having an idea, so I try to have a sentence about miracles. I think of how the sentence may have to be ungrammatical.

*
 

Walking around my suburb at night, I see a house with a large white-flowering jasmine bush, no cars in the carport, and an enormous glow in the backyard. I walk down the driveway and find a doorway in the wood fence dividing the glowing backyard from the public world I have been walking through. Attached to the interior gate clasp is a string hanging through the slats. There’s no noises in the backyard. I pull the string. There’s no lock in the gate latch. The gate opens, a metal rattle: Then, no man in white Calvin Klein briefs and a mesh trucker cap ready with a whiffle bat and the rage and courage of ownership. In the backyard is a swimming pool. Long after I close the gate, turn around, and walk back home, I think of the gate open and the blue kidney-shaped swimming pool and cement backyard with pool chairs and a pebbly glass top white iron table and an open table umbrella all blue-glowing. I smelled jasmine and chlorine.

JOSHUA HEBBURN is an assistant fiction editor at X-R-A-Y. His own fiction is recently in HAD, New World Writing, and Hex. He recommends Mike Andrelczyk’s “The Walrus” from Vlad Mad: Sweet Trash. 

U.S. NAVY SEAL CHRIS KYLE HAD OVER 150 CONFIRMED KILLS FROM 1999 TO 2003

at the end of year formal
 

my middle school crush
 

Tiffany is dancing with Bigfoot,
 

he’s shouting, “the CIA created serial killers
 

using mind control starting in the 1960s”
 

my best friend Chris Kyle
 

is aiming a sniper at Bigfoot’s head,
 

but I don’t want anyone to get hurt
 

so nothing important happened back then
 

except the moon fell through the band-room window
 

gently kissed a viola’s neck
 

without asking, oh
 

and Tiffany was wearing a thong

GRAHAM IRVIN lives in Philadelphia. He is the author of I Have a Gun. 

SIDE OF THE ROAD SOMEWHERE

“Fucking sweet, fucking Woodstock twenty-ten in my own fucking front lawn.”

It was barely midnight. We were on the side of the road somewhere, that smooth and dry California concrete, cracking ’round the sewer grates. Kara had just parked the truck-camper and I’d managed maybe one foot through the passenger door onto the sidewalk and this lady was already at us, some local—I think we were in Venice—in a crouch, picking trash from what I assume was her own fucking front lawn.

“’scuse you,” Urse said, flopping his bare hairy gut from the camper door and spanning the sidewalk with his version of the splits. 

You could hear the ocean sighing a few streets over, taking the piss, salt-misting everything for miles.

“Exactly what I need,” the lady said. She was dressed like she’d already been to bed, nothing but an old house-shirt on, pit-stained, piss yellow. I could see it all, years of seething, sleepless nights, hanging from her as she grunted to pull a water bottle and some cigarette butts out from under a hedge. “More skids treating my property like a toilet.”

“Sign says we can park here.” Urse widened his stance and pulled his head to the left.

“Parking’s one thing, living’s another. How many of you are there? Got a shit-can in that truck?”

“Two shit-cans, Mam,” I said, pinching the last bit of tobacco from a few found cigarette butts into a dent on the hood. “A three-piece in the master and a powder room off the kitchen.”

She pursed her mouth into the shape of a rat’s and put on a show like our smell alone might cause her face to slip off and her garden to wilt.

“Last I checked, there’s a hundred of us,” Urse said. “But we’re multiplying by the minute.” He was rolling his head around now, from tit to tit.

Holding a handful of garbage, the lady dabbed her forehead with the back of her wrist, like she was checking for fever, or checking herself, like, let’s not boil over here, they’re not worth it. Dropping her hand, her face wasn’t angry anymore, but hurt, disappointed—I saw a flash of my own mother’s bewildered strain.

“We’re just five,” I said. Teo and Urse were sharing the double bunk above the truck cab, while Lax, Kara and I slept arm to arm on an old piece of plywood we’d rigged to turn what would’ve been a seating area into another bed. “And it’s just the night. We’ll be gone in the morning.”

“Maybe.” Urse was working on his back now, one hand planted above his ass, the other raised in worship. 

“We’ll see.” 

“We will be.” I imagined some lens-flared forever memory waiting to be made, like out in Arizona maybe, all of us on the edge of the Grand Canyon, smiling slo-mo and laughing silent like a commercial while the sun set and turned our profiles into silhouettes of unmistakable potential. 

I rolled my ash-black tobacco into a skinny smoke, wiped what mess I’d left off the hood, and tucked the smoke behind my ear.

“Yeah, we’re big time,” Urse said, letting his hand down. “We got places to be.”

“Watch that smart mouth,” the lady said, covering her hardening nipples with an arm full of trash. “Alarm’s set. So much as step over that sidewalk—”

“You must think we’re real pieces of shit,” Urse said, toweling off with the shirt he’d untied from around his head.

“Think I’ve never been to the rodeo?” she said, “I know what a goddamn horse looks like,” and with all the hate she could scrape from her rag-doll guts, she hocked up a loog and spat it up over the hedge where it hung, like some moon blue fishing lure cast down from another world, or the tiniest little UFO, for what felt like minutes. By the time it landed on the sidewalk between Urse and I—in one piece, no splash, like a clot of curdled cream—and stopped jiggling, the lady had already turned, slapped her thong’d feet up her stoop’s three steps, slammed her front door and flicked the patio lights, illuminating the broadside of our rusty road-home.

Ah, the rodeo, I thought. Wouldn’t that be something?

Urse knelt on the sidewalk beside the spit, dabbed his fingers in it then rubbed them together at his nose and sniffed. “Yep, she’s a boozer,” he said. “Just gotta feel bad for miserable old bags like that.” He dropped his fly and slashed on the hedge. 

I looked back at the lady’s house. A good ol’ bungalow of board and baton, peeling white paint under black salt-battered shingles. Its fishbowl front window turned one-way mirror in the light. And what a reflection it held: Urse, with his hairy manhood out in freeform, his underarms glistening as he readjusted the shirt around his head, me, with a scavenger’s smoke, unlit, in my mouth, searching for a lighter, the red, bug-spotted truck behind us, the truck-bed camper, that bent piece of siding from the tree we tried to take down in Vancouver or somewhere, the scuff-mark dubbed speed-stripe from the Jack in the Box drive-thru we were never going to fit through. It was all there, all the pieces, all we ever needed was a rope and a couple of cowboy hats.

The heads of Lax and Teo emerged from the torn screen of the camper’s now lit window, their faces sleep-creased and swollen. “Ho-ly shit,” Teo said, confusing the patio light for morning sun. “You telling me we get another one of these?” 

Lax bobbed his head, hungrily seeking out the rhythm of what I assumed he thought was a new day.

The cab locks clicked. Kara, still slumped in the driver’s seat, lit a cigar. She looked away from the light. She wasn’t fooled. She wasn’t having any of this. After a couple of puffs, she cracked the window. But only slightly. Not enough to let us in. 

She was still mad about how the morning played out, Lax all but throwing her up as a shield. We woke to the tin door of the truck-camper being beaten in by Huntington’s neighborhood watch. Bunch of bulked up, buzz-headed surfer dads making the best you’ll-be-sorry faces. The shortest one out front, obviously, traps flared, barking, “Five minutes to move or I’m a rip the hood off your truck and crush y’all like roaches with it.”

Of course, we couldn’t find the keys. Not under pressure like that. We tore the camper and cab apart, our scattered panic chiming to the tune of last night’s empty tins clanging and crunching under our feet. I was certain it was Lax who’d last had the keys, and since I said so, it was him Urse pushed out the door when our five minutes was up. How were we supposed to know he was going to grab Kara and throw her out in front of him? 

She didn’t get it too bad. They realized after a few blows that she was a lady and scrambled off like roaches themselves down their paved driveways to hide behind the slow, automatic close of their respective garage doors.

Still dirty of Lax, though. Especially considering Kara’d already been taking the physical brunt of his war novel-induced night terrors. Every night, jumping to his knees, screaming from some imaginary frontline, or squirming his way through some imaginary trench, throwing actual kicks and punches. 

He got his though, in Seattle or somewhere, a city. We gave a beer to this gentleman living behind a dumpster at a gas station only for him to get violent when we cut him off at three, barging into the camper, throwing blindsides. The greedy prick, he still had beer foam blistering in his mustache. I guarded the cooler, but he got hold of Lax and rattled him by the throat. 

We let it go a minute, then Teo got involved. He bear-hugged the two of them, kissed our new friend’s neck and whispered in his ear something about how we’re all god’s children. I couldn’t hear it, but that’s the type of shit Teo would say. By the end, both Lax and our new friend were weeping. I’m not sure about the gentlemen, what he deserved considering we were in his home, but with Lax it was only fair. Honestly, between his night terrors, the drugs, and the cops, who waited until the very minute your eyes closed to announce their presence with a firm and rhythmic knock, we weren’t getting any sleep. 

On the night of the lady in the night shirt, the saggy, seething, pleading echo of my own mother—I’m pretty sure we were in Venice—an all-out war broke loose. It’s anybody’s guess how it started, but I’ll say we awoke suddenly to Lax up on his knees, fighting off some imaginary tear gas with an open tub of marmalade. “Don’t breathe in!” he screamed, jiggling the tub’s contents around the camper. 

“We moving?” Teo asked, stiff as a board in the top bunk, sleeping bag clutched at his chin. 

“Are we?” I was up on my knees, back to the back door of the camper. 

“Not actually, no way,” Kara said. She ducked as Lax swung, then made herself as small as she could beside me.

“Who’s driving?” I asked. 

“We’ve been hijacked,” Teo said.

“What do you expect this far behind enemy lines?” Lax leapt for the window, gasping for air.

“We’ll stop ’em.” Urse was up now, naked, on all fours. He reached out from the upper bunk, grabbed Lax by the hair, and threw him, bag of bones style, onto Kara and me. 

“Where are we going?” Teo screamed, pushing Urse off the upper bunk. 

“We’re never going to survive,” Lax said, resigning his sweaty self to lie over Kara and me. Kara took the chance to punch him in the dick. Lax winced but stayed limp.

Urse grunted, got to his knees. He grabbed Lax by his right shoulder and the waist band of his boxers and threw him back across the camper.

“What are we doing?” Teo said, kicking blindly off the upper bunk. If he wasn’t crying, he was making that face. You could hear it in his voice. “I’m sorry!” he said. “This is all a big mistake!”

The only face I could see was Urse’s. Without his glasses he looked like an animal, up close, growling. The beard, the hair. His bared teeth. I heard the click of the camper door and I prepared to roll. I’d seen it in the movies. A broken collarbone, some road rash. I’d survive. Urse hooked his knobby fingers in my pits and lobbed me backwards through the steal doorframe, into the street. 

But the way I hit the road—like the car had stopped just before he’d thrown me out, or like we were still parked and I’d only taken that extra step out over nothing while pissing into the dark, which I’d done before, I did it nearly every night—no roll, no skid, no nothing. Just me on my back with a sore ass, staring up past the streetlight. . .

Before I knew it, I’d trampled a hedge and set off an alarm. I had my pants down and was pissing, no hands, when I realized we hadn’t moved at all. We weren’t going anywhere. I was still in that lady’s very own fucking front lawn.

Look at me, I thought over the piercing sound of the alarm and what I could only imagine was Urse force feeding Lax his own marmalade while Kara hid and Teo continued to fire off questions from the upper bunk—who’s driving, where are we going, what are we doing?

My wavering reflection flashed with alarm light, all translucent and red, like a glitching hologram, in the dark of the lady’s fishbowl front window. It had all just begun. Every second that passed was something shiny I was sure I’d lug around forever. 

Look at me. Center of my own goddamn rodeo, for fucks sakes, finally.

COREY LOF is the author of a bunch of stories you should probably make a point of reading and a couple books he’s about ready to start showing people, you just hold your horses on those. He lives with his wife, son, and their many animals on an island in the North Pacific. He makes his living as a carpenter.

DISPOSALS

Davis said he would pick me up around noon because he was working through some things and needed a hand. He ended the call when I asked exactly what he meant.

The air conditioner rattled like a rat inside was trying to escape. I knew it was dying but I didn’t want to do anything about it. I preferred to watch it decay, maybe tumble from the window and crash against the sidewalk in a flourish of plastic and metal. 

After dozing for a while, I slid out of bed, got dressed, went outside, and sat on the stoop. Watched some kids as they built a shelter for the feral kittens on our block. They taped cardboard boxes together and cut out the undersides of a pair of plastic jugs to fill with water and kibble. Used an old blanket for bedding. 

Then I heard Davis in his four-door shitkicker SUV. You could hear it coming from a few blocks away. Rust chewed the truck’s edges. When I opened the door a heavy trash bag fell to the ground.

Grab that shit and get in, Davis said.

The truck growled through the neighborhood. We didn’t speak. I thought about the mysteries surrounding our drive. Davis was the only guy in the city I knew who drove. I never understood how people put up with it. The city was already stressful enough to make you feel anxious and dangerous and alive on foot. Davis was one of the few people I really knew in New York and thus felt a sense of heightened loyalty to whatever problems came along. 

We inched through Brooklyn traffic. I rolled the window down and a tepid wind limped inside. 

So, what are we doing? I asked.

Driving, he said.

No, like, what are we gonna do? You said you needed some help.

Oh, yeah. I gotta bring this somewhere.

I unknotted Davis’s trash bag. Inside I found a big cluster of wired phone chargers. High school baseball trophies. A few pairs of muddied sneakers. A laptop with a broken screen. Several unopened packs of playing cards. Exercise shorts with the tags still attached. An abridged copy of Moby Dick. 

Davis took us to the outskirts of Brooklyn. Potholes haunted streets walled by shipping trucks. For-lease signs lurked in dirty windows. The East River was close, and I smelled the air coming in off the water. 

We pulled up to an intersection beneath the highway and waited at a red light. Pass me the bag, he said. 

I pushed the bag over the console. The stoplight turned green and as Davis gunned it, he squeezed the trash bag through the open window. I twisted around to watch the bag. The open bag flipped over and spilled across the intersection. Trophies bounced and hid in potholes. Moby Dick caught the bumper of the car behind us and its pages spread like a battered flock of birds. As we fled Davis smacked the roof of the truck with his fist and hooted. Eyes aflame, demon-like. Jealousy jolted through me. 

Let go of the past, he said. Right out the window. No sense lugging shit around with you.

Is that why you littered in an intersection?

All that stuff, I can’t just toss it in the garbage can outside my place. I’d go looking for it again.

Wish I could do that, I said.

Then try it. Let’s grab some shit of yours and do some illegal dumping.

Alright, fuck it. Let’s do it. 

That’s the goddamn spirit!

My roommates were out somewhere. Davis searched through my closet and lifted a trash bag with some old clothes inside it. 

What’re these for? he asked.

So, when I lose weight, I can fit in them again.

Davis dropped the bag into my arms. Let’s toss these, he said.

I collected other things. My old high school yearbook. A copy of Monopoly missing the dice and hotels. A five-pound dumbbell collecting dust by the door. Each one we stuffed into the trash bag. 

What about this? Davis asked. He held out a small dark ring. Tungsten. My old wedding band.

That’s my wedding ring, I said.

You married?

I was. 

He placed the ring in my hand. I’d worn it around for a few months after the divorce until I felt like I’d cried enough. That was two years ago. 

You shouldn’t carry something this heavy around, Davis said.

Yeah, I said.

We hooked south toward the ocean. Late afternoon but the sidewalks still shined with sunglasses, sweat-faced families, and steaming food carts. Some people wore masks, but I didn’t see as many as I did in the spring. Davis fished a couple of warm beers from the floor behind his seat. Mine tasted spoiled but I drank it anyway. Relaxed. The weight of the bag in my lap receded a little. I thought about the things I was going to let go, somewhere. I wondered if this was the start of something bigger. Career change. A new love life. Maybe I’d leave the city for good.

Alright, it’s time, said Davis. 

I still had the wedding band in my hand. Hadn’t held it in a while. I wondered what my ex-husband was doing at that moment. If he was happy. If the fundamental differences that weaponized the fights, triggered the split, and resigned us to one last ceremonial hug outside the courthouse, still mattered to him, if they mattered to me.

They do, I said aloud.

Huh? Davis said.

The traffic light turned green. Davis hit the gas and the truck jumped forward. I shoved the trash bag through the window. Davis roared and twisted the wheel rightward. Shrieked out of the intersection. In the mirror, I watched the Monopoly money fountain behind us. Shouts and laughter poured through the open window. Somebody yelled for us to stop but Davis kept speeding. Hurtled beneath stoplights. Bounced across speedbumps. My heart chattered like a nervous houseguest. 

We blasted through a yellow light and whipped past signs for the highway. 

Fuck yeah! cried Davis as he pounded the roof. Then he asked, How do you feel?

Good, I said. Really good, actually.

That’s the spirit.

I could do some more.

More dumping?

Sure. I can throw you some gas money.

That’s the spirit. Everybody is working through some shit these days. No matter how alone you feel. 

Then Davis turned to look behind us. Fuck, is that a cop? he asked.

Dense traffic gnarled a police cruiser behind us, a kaleidoscope of lights, but nobody gave a damn. We left him behind. The East River glowed on our left, set aflame by the kneeling sun. 

Back at my place, I rummaged for more things to ditch. Nothing seemed momentous enough. Then I looked at the air conditioner. I’d lugged the damn thing around since I’d moved to New York in exile. Scored on a street corner because I was too cheap to pay for clean, cool air. 

This right here, I said to Davis. Excitement dogged my voice and I felt out of breath. 

It’s kinda big.

Yeah. Fuck this thing. 

Davis laughed. Alright, man, he said.

We hauled the air conditioner out of the window and with careful steps marched it down the steps and out to the truck. I climbed into my seat and Davis placed the air conditioner on my legs. Some bent and sharp part of it dug into my leg. I grinned as we drove beneath the cusp of evening. Music bombasted us from street corner speakers. Grills bellowed glorious aromas outside barbecue joints. A thousand first-date Saturdays bloomed. 

We queued in line at an intersection with one of Brooklyn’s big arteries. 

Then Davis asked, You ready?

I was. I really was. I gripped the base of the air conditioner. Mutant strength coiled in my hands. Fresh lava flowed through my veins.

Davis hit the gas and we dashed into the intersection. I hoisted the air conditioner and pushed it through the window. As it fell from my hands I saw two cops beside their cruiser, made eye contact with one, and shouted Davis’s name. He tore the wheel in the wrong direction and drove over the air conditioner as it exploded on the pavement. The metal speared the truck’s rear tire. I felt it die. The air conditioner’s remains howled beneath us. Davis kept driving but the truck was mortally wounded. Blue lights blinded us as we lost speed. 

&

Davis and I left the police station with a pair of summonses for illegal dumping. Thousands of dollars in fines all but ordained. I bought us a ride back to my place. One of Davis’s roommates would meet us there, so when we arrived, Davis and I squatted on the stoop and smoked two of his cigarettes, waiting for the roommate.

You never tossed the ring, said Davis.

I took the ring from my pocket and held it out. Nope, I said.

Give it to me.

Why?

’cause I’m skipping town. I’ll give you some distance.

You’re leaving?

Yeah. Fuck this shit, Davis said, waving his summons in the air. I got more important shit to do. I don’t need a car to get anywhere. I’ll walk. Crawl if I have to. Fuck the pigs. All we did was put some shit behind us. 

When Davis’s roommate pulled up, we shook hands and let our connection linger. I gave him the ring and watched them drive off. Across the street, the neighborhood kids fed some kittens in the homemade shelter. The kittens mewled and licked at their food and water. 

I went up to my apartment and into my room. The window blinds shivered in the night breeze. The room was cooler than it had been in weeks. Like it had learned how to breathe again. I watched the stars multiply. Flies rode the air current through the window and hid in the corners near long-abandoned spider webs.

Then I crossed the room and took my backpack from the closet. Stuffed it with clean laundry, the wad of cash from my sock drawer, a small jar of weed and a pack of papers, and my only working phone charger. Scribbled an apology to my roommates in my notebook, ripped the page out, and taped it to my door. 

I wasn’t sure if my salvage was enough. There wasn’t much left, just the remains of a boxed-up life I’d dragged and slept beside for years. I decided to keep the window open so the wind might scour my stench. 

Then I departed, in a great and solemn hurry, a phantom of my own choosing, slamming every door behind me as I fled.

MICHAEL MCSWEENEY is a writer from Massachusetts. His first novel, Heroman, is forthcoming from Expat Press.

UNKEPT UNCLE

I can’t restrain my Kid Uncle Al, drunk in Chicago, having found our way back to the hotel we’re sharing with our mothers, at first still asleep and snoring, sent there by Cousin Marty from our cousin’s wedding receptions effectively—to grooving Aunt Gwen’s great disappointment—youth-only bar crawling afterparty, who is wasted too but more familiar with the city, accustomed to confronting the limits of impaired capacity here, who asks me where Al is, presuming in a true-feeling way that I am logically his keeper for the evening, and brings me out front where I suspect he is, my Uncle Al, to find him swaying, futilely flirting with a trio of college girls whose outfits indicate a level of uncompromising seriousness about going out, ignored by them, bumming a cigarette and a light and then for some reason flicking the burning thing back at the man who supplies it, setting off a rapid sequence of events: a what the fuck taken aback pause of indignant disbelief; the spilling out from a parked car of the man’s hidden defending goon army; a nonchalant attempt by my uncle to retreat to the bar for another drink; an oh no you don’t manhandling grapple from Cousin Marty; a well-timed cab slowly rolling by; us getting stuffed into it while he restrains the angry jock mob behind him and confirms we know where we were headed, which destination Al undermines by requesting to be let out just a few blocks later, a request that the driver curiously honors despite the obviousness that I, the relatively coherent and composed passenger, will be the one to cover the cost on the meter, on top of which I nonetheless tip handsomely, embarrassed by our behavior and feeling guilty for the vomit I hadn’t previously noticed make its way into the footwell, realizing how desperately Al wants to be in the company of family, by which he does not mean me, but these others from all over, the fun ones he hasn’t seen since childhood rounds of Mille Bornes in tents, so I change my tack and trick him into thinking we are heading back to the bar, following under the L tracks, unsure of which line but trusting it will lead us through the Loop, a course he repeatedly questions, turning around and retreating the way we’ve come for several strides before resolutely changing his mind and resuming in our original direction, bothering each of the few people we see, mostly homeless, with requests for smokes, surprising me with resignation when we emerge in front of the hotel’s green awning, following me inside more or less willingly though by now weeping with sorrow over his exclusion from the festivities, muttering blame for himself and curses for me, attempting to hide his inebriation for the benefit of the eagle-eyed concierge, erring on the side of too little interaction, with all our energy focused on moving straight and upright through the lobby to the elevator, into which we go, somehow pushing the button for our floor automatically without consciously recalling the right number, creeping as quietly as possible into our room, into our cots made up on the floor and staying still, trying to slow my breathing while praying for pattern of our moms’ blocked exhalations to remain unbroken, relieved to have reached this resting place, my mission complete, my responsibility for my drunk uncle’s well-being satisfied for the night, but then his sobbing swells, he writhes and jitters his legs and his mom stirs, her breathing clears as she regains consciousness and asks, who’s that crying? which makes him cry harder, at which point I accept that there’s no use in trying to deceive her, confessing, he’s shitfaced, my guilt implied by association but the least pressing concern at the moment when my grandma does her aching joints version of springing to action, rummaging around for a half-full bottle of Coke leftover from her hot dog lunch, forcing it upon her son, the caffeine will sober you up, and so he sips through tears, swallows down the wrong tube and coughs my mom awake, the absence of sleeping sounds a kind of propulsive shock vaulting him up to his feet, Grandma Pauline pleading for him to stay, and even though my mom with a few years of hard-fought sobriety under her belt is saying there’s nothing we can really do to stop him, I stand in his way but without conviction, causing him to swing at me, or maybe he’s just stumbling, but in a way that seems meant to wound me, and so I catch him and prop him back up, and he keeps leaving, and we let him, and he falls the rest of the way out.

CROW JONAH NORLANDER lives in Maine and has nothing to hawk.

DOG DAYS

We saw Miss America 

on a most wanted poster

as the city planner

underachievers pitched tents 

in the park at dawn. 

Nearby, an abandoned 

strip mall stood like a sequel 

to the online marketplace. 

In the self-referential 

part of town 

where billboards 

advertise billboards

and the darker 

the bar, 

the better. 

We took two more 

and tripped into a dive. 

An angel sobbed 

through the jukebox static, 

her voice drifting 

the way a ghost floats.

I was hanging out with an adjunct 

pharmacist who’d crushed us 

a choice combo of compounds. 

I felt as fearless as a wildflower 

blooming in the shade 

of a nuclear reactor—

more adrift 

than a cover band

on a cruise ship.

We smelled fire 

everywhere we went.

Our shadows tumbled

onto the sidewalk, 

stood up, and sprinted 

to a different area code.

The pixelated sun set

as my associate

and I parted ways. 

He was the seventh son of a man 

who made millions selling

glow-in-the-dark condoms 

made from radioactive latex. 

“Don’t let the Puritans stoke 

your sadness,” he said. 

“Be prepared for bad bartenders 

with awful haircuts 

and airport agents who despise 

your very presence.

Approach them swiftly

and speak slowly. And don’t 

ever trust anyone who doesn’t 

love dogs.”

Afterward, I spent months

mostly staring out windows

and too many years

answering emails.

Not every fuckup becomes

a Hollywood script.

THE BERMUDA TRIANGLE OF THE MIND 

The circus came to the next town over. 

Someone placed statues of ordinary people in prominent places. 

When the Fourth Estate hit the third rail for the second time, I felt at one with you. 

As the invisible hand wielded a double-sided battle axe. 

Apparitions from my past appeared in dayglow flashbacks. 

A door-to-door salesman sold us a no soliciting sign.

We were under surveillance and overworked.

We’d traded meaningful connections for wireless long ago. 

A top diplomat covered Muddy Waters on CSPAN. 

An infographic depicted all of the love left in the world. 

You searched for a passage where Nostradamus predicted the winning Powerball numbers. 

I’d been sequestered by the court of public opinion for my hot take on the ice age. 

Lately, doesn’t it seem like life is dicier than a casino supply company’s inventory?

Why isn’t there an app that automatically updates our apps? 

Aren’t you concerned by the clandestine research they’re conducting at CERN?

I feel like a man in need of a pen name. 

As functional as a fireplace burning on television. 

Or a stowaway on a houseboat. 

Listening to the staccato swing of the washing machine. 

What’s after time?

Hailing from Louisville, Kentucky, RYAN RIDGE worked as an assistant butcher, delivery driver, dishwasher, janitor, landscaper, medical historian, paperboy, valet parking attendant, and video store clerk before eventually earning an MFA from the Programs in Writing at U.C. Irvine. He is the author of five chapbooks and five books, including the story collection New Bad News (Sarabande Books, 2020) and the poetry chapbook Ox (Alternating Current, 2021). His YA novel, Beyond Human, is due out in 2025. An associate professor at Weber State University, he co-directs the Creative Writing Program. In addition to his work as a writer and teacher, he plays bass in the Snarlin’ Yarns. He lives in Salt Lake City, Utah, with the writer Ashley Marie Farmer.

YOU CAN PLAY MUSIC ON YOUR PHONE AFTER JERRY CLOCKS OUT

Oh, for sure. Yeah, I was there. I was working the closing shift when he came in. You know, I knew something was weird because he looked really happy when he came in. Most people don’t look that happy, you know. You’ll see it… We get really fucked-up people in here, like that guy over there, or those guys. Yeah. You can tell they’re thinking about suicide, too. Oh, for sure. Sometimes I ask ’em and they’re like, “Oh, yeah, absolutely, I’m gonna do it tonight.” You can ask ’em, man, I’m telling you. But, yeah, so this guy was smiling, ordered a bagel sandwich and espresso, standing around with the other guys waiting for their bagel sandwiches and espressos. You’ll see—have to be really good at making bagel sandwiches and espressos at the same time. You can usually pull an espresso while the sandwich is in the conveyor belt toaster oven. Each takes, like, twenty seconds or something. Anyway, this guy, he tapped one of the other guys on the shoulder, just some random guy, which is insane if you ask me, but hey, what the fuck do I know, and he’s like, “Hey, guess where I’m from.” The second guy looked confused, like you’d expect, but also kind of disappointed? That made me laugh, like, what was he hoping the guy’d say, you know? So, he just made a sort of slow groan. Like, “Aw, hell,” you know. Then the first guy was like, again he was like, “Guess where I am from. You know, like which country.” Lots of guys get weird and bored waiting for their sandwiches and espressos but they usually don’t talk, or, like, not to other people, you know. Like they’ll say stuff but it won’t be a conversation or anything. And the bagel sandwiches always take the longest because of how you have to put all the toppings on them. It’s different than a normal sandwich—I hate making the bagels, man—you’ll see. Every night I’m like “Fuck these bagel sandwiches, man.” But they taste alright, so you’re gonna make a lot of ’em. So, anyway, he sounded vaguely Eastern European or something, I guess, this guy, you know, based on how he was talking. I don’t know how you tell but, like, you know. You do. So, it made sense. The game made sense, basically, even though it was like, what the fuck, you know? But the second guy shrugged like “I don’t fuckin’ know, man.” He was pretty mad, too, and the other guys were starting to laugh. And his bagel sandwich was taking the longest, man, because he ordered the Brooklyn Double, which sucks to make, honestly. That shit takes the longest. You gotta fold the ham the right way, and the olives always roll off. I fuckin’ hate Brooklyn Doubles, dude. And people are always angry when they have to wait for one, too. We should take it off the menu if you ask me. I told Jerry this but, apparently, it’s the owner’s favorite or some shit. So, it’s gotta stay, we gotta keep making these things. Yeah, over there’s the olives. Yeah. But so, the first guy, he, like, started rocking on his heels, you know, like Jerry does sometimes when he’s fucking with you. Have you worked with Jerry? You’ll see. So, he’s like, “One hundred dollars, my friend. I give you one hundred dollars if you guess right.” And he was all rocking and smiling and shit and then he pulled out a large roll of cash, like maybe a few grand, you know, like a drug dealer or some shit, and stripped off a hundred-dollar bill. This is when he turns to me—I was trying to box up the other guy’s Brooklyn Double, you know, I wasn’t paying too much attention, mostly thinking about suicide, to be honest, even though I like this job, kinda, but, you know, you’ll see. And then he said, “You can confirm. I don’t lie. I’m here all the time, yes?” And, I mean, it’s true—I would see him almost every night I guess, always around, acting weird, but not talking to people like this, so I was like, man, I don’t fuckin’ know, right? I’m just, like, I’m almost 100% bagel brained when I’m here. “Bagels or Suicide,” basically, like Jerry says. Yeah. You’ll see. He’s funny as hell. You see they’ve got those nets under all the bridges on campus? Like to catch people who jump off. But, like, what if you wore ice skates, you know? Cut through the nets? That kind of stuff is what I’m thinking about, usually. So, I don’t say anything but finally the other guy’s like, “Alright, fine. But what if I get it wrong? I’m not paying you shit.” The guys were laughing a lot. Like, this guy was funny because he was so mad. But the first guy was all like, “No, of course, if you’re wrong, you’re wrong. No problem. No money. Only I pay you if you’re right. Only fun. But nobody ever guesses right.” I remember he said it like that because one of my students had tried to hang himself, like last year, but it didn’t work right, so he had to go home and live with parents and then he emailed me once to thank me for giving him a good grade, you know, he was like, “That was the only good grade I ever got the year I decided to die,” but that was back when he was really deep in it. Whenever anyone asked how he was doing, he would say, “Only Fun,” like a slogan, kinda, like a joke I guess, and he even got a tattoo of it. So, it was funny to hear this guy say it, especially because I was pretty deep in it, too, you know, I was just thinking about the nets and stuff, like could you go out and cut them up in the middle of the night, and then climb back up and jump? Anyway, I had an order up so I was like “Olive pizza bagel and espresso for a Tommy?” you know, or some shit like that, basically you gotta say the order and the name, and you gotta be loud enough for the whole place to hear you, and I gave the carton and a shot of espresso to the Tommy or whoever, and we’re both standing there watching these guys when the second guy says, “Fine. Whatever. Lemme look at you.” And he, like, reaches up and holds the first guy by the chin and starts moving his head around, you know, like he was looking at a dog or something, and everyone’s laughing. Like how are you gonna look at a dude’s jawline and be like, “Yo, definitely Bulgarian” or whatever, you know? The first guy’s laughing, too, and he’s raising his eyebrows up and down like “Huh? Huh? What do you think, huh?” It was pretty great. But then the second guy, the guy holding him, he was like, “Man, you’re from Azerbaijan, ain’t you. Shit.” And he was smiling and still holding onto the guy’s chin, but the first guy stopped smiling. He was like… scandalized? And he looked pretty mad. But people were fuckin’ howling, man, I’m telling you. So good. Anyway, I had to go back and make some more bagel sandwiches after that, but I guess he didn’t give the guy the hundred bucks, so it was this whole thing and they both died. But that dude was definitely from Azerbaijan. I dunno how that other guy did it. Or at least I’m pretty sure. Hold on—let me get his passport. It looks crazy, yeah. We keep it in the back with all the other shit.

ZAC SMITH is actually 12 guys.

DAN, SKELETON MAN

Beside the Bloomin’ Onion is a stack of stapled paper. We’re each invited to grab one, read it. Aloud, Eric clarifies, sipping his third pint. It’s called a table read. You’ll see, y’know, bolded there when it’s your line. See, I’m first. It was the summer of our fifth-grade year. VO, that means voiceover—that’s so, like, well, you can imagine my voice coming through over the blocking there: the child actors, one for each of us, and Danny of course—I’m hoping to have you all involved in the casting; pick a kid that reminds you most of yourself, y’know, at that age—biking downhill at breakneck speed, in black, y’know. Our suits were too big. Then Andrew, you go. It was the summer we lost our friend. Brief silence around the table, the server standing there. Eric transitions to whiskey. Now I know, I know. You’re thinking, this is exploitative. You’re asking yourself like, why? Why dramatize our friend’s death now? I mean we’re forty. We have lives, y’know. Some of us have kids. And by all means have them audition. That was another thought I had. Pete, have your kid play you. Y’know. It’d be perfect. And you’re right to ask. No, I’m not, like, what you would call a filmmaker, but I have seen a lot of them, so. Tony, just, y’know, read your part. Come on. Please. Tony, I need this. Don’t. No, don’t read ahead. No. Come on. That’s not fair. It’s gonna ruin it. We have these dinners every year to remember. I thought, y’know, what’s this if not remembering? I thought, y’know, you all would support me in this. Eric, what’s going on here, page 34? We’re digging a grave? That’s. What the fuck? No, no. Flip to page—I think it’s forty-something—you’ll see. Oh, it’s ruined. Oh, you ruined it. Pg. 42, there’s all this, like, whooshing. Stars. A beam of transcendent light? You haven’t made a movie before, how you gonna have special effects? Eric, what is this? Like, what’s the general plot? Y’know, he . . . he comes back to life. Pete, you—Me? You keep hearing this rattle, like chains. Remember, your house was over by the cemetery. And you were like our leader then. You convince us, like, y’know, we go dig ’im up. We were traumatized, him dying. It’s an expression of trauma: we go dig up his grave, y’know. With like spades. Lanterns. There would be . . . y’know, we would get dry ice. And we dig ’im up, y’know, but he’s not dead. He’s like animated. Y’know, it’s like Casper. We take ’im out like, smuggle him. Have that summer we were supposed to have. We all learned to skate that year. Got our skateboards. It’s like, biking was kid stuff. Something we did with Danny. But that’s a million-dollar scene right there, us teaching Dan to skate. Y’know, he goes down the hill, cloak we got ’im in blows off. That’s a million dollars. Or y’know, we sneak him into school, he pretends to be the anatomy skeleton, so we don’t get caught, like. He gets to be in school again. Remember? Danny was the studious one. Just, like, y’know, I was the funny one. And antics, like, comic relief with his dog. His dog wants to chew on him. Or maybe, y’know, he won’t chew on him cuz he knows it’s him, right. Like in the moment before he bites, right, he stops. He’s like, it’s my old master. I could fix that. Put that in. But it all kinda terminates on Halloween. Which, y’know, the run-up to had been convenient for . . . gags and stuff in there, y’know . . . and script-wise, pacing, there’s like a ticking clock element. Midnight on Halloween, the magic runs out. We learn this, there’s like a witch. We gotta put him in the ground again. And it’s sad, y’know, but it’s like a kid movie. You gotta grow up. Move on. Dan, in his wisdom from having died and all that and coming back, he sees that. Teaches us, y’know. It’s like a coming of age like, Young Adult, y’know. I need the money. Guys, I need the money. I wouldn’t ask you, like, if I didn’t. So, I need, maybe, if each of you could put in like ten thousand dollars. We’re gonna make a lot more from this. And like, Dan’s parents, they already agreed to pitch in, but they don’t have a lot either, so. It’s like for them in a way. They took out from their retirement fund, so I can’t, y’know. I can’t give the money back. I can’t, like. They gave me their permission so I can’t, y’know, I can’t not make the movie now, and they’re expecting some footage next week. So, listen, please, if each of you were to pay me like ten thousand dollars, I could buy a camera.

DON TELEVISION is an American writer. 

SPECIAL K

My best friend Andrew is suffering. He suffers from many things but mostly clinical depression. In fact, he’s so depressed the only food he’ll eat is cereal. He takes it with whole milk and a big silver spoon. He wakes up and talks backwards until he’s had his Pops. He’s mostly just saying, ‘gotta have my pops’ but backwards, so it sounds like, ‘spa vemba head ig.’ He talks backwards to keep the acid reflux from traveling up his esophagus. It’s not scientifically proven but he swears talking backwards helps his GERD—another thing he suffers from. Andrew loves Pops but he loves other cereals too. He doesn’t discriminate. He also loves Cookie Crisp, Oreo-O’s, Honey Smacks, Apple Jacks, etc. As kids, we once made goggles out of a Froot Loops box. I wore the ‘Froot,’ he wore the ‘Loops.’ But his favorite’s always been Special K Red Berries. I’ve tried convincing him to get Special K Original and add his own fresh strawberries, but he swears the dried strawberries are better.

I digress.

He’s depressed.

Andrew got a new dab pen that helped him make a new friend. A good friend, maybe even a better friend than me. Andrew chiefed his pen before walking into the grocery store.

There was no Special K Red Berries but there were other varieties of Special K. Andrew stood there gawking at the Special Ks on the shelf. He hoped a box of Red Berries would eventually pop out at him. He stood there, hunched, somewhere between 4 to 5 minutes. Lo and behold, a little box of Red Berries popped out. It had a cute cartoon face with the kind of charming smile you’d expect from a face like that.

‘Hiya! I’m Red Berries but you can call me RB.’

‘Yo! What’s goodie, RB? My name’s Andrew,’ he says, trying but failing to dap up RB.

‘I was gonna scare you, but you looked a little too sad for a spook. Are you OK?’

‘Yeah, I’m chillin’, just high af right now.’

‘Word. Well, I’m down to chill with you but I can’t smoke right now. I’m getting drug tested later this week. They’re thinkin’ about discontinuing me.’

‘What? No fuckin’ way. I’d be so depressed if they did that. I love you bro.’

‘…’

Kellogg did end up discontinuing Special K Red Berries, but Andrew seems to be doing OK. He took it way better than I thought he would. Lucky for me, I’ve been able to step up and be a better friend. I make Andrew homemade cereal every morning when he walks over for coffee and cigs. It’s so easy. I just pour some Special K Original in a bowl, add a handful of fresh strawberries, drown it in whole milk, and serve it with a big silver spoon.

When I tell Andrew I love him now, he believes me. Sometimes he looks at me with his big milky eyes and says it back. Other times he stares at his reflection in the spoon.

MD WHEATLEY’s a husband, father, and writer living in Charleston, SC. He wrote a book called what a heaven could feel like. He’s currently working on two more books.

TROY JAMES WEAVER is the author of Visions (Broken River, 2015), Witchita Stories (Future Tense, 2015), Marigold (King Shot, 2016), Tem­poral (Disorder Press, 2018), and Selected Stories (Apocalypse Party, 2020). He lives in Wichita, Kansas, with his wife and dogs. 

VLAD MAG #4 (PART ONE): “BONE THUGS” IS OUT NOW!

Contributors:  Alice, Chris Barton, Danielle Chelosky, Tyler Dempsey, Stephanie Yue Duhem, Phil Earle, Adelaide Faith, Jenna Farhat, Alannah Guevara 

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