BUMMER SUMMER

A HOUSE OF VLAD PRODUCTION

© 2025 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: August 9, 2025

Cover design: Percy Hearst

Cover photo: Andrew Chadwick 

Author photos © the authors

Founder and editor: Brian Alan Ellis 

Contributors:  Caroline Ganci Patterson, Ira Rat, Timothy Willis Sanders, Lizzie Scheader, Mallory Smart, Bud Smith, Shy Watson, Chelsea Laine Wells 

Thanks for reading.

HOUSEOFVLADPRESS.COM

PROCEDURAL

i root my body in my ego. sliver

of an impermissible decade. i

am a self-disgusted girl. i say i

betray myself as self-protection.

i could not be alone with someone.

touched people in twos and

threes. it got ahead of me

as it often does. forgive forgive.

i stopped referring to myself.

it is important to ask people

questions about themselves.

seeking: conflict.

seeking: endless platitudes.

a tasteful angle. that bit of

youth right after you start

punishing yourself.

when it felt revelatory.

FRICATIVE

unfuck the forgiving comfort. hump a pillow 

and do so thoughtlessly and with feeling.

make a ritual out of explanation. 

mistake humanity as surrogacy.

a love so tentative it could not be felt without revision. 

you know it.

and you know it as it was. 

and you know you are no ascetic.

and you tuck it up into your indignation 

and spend the whole of your body

on your skin. 

a stranger touching his thumb to his wrist in circles. 

an ant-bitten squash. this tourist photo op 

or that predisposition to anomie.

you will be forgotten. 

the tips of all of you kissed delicately and guzzled. 

your lust like a horsefly in a straw.

NUMB PALATE

it can’t always be about ownership. he spits out the

helicopter seed. and nourishment is a consequence

of theft. on oral numbing: blame a molecule. but also

blame the thinness of the skin of your cheek. 

adoration is only

briefly about penetration. mostly it concerns putzing about.

i am trying to say that numbness is a laziness. instead i say:

eat this. i alert an audience to an expected sensation.

the warning being the whole point.

i am trying to say that laziness is a simplification.

that the samara fruit and a tooth gnash

is just a replication of a long held fixation. i wanted it

to be about my childhood. but that was before

i learned about presentation. that was before i read my 

mother’s poetry. who cares if i would put anything in 

my mouth.

NOMINAL PLAYTHING

fervor in the gut made into a real shame object.

two men at the dump hill. sweet peppers cooking.

man back from the desert. the intellect of the synthesizer.

very often, seasonal sports. there is a shop where it is easy

to steal buttons and to purchase playboy magazines.

there are many personal projects that involve the bush.

the drive-thru: a visual erotics of a plowman’s sense

of taste. a friend makes a pot of soup. a pair of vermin

complete a jigsaw puzzle. the enthusiasts mistake a

euphemism on reconnection. three women in mittens,

all in shoes of marginal variety, with green trousers some

with or without pleats, think at the exact same time

“Is My Lover the Only One Who Gets to Know Me”

there is a carpet shop. parking is free on the weekends.

YOUR VOICE DOWN

what if i was winter

and i ate you whole.

i have crumbs in my bed.

matching my hat to my shirt

has felt less rewarding recently.

i tried to enter my home and saw

two deer in the yard and felt fear

and panic. aren’t you supposed to

feel tenderness, granted absolution by

their presence? all that nothingness about

sinning, and i know that. know, the one

deer was just small, the other, his worn

rackets out of his skull, lay under pine.

the snow he lay on, only lain on by him.

still pestering down across his nose and

the roofs and the cars with good tires

all arranged wiper up. us all out in it.

us, with our skin and our hair and our

couple of eyes and having that mean

we are up to something. my little tasks.

boxes of pasta and off-season stone fruit

are gathered on my side. their little tasks

unknowable and innate. though some

would deduce 

shelter, feed, fuck, and

be part of many joyful and dangerous gatherings.

i did not ask them. instead, i apologized to them

repeatedly. so sorry to be so close, so near to you,

seeing even the wetness of the air on your whisker,

so sorry. i leave the door open for them,

let the light of the living room yellow

their bellies. they never come, the light

being the point of their own fear.

CAROLINE GANCI PATTERSON is a “genderfluid avant-garde ex-suburbanite poet” whose work has appeared or is forthcoming in The Columbia Review, Reed Magazine, Bullshit Lit, phoebe, and Allium, among other places. They were a poetry editor for Cutbank Magazine, and reside in a grey house in Missoula, Montana, where they teach poetry in psychiatric institutions when not folding greeting cards.

JUST ANOTHER GODDAMN FAILURE

He looked like a badly drawn version of the Joker that you would see on the front of a stoner’s notebook. But with a flame-red bowl cut and the accompanying shit-brown galaxy of freckles that came along with it. I didn’t meet him until he had already come back, which was strange as it would be like missing Bozo the Clown in the hallways of our school.

A 6-foot-3 ginger should have been hard to miss. I, however, somehow had missed him. Even though he was friends with everyone I knew. It seems that even the ones that garishly stand out get sidelined to the peripherals of your mind.

He had just come back from the 6th floor of the local hospital. That was the psych ward. I had never been there, but the thought of psych wards always frightened me. Anything that denoted a loss of control of your mind terrified me. As a kid watching Stephen King’s IT, I wasn’t scared of Tim Curry; I was scared when they started to forget about everything in the end.

It was only in my mind, but the images of what happened weren’t some Jack Nicholson anti-establishment romp. Rather, they could have been pulled directly from de Sade’s nightmares. And he had made it sound like Dante through the inferno, which gave him a mythic quality that few people in small-town Iowa could attain.

He was getting an F in biology.

At least, that’s how the story was told to me. Even being as far away from being an honor student as he was, it was just something that stuck in his craw in a way that he just couldn’t stomach.

I pictured his dad screaming at him, Incredible Hulk fists smashing eagerly into his face, but I’m just projecting. Maybe his father was hen-pecked, and he just didn’t want to disappoint him again. Who knows the inner lives of the people you loosely associate with? Even when I watched my best friend getting repeatedly kicked by his father while he lay prone on the floor, I didn’t know if it was a one-time thing.

A cigarette bit between his father’s angry lips. Maybe it was just his way of saying he cared.

Anyway, the F was why he had waited for Mr. Johnson in his lab.

Zippo in hand, he turned on all the Bunsen burners, letting the room fill with gas. One flick, and he could have taken most of the school out—Mr. Johnson, himself, and whoever else happened to be there that day.

It was never mentioned how he got talked down, but he did, and then he was drugged up and stashed away on the 6th floor. At least, that was the rumor. Missed an entire midterm of school before they just let him come back like nothing ever happened.

Just another goddamn failure. Walking the halls. Trying to get through the day. Trying to relate to people. Trying to pass Mr. Johnson’s class for the second time. All while fingering a zippo in his pocket.

IRA RAT lives in Ames, Iowa. His new zine Baby Needs Content is forthcoming. He runs Filthy Loot Press.

MIATA MOON

I’ve rented a 2005 Montego blue Miata. The top is down. You and I are cruising on highway 1 along the ocean. The clouds are few and the sun is bright. Your hair is whipping in the wind. Your smile is wide as the ocean.

I’ve a surprise for you, I say.

Your smile gets wider. I steer us off the road and through a guard rail. Your smile disappears. We do not fall. We keep rising over the cliff. We are flying over the ocean in a 2005 Miata. Your smile comes back uneasy.

Don’t worry, I say.

I’m not worried, you say, this is a quality Japanese vehicle.

You point to a seagull gliding on the wind.

Look at the seagull, gliding on the wind, you say.

I look at the seagull and nod.

I point to a Boeing 747 flying towards us.

Do you think they can see us, I say. 

I flash the headlights and laugh.

What if a kid on the plane sees us and tries to tell her parents and her parents think she’s crazy, you say.

But the kid won’t let it go and keeps insisting she sees a Montego blue Miata floating in the air, I say.

And then the kid gets committed to an asylum where she draws pictures of Miata cars on the walls of her cell, you say.

Kind of took a dark turn, I say.

We’re so far above the clouds, you say.

We continue to rise. We can see past the blue sky into black space. I press a button and the top moves back over the 2005 Miata. I pressurize the cabin. We are in space. We are moving towards the moon.

Don’t worry, I say.

I’m not worried. I’ve been to the moon before and I liked it, you say.

I point to Jupiter. You nod. I point to Venus. You nod and smile. I point to Saturn.

I’ve always wanted to go to Saturn, you say.

Would you rather go there?

I mean if you’d prefer to go to the moon. That’s cool too, you say.

It sounds like you’d prefer to go to Saturn, I say.

No, it’s too much trouble. There’s an asteroid belt to get through. Parking is a nightmare. There are literally no Airbnb’s. I’d like to be home by 5 pm to shower and watch the season finale of Severance, you say.

I look directly at the sun. I look back at the Earth. I turn the wheel towards Saturn.

We can make it. This is a 2005 Miata. It has excellent handling and it’s quick. You can park it anywhere. And we can be home by 5.

Are you sure?

Totally, I say.

We come to the asteroid belt. Huge frozen rocks twirl slowly past us. I maneuver the 2005 Miata past the asteroids. You giggle and smile.

Phew, you say.

The 2005 Miata has excellent handling, I say.

The rocks clear and Jupiter comes into view. I point at the spot on Jupiter.

Whenever you dream of a storm, that’s where the storm happens, I say.

Are you high, you ask.

Yes, but it’s true, I say.

Jupiter pulls us into its orbit. The 2005 Miata is known for its performance. I press the gas and pull away from Jupiter.

This small car beating such a large planet, you say.

I slap the dashboard.

Quality Japanese vehicle, I say.

I look through the windshield and gasp. We are in the orbit of Saturn. We can see the rings. Everything is the color of bone and sand.

Should we go into the atmosphere, I ask.

Can we please, you ask.

I steer the Miata towards Saturn and press the gas. We zoom towards the planet. We descend into the atmosphere. The wind is violent. The Miata begins to shake.

I lose control. The hood flies off. The side panels tear. The top flies off. We are pulled out of the Miata. We tumble and spin in the violent wind.

You say something. I cannot hear you.

What did you say, I ask.

I said we should’ve just gone to the moon, you say.

Ah, maybe… but isn’t this beautiful, I say.

You reply. I cannot hear you. The wind breaks us apart. Atom by atom.

TIMOTHY WILLIS SANDERS wrote Modern Massacres (Publishing Genius, 2022). He lives in San Francisco, California.

HORSES

“But Liz, they have horses at this one!” my mom excitedly announced to me, with my two older siblings on each shoulder as if angels sent from God. She was pitching fancy pants Californian rehabs to moi. You know, the ones celebrity kids go to when the paparazzi catches them with a one-hitter. My mom, who has known me for 22 goddamn years, has never heard me utter the desire, nor the fucking word “horse.” Or “cowboy.” And I’m pretty certain I was the only one in the family to not gush over Clint Eastwood in The Outlaw Josey Wales (has anyone canceled him yet?). What was more concerning, over her wish to send me away for 90 days, was the fact that she didn’t know me well enough to know I wouldn’t give one single fuck, one single shit, about this facility having horses. What in the Lady-Gaga-creatively-producing-Polaroid is this place? All coming from a girl who thought eating meat was kin. I went outside for a breath of fresh air, and looked up at the airplanes, most likely departing from Newark, and told myself they were stars. Lying to oneself. I felt no one got hurt by me pretending those luminous spheroids held by gravity could maybe occasionally get confused with a commercial plane—and vice versa. And no one seemed to be getting hurt by me stealing my mom’s stockpile of trazzys and zonking out at bars with friends. Some might even say that is harmless behavior. I mean, think about it: our air is smog at this point. We are living at the end of the world. A man on a date teared up to me over Dragon Ball Z. I considered nothing serious anymore. But I get it. You have a baby. The baby is cute. The baby toddles up store aisles, and you think the baby is worth something great—no—worth something better than great. My mom didn’t have the word, but she felt that unbeknownst word deeply and attributed some resort cosplaying as a rehab would dust that word off, maybe even tweak it up a bit. I wonder what she would think if I revealed the (assuming?) truth that, most likely, all the people there were fucking each other. Or when I joked about finding my husband in group because that’s always a success story. I said anything to put the conversation to rest, until she threw my sock at me and defeatedly muttered, “Fine, kill yourself. But when you do, know that I will stop taking my medication, and you’ll not only be depriving your siblings of a sister, but of their mother as well.” Dammit. Let me look at the pamphlet. Dammit. The weather’s quite lovely there. Dammit. Suddenly I saw myself surrender to the idea. Seeing yourself (despite the gummy vitamins) almost seemed more effort than it was worth. It was time I tried harder to be an alive daughter slash sister slash person. “Ok, what’s the deal with the horses anyway? Oh, they are pretty cute. How many are there? Do I get to keep one when this is all over?”

LIZZIE SCHEADER is a Parsons graduate and multidisciplinary artist, specializing in production arts, installation, and creative writing. She lives in Brooklyn, New York.

BE KIND, REWIND

There’s a VHS rental place in my neighborhood that doesn’t exist unless you’re already having a bad day.

Not just regular bad.

The kind of bad where the air feels sticky, the clocks stutter, and even your own skin feels secondhand.

I didn’t have a destination when I saw it.

Windows cracked; posters sun-bleached to the point of disappearance: 

The Craft.

Gremlins 2.

Deep Impact.

A handwritten sign taped crooked in the center: 

BE KIND, REWIND.

I’m not kind.

But I went in anyway.

*

Inside smelled like melted plastic and the kind of lip gloss you could only buy from vending machines in the ’90s.

Not a bad smell—just one you didn’t realize you missed until it punched you in the face.

The battered TV behind the counter flickered: cheerleaders running through smoke, cars nosediving off bridges, kids standing on rooftops like they were daring gravity to blink first.

The guy behind the counter didn’t glance up.

A padded vest over a stretched-out REWIND OR ROT tee, like he couldn’t decide if he was cold or committed to the bit. A half-flattened can of Surge sweated next to the register.

There were rumors: some former Netflix producer who helped build the algorithm, then dipped out and opened this place like a middle finger to the future. He called it a preservation project. Everyone else called it denial. 

He didn’t look like he regretted it. He looked like someone cosplaying himself from 1996. Badly. Someone who wanted to be forgotten on his own terms.

Maybe he’d finally found somewhere he didn’t have to pretend he wasn’t losing.

Netflix Bro was rewinding a tape that was already rewound, letting it cycle and click, cycle and click, like the machine knew something he didn’t.

*

I wandered the aisles, dragging my fingers along the cracked cases.

The horror section was mostly duct tape and sun damage.

I picked up a sun-faded Donnie Darko, the cover soft from too many rentals.

Still in my Buffy the Vampire Slayer shirt. Collar chewed to hell. I used to bite it during fights. Pretend I didn’t cry.

It was recognition, not nostalgia.

Like bumping into a stranger who has your eyes and pretending they got the color wrong.

*

At the counter, Netflix Bro finally noticed me.

He looked at my tape, then dropped a different stack in front of me like it was nothing:

• Nowhere Fast — Pilot

• Nowhere Fast — Episode 2

• Nowhere Fast — Episode 3

• Nowhere Fast — Episode 4

• Nowhere Fast — Episode 5

No cases.

Just crumbling stickers and scribbled numbers.

“Better fit,” he said.

“First season’s tight. Then it gets weird. Better that way.”

I raised an eyebrow.

“So weird’s the pitch?”

He sipped his Surge without breaking eye contact.

“Weird’s the whole reason.”

Then he dropped a stapled zine on top.

STATIC was scrawled across the cover in what looked like eyeliner.

“Helps you keep track if you’re the type to care.”

I didn’t ask if I was.

I took the tapes.

He didn’t charge me.

I don’t think he ever does.

*

I sat on the floor with the STATIC zine, knees pulled up like I was bracing for an earthquake that had already hit.

It creaked open in my lap like it had something to confess.

No barcode.

No date.

Inside, it was a graveyard for lost shows and dead pilots nobody wanted to admit ever existed.

*

NOWHERE FAST — SEASON ONE:

Pilot, “There Are Worse Places to Stay”: Marnie returns home. The streets don’t remember her.

Episode 2, “Roads Go in Circles”: Leaving just reroutes you back into town.

Episode 3, “Open House, Closed Town”: Her house is listed for sale. She’s still living in it.

Episode 4, “Floodlights”: Sky flashes wrong. Days start missing hours.

Episode 5, “Free Samples”: A carnival promises prizes nobody can carry.

*

I stuffed the tapes under my arm and went home.

*

I meant to ignore them.

I really did.

I didn’t cry. I just microwaved something with instructions I refused to read.

It had split down the middle like it was trying to escape the microwave. I ate it anyway. I respected it for trying. I’ve made less graceful exits.

I sat still long enough for the air to forget I was there.

Pretended I couldn’t hear the VCR humming from across the room. I told myself it was the building settling. Or maybe my personality.

At midnight, I gave up.

*

The tracking was just bad enough to stretch faces wrong.

No intro music.

No opening credits.

Just Marnie, standing under a gas station light that buzzed like it wanted to die.

She bought a bottle of Grape Nehi.

The cashier asked where she’d been.

“Home,” she said.

The way you say it when you’re not sure anymore.

Nothing big happened.

But the cracks showed early.

The street behind her rearranged itself between shots.

Background extras swapped outfits mid-scene.

Static seeped into the edges of the frame, twitching like it had a pulse.

I paused it during a dream sequence just to feel like I had control over something. Then I rewound it so many times the faces melted into static and someone on screen started to look like me. Or maybe I just gave up arguing.

*

I told myself I’d return the tapes the next day.

I didn’t.

I overslept.

I missed something I used to call a job. I think it had forgotten me first.

I found myself pacing the apartment like it was breathing wrong.

There was something growing in the sink. I named it Kevin and promised I’d deal with it tomorrow.

By dusk, I was back at the VHS store without remembering I’d decided to go in the first place.

*

Inside, the STAFF PICKS shelf had a new sign:

FOR CUSTOMERS WHO ARE GOING THROUGH IT.

Netflix Bro was restocking tapes without looking at them, like he already knew where they belonged.

“You finish Season One?” he asked, like he was asking if I’d finished a plate of fries.

“Most of it.”

“You want Season Two?”

Already ducking under the counter before I could answer.

Netflix Bro came up with a single tape in a grocery bag and another STATIC zine, thicker and more chewed than the first one, and slid them across to me without ceremony.

“What’s different about Season Two?” I asked.

He thought about it like he was picking a scab.

“Season Two’s meaner. Less about the rules. More about realizing there never were any.”

Then he added, almost absentmindedly: 

“You wouldn’t be here if you weren’t already unraveling. Weird just makes it easier to look.”

I nodded like I understood.

I didn’t.

And it didn’t matter.

He never needed anything but for you to take it. The guy looked like someone who still checked the door when it opened, just in case it was the past coming back to tell him he mattered.

*

At home, I tore open the bag.

The tape was heavier than physics should allow.

The STATIC zine smelled like copier toner and rain-damaged paperbacks.

*

NOWHERE FAST — SEASON TWO:

Episode 1, “New Management”: Rules change. No one tells you how.

Episode 2, “Your Twin Looks Healthier”: Marnie’s reflection stops following her.

Episode 4, “Buy One Get One Soul”: Grand opening. Immediate closing.

Episode 5, “Weather Warnings”: Sirens start. Don’t stop.

Episode 7, “We Know Where You Sleep”: Flyers stapled to every pole. Her face smiling too wide. Every address a dead end.

Episode 9, “If You Stay Long Enough”: The library rearranges itself into dead ends.

Episode 13, “See You Soon”: Someone throws her a farewell party she never agreed to.

*

The VCR groaned when the tape slid in.

The screen spasmed before settling, like it had to remember how to behave.

Season Two felt closer.

Hot-breath-on-the-back-of-your-neck close.

Each block repeated like a skipped track.

The sidewalks folded into themselves.

Strangers smiled too wide, handing her coupons for things that didn’t exist.

The streets she tried leaving kept getting shorter.

I rewound one scene until the sound warped. The laugh track came out as a long moan.

I didn’t know whose voice it was, but it sounded like it had been waiting a long time to be heard.

*

When the finale started, I felt it in my teeth.

See You Soon.

Marnie sat at a folding table in a dusty gymnasium.

Across from her, another girl—same hoodie, same hair, wrong face.

The twin leaned forward.

“We’ll see each other again. Twenty-five years from now.”

Nothing after that.

Just static that slithered up the walls.

The VCR coughed and spat out the tape.

I said my name out loud just to hear it. It felt fake in my mouth, like trying on a voice that didn’t belong to me anymore. I turned the volume up so I wouldn’t have to try again.

*

I sat there blinking at the dark screen.

Flipped to the last page of the STATIC zine.

Smudged ink barely readable under some stranger’s thumbprint:

Fall 2001.

Twenty-five years later:

2026.

Two years left.

*

The TV remained dark, and I could still hear it breathing.

I pulled my hoodie tighter around me, like that ever helped anyone do anything other than sweat and spiral. Someone once told me I looked comfortable in decay. I thanked them and meant it.

Kicked a pizza box off the coffee table without looking inside.

It smelled like sweat, regret, and the inside of a Magic 8 Ball.

Microwaved another burrito.

Ignored the noise in the walls.

Let the tape hum and wait for me. There’s a version of me somewhere in there, probably stuck between episodes. If she screams, it’s dubbed.

I used to think I was collecting memories. Turns out I was just recording over them until the tape got thin.

By the time the sun came up, I was already halfway through Season One again.

Reruns are easier the second time. There’s no missing person report when you forget yourself on purpose.

Third time’s nothing.

By the time 2026 rolls around, I’ll be ready.

Or maybe not.

Either way, I’m already here.

Waiting...

MALLORY SMART, a Chicago-based writer, founded Maudlin House and hosts the podcasts That Horrorcast and Textual Healing. She wrote The Only Living Girl in Chicago and I Keep My Visions to Myself.

ANY DAY NOW

The guy who lived here before us painted the walls pink. We left it like that for the first year. But then last Easter, we found explosives stashed in a void under the hardwood floor near where we’d been keeping our umbrellas.

We called Shirley, our super, and Shirley confirmed, yeah, the previous tenant had been contemplating how and when to detonate a bomb, or more realistically, a series of charges to implode the apartment building he shared with a thousand other people.

“Crazy, right? The worst part was, I was the one who gave him the blueprints.”

“Why would you do that?”

“He just seemed—”

Shirley wears her hair in a massive bouffant. She’s seen it all. She’s worked here forever and has a bracelet for each year. She told us how this guy had seemed miserable for years, but then that one day, he tapped timidly on her office door and began asking structural questions. A smile had spread across her face that morning. “Here he was showing an interest in, well, anything. And gosh, this is a great old building. That’s what drew me here. That gave me hope about him. I thought he was going to become an architect or something.”

Little did Shirley know, just the opposite, late in the evening, the guy had begun to drill holes in subterranean columns, was collecting nitroglycerin, blasting caps, copper wire, was stashing it under his bed, couch, kitchen sink, floorboards.

“Oof,” Shirley said. “Can you imagine? Everybody was about to get set free.”

But then as luck would have it, the tenant next door to the guy moved out.

As the movers angled the couch through the doorframe he caught a glimpse inside, into an apartment nearly identical to his own. The only difference in this apartment was that there was a bookcase built into the wall.

Soon after, from a branch of the sycamore on our street, he saw the new neighbor painting their wall an unprecedented flamingo pink.

Later, sitting in his own dully painted apartment he heard that neighbor singing. He set down his soldering iron and stared at their shared wall. Attempted to hum along. Couldn’t.

He wondered why they were so happy.

He figured he’d better find out soon.

On Thursday evenings, between seven o’clock and five minutes after seven, Shirley said this new neighbor always began their laundry. The guy who used to live in our apartment would always hear the ritual’s start announced by the thunder shot of the metal apartment door bursting open.

He would go to the peephole and watch the neighbor struggle down the hall with their laundry basket, still humming joyously, and see them enter the stairwell, descend into the dank basement.

A few minutes later, still looking out the peephole, he would see this new neighbor say good morning to somebody in the lobby who would not acknowledge. Then he would see them say good morning to someone else.

After that, Shirley said he got sidetracked from his plan.

He forgot about the explosives packed underneath everything and decided to make a change. He thought he could force himself to be happy, like his new neighbor. He painted these walls pink, and he, himself, began to hum.

Shirley said none of this worked.

The guy actually felt worse.

But the next time that neighbor did laundry, he noticed their door was left slightly ajar. 

He let himself in that apartment.

And, lo and behold, standing in apartment 1A instead of 1B, a premonition struck.

Suddenly, he understood his own life. Things had never been clearer.

Shirley said, “And hey, who knows, really. Life is funny. Profound answers to the mysteries of the universe might well have been delivered to him there, in that apartment, if he hadn’t had to slip out before his neighbor came up after putting the laundry in the machine. Who are we to say?”

That winter, every Thursday evening, just after seven o’clock, when his neighbor went down to put the laundry in, he stood undetected in that temporarily empty apartment, and bit by bit, he gained, as Shirley said, “Secret knowledge beyond what you or I can comprehend, nor critique.”

And this, she added, got him through the winter.

At first, he only stayed inside his neighbor’s apartment for a few minutes. But every Thursday night he went a wee bit farther. Three minutes became five. Then became seven, then became nine. By the end of the year, he’d found the will to remain in the apartment, concealed, even after the neighbor came back from putting their clothes in the washing machine. He’d meditate behind the fluffy red chair. He hid behind the silk shirts in the far closet.

The apartment was so much like his, he sometimes wondered if the neighbor was an alternate version of himself—a satisfied, beautifully content version.

Sometimes he fantasized about talking to the neighbor, telling him of his plot to knock down the building. Warn him or include him. Maybe this neighbor could calmly explain a better way to live. Or better yet, stop him.

The apartment next to us was now occupied by a gaggle of Romanian sisters. But just before we’d lived here it’d been occupied by a tall, gleeful engineer named Thomas who’d impossibly painted their bedroom purple. Or closer to plum, actually.

While lying on their bed, Shirley said it was like you were inside a grape looking at the skin of the fruit you were trapped inside.

As the tale goes, in his own apartment—our apartment now—the guy who used to live here felt increasingly doomed. He had no pleasure or focus. Whatever his work was, he could not do it.

The only place he felt okay was in his neighbor’s shower. His neighbor’s water pressure was superior, and he was certain the meaning of life would slowly reveal itself in those steamed up mirrors.

He heard the front door’s thunder shot and immediately cut the water. Thomas had come back realizing they hadn’t enough coins for the machine.

The bathroom door opened.

And Thomas came in, wearing headphones, singing. Not realizing someone was in his shower, naked and shivering behind the opaque shower curtain, holding their breath, catching drips out of the faucet one at a time and delicately placing each in the drain rather than letting them plink.

In the beginning the guy used to hide his clothes under the sink but these days he’d evolved to enter his neighbor’s potentially enlightening apartment completely nude.

Shirley said, “The lengths some people will go to try and reach enlightenment is just…”

“Concerning?”

“Breaking through to the next level of understanding might give him a heart attack.”

Then Shirley said, “But all things come to an end. His lease ran out. The movers came. He gave me back the blueprints—but my god, he’d drawn screwy little symbols all over the thing. I tossed it.”

“Where did he go?”

“They go where they go,” Shirley said.

“I’d like to know.”

“Give me those baddies.” She took the blasting caps from my hand, then gathered up the remaining copper wire. “These, I’ll put in the river too.”

BUD SMITH wrote Teenager (Vintage, 2022), Double Bird (Maudlin House, 2018), and Mighty (Knopf, 2027). He lives in Jersey City. 

BASSEM SABRY

in god’s left hand

there is nothing

but spent gauze and spit

i sweat heavily footed

all up the street

all down the avenue

all up the street

until

the mirrors turn in

and when the mirrors turn in

there is strobing, static and ice

i pause the recording

with a six-tiered apology

and consider

my unruly

belly hair

the parched grass strip of a

warped, splintered center

and what are the odds

of myself in

new york city

in center of the universe

again and again

POSH

the past is

a poison but

you knew this

after all i’ve

never been

one to teach

so unforgiving

my guarded subjectivity

the dreary isolation of

this unending brain

in my memory, well…

you were the center

but in yours?

i imagine i stared

beyond the beginning

a monogrammed saltshaker

so rude and eternally

in my way

AVAILABLE

to be a whale is to be

the vast

owner of crypto

the moon

which has never

looked away

sitting in the sand

i await

more sand

the refusal to blink

by eyes which

harden and dull

i’m keeping it close

so come be close to me

because what once was

no longer can

NEARBY, A TWEAKER UNCHAINS HER BIKE

missoula’s strip is

a mountain dew

draped in fog

i squirm against

the chemical green

casino’s uncannily kept

yard

BESIDE MYSELF

BESIDE MYSELF

BESIDE MYSELF

// // //

THE FRIGHTENING

THE FRIGHTENING

THE FRIGHTENING

the sprinklers

indiscriminate

obey their settings

soaked by circumstance

i reluctantly

sober up

SHY WATSON wrote Cheap Yellow (Civil Coping Mechanisms, 2018) and Horror Vacui (House of Vlad Press, 2021), and has been published by New York Tyrant, Fence, and The Rumpus, among many other places. She lives in California. 

THE BOUNDARY

It started small. 

Garrett plucked a pencil from his desk, and it gave in his fingers, like putty. He dropped it. 

Then he bent over to examine it, thinking surely this was a prank, though the reasoning was beyond him. Ultimately, he rolled it into the trash and chose another pencil. The rest of the day proceeded without incident.

Then, on his way home, Garrett went to trigger the turn signal, and it ran through his fingers limp as hair. 

He startled back and the car swerved. Someone honked. Carefully, Garrett glanced over the steering wheel. But the turn signal was intact, and when he touched it again, it felt normal. 

Regardless, he drove the rest of the way without indicating a single turn.

That night, he couldn’t shake his unease. He ate a tasteless frozen dinner and sat stiffly on the couch like an awkward visitor. At bedtime, he peeled the covers back and lay down carefully, his heart pounding. But everything seemed normal.

The next day there was a staff meeting. Garrett had mostly forgotten about the day before until he pulled out the padded chair and found its pebbled fabric as smooth and hard as river rock. He yanked his hand back and looked furtively at his coworkers. They were collapsing into chairs, unfazed. Perhaps it was only his. Some chemical change in the stuffing? Another prank? 

Gingerly, he sat on the hard, smooth seat. Something about it disturbed him viscerally, as though the object was misbehaving, as thought it had developed a consciousness and humor of its own. It entered his mind that maybe the universe was pranking him rather than a co-worker. 

Throughout the meeting, Garrett found himself intensely distracted. He stared at the woman in front of him. Her weight seemed to depress the cushion, so her chair must be normal. But how could he be sure of anything? 

Finally, he leaned forward and whispered, “Are you sinking in?”

She swiveled, frowning. 

“I’m fully in,” she hissed. “These are the quarterly numbers. It’s go-time. Worry about yourself.”

“No, I—” but she had turned back around. 

He slipped sideways a touch. There is a reason office chairs are not made of river rock. Somehow it made him frantic, almost scared, and on impulse reached forward and pushed the seat of her chair, right in the crease where her body met the cushion. 

She whipped around and punched him directly in the eye socket, and the room erupted.

The HR office doorknob was soft, sectioned like an orange against Garrett’s palm. Their company’s HR manager possessed inexplicably strong camp-counselor energy. He stood with one foot planted on his desk chair, as though having just bested a summit. Garrett thought of Brawny paper towels.

“Hey big guy,” he said. “Let’s rap. Who among us hasn’t been tempted, amiright? I heard that. But keeping our hands to ourselves is the coolio thing to do. You want to give me the deets on that whole sitch?”

“I wanted to feel the cushion.”

“Oh, you bet,” he said, winking. “Who among us, amiright?”

“Everything feels wrong,” Garrett said.

“Preach. Unprecedented times, for sure. Lotsa presh, for sure. But we’re gonna need to keep our hands to ourselves, champ. Much appreesh!”

“No,” Garrett said, suddenly close to tears. “Everything feels… like something else.”

“You said it, slugger. Absolutely something else, these unprecedented times.”

“My turn signal felt like hair,” Garrett said. 

A long silence followed, during which Garrett and the manager watched each other, unblinking.

“Well, I don’t know what that means,” the manager said finally, “but it sounds dope. Hey, I’ll tell you what I see—and that’s a guy who can use a few days of R and R, amiright? Let’s get back to the dojo, tiger.” He fished a piece of paper from his desk and handed it to Garrett. It was an official directive explaining that Garret was on a three-day unpaid leave, effective immediately, after which he would need to complete sexual harassment training. Against Garrett’s fingertips, the paper felt pebbled, like a tongue. 

“This feels rough,” Garrett said. 

“I heard that, chief. Totes McGoats! Always rough to take the old med-a-roonis, but gotta do her.”

“No, I mean, the paper feels rough,” Garrett said, and started crying. 

“Holla! Raise the roof. Let’s get you audi-five-thou,” said the manager, trotting around the desk with his arm stretched towards the door.

Garrett sat in his car for a while, struggling to think. On his phone he searched “things feel like other things” and “things feel wrong,” but only the SAMSA hotline came up. As he typed, the keys crumbled like stale bread. 

On the highway, in crawling traffic, Garrett felt the seat ripple like muscle moving against his back. For the rest of the commute, the seat breathed and beat against him like a bird gearing up to take flight. He almost loved it. His throat closed.

The doorknob to his apartment was limpid like a mouth. Garrett beelined to his bedroom. 

He stood in front of the mirror, struggling to see himself. He examined where he’d been struck. His ear was inexplicably red but there was no mark around his eye. He touched his cheekbone and felt his hand sink into what felt like a bowl of buttons. Thousands of them. The buttons swarmed like bugs, though in the mirror there was only his ordinary hand and his ordinary face and the ordinary boundaries between. 

But he wondered… what was the boundary? What kept the hand outside of the face? What made the face not buttons? That’s when he understood, at last, that nothing was real. The wrong sensations weren’t real. Nor were the right ones. Nor was the river rock desk chair or the rubber pencil or the hair turn signal. Or the mirror. Or the reflection. Or the man.

Garrett touched the mirror and found the glass soft as water. His arm sank elbow deep. He stepped through the frame, and the mirror sealed closed behind him.

CHELSEA LAINE WELLS is a high school teacher and managing editor of Hypertext Magazine. Her writing appears in PANK, Pithead Chapel, Split Lip, Paper Darts, Witch Craft, Little Fiction, Hobart, Evergreen Review, Heavy Feather Review, and wigleaf, among other places, and her first novel, How You Come Back, is forthcoming from Jaded Ibis Press. She lives in Dallas, Texas.

BRIAN ALAN ELLIS, owner and founder of House of Vlad Press and Vlad Mag, wrote several books, including The Errors Tour (House of Vlad, 2025). His writ­ing has appeared at Juked, Hobart, Monkey­bicycle, Fanzine, Electric Liter­ature, Vol. 1 Brooklyn, X-R-A-Y, Heavy Feather Review, BULL, and Forever Magazine, among many oth­er places. He lives in Florida.

Artwork: Rachel Wise

VLAD MAG #6 (PART ONE): “SUMMER BUMMER” IS OUT NOW!

Contributors:  Ryan-Ashley Anderson, Frankie Baby, Ana Carrete, Heather Halak, Gabriel Hart, Homeless, Kirsti MacKenzie, Kevin Maloney 

Editor: Brian Alan Ellis

THANKS FOR READING!