TOXIC NOSTALGIA

A HOUSE OF VLAD PRODUCTION

© 2026 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: March 4, 2026

Guest Editors: Tex Gresham and KKUURRTT

Cover design: Percy Hearst

Cover photo © Tex Gresham and KKUURRTT

Author photos © the authors

Founder and Editor-In-Chief: Brian Alan Ellis 

Contributors: 804 Sentence Cult, Frankie Baby, Sam Berman, Caleb Bethea, Emily Costa, Cletus Crow, Z.H. Gill, Paige Johnson, Kevin M. Kearney, Henry Luzzatto, Julián Martinez, Jenn Salcido, Eric Subpar, Jessamyn Violet

Thanks for reading.

HOUSEOFVLADPRESS.COM

ALUMINUM FOIL MAKES FOR GREAT COMPANY

Pee-wee dreams of death

Pee-wee dreams of porn theaters in the sky

Pee-wee dreams of couches who do not smile at him 

Pee-wee dreams of a gray tract home

Pee-wee dreams of another couch inside the home, another Pee Wee

Pee-wee dreams of touching his dick in a theater and no one watching and no one caring and his career going on and growing until he plays King Lear at the Royal Shakespeare Theater 

Pee-wee dreams of sharp peaked foil hats reflecting the sun’s light back to it

Pee-wee dreams of the familiar leather saddle pressed up between his thighs

Pee-wee dreams of an oversized tracksuit made from the fabric of a beach towel

Pee-wee dreams of Windsor knots and un-gelled hair

Pee-wee dreams of chestfeeding his elderly neighbor, who collects portraits of Peter Jennings

Pee-wee dreams of a nitwit dwarf teasing him in all the right ways

Pee-wee dreams a genie “meka leka hai meka hymie ho”

This poem was written collaboratively by a group of friends in various stages of their literary career. They have published some short stories, poems, and books and are happy to be here.

DEATH IS A CLOCK WITH A CRACK IN IT

 my memories take me to places I wouldn't go with a gun the warmth of your blood makes me remember I’m still alive I try to let go but the phone won’t stop ringing and the guy on the other side tells me the cemetery is occupied digging my own grave every time I blink the ground is solid when I try to light myself on fire it starts to rain acid that burns but does not engulf me in ways you used to 

*

on a flash sheet from a tattooer in Miami I dreamt about being with you forever airbrush palm trees Jesus Christ flushed down a toilet that little guy on the back of a pickup pissing on the world. Fuck it all. I’m in love with every person I've ever been entangled with If I had twins I’d name them despair and demise or grief and desire it’s 6:22am in front of the domino sugar factory and I put my butterfly clip in your hair I don’t remember the sunrise but I know it was there it’s 12am at carmelo’s and you’re leaving with someone who isn’t me it’s 5pm on the dot on the upper east side and the first one at the bar I watch your stories and your new girlfriend is famous but she isn’t funny I ask my lawyer if it’s illegal to report someone’s post for harassment if I simply do not like them every time I type ‘myself’ it autocorrects to your name and no matter how many days months years have gone by you still read my text if I send one but you do not respond I hope you know it’s always sunny here but occasionally a storm cloud is so dark I get lost in it then I realize it’s just me thinking you’ll go inside and fall asleep on your sisters roommates couch dreaming I am still there 

*

If you died nothing in my life would change 

The cut in my nose keeps opening but the only thing going in these days is fresh air 

Here it smells like summer everyday

Paradise is whatever you want it to be

Hiding under a bed

Pretending to be asleep 

Can you hear me breathing

My heart would bust through my chest if I let it 

How much more until it does

I dream of places to expire in

But none feel right

I’ll know when I know

By then it’ll be too late

I heard a song that reminded me of you today and I googled if lobotomies were still a thing 

You can’t convince me nightmares aren’t real

FRANKIE BABY wrote DESOLATION (Long Day Press, 2024) and lives in Brooklyn, New York.  

THE ROCK GUY

After unending pleasure goes awry. And the nuclear fit. And the chapel runs out of lettuce. And the oxtails burn because your recipe sucks. And homecoming is cancelled. And prom is probably cancelled. And the bison walk onto the baseball field. And you bounce way south. And go clubbing in Atlanta. And you take a swing at Mr. Beast in Atlanta. And he tags you back in Miami. And you talk it out on tarmac at Heathrow. And rebuild a collapsed bee colony for Mastercard. And the settlement fails. And the league that’s been so good to you fails. And the Purge you cook up brings out the twerps. And the twerps drag the abbot out to the snowbank. And your Rocket Mortgage folds. And the natal charts burn. And the parish rebels. And the rebels reorganize in fitted caps, in all red caps. And even though you sink the eight ball. And bank the nine, the congregation stays mutinous. And you lose yourself, your phone and house keys in a hotel room with a girl named Bailey or Baylee. And it doesn’t matter. Because you watch the sun go down until the sun goes down. And when the sun stays down you make your last mistake: you put Usain Bolt in a Team USA tracksuit made of horning wire and broken glass and force him to run a mile for his country.

And you hate it.

All of it. 

So.

You smarten up. 

You get smarter. 

No fame. Nor adulation. Forget racquetball with Lorne Michaels; the Newport Regatta; bottle service. Lock the door to the upper west-side. 

End it.

And you do.

Yes. 

And you make your twenty-first wish a modest one: to be an old-timey owner of a riverboat casino. “The soul proprietor,” says the Genie eagerly, rocks falling from his mouth. “Not that type of soul,” you say, now wise to the Genie’s game, his omissions, his small and devious clauses. Soon you’re slow-floating the Amite River, with its milk-still waterways, turned logs and cordgrass. It’s as peaceful as you were hoping. Calm. Twilit. With nightbirds watching from the banks of the wetlands, their eyes yellow and curious between the salted marshes. But nothing stays. No. Not how you want. Not when the genie’s involved. Before long, from the tip of your riverboat, you hear a card fight breaking out inside the parlor. Someone’s wronged someone. Bumped or scuffed without contrition. Maybe a bride has been caught indecent. It’s always that. Some version of that. And the sounds are the same: jealousy, dog-thought, malice, and unfinished business. Chandeliers swing. Saloon doors sharpen. While out on the beachhead, fishermen pull their boats to the gangplanks. “Show me your hands,” yells someone. “Show me your belly,” yells someone else. “He’s all belly,” laugh most of them, the entire parlor now fevered and ready. Then it begins: the juggernaut buffet is tipped on its side. So is the blackjack table, the roulette and stud table. A pistol is drawn and then wrestled away. You try to scream, “This is a lawful establi—” but by the time you get the words out, the Barron’s gang has tipped you over the side of your ship. They leave you soaked and cold as your unruled riverboat floats on and eventually around the faraway bend. “Okay,” you say, your head bobbing in and out of the darkened water, the pinfish circling at your ankles. “That’s fine.”

Once more: you simplify. 

You make it easy.

The easiest thing that you might still like. 

Your twenty-second wish is to be a piece of fruit at the supermarket. A persimmon or apple. A Bergamot orange. Something delicious but not yet ripe. Something that’ll stick around for a while—a few days at least—before fulfilling its ultimate goal: devourment at halftime of a children’s soccer game. And it works. And you’re devoured. And it doesn’t hurt. No. It’s good. Not great. But fine. And it happens how you want, more-or-less, which is rare when it comes to wishes. 

And. 

The Genie’s not too happy. 

“Artless,” he says. 

His rock forehead downturned. 

“Seriously,” he says, “What do you actually want?” 

And you know what he means. What this is really about. 

Why you went to the cave.

Threw dynamite down the well.

Held a flare above the coffin, the catafalque, the olden dirt. 

You— 

You know it. 

But you’re too scared to ask. 

Because what if he sends you? 

What then? 

If you show up sweaty on the motorcycle you’re still showing up. 

Albeit sweaty.

Which—Genie or no Genie—is the one way you promised to never show up again. So, you’d have to cool yourself on the hill grass next to the house. Our house. Our half-home on 8th street. And not come inside until you're right. Or almost right. Something close. 

Rightish. 

And that’s fine. You can wish for that. An undo or do-over. A repeat of our splendid life. Ava. Ginger. Ringo. The fish we never named but numbered. Four and Ten are still here, they’re swimming behind a rock right now! And me! I’m here. Me. And it’s great. Okay?

So.

Jon.

Please.

It’s time.

Take it back.

The gas stove; the oxtail you always, always burned; the curtain fire which turned into a wall fire which turned our half-house into a full-house fire; an awful blaze. Collect the sirens that woke the neighborhood dogs and then the neighborhood families while the dogs stayed barking. Return the smoke they saw from the highway. Sweep away the news vans at the bottom of Quarter Hill. 

Okay.

Wish us home.

We’ll start again. I swear. No more helmets or bank statements. No pee-tests before Easter dinner. I’ll even take the tracker off the Dodge. For real. Seriously. I promise. A new start. A new me—the as-you-wish version! Tell the Genie. No twists. No games. Make me that thing which I’m not, which you love, when I’m not what I am.  

SAM BERMAN is a writer living in Boise, Idaho. His work has been featured in X R-A-Y, Forever Magazine and Maudlin House.

 VHS COFFIN

When I die, they’re gonna stash me in a coffin-sized VHS. Before sliding me in the VCR pyre, they huddle together to see me through the clear plastic, waving, knocking, planting kisses like I’m the corpse of a saint, etc. They push me in, hit Play. Whole fucking thing goes up in smoke. Plasticine smog. Nuclear purple skies. Starts to rain and my mourners, through tears (the good kind) say it’s like watching end credits roll, straining to find their names up there–failed stunt artists, assistants to the assistants, drug-addled camera operators. The toxic rain is too much. Burns out their eyeballs. Poor, pathetic bastards. 

I’m under their feet, watching my own tape. Found footage of the time I crucified myself to death. 

Three nails: the first, simple. I cross my feet one over the other and hammer that shit through my bones, thinking of my sins as I do it and you’d be surprised what comes to mind and what doesn’t. The second nail, a little more complicated. My fingertips have to situate it over their own palm. I give the hammer a swing with my free hand, miss, and crack a few finger tips. The pain starts to blot out any memory of those sins. But as the throbbing subsides a little and my frontal lobe engages with the situation again, I’m thinking about all those regrets. Static flashes horizon-like across the screen. Then comes the big swing, motherfucker. BAM. Second nail, finished. The third, I can’t. With no free hand to hammer it in, I have to settle for a stab wound to the torso. Right in my side, just like how they got Jesus with the spear. It’s only fair. 

CALEB BETHEA wrote Disco Murder City (Maudlin House, 2025). Their writing appears in HAD, X-R-A-Y, hex, Bruiser, ergot, and Modern Alchemy. They live in a forest with their wife and four “goblins.” 

MORPH

In this episode Bulk & Skull kiss

Tommy is green or white

Tommy is good or evil

We understand good & evil as separate & distinct concepts with no overlap

We understand the practicality of Billy’s overalls

Zack goes to space for two years

Trini survives her car crash

Or maybe doesn’t have one at all

Kimberly leads a strike & they agree to her terms almost immediately

The Rangers make double now

Extra for stunts, plus royalties

Someone falls in love with Rita

It’s enough for her to give up her mission

To move back to her moon dumpster & devote her life to compassion

We do not struggle in limbo

We all live in Angel Grove

The putties melt down into the desert earth & fertilize it

Something green grows

Alpha dies, too, but no one mourns

& no one feels guilt about it, either

Ernie wins the lottery, quits making juice for teens

But he retains the Youth Center because he anticipates the great decline in third places

Tommy doesn’t kill himself

He morphs into something else entirely

It could be that easy

I get to be the Red Ranger

I get to be Jason

I get to do all those things with my body

That pig eats until it bursts

We let it

Zordon is freed from his tube early on

& his great blue head deflates like a big balloon, up up up

It looks painful

But we know it’s what he wanted

That freedom

Sometimes this is how you get it

Bulk & Skull kiss & kiss & kiss

& their love radiates, ripples out like what a stone does to a lake

Their love vibrates into the universe

& Goldar howls at the moon

EMILY COSTA wrote Girl on Girl (Rejection Letters) and Until It Feels Right (Autofocus) and is a semi-regular contributor to LISTLESS on Substack.

MY LIFE IS A MOVIE

gnats

stuck in shot glasses

with a little left

our protagonist

thinks he'll be okay

camera cuts to gnats

PORTRAITS

i pose nude 

for adult art students 

on thursday nights

i stand very still 

2 hours 

with 5 minute breaks 

every 30

most of the artists 

replicate my body exactly 

i like this guy who does caricatures 

he makes my nose huge 

and that is not all

PRIORITIES 

Chips are stale 

at the missing person vigil.

HEIMLICH MANUVER

you hold them

briefly

before the party starts

CLETUS CROW wrote Jesus Freak (Pig Roast Publishing). 

I’VE DECIDED TO DIVORCE MY WIFE

i’ve decided to divorce my wife for you. she licked 

my entire body; will you do that? let go of me. go 

to hell. go eat shit. we arrested him in a bar. you never

return my calls. i think they will strike soon. i had to

betray a friend. i will not rest in peace. put it away 

for now—your face alone is frightening enough! would

it kill you to wait a bit? a blue balaclava and a beige

balaclava. don’t make a sound. what i need now is all

information and clues. waiting for you to come home.

AT THE END OF THE YEAR, THEY’RE DELETING EVERY MOVIE

At the end of the year, they’re deleting every movie. I worship

the floating god. I have enrolled the cat in primary school. The 

light in here is poison. I had a hand in manufacturing the vinyl

of the floor. My friend tells me seafood gets depression before

it is food. I mug my neighbor every night in the elevator. There

used to be dead kids living here and if you leave out cheese for

them, they’ll talk to you. My grandmother purchased the blan-

ket wrapped around your bosom in Beirut. I would love you to

stay over if you’re not scared. I have no alarm, but the light will

wake you. This has yet to fail me. We’ll wake rested and tanned.

[for Devin] 

Z.H. GILL edits Burial Magazine and lives in East Hollywood, CA. 

SKULLCANDY

Limerence is the new longing, pop psych term for TikTok tarts to sprinkle about between bubble-gum pouts and Dum-Dumb doubts. I’m no stranger to sucking on that lollipop of lives-past, taking tabs to astral project unto my smaller self, but I know cyber-venting doesn’t circumvent it. So, I text you pictures of our first date, hoping you’ll forget our last dare: “Go to Hell.” “Meet you there.” 

As I wait for a response, my tongue turns over a lemon lozenge loaded with a stardust sedative. “Key-lime K-hole,” you said when I shared six years ago. 

Putt-putt down in Port Charlotte, Pelican Pete’s. Never saw a bucket-mouth bird there but named the water trap troll after him. “Petey, sweetie,” we sang from the footbridge. Fed the smiling gator circular coagulations of Oscar Meyer “meat” from the concession stand. Smelled barely better than the arcade’s cotton candy/feet combo but still makes me smile. Tilt my head and sigh, remembering rounds of laser tag played off half a tab, how we got Skee-Balls caught in the clown mouth trap like cavities. Chain-smoked and skated pearl pink carpet akin to the kind atop my Granny’s toilet, the one we clogged a week before, flushing a bag of grass we thought she was hip to.

Traded flimsy tickets for neon lizards: plastic, small, and scaled like my lipstick bag I nervously stroked at a booth. I’ve only rubbed half the curl-tailed one’s back smooth off. He’s my fingertip friend every dose this February. Named Freddie, like Mercury in retrograde. 

Tap his minute body like mini cymbals, the belly of an iPod Nano, a hospital monitor, as I recharge playlists carved out of railroad walks and hayfield romps, screaming match aftermaths and Slurpee stops on the windy side of town, where running away seems easier. Each ice syrup sip changing my lip color coral, lavender, sapphire, like my mind and mood on this unprescribed stabilizer.

Bud-block my ears, curl on the shag rug, hugging fibers and ghosts when I can’t have you. Sink into times mine and not anybody’s until my body is static and marshmallow. Personalizing reverby hipster hits, cords fat as ethernet cables, tickled like angel harps, connecting us by clouds that eventually, hopefully swirl round to the same spot on the globe. Clefs and trebles falling like raindrops, fuzzing my vision. 

Stringy bedroom pop, I use it to shoegaze into closet shadows of Sharpieed Converse collecting dust under out-of-fashion stud belts, distressed sweaters, trinket boxes stuffed with unforgettables crinkle-wrapped like chocolates. Rings and first-time rags (blood from the nose and nether). 

Ketamine pulls me under like a blanket. Heat rising, condensation from these irises raising smoke screens. Interludes of sunlit us, dancing under wedding rays, beset fogged stained glass, trellises dripping white roses at our feet on repeat. Always intercut by elseworlds’ mist and faraway trainsong, either five signs or states (of matter) away. Until the film spots like mold and tears, and tears.

My head shifts an inch on the crumb-caked rug but it feels like shouldering Stonehenge. Heavies my corporeal form, like when we fight over long-wet laundry or copay policies or last bottles and you push me into the fridge. My neck still creaks like a roll of marbles if I twist too fast to gauge stoplight traffic. The magnet from Madeira Beach really did a number on me.  

Pitched on that pinched nerve, I stare out the window like waiting for you—with wings, less stress-hunched upon descent. My eyes stuck on star-spliced power lines, expecting you to come from the clouds that should have made that one-earth’s revolution by now. Twenty-seven seasons ago. From teeny teen dates foretold by paper fortunetellers to on-the-dotted-line leases on abodes and bodies.  

Faithed in gold promises, I let the first date earworms burrow in until they squirm in the folds of my brain, feeling seminal, sensual, flexible like my neurons are purported to be, pummeled into plasticity for new patterns. Maybe a coloring book maze swirl, a Fibonacci sequence that ends in an embrace. 

At least, that’s what Spravato commercials imply. I may have a home remedy but that’s where memories are made anyway. Overcooked like cookie dough, still enough to teeth-scrape away scraps of goodness, make a play of squishing the caramelized goo like we’re a couple kids again. Star-crossed or glossed over by the cosmos? Not so clear anymore. 

Tugging on an old stretchy choker, I can’t breathe anymore. 

Words falter behind gummy tongue and gunked thalamus, all my gray matter on gray matters distorted by guitar riffs, rolled notes, wails indecipherable from what’s born of the whammy bar. A blur. A bleat. Another beastly scream of you?

Maybe if I squeeze the toy lizard tight enough between thumb and forefinger, I can condense the noise. Control it. Compress you into song notes from a compact disk. Deliver a more ethereal aria to tongue-trace the grooves of. 

Sounds shift sight. Morph me and the room from tornadic black to mint white. Something worth suckling on. Back in the kitchen, scented daisy and thyme this time. Hands at our sides, flinching from ardor, not anger. Hushed voices. Pitch and POVs and fridge face smoothed over, pointless.

Pointless.

Until your reply lights up my phone screen and face again. Green light green-lighting my bad choices again. Back of my head says I’m beating a dead horse, but it’s not that. Too passive for that—I’m reclothing a corpse. Trying to reanimate what was there like Victor. And I’ve still got flavor left in this lozenge, so I’ll Frankenstein-stitch until the mold sets, this vision steadies. That’s life enough. 

I liked mine so much, I’m reliving it every night.

PAIGE JOHNSON, Editor-In-Chief of Outcast Press, wrote the illustrated poetry books Citrus Springs and Percocet Summer. Her writing appears in Gritmas: 12 Sinister Tales Inside (Anxiety Press), Punk Noir and Troublemaker Firestarter: 666.

RE: YOUR MEMBERSHIP TO THE MEDIEVALISTS OF AMERICA: NORTHEASTERN COLLEGES AND UNIVERSITIES CHAPTER

I am in receipt of your previous email. I’m confident that after hearing my side you will reconsider your decision.

I’ll quote directly:

> belligerently drunk throughout most of Saturday afternoon

At around 7 p.m. on Saturday, I was reciting Unferth’s big moment to a group of fellow “old-timers” (not my words) when a younger man (I didn’t see his nametag but tallish, well-defined jaw, possibly Southern?) asked me to “quiet down.” When I explained that I was re-enacting one of the most significant sections of the poem, he rolled his eyes (like an undergrad) and went back to his table (which erupted in laughter, I assume because of some snide remark made at my expense). 

That is the extent of the so-called “belligerence” from Saturday. I don’t know if that’s the young man who made this claim, but whomever reported this clearly misread the situation.

At my first MoA, Aldous Schaffer was President. (I’m sure you remember him, Gene: UTEP, Gaiwan guy, towering redhead, twenty-inch beard that was always riddled with knots.) At the Welcome Ceremony, he placed his arm around me, handed me some mead, and said, “you must be the new guy!” (Made me feel like I was supposed to be there, you know? Like they had been waiting for me.) He’d drink ten, sometimes twenty flagons every night. And he was the chapter president!

> before presenting an offensive and misogynistic paper approved under false pretenses

I admit that I proposed the paper in vague terms (the working title was “Reconsidering Grendel’s Mother”) but I assure you I was not being deceptive. Are we now expecting scholars to limit their inquiries to the exact wording they proposed months earlier? Are we not hoping that they follow their ideas, even if they’re unpopular or “offensive”? What does it mean to be “offensive”? Is not some great art (most great art?) in some way “offensive”? What is a “misogynist”? Can one be a “misogynist” if they’re expressing an appreciation and near-reverence for a female?

> and featured a disturbingly detailed recollection of the presenter’s sexual fantasies of Grendel’s Mother,

It’s convenient that whomever took umbrage with this aspect of my paper (I know you’re merely the messenger, Gene; this strikes me as Ingrid’s doing) fails to acknowledge the numerous well-regarded theories on using the unconscious to navigate foundational texts (you see why I assume Ingrid) and has instead reduced it to some semen-soaked dream journal.

> including a prolonged description of his “unquenchable thirst and indefatigable libido” for the character. Several slides featured hand-drawn sketches of Grendel’s Mother as a human female whose absurd proportions suggested the presenter was unfamiliar with actual women.

Is that last bit a joke on your part, Gene? You never struck me as someone with even a sliver of a sense of humor, but maybe things change with age. Or maybe that UMass woman snuck this in, knowing you wouldn’t proofread. What’s funny (read: cruelly ironic) is that many of us entered academia looking to escape the repressive social strata from which we came, yet we now find ourselves at institutions intent on stifling expression rather than encouraging it. In the past, a disagreement of this nature would have been meted out through actual academic discourse rather than in libelous emails sent at midnight on a Friday. (I hope you didn’t have a glass of wine at dinner tonight; how outrageously unprofessional that would be!)

At last year’s conference, (I’m watching the video right now, Gene) you encouraged us to approach “these ancient texts with contemporary eyes, to challenge our understanding of the past by presenting papers that frame it within the present; to interrogate, to provoke, to redefine our notions of the Middle Ages.” That was you, Gene, was it not? Sounds rather hypocritical now. Or maybe this was another one of your jokes?

> Considering the reputation of the Chapter, as well as the safety of its members,

I remember your first conference, Gene. You said you were nervous about presenting, but I didn’t believe you. You seemed so self-assured, so calm as you walked me through your research. I admit I was jealous. It was as if you didn’t need the validation. 

I knew you’d be heading the Chapter one day. I even told Smitty (the one from UMaine, not the one from Nebraska) at the end of that weekend. “Seems like a stand-up guy,” I said. Smitty nodded in that stoic way he does. I remember that so vividly, Gene.

MoA began as just another inconvenience academia required of us. Yet it only took a few hours into those first proceedings to realize that this was something much more, something close to a family (albeit an unstable one that seemed to have a few too many Arthurians, ha ha).

These new faces don’t appreciate it like we do. The other outcasts were always just a few clicks away. Maybe it’s for the best that they didn’t need the Chapter in the way we did. But I don’t know, Gene. They seem to have everything except the ability to listen to someone with whom they disagree. Does that scare you as much as it scares me?

> I am hereby informing you that you have been officially expelled from the Medievalists of America: Northeastern Colleges and Universities Chapter.

Think of the chilling effect this will have on future conferences. Think how this will negatively impact MoA’s research. What will these supposedly frightened, yet totally anonymous members want next? Where will we go, the Schaffers, the Smittys? What are we supposed to do? 

I wonder if you’ll only understand when they eventually come for you. And they will come for you, Gene. Have you realized that yet? Or are you convinced you’re somehow different? 

Jesus, Gene. Now I’m starting to feel bad for you.

KEVIN M. KEARNEY wrote FREELANCE: A Novel (Rejection Letters, 2025).  

AS SEEN ON TV

Woke up backwards-spooning myself with infomercials playing on TV. 

Introducing Touch-N-Brush, Butter Express, Zoopals. “There has got to be a better way!” 

Yeah, you’re telling me, man.

Make fries in your microwave, build cupcakes the size of a cake, turn your can into a bottle, mix the yolk inside the eggshell, make your hot dog…curlier. 

Well, maybe they’re not all winners. 

Hey, is there a show coming anytime soon? 

Call now and receive the bonus egg strainer (just pay separate processing and handling)! The secret is the space age polymers! Call in the next ten minutes and we’ll double your offer free!

You don’t see things sold for 19.95 anymore. Not much is patent pending, either. 

They feel like echoes from another time, back when we still invented new ways of doing things. 

Call now and receive the space age polymers! The secret is the double your offer free! Call in the next ten minutes to pay separate processing and handling!

It’s been what, fifteen of these in a row? Still no show. Maybe there is none. The ads have expanded beyond the content, creating a channel that runs nothing but the filler that comes between. 

It’s only natural. Whenever someone messes up live, they cut to commercial, so there must always be commercials waiting in the background, right? Maybe you let the TV play alone for long enough and it reverts to commercial like the universe falling to heat death. Shows are matter, and ads are dark matter. Antimatter. The spiky-haired salesmen holler at you from in between moments of Family Matters are the depth of space themselves, absence embodied, pure emptiness, and once all the energy of art has spooled itself out that space will inevitably expand to take up everywhere things used to be. 

This is the end of the universe. The age of uselessness. The age of plastic molds for cakes, the age of things to make eggs exciting again, the age of grabbing machines. Useless, useless, useless.

Except…

Huh.

Now this…this?

No-Spill-Chill, the non-spilling ice cube tray. An ice cube tray that doesn’t spill.

I mean, the others are kinda stupid, but this one? This one has science. 

The advanced interlocking technology forms a watertight seal, the divided insert secures the cubes inside the flexible polymer sleeve so they come out perfect every time, the revolutionary leperoptodite frame saves space anywhere in your freezer, the fastening technology adheres intuitively to the space-age casein polymer wing-weight doglemizer so the silver goddess embraces the bronze laser at the core of its flavor rings! 

Or something like that. They talk so fast, it’s hard to tell exactly what they’re saying. 

Numbers roll onto the screen:

1-800-555-1212! THAT’S: 1-800-555-1212!

Wish I had an old-style home-phone where I could mash the buttons in enthusiasm but instead my fingers slip frantic over the glass phone screen as I try to call. 

Misdial twice. Come on, come on. 

I try to keep my cool, but it’s impossible to keep your cool without No-Spill Chill, the non-spilling ice cube tray. 

And finally, the connection’s through. It rings once. Twice. Keeps ringing. 

That’s strange. Don’t they want my business? 

It rings still until the final three-note melody. Then: We are sorry. The number you are trying to reach is out of service. 

Out of service? How is this possible? The No-Spill Chill is a revolutionary idea—a million dollar—billion dollar—concept! There’s no way they went out of business. There’s no way they stopped picking up their phones! That was the entire point of the ad in the first place: to get this brilliant idea in front of people so someone who truly needed it could call in and make a connection, a true connection across time and space and commerce even in the dark and lonely night of commercial dead space.  

Wasn’t that the whole point of an ad? A being reaching out, hoping to find a need?

Then, all of the sudden, the ads themselves grind to a halt. A replay symbol emerges in the center of the screen, an arrow eating its own tail. Further recommended viewing below. 

This wasn’t the dead-air advertisement stream at the end of the universe, but an hour-long YouTube video entitled “nostalgic golden age 2000s infomercials/ads to sleep to.” 

The next video autoplays onscreen. 

HENRY LUZZATTO is a Brooklyn-based writer/editor with work featured in Slate, The Baffler, and Los Angeles Review of Books. He plays guitar in the DIY band No Jersey and is working on his first novel.

JESUS AT BOSSWORLD

Jesus behind the wheel, I kept the sawed-off shotgun between my knees as I handed Him my Bossworld membership card. He handed it to the lady at the toolbooth, who scanned it and smiled gummy wide and said, “you’re alllllll set! Have a glorious-as-the-glory-days day.”

In hindsight, maybe I shouldn’t have loaded the gun before we even parked, but I had no clue when we would be meeting our mark.

The A/C in the church van was busted so the windows were open, mosquitos whining in and out, but it didn’t bother Jesus, who had no blood left to give. Poking at the dried gore around His crown of thorns, they flew to me instead, and I had to sit there and get ate to shit like the good disciple (thou shalt not kill innocent critters) I was trying to be.

Bossworld was beautiful, shimmering in the summer heat. I used to go all the time as a kid ’cause my mom and her church friends traded coupons the park gave in these bigger-than-Bible booklets more generous than anything they’d offer nowadays: get three friends in free, see the Fourth of July Sandy & the Auroras show front row every weekend. I had a hopeless crush on Sandy, with her crazy silver hair and red-blue two-piece. I told all this to Jesus while we sat at the edge of the lot, leaving out the Sandy part.

“You left out the Sandy part,” Jesus said, eyebrows doing a jitterbug.

“Hey, how d’you know that?”

Jesus threw His nailed palms up like, womp womp! He went back to messing with the radio, telling me over the static and cheesy music that I could talk to Him about crushes and everything in life, which I didn’t know how to respond to, which I think is partly the reason why I didn’t get Raptured with the rest of my fellow churchgoers when the end times came. Jesus wanted me to open my heart to Him, and I was desperate enough to sacrifice all my free time and even my freedom as a parolee to His will and worship, but I was always too nervous to talk real shit.

“Truly I tell you,” Jesus shook His head and said, “your concept of realness? It’s as much an illusion as a man’s own heart telling him he is no good.”

“Huh?”

“It’s for your future self to understand.”

…Huh.

Well, I’m as stumped now as I was then, itching my wrists, chugging water from the crushed-up bottle Jesus kept on magically refilling, my thumb playing with the safety of the cold shotgun on my lap.

Jesus slammed His hand on the radio dial, silence getting fat amidst the chatter of families and highway and soft winds in the trees.

“He’s close,” Jesus finally whispered. “The Satanic asset. False savior.”

He U-turned into another spot, this one facing the tollbooth’s incoming traffic.

“Our mark’s coming through the front entrance? I thought you said he was, like, a guest of honor.”

“He who covets honor will drink it from any well—”

The horns caught our attention first, a chorus of blares and cheers, then the tallest tour bus I’d ever seen zoomed past the toll, every side of it plastered with the image of a middle-aged yet impossibly fit man with a guitar around his waist and a grin on his face, fingers up to the sky and to You, mere mortal in the presence of The Boss.

“Fake working class motherfucker,” Jesus scoffed.

I almost choked on my seventh water bottle.

“Je— Jesus, Springsteen’s not a fake! He writes what he—”

“He doesn’t love you,” Jesus said, leaning so close He could kiss me. “I love you, bro. I love you.”

My mind was racing. Disappearing.

Golden stillness took hold.

For a brief moment that felt like forever, I watched myself lift and aim through the open window and blast and reload and blast and reload and blast, piss coursing through my swim trunks.

To think I landed back in prison dressed for my favorite place as a child— my death trap of a water park, The Promised Land at Bossworld, where I’d long ago thought I was drowning and thought I’d been born again.

JULIÁN MARTINEZ says he has nothing but “big ole hearts dancing in his eyes.” His work appears in HAD, hex, Little Engines, and Rejection Letters. He lives in Chicago.  

OLD FRIENDS

The thing you need to know about this lady is that she has recently said goodbye to her dog. He was an older guy, and he had a good life.

In the space she held for him, other dogs do not fit. She still can’t bring herself to smile or reach out for the noses that come into her field of vision as she sits on her gardening stool trimming the creeping juniper with swift, exacting strokes. The loss of interest is not grief, it’s neutral, a fact of her reality. An entire level of life has been buried over with silt after Buster’s death, and she has a new world. In this interregnum, she becomes attuned to other things: the weather, the plants, the rhythms of the neighborhood, the faces of people walking by. 

There is a shift down deep in the fossil layer one day when she sees a man she hasn’t noticed before as she sits in the yard performing the morning gardening ritual. He’s nondescript, earbuds in, tennis shoes with soles spilling over like marshmallow in a s’more. She finds herself surprised at the spark she feels when she sees he’s holding a leash. 

He gets closer, and she readies herself to say hello. As she raises her hand in greeting, moving her lips to shape the word, she stops herself instead, taking in the dog, who sniffs missives left by other friends on the low shrubbery. It couldn’t be, she knew, but she was looking at Buster. 

It is not simply that this dog shared his color, or his shape. It is not even the way the soft, velvety ears flop over like beetle wings in repose. It is a small, but unmistakable concurrence: the spot of dark hair in the middle of his brow. 

She hadn’t noticed Buster’s spot in the shelter. In the light of her home, she thought it was some kind of grease or paint residue. She plopped him in the bath, quaking and paddling, his feet spread out with toe webbing exposed. Despite her gentle ablutions, the spot didn’t come out. She took a washcloth and scooped up a pile of the hypoallergenic bubble bath, slowly wiping his forehead. He closed his eyes and looked a little blissful, the worry melting away. 

The spot stayed, some kind of holy mark. When she finally put him down, he ran in a little circle, then pooped in the middle of it. 

She had no business getting a dog, she thought, cleaning up the steaming turd on the floor. She had read that she was to scold him in a very particular way—with a deep voice to convey her sincerity, the cause and effect to be outlined by pointing at the offense. 

“I’m so disappointed,” she said, affecting a gruff growl. “I am. So mad. About THIS,” she said, pointing to the bag she held up gingerly between her thumb and pointer. Who had let her bring this living, breathing creature home? How was this possible? 

She had long suspected herself dead inside, unable to love. A friend had once laughed while looking through pictures, noting how everyone else’s hands naturally came to rest draped casually along waists and shoulders, fully extended into each embrace, whereas the woman’s hands were balled up in fists. There was a hardness radiating from her being, leading to some chicken and egg-like spiral where she couldn’t connect because she wouldn’t connect because she couldn’t connect. 

But the night of the bath. The night of the spot. That night, she looked at Buster, and she felt that she was looking at him with something like gladness. Like love. 

This dog’s identical spot is offset perfectly by a coat that is an echo of Buster’s in every way—color, length, probably texture, she thinks, if she were able to touch it. The man continues on his walk, and she looks undone, her mouth open and her eyes wide. A light long extinguished is struggling to blink on. 

What if— 

She shudders, flaps her hands a little bit, trying to physically shake off the notion, this haunted worm of a thought she catches herself having. But the thought is there, trapped, a dying fly stuck between window panes. Of course she had no way of knowing what had happened after she had left the room, after he left her.

“It’s done,” said the vet, quietly making her exit. “Take as long as you need.” 

She had not been sure how long to stay. She did not want to feel him become cold. But to leave him for good while he was still warm? That couldn’t be right, could it? 

She tries reaching back into the memory now. She can’t remember, had his eyes closed? Had they been open? He would sometimes sleep with his eyes open, muzzle puffing out with breath. 

Just before she left him, she thought she had maybe felt something. She looked at him like his soft, still body was a message conveying terrible news, like if she read the message just one more time the words would rearrange and the meaning would change and everything would be fine again. 

Later, a friend would tell her it’s a common notion for people to have. There were gasses and substances in the body that were shifting, coming fully to rest. “Think of a car engine, how you hear that tick tick tick after you’ve turned it off,” said her friend. 

What if— 

She takes one last look down the block. She laughs. It couldn’t be, but okay, just think for a second, what if he hadn’t died? 

What if, she wonders, the vet came back in after she left? Taken him, merely asleep, in her arms, back to the kennels? 

What if they somehow knew about her, her blackened heart, her perpetual apartness. 

What if that dog wasn’t just looking like Buster or acting like Buster. 

What if— 

JENN SALCIDO’s short fiction appears or is forthcoming in Zac Smith’s Chrismzine, X-R-A-Y, JAKE, Back Patio Press, and Farewell Transmission. She lives in Los Angeles. 

WESTERN

Awaken, John Ford, 

inside my train car.

Gaze upon me.

See me when you see 

Rust Colored Outcroppings 

because I see you.

Dust me over the pommel,

ankles like roosting osprey

sent aflight.

When I stare at my cock in the mirror

I am the wild wild west. 

I am a strange Bouquet

Blown to bits inside a Wind Tunnel. 

You'd like my father,

John Ford. 

He too was a horseback man

the long gun stoic

the world in flux.

John Ford like my Father

chase me through your papier-mache desert 

with your plastic ruler and eye patch.

ERIC SUBPAR wrote Ghouls in Love (Pig Roast Publishing) and his work appears in X-R-A-Y, Bruiser, and Hobart. He’s from Washington.

SMELLS LIKE TEEN SPIRIT 

Tina snaps gum between her shimmery lips and presses her hips against the take out counter as she leans forward to pick up the ringing phone. Kevin J eyes her short black miniskirt, tiny denim collared shirt. The pale white of her 16-year-old lower back peeks out, winking at him like a third eye, like she already knows what he’s thinking about.

“Enzo’s To Go, can I take your order?”

Her manager moves behind her, a seductive joke—at first. But Tina seems to like it, looking up at him with fluttering her eyelashes. She grips her pen and tips it towards her. Just the smallest movement, but it’s an invitation. Kevin J knows one when he sees one.

“We actually just ran out of shredded cheese,” Tina apologizes. “We have fresh mozzarella balls, if that’s ok.”

She keeps looking up at Kevin, daring him with her eyes. His hands grab her waistline. Those thin teenage hips. Tina presses up against him, and he lets out the smallest groan, then leans down to breathe into her ear.

“Sorry—what size again?” Tina strains to suppress a giggle as she turns to scribble something down on the order form. Kevin J traces the top of her skirt gently, then, when met with no resistance, dips underneath. His fingers find their way around her panties to her warmest parts. She closes her glittery eyelids and inhales hard.

“No, it’s, um, I’m just about to sneeze. See you in twenty!” Tina slams down the receiver and arches her back against him. He’s stroking quickly now. It doesn’t take long to get her to shudder and gasp.

“Shhh... Easy, now.” He smooths her hair as she fixes her skirt. The owner, Kevin K, could walk downstairs any minute.

Tina heads to the bathroom to gather herself. Kevin J sniffs his fingers and smiles, wishing he could save the scent forever. Teen Spirit is more than the best rock song ever written. More than brilliant branding of a tropical hair product line. Teen Spirit is the sweet, free-flowing underage juice of the 90s, and what Kevin J will later come to realize is that for men in charge, there’s never been a better time to be alive. 

They’re back sorting out orders behind the counter when Tina gives Kevin J the look. He grins. 

“Your turn,” she says.

The dare is there. Tina licks her purple-tipped fingers and fearlessly reaches for Kevin J’s zipper, inching it down, waiting to see what he does. He keeps his stare unflinching. Her fingers slip inside his boxers. And there it is, his ecstatic cock already begging to be set free, pressing hard and hot against her wet hand. She grips him, watching as his eyes bug just slightly, cheeks reddening around his goatee. Tina starts to tug and Kevin J’s eyes have trouble focusing. She contemplates getting on her knees. 

At that moment, the door jingles and a grumpy man in an ill-fitting gray suit enters. Tina’s hands snap back to her sides. Kevin J sputters, grabbing his crotch and diving behind the pizza line.

Tina struggles to speak. “Uh. What’s the name on the order?”

“Solomon,” the guy says, squinting skeptically at Tina, then at the prep area in which Kevin J has disappeared. 

Tina finds the order and holds up the ticket. “That will be $18.54.”

The man opens the pizza box to see a large sausage pizza dotted with white melted mozzarella balls. “What the hell is this?”

Tina looks at the pizza. “A large saus—”

“—I didn’t order cheese balls.”

“They ran out of shredded cheese,” Tina says. “Sorry. The fresh mozzarella is—”

“I want to speak to the manager.” 

“I’m, uh, not sure where he is at the moment.”

“I just saw someone! Who was that?!”

Tina’s eyes widen. “Um—”

Kevin J reemerges from the depths of the pizza line, still flushed, using a menu to cover his crotch area. Tina realizes her manager suddenly looks like a little boy in trouble. 

“How can I help you, sir?”

“So, you are around,” the man sneers. “I’ve obviously interrupted something. Give me a refund and I’m out of here.”

“Of course,” Kevin J says solemnly. “I apologize for the inconvenience. But fresh mozzarella balls are usually an upcharge. You should try it.”

“It’s not the same. She should have told me when I placed the order.”

“We’d just run out, she didn’t know. It’s not her fault.”

He rolls his eyes. “Well, I don’t want your fucking fancy pizza.” Solomon shoves the box across the counter at Kevin J. The box opens and chunky tomato sauce and bits of Italian sausage fly out, covering his white collared shirt with pizza carnage.

Then he storms out, slamming the door. 

The big boss, Kevin K, stumbles downstairs. “What the hell was that about?” he says, squinting through his wire-rimmed glasses. “You murder a pizza, Kev?”

“Another uptight cheesedick mad about cheese balls.” Kevin J shrugs. “Hey, you got any of that special stuff?”

Kevin K nods as his eyes dart from Tina to Kevin J. “For you, or for her?”

“Me.” 

Kevin K’s eyes stay on Tina. “Well, if you want some, I can get you any flavor. Coconut, vanilla, mango—you name it.”

“I didn’t know special K came in flavors,” Tina says, then snaps her gum.

“Well, now you do.” Kevin K winks at her from behind his lenses. He takes a little packet of white powder from his pocket and hands it to Kevin J.

“Thanks, buddy,” Kevin J says. “I’ll pay you back.”

“I know you will,” Kevin K scoffs. “I write your fuckin’ paychecks.” He laughs as he turns to go back up to his office.

The phone rings. Kevin J looks Tina up and down and sniffs his fingers again.

“Well?” he says. “You gonna get that?”

JESSAMYN VIOLET wrote Secret Rules to Being a Rockstar (Three Rooms Press) and Venice Peach (Maudlin House) and also plays drums in the band Movie Club. 

TEX GRESHAM and KKUURRTT are collaborators. Their novel Pop! (Rejection Letters) is about the unfortunate intersection between a bad toy line and bad artists.