“Now, the making of a good compilation tape is a very subtle art. Many do’s and don’ts. First of all you’re using someone else’s poetry to express how you feel. This is a delicate thing.”
Side A
1. Butterfly Wings by Rachel Swabey (Bullet for Butterfly Wings – Smashing Pumpkins)
The air was lava thick as lunchtime limped to a close on another July day at Queen’s Park High School. Exams were done and everyone was trudging through the motions until the holidays hit.
Abbie Bates produced a packet of ten Marlboro Lights and a green plastic lighter from the inside pocket of her blazer as she squatted behind the sixth form block, while best friend Laura Andrews fumbled with the Walkman.
“Remember, listen to the words,” Laura muttered, the tape squealing she fast-forwarded. The day before, she’d found out Abbie’s crush James Patterson’s favourite song and Abbie had rushed straight to HMV after school to buy the album. Abbie took out a cigarette, put it between her lips and sparked the lighter with a crunch-pop-hiss. She dragged deeply. She was getting good at it now; the acrid-sweet smoke hardly ever made her cough any more.
“Aha! This is it!” Laura handed the headphones to Abbie, who pressed one of the foam pads against her ear, while Laura leaned in, twisting the plastic headband so she could listen as well. Abbie held out the cigarette and Laura took a drag as the song began. Billie Corgan’s voice intoned something about vampires, then the drums surged in. Both girls frowned as they passed the cigarette between them and searched the searing lyrics for clues that might unlock the secrets of James Patterson’s heart.
In the classroom, Mrs Rowe fanned herself with her dog-eared copy of Ray Bradbury’s A Sound of Thunder and tried in vain to focus on Mary Stevens’ essay and ignore Lenny the hamster’s scrabbling. She sighed, ruing her decision to get a class pet. The children had lost interest after a week, and he’d since become an irritating distraction she had to remember to clean out and feed. She glanced up at him as he nibbled on the bars of his cage sending a dinging clatter echoing off the thin walls, then frowned and turned determinedly back to the page.
The symbol of the butterfly is a reference to a thing in science called the Butterfly Effect, Mary had written. When Eckels saw the impact of what happened when he killed it, he said, “Not a little thing like that! Not a butterfly!” I thought this was super powerful because it shows you how even though you think your actions don’t mean anything, they can actually do loads of stuff you didn’t realise and have a bigger impact than you thought, like even cause a hurricane or change the course of history.
Mrs Rowe let out another sigh, sceptical that any of the teenagers she taught had the wherewithal to apply that lesson to their own lives. Sweat trickled between her shoulder blades.
Bloody prefabs. It’s like working in a tin can, she thought.
She dragged a chair over to the wall, its feet screeching on the lino floor, and clambered up to open the tiny window. A waft of tobacco and cheap body spray drifted in on a stifled giggle.
“Is someone smoking out there?!” she blurted out, and then instantly regretted it. If she’d just quietly slunk round the back, she would have caught them in the act. She heard taut whispers and scuttling that faded as the culprits made their escape.
Laura stamped at the cigarette with scuffed DMs sending sparks flying as she stuffed the headphones into her bag. The girls scuttled towards the main building, trying to look purposeful rather than panicked. Abbie grabbed a stick of Doublemint from her blazer pocket and ripped it in half, offering one half to Laura.
As the girls rushed towards the toilets, chewing and dousing themselves in Impulse, the discarded butt smouldered, igniting a patch of litter-studded scrub that would likely have burnt out quickly if it hadn’t been so hot, and if it hadn’t happened to be situated directly below the art supplies cupboard containing a five-litre bottle of white spirit.
Jim locked the door of his cleaning cupboard and sat onto the plastic chair with a harumph, fishing his lunchbox and Thermos out of his backpack and placing them on top of the storage unit next to him. The head, Mrs Greenwood, said he was welcome to use the staffroom, but he preferred not to have to make small talk with the teachers while he ate –they seemed like a different breed, he always thought, all chalk dust and big words in loud voices.
Besides, he’d arranged things just right in his little cupboard. It wasn’t what most people would consider luxurious, he realised, but Jim always looked forward to disappearing for a few precious moments of peace in the middle of the day.
As the bell jangled and the flimsy building shook with the thud and chatter of sixth formers traipsing from the common room to their next lessons, Jim congratulated himself on sealing himself off from all that hubbub. At least there were no lessons in this block during the next period on a Tuesday so he could eat in peace, he told himself.
After he’d finished his ham sandwich and pack of Wotsits, Jim poured a capful of tea from his Thermos and placed it down next to him. He took the paper off the outside of his KitKat, then ran his thumbnail along the foil between the two biscuit fingers and snapped them in two. He was just wondering whether to clean the girls’ toilets next or wait until after school, what with there being netball on a Tuesday, when he noticed a tendril of smoke seeping under the door.
The fire alarm tore through the school, jolting everyone out of their post-lunch slump. There had been a drill the week before, so rumours this was the real thing spread fast through hushed whispers, as pupils were jostled into lines and marched onto the field by teachers who shushed the muttering and snapped down questions. The sixth form block was on the other side of the main school building, not visible from the field, but by now a column of black smoke was emanating from it and spiraling up into the clear blue sky.
The teachers bustled about, blowing whistles, taking registers and shooting each other panicked looks. Mrs. Rowe’s heart hammered in her chest as she tried not to look at the plume of smoke she knew was coming from the classroom she’d been sitting in just ten minutes earlier, the sounds of girlish giggling and her own voice snapping, “Who’s smoking out there?!” echoed in her mind.
Abbie and Laura surreptitiously chewed now-flavourless gum, studiously avoiding each other’s gaze and trying to keep their cheeks from flushing.
The fire engines screamed into the gates within seven minutes and had put out the blaze in another three. Abbie was starting to relax and join in the giggling and swooning over hunky firemen when she glanced over to see a stretcher being rushed towards a waiting ambulance. Her stomach lurched.
Jim the caretaker had been unconscious when the firefighters found him sprawled in the corridor of the sixth form block. He came round fifteen minutes later in the ambulance as it sped him, siren wailing, to the Royal Victoria Hospital, but he coughed and sobbed so much he had to be sedated.
Once at the hospital, he was treated for minor burns and smoke inhalation and was sent home the next morning armed with dressings, tablets and instructions. but although his physical condition wasn’t considered to be serious and his burns healed within a month or so, he suffered in the weeks that followed with flashbacks and uncontrollable bouts of crying, and he never returned to his job at Queen’s Park High. Nearly three decades later, he still has occasional panic attacks and can’t abide enclosed spaces.
In the aftermath of the fire, rumours broke out around the school that Jim the caretaker had died, so Mrs. Greenwood made an announcement in assembly informing everyone that, while he had sustained minor injuries in the fire, he was going to be just fine. “And I don’t want to hear any more about it,” she’d concluded tersely, although she later wondered if that had struck quite the right tone.
Abbie never smoked again. The smell always made her want to cry. Her and Laura only ever discussed the fire once, in hushed voices in Laura’s bedroom the following day, when they linked pinkies and swore each other to eternal secrecy. Abbie didn’t even tell James Patterson about it in the whole three-and-a-half months they went out.
A group of Mrs. Rowe’s pupils decided to hold a memorial service for Larry the hamster. Three of them cried, and Carl Oakes – one of her more unruly students – read When Great Trees Fall by Maya Angelou. It was perhaps a little much, she’d thought, for a hamster, but sweet. And, despite herself, she found she was close to tears herself at one point, as she marveled at the way the fluttering butterfly wings of Larry’s tiny presence had stirred something in these teenagers’ hurricane hearts.
2. Brother by Kyle Decker (Brother – Murder by Death)
I’m a tile setter by trade, not so much by choice. My father was the one who laid down that particular mortar. I started working with him in the summer of my fourteenth year. Apparently, the fact that the business was a family operation helped him skirt child labor laws. So he said, anyway. Whenever I complained about the job he would remind me that “it’s kept us afloat since we stepped off the boat.” And, to his credit, that inane little rhyme was true. We never had a big house or dined on caviar or anything like that. But the roof never leaked. The cupboards were never bare.
Had Dad not slapped an “& Sons” on the side of the damn van, I wouldn’t still be at it ten years after his funeral, but there’s something about an ampersand that fills one with a sense of obligation.
The fact Dad made “Sons” plural was always a point of contention. My brother couldn’t tell his caulk from a vibrator, but Dad had always held out hope he’d join the crew. Weren’t much in the way of incentive for him. At the time, he made way more money than I did. He never told me how, and I knew better than to ask.
That all changed when I took over the business after Dad’s passing. This was especially true in recent years. Because of the pandemic, people had spent over a year sitting around their houses and were itching to change up their living spaces. It was a good time to be in the home renovation business.
I had left the “& Sons” in the name, despite the fact my twins were both girls. And only ten. Maybe it was to preserve the legacy. Maybe it was just to maintain the brand. Or maybe I had also inherited Dad’s hope my brother would get his act together and join the family business. Lord knows he needed it. What had been a lot of money for a seventeen-year-old, wasn’t so much for a man just past forty with a prison sentence in between two trips to rehab. In terms of legitimate work, he was running out of options.
Being the dutiful brother, I still invited him to family parties. Mind you, I wasn’t too keen he often had his best friend, Manny, a walking stick-and-poke tattoo with a predilection for pomade bordering on parody, in tow. His most prominent –and only professional-looking– tattoo read “family” in a font implying it wasn’t one you wanted to mess with.
Manny and my brother started hanging out together in middle school with a handful of other guys whose family names ended in vowels. I remember getting bad reads on him even then. See, Manny was the kind of kid who shot housecats with slingshots and laughed about it. My brother was the kind of kid who shot housecats with slingshots and cried about it later when no one could see. I was the kind of kid who shot cans.
I’ve played poker with Manny once or twice since and, well, let’s just say I got the impression I should be glad I never owed the guy money.
My brother occasionally made that mistake. As a form of payback, he wound up doing a “job” for Manny that went south. There was a week or so when I saw more of the bondsman than the mailman. Even if he hadn’t been a smug prick, I wouldn’t have told him a damn thing.
All they were able to pin on him was unlawful possession of a firearm, but he still did three years. In that time Manny’s “business” took off thanks, in large part, to my brother keeping his mouth shut. As recompense for his troubles, Manny had cut him out of the business.
My brother once told me over cigars at Thanksgiving that when he’d asked Manny for some money until he could get himself back on his feet, Manny had given him a brick of heroin to sell. Told him he could keep half. Sampling the wares had knocked him back off the wagon and damn near into the grave. Had his girlfriend at the time not had the foresight to flush the rest before emergency responders showed up, he’d have gotten a hell of a lot worse than rehab. As punishment for losing his product, Manny only split his lip and bruised some ribs. “Friends discount.” He’d said.
He raised similar confidence at a pool party I was hosting for my twins’ elementary school graduation. I’d noticed his black eye on a recent poker night and figured he’d soon be sheepishly asking me for money. Which I was willing to offer if he worked for me. Sometimes I’d pick up some bigger, fancier jobs with the hopes of luring him in.
But that wasn’t why I had taken the job to tile and backsplash a kitchen in a high-end Goldcoast brownstone. The reason was, quite simply, the money. Even more specifically, the girls’ braces. Twins typically need the same things at the same time and orthodontia is not a service you want to skimp on. My own teeth were proof of that.
“I could really use your help on this one, man,” I said.
“Good money?” he asked.
“Well, like everything else in that place, they went with top-of-the-line tile.”
“Expensive place, I bet. This market?”
“Oh yeah. I looked it up. 2.5 mil. Easy. With a bath for each of the four beds. 5,000 square feet. I mean, you should see the kitchen. Professional grade. We’ve lived in smaller places than this kitchen.”
It was an elaborate job. Easily big enough to be a two-man operation. Alone, it would take the better part of a round-the-clock week. And that was just the tile. The family who owned the place planned on being out of town during the renovations and so they’d given me a key.
“Think about it,” I said. “Just the two of us working with our hands. Together. It’s what Dad would have wanted.”
I thought I had him when he sucked air in through his teeth and rubbed his chin.
“Better to earn money than owe it,” I said, conjuring Dad again. Maybe that bit didn’t help, what with how they’d left things. Either way, he said what he always said.
“Nah. No thanks. I’ll sort it out myself.” Just then Manny called him over. “I’ll see you.”
“You’re coming for the Fourth, right?”
“Yeah,” he said. “Wouldn’t miss it.”
The brownstone’s kitchen was even bigger than I’d remembered from the appraisal. The rest of the renovations had been done or were waiting for me to finish, so the other workers were at other sites. Which meant it was just me and, occasionally, the housekeeper, a chubby and stern Polish woman who was not without her own, unique, matronly charm. Her English was minimal, my Polish, non-existent. But people managed to get by on grunts and body language for tens of thousands of years. So a week of it wasn’t bad. We mostly stayed out of each other’s way, which was easy enough, given the size of the place. We could come and go without the other being the wiser. There was tension, but no malice. Not on my end, anyway. She made it known she wasn’t thrilled with my pacing. Clearly, the woman just wanted her kitchen back. And, based on the perogies she brought in one day, she would do great things with it.
I was about three days into the job, leveling out the floor with a tile vibrator when I looked around the room. I was falling behind, and really hoping my brother would change his mind. I’d managed to at least convince him to come to look at the place I was working on. He was impressed and seemed tempted, but inevitably shook his head and said he’d probably just screw it up anyway. I won’t say I was surprised. What had caught me, though, was that my brother’s face hadn’t really healed much. In fact, there were a few new bruises. The cut on his lip had reopened.
“Nah,” he said. “Nah. Maybe next time.”
I’d have to finish up on my own. It was more money for me, I guess, and, again, the twins needed braces
Much as I’d have liked to pace it up, I was on my own, and while I wasn’t passionate about my work, I took a certain amount of pride in it.
Of course, I had to take the day off for the Fourth. The housekeeper was none too thrilled about further delays, but I had a party to host. My brother showed up, with Manny, naturally.
Either embarrassed by the debt or guilty about rejecting the work, my brother spent the party ducking my every attempt to chat. Manny, on the other hand, kept looking over at me. In avoiding his gaze, I noticed my beer had run out and went for a refill.
While standing at the keg Manny walked up, and patted me on the shoulder.
“Hey, man,” he said. “How you been?”
“Fine,” I said. “Good.”
“How’s that tiling business of yours?”
“Fine,” I said. “Good.”
“I hear it’s more than fine,” he said. “Your bro tells me you’ve been getting some choice work lately.”
“That’s right,” I said.
He looked over his shoulder, rested his hand on mine, and then leaned in a bit closer.
“Y’know, I’m sure with everything going on with your brother, him being in trouble and all, you’ve probably felt a bit distracted lately, trying to figure a way to help get him out of it, right?”
I didn’t have a verbal response. Which was fine. He wouldn’t have wanted one.
“People can get…absentminded when they’re distracted. I know I do. So it’d be understandable if you, say, forgot to lock up that brownstone on Friday.” I just stared at him. “Besides, after a long day, a man just wants to, uh, get home to his family, y’know? Make sure their safe. That’s what matters most, right?”
“Yeah,” I said. His hand was still on my shoulder. He shook it gently.
“Be careful, though. Distractions can make us vulnerable to all kinds of accidents.” He slipped a roll of bills into my front pocket. “Something for the kids,” he said, looking at my twins, “Graduation present.”
Manny turned back to me. He smiled. So I smiled. He patted my breast pocket and walked away.
The roll in my pocket wasn’t as much as the legit job. Not near it. But Manny had been over to my house. So, yeah, you’re goddamn right, I left the door unlocked that Friday. I left early and in a hurry.
I left in such a hurry, in fact, that about 20 minutes down the road, I realized I’d forgotten my tile vibrator. I figured I had time to go back for it. Just in case, I parked around the corner and walked down the alley, slipped in through the back and found my tile vibrator sitting on the counter. Just as I picked it up, I heard a thump from the other room.
Through a crack in a partially open door, I saw movement. I caught a figure in a ski mask. I heard two men speaking. I recognized one voice as Manny’s. I really wish I didn’t recognize the other.
“Dammit, Manny, what the hell did you do that for?”
“Shut up and pick the bitch up by the legs.”
With a silence that would impress mice, I slipped out the back, sprinted down the alley, clambered into my van, and drove off.
Could I have done something? Could I have helped?
Sure. I know I could have. Well, maybe. I’ll never know. I pushed it out of my mind. All I know is that what matters most, is a man gets home to his family.
And the twins needed braces.
3. Million Miles of Fun by Joel Nedecky (Million Miles of Fun – Drug Church)
Sean hasn’t read the newspaper in a decade. He never watches the news, nor does he listen to it, read from websites, or go on social media, and when he hears people discuss politics or sports at the grocery store, he moves to a different line.
He’s never owned a cell phone.
Ask him who the mayor is, or the prime minister, or the president of the country next to his, and he couldn’t even harness a guess. He wouldn’t be able to tell you who won the Super Bowl or Stanley Cup, and he consumes politically ambivalent books, movies, and TV series.
When he works, delivering mail for the city, he listens to true crime podcasts about murders that occurred years earlier, and if someone goes off about current events at the monthly staff meeting, Sean goes to the bathroom until the rant is over. He’s not anti-social, but he keeps to himself. There’s a difference.
Too much information is what it is, and Sean refuses to be part of it.
Instead, he lifts weights five days a week at the Y. His diet is precise. His garden had a banner year, producing so much lettuce and so many cucumbers and tomatoes that each neighbor received a basket. In winter, he builds a rink in his backyard. Two-by-sixes nailed together, a thick, white tarp underneath, and when the temperature hits minus fifteen, twenty, twenty-five degrees Celsius, he’s out there with the hose, steam rising off the ground like dry ice on the set of action flick. It’s only twenty-by-thirty-five feet, but it’s enough. Sean’s does man makers every night until his legs burn.
But there are challenges. He is forty this year, a milestone birthday, and who will he celebrate with?
Most men his age talk sports and work and politics and about their families, so friends have fallen by the wayside. His last date was two years back, and the woman, Carla, launched into a rant about public education before their meals had even arrived.
“I’m sorry to interrupt,” Sean had said. “But I don’t discuss the news.”
Carla thought he was joking. “Yeah, right, so my kid’s school is—”
Sean cut in. “I’m serious.”
Confusion splashed across her face. “What do you talk about?”
It was a valid question, and one Sean had been asked many times. He had a philosophy, a code of sorts.
“I love music. I watch movies and TV shows. I read a lot. I like fitness. I write.”
“Okay…” Carla said, dragging out the ‘ay.’
Then she asked him if he’d seen the latest episode of The Bachelor.
“This isn’t going to work,” Sean said. Despite not eating, he left cash on the table and left.
Sean’s new thing is bird watching.
He used to think of bird watchers as deficient, like maybe their personalities were lacking. To stare at a bird, an animal so common? But then two squirrels nested in the trees in his backyard. Another mundane animal he thought, until he watched them jumping from tree to tree, collecting sticks, playing, eating, and being affectionate. Unbelievable. His appreciation grew.
That’s when he reassessed the birds.
First, in his yard. Next, at work.
They are everywhere.
Robins. Goldfinches. Woodpeckers. Sparrows. Crows. What beautiful creatures! Sean takes to sitting on the bench near the small manmade lake at the park.
He’s in deep thought, when someone says, “Red-winged blackbird?”
“Pardon?” Sean blurts, turning.
And there she stands. Tall, like 5’10,” and curvy. She younger than him. Her blonde hair looks course, long, and wavy, and she’s cute.
“You’re looking at a red-winged blackbird,” she says.
Sean gets his bearings and realizes she’s talking to him.
“Indeed,” he says.
“It’s a male. You can tell by the colours—”
“—black with a small patch of red and yellow on the shoulder,” he says.
“That’s right.”
“And the females are brown and streaked. A tiny bit of yellow surrounds the beak.”
“Correct.” The woman smiles. “I’m Madison. Well, Maddy.”
“Sean.”
She asks if he comes here often, he says yeah, every day, and she tells him she just moved here from the east coast. He believes humans emanate energy, and it can be warm, harsh, interested, aggressive, or any number of other descriptors that prove little more than summary labels, but they form a first impression. Her energy is open and curious. He likes it.
A moment of confidence arrives.
“Have you had lunch?” Sean says.
Twenty minutes later they sit across from each other at Coffee Grinds, one of his favorite spots. He goes with the turkey club on rye, and she tries the Greek salad.
Sean asks where she’s from out east, and Maddy says Halifax.
“I love Halifax,” he says. “Visited in 2019. Spent most of the trip wandering around downtown, reading by the ocean. I was surprised by how much I liked it.”
“Surprised?”
“I guess I didn’t know much about Halifax. Vancouver, Montreal, and Toronto get all the headlines in this country.”
Her laugh penetrates him like an embrace, and he finds himself smiling.
“That is true,” she says. Then, sheepishly: “What do you do for work? That’s the question adults are supposed to ask each other, right?”
“I’m a letter carrier going on eighteen years. You?”
“I’m a journalist. I start with the Free Press next week.”
Sean’s heart somersaults, and his stomach drops.
A journalist? Are you kidding me?
A feeling of impending doom grows within him, and for the first time in a long while, he’s worried, scared she’ll bail when he shares his philosophy of abstaining from the news.
Should I lie?
No, I like her.
“A journalist…” Sean says to buy himself time. “I need to—what I mean is…”
Maddy waits a beat, soaks in the discomfort on Sean’s face.
“Are you okay?” she asks.
“I have this, well…”
“What is it?”
“—a code. Like a philosophy. I don’t follow the news.”
Maddy laughs and it’s full of joy.
“That’s it? I thought you were going to say you belonged to a cult.” She pauses, realizing something. “Is that why I haven’t seen you with a phone?”
“Yeah, I’ve never owned one.”
“Wow.” Maddy reaches across and pokes his arm. “A unicorn, here in the flesh.”
It’s his turn to laugh, and it feels good, but fear lingers.
“I want to be clear. I haven’t watched, listened to, or read anything relating to current events, sports, or politics in close to ten years. Since my thirtieth birthday. When I hear people discussing those topics, I leave the room.”
Maddy says, “You’re serious about this.”
He nods, and she contemplates his words.
“I understand part of what you’re saying,” she says, “but journalism—at least how I practice it—is about storytelling, and letting people know what’s going on in their communities, country, world. It’s about holding those with power accountable. It’s about truth.”
Sean nods again, listening, unsure how to respond.
“How did this begin—your code?”
How did it begin? She wants a reason, something that caused me to be this way.
“I was at the movies—Scorsese’s new one—and I looked around. Three-quarters of the people were on their phones. The middle-aged couple next to me was discussing a local story that had been in the news. A kid had been arrested for selling drugs and they thought the only reason he got bail was because he lived in Tuxedo—the city’s most affluent neighborhood. Two women, mid-thirties, on the other side of me, in-between texts, talked about abortion laws becoming more restrictive, and how this was a good thing. And a foursome in their early twenties in the row ahead of me laughed at memes with Donald Trump’s mugshot. I walked out of the theatre and that was it. I guess you could say I’d had enough.” Sean looks across at Maddy. “Is this going to be an issue for you?”
“Oh, look who’s getting cocky? Are you thinking there’s going to be another date after this one?” she asks. Even her mocking comes out gently, though.
“I was—well, I hoped…”
“I’m busting your chops, Sean. I want to see you again.”
She cooks for them on the second date, a turkey chili recipe that is spicy and delicious. He brings an apple crisp and vanilla ice cream, and they eat dessert on her deck under a bright blue sky, cloudless. When they end up in her bedroom, he feels like they are a couple. Maddy is such a happy, likeable person, that afterwards, as he lays next to her, he’s surprised it went this way. He’s not sure why he associates niceness with sexual conservatism, but he does.
August flies by.
They take long walks, cook meals together, and read. They go to movies and check out a concert, a hardcore band she likes called Drug Church. Sean likes their intensity. Summer ends, and the leaves fall, pooling at the curb like the border of a picture frame. Sean feels like he’s in an alternate universe, being watched or photographed from afar. They talk about books, movies, and music, but never work or anything in the news.
In September, fissures appear, minute weaknesses in the foundation of a building. A little more silence in the car, less to say. Maddy suggests a book club, and it works for a while, but then fades. It’s the day before Halloween, what Sean calls Gate Night. Maddy comes by after supper, and Sean knows she’s off. Her body is stiff, her expression concrete.
“I need to talk with you about something,” she begins.
“Okay…”
They sit next to one another on the couch.
“I need to be able to share with you about my job,” she continues, “about what’s going on in the world. I think we’re a good match, but it’s like we’re hiding.”
“Hiding?”
“Maybe not hiding but holding back. At least I am. We lack intimacy. If we can’t talk openly, how is this is going to work. How can we know each other?”
Sean scratches his jaw, hears the hair. He’s been expecting this conversation.
“I know,” he says. “I feel it, too.”
What can I say?
Sean senses there’s more.
“Can I tell you about my day?” Maddy says.
The air is sucked out of the room, he feels dizzy, like an alcoholic with years of sobriety ordering a drink, watching the bartender pour and slide the glass across the counter. Sean can taste it.
Can she tell me about her day? Do I want her to?
Sean doesn’t want to go back to being alone, but he’s terrified to abandon his code.
“Will your day involve the news?” he asks.
“Of course,” she responds.
“I like you, Maddy, and I don’t want this to end, but… I don’t want to hear about the news more.”
She pauses, looks hurt, then stands, shaking her head. When she leaves, it’s silently, without a goodbye.
Sean picks up a Lawrence Block novel and continues to read, pushing her from his mind like a splinter.
4. How the Gods Kill by Madison McSweeney (How the Gods Kill – Danzig)
Have you ever had a dream where you’re multiple people at once? Experiencing the moment as yourself and then as an observer, watching things being done to you?
The crone puts a finger to my lips. “Hush,” she whispers, tracing a zigzag pattern across them, sewing my mouth shut. I stop fighting and rest my head on the rock.
I might have asked, “What are you doing to me?” but I know full well: I signed on for it.
Above the clearing, the full moon shines unobstructed, beams of lunacy fueling our gathering. Closer to the earth, rising smoke makes the treetops hazy and indistinct. The tips of the wavering pines are all I can see from my current position, though if I lift my head above my chest I can watch the bonfire and the cloaked figures dancing around it. How they stay conscious that close to the blaze, I don’t know. Even on the ground, the smog chokes me, cuts me off from the real and puts strange pictures in my head. Right now, the ropes biting into my wrists are the only things tethering my mind to my body.
I’ve looked up at the right moment – just in time to see the flames roar and part for the priestless. She walks across the pyre barefoot, as naked as I am, although I suppose she represents Wantonness while I am supposed to be Innocence. The men, in their frenzy, throw themselves towards her, their manhood poking out of their robes – but they’re greeted by lashes of fire that shoot out from the main blaze. One of the burning tendrils slithers like a snake and looms over the most aggressive pursuer, hissing until he staggers backwards.
The sideshow does not distract the priestless, who walks up to me shaking a scarlet decanter. Hot oil splatters onto my breasts. It stings, but the crone’s magic holds and I can’t cry out. As if taunting me, the priestless opens her own mouth and starts chanting in backwards Latin.
I should be thrilled, or at least terrified. This is the end of my life and my induction into eternity, after all. But in practice, I’m bored. I’ve been tied to this rock for too long, blood rushing to my head, breathing smoke. Nothing means anything anymore. Even the moon-glint off jagged stone doesn’t strike holy fear into my heart.
The priestless extends her arm, accepting a dagger from the crone, fist tightening around it so limb and blade are one. I hope this means we’re almost done here. But she must first deconsecrate the blade. One by one, the dancers leave the fireside to present her with their palms, letting the priestless stain the steel with their blood. With each cut, she murmurs a blessing.
My wrists go numb, followed by my ass. The only thing I can feel is my heart, pounding faster and faster as I fight to breathe. Finally, it bursts.
A thousand colours swirl in front of my eyes. Fireworks, just for me. Through the iridescence, I see the blooddrinker crawl towards me, teeth bared somewhere between a snarl and a sneer. As he seizes my heart in his jaw – the exact instant it stops beating – the pain is almost enough to shock me back to life. Though my limbs are dead and tingling, a sudden arousal blooms at the place where they meet. As my blood bubbles around the vampire’s lips, I stain the rock silver.
The blooddrinker disappears, was never there in the first place: just a death-moment hallucination. His absence leaves me in darkness, alone with my exploding heart. How could I have imagined teeth could pierce it? Its flesh is like steel, bursting through my anointed chest and flying in all directions. Unlucky revelers duck and scream as metal shards slash their faces, slice tendons, plunge into their stomachs and sever their spines on the way out.
I have a shard-eye-view as I fly above the dancers who are lying on the ground, legs spasming involuntarily as the light leaves their eyes. Like when you break an insect’s back and it just keeps twitching. Their movements are almost sexual: moaning, writhing, pelvises thrust into the ground. Now that they’ve cavorted and drank with the lords of the woods, they must now fuck the earth. What manner of creatures will that spawn, I wonder? More of the human-squirrel hybrids with buckteeth and fur-tipped ears? Mindless clay lizards for the witches to crush into cakes?
I flip end over end as I soar far above the fire. When I am earth-facing, I can see my body still bound to the stone, the priestless standing over me, the stone dagger gripped in her left hand. Not a muscle moves as she plunges the blade into my chest. Does it matter that the heart inside doesn’t beat? Is it a proper sacrifice if I’m already dead?
Not my problem. Not anymore.
I rise with the smoke, spreading at last to kiss the moon. I gag as the celestial body slips between my lips, forces its way down my throat. It lands in my stomach like a brick, weighing me down.
I sink, heavy smoke infused with moonlight. The surviving dancers inhale me and their mania increases. When they sober up, the hunt will begin.
5. Paranoid by Lene MacLeod (Paranoid – Hellsongs)
Angelique felt that crawling sensation again, starting on her arms and trickling down her back. It always preceded the intrusive thoughts: nobody likes her, they are all in cahoots and want her to be miserable, nobody understands her. Dr. Hoekstra did nothing to help her, he only wanted to pump her full of pills and tell her she had to toughen up, life’s hard. Some psychiatrist, Angel thought. She was finished going to those useless sessions.
She handed the passbook back to the customer. Not many bothered with the booklets anymore, but this old guy refused to do online banking. “Smile!” he said, “the way you’re frowning you look like one of those lunatics begging down by the plaza!” She only stared at him through her round-lensed glasses. Angel knew that plaza well. She’d worked at a wig shop there for three months. She even learned how to make wigs. She never thought the hairpieces looked realistic enough. Before she left that job, she smuggled out a nice supply of human hair. The wigs were bad but there’d be other uses for the strands, surely.
Throughout her shift, Angel eyed those who entered the bank. That guy in line, the one with the overcoat, what does he have in those big pockets? Why is he watching all the tellers? Seeing who would be easiest to hold up? That lady with the cane – maybe it’s not really needed for walking. Angel saw an ad once, on a sketchy website, for canes that have a dagger hidden inside…I mean the woman is not very old, she doesn’t even seem to have a limp!
Every time a customer approached her window, Angel’s heart beat a bit faster. Her thoughts were anxious. She heard a few more commands to ‘smile!’ and had to control her urge to shout in these customers’ faces that there was no reason to feign happiness. Her forehead did ache slightly, a clue that she had been frowning. There was nothing she could do about her sad mouth, however. It was just naturally downturned. Echoes of Dr. Hoekstra’s voice occupied her head: you’re far too pretty to be sad, let me help you.
She noticed the security guard seemed to be examining her with suspicion. Did he think she was going to slip a few bills into her dress pocket or something? “I’d never bite the hand that feeds me!”
“What’s that?” Belinda, the teller from the station next to hers asked. She was on her way to the validation printer located just behind the row of tellers. Angel felt small next to Belinda even though Angel was the taller of the two. She was actually average height. Half the time she thought people were snickering about her being short, and half the time she was sure they laughed at her for being tall. “Nonsense” her former psychiatrist had said when she brought up that fear. Angel supposed from his perspective it was nonsense – Dr. Hoekstra was six-foot two.
Angel stared at Belinda; she hadn’t meant to say anything out loud “No, nothing,” she glanced at the security guard again, “just, the guard, does he keep an eye on all the tellers or am I the lucky one?” She gave an awkward laugh, trying to make her concern seem like a joke.
“No, well, it’s not because you’re new, but you seem really nervous.”
When the crowd had thinned, Angel stepped closer to Belinda. “How can you not be nervous, working here? Hold-ups?”
Belinda was busy stamping documents, and didn’t look up when she replied, “you need to stop being so paranoid, Angelique. The guard isn’t singling you out. He gets bored and glances at all the tellers from time to time.”
“Call me Angel. Bank robbers, though…”
“Statistically, a branch in this neighbourhood is much less frequently held up than those in the city centre. It’s just a matter of convenience, I guess. You know they’re almost always junkies, they won’t wander out of their own backyard to hit up some cash. We have a part-time security guard. You better believe the downtown branches have at least one at all times.”
“Yes, I know. I’ve seen them.”
Angel turned back to her station but still heard Belinda’s final comment, “I don’t know why on earth you’d want to work in a bank if it worries you so much!”
She managed to serve the customers while carrying on with her inner thoughts. She couldn’t find happiness the way the others did. Like Belinda, who was so happy to go home after work to her boring husband and boring children. They’d have movie nights and backyard barbecues with their boring neighbours. Not for Angel. She could never live such a regular life, she had to keep changing. She had to learn and try new things. Not ordinary things, either. Ordinary things meant being around ordinary people, the kind that ridicule and gossip. She needs money to follow her desires. Yes, there are reasons she took this job even though, to use Belinda’s words, it worries her so much.
Angel’s shift was an early one, ending at two p.m. That gave her plenty of time. She rode the bus past the subdivision where she was renting the basement apartment of a bungalow and exited at the final stop. From there she walked to an old back road that had very little traffic. Ten minutes later she took an overgrown path to a small clearing in the woods and entered the car she had stashed there. As far as those that knew her were concerned, she was a non-driver. Technically that was true. She didn’t own a car, this one was…well, borrowed. It was a common colour and model, and as an extra precaution, to defy being identified, Angel had smeared mud on the plates.
It was time to change, and the task didn’t take long. She started up the car and drove two towns away. She felt like a new person walking so tall across the bank parking lot. She felt she could run a marathon in the platform boots. All that practice wearing them in the basement had paid off.
This wasn’t another branch of the bank she worked for but a totally different bank. I don’t bite the hand that feeds me. She planned to stay in her current job for a couple more weeks. She caught her reflection in the glass doors, paused before entering, and smiled. Finally smiled. Her grin showed teeth that were just a bit crooked and stained but perfectly natural-looking. The plastic caps felt awkward, but it was important to look natural, otherwise people would be looking for a woman who had worn a disguise. She had removed the eyeglasses – they were non-prescription, just for show, and put in brown contact lenses that hid her bright blue eyes. The hair she clipped to her own was a dark fringe with random dark strands that blended with hers, especially now that she’d tucked her hair behind her ears showing off the dark roots.
Her current employer had taught her well, and she expected the tellers at this bank would act the same way as she was trained to respond to a holdup. When her turn in line came, she approached the middle teller of the three open ones. She had her hand on the note in her pocket. She didn’t even need a weapon, that much she knew. But she had a toy gun in her other pocket if she needed to brandish it at any point.
“Good afternoon! How can we help you today?” The woman looked like she was fresh out of high school. Angel glanced to the other tellers, on the left was a balding middle-aged gentleman wearing a sweater vest, and on the right the teller was a woman of about her own age. Angel felt sweat trickle down her forehead. The hair extensions and faux fringe she’d clipped in began to itch her scalp.
“Ma’am?”
Angel looked behind her. All in line stared at her. A couple standing at the end of the queue giggled at what could have been a private joke, but Angel knew it must be about her. They all know, don’t they? They’ll play along, maybe even give me the money only to capture me somehow before I exit.
Angel looked back at the young teller. For a moment she thought about her perspective. This was supposed to be a victimless crime. Angel would get the cash she needed – not a fortune, but enough to finance her next adventure. The young teller, though – she might be traumatized, the way Angel herself feels. The teller would be scared, maybe looking over her shoulder from this day forward. What if she’d never been held up before? Could Angel do that to her? Could she be known as the person that caused someone else’s trauma?
“Sorry, I forgot my bank card. I’ll be right back.”
Angel dashed out of the bank. Yes, she could run in those platform heels, and drove back to her woodland hiding spot. I’m a decent person, Angel thought. Nobody gets hurt. Well, maybe Dr. Hoekstra. She changed out of the long pants she’d borrowed to cover the tops of the platform boots. She removed the bulky jacket she had sewn stuffing into to make herself appear heftier in the security footage and opened the boot. “I suppose it did hurt when I strangled you, Doctor,” she said tossing the borrowed clothing atop their murdered owner. The psychiatrist’s long body was bent into the small space of his car boot. “Why did you have to come see me?” Let me help you, he’d said, let’s relax with this wine. Let me loosen your tie, Angel had said, standing behind him. Then she did the opposite. Not even his tall man hands could loosen her grip. “Why couldn’t you accept that I no longer wanted to visit you? Wasn’t it against some kind of doctor/patient code?”
Angel shook her head at the corpse of the man that never did help her. “I guess it did hurt, and I’m sorry about that. But I’m finished with you now.”
Rachel Swabey is a mother-of-three and newspaper subeditor from West Sussex who escapes the depressing headlines by dreaming up short stories and flash fiction. She’s working on her first novel.
Kyle Decker is a Chicago-based author, educator, and punk vocalist. Kyle is a graduate of Drake University in Des Moines, IA where he majored in writing. He also holds a Master’s of Education from the University of Illinois at Chicago.
From 2013 to 2018 he lived in Daegu, South Korea where he worked as an English teacher, DIY concert promoter, headed the local chapter of Liberty in North Korea, fronted the punk band Food for Worms, and was a frequent contributor to bROKe in Korea, Angle Magazine, and The Daegu Compass. His work has also appeared in The Korea Times.
His fiction work has appeared in The Molotov Cocktail, Mystery Magazine, Hyphen-Punk, and Mystery Tribune. He self-published his novella, Cannon Fodder (or The Secret Lives of Henchmen) in 2013. His debut novel, This Rancid Mill, was released by PM Press in April 2023.
He currently teaches high school special education and English as a second language and fronts the modern iteration of the punk band Bad Chemicals.
Joel Nedecky‘s novel The Broken Detective was shortlisted for a 2023 Arthur Ellis Award by Crime Writers of Canada. His short story, ‘One Cold Moment,’ will be published by Guilty Flash (Guilty Crime Story Magazine) in November. He is a member of the Manitoba Writers’ Guild, as well as Crime Writers of Canada.
Madison McSweeney is a horror and dark fantasy writer from Ottawa, Ontario. She is the author of The Forest Dreams With Teeth (Demain Publishing), The Doom That Came to Mellonville (Filthy Loot), and the poetry collection Fringewood (Alien Buddha Press). Her short fiction has appeared in anthologies like Zombie Punks, Fuck Off (Weirdpunk/CLASH) Nightmare Sky: Stories of Astronomical Horror (Death Knell Press) and American Gothic Short Stories (Flame Tree).
She blogs at www.madisonmcsweeney.com and tweets from @MMcSw13.
Lene MacLeod writes fiction and poetry in Ontario, Canada. Some work can be read online at Bristol Noir, Briefly Zine, and DarkWinter Lit. Publication updates are on LeneMacLeod.com
Punk Noir Press 