#mill pages

By Matthew H. Jones

     He liked the sound of the world when it wasn’t moving. He loved the feel of stillness. He wanted a man to tie him to a chair. It’s not sexual. Mike kept insisting it. He met a soft-spoken stranger who understood that. He asked men because it would feel sexual with a woman. Sex would vibrate in his bones like someone worked on him with a power drill. Mike wanted a straight man to tie him to a chair and let him alone.

     It’s not sexual. Once he asked a close friend to do it for him and now, he didn’t have that friend anymore. Mike knew him from high school and suddenly, disgust buzzed on his friend’s face. It was only for a second and his friend’s face morphed placid again.

     “I’m not like that,” he said.

     “It’s not like that,” Mike said.

     “I didn’t know you were like that,” he said.

     “It’s not like that,” Mike insisted. The entire world just moved too much. It was suffocating. Mike just wanted to be still. Couldn’t he be still? Mike didn’t have that friend anymore.

     The stranger understood that it wasn’t like that. He also understood that Mike lived alone. Now, Mike’s world is very still. It’s very quiet because the stranger left him in a closet and robbed him.

By Matthew H. Jones

     Hector has no words in his mouth. His legs, his arms, and his mind are all simple things. Even still, they are incredible. Listen close and you might hear his bones grow. They all grow so fast. Hector isn’t listening, though. Not to his bones anyway. His eyes goggle like a fish out of water. His jaw is an open door. The world is a clatter of laughter, and, movement, and dancing light, and smoke, and sweet smell, and his mother.

     His mother is there, making it all bearable. Hector holds one ear to her soft, yielding plain of her chest. Her heart pumps beneath her breasts, her skin, and her ribcage. Once, it was a mystery, a sound echoing through the water. He was sightless, then. His world was all feel and sound. His world was his mother’s body and the greatest tragedy of his short life was that he was torn out of his own world. By the time he can remember, he won’t remember being born.

     He won’t remember the certainty of death – the unrealized realization that the thump-thump he heard was actually the click-click of his life’s clock. He won’t remember that clock speeding up. He won’t remember his world hugging him and releasing him, hugging and releasing. He won’t remember that this is where he learned to fear death.

     How long he won’t remember asking. How long before I am born again? I was inside my mother, my world. Her heart was a living thing that I could feel. Now, it’s something I can only hear. How long before it’s something I only remember?

    By Matthew H. Jones

    Carla Maine was twenty years of alone and tonight, that fact screamed at her, like drunken frat boys out the side of a speeding Subaru. Tonight, she cried in public, got a half-empty slushy tossed at her and decided she hated all men. It started on a date. He was tall and handsome, all smiles and charm. She thought she liked him but now, she hated all men. The stranger was all smiles and charm until his phone rang. He got into some argument with someone, apologized, dropped a few dollars on the table and left.

    Maybe, he thought there was a large bill in the pile. But there wasn’t. It was fives and ones, and a CVS receipt for condoms. She wanted to excuse him. She guessed it was fair that she pay for half the meal. Maybe? She did. The condoms… The receipt was time-stamped fifteen minutes before he picked her up. Maybe, he was just overly optimistic?

    Standing in the tree-ringed parking lot, Carla Maine realized that he was her ride. Beyond the trees, there was a long, lonely road. She didn’t cry yet, though. Of course the stranger drove. And, of course, he knew a place a little ways off with the most amazing Greek food. Carla Maine rang her father, who would have the night off. Voicemail. She called again. Voicemail again. She tried a third time and his inbox was full.

    Carla didn’t cry yet. She tried for a cab. She could take a cab to the train and take the train home. She called three companies and the universe conspired against her. No, our drivers don’t drive that far out. No. Can’t help you, lady. The last company never picked up. She wanted to cry, but didn’t. She put her feet to the pavement and started down the back roads. She could take the train home, but the train wasn’t exactly close.

    Thick forest sat on her right and an open field lay to her left. The street lamps were few and far in between. Headlights glared up her legs, her hips and then, across her entire body. The slushy turned end over end, hitting her on the shoulder and spraying cold, blue sugar slurry on and down her shirt. She only saw the thrower as he disappeared down the road.

    “Bitch,” he screamed in a shrill, almost hysterical voice. He hung, hinged at the hips, out of a Subaru, his tongue lolling and his middle finger extended. She didn’t know who he was or why he did that, or how he hadn’t fallen out of the car. She wanted to cry as she tried to clear the pebbles of ice from her bra. She wanted to cry when she found a blue-stained, soaked cigarette butt. She wanted to cry when her feet began to hurt from the walk. She wanted to, but still she didn’t.

    Finally, the train station was there, in sight and miserably air-conditioned. She’d walked long enough for pain in her feet to rope up her legs, but not long enough for the slushy to dry on her shirt. She saw that her train was delayed by twenty minutes, and she sat alone on the benches in a dim part of the station.

    A girl and her guy strolled through her eye line with their fingers intertwined. They sat in the center of everything. He put his arm around her and she leaned into his body, closing her eyes. His fingers ran through her hair in slow strokes and soon, she slept in his embrace. It took a few minutes for Carla to realize that the guy was looking at her. It took a little longer for her to realize that he was signaling for her to come over. She decided to ignore him. He continued signaling. She continued ignoring. She tried her father again. Again, her father didn’t answer. Again, the guy signaled for her to come over. Again, Carla ignored.

    The guy slipped free of the girl, guiding her to lie lengthwise across the wooden bench. The guy took ten long strides and stood over Carla, smelling like sweet cologne and sweat. He smiled like the stranger smiled, and he crouched down to meet her eye line.

    “Yeah?” Carla asked, trying to look occupied with her phone. “No need to be rude. I’m not a creep,” he said, and smiled his stranger smile.

    “I’m tired. What?” Carla said. She knew she should just walk away, and she half-prepared herself to do it.

    “You look like you’re having a bad night, is all.” He smiled that stranger smile again, the one that worked so well in the day time. Now, it felt like an ape’s grimace, a primal, preverbal kind of aggression.

    “What do you want?” Carla said.

    “You see her over there,” the guy said, pointing to the girl. “She’s cute, right?”

    “And?”

    “You ever had a three-way?” Carla walked away from the guy as he called after her. “You don’t have to be rude about it.” Still, she didn’t cry. The tears finally came on the relative stillness of the train. Black trees, and black houses, and black people buzzed by her window, set against a deep, bruised purple. It all looked flat, two dimensional like shadow puppets.

    She was alone on the train home except for an old ticket taker in a clean, blue uniform. Tears were in her eyes as she handed over the last of her money. The old man smiled at her and said, “Smile, darling. It can’t be that bad.

    Carla told him to eat shit and die.