Morrison Park’s empty this time of day and the clouds bear down like a secret. Jeraldine pulls into in the first lot inside the entrance, where a March breeze trembles an unsteady clang from the flag pole like a metronome ticking against rhythm. She turns off the engine and shifts in her seat—a little buzzed, a little brazen. She’d emptied the last of her Beam that morning. Behind her, the whine of worn bearings squeal, and she catches the white truck he described in her rearview. He slows to a stop and leaves it running, leans over and pumps down the passenger window.

“Wasn’t expectin’ you to be good lookin’,” he grins. He’s clean-cut but gruff, with a cigarette between shaky fingers and a thin jacket over flannel. “You a cop?”

“No.” She works to steady her voice. She regrets her dress, a little black one, and the black-to-the-knee boots Carl bought her years ago when he stood behind her in the shoe section and told her not to worry about the splurge. He said he liked the way her legs looked in them as she turned each boot, this way and that, in the low-to-the-floor mirror. That was five years before he walked out on her and her drinking, before he left his work boots in the closet. She put them in a box. Taped them up.

“Why don’t you get in,” the man in the truck urges. Clang. “We should get a bit further into the park.” Clang. “I’ll bring you back.”

Jeraldine steps out of her Escape, slams the door behind her, and presses the button to lock. Her boots click against the cement.

“You might want to close that,” he tells her, blowing smoke through the crack in his window and pointing to hers. She grips the crank and struggles to seal it shut, notes the thin layer of dust on the dash. She can smell it. Starting through the curving roads of the park, the man keeps the odometer under fifteen as if they’ve come here to see the flower beds and the fountains. She stays quiet, hugs her purse and its frayed handle to her chest. Months from now, she’ll shudder to imagine what he might have done to her. She’ll picture a park ranger shining a flashlight in the dark windows of her abandoned Escape.

When Jeraldine gets too much Beam in her, she fumbles through her closet to find the box with Carl’s boots. Knifes it open. She sits on the edge of her narrow bed and wiggles her toes into them. The grit of cement dust against her bare feet makes her think about the scratch of Carl’s beard, how he called her Jerry. After a long while and a little more whiskey, she wobbles to the cracked linoleum of her kitchen and steps a maze. Charts a little gray-dust map of her missing. The next morning, she sweeps up the siftings and spills them into the trash. Someday, she thinks, all this dust will be gone.

The man, the one with an e-mail address that didn’t hint at a name, nudges the gear to park and turns toward her. “Back okay?” He cuts the engine. “Just want you to know—me and my lady? She won’t let me do it to her. I’m not trying to scare ya. Am I scaring ya?”

She shakes her head. “No, you’re not scaring me.”

“I just want you to know why I do this. I never did it with one as pretty as you though.”

“She know you do it?”

“Hell, no. She’d kill me sure as I’m sitting here.”

“Well.” She clears her throat and smoothes her skirt a little. A bright couple glides by on bikes. “I want the money first.”

He nods, reaches under the seat then fingers two twenties from a bank envelope. Hands them to her.

“Now put that away,” his words a threat as he pushes his burning cigarette out the window. She stuffs the bills into her purse. They stick out a little.

A blanket’s thrown over the ruts of the camper in back, and his eyes follow her, anxious. The wind picks up as she settles down and pulls her skirt up. Didn’t bother with panties. He kneels, and she turns her head.

In seconds, she feels the climb of a roller coaster, waits out those long pauses between loud clicks on the cars dragging themselves to the top. She’s writhing and moaning, those cars shaking with speed as they fall from the steep. She slaps one hand against the truck and twists the blanket in the other. He’s got all of her in his mouth, his tongue insistent, a wild distraction. Again, and again. She’s pulled fast up another hill and dropped down, near-to-ragged. Clang-clang. Before she knows it, he’s sitting up and wiping his mouth with the edge of his flannel. She wants to say something about hiding things, about knowing what it’s like to need what you can’t get. Thinks better of it.

“That’ll do it for me,” he mumbles, climbing back to his seat. The back of her knees a sweat.

At the park’s exit, she turns on her blinker and checks her rearview to see the flags folded against the pole. The breeze gone. The man’s still there, holding a lit match to a cigarette. She turns toward the liquor store that’s a little more than a mile from here.

With a sigh, she steps a boot down onto the faded yellow line of the parking space and grabs her purse. Just then, the two twenties rush into the wind, and she hurries after them. The door to her Escape left open behind her. She catches one bill but loses the other. No matter, she thinks, I only need a little.

Inside, the heels of her boots scuff against the dust of the store’s tile.

::

About the Author: Jill Talbot's work has appeared in Brevity, DIAGRAM, Fifth Wednesday, The Normal School, Passages North, Sundog Lit and more. The Way We Weren't: A Memoir was published by Soft Skull Press in 2015. She loves roads and stormclouds and pay phones. Her website is jilltalbot.net.

Story Song: "Walk On Out Of My Mind" by Waylon Jennings

The Brave Pugilist was 50 feet long. Its mast was 75 feet tall and stood straight up, pointing to God. The waves lapped around the hull as we sailed between the two islands. I sat on the railing with my feet dangling over the ocean with several other crewmembers. We smoked and tanned with our shirts open. We were waiting in line.

A doctor with a stethoscope around his neck, headgear with a magnifying glass attached to it, and two tongue depressors investigated our mouths, one after another. Our view was obstructed by the front guys, but we didn’t mind. Every so often, I looked around my mates to the bow of the line. Their jokes weren’t like ours. The front-of-the-line boys shuffled and joked nervously about the weather. In the back, we joked about what we’d do or whom we’d do when we got to land. We’d try to scare each other by pushing each other in. Sapper got burned yesterday during a nap, so we berated his skin as he sat on the deck behind us under a wet blanket to keep cool. We called him Lobster Shell for half a week and he just kept saying, “Oh, you guys. You guys keep me out of heaven. You guys just keep me out.”

Captain Magpie, I saw, stood by the doctor with his pipe in his hand. When the doctor would nod, which was often, Magpie did, too. Then he would adjust his hat and stand up straight and suck on his pipe as the latest man was sent to rejoin the back. We could smell his vanilla flavored tobacco from anywhere. For years, behind his back, the crew made fun of Magpie and his weakling smoking habits. We called him a sissy for it. We would never say it in front of Magpie, though. That would be suicide. In truth, Magpie was tough. I had never seen him put out a fire with anything but his hands, not once. When his pipe was finished, he would shove his thumb right in and mash the embers out. He didn’t even need to. He could have just tossed the refuse into the sea, but he didn’t. I saw, a long time ago, Magpie take a man by his neck and toss him off the boat for exposing himself while drunk. We all heard the splash and gathered and peeked overboard to look at the drowning man. All of us turned to look at Magpie at the same time. Magpie shoved his thumb into his pipe and grunted. We did not turn the boat around. We left the man.

“So, what happened up there? What’s the doc lookin for?” Hatfeet said to Clefty John who had joined us. Hatfeet was him because one day, a few decades ago, the deck was so hot that he put hats on his feet. I don’t know why we called Clefty John, Clefty John.

“I dunno. He pushed my mouth around every way and said ‘hm’ and then nodded. Then he pointed to the back of the line so I came back here,” Clefty John said.

“How many times you been up there, Clefty?” asked Hairless.

“Two hundred, right?” Clefty John said. We all nodded. Clefty John started munching on an apple.

“What are you up to now, Blossoms?” Clefty asked me.

“Same as you, I think,” I lied. I had not been examined two hundred times. I didn’t trust the doc at all. I didn’t know what he was testing for. Neither him nor Magpie had said a word in three months. We just kept going up there, had our mouths moved around, heard the doc say “hm,” nod, and point to the back of the line. When I hit fifty exams I said in my head, “okay, enough of this malarkey, I’m just gonna pretend to go up there.” Me, Hatfeet, Shiners, Necklace Pete, and Windswept Willey had not been to the front of the line since October. We scooted along the railing incrementally. It was around January and we had moved maybe six feet. The others didn’t seem to notice or they didn’t care. Clefty John just hopped back in line with the rest of them. None of us wanted to ask the doc what he was doing. He didn’t answer, anyway.

Magpie didn’t notice we stopped going up there, too. I thought that maybe he was so set on impressing the doc that he’d completely lost track of who he was, what year it was and just everything.

“Land, Ho!” Satchel-Chest yelled. The men leaned as far as they could over the Pugilist's railing. I clung to the railing with my free hand and pushed my feet against the gunnel. Hanging over the water, I could see the beach and trees far and away. My brain flashed with images of island girls and fresh fruit and booze.

When we landed, most of the men hopped off right away. We went into town for a few weeks before we got called to catch a train back to the island we came from. All of us were sitting on top of the train when I decided I wanted to see the boat one more time. I asked Garbage to delay the train for a few days.

I got back to the boat which was beached and leaned a bit starboard. I climbed onto it on the bow side and looked to see who was still there. I saw Magpie and the doc from behind. The doc leaned forward with the two tongue depressors and moved them around, but there were no mouths there. Magpie was still looking where the doc was and when the doc said “hm,” nodded, and pointed to the back of the now empty line, Magpie still stood up straight, puffed on his vanilla flavored smoke, and agreed with the doc. I still didn't know what the doc was testing for.

::

About the Author: Dylan Davis has been published by Brilliant Flash Fiction and Fiction International. He writes in Northern Utah, where he received his B.A. at Weber State University.

Story Song: "Lofticries" by Purity Ring

All I hear in Jade’s voice is sex and hate. And the level of sex and hate always depends on how low or high she falls on my cell phone text log. The lower she falls the more hate. The more hate the more sex. The better. Today my log looks like this:

Jade       8:55 pm Nayomi     Yesterday, 6:55 pm Rita        Yesterday, 12:01 pm Marissa    Yesterday, 11:57 am Devon       Yesterday, 9:14 am Jordanne   Yesterday, 8:18 am

It’s almost midnight and I haven’t replied. Today I think I’m going to be good. That I’ll refuse. Then Jade calls and says she’s left her boyfriend for good. Again.

♠

Jade already had a boyfriend. I met him once. He popped his trunk open just to show me he meant business. Rifles. Pistols. Revolvers. Shotguns. Anytime anyone ever talked to Jade, Jade’s boyfriend would flash his military badge and pop his trunk open. It was legal. He didn’t make threats. He didn’t point them at anyone. Anyone except me, that is. Jade said this was it. “Nobody sane does that,” she said. She showed up on my porch and I thought I wasn’t going to let her in the house. Until I did.

♠

Jade does all sorts of things. She works. She goes to school. She volunteers. She cooks. She reads. She reads to me. I think about asking her to move in. I have it all planned. I’ve made her a key. But the other guy shakes his fist at the universe and says he’ll point one of his guns at himself this time. I think I can stop Jade from leaving my house. Until I can’t.

♠

The ring was bigger than his army pension could buy. He bought it anyway. She wore it and worked and went to school and volunteered and cooked and read and read to him too. “I’m happy,” she said. So happy she went out of her way to text me then hated me when I didn’t reply. Now my log looked like this:

Jordanne   11:59 pm Devon      11:30 pm Marissa    9:46  pm Rita        8:31  pm Nayomi     8:22  pm Jade       Yesterday, 5:45 am

She was back on my porch and ready to raise hell. The moonlight bounced off her face. This time I didn’t try to stop her from leaving. I just fried her some eggs the next morning.

♠

The baby might be mine. I think it is. Jade won’t reply to my texts or emails or calls. Somehow I don’t feel bad about her boyfriend and not just about his being suicidal but because I know she still wants me and I accept that it’s come to this if a baby with her is what it’s come to. I do my best. I try to but at night he guards the house the baby’s in as he thumbs the hammer on his chrome coated Desert Eagle. It clicks the way a gun clicks when it’s ready to fire.

I decide it doesn’t matter who Jade belongs to because the baby doesn’t last. I don’t know what happens. Nobody tells me. I don’t know the age or the sex. I yank up obituaries but don’t even know if they had time to give it a name. It. Then I think of Jade tiptoeing out of my shower and me picturing a bump on her belly before she ever had one. I think of the same question every other girl in my text log has asked me one way or another which is if I believe in fighting for love. The answer is always no. Now I think that maybe every day without that person is its own brawl. Its own form of fighting.

I think til I can’t think anymore. I wait til I can no longer wait. Slanting my way up their stairs I lunge for the door. The boyfriend sees me coming. He’s on the trigger then looks at Jade and puts the pistol down. He steps outside and kicks the shit out of me. I deserve worse.

♠

When Jade and I first met this is what she said: “Do you ever feel the presence of someone you don’t know? I do all the time. When I meet whoever it is, I’ll know.” “You may never,” I said back. “Too late,” she said, “I already have.” Jade stopped feeling the ghost of presence because it was me in the flesh. I wasn’t not there anymore.

Today was different. I knocked and knocked and waited and knocked. Jade almost came to her senses. She told me to get lost. That another beating was waiting for me until she confessed her boyfriend wasn’t home. We’d come to the point of talking through a door. She watched me through the peephole as I left her all I had to my name. A wad of wrinkled cash. “This would’ve been for him,” I said. “Or her.”

♠

I’m at home slouching in front of the TV. I delete all my texts. The entire log including everything Jade’s ever sent. I drop the phone and switch the TV on. I have no cable, no Netflix, no gizmo that’ll beam my computer screen to the wall. All I get is what floats through the fog. A newscast reports a fire on a street that looks just like Jade’s. I drive there and it’s her. “Nobody sane does that,” she says, quivering under a blanket.

The baby was never mine. Her boyfriend will be home any second. Jade’s caramel head is on my pillow and a tingle touches the tip of my tongue. “You left something behind last time,” I tell her, handing her a ring. “I know,” she says, winking.

Any day now I’m going to let go. I think I’m going to be good. And when I do it’ll mean it got better somewhere else. It’ll mean I won somehow.

::

About the Author: Penn Javdan has worked at a catering company, at a street vendor, at a restaurant, at a museum, at a bar, and on his writing. He's outgrown working for a catering company, for a street vendor, for a restaurant, for a museum, and for a bar. He hasn't outgrown the written word.

Story Song: "The Getaway" by The White Buffalo

When Chelsea is sixteen her best friend Julie’s mom has a dress burning party. Chelsea isn’t formally invited but she happens to be hanging out there that night. It’s a big party, a lot of middle-aged people drinking beer and vodka tonics, smoking American Spirits, talking about Tom Petty concerts and car payments. Chelsea and Julie steal Miller Lites and drink them in Julie's bedroom. Everyone at the party is piss drunk by midnight, when the actual burning occurs. Julie's mom comes out of the house with the dress raised over her head, looking triumphant. She tosses it into the can and lights a match.

"I'm free!" she says as the fire catches.

Everyone claps. Some holler things like "burn baby burn!" and "fuck him!" Chelsea looks at Julie, who shrugs and opens another Miller Lite.

Later that night after the party’s over, Chelsea goes downstairs to get water. Julie's mom sits at the kitchen counter smoking a cigarette. Her hands are covered in ash, she’s crying. She says, "it was such a beautiful dress."

Chelsea feels sorry for her. She says, “it’s just a dress.”

"Never get married."

Chelsea already heard this from some of the other women at the party, even the ones who came with their husbands.

The next morning she makes a promise to herself.

♠

She walks beside him, unassuming, her tall neck wrapped in a beige circle scarf like a cozy noose, her red lipstick fading towards the part of her lips. He loves her so much he wants to eat her, romantic cannibalism. For so many years he was indifferent to companionship, in the same way you can be hungry but not feel like eating anything. When he met Chelsea he was suddenly starving.

He drops to his knees and asks, his hands so clammy the box nearly slips from his grasp.

♠

Chelsea has known Dan for a long time. They were friends in high school. They went to the movies together. They drank blue slushies and compared the changing colors of their Smurf tongues. They danced at Junior Prom. They didn't go together but both of them had been abandoned by their dates by the last slow song. "Don't Dream It's Over" by Crowded House. Chelsea rested her cheek on his shoulder and got makeup on his suit jacket.

He used to pick her up and they'd go sit behind the deserted boathouse and wait for strange things to surface out of the lake. They'd take guesses about how many cars were rusting underwater. They'd go to the diner and share a plate of disco fries.

They reconnected after college at the funeral of a mutual friend who’d died of a drug overdose. Dan walked Chelsea to her car afterwards and held her as she cried. She got snot on his suit jacket.

"I ruin all of your suits," she said.

"I’ll invoice you," he said, kissing the top of her head.

♠

When Chelsea is twenty-six she tries on wedding dresses. None of them look like the one she saw burn a decade ago but all of them remind her of it.

♠

Chelsea loves Dan.

The kind of love where a trip to Wal-Mart is a European vacation and every conversation is a scene from a movie you watch and wish was your life. The kind of love where the other person's presence hangs around your head all day like a halo. A state of euphoria that causes you to confuse your colors with prettier colors and smells with better smells.

Love that's so fierce it binds to your bones and before you know it your weight isn't just your weight. You're more than yourself. You're also the love. The love you said you'd crawl to the moon for but halfway there your knees are raw and bleeding. The love you said you'd sacrifice everything for but when you see the sacrifices there scattered like shipwrecks along your shores you wonder.

She wonders if she loved him straight through, all the way to the other side.

♠

The air is dense with the threat of early April rain. Grey clouds curdle an ominous sky. Dan's lawyer calls to let him know that it's done. He thanks him, though he’s not at all thankful for what's transpired. He's bitter now, but in three months he’ll meet a model/photographer and after a few dates she'll move in. He'll get married again and have two daughters with big blue eyes and iridescent blonde hair.

In ten years someone at a cocktail party will ask him about his first marriage. He'll say, "my divorce was the best thing that's ever happened to me."

♠

Chelsea finds the dress in the back of her closet, hidden in a garment bag. She unzips the bag. It's more off-white than white now, the years having had their way with it.

"I'm more off now, too," she tells it.

It's just a dress.

She zips the bag back up and buries it in the dark depths. While she's there she finds one of Dan's forgotten shirts. She thinks about reaching out, asking him if he plans on invoicing her for the clothes he left behind.

She’s seeing someone new. Clark. He's tall and handsome but doesn't have Dan's sense of humor.

That's all appreciation is, measuring what we once had against its absence.

♠

She gets annual emails from Dan. He asks how she is. He attaches photos of his beautiful, cherubic babies in matching pink and yellow outfits.

Chelsea gets this year's email while sitting at a bar waiting for a friend. There are young women beside her, checking their phones, talking about men.

A chorus of ghosts appears, the ghosts of the women at the party who whispered warnings to her when she was sixteen.

She thinks of the words said as the fire started,

"I'm free."

So long as there’s love, you can never be free.

::

About the Author: Rachel Harrison lives and writes in Brooklyn, NY. She tweets @rachfacelogic.

Story Song: "Don't Dream It's Over" by Crowded House

had painted over wallpaper, over nails and screws now orange, had painted orange, had failed to fix the floorboards, had broken a banister spindle on her way out, had signed the lease illegibly, had fish-handed our parting shake, had failed to mention the fridge, or lackthereof, had failed to mention the ceiling fan death wobble, had bought us spare bulbs that didn't fit, had bought us blinds, broken, had hid a secret mess of aesbestos and pallet wood in the basement, had let the wall rot wholly in the bathroom, had (we're pretty sure) programmed the garbage disposal to cough dark debris when activated, had promised her husband would be by with the keys and a weed wacker, but he never showed up, and had actually (we discovered) months earlier divorced The Landlord who'd forgotten to give us a limit for friends on the roof, or suggestions for good fruit to mix with Yuengling, had no advice for getting up on time, no pointers for the wash, had no lunch packed for the week, no leftovers frozen, had left no number for a good dealer, a decent grocer, or her own home line, hadn't tucked us in, fluffed even one pillow, hadn't described for us the star shapes we'd make out from our window, hadn't mentioned that we could stay up late as we wanted, could rise with the birds if we chose, could grab the dirty city by our pasty hands and lift. If we tried.

We woke around eleven. Some stuff of ours vanished. She forgot to lock the door. Or maybe it was on purpose.

We put our monthly money in a numberless mailbox twelve times. Our absent mother. We never saw her, but we lived in ways we thought would make her happy. We got up. We went to work. Locked our doors. Saved our money, bought Christmas presents. We tried dreaming realistically.

She never came back until the day the hairdryer stopped. I went down to flip the breaker, and there she was. Get! she told me, put her foot through a pallet for emphasis.

And so we moved out; she followed us. Made home in the empty basement, and we kept our things in the attic. She was ornery. Her behavior, erratic. She kept us up at night. We lost sleep, our jobs, our dream of never renting again. We went down the stairs, narrow, dirty. We asked her for help, and she smiled.

::

About the Author:  Tyler Barton lives in Lancaster, PA, where he works as co-founder/co-editor of The Triangle. Some of his sincerely held beliefs are that Seinfeld will never die and that writers can still save the poetry reading. Follow him @goftyler, or check out more work at his blog.

Story Song: "Triangle" by BadBadNotGood

Right there in the cafeteria, in front of everybody, Tessa Sims slid her eyes my way and announced that only poor people ate Bunny Bread.

Her own sandwich bread was thick and brown, the crust studded with exotic looking grains. Tessa Sims had probably never eaten bologna in her life. Not on a sandwich with squishy white bread, and never fried for dinner, cut along the edges so it wouldn’t curl in the pan.

You said, I bet Tessa Sims doesn’t even know that trick.

I knew we were poor because I’d figured out what rich meant. What I didn’t know was that other people knew we were poor too, that someone could tell not just by my hand-me-downs but by my sandwich.

You told Tessa, your lunch looks like something my dog crapped out this morning. We were the only ones who laughed.

♠

It was communion Sunday at church that week. We snuck into the kitchen during fellowship to see if Mrs. Greely was hiding the good doughnuts again. You said, for a poor kid, you’re very discerning about your doughnuts. I didn’t know what that meant, only that it was your idea to find me a custard-filled.

We had two doughnuts apiece and some grape juice—aka the blood of Christ, I said. You laughed so hard juice trickled out of your nostrils like a nosebleed, and if I was struck down, it would be worth it.

When we went to hide the evidence of our feast in the trash, your eyes grew huge as you pulled out two plastic Bunny Bread bags. It was no secret the communion wine was grape juice, but the bread—since it was supposed to represent actual Jesus—seemed more serious, like maybe the pastor’s wife made it or you had to send away for it, not something you could pick up at Family Dollar.

In the cafeteria the next day, Tessa walked by and slapped a palm full of change in front of me: a donation to the poor. Do you smell dog crap? Your voice was thick with innocence.

You took my sandwich and tore off the corner, and I cupped my hands into a cross. Eat this in remembrance of me, you said.

♠

They said it was an accident, but I wondered if you knew you were going to die and that was why you weren’t afraid of Tessa or stealing doughnuts. Maybe you were my own personal middle school Jesus, except Jesus probably didn’t talk about dog crap nearly as much as you did.

At your funeral, I stood in line as the other kids dropped roses into your grave. Tessa wept; I snuck bites of a bologna sandwich.

I didn’t drop my flowers when the time came. I gave you my sandwich instead. The bologna and bread separated as they sailed down to the casket, changing not to the body of Christ but into something else entirely.

::

About the Author: Amy Rossi recently abandoned Boston winters for Louisiana summers. She loves Game 7s, baking, and hair metal. She can be found on Twitter @mossyair, and she can be found in a room by quoting Road House.