The Masterpiece
By Robyn Bashaw
“In the classroom, the project was set down on the table, and one of the small figures fell over. The child took the figure between their two fingers, but the child squeezed too tightly, and the figure snapped in two.”
The child stroked their fingers gingerly across the landscape, accidentally shaking the surface. They jerked their hand back, then spotted a piece of dust marring the masterpiece. So, the child blew on it, meaning for dust specks flew away, but, instead, the sand whirled around inside. The child dipped their finger in the cool blue, stirring it so the dust could settle below the surface.
“Hurry up, or you’ll be late for school,” the child’s mother called, and the child ran out, carrying the project between their arms, careful to jostle it the least possible.
In the classroom, the project was set down on the table, and one of the small figures fell over. The child took the figure between their two fingers, but the child squeezed too tightly, and the figure snapped in two. Overhead, the lights flickered as the teacher attempted to draw the class’s attention. As the lights settled into a dim hum, the child’s elbow knocked the project. The child hollered out in pain while the blue sloshed up onto the sand. Then came the tears, falling onto the round sphere perched upon the desk. When the lights returned, the teacher approached, her shadow darkening one side of the ball as she tried to comfort the child.
“Don’t cry, God,” she reassured. “Your project looks lovely – what did you make?”
The child’s smile lit up the globe, shining brighter than the light overhead as they answered, “I call it Earth.”
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Robyn Bashaw has graduated with a BFA in Creative Writing and published a piddling of stories. Check them out at: https://robynbashaw.wordpress.com/
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The Last Time We Hypnotised a Chook
By Tom Campbell
“I erased the line with my bare heel. But this chook kept on looking.”
My brother and I drew a line in the dirt. We held the bird’s head, so it had to see. It looked up the line, then down the line, up, down. This was our favorite and only game that winter. I erased the line with my bare heel. But this chook kept on looking.
Up, down, up, down.
We yelled at it, hissed at it. My Brother had the harried hands of a bed-wetter. We couldn’t make the bird stop. Dad had to cleave its head off. He did not speak to us for three days.
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Tom Campbell is a writer from Meanjin/ Brisbane in Australia. His work has been featured in The Suburban Review Issue #32 and Urinal Mag Issue #2. He is currently working on his first novel.
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Don’t Worry
By William Cass
“Her grandfather had died of kidney failure, nothing to do with a blow to the head, and it became apparent that careful attempts had been made to mask some ugly bruise.”
It was midway through the wake’s visiting hours, and the mortuary’s tiny chapel had grown crowded. Alice made her way through the jumble of mourners to the open casket’s side. Her grandfather lay in it on his back, dressed in his beloved fly fishing garb, his rimless glasses perched slightly crooked over closed eyelids. She choked back a sob before noticing a bluish tinge through extra thick makeup near the left temple of her grandfather’s face. Her eyebrows were knit as she realized the edges of the tinge were almost purple. Her grandfather had died of kidney failure, nothing to do with a blow to the head, and it became apparent that careful attempts had been made to mask some ugly bruise.
Alice turned on her heel and hurried through the crowd into the foyer, where she found the mortician standing discreetly in an office doorway with his hands clasped at the waist of his black suit. She strode over to him, narrowed her glare until his eyes met hers, and hissed, “What the hell happened to my grandpa’s face?”
His eyes traveled anxiously around the smattering of guests in the foyer, resettled on her, and motioned her into the office. He followed, closed the door partway, glanced through its opening, then looked back at her with his mouth in a tight line. His forehead creased with unease.
“Well?” she demanded.
“I’m afraid there was a bit of an accident.” His voice was hardly more than a whisper, and Alice had to lean forward to hear him. “In the preparation room.” The mortician was a tall, middle-aged man with thinning hair and a long neck in which his Adam’s apple plunged several times before he said, “He fell off the table. I had an awful time trying to get that fishing vest on him, and…he slipped.” His unsteady voice fell even further. “That’s never happened to me before. I’m terribly sorry.”
The sounds from the foyer became a murmur of white noise as Alice felt herself blinking rapidly. A heat had risen behind her ears. The corners of the mortician’s eyes brimmed, and his lips trembled as he mumbled, “I’m so terribly sorry. I did my best to cover…”
Then he began whimpering; his head lowered and turned away. Suddenly, an image of her grandfather twenty years before, strong and vital, casting from the shallows beside their family’s old river cabin, invaded Alice’s mind. She’d always marveled at the practiced precision of his movements with the rod, his strict, solitary concentration with its calm stillness. In the image, the blue hour had begun, and a hatch of mayflies hovered over the tumbling water in slanted shafts of the dwindling sun; her grandfather’s face was lit by the sun, too, awash with quiet, reverential joy.
The mortician sniffed loudly. Alice swallowed, reached out her hand, and gently rubbed his shoulder. “It’s all right,” she said softly. “It doesn’t matter. Don’t worry.”
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William Cass has published over 325 short stories. He's been a Best Small Fictions, Best of the Net, and six-time Pushcart nominee. His two short story collections were published by Wising Up Press.
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The Last Minute of Marv McCullin
By Jonathan Jones
“Books expire the same as people. It was a brave thing. It was a scary thing. Sleeping rough on the streets for a year, he had learned to recognize their faces.”
Marv McCullin was a long-looking fellow whose arms had reach. Eyes grey, once keen, spoke early warnings. A quiet shape of mouth offset by a careful shave. All morning, he had been practicing his diagnosis. Most hopeless cases could be told at a glance coming apart at the seams. Books expire the same as people. It was a brave thing. It was a scary thing. Sleeping rough on the streets for a year, he had learned to recognize their faces. Across the library reception area, automatic doors slid back and forth. Their patterns of entrance and exit fascinated him. Rhythms of coming and going, like a machine that breathed for you. So, this was how time passed on the outside. A few days ago, he came across an untouched paperback over fifty years old. Although he had opened it gently, the ancient glue binding had cracked and split, and it closed its eyes forever.
“Have you read it?”
Marv looked up from the service desk. The book was a popular hardback, taken out on a regular basis. He shook his head as he stamped it for issue and handed it back. A woman in her mid-forties with a mole-like face stared at him curiously. Her eyes were a watery grey, half blind and half prophetic, a face unremarkably English, except for the eyes. Marv had learned to wear his face with a clean razor. His talent was a slow observation. All perfume is alcohol, he thought to himself. The woman spoke again as though speaking to no one, as though she had already expired herself.
“Some never stood a chance,” she rasped and turned to go. Marv McCullin’s heart had stopped two minutes earlier.
“How could she tell?” he stared at his hands, furious with incomprehension. The automatic doors opened and closed once more as though of their own accord. Nobody saw him leave the library early. Nobody noticed as the sunlight hit them right between the eyes.
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Jonathan Jones lives and works in Rome, where he teaches at John Cabot University. He has a PhD in literature from the University of Sapienza.
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Night of the Golden Darkness
By Mandira Paittnak
“You and I — just married, like cattle to the herd, unsurely out of childhood, learning to love. The night was still not quiet; someone’s phone was ringing, the sound of traffic, and the air grew warm, warmer, hot like a furnace.”
Brace again, for we might be gone again.
Another November night chilly like this, bodies eroded from working overtime in the small, cramped space stitching and packing garments for another world, rag-quilts on the basement floor, seven in the space for two, packed like smirks on a joker’s face, barely asleep — fingers, eyes, tracing my skin. You and I — just married, like cattle to the herd, unsurely out of childhood, learning to love. The night was still not quiet; someone’s phone was ringing, the sound of traffic, and the air grew warm, warmer, hot like a furnace. Had it been the next day, we’d collect our wage and off to Kusalganj by the morning bus, remember? But it was not to be. We struggled to attribute source and meaning to the heat in the windowless dungeon, hearing shrieks and cries, rising, rising, enveloping our senses, walls, and floor burning like coal. We clung to each other, trapped. Hands comforting me, you pulled me closer — it made us escape the heat — at least the sense of it: your eyes — pools of calm hope.
I’d never know what had gone wrong. Remember a golden darkness later, twisted melted steel, black smoke, charred bodies wrapped in half-burnt polo-tees emblazoned C & A, Walmart, and Li & Fung, and the date — November 12, 2012, Dhaka. They only said the workshop was illegal or overcrowded; you just pulled me away and said we should hurry and be gone.
Then and now. Your eyes tell me to be brave again, for soon, we might need to run again.
Now our backs hurt from loading and unloading beer crates and boxes of what-not.
Mumbai Port is busy at night for extra cash. Palms, rough from alternating between foam and adhesive, ears used to words: Hey you! Go back, you! — appended with one of those that scream You are the other! The outsider! — As though one or the other names that you call us by will stick and fire us up to violence, and hey, we get packed to jails, like all in a day’s job for them. It won’t leave us in peace. They will kill us if they can. The warning is upon us.
Brace again. Prepare to be gone again. When you hug me last thing at night, your droopy eyes — steadily losing hope.
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Mandira's work appeared in McNeese Review, Penn Rev, Quarterly West, QAE, Rumpus, and AAWW. More: mandirapattnaik.com
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Old Gold
By Daniel Webre
“When they switched to hi-def, and my TV stopped working, I draped the old console— twenty-six inches from Curtis Mathes—in a quilt my grandmother had left me and smashed the screen to bits with a sledgehammer.”
When they switched to hi-def, and my TV stopped working, I draped the old console— twenty-six inches from Curtis Mathes—in a quilt my grandmother had left me and smashed the screen to bits with a sledgehammer. After the dust settled, I swept it out with a broom and dustpan, careful not to breathe any glass into my lungs. I could see myself in some of the larger fragments, so I broke those up but then stopped looking because I didn’t want to be in the glass any more than I wanted it in me. When all this was done, I polished the wood with Pledge and enjoyed the fresh lemon scent. The shine of the wood doesn’t bother me like glass does. In fact, it pleased me to be inside the TV. Although the console was big enough to use as an end table, it wasn’t big enough for me to crawl into entirely, so the best I could do was place a pillow where the electronics had been, rest my head there, and polish until my thoughts took on the same clarity as the wood (though it was kind of dark in there).
And that’s when I remembered the brass handles and how they looked like they belonged on a drawer, but also that they were there just for show, to make it look nice and everything, and how they should be polished too if I really wanted to do this right. It occurred to me that only a jackass would polish brass with wood furniture polish—I needed Brasso or something like that, but who keeps all these different cleaning supplies around the house? I didn’t feel like leaving and going to the store right then, even though I didn’t really have much else going on at the time, and all my favorite TV shows wouldn’t be coming on anymore.
So, I sprayed some more Pledge, careful not to get it on the brass—just in case—and thought about how sad people are who depend on TV for something to do. I was free now and didn’t want to waste a minute of this new way of life. I took the pillow out, shined a light in there—a tiny desk lamp—then tried other household objects in the pillow’s place. I decided on the goldfish bowl, pleased with how nice it looked, and I lay back down on the couch, grateful to have something to watch. Goldie really seemed to be enjoying himself now that he was swimming around inside the television. It was as though the scales had fallen from my eyes, and I could see my old friend shimmering all over again—bright and distant, like a star.
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Daniel Webre's short fiction has appeared recently or is forthcoming in DASH Literary Journal, Permafrost Online, The Coachella Review, Stoneboat Literary Journal, muse, Pinyon, and other places.
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