“PUSHED, NOT LEADING”
Gabriel Hart
Someone I was forbidden to have let in. Someone parasitical, a hanger-on. Someone overbearing, high-maintenance, and manipulative. Yet I remained by their side, loyal to the oncoming fault. Caught between forces of repelling, magnetic, paralytic. Shady with secrets, and because he trusted me, he told me every last detail.
I did not witness him kill the young woman, but he cornered me to tell me how he did it, every last step, nothing left to my imagination beyond this interpretive abomination. Leading us back to the scene of her initial abduction, carrying me through every subsequent step: her death, her dismemberment, her burning, his surprise and unpreparedness for not exactly every bit of her becoming ash in her last trip in the wind; her teeth and splinters of femur lay in the pile as if bone had eyes, holding him accountable, and now I, just for knowing.
All the while, our psyches now quartered, we were being questioned: where was he in proximity and time to the place she was last seen and where was I with keeping his—now my—story straight.
In parallel: a cartoon sequence further expressing the conundrum, uncertain who was playing who. An anthropomorphic bunny combined with Roger Rabbit and the Pink Panther, whimsically strolling through sceneries of criminy, unaware of its silhouette mocking him. The rabbit shaped shadow demurred into a single black circle bouncing in rhythm with the pink rabbit’s pacing. Follow the bouncing ball, it knows everything the rabbit is leaving behind. The rabbit thinks he’s leading, but the black circle is the one pushing the rabbit to the scene of the crime where everything was being exposed and exclaimed. All mysteries explained except what was inside the void of the black circle, a hole of sacrifice, of negative, of every secret still quivering. The rabbit unaware we could all see the black circle beside him in pursuit of its hubris.
“Be At Leso”
Julián Martinez
I followed the instructions on the Sgt. Peppers’ Lonely Hearts Club Band cover and arrived at the Greek island of Leso as the sun rose over the misty beach. The ghost of Paul McCartney, the real Paul McCartney, was signing autographs. When it was my turn, dumbfounded in his cherubic glow, I blurted, “you’re barefoot!” “Sand’s good, yeah,” murmured Paul. “Like on the Abbey Road cover! The clue?” He shrugged. I cleared my throat and said, “?eulc ehT !revoc daoR yebbA eht no ekiL.” Paul smiled, winked and said, “Very good. Right. Want me to sign something now?” I didn’t know where to start— fake Paul’s black rose from the ‘Your Mother Should Know’ video, fake Paul’s walrus mask from Magical Mystery Tour, the White Album insert poster of fake Paul in a bathtub with his hands around his head, representing the decapitation of real Paul. He massaged his neck, staring at the picture of his impersonator. I saw his eternal sadness. This journey had been in vain. I took Paul by his weightless waist and, with him over my shoulder, bolted to rescue him from the island of Leso, but he pointed out that he couldn’t leave without his remains, and that was a whole ‘nother mystery I had to go get high about.
“DREAM OF THE ABSENT”
Ali Huff
It was a night stuck in time. The pizza was warm, and biting into it myself felt like a sin. I let the grease slide down my chin. I knew no one would care because I was the one no one cared about. I watched my mother in the kitchen with a spatula in her hand. My stepfather was getting bigger and bigger in presence. He would talk, and the newspaper on the table would multiply. He would boast, the trash on the floor would double, and he would yell, the clothes and blankets on the sofa tripled. I stuffed a scoop of melting vanilla ice cream into my mouth. They both left to get more food at a high-end steakhouse. They had the munchies. I ate four dark chocolate-covered almonds on the couch. I was overwhelmed by the blankets. The floors were toys, newspapers, magazines, pizza boxes. The television ran its news report and I looked up towards it. “I trusted you…” I heard garbled in time as the rooms all swirled into their own frenzy of chaos. I knew the stomach ache would never come because I was not really a human to anyone. I was discarded material observing ghosts enjoy their high. I woke up before the couch turned into a blanket ocean and the news report sank slowly into analog static. My hope is that whatever departed people do, that they always eat well.
“Three Dreams”
Benjamin Niespodziany
a triptych
[1] A party went into the night and well into the next morning and proceeded to overtake many days and nights until the host of the party was nothing but a party host so he wore the hat and packed the cakes and ordered more hors d'oeuvres and ignored calls from his former corporate job because he was only employed as the party host and even after he became a ghost this was what he continued to do.
[2] “You were talking in your sleep last night,” my wife told me over breakfast. “What did I say,” I asked her. She stirred her cinnamon into her porridge. “Something about how the graves are out of order.” I quickly turned to look through our front window. The stones were little in their alignment, hardly visible from our kitchen table. Moss was beginning to form, a porous witness to the beginning sickness beginning to ravage us all.
[3] We stayed the night. Had dinner. Put it on the room. We walked to the nearby plaza and had a snack. Put it on the room. We drove an hour to a golf course and feasted near hole seven, the country club offering no objection when we put it on the room. While we were swimming in the manmade lake, we were asked if we wanted to put it on our room. Put what on our room, we asked. The lake, they said. Of course, we said. Of course. On our way home upon checking out of the hotel and saying farewell, we stopped at the toll booth and asked if we could put it on the room. “What are you talking about,” the tollbooth worker said.