“My Fathers” as featured on Afterimages
Micah Muldowney
My dad was a hard man. Angry and lost. Understand I don’t blame him for it. Oh no. I loved my father, and he had redeeming qualities too. My mother left early, you see before I can remember and I can’t help but think he never got over it, the poor man. It was the story of his life in microcosm. It was hard and without reward, carting lint from one factory floor to another twelve hours a day, coughing, always coughing, always under somebody’s thumb. There was always some menial little thing that had to be done, over and over, forever. And I was the trap set of that horrible world. I think if I weren’t there he could have just run away or died and been happy. But I was there, and all he could do about it was drink.
When he was sober he was distant, hard-bitten, prone to sudden anger over little things. Or sometimes he’d sulk, or give way to a muttering secretiveness that I could never understand—I don’t think he had anything worse inside to hide than what he showed me. But when he was in a mood, he’d watch me out the corner of his eye and complain and protest about what I’d done to him, how I’d ruined his life, driven her away, how he always had to pick up the pieces and what was there in it for him? And he’d be after me with his belt at the slightest imagined provocation, or even without it.
But when he drank it was worse. Far worse. Terrifying. At first, right when he started he’d relax; He’d loosen up and smile and talk sweet to me, hold me on his knee, kiss my hair, and tell me stories about when he was a kid. A part of me lived for those first moments, to see that piece of him he’d tucked away against the harshness of his life, to feel real tenderness, like I was his real daughter and not just some Cinderella skulking around the house of almighty god, making his food and taking his whippings. But I also hated and feared those moments most of all because of what I knew was going to come. Because after a few drinks, he was no longer happy. I could feel it creeping in along the hairs of my neck. First, he would grow petulant, then angry, then cruel. I’ve never seen such hard eyes, such pleasure in suffering, and he was far too strong for me to ever escape. To this day I cannot see good things happen without feeling a pang of fear, like an episode of vertigo, that the other foot is about to come down. Those awful rages, after the drink had gotten to him, the violence of it, I won’t tell you more than this; he was cleverer mad than he was in his right mind. He never did anything that could be tied back to him, never hurt me but he tied me with a thousand invisible strings not to tell. He’d cut my wrists and laugh and watch me scream and bleed, and I had to scream for him or he wouldn’t stop. I just didn’t have it in me to harden myself against it, to grit my teeth and stay the course, even though I hated to see the pleasure he took in it. It burned me to see it flare up and leave my father for a moment before seared to ashes. I could see that he was dead then. That someone else was there behind his eyes.
He cut my wrists because it could be explained. I was troubled, he’d say, suicidal. A danger to myself. Not to be trusted. They kept me away from other kids. I think they were afraid I’d be a bad influence. That they’d see something and it’d rub off. I was alone a lot, even at school, and it hurt me. I love to be with other people. That was maybe the cruelest thing my father did, the way he erased my life to cover up what he did to me. Not that it was the worst thing he did, mind you. I mean the worst actions. There are worse things you can do than that. But somehow it was the cruelest.
That’s when I started to read. To escape, at first. To connect. To live as long as I could in the imaginary world between the pages where life was hard maybe, but also beautiful and held meaning. I read every minute I could, though I would never let my father see. He would never let me keep anything that was my own, anything that pleased me. So I’d hide library books under the floorboards and read them before he got home from work or after a row when he was passed out drunk and I knew he wouldn’t see the light. They kept me alive.
I was never the type to be angry. I don’t know why—maybe I was afraid when I saw what it did to my father all those years—but I was often afraid and always heartbroken. I felt wounded to the soul with a hurt I thought could never be recovered until I started to have the dreams. They started before my dad died, after I left his house, but got more frequent and vivid after he was gone. In these dreams I would be sitting in my room, only it was a beautiful room, and all the things I loved were in it out where anyone could see them and be happy. He would come, and knock on the door and ask me if he could come in, and I would let him. He’d come in, careful as he never was in life, and he’d kneel and hold my face in my hands and look at me with these beautiful eyes like I had never seen, filled with joy and deep sorrow and regret and hope for the future, all at once, and he’d tell me he how sorry he was, and how much he loved me and what he would do to make it better. Or sometimes he’d tell me funny stories about when he was a boy and promise me that my life would be just as carefree, just as good. That he’d take me there, protect me. No one would hurt me ever again. And he’d rock and cry and kiss my hair, only with clear eyes and in his right mind, and sing to me songs from his hill country childhood that I had never heard in waking.
I thought about those dreams for a long time. Why would he come to me like that? What did it mean? Was it simple wish fulfillment? I don’t think that it was. Slowly, the conviction grew inside me that that was my real dad. That the father who shook the house wasn’t a real person at all, that everything real about him had been stripped slowly away under the weight of broken dreams and heartache and the endless grind of meaningless toil. His body, his husk, had become as unreal as the world it lived in. But my dad existed, always would exist somewhere else. In my dreams maybe, but not from me or by my design. After all, the songs were real—I looked them up. That song, Poor Wayfaring Stranger, was one of them. He was independent of me, you see. The dream was the place where he was restored to life, to being, to personhood.
And my world opened up.
I started to see and feel traces of the dreams that others dreamed of everywhere I looked. Poets long for it. Children run to it when the world holds too much tedium for them to bear. I used to do it myself without knowing when I was shut behind closed doors at school with nothing but a sleeping classroom aid, and I’d fly far away and live the day dancing behind my eyelids. Sometimes I’ll still see someone on a bus or walking the street, smiling and looking around and whispering words to people I cannot see, lost in the dream. Because I know what they may not—that the things they commune with are more real, maybe than the seat at their back or the post in their hand.
And I’m not saying that I don’t know that there is a world we live in, or that I don’t believe that it exists. I just know that it isn’t the only thing, the only place that is real, and it’s certainly not the realest. I see my dad’s face, and it is the man from my dreams. Gentle. And I can move on. I can smile and laugh and breathe deeply and go to University or to work and write this to you now because the man in my dream is real, and I know that there is another world right alongside this one, just out of reach except when we need it, where it is all going to be alright, even if was not alright then, and I can forgive and I can love him anyway. That’s what parting the veil has been to me, and this is what I intend to do: shake people until they can see and hear it.
“We Vanish” as featured on Afterimages
Mileva Anastasiadou
Girl meets boy and love blooms, the sun shines, time stops, because that’s how it goes, the Big Nothing is broken, defeated and shattered, dissolves into the background, when two people collide and fall into bliss.
Sheila is bedridden and can’t do much but she writes. She’s working on a story right now, time flows better when Sheila writes, otherwise time stands still, like Sheila stands still, and Sheila is trapped, like time is a prison.
@sheilaissickbutshewrites about how she once had it all, she didn’t need stories back when she had a functioning body and time was on her side. She watched time steal life and she didn’t mind, because she was still safe, invincible, time-proof, until everything changed.
Girl fears love and runs away, because that’s how it goes, logic feeds fear, beats hope, kills love, for love isn’t logical, or concrete, or certain, and unimaginative reason is the Big Nothing’s deadliest weapon.
@sheilaissickbutshewrites about her body, the body she once took for granted but now is failing her. Soon her mind will follow, the mind she now takes for granted, like we take for granted things, while we still have them. Her mind comes up with stories, tiny little warnings to those who are naive enough to think they have conquered time, she posts stories that free her, in them she becomes ethereal, if only for a while, and Sheila thinks that she’s cheating sometimes, but she can’t commit to reality as it is.
She writes about him, and she grabs his hand and holds it tight, she wants to feel it while she still can, she wants to devour the touch, before time steals it away, but he pulls away, oh, the arrogance of the living, who think they own the world and that this power lasts forever, Sheila now smiles, like she knows better, now that she’s tired, exhausted, half-dead.
Boy searches for girl, because that’s how it goes, sometimes in youth you are fearless, and strong, and invincible, you go on long, futile quests, certain the Old Nothing can’t ever touch you and that time will forever be on your side.
@sheilaissickbutshewrites while he is feeding her, while the love of her life, in sickness and health, is now trying to put food in her mouth. She knows he means well, she knows his hand forcing the food inside is moved by love and care and tenderness, only she isn’t hungry, she’s spitting out the food, the love, the sickness, and the remnants of it all are now all over the sheets, her clothes, his face.
She writes about him, about how he changes subtly, about how he stays calm, but then he gets tired, and he yells, and she yells back, and then they cry for a while and wonder silently where love goes when sickness comes, but then they make up, and Sheila can’t wait for those precious moments, when love storms back into the room, because she knows that he sometimes hates her, but he also loves her.
Boy finds girl, and girl stays with boy, because that’s how it foes, love finds a way, it always comes through, it conquers the fear, and the Old Nothing falls apart into a million little Somethings, when hope is restored.
@sheilaissickbutshewrites about how she once fantasized how it would feel to arrest time, to be running after it, and scream, freeze, at it, and time would be dead frightened and it would freeze, but time ran faster, like it always does, and she never caught the bandit. In stories she’s bodiless, faceless, a spirit, in stories she’s free from all limitations, in stories she walks and runs and flies, and the Old Nothing is a pitiful monster she beats all the time, and she posts the stories for people to read, she posts them online, and her stories float like they’re part of the universe, they’re ghosts in progress just like her, only they’ll still be there after she’s gone.
She writes about him, the love of her life, and in her story he’s sick, but he doesn’t yet know, he coughs, he coughs badly, and he says, I’m fine, only he isn’t and he will never be fine again, he’ll only end up like her, it’s a matter of time before he’s caged too, until time captures him, and then he will know how it feels to be her.
Then things get hard then come disasters and hardships, the bad wolf appears and knocks on their door, because that’s how it goes, you grow old, and life happens and the Big Nothing is out for revenge.
He thinks he’s in charge, he takes time for granted, and Sheila is grateful he’s still there, for the last sparks of love, of a dream, a shared life, there is this line in ‘The Age of Adaline’ about how love is heartbreak without a future, and Sheila knows that love is heartbreak with or without a future, like the future is heartbreak with or without love, and this is a sad ending, but Sheila knows that all endings are tragic and that we have invented happily ever after, like we have invented God, because we can’t live without hope.
@sheilaissickbutshewrites about how we come and we go and we vanish for people who think that we come and we go and we stay, and she ends the story before the Big Nothing swallows them whole and love tears them apart, and she grabs his hand and holds it tight, and she wants to speak, because that’s what you do when the game is rigged and you know you can’t win, you can only speak out, but she only stares right into his eyes, no fear, no regrets, no hope, because Sheila won’t talk, she only writes.
“Millennial” as featured on Afterimages
Sophie “Knox” Peters
I'm a millennial, of courseeee I have cuboid irises, thick legs, and acrylic nails.
(I'm a millennial.) I watch warships and retweets, and I hold gossip, where my prayer hands could be.
I take airplanes, I doom scroll, and I am not dissimilar to a heat lamp, a bowl of soup, or yes, a snowflake. I'm a millennial! I was told I could save the world.
Last week in the shower, I transmuted, (I’ll walk you through it.) To do this, you gotta squeeze your muscles tight, all of them, the ones you didn’t know you had. I did this and opened a door to the earth and called out. My silly little transmutation worked.
A man stepped directly into me, coughing. He entered through a small door at the back of my skull, the way one steps into an embassy. As my hands rubbed soap over my chest, I could feel everything that he felt, from the sharp bones of his arms to his tight dusty skin. I could feel him. He had arrived from an oily desert far away. He was war-weary, his eyes were burnt umber with yellowing whites. He was battered. His nails were thick as teeth, his soft hair coated in rubble, powdered with the grey dust I have been seeing on my iPhone, I could feel his world, and he could feel mine. He began breathing through my lungs, and felt my hands reaching for a sponge, my fingers handling Tresemé, he observed the shifting wobble of my flesh as I scrubbed, and stared through my blue eyes into new, white, washed, surroundings.
The man was exhausted. His liver had shut down, his abdomen was swollen. He was starving, thirsting, and bedraggled. His eyes had dehydrated and lost their roundness, you can imagine his sigh of relief, as the glucose in my bloodstream began to pump to his body as well as mine. He was fusing with my biology, his cells absorbing my water and my salts, I heard him groan with pleasure as warm soapy jets washed over us. As he drinks in the bright light of the bathroom through my eyes.
I'm a millennial, I try hard. And a good host, damn it. I must greet him. I fall back inside my head and the shower water becomes a distant, muffled thrum—I enter my skull like an apparition. He stands inside me still and hollow, knees wider than his thighs, his wrists jutting, head spindle on the skinned turkey-like arch of a neck. I lead him through the regions of my brain, the lyrical shape of my thoughts—until we come to a mental hallway. In front of us, there are two doors, wedged into the flesh walls of my limbic system.
One is small, the other large. I walk him through the large door. Inside is a messy bedroom. Toys, empty drug baggies, trash, and snack wrappers litter the floor. It was the remnants of my post-festival comedowns. The walls are red and humming with blood, they are coated in a sticky layer of song lyrics (I’m a millennial, of course, I listened to the Gorillaz, Britney, Beyonce, Red Hot Chili Peppers, MGMT, LCD Soundsystem, Tame Impala, The Killers, The Cure, My Bloody Valentine, and Rihanna.)
I tell the man to make himself at home, we share no common tongue, (besides the one between my teeth), but he understands. The only rule here, I explain, is that he must be gentle to the girl in the other room. The one behind the smaller door. I explain that her body is deceased, and she never speaks a word. I tell him that she arrived the day after she was sold to a billionaire (sold under the name of ‘1 Disney Princess: Jasmine’.)
I tell the man to do what he likes in my head but that unfortunately, I can’t give him motor control. I will be in charge of where my body goes and what it does, (and doesn’t do). He looks around my room at the drug paraphernalia and back at me, doubtful.
I tell him—you will be like a quadriplegic, able to see everything I do through my eyes. You can expect a reasonably long life if you decide to live within me. I don’t make so many bad choices these days. I don't exercise, my family doesn’t call much, I am single and I consume a lot of butter. You can count on me to feed this body and keep it watered, of course, everything inside me is in English and there are no religious texts (besides anecdotal Christian myths,) I might learn your language one day, perhaps.
He still looks as forlorn as when he first arrived, I notice his skin is a little less tight to the bone though. Furthermore, I can feel his swollen belly filling with the risotto I ate yesterday. I decide to leave him to settle in.
Back in my shower, I turn off the faucet. A little numb, wrinkled, unnaturally cool.
I wonder if there is a way I can take anyone else in? I feel that the man’s body has absorbed over half the blood I had to offer, and I feel tired. But nevertheless…I’m a host, I’m a saviour. I’m a millennial.
I wonder, could 8 billion of us witness this one, warm, steamy room? Just for a moment? I wonder what it would do to me, to them, to let everyone in?
There is one way to find out.
“The Moses Stitch” as featured on Afterimages
Amy Cipolla Barnes
Terra was born with a horn poking out of her forehead. The nurses were amazed. The doctor was too. Terra’s mother Susan was less pleased, especially as the forehead horn grazed her insides, requiring an extra-large stitch.
“She really scraped you,” the doctor said, shaking his head.
Susan studied art before Terra was born unexpectedly. She told the doctor art history facts to distract from her postpartum pain.
“Did you know there are paintings of Moses with a horn too? It’s because the French word for horn was mistranslated.”
“This isn’t quite the same thing,” the doctor said.
After he was done, Susan called a birth photographer who came to the hospital in a black tent of a dress.
The photographer tried to pose infant Terra in the sterile shadows with her hospital cap pulled down.
“Can you add a gold halo afterward?” Susan asked.
“I think so,” the photographer said.
When the pictures came back, Susan focused on Terra’s brown eyes and long fingers. The horn was part of her daughter. She loved her as much as a non-horned child like it was simply an arm or a nose.
The photographer secretly mailed the photographs to their town’s newspaper, but Susan wasn’t having that. She sent a terse note to the editor and the story didn’t run.
Terra’s life was mostly normal, but there were differences. She wouldn’t nurse in a traditional way. Susan found herself on all fours, with her breasts hanging down. She didn’t know why she offered milk like that to her newborn, but it was instinctual somehow. Susan had read parenting books and was aware children ate mud and grass out of curiosity, but Terra refused all other foods when it came to solid foods.
Terra crawled with her hands and feet, back arched, fingers and toes tightly together to better grip the ground. Susan often found her like that in the backyard or the park or on her parents’ farm, with her head back laughing.
When Terra had her first birthday party, Susan only invited friends and family. However, there were many uninvited guests that arrived as if Terra was the baby Jesus in a manger. A long line of lambs, kid goats, calves, and ponies came up their suburban driveway, wrapped gifts in their mouths and parents lingering nearby.
Susan baked an alfalfa-flavored smash cake, and everyone sang, brayed, or snorted their best wishes before running circles in the backyard paddock. There was obviously no “Pin The Tail On the Donkey” game. That felt like a step too far and the foal’s parents gave her a pleading glance when they arrived.
For the next four years, Terra’s life was happy outside of a few stares and whispers in the grocery store. There was fingerpainting and visits to the local art museum. When it came time for kindergarten, Susan set her down to explain school and that the other children might notice she was different.
Terra smiled as her mother packed a lunch of granola and sprouts.
“It’s okay, Mama. I’ll try my best.”
As Susan dropped Terra off for her first day, she smiled at the familiar trotting gait. She saw Terra swept her bangs to the side when she met another little girl. Susan felt an urge to run after her on all fours, but resisted because that’s what mothers do.