“In Tandem” from Nature Trail Stories

Shannon McLeod

Person rides their bicycle to therapy. It’s a tandem. They have added outdated science textbooks to the basket in back to weigh down the empty half of the bike. Person picked the books up from the school’s dumpster last week. The school marks the halfway point to work, and now it also marks where they picked up old books, and the time when the books became necessary.

Therapist is too chipper. A self-proclaimed athlete, her biceps stretch the armholes of her polyester polo. She probably plays tennis on days when she wants to “take it easy.” Person is talking about their coworkers: the one who is passive-aggressive and the other who is just aggressive. Therapist urges Person to be gentle with themself. Person brings up their mother because they don’t know what else to say. Suddenly, the sound of screaming. Stomping. A string of expletives like an incantation. 

“Sorry about that,” Therapist chuckles without a trace of discomfort on her face. “That’s group therapy in the room next door.”

Person cannot bring themself to talk about the breakup with Therapist, who has clearly never been rejected. Person has this realization after they hear a guttural scream from the other side of the office wall, beyond the hyacinth which somehow never wilts. 

After this session, Person hangs around the parking lot. First, they pretend to fiddle around with the bike lock, eyes darting up to the office door at grandfather clock intervals. Eventually, they take a seat at the picnic table. They inspect the worn wood because they’ve left their phone at home. The sense of timelessness is disorienting but comfortable. The word PERFECTIONISM is carved in all capital letters and then crossed out with a gouge. I free myself from my story of myself is written in permanent marker against the grain. 

Then, the sound of the door opening. Five people scatter in different directions without goodbyes, as though they’re all exiting a grocery store. Guy walks in Person’s direction. They perk up, say hello. Guy looks around. He sweeps his head, like he’s just making sure the hello wasn’t for him. He turns back to Person. “Oh, hi.” He halts his swift pace.

Person asks if he likes group therapy. “I’m thinking of trying it,” they add to minimize his potential defensiveness. “Individual therapy just isn’t for me,” they say to show they are equally vulnerable to the world.

He comes closer. “It’s good. Really good.”

“I’ve heard screaming.” 

He steps a leg over the bench and takes a seat at the picnic table across from Person. “It’s not about the screaming, it’s about other people being there to witness your screams.” 

Person nods. This picnic table seems to be an extension of the therapists’ office. 

“It opens you up to peace and kindness, knowing your anger is accepted.” 

Person asks if they can join. Guy says it’s too late; the group started last month and won’t open up for a new cohort until next fall. He says he will witness Person’s screams, though. He says the best place to scream is on the river.

Person takes the textbooks out of the basket, stacks them on the table. 

“Are you worried about those?” he asks. “You can leave them in my car if you want.” Person says no. They try to get the tandem into his car, but it won’t fit. 

Person sits on the front seat of their bike and welcomes Guy on the back seat. His weight is greater than the textbooks. He makes it so Person must push harder on the pedals. But the bike is steadier, too, not jostling over potholes. Guy shouts directions as they enter traffic. They turn onto a residential street. Person sees his pointing hand in their peripheral vision. There’s a narrow dirt path, parting the tree line. The bike bumps over roots and rocks. Branches whip their elbows. Guy tells Person to slow down, and they come to the river. Dust kicks up as they brake. They get off the bike and Person props up the kickstand. They walk to the water. 

“Is there a special way to do this?”

“Yes, but you’ll know when you’re ready.”

Person gulps air and then screams. The water ripples where fish are traveling or maybe just the soundwaves of their screaming. When Person is empty enough for now, they turn to Guy. Guy nods. 

They both sit down, setting their feet in the sandy dirt at the water’s edge. There’s foamy buildup at the shore that reminds Person of root beer floats, which they loved so much in childhood and haven’t tasted since. The water is a rich brown, its color deepened by dead leaves and animal feces. Person takes a deep breath, and the sweet, rotten smell almost makes them sick. Beautiful things are sometimes repulsive and vice versa. Mosquitos are getting fat from Person’s blood and they don’t care. They no more feel the insect mouths than they would feel a single bristle scrub their back molar when brushing their teeth. 

Guy and Person are silent for a while. Their hands planted in patchy grass. Guy yelps, a sputter of a scream, and Person hears it echo. Guy rubs his hands on his denim knees. Person thinks he is ready to push himself up. Instead, he holds his palm to Person, turns and gives them a look like, Why not? And—as though it’s easy—Person takes his hand. They watch the geese bob through the gentle rapids and out of sight. The two hold a tiny bubble of warm space between their palms.

“Before Going to Sleep, Many of Us Draw Up a Balance Sheet” from Cunning, Baffling, Powerful

Sean Ennis

Today’s topic in group therapy is “dreams.” What Benny the Therapist intends is a discussion of our life in recovery without drugs and alcohol. But quickly the discussion turns to the ways we are haunted at night during sleep.

Marco R. dreams of being at a wedding and trying to find a moment when no one would interrupt his time with the bartender. Sheila Y. dreams of being at a party filled with acrid crack smoke that no one else seems to notice. Wayne C. says in his dream he’s driving a car he can’t properly control, navigating backwards with no working brakes.

“No,” Benny the Therapist says, “Your dreams. Like, your hopes for the future.” An expert once said dreams are really just wish fulfillment. So, Marco R. says, “To drink without consequence.”

Sheila Y. says, “To find something I like nearly as much.”

Wayne C. says, “Trade stocks again. Finally buy that boat.”

This is not a place to properly dream. The sheets are just a bit too short for the small bed, and the heat is set at 55 degrees. Our roommates want to listen to the BBC, the sounds of waves crashing, Sports Center, when the rest of us prefer quiet. And we know, at 5:30am, LaToya the Client Assistant will barge into the lockless room demanding we wake for breakfast, meetings, meetings, lunch, meetings, meetings, meetings.

Which is not to say we don’t feel safe at night. The campus is buried in the woods, and the only unwanted visitors are coyotes, which seem menacing, but are really just tall cowards and whiners.

Sunday afternoons are for visitors. This is a cruel joke. Those of us with guests are too tired to be put on display. We zombie through the tour. Those without can nap, watch football, but are feeling abandoned.

We’re not allowed to sleep through meetings, but they leave a few of us alone. Crystal S., for instance, whose backstory is the worst, who sits in the back with the hood of her sweatshirt up, fighting bad demons, but not snoring.

The rest of us all snore.

Crystal S. is here for her own safety, her family and friends more toxic than any drug she might be addicted to. But for the two hours a day, when she’s awake, and removes her hood, and smiles, we all can see it. Why others would want to be around her, push her around, surround her like schoolyard bullies. She clearly has a lot of love in her heart, and if anyone fucks with Crystal S. from now on, they’ll have to answer to all of us.

“Faint Memories of a Disaster” as seen in Afterimages

JD Clapp

*Disclaimer: The following story is factual and depicts disturbing images. Reader discretion is advised.*

Between first and second period, standing by a fence on the lower field, we heard the boom from above. I watched the burning jet cartwheel, wagging a tail of fire and smoke, spiraling, somersaulting, earthbound. A remember a stoner kid pulled my arm. Look, he screamed. I turned just in time to see the jet plummet into the ground. We felt the boom and a shudder strong as an earthquake. We watched the fireball, then the mushroom cloud, first orange, then black as oil.

For a minute, the world seemed to stand still, silent like the woods when a predator is hunting, silent like the pause before your first kiss. The stunned silence gave way to screams, followed by loud nervous banter.

I went to an all-boys Catholic school. Kids came from all over San Diego to attend. I remember the handfuls from the neighborhood running home in panic. I remember priests and teachers jumping into cars, racing off to help, to rescue the rescuable with tires screeching.

Smoke, thick and greasy, blackened the sky. It was eerie. A Santa Ana breeze carried the acrid, hot stench of burned rubber, jet fuel, and woodsmoke.

Sirens erupted all morning. I remember waiting with nervous speculation. We stood outside for hours milling, watching it unfold. We waited for some instructions, for some updates, for anything that would make this normal.

Then, the kids and teachers began to trickle back, shell-shocked, looking like zombies. They reported bodies still strapped to their seats hanging in trees, burned corpses, smoldering appendages strewn everywhere for blocks. There was luggage in trees, smashed through the roofs of parked cars. They described the burning metal, the melted cars, the horror. Horror.

Then the rumors started. A stoner kid took a severed hand so he could steal the diamond ring on it. They said he stashed it in his locker.

Some senior grabbed a piece of the plane and was showing it off behind the gym. My buddy, Rolo, said he saw it. Some sophomore kid who lived in the neighborhood ran home to find out his house was just gone—a hole in the ground. His mother and baby brother were gone too. They even said the local divorcee, the one all the neighborhood boys’ thought was hot, burned to death. Her house was flattened by the jet.

Then, the body bags arrived on a never-ending assembly line. Seniors, teachers, cops and fireman, all pitched in. Our gym served as a makeshift morgue.

There were helicopters landing on the football field, news trucks parked on the grass. Around noon, we were declared safe to go home. But there were no cell phones in 1978. The landlines went down with the jet. The power went out for half the city, snarling traffic, and making essential news updates difficult. All the roads in the area were closed anyway. So, we walked to the bus stop. But there were no busses running because of the plane crash. So, we kept walking. All the kids in my carpool walked together. We scampered on for miles. We finally arrived home five hours later.

Our parents asked if we were okay and if anyone was hurt.

We were okay, but we were not really okay.

That week, Time Magazine put our school on the cover. School was closed for a week. Maybe more. I honestly can’t remember. I do remember teachers and older kids coming back with PTSD, before PTSD was a thing. Some of them left the school, some of them could never fly again, stuck forever in the long shadow of PSA Flight 182.

The morning we resumed class, we had a mass for the dead in the same gym that housed them just days earlier. The priests read 144 names. These names, smells, and horrible sights are my first memories of high school.

“Potatoes” from Musical Figures

Samn Stockwell

I am roasting a chicken

and arguing. Change appears

slowly, the slow browning in the oven,

my thickened waist bulging in my tee shirt.

Am I mistaking

this spasm of anger for future pattern?

A nice roaring I make

perusing the funnels and torrents of rage.

How grateful I was

for that one afternoon I could see something;

not a blight moving across the floor, one

strong light over the kitchen sink,

one garden of mint & pennyroyal waving

an ocean where I am less tried.

“Every Living Day” from Every Living Day

Adam Gianforcaro

To give up convenience, to wear patience like walls 

draped in soot. To do no harm.

I try my best. But the little I do seems so little.

Map out the landfills. Bury yourself in plastic.

Every novelty cup filled to the brim

with unbearable, living pain.

O Sorrowful Earth, this is sorrow overflowing.

The streets are flooded with it.

Fish swim right up to our doorsteps.

The scary kind, too, with headlamps

and daggers for teeth.

When I can no longer kneel, I will wade myself

toward repentance, beg forgiveness—

for folding banana peels in tin foil,

for drinking coffee from a Keurig.

Every living day I fuck the earth with negligence.

Earlier this summer, I ran over a mouse

with the lawnmower. Sliced it in half

like the ocean divorcing the sky.

And the mouse was a newborn, with mama mouse

giving birth to her second pup right there

in that verdant patch of trauma.

As if to live without harm is to be born into the blade.

And as it happened, while the mouse

twitched itself into stillness,

I thought immediately of this silly song

from summer camp: It’s cheese, cheese,

cheese that makes the mice go ’round.

We’d squeak our campfire voices

and wave our arms like ribbons.

and we would scream it as loud as we could:

IT’S LOVE, LOVE,

LOVE THAT MAKES THE WORLD GO ’ROUND!

What is love if not sharp and spinning

and smelling of earth?

The truth is harder to swallow. And the truth is this:

I am a terrible partner.

I tell the Earth I’m sorry, write halfhearted elegies

for field mice, only to fall victim

to fast fashion and Amazon Prime.

What I mean is this: I try my best

when it is convenient to do so.

And now I’ll zoom out, place the blame elsewhere,

create alternate histories

to make myself seem less culpable.

Privilege is the planet from which all of this is possible.

Convenience is a world on fire.

And to give up that convenience, to do no harm.

I’ll pretend to not know the answer when I ask, But how?

“A Sun Was Once a Reflection” from Cloud Picker

Sy Brand

I try not to look

at reflections

in the water (the sun,

a frayed rope swing,

a ghost,

perhaps) especially myself;

they remind me too much

of what they reflect (the sun is dying,

the rope swing snapped,

the ghost wanted something it could touch,

myself—well—)

the sun

is

dying;

I want something I can touch,

so I touch reflections, eyes

averted, my fingers cold like a ghost,

and the reflections fade like the sun,

and I try not to look,

but I feel all the suns who have died in this place.