Thomas Broderick

Leah, upon returning home from a business trip, discovered an extraterrestrial sitting on the living room couch. It slowly turned its head toward her, meeting her indigo eyes with its obsidian ones. The alien was humanoid in form, the rough, hairless skin the color of old pennies. Flaring slits existed in the place of nostrils.

Kicking off her heels, Leah showed no hesitation as she walked across the room and stood directly in front of it. “Daniel, what in the hell do you think you’re doing?!”

Unintelligible sounds passed between its paper-thin lips.

“Don’t give me that crap,” Leah replied, her voice rapidly fluctuating between anger and fear. “What if one of our neighbors had knocked at the door? What if the blinds had been open? I could have had someone with me!” She ran into the bedroom, quickly returning with a pillow in her right hand. She threw it at the alien’s face. It missed, bouncing off the couch before coming to rest on the carpet. “You’re not invited into my bed as long as you’re like that!” Leah marched back into the bedroom and slammed the door behind her.

The creature reached down with its three-fingered hand and picked the pillow up off the floor. As the sound of crying began to carry through the bedroom door, it grasped the pillow with all its strength. The fabric tore apart like tissue paper.

The next morning the couple sat across from one another at the kitchen table. In place of the alien was a young man in his late twenties. Frosty blonde hair topped a round face and light hazel eyes. He sipped coffee while Leah read the news on her laptop.

“About yesterday,” Daniel said, running his fingers up and down his cup. “When you were away, I had a lot of time to think. At first I was glad, grateful really, for everything we’ve done here.” His eyes darted between the possessions in their kitchen and the connected living room. “But as hard as I tried, I couldn’t…I couldn’t remember what you really looked like.” He gazed up at Leah for her reaction.

Leah closed her laptop, and took her husband’s hand. She did not speak for several seconds. “This is what I….we look like, Daniel. This is who we are. We agreed. Do you remember the alternative?” There was more, so much more, but the rest was long since repressed, words of it never having been spoken by either of them.

“I remember,” Daniel said, intertwining his fingers with hers: five against five. “I’m sorry.”

“Good.” Leah stood, nodding her head slightly. Heading towards the bathroom, she added, “You can come back to bed tonight.”

No surprises awaited Leah that evening when she arrived home from work. A scribbled note from Daniel lay on the kitchen counter. “Went out to pick up some vegetables. Be back at six.” Leah checked her wristwatch. She had an hour to herself.

Leah mechanically performed her evening routine: shower, sweat pants, glass of white wine, and feet up on the couch. Taking a sip from her glass, she leaned back onto the couch’s armrest and closed her eyes.

After a few minutes and mouthfuls of alcohol Leah began to trace the outline of her face. “You’re beautiful,” she whispered, repeating Daniel’s words the first time he had seen it. How long ago had that been, she wondered.

“Five years.” Leah sighed, finally understanding what Daniel had told her: she could not remember her old face. She would have been hard pressed to describe his if she had not just seen it the day before.

Never in that time had she changed back. Curiosity had not once prodded her to even consider the option. But now, lying there, she wondered if she still knew how. Racking her memory, she began to tap the fingers of her free hand, one at a time, against her bare stomach. 1 2 3 4 5. 1 2 3 4 5. 1 2 3 4. 1 2 3.

Leah’s eyes shot open. She stared at her hand. It was normal. Did it, had it changed? A chill running through her body, she quickly finished her wine before heading back into the kitchen to pour herself another glass.

Though Leah was certain nothing physical remained of the lives she and Daniel once led, for the rest of the evening she could not shake the urge to search their apartment and destroy any evidence she might find.

Sleep did not come easily that night. Hands hidden under the covers, Leah rubbed her fingers together, counting the digits like sheep. It did little good, and when her knuckles began to ache, she balled her hands into fists.

Her body perfectly still, the thoughts grinding through Leah’s mind became all the louder. They were words, but ones her throat, tongue, and mouth lacked the ability to speak. She began to whisper them aloud, but what came out was a poor imitation.

Groaning softly, Leah stood and walked into the bathroom. She turned on the light only when the door was shut behind her.

The medicine cabinet lacking any sleep aids, she splashed some warm water on her face before reaching for a hand towel. She dried herself in a single slow motion. The cotton cloth just below her eyes, Leah finally saw her reflection in the mirror.

Inky blackness stared back.

The scream, more of a shriek, had Daniel in the bathroom within seconds. Catching his breath, he found his wife sitting on the edge of the tub, hands covering her face.

“What happened?”

Body trembling, Leah slowly raised her head. Her eyes were shut tight. “What do you see?” She opened her eyes. As her vision cleared, all she saw was Daniel looking at her in confusion.

“Nothing’s wrong,” he said, kneeling next to her. “Did you have a nightmare or something?”

Leah shook her head. “My eyes…they were like…before.” She only mouthed the last word.

Daniel turned her face to the light for a better look. “You’re fine. You said it happened just now?” Leah nodded. “I think you’re just tired, maybe half asleep. Come on, let’s go back to bed.”

“Okay.” Leah took a deep breath before standing. Daniel leading her back into the bedroom, she quickly glanced at her reflection, just to be sure.

“Yes, she’s not feeling well today. A twenty-four hour stomach bug, she thinks. I’ll let her know. Thanks.” Daniel set Leah’s cellphone on the nightstand. Sitting on the edge of their bed, he placed a hand on his wife’s shoulder. “You get any sleep after what happened?”

“Maybe two or three hours,” Leah whispered, turning over on her back to look up at him. “Nightmares.”

“It’s not your fault,” she added as the characteristic signs of guilt came over Daniel’s face. “Can I ask you something?”

“Anything.”

“Daniel, how do you deal with it?”

Daniel sighed, and though he was dressed for work, lay on his side next to her.

“Probably not as well as you think. And since I’m being honest…the day before yesterday wasn’t the first time I changed back.”

“How many times?”

“I’ve lost count. I didn’t do it at all the first few years. I was just so relieved that we got another chance. But then it was just like I said. I began to forget. First it was my sister’s face, then my father’s…my mother’s. And then when you started to fade away, I couldn’t stand it.” Daniel paused to wrap some of Leah’s shoulder-length hair around his index finger. He examined the strands as if they were a strange curiosity. In a soft voice he added, “What’s the point of surviving if we’ve already buried ourselves?”

Leah pulled her knees up to her chest. “I know, but what if we…” She trailed off, exhaustion overcoming any possible answer.

“Think of something,” Daniel said, kissing her on the forehead. “Are you going to be okay by yourself today?”

“Go to work.” Leah had already closed her eyes.

Daniel made sure the room was dark before leaving the apartment.

Daniel, upon returning home from work, found the apartment in pitch blackness. Resting his hand on the light switch, it took him a moment to realize what had happened: their spare sheets were hanging over the living room windows, each tightly secured by long strips of duct tape.

“Leah, are you okay? Where are you?”

“Are you alone?” Leah’s voice called out from the bedroom.

“Yeah.”

“Make sure the door’s locked and don’t turn on the lights.” Her voiced wavered with hesitation. “Wait there.”

Still standing in the entryway, Daniel took off his sport coat and loosened his tie. He was about to speak again when the bedroom door creaked open.

Though his eyes had not yet completely adjusted to the dark, he could make out her figure in the doorway. It was not the woman he had told “you’re beautiful” for the first time five years prior, but the woman with whom he had bonded, the woman who had fled with him, and, most importantly, the woman he had almost forgotten.

It took Daniel only seconds to completely disrobe. Leaving his clothes in a messy pile, he took long strides across the living room. With each step his body became more like hers. Standing in front of one another, they were nearly identical in appearance. The only difference was her slight advantage in height.

For a long time the two simply looked at each other. He made the first gesture by holding out his hand. Their fingers intertwined: three against three.

He spoke her name.

She spoke his name.

That night, for the first time, they mourned all that was lost, and cherished the little that remained. They lived as who they were, rather than the people they became.

A writer living in Middle Tennessee, THOMAS BRODERICK has had his fiction appear in Curbside Splendor, Jersey Devil Press, and Prole, among other publications. A forthcoming story will appear in Space and Time later this year.

Andrea Danowski

Two hundred eighty-three miles away the melting snowpack trickled into streams. The streams traveled and grew weighty, feeding the river. The calendar in the ranger’s station hadn’t been flipped to July yet, but already the river running too high and too cold and too fast had swept away a boy from Jenningstown and a man from the next county over who had been fishing nearby when he dove in to try to save the boy. The bodies hadn’t yet been found.

Grace pulled on the two halves of her ponytail, tightening it. Her hair was hot from the sun, but when she brushed some dirt off her leg, she felt goosebumps. The summer air up near the campsite felt stifling even in the shade. But here next to the river, the last breaths of winter flew up and crashed down against Grace’s skin, disguised as a breeze. She imagined the air above the river moving just as fast as the water below it, twisting in invisible whorls and vortexes. She knew it was the movement of the cold water against the hot air that created the changes in pressure, created the turbulence. She thought if the air above the river had color, it would share the same palette of the sunset from last night, the candy pinks and spiced oranges.

The drive to camp yesterday had been long and hot. Grace didn’t mind sharing the backseat of her parents’ car with her brother on the yearly trip, but their legs were longer this year and he was less accommodating to her compulsion to attach herself to him in some way during the six-hour haul. He wouldn’t let her hold his hand while it rested on the upholstered hump between them anymore, and he bounced his shoulder against her head if she attempted to lean in for a nap. She leaned against the window instead, the sun burning her eyes through their lids, and the tremors of the highway traveling up through the tires, up through the metal of the car, vibrating the window against her face.

They had already set up their camp by the time the Hamiltons got there. Like every year. And like every year, Grace’s dad and Mr. Hamilton hugged like it had been forever, called each other Genius and Skipper, respectively. The mothers hugged politely as wives of college friends should, the boys ran off somewhere. Olivia mostly ignored Grace this year, but agreed to let her help set up her tent. They had their own tents this year, much to Genius’ disapproval. He didn’t want to have to buy a new tent for Grace, but had relented after a telephone call from Skipper a few weeks ago.

Grace would be starting high school after the summer. Olivia, two years older, seemed different this year. Maybe it was the ties of her bikini peeking out of her shirt by her neck, touching the end of her ponytail. Maybe it was the ponytail, not her usual mess of hair fumbling everywhere. Grace remembered the bottle of glittery purple nail polish she brought with her, bought and packed because she thought Olivia might like to do manicures with her some boring afternoon. But Olivia had already painted her finger- and toenails a soft pearly pink. Grace suggested that Olivia set up her tent close to her own. Olivia didn’t object, but zipped herself inside her tent early, claiming travel exhaustion.

The boys left camp in the morning before Grace had a chance to tag along, leaving her with Olivia. The girls lounged next to the river all day, laying side-by-side on a plaid blanket in their bathing suits and shorts, legs not hot but beginning to tan. It was hard not to notice there was less bank this year, the river overrunning itself, bending the saplings.

Sometimes they would both be on their stomachs, sometimes on their backs. Olivia thumbed through the magazines stolen from her mother, the latest Cosmo and People and O, delivered just as they were packing. Grace held a copy of Flowers in the Attic between her eyes and the sun. It was Olivia’s book, handed to Grace after breakfast, the spine pinstriped and the pages with the sexy parts already dog-eared. Grace looked forward to the dark privacy of her tent later: by electric lantern light she would instead read the books she had brought with her — The Catcher in the Rye and The Tempest.

Sometimes Grace sat up and flipped over the other way so she could run her hand through antennae of tall grass, taking a break from the book. Sometimes she felt things she couldn’t explain. She wanted to tickle the skin of Olivia’s feet when she pulled out a particularly long blade. She wanted to draw a line with it up the back of Olivia’s leg and poke it under the cuff of her shorts. She wanted to scratch the skin of Olivia’s back, pulling her unpainted fingernails over the freckles that were silently forming in the deeper layers of her skin, the dark flecks of pigment eating up the sun. But instead she drew circles and lines in the dirt, bit at the inside of her mouth.

Grace leaned her head against her shoulder, her etched circles turning into spirals. She realized she was chewing on her cheek harder than usual. Her tongue felt the ridges her teeth left in the tissue of her mouth, then flitted out to her lips, tasting her own skin. “Do you ever wonder what it feels like to touch your tongue to another tongue?” Grace asked, sitting up.

Olivia continued reading “10 Steamy Positions to Make Your Guy Beg for More” in one of the magazines, then pulled a finger out of her mouth and placed it on The Reverse Cowgirl before turning to Grace. “What a little freak. Haven’t you kissed a boy yet?”

A fly buzzed around the two of them and landed on the back of Olivia’s knee. Grace noticed the way it rubbed its hands together like it was scheming. She imagined the places the fly had been before landing on her friend’s leg: a puddle, a garbage can, the roof of the latrine, a leaf, a bird, her parents’ car, a pile of Bandit’s shit, the garbage again, and then Olivia.

“Bugs are so fascinating.”

“What?” Olivia made a face and turned back to her magazine. “You’ve probably never kissed a boy because you talk about bugs all the time. That’s just weird.”

“You’re weird.”

Olivia swung her leg at Grace. Grace caught the kick and traced the faint paths of Olivia’s veins on the back of her calf with her finger. Olivia pulled her leg away and sat up, punched Grace in the arm. She kneeled then and grabbed Grace’s face with both hands, her ponytail swinging. Annoyed, she placed her lips on Grace’s. She left them there until Grace relaxed just a bit, then used them to tug at her bottom lip. Grace opened her mouth, allowing Olivia’s tongue to enter. She tasted it for just a second before pulling away. It felt like a warm alien, tasted like applesauce.

Olivia lay back down in front of her magazine and readjusted her breasts in her bikini against the ground. “If you ever tell anyone that happened, I’ll kill you. I will fucking throw you in the river.”

Rolling her tongue around in her mouth, Grace tried to recreate the feeling. But it wasn’t the same at all. She touched her fingers to her lips and wondered what it would feel like to have Olivia’s hands wrapped around her neck. Would her pearly pink nail polish chip, lodge itself in her skin? She wondered how cold the water in the river really was. She wondered if she would drown in it right away. Would her body float? Would the eagle fledglings tear chunks off as it traveled, or would the seagulls peck at it after it rode the swift current the whole way to the ocean?

Grace stood up and walked to the edge of the water. Chilled droplets splashed her legs while she found a flat rock to sit on. She sat and plunged her feet into the water, screamed from the shock of the cold. It felt colder than anything she had felt before, colder than snow. Colder than an ice cube dropped down the back of her shirt. She wondered if the water would be cold enough to preserve her body from decomposing.

She caught her breath and without turning her head away from the river said, “Hey Liv, did you know there are these worms that live in icebergs? They just melt when you take them out of the ice.” She wondered if Olivia’s silence meant she was rolling her eyes. Or maybe she just couldn’t hear her over the rough rush of the river. She pulled a long wet piece of grass from the ground beside her and traced the outline of her lips with it before tossing it into the water, wondered when the boys would get back.

A 200-word version of “Black River” previously appeared in Monkeybicycle.

ANDREA DANOWSKI’s work has appeared in SmokeLong Quarterly, Monkeybicycle, and Nontrue, among others. She lives in Southern California.

Christine Reilly

Natasha attended her first Halloween party dressed as a French kiss. She wore a beret with a piece of crepe paper labeled Hershey’s Kisses on it, and made a dress out of aluminum foil. Underneath, she wore a black dance leotard. Molly had come over and they got ready together. Molly wore braids and carried a mug of hot chocolate. She was Swiss Miss, from the hot chocolate box.

Natasha’s sisters lived in the awkward phase of being too young to attend pubescent Halloween parties, but claimed to be too old to go trick-or-treating. They planned on spending all night watching Hocus Pocus on ABC Family and eating Reese’s Pieces from the neighborhood CVS. They helped her and Molly get dressed.

I’m so excited for you! You’re going to kiss a cute boy! crooned Lucy.

A girl in Natasha’s grade named Tatiana hosted the party. Natasha played her first game of seven minutes in heaven. She christened heaven as the backyard. A boy named Ben Shmirker picked her out. She had barely even noticed him before. He told jokes about everyone else’s mother and made obscene gestures with his mouth and fingers during class pictures. The way Natasha’s mind worked was that she typically noticed quiet people more than people who relished in the center of attention.

Earlier in the night, Natasha had left her remains in the bathroom: all of the aluminum foil had fallen off at that point, thin and shiny layers. She was left in her dance leotard. Ben grabbed her hand by the wrist. His thumb and pointer finger overlapped. He was almost two full heads shorter than she. He called her honey. Natasha thought me? They kissed.

Take off your shirt.

Pardon? Natasha asked. Her first kiss felt like nothing, like bumping into somebody while taking public transportation, any setting when she would neither want to thank someone for touching her nor feel violated. She didn’t want to take off her shirt. She felt like she was in class, or in church. Anywhere where it would be inappropriate.

You heard me.

I’m not comfortable. Natasha had always been taught that whenever you’re in a situation where you aren’t comfortable, you should let people know. The other person might not know this. Though, Ben seemed like he knew this. How could he not? Natasha was blinking twice the amount she usually blinked. She kept brushing her sleeves, like she had invisible beetles and crickets on her.

Come on, said Ben. You know you want to.

Not really. Natasha felt how chilly it was in the backyard. Why did they name heaven the backyard? Why was heaven so cold in October?

This is what you’re supposed to do.

I don’t feel good. When Natasha was a baby, every time she was embarrassed, she would tell her parents that she had a stomachache. I can’t go to school today. I have a stomachache. I can’t play with Lucy and Carly. I have a stomachache. Natasha would never admit that she didn’t want to do anything, just that she was physically incapable of doing it because of her stomach. In reality, Natasha’s stomach worked quite well. She had a fabulous metabolism and great digestion.

I have a stomachache.

Yeah right. You’re a dyke, and everyone knows it.

Oh really? She left the backyard and went back inside, through the sliding doors of the basement. It seemed like all teenage saturnalia occurred in people’s basement, as though they had to retreat to those depths in order to explore themselves with sex and drinking at their grandest capacity.

Molly put an arm around her best friend. How was he?

He was all right, said Natasha. She didn’t want anyone to think she was a prude. Or a dyke. But what was so wrong with being gay? Uncle Sawyer and Uncle Noah were gay. Maybe it’s different for girls, she thought. But the more she thought about it, the more she knew that it wasn’t.

She thought to herself, am I gay? She didn’t think she was. She had thought she liked boys, but at this point couldn’t really picture liking anybody. She thought that maybe she was asexual like the fungi and plants they studied in science class. People were probably asexual, sure. It was most likely a birth defect. Oh well.

With the luck she carried for the night she did not want to continue the game. She’d had enough. Instead she went into the living room upstairs and watched It’s The Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown, with an Sri Lankan immigrant boy in her class named Ajay. Ajay hadn’t wanted to play either, but he had been invited. A pity invite, Natasha thought. Natasha sat with him, not speaking, waiting for her father to pick her up at eleven.

The American culture was so different from Ajay’s home culture, which nobody had ever asked him about. Natasha and her peers convinced themselves that they had nothing in common with Ajay. Even sitting next to him on the couch that felt stubbly like kitty litter, Natasha believed that she could not be friends with him. Did Ajay get homesick? Last year, Natasha went to astronomy camp for two weeks and cried into her pillow every night, thinking about how much she missed home. She made lists of all the things she missed. Lucy’s hair. Eating pineapple in Tupperware on the kitchen counter. The sculpture of Adonis in our bathroom. She realized that this feeling of homesick granted her an identity that she had never realized in a finite sense before. Leaving home allowed her to understand who she was. Maybe Ajay was the most self-actualized person her age, with regards to his personal Diaspora.

At 10:00 p.m., she pictured herself kissing Ajay because she was bored and kissing was on her mind. So maybe she wasn’t asexual.

What’s Sri Lankan food like? Natasha’s breech of silence was abrupt, like a sandpiper swooping down to grab lunch.

None of your fucking business, said Ajay. Two months of being ostracized at an American school left him hardened and suspicious of anyone who asked him a question that had a purpose other than transactional. He yawned very loudly, accidentally. Natasha studied his mouth. The way he yawned was human adjacent with the intensity of his words.

Claudio had been listening to old Halloween music loudly in the car ride home. The B-52’s.

Turn it off, Daddy.

Something wrong?

I hate you. Why did you have to pick me up so late?

You could have called me. Mommy and I were just at home watching movies with the girls. Did something bad happen?

I had a stomachache.

Claudio reached into his pocket. Want some Pepto-Bismol?

Natasha paused. She didn’t want her father to know she had been lying, but didn’t know what would happen if she took medicine on a perfectly healthy stomach. No.

With his eyes on the road, Claudio reached over to dishevel Natasha’s hair. She ducked.

Don’t touch me anymore, Daddy. I’m too old to be touched. Besides, you’re going to have an accident.

Penguin, I used to drive a stretch limo all over New York City, said Claudio. You don’t need to worry about me driving.

Accidents happen all the time, said Natasha. That’s why they’re called accidents.

When Natasha got home, Lucille and Carly ran to her. Their tongues were blue and their hands had ring-pop residue. Carly asked her, did you kiss a cute boy?

I kissed someone, but I can’t remember if he’s cute. Natasha could not picture his face. She remembered how his breath felt waxy, like parchment paper, but she couldn’t even remember if he had freckles or the color of his eyes.

What was he dressed as?

The Monopoly man. Actually, Ben had been dressed as a vampire, but Natasha didn’t want to think about sucking or nighttime. Vampires seemed too sexual to her. She wanted to picture Ben as a fat old man with a monocle and two giant bags of money that he carried over his shoulder like a tramp and his bindle.

One week after she had her first kiss, Natasha volunteered at a retirement home. She had to complete ten hours per semester as a requirement for her middle school’s National Junior Honor Society. She was matched with a ninety-year-old man named Roy. Roy didn’t want to play checkers, and every thirty seconds or so he kept turning to Natasha and telling her that she was the prettiest girl he had ever seen.

You’re so sweet!

I love you.

You have pretty hair.

You have beautiful lips…I’d love to kiss ’em!

Roy was persistent but harmless, so Natasha let him have his fun. She noticed that he had a wedding ring on.

Samantha, he told her. We were married for fifty-two years. She was my first kiss, you know. First and last.

Do you ever get lonely? asked Natasha.

Once in a while. Then I think about being buried with her. It’s not so bad, thinking about that. Samantha used to bite her lip all the time. We didn’t get to have children, which maybe would have made it a bit easier. I could’ve remembered her in the way our son could’ve laughed or the way our daughter’s chin could’ve looked. My memory’s not so great now, you know, and every time I think of her she gets fuzzier and fuzzier. A pretty girl here and there like you helps spark the old memory. Would you believe that sometimes memory can be the best medicine?

CHRISTINE REILLY lives in New York. She got her MFA at Sarah Lawrence College. She has been nominated for the Best New Poets Prize, among others. She has been published in over forty journals. She likes wearing shoes that make her the tallest person in the room. She hates hokey people, the Disney channel, and not much else. She bakes a mean cookie-brownie hybrid. She reads an average of 100 books a year. She used to work at a mental hospital. She currently teaches writing to hospital patients in the city. She loves rock and roll.