by Brian Long



“The World’s Largest Jigsaw Puzzle is a Bitch to Solve.”

This was the headline smeared across the front page of Nebraska’s largest newspaper, like a bold font slap in the mouth.  Brannigan, Nebraska, which was hailed as being the home of the World’s Largest Jigsaw Puzzle on all of its billboards, was a small town without much money to its name, and its citizens were tired of being mocked for their incomplete roadside attraction.  The desperate need for a new tourist trap had been growing since the Great Fire of ’66.  Brannigan lost two attractions on that day, when the World’s Largest Match was burnt down by the newly completed World’s Largest Magnifying Glass.  The oversized ocular assistant was taken down when it was deemed to be far too dangerous to Brannigan, and any oversized objects that might be constructed in the future.  As time went by the town burrowed deeper and deeper into financial ruin.  Brannigan’s citizens were looking for any excuse to stage a political coup and with the printing of this article they were certain they had found it.  The small town’s mayor, Cal Janson, was certain the newspaper article would become his epitaph if he couldn’t assure the people at the town hall that the puzzle would be finished soon.

“Okay, if we could refrain from throwing anymore bottles or shoes, especially those of you wearing high heels, we can continue with the questions,” said Cal, nervously adjusting the tie that felt way too large around his straw-thin neck.

“We’re the laughing stock of the entire county Mr. Mayor!”

“I don’t think there was a question in there,” Cal said.  He dabbed his handkerchief, which was now soaked with liquid fear, against his charcoal hair.

“My question is, why on Earth didn’t we make the world’s largest dictionary instead!?”

The crowd began to murmur in agreement.

“People, we are only forty pieces away from finishing the puzzle!  Now it’s true, we still can’t tell what the image on the puzzle is, but I am certain once the last few pieces are put into place it will all make sense.  And I hope all of you will be coming out for the big celebration tomorrow where we will be finishing the puzzle; won’t that be great?”

The crowd gave a tepid reaction, and then the mayor continued.

“Also, Mr. Cappello, they turned down your world’s largest dictionary idea nearly thirty years ago, you’ve really got to let it go.”

Cal began to survey the crowd for the next question when one of the townspeople exclaimed:

“He’s only saying that ‘cause he’s porkin’ the puzzle maker’s niece!”

Cal took a nervous glance at his wife, Carli; she had recently been kicked out of her second attempt at anger management and things were always a bit sticky those first few post-therapy days.  This time she had been kicked out for proclaiming that “This shit is for pussies!” in the middle of a group therapy session.

Carli stood up from her seat, gently brushed off her purple dress, tucked her brown hair behind her ear and stepped up to the podium.

“Good people of Brannigan, to make the claim that attempting to finish the world’s largest puzzle is the result of nepotism because of my relationship with the puzzle’s creator is ludicrous.  My ties to my Uncle Sebastian are strained at best, and as far as the newspaper article is concerned…”

Cal was amazed by his wife; she had always had a calm and levelheaded side that few people besides himself had the opportunity to see; he couldn’t believe this was actually his wife, reasoning and keeping the peace with the crowd.  And then she said this:

“Honestly?  Who reads the fucking newspaper anymore, for Christ’s sake?”

“This meeting is adjourned, thank you everyone,” said Cal, grabbing his wife and bolting off stage while the sound of boos, shattering glass, and shoes thumping against the wall accompanied their mad dash.



At the ceremony the following morning, Cal remained nervous.  It looked as though the entire town had showed up at the grand unveiling.  Many of them had stopped at Fiscal Frank’s Flea market before arriving, which was having a sale on angry mob supplies.  They had all purchased bargain priced pitchforks, torches, or Molotov cocktails and each of them was prepared to handle their problems in the manner that their town was famous for: a good old fashioned mob scene.

Cal’s attentions were split between the volunteers putting the last few puzzle pieces into place and his watch, which was reminding him with each tick of the second hand that Carli was running late.  He still could not determine what the image was that the tiny pieces were supposed to make once they had been put into their proper position.  The rabid gerbils that currently inhabited his stomach calmed a bit when he saw his wife approaching the podium alongside her uncle.

Uncle Sebastian had always been considered a pariah in Brannigan and he wore this small-town judgment proudly like a crown.

“Screw ‘em,” he always said.  “If I want to be like those cow-humpin’-corn-suckers I would burn all my books and plant my ass on a tractor.”

Sebastian was never one to keep his thoughts to himself, but in the past few years he had stopped speaking.  It was as though his voice was a mom-and-pop store in a run-down neighborhood, boarding up its doors forever.  All he did now was read book after book about space travel.  The idea of flying through the cosmos had always fascinated him.  Everyone in Carli’s family always assumed it was because of his disdain for Earth and everyone on it.  He collected every newspaper article he could about America’s first moon landing and hung it on his office wall; in fact, it was on July 27^th, 1969 one week after the moon landing, that he was commissioned by the town to build the world’s largest jigsaw puzzle.  Sebastian was a master toy maker and specialized in puzzles; while the town desperately needed some kind of attraction to get tourists into Brannigan.  It seemed like the perfect match.  Five years later, Sebastian completed his magnum opus.  A 1,000,000,001 piece puzzle that was exactly the length of the open land on the outskirts of the town; and now, nearly thirty years after its creation, it was complete.

“How’s he doing?” Cal whispered to his wife.

“I dunno, silent Sally still won’t say a damn thing,” she said.  “I don’t understand, he was always flapping his gums when I was a kid.  Ah, damn it!  I’m sorry honey; I just can’t keep my cool.”

“It’s really alright, dear.  Once today is over I think things will get a lot easier for us.”

Cal loved his wife; some would say in spite of her rage fueled outbursts, but it was rather because of them that he fell in love with her.  The two of them were like the two halves of a black and white cookie; unimpressive separately, but once you put them together, they created something perfect.



In college, Carli was the president of the university’s Cause of the Week Club which protested on behalf of a different organization each week, regardless of whether or not this meant supporting conflicting ideologies.  In the span of one month they protested on behalf of the Vegans of America Group, the Meat Packing Labor Union, Mothers Infuriated by Lazy Kids (or MILK), and Nobody Asked You Mom, Now Leave Me Alone So I Can Play My Video Games, I’ll Get A Job Tomorrow (or NAYMNLMASICPMVGIGAJT).  The club gave Carli the perfect outlet for her pent-up rage.  She could yell, threaten, burn effigies, and make signs that had both a social message, and some kind of pun.

Cal was the president of the Indifference Society.  The majority of their meetings were spent discussing what they should do that week, but Cal always made sure that meeting time was always set aside for Carli, who came to their meetings in the hopes of recruiting more people for her next protest.  Cal fell in love with the way her lips curled back when she snarled, and the way her small mole looked on her cheek when it reddened with fury.  He went to all of her protests.  It was on the day she punched out a cop to protect him while he was tied to a holly bush that he knew he was in love.  Cal asked her to be his campaign manager for his bid at the class presidency, and thanks to her ingenious smear tactics he won by a landslide and finally gained the courage to ask her on a date.  She said yes.



“I want to thank everyone for coming today,” Cal said into the microphone.  “The last puzzle piece is being put into place now and then one of the brave pilots from Fort Ramrod will be flying over to tell us just what exactly is on the puzzle!  Yeah!”

A few charitable claps were given to the mayor as the final piece was dropped into its destined position with a click.

“Oh my God,” Cal said, “oh my God, ohmyGodohmyGod.”

“Shut up, honey,” Carli said.

Cal spotted the jet plane a few short miles from the puzzle; he clapped his sweaty palms together in anticipation and turned on the walkie-talkie he had strapped to his belt.

“This is Mayor Cal Jansen,” he said as the black square croaked with feedback, “are you in position?”

“Roger that, Mr. Mayor, I am in position,” the pilot replied.

“So, what do you see?”

Cal proudly held the walkie-talkie up to the microphone so the rest of Brannigan could share in this moment.

“Well… uh… it looks to be… some kind of… some kind of phallus.”

Cal gripped the podium tightly; the rapid gerbils had taken hold of his stomach with ruthless aggression and were spreading to his entire body.

“It’s a what?”

“I’m pretty sure it’s a big penis, sir.”

Sebastian began to laugh hysterically like a man whose sanity was slowly slipping away.  He made no attempt to hide his laughter at his nephew-in-law’s expense; his wrinkled hands clapped together as he watched the townspeople growing angrier and angrier.  Cal threw the walkie-talkie onto the ground and looked the old man in his face, which was contorted from the swells of laughter that seemed unending.

“You spent taxpayer money to make a giant puzzle with the image of A PENIS?” Cal screamed.



The puzzle didn’t actually contain an image of a penis.  The pilot, Jack Trubee, had been seeing penises everywhere lately.  These phallic phantoms were the product of his repressed sexual desire for Ring Pops and his recent completion of a community college course on psychological literary analysis.



“How are you not more upset about this?” Cal asked his wife.

“I think it’s kinda funny,” she replied with a smirk.

The townspeople of Brannigan had had enough.  With their weapons ready they rushed the puzzle in unison, all of their anger, frustration, and embarrassment being channeled into the burning light at the ends of their bargain priced torches.  Sebastian’s laughter was silenced by the sight of swift revenge heading for his masterpiece.  He bolted down the grandstand’s steps to throw himself in front of the wave of bodies that was about to come crashing down; if they were going to destroy his work, they would have to destroy him too.  Sebastian thought about the exhausting evenings he spent working until the sun rose to cut each individual piece of the puzzle.  There were beads of sweat dripping down his face as he stared into the angry eyes of Brannigan’s citizens; they did not understand his masterpiece, despite the fact that he hoped they would.

At that moment, a black limousine came barreling down the dirt road that ran parallel to the puzzle’s vertical edge.  The limo, shining like spilled oil, stopped directly between Sebastian and the mob.  Everything was still except for the miniature American flag attached to the car’s radio antennae, which was flapping violently in the mid-afternoon breeze.  The flag’s presence seemed to suggest that the car ran purely on America’s can-do spirit.  The silence was finally broken by the clicking of the limo’s back door opening.  A large man in a blue military uniform stepped out and gave a mini salute to the tiny antennae flag.  If his body type had to be compared to a polygon, it would be a square; two squares to be exact, one large one for the body and a tiny one sitting on top for the head.

“Hi there, folks, sorry to stop you in the middle of what appeared to be an ol’ fashioned mob scene.  My name is Colonel G.T. Watts and I’m looking for a Mr. Sebastian.”

Sebastian slowly raised his hand and stepped forward.

“Sebastian, I’m Colonel Watts, damn good to meet you,” said the man, shaking Sebastian’s frail hand.  “The NASA boys noticed your little project here on one of their satellites a few months back, but we wanted to wait until the grand unveiling before we came to see ya.”

Cal tried to intervene, still under the pretenses that he was standing beside a mural of a giant penis, in the hopes of saving his political career.

“Colonel Watts,” he said, “I am so sorry about all of this; we’ll have it taken apart immediately.”

“No harm done,” Colonel Watts said, with a hard smack to Cal’s shoulder, and returned to speaking to Sebastian.  “As for you, sir, I want to tell you that I’ve worked with NASA for a few years now.  I’ve circled this little blue ball of ours more times than I can count and I came here to tell you that you’re absolutely right.”

Colonel Watts pointed to the puzzle as he said this.  Sebastian’s eyes filled with tears as he finally broke his years of silence.

“Thank you,” he said.  “I knew, that if you just took a step back and looked at it… all the pieces would make something great.”

“I think the show is over, folks,” Colonel Watts shouted at the slowly calming mob.  “If you gotta burn something down, try the motel I stayed at off the highway!  They didn’t give me fresh towels this morning!”



After the crowd had gone their separate ways, Cal and Colonel Watts were left alone with the puzzle.

“It really is incredible, ain’t it?” the Colonel asked Cal.

“I suppose,” Cal said.

“I’ve seen and done a lot of things in my lifetime,” the Colonel said.  “I’ve flown at the speed of sound, I’ve seen the Earth from the Heavens, I overthrew the kingdom of the Radioactive Moon Chimps…  Whoops, I’m technically not supposed to talk about that last one.”

The Colonel chuckled to himself and went on.

“The point is, it’s this kind of thing that really stands above the rest.  An example of the things a person can accomplish when he just puts his mind to it.  It’s the only reason I’ve ever been able to fly anything, because someone simply thought humankind could do it.”

“So…” Cal said, “it’s not a penis?”

“No, no, no, it’s nothing like that.”

“So what is it?”

Colonel Watts looked at Sebastian.

“It’s a message,” Sebastian said.



A few weeks later, Sebastian passed away.  He died peacefully and without pain, the doctors said.  A short month after what became known as the Brannigan Puzzle Panic of 2010, Cal retired from the political game and opened up the Uncle Sebastian Memorial Gift Shop right next to Sebastian’s masterpiece.

Their most popular item is a miniature recreation of the world’s largest puzzle.  Once it is completed, you can view the message that was originally intended only for the eyes of those who were miles above the Earth’s stratosphere.

It reads:

IT’S BEAUTIFUL FROM UP THERE, ISN’T IT?






BRIAN LONG runs the streets of New Jersey with a gang of literary street toughs known as The Broad Set: www.thebroadset.com.

by Isaac James Baker



The air was warm and thick the night we became teenage killers, one of those sweaty, steamy ones when humidity covers Chicago like a wet blanket.  It was the four of us: Sterling , Victoria , Whitey and me.

Sterling was the leader — well, not really the “leader” — we were all anarchists in those days and we didn’t believe in leaders, authority, government, any of that shit.  But Sterling was sixteen and he had a car, which meant he determined when and where we were going.  To that extent, I guess you could call him a leader.

Victoria was too beautiful to be called Vicky or Vic or some other cutesy nickname.  Just Victoria .  We always joked with her that she should become the lead singer of a crust punk band and go by the stage name Victoria Victim.  She didn’t like that idea.  She said she was nobody’s victim.

Whitey was called Whitey because he was a Polish Jew and his parents came from Krakow or Warsaw , I don’t remember which.  We thought it was ironic.  His grandparents had been through the shit with the Nazis.  He told me stories about them, stories so fucked up that when I heard them I just sat there like a deaf mute.  After we killed the Nazi, Andrew told me he wished his grandfather was still alive so he could tell him about it.  He said his grandfather would’ve been proud of him.

Then there was me.

We were The Musketeers, plus one, and we were ready for Friday night.  We all met at Sterling ’s place and hopped into his rusty old Buick, Victoria in the front and me and Whitey in the back.  My crew and I were headed out for a great show, The Abused, a thrash punk band from New York.  We were gonna drink some beers, sing along with the punk anthems, jump around, pump our fists in the air, slap each other on the back, maybe meet up with some other punks, drink some more beers.  We all knew it was gonna be one hell of a night.  Anything could happen.

We rolled down all the windows and lit cigarettes, looking out the sweating pedestrians trudging along the sidewalks.  Sterling was playing The Damned on The Brick’s CD player.

“Man, can’t we change this?” I asked.  I wanted something harder, something I could stomp my shoes to, and The Damned strayed a bit too far into that whole wimpy British new wave kind of sound.

“It’s my car,” was his reply.

Victoria said she wanted to listen to something else, too.  Whitey, who was slouched in the back seat with me, was staring out the window at the passing apartment buildings and bodegas.  I hit him in the shoulder.

“Yeah,” he replied.  “Something else.”

“That’s participatory democracy,” Victoria said.  “Sorry.”

“This car isn’t a democracy,” Sterling replied.

Victoria scrunched up her brow.

“It’s not?”  She crossed her arms in front of her chest.  “Sterling , you’ve got to be the change you want see in…”

“Alright, alright!” Sterling huffed.  “Spare me the political speech.”

He ejected the CD and Victoria slipped in The Exploited, which Whitey and I agreed was a better choice.  The pounding music crackled from the speakers, muffled and scratchy from the countless hours of full-volume hardcore punk we submitted them to.

Sterling reached into a big brown paper bag shoved in between the two front seats.  He threw a can back and I snagged it before it hit me in the face, a Pabst Blue Ribbon.  We called it “Street Cred in a Can,” and we drank as much of it as our teenage bellies could handle, and then some.  Sterling told us he got it from his older brother and we should drink up because we were getting close to the Fireside Bowl, a decrepit bowling alley turned infamous punk rock dive.  Victoria chugged hers faster than me and then stuck her head into the back seat to rip a belch in my face.  I finished my beer and burped in reply, although mine wasn’t nearly as loud.  Whitey took a few sips of his beer and then threw it at a yellow Hummer parked on the side of the street.  The can smacked the windshield and spewed frothy brew all over the car.  I slapped him five.

Victoria scolded Whitey for littering.

“These are our streets,” she said.  “Don’t shit where you eat.”

“It was a Hummer,” Whitey said in defense.

He had a point.  After all, Hummers exemplified everything punks hated: materialism, upper class elitism, environmental degradation, macho douchebags, all that shit.

“Fine,” Whitey said.  “The next time I see a Hummer, I’ll drink my beer and then piss on the car.”

“Atta boy!” Victoria said.  “Fuck with The System, but watch out for Mother Earth in the process.”

Sterling slapped a curb with the front of the Brick as he pulled into a narrow parking spot.  He threw the car into park and it groaned like the trip had worn it out.  We got out and sat on the warmed hood.  We all cracked open our second PBRs.

“To not shitting where you eat,” I said, raising my can in the air.  The others said “Cheers” and we downed our beers quickly, hoping the alcohol would drain into our bloodstreams and cloud our minds a bit before the show.  The Fireside Bowl was serious about not letting minors buy booze.  Rules, regulations, identification cards — in a punk rock club?  What a bunch of crap.  We hated their rules, but it was the best club in town to see street punk shows.

Victoria collected the empties in a plastic bag and, after searching up and down the street for a recycling bin, she threw it in a nearby trashcan.

“Goddamn city doesn’t give a damn about the planet,” she muttered.

Victoria led the way down the block to the club.  A couple of punk guys sitting on a curb checked her out, eyed her up and down, but they didn’t say anything to her.  I walked up beside Victoria to make them think she was with me.  With raised eyebrows, they looked up jealously, puffing away at their cigarettes. Punks are good at not trying to steal each other’s girls.  Maybe it has something to do with their left-wing, self-induced guilt for being part of the male gender, the gender of The Oppressor, the gender of The System.  In the punk scene, if a guy got laid, most of the time it was because the girl fucked him, not the other way around.  At least that’s what I’d heard.  I would be a virgin for a couple more weeks.  It’s kind of funny: I was a killer before I was a lover.

As we approached the club we could hear one of the opening bands slashing away at their guitars.  I felt the asphalt below me pulsing with raucous beats, as if the punk band’s riffs were pouring life into the crumbling streets.  We paid our eight bucks a piece to a guy with a nose and lip ring and pushed our way into the hall.

The place was already packed.  A hot, heavy fog of sweat and cigarette smoke hung in the stale air.  It smelled like beer and piss — or maybe just cheap beer, which, after all, smells like piss.  There were no fans or windows in the Fireside Bowl.  Everything was pretty much black except for a small bar in the back by the bathrooms and the lights on the stage, which flickered on and off chaotically, without rhythm, like a deaf person was running the system.

Once inside, we huddled near the back, assessing the premises.  The four of us began moving together to the music, slamming our boots and bobbing our heads.  The first band played decent street punk, kind of like early Casualties stuff, but not quite as fast.  We were all feeling the buzz and the music.  We slammed our shoulders together and punched our fists in the air when the bass, guitar and drums would all stop at the same time.  We stomped our boots on the floor together when the music ripped open again.  We jumped around, up in the air, sideways, ricocheting off of bigger punks, back to the ground, up in the air again.  I was surrounded by tons of people I didn’t know, thrashing around without a care, but I felt more like myself than ever.  I was squished between punks on all sides, but I was unchained, free.

During the palm-muted intro to one of the opening band’s songs, Victoria slapped me on the arm and motioned me to come toward her.  I danced close by her and as I stuck my head in her direction she kissed me on the cheek.  At first I thought it was an accident, like she had bumped into me and her lips just happened to come together on my face.  But I looked at her and she smiled.  I put my ear to her mouth, offering her the chance to try to yell something to me.

“Let’s just do this forever.”

The drums and bass kicked in and I had to scream so she could hear me.

“Do what forever?”

“This!”  She held her hands in front of her, opening her arms before the crowd.

One kid was helping another up off of the floor.  A fat guy was letting a skinny kid use his shoulder as a crowd surfing launch pad.  Faces, jackets, patches with safety pins, spiky hair and piercings all blurred together into one, a punk rock rainbow rising from the surging crowd.  The vocalist was screaming about unity and, during the chorus, he let six or seven punk kids jump up onto the stage and sing the rest of the song.

“Okay!” I yelled in affirmation.  “This is it, isn’t it?”

She nodded.  The band’s song ended and the crowd breathed in at once, everyone stopped moshing and stuck their heads up to try to suck some fresh air.  I was already sweaty and we had just gotten there.

I think I was a little drunk from those two beers.  I couldn’t feel much.  When you’re packed in that tightly, smashed between so many sweating, thrashing punks, it’s like you almost don’t feel a thing.  Almost.

I sure felt it when I was slammed forward onto the floor.  My face hit the ground and a bright flash shot across my field of vision.  I tasted blood in my mouth and felt throbbing pain in my temples.  The force that knocked me down was so intense that I knew it wasn’t just some kid pogo dancing around.  This was intentional.  I was on the floor because someone wanted me there.

I looked up, stunned, disoriented, at a towering pillar of a skinhead.  My vision was blurry for a few seconds, but I quickly realized what I was dealing with.  He was the whole package: shaved head, black leather jacket (even though it was one of the hottest nights of the summer), jeans tight around his bulging waist, iron cross on his belt buckle, combat boots like waffle irons.  His shirt said something in Old English script.  I never got to read the entire thing.  I’m sure it was just some racist bullshit.

“Heil Hitler!” the skinhead shouted.  All the kids I was surrounded by had scattered like roaches, leaving me sprawled out alone on the floor.

“What the fuck?” was all I could think to say.  It seemed an appropriate response.

“Salute!  Take pride in your pure blood, white brother!” the man said, his jowls flapping like a bulldog’s.  His opened hand jutted out firmly in front of him.  A black swastika was singed into the skin on his wrist.

I looked around to see Sterling backed against the wall behind the skinhead.  Victoria had her hands over her mouth, her leftist sensibilities no doubt rattled by this six-foot-something mound of muscle, fat and hatred.  I couldn’t see Whitey anywhere.

Everyone else stood back as far as they could get, fear burning in their eyes.  There were dozens, maybe hundreds of them.  There was only one Nazi.  He stood alone, defiant, his huge, oppressive shape demanding all the attention.  He and I were now the show, and all eyes were on us.

“Salute!” he commanded again.  “Now!”

Standing to my feet, wobbling, I spat blood on the floor.  I remember being worried that I had lost a tooth.  I remember thinking that adult teeth don’t grow back.  I pondered this fact like it was some spectacular mystery I had just now finally understood.

I told the Nazi that I wouldn’t salute him, that I wanted no part of his hateful system, that he should go fuck himself.  I did all this by saying, simply, “No.”

He didn’t ask me again.  Pounding the ground with his boots, he stamped toward me.

That’s when my mates jumped in.  They threw off their self-preservation instincts and dove in to protect me.  I didn’t even know most of these kids, but they knew I was in trouble, and punks protect their own.  They leapt on the skinhead’s back like a pack of wolves working together to take down a bear.  The Nazi threw one kid off with a snap of his thick right arm, sending him sliding across the floor into a wall of other punks.  Two others clung to his jacket, but he shook them off by thrashing his limbs.

Right before he was about to reach me, his fists readied in front of him, Sterling jumped up and gripped his arms around the skinhead’s neck.  The Nazi threw his arms back, trying desperately to pound Sterling hard enough to force him to loosen his grip.  But Sterling was determined.  Nothing could force him to let go.  At that moment, two punks attacked the Nazi’s legs, ripping them out from under him.  The giant fell flat on his ass with a resounding thud.  Sterling still held his grasp, refusing to budge, trying to choke the massive fascist.

The Nazi was down.  We’d done it.  But we didn’t stop there.  Hell no.  The violence spread like poison through my veins, through all of us.  We had tasted blood, and we wanted more.

I stomped on the downed skinhead’s chest as hard as I could.  I was a skinny kid, so I couldn’t have done too much damage, but I kept kicking and kicking until my feet hurt.  The Nazi kicked and punched in defense.  His steel-toed boot slammed a kid in the face so hard I heard his nose break like splintered wood.  The kid, blood streaming from his face, fell backward onto the floor screaming.  His screams sounded oddly hilarious.  While the Nazi’s punches and kicks were heavy and powerful, he was slow, and the punks moved fast, hitting him with dozens punches and kicks each second.  The whole time he kept screaming, “Bring it on you traitors!  You scum!  You white niggers!”

Each time he yelled at us we hit him harder.

Whitey, out of nowhere, entered the fray.  Down on his knees, he smashed his fists into the skinhead’s neck.  Whitey slammed him in the temple, recoiled in pain, and screamed that he had broken his wrist.  But wounds would have to be tended to later.  The battle wasn’t over yet.  We kicked the Nazi in the ribs, the face, the neck, the legs, for what must’ve been several minutes, although I’m not sure.  Amidst the pounding of flesh on flesh, time seemed to stand still.

Through the chaos, someone screamed “Stop!”

Several punks jumped back like their mothers had caught them doing something they weren’t supposed to be doing.  One by one, we stopped punching and kicking.  The blood in our veins slowed.  We all took breaths as the rage began to drain from us.  It was Victoria who had screamed.  She pushed herself between us and the Nazi, shoving and shooing kids off of his body.

When everyone backed off, I saw just how much blood was splattered on the floor.  I looked at my shoes.  The toes were smeared red.  Nothing looked particularly special or pure about this blood.  What the hell was the Nazi talking about?  His blood was a dark, dirty red, just like the stuff that comes out of your nose if you pick it too hard.

Victoria pressed her fingers against the skinhead’s throat, kneeling.

“He’s dead,” she said.

I tried to swallow and almost choked.  Now that the battle was over, I felt a thick, pulsing pain in my mouth.  I ran my tongue across my gums.  I had lost a tooth, one of the ones on the bottom.  It was an adult tooth, I told myself, one of the ones that would never grow back.  I cursed aloud and kicked the dead skinhead in the belly as hard as I could.

I got down on my hands and knees, searching around the club’s floor for my tooth.  I don’t know why.  It’s not like a dentist could’ve stuck it back in.  It didn’t matter, though, because I couldn’t find it anywhere.  There was just too much blood.






ISAAC JAMES BAKER was born in Belmar, New Jersey, in 1983. He grew up surfing and causing trouble on the Jersey Shore long before words like “Snookie” and “The Situation” further diminished the Shore’s already terrible reputation. He writes poetry, short stories and novels, and is working on his master’s degree in fiction writing from Johns Hopkins University. His novel, Broken Bones, the story of a young man’s struggle in a psychiatric ward for anorexics, is forthcoming from The Historical Pages Company. He lives in Washington, D.C.

by Brian Long



Joe was enjoying his day off from work – which, thanks to unemployment, was every day.  Cracking open a beer, he plopped onto his lumpy, pea green couch which made him feel warm like a lover’s embrace.  He stared at his broken television, which he had temporarily repaired by pasting a picture of a red-headed centerfold model over the screen.  The theme for that issue was “Working Women” and the model was a veterinarian with an impractically short skirt who was giving a shot to an injured tortoise.  Just as Joe was getting comfortable, a flash of light suddenly filled the room.  When the flash faded, a young boy, who looked to be about fifteen years old, was standing in the middle of a circular burn on the carpet.  He wore an all white jumpsuit and a pair of oversized green goggles.  The boy lifted the goggles above his head.  The boy had the same untamable curly hair and brown eyes that Joe had.

“Are you Joseph Peoples?” the boy asked.

“Y-yes,” Joe replied, “who are you?”

“Are you sure?” the boy asked with a disappointed tone.

“Yeah, who are you?”

The boy took a look around the room; he observed the discoloration of the carpet caused by Joe’s carelessness while eating.  The stains were a visual timeline of everything Joe had eaten since he first purchased the rug.  From the two large sausage and veal pizzas to the spilled box of wine that left a stain which slightly resembled the Dali Lama.

“That one totally looks like the Dali Lama right?” Joe asked the young man.

“Oh, this sucks!”

The boy threw the goggles onto the ground and kicked them towards the couch.  Joe picked up the goggles which had landed next to him and read the label on the strap.

“Toronto Time Travel Institute?” he said.

The boy snatched the goggles away from him.

“Yes, you Neanderthal, time travel,” he said, placing the goggles back onto his head.  “I’m supposed to be doing a report on our family history and THIS is what I find.  I’m going to get an ‘F.’”

“You could probably get at least a ‘C’…” Joe replied, slightly hurt by this temporally misplaced adolescent.

“No, no, I couldn’t, you’re a slob,” the boy said.

“Hey…  It’s my day off,” Joe said.

“Really,” the boy said, “and what exactly do you do for a living?”

“I sell hubcaps.”

“Where do you get the hubcaps?”

Joe looked down at his gut as it rose and fell with each breath.

“I steal them…”

“That’s what I thought,” said the boy as he pressed a few buttons on his oversized watch.

“Wait, are you leaving?”Joe asked.

“Yes, why?”

“I dunno, I thought you would tell me some stuff about the future.”

“I’m legally not supposed to, but you know what?  You seem to be such a brainless dolt I don’t think telling you anything about events to come would damage the time-stream at all.  There are flying skateboards in my future and they are all reasonably priced!”

“Oh man,” Joe said, “that’s awesome!”

“And if my calculations are correct, you die the day before they are released to the public,” the boy said.  He finished typing on the keyboard and the room began to fill with the white light again.   “God, I really hope my great grandparents are more interesting; although since they were spawned by YOU, I’m not going to hold my breath.”

The boy disappeared in another blinding flash.  Joe began to take stock of his life.  He looked around his ruined apartment.  He had no job, no girlfriend, and no mature adult relationships with anyone.  And then it hit him.  Judging from what that kid said – and after he had looked up the definition of the word “spawning,” just to make sure he understood him correctly – Joe knew, sooner or later, he was totally going to get laid.






BRIAN LONG is an amateur wordologist. His works can be found at The New Flesh and The Broadset Writing Collective.