Neon Literary Magazine #35 Read online

   

  It's darker here, the lantern-like house over the hill behind. The girl stuffs her hands in her jacket pockets and walks quickly, her back straight, her eyes flicking back and forth across the road in front of her. She thinks she hears something, a rustling of leaves or a chittering of great teeth. She reaches down and grabs a rock the size of her hand, curling her fingertips around the uneven edges. It's all about posture, she knows. The animals here attack only those that won't fight back.

   

  A car's headlights absorb the darkness, until there is no place that does not see her. She blocks her eyes with her hand, but is too late to duck. The car pulls to a stop beside her and she looks in the driver-side window.

   

  "Where do you live?" The voice comes before the face. It is not the one she was expecting.

   

  "Sorry?" She squints.

   

  "Do you live nearby?" A woman. One the girl has never seen before. Curly gray wisps waver around the illuminated face, the darkness slipping into the crevices of her skin. The green numbers of the dashboard clock reflect back in the woman's glasses.

   

  "Yes, just down the street." She feels suddenly known.

   

  The woman becomes clearer, her eyes hesitating, suspicious. Her lips, white, press together.

   

  "Do you need a ride home?"

   

  The girl shakes her head. "No, no. I'm just out for a walk."

   

  The green numbers move up and down as the woman nods. "Be careful."

   

  Gravel grinds against itself as the car drives away, leaving the girl in darkness.

   

  She wonders if she should turn back. How hard would it be now for her parents to piece together? This street was too small for anonymity.

   

  The next car that pulls up, she gets in, sliding into the back seat, the right side of her body pressing against a boy who smells like leaves. He passes a pipe and a lighter and she takes them, filling her lungs to prove that she will not waste. The boy smiles.

   

  In the front seat, the driver grips the wheel like a chauffeur. The smoke drifts towards him in a suspended stream. He breathes. A black briefcase rests on the passenger seat – the one his father will need for work tomorrow.

   

  "How long do we have?" the girl asks, exhaling.

   

  -

   

  The sun, rising, smears Coyote with orange heat. Thief, it calls. Thief. A vulture floats in the hot air, rising. Her shadow spreads across Coyote's back and he keeps running.

   

  -

   

  The blonde driver holds up three fingers, each representing an hour before the car has to be safely back in his parents' driveway.

   

  "To Anne's?" the girl asks.

   

  The driver nods without turning his head. She sees the shadowy curve of his upper lip in the rearview mirror – the wide indent that travels upwards, bending into the underneath of his nose. Around his silhouette, the road unravels into existence beneath the headlights. The girl focuses on each stone that passes, trying to hold them in her sight as they disappear under the car. For some reason, she thinks this will be possible. Each new stone begins to disappear faster than the last – or is she imagining this? She can't decide. In the rearview mirror, the driver's upper lip curls into a grin and the wide-eyed girl presses her fingers into the leaf-boy's shoulder.

   

  Suddenly, her body swings sideways, and the leaf-boy wraps his arms around the girl's shoulders as their bodies fall first away from, and then towards the car window. The deer's massive chest seems to pass in slow motion, a held breath; she swears she sees its heart beat, hears the blue fly buzzing in its coarse fur.

   

  The girl cranes her neck, desperate to see its face, its eyes. The car bolts past. She spins around in her seat, pupils pressing into the corners of her eyes, trying to catch a glimpse of it behind them, but there are only shadowy clouds of dust.

   

  The car horn blares into the darkness.

   

  -

   

  Coyote crosses a stream, but does not stop to drink. The tattered shadows of the tree line decorate his golden fur. Tiny silver fish scatter from the shadows of his paws. Water splashes against Coyote's shins. His fur darkens and shines.

   

  -

   

  The car pulls down the tree-lined driveway, stopping in front of the old stone house – headlights pressing through the window and reflecting off the gold-striped couch and the mirror that hangs above it – until the engine shuts off. In unison, the girl, the driver and the leaf-boy pull their car door handles, step out and walk towards the house, their footsteps like waves on a pebbled shore.

   

  "You're smallest," the driver says, and bends his knee in front of the loose window, intertwining his fingers like a stirrup. She presses the sole of her shoe into his hands and he lifts up, leaning his shoulder against her hamstrings as she lifts the screen from the window frame. The screen drops to the ground with a singing saw shudder.

   

  She presses the glass with her fingertips and the window creaks open. She pulls herself through the opening and drops, landing on a wooden chest. Across the room, beside the gold-striped couch, is a pianola, the keys yellowed and cracked.

   

  The boys' shadows sprout across the stained wooden floor, and she considers not opening the door. Instead, she could run into the next room, lounge on the Victorian couch in one of Anne's dust-covered dresses and listen to a record of Mozart while they ran from window to window, watching the little Tippler–

   

  There's a light tapping of fingernails on glass and the girl steps into the stream of moonlight that seeps into the floorboards. The blonde driver and the leaf boy stand beside each other, the latter out-sizing the former so dramatically that she presses the outstretched undersides of her knuckles against her smile. The driver tilts his head and taps the glass again.

   

  From this side, the lock turns easily between her fingers. It clicks open and she pulls the door towards her. Their shoes cross the clapboard.

   

  "Remember what we agreed," the driver says, his eyes blue and severe. The two nod. If one gets caught, the others run. No waiting, no heroism.

   

  "We're in this alone."

   

  They separate. The driver rests on the gold-striped couch, his heels propped on the wood-trimmed arm while he flips through a photo album filled with old stamps. The leaf-boy has taken to spraying the floors with white vinegar, wiping them with a dry-mop they kept in the closet. The girl sits down at the Victorian cylinder desk and rolls up the thin wooden cover.

   

  In the corner of the desk are three coconut dolls – souvenirs from a tropical island where their hair was made of the brown bark, pulled after all the milk had been drunk. Paper rests on the desktop, a pen beside it that had dried itself of ink long ago. Indentations are made in the corner of the page where the girl has tried, once before, to bring it back to life.

   

  -

   

  The hairs on Coyote's cheek are charred and curled tight against his reddening skin. He slips between the trees, feeling the gods at his back. The wind shouts.

   

  -

   

  The girl pulls the long drawer until it presses against her stomach. From it, she takes a pile of yellowed letters tied together with thin, brown string. She tugs the string's frayed end and lets it fall from the paper in a loose coil.

   

  Dear Anne, the first letter starts. Thank you for the pictures, Dear. Especially the one with the display of hose. I love you more than I can... The pencil strok
es soak into the paper, lines of confession invisible after all this time. His name was John Beban, and hers, as they knew her sixty years later, the woman who lived alone in the little stone house, was Anne Citron. The girl imagines that John died there in the trench after he wrote this one last dirt-splattered letter. Anne would, perhaps, take them out and read them from time to time, while she waited, while she mourned, while her new husband, a book draped over his face, snored on the wood-trimmed couch. It wasn't that she never loved him, this second one, but she would often wake up in the middle of the night, her body soaked in sweat, with the image of John's face. And when her husband, this college man, tried to comfort her, it was never enough.

   

  In Anne's bedroom, the girl sifts through the clothes that still hang in the armoire: long dresses with lace-trimmed sleeves. She drapes a knitted shawl over her bony shoulders and sits on the corner of the stiff mattress, one arm wrapped loosely around the canopy post.

   

  The leaf-boy starts the pianola and Bach's ghostly keystrokes drift through the door frames. The girl sighs and lies back on the bed, staring up into the canopy's dizzying garden and allowing the song to become familiar. A slant of light breaks beneath the curtains.

   

  -

   

  A blue bird flies by Coyote's head – low – swooping closer and closer. It pecks at the skin on his skull over and over until he's sure he deserves it.

   

  He bends between the trees under the cover of leaves. His tail stretches behind him and the gods reach for it with fiery hands. In the distance, there is music.

   

  -

   

  The leaf-boy is standing by the window, overlooking the back yard. The girl stands behind him. His wide shoulders rise and fall with each breath. He is silhouetted by dusty yellow light and suddenly seems small – a grain of sand, an atom.

   

  They are standing together, watching the first hazed cues of sunrise. The girl slips her hand into his. The back yard's steep slope is smeared with treetops and fog. It feels as if the house is floating; just one push and it would be swallowed whole, like a melon.

   

  "We should go," the girl says. The driver slips the book of stamps back on the shelf.

   

  Outside, a thick fog presses against them, and they wonder what time it's gotten to.

   

  The car speeds through the fog, streams of white rolling against the windows. Through the windshield, they see only white. They are in a cloud. They are flying.

   

  "Slow down." As she says it, the car lurches sideways, lifting their bodies from their seats. The driver slams on the brakes and the girl's head smashes into the seat in front of her. For a moment she is lost; the car has stopped. Her nose feels like it's been pushed inside her head. She tastes metal. She reaches up to her face and feels her nose, still there, still whole. Her hands cup over it.

   

  "Let me see," the leaf-boy says, pulling her hands from her face. Staring. "You're fine, it'll be fine." He smiles.

   

  "Shit, shit, shit," the driver says, stepping out of the car and into the glow of the headlights. The front bumper is smashed against a stone wall – broken rocks strewn across the grass of an apple orchard.

   

  The girl and the leaf-boy come out of the car slowly. She can feel her heart beat pressing frantically against her ribs and struggles to swallow. "Shit," the driver says again, running his hand along the hood. The other two step forward, fog separating around them like a sea.

   

  In the headlights' distance, surrounded by a mist of disturbed white, lies a mass. Its midsection rises and falls unsteadily.

   

  "What is it?" the leaf-boy asks.

   

  They step carefully. "A dog?"

   

  Up close, the animal's grey fur looks as if it's been brushed with gold paint. Its body is motionless, laying on its side, but its eye – tinted brown around the pupil – follows them frantically, straining into its corner while they kneel beside the body. Gravel presses into the girl's knees as she runs her hand against the animal's luminescent fur and the breathing, shallow, quickens. "A coyote," she says.

   

  The beast's legs begin to twitch and then kick. The leaf boy grabs the girl around her shoulders and pulls. They fall backwards, together into the dirt. They sit still, breathing in rhythm while the coyote stands and shakes the dust from his fur.

   

  He looks at them, and the girl tries to discern anything from his eyes. The coyote turns and runs, disappearing over the stone wall and between the apple trees.

   

  The sun rises orange, setting fire to the orchard.

   

  "We have to go," the blonde driver says, plucking an apple and throwing it over his shoulder. It lands in the girl's lap and she takes a bite. It soothes her swelling tongue.

   

  -

   

  Coyote runs. His teeth dig into the burning stick's bark. His cheek boils. His legs go numb beneath him – mechanical feet. Coyote stumbles over his own pin-pricked toes. The fire, loosened, leaps from his mouth, tumbling end over end over end across the sky–

   

  Until it lands in the apple tree's igniting arms. The fire catches, infecting the orchard with majesty. Coyote collapses on a twist of upturned root.

   

  -

   

  The car pulls up to the driver's parents' house. The driver rolls the car carefully into the previous day's tyre tracks. The three get out and follow silently, ducking behind the car's broken body. The blonde boy tip-toes up to the side door and waves once before disappearing through it. The girl counts to ten.

   

  The two grab the largest rocks they can find, and, gripping them tightly with their fingers, smash the rocks against the car hood. At first, she does it tentatively, wincing with each crash. The impact echoes through her body. Morning light glistens from the metallic indents; the paint cracks. The girl and the leaf-boy shout and cackle over the sound of cracking aluminium.

   

  When the lights in the house flash on, they drop their rocks and sprint as fast as their feet can carry them. Dew damp dirt splatters the backs of their bare legs.

   

  -

   

  "Someone's been breaking into that old house down the street," her mother tells her. "Did you hear?"

   

  The girl shakes her head and sips her coffee. The mother watches her, and the girl swallows carefully.

   

  Her mother shrugs. "Well, the nephew's taking the place over, finally. That old woman's been dead for months."

   

  The next time they drive by the old house, a green dumpster overflows in the front yard – furniture and clothes, the gold-striped couch, the Victorian cylinder desk. Plywood is nailed over the windows, and a path of pink insulation litters the grass.

   

  Before the nephew sells it, the three will make it back inside Anne's house one more time. They will be overwhelmed by the dust-covered floors, the empty quiet, and they will find a chandelier bead, a photograph and one broken piano key under the radiator.

   

  When, years later, the leaf-boy and the girl meet by chance on a layover in Chicago, she'll still be wearing the piano key around her neck. Snow will be piling against the window, covering the wings of the planes that will take her east, him west. They will sit side by side at a coffee bar and she'll try to recite Anne's letters, but stumble over the words. He'll interrupt and say she looks radiant. She'll comment on how much weight he's lost, he'll say he's stopped drinking, and they'll wonder how they got away with it all.

   

  Derek Adams

   

  Image by Ognjen Djokic

   

&nbs
p; What You Need To Know About Your Caesarean Section

   

  Turning the pamphlet's well-worn and underlined pages,

  in the soft green waiting room,

  comparing bellies; yours ripe and ready,

  mine a dream-filled pillow.

   

  Choosing the one, that was hard,

  the right one, my ideal other,

  the right hair, right eyes.

  Everything must be perfect for baby,

   

  The plan meticulous,

  your home town

  a twenty-five minute drive,

  just over the state line.

   

  Our meeting  "Hey, look at us,

  how long? Me too."

  away from the video surveillance

  of the Grantsburg prenatal unit.

   

  "Perhaps I'll bump into you again."

  Not too often, enough for a check up,

  not enough for anyone to remember

  seeing us together.

   

  Double-checking dates.

  Not too soon, not too late.

  Timing is the key,

  like me arriving at my

   

  "What a co-incidence, next to yours"

  auto, in the hospital lot,

  with you, the ignition, the battery,

  all at the point of despair.

   

  My Arm & Hammer smile offering a lift.

  Hand, clean and red,

  on the car door

  "Help yourself to some of my OJ"

   

  Ketamine bottle in my purse.

  In the trunk,

  distributor wires, carrycot,

  sterile sheets, alcohol, scalpel.

   

  *

   

  Paranormal Investigation

   

  I am experiencing strange phenomena

  in the streets of this deserted ghost town.

  I catch your blonde locks flowing

  from the corner of my eye

  or your skirt lifted by the wind

  in the movement

  of a curtain at an open window.

  I am setting out my equipment

  in search of what once was physical.

  I have a tripod-mounted 

  Full-spectrum video camera

  to catch any unusual motion:

  the corner of lips lifting into a smile,

  or the flash of your glow worm eyes.

  I switch on my voice recorder,

  ask tentatively "Are you here?"

  Listen, straining to create my name

  in the distorted buzz of white noise.

  Wander around

  Electro Magnetic Field meter

  in my hand,

  waiting for the needle to jump.

   

  *

   

  The Eels

   

  Several people said

  they had seen him

  clinging to the guardrail,