beginning on page 1: Sky Harvest by MATTHEW DERBY
We were in the sky tent, harvesting air.
"Push off, guv'ner," said the terse, black-veiled Minister, and the hard, black cloud lurched underneath us. "Push off, push off. On to the next we go." The bellows heaved with the sudden current, swelling with the dilapidated gusts of colored air we gathered into the tent.
Chunk finished his cigarette and tossed it off the side of the cloud. We leant on our harvesting wands--long poles with soft, absorbent swab tips--and watched the tiny embers of the butt sail away from us towards the awkward, disheartening cityscape, a cheesy gridwork of dilapidated factories and townhouses that from our vantage point seemed only to map out the pressing, hysterical flight pattern of the people who threw themselves into it on a daily basis. We were intractably beside ourselves.
I'd lived in two of the houses down there, when 'down there' was actually a place I lived. I willed the cigarette's trajectory down the flue of the first house I'd lived in, a building that still paid lip service to my first and only husband. Down the chimney and into the chemical vase, I prayed, where, if I were lucky, the resultant flash-fire would scorch beyond recognition not only his rueful, multi-chambered face but also the couch where I'd combed his hair each morning, the hallway mirror against which I'd pressed him countless times, plugging his tight fissure with two trembling fingers, and the collection of lurid photographs we'd made in the static, dusky light of a clustery drive-thru arch; pictures that failed, like everything else we did, to amount to anything but drunken hubris. He was a straw-armed man, willfully spindly, who made his presence known only when he was not around, so that in living with him I was most alone when we shared the same room, huffed the same withered airspace.
The second house, my first wife's, would be far enough away to survive the blast.
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beginning on page 7: Flatbed, Seabed by TARA WRAY
We drank purple grape wine till dawn, then drove to the water and parked the truck just at the edge of the beach. Some waves came up the tires. Hello
tires, they said. We laughed with our heads thrown back, kissed for a minute
with forceful lips, and then passed out on the flatbed, sleeping bags and
cold wheelwells pinning us ever closer.
First light came after a long black sleep. The truck had drifted into
the sea. We must have been out there for hours; it could have been days. I
had some chocolate covered mints in my pocket and ate two and so did Jack.
We hugged frantically, then wondered aloud about the state of things.
Water is a very beautiful thing if you are not afraid, said Jack. Are
you afraid?
A little, I replied, because I was. There was so much of it and just the
two small bits of us.
Don't worry, he said, and climbed into the cab through the back window.
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beginning on page 15: Motley Crue and the Avant Garde by JASON DEBOER
The four controversial artists known as Mötley Crüe have often been the
subject of heated scholarly debate. For years, philosophers, cultural
anthropologists, alcoholics, and historians have discussed the influence of
the group on greater society and have opined on any future importance the
Crüe may offer the diligent researcher. Of course, the perennial question
remains: "Why the umlauts?" Theories abound, with some cutting edge research
coming out of the many junior high institutions of the American Midwest. In
1989, upstart theoretician Stevie Ash of Yankton, South Dakota made perhaps
the most profound contribution to this question when he surmised: "Those
little dots in their name? I bet they stand for Satan's eyes. How fuckin'
wild would that be?" His bitter opponent, Professor James R. Oldham II of
Columbia University, countered: "Then how come there's two sets of the
little dots? Unless the Devil has four eyes, it just doesn't figure." Still
a morass of opinions, the umlaut problem may never be properly resolved.
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beginning on page 23: Hiding From the Puppet Woman by AMY WILKINSON
Trula is on the couch with her back to the armrest, feet tucked under
the far pillow, facing CJ and the peephole at the corner of the rectangular
apartment.
"You got here quickly," CJ says, as he produces slicing noises.
"Good subway luck," Trula responds. "What kind of chicken are you
making?"
"Jamaican something." Without turning around, CJ holds up a plastic bag of what looks like dust.
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beginning on page 29: Flying Monkey is Down by KENNETH CALHOUN
When I was seven, I had a friend named John-Paul, just like the Pope. I
remember him as being a ghostly white boy with a shiny-slick lower lip. He
often had two trickles of ultra-green snot glazing the twin vertical summits
of his philtral column, which served to further emphasize his remarkably
shallow philtral dimple. He was possibly, I can now see, a recovering
harelip. Everyday, he came to school with his corduroys tucked into a pair
of black cowboy boots and always wore a red quilted coat with some kind of
military or yachting club emblem patch on the left breast. He was a jittery,
fidgety kid whose constant staccato motions hinted at a high degree of
inner agitation, causing me to suspect, even then, that he was afflicted
with pinworms.
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beginning on page 41: Reincarnate by JEFF ROSS
I understand this now, Father, there is not much time. Particles are
shifting, the sands of time are tipping; souls are on the move. Or, at
least, your soul is.
My comprehension began while studying a verse on reincarnation. A slim
volume titled 'Reincarnate' by a professor Robertson explained that
reincarnation can occur between hundreds of decades and a single year after
death. You, Father, are one year gone. But this was not evidence enough for
me. Certainly not. There was a reason I began my study of reincarnation,
Father. I began my study of this beautiful motion of life and death because
I heard your whistle. That clear, pure sound slid through the windows of my
house one morning, one simple morning about a month ago. I rose from my desk
and stared out the window, I picked up the phone and held the receiver to my
ear, I pulled the electricity lever and shut power off to the entire house,
yet the whistle continued, deep and low, playing out some ancient Irish
tune. And it was then that I felt you tap upon my shoulder, I sensed you
were near. And, instead of feeling fear, I felt alive and loved.
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beginning on page 53: August by JOHN LEARY
1.
The day before they rode into the desert--an August day in a summer of
great days--Otto sat on the front porch with Duke, trying to convince Duke
to go around the corner with him and visit Madam. Duke sat with a sheaf of
lost dog flyers in his lap, ready for another canvass of the neighborhood
near Vatomat.
By way of argument, Otto said, "Polly won't be back from the flea market
for hours." But Duke was thinking of Bang, his lost dog who had been missing
for two weeks. Duke was moving from an urgent worry to a melancholy, the
idyll of their summer notwithstanding.
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beginning on page 65: HorsePower by MIKE MAGNUSON
One Saturday in winter I'm at Greg's farm for the afternoon, nursing some beers with him in his tool shed and helping him pull the engine on this 1970 Ford Ranchero he's been restoring for as long I've known him, which is for a couple of years.
"Badass dogs," he says. He's happy. He's checking the chain tightness between the engine block and the hoist. He yanks outward on the chain, a put-his-body-into-it heave, and the hoist pulley makes a tiny squeak that he doesn't frown at, not today, because everything today is music to his ears.
"Not just powerful dogs," he says. "We're talking intelligent dogs."
Greg is excited, obviously, about dogs. This is because in his spare time--which he's got extra of these days because he got divorced about a year ago--Greg has personally engineered his own breed of guard dogs, a breed he says is what you call a genetically blenderized hybrid of the German Shepherd and several other breeds of the killer home-protection variety, a combination of breeds, he says, that will someday revolutionize the concept of dogs worldwide. He says they might be stuck in the puppy stage right now and can't do nothing but sit there in a cardboard box and crap the newspaper and look cute, but when these dogs are grown, man, they'll inspire fear in you, all the way to your gut's center, if you're stupid enough to do something that makes them disapprove.
Greg's your dirty-flannel-shirt type guy, just like me, and he's got brown hair, which I got, too. His hat says Genuine Ford Parts. Mine just says Ford. He says he, Greg, genius, is going to be rich. He's going to become the Hugh Hefner of the guard-dog world inside of three years.
"I have created this opportunity for myself," he says, "right here on this farm."
For your information, Greg doesn't farm his farm. He doesn't do crops. He's just got the farmhouse, where he says the dogs are at, and the big yard and the old chicken coop and this tool shed with the Ranchero in it. His ex-wife took a lot of stuff from him in the divorce, namely his two kids and his 140 bucks a week in child support payments, but Greg says she left him with the farm because she hopes he rots out here in the country ten miles from town as bad as she rotted out here for the six years they were married.
Greg says, "My ex will freak at the money I'll be making off these dogs."
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beginning on page 83: Bald Monkey by NATHAN OATES
Brendan the Monkey walked down the street with a lollipop in one hand and the other sticky from holding the lollipop the wrong way, like an idiot. That's what his mother might have said if she'd been there with her silver hair pulled hard and tight back in a bun at the top of head, but she wasn't and the wind was hot on his face in the street. It was his brother who had given him the name Monkey. When he'd asked why he was a Monkey, his brother said that it was his nose, or his mouth, or hell, it could be any number of things. What was important is that he was a monkey through and through.
So Brendan the Monkey, or just Monkey for short, was walking down the street with a sticky hand and a lollipop that some might consider ruined. It was salty from the sweat of his palm and stuck with small hairs from a dirty white dog Monkey had met before the lollipop. But Monkey didn't seem to mind much and occasionally he would smile down at his hands, watching them swing slowly from side to side.
The street was hot, but empty. It was the weekend, and at any other hour the street would have been full, but it was churchtime and so everyone, including, supposedly, Monkey was in church, kneeling and standing and generally praying hard all around. Though the street was hot and mostly quiet a wind scolded Monkey with broken gusts saying in a whispered voice, get back to church you Monkey. Monkey knew that to some degree the wind was right. He shouldn't have been out there, alone, walking around with a lollipop and a sticky hand. When he might have turned back, might have begun to feel bad, the wind died suddenly as a weak breath so Monkey walked on down the street and smiled at a broken Styrofoam cup riding a dying gust over soft, black asphalt.
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beginning on page 95: Should I Be Scared? by AMANDA EYRE WARD
I first heard about Cipro at the potluck.
"Thank God, I've got Cipro," said Maria, "My doctor prescribed it for a urinary tract infection, and I still have half the pills."
"Cipro?" I said, my mouth full of artichoke dip.
"Honey," said Maria, "where have you been?"
It was a cold, clear night in Austin, Texas. After the disgusting heat
of summer, the cool was a balm on my arms. Maria wore a giant sweater, knit
loosely from rough, rusty-colored wool. She stood next to the barbeque,
holding her hands in front of the hot coals. In the kitchen, my husband and
his scientist friends made an elaborate marinade.
"Anthrax," whispered Maria. She had just begun dating my husband's
thesis advisor, and cast a glamorous glow over departmental potlucks.
"Excuse me?" I said.
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beginning on page 107: Sandur by JASON WILSON
"The land is black like licorice." That's what Jane said as I drove our
rental car silently across the broad, desert sandur.
Jane had been crying since we'd left Hveragerdi, and hadn't spoken until
now. "The land is black like licorice," she repeated. "Don't you think?" I
didn't respond. I hadn't spoken since Hveragerdi, either. "Do feel free to
use that if you want," Jane said. "You don't even have to attribute that to
me."
Jane rested her cheek on the window, flattened the map against her lap,
and looked out to where the empty black met the deep gray sky at the
horizon. We'd read in the guidebook what the sandur was: It was a
topographical phenomenon that occurs when silt, sand, and gravel are carried
down in glacial bursts and rivers and deposited, creating a desolate
black-sand plain. But knowing that didn't make it any less creepy. It was
like a photographic negative of the world. It was indeed black like
licorice.
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beginning on page 141: The Drink by SARAH M. BALCOMB AND BOB BEIER
"Yes, drink and drug, have a drugged drink," said the bartender, the words
slipping through his jagged yellow teeth. The bar was long and narrow, just
enough room for the solitary glass. "Yes, thank you, I will," said the young
man.
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beginning on page 147: Long Live the Superlative by DAVE REIDY
Steve sat on the overstuffed vinyl cushion of the booth and read his
book. With a sigh, the waitress approached the couple sitting across the
aisle from Steve. The young man's hair was mussed and supposed to
project a devil-may-care attitude. The young woman, sitting opposite her
date and leaning on her elbows, wore a brown leather jacket over a
sundress.
As he read, Steve heard the waitress groove into her night shift
routine.
"Coffees?"
The young man responded first. "Two."
"What'll you have in your coffee?"
"Nothing."
The waitress pivoted and stood over Steve. He looked up from his book
with a smile.
"Still waiting?"
"Yes."
"Wanna order somethin'?"
"No, I'm gonna wait for my friend." Steve paused. The waitress looked at
him, chomping on her gum. "He'll be here in a minute."
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beginning on page 159: The Scalpel by MATT SUMMERS
There are a lot of surgeons here. I am not a surgeon. My friend, Dusty, is a surgeon. I am at Dusty's picnic. I carry my Jell-O dish, which took me four hours to make, protectively as I work my way through the picnic. I'm here to have a look at and report on his newly designed Curved Blade for the Harmonic Scalpel. He's proud of it, and is having a picnic in its honor. Yesterday, I mentioned the picnic to an acquaintance at SCALPEL Magazine, who suggested I write an article about it. I will. I can use the money.
I set my Jell-O on the food table. I remove the tin foil and examine it. All of the suspended fruit is in place. I set a spoon on the Jell-O. My work done here, I wander toward a barbecue pit. I know only one person at the picnic, Dusty, and I donít see him. The sun is setting.
I look at my wrist. My watch isnít there. I just had it two minutes ago. It was on my wrist. I've lost my watch. I've lost my kinetic watch.
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beginning on page 177: Errands by JUAN MARTINEZ
Rosalie's parents lived in a forest. Rosalie lived in an apartment complex. They lived in Oviedo, a city adjoining Orlando, many years from now.
Rosalie measured time by how many birds hit the window: five in a row meant that it was late afternoon, and that she should be out. The phone rang--she did not pick it up because the caller ID showed her parents' number. They were calling from the forest. If she could make it through her little one-day vacation without having to talk to them it would be wonderful.
She needed to pick up some Shake-and-Bake--the forest where her parents lived lay between her apartment and the Publix supermarket.
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