Author Archives: oblongmagazine

Mar 11 2014
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Fiction

The Beginning of an Imaginary Autobiography

by J. J. Steinfeld

This is my autobiography, begun today at the crack of dawn, even before I’ve had my first coffee of the morning or felt my first pang of regret, yet it isn’t chronological or especially personal and has an awkward coherency. But it’s not dishonest, even if it may be short on the factual. Basically, fragments bouncing off fragments like an angry chain reaction in a far-off lab. I cannot tell you my name because God may be watching and I do not want to alienate God any more than I already have in my chaotic, jumbled life. I’m also not going to say whether I’m married or not, if I have any political affiliation, my favourite breakfast cereal, even my age, and I’m not going to divulge my religion, or whether I fear dying or not. Before I get too far into my autobiography I should mention that I’m imaginary, and don’t want you getting me mixed up with the author. What an uneasy relationship I have with the author, to say the least. We don’t talk, even over drinks. I like to keep my distance from authors, even the one who has created me. But all this said, or not said, most or all my autobiography is a love song, contradictory as that may sound. Off-key maybe, somewhat strident, but a love song all the same. Yes, a heartfelt love song of existing.

In my autobiography, dreams are important, both waking and sleeping. You know, the dream within a dream within a dream, and then there’s a gargantuan thunderstorm and Zeus thunderbolts wake you but you’re already awake, and you realize by the process of elimination that it’s not a reality-TV show, or a low-budget feature film, or a controversial stage play, or even a dreadfully tedious home movie. It’s one of those disjointed days. Along with the dreams, prominent in this autobiography will be musings and introspection and existential angst and— Whew, let me pause and take a deep metaphysical breath. A life lived, that’s what this fragmentary exploration is all about. How many thoughts does a person have in a lifetime? How many words and regrets and desires and fantasies and apologies? What is the proper measurement for a life? Where is the consciousness odometer? However, I’ll leave the statistical appraisal to the census takers and score keepers and those who have perfected systems of keeping track of the days while incarcerated. Let me continue before I run out of time. That’s one of the dangers about life or writing an imaginary autobiography: running out of damn time…

– J. J. Steinfeld is a Canadian fiction writer, poet, and playwright who lives on Prince Edward Island, where he is patiently waiting for Godot’s arrival and a phone call from Kafka. While waiting, he has published fourteen books, including Should the Word Hell Be Capitalized? (Stories, Gaspereau Press), Would You Hide Me? (Stories, Gaspereau Press), Misshapenness (Poetry, Ekstasis Editions), and A Glass Shard and Memory (Stories, Recliner Books), and over forty of his one-act plays and a handful of full-length plays have been performed in North America.

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Mar 04 2014
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Fiction

Anybody, Antarctica

by Nicole Matos

I brought you, for one thing, a penpal in Antarctica. The covers of those splashy books, ‘101 Things to Do – For Kids – for Free!’ We were certainly interested in anything that could be done for free. But the agencies, the oversight, send your letters in-care-of? It was an idea best taken under independent consideration. It was wise for us to always use a payphone, it was wise to have first called the Post Office for the numbers of more distant Post Offices: we knew so much about succession, the layering of small steps.

‘We-are-calling-for-a-school-project-how-you-send-a-letter-to-the Queen-of-England? The-guy-in-Hawaii-who-sits-at-the-top-of-the-volcano?’ – though our list actually said, ‘Volcanologist,’ always better to play dumb. The Head of Endangered Species, on behalf of underappreciated lichens. The publisher of our social studies textbook, to let them know when they wrote ‘Abraham Lincoln’ we added ‘Towncar’; when they asked, ‘Where was the Declaration of Independence signed?’ we wrote ‘At the bottom’ – that we mocked, in short, their childish récite. Could you address a letter to an astronaut on a satellite? Could you address a letter to not a particular person, but the sort of person you wanted? Could you put, Khoi Tribesman, Kalahari Desert, could you put, A Nice Grandmother, Somewhere in Croatia – would the Post Office sort of help you out like that? We smoothed them out, question by question. We brought them back to postage, and we hung up and called someone else, and put the pieces together.

Of the letters, there is nothing. We sent them all. No return address – they’d have to be opened to ever be returned. What does it count as, that we scribed them out – during school, after school, we had nothing but time – and mailed them, keeping nothing for ourselves. ‘It counts as normal,’ I can hear you snort, say. The writer’s cramp, muscle memory of my numb hand. We were wrong to write them separately, in the same rooms, mostly, but lost in our own heads. Not enough just to mail them together, in piles, that creaking of the mailbox drop a sort of final salute. But anyway, anyway – ‘Anybody, Antarctica,’ was the crown jewel, Best in Show, and that one was mine – my throw was the farthest, and the only ball returned, both, and so that gift, at least, I brought to you.

We figured on the slow procession of time, not on the startling gap between the letter written – crystallised in just that moment forever – and the late, late, miscast, far behind the unimagined future, reply. ‘Anybody, Antarctica’ dramatically increased this factor. So when my sister placed our reply in my lap, in all its red and blue army and airmail packaging, we’d long ceased checking the mail. The return address was ‘Matt, Anybody, Antarctica,’ and then a drawn-in smiley face, but the effect was oddly chilling. Too little, too late. We were already that changed. That letter, whatever he returned, I need to tell you, I never thought to keep, or to share.

* View Nicole’s story on Tapestry *

– Nicole Matos (http://about.me/nicole_matos) is a Chicago-based writer, professor, and roller derby girl. Her recent writing credits include Salon, The Classical, THE2NDHAND txt, Vine Leaves, Chicago Literati, and others. You can catch her blogging for Medium, publishing tappable stories on Tapestry, and competing on the skater track as Nicomatose #D0A with the Chicago Outfit Roller Derby, too. 

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Feb 25 2014
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Fiction

His Maoist Tenured Ass Or Ode to a Cliché

by Margaret Eaton

He told her he worked with Cesar Chavez. She said he was living a life of consequence. I told her the only grapes that pretentious prick ever picked was choosing a wine to seduce idealist babes like her. She said she wasn’t being seduced. He told her she should read serious writers. She said she knew she really should. He told her to come to his place so he could lend her some books. She said she would.

I said: This guy is so obvious why can’t you see it? She said professors are supposed to open our minds. I said: you know you’re not the first fair maiden he’s laid his messianic bullshit on. She said that I’m jealous because I don’t believe in anything. I said: I don’t believe in using my beliefs to lure people more attractive than me into my lair. She said the professor was the more attractive one because he had a deep soul and a fine mind. Upon hearing this I said: I’m going to vomit. She said she was not being seduced, that she was not that predictable or that stupid. I said: I don’t think you’re stupid. She said, but you think I’m predictable. I said: I think this situation is so pathetically predictable that vomiting is not a persuasive enough display of how sickened I am by it. She said she bought him a Che Guevara beret from an ad she saw in The New Yorker. I was dumbfounded. She said she put the beret on his head and hasn’t seen him since. Disgusted and relieved I said: Because you realized how totally full of shit he was when he rubbed his sagging 1970s Maoist tenured ass up against you. No, she said. Then why? Scalp odor.

 

– Margaret Eaton’s stories have been published in Opium, Matchbook, The Collagist, The Quotable, Pif Magazine and Barrelhouse. Another is forthcoming in Grey Sparrow Journal. She was an early contributing editor to Dowser, an online news source for social entrepreneurs. She lives in St. Louis.

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Feb 18 2014
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Fiction

Erraticism

by Ric Carter

We caught fish and sent them by post to the record shop. They would exchange a seven-inch single for a decent-sized mackerel, whereas a bass would land us a twelve-inch.  We had no front door. When the postman came to deliver our packages he just walked into the house and handed us the post while we were still in bed. The record player was at the foot of the bed, actually it was on top of our feet, which meant we could change the record without getting out from under the covers. We spent whole weeks like that, and these were weeks that went on and on – we invented new days so as to make a week stretch until it became ten, twenty, thirty days long.  

Our plan had been to spend a year there, but the year kept on expanding. It also happened to be the best year for new music since records began.  

We gave the postman some mackerel for his trouble and he brought us news of the outside world, from which we made connections to some of the lyrics we heard. There were fantastical lyrics, lovestruck lyrics, satirical lyrics, obtuse lyrics that didn’t seem to mean anything until you had listened to the record over and over. 

Our elongated weeks passed slowly. We looked out of our bedroom window and saw fighter jets screaming across the sky. We looked out of our bedroom window and saw mushroom clouds far across the sea. We looked out of our bedroom window and saw the military doing manoeuvres on the beach, smartly dressed in banks of three, guns over their shoulders, a marching band out front. We got back under the covers where it was warm and where we had been thinking about the possibility of going out to catch more fish so we could send away for more records. 

We heard the postman coming in through the space where our front door might have been, but when he entered the room, it turned out to be a soldier instead. He pointed his gun at us and ordered us to sit up and turn off the music. We put our hands to our heads and kept them there. We told him that all we were doing was catching fish and listening to music. He picked up our records and began to look through them, throwing selected titles to the floor. He put the depleted collection back on the bed and then snapped the discarded records under his boot. 

After he had gone we decided that a new week should begin with immediate effect. What the hell, we may as well make it a new year. We slept for longer than usual, then we went out and caught fifteen mackerel and three bass, which were sent straight to the record shop. Back in bed, we listened to the records we had left, but the best ones – the most thrilling, the most vital, the most monumental – had all been broken. 

The postman delivered our new batch, but no matter how hard we listened we couldn’t hear anything that told us what was going on.    

  

– Originally from Bury in North West England, Ric Carter lives in the Channel Island of Guernsey.  He publishes on his own website, Digestive Press, has produced several handmade chapbooks and has had work featured in various places online.

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Jan 30 2014
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Fiction

The Raven’s Unction

by Art Bupkis

Naarah and her mother started the journey south with the others after they ate their last goats, but it wasn’t long before they fell behind. The two stragglers took water from a muddy well, and the mother died of dysentery. Naarah escaped that illness, but was now traveling alone, and near death from starvation. 

Night approached. A small mud-brick church appeared in the distance. A church offered special promise of protection for Naarah. The girl’s family had converted to Christianity when she was four. Naarah had nearly died of measles then, but lived after the family called on Christ at the suggestion of a friend. She pushed to make the building before dark.

When she arrived at the church, Naarah saw that fire had gutted it. All that was left of the roof were rows of blackened beams. With the last of her strength she pushed the heavy twin doors open. There was little inside but ashes, and certainly no food. Still, she decided to sleep there with the doors shut against the creatures of the night. 

Naarah collapsed on the hard dirt floor next to the white stone altar. Gazing up through the dying light of eve she could barely make out the silhouettes of a raven being pursued by a mob of crows. She tried to sleep as the night cold of the desert plain settled upon her.

‘Are you in need child?’ a voice asked.

Naarah shook her head, but still the image of a large raven persisted on top of the altar.

‘Yes, Father,’ she whispered. ‘I am without family or friend, and am about to die of starvation.’

The raven looked the girl over carefully.

‘I can lead all my flock from this place of death to lands of ample water and rich harvests, but first you, child, must pray for salvation.’

With the raven’s words Naarah felt desperate pains of guilt, for she had cursed God at the time of the villagers’ flight. But she also felt hope, for she was ready to repent and be saved.

‘As penance you have but to pray through the night,’ reassured the raven. ‘Just as Jesus prayed in the garden before his time of glorious sacrifice and triumph, so too can you ensure life through this simple act of reverence.’

Naarah knelt by the white stone altar. Eyes fixed on the raven, she chanted her prayer in the moonlight.

 

‘Savior in darkness, Father of Light,

Whose Son before torture did pray like me,

Keep safe my spirit, by Your great might.

The new land of plenty, grant we may see…’

 

The raven listened approvingly, cocking his head first left, then right.

Hours later, when the first light of the rising sun poured over the white stone altar, it glistened off the feathers of an ancient raven and a small congregation of black carrion crows noisily celebrating the feast of Naarah’s corpse. They gorged themselves for days before heading south, as their provisions were secure within the church.

 

 – Philosopher, poet, and small-time humorist, The Rt. Rev., Professor, Dr. Art Bupkis, is a literary ward of L. R. Baxter, a professor at the University of Florida.

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Jan 16 2014
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Fiction

CLASSIFIED SECRET SERVICE REPORT ON MORAL/IMMORAL

by Thomas McColl

MORAL and IMMORAL are both vast organisations, operating in each country networks of spies and agents concerned solely with each other’s overthrow and destruction. Agents are everywhere – everyone’s involved – working undercover in every occupation, in every pub, in every household, on every street, watching, collating, reporting their information …

All that is known for sure about the two groups is that the one side will oppose whatever the other side supports. On both sides, secrecy is essential. Agents often do not even know which side they’re working for. Orders are given in the press through coded messages, and people only have to read and take them in to be recruited, often not knowing why it is they have become involved, or where it was they got their orders      from …

Double agents are numerous. It’s thought most members of IMMORAL still retain MORAL membership, and it’s not known how many members each organisation has. Once, it was believed that IMMORAL membership was almost universal within MORAL, but now it’s thought that MORAL has managed to infiltrate IMMORAL so effectively, if its own members were taken away there would be nothing left. It’s even been rumoured that the two organisations are simply one and the same …

Double agents are sometimes dealt with by a third organisation called AMORAL, that owes its allegiance to neither side, but works for both, and is currently supplying drugs into IMMORAL at their request in order to flush out the double agents and pretenders within its organisation. These noxious, mind-bending drugs, if taken by double agents, twist their minds so much, they render their reports incomprehensible, and now that drug use is compulsory within the ranks of IMMORAL, MORAL has found that its members who’ve infiltrated are not being driven out and back into its own camp as expected, but instead are taking drugs as often as possible to benefit from their pleasurable side effects, ignoring the warnings of possible brain damage, and giving IMMORAL more control than ever before, enabling it to infiltrate MORAL from within its own organisation, and at the same time, stem the flow of information that could be used to put a stop to it …

There is concern within IMMORAL that this latest success will make its membership almost redundant in its fight against MORAL, which instead is being won by AMORAL drugs, and making it seem more likely than ever before that the end of MORAL could mean the end of IMMORAL too. AMORAL though concedes that its agents also work for MORAL, using methods MORAL would not use, to combat the spread of drugs, and has agents too who work for neither side, sabotaging the efforts of both. It’s also thought that AMORAL is heavily infiltrated by both IMMORAL and MORAL, and would collapse if the two organisations they claim to use and work against suddenly ceased to exist …

– Thomas McColl lives in East London and has had short stories published in Notes from the Underground, Ranfurly Review and Smoke. He recently came second in 4’33” Magazine’s 60 second story contest, and has completed a novel. His favourite bookshop is Quinto, on Charing Cross Road.

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Dec 31 2013
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Fiction

Night Watch

by Roland Goity

This is Rockhaven, a half-day’s drive to civilization, where the heart of town – post office, gas station, general store slash deli, and First Presbyterian Church – revolves around a 4-way stop. The quadrant on the hilly side stands out. It’s the church that’s Rockhaven’s centerpiece. Reverend Thomas led the effort behind its shiny new paint job, which emits a sparkling halo on extraordinarily sunny days, ‘otherworldly’ some call it. The church bell rings not only Sunday. Events take place throughout the week, once the public school kids and quasi-professional, non-farmer types have returned from studying and working in Summertown, or from as far away as Adams Valley. There’s no industry in Rockhaven. Hasn’t been since the psychiatric hospital in the distance shuttered decades ago. Evidently there were some serious problems at the facility so it had to close. Now all that’s left are brick barriers, concrete walkways, and jutting rebar in a skeleton maze of what once must have been a formidable structure. Although First Presbyterian is the town’s official place of worship, every year more and more teenagers try to summon spirits while partying down at the hospital ruins. They ignore the Danger and No Trespassing signs and slip through a bolt-cut wedge of a chain-link, barbed-wire fence in the dead of night, their cars parked off in a stand of woods nearly a half-mile away. The dilapidated site fascinates them with its history, its morbidity. Without fail someone will spout: ‘I’d rather have a bottle in front of me than a frontal lobotomy,‘ before taking a swig of wine or liquor. The old joke takes on a special meaning here: frontal lobotomies and electroshock therapy treatments were performed as routinely as oil changes, the hospital’s patients like vehicles in need of a tune-up or lube job, required repair if they wanted to safely navigate the road back home. Such a legacy, when combined with a brisk wind or snapping branch under foot, sends chills across the arms and shoulders of kids, many of whom are drunk, high, tweaked, or maybe tripped out. There’s always a hint of uncertainty. They gaze at the night’s shadows figuring ghoulish figures might suddenly appear and reclaim their right minds, and the right to think for themselves. It’s a source of entertainment that can’t be found in Summertown, or even Adams Valley. It’s a Rockhaven thing. 

  

– Roland Goity lives in the San Francisco Bay Area, where he writes in the shadows of planes coming and going from SFO. His stories can be found in Fiction International, The Raleigh Review, Word Riot, Compass Rose, PANK, and more recently in The MacGuffin, Menacing Hedge, Defenestration, and Bluestem. He edits WIPs: Works (of Fiction) in Progress.

 

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Dec 12 2013
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Fiction

Q: What Makes Our Quinceañera Supply Store A Cut Above The Rest? A: Customer-Fucking-Service.

by Thomas Mundt

The Internet Age is one of options, of devastating alternatives that can cripple a man or his small business quicker and more efficiently than any oxidized piece of rebar could ever dream. Seems like you can’t walk down the street or commandeer an ’81 Hatteras Wide-Body Power Yacht without having your eardrums assaulted by the din of the newest, brashest kids on the quinceañera block, all promising the moon and its vast oil reserves to gain not only your business but your trust.

Pardon me while I make the air-jerk-off motion, but only because it’s just the two of us and I feel like we already have a rapport and you’re not going to interpret the gesture as my tacit condonation of the patriarchal construction of language.

If you want to survive, nay, thrive in this business, you need a plan that puts people first, and ahead of trendy buzzwords like sustainability and OSHA compliance. That’s why, at Quince Sustanivos, we’ve been servicing Southwest Michigan and select Central American mining communities with a singular focus:

Customer-Fucking-Service.

No, we don’t have a staring problem, but thanks for asking! It’s just that, when you’ve been in business for as many months as we have (two), you learn a thing or three about delivering to your customers the high-quality balloons, tablerunners, and, our favorite, the ‘Mis Quince’ Venetian Half-Mask and Gloves Combo Paks, they deserve. You discover that moving units has less to do with slick circulars and appropriate Cuidado: Piso Mojado signage in the washrooms than it does Mrs. Alvarez’ gardenias, or La Familia Calderon’s recent exploration of Carlsbad Caverns.

It’s the little things, like never, ever mentioning Luís around Rosa Hermosillo because she still hasn’t forgotten about the tire fire and often forgets to re-up on her Celexa, that make all the difference.

Sure, you could go to The Other Guys (insert the sound of me puking all over your face) and save a buck, but do you really want long lines, pushy commissioned salespeople, and feeling like It’s never the right time, Gary! It’s fucking never the right time because everything’s about fucking you!*

I mean, do you?

No way, José!

So, remember:

The need of a constantly-expanding market for its products chases the bourgeoisie over the whole surface of the globe. It must nestle everywhere, settle everywhere, establish connections everywhere.** And, when it comes to one-stop shopping for all of your quinceañera needs, make it Quince Sustanivos today. You and Your Little Lady will be glad you did!***

*The competitors of Quince Sustanivos and their affiliates may not be responsible for your generalized feelings of remorse and resentment. The same may be directly attributable to Gary, who is not a Registered Agent of Quince Sustanivos or its subsidiaries.

**Karl Marx, The Communist Manifesto. 

***Your Little Lady has entered an awkward phase of indefinite length. During this stage, nothing you do or say will be right and her hatred for you will be palpable at the dinner table, including but not limited to gatherings for breakfast, brunch, lunch, dinner, supper (a Midwest variant of dinner), and dessert.

 

– Thomas Mundt is the author of one short story collection, You Have Until Noon to Unlock The Secrets Of The Universe (Lady Lazarus Press, 2011) and the father of one human boy, Henry (2011). Teambuilding opportunities and risk management advice can be found at http://www.jonathantaylorthomasnathanmundtdds.com.

 

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Nov 20 2013
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Fiction

The Cloud

by Burt Swan

The man was thirty-three when he found his cloud. He was staring from a train window when he noticed it hung familiarly in the sky; white, fluffed and proud to be his. As soon as he saw it, he said to himself, ‘That’s my cloud.’

His eyes followed as it peeped out from behind embanked trees and the chimney stacks of the houses beyond, and he felt both happy and not a little smug that the other people around didn’t recognise the cloud as he did. They would look and see it there clearly against the blue turning pink turning indigo, and yet not one of them thought it might be their cloud. His heartbeat quickened in alarm as he watched it chase towards a larger cloud that had nothing to do with him; he bit his lip as its edges unfurled into the underbelly of its bloated cousin. He looked away, sad and jealous, but turned back a moment later to feel his heart squeeze warm and full as the cloud dragged itself away, and he said again with all the love he felt, ‘That’s my cloud.’ And he knew it was.

The man’s wife wasn’t listening to him when he described what had happened; either that or he wasn’t explaining properly. Now he’d found his cloud, he knew everything would be alright from now on, but she wasn’t impressed.

Each morning he’d step out on his way to the office, and smile up as he saw his cloud there waiting to accompany him. He swapped his old desk for one by the window. On the twenty-third floor he was closer than ever before to the cloud, and every chance he got, he snuck a look to see it there, waiting so they could go home together.

Usually his cloud was a tightly puffed blob, a piece of balled-up paper tossed high into the air. Sometimes when he or the cloud were uncertain, it would hide, sheltering amongst its brothers and sisters, but he’d always know it was still nearby. And sometimes, on certain special days decided between themselves, it spread into beautiful feathers across the setting sky.

His wife said awful things about the cloud, at first, and then about the man. The things she said brought tears to his eyes, though not for himself. He was only sad that his wife had no cloud of her own, and though he’d tried, she wouldn’t share his. One day he woke and the bed beside him was cold, and through the blinds his cloud was dark, and swollen with anger, and the man understood how upset it was with what his wife had done.

Even years later, the man and the cloud were still best of friends. His children had grown up with their mother, then moved away to hot, terrifying, cloudless places. His wife had gone north, where there were so many clouds the man could never visit for fear of permanently losing his own.

Still, he was never lonely, and he was happy, because no matter what, his cloud was faithful but for the occasional summer holiday which the man didn’t mind, because he could rely on his cloud to return at an appropriate moment; and they probably needed some time apart anyway, even if beneath these reasons lay a dull leaden ache. He had the sense of being lost no matter where he went on those sunny days everyone else called unspoilt.

Eventually, when he was rather older, the man died. They said he must have been alone when his heart gave out. The doctors had been saying his entire cardiovascular system would have been under strain for years with the divorce, the redundancy, the separation from his children. They’d tried to tell him living alone wasn’t good for the body nor the soul, and they’d sighed and glanced at one another when he’d told them he wasn’t alone at all. And whilst they went ahead and said that was why his heart was weak, he had known all along that really, it had been overworked by the little jumps and flurries he’d felt every morning when he woke and found his cloud outside, still watching.

Nobody came to the man’s funeral in the end, aside from the sheltered accommodation manager, who’d warmed to the ‘…funny old coot, really.’

But the cloud did come along, and cried hard whilst they buried him, and stayed after they’d covered him over. For three days and three nights, the cloud rained down every part of itself onto the cold ground until it was sodden. By then there was nothing left of the cloud but its last tears trickling between the blades of grass and sinking into the earth, and the two of them lay there together, touching at last.

– Burt Swan is a writer and musician who confuses the disciplines as often as possible. He grew up in suburban Kent, and now lives just south of the River Thames with two extremely personable rats whose conversational English improves daily. He is currently working on his first novel.

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Oct 31 2013
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Fiction

The Beanstalk

by Joe Baumann

Zoe was the only one brave enough to climb the Very Tall Tree. It was in the deepest part of the park, the area cordoned off by the rusting chain link fence covered in vines where the grass had grown tall and tangled in the metal webbing. When the sun would set, even the blazing lights from the baseball diamond and running paths didn’t cut through, and the tree’s massive fronds, the size of chairs, were swallowed in the darkness.

But Zoe climbed the tree in the afternoon, when twinkling, glittery light still shone through the higher branches and a swampy mist from the humidity had settled on the slick greens of the trees. We all watched her from the other side of the fence, our heads tilting back as she climbed higher and higher. A few of the girls squealed, one begging Zoe to come back down, but she wouldn’t. When she was very far up, so far we could hardly see her any more, someone said they saw her stop, but she must have only been taking a short rest, because then she kept climbing and disappeared from view.

We waited for hours, it seemed, everyone scanning the Very Tall Tree, with its wide base and bark thick as the wall of a bank vault. The sun started to set and we heard our parents calling for us as they thrashed through the thick bushes to find us. We bit our lips and our legs shook. Just as they found us, the first adult yelling that we were near the Very Tall Tree, Zoe came falling down out of nowhere, rocketing through the sky like an asteroid. She kept flopping on branches, which caught her like careful, rocking arms, and slowed her descent. She landed in a pile of dead leaves that poofed up around her like a down comforter.

Someone’s mother screamed, and another kid’s father hopped the fence in a silky leap and ran to her. He yelled that she was breathing, but something was wrong with her skin. When they finally managed to get her across the fence, unconscious and heavy, we saw: she was red like cherry bubble gum. Her cheeks looked like they’d been slapped forever or doused with hot water. Blisters covered her forehead.

They took her to the hospital, and everyone followed, waiting in a congested clump in the waiting room. It smelled like antiseptic and helium. When she woke up the hall was filled with exhaled relief. The doctors said she was in a full-body cast for her burns, which were all over, even the parts where she’d been covered in clothes. She wouldn’t say what happened to her, they told her parents, but the whispers waved across everyone, and soon we all knew of Zoe’s silence.

Those of us who had watched her climb the tree sat in her room nervously when they finally let us in, our legs bouncing on the floor, some of the girls braiding their fingers together over and over. We waited for Zoe’s mother to leave the room to go to the bathroom, and when she did we all stood and crowded around her. She was a frozen white blob. Three little holes were poked in the bandages wrapped tight around her head, one for her mouth and two for her eyes.

‘What happened, Zoe?’ someone whispered. Someone else shouted for someone to watch the door, but no one wanted to, because Zoe’s voice was tiny, like a squeaky hinge.

She had found the clouds, she said. They were hot, steamy, and that she’d ignored the warmth as long as she could. She’d seen an owl perched on one of the Very Tall Tree’s branches – she still couldn’t see its top – that was nothing but a skeleton, all of its skin and muscle and organs and blood evaporated away by the scalding heat of the clouds that flashed, she said, with bright orange radiance. When it flew away, it sounded like bowling pins smacking together.

‘Then how’d you know it was an owl?’ someone said.

Zoe blinked through her gauze and said she just knew.

‘And then?’

And then she’d felt the pain, she said, the heat in her skin bubbling her flesh, and she’d passed out, and now here we were.

We looked at one another. Everyone had their hands tight on the cold metal rail on either side of Zoe’s bed. For some reason she had a thin blanket over her legs, as though she needed that with the bandages wrapping her up tight like some bland Christmas gift.

‘I thought I heard something,’ she said. ‘Right before I passed out.’

We all leaned forward. Someone hissed that Zoe’s mom was coming.

‘Like laughter. Or footsteps. It might have been thunder.’ Her lips were chapped, and she let out a wheeze. We all stepped back and sat down where we’d been.

Zoe’s mother came back in the room.

‘I think we need to let Zoe rest,’ she said. Her voice was tight as a zipper.

We marched out, each of us casting one last look at Zoe, imagining her skin pink and bloated and rotten, and we wondered what kinds of voices she’d heard up there, and what it must have been like to fall into that heavenly slumber.

– Joe Baumann is a PhD candidate in English at the University of Louisiana at Lafayette, where he serves as the editor-in-chief of the Southwestern Review. His work has appeared in the Hawai’i Review, flashquake, The Coachella Review, and several others, and is forthcoming from Cactus Heart.

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