4 Hour Hard On

Ellen Parker is an extraordinarily talented fiction writer. She is currently working on a novel, set in Kansas City, Missouri-- at the end of the world. She also publishes the seminal online literary magazine, FRiGG, a link to which I just happen to have-- Right Here. I am grateful to Ellen for giving me permission to publish the following three flash fictions on my humble blog. This work will absolutely rock your world folks I money-back frickin' guarantee it. Enjoy at your leisure. --dm



"Metallic" (c) '05 by Ellen Parker

I told this new man I would have sex with him only through the fence. His name, I think, was Charlie. Joey. Jamie? He said it while he tongued the roof of my mouth. I slipped two fingers down his jeans waistband and, in his ear, I went, "Kimberly." When he took his tongue back he told me, sotto voce, "Makes me think of spiny green veggies, wet." Perhaps he was a poet! This pleased me. Still, I didn’t want to interact with him barrierlessly. I liked the cold truth of his whispering sexy words at me through metal links.

We’d see each other sometimes while putting out the trash. "Just give me a whistle," I called, once. He did and I trotted over, like a pug. Immediately we pushed our mouths against each other. He put his tongue-tip up my nostril. We got creative in wetting each other’s faces. He licked off my mascara and made like it was yummy, licorice-thick, gritty as sugar. You’re thinking I liked him. I liked the toothy feel of his hard cock beneath his zipper. Each time we met we grew bolder. "Next time," he said, one time, "we’ll remove something."

To be cute I wore a bobby pin lined with rhinestones. I plucked it off and dropped it down his shirt. He unbuttoned all the way. He showed me his reticulated chest. Through one opening, I bit his nipple. Through another, I bit the other. Were people passing? Sure. I sensed their shadows at the back of my neck. But this was nobody’s business but his and mine. The way he ran his fingernails up my inner thigh was purely private.

The catch to spontaneity is it’s short. Our meetings, soon, grew ritualized. Trashcans and kisses. Sunrays and asphalt. A chain-link fence is, after all, not beautiful. I told him I’d meet him one last time, that night, at midnight. Wouldn’t it be lovely to have a moon? Wouldn’t it be nice to fuck through a fence in the dark? All day long I considered the challenges.

The moon at midnight was blind. Perfect, no? A box of blackness. Fuck, the fence was cold. I pressed my breasts against it, transferring heat. The wind, though, was reaching up my skirt. I’ll give him fifteen minutes, I thought, after giving him forty-five. Firm, I jammed my face on the fence—two squares framed my eyes, which made me feel wise. Through my mouth link, I whistled. After a while, after twenty minutes or perhaps two hundred forty, I began licking the metal. Soon enough I began sucking on it. I won’t tell you I liked it. I sucked enough hard shapes to fill a child’s toy chest. I never grew used to the taste. When the sun showed itself, I felt so full of grief that I stopped. What if a person saw me? I cowered. I wrapped my skirt around my legs. I went upstairs to bed. I dreamed I was lunching on a plate of mortified silver worms, making them squirm, making them bleed.





"Lovechild" (c) '05 by Ellen Parker

I didn’t want it at first. I wasn’t prepared. My buds were not full enough to give suckle. But yes they grew day by day until really I disliked them. I missed their small plain painlessness and their absence of cummy spurts that make big creamy messes down my blouse flaps.

He said he knew I didn’t want it. He said yes he knew.

Earlier tonight I stood before him in the bedroom and I asked him how on earth had I gone from that to this? This! And I let down my nursing cups and I hoisted the two of them sadly, those gross milky twins wearing their swarthy caps, goose-fleshed. Both of them were weeping. For this I fully expected repulsion on his part. Instead though his arctic eyes pooled and his lips parted and warily I said, "Ah yes, I know that hungry look." All the irises in this house give me those wolfish eyes.

Here the baby cried.

"Well, well," I rasped. I packed away my tits and I went out.

I know it’s been weeks and weeks. You think I can’t count? But I ask you: just how much am I able to give? How much more can I give before I am dry?

Of course I feel his mind on me. It’s constant. It’s wearisome. It’s pitiful. It’s maddening. It’s beautiful. It’s loving. It’s heartbreaking.

But in this house the baby rules. The baby wants. The baby needs. The baby gets. She mustn’t wait. Her parents exist to serve her. Thinking otherwise leads no place satisfying.

So. Now I am rocking. She has just finished off both of my breasts. She has fully milked me. Now she dozes, sated. I have just placed her lightly on her back on the small hard mattress of her crib and while I rock the rocker in the dark I look at her there. She is so tiny and so touching and so by herself, in lonely relief against the vast paleness of that ridiculous prison, and suddenly my nipples tingle and I can feel the milk coming down again.

At this moment all I can think is: I am ready to share.

Oh, this makes me smile. This strikes me as being terribly droll. After all, how can I go from that to this?

Presently I want to be the one to suck. I have a powerful urge. I mustn’t wait. I undo my leaky tits. I will take them quickly up the stairs. But won’t everything get all milky? Sure it will. Nevertheless I will climb onto our bed and throw off the covers and straddle him and suck his cock and suck and suck until he is hard. Then I will slide him inside me and I will watch his sleepy smile and together the two of us, me on top, will take a ride.

Then I’m imagining he might think it appropriate, while we are rocking as if it’s our first, to tell me how happy this is by starting to say, "I love..." But I will whisper shhhh and I will say, "I love...oh yes, I love..."

And I will offer my bawling tits to his hands and he will grasp them and milk them so wet that while we fuck the warmth of the juice will sluice through his fingers and oh the only words that can enter this heaven are I love to fuck you and as I say it the meaning of each word will sting the surface of our skin like small angry pebbles flung hotly into a pond.



"In The Flesh" (c) '05 by Ellen Parker

"What kind of fish is that?"

She lifted her head off the pillow and looked at him from between her raised knees. "Excuse me?"

He was kneeling at the foot of her bed. He tipped his face and sniffed. "I smell fish. Salmon. Sockeye, perhaps. Have you been cooking sockeye?"

She sat up. She hid her nakedness with the bedsheet. "Exactly what are you trying to say?"

"No offense." He showed his palms and smiled. "I love salmon. Did you know salmon is the third most popular fish in the United States?"

"You mean, it gets asked out on a lot of dates?"

He pondered this. "Ha," he said, finally.

She crossed her arms over the sheet, binding her breasts. "You don’t want to do this, do you?"

He cocked his head. "Do what?"

"This." She spread her knees underneath the sheet, making a tent.

He reached for the sheet. She snapped her knees shut.

"I thought you seemed nice," she said.

"I am nice," he said. "If that’s what you want."

She pointed at a dainty gold hoop piercing his left nipple. "Did that hurt?"

"Delectably." He licked his lips.

"Oh. I get it. You’re into pain."

He frowned and took a deep breath. "Salmon runs are really very brutal," he said. "Hordes of muscular bodies slamming furiously into each other. Some of them get trampled. Some of them are so badly beaten up they can’t be sold at markets. Their appearance is horrifying. No one would buy them. This is despite that fact that underneath their bruised exterior their wild flesh is delicious."

She looked at him steadily. "I think you should leave."

He shrugged. He got off his knees and moved to the open door. He paused there, showing her his naked back, his ass-clenching jeans. He grasped the knob and pushed the door shut. He kept his back to her.

Suddenly his shoulders drooped. "Now who’s not being very nice?"

She laughed. After a long while she stopped. "Take off your belt," she said. "Give it here."

He turned, but kept his eyes on the floor. His face was ashen.

"What are the first and second?" she asked.

Without looking up, he said, "Excuse me?"

"What are the first and second most popular fish in the United States?"

He met her gaze. His eyes showed panic. "Well...tuna," he said, "is one and...." He looked like he might weep. "The other is, number two...." His eyes filled with tears. "I don’t...I can’t remember." He unbuckled his belt and whipped it off. He lobbed it at her.

She caught it with both hands. Her bedsheet fell. She was fully exposed, palely glistening, as if she’d just emerged from water. "Well, now. Who’s been a bad boy? Who hasn’t learned his lessons?" She looped the belt and slapped it on her palm. "Sit."

He sat on the bed, waiting.






Joseph Young lives in Baltimore, Maryland-- and is one of the finest flash fiction writers working today. His engaging stories crackle with verisimilitude and a sort of insouciance that dares the reader to dismiss his characters and evocations-- all the while we're eating up his words like theater caramel corn.

The following flashes are taken from the zines Smokelong Quarterly; Frigg Magazine; Word Riot; Exquisite Corpse; and Philadelphia Stories, respectively.



"THE SUSPECT" (c) '05 Joe Young, all rights reserved


You see? He's alone.

So?

So it makes him suspect.

As if on cue, the crowd along the sidewalk pulled away on both sides, leaving the man within an empty backdrop of brick wall.

Why should they be suspicious?

Well, what kind of a man is alone? One that's flawed. Unhealthy.

The man turned his back to the street and faced the wall. He placed his hands on the bricks and spread his fingers. As he pushed, he rolled his head slowly around his shoulders.

He's out for a walk. For exercise.

He's still alone in a crowd.

The man left the busy sidewalk, crossed at the corner, and cut across the park lawn. As he walked, the crashing of the rock band grew quieter. When he reached the trees on the far, far side, he lit a cigarette and cupped one hand around the smooth brown bark.

While he smoked, he thought of the little girl he'd bought a popsicle for at the 7-11. "Tell the nice man thank you, Brittany! Don't be so rude." The little girl curled her nose, glaring at her mother.

"She's shy," he said now, to a wasp cutting the air, an empty soda bottle. "It's okay."

He finished his cigarette and left the park, strolling slowly. When he got to his house, he stood a moment on the marble landing. He could hear the band playing when the wind blew in his direction. Perhaps I'll go back and listen some more, he thought, but he didn't move, just felt the hot evening sun on his arms.

You see? Now he'll go inside.

Maybe he has a family in there, children.

Yes, maybe he does.

Then he's okay. He's all right.

The man drew a heavy breath and climbed the dark stairs, the radio still playing in the kitchen.

No, I don't think so. I don't think he's all right at all.




"HOW THINGS HOLD LIGHT" (c) '05 Joe Young, all rights reserved

You didn’t know that the road by the beach that twisted against the root of the mountains led anywhere at all. You didn’t know that the ocean tipped on its side in the afternoon light had the least bit of depth. You didn’t know that the girl in the seat beside you loved you or that you loved her or that love could hold any more consequence than sex and moss.

All of it was as without weight as the Mexican road crew on the shoulder, touching the change in their pockets, waiting for the truck to take them home. This was the rawest freedom, and even as your stomach was an empty field where the stars burned, you couldn't see that there was anything else, any other time. You were just burnt wood stirred with a stick. Jesus, how things held light.
And she held your hand. Do you remember that?

The curves in the road and the updraft of birds. The yellow grass and the tint of moon on the hood. A meteor could burst through the windshield hot with atmosphere and bloody your lip. Or you could just stop, and the fog would shine with a headlight coming toward you. That’s all it was, a headlight, no driver, a little boy asleep across the long back seat.

Still, it was a race, whether you knew it or not. A silver watch ticked on the forest floor among pine needles and owls. There was an echo somewhere that amplified the hinge of your lungs. A truck just over the horizon beat its wheels on the asphalt. You hoped it was just an image, of money and your grandfather’s photograph, terrible in sepia and wool. It was the memory of something that hadn’t happened, twisting like rope in the night. You held on to the glint of gold in her earring. That and the lovely curve of evening rising between you.

Now you look back. It’s a fold of mountains over your shoulder. Like the time you ate sunfish on a yellow spotted rock; the dog that went into the waves and you worried about the sharks. Still, you wonder, is this all? bits of trick candy and tin? and the sky that only looks like snow? Though, for a moment, so serious that scalloped edge of cloud, the talk of business at the table that thrums with purposefulness. Maybe you could just sit. Yes, that would be nice. The chance to close your eyes and see only darkness.



"DOG LOVE" (c) '05 Joe Young, all rights reserved

First time I ever gave love to a girl, I was 13. We were smoking twigs from a lilac bush out back of her house, and Jean asked me, what was it like having a thing? I said it was good, oh so good, on a summer night when the frogs were thick in the pines and the moon was orange in the window screen, and you had it in your hand, working it so slow. She said she wanted to watch me, and I said okay, and then she said she wanted it in her, and I said okay again. It was hot in the rafters of her garage, and her skin smelled of sweet mown grass.

Forty years later, I'm married to her sister Sari. But where Jean had lovely handfuls up front, even at 13, Sari is just a stretch of dirt road, a pothole in the center of her belly and some clods of earth up top. And she doesn't smell of heat and grass, but of onions, paste, and bitter weed. I can't ride her without a sinking in my heart, same as the day 30 years ago when death put Jean in the ground. I took Sari to the willows that day, pleaded with her to let me in, and with a grimace she opened her legs.

This morning we heard a whimper under the porch, and Sari got up to check on Girl. Some months back, we came home from the hardware to see Girl and the neighbor dog linked tight, the neighbor dog rocking hard into Girl's backside, Girl lifting her head at the sky and moaning like God's glory. "Pull 'em apart!" Sari had said, and when I looked at her like she was the Queen of Ice, she went in the shed and got a stick to wedge between them. All the good it did.

So I'm sitting on the porch when Sari comes from underneath, covered in dirt, eyebrow to toe. "Have you know," she says, "We got six damn dogs to contend with now. That won't be a burden. No sir." She slams through the door, and in a minute I hear the shower run.

After crawling under the porch and taking a look at them blind-eyed pups suckling their mother's teats, wiggling with the life in them, I go through the screen door, too. I press up the stairs and down the hall to the bathroom door. Inside, I hear Sari moving around, brush ripping through her wet hair, swish of water as she scrubs out the tub.

"Sari," I say, and push in. She's on the toilet, naked and pink, sucking her cigarette. "Sari, you and I are different as black and white, up and down, morning and eve. Sari," I say, "I don't know why I married you."

She looks up through her smoke, tiny, wrinkly breasts poking the air, brows pinching tight. She shrugs.

"Wasn't no one with the sense to pull us apart," she says.



"WHAT, ME? HARDLY (c) '05, Joe Young, all rights reserved

I've been trying to learn bass for two years. I'm an idiot, my fingers are dog shit. My girlfriend plays guitar, and the way her hands move like water, like green light, over the frets is amazing. I play with her, and she looks at me with only the slits of her eyes. One morning, she puts down her guitar, and we take a drive along the cliffs above the ocean. She pulls over, and we look out at the black crumbly rocks and the whitecaps of milk, the sea rocking for 10,000 miles.
"Isn't it incredible?" she says, and her eyes are so round and hungry. She watches a minute, and then she looks at me.

"Well isn't it?"

"I don't know," I say.

"You don't know?"

I offer up my empty, useless hands. She tilts her head, her mouth in a wrinkled 0. Then she shrugs, gets out, and slams her door. As she stretches, I watch the freckled knobs of her spine take in the morning sun.



"CATHERINE STREET" (c) '05, Joe Young-- all rights reserved

Alberta likes to walk the Italian Market and look at the fish. She thinks they watch as the people pass, awareness lingering in the black marbles of their eyes, kept cool and alive by the boxes of ice in which they sleep. She smiles at the sturgeon and stickleback to let them know she knows.

When we get back to Catherine Street, the Vietnamese couple are having sex in the apartment under ours. Their passion increases as the temperature rises, and with the sun blazing hard at 92-degrees, they can't seem to keep their hands off of each other. The woman’s moans echo up the chimney and pour out of our fireplace.

Alberta lies across the bed and watches me undress. Her gaze follows as I shed my underwear and stand next to her, breathing deeply. I fall forward, into her smell of limes and grass.
When I wake, Alberta is crying, fingering the glass fox on our night stand. I lean close and push the hair off the curl of her ear.

"I dreamt I left you," she says.

"You are leaving me," I answer.

She nods.

Alone, I make coffee and stand next to the fire escape, slick with sweat in the twilight. A little girl sits on her step as an old man walks his dachshund along the curb. From the roofs and telephone wires, the birds sing their last songs.

The next morning, I stroll the market until I see Alberta coming toward me.

"How was Susan's?" I say.

She palms the back of her neck. "Her couch gave me a crick." In a brown bag she carries rhubarb and wine.

"You knew I'd be walking here?"

"Of course."

In the heat of the afternoon, the Vietnamese couple fights, their curses rattling in my fireplace. Then there's the clap of a hand on damp skin. "Don't hit me," he says, and she answers, "Why shouldn't I?"
Alberta comes over later that week and we have sex in the shower. It's tremendously hot as the steam creeps around our legs and over the wings of her shoulders. When we're finished, we look at each other and blink.

"I found your bracelet under the couch," I say to her on the phone. I pretend to admire it on my wrist, the cherry garnets and opal.

Alberta breathes into the receiver. "So that's where it was."

By August, the last of her clothes are gone and all of her records—except for the one I hide from her. Time takes a cigarette, says Bowie. The old man walks his dog, the little girl sits, as the street lights fill the street with light.







Jeff Landon lives in Richmond, Virginia. He writes tight, seductive stories that are so heartwarmingly well-crafted as to make him--in my humble opinion-- destined for literary superstardom.

Also, author Robin Slick has platonically described Landon's Southern-fried snoring as, well-- Loud... but also sort of hypnotically musical and "waterfallesque", once you stop and listen to it for awhile.


The following 3 flash fictions originally appeared on the Web in "Pindeldyboz", "FRiGG", and "Smokelong Quarterly", respectively.

So, let's dig some Jeff Landon, shall we?



Like Swimming(c) '05 by Jeff Landon

Angie Watson sits waiting for me on the front porch of her mother’s Mexican-style home. I’m leaning against my bike, a black ten-speed that my mother discovered at a yard sale last weekend. Angie jogs out to the street to greet me in her clunky green boots. She’s wearing a jean skirt and a baggy sweatshirt. No bra. She’s eating glops of potato salad from a green plastic container, and I am trying, and failing, to maintain eye contact because she isn’t wearing a bra. Her boobs are small, but that’s not important to me.

“Want some?” She waves a spoonful of potato salad under my nose. “It’s tasty.”

“I’m sort of hungry,” I tell her.

“When I was five, I poked my eye with a fork-it was gross.” Angie looks at me with this deadly serious expression. “Isn’t that the saddest tragedy you’ve ever heard? Don’t you feel sorry for me?”

“Sort of,” I say. “I guess it hurt.”

“Sure it did,” Angie says, touching my arm. “But I’m a survivor, Lewis Mason.”

We amble back to the shed in her sprawling backyard. Angie yanks her red bike over a riding mower, and we leave. I like her bike. It’s at least thirty years old, with a metal basket and a bell.

We drift all about Arcadia Springs, stopping for a Dr Pepper break at the Hop-in. Springtime has returned to our town; cars flash by with windows open wide to let out the music and stale air. We glide downhill through Wasena Park beside the Mechunk River. On this muggy day, families gather in pools of shade to open picnic baskets and shoot hoops. Horseshoes clang and dogs bark. Angie hums along with the soul music pumping out from a line of just-waxed cars. The song is called Betcha By Golly Wow . Angie strains to hit the high notes. Her face gets all scrunched up and serious from the effort.

We stop to rest beside a ruined swing set. Angie cradles her hand around the nape of my neck for a second.

“Aren’t my hands cold?” she asks. “I swear, I’m part reptile.”

I can smell Angie’s shampoo and her perfume, musky and sweet at the same time. I lean in closer to that smell. We’re both sweating a little bit. I keep staring at Angie’s boobs under her damp T-shirt. She catches me staring, and she lets me stare, for a moment.

In spring, the Mechunk River is the color of a slightly used basketball, and these families around us seem happy with the day, normal families with big dogs and towheaded youngsters fighting over toys and cupcake icing.

I follow Angie up the steep, curving mountain road that opens to the Blue Ridge Parkway. Sunlight fades, and we give up near the top of the hill and walk our bikes the rest of the way. Angie talks about her gym teacher, a psycho, a sadist, the biggest, meanest bitch in America. Clouds block the moon, but we see a few stars and, I think, Venus.

Angie sings an old Todd Rundgren song that we both like, and I sing off-key beside her. We walk close to each other, touching some. This is almost a perfect night. Behind us, our city lights up to fight the darkness. They’re playing minor league baseball tonight at Howsley Field. Truckers roar down the highway with their high beams on. Farther up the road, parked at all the lookout points, couples make out in shiny cars and smashed-up trucks. In one car, a cherry red Camaro, a woman’s bare legs poke out the passenger side window. She’s laughing real loud and kicking her legs like someone swimming underwater and upside down.



For You (c) '05 by Jeff Landon

It’s like the ninth grade only more naked. You feed each other popcorn at the movies and then, hand job in the back row. Later, you return the favor, in the woods, in a clearing in the woods, and when you unsnap her jeans it’s the only sound in the world, until the birds join in, here, away from the world. World, go away.

* * *

Some mornings, you wake up trembling, you wake up hard. You peek under the covers. Your wife is in the shower. Your children are waking up with radio music.
“Hey, boner,” you tell your boner. “I need to go to work now.”

* * *

And: this. Kissing hard, kissing with numb lips on the ninth floor of a hotel in New York City. Braced against a wall, fumbling out of clothes, her breath wine-oaky and warm, her hands pressing your chest, your thighs, her small breasts, the curve of them, her hands pressing and her skin is so soft, and her body, like yours, a middle-aged body. You kiss every imperfection and her hands move in your hair, against your soft belly, and she will moan, and so will you, you can’t stop, and you cup her ass and pull her tighter against you, tighter, and she unbuckles you, her tongue sliding against yours, her hair, her hands guiding you inside her, match her rhythm, hips rocking, lock in, look at her face, look at her face, and she will say your name over and over, and you’ve forgotten how it sounds, like this, you’ve forgotten this sound, the beauty of every fucking word that she says.

* * *

She will call you. It is Against the Rules, but, one day or night, she will call. She will call you at work. She’s had a bad day. She wants to meet you.
“I’m wearing a blue summer dress,” she says, too many cigarettes in her voice. “I’m not wearing anything under my dress,” she says. “Let’s meet at the park. I’ll bring egg salad sandwiches from Feldman’s.”

* * *

A bad weekend. A bad weekend away. Three days of snipping, mean silences, too many drinks, and sad, cold sex. It’s not even fucking. It’s just rote, hair and movement, an outline, a memory to blot out, later.

Driving home, of course, a snowstorm. You can’t see anything, and she is pretending to be asleep beside you. You should: pull the car over and let the storm pass. You should: tell her the truth and tell her goodbye. She doesn’t need you anymore. You don’t need her anymore.

You drive too fast in the snow, but you make it home alive.
She is ducking into her little red car. Watch her drive away. Don’t wave. If you cry, believe this—it’s not for her. So: don’t.

* * *

She’s gone. She left. You left. It doesn’t matter. Be tender, for a few days, to your wife. Promise to be a better man. There is so much room for improvement here.

One night, she will find you, in a dream, in a fantasy, and you will hurt, and you will touch yourself but that won’t help, and you will stare at the ceiling in the dark, and your wife snores softly beside you, but it’s just you. All along, it’s always been you, just you. And: You.



Thirty-Nine Years Of Carrie Wallace (c) '05 by Jeff Landon

At recess, in Roanoke, Virginia, we play freeze tag, only the rule is you don’t tag the person, you kiss the person, and once you’re kissed you’re frozen forever until somebody tags you. I’m a fast runner, but I always let Carrie Wallace catch me. She has bangs and white plastic boots. She kisses me and goes, “You’re frozen,” and I go, “So what?”

***

Carrie’s basement and we’re fifteen years old. Her parents have gone to Aruba for a rebirthing workshop, and her big sister is upstairs, shaping her eyebrows. We are high on green pot and the jug of Mogen David wine I lifted from Garland’s Drugstore. It’s summer and I can taste the heat in Carrie’s skin. Huddled together we smell like fruity wine, spearmint gum, Lark cigarettes, pot, and Herbal Essence shampoo. It’s not as awful as it sounds.

“Make it last,” Carrie whispers in the dark. But I don’t.

***

Downtown Boston, in my dorm room, and we’re listening to a Poco record. Carrie’s down for the weekend; she goes to school in Vermont. Tonight, she’s wearing a yellow T-shirt and my flannel pajama pants. A pot of coffee is brewing on my hot plate, but right now we’re eating cookies and drinking beer. We pretend that we’ll be grown-up and stop drinking beer any minute now, but it won’t happen that way.

It’s snowing outside. It snows all the time up here. My dorm room is on the tenth floor of a converted hotel. In the hallway, this insane guy from Texas dribbles a basketball and sings a song about cheese. In my room, Carrie and I sit on the edge of my bed and look out the window. She loops her arm around my shoulder. People are skating on the Charles River, under artificial light, and the snow swirls everywhere.

Carrie is in love, she tells me, with someone she met in school.

I look at the window. I want to jump, but I don’t want to die.

I just want to float.

***

When I see Carrie again, it’s by accident. She’s in town for the weekend; she’s helping her mother move into a new place on the river. We meet in a bar, back in Roanoke. I moved back here, after my divorce. I live in an apartment complex popular with young singles. They smile at me. The women ask about my daughter, and the men go, “Hey, big guy, how’s it hangin'?”

When the bar closes down, I offer to drive Carrie home, but she wants to go for a walk. It’s April, but it feels like summer tonight, so we walk. She talks about her kids, her mother’s ancient Cadillac, and her adult ballet class. She doesn’t talk much about her husband.

“He’s OK,” she says. “He’s a wonderful father.”

I nod. It’s getting late and Carrie needs to get back to her mother’s house.

***

It’s hard to explain the luster of certain ordinary nights when everything works together. When you’re walking in your old hometown with Carrie Wallace and her new, complicated haircut; when the moon ducks under the mountains, when the song you hear on someone’s passing radio is one of your favorites, when Carrie walks beside you in her blue sneakers and a yellow dress, and neon crosses flare over empty churches and it’s the exact middle of the night and for a little pocket of time your life seems perfect and without memories, and so quiet.

Leigh Hughes is Editor-In-Chief / Publisher of the
upstart literary magazine, Edifice Wrecked.

She is also a writer.

Today I'm privileged to present
five of her unique fictions on my blog.

Leigh Hughes has a voice that is truly
all her own. See if you don't agree!


Editor's note:

These stories originally appeared
in "Underground Voices", "The Glut",
"Word Riot", "Blue Almonds"and
"NFG", respectively.

Enjoy.

Caesarean
(c) '05, Leigh Hughes

I was pregnant once, a long time ago. When it came time to give birth I said none of that vaginal stuff for me. I want a caesarean. And doc, don’t you dare cut me on the bikini line. Don’t hide my scar under a roll of belly fat. No. I want to be split straight up the middle, pubis to sternum. He did as I requested and peeled me back, layer by layer. Sliced through the stratum cornea of the epidermis, deeper through the dermis, past the subcutaneous fatty tissues of the hypodermis, through the abdominal muscle, more fat, lots of fat, tiny arteries and veins and finally exposing the spotted pink balloon of the uterus. Another long slice revealed what I already knew. A deformed and unbreathing blob the doctor called ‘boy.’

I didn’t hold it, no need to look or bury. Just pitch it in the trash. Jar it in formaldehyde. Sit it on your desk or bookshelf. Pass it around a cackling circle of knitting ninnies. Whatever you gotta do, doc, really. It’s not mine.

Two weeks later (and without provocation), I squatted on a two-handled hacksaw and rode it. I rocked my hips back and forth, back and forth, splitting myself in two along the natural perforation of my labia, perineum and the smooth fissure between my buttocks. Somebody found me and called 911. They sewed me back up at one hospital and sent me somewhere else to talk about the ‘baby’. Post-partum depression they whispered. There were lots of whispers. Females wearing tight buns and white shoes came by a million times a day to pump me full of pills and fluids until I could no longer feel or think, much less talk about whatever it was they wanted me to talk about. I heard them saying things. Things like, denial. Depression. Borderline personality disorder. Paranoid. Possible schizophrenia. No coping mechanism. That roommate of mine must be really fucked up.

I study my caesarean scar in the bathtub. I run my index finger up and down the raised line of pink that halves my abdomen and feels like a half-melted rope of licorice. I bury myself under the weight of the water. Let the air out of my lungs one bubble at a time. Feel my hair fan out and glide through the tepid waves. I throw one leg over the side of the tub, then the other. I jam a fist deep in my vagina and try to pull my uterus out. I scrape at the walls getting thick chunks of endometrium under my fingernails. The tub fills with blood. I slide my hand through the cervix and try to reach the fallopian tubes. I know that if I can tie them around the uterus like a lasso, I can pull the ovaries out, too.

It doesn’t work though. I am not quick enough. The nurse finds me before I finish and rushes me off to surgery. I try to tell the doctor to cut me vertically, but they slam an oxygen mask over my face and force a bag full of shut-her-up through my veins.

When I get out of here, I will find a way to finish what was started a long time ago. I will find a logging plant and ride the conveyor belt between the cypresses and pines. I will lie on my back, spread my legs wide and hold my arms straight out like the penultimate Jesus. I will jut my chin in the air and howl when I get to the end and the spinning blade pushes its way through me from anus to scalp. I will fall to the floor and my halves will face each other. My left arm will grab my right. They will celebrate when everything inside is free to run circles around the rest of me, once and for all.



Green
(c) '05, Leigh Hughes

What does it mean that he's green? He's not mean and green. Or lean and green. He's not envious, or young. Or grassy.

There's just this greenish glow around him. It emanates from his eyes, his face. His ears. It glows brighter when he's sleeping, or hungry.

I pull him closer. Touch his lips, his tongue, with mine. I expect him to taste like broccoli. Or asparagus. A sour apple.

He tastes like none of these things. Although, I catch a hint of parsley in the aftertaste.

I probe deeper. Climbing past his teeth, his tongue, into his throat. I tickle the little hangy thing at the back of his mouth. I dangle under it, nuzzle it, nurse on it. Rub it between my breasts and thighs. Take huge Tarzan swings on it, back and forth. Back and forth. Slide up and down it like a stripper on Main Stage. I position my bucket and try to milk it. He sneezes. Then coughs. Then spits me out.

"What?" I ask. Like he's the one with the problem.

He snorts.

He always snorts. Not in a funny way, not when he's laughing. More like a bull in the ring. I expect him to hunch over and dig and drag his feet across the carpet. I wait for the smoke to ooze from his nose. I wait for the charge.

I throw up a red cape, and say, "Torro! Torro!" He just rolls his eyes and walks away.

"What?" I ask. Because he's the one with the problem.

See, he's green. Green is the opposite of me.

I prefer orange or yellow. Or red. Something feral and hot. I like colors to wrap me, burn me. I like the singe on my skin, the smell of the tiny hairs on my arms when they ignite. I like to savor the blaze in my sleep.

I can't do that with green.



Wince
(c) '05, Leigh Hughes

and then there was that one time, the one time that you
shook me to the center of the earth, you pulled my ears
and screamed as loud as you could, and i cried, i definitely
remember crying, even though i shouldn't have, no, what i
should have done was to take the knife and shove it
deep in your throat, cutting the chords, to shut you the
fuck up, i should have danced in the spray of blood
from your neck, laughing as you clumped at my feet,
stepping on your back and twisting my feet as i pushed,
down, hard, feeling you crunch under my boot
like a cockroach, i should have told your mother
what you liked to do in your spare time, how you liked
to berate me, and tease me, and how
you liked me to tickle your ass with a hot curling iron,
and how you laughed when it seared your flesh, and how
you'd shove my face in the toilet if i winced,
i mean fuck, how could i not wince, i loved you,
i don't know why or even how, if i ever knew,
i've forgotten, well, i forgot everything except
the one time we met in the park after school, and we
shared a cigarette, you pulling the smoke from the
filter and then blowing it slowly into my mouth,
as i inhaled deeply, trying to infuse your soul
with mine, what the fuck did i know, i was only
sixteen, i thought you were cool with your long hair
and black eyeliner, and you said you liked it rough
and i thought that meant you wanted to tumble in the
sheets and laugh as we fell to the floor, maybe
scuffing knees or getting carpet burns,
i didn't know you meant you wanted to feel my
cheekbones crack under your fist, yeah, i should
have never let you, never let you,
never ever let you, inside.



Vegas Baby
(c) '05, Leigh Hughes

I always wondered what it was like to lie at the bottom of a fish tank. To look at the world through algae-stained glass. Jagged neon rocks sticking to my arms and legs. Plastic leaves diving between my toes. Fish mouth wide for falling flakes.

Bubble
Glubble
Glubble Bubble
Here comes Angelfish
Here comes Trouble

The night we met in Vegas is a blur. Too many drinks, not enough sleep and lots of drugs.

There we were, celebrating the fifth anniversary of the last time we were here. It was a three-day weekend, Memorial Day, I think. Just us girls.

Lesha was freshly divorced and looking for whatever. Men can smell that, you know? I think pussies flood out a shitload of extra pheromones as soon as the judge swings that gavel. Or maybe even before that. Maybe it happens the day the fat fuck puts the last bag of his crap in the back of the truck.

I tried to tell them to not take drinks from just anybody. But nobody listened. I was the old hag. The party pooper.

Eventually, I shut up and gulped tequila. Slammers, isn't that what they were? I don't know for sure, I just remember pounding the glass on the bar and the violent shaking of my head. Not sure why. Must be a Vegas thing.

Anyway, so it was me, you, Lesha, Marcey and Tam, I think that's it. There were five, right? Yeah. That's it.

Well, Lesha's blitzed off her ass. I'm blitzed off my ass. Shit, all of us were torn up like ghetto bicycles. The only one who was halfway okay was Tam. Then again, she's not much of a drinker. She likes the hard stuff. Blow. Flake. Powder. Snow. Short road to a long nosebleed, if you ask me.

Yeah, so we're all at the bar with Steve. Fucking Steve. Who the hell started talking to him anyway? Fuck you, it wasn't me! Maybe it was Lesha.

So, Steve says, hey you girls want some blow? I say, nah, not right now; you say, nah; Lesha says, nah. And I think it's all good.

But then Tam comes up out of nowhere, and I'm thinking there's no way she could have heard him say that from all the way over there, right? But there she is, tits popping, hair flipping. She's all "heyyyyyy Steve." Like some kind of slutty psychic, right? It was crazy.

So then Steve goes, how about you? You want some blow? And Tam's all, hell yeah, what's your room number? Can you believe that shit? What's your room number. What a freak.

We didn't want to go. I remember that. But we sure as hell couldn't let Tam go alone. There's no telling what would have happened to her if we hadn't gone.

Okay, so there we go, all the way up to their suite. Apparently they were big gamblers or something, High Rollers, as the old saying goes and goddamn, I couldn't believe their suite. Steve said it was comped, but I think he's full of shit. Don't you? I mean - come on. That dude was a loser.

I mean this, this was a top floor suite. The penthouse. Nothing but clear glass windows between us and the neon desert sky. Two black leather sofas flanked the glass table which was covered in a fucking street map of cocaine.

The puffy white lines slanted this way and that, some hooked up, some with one end fatter that looked like snowy cul-de-sacs. And Steve didn't have some grimy twenty rolled tight like Tam always did. No, he had a crystal goblet full of tooters. That's what he called them.

Hey girls, grab a tooter, he said. They looked like little glass cigarettes, about two and a half inches long. I liked watching the coke travel from the table into their nostrils.

I said no thanks. I just watched and sucked on the bong that was sitting on the table beside me. Then that other guy, Darren, I think his name was, comes up and goes, you want a drink? I'm like, yeah. He wasn't cute or anything. Kind of quiet, hung to himself. Just like me, I guess.

So we go in the kitchen and this suite had a full fucking kitchen, not some lame kitchenette. Do you believe that shit?

He grabs this bottle of vodka out of the freezer, and starts bragging about how you can only buy it in Russia and how it costs like five hundred bucks a bottle. Of course, I think he's full of shit. But, well, what else is new? I think everybody's full of shit.

He pulls the bottle out, and the thing actually looks like a piece of ice. I mean, not just frosty, from ice, but actually looks like ice. It was weird. I've never seen anything like it.

And I'm just standing there like some kind of mute. Like the fucking lady from "The Piano" or something. I knew I should say something. But I didn't want to say what I was thinking, so I kept my trap shut.

Well, he kept looking at me, so finally I was all, ooooooh cool. I don't know why. I guess I just wanted him to quit hawking me out.

Then he says, you gonna grab us two glasses or what. I'm sure my face turned a little red, but fuck it. So I turn around behind me and snag two out of the cabinet. Meanwhile, he grabs a lime out of the refrigerator and pulls this giant chef's knife out of a drawer.

He holds it up to the light. Grins at his reflection.

Sharp, huh, he says.

I say, yeah. Looks like it.

Then he goes, you know what I could cut with a knife like this?

And I go, ummm, limes?

He laughs, right? Cause that shit was funny.

He says, yeah, limes.

Then he cuts the lime and squeezes the juice into my glass. Slips in the fat green wedge. He picks up the block of ice, that's supposed to be a bottle of vodka, and he pours it all slow like over the lime, and it starts to fizz.

And I go, whoa. Why's it doing that?

He says, that's just the way it is.

Then I said something about those crazy Russians, or something stupid I'm sure, then slugged back the vodka.

It was really smooth and the lime was all tart on my tongue.

I slid my glass back across the counter, towards Darren, and said, another one barkeep.

Cut the lime.
Squeeze the juice.
Slide the wedge.
Pour the drink.
Watch the fizz.

Bottoms up!

After like three or four of them, I became fascinated with this picture over the dining room table. It was this giant painting, in a gilded frame. I mean, it was fucking huge, almost as big as me.

It was of a gold and white angelfish, swimming in a too-bright blue sea. At the very top was this orangey squiggly section that I guess was supposed to be the sunlight coming down through the water. But it really just looked like some fool had spilled Tang on it.

I stopped at the table and stared at the painting. It was fucking ugly.

I remember asking Darren if he thought it looked like some cheap flea market painting, and not like it deserved such a place of prestige in a gold frame in a High Roller suite.

I turned around. He wasn't there.

I turned back to the picture. I heard a slice. The lines blurred. I felt a squeeze. Everything warbled. Then a slide. I think I fell. I burned with fizz. My eyes were soldered.

The ground felt soft, then hard.

Like the stones at the bottom of a fish tank.



The Wink
(c) '05, Leigh Hughes

The old light post watches me. I sense its eyes when I pass
each night at nine. Joseph says it's my imagination.
But I see it.
I hear it bleeding between the flickers. Thick globs, full of
stench. Joseph thinks I'm crazy.
But I hear it.
I feel its screams between flashes. Terror grips with every
wink. Joseph suggests a different route, if it bothers me.
But I need it.









Alicia Gifford is a writer from Los Angeles whose literary star is most definitely on the rise. Since she began actively pursuing her craft just 5 years ago, she's had stories nominated for the BASS (Best American Short Stories) series, and her unforgettable tale entitled "Toggling The Switch" was chosen as the best online short story of 2004-- by voters in the prestigious Million Writers Award sponsored by Story South Magazine.

It's no secret this blogger is a huge fan, and I fully expect one day to be reading Alicia's work in places like The New Yorker, Nerve and Playboy. Yep, she's that good. Recently this tres-talented and generous lady granted me an interview-- when I know darned well she's got lots of other more important stuff on her plate; so, it's with much gratitude that I present said "Literary Q and A"-- forthwith and FORTISSIMO, baby!

So otay then… Here they are:


Those Eleven
Nosy Little Questions


1. Alicia, in your narrative voice I often hear very distinct "Thom Jones Overtones". Would it be fair to list him (Jones) as a major literary influence? If so, what is it about this man's work that resonates most with you?

I’m definitely a fan-- of his short fiction, and I went through a "read-everything-by-Thom Jones" phase. His story, “I Want to Live”, will haunt me forever, I think. Certainly one of my all time favorites. But I never tried to consciously emulate him like I have in the case of other writers.


2. Can you list some of these other short story writers you really admire?

I’m a die-hard Lorrie Moore fan but I think her last New Yorker story was a bit of a clunker. Denis Johnson’s "Jesus’ Son" I can read a million times, “Bullet in the Brain” by Tobias Wolff is an all time favorite. I went through a Raymond Carver period in my writing after glutting myself on his work, where I Wrote like Ray. His prose style has influenced me a lot. After reading some of Deborah Eisenberg’s work I went through a Write Like Debbie phase, I adore everything Richard Yates and I’ve tried to Write Like Richard, too.

But I digress: Denis Johnson, Lorrie Moore, Deborah Eisenberg, Alice Munro, Andrea Barrett, Tobias Wolff, Charles D’Ambrosio, George Saunders, Bob Dylan...


3. You have a background in Critical Care Nursing. This would seem a milieu ripe with "raw material." Have you ever been tempted to compose a sprawling semi-autobiographical "ER-Type" novel?

I’ve written a few stories with nurses as characters but they aren’t “hospital” stories. I was a nurse during the Reagan years, a very interesting time to observe the business of medicine, the corrupt greediness of it, and this is something that interests me as a subject.

Doctors became absurdly rich and wove these incredible political and social webs motivated purely by greed. They could drop $10,000 on a cocktail party and write the whole thing off their taxes. "Ass-licking" skills were more important than clinical skills. It was a delirious period of time to not only be a nurse, but a doctor’s wife as well. A novel set in that era is something I definitely think about. But so far I haven’t written about the life-and-death drama stuff of working bedside as a Critical Care nurse.



4. Let's talk process. When you create a story, do you begin with characters--or are you more concerned with scene-setting and plot development as a first draft develops? Do entire stories ever come to you in "one fell swoop?" If so, can you describe what that is like?

I really don’t have a certain process.

Sometimes it’s a concept, like for “Toggling the Switch” I knew I wanted to write about an accident where a woman with everything to lose kills a child while intoxicated. Another story bubbled out when I read the names of different breeds of chickens and the eggs they lay. Someone on TV said something about a snake in the woodpile and that inspired a flash. My boyfriend (before we lived together) used to peep from his kitchen window at his neighbors when they showered. He even missed some major basketball, last second, winning shot by Kobe Bryant because he was peeping, and a story was born.

Most of the time I sit down and have no idea what I’m writing. I put one sentence down after another and see what happens. I write at all hours but most especially late at night. I can’t write anything decent when I’m liquored up; I’m most productive on caffeine but a friend of a friend of mine heard of a writer who sometimes gets inspired by smoking some stuff. After all, “Inspire” is another word for “Inhale”. Right?

I recently went to an Aimee Bender reading for her new collection, and someone asked her about her process. She works every morning, six days a week for two hours, no more, no less, no matter if it’s flowing or blocked, very rigid, very disciplined. It made me consider structuring my output with more of a "process" in mind.



5. Did you have literary aspirations in your younger years, which you shelved at the time in order to concentrate on "practical", or pressing, concerns-- i.e., making a living, raising a family et cetera?

No aspirations per se back then.

I knew I could string sentences together; spelling, grammar and language came easily to me through school years. I wrote entertaining, offbeat nurse’s notes, imagining them being read in court some day in a dramatic lawsuit. I’ve always been an avid reader and sometimes thought of writing a novel, but I wanted a fully-gelled idea to hit me before I would attempt it. When I started dating at the turn of the century a lot of the men I met encouraged me to write (I gave good email) and so I took a class in the fall of 2000 at UCLA Extension with Tod Goldberg, and it was a huge epiphany to me that you could sit and write without any idea of where you’re going and what will happen. I’ve been writing since then.



6. Do you find the "housekeeping aspects" of a literary career--networking, workshopping, hunting down agents/publishers etc.--to be a nettlesome distraction? If so, how do you deal with it? If not--then why not?

I’m not real good with the “bidneth” end of writing.

But I see how having goals and a sharp focus on them-- along with dogged discipline--pays off, success-wise. I’ve come to see that it’s as important as “talent”. I have a collection I’ve hammered together but they’re unlinked stories, no novel in the works. I haven’t looked for an agent. I’m not terribly ambitious in the Claim for Fame department. The thought of a public reading fills me with pathological dread.

I put out what are probably moderate submission campaigns, but I have a tendency to hibernate stories that aren’t taken in the first onslaught or two. I find an online workshop--such as Zoetrope-- to be of infinite value; but I’ve come to loathe the "in-person roundtable" aspect of a live workshop or conference. Workshops can murder stories.



7. What's the one unforgettable scene from any of your most favorite novels/stories that sticks in your mind more than any others--even after the passage of much time?

One?!? There are in fact a few.

What comes to mind immediately is the final scene in Cynthia Ozick’s “The Shawl”—the baby, the electric fence, concentration camp setting; also, the final thoughts of Tobias Wolff's character, Anders-- before he succumbs in “Bullet in the Brain”—'…They is, they is, they is…' ; then there's the acceptance-of-the-inevitable in Thom Jones’ “I Want to Live”; and the final lines of Denis Johnson’s “Car Crash While Hitchhiking”.



8. How does living in L.A. influence your writing? Have you ever considered writing a screenplay?

Most of my stories are unabashedly and lovingly set in L.A. I LOVE L.A!! I believe that I write from a very L.A. Mindset. And yes-- taking a course in screenwriting is definitely on my life’s “to do” list. Some day...



9. What facet of your art brings you the most joy?

Well, acceptances make me delirious: that external validation we writers are all so crazy about. That said, certain sentences bring me joy, finishing a story and feeling you’ve nailed it is an exhilarating feeling though it’s often a false exhilaration. I love, LOVE it when I’m on a writing high, when things are happening, it’s rolling and I find what the story is about. I don’t think I’m too unusual in that I often finish a story and think it’s done, it’s fabulous, a breakthrough — only to realize a few days/weeks/months later that it still needs a lot of work.

I’m horribly impulsive; I send out new stories because I’m loaded on endorphins from a Finished Story High only to rue sending them out too soon. An exception to this scenario was the story, “Surviving Darwin”. I wrote “Surviving Darwin” with The Barcelona Review in mind-- responding to a rejection Jill Adams wrote me, in which she asked for something “edgier”. As soon as I finished the story, I sent it immediately to The Barcelona Review. Then, I workshopped and revised it, kicking myself for sending it to TBR too soon!

As it turned out, they accepted the original version and when I offered the revised version they said they liked the original better, and it was true: The unrevised, hot-off-the-press version was better. There’s a lesson here, somewhere.



10. What's on the horizon for Alicia Gifford? Any new pubs coming up that we fans should be aware of? How is your collection coming? Can you shock me now with a "scoop"-- which will turn the envious faces of all other literary Web Loggers the color of pure Kentucky bluegrass?

Unfortunately my "scoop cup" runneth empty-ish at the moment.

I have something filthy and depraved placed in an upcoming erotica anthology (Better Non Sequitir’s "See You Next Tuesday") That’s all I have lined up right now. I need to amass a new submission campaign.

I’ve been reading many, many unpublished works in my capacity as Fiction Editor for Night Train, and I’m really excited about some of the fine work we have slated for upcoming issues. Jumping-up-and-down-with-titties-flopping excited! I’m working on a new short story at the moment that I’m kind of excited about; and have a couple of others in the works (resting) as well.



11. One last question. A bit "off topic" now. Ahem...

I’m thinking of changing the name of my blog to: "Pat Robertson's Poison-Tipped Priapic Assassin's Pecker"...Do you think this will fly for me better, or should I stick with what I've got?

Well, I’m not sure Pat could ever work himself into a state of persistent rock-hard tumescence, even with a handful of Viagra and a load of sturdy pipe cleaners. Forgive him for he knows not what he does. Or says. Or where he is, what day it is. My advice is to stick with what you have.


;) That's kinda what I thought. Thank you, Alicia Gifford!

You're welcome, Dennis.