The Short Story of Success

By Angela Yeh

She wandered the aisles listlessly. She picked up a can of beans and set it down. She didn’t have anyone to cook for now. She let her memories draw her down to happier days. She sighed as she picked up a jug of orange juice. The small one this time. No need for the gallon jug. Not anymore.

When she reached the cashier, the kid barely glanced at her. She studied her stained flowered dress, and caught herself frowning, a pale reflection in the plastic divider. Dividing them and her. She slipped her hand underneath to take her change back.

“Have a blessed day,” he said, and she caught his eye this time. He leaned back, visibly shaken by whatever he perceived in the depths of her pupils. She smiled thinly and shuffled out of the way of a busy mother of three, monkeys leaping around her like crazy suns orbiting an exhausted moon.

“Enjoy these moments,” she announced to the mom because she was feeling mean.

The mother stared at her blankly but nodded, trying to be polite.

She reached her car, a beat-up gray Honda Civic with expired plates. She didn’t bother to buckle as she careened around the parking lot, being careful to avoid a stray dog limping by. She had the sudden destructive urge to run over the dog and put it out of its misery. She passed by, leaving the mutt unharmed, alarmed by her own thoughts.

When she got home, she threw her keys across the kitchen table and put the orange juice in the fridge.

The air conditioning unit buzzed and clanked, working as hard as it could in the hundred-degree heat. Still, the smell of rotting meat cloyed around the corners. The neighbors would call the police soon. That was okay. She was almost done.

“Hello, darling,” she said when she stepped airily into the living room. George sat where she shot him, one palm still curled around his beer, stiff with rigor mortis. His brain was sprayed against the back wall, although some had dripped to the brown carpet and congealed there. Flies were starting to find cracks and holes in the house and congregate at his shredded neck. She noticed the stubble on his chin. He would hate that.

“No need to shave anymore, George,” she said helpfully.

“You’d be proud of me. I only bought exactly what I needed. No silly spending on organic bread or expensive fruit. No, I got the orange juice and that was it,” she smiled, waiting for his approval. It never came. It didn’t now.

Sirens rose in the distance, and she wondered if they were coming for her. She stepped to the living room window and flicked up the beige curtains. No. They drove by, on their way to someone else’s house.

She turned back to George. “What? It’s too late for you anyway. I’m going to make some breakfast for supper. What do you think of that, George? And I’m going to watch TV. And I’m going to eat it in here. WITH the ketchup!” She grinned, caught a glimpse of herself in the mirror hanging beside the window, and froze.

“Well, hello there! Who are you?” Out of the corner of her eye, she caught a glimpse of something awful, horrible, too nightmarish to process.

She turned, sure what she was seeing must be wrong. A trick of the light. Her right eye twitched.

George stood up, fully intact, burped, and lumbered to the kitchen.

Her shoulders tensed as the fridge door was jerked open, then slammed shut.

“Damn it, Charlene, you got the wrong size OJ again. And you forgot the Gin. Damn it, woman!” He thundered back into the living room, “DO I have to do EVERYTHING my own goddam self!?” His rage, instant, brilliantly hot, blasted over her like a supernova.  “You’re fucking useless. A goddamn burden. Good for nothing.”

She started to cry, falling to her knees, despair rushing over her, her soul sucking out through her toes.

“Oh, just cry again; that’s your favorite thing to do. Make me look like the bad guy. Manipulative bitch.”

Her spirit puddled out and squashed under his anger. His voice seemed far away now. When she looked up, he’d gone, slamming the front door so loud the screen door banged and snapped open and shut again. The Honda started up and roared out of the driveway.

She lay her hot cheek on the brown carpet; the individual threads could have been worms. Laughter bubbled up inside her. Was she dead already? She closed her eyes. Was she in the ground? A memory flashed behind her eyelids. Her, as a young girl, swinging through the maple trees on her grandmother’s farm. No. She was not dead yet.

She could swing one last time. Or she could leave. Start over. Death of a different kind. She looked around their small home. It wasn’t much, but it was all she had.

She was still wandering the rooms, as if memorizing them, taking one last look around when she heard the tires screech, someone laying on a horn, and a terrific crash, then awful silence. She waited, daring to hope. When she didn’t hear his heavy steps on the stairs she floated to the window. What she could see of the Honda was the trunk, which popped open on impact, the front end disappearing inside the bowels of a garbage truck. The driver staggered out of the high seat, lurching back to see what had hit him.

She found herself beside the car, peering inside the mangled mess of broken metal and snapped bone. The bottle of Gin was still rolling around in the back seat. The silence held. Hope grew. Relief bloomed, flowered, took root, and grew so fast she felt taller physically, and laughter escaped between her grinding teeth.

“I’m so sorry, ma’am. I don’t know what happened. Is he—oh god. Dios Mio. Oh god, oh god, o—” The man turned green, spun away from her, and threw up on the sidewalk.

She needed to be sure. Sirens wailed in the distance, rapidly growing closer. Someone had finally called 911.

She walked quickly to the driver’s side. His face was gone, melded into the back of a rusted piece of grinding machinery. A rotting banana was flung over his shoulder and scraps and curls of discarded paper leaked into the backseat. She marveled at herself. There was no pity. No grief.

A strange feeling washed over her. It was light like a fire, burning and scorching as it filled her chest. She looked away from the wreckage, holding her stomach and doubling over with laughter, with relief.

She was led to the back of the ambulance. “Hysterical,” one said, shaking his head. “Must have been awful. She probably saw the whole thing. Poor girl.”

Kindly, he swabbed her arm and injected a low dose of droperidol.

“It’s alright, ma’am, he didn’t suffer at all. Happened instantly.”

As the drug began to calm her jagged nerves, she heard their voices in the air, floating like they were in dialogue bubbles. “— see what caused — someone said — driver didn’t see him coming — a dog.”

She sat up slowly, with help, as the second paramedic climbed into the back with a brown bundle of fur. In a flash of recognition, she realized this was the mutt from the supermarket.

“Is this your dog, ma’am?”

She looked into its liquid brown eyes, the whites showing from fear, and she nodded, folding the frightened dog onto her lap. “Yes. His name is George.”

Angela Yeh is an East Coast Canadian native who grew up a stone’s throw from Stephen King’s Maine. She now lives in Texas and sees Chuck Norris on the always. Angela is a short, tall-story-teller who loves to garden, write about magic, and eat cake. Her first published novel, “A Phoenix Rises,” was a finalist in the Dante Rossetti Book Awards for Young Adult Fiction. You can follow her antics on Twitter @thatplukcygirl and Instagram @thatpluckygirl and at her website www.thepluckycanadian.com.

X is for X-Rated

By Justine Cadwell

Let’s talk about sex ba-by/let’s talk about ther-a-py. Pretty sure that’s how the song goes.

***

“Waaaaaahh,” my 18-month-old daughter wails from my bedroom. I bolt out of the bathroom to rescue her.

“What’s wrong, sweetie?”

She approaches me with tears in her eyes, cradling a trembling pink toy she must have turned on by accident.

Oh—I see you’ve found my vibrator.

***

The first time I sexually experimented, I was 5 years old. My friend Natalie and I debated over who would play “the boyfriend” and decided to take turns. I pulled down my underwear to let her kiss my mons pubis and labia majora (it was all a “vagina” back then). She laughed in between kisses, highlighting the fact we were confused children with the vague notion genitals were “private” and therefore, forbidden and exciting. But also, haha—vagina!

Two years later, I set up an elaborate plan to kiss my friend Beth, creating a scene where we ran around a “building” (a large appliance box) and our lips just happened to run into each other. Somewhere in this plan, I convinced her to remove her shirt as well.

Shortly after this, I felt the need to come clean. Sexual feelings were embarrassing and certainly not appropriate for kids. During a bath, I confessed pieces of these events to my mom as shame spread through my body. The response I received was loud and clear: don’t do that again.

Inside a sleeping bag, I pseudo-masturbated around the age of 7. There may have been some play commentary that my older sister overheard on the other side of the room.

“What are you doing?” Louisa demanded, a tone of disgust in her inquiry.

The message I received was loud and clear: don’t do that again.

Catholicism taught me the sterilized notion of sex looking like a married couple having sex in the dark to create more of God’s children.

Casual sex was:

                                                           DIRTY

                 DANGEROUS

                   AN ABOMINATION

Lesson learned: sexual desire is wrong.

While watching the movie “Ghost”, my parents instructed me to hide behind the recliner during the pottery scene. When Forrest and Jenny make love in “Forrest Gump,” my Catholic maternal grandmother squirmed, prompting my sister and me to fast-forward. These movies were rated PG-13.

Most of the sexual media I absorbed as a child were the unedited bits of whatever was showing on cable television. As a result, I witnessed overemphasized elements of coercion and male pleasure. At the beginning of “Romancing the Stone” a woman is held at gunpoint while a dirty cowboy demands she take off her clothes. In “Abducted,” a deranged mountain man kidnaps and sexually assaults a female jogger. These movies were rated PG.

When I was twelve, I locked my bedroom door and muted my 19-inch television to watch late-night soft-core porn on Cinemax. I tried to trick myself into thinking I wanted to teach myself what was expected of me, sexually. I wasn’t depraved, this was research! Apparently, pubic hair was undesirable because these ladies didn’t have any.

X-rated movies hid behind a curtain at the video rental store. Years after tricking Beth into kissing me, I suggested we rent the horror classic “I Spit on Your Grave” because the description promised a rape and revenge tale. Not fucked up at all, huh? I was so desperate to view sex in a socially acceptable manner. I had to rely on Hollywood’s exploitation of women, cloaked in an innocent desire to watch a scary movie. America loves its murder porn.

I remember talking to my mom about sex exactly twice as a teenager. As I rummaged around the refrigerator for a snack, she caught me off guard.

“I saw on Oprah that kids in junior high are giving oral sex in school bathrooms. Do you know anything about this?”

“Uhh—”

I hadn’t even kissed a boy yet.

The next conversation happened in the car around the age of 15. My mom told me whenever I decided to start having sex, to be sure and get on the pill first:

“No daughter of mine is getting pregnant in high school.”

Good talk, mom.

My academic sexual education was not much better. In my sixth-grade health class, I received an assignment to write a letter to my future spouse, promising to “save myself” for him. During my tenth-grade health class, boys were instructed to stand on one side of the room while girls stood on the other side. We scribbled down STDs on sheets of paper and then walked toward each other in pairs.

“I just gave you syphilis,” I sheepishly announce to my classmate.

“And I am giving you herpes,” they reply.

From the novelty store Spencers, my male friend stole a white vibrator for me that looked like a medical device. I didn’t ask him to, but he had a crush on me, and maybe this was his way of wooing me? Perhaps I could self-educate. I attempted to masturbate, turning the vibrator on, and pushing it in and out of my vagina, mechanically. What is supposed to be so great about this? I didn’t understand the difference between a vulva and a vagina or where the clitoris was or how it worked or what to do— so I gave up on masturbation and eventually tossed the vibrator in an apartment dumpster.

***

All American women grow up facing the virgin/whore dichotomy: you should be pleasing to look at and accommodate men’s desires, but if you explore your own sexual inclinations, you’re a “hussy.” You can read all about it in “The Purity Myth” by badass Jessica Valenti if you want to be “woke.”

Thanks to Catholic indoctrination and America’s deranged views toward sex, I approach watching porn with a look-over-your-shoulder, because your parents might catch you vibe, even as a married thirtysomething year old.

Most porn is created with men in mind, and the industry is problematic. But women like porn, too, and there’s even some created by and for women. The “Fifty Shades of Grey” series is popular for a reason (despite the horrendous writing). I’m a feminist who doesn’t want to support raunchy old men, but I’m also a human being with the ability to watch people have sex in the comfort of my own home. What’s a girl to do?

***

From a naughty NSFW subreddit, I click on various videos, equally enthralled and horrified.

People get off on this? I wonder aloud, clicking on “Stepdad Fucks Stepdaughter on Kitchen Table.”

Suddenly, my sinful quest is interrupted by an official-looking message: my computer has been compromised, and I need to call the number on the screen to fix it. Obviously, a Microsoft message, created by Windows staff! Well shit, this didn’t look good.

I should call my husband Derek to verify this sketchy pop-up. He works at Microsoft and knows computers in a way I never will. He also knows I occasionally look at porn, so it wouldn’t be a total shock. But I’m embarrassed by the content I clicked on and prefer to erase the laptop memory when I’m done, so I’ll just solve this issue on my own.

I dial the number and await my fate. When a man answers the phone, there is excessive background noise which strikes me as odd, but he sounds official enough. He has a strong Indian accent, and I try to push any stereotypical assessments out of my mind. Microsoft has offices all around the globe, after all.

I tell him my plight, reading off the message on my computer screen.

“It looks like you were looking at some adult content.”

I want to die right now. “Yeah…”

“It’s only natural. I can direct you to some websites that are safer to visit in the future.”

“No, this has ruined porn for me. I’m never looking at it ever again!”

He butters me up, making my shame less palpable. Then, he gets down to business.

The man directs me to a help site where he pretends (I later learn) to log into a staff Microsoft account (he’s good) and proceeds to take control of my computer.

Occasional red flags pop up during our conversation, making me question the validity of this whole operation, but then he says or does something convincing, restoring my confidence.

Apparently, I need to buy a firewall program to solve the problem. The cost is somewhere around $100 or $200. Two hundred dollars and this all goes away? Worth it.

Then I do the unthinkable. I give this man my credit card info. To my credit (heh), I use a card with a low credit limit that isn’t tied to my bank account. So, I’m a dummy, but a cautious one at least.

The man keeps prompting me to purchase additional bells and whistles.

“I can’t afford that. I just want the issue resolved as soon as possible.”

After several minutes, he gives up and tells me to await a phone call from their billing department for confirmation.

I call Derek to confess and explain the situation to see if I had been duped. You bet I had.

“They have control of my computer, and they’re processing payment now—”

“Shut off your computer.”

“Shut it down?”

“Shut it off right now.”

“Ahhh, okay!”

I plead my case, “They were so convincing!”

“Yeah, I’ve seen some of those. They’ve gotten really good.”

Derek tells me to call my credit card company to try and get the charges reversed. During a three-way call with Capital One and the scammer “company,” I accuse them of such. They assure me they are a legit operation and would be happy to reimburse me.

After some investigation, Derek determined they were trying to sell themselves as a credible organization, so he wasn’t too concerned they would try to steal information off my computer, but of course, we updated our security, changed passwords, etc. to be safe.

Wisdom garnered: You’ll pay for giving in to your sexual curiosities, ya heathen!

***

Is it any wonder I didn’t have my first orgasm until I was in my twenties?  When my friend Kaitlin discovered this, she was horrified.

“We’re going to buy you a vibrator and I’m going to wait outside your bedroom door until you finish!”

That’s not how it went down but I appreciated her concern. In college, I finally received a proper sexual education via a health course that explained how important the clitoris was and a trip to Sex World where I purchased a pink vibrator.

“Have you had an orgasm yet?” my friend Annika asked.

“I think so?”

“You’d know.”

A few days later, the difference between almost and achieving climax became crystal clear.                

Unfortunately, the ability to have an orgasm with a partner was an entirely different story. A long one, so here’s a quick summary: After years of struggling to have an orgasm in Derek’s presence, he encouraged me to seek out the help of a sex therapist. She recommended an informative book called “Come As You Are: The Surprising New Science That Will Transform Your Sex Life” by Emily Nagoski. The contents of this book + more sex therapy + the decision to open our marriage + dirty thirties hormones = things have improved. But there was a lot of unlearning to do, no thanks to the sex-negative culture I was raised in.

***

I laugh as I reclaim my vibrator from my scared toddler. Whoops! I guess I forgot to put that away.

I aim to raise my daughter in a sex-positive household. Not too long ago, I heard her singing a song from the bathtub that made me proud:

This is the way I wash my vulva/wash my vulva/wash my vulva/This is the way

I wash my vulva /so early in the mor-ning.

A vulva and a vagina are not the same thing? Who knew?

Justine Cadwell is the author of “The ABCs of My Neuroses: Tales from an Anxious Life,” coming soon from Library Tales Publishing. She blogged at TheHungryGuineaPig.wordpress.com and ParentalAdvisorySite.wordpress.com. Her work has appeared in The Collapsar, Adelaide, Fine Lines, and Braided Way magazines. When she’s not writing, she’s working as a clinical dietitian at a long-term care facility, playing music as “Channeling Merlyn” on her YouTube channel, or volunteering at the food pantry or hospice with her best friend. Justine lives in Minnesota with her husband, daughter, and feline friend. To see more of her work, follow her on Twitter @JustineCadwell

I Said

By L.V. Senuta

It is good to be alive they said

But not if there is none to dread

A life worth living is one with flaws

They said it would be more than cause

Don’t be bossy they said to me

Nice girls are those who listen freely

Don’t fight for worthless battles

A small complaint is all that tattles

You have to know what makes you pretty

Or else you’ll finish gray and knitting

Without a husband and a fine son

You’ll die a widow, looked down on and done

How dare you speak up about what you think

Your voice is not at all worth the ink

Listen to the officials first

Then maybe you’ll be excused from your worst

Where is your makeup, you forgot to smile

That tank top is too short, but show what is while

You have good looks so show them off

Why are you difficult, just take it off!

You’re pretty smart for a girl, they say

Even for the monthly you’re acting okay

Am I supposed to be a weak little thing

Born and raised by nature’s own thing?

I am a woman, strong and brave

I have feelings I’m not afraid to save

Yes I’m a woman, with multiple thoughts

I’m not here to waddle with two coffee pots

Since when will they get that I am better

Born and raised on the same earth for one letter

“I” is my way, and I will make change

Some that those who “once said” can’t trade

With three hearts to love I present them all

One to love myself, for I always stand tall

The rest for others and the world I’ve lead

And I am more than a woman, I said

L.V. Senuta has been writing fiction and poetry since the age of twelve. She says “I am constantly working on new projects. I write short stories, long stories, numerous verses strung up into fabulous poetry, and my favorite genres of writing include sci-fi, fantasy, mystery, and realistic fiction. I hope that my creations can be an escape, a sanctuary, and an adventure all through my own words. I’m excited to bring my works into this magazine, and I hope you find it all as mellifluous as I do.”

Self-Portrait of the Poet, Looking at a Photo of Herself

By Sara Letourneau

Photo taken at Logan Airport in Boston, Massachusetts, September 2021

Look at my eyes

and how they sparkle like tumbled aventurine

behind my glasses. Everyone says my eyes

are the first thing they notice about me.

So did my boyfriend when we finally sat down

to talk about love. He still swears my irises

are the color of polished nickel.

I disagree, but I won’t deny that,

when in just the right light

and at just the right angle, they glow—

soft and steady, like the headlamps

we’ll both wear at the Lava Tunnel cave tour

in a few days. But right here, right now,

I’m at the airport, waiting with him

for our check-in desk to open,

glasses on and sweetly tilted

as I look at his camera,

dark brown hair half-up,

half falling out of the matching elastic;

one hand tugging down my magenta COVID mask

so I can smile for the photo (and for him),

the other curled around the small of my back

to reveal a peek of the opal promise ring

he gave me five months ago.

No pimples or chin hairs are visible,

the freckles on my cheeks too small to see

from this short distance,

but it’s clear from the heart-blush on my cheeks

and the vastness of my grin that I’m thinking

only about the upcoming trip

and not my perceived imperfections.

Behind me, the waiting area at Terminal E

is dim, the announcement screens and white numbers

at each closed desk blurred, almost impossible

to read, as the girl in the mint green shirt—

the girl who is me—

reflects all of the room’s light

like the snow I’ll see atop Snaefellsjökull in one week.

Or perhaps I’m not reflecting light

but emitting my own,

a beacon of my world and his,

using lenses made of intuition that flash a message—

Look at me, I am beautiful—

that I’m only now beginning to believe.

---

In the Bath

Here,

in the hotel bathtub,

I am resting

in water scented with

coconut shampoo

and arctic thyme bath salts,

rinsing myself

in solitude,

a river of reveling.

My boyfriend has already

washed my hair

and my body,

but that is not

why I feel

cleaner

and newborn.

Here,

in this bathtub,

I marvel at myself

for the first time as an adult.

Smooth, uncalloused feet

with toenails painted

the purple of orchids.

The thighs I’ve called

thick and flabby,

now weightless.

My stomach,

softly sloping,

a meadow of skin

inclining toward

the hills of my breasts.

Slender arms,

with hands that hold love

and fingers that give back.

Now they wave

from side to side

so that gentle tides

are slapping against porcelain,

splashing my face,

rippling, whispering.

Here,

in the bathtub,

I let my body rise

to the surface,

let my old fetal self

unfurl my limbs and neck

so my new eyes

and freshened mind

can see me as I glisten,

as I glow.

Here,

a dam I never knew

I had built

bursts inside,

and thoughts of

blemishes,

scars,

spidering veins

are swept out to sea

as I caress

this precious vessel

that carries me.

Sara Letourneau is a poet, freelance book editor, writing coach, and writing workshop instructor who lives in suburban Massachusetts. Her poetry has received first place in the Blue Institute’s 2020 Words on Water Contest and appeared in Mass Poetry’s Poem of the Moment and The Hard Work of Hope, Constellations, Soul-Lit, Amethyst Review, The Avocet, The Aurorean, Golden Walkman Magazine, Aromatica Poetica, and Muddy River Poetry Review, among others. When she’s not working or writing, she enjoys drinking tea, doing yoga, reading, cooking and baking, and going on adventures (including traveling) with her boyfriend. Her manuscript for her first full-length collection of poems is currently on submission. You can learn more about Sara at https://heartofthestoryeditorial.com/.

Sunday

By Karian Markos

as a kid I wished for conformity

my name sounds like another word—

what vultures call their breakfast

like Marion with a K

blaming my parents for their ignorance of English homophones is unfair

their thoughtful creativity conceived of this mishmash

for fear a Spanish rooster would awkwardly crow my real name

on the first day of kindergarten—

kikiriki and Kyriaki sound awfully similar

and so abrasive to small, third-generation German Irish ears

and quite the tongue twister for a teacher

the solution—

Karian kicks six kittens quick

Karian kicks six kittens quick

Karian kicks six kittens quick

rolls off the tongue

my Greek name means Sunday so I could have been a Sunny—

Sunny sells seashells by the seashore

Sunny sells seashells by the seashore

Sunny sells seashells by the seashore

just as easy and no animals were harmed

as a kid I wished for conformity

for sleepovers and dances with boys

for ham and cheese instead of taramosalata

for time outs instead of flying shoes

for the freedom my ancestors coveted

the weight of my family tree was placed square on my shoulders

its reputation was secured in a vault between my legs

pride bedded shame and my tangle of dual loyalties was born

two flags two homes two names

Karian Markos is a Greek American poet, fiction writer and nonprofit attorney living with her husband and three children in the western suburbs of Chicago, Illinois. Much of her poetry and short fiction explores issues relating to identity and mental health. She is currently working on her first novel, a dark fantasy fiction inspired by medieval Greece. She donates much of her professional time to charitable organizations that work with children. Her work has been published in Beyond Words Literary Magazine and Bombfire.