When the noisy clock sounded nine times, the open bar was drained to a trickle. This roadside bar in the middle of the woods was the last thing I expected in my long ride. There must be a hamlet nearby, I thought, and parked my car beneath the giant banyan.
Just two of us—a stranger and me—dipped our sadness in our brimming glasses. He finally broke the silence between us: Would you play a game, gentleman? I didn’t offer a second glance.
and pretended to put my head in the glass. Game of dares? It’d be fun! His voice as loud as the clock, as close to me as my shadow. Then the touch of his arm in my shoulder.
I’m in no mood to play, I shrugged.
Your face reveals you’re also broke. Why not lessen the load a bit? Let’s make it a deal of interest. The one who fails will pay the bills.
My reluctance yielded to his relentless pestering.
He then took out an empty bottle and gave it an angry spin. It danced on the table for a minute or so and finally died, pointing its head toward him.
Ask me anything and I agree to oblige, he said.
I had no idea in my head. I wished him to go away. But I didn’t dare to flare his fury!
Walk on the bonfire if you can, I said instead, pointing my finger to the outside.
He followed my instructions like a zombie and gingerly walked over the fire as though it was a carpet of roses. No frown, no fear, no agony—he was completely insane!
My shock had no time to culminate.
Let’s start it again, he said.
The bottle poked its finger to my face and he jumped from his seat: half in excitement, half in madness. It’s my turn now to test your prowess.
He took out a knife from his pocket like a nice little secret and kept it on the table.
Stab me, he said.
What the fuck? I am not playing anymore.
You can’t quit. Rules are rules.
I was trying to escape in haste but he held my hand in his grip. The smile turned to ferocity. Rules have to be obeyed.
You never said, one can’t quit, I bawled with indignation.
I may have forgot. But rules are rules.
I yelled for help but the bar owner and the lone waiter were nowhere.
I nervously picked the knife, closed my eyes, and tried to thrust it into his belly. The knife went through him and pierced the leather as if he was a shadow. His body was only air.
His smile reappeared with ghostly intensity. You can’t kill a dead man, can you?
Debasish Mishra is a Senior Research Fellow at NISER, India. He is the recipient of the 2019 Bharat Award for Literature and the 2017 Reuel International Best Upcoming Poet Prize. His recent work has appeared in 𝑁𝑜𝑟𝑡ℎ 𝐷𝑎𝑘𝑜𝑡𝑎 𝑄𝑢𝑎𝑟𝑡𝑒𝑟𝑙𝑦, 𝑃𝑒𝑛𝑢𝑚𝑏𝑟𝑎, 𝑇ℎ𝑒 𝐻𝑒𝑎𝑑𝑙𝑖𝑔ℎ𝑡 𝑅𝑒𝑣𝑖𝑒𝑤, 𝐴𝑚𝑠𝑡𝑒𝑟𝑑𝑎𝑚 𝑄𝑢𝑎𝑟𝑡𝑒𝑟𝑙𝑦, 𝐶𝑎𝑙𝑖𝑓𝑜𝑟𝑛𝑖𝑎 𝑄𝑢𝑎𝑟𝑡𝑒𝑟𝑙𝑦, and elsewhere.
The party would have been over, if someone hadn’t brought along marshmallows as a party food, which in turn, brought up the suggestion that when the sun would set, and it would start getting dark, we would build a fire, and roast the marshmallows above the open flame. It was in town, this party to which I had been invited for some reason (as it was not customary for me to be invited to any shindigs, and so, was not in my habit to attend), and most of the attendees were military brats.
And a good deal of them were army air cadets – a sinister organization into which I once had been drawn. Being a metalhead I fit in very little with their spit-and-polish types. The type of people who pretend to be cleaner than their neighbours, and who judge you on sight. Who think that shaving means that you are respectful, and who see disagreeing as a criminal offense (as, in the military, it often tends to be).
(When I say I had been drawn into it, it was for a rather short period, as when looking at my shaggy black hair they said “above the ear”, and when I had it cut to “above the ear”, it still was not short enough to their liking; they postponed giving me my uniform leaving me singled out, most purposefully – noticeable, that one who doesn’t have a uniform, doesn’t have a buzz cut, and wears metal band Ts – and that day they wanted us to parade around for some officer, behind the Foodland by minus forty, I said “no sir, enough of that!”, and never went back. I had been lured in by the prospects of a free piloting license – because the government is willing to spend money on youths to have a free piloting license if they spend hours every week drilling, but it wouldn’t do the same for youths who spend their time reading, or studying. But a free piloting license wasn’t worth the wasted hours. One of the last times I had gone to cadets, was one time we could finally do some shooting. They handed me an air riffle and a pair of protective glasses, to shoot targets at the end of a range, while lying flat on our fronts. Some pipsqueak leading air cadet half my size was assigned to supervise me (to be a Leading air cadet, one needed no qualifications, one needed only to be with the organization for at least six months). I was laughing. “What’s funny?” he asked. “What the hell is this?” I replied, “I’m from the countryside, I’ve been shooting with live ammunition since I’ve been ten. What’s the deal with these glasses when we’re gonna shoot pellets at the end of a range?”. “They can bounce back and hurt you” he said. “How do you suppose it could bounce back from the end of that range?” I insisted. Smart mouth, the L.A.C. said “Either you comply or you don’t shoot”. Fun stuff – so I was lying down with my glasses becoming foggy from my body heat, and I was trying to aim properly. After a first shot that hit somewhere along the blue line, I took off my glasses to wipe them. “Put those back on! You need to have your glasses on at all times when on the range!” he yelled. “I’m just wiping them clean – they’re foggy; I can’t see shit!” I said, showing him the goggles. “Okay, but do it fast” he whispered. As soon as I had put them back on, it started all over again – it was damn hot, how they were heating that building in mid-November! Another half-miss. I had enough of that – I reloaded, stood up, took off my glasses, and shot. Dead center! That’s how hillbillies do it! I went back and turned in the “weapon”. That was it for me and the “air cadets”).
And here was I, outside a house in the town suburbs, with a bunch of those fanatics, and we were going to start a fire. They – the owners of the house – had a fire pit all ready, arranged, prepared. “Perfect!” I though, until the cadets went in, to try to apply what they had learned in “survival training”.
During the first ten-or-so minutes, they argued about how to set up the wood. “We have to put all the branches in one direction, so the wind gets through! The flame needs air!” said the first. “No! We have to Cross them in different directions, so that it leaves room in between! Air pockets!” Said the second. “No, the branches should be standing, I mean, they should be like a cone, like a teepee. That way there’s room underneath, and the flames are high” said the third. Impressed by this elaborate design, they got to work. Standing there, I remarked “It all depends on the weather you have, but none of it really matters as long as you get it started right”. “Shut up” they said “we got this. We passed our survival training. This is easy”.
And so, I sat at the table where the ladies were steering clear from the macho quarrels, or admiring them. Another excluded male, whose name was Gabriel, honestly stated “My grandad always got his fires started with a gasoline mix. That’s how he showed me. Said it helped, like with barbecue fluid. So don’t ask me nothin’ about building a fire other ways!”. Clean, unassuming, honest. He stayed seated and chatted with the ladies.
It was a hilarious scene where the distinctions between the expected typical males and the expected typical females were put into stark contrast. These scenes, we’ve all had them. I recall a story from my school music teacher with whom I got along, because neither he nor I fit into an “expected typical” category. Once after class once, he reminisced about a soiree he had been at, while explaining to me how Schoenberg’s 12 tone method worked. “All the men were in the living room, talking about cars, hockey, and boobs, so I went into the kitchen where the women were, who were talking about gossip, tv. series and books, which in comparison was vastly more interesting, but they shooed me out because they didn’t want any guys there, so I had to stay and be bored, listening about cars, hockey and boobs”.
In the backyard, where I was, the girls, who were all of military upbringing, were fundamentally different. Maybe because of the branches in the military. With only one of them, Sophie, was I acquainted – we had been in after-school clubs, and I suspected it was through her that I had been invited. Her family was military, but worked in Search and Rescue – so, not cannon fodder. Actually, I had a huge crush on her, and not only because she was one of the rare girls who talked to me. I wouldn’t have asked her out because I valued her friendship too much, and I feared the same thing would happen as with this other girl called Jenny. She and her best friend Marie had started hanging out with me and my friend Peter, who was nicknamed Peter built because we both expected to become truckers, and he was so large that he had something of a peterbilt. They had hung out with us some, and we had enjoyed their company, until Peter, who had more guts and more self confidence than I, asked Marie if she would like to go on a date with him, maybe even, if Jenny wanted to, a double date, the four of us. She politely declined, and they ignored us for the rest of the school year.
And so I valued Sophie’s friendship too much to ask her out, which is ridiculous since she stopped talking to me anyways. She stopped talking to me largely due to another girl who was there – named Daphne – who was as superficial as they can come, all the opposite of Sophie. As that evening was one of the only pleasant encounters I had with Daphne, I would have never suspected her – the low-witted make-up covered gossip queen – to become friends with the socially engaged and very literate Sophie. Nonetheless, the worst is often to happen. I’d never know why Sophie preferred Daphne’s company. Maybe they went to some same church or something – I wouldn’t know about any of that.
Two girls remained, and they were Angel – a tall black girl, who was an air cadet, yet instead of the air of superiority most of them hailed, was a shy and polite girl, who liked to take pictures, and who envisioned becoming air reconnaissance photographer (or something along those lines) –, and Jane, a short baptist who was very nice as long as no one mentioned any religious subject (I learned that surprisingly enough, she would later convert to Catholicism and become a nun). We sat there, and joked for a while, about trying out Gabriel’s technique, about driving a car around for a few blocks and roasting the marshmallows under the hood, or about going to the beach to roast the marshmallows, as it would take less time than waiting for the dudebros to succeed in building a lasting fire.
The three dudebros huddled around the fire pit had abandoned the idea of arranging the sticks like a cone. In fact, they had found other ways to rearrange the wood, so that it would supposedly burn better. They had debated matches; safety matches (or Swedish matches as they’re sometimes called), vs. other matches, or a lighter.
“Does anyone have a lighter?” asked the main alphaalpha – the kind of guy who you knew would peak around our age – “I forgot mine. I didn’t think I would need it”.
“I can just get the fire started,” said I.
“No, screw you, we’re doing it,” he affirmed.
“Okay,” I backed down, relaxed, largely also because I thought it was funny to watch them try, and put so much effort into it.
“Just let him do it,” sighed Sophie.
“No, Sophie, we’re gonna have it lit soon,” said the second one.
So we sat pretty while they used up a pack of matches, and we talked about projects, about activities, about cooking, about food, about the fact we were hungry, about night that was getting dark, about mosquitoes… And the dudebros talked about how they could place the sticks they had gathered as firewood, and I was asking them if I could do it, and they gave me the same response “No, screw you, we know how to do it”, and I tried to give them tips “Place some of those dry leaves at the bottom, get some more fire starting material”, and they would tell me to shut up, and Gabriel would make jokes about getting some gasoline, and I would say that build small fires it all the time on the north mountain, and they would ignore me. Daphne wanted to go in to sing some Karaoke, and Sophie wanted to go to the beach; Angel and Jane wanted to go home, but they didn’t have a ride. “I can give you a ride” I told them. “How do you know where I live?” asked Angel not shocked, but amused. “Don’t you remember? You saw me coming out of Nanette’s place – she’s my band’s drummer, that’s where we practice”. “Right!” she said, before Daphne asked “You’re in a band?”. “Yes” I answered. “Oh”.
And as we were about to leave I asked for the last time “You sure you don’t want I should do it?”, about the fire, to which the dudebro who had non-verbally established himself as the leader of the pack, burst out “Fine, you think you can do it, go ahead!”, and the third one warned me “It’s these matches, the problem”, though they were using up a second pack, as the first one had been used up.
Not changing how they had placed their wood, I stuffed dry leaves wherever I could – as dry leaves were all over the ground, no more fire-starter needed to be found ; I lit a match and put it to the middle of the base I had established. Within a minute a fire was roaring, and I handed them their matches, of which one single I had used. Frustrated but glad to have a fire, and for the party to have come back to life, the others gathered around the flames, sticking the marshmallows on sharpened sticks. One of the guys only muttered to me “You redneck bastard”, to which I didn’t care. Having a sun-burnt neck means that you work hard under a harsh beating sun. You work hard, you also know your stuff. And you need neither to show off, to be called leading cadet, or to wear a uniform. All I had needed was time in the country to try things out for myself, and if I didn’t manage myself, to ask from people who knew. If the government wanted to invest into these military brats, who went from town to city to town, and give them free piloting licenses in exchange for standing straight in lines, and getting haircuts, then my behind would stay in the country without any of their privileges. At least I knew how to build a fire.
Born in Nova Scotia, Canada, in 1993, Thibault Jacquot-Paratte writes in both English and French. Recently he has served as literary editor to the anthology Il y a des bombes qui tombent sur Kyiv. His novel A dream is a notion of and his short work collection Souvenirs et Fragments were published in May 2022. Previous publications include his poetry collection Cries of somewhere’s soil, and three of his plays. More of his work has been featured in reviews and anthologies. He enjoys spending time with his wife and their daughter, and finding new creative projects. He is a regular contributing journalist to Le Courrier de la Nouvelle-Écosse, his play Il y avait des murmures sous le sol will premier in February 2023. He is currently employed as Script writer at Bored Panda Studios.
The father’s breathing sounded like marbles rolling on a hardwood floor. The boy had heard this comparison used to describe the death rattle before. The old people always said this, like people on the news always said that a tornado sounded like a freight train. The boy had heard tornados that sounded like trains and now he heard death that sounded like marbles.
The nurse said this sound rarely lasted for more than a few hours. She saw death almost daily. She was a clean and pretty lady, an expert in human exits. She said this at 5pm. It was now 3am. She also said that this rattle caused no pain, but those who might confirm this never did. It sounded like it hurt.
The mother slept on the couch, soundly, not ten feet from the rattle while the boy moved from seat to seat, the foot of the father’s bed, and kitchen chairs, and even the floor.
The boy thought of the last few days, and then the last few months. He thought of the father’s questions about what sins Jesus might forgive and which ones might preclude pardon. The boy quoted the relevant red passages from memory. The father admired the scriptures and the boy who memorized them. The boy knew them all, but believed only a few. The father liked believing in the boy and the reassurance he gave, and the boy liked giving the reassurance he himself would never receive. It was a small lie, he thought, smaller than those the dying father and sleeping mother told.
Then the boy thought mostly about promises. The father made those he didn’t keep, but the boy always believed he would have kept them if he could, and he always believed he might keep the next one. It was here that he saw his faith disappear like wisps of holocaust smoke, every future lie reflecting an original one.
The boy also thought about his own promise. The father feared suffering more than retribution and made the boy promise that he would end his suffering when the time came. Believing in mercy, the boy had agreed, though he knew others had begged the father for mercy he never gave. The boy sat for two long hours, his back against the kitchen wall. The rattle never changed in tone or volume. Then the boy nodded asleep and dreamed, or remembered, the father putting his pistol to the head of the boy’s dog, his back broken, his hips twisted topsy-turvy by the car’s impact.
The sound of the shot awakened him, and something inside him.
The boy walked to the father’s bed. He placed his palm against the father’s scalp. It was cool to the touch, like the hood of a car left sitting in the shade, its engine having been shut off for hours. Cool, and yet the rattle continued.
The boy unfolded a damp cloth and wiped the father’s face one last time. He lay the cloth over the father’s face, covering his eyes. He clasped the father’s nose between his left thumb and forefinger and pressed his palm over the mouth. The process reminded him of a child forming a snowball from cold white powder.
The boy loved the father and hated that he loved him.
But, most of all, he hated the sound of the marbles, and then there was nothing left to hate.
Alan Caldwell hs been teaching for 29 years, but only began submitting my writings last May. He has been published in almost two dozen journals and magazines since.
A great resumé. Law review editor. Opinion writer for the state Attorney General. Chief counsel for the state legal ethics board. Assistant counsel for the state highway commission. Senior assistant then Chief of Staff to the Attorney General. Married. Two children.
Then a death. An off-year election. And now, Attorney General in his own right with marble-walled offices and parquet floors on the second floor state capitol building.
Political debts incurred were repaid with subtlety-slanted findings and fresh staff. Young, bright, connected, tempting.
One stood out. Given an office with an empty desk. Accompanied him on trips. Accommodating.
Restaurants. Baroque hotels in neighboring states. Reservations under assumed names lasting days longer that the scheduled meetings. Poolside. Sunglasses. Shadows.
One newspaper.
One front page.
One resignation.
One divorce.
One damn photograph.
Thomas Elson’s stories appear in numerous venues, including Blink-Ink, Ellipsis, Better Than Starbucks, Bull, Cabinet of Heed, Flash Frontier, Ginosko, Short Édition, North Dakota Quarterly, Litro,Journal of Expressive Writing, Dead Mule School, Selkie, New Ulster, Lampeter, and Adelaide. He divides his time between Northern California and Western Kansas.
Poplar fluff floats through the air, to me they look like fairies dancing in the sun. I hear the sound of a gentle breeze shaking the leaves in the trees, flowing through them dancing with the fairies.
By the stream the smell of wet mud and leaves intertwines with the floral bouquet of summer. Those smells combined, smell like childhood.
I lay under the weeping willow, looking at the blue sky through the trees flowing branches. The sun glistens through. With each breeze the sun rays scatter beneath the canopy, glittering and glistening onto the sweet green grass.
I put on my rubber boots and walk to the stream. The tree canopy is thicker here, the air is cooler. Somehow bluer.
The banks of the stream are short and muddy. My boots sink into the chocolate brown sludge. I suck my boot out. Stepping into the stream I turn and watch as the mud reclaims the space. Filling up again as if my step had never been there.
The water trickles over the mud on my boots, washing it downstream. The trails of brown are enveloped by the clear flowing water. Now I can hear the stream. It flows over the small rocks down here. It trickles and splashes. Flowing ever onward, almost magical as I watch the water go.
I lift a rock and watch the world beneath it scramble to hide. There are squirms and skitters moving in the space. A frog leaps over my foot, startling me. I step back, my foot twists on the rocks behind me. I fall! My backside splashes into the stream. I reach out my hand to pull myself up, and my hand disappears into the wet muddy embankment. I look at my arm as I pull my hand free. It looks as though the earth is giving birth to my hand. Spitting it out.
I hold my mud caked hand under the water. I watch the stream bubble over it, as if it were just a new rock for the stream to navigate over. The mud is washed free as I shake my hand. The water is cold. Colder than I thought it would be. My butt and hand are wet and cold.
I try to walk up the embankment, it’s too steep for me. I try to climb and my knees are swallowed by the mud. I push myself up, and my hands are taken once more.
I push back as hard as I can and am freed with a wet sucking sound. My butt once more in the stream. The stream flows around me, just another obstacle, just like the rocks.
I put my hands in the water and look at my knees. The thick cool mud is in my boots now. It’s all over me. I hear my sister call my name; I see her face above me.
She reaches out her hand and I climb the muddy embankment holding onto her tight. The mud sucks off my boot and my socked foot squelches into mud. I leave it, I let my sister pull me up and get my boot.
I lay back down under the weeping willow tree, and watch the sunrays dance with the leaves and poplar fluff, a dragonfly joins in. I feel the heat of the sun warming me now. The mud dries hard and heavy, as I lay absorbing the sights and smells of the summer.
Victoria Smee is an outreach worker who writes in her spare time.
She has enjoyed writing all her life and has recently started to make more time for her short stories and poetry.
