Open Windows, by Erica Orloff

In my bottom right-hand desk drawer, I keep a bottle of Johnnie Walker Black. I keep it for celebratory cases, hard-won. I keep it for the God-awful cases that trail me home like shadows at the end of the day. The Marsh case was both.

I set the glass on my desk and poured it more than half full. My hand shook and the first sip raced through me. I imagined it purging my brain of the shadows. I took the second slip slower and shut my eyes. Another one for you.

Someone tapped on my glass. My assistant opened my door and stuck his head in. “There’s a woman here to see you, Joe.”

I glanced at my watch. “It’s been a long day. Can you take a message?”

He shook his head. “She says she has to see you. Today. Said her name is Grace Ann.”

I set the Scotch down unsure I could trust my voice. “How old is she?”

“About your age. Beautiful. Blonde.”

I exhaled. “You can send her in.”

When he shut the door, I downed the rest of the Johnnie Walker.

She walked in not three minutes later, tall, willowy, expensive bracelets on her wrists, and the scar. The little star-shaped scar on her forehead that she got the time she fell from my treehouse.

“Hello, Joe,” she whispered.

“Hello, Grace Ann. Sit down,” I gestured toward the chair. I wasn’t sure if I was even breathing.

“I followed the case, and . . . I saw your picture. I thought of coming here a dozen times and always chickened out. But . . . I wanted you to nail the bastard.”

Nail the bastard.

I’d spent fifteen years of my life atoning for not rescuing Grace Ann from the shadows on her wall.

“How are you?” I managed to speak. “Do you live in the city? What do you do? Are you married?”

“Do you cross-examine everyone this way? Good, yes, actress, no.” She smiled. Her eyes didn’t though. Sad eyes behind the flirtatious voice.

“Occupational hazard. I ask a lot of questions.” I blinked and I remembered a day in fifth grade when she smiled at me. Maybe the only time I ever saw her smile that way. A pure laugh. “So . . . It’s been what? Fifteen years?”

“Yeah. I . . . God, where to even start. I ended up, believe it or not, in L.A. You can fill in the blanks. I did some things I’m not proud of. A lot of things, actually. And I woke up one day and looked in the mirror and wasn’t sure who I even was anymore. So I took all my money, came east. Took real acting classes. Ever see that commercial for—”

“Oh my God,” recognition flooded through me. “You’re the toothpaste girl.”

She laughed. I saw a hint of the girl gazing at the stars. “Yeah. That’s me.”

I leaned back. “I didn’t recognize you.”

“And how about you, Mr. Prosecutor?”

I didn’t answer for a minute. Finally, I whispered. “I’ve spent my life going after bastards like your stepfather. It’s my penance.”

She bent her head. “Joe . . . you were a boy.”

“Doesn’t matter.”

“Yes, it does. You were so kind to me. I’ve held onto that night in the field my whole life. Kind of measured people up against you, Joe.”

How could I tell her I did the same?

She looked up from her lap. “So I just had to come say thank you, Joe. And shake your hand.” She stood up and put her hand out in the space over my desk.

I stood. “Do you want to have dinner, Grace Ann?” I took her hand and didn’t so much shake it as hold it.

“Considering how I left town and what you do for a living, Joe . . . I don’t know if that’s such a good idea. It’s sort of why I haven’t come before now. But this case, the Marsh girl. She might have been me.”

I’d actually thought about what would happen if I ever found Grace Ann. “How you left town doesn’t matter to me.”

“Maybe not now. But someday it might.” She withdrew her hand and started toward the door.

“Grace Ann . . .” I just couldn’t let her walk out.

Her back was to me, but she didn’t say anything.

“You were right, that night. I was spying on you. I could hear what he did to you. See what he did, through the open window. In shadows on the wall. My entire career has been about saving every Grace Ann there is. Every last one. I have something to show you.”

I opened my bottom desk draw where I keep the Johnnie Walker and took out the envelope.

“Here.” I walked to her and put it in her hand. She still didn’t move.

Then slowly, she opened it. A single Polaroid our fifth-grade teacher had taken of her and pinned on the bulletin board along with all our pictures. I had stolen hers and kept it until the colors faded to sepia tinges.

She turned around. “They say you are the prosecutor who never sleeps. That your assistants quit from exhaustion. That you’re driven like no one the city has seen before. You’re forgiven, Joe. Now you can sleep.”

“Don’t go,” I heard a panic in my voice I didn’t recognize.

She held my gaze, then looked down at the picture. We stood there like statues. Finally, she said, “All right.” She smiled at me. “Dinner, then, Joe.”

I nodded and opened the door for her. And for the first time for as long as I remembered, a shadow didn’t follow me home or come in echoes through an open window.

[AUTHOR’S NOTE: This is a companion story to the earlier Open Windows.]

The 11th Ring, by E. Flanigan

Raisa says people are like trees: you have to cut them down to see what they're made of.

Raisa's really smart, and she's also the funniest person I've ever met. She's always cracking jokes and playing tricks and stuff. And she comes up with things really fast. When Margot didn't save her a seat at breakfast, Raisa said, "Hey, Large Marge, I know you got your red hair from your mom, but did you get your chest hair from your dad?" It was so funny.

She has nicknames for everybody. Smelly Shelly. Sticky Nicki. She calls me Scabby Gabbi, but nobody has a nickname for her because nothing rhymes with Raisa.

We're best friends. They call us the Rainbow Twins because we always wear two different colored socks. If she wears red and blue, I wear pink and purple. We also wear yellow and green sometimes, but not black or white, and not orange. Raisa hates orange.

Raisa wears two different socks even when she’s not at camp because rainbow is her favorite color. I do it because we’re the Rainbow Twins.

She can tap dance and French-braid and count to 10 in Japanese. She went to Hawaii last year and rode in a helicopter. Her dog's picture was on the Today show. She likes being interesting.

If you can't take a joke, you're boring, and nothing is worse than being boring. "What good are you?" That's what Raisa says.

Last summer Sarah and Raisa were best friends, but not now. Raisa says Sarah is boring. She calls her Snoozy Sarah.

Last night we played a trick on her. Right after lights out, Raisa called for our counselor Michelle. “Sea-shell, I need to use the bathroom!”

“What are you up to?” Michelle shined her flashlight toward Raisa’s bunk, and Raisa was hopping up and down with her hand between her legs.

“I really have to go, Sea-shell. This is très serious.”

Michelle said, “You have to take a buddy.”

Raisa grabbed my hand and pulled me out the door. We started toward the bathrooms, but then Raisa turned off her flashlight and stopped.

“What are we ….?”

“SHUSH!” she said. She looked around, then pulled a piece of paper out from under her shirt. "Wait 'til you see this letter the Snooze wrote her mom today: Boo-hoo, I miss home, I miss Daddy. Wahh!"

She yanked a roll of masking tape from her shorts pocket and started walking toward mess hall. "This will be hilarious. Just wait 'til tomorrow."

Raisa taped the letter to the door and we went back to the cabin and went to bed.

This morning, when Raisa and I walked up for breakfast, the other girls were gathered around reading the letter.

"What a big fat baby!" Raisa started laughing.

Nobody had a chance to say anything because just then Sarah walked up and saw. She ripped the letter down and looked at Raisa like she was about to cry. "You know, Raisa, you're a jerk!"

Raisa laughed. "Why don't you go get your diaper changed, Snoozy? Or is it time for your bottle?"

I laughed, and Sarah turned to face me. "Gabbi, grow a brain of your own!"

A few girls giggled and Sarah walked away, back toward the cabin.

"She's such a joke." Raisa snorted and went in for breakfast.

This afternoon when I walked up to the cabin to change into my swimsuit, Sarah was sitting on the stump next to the cabin.

"Where's Raisa?"

"Still down at the lake."

Sarah sat there for a minute, then wiped a tear off her cheek. "Gabbi, did you know me and Raisa used to be best friends? But she's not a good friend."

I thought about what Raisa would say if she were here. "You're just mad because she thinks you're boring."

Sarah shook her head. "No, Gabbi. You know that thing she always says about how you have to cut something down to see what's inside? Well, it's not true. You can see what's inside her if you just look."

“As if you would know!" I said. I thought about walking away from this très boring conversation, but I didn't.

Sarah stood up and pointed to the middle of the round stump.

“The rings are small in the middle, see? This tree didn’t start off good. Michelle told me if the amount of rain and sun is just right, the tree makes a big fat wide ring. But if it’s too dry or too cold or too cloudy, then the ring is real thin.”

"Thanks for the science lesson."

"Gabbi, you don't have to cut Raisa open to know she's real small inside. And she's making us small, too. And you're helping her."

Sarah sat back down. “Michelle said people like Raisa make everybody’s 11^th ring small. Forever.”

"You wouldn't say that if she was here."

Sarah shrugged. "OK, Scabby. Just think about it."

I went in the cabin, but I don't have to think about it. Sarah is boring, and Raisa is interesting, and which would you rather be?

She Hung It on the Blackboard, by Allen

I sat at my desk, convinced my drawing was the best ever made. Ms. Cummings often found most my stuff to be too messy or that I had committed the ultimate sin of crossing the lines with my paint. Funny, how the world wants order.

In the fancy drawings of my peers, you can tell what the art represents. Not in this creation I have. My drawing was of the things floating around in the fog of my mind. So depicted and so drawn as to offer the class a real look at the genius of this nine year old.

I drew this because I wanted Ms Cummings to see the real me, to know what lurked under those line faults. The broad brush strokes and the lavish use of blue and red indigo ink. I succeeded. Her look after viewing my drawing let me know she knew the real me.. She didn’t scream. She didn’t cringe. She smiled.

"What a wonderful picture!" she said. "How on earth did you do this?"

I smiled and grabbed up the blue and red tipped pigtails from the girl in front of me.

April Prompt

For this month's Storytellers ...

Monsters, By Jon VanZile

I remember everything about that night.

After my parents put me to bed, they stood outside my door and had a whispered argument.

"We should leave the light on," Mom said.

"No way," Dad answered. I pictured his face just from the tone of his voice. There would be lines between his eyebrows, and his mouth would be tight.

"But he's just a little boy!" Mom said. "And seriously, this lightning is even freaking me out. I wouldn't want to sleep alone in a dark room on a night like tonight."

Just to make her point, there was a huge FLASH! from outside that lit up my room with an electric glow. I pulled the covers up to my eyes and counted ... one-one thousand, two-one thousand, three-one thousand ... until a BOOM! rolled down from the mountainside, over our house, and shook the old windows in their frames.

"That was a big one," Mom said in a far-away voice. "Honey, just for tonight. Let him have his light on just for tonight."

"No way," Dad answered. "We start letting him sleep with the lights on, next thing you know, he'll be in our bed. He'll be running the whole house. He's the original give-an-inch, take-a-mile kid."

"But-"

"Seriously, if you turn that light on, I'm gonna break out the bulb," Dad said. "I thought we were on the same page about this kind of stuff."

"We are, it's just that ... I don't want him to be scared."

"What's so wrong with being scared?" Dad said. "This is our house. If you can't learn to handle fear in the safety of your own house, where will you?" Mom was silent, and I could tell the argument was over. He'd won.

There were a lot of good reasons to be scared in your own house. I knew that, even if they didn't. They still pretended they liked this old house, even though I could already tell that, underneath, Mom hated it just as much as I did. I wasn't even sure Dad liked it. He cursed when he talked about it, and he said it was "probably going to kill him," but when he talked on the phone, he laughed and said he was going to "put lipstick on this old pig and make a fortune."

I didn't sleep. I lay in my bed with my felt blanket pulled up to my nose and my eyes plastered to the window. My room was on the second floor, and my window looked across the overgrown field to the dark line of trees. It was very windy, and the branches tossed and flailed beneath the racing clouds and full moon.

Another FLASH! lit up the sky and I counted to two-one thousand before the BOOM! came and shook my bed. My window was old so cold air rushed around the frame. I felt like I was almost outside, like the skin of the house was thin and brittle like skin on top of pudding.

After the traces of thunder rolled away, I listened for Mom and Dad. I didn't hear their voices. Nothing. So I waited with my eyes plastered to the glass. I knew he would come again tonight. He had come every night for the last three nights, each time inching closer and closer to the house, until once I thought I almost saw his face. Even thinking about it made my throat close around my breath.

I watched the same spot in the woods until my eyes were drawn away, closer to the house. I saw a blacker shadow among the other shadows move slightly, the hulking shape of a man shifting under the cover a dark bush right beneath my window.

I began to scream. I kept screaming as their footsteps drummed up the stairs and Mom flung my door open and turned on the light. I was sitting up in bed. She raced to my bed and wrapped me in her arms while Dad stood in the doorway, shaking his head and frowning.

"See?" she said to Dad. "You're being a major asshole about this. Just so you know." Then she turned to me and nuzzled me. "It's just a storm, honey. Don't worry."

My breathing slowed down, and my crying dissolved into hiccups.

"Did the storm scare you?" Mom said. "It's just thunder. It's just God bowling."

"No," I said, finally working up the courage to tell them the truth. "There's a monster outside. I saw him. He comes closer every night."

"No honey," Mom said. "It's just a storm."

Dad came in a few steps and looked down at me. He didn't look so angry anymore. "She's right," he said. "Listen, I'll tell you what. We'll both be brave tonight. You sleep with your light off like a big boy. And I'll take care of that monster. OK? Any monster comes in here, I'll kick its ass. I’ve got a air-powered nail gun with that monster’s name all over it."

"Trevor!" Mom said. "What kind of message is that?"

"Just the truth, baby," Dad said. "OK?" he said to me. "We got a deal?"

I nodded, but only because I knew they both wanted me to. What good was a nail gun against a monster? Then Mom kissed me and they left. Dad turned out the light, and before he shut the door, he said, "You remember. I'm right outside this door, and I'm tougher than any monster."

But he wasn't.

Open Windows, By Erica Orloff

Sometimes, on hot summer nights, when my mom kept the windows open, hoping for a breeze to float through after dark, I heard it. Hidden in the symphony of crickets and tree frogs echoing across the fields, I could hear Grace’s stepfather raping her. At least that was what I thought I heard.

I’d climb out my bedroom window onto the trellis and scramble down, running across summer grass, cool and wet on my bare feet. When I got close to her house, I’d crouch down and listen. And I swear that’s what it sounded like. Whimpers, grunts, a mattress squeaking, the occasional slap of hand against cheek. Then I’d see his six-foot hulking frame rise up, a monstrous shadow on the wall, and leave her pink bedroom.

And right then and there, I decided one day I’d marry Grace. And one day I’d kill the bastard. I never said anything to her. But in my mind, I’d told her and I convinced myself she heard me.

In August, I heard her cries traveling in Morse code on the backs of a flock of cawing crows. I did the same thing, climbing down, sneaking to her house, sitting on the grass and trying to conjure the nerve to get my granddad’s rifle. Then, like a wild angel in a white nightgown, she came tearing from back door, running straight for me and crashing into me.

“Shit,” I said. Blood spurted from my nose where her kneed landed square on the bridge.

“Shh!” she whispered. Then she squinted her pale gray eyes. “What the hell are you doing here? You spying on me, Joe? Is that what you’re doing?”

I scooted away, wiping my bloody palm on the grass. “No!”

“Come on,” she urged. She grabbed my hand and pulled me toward the grassy fields where the old horse owned by Mr. Morris—a sway-backed mare a step from glue—grazed.

Behind us, I heard a screen door crash open, and a man’s voice calling out, “Grace Ann! Grace Ann, you get home now before I bust your face wide open.”

I stared at her in the moonlight. “You going back?”

She shook her head, her face streaked with tears and dirt from our tumble. “I’m not ever going back.”

“What if he was dead? Would you go back then?”
She shook her head. “Nope. I’m leaving here, Joe.”

“In a nightgown?” Her blonde hair reflected moonbeams. “Where are you going? You got any money?”

“I have a hundred and ten dollars in a savings account.”

“Hmm.” Even I knew that was only going to get her just so far. “What about going to the sheriff?”

She looked at me like I was the stupidest boy in the whole town. Maybe even the whole world.

“Oh. Yeah,” I breathed. Her stepfather was a deputy. “All right then, I’ve got a savings bond for $500. You can have it.”

I heard the old mare whinny. I sat down, out of breath from fear and from being so close to her. She sat down next to me.

“I hate him.”

“I do, too,” I whispered. “You think he’ll come chasing you?”

“Nah. Too drunk.”

“What about your mother?”

“She’s just plain crazy.”

I ran my fingers along the grass. “What if they were both dead? Would you get the house? Would you get their money?”

“I suppose. But I don’t want nothin’ from them. I just want to get away.”

She flopped back on the ground and stared up at the night sky. “I wish I was a shooting star.”

I leaned back. I didn’t know what I wished.

The two of us whispered all night. I don’t even remember what we talked about. Everything and nothing, until a pink-gray wash chased the moon away.

“You better go home,” she said. She grabbed my hand and squeezed it. “Thanks, Joe.”

“Why don’t you come home with me? My mom will help you. I swear she will.”

Grace jutted her chin out. “I’m going home. I’ve got things to do.”

She rose slowly, and gave me a half wave, then walked toward the house.

The next night, there was a fire.

Supposedly, her stepfather fell asleep, drunk in bed, and his cigarette lit the mattress on fire.

He and his wife died, their bodies charred to blackness.

And Grace Ann was nowhere to be found.

Now, on hot summer nights, through the open window, I just hear the sounds of crickets and tree frogs. I shimmy down the trellis and run, barefoot, to the house. I sit on the grass and smile, and I like to think Grace Ann is somewhere else. A shooting star. An angel in a nightgown in a grassy field.

Ass, by E. Flanigan

This summary is not available. Please click here to view the post.

What A Picture’s Worth, by Melody Maysonet

That Gothic-style mansion with its ivy-covered pillars looks like something out of Amityville Horror, only creepier, if you can believe that, and in a lot worse shape. No one believed I’d seen a girl’s face peeking out of the little round window of the attic, and that’s why I’m standing not twenty feet from the house, pointing a camera at the upper stories, hoping the girl will make a reappearance while at the same time wondering what the hell I’m doing.

I mean the place has a reputation, for god’s sake, and it isn’t a good one. Just a year ago there was this neighborhood dog that went missing. It was a husky, a real pretty dog, and the owner went all out to find it. I mean everywhere you went you saw this dog’s picture on a telephone pole. A week goes by and no sign of the dog, and then out of the blue all those faded color printouts of the dog have been replaced by pictures of the dog hanging by its neck on the porch of that house, its head twisted sideways like a hook and its tongue all black and spilling out between its teeth. I still clench my stomach when I think about that picture. I mean it was disturbing.

And then there’s that newspaper story from fifty-some years ago that everybody around here knows about, the one where the owner of the house thought an atomic bomb had fallen and it wasn’t safe to come outside. He was starving so he started chopping off bits of his own body to eat. They say he started with his ear lobes and then moved on to some of his toes and then graduated to bigger body parts, so when they found him dead he only had one foot, no nose, and there were strips carved out of his side like he was some kind of rib roast for god’s sake. Anyway, they found him in the kitchen of that house in the act of sawing off his other foot with a bread knife. That was the picture they printed in the paper if you can believe that. Ever since then the house has been empty and no surprise.

But it’s not empty now. I swear I saw a girl’s face in that window, and she didn’t look like she was a prisoner. She looked like she lived there and was just taking a peek out the window to see about the weather. That was about an hour ago when I saw her, so I ran home to get my camera and here I am standing in front of the house looking up at that window and thinking I must be insane.

I mean that too because there’s no way I’m seeing what I’m seeing. That dead husky is on the porch barking at me and the girl is looking out at me from the other side of the screen door. I find myself moving closer and then I remember about the camera and I stop to take a picture of her and the dog both.

The girl waves to me, and I’m curious as hell so I jog up to her and step onto the porch. The dog comes up and licks my hand and I pat its head and look at the girl.

“Nice dog,” I say.

“He likes you.”

I study her and notice that her dress is real old-fashioned, like something out of Little House on the Prairie. “You live here?” I ask.

“I used to.”

“But not now?”

“I died here.” She looks fondly at the dog. “Me and Canook both.”

Jeez Louise, I think.

“I see you brought your camera,” she says.

I lift it and look at it like I don’t know what it is, and for a second, I don’t because I’m so scared that I’m only thinking Ohmygod.

“Let me take a picture of you,” she says and reaches for the camera.

Screw that, I think, and that’s when I run. I don’t even realize the camera’s in her hands until I trip over the dog and hear the camera’s shutter go off just as I smack my face into one of those ivy-covered pillars. My nose explodes like a squished bug and my tongue feels like someone cut it off with shears, and as the pain blooms to maximum intensity I realize I’ve bitten off my tongue. The girl picks up the piece of tongue and says, “Fred will like this,” and I have enough sense to wonder, “Who’s Fred?” before the dog starts licking the blood off my face while the girl takes another picture of me.

The screen door opens and out comes a man who must be Fred and though he still has a nose and a foot I know this is the guy from the newspaper. I’m laying on the porch trying to crawl down the steps but the dog’s all over me and then Fred grabs me by one leg and starts dragging me into the house. I kick and grab onto one of the pillars, but my fingers are slick with blood and I feel myself being dragged through the entryway. The girl’s holding the door open and looking down at me with a smile and I try to scream but it comes out more like a gurgle.

Inside the house, the flash goes off, and I see myself the way the camera sees me, my body sprawled on the dusty floor like one of those homicide chalk drawings. There’s a mess of bloody meat where my throat should be and the dog’s hunkered over me chewing something and gulping. My face is covered with blood, which is just as well because I don’t want to see what I look like. And then the dog licks the blood clean and I see my face and I realize it doesn’t look that bad even though I know I’m dead.

In My Father’s House, There Are Many Mansions, by Allen

The grass huts ringed the center of the village. The church bell tower stood above the grass roofs, majestically. They were hiding from us, waiting for us to appear in their sights. The only ones left were the young, the rest had been carried off by the insurgents months before.

Mud squished around my boots as I tried to get steady. The clicking of my sixteen-millimeter movie camera set the cadence of my steps. Along the tree line, mix in among the leaves, were the faces of the young boys and girls waiting to attack us. With no experience, they were soon to be massacred.

The lofty sounds of muttered prayer rolled out of some of our men. Others cursed the job and continued with their usual battle rituals. The officers, huddled in the recesses of the rear, pointed to their maps and ate their boxed lunches. This scene had become far too normal.

The first shot echoed across the open field. Then another. Screams and hollers catapulted the kids, fourteen at most, from behind the barn, their eyes fixed on the enemy ahead. The distinct rattle of an AK-47 preceded the bolt slapping sounds of a Ma Deuce stippling a line of bullets through the boys along the tree line. The thunder from a grenade covered the shrillness of a lone soldier screaming in pain, all captured in brilliant color.

I lost my place in this mess, unable to tell where my camera pointed. The richness of the brown and camouflage scenery melted into the iris, swallowing the background of blue so that I didn’t know how close to the fighting I had wandered. Even in the fog of my thoughts, I found a place to hide, a small recess in the ground where I would be safe. Trembling as the film rolled, I continued, steadfast in my duty.

An explosion rumbled across the open field. The staccato sounds of shots bouncing around me were like musical triplets. The bass line rang from the thumps of the tubes on the hill, scattering shrapnel in the midst of the boys held behind the barn in reserve. I stood to capture the moment on film when, in an instant a single shot rang out from the bell tower. After the echo left, I found myself engulfed in utter silence, devoid of my senses except for my sight.

The sun’s rays shone on the field as I viewed the whole process from above. I drifted past the bell tower window and saw the girl, no more than sixteen years old, ratchet another round in her rifle. She pulled the trigger without emotion, killing my sound man. I watched his soul rise above his body until he crashed through the clouds and out of sight, followed closely by the dead boys of the field.

The ragged clothes and unkept hair of these kids somehow made the whole situation more palatable to us. The girl was too young to know about killing someone, to not feel anything as she watched someone die. She was a throw away child in a useless country, the victim of some far off dictator whose quest was for power was at the expense of those young children. For the child’s lost soul, I was sad.

I felt strangely safe as I rose through the clouds, hovered over the earth still draped in a blue hue. Crashing into space left me speechless. I was floating, but not at my will or my direction. I was drawn to that place, dark and murky, as if pulled along the way. The darker it got, the less I felt until I know I slept.

Waking on a lawn, I looked across the green, lush field of freshly cut weeds. In the foreground stood a stately old mansion, one like my father restored for our family to live in. The wrought iron rails were entangled in vines and weeds, and the English boxwoods had grown high enough to cover the first floor windows. The whitewash on the bricks was faded and failed to cover the bricks behind it. The woodwork had lost its charm as the bare wood rotted in place. All manners of critters roamed the rooms as the missing windows allowed them access. I thought I was in heaven, but I must have found hell.

My camera was still around my neck so I filmed the building. It may be disheveled, but no one could deny its majesty and beauty. Perhaps, for my sins, I was sent to hell to reclaim this house. Perhaps if I did, God would reclaim me. I didn’t know, but it felt good to film something so beautiful. Not the least of my joy was filming something devoid of blood and guts.

As I stood in the rough grass, my camera to my eye, a man placed his hand on my shoulder. "This is your mansion, Son, but it is not ready, yet. You must return home so that I can prepare this place for you."

I lowered my camera so that I could meet this man, but all I saw was a Navy Corpsman frantically working on my chest wound. Flat on my back in the blood-soaked mud, I felt the cold prick of fear climbing up my spine. I held my camera tight to my side as they rolled me onto a litter. The bouncing trip to the Huey sent bolts of pain across my chest with each step until they racked me in a bunk.

They returned my camera to me several weeks later, untouched by others. I often watch the footage of the house when I am down or blue. Just knowing there is a restored mansion waiting for me is comfort enough. But I often wonder what happened to that girl.

Sonnet, by Erica Orloff

Janet stamped on the accelerator. A bottle of Jim Beam slid toward the gas pedal, and she kicked it sideways as she drove, wiping angry tears.

When she reached the cemetery, darkness had settled like a heavy blanket of silence. She climbed out of the car, her cowboy boots crunching in the gravel. She grabbed the bottle of bourbon, slammed the heavy Cadillac door shut with a thud and surveyed the locked gate.

“Never stopped me before,” she muttered, and climbed an oak tree, slid out on thick branch and dropped on the other side of the stone wall.

The moon filtered through a cloud and she saw the freshly dug grave at the top of the sloping hill, a mound of dirt that infuriated her. He wanted to be cremated. He told her so. Told her that. Told her a million things she bet no one knew. Secret things.

Janet hiked up the hill and sank to her knees in the fresh earth, the scent of mowed grass and damp soil making her heart ache as surely as if someone had squeezed it. She unscrewed the bottle and took and healthy swig. She splashed a little on the grave. Then a sob sprang up, and she tried to choke it down, choke it with another swallow of bourbon, but it refused to be choked.

She slid down, almost in slow motion, pressing her face to the earth and whispered. “I know you loved me, but I couldn’t go to the funeral. I just couldn’t. Couldn’t watch them put you in this box, Professor.”

She stretched her arms, hugging the dirt, then rolled over on her back and stared up at the stars.

He had been 72. She was 23. He taught her things. Like Shakespeare. He listened to her. She made him laugh.

The stars made the squeezing in her heart hurt more. They used to sit on his back deck and drink red wine—from Napa, really good red wine. He taught her about finish and the scent of laurel. And he gave her his old Cadillac, and a bunch of books, and a telescope. A really good one that let them see the rings of Saturn. And they looked at stars. He showed her Orion and Canis Minor. Then they would make love. He took his time. She loved his eyes.

“But no one would understand,” she said to the stars and the dirt.

When he got sick, near the end, he made her promise. You will find someone young. Someone to grow old with in your own time. Someone to have babies with. Promise me.

She had nodded. But she never spoke the words. Never said “I promise” out loud, so it didn’t really count.

The pain was worse thinking of him sick. She sat up and sipped the bourbon. Her face was wet and mixed with the dirt, she was muddy and tired. She whispered Shakespeare,

Let me not to the marriage of true minds
Admit impediments. Love is not love
Which alters when it alteration finds,
Or bends with the remover to remove:
O no! it is an ever-fixed mark
That looks on tempests and is never shaken;
It is the star to every wandering bark,
Whose Worth's unknown, although his height be taken.
Love's not Time's fool, though rosy lips and cheeks
Within his bending sickle's compass come;
Love alters not with his brief hours and weeks,
But bears it out even to the edge of doom:
If this be error and upon me proved,
I never writ, nor no man ever loved

She let the words linger with him in the soil. Then she brushed her hair back, dirt on her palms, and stood up. “I won’t come back,” she said to him, firmly. “Not here. This isn’t where you really are.”

She made her way down the hill. She would go use the telescope he gave her. The one that showed her Saturn. The one that let her dream of things beyond her world.

He wasn’t in the dirt but in the stars.

Doppelgangers and Other Monsters, by Merry Monteleone

Janet stamped on the accelerator. Still nothing. She pulled the keys out of the ignition and held them between her palms. If anyone happened to notice her, they’d think she was praying – ironic really, since god was obviously done taking her calls.

Okay, one, two, three.

Shoving the key back in the ignition, she turned it with a flick of her wrist and stomped on the pedal at the same time.

“You rotten motherfucker.”

For about two seconds, the weight pressing against her neck and shoulders relinquished its grip and floated above her. Swearing might be cathartic, but it didn’t get her to work any faster. Grabbing her purse from the passenger seat, she jumped out of the car and slammed the door. She jogged up the block, until she saw the bus chugging past the next intersection. Bursting into an all out run, she cursed her cute shoes and skidded around the corner just in time to stumble into the last guy waiting to board.

Whoa. Hello.

From the back she only saw wide shoulders, mostly because she came damn close to bashing into them face-first. But when he turned and squinted down at her, all broad cheekbones and chiseled jaw, she forgot to breathe. Something about him was familiar.

“You okay?” He cupped her elbow with his hand, steadying her the way on old friend might, without thinking.

Janet regained her footing enough to pull her arm away and he bit down on his bottom lip, one dimple just peeking out. He was trying not to laugh in her face, which should have annoyed the hell out of her, but for some reason it made her smile.

“I’m okay.” Stop panting, you moron. “It’s the shoes, can’t run in the shoes.”

“That’s why I had to give up the heels,” he said, “ruined me for marathons, it did.”

She followed him onto the bus and paid her fare, and then she grabbed the closest unoccupied seat. She kept her eyes focused on the grungy floorboards and wished she’d brought a book or something. She would have if she’d known she had to take the bus.

“Janet? It’s Janet, right?”

It was him again, sitting in the seat across from her. Her chest contracted and her eyes shot up to meet his before she could stop herself.

Damn, damn, damn.

“No, sorry,” she adopted that blank stare she’d spent the last two years perfecting, “my name’s Marina.”

“Really?” He scowled, and looked above her as if trying to picture something and said, “I’d swear you were a girl I knew back in Milwaukee. You didn’t used to live in Wisconsin, did you? Maybe I’m just messing up the name.”

“No.” She answered too quick but caught herself enough to give him a full smile, “Never been there. Sorry.”

“Huh, well, you’ve got a doppelganger out there.”

He laughed and it was so warm and fun and full of promise that her heart sank. The bus slowed down and she jumped to her feet.

“Whoa, where you going? We just got on.”

“I... yeah...” she fished around for some excuse and came up lame, “stupid shoes. I didn’t think I could make the five-block walk.”

“Oh, well, nice talking to you.”

She didn’t turn around, just waved behind her as she got off and stood at the sidewalk. Through the window she could see him looking down at her, squinting again, as if he was trying to figure her out. She hoped he didn’t try too hard.

She pulled out her cell phone, and dug through her purse to grab her wallet. She opened it up and rifled past the driver’s license that said she was Marina Sandoval, and pulled out the other one – Janet Sierra, issued by the State of Wisconsin. She was supposed to get rid of it, it was dangerous and she knew it. She just couldn’t give that one little piece up. She’d already given up everything else. Behind that last reminder of her former self was the scrap of ragged paper she was after.

She punched in the numbers and waited two rings, putting the scrap of paper back into its hiding place.

“Bitsy? It’s Janet. Someone saw me.”

“You need to come back in. Now. Just grab what you need.”

“Yeah, same place?” It was mechanical. She knew she’d have to move on again, as soon as he called her by her real name, she knew.

“Same place. I’ll make the arrangements to send you on to the next stop today.”

“Oscar doesn’t know I’m here yet. Maybe I can stay.” She knew she couldn’t, knew Bitsy would talk her out of it if she tried, but God, she loathed giving everything up. Again.

“Same place, Jan. I’m sorry, you can’t take the chance. You just can’t. Meet me there.”

“Yeah, okay. My car’s not working, though, I got spotted on the bus.”

“On the bus? There’s a whole new reason public transportation sucks.” Bitsy laughed, trying to lighten the mood, “I can pick you up in two hours. Is that enough time?”

“Yeah. See you then. Thanks.”

She closed the phone and dumped it back in her purse. Walking up the street she kept her eyes open, drinking in every sound, every movement. Amazing how he could still ruin her life without even trying. She stopped at the garbage can on the corner and looked down at the old license, still palmed in her hand. She dropped her old smiling face on top of the used wrappers and garbage and walked on.

Janet Has a Gun, by Allen

Janet stamped on the accelerator. With the wind tossing her hair, she sped past the marketplace still thinking of that evil woman lying in her bed. Her husband surely knew better than to carry his secret rendezvous into their house. Each puff of wind fluttered another lock of hair across her face and added an additional layer of contempt for that tramp.

The gun sat beside her as a traveling companion. Each cylinder carried the revenge she so desperately deserved. Nothing was too morbid for this man, a cheater and a liar.

Janet stomped the brakes as the car slid into her driveway. The loud, crashing sounds traveled far past the crumpled trash cans bouncing against the garage. She wondered if the copulating cheaters upstairs had even heard it, or were they so engrossed in their own dalliance that mere thunder, lightning, nor careening trash cans could penetrate their frolicking minds.

The gun nestled nicely in her hand. It felt comfortable, like an old, worn out tennis shoe. Her palm surrounded the pearl grips as she slid her thumb across the hammer. Three solid clicks and the revolver stood cocked, ready for whatever Janet needed.

Janet stamped the cigarette out with her open-toed shoe. The last puff of smoke held in the air as she worked the key. The single ping from the alarm echoed through the hall. The clip clop of her heels on the hardwood floors traced her path through the den to the stairs in the back. Climbing the stairs, she waded through a maze of strewn clothes; a silk blouse in dark green, a black skirt too short to hide anything while climbing stairs, a black bra, and a pair of red panties inscribed with Tramp on the back.

She rolled her eyes. Fitting.

Janet stepped into her bedroom amid the smell of a lavender candle burning on the table, a gift from her mother just before she died. The sounds of sex reverberated in the corners of the vaulted ceiling. Framed by the poster bed’s posts and canopy that he bought to celebrate their twenty-fifth anniversary, Janet stared at the whore astride her husband, still riding him as if he was the only steed left on earth. Their rhythm, accentuated by the squeaking bed, droned on as moans of pleasure escaped the petite young thing’s lips. Janet, fixated on the rocking motion and the visual of this woman’s hips gliding back and forth, playing peek-a-boo with the bunched covers of the bed, couldn’t divest her eyes from the sight.

Tramp stamp. Figures.

Janet firmed her grip on the revolver, rolling her head in their direction, craning her neck just enough to view the wall mirror’s image of the two humping away. She held the gun rigid, assured of her aim and determined to fire. She watched the couple begin to build the intensity of their endeavor. Still, the gun never wavered. When her husband began his final climb, one she had experienced through all the years and both of the children, she knew the time was right.

Janet slammed to the floor as bits of her brain and blood hung in the air. The spatter, clinging to the mirror, obscured the view of the couple, still entangled in their deceit. The crimson stains slid down the glass until the brain speckled goo plopped to the dresser. The burst of blood which covered the tramps back mingled with the green of her tattoo, a grotesque display of dancing Cherubs. Her screams ended their play.

The gun, oozing smoke from its barrel, lay beside its traveling partner as another jilted wife became silent. No gurgling sounds or twitching motions. The two lay in abject stillness.

Thumbing It, by Jude Hardin

Janet stamped on the accelerator.

Janice stomps on the accelerator.

Jan floors the gas pedal. The Mustang lurches forward, pinning me back in my seat. Thirty seconds later, we’re cruising down the two-lane at a buck ten.

“Why are you writing in that notebook?” Jan asks.

“Because I’m a writer.”

“Really? A writer? Have you published anything?”

“Yes. I’m very famous.”

“Are you writing a story now?”

“Yes.”

“And I’m in it?”

“That’s right.”

“What’s my name in this story of yours?”

“I couldn’t decide between Janet and Janice. So it’s just Jan.”

“That’s boring. Would you like to know my real name?”

“There’s a pretty sharp curve up here,” I say. “Might want to slow it down a little.”

Jan glances over and smiles. She doesn’t say anything, and she doesn’t slow down.

“Seriously. Really sharp curve. Up ahead. Really sharp.” I fasten my seat belt. “Actually, if you could just drop me off here…”

“You’re funny. Are all writers such cowards?”

“I’m not a coward. I just believe in exercising a certain degree of caution.”

“Where’s your sense of adventure? Isn’t it important for a writer to have a sense of adventure? If I slow down, the story isn’t going to be as exciting, now is it?”

The needle on the speedometer jitters around the 120 mark. It’s dark outside, but a Texaco sign blurs by and I know there’s an extremely sharp curve less than a mile from here. Beyond the guardrail there’s a sixty-foot drop to a dry creek bed.

“The story’s not even going to get written if the main character dies,” I say.

“Who’s the main character? Me or you?”

“That would be me.”

“Rather selfish, don’t you think? You should make me the main character. Make me the main character, and I’ll slow down.”

“Okay, you’re the main character.”

“Awesome!”

Jan presses down harder, as though she’s trying to put her foot through the floorboard.

“What are you doing? I thought we had a deal.”

“A main character should have some sort of flaw, right? I’m a pathological liar. That’s my flaw.”

Jan flings her long blond hair back and cackles insanely. We pass a blinking yellow light atop a sign that says Curve.

“This is, like, super-suspenseful, isn’t it?” Jan says.

“I’ve decided to make it a horror story.”

“Beg your pardon?”

In one swift motion I grab Jan by the hair, pull my hunting knife from its sheath, and slit her throat from ear to ear. Her muscles go slack. I straddle the console and stomp the brake pedal with my left foot. The Mustang goes into a spin, whipping round and round like a Tilt-A-Whirl from hell. With every revolution I see the reflectors on the guardrail. Closer and closer and closer until…

Bang!

The Mustang breaks through the rail and bottoms out on the asphalt. Sparks fly from the undercarriage as it grinds to a stop on the edge of the cliff.

I gently open the door and step out.

The car teeters, and then, as if in slow motion, careens down the hill and explodes in a massive fireball on the rocky bottom. Realizing this is a cliché, I vow to think of something better on revision.

I stand on the precipice, like some sort of crazy god, and shout toward the plumes of greasy black smoke filling the canyon. “A first-person narrator rarely dies, silly girl. It’s a point-of-view issue.”