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| Short Stories |

Oh Brother, My Brother

by Robert Hyma
written by Robert Hyma

            Brother Omaron was probably dead. It wasn’t definitive, no one had checked his pulse. We weren’t allowed to, part of the Greater Plan authored by Brother Omaron himself. “In case I shall be struck down by Heavenly Father, His aura shall roam near, and I will be pure.” (Subsection 2 of the Greatest Plan). There were three of us there, myself and Brother Dan. The third was a brown labrador retriever that had quickly risen up the ranks of our brotherhood, Brother Bark, and he sniffed the body of Brother Omaron with fierce curiosity.

            “Shoo!” said Brother Dan. “You’ll desecrate all we’ve accomplished! Go on, Brother Bark, out!”

            Brother Bark sniffed once more, sneezed into his brown coat of fine fur, and trotted from the tent.

            “I’m sorry, Brother Solomon,” said Brother Dan. “I didn’t mean to disrespect Brother Bark as I had, but you saw where his nose was sniffing. If I didn’t intervene, he might have sniffed up Heavenly Father’s aura.”

            I nodded and thought my secret thoughts, the ones that should have been purged from my conscious upon entering the brotherhood, but I could not help but wrinkle my brow and partially raise an eyebrow.

            “Brother Solomon! The accursed mask of doubt is on your face!”

            I cleared my throat, straightening my features. “Right. Brother Dan?” I asked, “Do you know how long we are to let Brother Omaron lay on the floor before the aura of Heavenly Father, I don’t know, heads elsewhere?”

            “What pertinence,” Brother Dan dismissed. “Heavenly Father will leave when He sees fit. We are bystanders basking in His graces. He is here, among us! Do you not feel His presence, Brother?”

            A slight wind rustled the tent flap of Brother Omaron’s teepee, it smelled faintly of toasted marshmallows and smoke coming from the Bon Fire of Sacrifices—really, just a big fire made from still-wet wood from the campsite. I could hear laughter, and someone shouting, “Brother Bark, fetch!”

            I shrugged, another sign of the demonic doubt, so Brother Omaron told me. I might have said more, but didn’t, and reached out to Brother Dan’s hand—he was crying, overwhelmed, I think. We watched in silence as Heavenly Father’s aura roamed over the still, bloodied body of our former Brother, his stiffened hand resembling what it must have looked like just before pulling the trigger of his Civil War replica firearm. 

            “I do, Brother Dan,” I answered at last, squeezing Brother Dan’s hand. “As Heavenly Father wills it, I do.”

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| Short Stories |

Dirty Dishes

by Robert Hyma
written by Robert Hyma

The following story contains strong use of language. If this sort of thing bothers you, then I’d click on something else before scrolling too far down. Thank you and please enjoy!

***

            “Listen, asshole, just do your share of the dishes!”

            I’ve learned to keep calm when other people lose it. That’s what my dad always taught me about winning. The one that loses control first has already lost. There’s no need to shout because Paul is a loser. I knew that when I first moved in.

            “I’ll do them,” I say.

            “You said that last night,” says Paul. “You say it every night, and every morning when I get my coffee, there’s a huge fucking pile of dishes in the sink. Do the fucking dishes, man!”

            I’ve never seen Paul like this. Ten minutes ago, I was scraping my potpie from the pan and and shoveling gooey chunks of chicken and gravy breading into my mouth, doing what I do every night. When I was done, I placed the crusty pan on the pile of dirty dishes in the sink. It fell off the top, clanged on the kitchen floor, but I rearranged the pile so the pan would stay put. And now this.

            “I will, God,” I scoffed. And I don’t see what the hurry was. We’ve had this pile of dishes for the past two weeks. He didn’t say anything then, but all the sudden it’s a problem.

            “It’s embarrassing,” he says.

            I try not to laugh. I get it now. He’s bitching about Katie, the girl he had over for the first time last night. She saw the pile in the sink and Paul tried to explain why it was my fault, that I had promised to do them before she showed up. When he brought her inside, I could see him turn shades of pink, just pissed that I lied to him. Hey, if he wanted dishes done for a girl he invited over, he should have done them himself. And as far as I could tell, without Paul whining about the dishes, he wouldn’t have had anything to talk to this girl about. So, really, I was doing him a favor. 

            I’m not sure how he got a girl like Katie to even come over at all; she’s about ten floors higher than Paul will ever get to.

            Paul steps towards me. “Do them. Now. Do them right now!”

            I know what he’s trying to do; he’s trying to stand tall, for consequences and whatnot. It won’t work. I’ve known guys like Paul since I was a kid. Why do you think I’m his roommate? He was desperate, I knew that, and so I pay a fourth what I should owe. I was even able to cosign; God, he was desperate. Kind of funny, actually.

            And I laugh at him now, “Dude, get out of my face.”

            He steps closer. “No.”

            This is my cue; Paul is trying to speak my language, the language of real men. I stand up, turn my neck so it cracks, and look over him. He’s angry but like a sick animal—harmless and desperate. “You’re not going to do anything. Sit down.”

            That’s the other thing my dad taught me: tell them what they will do. You dictate the terms and they’ll follow. Most people that get upset are followers, and they’ll get back in line if you show that you’re stronger. I’ve seen Paul huff and puff around the apartment before, but nothing to bother about. He just fumes and leaves for a while. You can’t take on other people’s problems. I didn’t need my dad to teach me that one.

            Paul steps back, bowing his head. “Last chance, do the dishes,” he says much quieter, almost a whisper. He looks like he might cry.

            “Ask me nicely and maybe I will,” I tell him.

            “I wasn’t asking you to,” he says. It’s an ultimatum.

            I can’t help but snort a laugh out my nose. “Or what? Kick me out?”

            He doesn’t answer, keeps his head low.

            “Dude, you’re so dumb,” I say. “We co-signed. I own half the apartment. You can’t kick me out.”

            “Fine.”

            Paul steps past me, which isn’t good. He might leave, try something with the landlord, maybe find a loophole to scrape me off the contract. Squirrely guys like Paul are good at that kind of stuff. I have to change the subject, make him stay put. “Why don’t you get Katie to do the dishes? She looks like the kind of girl that’s good in the kitchen.”

            Paul’s a liberal, I knew that had to hurt.

            “I didn’t think of that,” he says with a smile. “Maybe I’ll ask her next time.”

            “What?”

            He brushes past me towards the kitchen and starts arranging the crusty pots and pans on the countertop. “It’s fine. I’ll do them,” he says.

            He had to be messing with me, but I couldn’t figure out how. He starts doing the dishes, like he always ends up doing them, but it didn’t feel the same. “Good. It was probably your turn anyway.”

            “Probably,” he says with a shrug.

            Something is wrong. The lights are the same, but Paul seems cast in shadow, like one of the ceiling lights burnt out. Paul is the kind of person who will crack if you keep pressing him. He can’t ignore being beaten on forever, even if he can’t do anything about it. “It’s your turn to clean the bathroom, too. You said it was my week, but if you got this wrong, you’re definitely wrong about that.”

            “Yup, I’ll clean the bathroom.”

            Eerily, the lights flicker.

            “Good. And vacuum the hallway. I’m sick of stepping on crumbs.”

            “I should,” he volunteers. “I can hear you sneak around at night, they’re so crunchy on the fibers.”

            The lights flicker again.

            Ever stare down a hallway and think you’ll see two twin girls holding hands? That’s what it is like with Paul. He turns on the faucet. Hot water steams in the sink as he grabs the nearest pan.

            I can’t take it anymore. “What is this? You’re just going to stand there and agree to whatever I say?”

            “Oh, just for a little while longer. A few hours, maybe. Depends.”

            “Depends on what?”

            He shuts off the water and looks at me. “Depends on when you go to bed tonight. I’m going to kill you in your sleep.”

            He says it so meekly, like all of his lame jokes. “Dude, that’s the unfunniest thing you’ve ever said, and we’re talking about you here.”

            He smiles. “Yup,” and turns back on the faucet, scrubbing at petrified crumbs clinging to pans with molecular fusion. “Hey, want to play games after this? I lost my controller, but maybe we can share. Haven’t gone online in a while.”

            “You mean play some games before you kill me later?”

            He shrugs. “Or whatever you want to do until then.”

            “Right. Why do you want to kill me, exactly? It’s not like you have a lot going for yourself. Maybe you’re thinking you should kill yourself instead. Is that what you mean?”

            He rinses a plate in the already muddy sink water. “No, I meant I’m going to kill you. You’re just a pathetic and unreasonable human being that deserves to be erased from existence.”

            I debate punching the back of his head and through his nasal cavity but restrain myself. As my dad taught me, it’s about control. “Ok, I’ll play along. And how will you kill me? You can’t even do ten pushups; are you going to smother me with a wet towel?”

            He pauses scrubbing and wrinkles his brow, considering. “There’s all kinds of options, I guess. Assuming you lock your door tonight, I’ll grab my spare key that came with the apartment, unlock it at an hour I feel you’ve grown weak with trying to stay awake, take a steak knife – there are more hidden around the apartment, don’t try to hide them from me – and I’ll stab you in the heart. Or cut your neck off with a pizza cutter. Something like that. Have a preference?”

            “Dude, that’s fucked up,” I say with a laugh. Paul was supposed to laugh back, but he doesn’t. He smiles. “You’ve really thought this through?”

            “Sure.”

            “And all because I didn’t do the dishes?”

            Paul doesn’t answer; he just scrubs away.

            “Fine, I’ll do them,” I say, bumping him aside. “If you’re going to be such a bitch about it, I’ll go ahead and—Hey!” Paul stabs my forearm with a pair of scissors. Blood is running down my wrist and fingers like a faucet. “What the fuck!”

            “No, I said I would do dishes,” he says calmly. “You’re off the hook.”

            “I’m calling the cops,” I say, pulling out my phone. I begin dialing but my cut arm is shaking so terribly that I slowly type: 9-1-…

            It felt like there was suddenly a hot coal embedded in my rib cage. I look down and Paul is grabbing hold of a steak knife handle, the blade is entirely lodged in my side. I feel the hot spread of blood as it seeps from the wound. I gasp and every breath is agony. I can’t speak, I can’t move. He twists the handle and the world is flashing white. He takes my phone, saying something I can barely hear like, You won’t be needing that, and tossing it on the floor.

            “Why?” I ask without drawing in air.

            “Because I hate that there are people like you,” Paul says. “I hate that you think the world should bow down before you because you lack the decency to conceal being an asshole like the rest of us. The question you should be asking is, ‘Why shouldn’t I kill you?’ Because what you don’t see is what a pathetic waste of space you are on this planet. Killing you would make the world an objectively better place.”

            “You…can’t…. just…. kill people,” I manage to say in quick bursts.

            “Sure I can. People kill each other all the time. I made a decision to murder someone I think despicable for the greater good. I’m the good guy here. You’re a delusional fuck-o that can’t even do his share of the dishes.”

            “I said I’d do them,” I try to say. I’m not even sure if I made sound.

            “With a knife in your ribs, you’ll do them?” Paul asks.

            I nod, frantically.

            “Ok,” he says, steering me with the joystick handle of the knife. He parks me in front of the running faucet. I want to take soap and splash it on the wound because I know for certain it was a dirty steak knife Paul stabbed me with. I’m thinking of blood loss, of infection, and suddenly my knee buckles beneath me. Paul grips the knife and I’m brought back to life by another burst of razor-sharp pain. 

            “Can you really not finish them?” Paul asks belittlingly. “Is that too much to ask?”

            The pizza pan I’ve been using to cook potpies with is obscenely crusted. I scrub with all my ability, my vision fading white every few seconds.

            “Credit where credit is due,” Paul says. “Dishes are never fun, but to do it with a knife in your side…can’t be much easier. Not with the messes you make.”

            Paul laughs. He looks at me like I should join. “It’s a little funny, even if it’s coming from someone like me. Right?” I try to mouth “I’m sorry,” but I nearly faint.

            He starts humming to pass the time and I start crying. I can’t take much more of the pain. I know I’m soon to bleed out. The least I can do is take Paul down with me, that asshole. I reach for a knife to clean, Paul sees but does nothing to stop me. I dip it into the sudsy water and quickly thrust the blade into Paul’s chest. He looks at it, smiles, and says, “It doesn’t work that way,” He plucks the knife from the wound and hails it over my head, ready to strike.

            I look at the hole I just put in his chest. “You’re not even bleeding,” I manage to say.

            Paul sighs, dropping the free knife on the kitchen floor. “Why would I bleed?”

            Suddenly, I don’t feel a knife wedged in my ribcage. I can breath normally again. “What is this?” I demand. I pull the knife from my ribs, ready to kick the shit out of Paul.

            “You tell me,” he says. “It’s not like I want to be here.”

            “I’m not dying?”

            “Oh, very probably,” Paul tells me. “But you wouldn’t know it. People like you don’t notice much of anything. You’ll forget it, won’t care, and go on being the same asshole that can’t do a single dish to help out.”

            That’s all I needed to hear. “That’s right, bitch” I say, throwing a fist. Even if Paul is a dream, the satisfaction of landing a fist against the side of his face feels real.

            He stumbles backwards from the blow and I chase after. I throw the heaviest punch I’ve ever attempted. It whiffs through Paul’s head like a specter.

            “Ow!” shrieks a woman’s voice. 

            I’m on my knees, sinking into the soft linen of my bedsheets. My fist is extended, and Katie is holding her eye, shaking with both surprise and anger.

            “What the fuck was that for?” she demands.

            “Shhh!” I hush, but she’s already rolling out of bed, getting dressed. “Where are you going?”

            “I’m not staying here,” she says, pressing her eye while pulling up her jeans. “You just punched me!”

            “It was a dream, I was dreaming!” I hiss, but it’s no use. Katie is out my bedroom door and I hear an audible, “Ew,” as she steps down the hallway.

            Crunch, crunch, crunch.

            The front door slams and she’s out of the apartment.

            I swear and my ankle bumps into something hard and plastic under the sheets. I rummage around until I drag it out. It’s an extra controller I’ve been hiding from Paul whenever he wants to play online. It was stabbing me in the ribs the entire time.

            I walk out into the living room and sit at the kitchen table. I hear the bathroom door creak open as I stare over the parking lot outside our apartment window; the sun is just coming up. Paul emerges from the hallway, fully dressed, khakis and a tucked in blue button up. He steps past me, heading straight for the coffee pot. “Did you just leave the apartment? I thought I heard the front door.”

            “No,” I lie, thinking fast. “Maybe it was Katie. Did she stay over last night?” I say, massaging my ribcage. The pain feels sharp, not very much like a bruise.

            “No, she had to leave last night. Apparently she has to wake up early for work,” says Paul, concealing a smile. “We didn’t kiss, but I think there was something there between us. We might hang out again next week, whenever she’s free. She didn’t know, yet.”

            I don’t reply. The pain in my side feels hot like a coal.

            Paul pours his coffee from the pot, sighing over the sight in the kitchen sink. “Hey man, are you going to do dishes today?”

            “Yeah, I’ll get to it,” I say.

            He steps towards me. “Today, man. I’m not fucking around. It was embarrassing with Katie last night. I’m tired of dishes piling up.”

            I stand up, cocking a fist back like I’m ready to punch his face in. “I’ll do them when I fucking please!”

            He shakes his head, gathers his backpack with his work laptop, and storms out the door, but not before firing off a passive, “Asshole,” on the way out.

            I’m left alone. I start to nod because I know I’m right. 

            And I walk to the kitchen sink to turn on the faucet.

            I’m still nodding because I don’t believe in stupid dreams. 

            And I scrub at the petrified crusty remains on our lone pizza pan.

            I keep nodding, even when the tears come. 

            And it’s because I’m no loser, not like Paul is.

            I nod as I scrub the steak knife clean.

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| Short Stories |

Like Straightening Trumpets

by Robert Hyma
written by Robert Hyma

            I always wanted to handle the horn like Louis Armstrong, with lips so swollen and flush against the mouthpiece, girls wouldn’t know if I was making music or making love. But most of us don’t turn out to be Louis Armstrong. I ended up uninteresting, a trumpeter called on to perform at funerals, kind of a musical pallbearer. If anyone is seeking to get into this line of work, I’d suggest starting the trumpet at fifteen, having a military uncle that dies, and a father who encourages you to play “Taps” at the funeral.

            I couldn’t play it well, but people cried anyway. That’s the nice thing about playing “Taps”, it’s beautiful to some, no matter how badly it’s played.

            Outside of funerals, I’m no one. I could never stick in a band, play anything worthwhile, or find work that was the least bit related to my trade other than appearing as a local bartender-slash-holiday-trumpeter double threat. So, if you’re me, every time you play a funeral, there isn’t much else to do but stare down at the decorated coffin about to be lowered into the ground and wonder what it was all for.

            That’s thinking inside the box; a little funeral humor. You learn these things if you go to enough funerals.

            Like this last one I played.

            It was a cold day, cloudy, gray as the reaper might like it, and the funeral proceedings came to a close. I was left with the priest, packing my trumpet back into its case as we exchanged the usual dry and morbid joke that a veteran pair of funeral goers knows: “See you next time,” I said. “Hopefully not in the ground, aye?” said the priest, and we went our separate ways, a blast of frigid wind the only applause for our vaudevillian show.

            “Excuse me,” came a woman’s voice behind me. “Could I ask you a question?”

            I knew who she was. At military funerals, there’s always a growing collective of widows to support whomever the newest addition to the sad sorority was. Cassidy, was her name. No one had told me who she was, but I was interested from afar, so I knew it anyway. She was younger than I was, thin in a way that complimented how tightly a funeral shawl wrapped around her to scantly protect from the cold, and she had a pair of dark eyes that seemed permanently stained from mascara that no longer streaked across her face from tears.

            She had cried her share of those, having lost two military husbands before the age of twenty-five.

            “Is it hard playing at funerals?”  she said when I stared blanky in reply.

            “Can be, if it’s cold” I said, wondering why she asked. We watched the gravedigger pat the final plot of dirt on the gravesite. “Why, do you want lessons or something?”

            She smiled meekly, as though it took great effort. “Do you want to get a drink?”

            Something about meeting a hardened woman suits a trumpeter, I think. We found a nearby bar and sat down. Cassidy had such silky hair. I always thought widows didn’t care much for dressing up anymore, especially someone who had lost a pair of husbands so young in life. But there was something in her eyes. They were crystalized things of marble, able to withstand the rays of the sun without dilation or intention to blink. I’ve seen soldiers with the same look. It comes from experience, not character. I felt I was talking to someone twice my age, not ten years younger.

            “I’m going to need more than two of these,” she said, indicating her nearly finished glass of whisky. I flagged the bartender, signaling another round. She sighed and said, “I think there are times when you’ve felt you’ve died more than other people.”

            “Your husbands?”

            She nodded, unsurprised that I knew about them without knowing her. “The worst part is never getting to see them die.”

            “I don’t think it helps.”

            She shook her head. “Not when you need closure. No matter how something ends, it’s better to see the blood and guts of how it ended.”

            I disagreed but kept silent. She was talking another language, the soldier one, and I was playing the part of trumpeter waiting for his cue to play “Taps”.

            She touched my hand. “Have you ever seen someone die?” she asked. I shook my head. “Me neither. I hate it. I feel disconnected from those that do, like they’ve seen something in life you are supposed to see. You know what it’s like to have lost two husbands overseas? It’s like having something taken from you and never getting to see it; kind of like a soul. You can feel it there, by your side, it’s warm, but one day it’s gone and there’s nothing to be done about it.”

            “I don’t know,” I replied stupidly, automatically. “Losing something feels bad no matter how you look at it.”

            “You’re wrong,” she said, drinking the whisky. “There are people out there who think they know what it’s like to be without, but they just think they know. Like yourself.”

            I cleared my throat. “Me?”

            “You never served.”

            “No,” I said, feeling exposed. Was this the point? To be shamed? I felt I should leave.

            She touched my hand again, keeping me in place. “No, it’s not that. You’re still part of it.”

            I smirked. “I just play the trumpet.”

            “You don’t believe that. You’re needed.”

            “A recording would do the same thing. And sound better, honestly. I’m not very good.”

            “It’s not about how good you were.”

            “Were? Are we talking about you or me now?” I couldn’t tell anymore.

            “It’s like being a military wife,” she said. “You’re the plus-one to the party, one you would never get in the front door to if you didn’t know someone. So, you feel you shouldn’t be there, but there you are, doing your best to make friends, appear happy, and be good company. It’s just that no one tells you how perfect you have to be because of what they’ll go through.”

            I finished my drink. “Yeah, but it’s their choice to go through it.”

            The hardened stare returned. I said something I shouldn’t have, and I slumped in the bar stool, appearing ten inches shorter. I was ready for my corporeal reprimand.

            “You’re right,” she said at last, finishing her drink.

            “I am?” my voice squeaked, a sharp note.

            “My husbands died because they chose to,” she said.

            “Well, that’s not what I—”

            “No, it’s true! I know what you’re saying. Why should I be stuck in their shadows? I don’t have to wear black, to be a war widow, some sappy girl that cries in the middle of the night because my dreams died with some dumb war hero overseas. We get to choose what our life is about, don’t we?”

            “Yes,” I said, feeling better about all of this. “Yes, we do.”

            “What are you doing right now? Are you free?”

            She had turned to me, naked knees touching mine, her black dress hiking up from the swivel of the stool, which wasn’t insignificant. “Nothing at all,” I said.

            “Pay up. Let’s go to my place. Let’s leave it all behind.”

            “Ok,” I said, a feeling in my stomach I hadn’t felt in too long.

            I grabbed my trumpet case atop the bar.

            She stopped me. “What are you doing?”

            “Grabbing my horn, why?”

            “Oh, no,” she said and put it down on the bar. She unclasped the locks. “We’re leaving all this behind, aren’t we?”

            I was horrified. Her hand was on my horn and I was horrified. “Yes…?”

            She banged the bell of my trumpet over the wooden bar top. It clanged, crying out for mercy. “Hey,” I protested, but she was on the move with it, heading towards the back restrooms.

            “No turning back now,” she said.

            Satirically, I chased her. She locked herself in the women’s stall. I knocked feverishly. “Cassidy! What are you doing?” I heard a stall door open/close, open/close, clamping something into place. Then, a gruff of effort and mangled creak of brass. “Open up!” I shouted, horrified at what I knew was unfolding inside. “Unlock the damned door, Cassidy!”

            She did, at last, and something slid to the floor. I entered. She was on the filthy tiling beside my trumpet, which had been wrenched into an awful angle, like a crooked V. She wept there against the wall, head against the sink, mascara running down her cheek. I gave her a look, that I wanted to say something directly, but I couldn’t. I didn’t know what to say. I picked up my deformed trumpet and held onto the bent brass, massaging it. “I’m not sure where I can get this fixed.”

            She stood up, in a fury, racing past me, “Well, who do I see about fixing me?” She stormed out of the bathroom, slamming the door closed on her way out.

            I packed the trumpet as well as I could into its case, which no longer closed, and looked more like a hotdog bun made of hard plastic carry-on. Clamping it together in my arms, I walked past the bartender and all the patrons who had watched the spectacle. They stared, quiet as a funeral procession. And it was one, I think, because something had been taken from me.

            That next week, I was called to play another funeral. I hadn’t repaired my trumpet and told the sergeant that requested my playing I was unavailable. “Son, I need you to show up,” he said, and there wasn’t a way around it, even if I didn’t have a trumpet. So, I arrived at the graveyard with nothing in hand, standing around, foolishly, wondering why I had chosen to come at all.

            To punish myself, I guess.

            The Sargent directed that all military men form two rows around the coffin. I tried to sneak away, then, seeing that I had no purpose, but the Sargent came over, cupped my arm in his large, weathered hands, and placed me sternly at the head of the line. “Son, you lead us off. We need you now.”

            “You want me to sing? I can’t sing.”

            “It’s not just you,” said the Sergeant, looking around to all the other men of his apparent platoon. And, foolishly, farcically, I cleared my throat and recited the first note of “Taps” in voice-cracking acapella in an embarrassed hush, “Da, da daaa. Da, da daaaa. Da, da daaa, da, da, daaa, da, da daaa!”

            And after the first verse, the ten soldiers at my side joined in.

            “Da, da daaaa, da, da, da. Da, da daaaa!…”

            Afterwards, the gathered audience applauded our efforts. And there, on the end, Cassidy smiled at me before turning away with rest of the funeral party, one arm hooked around the newest widow, helping her along.

            I was greeted with stern handshakes from war-weathered men with far firmer grips, and they thanked me for the song. It wasn’t until then that I heard the music the way it was supposed to be played, I think, and I wondered why I never knew it before.

            Just how damned beautiful that song was.

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| Short Stories |

Penguins with Hand Grenades

by Robert Hyma
written by Robert Hyma

            The place: Siberia.

            The time: could be any. It’s Siberia.

            The horn blew and Pebby waddled in line with the other captured penguins as they headed back to the Berg. That was the name of their bunk, so called because it was essentially straw and mud caked over another iceberg-looking rock, surrounded by barbed wire at the base. The Siberian winds blasted the encampment, which felt like home, but, still, was technically a prison.

            It was the fifth straight day of pecking stones into slightly smaller ones. Clearly, this was a pointless task meant to break the colony of penguins that worked alongside other human prisoners. The humans dug trenches, the penguins pecked stones, and the Russian guards would fart, secret and silent plumes of poisonous invisible gas that tormented said pecking and digging.

            It was hell.

            Upon the Berg, Pebby sighed in his makeshift nest of trampled tin cans and permafrost straw. Below him was another penguin, Perkins, who had chipped a good portion of his beak earlier. Perkins was gyrating back and forth, chirping on and on about diving into the sea below for a swim. There was no sea below the Berg; just the chipped rocks of hopelessness.

            Pebby bowed his head and nuzzled his beak deep into his blubbery fur. He missed his wife, he missed his child, still a yoke in a speckled egg beneath the blubbery protection of his mother back home.

            He wondered if he would ever see the ice flow again.

            Morning came. The prisoner penguins atop the Berg were marched through a gap in the barbed wire by an armed guard. The penguins held their breath as they waddled by. Only one penguin dared to breath in and subsequently coughed on the toxic air of another USSR silent fart. For his insolence, Perkins was prodded in the back by a rifle barrel.

            There was to be no handful of frozen guppies for breakfast that morning. The penguins were marched past the feeding quarters and towards the ominous mortar building at the center of camp, the one with the smoking chimney. Since their arrival, the penguins had yet to see any of the human prisoners ever return once they entered the mortar building.

            In dignified silence, the penguins marched through the dark doorway.

            They were arranged into rows of four in a dimly lit room. A ceiling light flickered above, giving most of the prisoners headaches—penguins are incredibly light sensitive. Then, a man with a slicing scar down his cheek and decorated with a chest-plate full of medals entered the metal door of the dimly lit room. Two armed guards stood at attention by his side. “There is no doubt that many of you have questions as to why you are here,” said the heavily medaled man, his chin held high with superiority. “I will be brief. I am General Popper, and you are now my penguins.”

            The penguins stared.

            General Popper rolled his eyes. “When I say you are my penguins, I expect all of you to salute. Raise a dorsal to your leader, filthy birds!”

            The guards that surrounded the prisoners aimed their rifles. Each penguin instinctively raised a dorsal and honked their allegiance.

            “Better,” said General Popper. “Any more penguin shenanigans and I will replace your guppy mealtimes with American tuna tins!”

            The cries of mercy amongst the prisoners were deafening in the small room; as all penguins knew, American tuna was the worst.

            “Good, now that I have your attention, we will proceed.” The General stepped to a wooden crate upon a small desk at the front of the room. He withdrew an orb-shaped object from inside, handling it gently. “Do any of you recognize this?”

            Each penguin tilted his head, unsure of what the object was. It was vaguely familiar, appearing like an egg, only green and metal.

            “That’s right, it is a hand grenade, a very special hand grenade. One designed for your penguin sensibilities.” The General nodded to a guard who pulled on a string. A map of the world descended with many red Xs tagged over several cities in North America and Europe. “You certainly recognize the significance of these locations,” sneered the General. “Zoos. All of them packed with American tourists, paying extra to see the penguin exhibits. Americans think your species so cute. ‘Look mommy, watch the baby penguin dive into the water and frolic while I spill my ice cream!’ Foolishness!”

            The General slammed the tabletop, which rattled the wooden crate of hand grenades. Each penguin gulped simultaneously.

            “Our top researchers,” continued General Popper, collecting himself, “have discovered the source of American pride, American snobbery, and, worse of all, American ingenuity.”

            The penguins blinked. Not one knew what the general was talking about.

            “It is a scientific fact that American children develop FOUR TIMES the required brain cells for national superiority after visiting penguin exhibits for the first time. It only follows – and my word is supreme! – that the best way to combat American nationalism is to destroy the source of these enumerated brain cells. That’s why each of you is being primed as a donation for every city zoo marked on this very map.”

            A penguin in front of Pebby raised his dorsal and asked a very smart question, “Honk? Honk, honk?”

            The General was not amused. He nodded to the nearest guard. The inquisitive penguin was dragged from the room by his dorsal fins. The metal door slammed, muffling the penguin honks for help on the other side. A dread silence befell the other prisoner penguins.

            “There will be no more foolish questions!” shouted the General. “Any more interruptions and each of you will be clubbed like baby seals!” He smiled knowingly. “Skeptical that we would ever be so cruel?” The General leaned in closer, as though relaying a secret. “Who do you think invented the practice of clubbing baby seals in the first place, hmm?”

            It isn’t the nature of a penguin to shiver. But in that dimly lit room, every penguin shivered for the first time.

            “You will each be armed with a hand grenade,” instructed the General. “It will be painted white, which will resemble your species’ eggs. So perfectly identical will our hand grenades be to penguin eggs that American zoo caretakers will never know the difference. And when the time is right, you will all be sacrificed in a vast explosion of heroic nature! You will destroy American nationalism at its source!”

            The penguins blinked.

            “And,” admitted the General after several anticlimactic moments of silence, “quite a few American children and their families, I suppose.”

            The penguins looked to one another, certain there were two ways out of this: rebellion or death in a zoo, both equally awful. In solidarity, each penguin made a decision and stretched a fin to one another. Pitted against rifles and Russian farts, they would attack the General, explode the eggs, and sacrifice themselves in a blubbery explosion before any American school children could lose out on the opportunity to take field trips to national zoo aquariums.

            There could be no nobler a cause.

            Pebby nodded to Perkins beside him. They stepped forward, ready to be sacrificed.

            Then, there was a knock at the door.

            “I’ve rented this room for an entire hour,” complained the General, signaling a guard to see who was knocking. “Who in the world is interrupting—”

            The nearest guard turned the knob to the door. The door swung back into the guard’s face, rendering him unconscious. A pair of men in white furry overcoats barreled through the threshold with brass badges stitched to their breasts. The General reached for his firearm, stuck in its holster from disuse, and the two men fired two polar bear-strength tranquilizer darts into his neck. The General slid to the ground unconscious.

            The two men in white radioed into their sleeve. “All clear. We got ‘em.”

            Pebby and the prisoners stared at the men in white coats. Slowly, the men holstered their tranquilizer guns and removed their ski masks. “Sorry we took so long,” said one of the men with a mustache, indicating his brass badge on his furry coat. “Story Police. This story has gotten out of hand. Our alarms went off when we got wind of ‘Russian farts’, no pun intended. It took us a while to figure out the setting of the story and where you were being held prisoner. The setting wasn’t very specific, which should have been a clear sign this story wasn’t going well. But we found you; you’re all safe now.”

            The penguins embraced one another with dorsal fins, awkwardly hugging one another. During the celebration, Pebby stepped forward and asked a question with a series of honks and squeaks.

            The mustachioed man laughed at the penguin’s candor. “Yes, that Russian General sounded more like a Nazi to me, too. Don’t worry, we’ll get your colony home. You deserve to be part of a better story than this.”

            The penguins honked in agreement.

            The mustachioed man looked to you, the reader, and nodded assuredly. “We all do.”

            With a hearty laugh, the two men in puffy coats gathered all the penguins into a close huddle – which was second nature to the colony – and raised a device with one large red button to the sky. Then, with a single press, the two men and colony of penguins disappeared from the story entirely.

            When he awoke, General Popper tore out the tranquilizer dart from his neck and surveyed the empty room. He ground his teeth, cursing the Story Police. “They won’t save you next time, penguins. Next time, Neil Gaiman will write the story, and it will work! My plans will be,” the General slammed his fist on the small table of hand grenades, “realized!”

            BLAM!

            A vast explosion. The General, and this story, finally came to an end.

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| Short Stories |

The Form It Takes

by Robert Hyma
written by Robert Hyma

            “Yes, hi, I would like to lodge a complaint,” she said.

            “Very well,” he said. “Let me just retrieve the right form. One moment please.”

            “No rush,” she said.

            The man rummaged through a filing cabinet beside the bed and withdrew the correct form and a fresh pen, noting the date and time of the meeting. “We’ll start at the top: who is lodging the complaint?”

            “Your wife,” she said.

            The man checked a box on the form. “I see. And whom is the complaint directed towards?”

            “My husband.”

            “Yes, so with me.” He checked another box. “And what does the complaint pertain to?”

            “Something you said to me over dinner last night,” she said.

            The husband made another mark on the form. “To be specific, was this before, during, or directly after dinner?”

            “After.”

            The husband checked a box. “Before we continue, does the complaint relate at all to food? For instance, who prepared said food, how large of serving each participant took, the manner in which the food was eaten?”

            “No, it had nothing to do with the food. The food was sublime, delicious.”

            The husband hinted a smile. “Your comment will not go unnoticed.”

            “Please, no tongue-and-cheek comments,” she warned. “I’m not in the mood to open another form about inappropriate behavior during an official complaint.”

            “Noted,” said the husband, marking the form as such. “I’ve given myself a formal warning. Now, what is the nature of your complaint?”

            “You don’t remember? We discussed it last night, briefly.”

            The husband sighed, withdrawing a manilla folder from the filing cabinet, turning over a document dated from the previous evening. “Recalling the minutes of dinner last night, I noted tension at 6:45 PM, just as our plates were emptied and we debated dessert.”

            “Do you remember what we wanted for dessert?”

            The husband flipped the page. “Superman ice cream.”

            “You couldn’t remember that just now? You had to read the minutes?”

            The husband clicked his pen and wrote on the complaint form currently open, reading aloud as he wrote, “Plaintiff seems concerned about memory recall function of husband despite minutes written in detail.”

            “What did I say about the tongue-and-cheek?”

            The husband crossed out what he had just written and amended it as: “Wife appears concerned.”

            “That’s better.”

            “Should I keep on with the minutes to find the complaint you are referring to?”

            “Please.”

            The husband resumed reading, “6:46 PM: Wife asks if husband will be attending work party with her next weekend. She also notes the dress she has picked out.” The husband looked up. “Is that the complaint?”

            “Partly,” she said.

            “What’s the matter, exactly?”

            “Read on,” she said. “Unless you can just tell me.”

            The husband picked up the minutes and continued: “To which the husband replied, ‘I won’t be able to go, Honey, I promised Dave I would help him move out of his apartment.’”

            The wife stared expectantly. “Well?”

            “A perfectly acceptable excuse,” said the husband. “If you don’t believe me, I have your signature next to the minutes log. That means, per bylaws, you cannot go back on plans made yesterday evening, and I am entitled to a weekend excursion with Dave under the provision that I help him move out of his current apartment.”

            “Why is he moving?”

            “Irrelevant,” said the husband. “The minutes have been signed.”

            The wife sighed. “Look, I understand that I signed. I want to reopen the case.”

            “That’s a completely different form,” said the husband. “Why didn’t you say—”

            “Because I shouldn’t have to.”

            The husband dropped his pen on the floor and fumbled around in the fibers of the carpet until his fingers pinched around the cold, metal pen clip. He sat up, collecting himself. “Our household bylaws are not up for discussion. If you wish to reopen last night’s minutes form, a new set of minutes must be added and amended for tonight’s proceedings.”

            “Along with the formal complaint you are filling out now?”

            “Yes.”

            “And this new set of minutes will compound on top of the complaint form you’re already filling out, in which case a series of amendments and disclaimers will have to be inserted, proofed, counter-proofed, re-signed, and be reviewed again and again?”

            “Perhaps I should fetch our marital bylaws in order to cross reference proper procedure in the case of—”

            “No, you’re going to stay put,” said the wife, pressing on his shoulders, keeping him seated upon the bed. “You’re going to talk to your wife, Brian.”

            The husband, who kept referring to himself as such, said, “It is custom to refer to each other by husband and wife for the sake of honoring written bylaws.”

            “What?”

            The husband cleared his throat, repeating, “It is custom to refer to each other by—”

            She craned over him. “I can’t understand you, Brian. What are you trying to tell—”

            “Stop calling me Brian, bitch!”

            The wife raised an eyebrow. The husband swiveled quickly to the filing cabinet by the bedside, retrieving another form. “I apologize, profusely. Here, I’ll begin my Official Husbandly Apology Form. Please, continue with your complaint.”

            “That’s the problem, Brian,” she began, but her husband lifted a finger, objecting to the use of his name. “Sorry, husband. There’s more to this than not going to the work party.” She hesitated, then finally said it. “Last night, when we were through with dinner, you asked what I wanted for dessert and—”

            “Please read the minutes if you are referencing something I said specifically.”

            “No, husband, I won’t. Because what I said was, ‘I don’t want ice cream. I want you.’”

            The husband paused filling out his Official Apology Form. He cleared his throat. “What you are referring to sounds familiar; I will have to check the minutes for specific language.”

            “Don’t bother. I remember what you said. You said, ‘Ok. I’ll get the Official Sex Form.’”

            The husband tilted his head, almost confused. “And what is the matter with that?”

            “Your wife says she wants you and your reply is to offer her a form to sign?”

            “The form is merely a formality.”

            “Hardly,” she said.

            “I disagree,” said the husband. “The Official Sex Form is a brief survey of what level of sexual completion you require on said occasion: amount of foreplay, intensity of orgasm, duration of the act.”

            “I know what’s on the damn form,” she said. “My question is why do we need it?”

            The husband put aside the Apology Form and pulled out a fresh piece of paper. “You’re bringing up a very important point. It’s clear, from this discussion, that there is a loophole in the marital bylaws. What we are missing, in our proceedings, is a failsafe when breakdowns occur.”

            “Brian,” she sighed, this rhetoric all too familiar.

            “No, no, this is important,” the husband continued, writing longform on a blank piece of paper. “If there is ever a need for a failsafe, it is now. This new form, as you can see here, will remind us to reinforce the bylaws, the ones we both agreed and signed for at the start of the fiscal….”

            The tip of his pen ripped through to the other side of the new form, stabbing into his pantleg. A blotch of ink stained into his khakis.

            “Brian,” she whispered. “Please stop—”

            “No, Janet, I won’t!” He paused, the air unwilling to exit or enter his sternum. She touched his shoulder and he breathed again. “I mean, wife, there are certain rules in place so that…”

            “Say it,” she said, sitting down beside him. He didn’t move away.

            The husband stopped writing. He shook his head no.

            The wife looked to him. “Please.”

            He recoiled from her touch, turning away. “Because we don’t want you cheating on us again.”

            They sat in silence for some time, a stillness that hadn’t existed between them since she had first told him of an affair the year before.

            “I’d like you to formally complain against me,” she said at last.

            The husband looked up. “Why?”

            “Should I reread the minutes?” she said, reaching across to the filing cabinet next to the bed, withdrawing a blank piece of paper from the open drawer. She took his pen and asked, “Name of the plaintiff?”

            He hesitated, the hurt coming back. She put a hand on his knee, and he didn’t swat it away, as he usually did. “Your husband,” he mumbled at last.

            “Who?”

            He smiled slightly. “Brian.”

            “And who is your complaint meant for?”

            “My wife,” he said. She stared. “Janet.”

            She checked an imaginary box on the blank piece of paper. “Very well. And what is your complaint?”

            He didn’t want to say. She kissed his cheek and smiled.

            “I want to know why,” he strained to say.

            She rested her head against his shoulder. “Can you be more specific?”

            He cleared his throat and said, “I want to know why you did it.”

            She lifted her head and said, “Is it ok if I write my official response?”

            The husband conceded.

            He watched his wife, Janet, as she turned away to write. He wanted to peak around her as though back in grade school, trying to lift a few answers from the person in front of him. He didn’t speak, and he spent his time looking over the metal filing cabinet that he had bought the day after she had told him about the affair. It was a cold and hardened thing, an obelisk in the stead of a bedside table. Inside were countless forms, each cataloguing the Dos and Don’ts of their lives from that moment onward. He hated it, the procedural and metallic failsafe.

            “Done,” she said at last, turning to him with her written response. “Do you want to read it with me here, or would you like me to leave the room?”

            “Stay,” he said, surprising himself. He took the page, expecting a few paragraphs of explanation, but instead found a single line.

            Because it took the mistake of my life to realize how wonderful you are. Bylaws and all.

            When he was through, he looked to his wife, and stormed the filing cabinet, gutting the insides of manilla folders and excess forms. He threw them to the carpet, ripping to pieces an entire year of catalogued love and unlove.

            “What are you doing?” she asked, her voice quivering.

            He stopped ripping up documents and grabbed his wife, kissed her, and said, “Before I destroy every one of these files, I need to reopen last night’s minutes and ask you a question. And, believe me, the rest of our lives depends on your answer.”

            She smiled. “Ok, anything.”

            “What would you like for dessert tonight?”

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| Short Stories |

All the Bad Things Out of the Way

by Robert Hyma
written by Robert Hyma

            It began with a string of bad ideas: don’t feed the crying baby, kick the dog who is always sleeping in the narrow corridor, break the alarm clock that never turns off. After laughing at how ridiculous they were, Stripford thought of many more bad ideas. Why not put one pantleg in his suit and walk out the front door to work? When backing up his car, why grab the steering wheel at all?

            These were the kinds of ideas he thought of when nothing was working in his life. The argument always ran thus in his mind: if nothing was working right, why do anything the right way at all?

            This was the day when Stripford decided to act on this impulse.

            When the alarm clock rang, he threw it against the bedroom door, smashing it to pieces. His wife bolted upright in bed at the commotion, and the baby began crying in the next room. She asked him to tend to the little one. He didn’t reply and put on his suit for work and let the baby wail away while he nibbled on leftover cupcakes in the kitchen.

            The Pomeranian, Benny, slept in the lone corridor of the cramped apartment, ready to stir at the exact moment that Stripford stepped over. With a shrug, Stripford landed a buckler of a kick into the dog’s ribcage. The mutt half-yipped, half-barked and raced around the apartment to escape further punishment, which was quite amusing.

            He dented a neighbor’s car parked under the carport of the apartment complex, having refused to steer when backing out. On the highway, Stripford didn’t look to change lanes and ran a minivan off the road. The subsequent beeps and threatening gestures that reflected in his rearview might have been menacing the day before, but Stripford shrugged. He mentally checked the box of the list of Bad Things in his mind: reckless driving.

            At his dental practice, Stripford merely glanced at decaying molars and glazed over at dentures in need of polish and refinement. He told children they might as well eat as much candy as they wanted so he could stay in business when they next visited for cavities. Mothers scorned his terrible attitude, threatening to complain. His dental assistants festered in the breakroom after lunch, each sharing one of Stripford’s suggestive innuendo about their fitted scrub uniforms, and each agreed to complain or file suits to HR.

            Stripford was to pick up his eldest from school at 2:30, but he never showed. Passing by the school, he saw his little boy sitting on a bench outside, overlooking the parking lot for any sign of a silver sedan rounding the entrance. This was a particularly unforgivable Bad Idea that required more effort to perform for Stripford, and so he next stopped at a fast food restaurant to order a tripe deluxe Piston Burger, one so drenched in fryer grease that the inevitable uptick in cholesterol would surely befuddle the family doctor come his next checkup. His intestine churned noisily as he drove to the beach to stare at the weekly gathering of recreational women’s volleyball. He unapologetically parked as close as possible and ogled them; the games didn’t last long.

            At the end of the day, Stripford parked his car in the adjoining parking lot to his own apartment complex. It was nighttime and the visitor spots in front of his home were occupied with his wife’s parents and friends, each certainly called to comfort and console why Stripford would ignore their crying infant, or kick the family dog,  and even refuse to pick up their 10-year-old boy from school. He had ignored all phone calls, even the 3 voicemails left by HR from the dentist office. He checked off the box in his mind that read: Successfully completed list of Bad Things.

            But he had so many more Bad Ideas, ones that were even more creative and realistic. Why not abandon the family? Why not take his savings to Vegas and bet big? Why not travel the interstate to that tiny diner off the highway and meet up with – what was the name of that waitress? – Molly…something?Stripford considered all the Bad Things that could still be done and found the list endless. He was gripped by dread knowing that an eternity could be spent checking the boxes on every heinous act.

            He would never be done, never be rid of all the wrongness in his life.

            Unless, he decided, to check the final box on the list of Bad Things this very night. The Bad Thing to end it all.

            It would require heading inside the apartment, attempting to calm and explain his streak of reckless behaviors, apologizing profusely for his brief day of madness and stress. After they all had gone – still angry and bitter, to be sure – Stripford would excuse himself the bathroom for a long shower, turning on the water. Instead, he would dig underneath the sink for a hidden pack vintage razor blades he had received from his father a long time ago. His father explained that one blade was missing and never found. Stripford knew where it was, at the end of his father’s list of Bad Things.

            He took one step forward and something stopped Stripford. He stood still, still enough to cease thinking for a moment.

            The cool summer evening dropped below 60 degrees and he began to shiver. He wanted warmth, like cuddling up to his wife, even after an exhaustive day of tending to a newborn, she was still the best comfort of all on nights like these.

            He listened to the sound of distant traffic on the highway some two miles away and how lonely he felt in its wake. It was calmer outside and Stripford found he didn’t prefer the calm. He much preferred the irritable cries of his newborn son and the bips and beeps of his 10-year-old’s video games that he played late into the night when Stripford needed sleep.

            The parking lot was vast, and he could go anywhere, but why did he want to? There was always the cramped corridor of the apartment where the dog always waited for the opportune moment to awaken each morning to surprise Stripford. He nearly stepped on the mutt a hundred times over, but the dog was the happiest creature in the world to see him each day.

            The night was hazy, but not enough to hide the twinkling stars above from shining down. They might have been brighter in the countryside, perhaps on a vacation somewhere next summer when the kids could see the world for what it was. He had heard of a place from one of his dental assistants, the ones he had made suggestive comments about.

            He exhaled, and the breath of his day plumed out into the crisp night air like car exhaust.

            Stripford began thinking again.

            No, he thought, the razors were packed in the medicine drawer, not underneath the sink.

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| Short Stories |

Day Three of Nightly Push Ups

by Robert Hyma
written by Robert Hyma

            “The point is he doesn’t use me that often,” said David Pinster’s Triceps, the oft underused muscle group after the third straight day of nightly pushups. “Then he expects me to do more pushups each night? I’m up to my ears in lactic acid.”

            “You don’t have any ears,” said David Pinster’s Human Resources Director, who had taken the Spinal Cord Elevator down from the main office – the Brain – for this meeting. It was urgent, so Triceps said in its memo in all caps ‘GET DOWN HERE NOW!’

            Triceps sighed. “It’s a metaphor. You can understand that—you don’t even have a face and I’m looking straight at you.”

            The Human Resources Director shrugged (metaphorically). He (well, it considered itself a he) was a subconscious Human Resources agent responsible for happy workplace conditions for all veins, appendages, organs, and other such departments that needed to vent their issues. Usually, an electric message sped up the Neural Highway, pinging HR (that’s what everyone in the Body called him) about something they wished to discuss. For the past week, every menial limb and appendage – including an impromptu meeting with Toenails – had something to complain about. It wasn’t easy keeping every working part happy in David Pinster.

            These days especially.

            Still, HR smiled (metaphorically) and did his job to the best of his ability, helping each part of David stay happy.

            “Whatever is going on, I don’t want any part of it. Convince the Brain to cut out this pushups business. I speak on behalf of my Muscle Group and a few close friends of mine: Abdomen, Biceps, and even Pectorals. We’re sore and calling it quits unless he stops this new nightly workout regimen.”

            “Why do pushups bother you so much?” asked HR. “I thought a pair of Triceps would be happy for a chance to do pushups regularly.”

            Triceps scoffed. “See, now that’s a stereotype. You think that since I belong to a Muscle Group that exercise is second nature, but it’s not. Ok? You have to be brought up on it, and David never did pushups in his life. Gym class was a joke, remember? When it was time for pushups, he’d hump the floor.”

            “That’s not what he was doing,” HR countered.

            “Ok, maybe not what David was trying to do, but that’s what it looked like. It was embarrassing! I tried to keep him active, twitching whenever I could to remind him, ‘Hey, use me, stupid!’ but did he care? No. He just played video games all day. I bet Thumbs and Fingers are the strongest muscles in the body.”

            They were. “I can’t speak to that,” HR said.

            “I don’t get it, is all,” said Triceps. “Why start doing them? Did he see a movie or catch an infomercial about workout equipment?”

            It was the end of a long week, thought HR. Maybe it was worth sharing a little to get a little. HR put down his metaphorical notepad and pen on the desk, peeling away his glasses with a tired exhale. “Any idea who Bethany Comatanos is?”

            “Cute girl from down the hall,” said Triceps. “Apartment 3, I think.”

            “She just broke up with her boyfriend.”

            Triceps flexed with glee. “I got it, I got it! It’s all starting to make sense. David sees this girl, sees she’s attractive – I should know, I’ve checked out her Triceps, they’re legit – and thinks he has to get in better shape to have a shot with her. Am I right?”

            HR knew what was coming. “Yes, that’s about it,” he conceded.

            Laughter, uproarious laughter. Triceps twitched and flexed, unable to contain himself. “That’s hilarious! David? Our David really thinks he has a shot with a girl like Bethany Comatanos?” More laughter.

            HR cleared his throat, showing a bit more bemusement than necessary. “You don’t think he has a shot?”

            “Have you seen this girl? She’s like a gymnast or something—”

            “Marathoner.”

            “Right, whatever, and here comes our David, walking along—all five-foot-ten and skinny as a twig. Did he think a few pushups was going to bulk him up? As a joke, I could flex more. Tell you what, I’ll do one better: I’ll tell Abdomen to ‘suck it in’ next time David sees her!”

            More laughter and HR rubbed his eyes metaphorically. He had similar confrontations this week. Not one appendage thought David had a chance with Bethany. For this precise reason, heading back up to his office in the Brain was always grayer these days. HR looked to the floor, the same tiled red-and-white blood cell design that hadn’t changed in the past 26 years. “So, you think there’s nothing to be done to help?”

            “Help?” mocked Triceps. “I’ll tell you what I’m going to do about it, I’m going to facilitate lactic acid buildup as I’ve always done—on schedule. David likes this girl, but nobody sticks to a nightly pushup routine past day four. Guys like David think doing them for a few days is like that Oxi-Clean guy swooping in and miraculously cleaning up a lifelong mess at outstanding prices. What was that guy’s name? Billy, Millie-something?”

            “I only know if David knows,” explained HR. “Limitations of the job.”

            “That’s right, you got access to his Brain!” said Triceps, sitting up in his chair. “Don’t you? Well, tell me this: how does David have any will to live? I mean it. Seriously, how does he stand waking up every day knowing he’s going to finish outside third place every time? This guy isn’t even going to medal. Doesn’t that bother him?”

            HR grew silent. This was all he needed to hear, another rebelling Muscle Group. They weren’t the smartest parts of the Body, but they held a lot of sway—sometimes literally (David didn’t have great balance).

            “Hey, don’t you think this is a little funny?” asked Triceps noticing HR’s long stare. “I meant it to be funny.”

            HR looked up at Triceps, straightening in his chair. “I don’t like to gossip about what goes on upstairs, but maybe it’s a good sign you aren’t thrilled about pushups. There’s a rumor none of us will be needed for David much longer.”

            Triceps twitched slightly. “Wait, what does that mean?”

            HR stood up to leave, gathering his notepad and pen (metaphorically). “It means that there may not be a David Pinster in a few weeks.”

            “You don’t mean…”

            “Look at my face.”

            “You don’t have one,” said Triceps. “None of us do.”

            “Not the point. It’s just an expression.”

            Triceps was quiet for some time. There were days when he felt weaker than usual, some sort of fatigue he figured, but he thought it was because David was so out of shape. He never considered upper-level management was thinking of clearing house. He had felt the ripples of something big and never considered what it might be.

            “Hey, I was only kidding before,” said Triceps, grabbing hold of HR. “All that stuff about not wanting to do pushups, yeah, just blowing off steam. I can pump out more pushups if David wants. I mean,” Triceps studied the HR’s bowed expression, trying to read his faceless face, “it would help, right?”

            “Couldn’t hurt,” muttered HR. “Just between you and me, I’d expect a memo coming down the Central Nervous Delivery System soon with instructions.”

            “For what?”

            HR gave the look, and Triceps knew what it meant. Then, HR was gone.

            Triceps couldn’t settle down. On his way back to his office, he was bitter. After a lifetime of service – of teaching David how to use his arms as a baby, coordinating his swings of a baseball bat as a toddler, holding steady in a dark bedroom while he learned to explore himself as a pubescent teen (which, Triceps needn’t point out, there was no overtime pay for), and never once protesting David’s career decision to spend his waking days in front of computer screens to type code – this was the thanks the Body would get?

             Despondent, he went downstairs, back to the Arms Appendage, waiting at his desk for instructions.

            A beep at the mailbox of the Central Nervous Delivery System—a memo came through. Triceps hesitated to read it.

            “Everything all right?” asked a new strand of Bone Marrow passing by his office.

            “Yeah,” said Triceps, standing up, smiling at the new hire. She was young, full of potential. “Can I ask you something: why did you want to work here?”

            “I heard good things,” said the new strand of Bone Marrow. “Seemed like a good fit.”

            The memo box beeped again and Bone Marrow retrieved the incoming memo. She read it to her supervisor.

            “Says we’re scheduled for more pushups tonight. For a fourth night in a row? I heard the team over at Abdomen complaining about sit-ups, too. Does David workout a lot? Doesn’t seem like the type of guy to do that.”

            Triceps smiled. “Sure he is. C’mon, let’s get everyone started.”

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| Short Stories |

Hunters & Gatherers

by Robert Hyma
written by Robert Hyma

           You’re not supposed to throw rocks at triceratops’ heads, but I did anyway. Can you blame me? They basically have shields on their foreheads, they can take it. It’s not like I have an extra-hard head that I can defend myself with. Instead, I have to be pushed around by Gork everyday on the way home from Hunting and Gathering school.

            Oh, I’ve talked to my teacher about it. Ms. Splert knows about Gork, but she doesn’t do anything. Why? She loves him. He’s the biggest and strongest in class (probably because he’s been held back a few grades, but that’s another story), so why wouldn’t our teacher love him more than the rest of us?

            Erg knows what I’m talking about. He’s smaller than I am, and a little dopier, but I wouldn’t tell him that—he’s my best friend. Last week, when Erg and I were walking back to our community cave, Gork came out of nowhere and threw a branch at my head. I ducked, and I would have told Erg to duck if the branch hadn’t hit him already. If it wasn’t for the thick braids in Erg’s hair, that branch would have stuck him through, and I would have lost my best friend forever.

            I told my dad about it, but he just grunted something I couldn’t understand. Dad is from the old country and he doesn’t talk so good. Mom looked after him once he emigrated here, and she loved him for the way he is. Luckily for me, she translates for him.

            “Your father says you just have to stand up to that bully,” she told me.

            “How do you know he said that?” I asked. “All he does is grunt all the time!”

            “Because I know, dear. Now, listen to your father.”

            “Oog! Rugga, ra!” says my dad, folding his arms.

            “He says off to bed,” my mother says.

            “Yeah, I heard him,” I say, kicking at some loose stones on the way to my straw mat.

            “Oog!” says Dad.

            “And wipe your teeth clean!”

            “I know!” I mutter something under my breath because my dad has bat-hearing in our cave. For a guy that doesn’t speak our language, he’s got a lot to say, that’s for sure.

            The next day, I meet up with Erg before setting off for Hunting and Gathering school.

            “Hey Stone-heads!” Gork shouts across the tall grass.

            “Should we run?” asks Erg.

            “No, he’ll just take it out on us in class anyway,” I say. “Let’s just get it over with.”

            Gork runs over to us. “You guys want to see something cool?”

            Erg and I exchange looks. “Us?”

            “Yes, you. C’mon, stone-heads. This way.”

            Uneasily, we follow Gork into the trees nearby. We push past some thrush and leaves and then we hear it.

            “Sounds like someone moaning,” says Erg.

            “Quiet or you’ll chase it away!” shushes Gork.

            On tiptoes, we inch towards a clearing where the moaning is as loud as ever. I get on my stomach and peak through the tall grass. My heart clenches. “We have to go. We have to go RIGHT NOW!”

            “What’s the matter?” asks Erg. He peaks through the leaves. “Yup, let’s go!”

            Gork grabs our hair and keeps us in place. “Would you wusses stop crying! It’s just a baby one. And it looks hurt, so it’s harmless.”

            My legs are shaking, but I pull down the great green leaf in front of me for another look. Sure enough, in the middle of the clearing is a baby T-Rex no bigger than Erg. It’s on its side, clawing at its right ankle that’s bleeding and probably broken.

            “Do you think something bit it?” asks Erg.

            “Don’t know,” says Gork. “All I know is this is my chance.”

            Erg and I look at Gork. “You don’t mean,” I say in a hush.

            Gork looks around and grabs a branch, breaking it off a nearby tree. He plucks small leaves and twigs along the length, forming a makeshift spear. “You guys keep a lookout. If that thing’s momma is around, shout or something.”

            “Why, so it can chase us instead?” asks Erg.

            Gork smiles and proceeds stealthily out into the clearing.

            Erg mutters something under his breath, the kind of stuff that Ms. Splert would make us stay after school and carve into our stone tablets to never say again. “What are we going to do? We can’t let him kill it!”

            I’m shocked at Erg. “Why not?”

            “Why?” Erg spits. “Because it’s a baby that’s hurt, that’s why!”

            “But it’s a T-Rex,” I say. “If we were the ones that were hurt, it would eat us.”

            “That’s different,” says Erg.

            “How?”

            “Because we know better than it does,” says Erg. “And it’s our job to take care of things that don’t know any better.”

            I look down, something heavy and sad coming over me. “You saw me throwing stones at that triceratops, didn’t you?”

            Erg doesn’t say either way, but the way he turns from me says he saw.

            “Ok,” I say at last, “what’s the plan?”

            We peak through the leaves. Gork is walking as silently as the wind, but the baby T-Rex is sniffing the air, knowing someone is near. Another step and Gork will be able to stab the T-Rex through.

            Thinking, I pick up a branch on the ground. “How hard do you think Gork’s head is?”

            Erg smiles. “Oh, only of the hardest quality.”

            Gork lifts his sharpened branch, ready to strike. The baby T-Rex looks up in time and cries out.

            Then.

            Thump.

            Gork falls to the ground in a heap.

            Erg and I emerge from behind the thrush. “Nice throw,” I say to Erg.

            “Gork taught me well,” says Erg, all tongue-and-cheek.

            The baby T-Rex looks at us as we grab onto Gork’s arms and legs and begin dragging him along the tall grass. It tilts its head curiously, watching us as we go.

            “Sorry,” we say.

            Then, with Gork at a safe distance, we quickly pick a pile of berries and place it near the baby T-Rex.

            “T-Rexes don’t eat berries,” I say.

            “Who cares,” says Erg. “It’s nice.”

            We bow politely to the baby T-Rex, thinking this is a good way to say goodbye, and drag Gork away with us.

            The next day, Ms. Splert gives us detention for abandoning the class. She even accused us of knocking out Gork, but my mother very much doubted it. My dad didn’t have any complaints when they met with my teacher to discuss it. I still served detention with Erg, though. We carved into our tablets until nightfall when we had to make our way back to the cave.

            “I still feel bad about the triceratops,” I say to Erg on the way home.

            “I get it, even if I don’t like it,” says Erg. “Sometimes, you just gotta throw stones at stuff.”

            “Stop right there, stone-heads,” says Gork.

            He emerges from behind a tree, this time with three of his friends, each bulky and armed with branches, the pummeling kind.

            “Just because you got detention doesn’t mean this is over,” says Gork. “How about we go and find that baby T-Rex again, but this time, I think we should feed you two stone-heads to it instead.”

            Gork laughs and so do his friends.

            “This time we’re definitely dead,” I say to Erg.

            Gork and his friends surround us, getting ready to beat us with branches. I’m not sure which part of me to protect first, my head, my shins, my ribs. I can feel the first swing before it evens hits, the one that crunches some vital body part that will never work properly again. Erg and I back into one another, prepared to die.

            “Wait,” says Gork suddenly. He strains his ears to the surrounding trees.

            I hear it, too. Something is racing towards us from the forest.

            “Run!” says Gork, prompting his three thug friends into a frenzy.

            From out of the trees emerges the baby T-Rex, flashing its teeth murderously. It stops, watching Gork and his friends run away. Then, it turns to us.

            Erg and I stand frozen.

           The baby T-Rex approaches, sniffing us over. It looks me in the eye, prods its nose into my chest, bows its head to the ground and opens its mouth. A few freshly picked berries fall out into a slimy pile. Then, the baby T-Rex looks up and flashes its sharp teeth.

            “I think he’s smiling,” I whisper.

            “What should we do?” asks Erg.

            “Smile back, I think.”

            And that’s what we did. The baby T-Rex tilted its head, cooed something, and ran back into the forest, never to be seen by us again. We stand still because it’s the kind of thing you don’t say much about afterward, only that it happened, and we were both very happy about it.

            “Oog!” shouts my dad from the lip of our cave in the distance.

            “What did he say?” asks Erg.

            “Time to get home,” I say.

            “How do you know that’s what he said?”

            I shrug, thinking about the baby T-Rex and my dad. “Some things you just know, I guess.”

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| Short Stories |

The Taken Tree

by Robert Hyma
written by Robert Hyma

           Once upon a time, there was a tree. The tree knew it was a tree, knew it was in a local park, and if a tree fell in a forest somewhere, the tree knew that, too (sorry, bit of tree humor there).

            One day, a mother and daughter walked through the park where the tree stood. “I hate this book!” said the daughter. “But you used to love it, what’s this all about it?” asked the mother. “You never understand me,” said the daughter, who flung the book like a Frisbee across the grass and ran to a nearby swing set, her mother chasing swiftly after. The book crashed into the tree’s bark and fell at its roots with a thud. The tree looked over the book and didn’t recognize the title. The tree liked reading, which wasn’t desirable amongst trees since most trees are well aware of where paper comes from, making reading a taboo practice amongst their kind.

            But, since no one was looking, the tree reached down with a long, oaken branch and turned the book upright to read the title. “The Giving Tree,” read the tree. With a shrug, the tree leafed through the book (some more tree humor for you; trees are big on puns, apparently), and found the book rather charming. The tree caught the attention of his closest friend, a thorn bush, and said, “Have you read this? I found it rather touching.”

            “Don’t much care for touching things,” said the thorn bush. “Most people complain when I do.”

            “Well, what do you think of the story?” asked the tree.

            “Kind of gruesome if you ask me,” said the thorn bush. “A kid keeps coming around, sawing off different limbs until the tree is a lonely stump? What kind of person would do such a thing?”

            “Humans,” said the tree, an undeniable fact. “But I thought the message was sweet.”

            “Still gruesome. I wouldn’t want my arms and legs plucked off of me”

            “Hey, you’re right,” said the tree. “Humans don’t know how good they got it. How would they like it if someone came around and plucked a finger clean off, or ripped out some hair just because they were bored as they passed by?”

            The thorn bush chuckled. “I’d read that story.”

           The tree suddenly had an idea, a revolutionary one. “What we should do is write our own version of the story. We’ll call it The Taking Tree, and it’s all about trees taking things away from humans.”

            “Hate to interrupt,” said a quiet voice from upon the tree’s bulkiest branch, “but there’s already a book called The Taking Tree.”

            The tree felt a little wiggle and knew it was a worm that was talking. “How would you know?”

            “I’m a book worm,” said the worm. “I’ve read such a book.”

            The tree and the thorn bush rolled their eyes (well, they would have if they had any) and said, “Of course you are.”

            “Someone wrote my idea?” asked the tree. “Did the tree kill people like the little boy in The Giving Tree?”

            “Nope,” said the worm. “It’s about some jerk kid that keeps doing cruddy things to the tree. It’s basically the same thing as The Giving Tree, except the kid is criminal.”

            The tree grew angry, which gave off an odor smelling like freshly mowed grass—the pheromone of plant torture. “Someone takes the title of my perfectly good story idea and they can’t even do it right? Where’s the murder? Where’s the dismemberment? I think the story should be about a tree in a sinister forest that takes the limbs and body parts of humans that stroll by, except the tree doesn’t know what to do with them, and ends up putting them in a pile somewhere. Now, that’s a better story!”

            The tree cackled for some time, which also smelled of freshly mowed grass, but a touch more bitter. Then, after the smell was whisked away in the passing wind, the tree felt rather stupid. “Sorry,” it said.

            “Get it all out of your system?” asked the thorn bush.

            “Yeah,” said the tree, realizing it was being irrational. “It’s just that the good stuff is wasted on humans, you know?”

            “We know,” said the worm and the thorn bush.

            “Should I write the story anyway?” asked the tree.

            The worm shrugged. “Might get into trouble. Better give it a different title.”

            “I don’t read, call it whatever you want,” said the thorn bush.

            “Maybe I will,” said the tree. “Maybe I will…”

            A month later, while in the planning stages of plotting the story, a trio of park workers came with chainsaws and buzzed down the tree. It was taken away to a nearby paper mill. It never had the chance to write the better version of The Taking Tree, nor a few other novels that it thought of. Once the tree was properly transformed into printer paper, it was shipped to the little girl’s house that had thrown The Giving Tree away in the park in the first place. On the carpet, in the living room, the girl took out crayons and drew the most uninspiring and archaic drawing of a little boy looking up at a tree, ripping off the famous Silverstein illustration completely.

            The tree sighed, feeling yucky from scribbles of green and yellow crayon all over its pearlescent-coated paper face, and said, “Yup, all the good stuff is wasted on humans.”

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| Short Stories |

Blinking Twice

by Robert Hyma
written by Robert Hyma

           “Notice the contoured curves.” He’s a genius, this salesman. “Gun-metal stainless steel certified. As solid as the company that built it.”

            “Sold,” says my husband, not letting the man finish his pitch. My insides cringe. We were only going inside to browse. Rather, I told him we were only heading inside to browse. I should have known better. In my husband’s particular vernacular, the word browse is loosely translated as certain purchase.

           Case in point: Remember the $50 insolated tumbler that came out last June? You know the one; it could keep coffee hot for 10 hours, maybe more. Even the scientists didn’t know.

            Can you believe that? That’s what the label said in large quotations. “How long can coffee stay hot? EVEN OUR SCIENTISTS DON’T KNOW!”

            When my husband showed me that, I said that the company should either fire the scientists or think up better job titles like, “Intern Marketer”. Of course, it didn’t make much difference to him whether a bunch of crackpot scientists or unpaid interns printed a label on a state-of-the-art tumbler. He wanted it, so he bought it anyway.

            “Would you like to buy our 1, 2, or 3-year insurance plan on your new laptop, Ray?” asks the genius. “Keep in mind that 3 years is nearly 4 dollars off the monthly cost it would be otherwise.”

            The genius called my husband “Ray”. Oh, how quaint, I think. They’re already on a first-name basis, like two college friends catching up who hadn’t quite been close enough to exchange phone numbers. I roll my eyes because it’s my turn play devil’s advocate—you know, for the sake of our savings.

           “Didn’t you say this thing was as solid as the company that built it?” I ask, gesturing to the laptop heralded in my husband’s hands. He’s carrying his new purchase like a royal tiara meant for the next English Queen.

           “Yes,” says the genius.

           “Then why do we need insurance?”

            “Accidents will happen,” says the genius, which doesn’t sound like a very genius thing to say.

            “We’ll take 2 years,” my husband says. He caught sight of the eye-roll, the almighty warning that he’s doing something I don’t approve of. “We’ll play it safe.”

            Playing it safe, in my husband’s particular vernacular, is loosely translated as pay for it anyway.

            Then, that was that. Another $1400 spent on another tinker toy, another thingamajig. A state-of-the-art, modernistic piece of technology with the ingenuity to triple productivity. Would this treasured artifact be shared with his wife and 3-year-old daughter? No. The glistening slab of gun-metal stainless steel will sit on his lap while the rest of us gather on hands and knees to pray to the new false idol.

            And forget about the new kitchen floor we desperately needed. Never mind a down payment towards a bigger vehicle. Forget about using our extra savings to find a slightly-better-than average babysitter that gives a care about strict bedtimes and sugarless meals. We could use someone better than Angie, the only neighborhood teen with a pulse and a – somehow – vacant relationship status. Believe me, it’s a blessing to come home and NOT find Angie and some guy with mouths warped together in cosmological mystery, like two colliding black holes that elude the description of modern physics. Thank God for that, but not much else. You want to know why?

           Because Angie is the worst.

           Angie, the inept acne-prone mess that shovels sugary treats into our sweet little girl’s face. “How was your night Mr. and Mrs. Bidkins? Have a good time shopping? Oh, not to worry! I sent your daughter to bed a few hours ago. Hmm? What’s the noise? Oh, it’s just the springs imploding on your couch. Yes, I did send her to bed, but then she got up, full of energy, and just wants to jump up and down on your already outdated couch. What did she eat? Well, I may have slipped her an extra push-pop. She was being sooooo good! Could I have a tip please? It’s hard for a teenager/future slut-barn like myself without an extra $5 dollars. Don’t you think I deserve it? For just DOING MY JOB?”

            “Honey?” my husband says.

            Reality has returned. It isn’t pretty.

           As far as I can tell, I’ve been standing beside our outdated minivan for some time, clutching a shopping cart that I had, apparently, asked for from a passing shopping couple. I’m in the process of coming up with an excuse for why I asked for it in the first place, but I’m too angry to come up with one. Instead, I see Ray. He’s gawking at me.

            No, that’s not fair. He’s concerned.

           He’s looking at me like that same boy I knew in college, the one who was too shy to ever come over and say something, so my friend at the time – who has since become a matrimonial slut-bag – drags me across a frat house and introduces me. It’s 3 months before he kisses me, which was infuriating. Didn’t he get that I wouldn’t have stuck around if I hadn’t thought about us kissing? What took him so long? Why was he so stupid!

            That’s why I’m standing here, I decide. I’m wondering why I’m so stupid. Why did I ever marry this moron who buys the first shiny object that comes along? It takes me another four seconds to equate that I’m just some shiny object, too. I’m hot off the shelf, the latest thingamajig, and Ray will find someone else once he’s found…

            “Honey?” he asks near my ear.

           I freeze.

           Oh, how I hate him—he knows how to press my buttons. He whispered because this is private, this is intimate. We’re apart from the world now and it doesn’t matter who might be watching our family Soap Opera take place outside the passenger door of our quaint minivan. Well, I’m not falling for it. He flushed $1400 for no reason today.

           “Is this about the laptop?” he whispers, even softer than before.

           Something in me purrs, like I’m some pathetic alley cat that’s been fed by a benevolent human with access to cat food. And benevolent why? He has opposable thumbs and offers hard food that cracks beneath my fangs, which isn’t altogether healthy. Or, so I’ve gathered from the twang of pain after every bite. I’m just a cat and don’t know much about cat dental hygiene. But this cat is well off on her own and can decide for herself when food is benevolent. Oh, I’ll hiss. I’ll hiss so my “benevolent human savior” knows that I don’t appreciate such hard food on my sensitive fangs!

           I shake out of it. I’m so angry that I’m actively pursuing metaphors about cats.

           “Honey,” he says a bit more gruffly. He’s serious now.

           I look at him.

           Yes, Dearie, it’s about the laptop. The putrid piece of hardware that is sure to ruin plans for our next family vacation and force us to keep our incredibly unqualified babysitter on staff for the coming months. Yes, the freaking laptop! How can I put it best, Dear? Here’s a few suggestions:

  1. You’re an idiot who doesn’t care about the future of this family!
  2. Remember your friend Martin Shoresman? Right, from college. I thought he was a bigger idiot than you ever were, mind if I give him a call?
  3. You are so stupid. How stupid? “EVEN OUR SCIENTISTS DON’T KNOW”!

           I refrain from any of those suggestions. Something is tugging at my heart, and it is more piercing than any of them.

            “Min?” he asks again, sensing something is more wrong than usual.

            He’s right.

            So, I ask him: “Do you love me, Ray?”

            “What?” he scoffs, transitioning into an incredulous laugh. But this isn’t funny, and he knows it. “Of course, I do. What kind of question is that?”

            “Yes, I know that you love me,” I say, stumbling over the off-limits thing I implied. I didn’t mean that and hopefully Ray knows, too. “What I want to know is why?”

            “Why what?” he asks.

            I look up at him. “Why do you love me, Ray?”

            He’s concerned. “I married you, Min. We have a beautiful daughter. We have a home.”

            I keep silent. It’s not what I wanted to hear, and I can feel my eyes welling with the beginnings of tears. Only, I don’t know why. This is all silly, I think. This conversation is silly. Cats are silly. The laptop is silly…

            He bends down and puts the laptop bag on the muddy, salt-sprinkled parking lot. He hugs me, which helps. Then he reaches out and holds my hands in his and says this:

            “Do you remember the night we first kissed?”

            I blink—which he knows, in my particular vernacular, means yes.

            “I was going to kiss you first,” he says, “but then you attacked me. I might have been seconds away from kissing you, but you puckered up your face – much like you are now – and accused me of not wanting to. Ever. I never told you, but I remember thinking, ‘If I didn’t want to kiss you, I wouldn’t have stuck around all this time.’”

            I start crying now. Don’t judge.

            “Do you remember what happened after that?” he asks.

            “We kissed,” I say after a large sniffle.

            “We kissed a lot,” he corrects in his own way. “From then on, I think we’ve kissed more than any couple in the history of planet earth. You might ask, ‘How much have we kissed?’”

            That’s my cue. “EVEN OUR SCIENTISTS DON’T KNOW,” I say.

            He smiles and kisses me. We eventually stare down at the ground, at the laptop bag. “You don’t like the laptop?”

            I blink. “No.”

            “Ok,” he says and stands back. He scrapes the toe of his boot across the pavement, flinging bits of mud and salt against the bag, staining the opalescent exterior. “I don’t like it, either. We’ll return it.”

            “No,” I say, surprising myself. I don’t feel differently about the laptop, but I keep on talking, “But you love it.”

            “No,” he says. “I just wanted it. You are what I love. And our daughter. And our home. And I didn’t kiss you for three months because I made sure to know our future was what I really wanted.”

            I wipe my nose on my sleeve, hiding a smile. “You really want to return it?”

            “No,” he says, and means it. “But I really hate Angie. Maybe we could pay her off with it?”

            “Angie is the worst,” I say.

            He looks down at the laptop, like he’s about to leave it there in the parking lot.

            I clear my throat. “Well, then,” and bend down, brushing off the mud and salt from the bag. I present it to my husband with a dramatic bow. “Your tiara, Sire.”

            “My what?” he asks.

            “Nothing,” I say.

           It made sense to me. You know, because of how he held it before in the store. I forget that he’s not in my head. Only, he is, which is probably why we kept the laptop.

           We get in the car and drive home, dreading what sugary food Angie fed our daughter while we were away. I look over at Ray and I know he’s thinking the same thing.

           So, I reach across the shifter and hold his hand. I blink and he keeps driving.

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