Photos: Fan Ling
Short Story: Brian Foley
Music: Stars by The Xx
Stars
The phone caught him in its rings. He conceded, congratulated the voice on the other end for catching him and hung up. He went outside. They were having a party on their neighbors’ front lawn. As he approached to rejoin the party he noticed a change in mood, a stillness. He got closer. Everything erupted into applause. He bowed, then realized the applause was not for him. Did you see that? said his wife, her arms shaking. He told her he had no idea what she was talking about. It was the most magnificent, most beautiful…. She was at a loss. Over her shoulder he could see his brother was crying into his wife’s sweater, who was also crying but laughing at the same time. He demanded to know what had happened. His neighbor said, It just appeared. It was like a big ladle of cream light…. but he had to stop to catch his breath. By now his wife was drooling into her wine glass, overcome. She was far away, in some other place, possibly Florida. He had never seen such a look of pleasure on her face and her euphoria frightened him. He could hear the phone ringing again. He knew he would never make it in time. It was yet another thing he would have to miss.
They Marched Into Fields
Photos: William Fruet
Short Story: Jamie Iredell
Music: Sleeper by Laura Gibson
Sleeper
The fields were polka-dotted with strawberries. The youngest–a towhead–said his finger had found the furthest reaches of his nose, which tickled, and that the sky had turned pink. The middle one–Michelle, a girl, brace-toothed and bespectacled said, “Shut up, Bobby. You’re such an idiot.” The strawberry arched from her fingers in a parabola of streaked red. It splattered Bobby’s shirt so that it resembled a television gunshot wound. The freckled chubby oldest filled the inside of his headlock with Michelle’s curled locks. Another berry smashed upon those curls resembled the brains that ticked away under Michelle’s scalp, the mind itself overcome with hatred. She was, after all, the middle child, a girl, the one they called “Four-eyes,” and “Lispy,” for her retainers.
“You fat ass,” Michelle hollered from within Jacob’s elbow. It sounded like she was deep inside a cave, locked away, which, of course, she was. There were things these brothers would never know: the twisted ruined barn beyond the southern hills, the old man and his son, the hundreds of colored bottles, and that to those men she was beautiful and wanted.
When Jacob released her, the hills sparkled not with strawberries and brothers, but with dew, alight with sunset, dappled like a tuxedo’s white-rosed lapel, the scent of mango carried in from the sea.