by Michelle Darnell

Tommy slipped on the cracks in the marble below him and clutched towards the wall to break his fall. He grimaced quietly at the sudden pain in his wrist, but also at the solemn and filthy destruction around him.

“No care. No care for these old things,“ he mumbled as he looked up at the embellished ceiling, now covered with years of dirt. No one was around to hear his complaint, but it didn’t seem to him to have mattered either way. People didn’t listen to grumpy old men, and though he appeared like any handsome young man, maybe no more than twenty-four or twenty-five, he grumbled as if he were a hundred, which he was, depending on how you counted.

He sighed with sad relief as he made his way further through the chalky tunnel. Wide enough to hold
a hundred men, the grand underground reception now stood only as a relic of the city. The light from
the stairs behind him did not sparkle off the metal work above him. The mirrors lining the arched walls
dipped and swayed as if ready to drop from their long held positions with the sound of his next exhale.

The decay around him suited his mood. This world surrounding him now was a mess, and he no longer
wanted to be a part of it. All he wanted now was to go home.

Thomas MacDonald had left the comfort of Ottumwa to seek his destiny only three months ago as the
prodigal son of the small Iowa farming town, where the mention of his name alone would be met with a
glow of pride from every townsperson. Smart and handsome, Tommy had worked hard through school
and had earned respect from classmates and town leaders alike.

At fourteen William Hansen had seen the young man’s promise and hired him as a mere stock clerk for
a dollar a day, but Tommy soon became a well-loved addition to the shoppers at Hansen’s Mercantile.
He covered the deliveries, loaded the silage, or even helped the young girls select the finest ribbons for
their spring dresses.

It was not too hard to imagine that this was how the charming Tommy had earned the attentions of Lily
Sanderson. Lily was the daughter of Judge Sanderson, and the prettiest girl at Ottumwa High School, and
together, Tommy and Lily were the perfect couple. The ring advertised in the Iowa Ledger cost more
than Tommy made from the mercantile in six months, but it was all that Lily wanted, and all that Tommy
wanted was to make Lily happy, so Tommy left for New York. The laborers in the fields who stopped in
for cold lemonades at the end of the day had been talking about New York. They had said that there was
work for the able-bodied, sometimes paying up to three dollars a day. If he worked hard he could have
the ring for Lily in half the time, and they could begin living.

Getting to New York cost more and took longer than Tommy planned, and he had spent most of his
savings within a month. He also had still not found work at the myriad of construction sites. No one was
looking for a smart-alec farm boy with no experience. Soon enough, he couldn’t even afford the rent on
his bed and was sleeping on the streets with the other unemployed men. That was when he found the
doorway.

Run off a couch in the Grace Hotel lobby by a notoriously vicious hotel detective, Tommy scrambled

down the sidewalk, and stumbled down the large stone steps of the underground corridor nearby. Few
commuters would be passing through at this late hour, but the polished gas lamps still flickered brightly
off the mirrored tiles overhead. He ducked into an alcove nearby to avoid the diligent patrolman, and
as the footsteps drew nearer on the polished marble underfoot, Tommy pressed himself further and
further back into to the recess. Painfully, a knob poked out at his ribs from the dark corner, and without
thinking, he turned the handle, and slipped away from the noise of the city and into the dark.

When Tommy stumbled out into the sunlight of the street again, everything was different. The noise of
the city was louder, the sky, and even the park around him, looked greyer. He followed the sidewalk to
the street and was confronted by more people than he had ever seen, moving faster than ever before.

It was daylight, not the dusk he had left behind, but Tommy could barely tell. The fumes around him
made him cough, and the scantily clad people moving past him seemed to not even notice his distress.
No one offered assistance, or even slowed from their frenetic pace. He stumbled to the corner, but
only made it across the street by the force of the mass of humans around him. Once across, an almost
familiar sight greeted him, and he approached the corner newsstand as if it were a dream oasis in the
middle of the desert.

The newspapers hanging from the wood shack were full of colorful print, and Tommy stared at the
print as if it were foreign. The date on the byline seemed out of focus. It did not read 1928 as it should,
but 2010. The new century stuck Tommy with fear, and suddenly all his thoughts for success and pride
vanished. All he thought of was Lily, and home, and his normal life in Ottumwa.

He pushed himself back through the crowd, and away from the newsstand, and away from the headlines
that only confused his brain. Tommy tripped over cracks in the pavement, and slipped on garbage on
the street. At last he was back in the park. His head swam, and all he felt was raw, burning confusion.
He seemed to be in the same place, but it was covered in grime so thick that it was unrecognizable.
Faces around him were cold and unfeeling, and somehow managed to never look him or each other in
the eye despite the constant compression of the crowds. Only the thoughts in his head of Lily, and the
mercantile, and the farmland near his home were clear, so he did the only thing he could think, and
made for the grass lawn of the park he had come from.

The steps downward felt deeper and the light below was dimmer than he remembered, by he know the
spot that he had come from as if he were tied to it. The alcove was four feet wide and just as deep. He
could feel the now splintered wood in and scratched for the door handle like as if he were scratching at
a coffin lid holding him in the musty earth.

After one turn, then two, Tommy could feel the knob refusing to give up its secrets, but this old man
was strong of mind and body. He was not going to let the little piece of carved metal stand between him
and all that he knew and loved. Finally, corroded pieces of brass gave way and turned. He could feel the
rhythm of the bolts shifting into place within the heavy mahogany door. Tommy pulled with more force
in himself than he ever knew he had, and the blocked fell lose from its repose with a sigh, releasing fine
silt into the air as if with a huge sigh of reluctance.

Even without the help of the now broken lamps hanging from the ceiling, Tommy knew that the
darkness had won. As he ran his hands from ceiling to foundation, the cold bricks in front of him
sat firmly in place in front of him. The door had been filled in years ago. The passage was closed.

Tommy beat against the wall, but the workmanship of another time was prepared to hold up under this
or any force. He sank to the ground with his back turned against his former hope. “Where did it all go?”
Tommy asked the gloom around him.

“I’ll never get back,” he said to himself. Tommy thought of his life, or at least what he thought his life
was supposed to have been, and his heart broke for the thought of Lily, and his friends and family.

“I have a future. I have a life. All I want is to go home. All I want is to have all that I was supposed to.”

Tommy sat alone in the dirt and tried to imagine something new. He couldn’t understand what had
happened, but there had to be a way to fix it. No matter what else he thought of for the rest of his
modern life, Tommy would always be thinking of how he could get back to the promise of the past.

by Aron White

I sweep this floor every day. I know this place is rundown nowadays. You don’t need to waste your breath in telling me that the train no longer runs through here. You think all I’m sweeping up is leaves and that it is a pointless task because this place is no longer visited, no longer used. I’m not sweeping up just the leaves and I know that this place was once cleaned with acids and bleaches, you see. No, there’s more. Death.

***

It was the summer of 1941. I had just finished my training and was now a fighting member of the German army. I was one of Hitler’s men. It was a great honor. The majority of my unit were wet behind the ears, just like me, but it was time to go. We were to invade the Soviet Union.

Once the invasion began, my unit was assigned to assist the Einsatzgruppen. The Einsatzgruppen were killing squads made up of SS and German police units. Our unit’s duty was to keep the Einsatzgruppen stocked with supplies and transportation as the invasion went further into the Soviet Union. Sometimes we would help in the capture and transporting of the Soviet Jews.

I really didn’t have a problem with Jewish people like Hitler did. In fact, my neighbors were Jewish. My little brother played with the younger neighbor kids. I, on the other hand, spent time with the oldest sister of the neighboring family. Her name was Angelika and she was every bit as angelic as her namesake. Had my heart, she did. I was fifteen at the time, she was thirteen. We didn’t care about age difference, but we kept our love a secret because her father would have never stood for it. I wasn’t Jewish. He was always making comments to me, though, about how he wished I could have been a nice Jewish boy.

We were each others first kiss. I still remember the twinkle in her eye and the smile that covered her face just as soon as we pulled away. I thought she was going to burst! I wrapped my arms around her and tried to keep her from bursting, and it felt like she was really about to. Her body was in terrible convulsions which, after a second, were accompanied by laughter. She was only giggling. I never saw her so happy. I tried to kiss her again, but she broke out into hysterical laughter. Angelika had one of those contagious smiles so, before I knew it, I was laughing too.

Every afternoon, while in the summertime, Angelika and I would go off and have a picnic lunch. We would lie on the blanket after eating and snuggle as we discussed the future. Simple, puppy love conversations, you know. Topics ranged from how we were going to convince her father that I was really okay for his oldest daughter, to where we were going to live and how many children we were going to have. We hadn’t yet a solution that would work on her father, but we already had names picked out for our first two future children. Hannelore, for a girl and Godafrid, for a boy. Yes, I know that’s not very realistic and that no couple always gets what they want. We didn’t think, what if we had two boys? We never considered, what if all we ever had were girls? They were our dreams, so everything worked out perfectly. We were happy. We were dreaming.

Our dreams soon turned into nightmares. Synagogues were being smashed and burned. Angelika’s father’s business, along with other Jewish businesses, cemeteries, and hospitals were being looted. Jewish people were also being beaten and killed. Angelika’s family got word that their aunt and uncle had been killed, so they ran. They fled the country and I never got to say goodbye to her. I never got to kiss my giggling angel one last time. I had to say goodbye to our dream.

After Angelika’s family ran away, my life took a nose dive. Before, I had a creative hand. I was going to become an artist when I had finished with my schooling. Father didn’t think I could make a whole lot to support a family with my paintings, but mother was always behind me in everything I wanted to do. I didn’t have the strength, drive, or hands to become a working man like my father. That’s something that my father held against me, though he never would have admitted it. When I lost my love without saying goodbye, I had also lost my creativity. I lost my love of art and the desire to create. I finished school, just barely getting by and then I did all that was left for me to do. I joined the army. I think that, by joining the army, it restored some of my father’s pride in me. He always looked at me differently after that. In a good way, of course.

No, I didn’t have a problem with Jews. That’s not something I would admit aloud to my company, however. When I played part in helping the Einsatzgruppen round up Jews, I was only doing my job; only doing my duty. You can’t look at something like that as anything other than doing your duty or you will lose part of your sanity. Especially the day that I was called to do more than just transport.

I was on supply duty that day. Normally I would go and round up Jewish men, woman, and children onto the train so they could be taken to wherever they were taken to be either killed or put into labor camps. I always avoided eye contact when I did that. These were still humans, after all. It’s wasn’t like we were just kicking around some mangy looking dogs. Finding out that I was on supply duty that day came as a huge relief. When the train headed out into fresh Soviet territory, I boarded a truck to get more food and cigarettes for the Einsatzgruppen. We were gone half the day. When we returned to our camp near the train station, I noticed that the train had not yet made it back. That was odd because the train always beat the supply trucks. I soon found out the reason for the delay.

The Einsatzgruppen were separating the families that day. They took the children first. All of them. Probably a good group of one-hundred and fifty children in ages ranging from two to eighteen. If they couldn’t yet walk on their own, they were left with their mothers. This angered the adults and a riot broke out. Three large men jumped one of the soldiers there to help, from my company. They stomped him and crushed his windpipe. They stomped and kicked him in the head until his neck broke. Those three large men were dealt with immediately and the doors of the train were locked. They were moving the children back to camp. When the train arrived, I was told I had to replace the fallen soldier in the unloading of the train.

Armed soldiers came out of the front car and passed under the arched entryway into the foyer and stood along the back wall and up the steps. The entire foyer of the train station was surrounded. The doors of the train then opened and more armed men forced the children out into the foyer. The men remained in the open doorways. I joined the group of soldiers that were on the steps. The officer in charge of the group was angry with the loss of one of our own, as was the entire company. He shouted to us that none will be spared. Not even the older children, which were usually sent off into labor camps. They were all to die that day. I was scared and shaking. I had not even seen combat yet and here I was getting ready to be responsible for a lot of deaths. A lot of innocent child deaths. One of my superior officers was behind me so I dare not disobey the order. That’s all I was doing that day. Obeying orders.

“Erschießen!“

The order was given. Pulling a trigger was as easy as pulling a drawer open, but not that day. It took all the strength I had in my body to pull that trigger. I couldn’t look away, either. I had to keep my eyes on the task so none of the other soldiers accidentally took a stray bullet. One by one, I watched them fall. They clung to each other, sibling or not, as their lives were snuffed out. The screams and cries, I could surprisingly hear above the gunfire. As I scanned the crowd with my gun, I also scanned with my eyes. There in the middle, revealed by those that had fallen just seconds before, was Angelika. Our eyes met again for the first time in three years. Her scared, panicked look was covered with a mask of unspeakable terror. It was an expression that has been forever burned into my retinas.

***

That was sixty years ago. After the war, I hid out and let my appearance go to ruin. Many times, I wish I would have been caught and tried for war crimes but I think living every day with the things that I have seen and done, and my last memory of my precious Angelika is a prison all on its own. Not even death is a suitable punishment. I never left the Soviet Union. I never loved again. I’ve lived my life, lonely, coming to this old, abandoned, rundown train station every day to try to clean my mistakes and sins of the past. To brush away the visions that haunt me, is my only desire. Sometimes an echo catches down here and it’s the same screams and cries of that day long ago.

I’ve been coming here every day with my broom, for the last fifty-five years, to sweep. Do you want to know something? I am going to end up sweeping away the tile and concrete before I’ll ever sweep away the memories.

by Kay L. Roscoe

It’s hard to believe that this is the same building where my grandmother and grandfather met on Sunday afternoons to dance so long ago. All my life I’ve seen pictures of them and their friends dressed in gorgeous clothes in this exotic setting. I would daydream of being here wearing silk dresses, feathers in my hair, and long ropes of pearls. But the building with its mysterious and foreign architecture attracted me the most.
It was by chance that I arrived in the city where my grandparents met. I was traveling several days by train to visit a friend when I realized, almost at the end of the journey, that the train was passing a lovely building that seemed so familiar. By the time the train reached the station, I realized what the building was. When the train pulled into the station, impetuously I grabbed my bag and raced into the terminal. It was difficult to contain my excitement knowing that soon I would see the very ballroom that has always been a part of my life.

Rather than catch a taxi, I decided to walk as it seemed a short distance and the neighborhood wasn’t bad. Also, I wanted to soak in the mood of my new surroundings. The buildings appeared to have been built around one hundred years ago and were now apartments and small businesses. They weren’t shabby but were in need of repair. There were few people on the street. Those that I saw were of the same ethnic group.

Their stares and whispers didn’t make me uneasy as they were probably curious as to why a stranger was in their neighborhood with a suitcase.

After walking several blocks the weather began to change. The cool, sunny day was quickly becoming overcast and windy with dark clouds scurrying across the sky. I buttoned my coat and wished that I had put my gloves in my purse. My walk had taken longer than I had anticipated. I stopped at the cross street and looked each way trying to decide what to do, which way to turn, or whether to continue on this street. Walking and pulling a suitcase weren’t helping me to stay warm. I needed to get out of the weather and get a hot drink.

As I stood on the corner, I saw someone walking a dog. They were coming in my direction. At last I could ask how much further to my destination. I approached them and the dog wagged its tail and began barking in a friendly tone. The man, who was elderly, hesitantly acknowledged me. I won his trust and he offered to take me there, as he was going in that direction. As we walked we chatted about the surrounding area. He had lived here all his life and had witnessed so many changes.

The street became busier. There were more little shops and cafes as we continued our walk. Women, bundled up for the cold weather, were out shopping and greeting one another. The old men were gathered in the little cafes drinking demitasse. It was as though I had walked into a fascinating bazaar with music, bright colors, laughing, foreign dialects, and shops with treasures from distant shores. I felt an excitement just being on that block, and then I spotted a tarnished domed structure above the other roof tops.

I just stood and gazed at the building on my left. It was the centerpiece of all this energy that surrounded me; a serene beauty in the midst of so much hubbub. Beneath the grime on the copper domes, the huge curved windows and the magnificently carved wooden doors stood a fabulous jewel of architecture. A chain link fence surrounded the grounds of the building and one of the upper floor windows was boarded. But the structure was superb. Oh, to be able to enter and explore this paradise. My guide gleamed with pride as he saw my look of awe.

“This was a masterpiece of design and a ballroom built for the pleasure of dancing and flirting when people believed in romance. During the day the older people played cards and dominoes. Oh, they too danced at night and Sunday afternoons. People weren’t so separated by age then. Back then it was called a casino. No gambling; at least not in public view. What marvelous times we had.
“Now it would be too expensive to repair and nobody wants to take a chance on this neighborhood. People here can’t afford such luxuries. But they would be a perfect fit for this building. They love life.
“Do you want to take a closer look? I have the keys. I’m the caretaker.”

Words I’d been waiting to hear. We entered the gate and walked through the modest but well groomed grounds. The brick structure is a work of art built during an era of grandeur and opulence. We pushed open massive outer oak doors and went into the vestibule – a cool, darkened area with a high reflective ceiling, marble colonnaded arches, and floors of terrazzo. A faint musty odor mingled with the scent of wooden walls. A few of the many light fixtures had little bulbs which, when the caretaker turned on the electricity, cast a warm glow and soft shadows. Such a stunning room, but unpretentious when compared with the ballroom.

This ballroom could have been designed for the mansion of an aristocrat. The few sconces with light bulbs emit a misty sheen; the quiet has been disturbed and dust floats around the pale light. A mellow, golden patina on the long wooden floor dramatizes the pits and scars from years of dancing shoes. Hundreds of spectacular mosaics and hand painted tiles catch the low light and transform the walls into an ethereal presence. I’m almost dancing as I turn in circles and look up and down and all around at this room filled with adornment. Floating across the ornately painted ceiling are sweet gilt edged cherubs, faces smudged from weathering, trailing garlands of fruit, flowers, and ribbons among airy clouds of apricot and lavender. What splendor under layers of tarnish and dust. I open the French doors that lead onto the terrace and there’s a delightful fragrance of some exotic plant that has managed to survive its neglect. This speaks to me of the hope I have for this tarnished beauty.

I feel so privileged to have met this kind caretaker and to have been invited into his world. I don’t know the future of this magnificent building, but I will strive to keep it from being destroyed. It needs to be opened for people who love beauty, who love life, and who are filled with joy. It belongs in this neighborhood and with these people.

by Jeff Sanger

I wasn’t sure if I should meet him outside the entrance to the train station or if I was supposed to go downstairs and find for him there. It was raining when the cab dropped me off and I didn’t have an umbrella so I figured I would just go straight downstairs. My dress shoes made a lonely clop-clack noise on the wet stone steps, made me think of some kind of lost traveler looking for shelter at Dracula’s castle. The steps led down past a row of ornate columns into a wide foyer with enormous polished marble stones, alternating irregularly between white and gray. The vaulted tin ceiling had been completely restored and outfitted with modern track lighting. Apparently he had decided to spare no expense in the renovations. Perhaps he wanted to create some uncertainty for his patrons: where does the artful design of the gallery end and the art for sale begin?

My father supposedly began painting professionally at the age of six when his first grade art teacher asked if she could display his first oil painting on the wall next to the blackboard. He insisted she pay him a dollar and that he retain rights to any future prints. Unlikely? Yes, perhaps, but not in the context of the many other strange and equally unlikely stories I extricated from my begrudging mother over the years. My only knowledge of him comes from her and other secondary sources since my father and I had never met.

The tale of his departure is one of the more anticlimactic ones in my recollection. He didn’t wait until the day of my birth to make a theatrical exit and he didn’t pack his bags after the first dirty diaper either. He didn’t run off with a mistress when I was in grade school and he certainly didn’t lose himself in a vain devotion to his 8-5 job since he never had one. According to my mother once she had made it clear he would not be able to talk her into an abortion, he left. It went something like this:

He’s standing in front of his canvas, poised in a shard of light cast through the only decent window in the whole apartment so he can make full use of whatever natural light filters down through the bushes and the cloudy basement window. A door opens and closes behind him but he doesn’t react, brush still moving steadily up and down.

“Hi love,” he says.

She says nothing but he doesn’t seem to notice her lack of an answer. Up and down he pushes and pulls the brush rhythmically across the texture of the canvas. Now short quick strokes to the right, smoothing something out. He takes a little more red from the palette now.

“You’re almost finished,” she says finally. She knows better than to interrupt him by now. She only does when she has something she considers important that usually isn’t and then she skirts around it for half an hour trying to make small talk. He considers asking her just what the hell the problem is now but reconsiders and says, “How can you tell?” in a tone carefully cultivated to hit an odd note somewhere between biting sarcasm and self-mocking.

She is silent, embarrassed perhaps, uncertain despite the frequency with which they had replayed this scene since Lawrence had first offered to display some of his work. His distraction and thus frustration mounting he places the brush and palette down in as subdued a fashion as he can and, to avoid shouting by accident or otherwise betraying his ire, he dials his voice down almost to a whisper and plasters a stiff but nicely composed smile on his face.

“What is it honey? Something you want to talk to me about?”

“Do you remember what today is?”

“Thursday of course.”

“No,” she says patiently, “Do you remember what was supposed to happen today?”

Then it dawns on him this is the one time she actually has grounds to interrupt him and he is thankful for not yelling. “Oh God. Of course. I’m so sorry.” He actually makes eye contact with her now. “How could I forget?”

She nods neutrally, not just patient anymore, something else he can’t place yet. She kicks her sandals off into the corner instead of putting them in the closet. He hates it when she does this but doesn’t say anything this time given that it has probably been a difficult day for her.

“How did it go? How do you feel?”

“I didn’t,” she says without emotion.

“What do you mean you didn’t?” he says hotly, brandishing the fat paintbrush at her like a knife. A glob of burnt sienna falls to the hardwood floor.

“I couldn’t.”

“We’ve talked about this!” More red paint spatters.

“I know!” She glares at him, betraying her emotion for the first time. “It’s not like I’ve got some kind of moral objection to it. I’m just telling you I couldn’t do it.”

He pauses, composes himself. He directs the brush back toward the canvas and resumes his work before he answers her.

“Well we’ve got another week before it’s too late, right? I’ll go with you, all right? Would that help?

“No, Michael.” It is quite possibly the first time she had ever refused him anything so directly.

“I’m not going to do it,” she goes on. “WE are not going to do it.”

He stops painting and then starts again without ever looking up from the canvas.

“You had it right the first time,” he says simply.

She sees it coming but still can’t help being surprised when she wakes the next morning to find his canvas and paints and half of their rent money gone.

All future interactions with him were conducted solely by mail. No child support checks of course, no birthday cards with the quintessential $20 inside, just his long-awaited signature on a divorce settlement. And then, a week ago, an invitation to the opening of “Gallery 28.” It was printed on thick, embossed paper that looked better suited for wedding invitations. At the bottom someone had written in careless blue script:

“Come the day before if you are able.” For all I knew he had written a similar post-script on 30 other invitations to this private pre-opening party. But still I came. Any son who has a father will tell you: when his light finally shines down on you it might as well be the Lord himself and even if you’ve been waiting 30 years faithfully somehow you’re confident it will be worthwhile. So the clouds parted when I opened the invite and here I was, ready to be blessed or cursed, whatever he decreed.

Most of the paintings had not been hung yet perhaps due to the challenge of finding the appropriate device to hang something from the thick masonry. They lined each side of the wall along the wide corridor that had presumably once led to the train platform. Beyond a gradual bend to the left I could hear drilling, the clatter of wood planks on scaffolding, and indistinct voices shouting directives at one another. I followed the corridor obediently, my hand trailing idly along the stones until I came to the first painting that had been hung. The fastener had already bent under the enormous weight of the elaborate metal frame. The canvas was at least 10 by 12 and covered in thick globs of purple and green shades, too bright for spring but too warm to be surreal. Somewhere in the middle of the myriad right angles and colors I thought I glimpsed the outline of a figure but it was difficult to tell. There was no title placard but even if there was I don’t think it would have helped me decipher it much.

“Do you like it?”

He had crept up behind me without my even knowing, emerged from the darkness and the construction sounds to stand right beside me.

“No,” I said flatly, pretending I didn’t know it was him.

“Why not?”

“I can’t tell how I’m supposed to feel about it.”

“If you were sure about how you felt about it, you’d be tired of it before the end of the week.”

“Hm.”

“People should be able to look at something and feel a little different each time they see it. That’s the difference between art and… pictures,” he said wiggling his fingers dismissively.

“Is it yours?” I asked.

“Yes. Everything in here is mine. Later we’ll add other painters, as pieces are sold of course.”

“Of course.”

He looked different than I pictured him, but then again it wasn’t very realistic to expect him to resemble the amalgamation of Starsky and Hutch, Bo Duke, and Lee Majors I had created for him as a child. He actually looked more like Uncle Jesse than any of my other evening re-run heroes. He had the same grizzly white beard only he had curly salt and pepper hair on top instead of the stained red hat and a crisp Armani suit instead of the overalls. He looked like a daytime soap opera star that had let himself go.

“I’m glad you came,” he said, extending his hand.

I shook it, firm and formal like I was interviewing for a job I wanted but didn’t really need.

“Sure.”

“I wanted you to be here to see it.”

“Why?” I asked more out of genuine curiosity than spite.

“This is what I worked my whole life for,” he said irritably, “and now it’s finally here. Your mother never understood the sacrifices, the devotion a real artist has to have to what he creates.”

I nodded.

“Follow me, I’ll show you what we’re working on.”

We walked further down the hall that eventually let out onto a wide, open train platform. My father had apparently opted to leave the railroad tracks intact though a short wrought iron railing had been erected to prevent anyone from falling off the platform. Workers manned pulleys in an elaborate effort to raise a twenty foot high canvas into position on the main wall facing the corridor. The painting depicted more of the vague, oddly bright colors, this time revolving around a figure of a nude woman in the middle, a kind of island of classicism in a post-modern maelstrom. Directly above a skylight opened up to the cloud-strewn sky, flecked with scattered raindrops on its surface.

“The things that are created in here…Once they’re sold and hung and loved…They become immortal you know. They are the only part of me that lives on forever.”

“Nothing’s forever.”

His eyebrows furrowed into a thick bridge over his eyes. “Art is forever. Art is what makes us human. What we create makes us who we are. That kind of nihilism won’t get you anywhere in the world.”

“Just saying it’s important to keep things in perspective.”

He shook his head and turned away from me. I looked down from my hands to his, sprinkled with paint speckles and the beginnings of liver spots that I would have too someday. Above us the clouds suddenly parted and the gallery filled to bursting with light. The dark voids in the painting above us became nascent beginnings outcropping from the nude instead of turbulent ends pulling it apart. The steel frame shimmered against the thick oil. He breathed in deeply next to me then exhaled in an abrupt exhortation as one of the workmen almost lost his hold on the large canvas. My father was too preoccupied with his efforts to help them aright the now clearly crooked painting to notice me making my way back to the surface where, despite the sun, the rain continued to fall.

by Bob Waymire

The dream was so real I was startled when I awoke. Breathing hard, I
could feel sweat tingling on my upper lip.

In the dream I wandered around, nearly in a panic. The city was
empty. Wherever I turned there were no people…no one…not a soul!
Signals worked at the intersections. Lights burned in the
underground…but it was eerily quiet…and there were no trains. The
large wall murals stared down on vacant subway station platforms.

I found myself whispering the words of a song, “…the marketplace
is empty, no more traffic in the street; all the builder’s tools are
silent, no more time to harvest wheat…” If that was what was
happening, then why am I here? My mind reeled, and I couldn’t
string together any thoughts that made sense. The further I walked,
the more lonely and afraid I felt.

Suddenly a puzzling question surfaced: ‘Why am I all alone? Why am
I the only one here?’

The only answer I could find was, ‘Maybe no one loves me. Maybe no
one really cares about me after all. If they did, I wouldn’t be
here, like this, alone, stranded.’

A terrible emptiness settled over me, like a heavy blanket…an agony
so stifling that I gasped. ‘But my family loves me. And then there
are my friends…’

A scary oppressive thought overwhelmed me. ‘I’ve been a fool, how
could they? Have I ever, really, shown them any unconditional love?
Have I even bothered to tell them how much they mean to me? No…I had
never even so much as told them how I’d appreciated their
faithfulness through all the ups and downs of my life.’

Inhaling, I tried to steady the anxiety that had risen up like a
flood. ‘You fool,’ the voice inside taunted, ‘The greatest power
on earth is love,’ but I had rarely displayed anything but
impatience and arrogance to those who actually had a right to expect
something different.

What was I lacking? What had I not learned along the way?

Awake now I found my thoughts drifting back to my childhood. It’s
funny how that works; memories often take interesting pathways that
lead us into the depths of our souls.

My parents had divorced when I was three, when Mother left Dad, my
older sister and me, with hardly a word. She married someone we had
never met, someone who recognized her piano talent and took her off to
Hollywood.

Mother’s leaving impacted my six-year old sister more than it did
me. We lived in a small town of about four hundred people in Southern
Nevada, with our dad and grandparents while Dad built us a new house
next door.

When Mother left I don’t remember feeling insecure. Perhaps
because there was an abundance of love from our grandparents and aunts
and uncles who lived nearby. Or because I was the kind of kid who
seemed to cope fairly well, better than my sister…

And yet, there lay buried beneath the surface, a reoccurring
question, “Why? Why did she leave us?”

Unfortunately, it’s difficult for small children to express
themselves, especially about those deep feelings that lie below the
surface of consciousness.

My sister was heartbroken over our parents’ split. Our mother was a
world-class pianist, and my sister had been taking lessons from her
and “Gra”…and she was quite good for a six or seven year old.
Occasionally she spoke about our mother, but for me, at three and
four, some of the implications had not permeated the surface of my
mind. Yet I missed her greatly and was always puzzled about why
she’d left.

When I was in the second grade, all the family lived in Gra and
Papa’s house, and I walked to school just two country blocks away;
across a horse pasture, jumping a ditch, and climbing through two
fences. When I was in the first grade my sis walked with me, but when
I was in the second she rode her bike to school.

One day after school as I neared home by myself, something felt
different. Gra wasn’t on the porch waiting for me. Neither Papa nor
my dad nor my uncles were working in the shop or around the place. I
felt panic wash over me, and I ran the fifty yards to the house. I
opened the door and called out…but there was no answer. I even ran
around to the dusty alley where the vehicles were always parked…but
there was neither a person nor a single vehicle anywhere.

At that point I fell face down in the dirt and began to cry.

I sobbed and sobbed as a harassing voice condemned me: I wasn’t
loved…no one cared. I’d been abandoned.

That’s when I heard the woman’s voice. “Oh my lands, Bobby.
What in the world is the matter? Oh, you poor thing.” Then she
gathered me up…and whispered that everything would be okay.

A hard-to-describe feeling of relief flooded me.

It was our neighbor, Mrs. Whitby, and she spoke again. “Gra’s
gone with the ladies to do quilting, but she said you could go over
and play with Reid. My, my…let’s go get you into some overalls.
The men are downtown working on the new store.” She smiled. “Your
grandpa went with them.”

Suddenly my sister rode up on her bicycle and pointed. “What’s
wrong with him?”

That was many decades ago, but the memory has never been erased.

And now, in my dream I once more experienced that traumatic feeling
of abandonment and despair.

The darkness eased as I returned to the present…the bright morning
sunshine brought its own promise.

But the dream, like the old memory, remains a little haunting, so I
remind myself of all that I know to be real. And true.

I have the love of family and friends. And I know my Creator is the
ultimate ‘lover of my soul.’ Another song springs to mind, and I
begin to hum, “I’m a pot, I’m a vessel, made to hold something
special….”

Suddenly I realize that the ‘something special’ is love.

Love is both the subject and object of life…of our lives. When we
think it is missing, we feel alone…and before long depression and
despair fill the void. But love fills the empty spaces. In love we
are secure. Love never abandons.

by Christina Brandon

“I can feel them laughing,” the homeless man confided to the violin player, his eyes studying the worn concrete stairs that led into the pedestrian tunnel, thinking what a pity it was that the violin player wouldn’t know how beautiful, how romantic the tunnel looked since it had been restored to its former grandeur. There was no elevator so her wheelchair kept her above.

“At least they’re happy,” she mumbled, making a show of tuning her violin.

He thought about that for a moment, then grinned. His teeth were brown, the same brown as his eyes, a generic color like cardboard.

“But they scream sometimes,” he shivered. “They’re in pain. They woke me up last night. I had a dream I was in the earthquake again. . . .”

She looked down into the tunnel from her perch above the stairs. Even in the noon sun, she couldn’t see beyond the base of the stairs and the slender columns supporting three arches. She didn’t want to encourage him to stick around so she never told him that she sometimes heard things when she was alone. Scraping, laughter, something heavy getting dropped, a scream. If the day was cloudy and she focused her gaze down there long enough, beyond the arches, to the darkness, she felt as if she were staring into the bowels of something terrible, and she believed his stories.

“I’m going to play now,” she interrupted, brushing her frizzy hair, the color of a tarnished penny, off her shoulder. She hated it when he talked to her while she played. Though she worried how the heat and humidity affected her violin, she preferred to play in the afternoons. Every morning during rush hour, a company of coughs and honks of traffic and the dull rumble of jabbering and snippets of music bursting from headphones and feet running up and down the stairs overtook her playing. Hardly anyone noticed her skill, even those that tossed a few coins into her beat up case. They noticed her wheelchair, not her music.

The homeless man stood, picked up his tin cup, a couple coins pinging against the side, and eased himself downstairs, the violin’s melancholy notes escorting him. He hadn’t slept well the night before. His body had laid corkscrewed together as he tried to ignore the ghosts in the tunnel.

The three boys laughed as they fled into the tunnel. At night, their bodies looked like silhouettes flying through a shadow box.

“That was close. I thought we were busted for sure!” Mike said as he sailed over the last steps and landed on his hands and knees, in a pile of dried leaves.

“Nah. That security guard doesn’t give a shit. I mean, it’s not like we were trying to lift a Wii or anything.” His friend Evan said trotting up behind him. He yanked at the collar of his hoodie to cool himself down from the run and glimpsed himself in the glossy tiled ceiling and started. In the faint orange light, it looked like he was melting.

The third friend, Burt, sauntered down, his hands searching his pockets for cigarettes. He tilted his head toward the abandoned tunnel that ran perpendicular to the main pedestrian tunnel. They settled there with just enough light that they could see, but far enough back that a passerby would assume the tunnel was empty.

“Well, let’s see what we got,” he said, cigarette dangling from his lips.

They emptied their swollen pockets of their booty and tossed them in the center of the circle: a snack-sized bag of Cheetos and cool ranch Doritos, a couple packets of gum in mint, cool breeze and watermelon flavors, two packages of original flavor Skittles, a Snickers, a Payday, four packages of peanut-butter cheese crackers.

“It smells down here,” Mike said, nose in the air. “Like. . . wet. Wet wood or something –”

“What was that?” Evan asked. His head whirred behind him.

“Dude, it was just me,” Burt said, “I’m tryin’ to light a cigarette. Is that all? No tic-tacs?” The other two shook their heads. He sighed and snatched two packs of mint gum and the Snickers.

“Hey, did you get the Playboy?” Mike asked, flicking leaf debris from his palm.

“Sure did.” Reaching under his hoodie, Evan produced the magazine from the waste band of his jeans. He offered it to his friend who gave him a dubious eyebrow raise.

“I don’t want that if it’s been rubbing up against your junk.”

“Fine, don’t look at it.”

“Give it here.” He snatched it and tore of the plastic wrapping.

Tugging on his hoodie strings, Evan asked, “What if—what if someone comes down?”

“So what?” Burt took a drag on his cigarette, “what’s anybody gonna do? Call the cops on a couple kids eating junk food? Besides, no one comes down here at night.” His chuckle was low and phlegmy.

“This place is supposed to be haunted,” Mike muttered without glancing up from the magazine.

“It’s true,” Evan said. “After all those people died in that earthquake, like 50 or 60 years ago. When that tunnel there collapsed,” he pointed at the pitch-black tunnel but avoided looking directly at it. “My grandpa even said he saw ghosts here when he was a kid. A friend of his died in it, I think. That’s why he never walks this way anymore.”

Mike flicked his eyes towards the abandoned tunnel and said, “Yeah, weren’t there some stories of mysterious occurrences or something, when they were restoring that part?” he nodded towards the lit tunnel.

“Right,” Burt chimed in. “Ladders moving and hammers disappearing or some shit.” He snorted. He got stuck in an elevator once, on his way up to his Dad’s office. He dangled between the 34th and 35th floors alone for almost an hour and all he could think about was gravity slamming his body to the bottom of the elevator. He dreamed about it too, for days afterward, but never told anyone. He supposed a collapsing subway station would probably feel the same.

Evan shrugged and pretended to look at the magazine, but he, with his back to the abandoned tunnel, felt the blackness creeping around his body, the nothingness. He remembered watching “The Never Ending Story” when he was a kid. He hadn’t been able to sleep for days. Each time he drifted off, his chest and belly would rumble, lights flashed against his closed eyelids. He couldn’t breathe—The Nothing was coming after him—it would gobble him up and he would never exist. He did a double take into the darkness. Something was there. “Check that out. Hey.” He elbowed his friends.

“What?”

“Huh?”

“There’s something down there. Can’t you see it?” He squinted sure he’d seen a light flick on and off.

“Um, kinda busy.” They gestured to the smiling centerfold.

Burt’s cigarette glowed Halloween-orange before fizzling, “Oh, are you afraid of the dark.”

A noise, like a scratching or scraping. Or it could have been cough. Or a low wail. “You—you guys heard that. Right?” Evan asked. Burt and Mike glanced at each other. The magazine was momentarily forgotten.

“Whatever,” Mike said, shaking his head and focusing on the picture of the blond. But he shivered, scratched his neck. His skin tingled like had just walked into a spider web. He scratched his neck again. Once, he had grabbed a t-shirt from his dresser, put it on, and a few minutes later, his back itched. He clawed at himself, but his skin prickled across his shoulders and arms and chest and finally he threw off his shirt and there—a white sack split open by a million baby spiders crawling in the folds of his shirt.

Burt stubbed out his cigarette and opened a package of gum, the sound of crinkling foil felt like glass being scraped. Mike and Even flinched and glared at him.

“What?” he snapped. He looked up at the ceiling, as empty as a night sky without stars.

Evan caught it first, out of the corner of his eye. “Holy shit!” he said, in spite of himself. There was a fuzzy glow, a pale yellow, down in the tunnel. Another sharp sound, like a click or a snap.

Mike and Burt stared, “What the hell. . . ?”

Evan sprung to his feet, that feeling of Nothing straining his chest. “You see –” he stuttered.

Mike crunched on the Doritos bag as he stood; the sound made him jump back and stumble into Burt who was leaping onto his feet and the two of them jostled Evan who snapped into a run. Burt and Mike dodged out of the tunnel behind him, slipping up the steps, leaving their booty behind.

The homeless man was shaken awake by the sounds of dozens of feet slamming against the ground and fighting for the stairs. Their screams ricocheted off the ceiling as it groaned and split, raining chunks of concrete and brick down on everyone. Someone tugged on his hand as the whole earth crumbled and split apart and his hand slipped and he was falling, they were all falling. . . .

He gasped. Bolted upright. He rubbed his eyes with shaking hands. He was sitting on his cardboard bed, the coat he used for a blanket bunched up at his knees.

He shuffled around his little space, a big concrete hole behind a “Do Not Enter” sign, nudging soda cans and bottles he collected from the commuters garbage out of the way. He used a flashlight with stolen batteries to find the bucket where he relieved himself. Before going back to bed, he glanced out into the tunnel and saw a glow, heard the fevered whispers. The ghosts were moving.

He would have to tell the violin player about this in the morning.

by William A. Abbott

The bodies were gone, but he still saw them in his mind, scattered up and down the steps to the Subway. He stood behind the column where he had hid that horrible day six years ago. The machine guns and screams still echoed in the silent underground where the trains no longer ran.

Only eight years old, his whole world had changed that day. He turned to his friend, “Ivan, do you remember my mother? She died right here, after shoving me behind this column.”

“I remember her, Boris; I ate dinner at your home many times. She treated me as if I were your brother. I will never forget her.”

“We were returning home with many of our neighbors. People stood on the stairs and around this floor passing out pamphlets to the commuters. The soldiers suddenly appeared at the top of the stairs and started shooting. They killed everyone on the stairs and fired into the crowd below, at anyone holding a pamphlet. Then they left as quickly as they came. They must have had other places to go, other people to kill.”

“You were lucky to have survived, Boris.”

“Thinking about how we steal and scavenge now to live, I?m not so sure. I pulled my mother behind the pillar, but she didn?t respond. I watched her life ebb away, then sat by this column and cried. Everyone was screaming and running around. I don?t remember much after that, until a neighbor, Peter, found me and took me home with him. I don?t even know where they buried my mother.”

“What happened to Peter? Why didn?t you stay with him?”

“They came one night and took him away. We never saw him again. He must have said something against the government. His wife nearly lost her mind, and left to find relatives in the country. I don?t know what happened to her.”

“The government! To think that we actually welcomed them when it started. They promised prosperity and order, and we gave them control of everything. They were good at promising and taking over, but they couldn?t run anything. Look at this subway. They didn?t maintain the trains, and now they don?t run. It makes a good cave for us to hide in, but that?s all.”

“Not so loud, Ivan. So far we have escaped the political schools and work camps, but if they find out we exist, we might stop existing.”
As if to punctuate Boris? statement, two soldiers started down the stairs. “I told you I heard something down here, Nicholas, there they are!” The soldiers increased their speed down the stairs.

Boris and Ivan ran for the old subway tracks and leaped off the platform, still running. Ivan?s foot hit one of the tracks, causing him to fall hard. Stunned and unable to stand, he moaned from the pain but muttered, “Boris, run! If they put me in one of the city compounds, look for me by the fence. Maybe you will think of something to help me escape. Go! Go!”

Boris ran. He knew the underground tracks well, where they split and merged, and where he could hide. The darkness had protected him before. When he made it to the bend in the tracks and into the darkness, he looked back. He could hear the soldiers shouting.
“There?s one! I don?t see the other one.” The soldier jumped from the platform and grabbed Ivan by his coat. “This one isn?t going anywhere. He hurt himself when he jumped on to the tracks. Did you see which way the other one went, Nicholas?”

Nicholas came puffing to the edge of the platform and carefully let himself down. “No, Dmitri, and I?m not going to spend the day stumbling around these tracks looking for him. By the time we can get back with a search party and some lights, he could be anywhere in the city. Forget about that one. Let?s take this one back and see if his capture can buy us some extra privileges.”

Dmitri shook Ivan, “Where did your friend go? Tell me or it will go bad for you.” Ivan moaned but said nothing.

Nicholas moved closer and took Ivan by the arm. “He?s just a boy, Dmitri. And a very skinny one at that. He?s already in enough pain. Even if he tells us which way his friend went, we would never catch him. In fact, let?s not even mention the other one, as his escape could bring us punishment.”

Dmitri reflected, “I suppose you?re right, Nicholas, and this capture should prove to the Captain that we patrol our area diligently. The stupid bastard won?t be able to bellyache at us at least for awhile.”

Nicholas grasped Ivan?s arm harder. “Boy, was anyone else with you? Think of your answer carefully.”

“No, sir,” Ivan mumbled. “I was all alone.”

“Good! We understand each other,” said Nicholas. “Make sure your story does not change. If our Captain finds out you have more information, he loves his tortures and takes great pride in breaking little people. Let?s not make him suspicious about your knowing anything.”

The soldiers half dragged Ivan to the platform and lifted him up as they climbed up themselves. His ankle felt better and didn?t seem to be broken, only sprained. With their assistance he limped along as they proceeded back up the stairs.

Worried about Ivan, Boris stopped when he realized they were not pursuing him and hid in the darkness. The acoustics in the tunnel allowed him to hear most of the conversation between Ivan and the soldiers. He decided to follow, at a distance.

When Ivan and the soldiers reached the Captain?s office next to the compound, Dmitri pushed Ivan inside roughly, causing him to fall to the floor before the Captain?s desk. Nicholas said, “See what we have caught for you, Captain Pavlovitch, one of the young thieves that roam the neighborhood, maybe the one who stole the supplies from your truck.”

The Captain came from behind his desk and kicked Ivan, “What?s your name, boy? Where do you live? How old are you?”

“My name is Ivan, sir, and I have no home. I live on the streets and in the old subways. I?m fourteen.”

“We caught him in the subway,” said Dmitri, “on one of our sweeps through the area. He gave us a difficult chase until he fell and hurt his ankle. Tell us, boy. Are you part of the gang who stole the Captain?s supplies?” Of course, you aren?t. Nicholas and I took the supplies, and we haven?t swept our area for weeks.

Ivan managed to stand up. Frightened, he said, “I have stolen nothing of value, only leftover food from behind the restaurants, just enough for my own needs. I cause no trouble. If you let me go, you?ll never see me again.”

Captain Pavlovitch backhanded Ivan so hard, Ivan fell to the ground again, where he wisely stayed. The Captain shouted, “Thief! Liar! I”ll deal with you tomorrow. In the meantime, enjoy your new home — in my compound, the one with twelve foot high fences with barbed wire on top, where no one has ever escaped and many have died. Maybe you will be the next to die, tomorrow.” He giggled, then ordered, “Take him away.”

Dmitri and Nicholas helped Ivan to stand, then led him outside and around the building to the compound gate. Dmitri muttered to Nicholas, “That nutso pig, always bragging about how his prisoners stay locked up. The only prisoners he?s had are children who couldn?t possibly climb the fence or mount an escape. He boils my butt, the way he treats them.”

“I know,” said Nicholas. “If he only knew how his guards gambled all night in the guardhouse, he?d crap his pants. Ivan, my boy, why don?t you find a way to escape and shut that bigmouthed donkey up.”

As they reached the gate, they greeted the guard, “Here?s another dangerous criminal for you, Alexey. He?s all of fourteen and can scarcely walk. Do you think your powerful crew can handle him?”

Alexey laughed. “Oh, be quiet, Nicholas. We all do what we must. Why don?t you stop by this evening? We could use some fresh money. We keep a watch out for the Captain, but he has a new girl friend and hasn?t been by in weeks.”

“How long do you think this one will be able to stand him? How long did the last one stay, three months?”

“About that,” laughed Alexey. “This one?s bigger, maybe she?ll hit him back.”

The guard took Ivan inside a barracks with cots lined up in rows, and showed him which one he could use. Children of all ages occupied the cots. They looked at him but said nothing. Ivan said to the guard, “I sprained my ankle, but I want to see how much I can walk on it. May I go outside the barracks and walk along the fence?”

“I have no problem with that,” said Alexey. “It gets cold at night, but if you want to take a walk, be my guest. There?s no way to escape, unless you can leap twelve feet.”

Ivan went out and limped to the far end of the fenced in compound. Darkness had descended. He could see no guards, but he heard laughter in the guardhouse. He wondered if Boris could find him. He thought of the snug home he and Boris had made in one of the subway tunnels. Will I ever see Boris again?

“Psst. Ivan. Come this way along the fence.” Boris leaned out from behind a tree. “Where are the guards?”

“Boris! How good to see you! Don?t worry about the guards. They are gambling in the guardhouse.”

The two boys met at the fence. “How can I make it over this fence, Boris? Do you have any ideas?”

“It shouldn?t be that hard. I have plenty of rope. You can climb the rope, but how do you get over the barbed wire?”

After some thought, Ivan suggested, “Do you think a heavy rug would hold it down enough for me to crawl over it?”

“That?s a good idea,” said Boris. “I know where I can find a stepladder. That should get me high enough to get the rug in place. How soon do we need to do this?”

“Tonight, if possible. Captain Pavlovitch promised he?d see me tomorrow. He?s crazy mean, and I don?t want to see him.”

“I?ll get everything together and be back in about two hours. Everyone should be sound asleep by then and we can hope the guards keep playing cards. Can you climb over and walk with your leg?”

“I”ll have to. See you then.”

Two hours later Boris returned with the ladder, rug and rope. He climbed the ladder and managed to throw the heavy rug over the barbed wire. He climbed down and threw one end of the rope over the fence to Ivan. As Boris held the rope, Ivan started to climb, but his sore ankle had swollen and kept causing his leg to collapse about half way up. “Boris, I don?t think I can make it.”

Someone touched Boris? shoulder and pushed him aside. Boris jumped, as he thought no one was around. “Let me help, son. Ivan, just hold on to the rope. I?ll pull you up to where you can crawl over the barbed wire. Let yourself fall. I?ll catch you.”

“Nicholas,” stuttered Ivan. “I thought you were playing cards. Are you going to turn us in?” Nicholas pulled Ivan over the fence and caught him.

“I just finished playing, and you never saw me. Now, boys, get the hell out of here and don?t get caught again.” Nicholas chuckled. “Captain Pavlovitch should have a hissy fit tomorrow with his guards. That?ll teach those dudes to beat me at cards.”

by Howard Capeci

“Your bird looks cold”, I tell my sister at her door.
She doesn’t let me in.
“He’s dead.” She answers and pushes me further out into the
snow.
I am not dressed for the snow.
“Do we a favor, would-ya” she says “Go bury him down by the lake
before my kids see him.”
An icicle falls and pierces through an ashen puff pastry looking
bush.
“Alfred’s not home otherwise I would have him do it.”
She closes the door and it squeezes the inside air out.
I smell the lunch I was invited here to eat.
There are no leaves on the trees and a silent flock of Canadian geese
cut the gray sky.
The pool is covered in blue plastic frosted white.
It reminds me that I did not prepare for this kind of weather.
I worry about ruining the leather of my shoes.
As a kid I had few worries and liked to walk on virgin snow.
I wish it were spring. Flowers would be growing at the burial site.
I turn towards the bird, huddled in a little nest of straw, and I
reach into the cage her husband built of scrap timber from the old
train depot in their town replaced with a new one that looks exactly
like the old with its peaked shingled roof and decorative lightning
rods.
I open the homemade screen door and it fills the still air with a dry
honk, the sound that was absent from the arrow of geese a moment
before.
I grasp the bird. He sticks to the bottom of the cage like a wet
tongue would stick to a metal pole.
His feet break from the wooden surface the same way frozen asparagus
do when I use my bare hands to break asparagus spears before tossing
them into boiling water because I like the way it feels.
I will not like it anymore.
I think of the lunch I was invited over to eat inside.
This bird is tiny piece of frozen meat to me and has no name.
The kids call him Barclay.
His meat feels barely weighty in my hands.
I walk towards the lake breaking the hard surface of the snow to
reveal the fluff within.
I approach their shed.
Shed’s have shovels, my dad’s does anyway. He is a gardener.
All gardeners have shovels.
Alfred is a mechanic so I find that his shed does not have a shovel.
The lake beckons black before me…with a quick toss into its depths
the job will be done.
I wind up to pitch with the memory of “You throw like a girl”
ringing in my ears and I let the bird fly.
There is no splash, only a slight crack, like a bat hitting a ball in
the distance that lets the hitter slide into home as Barclay bounces
and skids on the solid surface of what should have been water.
I look back at the house with an empty nest in my hands.
The lake stands stone-like behind me as I see the faces of my nephews
flattened against their bedroom window…watching what grown ups do.

by Joan C. Limbrick

I could feel the fear in the old lady’s eyes as she hurried up the
stairs, the last to clear the underground station except for me. I am
the only one down here now. Me and the moths attracted to the lights.
The sounds overhead are muffled. Hard to believe that thousands of
people are standing above me. You could hear a pin drop down here on
the tile floor. I imagine thousands of people all over the earth
waiting, someplace like this. Near a church or some other religious
building.

I know what they are waiting to hear. I know because I dreamed it a
long time ago. I have never been able to get that dream out of my
mind. It has altered the path of all my thoughts and all my actions
since. I think it was about 20 years ago. I can’t tell time anymore.
I live moment to moment, wondering when the shoe will drop. They say
that prophecies are impossible to pinpoint in time.

It feels very peaceful here. I should go up the steps to the
cathedral to hear what the priests are going to say too, but I don’t
think I can bear to be there, with the others.

I never smoked pot or took LSD. Then I got older and settled into
being an artist, happy of that because I paint from my imagination and
wouldn’t want people to assume I was on drugs or having a
flashback…like the dream. What’s the difference. Imagination from
drugs or from your mind. The mind is a powerful thing, not to be
trusted. What if my dream was just that, a dream. Meaning nothing
more than some impression from something outside of me. Or a wish. I
have never been able to take that chance, that the dream was not
telling me something that was not real. I have had to live my life
everyday as if the dream was a portend of the future. Someday. Now I
think that that day is today. My senses are so heightened I cannot
hear if I am relaxed and buzzing with energy or frightened and full of
adrenalin to take flight.

I hear some stirring above me. The lights are swaying a little. It
sounds like a herd of people are moving above me, caught on the side
of the river where the wolves hunt…silent so no beast can hear them
out.

I wish I had a broom to sweep up some of the trash littered all around
me. No matter. What does anything matter now.

I wish I had a chair. I could sit on a step but then I could have to
go out into the damp light. I prefer to not see any faces. I would
not want to tip the devil off ahead of time with what I know.

Do I wish I had told someone, anyone about my dream? So that I could
be right? No way. I would be considered certifiable insane. No one
would listen to me. Then, not even now.

I never told anyone about my dream. Not one of my family has any idea
that I have been carrying this dream around with me for so long.
Every present I buy, every holiday I celebrate with them, every dinner
I prepare…all are cloaked in this dream. I cannot get away from the
symbols of it, the geomatricies of it, the sound, the color, the
rhythms of it. Even here on the floor of this underpass I see them.
The patterns of even the rocks and debris brought in from peoples
gardens and roads, stuck to their shoes, thrown from their hand, from
a bag, un-thought of, unnoticed. There, the pattern of the ascending
stairs and the diamonds on the decorative wall art. Even above me is
a cross with equal arms growing outward like a vine. Three by three
by three the grids are in the light above me. Three arches at each
arm of the cross interior.

There, I hear some commotion above me. A loud roar of voices. I
cannot go up there. I will not. I am too curious to know if I am
right. If I leave, I will become part of the illusion. If I stay, I
can remain as I am. Or will I?

I am just noticing my reflection in the ceiling above me. It could be
the floor if the world turned upside down. Some people believe that
we are in for a pole shift. I wonder how many have thought what that
really means. Not just the shift of Earth on her axis, but a shift of
our magnetic electric field. I am sure somewhere someone has been
doing research and experiments based on that thought. No one would
spend that kind of money for a ceiling today. This is just a public
space. What purpose was it originally intended.

I think I see a dime shining in the light…the wind has picked up.
Gusts of warm wind seem to be wrapping around my skirt and legs but
the trash is still and inert around me. They say perception is really
the truth of our experience. I see the ship landing above me. I see
it right through the shiny ceiling tiles. Grout falls from the weight
of the people above running to make way for it’s landing and litters
the dirty floor with specks of white. I really should go up too. But
if I don’t, I can go on believing in everything I was taught until the
dream came.

Try to paint a dream. Try to paint a dream that has no picture or
words, no shapes, no beginning and no end. I have been trying to
paint that dream for all these years. I am rich. I am famous for my
paintings. Critics take my silence for arrogance. My family and
friends have left me because they feel I think I am too far above
them, my ego too huge, to engage in conversation with them about my
work. That is not the case at all. They would think me insane if I
tried to tell them what I know. But it will not be long before they
know it too. I wish I was with someone I have loved but I know that,
even that, does not matter.

That warm wind and the smells of this damp place make me faint. Wasn’t
this winter. Isn’t that the winters light? Ah, everyone is gone. I
can feel it. It is time to go home to paint the light.

by Karen Sue Bennett

The Inspector, his mustache buried in his clipboard of blueprints and electrical trunk lines, bumped right into the ragamuffin man. Apologies were absentmindedly mumbled by the inspector, as the rope-belted man backed away, bowing, pushing his glasses back on his nose, waving his hand, calling, “Oh no, sorry. It was my fault.”
Tommy Roberts, called Tommy Bobby in his childhood, scuttled through the bustle of rush hour feet to retrieve the paper wrapped package, loosed and shot from his grip in the jostle. He secured the newly purchased canvas curtain from the mosaic floor, and made his way, one step and one loose sole slapping awkwardly in a comical rhythm. He step-slap-step-slapped his way to the end of the railway station, passing symmetrical, precisely tiled mosaics on the walls, each a masterpiece, glistening from another continent and time.
He left the rush hour of the Cottshire Palace through the ball room, now, the leaf strewn, main concourse of the Cottshire Palace Underground Railway. Tommy Bobby climbed the steps to the street level, rounded a corner and silently melted into the stone wall, well hidden from view by two centuries of thick ivy and age-old bushy shrubs.

<<<<>>>>

Tommy Bobby’s second grade class came to this palace in 1952 before the renovations. He remembered holding onto the hand of his best chum, Tommy G. as the class snaked around the building in twos. The children looked dutifully into the servant’s quarters, the flagstone floored kitchen, rough hewn closets and deep, dark wells.
“You two Tommys, – Stay close, or I’ll put you right up front with me. I don’t want to lose you down a secret stairway,” Mrs. Peters threatened.
Secret stairway? Did she mean it? The boys were thrilled. The two Tommys managed to slip to the tail of the group, doing their own investigations, satisfied with finding dark crevasses and excellent hiding places for another time.
Mrs. Peters called, “Just as we studied, Lord Cotts wanted to please his fifteen year old bride, who came from a country called Morocco. He paid special artists to decorate her new palace to remind her of her home so she wouldn’t be homesick. The carved stone lattice walls and the mosiacs makes this one of the most beautiful palaces in England. It’s my favorite. And children,” Mrs. Peters eyes wide as she continued, “they say horses and carriages came down a ramp straight onto the ball room floor, right here, so the ladies’ fancy ball gowns and shoes would not get soiled and stained as they stepped down from their carriages. Those many steps were added later.”
Tommy Bobby pushed his glasses up to his nose and hollered, “Did the horses poop in here too?” The children reacted in gleeful laughter.
Mrs. Peters, knowing a fair question, answered, “Well, Tommy, you know how horses are. I expect sometimes the servants had cleaning up to do.”
Tommy couldn’t resist being the clown, “Well, here’s the pigeon poop.” This caused uproarious laughter. Mrs. Peters also laughed.
“Okay, settle down.” Then back to the group, “Can’t you children just hear the horses’ hooves clopping and echoing in the hallway? I can.” Mrs. Peters grabbed the hands of the children next to her and led the class up a narrow stone stairway to the bed chambers, then outside to the elaborately carved gardens.

<<<>>>>

Orange fencing unevenly surrounded the heaps of dirt, mountains of gravel, and a pyramid of water pipes. Lights were strung, fiesta-like, around the perimeter on wires, hanging perilously close to earth movers and tractors. Two gardens were plowed flat to provide eventual parking for the newly renovated and converted Cottshire Palace Underground Railway entrance. The actual working of the trains: ticket windows, food courts, wash rooms, and modern advertisements on walls with neon signs, would be located on the concourse level of the tracks. Changes would be made where necessary for health and safety; otherwise the Cottshire Palace ballroom was safe. The construction crew sealed off ballroom doors leading to upper and lower staircases against the south wall, without being aware they left a wide flat landing between the floors.
The two Tommys surreptitiously returned to the old palace over the years. As children they discovered a slit in the palace’s wall behind gnarled branches of tall, old bushes, and a wall of thick ivy. The boys had their secret, fortunate, swashbuckling, dangerous, heavenly hide-out. They came singly or together to swap stories of conquest, to smoke cigarettes, and to drain the last few inches from liquor bottles, which they then added to the masculinely decorated wall of stacked emptied bottles.
The boys stretched, scratched and snuffed out cigarettes. Tommy Bobby squinted into the darkness, lay back, twirled his glasses by the thin over-the-ear wire, and exhaled, “So, TG, what’s it gonna be? Will it be Mary Lou for you or the Navy? Or did your cousins get that paperwork for you to be a copper?”
“Probably copper. Wha’ about you?”
“Probably the Navy. Can’t afford more school, so the Navy’s the thing. Eyes not good enough for me to be a copper like you. Or, maybe I’ll be a movie star or a millionaire architect.” Tommy Bobby kicked Tommy G’s shoe and they both laughed.
Tommy Greer did become a policeman, and he did take Mary Lou too. Tommy Bobby joined the Navy, and was never heard from again.

<<<>>>>

Inspector Thomas Greer remembered the secret entrance and laughed to himself. “How much stolen electricity could we possibly be talking about here?” The thought of the potential for real danger sobered his light mood. I don’t know why it never occurred to me this would be an ideal hiding place for a felon, or even a gang. He turned to the outside wall at the hidden exit and said to his assistant, “Keith, let me go ahead. Let’s see if I’m still thin enough to slide in. Here, hold my coat.” He coughed, “This was easy enough when I was seventeen.” He gesticulated with his torch, “I’ll call if I need your help, but it’s cramped. Leave the door open and listen.” Keith nodded and obediently placed himself into the narrow doorway and leaned in to listen for his boss’s signal.
The inspector felt years falling from him as he crept into darkness. He heard the laughing voices of Tommy Bobby and himself, and smiled at the remembered boyish pranks and jokes they shared. Inspector Greer was becoming Tommy G. again, clowning with his crony, remembering Tommy Bobby’s glasses eerily reflecting orange discs from the oil lamp, and his funny grin, and poor thin body. That was a pitiful little bugger. I wonder what happened to him.
Inspector Greer reached the landing and flashed his beam on a tall, elegantly carved four poster bed covered by a multicolored bedspread, its tassels resting on a small oriental rug on the swept stone floor. Greer retraced his steps to call his assistant in a loud whisper. “Keith, come on in. We’re alone. You won’t believe your eyes. This old chap has a miniature palace inside where my pal and I use to get away to smoke and brag about our girls. It’s the damndest thing.”
The slice of light from his torch illuminated a table lamp on the home constructed bookcase. “Right. Look here. Here’s our culprit. He’s hooked himself up to the power in the building. Guess the supervisors missed this.” Tom Greer rocked back on his shoes, proud of his find. Greer leaned in and flipped the lamp switch.
The whisper gave way to a well vocalized exclamation. “Holy mother of … ! Would you look at this? The ceiling and floor – he’s reproduced the mosaics in the ballroom. I’ll be. And the walls … .” The delicate cut glass sparkled. And look here. He used this canvas to cover the spaces between the stones that lit the staircase with sunshine so his lights don’t shine out at night. I guess he’s thought of everything. Whatta genius.”
“Uh-huh,” Keith answered, hands in pocket, touching nothing. “No cobwebs or spiders like you’d expect. And really decorated for some bloke. Let’s get out before he comes back.”
“He’s not a killer, Keith, he’s an artist.” Inspector Tommy Greer leaned over a two unit electrical hot plate with melmac plates stacked next to a box of cutlery for one. “You know, Keith, you can’t get any wide furniture in here, so, look here, this guy brought in the wood pieces and built, carved and polished it here. When we were kids, Tommy Bobby and I wanted furniture too, so we sneaked in flat cardboard we found lying around the construction site. We were so proud of our haven. By the way, I stole some pillows from my mum’s lounge for us to lie on – but that was before I became a sworn officer of the law.” The two chuckled.
“Look how he’s carved the sides of this bookcase in keeping with the Moroccan art. I can’t believe my eyes.” Greer was shaking his head in disbelief as he fingered through the books. “These are about architecture and Moroccan design.” He lifted a large pictorial book in a slick white paper jacket. “Why, look at this. It’s him! This hideaway belongs to my old friend Tommy Bobby.”
The inspector plopped down, sitting on the bed. He rubbed his forehead. “Look, at this. A Study in Moroccan Architecture by Thomas Roberts. He wrote all of these books. England’s Moroccan Pearl, by Thomas Roberts, and, look, Cottshire’s Morocco by Thomas Roberts. I can’t believe it. He’s been living in our old hideout.”
Greer ruffled through the pages. “This book says, ‘…fortified walls, lavish gardens,’ Yeah, that’s how it used to be all right. ‘Tiles of elaborate colors, deep jewel hues, intricate designs….. .’ Really Keith, I feel almost sick. I can’t believe he’s been living here all this time, carving furniture, setting stones and steadfastly writing, and publishing books, all with his terrible vision. He used to tease about wanting to be an architect, except his eyes were so weak. Eyes almost kept him out of the Navy.” Greer laughed, turned his head from Keith to blink and swipe at tears.
“Who would know old Tommy Bobby even noticed the designs of the mosaics? When art is around you all the time, do you still really see the magnificence? I mean, doesn’t it just become the ordinary background to your everyday life?” Greer looked at his feet. “And, why didn’t he contact me?”
“Well, sir, maybe he’s been in some trouble and doesn’t want to call his best friend, the chief inspector. Maybe he’s embarrassed that he’s poor and living in your childhood hideout, stealing electricity. You know?”
“Oh my God. Of course, you’re right.” Greer wiped at his forehead. “How can I not report this?”
Keith shrugged, “Lie.”

<<<>>>

Inspector Greer sat on a crossbeam of the fence marking the parking lot of the station and lit up a cigarette. Rustling branches behind him caused him to turn. The same rope belted man he’d bumped into the day before stood still. Caught.
“Tommy Bobby Roberts. I hear you want to be a famous movie star or a millionaire architect.” Thomas Greer studied his friend’s face. Tommy Bobby smiled a tentative smile and pushed his thick glasses to his eyes. “It’s me, Tommy G. Can’t you recognize me, old man? I found your house, your wonderful, magical Moroccan house – our hideout. Tommy Bobby you’re an author. You’re a celebrity. We must visit and you must tell me all about yourself. You must teach, lead tours. Your hiding is over. You’re famous.”
The inspector swung his arm around his friend’s slender shoulder. The cronies walked around to the ballroom entrance, ignoring the rushing passengers. Their heads were together. They laughed and nodded as they pointed to the ceiling and to details in the mosaics.