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My Name is John

by Steve Cain

            So hot, he thought, wiping sweat off his forehead. He ignored the square of skin that flew with his perspiration. It hit the ground with a thud and stuck, sizzling in the heat.

            It had been hours since he’d drank. His mouth was dry; his lips were crusty. The moisture was evaporating from his body and his skin tightened. Ahead was another figure walking up Route 64. He tried to call out, but his tongue stuck to his teeth; he couldn’t make more than a moan escape his mouth.

            He paused, looking around for a bit of shade. There was only asphalt, sand, and cacti. The figure ahead shambled on, growing smaller as it moved farther away.

            He was disoriented. The heat was playing with his mind. Everything was fuzzy. He didn’t know why he was walking, but there was an urge driving him. My name. What’s my name? Something with “J.” His lips opened, and he stutter-whispered “J-J-J,” but that was all. Jimmy? Jacob? Jules? No.

            He walked on, nearly tripping over his untied right shoelace. He couldn’t fall; he might not get up. He was tired. T-t-tired.

            The road rose slight and looked like it dropped away into nothingness. Everything was hazy. He wanted to run, but his legs wouldn’t obey.

            J-j-john, he remembered, my name is John. A slight smile crossed his lips, cracking the red crust ringing his mouth. My name is John. He couldn’t remember where he was from, couldn’t remember his mother and father. Didn’t know if he had a wife, or kids. My name is John. He clung to that.

            He doddered on, following the figure in the distance, maybe a mile ahead. Other figures were with it now, close together. Not social distancing, he thought, not knowing why he’d thought it. What did it mean? I’m John, he yelled in his head, but they didn’t hear him. “J-j-j”.

            John came to a sign and stopped, trying to read it. “G-g-g,” was all he could muster. There was a vague recollection, but the letters ran together. Hole. He kept walking, dragging his left foot along now. The shoe pulled off, and the scalding asphalt burned through his sock. He ignored it. He was close.

            The figures ahead of him were gone, but he continued in the same direction. A path forked to the right, but he tottered straight ahead. He had an urge to see. The road ended at an overlook. Stumbling forward to a short rock wall, John looked down. Below were his people. Thousands, tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands? He didn’t know, but he could hear them calling him, hear them echoing off the canyon walls.

            “B-b-b.”

            “S-s-s”

            “L-l-l.”

            “J-j-j,” he replied, but he couldn’t remember his name. Just “J.” He was J.

            He turned towards the path he had seen prior to the rim. He would go there. That’s where he would join his family. “F-f-a,” he stammered. “F-f-f.”

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Lights! Lights!

by Michael Anthony Dioguardi

 

I put down my fork as my cellphone lights up, but I don’t read the emergency text—I know what it says. Everyone on Earth lifts their heads in unison as the sirens begin to blare. I’m alone, yet connected to every being on the planet; our fate is a collective one. 

 

All I can think about is Pop; he’s the only family I have left. I have to reach him before it’s too late, before the fires stop me, or the raining debris impales me, or the radiation weakens my bones to gelatin. 

 

Flakes of my ceiling trickle down after the initial shock—the first of a seemingly endless barrage. By my estimates, we should expect a strike every ten minutes until the sun sets permanently on earth. 

 

What if Pop’s already gone? Surely, the staff would have fled to the nearest bunker by now. Would they take the terminally ill?

 

The front door to my apartment swings inward, dislodged from its jamb. My exit into the street is followed by a paralysis of fear. Crevices run like tributaries through the streets, steam hovering above their abysses. Hundreds of sirens for miles in every direction blare out in an uneven cadence. So many people, deformed to unrecognizable lumps of charred flesh lay steaming among the wreckage. There are few whimpers: vocal cords are thin and easily singed. Breathing is becoming difficult. I remember reading about the metallic taste in the air, like biting into a battery.

 

The nursing home down the road is lopsided, one third of it already underground. Luckily, it’s not Pop’s wing. A woman is crawling out from the front entrance, foaming from her mouth, blood streaming from her eyes. I follow her bloody hand and knee prints to deformed steel steps. The banisters are sticky with more blood, and there’s a half-burned man huddled in the corner feeling around like a beheaded animal.

 

REAGAN ALZH— —ARCH CENTER

 

The sign has a crack in it but I know it’s Pop’s floor. I have to crawl under the doorway’s steel cross into the ward. It’s as dark as the stairwell, and the smell is just as putrid. With each passing step, more glass crunches beneath my feet; every window is shattered, but the natural light filtering in is gray and dust-ridden.

 

I pause before a chasm in the floor. As I look up, I see him. He’s smiling, sitting in his wheelchair with his favorite blue blanket draped over his knees. His customary shakes hadn’t dissipated yet. He looks happy, at peace. He turns to me, reaching out with his hand. He doesn’t know who I am—hasn’t for years. But he’s alive and we’re together—and that’s all that counts.

 

“Pop!” I shout.

 

He nods back at me—his head bobbing as his fingers shake at the glass-flaked window frame. I feel another rumble, followed by the last siren fading to silence. An orange hue grows over the horizon.

 

“Lights! Lights!” Pop shouts.

 

More flakes fall from the ceiling.

 

“I love y—”

 

END

Michael Dioguardi

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Ava’s Life

By Dale Parnell

“What are you reading?” asked Ryan, dumping a large box of clothes by the front door.

“It’s one of mum’s books, I found it in the attic,” replied Ava.

“Well could it wait, the estate agent will be here soon,” said Ryan, before stomping back upstairs.

Ava sighed. She was already struggling to deal with her mother’s death, but the fact that Ryan had been so distant lately made it almost unbearable.

Ava had been close to her mother; growing up they did everything together, and after Ava moved out they spoke on the phone almost every day, so she was surprised that she had never mentioned the book before. It was the title that made her pause; ‘Ava’s Life’. The fact that it was printed in 1953, thirty years before she had been born, made Ava wonder if she had been named after the character in the book.

“I could use a hand!” shouted Ryan from the top of the stairs, making Ava flinch.

“I’ll be up in a minute,” she called back.

Ava realised she was still holding the book, and despite Ryan’s obvious impatience to get on with clearing her mother’s house, she couldn’t help but flick through a few more pages. It was uncanny; it seemed like whole passages in the book mirrored her own life – a sheltered childhood, art college, a failing love affair with an older man and the sudden death of the character’s mother. Ava sank down onto her mother’s worn, familiar sofa, her attention now completely taken with the musty smelling book.

The sound of creaking hinges startled Ava, and looking up she saw Ryan was standing in the doorway staring at her, his face red with barely contained fury. She hadn’t heard him come downstairs. All she could focus on was the last page of the book.

“What it is?” asked Ryan angrily.

“This book, it’s about me,” she replied shakily.

“What do you mean?”

“Everything that happens in this book has happened to me,” Ava said, frantically flicking back and forth between pages.

“So how does it end?” asked Ryan uneasily.

“It says you kill me,” replied Ava, looking up at Ryan, his face set like flint.

“I wish you hadn’t said that,” said Ryan coldly, moving slowly into the room and closing the door behind him.

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Young Girls Scream

By C. Marry Hultman

“Hey guys,” Colton buttoned his skinny jeans with a satisfied grin as he entered the back alley. The heavy bass of the after party vibrating through the wall.

“That fan girl sure sucked like an angel,” he said. It was what being part of As If — the quickest rising boyband in the US, was all about. He had never seen so much action working at Jiffy Lube. So what if some of the girls lied about being eighteen, where was the harm?

The other members had boarded the bus already. They were always finished with their girls before him, he liked to chat them up a bit, get to know them, before they serviced him. He was old fashioned that way, a real gentleman.

At the end of the alley, among boxes and debris he saw a seated figure. When his eyes acclimated to the dark, he realized it was their bus driver Carl. He appeared passed out.

“Great,” Colton screamed. “The driver’s drunk again.” Now they would have to wait for a replacement, it wasn’t the first time. He’d have to talk to Charlie, their manager, again. He sighed, flicked the remains of a cigarette at the lifeless blob and stepped onto the bus.

“Fucks sake guys,” he called out. “You dirty bastards, the bus is filthy.” They didn’t answer him.  The carpeted floor was sticky and a sickly metallic scent hung in the air.

Stop fucking around,” he was so tired of their shit. “Come on, how many times have I told you to store your crap?” He pulled out his cellphone and used its torch. A body lay before him. Scurrying back, he scanned the bus, nearly vomiting at the sight of the blood coating the walls and the four severed heads of his mates Chad, Brad, Tad and Nad displayed along the windows. Stifling a cry Colton turned to run, but a shadowy figure barred the door, a large knife glinting in the dark. He illuminated the form to reveal a young woman. Her pale visage startled him and he fell over the body again.

“Remember me Colt?” she said moving towards him and climbing up on his chest. “Lainey Foster. We met at the As If Cruise last year.”

“I meet so many fans at those things,” he whispered.

“You bought me drinks, even though I was under age. Then you and your friends dragged me to your suite, remember that?”

My God, he did. “You wanted it,” he stammered.

“You think a girl of fifteen wants five adult men to force themselves on her?” She allowed the point of the knife, to steadily, slide down his chest.

“Why would you come on the cruise if you didn’t?” He tried to act hard.

She laughed. “Colt, I adored you, but you’re just like the rest.”

“Please,” he whimpered.

“That’s what I said,” she mocked him and her eyes darkened as he felt the knife penetrate the abs he had worked so hard to maintain.

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Death Shaped Box

By N.M. Brown

It’s been eight months since the incident and I’m still hearing sirens in my sleep.

It was a Thursday evening; I came home from work to an empty house. My wife Lena’s clothes and phone weren’t missing. Her cell phone sat abandoned on our counter; vibrating with calls and notifications.

The only thing signifying that she hadn’t been abducted was her missing car.

I hadn’t even completed all three numbers of 911 when police officers came to my door. Our neighbor Janice stood behind them; eyes rimmed red with tears. She had asked Lena to pick her son Thomas up from school due to a work emergency; meaning he was also missing.

They questioned Janice and I repeatedly over the following weeks to no avail. We knew less than they did. No one wanted our loved ones home more than we did.

Janice and I got the answers we asked for about two months later, but they weren’t the ones we wanted. Lena’s car was found burned up; crushed like a tin can. Someone saw a set of tire tracks heading off the mountainside and called it in once they saw the wreckage at the bottom.

This New Year’s Eve, I finally got the courage to try to remove the last of Lena’s clothes from the house. The closet had been cleared, leaving only the items she kept in the linen trunk. I painstakingly packed up her favorite skirts, dresses and shoes. My heart felt emptier with every new item I removed from it.

My heart broke to find a heart shaped box at the bottom, one I’d never seen before. A tag was taped atop it; my name scrawled across it in red ink. There was no lock; no key to be found. Only a simple, metal clasp kept me from the last gift my wife would ever give me.

My fingers fumbled to open it in a frenzied anticipation. The endless possibilities of her love called to me from inside. Once it opened, I felt my soul freeze and then shatter. Tears ran down my face as I punched our closet walls until my knuckles bled.

Laid inside, was a simple scrap of bloodied paper. A set of latitude and longitude coordinates (which I found led to the same mountainside her car was found at the bottom at) was written on it in my wife’s handwriting; along with a message.

Dear Tobyn,

I know about you and Janice. It always killed me that Thomas had your eyes. — Lena

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