Tag: Fiction

Now Your True Life Begins

By Claudia Wair                                                                                                              

It’s dark early morning when they take you out of your cell at the county jail. They lead you to a waiting bus, full of other prisoners. The detainees are all Black, like you. Everyone here has been charged with the same crime: taking a white man’s job.

The people on the bus are quiet. Some sleep, others stare with frightened eyes out the windows. Your destination is the State Re-education Camp.

At your trial, you argued that your job as a writer was unique. No white man could write the same words. But the judge laughed and said, Your words don’t matter. Then he banned your books, made you watch as they burned.

It’s late morning when you arrive at the camp and the sun is already hot on your skin. The guards separate the women from the men. You join the line of women and are led to a bunkhouse that smells of old sweat. When the guards leave, everyone introduces themselves: doctors, lawyers, college professors. You feel insignificant with your master’s degree in English literature. When it’s your turn, you say I’m a writer. They burned my books, scrubbed me from the internet. The women shake their heads, suck their teeth in sympathy.

Silence descends when your Instructor enters, a white woman with a cruel sneer. Forget your past lives, she says. Now, your true lives begin. The lives you should have always led.

You’re told that here you will learn to be subservient to white people. That you will learn to love serving them. You know this isn’t true.

During the months of your incarceration, you endure beatings, forced labor, sleep deprivation. You survive it all. Not everyone does.

They humiliate you. They try to make you believe you are less.

They fail.

One day, without explanation, they release you to a halfway house in a strange city. You vow to never lift a finger to serve them. This will lead to prison—or worse—so you run.

You pass yourself off as an Unemployable. You sleep in a hard-to-find corner of an abandoned building, get donations of food and supplies from church basements. You trade secondhand clothes for basic survival gear. You buy information with fresh fruit. Then you set off for the mountains.

You’re chasing whispers and rumors. You follow hand-drawn maps. You stop at secret safehouses, get help from unlikely sources.

By some miracle, you evade the Race Police and the Nazi militias. A Black truck driver stops along the highway and gives you a ride out of the state. You could both go to prison for this. He accepts the risk and muses about following you one day.

After weeks of hiking in the mountains alone, you find the Free People. Your joy at seeing healthy Black and brown faces nearly breaks you. After you recover from your journey, you join the others growing food on the community’s farm. You teach the children using banned literature and history books.

Soon, you are almost yourself again.

The Free People remember your writing. They give you pen and paper and ask you to tell your story. You tell your story. You tell all the stories. One day, you swear, the world will read them.

The community is growing. White allies bring supplies when they can. Clothes, tools, guns.

You learn how to defend your new home. Cradling your rifle, you scan the shadowy forest for intruders. You wonder how you’d acquit yourself if faced with the people who deny your humanity. The people who tried to break you. The people who took your old life away.  

A grim smile crosses your face. Because you know what you’ve lost. Because you know what the world has lost.

Your jaw tightens, your blood burns, and part of you aches for the chance to make someone pay. You are fueled by rage and sorrow and just enough hope to keep going. Enough to aim the rifle and pull the trigger.

Claudia Wair is a Black writer living in Virginia. Her fiction has been nominated for the Pushcart Prize, Best Microfiction, Best of the Net, and Best Small Fictions. Her work has appeared in Pithead Chapel, Astrolabe, Writers Resist, JMWW, and elsewhere. She can be found at claudiawair.com or on Bluesky @CWTellsTales.bsky.social. 

Mural by Ashley Cathey, at Hartford Hall, Jefferson Technical and Community College, Louisville, Kentucky.

Photo credit: Don Sniegowski via a Creative Commons license.

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Thank you for reading! If you appreciate creative resistance and would like to support it, you can make a small, medium or large donation to Writers Resist on our Give a Sawbuck page.

The Heron

By Sam Rafferty

Sunset was approaching when the birdwatcher kayaked deep into the swamp. She hid behind shrubs, which offered a full view of the cypress trees where several herons would soon arrive to roost for the night. The trees reminded the birdwatcher of the uncomfortable debutante balls of her youth. Their roots spread into the water like bell-shaped skirts, and Spanish moss hung from their branches like ringlets of aerosol-laden hair. Her skin still itched at the thought of the crinoline brushing her thighs while she paraded around the ballroom with a flock of other young girls, all whirring in white satin, watched by middle-aged men.

When the breeze blew past her, the birdwatcher shivered and reached for the jacket at her feet. She put it over her shoulders, marveling at how the thick flannel still smelled like her ex-husband, a mix of cheap shampoo and hand-rolled cigarettes. She remembered with a pang that today was Thanksgiving, and he was probably smoking those same cigarettes on the porch of his new home. His new wife was likely inside making a sweet potato casserole they would consider a vegetable despite the marshmallow crust on top. His new kids were probably running around the house, throwing a football that should have made its way outside.

Before the divorce, the birdwatcher and her husband had endured quiet holidays with no children playing and no extended family nearby. Their only guest was the specter of unspoken tension over the question of offspring. Like a heron exchanging sticks with his chosen mate, he had gone through elaborate courtship rituals, preparing to pass on his genetic material through the fertile body of the female before him, only to find that her body was not so fertile, and worse still, that her will was not so bent toward the development of progeny. He had seethed in his disappointment, accusing her of “giving up.” What the birdwatcher had done, however, was notice that she felt no longing to share the high-pitched “sweet-sweet” of the warbler with a child at her heels. She had no desire to hover over a squawking brood in a perfectly crafted nest. Her desires bent instead toward a quiet solitude that motherhood could never provide.

The sun sank lower, leaving an orange haze over the canopy. The birdwatcher sat still in the kayak, breathless, waiting for the loud, shrill cry of a heron. A large group of squawking ibis flew overhead, chaotic white feathers clouding the sky. The birdwatcher held some disdain toward ibis for the way they constantly congregated, digging in the mud with their downturned bills. Ibis held no great love for silence, stillness, or solitude. Herons, on the other hand, were solitary visual hunters, waiting patiently, watching, then striking their prey at the most opportune moment.

Soon, the herons began to fly overhead, coming slowly, one at a time. Their wide wings spread over her, temporarily blocking out what was left of the day’s sunlight. They settled in the branches, grouped in pairs, spread out among the trees. The birdwatcher noticed one heron set apart from the others. It was relatively small, likely a female. She seemed agitated, head turning side to side as if watching for a predator to emerge. The birdwatcher wondered if the heron had been hurt in some way. Though they were once endangered, reduced to hat feathers by opportunistic hunters, herons were protected from humans now, at least in theory. She fixed her binoculars on the bird’s yellow eyes, and it seemed to stare back at her. The birdwatcher saw her own isolation and her fierce desire for freedom reflected in the heron’s gaze. There they stayed, two solitary beings contemplating one another while dusk fell over the swamp.

Darkness thickened, and the birdwatcher felt a need to get back to the warmth and safety of her car. Putting on a headlamp, she began to paddle. Occasionally, she would see alligator eyes peering out of the water at her, shining like the headlights of beastly cars that hid beneath the surface of the black water. The sounds of night assailed her ears: croaking frogs, the hooting “Who cooks for you?” of the barred owl, raccoons scampering over leaves on the banks, the wingbeats of bats overhead.

The birdwatcher’s body warmed as she paddled, or maybe, she thought, this was another flash of heat announcing her imminent transition to crone. When she paused to remove her flannel coat, she felt an eerie sense of being watched, eyes taking in the shape of her shoulders, the curve of her neck, the movement of her hands.

Gazing around, she could not see anything unusual within the radius of her headlamp’s glow. She continued paddling, faster, but taking care not to become frantic. After a few interminable minutes, the birdwatcher was nearly at the dock, which was only a short hike through the woods away from her car. She heard a loud screech as wide wings deepened the darkness over her head. She jumped at the sound, and the paddle slipped from her hands.

Instinctively, she reached for the handle as it sank into the black water, barely grasping the end before it drifted away. She began to paddle again, then shuddered, realizing how foolish she had been to reach her arm into the water where so many predators lay waiting to sink their teeth into vulnerable flesh.

The birdwatcher felt relieved when she pulled up to the dock. Stepping on the warped wooden boards, she leaned over to hoist the kayak up. Then she heard another paddle slapping the water. She peered out, straining her eyes to take in the surroundings illuminated by her headlamp. She could see no one, so she rationalized her fear as the anxiety of a woman alone and continued with her task, beginning the slow process of carting the kayak down the trail to her car.

The trail was overgrown even in winter. Palmettos filled the underbrush beneath towering pines and sprawling oaks, the latter of which had left their leaves to become a carpet of damp brown littering the sandy soil. Hairy tendrils of poison ivy vines circled the trunks and exposed roots of the trees. The birdwatcher made her way down the little worn path, scanning the ground for anything that might impede her: fallen limbs, large rocks, an armadillo making its way through the forest.

When she looked up to see what progress she had made toward the car, her heart leaped in her chest, and she dropped the kayak. Inches in front of her was a man standing stock still on the path. Black hair hung in tangles around his shoulders. The patches of the skin on his face that were not covered by his unkempt beard were translucent. He wore thick layers of camouflage with a rifle slung across his hunched shoulders. An unsheathed machete hung from a belt around his narrow waist. The birdwatcher froze in his presence.

“What’s a girl like you doin’ alone in the woods at night?” he asked, his voice a thick, slow drawl.

“I’m just going home,” was all she could sputter as a reply. It was as though, by calling her a girl, he had suddenly reduced her to a child in ribbon-laden pigtails, murmuring a compulsorily polite, “Yes, sir.”

“Well, let me help you then,” he crooned, crossing close to her as he went to pick up the kayak.

The birdwatcher hesitated. Should she walk with this stranger? Was he a threat? She could take off, running through the trees, but could she outpace him if she did? Though he looked slightly older than her, the birdwatcher took note of the sinewy frame of the stranger as he effortlessly pulled the boat.

She walked silently beside him down the path, hoping against instinct that he was simply showing kindness, though the moonlight reflecting off his machete kept her from feeling at ease.

“So, you never answered my question. What were you doin’ out here?” the stranger pressed.

“Birdwatching.”

“Birdwatching! Well, I’ll be damned. I guess you could call me a bit of a birdwatcher, too. Watch ’em to hunt ’em, at least.” He let out a loud, breathy laugh.

Now was not the time to lecture on the fact that this was a wildlife refuge where hunting was strictly prohibited, so she nervously laughed instead. The birdwatcher’s mind went back to the solitary heron she had seen earlier that evening, remembering her agitation. Had this man been hunting her?

“That’s why I’ve got this knife here. Cuts right through the neck of a bird.” While he spoke, the stranger pulled the machete out of his belt, holding it up as he turned toward her. He stared into her eyes, holding his gaze for an uncomfortably long moment.

The birdwatcher shivered, ready to take her flight, but he slowly put the weapon away. She continued to walk with the stranger, listening to the sound of leaves crunching underfoot, until, after what seemed like an eternity, her feet began to tread over the gravel of the parking lot.

He helped her tie the kayak to the top of the car. Quickly, she thanked him and reached for the door handle, but his rough hands grabbed her arm.

“Drop the keys,” he demanded. She felt the cold steel of the machete hit the back of her neck. Even as her stomach dropped in terror, she felt a sense of vindication. She had known this snake for what he was and had sensed his predatory nature, even if she had fallen into his inevitable trap.

He twisted her arm painfully, repeating, “Drop the keys.” She did as she was told. He turned her around forcefully, and she saw that all the false kindness had vanished from his face. He gripped her tightly, the knife against her throat.

 “I’ve been watching you, just like you watch them birds.” He laughed. “You got no husband. No family. No friends. No one to come looking—”

His words were drowned out by a loud shriek overhead. The noise caused the man to flinch just enough to lose his grip on the birdwatcher’s arm. She jerked away, running back toward the woods.

She ran from the man wielding the machete behind her.

But she also ran from the uncle she had been forced to hug at Christmas, though her skin crawled when he placed his hand on her thighs.

She ran from the high school boyfriend who had begged her so often for a blow job that she finally gave in, the taste of his semen like ashes in her mouth.

She ran from the employer who “jokingly” insinuated that sleeping with him could lead to a promotion.

She ran from the disbelieving look on her husband’s face when she told him she would not pursue another round of IVF.

She ran from a lifetime of being stripped of her autonomy and shunned when she tried to reclaim it.

She ran until those rough hands grabbed her once again. She felt her hope collapse as she fell to her knees.

Then, suddenly, she saw it. Gray-blue feathers spanning six feet, neck bent into a taut S-curve. Even in the dim light, the birdwatcher could make out a vision of the solitary female heron she had seen before. She saw a gleam of recognition in the bird’s yellow eyes as it let out a great shriek, diving down toward her assailant. The heron swooped onto his back, knocking him sideways and freeing the birdwatcher. She saw the bird dive its long bill into the man’s eye. His screams echoed through the trees, setting off a chorus of howling coyotes. Warm blood sprayed onto the birdwatcher’s arm, lifting her from her momentary despair. She felt as though she could finally flee all that threatened her solitude.

Grabbing the machete the attacker had dropped in his moment of pain, the birdwatcher ran back through the woods to the parking lot. She dropped down next to her vehicle, her hands moving over the gravel, searching for the keys. Her heart beat violently when she finally grasped them and scrambled to her feet, lurching the door open and slamming it shut. As she cranked the ignition, she could see the man, blood streaming down his face, marching blindly out of the woods toward her, rifle in hand. Then the heron flew past him once more, causing him to stumble backward. The birdwatcher took one last look at the great, terrifying creature and drove off into the night.

Sam Rafferty (she/her) is a Georgia native whose writing often explores the experiences of women in the South. Her other stories are published or forthcoming in Avalon Literary Review, The Sunlight Press, and The Dead Mule School of Southern Literature. You can follow her writing in Instagram at @samraffertywrites.

Photo by Debbie Hall, Writers Resist Poetry Editor. Follow her photographic work on Instagram at @debbie.hall.poet.photog.

A note from Writers Resist
Thank you for reading! If you appreciate creative resistance and would like to support it, you can make a small, medium or large donation to Writers Resist on our Give a Sawbuck page.

Welcome to Writers Resist the 2025 Summer of Resistance Issue

Wouldn’t it be dandy if this season were a 21st century version of the Summer of Love, but more inclined toward the civil rights movement? An uprising of all ages—of every identity!—leading a powerful return to our generations-long quest for liberty and justice for all; for diversity, equity and inclusion; for a moral commitment to our three branches of government, our pursuit of a true democracy, our vision of what we might be?

Yes, that would be dandy.

This issue launches after the 14 June protests, and we saw you all were on streets across the nation, with oh-so-clever signage, lots of peace and love, and being absolutely dandy.

Thank you—don’t stop!

But first, we’ll take a moment to offer our fondest farewell to René Marzuk, editor extraordinaire and exceptional human being. We’ve been grateful for his presence on the Writers Resist team. We will miss him sorely and lovingly.

A note from René—

In August of 2022 (more than two and a half years ago!), the editors of Writers Resist welcomed me as one of their own. Since then, I’ve had the privilege of reading and considering (mostly) poetry submissions from all over the world. Working closely with Debbie, I read pieces carefully and consistently, trying to find expressions of resistance that took full advantage of the resources available to poetry. As I get ready to step down from my role, I look back with joy to all of the instances in which I found not only what I thought I was looking for, but much, much more.

Early on, I learned that Writers Resist offers a platform for resistance and community that is in turn supported by the generosity and love of those who keep it running. Thank you so much for creating and maintaining this space, K-B, and thank you all for allowing me to be one of you during the last couple of years.

Keep writing the resistance, friends!

Saludos,
René

And now, in between protests, please enjoy the rich contents of our Summer 2025 issue—and join us for Writers Resist Reads, a virtual celebration of this issue, on Saturday 16 August, at 5:00 p.m. PACIFIC. Email WritersResist@gmail.com for the Zoom link.

CONTENTS

Work Trip by Alyssa Curcio

Manure by Robert Delilah

The Neighbor’s Goldfish by Ashley Dryden

Freedom Calls (Commemorating Harriett Tubman’s Promotion to Brigadier General in the State of Maryland) by Ellen Girardeau Kempler

s k i n by Rebecca Havens

Awaiting Harris’ Concession Speech November 6, 2024 by Dotty LeMieux

Standard Safety Recommendations: Revised, 2025 by Ryan McCarty

Stars and Stripes: Registering Voters in the Travis County Jail by Lauren Oertel

Inauguration Day by Linda Parsons

The Age of Unreason by Matthew Sam Prendergast

The Bishop by Lao Rubert

Marked by Fendy Satria Tulodo

Saved by Phyllis Wax

you’re all for autism awareness ’til by Lauren Withrow

Photo credit: K-B Gressitt, taken at Greenwood Rising, a Tulsa, Oklahoma, museum that will “educate Oklahomans and Americans about the [1921] Race Massacre and its impact on the state and Nation, remember its victims and survivors, and create an environment conducive to fostering sustainable entrepreneurship and heritage tourism within the Greenwood District specifically, and North Tulsa generally.”

Manure

By Robert Delilah

That morning, something jammed the automatic sweeper.

Every hour—on the hour—the sweeper pushed the cowshit that matriculated from the pens above to the waiting troughs just beneath the barn floor. Thanks to the sweeper, the sludge would be shunted off into the pit-like tank beneath it all, instead of rising through the grates as a massive, gut-churning lake. The pit was pumped clean by truck every other week or so; its contents processed, bagged, and sold off to hardware stores, flower shops and, of course, farms.

No one noticed the jam until well into the afternoon, so the troughs had very nearly begun to overflow. But instead of calling for a mechanic, Guillermo’s foreman, Ted, handed Guillermo a twelve-pound sledgehammer, one of those with most of its haft sawn off—the sort used by idiots and oilmen. Between clenched, meth-cooked teeth, Ted hissed two words:

“FIX. IT.”

Guillermo spoke English.

Rather well in fact, as he liked to brag to no one anymore.

But he also liked to pretend he could not. Ted had yet to discover this of course. And ever since Guillermo had been brought to the farm more than three years prior, the two of them had remained on a two-word basis—broken jaw or no. He’d gotten out of this sort of work before, but Guillermo clocked within Ted’s eyes a bloodshot, drug-wired mania and he knew, understanding or no, that this time Ted would broker no argument.

Two days ago, Julia was shipped off to a “facility.” One of the ones the other laborers fearfully murmured about, as if only by being overheard they might themselves be dragged there screaming.

They’d brought Julia to the farm some months back. She spoke little—one-word responses to most anything. Perhaps that was what drew Guillermo to her. But where Guillermo’s silence spoke of cold acceptance, Julia’s screamed of a smoldering rage only just held in check. She kept a buck knife in her pillow. Somehow neither the other laborers nor the foremen ever found out about it. Guillermo himself discovered it one morning when trying to wake her.

He’d lied and told the others he’d cut his hand on a bit of barbwire.

Guillermo and Julia shared meals from then on. And in the ensuing weeks the girl, barely thirteen, became somewhat of a de facto niece to him. He no longer had any family of his own, and if she did, she never spoke of them. Perhaps Guillermo was simply lonely; he suspected as much anyway.

One day, Julia was picking muddy green onions when, shrouded in the cool shadow of a domineering cloud, an uncalloused hand grabbed for her ass.

Guillermo, standing in the sun a field away, heard the subsequent pop of bird-bone knuckles cleaving jawbone. The sound reminded Guillermo of a framer he used to know in Ciudad who’d drive a five-inch nail into rough-sawn timber with just one swing. Ted awoke a while later, sporting a broken jaw and a freshly purple bruise which bled down into his neck.

ICE was there in the hour.

Guillermo felt Julia’s buck knife press against the inside of his left boot when he rounded the back of the cow pen where a line of grates led down into the machinery’s bowels. Crossing a rusted trapdoor complete with ancient, grime-coated padlock, he knelt and unfastened a cross-stitched aluminum panel, then shimmied into the crawlspace. Once inside, still stooped, he stepped from joist to joist, then back along the underpan’s entire length to find where the thing had jammed. The grate above dripped constantly. And every minute or so, a fresh cow pie would slither past him into the already overflowing troughs. There were several near-misses. And he heard little over the clang and clamor of hooves against concrete and steel just above his head. The smell within was dull and sulfurous, but a tang of metallic sweetness rested on the underside of his tongue. Guillermo had worked on this end of the farm since he’d arrived. After the first month, he’d stopped noticing the fetid reek that pervaded the place. Yet now, balancing above a veritable lake of shit, he was pressed once more to reckon with the stench. Grease-flecked and vile. Undeniable.

At last, after some tens of minutes, he located the problem: a rock—practically a small boulder—trapped in one of the tumblers. It was wedged within its teeth like a particularly stubborn seed.

Guillermo perched his foot on an angular joist to straddle the tumbler’s weighty servomechanism. The steel creaked as Guillermo felt the beam itself sag. He froze, loitering between heartbeats, waiting for the rig to inevitably snap apart and collapse.

Bracing his back against the damp ceiling, he readied the sledge, angling to dislodge the rock with one momentous blow.

WHAM.

Brittle flecks shot out as the impact marred the surface of what he realized then was a solid chunk of concrete. He shut his eyes as the spray of chips and dust flew into his face.

It was a slim, half-moment—a twitch within a hesitant spell—but that’s all it took.

Guillermo’s weight shifted, and a forgotten slick of grease leaking from the servo caused his left foot to slide, then slip out from under him. He pitched forward, dropping the sledge before extending his arms to try to catch onto the railing. But, gripping blindly, he missed. Guillermo’s chest slammed hard onto the wedged concrete. The air, forced from his lungs, came out his mouth in sputters. The ensuing impact of rib cage-to-stone was enough to unseat the chunk and Guillermo, flailing, tumbled downwards with it into the awaiting troughs.

He landed with a sickening squelch, and before Guillermo could grasp a sense of where he was or what had happened, a whirring sounded above him, and the rolling tumblers hummed once more to life. Shuffled along the top of the trough’s putrid surface, Guillermo was ferried down a waterfall and into an awaiting well of shit and cow piss. Guillermo feared he might drown and was sure he’d broken his neck. But he rose and wiped at his eyes. No matter how thoroughly he smeared away the refuse, he saw only dark.

In time, though, his eyes adjusted. He gleaned the vague profile of the pit’s sheet metal sides and figured a rough outline of its dimensions by the scant illumination shining through the gaps of the machinery overhead. Guillermo found himself strangely calm. So long as someone looked for him in the next several hours, that someone would find him.

But several hours did pass. Eventually, he started shouting, and then he began to scream.

Yet even these little desperations couldn’t carry past the grunts and the chuffs, the shuffling of hooves on steel, nor past the mechanical drone that shook his skull whenever the servos hummed again to motion. Every hour, the shoots opened and—for the briefest of moments—Guillermo saw dregs of bright sunlight peak through until another fresh load was swept into the pit to pile atop him. And each time Guillermo could do little but hug the far wall and pray.

It was when the sludge rose to his chest, when the subterranean chill had sunk fully into him, that he found himself thinking of the barn’s tin roof, roasting like the dangerous little hotplate he used to warm his coffee; he thought of tamales, cold beer and good sex. And, for reasons he couldn’t quite explain, the sun most of all.

Then he spotted it.

Corroded. As thin at parts as a coat hanger. A grimy, decaying service ladder stuck out of the wall.

Hope alighting within him, Guillermo swam to the opposite wall. Shaking with the effort, buoyed by liquid manure, he lifted himself up onto the bottom-most rung set seven feet from the floor. He climbed, rung by rung, shivering wildly with chill, as his limbs howled and begged him to stop. But Guillermo knew better than to listen. He’d been through worse. He survived the crossing. Survived the Coyotes, and the Cartel. And that bastard Ted. He promised himself he would survive more after this.

So he climbed—more than seventy, eighty feet—until he was under the trap door leading up and out to freedom. Hooking an elbow onto the top rung, Guillermo lifted a hand to the trap door and pushed hard.

CLUNK.

He felt the door catch, exposing a bare inch of warmth and daylight before stopping short on the rusted padlock he’d noticed earlier.

It was locked.

Manic tears dug deep trenches down his stained face as, without thinking, Guillermo seized Julia’s knife from his boot, holding the blade momentarily with his teeth to adjust his grip on the rail. The taste of steel and copper-tinged shit was irrelevant. With a shaking hand he lifted the knife and wrenched hard against the underside of the padlock.

The blade broke with a snap and only a jagged half of it remained.

Choking, sobbing, and with the very last of his strength leaving him, the trap door clattered back into place, casting Guillermo again into darkness. He hung onto the top rung, clutching the broken knife, and cried.

Thump THUMP.

Thump… THUMP THUMP.

Hooves, Guillermo thought. Or were they footsteps? Was he imagining it?

There was a jingling of keys, and a neat click from the padlock. Sunlight blinded Guillermo as the oubliette’s trapdoor was hurled open above him, revealing a crouched and sniggering figure.

Ted flashed crooked grey-and-yellow teeth. “Got a little stuck, eh?”

Guillermo stared, fumbling to extend a grime-laden hand, but the foreman made no motion.

“How’d you get your hands on that?” Ted asked, raising a finger towards the broken buck knife.

Guillermo didn’t answer. Switching his grip, he extended his free hand towards Ted.

Ted grinned, just out of reach, his eyes still transfixed on the thing in Guillermo’s hand.

Then there came a groan and a creak. One end of the rung onto which Guillermo had hooked himself snapped suddenly free. The corroded steel screamed as it bent and warped, while the rung on which Guillermo’s feet were set began to bow. Guillermo wobbled, trying in vain to balance himself in some way that would stop him from toppling backwards into the pit.

Ted made no motion.

Fury welled within Guillermo. Where before he was cold and paled by chill, he now felt his head grow hot, felt his ears burn red. Like candle wax, whoever he was, whoever he’d been before, melted away, leaving only the burnt wick of rage—and a sole impulse.

Guillermo leapt.

The rung broke clean from the wall as Guillermo, in one frenzied strike, stabbed Julia’s broken buck knife above Ted’s collarbone, hooking him like a fish caught by the gills. There was a spurt of scarlet spray as Ted, yellow eyes suddenly wide, pitched forward. With his other hand—firm and calloused—Guillermo seized Ted’s khaki-yellow collar and yanked down, hard.

They fell. Together. Ted struggled hopelessly in the air.

But in the moments before the two of them landed head-first into the pool of liquid refuse, without any prospect of survival or escape, the last vestige of Guillermo gave thought to Julia.

He hoped she was okay.

Robert Delilah is a writer and comedian based in San Diego, California. His written work focuses on the ridiculous, the unsettling and the uncanny. Previous credits include “The Numbers,” published in Black Sheep: Unique Tales of Terror and Wonder issue No. 17, and the comic short “Peel” as part of an upcoming horror anthology from The Panel Smiths comics collective.

Photo credit: James Whatley via a Creative Commons license.

A note from Writers Resist
Thank you for reading! If you appreciate creative resistance and would like to support it, you can make a small, medium or large donation to Writers Resist from our Give a Sawbuck page.

The Neighbor’s Goldfish

By Ashley Dryden

I saw her today, the next-door neighbor’s goldfish.

They keep her in a shabby, old pond in their backyard where the lawn meets the patio. I watch her swim around the lily pads from my second-floor bedroom window, every splash of her tail makes ripples along the surface of the water.

The neighbors like the attention she brings. They’re a cheerful, young couple who love to show her off, always having parties in the backyard. And when the other neighbors learn about the pond, they learn about the goldfish too. I was never invited but the noise they make keeps me up late. The only thing that’s quiet in the neighbor’s yard is the coin jar they keep in the center of their patio table.

The wife loves to go on and on about the goldfish. She spends hours chatting about how the fish is a fancy breed and how fancy breeds often get sick and require higher maintenance. It’s the only thing she ever talks about with anyone. The husband is just happy to be there. He isn’t afraid to mention that the goldfish belongs to his wife, not him. He’s fine with it and often mentions how the wife had the goldfish for many years before she met him. Sometimes he posts photos on social media of him standing next to the goldfish.

.     .     .

It was a few weeks ago that I noticed something. Through my binoculars, the shimmering orange goldfish was struggling on its side when she tried to roll herself upright. Her scales had begun to flake, and the delicate fins were rotten and torn. In the murky water, I could hardly see her. The thick punch of cloudiness had caused the lily pads to wither. It took effort to see the goldfish under the smoky water, and for a moment, I wondered if she was even there.

I wasn’t sure if I should say anything at first. I didn’t know anything about goldfish. But the neighbors claimed they did. The wife was glad when someone brought her up at a party after seeing the goldfish tilting to the right.

The wife insisted it was due to the breed and that it came with health problems. She wasn’t silent for the rest of the party, laughing and smiling away. Neither was the coin jar.

The goldfish, though, kept declining and the community began to fear the worst. I remember when the cops were called to the neighbor’s house. The wife was screaming and kicking her feet as the officer took the goldfish away. The goldfish was given to the old lady at the end of the cul-de-sac. She posted pictures of herself standing next to the goldfish playfully swishing around in a clean tank. Nobody attended the wife’s parties anymore. The coin jar was empty.

But a few days later, binoculars in hand, I saw the goldfish swimming in the pond again, her scales shining in the moonlight. The wife stood on the patio looking over the pond. She had a pair of scissors in one hand and a bottle of gunk in the other. I couldn’t make out what type of gunk it was, but it sloshed around the nose of the bottle while she poured it into the pond. Then she took the goldfish out of the pond by its tail and beat it against the side of the house. She smacked it hard, the scales popped off like sparks from fireworks and blood splashed onto the patio. At the end of the thrashing, the wife took the scissors and cut up her fins before throwing her back into the pond.

.     .     .

It’s not long before the neighbors start attending the wife’s parties again. Nobody mentions “the incident,” and those who bring up the old lady in front of the wife are kicked out. Every so often I look over at the pond and see the goldfish, her fins shorter, her speed slower.

One day, after the neighbors leave the house, I sneak into the yard to see the goldfish. When her head comes to the surface, I show her my bucket and tell her I can get her out of this place. I promise I will take her somewhere safe where she will never be beaten again.

“You don’t know what you’re talking about,” the fish says. “The people in this house love me. I’m not going to let anyone take me away ever again. And the coin jar needs to be fed so my people are fed.”

I beg her to listen, but she bites my finger and swims under a lily pad. I go back home.

.     .     .

So, yes, I saw her today, the neighbor’s goldfish. The police found her body on the patio this morning.

.     .     .

I’m a writer and a college graduate who has always been a fan of symbolism and horror. I’m into writing, video game making, and photography. I have two dogs at home, and I love my parents.

Photo credit: Güldem Üstün via a creative Commons license.

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s k i n

By Rebecca Havens

She is dancing by the entrance. Graceful, slow-then-fast; even Helen can neither compete nor look away.

Drinking in the shadows, I imagine all the shapes violence comes in, collectively stomping her meat into the pavement. I am one with the darkness—but I swear, I can see each layer of skin even through this candlelight, even from across the room, even with her flitting about this place, hip bones on full display. I will painstakingly peel, layer by layer like an onion, to form small arrays of flesh, penetrable by the light.

I will hang them up to create monotone papel picado. Sheet by sheet spread onto my windowpane until it consumes the sunlight that tries to come through the door to disturb this dark romance. How is there so much skin unraveled? How is there so much skin still on her? Spread as thin as a whisper across mountaintops, I could cover the vast seafloor with her remnants. A declaration of some sort. Man makes meaning out of fluff; so I will construct meaning out of this pastime as well.

Dermis, thicker. Slowly, would-be tenderly, unearthing filthy filmy sacrifices to a god I do not believe in. Lung tas claiming stake to this apartment, to these long plank floors and its dust-catching corners, just as I am claiming stake to her.

To love is a craft—but so is it to hate.

Tissue, fat, muscle, that fleshy softness and her blood. Spreading, spreading, I cover my desk, my best coffee mugs, my trash can and the sink in the vacant parts.

I Sweeney Todd her innards, mixing her meat with other meats to create a bouquet of unmatched delicacy. Potluck indeed.

And a heart. I want to pour resin over this heart, I want to taxidermy it and keep it close. I want to whittle wood into its likeness. I want to create an altar to this grim offering.

Next time you tell me “boys will be boys,” I will smile my mischievous smile, drop my head, and nod to acknowledge this sin.

Rebecca Havens is a happy person. They work in the political space. They mostly write fiction and poetry, but adore everything.

Photo credit: Christian y Sergio Velasco via a Creative Commons license.

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Enough

By Alyssa Beatty

I add another rowan branch to the fire underneath the brazier and test the water with my pinky. Almost hot enough. A quick count of the bundles of herbs on the kitchen counter to make sure I have everything I need. Rose-tinted sunset streams in through my back door, propped open with a cinder block. It’s a signal to anyone who needs me.

First in is Mr. Murphy, who needs a tea for his arthritis. I decant a measure of hot water into an old glass Coke bottle, sprinkle in the herbs, and seal the top with wax.

“Let it steep until you get home. Drink it all. It’ll taste like ass, but it will help,” I tell him.

He ducks his head in thanks, holding out a loaf of fresh baked bread from his wife. He’s never said a word to me, but he’s also never missed a visit.

When he’s shuffled out the back door, I sit at the kitchen table, waiting. I should turn the radio on, for the illusion of company. But it seems like too much effort to get up again.

I turn the little mustang figurine toward the door, letting him see the sky. He’s my reminder, for days like today when I’m feeling worn out, of why I’m here. Mustangs were brought to a place they didn’t really belong and made it their own so completely that they became synonymous with their adopted landscape. I don’t belong here either. I’m a city girl at heart, more at home with concrete and steel than the endless flat plains that surround this speck of a town.

Some people think witches shouldn’t live in cities; that they need to have their feet on bare earth, see the sky and hear the wind in the trees. But those people have never harvested the energy of a crowd at a street fair or bathed naked in the moonlight reflected off a skyscraper.

Before I start to feel too sorry for myself, Martha Sperry knocks on the door. I’ve told her a million times if the door is open, she doesn’t need to knock, but small-town politeness is ingrained in her.

“Come on in, Martha. Need a refill?” I rise from the table, trying to disguise my weariness.

“Yes, please, ma’am.”

Martha’s son suffers from the worst case of cystic acne I’ve ever seen. Poor kid’s face looks like a map of the moon. He’d never agree to treating it with what I’m pretty sure Martha’s husband calls “devil’s brews,” but my tea works wonders for skin conditions. Martha’s been slipping it into her son’s dessert every night, and he’s come so far out of his shell he asked a girl to homecoming. Small victories.

I stir the herbs into the hot water, carefully pouring the brew into a yellow Tupperware bowl. As far as her husband knows Martha and I have been swapping soup in this bowl for the last three months. She takes it carefully and pulls out a hand crocheted rose and gold shawl, the exact colors of the sky outside. She’s really talented. I can’t help but picture her at an artisan market in the city, selling her wares for a hundred bucks a pop.

I need to stop thinking about the city. I’m here now. I stroke my finger along the mustang’s side. I picked him up at a swap meet on the trip here. He’s inexpertly cast, the metal lumpy and undefined on one side. But some magic leaked into his legs; they flow, capturing the joy of motion. He looks free.

It’s almost time. I dim the lantern on the table. The next client won’t want me to see her face or know her name. I wish I could concoct a tea that would take her shame and lay it squarely onto the man who should bear it. Lay it so squarely it puts him in the ground. I close my eyes and take deep calming breaths, visualizing my mustang, hooves thundering on the earth.

She slips in so quietly, trying to make herself small. My heart aches. Even in the dim light I can see the bruise blooming on her jaw. There are other bruises, too, I know, hidden under her loose sweatpants and oversized hoodie. On her wrists. Her thighs. She can’t be more than sixteen.

“Are you the lady they told me about? The one who helps . . . girls in trouble?’

“I am. Sit down. I’ll get started.”

“I don’t have money. The clinic . . . it used to be free.”

The clinic has been scorched rubble for two years now.

“I don’t take money.”

I scoop the water from the brazier with a jade cup, for peace.

“Will it hurt?” she whispers, as she watches me mix the herbs.

“Yes.” No use lying to her. “You’ll feel nauseated. You might throw up. And you’ll bleed. A lot. Drink ginger ale, real stuff, not Canada Dry, and rest as much as you can, until it’s over.”

“What will I tell my dad?”

There’s a lot of things I want to say to her father, none of them pleasant.

“Tell him you have the flu. The symptoms aren’t too far off. Burn or bury your pads, if you can.”

She nods, eyes downcast. Tears glimmer in the lanternlight.

“It’s not your fault, you know,” I murmur, filling the Coke bottle, melting the wax.

She clears her throat, taps her finger on the mustang’s nose.

“I like this. The way it looks like he’s running. Where’d you get it?”

“Someplace between here and San Francisco.”

“I’d like to go there, someday. Or anywhere, really.”

There’s no potion I can brew that will get her out of this town.

I offer her the bottle, and she slips it into her hoodie pocket. Just before she disappears into the night she whirls and hugs me, stick-thin arms around my waist.

“Thanks.”

I turn the lantern off. Starlight streams in; my mustang runs in their shimmer. I picture the girl running too, long legs skimming prairie grass, leaving this place behind. I picture it as hard as I can. Maybe it will be enough.

Alyssa Beatty lives and writes in Brooklyn, NY. Her work has appeared in Luna Station Quarterly, Flash Fiction Magazine, and Spread: Tales of Deadly Flora. Find her at alyssabeattywrites.com.

Photo credit: Madhu Madhavan via a Creative Commons license.

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She, I, You, We: Every Woman

By MM Schreier

FIFTEEN

She’s afraid her skirt’s too short, but gives it a little hip-swish, anyway. People are watching. If she owns it, maybe they won’t give her the side eye. Wishing she wore leggings, she considers tugging the skirt’s hem down, as if the sparse fabric could magically cover more of her legs, but knows if she does, it will just give them something else to gossip about.

Instead, she shifts the heavy calculus book that’s tucked under her arm so the title shows. She ignores imagined whispers of thunder thighs and decides it’s better to appear clever. Still, there’s a fine line between chic-smart and nerdy-smart. Her stomach clenches, and she struggles to keep the hint of a coy smile on her lips. She flips the book over and hugs it to her chest. Maybe everyone doesn’t need to know she’s in advanced placement math. She shimmies her hips again and swallows a sigh.

A broad-shouldered jock in a letterman’s jacket gives her a wolf whistle. It cuts across the throng of students. An unnatural hush falls over the crowd as too many eyes focus on her to see how she’ll react. She tosses her hair, blows the boy a kiss, then ducks into the bathroom before anyone can see her cheeks flush crimson.

While she waits for the halls to clear, she touches up her makeup in the mirror. Eyeliner, mascara, powder. A spritz of perfume, a swipe of blush. She digs around in her purse to find the smokey cranberry gloss that turns her lips into a sultry pout. It’s all camouflage. No––war paint.

The bell rings, and she saunters to class wrapped in the armor of feigned confidence. She might feel like an imposter, but at least she looks fantastic. She tells herself it’s all that matters.

TWENTY-SIX

I wake up every morning in my dingy studio apartment, take a deep breath, and repeat my favorite mantra. Visualize, materialize. It’s my habit to bolster myself with a series of pithy motivational quotes. Today is going to be an amazing day. The best is yet to come. Focus on the positive.

Leaning over the rusted fire escape, I take a snapshot of the sunrise and crop out the dumpster. #earlybirdgetstheworm. It’s important to curate my socials with meticulous attention. I tell myself it’s not deception; it’s the highlights reel of the life I want to have.

At lunch, if I turn the plate around and add the right filter, no one can tell that the #perfectsalad is disappointingly wilted. I post selfies from the woods, fresh-faced and smiling like the #trailgoddess I want to be. No one needs to see the hot mess that returns to the car, covered in bug bites and blisters. When the light’s just right, I get a shot of my #newtome Jeep that doesn’t show the rust spots or bald tires. I promise myself the next time I buy a car I’ll be able to afford a nicer one.

There are a million little photo tricks to upsell my reality. I order a second drink when the first is only half gone. After a few sips on the new one, I pose the glasses side-by-side so the solo excursion to the brewery turns into #girlsnight on Instagram. Framing and angles and perspective can make a budget trip to Portsmouth look like the glamor of Cancún. Haircuts, makeovers, vintage thrift store clothes, and suddenly #Iseeyourguylooking. He could be.

It’s exhausting work to fill my feeds with all the right tags––#livingthedream, #singleandkillingit, #mybestlife. If I get enough likes, maybe I’ll believe it’s true.

THIRTY-EIGHT

You power walk everywhere. Not because you’re in a hurry, but so everyone knows you have somewhere important to be. Running would make you look late and scatterbrained. Strolling is for receptionists with nothing better to do than ordering paperclips and making coffee. Not that there’s anything wrong with that—honest work, you know. You’re just driven to prove yourself as a career woman, so you stride with purpose.

Kitten heels clack on the tiles, not too high to be slutty, but still feminine. You must balance both. It’s difficult to speed walk in a pencil skirt and still look graceful. You feel like a drunken calf, hobbled by a cage of carefully pressed pinstripe cotton.

It’s tough being the only woman on the Leadership Team, and it looks bad if you are the last to show up to the meeting as if you’re Greta Garbo making an entrance. Keeping up with the men in their comfortable trousers and loafers requires twice as many steps, twice as fast. Somehow you do it, though it tests your extra-strength antiperspirant. You hope you’re not glistening. Ladies never sweat.

You round the corner to find That Guy from sales blocking the doorway to the conference room. You’re moving too fast. The damned heels skitter on the polished marble as you try not to collide with him. Surely, he’ll step back and give you space. You bounce off his shoulder when he doesn’t move.

Everyone laughs when a man almost a decade your junior says, Whoa there, little lady. You paste on a faux smile and pretend it doesn’t bother you. It appears you’ve made an entrance after all.

FIFTY

We dye our hair an unladylike purple. When asked if we’ve changed our look, we reply, Thanks! Glad you like it. That’s not what they said, but we don’t care. Once, we might have hedged and said it wasn’t exactly what we asked the hairdresser for while secretly loving it. But we no longer have the energy to be ashamed of who we are. Liking ourselves is an act of resistance.

When it’s hot, we wear tank tops and shorts, cellulite and knobby knees hanging out. When it’s cold, we cozy up in leggings paired with oversized hoodies. We have no patience for clothes that bind and pinch and squeeze. Some days, we pull on a slinky dress that hugs our curves and do our hair up in flowing waves. But only if we want to. It’s all on our own terms now. Either way, we remind each other at every opportunity we are beautiful.

We have hobbies, and we don’t hide them. Sure, we do typical middle-aged “women’s” activities like gardening and reading. We also scuba dive and play video games and forge armor and raise newts. We’ve stopped power walking and actually enjoy hiking. It’s peaceful in the woods, and we take our time on the trails. If we post #optoutside it is photos of cool mushrooms or fat toads we find along the way. We can’t remember the last time we took a selfie, but we’re head over heels for the toads.

Shagging is still a good time. We’re fifty, not dead. But we no longer accept being sexualized without our consent. Young, thin, and pretty do not hold the same value as generous, kind, and loyal. We no longer sacrifice our sense of self for love, because we have found it within.

For the first time, we know we are powerful; we are strong. We never truly needed to pretend to be all these things. It was who we were all along. We only wish we had realized we were enough at fifteen. 

TOMORROW

She’ll tell her friend she’s more than just her clothes, her makeup, her hair. Her body is not for consumption. I’ll remind my niece that Internet people don’t care about her. She can stop fabricating an image and live beyond the lens. You’ll teach your daughter she has nothing to prove, freeing her to find success on her own terms. Together, we’ll forge a generation of women who know what they are worth, and that will be our legacy. 

MM Schreier, the author of two speculative collections—Monstrosity, Humanity and Bruised, Resilient, is a classically trained vocalist who took up writing as therapy for a midlife crisis. In addition to creative pursuits, Schreier is on Leadership for a robotics company and tutors maths and science to at-risk youth.

Photo credit: sandra lansue on Unsplash.

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You Can Tell by Looking at Her

By Susan Rukeyser

Purity stood behind the counter at Wildfyre Drug, ready to assist Billionaires in possession of a valid pharmacy card and a signed Terms of Agreement, swearing that none of their purchases would be shared with members of the Worker class.

Occasionally, customers recognized her from her beauty product testimonials, which ran on true crime podcasts. Her niche was aggressive anti-aging for Billionaire’s wives at midlife and beyond.

Here in what used to be Los Angeles, known as The Angels since 2039’s American Language Act, the freezing haze hung low and yellow. The heavily armed security guard at the entrance wore a parka but not a respirator, although most people wore both.

“Men don’t need respirators. Their lungs are stronger,” Purity had been informed by Dotsie, a frequent customer of Wildfyre Drug and also sort of a friend.

Purity was the third wife of Skip Jenssen, an acquaintance of Dotsie’s husband, Dick. Dick and Dotsie were Billionaire class.

Dotsie appeared at the store’s entrance. The security guard recognized her, despite her respirator. Once inside, Dotsie removed it carefully, so as not to disturb her hat, which appeared to be covered in bald eagle feathers, velvety brown and white, very on trend for Winter 2051. Dotsie paired it with a long cashmere dress and vintage down comforter, redesigned as an oversized wrap.

Another employee, a kid named Link, stood across the store by an endcap of two new drugs from Compliance, Inc.: Smile4Me and ChillZout. Link was a Billionaire’s kid working off his community service for rape.

He said, “May I—”

“No,” said Dotsie, heading straight for Purity.

As Dotsie approached, Purity realized the hat Dotsie wore was a live bald eagle, now waking prematurely from sedation. It was secured by loops of brown ribbon. It could not move much, but it tried.

“What do you think?” Dotsie asked.

“About your hat?”

“No, about my Mommy Makeover!” Dotsie spun to give Purity the 360 view, holding out her arms—all four of them. “I splurged,” said Dotsie. “Two eyes in the back of my head, extra set of arms, and of course the entire line of detachable tits. Dick likes when I put a set on my back, ha ha.”

“You look unbelievable,” Purity said.

Dotsie blushed, pleased with the compliment. “So tell me, what’s new, overpriced, and fabulous?” She squinted at the products displayed behind the counter.

“Microrobotic lip enhancement,” Purity said. “From a brand called Face Invaders.” She handed Dotsie a red foil packet. “It’s expensive, but—”

“Purity!” Dotsie scolded. “Don’t be dreary.”

“Sorry. Just hold the packet open near your mouth. The microrobots locate your lips and access them through tiny tears—it’s not that painful, I swear! Then they travel around inside your lips, dispersing a proprietary blend of plumping agents and fillers according to specifications you pre-select in the app. Then they dissolve.”

“Sold,” said Dotsie, plunking down a credit card. “I’ll take five.”

Purity wondered how long it would be before Dick and Dotsie learned that Skip had accused her of adultery? That she now slept on the couch in her sister’s one-room Worker housing? Would Dotsie let her explain that Skip was the cheater, and he projected his guilt? That when he was angry, the first insult he hurled at her was “Worker,” contempt always just beneath the surface of his love?  

Dotsie was a lot, but she was kind. She invited Purity to all her social functions, but some of Dotsie’s friends were sticklers about who qualified for inclusion. Some said, “You can tell by looking at her, Purity was not born Billionaire.”

“Is that one of those Traditional Values credit cards?” Purity asked.

“You are correct,” answered the card. “I am the Traditional Values card, Woman edition, crafted from a polished cross section of real human bone and carried by the wives of Billionaires of exceptional taste and worthwhile portfolio. I ensure the highest level of security for all transactions approved by her husband. When in use, I stream a live feed to both our monitoring station and her husband, offering the premier protection every Billionaire’s wife deserves.”

“Your credit card is a snitch,” Purity said.

“Proceed with the transaction,” said the card.

Purity scanned Dotsie’s human-bone card over glass, causing it to groan in a way Purity did not care for.

Before Dotsie replaced the card in her wallet, it said, “Dick says that’s enough shopping.”

Dotsie pressed her ear implant: “Hover sack, come.” A shopping bag appeared at the door and identified itself to the security guard. It flew to Dotsie’s side.

“Hungry,” it said.

Purity put the five red foil packets of Face Invaders into the bag, and it quieted down.

Dotsie put on her respirator and turned to leave. Then she turned back and said, “Purity, I’ve always known you were Worker class. It never bothered me. Skip told us what he did.”

“I understand this changes everything,” said Purity. “You don’t have to stop shopping here to avoid me. Link can help you.”

“Doubt it,” Link called.

“I don’t want to avoid you, Purity. I always thought Skip was a prick—don’t you dare tell anyone I said that. But listen: You are free. You have a job and you’re famous. You can do anything.”

“I’m not famous,” Purity said.

“You deserve better,” said Dotsie.

“Oh, please.”

“See, there’s your problem,” said Dotsie. “Mine too.”

Dotsie walked toward the door, her hover sack gliding beside her. The eyes in the back of her head stared up at the bald eagle, now wrestling free of its bonds, sending clumps of Dotsie’s hair flying. It let out a shriek.

“I hate this hat,” said Dotsie, but as usual, it looked like she felt nothing.

When she got outside, Dotsie untangled the ribbon and released the bird. It flopped to the sidewalk but swiftly recovered and flew off. Then Dotsie walked on and out of sight, her neatly pinned hair torn loose.

Susan Rukeyser writes and lives in Joshua Tree, CA. She publishes select titles as World Split Open Press and hosts the Desert Split Open to amplify literary work that is feminist, queer, and otherwise radical. Her second novel, The Worst Kind of Girl, is out now from Braddock Avenue Books. Find her here and there: susanrukeyser.com, IG @SusanRukeyser.

Photo credit: Birgith Roosipuu on Unsplash

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Thank you for reading! If you appreciate creative resistance and would like to support it, you can make a small, medium or large donation to Writers Resist from our Give a Sawbuck page.

Welcome to Writers Resist the Winter 2025 Issue

Whether you’re still in recovery or planning your resistance against the incoming regime, there’s plenty of common ground in this the Winter 2025 issue of Writers Resist. Enjoy the art, poetry and prose and then join us for our virtual Writers Resist Reads, Saturday 15 February 2025, at 5:00 p.m. Pacific. Just email for the Zoom link: writersresist@gmail.com.

In this issue:

Mary Brancaccio “This little piece of heaven“

Salena Casha “In This Version, Cancer Is a Woman“

Karen Crawford “You Don’t Run“

Jennifer Freed “Upon Learning, in a Report on the Footage of a Sheriff’s Deputy Shooting Sonya Massey to Death in Her Kitchen, of Massey’s First Words to the Deputy“

Jennifer Karp “Postcards from the Valley of the Moon“

Flavian Mark Lupinetti “Trigger Warning“

M.R. Mandell “Gen X Girls Ghazal“

Melissa McEver Huckabay “Why I Fight for Texas Even Though Everyone Says We Should Move“

Livia Meneghin “What should be free“

Ria Raj “kaala; kala“

Ash Reynolds “Uprooted/Planted“

Sheree Shatsky “Judged“

Beulah Vega “About Those Census Checkboxes“

Laura Grace Weldon “Election Day Facebook Exchange“

Amritha York “mmiwg“

Photo by K-B Gressitt

In This Version, Cancer Is a Woman

By Salena Casha

If we were really there for the battle of Hydra and Hercules, we’d remember the crab. Monstrous, the size of two buildings, difficult to miss with its burnt orange shell. As Hydra’s heads fell again and again to Hercules’ sword, the crab leapt from the murky water and wrapped herself around Hercules leg. Pinched as if Hades depended on it, sinking her claws into his striated calf. Hercules wouldn’t admit it, but if he’d been in a confessing mood, that bite hurt to Mount Olympus and back.

Maybe we don’t remember her because she was a crab first and a woman second, things history likes to forget. Maybe we don’t remember her because Hydra was a villainous female enough for the both of them: two were unneeded. But what if these ladies had just been minding their own business, eking out a living in a desolate swamp when a demi-god with daddy problems tried to make a name for himself? What if the victor told a different story?

What we do know is that they both died, Hydra and the Crab. They often do, these women who find themselves at the wrong end of a man’s pride. And of course, Hercules left, the remnants of a valiant heroine crushed into the grass beneath the weight of his golden club—the first sign that the environment was going to hell in a handbasket because of man. Once she was sure he was gone, Hera herself slid across the damp ground to cup the crab’s powdered exoskeleton in her palm. Bent her face close.

As she lifted her palm to the heavens to immortalize the crustacean in stars, she whispered,

We have not lost yet.

And somewhere to someone, it meant something.

Salena Casha’s work has appeared in over 100 publications in the last decade. Her most recent work can be found on HAD, Wrong Turn Lit and The Colored Lens. She survives New England winters on good beer and black coffee. Subscribe to her Substack at salenacasha.substack.com.

Illustration: Sidney Hall (1831) astronomical chart illustration of the zodiac Cancer. Original from Library of Congress. Digitally enhanced by rawpixel.

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Welcome to Writers Resist the Fall 2024 Issue

The collage by Kristin Fouquet is an apt introduction to this issue, launched in the final throes of the chaotic, often hateful presidential campaigning. How wonderful it would be if the joyful prospect of electing the first woman president of the United States could be just that.

Perhaps we can make it so by encouraging all our sisters and other beloveds to use our hard-won right to vote. As Kristin’s artwork warns us, “Suffrage or Suffer.”

But first, a very fond farewell to one of our founding editors, Sara Marchant, who has a few words to share:

In the last days of the late 1900s, I woke up underneath a beanbag chair on the bamboo floor of a thrashed house not my own, missing a shoe, cake-frosting in my hair, and with full awareness that hijinks had ensued. My first thought was: That was an excellent party.

Today, while reading this issue of Writers Resist, please picture me in my pajamas, bedhead resplendent, toasting you, dear readers, contributors and editors, with my second cup of coffee.

Writers Resist was born from worried dread about our future and righteous anger over our present reality, and there is still much work to be done, but I know I leave her in capable hands . . . and it has been an excellent party.

Now, this issue has a notable dose of dystopias, but—or because of that—you should find some kindred souls in the works of our contributing writers and artists—and if you’d like to join them for our virtual Writers Resist Reads, on Saturday 16 November at 5:00 p.m. PACIFIC, please request the Zoom link via WritersResist@gmail.com.

D. Arifah, “Watching Over the Horizon“

Linda Bamber, “Endless War“

Robyn Bashaw, “Beware the Homo Sapiens“

Cheryl Caesar, “Grass“

Chiara Di Lello, “Abecedarian for Billionaires“

Matthew Donovan, “I Believe Her“

Kristin Fouquet, “Suffrage or Suffer“

Ellen Girardeau Kempler, “Poem in Response to Mass Shooting Number 130 in the United States 2023“

Michael Henson, “The Dream Children of Addison Mitchell McConnell III“

Jacqueline Jules, “How I Feel About the 2024 Election“

Craig Kirchner, “The Coming“

Christian Hanz Lozada, “When I hear ‘migration,’ I think of ships“

Rasmenia Massoud, “Who We Are, More or Less“

Ryan Owen, “Breathe“

Kate Rogers, “Sisters“

Elizabeth Shack, “tree : forest :: ad : internet“

Angela Townsend, “French Kissed“

Rachel Turney, “Respect“

Diane Vogel Ferri, “Election Day“

Who We Are, More or Less

By Rasmenia Massoud

There’s no telling how long his 15 minutes are gonna last.

His raincloud-gray eyes stare out from thumbnails and video clips in news feeds. They’re surrounded by white impact font, memeified versions of him coming in from the left and the right. There he is. The conservative news hero du jour. The vigilante. The patriot. The murderer. Eddie.

Fucking Eddie. His back ramrod straight, his nods stiff and rigid as though that shiny blue necktie is the only thing keeping his bald head attached to his thick neck. The chyron at the bottom of the screen below his grin says he’s Edward now. All grown up. All business. All American flag pin stabbed into his lapel.

Anyone who knows how to look can see the skinny kid with a mullet and weak attempt at a moustache cowering beneath the surface. Anyone who grew up in our little Idaho town that no one else ever heard of. Anyone who was drinking Mickey’s Big Mouth around a bonfire at the reservoir when our soundtrack flipped from Mötley Crüe to Alice in Chains.

Another moment that didn’t seem relevant until it was gone.

The news personality leans in to show sympathy for Edward’s harrowing ordeal. Not a hair out of place in her crispy platinum mane. The defender of his neighborhood, Edward talks about his pride in the Minneapolis suburb where he grew up. Except he didn’t. Well, Eddie didn’t anyway. There are brief flashes where he seems like a different person, but as I lean on the table to close the distance between my eyes and laptop screen, I see that there’s just more of him now. The added flesh around the neck and eyes, the meaty arms and torso. Life and time have added layers, pushing that kid I once knew farther down.

I rub the thick scar tissue on my chest, a habit I developed after the double mastectomy. A transparent reflection of my face is a ghost hovering over Edward’s on the laptop screen. My hair is cropped short, the warm blonde morphed to shimmering strands of silver. Edward’s been piling on protective layers, becoming more visible. Stacking them up until he fills a TV screen. Me, I’m shedding them, cutting things away, fading to colorless invisibility. Distilling down to the essence of a person.

The blonde woman behind the desk blinks her heavily painted eyes. False lashes fluttering and pencilled brows furrowing to show the audience how serious, how life-and-death Edward’s experience was. Edward recounts the series of events. He talks about his neighborhood, his family, his unwavering belief that America is still the best country in the world, despite how bad things have gotten.

What he doesn’t say is the name Marcelo Chavez. Neither Edward nor the sculpted on-air personality mention that Marcelo was only 15 years old. It never comes up, how the kid was walking home from a babysitting gig when he dropped his phone on the sidewalk, at the foot of a driveway. Edward’s driveway, where he parked his precious SUV. What Edward tells the woman, and the rest of the viewing audience, is that the boy appeared to be messing around with his vehicle. Maybe vandalizing, slashing tires, siphoning gas, or worse. Who can tell these days? When Edward stepped out of his house, aiming toward the trespasser, Marcelo made the mistake of raising his hands while holding his phone and having skin a shade too dark for that particular corner of the city.

Edward at fifteen had been as awkward and gangly as Marcelo Chavez. At sixteen and seventeen, he started to grow into himself, taller and thicker, a brush of brown-blond hair beginning to appear above his upper lip. No matter how deep I plunge into the murky depths of my memory, I can’t recall when he’d begun sticking to the edges of our friend group. He was a few years younger than me, not someone I paid much attention to. But Eddie made his presence known. Younger and goofy, sure, but he had more confidence than he’d had a right to.

The skunky smell of weed mingled with the pine smoke. A crackling bonfire, popping wood, whooping, and chattering from all the shaggy-haired kids clad in denim and threadbare band shirts. Strawberry blonde down to my waist, c-cups beneath my Guns n’ Roses Use Your Illusion t-shirt, dancing and singing along with Tesla about signs, signs, everywhere the signs with my bottle of Mickey’s when that kid hovering in my periphery was right in front of me. Right in my face.

“Dude. No. I have a boyfriend,” I said. My boyfriend, what’s his name, who was old enough to drive and buy beer. Also, old enough to hang out at strip bars while I drank cheap malt liquor with the rest of my underage friends at the reservoir.

Eddie stepped closer until we were nose to nose, smirking. “Yeah?” He looked around. “Where is he?”

That confidence was five sizes too big for Eddie, but he wore it like a second skin and that was enough. That’s all it took. A few days later, we’re rolling around naked and sweaty in a bedroom that belonged to neither one of us. That’s when his protective armor left him, when I saw beneath and looked into the eyes of an insecure young man who desperately did not want to be seen.

“Were you a virgin?”

He glared at me. “Of course not. Why? Was it not okay?”

“It was fine.”

“No really. If it wasn’t okay, tell me. I can take it.”

I knew better. He couldn’t take it.

“It was fine. Really,” I said.

“Just fine?”

Now, on my laptop screen, that insecure kid is in there somewhere. Like a matryoshka doll, the years of doubt, decisions and bad habits all wrapped around and around until Eddie is concealed forever.

Somewhere behind me, Lupita tells our son to brush his teeth before bed. I inhale the smell of dish soap and eucalyptus as she sits at the table next to me, leans in and turns my face to hers. She kisses the tip of my nose. Her big dark eyes glistening like they always do, hair tucked up in her silk scarf so that I can see her entire face. The dimple on her left cheek, and the freckles dotting her nose. Somehow, she glows brighter more and more with every passing year.

Then my wife closes the laptop.

“You need to stop watching this.”

“I know. But I’m stuck on the fact that we came from the same time. The same place.”

“He’s not the person you used to know. You’re not the person he knew. People change. It happens to all of us. That time and place is gone.”

I want to tell her people don’t change. They evolve and erode. They become more or less of who they are. I don’t say any of this. Instead, I push my chair away from the table and take her hand. “C’mon,” I say. “Let’s go tuck him in.”

A daily, mundane thing, the bedtime ritual of telling our son goodnight. A tiny thing that might not seem relevant until it’s gone.

Rasmenia Massoud is the author of three short story collections and several stories published in places like The Sunlight Press, XRAY Lit, and Reflex Press. Her work has been nominated for The Best of the Net, and her novella Circuits End, published by Running Wild Press, was nominated for a Pushcart Prize in 2019. A second novella, Tied Within, was published by One More Hour Publishing in 2020. You can visit her at www.rasmenia.com.

Photo credit: Joe Wolf via a Creative Commons license.

A note from Writers Resist
Thank you for reading! If you appreciate creative resistance and would like to support it, you can make a small, medium or large donation to Writers Resist from our Give a Sawbuck page.

Beware the Homo Sapiens

By Robyn Bashaw

“Don’t!” Eeip closes his mitt over Swee’s, stopping her from placing the bone into the waiting psittaciforme’s beak. Eeip pulls the bone from Swee’s grasp, tossing it in the Trash Trench where it lands between a rusty fork with its one twisted tine veering right and a single brass earring with its post back missing.

There had also been a Trash Trench at the archaeology dig where Swee had interned, growing steadily taller, but it was better in the trenches than the oceans, decomposing slowly, as it was wont to do, with occasional help from the curious nibble of a fish or the tear of a passing crocodile leg.

Beyond the bone, Swee can make out colored rectangular cases holding deadened black screens, wires crisscrossing over black boxes of varying sizes, deformed plastics of every color, brown and green glass bottles perfectly preserved in black bags. The plastic reminds her of the wide-eyed skull of a sciuridae, whose skeleton she’d uncovered in her second week on her internship, throttled by a plastic ring that finally fell loose as she brushed aside the dirt by its neck.

“Never the homo sapiens,” Eeip scolds, and Swee nods her head, glistening silver under the sun. It had been a mistake, but Eeip wouldn’t believe that. Swee knew the homo sapiens were the ones responsible for the Trash Trenches, for the plastic-choked deaths they found below ground, for the entrapment of fantastical creatures. They hadn’t known what to call them when they first uncovered them, entrapped in wired boxes, giftwrapped for their convenience: a huge creature with two long teeth poking out from its head, an animal with sharp teeth bigger than a shark’s protruding from its lips, a short-armed creature leaning back on a long line of delicate bones making up its tail, a tail-less animal with a curved spine and long nails clinging tight to an echo of a tree.

When the linguists had cracked one of the written human codes, they had learned some of the names along with the homo sapiens’: Elephas maximus, Panthera leo, Macropus rufus, Phascolarctos cinereus. It was archaeology that told the tale of their final extinction where the homo sapiens held them captive: Trees were pushed and tossed about past the brick walls and glass windows that were tortured by the wind. Tiny flowers cowered in fear, trying to hide their bright little heads before they were snapped right off. Rain poured out over the Earth, sweeping coffins over cliffs to be splattered against the rocks below. When the storm finished stirring graveyards, churches, homes, and schools together to be poured out fresh across the globe, all traces of homo sapiens’ time upon the world were washed away, buried beneath the new rising ocean.

Millions of years later, the water receded once more, cooling back into mountains of ice that revealed beaches for the cephalopods to waddle upon.

The psittaciforme plants its all-knowing black pupil on Swee, highlighted by the amber iris, as he accepts the bone of a tiktaalik from Eeip. The psittaciforme takes to the sky, its red wings flashing between the blue and yellow of his brethren, each carrying a bone in its talons to the river’s edge where the scientists would sort them and harness any DNA still inside. The tiktaalik have strong fins like the cetaceans to support their body weight out of water, scales like a fish, head like a crocodile, and tail as powerful as the cetaceans. Swee knew it was the kindred features that had made the tiktaalik a prime choice to resurrect from extinction.

Eeip snapped his jaw at Swee. “I thought you were trained! Do you know the damage you could have caused, passing on a homo sapiens’ bone?”

“I am trained!” Swee held her ground. She could have told Eeip about the extinctions the cetaceans had mapped backwards: the storm and subsequent flood that had wiped out the two-legged homo sapiens, the homo sapiens’ entrapment of the multitude of four-legged life, the four-legged life’s emerging from the tsunamis and fires rippling after the asteroid, the giant four-legged dinosaurs tramping across Pangea after the red lava of volcanoes coated the large, lumbering lizards whose steak knife teeth and sail atop their backs kept rivals at bay. It was back another layer of lava that they had discovered the tiktaalik before facing fathoms of ice. Swee stares at the ground under her fins; this was not her mistake. Homo sapiens were more than five extinctions apart from the tiktaalik. Their bones should not have been here at all. Swee lifts her eyes. “Maybe it fell from the Trash Trench?”

Eeip let his eyes scan over the Trash Trench, its logged edges monitored by the loyal canis lupus familiaris, and Swee felt her stomach landlock. Of course, the canis would never permit any piece of trash, much less a homo sapiens bone, to slip past their guard.

“Sorry,” Swee sings sweetly, and Eeip allows her to move on with a final warning to not let the mistake happen again.

•  •  •

Swee does her best to work diligently, but, when the day is done, she finds herself wandering past the cetacean and tiktaalik races with their long-standing battle of wisdom versus brute force, to slip into the river herself. Kicking her strong flippers at the end of her legs, she follows the current to the ocean where her fins shiver to brush alongside a shark and her heart pumps in relish of her flying leaps across the surface. A cackling laugh erupts from her when she spots a seal, but, when it dives deep off a shelf, she lets it pull ahead, content in the chase alone. She swims back through the teeming life of the ocean, untroubled by the schools of fish that dart away from her passage.

She pulls herself up on the river’s bank, pleased to see the brachiosaurus stretching its neck out to pluck a branch free beneath the setting sun. The land had been too bare when the cetaceans had first emerged from the ocean, so the brachiosaurs, the triceratops, and the stegosaurs had been welcome additions to help manage the plants aboveground. The same pity that had sparked Swee to pass her sciuridae’s skull along to the scientists at her internship had led to the resurrection of some of the encaged mammals.

Elephas maximus had been the most pleasant surprise. Not only did they help dig out and build the bases for the Trash Trenches, but they quickly learned to bubble the waters alongside the cephalopods to gather fish from the river to distribute to feed the pod. Swee lifts a fin now to wave at the elephas called Hoount, who swings her trunk to toss a fish Swee’s way. Swee catches it in her flipper, closing her fin over the damp scales. When she slips into her mud bed, Swee bites into the cool flesh. She tears off a small chunk of scale, offering it to her hallucigenia, which grasps the offering in three of its spindly arms, bringing it to its first mouth to suck inside its tiny body. Its two beady, black eyes watch Swee to see if more is incoming, but she does not want to overfeed her pet.

Smaller than the bottle caps littering the first layer of soil, the hallucigenia curves its hair-like neck to the ocean floor while it processes its dinner. Balanced upon its seven legs, its antennae feel ahead as it returns to Swee, who runs her fin over the spikes across its back. The tiny prickles make her laugh, and the hallucigenia nuzzles close until Swee relents and tears loose another scale chunk, reasoning to herself that one more bite wouldn’t hurt it.

Her hallucigenia is a reminder of why she chose to go into archaeology. Many would have been satisfied to stop once they reached the fathoms of ice, but Ipip was a curious cephalopod and he continued to dig. Fathoms down, the sea levels dropped as they did today and whole new creatures, including the hallucigenia, were unearthed. The gecko-sized twenty-eight-legged centipede creeping its way to nibble on microbes at low tide was perfect to keep the ecosystem balanced, but, like the hallucigenia, the wiwaxia was resurrected for its beauty. Outside many mud beds, a wiwaxia sits with its eight rows of armored plates, shimmering like a bird’s feathers with flashes of blue, green, and yellow.

Swee’s fin rests on her hallucigenia’s spikes, and she stares down into its dark black eyes as it lifts one of its legs and places it on Swee’s smooth leg. Of course. Her hallucigenia only knows her as the bringer of food. Even if Eeip hadn’t stopped her today and the homo sapiens had been resurrected, her hallucigenia would be crawling on her, seeking out more treats and rubs.

•  •  •

Swee arrives at the dig site early the next day, bypassing the layers etched into the ground to walk straight to the Trash Trench. The canis lap the trench, but there is one brown canis in front who paces by where the trash is thrown. Swee stops before the brown canis. Knowing they can understand more than they can say, she takes a deep breath.

“Were you once a pet?”

The brown canis, naturally, does not answer, but he does whine.

Swee reaches out her fin, forcing herself to not pull away as she runs it over the canis’s scratchy fur. She had practiced her speech last night. “I bet your homo sapiens took good care of you—fed you, petted you—but all of them weren’t that way. We can’t risk bringing any back.”

The brown canis hangs its head and whimpers, so Swee strokes him again. She had gone over it every way, but she wasn’t sure how to make a canis understand the difference between how something cared for its pet and how it cared for the world at large. Pets have such a narrow focus of the world.

“You can’t slip any more bones in,” she speaks firmly, eyeing the canis so he will know she’s serious. “Understood?”

The canis whines once more, but he drops his body forward in an accepting bow. So, Swee pats him on the side and takes her leave. At the dig, Eeip is waiting. He lifts his fin in welcome, and Swee returns the gesture, assuring as she flops down with him that there will be no more mistakes today.

Note: The title is based on John Whitfeld’s Lost animals: Extinct, endangered, and rediscovered species. Welbeck publishing group limited, 2020.

Though Robyn Bashaw has graduated with a BFA in Creative Writing and published a piddling of stories, her greatest accomplishment to date is training her ball python to distinguish the fast taps of playtime and the slow taps of foodtime. Communication, however possible, is vital. Check out her work at: https://robynbashaw.wordpress.com/.

Photo credit: Debbie Hall, poet, photographer and Writers Resist poetry editor.

A note from Writers Resist
Thank you for reading! If you appreciate creative resistance and would like to support it, you can make a small, medium or large donation to Writers Resist from our Give a Sawbuck page.

Breathe

By Ryan Owen

When her husband lowers the newspaper and stops hiding his cancer, Stacy learns that their voting rights have eroded as quickly as his health.  

The front fold rests on his lap. “How?” she asks.

“With new laws.” He taps the headline with an ink-stained fingertip.

From the kitchen countertop, a screen’s colorless aura startles awake, its glow spilling onto the tan tiles of the floor.

“Let me explain voting rights to you,” a robotic voice replies from the countertop.

Their eyes go wide.

“They can hear us now.” Arthur mouths the words. A hoarse whisper.

A powdery crescent scars the wall where Stacy pitches the device. Black plastic thorns litter the tiles. She steps around them as she picks her way to the bathroom.

She stares at its dead screen as she closes the door. Arthur yells that it can’t hear their words anymore, communicate them to false protectors, misguided champions. Nevertheless, she’s cautious to act, resist . . . persist.

She can’t let them win, or they will silence her words and know her thoughts. Steal her voice. For a forever that feels like death.

She has already locked her smartphone into its metal box in the attic. When she exits the bathroom, she descends the cellar stairway to cut the power to the house.

“Flip the main breaker,” Arthur shouts his deathbed advice. 

He’ll be dead by the election. They both know this. Neither says it aloud.  

She comes up the stairs, following the smooth grain of the wood handrail. She sits at Arthur’s desk, harvesting the loose threads in her thoughts. An early-morning rain soaks the sounds drifting through the window.

Her fingers rest on the cool glass keys of the typewriter. Their smooth steel rings brush her fingertips.

She is safe here. No one sees her words, reads her thoughts, as she launches them at the page.  

Her inspiration comes alive.

She presses the keys. Like soldiers, the hammers rise, striking the paper, creating the letters, forming the message.  

Will it work? She steels herself against self-doubt.

Her finger slips. The word ‘vote’ has two o’s.

She sighs.

Arthur was a gardener once, and she finds a thick thorn like a dinosaur claw, in the desk drawer. She scratches away the ink of the extra letter. She finishes the word, vote, the t grainy on the rough parchment.

Her fingers shake.

The years have swelled her knuckles, her fingers unbendable rods, rigid stems.  

Her gray hair sways in the reflections of each of the forty-nine glass panes forming the keys.

Vote. Or you never vote again, she types. She breathes.

Arthur breathes beside her. He watches. It’s all he can handle.  

She adds the period. They exhale.

Arthur hands her a new sheet of paper. An eyelet on her sleeve catches on the carriage return lever. 

She inhales.

She begins the next letter.

Ryan Owen is a writer living among the glacial erratics and waist-high stone walls of central New England. Ryan resurrects antique typewriters and writes all first drafts from their glass-and-chrome keys. Ryan’s fiction has been recognized with an honorable mention in the Writers of the Future contest and has been published in Idle Ink, Litbreak Magazine, and Penumbric Speculative Fiction Mag, and is forthcoming in Literally Stories and Writers Resist. Find Ryan on Twitter/X, @4gttnNewEngland or on Bluesky, @iviesofinkribbons.

Photo credit: Ben Rogers via a Creative Commons license.

A note from Writers Resist
Thank you for reading! If you appreciate creative resistance and would like to support it, you can make a small, medium or large donation to Writers Resist from our Give a Sawbuck page.

Welcome to Writers Resist the Summer 2024 Issue

It’s summer and all kinds of things are in bloom—beautiful and ugly—but we’re happy you’re here.

We’re moved by the courage of those who give voice to their righteous struggles.

We’re determined to continue to be able to challenge the inequitable and untenable.

We’re hopeful climate leaders will be followed.

We’re particularly grateful to Dorothy and Rebecca for their extraordinary, generous support—thank you!

And, we’re delighted to give thanks to this issue’s contributing authors and artists:

Kayla Blau, “God in Hiding“

Anna Lucia Deloia, “In Florida“

Dameien Nathaniel, “Trans Joy: A Selfie in Five Parts“

Ell Cee, “Make a Splash“

Laura Grace Weldon, “Miss Suzie Had a Baby, She Named Him Tiny Tim“

Zhihua Wang, “2020“

Myna Change, “Suburban Survival“

Elizabeth Birch, “Come Mourn with Me“

Eduardo Ramos, “Shukran“

Micaela Kaibni Raen, “Death Equals Silence“

Michal Rubin, “Numbers“

Shieva Salehnia, “Baptism“

Dick Westheimer, “Inside the Serotonin Industrial Complex“

If you’d like to join them for our virtual Writers Resist Reads, on Saturday 27 July at 5:00 p.m. PACIFIC, please request the Zoom link via WritersResist@gmail.com.

A note from Writers Resist

You, too, can join the Dorothy and Rebecca donor club: Make a small, medium or large donation to Writers Resist on our Give a Sawbuck page.

Photo credit: K-B Gressitt

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Suburban Survival

By Myna Chang

 

My sleeping bag’s nestled in the drainage ditch where I used to play hide and seek. The new people living in our house don’t have any kids, so they don’t know the neighborhood’s good hiding places like I do.

I see them in our kitchen. Mom’s curtains are gone. The walls are blue now. They’ve painted over my height chart, too. Mom stood me against that door frame every birthday so she could mark my progress. She’d scratch the pencil into the soft wood and say, “Look how much you’ve grown, Timothy!”

– Age 6, 3 ½ feet

– Age 9, 4 ¼ feet

– Age 12, 5 feet

The door frame is clean white now.

I find my old foam football wedged in the holly bushes. Sun-bleached and ratty, it smells like mildew. I tuck it under my arm and saunter down Boxwood Lane like a kid who’s never had to sleep in an abandoned car. I toss the ball up, catch it, pretend to pass it downfield. I could be on the team, I could be the quarterback, I could be any boy heading to the park on a crackle-leafed fall afternoon.

“Timothy? Is that you?”

Mrs. Johnson sounds the same, all growly and sweet at the same time. My eyes blur.

The football was a birthday present, before Dad lost his job, before the bank took our house. Before I got lost in the crowd at the shelter.

Mrs. Johnson calls my name again. I hug the ball tight and run. Just like Dad taught me.

Our mailbox is filled with letters addressed to the new people. I take the envelopes, drop the boring ones in the gutter. I find one addressed to Mom, a form from my school asking if I’d be coming back this semester, if we had a forwarding address. I fold the paper with my name, keep it in my pocket.

A few days ago, I swiped a package from the mailbox. It had a wool scarf in it. Mom always tucked my old scarf into the collar of my coat, telling me, “Stay warm, sweetheart.” The new people’s scarf kinda itches, but it’s mine now.

•     •     •

The new man sits on the back porch tapping a laptop and scribbling on a pad of paper. His computer looks like the one I used to play games on. The woman calls for him. He sets his stuff by a computer bag and goes inside.

I duck under the loose board in the fence, race to the porch, shove his computer and pencil in the bag. I sling it over my shoulder and am about to run . . . but the door is open. There’s the kitchen. My kitchen.

I slip inside. Voices drift from upstairs. For a heartbeat, I imagine it’s Mom and Dad, that we’re still together, that we’re normal again.

I take the man’s pencil, step up to the door frame. Stand straight. Mark my height on the clean paint:

– TIMOTHY, AGE 14.

I can’t do the whole thing because I don’t know how tall I am now. “Happy birthday, anyway,” I whisper.

Then I run.

 

Myna Chang (she/her) is the author of The Potential of Radio and Rain (CutBank Books, 2023). Her writing has been selected for the Locus Recommended Reading List, W.W. Norton’s Flash Fiction America, Best Small Fictions, and Best Microfiction. She has won the Lascaux Prize in Creative Nonfiction and the New Millennium Award in Flash Fiction. She hosts the Electric Sheep speculative fiction reading series. Find her at MynaChang.com, and on Twitter & Bluesky at @MynaChang.

Photo credit: Michael Coghlan via a Creative Commons license.

A note from Writers Resist

Thank you for reading! If you appreciate creative resistance and would like to support it, you can make a small, medium or large donation to Writers Resist from our Give a Sawbuck page.

 

Suburban Median

By Myna Chang

 

We see the body on the way to drop our kids off at school. It’s in the median at the Parkway stoplight. We don’t recognize what it is, at first. Understanding comes in pieces: leg, arm, slender foot. Naked, of course.

We try to look away. But is it someone we know? Nestled there in the ragweed and road debris, snarled hair hiding her face.

We gather over coffee. Talk about what we saw, how we tried to protect our children from it. Close your eyes, baby. Blood pounding in our ears.

One of us admits her husband looked, driving past, looked and kept looking. His breath ragged. She doesn’t say any more, but we know. He liked it. That helpless curve of hip.

We expect the authorities to remove the body. Cover her with a blanket. Gentle the evidence from under her nails. But when we go pick our kids up, she’s still there. No police cars, no crime scene tape.

We steel our nerves. We go to the station. We file a report. We demand: Didn’t you see? Who was she? Who did this to her? We hope for help.

The police officers raise their eyebrows, say there’s no body. Maybe it was a trick of the light, they say, or a dead deer. Maybe you imagined it.

No, we say, we didn’t imagine a dead body in the median! It wasn’t an animal, it was a woman!

The men shrug. I don’t know what to tell you.

We still see her. The bend of her back. Tangle of limbs. Faceless. It could be any of us. We think it might be all of us.

 

Myna Chang (she/her) is the author of The Potential of Radio and Rain (CutBank Books). Her writing has been selected for Flash Fiction America (W. W. Norton), Best Small Fictions, and CRAFT. She has won the Lascaux Prize in Creative Nonfiction and the New Millennium Award in Flash Fiction. She hosts the Electric Sheep speculative fiction reading series. Find her at MynaChang.com, or on Twitter or Bluesky at @MynaChang.

Image credit: R. Nial Bradshaw via a Creative Commons license.

A note from Writers Resist

Thank you for reading! If you appreciate creative resistance and would like to support it, you can make a small, medium or large donation to Writers Resist from our Give a Sawbuck page.

 

Hi

By Rachel Rodman

“I’m just saying. I’m a nice guy. I just want to say HI. And you’re going to accept this greeting whether you fucking like it or not.”     —Elon James White, from a now deleted Twitter account

 

“Hi,” he demanded.

He waited, while everyone watched; he waited with a smile, because this awkwardness was his power, his, his, his.

And something else for me.

But I did not give it. Still I did not give the “Hi” that was owed, though I knew that it was the custom here, to smile for men when they told you to.

A smile that was something else to you.

I had been here long enough, so I did know.

But I was not from here.

“Take me to your leader,” I had said, the first time we had spoken. When I had missed my sisters so much, so much—already, I had missed them so much—though not as much as I would come to miss them.

“Your leader?” he’d said.

“Your leader,” I’d affirmed. I had spoken very badly then (far less well than now). That had been weeks before, right after I had arrived, and I had not yet learned.

“You’re looking at him,” he’d said.

“I do not think so,” I’d said, and the way I spoke was very bad. I would piece this together afterwards, just how badly I had spoken, how badly I had taught myself, even with the assistance of the computer in the cryogenics chamber.

“You’re looking at him.”

“I do not think so,” I’d said again, and the way I spoke was still very bad. I would understand even more how badly later, because he would volunteer to teach me that: the meaning of shame.

Even though he was not a shipboard dictionary.

In my homeland, I had known about leaders. I’d required no shipboard dictionary to learn how to identify them. But I’d known very little about what a teacher was.

So I let him teach me.

I had, however, come to this world for the purpose of reconnaissance. I had come to analyze the air and water. I had come to make maps. As I worked, I also came more and more to correct my most serious misapprehension upon landing: that there was a leader, somewhere, to take me to.

In reality, it was not that kind of world.

So in time I regained my focus. In time, I stopped attending his lessons—the private ones that, in the beginning, he’d insisted were essential.

By that point, in any case, I thought I’d learned enough about shame.

But he’d continued to seek me out in public places, wherever I went to make maps, and he found other ways to teach me.

Initially, I was even astonished by the nuance of these additional lessons: how powerful shame can be. How, in particular, by exploiting an audience, he could shame me into submitting to him.

After a long, lonely, empty journey between the stars, I had also been confident in my understanding of space. (I was intimately aware, in particular, of the effects that one might have on space by passing through it.) But he did things to space that I had not previously understood to be possible: legs spreading to possess more of it (though it was more than that); arms spreading to take the rest (though it was more than that). “Manspreading,” the shipboard dictionary had called it, at least in certain contexts, and the entry had been accompanied by a picture of a man sitting on a bench in a public vehicle, and doing so expansively.

At the same time, his actions on space also constituted a sort of language, even though the words were few. I could translate it like this:

Validate me.

I knew what it meant now; I understood absolutely. (For not even the shipboard dictionary had been so persistent a teacher.)

Validate me.

Validate me.

So eventually, even in public, I increasingly strove to stop participating.

Even as, with ever increasing passion, he continued to teach me.

“Hi,” he was saying now, and everyone was staring, because I did not answer.

“Hi,” he said, in order to accentuate my noncompliance.

“Hi, Hi, Hi,” he was saying, because now he was going to get his validation.

He always did.

Sisters, I had said, days before, when the nature of these lessons had first begun to do more than wear. Please come, sisters.

It was selfish to ask this.

This was not a good world. Even though the air and the water were good. Even though this would be a good place for our spores to grow.

But this was not a good world.

“Hi,” he demanded.

I was only asking them for me.

With the ansible, I had sent them a message: This is a bad world, the world where I am. But perhaps, if you come…

In the journey, my ship had been used up. Our ships always were, in passages like these. Most of what remained: the computer and the cryogenics chamber, had burned up in the entry, leaving, as was usual, almost nothing.

Just me. Just the ansible. And the capacity to send one instantaneous message.

Perhaps, if we are together…

On this world, it would take many, many, many rotations to grow another ship and more fuel, and perhaps weapons too. (As first conceived, it had not been that kind of mission. First missions never are.) Until then, I had only myself.

I had gone the long way, but now that I had made that path, long and lonely between the stars, it could be much quicker for them, no cryogenics chamber required.

That, at least, could be said of my journey.

Though the way back would be just as long.

It was selfish of me to ask. It was selfish, selfish to ask.

To maroon them with me for so many rotations on this bad world.

Would they come?

“Hi,” he said, and his face was close, and everyone was watching, in this place where people came to sit and where coffee was sold. (I needed coffee, I increasingly found, though I hadn’t on the ship; I needed it to assist my mapmaking.) And the shame—yes—was everywhere, but most of it came from me, from parts of myself that, prior to his lessons, I had not known existed, or ever imagined might be violated.

This was part of the lesson.

Validate me.

Validate me.

Validate me.

He was taking all the space now; he was manspreading, manspreading into it, and, in spite of the familiarity, there was also a nuance to the way he expressed himself that I still did not entirely grasp, even as I increasingly sensed that it lay at the heart of the matter: that he seemed to want it all the more—that he wanted it implacably—precisely because he knew I did not want to give it to him.

Is that what I still needed to learn?

In that moment, however, I sensed something else, something behind me. But in that moment I did not turn.

“H—” he started.

Then, in that public place, all the people were screaming and all the people running, and with the frantic exit of everyone went some of my shame.

At the same time, there was a blast of heat and light. And something else on the wall, too, in place of where he had been—a distributed smear of what had once been him:

Manspreading.

In that smear, that “manspreading,” I recognized a basic misapprehension of the language: subject and object switched, so that it had become something that was done to the subject, rather than something the subject did. The man, in this incorrect interpretation, was not the one who did the spreading, but rather the object that was spread (gory and thin, in this case, and on the wall of a public cafe). This kind of mixup felt familiar to me; it was the sort of error committed by someone who has fundamentally not learned to speak correctly.

It was incorrect.

But not, I thought now, so very shameful.

So I turned. And, as I did, I suddenly apprehended, more profoundly than I ever had before, a feeling that, in the first rotations of my existence, safe in my homeland, I had continuously experienced but had never had any need to express—a feeling that, in part, a long, long journey, alone among the stars, had been required to teach me.

“Greetings,” I said, but not to him.

For my sisters had come.

 

Rachel Rodman’s work has appeared in Analog, Fireside, Daily Science Fiction, and many other publications. Her latest collection, Art is Fleeting, was published by Shanti Arts Press. More at www.rachelrodman.com.

Image credit: By Diario de Madrid for the Madrid Municipal Transport Company, 2017.

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A Moon Is a Moon Is a Moon

By Mandira Pattnaik

Warning: domestic violence

Because you’re the moon, Mother thinks you’re full of circles and spots, and never consistent — rebellious and sulking, often hiding in hoodie jackets, known to break china even with a sponge scrubber, and mostly saying what is best avoided, making mistakes. Sister is better. She poses no troubles, hangs on the wall like a dish cloth, never speaks, never does anything at all. Then Aunt Cheema comes visiting, shepherding guests known to her, strangers to us, and you suspect it’s the same as two weeks before, one that’ll make your family smaller by taking one away. It’s Sister who goes first, her hair plaited, jasmine flowers in them, carrying a tray of sherbet in finest wine glasses, she greets and listens while they make plans, and speaks only in consenting nods even though it’s her marriage they’re talking about. You’re told to walk to the store, with a list of items that you’re sure aren’t urgent, but what can circles do when they’re rolled about, and it’s best to stay away— grooms are known to prefer one to the other, as if they were items on a shelf. When you get back from the store the guests are gone, the atmosphere at home is loud and vengeful, the conversation dents the walls. It emerges that when the prospective groom asked Sister if she could cook Bhindi-aloo-keema, or embroider, or tie bandhani threads (and you know the answer is no), Sister, being land unchanging, consented to all, and now it was a matter of truth versus dare.

Because you’re the moon, Sister suggests it’s the circles, well-rounded, that are the problem: that you’re likely a positron having a positive charge that attracts men of marriageable age, but that the men are repelled by her because she’s firmer and leaner, the nuclei within, a collision with annihilation. When you wonder how she’d know, because the grooms never came to meet you, she says it’s because of how their eyes rove and peek behind the drawn curtain.

Because you’re the moon, you’re still the moon when many months later Sister, like land, unchanging, cannot escape when the man she was married to is merciless to her while his family watches, like good riddance. Your Mother is told only a day after.

Because you are the moon, you make yourself small thereafter, waning, waning, waning, until you completely disappear, so men know you’re unreliable and they never come near.

 

Mandira Pattnaik is the author of collections Anatomy of a Storm-Weathered Quaint Townspeople (2022, Fahmidan Publishing, Poetry), Girls Who Don’t Cry (2023, Alien Buddha Press, Flash Fiction) and Where We Set Our Easel (forthcoming, Stanchion Publishing, Novella). Mandira’s work has appeared in The McNeese Review, Penn Review, Quarterly West, Citron Review, Passages North, DASH, Miracle Monocle, Timber Journal, Contrary, Watershed Review, Amsterdam Quarterly, and Prime Number Magazine, among others. She edits for trampset and Vestal Review. Learn more at mandirapattnaik.com.

Image credit: chiaralily via a Creative Common license.

A note from Writers Resist

Thank you for reading! If you appreciate creative resistance and would like to support it, you can make a small, medium or large donation to Writers Resist from our Give a Sawbuck page.