'The Prospective or What I Tell the Man in the Cafe' by Sudha Balagopal

My parents sent me to the movie theater with a man they found in the matrimonial columns of a Bombay newspaper.

They made concessions for this prospective from America. I went out with a man, alone, for the first time, at twenty-one.

My eyebrows stung—they'd been threaded and shaped into perfect crescents. The crimson on my nails and lips felt vulgar. I wanted to pull out the pins in my French braid, let my hair loose.

They told me he was a romantic, a Bollywood aficionado. Perfect for someone like me who read  Austen.

*

You ask to meet with me and you stare at your potato chips as if you don't recall 1989. The bag of chips has spilt its contents on the cafe table and over the check. Your hair is gray and the glasses outsize, your shirt's cuff folded to the elbow. You still wear a gold wristwatch.

*

Inside the movie hall, The Prospective snacked from a theater-sized sack of red chile flavored potato wafers―which I declined―his bony shoulder a jostle away, his elbow solidly on the armrest between us as we watched trailers for yet-to-be released movies and product advertisements.

A condom ad appeared on-screen.

I studied the glint of his wristwatch, counted the shiny buttons embedded on the seams
of his jeans, observed his sneakers―ghostly gray in the theater's light―while an actress sang, “Two children is enough.”

*

At the end of the feature film, the hired car that brought us to the theater took us back.

Questions thrummed in my head.    

The Prospective, in a post-celluloid trance, asked to be dropped off before me. “It's the jetlag,” he said.

When I got home, I thanked the driver, offered him a tip.

“The girl yesterday wasn't as polite or as generous,” he said.

*

You ask to meet with me and you pulverize the chips with your fingers.

*

My family pounced on the phone, they shed tears and laughed. The Prospective's parents said he'd agreed to marry me before he returned to America.

“Why would someone eight years older choose me,” I asked my parents. “What criteria did he use?

Shouldn't he have asked me what I wanted? I don't know what I want, how could anyone else?”

They said,”You ask too many questions.” They made wedding arrangements.

Six days later The Prospective's parents called to say he'd locked eyes with this girl on a bus, “in true Bollywood style.” He married bus-girl on our wedding date.

*

You ask to meet with me. Yes, my son's twenty-two, in college, and your daughter's a high-maintenance twenty-eight with a four-year-old child.  You fold and unfold the check, leave greasy marks on the paper. What did you think I'll say?


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'The Prospective or What I Tell the Man in the Cafe' was first published in X-r-a-y Literary Magazine, February 12, 2020.

'Lionel and the Fly' by John Wheway

Normally, the fly’s landing on Lionel’s nose would wake him. Today, running up and down the nose had no effect. The fly dipped into the crease between nose and cheek. Mm-mm, the taste of sebum.  

He’s dreaming. Let him dream, thought the fly. Slipping into Lionel’s car to drink his tears and nose-drips on the day of his wife’s cremation, the fly sailed into his house on the brim of his hat, to survive the winter. It wouldn’t end up spinning on its back on some windowsill, drying to a husk, as long as there was leftover gravy to guzzle. Though once, sipping a spot of wine sent it zooming towards the log fire. From then on it steadily avoided alcohol.

Lionel’s secretions, their bouquet of grief and endurance, became irresistible. Helpless anger was as piquant as caviare, and the fly, to intensify it, would scurry into an earhole or nostril. Lionel crashed round flailing with a rolled-up newspaper, but the fly always escaped. If Lionel gasped and became breathless, the fly hid behind a curtain till he calmed down. It didn’t want a corpse on its feelers. Not yet. It hurried over his forehead to lap up fresh beads of sweat.

One morning, as it siphoned mould from a squashed prune, Lionel said, So here you are again, old survivor. You’re just like me.

The fly stared into two giant brown eyes. He wasn’t rolling newspaper, spreading his hand to slam down. You and me, Lionel sighed. You and me…

As Lionel relaxed, became less rigorous at scouring counters, he left food uncovered, wore the same clothes for days, threw dirty underpants and socks in a heap instead of into the laundry basket. If the fly guzzled too greedily, Lionel merely wafted his hand round. Best of all, he began telling the fly his life-story. He’d outlived countless generations of flies, had known a time before litter laws, sell-by dates, refrigerators, even. A lost paradise.

The idea of the wife’s being cremated made the fly sad. Such a waste of flesh. If Lionel ever has a new woman, let her corpse be buried, the fly prayed, but only after an opportune few days of decay. Imagine – another human body to feed on, a new collection of flavours.

Spring saw the fly skittering around Lionel’s car windows, riding on his hat. There were exotic smells in the shops – and not only at the butcher’s. The fly scouted cafes and pubs for suitable women. But Lionel seemed unimpressed by women the fly found delectable.

One morning, the door bell rang, and at the front door, a small round woman appeared. The fly dived into her hair and tasted her scalp. Mm-mm.  Lionel’s frisson of interest, to the fly, smelled like an overripe apple. This has got to be the – began the fly, but the woman shot out her hand, plucked it from Lionel’s jacket, and snuffed out its life between her thumb and forefinger.

'Spinning' by Noa Covo

I spent hours trying to crack the eggs for my omelette that morning before I realized they were smooth rocks from the garden. I started complaining about it to the man outside my window before I saw that he was only a shirt dangling from a clothesline.

I wasn’t always so confused. I used to know how to solve puzzles and color between the lines, but these days the markers turn into forks and the lines become snakes and the little puzzle pieces crumble to dust and I am left spinning.

The doctor said there’s nothing wrong with me before becoming a mailbox with its mouth hanging open. The dandelions between the cracks told me I just needed to get some sleep, when I blew on them in response they turned to children and ran away. The neighbors think I’m crazy but they never tell me to my face, at night they whisper obscenities in my yard and when I shine a light on them they turn to trees. When I go online, the websites say that there are all sorts of pills that can help, but every time I try to take them they turn into roly-polies, unroll and crawl away. The sidewalk is conspiring against me; it turns into a river every time I try to cross it.

After breakfast, I went to the corner store to buy some stars for the sky because there were a few blank holes that needed filling in. I looked around at all the eyes inside and tried to determine which ones would reply to my question.

Excuse me, I said, do you have any stars?

Two of the eyes blinked. For a moment I could see the woman behind the counter before she turned into a potted plant.

No ma’am, she said, we don’t. She stared at me funny and I wondered if I was standing on the ceiling or wearing a cloud or any of the other things that I used to know were wrong. I didn’t appreciate the look so I turned around and walked out. When I looked back I saw it was not a store at all but rather the mouth of a lion. Oh well, I said, before taking another step and falling straight into the waiting river.

'The Complexities of Hens' by Sandra Arnold

He always set the clock thirty minutes fast so he could enjoy the luxury of having more time than the clock showed. He mended every broken thing in the house with black tape. He welded iron bars onto saucepans whose handles had come off and reminded his four daughters to fill the pans to the brim before they put them on the stove to stop them overbalancing. He trimmed their hair with the kitchen scissors. This wasn’t easy as he had the sort of fingers that struggled to pick up small change that had fallen on the floor. He ran up four sets of identical dresses on the sewing machine after he’d finished his cleaning shift at the hospital, using material he’d bought on special. Sewing a straight seam was hard for those fingers, but he wasn’t one to shirk his duty. He taught himself how to knit and told the girls not to fret about the dropped stitches in their hats and scarves. He said when he’d mastered the technique he’d teach them to knit for themselves. He polished their shoes every night until they gleamed, the way he’d learned in the army. He bought six hens and a rooster so there would always be fresh eggs and meat. When the eggs hatched the girls carried baby chicks in their pockets to keep them warm and gave them names and sang to them as they weeded the vegetable patch and vacuumed the house and did their homework. When all four girls turned up at school one day with black eyes and split lips they said they’d walked into a door. The youngest said it had nothing to do with refusing to eat the chicken he’d killed and roasted for dinner. She said it had nothing to do with her saying that chickens had feelings and that they had thirty different vocalisations to communicate those feelings. She said it had nothing to do with her sisters saying the chicken he’d roasted was the first one they’d seen climb out of his egg and that they’d watched him grow his new feathers and that he’d just learned to crow.

---
'The Complexities of Hens' was first published by Reflex Fiction in March 2020.

'Tableya' by Sara Magdy Amin

She is stooped over the burner. The kitchen swelters with a heat that scorches, but intensifies the aromas.  Sweat bulbs form on her forehead, dried by the futile turn of a fan. A laborious Friday morning is once again revived. All her senses are working at their maximum capacity. Breakfast must be ready before the congregational prayer. Her ears perceive the call to prayer rising in the distance. Ali, wailing, clings to her soaking cotton nightshirt, articulating his disinterest of the cheap plastic sieves she handed him earlier. Her lips sing of a butterfly wearing a spotted top in her Arabic tongue and her eyes focus on the pot that is spilling over.

Breakfast is served on the tableya. Buttered fava beans and tahina, dashed with a squeeze of lime, eggs scrambled with cured and spiced basterma meat, deep fried ta’ameya balls and, what would serve as the vessel for all these little joys, fresh, hot aish baladi.

The aish was courtesy of Aisha and Fatima, the two Bedouin ladies who worked at the local bakery downstairs. They sat criss-crossed by the tableya when they made the bread. Their children, Reda and Khalil, mirrored their mothers and the way they rolled out the dough.

Here, in their little breakfast arrangement they sat criss-crossed by the tableya. Ali mirrors his mother as she rips a morsel of bread and curls it into the shape of a cat’s ear to pocket the beans. She smiles as he licks his messy fingers. Her morning labour was rewarded.  She knew why she winced that time his father had given him a spoon to eat, but had ultimately said nothing.

She plops Ali in front of the television and turns it on.  A cartoon bunny chants the phonics of the Arabic alphabet: Alif ah ah Arnab, Ba’a, buh buh Baba, Ta’a ta ta Tofaah. Her husband took an audible swig of his tea and changed the channel. The reporter announced that the death toll of the migrant boat that had capsized near the coast of Rosetta rose to 42.  Shameful muttered her husband, shaking his head in disbelief.

Her chest tightens. She grabs Ali without a word and forces him to her breast. Their immigration papers had been accepted last month, sums of money had been paid, their backgrounds had been scrutinised and their permanent visas issued. Her eyes roll back to the news. Images flashed, of the victims, their wailing mothers, Aishas and Fatimas, their children Redas and Khalils, some others estranged, traumatized and shivering, all for a chance at some better life.

*

She is stooped over the burner. A laborious Friday morning is once again revived. All her senses are working at their maximum capacity. Breakfast must be ready before work. Ali and Adam are plopped in front of the television. A cartoon bunny chants the phonics of the English alphabet:  A Ah, Ah, Apple. B Buh, Buh, Ball, C Kuh Kuh Cat. Breakfast is served on the table.

'Dark Moves' by Marie Gethins

1.
Click, click, click. My father is switching off lights. He is full of words: waste, conservation, budget, money. My mother sits at the kitchen table. She doesn’t look up from Good Housekeeping. I carry picture books from the living room into the kitchen and sit beside her. Click. The living room goes dark.

2.
I’m lost in an unfamiliar house, feeling my way through the darkness. A cautious shuffle--right, left, right. Knees bang against something hard. Table? Couch? Fingers recognise plush faces and button noses. It’s my bed. The closet door creeps open with a horror movie squeak. A figure lurches towards me. It’s my grandmother, her outstretched finger taps a beat. Bad, bad, bad.

3.
Everything is grey. Not black, as I wanted it to be, the afternoon sun is too bright. My hand skims along an uneven wall. I follow a curve and turn down the corridor. When my mother grabs a shoulder, I open my eyes. ‘Are you a little blind girl today?’ She laughs and releases me. Lids down, I continue my journey.

4.
A gas lantern hisses on the picnic table. Beyond our yellow circle, I see light spots dance in the trees. My father turns off the lantern. I hold my breath and the light spots come closer. Fingers slipping between boards, I grip the table. A firefly lands on one hand and pulses green.

5.
I’m stumbling again. Arms outstretched, I move them from side-to-side in an arc. There is only emptiness and gloom. I squat, touch the ground, feel grass. Five steps forward. There is only emptiness. I am falling, falling. Wind rushes into my open mouth, scattering the scream.

Debut Fiction: 'The Snake Derbies' by Bill James

It was raining threedrops and by the time we got to the foodbake we were pretty well sopdrenched. Dad sat down and, like always, picked up the pieguide as if he owned the place. I must have eaten my way through the list so many times I had to think back to what I’d eaten the longest time ago.

Dad would talk vanmagic and booksmarts, sailhope and trampgate. ‘… the motherface slipped on the oil, fell backwards onto his kisscrate, I laughed like a teabrain, and he never did it again.’ I part listened and part looked around the foodbake. The waitress was taking a cup of tea out to the brush beggar in the street, and he stood in the doorway, out of the rain to drink it. Not all foodbakes would let them do that and I loved the way that she did.

That’s why I remember this time, because as I was watching him, dad’s voice a pleasant smokescarf around me, through the misty windows, I saw a Roadfort screech to a halt outside, and six Tigerslaves jump out of the back leap at the beggar, sent his brush flying and knock him to the ground, kick him, pick him up by the arms and legs and throw him into the back of the van. I couldn’t believe it, but what really shocked me was dad just turned round, glanced at the disappearing van and said, ‘Cleaning up for the Snake Derbies. Gotta be done.’