All Stories

“Mine!” the witch insisted, poking my ribs.

“I thought witches were nice?” I said, yanking at a sleeve. “Misunderstood?”

“Not this witch,” she said.

Around us, carols blared from a tinny sound system. Shoppers snatched up handfuls of polos, armfuls of sweatpants. The room smelled of acrid sweat and the air click-clacked as plastic hangers were batted.

“It’s too big for you,” the witch said.

“It’s perfect,” I said.

“You don’t understand,” she said.

She said words I didn’t understand. I’m not even sure they were words.

Now I’m a newt.

A tiny, happy newt in a sweet, sweet dress shirt.

Grandpappy told me he didn’t believe in death. He believed in terms. “People have to come to terms with life, kiddo. Terms dictate everything—the beginning, the end, and all that shit in between.” An hour later, he went into his bedroom and spattered his brains onto the wall that Ma had just repainted. How rude. We found him grimacing, his eyes wide open. He looked wild, like a monkey that got caught devouring another monkey. Prozac dotted his nightstand. “Never take any pills,” Grandpappy had told me. “They’ll make you crazy.”

Poor Ma. She’ll have to repaint that wall again.

Smoke curls upwards as she watches him shuffle the cards.

Corners slap together like skin on skin. Fast, sure fingers.

Eye contact breaks to look at the cards they have been dealt.

On the table, hand-rolled cigarettes lie neatly in a row. Red wine breathes in bulbous glasses, awaiting their lips. Hot, sweat-soaked skin glows in the light of the fire.

She runs her fingers down the stem of her glass, then slowly lays out her cards.

He pushes back from the table, eyes flashing with desire. A smile curls her lips as her eyes follow his boxers to the floor.

I awoke to the same view as always: bars and walls. Still in isolation.

This barren, lonely existence. I stared out, so very alone.

I stood and shook the bars. I had to have a change! I had to!

“I can’t stand it in here anymore!” I cried to no one. “Somebody get me outta here!”

Silence.

Or was it? Did I hear a voice from beyond that wall?

A figure approached. A woman. She was big. And bleary-eyed.

“You’re up early today, Sweetums!”

She reached into my cell. Release at last!

“Let’s get you a fresh diaper before breakfast.”

I let my head rest on the car window and watch the mountains spring into view. I almost miss my new stepfather—he had seemed interesting, unlike the others. Six marriages this year. Six mother-daughter trips to nowhere.

Mom veers off the road. She kills the engine, keeping one hand on the steering wheel, and checks her mirrors to make sure we’re alone.

“Wait here while I bury him,” she says as she pops the trunk. Her eyes are as focused as when we used to hide from my real dad, but these days they are bright with happiness.

“Keep watch!”

Alex watched his new neighbor storm out of her house that morning. An angry, bitter woman, he thought. I’d hate to be her.

He closed the curtain and relished the calm of his empty house.

Come evening, his neighbor’s car returned. She looked bone weary, but that was before the door swung open and children poured out. Her husband kissed her cheek.

The curtain fell from Alex’s fingers as phantom sounds filled his ears—his own door; his own children.

She wasn’t angry or bitter, his memory told him. Only tired.

It wouldn’t be so bad to be her, he thought.