Fiction / Suzy Eynon 

          Mad­die and Chris cross the thresh­old into the first gallery room of the down­town art muse­um still blink­ing away the bright spots in their vision left by an indif­fer­ent win­ter sun. Mad­die reads the neat script on a small white note­card, a slight­ly dif­fer­ent shade of white from the wall to which it’s affixed, next to the Geor­gia O’Keeffe. A Cel­e­bra­tion, it says. She is drawn to the swirling clouds against a blue close to the pri­ma­ry shade she learned in kinder­garten. This blue is every­where that after­noon: the paint­ing, her wool coat, the unin­ter­rupt­ed Jan­u­ary sky. Chris leaves her side after only a minute to head for the rest of the Amer­i­can oils in their gild­ed frames. The cou­ple rarely remains side-by-side in pub­lic, as if wit­ness­ing or con­sum­ing some­thing togeth­er can only occur at a phys­i­cal dis­tance. If she fol­lows him, he will pro­ceed to the next paint­ing, a game of chase. She’s always in pur­suit, try­ing to catch up. She puts a hand to the spot on her low back which throbs as if to reas­sure it. Then, a high-pitched squeal inter­rupts the rooms of the sec­ond floor of the muse­um, a sound at first unplace­able to Mad­die.  

          The sharp alert is fol­lowed by a ris­ing cas­cade of voic­es and shuf­fles, bod­ies adjust­ing and on guard, a heel squelch­ing against the shined floor. A young child gig­gles then set­tles into a sob. The alarm speaks in a woman’s voice, calm but firm. There has been an emer­gency report­ed in the build­ing. Please con­tin­ue to the stair­well and evac­u­ate the build­ing. Do not use the ele­va­tors. Mad­die looks for a glow­ing red exit sign, imag­ines curl­ing fin­gers of smoke creep­ing into the room from an unknown source and becomes aware of her own breath­ing. Chris appears at her side, grab­bing her hand. She pulls away from the heavy warmth of his palm on impulse before find­ing it again. They walk toward a stair­well, where oth­ers form a line to exit. 

          “Only in the Pacif­ic North­west would peo­ple line up dur­ing an evac­u­a­tion,” some­one says behind Mad­die.   

          At the bot­tom of the stairs, a muse­um vol­un­teer holds a door open to the street. Mad­die and Chris walk away from the build­ing, then stop near a win­ter-bare Japan­ese maple plant­ed in a cement con­tain­er. Mad­die looks up at the build­ing, vague­ly hop­ing to see some­thing on the roof or a shad­ow in retreat from an upper floor win­dow, more imag­ined smoke bil­low­ing from the build­ing, even some­thing oth­er­world­ly like slime in a crawl down the mono­lith of glass and steel but sees no evi­dence of what sent them onto the side­walk. Patrons gath­er in twos or in clumps form­ing lit­tle closed cir­cles of chat­ter. The few vol­un­teers in their bright blue but­ton-up shirts and lan­yards give away noth­ing. They stand with groups of patrons or peer through the glass to the inside of the muse­um. 

          “Do you think this is far enough away, in case?” Mad­die ges­tures up at the roof of the build­ing. 

          “There’s nobody on the roof,” Chris says. But he can’t know this. 

          Mad­die search­es Seat­tle art muse­um emer­gency today on her phone. Dif­fer­ent com­bi­na­tions of words fail to bring her the nec­es­sary infor­ma­tion. It seems to her more and more late­ly that there is too much infor­ma­tion avail­able, so when she needs a spe­cif­ic piece of information—wants to know if she should run or wait, won­ders what a loud boom was in the night—she can’t find any rel­e­vant results. She con­sid­ers ask­ing a near­by vol­un­teer what hap­pened, but this feels wrong, like an admis­sion of weak­ness. She glimpses a ver­sion of her­self as an uneasy per­son, hands shak­ing as she asks with wide eyes what’s going on, too breathy, like a con­fused child. She might annoy them, a per­son too impa­tient to wait, or look like a neigh­bor­hood gos­sip while some­body might be suf­fer­ing a real emer­gency. This ver­sion of her­self sends a wave of revul­sion through her body, which she receives as a chill and pulls her coat closed over her chest. The vol­un­teers don’t seem to know much more than she does, since they wait on the side­walk with the rest of the crowd. No one makes a move to re-enter the build­ing or share fur­ther infor­ma­tion with the group. 

          A lad­der truck and small­er firetruck pull up across the street.  

          “Why are they over there?” Chris says. He pulls up the fire depart­ment live response web site and reads off the codes. Fire alarm. 

          Sev­er­al fire­fight­ers hop out of the truck and head for the build­ing across the street instead of toward the art muse­um. Some­one in a muse­um shirt approach­es the trucks. Then Mad­die sees a fig­ure through the glass front of the muse­um, some­one in repose. Injured, maybe, or bent down to retrieve some­thing. She steps clos­er and peers inside.  

          A young woman is seat­ed in a plas­tic chair by the exit, her back to the glass doors. From the side, her face appears to be at rest, nei­ther smil­ing nor frown­ing, and yet she looks pleased, some­how. Open. She sits with her legs squared, one foot firm­ly on the ground and the oth­er casu­al­ly crossed. 

          Glass sep­a­rates the two women. Mad­die can’t tell if the woman holds a walkie-talkie like she imag­ines some of the guards might. She looks as if she belongs there, like a per­son at ease with her exis­tence in the world, not clam­or­ing to occu­py any space oth­er than the inside of the muse­um, unin­ter­est­ed in the com­mo­tion out­side. It strikes Mad­die as strange that this per­son is inside of the build­ing while they all wait out­side for the emer­gency to pass, just sit­ting pas­sive­ly in the cen­ter of this sup­posed emer­gency. 

          “Should we get a cof­fee and come back?” Chris asks. “Or we can get lunch.” 

          This is a belat­ed birth­day gift to her from Chris, the muse­um out­ing, an attempt to break up the monot­o­ny of those sil­ver-skied win­ter work­days.  

          The groups of muse­um­go­ers slow­ly dis­perse, set­ting off to get food or drinks, some way to pass the time. There’s no infor­ma­tion about how long the emer­gency may take. A man asks one of the vol­un­teers if he can use his exhib­it pass­es anoth­er time and says he’ll come back lat­er for his coat from the coat check. Mad­die has nev­er used a coat check in her life and is relieved to have noth­ing to leave behind. She likes to keep things on her per­son, so she leaves no strings attached, no require­ment to return to a par­ty she might run from. Her child­hood home was crowd­ed with belong­ings: fur­ni­ture obscured by stacks of news­pa­pers, tow­ers of unla­beled box­es nev­er unpacked, all man­ner of elec­tron­ics and house­hold items bro­ken but which might have been fixed but nev­er were. She learned to squeeze through the mar­gins between piles, mem­o­rized where to step or stand in this sea of stuff. The home was filled with rooms she could no longer enter by the time she moved away with two trash bags of clothes and books.  

          They’d parked the car in the garage attached to the muse­um, teth­er­ing them to the area unless they aban­doned it and returned for it lat­er, the garage now closed for the emer­gency just like the build­ing.  

          “I don’t know where we’d go,” Mad­die says, final­ly. 

          Despite stand­ing on a side­walk down­town sur­round­ed by shin­ing build­ings, she feels this deci­sion requires too much plan­ning and research. What if they leave that moment, and the muse­um re-opens just as they walk away? They’ve already invest­ed the time to dri­ve down here, cir­cle the under­ground park­ing garage in search of a space, and walk the wind­ing garage to find an elu­sive unmarked ele­va­tor. Mad­die is com­mit­ted to the idea of a muse­um day. The blue sky is a rar­i­ty in Jan­u­ary, and the feel­ing of light­ness she car­ried in the brief moments spent inside float­ing from piece to piece had felt rare, too, a blan­ket­ing calm she hadn’t felt in months. With each pass­ing moment, Mad­die ques­tions whether they should walk away. The wind picks up, blow­ing off the water and up through the streets. It licks at the flaps of Maddie’s coat. She tight­ens the scarf around her neck. They tuck clos­er to the build­ing again as the sun shifts over­heard toward an after­noon glare which makes Maddie’s eyes tired. She has the sense of being late to some­thing, like walk­ing into a high school class already in progress after arriv­ing late from a doctor’s appoint­ment. 

          A few groups remain by the time a guard holds open the back doors, and they re-enter the build­ing. They are direct­ed in clumps to go back through the main entry to the exhibits. They walk past the tick­et scan­ner and ascend the same esca­la­tor they used pri­or to the alarm. Mad­die walks at a quick pace, eager to get back to the point at which they’d been inter­rupt­ed before, just past the O’Keeffe.  

          A cou­ple trails behind Maddie’s path through the muse­um. “I stud­ied in France,” one of the women says. The pair give off the air of a first date or arranged meet-up: one does much of the talk­ing, rat­tling through a list of col­leges attend­ed and coun­tries vis­it­ed. Places Mad­die has nev­er and will like­ly nev­er vis­it. When­ev­er at the table for a din­ner con­ver­sa­tion that veers into trav­el, she rearranges the food on her plate, nudges piles to the edge with her fork as the oth­ers vol­ley des­ti­na­tions among their cir­cle like triv­ia, the words float­ing above them with­out ref­er­ence in Maddie’s mind. Biar­ritz, Cor­si­ca, Nice. 

          The cou­ple paus­es in front of a case con­tain­ing blue and white ceram­ics, lit­tle bowls with par­rots on them. Mad­die imag­ines eat­ing stove-warmed Chick­en N’Stars soup from one of the bowls, her Ikea spoon mak­ing a pleas­ant ting as it con­tacts the hilly tex­ture of the insides. The par­rots are espe­cial­ly beau­ti­ful to her, and in that moment she imag­ines a future includ­ing fam­i­ly heir­looms she doesn’t pos­sess: her mother’s berry print crock­ery, which her broth­er had remind­ed her was promised to him before their moth­er died, or the juice glass­es with car­toon char­ac­ters on them they’d used with break­fast as chil­dren. Mad­die hadn’t been home in years but pic­tured her broth­er scoop­ing mashed pota­toes from the largest dish, pre­pared by his wife and devoured by their chil­dren, or his chil­dren let­ting a juice glass slip from sticky hands while they stared at the tele­vi­sion. It had made sense for Mad­die not to argue about the dis­tri­b­u­tion of their mother’s items, of the wealth if you could call it that. Her broth­er had chil­dren while she and Chris didn’t. Couldn’t, she had stopped explain­ing to peo­ple who asked. It was eas­i­er to make it sound like a deci­sion they’d made. 

          Mad­die dis­tances her­self from the cou­ple, mov­ing toward a tex­tile instal­la­tion, a heap of knit­ted blan­kets piled in a stud­ied non­cha­lance from their pedestal to the ceil­ing. She inspects the pile, search­ing for how they man­aged to stay in that form, stacked so high, with­out falling. There must be a cen­ter­ing force. The edge of a rust-col­ored blan­ket catch­es her eye, its loose weave giv­ing it a drape the oth­er blan­kets don’t have. She stretch­es to run her fin­gers along its edges, her arm reach­ing over a rope bar­ri­er. She wants to feel the yarn at her fin­ger­tips, but she stops short as she recalls the guards she knows are wait­ing near­by. Dur­ing oth­er vis­its, she had seen them mate­ri­al­ize next to an offend­er caught with a hand against the glass or a cam­era inside an exhib­it labeled no pho­tog­ra­phy. She pic­tures pulling the blan­ket over her out­stretched body. 

          She turns to find Chris, to call him to the pile of blan­kets, when a sec­ond wail­ing punc­tures her thoughts and a rolling door descends from one of the path­ways to the oth­er rooms, dis­con­nect­ing the gal­leries. The sight of the door rolling toward the ground pan­ics Mad­die more than the pre­vi­ous alarm because while this time has to be anoth­er false alarm, the quick­ness of their trap­ping is breath­tak­ing.  

          “I won­der why those didn’t close before,” she says as Chris returns. 

          “Maybe we just didn’t notice,” he says. They walk to the same stair­well as ear­li­er, this time with a sense of direc­tion.  

          They must leave this time. Mad­die can’t bear the thought of repeat­ing this dance every half hour, hear­ing the same emer­gency and react­ing the same way, only to begin again. At one land­ing, Mad­die pulls her gaze away from the back of the head in front of her to look ahead, to cal­cu­late how much far­ther they have to go. She thinks she sees, in the trick­ling riv­er of bod­ies ahead, the com­posed face of the woman from ear­li­er. A turn­ing sliv­er of face, of jaw, a del­i­cate neck. Was her hair this shade of brown? The woman merges into a bun­dle of move­ment, absorbed by the loose, snaking line.  

          “Keep going?” some­one ahead of Mad­die in the stair­well asks the air. At each land­ing, it isn’t obvi­ous which way to go, if they are to push through the heavy unmarked doors or descend anoth­er flight. 

          “It’s down one more lev­el,” Mad­die offers. She is now an expert at escap­ing, at least from this par­tic­u­lar emer­gency.  

          Those ahead of Mad­die and Chris on the stairs file through the street-lev­el door. Chris reach­es over Mad­die to hold it for their exit, but Mad­die dodges to the side, step­ping out of line. 

          “What are you doing?” Chris asks.  

          “I have to go to the bath­room.”  

          “Now?” asks Chris, but he fol­lows her down anoth­er lev­el. 

          “Here,” Mad­die says. The next met­al door is marked to Shop. “I remem­ber there was a restroom on this lev­el when I came years ago.” She pulls the door toward her chest and holds it for Chris, forc­ing him to pass first. 

          They enter a vestibule which leads to the muse­um gift shop, the restrooms, and an undec­o­rat­ed rest area with a sin­gle stuffed beige chair. 

          “I don’t think you should go right now,” Chris says. “We can go to a cof­fee shop. You can use the bath­room there.” 

          With­out respond­ing, Mad­die pulls the door to the gift shop. But­tery light blooms into the vestibule, a con­trast to the con­trolled, cool­ly lit envi­ron­ment of the gal­leries. A staff mem­ber remains behind the cash reg­is­ter. Some patrons gath­er out­side the large win­dows of the shop, heads craned into their phones.  

          Mad­die has always been attract­ed to gift shops. She doesn’t find them to be tourist traps ped­al­ing over­priced tchotchkes. They are an exten­sion of the expe­ri­ence, a place to obtain a phys­i­cal reminder to show she’s been there, not to oth­ers but to her­self. A part­ing gift for hav­ing lived. 

          “Mad­die?” Chris says. He doesn’t fol­low her into the shop. He stands next to a rack of tote bags near the back door. “Come on.” 

          She picks up and then places down a thick text on William Mor­ris. “Just a sec­ond,” she says. She eyes glis­ten­ing glass­ware, a bas­ket brim­ming with logoed mar­bles. Stacks of mint green hard­cov­er note­books with clean, unbro­ken spines. She can prac­ti­cal­ly hear the crack of open­ing one for the first time, the fwip-fwip of stiff pages turn­ing. Mad­die paus­es again in front of a dis­play of pol­ished stones. They look like riv­er rock, or what her mom had called riv­er rock, like the stones beneath the small foun­tain in her child­hood home which absorbed splash­es or dis­played a spray of water across their flat sur­faces. These have no dirt debris and are cool to the touch as Mad­die runs her fin­ger across their sur­face. 

          “Folks, we need you to head out­side for a few moments until we’re ready to open the reg­is­ter back up,” says a guard, sweep­ing his hand in the direc­tion of the street-side door. A woman strug­gles with sev­er­al bags as she makes her way past Mad­die. Chris looks pained as he glances at Mad­die, then at the door.  

          “Excuse me,” says anoth­er woman. It is the woman from ear­li­er, the inside woman. She walks toward Mad­die with a wide, quick stride, a look of deter­mi­na­tion on her face. Mad­die feels a wave of guilt, a red­ness bloom­ing on her face. She braces as if to be struck or yelled at though she isn’t sure why she reacts this way even as it hap­pens in her body.  

          “Me?” she says.  

          The woman has a dis­arm­ing smile. Warm. “Your scarf.” She holds it aloft. Its weave has come loose from wear, fuzzy and haloed in the light. 

          Maddie’s hand goes to her throat. It must have slipped off. 

          “Wow, thank you,” she says. “That’s so nice.” She nev­er knows how to show appre­ci­a­tion when helped and knows she relies too much on say­ing things or peo­ple are nice or kind, like she can only acknowl­edge the deed by label­ing it. 

          The woman nods by way of acknowl­edg­ment and walks toward the exit. Mad­die knows she has been too appre­cia­tive of the woman. It’s only a scarf. Chris still stands at the edge of the shop, his expres­sion bored. Mad­die moves with rare flu­id­i­ty of motion, palm­ing a gray stone before drop­ping it into the deep pock­et of her coat. For a moment, she imag­ines an out­come in which she has mis­cal­cu­lat­ed, and the stone falls to the floor with a clat­ter, draw­ing the atten­tion of Chris and secu­ri­ty. But she can feel its weight, tug­ging her coat slight­ly down, root­ing her in place. It weighs her down, this imper­cep­ti­ble shift, and she doesn’t move until Chris stands before her with an out­stretched hand. When they make it to the street, Mad­die is reas­sured by the per­sis­tent sky, the pres­ence of low clouds obstruct­ed from her view by tall build­ings. 

From the writer

:: Account ::

The pro­tag­o­nist of this sto­ry, Mad­die, grap­ples with inde­ci­sion and comes from this place where she doesn’t feel there’s room for her, not just phys­i­cal­ly but in terms of space. The title is pas­sive—there has been—which was delib­er­ate, since she is pas­sive in ways, too. I was at an art muse­um once when the alarm kept get­ting trig­gered, a false alarm, and it made me think of dif­fer­ent types and sens­es of emer­gen­cies and how we react to them, the choic­es we are forced to make even dur­ing small emer­gen­cies. In this sto­ry, I was also think­ing about an art muse­um as a blank, clean, arranged space to which view­ers bring their own mess, their own lives. The art muse­um can be a place you peer into through glass, a reflec­tive sur­face or a place you look through to some­thing else. It’s a third place, not home or work but oth­er, and I think Mad­die is look­ing for her­self in there, or look­ing for some­thing to call her own or to pos­sess.  

Suzy Eynon is the author of the forth­com­ing novel­la Ter­res­tri­al (Malarkey Books 2026), and the prose chap­books Being Seen (Ethel) and Com­mut­ing (Ghost City Press sum­mer series). Her fic­tion and non­fic­tion work has been pub­lished in Roanoke Review, Pas­sages North, Aut­o­fo­cus, X‑R-A‑Y, and else­where. Orig­i­nal­ly from Ari­zona, she lives in Seat­tle. More at http://suzyeynon.com/. 

Fiction Translation / Anita Harag  Tr. Marietta Morry and Walter Burgess 

:: The Morning Boy ::

The chair squeaks, I lean back, the floor creaks under the chair, the table makes a crack­ing sound when I put my elbow on it.  I have noticed that I loud­ly crack my knuck­les.  I do that every cou­ple of min­utes, but it could be any kind of sound.  For exam­ple, some­thing com­ing from out­side: a branch snaps against the win­dow or some­one slams a car door, or it could be a sound from inside like the wood con­tract­ing as the cool air rush­es in.  Per­haps he hasn’t even got­ten up yet.  Just after nine, why should he be awake at nine.  Maybe at ten or eleven; from then there would be only a cou­ple of hours left.  I shouldn’t try so hard not to make any noise; he won’t hear it any­way.  I can walk over to the win­dow to close it.  I’m sure the arm­chair doesn’t squeak; I just need to make it that far.  On the oth­er hand, the par­quet floor creaks and it takes at least five steps from the arm­chair to the desk.  If he wakes up and goes to the kitchen, he will need to pass by the bed­room door and hear that the win­dow is open.  The sounds change as if the gar­den moved inside the house.  The car dri­ves by in the bed­room, the bird tweets in the bed­room, the wind blows the branch­es in the bed­room.  I have to close the win­dow, but if I stand up now and walk over there, it could be the squeak­ing of the floor that wakes him.  That’s even worse.   

        I can see the pic­ture on the wall if I lean back from my lap­top.  Yet I don’t rec­og­nize any­thing in it, there’s noth­ing there to be rec­og­nized.  Col­ors and shapes swirl around each oth­er, the whole pic­ture is some­how hap­py.  The room also becomes hap­pi­er because of the pic­ture.  I wig­gle my toes; I try to move my small toe on its own, but the oth­ers move with it.  It’s an evo­lu­tion­ary regres­sion, I’m sure that mon­keys can do it, they need all of them for climb­ing.  Per­haps it would be sim­pler if we were mon­keys.  We would cud­dle each oth­er, groom each oth­er, know each other’s voic­es; it would be nat­ur­al to be close to the oth­ers and we wouldn’t be able to sleep with­out the warmth and famil­iar sound of anoth­er ani­mal.   

        I don’t know this sound, this dron­ing.  It orig­i­nates from some­where in the house, per­haps from his room; he turned on his machine, but what machine would have such a loud drone.  This house is too nice to have such a loud com­put­er.   I don’t know if it has been dron­ing before, only I didn’t notice it, or if it just start­ed now.  I lis­ten intent­ly.  There will be sounds once he gets up.  Chair squeak­ing, fur­ni­ture creak­ing, or some­thing.  The open­ing of the door, clos­ing of the door, toi­let flush­ing.  Water run­ning.  A crow starts croak­ing in the room.  I should real­ly close my  win­dow, I’m chilly, my hands are cold.  How cold your hands are, Eszter says; are you anx­ious?  The win­dow is maybe four steps from here; from there it is only two steps to the book­case.  I had ear­li­er spot­ted that book with the yel­low spine, it would be good to get it.  I would still be able to see the pic­ture from the arm­chair.  It was paint­ed by Eszter.   

        The win­dow shouldn’t be closed after all.  A closed room ampli­fies the sounds.  I make it to the book­case in three long steps.  The books lean against each oth­er hel­ter-skel­ter on the shelves.   Eszter has been talk­ing for months about want­i­ng to do some­thing with the emp­ty spaces but hasn’t found the time.  There used to be some­thing round in the cor­ner, the floor is dark­er there, per­haps a large plant with a leaky pot.  One of the pic­tures has also dis­ap­peared from the wall, a lighter square and a hole where the nail used to be.  If I opened the dress­er, one of the draw­ers would per­haps be emp­ty and the oth­er one would only be half full with Eszter’s panties.   Every­thing is as it used to be; the spaces not yet filled. There is no car­pet on the floor which would allow me to walk qui­et­ly.   He took that as well.  Accord­ing to Eszter, he also took things that she hasn’t yet noticed and will only miss lat­er.  Items she doesn’t think of because she only used them rarely, like the pota­to mash­er, that was always her husband’s job, now she uses a fork to mash the pota­toes.  The stove-top espres­so machine had the same fate.  She rarely drinks cof­fee but some­times has a han­ker­ing for it.  She thought she would not miss those things, the cof­fee machine, the pota­to mash­er and God knows what else. 

        She doesn’t under­stand how she can miss the pos­ses­sions of some­one if she doesn’t miss him.  It doesn’t mat­ter if she miss­es him, I told her.  It’s his books I miss, Eszter answered, she miss­es his plants, and she’s not alone.  Her plants also miss her husband’s plants.  The plants know; they sense it.  Her hus­band knew how to water them, or rather he still knows but no longer does it.  Eszter called him the plant whis­per­er; he could save the sad­dest look­ing plant.  Can she still call him that?  Or is that some­thing only used when they were a cou­ple?  It’s all right if you miss him, I told Eszter again.  I only miss his plants, she answered, and his books.  And the cof­fee machine.   

        She still calls him her hus­band; they are not offi­cial­ly divorced yet.  There­fore, she still has a hus­band some­where.  I still have to get used to this.  I have nev­er been with any­one before who had a hus­band – some­one who lived with a hus­band for fif­teen years, had a child, and lived here as a three­some for ten.  They slept in this room, in this bed, in this house.  The par­quet floor also creaked under the husband’s feet.  Eszter loved him.  She loved a hus­band.  They washed their clothes togeth­er; three loads, that’s a lot of laun­dry.  Their clothes had the same scent, a uni-scent.  I don’t even know where the wash­ing machine is in this house.  I could start using the same deter­gent and my clothes would also have that uni-scent, and then, per­haps, her son would accept me, would rec­og­nize my scent.   

        I can­not pay atten­tion to the book with the yel­low spine.  I start­ed read­ing it from the first sen­tence and now I am up to the for­ti­eth and don’t remem­ber a thing.  The word “wood­peck­er” appeared in it sev­er­al times.  I lay the book on my knees.  The arm­chair is com­fort­able; if the hus­band left it behind, then it belongs to Eszter.   She would sit in it the way I am sit­ting now, with my legs under me, my head against the back of the chair.  She must sit here in the morn­ings to read, lis­ten­ing to find out if her son is up yet.  She is famil­iar with his sounds.  She knows what this drone is; she doesn’t even notice it.  She looks at her watch, it tells her when her son gets up and when she needs to start wor­ry­ing if he doesn’t stir.  But Eszter prob­a­bly doesn’t sit in the room and doesn’t read; moth­ers are usu­al­ly in the kitchen prepar­ing break­fast, stir­ring cocoa; there is a rou­tine.   When her son leaves his room to pee, she’s already warm­ing the milk.  I don’t know why I think the child drinks cocoa, he’s already twelve, per­haps he has grown out of the habit of cocoa.  Although he hasn’t grad­u­at­ed to whiskey yet; last night Eszter found a bot­tle of whiskey in the freez­er.  It must have been there for so long that her hus­band for­got about it.  Although it’s pos­si­ble that it belongs to Eszter; she didn’t say any­thing about the whiskey, only showed it to me after the  boy had gone to bed.  It’s no longer cocoa, but not yet whiskey.  But what do twelve year olds drink in the morn­ing?  This is our first morn­ing togeth­er; Eszter didn’t say any­thing about what I should serve him.   She will be com­ing back around noon.  She needs to chair a pan­el dis­cus­sion this morn­ing, but will be home by noon and we can leave for our hike togeth­er.   

        I’m thirsty.  My water was fin­ished twen­ty min­utes ago; I drink a lot when ner­vous.  Despite the fact that she talked to each of us sep­a­rate­ly about what was going to hap­pen. We will go for a hike on Sat­ur­day at noon.  Eszter is at a con­fer­ence in the morn­ing.  I will sleep over; there­fore the son and I will be alone in the house for a cou­ple of hours.  Will that be OK with you, she asked her son.  OK.  Is it OK with you, she asked me.  OK.  I don’t know what her son’s OK meant.  Is it OK, indeed, or does it mean that it doesn’t mat­ter to him, which would actu­al­ly mean not OK.  This could make Eszter think that it was real­ly OK, when it sim­ply meant that it wasn’t OK and Eszter knew this, but you have to start some­where.  If it were up to her son, OK would always mean not OK.  But she didn’t tell me that, so that I wouldn’t feel uncom­fort­able.   

        After all, this is his house.  I’m not about to wake him up, the way the mail­man or a couri­er would do if they arrive unan­nounced.  Once he’s up, once I hear him stir­ring in his room, I can go fetch some water.  I won’t be drink­ing before; at least I won’t need to go to the toi­let.  If I was to wake him, first he wouldn’t know what he hears.  Mine is not the usu­al voice.  He would rec­og­nize that it is nei­ther his mother’s nor his father’s; per­haps while half asleep he would think it’s his father and then would remem­ber the divorce and real­ize that his father no longer lives here.  Their voic­es wouldn’t make him get up any­way.  It’s an unfa­mil­iar voice and he would be star­tled that there is a stranger in the house, and then would remem­ber it’s his mother’s girl­friend.  His moth­er has a girl­friend who sleeps in the house; OK. 

        OK, he answered when Eszter told him three months ago that she was in love with me and spends the night at my place when he is at his father’s.  She asked him if he want­ed to talk about this.  He didn’t.  It would have been weird, Eszter told me after­wards.  I tell him every­thing and yet he wouldn’t have known about this, that I, that we, you know; it would have been weird that I loved some­one so much, and he, of all peo­ple, wouldn’t know about it.  A few days lat­er, her son asked her how long she had been in love with me.  He didn’t say my name.  Accord­ing to Eszter he didn’t remem­ber it; after all, he only heard it once.  Five months.  You’ve been paint­ing ever since, he replied, or, ever since you’ve been paint­ing.  I don’t remem­ber exact­ly how he said it.  Since we met, Eszter keeps think­ing about paint­ing all the time; when she could paint next or if there was enough paint at home.  She enjoys dis­cov­er­ing a red or yel­low speck of paint in the most unex­pect­ed parts of her body; for exam­ple, at the back of her knee.  I have hung three of her paint­ings in my apart­ment.   Her son didn’t state it, instead he asked whether Eszter loves me because she start­ed to paint.   

        Per­haps the OK didn’t mean OK for me either.  After her son’s OK, I couldn’t have said any­thing else.  At the time, it seemed OK but it was in the after­noon, we have already spent after­noons togeth­er as a three­some.  We also spent a cou­ple of evenings togeth­er, watched movies in the liv­ing room, went for a walk after sup­per; I didn’t hold Eszter’s hand and we didn’t touch each oth­er.  Not on the street, nor in the house.  I remem­ber each time I want­ed to touch her and didn’t.  When we went to buy choco­late, it was dif­fer­ent.  We were stand­ing in line in front of the cashier, the line was mov­ing slow­ly, Eszter looked at me, smiled and gave me a peck on my lips.  After­wards, she and I talked a lot about it, and how that woman two paces behind us looked at us.  And how this wasn’t real­ly the same as it would have been kiss­ing her hus­band while stand­ing in line.   

        So, we had already got to watch­ing movies with her son.  We also go for walks togeth­er.  After a walk we return to their place and Eszter accom­pa­nies me to the bus stop.  We let three or four bus­es go by.  I find it dif­fi­cult to keep my dis­tance from Eszter, from her hands, her mouth, her shoul­ders, her hair.  We like it when Eszter sleeps over at my place.  At night, half asleep, I tell her that I dreamt about her hair, her hair was the star of my dream; I only remem­ber her hair, her curly dark brown hair.  Real­ly, she asks me.  Yet, in the morn­ing, she doesn’t remem­ber a thing.  I have told her about this dream dur­ing sev­er­al nights; I won­der when will she wake up one morn­ing and remem­ber it?   

        It was my after­noon self who replied OK to her after­noon boy.  I didn’t think about the morn­ing boy and my morn­ing self.  I didn’t check with Eszter what I need­ed to know about this boy.   What time he wakes up, should I go to him once he’s awake, should I pre­pare him break­fast; what does he eat for break­fast, or should I just leave him alone?  Is he a sound sleep­er?  Should I wait for him out­side by the table, should I take my lap­top into the kitchen and work there?  Eszter also works at the kitchen table.  Should I be like Eszter?  Par­ents have a spe­cial greet­ing when they see their child, first thing in the morn­ing.  Their voic­es change, they nev­er greet any­one the way they greet their child in the morn­ing.  Per­haps I should learn it.   

        There are more and more sounds com­ing from the street.  Chil­dren go to the play­ground shout­ing, they go down the side­walk in toy cars, their moth­ers and fathers call out to them.  Flóra, Beni, Zente and Léna have already passed by our house.  Then came anoth­er Beni, although it’s pos­si­ble that it was the same Beni as before, except on his way back.  One of the swings in the play­ground squeaks, that’s where I sat with Eszter beside me and the evening boy beside her.  The evening boy seems to be more anx­ious than the after­noon one; accord­ing to Eszter, I’m just imag­in­ing things.  The evening boy is qui­eter, more seri­ous, watch­es my every move, but if I look at him, he looks away.  Yet, I sense that he’s watch­ing me, he knows exact­ly where I am in the house, when and where I go, which way I’m head­ing, whether I’m putting my shoes on or walk­ing to the liv­ing room.  A cou­ple of weeks ago, he came back from his father’s with a fresh hair­cut.  He didn’t tell Eszter that he want­ed to have his hair cut, even though Eszter liked to tuck his hair behind his ears and pat it.  I can recall that ges­ture.  Per­haps he had it cut because I noticed this ges­ture.  He had such love­ly hair, Eszter said after­wards when we were our own; it was love­ly, was­n’t it, she asked.   

        Will you get over here this minute, I over­hear from the street.  I hope they bel­low like this to a dog.   I can’t imag­ine Eszter bel­low­ing  to her son, although she must do that some times.  And what am I going to do when she bel­lows like that in front of me; will I leave the room or pre­tend that I’m not there.  I will be the fifth chair, or a jug of lemon­ade.  I won’t make a move, won’t look at either of them, chairs don’t look.  I’m sure she will bel­low at him in front of me.  That will mean that I’m accept­ed.  Once I’m a chair, then I’m accept­ed.   

        I close the win­dow, at which point the door opens a bit.  I pre­tend that I’m look­ing at the gar­den.  A bee­tle is crawl­ing on the win­dow, that’s what I’m watch­ing.  I closed the win­dow to pre­vent the insect on the ledge from com­ing in.  I count the chil­dren going to the play­ground and let him watch me. When I’m being watched, I sense it and look back. That prompts the oth­er per­son to turn away, because it’s hard to take that look.  Almost impos­si­ble.  One of the two always looks away.   

        I turn very care­ful­ly as if that’s how I usu­al­ly turn.  There’s no one stand­ing at the door.  I don’t see fin­gers on the door either, or a hand on the door­frame.  I stay qui­et; it is qui­et.  I don’t move, nei­ther does any­one else.  I walk over to the door; there is no one stand­ing behind it.  Yes­ter­day we made crêpes and left the kitchen win­dow open; it must have been the draft that opened the door.  The hall­way is dark; his door is closed.  I lis­ten for sounds but there is noth­ing com­ing from his room.  Per­haps he’s stand­ing by the door lis­ten­ing to see if I leave the bed­room. I close the door.  When Eszter comes home and asks what we’ve been doing, I will tell her that I was work­ing and he will say that he was study­ing.  Or, what would a twelve year old do on a Sat­ur­day morn­ing.  He played games, but that I would hear, or at least the after­noon boy shouts words when play­ing the game that I don’t under­stand. He’s got his head­set on.  Eszter has to open his door to ask him to come to din­ner because he doesn’t hear.   Once when I asked Eszter what he was doing, she said he was run­ning.  He’s always run­ning in the game, she said. 

        I opened his door one day.  The door was open a crack; I knocked, he said to come in.  This “come in” sound­ed nat­ur­al.  He thought it was his moth­er; I had nev­er been in his room before.  I was sur­prised by the plants.  He was sit­ting in the mid­dle of a jun­gle, run­ning.  The small lamp in the cor­ner makes the plants cast shad­ows on the wall.  Would you like to have île flot­tante?  Your mom would like to know.  It was île flot­tante or pan­na cot­ta, some sort of dessert.  He was sur­prised to see me there.  He shook his head, didn’t real­ly under­stand what I’d asked him, he was so tak­en aback that I was in his room that he couldn’t con­cen­trate on any­thing else.  I left and closed the door behind me.  His best friend left not long before, I could sense the stale ado­les­cent air.  Accord­ing to Eszter, he hadn’t told his best friend about me yet.  That’s why she want­ed me to come lat­er, after his friend had left.  He would nev­er get used to me, I thought as I returned to the kitchen.  He doesn’t want any, I told Eszter.  He doesn’t want any, she asked.  He always wants some.  She put some on a plate and car­ried it over to his room.  He has beau­ti­ful plants, I said.  He adores them, she answered.  I hope he will turn the machine off.  His hour is up, she said.  I left soon after.   

        The leaves on Eszter’s plants are turn­ing yel­low; some already have brown stems.  I touched the soil; it’s dry and should be watered now.  We are all thirsty.  If I man­age to go to the kitchen, I’ll bring them water, too.  I’ll ask Eszter if she has liq­uid plant food, they could use it.  The plant food must have also belonged to her hus­band; anoth­er item she’ll miss when she notices it.  I’ll bring some plant food; we’ll have com­mu­nal plant food.  My plants will be beside hers on the flower stand.  My belong­ings will first be in this room.  Then slow­ly we’ll move my plants to the liv­ing room, we’ll start with a piece here and there, a cardi­gan left behind on the arm­chair, a book on the cof­fee-table, my mug on the kitchen counter.  He will slow­ly get used to my things, we’ll have joint activ­i­ties, movie Thurs­days, we’ll pop corn; I will bring over my grand­mom’s pop­corn machine, the pop­corn will be just like in the cin­e­ma.  Yes, this will be my first item here, some­thing use­ful.  He will find it less and less strange if I touch his shoul­ders or pre­pare him some­thing for break­fast. I’ll know whether to talk to him or leave him alone.  He will get used to my voice; won’t take off the head­set when he hears a weird noise from a strange woman; and won’t start lis­ten­ing when I go to the wash­room, to make sure that I’m not com­ing to his room.  What would he need anoth­er moth­er for?  Do I need a child?  When we first met, I was sur­prised by how tall he was; I even told Eszter.  Yes, she answered, it’s incred­i­ble that I once wor­ried about drop­ping him.  At least I need­n’t wor­ry about that.  

        Let’s say a year from now, Eszter will have to attend a con­fer­ence again and he and I will stay here on our own.  I have already moved in; this is my home.  We not only go for walks and watch movies, we sit togeth­er in the kitchen, have break­fast with­out say­ing a word, but it’s a com­fort­able silence.  He heard that I was in the kitchen, got up and joined me.  Good morn­ing, I said to him in a moth­er­ly tone, yet not the same way as Eszter.  I would like to tell him that this whole thing is new for me as well.  The hus­band, the child.  I don’t know who he will be to me and who I will be to him.  I will sim­ply be Pan­ni.  Anoth­er per­son who loves him.  Per­haps this will suf­fice.   

        A cou­ple of weeks ago he did­n’t want to come back from his father’s place.  The same thing hap­pened the Wednes­day before.  He want­ed to stay there.  In spite of the fact that dur­ing the first days he and Eszter were alone; I did­n’t show up until the third or fourth day.  It’s eleven-thir­ty.  Should I start wor­ry­ing about him now?  Sure­ly he’s not asleep, Eszter is due back at noon.  Per­haps he real­ly is asleep; I could go to the kitchen for a glass of water.  The put­ter­ing, the water will sure­ly wake him.   Or he’s not well and does­n’t dare to say any­thing; or he’s not well and can­not speak. I’ll  go to the door and lis­ten.  I’ll open the door and lis­ten to sounds in the hall­way.  What do I say if that’s exact­ly when he leaves his room?  I’ll say that I’m on the way to the kitchen.  Or I’ll only say good morn­ing and con­tin­ue on my way to the kitchen.  Yes, there’s no need to explain things.  He’s a very bright boy; I heard him talk to Eszter a few days ago while they were doing the dish­es, that the sis­ter of one his class­mates had leukemia.  He and this boy talked through lunch break.  And they also walked home togeth­er.  He did­n’t say a word, only lis­tened to his class­mate; he asked Eszter what he could have said.  He told Eszter that he remem­bered every sen­tence that he heard.  He does­n’t have a sis­ter and, apart from his grand­ma, nobody died yet.  He was still small when grand­ma died.  What should he have said?  Eszter replied that it was a good thing that he was qui­et.  How will I explain to Eszter that I spent the whole morn­ing in the house and did­n’t real­ize that this bright sen­si­tive boy died?  I’m halfway through the door; I even hold my breath.  I take anoth­er step, that’s when some­thing falls on the floor in his room.  I get fright­ened and step back into the bed­room.  And I’m also relieved.  I care­ful­ly close the door.  It was a thud like a copy­book falling on the floor.  I also heard a creak, as if some­one was try­ing to reach for it from the bed or the chair.  He’s awake and read­ing.  I sit back in the arm­chair, watch the pat­tern of the par­quet floor, then from there I move my glance to the pic­ture; my knap­sack is beside Eszter’s by the desk.  Hers is lilac col­ored, mine mus­tard.  I won’t be going to the par­ent-teacher inter­view, will I?  He asked Eszter. She will go with Dad, won’t she? 

        I real­ly have to leave the room now.  Per­haps that’s what he’s wait­ing for; he’ll fol­low me.  I leave the room with a glass in my hand, fill it up and make myself a sand­wich.  If he comes out, I’ll ask him if he would like some.  He’s not hun­gry, he’ll say.  That’s a prob­lem.   A twelve year old must have break­fast.  Also, we’ll be going hik­ing, he must eat some­thing.  But how can I tell him that.  Do I remind him that in an hour he’ll be hun­gry or do I ask whether I should pre­pare a sand­wich for him for lat­er.  Per­haps he’ll get to hate me for car­ing for him so ear­ly in the game.  He says he doesn’t want any, that’s all.  After that I’ll have noth­ing to say.  If I ask him how his sleep was, that’s even worse.  He sits down by the table and doesn’t talk to me, doesn’t even look at me.  I love his mom.  That’s all I need to tell him.  I sit down beside him and tell him that I love his mom.  He’ll give me a seri­ous look; I’ll then give him my most seri­ous look.  I’ll tell him in a lot of ways that I love his mom and that’s all there’s to it.  Or I will tell him only once but using my most seri­ous tone.  Maybe that’s how I should start.  I notice him in the kitchen, all I’ll say is: you know I love your mom, don’t you.  We run into each oth­er in the hall­way; I love your mom.  I’ll stand by his door and whis­per it to his door: I love your mom.  My whis­per will also be seri­ous.  When one whis­pers, it’s because one needs to tell some­thing at all cost.  Only urgent things need to be whis­pered.   

        I go to the win­dow; from here it is easy to see if Eszter is com­ing home.  I’ll see her first and only hear her after.  I’ll know that she’s com­ing, that she’s about to come in by the door.  I spot in the cor­ner of my eye some­thing white on the floor.  It’s dif­fi­cult not to look at the fence and the street.  The white some­thing is a water­ing can behind the arm­chair.  Maybe it has water in it.  It does.  I dis­trib­ute it so that each plant gets some.  Before we leave we’ll have to give them a thor­ough water­ing.  Hi there!  This is Eszter’s voice.  I didn’t hear the key or the door open­ing.  I walk over to the bed­room door and try to fig­ure out from the sounds what’s hap­pen­ing.  Eszter is tak­ing off her coat, I don’t leave the room yet.  Let the morn­ing boy go out­side first, greet his moth­er; let them be alone for a bit.  Hi there, Eszter says again while she’s remov­ing her shoes.  No one comes out from the oth­er room.  I’m wait­ing.  Is there any­one home?  Where are you?   

From the writer

:: Account ::

The gen­e­sis of the Hun­gar­i­an orig­i­nal of this sto­ry is a vol­ume of sto­ries by many authors put togeth­er to mark the thir­ti­eth anniver­sary of the Budapest Gay Pride parades.   In Hun­gary this event has a very dif­fer­ent sig­nif­i­cance than sim­i­lar ones in oth­er coun­tries (what the future will hold in the US is unclear).  The present Orbán regime in Hun­gary passed an amend­ment to the Fun­da­men­tal Law (the Hun­gar­i­an con­sti­tu­tion) which says that “a fam­i­ly is a union of a father who is a man and a moth­er who is a woman” and that each Hun­gar­i­an is either male or female.  

Even though the sto­ry stands on its own as an absurd sit­u­a­tion made more absurd by the narrator’s own inabil­i­ty to assert her­self even a tiny bit; the con­text of its ori­gin can add to the piquan­cy of her sit­u­a­tion. The epony­mous boy will have a dif­fi­cult time explain­ing his liv­ing arrange­ment to his bud­dies.  How­ev­er, through­out the narrator’s dither­ing, he is like­ly sleep­ing or play­ing video games. 

Ani­ta Harag was born in Budapest in 1988.  In 2020 she was the win­ner of the Margó Prize, award­ed to the best first time fic­tion author of the year, for her first vol­ume of short sto­ries Her sec­ond book of sto­ries came out in 2023.  This sto­ry post­dates her two books. 

Mari­et­ta Mor­ry and Wal­ter Burgess are Cana­di­an.  In addi­tion to sto­ries by Ani­ta Harag (twen­ty have been pub­lished), they also trans­late fic­tion by five oth­er authors; these trans­la­tions have appeared in lit­er­ary reviews in North Amer­i­ca and abroad, includ­ing in The New Eng­land Review, The South­ern Review and Ploughshares.  Gábor Szántó’s book “1945 and Oth­er Sto­ries”, six of its eight sto­ries trans­lat­ed by them, was pub­lished in 2024.  

Fiction / D.A. Hosek

:: The Boy Who Loved Music ::

       There once was a boy who loved music. When he was four, his grand­fa­ther bought a piano for his fam­i­ly so the boy’s old­er broth­er, the grandfather’s favorite grand­child, could take lessons. The boy watched as the piano was unloaded and set up in the liv­ing room. One of the deliv­ery­men tapped a sim­ple melody out on the tre­ble keys of the piano and gave the boy’s moth­er a form to sign for the deliv­ery of the piano. The boy was in love.

       The boy’s old­er broth­er was enrolled in piano lessons. The boy was not. This was no deter­rent for a boy in love. He was a pre­co­cious child. He had taught him­self to read from Sesame Street and Dr Seuss. He could teach him­self to mas­ter this strange new device. His brother’s piano book had pic­tures show­ing how he should posi­tion his fin­gers over the keys and which keys cor­re­spond­ed to which dots on the staff. The first song in the book was enti­tled “Swing­ing” and was a sim­ple sequence of notes: C‑D-E-F-G-F-E-D‑C, repeat­ed end­less­ly. The boy played this song over and over until his parents—either out of respect for his ded­i­ca­tion to his muse or out of a desire to pro­tect their sanity—enrolled the boy in piano lessons along­side his old­er brother.

***

       My grand­moth­er wore hear­ing aids. I had always assumed she did this because of the ordi­nary decay of hear­ing in old age, but her hear­ing loss was the result of a con­di­tion called oto­scle­ro­sis. The bones of the mid­dle ear nor­mal­ly vibrate against each oth­er to trans­mit sound between the tym­pa­num and cochlea, but in a per­son with oto­scle­ro­sis, these bones become cal­ci­fied and trans­mit lit­tle or no sound as they become fused.

       Oto­scle­ro­sis is a hered­i­tary dis­ease. My uncle and one of his sons inher­it­ed it. My moth­er did not. The dis­ease, appar­ent­ly, can skip a gen­er­a­tion. I also have otosclerosis.

***

       The boy’s skill as a pianist grew quick­ly. When the kinder­garten teacher dis­cov­ered the boy could sight-read the songs she sang with her stu­dents, she proud­ly ced­ed the piano bench to him dur­ing music time.

       Music was a kalei­do­scop­ic expe­ri­ence for the boy. He expe­ri­enced notes as col­ors, tim­bres as shapes. Har­monies tick­led dif­fer­ent parts of the inside of his nose. He learned the con­nec­tions between the col­ors he heard and the keys on the piano and was able to hear some­thing once and play it per­fect­ly on the piano.

       He trans­formed this abil­i­ty into pop­u­lar­i­ty by play­ing the pop­u­lar songs of the late 70s for his class­mates’ enter­tain­ment, although he gen­er­al­ly viewed the music of the time with dis­dain. And some of their requests, like KISS or Don­na Sum­mers didn’t trans­late well to the piano. The boy’s broth­er, mean­while, lost inter­est in the piano and turned his atten­tion to base­ball. The grand­fa­ther paid for coach­ing until the broth­er lost inter­est in that as well.

       The boy want­ed des­per­ate­ly to write music, sit­ting at the piano try­ing to cre­ate his own com­po­si­tions. His junior high music teacher told him of a com­po­si­tion con­test and he spent weeks work­ing on his piece, going through a full pad of man­u­script paper before he final­ly had some­thing ready to per­form for his teacher and classmates.

       He sat at the piano and began play­ing his piece. His class­mates snick­ered. He glanced at his teacher and saw her frown­ing, but not because of his class­mates’ behav­ior. Her reac­tion was direct­ed at him. She told him to stop before he reached the end of the sec­ond 12 bars.

       “Is this a joke?” she asked.

       “What?”

       “Your song. It’s—”

       “It’s that song from the Arthur movie,” one of the boys in the class said.

       A girl in the class sang the open­ing line, “Once in your life you find her…” and the class burst out in open laugh­ter. The boy snatched his man­u­script pages from the paper, crum­pled them and threw them in the garbage, flee­ing into the hall­way. He locked him­self in a stall of the boys’ bath­room where he remained until half an hour after the school day ended.

       His broth­er learned of the boy’s humil­i­a­tion and mocked him for months afterwards.

***

       There was nev­er real­ly any indi­ca­tion when I was young of the time bomb in my ears wait­ing to erode my hear­ing. I could hear every­thing just fine. Bet­ter than fine, even. Cal­ci­um deposits were already form­ing on the sur­faces of the malleus incus and stapes, but they did not impact the func­tion­al­i­ty of the bones of the mid­dle ear.

***

       The boy went to col­lege, but to the sur­prise of his teach­ers, he chose to study elec­tri­cal engi­neer­ing at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Illi­nois rather than music. The head of the music depart­ment at his high school told him he should apply for music pro­grams at Jul­liard or NYU or, at least, Northwestern.

       But the boy was real­is­tic about the prospects of a career in music. He had man­aged to get a gig play­ing piano with a Latin band that played out four times a week. They snuck him through the back doors of bars in Mex­i­can and Puer­to Rican neigh­bor­hoods with a claim that the boy was twen­ty-one and a promise that he wouldn’t drink any­thing stronger than Coke any­way. The trum­pet play­er occa­sion­al­ly slipped a lit­tle rum into the boy’s soda when no one was look­ing despite that promise. He could do the math and real­ized that even if he gigged every night and made triple what he did with the Latin band, he would still be liv­ing on a pover­ty income.

       But he was a boy who loved music, so in col­lege he joined a bar band start­ed by anoth­er stu­dent who heard him play­ing the piano in a col­lege prac­tice room. The boy scraped togeth­er a few hun­dred dol­lars to buy a used Roland Juno-106, ampli­fi­er and key­board stand. He liked that he could mod­i­fy the shapes of the notes from the key­board by adjust­ing the set­tings of the key­board, but if they played some­where that hap­pened to have a real piano, he always chose to play that in place of the Roland.

       He helped the band learn songs, writ­ing down chords and basslines for songs as quick­ly as he could lis­ten to them. One day, the gui­tar play­er showed up at rehearsal with a song he had writ­ten. He played the song accom­pa­nied only with his acoustic gui­tar and the boy could see all the holes in the song where the oth­er instru­ments would fit. He start­ed play­ing the miss­ing key­board parts on the sec­ond verse and direct­ed the bass play­er on what to add to the bot­tom end. The drum­mer joined in. On the sec­ond run-through, the gui­tar play­er switched to his tele­cast­er and the song trans­formed from idea to art. They all agreed that they would slip it in with their reper­toire of cov­ers at their next gig.

       After the show, sev­er­al peo­ple asked about the new song, want­i­ng to know who orig­i­nal­ly per­formed it. When they learned it was an orig­i­nal, they all said the band should record it, promis­ing to buy copies when they had them available.

       This was enough for the band mem­bers to decide to write more songs and record a four-song EP. The uni­ver­si­ty had a record­ing stu­dio but it was only avail­able to music majors. The drum­mer filed the paper­work with the reg­is­trar to change his major so they could book stu­dio time. The boy played his parts on the studio’s Stein­way grand piano, lux­u­ri­at­ing in how each chord felt in his body.

       They pooled their funds to have a com­pa­ny in St Louis man­u­fac­ture 500 CDs.

       “I hope this isn’t a big mis­take,” the boy said.

       “Hey, all we need to do is sell 60 CDs at shows to break even,” the gui­tar play­er answered.

       The first gig after the box with their new CDs arrived, it looked like the boy’s con­cerns were jus­ti­fied. They sold three CDs.

       The gui­tar play­er had a friend who DJed on WPGU and the friend added a cou­ple of the bands’ songs into his playlists. Their next gig, the bar was packed and they sold over a hun­dred CDs. The whole run of CDs was gone in a month.

       “We should make a whole album,” the drum­mer said at their next rehearsal. “You got any more songs?”

       “I’ve got a cou­ple half-fin­ished ideas,” the gui­tar play­er said. “We could work on those.”

       “I’ve got a few things we can try to build into songs,” the bass play­er says. He turns to the boy. “You got anything?”

       “Sor­ry, nope.”

       The boy was lying. He had writ­ten sev­er­al songs, but he was wary of shar­ing them with the oth­ers in the band out of fear that he had once again “writ­ten” some­one else’s song. His attempts at song­writ­ing were kept secret from everyone.

***

       My hear­ing loss in col­lege was some­thing that only became obvi­ous in ret­ro­spect. I always assumed that I had trou­ble hear­ing on the phone in my right ear because I had long hair that blocked the phone and the drum­mer was always to my right when I played gigs. I didn’t know that the cal­ci­fi­ca­tion was begin­ning to cause the bones to vibrate less, block the sound instead of trans­mit­ting it.

***

       The band record­ed their first full-length album at the begin­ning of the next semes­ter. They decid­ed to have a cou­ple thou­sand CDs man­u­fac­tured, a poten­tial­ly out­ra­geous risk. Again, they pooled their mon­ey, sup­ple­ment­ing the prof­its from the sale of their EP with funds embez­zled from the mon­ey their par­ents had des­ig­nat­ed for books (why buy text­books when they could be checked out from the library?). They ner­vous­ly await­ed the arrival of the box­es of CDs from the fac­to­ry and hand-deliv­ered a disc to the gui­tar player’s friend at WGPU as soon as they opened the first box.

       The lead track from the CD was on the radio when they drove back from the sta­tion. They sold a hun­dred copies at their next gig—every sin­gle one they had brought to the bar to sell between sets.

       “Maybe we should go on the road,” the gui­tar play­er said. “I’m sure we can expand beyond Cham­paign-Urbana, no problem.”

       The boy was reluc­tant to tour. He wor­ried he’d miss too much class. He wor­ried that the expens­es of trav­el­ing would over­whelm the income from sell­ing CDs and col­lect­ing the two-dol­lar cov­er charge in cities and towns where they were unknown. He wor­ried they’d end up fail­ing as both a band and as col­lege stu­dents. Yes, the gui­tar player’s friend had got­ten copies of their CDs out to oth­er col­lege sta­tions where it had been well-received, but just because they were get­ting air­play on oth­er col­lege sta­tions didn’t nec­es­sar­i­ly mean peo­ple would come out to see them or buy their CD.

       The band mem­bers met with­out the boy. It was obvi­ous to them that the next step for the band was to do a tour across Illi­nois, Indi­ana and Mis­souri, maybe even Wis­con­sin and Michi­gan. If they boy wasn’t up for it, they could get some­one else to play key­boards. They all agreed that the boy was the best key­boardist around, but maybe they didn’t need the best key­board play­er, just some­one good enough. Maybe a new key­board play­er would con­tribute songs of his own. They qui­et­ly approached a friend of the drum­mer and audi­tioned him one Wednes­day morn­ing while the boy was in class. The boy learned about the tour and his replace­ment on the same day.

       The boy, ashamed at being dis­missed from the band, dropped out of per­form­ing music for years. The band went on to mod­est suc­cess, sign­ing a deal with A&M Records. A few of their songs chart­ed, their biggest hit reach­ing as high as #41 before fad­ing into obscu­ri­ty. Every time one of their songs came on the radio, the boy could hear the places where the music was lack­ing, things he would have sug­gest­ed that would have filled those gaps and make the songs bet­ter, but he kept his silence. He was the band’s Pete Best, the mem­ber who didn’t make the cut and any­thing he might say about them could only appear as bit­ter­ness and jealousy.

***

       I didn’t real­ize how much hear­ing I had lost until I casu­al­ly men­tioned to a girl­friend that I heard my pulse in my ear, some­thing I assumed every­one did. I was wrong. Starved of sen­so­ry input, the brain takes what it can get and ampli­fies that. In my case, since sounds weren’t con­duct­ed to the inner ear, my brain inten­si­fied the sig­nal from the blood flow in my head that didn’t need to be trans­mit­ted through the malleus, incus and stapes.

       Lat­er that year, talk­ing with my cousin, it became appar­ent what was going on, He had the same symp­toms before his ear surgery. His father, who nev­er had the surgery, still hears his pulse if he isn’t wear­ing his hear­ing aids.

       For years after col­lege, if I had health insur­ance, it was the kind with a deductible high enough to dis­cour­age actu­al­ly seek­ing any sort of treat­ment. Only in my ear­ly thir­ties did I final­ly get insur­ance that made hav­ing my oto­scle­ro­sis treat­ed prac­ti­cal. I had a stapedec­to­my, first in my right ear and then in my left and my hear­ing was restored to nor­mal. Sud­den­ly I could hear nois­es I had for­got­ten existed.

***

       The boy’s exile from music end­ed in his ear­ly thir­ties. When he was at Mass, the usu­al piano play­er was absent and a woman was strug­gling to lead the con­gre­ga­tion a cap­pel­la. She grate­ful­ly accept­ed his offer to accom­pa­ny and the his fin­gers demon­strat­ed the dex­ter­i­ty they always had as he impro­vised an accom­pa­ni­ment from the song­book con­tain­ing only the melody line.

       This one-time instance turned into a side job replac­ing the parish’s music direc­tor who had fall­en ill and was unable to con­tin­ue in the role. It didn’t ful­ly scratch his itch, but it helped. He made friends with a few like-mind­ed musi­cians and even formed a bar band to play cov­er songs on week­ends. He wrote a few songs, but nev­er shared them.

***

       My hear­ing fad­ed after the surgery. Slow­ly enough that it wasn’t imme­di­ate­ly obvi­ous. I could still hear the notes of music, but under­stand­ing speech was a chal­lenge. I occa­sion­al­ly found myself agree­ing to do things I didn’t real­ize thanks to pre­tend­ing to be able to hear. My oto­laryn­gol­o­gist gave me the bad news. The cal­ci­fi­ca­tion that had ren­dered my mid­dle ear inef­fec­tive had migrat­ed to my cochlea. There would still be years of hear­ing and with any luck the tech­nol­o­gy would improve by the time I would need cochlear implants, but in the inter­im, I would need hear­ing aids.

       Hear­ing aids don’t work like glass­es. They don’t trans­form poor hear­ing into nor­mal hear­ing; they trans­form poor hear­ing into less poor hear­ing. What gets ampli­fied isn’t always what I want. In a restau­rant, I might hear some­one one table over bet­ter than the per­son in front of me.

       Most peo­ple lack empa­thy for the hear­ing impaired. It’s aggra­vat­ing to be asked to repeat your­self over and over. Almost as aggra­vat­ing as ask­ing some­one to repeat them­self. It’s easy to imag­ine being blind. You just close your eyes. But it’s dif­fi­cult to emu­late deaf­ness. Elim­i­nat­ing sound from your life, even tem­porar­i­ly, is not a sim­ple matter.

       And cochlear implants are not a mir­a­cle cure. The abil­i­ty to hear sub­tle vari­a­tions in sound that the thou­sands of hair cells in the cochlea pro­vide is still well beyond the abil­i­ty of mod­ern tech­nol­o­gy to pro­vide. The brain needs to re-learn how to hear post cochlear implant and being able to decode speech is enough of a chal­lenge with­out adding in being able to hear the tones and col­ors of music. Search­ing cochlear implants and music on the inter­net revealed that many musi­cians lost their abil­i­ty to enjoy music the same way after get­ting the implants that they could before.

***

       The boy’s hear­ing has an expi­ra­tion date. There will come a time in his life when there will be no more sound, no more col­ors and shapes, no more intense feel­ings from a dimin­ished chord, only silence.

       He’s aware of Beethoven’s famous deaf­ness, but he’s not Beethoven. He might have had the poten­tial to become Beethoven, but if he did, it’s too late.

From the writer

:: Account ::

This piece began life as a work of CNF, but I found my own life to be too dull to sus­tain nar­ra­tive inter­est. For­tu­nate­ly, I’m a writer of fic­tion and not non-fic­tion so giv­en the free­dom to make things up, I was able to bor­row aspects of the lives of oth­er peo­ple I’ve known as well as things that nev­er hap­pened to any­body as far as I know to come up with the sto­ry at hand. I do like steal­ing the braid­ed nar­ra­tive form that the CNF peo­ple have claimed for their own. Why should they get a great nar­ra­tive forms like braid­ed nar­ra­tives all to them­selves? While my own hear­ing has decayed some­what over the last decade, since I orig­i­nal­ly wrote this piece, the hear­ing loss has slowed to an imper­cep­ti­ble pace. I can only hope that when the time comes to give up my cochleae for a dig­i­tal proth­e­sis, the tech­nol­o­gy will be much better.

D. A. Hosek’s fic­tion has appeared in The San­ta Mon­i­ca Review, Exter­mi­nat­ing Angel, Nebo, Menis­cus, South­west Review and else­where. He earned an MFA in fic­tion from the Uni­ver­si­ty of Tam­pa. He lives and writes in Oak Park, IL and spends his days as an insignif­i­cant cog in the machin­ery of cor­po­rate Amer­i­ca. https://dahosek.com @dahosek.bsky.social

Fiction / Xincheng Liu

:: An Elephant That Never Existed ::

My life is a fuck­ing mess. 

The only solace I find is an arti­cle from a well-known film review account, bold­ly titled “Fuck Life, Fuck.” 

The piece is about An Ele­phant Sit­ting Still, the only film ever made by the late direc­tor Hu Qian. It’s said to be four hours long—pure, unfil­tered depres­sion. Hu killed him­self right after he fin­ished it. He was heart­break­ing­ly young, just twen­ty-sev­en. The film nev­er screened in main­land Chi­na. I want to watch it so bad­ly I could die, but I can’t find this film. 

My obses­sion with the film isn’t just about its sup­pos­ed­ly pro­found artis­tic value—though of course, I love art—but more because of one par­tic­u­lar sub­plot: a girl from a sin­gle-par­ent home falls in love with her school’s teacher. Even­tu­al­ly, the teacher’s wife finds out and storms into the girl’s life, humil­i­at­ing her into run­ning away. The girl joins a few oth­er mis­fits on a jour­ney to Manzhouli to find the elephant—an ele­phant that, of course, doesn’t exist. 

The moment I read that syn­op­sis, I near­ly choked from a cock­tail of shock and thrill: Holy hell, isn’t that bas­cial­ly me in anotehr life? In that moment, I for­gave every so-called trashy plot in the world. A lone­ly, father­less girl falling for an old­er man; a stu­dent and her teacher. Sud­den­ly the word melo­dra­ma had a per­fect­ly log­i­cal struc­ture. When the cliché crawled out of the screen and into my real life, all I could do was applaud the uni­verse for its twist­ed sense of humor. 

And after that? 
Well—there was no after. 
He was a pub­lic school teacher, not some sleaze­ball. I was just a reg­u­lar high school stu­dent, my head filled not with ele­phants or escape, but with the col­lege entrance exam. 

Lat­er, I mud­dled my way into uni­ver­si­ty. It wasn’t what I imag­ined. The cam­pus was small, sparse with trees, with nowhere to hide from the open sky. When the sun blazes, it still beats down on half my face; my sun­screen melts, milky tears smeared in globs across my cheeks. I don’t have many friends. The down­side is lone­li­ness, the upside is free­dom. On days with­out class, I wan­dered through the ear­ly after­noon sun­light. A drowsy haze wraps around my heart; I must look like a six-year-old child lost in thought. 

Then all of a sud­den I just stop feel­ing hap­py. Not exact­ly sad, just… not happy—a touch of wist­ful­ness, a melo­dra­mat­ic melan­choly with no real cause. I push open the glass door of the aca­d­e­m­ic build­ing. As I walk past the foun­tain, streams of peo­ple brush by my shoul­ders. That feel­ing is like burst­ing out of a swel­ter­ing street straight into an office cranked full of AC: heat clings to my skin like a sheet of flame, cold air blasts my face like a frigid dag­ger, and my body becomes the bat­tle­field. I feel a chill—not the heart-deep chill of hav­ing cold water dumped over your head, just a numb pause, stand­ing dumb­ly at the col­li­sion of hot and cold. The tem­per­a­ture leaves a blank white void on my skin. It’s so pre­ten­tious, I know. I feel emp­ty sim­ply because it’s been too long since my heart felt a spark of excite­ment. I sus­pect the sweet flut­ter of a crush is like a man’s genitals—leave it unused too long and it rusts like an old iron key, goes impo­tent. After leav­ing the teacher-filled halls of high school, love drift­ed far, far away from me, until even­tu­al­ly it wasn’t even love any­more. In this sti­fling cage of a col­lege, I lived with a dead calm heart, like a walk­ing corpse—even though I clear­ly still had a soul. 

Then, like sal­va­tion, I met Hu Yang. How my feel­ings for him developed—I’d bet the com­plex­i­ty of it could put a cat-tan­gled yarn ball to shame. I’m the type to quit when faced with a snarl of threads, so I nev­er tried to dis­en­tan­gle it. My room­mate, Meng Nai, was Hu Yang’s friend. Meet­ing him was inevitable. I don’t remem­ber how I came to like Hu Yang; the process wasn’t impor­tant. The result was nailed down sol­id, and I had no chance of pry­ing it out with my bare hands.But how much did I like him? I wasn’t sure. That damn ball of yarn comes to mind again: with Hu Yang, even one plus one equal­ing two became a cos­mic unsolved mys­tery. 

Hu Yang is like a black hole for me. Not a black hole that devours light—one that devours my shame. The more time I spend around him, the more of a brazen clown I become. Pass­ing by the giant banyan tree on cam­pus, I imag­ine see­ing myself from his per­spec­tive: strip all the bark off that thick trunk, and that’s me.  

I can only tell myself one thing: what a shame­less fool. 

Hu Yang, Hu Yang. A tree, a man. The world is a rid­dle to me, its answer hid­den on the far side of death. While I’m alive, every­thing is hazy, like flow­ers in fog; I’m a com­plete idiot. Among all the unknowns, the only thing I’m sure of is that my teacher nev­er liked me, and nei­ther does Hu Yang. My eyes are filled with love—this cin­e­mat­ic word hur­tles toward me and I throw myself at it, only to grasp noth­ing but emp­ty air. 

I haven’t seen my high school teacher in ages, long enough that I’ve embraced my iden­ti­ty as a col­lege stu­dent. The teacher is like a del­i­cate leaf book­mark pressed between pages of a book—one I’ll nev­er open again. But Hu Yang is dif­fer­ent. He’s here, around me, in this lit­tle prison of a cam­pus. I run into him con­stant­ly: in the cafe­te­ria, in big lec­ture halls, on plain unre­mark­able roads. He shows up day after day, like cease­less driz­zly weath­er in spring. But even the small­est, mist­ing rain can soak a city in damp. So I have no doubt I’ve fall­en in love with him, just as I’ve always believed that affec­tion grows over time. 

I chat with him on WeChat, get jeal­ous over things I have no right to, pick fights only a crazy per­son would start, hurt­ing both him and myself with masochis­tic enthu­si­asm. 

I’m a hol­low, nutri­tion­less typ­ing machine, send­ing him goofy one-lin­ers I’ve copy-past­ed from Inter­net. I have no grand ambitions—I’ve crushed my wild hopes and desires to dust and parked my ass on them. Plas­tered across my face, like slop­py graf­fi­ti, are four big words: “just mud­dling along.” I say “don’t love me” out loud, yet my actions car­ry me in the exact oppo­site direc­tion. When I’m typ­ing to him, my long nails jab at the screen, mak­ing the rapid clack-clack of a horny lit­tle slut’s hooves. The glass screen bounces back against my fin­ger­tips. I’m like a cat in heat scratch­ing its claws on the wall. 

“I won’t ini­ti­ate con­ver­sa­tion with him ever again”—I par­rot the same vow every lovelorn girl in the world makes. 

Am I telling a sto­ry? This isn’t a sto­ry. There’s no tidy, lit­er­ary log­ic here like a the­sis with quotes and ref­er­ences. In fact, there’s no log­ic at all. 

Hu Yang and I are friends—whether or not that damn word “for­mer” ought to be tacked in front of “friends,” we are friends. I’m per­verse­ly grate­ful that time can’t flow back­ward in our three-dimen­sion­al world, that what’s hap­pened has hap­pened. In a world that can change faces faster than a Sichuan Opera per­former, at least some things can’t be undone. We were friends once. On those wet, heavy sum­mer nights in the South, he walked with me down the most seclud­ed paths on cam­pus. We thread­ed through kiss­ing cou­ples and sway­ing car head­lights. I think back on it now—standing here today and gaz­ing back at yes­ter­day, I can almost reach out and touch those moments. My fin­ger­tips tin­gle with the mem­o­ry, and I’m near­ly moved to tears, believ­ing for a sec­ond that I was immersed in such peace back then. I remem­ber the night he, Meng Nai, and I left a bar at one in the morn­ing under a driz­zly sky, try­ing to catch a cab back to school. It was so late even the street­lights had closed their eyes to sleep. Meng Nai’s hair was thick and heavy, like the fur of a small ani­mal. The three of us walked down an emp­ty con­crete road. On one side lay a lake, a patch of ink-black water under the night sky. Hu Yang joked that he’d push me into the lake—he grabbed my arm and we tus­sled play­ful­ly among a clus­ter of small trees by the shore. There were no lamps that night, which made the moon­light as bright as white jade. The moon’s glow spilled over the tree leaves, sneak­ing through the gaps and scat­ter­ing over us in flecks of sil­ver. 

These mem­o­ries, because they are mem­o­ries, are beautiful—so beau­ti­ful. Beau­ti­ful like a scene in a movie. And pre­cise­ly because it’s like a movie, it’s laugh­ably fake. I don’t under­stand why I end­ed up ensnared in end­less fights with Hu Yang. His good man­ners weren’t a gold­en shield pro­tect­ing him from my shame­less attacks; on the con­trary, they became a soft spot I couldn’t resist hit­ting. I became increas­ing­ly aware that I’m exact­ly like that famous line from Eileen Chang: a gor­geous robe rid­dled with fleas. My looks aren’t aston­ish­ing enough to stop traf­fic, but the mal­ice inside me is singular—enough to make even a shrew step back. I hurled every curse word I knew at him. Those insults, like acid rain, cor­rod­ed not only the stat­ues on London’s streets but our rela­tion­ship as well. 

For a long time, I was distressed—distressed that in this pure­ly pla­ton­ic friend­ship, I made every pos­si­ble wrong choice. I took what could have grown into a text­book case of love blos­som­ing from friend­ship and I hacked it off in its infan­cy, chewed it up, swal­lowed it down, and then had the nerve to feel regret. I couldn’t fig­ure out why I was so stu­pid and clum­sy, liv­ing out a ridicu­lous, pathet­ic joke: How do you screw up a rela­tion­ship? Just act like your nor­mal self. 

I began to under­stand that every­thing liv­ing has an expi­ra­tion date. A rela­tion­ship, a feeling—just like a leaf on a tree, just like a per­son. They sprout in secret, flourish—like the Gold­en Age described by Wang Xiaobo, like the height of summer—and then, soon­er or lat­er, they with­er and die. Time and fate silent­ly set every lim­it. Soon­er or lat­er I had to accept that things end not with a glo­ri­ous bang but with a whimper—just as I accept that the air will always be dirty with float­ing dust that we end up breath­ing into our lungs and blink­ing into our eyes. 

In the end, Hu Yang and I still have each oth­er on WeChat. The chat win­dow just sits there, blank and harm­less, for ages. The heart­beat of that rela­tion­ship flat­lined in all the fury and tears. What’s left isn’t some words caught in my throat—there’s sim­ply noth­ing left to say. 

Then one day, Meng Nai men­tioned Hu Yang to me. The very first thing that came to mind was a tree, and only after that did I remem­ber the per­son. I real­ized that I’d final­ly, faint­ly, part­ed the fog and glimpsed a silent ending—or maybe it was a shal­low, as-yet voice­less begin­ning. 

When sum­mer break arrived, the long and use­less vaca­tion lay before me like a blank can­vas. With all the paints at my dis­pos­al, of course I had to cov­er every inch of that glar­ing white. So I decid­ed to go back to my high school—to see the grand youth I once had such high hopes for, and to see the teacher who lived in that grand youth. 

I had already fin­ished read­ing the screen­play of An Ele­phant Sit­ting Still. 

Stand­ing at the school gates, I was engulfed by throngs of stu­dents in uni­form, crash­ing over me like a ris­ing tide and sub­merg­ing me in their youth­ful fren­zy. When the tide ebbed, it left me behind on the shore of mem­o­ry, an exquis­ite lit­tle fish­bone spit out on the sand. 

Lat­er on, when Meng Nai asked me how it felt to revis­it my high school, I remem­ber I didn’t both­er to sug­ar­coat it. 

“Back then the real dog days of sum­mer hadn’t arrived yet,” I told her. “There was a good breeze, and the sun wasn’t too harsh. Can you guess what the weath­er feels like right before mid­sum­mer hits?” 

With­out wait­ing for her to answer, I smiled and said, “Cool—like a fine autumn day.” 

From the writer

:: Account ::

This sto­ry is the inevitable result of an emo­tion­al col­li­sion. Just as ris­ing tem­per­a­tures will crack ice into water, the accu­mu­la­tion of inner tension—combined with a dri­ve toward beau­ty and a com­pul­sion to articulate—made the act of writ­ing this piece feel less like a choice than a phys­i­cal cer­tain­ty. Influ­enced by the emo­tion­al core and aes­thet­ic restraint of East Asian writ­ers like Eileen Chang, Han Kang, and Lin Yi-Han, I approached this sto­ry as a scream dis­guised as form. It had to be a cry—not raw and ragged like a child’s sob, but refined, con­struct­ed, and lit­er­ar­i­ly shaped. The writ­ing is the expres­sion; the struc­ture is the scream. 

I chose a non­lin­ear struc­ture, inter­weav­ing high school and uni­ver­si­ty time­lines to reflect the frag­men­ta­tion of the protagonist’s psy­che. Through shifts in time and voice, I sought to explore the void with­in the char­ac­ter and their mar­gin­al­i­ty in the world. For me, fic­tion is nev­er sep­a­rate from lived expe­ri­ence. When a sto­ry aris­es from life, it also strikes back at it—with force. Like a ham­mer shat­ter­ing the mir­ror of the real, this sto­ry is both a reflec­tion and a blow. 

Xincheng Liu is a grad­u­ate stu­dent in busi­ness at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Illi­nois at Urbana-Cham­paign and an avid writer out­side her aca­d­e­m­ic stud­ies. She began writ­ing fic­tion in ele­men­tary school and has nev­er stopped, car­ry­ing her pas­sion from child­hood sto­ries into more com­plex explo­rations of love, mem­o­ry, and self-dis­cov­ery. Her recent work engages with themes of cross-cul­tur­al iden­ti­ty, fem­i­nist per­spec­tives, and the Asian Amer­i­can expe­ri­ence, blend­ing per­son­al imag­i­na­tion with broad­er ques­tions of belong­ing. She hopes to con­tin­ue devel­op­ing her voice through cre­ative writ­ing and to share sto­ries that speak across cul­tures. 

Fiction / Anamika M. 

:: Dogless  ::

At thir­ty-eight, Lalitha had achieved some­thing few women in her apart­ment com­plex had man­aged — she lived a dog-free life. No leash by the door. No slob­ber­ing tongue and smelly breath in her face. No Insta­gram bio that read Mama to Fur Baby. No social media feed full of dog pic­tures. And for this, she was basi­cal­ly the neigh­bour­hood vil­lain. The out­cast. 

“She doesn’t like dogs!” Mrs. Menon would gasp, clutch­ing that tiny crea­ture with the annoy­ing bark like it was her Birkin. “What kind of woman doesn’t like dogs?” 

“A ser­i­al killer,” some­one whis­pered. Prob­a­bly the broody teenag­er from 67/A who spent the whole day watch­ing dog videos on social media. 

“She must be emo­tion­al­ly repressed,” said Ananya, the Rei­ki cer­ti­fied heal­er, who believed her Labrador could sense neg­a­tive auras. 

Lalitha heard all of it. Every whis­per, every smirk, every pas­sive-aggres­sive dog pic­ture dropped into the Res­i­dents Asso­ci­a­tion What­sApp group. She wasn’t a sociopath nor anti­so­cial. She sim­ply didn’t care for dogs. And that, appar­ent­ly, was a crime against human­i­ty. 

Ananya dropped by one after­noon, unin­vit­ed. With her Labrathing in tow, unleashed. 

“Here to cheer you up! He’s super friend­ly,” Ananya chirped. 

Lalitha backed away instinc­tive­ly as the dog padded toward her and sniffed her knee. 

“Oh my god, are you scared?” Ananya laughed. “He won’t do any­thing, he’s a dar­ling. Just touch him.” 

“I’m good, thanks,” Lalitha said, polite­ly. 

“Oh come on! You are giv­ing out a dark aura, he can feel it. Your path­ways are prob­a­bly blocked. He will help you open them.” 

“I’m not a bot­tle of pick­le, Ananya. I don’t need to be opened.” 

Ananya rolled her eyes, then grabbed Lalitha’s hand and tried to place it on the dog’s head like it was some sort of ini­ti­a­tion cer­e­mo­ny. 

Lalitha yanked her hand back, smiled tight­ly, and said, “You touch your dog. I’ll keep my bound­aries.” 

Ananya sulked. The dog sneezed. Lalitha made a men­tal note to Lysol the floor. 

It wasn’t that she hat­ed dogs. She was just indif­fer­ent. To all pets for that mat­ter. She liked the idea of them, the way one might like the idea of camp­ing in the wild or rais­ing triplets: delight­ful in oth­er people’s lives, but not for her. She even dou­ble-tapped the occa­sion­al dog reel and sent the occa­sion­al thumbs-up emo­ji or a heart emo­ji when a friend post­ed a “My Baby Turned Three” update. But that was her lim­it. No kissy face or heart eye emo­jis, no baby talk. And of course, she drew the line at being referred to as Aun­ty to a mon­grel with dopey eyes. 

She had tried to be, well, “nor­mal” just to shut peo­ple up. She had  once bent down and hes­i­tant­ly put out two fin­gers, like one would test the tem­per­a­ture of bath­wa­ter, to pet a neighbour’s pup­py. It peed on her new san­dals. The neigh­bour laughed, “Naughty boy! Made susu on Aunty’s chap­pals,” and ruf­fled its fur. No apol­o­gy. Not even a flick­er of embar­rass­ment. Bitch. 

After that, when­ev­er dogs came thun­der­ing down the cor­ri­dor, leashed or not, fresh­ly bathed or filthy, she stepped aside. Point­ed­ly and polite­ly, wait­ing for them to pass. And she stepped fur­ther and fur­ther away when the ani­mals tried to sniff her up or slob­ber over her, until the pet mom­ma or dad­da called them off, dis­ap­point­ed that their fur babies were not acknowl­edged with a delight­ed shriek of wel­come. They usu­al­ly walked away shak­ing their heads in dis­be­lief, mut­ter­ing, “Is she even human?!” 

One day, some­one left a scrawny indie pup near the lift with a “Please Adopt Me” sign and a bowl of milk. It blinked up at her with wet eyes, tail thump­ing hope­ful­ly. 

She side­stepped it and took the stairs. 

From the cor­ner, some­one gasped. 

“No heart,” mut­tered the man who lived with three sad-faced dogs that peed in the stair­way every morn­ing. 

She want­ed to snap back. Kind­ness isn’t per­for­mance art, Karthik. But she didn’t. 

That week, the news was full of dog sto­ries, and not the heart­warm­ing kind. 

“Pack of strays attacks elder­ly man on morn­ing walk.” 

“Child bit­ten near school gate — third such inci­dent this month.” 

The inter­net explod­ed. Half of Twit­ter declared war on the feed­ers. The oth­er half shared fake Gand­hi quotes and crowd­fund­ing peti­tions for Parle‑G bis­cuits. 

Lalitha sipped her tea and scrolled silent­ly. She had thoughts. Oh boy, did she have thoughts! 

Peo­ple say they love dogs more than humans. Is that because dogs don’t talk back? Or because they’re eas­i­er to own? 

She pic­tured those ador­ing pet par­ents who treat­ed obe­di­ence like affec­tion. Who called the response to their dom­i­na­tion “loy­al­ty” and slob­ber­ing mess­es “uncon­di­tion­al love.” What they real­ly want­ed was a thing that wouldn’t leave them, argue with them, or grow tired of them. Some­thing to fill the void in their lives, but with­out ask­ing ques­tions. How would they behave if that love came with con­di­tions, she won­dered. 

She didn’t say any of this out loud, of course. She knew she would end up sound­ing bit­ter and hate­ful. But there was truth to it, and peo­ple didn’t want real­i­ty checks. They want­ed val­i­da­tion that their choic­es were the only right ones, uni­ver­sal­ly accept­ed. 

At work, a col­league brought her tiny dog, some import­ed breed, to the Bring Your Pet to Work Day. Peo­ple squealed and filmed Insta­gram reels with it. Lalitha blocked a meet­ing room and sat inside all day, head­phones on, wish­ing she had tak­en the day off. 

“You’re scared of dogs?” some­one asked. 

“No.” 

“Reli­gious rea­sons?” 

“No.” 

“You’re aller­gic? There are breeds that don’t shed…” 

“No.” 

“Then what is it?” 

“I just don’t want one. I don’t like them.” 

They looked at her incred­u­lous­ly like she’d said she kicks pup­pies for car­dio. 

Peo­ple didn’t want hon­esty. They didn’t believe in peace­ful coex­is­tence. They want­ed rad­i­cal con­ver­sion. They want­ed the joy­less and unloved, the hard-heart­ed mon­sters like her, to be “healed” by a wet nose and a wag­ging tail, and then to feel good about them­selves for hav­ing changed someone’s life. 

As if dog own­er­ship was the uni­ver­sal path to emo­tion­al whole­ness.  A dog, a baby, or a man. Or all three.  

A man, she had tried. 

His name was Amit. He ran a start­up that import­ed kitchen stuff from Chi­na and white labelled them. He made her laugh. He respect­ed her bound­aries, and he gave her space. For the first few months, it was easy. Long dri­ves, mean­ing­ful con­ver­sa­tions and lots of sex. He said he liked that she was clear-head­ed. Not like oth­er women, he had said. She cringed inter­nal­ly, but didn’t ask him to explain fur­ther. 

Then, eight months in, he rang her door­bell on a Sat­ur­day morn­ing with a box in his arms, grin­ning like a school­boy. 

“Sur­prise!” 

Inside was a Gold­en Retriev­er pup­py. Squirmy and fluffy with dewy eyes that looked up at her. Text­book heart melt mate­r­i­al. He stood there, look­ing at her in antic­i­pa­tion like a flop­py-haired cutesy boy from a Phal­gu­ni Pathak 90s pop video, wait­ing for her to grab it and break out into a dance. 

But she took a step back. The pup­py popped his head out and looked around curi­ous­ly. She did not melt. 

“Four weeks old, pure Gold­en,” he said proud­ly. “I thought we could raise him togeth­er.” 

“You brought me a liv­ing thing, one which I explic­it­ly told you I didn’t want,” she replied, in the same tone she used when the local gro­cery store deliv­ered green milk pack­ets instead of the orange ones. 

“You said you didn’t have a dog.” 

“I said I didn’t want a dog.” 

He laughed. “Come on. How can any­one not!” 

“I don’t want fur on my fur­ni­ture or some­thing drool­ing on my bath­mat. I don’t want a being that thinks it owns me because I feed it.” 

He blinked, try­ing to process what she was say­ing. “That’s… kind of dark.” 

“I don’t want some­thing that licks its butt and then my face,” her tone, bit­ing. 

“Come on! Dogs don’t do that. And what if it was a human baby?” 

“I don’t want one of that too.” 

He laughed ner­vous­ly, like she was being dif­fi­cult on pur­pose. “Come on, he’s adorable. You’ll fall in love. Trust me.” 

“I don’t want to fall in love with some­thing that needs me that much. I don’t want slob­ber on my floors, or some­thing scratch­ing at the door every time I leave.” 

Amit frowned. “That’s… a bit extreme, don’t you think? I mean, most peo­ple want that kind of love.” 

“I’m not most peo­ple.” 

He stood there, still hold­ing the box like it had grown heav­ier. 

“I read some­where that peo­ple who don’t like dogs often have unre­solved inti­ma­cy issues,” he said, not meet­ing her eyes. “Maybe we could talk to some­one. Togeth­er.” 

“You want me to go to ther­a­py,” she said, “because I don’t want a dog?” 

He didn’t say yes. But he didn’t say no. 

They broke up a week lat­er. She had failed his test. He said he need­ed some­one “more open.” More human.  She said she need­ed some­one who lis­tened to her. 

He post­ed pup­py pics like they were rebound rela­tion­ship flex­es. Simba’s first swim! Sim­ba stole my heart first, now he’s steal­ing my slip­pers!  Sim­ba taught me real love! Dogs over Humans any day! 

She scrolled past with­out a twitch. No rage, no regret. Just relief. Like a painful peri­od that final­ly arrived after a week of anx­ious uncer­tain­ty. 

Yes­ter­day, the neigh­bour­hood indie tried to jump on her, and she stepped aside. Not out of fear. Not out of hate. Just out of habit. Out of san­i­ty. Mus­cle mem­o­ry. 

The dog launched itself into Mrs. Menon’s arms and the woman clucked her tongue in judg­ment. 

Lalitha just walked up to her flat, took off her shoes, and basked in the glo­ri­ous silence of a home with zero liv­ing things shed­ding on her cush­ions. 

She liked her silence. Her space. Her books and old Tamil film songs and rain on win­dow­panes. She liked not trip­ping over slob­bered up toys and slip­ping on dog diar­rhoea. 

She turned on an Ila­yara­ja playlist and sipped her tea. Because some­times, choos­ing not to love some­thing that expects eter­nal devo­tion, unques­tion­ing affec­tion, and a life­long sup­ply of chick­en liv­er is also self care. 

From the writer

:: Account ::

It’s incred­i­bly dif­fi­cult for me to even attempt this account — not because I don’t have things to say, but because I’m ter­ri­fied of being judged. All my life, I’ve been asked, side-eyed, and some­times inter­ro­gat­ed about why I’m not com­fort­able around dogs. The truth is, I don’t have one dra­mat­ic rea­son.  

I wrote this because I’m tired of pre­tend­ing. 

I didn’t wake up one morn­ing and decide I wasn’t a dog per­son.  

I grew up in a town that housed the Pas­teur Insti­tute, the only rabies vac­cine man­u­fac­tur­er in the coun­try back then. Labs that housed sheep brains in formalde­hyde and the long queues of dog-bite vic­tims wait­ing for the vac­cine, which was a shot around the navel for ten days — those images nev­er left me. 

I still remem­ber my unpleas­ant neighbour’s dogs that ran loose in our yard, leav­ing poop on my hop­scotch grid. She nev­er cleaned up. 

As I grew old­er, I began notic­ing the hypocrisies around me. Peo­ple feed­ing mut­ton and ghee rice to their dogs while offer­ing three-day-old sam­bar rice to their house help. Some­thing about the pow­er dynam­ic, the mis­placed affec­tion, and the glar­ing unfair­ness of it all angers me. 

There is this the  rude man who walks two mas­sive dogs every morn­ing — unleashed. I cross the street or freeze in place, hop­ing he’ll have the basic decen­cy to rein them in. But no. Every sin­gle time, he smiles that smug, patro­n­is­ing smile and says, “They won’t do any­thing.” 

And then the man I dat­ed who spammed me with cutesy pho­tos of ran­dom dogs. Con­stant­ly. The pres­sure of hav­ing to respond with polite affec­tion every time gave me anx­i­ety. Worse, his dog watched us. Always. I hat­ed it. He thought it was fun­ny. 

So no, I’m not a dog per­son. I’m not heart­less, I’m not dam­aged, and I don’t need to be con­vert­ed by a gold­en retriever’s soul­ful eyes. I just want space to exist with­out hav­ing to explain or jus­ti­fy myself. 

I wrote this because maybe, just maybe, some­one else out there feels the same way but has stayed qui­et. I want them to know they’re not alone. 

Anami­ka M. lives in the hills of South India where life moves at a qui­eter pace. She spends her days with spread­sheets and pre­sen­ta­tion decks, and her evenings with sto­ries shaped by the peo­ple she meets, the thoughts that sur­face dur­ing long walks, and the small-town secrets woven into every­day life. Her writ­ing rests between fic­tion and reflec­tion, lin­ger­ing in the grey area where facts seem imag­ined and fic­tion feels true. 

Fiction / Christopher Stolle

:: Deconstructing Paul ::

From the writer

:: Account ::