blanket and sombrero dropped in a pile, she runs through a vacant city of gold, echoes thudding against eardrums, sweat pouring in a hum.
the priest rings a bell to the stirring dust, wipes his forehead with the back of his hand, spits, walks back to the bottle and eats the worm.
she calls him father. he waves her in. their arms slow in the heat.
risky business
paintings locked in colour
and boulders in falling rock zones, never really falling.
you’ve never seen a pebble bounce or heard a hard crack and you know if you drive through this same threatening stretch of road every year and locate the same boulder on a precipitous ledge it will always be el cid dead on his horse which gives you something to talk about.
pigments are never diluted with water but seasons change your taste in fruits and vegetables and leave you nothing to choose at the market except endive and spinach. and the heavy green of one colour is a still life’s red tablecloth hung over the edge in perfect folds of shadowed smiles with teeth unseen
improving the drainage
walking along the street near my home where machines are putting in new sewers;
no humans to be seen here.
just yellow backhoes and orange cranes red dump trucks with windows layered in foggy brown and not a human within them, not a movement.
slabs of concrete and asphalt piled for a campfire, it seems;
smells captured under bulldozers and released as steam. a whole neighbourhood glued in chaos and coated in the sewage of wet dust.
walking past the detour signs and plastic blinking lights, generators thumping failing thumping.
home finally but not really there, crouched unsteadily on the sidedoor steps fingering spider webs, teasing apart the smells of bean soup and a flooded basement.
props
the old men who play chess in parks
rarely speaking, smoking tobacco spitting juice as young boys watch and run for sandwiches and coffee. as sun sprinkles through the trees just enough and the breeze folds a newspaper just enough.
i have never seen this.
the old men who wheeze and take pills, cough and lock in dentures before the sandwiches; piss themselves from the coffee. who wear safari hats and measure immortality with captured pawns.
i have never seen this.
except in movies grainy and frightening whose titles i forget.
soft landing
chocolate evening drips a candle of slow light. coffee, gurgling breath of steam aroma is harboured in dreams of unthinking skin. closed eyes and the exquisite deadness falls through murmurs of crossed and barricading arms. my hair is uncombed my breath is unwashed my heart is a trampoline (and not a pump) so warmth splashes randomly and grease flies from bacon but doesn’t burn;
a rare moment.
Livio Farallo is co-editor of Slipstream and Professor of Biology at Niagara County Community College in Sanborn, New York. His work has appeared or, is forthcoming, in The Cardiff Review, The Cordite Review, Roi Faineant, North Dakota Quarterly, J Journal, Schuylkill Valley Journal, and elsewhere.
(Inspired by “What I Believe” by Jacqueline Woodson)
I believe teriyaki chicken with rice tastes better than anything. I believe my grandma agreed. I believe God whispered to her our family teriyaki sauce recipe. I believe my father taught the secret to me to continue her legacy.
I believe I will continue her legacy by clothing every meat I eat with sweet teriyaki.
I believe my wife dislikes sweet meat. I believe that does not matter to me. I believe that does not matter to her either.
I believe our future children might not like it either. I believe my wife and I will dress their meat with teriyaki sauce anyway. I believe my children will eat teriyaki chicken with rice anyway.
I believe, if they like it, they might even learn the recipe and then forget it after eating too much McDonald’s or Wendy’s.
I believe, despite this possibility, they will still carry my grandma and father’s legacy. I believe they will even honour my wife and me
because
I believe they will see, just like anybody, that family is fitted with so much more meaning than chicken and rice in sweet teriyaki.
Caleb Delos-Santos (he/him) is an English graduate student at Southern Illinois University Edwardsville. Throughout his four years of writing, Caleb has published poetry with nearly twenty literary magazines, including North Dakota Quarterly and the Madison Journal of Literary Criticism, and most recently released his first two poetry collections, A Poet’s Perspective (2022) and Once One Discovers Love (2023). Caleb also won the 2022 Esselstrom Writing Prize and the West Wind Literary Magazine’s 2023 Best in Genre Award for his nonfiction. Today, Caleb teaches English 101 as a teaching assistant and dreams of a successful writing and teaching career.
The conductor’s wife carried his balls in her purse, so he said. She was a bully, convinced that she was smarter than, more successful than, more desirable than he. Plus, her purse was bigger. In rehearsals, he had become so nervous that his baton kept slipping out of his hands. “What’s bugging you?” I wondered. “My wife,” he might have said─ but now I can’t be sure. At the podium, he watched my bowing arm for cues. My staccato, sautillé and spiccato all helped him feel the vibrations through his feet, he said. I wondered if he knew he was deaf. “I love you,” I whispered, to test him. He didn’t answer but launched into the latest story about his wife: how she’d taken to fishing out a can of Mace from the purse where she kept the balls, and setting it like a centrepiece on the table. He recited these details to me in the Green Room with his eyes squeezed shut from the effects of the spray. I held his hand, the one without the ring. I liked him to look less married, if possible, for the sake of my fantasies, which throughout my life have always been the best revenge against reality.
Cheryl Snell’s books include several poetry collections and the novels of her Bombay Trilogy. Her latest series called Intricate Things in their Fringed Peripheries. Most recently her writing has appeared in Gone Lawn, Sleet Magazine, Necessary Fiction, Pure Slush, and other journals. A classical pianist, she lives in Maryland with her husband, a mathematical engineer.
When I walked into the room, they poured lava on my head and told me I was fired
but I couldn’t hear because of all the ash in my ears and the room was packed full
of people I didn’t know—a librarian who said I stole a book back in 1968, a penguin
who said I made half its family extinct, and my boss who looked like a hole in
an animal—and they were lined up, all with notebooks, all ready to slice me in
half, but I thanked them, because now is the time where all can collapse, so
you have to be gracious and smile and accept them shoving a mountain deep
into your guts, and I walked away after, heading nowhere, ending up in a grave-
yard where someone mowed the lawn like they had rivers of madness in their
lungs, just circling and spinning and weaving that machine into sand and
puddle and fence and I just stood there, jobless, watching this guy with a job,
tearing up the earth as if he wanted to erase every single thing in sight.
I’d chop off my eyes for a kiss
that’s how lonely my eyes are, my memories like rope, so god-
damn garden-level beautiful; I should have died for her, but
instead I just wrote poems. My God, I should have died and come
back to life. I should have done everything. Everything.
The magician who lives below me comes home
and looks wrecked, destroyed by magic, this slow trudge, and I’m a peeping tom, slits in the blinds, but so curious to see this
body, bedecked in motley, and so old and so young at the same time, a man-boy who’s never smoked, never drank, but greyed,
youth-aged, starving for money, gambling for fame, but coming home to this metal neighbourhood where crickets don’t even come,
just the soft sound of traffic in the distance, blending in with his footsteps, so tender, like rabbits that have been forgotten in hats.
I went to Niagara Falls
I didn’t get it. All that mist. I got back in my car and drove one thousand miles, to Kansas, where my ex- lives, happily, without me. I told her about Niagara. She drank coffee in her kitchen that was the colour of the Civil War. I said I didn’t get how people could go down that thing in a barrel. She told me her ex- would be home soon. They still lived together. Nothing in this world makes sense.
Ron Riekki has been awarded a 2014 Michigan Notable Book, 2015 The Best Small Fictions, 2016 Shenandoah Fiction Prize, 2016 IPPY Award, 2020 Rhysling Anthology inclusion, 2019 Red Rock Film Fest Award, 2020 Dracula Film Festival Vladutz Trophy, 2019 Très Court International Film Festival Audience Award and Grand Prix, and 2022 Pushcart Prize. Right now, Riekki’s listening to Nanci Griffith’s “I Wish It Would Rain.”
A woman’s love is an extraordinary treasure! She will give you love, She will give you loyalty, She will give you, her dreams. She will give you, her future! She will give you eternity!
But many a man never knows the value of that treasure. He will possess her, He will desire her, He will rest his heaving passions in her. Like a plundering warlord he will only take again and again, And lay the remains to waste.
He will grow large from that tree of love, Not watering the tree with any affection. He will grow vines of neglect Subsuming her identity with weeds, That sap her of her strength and love! He kills the woman of her spirit, And dines off her carcass like a bird of prey.
And the woman’s heart is crushed, Like a river run dry No longer fed by the rain of affection. Violated day after day like the earth, Into whose wombs wells are bored relentlessly, Deeper and deeper, In search of the elixir!
The saddest sound in the Universe, Is the sound of a woman’s heart break! In the silence of the night She quivers and thrashes unseen! Gnashes her teeth at the impotence of her fate! Weeps soundlessly for herself, Longing to escape the coils of a loveless union, That trap her soul.
Tales of a River
She is a river of gold, Flowing swiftly in the golden dawn. The sun rippling beauteous in her joyous being She whooshes exuberantly over the rapids, As one by one she clears them, In her flow.
Worshipped by man Desired by man Who always sought to control her To contain her Fight over her For exclusive rights!
She is the river of discontent In whom waste has been dumped, by toxic relationships. She cries for release. The waves of agony crash Against the high rocks of indifference!
She is the turquoise river, Below the cerulean skies, The woods behind her, The shores distant. With a sky full of stars, She flows!
She is a ribbon of silver Sparkling in the moonwake, With the wisdom of the ages Running in her veins! Nurturing life, Healing the wounds!
She is a river emptying soundlessly into the sea Between existence and non-existence! In her existence, exists her identity In her non-existence, she loses not Just different ways in which she emerges, Her essence ever fragrant in her tributaries!
Avantika Vijay Singh is a writer, blogger, editor, script writer, poet, researcher, and amateur photographer. Poetry is her song from the heart to express her thoughts and emotions. Dancing Motes of Starlight, self-published during the pandemicin 2020, is her debut ebook on poetry.
She enjoys a good laugh, especially over herself, and her blog “Ordinary People, Extraordinary Lives”. She loves taking long walks in nature, which germinate the idea of many of her poems.
She is a lifelong learner and holds an M.Sc. (Zoology), an M.S. (Biomedicine) from BITS, Pilani, post-graduate Certificates in Sustainability from Blekinge Institute of Technology, Karlskrona, Sweden and Digital Marketing from MICA.
Charity to the neighbour absurd Wolf in Sheep’s clothing Monks and Friars slowly crept Bearing Palms and Harps of the Blackbird Patrons of holy youth sleeping Bluebird Women blessed symbols slept Dragon Lilies robes we kept Ink horns eyes of Lady-dove
Sonnet CDLXXXXIV
Dumpy sort of a gait bone due trench Two flashes of presumable ships rum from Maine Gurgling noise shrewd suspicion pain Day of reckoning Mono Publishing conservation bench Best jumpers and racers wrench Skin the goat an Ax to grind throbbing forehead vein Loudly lamenting Galway Bay rain Slightly disturbed in her sentry-box stench Facial blemishes treasure Effusion the redoubtable gravel Dropping off into a restful measure Silence all around we try to unravel Manicure counterattraction female pleasure Rum explodes piers and girders travel
Sonnet CDLXXXXIII
White tipped New Guinea’s chip Wispy quiver and dance trouble Poniards Gibraltar bubble Muensters Boston weather drip and dip Ill-fated Irish Times petrified drip Weathered a monsoon Daunte’s rock doubled Rumpled stockings showing her stubble Impetuosity isosceles triangle flip Temperaments at the door in trio Passionate about the Ten Shillings viol Visit coincidences Kilaru Museum in Rio Washed in the blood of the sun denial Spaniards old Leo Exception here and there trial
Sonnet CDLXXXXI
Enlightened men morbid mined shrug Buys dear and sells cheap her money amplify A slow puzzled skin-Berean Butterfly Old Meldish squeamishness drug Super human effort as she dug Shrugged his shoulders to deny Dizzy-Billy all-be-plastered high Coffee in a cheap-eating-house mug Sticker for solid copper Tumour Tee total skipping rocks rube Fa-r-reaching circumstantial rumour Piano playing cell-mate in a cube Not listening at a yarn humour Blunt horn-handle tube
Terry Brinkman has been painting for over forty five years. Poems in Rue Scribe, Tiny Seed. Winamop, Snapdragon Journal, Poets Choice, Adelaide Magazine, Variant, the Writing Disorder, Ink Pantry, In Parentheses, Ariel Chat, New Ulster, Glove, and in Pamp-le-mousse, North Dakota Quarterly, Barzakh, Urban Arts, Wingless Dreamer, LKMNDS and Elavation.
You can find more of Terry’s work here on Ink Pantry.
Spring is colours, sweet heavens that clothe, March you like fresh wind and rain a celebration that buttons you up stomps in puddles like boots like taffy coloured rainbows and a sunny yellow coat as flowers pop open like balloons and trumpet bumblebees— be buzzing busily. This is me, my songbird sings.
Twigs’ lush medium is converting to calligraphy, the dismissal of leaves to launch its winter forewarning. Laden with late acorns, squirrels chuck-chuck meaningless memos, counter-balance full bellies, tails unfurled. I am embracing—keepsaking— the unscrolling calendar, harvesting days tossed my way, the prodigious burden of nows. Hunters will bruise this calm soon, but until then it’s choirs of jays, cranes, and crows.
If Only I Moved by Instinct
Life has been a grand migration to where you are today! —well known wisdom
I didn’t know!
Otherwise, when those raggedy squadrons clamoured overhead last evening—
three V’s disarrayed like frayed arrow feathers,
their leaders insistent as clowns with braying horns, honking for plane geometry—
I would have taxied, sprinted, lifted arthriticly from water’s edge (granted
more dodo than goose, my splayed toes just scuffing the webbed crests of waves),
and elbowed my way into a rhythmic wedge
to claim my slot in that mindless rotation toward the life-saving draft.
Leaf Fall
Asymmetric chandeliers instigate their rhapsodic drop, the ruddling scumble- trove of falling leaves and epiphanies whose sillage shellacs paw, pelt, and breezes. Trapezes sling these acrobatic hues into bold arcs, risky spins, pronounced turns before alights the wind-borne troupe of the trees. Stippled bark akin to camo backs the show, and cursive limbs announce the new season: caesura ending summer’s song.
For Therapy, I Mix Metaphors
From a frozen wedge of machine-split pine, tossed on this settling fire, one frayed, martyred fibre curls back and away like a wire, then flares, a flame racing the length of a fuse. Imagine this my innermost strand, a barely-dirt two-track off Frost’s road less traveled, a thin, trembling thread of desire, the uncharted blue vein of a tundral highway. Or in some dread cloister it dreams, and a sillier spirit suddenly moves— like four fresh fingers over flamenco frets, like dumb elegance uttering Old Florentine, never meaning one of its crooning words. It might dance—Tejano, Zydeco, any twenty Liebeslieder Waltzes, any juking jumble of a barrel-house blues—wherever arose an arousing tune, the thrum of a Kenyan’s drumming, the merest notion of Motown soul. I do know: there must be this lost but lively cord, an original nerve, perhaps abandoned, or jammed as if into an airless cavity of my old house. It waits, to spark, to catch, its insulated nest punctured by the stray tip of a driven nail. It craves some risky remodelling, that annoying era of air compressor, plaster grit, dumpster, and the exuberant exhalation of ancient dust.
Slackening Observed
A cardinal, its heaven’s sound, the winter’s effervescent rag with salutating gait. Notes etch, sun foils, and cathedralic miles enlarge the whispering. To centre oneself, to murmur, to intercept the synchronizing run that’s rioting, is as longingly still as the slope outside the city’s heaves, the barn-red-confetti’d woods, the uniform crisp of autumn days, shallows iced to the shoreline, valley’s dream.
A Moment Depends Not Just on its Moment
You’d like to move on beyond mean memory, skirt that peopled, hollow squalor, pack up your numerous mind encampments whose smoky cook fires now flicker, now flare on this or that nostalgic hillside— sometimes like coded reminders, sometimes like brash blazes arousing anything but simpering gratitude for a brainscape stippled with so-called love. But then a random moment’s rush of fragrant pine rises also from vague beds of heady needles in your rural past. And today’s savouring of your young son’s self-liberation emerges from its oblivious storage of almost forty years. And the resuscitating pulse in a flagrant poem owes a measure of its happy current to your decades of emotional prohibition, your suspension in the numb ice of wordlessness. A generous peace depends on your history’s stingy drudgery, and a restful season of seeing who you might really be depends on the eons of not letting being, on the contrast with not knowing you didn’t see.
After the Gale
Ivory spines disguise the oaks’ south sides, slivers of sunshine lightening their rough trunks. What furrowed pallor, what dignity: spires anchored to all others underneath, delight clad in the plucked bones of winter. What diligence, what staid bystanding: a throng of distinct ascetics, enmeshed horde of collective loners. It’s as if they’re avowing how steadfastness, soon resumed, enroots in you your essential locale.
D. R. James, a year+ into retirement from nearly 40 years of teaching college writing, literature, and peace studies, lives, writes, and cycles with his psychotherapist wife in the woods near Saugatuck, Michigan. His latest of ten collections are Mobius Trip and Flip Requiem (Dos Madres Press, 2021, 2020), and his prose and poems have appeared internationally in a wide variety of print and online anthologies and journals.
You can find more of D.R.’s work here on Ink Pantry.
“quick question hot shot when you’re a feature, how many poems do you read”
on asking melissa: wanna walk?
she says: “i’m knee deep in organizing my desk, do you ever work?”
on receiving a job promotion
boss asks, “do you own anything other than jeans?” I laugh, then say “no”
on telling Joseph Fulkerson about receiving scathing rejections because I title my haikus
he says, “of course people are upset, tohm… you’re challenging tradition.”
Tohm Bakelas is a social worker in a psychiatric hospital. He was born in New Jersey, resides there, and will die there. His poems have been printed widely in journals, zines, and online publications all over the world. He is the author of twenty-four chapbooks and several collections of poetry, including “Cleaningthe Gutters of Hell” (Zeitgeist Press, 2023). He is the editor of Between Shadows Press.
You can find more of Tohm’s work here on Ink Pantry.
I was definitely feeling pleased with myself. I made it to the private clinic without the usual escorts, for a check-up that would tell me how to deal with my upcoming departmental physical. It was a rare treat to be alone for a few minutes without any responsibility. There was a knock on the door. I called: “Come in,” and a pretty, young girl entered.
“Good morning, sir. I’m Eva, from transport. These men are here to take you to x-ray.”
Two identical looking men, wearing blue jumpsuits, pushing a stretcher, came in. The only problem was that I wasn’t scheduled for x-ray. I lifted the sheet, grabbed my weapon, shot both of them, and they slumped to the floor. Eva froze, waiting for the lunatic to shoot her. Since she couldn’t run or hide, she tried to make herself invisible. Smart girl.
“Eva,” I said gently.
“Yes, sir,” she quavered.
I pointed and said:
“Give me that tray, please.”
She cautiously brought the tray. I put my weapon on it and told her to put it on the counter. She quickly rejected trying to use it on me, since she had absolutely no idea what it was, or how to use it. Smart girl.
“Give me your cell phone, please.”
She did. I called headquarters, apprised them of the situation, then waited for the police. A minute later a cop came in, weapon drawn. ready for anything. He quickly eyed the two bodies, the girl, then me. I read his nameplate.
“Sergeant Jefferson. Please search me, so you’ll know I’m unarmed.”
He approached carefully, as I slowly pulled down the sheet. He was thorough, even checking under the pillow and bed.
“What happened here?” he demanded.
“You’ll get a phone call in 30 seconds that will start a process. In the meantime, don’t let anyone else in, and if you can’t stop them, make sure they don’t see my weapon.”
He started to ask me something, but his phone rang.
“Yes, sir. Yes, sir. I understand, sir.” He disconnected and looked at me. “Homicide is going to be pissed when they can’t get in.”
“Sergeant Jefferson.”
“Yes, sir?”
“This is not an ordinary homicide.”
We waited quietly. Two minutes later the door opened and Parker and Lindner, my executive assistants/bodyguards, rushed in. Parker took in the scene at a glance.
“We have 10 agents deployed, air cover and a team is searching the building. A support team will arrive in eight minutes… Did you really have to go off on your own, sir?”
I ignored her and said:
“This is Sergeant Jefferson and Eva. They have been exemplary. They will be offered opportunities.”
“Yes, sir,” she replied. “Can we move to a secure location, so the containment team can get to work?”
“Sergeant Jefferson.”
“Yes, sir?”
“Is there anyone you have to contact until tomorrow?”
“Only my watch commander.”
“He, your Lieutenant and precinct Captain have been notified that you are temporarily assigned to a federal agency. Eva. Do you have to notify anyone?”
“I live with my sick father. I have to make dinner for him.”
“What if we send some good, Spanish speaking people to take care of him tonight?”
“That would be wonderful.”
“Then call him and say you’re spending the night with a girl friend. Take care of it, Lindy.”:
Lindner made a few quick calls, then said:
“Ready to go, sir.”
As we headed for the door, Jefferson asked:
“They aren’t human, are they?”
I just looked at him and didn’t reply, as our team guided us to waiting SUVs.
We raced, with helicopter cover, to a campus just outside Washington, D.C., and entered a special building through a series of well-protected tunnels. Parker arranged comfortable quarters for Sergeant Jefferson and Eva, told them to use the house phone if they needed anything, then informed them they would be interviewed at 7:30 a.m. Then Parker and Lindner joined me in my office.
“We have two questions to consider,” I said. “How did they find me and why didn’t they send a hit squad?”
Logical Lindy stated.
“You didn’t tell anyone you were going, so x number of people may have seen you leave the campus. I’ll check anyone who might have seen you go. We may be under observation. You may have been noticed in transit, or entering the clinic.” He looked at me and Parker “Have I omitted any possibilities?”
I couldn’t think of any, so I shook my head no, then nodded to Parker.
“The only thing that makes sense,” she said thoughtfully, “is that they didn’t have time to muster a strike force and took a chance on a simple snatch.”
I couldn’t think of a better explanation, looked at Lindner, who nodded agreement with Parker.
“Alright,” I mused. “We obviously have some work to do.”
“May I make a request, sir?” Parker asked. I knew what was coming, but nodded ‘yes’.
“Please don’t go anywhere again without us,” she urged. “We’ll close our eyes no matter what you do, we’ll look the other way, or oblige you any way we can. Let us do our job.”
We all knew it was more than a job, so I agreed.
“Shall we debrief you now, sir?” Lindner asked.
“Let’s do it after we debrief Eva and Jefferson.”
“Who first?” Parker asked.
“Eva. She was the eyewitness. Jefferson arrived after it was over. Be aware, I’d like to recruit both of them.”
“Eva’s a kid,” Parker protested.
“You’ll change your mind once you hear her account of the incident. Now. How about some dinner. I’m starved.”
When Eva entered the conference room the next morning, if she was intimidated by the people at the table, the video cameras and other recording devices, she didn’t show it.
Parker said crisply. “Are you ready?” Eva nodded. “Then please tell us everything that happened yesterday afternoon.”
She took a deep breath. “My supervisor at transport told me to take the two transporters to room 502 and bring the patient to x-ray. The two men were wearing some kind of blue worksuits, like plumbers or something. They looked a little weird…”
“In what way?” An Admiral asked.
“They looked alike, but odd.”
“Go on,” Parker said.
“I led them to the elevator, we went to the room, I knocked and a man said: ‘Come in’. I said: ‘I’m Eva, from transport and we were here to take you to x-ray’. The two men came in. The man on the bed looked at them, pulled out some kind of gun and shot them. I had no place to run or hide, so I made myself invisible and hoped the madman wouldn’t shoot me. Then he told me gently to bring him a tray and he put the gun on it and told me to put it on the counter. I knew he wasn’t going to shoot me, so I relaxed. Then he asked for my cell phone, which I gave him. He made a call, then the cop came in.”
“Good, Eva,” Parker said. “We’ll stop here for now, but we’ll talk to you again in an hour.” Parker signaled an agent. “Take Eva to breakfast, please.”
When she left, the group discussed her statement and agreed she handled an extremely challenging situation with exceptional poise.
“What do you think, sir?” Parker asked me.
“We’ll discuss that after you debrief me. Now let’s have Sergeant Jefferson.”
An aide brought Jefferson in and I saw him quickly scan the room, noting the high-ranking military officers and the cameras.
“Good morning, Sergeant Jefferson,” Parker said. “Will you please tell us aobut your response yesterday.”
“I was passing the clinic in my patrol car when I got a report of some kind of disturbance on the 5th floor. After a brief search I found the room, drew my pistol and entered cautiously. There were two bodies on the floor, a girl was standing in the corner and a man in bed said: ‘Come search me. Sergeant Jefferson, so you’ll know I’m unarmed’. I approached carefully, made sure there were no weapons, and he said: ‘You’ll get a phone call in 30 seconds that will tell you what to do.’ I saw a strange weapon on the counter, but before I could look closer, he said: ‘Don’t let anyone else in the room. If they do come in, do not let them see the weapon’. Just then my phone rang, my Captain instructed me to cooperate with the agency taking charge and disconnected. I told the man: ‘Homicide is going to be pissed’. He said: ‘This is not an ordinary homicide, Sergeant Jefferson’. Then two agents came in and took charge.”
“Thank you, Sergeant Jefferson,” Parker said. “We’ll talk to you again in an hour.” She signaled an aide to lead him out and he turned to me.
“Question, sir?”
“Of course,” I replied.
“Will I be allowed to leave?”
“Certainly. You’re not a prisoner. If you wish, you can go after the next meeting. However. You might want to talk to me before you go.”
“Thank you, sir,” and the aide led him out.
Parker looked at me quizzically, and I said:
“We want to hear their opinion and perception of what happened. Then we’ll analyze the incident.”
We listened to Sergeant Jefferson’s and Eva’s account of what they thought happened. They were thorough and clear on what they did and didn’t know. I met with them, one at a time, Jefferson first, Parker and Lindner sitting in as I reviewed his record.
“You’ve been on the force for five years, two years of army service before that. You have several commendations, one for a shoot-out in a deli that saved civilian lives. You are respected by your superiors, especially your watch commander. You are going to night school for a law degree. I offer you the following choices: You can return to your precinct with commendations that will put you on a fast promotion track. You can join our agency and we will train you in counterterrorism and other skills, and fast track you for a law degree in the area of your specialty. You would be working for a clandestine government agency, with many responsibilities and benefits.”
“Do I have to decide now, sir?”
“No. We’ll give you a contact number if you opt to join us. However. There is one stipulation. You cannot discuss or tell anyone about the events of the last two days, or mention the agency, under any circumstances.”
“What if my watch commander asks what I’ve been doing?”
“Your chain of command has been informed you helped federal agents subdue two men who attempted to kidnap a government witness. Parker will give you an outline of the incident that will satisfy any inquiries. Lindner will arrange to have you driven home, or to your precinct. Good luck, Sergeant Jefferson.”
Thank you, sir. One more question?”
I nodded and he asked:
“What kind of weapon was that?”
I just grinned and Lindner summoned an aide, who led Jefferson out.
“What do you think, sir?” Parker asked. “Will he be back?”
“We’ll hear from him tomorrow. Let’s see Eva.”
An aide brought her in and seated her.
I nodded, then reviewed her background.
“Eva Rodriguez, age 19, graduated from Woodrow Wilson High School, 4.0 grade average, ran track, scholarship offers, including one for track. Father became ill and you had to go to work at two low paying jobs. We can help you get a better job and arrange a medical policy to take care of your father. Or you can go to work for our agency, take special training, then attend college part-time in preparation for a medical career. We would provide assistance to your father while you were in training.” Before I could continue, she said:
“I would like to join your agency, sir.”
“Why?” Parker snapped.
“I know enough to realize something very important is going on and I would like to make a meaningful contribution. I also want the educational opportunity.”
“Lindy. Have someone drive Ms. Rodriguez home. Eva. You cannot discuss the events of the last two days with anyone, not even with your father. Unless you change your mind, a car will pick you up at 7:00 a.m, and take you to a training facility.”
“Thank you, sir,” and an aide led her out.
“She’s awfully young, sir,” Parker commented.
“She’s smart, tough, has good sense and good judgment. In her way, not unlike Jefferson. We’re facing a dangerous menace that we don’t understand and we seem to be learning everything the hard way. We need people who can rise to the challenge. As you both know, they don’t grow on trees. We have to find out what we’re confronting and need all the help we can get.”
Parker moved closer, recognizing a real opportunity to question me.
“Who do you think we’re facing, sir?”
“Looking at this logically,” I replied, which made Lindner grin, “there are two alternatives. Either a powerful cabal has made incredible scientific advances in producing some kind of android that can almost pass for human… Or there has been an alien incursion that for what purpose has not yet been determined.”
“Which theory do you favor, sir?” Lindner asked.
“There isn’t enough evidence to reach a conclusion, but I would prefer an earthly conspiracy, to an alien visitation… Do either of you have an alternative theory?”
They shook their heads and Lindner said:
“Better a human conspiracy. At least we’ll be able to figure out their motives.”
Gary Beck has spent most of his adult life as a theatre director and worked as an art dealer when he couldn’t earn a living in the theatre. He has also been a tennis pro, a ditch digger and a salvage diver. His original plays and translations of Moliere, Aristophanes and Sophocles have been produced Off Broadway. His poetry, fiction and essays have appeared in hundreds of literary magazines and his published books include 39 poetry collections, 14 novels, 4 short story collections, 1 collection of essays and 8 books of plays. Gary lives in New York City.
You can find more of Gary’s work here on Ink Pantry.