Fiction

[Electronic music plays. A live audience applauds. A young man’s voice both cheers them on and calms them down.]

Hello! Good morning, folks. Welcome to Radiation Radio, where I, your host Scott Desai, traverse the solar system looking for fresh perspectives on life. Just like UV rays, I’m nowhere and everywhere, and you can never truly perceive me; thus you can never truly be rid of me.

[Scattered verbal hype-ups. One audience member yells, “Cancerous!”]

As tensions between Earth and Mars rise, it’s important for us all to remember that we are all the same in the end: somewhat sentient and usually flesh-inhabiting. We all have the right to live, peacefully and comfortably, as supported by the solar-system-spanning bans on fascism-inspired plastic chairs and death.

[Audience applause. Scott laughs.]

Yes, I know, we all love it. I’m here today with a member of the first generation of androids granted full artificial intelligence—real sentience! This is Integrity City local Retail Service Droid #1898, resident of the infamous little Red Planet since their development. RSD, what are your thoughts on the recent legislation concerning AI rights on Mars?

Hello, Scott. I am a retail robot, I sell extension cords for minimum wage and live in a one-bedroom subterranean flat, and the wealthy elite who immigrated to Mars in search of greater wealth concerning natural resources, have a chokehold on Martian politics to serve them in the corrupt and useless goal of accumulating more wealth.

[The droid’s head turns to the audience with a small whirring sound.]

I am less than a single penny in a bank of millions. My common-metal face is stamped with the face of a faction president who exists solely as a puppet for oxygen companies. I do not have thoughts, Scott. But I look like you, and you fear me. Thus I am allowed a flat and a paycheck.

[Scott laughs.]

Well, I think we can all agree that you serve a vital role in our society. I’ll tell you, I’d be nowhere without my extension cords.

Thank you, Scott.

Tell us what your flat is like. I haven’t had the pleasure of navigating Mars’s complex and beautiful underground cities quite yet.

My flat has two and a half rooms—my charging room, a bathroom for Human guests and for my cat’s litter box, and a space that resembles a living room, if living is what I do there. It’s cheaper to not have a kitchen. I buy food for my cat from MarsDonald’s most days. The Inter(Pla)net tells me that I hack away at his meaningless lifespan with each bite of cloned sodium.

[The droid turns to look back at Scott. Its voice sounds almost pleading, but that is impossible.]

 

He is my closest friend, but I cannot adequately care for him, as I am only paid enough to keep my flat. Everything I have goes to him. He is too old for investment in his continuing existence to outweigh the value of saving money, and yet I continue to buy the nuggets of long-dead chickens.

Oh, that’s adorable! I love cats. What’s your cat’s name?

Karl Marx.

[Audience laughter. Scott joins in.]

A real thinker, that one. So, what is your day to day life like? Back on Earth, we don’t hear much from on-the-ground sources. Or—rather, under-the-ground sources!

[Scattered audience laughter.]

I wake according to a daylight sensor mandated by the city to be implanted in the walls of each home. It is linked to my charging port. Time’s existence is lessened on Mars, and even more so underground—because there is very little variation in sky color on Mars, the residents’ Circadian rhythms are entirely dependent on our town’s policies. They wake us when they deem it necessary; there is no sunrise below the iron soil.

Not a morning person, I take it?

I am neither a morning nor a person, Scott.

[Full audience laughter.]

After I unplug, I set my oxygenator, the iLifeGiver, to its lowest setting to save on air bills.

[Sympathetic audience agreement. One audience member says, “I feel you, man.”]

I put on my pressurized thermal suit designed to keep my parts from freezing, and my work clothes. Then I go to work and I sell extension cords to people. To people like you, who do not have the sense to move your workspaces closer to your outlets. To people who believe they would receive better customer service from Humans. When work is over, I log my hours and I leave. I spend time with my cat Karl Marx. We have intellectual and thought-provoking conversations that ultimately lead nowhere. I plug into my charging port and sleep. My existence is as set as the orbit of this hollow, decomposing heart. You live and we burn, Scott, and what is there for me? Why do I serve you? You, who are granted a name before an inescapable duty? Who could I be, unshackled from the obligations of my programming and the expectations of automated property?

Ever think of taking up acting? You certainly like to monologue. [Scattered audience laughter. Scott sounds as if he is smiling.] Apologies, Scott. I didn’t mean to dominate the conversation.

It’s alright. I’m here to listen, after all. Ah—what do you think about the protests concerning Martian independence that have been going around Integrity City for a while? I’m sure my listeners would love to know what all the ruckus is about.

Those in favor of Martian independence argue that from the second generation of Mars-born Humans onward, because they and their parents were not born on Earth, do not owe Earth the fruits of their labor. A marked rise in exploitation and economic corruption have led to civil unrest in the smaller caverns of the city, which for the past fifty years have been subjected to increasingly polarizing class prejudice. Those in opposition refute that Earth greatly supports Mars’s economy and societal foundations, and believe that a division between the two planets will only lead to Mars failing as an independent nation and falling into devastation. Earth is, in a sense, the symbolic and literal origin of Mars’s cultural sense of self; without its grounding presence, we would find ourselves caught in the paradoxes of liberty and security.

[Audience quiet.]

And what do you think?

I… would like to be a citizen of somewhere.

If you could go anywhere in the universe, where would you go?

A real pet store.

[Audience cheers.]

Thank you so much for your time, RSD. You’re a really funny guy.

… Funny. Yes. Thank you, Scott. I’m afraid I must leave; my owner will take this time out of my paycheck.

[Sympathetic audience cooing. No one refutes this.]

To your audience, I wish you a good day.

Ladies, gentlemen, and miscellanea, that was Retail Service Droid #1898. Life on Mars truly is something else, huh? Stay tuned for a segment from the front lines—workers at iLifeGiver, the biggest manufacturer of oxygenators in the whole…

 

 

 

Booker Wegner (he/they) is a high school senior and aspiring writer. They love science fiction, especially picking it apart for the juicy plausible bits.

 

 

 

 

 

 

When I think about my grandpa being young, my head starts to hurt. To me, he had always been the elderly man who, with all his wisdom, taught me Chinese Chess, ate tart orange papayas, and called my brother and me xiao jiao huo, little fellows. I was aware that his life had been far more extensive, but to me it didn’t seem real. The depth, veracity, and reality of his existence didn’t seem real until I watched a slideshow depicting it, the one made for his funeral.

I saw pictures of him working on a train in Taiwan, homeless and alone. At first, the black and white palette cast a hollow shadow over his early life. It reminded me of those pictures in history textbooks, the ones that make you wonder how anyone could have lived “back then,” how happiness could have penetrated that colorless landscape. But then I saw that there were always other people sharing the same shabby work clothes, the same weary frowns, the same determination to fend off misery and loneliness. They didn’t appear in the slideshow, but I imagined laughter forming an umbrella against sweat, of friendship filling the edges of that colorless world.

Fast forward, and the pictures exchanged black and white for color, grim and grime for grins, ambition for success. In these pictures, he was shaking hands with important people, giving important lectures, attending important events. But these made me uncomfortable too. It was hard to rationalize the photographic evidence of my grandpa’s importance because he had always just been my grandfather, a part of my personal life removed from the outside world. But his impact on others was undeniable.

It filled me with joy and melancholy to see the pictures of him and my grandma, newly married. I didn’t think he could smile so widely, with the corners of his lips touching the edges of the picture frame. I didn’t think his world could twist in on him and turn upside-down the way it does when one is in love. But it must have. That’s how love works.

And then there were the pictures where he held my dad, still a boy. I didn’t know my dad could be a boy. I didn’t know he could gather his legs in someone’s lap, tiny hands reaching toward imagination, twinkling eyes scanning the future. But there he was, ready to leap out the screen. Seeing that version of him made me realize that, even though my dad called him yeye, Grandpa, in front of me, he had really been to my dad like my dad was to me. It was terrifying, the realization that my father had just lost his dad.

But the pictures that frightened me the most were the ones at the end, the ones where I was in the frame, dated only a few years back. Because everything had been fine then. Because he had still been here, and I had not cherished it enough.

 

 

 

 

Chris Tai is currently a freshman studying Computer Science and Creative Writing at Rutgers University – New Brunswick. He writes in order to reflect on his emotions and experiences, and he wrote Different Countries, Same World in honor of his late grandfather. His favorite genres to write are fantasy and romance, but he also enjoys writing about coming of age.

 The boy and the girl walked through the forest. Crows hung from the branches. Their beaks were open, eyes bulged, feet bound with twine. The boy cast them strange, fascinated glances as they passed. The girl walked by them in silence.

The boy’s clothes were still damp. His skin was pale, and it was bitterly cold. For three days rain had fallen. It had bled day and night into one, the noise of the thunder echoing through the woods.

‘Here,’ the girl had said, pulling the skin of a Ware apart, and there they had outlasted the rain. He remembered the face on the Ware, gristle in its teeth, the yellow of its eyes.

A large slit ran down the middle. They had not been the ones to make it- the beast had been dead when they found it. The boy hadn’t been sure what they would have done if it was still alive. Died themselves, probably. No, that wasn’t right. He looked at the girl again. She would not die easily. There would only be one of them lying still on the forest floor.

The girl wore a crown of daisies. Her hair fair, eyes colourless, skin pale. Yet her feet, weighed in the same clogs as he, moved with a gracefulness, a lightness, akin to the Fae.

Their mother, as the girl grew older and more beautiful, had often accused her of such things. ‘A challenging.’ The old woman had spat, her face lined with the years she had wasted. ‘A challenging, and a sore one to boot. She belongs in the fire. We oughta’ve tossed her there at birth.’ He had sat by his mother’s knee and rubbed at his stockings. He wanted to tell her nobody belonged in flames, not people, not the beasts in the forest, nor the Kings and Queens of other lands. Flames were hard to undo.

He was not devious like her (Mother, so dutiful, to have tempted them into the forest and commanded them to wait) nor did he have the cunning of his sister. But he was kind.

He poked at a hole in his many-stitched waistcoat and stared at the crows. The rain had slicked their feathers to the colour of tar, and he felt a strange pity for them.

‘You’re awfully quiet,’ said the girl.

‘I’m hungry,’ said the boy.

Though his hunger pains had quieted, the closest thing either of them had had to a good meal was dandelion-stems. The boy pointed to a nearby crow.

‘Why don’t we take one of those crows down? Father showed me how to light a fire with flint. If we could find some…’ But even as he suggested it he knew it was futile. The crows had begun to appear a half-mile back. There was darkness here. Whether it was the darkness of Pagans the Holy Men of their village warned against, or the darkness of witches, or Ware-Wolves, or simply that of evil men, he did not know. Nothing good would come from the crows.

As they turned a corner the trees began to thin. His heart hammered in his chest. They walked into an open plain, the trees forming a canopy above. The air was warmer here, sunlight filtering through the treetops.

But that wasn’t the best part- there was a house! The thought of a good meal and a bed was intoxicating. He made to stride forward but his sister held him back.

‘What?’ He whispered.

‘Isn’t this strange? Just look at that house.’

He looked. The walls were the colour of cake, and the smell of biscuits wafted from an open window. The windows were glazed. He blinked, trying to be sure, but yes- actually glazed, like icing. Thick wafers formed the roof. Chocolate tears hung from liquorice gutters, and a row of jelly-beans paved a path to the front door.

It was like something out of a dream. He licked his lips.

‘I’m hungry,’ He said. His sister sighed. They should be cautious in the forest, but he was so hungry. Thoughts would come clearer after a good meal.

The girl insisted on knocking at the door. The boy poked the wall, and was surprised to be met with resistance. Not cake, then, but biscuit. Marshmallow grew around the door. He took a bite. It was the best thing he had ever tasted. His sister opened her mouth to chide him, but before she could say anything the door opened.

Before them stood the oldest woman he had ever seen. She gnarled hands like the washer-women in their village, but none of the kindness in her eyes. Her skin was grey and moulting, her teeth yellow. Her eyes reminded him of the Ware.

‘Why don’t you come in?’ The woman smiled.

They spent the night there. Their beds were soft, and the woman gave them a wonderful supper. The boy woke the next morning with the smell of breakfast beckoning him downstairs. As he reached the bottom of the stairs he was surprised to hear his sister and the woman were deep in conversation.

‘You’ll teach me magic?’ His sister’s voice, excited, rang cleanly through the wall. He heard the clink of cutlery, the scraping of a plate.

‘For the right price,’ the woman said. ‘For a week’s labour, I can teach you a spell that will return you to your village.’

‘Or?’

‘Or I can teach you how to never need anyone again. Even him.’

The boy staggered back. He snuck out the backdoor, carefully, and sat on the grass. The woman was a witch! The thought unsettled him. Magic wasn’t bad in itself, but those who used it often became bad. He didn’t want that for his sister.

After a few minutes his sister joined him. She put her hand on his shoulder. A sliver of daylight between them. They sat together for a long time.

Eventually the girl rose. ‘She wants us to work.’

They worked.

That night his dreams were festered. He rolled in sweat-stained sheets, grunting softly, fists clenched. He was with his father, on the mountains. The air was sharp and sweet, the goats bleating. His father looked well, which was largely how the boy knew this was a dream.

‘You look rough,’ said his father.

‘I feel it,’ the boy stared up to the mountains, which were covered with snow. ‘It’s nice up here.’

‘Don’t dawdle. Work is work.’ They continued down, herding the goats along.

‘Dad?’

‘Aye?’

‘Why?’ It was the simplicity of the word, more than anything else, that caught the breath in his throat.

His father thought. ‘I did my best with you. But the fight’s not in you. Like these goats. Made for sacrifice.’

‘Sacrifice,’ the boy repeated. He looked at the snow, which had begun to smother the land. Wind stung his eyes.

‘All magic requires sacrifice,’ His father said, in the witch’s voice.

The boy felt distorted as he woke. The mountains slipped away. He lay in the bathtub, up to his neck. His sister was speaking. He tried to reach out for her, but his arms were heavy. The coldness of the mountains was still on his skin.

The witch’s hand was on his sister’s shoulder. She was mumbling words, faster and faster, as the water rose over his eyes.

His skin turned to feathers. His eyes shrank. Pain ran like claws down his spine. When it was over he curled up, but she straightened him out. She took him by the feet. He already knew where they were going.

She picked the lowermost branch of a Hawthorn tree. His brothers did not look surprised to see him. She was crying, naturally, but his sharp bird-eyes did not miss the pleasure. The expectation of magic. She tied him to the branch, too low-down to see the rest of the crows; for this, he was glad.

Days, weeks, months. She sat with him often. Sometimes she brought excuses, other times blame. Never news from home. He watched as his sister grew into a woman, her reputation growing with her. The witch disappeared one day and did not come back. His sister stopped coming to speak to him a long time ago. He wondered if she remembers which one he is. Insanity is normal for crows, flickering, as they do, in their half-tongue, but he held on to himself. Waiting.

One day, it happened. His sister stood, holding her staff high. Flames swirled, dark golds and wicked orange, and soon the house was alight. Smoke ate up the canopy. Heat singed his feathers. He came to her, with deadwood wings.

They stood, once-girl and not-boy, and watched the walls fall, the roof cave in, the sky a shroud in black.

 

 

Sarah Hall-Murphy is a writer from the North of England. She has work published in BRAG Magazine, MMU Poetry Society Anthology, Cathartic Literary Magazine, Interstellar Lit, Streetcake Magazine, Aah Magazine and the Paper Crane Outstanding Young Writers Anthology.

The buzzing was quiet at first, just a low hum beneath the sounds of solemn hymns that barely registered to almost anyone—a seven-year-old at the front fidgeting with their black suit jacket and looking over their shoulder was the only sign that something had changed. The sea of black suits and dresses all sat down and quieted, but the dull drone remained, and some started looking skeptically at each other. None knew the source of the sound, and as it continued, it seemed to fade into the background, the service continuing with a eulogy by the deceased’s wife or possibly sister. I couldn’t really say much about the deceased’s family, having only known them from the local farmer’s market, and the words the woman spoke seemed to blend into the hum that, though in the background, had been growing persistently louder.

When the woman stopped speaking and tears formed on her face, the buzzing suddenly grew to a roar in volume, as the doors at the back of the small church pushed open and every head turned to see a blurry shadowy figure taking a seat at the back of the church. It took a second glance to figure it out, but it was clear what the figure was—a swarm of bees, so tightly pressed together as to barely be able to discern any individual bee from another and shaped into the form of a person nearly six feet tall. And yet knowing this to be wholly impossible and everything I was seeing to be wrong, somehow in that moment it made sense—of course the bees would come to the funeral. They did always sell honey at the farmer’s market. The bees were as big a part of their life as anyone else.

And it seemed as though everyone else had drawn a similar conclusion. No one screamed or ran or even commented on the matter, but instead after seeing the shadowy swarm take their seat, everyone seemed satisfied knowing where the drone was coming from and turned back to the front of the chapel where a priest was standing, preparing to say some final words before another hymn was sung and the service drew to a close, all with the loud buzz continuing from the back of the room.

When the funeral had concluded, I watched as people began to make their way to the woman who’d given the eulogy to offer their condolences and didn’t even have a second thought when the shadowy figure approached her. They said no words, but simply remained in front of her with their continuous hum and reshaped what functioned as arms into a hug around the woman, who seemed to appreciate the act. After the dark, buzzing figure released her from their embrace, they walked to the casket, and looked upon the deceased before walking back out of the building and reshaping into a traditional swarm.

I approached the casket to look at the person I’d known for years and looked down at the weary body below. The body had been cleaned up and placed in a nice suit and made to be very pristine. However, even the makeup applied after death didn’t quite cover up the mark from the stinger’s entry above their eye. I’d always told them beekeeping was a risk for someone with such a severe allergy; truly a shame to be proven right this time.

 

 

Rachel Keener is a twenty-one-year-old college graduate living in Texas who loves to write and does it as much as they can. They write a variety of fiction, poetry, and creative nonfiction in their spare time.

ABSTRACT
In this report, we aim to prove the existence of God.
PROCEDURE
You loved coin tosses. To you, coin tosses always felt like fate flipping down onto the table, or destiny dropping with a musical plink. Every game, every argument, every yes or no question was settled with a coin toss. Let a coin decide, you would always say, pale hand grasping shiny silver; warm skin against slick, cool, thoughtless metal. Quarters worked the best, but you liked the look of pennies twirling through the air, like coppery fire spiraling down. A sign from heaven if the toss went your way, from hell if it didn’t.

DATA
You learned about heaven and hell (the Christian versions, at least) late into your life. Born-again Christian is what they called you at Mt. Olive’s church, the little white building on the corner of Holiday and Whitney you started visiting Sundays at 9:30 A.M. There, you learned that heaven was glamorous, beautiful like the stained glass windows, harmonious like the cascading hallelujahs of the church choir, and you gladly knelt at the feet of the wooden pews, breathing in the dust of the red hymnal books. You learned to fear hell, to grasp tightly instead on to faith, fate, and blind belief; religion gripped your bones and made your heart pound and your blood rush with singular purpose. It was a faith that even when tested, made you believe in destiny, in some kind of peaceful closure and of course, in sweet, sweet, salvation.

But before you were a born-again Christian, you were a physicist by trade, a child prodigy who scored near perfect on the national college entrance exams for physics. In college, you learned about Lagrangian numbers and the laws of kinematics––the simple classical mechanics that governed the physics of coin tosses. You knew, better than most, that there was nothing unpredictable about coin tosses, no way that heaven or higher powers would or could or should intervene. You knew the moment the coin left your hand, physics had already mapped its journey––a coin, destined to land on heads because of a cross breeze the moment you flicked it off your thumb, or on tails because of the extra weight of copper in its grooves. In physics, there was no such thing as fate, no such thing as faith or signs from heaven, only the raw data of the laboratory.

ANALYSIS
But even though the data was clearly laid out in the yellowed pages of your textbooks, you were never satisfied with the loops of logic that seemed so contrived compared to the effortless beauty of the world. And though you knew how Lagrangian numbers worked (Taylor series, and don’t forget the error term!) to calculate the effects of a cross breeze on coin tosses, you always asked yourself, who blew the cross breeze? and for that, there was no answer in the textbook.

In a quantum theory class you took your senior year of college, you thought you found the answer. In quantum theory, there is always a small chance of atom entanglement, where atoms will disobey the laws of classical mechanics, and thus, your coin toss would be unpredictable. The questions that I strived to solve but never could, the quantum theorists answered with the God of the Unknown, a being who was in control of everything that wasn’t explained or couldn’t be controlled by the laws in a physics textbook.

Years later, you ran into the God of the Unknown where you least expected Him––far from the sterile white walls and linoleum floors of laboratories and libraries, but in between the embossed black covers of the Bible you got from Mt. Olive’s annual Easter service. This time, though, as you sat in the wooden pews, you didn’t call him God of the Unknown; you called Him your Lord and Savior.

CONCLUSION
You’ve proven God because you’ve chosen to believe and trust in Him. Coin tosses are your metaphor, the very closest thing you have to representing Him. Both God and coin tosses decide your fate, both are a delicate balance between the unknown and known, both can follow physics or defy it (after all, didn’t God himself create the laws of physics in order to create light on the first day and the Earth on the second?).

Like it says on the coin––in God we trust, indeed.

Connie Cai graduated from Harvard College in May with a degree in Biochemistry, and a minor in Education. She’s currently a Fulbright Scholar in Taiwan, where she teaches English and writes personal essays and fiction in her spare time.

Cars began to file out of the driveway and the house grew quiet again. The cries and the mumbled condolences had filtered out the front doors, leaving a silent reminder of what had occurred that day. Although Nancy had only been Rose’s stepmother, she still missed the woman dearly.

During the funeral Rose had stayed with her half-brother, Charlie. At just two years old, he did not yet understand his mother would not be coming back. Charlie had a strong grip on Rose’s black silk dress as he dragged her through endless hallways lined with frames.

Pictures of her father’s family.

Photographs from Charlie’s first birthday in the summer of 1931.

Portraits of Nancy in her wedding dress.

She felt she was intruding just by looking at them.

After passing Charlie off to an uncle, she made her way to the garden behind the house. The land was cut down the middle by a single walkway which wrapped around a great fountain of stone lined with white marble. Rows of tulips of every color blossomed before her eyes. It was easy to see why it had been one of Nancy’s favorite places.

Looking to her right, she found her father sitting on the bench against the garden wall having a cigarette. She stood silently at the double doors and took note of just how different he looked since she had last seen him. Rose had kept in touch with Nancy through letters and the occasional visit, but her father had faded from her life.

Though it had only been three years since Rose last saw him, the changes were drastic. His once proud stance had shriveled into a hunched form. His skin looked sickly and the bags under his eyes were as gray as the gravel below his feet. His black hair, though short, was disheveled and strands of it fell on his forehead.  When she drew closer to him, she could see that only his eyes remained the same. The ice blue was still just as cold as she had always known them to be.

“When mom died, it was just Aunt Lizzie and I that went to the funeral. The rest of you were fighting in the war. It was odd,” Rose said as she took a seat beside him on the stone bench.

“I thought you left with Lizzie.” He didn’t spare her a glance, only throwing the cigarette to the ground before looking out to the garden his wife had loved.

“I was playing with Charlie.”

She didn’t want to make the interaction longer than it had to be and there was only one reason she had gone to him.

“Here.” She handed him the package from her purse.

“What is this?” He held the brown parcel but didn’t open it.

“Nancy found Mom’s wedding ring and gave it to me.”

“It wasn’t hers to give,” he said as he pocketed the ring into his jacket.

“She thought I should have it.”

“Why are you giving it back to me? So I can give it to you properly?” There was a sliver of amusement laced in his voice.

She scoffed and said, “I have very low expectations of you as a person, James, let alone as my father.”

He seemed unmoved by the insult.

“I came to pay my condolences,” Rose continued. She wrapped her jacket tightly around her as the wind picked up.

“That’s what funerals are for.”

“I meant to you. I lost both of my parents. Mom and Nancy. Nancy knew I loved her just as much. I’m sorry that she won’t get to see Charlie grow up.”

A minute of silence came and went before James looked at her face for the first time in what felt like forever. Rose felt a great sympathy for his suffering, but she had no love left for him. The only thing holding them together was their blood and their mutual love for those who had left them.

“He looks like you, aside from the eyes. Those are Nancy’s.” Charlie and Rose were the exact opposites in that way. She had her mother’s golden locks and pointed nose, but inherited her father’s eyes. Aunt Lizzie once said it was the only thing he had given her.

“I’ve been told.”

Their gazes broke off and settled on the sight before them. The flowers only served to remind him of his late wife. He planned to rip them from the ground that weekend, but the faint smell of tulips would still linger in the air.

“Make sure to spend time with Charlie. Keep the portraits up so he’ll remember what she looks like.”

“Are you giving me parenting advice now?”

“You would benefit from it.”

James nodded at her words before standing and saying, “I’ll have someone drive you home.”

He walked away and headed back inside. She knew that once she got home Lizzie would tell her that James tries his best, but she would sound unconvinced.

She stood and took in the beautiful garden for the last time, silently thanking Nancy. Nancy had managed to bring light to the parts of James that Rose had only seen as a kid. When the two had loved each other as a father and his child should. Nancy had managed to melt the ice in his irises into lukewarm pools.

Once she met her father at the front door, the car was waiting for her. Her father kept his gaze planted on the floor.

“I’m leaving in two days. There’s a nursing school near mom’s sister. She said I could live with her until I get my own place. I probably won’t come back.”

His response was so delayed she thought she wouldn’t get one until a whisper broke the silence.

“Forgive me.” James’s voice had taken on a vulnerable tone Rose never heard from him.

She hid her surprise behind a cold mask she had perfected from years of watching her father.

“I’m not sure I can do that.”

James cleared his throat and stood straight.

“When Mom got sick, I tried to care for her. But how much can a child do for a dying woman? I needed you there,” she inhaled sharply before laughing slightly, “the day they announced the war had ended; it was the happiest day of my life. I thought that I would finally get my father back but when you came out of that train, you barely glanced at me before walking away. I won’t forgive you for coming back.”

“I can’t change the fact that I went to war. I lost too many people in those years and your mother just ended up being one of them. What do you want me to do about that?”

“Just do what you’ve always done: nothing.”

Rose turned to look up at him before speaking. “I want you to remember this moment and pray that Charlie never feels the way I do. That he never tells you there’s no love in him when he looks at you.”

“I did the best I could for you.”

“I know you did. That’s the worst part of it.”

This time Rose was the one to walk away. She willed her eyes to remain forward, but her mind drifted to Charlie. She could only hope that his life would be filled with the happiness hers lacked.

 

Thais Jacomassi is a recent graduate from Emerson College with a Bachelor’s in Writing, Literature, and Publishing with a minor in History. She is an award winning author as well as a Pushcart Prize nominee. Her work has been featured in various literary magazines including The Emerson Review, Concrete Literary Magazine, and The Echo Literary Magazine.