For most of my life I had no religious or spiritual leanings, but I have a sort-of-a friend who is a priest, and a real friend who used to be a nun. I also knew an ex-priest toward the end of his life, and that was a powerful time for each of us. I think had I known him earlier – he had been a priest for thirty years, then not one for twenty – I would have learned something more, though I can’t say what it would be, about my own life. I now claim I’m a Buddhist but sometimes it is only a claim.

Once I was a disc jockey, in the days when disc jockeys played music and spoke into the night with dulcet tones. I worked the late shift, and sometimes the all-nighter, spinning tales of woe and wonder and lust, with 45s, albums, and my own voice. I felt connected to unseen folks in ways I’ve rarely felt with people right in front of me. It’s like when I travel and speak Spanish, and I find my self far more open, with new friends and with strangers, than I am at home, in English. Speaking into the microphone, tucked into Studio A and the dim light of the board, I was both encouraged and encouraging, with no sense of expectation. Would that all of our conditions offered the same.

I wasn’t religious or anything, in that radio time of my life, but there was something about giving my words into the night airwaves, just putting them out there, where they might descend beyond my control or imagination. Everyone should have such an opportunity. All these years later, I often wonder if anyone remembers what I might have said. I can remember much of the music, but little of the language.

All these years later – there’s a phrase I never anticipated – I speak less, and listen more, if someone speaks to me, or near to me, and feel more alone than ever.

Maybe the motorcycle guy feels the same, and that’s how he deals with it. At the corner, coming from a jukebox across the street, I hear somebody sing: “I’ll never get out of this world alive.”

I make the sign of the cross and walk on.

Tony Press lives near San Francisco. Poetry: The Postcard Press; 34th Parallel; Postcard Press; Contemporary Verse 2; Right Hand Pointing; Inkwell; Spitball; more. Fiction: JMWW; Rio Grande Review; BorderSenses; SFWP Journal; Switchback; Toasted Cheese; Boston Literary; Qarrtsiluni; Foundling Review; Menda City; 100 Word Story; Tales from the Courtroom; and more. Non-fiction in Quay and Toasted Cheese. He strives to live with compassion and awareness.

Wild Dog loved to play games. His favorite game was bury-the-bone. He would search the plains for dinosaur bones, and when he found a particularly juicy one would run like the wind until he found a good place to bury it.

One day Wild Dog was running with a fine femur in his strong jaws when he was suddenly hit by a reptile skull. He yelped with pain and fell over. The femur tumbled into a nearby stream, much to Wild Dog’s annoyance because he hated to get wet.

“Are you alright?”

Caveman appeared out of a thicket. The man was distressed and approached the whining hound cautiously.

“I’m really sorry. I didn’t see you there,” he explained.

Wild Dog decided to accept the apology. It was a hot day and Caveman seemed genuinely upset.

“I’ll get you another one if you like. What’s your preference? I saw a rib cage that’s to die for over the ridge,” asked the man.

It was a tempting proposition but Wild Dog demurred. He’d been eating too many ribs of late. Besides, his head hurt and he just wanted to go home and take a long nap.

Caveman apologized again, and explained that his favorite game was to hurl dinosaur skulls as far as he could. Wild Dog told the man about his predilection for the bury-the-bone game. The man had an idea. He often did. They could combine the games. Caveman would throw a bone and Wild Dog would fetch and bury it. The idea sounded very interesting.

The new game was a great success, and they played it every day until the sun was low in the sky. Then they would stop and watch the sunset together.

Before long Wild Dog and Caveman became best friends. They took to going on long walks and taunting dinosaurs together. Caveman suggested that his friend move in with him.

“We make a great team. It would be so much fun,” he said.

Wild Dog was intrigued by the idea. But then he realized that going to live in Caveman’s cave would mean losing his precious freedom. The hound ate and slept when he liked, and loved to run free when the mood took him. Wild Dog politely declined the offer.

Years passed. Life became extremely difficult for Wild Dog. More dinosaurs moved into the neighborhood. Some were hostile and tried to eat the hound. Others were great hulking beasts that pooped everywhere and didn’t watch where they were treading. They even ate his favorite trees. Worst of all, his roof leaked.

Caveman, on the other hand, was leading the good life. He discovered fire and was able to keep warm even on the coldest of nights. He fashioned tools that made his chores much easier. And he found time for hobbies, so took up cave painting.

They still played together, and Caveman became concerned about his friend. Once again the man suggested that Wild Dog share his home.

“My cave is your cave,” he said.

When he saw the snug, dry den with its wall-to-wall furs and modern art Wild Dog could not refuse. This time he accepted gratefully.

They packed up Wild Dog’s belongings. Caveman invented the wheel, built a wagon, and tricked a dinosaur into pulling the vehicle. Laughing and joking the two pals drove to Caveman’s abode.

And so began a long, enjoyable partnership. Wild Dog helped Caveman to hunt and fight off intruders. Caveman cooked for them and gave his friend an occasional belly rub.

The partnership is still going strong today. Man and dog remain best friends.

However, the dog still thinks about the freedom he lost all those years ago. That is why whenever he goes to lie down the animal turns a few times with his nose to the ground as if in search of something.

Ken has worked as a professional writer/editor for more than 25 years. He has written articles for numerous publications in North America and Europe, as well as books, short stories and plays. He lives and works in Yardley, PA, USA.

Kerri had been my friend since the sixth grade. I don’t know when she started huffing. Perhaps it started innocently in art class with a bottle of glue. I remember one time Joey Danforth gave me a fresh bottle of glue and told me to sniff it for a good high. I sniffed. Nothing happened. Maybe it affects people differently. But I never thought of glue in the same way again after that. This stinky, gooey substance that is designed to mend and hold things together can actually tear someone apart. It may have started with glue for Kerri, but it didn’t end that way. It ended with that stuff people use to blow the dust off of their computer keyboards. I’ve never used it. Once a week or so, mom sweeps a damp rag over my keyboard to clean it off. Even if I had a mangy keyboard, I’m not sure I would care.

One day, Kerri started dusting, not her computer keyboard, but her brain. I wonder if she was trying desperately to clear away the clutter and confusion of this thing called life that our parents say will only get more difficult as you get older. It would be nice if they gave us something to look forward to. I can’t blame them entirely because I’m sure life at forty has its own set of challenges, but the pessimism does not offer much hope to a lost, insecure, and unpopular sixteen-year-old who already feels as if her life is controlled by the hounds of “no” and “not now.” I wish she would have used laughter to clear the cobwebs from the dark corners of her psyche instead of a toxic aerosol can that burns your brain cells, but who am I to judge? I deal with my problems by falling into fits of depression that drive my mom up a wall until I am finally able to pull myself out of the slop bucket of malcontent. But Kerri didn’t die from burned brain cells, she died because her heart couldn’t take it anymore. The dusting made her heart stop. She died from a broken heart and most of us will never know what caused it, or what made her start huffing and dusting in the first place.

The drive home from the funeral was silent. Mom drove while my friend Veronica and I sat in the backseat passing slips of paper back and forth with different drawings of frowning faces. Veronica drew a picture of a frowning old lady with curlers in her hair while I drew a picture of a frowning baby who had one hair swirling up from the top of his head. The drawings made us smile, if only for a moment. I suppose it’s in really poor taste to find humor in the faces of sad people, but funerals are like that sometimes, aren’t they?

When we got home, I opened up the trash and noticed that mom had tossed away all of the markers and bottles of glue in the house. “Mom, it looks like an art supply store threw up in our trash can. Why did you throw all that stuff away? I’m not going to start huffing.”

“I know honey. I just don’t want to look at that stuff for while,” she said quietly. “These kinds of things just shouldn’t happen. I feel so sorry for Kerri’s parents.”

Everyone has their own way of coping, I suppose. Veronica is probably the most introverted person I know, but she doesn’t feel the need to analyze and figure things out the way I do. Maybe it’s because she lives on a farm and she witnesses birth and death all the time. Maybe it’s because she lives near a small stream and has learned to go with the flow. Regardless of the reason for my overactive mental tendencies, I did draw a conclusion. When people say “stop and smell the roses,” I know they mean that we should all slow down and remember to enjoy life, but that phrase means something else to me now. I could sit under one thousand willow trees and never understand why this had to happen to my friend Kerri, but I’ll never forget that my breath is my life and what I inhale becomes a part of me. So if you have the choice between a rose and an aerosol can, always choose a rose.

Donelle Dreese is an Associate Professor in the English Department at Northern Kentucky University where she teaches multicultural and environmental literatures, creative writing, and composition. Her most recent publications include short fiction published in Gadfly Online, Sunsets and Silencers and Postcard Shorts.

Met a Star’s Eyes

In sequins, in jeans, no vice untried, he’s hot, too famous. Sharing in a new rage, fans without sense, ability or taste were stunned by his great disco – very dazzling; such technique, each woman with a queue. Men lined up, hopeful, frustrated – he the most. No table – a rival on the scene with his ex (pert, poisoned laughter) got there first. He could sin till late, a lewd hint enough to get what he wanted. All night stud, he made endless advances. Easy Sue pursued, taking the bait, seriously in love. With excitement he lost count of the times he got on her – danger never far away, envy. Whatever the problem, a debt recalculation got him through.

While ordering his double, he licks his lips, injects himself with the weirdest elation. Sin had transformed his life. When can circumstances change? His key moment – he had to be careful. On the Med he sins again, new cocktails. A new drug treat meant more sickly daze. She was prone to dye her hair a new colour each night. Once a rogue antagonist if led astray, hope entered his life, a recovered drunk. But his weekend spirits failed – too easy to stress doubt. Wisecracking, he scolded her each night. He still spoke too much, a claim he later denied. Liking jewels, he had a greedy side, dead mean to tell the truth, but with friends she forgot all that, said all was fine, no doubts allowed, innocence assured.

The rape he denied. Any hope she had disappeared without successor in sight. There was no missed ache. She’d tear strips off him, the pain no cure. A quiet end was what he wanted to avoid. He wanted to party, longed to be wilder – not with her, coffees piled up. Fears receded. He hadn’t even won friends’ love, though he loved disguise. She suddenly realised all that other people missed – defied him, began to wonder, stand apart from his ego. There were other problems though – not earning, back in trouble, a loan turned down. No time to readjust. No ring, of course. It was finished, a lover gone forever, another of life’s fated, casual ties.

Metastasize

In sequencing genes – novice, untried – he shot to fame, ushering in a new age. Fans without sensibility or taste were stunned by his great discovery – dazzling, such technique. Each woman with acumen lined up, hopeful, frustrated. He, the most notable arrival on the scene with his expert poise and laughter, got there first. He could scintillate, allude, hint enough to get what he wanted. All night study made endless advances easy. Super-pseud, he took debate seriously, in love with excitement. He lost count of the times he got honoured – anger never far away, envy. Whatever the problem, adept recalculation got him through.

While ordering his double helix he slips, injects himself with a weird distillation. His DNA transformed his life. When cancer comes, stances change. His chemo meant he had to be careful on the medicines again, new cocktails – a new drug treatment, more sickly days. He was prone to diarrhea – new colour each night. Once arrogant, agony stifled a stray hope, entered his life – a wreck; overt drunk. But his weakened spirits failed – too wheezy, too stressed out. Wise, cracking his code, deader each night. He still spoke to much acclaim. He later denied liking duels. He had agreed, decided, meant to tell the truth, but with friends he forgot all that, said all was fine, no doubts aloud, in no sense assured.

Therapy denied any hopes he had, disappeared without success or insight. There was no mistake. Shed tears drip, soften the pain. No cure. A quiet end was what he wanted too; a void. He wanted to part, he longed to bewilder, not wither, cough. Fees piled up. Fears re-seeded. He hadn’t even one friend’s love, though he loved his guys – he suddenly realised all that. Other people mystified him, began to understand. Apart from his ego there were other problems though – no turning back, in trouble, alone, turned down. No time to read, just knowing of course it was finished, all over, gone forever, another of life’s feted casualties.

Tim Love lives in Cambridge, England. His prose and poetry have appeared in Stand, Rialto, Oxford Poetry, Panurge, Horizon Review, Short FICTION, etc. He blogs at http://litrefs.blogspot.com/.  His poetry pamphlet “Moving Parts” was published in 2010 by HappenStance.

He’d never been good for anything. Always he led a private life in a public way. He made attempts at friendship, at being a good son and brother, at expressing love. But it was all driven away. The maintenance of his private life devolved into abuse without fail. He ran with the other private people who self-destruct in communion in places where there is no judgment. Wet-smelling wooden places like dark stages and always him sitting quietly, a big attractive man capable of so much love that these things he’d attempted seemed pitifully insignificant. Life demands a more substantial sacrifice.

Routine stuck in his foot like a splinter. He knew more serious people wondered, ‘who do you think you are?’ The love he had to give fermented in the wet, dark places. Time and comfort were more suitable sacrifices. Life, as he couldn’t begin to define, was wasting him and as the well-meaning voices began to fall away, he knew he was on to something.

He wrote about these places he’d go and these people and mostly about himself. His time wasted away, people fell off their stools, and teeth were lost. Bottles of poison drained for celebration fueled grotesque couplings, nightmarish abstractions, moments of fine art, transcendent bridges of flesh. He began to know beauty. He embraced the ends of each night like the end of Life. More well-meaning voices fell away.

He dug deeper. Rejections of what he unearthed piled up. People did not want to hear it. He couldn’t stomach inventing characters. He knew too many people so desperately being themselves. He wrote them bigger and better or worse, more or less of who they were rewriting themselves as. Most people didn’t know what the fuck was happening. Even these private people he thought worthy didn’t see things the way he did. He continued to write.

Time wasted away with great fervor. Life was digesting him and he saw this as the ultimate gift. He’d found a place for some of this love. These bars and alleys were so full of it. He’d woken up on the steps of a church once. He assumed all the disgusted looks from the well-dressed people stepping around him had something to do with the throbbing he felt under his right eye. He excused himself and began to walk north. Walking home, blindly lighting a cigarette, he found the peaceful laughter of the damned. It would sustain him through anything.

He tried to write laughter. He tried to write fulfillment. He tried to justify his existence with words, but all he found were parables. The voices were gone now. Even the desperate letters had ceased. He was now on his own, beholden to no one. He felt incensed like never before, the last dregs of guilt finally drained. Life was his; he was God.

By the time his first acceptance letter arrived, his art had justified itself and he had hundreds of stories. It wasn’t long before he began to receive unsolicited responses to his work. He couldn’t believe his eyes: voice of your generation, brutal, unbridled, unprecedented honesty, genre-bending narrative. He had dreamed of this and it was briefly nice to be noticed.

It was fun for a while. Four collections out and people flocked to find him in those dark, wet bars, to turn them into literal stages. The discoveries he’d made were mined like precious minerals. The exploration to which he’d been devoted was now a pilgrimage. Life had taken shape as he felt its weight. He felt it digest him and learned. His life took shape as the world crowded around. There was no private place now and he’d seen himself in what he’d inspired. There was continued success and his habits became more pronounced as he was not so easily wasted anymore. He gave them what they wanted and he’d never known a hell so complete.

The crowd roared and shouted vulgar things they thought he’d approve of. He drank from the bottle an old man now. As he gulped, the crowd rejoiced. He was their God, their Life, and he wasted himself with great courage.

-I’ve got my fucking shotgun tonight, case any of you mother fuckers wanna come at me, he slurred angrily, brandishing the thing by its double-barrel.

The crowd knew it was real. They trusted him and gave him the recognition he’d fought to never need. He’d created selflessly and found an impossible beauty at the bottom of the day. He felt them tear through the pages for his life. They found truth that wasn’t their own and that wasn’t him and he could’ve written a story to explain, but he was tired and he’d given it all away.

The crowd roared as the empty bottle arced from the stage, end over end through the strong white lights. They roared so loud, the boom of both barrels didn’t sound like much from the cheap seats.

Daniel Pontius is a writer living in Philadelphia. He works for Philadelphia Stories, a non-profit literary journal and participates in a number of weekly writing groups. He’s currently working on a full-length collection of flash fiction and on the second draft of his first novel.

Sick means on the drive home I ride in the middle, up front between my parents. The coveted position. My brothers sleep behind me, one stretched out on the second seat, one in the way back of the station wagon. My ear pressed to Mom’s chest, I pretend to sleep so she might keep her arm around me longer. She pat, pats my shoulder kind of hard, but I think this is like a hug, like she wants me leaning in against her, wants me hearing the timbre of her voice through the bones and skin of her. Held this way, fear slides away. I don’t care what my parents are saying. I like where I am.

I don’t remember when she pushes me away. When I become too bothersome, a heavy thing putting her arm to sleep.

I don’t remember another time when she holds me.

Helen Silverstein is the co-editor of Southern Women’s Review. She writes fiction, nonfiction and poetry. Her works have appeared in publications as diverse as OBIT magazine and Big Pulp. For more information, please visit her website at www.helensilverstein.net.

Yosemite Sam and Tinker Bell were placed on the sash top of the kitchen window. In the dining room went Tweety and a Yarzeit glass, while The Roadrunner, Sylvester, the three little pigs and a chipped jelly glass with a grinning Mickey Mouse went on the two windows in the living room.

Lilly placed the Ouija board on the kitchen table and dragged a chair over to the door and propped the chair back under the doorknob. She did the same with her front door. Now that her alarm was set for the night, Lilly turned on the teapot and took a deck of cards out of the drawer and dealt herself a hand of solitaire. She played two games before the water boiled and she got up, made a cup of instant coffee, put the cards away and took out two milk crackers and sat down at the Ouija board to complete her nightly pre-bed ritual. The board was well worn from being used as not only a Ouija board and as a tray for her evening glass ritual but also as a tray to bring the kids food when they were sick in bed. She never asked Ouija if it liked being used as a tray—the thought never entered her mind.

As the steam rose from the teacup Lily put her fingers on the planchette lightly and being a person of habit asked silently the first of the three mandatory questions. “Will I ever marry again?” And then “Did Bernie ever love me?” And lastly “Am I ever going to know happiness again?”

Lily’s planchette had a space for a pencil where the answers could be written on paper, but she preferred to use it as a wedge and let it lead her to yes or no answers. As always, all three questions pointed her to NO. The planchette only moved slightly but the tip pointed cross board at NO and that was enough for Lilly. She put the board away and took her tea into the living room, turned on the radio softly so as not to wake the children, and lit up a cigarette. She pulled the coupon from beneath the cellophane of the now empty pack and added it to her collection in the end table drawer, where the Raleigh catalogue was also kept. Lilly wasn’t sure what she was saving up for but knew she had over a thousand coupons elastic banded in packs of a hundred. Not for a minute did she think of the health aspects of a thousand coupons; but every once in a while she would add up the cost of buying that many packs or cartons of cigarettes and think about what she could be doing with the money.

Lilly fantasized about walking into the Raleigh Coupon store, ignoring the cases and shelves filled with shinny new household appliances, knick knacks and the like and saw herself standing in line at the cashier’s window. “Here,” she said when her turn came. “I’d like to exchange these coupons for the money I spent.” She pushed the coupons towards the cashier who pulled down the iron bar window gate blocking the coupons path and said, “Sorry. I’m closing for my break. You’ll have to come back another time.” This fantasy scene never changed and Lilly never ever got to imagine what it would be like to have a few hundred dollars at her disposal. She couldn’t even allow herself the luxury of having a good fantasy.

In the morning, before her boys woke, Lilly put the chairs and glasses away, checking to see with her practiced eye if anything had been moved during the night, which meant a potential burglar. Lilly felt a chill after noticing that Yosemite Sam was out of place. She knew there was no way she would have put him on the same side of the window lock as Tinker Bell.

At breakfast she interrogated her three boys, Nathan twelve, Rueven ten and Samuel five. It wasn’t much of an interrogation, Reuven said he came downstairs to get a drink of water and grabbed Yosemite, took his drink and put Yosemite back. Lilly, angry beyond reason, yelled at him for touching her alarm and offered several different scenarios of what burglars do to children when they break into a house. Reuven, instead of apologizing or sitting mutely as the others did or would, told his Mother that Yosemite was his glass and he was thirsty and the only other glasses in the cupboard were Yarzeit glasses and he wasn’t about to drink out of one of them. He then picked up Yosemite and took sip of his milk.

Lilly walked into the kitchen, opened Reuven’s lunch bag and took out the oatmeal raisin cookie—his favorite and refolded the bag and said nothing more about the alarm as she sent her boys off to school.

Paul Beckman specializes in the short story and flash fiction. His work has been published in England, Canada, New Zealand & Germany and several stories have been turned into plays. He’s had two collections of stories published in print, “Come! Meet My Family & other stories” and “Maybe I Ought To Go Sit In a Dark Room For a While” and a novella “Lovers & Other Mean People” published on line by Parting Gifts. Additionally he’s had two chapbooks published; one with Web Del Sol and the other with Silkworm Ink. He earned an MFA from Bennington College in 1999.

The ambulance came and two burly men hurried through the chain-link gate, up spalled cement steps to the porch where they deposited boxy equipment beside the woman’s face (blocking the view for Janice March next door, who was taking notes).

They proceeded to revive the woman, undoing three buttons to plunge a syringe directly into her quivering heart, placing an oxygen mask over her lips. All this while Frank Rowe leered, Noreen Perkins would report from across the street. The truth is his mouth did gape, but only because he had not been so close to death since his brother’s funeral last spring.

As the men bundled the mailwoman off on a stretcher — naked as a blue jay according to Jennifer Strong — he noticed their resemblance to pallbearers and winced. A wince is not a smile, no matter what Francine Jenkins told her husband.

And when the lead man stumbled, the rusted gate snagging on his uniform pants, Frank Rowe laughed outright a majority of the women recounted. Yet his doubling over was not the result of some reflexive cachinnation, but a physical pain in his gut, a metaphorical kick to the solar plexus resulting from a momentary vision of his brother’s pallbearer tripping, the body sliding from the splintered pinewood coffin amid a confusion of flowered wreaths and wire stands. “You get what you pay for,” Frank’s wife had later commented, meaning the coffin.

That night at the Moose Lodge he listened to the tragic tale unwind second-hand from various husbands to the laughter that accompanied his complicit actions therein, and he smiled. A simple smile to be sure, nothing fancy. He had never been one to stand in the way of fun.

Afterward, when they bought him a round and toasted his antics — Stealing the mail from a convulsing mailman? Talk about post haste! — he only pretended to drink.

Stephen V. Ramey lives in New Castle, Pennsylvania. His work has appeared in The Journal of Compressed Literary Arts, Bartleby Snopes, and Orion Headless, among others.

#

Morning. The hazy, early sun angles past the white sand beach to guild row upon row of low, rounded mountains as uniform as the corrugated surf of the Caribbean. The first colors of the day are precise: blue ocean, yellow sun, green jungle. Beside me, Pablo spoons sugar into his morning drink of chocolate and ground corn. He swirls his cup to dissolve the granules, tastes, adds another teaspoon of raw cane, then settles into his chair with his back against the bamboo wall of my cabana.

I want to ask Pablo about the scream I heard – or thought I heard – last night, but Kunas can be Sphinxlike in their evasion of direct questions. Pablo will tell me what happened in his own time and on his own terms – if he tells me at all. I study the mainland, where a strong golden ray breaks through the morning mist to define the nearest mountain, highlighting scraggly plantations of banana, corn and rice.

Pablo raises his head and with his chin points toward the golden-lit mountain. “Opsuli Yala.”

I know the word opsuli: monkey. “Yala means mountain?”

“Eh-yea,” he affirms in Kuna. When I met Pablo fifteen years ago he was nearly fluent in English, but since then his language skills have atrophied like an unused muscle.

“I always thought that yala meant homeland.”

“It means both.” I love this about the Kuna language: the use of metaphor is so deeply ingrained that one word can stand for two entirely different concepts. Goa means both a human baby and a deer; waga is a squawking parrot or a Panamanian.

“There are monkeys up there?”

“Before.” Pablo sips his chocolate, grimaces, and adds more sugar. “Not anymore.”

“Do all of those mountains have names?”

“Hunters used to have names for all of them. Most of the old names though….” Pablo’s voice trails off, then revives. “There’s one called Sayla Yala.”

“Sayla — like the community leaders?”

“Sayla also means” — he reaches over and takes a lock of my hair between his fingers, rubs it for a moment as if he needs the tactile connection to remind him of the word — “hair.”

“Hair Mountain?”

“During the war, the Americans stationed soldiers there to guard the Canal. There was a tower on top of that mountain, and about a hundred soldiers lived there.”

“Near here?”

“Sully — no. It was deeper in the jungle. I’m not exactly sure where it was: I’ve never been there. I’ve only heard the story from hunters. They say that there’s still a concrete foundation on that mountain, and the remains of buildings where the soldiers lived.”

“But no one’s up there now?”

“The soldiers were only there for a week or so. They shipped out from here — my father was one of the hunters who guided them through the jungle and up to where the tower was. They were all young men — he said most of them didn’t seem old enough to be away from home. They didn’t know the jungle.”

“What happened?”

“About five days after the soldiers got to the tower — it took my father almost that long to get home after leading the Americans up there — another group of soldiers showed up on the island. They said that the soldiers on the mountain hadn’t answered any radio messages, that they hadn’t been heard from for several days. So my father had to go back to the jungle and up that mountain again with the second group of soldiers. These were older men, they’d been trained for the jungle. But even they had a hard time getting to the tower. And when they got there, no one — not the jungle soldiers, not my father, no one — could believe what they found.”

Pablo pauses in his narration to add dramatic effect. The Kunas are still an oral society and storytelling is a finely practiced art.

“And that was?” I prod when the pause begs for a prompt.

“They didn’t find anything: no people, no bodies, no food: no trace of anything from the soldiers except their hair.”

“Hair?”

“There are stories from back when the Spanish first came to the jungle here of an animal, a rat, that lives in the mountains. They say these rats travel in huge packs and devour everything they encounter. Like those fish in the Amazon — what are they called?”

“Piranhas?”

“Like piranhas. Only on land. During the day they’re invisible: there’s no clue they’re around. Only at night they attack. And they eat everything.”

“Except hair.”

“Eh-yea.”

“And they’re still in the jungle?”

Pablo points again with his chin to the mountains now swathed in cloud. “Who knows if they were ever there, what those people saw or imagined. The Kunas believe that often what is most dangerous is not alive.”

“Like ghosts?”

Pablo scowls and turns his face away. “In the dark your soul, your dreams, your fears are all naked, unprotected. And so are the souls and dreams and fears of all of the animals around you. Who knows h—” The word cuts off abruptly. He looks at me, then smiles. “Who knows.”

Louise Young has published a novel, SEDUCING THE SPIRITS, which was a finalist in the literary fiction category for ForeWord magazine’s Book of the Year Award in 2009.

Not today though. Blue sky. Wispy clouds. Last fall’s leaves made a mottled, powdery carpet along the path and out under the trees. The runner before her panted in his effort, one of those guys who wouldn’t let it beat him, gravity. A dark stain grew from between his legs, and sweat tracked down his bare, narrow back. The bottoms of his shoes, dirty red, blinked with stupid monotony. Jeanie’s lungs burned. Why was she even doing this? Hadn’t she read somewhere that walking offered the same health benefits as running? But if he wasn’t going to give in, either was she.

What did he look like? Somehow it had become tremendously important she find out. She could pass him—if she had the strength—and glance over for a quick view of his profile. What is she flew by and then stopped to tie her shoes? Was there any reason to face back while she did this? No, no, no. They were nearing the crest of the hill, leaving the river valley for the flat land above. Soon the trail would dump them onto 30th Street, just across from Steve’s Olde Barbershop and the Hilltop Tavern, a mucky part of town.

“Hey,” she shouted, surprising herself. “You up there.”

The runner looked back over his shoulder, still jogging slowly. He was a college kid, pimply faced, probably not even old enough to drink. Nothing at all as she’d expected.

“Never mind,” she said, and gasped for breath. “I thought you were somebody else.”

Kel Daniels’ fiction and nonfiction has appeared in the Cimarron Review, Puerto del Sol, Sonora Review, South Dakota Review, Third Coast, Eyeshot, GSU Review, Orange Coast Review, Mayday Magazine and other literary publications. He lives with his wife and son in Rock Island, Illinois, where he teaches creative writing at Augustana College.