Old Ways

by Dan Dworkin

The man in the doorway was backlit by the low hanging sun, and when he told her about Ray it didn’t seem real.

“Dead?”

“Yes ma’am, I’m afraid so.”

Fatima gripped the front of her blouse and twisted. She steadied herself against the door jam, and when she spoke it was a whisper, “Imkonsiz…”

The detective frowned, as he was not learned in Uzbek, “I’m sorry?”

“I say, is impossible.”

Everything about her was fragile and too thin — her wrists, her neck, even the skin on her face, which was translucent in the morning light.

“I wish you were right about that, ma’am.”

Come to My Arms, My Beamish Boy

by Douglas F. Warrick

Most of Cotton’s memories were gone. Like the name of the ship he had served on. Like the name of his commanding officer. His daughters’ names, which husband went with which daughter, which grandchildren came from which marriage, which fiancé held hands with which granddaughter. That had mostly melted away. His head felt like an icebox, like someone had opened the door, maybe just to grab a beer or to check the expiration date on the milk, and let all the cold air out, filled it up with thick stagnant heat. Alzheimer’s was a muggy goddamned country, the airless stomach of a huge beast that takes its sweet time digesting old useless machinery like him.

He could hold Audrey’s hand, like he was doing now, and he could remember her name and he could see the wedding ring he had given her all those years ago, could run his trembling fingers over it and feel its coldness, its sharpness, and for a couple of moments these things were all he needed.

But he couldn’t remember the wedding, not a goddamned thing about it. He’d reach as far as he could into that broken old icebox, strain to stretch a little further and try to find the little details, what did her dress look like? How did she wear her hair? Was she smiling? Was she crying? It was gone. Melted. And he’d panic because he knew it was there, knew that if he could just reach a little further… And he’d look around and realize he wasn’t at home. He was in a hospital bed. And he’d look up at her and try to say, Audrey, I’m scared, dammit, I’m scared and I want to go home! And all he could ever say was, “Audrey… where’s the cat?” or “Audrey… I don’t know…”

And Audrey said, like she always said, “Hush, Cotton.” And he could see himself in her eyes, a useless old man, or not even a man but a reminder of the husband she ought to have. And he could see how tired she was, could see the part of her that wished the whole mess would just end. The part that wanted a period on the end of this awkward run-on sentence, not that he could blame her. It would be a period, too. Not an exclamation point like he’d always kind of wanted in his Navy days, a smile on his face and the devil at his heels, a man’s sort of death. It—no—he would end quietly with a mushy melted head and a single dark period.

The Reign of the Wintergod

by Eugie Foster

The doctors come and ask me questions, but they always ask the _wrong_ questions, so I’m stuck. I can give them the wrong answers or no answer at all. I try to explain, try to teach them what the right question is, but they never listen.

“How are you, today, Carolyn?” they ask. And, “Did you have the nightmares again last night?” And occasionally, “Ready for your medication?” The last question I don’t mind as much. The round blue pills give delicious sleep — sleep without dreams. They just make it harder to sleep without them. But the purple pills, the ones with the jagged edges, they make me numb, detached, and that frightens me.

The Eyes of the Crowd

by Bruce Boston

As rain began to speckle the partitioned windows of the station, an ancient engine groaned into view. Villers soon found himself squeezed into a dingy and narrow car of questionable vintage. Making his way to a window seat, he noted his fellow travelers were exclusively of the lower classes. Peasant women, shapelessly hunched within their shawls. Dark men who drank from bottles concealed in their coats and ate pieces of bread right from the loaf, breaking off the chunks with large, uneven teeth. Scampering children who seemed to belong to no one, or at least recognized no one’s authority.

In his suit and vest, Villers was uncomfortably aware of his relative affluence. He checked his watch chain to make sure it was securely fastened, shifted his billfold so that it was lodged deeply within his breast pocket. As Sophie had once warned him amidst the rumpled sheets of their conjugal bed, “Some people will steal the gold out of your teeth if you give them half a chance!”

The Duel

by Michael James McFarland

“A what?! What did you say? A duel?”

“You heard me, Vanderbilt. D-U-E-L. Duel.”

“You mean like with pistols… ten paces, turn and fire? That kind of duel?”

“Something like that,” John Lawrence affirmed, hands planted on his hips, the breeze blowing casually through his stylish hair, making him look like a young Michael Douglas, right down to the ass-shaped cleft in his chin. Twenty years old and living life like it was a goddamn movie. That was Lawrence all right. This was just the latest example of his madness.

A duel.