Tag: Fiction

Junk by Andy Tran

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It began with me going outside my friend Samuel’s apartment building to smoke a cigarette, and it ended with me not coming back, until the next morning. Samuel had fallen asleep and wouldn’t answer his phone: texts, or calls. Earlier in the night, he had pounded back three
Tecates, and eaten Chicken Kabob and rice from the Deli down the street. He was under the influence of a food coma. I even tried knocking on his apartment window. There was no answer from him. And then my phone battery died. This was the beginning of the end. I was going to die in the Upper West Side.  


I walked up the street to a bodega, hoping I could charge my phone. I waited for 20 minutes. The phone wouldn’t charge. I ran over to a second bodega. I waited 30 minutes. And then the phone finally charged. 


As I was scrolling on my phone, calling Samuel, and not getting an answer, I met this couple outside who asked if I wanted to smoke weed. I thought why not. My friend wasn’t picking up his phone, my phone had barely any battery now, and it was fucking freezing out. 


I looked at them, up and down. The woman had her black hair in a bun and wore a winter jacket, boots, and a gray scarf. The man was wearing a sweater vest and Nike sneakers. They looked normal.


I walked with the couple over to their apartment building. 


We stepped in and I noticed there was a kid laying on the pull-out futon. Tricia, the woman, said that was the man’s daughter. Bobby Ross, the man, said they needed money for the weed. I didn’t have my wallet, backpack, or phone charger on me. All I had was my black peacoat, my
pants, my shoes, and my phone that was on 3% battery. We went inside of a room and I taught the man how to install and use Venmo on his phone. Then I sent him $20, for the weed. $15-20 seemed reasonable for a gram of weed, so I was expecting a gram. The woman ran out of the apartment, searching for the weed. The man started telling me his father used to make six figures and that when he was a kid, he saw The Lion King on Broadway 10 times in a row. I wondered to myself who would see The Lion King on Broadway 10 times in a row. I barely read novels more than once. Bobby Ross would, and he did. Bobby was also reading several books: James Paterson novels and Game of Thrones. I didn’t give a shit, but I smiled and acted like I did. 


Bobby talked for two straight hours, his breath shallow. I zoned the fuck out for two straight hours. He told me stories. That was the best part about the whole night; Bobby’s stories. He talked about getting shot for wearing a yellow bomber jacket. He talked about getting jumped in
the park in Queens, getting the shit beat out of him so badly he ended up in the hospital for a month. He talked about his ex-wife who stabbed him in the side with a kitchen knife, driving the blade through his flesh, a long deep cut. He talked about doing tattoos for a porn star that he met
through Craigslist. He talked about being a parent how you had to get used to being patient. He was 35 years old with grey hairs in his beard, and a tattoo of a giant cross on his left shoulder. He smoked a spliff and ashed in a Pepsi bottle cap turned over. The window was missing from the wall, so the wind rustled in from the alleyway and streamed into the room. He was eating rainbow chocolate cake and wiping his fingers on his shirt. 


When his girlfriend Tricia came back, she took out a tarnished white pipe, lit it, and smoked a small rock, the size of a pebble. Her eyes rolled back, and she let out a cloud of gray smoke. She smiled and snapped her fingers. As I sat there, stunned, I was wondering if my judgment even mattered. I’d done acid, klonopin, weed, ketamine, molly, and cocaine. But I thought I was better than Tricia, because I didn’t smoke crack. I was a sheltered Vietnamese American kid, at least
that’s how I came off to people, I presumed. Later on, I realized we were all pieces of shit. I was staring at her and chuckling lightly, as though she were a standup comic bombing a set. The
setups worked, but the punchlines kept missing their spots. I smiled, sweating through my black pea coat. Tricia cackled and swung her hips back and forth to an Usher song playing on the radio. As she took another hit of crack rock from her smoking pipe, I heard the girl snoring in the other room. 


I’d never done drugs in front of a child, but maybe if I was fucked up or desperate enough I would do it. Maybe I wasn’t as good of a person as I thought I was. I always thought I wasn’t a junkie, but perhaps I was one too.


Tricia made Bobby, her, and I Colombian coffee. I asked for black, and I didn’t flinch when I held up the cup to my lips and felt the bitter taste. It burned, slightly. I never got the weed from those two. But they did give me something. A gray scarf was wrapped around my neck. Tricia
tied a knot, edged it up towards my Adam’s apple. 

And in that moment, I felt warmth, in that moment, I felt like I was being burned at a stake in the middle of a field. But I wasn’t in a field. I was in a bedroom with Bobby, as he smoked weed, and Tricia, as she smoked crack; their daughter snoring gently a few feet away.

Andy Tran is a writer from Virginia. He’s graduated from Virginia Commonwealth University with a degree in English. Follow him on Twitter: @AndyT187 or Instagram: @dopestorybroo

Men Without Women by Avee Chaudhuri

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Carmen and Trevor had fallen so suddenly to making love, to barebacked screwing after splitting a bottle of Japanese whiskey, that they had not discussed the matter of his ejaculate. Trevor felt it was unwise to potentially saddle Carmen with a child, especially given how much red meat he had been eating as of late. In fact, his diet was terrible and had once been the subject of a heated conversation with his ex-wife. This same discussion had led to his eventual ouster. Yes, Trevor was newly divorced. Trevor was lonely. He was eager not to ruin the evening with unilateral transmission. 

They had met hours before at a wedding in Lincoln, Nebraska and then had gone drinking afterwards. 

“I’d love some corn-fed dick,” Carmen had said at the bar during an interval in their conversation, at the exact same moment that Trevor had thought about heading home and ordering kebabs. 

When it was time, Trevor hurriedly uncoupled himself from Carmen and ejaculated onto a nearby houseplant.

“Pervert! What is wrong with you!” Carmen screamed as she hit Trevor in the face with a foam pillow, breaking his nose. Trevor had to go to the emergency room to have his nose tended to, reset and bandaged. 

“Please will you drive me?” Trevor asked. 

Carmen refused to drive him, dressing herself and standing quietly with her arms crossed, signaling that she wanted Trevor to leave her apartment with some haste. 

“Can we have breakfast tomorrow?” Trevor asked. “I didn’t want to mark you as chattel or possibly impregnate you. I’ve been primarily on a diet of frozen steak fingers, dipped in tartar sauce.” 

“I’m on the pill, you fucking idiot. You’ve ruined the evening.” 

Trevor made peace with himself in the parking lot after smoking a cigarette. Then he proceeded by car to the hospital. He was dexterous, or so he thought, but ended up losing control of his Subaru and crashing fatally into a street lamp at the corner of 14th and P Street. 

Trevor’s ex-wife was asked to eulogize him but forcefully declined when she learned of the circumstances leading to his death. “Classic Trevor,” she whistled into the phone and then hung up, returning her attention to the naval exercises she had been observing from the main balcony at the Rock Hotel, Gibraltar. 

Avee Chaudhuri strenuously denies embezzling funds from the Holmes Lake Fishing Association. 

The gas tank we filled up yesterday is empty today by Alec Ivan

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The tongue laps the petrol off the ground. It belongs to a sick dog with fleas and flies battling beneath its matted fur. It runs off into the desert past the gas station and promptly passes out and maybe dies, but we don’t want to know that so I’m not saying anything. Tires roll up to a pump and some boots arrive at the counter where the man sits on the stool and counts the money. He asks the pretty blonde dudes in the boots and leather jackets whether they wanted a pack of cigs or not. He tells them that’s all they sell here: gas and ciggies. They each bought several packs and went back outside to smoke and pull the throttle on the pump and smell the gasoline as it penetrates a rusting tank. The vehicle is an old matte black pickup of indistinct branding with a dead deer in the back under a blue tarp and wrapped in baling twine. Just past them is a billboard advertising a strip club in Vegas that was so far away you wonder whether it was worth it to advertise here of all places. They stand at the pump for hours. There’s a tink and the pump’s numbers stop at 34.42. They decided they’d already bought all these cigs, why should they pay for anything else? Tires slide underneath sand black in the night. The two pretty blonde guys sang a song from high school with the windows rolled down, and swore they’d find better luck beyond the border.

The next day, they got stopped by a cop in the middle of nowhere. He siphoned their gas citing it as evidence, threw up, and drove past them into the most orange sunrise you’ve ever seen in your life. The two stood there without gas and thought to themselves, well, we’ve got these cigarettes.

Back at the gas station the clerk sleeps on a magazine with naked women in it, some of them looking absolutely miserable.

Oh, the dog is alive, by the way.

Alec Ivan lives and writes in Indiana. He’s published PHOTOGRAPHS OF MADNESS (Back Patio Press, 2019) and THE TENDER ATROCITIES (Sweat-Drenched Press, 2020). You can find his other writings buried in your backyard or on the internet depending on how hard you’re willing to work for it.

Windbreaker by Megan Cassiday

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On the side of the road, you turn the car off and throw your keys into the tree line–for a moment you feel bad about littering and wish you had scribbled in a short line about donations to a wildlife charity in lieu of flowers, but it’s too late now and your phone is in your car, which is locked and which you don’t have the keys to anymore and you need to stop stalling. Instead of standing there thinking about the things you wish you would have done, you start walking. There’s a pedestrian bridge over the expressway about a mile away and your only obstacle on the way down is a chain link fence but you’ve spent the past week practicing jumping over the one in your backyard and know that you need a running start to clear it. When you get to the bridge though, you’re just in time to catch the flash of a jacket as it sails over the railing followed by a chorus of car horns. You wonder for a moment if you’d be able to run back and find your keys in time to catch the first patrol car as it arrives at top speed, but decide you’ll settle for the two story drop from your neighbor’s split-level, on second thought.

Megan Cassiday is a creative writing student from Michigan and the EIC of Dead Fern Press. Her work has been featured or is forthcoming in CLOVES Literary, Bullshit Lit, The Daily Drunk and others. You can find her on Twitter @MeganLyn_

The Obituaries by md wheatley

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It was time for another paddle-out because another surfer died. This time it was Kelly Slater. Kelly Slater died. You’ll never believe how he died though. You’d think, like, oh he got eaten by a shark. Or, like, he probably drowned from a gnarly wipe-out or something. But no. No, it was neither of those nor any other way you could think of. I don’t even know exactly how it happened, but I know it was something crazy random because I heard the old heads out at Log Cabins talking about it yesterday morning. They said his dog found him and dragged him all the way home by his leash. So I mean, it did happen on the beach but we’re just not sure how. No one seems to really know. It’s all hearsay. All I know is it’s time for another paddle-out and this time it’s for Kelly fucking Slater.

*

All the original members of the Bones Brigade are having a big memorial party at Poods today. I heard there’s going to be a big cookout with probably hundreds and hundreds of cheeseburgers and hotdogs. I’ll admit, I’m mostly going for the free food but it’ll be nice to be a part of a big memorial for such a legend. Tony Hawk died. He died either last week or the week before, but the news rushed thru town quicker than a California wildfire. He died the exact way you’d imagine—skateboarding. He was out at Bob’s house skating his mega ramp and it was a windy day. The Santa Ana winds had been coming thru pretty heavy the past couple of days. But yeah, basically the winds caught him midair and sent him flying off to the right side of the landing. People always said, ‘The Birdman can fly,’ but damn, it would’ve been nice if he really could’ve flown this time. When he hit the hard desert floor it was game over. Dead on impact. His shoes even flew off like Jake Brown’s did that one time.

*

Straight up, Robert Smith died. I was supposed to hear Robert Smith sing me a Lullaby the next week in Atlanta but he had already dozed off forever. He was about three-fourths of the way thru a full US tour when he met his untimely death. Very untimely for me. The Cure was running thru soundcheck in Detroit and Robert Smith was very unpleased with the sound. More specifically his sound guy, also named Robert. The Roberts got in an embarrassing yelling match. In a fit, Robert Smith ripped out his in-ears, stormed off stage, and went to cower backstage. When he got back to the green room, he realized his phone had died and tried to plug it in behind the worn leather couch. A faulty receptacle sent 110 volts of pure man-killing electricity thru his body. He was dead within seconds but his bandmates didn’t notice when they walked in the green room minutes later. I guess they just thought he was napping on the couch. It wasn’t until later when his lipstick had faded and they could see his bluing lips that they realized what had happened. The Cure had to cancel the rest of the tour and I’m still pissed about it.

*

The Obamas and I flew private to Banwa Island in the Philippines. Everyone was on the flight except Michelle because she was busy finishing up a book tour for the shitty new memoir I’d ghostwritten for her. She planned to meet up with the rest of us on Wednesday but she wouldn’t make it before Barack died. She also wouldn’t find out about his death until she got there. Banwa was very remote. Poor Malia felt all sorts of guilt and shame regarding the death of her dad. She figured it was her fault because her marijuana stash was depleted and she found the empty pot bag appropriately labeled, ‘THAT SHIT THAT MADE BOB HOPE.’ She went searching and found him dead by one of the many pools with a primitive wooden spear thru his chest. There was a bright yellow post-it stuck to the spear that simply read, ‘THE ALIENS ARE REAL AND THEY’RE COMING.’ Barack Obama killed himself in a state of paranoia. But I knew they weren’t coming because I rolled the spliff that morning and I thought the same thing—yet they still aren’t here.

md wheatley is a dude with a website—mdwheatley.us

Teeth by Tyler Dempsey

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Slightly reclining.

The nine-hundred-year-old assistant is describing summer fish camp near the village
where she grew up, how sweet blueberries tasted. The periodontist injects localized
numbing into my gums.

I have no insurance, so opted to stay awake during surgery. Am also grafting flesh from
the roof of my mouth instead of a cadaver. More painful, and longer recovery time, but
cheaper.

“We’ll wait for the numbing to kick in.”

A man who chose four additional years of education after dental school. Looking bored.

“Me and the wife did Denali. The bus thing. Saw four grizzlies at Wonder Lake.” His face
considers a birdie he missed this morning, instead of time with his family.

“Ughhhuhhh ess colll,” I say.

There’s only so much of your mouth they can remove at once. This is my second
surgery.

Slow my mind. Deepen breathing. If I focus, not on what’s happening, but on relaxing
anywhere tense on my body, I’ll absorb less trauma.

The periodontist slices my upper gum. The high-pitched whine of a dremel fills my skull.

“Looks like cracked black pepper glued to your roots.”

“Uggh,”

“You know somewhere else beautiful, northern-Idaho. My brother has a second home.
We’d get our motorcycles over a hundred on the dirt roads.”

“Ehhr eh?”

“Sure wish they’d let us take em on that Denali road.” His eyes wrinkle, considering
possibly I’m the bastard ruining his life. “Yeah, it’d be nice. Martha get the lubricant.”

“It’s time for the ultra-violence?” I imagine her saying.

She applies lube. He cracks knuckles, grabbing a bigger knife. Taking a wide stance, he
pushes my forehead back, pointing the blade down my throat. “Say, AHHHH.”

Instead of shrieking when the blade penetrates, I take larger and larger quantities of air
through my nose. Picture an egg filled with light and warmth. I’m inside it.

He drops half the roof of my mouth on the blue napkin. By the weight as it hits my chest,
it’s big as pickled ginger I’d be stoked for at a sushi place. He applies gauze and
pressure to the new vacancy. Tears blur my sight. He wipes sweat from his forehead
with the back of his rubber glove.

“Alright, Martha,” breathing like finishing a marathon, “the one suture.” She lifts
something you’d sew two hunks of metal with.

While he knots thread wide as an aux through the eye, she grabs the pickled ginger off
my chest. It flops like a minnow.

Aligning what will be my new gums, she squints. He says, “Lower,” pushing the needle
through.

I wince.

“Is that too painful?”

“Ugghh,” I say.

“Higher, Martha. Good.” The needle meets resistance. He leverages teeth, putting his
back into it, forcing it through. My vision goes white.

“Lower, Martha. Lower. No, higher.” Imagine myself small. Suspended in the egg’s
amniotic fluid.

“Concentrate. Just,” he sighs, “suction the blood and saliva.” Almost adding,
“Goddammit.”

She vacuums fluid from my mouth. Holding the instrument as if she were a flight
attendant and the captain asked if she’d take over while they took a nap.

I tear up.

Holding my gum with his thumb, he sticks his tongue from the side of his mouth. Like
lining up a game of pool. I breathe calm into my shoulders. Two vertebrae in my spine
pop. When it’s done, I picture his hand flying like he roped a steer.

“Alright, top’s finished. You need to use the bathroom or want a break or anything
before we start the bottom?”

“Ugh uh. Eww ew?”

“I’m good. Man, you’re strong. Martha,” he drops his head, “try to pay attention.”

“Yes doctor.”

**

Stumble in the bathroom.

Touch sacs below my eyes already turning black in the mirror. Vision whirlpools from
pain as I urinate.

Hand this desk-person that looks identical to the other desk-person my credit card. Feel
crushing depression when she says, “The total is twenty-six-hundred and fifteen
dollars.”

“Anng eww,” I say.

Disassociate. Float to my car.

Weeping, I dab blood and spit from my chin with toilet paper.

Start the car. Drive four-and-half hours back to Denali on barren streets.

Tyler Dempsey is the author of Newspaper Drumsticks, Time as a Sort of Enemy, and Consumption & Other Vices. He lives in Utah and hosts Another Fucking Writing Podcast.

Exactly Where I Don’t Want to Be by Daniel Jaeger

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A writer in Paris? Try Bumfuck Eastern Oregon, living in an RV parked in gravel. An afternoon at Café de Flore? I’m boofing Robitussin in a desert full of invasive plant species, I’ll meet you there.

Synthetic leather bookmarks? I’m cool with my empty suboxone packets, thank you.

I’m bored of that structure. We get it, Dan, you’re edgy and depressed. Pretentious at best. Polyps under sutures wrapped in gauze, Sunday dress. No one rhymes anymore. I’m rapping. Culture vulture. I’m one of those goth sadboys. Oh, that’s okay then. Thai curry–one of the best foods on the planet–is the result of mixing cultures. Yeah, but you have to give credit where credit is due. Okay. Thank you Stevie Wonder and Marvin Gaye. Oh, and Tupac.

Daniel Jaeger lives and works in Portland, Oregon. A poet and artist at heart, he doesn’t want to live fighting for literary appreciation, but he wants literary appreciation. He doesn’t care if everyone likes his work, but he wants you to like his work. He has work published in Rejection Letters. He’s on Twitter at @BlackLiquidStar.

Two Shorties by Z. H. Gill

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Dogs Fucking

At my girlfriend’s dad’s house, I am watching two identical dogs—Labrador Retrievers—fucking in the front yard across the street. My girlfriend’s dad calls that yard the “weeds start-up.” He calls the dogs, these interchangeable yellow Labs, “Jim and Pam.” He calls me “buddy.” He calls my girlfriend “sweetie” or sometimes “daughter.” He calls the limpid bay window through which I am watching “Jim and Pam” fuck “my portal.” He calls his house “Housey.” He calls his wife “Kath” or “Kathy.” Sometimes he calls her “Cathedral,” which she hates. He calls me “youngster.” He calls me “Dinner,” like, “Where’s Dinner?” or even “Hey, Dinner!” because the first time I met him I bought him dinner—at a nice-enough restaurant—and none of my girlfriend’s former boyfriends had ever done that, and he never lets me live it down. Out of love, my girlfriend claims. The two dogs are finished fucking. They kiss each other tenderly, knowingly. They disappear down the side of that house, presumably into its backyard. My girlfriend’s dad calls that backyard “Weeds Corp.” He’s been back there before, helping his neighbors catch a dying bat scrambling for “one last go at it.” He calls their house “The Academy.” No one knows why he calls it this. He won’t say. (Now we all call it “The Academy,” too.)

You Have to Spend Money Every Day

Your best friend posits the existence of a person with shot glasses for pinky fingers, both of them replaced, fleshy opaque cups attached in their stead. They point straight up, drinking from them is awkward, doable but awkward; you twist your wrist in unnaturally to do so, to sip Don Julio that’s cold as a river.

You used to steal shot glasses from gift shops wherever you went. Souvenirs, you told yourself, and so easy to steal.

You quit drinking and grow addicted to the following: spending, saving, watching, weather forecasts, quiet, cockcrows, unsweetened iced tea with a jet of lemon. It’s better this way, you tell yourself every day [you have to or you’ll fold into yourself].

Z.H. Gill lives in LA.

It is Not Advised to Do Cocaine When You’ve Had Open Heart Surgery by Xairan Ray

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The two. They slouch into the rigid metal poles of a mid-rate hotel couch. It is red. Their skin is red. They had a day at the pool.

Earlier in the day they were sitting at an angle from each other.

“I think I’m gonna use the bathroom.” The larger, near-sixty father suggestively wiped his nose. He just had open heart surgery. The skinny son of the man in his 20’s. It’s not advised to do cocaine when you’ve had open heart surgery.

The father is startled by his son as he pushes the door of the restroom open. “Jesus, I just about had another heart attack!”

It’s not advised to do cocaine when you’ve had open heart surgery. Crudely. The father lets an excess amount of cocaine fall from his finger onto the floor. He pouts like a Playboy model and says, “oops.” It’s not advised to do cocaine when you’ve had open heart surgery.

The two. They are slouched on the crude red couch. Their skin red. They now wait in their hotel room.

“Almost ready!” A man calls from the bathroom.

“No worries! Just gonna do another line!”

The father innocently grabs the powdered-over zip of cocaine. Pours it carelessly on the table. It’s not advised to do cocaine when you’ve had open heart surgery.

Two people come out of the bathroom. The man who called from the bathroom and a woman.

“Excited to finally lose your v-card with your old man, hey Josie?” The father smiles at his son. It’s not advised to do cocaine when you’ve had open heart surgery.

The man who called from the bathroom stands before the father. As if in front of a urinal. The man who called from the bathroom has a large penis. The father lays the penis in his hand as if holding a taco. His hand the tortilla. The penis a sort of worm filet.

“Only seen these in the pornos!” The father smiles. Opens his eyes wide. Gobbles.

The woman mounts the son on the couch. It’s not advised to do cocaine when you’ve had open heart surgery.

The son suffers from erectile dysfunction. For the first time that whole trip, the son speaks.

“I can’t do this.”

The son pushes the woman off and gets up. His penis hanging awkwardly in front of his father. He gets his underwear and shorts on. He runs out of the room. The father squabbles the penis out of his mouth. He runs for his son. His dropped-trousers catch on the glass coffee table. He falls. The shock of the fall combined with the pain in his chest. His rising heart rate. His raised libido. His recent drug use. It’s not advised to do cocaine when you’ve had open heart surgery.

Xairan Ray is a writer and filmmaker based in San Diego. He is interested in the uncomfortable nuances and dark secrets of relationships and desires, inspired by such artists as Todd Solondz.

Beastmaster, Esq. by John Pinto

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I.

I’ve been learning lots from going through old people’s homes, destroying their things, and cleaning out their fridges. Their fridges especially. Open any old person’s fridge and get honest with yourself. See the food growing hair in the dark. Smell the sour milk. Know someone too old and tired to care is drinking it anyway and then, a little later, puking it back up.

The next-of-kin who contract this work out to me are horrified by fridges. But I can throw out anything. I throw out baby pictures, wedding albums, books someone meant to read when they had the time, and it’s all whatever.

But then the sobbing sneaks up on me while I’m shredding totally superfluous documents from law firms with names like “Sweeney, Knopfler, Nitro, & Beastmaster” and I realize the pink thing failing to navigate bread and butter at the breakfast nook used to be Beastmaster.

Beastmaster: he’s got a Joe Pesci build, rugged Pesci charm, Pesci handsomeness, and I bet prosecutors shit themselves whenever Beastmaster went full Pesci on their fascist, sculpted-by-Jazzercise asses.

This job, man. Some days you’re the janitor for a grand building from a gilded past, and some days you find yourself hoping Joe Pesci’s inevitable death will be sudden and violent. You imagine Joe Pesci stumbling off a subway platform or wrecking a small aircraft. You see him get shot in back of the head while admiring a mounted swordfish in a faux-wood paneled man cave.

However he goes, I hope there’s no warning or waiting. I hope his loved ones don’t even get to say goodbye. I hope they don’t have to hire me.

II.

I find “My Cousin Vinny” while throwing out Beastmaster’s VHS collection!

III.

Purpose re-enters Beastmaster’s life. He marshalls me like I’m a janitor-turned-paralegal with raw natural ability and a disdain for protocol that reminds him of his younger self: “Buy a VCR at Sharper Image! I’ve got coupons!”

So I take the coupons for my wall of tacked-up bric-a-brac back home, and I trawl a few thrift stores.

The winner is from Singapore and weighs 35 lbs. We need to unplug the living room lamp to free up an outlet, and then we need an adaptor or else the VCR won’t talk with Beastmaster’s TV, and then Beastmaster needs his evening bread and butter, and then suddenly the sun has gone down and Beastmaster’s cooled on the whole enterprise. He’s re-forgotten being a lawyer. He’s utterly incurious about Marisa Tomei’s Academy Award-winning performance. With no joy in my heart, I turn on the VCR so he can be babysat while I throw out his Naval papers.

But then it’s just one of those moments.

And we are both surprised by a tape someone forgot to eject from the VCR, an old home movie of little kids at soccer practice.

These kids! Offscreen coaches implore them to pass, but they’re the kind of little where a 4-4-2 is unimplementable and confusion reigns supreme. You can’t even see the ball most of the time. Strikers, sweepers, and middies all bunch and clump into schools of red and yellow pinnies, goldfish yet to be bagged for the fair.

“What is this,” Beastmaster asks. His generation was not raised alongside this sport. “What are they doing. Who are they.”

And I’m like, “I don’t know.”

Beastmaster points at the pinnies onscreen. “Ketchup and mustard.”

And I’m like, “Yes, I suppose.”

“There was still some ketchup and mustard in my fridge yesterday. Not today, though. Only butter today. Can you believe that? A fridge of only butter. I bet tomorrow the butter will disappear, too.”

And I’m like, “Hmm,” and I keep my eyes on the screen and wait for a jump ahead in time on the VHS to a birthday party or Christmas, or even to halftime and kids eating oranges on the sideline. But the jump never comes. The moment never ends. The soccer is unremarkable. We never get a goal. So I start watching Beastmaster watch the kids. He’s looking pretty Pesci in this moment. Then he leans forward and squints and vaults Pesci entirely.

He goes post-Pesci.

He looks like Pesci’s immortal soul as it will appear forever after the bodies we clumsily labeled “Beastmaster” and “Joe Pesci” are dead and gone.

When a ketchup pinny kid loses a cleat but keeps on running after the scrum, I watch Beastmaster smile.

“Sure looks like fun,” he says.

And we watch together, but only once—rewind button’s broken.

John Pinto is a film lab tech living in Philadelphia. His work has appeared in HAD, Rejection Letters, and The Second Bullshit Anthology.