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It's all about motherhood. END

There is an apartment on the West Side of Chicago that is almost always dark; inside it, Clint lives, and Meg exists. . . . In the kitchen, the fridge seems to be exclusively the domain of the American alcoholic, as Clint is constantly rummaging through it for something cold to satiate his drunken hotness; more cold beers, cold pop, cold cuts, cold butter, cold peanut butter, cold fresh fruit, cold fruit preserves, cold everything, delicacies that the European mind could never fathom.  This has left the pantry and other less interesting things entirely to Meg; though her life has been reduced to corners, she can still make some things expressly hers. The napkins she’s purchased have embossing and are seasonally themed, now it’s snowmen in tophats with intricate buckles and evergreens behind them; in a few months, it will be floral spring designs; and after that, Meg will have found napkins with summer brightly stamped into them, and she’ll use those to wipe formula or breast milk f...
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Out of the Closet

          The space in a grieved heart is ample, and it is empty, and in its emptiness, everything echoes with the sweetness it has been bereft of.  A wounded soul is not easily convinced by distractions, for they are only distractions, and nor is a wounded soul comforted by the passage of time, for true heartache never departs from the moment that ails it. Ian places his hand on Ethan’s shoulder and gives it a squeeze, “There, there,” Ian mumbled.  “There, there.” “I just want to forget,” Ethan sobs into his hands, his voice muffled and almost inaudible. “Do you maybe want me to put a song on?” Ian asks in earnest.  “I like to put on music when I cry.” Ethan shakes his head no. “Come on, just one song.”  Ian futzes around with his phone, opens YouTube, and, despite Ethan’s protest, puts on the Resident Evil Dead Aim saveroom theme.  It is far too loud, and the opening chord startles both of them.  It’s hardly music; it feels...
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In the Closet

The inside of the closet is small, and a concentrated stench hangs in the air.  It overwhelms Ethan’s senses with the taste of white vinegar sucked into the back of his throat through his slack-jawed mouth.  It’s from Ian’s shoes, his beloved  V ibram FiveFingers™ .  Long ago, they had been a bright orange, but now are the color of dark rust, rancid with mildew. “Ethan, that is you, isn’t it!” Ian said.  He scooched over on an unkempt twin mattress and slapped the space with his hand.  “Come on, buddy, take a seat.” There was a pause, and then Ethan answered, “Why are you wearing those in bed?” “It’s a sofa right now.” Ethan is vexed. “Then why are you wearing them on the sofa?” “I don’t go anywhere without them.” “But you haven’t gone anywhere.” “But I’ve come from somewhere.” Tears in Ethan’s eyes well up and start to drip down his cheeks.  They sting and blur his vision, making everything wobbly, adding to the confusion.  Why does Ian talk like...
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Iconoclasm

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Ethan flings the sliding closet door open as if he’s shoving a heavyset woman out of his way; it slams loudly and rattles in its track.  He’s through the opening, flying toward Ian like a raped ape, screaming in a high-pitched tenor that breaks into a shrill moan.  Above his head, his hands wield the bottle as a club.  Every tendon and ligament flexes and bulges under the tension of his grip, and Ethan swings it into Ian’s head. When the bottle comes down, the thickest part of it splits into the top of Ian’s skull with a sickening crack.  Another blow lands, and another one; the strikes begin deforming the bone.  Blood runs down his face, and his eyes roll back.  The blows keep landing until the skull gives way; the brain exposed through the split skin spills out onto the sheets.  There’s a sucking pop as Ethan dislodges the bottle from the gore with each strike.  He goes until the whole top of Ian’s head has been pounded down into the jawline; no...
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Breaking and Entering

From the moment Ethan’s flight landed at Logan International Airport, it was clear that, had he found himself before a Suffolk County judge, he wouldn’t have been able to give an account of his actions or, more importantly, his intentions.  In that same sloshed fugue state, he made his way down the South Shore to Carver, to the house where he would find Ian. . . . Ethan pulls from his coat the bottle of alcohol he’d purchased fifteen minutes before at the store, and from his back pocket produces a non-slip rubber jar opener.  Around him snow silently falls;  the flakes instantly melting against his warm, liquored face.  Any tracks he’d left are already covered.  In every direction, the ground is indistinguishable.  He cannot turn back now. “A good day,” he says, joining the twist-off bottle cap to the rubber jar opener.  There is a slight hiss.  “To IPA.” He draws the opening of the bottle to his mouth and begins to slug down the booze in one prol...
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A Sermon to Anyone That'll Listen

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     Ethan begins to speak, “These silly people, they believe in sky daddies and fairy tales, the things that have no proof or measure: how dare they offend my modern intellectual sensibilities!  Such sensibilities are derived from fact, can be replicated, and will be studied relentlessly; in science, we even leave room for our positions to be readjusted!  Over two thousand years spent at worship, and those charlatans haven’t updated the Bible once.  This makes me wonder – what does Bible study even mean?        “Harumph!      “The worst of them is Ian.  He must have something to do with this; he is always out to get me.  It would be in his best interest to see me utterly crestfallen. I will not allow it!  In fact, I could practically hear the smile stretch across his face during my tribulation, and it irks me to admit I was truly grieved.  How could I not be?      “Should there be a...
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East of Michigan

               The Clint-shaped hole in Ethan’s heart has been filled with a highly developed interest in a grey monoculture: an autocratic worldview where the pluralities of good versus evil have been stripped away to protagonist versus antagonist, where the structure of something is the ultimate truth and the very implication of an objective morality is devil-speak, whereupon such devil-speak causes him to recoil, shuffle through his notes to refute scripture that no one cited, and smile self-assuredly. But at this very moment, he makes an exodus from Traverse City, forsaken and malignant of heart, intent on doing harm unto Ian as a well-measured act of retribution that he sees now is far overdue.  To fund the trip, he had to pawn off the collectibles that were once to furnish the shag shack, which had become painful to look at in recent months.  The Gears of War Lancer was the most hurtsome. . . . “Dude, is that what I think it i...
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