The Eye Chart

-Isabelle B.L 

No. 1.

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Don Quixote changed my life but from chapter thirty-three to chapter thirty-six. You were Camila. I played Anselmo. Eleanora, in the role of

Lotario. I couldn’t have trusted anyone else but my loyal best friend. Though, like Lotario, Eleanora vehemently refused to seduce you.

Marriage is about trust, she said, and playing a trick like that will lead to trouble. “I’ll ask

No. 2.

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Jade,” I said. That’s when Eleanora changed her mind. Day one

No. 3.

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I asked Eleanora to knock on our door at 8.00 p.m. She picked up War and Peace that lay upstairs on my bedside

table. She grabbed the book and left, accentuating her deep dimples and brilliant whites. She cocked her head to

one side and applied red lippy, as per my

No. 4.

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instructions. Day two, she knocked on our door and complained. Bradley was cheating on her. She

needed a shoulder to cry on and my shoulder was 300 km away. Day

No. 5.

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three, you checked in to see if everything was A-Okay but everything was KO. Eleanora was

splayed on the couch. Knocked out by more than a few glasses of Scotch. After your call, she

gargled a twelve year old pure malt for thirty seconds, prepared the crystal glass without

coaster, slipped on left shoe, slipped off right, ruffled the bangs, applied mascara and removed

it in an

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amateur swipe. Day four, dinnertime—to thank you for your shoulder. Eleanora

didn’t check my list. Bravo. She took her own initiative and made it a red night.

Spaghetti strapped red dress, braless. Red berries drowning under whipped

cream tinged with vanilla. Red plush pillows. Jazzy music silencing suburban

mayhem. Move over Marilyn. You like it

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hot. Day five. Sleepover at Eleanora’s. She never wears pyjamas and

you weren’t going to start

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now. Day six. She told me you fell for it, but I was no Don

Quixote sound asleep fighting a giant. Wide awake, I figured,

you and Eleanora would meet again. Behind hat boxes, inside

beach cubicles, corrugated

No. 9.

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cardboard. Unlike Cervantes’ story within a story, there

were no daggers, maids or convents but I did have

cameras and third-party

No. 10.

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insurance. At page 310 we used to be married.

No. 11.

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Now you have read this far my dear Camila. You don’t need glasses but I will give you a

prescription anyway.

Eye drops for tired, red eyes after reading contracts in fine-print.

Three suitcases.

A divorce lawyer.

If you don’t mind, please leave my office. My next patient is waiting.

" Isabelle B.L is a writer and teacher based in France. Her work can be found in the Best Microfiction 2022 anthology, Visual Verse, Rune Bear, Discretionary Love, Alternate Route and elsewhere.

Divorce 

-Brayden Norris 

If we got a divorce, would we still be friends? 

I did not look up as she spoke. Exhaustion was draped over the both of us like a  weighted net cast from above. Not that pure, specific exhaustion you feel after a hard day’s  work… a heavier sort, the sort which bleeds into the silent cracks between spoken words.  Those silences had grown longer and longer over the past six months. 

No, I said, after considering her question for some time. I don't think so, no. I turned to face her. She had the sheet pulled up to her collar. One shoulder lay exposed,  smooth and richly tanned, coloured like that expensive honey you put on wounds. Try as I  might, the name would not come to me. She noticed me watching; I saw her eyes flicker to  the side and back again, hoping I would not notice.  

It was not that I had no emotional reaction to her question. Icy fists gripped my heart,  wringing out the blood. It is impossible to have your companion of five years ask such a  question and to not have an emotional reaction of sorts. Even so, I remained unmoving, a  manikin, a porcelain face, white as sleet. Externally empty. I knew she hated it. I did not care.  

If I were to describe how I felt… We had sailed out into the ocean together, far, far  beyond the sight of the shore. Dark, choppy waves sliced at our feeble craft on all sides. This  was our marriage, our unspoken agreement, those slashing waves. Together. Upon reaching  our designated spot, we planned to strip off and leap into the water, just to see what it was  like. But when I jumped, she hesitated. I came up to the surface, treading water, waiting for  her, but she stood still, looking down at me from the edge of our small boat. And then, after a  moment, she reclothed herself and sat, readying the oars, leaving me surrounded by ocean,  alone.  

Don’t hate me for this, that unreachable face said to me. Please?  

I do not think she spoke to me again that night. If she had, perhaps I would have been  able to share how I felt. How, if she were to paddle back to shore, every time I saw her I  would be reminded of how cold and alone I had become, of all that we could have been, but  never would. We could have talked it over, and maybe she would have understood. Perhaps  we would have held one another, bodies clinging tightly in desperate opposition to fate. Our  unspoken agreement. 

         Instead, she closed her eyes, and in a few short minutes, was sound asleep.

        I want to rephrase my earlier metaphor, give it a new skin, so to speak. Marriage is a  suicide pact. Both parties agree to plunge into unknown territory, holding one another close.  But when I cut my wrists, my wife watches the blood spilling from my wounds, and placed  her knife carefully on the ledge beside her.  

         I don’t think I can do this any more, she said to me as I lay bleeding on the floor. Don’t  hate me for this. Please? 

        When I was a child – that is to say, when I was younger than I am now – people would  talk to me all the time. I would always be hearing about somebody or something new,  whether it was a personal problem, a story, even some menial retelling of the day’s events.  Philosophical and political questions would crop up from time to time, although these I was  never entirely comfortable with and preferred to keep my views private. Even so, I was never  at a loss for conversation, for better or for worse.  

People do not talk to me any more.  

As you travel through life, you go through two phases. The first, in your formative years,  is about things gained. You gain family and friends. Possessions. Attention. Perhaps acclaim.  You reach your twenties, and you gain employment and wealth, to some degree or another.  And then there is this moment, right around when you hit 35, that things seem perfectly  balanced. You have everything you want, and you do not need anything else. You are  comfortable and happy, perhaps having tasted a little success, and you would have no  objection to life remaining this way forever.  

What you do not realise, however, is that life is the figurative rollercoaster (pardon the  cliché), and this moment of balance is only where the carriage is slowing, coming to the  highest point on the track. And then, just as you pause to gaze out at the scenery, it drops.  

It takes a moment to process, of course. You weren't expecting it; you never knew you  were on a roller coaster. Life has always been a mountain to you, a series of events to conquer,  the peak in sight, growing closer with every step. You can only be forgiven for stopping and  sitting back, taking a look at all you have achieved and thinking that finally, you have made it.  How could you know that this is not the beginning, but the end? 

As I say, you take a moment to process it. People start drifting away, falling to the side,  whether that be out of your circle or out of this world. You lose someone you are close to, and  you put it down to fate and the cruelty of the universe. It is a singular event. Perhaps it is a  parent, a friend. A grandparent. But a pattern slowly emerges as everything you know starts slipping away, and before you know it you are hurtling back to the ground, to where you  came from.  

Some people may be lucky enough to go out on that high. My brother was. Thirty-two,  playing tennis at an international level. He had his youth of sin behind him and had settled  down with his wife and three-year-old son, a house in the suburbs, enough savings to last him  a decade. And in a flash, he exited stage right, as if comfortable with what he had achieved  and harbouring no desire to sit around and watch it all fade. He was where he wanted to be –  why stick around?  

Quit while you are ahead, they said. So he did.  

The rest of us, however, are the ones destined to sit by as everything we thought was  ours by right crumbles away to nothing. It is like trying to hold water in your cupped hands –  eventually, it begins to spill out, and you cannot catch it again. Everything you think is yours  is not. It is on loan from the universe, and one day all will be returned.  

So why not simply cast it all aside now, and save yourself the trouble?

OUT OF JOINT

-Marc Audet 

 When the bus stopped at the corner of Rathgar Road, Eamon stepped out into the crisp Dublin night, brooding over the mess that he had gotten himself into. The village clock struck eleven and a solitary BMW fleeted by. Rather than wait for the connecting bus, Eamon set out at a brisk pace. The cool air felt good in his lungs and he began to think more clearly. He would break the news to his father first, and then later to his mother if needed.

For weeks, Eamon had been looking forward to hearing live music at the first big rock concert since the COVID lockdowns were lifted earlier in May. He had flown in the day before from Edinburgh where he was working as a summer intern for an accounting firm. A new friend from work, Brad, also from Dublin, had tickets for the concert in Marlay Park and had invited Eamon to come along.

When Eamon arrived home, he found Charles, his father, sitting at the kitchen table reading *The Irish Times* and sipping a cup of Barry's tea.

"How was it?" asked Charles.

Eamon took a can of seltzer out of the refrigerator. 

"Where's Ma?"

"Sleeping. She had to work today. There was a three-car accident on the M50 and they needed another surgeon." Charles sipped his tea. "Who was there?"

"Brad, his girlfriend Doreen, the one from Blackrock. Her friend was supposed to come along, but she tested positive." 

Eamon said this casually. By now, COVID had become commonplace.

"Dad, I need to tell you something." 

"Of course."

"Don't say anything to Ma, at least not yet."

Charles put down his tea. "Just tell me."

"Brad's girlfriend brought dope to the concert and passed it out," confessed Eamon, unable to look Charles in the eye. "I had three joints. On the way in, the Gardai were searching everybody and they found the stuff."

"Were you arrested?" Charles snapped.

"No, but I'm supposed to get a letter and then appear before a judge or something."

Eamon saw the furrows deepening in his father's forehead.

"You will need to tell your mother, not now, but tomorrow."

"I would rather not. I can deal with this. It's my problem," said Eamon, trying to take some responsibility.

"Eamon, this is bloody serious. This is Ireland! Like it or not, possession is still a crime. You could still be charged."

The following morning, Eamon came down into the kitchen and walked into the heat of the argument.

"How could you let this happen?" Eamon's mother shrieked at her husband then directed her fury at her son. "What were you thinking? You just turned twenty-one and you have interviews coming up in a few months! After all that hard work you put into your courses, all the support that we gave you, and now this?" His mother fell silent, her arms crossed tight against her chest, her eyes red with tears.

Charles spent his Sunday morning calling friends, following referrals, and finally found a good solicitor. Miss Sheila Lafferty came over that afternoon, asked some questions and agreed to represent Eamon. For now, there was nothing to do but wait for the summons to arrive from the Garda Station.

Eamon flew back to Edinburgh early Monday morning. Though he saw Brad at work, the two friends no longer went out on the town as they had during those earlier carefree days of June. As the dog days of summer crawled by, Eamon found himself waking in the middle of the night, pondering his fate. Would he be charged? Would he be convicted? Would he be able to get a job?   

By the last week of August, he was back home waiting to start back at UCD. The summons had finally arrived from the Garda Superintendent and that morning, Miss Lafferty had gone to the meeting. Eamon waited in his room watching YouTube videos about mountain biking, trying not to think.

The doorbell rang. "Eamon!" shouted Charles from the landing. Eamon walked into the living room and saw his parents waiting by the fireplace. He greeted Miss Lafferty then sat down in the sofa chair.

Miss Lafferty remained standing. "I met the Superintendent this morning. He accepted that you were in possession only for personal use. Because of the backlog due to COVID, he decided not to charge you. Instead, you will receive a caution and that will remain on your record for six years. However, because cautions are not made public, this will not affect your job prospects." 

Eamon's mother let out a sigh of relief and started to breathe again.

"Thank God," said Charles, looking at his son.

Eamon thanked Miss Lafferty, shook her hand, then went back to his room. He heard his parents saying thank you as the solicitor left the house. 

Charles came bounding up the stairs to have a word with his son. "Well, it all worked out. We were lucky."

Eamon stood deep in thought as he gazed out at the back garden. "Miss Lafferty said that these cautions only came into effect last January. If this had happened last year, I would have been charged and convicted."

"I know, this could have turned out very differently. You were lucky." 

"How's Ma?"

"Back to herself again, she was really worried. I'm putting the kettle on."

"This is really good Dad, thanks. I'll be down in a minute."

The garden shimmered as the morning clouds drifted away into the past. The rose bushes, planted by his father and pruned by his mother, were still in bloom, the pink flowers still wet with dew, glistening in this new light. Eamon smiled and his shoulders relaxed for the first time in weeks. "The garden is beautiful. All their hard work has paid off," he said to himself.

Upon hearing his mother's laughter from the kitchen, Eamon felt reassured and headed down the stairs.

Marc Audet lives near New Haven, Connecticut, where he is self-employed as a web application developer. He enjoys reading contemporary fiction and literature both in English and French. He has traveled and lived in Canada, England, and Ireland. In addition to writing computer code in various languages, he also writes short stories, creative nonfiction, and poetry. His work has appeared in Potato Soup Journal, Across the Margin, Books Ireland Magazine, and Ariel Chart.

Telephone Cuisine

-Terri Mullholland

We call it telephone cuisine.

The two of us, cooking together, each with one shoulder hunched up to hold the phone to our ears. When I lived at home, we’d cook all the time. As soon as I could reach the worktop, you put a wooden spoon in my hand and had me creaming sugar and butter for cakes, mixing batter for pancakes. As a child, I practiced separating the yolk from the egg white while my friends practiced shooting goals. As I got older, you taught me to make more complex dishes.

I remember my pride at that first roast chicken dinner, served to you and dad, with a pile of cindered potatoes and soggy cabbage. I was about eight years old. My cooking has improved a lot since then. Our best cooking times were when I was at university. I’d prop my phone up on the worktop, and your disembodied voice would fill the kitchen. I’d slice and mix and sauté, you talking me through the recipe and me laughing and saying: ‘Are you sure that’s not too much chili? Is the cake supposed to have a dip in the middle?’ 

After dad died, your days revolved around food even more. You loved a recipe that took at least an hour or more to make. It kept you busy, stopped you from thinking too much. Recently in our phone calls, you’ve been talking about your childhood. Your cousin sent you a photo of the street where you grew up. You’re a toddler, standing outside a house with your older brothers. Behind you, your mum and dad stand by their front door. Your mum has an apron on and a mixing bowl in her hand. She’d probably been making a cake when they called her to be in the photograph.

The whole family lived on the same street, your nan and grandad next door, your uncle and aunt next to them. You remember running up and down the street taking messages from one house to another: ‘Mum says if you can spare her some flour, she’ll bring you half the pie later.’

In every story you tell me, someone in the family is eating or cooking. When you visit nan’s grave, you tell me you always bring her something to eat, a freshly baked scone or a biscuit. ‘Ghosts get hungry too,’ you say.

I used to laugh at you. I don’t anymore.

I still phone you up about once a month or so for telephone cuisine. Sometimes we cook Sunday lunch together or a dinner party for your new friends.

I get all the ingredients in advance; I know you can’t get them where you are now. I lay everything out in the kitchen, ready. Then I go into the other room and give you a call.

I listen as the recorded message repeats: We’re sorry, the number you are trying to reach is no longer in service. Please check and dial again.

The first time it happened, I hung up and couldn’t stop crying. The next time I let it play over and over.

Like tears, it eventually stops, and there is only the static hum of the deadline.

‘Time to cook,’ I say.

That’s your cue. In the kitchen, I hear the fridge door opening, the sound of the fan as the oven ignites.

I hear the bustle of a busy kitchen, the clatter of pans, the rinsing of vegetables, the firmness of the knife on the board.

I shut my eyes, inhaling the scent of garlic and rosemary.

I still have the phone to my ear. Through the static, I hear your voice again, talking me through the recipe step-by-step.

The spot 

-Ratón Moreno 

They sat on their old, serene chair and looked out the window. It was snowing out. From the small room they looked and watched the snow fall. They kept their hands lightly placed on their knees and their back straight up against the spine of the chair, looking and listening—listening to the soft, muffled wind outside, listening to the uniform breath of the heater, listening to the utter absence of life. Looking out, they seemed to fade.

To get away from others is one thing. To get away from yourself is another. In a sense, it’s impossible; a Schrödinger’s dilemma. You cannot be in a room with no one inside, cannot watch a film with no audience, cannot hear a noise that nobody hears—there is always you, confirming its existence. But it seems now, in that spot, one can experience the complete absence of consciousness in a given space. It’s a spot to become one with wood, a spot to fizzle out of thought and sight, to step in between the atoms, and dissipate for a moment.

It was as though everything in their home was unaffected by any external force they had to deal with in everyday life—time, gravity, motion, thought, identity—none of that mattered here. There was no need for it. Out there, all the golden people went out and lived their clover lives, destined to love those and be worthy enough to be loved back—but in such a system of settled souls, there are bound to be outliers: those who cannot be fit into a defined space or definition, or be able to give and share love because on earth there is no more room to give (sorry love, reservations are full. Try another day. And try, try, again...). But in here, in the spot, it never quite seemed that way.

It was quiet. Everything was so quiet... cathartic and ethereal, beyond the meditative plane. They sat for a little while longer...

Finally, they got up and savored the light rasping on the wooden floor as they dragged the chair back to its humble empty desk, returning it to where it belonged. The sound induced a quiet, warm shiver up the whole of their spine like the soundwaves of a discreet whisper. They eased into bed and pulled up the sheets, feeling the warmth rise and fall over them in soothing parabolas, hearing the sounds of fabric on skin, basking in the flavors of rubbing one’s feet together under the blankets.

Tomorrow will be a day where they will have to face the earth’s external forces they hide away from so fervently. Tomorrow they will face it, and it may cause pain, but they will come back here and face it again the next day. But they can hide away only for so long, and soon they will become numb to the nurture of the spot. They wonder if they’ll have to flee and hide away to go looking for the spot once more, just like last time (and the time before that, and the time before that...)

The heater shut off and they fell asleep to the sounds of the wind.

Breathe 

-Nicole Malyj Daone 

My Daddy hurtled us along the mulched trail in the wooded nature park. Gripping his strong shoulders with my small hands while I pressed against his back, my legs embraced his middle. One of his hands clutched a tackle box that clunked and rattled with every step. The other hand cupped around my backside to keep me close. I struggled to keep from slipping, but we were both slick from the unseasonable wet heat. 

He leaned forward and hoisted me up higher. Trying to stay there, knowing how hard he was working to keep me on his back, I began to wrap my arms around his neck. “Don’t put your arms around my neck,” he instructed in a kind but firm voice, in a tone I rarely heard from him. “Just try to breathe.” He sounded protective. Panicked. Usually so aloof, or somewhat agitated, his fear was unfamiliar. My Daddy was strong as an ox and never afraid. 

Each of my shallow inhales produced a squeak of a wheeze. The effort to bring the humid summer air into my lungs burned my chest and back. I tried to count the inhalation, one, two, three. One, two, three, the exhalation. The vice grip around my lungs wouldn’t ease. 

Behind my Daddy and I galloped my younger brother, doing his best to keep up. He tried not to drag our kiddie fishing poles on the trail as we made our hasty exit to the parking lot. He managed to hold the Igloo cooler, too, as we hurried along. The cooler was empty because Daddy made him pour the fish back into the pond before we left. Daddy couldn’t carry a cooler of fish if he also had to carry a tackle box and an asthmatic, breathless me. 

Lush canopies of scarlet and gilded green formed shields above us, and the scent of pine mingled into my shallow breaths. A tufted titmouse sounded an echoing alarm call as we passed the herb garden, studded with fragrant purple lavender stalks and bushes of pointy rosemary. The black-capped chickadees flitted and followed us, swooping ahead to encourage the way. 

I thought of Snow White, surrounded by nature that protected and guided her. I wanted to be like the Snow White who traipsed gracefully through the woods. It was a ludicrous notion, what with my extraordinary allergies and serious asthma. I was more like the Snow White who lay encased in glass, kept from the natural world because of her reaction to a poisonous apple. If only we had remembered my inhaler. If only the very air I breathed wasn’t treated like poison by my young body. 

I was always tragically wishing my asthma and allergies away, like the year prior in second grade when I insisted that someday I’d work in a zoo or be a veterinarian. Teachers shook their heads in pity. “Dear, you know you can’t work with animals or be outside all the time. Maybe you could work in an aquarium?” No! I insisted that I could never work there. The silent, sleek sharks with their heartless stares could never compare to the wholesome, beautiful world of Snow White’s adoring squirrels, tittering chipmunks, and soulful deer. I’d retort, “But you said I could be anything!” Hurt, and indignant, my dreams were crushed by my physical condition. It was so unfair. So burdensome. I wanted a dog, a cat, a pony, a giraffe. The goldfish in my gumball-shaped aquarium at home just swam in stupid, boring circles. I wanted a pet with a memory, something I could run with, stroke, hold, and love. I wanted things I could never have.

Sinking heavily against my Daddy, I could hear his own labored breath as he tried to get me to stay alert. “We’re almost there, just hang on,” he said with a groan. I realized my legs no longer held him at all, having slipped all the way off his flanks, dangling like wet spaghetti. He’d started clenching my forearms as he leaned even more awkwardly forward, breaking into as much of a jog as he could muster. My head bounced against his shoulder, and I pressed my left hand onto his chest to feel the quick THUMP THUMP THUMP of his heartbeat. 

The wheezy squeak-squeak-gasp of my breath became more pronounced. I tried to stay calm, just like my doctors and nurses had taught me, but I could feel my consciousness beginning to float away like a balloon. Inhalation, one… a wheeze, then two… Exhalation, one… “Stay with me, Nicole!” Daddy grunted through a strained jaw as he felt me go limp against him. He dropped the tackle box to the ground like it was nothing, and stopped to swing me into his arms, carrying me now like an offering, holding me against his sweat-soaked t-shirt. My head dropped back, and I gazed at the tackle box as it got smaller and smaller in the distance. Grandpa’s lures. Extra line. Hooks in various sizes. Jiggly, spotted, tentacled fake bait. Shiny metal fish with large eyes. Gone.

Daddy stood more upright and tried to increase his pace. I knew then that his bad back was as on fire as my lungs. Guilt leaked into my gut, warm and thick like the northeast Ohio air. I was hurting him. My asthma ruined everything, even the rare hike and fishing excursion my hard-working, aloof, agitated, tired, aching Daddy put together for my brother and me. 

When the parking lot came into view, my brother managed to run ahead. Looking back at me for a moment, his little face didn’t register the angry disappointment I was anticipating. Instead, he seemed to look at the jaunt on the trail as an adventurous maze we raced through that led us back to our car. He was too young to grasp the gravity of the emergency. I was grateful for that small miracle. I hated disappointing my brother all the time. He could breathe normally and go to the nature parks whenever he wanted. If I went with him, my asthma usually ruined things. I ruined things.

We should have known better. It was ragweed season, an arch-nemesis, the kryptonite to my weak immune system. But the Autumn weather was so sunny and fine, and the fish were sure to bite. Daddy took a day off work, and I wanted to prance like Snow White in the woods. Now, I was being rushed to the ER again for my insipid illness, and my Mommy would join us at the hospital in a panicked shamble after this latest episode of nearly losing me. 

Ruined, we’d never again go to the nature park. It was too much to risk. My broken breath was a burden, carried by my whole family, heavy as mud. We couldn't again forget the weight of my condition. I wished and wished and wished it away to no avail. My breath, fickle and demanding, was a ghost, appearing and vanishing on a whim. It was an apparition in a twisted fairy tale.