Issue Three

JESSICA BOWERS
stained glass lakes and plaster hills;
soon it would be all lit up as if everyone
in the world were home. Soon, yes, but
for now Kurt could not help but shuffle
back to the window and behold that
unremitting pattern of yellow and black,
his bloodshot eyes cast and recast in a
glare of deepening irritation.
That was it, gods blast it! He parted
with his sanctum and hobbled toward
the hill, planning to beat those stupid
kids with his cane when he found the
foolish lot of them. Like Cassie, he
struggled to the top, and once there he
was faced with the same obscurity at
the threshold. To Kurt, it looked as
someone had torn the wood and nails
from the door with his bare hands, but
he was nonetheless unfazed. Damn
those kids, he thought again, clearing a
path with his cane. Without hesitation,
he too went in.
Janie Sanders of 36 Orchid Street was
flustered when she realized the yellow
flash coming through the window did not
signal the arrival of her date in his
car. No, it was just that stupid ugly
house atop the hill having some kind of
electrical malfunction, and the longer
Janie sat there waiting and filing her
fingernails, the more she wondered
when the hell someone was going to get
over there and do something about it
before the whole town started in. She
glanced sporadically at the window just
to make sure it wasn’t him this time, and
then resumed her feverish filing while
she smoked. As she filed, she sprinkled
yellow dust over the table already
littered with cigarette butts and smeared
ashes. Everything had to be perfect,
right down to the fingernail.
Luke Harris was The One, and this
Janie knew for certain. Literally
everyone she’d ever dated had been
The One; but she would deny it if
anyone ever said so, for there had been
quite a lot of them. The young and
attractive Miss Janie Sanders had more
love interests than she did IQ points; in
fact, The One was actually The
Many. Luke Harris was The One today;
Anthony Benjamin would be The One
tomorrow, and perhaps Nick Carleton
would be The One next week. She was
a girl with simple compulsions and
simple goals, marking up every tree with
her gaudy red lipstick and musky
perfume, notching her bedpost in the
very midst of the act.
If asked why she had taken so many
lovers, Janie would say it was because
she had nothing else. She’d flunked out
of school because her brain had the
learning capability of a rotten banana,
for which her affluent Catholic parents
had cut her off in disgrace. She worked
a mediocre job and lived in a mediocre
house, and were it not for the endless
slew of men whispering their sweet
nothings, Janie Sanders would be in the
corner with six gallons of ice cream and
a shovel, bawling her eyes out and
eating her feelings.
When Janie got bored with The One, she
had no trouble in biting his head off and
sending him away with what she thought
was agony and wounded manhood. She
really thought they all loved her, that she
kneaded them all like putty beneath her
thumb, and that she left their hearts in
fractions when she