200 CCs - June 2016

Elizabeth Archer • Christina Dalcher •
Jeaninne Escallier Kato • Sandra Grills •
Adiba Jaigirdar • Rita Jansen • Casi Scheidt
• Pamela Hobart Carter • J. Bradley •
Soren James
plus George Wells
June 2016

Volume 1
Issue #5
Editor-in-Chief
Paul A. Hamilton
Consulting Editor
Nikki Hamilton
Guest Editor
George Wells
Copyright © 2016 ironSoap.com. All writing and photography is the property of their respective
authors.
Cover photographs by Paul A. Hamilton.
200 CCs is an anthology of microfiction, collected monthly. Inquire online for submission guidelines.
http://200ccs.ironsoap.com/
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Contents
The Draw: The Constant Experiment . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4
Camp Tramp Stamp . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5
by Christina Dalcher
photo by Alexander Steinhof — http://web-done.de/ (CC BY-NC-ND 2.0)
Opera Night . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6
by Jeaninne Escallier Kato
photo by David Moran — https://www.flickr.com/people/53951307@N05/ (CC BY-NC-ND 2.0)
Midnight Hugs . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7
by Sandra Grills
photo by Mark Probst — https://www.flickr.com/people/schani/ (CC BY-SA 2.0)
When You’re on Fire . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8
by Adiba Jaigirdar
photo by Andreas Levers — http://www.96dpi.de/ (CC BY-NC 2.0)
A Present For The Future . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9
by Rita Jansen
photo by Henning Mühlinghaus — https://www.flickr.com/people/muehlinghaus/ (CC BY-NC 2.0)
The Grown-Up Answer . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10
by Casi Scheidt
photo by audi_insperation — https://www.flickr.com/people/audiinsperation/ (CC BY 2.0)
New Routine . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11
by Pamela Hobart Carter
photo by Scott Robinson — https://www.flickr.com/people/clearlyambiguous/ (CC BY 2.0)
Your Heart is Mine . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 12
by Elizabeth Archer
photo by Elton Harding — http://eltonharding.co.za/ (CC BY-NC-ND 2.0)
First Responder . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 13
by J. Bradley
photo by Jennifer Luis — https://www.flickr.com/people/luisjennifer/ (CC BY-NC-ND 2.0)
A Little Light Pruning . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 14
by Soren James
photo by Christopher Melnychuk — https://www.flickr.com/people/cmelnychuk/ (CC BY-ND 2.0)
The Plunge . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 15
by George Wells
3

the draw
The Constant Experiment
If you’ve been following along with 200 CCs for
the past several months as we’ve gotten off the
ground, you’ll notice something different about
this issue: the size.
Five issues in and I decided to run an experiment
in doubling the number of stories featured,
running them twice a week on the site, moving
from an average of four per issue to an average of
eight.
At the same time, I started trying to be a bit more
coordinated about grouping the stories together,
making them into a more pointedly cohesive
collection rather than a random grouping of
similarly formed pieces. I have to tip my hat to
guest editors R.L. Black, Nolan Liebert, and
Joyce Chong for teasing common threads from
the stories in those previous entries. Granted, I’m
sure you can find some theme to discuss in any
group of stories, but I certainly didn’t make it
easy on them.
The experiment, on the surface, might seem a
bit odd. If I can pack twice as many stories
into each issue, why would I not? It turns out
the experiment was in whether or not I could
manage it from a workload perspective. And if
I made life difficult on my early guest editors,
I made my own life downright miserable as I
subjected my newbie editorial skillset to a
sharp uptick in work during the exact same
month I had to pack and organize a move.
The move is not far and my family and I are
no strangers to relocation. But it’s a sort of
experiment of its own. After nearly two
decades of apartment living, we’re moving
into a house.
This got me to thinking about experiments,
about change and major decisions. Rarely
is anything we do of any consequence cut and
dry. There are pros and cons of any endeavor,
and we tend to use a straight balance
equation to make the final call. More pros: go
for it. More cons: not a great idea. We do this
because objectively comparing criteria relative to
4
each other aspect is maddeningly difficult.
For example, a big factor in our upcoming move
is that I’ll go from a 20 minute commute with no
traffic to a minimum hour commute with heavy
traffic. I’ve considered this factor carefully and
from this side of experience I can say I’m more
inclined to live in the spacious house with the
garden and attached garage if it means I have to
put up with a commute. It’s numbers. Traffic (1)
versus Space, Outdoors, Work Area (3). Because
how can I possibly know if, in six months, I’ll be
so tired of losing that extra 100 minutes a day
that I never get to enjoy those three factors?
The experiment in doubling the size of 200 CCs
was based on wanting to make a better zine, and
to tell more stories. I anticipated there would be
more work, and that it would be tough, but I
didn’t expect that the work would increase in
difficulty—not just volume—whenever life
had the nerve of happening around me.
But this is why we try. The trick teachers
work so hard to get you to see for yourself
is that the scientific method is not just how
we perform lab experiments but how we
live life. We gather data. We learn. We
revise our assumptions. We try again. And
we repeat until success is achieved or
failure forces us to start over.
I’m proud of this issue. I love being able to
showcase more microfiction, to see them
gel into something beyond the individual
stories. And the experiment continues. I’ll
do whatever I can to tell as many tiny
stories as I am able. I’ve learned things
about myself and about the project.
And so I fully expect Issue #6 will be
roughly the size of this one as well. To
get there, I’ll probably have to try a few
things based on what I’ve learned. Because
so far what I know for sure is: don’t try
to run a magazine and move at the same time.
—Paul A. Hamilton

Camp Tramp Stamp
by Christina Dalcher
Gran’s tattoo might have been beautiful. On
her, it was a desperate grasp at youth, an
atrocity, an embarrassment. Ugly.
“You could have that
removed,” I said on a
Saturday after Gran
returned from wherever she
went on Saturday
mornings. “There’s a place
in town—”
Gran silenced me with a
wave of her stupidly
paisleyed left arm.
We’d attempted this
conversation before. It
always ended on the same
note, but now Gran
elaborated. “I got this after
leaving Budapest.” Her
eyes crinkled in a rare smile
as she nodded toward the
strip of curls on her
forearm. “From a man.”
“I don’t want to erase him.”
And I didn’t want to think about Gran having a
lover.
She died the following
Saturday, and two strange old
women came to bathe her
withered body. They saved
Gran’s left arm for last,
stroking it gently, muttering
foreign, guttural words.
I got one last look at the
ugliness of colored ink on
pale, papery skin before mum
dressed her, and I saw the
unspeakable, forgotten
ugliness hidden inside each
paisley teardrop: A-13968.
Beautiful, Gran, I thought
when we buried her.
“A man,” I repeated. I supposed even in 1940
men operated tattoo parlors. Or maybe she was
one of those ‘types,’ as mum might say.
Christina Dalcher is a linguist, novelist, and flash fiction addict from The Land of
Styron. She is currently matriculating at the Read Every Word Stephen King Wrote MFA
program, which she invented. Find her at ChristinaDalcher.com or @CVDalcher. Or
hiding in a cupboard above the stairs. Or read her short work in Zetetic, Pidgeonholes,
and Syntax & Salt, among other corners of the literary ether.
5

Opera Night
by Jeaninne Escallier Kato
“Moishe, darling, don’t forget your coat.” She has carefully placed his clothes on the bed, as she
does for every opera night.
“And you look breathtaking, Ruth, my love.” He stares at her through her vanity mirror as if
memorizing every feature on her face. “The black velvet suits you.” He swallows heavily, sweat
beading on his brow.
She grins in that special way that says she wants him desperately. Applying red lipstick, she says,
“The children are downstairs with your parents. I bundled them up in layers. It will be a cold night.”
She turns away when the tears blur her vision. She knows he is studying her closely.
He runs his fingers down her exposed spine until he touches the top of the zipper. She grabs his
hand and presses it to her powdered cheek. Her tears have left visible tracks through an otherwise
impeccable layer of make-up.
A door bangs open. He runs downstairs to the children, shielding them from the inevitable
intruders. She slowly slips into her mink coat. With trembling hands, she picks up the felted yellow
star that has fallen to the floor.
Jeaninne Escallier Kato is the author of the childrens’ book, “Manuel’s Murals.”
She has published short stories in various online journals, and her memoir essay
“Swimming Lessons” is published in the anthology book, “Gifts From Our
Grandmothers,” by Carol Dovi. Jeaninne is a retired, bi-lingual educator who is
inspired by the Mexican culture. Much of her written work revolves around the
people and traditions of Mexico. She resides in Northern California with her
husband, Glenn, two German Shepherd mix dogs, Brindey and Bobby McGhee;
and, one very fat Russian Blue cat named Mr. Big.
Visit her on Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, and YouTube.
6

Midnight Hugs
by Sandra Grills
“Mama, I need a hug” a small voice calls into the darkness. She believes, even at the age of eight, that
her little voice will be heard. She trusts that someone will be there. Not just any someone, her Mama,
ready to give her a hug.
With a sigh only perceptible in my sleep weary mind, I roll over and push myself out of bed. My eyes
open just a crack as I shuffle down the hall. She’s sleeping when I reach her room—a little cherub
running around in the land of nod—but experience warns against leaving. It would only result in a
louder, more urgent call. I reach down and do what many would consider an unthinkable sin. I wake a
sleeping child.
Delicate eyelids flutter open, and a smile cracks the flawless face with a look that says “I knew you’d
come.” Heavy arms reach up and claim their hug. The smile continues, even after the arms drift back
onto the bed, and the eyes slide closed.
I tiptoe past the creaks in the floor, careful to lay my feet on soft carpet, before I lay a weary head
back on my pillow. A little noise floats up the hallway. The contented sigh of a sleeping child who
feels safe.
Sandra has been a director, a business owner, a project manager, a bookbinder, and a mother.
Her current passion is reading and writing in Calgary, Alberta, Canada, where she lives with her
husband, two amazing children, and a gecko named Captain Doug.
7

When You’re on Fire
by Adiba Jaigirdar
The matchsticks in the broken drawer
don’t tempt me now that you’re gone.
We sat on my bed and shared scorch
marks like stories of old boyfriends.
The one between your thumb and
forefinger? Two years ago. Darkened to
a deep shade of brown on your already
dark skin. I’d be lying if I said I didn’t
love it. I’d be lying if I said that I didn’t
dream about it with my eyelids half
closed, imagining you beside me,
imagining me running my fingers along
that scorch mark.
I like the one on your right shoulder the best. It’s nothing but a giant brown blob. There’s a strange
beauty in it. Perhaps the most enticing thing about is the way you showed me, slowly rolling up the
sleeves of your overly-long, baggy t-shirt.
My scorch marks seem like nothing in comparison. Even now.
Fire has lost its delight too, since you left. Like I never understood the spark, the heat, until you
brushed your fingers along my collarbone.
Those two months, sharing stories on my bed, our limbs entangled in each other carelessly; those
were the days I was on fire.
The matches, the bedroom, the lick of fire against my skin? Nothing without you in it. No spark.
Adiba Jaigirdar is a twenty-two year old writer and poet. She is of Bangladeshi descent but
Irish by nationality. She has graduated from University College Dublin with a BA double
major in English and History, along with an MA in Postcolonial Studies from the University of
Kent. She has previously been published in literary magazines such as About Place Journal,
wordlegs and Outburst. You can find her on twitter at @adiba_j.
8

A Present for the Future
by Rita Jansen
“Better an empty house than a bad tenant,” Mum would
say, shovelling the weekly dose of castor oil into me.
“When the bowels are out of kilter, the brain turns to
mush!” Over the years, many of Mum’s aphorisms
made good sense, except for her take on my
sixteenth birthday present from my granddad.
“If you ask me, your granddad lost more than
his right arm in the war,” she said. “Who in
their right mind gives a gift like that to a
young girl?”
“Granddad’s not crazy,” I said
in his defence, although,
truthfully, it
wasn’t something
I would have
chosen
for
myself.
“He
knows
they’ll
all be
taken by the time I
need it, and I got to choose
the nicest one.”
Both have
passed on now.
Mother died
suddenly at the
age of fifty-two
and Granddad
didn’t make it to
my
seventeenth
birthday. His
gift has
remained untouched
although I’ve kept an eye
on it over the years.
However, it won’t be long now
until someone opens it on my
behalf and lays me to rest in the
best plot in Heaven’s Door Cemetery;
Granddad’s gift to me.
Rita was born in Drogheda, Ireland but left the Emerald Isle to work as a nursing sister
in South Africa. She’s been fortunate to live in many interesting places, including
Zimbabwe, finally settling down in a small fishing village on the South Coast of Natal.
Now retired, she has the time to pursue a life-long desire to write about the many
characters and situations encountered along life’s journey, which lie in wait, like hidden
treasure in her memory box.
9

The Grown-Up Answer
by Casi Scheidt
“I don’t know,” I said, my eyes stinging and
throat aching.
“Was it because she was sick?”
“That was part of it.”
“Why did my sissy die?” she asked, her blue
eyes dull, tone flat, looking older at four years
than she ever would again.
“Because it was her time, baby,” I said.
“I want the grown-up answer.”
“What do you mean?”
“I want the truth.”
“God decided to take her back.”
“No.”
“Baby, please.”
“No. Tell me why,” she said, glaring at me.
“I can’t.”
“You have to.”
“What’s the other part?”
For hours she followed me, demanding an
answer to the same question I’d been asking
myself since it happened.
“Tell me why. I won’t stop until you tell me
why.”
“Because she wasn’t like you,” I said, both my
voice and my will to shield her breaking.
She watched me, waiting, sensing there was
more.
“Because you came screaming into this world,
yelling so loudly the whole building could hear
you. Nothing could quiet you, nothing could
make you still. But not her. She came as if all
her demons had already defeated her. She gave
up. That’s why anybody dies, baby. Because
they have nothing left.”
Sandra has been a director, a business owner, a project manager, a bookbinder, and a mother.
Her current passion is reading and writing in Calgary, Alberta, Canada, where she lives with
her husband, two amazing children, and a gecko named Captain Doug.
10

New Routine
by Pamela Hobart Carter
One morning, it’s quiet.
One morning, he isn’t down first, brewing the
sputtering espresso, opening and banging doors
and drawers for newspapers and spoons.
One morning, you’re first.
You don’t understand until you check the clock
on the stove, the clock on the microwave, your
wristwatch, and add all the numbers for the same
result.
You draw your hand away, step backwards a
couple of paces, turn, and walk to the kitchen,
where you linger over buttered toast and a hardboiled
egg. The house has a lovely stillness. It
smells of singed crust and newsprint. The Times
is entirely your own. It is possible to savor your
coffee in this solitude.
One morning, you’re first, and too happy to
understand this is how death sounds.
Your heart hammers, your feet pound up the
stairs and race to his door—shut, and darkening
the hall. (Only half-awake, you missed this on
your way down, the too-dark hall. He likes to air
his room and let the day circulate.)
Hand-on-knob, you hesitate. He’s just sleeping
in.
For the first time ever?
He was tired last night.
Too tired.
The soft noises from the other side of his door
may be a sleeper’s long breaths or the curtains
luffing in the morning breeze.
Pamela Hobart Carter has worked as a geologist and teacher before becoming a writer. A
few of her short, short plays have been produced in Seattle where she lives. More about
Pam and her writing is at amazon.com and notalkingdogspress.com.
11

Your Heart is Mine
by Elizabeth Archer
We sit, waiting for the cardiologist to come in
with the results. Listening to shoes squeak on
the fake wood floor. Waiting for them to stop at
the door.
It’s been an hour, and there are 64 tiles in the
ceiling. A dead gnat sticks to
the window, in the
otherwise spotless
room.
When the door
opens, something
inside my chest
shifts. Opens too,
tries to squeeze past
him, run down the hall.
The doctor is thin and fit
and tan. He looks as if he
has been running all morning,
breathless and grinning with a
smile that reaches his cheek.
pictures of the insides of your arteries. “All
clear.”
I see images of holes. Pictures of your heart.
We breathe out then, both of
us, as if we had been
sucking a week’s worth
of oxygen inside.
Exhale fear, in the
form of CO 2 .
“All good. See you in
say, May?” he says.
I can hear your heart,
beating like a distant
drum, in the silence.
That’s what marriage is, after
twenty years.
I can’t hear my own heart at all.
“Everything’s okay,” Dr. Flynn says, white
back to us, his hand flipping through notes and
Elizabeth Archer writes flash, short stories and poetry. She lives in the Texas Hill country, and haunts Scribophile, a
site for serious writers.
12

First Responder
by J. Bradley
by J. Bradley
Helen stared at the smoke seeping
through the seams of the closed oven
door, the fire consuming last night’s
pizza box. I opened the front door. The
fire extinguisher case was bolted next to
the apartment door across the
h a l l . T h e l a n d l o r d s
thought ahead. I
f r e e d t h e f i r e
extinguisher, opened
the oven. The kitchen
didn’t give me enough
space to aim properly.
We stumbled through
the mist of smoke and
sodium bicarbonate, onto the
balcony.
Before my father “rescued” us from my mother, he listed all
the reasons why we were better off without her: listened to talk
radio, sucked her teeth at the dinner table, stole the blanket while
they slept, never voted in local elections, believed The Doors were better
than Pink Floyd. He said the list gave him the conviction he needed to walk
us out of her life.
I looked over at the refrigerator. The sonogram pinned to the freezer door looked
like a black and yellow blotch from here.
“My hero,” Helen wrapped her arm around my waist.
When Neil is old enough, I’ll show him my list. He’ll see on the first line: doesn’t look
in the oven first before turning it on.
J. Bradley is the author of the forthcoming story collection, The Adventures of Jesus Christ,
Boy Detective (Pelekinesis, 2016). He lives at iheartfailure.net.
13

A Little Light Pruning
by Soren James
The depression is getting to me. Of course, I
mean the depression in my leg from sitting on
this stone.
I don’t allow for the other type of depression—
it’s too expensive. From its weight alone I’m
guessing it must cost several thousand dollars. I
doubt I could afford more than half an ounce
of depression per week.
So how am I to survive? Roving happily
through life—a weightless drifter
through circumstance—no longer
standing out or drawing attention to
the depth of my existence. I guess
I’ll have to face a life of increasing
irrelevance to myself and others,
likely ending up forgotten—firstly
by myself, then the rest of the
world.
I move. That’s why I won’t move—the fear of
there being nothing there. A fear of my
disappearance from this planet.
Stay very still and keep a handle on this self of
yours. Keep a tight grip. Well done—you’re
maintaining yourself now. I can feel the weight
of me. I know who I am and where I am.
Two days later, a doctor arrived. The
lack of circulation had caused
gangrene in my leg and it would
have to be amputated.
Much like the depression in
my leg which will disappear if
Soren James is a writer and visual artist who recreates himself on a daily basis from the materials at his disposal,
continuing to do so in an upbeat manner until one day he will sumptuously throw his drained materials aside and
resume stillness without asking why. More of his work can be seen at sorenjames.moonfruit.com.
14

y George Wells
Father’s Day is this month and I have no
father to celebrate. He passed away suddenly
in 1999. His own father followed him not
suddenly later that year. Yes, I still hurt.
Yes, I’m fine with it, too.
I remember the man who kissed me in
congratulations for my eighth grade
clarinet recital—an underwhelming
m u s i c a l p e r f o r m a n c e , b u t a n
uncharacteristic act of bravery on my part
—and how that made me even braver. I
also remember the man who fell into my
doorway while stumbling down the hall
drunk—landing on my clarinet case—and
how that made me less brave. It’s taken
me a while to reconcile those two images.
Is it wrong for me to speak ill of the
dead? Is there not a statute of limitations?
Can I tell you about my paternal
grandfather’s racism? My maternal
grandmother’s many affairs (including
one with my paternal grandfather)? Can
we rise above hushed tones when talking
about alcoholism, depression, mental
illness, suicide? Would things have been
different if we had risen above those
hushed tones around the living?
(By the same token, maybe nobody needed to
know about great-grandma’s amateur beaver
shots.)
I’m far from home, and right at home. An
immigrant in a first world country is
expected; in a third world country, he is a
curiosity. In 15 years in Mexico, I have been
asked, “Do you have family here?” more
often than anything else.
But what to answer? I have no blood here, no
true marriage to bind me to the people, and
yet, I have to say, “Yes…kind of.” The yes is
for me; the kind of is for the natives.
Because what is family, really? Is it blood, is
the plunge
it a piece of paper? How far removed does
one have to be to no longer be family? (The
Spanish language elegantly calls your
spouse’s brother one thing and your
spouse’s sister’s husband another.
Believe me, that can be terribly
convenient.)
In these works, I find a lot of pain,
perhaps fictional, but most likely
fictionalized. Can you relate to that? If
you can, are you okay with that? These
writers have bravely dispensed with the
hushed tones. Can you? What will you
take from that? Do you think I’m being
too confrontational?
Don’t worry; I’m really asking myself.
I see here words of joy and of pain.
Family binds you, and bindings can
secure you and bindings can restrain
you. Have you not felt that security,
that restraint? Do these words seem
familiar to you? I know every one of
these people written into these stories.
They were my family, too.
If family is blood and marriage, then my
family is small. Aunts and uncles and
cousins have mostly fallen out of my
consideration and I’m left with a mother, a
brother, his wife, and their three sons.
There are a lot more people than that, but I
struggle to remember their names at this
point.
If family is more, if it’s the people we
decide to call family, then my family is big.
I have brother and sisters from grade school,
from high-school, from last year, I have
mothers and fathers and uncles and
godfamily.
I am an open book to them. I don’t want
them ever to speak of me in hushed tones.
15

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