UPON WATCHING A GOOGLE PHOTO MONTAGE OF MYSELF ON MY WIFE’S PHONE BY Michael Wheaton

I age quickly: hair thinning until bald, waist expanding until thick. A low angle of a fretboard in my bare hand, a straight shot pose in cap and gown, a dozen candids of Amy and I until we’re in tux and dress, and then come the baby pictures—us and our two boys. I feel like I am standing invisibly behind my friends and family watching this on a screen at my own funeral. I’m wondering: is nostalgia a symptom of the fear of death? You look at life as if you’ve already died and cherish it to the point you negate the present. I think that’s why I’m drawn to it.

My toddler Vinny loves to watch the montages on Amy’s phone. Having not seen his grandparents in a while, he claps each time a montage of one ends and cries until she replays it. Amy tells me that small children want to do the same things again and again for two reasons: 1) It’s how they learn. 2) It’s as if they are trying to relive the same happiness repeatedly so they can avoid shifting back into their normal, which is chaos and confusion.

Sometimes I worry about Amy or the boys dying, especially all at once—in a car maybe. What would I do? Alone in the house, I would watch and re-watch every video I have of them on my phone. I wonder if it would help. Maybe it’s the only thing that could. 

I was stoned when I wrote the first draft of this. I’m stoned right now revising it. In between then and now I had stopped smoking weed for a little while. I quit smoking sometimes when the highs stop hitting like they should. I know if I quit for long enough, when I have it again, I’ll get that comfortable fuzzy feeling again just the way I want it. Already, I find myself smoking bowls again all day every day just to feel normal, by which I mean still utterly full of chaos and confusion but getting stuff done anyway. It’d probably be the same pattern if my family died and I was left with only pictures and videos: every time you attempt reliving a feeling, you lose more of the original, and with over-simulation, the feeling vanishes. You can’t escape the void.

Vinny’s crying again on my lap. He wants Amy’s phone. I do too. I think maybe nostalgia isn’t a symptom of the fear of death. It’s the fear of life.

Michael Wheaton is the publisher of Autofocus and host of its podcast, The Lives of Writers. For more to read, check mwheaton.net.

None of My Childhood Heroes Prepared Me for This by Marissa Glover

My teenager asks me how long zits last, and I tell him about washcloths and exfoliating soap and his father’s acne scars because I grew up on G.I. Joe and knowing is half the battle. It’s not the answer he wanted. Mine never are. Like when he asks if he can go to the pool with the boys—and I remember fourteen, the dive, my ambulance ride to the ER. So I let him shoot hoops, hoping it will be enough. Hoping he remembers Billy Blazes and Wendy Waters and to think like a rescue hero, think safe.

When he asks how much longer we have to do this—wash hands, wear masks, go to school online, I smartly report CDC guidelines and the governor’s timelines and keep right on rattling about how the pantry’s stocked with soup and crackers, just in case, and thermometers and extra inhalers and his favorite sports drink, the one with all the electrolytes. Oh, and only acetaminophen because reports say it’s better for this kind of inflammation than ibuprofen. None of this brings him comfort.

He has stopped listening. Something about a rainbow and a siege and the number six. We’ve got this, I tell him again, like I’m Hannibal and this is war and my son’s part of the A-Team. I’ve always loved it when a plan comes together. But none of my childhood heroes help me be the mom my child needs. None of the taglines work. Yet here I am trying to MacGyver away his pain, MacGyver a way for us to recoup such loss, when I can’t even Go Go Gadget myself any taller to once more perfectly hug the boy who has outgrown me.

Marissa Glover currently lives and writes in Florida, where she teaches at Saint Leo University. She is coeditor of Orange Blossom Review and a senior editor at The Lascaux Review. Her poetry most recently appears in River Mouth Review, Middle House Review, The UCity Review, and HocTok Magazine. Marissa’s poetry collection, Let Go of the Hands You Hold, will be published by Mercer University Press in 2021. You can follow her on Twitter @_MarissaGlover_.

The Taste of Dust by Scott Neuffer

            “The worst kind of news,” he says to me, as he walks from the house to his sports car.     

            He’s a starved-looking man, bony, white hair, but wealthy. California money well spent on forty-foot masonry towers, one at each corner of his unfinished mansion, dominating the Nevada hillside.

            This summer, I’ve been a twenty-year-old construction worker without a chance in the world—told every sweaty day how best to furnish his rising stature. But today, even I can see that he’s been tapped by something profound, as vast and unyielding as the desert ground itself: sand, pebbles, flares of grass, all teetering as he walks in the summer heat to his car.

            “I can’t make sense of it,” he says, turning back around.

            He tells me that his son, my age, was killed by a drunk driver the night before. Apparently he was riding around with some friends when the maniac’s car smashed into the passenger-side door.

            “It should’ve never happened,” he says, sweeping his hand over the torn-up hillside. “It’s not what I had in mind when I moved up here.”

             Today, the heat is unbearable, the old man teetering towards his car. Today, I learn that I have a chance, that death makes no exceptions. It grants everyone the same desperate franchise. It’s everywhere, especially in the heat, sneaking in the hot, hard air, empowering him as it empowers me, charging us with the cruel ownership of our choices.

            Earlier in the day, during a doctor appointment, I met a young woman in an air-conditioned elevator. She was clean and beautiful. I wanted to fuck her. I wanted to taste that privilege. I had dreams of a moonlit rendezvous.

            “Hot, huh?” she murmured in a voice like water.

            “Come with me,” I answered the burgeoning scheme in my head. “Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall!”

            But that was then. Now, I’m a refugee in the shade.

            “The worst kind of news,” he says to me.

            His car makes a dismal smoke in the sharp heat. He leaves me in the hot air of his unfinished garage, sitting alone in the dust.

Scott Neuffer is a writer and musician who lives in Nevada with his family. He’s also the founder and editor of the literary journal trampset. Follow him on Twitter @scottneuffer @sneuffermusic @trampset

A Refresher by Evan James Sheldon

            Dad is watching cartoons, reruns of the original Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, and drinking. I’m supposed to be asleep, but I sneak out of my room and watch from around the corner. He doesn’t laugh or smile while he watches, though his face is lit up from the glow of the television, making him look like a ghost in the dark. I notice that every time they say cow-a-bunga he takes a sip of whiskey, like he’s playing a game all by himself.

            Eventually, I return to my room and pull out my action figures, Raphael and Michelangelo and Leonardo, I can’t find Donatello but he was never my favorite anyway. I don’t turn on the light so my dad won’t notice. I fight monsters turned into outrageous things by ooze, things Bebop and Rocksteady would be afraid of. I always defeat them, except tonight it doesn’t work. I can’t think of what my turtles should do to take down the evil creatures. I can’t picture them winning.

            And I think I understand why my dad plays his own game, maybe he’s forgotten how to take down the evil creatures too. Maybe he needs to watch how it’s done.

            I sneak back out but he’s fallen asleep. I leave Leonardo on Dad’s lap.

Evan James Sheldon is Senior Editor for F(r)iction and the Editorial Director for Brink Literacy Project. You can find him online at evanjamessheldon.com.