Orion headless

fiction and photography by R. V. Scaramella

The pond held Alligator Snapping and Red Eared Sliders. Underfoot the pattern snagged his eye, not an odd stone or lately popped leaf. Even with legs and neck extended, covered completely by a Kennedy fifty cent.

A long bus and a short bus of first graders stomped the park this day. One of their teachers had captured the man’s attention. He ushered the bantam turtle away from the trail and underneath an umbrella of leaves, no ride home in somebody’s stubby pants pocket, not today.

by Richard Peabody

Once the floaty tugboat LCD flashes 92 you can lean over and secure Danny into his red and blue baby bath seat. You’ve done this five or six times. Nothing to it. After your grandson is splashing and kicking you can finally relax. Maybe your daughter will be back from the grocery store sooner rather than later, if your wife doesn’t make too many impulse buys.

You take a knee after Danny starts singing along to the water gushing from the mouth of the green plastic hippo bath spout cover. He’s all smiles. Drooling. One big tooth pokes out of his gums. You hand him rubber duckie. Danny pops the yellow plastic right in his mouth. Everything has to be tasted. Squeaky squeaky.

When the pain begins you think indigestion. You love crunchy sweet pickles. One hand to your chest. When you think it’s fading the pain sledgehammers. You slide to your back on the wet black and white tiles. Danny doesn’t miss you yet. He thinks you’re playing. Boo. You have to turn off the water. Danny razzes you. He just learned how. You attempt a laugh. Can’t. You have to sit up. Have to pull the plug. Pull the plug. . .

by Len Kuntz

I did not tear your white dress.
It was me
at the other end of the room
who dished up drinks
from a blue bowl of vodka.
Her name was Valerie.
She said she knew you when
you were plump and lonely, not lovely.
She wanted to know
our sour history
and claimed to tire of trying so hard.
Or so she said.
Or so she appeared to say,
this sad former friend of yours.
She said, “If you kiss me quick, I won’t tell.”

See? I could not have torn your white dress.
There are a thousand crimes I can
rightfully be charged with
but you’re still pinning
this misdemeanor on me
the way a prom date does a corsage.
Do your best then,
new ex-wife of mine.
Stick a needle through me anywhere
and sew away.

by Marija Stajic

When I was one year old, my mother prayed for me to die.

She, my poor mother Mika, ended up bearing five children. Like so many other mothers in Serbia in the early 1900s, she lost a baby son to dysentery. She lost her first born, her heir. When her now eldest daughter, her four-year-old Radica, contracted the deadly disease in 1931, Mika couldn’t bear the thought of losing her little girl, her sun, her soul. She looked at her sick child, lying in bed, pale and yellow, weak, suffering, and then she looked at her younger daughter in the crib, still a baby, me, Ruza. I was a small, sickly baby, and a big burden to Mika, who had to take care of two children, work the land with her husband, and take care of the household and the cattle, every single day. No weekends, no vacations. And my parents still barely made ends meet. Helpless and desperate, Mika had to at least try to do something to save her daughter. She did the only thing she could. Prayed. Prayed to God for me to die.

“God, if you must take one away from me, please, take the younger one…”

When Radica died, Mika was not only in mourning but also in fear of God’s retaliation.

“Please, forgive me for asking you to take one child over another, I know you have your reasons that I, a small, ignorant woman, cannot understand, but you understand mine, don’t you? Please forgive me…”

Mika had been an orphan. She worked as a servant in the village, taking care of cattle and tilling land into fertile ground to grow wheat, corn and potatoes. She was a petite woman, almost half a woman, but she worked for two. Her gentle facial features and pale skin didn’t match her life. She married my father, Branko, who was also an orphan. His father died in the war, and when his mother remarried, she had to give him up. Her new husband didn’t want baggage from her previous marriage. Branko was taken in and raised by his aunt and uncle. So they found each other, both poor, both alone.

My parents desperately needed another pair of hands to work the fields and take care of cattle, as soon as possible. I was now their eldest child. When I turned seven, I wanted to go to school with my friends so badly. I had never wanted anything that much. I would have done anything for it! I promised to be a good pupil! I promised not to make any trouble! I promised to work before and after classes! I promised them the sun and the moon, but they still didn’t let me go, not even for one day.

I never, ever forgave them for that!
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by Michael C. Keith

Can I see another’s woe,
And not be in sorrow too?
– William Blake

When Morley Benoit was still a small child, he began to suspect he had an unusual ability. What exactly it was remained unclear given his tender age. As he was lifted into his aunt’s lap, for example, he knew that she would never hold him again. There was something in her eyes that told him that. The very next day she was dead. The disconcerting premonition repeated itself when he was in sixth grade. He had sensed it upon coming face to face with the school’s janitor, Mr. Morgan, in the corridor, and he, too, passed away shortly thereafter.

Several more years would pass before a similar encounter would finally convince Morley that he possessed the power to see when people would die. This time it was on a high school football field as his coach reviewed a play with his team. As Mr. Lowry addressed each player in his usual intensive, one-on-one style, Morley knew he would soon perish. He decided to warn him, but before he got the chance, the coach toppled over and could not be resuscitated.

Morley spent the years that followed fearing he would come upon another person about to face his maker. He wondered why he had been endowed with such a frightening ability. And he decided to keep it a secret, convinced he would be viewed as a freak otherwise.

Shortly after graduating from college, Morley met an aspiring artist named Lorraine Colman and quickly fell in love. The couple was soon married and settled in a small house on the outskirts of Cleveland. For the next few years, they worked in their respective professions––Morley as a mechanical engineer and Lorraine as a greeting card illustrator. Eventually their union produced a child. It was the happiest period in Morley’s life, and the memory of his dark visions began to fade.

As the Benoit’s son, Tyler, grew older, Morley occasionally wondered if he would ever again bear witness to the impending demise of another person. He fervently hoped he would not and prayed he had not passed on the bizarre talent to his child. When his son reached an age that Morley thought was appropriate, he asked the youngster if he had ever sensed anything unusual in people’s eyes.

“What do you mean, Daddy?” replied the six year old.

“Well, did you ever feel funny or scared when you looked at someone?”

“Clowns are funny. And Sponge Bob,” was his eager reply.

After a bit more probing, Morley was convinced that his son was free of his arcane affliction.
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by James Valvis

It’s the day my divorce became final. The judge asked us if there was any way we could salvage our marriage, and we shook our heads and said, “No way.”

Now I have it in my mind to get comforted the way only someone who loves you can comfort you, so I drive the hour to my girlfriend’s house but when I get there I’ve forgotten about it.

I don’t know, I’ve grown quiet, brooding. My wife (now ex-wife) had cried. She was bitter, brutal, too honest; and the hour drive, alone, has let things settle inside me.

So I’m sitting there, girlfriend across from me, neither of us talking, but especially me, and I’ve got the newspaper, trying to think of anything but myself, when my girlfriend says to me, “Why did you come here?”

“Excuse me?”

“Why did you come here if you’re going to be like this?”

Well, why I came escapes me, and other things escape me as well. Like, why have I ever come here?

“I don’t know,” I tell her.

“I don’t know?” she says. “Is that the only answer you can give?’

It’s one of those sad moments when things begin to end, when the high wire of love snaps, and you have nothing to do but fall.

I’ve felt it before with many things, women, friends, jobs, good things that die, just die.

Now there is an argument. (There are always arguments, but you never know why they happen, or how to end them, but I guess it’s part of the process of knowing when to quit.)

Then I get it in my head she’s upset I’m not happy my divorce is final.

Oh, how can I tell her failure is always sad, and saddest of all is the failure of love; even when you recognize the love hasn’t worked, the sadness remains and endures.

But our argument continues, holding us, as it perpetuates itself under the guise of proving a point, what point exactly we’re trying to prove I don’t know, except maybe that we’re both screwed.

Then suddenly it’s over; it’s over but it is not. The argument leaves a residue.

And later there’s love but it’s not as good, Later there’s hope but there’s not as much; and the day becomes ash, becomes night, becomes death, like a woman gathering her things to run, run, run.

And still later I’m inside my car, the cabin thick with Florida’s wet heat, asking myself, “So why did I go there? Why do any of us go there?”

I don’t know.

Yes, that’s the only answer I can give.

by Luis Cuauhtemoc Berriozabal

I was looking for the hole in my head.
There was an eye in there peeking
out and spying my every move. It
wanted me to stay on the couch all day.

The eye wanted to escape in the
wonders of television. The sports
programs were its favorites. With
books its interest waned. I knew I

had to excise it or I could have plugged
up the hole. I got into a staring contest
with the eye by looking into a mirror
for an entire night and part of a day.

The eye did not like the bright light
I pointed at it and it went blind.

by Jay Passer

as I approached the temple
a bunch of Indians were looking up into a tree
a fairly large tree, there were guys up there, trimming
I took a quick Western look

in the temple there was a guy guarding the shoes
I opted to keep my shoes on and not enter the interior
I didn’t want Kali to get mad
the guy guarding the shoes had cataracts in his eyes

I wasn’t sure if it was cool to take photos
but I took a photo
being a Westerner can overwhelm a guy
at times

outside the temple I was checking my camera
damn! the shot was just a bit blurry
when out of nowhere 20 brown hands
wrenched me from the spot

and WHAM! out of the sky
an enormous bough fell to earth exactly where I’d been
standing
just another tourist casualty

flattened in a puff of dust
whoa, that was close, I said
my saviors laughed naturally
and a woman gave me a glass of chai

as I sat on a bench
my heart pounding
I should have erased the photo
but I didn’t.

by Colin James

The long white beard affected verisimilitude.
It preceded and contrasted with
the old man’s frightened eyes.
I of course, was after his money
and was disdainful of the many, many stars
that fell like sand from his “I Want”.
He sat wounded, one hand held outward
in acknowledgment of his frailty,
or was he signaling some watchful friends?
I had picked this spot because of its loneliness.
The building’s decomposing stone harbored
worthless relics, myths of ancient powers.
The usually reliable death distracted by
a swarm of witless fireflies.

by Maurice Oliver

Two days later the wheel is invented.

I decide to become a mountain bike spoke.

Difficult to believe, the distance I can cover.

Rolling past wildflower graves in dusty Texas.

Fields of cotton mops splintering the earth’s air.

Turneresque added to the trail-mix verb used for action.

Endless locomotion without even one steam whistle.

Then purple night opens its unhealable wound of sky.

Footnote: That same night, in the still of darkness the
coyotes invent advertising, and by morning every foothill
was papered with freshly printed bicycle fliers.