She Rides By Every Day

Her perfume is lovely in the passing

breeze.

She has a husband who never smiles. He makes her wear ankle length skirts, and a frumpy hat that nearly covers her head. She utters not a word when he's near, and moves like a spooked and timid animal to let him pass. I hear her dinners are to die for.

He leaves for work every morning, getting in his Caddy with the dent in the door; it's not new. My friend Madeline, she's a neighbor of hers, lets her keep that bike in her shed. Every morning, not long after he leaves for work, she walks down to Maddy's house and lets herself in to the shed. It's like a different girl emerges from there, as the door swings open and she rides out, confident as the day is long, in that bathing suit and refreshing quality about her. She won't come back until shortly before he's home, and somehow has dinner waiting for him.

We all wish he would go away.

---

Willard Cooper is a self-taught ward of the state.

The Fog

Now it's got patina.

Last autumn I went for a drive to clear the cobwebs. I was driving my Grandfather's old Chief; I loved that car. He sold it to me for a dollar shortly before he died. It was flawless; garage kept for the majority of its existence, there wasn't a spot on it. Beautiful.

I was planning to watch some television that evening, to relax a bit and tune out the stress that end of semester finals can bring. But no channels would come in. So, I decided to take a drive, maybe pick up some fast food on my way home and finish reading the Stephen King book that I'd been working on.

Part way down the road, I found that the radio was picking up nothing but static as well.

I stopped at the Taco Bell and got a Mexican pizza and a nacho supreme and headed home with it, and that's when I noticed the fog.

The fog was like nothing I'd ever experienced. It looked like you could literally cut it with a knife it was so thick. I ended up rolling up the windows as well, because it had a smell that felt like it crawled down into your lungs like a super-strong Menthol cigarette, sticking to everything inside you.

I figured there must be a chemical spill somewhere, but there was no way to know, since the radio and television weren't picking up any stations.

I arrived home, parked the car, wrapped up my Taco Bell goodies so they wouldn't get whatever was in the air on them, and went home.

The next morning the television worked fine, but no news about the fog. I found the morning paper on the porch, and no word was written there of it either.

Later on in the morning, I went out to the garage to mow the lawn. When I opened the garage door, I found the car had aged forty years. Surface rust covered what was once a pristine, well-kept automobile.

No one spoke of the fog. I started bragging about the car's patina, to keep other folks from looking at me strange when I tried to explain The Fog.

---

--Cornelius Hatch, International Pan of Mancakes, or Mouse of Handshakes, or Land of O'Lakes, whatever (quit looking at me)

Vanished!

The last known photo of the boys.

Back in 1935, two boys set out on their bicycles. They took camping gear, some food, a map, and the appropriate tools to service their machines. It was a brisk autumn evening when they kissed their mothers goodbye and set off down the long dirt road that led out of town. They each got a hamburger at the corner diner at the edge of town and stopped long enough to have this, the last known photo of them, taken.

About a week prior to their ill-fated trip, Johnny Lockjaw and Clyde Loveless listened to a radio program that told of the mysterious Changawang. The Changawang is a long-fabled creature much like a loup-garou, or werewolf, but it differs in that it completely erases all traces of its victims after it has dined upon their misfortunate flesh. One account given by the only living soul who had survived the attack of the Changawang, also said that as it prepared to eat him, it worked itself up into such a state of arousal that the victims laugh themselves to death at the sight of it. This further angers the feared Changawang, and fuels its desires and hunger. He survived only by his personal lack of a sense of humor.

Did Johnny Lockjaw and Clyde Loveless anger the bloodthirsty Changawang and find deadly levity in its aroused state? We may never know.

To this day, though, late late at night, sometimes one can make out the sounds of uncontrollable laughter ebbing and flowing in the wind coming from the woods at the edge of town. Johnny? Clyde?

---

Hester Begoris holds a Ph.D in folklore and taffy-making from the University of Maxwell House.

Pickers on My Pant Leg

Her laugh was like sweet music.

One fine day I was walking in the woods by my house, the ones across the overgrown field that used to be owned by Mr. Kooser. There is an abandoned farm house in the back of the field, just before the woods. There are stones in that field, and trash strewn about. 

I had been walking, or rather, parkour-ing, my way through the woods toward the farm house, hopping over logs, swinging from vines, leaping across streams as is my wont to do in order to stay nimble, when my pant legs had collected a coating of pickers. You know pickers, those damned things that stick to your pantlegs. I'm no botanist or naturist, I don't know what plant they're from. Burrs. Whatever.

Anyhow, they were coating my pantlegs. Such a bothersome attachment. I suppose that's how nature chose for them to pollinate, or procreate; they stick to the legs of a hapless traveler, who carries them elsewhere, then they drop to the ground and propagate the continuation of their subgenre in life.

I approached the house and I saw her sitting on the porch step, looking rather forlorn. As I drew near, her eyes fell to the pickers on my pant legs, and it seemed to cheer her. She said not a word, nor did I.

I drew closer and she reached out and plucked one of the burrs from my trouser legs. She giggled. She plucked another; and laughed. She began pulling them from my pant legs with both hands, and soon was teary-eyed and breathless with laughter. Her laugh was like music, smooth and rich, and made my heart flutter. When there were no more to be removed from my pant legs, she looked up and smiled at me, rose, and walked into the house. The door creaked behind her.

After she had gone in the house, I brushed the bits of forestry remaining on my drawers to the ground, and knocked on the door. No one answered. I knocked again. Still no one answered.

A man walked by as I attempted a third knock. My knuckles were about to connect with the door when he called to me.

Hey! He said. No one lives there. No one for five years now. What are you up to? He said.

There was a girl. I said. She was just here.

Girl? He said. There's no girl. Not anymore. There used to be. He looked down the road and sighed. Say the dresses in the closet, he said. He took a deep breath and sighed another sigh. He began walking down the dirt road, looking over once, and nodding. Another one, he said, under his breath, and continued walking.

I looked down at my clean trouser legs, stepped off the porch, and walked across the field toward home. She sure had a nice laugh.

---

--Jasper Handysides

Elizabeth

She'll make your heart flutter, that's a fact, but she'll always be out of reach. 

There have been many days, many days indeed, when I'll have her over to my old farmhouse for beans and rice. We'll have a nice time, good conversation, and often a nice little sit on the back porch swing, looking up at the stars. My heart fluttered. Oh, did my heart flutter. I'd invite her up to my second floor bedroom, the one with the canopy bed, and the energy between us was enough to electrify a whole neighborhood of houses. I'd sit on the bed, heart pounding, and beckon her over. Every time, a look of infinite sadness would drape itself over her pretty countenance, and she would just stare out the window, as if waiting for someone.

Elizabeth, honey, I'd say, please come away from there and tell me what is wrong.She wouldn't say a word, just sigh. Oh the sighs. I could almost see the sadness accompany her breath that fogs the window.

I cannot, she'd say. My heart belongs to another.

My own heart would break each time. But always I pursued her. Dinners of beans and rice. Songs on my guitar. She smiled enough. Until the end of the night, when she brought out that sadness and set it on the windowsill for all to see.

--Horatio Bean