Cleaver

by Huina Zheng

The first time I sleepwalked, I was seven. I only know because my mother told me later. She said that one night, while the whole family was asleep, I got out of bed barefoot and walked to the front door. My fingers twisted the metal lock again and again. Click, click. In the silence, it was loud enough to wake them. She grabbed my arm; my father dragged me back into the living room.

“Where are you going in the middle of the night?!” he shouted.

I kicked and thrashed. He lost his temper and slapped my back. I started crying. “Why did you hit me?” That’s when they realized—I’d been sleepwalking.

After that, it became a worry. They tried red thread on my wrist, calming soups, even tucked a yellow talisman under my pillow, but nothing worked. I’d still get up at night, drawn by something, always toward the door.

Then an uncle from the countryside visited. After hearing the story, he tapped his cigarette and said, “Put a cleaver under the bed. Blade out. Spirits fear steel.”

My mother hesitated. She never believed in that kind of thing. But that night, she slid the heaviest cleaver we owned beneath my bed. Its cold weight pressed against the wooden slats like a silent warning.

Strangely, it worked. I never sleepwalked again. The cleaver stayed there for eleven years. Sometimes I’d crawl under the bed just to look at it. Its blade gleamed dully in the dark, like a closed eye.

Before I left for college, my mother knelt beside my bed and reached underneath. She pulled out the cleaver, wrapped it in old newspaper, and handed it to me. I held it for a moment. The outline of the blade pressed through the paper. Weapons weren’t allowed on public transport. Dorms did inspections. “I can’t take it,” I said finally, and slid it back. She didn’t argue. Just sighed, and looked away.

That first night in the dorm, I woke in the hallway. My hand was on the fire door. The metal was cold. At the end of the corridor, the emergency light flickered green. My shadow stretched across the floor. Behind me, my room door hung open.

And in that moment, I remembered the cleaver under my old bed. But here, there was nothing. Just me. And a door that would open with the slightest push.

━━━━⊱༒︎ • ༒︎⊰━━━━
Huina Zheng, a Distinction M.A. in English Studies holder, works as a college essay coach. Her stories have been published in Baltimore Review, Variant Literature, Midway Journal, and others. Her work has received nominations three times for both the Pushcart Prize and Best of the Net. She resides in Guangzhou, China with her family.

 

Legacy

creative nonfiction
by Lev Raphael

When I wake up at 3am these days because of chronic pain in my knee or neck or hands, I think about my late mother in the morning. She died in 1999 after a long illness and she hasn't left. I see her everywhere, but especially in the morning. Her morning.

Auburn hair well-brushed, she would sit quietly in the L-Shaped Washington Heights kitchen with her back to the window as if she wasn't ready to engage with something as simple as the view of another six-story, cream-colored brick apartment house built in the Thirties. Or the small bowl of cottage cheese that waited for her spoon.

Reading The New York Times that my father had brought before he went to work, she would have a cup or two of instant Nescafe, take aspirin for her arthritis, and smoke her first Pall Malls of the day while she put herself together. The Yiddish words she used to explain it—"Ich muss mich zusamenstellen" literally meant "I have to assemble myself" and the phrase always seemed both weighty to me, and a little comic. In her red-and-white robe she might have been a human stop sign. STOP. Construction Zone Ahead.

I never thought of her as anything other than "together." Brisk, highly-educated, fiendishly well-read and speaking French, German, Russian, Polish, English and Yiddish, she was quick in her judgments and firm in her opinions. In the Nixon era she dismissed him as a fascist and said that a speech by his vice president Spiro Agnew was "like Stalin on a bad day."

She was in her sixties when her fingers started becoming gnarled and painful because of arthritis and she would gaze at them and sigh, "Getting old is miserable."

In my sixties, and after various surgeries, I feel far less "put together" than I was ten years ago, I can't help but agree with her. I don't smoke, but I have many pills at breakfast and can't even get to them or food before a few cups of coffee to clear my head. And I often have cottage cheese for breakfast, though mine is organic.

My fingers aren't twisted, but arthritis has wrecked both my thumbs and one knee. Taking stairs hurts, using certain tools hurts, and sometimes just rolling over in bed at night hurts.

Yet thinking of my mother, hearing her husky smoker's voice in my head, I feel oddly soothed. It's taken me years to realize that I am so much like her: though I don't smoke, I have more opinions than one person needs, I can't get my day going until I read the New York Times and have my coffee, and I speak several languages.

Pain is now another thing that we share.

━━━━⊱༒︎ • ༒︎⊰━━━━
Lev Raphael is the son of immigrants, grew up in Upper Manhattan and now lives in Michigan.

 

My House Smells Expensive

by Kali Abel

I caught the tail end of an Instagram ad this morning. “Make your house smell expensive!” it said, showing a small, white, plug-in cube, like an oversized Altoid in an outlet.

Make your house smell expensive. Oh, my house already smells expensive. Let me tell you how.

It smells of the dog’s morning breath, the only morning breath I can stand. The dog who cost me $1500 in vet bills two months ago when she tripped down the stairs, tore a nail, and then the scar tissue caused it to grow back deformed warranting its removal.

It smells of my daughter’s wet gym bag and her disdain for my advice that she needs to remove her wet cleats from the bag itself, not leave them in the trash bag I had advised she carry the previous month. It smells like $5 of Febreze and whole new sports bag for her birthday, on the heels of that brand new lacrosse stick. My advice, however, remains irritatingly free.

It smells of books, thirty or so from the library, but many more that were bought. It's an addiction that no one would dare fault me for, and if they did, they could be prepared to smell my wrath up and down the halls.

It does not smell like the dinner I thought my husband would make me for Mother’s Day. He was tired and playing a video game on the console I bought for $1,000 a few years ago as his Christmas gift.

It smells like laundry. The clothes worn once by one child before being washed, and the clothes worn 25 times by the other child before she is told they must be washed. It smells of detergent and the fresh ink of the water bill as the water heater clicks on for their meditatively long showers even while the washing machine still whirs.

Oh, my house smells expensive alright. Expensive in countless ways depending on the day, whose birthday is nearest, which holiday has most recently passed, and what the temperature is outside. So with all due respect, Instagram, you can take your oversized Altoid mint and shove it in your own socket.

━━━━⊱༒︎ • ༒︎⊰━━━━
Kali Abel is a political ecologist and professor at the University of Portland. She is much friendlier than she sounds in this particular piece......usually.

 

Behind Every Man

by James C. Clar

Isabelle had never been prouder of Edward. He looked magnificent in his elegant suit. Everyone commented as well on his magisterial bearing. He was, finally, the center of attention; attention that, in Isabelle’s opinion, was his due. Nor was Isabelle being ignored since the goal of everyone who entered was to be seen with her.

Edward was, of course, in the limelight because of her and the three drops of colorless liquid she had placed in his martini last week. As the mourners passed, Isabelle basked in the glow. It was true. Behind every successful man, there was a woman.

━━━━⊱༒︎ • ༒︎⊰━━━━
James C. Clar is a teacher and writer who divides his time between the wilds of Upstate New York and the more congenial climes of Honolulu, Hawaii. Most recently his work has appeared in Bright Flash Literary Review, Sci-Phi Journal, Antipodean Sci-Fi, Freedom Fiction Journal and The Literary Fantasy magazine.