In the late afternoon, everything is hot in my parents’ backyard. My aluminum chair; the stucco house behind me. The cement walkway where my mother in her homemade apron is looking for the old cat. She makes the clicking sound we all do when around our animals, then her own exclamation of pleasure when the cat emerges from the blackberry bush for its dinner. My mother’s back is soft and rounded now, her gait uneven. Nearby, my father is watering the pots of tomatoes, although the leaves are yellow and crumbling. His hands are scarred from skin cancer. He’s taken to wearing a big hat. My parents move before me in their daily rituals, uninhibited in the way people are when they’re with family. With them I leave off being a wife and mother, becoming their child again. We have had forever, but it is nearly gone. My metal seat reminds me of the beginning, when I would burn my thighs on the slide in our first backyard. Once I was locked out of the house. My mother appeared at the glass door, opened it, and embraced me. I wrapped myself around her brown legs like a feline, like a vine. I held on. One day, when my parents are gone, and their house sold, I will be a daughter no more. But for now, I have them and all that is before me — the last warmth of the day, a sun that hasn’t yet set.

Lynn Mundell’s work has appeared in apt, Bird’s Thumb, Fanzine and Permafrost. Her stories have been recognized on the “Wigleaf Top 50 Very Short Fictions” long lists of 2017 and 2018. Lynn is co-editor of 100 Word Story and its anthology “Nothing Short Of: Selected Tales from 100 Word Story.” Learn more about her at lynnmundell.com.

Photo by Lars Blankers

I had an extraordinary hangover and wanted a shower, but the water in the dorm came out brown and rusty.

The bath was an organism pumping liquid into organs: salt bath, hot whirlpool, showers, cool water tanks, and a heart beating in the back: the sauna.”

While we shared kefir and moist poppy seed bread in the park, one of the locals I met scoffed at my complaints. Many people here dealt with bad water or no showers at all, she explained. Locals planned a visit to the banya once a week for their weekly bathing session. It was summer and I was in St. Petersburg, Russia studying poetry.

A few fellow writers and I spent ten or fifteen dollars at the door for a bunch of birch branches, which the bath attendant threw into a bucket to soak. We were also given oversized washcloths as towels. It was awkward at first, dipping into a lukewarm salt bath with women I barely knew, but things soon turned hazy.

The bath was an organism pumping liquid into organs: salt bath, hot whirlpool, showers, cool water tanks, and a heart beating in the back: the sauna. As we reached it, we were handed our soaked branches, for self-flagellation. We sat in the sweltering heat, shyly striking ourselves. I didn’t want to hurt myself and didn’t know what I was doing.

The striking is meant to increase blood circulation, and when the sauna workers saw us weakly beating ourselves, they grabbed the branches and took over. I surrendered, watched the portly woman beat me from all directions. The broken branches clung to my skin like tea leaves.

They didn’t hurt, the branches, which might have been due to the heat: flames danced in the corner and a topless woman stood there, waving a thick blanket to make the flames grow even higher. Suddenly, I felt as if I would pass out and was guided toward the door. We were then instructed to jump into a slender tank of cold water. My toes instinctively sought for the bottom of the tank and water inched above my head. I sprung to the surface, gasping, slithered down the ladder and crouched on a bench, settling to room temperature like a boiled potato.

At this point, the tiny towel was no longer a concern. We were naked and laughing, daring the heat by climbing higher up the colosseum seating, whipping ourselves, retreating into our cool pods.

As I showered afterward, I noticed that my skin was very pale and sloughed off with a few scrubs. I floated toward my locker, clean and euphoric, hovering above the puddles.

Dressed and thinking it was over, we coasted through the final corridors of the banya like cars in neutral nearing the end of their wash. Spat out into a little courtyard of cinderblock, Astroturf, silk flowers and plastic patio furniture, I was met by a woman and her plexiglass display, which read:

Cigarettes, candy or vodka?

Natalie Tomlin’s recent poetry and nonfiction appears or is forthcoming in Canary, Dunes Review, J Journal, The Hopper and Midwestern Gothic.  She lives in Grand Rapids, Michigan.

Photo by Sime Basioli

My sweetheart and I argue about checkmarks. A lot. More than any couple’s therapist might think normal.

She says my checkmarks are written backward. Her tone suggests that this crime in notational marginalia is not just physical, but intellectual, even moral. It’s true that I do make checkmarks with the shortened barb facing the text, not outward towards the margin. I see it as a more precise way of identifying the line or word I want to note for later reference, as if the shortened barb were securing the line in place like a fish hook.

… what I found there startled me. All of my checkmarks had been crossed out. Not just crossed out, but blotted out with heavy black ink. It looked like a classified government document with impenetrable redactions. You could see the fury in these violently hooded checks.”

I read a lot of books, magazines, newspapers, advertisements, calendars and television schedules and with so much information to keep track of, I believe that I have developed a more efficient method of processing that information. The outward-facing checkmark is often ambiguous in placement, leaving the reader to guess if it’s noting any one of three possible lines of text. Such precision is vital, I would argue, especially in this era of rampant fake news and inflated pronouncements flooding the world of print.

The Romans invented the checkmark. They used a “V” for veritas (true) to confirm items on a list including, one imagines, sacks of grain to feed starving citizens, lions imported for the circus games, and rival senators proscribed for execution. Like all autocratic empires, Pax Romana appears to have conquered the known world with meticulous record-keeping as well as hardened Legionnaires.

Over time, the “V” evolved into the truncated slash mark with the barbed tip we all recognize now, as harried list-keepers with inventories massive (see grain for restless mob) and selective (see endangered senators) shortened the left prong. This abbreviation resulted, too, from rudimentary ink pens that needed space on a papyrus scroll to warm up before leaving a mark.

So, it appears that the checkmark’s shortened, outward-facing barb became the universal posture through administrative practicalities and design flaws in writing implements, not some sacrosanct principle of correctness.

But try telling that to her.

She argues that, for her, the problem is not one of efficiency or accuracy, but one of neurology. My backward checkmarks scramble her brain and make her eyes hurt. I’ve yet to see any medical studies documenting this condition, and if I had, you can bet I would’ve noted the relevant data with my surgically precise checkmarks which would just prove my point about the need for graphic accuracy.

You may wonder why she feels the need to comment on my checkmarks. Reading is, after all, a solitary practice, not a collaborative project that requires group planning and compromise. But, we live in different locations and share reading materials on occasion, and I admit that it was presumptuous of me to litter one of her books with my medically-risky checkmarks. So, out of respect for her sensitive brainwave patterns and because I consider myself a supportive partner, I agreed to refrain from defiling her books with them.

Wasn’t that nice of me?

But no, it wasn’t nice enough. She started complaining about nonconformist checkmarks in my own reading material. Rather than change an entrenched and comfortable habit built over decades of reading, I refused to give in. I’ve been flipping my freaking checkmarks for as long as I can remember. I did a little research and discovered evidence of this habit stretching back at least to my college days. A copy of The Iliad from my Classics Lit course has more rebellious checkmarks than Trojan arrows shredding the skies. If I were to change now, after nearly a lifetime of this writing habit, what damage might I be incurring for my own neurological welfare?

The solution was a simple one, of course: I refused to lend her any more of my books. That might sound petty and vindictive, but I would argue that there’s a larger principle at stake here: censorship. Oppressive, controlling censorship.

But I’m a reasonable man. Things came to a head when we agreed to share the cost of a subscription to The New York Review. I was going to let my subscription lapse when it got too expensive. I often shared ideas taken from its pages during our dinner conversations, which my sweetheart appreciated because her job was so demanding that she had trouble keeping up with national and global news, and the latest book reviews. Therefore, she generously offered to split the cost of the subscription renewal. Under one condition: No more delinquent checkmarks.

It was an egregious case of domestic and journalistic blackmail! She was taking advantage of my journal addiction. At first, I refused, even when she wrote a check for half the amount and dangled it in front of me. My checkmark usage was particularly important, even crucial, in this particular journal, as I liked to preview the table of contents and mark the articles that interested me. Regardless, I caved when she threatened to tear up the check. I confess: I sold out my graphic principles.

But not right away. The habit was so ingrained that I continued using backward checkmarks without even thinking. It was just automatic. Then one evening, I was at her house, flipping through a recent edition of The New York Review that I’d passed on to her after reading it myself, per our agreement. I was looking for an article with a quote I really liked. I went to the contents page and what I found there startled me. All of my checkmarks had been crossed out. Not just crossed out, but blotted out with heavy black ink. It looked like a classified government document with impenetrable redactions. You could see the fury in these violently hooded checks.

That got my attention. To be honest, it scared me. I felt like one of those Roman senators who discovered his name on an enemies list of targets. The famous orator Cicero was put on such a list by the conniving triumvirate of Octavius Caesar, Mark Antony, and Marcus Lepidus for daring to oppose their power-grab. His assassins cut off his head and hands, a final insult for his habit of making dramatic hand gestures while giving a speech. Antony’s wife, Fulvia, hated Cicero so much for having suffered his scathing wit that she had his tongue pierced with a needle.

As a result of this disturbing alert, I’ve made a concerted effort to retrain my checking habits. But it’s hard. Really hard. I have to force myself to concentrate, squeezing the pen like a first-grader learning penmanship. After just a half hour of reading and checking, my hand starts cramping, and then I get resentful. But a few deep breaths and some hand flexing calms me down, and I remind myself that over the course of a long, committed relationship, one must make compromises. As Shakespeare says, “Let me not to the marriage of true minds / Admit impediments; love is not love / Which alters when it alteration finds.”

It’s still a struggle to flip my checkmarks, but whenever I catch myself backsliding, I see Cicero’s dismembered hands hovering over the page, a bloody index finger tapping a recalcitrant slash. And when I get an urge to renew the argument, I bite my tongue, which I figure is a lot less painful than a needle.

Tom McGohey is a retired professor who taught composition and directed the Writing Center at Wake Forest University and lives in Newbern, Virginia. His essay published in Fourth Genre was selected as a Notable Essay in Best American Essays and was nominated for a Pushcart Prize.

Photo by Aquachara

I was alone on the elevated train when the gang of teenage boys burst in.

It was a late Monday morning in winter, and the train was crawling through the Bronx, where I lived then during the 70s “New York City is bankrupt, Bronx is burning” era. The South Bronx was decimated, and a daily tabloid had just published a series on its violent street gangs. The editor characterized one with the headline “They Killed for a Quarter.”

These teenagers called themselves writers from the start, asserting their right to be through the pen names they took on, but writ large from a spray can instead of a pen. Like the rest of us, they were probably trying to beat the odds of insignificance, of going unnoticed and being forgotten, of nothingness itself.”

The city’s economic crash had affected me body and soul. I was a newlywed and naively expected happiness to radiate into every corner of my life. But every morning I’d awaken as if pinned under a heavy weight, conscious of my continuing unemployment after six months of searching, unsure of myself and my future as a recently graduated English major. Those days, even entry-level typing jobs in publishing were scarce, and I was beginning to despair. When I entered the empty last car that day, heading towards Manhattan for a job interview, I was wearing black patent leather shoes, a tweed coat and a brimmed felt hat — prim, proper and wildly conspicuous.

“Never show fear,” my older brother Bob used to say, advice I thought ridiculous as a girl because of its irrelevance to my life. Now I heard him urgently whispering those words in my ear as the teens rushed en masse to the opposite end of the car. They were spray-painting every inch of wall, working with purposeful efficiency and what seemed like quiet glee, moving closer to me foot by foot.

I began to argue intensely with myself. “They’re just kids. Maybe I’m not in danger after all,” I suggested hopefully in my most reasoned tones, struggling to stay calm. “Then again, graffiti writers are vandals, subject to arrest, and I’m a witness, which makes me a threat, which might put me in the category to be eliminated. Getting up and lurching through the moving train into the next car will only draw attention to myself, won’t it? And that’s risky. But it’s a chance I have to take. Make a dash for it. On second thought, that shows how frightened you are. Okay, then just get up and walk calmly, but do it NOW!”

And so my internal debate went, what I think of as my “to be or not to be” musings.  I wasn’t ready to shuffle off the mortal coil just yet, but I simply couldn’t act. And so I remained rooted to my seat, pretending to be interested only in my book. Later I recognized the irony in what I was reading: Do It! Scenarios of the Revolution by political provocateur Jerry Rubin. Of course I’d stopped registering meaning the moment the teens entered, for I had suddenly become an unwilling character in an unexpected story, maybe a horror story involving knives and a young victim’s blood gushing over her Sunday-best coat. I raised the paperback closer to my face, hoping to disappear.

Every few minutes, the train stopped and its doors opened, giving me hope that someone would enter. But my attempts to influence behavior with telepathy failed. Anyone who stood on the platform quickly sized up the situation and, wanting no part of it, stepped into the adjoining car instead.

The smell of spray paint was getting stronger. I peeked furtively over the top of Do It! and saw the aerosol-armed teens were within a few yards. Then one of the boys, who looked all of 15, approached me. “This is it,” I thought, my heart pounding as if being played by a deranged drummer. My last moment on earth. I wished I’d never been asked to interview for the editorial assistant job that day, I wished I was back in bed, safe under my blankets of steel. But when he pointed with his paint can to the wall behind my seat, I knew with a flood of relief that he meant me no harm. Hunching, I bent my head low so that he could spray his tag without interference.

At the next station, job done, they all piled out. My siege of terror was over. During what had felt like an hour but was probably ten minutes, no one had uttered a word to me. After my breathing returned to normal and the car gradually filled with other passengers, I felt a bit sheepish for having thought my life was at stake, but not sheepish to the point of self-flagellation — after all, not one person had the nerve to enter the last car, stop after stop. Already I could hear myself dramatically recounting to rapt friends the story of my close call.

Ultimately, what only mattered to those teenagers was using graffiti to claim the car for themselves. During those grim days, graffiti was a visual symbol of social anarchy and urban blight. To spend time in an enclosed space like a subway car covered with spray paint and black marker was to experience the deeply unsettling feeling of being trapped in a netherworld. That atmosphere did little to lift me from the gloom and fright of my joblessness and my eroding confidence in myself and a rational, orderly world.

Today, some graffiti is readily called art and is even produced on commission for public parks or for landlords who recognize its appeal to certain buyers on the sides of their condo buildings. But back then, authorities were waging a war on graffiti that young men —– for the graffiti subculture was almost exclusively male — found ways to circumvent, even venturing into dangerous tunnels.  In graffiti vernacular, the mission was always to write their tags, never their own names, but an alias chosen for personal meaning as a way to assert a new identity.  Often during my interminable job hunt as I filled out applications, I sighed silently as I signed my name. I too wanted a new self, the successful self I felt I was meant to be because the self I knew wasn’t getting anywhere.

It’s taken years for me to answer “writer” when someone asks me what I do, despite the many times that I added my name to a poem or essay. These teenagers called themselves writers from the start, asserting their right to be through the pen names they took on, but writ large from a spray can instead of a pen. Like the rest of us, they were probably trying to beat the odds of insignificance, of going unnoticed and being forgotten, of nothingness itself.

From the tunnel of my memory, I’m pulled back to the dungeons of the Doge’s Palace in Venice, across the appropriately named Bridge of Sighs, and the names that the condemned had scratched or written on the walls, a final act against the looming void. It strikes me that despite their crimes, real or fabricated by enemies (a frequent occurrence in 16th century Venice), the graffiti writers Marco, Giuseppe and Antonio have achieved a poignant recognition. Even now, still legible after four centuries, their names have the power to unsettle and move the viewer. I stared at them for minutes, imagining the desperate need of those men to declare their very being.

Thinking about my slow progression through the low-ceilinged, dank and twisting corridor of that prison and the inhuman conditions the inmates endured, I return to the New York City subway and the depressed era of that ride. Besides the stories of vicious street gangs, I also recall many newspaper and TV exposés about crumbling South Bronx tenements and vermin-filled apartments without heat or hot water along that same elevated train route. I knew these horrors existed less than three miles from where my husband and I lived. Our dark apartment near the noisy el train faced an alley, but was located in what was considered a safe Bronx neighborhood. Despite my near-desperation over being jobless for so long, I knew I would never descend into poverty, and that whenever I traveled on that train through the devastation, I was just passing through.

My interview that day didn’t lead to employment. Eventually, I had a lucky break and landed an editorial job, low paying but providing the career experience I needed for the next job up the ladder. The words dead end, which had begun to turn up in my mind like hangmen in waiting, suddenly vanished.

Recently I’ve been wondering about those boys in the last car. Were any of them highly talented, aspiring artists who planned their designs before sneaking into subway yards at night to sign across the car exteriors? Sometimes the multicolored, baroque swirls of names across the entire length of a train had a startling beauty that stopped me in my rush to board. Being only 21 years old myself, I could feel the exuberance, the youthful declaration of the “I,” the “yes!” defying all the “no’s” that the writers probably faced elsewhere in their lives. Painted over at first, by now all of that graffiti, the ugly and the beautiful alike, has been crushed and scrapped.

I can’t help wondering about the men those boys have since become, and how else they’ve left their mark. Did they try out other identities and, like me, run into some luck on the ride?

Maria Terrone’s nonfiction has appeared in such journals as Witness, Green Mountains Review, The Common, Briar Cliff Review, Potomac Review, The Evansville Review and Litro (U.K.).  At Home in the New World (Bordighera Press), her first essay collection, publishes in fall 2018. Also a Pushcart-nominated poet, she is the author of Eye to Eye; A Secret Room in Fall (McGovern Prize, Ashland Poetry Press); The Bodies We Were Loaned, and a chapbook, American Gothic, Take 2. www.mariaterrone.com.

Photo by Fabrizio Verrecchia