What Now?

August 23rd 2024

Sep 18, 2024

Welcome to Cottonwood's literary arts open mic. Our theme this month is: what now?

So, what now? What now is a beautiful and helpless prayer we offer when we know so little.

So what now my friends, what now? Why now and what next and how come and why me?

Perhaps these agonizing pleas transform themselves into prayers that ask for gratitude and transformation by the time they reach the ears of the gentle beyond.

What now? Maybe we can make a little space of peace and sit inside of it for a moment. What now, my friends? What now? Truly, I do not know.

But I have a hunch that you all know.

So welcome, and please tell us and me what to do next and what happens now.

And Whatever it is - I promise to try and welcome it.

Jacqueline Viola Moulton

Open mic night host

Short-throat Chamber (excerpt)

by Danny Schoenfelt

Fiction

There’s a saying that goes like this:

“I wish there was a way to know you’re in the good ole days before you’ve actually left them.”

He didn’t think it in exactly those words, but that’s how it felt as Auggy sat in the worn leather recliner in his dimly lit living room. His only company was the nearly empty bottle of bourbon and a steely black Smith and Wesson 357 Revolver on the side table. The only sound was the clink of ice cubes in a thirsty glass, and the dull click-clack of the brass shells in his hand. The dusty pictures of his two children on the shelf were at least a decade old. The carefree smiles now existed only in picture frames, the years and the lies had swallowed them up and silence was all that remained.

Auggy grabbed the brown bottle and tipped it against the rim of his glass. He caught a glimpse of his reflection in the otherwise blank television screen opposite the recliner. His thinning silvery hair laid in a mess across his weathered forehead. Time had slipped right through his grasp without his permission... He took a long draw of bourbon... The proof was all over his face.

Setting the glass on the shelf, and reaching behind the picture of his daughter, Auggy grabbed an old wooden frame he hadn't touched in years. Wiping the glass with his thumb, the dust cleared to reveal his father's face. Still jostling the brass in one hand and laying the frame on his chest with the other, he closed his eyes and sighed heavily. His mind drifted to what seemed another lifetime, his own voice narrating the memories as if telling the story to an old friend:

It was the morning of my 17th birthday and my dad woke me up early before he headed out to work, saying he had something important to show me. That "something" was teaching me how to shave with a straight razor, the same one I had seen him use almost every morning for as long as I could remember.

My face was lathered up with too much shaving cream. Dad stood behind me as I admired myself in the mirror, feeling like a real man. He gently held my right hand in his, as I gripped the fat handle of the straight blade.

"Nice and easy.... Hold it an angle so you don't cut yourself, " he explained, rotating my grip. "Now stretch your cheek out with your other hand."

I had to give as much effort to keep from laughing as I did to not turning my face into a bloodbath. I managed my way through without even a nick and may have even trimmed a few whiskers.

......

Four days later, I found my father's lifeless body slumped against the toilet on the floor. He had been shaving over the sink basin with the same razor he had taught me to use just days before. Now that razor lay on the floor, with dollops of shaving cream splattered across the marble penny-round tile.

"Dad! Dad wake up!" I shouted as I shook him by the shoulders. "DAD!!"

I panicked, not knowing what to do.

"Mom!"

I heard my mom's oxford heels clack against the wooden steps as she rushed upstairs.

She pushed past me and collapsed to the floor on her knees.

"Frank!" She cried. "Franklin Sybrant!"

She held his face in her hands and slapped his cold cheeks.

"Frank" she said more softly, her voice quivered as reality sank in.

She looked up at me with tears now streaming down her cheeks.

"He's gone, Auggy. " Her voice weak and cracking. "He's gone."

Without knowing exactly why, I reached down and grabbed the straight razor off of the foot. I folded the blade back into the black handle and stuffed it into the front pocket of my trousers. And then I flew down the stairs and out the front door of our house and I ran. I ran as hard and as fast as I could. I didn't feel the grass or even the pavement on the soles of my bare feet. The tears flowed horizontally on my cheeks as I sprinted across the intersection and leapt over the small picket fence that divided our neighborhood from the shore of Lake Michigan. I ran across the pebbles and sand and fell to ground under a tree I had climbed a thousand times. I huddled there, pounding the dirt with my fists until my knuckles bled, coughing and crying and choking on my own spit as I tried to catch my breath.

I don't know how much time passed, whether it was minutes or hours, before I turned and sat with my back against the tree. I pulled the razor from my pocket and rubbed my thumb over my father's fingerprints on the shiny black plastic.

"What do I do now, dad" I whispered.

I looked out at the waves as they relentlessly crashed the shore and watched the water change colors as the sun was setting behind me. I finally stood to my feet and watched my long shadow follow me along the shore as I headed back home.

I walked slowly up the middle of our street, feeling every pebble under my feet. There were two black Plymouths parked in front of our house. My older sisters, Paulette and Susie, were sitting in the porch swing taking turns holding each other and wiping tears. As I climbed the steps to the front porch Paulette jumped up and threw her arms around me. We embraced for a long time without saying a word.

"Suze" I said, brushing her hair from her face. "You okay, sis?"

She only shook her head no as she lay across the porch swing.

It turned out that my dad, Franklin Herbert Sybrant, suffered a major stroke that took his life in an instant at age 46.

I could hear the hushed voices of two men coming from the parlor as I stood on the oak hardwood in the front hall. My father's peacoat hung on the coat tree by the front door and a faint scent of his Old Spice cologne on the collar caught my nostrils. It all seemed like an impossibly bad dream, but as I walked toward the dining room and heard my mother sobbing, I knew it was all too real.

I stood silently and unnoticed in the corner of the dining room for several minutes, unsure of what to say or do. My mom sat in a chair holding her face in her hands and wiping the tears from her cheeks.

"Oh Auggy," she said as she finally looked up at me. She stood up as I walked toward her, and wrapped her arms around me. "You're the man of the house now, Auggy." She said as she straightened my shirt collar and looked at me intently.

"Man of the house." Those words played on repeat in my head. I didn't know what it meant to be a man. My father was the man of the house. Those voices coming from the parlor were from men. My father's friends were men. I was just a boy.

>>>>>>>>>

"What do I do now, dad?"

Auggy mouthed the words as his teary eyes opened and caught a glimpse of

the revolver.

He had pressed the barrel of that gun to his temple more than a few times to get used to the feel of the cold steel on his skin, but he never had the guts to load it. The revolver had been a gift from his ex-father-in-law. Auggy was surprised that his ex-wife hadn't included it among the other remnants of their failed marriage that she took when she left. He had purchased some ammo for it somewhere along the way, but this was his first time having the shells out of the box.

The despair weighed heavier on his chest than ever as Auggy reached for the revolver once again. He sat up straight in the recliner and the picture of his father tumbled off of his lap and hit the floor with a dull thud, sending a crack across the glass. Auggy took no notice as he raised the gun to his head and pressed the barrel to his temple. He forced himself to stare at the reflection of his image in the TV, which had caused him to turn away and shudder in shame many times before.

With tears rolling off of his unshaven chin, his hands trembled as he pressed the release and the cylinder pivoted out of the gun. He fumbled with the shells, but eventually managed to load 6 bullets into the chamber. Squeezing his eyes tightly shut, he rotated the cylinder back into the frame. but something wasn't right. One of the bullet casings clacked against the frame of gun, preventing the cylinder from going in all the way. Auggy opened his eyes, thinking he must have done something wrong. He pressed on each shell to make sure they were seated in the cylinder and again pivoted it back into the frame.

Clunk.

He tried again.

Clunk-clunk... Clunk.

In a moment of stunned relief Auggy was met with the sudden realization that the bullets he had purchased over a decade ago to use in a gun he had never once fired were the wrong size.

He laid the revolver back on the side table, and half-laughing and half-crying he crumpled to his knees on the floor, huddled over the picture of his father.

And in a sound so nearly audible you'd swear he was in the room, his father's familiar voice answered:

"What now Auggy?" he said, "now, you live."

Danny is an aspiring writer, traveler, adventurer.

What Comes Next

by Samuel H. Pillsbury

Poetry

Want to know what comes next

in the story? Of course you do. But then

why the rage about spoilers?

Seems they tell too much, too soon,

meaning there are limits to what we

want to know, and when. Of course

if it’s your story, that’s surely a different

story, you want to see what’s around

every corner, what lurks in every shadow.

Right now. Or do you? To know or

not to know. Hard question.

I ask men I meet in prison if they know

what’s next for them, hoping to learn of their

situation. They may tell me what’s on for

the afternoon. Or when they might

get out.

Some have an MRD, Mandatory Release Date,

the law providing a date certain for freedom.

More often it depends on the Board. The

Parole Board. Imagine that, strangers on a Board

deciding your fate. Who knows what they

will say.

I may ask about their plans post-lockup. To buy

a truck and travel trailer and go from place to place.

To work at the salvage yard, money’s not bad and

fix up cars on the side. Or to hole up in some quiet place

and just read and read and read. I hear their dreams.

I dream that what I write will be widely read.

It could happen. Who knows what comes next?

I know the years ahead will bring less money,

more sick. I need to plan for both. Though death can

come unannounced, mocking efforts to order a life.

In the face of its threat I’ve staked a bet with

Social Security about how long I’ll last.

Put my money down, knowing the odds. It’ll take

seven years to know who wins. Makes the living more

interesting, not knowing.

Uncertainty feeds expectation which pulls us

ahead. Murder kills expectation, just part of its

extinction event. No more anticipation of

growing up or growing old, of birthdays,

graduations, special triumphs. For the dead

what comes next is – nothing. At least

in this world. Forever, nothing.

Incarceration takes expectation by design.

Prisoners know what comes next. Each

day like the last, each week, each month.

For those with sentences that stretch

to years that sound like science fiction,

the future means just more of the same.

I don’t know what comes next for me.

In this way I am blessed.

Lies

by Beth Carlberg

Fiction

He looked over his shoulder at me, a long glint of sunlight highlighting the green of his eyes, making them look brighter. A shade too vibrant to be real. Then the sun dipped lower, deeper into the ocean behind us, and the gleam was gone. His eyes faded back to the dim, grimy green they normally were.

"What now?" I asked, though we both knew the answer.

He shrugged and kept striding down the rocky path, back to our rusted ’97 car below. It was always like this after we finished an assignment. The whole realization that the lies we had made were really just masks. That the people we had spent months being weren't really us, just facsimiles.

But sometimes we pretended so hard it became a half-truth, a quasi-lie. I wanted to kiss him because that's what we had done, pretending to be Bo and Bev Smith of Norfolk, Nebraska, for the last three months. I hated being called Bev at first, but the way Bo said it had been sweet. Not a nickname, but a loving syllable.

But we weren't those people anymore. He was Seamus. I was not Bev. I really didn't like my real name anyway, so he called me Shiloh. Something about Neil Diamond, but I didn't understand the reference.

The world after an assignment felt strange, with just our mannerisms, our strange relationship filling it. My anxiety ticking in my brain, and now I couldn't ignore it because while Bev of Nebraska didn't have anxiety, I did. I also missed the cigarettes Bev liked and the knitting projects she did, the way she and Bo teased each other. But Shiloh didn't smoke, didn't do crafts, and certainly didn't banter with her professional partner, Seamus.

Now was an empty waiting time between assignments, the fall between who we had pretended to be and the next set of lies we accumulated. That's why I started doing this job originally. The money was good, though it was annoying we couldn't use a newer car. But gross, rusty cars are easier to hide, and pretending to be poor was always easier than pretending to be rich. But I started this job because I liked lying.

Seamus had analyzed me and said it was because I was constantly told I wasn't good enough, so I didn't like myself. Maybe he was right, but the point wasn't why I liked lying, but that I liked doing it.

I didn’t mind faking it so people would trust me. As long as they believed the lies I told, I was content.

As we got into the car to drive all night back into the south of England, Bo and Bev had been tourists, Seamus turned to me.

"You liked being Bev too much."

I nodded and buckled my belt. This was the same conversation we have every time.

“You almost didn't kill her."

"But I did, didn't I?" I said, swallowing hard and refusing to remember Sharon's screams as I shot her and shoved her off the cliff. She had been Bev's friend, not mine.

"You need to be less emotional.”

“Like you didn't cry when you shot John last year?”

He flinched at the reminder. John had been Seamus's friend, and that hadn't been a lie. But the Company wanted him dead, so he'd done it. He started the car, and the engine ground against itself.

"We need a new belt," I said, not liking how hunched and wounded he seemed as Seamus, the man who had killed his best friend for money.

I wanted us to be Bo and Bev or Bill and Wanda or Ace and Aria, anyone but ourselves. Maybe Nico and Quinn. Those had been fun. We'd been artists traveling the Spanish coast, smoking a lot of weed, and doing bad paintings. I wore a lot of crocheted shirts and flowy skirts.

He hadn't worn many shirts at all in the heat and had even put in fake nipple rings for the part. I liked the sunlight and the wine and the giggles we shared. Then the dark treck into the cold city and the sharp stab into Diego's back. But Diego had been creepy as fuck, so I hadn't been sad about knifing him. Susan, though, she had been nice. An older lady from Kansas who had never married and now spent her retirement traveling and learning how to cook local cuisine.

I wondered who would take care of her dog now that she was dead. And John, he had been nice too. Quiet. Most Company employees were, but he had taught me how to shoot and Seamus how to do fake IDs. He had been genuinely himself in a business full of liars. I still didn't know why Seamus had to kill him.

“Seamus,” my voice raised up to Bev's pitch, higher than my natural tone.

He glanced at me sharply, as we rumbled over the stony road.

I looked away, bringing my voice down. Though it had a bit of Quinn's lilt to it, I couldn't help it. “We could just…”

“Leave," he finished. His voice was like Bo’s, soft and slurring the vowels a little. No hint of his Irish accent. He cleared his throat. Then, in his voice, he said, "They'd kill us."

Bev's response of "Fuck that" bounced off Quinn's response of "Jesus Christ, yeah." But I shook my head and said what I, Shiloh, wanted. "I'd rather live as myself for a bit and then die."

He jerked the car to a halt. It was a sharp, hard stop. Our seatbelts clicked, locked. We jerked back.

He turned toward me, eyes that sharp, too-real green again, and even though the sunlight wasn't on them.

"Shiloh," he said in Bo's voice again.

"I really don't care," I said in Bev's sharp, slightly shrill voice.

"I didn't think you liked yourself. I thought you liked the lies," he whispered. His voice, but the one I liked best. Soft and low, and almost melodic.

"I love lying," I said in Quinn's voice. But then, in my voice, and all its brittle rawness, "I don't know who I am. I never have. And I want to find out."

I swallowed the hard lump of raw fear sitting there. Fear that he'd hear the real me and despise it.

He sighed long and low. "Seamus isn't my real name."

I wasn't surprised. "Are you even Irish?"

"Yes," he said. He held out his hand. "Oisin.”

I shook his hand firm and quick, like my father had taught me. "Maya," I said, letting the Swedish accent dip into the word.

He looked a little surprised, but blinked it away.

"I prefer Shiloh, though. I never liked my given name."

He smiled. "I'd rather be called Nico myself."

"I thought you really liked that name."

He gripped the wheel with his fists, released it, and looked back at me. "What now?"

For the first time in many years, neither of us knew the answer.

Beth Carlberg is a freelance writer, editor, and journalist. She reads way too many books at one time, and enjoys a wide-variety of work, from poetry to non-fiction.

Frozen in Our Reflections

By Savanah McDaniel

My pen will not move for loose words

interpretable in their meanings

unsituated in solution.

I've seen too much death.

My sleep is haunted.

I no longer want to shut my eyes

and I no longer want to move about a world

content to consume platitudes,

so I sit in my house

scared to leave

to watch us fight

for seats at a table

soaked in our inhumanity

talking about dinners,

all we know to do is eat.

We reject what is inedible,

uneasy, uncomfortable-

situate life in a dining room,

not even the kitchen

where the meal is being prepared

nor any room