Something to Get Used To

by Kat Beyer

Jenny first found out on that night deep at the bottom of October.

She came home from trick-or-treating early. Her parents were skipping back and forth between bad Halloween movies, laughing, taking turns when the doorbell rang. Jenny was coming down the hall with a glass of milk when she heard her mother talking to a solitary kid.

“Trick,” the kid said, in a voice too old for somebody so small, and Jenny dropped the glass to get to her mom.

On the doorstep the kid stood smiling, while her mother’s head and torso disappeared into the bag in his hands.

Over his head she could see Mrs. Stevens from up the street, standing by the gate with five kids who were waiting their turn. She watched herself think, “this is like so embarrassing,” while she stopped herself from screaming.

She never knew how she knew what to do: raise her hands, snap them downwards, shout the word she didn’t know at the top of her lungs, then turn and race to grab the hall mirror off its hook. She hobbled back with it while the kid stared at her and her mother’s legs kicked over the top of his bag. She braced it against the door and yelled out the next strange word that would force him to look at himself.

He looked. She never saw what looked back at him, but it was enough, apparently. He exploded in a shower of autumn leaves and moldy Tootsie Rolls. Her mother sprawled across the steps with the bag on her head. She pulled it off and blinked.

The kids at the gate stared. Mrs. Stevens stepped from behind them, gently placing on hand on each head and saying, “forget,” in a voice that carried in the suddenly quiet air.

“Pretty good,” she said. “Although I always carry a hand mirror. Cheaper,” she added, nodding towards the hall mirror. Looking down, Jenny saw it was cracked clean across.

They both looked at her mother, who stared at Jenny.

“You should burn that bag,” said Mrs. Stevens.

“OK,” said her mother, dropping it. She added, “my mother-in-law tried to tell me about this.”

“That’s OK. Nobody ever believes it. Then they hit adolescence, and—boom! She can come study with me, if you want. In exchange for yard work or something.”

“As long as she doesn’t miss soccer practice,” said her mother.

“We can work around that,” said Mrs. Stevens.

Jenny sat down on the step. In the hall she could still see the shattered glass and milk on the floor.

“This will take getting used to,” she thought.

Sea of Crises

by Rudi Dornemann

On the news, the replay: L5 station exploding again, ring after ring opening into flame.

Behind me, Ivan threw clothes into a bag. In the doorway, Jill looked down the stairs her friend Sue had just run down.

Ivan shouldered me toward the door and nudged Jill through it.

From the empty apartment, we heard official confirmation: the moon had started targeting earthside cities.

The car met us as at the ground floor. The people from the fourth floor were loading their kids and an antique lamp into their van. Waving, we glided away fast.

We asked; the car told us the moon would rise in twenty-three minutes.

We were OK, we figured, as long as we stayed away from cities. No reason to think this, except then we could do something. As if surfacing from the deepening night, the evening’s first star appeared.

Ivan thought we should turn the radio on, hear the latest. Sue said no use getting all hyped on information.
We left the radio off.

Hours, the three of us rode, tense on the over-upholstered seats. The car gave us the random wander we’d asked for– industrial park cul-de-sacs, interstate frontage roads and ruler-straight deep-country state highways. Past fire-gutted grain elevators, through all-night truck stop diner/adult bookstore/discount firework shack minimall parking lots, down aisles of tall old elms where the leaves were thick enough overhead we relaxed a bit, and realized how tired we felt. Then we remembered the miracle of infrared and the blaze our engine must be making to distant watchers, leaves or no leaves.

By three, we were numb to worry. Ivan and I said OK when Jill suggested hacking one of the surveillance bands. We watched with watchers’ eyes: everything alien, milk-colored, sharp-shadowed. A farmhouse our earthly eyes could barely make out framed four dim embers in what we guessed was the kitchen. Mother, father, child, gathered around the newsfeed. The fourth heat source– a coffee-maker? And not far off, three smudges in the blurry lozenge of a car. We climbed around and traded seats, watching the screen to see if it really was us.

It was.

That spooked us. We turned off the screen, dimmed the controls, listened to wind-hiss and tire-hum.

If the moon sets and we’re still here to see it, we told each other, we’ll pull over and get some sleep.