SAD STREAK
by Sara Heegaard
Artwork by Lucy Mathews Heegaard
Sad Streak

 

Stir counter clockwise.  Rotate pan after ten minutes.  Real vanilla only.
When Mother felt empty, she baked.  A good pound cake, she taught me,
has only a single imperfection, a sad streak, which is more buttery than
the rest.  To properly bake a pound cake you must master the sad streak.
The secret, she said, dropping her voice, is to take the cake out a bit too
early and allow it to fall into itself.  First she’d eat the edges, then the
middle, saving the sad streak for last.  Father found the sad streak
unappealing, so Mother often ate his portion.  I did not eat. I fed everything
to the dog.

 

 

 

 

THE TANK
by Ian Breen
Artwork by Alexandra Lynch
The Tank_Breen

Barry stood in his dead grandmother’s living room, looking at her fishtank.
There were always two goldfish inside whose names never changed, though
their incarnations did.  Stanley and Mathilda were named after Grandma’s
neighbors from Brooklyn.  The pair had wronged her somehow, long ago,
though the particulars of that unhealing wound varied with the telling.

One Christmas when Barry was seven she came out of the kitchen and found
him staring into the tank.  She squatted beside him and explained that by
naming every new fish Stanley or Mathilda, she kept her neighbors’ souls from
going to Heaven.  As long as new fish replaced old, she said, they’d be trapped.
They’d have to wait until she was in before they passed those pearly gates.

Now Barry was the owner of the tank, the house, and Grandma Joan’s sizable
investment accounts.  On one condition.

 

 

 

 

 

A RED-FACED DRUNK WOMAN
by Elizabeth Earley
Artwork by Lauren Lee
Train

A red-faced drunk woman sat on my lap on the train. It was full and there
were no seats, so she sat on my lap. I panicked for a second but she was
small and dry and sad in a peaceful way that softened me. People stared,
waited. I relaxed and let her sit there. I even braced her with my hand on
her back. She said, “People hate, they hate, but let’s just take care of each
other, fuck it.” A young man standing nearby laughed and looked at me.
“She has a point,” I said.

 

 

 

 

 

—

Sara Heegaard has been eating pound cake since she was three years old.  She believes in ghosts.

Lucy Mathews Heegaard dwells at the intersection of word and image. She creates audio narratives and videos to tell stories of the heart. http://www.studio-lu.net

Ian Breen‘s writing has appeared in The Atlantic Online, Lady Churchill’s Rosebud Wristlet,Roanoke Review, Switchback, and elsewhere, and is forthcoming in Five Chapters and Noctua Review. He lives and writes in Western Massachusetts. He can be found online at www.ianbreen.com