Breadcrumb #6

Dallas Rico

I warned Art that my sister, Sophia, would be in town this weekend and that I planned to spend most of it with her. Yet, not 15 minutes after she and I arrive at the bar, he’s blowing up my phone with a barrage of jealous texts and outrageous voicemails.

     I set my phone on silent and l drop it in my handbag. It’s our monthly “Girls' Night Out” and I’m determined to keep him from ruining it. As I stare at the small-scale Ferris wheel spinning against the wall, Sophia asks me what’s wrong. I hate how she can read me like a book.   

     “This place is way too crowded,” I say, still looking at the Ferris wheel and sipping my rum and Coke. In the corner of my eye, I see her giving me a look like she knows that’s not what’s really bothering me. Thankfully, she doesn’t press the issue. I resist the urge to look back at my phone. He’s probably sent me, like, 51 texts by now. But, I don’t care. I’m not going to let him ruin another night.

     Sophia orders us both whiskey sours, though I’m not even finished with my first drink. We talk about what's going on in our lives but I make sure to avoid mentioning Art. And she doesn’t ask. She’s never made an effort to mask her disdain for him. As we talk, a guy approaches us and orders us more drinks. We let him join our conversation. Little by little, I drink the second whiskey sour he got me and my anxiety over Art intensifies. I succumb to the temptation to look at the cracked screen of my phone.

“I succumb to the temptation to look at the cracked screen of my phone.”

     “That's it. I'm done!” This message has appeared on my screen so many times before that now it’s lost its impact.

     “Look. I told you I was going to hang out with Sophie tonight. Deal with it,” I reply. I’m sick of his shit. I slam my glass on the counter, grab Sophia, and head to the dance floor. The hours fly by as we dance the night away amongst dozens of sweaty bodies. When the crowd dies down, Sophia suggests we check out this new club that’s got great Yelp reviews. I check the time on my phone and see Art hasn’t texted me back, which worries me.

     “I'm sorry, Sophie. Do you mind if we stop by Art’s place first?”

     “Do I have a choice?” She crosses her arms.

     “Please. It'll just be a minute.” I give her a pleading smile. A beat later, she lets out a long sigh of exasperation.

     “All right. I guess.”

     I stagger to the car, which prompts her to take my keys so she can drive. On the way to Art’s apartment, she asks questions I don't want to answer. Like what do I see in him and do I see us getting married. I ignore them and urge her to drive faster. Once we arrive, I practically jump out the car and scurry to the door. She waits in the car. He doesn't answer when I knock, but, thankfully, I have his spare key.

     My anxiety spikes when I open the door and don’t see him playing Xbox in the living room. I call out his name. “Art?” No response. My heart stops when I find him in the closet. My mind slowly processes the image of his limp body hanging by a belt from the ceiling. Oh my god! I can't breathe. I feel weak. Everything fades to black.

• • •

Breadcrumb #5

Bob Raymonda

The foundation of the castle sits just beneath the surface of the lowest cloud. Windows of varying shapes and sizes peek out from all along the spires. Wanda’s small green legs sprout out of the lowermost windows and she wiggles her toes enthusiastically with the wind. If she had had a mother, she would tell her that it feels like dipping them into marshmallow fluff — much less airy than one would expect. She giggles to herself and sits like this for hours until her caretaker enters the room (one of the unused storage areas in the basement) and chastises her for her carelessness. “Wanda June, get your feet inside this instant.”

     The caretaker is an old B376TT9 model and has been with Wanda since she was born. His joints creak as he kneels to pick her up. “Oh, Tin-Man,” she laments, “why don’t you ever let me have any fun?”

     The robot tilts his head to the left like a dog that has just been caught nose deep in his master’s dinner. “Wanda June, you know I don’t know what that means.” Tin-Man locks the door behind them after they’ve left. She is slumped over his shoulder, and her stomach is tied up in knots.

“The robot tilts his head to the left like a dog that has just been caught nose deep in his master’s dinner.”

     “I can walk myself you know.” She stares at the robot’s rusty back and sticks her tongue out. He continues his ascent up the spire’s steps none the wiser.

     “Wanda June, you are not permitted to walk unless you are wearing your protective suit, which you know as well as I,” Tin-Man says, setting her down on a chair in the study. Books line the walls, and a weathered VHS copy of The Wizard of Oz plays on a tube television in the corner. It’s one of the few movies Wanda June’s mother left behind in her castle in the clouds, and is how she coined her caretaker’s nickname. It's much easier to remember than B376TT9.

     She pouts as he prods her into her orange kevlar jumpsuit, and protests as he hefts the large fishbowl helmet onto her head. The absolute worst part, though, is when Tin-Man pulls the heavy gravity-inducing boots onto her feet. She hates the way they feel; they make her sweat. She feels anchored to the floor now, as he is, when otherwise she’d be floating through the halls as a ghost might. She lumbers off farther up into the castle, where the windows are reinforced by bars she can’t fit her booted feet through. She looks out into the deep grey sky and wonders at the purpose of it all. Why she’s here, alone, with nothing but an imprisoning space suit and a worrywart of a Tin-Man, who won’t let her realize her full potential. 

     She wonders what it will be like when he stops working. He goads her with the possibility of it every day that he finds her somewhere misplaced, naked, and enjoying the true freedom of the clouds. “Wanda June, someday I won’t be here to catch you before you fall,” he threatens. “And you won’t like what you find below any more than you like this suit I make you wear.”

     But she isn’t so sure that he’s right. Even if the earth is dangerous, isn’t that where her mother went? Isn’t that where the other people are? Isn’t that where Oz was? Maybe someday she’ll find out, she hopes. Maybe someday she’ll be able to read one of the books on the walls of the castle study and what’s inside will teach her how to deactivate Tin-Man and rid herself of her protective suit for good.

     Until then, she waits. She stews.

• • •

Breadcrumb #4

Kim Dietz

Her glassy eyes sulk heavily
As if she is fighting eternal sleep.

She sinks her onyx gaze into the pitfalls of a bleached, white
Dusting, resting atop the perennials along the cobbled sidewalks.

Chapped and splitting fingertips touch the cold glass;
Foggy vestiges of contact reflect inwardly

Red sky in the morning, sailors take warning,
She whispers in a breath to her chest—

An inhale of penitence.  
A storm is coming

Over the horizon through the billow
Of rolling clouds that charge electrically toward her.

She can hear the nearing of the train
A distant, and ascending hum, searing past

From within one side of her head to the other.
The rush of traffic and people and children and waking animals

Wanes in a stone wash
One droned note of passing

Like the haunt of a shadow in her mind’s eye
It disappears as quickly as the morning has returned.

• • •

Breadcrumb #3

Bob Raymonda

A kite floats along the horizon for an indeterminate period of time as they ascend the carved stairway at the foot of the mountain. Droves of people crowd the path, stopping every five steps to take the same two blurred cell phone photographs. The mountain is a tourist trap at this time of year, so they backpedal and choose instead to sit in the grass surrounding the parking lot to people watch.  

     The kite, which seems to have been suspended at the same vantage point for hours, is an unremarkable maroon with a small tail flailing in the wind. Despite its lack of flair, it soars far above its contenders — which are laborious creations built to be more visually striking than practical.

     Two mothers struggling with their adolescent daughter’s impatience lose control over their own inferior box kite. It crashes unceremoniously into a large elm, sporting its early November orange leaves. The first mother stops just at the foot of the tree and tugs too hard to wrestle the thing free and instead allows the string to snap, abandoning it on its perch. The second kneels down so she’s eye level with their daughter and attempts to comfort her and fails. The child’s cries are piercing, but there’s a chaotic temporary passion to them that makes them intriguing.

     He stares at them, amused by their predicament, and she pinches his thigh, laughing. “We’re too far away for you to hear them.”

     He looks back sheepishly. “How can you always tell when I’m eavesdropping?”

    She rolls her eyes and points to the first kite. It’s higher than before, and for a moment blocks out the sun, creating a brief diagonal eclipse. The sky is a brilliant burnt orange as the sun starts its descent, but this small piece of paper and string holds her attention more than anything else has before it. She runs her fingers through his hair, and for a moment, they’re quiet.

“The sky is a brilliant burnt orange as the sun starts its descent, but this small piece of paper and string holds her attention more than anything else has before it.”

     He surveys the rest of the park at the foot of the mountain, searching for the pilot of this magnificent beast. He sees a runner trip over a rock and right himself in seconds flat, and he sees one of the mothers pick up her comforted daughter and heft her onto the other’s shoulders, but no more kite fliers. The maroon outlaw has outlasted its casual competitors. They’ve either lost control like the two mothers, or given up on catching the wind for more than a few fitful bursts and migrated to the small country store a few hundred yards away. They're now perusing cheaply made sweaters sold for fifty times their worth, and sampling fruit preserves touting local labels and foreign ingredients.

     “Hey,” he says, trying to steal her attention from the kite for at least a second, “who do you think is flying it?”

     She looks around in the same sweeping manner as he did before her. Seeing the same lack of pilot puts a smile on her face. “I bet they’re a world-renowned kite flier.”

     He raises his eyebrows.

     “And that to show their face anywhere would mean they’d have to sign autographs and answer questions.”

     She puts her head in his lap and closes her eyes for one moment. He stares into her eyelashes and plays along. “So they hide at the edge of the woods in a public park and fly the least noticeable kite they can find.”

     “But it’s special,” she coos, starting to fall asleep.

     “Because it’s the very first kite they ever flew with their mother,” he whispers, tracing letters into her shoulder blade. The sky’s burnt orange is penetrated by dusk. Most of the tourists are leaving, but they make no move to return to their own car. The kite is barely visible, but still there. “And she taught them how to fly from their house in the clouds.”

     “Who do you think they are?”

     “God.”

     “Or an astronaut.”

     They fall asleep and don’t wake up until the grass is covered with early-morning dew. The kite is nowhere to be seen.

• • •

Breadcrumb #2

Bob Raymonda

The late August evening air was 10 degrees colder with windchill, but that didn’t bother Marcus or Teddy. The two sat at the top of an old Ferris wheel, suspended for a moment as Clyde let on another couple. There was a small space between the two of them, but their hands hung at their sides and their pinkies grazed ever so slightly. Marcus felt electrified. He hadn’t been this close to Teddy since they were standing in line to get their photo IDs taken at the beginning of the summer.

     The sky was burnt orange as the sun set over the carnival. Teddy stared out into nothing and let out an exasperated sigh. “I don’t think I can do it, Marcus.”

     Marcus pulled back his hand and dug his too-long fingernails into his palm. He glared at the back of Teddy’s caramel neck and wondered what it would be like to kiss it. “Do what?”

     Teddy turned to face Marcus and caught his glare. The Ferris wheel started with a creak. “You know what.”

     The ride was in full swing now after Clyde let on the last of their other co-workers. It was the end-of-summer party, and the park was already closed for the year. Teddy would be going home to Atlanta, and Marcus would stick around here and go back to working nights at his mother’s diner. It seemed unfair.

     They both wore the red-and-white pinstripe T-shirts of a games employee. They’d spent the whole summer in stalls across from each other, competing to see who could wrangle in the most customers over the bullhorn. Teddy always won, but that didn’t stop Marcus from goading him on, claiming he was the inferior.  

     “I don’t know what you mean,” Marcus lied.

     Teddy grabbed Marcus’ hand and pleaded for him to look into his eyes. “She’d know. She always knows.”

     Teddy’s mother was a Christian, and she had no patience for what she called his “affliction." She’d caught him with another boy at the end of the summer last year. He never told Marcus about it, but all the park employees knew. She had the boy fired, telling their boss that he had been harassing Teddy for weeks, even though that was far from the truth. Word spread fast — stay away from the boy with the shy brown eyes.

“Word spread fast — stay away from the boy with the shy brown eyes.”

     The ride sped up as Clyde depressed the lever further than he normally allowed it to go. Any other day of the year and he’d be fired for this, but at the end-of-the-year party, anything goes. Marcus slid closer to Teddy by the sheer force of gravity. Their thighs tensed up and Marcus could feel all the blood rushing from his head to other, more urgent vestiges of himself. He grabbed Teddy’s face and kissed him hard on his unseasonably chapped lips. He didn’t care if he never saw the boy again, or if he lost his job because of it. And in that moment, as the sun set and summer ended, he thought that maybe the Ferris wheel would never stop spinning. And that would be a good thing, because he was exactly where he wanted to be.

• • •