She lined up the family of dolls on an afghan covered sofa and stood back to admire her work. There was the Mama dressed up in her ‘going to church’ outfit wearing her ugly comfort shoes. Papa was scowling, holding his briefcase in front of him as if to ward off bothersome children. The little flaxen haired doll, Benny, was holding his arm back as if to throw a baseball. Beautiful little Jenny was wearing her pink smocked party dress and black patent leather shoes.

She noticed their clothes were getting a little rumpled, so she’d have to wash and iron them. Their heads were beginning to loll on their chests so she planned to reinforce them with rods to stand straight.

Oh yes, she was proud of her little tableau of dolls. But what was she going to do about that rotten smell emanating from their bodies?

We crept around back, weapons drawn. I pressed my body against the cool rusted metal, and waited for a sound. A cough came from behind me. I turned to glare at my younger sister and her best friend. Although they were undoubtedly scared shitless, they looked ready. I couldn't believe I'd let them get dragged into this. Ursula should be in college with a backpack slung over her shoulders talking about Voltaire and Beccaria, not in the wilderness with a gun in her hand. This was my job.

I heard stirring within the house. A sob, undoubtedly my son's, was muffled by the rummaging. I started forward, but someone forced me back. I turned. "What the hell are you doing?" I hissed over my shoulder.

"Stop," Paxlyn's voice was soft. "If you go in, she's going to kill you."

"That's my son! I have to!" I growled.

"Take it from someone who has seen their parents killed in front of them. That's not a memory you want him to live with."

I wanted to kick her, but I knew she was right. She and my sister had been with me since my son was born. It would be pointless to turn on them now. My sister's friend stepped around me, her purple hair flying in my face. She pressed her slender body around the edge. I could hear the woman barking orders at her daughter now. "Put him in that cage right there and hang him outside."

"Yes ma'am," the girl responded.

From where I crouched, I could peer into one of the broken windows. The woman's daughter was leading my son into a cage. She was no more than eleven. Her orange hair flew everywhere and she obviously hadn't eaten in a while.

"Come on," she murmured softly to my son. "Everything will be okay if you get in here."

My son obliged complacently. My eyes teared at the sight of him. He was still wearing the grey shirt with the firetruck he was wearing when my wife dropped him off at daycare. He was relatively unscathed besides a few cuts, probably from the broken glass on the floor. He had a red sucker in one hand and a yellow model car in the other. He had managed to get mud in his hair and smear it on his jeans. From the looks of the girl's tattered jeans, she was probably playing with him. My throat began to close from my sobs.

My sister placed her hand on my back. "It's going to be okay, Malcolm. You'll get him back."

I nodded. "Just wish Gloria could've come too."

Ursula stifled a chuckle. "That would not end well."

I smiled but in the corner of my eye, I caught sight of the bitch who'd taken my son. She was a redhead like her daughter. I had seen her many times, but I'd never forget this time. She wasn't facing me, but I could see every detail of her from the number of wrinkles on her forehead down to the last mole on her hairy chin chin. I clutched my gun tighter. That bitch was dead.

"Chelsea! What did I tell you!" she screamed, landing three hard strikes on her daughter's back. The girl writhed in pain. "Put him out now or so help me-"

I shot her in he leg, cutting her tirade short. Both kids screamed but I couldn't wait any longer. No one should go through that. Paxlyn entered through the front door and calmed the kids down. Chelsea, though not as hysterical as my son was, sobbed into her. "Mommy didn't mean it! It was my fault."

"No it isn't," Paxlyn assured her. "You didn't do anything wrong."

Ursula and I came in behind her. I had put my gun away, but Ursula still clutched hers. At the sight of me, my son sprinted to me and thrust himself in my arms. "Daddy, daddy! I wanna go home! I promise I won't be bad anymore!"

"You aren't bad."

"She said I am!" he pointed to his captor, who was struggling to get to her weapon, which was on a table on the other side of the building. 

"You aren't bad, Curtis. You're very good," I assured him again.

"Promise?" he said, holding out his little pinky finger.

I smiled and wrapped mine around it. "I promise."

"Daddy, I broke Mommy's thingie. The one with grandma in it."

"It's okay. We got most of her off the floor."

He was beginning to cry. "Will Mommy be mad?"

"No, Mommy won't be mad."

He yawned and put his sucker back in his mouth. "Okay. Can we go home now?"

 "Yes, we can go home now."

"Wait, what will happen to Chelsea?"

I turned back to look at them. Paxlyn had calmed Chelsea down and was holding her in her arms. My sister had pinned her mother, who had developed a few bruises along the way. Her weapon was in her back pocket. Blood was still slowly squirting out of her leg, but it didn't seem serious.

"I don't know, Curtis."

"Can she stay with us?" he asked with a grin."

"I don't know. We'll just ask the police when they get here, okay?"

As if on cue, the sirens from the cars began to grow from a faint background noise to a loud roar. They screeched to a stop and teams came out of the woodwork to make sense of the scene. My son and I stood outside watching as the officers ran in and did their work. From among the chaos, I heard my wife scream, "My baby!"

Next thing I knew, my son was yanked from my arms and smothered in his mother's kisses. She fussed as she inspected him, patting his head and griping about his clothes, all while swearing to never let him go. Some of the police officers watched her with slight smile. We were two of the lucky ones, and they all knew it.

I have a lifelong fascination with the ocean and now live in a small seaside town. My husband and I used to take picnics and spend most of the day at the beach standing in thigh high water, casting surf fishing rods to catch flounder and whiting. It was such a beautiful way to spend the day on our cinnamon colored sands with the cerulean blue of the white capped waves and the salt air on our cheeks.

For bait, we would catch sandfleas, which are not fleas at all but a type of crab that lives in wet sand at the water’s edge of our beach. We would wait for the waves to come in and then use a long handled net to catch the crabs going out with the flow of the water. The sandfleas are about a half inch to an inch long with no claws and they don’t bite. They breathe by gills and can live out of the water for a few hours to a few days. We would put them in a bucket with wet sand and use them to bait our hooks. Many good fish dinners came out of our partnership with sandfleas. I picked the name sandflea because it evokes such warm memories of our days in the sun.

The hunter in the tangled thicket looked out through bloodshot eyes at the forest clearing. He felt his anger boiling up from his cauldron of festering rage. Why did his father dislike him so much that his only childhood memories were of beatings and scathing remarks? He still had the scars that his father had inflicted. Even his mother hadn’t wanted him. Sometimes, she even sent him to bed without supper for no reason at all. Now that he was no longer a child, he could finally get back at all those who had caused him grief. His world was a dark, foreboding place as he tried to keep his escalating insanity in check.

A young woman was kneeling on the yellowed grass in the open space, picking wild strawberries and humming a little melody. Why should she be happy when he was so miserable? He took careful aim with his rifle, imagining she was a rabbit, and shot her in the back. She moaned as she flailed her limbs, trying to survive as she gasped her last breath.

The huntsman smiled to himself as he pondered his name, Chase. It was such an appropriate name for one who preyed on others. Running over to his young victim, he prodded her with his rifle but she didn’t budge. He wiped the saliva from his toothless mouth, slung her over his back, and headed back into the forest to the little dingy cabin where he lived.

“Ma! Pa!” he yelled, still trying to attain their approval after all this time. “Here’s another one for the barbie! Stoke up the grill!”

To be unhappy...

Most say it's bad.

I say it's fire, the sort that burns in your belly.

The same fire that got the Titanic halfway across the ocean and right into the middle of a gigantic-fucking-ice-berg.

What drives a man more than complete misery?

Where he goes, that's tough to say.

But the point remains.

I haven't seen her in years. But I still remember the old lady, with her short, unkempt hair under her blue newsboy cap, her bulging middle outlined by her ill-fitting vest and her bell-bottom jeans. I remember the shopping cart she pushed down the streets, always circling around the same ten blocks. The rainbow flags in her cart stood out most of all, and thus we dubbed her the Flag Lady. No one actually knew who she was, where she came from, or where she lived. No one talked to her, fearing instability, scared that she'd lash out at them. She was crazy, and not worth anyone's time.

There was a time Flag Lady wasn't such a suburban legend to me. I first saw her when I was three, and she seemed so fun with her rainbow flags. I had no idea what the flags meant, but I would beg my parents to buy one, always pointing whenever she passed. After all, rainbow was my favorite color. Flag Lady ignored me, used to the stares and the pointing, and my parents ignored me, not wanting to approach someone mad.

As I grew up, like the other school children, I endlessly taunted her. My friends and I would come home from school, racing to the end of the street, our mothers half a block behind us, taking their time gossiping. And as we stood at the corner, we'd see Flag Lady, pushing her rattling cart across the street. Always at the same time, always down the same path. Our laughs would fall into a hush.

At least, for the first few months. The hush would become quiet sneers, and after another few months, loud jeers. We were eight years old, obnoxious, and influenced by everyone's ideas of her being crazy. Our mothers, who were far behind, assumed we were talking to an imaginary being. By the time they reached us, Flag Lady would be gone. They would never see her, acknowledge her.

Once in fifth grade, one of the boys I used to walk home with whispered to me that he knew the secret identity of Flag Lady. We both made excuses to go to the bathroom, and our dismissive teacher let us both go, not questioning why we'd want out at the same time. We met in the hall, and he told me a tall tale he heard from a friend of a friend of a friend. He told me Flag Lady was secretly very rich, but she had married a man and then hurt him since she was so crazy. The man took all of Flag Lady's money, sold their house, and ran away. Clearly, he was in the right. The rainbow flags should have warned me of the inconsistency, but I still had no idea what they meant, living sheltered in my shallow, self-centered existence. Not for a moment did I question the story, not even when my teacher came out to the hall and caught us, telling us that ten-year-olds shouldn't be talking about such things. 

 For seven years, I saw Flag Lady roam the streets. I heard crazy rumors about her pushing someone down the stairs, or running someone over with her shopping cart. They got crazier and crazier, and eventually, her name became Crazy Flag Lady. And then, she disappeared. It was as if she fell off the face of the earth, and out of everyone's memories. She wasn't worth it, nor were her rainbow flags.

A failed attempt

A nosy so-called "friend"

Who interrupted

Your desired end

Now plodding through life

Lost, empty, and alone

All you can think of

Is wanting to be gone

my mother taught me how to stand up for myself. she taught me how to give speeches to rooms of hundreds with shaking hands, I learned to throw my voice off any wall I stood near. 

she told me eye contact is the best way to speak to someone. you don't need a heartbreaking story when eyes can reach people deeper than words will ever be able to. 

she taught me how to present myself, how to show somebody that I have something to say. my words are just as important as any they'll ever read. 

she told me that if I speak clear enough, stare hard enough, if I throw my words at anyone who is willing to listen, 

I will find somewhere to stand. 

but when I was fourteen she told me not to use my words. she took back every lesson she had taught me about throwing my voice across rooms to reach anyone I could. 

After being told to present myself in a way that demanded attention, I was told to back down, "step back, don't say that." she told me I was using my words wrong. I had chosen the wrong cause to stand for. 

After years of learning the importance of eye contact. I was told to look away. "don't look at them, stop staring." she told me eye contact made me seem defensive. I used to give my words to anyone who would listen, tossing them around in desperation. 

Now I'm saving them, giving them to those who need them, throwing my words like lifeboats to the drowning. 

I found somewhere to speak, and here I am, still standing. 

Skinny yellow hound dog

stinky breath and flea infested

wears a red bandana

and stays by old man’s side.

He thinks he’s the boss

won’t come when called

opens one eye to see

old man asleep in chair.

Dog keeps guarded watch

throughout the night

but daylight brings truth -

master doesn’t breathe.

Now hound dog walks alone

along the rocky shore

to lie across master’s grave

devastated on frozen ground

howling at top of lungs

begging to be with owner,

chasing rabbits in the sky.

In seventh grade this girl form the west

Started a first day at school

Her accent was strange, she tried to be cool

And fit in like all of the rest

Our very first year integration was here

Guess all of us were nervous

Bus drivers running here to there

And those in the kitchen who served us

First time she saw black combs with fists

Stuck in the back of hair

Dark skin and kids in little clicks

She knew it was rude just to stare

She took a good lickin' at recess

She was chasing a friend in the yard

Bumped into a kid, whose gang then hid

In the bathroom they hit pretty hard

Don't get me wrong, this aint a sad song

No storm will last forever

We changed our clothes in locker rooms

We exercised together

Well we grew up like little pups

Fluffing our feathers and "bowing"

It's time to relax

What's past is past

Let's look now at where we are going