The Official Caleb J Ross Homepage

Eric tosses night-glow emergency phone number magnets at a 1970’s retro avocado-green fridge, hard enough to rattle the rebuilt compressor. “Rebuilt” used loosely; he brags weekly of having fixed the botched part, defending his neophyte mechanic’s talents by blaming
subsequent failures on untouched pieces.

History: Michael has crammed the life of a 40 year old into his 8 year frame. His mother lactated ketamine, drowned his corn flakes in bourbon, and where other mothers christened kindergarten lunchbox napkins with “I Love You”s, Michael’s sent reminders to lift cigarettes from the 7-11 on his way home from school.

Max’s father was probably the frat boy who fucked me on a dare. I remember his loose jaw, the way it flapped, guided by so much alcohol. Max has the same way about him. They share eyes, too, always spinning and barely open. After, he hi-fived his roommates, and I went back to the bar, unsatisfied. But the glow had already been planted.

She wears ironed cotton now when addressing her followers, and pressed jeans, skirts when the weather allows, but not today; she has a meeting in Cheboygan. Clothes, shifts in weight, her diet, hairstyle, the pauses between breaths; these are the syllables to her narrative.

He’s been out of anti-depressants for two weeks. He’s been out of various other things for longer periods of time—rubber bands, staples, relationships—and it’s never bothered him much, but “being out of anti-depressants,” he says, “tends to depress a person.”

His neutral expression reminds her of a blinking cursor | | | ||| | | awaiting input, a spaceholder for impending | | ||| | | | emotion. His full cheeks the (parenthetical wrap) around colon : eyes and a bored, backslash \ mouth. She tries to coax nuances from him, massaging his earlobe, letting her fingers navigate the subtle ripples of his stomach. He might as well be dead. She imagines this for a moment, her face falling to her own version of a blinking | | | | |||| | | | cursor.

Mrs. Bellin’s husband strips away his amiable social veneer at night to accessorize his wife with welts and purple flesh, like an eggplant leather exterior. “Hitting me only where nobody can see the marks,” Mrs. Bellin says. Tiny Brian’s father returns some nights, when his mother leaves for bar therapy among fellow domestic targets, to make sure his boy knows how to be a man. Taking a few smacks is a manly thing to do. His father surveys the refrigerator, leaves, promises to one day come back for good.

“Who taught you to be ashamed of us? I want to know.
Society, dad.
They take everything from us, don’t they?”

If pressed Lori might remember her mother’s eye color, but distance has dulled the hue. Blood doesn’t translate well through telephone lines.

The medical tent stank of baked flesh and the wasted effort of sterility; bleach puddled dirt into mud while ammonia sat in open buckets just feet away, its fumes warping the air. The suction of each chemical step—heal, sink, toe, heal, sink, toe—failed to drown the ambient moans of the dying. Lowell stepped past an unconscious man, his sweat and blood boiling to the surface of his skin in the trapped heat under the canvas tent. Outside too, the sun tortured survivors.

Within a single heartbeat, a body goes from one of the Earth’s residents to just one of its craggy imperfections.

I don’t need something as complicated as god in my life. Give me a bible and I’d pawn it for a blanket. Though no one would be stupid enough to let go of a blanket.

Her father embraces fresh cigarettes with a longing romance Caroline yearns to share. She will learn the ways of capture. Until then, she studies her father’s spent filters for the transcripts of love.

When Samantha Gregory woke up one morning from unsettling dreams, she found herself buried beneath her own artifacts.

He’s navigating a labyrinth of sound; his hands aren’t thick enough over his ears to keep the blame from his head. He asks what they want. Finish our prayers, they say.

He removes stains for a living, those left by dead bodies. When a heart stops, his wife gets cable for another month.

Sick, that’s the term I’m told to use, like it’s supposed to work on me, grating away at preconceptions. Because being sick implies a cure. Simply being fucked up implies a lost cause. The jargon changes. Social Anxiety Disorder some days. Cardiac neurosis. Even agoraphobia. My files say that I have an idea of perfection coupled with a crippling fear of attaining it.

Tiny William guts his jeans, skins them down to the lint. His father surveys the emptied contents, warns the boy of lying to his father, and demands that he empty his mouth as well. Tiny William opens and offers upon his tongue a tiny ball of salivated beige tape.

It is the routine, I believe, of the packing, then the leaving to somewhere new, then the returning home refreshed that matters most to mom. The vacation itself is just something that happens between fresh starts.

Sometimes I go out on the weekends without my wedding ring. I’m not hunting for other women, but conversation tends to be so much simpler if they assume I am. Other times, I think, I forgo the ring as an invitation for misery.

You think it’s true, that bugs eat anything with protein? Guess they could feast on my sheets at home. Oh yeah, I’ll need your help with those, too.

The Eye’s hair grows long and tangled. He avoids mirrors, still water, and recent photographs, not out of fear for what they might reveal, but because he believes that nothing trivializes progress more than a reflection.

How the bald man with the needle in his median cubital vein said he found God felt like what a rape would be if afterwards the woman zipped up her pants, fastened her belt and said, “thank you, I’ve been so busy lately.”

Photographs leaked of the old man’s wounds. Durzenkya turned public outcry and protest into support by claiming that the bruises were “welts where ideas have lashed this man.”

If we tell ourselves the culprit sits right there, in front of us all, then we’re free to ignore our backs. In this place of kindreds the last body part you want to have to protect is one you have a hard enough time seeing sober.

The first morning we met—I remember the rain, soft the way I like it—was a series she later attributed as a fourteen-frame sunrise.

Fault and blame can be forgotten after three steep flights of stairs. Pregnant-lady-take-the-elevator kind of steep. I-said-elevator, holy-shit-she’s-falling kind of steep. A-faked-relief-when-the-child-is-born, but-born-special kind of steep.