Maria Thomas

Simple Battery

April 9, 2019

New fiction from NER 40.1.

man sat next to me on the tube. Straight away he started talking to his wife opposite us in a quick, large language, and waving his hands about to make his point. So enamored and assured was he of this point that between Canada Water and Canary Wharf, he hit me in the face. That was how this day began.

Wrigley was still dead. I went into work, my cheek screaming, and Anu pressed a wet wad of green paper towels to this tender part. “You should report him,” she said.

“Who?” I said.

“The tube guy.”

“For hand talking? It was an accident.”

“He was reckless, Loraine. It was a battery.”

“It’s probably not that simple.”

[Read more.]

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Valerie Hegarty

Cats vs. Cancer

March 21, 2019

New fiction from NER 40.1.

throw the bandage in the trashcan with the clumped kitty litter. I ask the kitty, both of us lying on the bed on top of the covers, “Did you do your best today? Did you show up and do what you needed to do today?” The kitty rolls lazily onto her back and stretches out her arms and legs like she’s in rigor mortis. She was recently neutered and I rub her shaved belly and mending incision line. She is purring. She is black with long white feet and white front paws, a white chin and half a white nose. “Kitten mittens!” I say rubbing her belly. “Cat jammies! You did a great job today, kitty!” I adjust the icepack under my bra. When I lifted my bra up in front of the mirror earlier there was blood on the outer surgical bandage. I remember the nurses said if I see some blood that’s normal.

[Read more.]

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Noah Bogdonoff

Indoor Animals

January 30, 2019

SCIENCE FICTION.

deer arrives for you in a yellow PT Cruiser. A woman slides out of the atrocious car, her face sun-freckled, her hair sun-bleached. She is no-nonsense about this deer. She says that she found him next to his mother, who was dead by the side of the road, and that the wildlife rescue centers would not take in a baby deer because deer are too common to protect. She says that she has already named the deer; his name is Star Wars. He is no more than five days old.

Will you take him, she asks.

You consider that your dog is named Han Solo and your car is called the Millennium Falcon. It feels momentarily like a collapse of reality: the molecule is smaller and more fragile than the atom. And then Star Wars mews from the blazing-hot cruiser. Eeeeee, he says. Eeee. He is hungry and very cute.

Of course, you tell the woman. Of course we will take the deer.

Thank god, she says, as you approach the PT Cruiser and lift the leggy, terrified creature from the car. Thank god, says the lady again. You are a saint. And then she drives off, and you realize as she peels away that you forgot to ask her who she was and how she knew that you would be the kind of loony to accept an orphaned deer. Eee, says Star Wars.

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Joan Leegant

The Eleventh Happiest Country

January 9, 2019

oi’s old friend from the army, Tal, had been an actor before he got religious and now he wanted to make another film and wanted Roi to do it. An action flick. Tal checked with his rebbe in B’nai Brak and it was all right.

“Whoa, man. Looking like that?” said Roi, waving at Tal’s face—the beard, the peyis spiraling down over his ears, the black kippa. They were at a café on Sheinkin. It wasn’t certified kosher but you couldn’t traife up espresso beans.

Tal had an answer ready right away. He said the movie would be about a former con man who’d found God but was dragged back into crime by his former con man buddies to do one last heist. So he does. It goes wrong and he goes to jail. Or maybe it goes right and he makes off with a pile of stolen cash. Tal hadn’t figured that part out yet.

“How can you make a flick like that?” Roi said. “It would have to have some cheesy ending where the guy sees the light again and gives it all back and comes to his knees in repentance. It’ll be terrible. Shit. I can’t direct shit like that.”

“No, no,” Tal said. His eyebrows were thickly bunched in concentration. Roi hadn’t noticed before how hairy Tal’s eyebrows were. Maybe because now there was so much additional hair in the same neighborhood. “It’ll be a real heist movie with a real heist movie ending. Prison or victory. The fact that the guy’s religious will have nothing to do with it. He’ll just be like all the other scumbags and thieves, only with”—he waved at his face—“this.” He paused. “What?” His dark eyes looked hard into Roi’s. “I’m not asking to film my life questions. No deep meaning here. I promise.”

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