I stumbled on the broadcast by chance, a series of disjointed words on an army frequency nearly sixty years old. I was in the Library of Congress’ lab researching radio transmissions for my Master’s. Dusty records, military logs, and the faint smell of old paper surrounded me. I’d grown accustomed to the monotony of it all when the voice broke through the buzz and hiss: “This is Private Lars Holmgren, bravo 2 , 6 alpha . . . Charlie closing . . . need indirect . . . map grid—”
My breath caught. Private Lars Holmgren. That name was familiar—too familiar. My grandfather’s older brother. My mother’s uncle. She told me about him when I was a child. He was a dreamer, she said, the poet of the family.…
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Tailing an unsuspecting fugitive on Route 93, just north of Kingman, Arizona, Maddy passed a wrecked car. The vehicle, an older model, four door, dark green sedan, had settled on its roof, resembling an upside-down turtle. Black smoke billowed, rising into the late afternoon sky. The low, looming sun resembled an overripe blood orange.
“Looks like I’ll have to catch up to Lester another time,” Maddy said.
She pulled her Yamaha motorbike to the side of the road and surveyed the wreckage. “Oh, man…”
A teenage girl crawled through the space where the driver’s side window had been. The two adults looked like mangled ragdolls.
Maddy knelt next to the lone survivor. She had long black hair and multicolored bangles on a badly bruised right arm.…
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“You will be famous,” is the first thing I remember my mother telling me. I had no idea how true that was. I walt through school my shoes squeaking on the floor, a bodyguard on my right, I had no idea what it meant, I just thought he was my friend. Other children couldn’t come near me, I stayed inside and watched them run, even the teacher had left the room. An unfamiliar feeling curled in my gut; I would later recognise it as loneliness. I pushed it away I didn’t know it then but I would be doing that often.
The next few years passed in much the same manner; I think I was about ten when I realised what all this meant. I was in history class, I was related to everyone we learnt about, from presidents of old to Hollywood movie stars, they were all family.…
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I’m not drunk, drunk. Not seeing double, drunk. Not gonna walk in a straight line though. Good thing I’m sitting down. I dunno, it’s been a long weekend. Whose idea was it to go from the bachelor party straight to the wedding? That one’s not on me.
Ow, what just poked me – oh… oh. Oh God, Kyle’s handing me the mic, he’s smiling at me oh my God. I know I’m not the best man but I’d be honored to make a speech. What do I even say? Uh oh, I’m standing up. Here goes nothing…
“Hey, I don’t really have much to say, but Kyle’s been my best friend since middle school and… and I love you man.” People clap. Kyle’s parents are smiling at me. …
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My brother Joe only sees the best of our mother. Whereas I recall her hands flying about my girlish body like angry birds, he recalls her fondly nursing him during his various childhood ailments. He is discomfited by my memories of her because they disrupt the gentle equilibrium he has laboriously structured about our ostensibly shared childhood and the mother who orchestrated it.
My brother ignores the abuses our little brother and I suffered from a petting zoo of perpetrators our mother maintained. She could have protected us, I insist, but she chose not to. Instead he offers the bromidic consolation that “she did the best she could” and he bristles at my retort that “her best wasn’t good enough.” We both agree that the lousy choices she made in life rendered her dependent upon the very men in her life who immiserated all of us.…
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I’m going faster than the signs limit, but slower than the other cars barreling through the toll plaza. Before I even see it, a car is right up behind me, that’s how fast they’re going.
As soon as they’re past the concrete divider after the tollbooth, the car darts over to the right to pass me. But the lane to their right merges into their lane and that lane is occupied by a semitruck. The car is caught unaware and has to slam on their brakes. Then the lane now occupied by both the semi and too-fast car pours into my lane. I use this lane every day because the other lanes merge into it. My lane is the safest course through this bonkers toll plaza where everyone is in too much of a hurry.…
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Now that they were gone he felt a little lost. Moving away had been an exciting adventure; but after that, then what?
It was wonderful, of course. They had the same things at home – pastries, coffee, cocktails, small plates – but they were so much better here. The flat white was available everywhere, but nowhere else had invented it.
Yet their being here had made it feel like home, and better than ever before. He had been content in a way he had not realised was missing. So now that they were gone he missed them, and felt worse than he did before.
The rain came from the sea over which they left. It illuminated the grey that the sun had obscured. It would have been better had they not come at all.…
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