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Rewind

By Josh Rountree

MONDAY

The dust biker comes into the video store that afternoon looking for slasher flicks. He heads straight to the horror section, not bothering to remove his breathing apparatus, and pulls a couple of classics from the shelf. Friday the 13^th Part III and the original Halloween.

“You like this kind of stuff?” I ask when he hands the tapes to me for checkout.

“Yeah, so?” His voice is a mechanical whine and the desert winds have rendered his gray body suit smooth and practically transparent. I can’t see his eyes through the scored surface of his goggles, but I can feel the edge in the way he’s staring at me.

“I like them too,” I say. “I’ve seen hundreds of them. Slasher flicks, I mean.”

“Yeah, so what’s the best one?”

I don’t even have to think about it. “You ever seen Sleepaway Camp?”

His neck makes a stretching, leathery sound as he shakes his head side to side. “No.”

I sprint to the back of the store, pull the sun faded VHS box from the shelf, and add it to his pile. “On the house. Just let me know what you think when you drop it off.”

“You aren’t charging me?”

“No, just a favor from one fan to another.”

He might be smiling but I can’t see through the grill of his mask. He looms there like Jason Voorhees, silent and unreadable. Dust rides the creases of his suit and he reeks of illegal petroleum. He’s s seven-foot shadow come to life, an abstract artist’s rendering of torn metal and melted rubber pooling along an endless broken highway. He exhales heavily and it sounds like the rattle of failing pistons.

“Do you have a bag?”

I bag up his tapes and he grunts his thanks on the way out the door. The front wall of the store is made of glass and I watch as he starts his bike and speeds away toward the shimmering red horizon.

I hope he likes the movie. (Continue Reading…)

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An Empty Cup

by J.T. Greathouse

1

Eshi the Boy

As for every child of the Islands, when Eshi was born a zephyr descended from the Upper Air to alight on his shoulder. Grandmother Sul burned precious driftwood, inhaled its cinnamon scent, and begged the zephyr to give her grandson the gifts of a healer. There were never enough healers on Eastwind Island, and healers were well regarded and well positioned in life. Eshi’s father, a less ambitious and more realistic man, burned driftwood of his own, but asked only that his son’s zephyr grant a talent for fishing or for hunting, or even for whipping the wind. Practical talents, but more common. Talents the community could use.

Eshi’s mother, too, burned driftwood. Her prayer was the simplest. She asked only for her son’s happiness, and that his zephyr would give him a talent to match his soul.

If not for that prayer, perhaps Eshi would have lived an easier life.

(Continue Reading…)