Sam Bradford

You have to dismantle Brad Pitt’s butt cheeks before replacing them. Donald knows that too well. Twice monthly he finds himself on a small stool, like a milkmaid, in front of Brad. This is Fight Club Brad, shirtless, and his jeans have a hidden zipper that runs down the seam of each leg. Donald, in white gloves, unzips the jeans.

He doesn’t say anything to Brad, unlike some of the other employees. You start talking and things get weird. It’s just a wax model, after all. Donald has the dual job of night watchman and “Evening Sprucer” over Brad and the others in Sir Blingly’s Wax Emporium.

Patrons pose with Brad for photos. Here, they can feel the excitement of celebrity proximity without any shame over the inability to control themselves. One outcome of this phenomenon is a surprising number of patrons, who, when posing with Brad, reach around and pinch his bottom.

Enough pinching results in a pocked, uneven wax derriere. Armed with a putty knife and a hair dryer, the Evening Sprucer rights such wears and tears and alerts the Wax Master to larger maintenance.

According to Todd, who is Wax Master and Donald’s boss, the last thing you want to do is rip people from their fantasy. For one moment these workaday folk are on equal terms with celebrities, casual enough to throw an arm around them or pinch their bottoms. A furrowed rump, however, disrupts the illusion of egalitarian brotherhood the emporium temporarily provides.

So Todd had the idea of installing rubber foam pads in Brad. He excavated the wax hindquarters (rumor has it they are still in his office somewhere) and replaced them with foam. Now Todd can look over the floor from his upstairs office and see adventurous patrons rewarded. Of course they know the figures are wax, but the unexpected gluteal suppleness generates a flash of doubt visible from across the museum. Like seeing people believe in a miracle. It lasts for only an instant, but Todd lives for this moment.

But even the foam wears out. A vigorous pinch can pluck out a nugget. And if you shuffle Brad’s pants, it falls by his ankle. Then, when it catches on that you can “get a piece of ass” from Brad Pitt, the response is piranhaian.

So Donald exchanges used butt pads for fresh ones. Donald, a still-single Ph.D. candidate in political philosophy, bows before Brad for rump maintenance. Donald, a real-life philosopher, already bald and bearded, sees women swoon over a mound of wax and ignore him entirely. Donald, whose 416-page dissertation-in-progress considers the political detriment of American consumerism, takes a dual job at SB’s just to sustain himself in his kimchi-stained, one-room apartment.

But it’s all ok. Donald doesn’t mind tonight as he rezips Brad’s pants and trashes the mangled foam buttocks. It’s all ok because that morning, Donald had received the first glimmer of real progress after eight years of labor: an email from a publisher telling him that he was “in for a treat.” To be looking for it in the mail.

The mail came and Donald only allowed himself to see the return address from the major publishing house. They don’t send hefty packets for rejection letters.

You see, Donald wanted to be more than an obscure scholar. He wanted to be the thinker that obscure scholars devoted themselves to. He knew that to have a lasting impact on the populace, you had to put things in terms they understand.

So Donald wrote what was to be the first in a string of scathingly dark satires, designed to skewer American consumerist ignorance so immaculately that there could be no resistance.

His first piece, “The Little Duck,” improves Eric Voegelin’s concept of sociopolitical history, the Orders of Being. This Donald portrays by describing American fowl behavior.

The gods of the Greeks and Romans inhabited the natural world — the trees, rivers, atop a particular mountain. Everything divine is in human, worldly terms. This, to Voegelin, marks the Compact Order of Being:

In the big blue pond, the little duck sings.

In the big blue pond, he sees many things.

But for the Israelites, God was unfathomable. No longer in Nature. Outside of all. They had made a “leap in being” from the Compact Order to the Differentiated Order:

In the big blue pond, the little duck was kept.

Out of the big blue pond, the little duck leapt.

Outside the pond, there was more to see!

Outside the pond, there was more to be!

But Donald himself sees a second leap in being — so long in the Differentiated Order and we create our own evil God, capitalism:

The little duck found a pretty dime.

The pretty dime had a lovely shine.

The pretty dime caught a hunter’s eye.

The hunter aimed his gun at the little guy.

The little duck leaps and leaps some more.

Boom! The little duck is no more.

Fin.

Finally, someone in the publishing world had recognized Donald’s vision. And so, tonight, Donald does not dawdle as Evening Sprucer. He wants time to read the contents of the hefty packet without distraction:

Mr. Donald Dubeneffer,

We are very pleased to offer publication of your groundbreaking book, THE LITTLE DUCK. We even have Una Lentutti, top-tier illustrator, interested in collaborating with you. We included samples of her work.

“Fancy that!” Donald says.

Please complete the attached contract and royalty negotiation and return in the enclosed envelope. Our editors will be in touch.

We are thrilled to publish your work, Mr. Dubeneffer. We believe it is the perfect addition to our new WORKS FOR “WIDDLE WEEDERS” series. Shooting from the hip here, but how would you feel about a pen name? Something punchy, so the kids won’t stumble over so many syllables — think “Brad Pitt.”

Warmest regards,

Gerard Albertson IV

Albertson, Albertson, Albertson, and Albertson, Publishers, Inc.

Una Lentutti — whose e-cigarette has interchangeable lights to match her outfit, whose perpetually damp hair looks jetted by an alarmed squid — was so powerful in the children’s publishing division of QuadAl that she was allowed to choose a book every year to “make.” Known for once depicting all characters in a book on table manners as nude and anatomically exaggerated, her drawings captivated young readers, evoking a profitable je ne sais quoi in lackluster subgenres. The book was banned in some countries.

Una was not to be inspired by a story; on the contrary, the story was not to get in her way. So every year, she scavenged the most innocuous submission from the slush pile.

When she had read Donald’s piece, she had recalled a species of Amazonian duck with a penis twice as long as its body. She could draw that. It’s not being crude, she thought. It’s real. Just try to censor it!

At the Wax Emporium, Brad Pitt and Donald climb to the top floor, where Todd’s office overlooks the figures. Brad Pitt has foam bottoms pinned all over him. The two stand atop the guardrail.

Brad Pitt leaps in being. He leaps and is no more.

WM. SAMUEL BRADFORD teaches high school English in Atlanta, Ga. He is currently working on a novel. His stories have appeared in the New Yorker, which is to say that he staples them in the back of the copy at the public library.

Christopher DeWan

14 February

I’ve finally done it! After years of wanting to escape the bounds of civilization, I’ve sold my house and everything in it, traded the bourgeois trappings of luxury for a small cutter sailboat and a dream — and now I’m ready to leave this old, cluttered, tedious life, and trade it for one of adventure.

I’ve never forgotten those uncharted archipelagos where we anchored during my days in the Merchant Marines; I have every confidence I’ll be able to find them within a few hours of departing port in Princeville.

Goodbye, old world! Welcome, unknown!

26 February

The winds blustery and the waves unpredictable, but how good it feels to be tested against the unmerciful ocean, one man versus the brute force of Nature! Swells thrice the height of my boat’s mast, tossing the craft aloft and every which way, the sting of salt water in my eyes, reminding me I’m alive — so alive! Tomorrow I’ll anchor in port to purchase the supplies and rations that are to last me throughout the rest of my day, and then I disappear from civilization forever.

1 March

An hour before dawn and under cover of darkness, I hoisted my sail and slipped back onto the open ocean. Everything was still and calm and quiet; the sea was wondrous, alive with dancing porpoises and phosphorescent jellies; and the moon beckoned me on.

True to my memory, I found the islands! I found them, right where I’d left them, all those years ago: a small and secreted paradise. For now I’ve anchored in a lagoon: I’ll spend my next days scouting the terrain from my boat, because what’s the investment of a few more days cooped up, if the reward afterward is beautiful serene isolation, no noise but my own pulse and the murmur of the tides?

2 March

My luck is better than I’d hoped: there’s a clean, airy cave a hundred yards from the beach that will offer me shelter; a spring of fresh drinking water; a cove blessed with bountiful fish; and the whole island lush with a feast of edible vegetation — berries and nuts and coconut, and bamboo of all sizes, from which I can fashion any array of useful objects.

How many men, stranded on such a deserted island, would waste their days dreaming of an escape from it? But here, now — this is my dream: to be stranded on this island, like Adam’s son, and never to leave.

3 March

I’ve committed a decisive act that many would call rash, but which for me is simply a ritual affirmation of the rightness of my course of action: I’ve burned my boat. There is no going back.

4 March

Today I lived purely, like the savages of old: I caught fish with my own hands, hung them to smoke over a fire, swam naked in the warm sea, and even began carving an old log into a sort of decorative totem pole, upon which I intend to sculpt frightening visages, such as would scare off any passersby, though of course the possibility of a passerby is remote bordering on ridiculous here in this Paradise.

5 March

Fate is cruel.

Earlier today washed ashore a wounded fishing vessel with a great gaping hole in its hull, and its crew of survivors is now cluttering up my perfectly serene island.

For now I’ll maintain my presence in secret, and hope they quickly find enough competence to fetch themselves off of my island.

8 March

The insufferable buffoons are still here. If they’d landed anywhere else on Earth, they’d surely have perished by now, fodder for whatever indigenous predator; or perhaps poisoned themselves on local flora; or simply lit themselves on fire from their sheer incompetence, then drowned while trying to put out the flames. But such is the hospitality of my island paradise: they seem able to blunder on forever without any consequence.

They’re led by a pompous captain and puerile man-child, the two of them together incapable of a single competent act — and thanks to this guileless leadership, the wretched castaways are no closer to rescuing themselves than the day they arrived.

Tonight, I will dress as a cannibal and sneak into their camp, to repair their radio and survey the damage to their boat. These infelicitous folk must go, even if I have to mend their vessel myself.

9 March

Woe is me: their craft, The Minnow, is damaged beyond repair. It seems these hapless stock characters are to be my mates here in Eden, till my hand or Fate’s conceives of another alternative. One can only hope that their incessant scheming, or mine, will soon arrive them at a happy escape. How long can this go on?

CHRISTOPHER DEWAN is author of the book Work and Other Essays, and has published numerous short stories in journals recently including Bartleby Snopes, Crack the Spine, The Doctor T. J. Eckleburg Review, Grey Sparrow, JMWW, and wigleaf. His fiction has been nominated twice for the Pushcart Prize. Learn more at christopherdewan.com.

Ryan Dunham

“Samson, what are you doing?”

I haven’t even stepped inside the hole, and Bertha is already admonishing me.

“It’s fine, baby.”

“No, it’s not fine.” She’s looking for the shovel. “It’s our backyard.” She’s looking for the wheelbarrow.

Four years ago I built a scarecrow. It was a cross-dressing clown. Bertha didn’t get it. My clown e-lude-ed her. Maybe she didn’t understand that it was a clown. Maybe she didn’t understand that it was cross-dressing. I never painted its face. I never gave it sexually distinguishing anatomical parts. It looked potato-faced. It looked androgynous.

“Yeah,” I told her.

Bertha stands on the hole’s precipice and looks for China (or is it Australia?). She doesn’t wave. She doesn’t bridge the cultural gap with a small gift or token. She just gazes deep into the hole I’ve dug. It’s so deep she can’t see the bottom. It’s so deep it piques her mind with existential questions like Why? and Who? and How Much?

Three years ago I built a statue. It was a monkey selling cotton candy at a minor league baseball game. I had to annex the neighbor’s yard to build it.

“Why did you buy Casey’s house?” she asked.

“I need the space.”

A more pertinent question would have been, “Do you really need to build the diamond and the dugout and the parking lot and the highway and the oceans and the Earth and the solar system and the universe and Time and God Himself?” not, “Why did you build this?”

“It completes the picture, baby,” I would have told her. “Yeah.”

Bertha sits on the ledge and kicks her heels. She digs her own holes inadvertently, two tiny eyes of darkness, the debris falling into my abyss. She doesn’t say a word. She doesn’t hum a song. She’s silent.

I sit down next to her but she ignores me. She’s looking for the backhoe. I try to embrace her but she slides out of reach. She’s looking for the excavator.

Two years ago I built a shopping mall. No one came because I refused to build a food court.

Bertha would yell at me, “Why would you build a mall without a food court?”

And I would tell her, “Bertha, baby, we have a Macy’s and a Sears.”

But she wouldn’t hear of it. She needed her cheeseburgers. She needed her free samples of Asian cuisine so she could call herself “cultured.”

Bertha’s on the other side. She’s three hundred and sixty degrees away. I beckon for her to come back but she’s motionless. She’s looking for the thousand years of wind. I wave and hope an incandescent smile can be seen from where she is but she’s stone as a rock. She’s looking for the meteorite.

Last year I built a pyramid. Unlike the Romans, or whoever it was that built the originals, I built mine by myself. I used limestone, marble, claystone, dolomite, ironstone, and quartz, and Bertha yelled at me. Told me I blundered worse than the Greeks (I guess I was wrong).

“You should have used gneiss. And only gneiss,” she said.

She was right. God weathered my creation in only a few weeks’ time. I should have called Greekland.

Bertha raises her hand like she’s in class.

“Yes?” I say/ask.

“Um, Mr. Weir?”

She doesn’t say anything else, but I know what she’s thinking. She’s thinking, “How did you do it? How did you create something that can’t fade away? How did you prove your awesomeness?”

So I tell her, “It’s a hole, baby. An idea. It can’t go anywhere if it doesn’t exist.”

And she dives in.

No thud. No clunk.

Nothing.

Bertha’s rockin’ out in China. She’s groovin’ in Australia.

I feel like I should dive in after her, but I don’t. I feel like I’d be better off if I did, but I stand up and step back. I feel like I should start filling the hole, but I can’t seem to remember what I did with all that dirt.

RYAN DUNHAM is currently a PhD student at Ohio University in the Media Arts and Studies department. He also has a B.A. and an M.A. in English: Creative Writing from Binghamton University. Ryan is a huge deadhead, but Phish keeps trying to convert him. He would only eat Chicken McNuggets and Sour Patch Kids as a child. Things have pretty much stayed the same.