Ally Malinenko

When the rumor circulated that the lion had been prowling just below 59^th Street, Joseph Dix loaded his revolver and, much to the chagrin of his hysterical wife, headed for the front door. She didn’t comprehend the point in going out when The Herald reported that the mayor had the city on lock-down. But then again, Ms. Valerie Dix, née Blanchett-Sauvette, had only lived in New York for three years now and had yet to fully comprehend why Americans acted the way they did. The things she had seen below 14^th Street would never be tolerated in her own, much missed, Paris.

Ms. Dix standing halfway down the staircase held up the newspaper report that read in bright bold letters AWFUL CALAMITY and A SHOCKING CARNIVAL OF DEATH, begging him once again to stay inside. “At least seventy animals are free,” she said reading from the paper. “Joseph, you cannot go out there. This is madness.”

He stopped at the door, peeking through the side lights and then feeding bullets one by one into his revolver said, “The wild animals of the park are loose and roaming my city, Valerie. What would you have me do?”

“Stay inside like a reasonable person!” Valerie shrieked.

But Joseph Dix took much pride in always being his own man and his tolerance for hysterics, especially female hysterics, was at an all-time low. He tucked the revolver into his waistcoat and warned his wife to stay away from the windows.

Besides he knew that already this freakish experience had transformed into an opportunity. And these days opportunity was a commodity he rarely traded in. No one had expected that the cages at the Central Park Zoo would prove so inadequate. The zoo had only been formally called so since the recent city charter, and already the city was threatened. The paper had reported forty-nine souls had been lost, with only half of them identified. The description of the rhino gorging was particularly grisly. Joseph couldn’t help but question how the locks on all the cages came loose. According to The Herald, it was possibly sabotage. Regardless, he was incapable of standing by, not while Grant was fouling up the reconstruction and the depression that began last year still had her hot hands wrapped around the financial district. He had to do something. Joseph was keenly aware that his chance to do something profound was slipping by.

And in just the few minutes since he had begun talking he saw them passing by his door. One by one, walking in slow steady packs, silhouetted, sketched on the fog by the flickering gas lamps: men with guns.

Hunters.

The city was slowly transforming, in just a single day, from the center of urbanity to a world not unlike Livingstone’s jungle.

“I’m begging you,” his wife said from the steps. Joseph watched how her hands wrinkled the paper, clutching it tight. He despised panic, he found it characteristically un-American, but his wife touched something tender in him. Something unexpected. Without answering he slid back the lock and opened the front door.

The air on the street was static. In the fog, Joseph could see figures moving and he was barely seventeen steps from his front door when the first crack of gunfire ripped through the air. He ducked and scooted towards the low wall buffeting the park. In the distance he heard men shouting and then the screech of something utterly unhuman.

“Dix!”

Joseph turned and saw crouching along the wall his neighbor James Thomas clutching a rifle. Joseph scurried back towards him and the two of them sat with their backs against the park wall like soldiers.

“It’s bad, Thomas.”

“Two hundred injured, they say. The police are nowhere to be found.”

“How long have you been out here?”

“Quarter hour.”

“Seen anything?”

“Just you.”

Joseph nodded, his hand warm around his gun. The early November fog rolled slowly through the city, blanketing it in an eerie sea green glow. Joseph thought of his wife at home, imagined her pacing the upper bedroom, staying away from the window not because he had told her so but because Valerie knew, as he knew, that there was terror, terror as real as The War going on in the streets below her.

Things seen can never be unseen.

“Best of luck, Thomas,” Joseph said, rising.

“Where are you going?” Thomas hissed.

“To do what must be done.”

Even as he left he could hear Thomas whispering his name, begging him to come back. But he wasn’t going to get what needed to be done crouching alongside the park wall like a scared child. Besides, Thomas was a waste, a skin sack waiting to be filled with food and wine so that he could regurgitate more vile political nonsense. And if Joseph was going to be ripped to shreds by a lion it was not going to be at James Thomas’ side. There had to be a nobler place to die. He had missed The War by just a few years. Instead he watched his brothers leave and die, one after another, to fight for the sanctity of this Union. His father had been wounded early on but never let a day go by where a story wasn’t told. Joseph felt it, the way it dragged at his ankles, this need to do something. Something profound. Something right. Something, if not for his country, then for the city he loved.

The gas lamps flickered and every shadow transformed into a wild animal as he turned up Fifth Avenue. It was a stagnant foggy night, like a sea before a storm, the kind of night where you could smell the seawater wafting all the way up from the estuary. Valerie had begged him to vote against the expansion of the Menagerie. What nonsense she cried, wild animals in the heart of the metropolis. It was a mockery of Mother Nature.

She had not dared invoke God before Joseph. Valerie knew exactly where her husband stood on the eternal question of what lay behind the veil of mortality: firmly, though secretly, in the non-believer camp. God had left Joseph, that chilly September morning when the Lord stole through the window like a vengeful goblin in one of Valerie’s fairy stories and took with Him the soul of Joseph’s baby daughter. All that He left behind was a cold waxy pink shell. And when He did so, Joseph took back the part of his own soul that had been conscripted to the Heavenly Father and offered up instead something black and dangerous. Something that Valerie did not dare rouse.

Things seen can never be unseen.

A scream erupted just to his right and Joseph swung his pistol towards the bush next to him, which shook ferociously. From it, a monkey leapt, its brown matted hair brushing right past Joseph’s face. It stopped for a moment on the top of a carriage and observed Joseph, its face a rubbery distortion of mankind. The creature emitted another fang-baring scream and then bounded off down the street.

Its hands. Its hands looked so human.

In his head Joseph heard his own pastor from his youth telling him that God had made all these creatures for Man to have. To command at his will. But Joseph could not help but think that something that close to human was not a gift but in fact a terrible mirror.

A reminder.

Before he was able to fully collect himself, steady his own shaking hand, and continue down the street, Joseph heard the clatter of hooves and with a not small bit of relief realized the cavalry must be here. The police had been slow to respond to the emergency, but they must be finally here. Except what clattered up the pavement was not mounted police nor even the chestnut muzzles of harnessed horses but instead four panicked zebras clattering down the center of Fifth Avenue, their eyes wild with fear, nostrils flared, foam dripping from the corners of their mouths. They clattered past him, bumping into one another and then into carriage omnibus parked on the side of the street. From the corner of his eye Joseph watched a wet shadow leap onto the park wall and race after the panicked zebras.

The panther was bigger than he could have imagined, even in his worst dreams. It leapt from the wall and pounded after the zebras, taking the smaller one down by the flank just a block north of where he stood. The zebra’s scream ripped through the air sounding so vivid and so much like a dying child, Joseph was stopped in his tracks. The gun hung utterly useless at his side as he watched the blood spread like a blanket across the road.

Another shot was fired from somewhere, causing the hysterical zebra to scream again before the panther put it out of its misery with a quick bite to the neck. Then, as easy as pulling tender chicken meat from a bone, sunk its teeth into the creature’s leg and tore it from its body. The panther took its reward and with the agility of an alley cat leapt upon the wall, disappearing into the park, dark as midnight.

Joseph raised his gun, not with any real purpose, as the panther was already gone but just so he could see it. It was a sign that he had some means of protection. A reminder that against teeth and claw he was not naked and weak. Valerie had been right all along. Coming out here was madness. What was his intention really? Two hundred were reported injured already. Forty-nine killed. He glanced again at the dead zebra, the wash of blood, lava-like, working its way towards him. In the stillness of the city Joseph felt something rise in him, something he hadn’t felt in the years since he had reached into the bassinet and picked up his own dead daughter.

“How pointless,” he whispered toward the carcass of the zebra. And then it seized him. He must return home immediately. Being here on the street with this weapon in his hand, he was committing some sort of cosmic treason. There had been no place for him in The War and now there was no place for him in this manufactured city. Under the layers and layers of concrete there was still mud and earth — an earth that was teeming with life that cannot be hidden or changed or truly killed. Nature would always out. In the end it would find its way back up through all the cracks that man had felt so sure he had paved over. It would find him and remind him he too is animal.

Joseph turned and headed back towards 59^th street, back towards home and Valerie and a life that had, at one time, made perfect sense to him. His hysterical heart told him there was a path back to that. He just needed to stay on it.

At the end of the street, the giraffe was just standing there, as bewildered to find itself here as Joseph was to see it, half wrapped in the fog that rolled down the street. It stood utterly still, its legs unimaginably long — a creature that seemed to be crafted from a child’s imagination, sketched on paper and then breathed into existence here on street. Its neck graceful and arched turned toward Joseph and considered him for just a moment before it took a single careful step forward.

Joseph didn’t dare breathe watching it move slowly down the street. Its perfectly round belly, the way it lowered its head so that its long neck was horizontal, attempting to see eye-level with the man on the street. It watched him as he watched it. Naturally, Joseph meant the creature no harm, and yet here he was with a gun and no means to confess that special necessary sentiment. For a moment the giraffe bucked, rearing up like a horse, stamping a hoof against the city street and bleating like a goat.

It dared him. Or possibly just acknowledged him, a fact that Joseph embraced more fully than he had embraced the previous fifty-two years of his life. For the first time ever, he was really being seen.

Shaken by this, Joseph took a step back and broke whatever it was that had existed between them. The giraffe turned then, heading towards the avenue, away from him. It ran, galloping graceful strides, before stopping once and turning back to look at him warily.

It wasn’t until the gunfire splintered the quiet that Joseph realized he had forgotten to breathe. The animal swayed, stumbled, its long legs now a hindrance, before it collapsed in a twisted pile. In the distance he heard men yelling, disjointed cries and the stampede of feet. Something somewhere screamed.

Joseph waited until the quiet returned before venturing towards the creature. Its long neck twisted and flopped on the street like a snake. By the time Joseph reached it, it was dead, a single bullet hole through its hide close to the heart. Whoever pulled the trigger was an excellent marksman. Joseph couldn’t help but wonder if they had fought in The War. If they had taken down many others.

He kneeled down near the giraffe’s head, examining the hard rounded horns on its head, the deep long nostrils, the velvety ears, not unlike a cat’s. Tentatively he reached out and gently lifted its face. It was surprisingly heavy, the weight of this dead animal’s skull in his shaking hands. He tried but failed to avoid looking into those two black eyes. They were not round and dark as lumps of coal as they seemed from a distance but instead a dark brown iris with a tender pupil. In it, he saw his own wretched reflection. Things seen can never be unseen.

With a careful hand he reached up, extended his finger and slowly brushed its eyelashes, letting each individual lash kiss his finger before standing, placing the barrel of the revolver against his temple and firing.

ALLY MALINENKO is the author of the poetry collection The Wanting Bone (Six Gallery Press), the children’s book Lizzy Speare and the Cursed Tomb (Antenna Books) and the YA novel This Is Sarah (BookFish Books). She lives in the part of Brooklyn that the tour buses don’t come to.

Dawn Corrigan

There were plenty of amusements to choose from in the city where Tommy and Annette lived — concerts, the theatre, the famous circus from Moscow. But what they liked best was dining out. And the love affair was mutual. Wherever they went, maitre d’s softened at the sight of the glowing young pair. Waiters and musicians fluttered around Annette as though she were a movie star.

During their first year of marriage, they dined out every Friday night. The next morning, they would sleep in for as long as they liked, then prepare an enormous breakfast. But once the pancakes and sausages were consumed and the dishes were washed, the reality of their week began. Together they’d sit down with the checkbook to calculate what they owed that week — to the landlord, the electric company, and the church, for they’d financed their own wedding and were still paying off the debt — and determine what small amount was left for food and other daily expenses. They’d decide how much could be spent at the butcher, the greengrocer’s, and the bakery. Then Annette would set off to do the shopping.

At first, Tommy had gone with Annette. Then he noticed the way the shopkeepers looked at her, and he surmised their grocery money might stretch a little further if Annette went on her own. After that he kissed her each Saturday afternoon and sent her on her way. And it was true: afterward she often came home with an extra pound of meat, or a cut above what she’d actually ordered, after a trip to the butcher’s; and one Saturday when she ordered a loaf of sliced pumpernickel from the baker she returned with a loaf of sliced pumpernickel and a caramel cake that was so delicious Tommy had eaten the whole thing by Sunday night.

The following Saturday as Annette was heading out to run her errands, Tommy stopped her at the door. “You’re wearing that?” he asked.

Annette looked down at her navy blue suit in surprise. “What’s wrong with it?”

“Nothing at all,” Tommy said, hustling her back toward the bedroom. “Only this is even prettier,” he added, picking a flowered dress out of the wardrobe. “Especially when you wear it with a ribbon in your hair.”

Suddenly Annette understood. “You want another cake!” she exclaimed, snatching the hair ribbon out of his hand. “And you think this is going to get it for you!”

“Please, honey. I need that cake.”

That night, and for many Saturdays to come, there was caramel cake for dessert. Tommy, who’d weighed 120 at their wedding, gained thirty pounds within six months. But far from tiring of the cake his craving for it only seemed to grow; so now, on their Friday evenings out, though he enjoyed the rest of the meal as much as ever, he was always disappointed during dessert; for no restaurant offering, no matter how creamy or chocolaty or light or rich or dense or dark, could compare with his weekly caramel cake from the neighborhood bakery.

But one Saturday when Annette went out to do her chores, the bakery had disappeared. The “Walker’s” sign was gone. The large plate glass window, which had formerly been filled with pastry and rolls, was boarded up. When Annette peered through the crack between two boards she saw that everything inside had disappeared as well: no cash register, no display cases, not even a discarded curl of red-and-white string remained.

Annette rushed into the fish market next door. “Where’s the bakery?” she exclaimed, but the fishmonger just shrugged and shook his head sadly, as though to indicate that the story of the baker’s disappearance was too tragic for words, though perhaps he only meant he didn’t know. Annette tried at the dry cleaners and the five-and-dime as well, but nobody could tell her what had happened.

When she’d asked everyone on the block, Annette turned her heavy steps toward home, stopping only at her butcher’s and at another bakery located next door to it. Though they couldn’t really afford it, she splurged and bought some steak at the butcher’s. At the new bakery she bought the week’s bread and a chocolate cake.

Annette debated long and hard about the latter purchase, because she knew Tommy wouldn’t be easily placated by the loss of the caramel cakes. She didn’t want to seem cavalier about his loss. But finally she thought, “Well, a person must have something for dessert.”

But when she arrived home Tommy’s reaction to the news was even worse than she’d feared. “Oh, no!” he moaned, and sank down on the couch in a swoon, rising only to eat the steak and a salad she’d prepared, and, after a show of some reluctance, a large slice of the chocolate cake. His face wore an expression of anguish the entire time he consumed his dessert.

Forever after this period in their lives, the caramel cake, and eventually even the lost baker himself, became the symbol of a kind of perfection for Tommy.

On Saturday evenings Tommy had to work at the Post Office. After dinner he’d go back to the bedroom to change into his uniform, emerging a moment later with the blue shirt draped over one arm and his other hand held before his mouth in the shape of a bugle, pretending to blow taps. When he finished he’d snap his heels together and salute Annette. Then he’d don his work shirt and leave the apartment.

Sometimes on Saturday nights Annette went out with friends from work, but more often she stayed home to clean house and watch a little TV. With Tommy gone it was more evident to her how poor they were. She’d walk from room to room surveying the cracks in the ceiling, the scratched surfaces of worn Formica, the odd tilt of walls and floor that nowhere met at ninety-degree angles. Some nights she cried herself to sleep.

Unfortunately, Sunday morning wasn’t much better. Tommy arrived home from work, but though he often brought some donuts with him, or a wedge of Gouda, his mood was foul. Before his coat was even off he’d be railing about the profound stupidity of the man who worked at the next sorter over, or the vicious stupidity of his supervisor.

Annette knew Tommy’s diatribe wasn’t directed against her, that she was its audience and not its cause. Still, she didn’t like it. Sundays tended to make Annette sad anyway: the weather always seemed gray on Sundays, and even when the sun was shining, it shone less brightly than on other days.

All these elements conspired against Annette’s normally buoyant heart, so a Sunday afternoon often found her in tears. Then Tommy would shake off his own bad mood, wrap his arms around her, and pull her onto his lap. “Come on now,” he’d say, “it’s all right. There’s nothing to cry about. Let’s go for a walk. We’ll walk around to the drugstore and buy a lottery ticket.”

Then Annette dried her eyes and grabbed her coat and they went out for a stroll about the neighborhood, winding up at Nicky’s soda counter. There they bought their tickets. Some weeks, when money was extra tight, they’d purchase only one number; other times, if the jackpot was up and they could afford it, they’d buy as many as five.

Tommy was not above grabbing a QuikPick now and then, but Annette disapproved. “We have to work for that money,” she’d say. Sometimes she’d try combinations of numbers imbued with personal meaning: their birthdays, anniversary, and street address; other weeks she’d poise her pen over the Lotto card like the pointer of a Ouija board and wait for inspiration to strike. At home she even set up a bowl with forty little pieces of paper crumpled permanently inside, and some weeks she drew numbers from the bowl.

When they finished they’d return home and Tommy would put on a cup of tea. Then they’d sit across from each other at the kitchen table and play the Lottery Game.

“Who will go first?”

“You go.”

“No you.”

“No, you go ahead.”

“All right, I’ll go. The first thing I’ll do,” here Tommy threw his hands up in the air and waved them like a boxer after a victorious championship bout, “is quit the Post Office!” He made a sound like stadium cheering. “And you’ll quit your job, too.”

“Well, maybe I won’t right away. They’ll need me through the holidays. Maybe I’ll just work through the holidays and then I’ll quit.”

“Annette, don’t be ridiculous! Let them find someone else to work through the holidays!”

“We’ll see.”

“Annette, it’s my turn! When it’s your turn you can think about staying on at your silly job — though let me add right now, as your spouse I advise against it. But in my turn we definitely both quit our jobs first thing.”

“All right.”

“Then we’ll move.”

“Where?”

“I’m going to tell you! . . . I don’t know. Where do you want to move?”

“I don’t know. Where do you want to move?”

“I don’t know. Somewhere by the ocean.”

“That sounds nice.”

“Okay. We’ll buy a nice house by the ocean — ”

“Yes?”

“And we’ll move into it.”

“And?”

“And we’ll live happily ever after.”

“That’s it?” Annette exclaimed. “That’s your plan?”

“What’s wrong with it?”

“It’s not a plan at all! It’s only the first step in a plan! A plan has to have more than one step! Besides, what about all the people we have to take care of?”

“Like who?” Tommy asked.

“Like your mother! Like my mother! And what about my brother and Teresa?”

“What about Teresa?”

“What do you mean, what about Teresa? Just because she’s my stepmom you think I don’t want to take care of her? She’s been very good to me, just like a mother. And Sammie is my sister!”

“Well, of course,” Tommy said, grinning at her.

“Well that means we have to take care of them when we win!”

“Of course. But I’m leaving all of that up to you. After we buy the house — which I’d like to have a say in selecting — you’re handling the money.”

“Well then it’s my turn.”

“That’s right.”

“Well then,” Annette began, making a frame with her hands and gazing through it as though she could see their future caught in some tree branches out the window, “first we’ll get Teresa out of that factory and move her and Sammie into a nice little house. Then we’ll buy a little theatre for Eddie so he can direct his plays in it. Then we’ll give something to Suzie — maybe we’ll buy her a little house, too. Yes, that seems only fair. Then we’ll have to give something to your mother and George; but how are we going to stop them from gambling away anything we give them?”

“There’s no way to stop that from happening,” Tommy said, shaking his head. “No way in hell.”

“That’s what I thought too. But then I thought, maybe we could set up a trust fund for them.”

“Sure. What’s a trust fund?”

“It’s what rich people use to take care of their children and other people who aren’t really capable of handling money on their own. I think they get it in installments or something.”

“They should call it a no-trust fund, then,” Tommy laughed. “Anyway, it’s trust funds all around for this family!” He swung his teacup merrily through the air. “A trust fund in every pot! Life, liberty, and the pursuit of trust funds! Hey, maybe we should set up a trust fund for ourselves!”

The lottery drawing was on Wednesday night. The broadcast came on at 11:00, after the news, and was hosted by a man named Bob and his assistant Sonya. The whole process was conducted with a great deal of pomp and ceremony, and Bob and Sonya dressed appropriately for it: Bob wore a tuxedo, and Sonya wore glittering evening gowns of a different primary color each week, to be shown off on the new color TVs that were being installed in living rooms throughout the city.

When Sonya appeared on the screen Tommy exclaimed, “Look at Sonya! Doesn’t she look beautiful this week?”

“She certainly does,” Annette agreed. “She has such lovely taste in gowns.”

“And look at her hair!” Tommy went on. “I think she’s wearing it in a new style.”

“Indeed she is,” Annette said. “And it’s even more flattering than last week’s style.”

But when the numbers had been drawn and they did not match the Hogans’, their tone changed. “What a hag,” Tommy snarled. And Annette chimed in: “That Sonya is an overly-made-up tart.”

As though not winning the lottery wasn’t bad enough, on Thursdays Annette and Tommy had dinner with Tommy’s mother, Margaret, and her new husband, George.

Margaret had her own version of the lottery game. It went like this: when she grew angry at Tommy — when, though he generally tried very hard not to, he had offended her in some fashion, she’d turn to him and pout, “When I win the lottery, you aren’t getting any!” Then she’d elaborate a long list of who would receive her bounty, so Tommy could feel the full weight of his imaginary loss.

Later, when peace had been restored and Tommy was in her good graces again, Margaret would blow him kisses and say, “When I win I’m giving you everything! Forget about everyone else! It’s all for you!”

Tommy’s response to both phases of Margaret’s game — the part where he was penniless, and the part where he’d been awarded the whole prize — was always the same. “I don’t want your money, Ma.”

The next lottery Tommy participated in was one he would have been happy to lose. The country had gone to war, a terrible war in the name of which young men were being scooped up and flown away. Many never returned. The men were picked by lottery. All males over 18 had to register with the government, which then assigned their lottery numbers.

When his time came, Tommy had gotten drunk before staggering in to register at the branch of the Post Office where he worked, where for once the older men eyed him sympathetically. Ever since, he’d been dreading the arrival of the mimeographed notice that would mean his number had been picked.

On the day it came, Tommy carried it in to show Annette with a stricken look on his face.

“I have something to tell you,” Annette said. “I’m pregnant.”

Tommy swooped over and gave her a big hug. Any misgivings he might have felt about incipient fatherhood were swept away by one crucial, beautiful fact: the government wasn’t taking men who were fathers to fight in its war. Not yet, anyway. And by the time it was, Tommy was too old, according to the government’s own reckoning, to fight; and so he was safe.

When Mary, their firstborn, was a toddler, and Annette was pregnant with Peter, their second, they decided that the city where they’d grown up, though beloved to them in many ways, not least in its variety of restaurants, was not where they wanted to raise their children. So they scraped together some money, took out a loan, and bought a little house by the sea.

And though with hard work and prudence they eventually eked their way out of poverty, they still continued to play the lottery game in their new home. They played it for so long that eventually everything around them learned to play it too.

Their little house said to the house next door, When I win the lottery, I’ll have new siding that won’t rust.

The cat said to the squirrels, When I win the lottery, Peter will bring me chicken every day for lunch.

One Japanese maple said to the other, When we win, we’ll have fertilizer sprinkled with jewels and gold dust.

DAWN CORRIGAN’s poetry and prose have appeared in a number of print and online journals. Her debut novel, an environmental mystery called Mitigating Circumstances, was published by Five Star/Cengage in January 2014. She lives in Gulf Breeze, Florida and works in the affordable housing industry.

Geza Fuchs

Of all the celebrations we held year round, all the feasts and commemorations we had, the one I looked forward to the most was the Festival of the Lamb. Fasting during the day for Ramadan was a struggle, but the night more than compensated for that: music and dancing on the streets, everyone sharing food with friends and families. The Prophet’s birthday was special because of the presents we received: colorful jilabas to wear, heavy silver necklaces with opal and topaz and jade stones. But seeing the city full of snow-white lambs, one for each family, hearing them clop-clopping down the streets, the smell of dry grass brought in from the countryside to feed them, nothing could compare to that.

In the course of just a few days, the conversation would change from the horrible summer heat or the gossiping about the new teachers at school to the fluffy new pets. All the families paraded back from the market with their lambs by their sides, a frayed piece of rope or a rusty chain tied around their necks. Big ears, crooked teeth, clumsy feet and a deep bellowing. Wooly as rugs, playful as mice, naughty as any of us kids, they were.

Everyone laughed at the eccentricities they put on display, the small feats of almost superhuman intelligence. For us children, all the games on the streets revolved around the little stumbling animals; my sister and I couldn’t help but feel like the unwanted guests at the party, invited only out of pity. “And where’s your lamb?” a neighbor asked me once. I just stared down in silence.

Some afternoons, while mom was still at work, we went to our neighbor’s, Hakkima, and she watched over us. She braided our hair and tattooed our hands with henna. Hakkima would take the opportunity to pretend she had children of her own, just as we pretended to have a lamb of our own. Hakkima always let us ride the lamb for a little bit. I would hold on to the wooly creature’s neck and it knew I wasn’t afraid: it walked me from one end of the patio to the other, under my surrogate mother’s constant gaze.

Going to sleep those nights, after mom kissed us on the forehead, the light would go out, we closed our little eyes, and against the silence of the night there rose an empire of bleatings. In each terrace stood a lamb; at times they sang, all together in harmony, a strange lullaby for my younger sister and me. At times they took turns, as if talking about who knows what lamb-like ordeals. I would fall asleep, counting on one day having my own.

The few times school started right before the festival, I would try my hardest to be the best student in the class. I did all my homework, always raised my hand, memorized the Quran, hoping that my teacher would tell mom how dedicated I was. Every year I asked mom, with my sweetest voice, if we would get our own lamb this time. Her invariant reply, a melancholic “Maybe next year,” and then she would turn around, as if hiding a strong emotion.

Only as an adult, many years later, did I realize the way mother had been acting in an attempt to keep everything hidden from us daughters. Making it all seem so casual, Mom would whisk us away from the city on the last day of the month, taking us to a remote cabin at the foot of the Atlas Mountains, or having us travel the whole day by train, from Tangier to Essaouira — almost the whole length of the country. When there was money for nothing else, she locked us up in the house without even the chance to peek our noses out through the window.

That year was different. Mom had been feeling sick, staying in bed until late in the afternoon, without being able to cook or pay much attention to us. The day the festival was set to commence, the fever she had been harboring rose so high she was unable to leave her bed at all. The eldest of the house, I took charge of the situation and provided care for my mother and little sister. Determined to buy some ice for cold compresses to soothe her temperature, my chest swelled with pride as I opened the door to leave the house.

With every step I took outside in the direction of the Socco, I felt, more and more, an eerie atmosphere hovering around in the Medina, in the alleys and the dead-end streets. There was a sweet smell in the air, a sweetness not belonging to sugar nor honey, not figs nor azaleas. After passing two or three corners, my shoes started to stick to the ground, which was covered in an opaque film. Then the screams: bellows that started out joyful, until suddenly they lost their strength like a balloon with its end untied. When I turned that last corner before the Socco, still walking up the narrow street laden with rugs and silverware and spices of eight different colors, I could see, in the heart of the Socco, the scene of the Massacre.

People dressed in white jilabas congregated in a semicircle. All in the pure color of white, but their clothes screamed out that something macabre was happening. Each family waited for its turn, with their white lamb next to them, playfully expectant the poor beast, like any other day. And in every family, the father stood proud sometimes, concentrated other times, playful or solemn, but always with a sheathed knife in hand. One by one, the families took the spotlight, and effecting that rite so symbolic and so concrete at the same time, would lose the newest member of their family. Sometimes the children cried, sometimes the mothers had the caution of making them look away.

Back in bed at the end of the day, the spectral silence of the night made the hair on my skin stand up. I kept my eyes shut in a vain attempt to force myself to sleep. Not one of my lambs had been spared.

That night was the first time the thought occurred to me, going against years of feeling just the opposite: I was grateful not to have a father. Despite the laughter thrown upon us, the scorn, the discrimination and my mother’s lonely sobs and sighs at night, I was grateful.

Because had I had a father, I myself would have taken the knife from his hands. I would have laid Father on his side on the street wet with blood, would have bound his four limbs together to keep him from kicking, pushed his head up forcing him to bellow one last time, and then opened his throat, liberating the torrent of trapped blood with one swift upwards motion of my childish arm. I would not have him hurting my lamb. Furious, I commanded under my breath: no, Father. Not my lamb.

GEZA FUCHS is a Hungarian-American vagabond, roaming the world in search of inspiration. He teaches English in Italy and has never been published before.