The Keystone Blend by Samya Jayachandran, martini

The mist in Kalimpong does not fall; it rises from the Teesta valley like the breath of something buried alive. It creeps over the ridges, thick and smelling of damp limestone and rotting cedar, until the pine trees are nothing but charcoal sketches against a grey canvas.

Nima sat on the rusted railing of the shortcut path leading to Dr. Pradhan’s estate. She liked the cold. It was the only thing that felt sharp enough to penetrate the layer of cotton wool that had occupied the inside of her skull since the "accident."

They called it an accident. A "slip" on the wet shale during the monsoon. But Nima remembered the sound most of all. Not the scream, but the crack. It was the sound of a dry branch snapping in winter. It was the sound of her own architecture failing. Since that day, the world had become a series of structural errors. Her mother’s face was lopsided; the school’s blackboard was tilted three degrees to the left; the very air felt too heavy for the mountains to support. She felt the dent in her head, she had named it “the cup”. Sometimes she imagined water collecting in it, penetrating her skull and swirling through the grey matter.

She opened her notebook. It was filled with geometric proofs and sketches of skeletal systems. She wasn't studying for the boards anymore, the school had "strongly suggested" she take a year off to recover, but she was obsessed with the physics of the human frame. The sphenoid bone, she wrote, her pencil lead scratching harshly against the paper, is the keystone. If the keystone is bruised, the cathedral of the mind leaks. "Nima? You’re going to catch a fever." It was Deepa. The Doctor’s daughter. She was wrapped in a soft, cream-colored pashmina shawl that looked like a cloud. She stood on the other side of the black iron gates of the estate, her skin glowing with the kind of health that only comes from imported vitamins and a life without damp walls.

Nima looked at her. She didn't see a friend. She saw a squatter.

"The density of your femur is higher than mine," Nima said, her voice flat, devoid of the melodic lilt she used to have. "It’s because of the calcium. Your father steals the calcium from the village children and injects it into your breakfast." Deepa flinched, pulling the shawl tighter. "You’re talking strange again. My dad says it’s just the trauma. You need your meds, Nima." "Your father," Nima whispered, standing up. Her movements were jerky, like a marionette with tangled strings. "He knows the truth. When I fell, the impact was so great that the vibrations traveled through the earth. A displacement occurred. Physics demands an equal and opposite reaction. I left my rightful place, and you slipped into it."

She pressed her face against the cold iron bars. The blunt force to her occipital lobe had done more than scar her scalp; it had rearranged her soul's geography. She was convinced that the girl in the cream shawl was a glitch in the universe. Nima was the Doctor’s daughter, the one meant for the grand piano and the tea sets and the future in Delhi. Deepa was the interloper, the daughter of the woman who washed clothes until her knuckles bled.

"I can see the cracks in you, Deepa," Nima said, her eyes widening until the whites showed all around the irises. "I can see where the bone isn't set right. You’re wearing my life, but it doesn't fit you. It’s sagging at the shoulders." Deepa backed away, her eyes filling with a mixture of pity and genuine terror. "I have to go. My tutor is waiting."

Nima watched her retreat up the manicured driveway. She didn't feel anger; anger was a soft, fleshy emotion. She felt a cold, calcified certainty. She turned back to the valley. Below, the town of Kalimpong clung to the hillside like a fungus. She saw the tin roofs of the bazaar, the smoke rising from the shanties and the tops of the pine trees that swayed like they were whispering secrets to each other. Nima reached up and touched the indentation behind her ear. The bone was jagged there, a permanent topographical error on her map. If I hit it again, she thought, the logic appearing in her mind as a perfect, golden equation, perhaps the displacement will reverse. A second strike to correct the first. She looked at a heavy, moss-covered stone at her feet. It was granite. Dense. Final.

She picked it up. It felt wonderful in her hand, the weight of a solution. She imagined the architecture of her skull vibrating, the plates shifting back into their original, divine alignment. She imagined the mist clearing to reveal the life she was owed. In the distance, the bells of the monastery rang out, the sound muffled by the fog. Nima began to hum. It was a high, thin sound that mimicked the wind whistling through a hollow bone. She sat back down on the railing, the stone resting in her lap like a pet, waiting for the moment when the geometry of the world would finally make sense again. She opened her notebook to a fresh page and drew a single, perfect dot.

Zero, she wrote. The point where everything begins and ends. The point where the pain becomes a shape.

The mist swallowed her then, turning the girl, the stone, and the notebook into a single, grey shadow.

 

Bio:

Samya Jayachandran is a school student based in New Delhi. She has lived across Arunachal Pradesh, Uttarakhand and Delhi. Her writing is informed by these shifting geographies, as well as by vacations spent in her paternal and maternal villages in Kerala and Kalimpong .

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Writing and All That Stuff by Michael Barrington, French martini

 Three rejection letters last week. That’s 409 since 2022. I’ve been keeping a spreadsheet since Covid. And yes, there’ve been successes too. Fourteen short stories published last year. But it raises the proverbial question, “Why do I write?”

I really don’t have an option, I used to say to myself. “I write because I have to,” and moved on. But is that really the truth? What is driving me to spend an inordinate number of hours each day putting stories onto paper, agonizing over word choice, and where failure to find the perfect phrase causes insomnia? Or am I just a dreamer, a gentleman of leisure without the inconvenience of an income, calmly squandering the hours as if the world had arranged itself solely for my amusement?

So, I had my astrological profile analyzed. Perhaps I could learn something there. Eureka! Yes. Among many other traits, Leos have a propensity for writing. And there’s good company out there to prove it: J.K. Rowling of Harry Potter fame, James Baldwin, Emily Brontë, Ray Bradbury, Suzanne Collins, and Alexander Dumas. Wow! But me?

My Ancestry profile shows that I am more than 50% Irish, and maybe that’s a place that might be worth exploring. After all, the Irish have the reputation as “story tellers,” and I have both maternal and paternal Irish connections. The genetic connection! But what is all this writing stuff?

Neither of my parents were writers, but both were avid readers, which they did every day of their lives. They ensured that from a very early age my sisters and I were enrolled in the local library. They were both gifted musicians— any writing relationship there? And both had beautiful penmanship. It was only late in life that I discovered my mother had kept a secret journal for years. Ahah. So, I can check that box; she too needed to write!

I have a sister who is a published author and writes both fantasy and poetry. Another is the family archivist and a journalist. I have a niece who writes poetry and has published a novel (romance). Another is a well-known local historian and researcher with several publications. My grandniece is a magazine editor and has also published several short stories. Does it all come down to genes?

I am convinced that my maternal grandfather caused this family epidemic. With just an eighth grade, rural education, and speaking English as a second language, he left Ireland and sought his fortune in Manchester, UK. Determined to be a gentleman, he took advantage of educational opportunities, attended night school and became a voracious reader. But here is where the genetic connection gets interesting. He was the landlord of The Shamrock Inn for thirty-six years, and while serving the local communities including huge numbers of Irish immigrants, he became known as a “storyteller,” a “Shannike,” (my poor translation from the Gaelic)!

So, is this what has been driving me—genes?

When I sit down at my computer, the room is quiet, but my mind is anything but. The moment my fingers hover over the keyboard, the voices begin. Characters press forward from somewhere just beyond thought, each one impatient, insistent, indignant almost, at being ignored. They crowd around the edges of my imagination, talking over one another, each trying to tell me who they really are. One wants to explain the wound he has carried since childhood. Another interrupts, eager to confess the secret she has hidden for years. A third laughs loudly, pushing his way into the scene, declaring that the story is really about him. Their voices overlap and jostle like people in a crowded room, each demanding to be heard first, each certain their history matters most.

I sit there, listening, half amused and half overwhelmed, trying to decide which one to follow. Sometimes I feel less like a creator than a reluctant host at a gathering I did not entirely plan. They arrive with their past already formed—their disappointments, their triumphs, their small, peculiar habits—and all they want is the chance to step forward and live on the page.

At moments like that, I feel as if I am two different people. One of me sits quietly at the desk, practical and deliberate, arranging sentences and choosing words with care. The other moves freely among these restless figures, hearing their whispers, sensing their moods, and letting them unfold their stories. Yet somehow the two selves work together. One listens; the other writes. And out of that strange partnership, the voices slowly become characters, the characters become stories, and the empty page begins to fill.

And yet there is a third person in the room.

Just when the voices are at their loudest—when a wounded soldier is trying to confess his past and a defiant young woman is insisting the story belongs to her, her child crying in the background—another presence clears his throat with quiet authority.

It is the practical one.

He reminds me that the dishwasher is finished and needs emptying. The garbage should really be taken out before it smells. There are errands waiting, ordinary duties that have nothing whatsoever to do with tragic heroes or secret histories.

He is unmoved by the urgency of fictional lives.

While the characters protest and try to drag him back to the glowing screen, this third self stands firmly in his imagination’s doorway and points toward the kitchen. He has a schedule, a sense of order, and a belief that life must continue in its sensible rhythms.

And he always has the last word.

“Later,” he says to the characters crowding in his head. “I’ll come back later.”

So, I take care of my chores. I step back into the simple machinery of daily life. Tonight my wife and I will go out for hamburgers. Tomorrow I will play golf. And all the while, somewhere behind the ordinary business of living, the voices will still be waiting—patient, persistent, prepared, ready to pounce the moment I sit down at the computer.

I never met my grandfather, yet I feel his presence in a way that is difficult to explain. He was, by all accounts, a genuine Irish storyteller—the sort of man who, after serving his customers a beer, could hold them there with nothing more than his voice and a well-spun tale.

I know him only through the stories others have told about him, but there is no doubt his influence lives in me. Perhaps it is simply the inheritance of blood. I carry his genes, after all. Or perhaps something less tangible travels quietly through families—the impulse to shape events into stories, to notice the small human moments that give life its color.

It may be a coincidence, or something more deliberate, that I bear my grandfather’s name. Sometimes I wonder if that alone carries a kind of quiet expectation, as if a fragment of his voice found its way forward through time.

I never heard him tell a story, yet when I sit down to write and the characters begin their clamoring, I cannot help but feel that somewhere in the background there is an old Irish storyteller smiling, leaning on the bar, a pint of beer in his hand, pleased that the tradition—however faintly—has continued.

So I continue to write my stories, not out of habit, but out of something closer to necessity. Along the way, I founded a small gathering for short story writers. Once a month, we come together simply to read, to listen, and to enjoy. There is no dissection of sentences, no weighing of merit—only the quiet, generous act of sharing. Voices rise and fall, some tentative, some assured, each carrying its own rhythm and truth.

At the same time, I am shaping my second collection of longer stories, a body of work that has taken years to gather itself into form. I plan to self-publish it this summer—a decision born not of impatience, but of resolve. These twenty-two stories have already traveled far. I sent them out into the world, one by one, to magazines and journals, each submission carrying a quiet hope. Most returned with courteous rejections—carefully worded, professionally distant. Others vanished altogether, slipping into that familiar void writers come to know too well, where no answer arrives. Not a single story was accepted. And yet, strangely, that absence of recognition never felt like the end of the journey.

The stories themselves refused to disappear. The characters continued to speak. They lingered in the background, interrupting, reminding, urging me forward. They did not care for rejection letters or editorial silence; they demanded only to be heard. There is a certain responsibility in that, a quiet obligation to give voice to what insists on being heard.

So, I return to the page, again and again, listening carefully, taking note, shaping their words into something that might endure. Whether published or not, these stories exist—and that, in the end, is reason enough to keep writing.

Bio:

Michael Barrington, has published 13 books, and more than 60 short stories. His most recent novel, Colourblind, recounts The Battle of Bamber Bridge. In 1943 the village welcomed 600 Black US soldiers but the army tried to impose segregation and violence errupted. He blogs on his website, www.mbwriter.net

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Saturday Sample: May by Jim Bates, lemonade

 

This year Mother’s Day fell on May 9^th, the same date as Andy’s birthday. When I left for work, I hugged Meg. ‘Happy Mother’s Day, sweetheart.’

She hugged me back. ‘Thanks.’ Then she held up Allie, who’d she’d been holding. ‘Kiss Daddy.’

‘Bye, Daddy,’ she said.

I gave her a slobbery raspberry smooch, which she loved. ‘Bye, bye, Goofy One,’ I told her.

She crossed her eyes and made a face. ‘Goofy, goofy,’ she said, and scrambled out her mother’s arms. It took one second for her to gear up to top speed as she began running around the room yelling, ‘Goofy, goofy, goofy,’ at top of her lungs.’

‘Thanks for that,’ Meg said. But she was laughing. 

She and Allie had a special bond. Kind of like me and Andy.

Speaking of… I looked around. ‘Say, where’s the Birthday Boy by the way?’

‘In the back by the garage, building a fort or something.’

‘Okay, I’ll touch base with him on my way out.’ I kissed Meg again. ‘The party still on for four this afternoon?’ Our friends Jack and Linn and Arnie and Amber and their kids Samantha and Willow were all coming over for a dual Mother’s Day/Andy’s birthday celebration. The weather was pleasantly mild in the sixties, and we were going to fire up the grill and do venison steaks that Jack was bringing and filleted walleye from Arnie. I was going to do up a big salad, bake some potatoes and steam some pea- pods. For dessert we’d have Andy’s homemade birthday cake that Linn was bringing.

‘Yep, we are,’ Meg said, chasing after Allie. ‘Watch out! Mommy’s coming to get you!’

Allie  screamed   and   ran   laughing  into   the bedroom she shared with her brother. ‘Nooooooo!’ Meg and I both smiled at each other, silently sharing the same thought: It was nice to see our daughter so happy. We shared a quick hug.

‘Okay,’ I said. ‘I’m off. See you a little after three.’ ‘Have a good day.’

‘I’ll try.’

I’d been working at Esker Quik-Stop for a couple of weeks. It had taken about a month to find the job and get hired after I’d found out that Zylon Labs, the company where I’d been a research scientist for the last six years, had closed its doors for good. The conclusion I’d eventually come to after bemoaning my loss of employment for about a day? That’s life. Get on with it. So, I did.

Of course, Meg was a little more direct. ‘It’s no time to feel sorry for yourself, Lee.’ Looked me in the eye and spoke in that direct way she has when she wants me to be perfectly clear I understand the point she is making. ‘Time to move on.’

Message received. I started looking the next day. I usually worked two or three days a week at the station, most often from ten in the morning until three in the afternoon. I was paid ten dollars an hour. It wasn’t much, but having a little extra cash never hurt. Meg was making good money as an editor for Charlotte’s Press, a small independent publishing company, but I wanted to contribute. With the onset of warmer weather, we didn’t need as much firewood to heat the house, so with less wood to cut, I had some extra time.

The Quik-Stop station was two blocks west of us on the corner of our highway and country road 2. It’d had a sign in their window that we’d seen coming home from getting our second Pfizer shot a few weeks ago.

I’d pointed it out to Meg. ‘What do you think?’

She’d slowed and read it as we drove past. ‘You working at a gas station?’

‘Yeah. We could use the money, right?’ ‘Right.’

‘You don’t sound too enthusiastic.’ I thought for a moment or two. ‘Is it because of the extra kids?’ In addition to Andy and Allie, Meg was now watching Linn and Amber’s girls, Samantha and Willow.

‘No, that’s not it. I love those two little ragamuffins.’

‘So, what is it?’

‘I don’t mind you working at all.’ She turned and smiled as she pulled into the parking space behind our cabin and near the garage. ‘In fact, it’ll be nice to have the place to just myself and the kids.’ She joked. I think. ‘I’m concerned about you being around so many other people.’ She waved her hand arbitrarily. ‘People up here aren’t the safest you know when it comes to Covid.’

She was right. Mask wearing and social distancing was still frowned upon by the vast majority of rural Minnesotans. But by being conscientious and masking up and social distancing and avoiding crowds we had managed to stay healthy and keep the kids from getting sick with Covid for the nearly five months we’d been up here.

‘I see your point,’ I said, helping the kids get out of the car. I watched them run laughing to the cabin. I pointed and commented, ‘It’s nice to see how well the kids have adjusted.’

‘It is.’

Meg took my hand as we followed behind. The wind was warm blowing through the pine trees. The ever-present crows were around squawking up a store. The sun was shining and the sky was blue. It was a pretty day. ‘The kids are doing great.’ She hugged me. ‘We all are.’ She sighed. ‘I just want you to be careful. That’s all.’

‘Don’t worry. I will be. I’ll wear my mask and use hand sanitizer. Plus, they’ve got a plexiglass barrier between me and the customers.’ I smiled and opened the door for her to go inside. ‘So, you’re okay if I apply.’

She shrugged. ‘I know you’ll be safe. Sure, go ahead.’

So, I did. The next day. Mr. Sven Jorgenson, the manager, hired me on the spot. So far it had worked out fine.

I checked my phone as I went out the back door. I still had some time before I had to leave. ‘Hey, Andy,’ I waved. ‘How you doing?’

He waved back. ‘Fine, Dad. I’m building a fort.

Come look.’ ‘I will.’

‘I found something.’

‘Cool,’ I said, not really thinking about what he’d found, but more to the point, thinking about getting to work. It was only my second week and I wanted to make a good impression. Plus, I was one of those people who was obsessed with being on time. I checked my phone as I walked across the worn yard that at one time probably used to be grass but was now mostly dirt and low growing weeds.

He was playing with some of the boards that were part of the collapsed garage next to the single car one that we could have used if it were empty of junk. Which it wasn’t, hence us parking the Honda Fit outside. The garages were about a hundred feet from the cabin.

On the way, I eyeballed the last of the wood Gladys our landlady had left for us in January. The pile was tiny compared to the ten-chords that had originally been there. We’d used most of it up, but still had enough to take the chill off any cold nights or days. I made a mental note to cut it all up, split it and store it on the porch in the next week or two to clear the yard. Maybe then we could plant a garden.

With those thoughts in mind, I walked up to Andy. He was squatting down with his back to me looking at something.

‘Hi, buddy,’ I said. He was dressed in a dark blue sweater under worn bib-overalls. He had on rubber boots because the ground was soft and muddy in a few places. And on his head, he worn a Minnesota Twins baseball hat. His hair was long and curly and spilled down to his shoulders.

He turned and grinned. ‘Hi, Dad.’ Then he pointed. ‘Look what I found.’

I put my phone away. ‘What?’

He stood up and pointed. ‘There.’ I bent close and looked. ‘Where?’ ‘Under that board.’

I squatted down and looked underneath. ‘I don’t see anything.’

Andy got on his hands and knees next to me and lifted the board.

‘Oh, my god!’ I yelled, scrambling backwards and falling over myself to get away. It was a twisting, writhing, mass of snakes.

Andy laughed. ‘What? You don’t have to be afraid. They just gardener snakes.’

Now let me tell you something about me and snakes. It won’t take long, and it’s not a pretty story. Nor one I’m proud of. My mom was terrified of them. So was my dad. Together they instilled a reptilian fear of them in me while I was growing up that not only filled my days with terror, but my nights with nightmares. ‘They’ll come in your sleep and eat you,’ Mom sometimes said.

‘Or crush you to death by suffocation.’ Dad would add.

Thanks, Mom and Dad.

The idea was to fill me with a fear so great I would stay away from them. Done and done!

But as I got older and I started to rethink that thinking. A friend of mine in college was a herpetologist, a snake guy, and he said to me once, ‘If you fear snakes, that means everything you know about snakes is wrong.’ Rational thinking to an emotionally charged fear, that was true. And, I have to say, I tried. He taught me about the good they did for the environment and their place in the ecosystem. He even got me to hold one, a harmless, four-foot-long bull snake. (Harmless!). All well and good, but I was unprepared for the thousands (at least) of the withering writhing snakelets (or whatever they were called) that my son was so proudly showing me.

As a mature adult and a father who wanted to set a good example for the younger generation, I tried to rally. ‘Those are nice, son,’ I said, trying to keep the quivering quaver out of my voice.

‘I know, Dad. They are so cool.’ He wrapped his arms around my waist and hugged me. ‘This is the best birthday present every.’

I cleared my throat. ‘You know we can’t keep them.’

‘Oh, I know.’ He grinned at me. ‘I just like knowing they’re here. I can study them.’

Wow. And here I thought the book I got him about strange Grimm’s Fairy Tales would be a hit. (It actually was.) But I have to admit, it was wonderful to see him so excited.

I hugged him, steering clear of the snakes. ‘Well, I’m glad you like them,’ I said.

‘Your mom and I had nothing to do with it, but I’m glad you’re happy.’

‘Oh, I am, Dad. I really am.’

I hugged him some more. He really was a great kid. ‘I’m glad.’

I left then and went to work. Later that afternoon, we had a great Mother’s Day/Andy’s Birthday and everyone had a super good time. Andy enjoyed showing off the den of gardener snakes to Jack and Linn and Arnie and Amber and Sam and Willow. The common consensus was that they were “Awesome!” In fact, I was the only one who had the willies over them. But I did my best to hide it. After all, not only was it Andy’s birthday, but, as my rationally minded son keeps telling me, ‘Dad, don’t worry about them. They’re completely harmless.’

He’s right. They are harmless. And I’m trying my best to get on board and come to grips with the snakes my son so adamantly admires. In fact, he and I go out there every day to check on them. Each day it gets easier, so maybe it’s working. It’s been over a week now, I haven’t even had any nightmares.

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About the author

Jim is an award-winning author who lives west of Minneapolis, Minnesota. His stories and poems have appeared in nearly five hundred online and print publications. His collection Short Stuff was published in early 2021 by Chapeltown Books. Additional stories can be found on his blog: www.theviewfromlonglake.wordpress.com