Animal Games
The Animal Game is the only thing that keeps Ava away from Jessie, who is convalescing because a maniac chopped off her foot. Jessie’s surgeons shortened the bone where her leg terminated and smoothed it over so there’s enough room for the tissue to lattice back. Jessie and I had a meeting with her team of doctors about a home recovery plan. I learned new skills like wound care and new words like dehiscence and old words with new meanings like weeping. This was two weeks ago. Now, back home, there is rest and pain meds and antibiotics. We turned our living room into a bedroom, so she doesn’t have to go up and down the stairs.
In a few weeks, there will be a fitting for a prosthetic foot and physical therapy. After the healing, after strength returns and she learns how to walk again, her foot will still be gone. This will lead to other things. And then there’s Ava.
Jessie and I had Ava five years ago. She came furiously, pounding against Jessie’s uterus four weeks early. After arriving, she refused to nurse, moving Jessie through various self-accusations: I’m a bad mother. My milk’s no good. Something’s wrong with me. One day, Ava finally latched and went to town for nine months before she abruptly stopped. She spit out Jessie’s nipple, repeatedly, until Jessie got the picture.
Ava must be reasoned with, so the morning that I was to retrieve Jessie from the hospital, I sat Ava on my lap and looked into her eyes. The brown of her corneas melted into her pupils, erasing any noticeable boundary between the two.
“Remember how we talked about Mama’s accident?”
Her head bobbed like a bolt in her neck needed tightening.
“And that things will be a little different?”
More bobbing.
“You remember?”
So much bobbing that I didn’t know if she was listening.
“Ava?”
She laughed, and I said her name again, more sternly.
“I know,” Ava said, exasperated. “You tellded me that.”
“Right. Mama gets to come home today.”
She clapped her hands. “This day?”
“Yes. This. Day.”
“Mommeeeeeeeeee.” She wound her arms around my neck and crashed her face into my chest.
“That’s right. But she’ll be very tired and needs lots of sleep and rest.”
She sat up and pulled the buttons on my shirt. “Did the doctors put on… put back on her… put her foot back on?”
“No. Remember? They can’t do that. But that’s OK because she’s still Mama.”
“Is she sick?”
“No, but she still hurts a lot. So that means that we can say hi to her and talk to her and we can even hug her if we’re gentle. But we’re not going to climb on her or anything like that.”
“But I like to.”
“I know. So, if you need to wrestle or do tickles, I’m your man. Got it?”
“Tickle me!”
I did, and she collapsed into laughter.
I bring Jessie home from the hospital and lay her on a small bed I moved into the living room.
I change her bandages every four hours. I remove the outer stretchy one and then the inner gauze. It resists at the stitches and makes my stomach lurch with every tug. Jessie shuts her eyes and turns her head. I wash the wound with mild soap and pat it dry. The stitches and the folds of skin at her stump make me think of spiders and fatty pig feet.
I apply new bandages and kneel beside her head and push her hair back and kiss her face and remind her she’s still a whole person that I love.
The doctor told us they’re doing incredible things with prosthetics these days. I’m guessing our insurance will only cover the kind of foot that looks like it was stolen off a mannequin from Sears, the one at the mall that shut down last year. I imagine a warehouse full of mannequins, scuffed and naked, dismembered and absent from all the world’s closed-down stores.
Before I give her meds and let her sleep, I rub lotion into the backs of her hands. I touch her fingers to my face. I tell her we’re still the same, even though so much else is not. After my ministrations, Jessie often cries from the pain and what is lost and other things.
Keeping Ava away from Jessie has become my day job. To Ava’s credit, though she is constantly handsy with affection, she is usually gentle. The Animal Game is the only thing that will uncouple her from her mama when Jessie needs to rest untouched.
In another room, Ava crawls onto my lap, faces me, and bounces. I put a hand over my crotch, so she won’t crush anything.
“I’m thinking of an animal, and it starts with the letter B.” I speak loudly because I know Jessie is crying in the living room.
“Baboon!” she says.
“No.”
“Bird!”
“No.”
“What does it sound like?”
I roar, hands like claws, and descend on her.
“Bear!” she screams.
“Yes.” I pick her up, turn her over in the air, and tickle the backs of her legs until she can’t breathe.
Jessie and I are mystically connected to each other. Feelings pass through the air between us. I’ll feel her joy over some small thing and light up like a Christmas tree. She’ll sense my anxiety and rub it out of my shoulders. Sometimes, at dinner, Ava makes me and Jessie communicate telepathically. Here’s how it goes: Ava whispers something into one of our ears, then Jessie or I will covertly point or gesture until the person guessing shouts out the word. “Candle!” “Fork!” “Chicken!” Ava lets out a squeal reserved for profound surprise.
But Jessie’s pain meds have disturbed our connection, so empathy goes one way now: from me to her. She only sees me by mere ocular machinations. The opioids thicken her blood and numb her skin, pulling her deep into something that’s at once euphoric and absent of feeling. She looks disturbed, even asleep, as if her blood, following the well-worn paths to her extremities, finds a way that’s blocked, and the cells become furious and confused, rolling back over themselves, frothing in her veins.
It was her right foot, so you get a clear picture. Her feet weren’t identical. A freckle marks her left foot, just an inch down from where her big toe and second toe cleave together. On her right foot, the second toe curved a bit. This happened after Jessie pencil jumped from a bough into the river and hit a submerged tree, cracking the toe in a clean break. I know because I was there. I took her to that river. Summer after our sophomore year in college. We were in love. She came to visit.
That foot’s had some tough luck since she met me. I miss it.
Jessie was doing some shopping when the man now identified as Terrance Donovan started slashing people at the mall. This wasn’t at the increasingly deserted mall where the Sears used to be, but an upscale, outdoor mall called a fashion park. I was home with Ava, so I didn’t see any of this happen.
Donovan had strapped a katana blade to his belt, hid it under a long coat, and then muscled his way into a bustling crowd. He unsheathed his sword and started hacking away. According to what little Jessie remembers, no one understood what was happening. Like maybe it was a staged TikTok dance or something. By the time everyone realized what was going on, six of them were sliced up, including Jessie. One person died.
Jessie was right next to Donovan, unable to get away in the madness. She tried to run but twisted her ankle and fell. He saw his chance and brought down the katana blade so hard that it completely cut through her foot at the ankle.
Jessie immediately passed out from the pain and the shock and whatever else makes you pass out from things like that, so we only heard the next part secondhand.
We were told that before Donovan could chop anything else off Jessie, some heroic citizen—still unknown to us—tackled him and got him in a neck hold until the police showed up. Unfortunately, the hero let go too early, before the police officer moved to the ground to take over the restraint, and Donovan popped back up, grabbed his katana blade, and started slashing again. No one had thought to get the sword away from him in the scramble. The cops shot Donovan dead on the spot, and later there was some controversy about whether the police were within their right to do so. Maybe if he had used a gun, it would’ve blown over. Maybe not. Doesn’t matter. No one’s asked my opinion, anyway. Mostly because we’ve refused all requests for comment.
I still get calls. I wish there was a way to violently decline an unknown number. I wish there was a way to violently remove it all from reality.
The person who died was named Brent Maloney. He was born here in Midlothian and grew up here and left for college but came back and got married and had two kids. Everything was all over the news for a while. It’s hard to not have all the details. Hard to forget them. Hard not to obsess over them and hard to get the name Terrance Donovan out of your head.
Terrance Donovan. Terrance Donovan. Terrance Donovan. The 32-year-old male who lived on the Southside and stocked produce at Kroger before he lost it and got himself shot. That picture the news kept running of him. The one with his big, thick neck and bald head and goatee. Terrance Donovan. Brent Maloney. Wife. Two kids. Terrance Donovan.
In all the chaos, Jessie’s severed foot disappeared, still unfound by the time the ambulances arrived. The paramedics agreed it was necessary to get Jessie to the hospital ASAP, foot or no foot. At the hospital, the doctor said it was amazing that Donovan had managed to cut it off in one slash. Really astounding. A lucky shot. Sure.
While doing crime-scene clean-up things, the police finally found her foot wedged under a bench, still laced up in her Brooks running shoe. It was an alarmingly long way from the locus of violence. Presumably, it had been kicked around so that it gathered dirt and gunk because all the blood made it sticky, like a snowball rolling through dirt. By the time they found it, it was too beat-up and too late for a successful reattachment.
“It looks good,” I say. “No swelling. No weeping.”
Her forehead is cool.
“How’s the pain?”
She closes her eyes. “OK, I think.”
“I can give you more meds in an hour.”
“Might be good.”
“Doctor says to stay ahead of the pain.”
“I know.”
“Can I come in?” Ava is under the archway that connects the living room to the dining room. She knows not to hover when I’m changing the bandages.
“One sec, sweetie.”
If Jessie isn’t crying, I’ll let Ava come in for cuddles. Let her show Jessie how high she can count all by herself (into the fifties). Then it’ll be time for a round of the Animal Game.
“Maybe we should pray?” I say it like a question. Like it’s just come to me and I’m not sure if I mean it.
“For what?” Jessie says. It’s enough of an answer.
“Yeah.”
My religious friend invited me to a Christian summer camp when I was thirteen. There was hiking and sailing and swimming and a zipline. After breakfast, all the campers gathered in a room with wood paneling and a checkered vinyl floor and a small, carpeted platform where a man read from the Bible in a way that made it all about us. We’d pray together, and the praise band would sweep us away with songs that moved either our souls or our emotions. Hard to know which. Later, we’d play ultimate frisbee on the quad and let our skin burn and feel the lake water drip down our backs, and we’d fall in love with each other and link our hearts together, all in the name of Jesus. Back in our cabins, before lights out, our counselor Derek would talk to us and pray with us and try to light us on fire for the Lord.
On one of those nights, Derek told us about his friend who was born with one leg shorter than the other so that he had to wear a special shoe with an extra thick platform sole. During a sleepover, Derek’s short-legged friend broke down and cried and told Derek and the other guys there how much he hated how one leg was shorter than the other. They all laid their hands on him and prayed that Jesus would heal his body and make him whole again.
And then Derek said that through their prayer and their faith and their hands, Jesus grew the leg back right before their eyes. Derek showed us what it looked like using his own legs by shrinking one up, then stretching it out again.
Derek told us that God answers our prayers when we pray in the name of Jesus, and I wanted to believe him so badly that I actually did until I did not. That came years later, but there’s an undiminished part of me that still wants to.
At first, I pray over Jessie from a distance, so she won’t know. I send words up to the sky, but it doesn’t work. Maybe prayers are like radio waves, all static and noise and competing signals when you’re too far away from the source. Maybe I need to move my heart closer to hers.
I kneel next to her, hover my hands over the deepness of her slumber, and pray in the name of Jesus, the Father and the Son and to the Holy Spirit. I pray for her foot to grow back. I pray to the Virgin Mary and the saints, and I imagine the tissue and the muscle and the bone pushing against the tip of her stump. I imagine a dehiscence and a sound like air released from tires as her body regenerates itself. I feel something surge inside of me that feels like belief. I wish I could explain it as if it were a rock formation or a simple mathematical equation, but I can’t. It feels like the word Yes sounds. Best I can do.
Emboldened by this, I touch her thigh, just barely.
Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, Mary and all the saints and angels, heal my wife, Jessie. Grow her foot back. In the name of Jesus, give her a new foot. Whole and lovely. Amen.
I hear a cough and turn to see Ava under the archway looking at me like I’m a stranger.
“Daddy, what are you doing?”
I touch my lips and mouth Mommy’s sleeping because I don’t know what I’m doing. Not at all.
“I’m thinking of an animal, and it starts with fuh fuh,” Ava says.
“Fish.” I suck in my cheeks, so my lips do the fishy-lip thing.
Ava is screaming. “No! No! Stop! It’s not fish!”
“Gimme a hint,” I say.
“It’s got red fur,” she says.
“A fox.”
“Yes! Your turn,”
I call Jessie’s sister, Emily, to come over. Emily lives downtown, and she’s helped with errands and stays with Jessie when I absolutely must leave the house. When I do, Ava goes with me because I only trust myself to protect Jessie from Ava.
I don’t know anything about what kind of church to visit, so I looked at Wikipedia pages of different denominations. I learned fascinating things. Like how some people believed St. Thomas Aquinas could levitate and teleport. I dug deep into my guts to believe it, too, because if it’s true, then maybe God would regrow a foot. I Googled churches near me and picked one that looked the most likely to believe in real miracles. A church with altars and candles and stained-glass windows and architecture that reaches up to Heaven.
I could have arranged a playdate for Ava so I could go alone, but there’s something about a child’s faith. That’s a thing, right? Like my faith isn’t strong enough but hers is. Where I equivocate, she will stand firm. Ava, in fact, may have enough faith to grow a limb back all by herself.
It’s 9 a.m., and Ava and I sit in the back. The pew cracks under our weight. The popping bounces up the walls and against the arches across the ceiling. The church may split and crumble and bury us.
The pews in the front are peppered with a few older people, looking like this is part of their daily routine after oatmeal and doctor-recommended stretching. Ava is the only child.
A woman ascends to a podium. Her frizzy hair fans out like a cone on top of her head, like that Gilda Radner character on SNL. Rosanna Rosanna something. I don’t know. It was a cast before my time. She wears one of those clerical collars and a gray blazer. What do you call a woman priest? Mother, I suppose. She produces a pair of glasses from her blazer pocket, unfolds the arms, and slides them onto her face in a way that looks as if it’s part of the ritual. She opens a book and reads aloud. “Lord, open our lips.”
From everyone in the pews: “And our mouth shall proclaim your praise.” They touch their heads and shoulders, making a cross in the air before them.
Ava slaps a hand to her mouth, cramming back a giggle. She looks at me like she knows a secret. I put a finger to my lips.
There are back-and-forth recitations. Sitting. Standing.
Ava pokes me. “Daddy. When’s it over?” She squirms, sending up pops from the antique wood like it has knuckles and she’s cracking them over and over. She crosses her legs, pushing the top knee so far over that she almost rolls in the pew.
“Just be quiet a little longer.”
“Daddy, how many more minutes?”
“I don’t know. I just need to talk to someone.”
“Can we get donuts?” Her voice breaks the whisper barrier, becomes a raspy echo.
“Shhhh. We’ll talk about it later.”
“At this time,” the priest says from the pulpit, “I invite you to lift up the prayers of your own heart, silently or aloud.”
Everyone is kneeling, so I do, too.
“Let’s pray for mommy.”
Ava drops to her knees, sending a thunderclap throughout the sanctuary. Her back is so straight she looks like she’s grown six inches. Her hands clasp together, fingers braided, lips kissing the tops of her knuckles. Faith is perfect in children. Maybe we just lose it along the way.
The worshippers in front of us vocalize their requests in low, barely audible tones.
“I pray for Jessie McIntyre,” I whisper. “For healing.”
“Daddy.” She pokes my side. “What are you saying?”
And in a softer whisper than before, “That you would grow her foot back.”
More poking. Ava’s looking at me again like she did before when she caught me praying over her mama. She looks at me like I don’t know what I’m doing, once again.
The whole affair takes 25 minutes. After the recitations are said and the people have gone forward for communion (Ava and I stay put) and the candles have been snuffed and the leftover bread and wine secured in a golden box and they all shuffle out of the chapel making swishing cotton sounds, the priest lingers at the podium.
“Daddy, can we go now?”
“Come with me.” I tether her to me with a slight gesture and she follows.
I approach the priest in a way that feels reverent, but I don’t really know.
She collects her holy books, a small leather purse, a canvas tote bag. She folds her glasses back into their case and makes the case disappear into her blazer pocket and looks up.
“Hello, I’m Camille. I don’t think we’ve met. I’m one of the priests here.”
Her hand is slight in mine. A collection of thin, spindly bones wrapped in crepe paper skin.
“I’m Nelson. This is my daughter Ava.”
“Welcome, Nelson.” Her hip pops when she bends down. “Hi, Ava.” She takes Ava’s hand into both of hers. “What a beautiful name. I’m glad to meet you both. So glad you’re here. Do you have any questions, or can I give you a tour of the sanctuary?”
“I was hoping for a miracle,” I say.
The walls of Mother Camille’s small, creaky office close in with deep bookshelves. Books go from top to bottom and back to the top. Her desk fits under a small-paned window. In a corner, an ancient golden retriever curls on a dog bed thick with hair. Small wooden pictures of Jesus, Mary, the saints, and scenes from the Bible clutter the only patch of wall unhidden by shelves. I recognize one as Jesus’s baptism. A white dove hovers above his head, kept there as if trapped by Jesus’s thick halo.
Ava plops down beside the golden retriever and pushes her fingers through its fur.
“Ava. No, honey. You have to ask.”
“That’s Chumps,” Mother Camille says. “And it’s perfectly fine. He loves sweet pets.”
Chumps lifts his lazy head, investigates the disturbance. His tail gives three muted thumps on the well-worn bed before he lowers his head back down. He’ll allow it.
Mother Camille pulls a glass jar from a desk drawer. “Would you like to give him a treat, Ava? He’ll be a friend for life.”
Ava fishes out a biscuit. Chumps sniffs and sucks up the treat from her palm. “Tickles.” Ava laughs and wipes her hand against her shirt.
“I don’t really know what I’m doing,” I say. “I wanted to talk to someone who does.”
“Sit. Please.”
I lower myself into a wooden chair that creaks like the pew. Mother Camille leans back in her office chair, sleek, black, and springy. Other than the laptop on her desk, it’s the only thing that looks modern.
I get down to it. I tell her how Jessie was shopping when Terrance Donovan cut off her foot and now Jessie is at home, disfigured forever.
“How awful,” Mother Camille says. “I know the incident. I couldn’t believe it. I’m so sorry about what your wife is going through.”
Of course she knows about the incident, but I want her to know more. Part of me hopes maybe Terrance Donovan went to church here. Was a choir boy or something. Maybe this is the Maloneys’ church, and now his widow and two children come to services more frequently because they find the strength here to process sadness and loss and permanent separation. I wait for Mother Camille to break down and admit she was Donovan’s own, biological mother. It would be a sign to me. But Mother Camille says nothing more about it.
I want to ask if God would grow back a foot, but that seems childish. I want Ava to ask, but I don’t think I could handle the condescension in Mother Camille’s certain response: Oh honey, wouldn’t that be lovely? But no. I’m sorry.
I think I just want to leave.
“What can I do for you?” she asks. “Would you like prayer?”
“Yes. I think so. I don’t know. The only word I can think of is miracle.”
“Of course.”
“There are still miracles, right? Like loaves and fishes and walking on water?”
Mother Camille’s gaze turns to the window. She nods, but not in affirmation. It’s like a how-do-I-put-this nod.
“You know,” she says, “healing is a miracle in itself. Not just physical healing, but emotional and spiritual as well. Healing from trauma is not only miraculous, it’s possible.”
“Yes, there are the exercises. There’s therapy. All kinds. We’ll have to adjust. It will be OK. But what about… I don’t know.” I drop my head. I stretch my fingers.
Ava pipes up, like she can’t stand it anymore. “Daddy wants Mama’s foot to grow back.”
Mother Camille smiles at Ava. Ava smiles back. They absorb something from each other. There’s no condescension directed toward Ava because Ava has cut to the chase. She’s told the truth. A five-year-old full of faith knows that such miracles are not real.
I see her in that cabin with me years ago, when Derek tells us about his miracle, while we’re all rapt and believing, our heads filled with wonder at what miracles could happen for us: to jump higher and run faster and drive a car and grow a mustache and get rich and have sex. What else do boys want? I don’t remember. And there is Ava, shaking her head, pitying us all.
“This is a hard thing,” Mother Camille says to me. “When we read those stories in the Bible, it’s best to see them for what they are. Stories of hope. Of renewal. What God wants is for us to recognize the beauty of life and see the miracle of potential all around us.”
Ava is at Mother Camille’s side now. She takes Mother Camille’s hand, opens it, and presses a finger into her palm.
“Hi, honey,” Mother Camille says.
“Can I have your dog?”
I am gutted.
Maybe there is another church. Another priest. Another religion. Maybe there’s a parallel universe I could visit where Jessie has both feet but I’m missing one. I think I’m just not one for other people’s suffering.
Back home, while Ava is in the kitchen, sticky with glazed donuts, I hover over a sleeping Jessie. Her eyelids ripple. I try to reestablish our two-way connection. I exert something and attach it to her trauma. It’s like sunlight pouring out of me. I meditate at the molecular level, tissue like water crystals growing into each other until an entire surface is covered, elastic and accommodating of new bones with fresh marrow poured into them.
Ava crashes into me. Jessie jerks awake.
“What—” Jessie says.
“Ava,” I say.
Ava pushes me, makes a tiny space for her to climb into between Jessie and me.
“Hi, baby,” Jessie says.
“Daddy says hugs are OK,” Ava says.
“Course they are.” Jessie is sluggish, her eyes barely open.
Ava and Jessie hug until Jessie’s sobs take over.
“Come on,” I say. “Mama needs to sleep. Let’s keep playing.” I tug her arm and lure her away.
“I’m thinking of an animal,” I say. “It starts with the letter M.”
“Monkey,” Ava says.
“No.”
“Manatee.”
“No.”
“What then?”
I’m thinking of maggots and the story a nurse told me while Jessie was in the hospital. How she saw a man’s foot infected so badly that it was filled with maggots. They had chewed up all the bones inside his foot, which had turned violet from necrosis. When the doctor cut off the tip of the man’s big toe the maggots poured out like foam overflowing from a bottle of beer.
“Maggots,” I say.
“That’s not an animal.”
“What are they, then?”
“That’s a worm.”
“A worm is a kind of animal.”
She rolls her eyes. “My turn. I’m thinking of an animal that starts with the letter M, and it goes ooh ooh ah ah.”
“Maggots!” I say.
“Nooo! It’s a monkey.”
“You have to let me guess.”
“OK. I go again. I’m thinking of an animal that starts with C,” Ava says.
“Cat!”
“No. I’m off cats.” She makes a chopping motion with her hand. I’m off cats means cats won’t show up in the Animal Game for a long time.
“Capybara.”
“What?”
“Chumps.”
“Yes.” Her face lights up as if I’d made a unicorn appear.
“My turn,” I say. I can tell Ava’s losing interest. She can feel her mama’s gravitational pull.
“I’m thinking of…” But I’ve gone blank on animals. I’m thinking instead about how I wasn’t there when Terrance Donovan started slashing everyone. How Jessie would still have both feet if she went to a different store in a different direction. How Jessie must relearn how to walk and drive. How different it will feel the next time we dance in the kitchen, slow and without music, after Ava’s asleep, surrounded by dishes and hours of chores ahead of us.
Will she be able to run a marathon again? I don’t know. I hear they’re doing amazing things with prosthetics these days.
It’s not our undoing, of course. We’ll just have to learn new things. Go forward as best we can. One foot in front of the other. I almost say this aloud, but I don’t because it sounds like a cruel joke, even though I don’t mean it that way. Another thing we’ll have to relearn is how to talk.
“Go, Daddy.” Ava is on top of me, rubbing the whiskery growth on my cheeks. Going on four days now. “Your turn.”
I don’t know how long I can keep this up. Ava and Jessie are counting on me, but I can’t think of one. I can’t think of a single animal.
A crashing noise hits the wall and rocks our house. Jessie shouts out from the other room. I think she’s fallen, or something has fallen on her, but then I hear the ecstatic joy in her voice.
“Come here! Nelson, come here! Look at this! You have to see this!”
My heart lifts and my senses are flooded with Yes Yes Yes. She’s still shouting when I burst into the room, but I don’t see what I believe I’ll see. Instead, Jessie has rolled onto her side. Wild smile. Bulging eyes. Hair flattened against her head, sticking out in places it normally doesn’t. She has both hands wrapped around her mutilated leg, one on the calf, the other above her absent ankle. The bandages are soaked through, as if her stump were dipped into a vat of red wine.
Dehiscence. We need to go to the hospital. Now.
“Do you see? Do you see it? It’s back. I’m healed. I can’t believe it.”
All the energy drains out of me, leaving me cold, my heart dried up.
“Baby,” I say.
“Do you see it?”
She’s laughing. She’s crying. She looks dead. She looks alive. She looks high. She looks like she may unsheathe a sword and cut through everyone around her.
“Baby.”
Ava slams into my backside. “Daddy, can we get a doggie?” Her tiny hands grip my thigh. “Can we have Chumps?”
“Baby, you’re dreaming,” I say.
I must be ready for this. There will be more dreams. They may never stop. Soon we’ll be dancing again in the kitchen, the music off, all the dishes on the counter and food congealing and the night pressing hard and black against the windows, trying to slip in and swallow us. We’ll learn new ways of stepping around things.
“You’re dreaming.”
But right now, Jessie can’t dance. She’s twisted up on the bed and looking at me, offering up a phantom limb. Her face has changed. I can’t describe how awful it is.
David Williamson works and lives in Virginia. His stories have been published in X-R-A-Y Literary Magazine, Maudlin House, Farewell Transmission, HAD, Short Story, Long, Rejection Letters, and others.