Brumal

“I often find myself laying still in bed with the ceiling fan on and windows cracked. I’ll wait for the cold air to shrink the tissue in my joints, for my nerve endings to cool, and to feel the agony of hypothermia even though I am perturbed by all things cold; snow, door knobs, the hands of people with poor circulation. I am fazed by freezers; and those stainless steel stretchers that will latch the cold onto my body.

I don’t think I’ll mind dying as much as I’ll mind sleeping in a freezer—my brumal body boxed beside strangers.”

From Guest Contributor Shanique Carmichael

Backroads

State troopers in the backwoods called in the wrong road. At 90 mph, the sign was a blur. So deputies set the spike strip in the wrong place.

As Bob fiddled with the radio, flipping through static and endless commercials, his pickup suddenly went airborne, tumbling through cornstalks.

Officers had Bob handcuffed at gunpoint in seconds. Cuffs cut off his circulation. An hour passed before they learned of the mix-up. Cordiality crept into their tones.

A deputy in shades took Bob aside.

“Look, we’re just out here trying to keep you safe.”

“Safe,” Bob muttered, his temple damp with blood.From Guest Contributor Joseph S. Pete

Joseph is an award-winning journalist, an Iraq War veteran, an Indiana University graduate, a book reviewer, a photographer, and a frequent guest on Lakeshore Public Radio. His literary or photographic work has appeared in more than 100 journals, including The Evening Theatre, The Tipton Poetry Journal, Chicago Literati, Dogzplot, Proximity Magazine, Stoneboat, The High Window, and the Synesthesia Literary Journal.