Seeing Things
by Michelle Herman

Facts about Blakey
by Franz Neumann

The Cryptozoologist Chaperones His
Daughter’s Prom
by Nick Lantz

Facts about Blakey
    Franz Neumann

Blakey lost his wife to a fast-moving cancer named Dr. Kevn Foley. The
doctor shared the news with Blakey on an Octoberfestless October afternoon in Blakey’s basement pool room, where the doctor seemed completely at home expounding on his love for Blakey’s wife, only pausing when lining up, and usually making, a shot.

    FACT: This was the first time Blakey had ever met the doctor.
    FACT: The doctor knew trick shots.
    FACT: Blakey was terrifically high.

Later, in the shower, a sober Blakey thought of myriad ways to harm the doctor. He could shoot him, gouge him with some fine German cutlery, disfigure him with bleach, or: knock him unconscious and put him in a car (stolen, of course), drive the car to an abandoned meat-packing district, perfume the entire car in gasoline and—spark—compact the doctor’s existence into just a midnight plume of crematory smoke. TV was educational.
    At the time of the revelation Blakey had been incapacitated by the doctor’s newscaster looks and hypnotist voice. The M.D. made Blakey feel almost guilty for being the impediment to a fully bloomed romance between the doctor and Blakey’s wife Lizzie. Great things would happen after his wife moved in with the doctor, Foley assured him. Life would be better for everyone involved. Blakey envisioned them running for a thankless political office, or starting a charity, or simply exploding with sweet intentions, like a struck piñata. When the doctor finished his spiel, Lizzie came downstairs and told Blakey the truth about those out-of-state conferences, the gym membership, and all the other excuses she’d used to spend time with the doctor (who was now performing trick shots in the background). Blakey wondered if the doctor had shown his wife a thing or two on the felt. That would explain the stain Lizzie blamed on sweaty ceiling pipes. He asked, they said yes, but not before looking at each other, thoughts bumping back and forth so loudly Blakey could almost hear them. Was it the pool table or the living room table? Was it this pool table, or that other one? And remember that one table where you got up and I and you and then we . . . ?

Continued in volume 43, issue 2, spring 2007