“Your masochism hurts me,” Rachael said, staring down at him.

“Doesn’t that make me a sadist?” he asked. He couldn’t judge how far up she was on the stairwell; her head was tiny.

“If you enjoy hurting me, yes. Otherwise, no.”

The little boy who lived in the apartment with the always-yelling mother tried to push past her. He was carrying a red ball. When she wouldn’t move, he peered over the rail to see where she was staring.

“Hey, Roger!” the boy shouted. “Tell your girlfriend to move!”

“Hey, Kennard!” he shouted. Kennard grinned, probably because no one else remembered his name. Roger was glad he remembered. “She’s not my girlfriend!”

The silence hung like a great crimson exclamation mark welded to clear glass. Rachael gasped. She wrenched the ball from Kennard and hurled it down the stairwell.

Faster than a hummingbird, Roger caught the ball with his face.

Chas is an English teacher who lives with his wife — also a
teacher — in South Korea.

I am a nameless lying next to a nameless. She, after a long lapse in words or moans or movement, says “There would be fewer divorcees if the movies would just stop calling it ‘making love.’” And I realize she says those things that I want to hear and she doesn’t what I don’t. She has become I with red hair and lipstick and a skirt too short for her legs and she would stay a nameless for as long as I couldn’t come up with a name for her and she was perfect.

Alex Schillinger is a senior at Eastern Michigan University majoring in Creative Writing and English Linguistics.