Excerpt from "State of Nature" by Eric Victor Neagu

By autumn, when she was well into the third trimester, he had written no more than a hundred pages of his book. His private goal to complete the novel before the baby arrived seemed nearly impossible. He marked the days of her pregnancy to add productive pressure to the writing. Each morning when he began, he notched a strong black stain into a piece of bleached oak he found on the shore. But after a few weeks it just reminded him of how poorly the novel was moving, and he gave this up.

Meredith was uncomfortable with their new arrangement. She thought they had become more like roommates than lovers. It seemed like a good idea to poke her head into the office periodically to ask questions about the book, something Michael hated to discuss. Head poking soon became walking in and sitting down. His best efforts to dissuade her intrusions failed. Offering only monosyllabic responses and a variety of grunts for conversation, still she came.

After her stylistically slight, almost inaudible, knock one afternoon, Michael lost it. “Can you not leave me alone for one day?”

She poked her head in, “I just wanted to know if you were hungry.”

He kept his back to her, squaring his shoulders, “Let’s make a rule. I will come get you when I need something. How about that? Can we make that rule?”

She responded quietly, “I like to see you sometimes, to know you’re there.”

“Where, exactly, the hell else would I be?” His voice was too loud, and he knew it. The door closed. There would be sobbing on the couch that he planned to avoid.

That night he watched the autumn sun fade over the lake, the moon rise, and a bottle of cheap bourbon dwindle to almost nothing. He did not leave the office until morning, when the sun was bright and breakfast ready. Eggs, bacon, and orange juice had been laid on the table alongside a solitary place setting. It was the first night they had not slept together at the cabin. Anticipating an argument, he was surprised when Meredith said nothing and sat quietly in her rocker knitting a child’s blanket.

Michael wanted to thank her for breakfast, but the sound of the rocker built a wall of resentment that he could not climb. Hard wood to soft carpet went the wooden runners of the chair. She sped the back and forth and he ate quicker. The cabin began to feel like a rustic dollhouse. The rocking was faster now and he was nearly done with breakfast. The food helped sobriety to catch up to him. If only, he thought, I can get through the book. Everything will be normal if I can get through the book.

Stuck in thought, he did not notice the rocking stop until he heard a great gasp and thud from across the room.Meredith fell to the floor, writhing like a dying snake. She grabbed at her neck with one hand and her belly with the other.

“Hey,” he said loudly, “You alright?”

When she said nothing, he ran to her and lifted her head to stop it from bouncing against the floor. Her face was gaunt and her limbs were fragile and sinuous. A too small tank top showed off three-dimensional stretch marks and a navel that reminded him of a small fleshy rocket ship leaving the launch pad. He could see movement in her massive belly, and he noticed a black and blue Rorschach bruise around her rocket ship. He stroked her hair with helpless violence waiting for it all to stop. The writhing became periodic twitches, and the twitches became deep heavy breaths.

When she could breathe and her eyes found focus, her voice quivered a weak sentence, “I was thinking, and,” she paused to breathe, “It choked me.”

“What did?” asked Michael.

Her face screwed into a conflicted knot, and she corrected herself, “Nothing, never mind.”

“We should go to a hospital. I’ll get your coat.”

“No, no hospital.” She smiled at the visible motions in her belly and said, “It’s two hours away, by then I’ll be fine.”

Michael tried to protest, “It might be a seizure or something…”

She grabbed him tightly by the wrist, “I said no hospitals.”

To read "State of Nature" in its entirety, download Tainted Tea Winter 2011.



About Eric Victor Neagu:

Eric Victor Neagu lives, writes, and works as a sustainability consultant in Chicago. His undergraduate degree is from Purdue University in civil engineering, which he uses to redevelop former industrial areas. Eric also has a graduate degree from The University of Chicago, which he mostly uses to give driving directions to Barack Obama's house when people ask. Other work can be found in Simon Magazine, The National Ledger, Bartleby Snopes, Bewildering Stories, Everyday Fiction, The Write Place at the Write Time, A Long Story Short, The Camroc Press Review, and Hackwriters.

Excerpt of "The Eleven O'Clock" by Sharon Goldner

The Rabbi looks at the picture and pushes it back in the eleven o’clock’s direction. “You are a bright young lady. With all of this enthusiasm and spark, you should consider finding a cure for a disease along with a nice husband and lots of grandkids for your parents.”

She points to her proof. “This is a photograph of Paul Bunyan’s foreskin, Rabbi. Naturally, the entire thing is colossal so this is only a partial picture of the fossilized foreskin. Carbon dating. Lab analysis. We’re right on target with this.”

Though his Judaic studies were much more intensive than those secular in nature, the Rabbi knows this: “Miss, Paul Bunyan is legend. He was never real.”

The eleven o’clock was hoping the Rabbi wouldn’t be like everyone else. “Okay. Well then. How do you explain the foreskin, Rabbi? I mean, it’s huge. DNA testing proves that it’s from Paul Bunyan, and the only men to routinely get circumcised back then were the Jews. Christian settlers and colonists did not; they kept themselves in one piece. Come on, Rabbi. Just think—when word gets out to the media and the public that Paul Bunyan’s foreskin has been discovered, it’ll shed a whole new light on Judaism. I see an exhibit, Rabbi. A traveling museum all across this country: Paul Bunyan: The Myth, The Man, The Frontier Member.

“People will look at the Jews differently. Everyone loves Paul Bunyan, so everyone will love the Jews. Articles. Hollywood will be scrambling for movie rights. Some of the biggest box office names will want to play Paul Bunyan, Jew with an ax. Oiy vey, right? Who knew? Broadway could turn this into one heck of a musical. And then Hollywood would turn the Broadway musical into a movie version of the musical. Paul Bunyan will do for Judaism what Jesus Christ did for Christianity. Oh gosh, I’m sorry. Am I allowed to say ‘Jesus Christ’ in front of you?” The eleven o’clock is flush with her own fervor.

The Rabbi is gentle. “The Jews do not need a PR campaign. We’ve existed thousands of years without one. We have our heroes: Moses, Judah Macabee, King David...but Paul Bunyan? He’s not mentioned in the Bible.”

The eleven o’clock tells the Rabbi that had the biblical writers continued writing, Paul Bunyan surely would have been mentioned. “One day they’re chronicling events, the next day, nobody’s writing anything anymore. I mean really, what’s up with that?”

The Rabbi shakes his head.

The eleven o’clock looks away from the Rabbi. The foreskin picture looks blurrier as her eyes fill. She has all her years of education, study, and devotion. She probably hasn’t had a home cooked meal in years. No date since forever because what boyfriend wouldn’t feel threatened by a woman immersed in her academic life? And well, the foreskin is just so damn huge.

She grabs her stacks. She grabs her briefcase. “I’ve been to all of the other synagogues in the state. I’ve written letters to synagogues all over the country. They all said they’re not interested. You were the last one. I almost didn’t know you were here. My friend, she’s working on Alice’s Wonderland. They think it was an ancient city…on another planet! I mean if they can find water on Mars...Anyway, she got lost driving and passed by your poor little synagogue. ‘This is the one,’ she said to me. ‘This one will believe.’ You have to believe, Rabbi. And I’m not leaving until you do.”

The Rabbi says, “I walk home for lunch every day, young lady. Shainamaidel leaves to count her children. You’re going to have to go. Her husband is a rabbi and a urologist. I’ll have her mention this to him. Perhaps you can switch your sights to the medical community, and they can use your work in a prostate commercial. Doesn’t that sound nice?”

The eleven o’clock undoes her hair. It falls from the bun on the back of her head like streamers down her shoulders. She shakes it out, feeling it the way it is meant to be felt. “A prostate commercial? Why do you insult me, Rabbi? I need for you to believe. I need you to embrace Paul Bunyan as a Jew.”

The Rabbi apologizes. He cannot.

The eleven o’clock braces herself against his door. “Well, then. I’m not leaving until you do. I put too much into this to get a final rejection. There’s no one left. There’s only you.”

Read "The Eleven O'Clock" in its entirety in the Winter 2011 Issue of Tainted Tea.

About Sharon Goldner:

Sharon Goldner is a three-time Pushcart Prize nominee. Her short stories have been published in literary journals across the country & in England, and her plays have been produced. She resides in Baltimore, MD where she lives out her life's lunacy, sometimes days at a time. No letters were harmed in her manipulations of the alphabet.