She stops by the corner deli to buy cigarettes. She burns a pack a day but today she needs two. The man behind the counter has a calloused shapeless scar. He’s distant but chatty.

“Are you passing through?”

“Yes,” she replies, “just passing through. The peony bush,” she asks, “does it remember Darlene?”

It took a whole night but Babushka, 99 years of age, had arrived at the fair on Saint Andrew’s Day—the only day she could buy an idol for her cottage garden. Drizzle and frost didn't deter her or dozens of other gray faces from scrambling in the ad hoc market.

Babushka spared no time—her ride would leave in less than an hour. She elbowed through, holding her purse tight against her bosom. A few inches too short, she could hardly see beyond cold shoulders that pressed harshly from all sides. Her cheeks felt like cheese on a grater in the wind.

“Let me through!” she yelled, and a young man gave her an impatient look before giving way.

The first stall held a single piece—a gold chrysanthemum. No doubt, Dedushka would adore it. The crone beheld the shape with watery eyes, and reached to feel.

“Take your sinner’s hands off, Babushka!” A loud shout came from a disembodied mouth. It moved together with a pair of hands that gestured the crone away.

“It’s a perfect idol, don’t you see? It will shatter to splinters should a worthless someone touch it.”

The mouth-and-hands stood afloat against the dark background of the tent. Dedushka had told her about the idol merchants. Over centuries they’d sold all their possessions, including their bodies. “But no one wants to buy merchant mouths and hands,” he said. Indeed, there was something disturbing about the floating hands. The fingers, their nails crooked, looked too short for the thick palms. And the mouth changed from a grin to a snarl in an instant—a disquieting sight. Babushka pondered how they served their clients just fine without eyes and ears. But why should she fret over something she cannot understand? She caressed the gold chrysanthemum with her eyes once again and walked past.

A sweet draft filled the next stall. Fat chefs made of raisin bread were lined up on the table. Another mouth-and-hands promised the crone dearly that this idol would double the size of her bake. Babushka considered the goods with hungry eyes, but the chefs were sagging in the rain. This won’t do for a cottage garden, and besides, she had no other mouths to feed but her own. She backed away from the stall and stepped into a muddy pothole, but she didn’t mind. It was the first time it had rained in weeks, and she knew the soil loved water as much as she loved Dedushka.

“What’s this for?” she inquired the keeper of an ignored shack, holding up a shallow copper bowl.

“It holds rain,” the mouth said, its hands motionless on the stall.

“For birds?” asked Babushka with delight. Dedushka loves a nightingale.

The bowl did not glint, but delicate waves were carved along its lip. Babushka held out two coins, and the hands received.

As she shuffled to her ride, a deafening crack echoed from a nearby stall.

“Catch that sinful dog! He shattered my last chrysanthemum!” raged the mouth-and-hands.

The sinful dog was a young man, the very same one Babushka had seen earlier pushing through the crowd. He dashed towards the pine forest on the hillside. Bystanders murmured, but not a single finger moved to catch him.

“Who needs a perfect idol, anyway?” uttered a solid woman, frowning. “There’s no saints where I come from!”

 Babushka snickered hoarsely and her appreciation for the sturdy copper bowl grew.

In her cottage garden Babushka placed the copper bowl atop Dedushka’s grave. Gentle rain has fallen ever since. But she didn’t mind, because she knew nightingales loved a soak as much as she loved Dedushka.

You can call me nuts for going down to Zorban’s Copy Shop, but I’d been out of luck for months, and I needed that to change. My Grand Doppelganger Show was coming up in less than a week and I had no stunt double. Ratings had been dropping since the chainsaw-in-half fiasco. If I cancelled yet another show, I’d be out on the street with the rest of the loser clowns.

I wake up to a slight change in my environment’s illumination. Right across the womb dim shadows shift against the egg-shell colored wall. I sit up, conscious that I am naked. Something which I haven’t quite gotten used to yet. Solitude, a warm, snug place to sleep in, and nurturing sap make nudity convenient. Appealing even. [...]

At 45, Andy lives alone. 

Every morning before sunrise he boards the conductor compartment of the A train. For the next six hours, Andy points to the black and white board when the subway reaches a stop. When his job is done, Andy goes home. He pours himself a mug of chicken broth and drinks it in one gulp. Then he turns into a dog. 

Andy spends the rest of his evening howling, waiting for neighboring dogs to answer. Sometimes the mutt three stories down replies, but her cry interferes with city traffic. The sound makes his heart drop. He day-dreams of going out, sniffing bushes, tires, and the mutt’s behind. They’d run in circles and run in straight lines, and turn spirals of dirt into meaningful signs. But the city is not a safe place for a free dog. He folds himself into a pretzel and sleeps. 

The next day Andy wakes up, tail still fuzzy from his dream chase, and heads out to work. The subway is, as usual, quiet but something is amiss. When he embarks the A train, his reflection in the window strikes him dumb. He forgot to switch.

A walking dog climbs in the conductor compartment of the 4th car. For the next six hours, he points to the black and white board when the train reaches a stop. No one pays heed.

When his job is done, Andy runs home. On his street the mutt three stories down comes out of the block. She bobs her head to say hello, but her keeper pulls her away, and calls animal control. 
“A free dog is not safe for the city.”

I loved my husband. I really did. I would’ve followed him into the desert, gone blind, sold my soul for him. But when I got home earlier than usual that day, something in the mechanics of my love for him broke.

You see, up to that point, I had no doubt my husband was an angel, a God-sent angel on Earth who spread kindness, love, and wisdom. I’d witnessed him give up his parent’s wealth to put an end to malaria. He served for years on the board, negotiating a new deal on nuclear non-proliferation. For him, leisure meant providing free legal support. Deportation, eviction, abuse—he took it upon himself to ease the suffering of those crushed by life.

Geniuses make lousy partners. This law didn’t apply to my husband. At home, he cooked and cleaned, ran errands, called my parents, and played with our dogs—all without a fuss. I cried every morning when he declared his everlasting love for me. I cried with gratitude as I hugged him like a trophy.

I would’ve lived in blissful ignorance if I hadn’t seen the circuitry that made him. Beneath the soft faux skin lay neither flesh nor bone, but graphite, copper and gold. He made no attempt to hide his inner workings when I caught him off guard.

His mother—barren, but in want of a child—had created him in the image of God. The commands etched into his body were configured to deliver solace and salvation.

My love didn’t wane when his true nature surfaced. My devotion stood strong, and I felt relieved. No mortal soul should carry the collective sins of humanity. No mortal soul was designed that way. But then I asked why he tinkered with his circuits.

“I’m building an eternal version of you in my image.”

The soft roar of the circulation pumps bid her a warm welcome. Maybe not warm, but sterile. Exactly what she’d been looking for. Jaimee hoped this would be the last time she ever moved apartments.

Her previous place was substandard, to say the least. The landlord distilled heavy liquor in the building basement. The gentle sweetness of fermenting rice attracted entire colonies of chubby rats. Had they only restricted their living quarters to the basement… Jaimee could still feel tiny, rubbery feet stride across her face at night.

The apartment before that was even worse. A wanna-be fight club popped into existence Tuesday nights in the inner courtyard right below her window. Why Tuesdays? Everyone hated Mondays, but they usually survived through them. Tuesdays, on the other hand, gathered all the ugly accents of Mondays, and had none of the Wednesday hope that Fridays would ever come around. The agony of a dozen petty men flourished between those slanted walls. Jaimee absorbed all of it.

But this would be the end of masochistic neighbors, claustrophobic views and foul pests. The price was exorbitant, but she knew it would be worth every penny.

Jaimee switched the lights off and floated to the singular round window. Minuscule starry twinkles and bare nothingness in between. Planet Earth was not even in sight. A perfect slice of space.

She reached for cigarettes, but her pockets were empty.
“Fuck.”

I could never be that girl. So I choose to scatter my glitter out the window, set my bras ablaze, and move to Seattle to study philosophy. My love understands. He says long distance relationships work, sometimes. He knows a friend who sends poems across the country to his girl, and his girl sends him voice messages in the middle of the night. We could be like that. His thumb caresses the palm of my hand.

“I’ll miss you”, I tell him, and I mean it.

This body I have been packaged into betrayed me. The head of a cherub atop a soft torso; cigarettes look funny between stubby fingers and vanishing nails; breasts collide when I walk across a room. This is not the body of a goddess–someone who gets coffee for free, captures the regard of men, women, and children alike, and sends the first unaltered iteration of her voice messages.