Free Lady Churchill's Rosebud Wristlet No. 22 by Kelly Link Gavin J. Grant

snuggling into the space between him and the back cushions. “You were just away."
    He woke up alone, and went upstairs to their bedroom door. It was shut, and he didn't know how to open it.
    He went back to the couch.
    * * * *
    Herman tried to find a job. He tried to remember how to exist. He was limited to job interviews in rooms without doorknobs, in buildings with motion-sensing or revolving doors to the outside.
    He tried to amuse his youngest son by juggling three broken pieces of moonlight, but the child only smiled when Herman cut his finger on a jagged edge.
    The youngest son wore little black ski-gloves to hold his iron fork at dinner.
    * * * *
    "I think he's enchanted,” Herman whispered to the cats. “He's not himself."
    "You wouldn't know,” said Orange.
    "And he isn't enchanted,” said Grey. “Enchant-ment is absence, to him. He doesn't trust it. He doesn't trust you. And he doesn't think that you're actually here."
    " And he's the youngest,” said Orange. “He's the third. You know what that means."
    Herman knew. He wished he didn't. “I don't want to lose him,” he said. “He's the only one who ever makes eye contact."
    The cats left abruptly, intent on other business. This is how cats leave.
    * * * *
    That night Harriet worked late. She called and left a message for the boys to fix their own dinner. Herman heard the message. He had been fixing dinner for a week now, because he was still unemployed and had little else to do, but no one ever noticed. Dinner appeared, just like it always did. Everyone was glad that it appeared. No one wondered how.
    He fixed dinner. The oldest son went to a movie with his all-knowing and never-smiling girlfriend. The second one went down to the basement to watch TV. Herman and his youngest son sat alone at the table and glared at each other.
    Herman broke eye contact and let out a long exhale, surrendering.
    "There's an egg,” he said. “There's an egg inside a hollow tree, and the tree is on a mountainside, and the mountain is at the end of an endless swamp. I left it there when I came home. It was easier to travel without. But now someone needs to break that egg, or I'll never really be here at all."
    "I'll go,” the child said.
    "Thank you. Take the cats."
    The youngest son left. The round and imperial cats followed behind him. None of them said good-bye.
    Herman folded his napkin into a child-shape. He wondered if anyone would be fooled. Then he went upstairs, opened his bedroom door, and waited in the dark for his wife to come home. He hoped she would notice him there.
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Vinegar and Brown Paper
    Becca De La Rosa
    Jack the Ripper comes to lunch on Thursdays dressed in his Sunday best. He brings me macaroons wrapped up in parchment parcels, Penny Dreadful magazines and wilting wildflower bouquets, and he always carves the lunch meat. Today is Wednesday, but when I carry my rose gloves and my pinking shears out onto the patio he is there waiting, his top hat full of wild onions. “What are you doing here?” I ask, surprised. Jack the Ripper smiles very beautifully.
    The sun has warmed the wrought-iron garden chairs for us. We sit beside the fish pond, watching greenflies and bumblebees. The bees come to us, because we are so sweet. Jack the Ripper takes seven sugars in his iced tea. “You'll rot your teeth away,” I tell him severely, but he has other things on his mind.
    Once Jack the Ripper came to my house in the middle of the night. He told me he loved my hands, the hollow of bone where my thumb lifted up, my joints and nails. He leaned in close, and I smelled sweat and lavender water. Jack the Ripper whispered all the things he would do to me. I can't repeat them here.
    "Where is she?” Jack the Ripper asks. It's the first time he has spoken. Jack the Ripper sounds a little bit like my father, and a lot like Big Ben.
    I dip a ladyfinger into my iced tea. “Not