Apex Magazine - January 2017 by Apex Publications

Author:Apex Publications [Publications, Apex]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Publisher: Apex Publications
Published: 2017-01-03T05:00:00+00:00

Lia Swope Mitchell is a writer, translator, editorial assistant, and PhD candidate in French literature at the University of Minnesota. Consequently she often feels overwhelmed by a multitude of small tasks. She lives in Minneapolis.

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The Quiltmaker

You are a nightmare from the grimmest of all fairy tales. by Mike Allen | 18505 words

20,000 Words

prologue: the pattern

You never imagined you’d be in a place like this again.

Mothers. Fathers. Schoolteachers. Children. All about you, children.

To a tiny part of you, this setting is familiar. These hard chairs built a little too small, with their desk flaps scarred by years upon years of pocketknife graffiti, rows on rows slanting down between aisles of threadbare carpet to the stage with its smooth-worn planks and its decades-old curtain and its faded elementary school logo marring the cinder block at the front of the stage platform.

You’re packed in tight among these people that the bulk of you finds so alien. To your left, a plump mom in a fancy black coat shushes her sullen son. To your right, a thick-bellied dad with a ridiculously long mustache makes no effort to hide his boredom. In front of you, a younger woman, slender, wearing a tacky spotted top, reveals a hollow, haunted look as she leans in to listen to whatever her towheaded daughter is trying to tell her.

The lights dim. The curtain parts.

The play is something scripted from a children’s picture book, and the set matches the source, all garish pinks and greens. Adults in the cast are dressed as children, with ponytails and long white socks and overalls. They speak in exaggerated childspeak, with loud slurred words, and jump and skip with over-the-top excitement. There are children on stage with them, playing at being playmates. They’re singing that old tune about the woman who swallows everything, the fly, the spider, the bird, all manner of beasts. Around you, the parents laugh and laugh, especially the moms, even the haunted mom in front of you.

You pay the story no mind, it’s all just screechy noise.

Except it isn’t.

If the school auditorium affects you like an alien moonscape, then this sensation is even more alien, this burning moistness behind the eyes you’ve chosen to use, this pressure in your throat like a tightening fist, this weight pushing down inside your chest, the pain there that billows and unfolds and billows.

You don’t understand. Thoughts echo confused inside the marble hall of your mind, whisper amidst infinite layers of tapestry.

Your vision blurs. You bring a hand to your face, unable to believe until your fingers touch your lower eyelids that you’re shedding tears. That you’re sniffling.

It makes no sense. You’re not moved by this squealing travesty on the stage. Not at all.

How many parts of you remember being read to at night? The drone of a father’s singsong voice, the sprightly coo of a mother reading Alice or the Grimms? Sharing in your wide-eyed delight with shining eyes of her own.

This agony in your belly uncurls layer after layer. You

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