The Boy in the Vending Machine

He was tanned, dark-haired and hungry, the boy who got stuck in the vending machine. He had an adorable little smile that warmed you like the wittiest kind of greeting cards. Judging by the events that transpired in the train station that day, he was starving and under no adult supervision. If he was, his guardians were guilty of negligence.

He paced for five minutes, for fifteen minutes, for hours in front of the glowing, humming vending machine, a golden display of all the things his tongue and stomach desired. He gazed through its window. Everything seemed by some optical illusion of transparency, so attainable. He was without a wallet. Not even the duct tape kind. 

He pointed his toes, rose to the tips of his scuffed up sneakers so that his body angled and he leaned forward as if he could phase through the glass. He rested there at a perfect forty-five degree angle, still as a yogi. His nose pressed like a pig’s snout on the shiny surface. His lips puckered and spread like those of a blowfish inching up the side of an aquarium. His stomach cried out and he broke his pose for the cramps were so overpowering and he understood then that he must do what he must. He smacked the glass with a big high five palm and pressed the buttons that dictated which chocolates, which gummies, which chips came forward, thinking, that maybe if he hit them in a certain order he would get something free. Maybe there was a kind of jackpot, a lottery, a prize of snacks that would be awarded to a poor kid like him if he got the secret code. He’d heard of children who had such luck before.

But not him. Fat chance. He jammed his fingers against the buttons until he was so mad he was trying to spell swear words with the letters and numbers available to him. F3CK. B11CH. He bit his mouth from the inside. He thought of the gum on the bottom of his shoe, and salivated. He rubbed his knuckles over his t-shirt and against his rib cage. Those thin bones protruded from his torso like a guiro.

Maybe he could tip it. Throw his body at the machine and watch all the shiny snacks tumble down for him and his hungry belly. 

He tried that. 

It didn’t work.

At the bottom of the vending machine, beneath the sour gummies and the caramel chocolates and the light and fluffy chocolates and the nutty chocolates and the chips and and all those things the boy had never tasted, was a flap of metal that read: Push.

The boy pushed it. He pushed it and realized he could get an arm into it and so he did just that. He stuck one arm in and he stuck another arm in and he stuck his head in like a rodent. And he got stuck. The blood dripped down to his brain and the metal opening held him just so, so that at the waist his legs could not slacken but stuck out like a plank of wood. And this was what he looked like to those who passed by: a human paper jam, a boy who had thrown himself down a waterslide headfirst, a boy who dove right into the vending machine.

His legs were getting numb but he could not bend them. They stuck out like those of an exercise instructor showing how to work the abdominals. 

When the men and women came by he had found his way inside. Found his way inside and to his feet but with no other room, he stood, not facing the snacks, but with his palms spread open on the glass. Don’t ask how. He was turned to everyone at the train station, unable to bend, twist, or even grab at the candies behind him.

G3, a backpacker pressed and a Snickers bar fell to the boy’s feet. 

J8, a nurse pressed and bought a packet of sugar free gum.

Please, the boy said. But his cries were muffled and his voice indiscernible. PLEASE he wrote on the glass with his finger in the fog of his own breath. 

A sympathetic schoolteacher on her way to the bathroom nodded so much so that it seemed her head might just rollick right off. I’ll help you, she told the kid. But the glass muted everything. She might as well have been speaking a different language, been on a different continent. A2, she pressed and a chocolate bar fell on his shoulder. The boy rejoiced. He gradually angled his head to the side so that his ear was pressed to the glass. And with his teeth, he opened the wrapper. The act took him time but once the wrapper was off he ate the chocolate as ravenously as he could in his situation. He ushered the chocolately rectangle along with his tongue as if it were a train and his mouth a tunnel.

Thanks he said, and threw the schoolteacher a thumbs up. 

She couldn’t hear him, but she could read his lips. 

Then a busker came and a grandma and a construction worker and a conductor and he convinced all of them to feed him from the food that was accessible from the top left corner which his head was angled toward. A little girl crying so strongly her eyes looked damaged from a chlorine pool didn’t pay the boy any attention and laughed like she’d never seen anything funny at all when the metal ring that escorted the food out at E4 poked the boy in the cheek. 

He was, by this time, stuffed. Stuffed from sugar and chocolate, gummies and sweets, all the wrong things. What a sickly kid. He felt nauseous, and so, heeled over as much as he could in his confined, cubic home. The vomit was torrential. The upchuck fell to the boys shoes and splattered across the candies and plastered the glass. 

Let’s break him out!, a policeman said as he rushed to the scene.

The glass will get in his eyes, a professor said.

It’s plastic, a construction worker said.

Well the whatever, the professor said.

I’ll stay with him, a pastor said.

Let’s break him out!, the policeman said, brandishing his nightstick.

You can’t go in like that, the professor said.

You’d leave him? the pastor said.

Just feed the kid, a lawyer said.

I’ll buy him a chocolate, a businessman said, If he shines my shoes when he’s out.

I got a train to catch, a salesman said.

Let’s break him out!, the policeman said.

Wait! a little girl cried. 

She looked at me. I tried to look away. 

And she said, What are you going to do about him?

Geoffrey Line recently spent two years teaching high school aboard a ninety-year-old Norwegian tall ship turned boarding school at sea during its first world circumnavigation, and facilitated its first integration program, partnering Norwegian youth with Syrian and Eritrean refugees to foster cross-cultural relations during the 2017 Tall Ships Races. You can read more of his surreal fiction featuring contemporary childhood at geoffline.com.

Five Poems by Natalie Stamatopoulos

 

A RECENT LIST OF THINGS TO REMEMBER, AND THEN TO FORGET

1.
TO CREATE A WILDFIRE FROM BRUSH AND PAINT
YOU MUST FIRST REMEMBER SOME INVOLUNTARY
LOVE THAT HAS BROUGHT YOU, AT ONE TIME, TO
YOUR KNEES. REFER TO THE BRUISES THAT ARE
STILL THERE AND BE SURE TO KISS YOUR CANVAS
FIRST. THERE IS NOTHING MORE ROMANTIC THAN
A BLANK CANVAS.

2.
TO BLOOM AFTER RAIN, RECORD YOUR TEENAGE
PAST, THE CONSUMPTION, THE BROKEN GLASS.
PROVE THE PARALLEL UNIVERSE WRONG AND
DRINK UP WHILE YOU CAN.

3.
THE TREMOR IN YOUR HANDS COMES ONLY
FROM AN ACHE OF WHAT YOU COULD NOT
HOLD. REMEMBER THAT YOU ARE LUCKY
AND RICH WITH THIS. EMPTINESS IS THE
DISTANT COUSIN OF BLISS.

4.
CLEANSE YOUR LIVER EVERY NOW AND THEN,
THE ‘IMPURE’ IS ONLY EXCESS FETISH. LONELY
FLAWS KEPT IN CAPTIVITY, IN YOUR BODY. AS
YOU WAIT FOR THE WAR TO BE OVER, CALMLY
SIP ON GINGER TEA.

5.
FALL IN LOVE WITH YOUR ENEMY AT LEAST ONCE.
YOU MIGHT FEEL ALIEN IN YOUR FORMULATION
OF LUST AND TOUCH. STAY UNDERNEATH THE
SHEETS. YOUR ENEMY WILL LOVE YOU CLEAN, IN
A BIBLICAL KIND OF WAY, ANCIENT IN AGE. THIS
LOVE WILL BE A MIXTURE OF POWER AND WEAK
KNEES. A LIGHTNESS LIKE A FEATHER FALLING.

6.
EXAGGERATE WHEN YOU SPEAK ONTO WHAT YOU
BELIEVE. KEEP AUTHENTIC TO THE MACHINE OF
YOUR BODY, CROWN EACH EXPERIMENTAL IDEA
ACCORDINGLY. AND AS FOR LOST MEMORIES,
BE SURE TO LEAVE THE LIGHTS ON IN CASE OF
RETURN. THERE’S ONLY SO MUCH PAST YOU
CAN BURN.

7.
IN ONE SWEET DOWNWARD MOTION, DIP YOUR
TOES INTO THE OCEAN. BE THE COOL AND
COMPOSED ONE WHEN THEY ASK YOU,
“WHAT ARE YOUR PLANS FOR THE FUTURE?”

8.
KEEP YOUR SPINE FLAT BY SLEEPING ON
YOUR BACK. DRAIN THE BATH AND WATCH
YOUR DAMP SHADOW MAKE ITS WAY TO BED.
SLEEP IS THE WISEST FORM OF REST.

9.
YOU MIGHT FEEL INTOXICATED BY NOTICING
EYES ON YOU. YOU MIGHT THINK WARMTH IS
AN ORANGE CLOUD IN THE LATE AFTERNOON.
WHEN YOU DREAM OF IT, IT DREAMS OF YOU.
REMEMBER, INTUITION IS JUST THE SOULS
REACTION TO TRUTH.

1O.
THERE IS ONLY ONE LOOPHOLE WHEN IT COMES
TO DEATH: HOLD YOUR BREATH. THE MIGHTIEST
RIVER MAY FLOW PAST THE LOCAL JUNKYARD OR
INTO YOUR OWN BACKYARD. WATER IS A STRANGER
THAT SWIMS HARD. JUMP INTO IT AND EXIST, THERE
IS NO GREATER INFINITY THAN THIS.

Ode To The Statue-You

You are everybody’s darling
and I freeze up to mimic you.
For me it’s either early or too
late. For you to love the way I
move, I would have to create a
space for you to sleep and to
wait for me. Most of the time I
am sorry for all of the ways I
want you to change, because
really I cannot get enough of
looking at you, the milk of your
skin, the indents your fingers
make when you hold yourself.
I could go for a glass of you
but I don’t even drink milk.
Really I don’t like it very much
at all. But I’d take a sip of the
way you stand so straight. How
can you pose the same way
each day? I’m tired now just
thinking of it. Remind me again
why I let you go but always
come back? I want to leave you
the way I found you. I want to
change everything about you.

zero to confuse you

foggy morning, bad November,
zero lands animistic as you.
0, the ugly ocean @
mid afternoon.
i built a home out of a fishing boat
to confuse you.
the sea salt on your eyelids
reminds you of
youth.
morning stands human
to confuse you.
the aquatic early evening, cosmic,
stay confused.
you had those vinyls robbing you,
your hours at
your neck, conflicted,
confused.
the winter water was
an early nightmare,
so false
but made divine by you,
by deciphering ripe zeros @
mid afternoon.
0, the balancing drunk,
rinse/repeat each morning.
throw in some raspberries,
check the clock,
smoothie’s almost done.
you had that book collection
blushing on the shelf crushing bugs, unread,
0 in your head
left confused.
the sea salt in your mouth,
your youth,
a bruised-lip memory
to confuse you.
you conduct a chilly experiment
in your bed,
dependent at best by
deformed light,
bright thru different windows,
so confused.
your god came pranking at your doorstep,
up thru the water @
mid morning, concave,
confused.

TO BE HUNGRY DOESN’T ALWAYS MEAN ALIVE

IT IS THOUGHT THAT AN AERIAL VIEW
OF THE HUMAN BODY
LOOKS LIKE A PINPOINT ON A MAP.
A PINPRICK WISH,
PASTORAL IN A SENSE,
THE CORTEX WRAPS LIKE IVY.
THE DESIGN STARTS WITH A QUICK SKETCH.
TWIN GUTS IN THE UPPER MIDWEST.
BUT WHAT ABOUT ALL THAT EXTRA EAST?
THE MEDUSA INSIDE YOUR BODY?
I MIGHT MEET YOU BETWEEN
HALF-MOON COASTS.
TELL YOU THAT MY DREAMS
CANNOT TOUCH YOURS.
THAT I CANNOT BEAR TO MAKE YOU
THE ONLY ECHO OF MY BLUE BLUE ART,
TO LET YOU PERISH IN THE BLUE BLUE CITY.
I’LL TRY AGAIN TO CREATE HAPPINESS
OUT OF AN EMPTY COUNTRY,
A WHOLE ABYSS
INTO AN INSTANT OF BLISS,
I’LL KEEP HUNGRY-
AND IF YOU SEE MY AERIAL HUNGER
ROAMING THROUGH AN EMPTY FIELD,
AS A DOT ON A MAP,
WILL YOU GO TO HOLD ITS HAND?
WILL YOU FEED IT?
IT WOULD BE A REAL VISION,
A THUMB TACK REFLECTION
OF MY NERVOUS HUNGER
WASHED OUT BY THE CLOUDS,
PASTEL IN THE BLOOM OF YOUR
OPENING HANDS.

Like Yesterday

Shedding skin, like
leaving the room, like
drying clay, like yesterday, like
dog hair on the couch.
If love is greater than hurting is greater than
nothing, then what am I in relation to you?
Growing skin, like
getting warm, like
finding shade, like yesterday, like
your lips on my mouth.
If the sunrise is to the sunset as light is to light,
then what does that mean for the night?

Natalie Stamatopoulos is a multidisciplinary artist based Elsewhere. She has lived in places like Saudi Arabia, Switzerland, France, and the US (she lives currently in the in-between). Natalie received her BFA from the American University of Paris.

Upstate

“The bitch is back,” Esther says, and slams a chipped-China mug on the hardwood dining-hall table, sending her coffee sailing.

“Excuse me?” I say, a spoonful of granola-and-milk halfway to my mouth.

“You may have to clarify which bitch you’re referring to,” Pearl snorts, dabbing at the creases of her lipsticked mouth with the corners of a paper napkin. “We know a lot of bitches.”

“You know,” Esther says. “The queen bitch herself. Priscilla Martin. She’s back.”

“Priscilla?” asks Pearl, and drops her napkin onto her plate, over her mostly-uneaten pancakes. “No shit. I thought she wasn’t coming back ‘til next semester.”

“So did I. But I swear to God I just caught sight of her poring over the pastry in there,” Esther says, and gestures with her spoon to the severy. A flick of yogurt flies off of the spoon and attaches itself to Pearl’s wool jacket. Neither Esther nor Pearl seem to notice. I direct my focus to the paper napkin I am tearing into shreds under the table.

“I swear to God. Bitch disappears in the night, doesn’t tell us where she’s going––sends a postcard weeks later saying her parents have sent for her from the Italian Riviera, and then just turns the fuck up back here, out of nowhere. No warning. It’s exhausting.” Pearl sits back in her chair and crosses her arms across her chest, which strains against her too-small blouse in a way she clearly thinks is sexy but to my eye looks more like desperate.

“Exhausting? Don’t see why it should be exhausting. Seems to me that the where and why of Priscilla Martin ought not to concern you, Pearl.” Esther stirs her yogurt vigorously until it is worked into a froth.

“Esther.” Pearl puts her spoon down and looks Esther dead in the eye, her horn-rimmed glasses sliding down her nose. “You cannot possibly understand the mental and emotional energy I expend just breathing the same air as that girl. She drains me.”

“Well––whatever. I, for one, am vaguely happy to hear that she’s back. At least now, we can try to get some answers out of her. When I saw her, just now, the bitch looked thinner and paler than ever, and just about as not-relaxed as I’ve seen her. Italian Riviera, my ass.”

It is fine, it is easy, for my friends to sit and gossip, despicably, endlessly, about the questionable circumstances under which Priscilla Martin disappeared. After all, Esther and Pearl were not the ones who sat with Priscilla Martin’s head in their lap that night that she slit her own wrists with a box cutter, who listened as she cried and repeated in a voice not so much losing as already lost that she’d made a mistake and she did not wish to die. They were not the ones who, wordless, terrified, wiped her tears as they collected in the bags under her eyes the same way they wiped her blood from the bathroom tile They were not the ones who saw their friend, small and helpless, leaking blood and Calvin Klein perfume, a tangle of messy hair and exhausted nerve and torn skin, looking less like a girl than a handful of broken glass on the stretcher where they laid her when they took her away.

Pearl had been throwing up in the toilet in the back of the sculpture studio that night. Esther had been chasing Patrick O’Malley from party to party. It was only me who’d saved Priscilla. Me and the ambulance. Me and the 911 call. Me and fate or coincidence or good timing or God’s sick sense of humor that had kept her from dying that night.

When she didn’t come to breakfast the next day, Pearl and Esther did not ask me why and I did not tell them. The next time I heard from Priscilla, I received a phone call from a restricted number on a Sunday morning and picked up to hear her frail whisper on the other end.

“Henrietta,” she’d said, urgently, as if there was only so much time in which to get the words out. “Listen. I’m fine. Well––I’m not fine. But I will be. I’m upstate. Don’t tell them.”

I knew that by upstate she meant that she was in what would have been called an institution in our parents’ age but that was now called a treatment center. I knew that by don’t tell them she expected me to lie for her until she could do it herself.

Then the postcard arrived. My friends didn’t believe it for a minute. They suspected academic probation, then pregnancy, then rehab. They didn’t suspect the Italian Riviera, but they didn’t suspect the truth, either. I kept the secret under lock and key.

“Well, would you look at who the fuck it is,” Pearl not so much says as announces. A shadow is suddenly cast over my breakfast bowl. My gaze rises from my lap. A hand curls around my shoulder. There is a smell, overpowering and pervaded with the memory of the night I’ve been keeping secret, the night I’d give anything to forget. Calvin Klein. Eternity Night.

“Hello, Henrietta,” Priscilla says.

***

Charlotte Freccia is a second-year student of English, Creative Writing, and Women's and Gender Studies at Kenyon College in Gambier, Ohio, where she also enjoys an associateship with the Kenyon Review. She is a winner of the Philip Wolcott Timberlake Award and has recently published poetry and creative nonfiction in Zaum Magazine and Newfound Magazine. Her short story "Baby Teeth" was published by POTLUCK in June 2016.