From our Fall 2016 issue, “Alone with All You Can’t Hear” is Jason Namey‘s twisted tale of a troubled twin & an eccentric assassin.

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THE CORK BOARD FLYER SAID “I CAN KILL YOUR HUSBAND” in discreet serif; I laughed at how funny it would be to call the listed number, but I wasn’t married. I called anyway.

I had sweated two coffees past midnight, time spent necking bare toes beneath a cafe table, avoiding the graphic design jobs my sister had been sweeping my way.

“Just find the shape for the puzzle pieces of your life,” she had said as we shared a glass of wine in bed a few weeks earlier. “Like take for instance me and Paul.” Every time Paul looked at me, I could feel him thank his luck for finding the fairer half of that zygote. Except when it was Christmas at their house and we sat next to each other on the couch and he pretended to need the remote control but really just wanted to reach over my legs and let his elbow brush my knee.

“What am I supposed to take for instance from you and Paul?” I asked.

“Well for one we don’t ask so many questions.”

My sister did not like questions. Not normal ones, not rhetorical ones, not moral ones.

I liked questions.

Like for instance: If Paul wasn’t around, would me wanting to move into their guest room still be considered “needy and pathetic”?

I flattened the flyer with my hand, while the ringing phone gave birth to blank space.

“Hello,” a tired, female voice said.

“I’m looking at your flyer outside Coffee Hut.”

“And you’re interested.”

“Give me the scoop, kid.”

“Be patient, lady. I need to be up soon to feed four kids eating their way to JV. We’ll meet in twelve hours, fifteen feet to your right.”

I tiptoed home over the cyanide white sidewalk, leaping cracks, not letting the palms of my feet touch. Each streetlight I legged under was the sun of some legendary world. I danced across galaxies.

I want to make love with everyone; I don’t want to make love with anyone.

I want to make love with my sister.

At home, I crawled onto the couch, a ball of caffeine flesh. I put in headphones and played Beck and dreamed about chewy toast on Sunday mornings.

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Continue reading “Alone with All You Can’t Hear” – Fiction by Jason Namey →