WHITEOUT

Autopsy Submissions are OPEN

THUNDERSNOW/TALKINGTOFEAR

It’s snowing for the rest of time. There’s never going to be another day when the sun doesn’t set before you want. And behind you the Saint hangs absolving your Sunday sins. Bird at the window watching the snow “Everything is white”

Born on a Monday. Favorite day of the week. Not coincidentally. The Saint hangs eternal. No one can see her but you, feel the chill of her presence. Spin in circles chasing that blur at the edge of your vision. It’s the Saint.

Get to the point: This is your conversation with fear.

The Saint, she hangs there, silent forever. You’ll have this conversation for the rest of your life. Every waking second of every day, infusing every moment, burning and white hot. Bird says you run hot. A blast furnace. Snow doesn’t melt, it catches fire before it lands on your huge baffle down coat, an off olive color, military smell to it, gun oil, not OD Green, an Adidas coat thick as armor, stop a .22 pistol round, the color of Yugoslavian war crimes in the ‘90s.

And the Saint hangs silent.

Details about clothes. File under things not important to the story. Hide the truth under lies. It’s a very one sided conversation. It’s yelling in an IKEA you shouldn’t have gone into alone because without six tea lights burning on the altar on the dresser forever your mental health suffers. And then find out it suffers more when you’re alone buying them, 600 at a time, wandering through the IKEA marketplace to get this one thing, panic attack curling, a muscular Burmese Python undulating, killing your throat for dinner, and choking words into the air no one wants to hear.

Yeah, well, you shit yourself when you died.

And the Saint hangs silent.

Stories about solo trips to IKEA. File under things not important to the thrust of the narrative. Fine. You’re sitting at the keyboard trying to think up something to write because you have to put out something in the morning and you haven’t felt like writing all day. Your lies don’t sound as good in your head or shitting out on paper compared to any of the other piles of lies you’ve read today, and you’ve read a lot. pill head calculus says the last mg of Xanax allowed for the day just got chewed up into chalky bits and the chemmy taste of cheap Mexican alprazolam got washed down with Fruit Splash Canada Dry Cherry Ginger Ale. The snow is so white sidelong it’s going to look like light out all night.

And the Saint hangs silent.

You shit yourself when you died and you hadn’t had a solid bowel movement in years, god, the stench must have been unbelievable. You were Catholic by chance of birth but you didn’t have to take the slingshot out of orbit with a trustfall with a rope around your neck. You were born Italian Catholic, but the last thing you ever did. Bitch, it didn’t have to be dropping to your knees.

Let us pray.

And the Saint hangs silent.

Haunting every moment, every memory, every conceivable future, everything is the Saint hanging silently behind you. The Saint is Love. The Saint Hanged herself. The fear of losing love is the embodiment of the thing hanging over your shoulder forever trapped in one frigid moment, bowels emptied down her perfectly beautiful fucking legs in a room knee deep in ripped up clothes and empty cardboard cases of White Claw, hanging by something you never found out exactly what it was but can assume was rope from an over the door clothes hanger she bought at Target that almost went up your ass when you sat down to start cleaning up the detritus of what was left after they wheeled her out under a sheet in front of your mother in the other room making some tortellini, after you drove 17 hours straight back from Floridecay chugging Ghost energy drinks not even realizing how funny a joke it could be. Ghost, best friend, suicide, hanging. Laugh. Is the embodiment of fear no one can see and maybe a few very specific people can understand, is the reason you write, is the reason you are a blast furnace filled with grief refusing to express itself as anything but white light white heat David Bowie live in Santa Monica 1971 covering The Velvet Underground all caps RAGE, is the reason you are having a conversation with fear.

And the Saint. Hangs. Silent.

Fuck your mom, Saint.

And the Saint Hangs Silent.

And the Saint hangs silent.

This is fear.

Off the image: “Is that a dare?”

The Saint said yeah, it was.

There’s fear.

Look at the date stamp at the top of the first screenshot.

Six days later, and for the rest of your lives.

The Saint, your love, your fear, your best friend, your thesis, your confidant, your partner in crime, your legend, your other half of your brain, your person you always try to impress, fuck.

Six days after this conversation.

The Saint Hangs Silent.

Bird says she’s been having trouble getting into the mood to write today.

The tortellini is done.

You forgot to start the chicken for Bird.

The candles on the altar all burned out while you were writing this.

And behind you the Saint hangs absolving your Sunday sins, because at least it’s a snow day.

But the Saint is silent, her silence never anything less than terrifying.

Cover the truth with lies to get to the bigger truth, and remember, no one believes a true story.

(

George Kalantzis

remember your prompt? Did I make fear tangible enough for you?)

SUBMISSION WINDOW FOR INVITATION TO AN AUTOPSY IS OPEN

From when 6am CST US to 6pm CST US you can send five pages of fiction to me and get put in for the lottery. Not like the Shirley Jackson story, promise. But, the lottery to see what story gets an editorial Autopsy next.

Last week I started the experiment on a whim. This week it goes intentional.

Send 5 pages during the submission window to emilottoman@gmail.com

Remember to follow instructions.

Thanks for the warm reception to the Editorial Autopsies. It was fun enough that Autopsies will continue until morale improves.

If you’re in the way of the storm

stay warm.