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Thank you!

Dear Readers,

Thank you so much for all of your support! The Scarlet Sound has been able to grow and achieve so much more than we ever thought. The first complete year of issues, however, is our last. 

We want to thank you again.

All the Best, The Scarlet Sound Editing Staff 

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bell

By Holly Appling

listening carefully to the air, I can hear green

where spring will seed leaves on the trees.

I know this road, by the quiet and the snow – where the hurry

is in the falling - of flakes.

there is a love a wisdom finds, blithe as sunlight shining,

kind, like the desires of birds. the dream moves inward to your eye

and our mourning is a pure gift, a madness –

I stay nearer while the years shiver, the glory is absent,

the sea is breathing and I am awake.

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Tiny Spaces

By Patricia Scull

We told each other that we would never cheat unless it was for something epic - like for a love, lust, connection - whatever it was - stronger than ours. We said would only cheat if it was like in the movies where the hero is helpless against the seduction of an affair, and the infidelity is somehow bathed in guilt and glamour all at once. We laughed at its ridiculous notions. That's how I knew he would never cheat.

When I found out, my spine went fluid and shot up like mercury into that hollow cavern, uniting with my equally yellow-bellied brain. How was I supposed to know what to say when he was taking my fish tank and turning it on its side? No, not a literal fish tank; a metaphorical one. I am the pale guppy flapping amidst the broken glass and plastic seaweed I once called home, nerves firing finely, exquisitely severed, casting a desperate net for something familiar to the touch. My eyes are not blinking, and I am colorless and immobile. I am pallid and pasty and yielding to the touch.

Later, after he has left our apartment, I can hear someone in the next building over playing Fur Elise on what sounds like a Wurlitzer, except they keep messing up after that part everyone knows, and then starting over, so that the song basically sounds like a neglected, endlessly ringing cell phone. Eventually, they give up and mash on a handful of keys so that it makes a giant, non-musically antagonistic sound. If they were playing a real piano and did that, the felted hammers strung to the delicate white keys would strike the metal strings all in a row, and the sounds would echo off of each other, and the dissonant chords would gnash together under the hood of the piano until they were left to seep angrily out of the cracks and through the varnished wood until they dissipated with the polluted New York air. But then again, you wouldn't have a full, proper piano if you lived in New York City, because there is no space where we live.

There was no space, and it was not epic. It was some girl he worked with. They had sex on a table at their office, and all the windows were open as the backs of her thighs recklessly met the creases of his elbows. He said it was not epic, or beautiful, and I wanted to be that hand smashing down onto that ocean of smooth white ivories. I wanted to hear what kinds of mournful cacophonous sounds they would make, and how long it would take them to fall into the piercing still of silence.

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Mother

By Patricia Scull

You pray in the dark, at night, still waves of breath gush over parted lips. You think back to the time your nine year old daughter said she would read the Bible. There is a wind chime tinkling by itself outside, metal slivers touching, pushing, swaying with corn stalks in the back yard. Where is your daughter now? A pithy sigh at the thought. A lemon-squeezed acid tongue, A ruby red drop of blood If only she knew how hard you prayed, in the still quiet of silence; How hard you work for her once everyone else has gone to sleep, you are the only one showing her you still care.

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Something About Momma

By Heidi Heimler

At midnight, when the crickets hum a familiar dirge and the warm wind runs her fingers through the willows, Momma goes fishing. She drops her pole into the water and stares up at the sky.

I watch her from the window then slide my feet into well-worn reindeer slippers and pad down to the pond. “What’re you doing, Momma?”

“Shhh,” she whispers. She doesn’t look at me. “I’m counting stars.”

The water licks our feet with a teasing tongue. My slippers look like used carwash sponges. The silence taunts me, a staring contest but in sound. I lose. “Where’s Poppa?” I ask.

“555, 556, 557.”

Poppa’s been gone for a week, and Momma’s been fishing ever since. I wonder how much longer she’ll keep it up. She uses gummy worms, on account of she hates real ones. She never catches anything.

Momma ain’t right, my brother says. I throw a half-peeled orange at him, a kamikaze fruit that hits him in the eye. He squints then throws it back, but his aim is bad and it rolls into the corner. We leave it there.

When I come back from school a couple of days later, a policeman greets me at the door. Beyond him, in Momma’s bedroom, paramedics huddle over her bed, a bunch of footballers planning their next play. The policeman holds me back as they load Momma onto a stretcher. She doesn’t move or say anything. By her bed, an empty bottle of pills waits for no one.

She looks the same when she’s lying in her casket. I peer down at her. “Bye, Momma,” my brother says.

When the preacher asks if I want to say anything, I walk up to the podium and lean into the microphone. “558, 559, 560.”

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immortal moment

By Linda M. Crate

I blew my breathe out it misted like white fog it spooled upon cobwebs  of gossamer silver as it spun a life of it’s own independent from mine — it’s time was brief like a spirits haunt, but it is a moment that lingers immortally in the mind.

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Stench

By Joe Baumann

She didn’t need the sound of the jiggling knob to know what was on the other side of the door.  Even with the heavy quilt pulled up to her eyes, the smell of sewage and dead fish seeped through the crack under the door and permeated the room, the walls, the bed, her nostrils.  She tried closing her eyes, pressing her hands against the blanket to plug her nose, but the odor lingered, swirling around like so much muck.

      The smell wouldn’t go away, and the angry grunts had started to weep through the door.  She felt her heart beat speed up, the coldness pour into her chest.  It always reminded her of waking from a nightmare, when she would rip herself away from the things that terrified her, like lawn gnomes and broken ankles and jackrabbits, when she knew she was asleep and told herself to wake up, just wake up because it’s not really happening, and then she would, and her face felt fuzzy, like dozens of ants were crawling across her cheeks.

The door knob was turning faster, and she caught her breath, wondering when the lock would spring, break apart with a pop, and then the smell would be there, in the room, the galoshes squeaking against the carpet, and she would stare wide-eyed at the wall, wanting to scream and thrash about, knowing it would do no good.

Her skin danced.  Her toes wiggled at the bottom of the bed.  Nervous energy crawled up and down her legs in waves, the tiny ciliated hairs on her knees undulating.  

The smell changed, became more acrid, the pungent sewage looming up and blossoming in a horrific flowering spray, and she wanted to pull the blanket up over her head but couldn’t.  That horrifying odor would overwhelm her, paralyze her senses and leave her lying there exposed, staring up at the ceiling when the door opened.

Because it would open.  She knew it would open.  She imagined it opening, the creaking noise sending a new flush through her, her face reeling back, skin thinning and tightening, her senses growing stronger when all she wanted was for them to disappear, for the room to grow even darker, for her hearing to fall silent, the touch of the blankets and air and weight to go numb. 

 The door knob stopped turning, but her breathing rattled on in ragged, pitchy huffs.  She closed her eyes again, but the kaleidoscope of light felt like a revolving dagger.

She held in her breath.  The groaning had stopped.  No sound came from the other side of the door.  Her body felt light, as though she might drift upward, float to the ceiling and hover their.  She imagined it, dreamed it.

The stench hadn’t gone.  It hung there by the ceiling, where she wanted to be, where things would be quiet and calm and dark.  It might smell like the ocean up there.

She heard the door whimper.  It opened. 

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Corinthian Frieze

By Ryan Shepard

He lies there lately, well past anything resembling a reasonable hour, and some nights he loses himself. (More nights than less, actually.) On such a night as this he finds himself enraptured in despair. Six shades of loss now color him in dark, and their picture finds his hands. This isn’t the first time it has happened and he admits to himself that it will not be the last. With a sigh he slips into their world, a single beautiful moment.

There they are, framed together in a large standing mirror. An entire universe bordered in brilliant golden Corinthian leaves. A realm comprised of but a single moment, stolen away from a different life to be made its own, given birth by a mutual reality born of an honest love. In that moment, they were unstoppable, the only thing that could have caught them was the camera’s flash. 

He saw how the future gleamed in their eyes, even though their faces were cast in shadow. Surrounded by intriguing furniture, the kind of a forgotten year yet in possible to give a certain date, their minds were filled with the ideas of a future together, so close to becoming reality as to be given near tangibility.  The shadows falling over them from the dimly lit parlor made it hard for him to differentiate where one of them ended and the other began, yet, as they held each other so close, it didn’t matter that they were individuals.

Both of them knew they came from a different reality,  and he knew it too as he observed, a world of innumerable troubles that seemed insurmountable at times, trivial at others, but they took for themselves a single moment, one where everything could be perfect for themselves, and for each other, and it was. Moments of this kind come very few in life, they are those that make one realize that nothing could devalue its lone purity; that the love is perfect within itself, and that is the only unbending truth, the only thing needing to be known to make it through. It is a moment like this that deserves to be saved forever, and so it was stolen away, a captured life, a reality, as their own and placed aside to exist always. No matter what, this reality would exist for those in the picture framed by the Corinthian leaves, and nothing those that walked away from the frame could do could take that away from them. Their reality would always exist, always be true for them, and so they would live their forever.

He envied those in the picture more than anything. He leaned back, breathed in deeply as he pulled himself away. Nothing marked him more than lost and listless. The picture lay close at hand, he glanced at it occasionally and how, he would think, he missed them so. How much he envied them. How much he loved both of them. How very much he missed being one of them.

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Memoir of a Mistress

By Ma. Cristina de Guzman

Centuries of sundown mourned, yet Manoah's loss was still a victory  for his tribe, set apart for light from the impure warmth of unredeemed.

Upon his tongue lied the sweetest lie, which tied her liberty to kiss and tell the innocence that once conceived by his younger days of abstinence.

Riddles and scribbles out of honey and bones paved a destiny to his virgin braids. Remember those knives on those papyrus he needless to utter, for it were written long ago.

Old  tribe sent plagues to her back, reminding her of spoiled blood in lion's claws that invaded the depth of his  blameless soul where the truth was hidden for centuries.

Hopes still cling to the twosome pillars  that broke her faith in his impeccable strength. Stains on his mighty linear limbs still haunt the remnants of her sanity.

The world has pierced her on the vineyard's earth where past spat his royal blood, that slowly turned into enticing green once blown soft whispers upon in dawn.

Thou shall not blame her for Zorah's grief, if his bones were crushed to a soiled carcass. Caresses laid him to the depth of slumber but her sinful hands did not cut his braids.

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Copper Locks

By Josh Gottlieb

Tossing and turning. Every thirty seconds a new movement comes to mind. A new position. Something that was supposed to make me more comfortable. I never slept well when I had to share a bed. Never. Even after the Xanax kicked in I couldn't sleep, and I knew it was bothering her too.

My earbuds were softly pumping my head full of Ace's latest rant. I could never sleep without background noise. Even though we were in the heart of Canada's largest metropolis, the sirens did nothing to assuage my insomnia. The Siren laying adjacent to my perpetually active corpse wasn't helping either.

I went from my back, to my stomach, to my left, to my right. I took a breath through my nose, then my mouth, then both. Through my lungs, through my diaphragm, down to my gut. The oxygen was flowing through my veins in addition to the anxiolytic. Alexander Keith was my best friend earlier in the evening, and his mistress was Crown Royal wearing a Canada Dry dress.

The clock read three forty seven and I began counting the hours of sleep I would be able to achieve if I fell asleep that instant. Six hours and thirteen minutes until the alarm went off.

Three out of four in our overpriced room were asleep, so why couldn't I? Maybe it was because they were women and I was the only male in there? Laughable. Sleeping in the same room as these three particular goddesses only added to my anxiety. Maybe I should have just slept on the floor instead of the queen with the slender, slightly inked, vicenarian who I envisioned the same scene with prior to its actual occurrence. The only difference being the images I foresaw didn't include the sweatpants she was wearing, nor the old gym shorts I had on.

Suddenly, I felt the sweet embrace I had been looking for. The soft, gentle lips of everything I wanted at the moment. With the copper haired beauty at my side fast asleep breathing quietly through her teeth; the sedating effects of the fast acting benzodiazepine finally came to fruition. I shut my eyes slowly, and little by little I found myself giving in to the pharmacologically induced languor. 

My wake up call came through. Nine o'clock sharp. I answered the phone, listened to the brief, form recording our particular hotel rattled off, and hung up. The bed to my right was empty, but they hadn't vacated the room too long ago. I could still smell the fragrances of the hair products and body lotions they had applied what I estimated about fifteen minutes prior to my awakening. The bathroom mirror was most likely still half covered in the fog produced from a hot shower.

The booze from the night before shifted in my gut, sloshing around like a seal in Baffin Bay. I rolled over onto my left side. She was staring at me. Her pretty, brown eyes gazed into mine. She looked confused, as if she wasn't sure whether or not we had engaged in some form of coitus, or even kissed-- a more intimate form of lovemaking.

I saw the sigh of relief in her eyes. It was almost as if her skeleton had leapt through her flesh, which would have left very little substance, given her angular frame. She knew nothing had happened. Beautiful girl shares a bed with a lonely guy and nothing happens. A story told a bit too often in my experience. 

Soon enough she would share a bed with my confidant, or so my imagination would lead me to believe. He would be afforded the opportunity I wanted so desperately, but really I had no knowledge of what was to come. Clairvoyance was not a particular strength of mine to begin with.

Rolling over onto her side, she turned her back to me. Her penny colored mane burned the white bedding. I shut my eyes gently, hoping I would receive just the slightest bit of affection. I felt an abrupt movement. The bed shook. It turned. It jumped. Was she tossing and turning? Was she agonizing over the same thing?

I opened my eyes again to see her figure swinging back and forth, getting rea

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cut to the core

By Linda M. Crate

you cut me into pieces of  moon silver, left me to put the tatters back together in a meaningful way conveying some form of sense, left me to reconstruct my soul’s eye.

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While you are waiting for the January issue to go up, why don't you check out this amazing, new project from Draft Attic Press!

P.S. The issue will be going up shortly. Your editor just needs to stop moving from state to state long enough to read emails.

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The Scarlet Sound would like to extend a big congratulations to our Jerry Guarino for publishing his work! You can find book Cafe Stories here.

Our Editor, Taylor Lampton, had the honor of writing one of his cover's reviews. Here it is!

"Jerry Guarino never confines his writing to a single style or a single idea. From science fiction to college tales of love, Guarino writes it all. It is so easy to get caught up in the craft and write for the purpose of writing, but he continues to write to his reader every time. Jerry Guarino is still fairly new to the publishing world and the world should be excited to see what comes out next."

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Want

By Anita McQueen

Seeing the light once or twice I can't forget it during the pressing down of the streets squeezing me into their hands constantly feeling me into what they want...

I want to be an old woman on her deathbed surrounded by a loving family.

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The Evolutionist Considers Self

By Chuck Von Nordheim

I am not I Nor are you The homunculus said to be inside The spirit that allegedly resides Cannot be found by any scan The so-called am Is a rationalization Of savannah adaptation

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D is for Doppelganger

By Sarah Gamutan

I wonder why they always act the same as if they know the world exist in doubles. I keep explaining to them that, sometimes, men

act as if they are someone else- like phantoms at night, we think it's Halloween. I laugh with my sisters thinking what may happen if we act

like Miley or any Mariah Carey, would we be so annoying or would we be loved? We try to ignore that afternoon has passed and we

are daunted with the darkness of the homes in and out of the village. We point at each other

who should be turning the lights, then they start to hide as if our world has never been wide. I scorn the fact that, it has never been an evening-

only a dusky disconnection notice. A pretty starry dream of young creatures who think they are big enough to upturn the world if they bear the beauties of Mona Lisa, J.Lo or Marilyn Monroe.

It will never bring the household better, perhaps, we need some scads of money to be educated, get employed and have some name. Probably,

we need to try some little make-up, high heels, and lipsticks- whatever gloomy this room we're in.

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The Scoop

By Priscilla Jolly

Chris was walking through the plantation where he had grown up, in a grey twilight when rain clouds were rolling in. The rubber plantation was laid out in the form of steps which rose higher and higher, an arrangement which made the expanse of trees seem limitless. The grey deepened as Chris walked on. The grey skies made Chris think of a woman, somewhere up in the sky, loosening her long, flowing curls from a knot. At night, he dreamed of being enveloped in those curls and sleeping, oblivious to everything. The dark silhouettes of trees whispered to him with their rustles. Crickets chirped from the dense undergrowth as he stepped on the soggy leaves. 

Chris felt that he had been playing a game of hide and seek. But he didn’t remember being hidden; he was looking for someone. The wind gathered strength and tore through the branches. Dead leaves fluttered around him. Chris smelled rain along with something else, something from the past- the smell of pineapples. The smell had ridden on the wind to come to him, to smother him with memories. 

Suddenly Chris was running. He was no longer a young man. He was a small boy, brimming with joy, running through the plantation. He stood still, panting. He could see the pineapple bushes now, with their long, thick leaves lined with thorns. He turned back and shouted in to the trees shrouded with mist.

“Mom where are you? Come soon!”

“Almost there, honey! Just a sec!”

Chris wormed his way through the clump of bushes. The baby pineapples were his favorite, fresh and pink. He pushed away the thorny leaves and made it to the centre. A ripe one! The perfect smell and the prefect yellow! He picked it and brought it close to his nose and inhaled deep. He heard a thunderclap. 

“Mom where are you?” He called out again. 

 No one answered him. A bolt of lightning lit up the sky. The wind and the rain nearly blinded him. Chris called out several times.  His voice was lost in the roar of the rain. The mist got thicker. Chris was running. He ran through the smoky expanse, through the great imaginary forests made of mists.                                                                                                                                                                                                 

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Chris gasped. He threw the covers aside. He had been dreaming again. He groped in the dark for water.  The glass shattered on the floor. He switched his bedside lamp on. He stepped out from his bed and walked towards the window.  The rain was raging outside. He felt that anyone could wail with the rain and the rain would just take away everything with it. He looked out and saw a solitary street light. It seemed to him that light was running off on the rain glazed asphalt. 

Chris walked to his desk and tried to write. He needed a scoop badly. He was on the brink of losing his job at the local paper. His mind was blank.  Then he felt something grow inside his chest, a familiar, unpleasant feeling that was binding his chest. Chris sat down on the bed. His last girlfriend had left him two days back. It was the longest relationship that he had- it lasted a month. She complained that Chris was always comparing her with his mom. It bugged her and one day she just blew. She walked out saying that Chris had to deal with unresolved childhood issues. He wondered form where had she picked it up. Unresolved childhood issues. The phrase made it sound as though he had a big problem.

Well, there was a problem and Chris couldn’t deny it. On his desk, he saw his mother’s journal that he had chanced up on. He thought it would make interesting reading. It is definitely interesting when you find out that you are not really the child of your parents and even more interesting when you come to know that the entire family knew it, except for you. Chris flicked through the pages of the journal. He tried to imagine the headline “Man’s search for his parents after 30 years”. His story, splashed on the front page. He went back to bed, listened to the rain roaring outside.