Creatures of the EZ-STOP by Janice Leadingham

Creature calls himself Creature because everyone else does and his mama says it’s better to be in on the joke. Creature looks just like his dead daddy but his mama is really beautiful and that has to mean something. Creature is still a virgin at 23, but he falls in love all the time, sometimes with the cashier at the gas station and the softball players practicing outside of the high school, but usually with his buddies’ girls because they know how to cut up with the guys and they smell like sweet breakfast food. Creature dreams of holding someone so close that he confuses their heartbeat for his own. Creature jerks off during his morning showers and his evening showers, while his mama watches the news. Creature drives his mama to church every Sunday, but he waits the service out in his truck reading the books she picked out for him at the library, detective stories, spacemen stories, sailor stories. Creature and his mama go to the Waffle House after church for waffles, flooding the doughy divots with butter and syrup. Creature works at a dairy farm that is a 42-minute drive from the house he has lived in his whole life, but he leaves an hour early every time so he can listen to the whole of Tim McGraw’s A Place in the Sun while chasing the sun rise over the Blue Ridge. Creature arrived at the farm this morning with the sky waking in wounded red, and all the cows were lying down in the field and the hairs on his arm, soft and spare as a woman’s, were standing on end. Creature waits for the thunderstorm to pass before starting the milkers because he’s heard tell of lighting traveling through the machines and zapping the cows, curdling the milk. Creature buys a 32 oz Mountain Dew and a Powerball ticket after work every Friday at the E-Z STOP. Creature is greying in the bubbles with the nubby putt-putt pencil when he is shot in the head by Bobby Waite-Walker who has mistaken him for someone else. Creature’s last thoughts are 2, 5, 7, 10, 20, and 23.  

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Creature’s body is buried under a stone, the name he was born with carved into it, and underneath it says, “Son and Good Buddy”. Creature’s soul is still in the E-Z STOP, though, and when it cries out to the world it makes a noise like the thud of a porcelain coffee cup when it is set down on the kitchen counter. Creature is lonely for himself, for his skin and his reflection, for his dick and his hands and his calves and—fuck—even his crooked nose, for the weight of his work boots and the sound of gravel under his truck’s tires, for the taste of melted butter and cheap maple syrup, for his mama and the way she smells like purple Fabuloso and Walmart’s take on Elizabeth Arden perfume, for his previous, bodied loneliness, which was rich, indulgent. Creature’s soul maybe could go anywhere, but it is too depressed, as most souls are, so it spends its days curled around the bottled sodas in the fridge on the back wall dozing in between the snippets of conversation he hears when the doors burp open and closed, or sliding through the bristles of the broom in the broom closet, the closest thing he’s experienced to feeling something since he lost his skin, because it’s sort of like someone you love scratching your back but also not like that at all. Creature’s buddies and Creature’s buddies’ girls visit the E-Z STOP and leave flowers and cans of Skol by the plastic Powerball ticket stand that wishes you “Good Luck!” in loud, curlicue letters. Creature’s buddies and Creature’s buddies’ girls buy a 32 oz Mountain Dew from the fridge on the back wall and carry Creature out with it. Creature’s buddies pass the Dew back and forth, their calloused fingers squeezing through the mush of his soul as easy as spoilt fruit. Creature’s buddies take sips and pour a little out on the curb for their good buddy, attracting big cluster flies that bump dully into everything. Creature’s soul unfurls from the bottle, screaming, “Thud! Thud! THUD!” and his friends and their sweet-smelling girls mistake him for their own grieving hearts.

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JANICE LEADINGHAM — Janice is a Portland, Oregon based writer and tarot-reader originally from somewhere near Dollywood, Tennessee. Her work has appeared in Reckon Review, HAD, the Northwest Review, Gone Lawn, Milk Candy Review, Tiny Molecules, Maudlin House, and Best Small Fictions 2024, among others. She is @thehagsoup everywhere and hagsoup.com.

Art by SANDY LITTLE — Sandy is a South African-born, UK based visual artist and illustrator whose practice is rooted in drawing and digital art. She completed her Honours degree in Fine Art at the University of the Free State in Bloemfontein in 2012, where she specialised in both traditional and digital mediums. Little has worked as an arts and design lecturer for the last 13 years thereafter she committed to becoming a full time artist and freelancer. Little can be found on Instagram under the handle AngryLittleCrayon where she shares her art and music from her band Big Fright.