About
Jared Fembleaux is a literary fiction, short story, and middle-grade writer based in Brooklyn, NY. His work has been featured in
Maudlin House, The Hopkins Review (forthcoming), and Flash
Fiction Magazine (forthcoming). He has written and published
a children’s picture book, “Ranger and the Way Home,” and
has created and runs a literary magazine, The Table Review.
Maudlin House, The Hopkins Review (forthcoming), and Flash
Fiction Magazine (forthcoming). He has written and published
a children’s picture book, “Ranger and the Way Home,” and
has created and runs a literary magazine, The Table Review.
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Ranger and the Way Home
Ranger the dog wants a place to call home, but he's had no success finding one on his own. But today he'll make sure that he gets one
at last, being a stray at the pound will be a thing of the past. With the help of three friends who are here to advise, Ranger sets his
bi-eyes on the ultimate prize! He must show off his tricks, like "
sit," "spin," and "lick," to hopefully be someone's number one pick.
But finding a home will be awfully tough when all of his tricks just
aren't enough...
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Stomach People
Originally published in Maudlin House
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They first knocked on Tuesday, softly, like fingernails on Tupperware.
Marta was hunched over her kitchen table eating cold oatmeal with a chipped spoon. She thought it was gas at first, some leftover reflux from the freezer-burned salmon she ate the night before. But the sensation returned the next day, then again. Rhythmic. Intentional.
By Friday, she pressed a stethoscope to her belly. Nothing medical, just one of those plastic toy ones from her niece’s old vet kit. But it worked. She heard them. Tiny voices, shifting, like mice sweeping crumbs.
She laid flat on the floor and whispered, “Hello?”
From then on, she stopped eating meat and breads, no fruit bigger than a pebble. No more danger of accidentally crushing anyone. She switched to soft things, like banana paste and unsweetened yogurt, room temperature applesauce. It was easier on their village.
She called them the Stomach People. Not “parasites,” like the doctor had muttered, not “hallucinations,” like her therapist scribbled behind thick glasses. Stomach People, that was all.
They were small, of course, no bigger than tiny cocktail shrimp, though she hated comparing them to something so edible. Marta thought their skin was translucent, like wet rice paper, and that they might have shimmered faintly under bile-light. She thought they might be bioluminescent, but only when they were happy.
Their arms were long and delicate, perfect for crafting or combing each other’s tiny hair. She was sure they had hair, but it was closer to whispery moss. They wore makeshift tunics sewn from shed stomach lining, how resourceful! Their voices were high and insectile, but kind. They chirped like polite crickets. Sometimes, when Marta hummed, they harmonized in falsetto.
She believed there was a leader named Davin. He had a dent in his head and carried the thimble she swallowed as a child like a crown. The others followed him reverently. They were building something in there, she was certain. A city, maybe, or an opera house.
She quit her job at the call center after a manager suggested her “body odor had taken a turn.” She didn’t mind. It gave her more time for the blog. Gut Village got thirty-two followers in its first week. People wrote in:
“Do they like mango?”
“Can they read?”
“Are you a prophet?”
Marta answered every message. She posted a video of herself pressing her ear to her belly, whispering lullabies. A reader from Piqua, Ohio commented he could hear them too, though he thought they sounded sad. One woman sent Marta a homemade, probiotic blend in a mason jar labeled FOR THE COMMUNITY. A man named Jerome claimed he had kidney people, but Marta didn’t believe him. The kidneys were a bad neighborhood, everybody knew that.
It happened on a Monday. A sharp pain cleaved her side while she was microwaving a mug of bone broth. She doubled over, holding her belly like a balloon about to pop.
“Davin,” she gasped. “Davin, please.”
For two days she didn’t eat. Just water, sipped carefully. She placed a tea towel over her stomach to keep them warm. No knocking. No songs. No movement. She panicked. Had the bone broth been poisoned? Did the probiotic jar woman mean them harm? She burned her gut with peppermint oil in penance. Slept on her side so they’d feel cradled. Started writing them letters, folded into tiny boats and swallowed.
“Stay strong,” she wrote. “I will never abandon you.”
By the third week, she was all clavicle and skin. Her hip bones hurt when she sat. The fridge was nearly empty, not from poverty, but devotion. A neighbor knocked once, but she didn’t answer. The light beneath her door stayed off. Trash piled in bags by the kitchen sink. The air grew humid, sour.
She kept to the floor mostly, curled like a comma. Listened for Davin. Waited for chirps. When the knocking came again, real knocking, wood-on-wood this time, she didn’t have the energy to get up.
The lock clicked. Footsteps followed. “Marta?” It was Mrs. Escalante from 3B.
Marta blinked slowly, her pupils waxy. “Shh,” she whispered, one palm pressed gently to her stomach. “You’ll wake them.”
The EMT said ulcer. Malnutrition. Possibly hallucinations from dehydration.
Marta didn’t argue. She stared at the ceiling of the ambulance, felt the sway of motion, and smiled faintly.
“They’re rebuilding,” she said. “I can feel them again.”
The paramedic made a small note on her clipboard but didn’t look up.
Marta was hunched over her kitchen table eating cold oatmeal with a chipped spoon. She thought it was gas at first, some leftover reflux from the freezer-burned salmon she ate the night before. But the sensation returned the next day, then again. Rhythmic. Intentional.
By Friday, she pressed a stethoscope to her belly. Nothing medical, just one of those plastic toy ones from her niece’s old vet kit. But it worked. She heard them. Tiny voices, shifting, like mice sweeping crumbs.
She laid flat on the floor and whispered, “Hello?”
From then on, she stopped eating meat and breads, no fruit bigger than a pebble. No more danger of accidentally crushing anyone. She switched to soft things, like banana paste and unsweetened yogurt, room temperature applesauce. It was easier on their village.
She called them the Stomach People. Not “parasites,” like the doctor had muttered, not “hallucinations,” like her therapist scribbled behind thick glasses. Stomach People, that was all.
They were small, of course, no bigger than tiny cocktail shrimp, though she hated comparing them to something so edible. Marta thought their skin was translucent, like wet rice paper, and that they might have shimmered faintly under bile-light. She thought they might be bioluminescent, but only when they were happy.
Their arms were long and delicate, perfect for crafting or combing each other’s tiny hair. She was sure they had hair, but it was closer to whispery moss. They wore makeshift tunics sewn from shed stomach lining, how resourceful! Their voices were high and insectile, but kind. They chirped like polite crickets. Sometimes, when Marta hummed, they harmonized in falsetto.
She believed there was a leader named Davin. He had a dent in his head and carried the thimble she swallowed as a child like a crown. The others followed him reverently. They were building something in there, she was certain. A city, maybe, or an opera house.
She quit her job at the call center after a manager suggested her “body odor had taken a turn.” She didn’t mind. It gave her more time for the blog. Gut Village got thirty-two followers in its first week. People wrote in:
“Do they like mango?”
“Can they read?”
“Are you a prophet?”
Marta answered every message. She posted a video of herself pressing her ear to her belly, whispering lullabies. A reader from Piqua, Ohio commented he could hear them too, though he thought they sounded sad. One woman sent Marta a homemade, probiotic blend in a mason jar labeled FOR THE COMMUNITY. A man named Jerome claimed he had kidney people, but Marta didn’t believe him. The kidneys were a bad neighborhood, everybody knew that.
It happened on a Monday. A sharp pain cleaved her side while she was microwaving a mug of bone broth. She doubled over, holding her belly like a balloon about to pop.
“Davin,” she gasped. “Davin, please.”
For two days she didn’t eat. Just water, sipped carefully. She placed a tea towel over her stomach to keep them warm. No knocking. No songs. No movement. She panicked. Had the bone broth been poisoned? Did the probiotic jar woman mean them harm? She burned her gut with peppermint oil in penance. Slept on her side so they’d feel cradled. Started writing them letters, folded into tiny boats and swallowed.
“Stay strong,” she wrote. “I will never abandon you.”
By the third week, she was all clavicle and skin. Her hip bones hurt when she sat. The fridge was nearly empty, not from poverty, but devotion. A neighbor knocked once, but she didn’t answer. The light beneath her door stayed off. Trash piled in bags by the kitchen sink. The air grew humid, sour.
She kept to the floor mostly, curled like a comma. Listened for Davin. Waited for chirps. When the knocking came again, real knocking, wood-on-wood this time, she didn’t have the energy to get up.
The lock clicked. Footsteps followed. “Marta?” It was Mrs. Escalante from 3B.
Marta blinked slowly, her pupils waxy. “Shh,” she whispered, one palm pressed gently to her stomach. “You’ll wake them.”
The EMT said ulcer. Malnutrition. Possibly hallucinations from dehydration.
Marta didn’t argue. She stared at the ceiling of the ambulance, felt the sway of motion, and smiled faintly.
“They’re rebuilding,” she said. “I can feel them again.”
The paramedic made a small note on her clipboard but didn’t look up.
Cold Storage
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Rachel and I sneak into the walk-in meat freezer even though we’ve got an hour left of our shift. We light cigarettes and shiver and duck when the maitre-de walks past looking for us. She tells me she loves me and she’s going to miss me, and I tell her I’d rather die in this freezer than work here without her.
She wonders what would happen if we got locked inside, if we’d get hypothermia and die—what an awful way to go—then apologizes and says she hasn’t taken her meds and the intrusive thoughts come when she skips them. I jiggle the doorhandles to show her they’re unlocked, and even if they weren’t, we’d hold each other and stay warm amongst the cuts of ribs and flanks and other bloody pieces of meat that we couldn’t afford on the salary we make serving them. But Rachel reminds me she isn’t into other women no matter how much I wish she was. I tell her how I didn’t know I liked girls until I drunkenly made out with one in high school and then everything made sense after that.
She laughs and says she really likes the line cook, though, and he likes her back. They’ve gone on two dates already and doesn’t it make her a bad person if she did something with someone who wasn’t him, especially if it was just a kiss she’d already decided not to enjoy? I remind her that she’s moving and that a long distance relationship with him wouldn’t work because men lack empathy, so we shouldn’t even consider his feelings. She smiles and looks at the ground and hums. I pretend not to hope.
I say maybe she’s hiding something, maybe she’d like it if she tried, but then we stand there and exhale smoke and chatter our teeth and laugh because we both know we won’t kiss, no matter how much I want us to. I remind her that huddling together for warmth would be a tool for survival and not inherently sexual unless she wanted it to be, which I know she wouldn’t, but Brokeback Mountain happened so why not Brokeback Walk-In? She tells me she’s never seen that movie and doesn’t understand the reference and for a moment I’m glad, but then I want her to tell me she’s joking and that since this is her last shift, she might as well give it a try.
But instead she flicks bread crumbs from underneath her fingernails and sucks the butter and oil from the fish dish she just served and sighs, remembering she needs to bring a rum and coke to the fat guy eating alone at table nine. If she plays her cards right, she says, he’ll leave an even fatter tip, which she needs to pay off her plane tickets. To stop her from leaving I begin to cry, but the tears aren’t real, and I tell her that I really can’t be left alone in this place, even though I know that’s not true. I’ll stay and make friends with the next girl and the one after that, but right now it doesn’t matter. She ashes her cigarette on a communal vodka bottle we all pull from between shifts and wraps me in her arms.
Rachel shushes me and strokes my hair. Our noses are freezing and our fingertips are turning pink. I feel her thumb brushing the edge of my ear. I wish I had never showed her that the door was unlocked and pretended we were actually stuck in here together so that she would have to stay with me, even though our tables were waiting and their food was going cold. I think about how my mother called me selfish and I wish I could tell her she was right, but I all I can focus on are Rachel’s lips and keeping her in this freezer.
Then I’m sharing Rachel’s cigarette and I don’t remember where mine went or if I was even smoking one to begin with and I badly joke that when she leaves, I’m just going to have to date the line cook because it’s the closest thing I’ll have to her, and then I’m mumbling something else and I can’t stop myself from admitting how much I like her and it’s making her uncomfortable, I can see it, but I can’t stop the words from coming. I tell her we could have a cottage in Vermont and raise cats and chickens and crochet, isn’t that something she would like? I realize how insane I sound but what if these are the words she needs to hear that will stop her from leaving?
And then I’m actually crying because Rachel will never love me the way that I want her to love me and it’s hitting me for once. My body shakes and my hands tremble and I can’t even imagine flambéing a custard table-side like I’ve been needing to do. And she tells me it’s alright, but she’s inching toward the door and grimacing in a way that she’s never done before. And because this will be the last time I ever see her, I kiss her, and she pushes me off into the hanging racks of lamb. She hesitates before she leaves, but then she does, and I wait a few minutes before leaving too.
The warmth of the kitchen prickles my skin and everybody is looking at me and I figure Rachel told them what I did and that she must be furious. I want to apologize. The maitre-de tells me that Rachel just quit and I need to cover her tables, so I walk behind the bar and make a rum and coke and drink it myself before I make another one and bring it to the fat guy at table nine, who ends up leaving me his number and a hundred dollar tip that should’ve been Rachel’s. He doesn’t even realize his waitress changed halfway through his meal, but it doesn’t matter. I keep the receipt and call as soon as I clock out.
She wonders what would happen if we got locked inside, if we’d get hypothermia and die—what an awful way to go—then apologizes and says she hasn’t taken her meds and the intrusive thoughts come when she skips them. I jiggle the doorhandles to show her they’re unlocked, and even if they weren’t, we’d hold each other and stay warm amongst the cuts of ribs and flanks and other bloody pieces of meat that we couldn’t afford on the salary we make serving them. But Rachel reminds me she isn’t into other women no matter how much I wish she was. I tell her how I didn’t know I liked girls until I drunkenly made out with one in high school and then everything made sense after that.
She laughs and says she really likes the line cook, though, and he likes her back. They’ve gone on two dates already and doesn’t it make her a bad person if she did something with someone who wasn’t him, especially if it was just a kiss she’d already decided not to enjoy? I remind her that she’s moving and that a long distance relationship with him wouldn’t work because men lack empathy, so we shouldn’t even consider his feelings. She smiles and looks at the ground and hums. I pretend not to hope.
I say maybe she’s hiding something, maybe she’d like it if she tried, but then we stand there and exhale smoke and chatter our teeth and laugh because we both know we won’t kiss, no matter how much I want us to. I remind her that huddling together for warmth would be a tool for survival and not inherently sexual unless she wanted it to be, which I know she wouldn’t, but Brokeback Mountain happened so why not Brokeback Walk-In? She tells me she’s never seen that movie and doesn’t understand the reference and for a moment I’m glad, but then I want her to tell me she’s joking and that since this is her last shift, she might as well give it a try.
But instead she flicks bread crumbs from underneath her fingernails and sucks the butter and oil from the fish dish she just served and sighs, remembering she needs to bring a rum and coke to the fat guy eating alone at table nine. If she plays her cards right, she says, he’ll leave an even fatter tip, which she needs to pay off her plane tickets. To stop her from leaving I begin to cry, but the tears aren’t real, and I tell her that I really can’t be left alone in this place, even though I know that’s not true. I’ll stay and make friends with the next girl and the one after that, but right now it doesn’t matter. She ashes her cigarette on a communal vodka bottle we all pull from between shifts and wraps me in her arms.
Rachel shushes me and strokes my hair. Our noses are freezing and our fingertips are turning pink. I feel her thumb brushing the edge of my ear. I wish I had never showed her that the door was unlocked and pretended we were actually stuck in here together so that she would have to stay with me, even though our tables were waiting and their food was going cold. I think about how my mother called me selfish and I wish I could tell her she was right, but I all I can focus on are Rachel’s lips and keeping her in this freezer.
Then I’m sharing Rachel’s cigarette and I don’t remember where mine went or if I was even smoking one to begin with and I badly joke that when she leaves, I’m just going to have to date the line cook because it’s the closest thing I’ll have to her, and then I’m mumbling something else and I can’t stop myself from admitting how much I like her and it’s making her uncomfortable, I can see it, but I can’t stop the words from coming. I tell her we could have a cottage in Vermont and raise cats and chickens and crochet, isn’t that something she would like? I realize how insane I sound but what if these are the words she needs to hear that will stop her from leaving?
And then I’m actually crying because Rachel will never love me the way that I want her to love me and it’s hitting me for once. My body shakes and my hands tremble and I can’t even imagine flambéing a custard table-side like I’ve been needing to do. And she tells me it’s alright, but she’s inching toward the door and grimacing in a way that she’s never done before. And because this will be the last time I ever see her, I kiss her, and she pushes me off into the hanging racks of lamb. She hesitates before she leaves, but then she does, and I wait a few minutes before leaving too.
The warmth of the kitchen prickles my skin and everybody is looking at me and I figure Rachel told them what I did and that she must be furious. I want to apologize. The maitre-de tells me that Rachel just quit and I need to cover her tables, so I walk behind the bar and make a rum and coke and drink it myself before I make another one and bring it to the fat guy at table nine, who ends up leaving me his number and a hundred dollar tip that should’ve been Rachel’s. He doesn’t even realize his waitress changed halfway through his meal, but it doesn’t matter. I keep the receipt and call as soon as I clock out.
Red Eye
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The PTA canceled the Harvest Festival, citing trauma. No one argued. A pair of sunglasses melted into the pitcher’s mound. Custodians took turns with the metal detector, pulling up forks, zippers, half a tray table. Miss Elena, who taught music, found an arm in the garden beside the tomatoes she’d planted in April. She told no one and called out sick for the rest of the week.
Marcus’s mom said the government was behind it. Alan's older brother thought it had something to do with satellites. David stopped talking altogether. On Thursday, he brought a journal to school and began sketching jet engines with graphite so heavy his hands turned silver. When asked about it, he said he was preparing. No one asked for what. Not even Mrs. Keane, who started locking her classroom door between periods and sitting with her back pressed against the concrete walls.
The eighth-grade president, whose house was destroyed by fiery debris, started having yelling fits in the middle of class, even though her family had been on a different plane, returning from the Bahamas when it happened. She lost her dog, Misty, a golden-doodle, and her favorite pair of sneakers. They combed through the ashes but couldn’t find anything that wasn’t made of metal.
Joan, the school counselor, took over the morning announcements, beginning each day with something like, “Today’s a great day to remember that our feet are planted firmly on the ground. Let’s do our best.” On the third day, she forgot to turn off the microphone and began weeping quietly for the whole school to hear. She’d once known a family who lost their son in September 11th and couldn’t stop thinking of them. A few kids said they saw Joan in the front office later that day, hands shaking as she wiped tears from her eyes. The receptionist just patted her on the back and escorted her out, telling her she would be okay.
Recess was moved into the gymnasium indefinitely. All sports practices were canceled. The other kids worried that trick-or-treating would be next. The air smelled too much like burnt plastic, and everyone said it wasn’t healthy for developing lungs. The school board held a vigil, which was scarcely attended and turned uncomfortable when they began handing out sparklers because the order of church candles and drip-protectors had gotten lost in the mail.
In the town over, a boy claimed to have found an intact seatbelt and charged five dollars to look at it. He said it was good luck. For another five, you could make a wish, and it would come true. His cousins vouched for him, showing off the new video game console their parents had bought them. He made over four hundred dollars from requests for straight A’s, new bikes, and snow days that never came. It was an unseasonably dry winter, the grownups murmured to each other at the store, avoiding eye contact, never fully stopping to talk. No one spoke of the tragedy.
The black box was found but offered no answers as to why it happened. The company’s spokesperson called it a fluke, citing technical errors that had since been fixed, assuring there was no reason to cancel more flights or issue refunds. Families vowed to stay local for the holidays, but by spring break, they were eager to escape to the warmth of tropical islands with names they couldn’t pronounce, even if it felt impossible to justify stepping aboard.
I imagined the passengers had all fallen asleep when it happened, unaware, thinking they’d soon touch down, ready to see their families or finish their work trips. I hoped they had sent messages to their loved ones saying I’ll see you soon or Only a few hours until we’re together again. I wondered if, that night, they dreamed of reds and oranges and yellows, a blinding sunset of tranquility as they plummeted from thirty thousand feet.
Marcus’s mom said the government was behind it. Alan's older brother thought it had something to do with satellites. David stopped talking altogether. On Thursday, he brought a journal to school and began sketching jet engines with graphite so heavy his hands turned silver. When asked about it, he said he was preparing. No one asked for what. Not even Mrs. Keane, who started locking her classroom door between periods and sitting with her back pressed against the concrete walls.
The eighth-grade president, whose house was destroyed by fiery debris, started having yelling fits in the middle of class, even though her family had been on a different plane, returning from the Bahamas when it happened. She lost her dog, Misty, a golden-doodle, and her favorite pair of sneakers. They combed through the ashes but couldn’t find anything that wasn’t made of metal.
Joan, the school counselor, took over the morning announcements, beginning each day with something like, “Today’s a great day to remember that our feet are planted firmly on the ground. Let’s do our best.” On the third day, she forgot to turn off the microphone and began weeping quietly for the whole school to hear. She’d once known a family who lost their son in September 11th and couldn’t stop thinking of them. A few kids said they saw Joan in the front office later that day, hands shaking as she wiped tears from her eyes. The receptionist just patted her on the back and escorted her out, telling her she would be okay.
Recess was moved into the gymnasium indefinitely. All sports practices were canceled. The other kids worried that trick-or-treating would be next. The air smelled too much like burnt plastic, and everyone said it wasn’t healthy for developing lungs. The school board held a vigil, which was scarcely attended and turned uncomfortable when they began handing out sparklers because the order of church candles and drip-protectors had gotten lost in the mail.
In the town over, a boy claimed to have found an intact seatbelt and charged five dollars to look at it. He said it was good luck. For another five, you could make a wish, and it would come true. His cousins vouched for him, showing off the new video game console their parents had bought them. He made over four hundred dollars from requests for straight A’s, new bikes, and snow days that never came. It was an unseasonably dry winter, the grownups murmured to each other at the store, avoiding eye contact, never fully stopping to talk. No one spoke of the tragedy.
The black box was found but offered no answers as to why it happened. The company’s spokesperson called it a fluke, citing technical errors that had since been fixed, assuring there was no reason to cancel more flights or issue refunds. Families vowed to stay local for the holidays, but by spring break, they were eager to escape to the warmth of tropical islands with names they couldn’t pronounce, even if it felt impossible to justify stepping aboard.
I imagined the passengers had all fallen asleep when it happened, unaware, thinking they’d soon touch down, ready to see their families or finish their work trips. I hoped they had sent messages to their loved ones saying I’ll see you soon or Only a few hours until we’re together again. I wondered if, that night, they dreamed of reds and oranges and yellows, a blinding sunset of tranquility as they plummeted from thirty thousand feet.