SmokeLong Quarterly

For the second night in a row, Daddy Marshwood sat in front of the screen and picked up the phone. “We don’t like what we’re seeing here.”

“Maybe you should change the channel,” Chris told him, flashing his eyes at Angela, who was sandpapering a chair the size of her thumb.

“The womb is still empty,” Mommy Marshwood chimed in.

His father assented, “We didn’t spend a couple hundred on a Viewer for this.”

Chris strained to hear him, idly playing with a fridge magnet. “Dad, we told you there’d be nothing.”

“Not nothing. Two nights ago the wall ruptured—left side, like fireworks!”

Chris sighed, toying with the pineapple magnet while handing Angela a finger puppet with an iron-ball head.

Angela sat the puppet into the chair, and leaned back.

“Make it fun together,” Daddy said, lowering his voice. “Macaroni, smooth jazz—”

Fun, they’d said. They bought it for Christmas, the Viewer.

Angela held the puppet and chair in her fist. She untied her bellybutton, dropped them both in, and knotted it closed.

She smiled and Chris put down the phone.

Angela took his yellow pineapple and made the little iron man dance.