At thirteen he decided to become a prophet. By nineteen he had died & been reborn five times. Nobody took him seriously. Youth is a hard barrier to overcome.
He then decided to emulate the form of regeneration that seemed to have been most successful for generating prophet recognition & had himself crucified. Unfortunately, one of the nails was rusty, & during the transition period he contracted tetanus. He came back unable to speak, & essentially illiterate since so certain had he been of his destiny he had neglected to acquire much of an education.
Nobody wants a prophet who cannot communicate his prophesies. He spent the rest of his allotted three-score & ten in silence. Alone.
“Isn’t that your sister?” Harry said to Ben as they left school on a warm May afternoon.
“What,” Ben said. “Where?”
“Over there,” Harry said, pointing toward a green VW Bug. Emma was sitting behind the wheel, waving at the boys. “Did you know she was coming?”
“Why is she here?” Ben said, as they wove their way through clusters of junior high students released for the day.
“Hey guys,” Emma said as they approached.
“What are you doing here?” Ben asked.
“Are you hungry?” Emma said.
“I could eat,” Harry said.
Emma laughed. “I’m sure you could. But if it’s okay with you, I need some time with my little bro.”
“That’s cool,” Harry said. “I have a lot of homework.”
Emma pushed open the passenger door. “Get in. I’m starving. Let’s go to the Empress.” She reached into the glove compartment and removed a cassette, which she handed to Ben. “That’s for you. I made it last night.”
Ben read the names of the songs. “Fire and Rain, Gimme Shelter, Bird on the Wire,Universal Soldier. Cool. Can’t wait to listen.’
“You’re going to love Bird on the Wire.”
“What are you doing here?” Ben asked.
“I wanted to see you.” Emma turned up 68th Street toward Queens Boulevard. “There’s a B side too.”
“Aren’t you in school?” Ben asked.
“I have a break before finals.”
“Do mom and dad know you’re coming?”
“I’m not coming home. I just came to see you.”
“Cool. Should I be worried?”
“You worry too much.”
“Maybe. But it’s a five-hour drive. Each way.”
Inside the Empress, they settled into a booth, and Emma ordered a grilled cheese and a slice of blueberry pie. Ben ordered the same.
“You don’t seem happy to see me,” Emma said.
“I am happy to see you.” Ben took a sip of soda. “I just wasn’t expecting you.”
“It’s a surprise. That’s how surprises work.”
“Is that the only reason?” Ben asked
“How’s school?”
Ben shrugged. “Fine.”
“Junior high is the worst. High school sucks too. But you will love college.”
“Do you?”
“I do. The people I’ve met, the friends I’ve made are all interesting and full of ideas and goals. I like my classes. I just don’t know what I’m doing there. But you’ll know what you want to do. You love math. That’ll make a difference.”
“Everyone says that to me. I’m good at math, and it comes easy. But what if I want to do something else?”
“Then you’ll do something else.”
The waitress topped off Emma’s coffee. Ben watched as Emma poured and stirred the cream. He liked the sound of the spoon against the porcelain. He noticed that Emma’s pink nails were jagged and uneven. She put down her spoon and brought the cup to her lips.
“I’m not quitting,” she finally said. “Quitting is a bad habit that’s hard to break. That’s not what’s going on.”
“What is going on?” Ben said.
“If something is not good for you, then you need to leave it behind and find something else. I don’t have any clue what I’m doing, or what I want to do. And I’m lucky. I don’t have to worry about the draft if I quit.”
“Sounds like you’re quitting.”
“I’ll finish the semester and then figure it out. I need to find a purpose for being there. For my life. And I haven’t found it.”
“Yet,” Ben said.
“Yet,” Emma said. “Let’s go to the pond.”
Emma drove through the neighborhood to Flushing Meadow where they found a bench.
“Remember when dad took us here so he could teach you how to ride a two-wheeler?”
“Not really,” Ben said.
“You were only three,” Emma said. “It came so easy to you.”
“That means you were nine. That’s why you remember. I do remember the time you talked me into riding our bikes to Central Park. Down Queens Boulevard. Across the 59th St. Bridge. It was awesome.”
“That was such a fun day,” Emma said.
They sat together in the park, looking out toward the pond. A breeze sent ripples across the water. Ben took the tape out of his pocket.
“The B-side is just as good,” he said, looking up. “I can’t believe you made a mix tape without a Dylan song. Might be a first.”
“I think you’re right. I wanted to add one from his new album, Nashville Skyline, but I need to listen to it more. Have you heard it?”
“They play a few cuts on the radio. I like the one with Johnny Cash.”
Emma leaned back, staring at the sky and said. “I’ll go back for now.”
“What?”
“I’ll ace my finals,” Emma said. “Maybe I’ll go to law school and work pro bono for draft evaders and death row inmates.”
Ben looked at her. “Would that make you happy?”
“Happiness is fleeting. Purpose isn’t,” Emma said. “Maybe I’ll go live in Paris and be a writer like Baldwin.”
“Is he a friend of yours?”
“I wish,” she said. “He’s a great writer. You should read him. I’ll get you one of his books. Did you finish, On The Road?”
“Twice. I love it.”
“I’ll bring you The Fire Next Time, when I come back.”
“How would I see you, if you go to Paris?” Ben said.
“You should come back to school with me. Yes. That’s what you should do. We’d have so much fun.”
“You do realize I have school,” Ben said. “And we’d have to tell mom and dad. And don’t you have finals to study for?”
“I know. I know. I just thought it would be fun.”
“It would be fun,” Ben said.
Emma sighed and stretched her arms above her head. “I should take you home.”
As they walked back to the car, Emma jingled her keys. Ben watched her, memorizing the way she moved, the way her shoulders didn’t sway, as if she was holding onto something heavy, and didn’t want to let go.
Elan Barnehama has published two novels: Escape Route and Finding Bluefield. His flash fiction collection is forthcoming in January 2026 from Poets Wear Prada. His writing has appeared in numerous publications, including ParisLitUp, Synchronized Chaos, 10×10 Flash Fiction, Boog City, Jewish Fiction, Drunk Monkeys, Rough Cut Press, Boston Accent, Red Fez, Syncopation Lit, HuffPost, public radio, and more. Elan served as the flash fiction editor at ForthMagazineLA, a radio news reporter, and was a mediocre short-order cook.
Eastern Oregon is defined as east of the Cascade Mountains. The east/west divide is political and topographical. The fauna and flora and climate differ as well.
Many years ago, it could have been 2010, I went with a group of nature guides from the Portland Oregon area to an interesting historical site close to the Northeastern Oregon city Baker. The main attraction in nearby Sumpter was the remains of an odd gold mining operation that operated from 1934-1954. A dry land dredge created its own stream while running rock through the dredge. Workers picked gold from the rock that passed through.
As interesting as that was, what caught my attention was a scene at the yard of a Sumpter resident. A dog on a leash was barking at a deer peacefully munching on edibles in the yard. The drama looked like it could be a nightly show. After he had enough of the relentless barking the resident of the house came out to shoo the deer away. The dog relaxed.
That wasn’t the only example of games animals play. When we visited the Malheur National Game refuge in Southeastern Oregon we witnessed a coyote stalking a pheasant. When the coyote got close the pheasant would fly twenty feet way. We watched the slow motion unsuccessful pursuit for a few minutes, but it looked like the show could go on all day so we moved on to other wonders of nature. Imagine a slow motion version of Wiley Coyote and the Road Runner. Beep Beep.
On another occasion we found what appeared to be a flattened road runner. A coyote didn’t get it, but it may have failed to Dodge a Maverick, Cougar, Impala, or other animal-named automobile.
Going through South Central Oregon just north of Nevada, we have seen herds of antelope (more accurately pronghorns). They are the fastest land animal in the USA. They evolved when dire wolves were around so they needed to be a little faster, and the excess speed has survived the demise of dire wolves.
The bittern is a bird that stays safe by standing head tilted up in reeds and is hard to discern from its surroundings. It is good at hiding but we saw one.
The landscape east of the Cascades is much different. The trees are different and smaller. The juniper, sage brush, and horned toads (actually a lizard made famous by Yosemite Sam – I’ve run across a few) won’t be found in Western Oregon.
The differences between East and West are partly from climate differences and extent and timing of volcanic activity. Western Oregon has a moderate climate with a lot of rain. Eastern Oregon is arid and much more extreme. Volcanoes made both Crater Lake National Park and Newberry Crater National Monument, home to East and Paulina Lakes, a frequent summer vacation for my family in the 1950s. On a much smaller scale, there are the lava tubes and ice caves which were formed by lava vents. Lava River Cave is over a mile long and open to visitors. The various ice caves can keep ice for much of the year when the outside temperature can reach 90F. In earlier times they provided Bend Oregon with ice in the summer.
I run to the other end of the rounded planet and return to a house that does not exist
Newmore
After long debates, the parliament finally approved the state budget presented by the government for the coming year. In a more ideal world there would be a poem instead of this text.
Extraordinary Madness, For Patti Smith, friend of William S. Burroughs
The lunch is always naked—that was Burroughs,
bearing the news steadily and with a wink
at the end of a long fork
There’s a newspaper spoon somewhere in there too,
folded like Guernica’s horses
Snorting acrid verses
Rimbaud spotted somewhere nearby,
having achieved fabulous opera
His rude shithouse scrawls
sanctified
solidified
Rolling forth through Kansas wheat fields
rolling like a family of tumbleweeds roll
rolling under leaden coffins of American sky
where freedom’s torch sizzles and dies
like a wet cigarette
with a shrug
and a sigh
Where are you now my friends
the spirit of revolution involuted with a death spiraling suite of
catastrophes
Iron monuments to all-systems crash regarding me with a hard eye
Triangulating all future forms of my skeleton nailed to the mast of the
Drunken boat
Oh Rimbaud, oh Patti Smith
Burroughs and his fork tines stabbing at the grey matter
digging inside the TV mind, digging out bits of
chewy pink neon.
(This poem previously appeared in The Smol Bear Review)
About Alex S. Johnson
Dubbed “the Baudelaire of our time” by Cyberpunk pioneer and screenwriter of The Crow (1994) John Shirley, Alex S. Johnson has written 15 books, including the canonical New Line Cinema Friday the 13th spinoff novel Jason X: Death Moon. A music journalist with such legendary magazines as Metal Maniacs, Zero Tolerance, Brave Words and Bloody Knuckles, Blue Blood and Metal Hammer, Johnson’s stories and poems have appeared in The Surreal Grotesque, Bizarro Central, Cut Up!, New Generation Beats 2024, HWA Poetry Showcase Volume III and Prying Deluxe Edition, alongside the likes of Edward Lee, Joe Hill, Allen Ginsberg, Charles Bukowski, Lucy Taylor, Alessandro Manzetti, Ron Whitehead, Ellyn Maybe, Wrath James White, Eric LaRocca, Poppy Z. Brite, Catfish McDaris and Caitlin R. Kiernan.
The founder of Nocturnicorn Books, Johnson’s most recent publication is White On White: A Literary Tribute to Bauhaus, with a Foreword by transgressive fiction icon Poppy Z. Brite and contributions from The Runaways founder Kari Lee Krome, two time World Fantasy and Bram Stoker Award-winning author Caitlin R. Kiernan, Bram Stoker Award-winning author John Palisano, industrial metal icon Jarboe (ex-Swans), Athan Maroulis from Spahn Ranch and Black Tape For a Blue Girl, Tara Vanflower from Lycia and Type O Negative, and Senor Fluffy: A Cat’s Tale creator Hazel-Ann Lynch.
Johnson lives in Carmichael, California with his family.
