Page 1 Page 2 Page 3 Page 4 Page 5 Page 6 Page 7 Page 8 Page 9 Page 10 Page 11 Page 12 Page 13 Page 14 Page 15 Page 16 Page 17 Page 18 Page 19 Page 20 Page 21 Page 22 Page 23 Page 24 Page 25 Page 26 Page 27 Page 28 Page 29 Page 30 Page 31 Page 32 Page 33 Page 34 Page 35 Page 36 Page 37 Page 38 Page 39 Page 40 Page 41 Page 42 Page 43 Page 44 Page 45 Page 46 Page 47 Page 48 Page 49 Page 50 Page 51 Page 52 Page 53 Page 54 Page 55 Page 56 Page 57 Page 58 Page 59 Page 60 Page 61 Page 62 Page 63 Page 64 Page 65 Page 66 Page 67 Page 68 Page 69 Page 70 Page 71 Page 72 Page 73 Page 74 Page 75 Page 76 Page 77 Page 78 Page 79 Page 80 Page 81 Page 82 Page 83 Page 84 Page 85 Page 86 Page 87 Page 88 Page 89 Page 90 Page 91 Page 92 Page 93 Page 94 Page 95 Page 96 Page 97 Page 98 Page 99 Page 100Fiction N o v e m b e r 2 0 1 6 9 3 modified photo, secret world by Funcom, Designer: Ragnar Tørnquist By Nicholas Panagakos it dry in the rain, but the bag was old and developing tears. He ripped the bag open, and coins bounced off the floor. “You stupid ass!” I said, picking up the coins. “Oh, who gives a shit?” He pawed at the cash and dropped a few dollars in his haste. I brushed the snow off them and held them up while he swayed lightly. “You always have to be right, eh?” he asked me. “Little Billy always gets his way? Well you don’t matter much to me anyway.” He shuffled through the bills twice. “There’s fifteen dol- lars here! Where’s the rest of it?” “You dropped three dollars,” I said, still holding up the bills. “You’re a drunk and an idiot, Craig.” “Well you’re a wimp and a fink,” he said, snatching the money from me. “How’s your stupid leg?” I rubbed it and still couldn’t feel much more than slight pressure. “It’s bad,” I said. “I may have to go to the clinic tomorrow.” “We can’t go to the clinic tomorrow,” he said. “Not tomorrow or ever again. Those pigs aren’t doctors. They’re fucking the bottle against his chest. He held it like it was his child. He looked at it like a 750ml prayer and closed his eyes tight like he was thinking. I don’t know if Craig had ever had a thought that last- ed longer than the time it took a pretty girl to walk past him. If he had, then I’d nev- er noticed. He was my older brother, but I often felt like the older one. “Give it here,” I said. Craig sneered at me and gave me the bottle resentfully. I took a pull and put it back in my bag. “How much money have we got?” he asked. “Same as yesterday,” I said. “Eighteen dollars and forty-eight cents.” “Let me count it.” He started to stand but fell back down. “Why count it?” I asked. “I haven’t touched it.” “Just let me count the damn money.” He rose again in earnest, this time steadying himself against the wall. I dug the money out of my bag. We kept all our earnings in a plastic zip bag to keep T he floor drain between my legs was underneath a layer of ice. Craig and I had broken into an aban- doned building on the darker edge of what may have been Skowhegan, and we de- cided to rest a while instead of continu- ing on in darkness. We had walked down the banks of the Kennebec River for a long time before I started losing feeling in my left leg. Craig wanted to keep going, but my capacity for pain had never been fantas- tic. The building was either a factory or an old slaughterhouse, but no one had been in there for a long time. The ideas of machines were still there in pieces, picked apart by scrappers and folks looking for copper to sell. These could have been presses or some- thing else. I don’t know. There was met- al everywhere. Cold metal under frost and snow blowing in from broken windows be- came our bed and blanket. The wind was low and howling lightly when Craig asked me for the bottle. “We don’t have much left,” I said. “Well, we are about to have less.” He took a good pull from the vodka and held