BREEDING
fiction by Dymphna
featuring the photography of Eric Goen

i always kept the stone he gave me, the smooth black stone he pulled from his trouser pocket and laid on the pavement between my tennis shoes. the silent boy would not leave until i picked up the stone and held it in my hand. he would not leave until i grasped the smooth obsidian and felt it cool the fire in my palms. then he nodded slowly and jumped on his skateboard.

two years later, i found my father. the circus lasted all night, unless the police came. my father drank whiskey and ate great holy flashes of fire, flaming torches, white-hot swords. a girl wearing tiny metal torches on each finger shoved both her fists down his throat at once, burning. he just laughed while the crowd of hobos roared.

he said i was no child of his. he said – my father said – that i could never make the fire dance and lash out into the night. and when i held out the stone, he would not take it. he walked away into the lonesome desert. "and tell that whore of a mother of yours," my father said on his way past, "tell her not to send me her strays."

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