Appetite by Gregory Wolos

When Drake turned eleven, he bought himself a pair of gerbils with his birthday money. He’d wanted a dog, but his mother was pregnant with what would be his first sibling, and puppies and babies don’t mix. The day itself had been a dud—his father had just lost his job after a merger that left him “redundant,” and to make ends meet had turned his candle making hobby into a full-time at-home job. Drake’s birthday breakfast was served while giant pots of strawberry-scented paraffin boiled on the stove. His dad had set eleven lit candles on the kitchen table, each a foot tall and as thick as a man’s wrist. Drake had to blow them out one at a time and was out of breath by the time he finished.

Drake named his new pets Adam and Eve, though he couldn’t tell them apart. Even the pet store clerk had only been “pretty sure” that the pair Drake had purchased were male and female. Truth be told, he didn’t like the gerbils from the start. They offered little to love—most of the time they hid in burrows dug in their cedar chip bedding. When they snuck out to their food dish or water bottle, they paid him no mind and scurried back into their tunnels the moment they’d satisfied their appetites. Nighttime was unpleasant. Knowing that he wasn’t alone in his bedroom, Drake couldn’t seem to quiet his mind down. Instead of counting sheep, he inventoried the sounds of the house. First, from their bedroom down the hall came the hum of his parents’ voices; probably, they were preoccupied with his mom’s health and his dad’s job situation. When they quieted down, Drake listened to heat sensors tick, refrigerators hum, floors settle and beams creak. But if he held his breath, beneath all the other sounds, Drake imagined he could hear Adam and Eve rustling in their burrow.

Eating breakfast was like having a meal in a candle-making factory. The boiling wax polluted the air like car exhaust. The greasy eggs his father prepared for Drake each school day morning tasted of strawberry scent. The odor saturated every meal and everything else in the house, including Drake’s clothes. “What’s up with the strawberry smell?” his classmates asked. He felt lucky that the nickname “Strawberry Man” didn’t stick. When his mother worried that the overwhelming odor might be unhealthy for the baby, Drake’s dad showed her the label on the scent bottle.

“It says ‘non-toxic,’ see?” he said. “I’m not sure about the paraffin. I think it’s okay.”

The second set of gerbils—at least a dozen, though Drake never attempted an official count—arrived in a twenty-gallon terrarium and came with a water bottle, a carton of food pellets, an exercise wheel, and a book about gerbil care. The animals and the supplies were a “bonus gift” from Drake’s mom’s Fuller Brush salesman and came with a bottle of conditioner for her “that avoids the chemicals that are dangerous for pregnant women.” When Drake came home from school and shrugged off his strawberry-tainted coat, hat, and scarf, his smiling mother told him to “go upstairs and check out the surprise the Fuller Brush man left on your dresser.”

The new terrarium had been shoved up against Adam and Eve’s smaller home and blocked most of Drake’s mirror—he could only see himself from the neck up. His stomach clenched when he saw how many little beige bodies there were: half a dozen or so had wedged themselves into one of the corners; several burrowed in the opposite corner; another handful stood like prairie dogs in the center of the terrarium as if they were waiting a turn on the occupied exercise wheel. Lying atop the tank’s cover screen was a thin paperback, Know Your Gerbil. It pictured a handsome, upright rodent nibbling on a pumpkin seed. Drake tossed the book on his bed among his schoolbooks and turned his attention to Adam and Eve’s abode, where the pair were hidden deep in their bedding. He was about to knock on the glass when both popped up like a pair of Whac-A-Moles and froze. Maybe, Drake thought, the oldsters would enjoy the company of the newbies. And vice-versa.

Drake removed the covers from both habitats and dumped Adam and Eve into the new tank. They landed softly and scrambled instantly to an unoccupied corner, where they began digging furiously. The Fuller Brush gerbils didn’t seem to notice. The pace of the one on the exercise wheel never slackened.

Drake watched the pair disappear into the cedar chips, then climbed onto his bed. He rubbed his jaw with his shoulder—strawberries. Had he absorbed so much of the artificial scent that it was leaking out of him? His nostrils flared at a wet-dog stench underlying the fruitiness, recognizable, but a hundred times worse than the odor from Adam and Eve’s habitat. Too many bodies in the Fuller Brush terrarium, and their defecation saturated the cedar chips. The two pungent scents—overripe strawberry and acrid cedar—didn’t blend well. Drake tried breathing through his mouth instead of his nose, but it didn’t help much.

Drake picked up the gerbil care book, Know Your Gerbil. He opened to a random page, and under the heading “Gerbil Teeth” he read: “Gerbils teeth never stop growing.” He frowned at the idea, imagining his own teeth lengthening like Pinocchio’s nose did when the puppet told a lie. Before long he’d have walrus tusks hanging over his chin. How would he eat? Or kiss? His face got hot, and he squirmed under his covers as he envisioned the limber strides of girls wearing jeans or short skirts in the hallways of his school. Giving the gerbils cardboard to chew will keep their teeth filed, Know Your Gerbil said. Why hadn’t Adam and Eve’s teeth been growing, he wondered. He hadn’t seen any cardboard with the Fuller Brush gerbils either.

The exercise wheel squeaked—something else he’d have to get used to along with the stew of stenches he tasted when he yawned. Sleepily, he turned the pages of the gerbil book, looking at pictures he hoped would make the creatures more appealing. He stopped when he came to a chapter titled “WARNING.”

“Because gerbils are cannibals,” Drake read, “it is necessary to take certain precautions.” Cannibals? He shuddered at the word. If gerbils aren’t properly fed, they will eat each other, he discovered. Colonies will attack and devour strangers. Mothers will eat their newborns “without a qualm,” the book said. The exercise wheel ceased to squeak. Why? What else were the gerbils up to? Were Adam and Eve safe? Drake was afraid to look. He threw Know Your Gerbil to the floor and reached for his math book. But he couldn’t concentrate on the assigned problems. He kept listening, for exactly what he didn’t know. Would he hear munching?

Drake started avoiding his room. He took to doing his homework at the kitchen table and stayed up later and later in front of the TV, outlasting both of his parents. When he finally dragged himself upstairs, he changed into his pajamas in the dark, scrambled under his covers, and tugged his pillow over his head; he tried to think about anything but gerbils. As he lay, the twin odors of strawberry and gerbil wound around him like a strait jacket, and he struggled to keep from writhing, as if the noise might stimulate the rodents’ appetites. The darkness, plump and full, hung over him like a storm cloud, and though his parents’ bedroom was silent, he dwelled on his mother’s swollen belly and the baby growing inside. Would it look like him? By the time it was his age, Drake would be a man, whatever that meant.

Mornings Drake dressed with his back to the big terrarium and used the mirror in his bathroom to comb his hair. Instead of investigating the fate of Adam and Eve, he got rid of their empty habitat. Eventually, habit conquered guilt, and he came to ignore the gerbils completely. Drake convinced himself that an “invisible hand” he assumed was his father’s was secretly caring for the little animals. Side glances suggested their numbers were dwindling, but most were probably hiding in the cedar bedding. The water bottle looked full, and seed shells scattered around the food dish came and went, which implied that someone must be feeding them. Drake kept mum on the subject of cannibalism with his dad, afraid that too much information might affect the invisible hand’s generosity. In fact, he never mentioned the gerbils at all. Silence and ignorance made things nearly tolerable, and as Drake hardened himself against pity, he grew more and more comfortable with the part of his life he’d abandoned to the shadows. His mom and his dad attributed his silence to the anxieties each of them fretted over, and never mentioned the gerbils.

“Are you worried about the new baby?” his mother asked. “Don’t be jealous—you’ll always be my first.”

“I know you’re not crazy about the candle business,” his father said. “But it’s just temporary—we’ll be back on our feet before you know it.”

Days went by without a sign of life in the terrarium, but still no comment came from the invisible caretaker. The deserted tank became a symbol of something, but what? Why was it still in his room? Then, one afternoon, a surprise resurrection: two gerbils, sat next to the exercise wheel as if it was part of their daily routine. Adam and Eve, Drake thought, convinced that they were his originals. And a new feeling, pride, surged past his suppressed guilt and revulsion. Adam and Eve were survivors! At that moment, the idea for his school science project was born.

Of course, the project was a hoax in every way imaginable, but it fit perfectly into the shadow world of half-truths that had claimed Drake since the gerbil invasion had begun. For his “experiment,” Drake pretended that this surviving pair had been fed a healthy diet of seeds and nutritional pellets, while a secondary group of gerbils had been fed only sugar and candy. Adam and Eve thrived. Those given sweets didn’t make it.

Drake scribbled a poster for his display at the science fair: “EATING ONLY SUGAR IS DANGEROUS.” He illustrated his point with a skull and crossbones like the ones on cartoon bottles of poison and attached pictures of the Disney chipmunks Chip and Dale, labeling them “ADAM” and “EVE.” Since the entire experiment was a lie, what did it matter that chipmunks were the wrong species?

Drake’s father dropped his son and his experiment off at school for the event Drake had told his folks was “just for kids.” His dad would spend the two hours of the science fair at Jimmy D’s, the neighborhood tavern that had become his hangout when he wasn’t pouring hot wax into molds or delivering candles to gift shops. Drake had heard his father tell his mom that the tavern was “great for networking.”

The science fair was in the school cafeteria. Drake’s project shared a table with a towering papier mache volcano that belonged to a kid from a lower grade. An easel in front of the volcano displayed a cardboard clock that announced the time of the next eruption. The volcano kid’s mother, a tall woman with dark-rooted blond hair, guarded her boy and his project. When she caught the tank’s animal odor—or was it the strawberry scent emanating from Drake?—her nose wrinkled. She read his poster and gave him a chilly look.

“Isn’t it cruel to starve innocent animals?” she asked. Her son’s smirking face poked out from behind his volcano, and he stuck out his tongue at Drake.

“These are the ones that had the good food,” Drake told her, trying out his fib aloud for the first time. “They got a variety of healthy seeds and nutritional food pellets. Did you know that gerbil teeth never stop growing, so you have to give them stuff to chew on to wear them down?”

The mother’s eyelids dropped and rose like window shades. “Of course the others died if you didn’t feed them. Did you watch them starve? Did they die right in front of you?”

“They stay burrowed in the cedar chips pretty much all the time,” Drake said. His face heated up. “Mostly, they come out at night, so I don’t see much. I hear them, though.”

Just then, Drake spotted his teacher, Mr. Leeds, who’d be grading his experiment. Mr. Leeds had stopped at the first table in Drake’s row, where he studied a half-dozen small flowerpots under a poster that read “THIS ‘MOSS’ BE THE PLACE!” Sally Jeffers, who sat in front of Drake in class, nodded at something the teacher was telling her. Mr. Leeds made some marks on his clipboard, shook his head, and moved toward Drake’s table. Drake smiled stiffly at his teacher while trying to ignore the volcano-mom’s harangue:

“You must have had an inkling that they were dying. You let them suffer cruel, painful deaths!”

“It’s for science,” Drake hissed like a ventriloquist through his teeth. Mr. Leeds reached Drake’s table and began to read his poster.

“Volcano eruption in one minute!” the volcano kid shouted. He ducked behind his project and mounted a stool. He held a vial of clear liquid over the volcano’s mouth. The handful of spectators attracted by the announcement looked at Drake, assuming the project was his, until the boy’s mother warned Drake to “quit blocking the show.”

“They eat their babies, you know,” Drake confessed to her under his breath. “I hear them at night when I’m trying to sleep. They keep nibbling away. Not just the ones that got the bad diet. These healthy ones, too. It doesn’t matter that they’ve been well fed. They just like to eat babies, I guess.” Drake had spilled so much information so aggressively that he was dizzy and could feel his heart pounding in his chest.

“Eruption time!” the volcano kid shouted. When Drake shut his eyes, the darkness was red and swirly.

A loud belch gurgled from the papier mache, and a puff of steam rose toward the ceiling. Thick gray slime slurped over the lip of the volcano, dribbled down its side, and congealed.

Volcano-boy’s mother clapped. “Oh, that was beautiful, Struther! See the lava, everyone? Doesn’t it look real?”

But Mr. Leeds frowned. “Another volcano,” he sighed and made a note on his clipboard. “Where’s the supporting information? You could have at least mentioned ‘our living Earth.’ C-plus, Struther, and that’s generous.” He waved his clipboard at Drake’s terrarium. “Now, ‘survival of the fittest’ is a theme we can all sink our teeth into.”

“But—but—” Struther’s mom stammered, then fell silent. Her eyes narrowed at Drake. For a second he thought she might slap him, as if her son’s lousy grade was his fault.

“So—where are your survivors?” Mr. Leeds asked Drake. “Are those the little devils, half-buried in the corner? Can you wake them up so I can assess their health. What precisely was the diet of the, uh, ‘non-survivors’?”

“Cookie crumbs,” Drake replied, ready with a host of lies. “Also crushed M & Ms. I filled their water bottle with Pepsi.”

Mr. Leeds paused. “Did I hear you say these rodents are cannibals? Any conclusions about that?”

There were Eews and Yucks from the spectators who’d come for the volcano, but Drake had an answer. “Maybe the sugar in their parents’ diet made the babies that got eaten really delicious.”

Mr. Leeds smiled and patted Drake on the shoulder. “Very good! Sweet babies! That answer takes you from B-plus to A-minus. Best in the class so far.”

“I think murdering God’s creatures shouldn’t be encouraged,” Volcano-mom grumbled. “I can’t tell you how many hours Struther’s father and I—”

“I’ve actually been to the rim of real volcanos,” Mr. Leeds interrupted. “Believe me when I tell you that your son’s project is subpar and unoriginal. But let’s see how these little critters are doing. He reached around to the back of the terrarium and knuckle-rapped the glass. “Rise and shine,” he sing-songed, the way Drake’s dad did when he called his son for his strawberry-flavored eggs every morning. But the gerbils didn’t move. “You’re certain they’re okay?” the teacher asked.

Before Drake could answer, a short, wiry man wearing a baggy track suit stepped through the crowd and pressed his nose against the terrarium, leaving an oily spot on the glass when he backed away. It took Drake a second to recognize his mom’s Fuller Brush man, the guy who’d convinced her to take the extra gerbils in the first place. How many afternoons had Blake come home from school to find this man in their living room surrounded by his open cases of brushes and supplies?

“Hey, I think I know these guys,” the Fuller Brush man announced. “Where are they all hiding?”

“They’re all dead,” volcano-mom said. “That’s his experiment. He starved them until they ate each other. They probably even ate their babies.”

“Survival of the fittest,” repeated Mr. Leeds, who lingered near the display. “No room for sentimentality.”

“Had to get them out of my house,” the Fuller Brush man said. “Wife and kids couldn’t stand them, and they wound up in our basement, where we’d kind of forget about them for a couple of days at a time. The smell of that cedar crap stunk up the whole house, didn’t it, honey?”

Drake caught his breath—the “honey” the Fuller Brush man addressed was none other than Sally Jeffers, who’d left her moss-filled flowerpots and wandered to Drake’s table, probably to see the volcano. Who would have thought Fuller Brush men had children? When Sally saw the terrarium, her face turned white, and her whole body seemed to shimmer like an image on a broken television.

“That’s why you did moss for your project, not rodents, right, kiddo?” the Fuller Brush man said to his daughter. “‘This moss be the place!’— that was my idea. And who do you think lugged the little buggers up to your bedroom, young man? Not your mom, not in her condition.”

“Dad was out selling candles,” Drake said, instantly regretting his apologetic tone.

“Yeah, the strawberry scented ones. Your house reeks of it. Your Mom says she’s sick of it, too.” The Fuller Brush man closed his eyes, lifted his nose, and sniffed. “You can even smell it here. I wouldn’t be surprised if the stuff is poisonous. Hey, don’t I see your dad at Jimmy D’s? I go there for lunch a lot. What, does he use the bar as his ‘office’?” He chuckled and clapped his hands as he tried and failed to catch the volcano-mom’s eye.

Drake couldn’t shake the image of the Fuller Brush man poking around in his bedroom. He pictured the guy setting the terrarium on his dresser next to Adam and Eve’s tank, then grinning at his reflection in the mirror. Maybe he looked through Drake’s drawers, touching stuff.

Sally turned her back on Drake’s display. Her black hair slipped over her shoulders like spilling oil. She probably owned a million brushes, Drake thought. Her eyelashes sparkled with caught tears.

“I had them in my room at first, but they made noises at night,” she said quietly. “I pretended they were crying.”

“Next eruption in five minutes!” Struther cried.

“Wait until this group leaves,” his mother said to her son. “These aren’t volcano people. They’re just cruel.” She looked at Sally. “Don’t fool yourself, miss. What you heard wasn’t crying. It was starving parents eating their own babies.”

“I wouldn’t eliminate the possibility of tears,” Mister Leeds said. “Tiny antelopes in Africa use their tears to mark their territory. And it’s a fact that there are moths that feed on the tears of sleeping birds.”

No one spoke. Drake imagined those soft moth wings batting against his cheeks, and a thrill ran through him. Sally blew her nose with a tissue her father handed her. What, Drake wondered, if Sally had been in Drake’s room with her father? Maybe she’d sat on his bed. Maybe she lay down with her head on his pillow and stretched out her long, white legs across his comforter.

Mr. Leeds tucked his clipboard under his arm. “I would have liked to have seen a little activity from the survivors,” he said as he walked away. “But you can’t predict Mother Nature.”

“He’ll miss the eruption,” Struther said. “And this is going to be a big one!”

The Fuller Brush man clapped his hands again. “Tell your mom I’ve got a new electric carpet sweeper to show her,” he said to Drake. “It’s almost weightless. I’ll stop by next week. Not that she should be pushing anything around in her delicate condition. You and your dad should be helping out more. Where is she, anyway? At Jimmy D’s with your dad? She’s staying away from alcohol, I bet. Good advice for all mammas and papas who care about their kids.” He shifted a look between the terrarium and Struther’s mother. “You think those baby-eaters care about theirs, ma’am? Now where’s that volcano?”

“He’s waiting for new people,” the angry mom said.

Drake tried to picture his father at Jimmy D’s, sitting at a booth with other men. What did “networking” look like? Then, as if conjured out of his thoughts, Drake heard his father’s voice.

“Looks like I got here just in time for the show!” Drake’s dad sidled up and nudged his son. The air was thick with strawberries. “You said two hours, so here I am.” He looked around the cafeteria. “I think you got the wrong message about parents attending.” He peered inside the terrarium. “Where’s the gang?”

“Adam and Eve are sleeping.” The Fuller Brush man winked. “Who knows what they’re up to.”

Drake’s dad looked at the short man. “I’m sorry—you must be one of Drake’s teachers?”

“We’ve never been officially introduced, but I’ve seen you around.” The salesman stuck out his hand but Drake’s father must not have seen it. “I’m Lou Jeffers, your wife’s Fuller Brush man. You can thank me for that beard trimming kit you got last Father’s Day. And for the passel of gerbils I gifted you, though I’ve been looking at your boy’s experiment, and I’m not so sure how well they’ve fared. Hey, congrats on the new one, by the way. Due practically any minute, right?”

“The rotten fruit smell is getting worse,” Struther said, screwing up his face.

“Smells like a strawberry daquiri,” the Fuller Brush man said. “Not exactly a man’s drink.”

“It’s just scent,” Drake’s father said. “I make candles. Smelling like one is an occupational hazard. We don’t even notice it anymore, do we Drake?”

“Rub-a-dub-dub!” The Fuller Brush man grinned. “How are the butcher and baker? You see them at Jimmy D’s?”

Drake bit his lip, but his father’s reply came with a cautious smile. “You mean what do they smell like? I don’t know. Raw meat? Cake? What’s a Fuller Brush man smell like?”

The salesman stood up straight, but he was still a half a head shorter than Drake’s dad. “We smell like whatever the customer wants us to smell like,” he said.

Struther suddenly sneezed like a machine gun, five times in a row. He wiped his nose with his sleeve. “Mom,” he whined, “I think I’m allergic to strawberry. Can I do the volcano now?”

Drake’s father’s smile faded. “So you’re the one who brought these into our house.”

“Your wife said your boy had some already and would love a few more.” The salesman stuffed his hands in his pockets. His eyes were as wary as Drake’s father’s.

“‘Love’ is a little strong, I think,” Drake’s father said. “And the ones you gave him turned out to be a bunch of duds, if these two are the only survivors. I don’t keep track of them, but that’s what it looks like to me.”

“Adam and Eve.” The salesman tapped the pictures of Chip and Dale.

Drake stood mutely. His dad hadn’t “kept track”? No “invisible hand”? But he’d suspected that all along, hadn’t he?

“Cannibals,” Struther’s mom murmured. “Just plain cruelty.”

The Fuller Brush man waved at the air as if he were swatting flies. “Man, I don’t know what’s worse, the gerbil stink or the strawberry.”

“Volcano time!” Struther, from up on his stool, emptied his vial into the volcano. Again there was a gurgle and belch from inside the papier mache shell. But this time nothing else—no smoke, no lava.

“No! Don’t let it!” Sally’s sudden cry broke the silence. She buried her face in her father’s chest.

The source of her alarm was immediately apparent: one of Drake’s ‘survivors’ had unburied itself and stood atop the cedar bedding. Smoothing his daughter’s hair protectively, the Fuller Brush man squinted inside the terrarium. “What’s that it’s got in its mouth? What the Hell is that?”

Struther’s mother screeched “Cannibals!” into her hands. The gerbil stood placidly. The thing dangling from its mouth was shiny and smooth, the size and color of a kidney bean.

“It’s moving!” a spectating kid shouted, and everyone stared. Had the tiny pink head gyrated slightly?

Struther stared gloomily down the mouth of his volcano. “It didn’t work,” he whimpered, but his mom wasn’t listening.

“That’s its baby,” she wailed. “Don’t you see, it’s eating its baby. Somebody do something!”

Parents pulled their distressed children away from the display. Sally heaved with sobs. What if she really had been in Drake’s room—in his bed—when her father had delivered the gerbils? What if Drake had found her there, the way the three bears had discovered Goldilocks at the end of their story? Then it might have been his arms wrapped around her now, instead of her father’s.

“No!” Drake exclaimed. “It’s not what you think. That’s just a candy gummy, I swear. It’s left over from my experiment. That’s from the sugar diet that the other gerbils couldn’t survive on. It’s just a gummy bear.” Drake’s admission was no less true than the bulk of his gerbil details.

The commotion had drawn Mr. Leeds back to Drake’s table. The teacher checked the terrarium, where the gerbil still stood at attention. “Survival of the fittest,” Mr. Leeds said one last time, and strolled away. Finally, only Drake, his dad, and the Fuller Brush family remained. Even Struther and his mom had vanished.

“A gummy!” Drake insisted. Hadn’t all of it—the lies, the cruelty, even the guilt Drake had struggled to hide from—been about survival? All he wanted now was to ride home with his dad on a wave of strawberry scent. They could light dozens—hundreds!—of candles, all over the house, and then invite Drake’s mom from her bed rest to share in the splendor.

The gerbil still stood like a statue. If there had been a tear in its tiny eye, it was too small to see. The thing in its mouth had lost its luster. Without warning, the critter ducked, spun around, and dove back into its burrow with its burden.

“So this is what you bring into people’s houses?” Drake’s father asked the Fuller Brush man. “This is what you do?”

The salesman was still patting his daughter’s head. “Mostly it’s brushes. But the animals were free. And didn’t your boy here say these here were his originals? Nobody took care of mine. Ask her. Ask your wife.” He pried his daughter from his chest and took a step toward her display. “Come on honey. Let’s clean up your mosses and get out of here. This is over.”

“Whoa-whoa-whoa—” Drake’s father grabbed the salesman’s elbow. “We’re not taking these things home. Nobody ever asked me what I’d let in my house. They stink—way worse than strawberry.” He dropped the Fuller Brush man’s arm and looked at his son. “You want these guys? You’re sick of them, aren’t you? Experiment’s over.”

Drake’s heart beat feather light. “They can have them,” he said as he followed his father toward the exit. They left the Fuller Brush man and his daughter without a goodbye.

“Wait—” the salesman called, but Drake’s father held up his hand. Then he stopped and pivoted.

“Listen,” he said, “What about this Fuller Brush thing? I’m interested in how it works. I’m looking for something. You want to tell me about it, come to Jimmy D’s tomorrow afternoon. You can meet the butcher and the baker.”

The salesman didn’t answer. Sally pushed her hair from her face, which was blotchy from crying. Something new filled her eyes—a kind of pleading. Drake touched his father’s hip, still staring into Sally’s eyes. It was mercy she pled for. And Drake understood that she shouldn’t ever have to listen to anything crying in the dark, even if it was just pretend.

“Dad,” Drake said, “I changed my mind. I want to keep them—Adam and Eve. I need them.”

Gregory Wolos has published 100+ stories in journals like Glimmer Train and Georgia Review. His collections include Women of Consequence (Regal House, 2019), Dear Everyone (Duck Lake Books, 2020), The Green Ray and Other Stories (Scantic Books, 2022), and The Thing About Men:Stories (Cervena Barva Press, 2023).