The Attic

Dad is the only family member who has been in the attic. He has warned his wife and sons not to go up there. "The floor is filled with holes. You need to know where to step or you will fall. I know where to step. I will never fall." Dad sometimes brings things up to the attic. They are things the family does not need but feels bad about throwing out. He relocates these items so his family will never suspect the attic is anything but a storage space. He relocates these items so his other family has objects that remind them of their existence. Some fathers escape to the movies after having loud arguments with their wives. Dad relocates items to the attic and spends the night with his conflict-free backup family.

The Den

The man remembers the crack in the wall. When he was a boy, he looked through the crack and told his father what he saw. He said, "I saw a room that I have never seen before. Neon triangles covered the wallpaper. There was a fuzzy pink rug on the floor. A table and chair were beside the rug. On the table was an empty glass." The father said, "You're not supposed to know about that room. It belonged to my father." The boy was confused because his father's father never lived in his house. The father did not react to the perplexed look on his son's face. Instead he got his toolbox out of the closet and fixed the crack. The next time the boy tried to look through the crack, he was a man.

The Study

A secret passage will open if you remove a book called Cellular Metabolism at Fifty Degrees Celsius. The designer of the library thought no one would want to read a book that sounded so boring. The designer of the library has not been inside the study. He has never been inside anywhere. He loves nature. The secret passage leads into a woman's womb. After a secret passage seeker is ready to leave the woman's womb, he will exit the womb. The exit of the womb is located in a place that is different from the library. It is a place where the secret passage seeker has always wanted to live. The location of the place is different for each secret passage seeker. When a secret passage seeker enters a secret passage, they choose to leave a place they dislike for a place they assume they will like. But there is no returning to the old place if they don't like the new. There is no book called Cellular Metabolism at Fifty Degrees Celsius in the new place. There are no books there that open secret passages.

The Laundry Room

The couple are trying to sell their house. The real estate ad lists four bedrooms. But there are only three bedrooms. The couple are trying to pass off the laundry room as a fourth bedroom. But it is not a bedroom. It is a laundry room. It is dark and dank and there is a crawlspace behind the dryer. But it is carpeted, the couple think, so why couldn't it be a bedroom? You can just take out the washing machine and the dryer and pretend there isn't a crawlspace and put in a bed and you'd be set.

A realtor shows the room to a potential buyer. The man says, "This is not a bedroom. This is a laundry room." The realtor says, "Look closer. This is a bedroom. The potential buyer looks behind the dryer. He gets down on his hands and knees. He crawls into the crawlspace. He looks for the bedroom. He crawls. He crawls for the next thirty years. His body hits a wall at the end of the crawlspace when he suffers a brain aneurysm. The couple never sell their house. They probably shouldn't have listed the extra bedroom.



About the author:
Bradley Sands is the author of the novel, It Came from Below the Belt, and the editor of Bust Down the Door and Eat All the Chickens. His work has appeared or is forthcoming in The Bizarro Starter Kit (Blue), Lamination Colony, No Colony, Opium Magazine, Zygote in My Coffee, Robot Melon, decomP, Mud Luscious, Thieves Jargon, Noo Journal, and elsewhere. He is an MFA candidate in Writing and Poetics at Naropa University. Visit him at www.bradleysands.com.

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