My nephew Moe is hungover. Even though he’s only 17, I had him sample the product last night. That way, he knows what he’s hawking. Before he took each Troll Shot, he stroked the Troll’s long, colorful hair as if apologizing for unscrewing the top of its head and downing the liquor inside. Moe moves in slow motion, but he’s a good kid.

From behind the steering wheel, I explain All 4 Fun’s business model to Moe as he loads the final box of Troll Shots in the back of the company van. “Nostalgia sells, baby,” I say, turning the key in the ignition. Moe climbs into the passenger seat. I agreed to hire him last week when his dad, my younger brother, threatened to kick him out if he didn’t get a job after dropping out.

Moe unfolds the day’s itinerary and reads aloud the first stop, Pair-a-Dice. I mostly deliver to dive bars. Their clientele fits our demographic of both remembering these things and liking to get plastered. I pull away from the curb, the sound of whiskey sloshing inside the Trolls’ plastic bodies.

I told my brother it was an orientation when he dropped Moe off last night. I almost invited him up for a drink before I thought better of it, thought of the ensuing lecture. Instead, I flipped my punk-ass little brother off as his BMW rounded the block. 

Drunk, Moe and I talked about how I came up with the idea after seeing an old photo of his dad’s Troll village, about how his dad had built the village outside our house with tree bark during a summer in the early ‘90s, about how I’d kept the neighborhood boys from destroying it and him.

“Old meets new,” I said, bringing a Troll and a bottle of Jack Daniel’s together.

Moe crashed on my futon. I texted my brother that Moe was spending the night so we could get an early start in the morning, and he just sent back a thumbs-up. I wanted to reply with how hammered Moe had gotten, with how we’d shit-talked him the whole night. I even typed a few words before deleting them.

My little bro wasn’t always such a dick. When we were kids, he was tethered to me like a shadow. I’d sit on a lawn chair inside our parents’ old garage, and he’d show me his Trolls, would tell me what job each of them had in the village. When we got older, we even hit the bars a few times. I’d order a pitcher of Budweiser, never letting him pay his half, and we’d discuss some sports team’s chances and other pointless bullshit that wasn’t so pointless since we were together. 

Then he got a job selling insurance, started drinking red wine, started pretending he came from somewhere he didn’t. He started telling me to buy this insurance policy or invest in this mutual fund as if he knew what was best, like a little bit of money somehow made him better than me. 

After stopping at McDonald’s for a greasy cure to Moe’s hangover, I drive into Pair-a-Dice’s parking lot. On their signage, dice hang like coconuts from a faded palm tree. Inside, a few drunks are already sipping on tallboys, surrounded by license plates mounted on the walls. Moe carries in a couple boxes of Troll Shots stacked one atop the other, while I head to the back to collect our check.

I knock on the door to the back office and imagine the bar manager handing me a check with a one followed by an infinite number of zeros written on it. I imagine tearing the check in half in front of my brother to show him how much I care about money, to show him that who he’s become isn’t that special. 

Someone shouts, “Weren’t you ever taught to share?”

I rush back into the bar. One of the drunks has Moe pinned in the corner next to the ATM with one hand while he paws through a box of Troll Shots with the other. I grab the drunk by the back of his shirt and fling him to the sawdust-covered floor. The box of Troll Shots he was digging through rips open, and Trolls scatter everywhere like fleeing villagers.

“I’m here,” I say, trying to put the box back together, trying to fix what’s broken.

Moe looks at me, but I see my little brother. Old meets new, I think, and I’m back in my parents’ garage. A bully dusts himself off, staggers to his bike, and pedals away. I promise my brother I’ll always be there for him, no matter what, and I gather up the trolls, careful not to grip them by the hair.

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Header photograph and artwork by Jordan Keller-Wilson

Not prayers nor writing lines nor even palms caned bloody would be enough to discipline Savvas, the worst student of our class, Ms. Antoniou said. So she made him stand in the corner of our classroom balanced on one leg with his back turned to us, and this lasted for years.

This is the only way children like him learn to behave, Ms. Antoniou said regretfully as she sealed the classroom from the rest of the school, and the world. Seated dutifully at our desks, we watched her swallow the key.

Christmas holidays came and when it snowed outside, we made miniature snowmen on the windowsill, then saved the water in empty crayon baskets for drinking. Easter followed and a bird left us its eggs to decorate with pastel watercolors before frying them on hot metal during a sunny day. School closed for summer break, and we stayed then also, sending paper planes out to our parents, saying we hoped they had fun on their vacations to seaside villages or mountain ones, kiss our grandparents for us but, no, we can’t come with because we’re being obedient, we are good examples for bad classmates to mimic, and aren’t our parents proud of us?

They sent back postcards sometimes, if their busy schedules allowed them, until they too forgot about us like the janitor and head teacher and principal already had. And we forgot about ourselves, our former selves, growing taller, surpassing every marking on every height chart of past first graders, then that of the second and third and fourth graders, the fifth, the sixth, and then there were no charts left in this classroom to surpass. But despite our best efforts, our bodies were diligent things, they didn’t stop growing until we wondered if we would be tall enough our heads would pierce through the roof.

Years passed in clusters of hours and days and weeks. We learned arithmetic until we discovered our own math theorems; soon we could recite all our classroom’s books forward and backward, and we invented new directions of recitation until we needed no other nourishment to sustain us; we could chew inked paper and spew out answers to the universe. Early on, the other teachers had climbed rickety ladders to our barred windows to slip us food and water and other contraband, but those offerings had trickled to a stop long ago. We watched the class’s pet rabbit grow old and die, and we sucked the marrow from its skeleton, fighting over the most fragile of bones.

What else did we do?

We danced, we bickered, we married each other and made fake flower crowns out of colorful paper. And someone put a wreath on Savvas’s head too as he wobbled on his one-legged perch. We thought he might fall but he didn’t. There, on the white-chalk-dusted and pencil-shavings-strewn floor, he flamingo-balanced as we slept curled under our desks with our old backpacks as pillows.

And when Ms. Antoniou grew old and died like our pet rabbit had, we wheeled her corpse upon her teacher’s chair so that it faced the opposite corner Savvas did. This was the only gift we knew how to give him. Soon our teacher was bones and we fashioned flutes out of them. We sang, we all danced together while Savvas swayed. But no one dared talk to him, if he could still talk, and some of us thought he might not have a face at all anymore, on account of us not having seen it in so long, his features slipping away from memory. And Savvas’ crimes? His mischief, his disobedience, the reasons behind the prayers and the written lines and even the palms caned bloody, why Savvas stood in the corner on one leg facing the wall? Well.

We forgot those, too. 

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Header photograph and artwork by Jordan Keller-Wilson

Beside me on the sofa, my daughter is playing a video game. Only her eyes and fingers move. When I ask her how her day was, she doesn’t answer. Or maybe my middle-aged ears have lost her frequency. On the screen, another version of her in a glittering lilac bodysuit is slaying skeletons and scaling cliffs. Set limits, they tell me. Keep trying to connect in the real world; she’ll come around. I’m tired of picking my battles with a trained warrior. She has the controller, but I hold the remote. I press the up arrow. Beside me, her body flickers. On the screen, her bodysuit deepens to violet. I wave at the screen; she waves back. She looks so happy. I keep pressing up up up, until beside me on the sofa, the daughter I always wanted fades away.

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Header photograph and artwork by Jordan Keller-Wilson

If you catch a frog, eat its legs. If you’re hungry, eat the rest. It doesn’t matter how cool the frog is—its little balloon eyes, how its skin is alien green, how its neck bulges and smooths, how it chime-burps on early spring nights, how a clump of grass transmogrifies into a frog. None of that matters. Frogs are food. You can eat them raw and use the bones to make arrowheads or stilettos or gigs and get yourself more. Frogs aren’t companions, not the way say, a dog, or a cat, or a rat, or a squirrel, or a raccoon is—even if you could grab one of those, and drag it close, and cocoon it in your arms, and tuck your chin over its back, its hot heart twitching next to your chest, you would have to eat it, eventually. This is the apocalypse. You are surviving.

If you encounter manufactured goods—congratulations! If you can get into a car, you can sleep in it; if you curl up tight enough, no one will know you are there. The radiator fluid makes an effective euthanizer, always handy. The glass and gasoline are good for starting fires. The tires make sturdy sandals, and you can dress yourself in the cloth or, if you’re lucky, the leather from the seats—but don’t get used to the foam padding. It will pack down, and then you’ll miss it and be sad. If you come across something that was desirable in the before-times, be careful. Be objective. A ring may have been important once, may have been precious, even—but in the after-world, it is dead weight.

If you encounter other people, be really careful. You may have compatible skills and interests, you may want help getting shelter or provisions—you may be lonely. This is understandable. But remember: other people caused this apocalypse. If it were up to you, your plans would have worked out, people wouldn’t have suggested taking a little time or reconsidering things. But the apocalypse happened, and here you are, collapsed in this empty lot, half-submerged in a puddle, soaked with freezing dew, wearing the same clothes you’ve had on since it happened, your stomach grinding dry, a sticky grit coating your neck and chest and hair and teeth—spurned and gazing at a frog.

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Header photograph and artwork by Jordan Keller-Wilson