The blow-up castle blooms like a ghost in their backyard. It’s bubble gum pink. Mara’s boyfriend can’t see it, gives her a look like not now, please when she points out the kitchen window. His mother is here for Christmas. They’ve removed certain books from their shelves, have taken down Mara’s paintings of naked women roller skaters. His mother is aware that Mara doesn’t want kids but not that she’s bisexual. Let her process one thing at a time, her boyfriend has said. Besides, it’s not like you come out to everyone. They met in college, have been together six years. Without realizing it, Mara has stopped going to gallery openings, stopped skating at the crusty rink in town, stopped wearing wild patterns. She smiles all night in her faded floral, a fussy IPA in her hand, washes the dishes while her boyfriend and his mother chat in the living room about mortgage rates and when he and Mara should stop renting. A herd of blow-up cows now surrounds the pink castle. Also, a neon green blow-up alien, a purple blow-up spider with a giant, flashing abdomen, and a black and white blow-up sandworm Mara recognizes from Beetlejuice, her favorite childhood movie. It’s as if everyone’s Halloween decorations have reinflated and gathered for a meeting. Mara wanders out to them, the soapy carving knife still in her hand, feeling like a combination of Alice in Wonderland and Shelly Duval in The Shining. The castle beckons. It’s larger and more solid than it seemed from the house, yet also reminds her of the playhouse her parents bought her one Christmas, the place where she’d hide when they made fun of her mismatched clothes, the place where she’d draw cartoony worlds full of creatures like these who shake in the wind, still tethered and staked to the ground. Her grip tightens on the hilt; her body knows to cut their strings. They all crowd through the pink archway, even the sand worm who hisses but curls into the corner like a cat. A girl in a pink chest harness pets its head. Another girl dances with the green alien. Mara meets people who make all kinds of art, who have all kinds of anger, who wield all kinds of sharpness in their hands. The air smells of sex and cheap candles. The night is bitter and clear. Mara’s boyfriend runs outside just in time to see the castle lift up into the stars, a speck of pink, a distant planet.

Meg Cass is a queer fiction writer, teacher, and roller skater based in St. Louis, Missouri. Their first collection of stories, ActivAmerica, received the Katherine Anne Porter Prize in Short Fiction. Their stories have appeared in DIAGRAM, Ecotone, Foglifter, and others. They run Changeling, a queer reading series focusing on works-in-progress, with their friends.