With and Without Class by David Fleming

same thing. If your brain plays tricks on you when you’re looking at space, why can’t your brain look at some space and get tricked in time?”
    â€œYou’re funny. Let me see it.”
    Grandpa looked up. Bethany walked fast and angry. “Playing them carnival comic book games.” She cringed and her finger jabbed at him. “Give it here. Gimmie that stupid funny-money dollar.”
    She loomed over the TV-tray, her face all crimson and Grandpa pulled it toward himself in jest. “But, it’s mine. It’s all I have to remember my time in…” He smiled, “Outer space.”
    â€œGive it over.” She jabbed her finger. “Stop feed’n ’em lies.”
    â€œAll right,” Grandpa’s clenched hands folded both ends of the bill together, “Here goes.” He raised his hands and unfolded the bill to her.
    I swung round to look at the bill and Bethany screamed. The edge of something pulled my sight in. I heard thunder, my vision ringed with a bright swirling flash.
    â€œMY EYES!” Bethany staggered, toppling the Lego tower onto itself like a crumpled drinking straw. “I’m blind. I’m—I can’t.” She tottered onto her butt, hands reaching out at nothing.
    The next I remember, I was crying near Grandpa’s easy chair with my back pressed into the ridge between the laundry closet and the molding. Aunt Becky and my father helped Bethany up, restraining her flailing.
    â€œI’ll kill you! I can’t. Ruined her. Ruined. I—”
    Grandpa laughed heartily, bouncing, eyes feasting. “Won’t let me taste that Irish.” He snatched up his empty glass with the air of a toast, and swirled the ice cubes, then lifted his legs to click his floppy, loose heels together, “Taste that Fiver!” floppy shoes clicking, “Taste it!”
    They helped Bethany into the kitchen as her head darted about to find a place to send her accusations. As it turned out, the blindness only lasted a few hours. It was later rumored that, prior to that day, Bethany had fallen victim to the Magic-Fiver some seventeen times in a row, annually, like a schoolgirl bitterly entrapped by her own impetuousness into recess games of bulls-eye punching or hand-slap and that this alone was the root cause of their feud.
    Â 

Electric Comedian
    T he night wasn’t warm though it bordered on spring weather and yet Larry was the only one on the bustling sidewalk wearing a jacket. The pleasant features of his mid-thirties face cringed as he slid his hand over his stomach with the crowbar’s hook covertly dangling from a small slit cut in his coat’s lining.
    He had spotted the crowbar that morning in the trunk of his car and laughed weakly and pulled it from beneath his dirty clothes, his sleeping bag and his empty bottles of Jim Beam. The crowbar reminded him of things pried apart—pried away from him. He had known at that very instant that he would go back to the nightclub, one last time.
    Above him, a yellow awning loomed atop a thin façade of old mortar and black cinderblocks and the neon name Chuckles glowed red with its cursive ‘ S’ sputtering against the dark night.
    â€œLarry? Uh… Mr. Hepton?”
    Larry stopped halfway up the steps to turn and consider the middle-aged man in the grey sport coat and leather wingtips.
    â€œRemember me? Sorry. Wow!” the man grinned, “Imagine this. I’m on my way to meet associates for drinks. I’m Steve Clemmons.” The man waited for a reaction. “Steve Clemmons? You joined us for dinner last March.”
    Larry winced.
    â€œNot sure if you got the letter,” the man said. “I appreciate the things you said to our daughter about following her passions. All those special schools… Somehow meeting you made her turn the corner. She says she wants to be just like you.”
    â€œI’ve