0400
Adrianna Monsivais
His clunker boots slap the wood, and you’re left awake. Torn from the sugar plums you dream of. And the less-sugary thing in your closet.
You call it a monster because your mother must find and kill it every night before sleep.
You thank her for her service.
Tonight: you slip out of bed again. Holding the stuffed pig whose name is just Pig because you couldn’t think of anything else or better. And Pig’s got some look about her: beaded eyes, round, black and broken-in with bone colored enamel. They look right at you. Sometimes past you. And you whisper to her that you’re on a secret mission. A mission to reach those thick boots which are now being tied up with those horse rope laces. You could be the stealthiest girl in the world, you think to yourself. Capable of infiltrating the smallest shadows, and the most still pauses that this slow-turning world has to offer. A thing that people can’t see or hear or feel but most certainly exists. The very best spy in the world.
The hallway is short, but every morning around 0400, it’s long.
And because you’re a spy every morning around 0400 you must tip-toe on the softest parts of your feet—remaining unscathed by the glass, the wood, and the roughness of the coiled ground—if you want to remain unseen.
Young feet you have.
Spy feet.
And you have spy toes, which your mother paints every now and then. Right now, they’re white with precious blue. “Cornflowers,” she called them. And because you have these painted flowers, you’re no longer just a spy but a spy/cowgirl. Tip-toeing through that long hallway which isn’t a hallway but the chamber to a larger hallway. No: a trophy hall in the minister’s castle. And a spaceship. Yes: a large castle, which is a spaceship, which is being overtaken by undead counterspies that you’ve been battling for well over a year now.
But you are still a quiet spy.
And you are still a quiet cowgirl.
Then, you catch yourself through the glints of your hanging family. Your framed family. Your family who smiles. At that picnic where the birds came. And at that birthday party where Conner fell into the table. And Easter. And Christmas. There’s one where your father is holding you close to his chest, wearing a T-shirt with a faded samurai on it. His smile is wide. Cat like. He has fine-lined lips which touch together like the horizon. And you are there, a baby, no older than six months, being held in empire.
At times, you’ll stop by that specific picture.
Look into it.
Measure your long face and almost-long hair, wild and unrelenting.
Your baby hair was so simple, you think.
You admire your daddy—his slopes and curves–sitting just below your eyelids; you think of how tired you look even though you wish you could never sleep. Yes, you think, to never sleep would be a dream. Daddy never sleeps.
The door handle jingles.
It wines and moans like something hunted. The hallway is now just a hallway again, and you must move a little faster. Pig is yelling. You take her snout in and tell her to shut completely up, that this mission will have to wait, and that you’ll resume your duties as a spy/cowgirl at a later date and time.
Now: you’re running to the end of the hall, listening to the quiet screech of the door as it opens. You’re almost late. Almost. But he’s there. Thankfully. Dad’s right there with his clunkers on, slumped over in his Navy uniform which is brown like the war sand he sends you pictures from. It reminds you of a beach. Before you forget, you ask your daddy if you could go to the beach sometime. He tells you in his father-voice that you should be in bed baby girl, that you need to go back to bed, that it’s late, real late.
And this.
This makes you feel some type of way.
You now feel like you’re supposed to go to the beach. Why can’t you two just go to the beach? Why? He takes you in with a half-tired kind of hug, kneels, and puts you on his thigh like he’s Santa Clause. Who you know isn’t real. You know it. But you have your own ideas about Santa. He’s a killer probably. A knife-wielder. Some member of the undead hoard you must get back to defeating at some point today.
You feel his chin on your head. Fresh shaven. Like the Velcro on your shoes.
I gotta go, honey, he tells you.
You tell him that he should stay, that he always leaves.
He looks at you.
His eyes some kind of way.
Half-empty and with something spilling over the edge.
He sets you down and tells you to go back to sleep, and that maybe you’ll go when he gets back from his next deployment, when he has more time, better, quality time to spare.
That’s it, you think to yourself.
His eyes leak.
You see them leak.
And in your daddy’s eyes most wet moment you receive your next mission as a spy/cowgirl. You need to find daddy some tape. Some CIA glue. Maybe you can get some from the closet at school. But no time. No. Maybe, instead, you can find some war sand to fill his eyes. Maybe the sutures the undead doctor uses to repair his fellow dead men.
He would help you.
He has to.
Because daddy needs help.
Which means you need to help daddy.
And everyone you know and have imagined needs to help daddy.
And you tell him this: you’ll be a good girl and find him some sand. Or glue.
Or the dead doctor.
And he picks up and tells you that he’s fine—just fine.
That he’s safe, and that you are safe.
And that he’ll be right, right-right back.
“Blink really slow,” he says.
“I will,” you say.
“It will be 1700 before you know it.”
Adrianna Monsivias is an undergraduate at Boise State University. She was the 2025 Top Writing Scholar Intern for Storyfort, a literary festival held in Boise, Idaho every March.
Art: Yongxi (Vivian) Lin is an illustrator and printmaker based in New York. She completed her undergraduate studies in Illustration at the School of Visual Arts and is currently pursuing Printmaking at Pratt Institute. Her work often blends illustration and printmaking, exploring themes of personal narrative, emotional storytelling, and cultural hybridity. Through her art, she reflects both visible joys and hidden struggles, creating imagery that is playful yet thoughtful.