New American Dream

You don’t ever get used to it. You think it’s a nightmare. Anytime you wake up suddenly, that’s what it is: a nightmare.

You’d be wrong. You’re not waking up from one. You’re waking up to one.

You almost wish the virus resulted in something more. After all the horror films and tv shows and novels, you were expecting zombies or vampires or at least a dystopian society. It would give you something to fight against, instead of this anticlimactic coda.

It doesn’t matter that you watched your wife and kid succumb to a plague that’s like the Black Death’s big bad-ass motherfucker of a brother. Life’s just there. An undesirable Everest. Existential manifest destiny.

The only salvation is natural resistance and immunity. Hey, you’re one-in-a-million, kid. You won the genetic lottery. Your prize, other than life, is to stand watch over your family as they bid adieu to the living world. To sit in stony silence as they scream and writhe at the end. You keep hoping they’ll get better, but when the seizure starts it’s time to put Old Yeller out of his misery.

                                                                                                ***

“Hey!”

The voice is loud but distant.

“Give it to me!”

You walk toward the parking lot, skirting the edge of the trees.

                                                                                                ***

Don’t think about who it is.

Don’t think about your youngest, still growing out of his lisp. Your namesake, fruit of your loins, proof of your virility.

‘Help me, Daddy.’

Don’t think about her, the one you love and make love to - oh, but not now, not with the blood and sweat. Did you know the last time you had sex it would really be your last?

‘Please, baby. Please help me.’

Then the shrieking horror. The shut-the-fuck-up of it. Are you really putting them out of their misery?

Maybe you’re just selfish. A selfish bastard who wants some peace in the apocalypse. What gave you the impression the apocalypse would be peaceful?

You want to swallow a gun, but you’re not strong enough to pull the trigger.

Strong enough to live, though. Ha. To have God look at you under his holy magnifying glass and say, “Yeah, that one - he’ll do.”

Strong enough for that bullshit divine intervention.

Not strong enough to squeeze that trigger when the barrel’s pointed in your direction, no sirree.

You are a survivor. It’s your curse: to be able to survive, to want to. You are your own Achilles's heel.

There’s a hissing voice in the back of your head, one that says maybe you wanted to shoot them. Maybe deep down in the very core of you, in the base, the id, the part unearthed by the End of Days, you longed for a solitary life. For the new American dream: peace in the apocalypse.

Because it was too easy, wasn’t it?

And you can’t confront that. Can’t look at it full-on, which means you can’t stay in your house, where memories are replaced with the stench of decay and the strange sounds of corpses. You don’t have the heart to stay there, to debate mercy and murder until you’re blue in the face. Just like them.

Sorry, lover. Sorry, offspring. This is one vacation we can’t take together. Are we there yet? Well, some of us are. One of us didn’t make the cut.

You close the door on that life.

                                                                                                ***

Two men argue.

“It belongs to me!” The bearded one says. His hair is gray, but he looks like he could’ve been thirty a year ago.

“Fuck,” you whisper. You spot the source of the fight.

                                                                                                ***

You get out of the city. You think of proportions and odds, the density of urban life compared to others. You decide it’s time to go loot the local Costco and say goodbye to modern living.

Now every morning you wake up with a start, the sleeping bag rustling as you spasm into consciousness.

You walk as far as your feet will carry you. And when you find a bike, you ride until your thighs cramp and the tires blow. You avoid cities like the plague (ha ha ha!), but small towns are fine. Towns are nice. Quiet. Beautiful, in a sad sort of way.

Some people make pilgrimages, traveling in packs to start a new life in some destined place.

Too many are like you--carrying on without a plan, without an ending in mind. It’s like you all decided to just go on a walk to get some fresh air, and you’ll keep going until you find it.

Or die trying.

                                                                                                ***

“Help me!” The woman screams. She looks around, her eyes wild and large. They fall on you, and her yell becomes primal and desperate.

You take in the bruises on her face, the clubs the two men carry.

Even Neanderthals are deadly.

“Please!” Her voice ends in a sob, and she wails louder as you turn around and walk farther than you have before.

You still hear her.

                                                                                                ***

Don’t be stupid. That’s the gist of it.

Don’t drink the water without sanitizing it.

Don’t go into old buildings.

Don’t eat wild mushrooms.

Don’t start fights you can’t win.

But you’re a survivor, so all these rules are common sense. They are easy to follow. And in the days and weeks and months, you age like it’s been years, decades, centuries. You’re an old soul traversing an ancient world.

You want to ask God to throw you a bone. Give you the peace you need. Because you were going mad in that house at the beginning, and you weren’t thinking straight, and you didn’t want to kill them, you really didn’t, and you know that now, because it’s all you ever really thought about since, and can you go home now?

Wouldn’t it be nice, to close your eyes and have everything tangible fade to black forever? To fall asleep and let death embrace, and in that embrace you find them?

Tiffany.

Max Junior.

To hear your own name on your wife’s lips?

I love you, Max.

I love you, Tiffany.

Phantom voices fill your head.

Help me, Father. Help me, Husband. Help me, Stranger.

But hey, cheer up.

It’s gonna be a beautiful day.

Written by: Erin Justice
Photograph by: Whitney Ott

Law 203B

My wife thought I was joking when I told her I had killed someone once.

“You’re such a shit. You did not!” she said with a smile, taking another sip of her wine.

“I did.” I said, no smile on my face.

We went back and forth like this a few times, her laughter growing more apprehensive each round.

“Alright,” she began. “If you did kill a guy, then how’d you do it?”

“You really want to know?”

She nodded.

“Well,” I said. “I stabbed him. Here… Here… And here.” I pointed to my stomach, heart and throat. “Are you sure you want to hear this?”

“Yes, I really, really do,” she said. Her smile had long since disappeared, her face flooded with concern. Should she fear me, or should she love me? Couldn’t she do both? These were questions her mind couldn’t answer. Or maybe it could but was too afraid to do so. 

“Okay…” I said, drawing in a deep breath. “First I stabbed him in the heart, then the stomach.” I paused to take a sip of my whiskey. “Then I cut open his throat.” I felt I had said too much at this point, but that’s what happens when you have almost four glasses of Knob Creek coursing through your veins.

She still wasn’t convinced I had actually killed somebody. But at the same time, she wasn’t convinced I hadn’t killed someone either. She gulped the rest of her wine, eager to refill her glass. I followed her lead and downed the rest of my whiskey.

As the alcohol made our minds heavy and dull, I continued telling my wife about the man I’d killed. I was twenty-three at the time, fresh out of college and living on my own along a small highway north of Lawrenceville. The man had knocked on the door of the house I was renting.

“I’m sorry to bother you,” he said. “But would you be able to give me a lift to the gas station? I ran out about a mile back.”

I couldn’t place my finger on it, but there was something about him that made me feel uneasy. His words weren’t genuine, and when he spoke, he filled the space between us with ill intention as thick and sticky as the air on a hot, humid day.

“Sure,” I said. “Let me just grab my keys.”

I came back to the door. The man wedged his boot into the doorframe and had a gun drawn. “Give me your keys,” he said. Up until that point, I had never been in a fight in my life, but at that moment, something inside me took over like a set of instructions my body had to obey. The next thing I remembered was looking down and seeing the man’s lifeless body lying in a pool of his own blood. His name, as the cops told me, was Robert Sanderson, a local meth head.

“I know this was self defense,” the police officer said. “Ain’t no doubt about that, but the way you killed this man… Looks like you really knew what you were doing here.”

After that night, my wife was cold and distant. She only said the bare minimum and came up with excuses that kept her away from the house as long as possible. I didn’t know if she was afraid of me or angry.

“What’s going on?” I asked over dinner one night. “Are you mad at me for what I said the other night?”

She didn’t answer, just stared down at her plate, nuzzling her food with her fork.

“Well?” I said, my voice swelling with anger.

Finally she said, “I want you to get the test.”

The killing gene test was developed five years ago by a scientist named Dr. Alex Sherman. One small drop of blood could easily identify if someone carried what Dr. Sherman called the killing gene. If you had it, it meant you were hardwired to become a killer, and the evidence supporting his research was overwhelming. And by overwhelming, I mean one hundred percent accurate. At first Dr. Sherman’s discovery was controversial, but pretty soon politicians began using it as part of their political platforms. This lead to the passing of Law 203B, or as it was more popularly referred to: the Killing Gene Law. The law required the pre-emptive arrest of anyone testing positive, even newborns. Once arrested, carriers were sent to specially designed prisons the press had dubbed Killer Camp. There are lots of theories surrounding what goes on at these camps, but no one knows for sure. Despite all this, the public still embraced the law.

“You can’t be serious!” I said. “I killed that man out of self-defense, and you know it.”

“I have to know,” my wife said. “I’m scared.”

As she finished her words, the world around me became fuzzy. My thoughts were suddenly mangled and confused. My body felt heavy and clumsy. And then everything went dark. I woke up a few hours later, tied to a dining room chair. My father-in-law was there. I assumed she was the one who tied me up.

“Candice told me everything,” he said. “We just have to make sure you’re not one of them. You understand, right?”

I didn’t say anything. I was too angry.

“The cops will be here in a few minutes,” he continued.

“Where is Candice?” I asked.

“She’s with her mother. Said she can’t come back until she knows she’s safe.”

During my third day at the Lawrence County Jail, an older doctor visited my cell late in the afternoon. With him were two police officers and a man wearing a suit, a lawyer I assumed.

Without any greeting, he jumped right into it, “I’m afraid you have the killing gene.”

“You’ll be transferred to killer camp in the morning,” one of the officers told me as he walked off, grinning sadistically.

Written by: Michael Williams

Photograph by: Whitney Ott

Return to Sender

The cold wind makes me rush into you, and I am well aware this heat between us is not passion. The force of your face toward mine causes my lips to retreat, and you to kiss meat-covered teeth. It’s awkward now. A fallen leaf scrapes a line between us on the concrete. All I can think is how glad I am that I drove. You say, "your lip is bleeding,” and I reply, "Oh," as I hurriedly lick the sweetness away. Our feet start moving because our tongues won't, and three years later we find my car. The night ends with a hug, I hold you too long, and rub your back as an apology for earlier. There are moments between seconds in which I do not want to let go. I do, though.

If only I’d met you before the ex...

But that doesn’t stop me from saying yes to a second date.

                                                                                                      ***

I write letters to my ex because I don’t know what to do with the leftovers. Just because he wrote an expiration date on the relationship doesn’t mean I have to throw us out.

I let my best friend read the letters.

You left because you think you don’t deserve me. You don’t. Now someone else is calling me beautiful, and it’s not the same, like when you speak a word over and over again until it no longer sounds like itself. Ex is a misnomer because it implies you aren’t a part of me anymore. There’s not a hole in me big enough to let you out.

She says to me, "I don't know how he can read those words and not respond."
I shrug, "You'd be surprised."

I know in the back of her head she wonders why I do it.
She hopes I receive a return letter, a late night phone call, an unfamiliar knock at my door.

She says, "I think you guys will end up back together."
I say, "No, we won't."

She envisions him reading my letters and six digit dialing me each time.
She doesn't imagine them left unopened, set ablaze on a pyre of cigarette butts and stale chewing gum.

And I can't lie; I can't say there isn't a part of me that indulges in the futile fantasies of failed romantic gestures suddenly being appreciated for their awkward beauty like all those John Hughes movies.

But that's not why I write him.

                                                                                                      ***

On the fourth date, you made love to me like broken light bulbs—properly screwed in socket, but never turning on. Walking home uterine contractions force out evidence of tonight’s event. I smiled because you didn't even notice I was bleeding, cried because despite my efforts even my biology will reject you. It reminded me of the time I was cooking eggs and as I broke one open, I noticed the yolk was red and thought oh, my! This egg has a heart. I whisked until it wasn't there anymore, but couldn't bring myself to pour it onto the hot, buttered skillet.

As I painted dotted lines on the sidewalk like a road marking machine, I wondered if it was a mercy not to be eaten, if I cut open my cramping belly would I find the yellow that was missing on that day?


                                                                                                      ***

Associations last longer than people.
Songs, smells, locations, a sock, your hair in my brush,
mother saying, "what happened to...?"

The awkwardness of my heart put back in my chest
where it was never meant to be again,
like when you accidentally use a toothbrush that's not yours,
and you know it because the bristles don't fit the grooves of your teeth the right way.

You don't exist anymore, but you live on in all these things,
like step children I want to give back
because they were never really mine.

                                                                                                      ***

By the tenth date you said “I love you.”

I convinced you that I was a contemporary woman and those words were meaningless predilections, overused and underrepresented in today's society. I suggested instead that we speak in code, and showed you affection in the only way I still could. In bed, as your body tensed, you said, “peanut butter,” and I said, “jelly.”

I wanted to say it back. In my dreams, I run wildly into the night and collide with you, full force destruction into five second flight, punching the ground, chortling bloody I love you’s. But he stole the phrase from me. Every story you've ever told that ended with the sudden stunning realization of absence, with I was going somewhere with that, is how I feel if I attempt to string those words together. I wish I could say this to you, but these words would give you hope that there could be something between us.

This morning, you woke up and found a note next to you that simply stated, I'm allergic to peanuts.

                                                                                                      ***

My mother has a friend who was electrocuted at the age of 9. The injuries she sustained led to her arms being amputated at the shoulder and hair only grew on one side of her head. She learned how to do everything with her feet; she flips burgers, writes down grocery lists, smokes cigarettes, and even drives a car. I wonder was it ever as hard for her not to be able to hold anyone as it was for me not to be held? Did she have a fear of zippers, of slow songs, of falling down? How could she be deformed and not broken?

The ticket ripper at the movie theater was so old that he had growths on his skin like grade school mold experiments and contorted knobby trees. He said, “theater 10 is to the right,” I wanted to respond with your death is showing, but instead said “thank you,” and went to learn what it’s like to watch a film alone. I write letters to myself now.

Written by: Monica Johnson
Photograph by: Whitney Ott

Pas de Deux

A boy of 12, Edward and his mother prepared to leave Uncle Isaak's dinner party when Edward ran upstairs to give Min a kiss. Min, a girl of 3, was Uncle Isaak's goddaughter, who abruptly entered Edward's life only 4 months prior, after her parents were deemed unfit to care for her. The boy entered Min's nursery to find her bed empty; he was confused.

"Eddie", Min's delicate voice came from the closet. The closet door was ajar, and Edward approached slowly. Opening the door, he saw Min lying on the floor with her blanket and stuffed animals.

"What are you doing in here?" Edward asked.

"It's safe here," Min replied.

Edward knelt down to kiss her forehead, and she took hold of his hand. "Don't go!" she begged. Edward laid down in the closet beside her as she snuggled into him.

"What are you afraid of?"

Edward's mother entered the nursery. "Edward?"

Before Edward could respond, Min covered his mouth: "Shhhh..."

The closet door opened. "Time to go, my love," said Edward's mother. She lifted Min into her arms and carried her to bed.

                                                                                                 ***

He was her protector, and this memory often replayed in his mind during moments of insecurity. Min was 18, and beautiful. She had just been accepted into Juliard's Dance Division, and would now be close enough to Edward that he could stop making up excuses to come back home to Millburn every weekend. He'd been living in Manhattan for 3 years, and just purchased a beautiful 4-bedroom condo for the bargain price of $12 million. There was no reason why such a good-looking bachelor needed so much space. Everything he did was for Min.

Min was petite with dark features and full of life, in contrast to Edward's broad frame, red hair, and reserved demeanor. She devoted her life to ballet and becoming the woman she believed Edward would want her to be, leaving little room for a social life. The one time she invited Edward to a party her freshman year of high school, he told her his presence would be inappropriate. After that, she never partied and rarely hung out with friends.

Min loved Edward, and never bothered with boys from school. She possessed a physical confidence unlike most girls her age, but Edward was self-loathing and had developed somewhat of a dependency on porn and prostitution. He was a loyal client to an exclusive escort service in the city, although he had been in unpaid relationships before. The escort service proved to be significantly less complicated, and the women never expected Edward to introduce them to his family. He never wanted Min to think there was any woman he would put before her.

                                                                                                 ***

After moving to New York, Min would go to Edward's condo most nights, usually sleeping over. She would often crawl into his bed in the middle of the night, resulting in him moving to the sofa in the living room. For years he'd fantasized about Min being old enough to take out on a proper date; fantasized about being able to provide for her and own a big enough home for them to have children, and for her to have her own dance studio like the one she had at Uncle Isaak's house.

It was on the sofa, late at night, with Min in the other room, he convinced himself he could never touch her, and that he was a pedophile for having been in love with a girl since she was a toddler. Even though now she was old enough, now that she was so close, the fantasy world in which he’d once felt so safe was becoming real, and he didn't know how to exist in it.

                                                                                                 ***

As Edward became more detached over the next several months, and his birthday was approaching, Min decided to surprise him at his home with a gift. She called his mobile, but as had become the norm, he didn't answer. She let herself into the condo with the spare key he kept in the stairwell, walking to the dining room table to set down his present. She saw movement in her peripheral, and turned to see a naked woman standing in the doorway of the kitchen; the woman was petite with dark features, though Min was too consumed by her own humiliation to notice.

"I'm… I'm so sorry," Min said as she grabbed the card from the gift bag, leaving the present on the table as she made her escape.

                                                                                                 ***

Edward was mortified upon discovering Min had been in the apartment, but couldn't bring himself to chase after her and look her in the eyes. He wasn't one for crying, but as he opened the gift bag she'd left behind, a sharp pain pierced his heart that made him wince; the gift was a Knight carved from wood.

Edward called Min every day for weeks, and even sent her her favorite flowers. Making his way to her apartment late at night, Edward had gone from being hesitant and fearful to becoming the determined and tenacious man he knew Min would want him to be, but she was traumatized by the incident involving the naked woman; her virginity had become shameful to her, and her lively spirit faded into bitterness. She never answered his phone calls for fear he would patronize her innocence, and the vulnerability she had always wanted to feel in front of Edward had now become a weapon against her; she could hardly stand to be within her own skin.

As Edward made his way to her apartment, Min was running a bath, taking the pink roses he’d sent her and picking the petals out, letting them fall into the tub. Immersing herself under the water, it was in the tub, late at night, with Edward ringing the buzzer downstairs, that Min would convince herself Edward could never love her because she was a child, and that the life she had envisioned with her Knight would never be anything more than a fairytale.

Written by: Rebecca Lee
Photograph by: Whitney Ott

A Conversation

We both sat quietly. Our breath, labored at times, came erratically but somehow remained synchronized. We knew why we were there, but neither of us had the courage to break the silence and speak first.

I studied his face while he tried his best to avoid my eyes. His lips were thin and quivered slightly with each drag from his cigarette. His nostrils flared with every breath. His nose was crooked thanks to a break he sustained as a child. He told people it was from a fight he won at age 12; I knew it was actually from running into a sliding glass door when he was 11.

My heart stopped as his eyes came up to meet mine. Why was this so hard? We had spent so many hours together, unable to stop talking even as the bar dozed off around us. Every moment that I spent with him was full of lively conversation and just enough light-hearted banter to make it easy to consider him my best friend. Our relationship was effortless but carried so much weight, and his eyes conveyed that heaviness.

I held his gaze for a few seconds before I looked down, trying to find the bottom of my beer. We were both halfway through our second, and we didn’t seem to be coming up for air anytime soon. We needed the courage. Maybe I needed the courage.

He put out his cigarette and cleared his throat.

"So, this is awkward."

"Right? Why is this so weird? It's just us," I said, hoping this would prompt him to initiate the conversation we both desperately needed to have. I knew as I looked up at him that I had fallen for him and I could only hope that he had done the same.

I remembered meeting him two years ago. I hated him at first. He was cocky without cause, but I quickly grew to appreciate that about him. Even when I beat him in every Backgammon battle, he insisted that each victory came from beginner's luck. As infuriating as it was, we spent all of our free time forming an inseparable bond based on this silly competition. It became clear that we needed to address this once we both found ourselves out of our previous relationships.

He took a sip from his beer and let out a heavy sigh.

"The most important thing is that I don't want to lose you as a friend."

My heart stopped again, this time from the fear that he didn't want anything more than we already had. Doubt overcame every part of me and manifested itself as my mouth opened slowly and my eyes widened. He laughed at my reaction.

"That came out so poorly," he admitted, backtracking to lighten the mood a bit. "I just don’t know how to say this.”

He trailed off, leaving nothing but uncertainty between us.

I reached for one of his cigarettes and he followed suit. We didn't know what else to do in that moment to fill the silence. He lit a match and raised it to me. My cheeks flushed as we looked at each other through the flame. He looked at me the way he always did, but something felt new about his gaze.

“I want more than this,” he murmured. “I want to be more than your friend.” He paused again, struggling to find the right words.

“So, if you want to make a go of it, I’m game.”

“You really know how to woo a girl,” I said eagerly, trying to bring us back to some sense of normalcy. Smoke gathered around us and I asked the question I had been ready to ask the moment I entered the bar.

“What happens now?”

He took another drag from his cigarette and smiled his sly smile. I loved that smile.

“We just take it slow,” he said.

He was right. If we wanted to delicately transition this friendship into something more beautiful, we only needed time.

I told myself we had to take it slow, but I couldn’t resist building our life together in my head. It all worked out perfectly. We would get married and move to Omaha. We would live in a small studio while I worked as a freelance web designer and he went back to grad school. We would wait until I had established my career to have children. We would be happy and we would never fight, just like we never did now.

I tried to bury these hopes for the future and live in this moment. Whatever we build together will be perfect for us. I know it will be. It has to be.

He smiled at me again as he ran his fingers through his hair. His hand stopped at the back of his head as his forearm rested on his crown, exposing the tattoo on the back of his arm. I never really understood why he thought getting the same Viking compass as Björk would go unnoticed by our friends. It didn’t. I swore I would never let him live it down, but seeing it exposed at this moment felt comforting.

Once again, we found ourselves in a silence we didn’t quite know how to break.

“I have to go,” he uttered, his voice trembling. “I have to go before I kiss you and ruin everything.”

I knew he was right to walk away.

I couldn’t bring myself to say anything as he got out of his chair, and I couldn’t stand to watch him leave. Instead, I glanced at our glasses, two empty and two half full, and dreamed of our life together.

Photograph by: Whitney Ott
Written by: Valerie Gleason

Bury Their Own

Anna sits with her legs crossed on a wrought iron bench in a cemetery, slouching forward with her elbows on her knees, smoking a cigarette. She wears a black ensemble finished with a leather jacket and high-heeled ankle boots. A silver chain hangs from her neck, bearing a cross that sways with the breeze. Her hair spills over her back and shoulders, forming a feathery frame around her face. Her lipstick stains the filter of her cigarette and Kohl eyeliner emphasizes the almond shape of her eyes. She savors her next drag, pulling the smoke between her lips and into her lungs as if it would save her life.

Cigarettes remind her of her mother who never looked or smelled like a smoker. She was an entrepreneur with a knack for palm reading and dream interpretation. Unfortunately, she wasn’t very good with finances and her relationship with the IRS was tense. She had her first stroke at the age of forty-four and then one every spring until her heart failed four years later. After she died, Anna longed for a connection, something to keep her close not only in thought, but also in body. Lighting up became a sacred ritual, an invocation of the dead, but her mother never came. Anna didn’t take it personally.

Anna crushes her cigarette with her boot on the brick path before picking it up and tossing it in the trash. She stuffs her hands into her jacket pockets and makes her way over to a tombstone nestled beneath a dogwood with tender pink blossoms. The epitaph reads: Lydia Marie Wilcox. An angel so loved by God, He took her for Himself. She was ten years old when she died in 1962. Anna looks up past the grave marker at the spectre sitting just beyond it. She is wearing a white dress with puffy short sleeves, black dress shoes, and a blue headband that holds back her blonde ringlets. The ghost is glaring at Anna, her hands crumpling fistfuls of her dress as she holds back tears.

“Hello, Lydia.”

Anna greets her with a gentle volume as if approaching an injured fawn. Lydia buries her face in her hands and sobs, her tiny shoulders shaking beneath the weight of a life unlived and a crime unsolved. No one suspected that her father drowned her in the bathtub, not even her mother. He supplied the police with a diary full of entries suggesting Lydia lost the will to live. He was smart enough to remove the pages that recounted his late night drunkenness, resulting in physical beatings that Lydia endured, but never deserved.

The sad tale floods Anna’s mind after she places her fingertips on the tombstone. She grimaces, taking back her hand. She watches Lydia’s ghost wail with a force and passion equal to her grief, but the sound is distant and goes unheard by all except Anna. She walks around the grave marker and sits down on the ground, leaning against it. The branches of the dogwood tree rustle in the wind, a natural white noise that folds over Lydia’s sobs.

The first time Anna experienced a transmission like this was six months after her mother’s death when she went to visit her grave. She knelt down on the grass and pressed her forehead against the name etched in stone. It felt like a dream sifting behind her eyes. She saw her mother sitting at the kitchen counter, staring blankly through the window. Anna felt awash with dread as her mother suddenly grasped her head, trying to stand only to lose her balance and fall to the floor. It was her mother’s first stroke, but Anna hadn’t been there. She pulled away from the tombstone, gasping for breath as sweat coated her upper lip.

The visions began happening anytime she touched an object belonging to her mother. Hidden pieces of her life unfolded before Anna’s eyes: the constant drinking, the chain smoking, the prescription painkillers. But Anna experienced more than images; she could perceive feelings, thoughts, and memories. Underneath her mother’s addictions was a thick floor of regret, which Anna chose not to explore. It’s true that knowledge is power, but ignorance is bliss.

“What can I do for you?” Anna asks Lydia’s ghost, pressing her palms together between her thighs to warm them.

Lydia lifts her head, wiping her face of snot and tears with her forearm. She licks her lips and looks at the grass, contemplating her answer.

“Do you want me to tell someone what really happened to you?” Anna suggests.

Lydia shakes her head, sniffling as she mumbles, “No, that’s not important to me.”

“What is important to you?”

“I don’t want to be alone.”

Anna folds her left arm over her chest, propping up her right elbow on her left hand as she fiddles with the cross hanging from the chain around her neck. There’s no way to help Lydia cross over to the next world, but she can show her how to make a world of her own.

“If you want, you could stay with me.”

The ghost’s eyes widen and her lips part in surprise.

“How?”

“You see my cross? If you close your eyes and imagine the most beautiful place, we can put it in there. You can live there and I’ll always be close by. I won’t be able to come inside, but you can come out whenever you want.”

Lydia clasped her hands in front of her heart and squealed, “Can it be a big white house? With a cat and a dog? I promise I’ll take good care of them! And I’ll bake cookies every day and read books all the time until I fall asleep!”

Anna smiles, nodding with approval. Lydia jumps up and down before closing her eyes and vanishing into thin air. The cross is cold and heavy now, bearing Lydia’s soul and her new world. Anna heads out of the cemetery, lighting up another cigarette.

Deep drag.

Sweet invocation.

Written by: Natasha Akery
Photo by: Whitney Ott

Tragedy In Wonderland

May 09, 2013

East Village, Wonderland

Humpty Dumpty, the famous ham-handed egg, has been charged with the murder of his wife and two children by Wonderland authorities.

Humpty is known as an easy going and amicable egg by his East Village neighbors. “That’s why it’s so shocking,” explains Alice, a frequent visitor to the village and personal friend of the Dumpty family, “He was always so kind, and he never seemed to quarrel with anyone in the village.”

While the family was enjoying breakfast, an argument began between 17-year-old Hefty Lefty, Dumpty’s oldest son, and Humpty. According to neighbors, the two were having a debate concerning the origins of the Dumpty family. Hefty, known as an innovative free-thinker, claimed that the family must be able to trace its ancestral roots back to the “chicken,” a prehistoric animal that supposedly inhabited the area that is now the East Village thousands of years ago.

“He just snapped,” explains the Walrus, one of Humpty’s neighbors. The Walrus reported loud yelling coming from the house at around 9:30 a.m. this morning to East Village authorities. It was clear that this was not some common spat between father and son says the Walrus.

Another neighbor, a local carpenter and life partner of the Walrus, claims to have overheard some of the argument. According to the Carpenter, Humpty yelled the following comments at his son after listening to the young egg’s theory:

“I will not tolerate such blasphemous comments under my roof! Chickens! Evolution! Lies! Absolute lies! You are not my son! Do you understand? You are dead to me!”

In an attempt to calm the situation, 38-year-old Margaret Hatcher Dumpty, Humpty’s wife, is reported to have explained that she believed the theory to not be completely absurd, and that they should be proud as parents to have such a clever child. Following the calming attempt, 12-year-old Chiquita Bonita, Humpty’s daughter, reportedly expressed her agreement with her mother’s statement.

“Yep, that’s when he really lost it,” says the Carpenter. According to East Village authorities, Humpty used a large iron skillet to brutally massacre his wife, son, and daughter. “It wasn’t a pretty sight,” explains the Caterpillar, the first investigator on the scene, “…there was literally not a single place that you could step without getting yolk all over you. I think there’s still some on my underside.”

Quickly following the violent slaughter, Humpty was witnessed fleeing his home by neighbors. He was last seen headed west along a wall just outside of Cheshire Forest.

Before his murderous rampage, Humpty did have a reputation for being somewhat eccentric. The Hatter, a colleague of Humpty’s, recalls hearing Humpty make some strange rants of his own years ago. “Yes,” recalls the Hatter, “Humpty was yelling about creating his own vernacular of sorts… Weeehehe… Oh yes, he claimed verbs to be angry but himself to be the master of all. Words bent to his will and he willed words to mean as he pleased. Tea became time and I became late after drinking of time and woo….” The Hatter, a victim of severe mercury poisoning, fled the interview before providing further explanation. However, Alice corroborates the rant in question.

Humpty abandoned his war on semantics after a life-threatening debate with the Queen of Hearts, the ruler of Wonderland. Though he never claimed that the word “queen” actually meant servant, the Queen of Hearts believed he would, and in Wonderland, such potential for a possible offense is as illegal as making an actual transgression.

Two policies have been cited in discussion concerning the Dumpty family murder: the decree that free speech will not be tolerated and the concept of divine right. Wonderland, the most irrational and confusing of the imaginary monarchies, is governed, not surprisingly, by the most neurotic despot in contemporary politics today, the Queen of Hearts. The Queen of Hearts, characterized as a highly erratic, paranoid maniac, invokes a number of nonsensical policies to maintain her rule of Wonderland. Amongst impressive political policy innovations such as ‘pre-execution’ for possible crimes committed, the queen also invokes several tried tyrant classics to maintain ‘amicable concord’ within her kingdom.

Technically speaking, Humpty was upholding the law while brutally murdering his family. The Queen of Hearts claims that the basis for her and her ancestor’s rule is one of divine right, deriving their right to rule directly from the will of the mystical Jabberwocky, the supposed creator, or god, of Wonderland. Furthermore, Jabberanity, the Jabberwocky faith, advocates creationist ideologies. So, to speak of evolution, or a chicken coming before an egg, is technically blasphemous and illegal, and of course, is punishable by death before or after being expressed.

With regard to the Dumpty family slaughter, the Queen of Hearts made the following statement:

“Indeed, this is a tragic day for Wonderland. The Dumpty’s were a strong, hardworking family whose patriotism was beyond question. However, I cannot condemn the actions taken by Mr. Dumpty. His son, Hefty, made several blasphemous comments, and both Mrs. Dumpty and Chiquita supported those blasphemous comments. Such comments cannot be tolerated if we are to remain in the great Jabberwocky’s good graces, and it is both my and this kingdom’s opinion that the actions made by Mr. Dumpty were made in the best interest of Wonderland. Therefore, I am granting Humpty Dumpty a full pardon for his crimes.”

Following her statement, the Queen of Hearts returned to her castle, despite the objections of several aggravated citizens.

The White Rabbit, the East Village’s district attorney, was unavailable for comment due to being “late for a very important date.”

Humpty was unavailable for comment concerning the pardon due to suffering from a fatal fall while evading authorities. Humpty Dumpty died at the age of 43. All of the queen’s horses and all of the queen’s men could not put Humpty back together again.

I am currently awaiting sentencing for intending to publish this piece. The Queen is the absolute best ruler. Long live the Queen!

Tweedledum - Wonderland correspondent

Photograph by: Whitney Ott
Written by: Hunter Hirsch