Beginnings

The colors of city lights bleed out into the blank sky, smoke rising to the atmosphere, and ashes falling back to the asphalt. In the back of his mind, he hears music—Beethoven’s Moonlight Sonata. For the boy, it has always been the song of the after.

Outside the thin windows of the apartment, Kai can hear the sound of falling rain and the low breeze, screeching cars and drivers spouting profanities. The streets are never quiet. He hears the beating of a moth's wings as it flutters around the street lamp, but not the urgent words that leave his mother's lips as tears streak her face. Her mouth keeps forming the same shapes, and it occurs to him that she's saying one thing over and over again.

"Everything is going to be alright, sweetie." The sound of her voice feels like the earth has dropped onto his chest when his mind returns to his body. He becomes aware that the side of his face is pressed into the cold, wooden floor of their living room. Sweat makes his dark hair stick to his forehead, and he can taste iron when he breathes. He feels like shit, personified.

"Do you need to go to the hospital?" she asks, knowing that after seventeen years, it has become a useless question.

"I'm fine," He manages to croak out a half-convincing response.

Kai struggles to pull himself up into a sitting position; there's a sharp pain flowing in the blue of his veins. The heavy soreness in his side makes him think he's broken a rib. The room is empty except for the two of them, and Kai is relieved to know they are alone, at least for now.

"Are you okay?" Kai asks. "He didn't hurt you, did he?"

His mother shakes her head, looking years older than she did the hour before.

"I'm alright," she says, leaning down to wrap her arms around his torso. The action is supposed to be comforting but she quakes in fear. His mother helps him off the floor and to the bathroom, which proves to be quite the task. Since starting high school he has grown a foot taller than her, and now his limbs still aren’t fully functioning.

He leans against the sink, and his eyes wander to his once-white shirt, advocating Sigur Ros, some indie rock group whose music he has never heard. It’s covered in blotches of dark red, the color of wine. The red seeps through the fabric. The stain will never come out.

"Just wash up, okay?" his mother coaxes. Kai pulls the shirt over his head, and she snatches it from his hands. Her eyes jump from the shirt to back up at her son.

"I'll take care of everything," she says, clutching the bloodied t-shirt to her chest and shutting the door behind her.

He takes off the rest of his clothes before stepping into the shower. He turns the faucets, and a stream of cold water hits his back. The red washes away, pooling on the white tiles at his feet, and the pain under his bruised, olive skin dulls. There’s a long, thin gash running diagonally across his chest. The cut is not deep enough to kill, but it will leave a scar.

He can try to forget, again. Try to remember all the good things, but the memories of those are fading. Besides, there is only so much you can wash away, and only so much that you can forget in the after.

Kai walks into his bedroom, looking for something constant in all the change. Instead, he finds that most of his stuff is dumped out into suitcases strewn across his bed. The shelves that once held pictures in frames are now bare. His mother stands in the center of the chaos, packing their lives away into trash bags. When she sees him she tries to smile, like this entire scenario is normal. It’s a slap to the face, a reminder of just how fucked-up their lives are.

“I have to go to the bank, Kai, sweetie. Finish packing up—I’ll be back soon.”

“Okay,” he says, because there is nothing more to say.

She reaches up and ruffles his hair, like she did when he was younger. Even though he is seventeen, he still finds comfort in it.

There’s still food in the fridge—mostly just takeout. Kai grabs a few relatively fresh-looking apples, but there’s not much to salvage among the rest. A bottle of wine catches his eye, cigarette butts floating in the dregs. He winces. The room smells like his father, like despair and fear. The burn on his arm feels vicious, singeing. He grabs the bottle, hurls it out the open kitchen window, and watches the glass shatter on the street. He laughs like it’s his last day on earth. It might as well be.

By the time his mother returns, Kai has packed everything. They pile the pieces of their lives into the back of the Impala, leaving the place they once called home barren and empty.

“Where are we going?” he asks as he shuts the trunk. His mother smiles warily before answering.

“Somewhere far away,” she tells him as he slides into the passenger side. The tiny green pine tree air freshener looks almost like an arrow pointing them away. The car’s engine sputters to life, and the sound is already so much better than any empty promise she could make.

The city is grey and flat, like a paper cutout, drawn with the tip of a needle. This city was the backdrop to his life, yet this is the first time Kai has ever thought of it as something other than his personal hell. Cars pass like water through an iron grate as they drive away. Everything looks perfect from afar, windows in buildings perfectly identical, symmetrical.

It was never so beautiful up close.


Written by: Jamie H
Photograph by: Skyler Smith

Flick of the Wrist

The house was empty. As Quinn walked through the garage she found that both of her parents’ vehicles were missing. Usually, by the time she walked back from school her father was already home and preparing dinner, cleaning the vegetables and ridding the meat of every ounce of fat. Her mother would then pull in the driveway 40 minutes later and review all of Quinn’s homework before stepping in to relieve her father of his cooking duties. Quinn had forgotten about the revealing of the new wing in her mother’s hospital this evening, which both parents were required to attend.

Her brother’s car was also nowhere to be seen, which meant he most likely stayed behind at school to help prep for play rehearsals. Either that, or he was busy getting high at his friend Pat’s house. He could get away with things like that.

Quinn had a reputation to uphold, a schedule to keep. Her entire life had become a dictated routine. Everything her parents expected of her, or everything she thought they expected of her, she became. Day after day she lost pieces of herself in order to fit into the mold that had been prepared for her. Her parents knew who she would be from the time she was conceived and had her every life decision mapped out in color-coordinated files.

In reality, Quinn didn’t know who she was anymore. The only thing she knew was that she needed relief from expectations – and she knew just where to find it.

Her first respite from parental pressure was an accident that occurred during her pre-bed shower – the only time that was hers alone. Quinn could wash and shave in just under ten minutes, so she used the rest of her time to remove every mask she wore throughout the day: the cheerleading captain, the Honors student, the “perfect” child. The steady beating of the water from the showerhead drowned out her sobs as she sat on the shower floor hugging her knees. As Quinn pulled herself up, she lost her footing and slipped backwards.

Once she sat up, she began to feel the tiniest ounce of relief. It started slow, the pain that ebbed through her every nerve dissipating. As she looked to the floor, she noticed a thin crimson stream weaving its way through the current to the drain. Reaching beneath her, she pulled her detached razor blade from the once supple skin of her thigh. It had embedded itself in her flesh after being knocked loose in her fall. Quinn was nervous at first, but she also felt a solace that was too sweet a drug to deny.

Instead of taking the time to write in her journal as she used to, Quinn now transformed her body into her journal; practicing calligraphy on her inner thighs and underarms as they became the alternating front and back pages, her wrists the footnotes.

Her mind was spinning, thoughts racing at a dizzying pace. Everything inside of her hurt, and the ache was more than she could bear. Quinn relished in the fact that today she had at least an hour to herself, if not more. She opened her bedroom door just enough to throw her bags from school and cheerleading inside, then headed straight for the bathroom. She turned on the shower, but not the fan. She liked the way the room filled with steam and made the air almost too thick to breathe. She stepped into the tub letting the near-boiling water scald her skin. As it cascaded around her, she let every thought she’d harbored and rejected throughout the day come rising to the surface. Every conversation in her mind that was stifled to pay attention in class, every dismissal from those around her, every emotion she had to cut off to appear normal, every twitch, tick, and anxiety attack she had to restrain; she let them all come flooding in. With every line she drew into her upper thighs she allowed it all to rise up in chaos and ooze out of her skin; her crosshatching marking every thought and feeling screaming for a way out. She shook less, she began to calm.

Finally, she could breathe.

She was able to concentrate on the sound and feeling of her lungs filling and deflating, like hearing music for the first time.

As she sat emptying herself beneath the steady shower, she felt the beauty of her etchings that followed the lines of her veins and sinews. Her body had become a braille novel, but she was the only one blind enough to read it.

By the time she pulled herself out of the shower the entire room was filled with a steamy fog. She loved walking through it, feeling high, as though she were stepping into a dream. She couldn’t help the smile as it spread across her face as she opened the door and it all came rolling out like an avalanche across the floor and down through the hall until it disappeared into the coolness of the fresh air.

The blood was still trickling down her legs as she walked to her room. She kept a drawer of fabric bandages to help the cuts clot and close. She had read up on how much blood loss was too much and how to take proper care of knife wounds. She was usually very careful, but on this rare occasion she had let herself go a little too far. She was glad to be able to let these fresh journal entries air out rather than suffocate and itch, hiding under her varsity sweatpants.

Quinn was so wrapped up in her release, she was halfway to her dresser before she noticed that her window was open. It wasn’t until she turned toward the gentle breeze that she recognized Celia sitting cross-legged on her bed. She watched her friend’s smile turn to shock.

“Quinn…What happened?”


Written by: Julia Hy
Photograph by: Jaemin Riley

Family Blood

Freddie MacNamus sat in his truck and looked down at his hands. So many stains. Blood, sweat, and tears covered those hands. And black oil that would never come out from under his thick, yellow fingernails.

But mostly blood.

His boy once told him that blood ain’t red inside you. It ain’t red ‘til it hits the air.

Well now Freddie knew a secret. The pits of hell sure ain’t black. When you walk through those places where nightmares are born, all you see is red.

It’s mostly blood.

His boy was smart. They gave him a fancy name at birth. Kissed his wrinkled, old-man head and said, “Prescott, all we gots to give you is a name. It’s your leg up. Reach high, son. Maybe you’ll make it to some other family tree.”

But blood runs thick, and old habits are hard to break. Within a year, Prescott MacNamus was just Mac. Plain and simple. But boy, was he sharp.

It damn near stopped Freddie’s heart, the night he saw all that thick, red blood pouring out of Mac, staining the pine slats of their front porch.

Freddie knows deep down he done it.

He was so mad that night. So God damn mad. And the sad thing is, he didn’t have nothing to be mad about. His boy would sit at the supper table, making his wife laugh til’ she begged him to stop, tears rollin’ down her face, sayin’ her insides hurt. They were happy. But Freddie couldn’t be happy. Just livin’ made him mad back then.

Bein’ just a mechanic. Selling just tires. It wasn’t enough. He always thought he should be doing more. His family deserved more. He felt guilty every time he looked at ‘em. So he stayed mad. And he stayed away. Always sippin’ that awful, burnin’ drink.

And the night they were killed, he wasn’t there to help.

It hurts to think about it now.

He can’t take more than three breaths without prayin’ to God they died quickly. That they didn’t see it coming. That they weren’t scared.

Freddie figures, lookin’ back, that he got home about twenty minutes too late. ‘Cause Mac was still warm when Freddie scooped him up. He ran to the truck, piercing the still September air with his screams. Pleadin’, “God. Please God. Please.”

He thought his boy might have a chance. ‘Cause he could still smell the milk and cookies on his breath, see, and lil’ Mac had his dinosaur jammies on, and Freddie was pretty sure those were his favorites. They were the ones Mac was always wearing when Freddie tip-toed through the house late at night after another bender, to peek through Mac’s cracked bedroom door and love him from afar.

He layed his boy down across the seat of the truck. He’ll never forget the way those tires squealed as he ripped out of his driveway. Surplus stock from the shop. He’d put ‘em on a few weeks ago, shooin’ Mac away when he asked to help.

He drove like his own life depended on. And it did. But after a mile or so, he couldn’t see the road. He couldn’t see Mac.

It was all blood.

He opened the door and puked. Whiskey and snot came out between wails. The putrid mixture hit the dirt road only a few seconds before Freddie did. He lay there, heaving, sobbing, covered in family blood, til a State Trooper pulled up.

Somewhere along the line, they realized Freddie wasn’t a killer. Just a worthless piece of shit.

They let him go. His penance? That the world kept turning.

He had to keep showin’ up at the shop. Keep on sellin’ tires. Every day he stepped into that place, the smell of old rubber filled his nostrils, reminding him he ain’t got nothing left to work for. He made barely enough to keep his home, but not enough to sell it.

So at night he’d come home and lie on that porch. Put his head down on that dark brown stain. If he was still enough, he could feel heat comin’ off the planks of pine. It was because the porch soaked up the western light all afternoon, but Freddie liked to think that warm spot was Mac.

And this morning was no different. Until it was.

He got out of bed. Got in the shower. Smelled his wife’s shampoo. Gently closed its cap. Then he put on his blue coveralls and went to work.

But when he got there, he couldn’t walk in the door. He walked out back, tore an old piece of tarp in half, and wrote “Closed” in clumpy motor oil on it.

He stepped back and looked at it. The shame of everything he’d done–everything he was– hit him hard. He couldn’t keep nothin’ alive.

He threw it out and started over on the other half.

He thought for a second, and wrote:

Moved to 1897
Metropolitan Park
Flea Market Plaza

Freddie didn’t have enough room to finish the word “park.” It didn’t make no difference. Something he made would live on, even if it was just for a day. Even if it was just for an hour. Even it was a lie. Soon enough, somebody would find out the truth. But that shop, the one Freddie never thought was good enough, was the only shred of worth he had left.

Sitting in his old truck, Freddie finally felt some peace. He couldn’t wash his hands of what he’d done, but maybe God would clean his soul.

He looked out the driver’s side window one last time, then put the truck into drive.

He turned onto the dusty highway, and slowly pressed the gas. He didn’t let up as he watched the speedometer reach 60, 70, 80, 100.

The pedal ground against the metal floorboard. There was nowhere else to go. Freddie jerked the steering wheel to the right.

For a second, everything was quiet, and then the deafening sound of blood rushed into his ears. And right before everything went black, he saw his wife. And his Mac. But mostly blood.






Photograph by: Jaemin Riley
Written by: Sarah Gatling