Pennybacker

When he was seven, Hunter slipped on his father's boat, fell in Lake Austin, and saw merlings. They were less magical and fantastical than he thought they would be; they were gaunt things with rigid bones and gray skin stretched thin. They were not the curved, fluid creatures of bedtime stories and animated films. They were, however, captivating. Hunter forgot everything: how to swim, his mother Elinor, even the importance of oxygen. His father jumped in and pulled him from the water.

There were witnesses. Witnesses who swore that the sopping wet boy's father had been a six-pack deep when he took his son out on the water. Witnesses who swore the father had a cap pulled low over his brow when the boy fell. Witnesses who swore the boy was under for almost a minute before the father jumped. It didn't matter how much was true. It mattered that Hunter's mother believed it

"Just tell her you saw them, Dad!" Hunter said. "I can back you up if you just tell her."

"When are you gonna quit this?" Hunter's father growled. "I didn't see them. You didn't either. You shut up about those mermaids."

"Merlings!" Hunter said. "They're merlings."

The merlings were real, and to deny them would be to lie. After his father left, he tried to convince his mother. Hunter drew pictures and plastered them all over his walls. His room was a chamber of Lovecraftian horror: shapes and angles forced by the rabid hand of an unskilled artist. There was one Hunter drew over and over again.

"The Harbinger," Hunter told his mother at dinner. He showed her his latest attempt, with rough calcified scales at the tail and sharp moldy skin. A wide mouth brimmed with dark pointed teeth. White eyes bulged.

"Where did you hear that word?" His mother forced herself to swallow a forkful of meatloaf.

"He told me. That's what he said he was called." Hunter replied. "I think I'm supposed to go back and find him."

His mother checked him into a children's psychiatric hospital. There, Hunter learned that he had likely experienced trauma falling in the water. The doctor said Hunter's father was an alcoholic, and although Hunter did not know that, he had figured out that he would probably die because his dad could not rescue him. Hunter's mind had invented angels of mercy to help him prepare to go to Heaven.

"But if that were true, I would've made real angels. Real angels are white and glow. They have wings, not fish tails." Hunter told his doctor.

Hunter learned that the mind does all kinds of funny things when you are scared. Maybe his mind played with shapes in the water. Maybe his mind played with how the light shined within Lake Austin. Hunter probably heard the word "harbinger" on TV. Hunter's mind knew what it was from context. When Hunter thought he was dying, he invented the merlings. One of them was his herald.

That's what the doctor said.

Hunter stopped talking about the merlings. Hunter stopped drawing them. Over years of therapy, the Harbinger faded into Hunter's memory.

But not Elinor's.

"I wasn't there for him," Elinor told herself.

She wasn't there when her son fell into the Harbinger's murky waters. She was across the street, "borrowing a cup of sugar" from Ted Vicars.

She wasn't there when the Harbinger called again. Her husband wrapped his truck around a telephone pole. The paramedics pronounced him dead at the scene. The coroner's report said his blood alcohol level was above the legal limit.

In the years it took for her boy to become a young man, Elinor saw tragic events as evidence of the Harbinger’s presence in her life. When the doctor suggested Hunter may be ready to leave the hospital, Elinor did not object. Good news was rare.

When Hunter came home, he was surprised by the house. Each room had been painted a different shade of watery blue. The living room was a shallow mountainside brook. The kitchen was a country pond, its surface just kissed with algae. Hunter's room was the top of Lake Austin when it glinted with sun.

Elinor's room - no longer his parents' - made him uncomfortable. It was the dark, deep inside of Lake Austin. It tugged at him, begging him to remember drowned nightmares. Hunter did not go in his mother's room. Hunter did not see her fill the tub and stare at it. He did not see her submerge herself, holding her breath under the tepid water. He did not see the inside of her closet, wallpapered with his old sketches of the Harbinger.

Hunter did not hear her call its name.

"I think we should go back to Lake Austin." Elinor said over lunch. "I think it would be good for us to confront what happened there."

"Mom, I don't want to go back in there. I don't think it would be good for me." Hunter stared at his spaghetti. The shapes were tangled curves, and for a moment he saw the ebb and flow of water and thought he might vomit.

"By Pennybacker! Not into the water, of course." Not yet. She could hold off a little longer. Maybe take scuba diving lessons first - just in case he wasn't near the surface this time. And really, who knew how deep Hunter had been?

When Elinor saw the bridge, she knew they were close. It was a low, wide arch the color of rust, and Elinor laughed at how it looked like water corrupted the structure. The amber curve did not dip into Lake Austin. It straddled the banks, but it was a false portal.

When Hunter saw the bridge, he inhaled sharply. Bad thoughts came to him, dark and evil things flooded his memory. The bridge transported Hunter back to that day he saw the merlings, that day he saw the Harbinger, that day he realized his father couldn't save him.

"The Harbinger." The word was a whisper. Neither knew who said it. Neither cared.

Shaking, Hunter pulled into the nearest parking lot. Elinor stepped out of the car without a word.

"See you soon." The voice creaked.




Photograph by: Emily Blincoe
Written by: Erin Justice

Training

Clark bent down and gripped the rail with his right hand. The vibrations surging through his callused palms indicated the train was just beyond the horizon. He traced the length of steel beams and wooden slats with his eyes until they became an indecipherable speck where the sky and the earth converged.

“This is it,” he reminded himself, suppressing any doubt that was stirring inside.

Clark had been contemplating this moment since pimples started forming mountain ranges across his chin and the sight of cheerleaders made strange things happen behind his zipper. Puberty transformed every fiber of Clark’s being, including his brain.

As his limbs, blemishes and cerebellum grew, so did the distance between Clark and the rest of humanity. While boys and girls timidly flirted in the lunchroom, Clark isolated himself in the library behind a fortress of comic books. When his family gathered around the TV for supper, Clark excused himself and retired to the basement, where he spent the rest of the evening lifting the rusty weights his father had been neglecting since his college days.

Clark outgrew the home gym within a month of his first bicep curl. Even the heaviest dumbbell on the rack – the 50-pounder – failed to challenge his rapidly developing arms. He peddled to a nearby gym in search of a heftier test, only to be turned away on account of his age. He pleaded with the owner to make an exception, but he wouldn’t look past the business-destroying lawsuit that would ensue if an unsupervised minor were to get injured in his facility.

Clark channeled his rage to his fists and slammed them into the counter like a sledgehammer, sending shards of glass scattering to the ground like a shattered basketball goal. As amazed as the owner was by the feat of strength, he was even more taken aback by Clark’s injury-free hands.

Clark fled the scene before the owner snapped out of his daze. When he rounded the corner he found a malnourished man hovering over his bike. He followed the track marks down the man’s arms to the pair of bolt cutters he was positioning around Clark’s bike chain.

Rage reignited, Clark bent down, grabbed a stone and chucked it at the junkie before he could bear down on his tool. The stone disappeared the moment it left Clark’s hand, reappearing in an explosion of blood, cotton and flesh as it tore through the thief’s right shoulder. The skittish man fell to the ground, clutching his bolt cutters until he became one with the parking lot.

“YOU SHOT ME,” the criminal yelled, gripping his shoulder as he squirmed on the concrete. “YOU FUCKING SHOT ME?”

Clark didn’t respond. He sprinted to the rack, unlocked his bike and lifted it from the bar one-handed as if it were a children’s tricycle.

“Where do you think YOU’RE going, you fucking PUNK,” screamed the injured crook.

Clark straddled the seat and turned the bike away from the criminal. He placed his left foot on the pedal and pressed down like a motorcyclist starting his engine. The wave of flexed muscles surging from his glute to his foot sent his shoe and the pedal crashing to the pavement. The metal square beneath his forefoot embedded in the asphalt like a cookie cutter. He wiggled his foot free from the strap and dismounted the bike.

“Take it,” he said, pushing the damaged goods towards the speechless drug addict.

The bike remained upright until the front tire collided with the thief’s knee, bending his joint with a deafening crack of bones and ligaments. He ran home as fast as his legs could carry him, which, according to the speed detector in front of his old middle school, was 38 miles per hour. Clark looked back to see what car triggered the radar, but he was the only object in motion at the moment.

Clark took a small hop and turned his sneakers sideways, attempting to stop on a dime like a professional hockey player, but the physics didn’t add up. As the soles of his shoes dug into the weathered sidewalk, the seams that held his footwear together exploded, sending fabric particles, and Clark, flying through the air.

Clark was ejected from his shoes like a driver without a seatbelt. He landed in a bush almost 30 yards from where his soles remained, once again, without the slightest hint of injury. Clark continued to sit in the heap of broken twigs and crumbled leaves.

“What. The. FUCK?” he asked.

As unlikely as it seemed, he could only reach one conclusion.

“I’M THE HULLLLLLLK.”

Clark sprung from the rubble as if floating on a cloud of indestructible joy. Fueled by adrenaline, he began putting his supernatural strength to the test. He knocked down a 30-year-old pine tree with a single punch. He lifted a car by it’s back bumper and pushed it around a parking lot like a wheelbarrow. And then, he saw the train track.

Clark returned the car to its parking spot and sprinted through the field. Fearing someone would mistake his actions for a suicide attempt, Clark ran along the locomotive road until civilization was out of sight.

When the train finally appeared in the distance, Clark got down in a three-point stance and prepared for the ultimate game of chicken. The morning fog cloaked him from the conductor’s unsuspecting view until they were too close for brakes. The conductor pulled down on the train horn, hoping to force some sense through Clark’s ears, but his mind was as one-tracked as his steel opponent.

At the point of no return, Clark reared up like an angry grizzly bear and flexed every muscle in his body. 

--

The librarian bent down and removed Clark’s headphones.

“Class or detention, Clark? Your choice.”

Clark scoffed, saved his progress and shoved his laptop into his book bag. He rolled back from the table and wheeled off to class as fast as his hands could push him.



Photograph by: Emily Blincoe
Written by: Mark Killian

Fake Soldiers

With fake soldiers in fake armies, we fought over fake boundaries, rivers, mountains, and countries. Our fake generals led men on fake horses into fake battle, and the roll of the digital dice decided who stayed alive and who died on the electronic battlefield made up, at its core, of ones and zeros. On December 31st, 1999, my older brother and I, in our mid twenties, played RISK, the game of world dominance, on my Playstation 2. We retreated to our cabin at the edge of Yellowstone Park on the Idaho and Wyoming border with enough wine, beer, and potato chips to make it through the apocalypse. It was the eve of the Y2K disaster, when the world’s computers would send nuclear missiles into the air, where the World Bank and credit history of all the world’s people would crumble, and where fires would spark from the fingertips of civilized people thrown back into savagery without computers. Walls of snow, stacked five to six feet tall, surrounded the little cabin. The tops of baby trees peeked out from the snow, their lives too short to stand above the wintery ground like their elders that stretched up to the blue sky and, during the day, sliced the snow with their shadows. The sun dropped down behind the mountains before five p.m., and clouds drizzled more snow onto the already thick base that covered the ground. It was cold outside, but inside, the fire burned.

Two cigars sat on the end table near the sliding glass doors that opened up to the deck. They would be saved for midnight.

In the mid 1980s, my brother beat me at everything. It didn’t matter what we played, he had the upper hand, and as most older brothers do, he played the upper hand with a lot of weight. He bankrupted me in Monopoly — I went for the fat pigs on Wall Street -- Park Place and Boardwalk -- while he became the slumlord of the Avenues (Baltic, Mediterranean, Oriental, etc.), stacked up hotels, and made the district right after “GO” a money pit for my flying shoe. He outwitted me at UNO. He knew when to back things up, when to keep things going, and when to turn one of the wild cards I had saved up all game into my own demise.

One day, sitting on the floor of his bedroom, bored in the late days of summer when the 103-degree heat finally pushed us indoors, my brother laid RISK out on the floor. I was sick of losing, so earlier that year I vowed to never place another soldier in harm’s way. Hadn’t I killed enough men? Hadn’t I waged pointless battles on imaginary borders that never ended in peace? Countless lives of men thrown to the ground on the whims of their leaders who looked down on them from the comfort of a carpeted room in the middle of summer. Hadn’t I learned my lesson? No matter how much I fought, I would always lose it all, eventually being pushed into exile with no capital or government or land to call my own.

“Let’s play RISK,” he said. His eyebrows and lips turned upward with the vision of another imminent victory and the slaughter of my men.

“No,” I said. “I’m not playing again. I always lose.”

“Come on. What else are you going to do?” he asked. At the time, he was right. “I’ll even spot you Australia.”

My greed welled up inside of me. I could own a continent right from the start. I would own all its extra armies. I could demolish Indonesia and its people with two turns.

“I’m in,” I said, thinking he had sealed his own fate.

I owned Australia, and with much bravado, I pushed forward into Indonesia and Thailand before his Asian forces punished me on the Indian mountains and forced my troops backward. Then the onslaught came in full force, and within two turns, he had vanquished my armies, rolling the dice and his forces across the globe, pushing me out of Kansas and Ontario, cornering and conquering me on the Sahara, and, one army by one army, killing my Australian stronghold until I had one guy standing on Cape Pasley, begging for mercy. I had enough, and instead of waving my white flag with honor, I flipped the entire board upside down, tossing armies across the room, into the AC vent, onto piles of dirty clothes, and beneath my brother’s bed. I was done losing. If I couldn’t conquer the world, I couldn’t handle the thought of anyone else doing it. It was supposed to be mine, all mine.

“You cheated!” I yelled, the world upside down at my feet.

“I can’t cheat,” he said calmly, which made me even angrier. “The dice do what they do. I’m just better.”

“You cheated,” I yelled. Then I stormed out of the room and vowed to never play him again.

In 1999, some people far away from our secluded cabin partied, some sang along with Prince, some prayed, some hid in shelters, and others slept without worries — midnight in 1999 had finally come. We held our controllers in our hands and watched our armies fight on the screen. Our brains floated in a bath of wine, and our game of RISK had yet to be completed. We knew the game could stretch out for many more hours, so my brother grabbed the cigars from the table, and we walked out onto the snow-covered deck and beneath the moon. The cold surrounded us. It was quiet, very quiet, like there-wasn’t-another-soul-for-miles quiet. My brother looked at his watch and counted down to the end of the millennium, a slow methodical count that added to the feeling of seclusion. We knew that if things really did go to hell that night that we would be together out there in the wilderness.

“It’s time,” he said.

“Let’s do this,” I said. I wish I would have said something less cheesy, but none of us really believed in Y2K.

He handed me one of the cigars, lit his own in his mouth, and then handed me the lighter. I clumsily lit mine and inhaled the rich smoke into my lungs. It warmed my gut. We stood in silence for a few minutes. Snow flickered on its descent. At the end of my cigar, I saw the bright red flame that circled the cigar edges like the sun burning at the edges of a solar eclipse, bright reds sparking out from behind the curved edge, but beyond the cigar, no fires burned, no sirens screamed, and no missiles cut through the sky. We stood in the snow until the cigars burned down to the edges of our index fingers and thumbs. Then we walked back into the cabin to play a game between brothers.




Photograph by: Jaemin Riley
Written by: Kase Johnstun

Beloved

Anna has plenty of experience extracting ghosts, but possession is not her expertise. Suri, her most recent client, sits across from her at a tiny table in the bookstore cafe. Anna glances over her notes, knowing this case is out of her league, but unwilling to turn back.

“Okay,” she begins after clearing her throat. “Every November since you were fourteen, this ghost chooses to possess a man in your life, and claims that he - not the man, but the ghost - has spent lifetimes with you, that you belong to him. Eventually he disappears, but what prompts him to leave you alone?”

“A restraining order.”

Anna laughs appreciatively before she realizes that Suri isn’t joking.

“The first time I encountered the ghost, he possessed my father. Dad would get blitzed every once in awhile, but there was one time when he was saying all of these strange things to me, that I wasn’t his daughter, that he’s known me for centuries, that he’ll always find me wherever I am. My parents eventually split up and it only got weirder after that. I told Mom and she said I didn’t have to see him anymore if I didn’t want to, so I moved in with her and she got a restraining order because he was getting aggressive. When we called the police, you could see it in his eyes. Whatever was making him say that stuff was gone. His eyes were clear. I still remember how confused he looked when they handcuffed him.”

Suri scoots her chair closer to the table and leans forward to continue.

“It’s been a different guy every time. Someone would come along - a teacher, a co-worker, a complete stranger - and it would be the same script, past lives and all that crap, but I felt like I was getting to know him a little more each time. Sometimes, I could see him after he left one of their bodies, and he’d smile and wave goodbye as the police escorted the host away.”

“Has he ever missed a year?” Anna asks.

“Not one,” Suri whispers.

They share a few moments of silence, encased in the sound of the espresso machine and surrounding conversation.

“I guess we’ve got to wait for him to show up. In the meantime,” Anna says as she closes her notebook, “I need to do research and talk to some folks. You’ve got my number. Call me the minute you think he’s manifested. I don’t care if it’s a squirrel on your windowsill. Just call.”

“Okay. I will.”

They both stand, shake hands, and Anna walks away with a knot in her stomach.

                                                                                         ***

“Yes, this is Anna. Who’s this?” she asks, holding the phone between her ear and shoulder, putting the groceries on the kitchen counter.

“Suri is mine. You got that?” the man barked from the other end of the line. “You won’t get rid of me so easy!”

Anna feels every hair on her body stand on end as she leans back against the pantry door.

As calm as she can muster, “Hey, man. No one’s trying to get rid of anybody. Where’s Suri? Is she okay?”

Anna can almost hear the sneer of his lips as he says, “1780 Rutherford Avenue. Come see for yourself.”

                                                                                           ***

It’s 4:15 pm when Anna pulls up in front of the abandoned house. A few of the windows are broken and an overturned grocery cart is in the doorway. She closes her eyes, asks her dead mother for courage, and gets out of the car. Fearing the worst, she walks up the driveway and pulls the cart out of the way so she can get inside the house, which is empty except for trash and drug paraphernalia. She is drawn to the light pouring from the room down the hall, the door left ajar.

“Suri,” Anna calls cautiously.

She pushes the door open with her hand and spots the graffiti on the wall, some haphazard squares made with black spray paint and a message next to the window.

“Go...at 4:33 you’ll see...”

Anna pulls out her phone to check the time: 4:30. She runs up to the window and looks out into the backyard. A man grins at her from beneath a tree and next to him Suri stands on a stool, gagged with her wrists tied behind her and a noose around her neck.

“Oh God, please,” Anna breathes.

The moment he lifts his foot to kick over the stool, there is a gunshot and he falls to the ground. Two police officers run toward Suri who screams through her snot-soaked gag, locking eyes with Anna through the window. Footsteps echo in the house behind her as backup searches the premises, following the tip Anna called in to the 911 dispatcher before speeding over to Rutherford, but the familiar chill of another presence brushes against the left side of her neck.

Suri’s voice is a distant cry, full of warning and remorse, “Anna! That’s him! Oh Anna, I’m so sorry!”

Anna takes in a breath as she turns to face the apparition. His appearance seems thick enough to touch, and he stands almost a foot taller than her, making him all the more menacing as he tilts his head to the side and smiles down at her.

“It’s dangerous to play games without knowing the rules, Anna.”

The sound of his voice both repels and lures every blood vessel in her body, desire and disgust making her heart pound in her throat. Anna realizes that Suri left out a very important detail about this ghost: he keeps haunting her because, deep down, she wants him to come back.

“What is your name?” Anna whispers, keeping her hands from balling up into fists as she waits for the one piece of information he is obligated to give her when demanded.

“Lucas.”

In a blink, he is gone as officers pour into the room with guns drawn.




Photograph by: Emily Blincoe
Written by: Natasha Akery

One Lucky Bastard

Every evening he walked half a mile down to the 7-11 to buy his lottery ticket. On the walk there, he smoked his pipe. On the walk back, he cleaned out his pipe and chanted the Powerball numbers over and over again in his head.

When he got home, he’d turn on the TV and wait. 7-37-9-2-82-12.

For three weeks, he’d played the same numbers. 7 for July, his least favorite month. 37 for the age his mother was when she died, standing over the kitchen stove sautéing vegetables. 9, the age he was on that day, when he entered the kitchen, turned off the stove, and called his father at work. 2 for his two good legs, for his two good feet, one in front of the other. 82 and 12 for the street address of the 7-11. 8212 North Lucas Drive.

When he won the Powerball, the 7-11 would experience a boom in business, and they’d put his photo above the counter. 8212. You have to tip your hat to the places that bring you luck. He wasn’t sure how long it was going to take to win. Probably only another couple of weeks.

He’d been avoiding the lottery. His father had been pushing him for years, “Use it on the Powerball,” but he’d always resisted using his luck for straight cash. It seemed wrong. But his father was ninety. And people who are ninety should get what they want.

After his mother’s death, he noticed strange things happening in his life. At a school assembly a few weeks later, he fixated on the end-of-the-year raffle prize: a gift certificate to Shoe World. Though his name was in the goldfish bowl only once (other more goody-goody kids had multiple entries for good behavior), the principal drew his name. It echoed across the gymnasium. He bought the red high-top sneakers his mother had said were impractical.

The cafeteria always served pudding on the days he craved it. He aced multiple-choice tests without cracking a book. When his father was up for a promotion at work, he paced the perimeter of the office building, envisioning the scene, until his father emerged and high-fived him in the parking lot.

The closer he could get to the luck, the quicker it would deliver. When he decided on Brown for college (Harvard or Yale would be too suspicious), his father took him to Rhode Island to deliver his application in person. He took seven campus tours to cover the most ground. His acceptance letter arrived a few weeks later.

By the time he was in his sixties, he was using most of his luck on internet giveaways. They were less conspicuous, and he found he could speed things along just by surfing the individual sites for a few hours a day. He took an all-expense paid trip to Montana when he won a Marlboro contest, despite the fact he preferred pipe tobacco. He entered his second cousin Darla in the HGTV dream house giveaway, which she won. He won iPads and computers and free groceries and shopping sprees, most of which he gave to relatives who were sworn to secrecy. He liked things simple. He lived on his luck, but only in such a way that he could remain under the radar.

“You gotta do the Powerball,” his elderly father croaked into the phone. “It’s the ultimate test.”

“But I have everything I need,” he said.

“Just do it,” his father said. “Do it for me? Move me into one of those luxury nursing homes with the sexy water aerobics instructors. Come on.”

So he did. He walked to the 7-11 and played his numbers. 7-37-9-2-82-12.

“Is today the day?” Kevin, who worked the register, asked.

“Might be,” he said.

“Dude, if you win, you should buy me a car. The AC’s broke in my Fiesta.”

“Sure thing,” he said.

As he left the 7-11, he ran his hand over the top of Kevin’s car and let the cool freon vision wash over him. He made a mental note to stop by the mall tomorrow and enter the drawing for whatever car they were giving away in the rotunda.

When the bowtie-clad announcer on ABC pulled the red 12 ball from the tube, he reached for the phone and called his father.

The phone rang seven times before the electricity in his house started to flicker, then went out entirely. It was almost midnight. He’d try in the morning.

The next morning, the power was still out. He went outside and headed toward the 7-11. It started to rain.

“Dude, no umbrella?” Kevin asked.

“My power’s out,” he said. “Can I use your phone?”

“Whatever,” Kevin said.

He dialed his father again. Again, no answer.

“Do you have a pen?” he asked Kevin.

Kevin gestured to the pen chained to the counter.

He pulled out his lotto ticket and signed the back of it.

“Holy shit, no way!” Kevin yelled, snatching the ticket and holding it up in the fluorescent light. “We gotta call the news!”

“I don’t want to be on TV,” he said.

“Well, I do!”

Kevin vaulted over the counter and called to his manager, “Yo, Ray! You gotta check this out!”

He tried his father one more time. When, on the seventh ring, an unfamiliar voice answered, he knew it was over.

The paramedic told him a neighbor had found his father lying in the kitchen when she came to borrow some sugar. It was probably a heart attack.

“I won the lottery,” he told the paramedic.

“You’re one lucky bastard,” the paramedic said. “I mean, man. Wow. Forget I said that.”

“I’ll be there soon,” he said.

Out the window of the 7-11, the news vans were pulling up. The camera crews swarmed Kevin and Ray, who pointed and gestured in his direction.

The television clip would replay across the country. Kevin, popping and un-popping the collar on his 7-11 polo, says, “He’s gonna buy me a car! Today’s the luckiest day of my life!” Behind him, the winner of the $290 million dollar Powerball lights his pipe and walks away.

Photograph By: Emily Blincoe
Written By: Dot Dannenberg

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

Lord Guan's Altar

“Detective Li, I just got a domestic violence call over at Redemption Towers. The patrol officer in the area is busy following up on an armed robbery. Do you mind watching the front desk while I look into it?”

It was 3:00 AM. It’d been months since Li had requested the shift change, but he was still unaccustomed to his new hours. He was restless, the prospect of manning the intake desk was unappealing. “I’ll take care of it,” he replied.

The Towers were a pair of government-subsidized residential buildings in Western. They were colloquially called Redemption Towers because the aggregate criminal record of its inhabitants rivaled that of Hong Kong island’s entire population. Naturally, the Towers were a hive for triad activity, so domestic violence calls were not unusual. The sidewalks leading to the Towers were swollen and cracked with age—damaged and neglected with no prospect for repair. Li sidestepped the disrepair and ignored the wary glances he received from residents as he made his way up Tower East.

The door to apartment 5B was askew and opened into a small kitchen, where the cabinets had been emptied. A doorway on the right led to the apartment’s sole bedroom. Alice was alone, sitting hunched on a twin-sized bed amidst a sea of debris from what appeared to have been dinner plates. She stared blankly at Li as he tiptoed his way towards her. A fresh bruise was forming on the left side of her swollen face and a streak of dried blood was smeared across her upper lip. She wasn’t crying, nor was there any indication that she had been.

“Let’s get you to the hospital,” Li said. She grabbed her purse and followed him out without a word.

The drive to the hospital was a hushed one and it wasn’t until she came out of the doctor’s office, cleaned and bandaged, that she finally broke her silence in the waiting room where Li was sipping lukewarm coffee.

“Thank you,” she whispered.

Back at the precinct, Alice was cautious in her narrative. Her boyfriend, a low-ranking member of the Three Brothers Triad, had beaten her. He’d discovered that she’d been stealing from him. But that’s where her story stopped—she refused to give up his identity and had no desire to press charges. The silence that Li had previously managed to dispel now persisted.

Alice was staring at a small desktop altar that sat above an old, dusty television in Li’s office.

“Do you believe he protects you?” She was referring to the ceramic icon of Lord Guan, angry and red-faced.

After a pause, Li replied, “No, I’d given up on gods a long time ago. After losing a wife and son to the triads, there’s not much energy left over for faith. That’s why you shouldn’t protect your boyfriend.”

She ignored his admonition. “Ironic isn’t it, Lord Guan, god of war, patron saint to cops and crooks alike. My boyfriend burns incense to him every morning. I’m sure your officers do the same.”

Alice continued, “How’d they die?”

“Who?”

“Your wife and son.”

Li was silent.

“I’m sorry, I shouldn’t pry,” Alice said.

“No, it’s alright. It’s supposed to be healthy to talk about one’s tragedies. My wife was kidnapped and shot—the price she paid for being married to a cop. And my son, well, death isn’t the only way you can lose a loved one to the triads…”

When Li realized he wasn’t going to coax any more out of her about her boyfriend, he drove her home.

It was early afternoon by the time Li’s shift ended. He stopped for dinner at Ang’s House of Curry and a cup of tea at Harmony’s before heading home. He was a regular at both spots. Routine, the doctor said, would help.

At home, he went straight to bed but was unable to fall asleep despite his exhaustion. There was an umbra of stubborn daylight illuminating the heavy curtains he had installed in a futile effort to imitate darkness. As Li lay in the stifling heat of the Hong Kong summer, he wondered if he would ever sleep again. He had changed his work schedule because of sleeplessness, which he attributed to the unbearable silence of the night. He hoped the urban frenzy, which broadcasted itself through his walls, would comfort him by mimicking the sounds his home had lost. It did not.

In his most sleepless moments, his mind wandered. Today, it was Alice. For hours he couldn’t shake the image of her milk-white innocence and fragility and the dark bloodied stains her gangster boyfriend had defiled her with.

Soon, Li was outside Tower East, coffee in hand. It was late afternoon. Sunglasses shielded his bloodshot eyes, burning in the way fatigued eyes do, from the sun. Each time he blinked, Alice’s face flashed before him. Blink. She’s smiling at him teasingly as her loose t-shirt flutters in the breeze. Blink. She’s looking down coyly as she combs her hair back behind her left ear. Blink. Her bare legs move back and forth as she shuffles her feet. Blink.

The air in the stairwell was stagnant. Beads of sweat trickled down Li’s neck and into the collar of his shirt as he made his way up to apartment 5B. The door was unlocked. Alice’s boyfriend was in the kitchen with his back facing the front door. Li heard shuffling in the bedroom—Alice. Blink.

The pistol quivered in his trembling hands as his exhaustion began manifesting itself. He pulled the trigger, striking the boy in his lower back. Alice appeared from the bedroom, letting out a bloodcurdling scream, “NOOOOO!”

As the boy’s legs buckled beneath the weight of his distorting body, he turned, revealing himself to Li. Li’s heart shuddered as he leapt towards the boy, in Alice’s arms now.

Li cried, “Danny? Danny?!”

He had lost his son twice now and there was cold comfort in the fact that he would never lose him again.

Photograph By: Jaemin Riley
Written By: Sam Chow

The Thing About Flying

So where are you going? Are you going to New York? California? Asia? Africa? Are you going to float down the Seine? Did you just see Before Sunset and now you simply have to take a trip to the old world?

Are you ready for the food? Airplane food is awful unless you’re first class. Are you first class? If so, what’s it like up there? You can recline all the way back, right? Seriously? All the way? I heard they give you an iPad to watch movies on? Any movie you want? You’re not stuck watching the latest Channing Tatum movie with the rest of us?

Now be honest, are you nervous when you see someone of Arab descent on your plane? What does this say about you? Do you go out of your way to NOT feel anything about it? Is that even possible? Do you judge people that DO admit to being nervous about it? Do you think they’re close-minded, or racist, or hillbilly? All of the above? Do other Arab people get nervous when THEY see Arab people boarding their plane? Is it only the white person guilt? Or is it guilt at all? Maybe it’s just being cognizant of the situation. Maybe it’s just being aware. Maybe we can’t stop it even if we try because we watch CNN or MSNBC or FOX NEWS (But never all three) and we’ve all watched that footage, the footage you don’t talk about, footage that is the hardest footage to watch in the whole world. Every single time you see a plane you think about it. The two things are forever linked, stuck together by the cement glue of mankind’s wickedness.

But what are you going to do, right? You can’t drive to the Bahamas. Be realistic. You’re going to have to get on that plane. You’re going to have to get up around 3:30AM and sit through security and then you’ll probably be selected at one time or another and then you’ll be embarrassed and nervous as TSA Brenda gropes you and tells you to take off your belt. Nervous? Why? I don’t know! It’s not like you have anything to hide, right? But what about that little bit of weed you once carried in your backpack during a camping trip? The backpack Brenda is currently digging through. What if a little of that weed fell out of that shitty Tupperware container and it’s sitting in the bottom of your backpack, mixed among lint, a few coins and a broken pen? Goddamnit, they’re really digging through your bag. They’ve taken out your book. They’ve taken out your notebook. THEY’RE LEAFING THROUGH YOUR NOTEBOOK?!?! You make a joke that the only thing they’re going to find in there is poorly constructed short stories, but they look at you like you’re not supposed to speak and you just broke the golden goddamn rule, so they search more frantically and somehow through this whole thing you’ve decided that you do in fact have something to hide. They’ve turned you guilty.

So finally you put your shoes and belt and jacket and hat back on and you promise yourself you’ll never again wear cowboy boots to the airport regardless of how cool you think it makes you look. You take a deep breath and you find the departures board and you need food but FUCK ME THE PLANE IS DELAYED.

FUCK. ME. THE. PLANE. IS. THREE. FUCKING. HOURS. LATE.

You take another deep breath and tell yourself you’re going to get through this. Not for one moment do you forget that you’ve paid $500 for this experience. This is like riding the world’s worst and most expensive rollercoaster. You find your gate and then you learn your fate. You ask Rhonda at the desk why the plane is three hours behind. She tells you it’s actually five hours behind, they just haven’t updated the big board. So you ask why the flight is five hours late. Rhonda curtly tells you that the plane you’re flying on is coming from Seattle. From Seattle it will land here and then from here it will go to Miami and then of course down to the Bahamas. Then she says that the plane has not yet arrived in Seattle. Your face must be doing something strange because Rhonda kind of grimaces and then the bitch actually smiles. So Rhonda, you ask, when does the plane get to Seattle? She says she doesn’t know, the system doesn’t tell her that much. There’s a big fat fucking blind spot in the system and your plane is somewhere in that grey area, like the goddamn Bermuda triangle. You literally say the words, “This is not fair,” and of course there’s a tone because Rhonda looks at you like you’re a fucking child and that phrase means absolutely nothing in the adult English language. That phrase lost its power after your tenth birthday party at putt-putt. You try to remember the last time you had a good cry, just really let it out.

So after three hours and two ten-dollar tacos that are so bad you have to throw the second one out after one bite, you head to the bookstore. You end up buying the new Dan Brown book for a small fortune even though you loathe Dan Brown AND his buddy Robert Langdon. Something has happened to you in this airport, you’ve turned into this walking, crying, bearded baby that spends too much money and gives zero fucks. You believe you dodged a bullet by not walking out with 50 Shades of Grey. You’ve lost total control.

Finally, you’re up and waiting. Group 2. You foolishly think this means you’re the second group to board, however you quickly learn it’s actually eighth to board after first class, rewards members, military people, old people, disabled people, people with babies, people with only one bag, and then finally, Group 2. You have to beast through the loitering Group 3 and Group 4 people, bumping into them, and they look at you with angry eyes because they know and you know that you’re going to take their space in the overhead bins. You smile.

Now you’re in the plane, in your seat. You think you’re all set. You’ve got a phone that’s dead, you’ve got a computer that you can’t open, you’ve got a Dan Brown book that you’re going to have to hate-read to get through. Eventually, you’ll get to the Bahamas and the beach and the fruity drinks and the sunburn. But first, a woman sits next to you. A big woman. A woman that looks at you and smiles and then says exactly what you thought she was going to say. She tells you that you remind her of her son. You smile, put on your headphones that are connected to your dead cell, and lean back and close your eyes. You think you’re safe until she taps on you on the shoulder and kind of leans in and asks the stupidest fucking question anyone has ever asked on a plane, and it’s worse because you knew it was coming.

She smiles, she leans, and she asks, “So… where are you going?”

Photograph By: Emily Blincoe
Written By: Logan Theissen

The Unlucky Ones

“OF COURSE,” Kurt yelled to the cosmos, not really expecting a response.

There was no acknowledgment after he cursed the universe for the power surge that disabled his alarm clock, or the bus that scuttled past as he ran towards the stop, or the umbrella that jammed as the skies opened up.

Kurt gave up on the polyester shield and sprinted three blocks to the sanctity of his regular coffee shop. He flung himself in the building and wiped his shoes before noticing the line of caffeine addicts that guaranteed he’d be late for work. He made peace with his impending tardiness and passed the time by trying to understand what he’d done to deserve such bad luck.

Until today, Kurt was always sitting at his desk by 9 AM. He stayed late most nights to avoid frantic commuters. He purchased wrapping paper from his coworkers’ kids and ran 5Ks to cure pancreatic cancer. His bad karma remained a mystery by the time he reached the counter.

“Well you’re here later than normal,” the barista acknowledged. “The usual?”

“Yesplease,” he quickly responded, saving seconds wherever he could.

The barista noted his accelerated speech and sidestepped to the espresso machine. Kurt reached in his back pocket for his wallet. Nothing. He tried both of his hip pockets. Nothing. He patted his breast pocket, feeling his heart drop to his feet when he pictured it on his nightstand. The steam roared from the frother in the same way it would’ve escaped Kurt’s ears if life were more like a cartoon.

“WAIT,” he called out to the barista. “Don’t make that. I forgot my wallet.”

The barista put the finishing touches on her foam four-leaf clover and sashayed the latte over to the register.

“I didn’t spend five minutes making this drink just to pour it down the sink” she said, capping the beverage and sliding it in his direction.

“Are you sure?”

“Sure am. You’re one of my best tippers. I can’t risk scaring you off.”

The universe had spoken.

“THANK YOU,” Kurt responded, startling the struggling writers and wedding planners conducting business at the surrounding tables. “I’ll pay double tomorrow.”

“I know you’re good for it. Now get to work so you can keep the generosity coming.”

Kurt turned to see people casually walking along the sidewalk, umbrellas clasped and tucked beneath their arms. He took a deep breath, resolving to forgive life for its previous mistreatment. The acquittal was short lived.

The rain returned as soon as Kurt reentered the street, proving God’s fondness for practical jokes. The cold raindrops mixed with the hot latte dribbling down his chest as he began round 2 with the umbrella.

“OF COURSE,” Kurt yelled once he noticed the stain.

“YOU NEED A RIDE?” yelled a cab driver witnessing the pathetic scene.

Kurt latched onto the door handle before even giving a nod of acknowledgement.

“Where to?” the cabbie asked as Kurt struggled to get in the taxi.

“9th and AHHHHHH,” Kurt screamed as the steel door and frame crushed his ankle like a vice. “THEHOSPITALTHEHOSPITAL!”

Kurt managed to lift his paralyzed foot into the cab and close the door. In the midst of his agonizing pain, he remembered he had no means of paying his cab driver.

“Listen,” Kurt hissed through his teeth. “I don’t have any money.”

“What do you mean you don’t have any money?” the cabbie interrogated. “I just saw you come out of a coffee shop.”

“I know! I had to tell them the same thing. I’m so sorry. PLEASE, just help me. I’ll take down your name and pay you double later.” Kurt bargained.

The cabbie scoffed and stopped the car in front of the ambulance entrance. Medical personnel berated him until Kurt flung the back door open.

“HELP,” he called out, unable to put enough weight on his foot to climb out of the vehicle.

A pair of nurses retrieved him from the back seat and helped him into a wheelchair. Kurt glanced over his shoulder and spotted the cab number before they rolled him through the automatic doors. He pulled out his phone and jotted it down before it slipped from his short-term memory.

“I’ll bring you your paperwork,” said the nurse not pushing the wheelchair.

Kurt dialed “2” on his phone and waited for the tone.

“Hello? Kurt?” his wife answered.

“Yeah.”

“I was just about to call you. I found your wallet on the nightstand.”

“Did you happen to see my common sense there too?”

She laughed.

“What are you talking about?”

“I can’t go into it now, but long story short, I slammed my foot in a taxi door. I’m at the hospital.”

“Oh my God!”

“It’s fine, sort of, but will you PLEASE bring me my wallet? I need my insurance card and stuff.”

“Of course! I’m so sorry, Dear!”

“I know, just hurry.”

“K. Leaving now. Love you.”

“I love you too.”

Kurt replaced the soothing sound of his wife’s voice with a string of expletives that would make a sailor blush.

“God damn mother fucking alarm clock. Stupid shit-eating bus driver. Fucking rain storm. Fucking cab. Fucking ankle. Fucking...”

Kurt’s flow of foul language was interrupted by a stampede of EMTs and MDs pushing a gurney through the ER like an Olympic bobsled team. They disappeared behind a pair of double-hinged doors before he could clearly see the occupant of the stretcher, but the blood-spattered woman being restrained by a pair of nurses painted a grim picture of the unfortunate soul. She thrashed and screamed and cried hysterically as the nurses struggled to keep her out of the operating room.

Kurt reverted his gaze back to his phone and allowed the stinging sensation in his ankle to consume his entire body. He felt it rush from his foot to every hair follicle on his head. He felt his phone vibrate with a text from his wife announcing her arrival. And at that moment, he felt like the luckiest man alive.

Photograph By: Emily Blincoe
Written By: Mark Killian

Cool

It was that point in winter when the snow drifts started blocking the view at intersections. In the car on the way home from school, Rocko’s mom cranked the heater up full blast and rolled the windows down. She craned her neck to check for cars, then turned onto their street.

Rocko jammed his hands into the pocket of his hoodie.

“How was school?”

“Fine.”

“Did you learn anything?”

“No.”

Rocko was already out of the car before his mom cut the ignition. He had shit to do, and it didn’t involve shoveling snow or checking on Mrs. Gotwalls next door or having an afternoon snack while he caught his mom up on high school happenings.

Down in the basement, he colored the white rubber toe of his Converse sneaker with a black Sharpie while he waited for the dial up to connect.

On AIM, sn0wbunny86’s away message, purple comic sans with little asterisk accents, told Rocko she was just waiting for someone to sign on:

and if this is what it takes / just to lie with my mistakes / and live with what i did to you /
all the heIl i put you through / i always catch the clock / it's 11:11/ and now you want to talk

He wasn’t going to play into what she wanted just yet. Rocko finished coloring in his shoe.

There it was.

sn0wbunny86: hey

He waited a few seconds. He wouldn’t want her to think him overeager.

sn0wbunny86: whats up?

Okay, now.

orockorocko: nm
sn0wbunny86: school sucked today
orockorocko: completely
sn0wbunny86: i’m so tired!!
orockorocko: yeah
sn0wbunny86: are you tired
orockorocko: i slept in english
sn0wbunny86: lol!! you always get away with stuff

Rocko waved the uncapped Sharpie under his nose and sniffed three times, almost as a joke. He capped the Sharpie and tried to spin it over his thumb like the debate kids. It torpedoed onto the floor behind the desk chair. Next he fiddled with the bent cigarette he’d bummed from some goth kid at school. Rocko didn’t even have a lighter. He’d have to work on that.

orockorocko: not as much as you do lol

Sn0wbunny86 had two classes with Rocko. She lived three blocks away in the same subdivision, Tregaron Oaks III, which sprung up after the identical houses in Tregaron Oaks II had devolved mostly to rentals. Sn0wbunny86’s real name was Heather.

When people asked whether they were together, Rocko shrugged it off. “Whatever,” he’d say. “We’re just friends.”

Heather wasn’t exactly beautiful. She looked like all the other girls in Nebraska. Freckly nose, stringy brown hair, no makeup. Skinny legs and a little bit of a pudge, which she hid under her knockoff North Face.

Nothing physical had happened between them yet. Heather’s parents had a strange no-boys-in-the-house policy, and Rocko’s parents weren’t much better, frantically worrying that his “bad attitude” would send him down the slippery slope of marijuana like his cousin Josh. His parents liked him busy, preferably at church.

But parental paranoia didn’t prevent Heather from stirring up enough tension as sn0wbunny86 to prompt hours of analysis. Heather rehashed everything with her best friend Kristen. When Rocko said she “wasn’t not good looking” what did that mean? Why couldn’t she get him to reveal his feelings on AIM? She even logged in with Kristen’s screen name trying to prompt Rocko to say he liked her, but he didn’t budge.

And yet, they IM’d until 3 AM most nights, continuing their are-we/aren’t-we dance, unless Rocko’s mom saw the light squinting from the basement door and shut the whole operation down, because it’s a school night and what were you even thinking?

sn0wbunny86: i only get away with stuff with you ;)
orockorocko: yeah…lol
sn0wbunny86: soooooooo what are u doing tonight?

Rocko took a deep breath. The pixels in the computer screen were starting to look a little 3D, like a magic eye he’d stared at for too long.

orockorocko: i’m gonna come see you

At the bottom of the IM window, the “sn0wbunny86 is typing…” message flickered on and off like a twitchy light bulb.

A good three minutes. Then her response appeared.

sn0wbunny86: where

All that for one word? Rocko hoped she was anxious, too.

orockorocko: the park. across from the miller’s house
sn0wbunny86: u sure? ummm what time?
orockorocko: 1 AM. i g2g, mom needs the phone
sn0wbunny86: wait hang on
orockorocko: just be there

He signed off. Tilting the desk chair back onto two legs, Rocko reached for the Sharpie on the floor.

His mom opened the basement door.

“You’re going to ruin that chair or crack your head open. Your choice!” his mom called.

“Okay, Mom.”

After dinner, Rocko made a big show of dragging his eight million pound book bag up the stairs to “work on homework.” At ten thirty, wearing pajama pants, he made another show of going to the kitchen for milk and being “really wiped out.” At twelve fifty, Rocko sneaked out the sliding glass door and into the yard.

It was snowing, and the street lamps glowed hazy overhead.

Heather stood on the corner by the Miller’s. She’d brought her family’s dog, Lucky. Good excuse if she got caught.

Rocko reached into the pocket of his hoodie and ran his fingers over his stash. Matches. Cigarette. Spearmint gum, just in case. Sharpie, for some reason.

“I’ve never snuck out before,” Heather tittered.

“I know,” Rocko said.

“Have you?”

“I don’t remember,” Rocko said.

He hadn’t. He hadn’t done anything. He’d never done anything. He’d always been supervised and chauffeured around—jailed. He knew all his friends were probably lying about how far they’d gotten with girls, about the one time their brother bought them beer, but surely something was supposed to happen eventually.

He struck a match and lit the cigarette like he’d seen people do at school, shielding the flame from the falling snow.

“I didn’t know you smoked,” Heather said.

“I mean, sometimes,” Rocko said, trying not to choke.

“Cool,” Heather said. “Can I try it?”

Rocko passed her the cigarette. She held it formally, as if she were clenching a peace sign. She took a drag, letting the smoke drift back out into the freezing air, then passed it back.

“Sorry if I got chapstick on the end,” Heather said. “You know…it’s almost like we’ve kissed now.”

Rocko looked for lip prints on the cigarette paper. He didn’t see anything.

“Yeah,” he said. “I guess it is.”




Photograph By: Yanbo Tang
Written By: Dot Dannenberg

Playlist

1. “Better Off Alone” by Alice Deejay

The first time Kat met Mason, she was walking out of the lunch line into the cafeteria with an orange tray of fried chicken, green beans, mashed potatoes, and a carton of chocolate milk. The girls her age were all so skinny, wore shorts that made her panties seem like boxer briefs, and knew what it was like to make out. Kat spent most of her time cheek-deep in a fantasy novel and watching Sailor Moon. She was pretty convinced that no one would be interested in her for a long time, if ever.

Her best friend Sophia waved her over to a table by the vending machines, smiling with a mouthful of braces. Kat took a seat across from her and noticed the boy to her left wearing a black Linkin Park tee and leather wrist cuff. She noticed the moon-like craters in his blue eyes when he met her gaze as she managed a tight, closed-lip smile.

“Omigosh, Mason! This is Kat,” Sophia began. “She’s been my BFF for like ever! She plays guitar and knows the lyrics to every Spice Girls song!”

Slightly embarrassed by the introduction, Kat looked down at her mashed potatoes and wondered if she should stop getting lunch from the hot line.

“I’m not really into them as much anymore,” Kat said, pushing the green beans around with her fork. “I’ve been listening to a lot more techno lately.”

She noticed Mason perk up and lean forward with his forearms crossed on the tabletop. “Oh, cool! So, you’re into like BT and Alice Deejay?”

Kat’s eyes shot up and her back straightened with renewed confidence. Mason was smiling at her and she realized she would totally make out with him if he asked her.


2. “Meant to Live” by Switchfoot

Kat and Mason were sitting in his Pontiac Sunfire in the parking lot of their favorite coffee shop. Kat’s first gig was in an hour and her performance anxiety was not agreeing with her dinner of Japanese fast food. Mason knew better than to bother her with encouragement, so he turned up the volume on the radio and smiled as a familiar guitar riff opened up their favorite song of senior year.

“Fumbling his confidence and wondering why the world has passed him by...”

He held her hand resting on her thigh and leaned his head back, closing his eyes. Kat was singing with the chorus quietly as she looked out the passenger side window at passing traffic, a setting sun, and cars pulling in. She took in a deep breath.

“Okay,” she sighed. “I’m ready.”

Mason cut off the ignition and leaned over to kiss her cheek.


3. “Fix You” by Coldplay

When Kat got off the phone, she curled up into a ball on her tiny bed in the dorm room she shared with a predominantly absent roommate. It was the week before final exams during Spring Semester of her freshman year at the College of Charleston. She held a pillow against her face and sobbed, a deep and guttural sound that made her body quake. There was no one to comfort her, no one around to explain why something so terrible could happen. Why did Sophia go to that party? Why did she have to drink so much? Why didn’t they go to the same school so Kat could have stopped her?

Her phone rang. She didn’t want someone else to say her best friend was dead, but she looked at the screen anyway and saw Mason’s name. He was at Savannah College of Art and Design, which meant he was over two hours away. Kat wiped her nose on the pillow, rolled over onto her back, and answered the call without saying anything.

“Hey, Kat.”

She didn’t respond.

“I know you’re really upset, but can you come downstairs? I’m here.”

Kat immediately started sobbing again as she got out of bed and mumbled through salty saliva and grief, “I love you so much. I love you so so much.”


4. “Politics of Resignation” by Motionless

They were on a bus headed from Madrid to Trujillo, Spain. Mason had his headphones on, listening to some obscure post-rock instrumental band as was the trend since they graduated in the Spring. It was their first time being in a foreign country together and a way to kick off the their professional futures. Teach for America assigned Kat to a team in Los Angeles and Mason took a job with a video game company in Santa Monica.

Mason placed a bud in Kat’s ear and said, “Listen to this one.”

Kat placed her book in the seat pocket in front of her and curled up in the crook of Mason’s arm as she closed her eyes. The electric guitars made her heart hurt and the drums pressed her into the future.


5. “The Only Moment We Were Alone” by Explosions in the Sky

The heat and humidity of the concert venue made Kat want to vomit. There were so many people with clammy skin brushing against her bare arms. The look of disgust was obvious enough to make Mason laugh and pull her close to him. He leaned against the wall and she against his chest as he wrapped his arms around her. Kat was already feeling a little sick, wondering if she should take a pregnancy test when they got home. Mason was playing with the fingers of her left hand as the band plucked the first notes of their favorite song. They were silent in the car ride home, the music still resonating in their bones. Mason pulled into the driveway and got out first. When the light turned on in the car, Kat suddenly noticed a thin gold band holding a small emerald on her left ring finger. Mason opened the passenger side door and leaned in, smiling. Kat looked into his face and nodded, leaping from her seat and into his arms.

Photograph By: Emily Blincoe
Written By: Natasha Akery

In the Darkness

 
Her mother named her Desire, then gave her up for adoption. Charlotte and Ben argued about the name as they signed the paperwork. Charlotte wanted to call her Evelyn after her sister, but Ben said they should respect the mother’s wishes.

“It’s the one thing she has from her mom,” Ben said.

“I’m her mom now,” Charlotte pleaded, but Desire stuck.

Desire grew up with no false assumptions about her birth. Her adoptive parents repeated the story constantly—how her real mother was struggling with the sin of addiction, and how Jesus brought Desire to their home to be a beacon of light in the darkness.

Desire, unaware of metaphor or of the silent darkness that is infertility, looked around for the dark wherever she went. She saw it down open manholes and on moonless nights. She saw it in her adoptive grandmother’s basement as it appeared in her nightmares. And then, in fourth grade, her Sunday school teacher Mr. George said it was time to address the darkness head on. It was time for street evangelism.

After church, the fourth graders climbed into the fifteen-passenger van with Eagle Vista Fellowship painted on the side, armed with paper tracts.

“Does everyone have their buddy?” Mr. George asked, twisting from behind the steering wheel.

Everyone did. Desire’s buddy was Brittany, who had won a medal last month for memorizing the most Bible verses. Brittany, whose blonde hair was so long she could sit on it. Brittany, whom Charlotte said had been blessed with a generous spirit, since her little brother had Down’s and was God’s special gift in difficult packaging.

93.8 THE FISH was playing a jangling praise song, and Brittany lifted her tinny voice to sing along with Mr. George. They were headed towards the part of town where Ben and Charlotte delivered meals on wheels to the needy. The front porches were crowded with junk. Some houses had broken windows or dangling shutters.

“This is it!” called Mr. George. “Stay with your buddy, and remember to pray over each house, even if the people don’t want to talk.”

Brittany ran ahead, calling for Desire to catch up. She had already scampered onto the first porch and pressed her pinky into the doorbell by the time Desire made it into the yard. Brittany rang the bell three times, but no one came. At the end of the driveway, the girls held hands as Brittany prayed over the house. Desire always kept her eyes open during prayers to see who else was peeking. Brittany wasn’t peeking. Desire looked at the sky, where she imagined God was glaring down at her for not speaking to him more sincerely with her heart. She saw a giant bird lope through the air and land on a telephone pole.

“Amen,” Brittany said.

“Look at that bird,” Desire said. “I think it’s a buzzard.”

“It’s not!” Brittany said, still speaking in her praying voice. “It’s an Eagle! For Eagle Vista! It’s a sign Jesus is blessing our work here today. We have a lot of people to reach. Why don’t you go down this side of the street, and I’ll take that side? Then we can bless twice as many houses!”

Desire, more from watching Scooby Doo cartoons than from listening to Mr. George, knew they shouldn’t split up, but she also wasn’t sure how much more of Brittany’s praying she could take in one afternoon.

“Okay, but don’t go to the next street until I catch up,” she said.

Desire shuffled her tracts as she waited on the next porch. An old lady peeked through the curtains and glared. At another house, a man thought she was selling Girl Scout cookies, but didn’t want to talk about God. Finally, at 665 Winthrop Street, someone took a tract.

The woman at the door was pale, and so skinny you could pour water into her collarbones and it would stay there. Her greasy, red hair was slicked back, and her eyes were glassy. Desire didn’t want to look at her face, so she looked at her feet.

“I like your anklet,” Desire said.

The woman laughed. “I blinged it out the best I could! Still keeps me on the porch.”

On the black plastic, a little green light blinked among stick-on rhinestones.

“What’s this paper all about?” the woman asked.

“Jesus wants to love you,” Desire said.

“About time somebody did,” the woman said. “What’s your name, church girl?”

“Desire.”

“That’s some name.”

“I’m adopted.”

“For real? Your parents told you that already? Damn.”

“Yeah. You shouldn’t say that word.”

The woman laughed again. “You come up on my porch and tell me what I can’t say?”

Desire backed down the steps into the yard.

“Do you want me to pray with you?” Desire asked, following the script she’d practiced with Brittany.

“Why not.”

Desire looked over her shoulder for Brittany, but didn’t see her anywhere. The bird flapped its wings on the pole, its feathers like long black fingers.

“Well, you gonna pray?” the lady asked.

“Um, dear Jesus, please bless—sorry, I don’t know your name.”

“Charlotte,” the woman said.

Desire stared at her, straight in the eyes this time. At that moment, Desire felt Jesus was trying to tell her something: this was her real mom.

“Don’t you remember me?” Desire asked.

“No. Should I? Your church group come here before?” the woman said.

“Did you have a baby nine years ago?”

“Hey crazy, I don’t have kids!” the woman laughed.

From behind her, Desire heard a sound like the screeching of a screen door. She whipped around expecting to see Brittany leaving a house, but the noise was coming from the buzzard, swooping down into the yard.

Where was Brittany? And why didn’t her mom remember? Was Jesus not speaking to her after all?

“Can you help me find my friend?” Desire asked. “And scare off that bird? He’s freaky.”

“They’ll be after me if I leave the house.”

Desire suddenly felt sweaty. Her mother, or Jesus, one, was abandoning her again, and there were people in this neighborhood who would get you if you went outdoors. And she had abandoned blonde-haired, generous-spirited Brittany alone in this land of darkness.

“Please help me?”

“Sorry,” Charlotte said, retreating back into her house. “You’re on your own.”




Photograph By: Emily Blincoe
Written By: Dot Dannenberg

Rosamund Parker

“I heard there are alligators in these swamps.”

“Bullshit,” I reply. “Maybe further east but not here. Someone would know if they were here.”

Like royalty, Big Jonny and I sit surveying our kingdom, drinking beer we are too young to buy. This is Texas and we are celebrating our country’s independence. There are parties scattered around the lake, pods of the American semi-nude, and as the sun goes down the water acts like a mirror reflecting the sky. The image is of twin suns stacked like bunk beds, one on top of the other. In this twilight, I am dreaming of Rosamund Parker.

“Fuck alligators,” I mutter. “I’ve got more important shit to deal with. She doesn’t even know my name.”

She doesn’t even know my name, Jonny sings. He sounds like a fine country singer. I love her, and she doesn’t even know my name.

“I’m serious,” I say, “It’s pathetic.”

Big Jonny nods and chugs his beer. He finishes and leans back in his orange lawn chair that’s worn out like blue jeans, and casually crushes the empty can between his big sausage fingers. Jesus, I think, those fucking hands could crush a skull.

As for Rosamund Parker, her beauty is refreshing like an oasis in the desert. She wears big, rangy glasses, and has brown eyes, and looks very serious until she smiles. She seems to have this Miles Davis cool about her, though to be honest I don’t know anything you can’t observe from a distance. I study Rosamund Parker like one would study a Great White shark. She is mildly popular at school and moves graciously among the groups that bunch the hallways. She smokes with the freaks, lunches with the nerds, and parties with the jocks. She’s the consummate lead in school plays and in third grade she punched Sally Jenkins in Social Studies, letting everyone know, even then, she was not to be trifled with. For whatever reason, she does this all with siren-like blue hair. Troll Doll hair. She has freckles that go great with anything and if I were a different person leading a different life she would be my girlfriend.

Big Jonny smashes another beer can, this time with his cowboy boot. The cicadas soundtrack the night and there are teenage shouts from the party nearby.

“Best get on with it,” Big Jonny drawls. “I suppose she will be here, big party and all.” And here he begins to sing again, passionately and embarrassingly.

I can feel it cu-ming in the air tonight…hold on!

“Nice, Phil Collins,” I mumble.

I’m nervous at the party, drinking too much and stealing glances at Rosamund Parker. I know this is my last chance as she’s soon leaving for college. The stage is set and now the requisite fright is setting in. To soothe the nerves, Big Jonny suggests a keg stand, and it’s fresh off this keg stand that I find myself surrounded like a press conference, offering explanations.

“I just kept drinking,” I say. “Nothing else to it.”

“That was the longest I’ve seen,” says a cute blonde girl, and then from the back of the crowd a muffled, “That’s what she said.”

And finally, between the laughs, “Your name is Stan, right?”

I turn to find Rosamund Parker. She’s grasped my arm. I panic.

“What?”

Slowly, she replies, “Stan. Right?”

“Right,” I say. “Stan.”

She doesn’t smile at me, but she doesn’t take her eyes from mine either. Instead, she squints at me as if I’m far away. I think she is the most beautiful, most drunk creature I’ve ever seen.

“Rosamund,” she says. “Rosamund Parker.”

That night we slept together. It was my first time, and as it turned out, her last.

As time has taken an eraser to my memories, I’ve lost many of the details. Perhaps the incredible nature of the morning that followed somehow dulled the preceding night – like trying to see in the dark after turning off the light. As it is, I remember snapshots of the nocturnal tryst that even when pieced together reveal only the corners of a puzzle.

I remember her pink bra crumpled on the ground, the feel of her hipbones to my fingers, and how she attacked my ear with her teeth. I remember the sound of sticks breaking as we rolled in the dirt, and her sweaty palms as she led me through the darkness of the woods to seclusion. Most of all, I remember her blue hair.

In the morning I’m awakened by screams. The sound leaves no time for a fuzzy adjustment period but even standing and awake I can’t believe my eyes.

Rosamund Parker is being dragged. Only her torso is visible. She is wearing my pearl snap shirt and the look on her face, years later, will keep me staring at ceilings for nights on end. There is a grating sound, like something being crunched and torn at the same time, and the sound sparks one excruciatingly obvious thought.

This is Rosamund Parker being eaten by an alligator.

Before I’ve taken a step, the gator has her in the water. There is thrashing, screaming, choking, crying, and ripping. The last I see of her is the hair, but really it’s over before it even began.

In the moments following, there is an eerie calm as I take in my surroundings. I am on the shore of a swamp and the water is low and muddy. Surprisingly there is no blood, as if nothing out of the ordinary has happened. In the coming days I know there will be questions and newspaper stories, national interviews, and a Jaws-like hunt for the killer beast. They’ll eventually find bits of her in the animal’s stomach, and remnants of a toenail will acquit me of murder.

It was my sixteenth summer. A summer of firsts. The shade fought the heat, the bugs stretched their wings, and nature laid Rosamund Parker to rest.

Photograph by: Jaemin Riley
Written by: Logan Theissen

After the Storm

The first frost came early that year, hardening the alluvial mountain earth – with it, soon after, the first winter storm. That meant the main road that cut through the mountains and out of the town was closed early, though it was at some point every winter. So Arata waited.

Time’s forward progression no longer felt like a certainty as the harsh frost froze everything it touched. Arata waited without any assurance that waiting would bring her any closer to realizing her plans. She sat patiently in the quiet of her living room watching the smoke snake out of her neighbor’s detached kitchen. Now and again, a huddled mass could be seen rushing from the kitchen to its attendant house with an armful of steaming food. She thought how curious it was that a detached kitchen, an antiquated and inconvenient architectural design, should still exist. The days and weeks and months passed and Arata continued to sit and wait. There was nothing else left for her to do.

Then spring came.

The winter weather had finally broken and the heavy curtain of cold lifted. The transformation was sudden. In a matter of days, the accumulated snow gave way to a dramatic explosion of green.

Arata gathered her worn suitcase, one her father had given to her before she went off to university, which she had prepared months before that first winter storm. Bits of dried faux leather flaked at its corners, revealing a layer of thin foam intended to mimic the suppleness of real animal hide. Memories of her father soon occupied her mind and she thought of how she had always despised her name. She was older now, but still carried a harmless resentment towards her parents for having given her a boy’s name.

At her doorway, decrepit suitcase in hand, she turned to look at the house where she had raised her family. She had always been, first and foremost, a mother and the house was her domain. From where she stood, the living room to her right and the hallway leading to the two bedrooms to her left, she could see the small kitchen, gently illuminated by the early dawn sunlight, just beyond the foyer where she had spent so many hours of her life. The pots and pans were suspended over the narrow gas range from a rack now caked in hardened grease. The pantry adjacent to the range was stocked with a healthy quantity of dried and canned staples. Arata wondered if she had left any milk in her refrigerator and contemplated checking, but then decided that it didn’t matter.

Arata pictured her children’s bedroom and the bedroom she had shared with her husband, the closets storing decades’ worth of clothing. In the foyer itself, a family portrait sat atop a candlestand table, welcoming visitors as they entered the home. Arata checked her watch and closed the door behind her, leaving it unlocked as she left.

The virgin spring air was cool, a remnant of the long winter. Arata made her way slowly to the bus station on the other side of town, both to enjoy the fresh air and because the slight hitch in her gait forced her. It was early yet, so the shops were still shuttered. She smiled politely at the handful of proprietors getting ready for the day’s business.

“Good morning Mrs. Sato. Going on a trip?” Mr. Yoshida asked.

What was this?

Arata shared the bus into the city with just one other passenger, a young woman dressed in traditional Japanese garb. She regarded the young woman’s beauty and wondered why she was dressed so formally before turning to her own translucent reflection in the clouded glass. Vanity had once been her greatest weakness. Even now, having been humbled by the passage of time, she took quiet pride in her girlish appearance which so often fooled those who attempted to guess her age. Only her hands, with its deep folds and dark blemishes, gave any indication of a life long-lived.

Arata took the sleeve of her thin cotton sweater into her fist and wiped away the condensation on the bus window, leaving a trail of water droplets in her wake. For a brief moment, she could see the world outside with a level of clarity possible only in contrast, but the early morning air quickly shrouded the glass pane with a new layer of fog.

Her right arm was propped against her seat, her left rested atop her suitcase just lightly enough to ensure it was there. The bus was at an incline as it climbed the unpaved mountain roads, still soft and moist from newly melted snow, the trees a continuous blur of green. She wasn’t running away. No, that would imply a shirking of authority or obligation – but there was none of that left, her children and her husband having passed. Doubt was all that was left. This was something different. She wondered if her motivation was even relevant anymore.

There was a past and a future, maybe. But there was no present.

As the bus entered the city proper, the mountain clouds that had clung stubbornly to the bus and the dreamlike miasma that had encapsulated the vehicle, dissipated. The unruly ride of the rural roads gave way to a dull hum of paved highways. Arata wasn’t sure if she had fallen asleep during the bus ride, but when she opened her eyes the world had changed. She turned her body towards the bus’s panoramic windows with a childlike enthusiasm as she saw the urban landscape come into view. Her heart beat headily.

As Arata stepped off the bus, the urban din immediately flooded her head, but the discordance played like a wonderful orchestra to her. The grey of the city was a curious novelty – even the green of the trees were darkened by the shadow of the imposing skyscrapers. Perhaps here she could disappear. Perhaps here, her solitude would be a blessing. This was the present now.




Written By: James Mo
Photo By: Becky Lee