Table of Contents

1. Maldives

   max sunog

2. A different kind of love

   ella markianos

3. like in those movies

   Alec bode mathur

4. afterlife

   amelia o.

5. Evanie

   Alex Williams

6. spring break

   ella markianos

7. untitled

   alex krusell

8. event horizon

   nate gardiner//iokera

9. thinking of you

   betty smart

10. inquiry into burning / at night you swim

    markus Tran

11. over again

    jocelyn olum

12. yrta 731

    nate gardiner//iokera

13. unpleasant fortitudes

    soraya mwangi

Photography by Adrianna Bruise & Alec Bode Mathur

Maldives

max sunog

It has been an altogether unsatisfactory day until the moment I am interrupted by a flyer that blows into my face as I stroll down Newbury street, an extravagantly lavish shopping strip, overcrowded with gluttonous stores, or boutiques, as I’m told they’re called. I am there only to get my coffee, a chemical necessity in recent days, as a recent lack of funds has required that I work more and sleep less. So I am not truly awake when a majestic little house in the Maldives, pool deck and all, slams into me with the force of a fifty mile-per-hour or so gust that the weatherman has somehow failed to predict. All this to say I have neither the time nor reflexes to react before I am entranced by the property, quaint and luxurious, cozy and open. Nine-hundred square meters of estate on stilts, resting above the endless turquoise. A swing in the back, and, oh! Two ladders stemming from the deck that lead directly into the clearest ocean I have ever seen. Too mesmerized to turn away, I watch myself fold the paper three times and place it inside my left coat pocket.

From two until eleven, I serve the customers, taking their orders to the chef who labors tirelessly to transform the words into magnificent creations. The work is tolerable; the chef is a magician, his hands natural tools, chopping and stirring and mixing and twisting, producing wonder after wonder. A dash of this, a sprinkle of that, the flash of a flame: another perfect feast. Occasionally, a customer has the nerve to request an adjustment to his brilliantly crafted menu, each dish balanced, creative, unique, just right in every way. And when somebody tells me that I have to alert the chef of a modification, when I have to impede the chef’s trade, on his life… that is the disheartening part of the job. But management has warned me about demeanor, and tips are imperative now, so I maintain a smile, my cheery facade. Regardless, all is forgiven at night when we close, and I eat. Anything on his menu, gratis! Typically, I savor every delectable note that hits my palette, taking it in like a symphony, each bite harmonious, developing into one complex, cohesive taste. Today, I scarf down my monkfish without a second thought and run off to catch my train.

The minute I get on the T to ride home, I carefully remove the flyer and unfold it. Admiring the picture, I am struck with the joy of the moment we connected, that profound instant, sweeping me off into another world. Looking further down the inside cover, I encounter the most enchanting paragraph I have to this day read, pithily titled: Maldives. Imagine waking to the sweet sounds of the waves lapping up the beach, ten feet from your doorstep. I imagine this. No, I luxuriate in it. I luxuriate in the house, I walk to the window and peer out, observe as a seagull flies lazy loops along the shore, not a care for the world. I sit on my deck, relaxing with my favorite classical music (I have always had a taste for the simple compositions of Mozart), occasionally opening my eyes to see the blue, so rich and so, so blue… I continue reading. You can find that here in the beautiful Maldives!   

The inside cover has grace, allure, charm, artistry. It is a work of art. The back cover is solid muddy green with poorly selected typography. It has no elegant descriptions, no transportive prose, no wondrous photography. Only a crude dollar symbol, followed by a vulgar number.

To me, this is the crux, the gruesome essence of injustice in the world. Through a stroke of absurd luck, I have been shown my calling, so clearly molded for me, so obviously my escape from this world of meaningless success, this weary, relentless forward march. It was mine, and it was vindictively seized from me so soon. Maybe that is karma’s crushing inevitability; I hope not. I hope it is a sign that I am meant for more.  Because if that house is not for me, then why is it there? Surely it is not for one of those insatiable elites, gorging, affluent simpletons that eat at my restaurant and can’t be bothered to respect the virtuosity, the craft. Those wealthy blasphemers who would buy the house solely to accumulate things, to have another house, in their brutish braggadocio.

It is an insult to the house itself, to its splendor, to be owned by anyone, especially someone so blind to its grandeur. No, it must be tenderly occupied, and the occupant must understand and accept the role that they are undertaking, the privileges and responsibilities both, considerable as they are. So it is permissible, even just; it is honorable that I take steps to ensure that the house falls into the gentle, caressing hands of someone who can properly care for it.  

My plan is elegant, less a display of simple brilliance than an exposé of the egregious security flaws embedded in standard restaurant payment procedure. Still, I am trembling when I check in at two, a mangled mess of nerves, and I am certain my co-workers can see it. I know they must be aware that something is amiss—running off early last night when I am always the last to leave, and now being anything less than the very image of presentable—obviously, I am disturbed. For a moment, I consider delaying the operation, allowing myself to settle down. But then I think about the house, and then I push both thoughts out of mind. I must work fast, focused.  

In a compromise and a legitimate effort to pacify myself, I elect to bide my time until the dinner rush. I suspect that I simply am afraid, but I rationalize it well: the chaotic tumult will shroud my mischief, the drinking will dull perceptions.

Over the course of the next five hours, my anticipation transforms, its tendrils of anxiety that prod at my consciousness slowly retreat, only to return as excitement. At seven, we are a full house and I cannot wait a moment more, so when my first table pays with cash, I am disappointed.  But not disheartened. My second table leaves a card, and when I slip into the back room to charge them, I record the name, number, and security code, almost an anti-climax in its simplicity. The mother is wearing a Berklee shirt, though, and she seems to be a music professor, an artist. Not our usual crowd and not my first choice mark. Feeling some remorse for her, I remove the drinks from their bill.

Throughout the night, I take ten more cards, each time easier and more exhilarating than the last. The thrill is addictive, and it is almost impossible to stop myself after the eleventh, but I must end with one final card, and I know better than to play with Judas’ number. Regardless, eleven is enough, especially from this crowd. I doubt any of them will even notice my purchases, absorbed as they are in their own realities. At least, they won’t notice the smaller purchases, the little items and trinkets I’ll buy to sell overseas. But an expensive, one-way ticket to Asia? Perhaps that could slip past their senses, numbed by constant consumption. But perhaps not, and hence: the second part of the first phase of my plan.

It is 9:30, leaving me two table turns, or eight more opportunities. I have no worries; as I was shown my place in the Maldives, so too will I be delivered. And yes, as I slowly patrol the restaurant, I hear it: a family sitting at table 4B. The father is a businessman, probably owns a major company, maybe a banking giant. Maybe one of those cutthroat companies, where you can’t make one mistake or you’re gone, where you have to spend every moment working, laboring to keep your place, or the next drone will take it. Where you can’t waste a minute, can’t spare a second, where you are consumed by your uphill climb to the top, your frivolous, futile battle for success.

However he stole his money, truly, I don’t care, because he is working on a merger with a company based in South Korea. And recently, he’s been taking business trips. And, what’s that? He has been indulging himself, taking business trips around the continent, writing them off as expenses? His company is doing so well that he could write off this several hundred dollar meal as an expense? Maybe he could even write off one additional trip to the Maldives. When he hands me his card, I smile a most genuine smile and give him my dearest thanks, because his corruption is the key to my victory, and he, the honorable sacrifice for my escape.

Until the end of my shift, I am buzzing, excitement zipping around my body, a staggering energy yearning to be used, aching to be harnessed. But I can control myself and cannot afford to attract any attention. So, with ferocious restraint, I sit down to eat my quail. In my eagerness, I have forgotten how to eat thoughtfully, but I take each bite slowly, methodically, counting to five in my head before the next mechanical motion.  

After a thirty minute lifetime, I am done. Frantically suppressing the frenzy of emotion coursing through me, I run off to catch my train. I arrive at the station, hop on the T, and I am free, invisible among the midnight crowd, preoccupied and uninterested. Oblivious as they may be, they are my convivial allies, and we celebrate silently.

A Different Kind of Love

ella markianos

moura

It reminds me of home

but everywhere

Reminds me of home

Green shadows between mountains

Tree roots spiraling around cliffs

Deep light and deep shadow

Embracing in the gaps between trees

Trees heartful and wiry enough

That I can almost see the moura my grandmother

Lifted me up the fruit-heavy branches to pick that summer

Pure sick-sweet and bursting

I would gather them until my hands

Were stained blue-purple

I have never been more on top of the world

Than I was that morning

on the highest branches of our neighbor's’ tree

Breathing cool sweet air pierced with mulberries

And the smell of my grandmother like old musk and rose perfume

My Yaya whose language I do not speak

Except in those soft silences where her callous-mapped palms

Fit my unmarked hands

Who sows the seeds of life each year

And is forever hoisting me up into the moura tree

girl friend

i live with you for the soft times in between

when grey and pink bleed into each other

and nobody cares and the world is ours

hushed conversations in the backs of taxi

cabs

secrets softer under moonlight

and adolescence we have not yet overcome

a love so raw it needs no touch or desperation

to reach out among the stars and take our pick

holding them in our hands like ripe cherries

and taking our first bite;

they taste of more

than I could’ve dreamed

good morning, boston

I can stretch my mind farther when I’m close to home,

where the bushes feel like trees and the

breeze smells like raspberries, where the

pancakes in the diner are always blueberry

but they’ll make you chocolate chip if you ask

real nice

Where Thalia who has been working there

fifteen-maybe-twenty years turns over

the closed sign every morning at 7am

when the sun is beginning to peek out

so tender each morning even the

homeless man who lives by the

supermarket smiles

a little

like in those movies

Alec bode mathur

A small woman who seemed to perpetually be looking up, Lana expended considerable effort to appear to have simply fallen into the company of those she was with. She was perched on the arm of the couch with her legs crossed pointedly at the knee, one elbow resting on her thigh. She gestured in small motions and spoke only just loud enough to be heard without strain.

“I have to agree with you, you can’t help but connect with him.”

“He’s just so…raw, it makes him relatable.” William laughed, “Relatable but disgusting.”

His long legs stretched out in front of him, his potentially imposing stature defeated by his haphazard manner of arranging his limbs. William gave the impression of a man whose jacket didn’t fit quite right across his shoulders, despite the perfect cut.

“Exactly, it’s such an unpleasant book.”

“I enjoyed it.” He glanced down, picking at the edge of his thumb.

“I mean, of course, it’s a classic for a reason. Who doesn’t?” Lana uncrossed her legs. “Have you heard from Charlie? Is he coming?”

“Well, last I heard.”

The pair lapsed into silence. William leaned back into the couch and closed his eyes to wait, fiddling hands still on his chest. Charles Meyer was always early or incredibly late.

Incredibly, in this case, meant by half an hour. He swept into the cafe, plaid scarf trailing from one long-fingered hand.

“Sorry I’m late, you know how it is.”

William cracked an eye open. “We do indeed.”

Charles tapped his outstretched legs with one polished shoe. “Shove over, would you? I need my coffee.”

Lana passed him a mug as he settled onto the couch beside her. He took an appreciative sip

“Perfect, thanks. You know just how I like it.”

“You know I didn’t actually make this. You always order the same thing, it’s just cold brew.”

He grinned at her and Lana laughed like he’d done something spectacular. They sat for a moment as he nursed his drink, the silence lighter than before.

“Late night?” William asked.

“Does it show?” Charles ran a hand through his hair, fluffing the bits that the wind hadn’t already gotten to.

Lana leaned forward and held his gaze intently for a moment, then sat back with a frown. “You've been drinking.”

He laughed and gestured with his cup, “I'm drinking right now.”

“Don't play, you know what I mean. I wish you'd be more careful.”

“Oh, you sound just like the wife.”

Charles's dry eyes glittered in the way they did when he was about to have a good-natured laugh at someone else's expense. William, who was well acquainted with that expression, asked, “The wife?”

“She finally did it! She finally left me. Took the kids too.”

Lana laughed, “That must have been hard.”

“Especially,” added William, “Considering you've been single the long time I've known you.”

Charles pressed a hand to his chest, “Right where it hurts Will, right where it hurts.”

“Maybe if you came out with me next time instead of hiding yourself away like you do, that would change.”

“But people, Lana!” Charles exclaimed, “I'd have to talk to people and get to know them and they'd all be so boring that I'd have to only talk to you all night and then I'd have done the unforgivable.”

“Oh really.” She said dryly, “What might that be?”

“I’d have hoarded your company.”

“Says the man who insists he'd have nothing to say to the crowd. You're an excellent tease, think of all the scandal you could start.”

William groaned from the cushions, “You're both very witty, we know. Finish your coffee, mine’s already gone cold. Unlike some people, I have other places to be tonight.”

“Are we unable to hold your attention even this long?” Charles dropped his theatrics, “I am very sorry to have been so late. I know it’s rude.”

“It’s alright, I expected it.” He pulled himself up and offered the other man his hand. “Next time I promise I’ll stay longer.”

“You better, lord knows I need my friends’ support in this trying time.”

Lana stood too, “You’ve got me a while longer, if you can stick around? I want to walk to Kendall, if you want to join me.”

“I’d love to.” He turned to wave as William headed out. “Bye Will!”

Snow had fallen while they were inside and the icy layer that had formed across the top crunched beneath Lana’s boots. Their crystalized breath caught the lights of the trees along the mall.

She huffed and shoved her hands into her pockets. “Maybe we should go to Park Street instead, it’s too cold to walk all the way.”

“I like it.” Charles glanced down at her, “Do you want my scarf?”

“No, then you’d be cold. Thanks though.”

“It’s yours if you want it.”

“How’ve you really been?”

“Eh, I’ve been better, I’ve been worse.” He shrugged, “Life doesn’t change much once you’re my age, Lana.”

“Charlie, you’re a year older than me.” Lana looked up at him, her eyes golden black in the darkness. Something that wasn’t quite pity, dangerously close to understanding glinted there.

He looked away. “Don’t do that.”

“Do what?”

“Look at me like that. I don’t know what to say.”

“Sorry.” Lana let her feet carry her a few steps further from him. Her toes traced patterns in the snow.

“No, I didn’t mean it like that. I don’t know.” He pulled his coat tighter around his body. “It’s okay.”

“Okay. Want to get coffee?”

Charles quirked an eyebrow. “Didn’t we just do that?”

“Yes, but I’m cold now and I want another.”

He made a sweeping bow. “Your wish is my command.” He pulled out his phone and searched ‘cafes near me’. “There’s only one still open, two blocks that way, called Café Roma.”

“Great.”

They walked in silence for a moment, the cold biting their cheeks red and their lips raw.

“Have you ever been to Rome?” asked Charles.

“Once, when I was very little.” Lana smiled softly at the memory, blurred like the old photographs in the box at the back of her closet. “I think I was seven, and all I wanted to do was visit the art museums. God, I was so pretentious.”

“Was?”

She shoved her shoulder into his. “Shut up. What about you?”

“Never. I’m going to go, someday.”

“We should go this summer. Why wait?” Lana’s chest pulled tight.

He laughed, “Absolutely.” She wasn’t sure if the warmth that replaced the tightness was pleasant or not. “So tell me, oh traveler of the globe, what should we do in Roma?”

“Well,” She spread her hands before her as though displaying the options before them, “we could go visit the art museums my seven-year-old self loved, but”—she paused, letting the drama build—"We could do it wine drunk. That’s it, that’s all I can think of.”

He grinned, “This is why you’re the idea man.”

“Is that supposed to imply that you’re the practical one?”

Charles drew himself up indignantly, “I’ll have you know I’m very practical.”

“Is that why the wife left you?”

He shook his head, eyes downcast. “She just couldn’t handle it. My focus and drive made her feel unaccomplished.”

“It takes a truly special woman to keep up with your kind of genius.”

“You seem to do just fine.”

“Yes, well.” Lana flipped her hair back over her shoulder, “I’m not just any woman.”

“You certainly aren’t.”

Music drifted across the rush of cars from an open window above them. Jazzy guitar and a smoky voice singing something about fantasy.

“So,” Lana shoved her hands deep into her pockets and rocked her weight onto her heels, looking up at him. “Mr. Practical. Where would you take us in Rome?”

He pressed his lips together, pondering. “On a drive.”

“On a drive?”

“Yeah, like in those movies, rent a convertible and drive out through the country. Bring a lunch.”

“What movies?”

“You know, those ones. You’ve got some big sunglasses on and a scarf over your hair, I’m fiddling with the radio until it’s playing smooth jazz.”

“Sounds nice.”

“But?”

“But you don’t like jazz.”

His lips twisted into a smile, “You raise a fair point.”

“And I have a solution. Exactly that, but we listen to your Best of the 80s playlist instead.”

“There's that creative genius again.”

She shrugged, “It's what I do. Keep going, it sounds like you've got this all planned out.”

“Well, as we're driving along some seaside cliff, another car appears behind us.” Charles spun on his heel to face her. He held his hands up as a viewfinder, walking backward slowly. “They pull up alongside us and suddenly: gunfire. You grab the wheel and steer us into them as they start shooting, throwing them off and saving my life.”

He slipped, wobbling on a patch of ice. Lana's hands shot out and grabbed his wrists, steading him.

“Thanks.” He stopped and stood facing her, doing his best impression of Tom Cruise. “After an epic car chase through the Italian countryside, we escape and you reveal that you're a secret agent and I'm just your cover.”

Lana matched his serious tone: “However did you guess?”

He winked, “I'm a genius too, remember?”

“Idiot,” Lana's voice dropped to a dark whisper, “you know I have to kill you now?”

“Let me finish the story first?”

She pretended to think it through. “I suppose.”

“Where was I...ah, yes, I am heartbroken to realize that you had ulterior motives and want to leave you, but they've seen us together now so it's too dangerous and you won't let me. We finish your mission together and you eventually decide I'm not just some convenient and stunningly handsome fool. And you might just start to fall for me. Or, at least you would in those movies.”

“Oh really? And how does it all end, in those movies?” Lana realized she was still holding his wrists. Charles caught her hands before she could pull away.

“Like this.” He leaned down and pressed a soft kiss to Lana's lips. It lasted barely a moment before he pulled away, dropping her hands like he'd been burned. “Sorry.”

“I–no. Don't be. I like that ending.” Lana reached out, fingertips just touching his.

“Really?”

“Yeah.” He laced their fingers together, smile softer than she'd seen it in a long time. She tucked their hands into her pocket and pulled him along towards the lights of Newbury street. “I’m still cold, and I still want my coffee.”

to be continued in the fall 2019 issue of helicon

afterlife

amelia o.

I pace around the cell. As I stare at my shoes I get increasingly dizzy, but I don’t stop. My vision becomes blurry. It’s not like the blur of something far away, it’s thousands of little spots crashing into each other, filling up my space.

Eventually, I fall onto the bed. The springs creak under my weight but the iron frame doesn’t move. It’s fastened to the wall. I stare up at the bland gray ceiling.

Everything in the room is boring. It’s nothing like my expectations. The dull in-between is somehow so much worse.

Half of my brain expected a grimy cell with corners shrouded in shadow as if  it’s in the twisted dungeons of a sinister castle. Perhaps a medieval instrument of torture would be rusting away against the wall. Dirt is beaten into the floor and the barred door is stained with blood. I am clad in rags, screaming into the darkness with no one there to hear me.

The other half of my brain expected the stark madness of science fiction. Everything would be pure white, never dirtied. It would be the kind of room that turns a protagonist insane. Nothing to look at, nothing to do. Nothing, nothing, nothing. The bright lights bore into my skull and project wild hallucinations there. I see deep vibrant colors splashed on the indifferent white walls. I see blood and gore and grotesque fantasies, anything to escape the nothingness.

I expected an extreme: the deranged perfection or morbid terror. Heaven or Hell. What I get is purgatory, and it’s a hell of a lot worse. I am trapped indefinitely in this in-between. Plenty of time to think about the supposed wrongdoing that trapped me.

I’m standing at the podium as the prosecutor goes on about what I’m supposed to have done. I’m accused of five counts of first degree murder. They claim I’m a serial killer. I know that already, but I’m hearing details I wasn’t told before. I don’t know how to react. I don’t want to seem guilty. Will the jury misinterpret my tears as remorse if I let them fall? I lower my head: It might seem creepy if I stare at them. But refusal to meet their eyes could be a sign of deceit. I settle on a pained stare at the polished wood of the desk in front of me.

My lawyer leans over. “You doing okay?”

I don’t respond. I know he’s trying to help, but he gave up that right when he tried to make me into a liar. I’m not going to force politeness with him after he suggested I plead not guilty by reason of insanity. I’m not a killer and I won’t pretend to be. I doubt the jury would ever believe me insane, either. I could never lie or feign mental illness once sworn by God to tell the whole truth and nothing but the truth.

I wonder if he really thinks I’m a deranged serial killer, or if he just figures this is the best way out. At this point, it can’t hurt to ask.

“Mr. Henderson?” I glance towards him and notice his dark red tie has a small, barely perceptible dot of white. I think it might be dressing from the salad he ate at lunch. I doubt anyone would notice.

“What is it?” The words come out rushed and breathy, he’s distracted by the prosecutor’s speech.

“Do you think I’m guilty?” He turns sharply and stares for a second. “As your lawyer, I can’t possibly-”

“Mr. Henderson. Let’s say you’re the judge on this case. What would you do?”

“I’m not the judge, Daniel. I don’t have beliefs in the courtroom, I have arguments. It’s not my job to play God.”

I return my focus to my trial.

The prosecutor continues to describe how each and every injury would have been inflicted by me. I can’t help but picture it.

My arms hold down Sarah, my first victim, as I press a knife to her neck causing the thin line of broken skin discovered during autopsy. I twist her arm until it cracks and bends like in the photographs. I slash her stomach, causing skin to rip apart as easily as tearing a tissue, deep enough for her blood to stream out, but not enough for a quick death. The prosecutor did say it took hours. Excruciating hours. Meanwhile, her uncle, Kyle, runs towards me shouting that I had killed his innocent little niece. How could I? I wait until he’s just a few feet away before I spring upwards and stab him. It’s an unnecessary death. If he didn’t run to avenge his niece, I wouldn’t have killed him. I can see the tears drying on his pale face as I kneel over his fallen body, stabbing vigorously. Twelve times, according to the prosecutor.

Who would do that?

I don’t know what to say or how to convince them that it wasn’t me. I was four blocks away. I wasn’t stalking the victim in the park, carrying that deadly steel knife now in an evidence bag in front of me.

It goes on for hours, but there’s nothing new. The prosecutor describes in vivid detail everything I must have done, every sin I’ve committed. She repeats their names. Maybe the jury will feel enough empathy for the sweet duo of teenage Sarah and protective uncle Kyle. Or maybe they’ll care for the young Anne, starting culinary school, so full of potential. As the prosecutor mentions that Arden was mutilated and stabbed just the day after his nineteenth birthday, I can feel the indignant outrage of the jury. My anger and defeat mingle, filling my insides with wasted hate.

After a half hour of deliberation, the jury returns. The jurors seem to form a great twelve-headed hydra which writhes as one of its forked tongues prepares to speak. Not one of the twenty-four eyes of the monster dare make contact with my own, as, to them, I am a far more malicious creature. I am guilty, the spokesperson says. It was my fingerprint they had found on the polished wooden handle of the five time murder weapon. But I was at home, a cold fifteen minute walk away. Ten, maybe, when in a hurry.

Every bit of my body feels too heavy for life. All outer perceptions feel dimmed and I can barely hear Sarah’s pained screams from the sidelines. I am an immobile statue, positioned to stare dumbly at the ground. I feel like stone, but every few seconds a prickle of pain runs through me, reminding me that I’m still a living being. I turn in place, searching for my little sister.

Her wailing seems to come from every direction.

The despairing weeping seems to slowly form words as Sarah materializes in the center of the courtroom floor.

She turns to face the jury, and shouts with all her might. Her screams reverberating around the room.

“My brother is not a murderer!”

She shouts it again and again, not changing a single word or breaking out of her immobile trance.

The jury isn’t bothered. They stare at me, their minds unchanged and their vision unwavering.

“Guilty” chants in my mind, overpowering any other thoughts. It fills up every available crevice in my body and overflows as tears pooling in my eyes. I blink and the guilt navigates down my face. It drips from my chin to the marble floor and splatters like the blood of the victim shed by some unknown killer.

—.—

I open my eyes and stare at the tears dropped on my cell floor. Can’t I even maintain some measure of dignity? No point in prison, though, anyway. I wish I could think of something else, but there’s not much to occupy my mind. I smudge the tears with my foot and they make the worn floor shine. The previous inhabitants of the room must have been the ones to wear that floor down. Thousands of steps pacing around the bed, perhaps. I stand up and immediately feel dizzy. I guess I must have been lying on the bed for a long time, but there’s no way for me to know. My only indications of time here are the three meals and the hour of exercise per day. From these, I calculate I’ve been incarcerated for three months, two weeks, and five days. I can’t discern hours though. I’ve given up on trying to divine anything from the small window I am allowed. It’s just above the dirt, and the angle is perfectly positioned so I can never see the sun, just the dim reflections on the dying grass. The window has actual bars. I always wonder if they keep the bars just for the look of it. There have to be better ways of locking up prisoners in the modern day world. Some strong glass or plastic, perhaps. The rusted bars seem almost comical in the age of computers and 3D printers

I’m walking in cramped circles around the cell when my next meal appears. I can’t see who delivered it and the metal flap is already locked by the time I take the four short steps from my window to the door. The meal is a fairly small portion of fish along with peas and carrots, so probably lunch. I sit on my bed to eat.

When I’m done, I stand and again I feel dizzy. Not enough fresh air and exercise, I imagine. My sister once told me that when I complained about lightheadedness. I laugh a little at the impossible fix. The light in the room suddenly dims like when a cloud passes overhead. I walk to the window and peer out, filled with doomed hope of seeing the sun. Of course, I can’t manage it. I stare at the brown grass, unable to muster up any reason to move.

The sunlight seems to glow uncontrollably brighter and the dim cell behind me fades from my peripheral vision. I am standing on a roof, the wind blowing against my face as I stare across the beautiful New York skyline and out to the endless ocean.

I know my fate is not to live in freedom, though. I’m convicted, after all.

And I am poised on a roof, preparing for flight. I ready myself for my wings to unfold and for my body to uplift itself. I pause to look out at the horizon, and I remember the story of Icarus. Perhaps, like him, I’m overconfident. What if we can’t try to force out feathers when it’s not our time? What if I haven’t yet done enough to be worthy? What if I fall down to hell rather than flying up to heaven?

I grab the warm cross around my neck and hold it tightly. I’ve always believed in a forgiving and understanding God. Surely, He can see that my hand is forced and I don’t have time to do more anyway. I did my research; death is a better sentence than solitary.

Maybe a miracle will occur and an appeal will work. I do believe in miracles sometimes. But I also believe in my lawyer who says the prospect of going to an appellate court looks grim. I believe in the common sense, which will almost certainly keep me convicted. I believe that life is unfair sometimes and there’s absolutely nothing I can do. Nothing.

I tip back and forth. Just as I tip forward, I look down and see the cement seventeen stories below. I feel like I’m falling and ingrained fear pushes me to step back. I imagine myself slipping off the edge and I shuffle backwards. I wonder if some people just accidentally fall right before they’re going to jump. Someone must have. In the history of suicides, someone must have accidentally fallen right before they were going to jump and no one would know. I can’t help but smile at the thought. I step forward.

What future can I possibly have? Wasting away for years hoping the true killer is found? If I don’t end it, I’ll spend my life trapped. Now, I have the opportunity to enter my true eternity. This might be my last chance to free myself.

I take another small step forward and close my eyes. I resume tilting back and forth. This is my only remaining option.

“What the hell are you doing?”

I open my eyes and spin to see my sister.

“I can’t live in prison.”

“It’ll be okay, don’t worry. We can fight this!”

“What good would it do?”

“You’re innocent. You’ll be alright. We’ll find proof!” She steps towards me hesitantly. “Just come down from there. You’re not thinking clearly! Just get down.”

I don’t remember her sounding so mechanical. She’s a perpetually cheerful cartoon: a gross caricature.

She amends her words, “You-” she stops and her impossible innocence and fear seem to form a ghostly shield around her. “You are innocent, right?”

“It wasn’t me.”

“Who was it, then? How could anyone else have killed them all? And with your own knife?”

No. Sarah doesn’t interrogate. She’s sweet and kind and pure. She believes me.

I know I’m right, so I say it again. “It wasn’t me.”

This time, she responds correctly. “Then I can help you.” She reaches out a pale hand which seems to glow with a faint blue light. She briefly looks up to the heavens, praying for me, and I can see the thin line across her throat.

Prison bars descend over my vision and everything turns dark and muted except for Sarah’s bright unearthly hand. I am trapped, and I take my only way out.

I tilt backwards, but this time I don’t catch myself. Sarah runs forward, always reaching, but she doesn’t have a chance. She never did. I’m already falling.

My clothes and hair flare towards the heavens, spurred by my descent. The wind blows around me and my arms are thrust towards the sky, involuntarily straining upwards. All the while, I see a dark translucent cage projected around me.

The bars become more solid with every second of my descent. I grab onto them, and my fall slows. And the vibrant blue sky fades away leaving a dim cell around me. I open my eyes and all movement stops. I’m standing in solitary confinement. Nothing has changed and nothing will.

My fantasy of freedom is gone. I have no more choices to make, and nothing else to do.

Evanie

Alex Williams

Red fuzz

Curlicues in a spastic array of directions

Off of the generic college sweater draping from her bony frame

The sleeves smothering her fragile hands

Making flesh indistinguishable from fabric

Fabric, or hand, meets wood

Three times

The blade of sound slices the air

Into slim slivers of nothing

No response is uttered

Leaving the sea of air

As empty and tumultuous as the northern Pacific

That sweeps a salty breeze across the cragged shore

After an everlasting silence

Fingers tentatively meet metal

Reluctantly turning and yanking

She squeezes her eyes haphazardly

As earth-toned dots skirt around her peripheral vision

Like an old Monet, as she adjusts to the dark.

As they fade, a new image slides seamlessly

Into their place

Skin on leather and leather on skin

Salty condensation riddles the fine grained sofa

Clumping together to form sticky outlines

As blatant and bold as white chalk borders

Of what is dead and gone in an instant.

Socks meet antique Persian rug,

Leaving their final imprint in elaborate designs

Of arching and peaking flowers,

Thread orbiting in smooth,pleasing trails

And then meet canvas shoe

Hand meets frigid metal

Twist and pull

Shoes meet pebbled path

Hand meets steel once again

Wood slices through the air

Whooshing, before crashing into the doorframe

With a defiant thud

And tires meet unforgiving, heat bathed asphalt

Melting away as they spin forward

Leaving their last mark on this once beloved place.

spring break

ella markianos

The rain began with dewdrops that landed on the window, quivering a little before running down in little rivulets and falling to the road. It grew minute by minute, imperceptible until it was near a constant roar outside, the tires of cars speeding through small lakes on the side of the highway, water thrumming against the roof. But inside there was a perfect silence, stillness unbroken except for the soft snore Elena would let out every so often and Jess’s tap-a-tap-tapping on the steering wheel. The air was sweet with old laundry and the fog of lilac perfume Jess had sprayed in it a day ago to purge the smell, and it hung soft over their heads as Elena’s breath left a misty imprint on the car window. Their bags were tucked away in the backseat, mingling with the 24-hour CVS chips and cookies Elena’s soon-to-be-ex-boyfriend gave her before they left.

“Are we there yet?” Elena mumbled into the car door, voice thick with sleep.

Jess put another tally mark on the index card by her side. “Seventh time you’ve asked today.”

“Hey, don’t be so…” Her head lolled back against the window before she brought it upright again. “Where did I put the map?” Before Jess could answer, she was rummaging under the dashboard. She bent down until she was eye-to-eye with the glove compartment and plucked an incorrectly-folded map out between her thumb and forefinger. The edges were worn and a little coffee-stained, and when she unfolded it some of the purple glitter ink of Jess’s pen had transferred to the ocean, which stood aquamarine against Oregon’s orangey paper coast. Elena traced her finger through their route, counting off their stops under her breath. “We should be near the… Money Saver Motel?”

“Yup.”

“Awesome. Man, I am so hyped for a real mattress.”

Jess smiled at the road. “Are you saying that the luxury interior of my car isn’t doing it for you?”

Elena kicked her feet up on the dashboard and craned her neck at the gray plastic ceiling, chestnut hair spilling against the headrest. “Dude, your car has mildew.”

“Look on the bright side. At least it adds a pop of color.”

“I don’t think that’s how it works, Jess.”

Jess squinted out the window, frowning at the water fighting with the windshield wipers. “I thought we left Seattle to escape the rain.”

“Hey, don’t knock the rain!” Elena pressed her nose against the window, her eyes following the pattern of the droplets pouring from the evergreen needles. “Besides, it’s different in Oregon.”

“What do you mean?”

“It just smells different, you know? And it’s a different texture. It feels different on your skin.”

Jess let out a short laugh, clear and bright in the still air. “If you want to commune with the rain gods so much, why don’t I just open your window? So you can feel the texture on your skin.”

“Hey, fuck you! I’m just enjoying the scenery.” She pressed her face to the glass, taking in the line where the scraggly sunset-colored rock met the shore down below.

A neon glow appeared in the distance, wavy through the downpour. Jess leaned forward a little, squinting. “What is that?”

“I think it says something?”

“Is it a rest stop? Thank God, I have to pee so bad.”

They let out a breath so strong it fluttered the pine tree keychain on the rear-view mirror as she pulled into the parking lot. Elena grabbed the umbrella under her feet as she sprang out of the car and they shared it as they walked across the soaking pavement, shoulders knocking together. The “C” of the gas station CVS sign had fallen off so that just the “VS” stood lonely against the wall, glowing in the reflection of evening light. They stood in the enclosure in front of the doorway, their figures illuminated from one side by the drugstore. Elena gazed back at the raindrops glinting off the cars and the pine swaying in the distance as she closed the umbrella, eyes wide.

“Man, this is so pretty.”

“It’s a CVS parking lot.”

Elena rolled her eyes, opening the door. “You know what I mean.”

Jess smiled softly. “Yeah.” She paused. “Do you have to pee?”

“Nah, I’m good. You can go.” As Jess disappeared into the bathroom, Elena wandered over the nubby surface of the wall-to-wall carpet to a small plastic hatstand that leaned to its side with an assortment of felt cowboy hats. She walked around it, surveying until she came upon two, breaking into a grin as she grabbed them off of the stand. Their fluorescent pink surface was punctuated with rhinestones that crept along the brim before leaping up and forming an awful pattern down the side. She put one on her head, narrowing her eyes and biting her lips as she looked at it through a cracked CVS mirror, laughing a little.

The pocket of her purple windbreaker glowed with the light from her phone screen as a text notification rang out in the still air. She looked down at it, frowned, and shut it off. She stared at the mirror again, pensive, before taking off the hat, and wandered over to the postcards.

A furrow grew in her brow as she went through the postcards one by one, surveying each before shaking her head almost imperceptibly and discarding it. Her thumb left a small patch of dullness on the glossy sheen of each little landscape. After she’d gone through each and every last one, she sighed, leaning against the crumbly white wall, and looked at the ceiling.

“You okay?” Jess had appeared by her side before Elena could notice her footsteps.

“Yeah! You surprised me a little, that’s all. I’m just… thinking.” Elena smiled, the corners of her mouth puckered.

“You’ve been doing that a lot lately.” Jess walked all the way over to Elena, leaning on the wall next to her. Jess turned her head to face her friend, but Elena stayed staring straight at the postcards. Jess saw the cowboy hats in Elena’s hand and took one, smiling tentatively. “Are you going to give one to Aaron? He was bugging you about bringing back a souvenir when we left.”

Elena flinched, grabbing the hat back. “No! I mean…” She rolled her eyes. “I was going to give one to you. We could be matching.”

“Aww,” Jess said, smiling. “What about Aaron, though?” She tilted her head. “You keep putting it off, and you keep getting defensive when I mention it.”

“It’s not that I’m…” Elena trailed off. “I looked at the postcards. For him. None of them feel right.”

“What do you mean?”

“I don’t know, it’s just a little thing, getting a souvenir or whatever but he was, like, weird, and pushy about it.” Elena fidgeted with a hangnail on her thumb. “He’s just been kind of serious, and, I don’t know, just… off, lately. It’s like he’s planning something.” She looked at the postcards again. “He wants us to go to the same college. He’s thinking long term. And I’m…”

“You’re what?”

“I don’t know.” She dug her fingernails into her forearm. “It’s only been, what, eight months?”

“I don’t think that’s true.” Jess frowned, counting off on her hand. She looked at her fingers, counted again, and let in a sharp breath. “Elena, it’s been… eleven. Almost a year.”

“Shit. What?” She shook her head. “That’s impossible.”

“Good impossible? Or bad impossible.”

Elena held the cowboy hats tightly against her chest. “It just feels impossible. It doesn’t feel like something that really could have happened.”

“How?”

Elena gave her a tight smile. “It just does. It’s not important.”

Jess opened her mouth to say something, but no words came out. Elena turned her head, startled; Jess always had something to say to something like that. California Dreaming was playing through the tinny store speakers, and they nodded along to it, slowly, not looking at each other. They stood like that for a little while.

Elena cleared her throat. “Well, should buy these hats, I guess.”

Jess unlatched herself from the wall. “Right. Yeah, let’s go.”

They walked to the counter, where the gangly cashier looked at them sullenly from behind the register. Elena drew circles in the blue linoleum surface as he rang them up, lost in thought. When they had paid for the hats, Jess took one, handing the other to Elena. As they walked out of the store, the rain fell lightly as if it was holding its breath.

They must have taken longer than it it felt in the store, because by the time they were back on the highway all they could see was the strip of road and wall of pine trees illuminated by the headlights, their scope of vision reaching only a few feet ahead. The quiet was laced with something now, and Jess flicked her wrist as they moved down the next rolling turn in the road as if she was trying to shake it off. The moon was a sliver of a crescent that night, and their figures and the ocean were bathed in darkness.

“Can I turn on the car light?” Elena worried at her thumb, squinting out the window.

Jess shook her head. “I’m pretty sure they said in Driver’s Ed that you aren’t supposed to do that while the car’s moving.”

“I’m just scared.” She wrapped her arms around herself.

Jess sighed. “Yeah, okay.”

Elena fumbled at the ceiling for a bit before the car’s inside was cast in gray LED. She checked to see that everything in the car was where it had been, and let out a breath when she saw it all in place. The gray washed over them a little while as their bodies got reacquainted with light.

“Elena?” Jess’s words rang out warm in the car’s air, which was beginning to cool with the night.

“Yeah?”

“Can I ask you something?”

“Yeah.” Elena frowned

“I…” Jess gripped the steering wheel. “I just feel like there’s something you aren’t telling me, something involving Aaron. Not that you’re obligated to, like, tell me everything about your life…”

Elena laughed. “... but I am.”

Jess shook her head, smiling. “I wasn’t going to phrase it like that.”

“No, I get what you mean. You’re my best friend..”

Jess nodded, a little shaky. “Whatever it is… you know you can talk to me, right?”

Elena smiled, flicking Jess’s shoulder. “Duh.” Her face stilled, growing a solemnity that seemed out of place on her body. “Can I just talk at you for a minute? We can have a real conversation about it later, I just need to get some words out.”

Jess nodded. “Of course.”

“It’s just… do you remember how I was after my first date with Aaron?”

“Yeah. You seemed…” Jess tilted her head. “You seemed really happy.”

“Yeah. I was, I think.” She leaned back in her seat. “It was just… nice, you know? We did all the coupley stuff. We went on the Ferris wheel, and he won me a teddy bear, and all that. I remember, the thing I remember most was that it was secure. I knew what I was supposed to do. I remember he did this, and I said that, and I was like oh, this is what it’s like, it’s not as big of a deal as I made it out to be, I guess because I’d never had a boyfriend before. It felt nice because I didn’t feel like I had to explain myself. I was just, you know, doing it.”

“Doing it?”

“Playing the part, I guess. I think that was the problem. I felt like I was reading lines I’d memorized off of a script or something.”

Jess frowned. “When did it change?”

Elena shook her head. “Why would it?”

“You’ve been with him for almost a year.”

“No. I mean, it’s still the same. It’s comfortable. It’s safe.” She picked at the thread in her jeans. “There’s nothing wrong with it. It just feels... weird.”

Jess snorted. “Clearly. You guys barely touch. I just thought you were weird about PDA or something.”

“No, it’s definitely not that.” She bit her thumb again. “It’s just… what should I be feeling that I’m not?”

“If you’re not feeling something, you aren’t. There’s no reason you should.” Jess glanced over at Elena, worried.

“What if I feel things I shouldn’t feel? Like, weird things?”

“What weird things?”

“Feelings that I thinkI shouldn’t feel.” She squinted at the trees outside. “Like, that what I thought I wanted might not be what I want, and what I want might not be… might not be good.”

“What?” Jess grinned a little. “You’re gonna have to be a little more specific than that, because right now what I’m getting here is that you have a foot fetish.”

Elena doubled over laughing. “What the fuck? Why would you–seriously, what? No!”

Jess giggled. “I don’t know… you were just talking about maybe not being sexually attracted to your boyfriend, and like, weird feelings? and I just…”

Elena’s shoulders shook with another peal of laughter. “Well, why are you so interested? Do my boyfriend’s feet really get you going?”

“Oh my god, what the fuck?” She put her hand to forehead, almost tearing up with laughter. “This is so traumatic, I don’t even want to think about that.”

“Well, you brought this upon yourself.” Elena grinned.

“Actually, I can’t imagine you doing anything together that isn’t really formal courtship dialogue, now that I think of it.”

“Yeah.” Elena sighed, looking out the window. “Neither can I.”

“So what is your mysterious sex thing?”

“I never said it was a sex thing! I mean, it’s not a sex thing. Not really.”

“Okay. Can you tell me what it is?”

“It’s…” She paused, squeezing her knuckles. “It’s not important. How close are we to the motel?”

“About…” Jess squinted into the distance. “I’m not sure. You can check the map?” She looked over at her friend tentatively.

“Yeah.” Elena was quiet, as if she was afraid that if she spoke too loudly, her voice would topple something over. She pulled out the map. “It’s another mile, I think.”

Jess inhaled. “Do you still want to talk about it?”

“Yeah.” Elena looked down. “Not right now, though. I think we should get to the motel and sleep a little first.”

Jess nodded. “Okay.”

The stars were still bright in their two-by-two-foot window when Jess woke up. Elena had turned on the only light in the motel room, a small turquoise thing with a pink lampshade that looked like it had been there since the seventies, and worked about as well. Her hands were pressed together over her crossed legs and she was staring at the wall like a coil ready to spring loose.

“You okay?” Jess lifted herself inch by inch with her hands until she was upright.

“Yeah. I mean, no. I mean… ” She flicked her hand to the side. “You should sleep. We have a long drive tomorrow.”

“Come on.”

Elena sighed. “How did you know when you liked Christopher?”

Jess furrowed her eyebrows. “I don’t know. I guess… I just liked him? It was like a friend, but more. Different.” She looked down, playing with the hair tie that held her long blond braid in place. The cuff of her jeans itched against her ankle; they had crashed in their clothes the second they got to the room.

“I guess I just… how did your first kiss feel?”

“I don’t know, it was a kiss. I texted you after it happened, remember?” Jess looked up at the wall and smiled. “It was pretty gross, but also really nice, which was weird because he was a really bad kisser.”

“How do you know if a kiss is a good kiss?”

Jess looked at her friend incredulously. “I think you should be able to tell?”

Elena frowned, playing with her sock. “I really don’t like kissing Aaron. It’s just, like, not good.”

“What do you mean?”

“I don’t know, it’s just…” Her words started to pick up steam. “Not pleasant. It’s like… It’s like a washing machine going around and around but with tongues and,” she grimaced, “saliva. And he, like, doesn’t stop to breathe, and if I do it too long it kind of makes my jaw hurt.”

Jess raised her eyebrows. “Elena. This hasn’t come up at all in the almost a year you’ve been dating him?”

“Well… no. I mean, clearly, from what I told you,” she laughed, humorless, “a lot hasn’t come up.”

“Yeah.” Jess looked to where Elena was fidgeting with her sock. “That’s a little fucked up, Elena. Do you…” Elena looked her attentively. “Are you even attracted to him?”

Elena shrugged. “I mean, what does that even mean? How do you know when you like someone?”

“You just do, I think. I think kind of the point is that when you do, you don’t have to ask.”

Elena bit her fingernail so hard Jess was worried it would break. “No. How does it feel?”

“I guess,” Jess watched Elena carefully. “You just feel different around them. Like I said, it’s like a friend, but different. You feel kind of warm and fuzzy around them, and like maybe you’d do stupid shit for them that you wouldn’t for a friend? It’s not… it’s different for everyone. It’s not something you can quantify, it’s more–”

“Shit.” Elena’s hand on her sock stilled, more stone than a statue. Jess would think she was paralyzed if it weren’t for the shallow breathing of her chest.

“Hey.” Jess lifted herself up, feet swinging at the side of the bed, and tiptoed to Elena’s mattress. She sat beside her, palms folded under her knees. “You know you can talk to me, right?” Elena didn’t move. “You can tell me anything.” She wrapped her arms around her best friend in an awkward sort of hug, rocking her from side to side.

Elena took a deep breath in, then out, slowly, then in again. “Yeah, um, Jess? I, I think… I think I’m a lesbian.” She spoke the last word as if she’d just exhaled a bullet and not a breath.

“Oh! That makes much more sense.” Jess smiled. “I was kinda worried about you for a second there.”

Elena frowned. “I’m sorry, what did you just say?”

“What do you mean?”

Elena laughed. “I guess that was just a kind of anticlimactic reaction, you know? I was expecting more,” she made jazz hands, “drama.”

Jess tilted her head. “What do you mean? Did you think I was suddenly going to become extremely homophobic and, like, platonically disown you, or something?”

She shook her head emphatically. “No! It’s just, there’s so many ways I imagined it happening, and none of them involved it being so, um, normal to you, I guess. Because it’s just kind of this huge thing that was going around in my head.”

Jess frowned, thinking. “That makes sense, yeah. I guess because I’ve never been through that I just didn’t get how it felt for you or what a scary thing that was for you.” She smiled. “Also, if you want to be dramatic about it, you know that I, like, love and accept you no matter what, and all that sappy shit, right?”

“Yeah,” Elena said, beaming. She put her head on her friend’s shoulder. “Thanks for being the bestest best friend ever.”

Jess rolled her eyes. “You’re welcome.” She frowned a little. “You know, I’m actually kind of mad at myself that I didn’t know.”

“How could you have known? I mean, I know you’re smart, man, but you’re not, like, clairvoyant.”

“Yeah, but,” Jess bumped her shoulder against Elena’s, “I just feel like because I know you so well, I should be able to tell what’s going on in your life, especially when it’s such a major thing for you.”

“Dude, just shut up and let me cuddle you. I’m having, like, a moment here.”

“No, I’m serious, I think I need to work on my gaydar.”

Elena snorted. “That’s not how it works at all.”

Jess smiled into Elena’s hair. “Okay, you’re probably right.” They sat side by side for a little while, their breaths rising and falling in tandem. Elena looked back out at the stars, contentment falling over her features as she felt the light wash over her face.

“Shit.”

“What?”

“I need to break up with my boyfriend.”

“You can worry about that tomorrow morning. I need to sleep.”

Elena yawned. “Yeah, maybe me too.”

untitled

alex krusell

The story you're about to read takes place in the year 4093. Between 2018 and this point, the human race has achieved the ability to terraform and inhabit planets without Earth's oxygen supply or a stable atmosphere, though they have had no contact with any alien lifeforms that rivaled the intelligence of humans. They have also set up numerous space stations all around known space in which commercially produced spacecrafts can dock and supply. Humans, to continue on the thread of industrialization, created a cybernetic grid to control an almost innumerable amount of automatons to perform labor no man or woman could ever do. Basically, we have robots now.

Why am I telling you this? Because on May 18th of that year, humans found the first intelligent aliens, who, to say the least, did not enjoy the human race existing. Although these aliens wrought such havoc in such a short amount of time, they did not have a name. "Why didn't humans name the aliens after they defeated them?" you may ask me. I'll give you an answer: the humans did not win, they were wiped out so quickly that these life-forms remained unclassified. This message is purely artificial: it was sent into the public message domain due to the lack of regulators, the result of aliens having exterminated the entire human population. Any personality you may hear in this message was artificially extracted by my regulator, Daniel, who made edits to my messages. As he is probably no longer with us, I used his previous message editing patterns to make his style my own. But enough about me.

We aren't going to follow some brave human soldier gallantly battling against the aliens on the front line, nor an alien fighting back to gain territory. We aren't even going to cover the leaders of the time, plotting to exploit any weakness in their foes. We're going to talk about UIOP-304824, a merchant drone left on the abandoned outpost Epsilon. The station was abandoned due to cyber attacks on the station's systems, mainly life support, that left the station wholly without oxygen. The alien force taken over much of the administrative functions of the station, including the ability to monitor the vitals of everyone inside. As soon as they turned off the oxygen, they ceased their virtual assault and sent a scavenger team to collect supplies from the outpost.

They had taken over almost everything: every single robot except that merchant drone, who I will now refer to as UI. They had overlooked him: what would a slave to the humans, who they were conquering with ease, do to a superior race? But we'll see what that same lowly slave can do. He was about to start his work shift.

UI booted up where it always did, in the back room of Planetary Eatery, and checked to see if it needed any updates. The room was pitch black, but UI couldn't have distinguished that, as it couldn’t see. UI used heat signatures and preprogrammed locations to move around and locate objects and people. As it finished checking itself, UI found that its siphoning (his ability to collect energy from the space station) efficiency had decreased by 20%, but nothing else of note had occurred. UI then walked to the serving line, where it would receive the first of its orders for the day and a meal to bring out to the customers of Epsilon. Its thoughts were clean and organized, so clean in fact, that I can directly link them to this message and translate it from complex code to "human speech": "Objective place: reached. Place in line: 1st. Probability of being in first place of line: 1/200. Serving joy level: 98.5%."

UI then waited for another 20 minutes before he defaulted to his "on break" setting. The drone then mathematically concluded that it was odd to be on break when it was activated to start its shift such a short time ago, prompting him to walk around to check on the people outside, presumably enjoying their meals. The eatery was open to the rest of the space station, with wheel-like tables with umbrellas sticking out of the middle of them, like "every mall cafeteria ever," as Daniel would put it. The other buildings around the eatery were of the same build as the eatery itself: three rectangular stories with curt, slanting roofs, like oblong pyramids resting above an urban desert. The rest of Epsilon was a sphere made of one-way reinforced dual-layer glass, so you could see into space directly. But, again, UI couldn't experience the “majesty” of the human constructions around him, only the lack of heat signatures and the immobility of its fellow drones. UI waited for another five minutes and was in the middle of proceeding towards a signature of an already active drone, when its feet sensed a pressure on the ground near him. It analyzed the weight and thought to itself: "Chance of prone human: 96.2%, due to the pressure on the cold steel flooring being greater than usual. Help signal initiated." It sent a plea for assistance to the main communications network of the station to help clear and assist the obstruction as it stepped over the body. UI then encountered another body, and, as before, it repeated the process. And it came across another. And another. And five more.

Its tally of signals sent was up to 39, both to help fallen humans and to assist fallen drones. As it advanced towards the drone it was signaling in on, it noticed a lack of activity in both function and  movement of the droid's system. It also noticed the similarity between the drones on the ground and the drone it was inspecting. "Probability of malfunction: 89.9%. Alert sy-." As he processed this new information, a cybernetic shock rattled the robot's entire core and a danger message, playing both audibly and virtually, was summoned into from the calm abyss of the lifeless station like a furious tempest from a calm sea. "Unidentified spacecraft fleet on course to space station: Epsilon. Time until rendezvous: one hour. Evacuation pods now open and ready for use."

Now, UI did something strange at this particular time. It may have been passed on from an alien virus that UI might have picked up when he had inspected the droid, or the uniqueness of its situation, as UI ran this through its mind: "Drones Malfunctioned: 1-48-50-200, Humans Deceased: ?, Humans Deceased (Approximation): 3,700. No purpose left. ... ... ..." Normally, when this lack of purpose arises in a drone, it deactivates: but not UI. UI instead walked briskly to the tables where he sensed the deceased humans and drones and reached for the umbrella protruding from the center of each one. As he piled the umbrellas near himself, he gathered the tables and did the same. He then carried and deposited all but one of these objects to the east maintenance air-lock and shut both of the gates such that the door facing inward and outward were both closed and the umbrellas were stacked with their points to the door leading to space. He then walked to the armory, where the station's defense controls were.

When UI got to said armory, the sturdy metal door was closed, as it should be, preventing any intruders from entering. The creators of this door did not anticipate a rogue robot, though, as UI dented the metal heavily by throwing one of the tables he had collected into the doorframe. After another attempt, part of the wall and the door fell in, revealing the bells and whistles of weapons and defense control. It was a small closet-like room that emitted a crimson glow declaring the station was about to be under attack. There were also a collection of pistols, rifles, shotguns, and a rocket launcher sorted in the back of the room on shelves, like an anarchist’s doll set. UI walked up to the station and tried to access it with no success.

"Troubleshooting... ... ... Power offline. Siphoning emergency power. ... ... Success." After the station was powered again due to his transfusion, he then armed the station's missiles, and, more importantly, its defense shield. He linked himself to both of those to his systems, as he walked out of the dark, cramped, red light illuminated room. Within a short walk’s time, UI stood at the east gate and listened as the same all encompassing alarm voice from before announced the five minute mark until the ships reached the station. UI felt as close to confident as a machine with no emotions could feel as he activated the station’s shield.

The entire clear ball of the space station was suddenly taken over: as UI saw the entire sky encompassed by the grey mass of the shield, he marveled in the sight’s beauty. There was nothing quite like the satisfaction one feels as a carefully calculated plan comes into action. These feelings had to wait though, as there was a space-station to save. UI noted that the airlocks were also secured, but he could take that protection off later, when he was about to strike. The time was not right yet. Two minutes until the ships closed in, and UI was in firing range of the ships. He reviewed his plan one last time before activating phase one of his plan: "Launch initial volley of torpedoes: 10:38:32, Launch Umbrella Shield (Makeshift): 10:38:43/until fired upon. Continued volleys: 10:40:02/Umbrellas are completely destroyed. Chance of successful defense: 56.39% (on account of makeshift debris shield). Commencing firing sequ-."

Now, here's another spot where I don't have a sense what happened, but unlike last time, I have a pretty solid theory. UI was about to fire the first barrage, when he suddenly ceased all of his function for another 3 minutes: which was more than enough time for the hostiles to approach and fire on the star-base. Why didn't he go through with his plan? Maybe it was morality, the effect of seeing his own robots and humans which he had served for so long killed could have shown to have a greater effect than previously noted. But I think that would be a step too far, even for UI. His hesitation would have to be rooted in the most primal starting point of robotic programming: Asimov's principles, namely, a robot should not be able to cause harm to humans. Since UI didn't know about the alien invasion yet, it happened so quickly, he didn't know that these beings who were flying starships weren't humans: aliens with sizable intellects hadn’t been discovered yet to his knowledge.

He was immobilized by the very roots that made him who he was: a pacifist robot who was made for serving chili-dogs, not the cruel battlefield. This realization rendered him inactive, even when the station's shield was up and was being pounded on by weapons the aliens used against it, the sound of echoed like the drums of war. Until right before the last shell broke the confines of the shield, UI had no thoughts at all. Then, when the metal indented and broke apart, UI contemplated his apparent favorite function, the one that he always ran: his boot-up. He checked everything, maybe in a last enjoyment of being...alive? Not alive, for he was still constrained by his robotic functions and laws that made up his life, but he was not fully artificial, as he had displayed ingenuity and planning far beyond any robot comparable to him, or above him for that matter. UI, for lack of a better term, the hybrid, examined his 20% less efficient siphoning power as his robotic exoskeleton drifted into the hole made by the explosion of the final shell breaching the shield, shattering it like a baseball hitting glass, as UI fell, weightless, into the fiery explosion, which singed his components and wires, as his computational skills sparked, and went out for good as UI's... lifeless?... body drifted into space, away from the only station and beings he had ever known and had cared about.

Event Horizon

 nate gardiner//iokera

thinking of you

betty smart

She hated panic. Her heart was beating too fast, and her vision was too blurry, and her head was crammed with a cacophony of thoughts that screamed at her and only made her panic more. She knew she was probably complaining too much. The door closed slowly, then much quicker when she leaned against it. Hurriedly, she drew what appeared to be a solid gold deadbolt. The door moved with every loud thump against it, but did not look like it would break. Putting as much distance between herself and the door as she could, she looked around at her settings.

She was in a large ballroom-like area, one wall obscured by a thick velvet curtain, another consisting of a staircase that seemed to flow into the room. In the middle of the room was a little table cloaked with a thick white tablecloth covered in red flowers. It seemed to be set for tea for six people, but there was one big problem.

The table was much too small. On it was a tea set with incredibly mismatched cups in various states of breakage, there were cups made of paper, ceramic, china, metal, and one made of wood. Around the table was a wheelchair, a stone block, a fluffy armchair, an office chair, a cushioned dining chair, and a thick, tall pillow. A few feet to the left was a phonograph playing a low piano song she realized she didn’t know.

The banging on the door had stopped. She had turned back to the door when it started up again, and it sounded angrier. The armchair looked like a good place to hide.

She began walking towards it, when something tall and red popped up from behind it, and shoved her backwards onto the floor, hitting her head on the process. The room spun and blurred along with the crackling of the fireplace.

“Ow! God, what- who’re you?!” Her back was jolting from landing so hard on the floor.

“I’m Neville. Welcome to Van Der Ranft Manor.” The red creature, she now saw was a tall man in a bright red suit. He was resting in the armchair, both feet on the tiny table.

“You’re the host?” She stood up, painfully.

“No…” he chortled, as his white teeth clacked against an ebony pipe. “I don’t even know if our host lives here anymore.”

“Okay, I understand.” She wished to speak to him no longer.

“What’s your name?” he asked, his eyes studying her keenly.

“Lisey.”

“Lisey,” he repeated.

Trying not to look at him, Lisey focused on the empty chairs. “This table’s set for six. Where is everybody else?” she asked.

“We’re playing hide-and seek,” said Neville with a smile. “Found you!”

There were several loud groans of disappointment. Four other people popped out from behind the chairs, where they had been surprisingly well hidden.

“You cheated, you!” snapped a man in green pajamas.

“Oh, was I supposed to cover my eyes?” Neville smirked in mock stupidity. Everyone groaned again, louder.

“How long have you been playing?” she asked.

“Did you want to join in?” said another man, who seemed to be wearing an orange toga. The others laughed this time.

“I…” Lisey was taken aback.

“I have no sense of time whatsoever,” said the first man, in green pajamas.

“What’s time, David?” asked a little girl in yellow whose hair was a mess of bows.

“Time for a clean cup!” bellowed a woman adorned in a deep blue frock.

“CLEAN CUP!” echoed everyone else. They proceeded to walk around, on the ceiling, under and over the table, and seat themselves on a new chair.

“Who are you?!” the woman in blue snapped indignantly.

“Lisey.”

“Can you spell that?” asked the little girl, who was seated on the dining chair.

“What’s your name?” asked Lisey, leaning down to be at eye level.

The man in orange giggled. “We don’t call her by her name.”

“Well, she must have a name you use…” Lisey protested.

“I thought we called her Esther,” frowned David.

“That’s too normal,” snapped the woman in blue. “We called her Ad Astra.”

“Her name didn’t have two words… did it?” the man in orange wondered.

“No it didn’t have two words, Corin,” replied Neville.

“Maybe it was just Astra?” David scratched his head.

As they continued to debate, Lisey did not notice the door was still again.

“Asterisk! That’s it! We called her Asterisk!” said Neville, delighted.

The girl, who had not been listening to this entire exchange, looked up at what was apparently her name. “Yes?” Neville nudged her. “What?”

“Isn’t that a punctuation mark?” asked a bemused Lisey.

“CLEAN CUP!” shrieked the woman in blue.

“Clean cup!” yelled everyone else. They got out of their chairs, and began to walk around and over the table to new chairs. Lisey followed Asterisk over the table. Quickly, the girl dropped down onto the office chair. Next to her was the man in orange in the dining room chair, on her other side was the stone block. The armchair to the right of the stone block was the loud woman. Resigned, Lisey sat on the stone block, which was just as uncomfortable as she feared it would be.

“Lisey, do you want tea?” asked the loud woman, speaking for the first time in a normal voice.

“Can I have some water?” Lisey asked.

“Here.” The woman placed a clear glass teacup of water in front of her. “Your name?”

“Lisey,” she answered, as the woman ate plain sugar cubes out of her metal teacup.

“Fran,” the woman replied. Lisey nodded, and silently took another sip. The water was nice and cool, even without ice.

“Fran, if I may ask, what does the clean cup mea-”

“Clean cup?” asked everyone else.

“No, no,” said Fran, waving them off. “It just is what it is, Lisey. None of us know, nor do we care, what any of this means.”

“That... makes no sense.”

“Exactly!” said the man in green.

“Your name is David, right?” Lisey asked, to be sure.

“My point is, caring not for boundaries of the outside world, we have all joined here, invited by our mysterious host,” ‘David’ continued.

“And where exactly is our host?” Lisey asked.

“I dunno.”

“...What? Then why are you here?”

Everyone shrugged collectively. The phonograph record scratched once and stopped.

“Lisey,” said Fran, “go change the record.” Lisey automatically nodded and walked to the phonograph. Removing the disk, she saw the name, written in curly handwriting, Thinking of You. A little heart dotted the ‘i’. Under the rickety table was a thin box of decaying records of varying color.

“What would you like to listen to?” she asked.

“Whatever,” said Corin. Lisey fingered through the records and selected one with a stethoscope against a white background. It was a simple, faint clarinet piece, scratchy with age.

“Good choice,” said David, as Lisey sat back down.

Everyone continued to drink. Neville continued to file his nails, not once looking away. David was removing the buttons from his pajama cuff. Corin looked around the dark and desolate room, beating a faint rhythm on the table. Fran silently offered Lisey a sugar cube, which the latter refused. Asterisk just looked happy to be there, bouncing slightly in her chair. Eventually Corin sighed loudly.

“I’m hungry,” he said.

“I’m not,” said David.

“Who’s hungry, raise their hands?” Corin raised his.

“I wouldn’t mind a little food, Asterisk makes a splendid ladyfinger cake.” said Neville.

“Let’s ask her!” said Asterisk.

“Will you?” asked Corin.

“No.”

“Come on! I am so goddamn hungry it’s unbelievable!” Corin wailed.

“I’m on vacation,” said Asterisk nonchalantly.

“I- want- cake!” Corin banged his hands on the table.

“You- can’t- have any!” Asterisk retorted, mimicking the young man’s gestures. Corin groaned in frustration and kicked his wooden chair into the fireplace. Lisey jumped back as it burst into flames and crumbled apart.

“Great,” he sighed, “Now my chair’s on fire.”

“Your own fault. I’m not asking Fran to let us take another giant brick out of the wall for a chair again,” said David.

Lisey pondered this as she put down her empty mug. “Is that why there’s a stone block here?”

“Used to be the overmantle,” said Fran.

“I used to use that as my hiding place,” sighed Neville wistfully.

Lisey looked down at her mug, fiddling with the handle.

“Do you think… we can play hide-and-seek again?” she asked. Everyone stared at her.

“... Drink your water, Lisey,” said Neville with an eye roll. Lisey did a double take. Her mug was full again with cold iceless water. She looked around and under the table.

“How? H-how did you do that?” Everyone was either unaware or didn’t care that she had said anything at all. Eventually Neville sighed dramatically.

“Fran, can you tell Asterisk to make the cake?”

Fran nodded, and gestured at Asterisk, who hopped out of her chair and skipped to the corner.

“Bout time!” called Corin after her. Then he turned to the table. “Do you have any after-dinner mints?” A giant jar of mints was placed in his hands. With that, Corin turned the jar upside down, only most of the mints landing in his mouth.

Lisey winced. “You realize that’s how you get holes in your teeth?”

Asterisk skipped back to the others, pulled a toothbrush from her hair and held it out.

“How do you do that?” Lisey asked.

“Come on!” Neville groaned. “Make the cake!”

“I’m hungry!” said David.

“Shut up!” retorted Corin.

“Make the cake!” ordered Fran.

“Hooray!” cheered Asterisk.

“OW!” screamed Neville.

“What’s wrong with you now?” groaned Corin.

Neville was covering his eye. “Little quail elbowed me in the eye!” He turned to glare at her but the little girl was already gone, skipping into the shadows.

Suddenly Fran snapped her fingers. “I know how to get food!”

“How?” Lisey asked.

“David, call our host, and ask him for a steak.”

“Just a steak?” David whined.

“For Neville’s eye!”

“On it!” David ran to the corner.

“There’s a telephone?” Lisey gasped.

“Mm-hmm. Old, but it works. Used to be a better one, but our kind host cut the wires,” Fran replied with a spiteful glare upwards at nothing in particular.

“Why does he keep inviting you over, then?”

“He doesn’t. We just come and- DAVID STOP EATING THE TELEPHONE!”

“MAKE ME!”

“I made cake!” called Asterisk. Lisey looked around, but the girl was nowhere to be seen.

“We just come and go as we please,” Fran finished.

“Where’s- where’d Asterisk go?”

“Cake!” Lisey cried out, jumping from her chair as the little girl popped up in front of her. Asterisk proudly held out a ladyfinger cake topped with oversize white sprinkles. Fran took it and put it on the table. Sensing that everyone else remained unperturbed by this, she sat back down. As she shakily drank some more water, another question came to mind.

“So, you guys are essentially intruders?”

“Not really,” explained Corin. “He knows we’re here. He just doesn’t like it.”

“Fran?” asked David meekly.

“Yes?”

“Fran, please don’t be mad at me.”

“What?” she sighed.

“I called up for a steak, and I was so hungry, I was thinking of more food, and then I was saying it out loud, and then I had already paid for it, and now in a minute we’re going to have a whole feast delivered to the table, please don’t be mad at me!”

“See? That’s how we get food!” laughed Corin.

“Why didn’t you just ask him to order the feast?” Lisey asked.

“He’d just order the steak out of spite.”

“So no cake?” Asterisk looked somewhat crestfallen.

“Later, Asterisk, later.” Fran motioned the girl back towards the table.

Lisey sighed, and idly started drawing pink swirls into the tablecloth. She meant them to just be a means of taking her boredom out on the table, but they wound up looking more and more like roses.

“What are you DOING?!” gasped Corin.

Lisey didn’t know how to answer him. He looked really angry.

“You can’t draw pink roses on a tablecloth with red flowers!!”

“Why, because it clashes?” replied Neville wryly.

“No, because then we can only use it for Valentine’s Day!” His tone implied it was something even someone as young as Asterisk would know.

“Who cares about Valentine’s Day?” scoffed Neville. “Come on, anyone who cares about it, raise their hands.” Nobody raised their hands.

“I have hands!” said Asterisk. Corin sighed.

“Lisey, get rid of the pen.” Lisey shook her head no. “Get rid of the pen.”

“No,” she said quietly.

“I think you’re scaring her,” said David. Neville leaned in, his interest piqued.

“I’m not scared!”

“Throw the pen away!”

At this, Lisey stood up. “I’m not scared of you, you… Roman senator!” Neville sighed in disappointment, leaning back in the wheelchair.

“If you’re not scared, then draw more on the table,” said Corin, arms folded. Lisey sat down and began to draw bigger thicker, more uneven spirals all over her spot. She was about to move over to Corin’s side when he jerked the tablecloth away. Everyone else picked up the various teacups except for Lisey, who was pulled with the tablecloth to the floor. Standing up, trying to ignore the staggering pain in her entire left side, she walked back to her chair. Corin silently followed suit.

“Lisey…” he began, not looking her in the eye. Lisey could barely look at him, she felt so embarrassed.

“Please get rid of the pen.” The embarrassment was gone.

“Fine, then, since it offends you so!” Lisey flung the pen behind her, forgetting to cap it.

“Good!”

“Don’t-” David started.

“Ow!” said Neville.

“-do that again…”

“Jesus!”

“Uh, Corin did that!” said Asterisk.

“You hit my skull!”

“Oh! Here’s a question!” said Fran.

“What?” everyone asked.

“What does the inside of the mind look like?”

“Easy,” said Neville. “It’s a dome of mirrors.

“Mirrors?” Asterisk went white. “Mirrors are scary!”

“Pity for you, Asterisk, with the proper care, one could truly grow to appreciate the beauty of the reflection within the mind.” Neville lifted up his silver plate and touched up his dark hair vainly.

“My mind isn’t that scary!” Asterisk whined. “My mind is made of sprinkles.”

“Oh, that is scary,” snorted Fran. Asterisk huffed indignantly.

“The mind is literally who you are, Asterisk, of course it’s scary,” explained Neville.

“But you aren’t scared of your own reflection, Neville!” snapped Corin. “The mind is hell. Chemical rivers, electric skies, needle-like foliage. It’s designed to torture you; the less time you spend there, the better.”

“Yeesh, you weren’t always such a tightwad, Corin,” responded David.

“They think it’s unhealthy to spend so much time in your mind, so they turned it into hell.”

“Who did?” Lisey whispered.

“Doesn’t matter,” Corin grumbled.

“The mind is technically matter…” said David.

“Oh, not this again,” Neville snarled

“So, nobody knows?” asked Fran.

“I just told you!” Corin yelled.

“You’re wrong!” Everyone started immediately arguing amongst themselves.

“It’s colorful,” said Lisey. Everyone fell silent.

“Do tell.”

“I saw it somewhere. I was in a waiting room, and I saw this picture. A silhouette of a head, but the inside wasn’t a brain, but a bunch of watercolor splashes. Most of them stayed inside the head, but some got out. And the best part was there was no ugly overlapping between the splashes, and they were still tight together, like bricks in a wall. I love the individual colors, especially when they’re all together, it’s like somebody shattered a rainbow, the colors were pale enough to look like they actually came from one. Turns out it was a magazine cover, and it was on mental health. I picked it up, it was a glossy cover, I love gloss, it looks so nice. And then it was my turn. And I had to go. So that’s my mind. Just a mess of colors, spilling out of cracks in my head. But everything’s moving so fast I don’t get much of a chance to look at them.”

The table was silent. They looked at each other, seeming to speak silently. Lisey would have been worried, and was, because they looked worried too. Eventually David spoke up, picking at the buttons on his green pajama cuff.

“That’s… really beautiful.”

“Really?” Lisey was surprised.

“It is.”

Lisey took a long drink of her water.

Inquiry Into Burning / At Night You Swim

markus tran

inquiry into burning

What of summer leaves

its wrath on your skin?

Could it be your trespassing footsteps

Into the balcony incubating early sunlight

Or heavy footfall ricocheting

From rosehips to mallows

in a garden of possible consequences.

How about your breaking of bread,

your body harbors false mirth and

merriment, decadent days combust

in a display of warmth giving, generous

welcoming of an open season for flames.

The firetail flicks quietly in its dive,

its eyes incandesce in bright songs of burning.

Buds on your tongue still haven’t fully bloomed

but dynamite is able to satisfy

your quick appetite. You are inclined to love

With the same kind of love sunflower has

for her sadistic master’s scorch.

Is that what’s left of the many hours you spent

waiting in the fields eager to have a stranger

Push your back up against chain-wire fences,

Your spine giving way to their metal charring

Just so you could feel the static

For another day.

at night you swim

In your runaway motel room,

the tiny slit beneath the doorframe

carries out your moans as they

fly off like marigold to the first sight of morning,

while your reddened knees continue to worship

cracked floorboards hiding underneath their moth-eaten carpet.

Facing the window, a sliver of dawn shines

through and unpeels the darkness from his face,

unveils the tangerined dimples underneath.

In the same basket were his clementine smiles welcoming

and swallowing you whole.

His lips siphoned the marmalade from your veins,

for only when you are empty you are whole again,

for only when he eases you into his light,

he will see the boy that you are and

the boys that have made you.

But you fear “boy” having been stripped from you,

so you fog the stained glass and

drown at his mercy.

over again

jocelyn olum

His silhouette is blue-gray against the dark white sky—nothing so well-defined as black. It should be twilight by now, four o’clock this late in November, but the gray light above him is unheeding, and the boy takes no notice as the phone in his back pocket ticks seconds. His face is turned up towards the sky and his entire being strains upwards, spiraling in and out of him like air currents whipping each other back and forth until they build up into a storm. Hot air rises into his lungs, up into the starless sky over his head, and his cold exhalation crashes down again onto the waves almost a hundred meters beneath his feet.

For a long, timeless moment, nothing changes. The waves crash against each other and against the rocks, seething into themselves like a million fingers questing or a thousand wringing hands. The clouds circulate in a seamless mass, the movement white on white and nearly indiscernible, and the wind whispers silently into the faintness of the boy’s breath and the rushing of the open water.

Then a single crunch of sneakers on gravel breaks the perfect equilibrium. He starts, pulling his head heavily down from the rapture above him and craning his neck behind him. Over his left shoulder, snap to center. Over his right.

There’s never anyone else there. As his eyes sweep behind him his expression opens, tension loosening, and a clear-eyed pain pierces through him like a thin wisp of cloudy smoke. For a moment he is perfectly framed, the script of his essence open to the world in tantalizing illegibility.

And then he jumps. His eyes close on the way down, and some kind of stricken exaltation writes itself across his face in the 4.4 seconds that it takes him to fall. The wind of his passage buoys his arms out above his head, featherless wings meaningless in his accelerating frame. When his body hits the water the sound ricochets against the rocks, caught in reverberation but unable to scale the cliff and reverse his course. A brief echo and then stillness, the crashing of the waves clawing at the shoreline. Caressing the cliff into smoothness as they draw themselves furiously back away.

My brother stands on the cliff for sixteen minutes. 3:49 exactly and he breathes himself into existence, semi-solid against the translucent sky. At 4:05 the gravel rustles with my footsteps and he whirls, eyes locking against mine wherever I choose to stand. His realest moment. And then he jumps, solidifying all the way into humanness and he falls through the viscous air.

But it happened differently that afternoon. I remember his voice whispering through telephone, drunk in his perfect sobriety, and the way the fog refracted across my thrusting headlights like so much smoke. A choked up cry tearing itself from my lips as I watched him leap, hardly spoken but so loud in the rolling silence that it carried to him effortlessly. And that afternoon he spoke my name on the way down, one slow word against the rush of gravity, and as the waves slapped inside his broken body the wind carried it back to me, up the cliff and over the expanse of gravel. It blew through me in a perfect hole, clean edges cauterized by sincerity, racing out beyond me and across the mesa.

And yet somehow the ghost of him cannot hear me. The crunch of my shoe on the gravel is inevitable but it is still my choice to scream, over and over again as if this time there is something I could change. Some way to make him listen. But again and again my voice washes over him, the thick windowpane of time between us heavier than those few meters on that one afternoon.

My memory is better than this memory of him. I screamed as he exhaled himself off the precipice and he said my name, turning to face me as he fell so the word carried back to me on the roaring wind. He said my name as he fell and I screamed, watching him. I screamed as he fell. I screamed.

Yrta 731

 nate gardiner//iokera

Unpleasant Fortitudes

Soraya mwangi

The brass signage placed above the black mahogany doors looked rusted and was half covered in vines. It read “Institute for Idiosyncratic Individuals” in curved letters. The steps leading up to the doors were coated in a thin layer of ice. The cold gust of wind blew past and Serendipity rubbed her arms. The icy air chilled her lungs as she took a few shaky breaths. She was half tempted to try to catch the bus out of town, even though she knew there was a very slim chance she’d run fast enough down the mountain to catch it. The Victorian building was made of dark wood, blending almost perfectly with the dark forest surrounding it. The forest was not just dark, but filled mostly with dark, leafless trees, with bark that was dark as tar. The grass was dry and crunchy, long dead. The flower beds were overgrown with shrivelled up rose bushes covered in pathetic blackened roses. They almost looked like clumps of ash as they came apart in the icy gusts of wind.

In her long walk up the mountain, she thought back to the way people shied away from her in town when she asked where the institute was. The mothers carrying their kids away, the old people looking at her with disdain, and a cab driver’s utterly refusal when she asked to be taken there. It wasn’t like there wasn’t a road, it was just no one in the town of Lagom seemed to want to venture up there for one reason or another. Serendipity had then stepped into a bookshop, and while tripping over her laces, had accidentally knocked over a shelf. A domino effect ensued and by the time Serendipity had pulled herself up every perfectly stack book and unattached shelf was sprawled across the floor. The shop owner snapped at her and gave her vague directions, likely just to get rid of her. As she walked through the town, she had caused quite a few mishaps, including an exploding fountain, serval runaway fruit carts, and accidentally distracting a herd of sheep that started to stampede through the town, casually interrupting the annual marathon that was going on. Serendipity had watched as a sheep was given a medal by a confused little girl in a flowery sundress dress whose only instructions seemed to have been to hand the medal to the first person who crossed the finish line.

The bookshop had a clear view of the town square where this had taken place.. He must have made the connection then: of course, this disaster of an individual belongs in the nuthouse up on West mountain. The closer you got to the institute, the more the forestry seemed inappropriate for early August. Halfway to the door, it seemed that the trees were starting to turn different colours, as if it was fall.

The bark of the leafless trees seemed to have patterns that resembled faces, getting more and more exaggerated as she got closer. Twisted grimaces in dark swirls of peeling black bark, each with a mouth that seemed to plead her to turn around.

Standing there, wearing her summer overalls and thin knee-high socks, shivering in a hoodie that was zipped up as far as it could go, she was woefully unprepared for what seemed to be unnaturally cold weather for a summer afternoon. She thought back to her mother's last words to her before she got on the bus.

“If you get kicked out, you’re on your own.”

Nicer words than usual considering their less than ideal interactions with one another, but the sentiment was there. Serendipity wonders how long it would take this institute to “ask her to leave,” as many other schools had put it. Those private schools always had found the nicest ways to phrase expulsion.

Serendipity grabbed her duffle bag while gathering her wits to go back down the mountain and try to figure out what to do when the doors slammed open. The gust of cold air that slammed into her made the wind outside the house feel almost warm and inviting.

A boy stood there, in a black waistcoat, staring down at Serendipity. He opened his arms wide and commenced a speech, and while it started off scripted, it was obvious that the boy had given this speech multiple times and had added his own sardonic twist to it. “Welcome to The Institution for Idiosyncratic Individuals, Miss Peachman! You may have been labelled a freak or degenerate wherever is was you’ve crawled your way out from, but here those differences will be accepted and valued! After all, the only truly pathetic thing in this world is normality, or so our crackpot of a founder says. Come now, Miss Peachman, a whole new world awaits you-” He moved to shake her hand, right when Serendipity remembered the steps, which were covered in ice. If someone had walked by they would have thought the boy was imitating a bird, for Serendipity had never seen anyone flounder like that. He didn’t just slip. He skidded down the steps, like the world's most uncoordinated penguin that had taken up figure skating in its spare time.

It when he got to what he thought was the last step that he finally regained some semblance of his composure. Curls in utter disarray and what could only be embarrassment causing the blood to rush to his dark cheeks, turning them slightly rosey,, he took his final step forward. What should have been a ground covered in dead leaves and crunchy grass was actually a final icy step. Serendipity rarely laughed at others’ misfortune, but the way his expression sobered at this realization almost elicited a chuckle from her. And so, falling backwards with a face that seemed to signify that he was completely done with the situation, the boy hit his head on the steps. The loud crack rang in the air.

Serendipity rushed forward, but to her surprised he simply stood up, brushed the ice and leaves off his pants and hair and stuck his hand out.

“Daniel Noteworthy. I’m one of your classmates. A pleasure to meet you. I take you are Miss Peachman?”

Serendipity gaped at him, wondering why his head hadn’t split open on the step and how he had gotten up so quick. Confused and only capable of a brilliant moment of word association she formed a sentence.

“What an odd way to welcome someone to a nuthouse.”

This would be the second thing in the last few minutes that would crack Daniel’s composure. This time, however, he keeled over with laughter.

“A nuthouse!?” He roared with laughter. Not some refined or fancy laugh like his appearance might suggest, but ugly and unbridled snorts. He sounded like a dying animal. Geez, thought Serendipity. This guy is either starved for humour or has a low threshold for jokes. She couldn’t imagine there was a lot of laughing going on in the dark hallways of the institute.

Serendipity huffed indignantly. “What am I supposed to think about a place that would want me? You’d have to be nuts to let me anywhere near this!”

Serendipity waved in the general direction of the building. It was large and intimidating, but she knew all too well its fate if she went inside.

Attempting and failing to compose himself, Daniel choked out, “Whatever do you mean?” He clearly wasn’t aware of who he was interacting with.

“I mean,” Serendipity gave him a pointed look and lowered her voice. “That within two weeks time this place will be in ruins.”

He stopped laughing long enough to answer her in an equally serious tone. “Is that a threat?”

“No. A warning.”

Not a minute after she had said this she could see Daniel biting his lip in a desperate effort to stop another bout of laughter. Maybe this really was a nuthouse. Shouldn’t he have been told who he was dealing with before he was sent to greet her? Did he simply not care? If so, she was worried a lot more would happen to him than a simple slip on some stairs. Serendipity knew she wasn't intimidating, even though she was often called tall, but why was it so hard for him to take her seriously?

Daniel reached forward and grabbed her duffle bag. He gave one more chuckle before attempting to walk back up the stairs.

“Come on,” His voice turned dark, the humour sucked out instantly. “The dean wants to see you.”

Shuffling through the dark hallways, Serendipity took in the musty smells, the marble busts, a few of which she knocked over but fortunately they were only cracked, and the portraits of individuals with either sobering faces or manic expressions, worthy of Daniel’s whiplashing behaviour. Her initial impression was confirmed: the inside was a heck of a lot creepier than the dead trees outside. Serendipity was getting ready to run at any moment—all the building’s ominous creaking here and there and dim lighting unsettled her—when Daniel spoke up.

“Soooo, what brings you to III?”

“Did you just say III?”

He looked over his shoulder back at Serendipity before responding.

“Yeah, for Institution for Idiosyncratic Individuals.”

“Is that what people here call the institute, or just you?”

Daniel’s silence said it all. They passed a few more doors, and Serendipity noticed just how quiet it was.

“Daniel, where are all the other people?”

“It’s August. School starts in September. They go home, obviously.”

“I thought this place was like a boarding school?”

Daniel turned to her, an eyebrow raised. He was staring at her as if she had uttered something idiotic, like that the moon was made of cheese or something. Whatever.

“Miss Peachman, you are aware that students can go home during holidays, right? What kind of boarding schools were you thinking of?”

Serendipity looked down at the carpet as they kept moving. Right. Just because her mother had wanted to get rid of her doesn’t mean everyone else was in the same boat as her. She probably wouldn’t see her for the next three years.

“Right, sorry. By the way, call me Serendipity. It’s weird having some guy who’s around my age calling me Miss.”

Daniel stopped right in front of the two large doors. “Well then, Serendipity, I’d ready yourself if I were you. The dean can be a bit,” his face turned dark again, his mouth grimacing as he searched for the right word. “...much.”

Daniel threw the doors open in the same grandiose fashion he had done when he greeted Serendipity. This should have been a moment for him to redeem himself, to cement himself as an individual that would be known for his ability to saunter into a room and make everyone feel severely small in comparison to his confidence. A redo for what had happened on the steps. This should have been that moment.

Unfortunately, standing next to Daniel at this very moment was Serendipity Marcia Peachman. So it was no surprise to Serendipity when a dusty old book hit Daniel square in the face. The sickening thwack and crunch only increased Serendipity’s guilt from the previous incident. However, the scene in the dean’s office momentarily distracted her.

Standing on the desk was a man with more tightly coiled curls than Daniel, spread around his head in a large Afro, dressed in attire that would have seemed more appropriate in Victorian England. The expression of utter madness on his face, paired with the pocket knife in his hand, kept Serendipity rooted at the door’s threshold, paralyzed. His eyes were trained on a girl standing a few feet away from his desk. All Serendipity could see of the girl from behind was long purple hair tied into a ponytail.

Before she could say anything, the girl moved and the dean threw his knife right at the lavender haired girl.. She caught by it the hilt and chucked it back him. The knife flew hard through his afro, creating a gaping space in its wake, and planted itself dead center in the huge portrait behind the dean's desk. One that had the dean, standing with a long haired woman, who didn’t share the same crazed look in her eye, and a young boy in the middle who looked like a combination of the two. A boy in a black waistcoat, curls framing his face. A boy who looked quite sardonic.

“Wait….Daniel?!”

The boy, who was laying on the ground, looking like he had just accepted that today was gonna be a write-off, let out a sigh. Serendipity had just noticed the blood slowing trickling its way out his nose, the result of being hit with a book the size of an atlas. It seemed as though he was lying down in an effort to not let his bloody nose drip onto his clothes. Serendipity handed him a napkin that she kept on her as he spoke.

“Ah, yes. You have discovered my identity. I am in fact the offspring of the man who you see prancing about on his desk currently attacking a student. Don’t worry, though, knowing Malorie, he’ll be the one who winds up seeing the nurse.”

Serendipity turned back to the commotion in the office. True enough, the dean and the girl, Malorie, were still going at it, though the dean looked significantly more haggard.

Malorie turned her head and made eye contact with Serendipity, icy blue eyes meeting anxious brown ones, and Serendipity felt as though she had seen her somewhere before. The dean managed to land a hit. Although it was only a couch cushion, the impact seemed to shock Malorie greatly. The dean paused his attack, appearing equally shocked. Daniel lifted his head up, his face quickly turning to confusion.

For the first time since Daniel had opened the doors, the dean looked over Serendipity. He seemed to recognize her as he jumped down from his desk and reached out his hand.

“You must be Serendipity! It seems you’ve just proven a hypothesis of mine.”

Serendipity looked him over, confused. Did his hypothesis include sending his son over to fetch her and then see how many pieces he came back in? He seemed to notice her confusion and laughed as he continued. The next words he uttered should have never been accompanied by a smile.

“You see, on her first day here, I dropped an anvil on Malorie.”

Serendipity tore her hand away and stared at him horrified. What kind of dean was he? Thankfully he picked up her horror.

“It’s not as bad as you may think, Serendipity. Despite my frequent ambushes, I never succeeded. She seemed invincible. That is, until you walked in.”

Daniel let out a surprised sound that quickly turned sour. He sprung up and shuffled his way to Malorie, shouting at his father all the while.

“You mean you sent me to fetch her?! You sent your only son to go fetch the girl you told me single-handedly caused the grand canyon to flood and was the perpetrator of last year’s zombie infection?!”

Serendipity cringed. She wasn’t allowed near any more national parks due to that incident. Also, Mr Carlos hadn’t been clear in his instructions in science class. How was she supposed to know her experiment would create a disease that exhibited patterns like the ones seen in zombie films? Though, looking back, that incident might have one of the main reasons she was stuck here.

“Well, you were part of my hypothesis. I wanted to see what would happen if you interacted with her with no knowledge of her disposition.”

Serendipity’s jaw clenched. Cold move.

Malorie looked more and more agitated as she spoke up. “I don’t you guys understand the gravity of the situation. I have never been hit in the face by anything. Like, ever.”

It was at this moment that Serendipity realized where she had seen Malorie before. From billboards signs and magazine pages to listicles and internet trends, Malorie was a frequent figure in all of them. Time and time again the name “Malorie” had been mentioned online, but it was the purple hair that threw Serendipity off. This was because Malorie was usually blond. No one didn’t know of Malorie Lachance, industry darling and jack of all trades, absolute master of all. Serendipity didn’t think much of her, but Malorie had declared she was taking a break from the public eye. But for her to end up here of all places? Serendipity might have recognized her sooner if she went online more often. In her case, she just stuck to cheap flip phones and such appliances. Anything else was too expensive.

The dean moved to sit behind his desk as he addressed the quite agitated Malorie. “Well, Miss Lachance, there's a first time for everything. Besides, I don’t think you’re appreciating what is occurring at the moment!”

He thrusted his hands in the air and in that moment he just seemed like a more nutty version of Daniel, grandiose in his actions. “I have single-handedly brought the incarnation of misfortune and lady luck herself into this very office! Finally, we will be the first to witness what happens when these two forces meet! Will the world fall into chaos or will we be-”

“Wouldn’t they just negate each other?”

Daniel cut his father off, still visibly angry with him for putting him the way of harm. The dean brushed him off.

“Hush, you simple-minded boy. I am an optimist. It does not seem too much use being anything else-”

He might have gone on a long-winded speech that would go down in the books. One that might have further cemented Serendipity's realization that it was not the place, but the people inside it that truly made a nuthouse.

However, he never got to make this speech. For the lovely portrait above his head fell forward onto the dean. Malorie laughed. Daniel whipped around to Serendipity.

And Serendipity?

For once, she wasn’t all too guilty about this particular incident.