Canyon Voices Issue 16

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ISSUE 16 | FALL 2017

01

fiction

02

poetry

Damascus Road

by William R. Miller

First Grave

by William Miller

Autumn

by Jonathan Lee

I Often Wonder

by Jonathan Lee

Nevada

by Jonathan Lee

Abominable Pig

by Matthew Bailey

A Silver Lining, in the Death of Stars

by Jesse Clark

Never Talk To People While Waiting In Line At Disneyland

by Em Leonard

Yea, Though I Walk Through the Valley of the Shadow of Death

Ask Me Anything

by Anthony DiPietro

by Randel McCraw Helms

The Past Still Has My Phone Number

Gerontion, to the Aged at Graveside

by Anthony DiPietro

comets

by Kristina Heflin

Soar

by Jesse Clark

by John F. Buckley

The Dark Mansion

in fletcher’s walls

by Tara A. Devlin

Mad as a Butler

by Alex Van Gorp

Oneirographia

by Kristopher J. Patten

The Ultimate Race

by Tara A. Devlin

That Time You Were, Supposedly, a Creep

On the Last Speakers of a Language

by Tara Thompson

by Randel McCraw Helms

03

creative nonfiction

Tomorrow, the Sun

by Kersten Christianson

Drug Deal

by Kersten Christianson

The Different Drummer

by Scott Stambler

Glossolalia

by Dustin Gardy

The Absence Was Ecstasy

by Vincent Marco

My Father Climbs

by Dustin Gardy

Snack Time

by Jessica Wiggins

by Jeff Meyers

CANYONVOICES

Giada Cattaneo Mark Pugh Frank Diamond Patrick McCormack Catherine Craig Julia Gabrielov

We Killed Him

by Alex White

Madrid

by Gavin Smith

Eight Phone Calls

by Eric Johnson

Chicharrones

06

author’s alcove

table of

scripts

Antonio Borzillo

contents

04

Ammama Malik

by Jonathan Lee

Flagellate Me, Baby!

by Michael Moriearty

05

artwork

Ileen Younan

Love of the Craft and Dedication An Interview with David Jesse Clark

Analyssa Sanchez A Timeless Poet

Randell McCraw Helms Speaks Poetry

Our Mission

What we’re all about

with Jessica Wiggins

Contact Us

Ryan J. Krebs

A Guide Through ‘Madrid’ with Gavin Smith

Ryan Wesson

about us

Jamin Kollasch

Exploring Creative Nonfiction

Kevin Sterjo

07

Kristin L. Wesson

Find us online

Submissions Guidelines for submitting

Snapshot of a Storyteller

Staff Pages

Ryan Wesson

Fall 2017 Crew

FALL2017

Publisher’s Note Issue 16 is here at last and I am simply in awe. One might ask if it’s a particular poem or short story that has me amazed. Or perhaps, it’s the artwork, which is certainly stunning as can be seen from our cover. However, I would have to say that it’s more than all this. In fact, it’s the marvelous students who labored so passionately to bring this issue to life.

For 15 weeks, the Canyon Voices staff of student editors worked hard to pick and present voices that emphasize our mission: to highlight emerging and established writers and artists.

PUBLISHER

JULIE AMPARANO GARCIA

EDITOR-IN-CHIEF

RUTH CAROLINA ARRIAGA

MANAGING EDITOR COPY EDITOR CHIEFS

DESIGN EDITOR EDITORIAL PRODUCTION MANAGER SENIOR FICTION EDITOR FICTION EDITORS

SENIOR POETRY EDITORS POETRY EDITORS

In our fiction section, our editors found a creative writer who works in an accounting department by day and pens haunting stories by night. One of his stories is about a man who escapes a Nazi concentration camp. In Creative Nonfiction, Scott Stambler tells us about marching to a different drummer, while giving us a little history of McDonald’s. Our Art section is stunning, with photography, paintings, and intricate brushpen creations. The Poetry team found a poet who said so much in just two lines. In the Scripts section, “Flagellate Me, Baby!” is a must read. I’ll say no more.

This is all the work of students. They are passionate, creative and dedicated. Time after time, they leave me in wonder. I’m hoping you’ll feel the same after reading Issue 16. I thank the entire student team for their ardor and enthusiasm. In addition, I give special thanks to my Division Director Louis Mendoza, Dean Todd Sandrin and Associate Dean Patricia Friedrich for their unwavering support.

When you look over Issue 16, the Canyon Voices staff and I hope the words of French Enlightenment writer Voltaire will come to mind. “Writing is the painting of the voice.” If true, our latest edition of Canyon Voices speaks volumes.

SR CREATIVE NONFICTION EDITORS CREATIVE NONFICTION EDITORS

SENIOR SCRIPTS EDITOR SCRIPTS EDITORS

SENIOR ART EDITORS ART EDITOR

AUTHOR’S ALCOVE EDITOR SOCIAL MEDIA DIRECTOR EVENT COORDINATOR STAFF PHOTOGRAPHERS

DANNY WALKER DANNY WALKER RUTH CAROLINA ARRIAGA SEAN HAMPTON DANNY WALKER ILEEN YOUNAN ILEEN YOUNAN JESUS ESPINOZA SEAN HAMPTON JAMIN KOLLASCH RYAN KREBS ALEXIS WATKINS ILYSSA GOLDSMITH AMANDA BECK ANALYSSA SANCHEZ KRISTIN WESSON DANNY WALKER SEAN HAMPTON JESUS ESPINOZA JAMIN KOLLASCH ALEXIS WATKINS RYAN KREBS ANALYSSA SANCHEZ ILEEN YOUNAN KRISTIN WESSON ILYSSA GOLDSMITH AMANDA BECK DANNY WALKER RUTH CAROLINA ARRIAGA ILYSSA GOLDSMITH RUTH CAROLINA ARRIAGA

GRAPHIC DESIGN CONSULTANT

LESLIE A. ARRIAGA

ASU NEW COLLEGE MARKETING DEPARTMENT

DAVE HUNT RUTH DEMPSEY

CANYONVOICES is a student-driven online literary magazine, featuring the work of emerging and established writers and artists. The magazine is supported by the students and faculty of the School of Humanities, Arts, & Cultural Studies at Arizona State University’s New College of Interdisciplinary Arts & Sciences. Click here for submission guidelines.

Cover image - Find Your Balance by Ryan Wesson See the Artwork section for full image

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Curiosity by Malik Ammama See the Artwork section for full image

FICTION Intruder by Frank Diamond (See Artwork for full image)

Jesse Clark A Silver Lining,

in the Death of Stars

Em Leonard Never Talk to People While Waiting in Line at Disneyland

Jesse Clark Yea, Though I Walk

Through the Valley of the Shadow of Death

Tara A. Devlin

The Dark Mansion

Alex Van Gorp

Mad as a Butler

Kristopher J. Patten

Oneirographia

Tara A. Devlin

The Ultimate Race

Jeff Meyers

That Time You Were, Supposedly, a Creep

FICTION : JESSE CLARK

A Silver Lining, in the Death of Stars

By Jesse Clark

T

he red lights are only making the

depicted in detail the births and life cycle and

pain worse. It is an immense, earth-

deaths of stars. I pursed my lips.

shattering pain, in my midsection and in my head. I try to move, but I can't; I try to speak, but I can't do that either. It hurts too much, and my voice obeys me no more than do my joints or my muscles or my bones or my mind.

“We’re... made of stars?”

“Yep. Isn't it awesome?” She stepped up beside me and moved her arm across the diagram as she spoke. “I just watched a documentary about it last night. Stars are just fusion factories held

And yet still there is movement. I can feel myself being lifted up and placed on something - a bed, maybe, or - no.

together by their own gravity. They start off fusing hydrogen to helium, and then they keep going on and on, fusing heavier and heavier elements until they're fusing the heaviest stuff.

A gurney.

“Alright!” one of the EMTs says, and several others then roll me into the back of an ambulance, and climb in behind me. But I'm already fading fast, and feeling an inexplicable heat, by the time those doors are shut.

Then they exhaust their fuel and collapse under

One EMT, a blonde woman, shoots me a look, just as I'm slipping away, and says aloud, “Wait.

Wait, I think I know...

“Huh.”

their own weight, and they blow off their outer layers and pretty much shower the galaxy with all these random elements, some of which are eventually used to create life.”

“Yeah. I’m Robin, by the way.” She extended her hand, and I shook it.

***

“Uh, hey. Brian. Nice to meet you.” There was an

“...we're made of that stuff, right?”

I turned around. There was a woman there, red-

awkward pause before I said, “Alright, I got one for you. If you replaced the sun with a black

haired and about my age, give or take, and she

hole, what would happen?”

was alarmingly beautiful. But how long she'd

“Depends on its mass.”

been staring at the exhibit alongside me I had no idea.

“Nope! The answer is - drumroll please -

“I'm sorry?”

nothing. I mean everything would get dark and cold, but we wouldn't fall in. Earth’s orbit would

“I said ‘you know we're made of that stuff,

remain entirely unaffected.”

right’?” She nodded at the museum wall, which

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“Not yet he's not,” she says. There's pain in her voice that she does her fruitless best to conceal.

“I already lost one earlier, Todd. I'm not losing...”

“IF the black hole had the same mass as the sun.”

“What?”

***

“What you said would only be true if the black

“... another one!” Robin said, and I laughed and

hole in question happened to have the same mass as the sun. Which it wouldn't, because the

agreed and we rushed to the back of the line.

sun isn't massive enough to collapse into a black

“See? Told you you'd like Ferris Wheels. Can't

hole.”

believe you've never been on one before today.”

“Oh. Crap.”

She shrugged. “Never thought they were as extreme as roller coasters, so I wasn’t

“Yep. Me one, you zero. Sorry, pal.”

interested.”

"Alright.” I said. “You're on. Whoever gets

“Well they’re not supposed to be

the most points by closing time buys

‘extreme.’ Ferris Wheels are for

drinks.”

She smiled at that and punched me in the shoulder, just light enough not to sting. “Alright, loser.

Come...”

***

There’s pain in her voice that she does her fruitless best to conceal.

“...on,” the EMT says. There is a flurry of activity around me, and there are voices, too, and blinding lights, and a cooling down of that monstrous heat.

all the parents waiting on their kids and sick people trying to relax their stomachs so they don’t puke funnel cake all over the pavement.”

“And adorable young couples, apparently.”

And just then we were waved

into the next seat. We sat ourselves down, and moments later the great wheel began to groan and protest and, finally, to turn; it dragged our cart around its underside and then lifted it up, up, up to the top of its crest, where

One of the paramedics is looking me over. Then he looks to another colleague - the blonde woman - and he shakes his head, slowly.

we could see the whole city at twilight, and the ships in the harbor that were backlit red with the

“This one’s gone, Rachel.”

setting sun, and the clouds that were lined at their tops with just a little bit of starlight. Robin snuggled up next to me and put her head on my

But she continues running tests, running diagnostics, placing a soft hand on my arm in case I'm awake enough to appreciate the comfort. I am. Barely. But I'm fading fast, and that heat is coming right on back as I do.

shoulder, and I put my arm around her waist. For a moment then I could've sworn the empty seat in front of us moved on its own, and furrowed my brow. But then Robin spoke.

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much as that rushing heat, and the effort is further disrupted when the ambulance hits a bump in the road and I nearly spill out of the gurney. But Rachel puts her steadying hand on my chest and says, “Hang in there, Brian. We're almost...”

“Thank you for being here with me,” she said. I didn't respond with words; I just kissed her on the head and held her tight, as the Wheel began taking us...

***

***

“...down on the eighteen hundred block of Gardersdale,” one of the EMTs says. “Yeah.

Yeah. Another one, I know. Hell of a night, isn't it?”

“...there!” Robin pointed at the interstate ramp, and I took the turn and put St. Thomas Vineyard away in the rearview.

The conversation is muffled again in short order.

I drift in and out, and there is a flurry of sound and lights and movement. But the jostling of the room and the sound of an engine tell me we're still in the ambulance.

“Still can't believe Mason got married,” I said.

“He’s only known that girl for what, a year?

Less?”

Robin shrugged. “They were in love.”

The other paramedics, for their part, continue running tests and checking my vitals, and as they work I try to remember what's happened.

But it hurts. Dammit, does it hurt, almost as

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“They hardly knew each other! They don't know if whatever they're feeling is genuine, life-long love or just new relationship googley-eyes that

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FICTION : JESSE CLARK

hasn't worn off yet. I guarantee it - and I'll put

There was a longer pause then, before she said,

money on this - they'll be done within a year.

with a degree of seriousness I wasn’t in the least

Just watch.”

bit prepared for, “Is that where you think we're headed? ‘Glorified roommates?’”

“You don't know that,” she said. There was a brief pause, and then she added, “We’ve been dating for two years.”

Quickly I calculated an avenue of retreat. But I calculated wrong. “No! Not you,” I said. “Not us.

I mean most people, you know? Most people

“So?”

just dive in and either get divorced or stick it out till someone gets heart disease. The divorce rate

“So... how far off do you think we are?”

I shrugged. “I don't know. Haven’t really thought

is more than fifty percent now in the US. But the ‘I-don’t-love-you-anymore’ rate? Shit, that's

about it.”

probably close to ninety by the time everyone hits middle age. I just want to make sure you're

"You haven't thought about it? At all?”

the right person, you know?”

“I mean of course I’ve thought about it. I just... I don't know if we're ready, you know?” I looked over at her, but she just stared out there at the rain with her chin in her palm. So I continued. “Think about it like this: people prepare their whole lives for

If ever there were words I wish I could’ve taken back, it were those twelve.

jobs, right? They start going to school as soon as they can talk, and

those twelve. She said nothing, but I saw her reflection in the window, and the little tear that welled up in the corner of her eye said more than words ever could.

“Listen, I... that came out wrong.

I just meant-”

they're not done till they're in their

“Can you drop me off at my car, please?”

twenties, and it's all so they can get a piece of paper that says ‘hey, hire me, I’m smart enough

"I thought you wanted to come over-?”

to work.’ But marriage? Nobody trains for that.

People just hook up and say, ‘hey we're twenty

“I don't feel good. Please?”

five, or twenty eight, you're cute, I'm cute. Let's

And we drove in silence for a while, as the rain

spend thirty thousand dollars on a giant

picked up its pace and fell in sheets and in

ceremony and then be glorified roommates for

torrents. After another twenty minutes I made

five years until we're both fat and hate each other and get divorced because neither one of

the turn onto my street and parked, and once I did she got out without so much as a glance and

us knew or cared how much work this thing

walked across the road to her own car. I ran to

would require.”

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If ever there were words I wish I could've taken back, it were

follow.

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“Robin, wait!” I grabbed her lightly by the arm. It

She dug through her purse for a moment, and

was slick with rainwater. “Talk to me. Please?”

then held up a ring that was brilliant even when covered in the rain. I felt my heart skip at least a

“What do you want?”

full beat.

I blinked. “I want you to talk to me. I just s-”

“Is that, um-”

“No. I mean with us. Where do you want this to go?”

“It was my mom’s,” she said. “She gave it to me before she died. She said, ‘find your partner in crime, Robin. Find someone who'll sweep you

"Where do I want this to go? I want to be with

off your feet. And jump off a cliff with you.’”

you! Listen, I didn't mean to imply that - that I

There was a pause before she added, “And at the time she said it I thought I knew exactly who

don't want that. I just want us to be smart about it. You know?”

that person was.”

"Well maybe love isn't something you can

I tried for a moment, but I knew,

calculate on a spreadsheet, Brian!”

beyond the shadow of a doubt,

She was shouting over the

that there was no combination of words in the English

cacophony of the storm. “Maybe it's just this thing you feel, you know? And maybe it doesn't make any logical sense.

Maybe it's not supposed to.

But that's part of what makes

Not every day is some cute little romance comedy.

it special; it's an adventure; it's

strung together to right this ship.

“Good-bye, Brian.” She kissed me on the cheek, and rubbed the back of her hand

a ‘jump off a cliff with me’ type of thing. And yeah, sure. Not everyone

on down it. And then she turned

survives the fall, I guess. But if you find

and got in her Civic, and drove off

the right person, then -”

until I couldn't see her tail-lights at all through the pouring of the ...

“A ‘jump off the cliff with me’ type of adventure?

Come on, Robin! We're not writing up a dating website profile here; this is real life! There are

***

“...rain’s comin’ down hard,” another of the EMTs said. “Careful when you unload him.”

kids involved, and finances, and house buying, and mortgages and all that shit! Not every day is some cute little romance comedy. This is half

There were grunts of acknowledgement, and then the back of the ambulance flew open and the sound of the storm utterly exploded into it; I felt the rush of wind, and the rain pelting my skin in sheets, and together they helped a bit with the oncoming heat that still I couldn't place. And then I felt movement. The gurney dipped and hit

your life we're talking about. Two-thirds, even.

Okay? All I meant was that you have to be prepared for it. I just-”

“I thought we were prepared.”

“What do you mean?”

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language that could be

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pavement while the paramedics held me tight to its form. And then there were shouts, and lights, and running feet, and then the hospital door...

“I know, I know. I will. Thank you so much.” I ran down the aisles and then, true to my word, made it back to the counter in less than a minute. The man put down his book, and processed the sale.

***

“Date night?” He said, bagging the card after the flowers. I smiled a bit.

‘Open?!” I shouted. The man behind the counter shot me a look, so I shouted it again, over the sound of rainfall and through the glass.

“Something like that.” And then I thanked him

“I said, are you open?!”

and ran back out to my car, and got inside, and took out the card and scribbled on its inner

And then he pointed at the sign saying the opposite, and went back to reading. But I wasn't

sleeve the words, ‘Jump off a cliff ...

taking no for an answer; I dug out my wallet and

***

pulled a twenty from the fold, and slapped it flat

“...with me, with me!” A doctor running alongside the cart motioned to some nurses in the hall, and they ran to follow. He turns to the EMTs. “Is he stable?”

up against the glass. Within seconds the paper was soaked with rainwater. But it got his attention, and once he saw me there he took pity on my plight, and the door clicked and whirred and slid open.

“He’s slipping. Heart rate’s falling, breathing slowing. Not good. Mumbled something about being too hot earlier, but if anything his

“Make it quick, man.”

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temperature’s too low.” Someone shows the doctor a chart. He reads it as he runs, and his face is grim.

back in, it becomes impossible to hear what they're saying. But it's abundantly clear from the body language that she hasn't yet given up . . .

“Alright,” he says. “Let’s ...”

***

***

‘...hope for a reunion with these guys?’

“...move!” I shout at the car I'm passing. “Just a

‘Well, Bolan and Snake say they’re against it,

little rain, assholes.” But it wasn't. It was a lot of

entirely. So that doesn't bode well for fans. But

rain. Sheets and buckets and torrents of it, in fact; it’d long since turned the dirt to mud, and it

look what happened with-’

swept up against my windshield like ocean surf, and the road was slick with little rivers of it that

I switched the radio off, and then wrapped both hands around the wheel with such force the

ran on down past the pebbles. I was going far,

knuckles turned white on the grip. The car hit

far too fast for such conditions. But I didn't...

seventy miles per hour. Seventy five. Seventy nine. The windshield wipers were flying, but they

***

weren't going fast enough.

“...care about that,” the doctor said. “I just want to get his fluids up. Rachel!”

Suddenly I saw things in the middle of the road, and I slammed my foot on the brakes; The car jolted and shuddered and fought for traction

The woman from the ambulance runs up and discusses my condition in harsh whispers with the doctor. As I fade, and as the heat floods on

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with the pavement, and I felt the tires squeal and the metal of the car grind in...

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***

He ignored the question. “I'm gonna need you to sit here for a bit, okay?” He said. “Just until the

“...protest.”

accident’s cleared up.”

“I don't care if he wants to protest!” the doctor snaps back. “You tell him to wait in the lobby like everyone else!”

“Accident?”

“It’s bad.” He nodded in the direction of the wreckage, and then he said again, “Just sit tight!

The nurse accepts her orders and heads back out into the hallway. “I'm sorry, sir,” she says.

“You can't see him until-”

We’ll wave you over when there's an open lane.”

And then he ran off into the storm.

I scanned the scene. There was a man on the

“Until what?! That's my son in there! That's my son! That's-” and then there's a scuffle of feet, and more shouts as a security guard drags my father from the wing. Rachel pauses as she hears the shouts, and then her eyes well up a bit with tears, and she looks at my face and appears to realize something. But she doesn't say what. The shouts continue, but they fade. And so do I. And in comes the heat as I do.

“That's my son!” Dad says.

“That's my boy! Let me see my boy! Stop! Please … !”

side of the road, I saw, sitting on the pavement with a poncho for the rainfall and his head in his hands. His SUV was totaled; the front end was bent and twisted and hideously mangled.

I’m gonna need you to sit here for a bit … Just until the accident’s cleared up.

***

But the other car was in far, far worse shape than that. I squinted hard, and could only make out panels of white amidst charred black chunks of metal and the force of the rain. But it was enough.

It was a Civic.

“...stop!” The police officer had both hands up as my car barreled towards him. “Stop! Stop the

Oh, God. Oh, God, no. No, no, no.

car!”

I got out of the car and left the door hanging

Finally there was a jolt and a shudder as the tires

open in the rain, and then I ran forward, at least until the officer caught sight of me and ran back

gained control at last, and the car slammed to a

over and grabbed me by the shoulders.

halt. Both the officer and I sighed in relief, and then he approached my window and tapped the

“Hey!” He said. “I told you to wait in the car!

glass with his knuckle. I lowered it.

What're you-”

I shouted over the rain, “I'm sorry, sir! Roads are

”ROBIN!!” I shouted over him. “ROBIN!”

crazy out here. You okay?”

And then I saw it; a fleeting glimpse of movement, a white sheet flipped on a gurney. A

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strand of red hair fell from the right side and

charged past him. “You're comin’ in hot!” He

hung there as the EMTs carted away the body.

said again. “You good, bro?”

“ROBIN!” I screamed. “That's my girl! That's my

But I ignored him. I went to the bathroom, and I

girl!” The officer was confused and stunned and

leaned up against the sink for a long moment,

did the only thing he could think to do - drag me back to my car.

and I grabbed my temples and set my jaw and sobbed without a sound; aching, wracking, heaving sobs. I heard a knock.

“No! Stop!” I was inconsolable but in no shape at all to resist. “Stop, please! That's my girl! Let

”Hey, man,” he said. “You good, dude? Anything

me see my girl! Please, stop!”

I can like, get for you? Or-?”

One of the EMTs, covered in blood from the waist up, turned to look at the spectacle. But

“I'm fine,” I managed. It wasn't convincing in the slightest, but I didn't care. I opened up my

then someone shouted her name.

phone. There was a text from Robin there, from this morning.

***

“Rachel!” The doctor says.

“You with us, or what? Let's go!”

She blinks as she stares at me, and then says, “Uh, yeah. Sorry. I just realized, this guy was-”

It read, ‘I love you,’ and they

And then I saw it; a fleeting glimpse of movement, a white sheet flipped on a gurney.

words I'd ever read. ‘I love you.’

I love you, too. I'm coming.

Hang on, baby. I'm coming.

Then I backed out, and found my dad in the contacts list, and typed, ‘I

“Just get the charcoal, please?

We don't have time.”

love you, Dad.’

And she does; she runs off to fetch exactly that.

And then I feel a hideously invasive sensation - a tube is being placed in my nose, and then I feel it falling down, into my throat. I'm too weak to gag, but I somehow manage to clench my fist. A nurse sees the movement, and he holds me down to steady me.

Moments later I got a response: ‘I love you too, son! You okay?’

But I ignored it, and then I threw open the cupboard, and I grabbed an old... ***

“Whoa, whoa...”

“...bottle of pills,” a nurse said. “Swallowed the whole thing. Lucky his roommate called it in when he did.”

***

“...Whoa, whoa, you okay, man?” My roommate stumbled back as I threw open the door. I

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were all at once the most beautiful and the most painful

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But the doctor is incredulous. “Well. That remains to be seen, now, doesn't it?” Then he turns to the door. “Rach-”

against the restraints, but all my effort and all my strength of arms musters up not more than the faintest whimper.

And she pushes it open with her elbow before he finishes. “I got it, I got it. I'm here.”

But Rachel hears it. She moves to my side, and she holds my head, and says, in soft enough a whisper that only I can hear the words, “Don't follow her, Brian. Don't follow her. Please, Jesus.

I need him here. I need this win.”

“Alright!” He says. “Fingers crossed, people.

Let's see if we can't save a psycho!”

There are isolated chuckles. Rachel, though, almost snaps at her superior for the insult, but then someone says, “Here we go!”

But I begin to fade all the same. One by one, as the spikes on the EKG slow to sporadic pulses, I see the nurses turn to each other and shake their heads. One by one by one, that is, until there is only a trembling Rachel there, and she's holding on for me tight enough for everyone in the room.

And then there is thick, wretched black stuff funneling down that tube and down into my throat. I'm almost desperate enough, but not quite strong enough, to resist it. I can feel it sliding, and hitting bottom, and pumping, and pulsing. My heart rate is erratic; my breathing is erratic; my ability to comprehend the situation is every bit as erratic. I struggle as much as I can

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“Call it,” the doctor says, just as the darkness swirls in and I feel like I’m starting to fall away.

The conversation carries on as I pass.

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“Two thirty two AM,” one nurse says.

“You okay?”

But I can hear Rachel screaming in protest “No! He's not gone! There's still time, there's still time to save him, there's still...”

I stood up, slowly, and I turned, holding my stinging arm while I did it, and said, “Robin.

Robin, w-what was that? That darkness? And the heat, and th-”

But she's wrong. I'm already gone. Her voice, and her face - those things are behind me as I pass. They're fading away into the darkness that's consuming me, and swallowing me whole, and throwing me to the winds.

“Its where you would’ve spent your eternity, Brian, had I not pulled you out.”

I had no words other than the weakest, “Thanks.”

And just when the magnitude of the situation dawns on me - then comes the heat. There are monstrous amounts of it. It rips and tears and scorches and scalds, and had I the ability to scream out or even to breathe I would've done so until my throat was hoarse. But then there is a new pain. A different pain.

“You know,” she said, holding her own arm.

“Suicide’s not exactly what I meant by ‘jumping off a cliff.”

I blinked again, and took a long, deep breath. “Yeah. I guess I didn’t think things through.”

And just when the magnitude of the situation dawns on me - then comes the heat.

A hand reaches out of the blackness, and it grabs my left-side forearm with such mighty force that the resulting pain eclipses that of the heat, and the nails of that hand rip right through the flesh.

And then I’m being pulled, and there is a rushing wind. It is cool and refreshing and beautiful, and suddenly I'm somewhere else entirely.

“Well, maybe I don’t. But you know what? I'd do it again, Robin. I’m serious.”

She nearly rolled her eyes, but I doubled down on the sentiment.

“What I said? Out there on my street? I'm sorry. I mean it, I’m sorry. You were right. Love isn't about taxes or headaches or just tolerating each other until we’re seventy. It's like your mom said.

It's about sweeping your girl off her feet. It's about jumping over cliffs with someone, and not knowing where you'll land, and not caring, as long as you get there together. And if this is where we land, wherever this is, I'm okay with that.” And I leaned in for a kiss.

***

I blinked. The darkness was gone, and the heat with it, and that sensation of being devoured.

Instead, those things had been replaced with starlit clouds as far off in every direction as the eye could see. But my arm stung like hell all the same. I looked at it. There were nail-marks, I saw. Four deep cuts beneath the inner wrist and a fifth on the side, in the shape of a hand. They bled a bit. And then I heard an all too familiar voice.

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“Not sure you fully realize how much of an understatement that is.”

But she stopped me with her hand before it landed, and I opened my eyes.

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“I can tell you've been working on that speech for a while,” she said.

I rustled in my seat a bit and it moved, and past Me furrowed his brow when he saw it. But then past Robin said “Thank you for being here with me,” and got a kiss on the head.

“Over and over again In my head, in the car, until... until I got to the scene of the wreck.” I looked at the ground, and then back up at her.

“And I realized, right then, that if you left the earth itself then I would, too. So here I a-”

“What do you see?” Robin said.

“Us. A year ago and change. I remember that day like it was yesterday. Your mom had just died, so I took you here. To get your mind off things.”

“I was wrong, too.” She cut me off.

“W-what do you mean?”

“You did. That was the first day in months I'd felt truly safe and truly at peace. That was love.”

“About love. I was wrong. My mother was wrong. It's not just about crap you see in romcoms and greeting cards, Brian.”

“I know it was. And I still love you, just the s-.”

Again I blinked. “I know that! I know, it's - it's something you feel in your heart; that defies logic and reason. Not something you can put on a spreadsheet. Like you said earlier.”

She sighed a bit, and then said, “Can I show you something?”

“It's a kind of love,” she said, cutting me off again. “And it's absolutely beautiful when it lasts. But can I show you something else?”

About love. I was wrong. My mother was wrong.

“Uh... okay. Yeah.”

She took my hand again, and again Infinity itself rolled in and out like the tide, and then we were somewhere else.

The hospital, it looked like. St. Joseph’s.

“Uh, yeah! Yeah, okay. Sure.”

And then she took my hand, and Infinity rolled in and faded back out, and all of a sudden we were somewhere else entirely.

“What do you see here?”

“Are we -?”

I looked around. Nurses running up and down the hallway. Doctors reviewing notes and talking to their patients.

“On the Ferris Wheel? Yep. Turn around.”

“I don't know. A hospital.”

I did, and there we were, past Robin and past me, on the seat above and behind us. I remembered it like yesterday; we were staring out at the whole city at twilight, and the ships in the harbor that were backlit red with the setting sun, and the clouds that were lined at their tops with just a little bit of starlight.

She nodded in the direction of a particular room.

“Look in there.”

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So I did. There was a woman on the cot. She was emaciated and hairless and deathly frail, and the doctors inside were shutting off the last of the machines.

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“A dying woman,” I said. “Looks like cancer.”

“Oh hey!” I said. “That's Dylan! What's he doing here?”

“Yep. And what about there?”

“He called the ambulance when you didn't come out of the bathroom,” she said. “He knew something was wrong, and when they drove you off he followed them here. Been standing there ever since, asking for information on you every time a nurse walks by. He's starting to annoy them.”

I looked down. There was a nurse crouched down in front of the same door and talking to a girl - eight or nine years old, if I had to guess - in silly voices. The girl had been crying, but the nurse managed to make her smile a bit, even as her mother died on the other side of the door.

“Looks like a nurse comforting a little girl.”

I watched my roommate for a bit, and sure enough he grabbed a nurse, and asked her a question that I couldn't hear. She said something pleasantly dismissive, and he nodded, and then leaned his head back up against the wall and closed his eyes.

“That's right,” Robin said. “And that little girl will remember that nurse for the rest of her life even if they never meet again or so much as exchange names - as the lady who came to her in her darkest hour and made her smile.” She turned to me. “That's love, too. Just as beautiful and just as previous as what we had.”

“Wow. I uh, I had no idea he cared that much.”

“That's love, too, Brian. Would you do the same for him?” But she held out her hand again before I could answer, and I took it. For a fourth time Infinity blinked.

“What's your point?”

She didn't answer; she just stuck out her hand with a sad smile, and I took it. Infinity faded in and back out a third time. And then we were in the waiting room.

And then I was in the emergency room, looking down on myself. I was covered in vomit from the charcoal and the pills, but I was still, too.

“See that?” Robin said. She pointed to the corner of the room, and I squinted.

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Deathly still. Most of the nurses and the doctor were still walking out the door.

Robin took another step forward, and without another word she put her hand on my temple, and my eyes rolled back.

But Rachel wasn't. She was crying openly now, and making no effort to hide it. She reached for something. A needle, it looked like, or a syringe.

And then I saw it.

Rachel and I are on a beach. Our child is playing out in the surf, and the sun hits her hair just right, and for a moment it is made of gold.

“What's she doing?”

“You'll see soon enough,” Robin said. “But that there? That's also love.” She held out her hand once again and said, “One more.” And I took it.

And then the image fades, and another one takes its place.

And then we were in the parking lot of the same place. The rain was coming down harder than ever.

A birthday party. I have silver hair at my temples.

Rachel does too. But it doesn't matter. Our little girl is turning ten.

“Turn around,” Robin said. And I did. And then I stopped; There were no words.

It was my father in his car.

He was holding a Bible up to his chest with both hands, and he was crying in a way no child should ever have to see their father cry.

And then that image fades, too, and is replaced by another, and another, and another; each one yielding another moment where someone loved someone else enough for it to break through the clouds and be seen forever, even if the moment itself lasted only for a heartbeat.

… he was crying in a way no child should ever have to see their father cry.

“And that there?” Robin said.

“That's the kind of love that can move mountains.”

Finally there is an image of Rachel and myself on a porch as old as we are, and she holds my hand and says, “I'm glad you didn't follow her.”

I put my hand up against his window. He didn't seem to notice.

And I say back, “Me too,” and I kiss her on the head.

“He can't see you, Brian. Not from there.”

And then Robin pulls back her hand, and again standing out there in the clouds together.

I wiped my eyes with the back of my hand.

“Okay,” I said. “I get it. I messed up.”

“How did you do that?” I asked.

And then she released my hand, and all of a sudden we were back in the clouds again, under the stars. I wiped another tear before it fell.

She shrugged. “Time has nearly no meaning in this place. I've been here for a while, Brian, and yet the doctors haven't even left your operating room. Don't think too much about it. Just think about what you want.”

“So now what? It's too late for me to go back down there. I'm already gone.”

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“That,” I said. “Was... was that my future?”

“Like I said. I've been here for a while.” She said. “You're made up of the stars, kid. Now go light up the world.”

She shrugged again. “Could be. I don't know what you saw, and I don't need to know. Was it enough?”

And she kissed me, one last time. And then she was...

I nodded, and she stepped forward again, and said “Then go and get it.”

***

“I'll miss you too much.”

“...gone, Rachel. I’m not telling you ag-”

“Well there's nothing wrong with missing someone,” she said. “That just means love lasted a little longer than what ignited it. So go ahead and miss me. You owe me that much.

Feel the loss; stand up to the storm like a man, and memorize the pain, and learn it inside and out, and let it roll over you in waves and run its course. And then one day you'll wake up and realize you have scar-tissue where the skin used to be, and you'll be stronger than the grief ever was.”

But I shot upright before the doctor could finish the thought, and I gasped for air when I did and grabbed at my chest with more strength than I'd had in hours. There was a needle in it; a bolt of life to the heart, and Rachel broke down in tears when she saw me.

“Well ,” the doctor said. “Welcome back to the land of the living, son. And Rachel?”

She turned around.

“Good work, kid. Made me proud.”

“I can tell you've been working on that speech for a while.”

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And he left, and she turned back to me and tried to hide a smile while she did it. “Hey there. How’re you feeling?”

“Better than dead.” There was a pause before I added, “Hey. I'm glad you got your win.”

She took my hand and squeezed it. For a moment she paused when she saw a scar below the wrist that looked like the result of fingernails dragging through flesh. But then she dismissed it and said, “I am too. And you'll get yours. Okay? I promise you will.”

I said, “I know.” And with that she got up and left the room to go save someone else’s life, while I took out my phone, and opened up the most recent text, and hit reply.

‘Am now.’

For more information on author Jesse Clark, please visit our Contributors Page.

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Never Talk to People While Waiting in Line at Disneyland

By Em Leonard

L

In late August, the crowds sometimes thin out as school seasons are beginning. This is different for us; having home schooled our son since the fourth grade. We have more freedom with our schedules than most and this trip to Disneyland has become our unofficial end to summer and a start to his school year.

et me first get this out of the way…

I LOVE DISNEYLAND!

I always have. The Haunted Mansion, Pirates of the Caribbean, Space Mountain. Call me a goofball if you want, I love them all. As long as can remember there was always a certain rush of magical excitement whenever I talked about it. That smell of the train’s axel grease mixed with fresh popcorn as you take first steps down Main Street. Your first glimpse of Sleeping Beauty’s castle sitting bright and vibrant against the Southern California sun. The wonderful dilemma of having to choose between The Matterhorn or Mr. Toads Wild Ride. All of this comes with one caveat, the crowds. But with such great adventures about to happen, who cares? We’re all there for the same reason. Well, maybe not everyone.

We all have our favorite rides. My wife and I, the Haunted Mansion (of course). My son’s favorite, surprisingly, is the Jungle Cruise. Looking back, it was a fitting place to meet them, while waiting in line for a ride with a savage survivalist theme. A boat ride where everything goes wrong and you’re attacked by all sorts of wild animals. Because that’s what they were, wild animals.

Keep walking, don’t look back…

They seemed normal enough, a wholesome family of five and friendly as can be. It was the young boy, about the same age as my son that started the conversation. I hadn’t noticed that they were talking, but soon we all became locked in an enthusiastic conversation about our favorite place in the whole world. And they sure knew their stuff. Like what years the rides were built, oral histories about rides long gone, and when I heard the dad, Walter, call his daughter Ariel I knew these people were way hardcore Disney folk.

These feelings I have towards the ‘Happiest Place on Earth’ were ones I so wanted to share one day with my own kids. And for the most part I have. My son, who’s ten years old, is just now appreciating the magic. Admittedly, not as much as I did at his age. However, last week I saw his excitement finally spill over as we parked the car

Walter and Belle have been together for over twenty years and with their three kids Ariel,

and hopped on the tram for our annual summer visit.

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Donald (Don) and Woody make up the most intense Disneylanders one could ever meet.

Everything about them was branded by Disney in some way or another. From the matching mouse ear tee shirts, to the branded lanyards filled with collectable pins, right down to Ariel’s pink Minnie Mouse sneakers. Even the teenager of the group, Woody, wore his fair share of the Magic Kingdom flair.

home schooled, making friends can be challenging and watching him mixing it up with Ariel and Donald was gratifying. Both Walter and Belle were nice too and filled to the brim with all sorts of Disneyland facts. Woody, however, was not so friendly. He would stand there quiet and observant.

After a ride on Peter Pan’s flight we stopped off to get a refreshing cola and have a quick rest.

We sat together in the shade as we waited for the kids to finish their drinks. Meanwhile, Walter’s Disneyland stories started to become strange.

And they talked about the place as if was their home, addressing some employees by their first names. Funny thing, the employees certainly didn’t respond as if they knew or even recognized them. It was nothing but confused looks in return. Maybe that should have been the first sign we could have picked up on. Or the fact they were all named after Disney characters. But we didn’t. In fact, after that first ride, we became ‘Disney pals’ so to speak.

“I’m actually a lifetime member of Club 33!”

Walter said at one point out of nowhere with an infectious enthusiasm.

For those unaware, Club 33 is an exclusive, nearly impossible to get into, VIP only private club located in New Orleans Square. It was hard to swallow that he was a lifetime member and

We went on a few more rides together and it was nice, especially for my son. Since he’s

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my gut instinct called this out as bullshit. But his promise of us having lunch at this exclusive club kept my doubts at bay. Maybe it’s true I thought.

I was frozen in shock at what I was seeing and so was my son. She was sucking the blood from his cut. My fatherly instinct grabbed his hand and pulled it away from that little shits' mouth.

She looked at us both as innocent as a porcelain doll, stoic and calm. I looked around to see if my wife had noticed but Walter was talking her ear off. In fact, everyone’s ears.

“Let’s do a few more rides then head over,” he said.

I politely tried to steer in the direction of breaking away but he insisted we join them. I could see that look in my wife’s eyes. The one that’s telling me to man up and cut this cord.

But hey, Club 33 is a once in a lifetime opportunity.

“This ride was the last one Mr. Disney worked on himself before he died,” he boasted out to the annoyance of everyone in line.

I tried to corral my family so we could ride together, but in the nonstop conveyer belt commotion I saw my wife ride away with Belle and I was stuck with Walter. I made sure my son was squeezed in with me. Ariel and Donald rode together, Woody rode alone.

As we all got up to leave I noticed Walter take my son’s empty soda cup from him. He proceeded to dump the leftovers into the trash can then take the mouse ear lid and straw combo. He handed it over to Belle who placed it in her fanny pack. Walter looked at me and smiled, exposing his bright white row of teeth.

For the duration of my favorite ride Walter proceeded to explain away details from every scene we passed through. The hydraulics in the animatronics, the techniques used to create the holograms. I learned more than I needed to or ever wanted, sitting there while he systematically ruined my most favorite and cherished dark ride. But even more disturbing to me was the little blood sucker in the car behind us and my wife sitting next to god knows what to our front. We were trapped. All I wanted to do was get us the hell off this thing and away from them. As the ride finally came to an end, the narrator’s warning “Beware of hitch hiking ghosts” suddenly took on a whole new meaning.

“Everything’s a souvenir” he said.

We should’ve left them right then and there, but we didn’t, instead the kids began deciding which ride to go on next and being the Pessimists my wife and I are, we just went along with it.

My son broke out his park map to give it a look.

Somewhere in the process he gave himself a nice and deep paper cut across his thumb. I didn’t notice until we were all waiting in line at the Haunted Mansion when I heard Ariel explain to my son that he should suck on the cut to stop the bleeding. I gave him a napkin to use instead.

She kept insisting that he suck on the cut. I

I rushed us off and asked the first employee I saw where I could find a first aid station. Who knows what kind of disease these people could be carrying and that girl was sucking on my son's fresh cut. Walter tried to steer us toward Club 33. I took my family’s hands once we were entangled amongst the crowd and changed course to Main Street.

found her persistence about it unnerving. But it wasn’t until later, within the darkness of the stretchy elevator that I saw Ariel with my son’s thumb in her mouth that my unnerving turned into terror.

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“Keep walking, don’t look back...”

from the park, what looked like (to my wife) a used dry and blood crusted tampon, and to top this all off, our son’s mouse ear soda lid/straw combo that Walter had taken earlier.

My wife understood what I was doing and went along. We walked briskly, navigating the scores of people for what seemed like forever hoping those weirdos were not behind us. Once we got to Main Street I finally glanced back and saw nothing. We lost them.

We sat there stunned, almost paralyzed. The only thought that came to mind was, WTF...

“Look! There’s Woody!”

I nervously dumped gobs of first aid ointment on my son’s thumb explaining to my wife what I saw.

My son stood up pointing at him. I turned to see his tall and hunched over lanky figure pass by in the crowd. He was alone. I quietly sat my son down and tried to make like a hole in the wall.

My wife and I locked eyes again. We knew it was time to go home, but when we got up, they came into the eatery out of nowhere.

“You’re not gonna believe what I saw either,” she replied, as I wrapped a Disney theme band aid around my son’s greasy thumb. But there was no time to discuss. We needed to make a decision.

We ultimately decided that instead of leaving the park all together; that we would head over to the sister property California Adventure. We did pay for a park hopper pass and those damn things aren’t cheap. Why let some freaks ruin our last day of summer? Fuck them. Plus, we were super hungry.

“Where’d you guys go?!” Walter belted out with a giant smile full of teeth.

What should we ride next, friends?

They took their seats blocking us in. I glanced over at Woody, sitting a few tables down all by himself and grinning like a madman. He was following us.

“What should we ride next, friends?”

Once at California Adventure, we sat in the corner of the most out of the way eatery we could find and started to relax as our food digested. I told my wife about the paper cut sucking incident and she told me what she had seen. It was just as disturbing. While on the Haunted Mansion she got a glimpse inside Belle’s fanny pack where she saw a clear plastic bag with stuff in it.

There was a slight change in Walter’s voice as he spoke. Like he knew we were on to them.

“I think we’re heading home...,”

He wasn’t buying my wife’s lie.

“Home? It’s barely two!”

“What kind of stuff?” I asked.

We sat there, trapped again. Then an idea hit me.

Used tissues, gobs of matted hair as if pulled from a hairbrush, flattened out Disney soda cups, remnants of someone’s leftover fast food

I mustered up my best polite person persona and suggested another ride, Mickey’s Fun Wheel. Their kids lit up with excitement. My wife

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looked at me like I had five eyeballs. I just played along and tried to act just as excited.

We wasted no time getting out of there, not even waiting for the tram and high tailing back to the parking structure. Once we got into our car I let out a huge sigh of relief.

“We can get a car all to ourselves and ride together!” Walter was overcome with joy.

“What are you doing?! Start the damn car!”

While waiting in line my wife squeezed my hand so hard I thought she was going to break it. But, I had a plan and it was nearing deployment, especially as we inched closer to the loading platform. The most important thing was to keep this family of freaks in front of us. Every time my son mingled too close to the front I’d pull him back as inconspicuous as possible keeping us together. And it was working, except for Woody, who kept lingering behind us.

My wife was not so relieved.

And she wouldn’t be until we were completely out of there. I started the car and backed out looking first to my son in the backseat. A feeling of anger came over me. What a shitty day for him. I noticed his band aid was gone.

“It fell off somewhere,” he said.

Fitting, I thought. We drove home in silence.

There were only three groups ahead of us and my heart was lodged into my throat. If this plan didn’t work I’m not sure what we could do next.

I had to execute this perfectly. The big gamble was how many riders per car, which was eight, perfect!

It’s been almost exactly one week since our doomed trip to the ‘Happiest Place on Earth’.

We’ve had a few family talks about not letting things get in the way of our fun time, no matter where we are.

It was our turn next to board and I managed to get us in the perfect position. They were to our front and therefore would board first, even that creep Woody. When the wheel turned and our gondola was ready I casually took my family’s hands. Game time.

We should not let that bizarre experience get in the way of future visits. I mean, shit happens, right?

I was feeling real optimistic about everything until I went to collect the mail yesterday. There was a plain, unmarked envelope mixed within the week’s mail. I opened it and inside was my son’s band aid along with a note written on “It’s a Small World” stationary.

Once the freak show boarded I pulled my wife and son off to the side and squeezed us back through the line. We quickly made our way past puzzled faced until we reached the nearest exit.

I looked back to the magnificent wheel now starting to turn, where I saw those creepers crammed into their gondola, trapped.

It read:

“Everything's a souvenir - your friend, Walt.”

My plan had worked!

I met Walters eyes one last time before they disappeared higher into the sky. They were pure darkness.

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For more information on author Em Leonard, please visit our Contributors Page.

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Yea, Though I Walk Through the Valley of the Shadow of Death

By Jesse Clark

G

Knock.

et away from there!” My wife crawls

There is a hollow sound that can be heard from

over to my daughter and pulls her away from the hatch and claps a hand over her mouth.

both inside our hiding place in the walls and outside it. Then there’s a pause, and the sound

And then there is silence in the space behind the

of feet joining the officer in the room. My wife closes her eyes.

wall. No one speaks. No one moves. But it is not silent everywhere.

”Perhaps I can inform you of other families in the

Outside the bushes are prodded with bayonets, and the contents of the carts are spilled to the

area with whom Jews might be hiding,” says our host. But he receives not a word in response;

mud. Then the doors are kicked in; first to the

instead the back ends of their rifles smash in the wall between us, and everyone is screaming.

shed, and then the outhouse, and then the house.

***

“I wasn’t expecting visitors,” our host says. For a time his statement is ignored; these visitors are

No train came on May 3rd. Normally trains pull in several times a day, and when they stop all the people that have been stuffed in them get off, and are stripped of their clothing and luggage and organized into two lines. Some of them, like me, go to the left, and are given uniforms and tools. But some of them - those too old or too young or too weak or too broken to work - go to the right, and the men with the coats with the red X on the back walk them into the brick buildings, and never are they seen again. Then their train leaves, and another is never more than a few hours behind that. When it arrives, the process begins anew. Day after day, night after night.

too busy searching under the sink, and in the closets, and even the pantry cupboards, as if Jews might be hiding in the shelves. Then there’s a knocking sound before the host again says, “Surely there’s nothing of value behind the walls?”

“Ah, that is where you’re wrong,” comes the response. He knocks again. “I have found a great many interesting things in the places no one else would think to look.”

He knocks again, just meters away. Still there is nothing, but ever closer does he come. ”I’ve found Jews in attics,” he says. Knock. ”I’ve

From all over Europe people who bore the Star of David would come: from Berlin and from Bavaria, and from Nuremberg and Cologne and Düsseldorf and Dresden and Hamburg and

found Jews in cellars.” Knock. “I’ve found Jews under floorboards.” Knock. ”I’ve even found Jews inside walls. Can you believe that?”

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Munich. Some months ago Jews came from Vienna and Warsaw, too, and before that they would come also from Minsk and Bialystok and Kiev and Smolensk and Budapest and all the regions in between. But now they come only from Germany, and there are fewer of them in each trainload.

always the Russians are at the gates; always the British or the Americans are racing east to save us. But then the Russians never come, and the British never come, and the Americans never come. Only more trains.

But no train at all came on May 3rd. And when we awoke at dawn we were not even given our tools to work. On that day we were thrown into a line, and the great gates were opened all the way up at the front of the camp, and out the prisoners went, one by one by one by one. They didn’t tell us where we were going, and nobody dared ask. But there were rumors.

Magda pointed to things as we walked past them. “Look,” she whispered. “They are burning the bodies.” And they were. The

Such hope is poison.

Sonderkommando men were dousing the graves with gasoline and lighting them up. But that means nothing, I tell myself. Always the Germans make them do things like this, to clear room for more bodies. And always there are more bodies.

One woman, Magda, leaned in and whispered to me in Polish, “The Allies are coming, Viktor.”

And in her eyes I saw hope, and it took a great deal of restraint for me not to hit her across the mouth. I had heard such nonsense before -

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But Magda continued. “And look there!” And I did; and I saw SS-men forcing Jews to carry down from their offices boxes and boxes and boxes of papers, and when they reached the

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bottom they had them light the boxes on fire, too. “They are disposing of the documents,” she said. “So the Allies will not find them.” Still I said nothing. That was bizarre to see, but it did not mean the Allies were close. It could’ve meant any number of things, so I didn’t dare allow myself to hope.

We walked for hours. None of us had good shoes. Some of us had none at all. Our feet were blistered and bleeding, but still we walked, for miles and miles and miles and miles.

Occasionally you would hear a gunshot, and sometimes a scream to go with it. But then there would be silence again, and never once did the column stop on account of the shootings.

Always forward did we move, and after some more walking, you would pass the bodies of the ones who’d been shot. They were the weakest of us: the oldest; the hungriest; the most tired.

They had been thrown to the side of the road with a bullet in their heart. And the further we walked, the more of them we saw. Magda again leaned in and whispered, “The fewer of us there are, the easier for the fascists to manage. They are trying to make speed.” But before I could respond I heard the word “Wasser?” And I looked up.

As we continued to march, some SS-men ran past us in the other direction with more gasoline, and lit aflame the barracks. Even over the roar of the fire and the commotion of the march you could hear the screams of those who were too weak to join us. But after a moment there was only silence. Magda leaned in again and said, “Do you see? They’re destroying this place and taking us somewhere deeper in the Reich. Away from the Allies.” I thought, If that is true then surely we will die before we are saved, but still I said nothing, and soon the long column of prisoners exited the gate and turned onto the dirt road that led away from the compound and into the woods.

An SS-man was walking against the current of the line with a canteen, and he was offering it to the prisoners as they passed him by. “Wasser?” he said again. Most dared not accept such a gift, famished and parched though they were. But one elderly man eventually did; he stepped out and nodded when the canteen was offered to him, and he said “Danke,” and he reached out his arms for it.

***

But the officer did not give it to him. Instead he unscrewed the lid and dumped its contents into the dirt by the man’s feet and said, “Oh, es tut mir

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leid!” And he laughed, and another guard laughed, too, and together they dragged the man out of the crowd. As I passed by them they were saying, “Tanzen, Judenshiesse! Tanzen!

Tanzen!” and they were leading him along in a mockery of a Jewish dance and laughing mightily while they did it. Then there was a gunshot, and onward moved the line to we knew not where.

the body and toss it to the side of the road, whether it is screaming or not. Sometimes the living are too weak to scream. Sometimes they are too weak to care, even as the Germans walk up to them, and take out a pistol, and shoot them in the head. They do this so nobody gets the idea of merely pretending to collapse so they will be left behind.

By the end of the first day, a fifth of our original number were dead; corpses lined the road for miles and miles, but still we marched.

***

In ever larger numbers the people of the crowd were leaning on each other for support that the others were too scared to give them. And when they received no respite, their knees buckled and then down they went in a heap. Whether or not they truly were dead did not matter; the Germans instruct the other prisoners to haul off

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***

Half of us at least had fallen by morning, but still the rest walked, until later on we heard a shouted “Halt!” Oddly it was not a welcome order; there’s a certain numbness in movement,

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but when you have tasted rest it is so much more painful to leave it when they tell you to march again.

of the Reich. Beyond that ridge is Russkiland.”

There was a rumble of a murmur throughout the crowd. But our Commandant ignored it and spoke, and Magda continued to translate.

But we didn’t move for some time. Up ahead I heard the officers talking amongst themselves, and I risked a look. There were new Germans there, I saw. Not in SS uniforms, either, but in

“Where are you lot going, then?”

“West. Americans will give us food. Russkies give only bullets.”

the new ones worn by the Wehrmacht. The soldiers wearing them were were alarmingly young; sixteen or fifteen, perhaps. Only their officer was of a proper age to fight, and he responded to our Commandant’s enthusiastic

“Surely you don’t mean to surrender-?”

“We do. And you’d be wise to do the same, Standartenfuhrer. Might want to ditch that coat, though. I hear even the Americans shoot the SS on sight.” He put a finger up to his head like a pistol.

“Heil Hitler!” with little more than a grunt. The two of them spoke for a time, and Magda translated to me all that she could hear.

“The Allies are on the Elbe,” she said, and the Wehrmacht officer pointed to that river on the Commandant’s map. “And that there?” The officer then looked up and pointed to a hill, a mile or so northeast of us. “That there is the end

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But our Commandant was having none of it.

“You swore an oath to the Fuhrer, did you not?”

“Fuck the oath. I want to eat. You can do what you want.”

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And then he began to walk away with his men, but our Commandant then called after him, “What about these Jews?”

instead of this one. I would lie down if I was. I would sleep. I w-

But suddenly there is a weight on my shoulder,

So the officer stopped and looked us over. Then he shrugged and turned back to the Commandant and said, “Ran into another group of you SS men not a few hours back. Said they’d been forced out of their station by the Russkies and had to shoot all their Jews on the road. Nowhere else to take the filth.” And then off they went to the west.

and when I turn around to look I see that an elderly man has fallen asleep and rested his head there. I nudge him, but he doesn’t respond.

“Hey,” I said. “Hey, wake up. Get off me.” But still he doesn’t answer. Only when I try to move do I realize he is dead. Yet still he stands.

***

The Commandant then spoke briefly with his own men, and then orders were whispered, and the guards took their paces and spread out until there was a man for every thirty or so of us. Magda squeezed my forearm with a new kind of energy, and then out came the German submachine guns.

The prisoners that could still speak began to beg for mercy. They received none.

***

When I came to I found myself buried under the weight of two or three of bodies; perhaps more.

It took all my strength to remove them.

But once I had I stood up to my feet and patted myself down miraculously I had not been shot - and then I looked around and found the road empty. The Germans, eager to rid themselves of our burden, had left long ago. I was a free man.

I went inside without hesitation, and lit a lantern near the hatch door … I was not alone.

But I was also a starving one who owned nothing.

I can see the countryside fly by through the wood-slat wall of the train. There are houses that are empty, and power lines that are dead, and sometimes

So I walked along the road by my lonesome for many hours that night. For a while

entire villages that go by where not a single soul can be seen. It seems as if all of Poland is here

the road is filled up with bodies. Some of them still move. But after that there were very few

with me, in the car of this train that I have stood

people to be seen. Sometimes a woman with

in for so long I have lost all sense of time. There is no water. There is no food. There is nowhere

her children and all their luggage would run by in the same direction I was going, and sometimes

to sit, and nowhere to lie. I and the hundreds of

there would be a car, and when either passed by

others in here can only stand. I am fortunate

me they often looked at me and my rags with disgust. But never did they find time to stop and

enough to have been placed by the wall.

jeer or report my presence to anyone, and for

As I watch, another train goes by in the opposite

that I found a small degree of comfort. For much of my walk, though, there was only quiet and

direction, on the tracks parallel to ours. Like the others before it is empty, and I wish more than

emptiness, and such conditions lasted until I

anything that I could simply be on that train

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reached the outskirts of Ruthendorf the next

light-posts had been hanged all manner of men and boys; and from their broken necks were signs that read terrible things that I couldn’t understand. One man saw me staring up at them turned to me and pointed at them and said, “Feiglinge und verrater.” But I only nodded and then moved along on my way.

morning.

***

Ruthendorf was a small but still inhabited village, and after a brief period of inspecting it from the bushes I determined three things: one, there might be food in here; two, there was almost certainly shelter; and three, it appeared to have been abandoned by the army. So in I went, and from an old clothes line I obtained a jacket and a pair of trousers, and from the porch of the same place I found shoes that were only slightly too big. Then I ventured further into town in search of food.

There were even more people deeper in the town. Some had nowhere to go at all, but many others had packed up their belongings into a family car, or into a horse-drawn cart, and were departing away to the four winds. Luckily for me it was only a short time before I saw a trail of crumbs on the side of the road that eventually led me to an unlocked cellar. I went inside without hesitation, and lit a lantern near the hatch door. But I stopped when I did. I was not alone.

There were many people there, and with my striped inmate’s uniform covered up to the neck by my coat they paid me little mind at all. Many of the remaining people, after all, were staring up. And when I did the same I saw that from the

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There were two others in here with me: a young man and a woman who I recognized instantly,

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and who ran up and hugged me when she determined I presented no threat.

ate entire handfuls at a time, often shoveling in the food without digesting the last mouthful.

“Thank God it’s you!” Magda said. “We thought you were dead!”

“Slow yourself, Viktor! You’ll eat yourself sick.

I’ve seen it happen.”

“I thought you'd died too.”

“I haven’t eaten in days.”

She shook her head. “No. No, thank God not.

Most of us who survived got up and left together after the Germans ran off. But you weren't with us.” Then she gestured to the man; a boy, in fact, of no more than nineteen. He looked healthy and well fed compared to us.

“None of us have. But this might be all the food we’ve got for at least as long as that.”

“The Americans will have more.” I took another handful and ate it.

“And how do you propose we get to the Elbe?

There are fascists all around this place. Roving bands of SS come into town every few hours and hang any man they find without a gun.

“And who’s this?” I said.

She shrugged. “He doesn’t speak much.” Sure enough the boy shied away from direct eye contact.

’Feiglinge und verrater,’ they call them. Cowards and traitors.”

“How did you come by him?”

I swallowed and then said, “Then we should leave tonight. Stay off the roads. The Elbe isn’t more than a few hours’ walk from here. We’ll swim across if we have to.”

“He was here when I got inside. And he offered me this.” Magda handed me a basket filled with fruit and bread. Instantly I took it from her and

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She concurred but added, “We should leave sooner than that. The Soviets aren’t more than a half-hour away, and I’d rather not have to tangle with the Reds any more than the SS.”

First came rifle fire from not more than fifty meters away. Then there was a swishing sound, and a distant explosion that followed, and then the machine guns opened up.

“Why not?” I said. “Anything is better than the Germans. Maybe they’ll help us.”

“What’s happening?” I whispered. “I thought the

She blinked. “They’d never help us get to the Elbe, Viktor. Why would they? Stalin sees us as no more valuable to his cause than Hitler. If we

Magda said, “Not the Wehrmacht.”

Wehrmacht had left this place!”

And then we heard more explosions - much, much closer this time - and we felt them too.

The whole earth seemed to rumble and shake and pitch forward and around, and all the things on the shelves were thrown from them. Then the engines moved in.

get caught by them they’ll never let us go.”

“You don’t know that.”

“I do, Viktor! And you do too. Don’t forget they invaded Poland with the Germans, and not a few months back they sat back while the fascists butchered the resistance in Warsaw, and all so Stalin wouldn't have to spend the manpower doing the same. So what if Poles fight with them now? They have no love for our kind, Jew or no.”

There were dozens of them.

Jeep engines, truck engines, bike engines; and then came the heavy rumbling and squealing of what could only have been the tanks.

One after another after another they came, down the street above, and along with them were scores and scores of footsteps, and the Russian voices they carried with them that shouted and whooped and hollered. Finally came the bellowing from the bullhorn - a Russian officer shouting at the locals in their native tongue. Magda translated as he spoke.

This time the mother made no further effort to silence her child.

“So what do you propose then, huh? If we leave here looking like Germans the Reds will shoot us, and if we look like anything else the Fascists will find us on the road and do the same. Best to let the Reds clear the area for us and then leave tonight. We could all use another hour or so for a break, no?”

”Citizens of Germany: your Fuhrer is dead!

Berlin burns! Your Reich is ended! Comrade Stalin extends his mercy to those who will cooperate with the Red Army. But to those who will not, hear this: a storm of steel will descend upon any who resist us. Surrender your arms!

Surrender your posts! Surrender your homes!”

But she had no time at all to respond before we heard shouts from up above, and screams, and pounding feet. After this there was a brief silence before we heard orders were shouted in German.

Magda whispered, “Put out that lantern, Viktor.”

So I did, and I shut and locked the hatch. Then we listened.

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And the city descended into madness. Upstairs in our own building we heard a baby crying, and

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its mother trying to hush it. But then the front door to the place was kicked in, and we heard no fewer than a dozen men storm into the house and pillage it; furniture was overturned, and closets were turned inside-out, and the kitchenware was bagged. I knew enough Russian to hear men arguing about who got which pair of shoes, or which painting, or which pretty dress for their sweethearts in the Crimea or in Smolensk. Jewelry went to the officers.

Then the footsteps went upstairs, and that door too was kicked off its hinges. This time the mother made no further effort to silence her child. Instead she howled and screamed and begged as she was defiled again and again and again and again by each of the soldiers in turn.

We heard it all, and the silent boy next to me began to cry when the woman screamed something and the Russians responded in between fits of laughter. I asked what they’d said.

“She begged them to kill her,” Magda said. “And they said back, ‘Russian soldiers do not shoot women; only German soldiers do that.’” We listened as the raping resumed. And then Magda said, “Do you see now, Viktor? Do you see what kind of men they are?”

I said back, “She is a German.”

insisted to him the coast was clear. Then we moved across the street and stepped inside the house there for cover, through the hole on its easternmost side that’d been blown through by a tank.

“So?”

“So let her suffer like we did.”

***

“Like I said,” Magda said to me, as she pointed out the corpses of six boys on the floor no older than ten or twelve. The Hitler Youth insignias were still plainly visible behind the blood. “Not

Some hours later Magda had her ear pressed to the cellar door and said back, “I hear voices, but they’re far away. If we’re quick we can get past them.” Then slowly and carefully she opened up the cellar hatch and looked around a bit, before motioning us up. I followed her into the night, but the Silent Boy only came up once we’d

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the Wehrmacht.”

“Why do they still fight?” I said. “The war is over.”

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She shrugged. “They’d rather die than give in to the Red beasts. Doctor Goebbels has spread propaganda about the Russians for years now; says they want nothing more than to rape and pillage and destroy. Better to die fighting than to surrender.”

swiftly and terribly punished. And then they are made to obey it.

When we are all out on the platform, the train behind us whistles and departs. Then the same guards separate us into two lines: one for men and the other for the women. I attempt to assure

“Utter madness.”

my wife and daughter it is only a temporary arrangement.

But in the distance just then we heard more cries of women, and more laughter, and she said, “But not entirely unfounded madness.”

Both the men’s line and the women’s line then approach their own table at the end of the platform, each of which is staffed by at least a

The Silent boy pulled his shirt up to his nose and moved out of the room quickly, before Magda caught him by the collar and pointed out a group of drunk Russians walking across the square. “Not yet.” So we waited for them to pass, and then we moved to the next house, and the next house, and the next. When there were no blown in walls through which to move we hid under stairs and under carts and under burning trucks, and we did this until the town of Ruthendorf was behind us entirely. The woods were next, and our path through them took us north and west, away from the town and towards the River Elbe.

dozen men in white coats, who inspect each passenger and take note of their age, and their height and their weight, and their posture and their strength. The most ablebodied are sent left. The

And what a convenient time it is for innocence.

others - my wife and my daughter among them these are sent to the right.

She screams for me when she sees I’m not going with them. For my part I shout over the din of the crowd, “I'll

find you! I promise I'll find you!”

But before I even finish the words my family is escorted to a great brick building by men in coats with a red X on the back, who are themselves pushed along by Nazi guards.

***

I am then taken left and into a building with the

The people packed near the side of the train nearly spilled out when the doors were opened, so tightly packed up against it they were. Then

other young men and girls. We are told to strip down, and we do, and while we're still naked we

we are told by armed SS guards to move on

are shaved until there is nothing left. Then our

down the steps to the platform. They tell us then

hair is swept off into great piles but not

to leave our belongings behind by the tracks.

“You will no longer have use for those things,”

discarded from what I can see. Then we are given black-and-white striped uniforms to wear, and are told to roll up the sleeves of those things

they say. Some resist this order, but they are

and expose our forearms. When we do a man

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not included in this conversation was unknown to me.

walks up and tattoos numbers on each of us there. When he reaches me he answers my look of confusion by saying, “Your number is your

So down the hillside I went, and when I arrived on their flank both of them were quite clearly surprised to see me. Magda said, “Viktor! We thought you were asleep!”

name now, Jewish shit.” And on my forearm I receive the numbers 977840.

***

“I was.” And I looked at the Boy, and in that moment I was unable and just as willing to hide my hatred for him.

I awoke to the sound of voices at dawn. We’d slept in the woods, the three of us, somewhere northwest of Ruthendorf and due east of the River Elbe, and I was still exhausted. But the sound of speaking is one that it would be tremendously unwise to ignore. When I sat up I realized Magda and the Silent Boy were nowhere to be seen.

But Magda only said, “We were talking about our path forward. He says there’s a bridge still open across the Elbe not a few more hours’ hike from-”

“He's one of them, isn't he?”

So I listened for a time, and determined two things: one, the voices were in German; and two, they were coming from the other side of the little hill on which we’d slept. I crawled as quietly as I could to the crest of the thing and looked over, and there I saw Magda and the Boy speaking to one another in whispers. Why I was

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“What?”

“That boy.” I gave a spiteful nod to him and sneered. “Doesn't speak Polish. Cries when the German bitch was raped. No tattoo. Meat still on his bones. He's one of them, yes?”

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“Viktor, I-”

“And you think that if Germans are still fighting

“Isn't he?!”

they won’t do everything in their power to bring more suffering to the Jews while they still can?”

“H-he was. Okay? He was an orderly in the

“Viktor-”

Wehrmacht. But he left! He ran, and put on civilian clothes like we did. He wants nothing to do with Hitler now.”

“It’s a trick, Magda! When they can’t win with brute force they’ll try for deception and trickery and false calls for peace. You think they’ll honor whatever treaty is coming now any more than they honored Versailles?!” She said nothing, so I leaned in a bit closer. “They will never stop fighting, Magda. Never. Not until they are destroyed will they cease to rise up, again and again and again, to break the back of the world.”

“And what a convenient time it is for innocence.”

“Viktor, he's not one of them. He’s-”

“He is, Magda! He is! He's a fascist! I don’t care if he’s a deserter. You believe him when he says there's an open bridge?! Please. It's a trap.

They're probably luring escaped Jews to this place to be shot or put back in camps, or-”

“You don’t know that.”

“Viktor, listen to yourself! The war is over. Its-”

“I don't?! Twice in a single generation they’ve done it! Twice! It is in their blood. Look at him.”

And we did; in the midst of all this the Boy whimpered and said things under his breath that sounded like pleas or prayers.

“Over?! You can tell that to those dead Hitlerjugend boys, Magda. Tell them their war is hopeless. You think that in all of Germany those boys were the only ones still fighting?”

“No.”

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Magda said, “This is what a threat looks like to you, Viktor?”

“I don’t want revenge, Viktor. I want to sleep in a bed. I want a hot meal. I want a shower. I want to go home and rebuild it and sit out on my porch at sunset with tea and read a book and water the flowers at the edge of the yard. How does more killing help get me there?”

I scoffed. “I don’t believe it for a second. These people have taken everything from me. You hear that? Everything! My wife? Dead! My daughter?

Dead! My home? Gone! I have nothing! No one!

All because these fascist beasts swept in and

“By preventing another war that will come crashing down on our heads when we’re too old to fight!”

stole it from me. And now he plays the hare in the lion’s jaws.” I spat at his feet, and he took a step backward and cried.

“And that’s why you’d do it? To protect future generations? How noble of you. And what exactly is your suggestion then? That we kill this boy here and do the same to every German we can find?”

“They took it from me too,” Magda said.

“What?”

“The Nazis. I had a brother. I had a sister. I had a mother and a father and a man I was going to marry. And I had a home, too. You think I still have those things now?”

“Magda, I just meant-”

“I don’t-”

“Do we do the same to the children? And what of the elderly? And the sick?

Them too? Maybe we can build camps to make it easier. We’ll come steal them from their homes and put them on train cars and ship them off to the gas chambers so we can save our bullets for the next batch, and the next after that, and the next. And then, when all the undesirables are gone, then, perhaps, there will be peace.” And with that she walked off with the Boy, down the hill and onto the road below, where a crowd of refugees was moving west.

He was crying when I reached him; open, wracking, heaving sobs that shook his body.

“You speak like you’re the only one in this world who’s suffered, Viktor. But you’re not. Everywhere you go now from Moscow to Warsaw to Berlin to Paris - there are people who have nothing left. People who are starving; people who have no place to go; people who have lost everyone they have ever loved; people who have had their humanity taken away from them.”

“And it is because of them!” I pointed at the Boy. “This madness wasn't because of some earthquake or storm! If not for Germany none of this would’ve happened. None of it! We are

***

I joined the same crowd some time later, and although I couldn't communicate with the people there I heard the word ‘Tangermunde’ quite often. And when I saw the same word displayed on a distance marker sign, and when people in the crowd reacted to that sight with

owed our revenge, Magda. No one - no one would judge us if we took it.”

“I would.”

“What?”

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whispers of excitement, I understood the word to be the name of a town on the Elbe, and of the bridge that stretched from that town across to the western bank of the river. Some time later one of the men nearest me tapped me on the shoulder, and pointed up to the top of the coming slope, and said, “Da ist es!” When I looked I saw there the spires of a church not yet bombed, and houses, and the markets of that town. Some of the people not encumbered by luggage skipped into a light jog when they saw the same.

did that; and behind them came all the men on crutches and on stretchers and with bandages wrapped around their heads, who limped west as quickly as they could. Then someone ran by us and screamed, “Lauf! Lauf! Die Russen kommen!” And we ran too.

Up ahead the bridge was swarmed with people who were climbing slowly and in the smallest possible units up the wrecked steel to avoid falling. Some others, having seen this slow progress, had taken to crossing the river on their own, and they used rafts and plywood and canoes and whatever else they could find. I saw

And beyond that town, and the field beyond that, was the River Elbe and the bridge. But it was in a sorry state; a part of it was underwater, I saw when we reached the field, and the frame listed heavily to the side. How such a thing could bear the weight of such a crowd, I didn’t know. But we moved towards it nonetheless, when the people saw that people had already made the crossing in groups of twos and threes and fours. At its far end I could see men helping these souls to the west bank of the river. The same man from before leaned into me again and said, “Amerikaner!” And I smiled and nodded.

men drowning, and Wehrmacht officers pushing pregnant women out of their rafts and boats and paddling across the water with their bare hands, and SS men brandishing their pistols at children and then stealing whatever watercraft they had for their own purposes, so mad with fear of the Russians they were. Some Americans had begun to shoot at any man who did this, but they scored no kills from what I could see.

Some German units had already arrived and set up artillery pieces by the riverbed to protect the evacuation, and those guns fired madly at the Soviets. But their effort was useless; when the Russians fired back all those guns went up in smoke, and the men manning them abandoned their posts and made for the bridge. Somewhere else in the field, I saw Russian infantry running for the bridge without checking their flanks, and they were ambushed by camouflaged

But then there was a shout behind us, followed by another, and another, and another. When I turned to look I saw that our group had been joined by thousands and thousands of other Germans, soldiers now, who were running from the woods and across the field and towards the bridge with all speed and with no regard for discipline or rank or order. It was a stunning sight to behold; there were Luftwaffe men and

Wehrmacht men. There was an exchange of fire before the Soviets were forced back, and the Germans made their escape to the bridge, snickering at their own cleverness.

Heer men and those with Kriegsmarine insignia and those of the SS, too, and it looked like a strange madness had consumed them all. Some of the Panzer crews had been stripped naked or had only part of their uniforms still intact enough to wear, and although many still had their weapons, many others did not. Those who could sprint did, and those who could only walk

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But then the Russians started firing on the bridge itself, in a final effort to prevent the enemy’s escape. Soldiers and civilians were blown apart in the onslaught, and I could hear the screams even over the explosions and the

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began to climb up the twisted slab leading to the west bank.

howling of the Katyusha rockets which fell in showers. Miraculously the bridge withstood this, but many of the people on it did not.

But I never made it up with the group I entered with. Instead I saw a figure dangling for dear life on the edge, and when I left the safety of the railing and approached I recognized it as that of the Silent Boy. He was crying when I reached him; open, wracking, heaving sobs that shook his body. He hung onto the snapped metal beam by a both hands but had not quite enough strength to hoist himself up.

Some brave men stood at the sides of the threshold of the bridge and helped people up and directed them forward. When it was my turn they said things to me in German that I pretended to understand, and then up I went, with both hands wrapped around the snapped beams to support my weight. I stepped very deliberately from that point forward. Entire sections of the bridge were leaning into the water, and ahead there was a large stretch that was almost fully submerged.

Behind me the line of refugees moved along like clockwork. But I didn't quite care about that: below the Boy and still on the bridge was a woman’s corpse hit by shrapnel - likely the same detonation that tossed the Boy into his current predicament. The corpse wore a suede jacket with a thick brown lining, and under that it wore striped pyjamas. I knelt and turned it over.

When I reached the submerged section I and the people in front of me and the people behind me placed our backs on the railing and shimmied along it until we reached the far side. From there we stepped over the split in the pavement and

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It was Magda.

quiet but an overwhelming peace that came with it. The war in Europe, save all the paperwork, I assumed, was over. And it had ended right here where I stood.

For a long while I stood there and stared at her: this woman who saved me and deserved her fate less than an man or woman alive; and yet here she laid anyway, so cruel had fate been to her. But then I turned back to the Silent Boy, who still hung by the rail and who nearly succumbed to panic when he saw me. And at first I wanted to push him over the edge, or hurt him terribly for failing to protect this woman who had placed such undeserved faith in him.

I then turned to the west. The Soldier, upon reaching the safe bank, was stripped of his weapons and his gear and searched before the American conducting this procedure sent him off to the prisoners cages where thousands and thousands of other disarmed Germans sat and waited. Some of the SS men who could be identified as such were slapped and beaten and made to stand painfully at attention for the amusement of their captors. But by and large the liberators’ effort was directed at keeping the mass of humanity organized as it reached the west bank and drifted between thousands of their own number and nearly as many jeeps and trucks and tanks. How anyone could declare war on a nation capable of mustering up such an overwhelming strength of arms was astounding to me.

But as I watched him cry and beg I saw him not as a killing thing or a savage beast or even a man at all, but as Magda had: as a boy, and one who neither deserved nor caused this war any more than did my own daughter. And then I did something I thought myself incapable of not a moment before: I put out my hand to him.

Even in his distrust of me so great was his fear that he took it without question, and although I struggled with his weight (my own was likely less than a hundred and twenty pounds), I was able to pull him up with the help of others who saw this and ran to help. One of these men was a soldier, I saw, and when he saw the numbers on my arm I think he felt the same turn of heart for me I’d felt for the boy. But he said nothing; together he and I simply hoisted the Boy up to his feet, and then up the bridge we went as a group of three as more small arms fire struck the side of the railing. I turned around.

When the Soldier was processed the Boy was inspected, and he was sent off with the other civilians, although I believe there was a modicum of suspicion given his age and build.

Still he said nothing to me, but we shared a look as he left and it was undoubtedly one of thanks on his part.

And when he was gone the Americans turned to me, and for reasons I can't quite identify - or perhaps begin to count - I collapsed in their arms and I wept uncontrollably for some time.

They, like the Germans on the bridge, soon spotted the striped pyjamas under my coat, and the numbers on my arm, and these things seemed to confirm for them an intuition about my identity that was likely sparked by my emaciation. Things were shouted in English that I couldn't understand, and soon I was swept off to the medical tents.

The Russians had mopped up all the opposition there still was on the eastern bank of the Elbe.

Germans were coming up out of the bushes in scores and all with their hands held up high over their heads, and even the civilians still there seemed to have ceased all efforts to escape.

And the firing had stopped (save for the occasional Russian soldier who took lazy shots at us out of boredom) and for the first time in as long as I could remember there was not just

CANYONVOICES

FALL2017

FICTION : JESSE CLARK

***

and hatred begets more of the same, and so too does bitterness. Only when someone stands up and refuses to take even the vengeance that is owed him does the cycle of it all break down.

Recovery was a long and painful process. For weeks after the events described here I struggled to move and exercise and so much as get out of bed. But gradually I learned to do those things again; I put on weight at a good pace, and when I was healthy enough I volunteered in the same facilities for some months before moving to the United States, remarrying, fathering children, and working in automobile factories - eventually working my way up to managing such a place - until my retirement.

And there is a beauty in that: for all the monstrousness men can conjure up in their hearts there is also forgiveness, and there is love to match the hatred, and sacrifice and selflessness to beat back the work of all the wretched men who give into their worst impulses. Lastly I have learned this: as long as there are good men willing to fight the wretched ones, there is hope yet for mankind.

Some of the wounds I suffered will never heal.

But perhaps that is best: perhaps those wounds serve to remind me of my humanity, and my weakness and my strength as a member of it.

Perhaps they serve to remind me of truth of what Magda had said: that killing begets killing,

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And hope is not poison.

For more information on author Jesse Clark, please visit our Contributors Page.

FALL2017

FICTION : TARA A. DEVLIN

The Dark Mansion

By Tara A. Devlin

A

bout a week ago my friend went missing. The day after, I received an email from him. Inside was a link and a single line of text.

“Save the girl or save yourself? You decide in this exciting text based horror! Escape from the mansion before the monks find you. But be careful, three times and it’s game over... permanently. Are you smart enough to escape the mansion? Download ‘The Dark Mansion’ for FREE now.”

“You need to try this out.”

The link led me to a web site with a download for a text-based horror game called “The Dark Mansion.” There were a few screenshots of the game; old school pixel art of a creepy looking house, some guys wearing hoods with no faces, and a woman tied to a table.

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I clicked the link and installed the game. Old school midi music blared as I opened the file. I turned the volume off, waiting for one of the neighbors to start banging on the walls for waking them up so late.

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FICTION : TARA A. DEVLIN

‘Press ENTER to play’ flashed at the bottom of the screen. Why did Teddy send me this? Did he schedule the email to send before he went missing? Was there a clue to be found somewhere in the game?

‘You enter the mansion. The door creaks but the entrance is still empty. There are stairs ahead of you and a door to the left and right. Where will you go?’

I pressed enter.

time. Stairs.

‘You go upstairs. There is a red door, a blue door, and a yellow door. Which door will you go through?’

Well I knew which way I wasn’t going to go this

‘You see a large mansion before you. It’s old.

Dark. Scary. Will you go in?’

Yes.

I wondered if sudden death was waiting behind any of these particular doors. The website flashed through my mind, ‘die three times and it’s game over, permanently.’ Would the game stop working after that? I’d already died once, that meant I had two attempts left. Two attempts and three doors.

‘You enter the mansion. The door creaks but the entrance is empty. There are stairs ahead of you and a door to the left and right. Where will you go?’

I picked randomly. Left door.

‘You are crushed to death by a falling anvil.

Will you play again?’

I looked down at the speakers and then I remembered... I turned the speakers off.

It wasn’t the game..

A pixelated blood splatter appeared in what appeared to be the mansion’s study. A desk sat in the middle of the room with a large bookshelf behind it. There was a painting of the hooded monks on the far left wall and beneath it a pedestal with a human skull sitting on top. Well that was one death down. Two to go.

Yellow.

Red seemed like it would just lead to more death, and besides, I liked yellow more than blue.

Lightning flashed outside, startling me in my chair. The wind picked up and rain began to fall. Just five minutes ago the sky was clear, not a single cloud in sight...

‘Lightning flashes and you see a hooded figure in the distance. It’s coming for you. What will you do?’

Yes. I typed.

Lightning continued to flash through the window in the game. Like it said, one of the hooded figures was standing on the mountain visible through the window in the distance. It was kinda creepy. It was also the first time I was given a little freedom in what to do next., however.

I was in front of the mansion again.

‘You see a large mansion before you once more.

It’s old. Dark. Scary. Will you go in?’

Yes.

Open desk.

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FICTION : TARA A. DEVLIN

‘There’s nothing inside.’

The rain picked up outside my study window when suddenly I heard a scream. That wasn’t from the game; it sounded like it came from outside. I got out of the chair and ran to the window but it was pitch black. I couldn’t see anything. Lightning flashed and briefly lit up the street below. There was nothing there.

Use phone.

‘The phone doesn’t work.’

Shoot hooded figure.

‘You don’t have a gun.’

Maybe it really was from the game?

Get gun.

I went back to the computer.

‘There is no gun.’

‘You hear a woman’s screams. There are doors marked 1-13. Which will you choose?’

I sighed. The room appeared to be a dead end. I drew closer to the monitor and tried to find something, anything I might be able to do in the room. Nothing I typed worked. I sat back in my chair and began to type again when I noticed it.

The hooded figure... it was closer. It wasn’t just a flashing gif background.

The figure was actually getting closer.

There was a hooded figure looking out one of the windows on the third floor. As lightning flashed I thought I saw one closing in from the mountains as well.

Okay, I thought. They probably wouldn’t expect anyone to pick 13 off the bat, so I typed in 13.

There it was again. It sounded even closer than before. I looked down at the speakers and then I remembered... I turned the speakers off.

It wasn’t the game.

“Crap.” Leave room.

‘You leave the room. There is a red door, a blue door, and a yellow door. Which

I sat and waited, listening closely. The room was dark minus the light coming off the monitor.

Rain beat harder against the window outside.

door will you go through?’

All was silent but for the water hitting the glass.

Blue.

I turned back to the computer.

‘You are in a hallway. There are doors marked 1-13. Which will you choose?’

‘You see blood on the walls and hear a woman’s screams coming from directly beneath you.

What will you do?’

It was a dark hallway leading into the distance.

The doors got smaller but I could see numbers on the closest ones. 1, 2, 3, 4, opposing each other at short intervals.

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A dark sense of foreboding washed over me.

The room itself was bare, four wooden walls and a wooden floor, all splattered in pixel blood. A single window took up about half of the

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FICTION : TARA A. DEVLIN

opposite wall. This time there was a forest in the distance.

window? I lived on the fourth floor... It had to be the wind. Or a tree branch. So why was I so scared to go and look?

Lightning flashed. The hooded figure was right there in there window. I screamed.

Leave room.

‘The door is locked.’

The text on the screen began to change.

‘The window breaks. The hooded figure enters the room. It approaches you slowly. What will you do?’

Of course it was.

There was a time limit to do things in the game?

It never said the story would keep moving if I didn’t do anything.

Hide.

‘There’s nowhere to hide.’

Of course not.

“Uhhhh...” Punch hooded figure. I didn’t know what else to do. It was a bare room with nothing of apparent use in it.

There was a tapping at my window. I jumped again. How could there be a tapping at my

CANYONVOICES

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FICTION : TARA A. DEVLIN

‘You punch the hooded figure but he stabs you in the throat. You are dead. Will you try again?’

well but this time it had to be. I knew it was the red door.

I sighed. I was rapidly losing interest in the game but I had one more attempt left. Might as well use it.

Leave room.

‘There is a red door, a blue door, and a yellow door. Which door will you go through?’

Yes.

Red.

‘You see the large mansion before you that haunts your dreams. It’s old. Dark. Scary. A figure peers at you from the window. Will you go in?’

‘You are in a bathroom. What will you do?’

There had to be a secret entrance hidden somewhere in the room. I needed to find it before the hooded figures found me.

Well that was new. Also kinda creepy. There was a hooded figure looking out one of the windows on the third floor. As lightning flashed I thought I saw one closing in from the mountains as well.

The same one from my first attempt. I needed to get inside.

Check bathtub.

‘There’s nothing special.’

Check cabinet.

Yes.

‘There’s some unmarked pills and a toothbrush.’

I avoided the door on the left, went straight through the blue door and stood in the hallway debating which door to go through next. 13 turned out to be a dead end, but that still left 1-12. Simply too many numbers to choose at random and hope to get lucky.

Probably best to leave the unmarked pills alone.

There was nothing else in the room, which meant...

Check toilet.

‘You put your hand in the toilet. There’s something there. Will you pull it?’

It said the woman’s screams came directly from underneath room 13. Maybe door 11 had a way down and under? But what if it didn’t? What if it was some random door and I only had once chance to get it right before it was game over.

Permanently.

Ugh. Yes.

‘You pull and hear a click. A single tile raises in the middle of the room. What will you do?’

‘You hear footsteps.’

Did I really have much choice?

The text scrolled across the screen. The hooded figures were closing in already? It was too soon!

Press tile.

‘You press the tile. A section of the wall opens.

Will you go through?’

I got ready to type in ‘11’ when I stopped myself. No, the red door. It had to be the red door. I thought the same thing about unlucky 13 being the right door and that didn’t end up so

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Yes.

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FICTION : TARA A. DEVLIN

I heard it again. This time much louder and clearer. It was downstairs. A woman downstairs was screaming.

‘You hear knocking nearby. Which door will you go through?’

The game text changed once more. It was starting to become more than just a coincidence. My heart began to race. When it said perma-death it couldn’t mean... could it?

‘You enter a secret room. The screams are getting louder. You hear footsteps getting closer.

There are two doors? Which will you go through?’

Left.

The text flashed at me on the screen as a storm raged outside. I waited and listened. No more screams. Nothing but the sound of heavy rain and strong winds.

My heart jumped into my throat as I realized the last time I typed left I immediately died.

‘You enter a laboratory. It seems an experiment was conducted here recently. Blood stains the operating table. What will you do?’

No. Not just rain and wind. There it was. It was faint but it was there. Footsteps. Large, heavy boots like steelcaps hitting the concrete. There was a knock on the door several apartments away. I glanced at the clock. 1am. Who was knocking on doors at this hour?

CANYONVOICES

Outside was quiet. Did they answer the door?

Maybe it was just a friend or family member coming home late who forget their key.

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FICTION : TARA A. DEVLIN

‘There’s a report. Will you read the report?’

‘The footsteps are getting closer. You must make a choice. Will you find the girl or will you escape?’

Yes.

Escape.

‘Report: October 1, 2017.

Subject complained of pain in stomach.

Stomach was removed.

Complaints ceased.

New subject required.

I typed it without thinking. I just wanted it to end.

‘You must find the exit.’

Check desk.

Leave room.

‘The door is locked.’

Of course it was. There was a single door ahead.

Report: October 2, 2017 New guest arrived today.

Open door.

Intelligence sub-par but will suffice.

Brain was removed. Transplant to new host to commence shortly.

Report: October 3, 2017 Transplant a success.

Report: October 6, 2017 Subject complained of pain in lower limbs.

Limbs will be removed.

Further study required.’

I stared at the computer screen. I didn’t want to play anymore. I had no idea what was going on but it was creeping me out and nothing was making sense.

‘You open the door. There’s a hallway with a single door at the end. There are two windows. What will you do?’

There was a forest of pixel trees just outside, but lining the forest were countless hooded figures all just standing there. Watching.

If I tried to jump out the window the character would probably die, he was on the second floor after all. Lightning flashed through the windows and my heart stopped. There was a forest of pixel trees just outside, but lining the forest were countless hooded figures all just standing there.

Watching. Waiting. With each flash of lightning they seemed to grow in number.

Clank. Clank. Clank.

Open door.

The footsteps outside were getting closer. They were slow, methodical. Another knock on the door. It was perhaps two or three doors down this time.

‘You’re not close enough.’

Run to door.

“What do you...” I didn’t hear the end of the sentence. I swallowed and turned back to the computer, my heart beating faster and faster.

CANYONVOICES

‘You run to the door. A woman screams from a nearby room.’

FALL2017

FICTION : TARA A. DEVLIN

Several of the hooded figures were getting closer. Others remained behind, as if on watch.

woman behind?’ Yes. ‘Are you really sure? This action cannot be undone.’ Yes.

Open door.

Lightning flashed. The hooded figures were right

‘You enter a greenhouse. It’s dark with no lights.

outside the glass wall.

What will you do?’ Turn on light.

‘Cannot find switch.’

There was a knock at my front door.

Light match.

Run to door.

‘You don’t have a match.’

I pressed enter. The screen went black. I waited.

Walk forward.

The wind and rain raged outside. I strained, my heart sitting in my throat as I waited for another knock.

‘You can’t see.’

I tapped my foot furiously as I racked my brain trying to think of commands. Like clockwork the in-game lightning continued to flash on the monitor. The entire wall of the greenhouse was glass with the forest in the background. Each time it flashed several of the hooded figures were closer than before.

None came.

‘As you run from the mansion you hear screams in the distance. The hooded figures watch but don’t follow. They have their sacrifice for tonight, but you have escaped.’

Then it hit me.

The screen faded to black before ‘CONGRATULATIONS’ began to flash in large

I typed in walk forward and waited. As the lightning flashed in-game I pressed enter.

letters and a variety of colors. There were no further knocks at the door.

‘You walk forward. A row of shelves blocks your path.’

I turned the computer off and got into bed. I lay

I typed in turn left and walk forward, waited, and then pressed enter as the game flashed again.

The hooded figures were almost right by the glass wall. My heart raced.

As I left my apartment the next morning I saw

there listening to the sounds of the storm until daybreak.

police cars surrounding the building entrance.

Apparently a woman was found dead. Her legs

There was another knock outside. This time it was next door.

There was a door just ahead. I could reach it

were cut off and had yet to be found.

with the next flash. I typed in run to

door and waited. And waited.

For more information on author Tara A. Devlin, please visit our Contributors Page.

The screen remained dark. White text began to scroll. ‘Are you sure you want to leave the

CANYONVOICES

FALL2017

FICTION : ALEX VAN GORP

Mad as a Butler

By Alex Van Gorp

I

’m back!” I called out, as I walked through the front door of the stately home. “I got the –” I paused mid-sentence once I saw the lady of the house kneeling on the ingrain carpet, crying in her hands. “What’s the matter, Amelia?” I knew that asking was pointless, as the cause of her distress was always linked to her husband.

this way since before I became a butler many years ago. I made another right turn and was on the final stretch. These stairs never took so long for me to climb before. I finally reached the second floor, but this journey didn’t get any easier. As I stepped onto the crimson carpet, it felt like both of my feet were sinking into pools of blood. I continued walking towards the end of the hallway where the only opened door was. I walked into the bedroom of both my masters and there it was. I found both the body of the maid and proof that the mister wasn’t the man he claimed to be.

Unable to find her words, she pointed up towards the top of the staircase.

Her hand was shaking, as was the rest of her body, causing her golden blonde hair to bounce along her shoulders.

She was also donning her mauve dress that I was fond of and wearing those blackbutton boots that she seemed to rarely take off. The lady of the house was so

I found the body of the maid and proof that the mister wasn’t the man he claimed to be.

“Oh, Millicent,” I spoke softly, as I kneeled and held her head in the palm of my hand. She was sprawled out on the ground and had multiple gunshot wounds, from what I guessed to be a revolver.

“You didn’t deserve this,” I whispered to her lifeless body as I placed her head back down and removed one of my white gloves. “No one does.” I used my fingers to pull her eyelids over her eyes to close them so she could finally rest in peace. I didn’t know for sure what caused her death, but I assumed she must have touched the mister’s top hat.

beautiful and it almost made me cry to see her like this. I wrapped my arms around Amelia to help soothe her; not because of my affection for her, but because it was my duty as her butler. I let go of her once she settled down, but I couldn’t see any tears.

Her body must have run out of them long ago.

I headed up the staircase, preparing myself for what I was about to see. My hand was scaling along the wooden rail of the stairs; not because I needed help going up, but because I needed help standing up. My legs felt so weak and my heart was pounding. I turned right when I reached the midpoint, and that’s when the world began spinning around me. I was nervous – no,

I put my glove back on and stood up to walk out the door, but something behind the late maid caught my eye. It was the cheval mirror; the same one that I would gaze into almost daily.

But today, something looked different about the mirror, and it wasn’t just the blood that was splattered over it. The reflection of the man in

scared – for what I was about to see. I hadn’t felt

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FICTION : ALEX VAN GORP

the mirror wasn’t one that I recognized. Sure, he wore the same black coat and tie, the same grey trousers and vest, and the same white collared shirt and gloves, but the man that I remembered seeing was going to stop this Hatter before he took any lives. He failed his responsibilities as a butler.

The inspector slipped his notepad into his pocket. “I think I’ve gathered enough information from the both of you.” He reached out his hand. “Your name is Amelia, correct?”

“Yes.” Amelia said as she shook his hand.

“And I didn’t catch your name,” he let go of Amelia’s hand and reached for mine. “I’m Inspector August.”

“I will avenge your death, Millicent,” I promised her, as I walked out of the room.

“Bernard,” I replied, shaking his hand. It seemed as if the entire world froze and enhanced the growing tension between the two us. We were supposed to be on the same side, but I felt like I was shaking hands with the enemy.

* * *

The police officers showed up to investigate the crime scene, but there was another guest who arrived soon after. It was an inspector, but not like one I had ever seen. Being a dark-skinned man made him the first non-white inspector I had ever met. Even through his oversized saffron-colored jacket and black trousers, it was obvious that he was very well-built. He began questioning us while jotting down notes in a notepad.

* * *

“Must you come with, Missus Amelia?” I asked her as we hopped aboard the carriage. Our carriage was a barouche, which wasn’t ideal for the month of December, but the lady preferred the style and I didn’t mind the cold. I had sent everyone else home due to the recent events, so I would be operating as the coachman this evening.

“I heard a scream, but I was afraid to go up there…” Amelia said, trembling. “My husband, William, hurried downstairs, and then ran right past me out the door… Without saying a word.”

“I mustn’t stay behind,” she said. “What if he returns home and wants to do to me what he did to Millicent?”

“I see,” the inspector replied, as he continued writing all of this down. He then looked up at me. “And where were you during this time, sir?”

“I don’t think he will be returning,” I assured her, as I grabbed the reins and signaled our two horses to begin walking towards the dirt road. “If he wanted to hurt you, he had a perfect opportunity to do so before he ran out that door.”

“I was at the market, per the request of Mister William,” I answered. “I am the butler of this estate.”

“A butler, you say?” the inspector reiterated. He stopped writing, and I could see a slight grin escape from the corner of his mouth. “As a butler, isn’t it your duty to protect the household?”That sentence didn’t sit well with me. “Indeed,” I nodded, wondering how much he really knew about butlers. “It was a blunder on my part.”

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There was a long pause between our conversation. It gave us time to appreciate the beautiful scenery around us. There was plenty of grass and bushes along the side of the dirt road, and open fields beyond that. I also admired the white, amorphous clouds that drifted above us.

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FICTION : ALEX VAN GORP

“Do you know more than you’re telling me, Bernard?” Amelia asked, breaking the silence.

“You seem to be awfully calm after everything that has happened today.”

“A gang?” she reiterated. I could sense the surprise in her voice. “What gang is he a member of?”

“He is a member of a gang known as the Hatters,” I replied, as I pulled at the reins, signaling the horses to turn the corner of the dirt road. “However, wearing a felt hat is not a surefire way to tell if someone is a Hatter. This is because most people don’t even know of these underground gangs, so many of the people wearing hats aren’t part of any gang.”

She was on to me. Perhaps I should have acted a bit more frightened… No, who am I kidding. In all honesty, I’ve been waiting for her to ask this question. I’ve never found any joy in keeping secrets, especially from those I love. I took a deep breath, preparing myself to share this secret, and the real reason as to why I applied to become their butler.

“So then… How do you know of these gangs, Bernard?” she asked nervously.

“The reason I’m so calm, Missus Amelia, is because I’ve been expecting this day to happen since before I became your butler two years ago,” I finally admitted to her. “There are many underground gangs here in England and I suspected your husband to be a member of one of them.”

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“You see, missus…” I paused as I realized we were approaching the toll road. “One minute, my lady.”

We arrived at the booth and I handed the man twelve shillings. I never liked the toll system here in England, but there really wasn’t any way

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FICTION : ALEX VAN GORP

around it. After I paid, I waited until we were a far enough distance to continue the discussion.

only two gangs you should worry about, and they are the Hatters and the Cobblers. He isn’t a member of either of them.”

“Anyway, there are two reasons as to how I knew about your husband’s identity. The first is because he accrued way too much sterling for just being a simple hat-maker. The second reason is because I am part of a gang myself. I am a member of a gang that strives to put an end to these other nefarious gangs, clean up their mess, and bring peace back to England.” I smiled and glanced back at her. “We are the Butlers.”

“What else have these gangs done to be considered so ‘dangerous’?”

“It would be better if you didn’t know,” I responded, but the truth was, I didn’t know much about these other gangs myself. I only knew my own gang inside and out, and the others I heard about through rumors.

“Alright then,” she sighed. “How long will you be?”

I hadn’t ever shared that secret with anyone outside the Butler gang; including my own family. I felt like a burden was lifted off my shoulders. And the best part was, she didn’t seem at all fazed. In fact, she seemed relieved; perhaps to know that someone would be there to protect her.

“Not long,” I promised, as I headed towards the tavern known as the Dust Bunny.

As I walked through the tavern doors, I immediately got a whiff of the smell of alcohol. I never cared for the smell, but I didn’t dislike it either. It was just something I dealt with and accepted as a part of business, because I never actually came here to drink. I would drink a bit to blend in with the crowd, and there certainly was a big crowd today. But drinking wasn’t my sole purpose of coming here; no, I came here to meet with the bartender of the tavern. While he is in a gang, I was honest when I said that he is not dangerous – for the most part, anyway. He’s in a gang known as the Bartenders, but they prefer to handle their business in a unique way.

They gather information from people and drunks at the bar, either by eavesdropping or through conversation, and then they sell that information to others for “tips”. So, while they won’t kill you directly, they may spread information about you that could lead to your death…

* * *

We finally arrived at our destination, located in a suburb of East Cowes, which was the city we lived in.

“A tavern at a time like this?” Amelia said, sounding a bit irritated. “I would like to get my mind off this too, but shouldn’t we be more focused on William’s whereabouts?”

“Believe it or not, that’s what we’re here for,” I informed her. “The bartender here is whom I receive all of my information from, and he has yet to disappoint me.” As I was getting off the carriage, Amelia jumped up and grabbed my arm.

“He’s not part of a gang too, is he?” she asked.

“Is he… dangerous?”

“Good evening, Bernard,” the bartender greeted me. He was a young man in his mid-twenties, sporting a black bow tie, black pants, and a black waistcoat over his white dress shirt. But

I couldn’t help but let out a chuckle. “He is part of a gang, but he is far from dangerous.” I proceeded to get off the carriage. “There are

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FICTION : ALEX VAN GORP

what really grabbed your attention were his sparkling blue eyes. “How do you do?”

“You have a bit too much to drink, Cecil?” one of the drunkards called out, followed by roars of laughter from the crowd.

“I’ve been better, Cecil,” I replied, as I pulled out one of the wooden stools to sit. “How about yourself?”

“What waste of good plonk,” Cecil laughed off as he grabbed a broom. “Haven’t done that for quite some time.”

“Couldn’t be better,” Cecil responded, flashing a smile. “What can I do for you today?”

“What happened there?” I asked him. I had

“I’d like a bottle of old ale.” I pointed at one of the drinks behind him. “And I need to know the location of William Cogswell.”

“Cogswell?” he pondered as he screwed the cap off and handed me the bottle. “Ah, yes, I overheard from another gentleman that William was headed for the Osborne House.”

“The Osborne House?” I was surprised. “Why would he be heading there?”

“I don’t know exactly, but he’s supposed to be there sometime tonight before midnight.”

I grabbed the bottle of old ale and took a sip as I sat there deep in thought. What business would he have at Queen Victoria’s estate? Then it hit me. Is murder his objective?

“How’s the missus doing, by the way?” the bartender asked, breaking my train of thought.

He was pouring himself a glass of cheap wine to drink with me. He mentioned in the past that I was one of the few customers he drank with.

never seen him make a mistake as a bartender.

“Not very well,” I sighed, fiddling with the bottle of old ale. “Not since her husband killed the maid and ran out of the home.”

“I was just taken aback,” he replied as swept up the mess. “Hearing about what… William Cogswell did.”

Cecil dropped the glass he was pouring into, creating a loud shattering sound, which silenced the rest of the tavern.

“I assumed that you already knew. Word usually travels pretty fast around here.”

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“I guess it’s a slow day.” Cecil poured himself a new glass of wine. “Watch yourself around the

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FICTION : ALEX VAN GORP

missus; I know you’re her butler, but try not to get too close.”

As I walked towards the tavern doors, I thought about what Cecil said:

“I appreciate the advice.” I pulled out my wallet to pay for the drink and tip. I always left a little bit extra, so that maybe he would help me out a bit more in the future. I doubt it worked. “See you later, Cecil.”

Watch yourself around the missus; I know you’re her butler, but try not to get too close.

These are words that have haunted me ever since I first became a butler at the Cogswell residence. Does Cecil know about my affectation for her? Regardless, I should heed his advice and not get too close to Missus Amelia. It’s my duty to protect her, not be with her. I would be a disgrace to butlers everywhere if I acted on these feelings. I couldn’t reflect on this too long, however, as I bumped into a familiar face.

“Hello, Bernard!” the man said. It was Inspector August. “What are you doing at a tavern at a time like this?”

“I could ask you the same question,” I responded. “Or are you just following me?”

August laughed. “No, I actually have an affinity for the shandygaff here.” He patted me on the back. “Maybe after this is all taken care of, we can share a drink.”

I nodded, wondering what his true intentions were, as we headed our separate ways.

* * *

“You’re not going to finish your ale?” he smiled.

Later that night, the missus and I made our way to the Osborne House. I didn’t want her to come, but she insisted on accompanying me. As her butler, I couldn’t deny her request. We went there by carriage, but this time we rode a hansom cab. The lone horse could pull us much faster on this carriage due to how much lighter it was. The goal was to arrive there before eleven o’ clock, and we succeeded, as we arrived about twenty minutes prior.

I grinned. “You know I never do.” I got out my seat to head out. I never finished my drinks because I never came here to drink.

“I know,” Cecil chuckled. He knew that I never finished, but he always asked me anyway. At this point, it was a running joke between the two of us. “Farewell, Bernard.”

“What now, Bernard?” Amelia asked me.

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“Stay right here,” I told her. “I’ll handle the rest.”

pain, but not before ripping the gun from her grasp. She tried to pull the gun away from me, but then a voice called out.

She obliged and let me continue without her.

The truth was, I had no clue what I was going to do. I just hoped that we got there before Mister William did. I walked around to the back of the house and there he was; walking to the back door. He was sporting his tan coat and black top hat.

“What is that?!” a shaken voice called out.

“Who’s there?!”

Not wanting to be seen, Amelia ran out the door, right as another woman came into the room. It was Queen Victoria.

“William!” I called out, with both anger and a little bit of nervousness.

“The antidote?” she sounded worried. “Where is the antidote?”

“Bernard?” he said, sounding confused. “What are you doing here?”

I scanned the carpet and found a wet spot surrounded by broken pieces of glass. This is what must have caused that shattering sound when I tackled Mister William. He must have dropped it.

“I came here to stop you,” I said, as I walked closer to him. “Once and for all.”

He scowled at me. “I don’t have time for this nonsense.” He kicked open the door.

As he started walking in, I bolted towards the door and jumped on top of him. His hat flew off and a shattering sound followed.

I was tricked by the missus…

“I’m sorry” is all I could utter, but I knew that meant nothing to her. I couldn’t think of what else to say, so I just repeated those words over and over. I knew that nothing I said could fix what had happened and, for the second time today, the world was spinning around me. I stood up and grabbed the gun Amelia left behind, as well as the hat that William would always wear. I walked out of that house with pain not only in my side, but in my heart as well.

“How could you do this to your wife?!” I yelled at him, as we landed on the ground. “Why are you killing people?”

“What are you talking about?!” he yelled back. “I haven’t killed anyone!”

As soon as he said that, the sound of a gunshot went off, and a bullet went through William’s head. I looked back and saw Amelia, holding a revolver, with a big smile on her face.

I was tricked by the missus…

The further away I got from Mister William’s lifeless body, the harder it was for me to walk. It felt like I was sinking into a pool of his blood. I put his hat on my head in honor of him.

“Amelia…?” I couldn’t believe my eyes. She tried to shoot me, but I dodged her first attempt.

I charged towards her and grabbed ahold of the gun, but as soon as I did, she shot again, and this time hit me in my side. I fell to the ground in

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“I need the antidote to save my husband…” she wept. “Where is the antidote?”

Maybe the Hatters aren’t the bad guys…

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FICTION : ALEX VAN GORP

The Queen was yelling out the nastiest of things to me; telling me that I killed her husband. She wasn’t wrong; I assisted in the deaths of two people tonight. Unknowingly, but that didn’t make me feel any better.

As he said that, a carriage suddenly pulled up. A man from inside poked his head out. He was wearing a top hat. “Are you the fellow Hatter?”

“Halt!” a deep voice called out. “I finally found you!”

He asked me again. “Are you a Hatter?”

I just stared at him.

I remembered the top hat I was wearing and realized that he must have me mistaken for William. “I am,” I called out.

It was Inspector August. He was walking towards me from the road.

“What do you think you’re doing?” August asked me.

“I know everything!” he claimed. “I know you’re innocent. That bartender told me what Amelia’s plan was.”

“The best way to take down the Cobblers is to join their rival gang.” I pointed the gun at the inspector. “Don’t try to stop me, August.”

I just stood there in disbelief. Is Missus Amelia a Cobbler? I was too focused on my own thoughts to pay him any attention.

He raised both of his arms. “You do realize that this makes you an outlaw?”

“I know that she framed her husband!” August yelled. “And I found out that she’s part of an underground gang!”

“I know,” I smiled. “Maybe after this is all taken care of, we can still share that drink.”

I was still trapped in my own thoughts. Cecil

He nodded at me, not happy with my decision, but I think he understood. My initial feeling of Inspector August was right; he is my enemy, but not in any way that I expected. I walked towards the carriage and climbed in. The coachman signaled the horses to begin trotting, which also signaled the beginning of my new life as a Hatter.

warned me not to get too close to her. How much does he really know? Is there anyone I can trust?

“Where did she go?” he looked around. “Did she come here with you?”

I looked for the carriage that the missus and I rode here on. It was gone. “I haven’t a clue.” At this point, I knew she was far enough where we wouldn’t be able to catch her.

For more information on author Alex Van Gorp, please visit our Contributors Page.

“Well, let’s get you out of here,” August said.

“You ought to see a doctor.”

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FICTION : KRISTOPHER J. PATTEN

Oneirographia

By Kristopher J. Patten

I

when she awoke in the middle of the night and began painting in the dark. I brought her a glass of water one night and recognized the dazed eyes and slumping head from childhood, when my sleepwalking brother would mindlessly pull food from the refrigerator.

paint what I see in my dreams,” Zoe told me.

It was an answer of sorts, a politician’s answer that addressed the obvious meaning of the question but left the implied and vastly more important subtext untouched.

She really did paint what she saw in her dreams.

I arrived at her gallery, Oneirographia, on the request of some hack actress who insisted her boyfriend’s overdose was on display at the Modern Art Museum.

“Drugsploitation” she called it.

I got called in to work early about a month later.

On my way out, careful not to wake Zoe who had finally come back to bed, I noticed her most recent painting: blood everywhere. She envisioned a cheap motel room slathered with dark crimson like a butcher’s back room. In a heap near the door was a man, an almost comically large knife jutting from his chest, his face a bloody ruin. A grayish oval loomed near the body, globs of paint rising from the canvas.

I snuck back into Zoe’s loft and grabbed the canvas.

I had to agree that there were a lot of similarities between the scene photos and the painting. When I talked to the artist, though, she proved the painting predated the suicide by three days. That should have been the end of the interview, but she wanted to show me around and I wanted to let her.

At the precinct, they sent me out on some big case. A murder in a pay-by the-hour motel; the same murder Zoe had painted in the night.

She was a good painter, if a little abstract. I turned a corner into her work area, her hand on my arm, and looked into my own face. It was a painting of a sex scene, half finished. The face of the woman on top hadn’t been finished, but the cascading red hair was unmistakably Zoe’s.

For the second time, she had painted something that came true.

I tried talking to Zoe, but got nothing but that same politician’s answer. I didn’t get worried until I saw another bloodied scene. Again, the corpse had no face. But it was wearing my jacket. A dark orb hovered over the body, still wet on the otherwise dry canvas.

In a few weeks, hardly a morning went by that I didn’t end my day at her loft downtown. Life imitated art, then we would fall asleep in each other’s arms. She would often cause me to stir

I remembered hearing that historians used xrays to uncover Da Vinci’s original work underneath the Mono Lisa. I snuck back into Zoe’s loft and snagged the canvas.

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Later that day, the lab tech texted me a picture of what lay under the glob; Zoe, with her

For more information on author Kristopher J. Patten, please visit our Contributors Page.

cascading red hair and a large knife.

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FICTION : TARA A. DEVLIN

The Ultimate Race

By Tara A. Devlin

E

considered part of the risks for the incredible rewards. And so year after year, people sign their lives away to take part, sometimes literally.

very year in our town, there is a race, but it’s not just any race. In this race, anything goes and the winner gets to have their deepest, darkest desire filled. You’d like someone dead? They’ll hand you the gun or do it for you. Want a million dollars? It’s in your bank account before you even get home.

This year I was one of those people.

My family is small, just myself, my younger sister, and our mother. She’s been raising us alone since our father died of cancer when I was only five years old. My sister was too young to remember it, but I remember watching him fade away and die before my eyes. Now our mother is sick, too, and she needs a heart transplant. Of all the things… I sometimes wonder if we’re cursed. Of course, you can’t just come by a free heart, and that’s why I signed up for the race. If I could win I could get my mother to the top of

Not only that, but during the race, all bets are off. Within the confines of the race track, anything and everything becomes legal.

Whatever it takes to win. Competitors aren’t allowed to bring any weapons with them, but if you manage to kill someone on the race track to get ahead, you’ll never be held accountable. It’s

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the transplant list. I could save her. I could save both myself and my sister the pain of having to watch another parent die. I didn’t care about the free-for-all that many people used the race as an excuse for. I just wanted to win and get that heart. I just wanted to save my mother and be the hero.

“A heart transplant for my mother,” I replied. Jo nodded and mouthed ‘ah,’ like it all suddenly made sense. “You?”

“Perhaps not as dire or noble as your cause, but money.” He shrugged. Jo also had a younger sister, and although our family was very far from well off, Jo’s family seemed to struggle even harder. He came to school without lunch more often than not, and he’d been wearing the same shoes for the last two years now. I’m pretty sure that he was using the same school bag he’d gotten in the second grade. Of elementary. His family certainly could benefit from the money, there was no denying that.

How stupid I was.

The competitors gathered at the starting line the morning of the race. Like previous years, there were close to a hundred runners or more. It was like those marathons you see on TV where a giant group of people move en-masse, like a giant wave of ants moving to devour a carcass—only these people were even deadlier. A good deal of these ants weren’t likely to make it to the finish line. That was exactly why a lot of them were here. A chance to kill with impunity. It attracted a surprising amount of people.

If life worked that way, we wouldn’t be in this predicament in the first place.

“Competitors, to your starting positions,” an announcement blared across the track from the speakers set up on either side of the road.

The course changed every year. This year, it would be taking them through the mountains, down past the local river, around the school, and finally ending at one of the biggest parks in town. It wasn’t a terribly long race, all things considered, but you tell that to a hundred people trying to kill each other for that grand prize.

“Hey!”

Oh. Oh no…

“Hey.”

It was my friend, Jo. My heart dropped. Why was he here?

“Good luck, hey!” Jo smiled again. How could he be so happy? He was surrounded by people who for the next hour or so would be trying to kill him. “May the best man win!”

“You’re racing this year too, huh?” he asked.

I pointed to the race number displayed on my chest and shrugged.

“Yeah.” I smiled meekly. If life worked that way we wouldn’t be in this predicament in the first place.

“Me too!” He laughed and slapped me on the shoulder. “So what’s your deepest, darkest desire? What’s big enough to get you out here

The starting gun went off and like murderous lemmings the crowd of racers surged forth. I wasn’t even 10 meters down the track when

with all these crazies?”

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already I had to jump over fallen bodies and dodge projectiles coming my way. I’ve seen the race enough times to know how it begins every year. It’s always the same. A rush of bodies, the initial thrill of the chance to kill. A good number of people go down and for them the race is over before it even began. Ambulances and clean-up crews stood nearby ready to pick up the pieces once the rush was over.

all the real action was. Nobody cared about the insignificant ants who died early on. It was the furious battles near the finish line that people camped out for days to secure their spot for.

That was what the crowd really wanted: blood.

Not just any blood, but the kind of blood that could only be spilled by those on the verge of having their biggest wish granted or taken away.

“So, your parents agreed to you doing this?” I asked Jo as we reached the top of the mountain. It gave us a view of the race ahead.

There were probably 20, maybe 30 runners ahead of us. A few bodies lay by the side of the road. Not the biggest starting race massacre ever but it still wasn’t pretty. The lead was about 300 meters down the road, a physically imposing man with something large in his hand.

Probably the rock that had taken down at least a few of the bloodied bodies lying nearby.

My plan was simple. Stick to the back of the pack initially, let the lead runners pick each other off, maintain a good pace and as the finish line drew closer I’d make my move. Whatever that move needed to be.

In the week leading up to the race, I questioned myself often over whether I could do it. Could I kill a person? If it was for my mother, for my sister, could I kill another human being?

What if it was just me and one other person drawing in on the finish line? Would I be able to take that person’s life with my own hands to save my mother’s?

You don’t have to kill anyone to win the race. Stop thinking about it.

“They don’t know!?”

Honestly, I didn’t know. I wanted to believe that I couldn’t, but who really knows what dark, horrible acts a person can commit in the heat of the moment.

“Nope!” Jo smiled as though it was all a big game. “Although they probably do now, haha!”

“Are you crazy?”

“Phew, that was close!” Jo said, keeping a steady pace beside me as we followed the violent stampede up the mountain. Bodies continued to drop like flies. I jumped over a man with his skull crushed in. A bloody rock lay beside him, discarded like he was. I remembered him from the front of the pack.

That’s why you never started at the front.

“Maybe. Did you ask your mother first?”

“Well… not in so many words, no…” It was true.

I mentioned the race to her but never specifically said *I* was taking part. But I think she knew deep down why I brought it up, and she never objected. That was permission enough for me.

“Look out!” Jo grabbed my shirt and yanked me back. Something whizzed by my head and landed by the side of the road.

Few spectators lined the mountain road. Most of them would be waiting near the finish line, where

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“They don’t know I’m here,” Jo replied, leaping over a hand grasping for his ankle.

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“A knife?” Competitors weren’t allowed to bring knives. It was strictly what you found on the way. A woman coming down the track behind us spotted the knife and slowed down to pick it up.

She turned to us with a feral smile on her face, like that of a starved animal about to take down its first prey in weeks. This was also the last smile she would ever share. Mere moments after she picked up the knife, a rifle sounded and the woman’s head split open. The knife hit the ground, followed by her crumpled body.

“I don’t know if I can do it,” I muttered.

“Do what?” Jo’s feet continued to hit the ground in sync with my own.

“Kill a person. I don’t think I can do it.”

“You don’t have to kill anyone to win the race.

Stop thinking about it.”

“I know, but you saw that guy up there. You think he’s going to just let us peacefully pass by and take first place?”

The sound of a taser drew my attention from the sight before me. One of the few spectators on the mountain descent was twitching as he hit the ground. A man in raid gear spoke into his mic before the body was dragged off. Jo and I looked at one another and started running again. Just need to keep moving.

“Probably not, no.”

A scream sounded ahead of us. Another competitor down?

“You’ve got some blood on your…” Jo pointed to my face. His hand was shaking.

I just kept running. It was all I could do.

We reached the river. By now maybe ten people were in front of us. We’d reached the part of the race where most of the runners were spaced out enough to just keep running. Other than the sound of our breathing, our feet hitting the dirt, and the trickle of the river, everything was quiet. I was okay with that. Quiet was nice.

“What are you going to do with the money if you win?” I asked. Jo didn’t seem like the type to really care about material possessions, but with a million dollars in front of you, well that could change a person.

The sight of that woman’s head exploding haunted me. She broke the rules. She picked up a weapon tossed onto the track by a spectator.

Everyone knew what happened when you broke the rules. But I couldn’t get the image out of my head. It was like her head just exploded. Blood and bone showered in every direction.

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“Send dad to that training course he needs to get that promotion at work finally. You know they’ve skipped him over three years in a row now simply because he can’t drive the forklift and they’re too scummy to pay for his license?”

“I didn’t know that. I’m sorry.”

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“And it’ll let mum quit her night job, and I wanna get Mari some new clothes and such for school.

She doesn’t say anything but I know the other kids tease her. They teased me.”

I swallowed my words and looked at his bloody hand, still in shock. He’d just murdered a man right in front of me. He was about to kill us, sure, but… I’d known Jo since we were five years old.

We grew up together. He was always so sweet and kind to everyone. The joker who never took anything to heart.

I didn’t know what to say. I just nodded as we ran.

“We’re about to lose the house too,” Jo said after a few moments. “We have nowhere else to go. I don’t know what to do. Even if I got another part time job, another five part time jobs, it wouldn’t help. This is our last chance.

No-one can do this but me…”

“They’re getting further ahead of us.”

I shook my head and took his hand. It was sticky.

Jo hit the ground in front of me, sending me tumbling over the top of him.

“Boohoo, what a sad story. Let’s all have a pity party about it.”

One of the runners was standing above us with a large, thick tree branch in hand. He must have been hiding behind one of the trees. I turned over and saw a body lying in the river. That must have been the scream we heard.

The branch connected with my torso and pain exploded throughout my side. Another strike, this time my shoulder. His aim was getting higher. Another hit and…

Jo’s foot connected with the man’s jaw and sent him flying. Jo scrambled for the branch before the man caught his bearings and before he knew what was happening, it was all over. Jo battered his face in, over and over the branch came down until there was nothing but a pulpy, bloody mess in the mud.

Jo stood up and turned to me. His face and upper body were almost entirely red. I opened my mouth a few times, but Jo just dropped the stick and held out a hand. “Come on, we’re not winning this race sitting around here.”

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FICTION : TARA A. DEVLIN

“Yeah, right. Sorry.”

“You go deal with them,” the tall man said. The smaller one started running towards us. He had a baseball bat in hand. It appeared to be wrapped in something sharp. Barbed wire?

Where did he manage to steal that from?

“Come on, let’s go.”

I took one last look at the body and started running again.

“Run!”

The longer I ran with Jo the more I realized that things were going to get very complicated. Only one person could win. It may not be either of us, but if it came down to it, what would we do? I needed that heart transplant for my mother. He needed that money for his family to survive. It wasn’t like either of us could just give up for the other.

Jo and I took off at full speed. I was tired. The run itself was wearing me down but the rise and fall of adrenaline was taking its toll on me as well. I didn’t know how much longer I could keep doing this. My legs burned like molten lava and my chest heaved like it was going to explode.

We neared the school. There were a few more spectators here. We were closing in on the end.

“Ah!”

“Do you hear that?”

“Hear what?”

“Listen.”

The impact never came.

I picked it up. There was no time. As the man got closer, I swung with all my might. His jaw cracked against the club and he collapsed. Jo had saved me before. Now we were even.

There was a fight up ahead. It was the big guy who’d been in the lead. A woman and two men were circling him, his brow cut and dripping blood into his eye. One of the men, tall but skinny, had something small and sharp in his hand. The woman was swinging a chain she’d probably lifted from the trash cans.

“Are you okay?”

“Yeah, yeah, I think so… I’m just bleeding…

Come on, let’s keep moving.”

Jo put a hand across my chest and brought a finger to his lips. He pointed through the middle of the school.

I held a hand out and helped Jo back to his feet.

He was a little wobbly but we pressed on before the others could follow.

“Leave them be. If we go this way we can avoid them. It’s a bit longer but…”

“Once we clear the school, we’ll be in first place.

There’s only 500 meters between here and the finish line. We’ll make it.” Jo smiled. More and more, blood was pouring from the back of his head.

“Hey!” The big guy saw us and called out.

“Shit.”

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Jo fell to the ground once more.

The back of his head was bleeding. The man had thrown the baseball bat at him and was quickly closing in.

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FICTION : TARA A. DEVLIN

“Are you sure you’re okay?”

drowned out by my heartbeat throbbing in my head and chest and throat.

“Stop asking me and keep running.”

300 meters. Jo caught up to me. The cut on his head was still bleeding a scary amount of blood but it didn’t appear to be holding him back.

Sweat poured down the side of his face, mingling with the dried, caked-on blood. His face was sickly pale but he didn’t say a word.

We just kept running.

We cleared the school gate when we heard it. It was an almost inhuman growl. I turned. It was the big guy, covered in blood. He was holding the woman’s chain in one hand and what looked like a steel pole in the other. He hurled it towards us and was moving before it even hit the ground.

200 meters. I could hear the footsteps behind us. He was closing in. I could almost feel his breath on my neck. I could hear the chain hitting the ground as he ran. For such a big guy he sure had some stamina. The finish line was in sight.

People were standing up and cheering, urging us on. Not to win, but to fight.

Blood. They wanted more blood.

The finish line was straight ahead, the park at the end of the street. Spectators lined the road and wild cheers went up. It would appear we were the final three and the last leg was about to begin. The crowd wanted blood. They always wanted blood.

It’s only another 500 meters, I kept thinking to myself. Just keep moving. Nothing else matters. Just keep moving.

He can’t touch you once you pass that finish line. Nothing else in the world matters but being the first across that line. Then everything would be okay.

100 meters. I tasted asphalt.

So close, yet so far. I don’t remember exactly what sound I made as my face planted into the ground at full speed, but I’m sure it wasn’t dignified. The baseball bat flew out of my hand and clattered nearby. ‘This is it,’ I thought. ‘It’s all over. I’m a dead man, and right before the finish line. How fitting. I’m sorry, mum. I tried.’

I turned back and my family was gone.

Did I imagine then?

My legs pumped across the hard asphalt. It was awkward running with the bat but I refused to let it go. Jo was not far behind me. I couldn’t turn to look. It would be precious wasted time.

A huge weight suddenly pressed down on my back. An almost maniacal laugh sounded near my ear. The crowd grew even louder. I didn’t have to turn around to know who it was. I braced myself for another impact. The last one of my life, no doubt. Just what the audience wanted. A grand finale.

“He’s gaining!” Jo screamed.

“So run faster!” It was all I could get out. My entire body and mind were focused on moving forward and nothing else.

The impact never came. There was a thud followed by cursing. I turned to see Jo kicking the man in the face again. The finish line was right there and here he was, helping me out

400 meters. I was slowing down. I could feel it. I couldn’t keep up this pace much longer. Not anymore. The cheers of the crowd were

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FICTION : TARA A. DEVLIN

once more. The big guy’s face turned murderous. He swung the chain over his head and then towards Jo’s side. He couldn’t get out of the way in time and fell to the ground.

“Jo,” I called out but my voice refused to work.

My throat was so dry I could barely swallow. My head was spinning. I got up to my hands and knees and tried again.

“You think you little shits are gonna keep me from my prize? Think again.”

“Jo.”

The big guy had stopped moving. Jo kept pulling the chain like his life depended on it.

Pain exploded through my head once more as his fist connected with my cheek. He grabbed Jo and yanked him up by his T-shirt, delivering a swift punch to his jaw as well.

“Jo!”

I put a hand on the back of his leg. He looked down at me, eyes full of fear and confusion and adrenaline. He was like an animal cornered with nowhere to go. He looked awful.

Jo smiled at him.

“Oh you like that, did you? You some kind of sicko, kid? Is that why you’re here?”

“Jo, you can let go now. He’s… he’s not breathing.”

Jo said nothing. I wasn’t sure he could. His lip was busted and his jaw bruised. He kept smiling.

Jo turned back to the man and after a few more moments he dropped the chain. He fell to his knees beside me.

He then held up his other hand. He was holding the other end of the chain. Before the big guy knew what was going on he wrapped it around his neck, planted his feet against the guy’s chest and pushed with all his might.

“It’s just us now.”

“It is.”

“What are we going to do?”

He grabbed feebly at his neck, the veins popping out and his face rapidly turning red. Jo kept pushing against him with his feet and pulling on the chain, not letting go even as the body slid off me to the ground. He just kept pulling tighter and tighter. The big guy’s eyes bulged, his breath rasped. The crowd cheered even louder. He was going to kill him.

“We need to finish this race.”

I stood up on wobbly legs. The finish line was just there, 100 meters ahead of us. I put an arm over Jo’s shoulder and we stumbled forward.

Together. The crowd was cheering. It was no finale they’d ever seen before. I could hear voices calling for blood. Calling for one more bloody finish. I could hear my name coming from somewhere. I turned back and my family was gone. Did I imagine them? It didn’t matter.

I looked over. My heart dropped. My mother and sister were in the crowd. Why? Why was she here? Why did she bring my sister here? She was only 12. Too young to see any of this. I didn’t want them to see any of this.

Forward. We kept moving forward. Step after step. Blood ran down my face and dripped onto the road below. Jo was silent, one arm across his battered side and the other helping to hold me up. What a sight we must have been.

My heart dropped even further. Next to her was Mari. Jo’s sister. His parents were nowhere in sight, presumably at work.

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We reached the finish line and stopped. We made it. One of us was about to win, and that’s when it hit me again. One of us. Only one person could win.

“This is the only way both of us wins. Watch out for my sister for me, will you? And give your mother my regards. Her pain is going to be over very soon.”

Jo looked at me. “Hell of a race, huh?”

He looked around, as though for the last time.

“Hell of a race,” I agreed.

“It’s so cold,” he whispered. It was the last thing he ever said.

“This is it.”

Everything afterwards was a blur. Ambulance officers rushed towards Jo while I was picked up and put on a stretcher myself. The race organizers were congratulating me at the same time medics were plugging a drip into my veins.

They told me later I was suffering from blood loss and heat exhaustion. They were amazed I made it to the finish line at all.

“Yep.”

A silence fell between us as the crowd got even louder. I could hear one of the race commentators blaring over the loud speakers but I had no idea what he was saying.

“I’ve been doing a lot of thinking,” Jo began. I opened my mouth to reply when he let go of me and shoved me over the finish line. I hit the ground, hard.

My mother got her heart transplant. Turned out the big guy was a perfect match. Jo’s family also got their money. Unbeknown to them, he’d taken out a life insurance policy on his own life before the race. A sort of backup measure in case he didn’t win.

I’d won.

I looked up, confused. Jo was still smiling, but it no longer reached his eyes.

Jo bled to death from his wounds. He was dead before they reached the hospital. I never got the chance to say goodbye to him. To say thank you. Because of Jo, my mother is still alive.

Because of Jo, I’m still alive. Mari got her new clothes and books for school. She hasn’t been the same since the day of that race though. She doesn’t speak very much and just spends all her time running…

“Your mother needs that heart. I can’t keep that from her. She was one of the few people who was kind to me growing up, you know? She never said a word, but she always gave us extra food when we came over to play, or tucked a few bills into our pocket when we weren’t looking.”

I didn’t know what to say. Tears filled my eyes. I was so confused.

“I took out an insurance policy before the race.

Just in case.” He gave a small laugh. “Even if I didn’t win, well I wanted to make sure that my family would be okay.”

For more information on author Tara A. Devlin, please visit our Contributors Page.

“I don’t…”

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FICTION : TARA A. DEVLIN

CANYONVOICES

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FICTION : JEFF MEYERS

That Time You Were, Supposedly, a Creep

By Jeff Meyers

I.

T

did the job. But always with an eye on the clock.

That's how small the world had gotten. Four extra spoonfuls of butterscotch pudding. And, if you could muster the patience, an equally inadequate second dish of soft serve sundae on Fridays.

he pudding was okay. The rest of the food was shit. But the butterscotch pudding, yup, that was almost tasty. Only they never gave you enough. The bowl – you really couldn't call it a bowl – held maybe four goddamn spoonfuls.

No seconds. Not enough to go around.

You didn't notice when Sophie's hand fell away.

Or that she had stopped talking and instead started convulsing out random vowels and consonants, noises that sounded a helluva lot like words. It was the reaction at the table, the alarmed looks on their faces, the sudden rush of orderlies to her side that made clear that her time was at hand. And you were surprised but really you weren't. It was inevitable. And not all that uncommon. A nonevent by assisted living standards. Except for the fact that everyone in the dining room watched as the medical staff struggled to resuscitate Sophie while you clumsily lunged for her bowl of pudding.

Sophie said you could have hers. Because she didn't like sweet things. Because she was lonely.

Because the rest of the men in the home couldn't stand to be near her for more than ten minutes. The sharp phlegmy cough, the teary eyes, the robe that fell open too frequently to be just chance. Everything about her reminded you of desperation and decay, that death was around the corner, under the rug, behind the door, waiting beneath the bed. And, shit, it was.

But who wants to be reminded?

So, you put up with her. For an hour. During lunches that served butterscotch pudding.

II.

She insisted that you wait, until she had finished her meal. And she ate slowly. Carefully chewing every bite like her teeth hurt. Asking too many questions between bites. Touching your sleeve then your wrist then the soft groove between index finger and thumb. Sometimes pinching it when she thought she had said something amusing.

The hotel room was air conditioner cold. Which you've always thought was somehow different than regular cold. Because as much as you loathed the relentlessly inoffensive brown-beigebrown-gray of yet another Junior Suite, you liked the uniform crispness of the air.

You once tried to recreate that frigid, seemingly metal-tinged, climate at home. First by adjusting the central air vents then by installing a window unit. Neither worked. But they did incite three

You smiled and chuckled and patted the fragile cables of her age-speckled hand, giving her just enough attention to make it worth her while. You

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explosive arguments with your wife that were spaced only days apart. You slept in the fucking basement that third night. And it was a different kind of cold.

and... possibility. Which wasn't real, you knew.

But this was make believe. They called it dramatic play at your son's preschool. Surely, she could manufacture that kind of fantasy for five hundred dollars an hour. More complicated things were put into the world every minute of every day for far less.

But let's cut to the chase: you were lonely. And horny. Which is nothing new. Business trips leave you with too much ghost time, that sensation that once you leave a meeting or client dinner you cease to exist. You don't know Columbus-Grand Rapids-San AntonioDavenport, and it doesn't know you.

“You have to hurry, baby,” she cooed. “I need time to freshen up before I go.”

And it was ruined. She tried to coax you back but any chance for the illusion to take hold was gone so she hissed, “So I guess it's my fault” then bee-lined into the bathroom.

And the eBook autobiography wore out its welcome. And Netflix is a lot less fun after forty than most people will admit. And you started to talk to yourself as you paced the room, looked out the window, dismissed the idea then convinced yourself it was okay then dismissed it again before opening your secret set of bookmarks. The one hidden in your “2014 Forecast” folder. In case, you know, the kids. Or...

Sitting on the bed, you felt the wrongness of your nakedness and dressed as quickly as possible. You turned off goddamn “Sexual Healing” and immediately wanted to take the money back. Not because you cared about the amount but because you didn't want her to have it. Not for making you feel like you did.

Sitting on the bed, you felt the wrongness of your nakedness and dressed as quickly as possible.

It was only the once. This is still important to you. The once part. Because once can be a mistake. Which wasn't what you were thinking about when you went down to the bar and asked for two wine glasses then took a second shower then played and replayed the same four Marvin Gaye tracks on Spotify. Everyone likes Marvin Gaye, right? His music is sexy.

But her purse disappeared into the bathroom with her. There was only her coat, draped across the chair. And her shoes.

So you threw your laptop into your bag and your few belongings into your overhead suitcase. You pulled the key ring from her coat pocket and dropped her car-bike-house keys down an air vent. You slipped out of the room and down the elevator and stuffed her shoes in one of those combination ashtray garbage cans and checked out at the front desk. You hailed a cab for the airport and arrived at your gate eleven hours before your flight.

She wouldn't kiss you. And when she did, it was brief. Her mouth opened into an unsealable “O.” Her tongue darted into the open space between your lips but touched nothing. Which was both frustrating and embarrassing. Because as much as your body was seized by lust, what you really wanted was the rush of unpracticed intimacy, that delirious mix of unfamiliarity and desire

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The next day the hotel bill arrived in your email inbox. It included the cost of the room and twenty-six dollars in minibar charges. Which was a lot less than a new pair of Gianvito Rossi pumps and a mobile locksmith fee.

III. “You're so funny,” she drunkenly laughed, clinging hard to your shoulder as you stumbled toward her apartment, her breath thick with the smell of too-sweet cocktails and a couple puffs off someone else's cigarette.

“You have a peach butt,” she said. Then you went inside.

And you didn't care. She had never given you this kind of attention before. Even though you worked together, had the same friends, lived only a few blocks apart. Sometimes you even sat across from each other on the subway. By chance. But whenever you would look at her too long, smile when your eyes finally met, she'd turn away. No smile. Hard cut.

The bedroom was mostly bare. An unmade bed, clothes on the hardwood floor, a small lamp on the bedside table alongside a pair of glasses and a Wonder Woman mug half full of water. You knew she wore contacts, right? Yeah. Of course you did. And as you kissed, as her tongue just barely touched your teeth, she burped. Into your mouth. And the giggle that followed grew into a confident laugh.

That night, though, her tongue darted into your ear after repeating, “I never knew you were so funny.”

Oh my God I am so sorry. But she kept laughing.

And no no no pulled away from you, reclined against the pillows on the other half of the bed.

God, I am so drunk. You shouldn't have bought me that last drink!

You had promised to walk her home. Your mutual friend was worried about her, but needed to go, would miss her ride. So, you offered. No big deal. Sure. She lives only a couple of blocks from my place. And your mutual friend gave you that look, the one that says “no funny business.”

Not that she thought you were that way. But in the way that all men may be that way.

You shouldn't have, dammit.

And then she was out. Asleep or unconscious, it was hard to tell. Is there a difference?

Shit.

At her door she struggled. The key missed the hole five, six, seven times. And she let loose that awkward giggle each time. Like she wasn't quite sure if her drunkenness was endearing or embarrassing. So you slipped your hand over hers, helped slide key into lock as her hand slipped down the small of your back.

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You said her name. You said it again. And a small rivulet of drool slid from the corner of her mouth onto the pillow. Shit. Shit shit shit. You didn't say that aloud but it was the word that ran on a loop in your head. Until you noticed that her jeans were unbuttoned. She must have done that while you were kissing. Before the burp.

Which meant the intention was there. So you

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fingered the buttons of her open fly and peaked at the red satin of her thong and then, checking that she was still asleep or unconscious or whatever, ran your fingers through the soft tuft of blond hair beneath.

clocking in two minutes late could lose you fifteen. But you really wanted that wait position.

You heard that weekends could earn you two hundred fifty bucks a night. Football weekends even more. And the guy who once lived in your dorm told you there was an opening for a bus boy that would probably turn into a wait position in a month or two. Especially for someone like you. But three weeks in you realized he was gay, and so were the rest of the wait staff. Except for maybe the waitresses, who were women. And still maybe gay. But you were neither. And there was no way you were going to be promoted.

They needed a bus boy. Period. Because every bus boy quit after a month. Six weeks tops. Except you. Because the schedule fit with your twohour Tuesday/Thursday night organic chemistry class at the community college.

Which you had to attend because you had to drop the course last semester because of the thing with your sister.

Just that. For what felt like an hour but was probably only two minutes. If that. Then you leaned in, whispered goodnight, kissed her lightly on the lips – was that a smile? – and left.

And the rest of that week was: she knew, she didn't know, she knew, she didn't know. And you didn't see her on the train. Or at work. Or at lunch with your mutual friend. Who was, if you weren't mistaken, a lot less friendly.

IV. Goddamn you were tired.

Seriously, that's all it was.

Being tired. And too clueless to realize that you should turn your head in another direction. I mean, you could see that she was getting uncomfortable, right?

I mean, you could see that she was getting uncomfortable, right?

She didn't know any of that. All she knew was that you were seated in front of her, smelling of sweat and kitchen grease and floor cleaner, eyelids fluttering closed black black black then popping back open, your dreamy awake stare fixed on her pale thin lips and high sharp cheek bones and thick brown hair bobbed at the shoulder of her leather coat and wide brown eyes and then black black black and then her again. For maybe ten minutes.

But mostly because you were tired. You didn't want to turn your head. You were comfortable.

As comfortable as the hard plastic back of a bus seat allows. But just the right position. Fading in and out of sleep. Not real sleep but that disorienting tunnel sleep that feels like a television being snapped off, fading down to a tiny white square, then, just a breath after going total black, snaps back to life.

“Creep,” she hissed as she got up, as the bus' brakes hissed even louder. And she dashed for the front door. Her face angry, her pace frightened.

You had just come off a six-hour bus boy shift at The Greater Downtown Food and Beverage Company. With its overpriced American diner cuisine and bottomless basket of honey wheat rolls and minimum wage check that was always less than you thought it would be because

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It was your stop too. But you decided that day to be late for class. Because maybe she was right.

V. You were twelve years old for Chrissakes. And she was your kid sister's best friend. Kind of stuck up. Even then, at nine. With her blue, blue eyes and her long, long hair and her expensive jeans that had names you never heard of. And you knew deep down that she'd eventually betray your sister, make fun of her behind her back, respond to her too needy affections with offhand cruelty. Because your sister was unraveled by your father, gaining more and more weight as she lost pieces of herself that you couldn't see.

But that afternoon, in the playroom with the coarse blue rug and the rain-streaked windows, you gave them rides on your knees. You on your back, fingers interlaced with theirs, bouncing up, down, up, down, varying the rhythm, a threefoot rollercoaster. A minute for your sister. Two minutes. Three minutes. Four minutes for her friend. And her hair flipped down in your face as she laughed and laughed and, okay, yes, you got hard. But you didn't know what that was.

Not really.

But somehow, she did. Even then, at nine.

Because when you dropped your legs and let her slide down, dipping lower and lower with each bounce, your pelvis met hers and well, maybe you kind of knew you shouldn't let that happen. But a hungry tickle unfurled inside you, a gigantic need that swallowed your whole head. She sensed it, understood way before you did that the game should stop.

For more information on author Jeff Meyers, please visit our Contributors Page.

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FICTION : JEFF MEYERS

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FICTIONCONTRIBUTORS Jesse Clark JESSE CLARK is an author of short stories who lives in Virginia and finds it strange writing about himself in the third person. He studied economics and history at Virginia Commonwealth University and as of this writing is 24 years old. On top of that he is fighting for something, right now, deeply and mightily and passionately, with nothing held back and everything thrown into the effort, through blood and sweat and tears. Others say around him, “it cannot be done!” But he says only back, “So help me God I WILL get this author bio to one hundred words.”

Em Leonard EM LEONARD is an American author who describes his work as “surreal macabre”. Since his doomed trip to the laundromat he has become a published author, a produced screenwriter and published musician providing content for globally distributed feature films and major network television programs. He is also the Dark Ambient music artist known as Sense Delete. https://www.facebook.com/fracturedfiction/ https://open.spotify.com/artist/0rTwUuD4LCE51fw8OwhPZ4

Tara A. Devlin TARA A. DEVLIN spent the first two thirds of her life living in Australia, the next third living in Japan, and now finally resides in Europe. When she’s not procrastinating on the internet or looking after her two cats she enjoys horror and pew pew movies. You can find her collection of horror and fantasy writings at taraadevlin.com.

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FICTIONCONTRIBUTORS Alex Van Gorp ALEX VAN GORP was born in Scottsdale, Arizona, and has lived there his entire life. He is currently a senior at Arizona State University and is pursuing a Bachelor's in Sociology, as well as a Writing Certificate. Prior to ASU, he went to Paradise Valley Community College, and that is where he first took a creative writing course and discovered his passion for writing. He loves writing fiction and many of his influences have come from watching anime and reading manga. His goal is to improve his writing so that he can one day turn this passion into a career.

Kristopher J. Patten KRISTOPHER J. PATTEN is a scientist by day and a writer by night and weekend. He recently completed his doctoral dissertation and will graduate from Arizona State University with his PhD in Cognitive Science in December. As a writer, he is a co-owner of the publishing company -30- Press and was asked to write a guest horror story for The Daily Dot in 2015. He published stories in and helped in the production of the flash fiction collection Horror d'Ouevres, of which all proceeds are donated to the charity Scares That Care. Kristopher is also featured in the horror anthology Vices and Virtues which was released in October. In the unlikely event he has free time, Kristopher is often hiking with with his wife and two dogs near their home in Queen Creek.

Jeff Meyers JEFF MEYERS is a journalist, filmmaker, and award-winning film critic. He will receive his M.F.A. in Creative Writing & Writing for the Performing Arts from UC-Riverside in December 2017. His poetry collection, "Hereafter," was a finalist for the 2000 Oregon Book Awards and he wrote the feature film screenplay for "Mimesis 2" (to be released in 2018). Jeff has short stories forthcoming in Confrontation Literary Magazine, The Carolina Quarterly, Dark Lane Anthology VI, and Digital Science Fiction Anthology. He lives in Palo Alto, CA.

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POETRY Celestial Navigation by Mark Pugh

(See Artwork for full image)

Anthony DiPietro Ask Me Anything The Past Still Has My Phone Number

Kristina Heflin comets John F. Buckley Soar Tara Thompson in fletcher’s walls Kersten Christianson Tomorrow, the Sun Drug Deal Dustin Gardy Glossolalia My Father Climbs William R. Miller Damascus Road First Grave Jonathan Lee Autumn I Often Wonder Nevada Matthew Bailey Abominable Pig Randel McCraw Helms On the Last Speakers of a Language Gerontion, to the Aged at Graveside

POETRY : ANTHONY DIPIETRO

Ask Me Anything

By Anthony DiPietro

Today at the beach I saw someone sweep

sand with a handle with a black plate on the end. Why

would someone do that? Where will you be

if I wake up and it’s still night? Can you tell me why

the moon’s gone sometimes? What is Papa Mystery’s

real name? Was that always his name? Why

do I have to sleep if I’m not tired? When can we

start wearing Halloween costumes? Because I

want to wear mine every day. Why do we have belly

buttons? I thought you’d know why.

Do you ride on dinosaurs too, when you dream?

Do you sometimes fly?

Where did Grandma go after the cemetery?

Are you a robot? I know you’re not, but try

and play pretend with me.

I heard you say “shed tears” to mean “cry.”

But the shed is behind the house, where daddy

keeps the lawn mower. Why

are you bald, Uncle Anthony? Will it be

tomorrow when we wake up? Will you still be here? And why

is a red heart the symbol for love? I see

it everywhere. I’ve been wondering why.

My poetry always springs from real life experience, and I think my job is to intuit what pairs with what. I raise this practice to another level in "Ask Me Anything," blending my nephew’s voice, his actual questions, with my own curiosity about how he perceives our shared world.

- Anthony DiPietro For more information on poet Anthony DiPietro, please visit our Contributors Page at the end of this section.

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POETRY : ANTHONY DIPIETRO

The Past Still Has My Phone Number

By Anthony DiPietro

Moonlight washes or it plunges

over every barrier—balustrade, breaker, highway divider.

At my right shoulder as I drive

over Shinnecock Canal I see twin concrete pilings

rising from black water like scarred ice

and between the pilings, two green lights, one red.

It is always two green lights, one red—a signal

to convey vessels from Peconic Bay safely seaward.

I need a set of lights like that

for you. Some nights I want your ship coming through.

Sometimes I wave from the bridge.

Some nights I want the silence

that is older than radio waves

to fill your wide mouth,

my wind-worn ears.

For more information on poet Anthony DiPietro, please visit our Contributors Page at the end of this section.

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POETRY : KRISTINA HEFLIN

comets

By Kristina Heflin

comets burn through the night sky

trail behind them

the dust and debris of all

their past destruction

it is lovely to look at

streams of falling light

against the black sky

all other stars become

faint wishes

of what could be

their end will be disastrous

collision unavoidable

full of chaos and turmoil

yet it will be brilliant

clamour in the night

bursts of radiance

passionate sparks

glorious and all consuming

until what is left

is revealed

iridescent rubble

“comets” was inspired by my first reading of Emily Brontë’s Wuthering Heights. I saw Cathy and Heathcliff’s relationship as having the magnetism of two celestial bodies, complete with the inevitable destruction that always accompanies such collisions.

- Kristina Heflin For more information on poet Kristina Heflin, please visit our Contributors Page at the end of this section.

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POETRY : JOHN F. BUCKLEY

Soar

By John F. Buckley

Proud from the marketplace temple,

watch the couple fly into the man

working the sidewalk with a mutt

with a neckerchief, spilling

his cup of change, those singles

smugly stuffed into plastic. They twitter

like swell birds perched on a branch

above the intrusions of thrown rocks,

but too low to show up on radar

or tax-audit database. They will never

get hit. They were born to snip safety nets.

Watch them flutter unfettered and propagate

feces on statues of trust-busting statesmen.

They are more than content with their

glib parrot jargon, their keen plumage

greedy for more color, their world

a gilded lattice of global blowers and suckers.

They can afford the sky. Their wings

are the price of progress. Over in the pet store,

two parakeets peck out another’s eyes.

It’s curious, something some would

call natural; the shop assistant can’t locate

this act in the company handbook.

All he can do is light the incinerator.

“Soar” came about after I watched a youngish Yuppie couple in brightly-colored Lycra leave a boutique and stride down the sidewalk, first ignoring and then snickering at a panhandler trying to feed himself and his dog. They joked about knocking the cup of change from his hand, and I imagined that they actually had, wondered about the ideological forces forging such casual cruelty.

- John F. Buckley

For more information on poet John F. Buckley, please visit our Contributors Page at the end of this section.

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POETRY : TARA THOMPSON

in fletcher’s walls

By Tara Thompson

a singular presence in study;

fallen petals cracking the smooth surface of a pond.

This piece was for an in-class assignment where we try and write something inspired by a poet (in my case, it was Ezra Pound). I wanted to write something that captured the feeling of our library and how tangible the quiet within is. I feel there are some feelings in life that cannot be named, simply discovered.

- Tara Thompson

For more information on poet Tara Thompson, please visit our Contributors Page at the end of this section.

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POETRY : KERSTEN CHRISTIANSON

Tomorrow, the Sun

By Kersten Christianson

Wind tousles cedar boughs, budding

corkscrew willow branch, blows dry

hemlock needles from the neighbor’s

three dead trees. Ella Fitzgerald bird-

twitters song through the gust of public

radio. Indoors, stillness from the wind:

the dog sleeps on her back, blocks the

door’s draft. Even my desk knows to

rest for the day: stepping stones of paper-

work piles, chapbooks marked at various

points of stop and go, animal spirit cards,

crystals and stones, a winter-worn box

of matches, greeting cards in need

of the written word to mail to friends.

Thermals crack open the eggshell of dark

sky, give way to leads of robin blue.

Spring to summer, blue sky leads offer buoyancy: spring in the step, sun-warmed face, fingers tangled in the earth. I write to the compass fixed north.

- Kersten Christianson

For more information on poet Kersten Christianson, please visit our Contributors Page at the end of this section.

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POETRY : KERSTEN CHRISTIANSON

Drug Deal

By Kersten Christianson

That August

summertime wafted

in on a Special Weather

Statement, fireweed fragrant,

Huckleberry red: temperatures

in the 70s. Fingers tangle

in garden weeds, in salmonberry

bushes; a thorough weeding,

another bucket of sweet harvest.

Sun on our faces, warming arms,

legs, we call this joyful drug

euphoria.

Spring to summer, blue sky leads offer buoyancy: spring in the step, sun-warmed face, fingers tangled in the earth. I write to the compass fixed north.

- Kersten Christianson

For more information on poet Kersten Christianson, please visit our Contributors Page at the end of this section.

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POETRY : DUSTIN GARDY

Glossolalia

By Dustin Gardy

Glossolalia means “speaking in tongues” in the Pentecostal movement

The term “speaking in tongues” always makes me laugh

Don’t we speak with tongues?

If I were actually in a tongue, like inside a tongue, I suspect the primary word I would use to describe it is

“undulating,” the wavy, rhythmic slide of the tongue

Like the C

The grade given to this nonsense poem

Like the sea

The mother motion plane of the curve of the

Wave of sound, angled

Crashing on the curve of the beach

The curl of the sand meets the curl of the sea

Meets the curve of the grade

Written red

Ink drift

Wood words

The sand and the surf and the sea and the grade of the plane

Of the angle of your neck

And the curve and the curl of your lips

Angled towards mine as I fish

For a kiss,

Kiss-fisher, angler

Angling, working the angle, hoping to catch

Red

Blood heightened centigrade

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POETRY : DUSTIN GARDY

As your toe tips

Tips toe-ward

Forward

Your head up, leans toward

To me

To kiss

The undulate of the tongue

We speak in

Rhythm

In the swell

Wet

Of the C

Und-ulate

Und-ertones

Under tongues

The lash of the waves

And the crash

Of the speech

In the tongue

In, with, and under

The merge of speech and sea

Two make three, each

One

Mystery

“Glossolalia” is the result of my attempt to write a poem about sex that retains a sense of dripping seduction without explicitly referring to sexual acts. It is informed by my theological studies, my religious background, the Song of Songs in the Hebrew scriptures, and my spouse.

- Dustin Gardy

For more information on poet Dustin Gardy, please visit our Contributors Page at the end of this section.

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POETRY : DUSTIN GARDY

My Father Climbs

By Dustin Gardy

My father climbs

With grace and balance,

Effortless he swings

On dangling saddle,

Climbing spikes dig into trunks

Like spurs in horses’ flanks.

A tree trimmer desperado,

Oiled Stihl slung at his side

To be drawn at a moment's notice,

Laying low whole groves of six-shot pine.

Birch and oak and poplar,

Dogwood, elm, maple

All fall before him,

“The Legend of the Branches.”

Hang him high, he'll cut them low,

And grind the stumps,

Making mulch of maples,

Paper pulp of poplar,

Cardboard from hardwoods,

Paneling from pine,

Siding from sycamore,

Countertops from conifers,

Staircases of spruce.

So I aspire to apple orchards,

Chopped down cherry tree integrity,

Ironwood imaginations,

Window memories framed in willow tree reverie,

And dogwood flowered dreams

Of falling autumn leaves.

This man who works in trees

Cultivates the very things

That make me breathe

“My Father Climbs” is about my Dad, who has been a tree trimmer in the Midwest since he was 18. For 40 years, a noteworthy amount of time in that field, he has worked storm cleanup in multiple states after almost every major hurricane since Andrew in 1992, including Katrina, and the recent storms earlier this year.

- Dustin Gardy

For more information on poet Dustin Gardy, please visit our Contributors Page at the end of this section.

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POETRY : WILLIAM R. MILLER

Damascus Road

By William R. Miller

At the top of the hill,

between the hemlocks,

I saw the towers and smoke:

Three-Mile-Island.

And I thought about those days

when the whole east coast

was threatened by

a cloud of poison dust.

There were plans to evacuate

and many did for fear

of turning into shadows

scorched on stone.

But we stayed behind,

most of us, until

the reactors cooled,

the wind changed,

a cold rain fell. Every time

I drove that road

I thought of blindness,

the kind that saves,

redeems, and faith

in control rods. We lived

on edge, fear of the light

that blinds us all.

For more information on poet William R. Miller, please visit our Contributors Page at the end of this section.

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POETRY : WILLIAM R. MILLER

First Grave

By William R. Miller

A piece of broken rock,

a crooked triangle,

no name or dates,

marks the grave

of a child, an Indian woman,

the first man to cross

the mountains

hunt and plant.

It doesn’t matter

to their blood

on Decoration Day,

those who lay flowers

and thank the one

buried here, before

they honor the graves

of those they knew:

a father killed by a Yankee

bullet, the Spanish flu,

a woman who died

in child birth,

her baby cut out of her.

They pray in silence,

laugh and cry on this

hill of talking stones.

For more information on poet William R. Miller, please visit our Contributors Page at the end of this section.

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POETRY : JONATHAN LEE

Autumn

By Jonathan Lee

And like the leaves that fall

My knees give in,

And I no longer can confess

The only truth that can make

A difference.

No longer does that trunk exist.

Standing and towering above,

In its place, a sail boat

That flies away.

To that light wheelin in the distance.

I hope it won’t drown.

As I sat down, pen and paper in hand, with leaves all around me and the trees changing hue, life was seemingly disappearing, but in the midst of it all is a tree of hope that may bloom in time.

- Jonathan Lee

For more information on poet Jonathan Lee, please visit our Contributors Page at the end of this section.

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POETRY : JONATHAN LEE

I Often Wonder

By Jonathan Lee

I often wonder why I threw that rock.

Why it slung over my shoulder. Into the valley

Of death.

I thought it would make an opening, that would let

My people in.

It did I suppose.

In came the fountain of gold.

They said they were going to purify.

They did I suppose.

Now the heavens exposed

The gentle breeze of the wind

Flows its way through the house

With no one inside.

And I often wonder-

Why the train never arrived.

As the last people who actually witnessed the holocaust disappear, I can't help but think what may arise in the future. “I Often Wonder” is a poem that seeks to show how quickly something can spiral down.

- Jonathan Lee

For more information on poet Jonathan Lee, please visit our Contributors Page at the end of this section.

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POETRY : JONATHAN LEE

Nevada

By Jonathan Lee

Today I sprayed my gun across the garden full of weeds.

Some tall, some short, some small.

Some with green hands.

Some with yellow heads.

Why? Why, Uncle Sam told me to water his plants while he’s away.

And then I started to mow the lawn, until everything was nice and orderly,

Each blade of grass like the next.

And where there was an outlier - ZIP

Gone through the blades and out like the rest.

Then I thought to myself-

I’ve been mighty fine, haven’t I?

And so the windows became shiny and clear, until nothing was there.

Not even the window. It was so clear, it ceased to exist.

You could see inside the house from miles away-

the small red lampshades, the blue stained carpet, and the white little cabinet in the corner

Where Mr. Sam kept his watering hose.

This poem was written in response to the shooting in Las Vegas and the only response that I, as nothing but a writer, could do.

- Jonathan Lee

For more information on poet Jonathan Lee, please visit our Contributors Page at the end of this section.

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POETRY : MATTHEW BAILEY

Abominable Pig

By Matthew Bailey

I saw God walk by today

in a grove of olive trees.

He had brown paper bag eyes,

and skin the color on a no-fly list.

He wore a casual, button down, blue-collared shirt,

conventional slacks,

and a burning bush behind him,

next to the highway.

Yahweh waved good morning,

he did not beckon me, Moses-like, to follow him

with his right hand,

while the left held a cup of coffee.

I wondered if he was drinking

a warm, bitter, medium roast,

like mine?

The Almighty had a friendly face,

though not the friendliest,

that memory goes to Freyr,

as he stood next to his colossal wife,

in line at the grocery store.

I thought about shouting to the Almighty,

to praise him,

to make devotion to him,

“Elohim,

hear the words of my mouth!”

but my mouth was full

of salted, crunchy, burnt bacon.

This poem is based on an experience that my wife and I had while we were eating breakfast one rainy morning and we saw a man crossing through an olive grove who stopped and waved at us. The man then walked out of our vision and I made the joke that it had been God visiting us heretics. It made me think of my own complicated relationship with the ideas of faith, belief and religion.

- Matthew Bailey For more information on poet Matthew Bailey, please visit our Contributors Page at the end of this section.

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POETRY : RANDEL MCCRAW HELMS

On the Last Speakers of a Language

By Randel McCraw Helms

I wish these old ones could enfold

And lift me up and take me where

Their young and lovely wives once were,

To hear the songs of love they made.

But none can now bend down to me,

And the loves are long since dust.

They sing to cold silence only,

These elders, widowed and desolate.

To live long childless, last of your kind,

To pray and no one know,

No one else who minds the word

To name your god, the one who dies with you,

What tongue has speech for such a destiny?

How can words suffice, when we know they die?

“The Last Speakers of a Language” was inspired by Tolkien’s Ents, the tree-herders whose wives went away long ago; there are no Ent children, and Old Entish is doomed to extinction.

- Randel McCraw Helms

For more information on poet Randel McCraw Helms, please visit our Contributors Page at the end of this section.

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POETRY : RANDEL MCCRAW HELMS

Gerontion, to the Aged at Graveside

By Randel McCraw Helms

Death quakes youth, not me,

An old hound badged with scabs,

Whose puffed knuckles gnarl and furl,

While bruises flower and yellow, arm by arm.

But listen: the bald pudendum of age

Is gift; all the rucked pucker and fold

Purfling the flesh is proof of survival.

You breathe; only the lovely die betimes.

Be it with stick or frame, but standing.

Leave mourning to younglings;

Time enough for moldering and ending

When they becomes yourselves, and wiser.

Withering in grace of senescence,

You pulled the luck of the long straw;

So roughly muscle the others under,

Wipe your mouth, and laugh, rasping.

“Gerontion, to the Aged at Graveside” was inspired by T.S. Eliot’s poem “Gerontion” (“old man”).

- Randel McCraw Helms

For more information on poet Randel McCraw Helms, please visit our Contributors Page at the end of this section.

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POETRYCONTRIBUTORS Matthew Bailey Matthew Bailey lives in San Tan Valley, Arizona with Licia, his spouse of seventeen years, and their two dogs Murphy and Fenway. He is a lover of poetry, sports, language, dogs, music, and film. Matt earned a Masters degree from Arizona State University in Curriculum and Instruction. He is a part-time coach and a full-time educator at Perry High School. He earned his Bachelors in English from the University of Utah while studying under the influence of Dr. Stephen Tatum and his ideas of the New West and the western environment, particularly the deserts of Utah, Arizona, and Nevada.

John F. Buckley After twenty years in and around California, John F. Buckley once again lives in Ann Arbor, Michigan with his wife. His publications include various poems, two chapbooks, the collection Sky Sandwiches, and with Martin Ott, Poets’ Guide to America and Yankee Broadcast Network. His website is http://johnfbuckley.net/. Right now he has a cold, so his favorite hobbies are sleeping and drinking generic medicinal syrups. He anticipates feeling once again sprightly before the first frost.

Kersten Christianson Kersten Christianson is a raven-watching, moon-gazing, Alaskan. When not exploring the summer lands and dark winter of the Yukon Territory, she lives in Sitka, Alaska with her husband and photographer Bruce Christianson, and daughter Rie. She completed her MFA in Creative Writing/Poetry through the University of Alaska Anchorage (2016). Her collection of poetry Something Yet to Be Named published by Aldrich Press along with a chapbook, What Caught Raven’s Eye by Petroglyph Press, are forthcoming (2017).

Anthony DiPietro Anthony DiPietro is a New England native who worked for 12 years in nonprofit organizations on issues such as violence, abuse, and income inequality. In 2016, he moved to Long Island and joined Stony Brook University as a candidate for a creative writing MFA and now teaches undergraduate courses. A graduate of Brown University, his poems have appeared or are forthcoming in Assaracus, The American Journal of Poetry, The Southampton Review, Anomaly, Rogue Agent, Talking River, The Good Men Project, and Helen.

Dustin Gardy Dustin Gardy is a native of northeastern Ohio, now residing with his family near Phoenix, Arizona. He earned a bachelor’s degree in Cross-Cultural Adult Education, then traded graduate studies in Theology for home-based studies in parenthood. Hoping to be prolific before he dies, he has written a lot of poetry over the last couple of years. Providentially, his middle name means “poem” in Gaelic.

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POETRYCONTRIBUTORS Kristina Heflin I am an Arizona State University English major, based in Northern California. I have strong interests in British literature and mythologic studies. I serve on the editorial board of the literary journal Flumes, and was previously published in their Winter 2016 edition.

In the summer of 2017, I travelled to the UK, and plan on applying to graduate schools there to continue my studies. I am also the author of the website Sagas and Mythos and the forthcoming novel Sigyn’s Saga: Burdened with Love.

Jonathan Lee Jonathan Lee is a student at the United World College Maastricht. His passion lies in telling stories of all kinds and in different ways. Whether through poetry or through film, storytelling is his way of expressing and understanding the world around. He has worked on multiple documentaries and narrative shorts and is currently working on a book of poems in collaboration with Edgar Gonzalez, a friend from his hometown in El Paso, Texas.

Randel McCraw Helms Randel McCraw Helms is retired from Arizona State University’s English Department. Now he writes verses. One of his recent pieces appeared in the last issue of CV.

William R. Miller William Miller's sixth collection of poetry, Recovering Biker, was published this fall by The Edwin Mellen Press. His poems have recently been accepted or published by The Penn Review, The Connecticut River Review, Plain Songs and Negative Capability. He lives and writes in the French Quarter of New Orleans.

Tara Thompson Tara Athlyn Thompson is currently a junior at Barrett Honors College/ASU’s West Campus majoring in English. She grew up in Houston, Texas as a product of Houston Independent School District’s Vanguard Gifted and Talented Program. When she exited middle school in 8th grade, she received 11 academic awards. Tara has been writing since elementary school, and became a formally published author at age 11, having her poetry featured in “The Stars Sing: Literary Arts, Librarian as the Teacher, Bringing Arts into the Library,” a compendium.

Tara relocated to Arizona in 2011 with her parents, and attended Arcadia High School where she continued to write, being honored by the Arizona Young Writers for her work. Tara is an avid reader, writer and artist. Tara has plans to continue her education with a Masters of Library Science, and Doctoral pursuit.

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CREATIVE NONFICTION

Winter, 2017 by Patrick McCormack

(See Artwork for full image)

Scott Stambler The Different Drummer

Vincent Marco The Absence Was Ecstasy

Jessica Wiggins Snack Time

CREATIVE NONFICTION : SCOTT STAMBLER

The Different Drummer

By Scott Stumbler

T

he popular Thoreau quotation, framed in a buttery yellow, matched the pink hibiscus wallpaper in our kitchen. If not for my mom’s commanding taste in home décor, Henry David would have hung in the garage. My father had kept the Walden’s Pond reference at his Paramount studio office. When he had brought it home, my parents argued about its Art Deco frame.

Sgt. Pepper, and I crossed-out the last Friday of school. Just shy of thirteen, I had visions of summer with pretty girls and matinees. On the first day of vacation, my mother yanked me out of bed. I arose to furious. She had enrolled me in the Boy Scouts, but it slipped her mind to inform her son. I argued with her, but it was pointless when she stomped her foot at my ingratitude— her signature-move before turning rabid. Mom tossed guilt better than an Olympic Javelin thrower, “You’re gonna love the boy scouts.”

Their fight started at dessert. My always-right mother surrendered just before Carson’s monologue. Mystery solved; the next morning, she had it reframed. If a man

During my brief tour-of- duty (Sixty-seven days.) I adopted ‘Be Prepared’, along with forty-two million scouts since 1907. That motto crazy-glueditself to my brain—despite my Scoutmaster’s formal invitation to my own exodus. He called my mother, and just like the school principal’s office, I attended while they spoke about me in third-person.

does not keep pace with his companions, perhaps it is because he hears a different drummer. Let him step to the music which he hears, however

He clearly whispered, “Don’t marry her, it’ll ruin your life.”

measured or far away. Thoreau cheered my independence, whether right or wrong. In and out of step to my different drummer, I became a twelve-year old maverick— misinterpreting Thoreau since the final episode of Mr. Ed.

“On three occasions, your son was insubordinate.”

“I know! That’s why I enrolled him.” My mother wasn’t talking about the boy scouts.

In June of 1967, McDonald’s first international venture opened in Canada, The Beatles released I refused the orders of my senior officer — a skinny, blonde-haired, Napoleonic fourteen-year old with Hitler-youth tendencies, but perfect teeth. Around the campfire, he ridiculed my idea that girls would make great scouts, but when I told him Jews didn’t go to church, he fell silent —like a coiled Western Diamondback without its rattle. (Ironically, my pure Jew-family replaced Hanukah with Christmas trees, but we adhered

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religiously to Deli.) Little Hitler waited for lightsout when he visited my lean-to.

“The dirty Jews killed Jesus. And I’ll fix you.” It was the sixties I’d been called worse. His distaste for Jews didn’t offend me more than his repellent personality. For the record, he ordered me to wash my just-washed dishes thrice, empty and re-pack my backpack for two hours,

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and the kicker? Hand-wash my filthy boot-laces.

I wonder if he had a brighter future than I imagined? (Security guard.)

voiceless pleas fell into his silence. At 7pm of the third night, a long-time friend of my father suggested we pull the plug on the machine that kept his body alive. Dad was fifty-one years old.

What I liked about scouting? I admired the Eagle Scouts with their twenty-one merit badges. I loved the hikes, the uniform, the brass belt buckle, and especially my Scout knife. I could tie a square-knot, set up a tent, and make scrambled eggs from a packet of yellow powder.

Fathers should avoid dying before their children.

I could have done without the gifts of grief, the empty hole, or the delusive search for a fatherfigure.

When death is a family close-up, it takes an irretrievable piece—soul, heart, prana, life-force, whatever. I write death from any distance, but nothing removes the shadow or sews up the hole. Time becomes my friend, but father-time is a crafty fellow. Time doesn’t heal all wounds it makes them bearable by reduction, as if looking through the wrong end of binoculars. Not much good comes to mourners, but the posthumous had restored goodwill between my brother, sister, and I—it forgave a variety of past sins. I took comfort in my marriage and three children.

We named our third baby Robert Scott Elijah.

Robert was my dad’s name, but our spunky-kid with three first names? He went with Eli.

I had earned the rank of second-class. I received the Silver Moccasin for the seven-day, fifty- mile uphill hike to the peak of Mount Baden-Powell. (Elevation: 9406′) On the final approach, invincibility carried us to the summit.

Rejection by the scouts left no dings, scratches, or dents. On the other hand, Be Prepared and Thoreau’s Drummer merged into my mottopsyche, framed by the Yiddish golden-rule: Waiting for the other shoe to drop.

It does not do to leave a live dragon out of your calculations…—Tolkien. “The Hobbit”

In 1979, McDonald’s introduced the happy meal.

Ten years earlier, my father survived a mild heart attack, fell in love with his cardiac-care nurse, then filed for divorce. Their divorce steamed like an active volcano, you couldn’t bet the odds, but it was inevitable. I’d never seen my dad so happy-in- love, but there was nothing in the Scout Handbook about his brain aneurism. I was twenty-five when my brother, sister, and I paced for three days in the hospital. Waiting for the unknowable and prepared with hopelessness, I recognized myself in the eyes of strangers, also waiting in the ICU—I wanted to hug them. At his bedside, we were glued to every occasional spike of EEG brain activity. I didn’t know which was worse—his comatose prone position, or the faint tease of his EEG monitor. To say, or un-say those needful words, constrained by his breathing machine, our

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We Plan, God Laughs—Yiddish Proverb

In June of 1975, Jaws opened in theaters, and McDonald’s opened their first drive-thru in Cochise County, Arizona. I was twenty-one years old when I introduced my fiancé to my

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dad. We had lunch at his house, prepared by his lovely wife. The conversation didn’t flow harmoniously, but using his bathroom changed my life. I saw a check-stub on his desk and I had a sneak-peek. Money talks; it said, ‘I was an idiot.’ My dad began in the Paramount mail room, he rose through the ranks film editing, associate producing, and finally writer-producer —old school. Before begging him for a job, I had worked graveyard at Ralph’s Deli-Dairy warehouse In Compton. Before that, I worked three simultaneous jobs: Plumber’s assistant, Pizza Delivery, Ambulance Dispatcher. I’m sure my asking, made him happy. (Seeing I evolved from idiocy.) He would have been pleased to know I loved my job in film-music.

ER Intern sneak-reading a book under the admissions counter.

“Hi. Look, my wife just had a baby in the car.”

He gave me a doctor-to-mental patient smile.

“Yes, and the name of the baby?”

That was an odd question. Patience was running on empty, “Elijah.”

The intern smiled, “Sorry, I cannot leave my desk. But ‘Elijah’ is a very good name. He was a prophet.”

My adrenaline was peaking, my brain speeding, yet I was ninja-calm, but ready to detonate. Now with zero patience, I spun from the ER Desk, grabbed a gurney, and wheeled it to the automatic sliding doors.

After lunch, dad walked us out to the car and waited until I closed the passenger door.

He clearly whispered, “Don’t marry her, it’ll ruin your life.”

If my mother had never cut me off, I might never have moved.

The Head ER nurse materialized and asked what I was doing.

Still pushing the gurney, I answered, “My wife had a baby in the car.” I was markedly lesscalm, but determined. She waved at the ER Intern to come—and he ran. We approached the Cordoba, I opened the passenger door and my wife held our newborn son with the still-attached umbilical cord. The ER Intern sounded exactly like Apu from The Simpsons. (An unavoidable stereotype, but true.)

I stopped at the driver’s door and looked at my dad, like a kid who failed algebra three times. I opened the door, he kissed me on the cheek and waved a cordial farewell to my future ex. He was right with his prediction— he read her like a comic-book. I reacted maturely. Marching to my self-destructive drummer, I proved my father wrong and married her. (Why was my auto-response programmed to mutiny? Anyone?) With a little help from the wife, we compounded my dad’s anti-nuptial forecast—In six years I was the proud father of Barbie, Amy, Eli, and Art. I wanted a large family, to stabilize my broken family. It almost worked.

“Oh my, you did have a baby in the car. You know what?

You should name him, Elijah Cordoba.” Scout’s honor, that’s exactly what he said.

I parked our overheated Chrysler Cordoba alongside the red curb of the ER. Leaving my wife and our fifteen-minute old baby, I jogwalked into the Emergency Room. I found the

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Getting to the hospital involved preparation and a cool-head. My lane-changing, freewayspeeding, flashing emergency lights, and my wife screaming at me, or out the window? That

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MGM twelve hours a day, plus the two hours of driving back and forth. I walked into the house and saw my sports-loving wife, and our sportsloving houseguest, watching football while sharing the same footrest. As we readied for bed, I parenthetically hinted at not her, but our houseguest’s possible crush. My wife exploded, claiming they were in love. I didn’t see that coming. (In 1854, young Willy Snyder died when a circus clown swung him by his heels. Nobody saw that coming either.) When your wife falls in love with your home-wrecking houseguest, there’s one choice above pleading—I bought flowers and tried romance. The quick-rip of the bandage is better than the prolonged breakage of till death do us part, but the third act always follows, and like a dead bee: It stings.

was the calm part. The clichéd, no cop in sight when you needed one, validated in its own bromide. Between her seven-minute contractions, she asked, “How far?” My answer was, I didn’t tell her—and sped to eighty. The car rattled, it didn’t like that speed. Then, her water broke. We were twenty-to- twenty-five minutes from the hospital—if the freeway exit soft-landed on the hospital roof.

On my last day of matrimonial-bliss, I helped with the packing. The Cordoba still had the three-year old, amniotic fluid stain on the crèmecolored seat. Ricardo Montalban’s famous marketing campaign “Rich Corinthian leather” was false on two counts; the seats were mostly ‘pleather’ or plastic-leather, and “Corinthian” was a meaningless word, scripted for Montalban to sound suave. (Life is full of unharvested symbolism.) Early that morning, my father-inlaw acting as the-buffer, came with a U-Haul truck. I carried boxes and loaded the truck, nonstop like a robot with excessive sweat. When she brought the kids outside, I felt stuck in the vortex of a whirl pool. Art, the youngest, was six months old. Three hours after he had greeted the world, I asked permission to play a softballfinal. She said fine, almost gently, but she meant, ‘Are you serious?’ A wife’s delayed reaction can vary from an hour to a year—my selfishness certainly rebounded in spades.

Spinning down the drain of uncertainty, I kissed my children goodbye. That frozen frame of memory when she turned the corner, made me feel the gross-weight of separation, as if swimming in concrete. I don’t know, or can’t

Her next contraction came five-minutes later, and she moved into a squat-position. I got off the freeway and rolled to a lengthy stop.

Drenched in sweat and devoid of color, she pushed the placenta out. Three minutes later, the baby’s head popped out for a look at the world before committing. I doubt my coaching helped. Instinct transformed her into a nearly unrecognizable Pioneer Woman. With her last push, the baby dropped in her lap like a watermelon on a water slide. I got out and opened her door. She cradled the baby in her lap. I grabbed a blanket, and she wrapped the baby inside. Before closing her door, I checked that the longish umbilical cord was inside the car—be prepared. If my madcap driving was played by Anson Williams, the question, whatever happened to Anson Williams, might never have been asked. (My unfunny joke to muzzle the temptation to go full-schmaltz, but Yahweh still rewarded me for being meticulously unprepared.)

In 1982, Johnny Carson hosted the Oscars, and McDonald’s had an E-Coli outbreak. I worked at

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remember, why she moved to Concord, a sevenhour drive, up the desolation of I-5.

almost-reunion since I moved out at fifteen and a half. (What mother let’s her son leave home at that age? Mine.) She rotated her three kids in and out of favor at random. She also had pills for any occasion. Her father-the- pharmacist kept her knee-deep in Mother’s Little Helper (Valium) since 1963. She also had a 90-day supply of pain meds, for just-in-case. She handed me two codeines a day for a month.

I walked inside the house and took inventory of the reminders that had to disappear from my fresh empty life. I collected leftover toys from the backyard and living room. I boxed them like a professional mover, never dwelling over the contents. They pack everything as if a hurricane had been in their path. I put the lone box in the girl’s room and shut the kid’s doors. I did everything to avoid their rooms, as a jurist told to strike a testimony from memory. That empty house was like Miss Havisham, her moldy cake, moth-eaten wedding dress, and her ruined mansion; everywhere a reminder. (Although for gender-clarity, I did wear a dress once—to a Halloween party, but on the embarrassingly wrong day.) For the next nine months, I buried myself in work and occupied my driving time with boxed CD sets of stories on tape.

Living with her wasn’t all bad, she had always been a good cook, and she spoke about Japan, where she moved after the divorce. She exited the plane and jumped into a taxi, but the driver refused to take her to the hotel. Remember, my mother always wins—She held her ground and stomped her foot. The driver, after much back and forth with his dispatcher, drove her to the hotel. Her boyfriend greeted her at the hotel entrance. She still felt insulted by her cab driver when her boyfriend asked, “Beattie San, why are you in a police car?”

My drive to work, drive-home rotation fell into a blurred-groove. I drank my instant coffee or treated myself to coffee at the Jack-In- The-Box. I began stopping at Jacks more often, until more often became every day. I added a couple of Jack Tacos to my coffee order, and the occasional Breakfast Jack. With a large coffee balanced on my lap, I headed west on the I-60, until a genderless driver slammed on her brakes for no reason. (See what I did?) Tacos, hot coffee, and extra Jack-salsa flew, like a thousand birds hidden in an African prairie tree. I decided enough. Enough with the lousy coffee, enough with my polyester pants.

I won’t lie or pull a Nancy Reagan—everything went better with codeine. From living with mother, or my divorce; the world had a new halo in the muted color of numb. (If my mother hadn’t cut me off, I might never have moved.) In November of 1983, A Christmas Story was released by MGM. I also found a second-floor apartment in Playa Del Rey that was six blocks from the beach. The living-room window, directly above Culver Boulevard with its cyclical roar of traffic, offered a sliver of ocean between the decaying beach properties. My drive to work was ten-minutes, tops. Before signing the lease, the manager warned me about the extremely loud traffic. I said it was just what I needed.

I put the house up for sale and camped on my mother’s couch. Living with my mother involved serious emotional risk, worth taking to look at nearby apartment rentals.

Nobody likes moving, but November is the ideal time to bite the bullet. The days are crisp, and the stars appear like the firework-sparklers we held as kids. My friend Marty helped me move.

(Marty had a lustrous career at DreamWorks, and remains a truly pleasant, happily-married

“It’s only temporary, right?” Before anything else, like how’s my state of mind, she wanted to know how long I planned on staying. It was an

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man.) The heaviest piece of furniture was the steel-framed queen sleeper-couch. We struggled with that 83-inch beast for thirty minutes. We had to roll it end-over- end up the stairs, one step at a time. It was like trying to push a Peterbilt uphill—a slight exaggeration, but there was a lead-heavy reason Ashley discontinued steel frames. That stupid sofa felt like the last hundred feet of the Silver Moccasin trail.

After tossing a few thousand pistachios at the TV, I lost interest, but was a changed man with Double-Bubble Gumballs. When summer had arrived, I ventured outside. Soon, I began marathon-training: The three-block jog to the Baskin-Robbins. My new best friend, Denial, had improved my outlook. I skipped the ice cream and ran another three blocks to the beach. I considered the distant sailboats, dreaming of quixotic ports, except sailing had once made me seasick. A beautiful woman walked in my direction, passing me with a hint of a smile. I closed my eyes to happy-thoughts drifting to the rhythm of the sea. I dared to imagine the possibility of a better future. I opened my eyes to the curses of a shirtlesshomeless man searching diligently through a large green trashcan. His shorts were too small, he wore long white socks and one brown dressshoe. He was looking for the other shoe.

While Marty tested the sofa, I moved the small stuff: a box of clothes, three forks, a wooden spoon, two soup spoons, and my prized softball mitt. Pa, my great-grandfather, gave me his vintage RCA table-top television, with its twentyinch color screen. Pa thought that Tilly, his wife, had accidentally thrown the remote away, or dropped it in her daily chicken soup. (Pa had bribed a Russian guard to release Tilly from jail.

Pa never spoke of the Pale Settlement, which aimed at removing every Jew from Russia. They escaped to America, and Tilly made soup every day. She was prepared for history to repeat itself. At ninety years old, her chicken soup was delicious, with or without a remote.)

For more information on author Scott Stambler, please visit our Contributors Page.

Alone in my new and crazy-loud apartment, I sat on the sofa-bed and threw pistachio nuts to change channels. The TV had a unique channelchanger built into the set. About the size of a computer trackpad, it had ten dimly-lit pushbuttons. My batting average was dismal, I felt nine- tenths depressed, mixed with a touch of apathy. (They should have named a cocktail after me.) Like my dad, I kept my emotions bottled, but the rare walk and especially the sight of children or cute babies in strollers, killed me. The first dreaded Christmas, I bought the loudest toys I could possibly find and spent the freezing cold day on a miniature golf course in Concord. It was good to see the kids, miserable to leave, and cheaply-thrilling to imagine the obnoxiously loud toys in the house of ex.

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CREATIVE NONFICTION : VINCENT MARCO

The Absence Was Ecstasy (Excerpt)

By Vincent Marco

A

frigid gust rips through the cracked window in the corner of a dormitory-style housing complex. It’s impossible to distinguish if the snow is falling from the sky, or again being disingenuous. Always slipping from trees, and dancing on the wind, a mirage that reminds you what a terrible winter it’s been.

In any case, tiny droplets of freezing precipitation find their way onto the base of my spine, exposed from a shirt halfheartedly draped over my lifeless torso. It jolts me back. Where the fuck was I?

Synapses again firing, I try to gain my bearings to no avail. My arms are anvils. My chest is airless. I’m twenty-one years old, at eight-thousand feet elevation, staring at a gumstain on an old carpeted floor, and I’m finally about to die.

off her. I’ve lost myself entirely with this one.

She’s a tough, defined person, with life experience that could bury me, yet her touch is soft and delicate as silk sheets pulled over exhausted legs at the conclusion of a hard day’s work. I attempt to nod in agreement, but my eyes can’t sustain contact. Hooded, they fall heavily and refuse to open for an unnatural amount of time. I’m moving in slow motion and she’s noticed.

It’s scarier than I had anticipated. The last months of my life had been riddled with such blatant apathy; I never forecasted the sudden emotionality of this moment. A single-framed movie plays before my eyes and I see a tombstone wielding two numbers far too similar in value. “Such a shame,” they’ll say, putting down their newspapers, as they quietly pat themselves on the back for not raising a drug addict. “He was a smart boy.”

“Sweetie, what’s wrong?!” She exclaims, suddenly mortified.

She’s never called me that before; I like it.

A single bass-drum thump of a heartbeat pounds in my chest and at once, everything fails. The color falls from my hands. I see in my periphery, blue lips pursed beneath a pearlwhite nose. She’s holding me, but the timelines aren’t adding up anymore. It’s like my

The silhouette of a figure appears in the threshold. It’s my South American lover, she’s chatting lightly with me, oblivious to the circumstances. Such a unique beauty radiates

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consciousness hiccuped and now I’m pathetically hunched in her arms unable to sustain my already atrocious posture.

I can see the pain and terror in my lover’s eyes.

“I think that girl just murdered me,” crosses my mind. No, wrong again. You murdered you, asshole.

“Vinnie, what the fuck is happening? You were smoking it again. How much did you do? Jesus fucking Christ.”

Time jumps again. I’m on a half-deflated air mattress in a room fit only for a junky. Drug paraphernalia is scattered in every corner, never

She’s not wrong; it probably is the heroin this time. I had spent the afternoon chasing stains of onyx gunk across a tinfoil sheet with a lighter.

Sundays, you know?

far from reach. Lying sideways I see the blade I hid beneath my desk last weekend. We had fought, violently, and there were no victors. The

climax came when I began to hack erratically I’d convinced myself it was a weak batch, thus into my forearm with a steak knife until she justifying the increased consumption. Now, in a wrestled it from my hands; and there it lay. I can true light-bulb ingenious moment, I realize the see little pieces of arm hair on its serrated drugs weren’t weak at all. Instead, edge, and wonder if there is any they had simply been muted by the heroin on the knife I can salvage Adderall, Xanax, promethazineto smoke tomorrow.

codeine, nicotine, and alcohol Lying sideways I see in my system. Not sure, how that had slipped my mind.

the blade I hid beneath Tomorrow, what arrogance.

my desk last weekend. I can’t fight it any longer. I’m For a while they got on We had fought, violently, shaking and freezing, and nicely. I mean, after all it’s a my eyes won’t focus. She’s party, and things progressed and there were no holding me close, wrapped in as one may expect. A couple victors. blankets that surely reek of shit awkward interactions, spilled and vomit, but seems entirely cocktails, not enough hors d’oeuvres, Janet is having another unfazed.

affair, the usual stuff. Then something turned, “So, this is it,” a voice in my head says, “dying and whatever discussions occurred led the on a floor, thousands of miles from my loved

occupants of that gathering to burn the house to the ground. Unfortunate for the owner.

ones, as a Brazilian stranger touches my hair and calls me by the wrong name.”

Count breaths, sustain eye-contact, count breaths, try to stand. Repeat.

It’s almost Shakespearian. Almost.

The word “hospital” is being thrown around but my venue remains unchanged. No bright lights, no angry nurses, just confused familiar faces,

some disgusted. I snap to again, she’s arguing with a roommate and I decipher something

For more information on author Vincent Marco, please visit our Contributors Page.

along the lines of, “We need your car, this isn’t a fucking joke.” I can’t make out the response but

CANYONVOICES

FALL2017

CREATIVE NONFICTION : JESSICA WIGGINS

Snack Time

By Jessica Wiggins

I

squinted at my handiwork under the sickly lamplight. My hand had trembled on the big S, and my cursive Sandy Johnson limped along the bottom of the permission slip in half-translucent gel pen. The paper was pink cardstock, heavy with underlined words and asterisks. Would they notice if I wrote over my first attempt? But then, a terrible thought: wasn’t my mother’s first name actually Sandra?

brought his lunch in a plastic shopping bag.

Over the roar of the vacuum cleaner, still in her work outfit, she half-shouted, “Sorry, sweetie.

Just sign my name next time!”

I stuffed the paper into my backpack. It would have to do.

My class sang songs on the bus, chanting together with a heady rhythm of inhale-exhale as we wound through the cramped, tree-darkened lanes that meant our destination was near.

Soon, a wooden sign on the side of the road read John Bryan State Park in runic letters, heralding a sudden clearing in the woods – a parking lot, bordered with a tiny visitor’s center.

The gravel hissed under the tires as we skidded

I stared at the forgery until my eyes felt like husks and the late night tick of the clock became deafening. Tomorrow was the due date, and Mom was already asleep. I thought about what she said last time I missed a field trip, after I had to sit in an empty classroom all day with Aaron, who wore stained clothes to school and

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CREATIVE NONFICTION : JESSICA WIGGINS

to a halt, and when the engine shut off, the abrupt absence of sound settled over the rows of downy necks pressed against the vinyl benches for a brief, sobering moment before we rushed to our feet and yearned toward the narrow doors in a flurry of Velcro sneakers and colliding lunch pails. Mine felt suspiciously light.

An elbow clipped my shoulder and I turned around to catch the back of Aaron’s greasy head; how did he get here, too? My teacher, Miss Bennett, pressed a plastic bag into each kid’s hand as they exited the bus; I clutched mine tight as I was jostled out into the green, green world.

Far from excited to have made it on the field trip, my stomach was harboring a mass of uneasiness. I had held my mouth shut during the singing to keep it from squelching out in some unimaginable way.

scientific method? Now you’re going to be the scientist, and these are your tools.” Divided into groups led by a teacher or a parent volunteer, we dispersed into the woods with the instruction to draw plants and measure them with our rulers. At lunchtime, we would compare our findings.

I tramped along, sinking into pockets of pulpy leaves and hurrying to keep sight of Mrs. Gillespie’s khaki backside as she led us into a little clearing. Her daughter Hannah followed close behind, the hub of a lively group of girls.

Chattering voices and excited squeals from other groups mere yards away floated between the trees like the distant sound of mermaid music out at sea.

I felt acutely how extraneous I was there – a ghost child, prone to making myself disappear.

I kneeled down to draw a patch of tiny white buds on wiry stems. Moisture quickly infiltrated the knees of my jeans, drawing the warmth out of my legs and down to the soil.

My magnifying glass revealed a lacy framework of interlocking white tubes that were almost nauseating in complexity.

The bag was thick white plastic of the variety used for handing out travel-sized toothpaste at the dentist’s office, and it contained four items: a wooden ruler, a blank paper booklet, a packet of miniature colored pencils, and a magnifying glass no bigger than an inch in circumference. I held this last item up, tilting it see the sharp glint of sunshine that skipped along its edge. The damp, vegetal air felt noticeably cooler than it had that morning at my elementary school; I tugged my jacket tighter as I crunched around the lot, avoiding the orbits of loosely gathered groups of classmates who brandished their rulers at one another, giggling.

My classmates were crouched in similar positions, armed with ten colors of pencil and sketching away. I spied Hannah with her friends, huddled around a stand of purple asters with her mother peering over her shoulder, and then Aaron, his hand moving in rapid, giant arcs over the page as he stood in front of a dandelion patch. He wore a striped short-sleeved t-shirt even though it had to have been sixty-five, and I noticed with distaste that it was far too small, riding up to show his ribs when he stretched his arm.

“Listen up!” called Miss Bennett, standing tall on a curb. “Does everyone have a kit?” She held up the plastic bag, scanning the crowd. “Good.

Today, we’re going to explore Mother Nature.

Remember the drawings we made about the CANYONVOICES

As the sun moved higher in the sky, it poked a few long fingers through the canopy and rested

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CREATIVE NONFICTION : JESSICA WIGGINS

them on the ground in warm little pools of syrupy light. Lunchtime was approaching with my book mostly blank. A strange sense of paralysis had come over me; I felt acutely how extraneous I was there – a ghost child, prone to making myself disappear. Feeling my stomach gurgle, I quietly unclasped my lunchbox and peered inside at the lunch my older brother had packed for me before he left early for middle school. There, in one corner, was half of a sleeve of crackers wrapped in brown waxed paper.

your thoughts and pain your body, you could never, ever look it in the eye or say its name. No one knew what could happen.

My shoulders shook, curving around an emptiness in the middle of me. But behind me, I heard light footsteps approaching, snapping small sticks. Maybe it was a bear and the bear would eat me. The footsteps came near and then stopped. I heard swishing and rustling, but I couldn’t let myself look, lest I be seen. My swollen eyes were hot under my cupped hands.

My heaving ribs slowly abated.

To my horror, a soundless sob slowly overtook my face and held it in a rictus. I had bad lunches and no lunches before, but now? On a field trip?

There wasn’t anything else? I was hopeless, embarrassed, angry. I was one wish, embodied

The footsteps retreated, and cautiously, I turned around just in time to see Aaron’s striped torso dissolving into the woods, plastic shopping bag

-- to be normal. From long before the word snapped onto my mute, infant understanding, I knew I was poor. And I knew there was one rule about poorness: though it might hover above, below, around, within, though it might terrorize CANYONVOICES

in hand. I thought for a moment about his small clothes, his dirty hair, and I looked at my own dingy sneakers. A foil packet rested on a log. I ripped open a corner and placed a purple fruit snack on my tongue, letting it melt into a puddle

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CREATIVE NONFICTION : JESSICA WIGGINS

of gluey sweetness. I fished out another with my forefinger and thumb and carefully placed it back on the log, where one by one, ecstatic ants discovered its saccharine perfection and rushed to claim an angle from which to consume it.

For more information on author Jessica Wiggins, please visit our Contributors Page.

CANYONVOICES

Fall2017

CREATIVE NONFICTION CONTRIBUTORS Scott Stambler Scott lives with his golden retriever on a horseless-horse-ranch nine miles north of Santa Fe. He occasionally teaches film music, is addicted to weed-pulling, and roadside fruit stands.

One day, he will complete his 20-volume biography about his narcissistic mother. He has been published in non-fiction, fiction, and film music.

Vincent Marco "The Absence Was Ecstasy is a chronicle of a young, struggling addict and his triumph over countless internal demons. This memoir illuminates the foundational elements of dependency in all of their forms from love to lust, drugs, and alcohol. It showcases how even those born into privileged circumstances can fall victim to the undiscriminating grip of addiction and lose themselves entirely. Throughout immeasurable suffering and loss, the protagonist fights tirelessly to believe that humor can be found in any circumstance he encounters, matching each tear with a smile and pushing on. Above all, he fights to leave behind pieces of himself in those he loves, with hopes of being fondly remembered if ever he loses his fight.

In present day, the narrator finds himself staring down at another lover's ghost. Haunted by the vices and habits of his past, he searches endlessly for purpose and direction, as the underlying question on his tongue remains, 'What now?'"

Jessica Wiggins Jessica Wiggins is a senior at Arizona State University. Once a STEM major, she now studies English, with the hope of one day teaching at the college level. This is her first published work.

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SCRIPTS Ophelia by Antonio Borzillo

(See Artwork for full image)

Alex White We Killed Him

Gavin Smith Madrid

Eric Johnson Eight Phone Calls

Jonathan Lee Chicharrones

Michael Moriearty Flagellate Me, Baby!

SCRIPTS : ALEX WHITE

We Killed Him

By Alex White

FADE IN: EXT. HIGHWAY - NIGHT FOUR TEENAGERS occupy a rambunctious, SPEEDING, smokefilled car. LOUD RAP MUSIC plays against the otherwise silent rural night.

CUT TO: INT. MOVING CAR - HIGHWAY - CONTINUOUS The driver, ARTHUR (17) PASSES a FAT JOINT to the next passenger and changes the radio station.

ARTHUR UGH! For real though, everything they play these days sucks.

FREDDIE (18) HITS IT like a pro and PASSES it to the next passenger in the backseat.

FREDDIE Dude, what are you talking about--Coco is the bomb.

PETE (17) WAVES the joint around to the song. The last passenger, KALE (14) anxiously WATCHES the joint.

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SCRIPTS : ALEX WHITE

PETE I’m in LOVE with the CO CO. He LAUGHS, takes a hit and offers the joint to Kale-but suddenly rescinds the offer.

PETE (to FREDDIE) Freddie, your brother smoke yet?

Freddie turns to them in the backseat.

FREDDIE Eh, probably shouldn’t.

KALE I smoke! I’m not a little kid. I get high... like, all the time.

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Pete and Arthur LAUGH, but Freddie just SHRUGS. FREDDIE You heard the man.

Pete hands the joint to Kale. He takes it with an inexperienced hold.

Arthur PEERS ahead at a PAIR OF HEADLIGHTS coming up ahead.

ARTHUR Oh shit!

He STOMPS the BRAKES, slowing to the speed limit, but it’s too late. POLICE LIGHTS FLASH and PASS them.

They all turn, watching the lights. Kale tries to gauge what to do with the joint, terrified to be holding it.

FREDDIE (stammers) --That--us?!

PETE Just keep going the speed limit.

The Police Cruiser STOPS in the middle of the road and makes a U-turn. Arthur takes an abrupt exit and FLOORS IT. PETE (leans forward) What are you doing?!

FREDDIE

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SCRIPTS : ALEX WHITE

(to KALE) Give me that!

Kale gives Freddie the joint, he rolls down his window and flicks it out.

Pete UNBUCKLES his seat belt and pulls himself up between the two front seats.

PETE Arthur! Just pull over, man!

ARTHUR Screw that! I can lose ’em!

EXT. HIGHWAY - CONTINUOUS The car SPEEDS BY with a SWERVE. Ahead, a clearing of trees opens up. It’s an old construction site where nothing was ever constructed.

INT. MOVING CAR - HIGHWAY - CONTINUOUS Freddie and Pete PLEAD with ARTHUR. Kale watches for the Police behind them.

Arthur shuts off the music in a fit. His eyes concentrate on the upcoming site.

ARTHUR CHILL OUT! I’ve done this a dozen times!

Kale’s eyes still GAZE out the back window. The FLASHING LIGHTS near the turn.

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SCRIPTS : ALEX WHITE

EXT. CONSTRUCTION SITE - CONTINUOUS The car comes in hot. It SLIDES across the gravel. The four of them can hardly hold on to their seats. Arthur SPEEDS around a CORNER. Then ANOTHER. A DITCH APPEARS UP AHEAD. THE CAR DROPS, HITTING THE INNER WALL OF DIRT. CRASHHH! FROM FULL SPEED TO DEAD STOP. AIRBAGS DEPLOY. Pete BURSTS THROUGH THE WINDSHIELD. HE FLIES OUT, GLASS FLIES WITH HIM. HE HITS THE GROUND, SKIDDING ACROSS THE GRAVEL. FADE TO: INT. CAR Arthur, Freddie, and Kale are all INCAPACITATED. Arthur comes to. He takes a BREATH and gets out of the car.

The door SLAMS SHUT, snapping Kale to... He sees Arthur running up ahead of the car. He leans forward and NUDGES Freddie.

KALE ...Hey, Freddie?

No response.

KALE Freddie... Freddie!

He JUMBLES awake, surprised that he’d gone out at all.

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SCRIPTS : ALEX WHITE

FREDDIE Huh? KALE Are you okay?

Freddie’s head BLEEDS. FREDDIE I think so... (rubbing his head) What a nightmare... Where’re the other guys?

Kale extends a finger, pointing out the front of the windshield. Freddie looks.

CUT TO: EXT. BY CAR Freddie STUMBLES out of the car. Kale follows. They SLAM their doors and approach Arthur, as he gauges Pete’s condition, lit only by the car’s headlights.

FREDDIE ...Pete...

ARTHUR He’s...

Pete comes into view. Kale GAGS and takes a few steps back. Freddie CHOKES UP. KALE (looks away)

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SCRIPTS : ALEX WHITE

Oh my God...

FREDDIE (to ARTHUR) What were you thinking?! Why didn’t you just pull over?!

ARTHUR I’m sorry. I...

Arthur can’t seem to look away.

KALE This has to be a joke.

Kale walks away. Freddie pulls out his phone and dials. Arthur stands and comes up to Freddie.

ARTHUR Whoa, hold on. Who you calling?

FREDDIE (as if it’s obvious) ...The police.

ARTHUR No-no-no-no. You can’t. (off of FREDDIE) They’ll lock us up for this.

FREDDIE ...You ran from the cops.

ARTHUR

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SCRIPTS : ALEX WHITE

We’d all be in jail right now if I didn’t.

Alright? You’re welcome, but, if you call them now, that’s exactly where we’re going. Me, you, your little brother...

Freddie considers this.

FREDDIE ...So what do we do?

ARTHUR We... hide the evidence, get the car out of the ditch and bail, ASAP. Freddie, stunned, watches Arthur as he circles Pete’s body.

FREDDIE You mean... (beat) Jesus, Arthur...

ARTHUR Aight. You tell me. What are we supposed to do?

FREDDIE Call the fucking police. That’s what a sane person would do right now.

ARTHUR No. No! That’s crazy! The police can’t know we’re here--running from them. They already destroyed one life tonight and you want to shoot for three more.

FREDDIE

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SCRIPTS : ALEX WHITE

(stammers) YOU--Dude, you are out of your god damn mind. We need to take responsibility for what happened. (to KALE) Hey, back me up on this.

Silence. They turn to Kale, who’s sitting off at a distant hole. Freddie squeezes the bridge of his noes.

EXT. DISTANT HOLE - CONTINUOUS Kale SITS at the edge of a pitch black HOLE. He PICKS UP a rock between two fingers and hangs it over the edge until he lets go.

Silence... CLACK. Kale grabs another rock.

Freddie appears behind him, whistles, impressed.

FREDDIE What in the world were they building here?

Kale doesn’t respond, except to drop the rock. Freddie takes a knee and puts a hand on Kale’s shoulder to get his attention, but Kale waits for the...

CLACK. FREDDIE What are you doing?

KALE How deep does that look to you?

FREDDIE Uhh...

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SCRIPTS : ALEX WHITE

KALE It looks so ...endless. The sound reminds me it’s not.

Kale looks up. Light meets his face, revealing TEARS running down his cheeks.

KALE (CONT’D) Oh, god. I don’t want to be here anymore. I wish I could trade places with Pete right now.

FREDDIE Don’t talk like that.

KALE We’re never escaping this.

FREDDIE That’s why we have to do the right thing. By Pete, and his family.

KALE ...Pete’s family.

He balls up, inconsolable. Freddie is at a loss for what to do... He HOLDS Kale.

FREDDIE Hey, hey. Kale. Listen to me-Listen...

Kale’s eyes meet Freddie’s. He searches for the words.

FREDDIE (CONT’D) ...When you’re going through hell,

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SCRIPTS : ALEX WHITE

you can’t just do nothing. You gotta keep going... You know what I mean?

Kale SHRUGS. KALE Yeah. You got that from a meme.

In the background, Arthur YANKS on Pete by the leg, trying to move him.

FREDDIE What now...

He stands and heads back to the car - he turns back.

FREDDIE (CONT’D) It’s going to be alright, Kale. I promise. He continues to the car.

EXT. BY CAR - CONTINUOUS Freddie approaches Arthur, DRAGGING Pete.

FREDDIE I’ll get his arms.

He does.

ARTHUR About time you had some sense.

There’s a pretty good sized hole down this way.

FREDDIE

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SCRIPTS : ALEX WHITE

No. We’re putting him in the car.

ARTHUR The hell ever!

He YANKS Pete away from the car.

FREDDIE We’re going to the hospital!

Freddie TUGS Pete back.

FREDDIE (CONT’D) If we take him we can say he passed away on the way there, or something. The cops won’t know a thing.

Arthur PULLS AWAY. ARTHUR Don’t be stupid! They’ll still blame us! I’m not going to jail, Freddie.

Freddie PULLS BACK. FREDDIE You need to grow up! Take some responsibility for your stupid ass decisions!

ARTHUR You grow up! (he TUGS) Let go! I’ll do it myself!

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SCRIPTS : ALEX WHITE

The two of them have a Tug-of-War with the body until Freddie realizes what he’s doing and releases Pete in disgust.

Arthur CRASHES to the ground, with Pete’s body landing on him.

Freddie GRIMACES. Arthur PUSHES Pete off and gets up.

FREDDIE Oh, man. I’m so sorry.

ARTHUR Fuck you!

(DRAGS Pete away) You can virtue signal all you want, Freddie, but let’s be real. You’re going to end up hurting all of us. ...This would kill my mom.

Arthur shrinks into the darkness, as Freddie turns between Arthur and Kale.

FREDDIE (cups his hands) KAAAAALE! Come here!!

He WAVES and follows after Arthur. Kale reluctantly looks in their direction as Freddie disappears, though he doesn’t move.

EXT. DARK LAND - CONTINUOUS Freddie wonders aimlessly through the darkness, searching for Arthur.

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SCRIPTS : ALEX WHITE

FREDDIE Arthuuur!

CUT TO:

Freddie CLIMBS one of the taller dirt mounds to its six foot summit. He sticks out like a sore thumb against the forsaken lumber and brick scattered about.

FREDDIE (cups his hands) Arthur! Listen to me! If you don’t come back here -with Pete!- I’m calling the cops and telling them about this whole thing!

Silence. Freddie’s view of the surroundings is generous, but nothing looks amiss. No sign that he isn’t just talking to himself...

FREDDIE (CONT’D) Alright! I’m dialing 911!

Silence. Freddie MUMBLES as he dials the number.

BRRRRRRRNG. FREDDIE (CONT’D) It’s ringing!

BRRRRRRRNG. Silence. Freddie keeps his eyes peeled.

BRRRRRRRNG. THUD (O.S.). Freddie TURNS. BRRRRRRRNG.

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SCRIPTS : ALEX WHITE

Arthur (O.S.) Stop--Stop! Hang up the phone!

BRRRRRRRNG. Freddie’s eyes DART ABOUT. FREDDIE Not until you come out.

BRRRR— The phone stops ringing. Freddie takes a SHARP BREATH...

DISPATCHER 911. What’s your emergency?

FREDDIE Hello? My name is Fred Johnson. I’d like to report a uhh, an a-accident...

EXT. WHERE ARTHUR IS - CONTINUOUS Arthur is taking cover behind a dirt mound.

FREDDIE (O.S.) No, it’s my friend. We had a car accident and... He’s... hurt. Real bad. Uh-(listens to DISPATCHER) Driving? ...Our friend, Arthur.

Arthur LEAPS UP.

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SCRIPTS : ALEX WHITE

ARTHUR --Alright, alright!

EXT. WHERE FREDDIE IS - CONTINUOUS Freddie stops talking and waits to see Arthur.

ARTHUR (O.S) God’s sake.

Arthur appears, alone.

FREDDIE Where is he, Arthur? (beat) Where is Pete??

DISPATCHER Hello? Sir? ARTHUR Right over here.

He gestures. Freddie looks, but it’s too dark.

ARTHUR Hang up the god-dang phone, would you??

DISPATCHER Mr. Johnson?

FREDDIE I’m here. Sorry... (looks to ARTHUR) ...We’re ...just going to bring him to the hospital.

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SCRIPTS : ALEX WHITE

DISPATCHER I can send an ambulance out to you, What’s your location?

FREDDIE No. No, thanks. We got it covered.

DISPATCHER O--Freddie hangs up. Arthur releases a sigh of relief.

ARTHUR You’re a psycho, man.

Freddie SLIDES down the mound.

FREDDIE Whatever. Let’s just get Pete in the car so we can wake up from this nightmare. (looks Arthur in the eyes) Okay?

Arthur maintains eye-contact.

ARTHUR Okay.

Arthur leads Freddie down where he gestured before.

EXT. BY CAR Shattered glass. Pools of blood, smeared where Arthur dragged Pete.

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SCRIPTS : ALEX WHITE

Kale stands there STARING at the mess. He SHAKES his head and struggles with it all.

He gets on all-fours to get a look at the damage to the car.

CUT TO: Kale PUSHES the car. It seems that the harder he strains, the less it budges.

BUSHED, he gives up... and gets an idea.

CUT TO: Kale RAISES the TRUNK DOOR. It’s messy. He DIGS through piles of clothes and bags. PUSHES a basketball out of the way.

KALE Who doesn’t have a freakin’ jack...

He LIFTS a DUFFEL BAG. Metal parts CLINK. It’s noticeably heavy. Kale PLOPS it on the ground and UNZIPS it.

Off of Kale, mouth AGAPE. EXT. WHERE PETE IS Freddie and Arthur make their way through darkness.

FREDDIE Hey, man... Thanks for coming around.

ARTHUR You really didn’t give me any choice.

CANYONVOICES

FALL2017

SCRIPTS : ALEX WHITE

He gives Freddie a friendly NUDGE as they walk through the shadows.

FREDDIE I know, I know. Just wait. It’s the right thing to do. One day were going to look back on this and laugh.

ARTHUR I hope you’re right.

They come to a stop at the foot of a hole. Freddie looks at it, and then at Arthur.

FREDDIE ...Is he...

ARTHUR ’Fraid so.

FREDDIE (looks closer) Man... I can’t even see him.

Arthur walks around the hole as Freddie gets on his hands and knees. He PEERS as closely as he can, but the hole is cloaked in total darkness. Arthur walks behind Freddie.

ARTHUR Can you see it?

He Raises his foot and DROPS it like a hammer.

FREDDIE I don’t---AGHH!!

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SCRIPTS : ALEX WHITE

HE SCREAMS in agony, his face TWISTS. EXT. WHERE KALE IS - CONTINUOUS Kale is following Pete’s smeared trail of blood when he hears Freddie’s scream ECHOING. He Hurries ahead.

EXT. WHERE PETE IS - CONTINUOUS Arthur STOMPS ON Freddie’s ankle. Maintaining pressure, Arthur TWISTS his heel into it.

ARTHUR I can’t believe you man! You would jeopardize all of us just so you can relieve your magnificent fucking conscience.

Freddie CHOKES on his pain.

Arthur tears up. Freddie hangs over the edge. One strong nudge and he would go down the hole, face first.

KALE Arthur!

Arthur turns. He sees Kale standing over them.

ARTHUR Get out of here, Kale. The less you know, the better.

KALE Whoa, come on... Let’s talk about

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SCRIPTS : ALEX WHITE

this. I mean, look at yourself.

Jesus Christ. We’re supposed to be friends. You haven’t thought about Pete at all since you killed him!

ARTHUR Oh, fuck you, kid! What would you know about anything?

FREDDIE Hey! You can’t talk to him like that!

Freddie JERKS under Arthur’s heel. He WOBBLES, regains his balance, and rewards Freddie with a KICK in the GUT. ARTHUR Shut up! If you two idiots would listen to me, we could go back to the way things were--Everything can be great again!

KALE There is no going back without Pete... And not without Freddie. I wish we could, Arthur... But... We have to move forward.

ARTHUR That’s the thing with you guys! You won’t even try! You just let everything happen to you...

FREDDIE (through teeth)

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SCRIPTS : ALEX WHITE

Go fuck yourself.

He applies more pressure on Freddie. Kale steps closer.

ARTHUR It’s... I don’t WANT this. I have no choice!

KALE Of course you do. You’re just making the easy one. The least you can do is own it!

ARTHUR There’s nothing easy about this!

KALE Hey. It’s fine... I made the hard choice for you...

The ECHO of POLICE SIRENS fades in. Arthur becomes completely distracted by it.

KALE (CONT’D) I found your stash... and they will too, when they get here.

Freddie takes advantage and JERKS, making Arthur lose his balance and he sweeps his leg, KNOCKING Arthur down. They throw punches.

KALE Hey! Hey! Hey! Whoa! Hey!

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SCRIPTS : ALEX WHITE

Freddie SADDLES on top of Arthur, whose head hangs over the abyss of the hole.

FREDDIE We’ll leave you here if we have to!

Arthur HEADBUTTS Freddie. They roll around. Suddenly, Freddie’s on his back, but the both of them hang well over the edge. They WOBBLE. Kale DASHES to grab them and CATCHES FREDDIE’S FEET. Arthur CLINGS to Freddie as they SLAM against the wall of the hole. The three of them SLIDE ever so over the edge.

ARTHUR (to FREDDIE) Go on. Let go. I dare you!

They continue to SLIP. FREDDIE You don’t think I will?

KALE --Freddie-ARTHUR No, I do... You’re a hypocrite.

You’ve always been a-Freddie LETS GO. Arthur SCREAMS all the way down into the dark depths... THUDS. Kale and Freddie stop slipping. Kale struggle to PULL

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SCRIPTS : ALEX WHITE

Freddie up. Holding Freddie’s legs, Kale Stands and PULLS his big brother with all his strength... until he’s on safe, solid ground.

The two of them lie on the dirt, savoring each breath.

SIRENS are close, and they are accompanied by FLASHING LIGHTS seen in the periphery.

KALE What do we tell the cops?

Beat.

FREDDIE We tell them the truth... (beat) We killed him.

FADE OUT: FLASHING RED & BLUE

For more information on author Alex White, please visit our Contributors Page.

CANYONVOICES

FALL2017

SCRIPTS : GAVIN W. SMITH

Madrid

By Gavin W. Smith

INT. TRAIN - DAY A world of so much sound, yet so little color.

Four teens sit in the grey seats: MILES, He's your average suburban teen, nothing notable has ever happened to him.

JUSTIN, same as Miles. DAVID, Same as the other two. CHLOE, same as everyone else, but she's a girl.

We pan over and get a good view of two strangers passionately kissing.

In the background, a business man sits alone.

Pan back to the kids.

MILES (To David) What was that movie you saw again?

DAVID Harvester of Sorrow?

MILES Yeah, yeah. What was that about?

DAVID It was about a dead man who's brought back to life three hundred years into the future.

MILES Why? DAVID He was an entrepreneur who revolutionized the world.

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SCRIPTS : GAVIN W. SMITH

MILES So they brought him back to change the world again?

DAVID No, to punish him. The good he did today ended up ruining the world.

Pan back to the couple just as they stop kissing and gaze into one another's eyes.

INT. TRAIN STATION - AFTERWARDS Like the soul of the station, the color has been drained and left to dry in the sun.

We see crowds of people flood off the train in a mild slow motion.

CUT TO: David and Chloe observing an art piece in the station.

CHLOE I hate art like this.

DAVID Art like what?

CHLOE Art that has no meaning.

David suggests a meaning.

CHLOE I think you're reading too much into it.

JUSTIN (O.S) How much time do we have?

DAVID About 50 minutes.

CUT TO: INT. DINER - MOMENTS LATER

CANYONVOICES

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SCRIPTS : GAVIN W. SMITH

A world of so little sound, yet so much color.

We start up high, viewing this diner from above. People eat foreign meals and drink strange sodas. In the background, a girl with blonde hair walks into the diner. The business man from before sits at the bar.

Pedestal down to the table where our cast sits.

JUSTIN When you remember something, you don't remember it in seconds or minutes, you remember it at once.

Your memories have no time.

DAVID If I remember what you said right now I'll remember it in seconds.

JUSTIN But how do you know they're true seconds?

DAVID 'Cause I know how long a second is.

JUSTIN You know how long a second is now, but when you remember this later it'll be hard to tell huh? You see, time is only in our heads.

Justin looks satisfied with that.

CHLOE If time doesn't exist, the future has already happened.

JUSTIN I didn't say time doesn't exist.

CHLOE But if not, then the future is predictable, right?

JUSTIN Yep.

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FALL2017

SCRIPTS : GAVIN W. SMITH

CHLOE So, we don't have free will, right?

JUSTIN I'm not the one who said it.

The girl from before leaves the diner. Miles gets a good look at her.

CUT TO: INT. TRAIN STATION - LATER The train starts off as our cast chases after it to no avail.

DAVID How long until the next train?

JUSTIN 3 hours.

CUT TO: Our cast leaning against the station wall. Silence. Nothing happens.

MILES I've never seen this city before.

DAVID You've never been in it.

MILES In pictures I mean.

Beat.

MILES I'm gonna walk around a bit, see the city.

JUSTIN Oh, please don't make us late again.

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FALL2017

SCRIPTS : GAVIN W. SMITH

MILES I've got 3 hours, I'll be right back.

Miles walks off frame and we sit on the rest of the cast for a bit.

CUT TO: EXT. STREETS - DAY Down a loaded street, Miles scans the faces of passerby.

CUT TO: INT. STORE - DAY Our characters search for something interesting.

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FALL2017

SCRIPTS : GAVIN W. SMITH

DAVID If you talk too much, soon you'll forget what you're saying. That's why it's better to only say what's important and leave no filler.

CHLOE What if you don't know what you're saying in the first place?

DAVID Then you'd make a good writer I guess.

CUT TO: EXT. PARK - DAY Miles walks through a peaceful city park, still scanning faces.

He passes by a few girls and observes their features for a bit before moving on.

Beside him, the business man from earlier walks.

CUT TO: EXT. STREETS - DAY Down a loaded street, our cast is surrounded by passerby.

JUSTIN So, he and his team ponder over this stupid word carved into a tree going over everything from genocide to mutiny to aliens. They pour over historical texts and 2nd hand accounts just to find out where the people went. Turns out it was a tribal colony all along. He spent a good 10 years of his life solving a riddle that didn't exist.

CUT TO:

CANYONVOICES

FALL2017

SCRIPTS : GAVIN W. SMITH

EXT. PLAZA - DAY The blonde girl from the restaurant is reading at a cafe's outdoor table.

Miles comes up from out of frame and plops down behind her.

He takes a shot.

MILES What are you reading?

She knows what kind of person he is.

GIRL I'm not sure.

MILES What do you mean?

GIRL I mean I'm not sure. Something written by a pretentious white guy I bet.

MILES You like reading?

GIRL No. MILES Then why do it?

GIRL I've got nothing better to do.

A beat while Miles thinks a bit.

MILES Did you know two strangers will fall in love if they stare into each other's eyes for ten seconds?

GIRL (smiling) That's not true.

CANYONVOICES

FALL2017

SCRIPTS : GAVIN W. SMITH

MILES I read it in a book.

GIRL You like reading?

MILES I do it to pass the time The girl puts down the book and turns to stare at Miles.

10 seconds.

Silence.

MILES Do you feel in love?

GIRL I feel like I've been tricked.

MILES You like coffee?

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FALL2017

SCRIPTS : GAVIN W. SMITH

GIRL I drink it to pass the time.

MILES Wanna get some?

GIRL Are you asking me out?

MILES I'm asking if you want coffee.

GIRL Then yes.

CUT TO: EXT. PARK - DAY The other characters walk the same path Miles did.

JUSTIN So he's stuck in an iron mining job on Mercury right. But the thing is, he wants to be a pilot and see the solar system.

CHLOE I don't like movies like that.

JUSITN Movies like what?

CHLOE Movies with social commentary. I know what's wrong with the world, I don't need it spelled out for me.

CUT TO: EXT. COFFEE STAND - DAY The coffee stand is cramped and almost fragile, a single man works the entire operation.

CANYONVOICES

FALL2017

SCRIPTS : GAVIN W. SMITH

In the background, the business man from before kisses a woman.

Miles and the girl come up and order their drinks.

GIRL Have you seen the movie about the dead man who's brought back to life three hundred years into the future?

MILES Can't say I have. You like movies?

GIRL Oh, don't get me started.

MILES What kind of movies do you like?

GIRL Romance. I'd like to think I'm a romantic character. And you?

MILES I like crime movies. Something about the thrill of breaking the law and living on edge really gets me for some reason. Also, you're more of a character in a crime movie. Like a sidekick or something.

GIRL A sidekick?

MILES Yeah, like someone who pickpockets and does small things like that.

GIRL You think so?

MILES Yeah.

They get their coffee and the girl pays for both of them.

She pickpockets someone as they leave.

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FALL2017

SCRIPTS : GAVIN W. SMITH

We stay there for a moment.

David, Chloe, and Justin show up.

They order coffee.

DAVID So, he tries to get the girl to run away with him, but the thing is, she doesn't actually love him, she's only in it for the money.

CHLOE Eh, that doesn't sound too good.

DAVID It was actually great, I liked it at least.

CHLOE It's too cliche. I could see that coming from miles away.

DAVID You haven't seen it.

CHLOE I feel like I already have.

CUT TO: EXT. PARK - DAY Miles and the girl walk around, drinking coffee and chatting in soft voices.

MILES You remember what that book was about now?

GIRL People walking and talking.

MILES That's it?

GIRL

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FALL2017

SCRIPTS : GAVIN W. SMITH

There was some sitting as well.

MILES Must've been a deeper meaning.

GIRL Not even, you can't force meaning onto something that has none.

MILES Maybe that was the meaning: to have no meaning.

GIRL What a lame excuse for a book then.

MILES I've never asked you your name.

GIRL Do you need it?

MILES Why wouldn't I? GIRL What's your name?

MILES Miles. And yours?

CUT TO: EXT. PARK - DAY The other characters sit in awkward silence.

DAVID I've never seen this city either...

No one responds.

CUT TO: EXT. STREETS - DAY

CANYONVOICES

FALL2017

SCRIPTS : GAVIN W. SMITH

Miles and the girl walk down an overly crowded street.

In the background, the business man and his girl walk and talk.

MILES What a city this is.

GIRL Tell me about it.

MILES Do you live here?

GIRL Yep. MILES How is it?

GIRL Same as any other city.

MILES I don't travel much I must say.

As they pass by a cop, the girl quickly turns around and uses Miles to block his line of sight on her.

GIRL (In desperation) Actually, we're not far from my home. Wanna come?

MILES Sure.

CUT TO: EXT. PARK - DAY David watches a bird peck food scraps off the ground.

CUT TO: INT. THE GIRL'S PLACE - DAY

CANYONVOICES

FALL2017

SCRIPTS : GAVIN W. SMITH

Her "house" is cramped and dirty. A mid-city apartment disguised and sold for double.

Miles sits about.

The girl reads the book from before.

GIRL And the artist talks about himself too much.

MILES What about it?

GIRL Art should be for the audience, not the artist.

MILES Who says what art should be for?

CANYONVOICES

FALL2017

SCRIPTS : GAVIN W. SMITH

GIRL Well, it gets annoying when the artist keeps talking about himself.

Look he's even doing it right now.

(MORE) GIRL (CONT’D) What's the point in trashing yourself like that?

MILES Art is strange.

GIRL Life is strange.

Silence.

GIRL What's your story?

MILES I don't have one.

GIRL What do you mean?

MILES I was never given one.

GIRL Well, you must have one. What's someone like you wandering the streets for?

MILES I missed my train.

GIRL Where're you heading?

MILES Madrid.

GIRL Why?

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FALL2017

SCRIPTS : GAVIN W. SMITH

MILES I don't know, because it's there.

GIRL I wish I was there.

MILES Have you been there before?

GIRL No, but I want to.

MILES Why? GIRL Because it's there.

MILES You can come with me.

GIRL I can't.

MILES Why? GIRL I've got a boyfriend.

MILES And I've got a girlfriend.

GIRL Where is she?

MILES At home, waiting for me.

GIRL So you do have a story.

MILES No, a story has plot and characters.

Where's your boyfriend?

GIRL At home.

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FALL2017

SCRIPTS : GAVIN W. SMITH

MILES Waiting for you?

GIRL Yeah.

MILES I see, and by next year we'll forget each other, correct?

GIRL That's the way it is.

MILES Yes, that's the way it is. (looking at his watch) Ah, time for me to catch my train.

I guess this is goodbye until next time.

GIRL There won't be a next time.

MILES Then just goodbye.

GIRL Goodbye.

Miles leans in and they kiss, she takes his wallet.

As dramatic as possible, Miles leaves the house and begins down the street.

The girl watches him as he is slowly absorbed into the sea of people.

Just as he's out of sight...

GIRL Wait!

A tone of remorse.

Miles turns around and slowly walks back.

CANYONVOICES

FALL2017

SCRIPTS : GAVIN W. SMITH

He moves up to the doorway and stands just away from the girl.

They stare at each other.

Eyes gleaming.

Breath heavy.

GIRL You forgot your wallet.

MILES Thanks.

CUT TO: INT. TRAIN STATION - DAY Miles joins back up with the other characters who sit around the station.

JUSTIN What have you been up to?

MILES Nothing much.

CUT TO: INT. TRAIN - DAY A world of so much sound, yet so little color.

Our four teens sit in the same grey seats.

We pan over to get a good view of two strangers apart.

In the background, a business man and his wife.

Pan back to the kids.

THE END

For more information on author Gavin W. Smith, please visit our Contributors Page.

CANYONVOICES

FALL2017

SCRIPTS : ERIC JOHNSON

Eight Phone Calls

By Eric Johnson

Characters: MAN: A man in his early 20’s.

Setting: A man is sitting on a curb, holding a 40oz of Malt Liquor, under a streetlight that flickers. Every time that it flickers off, a faint figure of a woman is visible sitting next to him.

Next to him is a memorial to a woman and a sign that says SEATTLE PUBLIC LIBRARY, worn down, barely readable, and covered in graffiti.

MAN: 8 phone calls... (yelling) 8 fucking phone calls and they don’t pick up!

(Smacks hand down on cement in frustration) Underfunded piece of shit, my ass. (Spits).

Light flickers off. MAN is silent and then takes a drink. Lights flicker back on.

MAN: No, no, no. You’re dead wrong. You think they wouldn’t answer for those assholes up in Lakeside? Their calls about raccoons in the trash? That shit goes straight through, I promise you.

CANYONVOICES

FALL2017

SCRIPTS : ERIC JOHNSON

Light flickers off. MAN is silent and then takes a drink. Lights flicker back on.

Man: Nah, you’re right. That ain’t funny. But if you don’t have the right area code, nobody is picking that up. That’s the sad truth of it. ...Man, what does that even feel like though? Still never been shot.

Light flickers off. MAN is silent and looks down at his bottle. Lights flicker back on.

Man: (laughing) I should try it? Fuck nah. I’m gonna keep being one of the lucky ones. ...My body was frozen, you know? When it happened. Always thought I’d be the kind of man to run into it. You always see yourself as some kind of a superhero in your daydreams. Can’t even listen to the sound of them anymore. Gunshots, that is. Always think about you bleeding out on that… (trails off)

Light flickers off. MAN is silent and then takes a drink. Lights flicker back on.

Man: (shaking his head) I know how much you wanted to go like that girl, the one that jumped off the Empire State Building, but it wasn’t beautiful like that photo. Photo would have been too blurry anyways, you were shaking, you know? ...And now they don’t even want your memorial here. Too ugly. An eye sore for the magical shit-cloud city of Seattle. (Standing up and leaving the bottle on the ground) The city that won’t even answer my fucking eight 911 calls has the right to tell me to remove a memorial? (kicking the SEATTLE sign) Next to this piece of shit!?

MAN exhausts himself and falls to his knees. The lights flicker off but the woman is gone.

CANYONVOICES

FALL2017

SCRIPTS : ERIC JOHNSON

Man: Leaving me like this, in the dark. You don’t want me to remove your memorial, right? I can’t do that to you, can I?

No answer, the lights stay out.

Man: Stop with this cryptic bullshit, just tell me! ...Just a yes... or maybe a no is enough.

MAN waits for a reply, but receives none and crawls back to his bottle.

Man: You think I can just sit here and let the city kill you again?

MAN takes a drink and buries his face in his hands. The lights flicker back on. MAN sits silently with his face in his hands. Slowly, he removes them from his face as he speaks.

Man: Who kills you then? Do I do it with my hands? Or do I let the city do it with their dirty fucking fingers? How are you going to leave right now, when all I have is questions?

MAN sits quietly for a while before finishing the

bottle off. He stands up

slowly and faces the

SEATTLE sign and the memorial.

Man: (muttering) Eight fucking phone calls.

MAN drops the bottle to the ground and it shatters. The lights flicker out as he does.

CANYONVOICES

FALL2017

SCRIPTS : ERIC JOHNSON

For more information on author Eric Johnson, please visit our Contributors Page.

CANYONVOICES

FALL2017

SCRIPTS : JONATHAN LEE

Chicharrones

By Jonathan Lee

FADE IN: INT. BOXING RING - NIGHT The lights reflect on the tough looking bodies facing head to head.

MAMBO BROWN, 22, wearing a couple of bruises on his face and JAMES LEE, a young Asian-American teen, dancing left and right, avoiding some punches but inevitably getting hit here and there.

The match is late in the last round with the seconds winding down. Mambo has the upper hand, but James is giving it his all - One desperate punch at a time.

James breathes hard, sweat dripping from his face. He jabs at Mambo who blocks. Then he reaches for the long hook to Mambo’s head, but he swiftly evades and counters- sending James down for the count.

The thunderous sound of the crowd slowly drowns out as the ANNOUNCER starts his count.

ANNOUNCER:…7 ...8 ...9

James lays stunned. His eyes showing some dim signs of life but it looks like it’s all over for him —

EXT. CHICHARRONES STAND - NIGHT (EARLIER) The stand lies desolate except for James who stands surrounded by the mess of chicharrones and other chips. Street lamps illuminate the surroundings.

James slumps down, tired from the days work, resting his head on his hands. He opens a bag of chicharrones and lazily puts them one by one into his mouth. He scans the packet for entertainment as he eats.

CANYONVOICES

FALL2017

SCRIPTS : JONATHAN LEE

An advertisement reading "Champion in the making? Join Alberto’s Gym now!" catches his attention. He stops crunching on his chicharrones and dusts off his hands. He reaches down under the counter for a pair of scissors and cuts the ad out, examining it. Then, he turns and pins it to a wall full of boxers and fighters. Newspaper clippings of their victories and glories.

He stares at the board, caressing each clip slowly.

STRANGER 1: Ya Chinga! You there?

A voice interrupts James’ moment. He whips around to face the sound- a pair of guys approaching the stand. STRANGER 1, 25, and STRANGER 2, 23.

STRANGER 1 (TO STRANGER 2): Hey watcha want? I got you.

JAMES: Hey sorry guys but the stands closed, I gotta go home for the night.

STRANGER 1: What you on about chink?

You still here, no?

James’ hand clenches

STRANGER 1 (TO STRANGER 2): Aight you want some chicharrones?

JAMES: Look, I said its closed. I’m sorry.

He reaches down to pull the gate on the stand down but Stranger 1 stops it before it can shut.

STRANGER 1: Bruh why you actin like a lil bitch? Just give me my damn chicharrones!

STRANGER 2: Hey calm down man. It ain worth it, its just some chips man.

STRANGER 1: Nah, this chink disrespectin me. Come here bitch ass.

Stranger 1 grabs James by the collar and brings him face to face-

CANYONVOICES

FALL2017

SCRIPTS : JONATHAN LEE

STRANGER 1: Why you disrespectin me, huh? Wonton eatin ass, just give me my fuckin-

James sucker punches him across the cheek. Stranger 1 lets go, for a moment he’s stunned.

Then he spurs up- anger amplified. He grabs James by the shoulder and throws him out of the stand.

STRANGER 1 (TO STRANGER 2): Yo hold him down!

Stranger 2 pins him onto the curb while Stranger 1 runs up, launching a kick to his stomach.

He kicks him a few more times until there’s almost no response from James anymore.

Stranger 2 loosens his grip.

STRANGER 2: Let’s get the fuck out of here.

STRANGER 1: Aight, hold up.

Stranger 1 reaches in the stand and grabs a bag of chicharrones and runs off. James lays motionless for a while...Then he curls up into a ball, clutching his head.

INT. SHOWER - DAY James turns the faucet of the shower, the water running down his face. For a long time he rests under the water. All of the sudden, he lashes out in the air — almost flailing at nothing. The rhythm of his movements gets increasingly faster and more contorted, like a hypnotic dance.

His hands wrapped around his head. Then a piercing scream rings out and as soon as the little episode had started- it stops. He slumps down, sitting, water pelting his scalp.

He sits drained.

EXT. OUTSIDE OF GYM - DAY James arrives at Alberto’s Gym, the advertisement in hand.

INT. GYM - DAY Scattered throughout the gym are trophies of past glories and victories and the young hopefuls that are punching the bags and jumping rope. In the center of it all is a boxing ring with an old hardened coach drilling a lean fighter. This is ALBERTO. James approaches the rink with the Alberto’s flyer in hand.

JAMES: Excuse me...

CANYONVOICES

FALL2017

SCRIPTS : JONATHAN LEE

But Alberto’s too busy training.

James stands awkwardly for a quick second then starts to leave. He’s at the door, noticing the sweaty hardworking men giving in the punching bag their all. He hesitates for a moment and then turns to leave, chiming the bell on the door when-

ALBERTO: Hey You!

James whips around.

JAMES: …huh?

ALBERTO: You lookin’ to fight?

JAMES: Yeah. Saw this.

He flashes the little flyer.

ALBERTO: Well what are ya waiting for then? Come ’ere.

INT. BOXING RING - DAY Alberto throws over a pair of used red gloves over to James.

JAMES: Well I’m really more looking to learn how to figh-

ALBERTO: Let’s see what you got lil’ man.

He turns over to the guy he was training- Mambo Brown.

ALBERTO (TO MAMBO): Alright, this is just warm-up for your big match tonight.

Keep it nice and neat.

JAMES: Hey- I really don’t know how to fight-

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FALL2017

SCRIPTS : JONATHAN LEE

ALBERTO: Well they always say a true fighter comes out when your backed into a corner. You ready to go?

DING DING

The bell rings, starting the fight.

Mambo struts confidently to the center of the ring, hands up, guarding his face. The intensity in his face doesn’t let up for a second.

James inches forward, timidly. He raises his gloves matching Mambo’s. A crowd starts forming around the ring. Mambo jabs lightly, testing the waters. James diligently blocks, hiding behind his gloves. The air is tense as the two fighters circle on another. Both fighters holding back from confrontation. Then the spell is broken-

James swings a wild hook at Mambo. Mambo dodges to the left and responds with a body shot. He recoils back, wind taken out off his lungs, but Mambo doesn’t stop yet. He winds for an uppercut and plummets James firmly onto the ground.

The crowd winces in slight pity.

ALBERTO: Alright alright, that’s enough.

James winces in pain on the ground.

ALBERTO: Hey someone go help him out.

STEPHEN GREEN, 26, enters the ring and kneels by James’ side.

STEPHEN: You good man?

JAMES: (in pain) Yeah... I’ll be okay.

Alberto approaches James.

ALBERTO: Hey sorry kid, but I don’t think this fighting business is for you.

He turns to leave but-

JAMES: Hey wait! At least let me train here. I didn’t just get beat up for nothin.

Alberto looks at James for a minute... then laughs.

CANYONVOICES

FALL2017

SCRIPTS : JONATHAN LEE

ALBERTO: Haha yeah sure you can use those punching bags all you want but I’m sorry kiddo I don’t got time to train you.

James slumps down, taking a deep breath.

INT. GYM - NIGHT Punch.. Punch.. Punch..

A steady rhythm of weak punches almost drone into the background. James sweating a ton, grunts in exertion after each punch.

STEPHEN: Hey c’mon, I gotta lock up the gym. I think you’ve done more than enough for today.

Punch.. Punch..

The rhythm stops. James looks up and nods, his breathing a bit heavy.

EXT. OUTSIDE OF GYM NIGHT Stephan locks the doors of the gym.

STEPHEN: Hey sorry about my old man. He’s a little crazy sometimes

JAMES: Alberto’s your dad? Woulda never guessed.

STEPHEN: Yeah, get that a lot- but see me boxing and man you’ll know where all the genes went to.

He places a lockpad over the doors and gives it a click.

STEPHEN (CONT’D): Hey you wanna go grab a bite?

INT. HOT DOG SHOP - NIGHT

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SCRIPTS : JONATHAN LEE

It’s a little hole in the wall hot dog joint. A popular late night snack.

STEPHEN: Maan! You got your ass handed to you by Mambo.

JAMES: Hey I don’t even know how to fight! Besides, I doubt you woulda done any better.

STEPHEN (Jokingly): Pshh fuck off man. I woulda knocked him out so fast he wouldn’t even see it coming bruh.

JAMES: Yeah yeah man. Whatever you say.

They laugh whole-heartedly. James takes a sip from his drink.

STEPHEN: I think you got promise man.

JAMES: Promise? In boxing? You really think so?

STEPHEN: Yeah, you got promise... but not in boxing man. As a person.

JAMES: Oh c’mon man. Get out of here with hat bull

STEPHEN: No no. I mean it. You got so much potential. Why you trynna fight? Why you trynna be something you ain’?

JAMES: …

James sits for a while. The pair is quiet with only the faint radio of the restaurant filling in the space. He reaches for another swig of his drink

EXT. CHICHARRONES STAND - DAY It’s a sunny day out. Kids and their parents walk down the street with laziness. There’s a couple walking together, a man on a bicycle, and a uptight business woman taking a phone call.

In the midst of all the movement, James stands stagnant in his chicharrones stand. Selling deep fried pork skins to the occasional customer.

SERIES OF SHOTS EXT. STREET - DAY

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SCRIPTS : JONATHAN LEE

James goes to work training on the road. The thuds of his feet increasing in tempo faster and faster...until-

INT. GYM - DAY ...they transition into high tempo jump roping. James adorns a slight scowl as he jumps getting faster.

EXT. CHICHARRONES STAND - NIGHT James grabs a box of chicharrones and starts restocking. Once he’s finished, he starts shadow boxing against the boxing clippings, striking into the air with intensity...

SMASH CUT TO:

INT. GYM - DAY ...we transition back to the gym where he’s wrapped up and shadow boxing in front of a mirror.

EXT. OUTSIDE OF GYM - NIGHT Stephen and James, the last ones out of the gym, lock up again.

EXT. OUTSIDE OF GYM - DAY James walks into the gym bright and early with no one else in the parking lot.

INT. BOXING RING - DAY Stephen spars with James one-on-one.

STEPHEN: Left.. Right.. Cross..

James gets faster and faster, punching his hands, getting better matching Stephen’s rhythm.

STEPHEN: Yes! You got it!

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SCRIPTS : JONATHAN LEE

James strikes with one last thud into the mitt.

STEPHEN: Man you are really getting good…Might start giving me a run for my money.

They take their gloves off.

JAMES: You really think so? I still feel like I can get my ass whooped in five seconds.

STEPHEN (Jokingly): Hey that’s part of the process. But don’t worry man, you’re ready.

James rests against the ropes off the ring.

STEPHEN (CONT’D): Just go talk to Alberto and see if you can get a fight.

INT. GYM OFFICE - DAY The office is adorned with trophies and news paper clippings- most of them from a long time ago.

JAMES: What do you mean you can’t get me a fight? I’m ready!

ALBERTO: You ain’t ready kid.. Just cause you can punch a bag don’t mean you can fight— You ain got the guts kid. Just go home — you got a bright future but this world ain for you.

James looks stunned. He shakes his head in disbelief and turns to walk out.

EXT. CHICHARRONES STAND - NIGHT Once again James sits behind the counter all alone. He turns round eyeing the wall of boxing clippings that he has saved over the years.

He places his hands over them gently at first — then with a blood curling scream he rips the clipping, tearing the board. He starts violently punching at the board.

The board is now cracked with torn papers hanging limply and a mess of them on the floor.

James pants heavily and sits stone cold.

INT. GYM - NIGHT James is alone at the gym punching a bag. He’s the last one there — not even Stephen is present. His halfhearted punches thud into the eerie silence.

As he trains a creak in the door as heard and Stephen comes in in a wheelchair.

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SCRIPTS : JONATHAN LEE

STEPHEN (Jokingly): Hey It’s closing time pal, ya gotta go.

JAMES: Stephen! What happened to you?

STEPHEN: Psh.. It’s nothing you gotta worry ’bout. C’mon you get to it — you got a lot more training to do. Here I’ll help you hold the bag down.

He wheels over to the bag.

JAMES: Train for what? There ain’t a point anymore..

STEPHEN: What’re you talking about? You’re fighting for me! I can’t make my next match so you’re taking my place.

James is stunned for a moment..

JAMES: No, I can’t man — it’s your fight... I didn’t even earn it.

STEPHEN: Shut up man, just take the fight. You’re ready and besides — d’you think I can fight? This is your chance man, don’t let it slip away..

James looks at Stephen with gratitude.

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SCRIPTS : JONATHAN LEE

JAMES: I’m gonna win that match — just you watch.

STEPHEN: You better! -Hey c’mon stop slacking off, let’s get to it.

Stephen holds the bag while James pounds the bag with renewed vigor and a smile on his face.

INT. LOCKER ROOM - NIGHT It’s fight time. James sports white boxing shorts and stares at himself in the mirror... He examines his face, looking meditatively at his reflection. He picks up a pair of clippers and raises it to his head. The low rumble makes a crunching noise as it mows down his hair. When he’s finished, he runs a hand through his now buzzed scalp... He’s ready now.

INT. BOXING RING - NIGHT The two fighters, Mambo and James, walk on opposite sides to the ring. The sounds of the crowd and the ANNOUNCER are drowned out by James’ anxiety — almost dream like.

Stephen nods to James as he passes, making eye contact. The two fighters walk to the center as they bump fists and return to their corners.

A dull bell rings —Commencing the fight. Both fighters charge out of their corners like bulls.

James making the first strike with a hook to the head- stunning Mambo who shrugs it off.

Mambo fires off quick jabs. James catches a few to the face — Mambo follows up with a bodyshot, pushing James to the net. Sensing being drawn to the edge, James maneuvers and dodges Mambo’s follow up hook and counters with a strike square on the jaw. He takes advantage of the situation by rapid hits to the stomach.

It looks as though James is gaining momentum but Mambo quickly retaliates, swinging with a nasty uppercut — James stumbles, trying to regain his footing. He struggles to keep his hands up, blocking his face but Mambo follows up with a wide left hook knocking James down —

A ringing noise is heard...

Mambo stands over a defeated James while the announcer starts his count.

ANNOUNCER: ONE, TWO, THREE

MAMBO: Looks like training won’t get you anywhere if you’re trash to begin with... You ain’t shit kid, go home.

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SCRIPTS : JONATHAN LEE

Mambo turns toward the crowd — arms high in the air, flaunting.

James struggles to pick himself back up, his body wont cooperate.

ANNOUNCER: FIVE, SIX...

He drags himself to the ropes using them to prop himself back up.

ANNOUNCER: SEVEN, EIGHT, NINE...

The crowd goes wild as Mambo parades around the ring.

JAMES: I’m up! I’m up!

ANNOUNCER: Can you fight?

James nods. The Announcer nods back slightly concerned for James but turns to signal for the fight to continue.

Mambo looks surprised by James’ recovery which quickly turns to disdain.

MAMBO: Stay down kid!

James responds with a succession of quick jabs to Mambo’s liver. He’s moving a lot quicker now- the initial anxiety now gone. He dances as he probes with his jabs.

DING DING

The round ends with James bruised and breathing hard but Mambo isn’t without his causalities as well. James limps to the corner as Stephen hands him a water bottle.

STEPHEN: Hey you’re doing good out there but you gotta slow it down. It’s still only the first round-- You gotta play man.

James nods breathlessly. His gaze looks distant as if in a trance.

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SCRIPTS : JONATHAN LEE

STEPHEN: Go get ’em For three rounds James stays in pace with Mambo. But he’s hanging on a thread with his eyes swelling up and blood running down his face.

STEPHEN: That’s it! Stick with him.

JAMES (Exhausted): I don’t think I’m gonna make it..He’s too good.

STEPHEN: Hey stop talkin like that — you got this. I know you’re hurtin'— but look at him over there. He’s hurtin too.

Mambo looks battered as he spits blood.

STEPHEN (CONT’D): You feel the pain?

James nods.

DING DING

STEPHEN: Good— that’s good. Feel it. Its real. Not like selling chicharrones every day. Now you go on out there and kick that guys ass.

The Fourth and final round commences.

James is locked in and focused solely on Mambo. He starts first on the offensive, jabbing with his left. He gets an opening and follows it up with a right. Mambo regains his footing but James isn’t done yet. He continues the onslaught, mixing body blows with strikes to the face.

He’s got Mambo on the ropes... but Mambo won’t fall.

Digging deep — he winds up for a devastating uppercut but Mambo manages to evade and counter with a straight left. James backs off, almost at his limit. Mambo charges forward with a right as James, instead of trying to evade, goes in with a right of his own.

They trade blow for blow—both fighters look absolutely drained but they press on, until only one remains standing.

But there isn’t much time left on the clock...

The crowd is split between the two, Mambo’s fans and those who love a good underdog story.

Alongside them, Stephen screams his head off.

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SCRIPTS : JONATHAN LEE

Mambo swings wide. James punishes with a shot to the ear. He follows up with a left. Right.

Left. Right. Then a last hook... And down goes Mambo — K.O

He flops limp on the ground. The crowd goes wild.

James looks stunned at what just happened. He looks around the room grasping for a pair of familiar eyes. He catches Stephen who gives him a big smile and a nod.

As if finally believing he had won, James lifts his hands into the sky. The bright light of the ring illuminating him like a halo as if he would ascend into heaven at any moment — Victorious.

THE END

For more information on author Jonathan Lee, please visit our Contributors Page.

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SCRIPTS : MICHAEL MORIEARTY

FLAGELLATE ME, BABY!

By Michael Moriearty

Characters: JASON: early 20s, male.

MARIA: early 20s, female.

Setting: The action of this play takes place in a prison cell in the present. One chair on an otherwise bare, cold stage.

Performance Notes: At Rise: JASON sits on the chair, staring into the audience and at nothing.

MARIA: (O/S) Jaaaaaassssooooooonnnn…

(JASON does not respond at first.)

MARIA: Jaaaaaaaasson Beeeeeaaaaarrrr…

JASON: Is someone there?

(MARIA enters.)

MARIA: Boo!

JASON: (startled) Jesus!

MARIA: Hey there, Jason Bear.

JASON: Fuck… What are you doing here?

MARIA: I came to see you.

JASON: Why?

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SCRIPTS : MICHAEL MORIEARTY

MARIA: Come on, Lover. You know why I’m here.

JASON: Don’t call me that.

MARIA: What? “Lover?” Does that bother you?

JASON: Just leave me alone.

MARIA: I like the new digs. Nice place. Great feng shui. Minimalist. I like that. I hear iron bars are in right now. Way better than those shitty, sweaty frat house rooms. Smelled like puke all the time. Always people and noise. Don’t you think it’s peaceful in here, Lover?

JASON: Too quiet.

MARIA: Oh don’t be a buzz kill.

(MARIA approaches JASON, touches him.)

MARIA: Haven’t you missed me?

JASON: Don’t touch me.

MARIA: As if that ever works. I can touch you if I want to touch you; it’s my body. I own it.

(MARIA leans in, kisses JASON’S neck.)

MARIA: Can’t a girl pay an old fling a conjugal visit?

JASON: You… smell nice.

MARIA: It’s the same perfume. You like it?

JASON: Yeah

MARIA: Is it driving you crazy?

JASON: Yeah. No… I-

MARIA: I know you want me Jason Bear. What do you want me to do?

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SCRIPTS : MICHAEL MORIEARTY

JASON: I don’t-

MARIA: Do you want me to talk dirty to you?

JASON: Please-

MARIA: (caressing him) Come on, Jason. Help a girl out. What words get you hard?

JASON: Stop it.

MARIA: Let’s see… how about… mercy?... No? Patience?... Oh, not that one either?

JASON: I’m going to call the guards.

MARIA: What about… pain? Control? Masculinity?... Force?

(Glancing down.)

Oh, there we go. Howdy there, little cowboy.

JASON: (covering his erection) Would you get your filthy fucking whore hands off of me!

MARIA: There it is! There’s my Jason Bear! Are you gonna fuck me right here in this cell, Lover? Come on, give it to me! Right here on the cold, hard concrete, just like the ground behind that dumpster where you dragged me.

JASON: Dragged you? I didn’t drag you!

MARIA: Oh Jason, your denial is so sexy.

JASON: You act like you weren’t asking for it. Laying there on that couch, letting every Alpha in the house climb all over you.

MARIA: Oh, keep going, don’t stop!

JASON: You weren’t drugged. I didn’t slip you anything. You got wasted and passed out, and somehow that’s supposed to be my fault? It’s not my fault!

MARIA: Oh, get down here Big Boy before I blow my top!

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SCRIPTS : MICHAEL MORIEARTY

JASON: Fine, bitch, you asked for it!

(JASON grabs MARIA and begins to lift her shirt, but sees something on her stomach and stops.)

JASON:What are those?

MARIA: What are what?

JASON: Are those tattoos? They weren’t there last time.

MARIA: They wouldn’t have been. They’re tire marks, Honey.

(JASON releases MARIA.) MARIA: What’s the matter? Aren’t I still sexy?

JASON: I’m… I’m so-

MARIA: So what? So sorry? Jason, you’d be prettier if you just shut the fuck up.

JASON: I didn’t know…

MARIA: …didn’t know that a garbage truck was coming in the morning? Didn’t know that you left me there passed out beside a dumpster in the dark? Didn’t know I was too drunk, too sick to move? What didn’t you know, Jason Bear?

(JASON is silent) MARIA: Honestly, I was lucky. By the time you were on top of me, I was out. I didn’t even know it was happening. I didn’t feel you ripping off my panties like the plastic wrapper on an oatmeal cream pie. Didn’t feel you gripping my tits like bicycle handlebars. Didn’t feel you force your way into me, even though I so wasn’t ready for you. I mean, didn’t that hurt, Jason? Wasn’t that a clue?

JASON: I wasn’t… I didn’t…. I just thought you were tight.

MARIA: Gross. You need an anatomy lesson, Big Boy. Do you stroke your manhood thinking about how big you must be for me to have felt so snug?

Because honestly Honey, I’ve had bigger. And it fit like a glove.

JASON: Stop it.

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SCRIPTS : MICHAEL MORIEARTY

MARIA: But I didn’t feel any of that. You know what I did feel, though? I was just awake enough that morning—laying there in the dark—to feel those damp garbage truck tires rolling over me. To feel myself get slowly crushed under the weight of thousands of pounds of refuse. That’s twice in only a handful of hours that I had trash on top of me.

JASON: No one forced you to drink that night!

MARIA: And because I was drinking, because I was drunk, that makes what you did okay? Because I couldn’t say no, I deserved to be plowed like a blow-up doll? I deserved to die?

JASON: I didn’t know-

MARIA: Oh listen to you! You knew what you were doing. You can lie to the press, you can lie to the university, and you can lie to Mommy and Daddy, but you can’t lie to me Lover. We have an intimate connection.

JASON: What do you want from me?

MARIA: What do I want? Oh Sex Pot, isn’t it obvious? I want to relive it. I want to relive that night over and over. Feel it again and again. Isn’t that what you want?

JASON: No-

MARIA: You mean you don’t want to fuck me? Why? What’s wrong with me?

Because I’m awake, I’m not sexy anymore? Or is it that now I can feel it, you’re worried you won’t be adequate?

JASON: I don’t know.

MARIA: Oh you know, Jason Bear. You know that what you did was wrong.

JASON: There’s nothing wrong about sex.

MARIA: Ha! That wasn’t sex, Boo-Boo, that was masturbation with a sleeping woman’s body. That was something else, and you know it. Sex is real. Sex is desire. Sex is consent. Tell me, do you even know my name?

JASON: Of course I do. It’s Maria

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SCRIPTS : MICHAEL MORIEARTY

MARIA: Did you know it then?

JASON: What?

MARIA: That night, when you were going at it on me like a horny Chihuahua on a slipper, did you know what my name was?

JASON: I… I…

MARIA: Of course you didn’t. You found out later, when they brought you in for questioning. Because you knew what you were doing, and you couldn’t do that to a girl you knew. Isn’t that right, Jason Bear?

JASON: You think you know me.

MARIA: Duh.

(MARIA begins to remove her belt.)

JASON: Stop. Just stop. I’m… I’m not interested.

MARIA: What does that have to do with it?

JASON: I’m sorry. Okay? I fucked up. I was dumb, or selfish, or-

MARIA: (siting in his lap) Hush. You’re not getting out that easy, Sweet Cheeks.

(She wraps the belt around his neck.) Of course, there is another way…

JASON: What are you doing?

MARIA: You know. You always know, Jason. And don’t you think it’d be easier?

You just jump off this chair, struggle for a minute, and then everything goes black. You won’t have to relive it anymore.

JASON: (tightening the belt) I… I didn’t do anything wrong…

MARIA: Then why are you tying that belt around your neck?

JASON: I hate you.

MARIA: Oh, but I love you, Jason Bear. Honey. Lover. Sex Pot. I’ll love you until the day you die.

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SCRIPTS : MICHAEL MORIEARTY

JASON: Just leave. Let me have this moment to myself.

MARIA: (Beat) Hm… alright.

(MARIA stands.)

JASON: Thank you.

MARIA: But there’s just one thing…

JASON: What?

MARIA: I’m rotting in a hole in the ground somewhere. Eyes melted, abdominal cavity crushed, body full of your decaying baby gravy.

I’m not here, Lover. All you’re holding in your hand is wishful thinking. You want me to go, you’re gonna have to work for it.

(JASON sits in silence for a moment, and then hands MARIA back the belt.)

MARIA: That’s what I thought. (She starts to exit, then pauses.) So… same time tomorrow?

JASON: Go to hell.

MARIA: It’s a date, Lover.

(MARIA exits) BLACKOUT

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SCRIPTS : MICHAEL MORIEARTY

A version of this script was first produced by Texas Tech University Theatre.

For more information on author Michael Moriearty, please visit our Contributors Page.

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SCRIPTSCONTRIBUTORS Alex White Alex White is a 22 year old grocery store employee by day and aspiring screenwriter, filmmaker, and amateur videographer by night. Born and raised in Colorado suburbs, but currently living in the rural backwoods of Louisiana and attending the fine school of Baton Rouge Community College, majoring in film production and cinematography. Though largely self-taught in the field. Having written several shorts in a variety of genres (drama, comedy, science fiction, thriller, and prose). Of those, I wasn't expecting We Killed Him to be noticed, but I hope it entertains and starts a little discussion. My idols include Vince Gilligan for his television series', Charlie Kaufman for his features, and Brad Bird for his animation.

Gavin Smith “Madrid” is the first screenplay that Gavin Smith has written.

Eric Johnson Eric Johnson is a private guy who, as a poet, values content rather than gimmicks. In addition to poetry, he has recently added script writing to his repertoire.

Jonathan Lee Jonathan Lee is a student at the United World College Maastricht. His passion lies in telling stories of all kinds and in different ways. Whether through poetry or through film, storytelling is his way of expressing and understanding the world around. He has worked on multiple documentaries and narrative shorts and is currently working a book of poems in collaboration Edgar Gonzalez, a friend from his hometown in El Paso, Texas. You can contact him at jonathan.lee@uwcmaastricht.nl for more work

Michael Moriearty Michael Moriearty studies theatre and dramatic writing at Texas Tech University, where he also serves as the Drama Editor for the Harbinger Student Journal of Arts and Literature.

Michael has seen four of his plays produced by the Texas Tech University School of Theatre and Dance (Point Two Two, Flagellate Me, Baby!, Gobble Me Up, and Cold Coffee) and his play A Tree for Hangin’ has previously been published as well. Michael works part time as a graphic designer and a writing tutor, and currently resides in Wolfforth, TX with his partner Mattie and their two daughters.

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CANYONVOICES

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ARTWORK

Kevin Sterjo Ryan Wesson Ammama Malik Antonio Borzillo Giada Cattaneo Mark Pugh Frank Diamond Patrick McCormack Catherine Craig Julia Gabrielov

Winter Flowers by Julia Gabrielov

(See Artwork for full image)

ARTWORK : KEVIN STERJO

Kevin Sterjo Kevin Sterjo is a visual artist currently working as a freelancer in San Francisco, California.

Originally born in Korce, Albania, Kevin was raised in Chicago and has been creating since the age of 6. He is attending Academy of Art University in San Francisco. Heavily inspired by music, pop culture, and the modern aesthetics of today's world, his inspirations span the entire gamut of design whether it be architecture, product design, interior design, or fashion. He strives to create bold visual statements that not only grab your eye from afar but pull you in closer to experience the meticulous details.

Often changing up his style due to a fear of becoming complacent, Kevin has become proficient in several areas of art and design and prides himself on being able to accommodate any client’s style or vision. More of his artwork can be found at www.kevinsterjo.com or on Instagram: @kevysterj

Domestic : Brushpen on Canvas CANYONVOICES

Storm : Brushpen on Canvas FALL2017

Radiation : Brushpen on Canvas

ARTWORK : KEVIN STERJO

CANYONVOICES

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ARTWORK : RYAN WESSON

Ryan Wesson Ryan Wesson, raised in Phoenix’s desert suburbs, developed an interest in photography when he turned twelve. A former D1 athlete both in high school and college, he decided to resign from his Cross Country/ Track campaign at Northern Arizona University (NAU) to pursue his photographical endeavors. During his time at NAU, he had the opportunity to work with Red Bull in Flagstaff, Arizona while also working for a local newspaper. He has since focused on developing his own style in events, lifestyle, and portraits. You can follow Ryan on Instagram @ryanjwesson or visit his website ryanjwessonphoto.format.com.

Northern Lights Series CANYONVOICES

Aliens Driving Cars | Humans Fly UFOs : Photography FALL2017

ARTWORK : RYAN WESSON

Wavy : Photography

Northern Lights Series CANYONVOICES

Between Utah and Arizona : Photography

Woody Mountain Road: Photography FALL2017

ARTWORK : RYAN WESSON

Northern Lights Series CANYONVOICES

Find Your Balance : Photography FALL2017

ARTWORK : AMMAMA MALIK

AMMAMA MALIK Ammama Malik is a graduate from National College of Arts, Rawalpindi who has majored in painting. Her work is unique as she revives the essence of true painting, where words and ideas take a backseat. She states her work as “Painting for the sake of painting,” taking inspiration from the paintings of the Renaissance and Baroque eras. The works of art are a recollection of the past and stand out in a sea of modern artworks.

Ammama’s artwork can be found on her Instagram @ammama.malik and her Facebook page.

Curiosity : Oil on Canvas CANYONVOICES

FALL2017

ARTWORK : ANTONIO BORZILLO

Antonio Borzillo Italian photographer, dreamer, bohemian. instagram.com/antonio_borzillo

Some wounds can be so deep and strong to destroy until the last mask that we wear : Photography CANYONVOICES

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ARTWORK : ANTONIO BORZILLO

Persist : Photography

Falling down in inner darkness : Photography CANYONVOICES

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ARTWORK : ANTONIO BORZILLO

Untitled : Photography

Untitled : Photography CANYONVOICES

FALL2017

ARTWORK : GIADA CATTANEO

GIADA CATTANEO Giada Cattaneo is an Italian Illustrator. She is based in Miami Beach, Florida and studied History of Art at the University of Bologna, Italy. She received her Bachelor of Arts degree at Bologna University. She has collaborated with Italian and American Editors. She has collaborated with many editors and publishers in Italy: Italia Art Magazine (Roma), Enrico Folci Editore (Roma), SensoInverso Edizioni (Ravenna), UAO Edizioni (L'Aquila), Eventualmente Edizioni (Palermo), Freaks Edizioni (Faenza), Cacofonico Editore (Faenza), Fermenti Editrice (Roma), Progetto Flaneri Edizioni (Roma), Zacem Cultural Association (Savona), L'URLO Magazine (Ancona), il Cacofonico Magazine (Faenza).

In the United States, my illustrations have been published in: Fourteen Hills Magazine (San Francisco State University), Mantis (Stanford University), Black Scat Review, Meat for Tea Magazine, The writing disorder, Midtown Miami Magazine, Puerto del Sol (New Mexico State University), The B'K bitchin' kitsch, Sea Foam Magazine, Canyon Voices Literary Magazine (Arizona State University), Broad! Magazine Sincerely Magazine, The Fem Magazine, 13th Floor Magazine (University of Nebraska).

Silence : Multimedia CANYONVOICES

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ARTWORK : MARK PUGH

Mark Pugh Mark R. Pugh began creating art at a very young age but has only recently pursued it as a full time profession. After earning a Bachelor’s degree in Psychology from UVU, Mark decided to develop his artist skills with help from his mentor and cousin, Jeffrey Hein. Despite his short time as a working artist he has already gained notable national and international recognition.

His style infuses traditional realism with a surreal dreamlike quality that allows him to explore concepts of psychology and spirituality.

Celestial Navigation : Oil on Panel CANYONVOICES

FALL2017

Learning to Peddle a Tricycle : Oil

ARTWORK : MARK PUGH

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ARTWORK : FRANK DIAMOND

Frank Diamond Frank Diamond (April 29, 1990, Lleida) is an artistic photographer who began his career at age 22. Fully self-taught, his photography is characterised by being dramatic and dark. In his photographs, some characters hide their faces and characters contain secrets and unleash fear. Photographs submerged in a cool and subdued atmosphere. Frank Diamond describes his photography as a visual diary where he tells of his fears and his insecurity about life. Usually working with feminine profiles, he believes that it is easier to work the beauty and the sensibility through them. The lack of identity in these profiles has a purpose and that is to make the viewer the protagonist.

A lover of natural light, passionate and adventurous, he likes to explore every corner of nature in search of new scenarios for his photographs.

You can follow his works in: Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/frankdiamondphotographer Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/frankdiamondphotography Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/frankdiamondphoto Twitter: https://twitter.com/FrankDiamondph

The Intruder : Photography CANYONVOICES

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ARTWORK : FRANK DIAMOND

Iceberg : Photography

Masked : Photography CANYONVOICES

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ARTWORK : PATRICK MCCORMACK

Patrick McCormack In the early hour of dawn, you can find Patrick McCormack capturing the stillness in the corners of a quiet town.

Originally from Burlington, Vermont, Patrick left home at the age of 17 to study filmmaking in Chicago. After returning to his home state with his now fiancé, Katherine, he began to develop a habit of preserving his surroundings through the medium of film. Now in his late twenties, his cataloging of manmade and natural landscapes is a constant pursuit.

Patrick uses Kodak film as the primary canvas for his cinematic portraits of a place and time, and takes advantage of the dramatic changes between the four distinct seasons the American Northeast has to offer. The scenes he is trying to preserve can often evoke a tinge of isolation, a warm sense of nostalgia, or remind the viewer of a distant past they had yet to witness. When he's not out shooting or developing film at home, Patrick enjoys movie theaters, fresh coffee, autumn air, and Pho. Find daily posts on his Instagram: @patrick.mccormack

September 16th, 2017 : Photography CANYONVOICES

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ARTWORK : PATRICK MCCORMACK

September 10th, 2017 : Photography

Winter, 2017 : Photography CANYONVOICES

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ARTWORK : CATHERINE CRAIG

Catherine Craig Catherine Craig is a senior attending ASU the west campus as well as Barrett the Honors college, who has enjoyed many forms of art from a very young age; practicing the fine arts through all forms of media. She is a little unconventional for an artist, as she is majoring in Biology and plans to move forward in the sciences. But this does not deter her love of drawing and painting. In the past her oil painting portraiture has gained acclaim and she hopes to continue her pursuit in art well into the future.

Perchance to Dream : Sketch CANYONVOICES

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ARTWORK : JULIA GABRIELOV

Julia Gabrielov Julia Gabrielov is a Ukrainian born fantasy surrealism artist. From an early age she was drawn to tales of enchanting dream like worlds. Spending hours recreating her favorite tales on any available surface including sketchbooks, notebooks, and homework. It was only natural that her first work as an artist would be to illustrate children’s books. Four years and seven books later she began to write stories of her own. After many short stories her focus shifted again and revealed her true passion. Today as a professional artist, Julia channels those childhood fantasies turning them into single works of art that embody an entire story. Each piece is its own fairy tale rich with detail and fascinating characters. Julia’s world has one ultimate goal – to make the viewer feel.

Luminous Nectar : Oil on Canvas CANYONVOICES

Antigravity : Oil on Canvas FALL2017

ARTWORK : JULIA GABRIELOV

Effervescence : Oil on Canvas

The Flight Between Dreams : Pan Pastel and Colored Pencil CANYONVOICES

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ARTWORK : JULIA GABRIELOV

Winter Flowers : Oil on Canvas

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AUTHOR’S ALCOVE

Cover Art by Catherine Craig

(See Artwork for full image)

David Jesse Clark Love of the Cra, and Dedica2on

By Ileen Younan

Randell McCraw Helms A Timeless Poet

By Analyssa Sanchez

Jessica Wiggins Exploring Crea2ve Nonfic2on

By Jamin Kollasch

Gavin Smith A Guide Through Madrid

By Ryan J. Krebs

Ryan Wesson Snapshot of a Storyteller

By Kris:n L. Wesson

AUTHOR’S ALCOVE : JESSE CLARK

Love of the Craft and Dedication An Interview by Ileen Younan with Jesse Clark

Can you please introduce yourself to our readers and tell us a little bit about who you are, what you do, and your background?

My name is Jesse Clark, I’m 24, and I studied economics and history at VCU. As of this writing, I work in the accounting department at a surplus lines insurance brokerage, which is exactly as fun as it sounds.

Check out Jesse Clark’s two stories in our Fiction section.

When did you begin to write? What propelled you to start writing?

I’ve always had a knack for writing, I think, but I didn’t start taking a swing at creative writing until around this time last year. I stumbled on some online outlets (r/Nosleep, where Canyon Voices found me) for short fiction that allowed you to post your work with no real effort required beyond the actual writing (no accounts, no submissions, no waiting for approval or editing.

Just writing and posting) and they had enough readership to make it worth it.

'A Silver Lining, in the Death of Stars' was a heart-wrenching, true commentary on different types of love. Was there an event in your life that made you want to pen this story? What inspired you?

I've dealt with my fair share of rough patches and loss, but I haven't exactly had an abnormally large number of run ins with suicide like what was depicted in the story. So I guess I'm lucky enough to say that there was no real life event that directly inspired this one. And I'm not sure what (if anything) did. I think it was more or less a desire to explore the question 'what is love?' (baby don't hurt me) beyond the cute but vapid depictions you see in rom-coms and greeting cards. I never thought it as a subject was handled properly, so I decided to take a swing at it.

‘Yea, Though I Walk Through the Valley of the Shadow of Death' was an emotional piece with a high degree of historical significance.

Did you do research prior to writing this fictional story?

I’ve always loved studying WW2 so I had a lot of knowledge going in, and since it's a big deal in my family (both grandfathers fought, and some very distant relatives were lost in the Holocaust), I thought I should do my part to at least attempt to do justice to the actual experiences of people who lived through the real thing.

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Do you have any writers who inspire you and if so, which ones?

I’ve been reading Hemingway and Foster Wallace a bit recently, and those guys are great.

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AUTHOR’S ALCOVE : JESSE CLARK

Do you have a set routine when it comes to

Do you have any advice you would like to pass on to aspiring writers?

Keep doing it. I haven't exactly MADE it but the

writing?

So writing needs to be a habit, where you sit down and just go, for at least a few hours a day, whether you have something to write about or not. A lot of times stuff starts pouring out that you didn't even know you had in you. So I'm getting better at making sure I spend at least an hour a day. Unfortunately it's the 'when' that's the most challenging aspect of that.

only reason I've gotten as far as I have is because I didn't get so discouraged by my initial lack of success that I quit. (I'd say a sad majority of would-be writers do this).

So write. Write until your fingers bleed, and then write some more. Write things you know nobody but you and whoever you force to proof-read it will ever lay eyes on.

Do you have any other stories you're currently working on? What is your goal as a writer?

I do! I hope to have my new story up in the next week. And I would LOVE to eventually write for TV or movies.

And it's important to remember that success still isn't guaranteed. But without putting in the hard work you'll never make it, and hey - if success and not a love of the craft was what was driving you all along, then this isn't the thing for you.

What do you find the most challenging when writing?

Coming up with ideas that work, definitely.

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AUTHOR’S ALCOVE : RANDELL MCCRAW HELMS

A Timeless Poet Analyssa Sanchez goes beyond the words with Randell McCraw Helms

month, in fact the day before the launching party on the 17th, so there’s personal relevance for me in my Gerontion’s attitude: wipe your mouth, and laugh, rasping, while you roughly muscle the others under.

Hello Randel, thank you for being a part of the Author’s Alcove. Let’s begin by telling us who you are. What is your personal background, what you do, and anything else that you would like our readers to know about you?

I’m a retired professor of English at ASU Tempe, where I taught for 30 years. My main courses were the Bible as Literature and Survey of English Literature and the Romantic Poets.

Here’s a poem that sums it up for me—I intend it as the epigraph of a book of poems I’m preparing:

Last Words

When he stands stinking beside my bed,

He will remember what I said.

As my last words with my last breath:

“Fuck you. Fuck you” I said to Death.

When did you decide that poetry was something that you wished to pursue and why do you continue to write today? What was an early experience where you learned that language had power?

I wrote five books of literary criticism, two on J.R.R. Tolkien, three on the Bible as a work of literature. I’ve always written poetry when I had the time, and since retiring at the end of 2006, I have had plenty of time.

Gerontion, to the Aged at

Are there any poets that have

“Work very, very hard, and revise endlessly.

Don’t be afraid of the 35th draft.”

Graveside gives a unique and confident perspective about the

On the Last Speakers of a Language, readers are left to

reflect about life after death. What was the message that you were trying

process and beauty in aging. Was this poem

to get across? What was the intention behind

very personal for you to write, if so why?

this poem?

You misread “Last Speakers of a Language” if you think it’s about life after death; I’m not interested in anything that’s after life. The poem was inspired by Tolkien’s Ents. There are no Ent children, because the Ent-wives went away long ago and the Old Entish will vanish. The poem is

What has been the best thing about in your own words, withering in grace of senescence?

T.S. Eliot’s poem “Gerontion” (meaning “old man”) was the inspiration for the speaker of my poem of the same title. Eliot’s old man was despairing, mine is a fighter. I’ll turn 75 this

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influenced your writing?

Thomas Hardy, Philip Larkin, Tolkien, TS Eliot, William Blake, the Bible. And lately, John Berryman.

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AUTHOR’S ALCOVE : RANDELL MCCRAW HELMS

about the immense and un-relievable sadness of such loss, for which there is no remedy. When a tongue, like a species, is gone, it’s gone forever.

Do you have any “rituals” as a writer that you believe help you to create or get the juices flowing? How do your ideas come to you?

What is the most difficult part of your artistic

Did you ever read a book, novel, poem or

process?

I have no advice about rituals. You should only write if you have to, it’s such hard work. But if you do have to, you will, nothing will stop you.

anything literary that changed your life? In what way did it affect you?

The two books that have most influenced me are the Bible and Tolkien’s “Lord of the Rings.”

Go and read the Book of Ecclesiastes for the philosophy that will enable you to grasp the poem on the last speakers, and think about the Ents,

Aging is a prevalent theme in your poems, what inspires you to write about your viewpoint regarding age? Was there a catalyst moment or event? How has your view changed over time, or not changed?

How would you describe your poetry?

The Arts are our only remedy for death, and sadly, it’s not sufficient.

I write about aging because that is what I’m mainly doing now.

What does literary success look like to you?

What I would like is to write just one poem that people will still be reading a few hundred years from now; but remember, a few thousand or hundred thousand years from now, the human species will be extinct. The typical life-span of a species is only a couple million years.

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If you could go back in time and give advice to your younger writing-self, what would you say?

My best advice for writers: Work very very hard, and revise endlessly. Don’t be afraid of the 35th draft. Hemingway re-wrote the last page of “For Whom the Bell Tolls” 50 times.

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AUTHOR’S ALCOVE : JESSICA WIGGINS

Exploring Creative Nonfiction An Interview with Jessica Wiggins by Jamin Kollasch

What draws you to creative nonfiction?

I kept a journal from a very young age, and I think doing that has made writing about myself almost reflexive for me. I go back and read them from time to time, which is always a really mortifying experience. I mean, imagine reading pages and pages of your twelve year old self’s innermost thoughts. I used to never be able to understand why I did that.

Occasionally I would think about getting rid of them – burning them, or some other overdramatic gesture. But, I think the same thing that draws me to look over them, as painful and mostly fruitless as it is, also draws me to write creative nonfiction. I’m fascinated with the weird people I’ve been and the weird thoughts I’ve had.

Jessica Wiggins’ story is featured in the Creative Nonfiction section.

Yes and yes. I think it almost always changes my perception for the better, too. Writing about family especially is such an empathy-building process. Characters 101 is learning to inhabit your characters’ minds, motivations, fears, and so on, and really trying to do that for my family opens up a lot of compassion and understanding that I might not have had before, which then tends to make me think of events differently.

How do you feel about the personal nature of this genre?

For myself, I mostly feel fine with it. I wouldn’t say I’m an open book, but I wouldn’t say I’m an incredibly private person, either. I find a lot of comfort in thinking (hoping!) that my personal experiences will resonate with someone, and that writing with candor is what allows me to make those connections. It’s a big hope, but it motivates me to put aside some of my fears about what readers might think of me, or what they might think of my life, and just write it the best way I know how.

When writing about your past, do you usually focus on a specific time period? If so, why do you think this is?

Though I've written stories from all throughout my life, I do tend to write the most about my childhood -- say, from earliest memories up until adolescence -- and I think that's mostly because I've just had more time to process those memories. Certain experiences seem to want to be written down immediately, but the majority of mine need to stew a while. By "a while," I guess I mean decades! I enjoy writing from a child's perspective, too. It opens up a lot of possibilities that are harder to carry off when

Does writing about your past ever change the way you think of it? Do you learn about yourself through the writing process?

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AUTHOR’S ALCOVE : JESSICA WIGGINS

you're telling a story as an adult. Kids notice strange things and they can (and I certainly did) react to situations unpredictably. I like exploring those quirks.

"Huh, that would make a good story," that's always an exciting moment. The worst is coming up with a title, obviously. Who likes titles?

What motivated you to write "Snack Time"

your writing?

and why does this memory stand out to you?

I haven't had many moments in my life when my perspective radically changed because of one identifiable event, and "Snack Time" comes from one of those moments. I came from a small Midwestern town where it was pretty normal to be poor.

I would never dare compare my writing to hers, but I have a bit of an obsession with Margaret

But, in "Snack Time," I finally realize that I am abnormally poor, and that my lived experience is unusual and shameful. I'm left with a new understanding of my relationship with my peers and my world.

I write stories that are pretty different than

There's clearly something interesting about moments of revelation, since we make them the center of a lot of stories, but honestly, "Snack Time" is just a deeply personal story that was important to me to write. If I intend to write about my life, a lot of my stories begin there.

What’s your favorite genre to read?

Which author has most influenced you and

Atwood’s work. I think a lot of readers and writers today value pithy language, and I like that too, but my heart will always lie with the unflinchingly lush and elaborate.

Atwood’s -- and she’s mastered a big handful of genres, so that says a lot about me – but her style always inspires me to work harder and take a few risks.

Historical fiction. I can’t decide if that’s strange for an author of creative nonfiction or very fitting – people recreating other people’s stories from long ago.

I particularly love medieval and Renaissance-era historical fiction. I also have a soft spot for

What does your personal writing process look like? What do you enjoy most and least

fantasy. I grew up devouring Tamora Pierce and

about writing?

I once read an interview with an author whose work I love, and when she said that she was a habitual revise-as-you-go-er it pretty much thrilled me to learn that there were successful authors out there who never learned to do the shitty first draft process.

it’s never really left me.

Imagine yourself in 10 years’ time. Where will you be, and what will you have written?

Hopefully I’ll have at least one more degree under my belt by then, and hopefully I’ll have escaped the desert for a climate more conducive to life.

I take my time with each page, and I take even more time once it's done to go back and do more revisions. So, my personal writing process in one word is "slow." I think the part of the process I like the most is when the , treasured bolt of inspiration strikes. When I suddenly think,

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I’ll have finished a memoir and maybe even a fantasy novel I’ve been chewing on for a while.

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AUTHOR’S ALCOVE : GAVIN WALKER

A Guide Through ‘Madrid’ Interview by Ryan J. Krebs

Hi, Gavin. How are you doing today?

Fine, thank you!

Have you watched or read anything lately that you’ve been excited about?

I’m attempting to watch all of Michael Haneke’s films right now. Loving all of his stuff so far.

Gavin Walker’s short story is featured in the Fiction section.

Let’s get into “Madrid.” Is this your first screenplay? If not, how many have you written?

Madrid is, in fact, my first screenplay.

It’s interesting to note that while “Madrid” is

Throughout your screenplay, you use the

written for the screen, it seems to be

ideas of sound and color to draw attention to

primarily dialog driven. Was your inspiration for the piece character-based or did it come

certain scenes, “A world of so little sound,

from a personal experience?

The inspiration for the piece was characterbased. I wanted to write a script with characters who were nothing special.

Trilogy”, by Richard Linklater, but his movies

chose to use this imagery and how it plays a role in the story?

I used this imagery in an attempt to place the reader into the world of the film. The role it plays is simply the one told, the train is gloomy and loud while the diner is colorful and quiet. There’s not much else to it, really.

also follow the main characters around a foreign locale while digging into their

You bring up several different movie plots

yet so much color.” Can you tell us how you

I’m not sure if you’ve seen the “Before

throughout your screenplay. Are these

personal issues and relationships. Do you

screenplay ideas that you had preconceived,

think movies like this have opened the door

or were they created specifically for this piece?

Some of them, such as the one about the miner on Mercury, were preconceived plots while others, such as Harvester Of Sorrow, were created for the piece. I wanted to add something for the viewer to think about during the short, a way to make the world feel more three dimensional and robust with ideas.

for a more free-formed writing approach, based more on dialog than plot?

I have not seen the “Before Trilogy”, but I am familiar with Linklater and his works. I think movies like that of his or Kassovitz’, have opened the door to free-formed writing. In my

opinion, films focus too much on plot instead of character and I’m glad these big name directors are out there making a change.

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AUTHOR’S ALCOVE : GAVIN WALKER

I like the small jab at writers that the

I think this piece stands out as a very unique

character David mentions to Chloe, “What if

screenplay with a distinct voice and style. Do

you don’t know what you’re saying in the first

you have anything else in the works, and if

place? Then you’d make a good writer, I

so, how can the readers find it?

I do! You remember that bit about the miner on Mercury in Madrid? Well, I’m working on making that a thing. Readers will be able to find it off my reddit account (/u/Da_Real_Cowpunche) once it’s complete.

guess.” Was your intention to make a comment on this screenplay, or on the act of writing in itself?

Both. I’d be lying if I said I knew exactly what I was doing when I wrote this and I think that goes with many other writers as well. We’re just people coming up with make-believe worlds and conflicts. When you boil it all down, nobody knows what they’re saying in a sense and the greats are great not because they know what they’re saying, but because they know what they should say.

It’s been a pleasure, Gavin. Thank you for contributing to Canyon Voices. Smile for the camera...and...there we go. All done.

No problem. Thank you!

Little bits of magical realism pop their heads out every now and then. For example, Miles telling the Girl she would be a pickpocket in a movie, and then she turns around and pickpockets someone behind his back.

Would you classify “Madrid”, genre-wise, as magical realism?

I wouldn’t even know what I’d classify it as.

It’s hard not to finish this piece and feel like you have delved into the realms of existential and metaphysical thought. How much do you draw on philosophy to help guide your writing?

All the time. Philosophy, when used correctly, can bring out things within people and make them question stuff they’ve never noticed before.

Is there a chance of extending this screenplay in further drafts? Or will it stay at it’s current length and story-arc?

The story will stay as-is.

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AUTHOR’S ALCOVE : RYAN WESSON

Snapshot of a Storyteller An Interview with Ryan Wesson by Kristin Wesson Stepping out into a sultry Phoenix August, a young Ryan Wesson laced up his running shoes and bounded away from his house, his cul-de-sac, his Happy Valley neighborhood. As he settled into a steady pace dust puffed at each dash of his foot against the

Ryan Wesson’s photography is featured in the Art section.

radiating asphalt; the former D1 athlete often loped past sublime wildernesses occupied by tall saguaro sentinels. Before hanging up his running shoes for good, Ryan’s

directions within the realm of photography, my stories became chapters of one bigger story. I am a photographer.

athleticism would take him up north to Flagstaff’s Northern Arizona State University (NAU) where he would earn his BS in Photography with a minor in Communications. Rather than the

What is your background as a

solemn saguaro looking down, the

photographer?

My background in photography is mostly within the genres of event, lifestyle, and portraiture. I have a slight journalistic style to my work but also a very extreme creative factor that contributes to my stories of the places I’ve traveled through.

towering pines of northern Arizona attended his new adventures.

Undeniably, Arizona remains Ryan’s home base and inspiration—evident in his arresting series Northern Lights.

Canyon Voices had the privilege to sit down with the recent NAU graduate to talk with him about his featured series

Is there a particular style of

and role as an artist.

photography you most identify with?

Event, Lifestyle, Astro, and Portraiture.

You can see these styles featured in my work on both my website and my Instagram.

Who are you as an artist and what do you do?

As an artist I consider myself to be a storyteller. Although I have gone in many

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AUTHOR’S ALCOVE : RYAN WESSON

How has your practice changed over

Describe a real-life situation that

time?

Over time I’ve just learned and soaked in a lot of knowledge that contributes to all of my current work and new ideas. I’m in my 8th year of Photography.

I noticed you said that you are only in

inspired you.

A real-life situation that inspired me was when I used to look through Flickr religiously because when I got to college, it was around my third year I kept looking at my work and smiling because I had finally achieved a goal that had been with me for a while. Looking at the work I used to look at I wanted to be good and I knew with how much attention my work was getting it was inspiring. It made me want to keep going!

your eighth year of Photography despite developing an interest in it at twelve. When do you consider your official start as a photographer?

Realistically, I started taking it very serious 4 years ago.

Are there specific themes you pursue with your work?

Mostly lifestyle and storytelling.

“being known for something you do at your own home city is kind of amazing”

photography? Have they provided you with inspiration?

Retail (skate shops, ski shops, and others). They inspire the type of things I look for. Something unique and you got to mold it into the story you are trying to tell.

What is your favorite/ most inspirational place (in Arizona) to shoot in?

Sycamore Falls. It’s seasonal. You usually have to wait until after the snow fall has melted, but it is a beautiful place to go shoot at just a little way out from Flagstaff.

Have you had any memorable response to your work? If so, what were they?

Right now, I am definitely feeling the local aspect. I have gotten a lot of great feedback on my work. People keep using the word local whenever I am conversing with them, and it’s cool because being known for something you do at your own home city is kind of amazing. It reminds me to be grateful for Arizona even though at one time I may have not liked it. It has been a beautiful place to grow up in and work at my endeavors. Just like running I achieved a local status and I want to continue to do

What do you like about photography?

It is like my own realm or world I created, and I get to visually show people what lays in my head and tell a story in my own way. I control this world. It’s very therapeutic.

What do you dislike about photography?

It’s a rough career path to choose. You’ll have a lot of learning to do. I mean years-worth and there are going to be many mistakes.

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What jobs have you done besides

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AUTHOR’S ALCOVE : RYAN WESSON

that with my photo work here for a little while in case I do move on somewhere else.

Who would you say is your biggest critic?

Always me. I rip myself to pieces.

Professionally, what is your goal with your photography?

Find my niche to be happy with what I produce, and produce astounding work for clients. Freelance is the main goal, but who knows it can change.

What is your dream project/ assignment?

Coming up with my own hub to see my content maybe within the confines of an app. Flickr is a photo platform website to showcase work that back in the day used to be a lot more simplistic, but they have moved away from that which has had me move to Instagram.

Do you do any sort of research before you go out for shoots for inspiration?

Yes, I always check locations out. You never know what is going to happen. It could be as simple as a sidewalk you walk on every day. People sometimes think you do have to go to extravagant places to photograph when sometimes one may see the world as a wonder right in your own front yard. That’s the beauty of photography it can be anywhere depending on how one sees the locations of the world they wander around. I usually work with a lot of different people both friends and other photographers.

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Are there any photographers who you look up to/ aspire to be like?

Many, they’ve definitely molded my eye for my own style. Dan Alpert is probably the one photographer who had me fueled with aspiration in astrophotography. He was there with me when I first started to shoot astro. He taught me the start of it and I took it into my own hands to keep learning. He’s astounding with his camera chasing anything landscape.

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AUTHOR’S ALCOVE : RYAN WESSON

With anything it’s going to be tough. But if you trust in yourself you’ll have everything you need.

What is the best piece of advice you have been given with your photography career?

Don’t ever lose the joy in Photography.

Finally, where can people interested in more of your work find you?

They can find me on my website ryanjwessonphoto.format.com and on my Instagram @ryanjwesson.

What is the joy in Photography for you?

I personally like being able to create almost my own view in the world. Its therapeutic and it always keeps me sane and happy when I’m out photographing.

Thank you again to Ryan Wesson for taking the time with us at Canyon

What is a piece of advice you would

Voices providing these wonderfully

give to individuals unsure about making a leap into photography?

insightful thoughts into your journey and process as an artist!

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About Us

Our Mission

CanyonVoices Literary Magazine is a burgeoning journal dedicated to displaying the works of emerging and established writers and artists.

Founded in the spring of 2010 at Arizona State University’s West campus by one professor and six students, this journal strives to bring the creativity of its writers and artists to light within the community and beyond. Supported by students and faculty of ASU’s New College (HArCS), Canyon Voices accepts writing and art from undergraduates, graduates, faculty members, and the community.

At CanyonVoices our mission is to provide an online environment to highlight emerging and established voices in the artistic community.

The work of maintaining and producing this magazine is entirely student driven. Since its formation, Canyon Voices has expanded into a full credit, hands-on class, offered through Arizona State University New College of Interdisciplinary Arts and Sciences. Students build a full literary journal each semester, heading every aspect of production, including soliciting submissions, editing, marketing, design and layout, and publication.

We eagerly anticipate further involvement from students interested in magazine publication for our future issues.

CANYONVOICES

By publishing works that engender thought, Canyon Voices seeks to enrich the scope of language, style, culture, and gender.

Contact Us Questions, comments, feedback? We would love to hear from you.

Contact us via email at: CanyonVoicesLitMag@gmail.com Connect with us on social media: Facebook: asucanyonvoices Twitter: @CanyonVoices Instagram: @canyonvoiceslitmag

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Submission Guidelines Submitting Work To submit your work, please send it to CanyonVoicesLitMag@gmail.com. Be sure to attach all the work you wish to submit to the email. You may include an author biography and a photo, which will be included in the magazine should your work be chosen for publication. We are affiliated with Arizona State University, and we uphold academic standards. If your work is accepted we reserve the right to make changes, such as grammar and punctuation. You will be contacted should your work require more extensive edits. We accept simultaneous submissions.

All documents submitted should be double spaced with a 12 point font, in either Times New Roman or Arial.

Poetry may be single spaced. All written documents must be submitted in (.doc) or (.rtf) format. Artwork may be in JPEG format. All work submitted must have a title.

FICTION

POETRY

Up to two stories may be submitted per issue.

Each story may be 20 pages or fewer.

Up to six poems may be submitted (no longer than two pages each) per issue.

CREATIVE NONFICTION

SCRIPTS

ARTWORK

Up to four stories per issue. Two pieces may be 20 pages.

Up to two scripts may be submitted per issue. Script maximum 15 pages.

Up to ten pieces, with at least 300 dpi or JPEG format (<1 MB).

Include detail on medium.

EXPLICIT MATERIALS

READING PERIOD

Because this is a university magazine, submissions containing sexually explicit material and explicit language will be reviewed and determined eligible for publishing depending on the context of the material in the work. Material deemed inappropriate or gratuitous will be rejected.

Our editors read submissions in August, September, and October for the fall issue. The reading period re-opens in January, February, and March for the spring issue.

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STAFF *Names listed in alphabetical order

Julie Amparano Garcia Founder, Publisher, Advisor Julie Amparano Garcia is the founder, publisher, and advisor of the Canyon Voices Literary team. Serving in the School of Humanity Arts and Cultural Studies at ASU’s New College of Interdisciplinary Arts and Sciences, Amparano overseas the school’s Writing Certificate and teaches a variety of writing courses that include script writing, crosscultural writing, fiction, persuasive writing, and others. She received her MFA in Creative Writing from Antioch University in Los Angeles in 2006, and is working on a collection of short stories.

Ruth C. Arriaga Editor-in-Chief, Copy Editor Chief, Social Media Director, Staff Photographer Ruth C. Arriaga is passionate about the publishing & editing industry, just as much as she is about writing. Taking Canyon Voices for the second time this year as an English major at ASU West has really opened her eyes to her future dream career––Editor-inChief. Being this semester’s Editor-in-Chief was a remarkable responsibility that Ruth will never forget and will always cherish. She wants to thank God, her parents, and the rest of her family for their help and encouragement, and Julie Amparano Garcia for the opportunity to learn and grow in such an esteemed and important role.

Amanda Beck Senior Poetry Editor, Art Editor Amanda is currently a senior at ASU and working toward a Bachelor’s in English with the hopes of pursuing a career in publishing. This was her first semester working with Canyon Voices as an editor for both poetry and art. Amanda likes to experiment with her own creative writing and keeps a good book within arm’s reach at all times. As a recent transplant to Arizona, she also enjoys exploring desert landscapes and has a newfound appreciation for both cooler weather and rain.

Jesus Espinoza Fiction Editor, Creative Nonfiction Editor Jesus Espinoza is a junior at Arizona State University, currently in progress of completing a Bachelor’s degree in English. In his upcoming semesters, he will be pursuing a Secondary Education Certificate. Being an editor for Canyon Voices has provided him with experience in reviewing a variety of writing styles, in both Fiction and Creative Nonfiction, and he hopes to utilize these newfound skills in his future career as a high school teacher. In his own work, he leans towards writing realistic situations and scenarios, but he is always up to the challenge of exploring and attempting genres unfamiliar to him.

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STAFF Ilyssa Goldsmith Senior Poetry Editor, Art Editor, Event Coordinator Ilyssa Goldsmith is a senior pursuing a bachelor’s in communication at Arizona State University. She has been published in Canyon Voices prior to serving as an editor, Claudius Speaks, and she will be appearing in the next issue of Normal Noise. At ASU West, Ilyssa is a member of Barrett, the Honors College and Lambda Pi Eta, a communication honors society. In addition, she works collaboratively with students as a Writing Tutor through the University of Academic Success Program. In her free time, Ilyssa has been developing her honors thesis around analyzing the depiction of strong female characters within Young Adult Literature. She strives to write stories about empowered girls and women — the type of characters women haven’t seen nearly enough on the page — flawed, strong, stubborn, and bold. In a word, female-strong.

Sean Hampton Senior Creative Nonfiction Editor, Fiction Editor, Copy Editor Chief Sean Hampton is a senior at Arizona State University. He’s pursuing an undergraduate in English, a minor in Philosophy and a Writing Certificate at West. His interests now lie primarily with creative writing, and in particular, Realistic Fiction. He believes that literature of this kind is just one avenue that readers today might take in order to cultivate ideas and think of the world around them. Whether or not this method of fleshing out is reasonable he’s unsure of, but it probably beats out reading simply for pleasure.

Jamin Kollasch Fiction Editor, Creative Nonfiction Editor Jamin Kollasch is a senior at Arizona State University. He is pursuing a Bachelor’s degree in English and will be graduating in December of 2017. An avid reader and writer, Jamin’s primary interest is fiction, but he often works with academic, business, and technical writing in his work as an English tutor at Glendale Community College.

Jamin enjoys learning and collaborating with others, and these interests led him to serve as a Canyon Voices editor.

Ryan J. Krebs Fiction Editor, Scripts Editor Ryan J. Krebs is an undergraduate student at Arizona State University, studying literature, philosophy and film. Currently writing short fiction, a novel and several screenplays, his time is monopolized by his passions, but on the side he enjoys composing music, photography and learning more about history. Every week he dedicates some time to escaping, and finds himself out on a distant Arizona highway, humming along in his little, brown, pickup truck, “Hot Mary”. As he passes through the canyons and continues on into the deep-orange horizon ahead, he wants you to know that he truly enjoyed his time contributing his time to this publication.

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STAFF Analyssa Sanchez Poetry Editor, Scripts Editor Analyssa is an aspiring actress and screenplay writer staying involved in the Interdisciplinary Arts and Performance scene. She loves writing and performance; it’s such a beautiful, fun and cathartic form of expression. Canyon Voices has inspired her to continue bringing the pages to life, behind and beyond the words.

Danny Walker Senior Creative Nonfiction Editor, Managing Editor, Design Editor, Author’s Alcove Editor, Copy Editor Chief Danny Walker is an aspiring fiction author. He grew up watching action movies and reading science fiction. Upon completing high school, he joined the Army and served as an infantryman in Operation Iraqi Freedom. Now at ASU, majoring in Creative Writing, he has since written various stories for school, ranging from science fiction to romance to mystery. He’s also expanding his expertise as an editor for the fiction section of Canyon Voices. In his free time, he enjoys reading, writing, playing video games, working on vintage engines, and staying physically fit at the gym. He’s currently working on a script for a sci-fi action cartoon, a medieval fantasy story, a 50’s era sci-fi mystery, an 80’s detective noir, and a memoir based on true events from his time before, during, and after the Iraqi War.

Alexis Watkins Senior Scripts Editor, Fiction Editor Alexis Watkins is currently a senior at Arizona State University and this is her second semester editing for Canyon Voices. She originally joined to gain more knowledge about editing and publishing, but loved working with everyone one creating the magazine.

She is also an aspiring author, writing scripts and short fiction, and is currently working on a novella. When she isn’t writing she enjoys reading both novels and comics, but spends much of her free time playing video games or drawing. Her dream is to help publish stories that bring new ideas and originality into the literary world, as when as have her own novel published.

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STAFF Kristin L. Wesson Senior Art Editor, Poetry Editor Kristin Wesson is a Junior at Arizona State University pursuing her Bachelor’s in English with a teaching certificate at the West campus. Born and raised in Arizona, she enjoys hiking Phoenix’s North Mountain preserve with her Queensland Heeler Koda when weather permits, observing all the wildlife that may cross their path. Besides hiking, she enjoys reading, writing, drawing, and playing video games during her downtime.

As a first-year editor for Canyon Voices, she enjoyed her time in the Poetry and Art departments learning the ins and outs of publishing an online literary magazine.

Working with her teammates was often the highlight of her Mondays and Wednesdays.

Although becoming a high school English teacher is the plan, Kristin does not know what the future holds for her and looks forward to experiencing new adventures that may change her path entirely.

Ileen Younan Senior Fiction Editor, Scripts Editor, Editorial Production Manager Ileen Younan is completing her Junior year as an English major at Arizona State University’s west campus. She has enjoyed her time working for Canyon Voices over the past two issues, primarily with the Creative Nonfiction, Fiction, and Script departments.

Ileen likes reading anything from literary theory to present day novels and is currently working on a draft of a story she hopes to one day see published. Upon completing her undergraduate degree and subsequently law school, Ileen hopes to keep writing in her free time as a hobby.

Woody Mountain Road by Ryan Wesson See the Artwork section for full image

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