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Introducing Generic, Emerson College’s first literature journal to celebrate genre literature!

With stories ranging from gothic romance to thrilling mysteries to dangerous dystopias, Generic is dedicated to exploring some of the best genre fiction Emerson has to offer.

in this issue

featured genres: mystery • historical fiction • romance • dystopia they never get the eyes right

Olivia Billbrough outbound

Melinda Thompson t h e t oy m a k e r ’s t r e n c h e s

Paige Sammartino m u r d e r s at w h i t e c h a p e l

Erin Sinnott firebrand

Janella Angeles songs from home

Paige Sammartino under the cypress trees

Blake Campbell

n issue # 1

Generic, Issue #1, Spring 2012 Copyright for all stories belongs to their authors Generic is Copyright of Undergraduates for Publishing, Emerson College Cover design by Liza Cortright Interior Design by Liza Cortright and Megan Seabaugh Printed at the Emerson College Print & Copy Center: Boston, MA

table of contents Foreword

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They Never Get the Eyes Right

6

Olivia Billbrough

Outbound

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Melinda Thompson

The Toymaker’s Trenches

21

Paige Sammartino

Murders at Whitechapel

26

Erin Sinnott

Firebrand

33

Janella Angeles

Songs from Home

39

Paige Sammartino

Under the Cypress Trees Blake Campbell Author Biographies

43 50

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Dear Readers, The staff of Undergraduate Students for Publishing welcomes you to our debut issue of Generic, Emerson College’s very first genreexclusive literature journal. Ever since arriving at Emerson we have been aware of the lack of genre-writing among workshops and student-run literature magazines; Generic was founded to provide a haven for students wanting to gain experience in the world of genre writing and publishing.

For nearly two years now, Undergraduate Students for Publishing has been hosting monthly Genre Nights, where one night out of every month we celebrate aspects of genre literature ranging from the big genres like fantasy and historical fiction to niche and lesser known genres like steampunk and time-travel fiction. After hosting these workshops, which have grown vastly in popularity over the months, we decided the next step would be to create a brand-new literature journal in order to showcase our writers’ hard work. What you are about to read is the end result of our little experiment.

The stories found in this debut edition of what we hope will be a staple of Emerson College’s collection of literature journals, all highlight the elements of what we all love about genre fiction, but more importantly we hope that you enjoy them as works of pure literary fiction. Generic is made to be a haven for all of the genre enthusiasts out there, but at its heart, we are set to prove that genre-writing should not be any less valued than that of any other literary fiction.

These stories will make you think, entertain you, and hopefully encourage you to further explore the world of genre fiction. We hope to see you at one of our Genre Workshops next year and maybe even have the opportunity to publishing your work in the next issue of Generic.

Enjoy,

the staff of Undergraduate Students for Publishing

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" S ci ence F i ct i o n

They Never Get the Eyes Right

by Olivia Billbrough

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The first thing I see when I wake up is a bright, sterile light burning my eyes and I have to squeeze them shut. I try to speak or sit up but my body feels too heavy, like I’ve been soaked in water and need to be wrung out.

“What’s wrong with her? I thought you said she would be okay.”

“She’s just coming out of the anesthesia. A little bit of dizziness and even nausea are expected. She’ll most likely experience an intense headache as well that will last for about a week or so.”

“But after that?”

“She should be fine. Quinn, can you hear me?”

I don’t recognize the man’s voice, but the nervous female voice belongs to my stepmother. I open my eyes again, slowly this time, and can just make out her overly made-up face in the glaring brightness. When she moves her head in front of the light I can see how tears have made tracks through her foundation, making her look like a painting that’s been set out in the sun. I turn my head to the side and see the doctor’s white lab coat by my head. I’m so close I can see every fiber woven in. There’s a soft bluish stain, like from a pen.

“Wha-what ha-” I try to speak, but my throat is so sore. My father, standing at the foot of the bed, is holding his hand to his face, covering his eyes. When I speak he moves as if to stand by me, but seems to changes his mind mid-motion.

“Quinn, you were in an accident,” he says, gripping the raised foot of the bed.

I close my eyes again and try to feel my body. Still got legs. Arms seem okay. I wiggle my toes and flex my fingers. At least all of my limbs seem intact. I open my eyes again and try to get my arm out from under the covers. It’s difficult. Everything is slow to respond.

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“Is…am I okay?” I ask, carefully propping myself up by my elbows, fighting the urge to vomit. The door opens and a nurse comes in pushing a car of different shaped machines and instruments.

“Well there are still some tests we have to perform and there might be a few side effects. This procedure is still relatively new, but we’ve managed to work out most of the kinks,” he says, opening the plastic black box filled with different colored wires.

“He means your surgery, honey. It was a new one! But you’re fine now!” my stepmother says quickly. She walks over and holds my hand smiling broadly. In the light and with her messed-up makeup, she looks like a deranged clown. I look over at my father who has left the foot of the bed to take a seat on one of the stiff plastic chairs. His hard stare cuts through me. The nurse moves past my stepmother and starts to attach stickers with protruding wires onto my skull. She’s an old model, and the spaces where her joints connect are starting to separate. The skin on her arms is turning a soft shade of peach gray and there’s a small crack in her left eye.

Her cold, mechanical arm brushes my cheek as she attaches the stickers and I recoil, looking up past her expressionless face. It always seems that no matter how hard they try, they never get the eyes right— too…lifeless. But then again, maybe that’s a good thing.

“Okay thanks, Dot,” Dr. Patel says to the nurse. “Now, Quinn, we’re going to do a few tests, okay?”

“Tests for what? What exactly was this procedure? Mom? What did they do?” I look from her to my father. His face is red and the veins in his neck look like they are trying to jump out of his skin. He’s not looking at me anymore but at some spot on a wall that will probably set on fire from his glare. I have only seen him look like this once before: when I was ten and found a box in the attic filled with pictures of a woman who I later learned was my mother. She had my eyes and slightly crooked smile, and her hair was the color of cream. Prematurely gray, but still beautiful.

And he loved her. And I took her away.

“Oh Quinn, honey, you were so hurt, and we just wanted to make you better,” she says, gripping my hand tighter. I wrench my hand free, push the covers away from my legs, and gingerly get out of the hospital bed. As soon as my feet touch the ground I notice how cold the floor is. The dizziness comes back for a moment but then subsides. It feels good to be out of the bed and to stretch. I reach for the ceiling with my arms and feel every joint cracking and the tendons and muscles stretching.

Every bone seems to fall into place with satisfaction and ease, almost gracefully. As soon as I’m done stretching, however, I feel dizzy and nauseated again.

“Here, you better get back into bed and let me explain,” Dr. Patel says helping me. My father has dragged my stepmother from the bedside and onto one of the

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hospital chairs. I have a strange urge to check and see if I still have hair. I reach up and feel my skull. My fingers trace over the stitches along the top and sides of my head. It seems vain, but hot tears start to prick at my eyes.

“You won’t have to worry about that. Your hair will grow back normally,” Dr. Patel says. “Now, Quinn, what exactly do you remember?”

Everything.

“Not much,” I say. My stepmother is smoothing back her black hair, still gripping my father’s hand.

“Can you tell me anything you do remember?” What I do remember? I remember being a child and not understanding why my father couldn’t stand the sight of me, and I remember my tenth birthday party where my friend Aaron gave me a clementine because he couldn’t afford a real present. I remember thinking it was a great present until I heard my father and stepmother talking about Aaron’s family spending all of their money to save his brother, Mike, with a new plastic body, and then even later attending the funeral when his new plastic body fell apart. I remember finding a box of pictures of my mother and not knowing who she was.

My father found me looking at the pictures from their wedding and parties and her pregnant belly. He shouted that the box was not any of my business and tore her from my hands. I remember walking in front of the truck.

“I thought I had enough time to cross the street before the truck got there. I guess I was wrong.”

“I see. Quinn, I’m going to perform a few quick tests. Just stay relaxed like you are now,” Dr. Patel says. He takes my arm and moves it around, pulls each finger so that the cartilage cracks. He does the same with my legs and neck. He pulls out a small flashlight and shines it in my mouth and nose and ears. When he shines it in my eyes, it’s so bright I start to tear up and immediately turn away. He puts the flashlight back in his blue stained pocket and writes something down in his notebook.

“Okay, Quinn, your eyes seem to be a little sensitive. Now, are you sure nothing else besides your head and throat hurts?” he asks. I frown and shake my head, which has increasingly been getting more painful. A thick throbbing starting in the front of my head has traveled to the back, slowly tracing along the lines of the stitches until it seems to seep into my skull and the soft brain within.

“Quinn…are you sure?” he asks. I don’t know what he means. I look up and he’s staring intently at me. My stepmother’s hand is half way to her gaping mouth. I look down and notice the scalpel softly pressing into my arm.

“I…why can’t I…” “It’s a side effect. We might have to go back in and rework some wires,” Dr.

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Patel sighs, wiping off some of the blood that has oozed out of my arm. I take a closer look and see that it’s slightly purplish.

It feels as if all of the air has left the room. Time has stopped and my breath floats in front of me, drifting past Dr. Patel and by my father and step-mother hanging in the air for a moment before it leaves the room all together and I’m alone in the silent stillness. Sound comes back to the room in a hot rush, encompassing me in the drumming of beating hearts and the soft in and out of breathing.

“Was it that bad?” I ask.

“You had no chance of survival without this procedure,” Dr. Patel says. He starts to explain the damage that the 18-wheeler had done to my body in convoluted medical terminology that I don’t, and can’t, listen to. I become aware of a warm, wet, sluggish liquid sliding down my cheeks and I realize I’m crying. I’m a little shocked that I can still cry. I interrupt him in the middle of his speech about reinforced synthetic muscle tissue that mimics natural repair.

“Is there…any part of me that’s still me?”

“Your brain is still you. Your memories and personality and beliefs. Those are all still you. You’re a better you now, though. You won’t fall ill or break bones.” I sit back on the pillow as the memory of breaking my arm when I was seven comes to mind. The horrible throbbing pain seemed to spread through my whole body, radiating from the spot in my arm that had been cracked in two. Now I couldn’t even feel pain. I didn’t want to believe that my body was not really mine, but something made in a lab with synthetics and electronic wires. Eventually my broken arm healed. It was still a little crooked after the fall but it never slowed me down. I look down at the arm I broke, the one the scalpel was pressed into, and see that it’s straight as an arrow. Perfect.

“What…what happens when I get older? Will I still age? Will this body wear out?”

I ask, thinking of Mike when the procedure was still brand new and doctors were too excited about it. He came back, weeks after his body had been mangled, without a scratch. He grinned a smile too bright and his eyes stared like two fixed spaces between his nose. And then his doll body fell apart and Mike was gone for good.

“Ah…yes eventually this body will wear out but you won’t actually age. You’ll have to come in for updates every year. We will simulate aging until you wish to stop.”

“Just like that?” I ask. “I’ll just stop. Just cease to exist? Will it hurt?”

“No, it won’t hurt. Think of it more like going to sleep after a long day,” Dr. Patel says kindly, patting my hand. I slap his hand away and pull the covers off the alien body attached to my brain. I’m almost surprised that my legs are the same pale skin color as my arms and not some shiny metal plastic color with little wires and doodads.

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“Don’t talk to me like I’m some dumb kid. ‘Going to sleep after a long day’—give me a break. That’s what they say in every sob movie when someone has to put their sick dog down.” I swing my legs over the side of the bed and plant them on the cold floor.

“It won’t be like that, I promise,” Dr. Patel says. He puts an arm on my shoulder, trying to get me to sit back down, but I push him away. I can’t sit there anymore while everyone stares down at me with those pitiful looks on their faces. My father is the only one not looking at me. He hasn’t said a word since they told me what happened. His burning eyes are closed now and he seems to be lost in some memory. My stepmother’s eyes, on the other hand, seem like they’re drowning.

“Quinn, baby,” she says. “Please sit back down and listen to Dr. Patel, he’s just trying to help.” I ignore her and take a shaky step onto the floor besides my bed.

“Will I still be able to go swimming? Or eat? Will I be able to have kids?” I ask.

Dr. Patel looks like this is his least favorite part of the speech. The procedure is still relatively new. After the debacle with the first hundred or so they tried it on, all fell apart so quickly, they took their time working out the kinks. It seems they didn’t work them all out though. He must have to tell that to all the rich people and soldiers and politicians and people whose families have decided to cheat death. They probably think they’re saving someone. Maybe they are.

“You can do…almost everything you have been able to do before,” he says.

“Okay, like what?” I ask, impatiently, fighting off the gasp that is stuck my throat, threatening to escape and choke my words in breathless sob. My stepmother gets up and wraps her arms around me, still crying. Her hot tears fall on the bandages wrapping around the side of my head.

“Quinn, I’m really sorry that this had to happen to you. I’m going to give you the number for a Posttraumatic Stress Disorder therapist who specializes in people with your condition. To complete your outpatient program you need to meet with him once a week. He’ll let you know what you can and can’t do anymore, but, really, you should be very grateful. You get a second chance at life.”

Dr. Patel has a kind face, with large hazel eyes and long lashes. He smiles sadly, but I know he sees this every day. All the lost souls who have just enough brain function but bodies smashed to pieces. I close my eyes and try to remember anything from before. Fleeting images of my father and stepmother taking me to the park or my friend Aaron teaching me how swim. I remember swim meets and parties and not wanting to miss the carnival when it came, the cotton candy melting on my tongue and Aaron winning me a stupid stuffed butterfly and pictures of my mother with her cream colored hair, secretly stolen and hidden in a shoe box in my room where I could see who I got my eyes and hair from that was just starting to get streaks of gray and Aaron telling me they were beautiful anyway.

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“Mom?” I say going over to her and holding her face in my hands. “Mom? Why did you do this?”

“Quinn, I couldn’t lose you. You’re my daughter, by blood or not. You’re my only baby.”

I didn’t ask my dad. I already knew why he did it. She would have wanted him to. I stand up straighter. I can feel my bones and joints moving within the skin they made for me. My swimmer’s shoulders hold taut as my arms stick to my sides and my legs gingerly step across the floor to the bathroom, where the mirror, covered with a sheet, by my stepmother no doubt, hangs on the wall. I reach up and pull the sheet off.

Staring back at me is my face as I remember it. My burgundy, silver streaked hair has been replaced with pinkish white skin and dark purple stitches going around my skull like a baseball and there are gray circles under my lids. I move in closer. Everything is mostly as I remember. Except the deep brown eyes looking back at me aren’t mine. They’re not my mother’s. They are simply…there.

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" Dy s t o pi a

Outbound

by Melinda Thompson

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On the night before I leave for the Academy, the nightmares come back.

They’re always the same. I’ve had them ever since I was a kid, although they come and go. Sometimes I go months at a time without one and trick myself into thinking I’ve finally outgrown them, but it’s never true; I don’t think I’ll ever outgrow them.

Eventually, always, something triggers in my head and then here we go again, and I’m waking up flailing, shaking, and screaming after people who are dead.

Of course, knowing where I’ll be in less than twenty-four hours, knowing who I’ll be with, I can’t really blame my subconscious.

I’m standing in the street in the middle of Well. The sky is red. The scene mixes real memories with blanks that I’ve filled in myself, and I can’t tell where one ends and the other begins because I see and hear every grisly detail the same. My dad standing in front of the firing squad. The gunshots, muted and short like popcorn popping on the stove, but then he’s lying facedown in the gravel. The too red holes in his jacket, the too red puddle seeping into the dirt. And then my mom, who screams and runs forward and cradles his head in her arms, who hurls accusations at the gunners with a pointed finger and crazy eyes, until the man in the uniform waves a hand and the guns fire again and she crumples.

That’s when I start screaming and can’t stop. I try to run to them but Finn’s hands clamp onto my shoulders and shake me and then I’m awake and he’s there, yelling my name, talking me back, just like he has since I was six years old.

“You’re all right,” he says over and over. “You’re all right.”

Heart thudding. Hands shaking and covered in sweat. But just breathe, Spence,

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I tell myself. Breathe, and look around, because you’re in your own room and your own place. Look at the familiar crack in the wall. Or Finn’s worried face. Don’t think about the guns and the Nat officers and the blood because that’s all in the past.

I don’t think, ‘That’s only a dream,’ because of course it’s not.

Finn’s sitting on the corner of the bed, so close to the edge that I keep expecting him to fall off. I stare down at my hands. The tracker bracelet that the Academy recruiters clapped on when they came for me has slid partway up my wrist, and, in the darkness, the flashing blue light throws creepy, distorted shadows onto the walls.

“The same?” Finn says.

I nod. That’s all the explanation he needs.

“Oh, kid,” he says, brushing my sweaty hair off my forehead. I suddenly feel very small.

“I don’t want to go,” I get out in a choked pathetic voice, and that’s when I start crying.

In my experience, crying doesn’t get you very far. Sometimes it even earns you a bit of a reputation—case in point is Jimmy “Crybaby” Farris, whose career as a thug up in Finger Springs went down the drain after a couple of emotional reactions to movies—so I’ve never made a habit of it. Finn takes it in stride, though. He pulls me into a hug and doesn’t even complain about the wet, snotty patch I’m making on the sleeve of his T-shirt.

“What am I supposed to do?” I say, wishing I didn’t sound so shaky and awful.

“I’m gonna go to this school and…and what? Rub shoulders with the Nats? Nod and go along with everything they tell me? What am I supposed to do?”

“Just keep your head up and your heart in the right place,” Finn says suddenly. I squint up at him; his face is sincere. “Just do what you do. Don’t take any of it too seriously; it’ll drive you mad. And it might be that they surprise you. The ones up top are scum, but even the Nationals are people somewhere. Just folks. Same as Westies.”

Finn surprises me sometimes. He can be pretty profound. I wipe my nose on my sleeve again. He makes a face, but lets me.

“Don’t you hate them, though?” I ask after a while. “You have to. Look at everything they’ve done. If it weren’t for the Nats, I’d still have my mom and dad, you’d still have your friends, we wouldn’t all be just barely scraping by out here. And you—,” I swallow hard but make myself keep going, “—you wouldn’t have gotten stuck down with me. You could have five bars by now, a whole chain all over the West and you could travel and make heaps of money and get out of Well and—” I cut off because I’m going to cry again because it’s so unfair. I take a good look at Finn, at his brown hair getting light at the temples, the deep line between his eyebrows,

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the bags under his eyes. He was barely twenty when he took me in, and, although he’s not even thirty, now he could pass for ten years older because he’s grown up too fast.

I guess we all have.

“Spencer,” he says in a voice so serious that it jerks me out of my thoughts, “I resent the government for a lot of stuff, your mom and dad included. But I do not resent them for you.”

Well, that sets me off again. Finn pats me awkwardly on the back of the head.

“Still don’t want to go,” I say, even though it’s childish.

“I know,” he says while I cry myself out. “I know.”

After a while he offers to make us hot cocoa, and I follow him down to the kitchen and sit on the table while he heats up the pot. It’s water, not milk, and the powder he’s using is just the cheap, stale stuff we had last winter or maybe a couple of years before. But when we sit at the bar in our pajamas and drink it in long, slow sips, it’s the best hot cocoa I’ve had in my life.

“What time is it?” I ask finally.

“Almost six.”

Two hours. That’s all I have left before the car comes, and then the shuttle, and then the train, and then I’ll be walking around in New Dedrick and living somebody else’s life, one that I never wanted. I’ve never been out East. The farthest I’ve been from Well is Finger Springs, or once, a weekend that I barely remember in Westlake back before my parents died. It doesn’t seem possible that less than two weeks ago I was helping my partner, Sully, break into a National Party research facility, just another criminal raid. And now this.

This is one of those moments you can only sum up with clichés: a crossroads, a turning point, when your whole life up ’til now is over, when everything you know is about to change.

I sip my cocoa.

Finn and I sit for over an hour in our old easy silence. Eventually the sun slants in through the dusty blinds on the front windows, and Finn sends me to go get dressed. I still haven’t opened the box with my uniform so I pull on my jeans and a T-shirt instead. My backpack is propped on the floor by my bed, the same one I used when I tried to skip town; I never bothered unpacking it after my visit from the Academy recruiters. Now I shove my last few essentials into it and pull it onto one shoulder. This time, there’s nowhere to run. No way to run. As I go back to the kitchen I don’t dare let myself think about how this might be the last time I see my bedroom. Or the landing. Or the creaky stairs. Or Finn.

At eight o’clock on the dot, there’s a knock on the door. Finn opens it.

“Spencer Hobbes, grade ten, transfer?”

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I blink. The man is tall and wiry, almost robotic when he moves; he’s got the upright posture of somebody who spent most of his childhood with people sticking straightening rods down his back. When Finn nods with a question—“You’re with the Academy, right?”—he maneuvers his way in and slaps his briefcase on the table closest to the door.

“Edmund Darvill,” he tells Finn without prelude. Neither of them bother shaking hands. “I’m hear to make sure everything’s in order and then to accompany Mr. Hobbes to the school and I’m kind of in a hurry.” He rounds on me in the same breath. “Where’s your uniform?”

Stay casual, I tell myself. Bored. “It didn’t come.”

“Yes it did. Go put it on.”

I look at Finn, who shrugs. Go upstairs, shut my door. Cut open the box—finally, a week after it arrived—and the insides are as bad as I expected: stiff dark blazer, stiff dark pants, monogrammed tie against a shirt so white it’s practically begging somebody to spill food down the front. There’s a pair of shined shoes, too, but they pinch my toes so I swap them out for my usual ratty sneakers. I’m glad I don’t have a mirror because I don’t want to see what I look like. My shirt collar makes me feel like I’m being strangled.

When I walk back down the stairs, Darvill’s eyebrows inch up his forehead.

“Your tie,” he says. He makes me stand still while he unknots it and does it up again. “There. Haven’t you ever worn a tie before?”

The last time I wore a tie, I was six years old and going to my parents’ funeral.

The tie was a trimmed down one of Finn’s. I don’t answer.

“Now stand still,” Darvill says again. He circles me like a vulture inspecting something dead, straightening my collar, making me tuck in my shirttail. “Well, you don’t look bad,” he says finally. “Your hair could do with a trim, though. Or at least a comb. You’ll want to do something about that.”

“No, I won’t,” I say.

“And your shoes.”

“The ones they gave me pinch,” I tell him.

“They’re supposed to. Put them on.”

Shoes that are supposed to pinch might be the stupidest thing I’ve ever heard of. “No thanks,” I say.

Darvill stares at me for a couple of seconds, then shrugs. “Fine. Your problem.”

I catch Finn’s eye from the doorway and see that he’s trying really hard not to crack a smile. I’m doing what he said: don’t take it too seriously. You’ll go mad.

Or Darvill will, maybe.

“You’ve packed your things?” Darvill asks next, and when I nod at my backpack

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his eyebrows go even higher. “That’s it?” I shrug at him. “I suppose it’s too much to hope that you read the student handbook.”

“What student handbook?” I ask innocently. Don’t look at Finn now, because there’s no way I can deadpan that if I do.

Darvill unclasps his briefcase and pulls out a thin black book. “Right,” he says.

“Then you’re in for a long day. We’re catching a shuttle in two hours; we should be on our way.”

Suddenly my stomach feels like it’s disappeared. “Just like that?” I say, and I don’t realize how pitiful I sound until the words are already out.

Darvill glances at Finn, then back at me. “Five minutes.”

He goes out to start the car and I stand there frozen for a good ten seconds and this time, Finn comes over to me. He tousles my hair, which just messes it up more, which will just make Darvill more exasperated than ever. “You know I’m proud of you, right, kid?” Finn says.

I bite down hard on my tongue. “Don’t make me cry again,” I tell him. “It’ll mess up the whole ‘who gives a care?’ thing I’m working on with Darvill.” But right now, I’m all right.

“No more crying,” Finn agrees.

Our time is ticking away. I feel like I should say something significant but I don’t know what. Maybe everything has already been said. I loosen my tie.

“I don’t feel like me,” I say, tugging at my collar.

Finn fixes it back. “I think you look pretty smart.” I cock an eyebrow at him and he rephrases. “You look like a brilliant but completely lazy kid, off to an East city school where you plan to cause all manner of chaos.” He smirks. “They’re not gonna know what hit ’em, are they?”

“This is what they get for bringing a Westie to a Nat school,” I tell him.

Five minutes passes too quickly. Darvill is back, tapping his watch, and then I hug Finn even though Darvill is watching. I cling on until finally he gives me a nudge and I pick up my backpack. He mouths something as I turn to follow Darvill: “Cause chaos!”

At least that’s what I think he says. Then I’m in the street, being loaded into the passenger seat of Darvill’s boxy gray car. The door closes. I’m so busy trying to rearrange my backpack off my lap and onto the floor by my feet that I don’t even realize we’re moving until we’ve moved. When I look out the window, Well is just a cluster of buildings in the rearview mirror.

Darvill gives me a copy of the student handbook to read in the car, but I don’t open it. I’m fidgety, claustrophobic. The landscape zips by outside my window, or

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what little landscape there is; almost everything on this side of the mountains is just long, grayish fields of ash and piles of rubble. The bombs were almost a hundred years ago but most of the West was never resettled, probably because most of the Westerners were dead after that.

I flip the pages of the book back and forth, scratch my finger through the gold letters on the front cover. The Lancaster Academy of Science and Technology: Student Guide to Excellence. Whatever that means. There’s a coat of arms, too, with a lion that looks more like a dragon and some sciency symbol that I probably would recognize if I hadn’t dropped out of school at age ten. I tap the corner of the cover on the dashboard. Finally Darvill glares over at me.

“You’re going to have to go over everything in that book at some point today.

You might as well get started.”

I give him a look that I hope says, You’re an idiot if you think I’m going to read this of my own free will, or something along those lines, and go back to staring out the window.

The drive to Southlake is nearly three hours. Everything in the West is pretty spaced out. For a while I doze off against the window—getting up at five this morning had to catch up with me sometime—and when I wake up we’re passing through Finger Springs. Then more fields of ash. I’ve never been this far north before but everything looks the same as it does back home. If I take a snapshot out of context I can pretend we’re driving toward Well instead of away from it.

But then we’re pulling into Southlake. The town is huge—more people than I’ve ever seen in one place, except in the movies, and I always assumed those shots were fake. Now I’m not so sure. In Southlake, the houses all lean against each other, street after street of them. Folks crowd on the sidewalks and there are actually other cars on the road, as in a lot of them, as in Darvill has to come to a standstill for a minute while we wait for a line of them to move. Only about three people in Well even own a car. Southlake’s population is well over ten thousand. Of course, New Dedrick has hundreds of thousands of people—maybe even millions—so Darvill doesn’t bat an eyelid. When we walk through the doors of the shuttle port, I almost forget to be casual and bored and keep lagging behind while I take it all in.

“Now,” Darvill says when we’re sitting on a bench in the glass-walled waiting room. “I’m supposed to educate you on proper behavior at the Academy—the point system, the term reports, and so on. The goal is for you not to humiliate yourself within ten minutes of arriving.”

“Honestly, I don’t much care if I do,” I tell him. His facial expression doesn’t change.

“You may not right now, but you will. The Academy is very…competitive. Suc-

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cesses are rewarded, failures are punished. Every one of your classmates is a competitor, an enemy. They’ll use anything they can to break you.”

I always knew they were my enemies, but I didn’t think of it in such a personal way. Suddenly all the bits I’ve picked up about this school turn very sinister.

I swallow. “They won’t.”

“On top of that, Doctors Ithaca and Patterson—they were the ones who recruited you, weren’t they?—Doctors Ithaca and Patterson have staked a lot on your success and, as I understand it, have plans to motivate you to try a bit harder than you have been this morning.”

“Motivate me?” I ask.

“How did they persuade you to enroll at the Academy in the first place?”

I let out a snort, but it’s really not funny. “It wasn’t ‘persuading’ so much as threatening.”

“Ah,” he says shortly. “Well, I would expect that the threats still hold.”

I feel sick. Somehow I’d made myself believe that if I just went along with this, just went to the Nat school, everything they’d warned they’d do to Finn and the other folks in Well would be forgotten. I realize now that thought was stupid and a little naïve. Of course the threats still hold; that’s all the Nats have to keep me in line.

“So they’re gonna blackmail me into doing good in school?” I ask.

“Well.”

Yeah. That’s where I want to be right now, but somehow I don’t think that’s what he means. “What?”

“Doing well in school,” he corrects. “They’re blackmailing you into doing well in school.”

I stare at him for a minute, then have to look away, incredulous—at the clock hanging from the ceiling, at the empty platform outside, at my own hands. At the tracker on my wrist.

“So,” he says. He flips open the handbook and jumps right in. “Traits of an Aspiring National. There’s a fine line between being a strong, forward-thinking leader, which is what the National Party is looking for, and being hardheaded, obstinate, or selfish. You are expected to be independent, strong-willed, but not stubborn. To also respect authority.” He gives me a pointed look after that but keeps going. “To study frequently and intensely….”

I try to tune him out but I keep catching bits and pieces of the lecture: “not overly trusting, but trustworthy,” “both mentally and physically healthy,” “selfmotivated,” and other bologna like that. He rambles on for a long time about the point system, where students get points for behaving “properly” or lose them for

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stepping out of line. The points get tallied up at the end of the quarter on your permanent record, which is what the Nats up top study after you’ve graduated when they’re handing out positions in the party. Or something like that. It all seems pretty arbitrary, and seeing as I’ve got no intention of taking a position in the National Party I don’t really pay attention. No one in Well would give an ounce of credit to a point system like that.

The shuttle comes—sleek and metal, like a long bus but with wings that fold up under it as it lowers onto the platform—and we get on in the first-class segment.

The security guard working the door takes one look at Darvill’s ID and immediately stands up a little straighter. Darvill barely even nods at him as he leads us to big squashy seats at the front. I break out of my nonchalant routine just long enough to give him a quick, “Thanks,” because he seems nice enough and he’s a Westie and Darvill is being kind of a jerk.

When the shuttle lurches into the air, Darvill snaps the handbook shut.

“You’re not actually listening to any of this, are you?” he asks.

I don’t see the point in lying. “No.” He just nods. Looks at me for a minute. Then he pops open his briefcase, stuffs the book back into it, pulls out a newspaper, and starts to read.

“I’ll tell them I tried,” he says into the page, and that’s the last thing I hear from him for the next four hours.

The shuttle from Southlake to Benton takes forty-five minutes. We’re traveling at nearly six hundred miles an hour over the mountains, but with the g-force stabilizers and no windows, we could be sitting still and not even know it. This is the farthest from home I’ve ever been. I try to sleep again, but I’m wide-awake and antsy, and my palms keep sweating for no reason.

We switch to a train in Benton, and it’s another three hours to New Dedrick.

Now I can see us moving. The mountains give way to green fields of corn in unnervingly perfect rows, and then eventually buildings start popping up closer and closer together. Darvill keeps checking his watch. When the food cart comes through our car, he buys two plastic-wrapped sandwiches with cheese and some kind of meat—ham, maybe, and not the cheap imitation kind I’m used to—and then, out of nowhere, he gives one to me. I wonder if Darvill is maybe human after all. The food smells amazing, and I haven’t had a sandwich with real meat in years, but the idea of eating right now makes my stomach turn. I nibble on the corner, though, for Darvill’s sake.

And then we’re in New Dedrick and my eyes are glued to the window because it’s so unbelievable, like somebody copy-and-pasted a whole city block full of

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people and buildings and cars over and over and then lined them up farther than you can see. I’m in shock; any hope I’d had of keeping up my casualness is gone.

Darvill can tell that I’m completely out of my league.

The train stops, and as the rest of our compartment trickles out, Darvill grabs my arm.

“You can do this,” he says in a low voice. I stare at him. Where is this coming from? I’ve been deliberately ignoring him all day but now, he’s being almost encouraging. “I know you’re getting thrown in blind, but you can do this. Just keep your head down until you settle in, and then go from there. You’ll be fine.”

I pull on my backpack but don’t move. “Look, I appreciate it, but…why are you telling me this?”

He thinks about that for a couple seconds. “Because you’ve got guts,” he says finally. “I can tell. And as irritating as you are, I can’t help but root for you.”

He gets off the train and onto the platform and I follow him. We speed-walk through the station—through so many people, I can’t move, can’t breathe, can’t hear myself think—and push through the wide glass revolving doors and out onto the streets of New Dedrick.

And standing there, staring at the infinite traffic and mile-high office buildings and concrete sidewalks of the National Party’s capital city, I know I am in the soup.

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The Toymaker’s Trenches

by Paige Sammartino

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Cole tinkered with his latest creations: ballerinas that twirled and pirouetted, soldiers that marched and swung their arms, and clowns that bent over backwards and kicked their legs over their heads. These days, everyone in London was in desperate need of his services. Toys distracted people, made them think of happier times and simpler things. Toymakers took away pain.

Toymakers like Cole were particularly rare; he specialized in clockwork toys with tiny copper cogs sewn away beneath cloth skins. His toys were practically alive; their fluid motions drew praise from customers used to the cheap work of other toymakers, whose toys moved in awkward jerks or just stopped working all together.

Coleridge Toys was a popular stop in the neighborhood. Having families walk in late at night pleading for Cole to keep his shop open just a little longer was no unusual sight. He never minded; staying open for an extra few minutes usually won him a sale. A little girl would skip off with a ballerina while her tired mother would hand over a few coins, her husband’s pension shipped from overseas. Small women with sad eyes often came into the store with their children. Cole had never turned them away before, but, in these times, it was impossible.

He had granddaughters of his own: Alice and Margaret. They were still small, so their grandfather’s shop held as many treasures and wonders to them as it did the neighborhood children. Their mother, Cole’s daughter Susan, would bring them down to the shop sometimes. Of all the sad eyes Cole had seen over the last few years, none were sadder than his daughter’s.

She brought her children in one cold winter night and let them run around the shop as long as they didn’t break anything. They never did, and, even if they

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had, Cole wouldn’t have minded. He, with his half moon glasses and silver hair, sat behind the counter at the back of the shop, Susan perched on a tiny wooden chair opposite him. She had always been a petite girl, but she seemed especially small now, somehow proportionate on the tiny seat that Cole had built for a child.

“It’s been a month, Pa,” she said, wringing her hands in her lap. Cole knew that his daughter kept a rosary in her coat pocket and was aching to twist the beads between her fingers. This nervous habit from her schoolgirl days with the nuns had only grown worse in the last few years.

“You’ll get a letter soon, love,” he said, kissing the top of his daughter’s head.

“George is fighting for his country. It can be difficult to write everyday when one is busy being a patriot.”

“I’m afraid of what letter will come for me,” Susan said, looking down at her trembling hands. “Elisabeth Morgan got a telegram the other day.” Her voice hitched, and they sat silently in the back of the store while Alice and Margaret looked at the new horse dolls their grandfather had made – ones that trotted and tossed their manes.

“There is no telegram coming for you, Susan,” Cole said.

“Pa,” she whispered back, looking up. She had the soft brown color of her late mother’s eyes but none of their easy warmth. Cole looked at his daughter for a few minutes more, the sounds of his granddaughters’ giggling and teasing echoing behind him.

“Susan,” he said finally, “I’d like to show you something.”

Cole stood and walked to the front of his store, locking the door and turning out the lights at the front of the shop. When his granddaughters whined and ran up to him, he laughed and told them to keep playing; they could keep any toys they liked. The girls ran off again in search of their presents, and Cole went to his daughter. He led her into his workshop, a small room in the back of his store. No one but Cole ever went inside.

“Pa?” she asked.

“I had a very unusual customer some months back,” Cole said, turning on the light and shutting the door behind his daughter. Susan glanced around at her father’s unfinished toys and his plans. In the back of the room was a cabinet, and Cole made his way towards it. “A man from the government.”

“The government?”

“Yes. I can’t tell you who it was, my dear, much as I’d like to, but he came to me with a request.” Cole reached toward the cabinet door, and unhinged it, pulling it back. Susan gasped.

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Standing in the cabinet was George, his cheeks deathly pale, his eyes shut. His blond hair was full, his shoulders broad. He wore his military uniform, looking every bit the way he did when Susan kissed him goodbye eight months earlier.

“I made him,” Cole said softly, reaching up and placing his fingertips on the pale cheekbone. “Just like my toys—a clockwork soldier.”

“Pa, I don’t understand…” Susan managed. Her father turned to her with a small smile.

“My dear Susan, I am an English patriot. I am doing my duty to my country in these dangerous and frightening times. My toys are practically real—you know this better than anyone. You’ve watched me build them all your life.” Cole touched the clockwork soldier’s eyelid, pushing it up, and Susan shrank back at the glass orb beneath it: the eye of a toy. “I’ve been perfecting him, bit by bit,” Cole continued.

“Once he is complete, this government official will come for him and ship him to Germany. Then George will come home in his place.”

“Toys fighting the war against Germany?” Susan asked, her hand finally plunging into her coat pocket for the rosary beads Cole knew were there.

“It’s ingenious, isn’t it?” he asked. “We send these clockwork soldiers into battle and bring our boys home. It won’t matter if the dolls are destroyed, because we can always make more, no lives lost…but, in the meantime, the dolls can fight the German soldiers, made of flesh and blood. Fight and win, Susan! Toys won’t just fight the war against Germany—they will win it!”

“Pa…!”

“We’re sending our children into war,” Cole said, running a hand through his thinning hair. “We’re building what some call trenches—and what I call graves.

We’re digging our own children’s graves, Susan. I won’t bury George. I won’t bury any of them.” He sighed. “Children dig holes to hide their toys, their treasures, whatever their imagination merits, Susan—but now this war that has the whole world turned upside down, has turned even digging holes in the sand into means for bloodshed.”

Susan twisted a bead on her rosary, her lips silently forming the words the nuns had taught her. Ora pro nobis peccatoribus, nunc et in hora mortis nostrae. Amen.

“I know how crazy this all sounds,” Cole said. “Susan, I know, but this whole war is mad. We’re sending children by the dozen to their deaths! Why not send toys? If you can even call these toys, that is. I’ve already sent a prototype to the government—they could hardly tell the difference between my ‘toy’ and a real man.” He turned back to his creation, the other George that mirrored his son-inlaw in nearly every way. “They’re much more sophisticated than mere toys, I think.

The clockwork required for this young man is more complex than anything I’ve ever made before. The main issue is figuring out how to program combat abilities.”

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“Pa, you can’t be serious,” Susan said with a quivering laugh, her dull rosary beads clicking together.

“Of course I’m serious, Susan. I don’t joke about my work.”

“Pa, you’re a toymaker! You’re talking about building clockwork toys to be used as weapons by our military, and—” “Not just talking,” Cole corrected, shutting the door of the cabinet and hiding away the other George from view. “I am building weapons.”

“Pa—” “If only I could complete the combat programming…”

“Pa, listen to me!” Susan exclaimed, fists clenching around the rosary beads.

Cole turned to look at her over his half moon glasses. “…Susan?”

At her father’s perplexed tone, Susan hesitated, lowering her rosary beads and looking away.

“It almost feels like you don’t understand,” she said. “I know that you do, but what you just said…George has only been gone for eight months, but I know women who sent their husbands and sons off to war more than a year ago. Our families are, as you said, patriots, and now you have the audacity to say that you can replace our soldiers with toys.” Cole opened his mouth to argue. “Pa.” Susan looked back at her father. “How can you belittle their—our sacrifices like that? If toys could fight the Germans, it would be wonderful, I agree. But they can’t. Toys are not people.”

“Precisely why it is toys that should be fighting, Susan,” Cole said his brow furrowing. “You should understand best of all. If we can create toys to fight—and I have proven that we can—we will no longer have to sacrifice innocent lives.”

“For now,” Susan said. “Pa, what happens when the Germans realize that we are fighting them with toys? What happens when they learn the pattern of moves that our ‘soldiers’ do when their commanding officers wind them up? What happens when they push our toy soldiers back, Pa? Because they will. You can learn to program your clockwork dolls, but you cannot make a cog feel, and you cannot make cloth indestructible.”

Cole studied his daughter and sighed. “I agree,” he said, “which is why this is still a secret project, why the government has not put it into full effect just yet, but we shall figure it out eventually. I believe that we will.”

“Your heart is in the right place,” Susan said, returning her rosary beads to her pocket. “Your mind is not.”

Leaving the workshop behind, Susan called for her daughters in the store and told them to put back their toys. The girls complained, and, Cole, following his daughter out of the back room, gently chided Susan. It was as if what he had just

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shown her had never transpired; as with every visit to her father’s shop, Susan found herself kissing her father’s cheek goodbye and carrying an armful of presents for his granddaughters.

Another week went by, and still no letter came from George. Susan’s rosary beads clicked against one another more and more as she prayed harder and harder. Alice kept asking when her father would come home. Margaret asked when they could go back to their grandfather’s shop again. Susan’s response to everything was more prayer.

She received a phone call late one Sunday night from Elisabeth Morgan. Reminded of her own husband, Susan offered sympathy and asked if Elisabeth was well.

“I’m better than that, Susan,” Elisabeth said. “There was a mistake!”

“A mistake?”

“Yes, with the military. Some identification papers were mixed up, and Robert is alive! He was honorably discharged with an injury and has come home to me!”

“Oh, Elisabeth, I’m so glad!”

“So am I!” Elisabeth said, her voice trembling on the other end of the call. “Oh, Susan! He’s different now…quiet, you know. I can’t even imagine what horrors he saw on the battlefield. Not that it matters now—I won’t push him. It’s just so…my husband is alive again. God brought him back to me, Susan.”

“Yes, He has,” Susan agreed, twisting a rosary bead between her index finger and thumb as she spoke.

“He is different now,” Elisabeth said again, “but think of what he must have seen. My poor Robert. I’m so glad that he’s home!”

Susan’s fingers paused in their fiddling with her rosary beads. The image of empty, glass eyes came to her in a flash, and she thought of the other George hidden in her father’s cabinet.

“George will come home to you soon, Susan, I know it,” Elisabeth was saying, her voice on the telephone even more distant than before. “Our Lord will take care of him and bring him back to you, just like he brought Robert back to me. Praise God!” “Praise God,” Susan whispered.

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Murders at Whitechapel

by Erin Sinnott

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It was when the papers spoke of a second victim that Lawrence Caldwell decided to get on the case. It had been only about a week since the first attack by the Whitechapel Murderer, and the district papers couldn’t stop talking about it.

Amongst the graphic details of how Miss Chapman was brutally murdered were more assumptions of who the mysterious killer could be. Perhaps an Irish immigrant? Jew? “Pervert”? All were simply more targets to feed the imagination of gossip around Whitechapel. At least, that’s how Lawrence saw it.

Adjusting the brim of his hat, Lawrence tucked the paper under his arm before heading down Wentworth Street. From the alleyways and corners, he could hear hushed whispers of the locals; women of their safety and men of the discovery of the killer so he too could be put to death. Lawrence rounded a corner into the street sellers’ section of town—the area inhabited mostly by Irish immigrants.

His eyes skimmed up and down the vendors, hastily catching glimpses of mothers trying to calm their children while fathers pushed sales on the English. Most waved the vendors off and continued on their way, muttering comments of how filthy the families were. Yet, Lawrence didn’t stop until he reached a small stand towards the end of the street. Only then did he smile and hold out two farthings.

“I’ll take the usual.” Lawrence watched as the man behind the stand glanced up.

He had mussed auburn hair hidden beneath his newsboy cap and hundreds of freckles dotted his pale cheeks. He appeared to be in his early thirties, much like Lawrence himself. Wiping a few beads of sweat out from under his cap, he smiled back.

“I’ve been waiting for you all afternoon, Lawrence.” The man tossed the fresh

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fruit to him before adding the farthings to his pouch. “I was beginning to worry you wouldn’t show. You’re one of the only Englishmen to come through here and actually purchase something.”

“You’re my friend, Oscar.” Lawrence took a bite out of the fruit. “Though others may find it odd, you’re forgetting that I have Irish blood in me, as well. My mother’s side.”

Oscar snorted. “At least you have the English blood to make up for it with your father.”

Lawrence said nothing at that, simply smirking before changing the topic.

“Have you heard the latest news of the Whitechapel Murderer?”

“That they’re suspecting he’s an Irishman? Yes, I believe I did hear talk of that earlier today.” Oscar shifted in the seat at his stand. “Why?” Lawrence unfolded the paper from under his arm, holding it out to Oscar. When the immigrant stared blankly at the front page, Lawrence annotated it to him.

“There was another victim last night. Miss Annie Chapman. They say there was a witness this time, at least someone having seen her speaking with a gentleman.”

“Don’t they have suspects yet? You would think the police would be on top of that.” Oscar said once his eyes lifted from the artwork provided in the paper.

“They have suspicion, yes. All they’ve mentioned is thought of it being perhaps an immigrant of some sort, as… you had mentioned. That or a ‘pervert.’” The word slipped off Lawrence’s tongue in reluctance as Oscar snorted. “Honestly, I think otherwise.”

“What do you suggest we do, Lawrence? We’re not the law. We’re ordinary men.”

“As very well could the murderer be.” Lawrence looked Oscar over again before smiling. “Why don’t you come by my place tonight for a drink? We’ll discuss my thoughts there.”

After a moment of hesitation, Oscar finally nodded in agreement. Lawrence took another bite from the fruit as he bid farewell, flicking his trench coat before heading on his way through the already darkening alley.

“It has to be someone with at least some education.” Lawrence poured another glass of gin for Oscar. “The wounds the victims suffered from both before and after death were too intricate to be just anyone.”

“A surgeon perhaps?” Oscar took a swig of the alcohol once he got situated on the posh couch in the center of the room.

While Lawrence wasn’t of the highest class in the city, his home clearly showed evidence of wealth from several generations. A candlelit chandelier hung from the ceiling over a wooden floor carpeted in fine imported rugs from

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India. Even the walls were papered in gaudy patterns, cluttering the mind if stared at for too long.

“They certainly needed knowledge of anatomy.” Lawrence took a seat beside Oscar. “The murderer didn’t just cut his victims open for the thrill of it, either.

Some of the interior organs were also removed and missing. Only someone with a history in medical procedures could have located them all...”

Oscar’s hand slid over to Lawrence’s knee, resting upon it gently. “Obviously they would need to be wealthy then, hm? Or at least well off.” He gave a little squeeze.

“Well, that removes all questioning of the immigrants, then. For the most part anyway.” Lawrence could notice Oscar’s eyes lower at that for a brief moment, until he managed a smirk.

“It still leaves the “perverts” on trial, however.”

Lawrence moved closer to Oscar, a gleam in his eye. Parting his lips with a soft chuckle, he, too, forced a smile. “Now what would a “pervert” want with women?”

Oscar scoffed in return, feeling Lawrence remove his glass of gin from his hands and set it on the table beside them. Leaning in, Lawrence closed his eyes and allowed his lips to catch Oscar’s, the candles of the chandelier dimming for the night.

It wasn’t long after the death of Miss Chapman that a new article struck the front page. The once called Whitechapel Murderer now had a new name, supposedly proclaimed by himself due to a letter that to the police: “Jack the Ripper.”

The people of Whitechapel were now talking more than ever before. Not only had the killer released a letter with his supposed alias, but also details of what his next victim would experience.

“I can’t possibly see why he would send such a thing.” Lawrence sipped his tea as he read the front page, glancing up at Oscar momentarily. “Much of it sounds forced. It hardly reads like a killer wrote it.”

“Well, you did say that he very well could be an ordinary man.” Oscar watched his friend with interest. “It also seems he was quite taken aback by the press commenting on the skills of a doctor. Perhaps, if it were him, he fears the authorities are getting closer?”

“That or whoever wrote it wants to keep the minorities as the main target. It’s all rather confusing. If this were the killer, why would he send a note to the police?

And if it’s not the killer, why would anyone send such a letter claiming they were?”

Lawrence stared at the paper in perplexity.

“Like you said, if it is the killer, we know he’s planning to strike again… just the details of his next victim. But if not…” Oscar bit his lip.

“This very well could lead to another murder.”

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The street lamps flickered as Lawrence and Oscar made their ways home.

Shadows lingered on the cold cobblestone streets, the only sounds coming from gin-shops and opium dens along the alleys. Both men’s shoes clicked along the street beneath them, echoing off the dark buildings. As they continued along, Lawrence could feel Oscar’s fingertips begin to curl around his own, causing him to pull away sharply.

“We can’t, Oscar,” was all Lawrence said before pushing his hands into the pockets of his trench coat. “You know the law.”

“Oh, come now, Lawrence! No one’s around! Take a look for yourself!”

Lawrence feigned a glimpse over his shoulder through the darkness as he heaved a sigh. “It’s best we don’t risk it. All it takes is one person to see before we—” “Before we get marked as the “perverts” who have been committing the murders?” Oscar snorted.

“Before we end up on trial or in prison for being ourselves.”

Oscar fell silent. Without another word from either of them, both men continued down the street. Only when they crossed over onto Mitre Square was their silence broken, hollers from a policeman ahead of them caught their attention. Hurrying down the square, Lawrence and Oscar stopped short, the officer, too, looking distraught.

The body of a woman lay before them—mutilated. Like the other victims in the previous cases, her throat had been slit open, blood pouring out over the cobblestones. But that wasn’t what took both Lawrence and Oscar back. It was her abdomen, completely cut open, intestines stretched up over her shoulder, which caused them to grimace and turn away.

“Did either of you see what happened? Anything suspicious? Anything at all?”

The officer began questioning Lawrence and Oscar once other authorities arrived to look at the body.

“Nothing at all, sir.” Lawrence spoke softly with a tremble in his breath. “We didn’t even hear a scream.”

As the officers surrounded the body and allowed their doctor to observe the aftermath, Lawrence and Oscar turned away again. Had they only been passing through less than a half hour earlier, they would have run into the murderer themselves.

“Catherine Eddowes wasn’t the only one murdered, Oscar. It appears an Elizabeth Stride was also attacked last night, presumably by the same killer.” Lawrence’s hands were shaky as he held the paper now, leaning against a wall for support.

“What?” Even Oscar’s voice carried a trace of disgruntlement. “He’s never struck twice in one night.”

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“I wouldn’t be surprised if this was due to the letter. Like you said, if it wasn’t a sign from the killer himself, it was sure to spark something.” Lawrence folded the paper before tossing it in the nearby trashcan. “What I find especially peculiar is that Miss Eddowes’s ear was sliced and a chunk was taken off the lobe.”

“A lot was taken off of her, Lawrence. Surely you can remember.” Oscar trembled at the thought.

“Yes… but if you remember correctly, in the letter that was written to the police, this, “Jack the Ripper,” made sure to note that his next victim would have a piece of their ear removed.”

Oscar peered over to Lawrence steadily as more hushed whispers rose around them from passersby who had just received their copy of the paper. Glancing out across the street filled with its bustling horse-drawn carriages, Lawrence parted his lips.

“Either it truly was the killer who sent the note as a forewarning… or someone playing what they thought would be a joke may have just gotten an innocent woman killed.”

Though the weeks passed, neither Lawrence nor Oscar could wipe the thoughts of Miss Eddowes’s body from their minds. They still saw the blood, covering the once gray cobblestone; still saw her intestines, coiled around her arm like bloody snakes squeezing the life from their prey, and they still saw her limbs, twisted and mangled against the ground. At night, they would lay awake in each other’s arms, staring at the shadows on the wall. Every now and again, they could swear they shaped into the image of the ripper, looming over their bedside with his dagger ready to claim their throats as well. It was at that point, they swore they were going mad.

“Gin’s not going to help drown out the thoughts, Lawrence.” Oscar spoke softly as he was handed a glass from the bartender. “If anything, it’s going to just add to the lack of sanity we’ve had these past nights.”

“Please, Oscar,” Lawrence coaxed, taking his glass and downing what he could of the alcohol, “it will help ease our thoughts, even if for a brief while. Enough to let us sleep tonight.”

The voices of other drunken men rose up from inside the gin-shop as Oscar leaned close to Lawrence’s ear, whispering. “All it will take is us stumbling around drunk and blabbering what we saw the other night to get us locked up, Lawrence.

We’d make the perfect image for what they’re looking for in the ripper.”

Oscar motioned to their reflection across the bar. He sat in his typical immigrant attire, Irish features prominent in the lighting. As for Lawrence, with

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his trench coat and hat, he looked much like the drawings of what the murderer was described as—especially if he were to be silhouetted by shadows.

“We need to be careful, Lawrence.”

Staring at his drink, Lawrence shrugged Oscar off, taking his next glass and gulping it down to drown out his memories.

Down the dark cobbled streets, Oscar led Lawrence. While the street lamps flared as they did every night, the men became aware of the uncanny that came with their glow. It had practically been a month since they had wandered out after dark, and the memories from the murder of Catherine Eddowes still remained prominent in their minds.

Unlike most of the nights the two spent together in public, Oscar held onto Lawrence, supporting him along the cobblestones his foot slipped upon every once in a while. Lawrence’s breath reeked of alcohol, the source of his staggered movements. As they rounded a corner, Oscar sighed, tugging at Lawrence’s coat a bit harder now.

“You’d better hope no one spots us out here, Lawrence.” He urged his friend on down the street, knowing that the sooner they arrived home, the better it was for the both of them. “With the ripper cases, policemen are everywhere. All we’d need is a slip from you, and—” “Oh, do be quiet, Oscar.” Even Lawrence’s speech was somewhat slurred. “We’ll be fine. If either of us should be worrying about being caught by the police for anything, it would be you before me.”

Oscar stopped. “Why’s that?”

“You worry they’re out looking for good ol’ Jack and that they’ll turn us in for suspects. It’s the immigrants they’ve been after, Oscar! They’d take one look at you and—” “Well what about you?” Oscar glared at Lawrence. “You’ve got the outfit people have grown to fear thanks to the brilliant artists who have been trying to terrorize the city! Plus, you’re drunk, Lawrence! They’d say you’ve gone mad from intoxication!”

“Think logically here, Oscar.” Lawrence’s voice had dropped and his eyes bitterly stared at the Irishman. “If they had to turn in either you or me for imprisonment and execution, it would be filth like you that would go first… not a higher class Englishman like me.”

Oscar pressed his lips together tightly, not bothering to come back with a response. He knew that Lawrence was right, even if he was speaking through a drunken mind with no knowledge of how hurtful his words had been. They both

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remained in complete silence, just staring at each other, until a scream from down the street caught their attention. It was a woman.

Yet, Lawrence and Oscar simply stood there and listened, the scream burrowing deep into the backs of their minds as it longed to be forgotten along with the body of Miss Eddowes. And thus, they turned and walked away.

D yst o p i a

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Firebrand

by Janella Angeles

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Today was a day for celebration in Symmetry. But then again, almost every day was.

Everyone gathered around a metal stage set against the long expanse of grey brick wall near the main entrance of our city. The wall was scrubbed spotless and bare but for a second my eyes saw it consumed by a rich, earthy brick red—probably the first memory I have of moving into this city when I was three years old. But all too quickly, the red dissolved back into the color of dust, the color that the General had ordered to cover the bricks.

“Sadie? Sadie!”

I turned around and saw my mom push through a grumbling bunch of people to get over to me, nearly tripping over her dark, shapeless overalls in the process. If I was ever looking for some red resembling the bricks, I could almost always find it on my mom’s face when she was mad or worried.

“What are you doing standing here?” she gasped, cheeks now pink and slowing fading back to their normal color. “I looked away for two seconds, and then you weren’t next to me anymore. I thought I’d lost you, then I remembered how much you hate being lost, and—” “Mom,” I said slowly, putting my hands on her shoulders. “I’m seventeen. Being lost in a crowd full of scary strangers stopped being my biggest fear ages ago.”

“But as your mother, it’ll always be mine.” Still frazzled, she looked like she wanted to scold me a little bit more. Instead, she mussed the top of my head like she always did with a rueful smirk and sigh, before placing a hand on my back and looking at my wall. “What were you staring at, anyway?”

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I looked back to the wall, now noticing the identical, banner-sized posters lining the expanse of it, the stark whites a contrast to the dull grey. The Wanted posters were not particularly attention grabbing except for their size, but when I scrutinized them more closely, I read the words: WANTED BY THE ORDER OF SYMMETRY: FIREBRANDS No rewards promised, no numbers to call in case of suspicious activity. The posters had become so useless in capturing even a hint of Symmetry’s most notorious gang that they were simplified and hung to function as mere warnings. What the poster really meant to say was: WE WILL FIND YOU ONE WAY OR ANOTHER. “Those bunch of fools.” Mom shook her head lightly when she followed my line of vision. But in her voice, I sensed more amusement than reproach.

I didn’t find them foolish; I found them reckless. I wasn’t born yet when the Firebrands first started. It was twenty-four years ago, right after The Three Creative Evils were abolished and the holidays applauding the list of creative crimes began. Everything Symmetry hated about a creative mind—art, liberation, invention, pleasure, emotion, violence, sexuality, and insanity—the Firebrands translated through their particular mode of expression: graffiti. When I was about five years old, the gang would divulge in sprees, wildly tagging walls and buildings, benches and sidewalks, anything that could be noticed by the public eye. Most of their work nowadays has been simplified into hate messages against the General. Back then it was so shocking and graphic that whenever Mom walked me to school, she would cover my eyes when the stenciled images appeared. She’d sometimes even blush at them.

“Mom, remember when this wall used to be red without paint?” I still thought of the day when the Firebrands had spray-painted this entire wall red last year as a joke. Guess they shared a fondness for the bricks as well.

“Shhh.” Her hand on my back tensed. “Not so loud here.”

The chatter of the gathering crowd around us was so great that my volume wouldn’t have made a difference; it would’ve just added to the noise. But Mom was usually the paranoid one, especially on days like this. There was a slight drift in the crowd as the Guards began taking their places by the stage and around the audience. Like herdsmen, the Guards guided us slightly more to the center. And like cattle, we didn’t really see anything wrong with compliance.

Everyone in attendance continued prattling, even more so than usual.

“What’s everybody so wrapped up about?” I asked as we were pushed into another couple of people. Attending one of the General’s speeches felt more like being in a compact can of sardines. I noticed even more black-clad Guards file

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around the population of the city, standing side by side with guns slung across their chests. The one closest to me was only a few feet away, but there was something in his angling face and searching eyes—the ones mirrored by every Guard surrounding us—that told me he was looking for something or someone in particular. I asked my mom the question again.

“Do you even know what day it is today?” An old woman with a triangular beak of a nose interrupted instead, training her weathered eyes at me. Her voice practically dripped with condescension.

There were so many celebrating days that they all sort of blended together.

The Order divides a whole year equally into three categories—Music, Writing, and Art— that represent the ills that have officially been abolished and transformed into crimes in Symmetry.

The Three Creative Evils, as the General called them.

Today, it was September 1, 2046. The projection screen that began to thrive with life showed a silhouetted image of paintbrushes shooting from a palette, all surrounded by an encompassing outline of fire.

“It’s Art right now,” I answered confidently.

“Tsk. It is Art, indeed.” the woman scoffed, not at me but at the word. “And a fine time to celebrate its end as the harsh winter starts trickling in. What a joyous Painting Day we’ll have today.” She looked up at the sky, which had turned a muddy white.

The Three Evils split up into subdivisions, which then made the holidays. Just last week when we were still in the season of Writing, we commended the illegality of poetry, an event in which the General spoke about the “wise” words of an ancient English poet named Samuel Taylor Coleridge. Then, he chose to highlight how the man inevitably became an opium addict because of his writing.

“Although tales exist no longer for us,” the General had said that day. “The life of a poet’s, as seen from Coleridge, is a cautionary one for all creative minds, indeed.”

I wondered which artist he will choose to illustrate as the cautionary tale of painting today.

“The Art season is such a satisfying time for me,” the beaked woman continued.

My mom is silent, and I can tell that she’s listening too. “It spits in the faces of all those lurid and vulgar creations, and their even more vulgar creators. How some of the men depicted women is positively sexist and perverted. No privacy, no modesty. All chaos and some unfortunate piece of paper for a demented artist to rape. No wonder most of them became insane.”

I felt my mom take me by the forearm, gently pulling me back, away from the woman who continued blathering about her eternal hatred for art. Frankly, I didn’t need to be pulled—I moved through the crowd willingly.

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At this point in the day, the stage was all lit up and alive in a way that demanded attention, with the screen displaying the emblem of Art season and the dignified leaders of Symmetry filing into the rows of chairs on the platform. The public grew even rowdier, especially as the General made his way up the steps, taking his time as his feet marched across to the podium.

“Something’s gonna happen, I just know it,” a guy behind me muttered.

I was close to turning around to asking him, but Mom kept a stern hand on my shoulder, keeping me in place. In her mind, keeping me safe.

“Yeah, I can practically feel it in the air,” another male voice replied. “They’ve been quiet for the past couple of weeks. They must’ve worked up something good for today.”

“Of course they did. It is Art season.”

“Bet the General loves that irony, right?”

“Remember last year when they graffitied all of Levington Street?” one of them started barking at the memory, and had to take pauses in between laughs. “It was labeled—” “The De-Evolution of Man,” the other one recited in a dramatic voice, which crumbled when he recalled the image. I could see the stenciled paintings so clearly in my mind—large images of man dominating the street pavement, regressing into apes, and finally to the General, who was drawn with some generously applied gorilla-like features.

The area around us suddenly grew quiet, a glimmer of a shadow descending over us.

“What are you two gentlemen talking about?”

This time, I had to look behind, and my heart almost stopped. It was a Guard, his sleek gun toted blatantly like it was just another limb attached to his body.

His face was that of a predator who had successfully caught his prey, a smug smile dominating his expression. The two boys who were talking looked to be about my age, but from the way their faces went immediately pale, they looked more like little scared children.

Nobody around us knew what to do other than just stare silently ahead. Mom urgently nudged me to look forward as the General took his place, but my eyes remained on the dark-haired Guard forcibly shoving the two boys through the already parted crowd. The Guard saw me watching, and gave me a smug little wink to match his smile before escorting the boys away from the gathering, no doubt contemplating some brutal punishment for speaking out against our leader.

I recoiled back into my spot next to Mom, fiercely ashamed at the silence and indifference that had overtaken us. I swallowed the lump in my throat, tried

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pushing the traitorous thoughts from my mind before the General could sweep his gaze over the crowd and spot me looking guilty. I drained my face of expression.

The General waited for the mass of citizens to hush like a disappointed father looking upon his misbehaving children. It filled everyone with so much shame that the silence came instantly. “‘How can I be useful, of what service can I be? There is something inside me, what can it be?’” the General spoke, his words bouncing off in echoes across the city even though there was no microphone in front of his. He almost always began with a quote, one he would say with such sincerity, such earnestness. “These were the words of a painter named Vincent van Gogh. A man who painted feral sunflowers, narcissistic self-portraits, and cut off his own ear in a fit of insanity.

Happy Painting Day, everybody!”

The General’s full name was actually General William Sett, and technically he was the city’s Mayor. But neither title suited him correctly, sounding too wordy or too delicate, so he grew accustomed to General because it was formidable and a reminder of his military achievements in the Third World War. Even though he walked with a slight limp, was a bit too pale, and possessed a body that was only hinted of some muscle, I always found him eerie to look at. His physical features made me wonder how someone like him could have earned a reputation as a death machine in war. The thought made me shudder as he continued speaking.

“Art is inferior, it is self-indulgent, has no definitive purpose or meaning, and consumes its creator with madness and obsession.” He said all in one breath, captivating us with the way the words rolled ceaselessly from his mouth. “Painting is merely a swirl of color, of perception that is not reality. It is delusion.”

The air shifted from mesmerized to shock as a scream pierced the air.

Mom grabbed my hand, always making sure that I was with her, as our eyes and those of all the people around us darted in every direction. But right in front of us the wall started ripping apart. All of the posters on the bricks simultaneously dropped from their holdings, sliding to the pavement to reveal the large images that lay behind them.

In the back of my mind, the phrase “See No Evil, Hear No Evil, Speak No Evil” ran through my head. It was something that Mom usually uttered, her common mantra for her paranoid self. Along the expanse of the brick wall were the images of monkeys in each of the posters’ places. Written in clear lettering above the first was FOOLED BY EVIL, an image that depicted a monkey handcuffed and placed within a celebration which imitated ours. The next image was SCHOOLED BY EVIL that showed a monkey donning a gray school uniform heading into a building

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which looked eerily like my school. And the last imaged was labeled RULED BY EVIL. The monkey was clearly dressed to represent the General, no doubt about it, with his military garb and abundance of medals. The monkey General, however, was picking his nose and drooling.

The General shouted at the Guards to cover the pictures. The length of the wall stretched for what looked like miles, displaying the same patter of Fooled, Schooled, and Ruled one after the other.

A few Guards shoved through the crowds in the direction of the General to protect him, but the majority of them filed in the opposite direction, their guns pointed out to the crowd with evil smirks on their faces.

The whole assembly of people started screaming—people ducking or crawling on the ground to safety, running in different directions and pushing against each other like schools of fish scrambling away from a predator. I was about to grab Mom’s hand and run, but she had already pulled me to the ground and covered me with her body, insisting that I stay silent and that everything would all right.

When the shooting began, I covered my ears and my eyes, heart racing beneath my chest as I imagined the blood flying in the air, the sound of bodies dropping to the floor in heaps and piles. I trembled at the thoughts, but as soon as I felt my mom’s body shaking—not in panic, in laughter—and urging me to get up with her, I uncovered my eyes and looked around.

The people who had crouched on the ground were laughing, and the ones who were standing were covered in blotches of neon paint. Bright pinks, oranges, yellows, blues. The colors were so delicious, no one could look away from the novelty of them. Having lived in grey with only glimpses of colors every now and then, I drank in as much as I could. Even the people who were hit didn’t mind— they looked amazed at their dark grey outfits destroyed by the color.

This time, a Guard stepped from the line with what looked like a portable cannon, pulling its trigger into the air which sounded with a distinct pop noise.

Our eyes were averted up to the sky where he had shot to, watching as a mass of tiny pieces of bright red paper rained on us like confetti. People everywhere reached their hands into the air, little kids jumping to retrieve it like it was gold. Eventually one fell right in front of my face.

The flimsy paper held one simple drawing: A bright, violent outline of a flame surrounded by a ring. The symbol of the Firebrands.

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41

Songs from Home

by Paige Sammartino

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My hands were too small to hold a gun, so I could not protect my home. I curled up in my mother’s arms, and she whispered to me, Eliasz, Eliasz, while my father, with a true man’s hands, took his rifle and followed his brothers out of the house. The Russians will save us; the Russians will come for us. This was my mother’s mantra.

I asked my sister Milena if it were true, if the Russians would save us. Yes, she said, with all the wisdom of a seventeen-year-old woman, if we live to see it. I wondered if my father would see the Russians save us.

The Germans had been in Poland for a long time—as far back as I can remember. Milena said it was because I was too small to remember when they came to Warsaw. I asked her once if she remembered when they came, and she got quiet, which frightened me. Back then, Milena was always chatty—that I remember. Now she was quiet all the time. I never asked her again whether she remembered the Germans coming to Warsaw.

Eliasz, Eliasz. My sister was calling me from my sleep. I opened my eyes. When I rolled onto my side, I saw my sister standing at the window, looking outside. It was early still. I had a dream last night, she said, sounding as if she were talking to herself. I dreamed that I died. It didn’t sound like a good dream, and I told her so.

Actually, she said, it was the most peaceful I’ve felt in a long time. I believed her.

Milena was quiet but not at peace. I asked her why she woke me up to tell me this.

In the dream, you died, too, she said, and I was glad that neither of us died alone.

That was the first time my sister dreamed about death. I was young, but not so young that I couldn’t remember. We shared a bedroom, and even in the dark,

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her eyes were bright when she turned to look at me. I dreamed that I died. I would come to hear this phrase often, to find patterns in her delivery of it. Sometimes her voice trembled in the dark—I drowned. I couldn’t breathe. Every time I tried, I only swallowed more water. Sometimes she giggled, a little like she was afraid, a little because it was funny—I exploded into a thousand pieces, like fireworks!

After our father joined the Armia Krajowa, my sister dreamed of death almost every night. I wondered when she slept. Milena’s dreams used to frighten me, but I became used to them after a while. She woke me up often to tell me that she dreamt of death. She stopped telling me how she died. It didn’t scare me to hear her talk about it—most of the time, at least. Once, Milena shook me harder than she usually did when she woke me up, and she was crying. You died without me! she kept saying. I was afraid because she was so upset. When she calmed down, she told me that she’d dreamed that her loved ones had all died, but she had lived. It was terrible, she said. I didn’t know what to say to make her feel better. She asked if she could sleep in my bed with me. I said yes.

One night, I woke up, and my sister was coming in the door. When I asked where she had been, she shushed me and said only that she couldn’t sleep. I recognized the glint in her eye, though. I knew my sister well enough to know that she was lying to me. I went back to bed and fell asleep again, but I was awoken once more by men outside our house drunkenly singing. Nie rzucim ziemi, skąd nasz ród! Nie damy pogrześć mowy! Polski my naród, polski lud! (We won’t forsake the land we came from. We won’t let our speech be buried. We are the Polish nation, the Polish people.) I listened to them sing for a while and waited for someone to tell them to be quiet. But when our neighbor, Mr. Kowalski’s voice did ring out, though, it was to join in the singing. Another man’s voice followed, and then a woman’s. Milena sat on the edge of my bed and put her arm around me, pulling me up to sit against her, and we sang with them. Nie damy, by nas zniemczył wróg. Tak nam dopomóż Bóg! (We won’t let the foe Germanize us. So help us, God!) My sister woke me up one night in 1944 but didn’t say anything at first. I slid over in my bed, and she got under the covers and curled up beside me. I dreamed that I was with our uncles, she said. The Germans blew off my head. My sister had never dreamed this before—at least, she hadn’t told me the details of her dreams in a long time. When she started to cry, I did too.

Our mother woke us up only a few hours later, before the sun rose. She was crying, and she told us to pack our things. Your father is gone, she said, and she pulled Milena aside. I wondered why she was so upset. Our father was probably off

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with other men planning to fight off the Germans. It wasn’t until Milena started crying that I realized what “gone” meant. I killed him, Milena said between sobs.

It’s my fault. I killed him. I killed my father! My mother grabbed Milena by the arm and told her to get dressed. We had to leave.

It wasn’t until years later that my uncle told me how my father died. He had given himself up to the Germans in order to give my uncles a chance to escape. The man who killed my father looked him dead in the eye right before he took out a gun and blew off his head. I was an adult by the time my uncle told me anything more than The Germans got him. The words came as no surprise to me, though. I knew how my father died. Milena had told me the night before it happened. I knew that he had died in exactly the way she dreamt, and so did she. My mother took us into the sewers of Warsaw to hide us. She sent me down first, with my uncle, but Milena ran. My mother screamed her name and chased after her. I reached up my arms and cried for my mother, for my sister, but my uncle pulled me down into the sewer and away from the morning’s new light. I never saw either of them again.

My sister killed herself. I know that she did. My uncle says that she panicked when she ran. My mother tried to catch up to her, but the Germans caught them first. He says that he is sure that was how it happened. I know that his explanation is wrong.

The first night I spent in the sewer, I dreamed of my sister’s death. I was running in the dream, and I heard my mother yelling behind me. I turned and saw her, huddled up in my father’s coat, running as fast as she could—nowhere near as fast as I was running. I ran down street after street, posters along every wall, fence, window, reading Polski my naród, polski lud! (We are the Polish nation, the Polish people!) People were running all around, awake with the new day. They were panicking, as my uncle had thought. My mouth opened, and my sister’s laugh spilled from my lips—that same sad, frightened laugh from when she told me she dreamed of exploding, like fireworks! I kept running until I turned a corner and met a group of German soldiers. My sister’s laugh bubbled from my stomach to my lips, and I opened my mouth to sing as loud as I could, in Milena’s voice: Nie damy, by nas zniemczył wróg. Tak nam dopomóż Bóg! My mother behind me screamed her name—Milena! Milena! One of the Germans aimed his gun, my sister’s laughter still ringing in my own ears.

I woke up, knowing that I had seen my sister’s death exactly as it had happened.

I felt what she felt. She blamed herself for our father’s death. I heard her thoughts loud and clear in my own head—I should have warned him, I could have saved him—and I was finally truly and completely afraid of my sister’s dreams. How

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many Polish lives had she seen in their final moments? When had she realized the meaning of her dreams? Perhaps she didn’t fully understand them until she lived my father’s death. Milena finally saw her gift—her curse—for what it was, and when she died she left it to me. Crying and trembling in the dank sewer, I whispered to my sister, whom I knew was there in the darkness with me, rousing her so that I wouldn’t have to be alone.

I dreamed that I died.

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Under the Cypress Trees Back Cover Summary

A Determined Journalist Self-described “Eco-Friendly Hipstress” Amelia Rallington lives a contented life in Manhattan, making a living as a writer for green magazine Tree Hugger Monthly.

When Amelia hears rumors of a surviving population of woodpeckers long believed extinct in the bayou of Louisiana, she leaves her urban jungle behind for the tangled swamps to get the scoop. Enlisting the help of swamp-man Jason DuPont, Amelia will go to any length to find the birds, but she soon finds something else that threatens to tear her heart asunder…

A Reptilian Playboy When down-home alligator wrestler Jason meets cultured vegan Amelia, he is immediately intrigued. This cultured woman with a journalism degree from Syracuse University and vegan boots of organic leather is like no one he has ever encountered in his life, and he soon turns his attention from the reptiles of the bayou to matters of the heart. But when forces greater than their social differences threaten their love, Jason must choose between Amelia and the bayou he calls his home.

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Under the Cypress Trees

by Blake Campbell

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Amelia sat in the boat with her legs crossed, snacking on a cup of organic soy yogurt with all-natural vanilla flavoring with a spoon made from recycled plastic.

Jason tied the length of orange twine around the dead chicken’s neck and tossed it off the back of the boat. It trailed a ribbon of red as he resumed his rowing, flailing in the murky swamp water like a flaccid cock.

“Won’t be too long now,” he said. “Any gator nearby’ll just snatch it right up.”

“Lovely,” Amelia said, licking the last bit of yogurt from her spoon.

“I know you ain’t too partial to animals gettin’ killed on accounta gator hunting,” Jason said, “but wait till you see this. These monsters are like dinosaurs. Like fuckin’ T-Rexes.”

“They aren’t monsters, Jason, they’re animals. And T-Rexes lived on land, walked on two feet, and probably had feathers.”

“No need to be so serious. You forget I’m not as educated as you, darlin’.”

“Believe me, I don’t.”

Jason smirked at her remark. His thin-lipped smile, as devious as it was charming, seemed to glaze his steel gray eyes with a silver glimmer. She scolded herself. This hick was her guide and nothing more. She wasn’t supposed to find him attractive.

“I think we’re gonna anchor here,” Jason said. The boat’s motor went silent, and the stark quietness of the bayou filled Amelia’s ears. Jason had chosen a secluded area, beneath the shade of bald cypress trees draped with Spanish moss.

The water became still and glossy as the last ripples from the boat petered out against the shore.

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It’s beautiful, Amelia admitted, but didn’t dare vocalize her feelings. She was a city girl, here for business and nothing else.

As Jason leaned over the edge of the boat to check out the bait, Amelia took advantage of the opportunity to check out his firm ass, perfectly framed in his faded blue jeans.

Stop it! she chided herself.

“This fucker’s goin’ strong,” Jason announced as he turned to face her, his hands slick with greenish swamp water and chicken blood. “Only a mattera time.”

Amelia sighed and fidgeted in her seat. The thought of a large carnivorous reptile exploding from beneath the surface made her a little nervous.

“You’re not scared, are ya?” Jason asked, chuckling to himself.

“No,” Amelia said, her terseness betraying her fear.

“Uh-huh.” Jason looked up for a second, that infuriating smirk appearing on his face again. He met her eyes, and she looked away, almost involuntarily, she thought. “You don’t have to worry, darlin’. I’ve done this a ton of times before.”

She scoffed. “I’ll just call you Steve Irwin, then.”

“Thanks,” he said.

Silence hung in the air for a moment as they waited. Then, Jason let out an abrupt snort of laughter.

“What’s so funny?” Amelia demanded.

“Nothin’,” Jason said. “I was just thinkin’ about how strange it is that a girl who wears boots made out of plants and won’t even drink milk from a cow can be so out of touch with Mother Nature.”

“How can you say I’m out of touch with nature? I came all the way down here to find a woodpecker. I obviously care.”

“Uh-huh,” Jason said. He opened his mouth to say something else, but the boat jerked suddenly before he could speak. Something splashed in the water.

Amelia caught the scaly edge of the alligator’s tail out of the corner of her eye.

She screamed.

“Shit!” Jason yelled. He tore off his shirt, and even in her terror, Amelia still made it a point to sneak a peek at his washboard abs before he dove off the edge of the boat and into the swamp. Adrenaline flooded her body, and she jumped from her seat to get a better look at the struggle in the water.

“Stand back!” Jason shouted from the water, and Amelia stumbled backward as he pushed the alligator over the edge of the boat, coming within inches of its snapping jaws. Jason followed, pinning the reptile’s thrashing body to the bottom of the boat and fastening its mouth shut with his belt. Once he had the creature sufficiently restrained, he looked up at Amelia, grinning.

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“Thank you for nearly giving me a heart attack!” Amelia said, clutching her chest.

“Aw, now don’t go all drama queen on me, darlin’. You’re better than that,” Jason said, examining his catch. “Six-footer, I’d say. Not as big as he could be, but not bad.”

“You’re insane. You’re just…insane.”

“And darn proud of it!” Jason said, still wearing his crazy grin as if to prove it.

Amelia noticed the way his soaked, beltless jeans hung below his waist, revealing the V of his groin, and she couldn’t help but smile too.

After the capture, Jason invited Amelia to his mother’s house for dinner.

Reluctantly, she accepted. The man had agreed to show her to the ivory-billed woodpecker; it was only polite to take a bit of his Southern hospitality.

She showed up at Mama DuPont’s house at 6:00 that evening, and could smell the savory aromas of Cajun cooking even before Mama DuPont opened the door and invited her into the house. Jason was already in the kitchen, setting the table.

“Nice to see you again, dear!” Mama DuPont said, giving Amelia an awkward, bony embrace. “Havin’ any luck with those peckers?”

“Woodpeckers, Mama,” Jason corrected. “Let’s not embarrass our guest.”

“Aw, she knows I’m just kiddin’ around,” Mama DuPont said, swatting her son playfully with a dishtowel.

“Something smells good,” Amelia said.

“It’s jambalaya,” Mama DuPont explained. “Jason told me you ain’t partial to meat, so I made a batch without it special for you.”

Amelia glanced over at Jason, who was putting out the glasses now. He smiled modestly as he caught her eyes. “Thank you,” she said, overcome with appreciation.

“You didn’t have to do that.”

“Well we certainly weren’t gonna let you starve, sugar. Now let’s sit down and eat,” Mama DuPont said.

The food tasted as delicious as it smelled, and Amelia was happy to enjoy a home-cooked meal for the first time in a while.

“So what are your plans for tomorrow?” Mama DuPont asked.

“I’m taking Amelia to the clearin’ in the woods, where we keep seein’ them woodpeckers,” Jason explained.

“And what are you gonna do there?”

“Wait for one to come by, I reckon. Ain’t that right, Amelia?”

“I guess so,” Amelia said. “That’s all we really can do. I need to prove these birds are still alive.”

“We’re getting up bright and early, before the crack of dawn,” Jason added.

U n d e r t h e Cyp re ss Tre e s

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“Well that sounds like a nice day,” Mama DuPont said. “You kids have fun.”

“Mama, I’m twenty-three.”

“That don’t mean nothin’,” Mama DuPont said, and she began to laugh. Jason began to laugh along with his mother, and Amelia found it was hard not to join in.

As Jason had promised, they awoke before sunrise the next morning to begin their stakeout. Amelia brought her notebook and pen, her camera, and a 100 percent pesticide free Granny Smith apple.

They chose an abandoned tree stand—newly refurbished by Jason—as their vantage point. Sitting about fifteen feet above the ground, it provided a clear view of the surrounding trees. Amelia took a bite of her apple and inhaled some of the cool morning air. She was ready.

Hours passed. Jason dozed off, his head propped against the tree trunk. He looked peaceful, she thought, napping in the forest like that.

It was becoming more and more difficult for Amelia to deny her true feelings for him, to dismiss the passion that boiled in her heart whenever she caught sight of his sculpted body or crazy, wolfish grin. She just stared at him, watching him sleep.

He stirred around noon, when the sun was high in the sky, gold trickling down through the branches of the trees. He grumbled as he awoke, rubbing the back of his head. There was a distinct bulge in his jeans.

“Good afternoon, sleepyhead,” Amelia said. “Is that a really big eastern diamondback rattlesnake in your pants, or are you just happy to see me?”

“Huh?” Jason said, looking down at his crotch. “Oh.” Amelia nodded.

“You’ve definitely been readin’ up on your reptiles, darlin’. Can you give me the scientific name, though?”

“Crotalus adamanteus,” she whispered in his ear before pulling him into a hard kiss.

“Correct,” he crooned when she moved her lips to his neck.

Amelia moaned as Jason’s hands explored her body, snaking beneath her shirt and unclasping her brassiere. He tossed the undergarment to the ground and pulled her shirt over her head, exposing her torso to the fresh air of the wilderness.

She kneaded the protrusion in his jeans with one hand as he took her breast in his mouth. As his warm tongue flickered over her nipple, she threw her head back and opened her eyes in ecstasy to the canopy of the forest. Suddenly, a flash of black and white flying overhead caught her attention. It alighted on a tree a few yards away, then disappeared into the woods.

“Fuck,” Amelia said.

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" Bl ake C am pb e ll

“What?” Jason asked, but before she could give him an answer she was climbing down the tree, camera around her neck, bare breasts jiggling back and forth.

“Amelia!” Jason called. “What the hell are you doing?”

“The woodpecker! It’s here, Jason! I saw it!” she yelled back, and she ran to pursue the Holy Grail bird through the forest.

“Son of a bitch,” Jason groaned, holding his aching member through his jeans.

“Fucking woodpeckers.”

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Author Biographies Janella Angeles is a WLP major from the class of

2015. She draws her

inspiration from rock stars like Disney’s Pocahontas and J. K. Rowling (in that order), and hopes to create ‘the next big novel’ like every young, hopeful writer in the world. She loves reading and writing about the world of fiction, especially dystopia, because of her vast appreciation for underlying truths, satires on society, and the rebels who ultimately emerge to fight for what matters.

Olivia Billbrough

grew up in Philadelphia and started writing plays in

high school. The kind of science fiction that she really enjoys are the stories that have an element of science fiction as a backdrop for a human story. This is the first time she has written science fiction and she enjoyed coming up with the world and the way everything would work. She is also in contact with D.D Conners who is writing a Yeti-Sasquatch love story. It’s going to be big.

Blake Campbell is a Class of 2015 Writing, Literature, and Publishing Major. He grew up in rural Pennsylvania, where he spent his childhood catching frogs and salamanders and watching the bats fly out of the old building across the street from his house. This is his first time in an Emerson publication and he is ecstatic to be part of Generic.

"

Paige

Sammartino

53

is a junior Writing, Literature, and Publishing

student pursuing her BFA. She serves as the Editor-in-Chief of Gangsters in Concrete and is also involved with Stork and the catharsis. One day, she hopes to write adventure books for young readers.

Erin Sinnott

is a WLP major with a concentration in fiction. She has

loved writing for as long as she can remember; and even before she could write, she has been told she used to tell stories to her pets and stuffed animals. She also led the Historical Fiction workshop hosted by Undergraduate Students for Publishing in January. The current novel project she has been working on (and heavily researching) is a WWII piece taking place in war stricken Germany entitled Requiem.

Melinda Thompson

is a sophomore Writing, Literature, and Publishing

student. This is her first appearance in a non-avian-named publication (previous credits being Black Swan and Stork) and also her first genre piece. She likes YA novels, the rolling fields of her home-state Kentucky, and correct usage of commas.