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Generic, Issue 7, Spring 2015 Copyright for all stories go to their creators.

Generic is copyright of Undergraduates Students for Publishing, Emerson College Design by Hanna Rose Katz and Kelsey Aijala Cover Art by Michelle Ajodah and Hanna Rose Katz This issue is set in Gill Sans and Cochin.

Electronic edition published on issuu.com Print edition printed at Emerson College Print and Copy Center, Boston

Table of Contents LETTER TO THE READER INVINCIBLE Michael Moccio

EVEN IN THE WASTELAND Jack Hemingway

IMP Emma Zirkle

THE LUNAR LIFESTYLE Rachel Cantor

CURIOSITY Amanda Doughty

MY MONSTER Kaitlyn Johnson

IZZY David Briody

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Generic Staff EDITOR-IN-CHIEF Natalie Hamil

MANAGING EDITOR Carl Lavigne

EDITORS Kelsey Aijala, Camila Cornego, Rebecca Crandall, Anna Tayman

READERS

Mary Baker, Rachel Cantor, Melissa Close, Sarah Cummings, Sammi Curan, Diana DiLoreto, Sarah Dolan, Allyson Floridia, Casey Nugent, Caroline Rabin, Laura Sabater, Victoria Sagardia

HEAD COPYEDITOR Hayley Gundlach

COPYEDITING STAFF Courtney Burke, Ariana Colozzo, Kaitlyn Johnson, Sara Zatopek

PROOFREADER Kaitlyn Coddington

INTERIOR DESIGNER Hanna Rose Katz

ASSISTANT INTERIOR DESIGNER Kelsey Aijala

MARKETING MANAGER Diana DiLoreto

ASSISTANT MARKETER Mary Baker

COVER ARTIST

Michelle Ajodah and Hanna Rose Katz

DEAR READERS, Thank you for picking up the seventh issue of Generic! We are thrilled and honored that you wonderful readers have embraced our mission to showcase genre fiction, and we are delighted to share these stories with you.

While there are many opportunities to study and write literary fiction here at Emerson College, the founders of Generic were disappointed by how few opportunities students were presented with to write genre fiction. Thus, Generic was born: Emerson College’s only genre fiction magazine. We hope to provide a haven for anyone interested in writing and publishing genre fiction. In addition to this magazine, we hold writing workshops each month, each dedicated to a specific genre. This semester we focused on romance, space opera, and western genres, which sparked some amazing marketing campaigns and stellar turn-out from the student body. We hope to create a space where our workshop guests can exercise their creativity in a constructive (and fun!) environment.

On the magazine side of things, we are very excited to announce that we have continued to expand our staff this semester. Our reading staff has grown to include editors and readers, who have had much more hands-on experience with editing for our authors; our copyediting department has been streamlined; our marketing department has outdone itself with the creation of Generic’s very own social media presence; and our design department has created a beautiful new design that will continue to evolve as Generic solidifies itself as a presence on campus. We are growing in so many exciting ways.

In short, it is incredibly important to us here at Generic that quality stories are valued as quality stories, regardless of their genre. These amazing stories are crafted by incredible imaginations with characters that are just as relatable, plots that are just as original, and quality that is equal to that of literary fiction.

This is my final semester as Editor-in-Chief of Generic, and, as my time comes to an end, I’d like to thank so many people. Since I don’t have much space, I’d just like to say thank you to everyone who has helped create this magazine, past and present. I will never be able to stop explaining how much I appreciate and admire you from the bottom of my heart.

- NATALIE HAMIL EDITOR-IN-CHIEF

MICHAEL MOCCIO SUPERHERO FICTION

Invincible

Let’s play a game.

Imagine you’re a superhero. You’re the superhero, the one everyone looks up to and the one who leads all of the others against those grandiose galactic threats that risk the earth’s destruction. When everything seems lost, it’s your name the people whisper as they cling to each other under the rubble, praying for salvation; it’s your name all the super villains shout when they’re carted off to prison; it’s your name the entire superhero community cheers as a rallying cry when everything seems hopeless.

Your name is Vanguard—you share it with your team. In the dictionary, your name has two meanings: “a group of people leading the way in new developments or ideas” and “a position at the forefront of new developments or ideas.” To you, it means to champion the way forward, to be the ideal to strive for when people start to question who they are and stray down the path of evil. You’re not only a hero: you’re a symbol and an icon.

You might be wondering who you are, how you got your powers, if your parents know, what your love life is like. None of that matters. As far as the general public is concerned, you’re defined by your powers, your costume, and your name. You’re defined by what they can see: the flight, invulnerability, super strength, and speed. They imagine you have all the powers your seven-year-old self, watching morning cartoons and hoping your parents would stop arguing, wished you had. And you do, even the ones they can’t see, like the super hearing. None of that matters.

No one cares about anything but your costume and your icon; no one cares about who you are. They wouldn’t care about the fact you’re a video game designer by trade—in fact, the video game designer of one of the most lauded titles ever produced. How would people react if they knew Vanguard

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Invincible was the one responsible for Era of Heroes: Dawn of Dreams? Suddenly, everyone could be the hero of their own story, their own Vanguard (and there were plenty of people who named their characters after you). They were amazed at the depth of game: how you could romance your best friend, your fellow hero, or even your super villain, how even the smallest decisions affected how the game would end and who would survive, and how you made these gamers feel for the protagonist despite the destiny thrust upon them.

Your goal was to inspire them to try and see beyond the icons and symbols, to inspire them to want to know their heroes on a personal level. No such luck.

They’re still enamored with what they think being a superhero is all about. They’re in love with the idea of flying over the clouds, over the ocean, punching something again and again until it’s all but rubble in your hands. They don’t get the letters you get from people. Sure, there are the letters that say, “Thank you, thank you, thank you for coming in time.” But there are always more saying, “Where were you when my grandfather’s truck flipped over?” and “Why are you always there to save those trust fund babies but not our beautiful trans brothers and sisters?” and “What was more important than us?”

Let’s play a game.

NASA’s recent social media campaign has been to snap pictures of you using their telescopes and satellites while you’re in space. Everyone assumes that you go there to relax, especially since your eyes are closed in most of the pictures. They assume it makes you feel better; they don’t know it helps you hear.

This is when the game begins.

You have three options: put out the blazing wildfire in Yellowstone National Park, help the screaming tourists caught in a freak eruption of Yasur on Tanna Island in the South Pacific, or stop a girl from committing suicide in New York. You can hear it all, everything that’s going on, and you have to decide who to save.

The fire at Yellowstone has spread to consume nearly a quarter of the park. You can hear the crackle pop of moisture erupt from the ancient bark turning to ash; you can hear the screams of the animals as the fire consumes them. You hear these over the louder, frantic voices of the park rangers desperately trying to call in the fire response team and yelling how this couldn’t have happened naturally. You can hear the head ranger’s son in the middle of the inferno, his coarse voice crying for forgiveness for starting this fire to

8

Michael Moccio get back at his family for kicking him out of the house after he came out as bisexual.

Tanna Island is too far out from the mainland for help to get there in time. It’s no secret that the tourists sign waivers affirming the danger of where they’re going. You know what they don’t: an eruption of this size will bring an unprecedented amount of humanitarian aid from the earth’s governments, so it makes sense to let the foreign tourists die as “help is delayed.” You can hear a son running back into the forest, screaming about having to grab his wallet because the only picture he has of his father is in there; you can hear the mother thrust her baby into the arms of a stranger, yelling at them to get to the car and to safety as she runs back to her son; you can hear her wrap her arms around him in futility, trying to protect him from the lava they can no longer escape.

The girl is someone you’ve had your eye on for about a year, since her car accident. You remember her from the letter her uncle sent you: “The girl’s mother is in prison for stealing the medication we can’t afford. Her father got gunned down for refusing to pay for the mob’s ‘protection.’ You’re telling me you had something more important than saving this straight-A student, with a life so hard just because of the color of our skin, from that dumbass white quarterback who got too drunk after the big game? She lost her ability to walk; he got a scholarship—where’s the justice in that?”

You listened for her during her recovery. You heard the tears of pain when the doctors told her that she wouldn’t walk again; you heard her grunts of determination as she pulled herself out of her bed every morning at four o’clock to have enough time to watch the sunrise. You heard her uncle worrying about the hospital bills and pressing charges against the quarterback. You heard the bullying and the gossip as the tight-knit school community turned against her as she sought justice.

And now you have to choose. There isn’t enough time—even for you—to save them all.

Choose. This is the game.

Choose the wildfire. You’ll swoop down in the middle of the fire, wrapping your cape around the boy as he starts to fall into unconsciousness. “I’ve got you. You’re safe,” you’ll say. The desolate look in his eyes will be more unbearable than anything imaginable at that moment—these are the hollow eyes of someone who only wanted attention, mortified at the resulting destruction. You’ll fly him to his father and say, “He’ll be okay. Get him on oxygen and stand back.” You’ll fly off before he can respond a word of

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Invincible gratitude or bewilderment. You’ll understand he didn’t realize his son was in the fire.

You’ll have two choices from there to stop the fire: go to the lake and create a funneled cyclone that’ll suck the water up and flood the fire, or fly around the fire counterclockwise and suck the air out of the area to suffocate it. The first option could destabilize the soil and root systems, and the second option takes a bit longer. Both ways risk the animals in the area dying, but they’d have a better chance at surviving suffocation than drowning.

You’ll choose the second option, circling round and round and round, losing yourself in the momentum until you stop and survey the damage. All the dead plants and animals will lie still in utter silence as the smolders die down.

You’ll ignore the screams of the tourists and the sirens of police cars investigating reports of a girl throwing herself off a New York City apartment building.

Choose Tanna Island. Before the mother even realizes, she’ll be in the car with the rest of the tourists. To her, it’ll feel just like a breeze when you pick her up, but when she starts to feel the car moving through the air as you carry it, she’ll cry with happiness. You’ll hear her son’s bones creak from how tight she’ll squeeze. You won’t be able to savor the happy moment,.

There’s more work to do: clear everyone else off the island and get them out to the safety of the water. You’ll dive down into the sea, blitzing through the rock towards the active volcano from underneath it. You’ll pass through the water like a knife through butter, clear through the rock as if running through a sheet of paper. The lava at the core of the volcano will tickle your skin and you’ll relish the blissful moment of finally feeling pain again after these past months without any super villains running amuck. When you emerge from the top of the volcano, the people will scream your name as the steam rises from the water, cooling down the volcano’s center.

You’ll ignore the sirens of the police cars investigating reports of a girl throwing herself off a New York City apartment building and the wails of a misled teenager succumbing to the flames and the sobs of his father after realizing his son was inside.

Choose the girl, Kai. As you fly down, you’ll remember the events of the morning: “Come on, girl,” you heard Kai say as she shut off her quiet four a.m. alarm—she had to keep it down to keep from waking up her uncle. You heard her massage her legs, hoping it would somehow bring life back to them. You heard how she reached for her wheelchair to start the day, to

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Michael Moccio wake up early enough to watch the sunrise, only to hear her hand slip and cause her to tumble in a heap to the floor.

You’ll remember how her uncle—still a bit drunk from his midnight coping—woke up and yelled in a rage, “Just let me sleep! My God—you take my money, my time, and my goddamn happiness. When is enough enough?”

You heard her sobs as she picked herself up, alone in the darkness.

You’ll remember how they treated her that day. How you heard the cheerleaders shove her over in the locker room. How you heard them laughing as she struggled to regain her composure and get back in her wheelchair.

You’ll even remember how you almost heard the heat of her embarrassment when the PE teacher found her.

You’ll remember hearing the faint, “Three o’clock, three o’clock, three o’clock,” Kai kept repeating over and over. You’ll remember hearing Kai’s best friend from childhood call and cancel the meeting they had been planning for months, saying that something came up. Despite him not specifying, you’ll know it’s because his mother unexpectedly passed away. Kai wouldn’t have access to that information, which is why it isn’t a surprise that she felt so utterly alone, a drain on those around her, and reasoned they would be happier without her their lives, causing your heart to break.

You’ll fly down behind her, holding firmly onto her wheelchair so she can’t throw herself off the roof of her apartment building and she’ll look up, eyes wide in wonder. You’ll say, “Your friend really did have something come up. It’s never as bad as it seems, Kai. You’re so much stronger than you think. Trust me.” You’ll hug her tightly and she’ll hug you back, crying after realizing what she was about to do. You’ll brush the tears out of her eyes and say, “You inspire me. Every day, getting up like you do. It’s people like you who help me go on.” And she’ll promise to call whenever she needs to talk so that she doesn’t feel as lost and alone again.

You’ll ignore the wails of a misled teenager succumbing to the flames and the sobs of his father after realizing his son was inside and the screams of the tourists.

No matter what you choose, you can’t save everyone. And that’s the last thing you think about every night, when you’ve been working for four hours on your next title and twelve hours going around saving the world. When you get into bed, eyes closing from exhaustion, you’ll hear all the screams, sirens, and suffering of everyone you couldn’t save.

Are you sure you still want to be a superhero?

Michael Moccio is a senior Writing, Literature, and Publishing Major at Emerson College. He loves everything comic books and has a lot of opinions to share about the medium and its heroes, especially heroes from the DC Universe. You can find him writing for the Eisner Award winning website Newsarama as a part of their review team.

Michael Moccio

JACK HEMINGWAY DYSTOPIAN

Even in the Wasteland

Jane skirted beneath the iron girders of what had once been a bustling financial center, an aluminum can clutched in her hand.

The earth stank of stomach acid.

Everything sat in stagnation in the shade of skeletal skyscrapers. She came to a street packed with cars full of burnt corpses that the vultures had long ago picked clean. Funny that God had seen fit to keep the carrion-eaters alive to scavenge the earth’s crust. Maybe she wasn’t so different from the vultures, clinging to the can of unspoiled Spam she had found. But the vultures had moved on from the city. She hadn’t seen one since she had found Cameron a year ago.

She lifted up a manhole cover and descended into the sewers, closing the hole over her head. Down the ladder she climbed, gripping the can by the rim with her teeth. Pausing when she reached the bottom, she allowed her eyes to adjust to the darkness. Then she proceeded to a cavernous intersection of pipes a few hundred feet away. The hole they’d been hiding in for two months was lit by an oil lantern.

In the dimness she could see Cameron’s face, his eyes staring at the little flame cradled inside the lantern. He was beyond skinny, but Jane was no better. Jane crawled into the hole, so cramped she could hardly sit up straight. She dropped the can of Spam into Cameron’s lap.

Cameron blinked, as if he was trying to puzzle out how the Spam had gotten there. Then he looked at Jane, who was seated, pulling her knees into her chest.

“I told you not to waste oil,” Jane said, but she made no motion to extinguish the flame.

“I got scared of things,” he said.

“Things in your head or outside?”

13

Even in the Wasteland

“Head things.”

“Well, they can’t hurt you. Eat,” Jane said.

Cameron inspected the can, not sure how he could open it. Hunger, that aching abscess, wore her patience thin. Jane snatched it from him, drew her pocket knife, and carved open the top. The stench of rotten meat hit their noses. Cameron grimaced.

In disbelief Jane began sticking the pink-and-green mush with her knife, then tried to scrape off what she though must’ve been just a thin film of mold covering the surface of the Spam. It was no use: the meat was inedible.

Jane threw the can into the darkness. It splashed in the sewage.

She fumed: she had smelled the can before bringing it back. It hadn’t reeked of rotten meat then. Maybe her hopes had gotten in the way of her sense of smell.

She tried to recall what good food smelled like from her time in the shelters, before the air and water all ran out. She couldn’t remember. The city was just like the shelters: it had an expiration date.

“I still love you,” Cameron said with all the conviction a thirteen-year-old boy could muster. He inched closer to Jane. She slapped him, but he only returned, puppy dog eyes wet with tears.

She wanted to tell him that this was it: they were really going to die now.

Their luck had run out. That was all they had ever lived on: luck. Not love, not anything in between. But she didn’t say this.

“You don’t know what love is,” Jane said.

“Yes I do,” Cameron said. “You told me.”

Jane rubbed her temples.

The two had been scavenging a week earlier and had found a sign that had been burned beyond recognition. The only decipherable word on it, written in fancy, cursive writing, had been “love.” Cameron had asked Jane what it meant. Apparently no one in the shelters had ever told him. Jane had given him the dictionary definition. Cameron had latched onto it ever since.

“I love you, Jane,” he said again.

“You don’t know what love feels like,” Jane said. Two skinny souls blowing across the wasteland don’t have anything to love.

“What does it feel like, then?” Cameron asked.

Jane said nothing. Maybe she had known what it felt like, but nuclear war sure could ruin one’s sense of stability. She had loved her parents, and her dog. What else does a six-year-old know how to love? Thirteen years later, she concluded not much.

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Jack Hemingway “If you don’t know, how can you know I don’t know?” Cameron said.

Jane felt like hitting him again, but didn’t. I can’t waste energy on this, she thought.

“You don’t do what people in love do,” she said.

“What should I do, then?”

“Shut up.”

“Do you love me?” Cameron asked.

“You’re not in love, you’re just alive.”

The oil lantern went out. Jane sighed. Another inevitable expiration. She couldn’t stop any of it.

“I like being alive,” Cameron said.

Against all odds, Jane laughed.

“Even in the wasteland?” she asked. But of course there had never been anything but the wasteland for Cameron.

“Yes,” he said.

“You’re welcome, I guess.”

How does he do that? she wondered.

The two of them passed through the rolling hills of rubble, Cameron stumbling and slipping in the gray, ashy snow-slush, Jane gliding over it all, feet always finding solid ground. They traveled while the sun was shining.

The sun had ceased to be a source of wonder. Though it showed itself only on occasion above the urban graveyard, warming Jane’s face, she did not think of it as her savior. It was a big ball of radiation. She’d seen plenty of fiery radiation before. That was what ended life on earth, so why should she feel indebted to the one fire that didn’t burn her?

“Are we going to leave the city?” Cameron asked.

Jane hadn’t decided whether to risk the countryside or not. She’d thought about finding a farm to try to rebuild. Seasons had stopped coming and going, but surely there was some plant that didn’t care. They could grow a crop of whatever it was, kale or peanuts, and live off that. That had been the adults’ plan. They’d all succumbed to the radiation poisoning, though. Jane supposed it was a miracle she’d lasted two years without them. If she and Cameron did leave, though, what would they live on until they found a farm? That spoiled can of Spam had been the city’s last offering.

“We might have to,” she said. We’re going to die if we don’t.

“What’s it like out there?” Cameron asked.

“I don’t know.”

15

Even in the Wasteland

They slept beneath a storm drain.

That night the world shook, waking both of them. Cameron buried his face in Jane’s shoulder, crying, feet kicking. She put an arm around him and listened to the sound of artificial wind racing through the city, playing the buildings like wind chimes. A light was fading out on the surface; Jane saw the last of it like the impression of a camera flash on a too-wide eye.

“Please no…”

She said it not to Cameron, but to the noise. She’d thought the end would come in darkness, in starvation and silence. She thought that would be so much better than this.

She stayed put, stroking Cameron’s hair as he cried, wasting what little water was left in him. Jane said nothing. He had been only a baby when these sounds first silenced the earth. They must be etched into his memory.

Jane had found him crying like this over the corpse of his mother. The shelters had closed everywhere and kicked everybody out into the wasteland. Cameron’s mother must have been a strong woman to last so long.

Another miracle, Jane guessed.

In the morning, Jane knew where to go. She had to see the wreckage.

She had to know it wasn’t just another nightmare.

The sun, fickle friend, was gone again.

She slowed her pace. Cameron was weak, limping along. They made it to the harbor to see the billowing smoke many miles away. It was a mushroom cloud, but Jane had forgotten what mushrooms were. That column of ash was The End. Again.

She felt herself starting to cry. It wasn’t worth it to hold back now.

She started cursing, screaming, kicking.

Cameron watched her.

Somewhere out there, other humans had survived. But for what purpose? To drop another bomb, to set another fire, to end the world again.

Eventually she ran out of tears. Her sides hurt from sobbing. She felt dizzy. She’d be dehydrated soon, most likely. There’d be no vultures to pick at her body. Or maybe they’d smell her from wherever they’d gone, fly hundreds of miles just to find her, just to continue the cycle.

“Jane?”

She sat up, having collapsed in her fit.

“Yeah?”

“Can we go to the countryside?”

She wiped her eyes, and nodded. Break the cycle.

She started off along the edge of what had once been the water. Cameron

16 kept up. He grabbed her hand and held on.

She used to hit him for that, but he never seemed to learn.

Just don’t say it, kid, she thought.

He didn’t.

They both held on.

Jack Hemingway is a junior Writing, Literature, and Publishing major at Emerson College. He grew up near a cattle farm and once looked a bull in the eyes.

His favorite book series is The Wheel of Time by Robert Jordan. He is a tyrannical Scrabble player. He likes to fish.

Jack Hemingway

Imp

EMMA ZIRKLE FANTASY

I lost my soul to an imp with ocean eyes and shark teeth. He ripped it from my body on a Saturday just after 3:30 in the morning. He sat on my stomach and leaned his face over mine, human in his features until he smiled.

He reached into my chest, under my heart, and closed his claws around my soul. I wanted to fight him, but my body lacked the strength. My soul glowed between his fingers, and I choked out a single sob of loss. The imp touched my cheek, dragging his nails until it stung, and dropped his lips to my ear.

“Good girl,” he whispered.

He kissed my collarbone, teeth scraping against my skin as he grinned.

He got off me and stood beside the bed. He locked eyes with me again, swallowed my soul, and licked his lips. The light of it pulsed in his throat as he faced the window and leaped out. I stared at the spot for a long while before my strength returned and I could move my leaden body to the bathroom to sew myself up.

It was my own fault. I had brought him home. Even before that, at the very beginning of the evening, I’d made the decision to visit an infamous club downtown. Trolls, dwarves, and other ghastly brutish men fawned over the fairy dancers and the nymph who stood behind the bar. Everyone knew of the place, of the patrons it catered to, but I’d known the nymph in high school and she’d invited me personally. It was hard to come up with believable excuses as to why I couldn’t go.

I saw his eyes over the rim of my drink, some frilly, fruity thing the nymph had made for me. He smiled, a close-lipped smile that should have tipped me off, and beckoned me to his table. It was the eyes, I thought, the eyes that did me in. They contained the universe, blinking with stars, and

19 Imp

they knew how to lie. I didn’t realize what he was until much later that night, as he closed the door of my bedroom.

I stood naked under the harsh yellow light above my bathroom mirror and took in the extent of the damage. My bones were intact, but my skin was flayed open from the base of my throat to just above my belly button. I kept one hand at the bottom of the gash, paranoid that if I moved it prematurely my organs would come tumbling out onto the white and grey speckled tile.

I prodded at the wound, my fingers coming away bloody. I retrieved a sewing kit from a drawer in the kitchen, returning to the bathroom on unsteady limbs. I threaded the needle with trembling, red-smeared hands.

Lining up the pieces of skin as best I could, I began to stitch. I started from the bottom, watching the white thread zigzag across my torso and turn scarlet. My body had started to go numb, the pain a dull throb beneath my heart, a burning heat from my torn chest. The tug and pull of the needle barely tickled.

The alarm clock in my bedroom beeped loudly, signaling 5:30 a.m., as I tied off the thread and snipped the excess. I washed my own blood from my hands, wet a washcloth, and gently traced my stitches, mopping up beads and drips of red.

My reflection was dead: skin pallid, cheeks sunken, eyes glazed. Over my shoulder in the mirror, the imp poked his head past the bathroom doorframe, smirking. I looked over my own shoulder—nothing. He was there in the reflection, closer to the me in the mirror now, and he closed the bathroom door. He slung an arm around my reflection’s neck in a grossly familiar gesture. A light, my soul, blinked faintly in his throat. His dark hair blended with the lightness of my own as he reached down and plucked at the string holding my reflection together. The dead me—the former me— collapsed, disappearing from the mirror, and the imp threw back his head and laughed. I could see straight back to the last row of his teeth.

Tears stung behind my eyes without falling. My heart hammered in my chest as I reached toward the mirror, toward my soul. Give it back, it’s mine. I need it.

I expected my fingers to touch glass—it was just a mirror, just a mirror and an image of my own pain.

But my hand passed through the mirror, its surface rippling like a disturbed pool of water. Forearm deep, my palm hit resistance. I pushed against it, testing it, and with the full weight of my body it gave way. I somersaulted through the mirror and out the other side, into a copy of my

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Emma Zirkle bathroom that swirled together in shades of grey and blue and orange. My skin was cool but itched, an uncomfortable crawling sensation just beneath the surface. This world was blurred, unfocused and shifting. The imp was perched on the edge of an orange and teal bathtub.

“You think you’re brave, don’t you?” His tone was light, conversational, as if speaking of the weather. Isn’t it a lovely day? “You’re not. You’re a coward.” Nice and sunny, warm, not a cloud in sight. He crossed his legs at the knee and pointed behind me. “Look. See what you are.”

I could see what he was gesturing to in my peripheral vision: the reflection of me that had deflated like a balloon without air, an empty sack of skin that had once been stretched over muscle and bone—something that had once been vibrant and now was nothing.

The imp was smirking, amused and gleeful. I was his entertainment, his plaything, even after he had taken the most important thing from me.

“You want it back, don’t you, little bird?” he asked, lifting a hand to his throat with that unyielding toothy grin. “You offered it to me, invited me in.

You asked me to clip your wings, little bird, little chickadee, because you knew how tiring it was to fly.” His lips twitched up.

He leaned toward me, long arm stretching out so that he could stroke my hair and pat my head. I flinched, recoiling from his touch, and he withdrew.

“I could destroy you,” he murmured. His voice was low, his touch ghosting over the crude stitches on my chest. “But I like you, chickadee.” He stood from the bathtub, licking his lips again and touching two nails to the glow in his neck. “If you want it then you must take it. I will not give it willingly.”

He curled his index finger and I stumbled to my feet, eyes shifting between my soul and that crooked digit. “Follow me down, chickadee, farther down the rabbit hole.”

He opened the bathroom door, stepped through it, and with a surge of desperation I lurched after him.

I never figured my bad habit would backfire on me. I should have known better than to try it that night, at that club instead of my usual place, but my body was accustomed to a certain routine. There was a reason for my routine, always a method in place to prevent anything unforeseen. Always sit at the middle barstool, where it’s easy to be noticed. Always go for the guy with tired eyes and stubble on his chin—he has something he wants to forget, so he’s an easy target.

21

Imp

Those rules, and more, kept me safe and successful—a succubus, a predator. I had my pick of prey in the safe zones where the bars were quiet and filled with lonely humans. In the morning I could dispose of their guilt-laden, burdened forms and get on with my day.

I was arrogant and sloppy the night the imp caught me, despite knowing that my usual victims would not be in a place like that. I was sure I would be equally successful regardless of change in location, and the imp took advantage.

My father would have called me an idiot. He was the one who taught me how to tighten the muscles in my face, so I could smile without looking soft and how to talk with a lilt to my voice to trick the other person into responding how I wanted. Routine breeds stability. Control what you can and avoid what you can’t. Everything can be achieved with enough effort.

Keep your emotions in check unless you want to get hurt. Relationships are pain—to enter into one is to accept the inevitability of that pain.

My father told me that last rule in a letter to me on my tenth birthday, as an explanation for why my mother never came back from a trip to visit her parents. He left me letters often in my childhood, notes placed on my bedside table and my chair in the kitchen. None of the letters after the first spoke of my mother. Most of them contained rules with extensive explanations or lengthy criticisms. On rare occasions I’d receive praise in one of the letters, but even the praise was usually buried in a paragraph on how I could have been even better. Performance was important.

I had kept so carefully to his rules until tonight, I thought, as I waded through thigh-deep black water. A strange purple sky and dark ocean had been just on the other side of the bathroom door, which I had jumped through without much forethought. Neon jellyfish creatures with large parachute bodies swam past my legs.

I trudged through the water as it began to thicken. I was chasing after the faint light, chasing after my soul. I could make out a sandbar not far off in the distance, with a thin white-framed door atop it. The light grew dimmer as it approached the sandbar, and I floundered, desperate, churning the water. One of the jellyfish trailed by me so closely that its tentacles brushed my thigh. I jerked away from the stark, cold shock, like live wires in petroleum jelly, but the tentacles curled around me and tightened.

Suddenly there were dozens, covering my legs and weighing me down. It became almost impossible to move, their gelatinous forms covering my flesh in a writhing electric bubble. Terror flooded me as they pulled me down

22

Emma Zirkle toward the surface of the viscous ocean, and my hands clawed, frantic, for the sky.

“It would be no fun for you to be stopped here, chickadee.”

I heard his mocking voice, his breath tickling my ear, and lunged forward toward the light. I tore the creatures from my legs, furious and uncaring of the pain. My fingernails ripped and bled, the skin of my naked thighs screaming in protest as I peeled their tentacles off my body and flung them away. I reached the sandbar just after the imp disappeared through the lone door, three or four stubborn jellies still stuck around my knees, and staggered into a hedge maze draped in red.

I had been my father’s little chickadee, though how the imp knew, I hadn’t the faintest idea. Every birthday card, every letter, every Christmas present, I was chickadee. He always requested that I sing for him, and I was, if nothing else, a dutiful daughter. Mother sang for him before she left, and he reminded me often of how much I resembled her. It made him angry and bitter that I looked like my mother, that the child of a succubus and a hunter would be only a succubus and nothing more. I had her essence, and he simultaneously wanted to snuff it and to smother it with his own. He didn’t mind it when I was younger if I stayed out too late or didn’t come home at all. As long as his little chickadee chirped only for him, all other transgressions were forgiven.

When I was seventeen, crying over a boy, my father shouted at me. The only time he ever raised his voice at me, he screamed at me that crying was for the victims. Daddy’s little girl was no victim, so sing for him, won’t you, chickadee? No more crying. Chickadees don’t cry.

It was always like that when he used the pet name, usually when he felt I hadn’t been clinging closely enough to his rules. He would remind me of them, make me write them over and over in my notebooks, and just when I was most upset, he stroked my hair and called me chickadee until I smiled.

I didn’t remember if I had cried before that moment—I was sure I had— but I never did after. I clung to that last inkling of self-control as my feet crunched through fallen leaves in red and purple hues.

Vines snaked out of the tall square-trimmed hedges, alive and twitching between the deep chocolate-brown leaves and branches. They teased me at first, dragging their thorny forms across my skin as I walked. The last of the jellyfish creatures dropped off my legs by my third right turn through the maze, leaving angry red lines across my skin. The vines’ cruelty increased,

23

Imp

curving their strikes against me so that their pattern of attack swirled up my arms and back.

I started to run, turned left, and barreled head-first into a wall of foliage. The twigs tangled in my hair, caught on my stitches, and it took some effort to pull free. I took a staggering step back, the skin stinging around my stitches. My foot nudged something cold—a half of a pair of hedge shears lay partially hidden under the leaves, rusted and grown over with weeds.

The pin in the center had fallen out at some point, leaving this single blade without a partner. I picked it up, testing its weight in my hand. The metal was dull, but I was sure that with enough force it could still cut. Hope roared within me and I allowed myself a small grin.

Infinitely more comfortable with the weight of the shear gripped tightly in my fist, I trekked back and made a different turn. When a vine slithered forth, I hacked at it with the blade. The metal connected with the vine, crushing and bruising it more than cutting it, but it skittered away regardless. A hiss emanated from the hedges on all sides. They shivered, leaves rustling without the assistance of a breeze of any kind, and I pitched forward, stumbling on. Around every turn, I caught a glimpse of the imp in the corner of my eye. He was just ahead of me, just out of reach, leading me to the center of the maze.

My body was exhausted, drained, and my flourish of hope and temporary triumph had dwindled to nearly nothing. I had gone too long without a soul, without that spark, and if I didn’t catch up to the imp before the last of my energy ran out, it would be too late. This was the last of my effort, the last of my capability. Daddy’s chickadee doesn’t give up, she tries harder. She takes control.

“Come now, chickadee,” came the imp’s voice, echoing to me. “You must have more than that in you. I don’t believe you really want your soul back.”

He laughed, his voice fading away, and I lengthened my pace. The ground scraped the bottoms of my feet, my grip so tight on the handle of the shear that my jagged, ripped nails left crescent marks on my palm.

I remembered my first attempt at a victim, nineteen and just learning to lie about my age, before I honed my method. I hid my trembling beneath the surface and forced a smoothness to my voice. Fake confidence is better than no confidence. Prey doesn’t know the difference between fake and real, but they can easily see when something is not there. Observe and strike.

My father tackled everything that way and rarely missed. Confidence and control equal success. Yet that first time, when my prey left me without even waiting until the morning, I realized I had let myself be used while pretend-

24

Emma Zirkle ing I was the one with control. Until tonight, until this moment, I had never let that happen to me again.

The light of my soul led me down a dead end, passing through the hedge wall like a ghost and forcing me to backtrack yet again. After what seemed like the hundredth dead end, I rounded a corner into the center of the maze, an open and breathable space, and fell to my knees. My breath was labored and shallow, gasping with relief and the need for oxygen. The imp stood in the middle, where the grass and dead leaves gave way to a circular stone pavilion. Ivy twisted up the columns, writhing and squirming as though it were breathing. There were violently blue roses growing on this side of the hedges and a single flowering white tree beside the pavilion.

The imp opened his arms in a grandiose gesture, smiling with his head cocked.

“Welcome, my chickadee.” He was behind me in an instant, both hands on my shoulders. He squeezed them tight enough that I could feel my bones grind together. “How do you like my garden?”

He released me, leaning against the railing by the tree, and ripped a flower from its outstretched branch. The branch began to bleed, dripping black from where he had pulled, and he reappeared at my side. He tucked the flower into my hair, and I slapped his hand away. He scowled at my reaction, sunk his teeth into my wrist in retaliation, and I bit the inside of my cheek to keep from screaming. When he released me and I tried to stand, he laughed.

“You think you can fool me, with your fake fire and clouded eyes,” he said. “You’re nothing.”

The ground trembled beneath me, cracking until vines burst forth from the dirt and wrapped me in a cocoon. Struggling only made them tighten, only made them jab me with their thorns until I bled. I was so tired, so very empty.

“Fight!” the imp commanded. He was angry now, shouting at me, but his voice barely reached me through the vines. “Go on!”

The vines twisted together, trapping me further and sealing off my air. I stabbed at them, trying to shove my rising hysterics to the back of my mind, as the imp’s voice came harsher and crueler to my ears.

“Why don’t you fight!”

The hedge shear slipped in my sweaty grip, cutting my palm. I readjusted it, my eyes burning with unshed tears of frustration, and continued hacking.

I pierced through the vines, just the smallest piece, and released a shuddering breath.

25

Imp

“You’re terrified, aren’t you?” The imp stuck his face in the space I’d created, sneering at me. “I bet you want to know why you, pathetic little bird that you are.”

He ripped through the vines as easily as tissue paper, pulling me close to him. “I couldn’t help myself, chickadee.” He licked my cheek and I shuddered in revulsion.

“Just one look at you and I knew it had to be you.” He released me and I fell in a heap. “Come now, get up.” He kicked my chest, finding the center of my stitches with his foot.

At the sudden, blinding pain, a few renegade tears slipped from my shut lids. It felt like a release and a disappointment. I thought of my father, of his creeds and his rules and his strict one-line orders. He would be ashamed.

Try harder. Take control. No daughter of mine gives in.

I stood on shaky legs, stepped toward the imp, and stopped.

“You’re weak, chickadee, a baby bird fallen from its nest.” The imp circled me slowly, leaning close and whispering low.

Try harder.

“I could crush you beneath my boot and the rest of the forest wouldn’t even notice.”

Take control.

“You were already a shell long before I came along, chickadee.”

No daughter of mine— I spun on my heel, lifting my closed fist to strike the grin from his face.

He grabbed my wrist, halting my pitiful attempt with ease, his nails digging into the bite marks, and tilted his head back to laugh. His laugh turned into a gurgle, blood flowing from the crude linear slash across his throat. It spattered my face, warm and heavy, as I dropped the blood-covered hedge shear.

I was right—with enough force, it could still cut.

The imp fell to the ground, eyes wide and mouth frozen in a grin. I reached down, fingers dipping into the gash, and retrieved my soul. It glowed faintly, tinted pink from the blood, and I pulled the stitches loose from my chest. I placed the soul where it belonged beneath my heart, pulled the thread tightly and knotted it once more. I exhaled, feeling the warmth return to my limbs and the smile return to my lips, and turned away from the imp’s body. I was whole, I was well— Abrupt laughter bit into my spine and chilled my bones, the warmth leaving my soul. It turned to ice within me, its glow fading away. A cheerful voice from within my chest chimed, “Sing for me, chickadee.”

26 Emma Zirkle is from a tiny town in Pennsylvania you’ve never heard of, but she considers Boston her home away from home.

She has previously been published in a short story anthology. She finds joy in writing, drinking coffee, and having colorfully painted nails.

Emma Zirkle

RACHEL CANTOR SOCIAL SCIENCE FICTION

The Lunar Lifestyle

We had booked the cheapest seats on the rocket, which meant that neither of us faced a window. If I craned my neck around, I could see the other couples sitting in the expensive seats, ogling at space and Earth through their window views. I didn’t let it bother me. Once we got to the moon, everything would be free. I turned to Matt and pointed out a leftover drop of puke drying on his chin. He wiped it away with his sleeve. He didn’t do so well with g-forces.

“Any regrets?” I asked him.

Matt shook his head. “We can always video chat my parents.

Or your aunt. And we’ll make new friends up here.”

“I guess you’re right.”

“Besides, Clara, it’s a fresh start. Think of it that way. A start for our family, you know?”

Matt yawned and thumbed through the Rocket Passenger Safety Handbook as we waited to disembark. It occurred to me that there was no point in reading the Rocket Passenger Safety Handbook at the conclusion of the trip. But he’d had a rough flight, so I didn’t say anything.

Matt and I used to live in Lake Placid, New York. Matt had taught sixth grade math, and I’d taught seventh grade geography. Eventually, they had to close the school because parents were getting concerned with the levels of radiation in the lake, and so we signed up to go to the moon. Matt and I hadn’t met at school, actually. He tells everyone that he fell in love with me at first sight. I’d stood out to him, apparently, in my bright green sundress on a warm winter’s morning at the dentist’s office. I’ve never had the heart or the courage to tell him that I’d only worn it because I’d been too lazy to do my laundry, and it was the only thing I’d had left. I certainly hadn’t fallen for him as I’d waited to be de-plaqued. Matt had grown his bushy red hair

29

The Lunar Lifestyle

out into a bushy red mustache back then. I considered it something of a public service when I made him shave.

Our rocket docked directly inside the lunar base. There were six or seven other bases scattered around the moon—China had one, as did Russia and a few European countries—but Matt and I would be part of the first group to settle the new American base. The government had done surprisingly little advertising for the program. On the last day of school, our superintendent had simply handed us a flyer. “Married couples between the ages of twenty and thirty-five looking to start families.” All expenses paid, forever. You just couldn’t go back to Earth.

We stepped out of the rocket and into what I might have called an airport, back on Earth. Robots that resembled forklifts unloaded everyone’s scant luggage and whisked them away to our new homes. Our house turned out to be a clean, white, beach-style cottage. We were allowed a few hours to settle in before meeting the rest of the group for orientation. Most of the windows in our new home faced the street outside, but a small round one in our bedroom faced the dimpled landscape of the moon. I stared out of it as Matt unpacked the few clothes and mementos we’d been allowed to bring with us.

“Look, Matt,” I said, pointing. “Earth.” It hung there in the black sky just like the moon used to. I couldn’t help but feel a sad little twinge. So far away. But I’d get used to our new life.

“Yeah, Earth. Where do you want to put our wedding photo?”

“Maybe on that nice coffee table in the spare room? Matt, the Earth looks sort of gray. The land. I mean, I’m used to it looking so green. Like all the pictures in my classroom.”

“I’m sure it just looks gray because you’re looking at it through the habitation dome,” said Matt. “And I’ll put the picture in the living room. That’s not a spare room, remember. It’ll be a nursery one day!”

We finished unpacking and headed to the top of our street for orientation. “Welcome, Moon Families!” a pink-and-blue banner proclaimed, strung up between two streetlights. A chatty former nurse named Joanne convinced me to sign up for a weekly meeting group called “Moon Mommy Mondays.” Everyone was very enthusiastic, and after a lot of introductions and chatting, my face hurt from all the smiling.

“Welcome to American Lunar Base: Tranquility!” chirped the petite blonde researcher leading our orientation group. “My name is Maria Norman, and I’m one of the researchers here. Before now, you may have been referring to this experience as an ‘experiment’. We here at American Lunar

30

Rachel Cantor Base: Tranquility prefer to think of it as a ‘Lifestyle Project’. My husband Donnie and I will be participating right along with the rest of you Mommies-and-Daddies-To-Be!” Maria passed out a thick glossy white pamphlet with black cursive on the cover, “The Lunar Lifestyle Handbook.” Matt read the handbook fastidiously and encouraged me to do the same. It was full of cute aphorisms, followed by more in-depth guidelines for conduct in our “Lifestyle Project.”

They ranged from “Left Your Job Behind on Earth? Find a Moon Hobby!” to “Sweet Ways to Avoid Spousal Conflict!” to “Thinking Maybe About Baby!”

ALBT, as everyone called it, had been built to look like a charming, small Earth town. All of the couples’ quaint homes had artificial lawns, and the cobbled streets were lined with cheery streetlights, always switched on. An oxygenated habitation dome encapsulated the base. It had been specially designed to replicate Earth’s gravity, and to keep us in a pleasant room temperature at all times. When I video chatted with my aunt back on Earth, I made it all sound very exciting and exotic—“Yes, we can see moon rocks out the window!”—when, in all honesty, it wasn’t much different from living in a nice suburb, set in perpetual nighttime. “What an adventure, dear!” my aunt said. “Your parents would have been so proud of you!”

Down the street from our house was the impressive faux-brick building which served as the Scientific Headquarters. After a few months, with every passing pregnancy announcement from my new friends, I began to feel anxious.

“It’s no rush, Clara,” Matt reminded me. “‘It’s Not A Crime To Take Your Time!’” he said whenever I brought it up, citing the page in the handbook that discussed the so-called timeline of family planning. “They want us to behave as naturally as we would on Earth, to simulate what it would be like to live here, in case there had to be an Earth-wide evacuation.”

“Matt, you don’t think they would ever have to evacuate Earth, right?”

“Of course, not, Clara!” he said, laughing. “It’s just precautionary. It can’t hurt to have a settlement up here, that’s all. On Earth, would we have jumped into intimacy and parenting, and all that, like rabbits?”

He chuckled.

“Of course not, honey,” I said whenever we had this conversation, and he would kiss the top of my head, and tell me he loved me. I took to wearing the bright green dress from the first time he’d seen me, even though that had been almost six years ago now, and it didn’t quite fit right on me anymore.

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The Lunar Lifestyle

“You look lovely, sweetheart,” Matt would say before he headed upstairs to his office to write lesson plans for moon-born children, who would not be old enough to learn anything from us for another decade at least. There was no point in me planning any lessons. I’d taught geography—of Earth, and we’d left it. I did love Matt, too, of course. We were trying for a baby, but the lack of sun and proper Earth conditions could mess with the mind and body in many ways. That was all. This was what Maria and the other researchers were looking into. At the start of what would have been spring, I finally made an appointment with Maria at the clinic.

“I’m going to Joanne’s baby shower,” I called upstairs to Matt as I left the house.

Maria sat on the doctor’s stool across from my chair, her lab coat hanging open, revealing a tank top stretched over the beginnings of a baby bump.

For once, I was hyperconscious of having a flat stomach.

“You have a lovely home,” Maria said, grinning at me, her huge teeth bleached bright white. “I can see it from that window,” she said, pointing. “I love what you’ve done with the furniture layout in the bedroom.”

Maria had done up her golden hair in flawless curls, and she wore pink eyeshadow. I ran a few fingers through my limp hair, and tried to pat the frizz down against my scalp. I felt more than a little nervous. I hadn’t been wearing makeup lately. How old and mousy must I have looked, compared to her?

“So, are you ready to take the test?” Maria asked, her grin widening even further.

“Oh—uh—no, I’m definitely not—ready. I was actually wondering— well, Matt and I are having a bit of, you know, difficulty.”

“Difficulty? Can you elaborate on that?”

“Yes, well, sure. Difficulty in terms of…conception.”

Maria’s face grew an expression of sympathy and she scooted towards me to take my hand, which immediately began to sweat.

“That is perfectly normal. Nothing to be ashamed of, especially for women towards the older end of the maternal spectrum. You’re thirty-four, correct? Well, we can start you on—” “No,” I said, blushing, “I don’t think there’s anything I could take. The difficulty is in terms of…the bedroom. I think it might have something to do with Matt’s…decreased bloodflow, because of the lower gravity up here or something. Matt would have come to see you himself, but, um, he’s very busy.”

32

Rachel Cantor “Of course. Well, all of ALBT is gravity-controlled, as you know, but if I understand you correctly, what you have been struggling with is practically a nonissue. You should have seen me sooner!” Maria released my hand, finally, and got up to retrieve a pill bottle from the large medicine cabinet in the corner of her office. She pressed it into my clammy palms.

“Have Matt take one of these prior to initiating sexual intercourse, and be sure to call me if the erection lasts longer than two hours.”

I spluttered a “thank you,” as I tried not to stare at Maria’s stomach, and excused myself from her office as fast as I could politely manage.

“You’re so welcome, Clara.” Her big smile stayed put on her face as I closed the door.

That night, I crushed one of the blue tablets, stirred it into Matt’s bedtime glass of milk, and waited. When we turned out the lights and got into bed, he clumsily rolled on top of me, and I didn’t feel much except for a vague sense of emotional relief. Being with Matt had been more…exciting when we were first married. But, as the Lunar Lifestyle Handbook advised, “Enjoy the Hard Work of Marriage!” So I tried to.

Afterwards, it occurred to me that what I’d done with the pills and the milk might have been a crime on Earth. I wasn’t sure what the laws were here, come to think of it. It all made me a little uneasy. But nobody had to know. All our expenses were paid because we were part of a family lifestyle project. It had to be done.

I passed a home pregnancy test shortly after the last blue tablet in the bottle had disappeared. “Share The Proud News That Baby Is Moon Bound!” advised the handbook, so I video chatted my aunt, and then put on my green dress to tell Matt. I wore it to my first official test and ultrasound at the Scientific Headquarters, and Maria beamed at me.

I even tried to appreciate the violent vomiting episodes that seized me each dark morning. They gave me something to do while Matt wrote his lesson plans, and something to talk about with the other ALBT ladies when we all met for Moon Mommy Mondays at the Headquarters.

About eight months in, one afternoon—or maybe it was night, it was easy to lose track of the days under the constant black of the lunar sky—I was really craving fruit. I sat at the dining room table and stared at the fruit in the white glass bowl. It was always there, but neither Matt nor I had ever eaten any of it. Usually we ate the prepackaged meals ALBT distributed every weekend; they were plenty filling. The fruit just sat there.

It was all free, so we didn’t feel the waste. Besides, we were rarely hungry anyway, not up here. On Earth, Matt and I didn’t have a dining room.

33

The Lunar Lifestyle

There were oranges, bananas, grapefruits. Bright tropical things I’d only ever seen in pictures. I mean, obviously the supermarket back in Lake Placid had sold fruit, but it never looked like this, all vibrant and ripe. Food hadn’t looked so alive since I was a little girl. This fruit looked so good that it almost looked fake. Maybe it was?

I picked up a grapefruit and considered it, in the palm of my hand. It almost glowed, neon orange, so bright against the white of our walls and the dull dark of the galactic sky. It was real. I was going to peel it. It felt sort of sneaky. It felt a little like stealing.

“It’s my f—” (I was about to curse, but remembered the handbook’s warning: “Don’t Curse In Front Of Your Fetus! Unborn Ears Can Still Hear!”). “It’s my fruit,” I amended. “I am going to eat my…darn fruit.”

I jabbed my thumb into the taut skin of the grapefruit, and it splattered my fingers with a spray of red juice. For half a second it looked like there was blood on my hands. I pulled the grapefruit open, in half. It was rotten; a black mold was rooted at the center of the fruit and growing outwards.

It smelled awful. I dropped it onto the flat white of the dining table and it oozed more red.

When I peeled them, all the ripe, golden bananas were black with malignant bruises on the inside. I grabbed the roundest, brightest orange, ripped it in two; it was even worse, its mold a gray-green slime.

All of it was rotten and dead. My hands reeked of it, stained deep red and black and green with ruined fruit and mold; without thinking I wiped them on my t-shirt, against my belly. Then the fetus kicked.

But it couldn’t be a fetus now; it was a baby, a real live thing. It kicked me again from the inside and pain shot up my spine and through my whole body.

“Matt,” I said. The baby kicked harder when I said his name. “Matt.” He still did not hear. I heard blood rush in my ears as I shoved the chair out from behind me and staggered to my feet. The baby didn’t like me moving.

Inside me, it felt like it had claws. I sank to the white tile, or maybe I fell, I’m not sure. In the haze above my eyes, I saw Matt’s reddish form standing over me. The baby was coming. It had been everything I wanted—but now I wanted it all to stop.

“Clara! What on Earth did you do to our fruit?!” He looked at me for a moment, puzzled, and then he ran for the kitchen phone.

The next thing I remember was Maria’s voice. “Clara? Clara, sweetie, there was a little issue and we had to do a C-section, okay? But the baby is doing great—that’s right, you’re a Moon Mommy! Congratulations!”

34

Rachel Cantor Matt came into focus, his eyes full of tears, his crimson hair standing up at funny angles as if he’d been tugging at it. He held a small bundle in a blue blanket.

“Clara, darling…Matt Jr.?”

“Yes,” I managed, my voice sounding rather far away. “That’s fine.”

What had gone wrong was never fully explained to me. Maria kept repeating that it had been a bloodflow issue, just a pregnancy side effect, maybe due to my age, nothing to worry about, nothing I could have done differently. Still, I was kept on strict bed rest for a while. Matt was very helpful with me and Matt Jr.. He wouldn’t let me so much as change a diaper. He even whisked the baby out of the room if he started to cry. One of the other new mothers nursed Matt Jr., so that I wouldn’t have to.

At Maria’s suggestion, a string of my new friends from Moon Mommy Mondays came to relieve Matt for a few hours every day, to sit with me and babysit. They were lovely, of course, and I thanked them profusely for the company and help. But sometimes it was hard to fill such a long day with constant conversation. Matt reassured me that it was just the recovery, and that I would be more cheerful soon. I would turn over to one side in the bed that Matt no longer slept in—I appreciated that he slept on the couch for my health—feign sleep, and stare at the sliver of moonscape and space I could see out of the bedroom window.

One day, after Joanne had put Matt Jr. down for his nap, she got a call from her husband: one of her twins had pushed the other out of the playhouse and given him a nosebleed.

“Don’t you lift a finger, honey!” said Joanne. “There’s no need to go to the baby if he cries while I’m out. Like Maria says, it’s best that Matt and the Mommies tend to him, for now. You’ll get better sooner without that stress. I’ll see you in a few minutes, Clara!”

I heard our front door close, and realized it had been days since I’d been alone. Slowly, I sat up. I felt fine. Suddenly, I felt that I had to get out of bed, out of this room, out of this house, or else I might scream. I slipped out from under the covers, testing myself, daring the floor to creak and give me away. But I moved silently out of the room. I tiptoed past Matt’s office and ran down the stairs and out our front door. I wasn’t quite sure where I was going, but I didn’t want to risk anyone catching sight of me, so I sprinted to the back of the house, my nightgown billowing around my thighs as I ran.

I ran past our patio, down our fake-grass lawn, and down the decline beyond it, until I was close enough

35

The Lunar Lifestyle

to touch the surface of ALBT’s habitation dome. The ground was cold and alien on my bare feet. There were shivers coursing through my body as I reached towards the edge of the dome. I hoped the glass wasn’t electrified. I looked across the dimpled, gray moon dirt at the small Earth turning in the distant void. Earth looked even grayer, even sicker than the last time I’d looked at it, when we’d first landed on the moon. I beat against the glass with both fists, silent but screaming; it wasn’t breaking, so I couldn’t get out.

I turned around and looked back through the windows of our house. I saw Matt rocking Matt Jr. at the edge of his crib. My baby turned his head and looked at me, his dark eyes and puff of fiery hair a miniature model of Matt’s. I barely recognized it—him, and he frightened me.

“Your baby is just the cutest little thing!” Maria said, walking over to stand next to me. It dawned on me that she had seen everything, this whole time— she could look inside my house from her office. “I just want to squeeze him,” she cooed at me, grinning with those big Rachel Cantor is a white teeth. “I hope he and Donnie freshman Writing, LiterJr. can be friends when they ature, and Publishing major. grow up.” She stroked her This is her first attempt at writing belly. “And this one, genre fiction, and she’s thrilled to have too. I want to have her work published in Generic! She’s exas many as I can, cited to be getting involved with several Emdon’t you?” erson magazines and clubs. When not writing or reading, Rachel spends much of her free time playing online Scrabble. She was born in New Jersey, and lived there her entire life until coming to Boston. She’s eager to study abroad in the Netherlands next year, as she would love to travel, but doesn’t think she’d ever journey as far as the moon.

Rachel Cantor

AMANDA DOUGHTY NOIR FICTION

Curiosity

Want to hear about the time I killed my cat?

Of course you don’t.

You, officer, have been trying to get a confession out of me for three days. Timothy Masterson. What a pretentious sounding name. I hated taking his last name, but he insisted. But, this is a much better story than anything having to do with the death of my husband, so I think you’ll enjoy it.

You’re doing that thing where you puff out your cheeks in frustration, slowly scrunching in your eyebrows all the while. It’s adorable. It makes me so much more excited to tell this story. Keep it up. I live for frustrating others.

I know I’m only really in here because of my father: the infamous Frederick Walker who shot up his entire office in a supposed crime of passion. Daddy always had a bit of a temper, though I will admit it got worse after the divorce. You’ll see it here.

I was nine and my brother was eleven, finally old enough to throw his first big slumber party. I was supposed to stay at my nana’s that night, because Wes didn’t want me annoying all the “cool” friends he’d invited: telling them about how he wet the bed until he was nine, or how he cried the first time his “wee wee got hard.” Wes wasn’t happy that my parents were staying, since my mother was the type who loved pulling out our baby books to anyone who would pretend to care, and my father’s anger scared most of our friends so much that they never came back. I ended up staying because I pretended to have a cold, and Nana was the biggest germaphobe out there. I knew she wouldn’t take in a sick grandchild, even for a night. It was almost too easy.

Despite my success, I was still forbidden to go down into the basement, where the boys were spending most of the night.

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“You go down there, Ellie, and you’ll regret it.” I remember Wes telling me; because that was clearly the most terrifying thing you could tell a nine year old. We were close enough in age that we were in the same gym class, and despite being two years younger than him I always got picked before he did. He didn’t quite know what to do with his gangly, too-long limbs yet. Meanwhile, my stocky legs allowed me to kick the kickball into many a neighbor’s yard. I wasn’t afraid of him or his threats.

Which is why I went down there about two hours after they got downstairs.

“Buzz off, twerp bag,” he said as soon as I got there, trying to sound way tougher than he actually was. It’s already hard to sound threatening when your balls haven’t dropped yet, but choosing the word “twerp bag” definitely didn’t help his case. Poor thing. He never really got that machismo thing down.

Please try not to yawn while I’m telling a story. It’s rude and unbecoming on you. Yawns give you wrinkles, and I don’t want that pretty face of yours getting all scrunched up and deformed. After all this time we’ve spent together since I’ve been in here, I thought you’d treat me with a little more respect.

I know, I know, I’m boring you with background information. But I get a little distracted when I talk about Wes. Nostalgia can get the best of just about anyone. Let me get back to my point.

I made up some bullshit reason mom would’ve sent me to the basement, but in all honesty, I wasn’t there to annoy Wes. I went to scope out the kids he invited. There were the obvious ones, like Adam Gagnon, his best friend since first grade. His laugh was shrill and obnoxious, but other than that he was duller than a protruding floorboard after it’s been fixed. If no one can trip on it anymore, where’s the thrill?

The rest I knew from gym class. Pete O’Brien, who felt the need to actually pinch everyone who didn’t wear green on St. Patrick’s Day…and every other day, was there. I kept a green ribbon on hand for whenever he came around, unless I decided I wanted to be pinched, that is. Ty Reader made a surprise appearance, at least from what I knew of him. He never seemed to like my brother in class, or speak all that much, or really care about anything. But he was there, and seemed to be having a good time. From what I know of him as an adult, it was probably for the free food (and, despite all my mother’s flaws, she knew how to make a damn near perfect meal).

Finally, there was George Flask, whose parents clearly didn’t have the guts to tell him it was time to start showering every day. It’s kind of cruel, when

38

Amanda Doughty you think about it, because it probably would’ve saved the kid a whole lot of hell. I swear I could smell his body odor from my cubby at school, even though there were a solid twenty cubbies between the two of us.

I was sad to see Henry Weir hadn’t shown up, but as the most popular boy in school, he probably had a better offer. It would’ve been nice to knock his ego down a few pegs earlier in the game. Oh well, can’t change the past.

Could you please stop drumming your fingers on the table like that, officer? It’s drowning out my story. I know you’re annoyed, and I’d be lying if I said I didn’t enjoy that, but I’m just getting to the good part, I promise.

My fascination with murder began at the ripe old age of six. See? I told you the good part was coming. I had just been scolded by my father for touching one of the specialty knives we kept by the sink. I think they were a wedding present or something. Not that it mattered; my parents were destined for divorce anyway. But I remember those knives. I remember thinking about how sharp they were, how much it would hurt to get cut by one.

I remember thinking, “Hey, I could kill someone with these.”

And so it began. Whenever I was alone in the kitchen, I’d hold those beautiful creatures in my hands. I’d memorize the way each handle felt, and where in their patterns I could best grip the knife. I’d make a peanut butter sandwich with one of them, and lick the remnants off, feeling the blade slice my tongue a little. Did you know the tongue is one of the fastest-healing muscles in the body? That’s why I used it. As long as I cleaned the few drops of blood off, there was no way I’d ever get caught. And obviously I didn’t want to make my dad angry. Like I said, he always had that temper.

In a lot of ways, those knives were the closest friends I had growing up, but they weren’t how I killed my cat.

I’d decided to kill my cat three months before Wes’s slumber party. One night, it was patting its nasty little paws at my feet the way cats do, and I started to imagine what it would be like to make that paw stop moving: to stifle the infernal, but inevitable late night meowing, and to close those piercing green eyes forever. Plus, the dumb thing kept pissing on my floor instead of in the litter box, and you know how much I hate a mess. Cats aren’t even supposed to do that. That’s what dogs do. In fact, that’s why my parents chose a cat over a dog; cats don’t pee everywhere like dogs do. But this cat was either a rebel without a cause, or just plain stupid. Either way, it had to go, and this slumber party was the perfect place for it to happen.

Obviously I didn’t want to make a big mess. My knives were too well crafted to be used to kill a cat as stupid as this one, so I decided to simply

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Curiosity

use my hands. This was before you could use traces of strangulation to find a killer, and I don’t even think you can do that with cats, anyway.

I see you’re paying a lot more attention now, but don’t get too excited.

The answers to the Timothy Masterson riddle aren’t hidden within the killing of my moronic cat. I just thought it would be a fun story to tell. Sure as hell beats you asking me questions for hours on end, like you’ve been doing for the past three days.

For the love of god, don’t start that damn finger drumming again! That is just awful. I certainly hope you don’t do that on dates because I would never want to go out with you again.

Anyway, it took hours for them to fall asleep. I don’t know if they were comparing sizes, or playing with each other, or if they just really had that much to say to one another, but they didn’t fall asleep until way after my bedtime. I was sleepy, but I knew I’d never get a chance like this again, so I powered through.

Luckily, my parents had taken pity on me that night and had let the cat sleep in my room. Despite being almost ten years old, I could still bat my eyelashes, use my “cute” voice, and get my way with them. All I had to do was move the cat to the basement.

Given the fact that this cat was dumber than that secretary of yours, who couldn’t even remember how to process my information, this task was surprisingly easy. Damn thing just cuddled in my arms, completely unaware of its own fate.

I knew I could’ve just killed it in my own room, but there was something about choking it out with a group of boys sleeping around me. They were probably dreaming about touching a boob for the first time, and meanwhile a life was ending right under their noses. There’s almost something magical in their ignorance. It’s empowering. Their life keeps on going while you live out your darkest fantasies. I could’ve done anything I wanted in that moment, so long as I didn’t wake them. I think Pete stirred at one point, probably when the cat screeched when I first started, but in seconds he was asleep again. I was back in control.

Like I said already, the cat let out this awful sound when I first started.

It’s nothing like those laugh track meows you hear on cartoons. It’s a lot more nasally. It sticks in your ear longer. But it fell quiet as I firmed my grip around its neck. Much like humans do when they’re strangled, its eyes bugged a little bit, and for a moment I feared one would pop out. I couldn’t handle one popping out. That would just be too disgusting. Plus, I wouldn’t

40

Amanda Doughty want to have to clean up gross eye fluid off my basement floor. No thank you.

Thankfully, the cat fell limp before an eye could pop out. As I placed the body right in the middle of the floor, taking care to make it look particularly mangled, I couldn’t help but feel the slightest disappointment. That marvelous, empowering feeling was gone and, though there was some satisfaction, I doubted I would ever feel that way again.

Then the next morning arrived, and phase two of my plan began.

I returned to the basement before the boys woke up, taking extra care not to make a sound on the steps. I wanted my blood-curdling shriek to wake them, and oh did it ever. They all sprang out of their sleeping bags, and turned out Adam didn’t have pants on because he scrambled to yank them up. Unfortunately, he got them up before my parents reached the bottom of the stairs, and everyone was fully clothed as they all stared in shock at the mangled feline body on the basement floor. In one of my finest acting performances to date, I began to sob uncontrollably, and as my dad wrapped his arms around me, I could feel the anger growing in his staggered, exhausted breaths.

“Which one of you sick fucks did this?” he asked, forgetting the fact that these were eleven-year-old boys who had probably never heard the F-word before. No one could make eye contact, and though some stammered, they said nothing in response.

“Did you all work together, then? A little satanic ritual for a group of sick fucks?”

“Honey, you can’t just call a group of little boys sick fucks,” my mother whispered, finally chiming in. I remember being surprised she spoke up at all.

“Our cat is dead, and it’s because of one or all of them. These are not sweet, little boys, and I’ll call them whatever the fuck I want.”

I know we should have taken this as foreshadowing of how extreme my father could be when he was angry, but Wes and I weren’t attentive enough to notice, and my mother was notorious for turning a blind eye.

Anyway, I really thought my dad was going to charge at them for a moment. That would’ve been a nice twist. Who knew he cared so much about that dumb old cat?

“Daddy, why would someone do this?” I asked between fake sobs, hoping to get him angry enough to hit someone. If my mother hadn’t been there, I think it would’ve worked. But a simple placement of her hand on his shoulder was enough to stop him, probably because this was during the

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Curiosity

phase when he was hopelessly trying to save their marriage.

“I don’t know, sweetie,” he answered instead. “But don’t think we won’t find out.” With one last glare, he and my mom went back upstairs. Though my basic instinct was to immediately follow them, I couldn’t help but get one last good look at the boys. All of them looked shocked, but I could see an anger in their eyes as well, especially Wes’s. I knew that the minute I left they would start shouting horrible accusations at each other, solving problems like adults for the first time in their lives.

I figured I might as well leave on a dramatic note.

“What did the cat ever do to you?” I asked, emphasizing just the right words before running up the stairs crying.

I know, I know, you must think I’m a horrible person. Technically, I never said I wasn’t. But I don’t think I’m any worse than any other person in this building, or any worse than you, for that matter. Weren’t you in the newspaper a couple of months ago for punching an uncooperative drunk driver? I remember seeing that pretty face of yours in the paper, the curse of these small towns taking its toll yet again. You had a mustache then. Didn’t look that great. I like you clean-shaven.

But, see, I would never punch someone, mainly because I can’t throw a punch to save my life, but still. We all have emotions, though, and those are what drive all of us to do terrible things. Yours is anger. Mine is curiosity.

As long as we have these, we’ll forever be flawed individuals, so would you stop looking at me like I’m the scum of the earth? It’s rude, and unflattering to your face.

Keep calm, sweetie, my story’s almost done.

I knew my parents would never speak honestly about my brother’s friends in front of me, but thankfully old houses like ours have very thin walls. It didn’t work in my favor when I was old enough to know the moans my parents made weren’t sleep noises, but it worked in my favor in this particular instance. All I had to do was quietly nuzzle up to the living room wall, and I could hear everything they were saying in the kitchen. I couldn’t help but laugh at the irony of how cat-like my motions were.

“We’ve known Adam since he could walk,” my mother stated. “He’s a good kid. There’s no way it could’ve been him.”

“But he also probably knows the house better than anyone,” my father responded.

“The cat was killed in the middle of the basement floor. They didn’t have to know the house all that well. The cat probably snuck out of Ellie’s room

42

Amanda Doughty while she was sleeping. What about that Pete boy? I know he pinches Ellie at school.”

“That’s because he likes her,” my dad boldly stated. “All boys do that. I did that at his age. He wouldn’t kill her cat. Besides, he’s too dumb to pull something like that off.”

What was really funny about this conversation was that Wes was never brought up. Neither of them would even entertain the idea that it may have been their own child that killed the cat. As far as they were concerned, Wes and I were perfect little angels and everyone else’s children were inferior.

They were living in denial. They still do.

“All of these boys were raised too well to do something like this,” my mother said. “What about the Flask boy? I’ve never seen his mother at the PTA meetings.”

“That kid smells like shit, but he’s harmless. He looked like he was about to puke when he saw the damn thing. And you can’t just blame him because you know nothing about his parents. We know nothing about the Reader kid’s parents either. I’ve at least met Mr. and Mrs. Flask and saw them when they dropped him off. Reader walked here.”

“That’s very true,” my mother agreed. “Come to think of it, I don’t remember Wes ever mentioning him before. I was very confused when I found out he was invited.”

“And he didn’t seem to have much of a reaction to the dead cat on the floor.”

I thought back to how Ty’s eyes looked a little watery but chose not to say anything.

In typical, small town fashion, they blamed the kid whose parents they didn’t know, for reasons that made little to no sense at all. Wes later told me that the boys thought it was poor George Flask, but he admitted that he mostly thought that because he wanted an excuse to not like the fat kid.

My life was just a walking stereotype, apparently—from my so-called cool brother not liking the fat kid to my parents blaming what happened on the kid whose parents they didn’t know. Not that it ever changed.

I, personally, was hoping they would pin it on Adam or Pete, mostly because I didn’t like them and knew their parents would take them out of school if they thought their kids were psychopaths. Ty was an interesting choice, and one I absolutely should have seen coming, but in that moment I was surprised that they chose to blame him.

I never saw Ty again after that day. His parents must have been more similar to the others in my town than my parents thought, because they

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Curiosity

shipped him off to military school not too long after the incident. As for the rest, none of them grew up to be much: accountants, managers, teachers, other typical jobs you find when you can’t live anywhere but the town you grew up in.

I love to tell that story because it forces me to look back, and when I do I realize that nothing has been more satisfying to me than killing that cat.

All the squirrels, dogs, and even the people I tried to replicate that situation with couldn’t give me the rush killing that cat did, or that feeling I got when my father screamed at Ty for an hour straight.

To answer your questions, yes, honey, of course I killed my husband.

With his murder and the cat’s being so similar, I’d assumed you would have been smart enough to pick up on that long ago, even if I said it was just a fun story to tell. But that piece of shit deserved to die. He’d come home every night, put his disgusting feet on the coffee table I cleaned every morning, tear off his work clothes, and make a goddamn mess everywhere.

I know what you’re thinking: why didn’t you just talk to him about that?

But I did. I did at least once a week, and every time he’d declare it was his house, too.

One day, I was out getting more cleaning supplies to keep up with the whirlwind of his generally disgusting nature, and I came home to find him jacking off to some virtual whore with the best tit surgery money could buy.

He didn’t even fucking bother to grab a towel or something to wipe that shit up. Immediately, I realized that it hadn’t been the first time. He’d been doing that our whole goddamn marriage, probably just to spite me. I was done. I’ll admit that I was a bit sloppier this time than I was with the others.

It was the first time I’d killed for reasons other than curiosity, so I suppose that makes sense.

Yes, officer, there are others. Seven others, to be exact. I surpassed my father long ago and was much more careful than he ever could have been.

I was able to satisfy all of my curiosities, tap into my weaknesses and make them strengths, unlike my father and unlike you, still continuing to succumb to your anger even though you’ve almost been fired.

You can put me in your cage, make me dance for you, and laugh at my misery, but you can’t fix the damage I’ve already done. All of the people I’ve killed are now closed cases. This means you have seven innocent people sitting behind bars, all serving life sentences. Trust me, I checked. Seven families think they have closure, but that closure is faker than the smiles they wear each day. Like I said, I live for frustrating others. I live for my curiosity.

44 Amanda Doughty is a junior Writing, Literature, and Publishing major at Emerson College. Her love of genre fiction started when she took Noir Fiction last fall, where “Curiosity” was originally written. It was also adapted into a play performed through Dive In Productions in “Absence of Light” in February. Amanda is incredibly thankful for this opportunity, and hopes you enjoy this issue of Generic!

Amanda Doughty

KAITLYN JOHNSON HORROR

My Monster I don’t want to leave the playground. The sun is leaving little leopard spots on my arms as it peeks at me through the tree leaves. It’s fun here with the other kids and the slide and the swings. I don’t like to say goodbye to the sun.

“Molly!”

Mommy is here now. She is wearing those clothes she likes to wear when we go to see the doctor man. They aren’t what she wears on normal days. I like her in her pretty shirts with the flowers on them. When we see the doctor man, she wears brown pants and stiff shirts. I don’t like to hug her when she wears them. I know we are going to see the doctor man just by looking at those brown pants. I wish I could stay here with the sun.

“Come on, sweetie. We’re going to be late!”

She is standing by the minivan and tapping her foot. Her hands are on the fence as she tries smiling at me. Mommy is always trying, but she never seems to do it right. I’m not sure if she knows how to do it.

My legs can’t touch the floor, so I just swing them as Mommy drives in the front seat. She still won’t let me sit up there with her; she says I’m not big enough yet. Mommy glances back at me and tries smiling again. It looks like the skin around her lips is stretched too tight. She looks like she’s wearing a mask. “Are you going to be a good girl today while I talk to Dr. Marco?” she asks me.

I look down at my right shoe. It came untied at the playground, and the laces look like bunny ears as I keep swinging my feet. The doctor man always makes me wait on a big red couch while he and Mommy talk in the other room alone. He tells me it’s private, and little kids like me aren’t allowed to hear. “Did he get new coloring books for me? He said he would get new ones this week.”

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My Monster

She lifts her shoulders up real high and rolls her eyes around. It looks silly, like I did something funny instead of just ask a question. Sometimes, I look at Mommy’s face and see a different Mommy. She likes to pretend that she’s someone else. “You know what? You can ask him when we get there, OK? Then you can color until I’m all done,” she says.

But he doesn’t have new coloring books. The doctor man’s office is blue and gray, with a big desk and two chairs and a little black couch. I know, because sometimes I’m the one to talk to him and Mommy waits outside.

Mommy doesn’t color while she waits, though, which is why he never gets any new coloring books. Mommy says she and the doctor man have been friends for a long time, and he is doing us a favor by talking to me. I’m a special little girl to get to spend time with Dr. Marco.

Mommy walks me to the big red couch in the waiting room, leans over, and kisses me on the forehead. Her clothes make dry crackling sounds when she straightens up again. It’s like they are laughing at us. “I’ll be out as soon as I can. You just color and behave for the receptionist.”

She gives a little wave to the lady behind the front desk before disappearing into the doctor man’s office.

“You’re back again?” Penny, the front desk lady, is squinting at me. Her eyes hide behind two puffy folds of skin. She never looks angry or happy, just squinty. “How many times is your momma gonna drag you here so she can whine about her problems to that man?” For a minute, she just stares at the mess of crayons and coloring books spread out before me. I am open to a page with a clown pointing out at me, red and orange scribbles already curling all over the outline. Then, her head jerks to the door of the doctor man’s room. “Go. Listen. You know you want to.”

I do want to, but I know what Mommy would say. She and the doctor man told me it is private. I’m not supposed to listen to what they are talking about. They must secretly want me to know, though, because the door is open just a crack. I can even see Mommy’s face as I peek through. I’ll only listen for a minute. A minute won’t mean I’m a bad girl.

“Jackie, it’s been three months. Maybe we should think about putting her on something, too.”

“No!” Mommy has tears on her face. She must be mad. Mommy never cries unless she is mad. “It’s bad enough I can’t even take a nap without a prescription from you. I’m not forcing that onto my daughter as well. It’s only been three months since we lost…If Cameron were still here he’d never allow…”

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Kaitlyn Johnson The doctor man frowns at her and pats her shoulder. He never looks like a nice man, just says nice words. Mommy knows that. She won’t look at him as he makes her sit on his little black couch. I can’t see them anymore, but I can still hear them.

“Marcus would want what’s best for Molly. He always did. These nightmares are consuming her. Ever since he passed, she’s gotten worse and worse. I’m starting to worry that she doesn’t understand they aren’t real.”

I can hear Mommy sniffing, like when she gets a cold and tries to pretend she doesn’t. She likes to go around the house talking in funny voices to fool me into thinking she isn’t sick. I never believe her, and I know she is being a faker now. They are talking about Daddy. A bad man was hurting people, and Daddy stopped him. Then Daddy had to go away. No one tells me where, just that he’s gone and isn’t coming back. I don’t think Daddy would like the doctor man. He wouldn’t like anyone who makes Mommy cry.

“What do you think I should do?”

I should plug my ears. I shouldn’t be listening. Mommy doesn’t talk about Daddy anymore. She hid all of his pictures except the one in my room. I think she misses him. Maybe that’s why she is crying and it isn’t the doctor man’s fault. But I can’t stop listening. I want to know what she will do with me.

“Convince her it’s not real. I think that’s the only way this will stop.”

He doesn’t know anything. I cross my arms real tight when they come out, and he holds up his hand for a goodbye high five. He shouldn’t give Mommy bad advice. Once we are back in the car, I start swinging my legs again. My shoe is still untied. “Can we stop for ice cream?”

“You’ll never get to sleep if you have sugar now. Don’t you want to go home and relax? Mommy has had a long day.”

I stop swinging my legs. No, I do not want to go home. I never want to go home. Mommy doesn’t want me to talk about that, though. The doctor man calls it a cry for attention. He says I want attention when I talk like that, and Mommy doesn’t like it. She says it is the same as lying. I don’t like the doctor man. I don’t lie, I don’t want attention, and I don’t want to go home. “Please can we get ice cream?”

Mommy lets out a big, loud puff of air that makes her floppy bangs flip around her forehead. She used to do that when I was little, to make me laugh. Now she only does it when she’s tired. “Alright, but just this once.”

She sounds sad, but we both get chocolate cones, and she keeps trying to smile over and over again. So I think she really wanted ice cream, too. She doesn’t even get mad when I drip some on my shirt.

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My Monster

“I was right. You are on a complete sugar rush.” Mommy waggles her tiny caterpillar eyebrows at me as we pull up to the front of the house. I grin real big at her. She has to learn how to smile from someone. She shakes her head, but doesn’t try it with me. “Bath and bed, missy. And no arguments.

You already won once today.”

I try to make the bath last as long as possible, but Mommy pulls out the plug before I can stop her. She holds up my pink nightgown and shakes it.

I hate pink. Pink is for little babies. “Bedtime. Let’s go.” The house is cold outside of the warm bathroom, but I walk as slowly as possible to my bedroom. At the door, I poke my head in and look at the darkness carefully.

“Oh, for crying out loud, Molly!” Mommy pushes past me and flicks on the light. She kneels at the bed and sticks her head underneath it. “See? Empty!” She stomps to the closet and flings the door wide. “Are you satisfied? Can we skip the delusions for tonight? It’s not real!”

She’s mad even though she isn’t crying this time. Mommy is mad a lot, in lots of different ways. I stick my toes over the crack of the doorstop and try to wedge the tips between the wood. I won’t cry. I’m not like her. I only cry when I’m scared. She sighs again and comes over to stand beside me. “Molly, please, just go to bed. There is nothing to be afraid of. I’ll be right down the hall all night. I’ll always be right here.”

But she’s wrong. Once she’s gone and the light’s out and all the sounds die, I know she’s wrong. There isn’t anything under my bed or in my closet.

There never was. I just know it exists.

The monster is here.

I hear them outside, noises that let me know it’s coming. Our puppy is the first sign. Rascal doesn’t like the monster. He barks to let me know it will be a nightmare night; that’s what Mommy always calls them. The monster taps on my window, too. Little tiny taps, like fairy fingers wanting to be let inside.

If I listen hard enough, I can even hear the squeak of the front doorknob being turned as it comes inside. Mommy says that’s proof I’m dreaming.

Monsters aren’t allowed inside after dark. That is a house rule. No exceptions. But Mommy takes pills from a bottle in her bathroom. She doesn’t know I know. I saw her one night when she thought I was in bed. I don’t think she knows how deep she sleeps anymore, either. I tried shaking her once, just for fun. Her snoring didn’t even pause.

I try pinching myself, like Mommy taught me when nightmares feel too real. Mommy says that pinching yourself in every dream is supposed to wake you up when things get too scary, but the monster learned my trick. It

50

Kaitlyn Johnson has sharp claws, and it pokes and scratches. Its pointy-toothed smile fills my head all night, and I always wake up without a mark on me. The doctor man tells me to show him a cut, give him a claw mark, and he’ll believe. I don’t need them to have proof. I know what I see.

All of my favorite storybooks say you need something powerful to beat the bad guys. Every hero appears from the mist with a magic sword swinging all shiny by their side. They never lose a battle. The closest thing I own to a magic sword is the package of bobby pins that hold back my hair every day for school. No monster will be scared by a bobby pin.

I clench the covers closer around myself in tight, shaking fists. Princesses in fairytales always have armies or warriors to fight in their honor. Maybe I’m a princess and only have to say a word for someone to save me. My eyes travel to the pale pink and white striped walls dotted with blurry spots of moonlight. Baskets of toys line the walls in ordered neatness, just as I like it.

The only army I might line up is a force of teddy bears.

The monster is coming closer. I know it.

There is always a dangerous quest to gather the bits for a spell that will banish the scary creature. It involves running and falling and bad people and good people…and leaving home. I never like the stories where people travel a long way away. Those aren’t the kinds I like to get lost in. People always end up dirty and sad during those books. I don’t want to quest. I want my warm, safe bed. Besides, no spell can stop what I know is coming.

Nothing ever stops my monster.

There are footsteps in the hallway.

It’s not hard to picture my monster. Its scales are all colors, a blend of red and black and blue and green, patchwork as plaid. The claws always sting when it digs them into my arms and holds me down. I never scream, not anymore. I can’t. Mommy gets mad if I manage to wake her up with bad dreams. I am too old to be such a baby. It’s just a dream, after all, and a dream can’t hurt me.

The monster’s smell is the worst thing. It is gym socks and our kitchen sink and Rascal’s breath early in the morning. It is everywhere, from the moment my monster enters the room. I bet it is probably between its icky toes.

The smell is like another person in the room, like Peter Pan’s own stinky shadow.

The doorknob is turning, so slowly.

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My Monster

What else? What else can make him go away? It is a pointless, repetitive game I practice every nightmare night. I try to fly away from my mind into the pages of each and every book on my butterfly bookcase. The list scrolls before my wide open eyes as the door slides open: invisibility cloak, sleeping potion, flying carpet, genies, ancient prophecy, snarky animal sidekicks, protective older sibling, ruby red slippers. Not a single thing that I keep stashed in my little closet.

The monster is inside my room with me now, beside me before I can blink.

There is something I’ve forgotten, something new. They told it to me last week, Mommy and the doctor man. Mommy waited on the big red couch and didn’t color while the doctor man talked to me. I squirm to the farthest side of the bed and try to remember the words.

It can’t be real if you can’t see it.

The monster is smiling. Pointy teeth stretch out and take over its whole face. I feel so little. It can swallow me whole if it really wants to. This is my nightKaitlyn Johnson abandoned mare. There is nowhere to her hometown of Fort Myers, go. It reaches its hands Florida, to live in her beloved Boston towards me. with nothing but her guitar and her calico I close cat Keiko. My Monster will be her first short my eyes. story and her first published piece, but she loves to write young adult novels in both fantasy and fiction genres.

Currently a student in Emerson College’s Writing, Literature, & Publishing program, she hopes to become a literary agent or copyeditor in one of Boston’s publishing houses. You can find other examples of her work at her personal website: https://emlita.wordpress.com.

Kaitlyn Johnson

Izzy

DAVID BRIODY SCIENCE FICTION

In her pink, windowless room, Izzy lay awake in anticipation of her sixteenth birthday.

Her parents always made her favorite dinner of baked chicken and mashed potatoes and ended with a cake for dessert. Usually it was vanilla flavored, but the year before there had been ice cream in it. The icing always said “Happy Birthday Isabella” with a red candy heart next to her name. Izzy could hardly sit still. Her clock read “3:35 a.m.”

The only light in her room besides her clock came from the pink, butterfly-shaped night-light next to her bed stand and the hallway light creeping in from the under the door. Izzy’s breath cut through the silence in the house and she was worried that her parents would hear that she was awake. She hid under the covers and let out a laugh as she clutched her stuffed dog, a birthday present from years ago.

Her first father brought home an actual dog once when she was around seven. He was a big, golden dog with a green collar. Izzy loved him because he would lie in bed with her as she went to sleep. For some reason, her mother wasn’t too happy with the dog. It seemed as though her first father had brought it home without asking her. They only had him, his name was Rufus, for a few weeks and then one night, her father took the dog out the front door. Isabella never saw Rufus again, but she kept his green collar under her pillow.

That was the first time that Izzy had ever seen the front door open. The door was painted green, and the paint had begun to chip at this point. It was not like the other greens in her life, however. This green was darker and heavier. It was less inviting than the greens that she had known from Rufus’s collar, her crayon, and a sweater that her first father would wear sometimes. It was her favorite sweater of his.

53 Izzy

Her first father was the one that started calling her Izzy instead of Isabella. Her mother wasn’t too keen on the nickname and always called her Isabella. The same thing goes for her second father. He only calls her Isabella. He’s been nice to her for the short month or two that he’s been here, but Izzy missed her first father.

She looked at the clock and it read “4:01 a.m.” Her restlessness became too much and she got out of bed and walked over to her dresser. She stopped in front of it and opened the second drawer from the top. After rummaging through some t-shirts, she pulled out a piece of paper that had been folded carefully. Izzy tiptoed over to her night-light, freezing and pressing her hand to her mouth every time the floor creaked.

She made it to the light and unfolded the paper, careful not to make a lot of noise. Under the pink glow of the butterfly, she stared at the paper. On it were three crudely drawn stick figures. The one in the middle was Izzy. On the left was her first father and on the right was her mother. Her mother’s hair was curly and red and she was wearing a tan dress, the only color she ever seemed to wear. Her first father was wearing a green shirt with a shamrock on it, her favorite.

She remembered the day that she colored it.

*Izzy sat at her kitchen table after her lessons for the day were finished.

Her first father sat next to her while her mother cooked dinner. At the time, she was eight years old.

“What do you wanna draw, Izzy?” he asked.

“Us! I wanna draw you and mommy!” she replied.

He laughed. “Okay! How about you draw me and I’ll draw you?”

“Okay, I’ll draw mommy and daddy and you draw me, got it!” she said as she raised a thumbs-up in approval.

He laughed and began to draw Izzy. He started with a triangle that was supposed to be her dress. He colored it in pink.

“I don’t have a color for mommy’s dress,” Izzy exclaimed.

“You don’t, do you? Hmm, how about you just use this peach-colored one? It’s pretty close. We can just imagine that it’s the color of mommy’s dress.”

At this, her mother dropped a glass that she was rinsing out and it clanged in the sink. She let out a sigh and turned to her husband.

“What?” he retorted. “It’s fine. She’s just making a drawing.”

“What does ‘imagine’ mean?” Izzy asked as she started work on coloring in the red brick background.

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David Briody “See? You know you can’t say that stuff around her,” her mother said as she returned to her dishes. The father shook her off and turned to Izzy.

“It means to make up something in your mind that isn’t really real, that you can’t actually see or touch. So if you look at this crayon and instead of seeing peach color, you think in your mind that it’s orange or green, then that’s imagining. You’re imagining something that’s not actually there, but you can picture it in your head. Get it?”

At the mention of the color green, Izzy immediately began rummaging through her crayons and pulled out the tiniest nub of a crayon possible.

Green was her favorite color and it was running out.

“Then I could have more green!” Izzy said as she held up what was left of the crayon.

“Right! Think of it like this. Remember that lesson that your mother taught you about the kings and queens of England?” he asked.

“There was Queen Elizabeth and King Richard and King Henry, and there were princes and princesses too!”

“Right! So right now, I want you to imagine something.” He grabbed her hands. “I want you to picture yourself. Now, picture yourself wearing a big dress like Queen Elizabeth. And you’re wearing a golden crown and sitting on a throne.”

Izzy squeezed her eyes closed. She strained as she tried to picture the image in her head. After a few seconds, she screamed.

“I’m a queen! I’m a queen! Queen Izzy!”

She stood up and began running around the table yelling, “Queen Izzy!”

“Rick!” her mother yelled at her father. He was laughing and just shrugged his shoulders.

She walked up to him and whispered something in his ear and stormed off to her room, but not before kissing Izzy on the head. He looked down for a second, but couldn’t help from smiling as he watched Queen Izzy prance around the room.* Izzy held the picture in the pink glow and smiled. She had imagined herself as a queen or princess before, just as any child would, but her father telling her what the word meant was different. For days after that, her mother had been cross with him and yelled at him more than usual. At the same time, she seemed to be very nice and warm to Izzy, warmer than usual.

Izzy loved her mother very much. She’s the one who taught Izzy her lessons. For most of the day, the two were with each other. She was stern, especially when Izzy was younger, and would tell her when she did something

55 Izzy

wrong or if she was being rude. If a burp erupted or a nose was picked, Izzy would get a slap on the hand. Her mother seemed to be much more comforting and affectionate towards Izzy as she grew older. She remembered a particular encounter with her mother just a few days before her fourteenth birthday.

*“That’s rude, Isabella. You know when you burp, you say ‘excuse me,’” she said as she took Izzy’s clothes out of the laundry basket and began folding them.

“I know. I just forgot. But why do we say that?” Izzy asked.

“Because, we just do. We always have,” her mother replied. She was wearing a tan dress, with her red, curly hair put up in a bun.

“Who’s ‘we?’ Me, you, and Daddy?” Izzy asked. Her focus was intense.

Almost fourteen, her questions became more inquisitive and less like a child asking questions just to hear themselves speak.

Her mother froze.

“Yes, it’s us, honey,” she said as she went back to folding her daughter’s clothes into piles.

“Is it just us? I’ve read so much about famous people and about other places like England and Europe and Africa and the moon.” Izzy said, a little embarrassed. Her face flushed. She felt as though what she just asked was out of line for some reason.

Her mother put a pair of jeans that she was tending to down. She stared blankly around the room. Her green eyes settled on her daughter’s piercing blue ones. She pushed Izzy’s golden blonde hair to the side as tears began to well up in her eyes.

“I love you, Isabella. I will always love you,” she said as she pulled her daughter closer, and kissed her on the head.

Izzy sported a confused look. She didn’t understand why her question had made her mother feel like this, but she felt terrible about it. The embrace between the two tightened.

“Just know that we aren’t the only people here, but for right now, at least, you can’t meet them,” her mother said. That was the end of Izzy’s questions for a while.* Positive that her parents were dead asleep, Izzy began tossing her stuffed dog up in the air. She even built up the courage to turn the lights on, which had gotten her in trouble before. She imagined herself as Jackie Mitchell, a woman her mother taught her about during a lesson a few months ago. She

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David Briody would do this often when she couldn’t sleep. Izzy didn’t know exact dates for anything that she learned, but she could tell from the black-and-white pictures in her textbook that she was really old.

*“Jackie Mitchell was a woman who pitched for the Chattanooga Lookouts,” her mother read from a textbook. Izzy had only been introduced to baseball that week and was fascinated by it. Her father even sat with her during these lessons, which he rarely ever did.

“She was a woman pitching against men. You have to understand that woman and men never competed together before. Everyone thought that the women were too small and weak to play with the men. So Jackie was very brave to take the mound against any ordinary men, let alone the New York Yankees.” She showed a picture of the Yankees baseball team on the projector.

Izzy glowed and yelled, “New York is in the United States! And Babe Ruth played for them!”

Her mother smiled.“Yes, very good. But remember to raise your hand.”

Her mother continued to go through pictures of Ruth, Lou Gehrig, and other famous Yankees.

Izzy raised her hand. “So what happened to Jackie?” she asked.

“She struck them out. She struck out Lou Gehrig and Babe Ruth, two of the greatest baseball players in the world. Ever,” her mother said. The excitement in her voice was growing. Her mother showed zeal for only a select number of topics. She always loved to talk about Europe and sports. For this lesson, she showed an excitement that Izzy had never seen before.

“A girl did that? Really? That’s so cool!” Izzy exclaimed as she raised her arms in the air and stood up. Huge smiles opened up across her parents’ faces as they watched their daughter bounce around, imitating a pitcher’s windup.

A knock on the door erupted through the house. Izzy stopped dead in her tracks.

“What was that?” her voice wavered. She began shaking and held onto her father’s arm.

A second knock echoed and her parents were visibly shaken.

“I got it,” her father said as he nodded to his wife. He walked out of the room and into the kitchen where the green door waited.

The girls could hear the door open, but they couldn’t see anything. Izzy ran over into her mother’s arms. They held each other tightly.

57 Izzy

“It’s okay, baby. Shhhh,” she whispered as she kissed her daughter on the head.

They couldn’t hear much from the kitchen, but they could make out two other male voices that weren’t the one they were familiar with. Her father was scared. She could sense it in his voice and the few words that she could hear.

“It was my idea.”

“Yes, I know she’s not supposed to be teaching that.”

“It was my idea. She had nothing to do with it.”

“Don’t. It was my idea, dammit!”

The other voices talked for a while, but Izzy couldn’t decipher it. After a minute or two of the unknown voices mumbling, her father spoke again.

“No. You can’t do that,” he said. His voice was audibly cracking.

“Please, no. We haven’t done anything wrong. This was a mistake. Please don’t take her away. It won’t happen again, I promise.”

“Please don’t take her away...”

That line rang through Izzy’s head over and over. She began softly crying. Her mother held her as tight as she could, but this offered little comfort to Izzy.

“Tomorrow, Mr. Easley!” erupted from a strong, deep voice that Izzy didn’t recognize. She shook in fear. The door slammed shut, and Izzy came running to hug her father. Her mother joined in and they held each other.* Izzy always stopped playing when she remembered that part of the night. She completed one final windup and threw the dog onto her bed. She walked over to turn the lights out. Her face shrunk as she climbed back into bed, clutching her stuffed dog. She remembered every second of that night after the visitors had left. How they held each other and ate ice cream.

They laughed and fooled around together. This seemed very odd because her mother was the one to put a stop to nonsense and horsing around. This time, however, she was putting ice cream on her nose and flicking water at her husband and her daughter. It was one of Izzy’s favorite memories.

The day after that, her father was gone. She snuck out of her room after hearing her parents crying in the middle of the night. She couldn’t hear what was said, but she saw him walk out the door and he never came back.

Only the second time that she saw the front door open, that green took on a new, sinister meaning for Izzy. She watched one of only two figures she had ever known, her own father, walk out into the darkness, leaving behind a slam of the door that now seemed monstrous and foreboding.

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David Briody After he left, Izzy was a wreck for days. She would beg for her mother to tell her what happened, but she wouldn’t say a word. Izzy could tell that it was tearing her mother apart that she wasn’t able to reveal the truth so she stopped approaching the issue. She never found out why he left. A new “father” came in and Izzy didn’t understand how she could have a second father, but her mother told her not to question it. This second father was not mean to Izzy, but she was never comfortable with him for some reason.

It seemed as if it was a chore for him to live in that house and take care of Izzy, almost like a burden.

Izzy drifted off into sleep trying to remember all the good times that she had with her first father, hoping that he would be in her dreams.

She woke up and looked at the clock. It read “11:55 a.m.” She gave a confused look as her mother usually woke her up by this time. She got out of bed and put some new clothes on. Her house was alarmingly quiet.

She walked out her door and down the hallway. She called for her mother, but there was no response.

She knocked on her mother’s door only to notice that it was not latched shut. She looked inside, but no one was in there. She continued to the kitchen where her second father would usually be reading a book or eating breakfast. The room was empty.

Izzy was more perplexed than scared. No one ever left the house, minus those few occasions with Rufus and her first father. She opened the fridge and saw her cake sitting there.

“Happy Birthday Isabella” it read, with a candy heart next to her name.

She smiled and closed the door. She pulled out a chair and sat down at the table, waiting for something to break the silence. She imagined her mother walking out of some room or closet and yelling “surprise!”

She imagined Rufus running into the kitchen and covering her face with wet, slobbering kisses. She imagined her first father singing happy birthday to her, as if nothing had ever changed. She imagined him hugging her and laughing with her. She imagined him, just being there in front of her.

Under her breath, she muttered, “I miss you, Dad” just as the front door creaked open from a gust of wind. Izzy jumped up, knocking the chair over.

She ran into the corner of the kitchen, her breathing out of control. She stared at the door in anguish and despair.

The door stopped creaking.

This was the third time that she had seen the front door open, and the first time that there has been anything but darkness on the other side.

59 Izzy

A bright light shone through a small sliver of the opening. She headed into her room, picked up her stuffed dog, and returned to the kitchen. Izzy’s heart raced as she slowly approached the door. She grabbed the doorknob and held it for what seemed like an eternity. She clenched it tightly. Slowly, she started to pull it open. The door creaked even more.

Izzy was blinded by the brightest light she had ever seen. She raised her hand to block it out. Her hair shone and sparkled. After a few moments, her eyes adjusted to the new environment.

She walked out the door and looked around. As far as the eye could see, there was green. The green that her father wore. The green that she loved so much just because of its scarcity in her life. The green that now encompassed everything in front of her. This new green engulfed and drowned out the treacherous green that was her front door. She saw trees blow in the breeze against a perfectly blue sky littered with clouds. She had only seen these things in books and pictures before. She had imagined what these things actually look like before, but this experience numbed her. She was entranced by it, her mouth agape as she spun around looking at her brick house. The grass surrounded the house in an untamed manner. She spread herself out on the ground and stared towards the sky. The sun’s warmth surrounded her like her father’s hugs.

After lying in the sun for a few minutes, she stood up and walked over to a signpost about one hundred yards from her house.

It read “ISABELLA 0999” and pointed towards the house. Above that was another sign that said “MAIN CHANNEL” and pointed down a dirt path. Izzy walked up to the start of the path. The brown trail had a steady decline, and was narrow with trees on either side. On the horizon stood a giant structure, similar to a cellphone tower. She recognized it from one of her more recent lessons. Her mom taught her about the invention of the Internet and cellular technology. She saw photographs of them in her textbook.

Izzy took one look back at her house and one look down the road.

Clenching her stuffed dog, she started walking towards the tower.

Before she was able to take more than two steps, a figure appeared from the brush a little ways down the path. It was a boy, about Izzy’s age. He saw her and they stared at each other. Then he started walking towards her.

Then another child appeared a little farther down the road. Then another from the other side of the brush. One by one, children of all different colors and sizes appeared from the brush on both sides. They all began to walk up the path towards Izzy. She stood at the top of the path and waited.

The trees were gently shaking from the soft breeze.

60 David Briody is a VMA major with a specialization in Film Production and a minor in History. This is his first piece to be published.

He has interests in documentary, screenwriting, and producing and hope to someday write a screenplay for his story.

David Briody