haunting

i am seeking a haunting .

a creak-soft floorboard, a window pried and gaping. all my prayers cut in half upon my cutting board and left hanging from the weeping tree. make terror of me, i beg, out of me, out of the nothing inside me. give me something to call myself that doesn’t sound like emptiness. all a haunting has ever been: a way to fill gaps.

by addidson

catalyst by morgan j.

The stairs were haphazardly placed against the chipped wall as if they were an afterthought. They fell too close to the entrance; the first thing spotted when you walk in the front door of the apartment. There was another wall connected to the left side of the narrow stairway, the rail simply a thin rod of wood supported by three golden brackets. It was hard to tell the original color of the carpet, likely once a cool beige but now far closer to a muddy slate. It looked like it could cave in with the weight of a child, even— yet it must have been there for decades or more.

I was six years old, about as useful as the toy telephones I played with and barely heavier. The scratchy material of my dress slipped over one of my small shoulders while my eyes fell to the stair in front of me, a drastic feat for a clumsy child like myself. Before my foot moved an inch, my jaw clenched in anticipation of the battle to come. I took a deep breath before placing some of my weight on the lowest step, wobbling as I began my ascent. In my eldest sister’s haste to guide me up the stairs, I was pulled along while my lanky legs knocked my knees together. Like an alien attempting to replicate the walk of a human being, my limbs did not belong to me and every step was a negotiation rather than an order. I walked as lightly as an acrobat and as uncoordinated as a baby deer.

My sister moved up the stairs, impatient but still attempting to lead the way. I struggled to keep up, as she was a full three years older than me. I

quickened my pace, only to trip on the hem of my dress. Her grasp on my hand was too tight, and while I slipped she did not let go. I was suspended in the air, my only connection to the earth being my sister’s hand wrapped around my own. My muscles tensed, but the knowledge of what was coming did not soften the blow. My shoulder locked, punished with the sickening pop of hard bone past ligaments. Time stopped, and I lied frozen on the middle of the stairs for a minute before anyone mobilized to help.

White light flashed before my eyes. My vision returned blotched with violent colors that moved and merged without pattern or design, contouring the sides of my eyes. I could feel my complexion become ashen, my natural color sunken to something corpse-like. The light flowed through a window somewhere above my body, and the dress, flat against my ghostly skin, was ripped at the bottom where I had tripped on it. A calm enveloped me. I could only hold still and breathe, slow and deep, to keep myself from passing out.

At first the ache was dull, as if some lazy torturer was standing right behind me, only applying enough pressure to be little more than an annoyance. It sat there, too far up, pried away from my collar bone. Then the pressure began to swirl without mercy, penetrating the skin that should have been squishy but lied taught and wrong as though the living cells had been replaced by aging rubber bands, thick and twisted. There was no blood anywhere, but it felt like my skin was being torn open, bone where there shouldn’t be bone. The pain took me deep inside myself to the primitive place that knows how to cope with this kind of feeling. Something felt so very wrong but I couldn’t articulate what it was with

my limited vocabulary. I tried to pinpoint the cause of this sudden pain, tried to reason the unbearable pressure. The hurt had an unpleasant warmth to it, eating away at me. With each second, the heavy weight on my shoulder amplified, the muscle quivered, my consciousness ebbed.

As I grew older, the accident continued to leave an impact on me. The pain ebbed and intensified on unpredictable intervals, following a schedule no one understood. Today, the pain commands my attention. It does not sit quietly in the background as it once did. It frightens my brain into meek submission, demanding a solution that I cannot provide. I used to think that the intermittent pains were the worst because they were random, chaotic. Now I know that this constant ache is far more debilitating. I am left without break, unable to formulate more than three separate thoughts before I wish for an end to the pain yet again. It is there when I eat, when I sleep, when I move in any way. It owns me, controlling every action. I’ve never been one cohesive machine of blood and bone. My body is the enemy, decaying and angry.

stories by kayla

maybe i wasn’t made for you,and you weren’t made for me.maybe one day the words i write will be happy.

meant to be, by morgan j.

heart to my hands

love fills me from my heart and to my hands - it seeps from all four chambers and i can feel it sing. up and out, up and out: arterial course from ventricle to claw: i flick my wrists and from each valley of my finger-prints it pours, liquid, retch, i catch it in my palms; breathe it out and watch the fog start beading on my fingertips. state change in progress, i fling my arms agape and let myself be crucified.

i wonder if all that streams from twixt my knuckles will twist round the atrium to someone else’s heart; fill them top to toe and drip from fingertip to throat.

by izzy fitz

You are naught but flesh and bone

Gnarled at grey fingertips

Yellowed at tongue

Curled at lip -

A prime example of Death’s throne

(cigarette smoke bellows from your rotten corpse -

You are naught but flesh and bone)

An ode to the pestilence we cry!

Breathless whispers as a call to cease

The white flag of youth hung bloodied Your coffin odoured and adorned with decays garment

Through fogged up windows a mare is visible

(your mouth is Wars Revolver; worn down -

spewing nothing but ricochet)

You are naught but flesh and bone

sentenced in whiskey soaked smoke

an ode to the pestilence by kristina

for the witches; for the burning in your veins, the smoke in your lungs, the beat in your chest and the fire flickering at your feet. for the pine on the forest floor and the blood on your smile and the dirt on your hands


hatchet, crywolf / bedroom hymns, the 1975 / thanatos, cold war kids / blood red sea, kanye / which witch - demo, childish gambino / pretty little head, kendrick lamar & zacari / river, frank ocean / world gone mad, the 1975 / bones, SZA / did you hear the rain?, tyler, the creator / what the water gave me, jhene aiko / bottom of the river, frank ocean

seven devils, beach house / no rest for the wicked, frank ocean / muddy waters, HONNE / kingdom come, bruno major / make a shadow, the 1975 / railroad track, willy moon / smoke, daughter / crow, sasha siem / scars, boy epic / the draw, bastille / blood on my name, the brothers bright / survivor, 2wei / you should see me in a crown, billie eilish

by kristina

katabasis. chapter 1 extract by kristina

“And so under the guidance of the sorceress Circe, Odysseus made the descent into Haides – with the intent of having the fate of his voyage revealed throughcommunication with the deceased.”. A girl of seemingly around 19, glanced uptowards the pacing lecturer as he spoke in lulled tones; twirling her pen in herfingers absent-mindedly as she glanced around.

The room was entrenched in the scent of musk, with thin bans of light peaking outof the squirming curtains to reveal the continuous waves of dust. To the simple eye,it would seem as though the room was 50 feet in square metres. However, anyonewith a plausible belief that they have a brain, would glance around the room andsee the impractical architecture expanding and shrinking the room. They’d see theround cornered ceiling juxtaposing the windows that jut in, or perhaps they’d focussolely on the desks haphazardly nailed down with little to no care.

The girl of 19, Isabella she was called, looked down at her own desk – noticing therusted nails chaining any escape the desk, if aminated, might be encouraged tomake.

“Odysseus sort out the blind prophet Tiersias upon entering the Underworld, withthe hopes that they would offer the guidance he so desperately craved in order tomake his way home.” The teacher continued – unfortunately Isabella decreed.

Considering Isabella clearly wasn’t paying attention – she took the time to try andmake eye contact with the girl a few rows across – Alessia. Of course, not thatsimply staring at the back of her friend’s head with intent did anything, but Isabellaliked to hope. Alessia was dark-skinned and in Isabella’s opinion, the prettiest oftheir ragtag gang of friends – not that Isabella was bitter or anything with her, incomparison, gremlin, goblin-under-the-bridge look neatly tied up with a jacketthrow on.

Isabella fiddled with her grey cotton over coat covering the restrictive black turtleneck slowly chocking the life out of her. However, Isabella was of the opinion that no matter how tight the collar was, she would inevitably die of boredom first. Comparatively she noticed the clothes of those around her – Alessia with her classy red pantsuit, the boy a seat across in his frankly ugly green muscle shirt revealing all that was there – or in other words nothing. And the girl in front, where disappointedly, all Isabella could see was a bundle of blonde hair over spilling the chair.

“Within Homer’s Odyssey, there are a multitude of necromantic rituals – ranging from animal scarification, a pit of fire at nocturnal hours or simply praying.” the teacher dragged.

The lanky boy in the ugly shirt to Isabella’s left made eye contact, rising his eyebrows in mutual boredom. He took awhile to look at her, with Isabella making equally as long eye contact before he turned away decidedly and scribbled frantically on his paper at his desk. Isabella looked towards the caving ceiling under the belief their exchange had finished until she felt a hurried kick on her chair leg and looked down to find a piece of crumped paper and the boy’s impatient eyes on her.

Upon the paper was a simple message – “Dustin” with an arrow pointing towards the boy and under that the sentence, “Would you ever raise the dead?”. Isabella looked at Dustin – would she ever raise the dead? What sort of question was that? She squinted, trying to recall any interaction they’d had before where the dead would come up before realisation settled in. The lecture. The lecture currently on. The lecture she wasn’t paying attention to. The lecture about Odysseus essentially raising and communicating with the dead.

Wow, she thought to herself, I am shockingly thick.

This is where people get found, he says, with our knees swelling and no direction out of this starvation. We walk through a museum of the dead, all their parts rotting, and I hear a rustling everywhere. Can the gone make noise, and why would they want to when no one is listening properly? I do not speak the language of graves. I whittle my tongue. I speak, and speak nothing. I cry, and cry empty air. I wave flashlights in the dark and become invisible. This is where people get found, he says, but none of the people are me.

the word found doesn’t quite fit on my tongue, by addison

what she asked of me, i did. who she asked of me, i became.

already on my knees, by morgan j.

masochism by kayla