Loose Tooth Magazine Volume II: Ethereal

loose tooth vol. ii: ethereal

max hurley........................ lexy lemons....................... sarah butler...................... brenna o’donnell............ alyvia covert..................... holly stoker....................... sean pollock..................... jordan kressley................ ania majsterek................ james o’hagan.................. dan mcgill......................... k.g. gyasi-frempah.......... liam barry......................... emily goodstein............... collin barrett-harvey......

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..................cover, 5, 24, 31 ...........................................6 ...............................7, 33, 35 ..........................................10 ...............................11, 19, 27 ..............................12, 13, 29 ...................................15, 34 ...................................16, 25 ..........................................18 ..........................................21 ...................................22, 23 .........................................28 .........................................30 .........................................32 ...........backgrounds 2, 333

WHY SO TO OP 4

IS IT HARD PEN UP 5 image by max hurley

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lexy lemons

SARAH BUTLER

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will dayligh the way he 8

ht see me e sees me?

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PSYCHICS IN AUGUST PSYCHICS IN AUGUST PSYCHICS IN AUGUST by brenna o’donnell photo by alyvia covert In a blue, Virginian Sunday downpour, the Appalachains meet the Mid-Atlantic Coast.

They come together like tectonic plates shifting into the incorrect place. Loyal to a love that isn’t bound by fate, they share stories, secrets, and take their time with all the etceteras that get left off at the end of sentences.

She predicted this.

It’s a slick, soaked darkness in the middle of August so here’s what’s open: The Liquor Store The Psychic On my way back from the liquor store, I see a woman in a long white dress standing outside the psychic’s door on the wooden porch, illuminated by the electric scarlet neon signs: “Tell her nothing, she tells all.”

But the shop is old enough for the neons to fade, to convey a different message. In its own language of artificial light, the sign flickers, “Tell her.”

The woman standing out front turns away when my car passes by like she doesn’t want anyone to know the questions she came to ask, the answers she came to hear.

And isn’t that why we’re all out here on a rainy Sunday night? To hear our prayers answered?

Somewhere between the first and second hand of the clock, I forget my question.

I let the woman knocking on the psychic’s door become the question.

Does he love her?

Will her children be okay?

Is hers a good investment?

And what of the pain? This seedling of a dull ache, which is so small now, will it eventually bloom into death itself?

I wonder if the psychic tells this woman the same things she told me last week: That I am disconnected from everyone around me, And that I present like an island even though I’m not.

That he in fact, does not love me.

That I am an incredibly old soul, one of oldest she’s ever seen, “maybe.”

That I’ll be fired by November and that I can’t finish anything I start. $75 to see a soul in the palm of a hand, Sunday through Sunday. More expensive than the liquor store, but these answers won’t stain her white dress.

The tectonic plates shift away without earthquake or incident and my car drives off.

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holly stoker

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holly stoker

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Untitled

I

always had a natural inclination towards anything grim from a very early age. What can I say? I loved cheap thrills. For as long as I can remember, I was inexplicably drawn towards being scared. My favorite movie for the first five years of my life or so was the Disney version of Snow White. I was horrified by the darker elements of the story, such as Evil Queen and the disembodied blue and greenish mask man surrounded by puffs of purple haze in the magic mirror, along with the enchanted forest of anthropomorphized trees with outstretched arms that terrorized dear Snow (who, not to mention nearly dies). Despite that these plot points were frightening, I found myself becoming particularly drawn to them, causing me to watch that movie over and over again. While I think there’s a lot of reasons why children can become enticed by media with horror elements, I think a really good analysis can be found in the words of Lindsay Knight, Head of Children’s Books for Random House Australia. She writes, “Scary stories play an important role in children’s emotional education, allowing them to identify and control their darker feelings—a good coping mechanism. It’s a chance for them to experience a really potent fantasy and almost live it, without any of the consequences.”

I’m inclined to agree with Lindsay—I could, to a certain extent, recognize that once a film like Snow White was over, that the rest of my life would go on completely unaffected by poisoned Red Delicious apples covered in radioactive green shaded slime, wicked sorceresses with fabulous arched eyebrows, and haunted trees with twisted faces and mangled arms.

That being said, once I learned about what actual death was like, and that there might be an afterlife—and on top of that, that some people got caught in between the land of the living and the dead—I had a really brutal time wrapping my head around it.

One could argue I agonized over it.

The first time I experienced death in any meaningful way was when my grandma died when I was 6 years old in 1999. By that point, both my grandfathers (on my mother’s and father’s side, respectively) had died and when my mother’s stepmom named Shirley died, I was down to one—my Nana. I know I am obligated to love my Nana and not talk shit about the dead, but aside from a handful of instances of maternal affection, she wasn’t very warm at all. She was Irish Catholic full time stay-at-home mom and part-time alcoholic who begrudgingly took me to get Happy Meals and was relatively

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by sean pollock

uninterested in getting to know me at all. She paled in comparison to Shirley, who was a quirky woman who doted over me hand and foot.

I can still remember her voice. She grew up in Ohio and later moved to my mother’s hometown of Erie, Pennsylvania but she still had a Midwestern flair to her voice, and said things like, “Holy Hannah!” instead of “Oh my god.” She was half-Cherokee, and she was a larger woman with short salt and pepper hair and type two diabetes. She loved birds, was a full-time nurse, and wore long house dresses. When she died, I had a really hard time coming to terms that she wasn’t going to be a physical presence in my life anymore, especially at such a young age. It was unsettling to me that although I was told that she was going to Heaven (and I was certain that she wouldn’t go to Hell, based upon my understanding of what Hell was), I was in deep denial she was really truly gone. At one point in elementary school, I became obsessed with this Christian propaganda show called It’s A Miracle where interviewees would talk about “real life” miracles and one episode explored someone who had a near death experience who saw the light but then came back. I brought this up to my dad once as we took a walk around my local lake, Birchwood, that grandma could come back because other people on TV had come back after having near death experiences!

But he told me it was too late, she was already gone. I dejectedly stared at a swingset that blew in the wind as we walked upon the sand on the way to the car, trying to process my disappointment.

Throughout the countless dry Catholic sermons I labored through in my early childhood, various priests would describe the father, the son, and the Holy Ghost during the Eucharist, but as I grew older, I wanted to explore this concept of what a capital G Ghost actually was. I came across a sensationalist book cover with pictures of “real life ghosts” aimed at young readers from my elementary school library that I immediately checked out. I vividly recall a realistic old fashioned sepia-tone photo printed on the cover of what appeared to be a ghost woman descending down a flight of stairs. I now know this image is a famous picture called “The Brown Lady Of Raynham Hall,” captured by Captain Hubert C. Provand in 1936, which is said to have captured the ghost of Lady Dorothy Wolpole in England in a massive country house called Raynham Hall (spoiler alert: the photo has been debunked as fake.) I remember skimming through the pages of this book I

had borrowed, seeing pictures of real life ghosts, and becoming so frightened that I might experience one in real life because there was documented evidence that other people had! Unlike the animated scary elements of Snow White, having the book specifying that these ghosts were “real photos” and from “real paranormal cases,” it seemed more than possible that I could encounter one and that was not something I was down for. Ghosts no longer something I could enjoy from a distance—even grown adults that I knew believed in the existence of them. I must have checked out the book close to the weekend, because I remember my babysitter, an old stocky woman named Bert, came to watch me and took notice of the book. She asked if she’d like to read it with me.

But by the time she noticed it, I was convinced that even by having this book filled with pictures of “real life ghosts” on my person, that it could somehow evoke ghosts coming out that very night. Therefore, I insisted I didn’t want to read it. My imagination was running wild based on what I had already seen. I was truly petrified in a way that was no longer enjoyable, unlike the fantastic imagery in Snow White.

After reading this book, I became convinced that my house was haunted. Once, in our guest bedroom, I was convinced I had seen one. In the dark, I noticed the door to our guest bedroom was half open and on the bed appeared to be a translucent blob vaguely in the form of a body. When I called my dad over to investigate, he turned on the light and revealed it to be a suit from the cleaners that was covered in a plastic garment bag—which would explain the unusual texture. Still, I had a feeling that there were ghosts around and for that reason, I insisted on sleeping with a nightlight well until I was in middle school. The nightlight provided peace of mind for me, because to me, it only made sense that ghosts would come out at night, and as long as that light was on, they’d know to stay away from me. I began to grow comfortable seeing ghosts depicted in film—I absolutely loved Casper and all of its sequels (especially Casper Meets Wendy), the Cartoon Network special of The Halloween Tree, Ghostbusters, The Addams Family—and became obsessed and fascinated and terrified by death, the afterlife, and the occult. Although the idea of real-life ghosts still severely freaked me out, I secretly hoped throughout my childhood that if there was one ghost who would come to visit me, it would be my Grandma Shirley. I wanted to talk to her one last time. I wanted to smell her again, go on walks with her again, hold her hand and hug her again.

But most of all, I wanted to know her. My time with her was cut so short, it felt so unfair. Why did I only have one living grandparent, when most kids had at least two?

At a certain point, I learned to make peace with her death. Life went on. However, grief is a non-linear process, and like a ghost, sometimes it creeps up when you least expect it. Last Christmas,

it marked the 20th anniversary of Grandma Shirley’s death, as I looked through old pictures of her in my family’s photo album, I wept uncontrollably for an entire childhood with her I was robbed of. I wished so badly she had told me about what it was like as a mixed Indiginous woman and what her childhood was like. I wish I knew what she expected of me. I wish she gave me sage advice as to how to best lead my life. Perhaps most of all, I now wish she told me about her other marriages before my grandfather. I learned this past year that Shirley’s second husband’s brother, Lou, is currently serving a life sentence in Erie for strangling his wife the year before I was born. But then again, I am pretty sure she, like my Nana, veered pretty Conservative and was at times very controlling of my mother and her siblings. My mom once told me that on her 21st birthday, she forced her to stay in and watch her younger sibling, my Uncle Paul. Another time she learned Paul was smoking cigarettes as a teenager, that she pulled up in front of the mall where him and his friends were hanging out, rolled down the window, and facetious smoked cigarettes in front of him. “Look Paul, smoking is so cool, I’m doing it too.” Sometimes, I wonder if we had truly gotten to know each other, if she would’ve liked me as I am, and if I would even liked her that much.

I can’t remember how or when in middle school I lost my faith, but when I did, I lost my belief in ghosts and spirits, too. I think for many young queer people who are raised with some variation of Christianity, your faith tends to wain once you learn you’re something that the church doesn’t want you to be. This certainly isn’t the case for everyone, but once I learned that if I was gay, I was a sinner in the eyes of the church, the whole illusion of Christianity shattered all at once. When I learned to reject all that I was taught, it was like I had been drinking polluted water my whole life, and then I started drinking from a water fountain that was clear and healthy. I was 13 years old, overweight, a devoted theatre geek with beady eyes and a terrible sense of fashion. I was mercilessly bullied, and I decided that if there was a God, why the fuck would he make me so different? Why would he make me fat in a town full of athletic obsession? Why would he make me artistic instead of practical? Why would God make me feel bad that I was attracted to men? It just didn’t make sense. The Bible, like Snow White, was just another story--but for some reason, the story of Jesus made people turn against others. The more I thought about it, the less sense it made. And that’s when I realized, the concepts of ghosts don’t even make sense. If a ghost is the manifestation of a soul, then what is a soul? Is a soul a translucent flushed out version held inside our body that’s released once we die? Or is a soul something intrinsic-and in that case, is a soul just another word for personality?

I don’t think I have the answers. I think there are some things that we experience in this world that are beyond our understanding or comprehension. But I think the real ghosts in this world are the ghosts of our own inner children, who haunt us into adulthood.

Ghosts, grief, broken expectations, heartbreak, and pain are all in the same family. And the only tangible thing that can make any of those things go away is time. The ultimate exorcism in my mind is a combination of time, perspective, new love and dreams, as well as connection with others can help us leave our ghosts behind. And perhaps some of the ghosts haunt us forever. But if we can find our own version of nightlights that work for us, perhaps they’ll stay at bay.

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JORDAN KRESSLEY17

ania majsterek

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Alyvia covert

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ParSel Tongue and Por tuguese by james o’hagan

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arly one colorful fall morning, Jackson, a mid-twenties deadbeat, received an upsetting text from his mother, Stephanie. He was summoned to return the Bose speaker he stole from her house, which he foolishly forgot at a fantasy football draft party at Tommy’s place, or face eviction from her basement. Jackson’s mom was a furrowed-browed woman who worked 60 hours a week to support his Twitch career—or rather lack there of. With just a few daily watchers and the motivation of a sloth crossing the Pacific Coast Highway, Stephanie finally had grounds to boot his lethargic ass out of her house. Her thyroid shook with delight at the idea of her son finally moving on and torturing his then girlfriend, Bria. Jackson, never thinking much at all most of the time, came up with a brilliant idea to dissuade his mother from revoking his daily Lunchable and decided to bounce it off Bria.

“I think I’m impatient because my mother never packed me hard boiled eggs for lunch when I was a kid.”

“Stop trying to change the subject.”

“Just a thought. Please don’t kill my cat,” said Bria reaching for a second egg.

“I’m telling you. We sacrifice Blue’s soul and all our problems will go away,” Jackson said, rolling his eyes.

Bria was a rare creature. Her demeanor and will-power exuded triumphantly through her strong shoulders. She had dark hair and deep features, accentuated by her glistening smile. She was growing continuously unhappy with her partner, understandably, but was madly in love. She had so much motivation and was excelling in her career as a writer while Jackson watched YouTube videos about “10 reasons why Chic-Fil-A Isn’t as Homophobic as You May Think” on his mother’s decomposing futon. She often watched him play video games on the couch while she created beautiful expressions on beige construction paper and knew this idea must have stemmed from one of his latest adventures inside his PlayStation.

“God sacrificed his only son so that Joni can shake her ass on only fans,” Jackson said looking at Blue menacingly. “I’m sacrificing our cat so that we continue living our fairytale life!”

Jackson had been playing a lot of Bloodborne lately, a terribly challenging action RPG game developed by the masochists over at FromSoftware. He had the wicked idea to sacrifice Blue in order to harvest her Blood Echoes, which he would offer to his mother— whom he called “Vicar Amelia” for no apparent reason—as penance for his lack of awareness and respect. He approached his twitch stream with the idea and his only subscriber Andrew, a ska-loving man-child with 12 cats, told him he would gladly sacrifice one of his fur babies for free cable and a futon in the basement, followed by a sweet Poggers emote.

“Jackson…first of all, Blue is my cat,” Bria said with the patience of a grizzly waiting for its daily trout. “Second, you need to get a real fucking job. Third, your imagination has been getting the best of you lately and I think you should focus your thoughts on something that is going to deliver a future for us.”

“Babe, she’s fat,” Jackson said pointing at Blue sitting quietly on the ottoman. “Most of the time, the larger the monster the more Blood Echoes you receive in exchange for their soul. I think the logic is sound here.”

Bria noticed perspiration on Jackson’s brow. It was cold in Amelia’s basement. The thick, moist air bounced off the concrete walls and created a cavern like effect. Jackson’s mounds of laundry acted like stalagmites, constantly growing and gently watered when he decided to add to the tapering column with another pair of Scooby Doo boxer briefs before taking his weekly shower.

She could not fathom, no matter how worked up he was, how he could possibly be sweating. Then, she noticed his eyes dancing like billiard balls along felt.

“Hey, are you okay?” she said moving towards him carefully.

“Amelia will be pleased. She will be pleased indeed,” Jackson sunk in to his chair.

He had been experimenting with micro-dosing magic mushrooms to combat his shaken libido, oddly enough, and that day had decided to eat more than his normal dosage for a little extra encouragement in order to come up with a plan to save his murky dungeon.

“What did you take?”

“It’s simple, really. I’ll toss her kerosene-soaked body in to the blaze and speak the words of the ancients, beckoning them for grace from my apathetic disposition. I’m sorry, my sweet, it’s the only way.”

Jackson pounced on top of Blue and ran up the stairs towards the back door. In the backyard, he had already placed a bucket of kerosene and constructed a sacrificial fire. The flames bellowed up like a tornado and shined deeply through the night sky. Jackson quickly dunked Blue in to the kerosene and then spoke an ancient invocation.

“Behold my offering, oh great Keeper of the Old Lords! This arcane act of immolation acts as atonement for the strain I have put on poor Amelia’s life. I am humbled to serve such a mighty and powerful deity! IMBUE MY BODY WITH THE ECHOES OF THIS CALICO AND SET MY CONSCIENCE FREE!” A swirl of multicolored flames rose from the ashes of the burning fire and swallowed Blue right out of Jackson’s hands. He watched in amazement as a wondrous feeling of solace filled his body, something he compartmentalized as the fusion of Blue’s Blood Echoes with his soul. The deed was done.

Bria saw things a little differently.

Jackson grabbed his favorite stuffed walrus, named Tusks, from his bedside and stumbled up the stairs, stubbing each of his toes with every jangled step. In the backyard, Jackson dunked Tusks in to a puddle of cesspool water, which in his delirious state he believed was a natural kerosene well that magically appeared in his backyard, soaking himself in shit and piss in the process. The fire, a single log barely lit inside of a hole in his mother’s well-manicured lawn, went out as soon as Jackson approached it. He let out gasping breaths that instead of providing the fire with oxygen, killed it with poopy breath and carbon dioxide. Jackson’s prayer went like this: “AHHH! LET ME HELP MOMMY! I’VE BEEN A GOOD BOY!” And then pattered off in to a mix of what Bria believes was parseltongue and Portuguese. He threw Tusks in to the fire and ran inside. Bria grabbed Tusks ashen body and brought him inside, knowing Jackson would regret leaving his childhood friend in the pit.

Jackson stripped off all of his clothes, basked himself in a victorious shower and whisked himself under the sheets fully nude.

“Hey, is it hot in here!?” he said, sweating under his blanket sprawling in his fortress of solitude.

Bria laughed knowing his trip would last hours and he’d sweat profusely throughout the evening—a fine payback for the chaotic night she had just been put through. No matter what existential plane Jackson was on or how sleepy he was at one in the afternoon, she would always love him and he would continue to inspire her. She grabbed her notepad and continued creating beautiful expressions on beige construction paper.

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daniel mcgill

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by holly stoker MAXphotos HURLEY

Iron Salt & Ivy by jordan kressley

I come floating through nine times spun

held forever careful not to touch the earth speak not my name

nor will I yours should I crumble in the time between bones to ash

blood to dust comes creeping ‘cross my blighted mind

my final thought a prayer

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alyvia covert

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Mask On I

have just finished three months of summer employment at—I don’t want to name the store, so we’ll call it The Store. This has probably been the worst summer I’ve ever experienced, but then again, this particular summer, albeit year, is the worst for most of the world due to our collective global pandemic experience.

In mid-late May, the Store hired me as a personal shopper. The Store had an app that customers could use to pick what groceries they wanted. A personal shopper would collect the items and bring the groceries to the customer once they parked in one of the reserved spots—a timely tool to practice social distancing in the time of Coronavirus.

Working at the Store was like most jobs: a mix of good and bad. I liked my coworkers and disliked most of the management.

I liked picking the groceries, but I disliked delivering them, and especially disliked going in and out of the store. Going in and out of the 90-100°F summer heat and being required to wear long pants, I constantly sweat through my shirt and the few cloth masks until they turned into damp, smelly rags.

I started working there as blocks of the country were reopening.

At the time, most of the general public didn’t have to wear masks, but essential workers (like myself) did. While working, I noticed some, but not all, customers disdained masks and mask-wearing. There was the understandable inconvenience of talking to someone with a mask on and the added potential of muffled noise. Considering I smushed my words together pre-mask, words were now strangled together even more. Two times, I noticed how people refer to my mask as “that thing.” The first time occurred within my first month.

I was picking groceries and an older gentleman, probably in his 50s, wearing a sleeveless shirt with small holes around the neck walked over.

“Excuse me,” he said. “Where’s your discount bakery?”

I left my shopping cart out of the aisle and walked to the nearby bakery stand.

“This is where we keep all our bakery,” I answered as I pointed and stood by the stand. He raised his arm, positioned his finger, and motioned for me to “come here.” I submitted and walked up to him, but remained at a foot distance. His face was plain.

“I didn’t hear what‘chu said.” He then asked, “How can anyone hear you with that thing on?”

That minor interaction seemed meaningless to me. Nothing of significance until a few weeks later.

It was early in the morning when the personal shopping department’s phone rang.

In a deep country accent: “This is Blank Blankety, to pick up my order.” I looked on the pickup roster for his name, but it was absent. This usually happened due to our proximity to another store. So I asked him if he was at a different store. He hoped he wasn’t. I went outside with my mask on. When I approached his car, I saw a slightly confused old man with a graying goatee framing his face, big aviator glasses, and a hat that I presumed told us he was in the service. He looked up at me.

“I couldn’t understand ya with that thing on.” I asked if he had a confirmation page. On his email, I saw headlines of MAGA, Trump, and “Last Chance To Meet President Trump.” Oh yeah, that makes sense, I thought. Not to say that people who support 45 don’t

by k.g. gyasi-frempah photo by holly stoker

wear masks. I don’t want to generalize, but it does add a possible revelatory layer to Blankity’s disdain towards it.

I constantly saw Blankity come in the store, often draped in a Trump 2020 cap, not wearing a mask. One of my supervisors placed me on mask duty once, giving out masks to customers. I saw him. He had grabbed a used cart from the lanes and walked in. I offered him a mask; he shook his head and proceeded to enter the store. I ran to my manager and asked, “What do I do if someone refuses a mask?” She, while silently acknowledging the instances of customers assaulting employees who were offering masks all over the country, whether verbally or physically, said to let him go.

Another time, I was talking to a coworker while she was outside doing mask duty. We were both standing behind the sign: Face coverings are required for all customers and associates per local/ state order. He and his wife were walking in. My coworker offered masks to them and then the wife said repeatedly and politely “no” whilst letting out a light chuckle. To be considerate, let’s assume they both have a medical condition that prevents them from wearing masks. That would be forgivable.

It wasn’t only customers, but also coworkers who were required but exhibited a sense of antipathy at mask-wearing. Some of my coworkers would only cover their mouths and not their noses; the same coworkers would come to the store maskless on their offdays, before masks became necessary (but after the surgeon general suggested it). I couldn’t understand that semi-cavalier attitude as it gravely contrasted with my own anxiety. As one coworker, that I know of, contracted it and one had a near scare with it that left him absent for two weeks, I didn’t feel safe working there. As the pandemic went on for longer, I was assured that I would contract it, so I attempted to delay it.

I still wonder why a simple face-covering seems like a hard thing for folks to grasp. Is there some relationship to masks and normalcy? It’s obvious that our current global situation is the farthest thing from normal and we’re on a slow march back to it.

I surmise that the natural human reaction to an abnormal event is either to normalize it and compare it to something similar in history that humanity survived (eg, The Bubonic Plague and the 1918 Flu Pandemic) and/or keep the same normal, pre-event life we had, or whatever semblance of it. With Blankity, before his rejection and aversion of masks, whether politically motivated, health motivated, or whatever reason, he wants to live in the times before March. He wants to go back to February, where he could grab a used cart from the parking lot, enter a store without covering his face, and see and interact with other bare faces. Likewise with my coworkers’ mask-wearing style. But sparring the arrogance and reckless endangerment of both self and others, there’s a small, minuscule amount of admiration that I have for the human need to acclimate oneself to extraordinary circumstances. The instinct of “I’m not going to let you make me stop living my life,” or “I’m not going to let you get in my way.” The spirit of humanity is in full effect replacing reasoned rationale; the spirit of misguided triumph instead of measured hibernation of medical defiance. Maybe I’m overanalyzing and overthinking and rationalizing contempt for others, but I do admit it’s all because of a simple piece of face covering. A mask can expose a lot in people.

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intergalactic colonizer

by liam barry image by max hurley

“History...is a nightmare from which I’m trying to awake.”

-James Joyce A burnt blonde freckled white man stands in a white bathing suit With red, raw, bloody, blistering hands Stranded in an exotic archipelago Shipwrecked on a blinding white beach, for weeks Brain bleached From flying too close to some dying star The man sends stagnant radio waves through a useless gizmo, Failing to transgress any sort of didactic message.

He pitches a rusty red lawn chair into the land.

Sitting, he exhales, and cracks a cold one, Settling his stinky toes into something else’s Sand Only to watch the sunset on humanity for the last time.

Once his drink is finished and the ethereal light fades, He stakes a white flag attached to a big stick, Its point, dripping, with glowing, green, bloody-goo...

Afterwards, he retreats, to the warmth of his newly apprehended man-cave

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emily goodstein

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Sarah butler

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The Boy in the Box: An U ns o l ve d P h i l l y M ys tery

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n February 25, 1957, the remains of a 4-to 6-year-old boy were found wrapped inside a bundle of blankets inside an emptied bassinet box in the woods of Northeast Philly off Susquehanna Road. The bassinet box was discovered to be specific to J.C Penney’s brand of bassinet, but store records came up short as to who had made recent purchases of the item. The authorities went to great lengths to try and identify the boy—including going so far as to send post-mortem photographs of the boy’s propped up body with every gas bill that was issued in the town, in addition to hundreds of flyers, posters and newspaper ads. While the case remained cold for a few years, in 1960, Remington Bristow, an employee of the medical examiner’s office, determined to find the culprit, consulted a psychic since results in the physical realm had come up short.

The psychic told him to look for a house that matched a foster home that was near where the box had been found. Upon attending an estate sale at said foster home, Remington discovered a bassinet closely resembling the model sold at J. C. Penny from the era in addition to a set of blankets hanging on the clothesline that were almost identical to the one in which the boy’s body had been wrapped in. He theorized that the victim belonged to the stepdaughter of the man who ran the foster home, and that an accidental homicide had taken place, potentially due to negligence—and they ditched the body in a rush job so the stepdaughter would not be exposed as an unwed mother. In 1998, Philadelphia police lieutenant Tom Augustine, along with numerous members of the Vidocq Society (a group of retired policemen and profilers) “thoroughly questioned” the foster father and the stepdaughter (whom he had married) in hopes of narrowing down suspects. After numerous interviews, the foster home theory was put to rest.

A second popular theory came to fruition in 2002 after a woman who used the alias “Martha,” claimed her mother, a local librarian, bought the boy (who was allegedly named Jonathan) from his parents in the summer of 1955, in exchange for an envelope which she assumed contained money. She said that Jonathan was raised in inhumane conditions in the basement. She described a floor

by sean pollock collage by sarah butler drain being his only option for a bathroom, and a “bed” assembled amid coal bins and discarded cardboard cartons. Martha claimed that her mother regularly sexually abused both of them, and had purchased Jonathan with the intentions of making him a “sex slave.” He met his final fate after one terrible night, where he began to vomit after a dinner of baked beans. She claimed that her mother beat Jonathan so severely he became unconscious. After that, she claims he was given a bath, and he died as he was bathing. This had coincidentally matched information that only the police knew about—such as that the boys fingers were water-wrinkled when they discovered him, and the boy’s stomach had actually contained baked beans inside. However, “Martha” wasn’t deemed credible because she had a history of mental illness, and her neighbors reported there wasn’t a boy living there at the time.

To this day, the case has never been solved. If I had to put my money on it, I think Martha was telling the truth and her mother was just extremely good at keeping the boy out of sight. If what she says about her mother is true, then it only makes sense that she would have intense trauma, which would explain her “mental illness.” After all, still to this day, those with mental illnesses are stigmatized as credible witnesses and authority figures can use a variety of psychological techniques to gaslight and alienate those giving false confessions--or repress true confessions, in this instance. I guess we’ll never know, but if I were on the case, I think Martha is worth talking to again after all these years, especially given what we know about the stigmatization of mental illness in the forensic field and in law enforcement. But perhaps too much time has passed. While I couldn’t find if Martha is still with us or not, this is a case that will continue to remain a mystery for the foreseeable future.

Sources: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boy_in_the_Box_(Philadelphia) http://edition.cnn.com/2002/LAW/12/05/ctv.traces.boy.box/ index.html

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THIS MAGAZINE WAS CREATED WITH INTENT TO DESTROY THE LINE BETWEEN REALITY AND SUBCONSCIOUS. WHEN READ, I HOPE IT INVOKES A SENSE OF DISCOMFORT OR JOY OR ANGER - I HOPE IT INVOKES FEELING. I HOPE YOU TAKE A BREATH AND AVOID LIMITING YOURSELF TO EXIST IN ONE REALITY OR ANOTHER. EMBRACE YOUR DREAMS AS THOUGH YOU’VE LIVED THEM. QUESTION NIGHTMARES. ASK YOUR DEMONS QUESTIONS. INTERVIEW THE PEOPLE WHO ARE IN THIS LIFE AND THOSE WHO ARE NO LONGER HERE. I PROMISE THEY ARE STILL LISTENING. WHEN THE WORLD IS LOST, WE SHOULD ALL HAVE SOMEWHERE TO GO.

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