Spring 2017 - Dreams

Letter from the Editor

While proposing themes for this semester’s magazine, we wanted a word that would encompass both a climate of turmoil and a nation looking for unity. Feelings of bitterness—no matter your political leanings—lingered as we entered 2017. Our theme required fluidity to either unleash one’s imagination or express that which weighs heavily upon the mind. The realm of dreams opened the door of possibility.

Dreams are something everyone experiences: intangible, perhaps unattainable, but ever-present. Whether in your sleep or during waking hours, dreams give shape to our greatest hopes, fears, and desires. It is a silent yet universal language we all speak, with no regard to age, gender, race, religion, or nationality.

The students, faculty, and alumni of NMC responded with zest, exploring both the real and imagined. Daydream or nightmare, grounded or absurd, I invite you to share these experiences with us and wish you pleasant dreams.

Ann Hosler Editor-in-Chief

Your Dreams Within...

NMC Magazine — Spring 2017 —. vol. 39 #2

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NMC Magazine Additional Content

Insomnia (Demo Version) Lyrics, vocals, and guitar by Zack Harrington Recorded and mixed by Conor Lynch

It’s half past midnight, and I can’t get to sleep.

Reality is finally better than my dreams.

The harvest Moon is waning, Venus by its side and I get to see it with night vision eyes.

I have insomnia, so I watch heavenly bodies and the light that they touch.

This is my life, I don’t need a cure.

My night sky is so pure.

I watch the twilight cinema play inside my head.

I listen to the orchestra, the ideas that have bled onto my pillow talk with the ghosts inside my sheets.

They’re hiding under the bed, giving me release.

I have insomnia, so I reap the truths of my mind and the secrets they keep.

I guess that you’ll never really know why I love shadow.

All of the stargazers blinded by the glow of this lack of sunlight that I’ve come to know.

This is no daydream, this is so very real.

So many others out there who know how it feels, To have insomnia, so we sing and dance among the stars just like Saturn’s ring.

Break free from gravity and all of your laws.

You’ll never admit that you need us because we have insomnia, do you want to hear?

Turn all the lights off, let the darkness near.

Embrace the eclipse and see what we see.

Become nocturnal, just like me.

Visit NMC Magazine's media page to listen

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NMC Magazine Additional Content

Odyssey Through Thought Video produced by Nichole Hartley & Roger Dickinson Based on poem "Joy" by Roger Dickinson, read by Nichole Hartley Inspired by montage "Transitions" by Sheila Currie (background)

Joy

by Roger Dickinson A window opens allowing for the fresh breeze of the cool morning air to brush across one's face my face, Unknown excitement courses through my bones Joy fills the heart brimming over into the eyes reflecting the summer carefree sun romping and playing with a dog rolling in the twinkling grass toys, games, toys and games Sneakers squeak the longing for the bell fills every motion, every action a cool breeze stretches down the hall blowing in the outdoor air my toes stretch themselves from one another the only part of my body that can't feel the breeze that can’t see the sun that longs to be free the most lost in the safe heaven we create not knowing what will come after not fully sure that there is an after only revealing in what could be lost in our thoughts of fun lost in our thoughts of would be lovers and friends lost in our schoolyard fantasy not bad not necessarily just enjoying life enjoying the moment

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The world we couldn’t see draws close we wade through it moving on moving out picking up burdens along the way haunted by the things of our past unable to rid the nagging, clawing finger clingy desperately to the truth we learned long ago trusting and crawling along not sure what the future holds or what it may drop from it hands reality trusting walking hoping hoping nothing is as bad as you think but knowing it is not is? no forgetting remembering repeating worrying about the cycle of life not wanting to get caught up in it up in it. is hope that the speck of dust that you are the speck of dust that enters the field of vision! and then just as quickly is gone the speck, that given enough time no man will remember. that there is a purpose that there is indeed hope that there is more

old and ragged now every wrinkle for every choice I've made sagging deeply into the once strong face like a chisel has persistently struck the soft stone face more seem to be from smiles then lies though but, who cares whether I've smiled or made people smile sometimes just as much joy can be found after or in, a tear was I good enough? there is no answer here it was never about whether or not I was good enough enough you know just as well as I do, why we… we love and fight, what you love and what you fight for now that's a question a good question, I think that may be the difference, what we love and what we fight for. good, evil it’s our choice it can be easy to be tricked sometimes would people remember me, and how will I be satisfied with how I've lived the people I've hurt the people I've loved ragged tattered and old. what good does worry do but trust and hope have faith a window opens joy is good.

Watch this on vimeo:

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Sandpaper

by Jackson Douglass

I

n the dream I was an animal made of gears and clockwork. My organs of springs and pumps were visible beneath my glass body, and lightning rod antlers protruded from my head. I ate tinfoil flowers from the ground and chewed them with my chainsaw teeth, and I drank from a river of gasoline as helicopter birds flew beneath a dazzling, star-studded sky.

tational force that my brother had become. More and more of the wandering planets were spiraling into his singularity with every passing second, and his event horizon continued to grow each time he swallowed a new star. I let my friends leave me. No light in the universe shined bright enough to lessen my brother’s darkness.

My mother was the size of a skyscraper. She slept with her head on a mountain and walked over the oceans. She held an important job. Every day, she would journey to the planet’s core, where the Celestial Clock rested, and slowly wind it up again, keeping the universe ticking at the same rhythmic pace it always had and giving the heart that beat within everything the strength it needed to carry on another day. She held immense pride in her work.

I drifted closer to him through space. He had expected my arrival, and he lashed out at me with his inescapable grasp. His crushing pressure was far too great for my corporeal body. My metal frames snapped, my glass shattered, and all of my oil-blood pumped out of leaking tubes. I was drowning in gravity.

No light in the universe shined bright enough to lessen my brother’s darkness.

On the day that I was sent away, many stars had gone missing from the sky.

“There is evil in the universe gaining power,” she told me. Her voice nearly cracked the ground open. “Your brother grows stronger as he takes away the stars. He must be stopped.”

When I left the planet, there were beings who showed me my way. They had no bodies, existing only as beams of light, and although they couldn’t speak I understood they were my friends. I followed them freely through space, past meteors and planets and spaceships belonging to unknown species, until we began reaching the darkness.

As we approached the heart of the galaxy, I started to see planets drifting freely in space, orbiting around nothing, their stellar anchors missing. My friends grew afraid as we neared the black hole at the center, for not even light could escape the destructive gravi-

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I felt my body dying as he ground it to dust, but I wasn’t yet ready to follow it into obscurity. I watched the metal and glass fall into the singularity, but I remained in space, unaffected by his desperate attempts to drag me down. I had become something greater than the universe, something stronger than the pull of a black hole, something faster than light, something outside of time, without limits. My brother tested his strength against my new form, but he was too weak, and as I gathered my full power to use against him, I….

A blaring alarm woke me from my sleep. I laid in bed for a moment trying to remember the dream, but it faded too quickly, and in a few minutes I couldn’t be sure I had dreamt anything at all.

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Nichole Hartley – Dreamy Eyes photo collage

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Aiden Kaufman – Beguile 2D sequential illustration

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Wake

by Ann Hosler

She awakens to sadness: her eyes downcast behind thick rims, memorizing the ground as their whispers flow free.

She awakens to grief: judgment weighs as she stands before others, an oration of losses and her deepest regrets.

She awakens to heartbreak: faces contort in laughter and she flees her first love in shame.

She awakens to torment: family abandons her, bared and raw, denial upon their lips.

She awakens to silence: a beginning in the sprawling city, stepping out of the shadows.

She awakens to fascination: her days are filled with new faces, open minds and accepting smiles.

She awakens to delight: welcomed into a new family, not of blood but bonded by love.

She awakens.

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Dreaming in Color

by Sethe Zachman

I

leave the realm of academics and all things scholarly, withdrawing myself from this society to relieve my soul in a parallel universe, more colorful than this one. I leave the breathing broken records stuck quoting Leviticus to a place where no scripture stings, folding people in on themselves like a turtle sensing danger and retracting into its shell. This argument among others, laden in limited perception, ignorance, and a deep-seated discomfort, binds our physical reality. This world, the only one known to allow our vessels to breathe, is a place still ridden with black and white vision.

I have a dream that exists as a subtle shadow in the day and a reoccurring theme in my sleep. It is a bright place consisting of what could have been and a spectrum of colors that could glow. Here happens what would have in tenth grade, when a spirited girl with freckles dotting her cheeks reached into my universe. The sweet feeling of our colors colliding hit her with euphoria, but never strong enough to top the public pain that would occur if we fell in love and our colors bled into a monochrome world.

We found each other in the crowd at sporting events and between songs at cheesy school dances, but even that came with a hue. Society had already painted me a rainbow, making it hard for girls to be with me and still blend in. I have lost so many colors in this world, and a little bit of light leaves with them every time. This is in part due to the ignorant conditions our physical reality has created, black and white standards so far from capturing the actual human condition—full of infinite tints, mixtures, and shades.

Now I only see that girl in the realm of possibilities, a wandering “what if,” a vibrancy I’ve allowed myself to feel in the Dream World but not this one. There, black and white embraces color, defining no lines between majority and minority, and true coexistence becomes commonplace. The young woman with olive skin whose lips met mine in a parking lot under a blinking lamppost senior year of high school rejoices in this safe place of possibilities as well. Feeling part of herself seeping into society, she retreated into safety and self-protection. Some nights we are together

I was born a rainbow, as many are born black and white...

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in my dreams, a divine collision of colors, leaving me hollow in the morning.

I was born a rainbow as many are born black and white, and as others are born a unique mixture. These girls, sitting at neither end of the spectrum, capable of our society’s “common love,” are able to lace fingers with their lovers in public, their hues happily hidden.

However, and a truth acknowledged beyond my individual wishes, they must dream of this alternative world too, for their coloration surely lingers in their soul—a reminder it etched into our DNA, carved into our bones, flowing through our veins, and embedded in the rhythm of our heartbeat.

I leave this conditioned, clear-cut reality for a realm overf lowing with color. It’s discussed, wondered about with curiosity rather than avoided with discomfort, recognized rather than ignored, valued rather than tolerated. I dream of this reality, where my best friend no longer suffers in silence. He embraces a no t h e r b ro a d- sho u l d e re d , h a nd s o m e m a n w it h p r id e a nd aut he nt ic it y, no he sit at ion, no denial.

So when I am entranced in deep thought, my mind elsewhere during the day or when I am smiling in my sleep, know I am dreaming in color, of a place where we are all free.

Ashley Poertner – Dream photo collage

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Nichole Hartley – untitled digital illustration

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Misled

by Rachel Lynn Moore

M

idsummer’s late setting sun burst, pierced by the jagged peaks on the horizon, spreading every shade of orange across the tiger-striped sky and drawing the night’s shadow over forested mountain slopes and across low, floral valleys, all while Jack captured every detail in his journal from his study window. Nearly ten at night, and despite the light outside, both his adopted daughter, Sybil, and her mother, Clara, were already sleeping soundly in their bedrooms.

Jack savored the scene alone. His desk, an ancient wooden behemoth dressed in twisted iron handles, was tucked in the back corner of the room with barely enough space to sit between it and the wall. He always said that he kept it away from the window so sunlight wouldn’t wear on the varnish, but truly that corner was the only part of the office where he could give Sybil school lessons and help record her prophecies out of sight of Grandfather’s home. That house, a three-story, brown brick watchtower, loomed in the corner of Jack’s eye and his pen pause d, lifting from the page over a half-scrawled sentence. He shifted his chair to face farther away from Grandfather’s eye.

When the sun had set Jack dragged the chair back behind the desk and opened its single locking drawer with the key he kept hanging around his neck. Inside, he rested his journal on unsealed white envelopes. He picked one up and thumbed through the densely packed 5x7 photographs inside. Something shifted overhead. Restless creaking and an aimless voice whispered through the floorboards. He sighed. Sybil’s bedroom was directly above his study, and he’d been listening to her dreaming prophecies for almost two months. For equally as long, Sybil claimed her prophecies had stopped. She said that she didn’t dream at all. The bed creaked again.

Jack dropped the envelope and re-locked the drawer, treading quietly down the hall to the bedroom where he took up half the drawers and never touched the bed. He slept on their living room couch by choice. He knocked as he stepped in and closed the door behind him, flipping on the light.

Carla turned over, hand hovering over her eyes. “Jack? What do you want?”

“Now, I don’t think it’s a big deal but—” “Is it Sybil?” Carla demanded, popping upright.

“I think she may be dreaming again,” he confessed.

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Carla sprang out of bed and pulled a coat over her long nightgown. She went to the window and lifted the corner of the curtain to look across the hillside at Grandfather’s house. “Oh, good,” she said. “Leonard’s window is still lit. He’ll know what to do.”

“Leonard is a snake,” Jack spat. “I don’t want to involve him.”

“I can’t believe Sybil would keep Grandfather’s prophecies from him,” Carla fretted, perched on the edge of her mattress as she pulled on a pair of slippers.

eyes. These old wounds would not have burned so badly if Leonard didn’t say please and thank you for everything he took from Jack.

“You are the most despicable evil I have ever come into contact with.” Jack’s words bled rancid venom. Leonard retreated, the door closing heavily behind him.

Sybil’s arms and shoulders suddenly ached. Both Jack and the dream crumbled and fell apart like an avalanche cascading down a mountainside.

“We don’t know that!”

“I’ll ask Leonard what we should do.” She fastened the last button of her coat as she swept by Jack. “Don’t worry,” she said as she hurried out the front door.

Jack’s palms began to sweat.

Bringing the top one to his face, he ran his fingers across the sleek surface.

Sybil wasn’t necessarily lying when she said her prophecies had stopped coming. Her dreams had changed their focus from the future to the past, and for these last two months she was witness to the evil that had surrounded her since birth. These new past-oriented prophecies carried her through the lives of everyone around her.

“Yes,” Leonard answered. “This doesn’t change our terms, though.”

“If you try to leave, lie, or corrupt the Prophetess, we’ll have them killed,” Robert clarified.

Leonard shook his head the slightest, stiffest bit.

Jack only nodded and hung his head over the pictures.

“I trust we don’t need to worry about you, Jack,” Grandfather said. “I’ll leave you to your evening.” Robert followed him out of the room and only Leonard trailed behind.

“I’m sorry for that,” he apologized. “Robert should be more restrained.”

Jack’s head whipped up and his hatred for Leonard—the man responsible for turning a six month boarding school teaching offer into years of captivity, for binding him to Carla, for convincing his wife and daughter he’d left them for another woman—stifled every tear that formed in his

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Unforgiving hands closed around Sybil’s arms and her body thrashed against their hold. They lifted her from the bed and carried her out of the room, her toes sliding across the laminate floors even as Robert and Leonard held her nearly as high as they stood. Jack followed nervously behind, not allowed to intervene but unable to stop himself from occasionally darting one or two steps forward and then falling back with slick, twitching hands. Carla watched from her bedroom as they marched Sybil into Jack’s office. Jack slipped inside before Leonard closed the door.

Robert dropped Sybil into the office chair between the desk and the wall. He stood at the end of the desk.

Grandfather sat across from Sybil, his wife next to him and Leonard standing two paces behind.

Sybil breathed rapidly through her nose and clutched the armrests. When she was convinced no one would touch her she pushed long blonde hair out of her eyes and waited.

Grandfather placed his hands on the table. Wrinkles were set deep into his hardened skin, as if carved into stone. His palms lay flat and his fingers splayed against the table, pressing down. He had broad, fresh slits across two of the knuckles on his left hand, the edges of his split flesh puckered like a withering peach.

Sybil stared at the blooming bruises growing from underneath red gauze on Jack’s face. He wiped bloodtinged saliva from the corner of his mouth. She couldn’t look away. She had seen what Jack’s life was before he came to this place, what a better life with him could be.

“Are you keeping things from me, Sybil?” Grandfather inquired.

“Why did you hurt Papa?” she asked in return. She never used to ask why. She never used to even wonder.

How had she lived sixteen years without wondering?

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Mackenzie O’Toole – Tales of a Dream mixed media

His shoulders rolled forward and he laughed, a pair of dice clattering in his lungs. His wife, his son, and his advisor chuckled along. They stopped when he yanked a handkerchief from his suit jacket’s breast pocket and coughed into it like a hacking beast. His wife’s hand rose from her lap and lingered near his arm, then sank again. Grandfather cleared his throat once, then twice, and shoved the handkerchief back into his pocket.

“Tell us what you’ve been hiding!” Robert loomed over Sybil.

She recoiled from him.

“Give her a moment,” Leonard ordered, motioning for Robert to step back.

Robert crossed his arms, but moved away all the same.

Grandfather waved his hand to silence them both. “You have to understand that we are concerned about you, above all else.” He gave careful consideration to each word, like a parent trying to explaining away sins witnessed by their child.

“My dreams are not yours,” slipped from Sybil’s mouth, and she clamped her lips together into a thin, pale line.

Grandfather leaned back into his seat and tilted his head slightly upward, peering down the bridge of his nose at Sybil. His suspicion fell over her like a noose brushing the nose, lips, and chin of the condemned. Jack rushed forward and fell to his knees next to Grandfather’s seat, reaching out to Sybil. His thin hands twisted over each other and spindly fingers elongated to reach closer to her. Sybil swallowed a rising sob as she stared at the blood leaking from his bandages. She grimaced with a quivering chin as she realized that heartache burns just like bile on the way back down.

“It’s okay, Sybil,” Jack told her. “Tell them. It’s okay.”

Sybil so badly wanted to believe that it would be okay, that she could tell the truth, but it was the only power she had. She turned toward Grandfather and said, “Forgive me for being afraid.” She wouldn’t surrender the truth to them. She paused then finished, “I think I’ve seen the end of us all.”

Grandfather stiffened. He planted a hand on Jack’s chest and pushed him back from the table. “Get out,” he said. “Robert and Leonard, stay.”

“I’ve always helped Sybil interpret the meaning of her dreams,” Jack protested.

“She seems quite sure of what she’s seen,” Grandfather replied. “You’re not needed.”

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“It’s okay,” Sybil repeated to Jack. “It will be okay.”

He stared at her, head tilted, before moving to the hall.

Grandfather’s wife sat still, holding her breath.

Grandfather waited only a moment before he looked to her, and she shrunk under his derisive stare, slinking out of the room like a kicked dog. All the air left the room as the door closed behind her.

She wouldn’t surrender the truth to them.

Jack stood in the hallway, fingers twitching, in a staring contest with Grandfather’s wife. He might have held more pity than fear for her if he hadn’t know the extent of her obedience and complicity in Grandfather’s plans. He might have cared about that if it were anyone but Sybil in his study. He took one soft step closer to the door and slowly, carefully, pressed his ear to the wood.

“Tell us,” Grandfather ordered from inside.

Grandfather’s wife whispered something ferocious.

Her round, wrinkled face paled at his misconduct. He waved her away. She paced the hallway, watching Jack warily.

Sybil’s voice carried through the door, “There are traitors in your family, Grandfather. They will bring the end of us all if they aren’t dealt with.”

“It’s got to be Jack,” Robert exclaimed. Jack pulled away for a moment, expecting Grandfather’s fist to barrel through the old door.

“It isn’t,” Sybil said. “He has always been loyal, and taught me well.”

“Tell me who, child,” Grandfather demanded.

There was a long silence, and then Sybil’s voice broke through again. “All of your suspects are in this room, Grandfather.”

Jack’s eyes widened and he backed away from the door. Grandfather’s wife f litted nearby, whispering empty threats, yet he brushed her aside. He stepped into Carla’s bedroom and ignored her questioning as he stared at his drawers of clothes and wondered what, if anything, he should take with him when Grandfather’s community collapsed.

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Awake

by Lyric Belle

I

t’s weird that I can feel pain. You’d think I wouldn’t be able to in a dream.

Or am I awake? There’s no distinction anymore since the wall was broken by a greedy person—Orwin—who sought to do fantastical things always, not knowing he’d rob from all of us reality—or not really caring.

Today I’m a girl. The breathless constriction of a dress continually being tied too tight, my form of discomfort. It’s funny to remember how people would say, “Pinch me, I’m dreaming.” The pain of the pinch would give them proof of wakeful consciousness. I rip off a fluffy Pepto Bismol pink dress to reveal armor. I’m suited like a knight without the metal, maybe a more heroic one because there’s nothing to hide beneath. No safety.

I’m opening my eyes, breath caught and released from the box in my chest.

For a while I’m slaying monsters trying to release the rage, picturing each as the one “reality,” hoping with every beast slain I’ll wake up, for real this time, structured by a limited wakefulness again. I had to feel frustration, fear, love, and joy when I was alive, when I had memories more confined to day and night, “normal” waking hours. I guess I cannot say “alive,” if that would make me dead. This is a life because I’m breathing. Though now the most man-like monster reveals a sword, the last thing I see before my vitality is stolen.

I’m opening my eyes, breath caught and released from the box in my chest. Suddenly I’m a boy. I hear a pixelated video game noise before I look about me and realize that’s precisely where I am. “Really?” I grumble, not amused. “Donkey Kong?”

I don’t care about rescuing the damsel, but I dodge barrels and climb ladders until I reach the top out of pure need for accomplishment. Level up. Part of me feels I really am ‘leveling up,” for my dreams used to be more mindless, but slowly—by the second half of each—I can refine a certain skill that carries over to the next dream. It’s just a bonus that the foolishness of an old arcade game happens to give me any skill at all.

I’m starting to wonder if Orwin really did make a game out of all of this. Are people too taken aback by the sheer freakiness of dream life to even try and see if

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A question mark in the form of an expression appears on the face from which the tongue belongs to.

The troll—I do believe I’ll guess, though the voice with a whimsically high and impossible to gender-define— offers no help but wants to know what I set out for at the start of my journey.

there’s rhyme or reason behind it?

Just then I’m taken out of the black hole where only my thoughts are felt and given vision of a map. It is laid before me as if in my own hands, revealed just for my eyes, though it is not graspable.

Quickly, I materialize a camera from my pocket— the way a person can only do in a dream or a cartoon— to steal a snapshot, but at the camera’s flash the map is gone. I sigh, relieved: this gives me hope.

“I seek the man who forced a forever dream upon us all.”

“Ah, Orwin,” it giggles. “That’s not me. I Etty, Etty Smergull, sorries for me gigglies. I find joy in a people taking action for what they want back. Though I quite enjoy the doubled traffic. Etty now sees double the people me did when dreams only happened at night.”

I try desperately to skip the nonsense I start with each time. Some days I’m lucky; today is not one of them. I hover helplessly back and forth through space without a suit, instead dressed in an Avril Lavigne punk style, ready to rock and roll. I take in the microscopic green dots of space with clusters of salmon pink everywhere.

“Wait, Etty, you mean everything is different for you now too?” I haven’t even thought of the possibility that dreams are affected by the constant stream of unconsciousness.

“Oh yes, my gooey little smumdrop, of course we’re affected. The creatures of the night need their rest, too you know, though before it was only a lack of anything, ‘cept the occasional nap, not a rest. No, methinks I could go forward in time to drive myself right back to the past only because things were the way they oughta.”

Of course, because of my previous line of thought, I’m shredding on a guitar, actually having fun for a moment before I realize myself and hone in on my mission.

I almost allow myself a lark at Etty, but try to remain focused; this isn’t fun and games even though both work their way into it.

Since I discovered the map I venture on a path, running into pop culture allusions along the way. The other day it was the hookah-smoking caterpillar from Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, but today it’s a surprisingly adorable troll. It’s small and fuzzy as it snoozes under its bridge, coiled up in a little ball, purple fluff swaying in the gentle breeze.

“Dear creature, could you offer me any guidance as to how to get to Orwin?”

“True true, you have the map? How far you wouldn’t have gotten without it!”

Sleepily, the troll notices my presence and stretches before a ridiculously long tongue flops from its mouth and touches the ground, the end of which has a tiny adorable face with cartoon eyes, and from that mouth it begins to speak. “A whozit, I see, or is it a whatzit? Oh, could it be? Have you come just to see me?”

I pull out the map and hold it up for the troll.

“You’d know better than I how to get to him, simply by the begging of your gut, like hunger but for your heart’s intuition,” Etty says. “Though I do know he’s somewhere where it looks like there’s no center.”

I assume that means the middle because the detailed little map has microscopic paths that go everywhere and nowhere, some visibly leading to dead ends with signs saying, “Nothing, Nowhere, or Now Here.” What makes it more confusing is how they all overlap, not in any concise pattern. No, this frustrating spectacle has hundreds of paths all ending and crossing at wildly different points.

“I didn’t set out on this journey to meet you, but I’m glad I did.” If only for the privilege of witnessing such a bizarrely entertaining spectacle as this.

I look down upon myself as I finished speaking, to find I’m wearing a polka dotted dress of a not-at-all fixed shade of blue. Every time it catches the corner of my eye a different shade is hugged by the big bow on my back. And big is really an understatement; the white of it matches my dots, but it obnoxiously spreads out, perfectly resting upward on either side of my waist.

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I pointed to the practically nonexistent center musing in an infinity of shaped paths scattered across

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the terrain of the map. I see my stream of existence as always zooming through an infinity sign and each “day” I start at the same spot, seemingly traveling the length of the paradox to restart just where I left off.

The tongue rolls back into the troll’s mouth, looking identical to a roll of Hubba Bubba gum in its spiral packaging, before Etty nods.

Of course that’s the instant the dream dissipates.

My eyes pop open—like a curl springs back when you push it down. Etty’s information must have been too useful so Orwin sent me back to the start. Or am I being rewarded for my achievement? I wonder this only because I’m now in my room in exact, perfect detail.

This isn’t right. The scene is a replicate of my real room. Sunkist’s chest doesn’t rise and fall as he sleeps.

But then, where is the snoring sound coming from?

I stand to better hear the sound that obviously isn’t

Chelsea Dunham – untitled 2D texture collage

My barely visible white walls are covered with various posters to such an extent I’m sure they can’t breathe. I relish the ability to see all my old friends and family intermixed between the posters which

themselves are a separate family. I look longingly into Ed Sheeran’s eyes as he plays the guitar. I admire the beauty of a seemingly ancient painting of French countryside, bales of hay spread out so perfectly and evenly I have to wonder if God himself is the painter. I can’t even absorb it all before the black lava lamp with pink goo, entrances me. My ears suddenly switch on. My orange tabby Sunkist cozies up at the foot of my bed, snoozing. Before Orwin, Sunkist’s incomparable snore penetrated my sleep every morning, awakening me in a way I not only found pleasant, but amusing. The same snore is powerful enough, just now, to flip the “on switch” for my ears.

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coming from Sunkist. That’s when I find the speaker hiding behind a stack of dirty clothes.

I need to get out of here! The sheer fakeness of everything I once held dear now being turned into a spectacle to trick me into comfort makes me far too sick to vomit. That’s when I gravitate to the mirror. Though I know I’m a boy today, my ref lection is of the girl I am other days. This phenomenon draws me away from my disgust. Is the woman I see my soulmate? What if, in Orwin’s version of reality, soulmates share a state of consciousness and that is why I transition seamlessly from boy to girl depending on the dream? Wouldn’t that have to mean we share one spirit—so which body I occupy has no significance?

At that, I reach my hand out to touch her, and as my hand grazes the mirror it shatters noiselessly. Broken glass is a noise I would never value hearing but a necessary obnoxious shrill that grounds me in reality.

it off, wanting to see armor again. But, instead, I gaze upon the dress from yesterday’s adventures. “Was I right then?” I inquire, not bothering to ask who he was.

Who else could he be but Orwin?

“Yes, the soulmate theory of this morning—quite clever. I was going to mention that to you if you didn’t bring it up.” His voice is nasally, not deep, tough, or even masculine, as I’d expected it to be.

It’s silly, the stereotypes we project upon the people we haven’t met, and the disappointment we then feel when we do. Orwin is dressed in all black, which I find pleasing, only because I thought him identical to Gru from Despicable Me.

The swans in my stomach rear their ugly heads and double in number...

My feet guide me into the rectangular hole, the doorway, where the mirror once stood. The tunnel I’m in glows freakishly bright, and not from a light at the end or even from the walls. It veers down in a perfect slant until curving up, then starts over again for six humps.

Eventually I find my way into a clearing without transition. I sense I’m near something important so my nerves nip at each part of my stomach as if I possessed ten tiny swans inside.

“What is the deal with mirrors? Are they supposed to mean something?” I wonder aloud, entering a funhouse-style hall of mirrors. Half the reflection is the boy I am today and half the girl. At the end of the hall there are two adjacent mirrors facing me. I place my hand upon the girl image in another effort to touch her. Her hand, reasonably, reaches up with mine, and our hands meet before our fingers intertwine. At that moment, she is gone and I am falling.

When I land upon my feet, the room around me is a dimly lit office in a house with floors of birch wood.

A man sits at a desk. “I thought I’d let you pick a gender before we met,” he says. “Apparently you’re fond of her.”

I look down to see a girl. Isn’t he clever, funny even, putting me back in that Pepto Bismol pink dress? I rip

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“Do you want to know why I did that? Put everyone with their match?” There’s a brief pause. “So they wouldn’t be alone.”

The swans in my stomach rear their ugly heads and double in number, packing a meaner punch with their beaks. It feels as if my nerves are consuming me.

“I’ve been waiting for you. When I realized you were coming for me, I grew excited; I was hoping for a challenge. Honestly, the limitlessness of this whole thing has become tedious, monotonous really. It seems I’ve done it all, everything that is impossible when awake.”

Orwin pauses, letting a sly smile slowly creep its way upon his semi-whimsical yet aged face. A twinkle beams in his eye as he takes a puff off a manifested cigar as if to prove his point. “And yet I know I could spend eternity inventing new circumstances to place myself into always keeping an eye on the population of dreamers for inspiration.”

I couldn’t have been expected to respond here but the smile ran away from his face and onto mine at his admitted defeat.

“But, as I continually watched your unrelenting effort, and growing suffering, I fear empathy flung its way upon me. I always presumed myself to selfish for the emotion. But a sore loser, I will not succumb to.” I watch Orwin take one more quick puff from his cigar before it releases a giant puff of smoke.

I’m finally awake.

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Adam Crocker – Conju rer photo illustration

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Lime Mile

by John Paul Koenig Sleep peels earth heart open? Nope. oh wall, hallow pale leap no where, now here.

Wonder Sun under snow. winter writ-en: “Lose sole lime mile.”

A deep hurt, death pure.

A lively wake; a give-in walke. if tin fit in file life drawer reward.

Flee feel, deaf fade.

Artist’s Note: This poem is the result of uncovering hidden themes between words as each line consists of an anagram pair. During its construction I was most interested in the interplay between the anagrams, so more emphasis is placed on each line rather than a concise narrative. There isn’t any intended theme, more of just a feeling that is built upon by each pair.

When I interpret the poem, I see someone seeking inner solace, but, unable to find it, gives up on his hopes and dreams, his one chance of standing out, of being himself.

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Hayden Comstock – Futurlux (#1 of a series) paper collage

Artist’s Note: The author Donna Tartt wrote: “Beauty is terror.Whatever we call beautiful, we quiver before it. And What could be more terrifying and beautiful, to souls like the Greeks, or our own, than to lose control completely? To throw off the chains of being for an instant, to shatter the accident of out moral selves?” In dreaming, we do so. And to lose ourselves anew, there must be a passage of time. With this passage comes the future: futurlux. The title of this humble series implies the meaning. What do we think of when we imagine the future before us? What does this say about us? I think of those who came before us - the ideals of the ‘atomic’ the the mid-century, for example.

Those ideals live on, and so may ours. with our children and grandchildren and beyond. But what is the legacy we wish to leave?

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What Falls Bright

by Zack Harrington

“All men dream – but not equally. Those who dream by night, in the dusty recesses of their minds, wake in the day to find that it was vanity... But the dreamers of the day are dangerous men, for they may act their dream with open eyes, to make it possible. This I did.”

– T. E. Lawrence

L

ong ago, when the tsavorite comet met our glacier in the crucible of celestial impact, it snowed glass. Our rocks: tektites. Our razors: shards. The “staring eyes” that were our buttons, our bowls: australites. And the mountain the people called Mirror.

The astrologers said, “Mirror is a blessing from the heavens! Come, let us build our republic at its feet, that we may one day know its origin and reach the stars as well.”

The alchemists said, “Mirror will teach us the secrets of the universe! Hear: its bodily shape and dimensions are unfathomable; its green, clean or clear colors are irreplaceable.”

The aristocrats said, “Mirror shall lead our people! Look! Its face reflects ours, yet not our despicable flesh, but our loftiest selves. The inner person. Our dreams.

Ice and glass slashed my hands, ripped my skin, dripped my life.

All invention was born of Mirror.

Fire, art, physics, astronomy. All saw potential in their own reflection others did not see when beholding the actual person in front of their eyes.

All less myself. I made my pilgrimage to Mirror in my youth, two days’ walk from my home. What dream I was to find, I did not know. Skirting the mountain’s foundation, I dragged my palm along the sheen, but my outline was not ascertained. I descended into the echo chambers and called out, but my voice did not answer. I asked a sherpa to help me hunt myself, but despite his zeal, he could not locate a trace.

I could not return home without finding my dream. I stayed with a wise shaman and his wife, a physician. Unlike my stony dwelling, their crystal cabin had windows

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that shut out the elements with sheets of glass. Strings of beads hung in the doorways to obscure their quarters and latrine. Flame, filtered through a kaleidoscope of glass, illuminated the den.

I asked the shaman, “Why does Mirror not show me my dream?”

He answered confidently, “Perhaps you must be on Mirror to see your dream. Climb to the peak, and look for your dream there.” The physician, smiling, prepared me provisions. I thanked them for their generosity.

Assured, I set out the next day as the red sun rose.

I climbed for two weeks, scaling the snow slicking the slope. Ice and glass slashed my hands, ripped my skin, dripped my life.

At the top, a child hosted me in his igloo. He boiled the snow into warm water to wash my wounds. The blood drained viscosity and stained the transparency.

I asked of his dream.

“I’m to construct a diamond monastery here. What of you?”

“Mirror tests me. I have not yet found my dream.”

Pressing his hands together, he bowed. “I pray you do. Until then, let us watch the sunset!” The child, attempting to comfort me, led me to the summit. The red sun speared itself on clear Mirror and bled a prism of light.

into tenebrous mazes, our pickaxes dulling. For two months we labored, digging deeper into the core than any had ever been. The miasma of emerald splinters cut my eyes, my throat. A chummy miner passed me a rag to filter the dust. I asked of his dream.

“I’m to construct passage through Mirror, that the districts may link. What of you?”

“Mirror teases me. I have not yet found my dream.”

He slapped me hard on the back with his work-calloused hand. “I bid you good luck. Until then, let us sing to raise our spirits!” He roused his friends and led them into a chantey. Their chorus reverberated throughout the jade labyrinth. Their tools created cacophony. The rhythm resonated Mirror’s heart.

That night, as I slept, I heard a new tone. An eruption of echoes, great and bass. It shook the ground, the bones. The planet angered and retaliated.

Again, a new phenomenon not provided by Mirror!

I returned to the shaman and relayed my story, keeping the new tone to myself.

He contemplated, then issued his final theory: “Perhaps your dream is merely around Mirror. Craft yourself a perfect mirror, polished and pristine. Then travel to the edge of the known world. Circumnavigate the crater clockwise then counterclockwise. Place yourself daily between your mirror and the mountain, and peer at the reflection of the reflection of the reflection.”

The physician pursed her lips for a moment. But she turned to me and smiled, presenting me freshly made moccasins. I thanked her for her aid.

My optimism withering, I set out, trekking past the palaces, the pueblas, the prairies. I crossed the tundra desert of our continent. I clambered the cliffs of the crater, gazed at the glacier. I hiked above all, first one direction then the other, diligently glimpsing into infinite dimensions within the reflections. For two years I persisted. My moccasins tattered; my feet grew swollen and weary. A pathfinder overtook me in the circuit. She gifted me sturdy boots. I asked of her dream.

“I’m to map the world and name the things discovered. What of you?”

“Mirror taunts me. I cannot find my dream.”

“They cannot imagine a world beyond, without the certainty of what to comprehend.”

That night, as I slept, I saw a new color. Infrared inferno from the blackest ice between stars, passing through ultraviolet smoke. A magenta comet, a crimson meteor, intercepting our sphere.

Twilight flared and blinded me.

If only I saw this color while gazing into Mirror! I returned to the shaman and reported my account. I did not tell him of the new color I saw, lest he rebuke my pagan vision.

Undeterred, he proclaimed, “Perhaps your dream resides within Mirror. Mine to its center, and search for your dream there.” The physician kindly and carefully re-treated my wounds. I thanked them for their graciousness.

Reinvigorated, I joined the mass of monks who drilled into Mirror, carving translucent tunnels through which the sky could be seen. We descended

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“Perhaps I can help. Let me tell you of my travels.”

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Whilst building camp, she described how the barren bowl civilization resided in, where rain never fell and the ground remained frozen, was an oasis from the tremors that befell the rest of the planet. Nobody could understand nor comprehend what caused the quakes.

“What makes our glacier immune to the tremors?”

“We are but an island, surrounded by water, an ocean whose expanse cannot be comprehended. Our land buoys with the waves, dispersing the vibration.

That is why no basin of liquid yields reflection. The ripples are not felt by us yet occur regardless.”

“Have any attempted to cross this ocean?”

“Look! Mirror anchors the people here. They cannot imagine a world beyond, without the certainty of what to comprehend.” Arms crossed and head shaking, she spat, “Yet we live in relative famine. Only the hardiest vegetation grows. Only what is dead is used as fuel.” She kicked at the slush. “Even our campfire burns dung!”

I despaired, condemned to never dream, stranded with no empathetic peer. But that night, as I slept, I tasted a new air, heavy and dewy. Ozone mixed with sugar, like rare maple struck by storm.

I returned to the shaman and divulged my journey.

Of the new color, tone, and air. Of the world away from Mirror.

He simply looked at me with pity. He could not imagine a life unharmonized with his mountain. “You who have no image, nor echo, nor coordinate from Mirror are cursed. Resign yourself to a life of not knowing who you truly are!”

The physician, who heard each of my adventures, scolded her husband. She turned back to me, beamed, and placed her hands on my shoulders. “Perhaps your dream is away from Mirror. Plot your way across the ocean and find it.” She gave me a precious gem to fund the excursion. The shaman scoffed as I left the cabin.

I spoke with the astrologers. They blessed me with a telescope and other instruments. I spoke with the alchemists. They built me a glass shape that floated on water. I spoke with the aristocrats. They recruited fifty whose dream was to explore, the pathfinder among them.

Our convoy gathered donations from all in the city.

Foodstuffs, liquors, clothing. Thousands assembled to grant us godspeed. The physician and I waved our final farewells over the crowd’s clamor. Our expedition

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crossed the plains to the walls of our world and wandered past. Our feet crunched snow, then cracked ice.

When the water ran beneath us we chopped the ice, freeing the flow to launch the alchemist’s craft. Some of us forged a path with axes. Others pushed against the ocean with oars.

Dusk began on open water. We lit our lanterns and donned our warmest gear. Doubt grew on the crew’s faces. The moment before the sunlight disappeared below the horizon, before darkness set, I told them of the new color I had seen. They asked if Mirror showed me. “No, it was only after I slept,” I said. “Rest tonight, and see the new color.”

A thunderbolt of fire hurtled into the horizon.

The day after was spent in good humor. We rationed tightly, but chanted through the work. As night fell, the crew told me that they indeed saw the ruby nova.

I could not sing them the new tone I had heard. They asked if all they need do was doze to hear the tone.

“Yes,” I replied. “Mirror did not give me the tone. It was only after I slept.”

The next day we suffered. The crew said they indeed heard the sound, so low it could only be felt. But waves overtook our vessel, leaving us wet and cold. The pathfinder told the crew of the tremors that shook the world and caused tidal waves. They became fearful. I stood, shifting my balance the whole while. I demonstrated how to calm oneself, and breathed in deeply. I declared that I had tasted new air. The crew responded, resolute, “We need only slumber to taste the new air.”

Two weeks passed. The food grew soggy and spoiled.

The drinking water dwindled, and the liquor’s heat extinguished. The heavens were dark, the stars bright. But the ocean’s surface was still, glassy, reflective. Was my visage in the tranquility? I stooped to check. Then the world flashed. The sky began to burn and the ocean amplified the glare. Molten glass rained from above the clouds, boiling the ocean, singeing our coats. A thunderbolt of fire hurtled into the horizon. Explosive light assaulted us, and even after it passed, a roar soon shocked, blowing us down.

“Draw a course toward the anomaly!” I yelled.

The pathfinder debated me in hushed tones: “We could be heading to our death!”

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“Yes, but at least all of you would die in service to your people and your dream. Only I would die never knowing my dream. I must follow my star.”

The pathfinder, both sympathetic and vigilant in navigation, steered us until the dawn. But as the sun rose, she screamed. All aboard roused and gaped. A tsunami approached, surging.

The wave loomed over all. I shouted over the crew, “See! Your outline in the wave! Did each of you see terror when you gazed at yourselves in Mirror? Why do you now change your dream when you always knew your purpose? Press on!”

finder and I struck out. The air clung here, humid. Lush green flora and forest ended, cut by a familiar crater edge. Though the soil within was aflame in swathes, we did not stop our marathon until we stood at the cause: a smoldering sardonyx mountain.

My australite buttons levitated toward the foreign mineral, attracted by an invisible force more powerful than gravity. The earth smelled strong and my curiosity piqued. I licked a chunk and found it sweet. I put my ear to the pyrope and listened. An answer rumbled. The peak erupted into a flaming geyser. The fire was fluid as blood and congealed into glass.

The dreamers howled and rowed and wrestled and worked at the wall of water. The winds wailed, and the glass raft shattered beneath us. We scattered into the sea, sobbing as we sank. I did not close my eyes. I couldn’t die without seeing my dream.

I scrubbed the most vitreous surface found on the mountain. The pathfinder joined me. The rest of the crew soon followed. A panel of shiny obsidian appeared.

Tentatively, we approached the sheen. A line of faces stared back at the crew, each real, physical. Faces others shared, recognized, forgot, received, judged, slapped, kissed. They rejoiced thunderously.

The sun was high when the pathfinder cuffed me awake. We sprawled on gritty golden glass, damp from the lapping tide. The crew in its entirety slept under the sun, breathing steadily. Relieved but resolved, the path-

All less myself. My reflection was filled by a face I had never beheld. Tears dropped from eyes I had never seen. I smiled, and my dream smiled back.

Koree Bemiss – untitled watercolor

We call the mountain Mirage.

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Can You Hear Me Dr. King?

by Alissia J.R. Lingaur

A Texas lawmaker avers women must be responsible for their bodies, babes, life and role but what of men and their seeds, sir?

How do I make my soul force whir when police still gun for brown skin, the POTUS won’t let Muslims in? ...if America is to be a great nation, then all, you, me persist, resist til kindness wins.

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The Select

by Mike Sims I

By Apollo’s moon You’ll not see my last dream killed In a heart-shaped sun.

II Rifled with unlove, Revolutionary tides, Cease as if a dream…

III Mother and Father...

Give me a far-off blue lake, Where dreams can set sail.

IV Drain the dream-ponds, for not even two swans can love In shared memories.

V O world unwanted, You’ve set a romantic earth To where my dreams end.

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Life and Dreams Cento

by Courtney Killingbeck

Losing–we wish to believe–less of awareness and the world that my days have been a dream the sky opens, the wind runs wild, laughter passes over the earth but blackens the skies and makes us wake.

Never should I forget this event while they gaze fixedly into each other’s eyes…

I hold my hand open for him to go all that’s left to go home again thrilling and burning as thought and desire is hidden from me in veils.

In the black darkness are bred somber thoughts withdrawing sadly and coming together again and soon again.

In veils of inattention, apathy, fatigue over the earth to dispel the darkness, star suddenly glides like a flying torch in the memory of a million vanished stars.

The moon has risen on the last remnants of night

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but a waking dream of life and light.

The first pale hints of sky, dawn glimmers through the shapes of misty trees… and trees lit up by sun whenever one drifted petal leaves the tree— creates the seeds for tomorrow.

This life of sleep, we waken dying and can it be, as between, body and soul each minute the last minute?

But they’re three seconds only for us, expire, and, over this dream of life, the silence of the soul.

Author’s Note: A cento is a poem made entirely of lines from other poems with some accommodation for punctuation and grammar. The lines above originally appeared in the following poems by the following poets: Wislawa Szymborska, “Seen From Above” and “View With a Grain of Sand”; Edgar Allan Poe, “A Dream Within a Dream” and “A Dream”; Rabindranath Tagore, “Sally Crabtree Chooses Light”; Johnathan Goldman, “Storm Clouds”; Carlos Drummond De Andrade, “In The Middle of The Road”; Valery Larbaud, “Images”; Denise Levertov, “Living” and “Witness”; Li Po, “Ancient Air”; Li-Young Lee, “Irises”; Po Chu-I, “Starting Early” and “A Dream Of Mountaineering”; Judah Al-Harizi, “The Sun”; Robinson Jeffers, “Evening Ebb”; Philip Levine, “A Sleepless Night “; Antonio Machado, “Rainbow At Night”; Jean Follain, “Face the Animal”; Dorothy Parker, “A Dream Lies Dead”; Jennifer D. Sonier, Untitled

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Nichole Hartley – Wanderlust photo collage

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dream

by Liam Strong after Susan Blackwell Ramsey

soft siren off the tongue, lips meeting at each end. a reverberating drum. the hummmmmmm of dragonflies. ice grinding whispers of thunder. or the sound of a car passing. under Orwell’s hand, it lingers in the air for but a moment, a wisp of smoke. ardor in the slackened buds of a breath. tethered. skyward. an unmade promise.

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a consideration that brings to mind desire, longing. it’s a thing brighter than eyes, an attic contracted with memory. it’s lost in the damage done. just out of reach. you could be there. straddle the hem of its womb, until it arrives stillborn or with wings unfolded.

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The Cosmic Voyage of Anton Semetsky

by Richard Vegh

A

nton Semetsky had made a habit of advancing toward what frightened him. He bore the strap of his father and the slaps of his mother with equanimity. In the first grade, the other children whispered anxiously to each other about the wood bordering the school playground, and the path that ran through it; as soon as Anton overheard this, he wasted no time in setting off down the forbidden, muddy track at recess. The paw prints he found in the snowy ruts were interesting, but not likely left by wolves, and in places there were adult-sized boot prints running alongside. He imagined the story of a medium-sized dog, gray and white, walking beside her owner who trundled along in her long blue coat. Finding nothing frightful in the image, Anton promptly turned toward the next most frightening thing after wolves: Mrs. Goatley, with her shrill whistle and reprimands.

Nothing troubled Anton more than having nothing left to fear. Fortunately, that kind of tedium was a temporary condition, alleviated continually by new rumors, new hardships, new desires. Sometimes, nightfall brought Anton dreams of things disturbing and strange. On one occasion, he dreamt he was running across an endless farmland, unable to reach the distant verge. On another, an older version of himself came and told him to find the poet, before shaking him awake. He dreamed of a night sky broader and brighter and darker than night itself, and of his hand swallowing the earth.

In the fourth grade Irina, a rambunctious student from one of the other classes, approached Anton with an outrageous dare: to kiss Andrea Smolensky on the lips. Anton, who by this time had developed a reputation for foolish bravery, had brushed aside countless challenges from classmates eager to disrupt the rhythms of the school days. They were unfrightening prospects, more transgressive to social mores than disruptive to Anton’s inexorable tranquility. “Run across the avenue, Anton!” “Climb the fence!” “Eat a worm, Antoshka!” “Take Ms. Mel’s lunch basket!” Daring him to kiss Andrea Smolensky should have been no different than these. And yet, it was.

A hallmark of Anton’s attitude toward fear was to waste no time attempting to understand it. It was recognizable by the physical sensations it caused: the flush of

...the sudden acuity of vision in which all but the thing itself, real or imagined, faded away.

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heat to the neck and cheeks; the feeling of lightness lifting the head and heaviness dragging at feet; the stippling of perspiration; the sudden acuity of vision in which all but the thing itself, real or imagined, faded away. All of these sensations clamored for Anton’s attention now, and without further deliberation, he was resolved.

Had Anton been inclined toward self-reflection, he might earlier have noticed his excited state of awareness around Andrea. She would be just ahead of him in the queue, which was always alphabetically-arranged by first names, and while Anton was never talkative, he always felt particu l a rly at a loss for words when she was near.

The world was somehow sharper. Details like the fraying hem of Andrea’s jumper vest beneath her strawblonde hair, the delicate wisps of which would escape their careful braid, became all-consuming.

When classes let out for recess, as the students made a mad break for the cafeteria and gymnasium double doors, Anton found Andrea and tapped her once on the shoulder, nodded at her smile, and folded a note into her surprised hands. Then he nodded once more before joining the dwindling crowd at the doors.

The following day they sat together at lunch, and during recess, they held hands.

Irina and the other students chanted delightedly over the two, trading accounts of their many kisses. In truth, their first kiss was an unplanned thing. It was over the Christmas break – Anton had been invited to Christmas dinner by Pani Smolensky when she learned Anton would be managing his family’s homestead over the holidays by himself. Andrea’s father, Mariusz Smolensky, watched with thick disapproval as Andrea’s mother ladled out soup for Anton. He turned to Andrea, bluffly informing her that the rich sable hue of czernina soup was not the result of chocolate (as all children were told), but of duck blood. Her pleasure of the moment was transformed instantly. She left the table as soon as she could be excused, under her father’s glare. Anton, also, excused himself and found her sitting outside, staring at the frozen duck pond, shivering.

He covered her shoulders and kissed her cheek.

From then on, it seemed as though Andrea and Anton would be inseparable. She had a passion for the outdoors, rock polishing, and science, devouring the latest issues of Focus magazine with its optimistic pro-

jections of what problems science could solve. Andrea would bring him the latest articles, and he would nod along as she explained each new idea, until eventually they had both agreed that the improbable world of the future was being realized before their eyes. Sometimes, he would find her alone, staring fiercely at nothing; in those moments he would turn to his journal, leaving her be.

There were things very like fear that Anton was disappointed to find no amount of determination could seem to dispel. During the seventh grade, Andrea’s mother took her to stay with relatives in the Beskids, thus dissolving the longest-running relationship in the school’s h i s t o r y. A n d re a a n d Anton had grown very fond of each other, and he’d learned something of playing and friendship from her, not to mention how to arrange hair into braids, as she’d learned to enjoy hearing and reciting poetry and clucking at chickens. Their last goodbyes were tender and brief; her mother, too, tearfully kissed Anton on both cheeks. Then Andrea and her mother were a blurred dot on the tree line, disappearing finally into an unresolved landscape.

In the years of Anton’s youth that followed, there were no great loves or fears that came near to that first one. He no longer wrote poetry. Anton suppressed both his memories and imagination of Andrea, preferring the life of the real to the stuff of fantasy. Sometimes, at unguarded moments, he would picture Andrea as she must appear now, at work in a delicatessen or engrossed with her matura exam preparations. He knew these must be flights of fancy. He’d try to quash these images as soon as they occurred to him, and to stop searching for her face in crowds.

Although compulsory military service had been abolished a few years before, Anton determined to join the Wojska Ladowe when he turned seventeen. He no longer pretended that he was running toward danger and away from safety. There was no fear that was not the product of his own fancy, no safety to be found anywhere in the world. Humans, after all, are vulnerable creatures, made to suffer and to fall sick and die.

Yet it was easier to follow the habit of courage and to seek to tempt danger than attempt to formulate some new approach to life. Besides, a military career seemed a pragmatic choice, liable to see Anton clear of the village and to forge some new way. When his orders ar-

He no longer pretended that he was running toward danger and away from safety.

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rived, Anton packed away his books and tucked scraps of poems into old journals, clucked a final goodbye to the chickens, and took the rural shuttle into town. The recruiter, also named Anton, drove him personally to the neighboring voivodeship for his intake, shaking his hand and wishing him well.

Anton never had difficulty making friends; his success seemed to lay in the careless, almost indifferent acceptance he offered others. He was well-liked in his unit, both during training and later on their first deployment to Afghanistan. There, the tenuous and blurred connection between a person’s real self and the physical world became ever more the subject of Anton’s thoughts. From time to time, he would heft a rif le round and ref lect on the words of Camus: “What! by such narrow ways—?” If he stared long enough at an object, he could no longer discern where it ended or began.

limited to forward operating base security, so while the threat of combat was theoretically ever-present, the actuality of it was mostly unrealized. At times, Anton imagined he could sense the Taliban and tribal militants assembling, and involuntarily he would tense for a rocket barrage. At moments like these, the others in his unit would return their attention to their duties and prepare for incoming fire, but Anton himself dismissed these intimations as having no more substance than dreams.

Near the end of his second deployment, rather than re-enlisting, Anton applied for admission into the Air Force flight training program. The battery of tests was exhaustive, the criteria for acceptance strict, and the competition intense, but with the recommendations of both of his previous unit commanders, Anton was fortunate enough to secure a spot. Milo sent along a letter of congratulations and one of the novels Anton had frequently borrowed. Inside the cover was the inscription:

In his dreams a young boy had begun to stare a silent challenge at him.

Toward the end of his second deployment Anton discovered he was not content. In his dreams a young boy had begun to stare a silent challenge at him. One day, on impulse he picked up that month’s issue of Focus, whose featured article enthused over opportunities available to young researchers and entrepreneurs in the EU. In one of the photographs he recognized Andrea, looking just as he had imagined she would, a student with the University of Warsaw on a CERN scholarship to work on the Large Hadron Collider. The caption listed no other details.

Anton began to borrow textbooks and asked around the barracks until he found Milo, a university-trained physicist who had declined the rank of officer. He was thin, dark, with a ready smile and an astonishing gift for verse. Anton was delighted to hear Milo recite Akhmatova’s Requiem, both translated and in the original Russian—his eyes ghostly fires, his feet stamping. Soon others had flocked over to hear Milo finish his recitation. Only after being prodded at length did Milo admit the translation was his own work. After a solemn silence, a corporal struck up a heartfelt recitation of Szymborska’s “Nothing Twice”, and the moment was transformed.

With Milo’s help, Anton studied the mathematics he had begun in secondary school. At Anton’s urging, Milo began to compose verses once more. There was time enough for such pursuits. Their command was

Anton—choose your dream. Milo Czeslasz.

Once, while they were in the sixth grade, Andrea had turned to Anton and asked him what he wished for. They were lying on the ground, a thin blanket between themselves and the earth, their breaths puffing up in plumes of crystals toward the bright flashes of the Leonid meteor shower. He had shaken his head and told her that it was useless to wish on stars, and that besides, the meteors were a long way from stars.

She had told him she dreamed one day he’d be a cosmonaut, and that when he came back to Earth she would

be there to ask him again what he wished for while he was up there.

The last cosmonaut they’d sent up had been Mirosław Hermaszewski, whose name every Polish child knew, in 1978; without a true space program in Poland there was little chance of Anton ever ending up in space. He had known this, but in that moment, he had chosen to believe with her.

Anton folded the book from Milo into his bedroll and finished packing. The final thing left unpacked was a letter addressed to Andrea Smolensky at the University of Warsaw. He tucked the letter into his pocket and turned off the lights. When the shuttle for Deblin and the Air Force Academy arrived, Anton nodded at the driver, stepping through its doors.

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Sarah Hardwick – untitled e tching

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Children of the Night

by Nichole Hartley

Autumn Haag – Arachnamare photo collage

Do not stir, do not stir, my children of the night.

My presence should not cause you panic, fear, or fright.

Descending from my dreamcatcher, created long ago, I come to weave a tale; please stay – do not go.

Your minds have been corrupted, as perturbed as minds can be with thoughts of evil and monsters – you may want to flee.

But if you stay and listen, you will not be harmed.

I shall reach out to you with one of my eight arms.

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3x3x3

by Liam Strong for my sister after Teresa Scollon one year after your death, the sky

stays white all day.

we all would have followed suit. three years apart

the three of us. dreams of reunion

converge. i just wanted to know your name. how it would snag, unfurl, slide

off my tongue, swirl around my head

like incense. maybe i wouldn’t have been needed or noticed as much. but you

wanted me. how would you say it?

i make for a terrible dreamcatcher, bearing low your legacy.

i want to remember. i’d love you like no one

else, watch you leave home before me. tease me, teach me, drive me anywhere you

want to go. we are one blood.

if i stare at myself long enough in the mirror, will you appear? would you

have Hannah’s copper waves

of hair, or see out my eyes? i don’t want death

to be the only way i’ll ever know you.

i dream of your outline, slim, sanguine, eyes of shallow grey.

smiling full, wings of a butterfly, speaking

contrails of words. the latticework of your hands held out to mine. i’d call you

sister. your eyes pursue me.

i know you’ll always be following. you are as absent as color.

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Sherry Fauble – Scarlett and Her Butterflies photo collage

February

by Kajetan Morman

A

veneer of quiet snow draped the yard. Smoke drifted from the part in her lips like small staccato clouds. She stared out the window and asked him, “Is that an old habit, the way you get lost in your reflection?” She spoke without a trace of authentic interest in his response, her voice coarse and distant. Fiddling with a lit candle, she tilted it, watching the wax wane and flow over its edges, pooling and coagulating on top of a saucer.

The two sat across from one another in the dining room. Moonlight filtered in through the f lurry of snow outside. He genuinely wanted to respond, but no replies came to him, and instead he twirled her lighter between his fingers. She extinguished her cigarette and began making coffee. He watched her move around the kitchen for a while. He then got up and wandered the living space, perusing her record collection. Neither of them really knew what they were doing.

Next to the mu sic shel f wa s a n old stereo. He pu l led Pau l Si mon’s Graceland out of its sleeve and began to set it on the record player, scanning for a power switch.

“It doesn’t work. We’ve been meaning to replace it.”

He turned and she was right behind him. Her slim fingers wrapped around the warm coffee mug, she exuded a certain elegance. He was drawn to her maturity. Whether it be the black sweater or dark hair, he wasn’t certain.

She spoke without a trace of authentic interest in his response, her voice coarse and distant.

“If you want any coffee you can help you rsel f,” she spok e wh i le avoiding eye contact.

“Um, I’m fine, thank you.” He’d been offered coffee several times before, and he’ d respectf ully declined each time.

“Well, it’s there if you change your mind.”

“Thanks, I appreciate it.”

She was tapping her mug with her finger. With each tap, her ring chimed against the cup and a faint reverberation sidled along the carpet and walls

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“Oh you know what?” she broke the silence with an excited and relieved tone. “I got a bluetooth speaker for Christmas that I had forgotten about.”

of the room. He frantically thought up conversation topics and juggled them in the back of his throat, reworking them in a fruitless attempt to find something interesting, but they might as well have been speaking different languages. She was eight years older and married. Her husband’s work involved f lying to different countries and making deals with stern men. And so in turn, she now had a stern husband who was nothing at a l l li ke the man she married. A f ter h e s p e nt h i s f i r s t night, he didn’t plan on seeing her again.

When he should have slept soundly, he instead experienced what was potentially the most visceral nightmare he’d ever had. The dream, it lingered with him, festering into some sort of deterrent to keep him from being drawn back to her. But it apparently wasn’t enough.

He couldn’t tell what she was thinking. Younger women were usua l ly far easier to read, but she was difficult, akin to the surrealist works of a Murakami or Kaf ka novel. She may not have been bound to earth by physical laws, no not at a l l. T here were nights spent together where they joined their bodies in absolute rhapsody, vivacious and passionate lovemaking. Yet there were also nights where their romance was nothing other than serene and calm, something an onlooker would consider to be a dull affair. There were other nights where he would arrive to find her in tears.

He thought about how maybe she once loved her husband for the wrong reasons.

Severa l m i nutes pa ssed a s she searched throughout other parts of the house, while he remained sunken in a formidably cozy couch.

The living room was decorated with minimalist furniture. Apart from the record shelf and stereo, a grand piano beckoned him. It was the largest piano he’d ever seen inside a home. Picture frames hung on walls and sat on coffee tables. He viewed a multitude of pictures depicting her with her husband. They all seemed to be taken very recently, considering she wore the same dark clothing.

Neither of them expressed genui ne sm i les, it seemed. She smiled without showing her teeth.

Her lips curled and created sma l l folds in her cheeks, her eyes closed in most of them.

While she was checking out books on marine biology at the library, they happened to cross paths and she invited him over for a second time. There was something about her that captivated him. Or perhaps there were several things. The way she dressed, perhaps. Most days she wore dark long sleeves, sometimes with a scarf, sometimes with thick plastic glasses. Or was it some unfathomable allure that complimented her maturity? Something he hadn’t come to understand yet, having only experienced the charm of younger women.

He often wondered if she dressed like that when she was still young. Did her husband chase after a woman who had always dressed so conservatively, or wa s t here once a su m mer where she wore sk irts and t-shirts, open-toed shoes and vivid sundresses? He’d spent several nights dreaming about her in her youth. The most unique quality that separated her from most, however, was that she didn’t possess a shadow.

He began to search throughout the dark home, scanning vacant rooms and corridors. Eventually he found her in her room, lights turned off.

She was on her hands and knees, sobbing with the force of an ill person vomiting on all fours. He placed a hand on her shoulder and they sat together at the foot of the bed. His shirt became damp from her tears and hot breath. He ran one hand up and down her back while the other rested on her leg. He waited a long time for her crying to cease. And then he waited longer still, yet she didn’t stop.

He never thoug ht to con f ront her about it because it seemed too personal a conversation topic, and if she felt either embarrassed or upset at his remark, well, he wasn’t a strong enough talker to be able to apologize or regain her trust. But yet again, neither of them was.

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They slept together that night, her falling asleep in his embrace. He thought about how maybe she once loved her husband for the wrong reasons. And he stuck with this thought for far too long, playing with the idea, considering whether or not he was the instigator, the root of their dysfunctional marriage. Was he helping or only hurting? She felt

warm, wrapped in his arms. He didn’t k now if he loved her. Loving her was false hope; nothing could ever come from it. He already knew that he couldn’t be with her forever, but it was still the calmest night of his life, laying with her in a quiet house under soft February snow.

Grace Kohler – untitled watercolor

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El Sueño por Zack Harrington

Nunca creía que puedo, mis amigos no tambien.

Mis profesores no saben tenía Español sueño cuando estaba durmiendo.

No especial estaba porque no recuerdo nada.

Me lo ayudó con mi examen de Español y podía tener una “A”.

I never believed I could, nor did my friends.

My professors don’t even know that I had a dream in Spanish while I was sleeping.

It wasn’t anything special because I don’t remember a thing.

It helped me with my Spanish exam and I was able to get an “A”.

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Stupefaction

by Breanne Russell

This, a waking dream.

Eyes open but a slumber.

Too asleep to change.

Author’s note: We perpetuate an idea in society that if we are not living our “dreams”—our aspirations, our desires—we are not living life to its fullest. “Stupefaction” is a statement on how often, we live more in our dreams than when awake. Out of fear to change, we walk through life as if asleep, our full potential untapped, living day to day a predictable, monotonous existence.

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Kenna Marar – untitled mixed media

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I Dream of Demons

by Matthew Laesser

I dream of demons, their eyes like ember fire.

I dream of devils, their guise of somber pyre.

Lyre, thy silver strings and mortal wire plucked by talons which cannot tire.

Arching semblance, masks of plague jettison forth from shallow grave.

Desire, sing thy twisted melody, from seraph wings once so heavenly.

This bed is feeble, leads minds astray to faces of evil, and faith betray.

I dreamt of demons, their eyes like ember fire.

I dreamt of devils, their guise of somber pyre.

Matthew Laesser – untitled graphite

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Dream Haiku

by Susan Odgers Cold medicine sleep, my dog speaks fluent Spanish, tripping on light show.

Sleep and imagine you’re no longer paralyzed.

You can walk again.

Please come back to me dream fleeting like softened smoke please come back to me.

Dark head on pillow, eyes shut to outside pictures, Northern Lights inside.

Man under the bed in the shower and bushes wasted years and fears.

We’re lucid dreaming, journey while staying in place deep blue eyes wide shut.

Without the dreamers will anything ever change?

Balloon-filled ideas.

Alone in my bed dreaming of your touch wake up and light up.

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Dreams are made of Spring, tender sprouts through soft snow, no other way up.

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Final Moments

by Jeff Comerford

P

eople tell me it’s supposed to be quick and easy. Honestly, I think the people who tell me this are lying to me. Well, that, or they’re lying to themselves. The doctor looks me in the eye. He doesn’t even have to open his mouth. I know what he’s saying.

The “drug” had been around for about 50 years now. At least, that’s what dad always told me.

Today, I am 33 years old. I am about to endure the worst possible day of my life (or maybe it will be the best). I can’t really say for sure. The truth is, taxpayers seemed to like the idea of inflicting as much guilt and pain as possible on death row inmates.

You messed up. That’s what I think he’s saying at least. He has three guards strap me to the table. The table feels cold, but I try not to let it show. After all, tough guys don’t do that crap. I could ask him what his name is, but I don’t see what the point is. The doc shoots me the “evil eye” at the dragon tattoo on my chest. At least, I think that’s what he’s doing. Maybe I’m trying to rationalize something that was never there in the first place. I know he doesn’t like it. I don’t care. He turns around to grab a needle filled with a green liquid.

hands. I’m actually staring past the doctor at the bigass window right beyond him. In the past, the window has been one-sided. About ten years ago, the government changed it. I guess it adds insult to injury. These people can watch me die. I can watch them watch me die. They’re all looking at me, hoping I’m going to feel sorry. I won’t admit it out loud, but I am sorry. Well, I’m sorry for some of it anyways. I feel a small prick in my arm. Is that it? I think to myself. I close my eyes.

“Joey,” my sister wakes me up. “What the hell did you do?” How did I get here? I look down at the blood and bruises on my hands. I had blacked out. I look at my sister. I haven’t seen her in ten years. She looks like she did the last time I saw her.

I remember. I know what day this is. She’s running for the phone. I love my sister. Her name is Kelly. She has long blonde hair. She’s pretty. She always has been. She won’t admit it. She’ll never admit it. The dead guy I wake up next to. He was her boyfriend. I never liked the guy. He was abusive. I always could remember how she dismissed the bruises on her arm, or the occasional black eye. I wished I could’ve convinced her that she needed to get the hell away from him, but she never listened.

Maybe I’m trying to rationalize something that was never there in the first place.

“It’ll be quick,” he says out loud. I only now realize that I’m scared. I know what’s coming. He mutters something else after. I can’t quite make out what it is, but it sounds like he’s saying “and not a moment too soon.” Soon, it’ll be time for me to face my fears. I have to face all the wrong I did in my life. My mind isn’t even on the doctor, or the giant fuck-off needle in his

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“Hello,” She says as she puts the numbers 9-1-1 into her cell phone.

“I’m afraid!” She begins to cry. She really is afraid. I black out again, and I don’t regain consciousness until the police arrive and pry me off of my sister.

NMC Magazine 4/17/17 9:12 AM

I never understood why my hands were around her throat. I still don’t. In a way, I’m glad I blacked out. I don’t know if I could imagine my own sister looking at me with that kind of fear. She coughed a little bit, indicating she was still alive. Police officers (whose faces were blurs to me) checked on her, helped her up, and made sure she was okay. I stood there frozen, terrified of what I had done. Now, the people who were going to be watching me die appear in the “dream.” This is my pinching moment.

I wake up only for a second. I’m back in the room I am about to die in. Just before everything goes black for good, I look at the window. Those faceless people are still there. One of them, however, I can make out very clearly. A face I never expected to see materializes. It’s Kelly. One thought crosses my mind as my eyes close for good.

Katie Zajas – untitled mixed media

Was she smiling?

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The Difference Between Night and Day

by Nancy Tucker

I have these dreams, you know.

Not about monsters or beasts or the bad man who chases me, not the kind of dreams to analyze for psychological motivation or deep-seated fears, not the kind of dreams to actually tell anybody.

I mean, I dream that I go into a 7-11 and spend half-an-hour picking out a candy bar and then I can’t find my purse even though just a second before it was there and so I have to go home and on the way I meet a woman who I went to high school with but I can’t remember her name and I’m not sure I should talk to her but I do and then I realize it isn’t her at all and I’m talking to a stranger so I have to apologize and she smiles and goes on and then I wake up.

Or I dream that I’ve gone to a cocktail party with a girlfriend who starts to introduce me to people but decides she should get a drink and bring me one so she tells me to stay there and I do but she doesn’t come back and when I realize that I keep explaining to people what I’m doing there I start to look for her and spend lots of time walking in circles and listening to bits and pieces of conversations thatregister in my head as bits and pieces and I’m just starting to wonder if I should have worn my blue shoes and then I wake up.

Or I dream that it’s Saturday morning and I have a new book with an orange cover and I pick it up and carry it to the couch and snuggle under the afghan and start to read and then my mother calls and tells me about her dental appointment and her doctor appointment and everything’s fine and we hang up and I go back to my orange book and continue to read and for a long time I dream that I am reading, just following print with my eyes and then I wake up.

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Or I dream that I am typing at my computer, line after line after line after line, fingers touching keys, and then I am printing, printing, printing, printing and I see electronic lines of type scrolling up and up and up and up and I hear the rattly hum of the dot-matrix printer in my dream, going on and on and on and on and then I wake up.

That’s the scariest one.

Now, what’s the deal here?

No dragons to slay?

No dark secrets to work out in my dreams?

Am I the most boring person in the world or what?

Perhaps I shall just have to make things up.

Ann Hosler – Word Purge photo collage

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Path of Knowledge

by Matthew Suehr

L

ush vegetation bordered either side of the cobbled path, and hardwood trees, sometimes ten meters wide, towered above the forest floor.

My bare feet fell silently on the puzzle piece walkway as I wondered how I had gotten there. I did not remember seeing any of the plants before, but they did not seem strange or alien. I thought of my bedroom, dirty laundry littering the floor and posters covering the walls, but with each step the thought faded until I didn’t know what I had been thinking about the moment before. All that remained was the archaic forest, and the path.

Before long I was standing in front of a dilapidated shack. Half of the door was torn off, with the words, “Caution, beware of…” The rest of the warning was a charred mess. After calling out and getting no response, I fol lowed the cobble stones into the hut. When I had ta ken f ive steps, I reached out expecting to feel the rotting wood of the inside wa l l, but i nstead felt nothi ng. On ly then did I realize that the warning was not written in English. Slowly I waded into the thick blackness, until the humid musk of the hut was replaced by exotic incense. In time, I detected a wavering light ahead, which proved to be torches mounted in stone walls every twenty meters. Faded tapestries hung on the walls, covered in eons of dust. A sharp smack of the hand revealed woven scenes of battle, royalty, and achingly beautiful landscapes.

A padding sound echoed down the hallway towards me, until a dark shape loped through the wavering torch light. My alarm gave way to relief as I realized it was merely a large white dog, its ears flopping and tongue hanging out of its mouth. It wasn’t until it spoke that I jumped back in amazement.

“Master! Master! Jeez, I haven’t seen you in, well, forever!” His tail wagged as he hopped around me, occasionally smelling my dirty feet and licking my hand with his warm, raspy tongue. Kneeling down, I scratched the sweet spot behind his ear.

“Who are you? Where am I?” I asked, looking into his friendly brown eyes.

“You said you might say that! I am your honorable servant, Jasper. I maintain order here while you are away, and guard your most precious treasures. This place is yours, in the t r u e s t s e n s e . Yo u have been here many times, in a way you are always here, but sometimes you don’t remember. T h at ’s okay. I can show you around until it comes back to you.”

Jasper trotted forward a few yards and looked over his back until I followed. “The library is usually your favorite, let’s start there.” As I glanced down at the tracks his paws had made in the dust, I saw a separate set of strange prints hugging the wall.

...my body remained unperturbed by the ticking of the cosmic clock, measured by the death of stars.

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Each new hallway was brighter than the last, and dull granite gave way to the florescent green of jade.

Tapestries were less dusty, while paintings and murals became more common. Countless intersections and

NMC Magazine 4/17/17 9:12 AM

Anonymous – Dream Journal mixed media

stair ways brought us to a massive circular room, with a spiraling staircase hugging the walls to higher and lower levels. Mahogany and steel book shelves stretched from wall to wall, each filled to the brim with books.

“Before you lies the compilation of all recorded works concerning all that is beyond the walls of this palace. All that is, all that was, and all that could be.

Your presence alone is evidence you are here for some purpose, a question that must be answered for your existence to continue.”

guided me by all of its miracles and curiosities. Despite my adoration of the Royal Gardens, my favorite was the Observatory, a smooth, diamond paned dome at the top of the tallest tower. Its spherical shape allowed me to gaze upon not only the stars and three moons, but also on the structure as a whole. It stretched in the way the horizon does on earth, but wrapped upon itself in a way that walking from end to end meant arriving at the point of origin, without any of the structure being obscured from view. Rounded domes, wending towers, and curving buttresses seemed to defy the laws of physics. Just to gaze upon them filled me with a sense of pride and horror.

Looking down at Jasper I asked, “How am I supposed to find an answer when I don’t even know the question?”

Each book I read was imprinted on my mind, but it was not all pure knowledge. Spell books had the curious script that seemed to swirl around as you read it, and any mispronunciation could have devastating effects. But each word I learned in a new language, trinket I made levitate, or portal that I opened only made me crave the books that much more.

Wagging his tail excitedly, Jasper barked, “Read!” and disappeared amongst the books.

I walked into the literary forest, taking down any books whose binding caught my eye. “Observations

of Nomadic Peoples”, “Interstellar Laws of Motion”, “History of A-9”, “Evolution of Stamps”, “Forest Lore and Edible Plants of the Pacific Northwest”, “Life on Drengun”, “Alghast’s Compendium”, “The Cosmic Voyage of Anton Semetsky”. Time became an unreal

It wasn’t until I had witnessed the death of the seventh star that everything changed, starting with a curious book in a hidden vault. I had been in the lowest level of the library reading, “The Constructed Civilizations of the Known Universe”, when I noticed Jasper scratching at the corner of a rug. By standing on the rug he could catch the edge but not actually roll it out of the way. Curious, I walked over and rolled the rug across the cobbles, revealing an oak planked trapdoor.

construct of a different world as words floated across my mind in fluid succession. I had no need for sleep or sustenance, and I freely explored all levels of the library to contemplate what I had read. Wisdom and experience began to weigh on my thoughts, yet my body remained unperturbed by the ticking of the cosmic clock, measured by the death of stars. Jasper taught me the secret to the labyrinth like hallways, and happily

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“Smell that?” I whispered, running my hand across the charred runes in the wood. They read, “Do Not Enter.”

“Smoke,” huffed Jasper, his lips pulled back, revealing sharp, opalescent teeth.

Descending the worn, stone steps side by side, we soon found ourselves in a dank grotto. Archaic pillars melted into the blackness in all directions, with an orb of white light from Jasper’s luminescent fur surrounding us. I closed my eyes and focused on the currents of energy in the air, letting it guide my steps through ankle deep water and deteriorating paper. Suddenly my left foot struck something solid in an especially detestable pile of mush. Reaching in up to my elbow, I pulled forth a miraculously dry book. Bound in black leather, the cover showed the symbols for Power and Creation intertwining in gold script. Just as I bent my head to begin reading, a fireball flew into the pillar at my back, sending shards of ruby veined marble everywhere.

cious books. Determination slid down my face like a visor, and I vaulted onto the top of the nearest shelf.

Once the beast was upon me, I jumped, slashed, and tumbled around its clumsy strikes. I was completely convinced the thing would catch a lucky blow, and that I would be devoured. A gout of flame overtook me. It felt like a hot wind and smelled of sulfur. I looked at my arms in amazement, I was unburnt. I stood in place, letting the next gout of flame pass over me to the same effect. “You’re not real.”

Chuckling deeply, the dragon’s head spun around its neck, again and again, until it was a shrinking rope of sallow flesh. Before me stood a cloaked figure, its he ad obsc u re d b y shadow. “Are you not impressed?” Its voice made my head feel light, and my hands and feet began to tingle. “Give us the book, it’s wasted on you.” Just then I noticed the book on the floor between us, obscured by a pile of ash. With a flick of my hand it flopped open, and black, greasy tentacles shot toward the cloaked figure. As it shrieked and pitifully scratched at the ground, I walked over to hear his pleas better. In desperation, it flipped back its hood, and I stared into my own face. “You need us!”

“It’s the Other! Run, Master, Run!” yelped Jasper, nipping hard at my heels.

Fast as a diving peregrine my feet flew across those uncouth waters, my to that squeezed my heart.

Red hot stone flew in all directions as a jet of flames burst s kyward. The wave of raw energ y sent me f lying across the library and into the wal l. As I slouched and struggled to stand, something flashed and sunk into the stone ten meters overhead. It was a sword imbedded up to its hilt. After casting a short spell, I walked up the wall, knelt to take hold of the grip, and pulled. It sang as it slid forth, a white blade light as air. Its pommel was a tuft of white hair, and the cross guard was the snarling likeness of Jasper, his ears f lat and lips pulled back in a growl. As I turned, I saw an onyx dragon slithering through my library, spouting jets of flame across my pre-

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Koree Bemiss – untitled watercolor

“I know who you are,” I said, shaking his hand off my foot.

“You are everything I suppress. The fearful. The exi led. T he schemer.

I’ve come to realize no one is purely good, nor should they be.” I set the point of the sword under his chin, turning his face up towards mine. “Swear me loyalty, or drown in the space between stars.”

“We… we swear.” The Other mumbled before melting into a pool of darkness and swirling into the soles of my feet. The tentacles retreated into the book, which I picked up, and walked towards the stairs. Through the halls and out the shack. Onto the path and into the forest, my shadow in tow.

Caroline schaefer-Hills – The Venetian photo illustration

Red hot stone flew in all directions as a jet of flames burst skyward.

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Caroline schaefer-Hills – The Venetian photo illustration

Tilt-A-Whirl

by Sharon Angel (A worry-dream sequence written out of concern for a depressed friend.)

Hospitable banners of hometown pride hang from new, old-time street lamps.

A house of mirrors arrives—on nine wheels.

Soon everything’s sticky with syrup, fingerprints, and cotton-candied lullabies wrestling for your attention.

Your friend, whose shadow you’ve trailed as far as the Tilt-A-Whirl, is out of sight.

No time to put warning to words—the engine is shrill.

Pinned eight feet up a twelve-foot panel. Your friend believes they will stop spinning soon…soon. Eventually, they do; but not before the floor drops out.

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Chelsea Dunham – Circus paper collage

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Short, Naked, Alone Story: Matthew O’Donnell — Art: Katy Frey & Aleksandra Hissong

Matthew O’Donnell,Katy Frey & Aleksandra Hissong – Short, Naked, Alone pen & ink

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The Dream Keepers

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NMC MAGAZINE • SPRING 2017 DREAMS

nmc

VOL. 39 #2

NMC Magazine is a student publication Fonts used in this issue: Modula Round Sans, Brioso Pro, Cronos Pro. Paper: Neenah Starwhite Blue Flash (cover) 100# gloss house stock(interior pages) Printed by BRD Printing Inc., Lansing, MI