“t i m e l e s s ”
By: Chloe Retika
I thought he wasn’t going to come and I have never felt more fooling waiting there. Because I know that hope is cruel and misleading but he came, he came, he came. And so we slipped out of the house into a dark night that isn’t really that silent at 3 am. It was muted. It’s a strange feeling, knowing you are awake while most others are dreaming. There was a blanket of darkness around us. But it wasn’t menacing or dangerous, it was… it just was. And so we slipped through the fence while our eyes adjusted and our hearts beat faster and faster. Stars are dancing, the moon is watching, for us for us for us. We rounded a curve and then a bend and I look back and there was power, there was this city humming with electricity full of rushing, awful people, choking the world with their needs and wants but it was beautiful, the silent, hidden chaos was beautiful, so we accept them. I’m still staring at the city until one of them puts her hand on my shoulder and whispers that we had to go. I could see her now. A faint outline and a hint of a smile and star-reflected eyes. If all of humanity could see each other like this, there would be no war, no struggle. The sky travelled spectrums, shade by shade, time was against us as it always is, and so we ran. We made it. This was the top. There was nothing above it and everything below it. Our bodies are slowly freezing as the wind screams at us to leave, that no, no you cannot corrupt my dawn, my sunrise, you cannot touch this, you cannot have her. You will corrupt my dawn, because in order for the most beautiful things to stay pure, they must never be found. But we fought the wind, fingers shaking. I had stopped moving. I was watching the sky. Watercolor brushed blues and purples, melding and disappearing into each other so easily….
“
And then the sun moved.
”
The world that had been cast in monotone was washed in light. Human gold is nothing compared to the brilliance I saw. This orb, dead behind mountains, was rising. A mass thousands of times bigger than our earth and millions of miles away rose. All those colors washed away for that light, spilling and dancing and touching everything. I know that we’re hurtling through miles and miles of violent space, but to see our sun, the center of our galaxy, creep the last few inches it took to rise from those peaks… I have not felt peace like this in months. So I mix my past tense, future tense, present tense into an incoherent mess because god, am I reliving this moment?
Am I living this moment? Am I about to live this moment? Can you remember this for me? To love the people and the things that make you feel timeless and invincible?
“
It wasn’t the most beautiful sunrise ever. It wasn’t ugly or spectacular or breathtaking or marred. It was just a sunrise. Like any other one painted by God.
”
But I will never see this sunrise again. My first.
I will never see it in the exact same spot with the exact same people ever again. It will not happen, it will be an impossibility. Because we were found. We are not pure, this world made us impure and one day we will be the city humming instead of specks of light breathing with the wind. I had that time to cherish it, that time to see it, and that time is over. timeless. 03.28.16
WHEN I WAS TEN By: Emily Carraher When I was ten, we were- what you’d call, a common family. When I was ten, I met my best friend. When I was ten I had a huge crush on this boy. When I was ten my mother
committed suicide.
When I was ten I finally saw my father cry. When I was ten my father began to beat me. When--when I was ten my father gave me my first kiss. and when I was ten, my father raped me. Life right now, is just, eh. You know, not too bad, not too good, just eh. The days just keep coming and going, quite boring if I say so myself. Nothing ever exciting happens anymore, not like when I was younger, everything seemed so much more dramatic back then, I mean, it’s not like I would want to go back to then, but it would probably make an interesting film if I do say so myself. In fact, when I look back on it, what happened was just such a predictable chain of events. I grew up in a small town, I… don’t exactly remember where. I know we had this ice cream shop my dad would always take me to. It was a place to get away from my mom. My mom had a lot of stress upon her, she would take it out on us verbally, I got used to it after a while. But I didn’t realize it there was a limit for her.
Just after my tenth birthday, I met this weird girl, her name was Alison. She was always reading on the benches during recess, it didn’t seem like she had any friends. I finally decided to go up to her and -well, you know- we shared multiple of the same interests, which led to us being great friends. There was also this boy, his name was Leo, and you know what, looking back at it now, he was a pretty good looking kid. He had these green eyes, just like my mom’s, that’s the only reason I can remember them. …My house was located on the outskirts of town, next to the woods. It had 4 rooms, my parents, mine, their office, and the living room. We also had an attic… I’d hide all my belongings up there, it was my favorite room until that day. March 9th, 1996, the day I found my mother hanging from a rope. Dead. she was dead. I called my dad up, he wasn’t as shocked as I, it was as if he knew it was going to happen. He told me to go downstairs to my room. I never saw my mom’s body after that, we didn’t have a funeral either. I’d hear my father cry as I my eyelids slowly closed. This repeated 3 weeks. A month after my mother’s suicide, I went up to the attic for the first time, my brain prepared itself to see my mother’s dead body again as if the situation would repeat itself, but instead just a horrendous odor of booze
lingered. My father was passed out on the floor with tear stains running down his face, bottles surrounded him. I shook him awake. He kept saying Raquel over and over again, my mother’s name. He started to cry. He held his arms out, asking for a hug, so that’s exactly what I did. That was my first mistake. He kept kissing my forehead and cheeks, his saliva and tears mixing on my face. He then proceeded to kiss me on the lips forcefully. I struggled to get away from him. I knew this wasn’t right. He cried even louder. I tried to get away. I tried and I tried.
And then I thought about it. Who was the one in more pain?
to the ones who told me they were By: Chloe Retika
TOO T IRED
*Author’s note: This story is 100% true. Or not. Take a guess.”
“
They got tired of hearing her complain about the pain in her head and the hell in her heart.
”
“The boy who used to live here fell in love with the girl who used to live next door,” he murmured as he leaned against the brittle wall, hastily cobbled together to be given form. “Oh. That’s nice.” “But he wasn’t supposed to. His parents didn’t allow it at all, didn’t want him to fall in love with this girl who lived a wall and a yard away. It was this great forbidden love that should never have existed.” “Wow, how exciting.” She drawled, tracing the rough outlines of the stones in the wall, rubbing the dust away from her fingers in annoyance. “The girl was sick. It was a terminal illness too, I think.” She froze and pressed her palm against the wall, completely forgetting about the dust she had just wiped away in order to steady herself and calm her pounding heartbeat. “All of the girl’s friends had already given up on her. They got tired of her complaining about the pain in her head and the hell in her heart. They were exhausted having to wheel her around at school and help her struggle up the stairs. They didn’t want the pitying looks from strangers anymore or the terrified faces of mothers pulling their children a little bit closer.”
He turned his back on her and walked up to a half white half black pole that stretched over the height of the wall. The top three fourths of the cylindrical rust was twined with jutting metal, sharp enough to cut and draw blood. She watched him warily, four paces away, not saying a word. “Do you believe in the concept of soulmates? That someone in the world was made just for you?” “That’s retarded.” He shook his head and laughed quietly, placing the tip of his index finger on one of the wicked wires, continuing, “Well, he did. He felt an unexplainable attraction to this girl. Her bald spots from chemo and her sunken cheekbones didn’t hide the fact that she glowed from the inside, didn’t mar how beautiful she was. He admired how she still had the capability to laugh even though she knew she was dying, he admired that she was strong.” She joined him, now, but chose to smooth her hands over the bottom fourth of the pole,
devoid of the wire. “And?” “I got your interest.” “Shut up, jerk.” He laughed louder this time, “And so every night, he would climb this pole and scramble down the other side of this wall to visit her. He’d never go inside her house. He’d just sit outside her window and she would press her hands against the screen as he told her stories about the world. He wanted to give her hope and love when she had so little left. He wanted to tell her about the good in life as she slowly-“ “There is no good in life.” “-lost her eyesight because of the cancer. He told her about how beautiful his newborn cousin’s eyes were. He told her about what his coffee looked like at breakfast, with cream and milk and 36 grams of sugar. He described how the autumn leaves danced in light for the few seconds it took for them to fall to the ground and turn from gold to dead. He made her laugh when he told her how it felt to step in dog food, made her cry silently when he told her how white his grandmother looked as they closed the
casket. He told her about how beautiful she was, but she never believed him.” She became angry now, and he knew it because he grabbed her chin and her shoulder scraped against the wires, but not deep enough to pierce the skin. Her gasp was covered by the tumble of words that came from his mouth as he said, “His parents found out about what he was doing, and decided to cover this pole with wires. But he didn’t stop. Under the sliver of blessed moonlight when he couldn’t even see what he was touching, he’d climb this pole and slip and cut his fingers his palms his wrists his thighs his shins his feet his face, but he would keep climbing and visit his love every single night to tell her stories about the world because he knew that if he did not, she would lose herself and concede to her sickness.”
“Let go of me.” “He felt the need to tell her stupid little stories about how his dog shed fur all over the couch or how beautiful the chorus in his new favorite song was because he wanted to save her in the only way he knew how, he wanted her to fall in love with the world and keep fighting to live.” “I DON’T WANT TO LIVE.”
“
And then the moon slipped out from beneath the clouds and reflected off of her angry, wet eyes and off of his calm, determined ones as he took in the tubes twining through her neck and nose, so much like the wires on that pole, keeping her alive and breathing.
”
He looked at her, with her head covered with tufts of hair that was falling out anyways, her nails that were as brittle and broken as the wall, and found her beautiful. He pulled her close, careful not to jostle her breathing tubes, and pressed her head against her shoulder as she sobbed so angrily, so unforgiving of the world that had decided to give her this sickness. “By the way, nothing I just said was true.” “Jerk.” Her words were muffled against the folds of his jacket.
“But stories are based off of facts and I read this one off of like Facebook or something-“ She hit him softly on the hollow of his chest. “-and I’d like to think that somewhere, at some point in time, a love as pure and unyielding and powerful exists. I’d like to think that love, not only for one person, but love for the world and small, beautiful things in life, can fuel the will for someone who only knows pain to want to live. They just need to meet someone who would climb impossible walls for them.
Like I would for you.”
Psychopathy: Strength or Hamartia? By: Melvin Zhou In this fictions story of romance and internal conflict, we are better able to understand the themes behind true psychopathy, and judge how they can be/are applied to our own lives. It is not a good feeling to be helpless, and I have known this all too well. Having been brought up in extreme poverty, my father would have been astonished to see how far I have come, how filthy rich I am now, and how powerful and influential I now am. Power and influence. The sources of my egotism. Two main driving forces that keep me going, and two driving forces that have gotten me where I am today. I look down from
the grandest building in the Shinjuku prefecture in Tokyo, and then I look towards the horizons. Olympus has merely become a new point of reference. Not many would not approve of my methods. My father would have been one of them. He was always considerate of the feelings of others, always helping others, and always feeling remorseful when he did anything immoral. He was empathetic and could easily committed to others. He would speak out against those who had done wrong or immoral things, and that, was dangerous. It was why I had to eliminate him. I hired a hitman to kill him two years ago, and I have never missed him. I have had to do many immoral things to get to where I am today, but I believe it is more rewarding to be powerful than to be loved. As Italian politician Niccolo Machiavelli said, “[It] is much safer to be feared than loved, when, of the two, either must be dispensed with�. Then I met a woman who made me consider the very foundation of my beliefs, who made me question my character and ultimately, my identity. I remember the day as clearly as if it were yesterday. It was a beautiful spring afternoon in Osaka. The wind flowed through the violet wisteria, the bright pink cherry blossoms were beginning to bloom, and the sunlight accentuated the pure, innocent beauty of the peach flowers. I could not help but feel a tinge of despondency. Pure, innocent, uncorrupted beauty is difficult to find in this world. I sat down by
the park bench overlooking the river and immersed myself in quiet contemplation. I did not notice her sit down next to me. I felt her hand brush gently across my shoulder as she asked, “What are you thinking about?” I looked at her and thought: damn, she is beautiful. I realized I had been staring, and that I had forgotten the question. She quietly laughed and repeated, “What are you thinking about?” The question took me by surprise, and I almost refused to answer. I never talk about my feelings, the ones that show the deeply repressed vulnerable side of me. No, I couldn’t do that. I looked back at her, and she was smiling, expecting me to start speaking. And for some reason, I did. I did not know how long I spoke with her for. As the sun began to set, I suddenly remembered that I had to be back in the company in ten minutes. I excused myself abruptly, and ran for the bus that was just about to pull away. That evening, she was all I thought about. I had never had a conversation quite like that.
“
She was beautiful, but not like those girls in the magazines. She was beautiful, for the way she thought. She was beautiful, for the sparkle in her eyes when she talked about something she loved.
”
She was not just beautiful for the way she looks. There was something about her that was more deeply captivating. She was vivacious and witty. She seemed shy but she talked about so much. Suddenly, unexpectedly, I had fallen in love. I went back to the same park bench the next day. She was there, writing in a notebook. I realized I had not even gotten her name the day before.
To Be Continued...