Penchant2.1

THE

PENCHANT DYING REFLECTION by orion fang

PERFECT RED, PERFECT SHAPE by adrianna thant

THE PRICE OF POINTE by verb

UNRAVEL

The thing, gave a tremendous shudder.

And then it grew, bloated grotesquely like some abhorrent balloon from hell, my face and my body turning into that of a soft, meaty, indistinguishable blob of flesh and skin.

Irvington High School’s Creative Writing Club is a student-run, interest-based club dedicated to providing a welcoming environment for writers of all kinds to convene and share their ideas outside of an academic setting. Members get a taste of publication through submitting to The Penchant, our online literary magazine. Meanwhile, monthly prompts, in-club competitions, and major writing contests are provided to allow members to explore the implications of writing, improve on their own techniques, and receive feedback from their fellow peers. Overall, our collective mission is to enable the students of Irvington to write what they wish and have their voices heard.

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Creative Commons Photos: Cover, 10: retrieved from Pixabay.

To learn more about us, go to penchantlitmagblog.wordpress.com/.

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the penchant Irvington | creative writing club EDITOR IN CHIEF Tianhui (Lily) Yang CONTENT EDITORS Catherine You Athena Xue LAYOUT EDITORS Sushrut Borkar Anikait Rao COVER CREDITS Desiree Ho CONTENT Srika Chargarlamudi Chaiya Chatkara Anusri Chavali Rory Conlon Irene Geng Trisha Godara Wanning Lu Felicia Mo Sashrika Pandey Tammy Shen Christine Song Precious Tampos Adrianna Thant Ria Thakker Shreya Venkat Samuel Vu Samadhi Wijethunga Madison Wong Nichelle Wong Athena Xue Serena Yeh Catherine You Frederick Zhang Roland Zhang

LAYOUT Kelly Feng Trisha Godara Alice Hu Ashley Lau Tammy Lee Hema Madichetty Geetika Mahajan Avani Pammidimukkala Janice Park Christine Song Jaime Wang Lily Yang Roland Zhang

5

november 2018

TABLE OF

CONTENTS

21

17 unravel

15

11

19

1 FEATURED 5| Dying Reflection

By Orion Fang “It’s as if I am surrounded by danger; by hidden evil that could drag me into a fate worse than death. “

13| Perfect Red, Perfect Shape

By Adrianna Thant “The red was all too captivating. She reached out to the yarn and when she touched it, it was as if all her anxieties melted away. “

19| The Price of Pointe

By Verb “It isn’t a pretty sight hiding under a perfect pink exterior.”

PROSE 1| Breath

by Anonymous 3| Waking Up

by Catherine You 5| Dying Reflection

by Orion Fang 11| Bolero

by Irene Geng 17| Perfect Red, Perfect Shape

by Adrianna Thant 15| House Unraveled

By Felicia Mo 17| Sarah

by Anonymous 18| Beguiling Lips

by Samadhi Wijethunga

POETRY 19| The Price of Pointe

by Verb 20| Opulent Red

by Vox Nihili 21| Unravel Me

by Wanning Lu

PROSE

BREATHE

PXHERE, 2017

The water around me disappears. The bridge is gone. The stars recede.

1

in the face of obstacles, i sometimes feel as if i’m falling. dropping closer and closer to somewhere cold. somewhere dark. but i’ve learned to overcome and look at things with new light. and i hope you do too.

ANONYMOUS 150 feet. Confusion was the gravity pulling me down and fear was the howling wind that whispered by my ear as I continued my path toward the waves.

The pounding in my chest pulsated through my body and my lungs began to give. Lightheadedness washed upon me, making it increasingly difficult to formulate my thoughts.

I’m scared. What would it feel like? What would happen to me?

100 feet. All I can think of are my parents—of the times I would run to them when I was afraid of ghosts and the dark as a child. “Rationalize your surroundings and perhaps things aren’t as bad as they seem,” I remember them saying.

And so I did.

It was just another freefall question, another object accelerating as time progressed. The force at time of impact would determine whether or not I would survive. The orientation of my body would determine how much air resistance is present and how fast I would fall. Feet first and I risk only my legs. Belly first would be certain death. I need to turn my body around.

50 feet. I feel paralyzed, unable to move myself. With every twitch of my body, it feels as if my flesh has been replaced with bone and my joints have been tactfully glued together. The roaring ocean beneath looks larger and darker 700 feet. I felt my gut clench than ever, but it feels so familiar. The from anticipating impact. My fingers were struggle, the situation, and the fear all writhing uncontrollably by my sides and seem so familiar. my hair was billowing frantically, Impact. A searing pain runs whipping my face and melding into my down my spine and I could feel the wind tears. getting knocked out of my body. The cold The beam of the Golden Gate water envelopes me as droplets that I Bridge that I so desperately held onto displaced pelt my face vigorously. I am moments before began to diminish in size, numb from both the icy waves and the fading into the darkness of the night. Time burning pain, and my vision blurs. slowed and quickened abruptly as the Darkness with its welcoming fangs distant intensity of the boat lights from the devours the last of the brilliant shards of ocean horizon started to compete with the light. Salt creeps into the back of my twinkling of the stars above. nostrils and I begin to choke. I try 500 feet. Was this the end? unsuccessfully at grabbing toward the No, it can’t be. I’ve only just surface, sinking further into the abyss. begun to live. Only just begun to realize It feels so familiar. Rationalize it. my purpose. Only just begun to Is this the end? No, I have only just begun. understand the world and how to I smile as I realized what had overcome the impossible. occurred.

It only just begun.

I breathe. The water around me 300 feet. And they who I’ve been disappears. The bridge is gone. The stars friends with for so long....how could they? recede.

I’ve known each of them for years, and not I awake. The familiar feelings of a once has any kind of contempt arisen challenging situation, of being out of between us. We were an inseparable control, and of falling into the unknown bunch who brought tissue boxes for each disperse. other when school got the best of us, who And just as it is in dreams, in life, gave hugs when hard decisions were on I will always remember that if I looked at our plates, and who reminded each other situations from another perspective and that things could always be looked at from rationalized my surroundings, then another perspective. “perhaps things aren’t as bad as they It didn’t make sense. seem.”

by anonymous They pushed me off

sending me spiraling

down into the

depths below.

Nov 2018||The penchant|2

PROSE

WAKING UP by catherine you

PIXABAY, 2016

3

IN HINDSIGHT, I REALLY shouldn’t have bothered waking up in the first place. Now, a good three hours into a new day and having stumbled through a monotonous routine just hours prior, I finally stand, some semblance of peace regained, over the cursed bed from which I rise every morning.

As I stare down at the innocuous furnishing, doing my best to make friends with the dogged sense of resignation hovering over my shoulder, the cracked lamp propped atop my bedside table flickers to life, as it sometimes does, its little tungsten wire sparking and fizzing like orange pop soda. A similar color, too.

No more than an isolated, tiny creature, encumbered with the weight of its little glass shell and nevertheless trying to breathe its tender little breaths. I stare at the lamp, quiet and thoughtless. It flickers out.

I shake myself awake—maybe not.

Perhaps I, desperate for some indication of normalcy, am deriving some sort of validation from an object as witless as a lamp. What meaning could that plastic hazard hold? It wasn’t anything of significance. No significance, no personality. Maybe I should have thought of something better, like a cluttered wood desk (one of which resides just opposite the bed) or a nice, patterned carpet (of which I have none but wished, occasionally, that I owned). The lamp still hasn’t come back on.

YOU Suddenly, it all seems to be too much for me. The back of my knees hit the edge of the bed and I, for the first time in what seemed like days, truly begin looking around my room.

In the corner, a small mountain of gently abused papers. Reports from work, maybe. Ideas that I just had to write down, never to reference again. The remnants of hopes that I had, once, when I was younger. I think I see a couple of polaroids that aren’t mine. I sigh. There’s not much to look at, is there? I briefly consider if any of the clutter is worth a little attention. No, better not to try and piece them back together.

I look away.

It's my desk that I’m looking at, now. It’s a good desk, sturdy and smooth on top, though you really have to jiggle the rightmost drawer to get it unstuck in the wintertime. What’s in there? I haven’t touched it in weeks. The dust is beginning to collect on top of the desk, settling into its well-worn grooves and graying the robust rowan wood. I think I keep some of my belongings in there. Important things. Birthday cards, a certificate for some competition that I almost won, a beat-up locket, a couple sheets of blue craft paper.

Maybe I should look inside. It would be nice to remember, I think. I cast my gaze across the surface of the table, imagining myself sweeping the uncapped pens and blunted pencils off of the desk as I dig through my time-dulled memories. Nevermind. Why would I do that? The past is long gone now.

I look away.

The closet door. I haven’t touched that, either, for a while. It’s slatted, white—or at least it used to be.

It’s a pretty blue color right now, and I wonder when that had happened. Did it change when the its contents evolved?

From a couple of plain, round-necked shirts and faded jeans to a mismatched array of borrowed button-ups and skirts in colors I would never have thought to wear. I smile, slowly. But then I stop myself. It’s not a good time for that.

Thinking about it too long would only make it harder to recall, later. I frown, eyes burning from exhaustion.

I look away.

What am I looking at now? My vision is hot and dry, the yellowish tint of the overhead light making my hands look sick. Unfamiliar. I’m looking at the wastebasket (occupied by tissues and a water-wrinkled paper), at the door (unopened for days, weeks at a time), the empty takeout boxes neatly stacked in a corner (how old, now? I don’t know).

I can’t find anything to rest my eyes on anymore, nothing that doesn’t

ask something of me, no one who isn’t urging me to take some sort of action, nothing that isn’t prompting some sort of interest in the happenings of the world outside. I don’t shift my gaze and I don’t make noise, but I turn, quietly, towards the headboard of the bed—a wood piece pressed up against the scuffed wall, the corner cracked off where I had accidentally smashed a baseball bat into it.

But it hadn’t been me, had it?

I’ve never owned a baseball bat in my life. I can’t even hold a bat correctly, much less damage a wooden bed-frame with one.

I can’t look away anymore.

In hindsight, I shouldn’t have gotten up that morning. I was already running late for my stupid office job at some stupid firm, and you were just trying to help me, weren’t you? If only I had stayed home.

If only I had stayed home, I could have helped you prepare my lunch.

If only I had stayed home, I would have been able to keep an eye on you. If only I had stayed home, I could have helped you get help after falling, falling so hard down the stairs.

I never meant for that to happen.

Your family says that they don’t blame me, but I don’t believe them. Your mother doesn’t want to talk to me anymore. She’s always “swamped with work,” or “busy with the kids.” Some painfully vague excuse so she doesn’t have to look me in the face.

I can’t blame her. I don’t want to look me in the face, either.

The only thing that I can do is leave everything the way you left it on that Thursday afternoon. You were going to sort those polaroids and paste the nice ones into a scrapbook, weren’t you?

I teased you about the scrapbook. I thought it was cheesy and tedious and cute. I can’t bear to look at it anymore. I can’t bear to look at any of it anymore.

My gaze drifts in its familiar pattern, towards the wooden desk.

There’s that locket I keep in the desk. You always complained about it. When I gave it to you, you complained that your hair would get tangled in the clasp and rip out of your scalp, but you wore it anyway and cut your hair short the next summer.

Your hair was really pretty. I always liked it, and it always grew faster than mine. It was such a pretty brown, too, like the warm color that bread is, sometimes. You took such good care of it.

When it was long, you would always tie it up and match the scrunchie you used to the color of your skirt.

I never saw the appeal of

wearing skirts, but you always claimed that it would give you space to kick at your enemies if such a situation would arise. You would joke about your skirt-endorsed kicks being my first line of defense, the second being the stiffness of my old jeans. I would protest and say that I could move just as well in a pair of jeans as I could in a skirt, but you would only laugh and shake your head. You loved pretending to throw my jeans into the wastebasket.

The wastebasket is empty now, except for the months-old notice that I received in the mailbox explaining to me how your funeral would be hosted. I close my eyes and lie back into the bed. I haven’t left the house in so many days.

Weeks. I didn’t want to walk in a world that loved to remind me of how I killed you.

I didn’t mean to do anything wrong. What a plaintive response—like a child scolded for breaking a pretty vase.

Such a shallow, instinctive response. The overhead light doesn’t bother me anymore. I squeeze my eyes shut and turn onto my side.

I’ll just get it together tomorrow.

Nov Feb 2018||The 2018||The penchant penchant|4 |15

PROSE

YANG, 2016

D

Where shadows rise by the dying light of day and where that demon of man’s fear and darknes arises from his slumber 5

FANG

DYING REFLECTION by orion fang

“WHERE SHADOWS RISE

BY THE DYING LIGHT OF DAY and where that demon of man’s fear and darkness arises from his slumber from the semblance of a corpse-city, built of charred embers and razed buildings—that is when Ac’rafilath awakens. And, when the ancient terror of ancient man awakens, so shall the light wither. His presence shall be revealed to the world, and all but those of the agents of evil shall look upon him and perish.

But until the greatest evil awakens from his slumber of death, Ac’rafilath lies waiting.” On the Matter of Interdimensional Beings, 673 BC, Author Unknown Something touches my consciousness. It doesn’t brush gently against it; instead, it (for I have no better way to describe this thing) roughly jostles my consciousness into the land of the awake. I almost jump up from my bed before I feel it against my skin.

No, not feel. I almost fall into whatever waiting creature’s clutches. It swoops by me, so close that I feel it draw near to my flesh. I do not hear the noise so much as sense it. A crackly voice filled with so much static it’s barely audible; but I can feel it. It tingles over my skin, draws in the hairs on my pores.

Its two cold, icy laughs, both filled to the brim with evil and murderous intent.

No other term calls this more clearly to mind than….

Devil laughs twice.

The realization sends goosebumps erupting across my skin like miniature explosions; I shudder in a cold sweat as I regain full control. That was no nightmare; no nightmare could cause such a strong feeling of…unease. What nightmare could cause such a thick fog of malice to fill the room? What nightmare could make me awake as if I was on the edge of death? No,

this is something far, far worse.

Something perhaps from the darkest pits of hell.

It’s as if I am surrounded by danger, by hidden evil that could drag me into a fate worse than death.

It’s night. The wind rustles gently against my window. The branches of the tree outside sway in the wind, cool air coming in from my bedroom balcony. The door was open.

Open? I was sure I closed it…

The wind hissed with malice.

What had seemed so cooling and gentle just minutes before was now filled with evil. It sent chills up my bloodstream.

Perhaps it was just the drapes billowing in my room near the window? I hesitated. There it was again! It wasn’t the curtains near the window. A dark figure stood outside. Concealed by shadows, it wasn’t all that… solid, to say the least, judging by the wispy shadows that curled off of the edges of its ethereal body. The shadowy figure had no sense of presence, nothing to show. It stood there ominously like the Grim Reaper. What had alerted me was not the presence of an otherworldly light; the creature was no angel, no spirit of the dead. No, what had alerted me to this is something far, far worse. Something perhaps from the darkest pits of hell.

It was a face like mine, and yet unlike mine, a face that was so perfect it resembled mine to some extent. Yet somehow that very same face brought forth hidden, ugly details that made the perfect face transform into a grotesque visage, a crippled and mangled shadow of my own face. The face of that monster was both mine and not mine, both beautiful and ugly, straight yet crooked, alive yet dead. And on its face was something uncharacteristic of me: a devil’s leer, one with teeth that showed too much. The fabric that was its skin rippled as shadows covered and uncovered repeatedly, but the nightmarish face was stuck in my mind.

Shadows swirled around it, covering up the hideous visage once more. It cocked its head.

Its eyes glinted.

I clutched my Bible tighter.

Then, I got out of my bed, never taking my eyes off of those of the Not-me.

The balcony was cool against my bare feet as I stepped out into the veranda. The shadows quaked in the dying half-light.

Opening the Bible, I began to read against the moonlight. Reading aloud, I imagined my grandfather and how he had encountered the demon in the forest.

“But he said to me, my grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.” Reading aloud with the quietest whisper, I continued with my passage.

The creature took no notice of my words; instead, it continued to absorb the infinite light from the moon.

“Therefore I will boast all the more gladly about my weaknesses, so that Christ’s power may rest on me.” My voice faltered, but I continued to read aloud. The figure had heard, for my voice had increased in volume. It startled, but then its gravity tugged at my soul ever so slightly. I felt my heart pull forward a little. The words I was reading began to literally flow off the page as I continued, being pulled away into the demon.

It’s two cold, icy laughs, both filled to the brim with evil and murderous intent.

Nov 2018||The penchant|6

YANG, 2016

DYING REFLECTION

I… am a paragon to your sins. I am both your rise and your fall.

At first the demon began to shudder, as it had before when it absorbed the light, as if it was ingesting a miracle drug. Then, it began to shake, and it fell to one knee. A spurt of black tar sprayed from the place where it had absorbed the words onto the ground.

“That is why, for Christ’s sake, I delight in weaknesses, in insults, in hardships, in persecutions, in difficulties.

For when I am weak, then I am strong. II Corinthians 12:9-11.” Finishing the verse, I pointed the Bible at the shadowy figure.

As if by some divine wind, the thing’s shadows were suddenly blown away, revealing nothing other than my body kneeling on the floor, as if in supplement to me.

Except–it wasn’t me. This mangled, twisted, version couldn’t be me.

Those body features were too perfect, and yet too crooked. The eyes were too mesmerizing, and yet too dangerous. This could not be, could never be, not in a million years, me.

“What…are you?” As if in response to my question, the Not-me began trembling on the ground. It answered in my voice.

No, not my voice. A twisted, deboned, mangled, distorted parody of whatever vocal cords the demon had emulated my voice and produced it; only it sounded like the laughter I heard earlier, and that very same voice projected my own question back, like that of a hellish parrot.

“What… are.. You??”

“I…” I–no, it hissed. It rasped at me in a voice tainted with barely concealed darkness. It laughed!! Of all things, it laughed!!! “I… am a paragon to your sins. I am both your rise and your fall. I am the ashes and dust, the ripped flesh and blood you have left in the wake of your dream.”

“I… am… you.”

“No…” I stumbled backwards like a blind man, feeling for something to anchor me before I was swept underneath the tide. “No, you can’t be.”

It leered. It smiled the smile of a knowing man.

“I can.”

And then suddenly it lunged at me, opening its, or my mouth, to an unimaginably wide gap, row after row of

7

razor sharp teeth suddenly springing to life behind its mouth, reminiscent of a shark’s maw. Its mouth had almost closed upon my arm before I broke out of my posture, swinging the spine of my Bible towards its face. The Bible collided with its face with a sickening thud, a sizzling of flesh, sending the creature sprawling across the balcony. Its neck made a horrible snapping sound as its head twisted at a gruesome angle. I had broken its neck.

“Did I… kill it?” “tHAt woN’T WOrK oN mEeeE…..” The creature slowly pulled itself up. There was a squishy, wet splurching sound as the creature healed its own neck…except… that shouldn’t be possible. Anything with its neck broken should’ve died. That creature should’ve just stayed there, should’ve dissolved into the wind, or melted into the shadows, or whatever the hell demons do. “yOu ARe nOThing cOmpaRED to wHaT I aM… bECAuSE… bEcAUsE… yOu ARe mE, aNd i AM yOU…” the creature slowly rose to my height. Its face morphed from a distorted parody of mine to a completely new image: my face, a perfect resemblance. “yOu aRe mY DEmOn, aNd I shALl bANish YOu.” Our eyes met.

I felt my mind slowly unravel, turning from a steady spool of yarn of thoughts and ideas into a disorganized, stringy mess of tangled trains of thought and corrupted morals and values. I felt the darkness slowly spread throughout my mind, permeate my soul, turn me into nothing but a pile of mental mush.

But somewhere in that sea of confusion, a hand reached out, grabbed me, hoisted me onto the safety of the land of sanity, away from that, that inhuman mind of thoughts and chaos and blood, war and death and destruction. The overwhelming weight of the images suddenly crushed me to my knees, sending the Bible clattering to the floor.

And then it hit me. That hand, it was my feelings of denial, my feelings of isolation and self-comfort, of self-preservation and selfishness.

Fumbling around like a blind man, I touched the Bible. The creature flinched hideously as I once again regained my footing, slowly getting up, supported by the balcony of my veranda.

I slowly approached it. “nO… mUStn’T leT IT gET TO mE…” The thing that was both me and yet not me shuddered. It tore at its own face. Its fingers smashed in the fabric of its skin, squeezing and twisting and mangling my own face into a hideousness.

FANG

Black blood erupted from its mouth as I got closer with the Bible in my hands, the creature slowly retreating, making a mad scrabble against the wall, to escape the Holy Book in my hands, to something, anything! If that thing wouldn’t get touched by the book.

But as I slowly approached the creature, closing the short distance between us, its face–my face–contorted hideously. The thing, gave a tremendous shudder. And then it grew, bloated grotesquely like some abhorrent balloon from hell, my face and my body turning into that of a soft, meaty, indistinguishable blob of flesh and skin.

One round eyeball rolled around sickeningly in a soft, well, for lack of a better word, wet circle. Stopping with a grisly, disgustingly squishy sound, the thing’s eye met mine.

It grinned with the sickening parody of my face. More like a sick leer, as the fat, bloated thing tottered. And then it exploded, shreds and bits of shadow flying around the veranda, some gently landing on the Bible with a burning, hissing sound. Darkness, the blackest black there was, flowed everywhere.

The shadowy thing that stood in front of me before, the distorted image of me before, the bloated monstrosity that had been there before, none could compare to this… creature.

The only thing I could look at was the shadow of the creature. That was the only thing that even bearable to look at without black spots dancing in my eyes. The rest of the creature was a shadow shrouded in menacing darkness, a cloak of death and a mantle of evil draped over its true body. The creature sniggered quietly, but the sound hit me with the force of an atomic bomb, the metallic warbling bouncing all around in my brain, screeching against my eardrums and sending an eruption of cold shivers down my neck.

The dark reflection of a soul.

In that moment, I understood.

Souls were ‘light’—in other words, the faith and goodwill that humanity possessed.

But this creature was ‘darkness’—the darkness and evil found ever present within the heart of man. The many evils of man were all represented by this creature.

“Where is your God now?” the creature whispered in triumph. The creature might’ve whispered, but the voice sent me to my knees, the voice sounding godly–but only on the surface.

The thin layer of perfectness passed through my ears, inducing one of the greatest feelings in my life. I felt my soul almost leave my body, before suddenly I returned back into reality. That image of that godly voice kept calling, but I forced myself to recall those eyes. How dead and lifeless they were.

Those eyes could never be those of a god’s.

Where is your God now?

Nov 2018||The penchant|8

YANG,

DYING REFLECTION

Blue and orange tongues of fire danced along my bedside.

9

And then that euphoric, drifting feeling peeled away, replaced by a… presence. That’s all that I could use to describe that feeling like you were bowing before a king, someone of ultimate authority. And then that feeling soon burned away also, as I forced myself to look up, at the creature, clenching the Bible so hard I folded the cover.

There was no way I could’ve fought against this… this…

Demon-god. That was the only thing I could say. A fallen angel, drawn in and disgraced by the powers of the dark, banished to the corpse cities that lay hidden perhaps everywhere, and perhaps nowhere.

I felt like I was peeling away before the creature, even as I looked upon it. It was like looking upon a hydrogen bomb explode in front of your eyes. The burning intensity of the creature was seared into my retinas, its very presence withering my body away.

The Bible saved me, the burning in my hands slamming me back into my body, heaving a loud gasp. The creature startled, the black tentacles that had encircled me retreating into its body with a dark flash.

I couldn’t ever kill this creature.

No man could. Just a glance at it had sent me into a trance. Maybe whatever God there was could, but right now what I needed was to escape, not to fight.

The Bible.

Holding it high over my head, I

chucked it at the thing, hard. The creature opened its maw, its jaw enlarging until it was as large as its own body, devouring the book, sucking the words out. But before the creature could finish– “Deliver me to salvation.” I prayed, ducked my head down, put my hands together, and quickly whispered for a miracle to whatever God existed.

There was nothing for a moment. The thing’s triumph was so thick in the air that I could taste it. But then it started to shudder, hunching over.

The thing’s pain and anger permeated the air now, instead of triumph and menace.

“You—” And then it exploded. Blew into shadowy smithereens, whispers of shade and black night that splattered all over the veranda, disintegrating one meter in front of me. The black mark of the blowback was evident, the shadows forming a smoking black crater on the balcony. Nothing lay in the middle, except for one page. That page was inscribed with one word. A message from the higher power.

Run. I ran, dashed into my bedroom, realizing that my lamp was steadily absorbing the light–a lot of light. The lamp buzzed. The shadows on the balcony slowly coagulated into a humanoid figure at the edge of my eye–the thing was forming again.

Maybe something about the demon had changed, or been reduced, because I could look at it now. Shadows slowly slurped as they began forming a large puddle, and the shadowy reaper rose from it.

My lamp began flickering as the circuits couldn’t contain the energy anymore. It hummed with a growing intensity, and just as the creature fully reformed outside, the lamp bursting into flames. Blue and orange tongues of fire danced along my bedside, licking the wooden cabinet hungrily and devouring the carpet in a swath of fiery destruction.

The blue flames formed a sort of barrier in the middle, separating me and the thing.

It stepped into the bedroom, passing over the flames, only to stop when half of its leg was suddenly devoured by the unnatural flames of blue. Its leg was literally charred to pieces, the thing dissolving into ash that was instantly blown away by an unknown wind.

The thing hesitated.

I bolted for the door, frantically unlocked all the locks, burst into the hallway. That thing wouldn’t be far behind. far behind.

, 2016

FANG The stairs wouldn’t save me.

Neither would the elevator.

Sprinting down the hallway, I jammed the elevator button hurriedly. It responded with a cheerful ding! as it started to slowly descend from the 12th floor.

Bamming came from my door number.

10th floor.

A cracking sound was heard as the wood slowly splintered.

7th floor. Come on, come on…

A shadowy arm burst through the door. The thing was slowly getting through my door.

5th floor… come on, please, please, come on… please!!! Make it!!

The door splintered into pieces as the thing burst through. A veil of blue flame enveloped its entire body, but the thing paid no heed, instead sucking the flames into its mouth. Pretty soon, it finished, and the lights in the hallway were flickering The elevator opened. I hesitated, before running towards the end of the hallway. The elevator suddenly dropped to the bottom, making a crash before a plume of fire erupted from the open doors, once again separating me from the creature.

If I had gotten in there, I would’ve died. But now, now…

I wouldn’t be able to escape unless I jumped through the window to the first floor.

I chose in less than a second.

If I died, I’d rather die to gravity than to whatever the thing was.

Or to confront it, and face something perhaps even worse than death.

Charging at the window, I broke it with my shoulder, shards of crystal embedding themselves in my shoulder and body, cutting through, letting out droplets of liquid crimson as I smashed through the trees.

As I hit the ground, hot, burning pain laced through my leg. I broke it?!

Above me, the apartment complex exploded, a column of fire shooting from the window above me, with a black thing landing in front of me.

That thing’s hand. Radiating a shadowy miasma, that unnatural appendage was definitely not of that world, not of any other worlds. No, it was different.

Later on they told me, that I was lucky to be alive. The freak accident was later dubbed the Hartlot Incident, and they later built a school over the charred corpse of the apartment complex.

It’s been 57 years since that night. I’m an old, old man now, a lot more wiser than I was, 73 going on 74.

That thing’s hand sits on my bookshelf, a souvenir of sorts from that night, next to my collection of Bibles.

Whatever that thing was, I know it’s still alive. At night, where the shadows come to life, that hand starts emitting a shadowy miasma, only to be stopped by the Bibles surrounding it.

I can sense the menacing aura each night as I go to sleep. My senses may not be what they once were, but I know it’s alive.

Each night, I dream of that fallen angel in all its forms, the distorted parody of a God seared into my eyes, locked into my mind. Each night, that shadow looms over me, the miasma engulfs me as I struggle to fight with my smoldering embers of a life. Each night, I wake up in a cold sweat, knowing that the feeling of that unnatural thing looming over me to deliver me to a fate worse than death, will soon become a reality as I stare into its eyes.

And there’s nothing I can do to stop it, to stop the dying light, the growing darkness.

That thing is drawing closer….

And so is my dying reflection.

Nov 2018||The penchant|10

PROSE

BOLÉRO

CASSATT. “LITTLE GIRL IN A BLUE ARMCHAIR” 1878

11

GENG

by irene geng

Maurice Ravel was a French music composer during the Impressionist Period (late 1800s to early 1900s). A notable characteristic of Ravel is that he was experimental in his compositions for the piano and orchestra. Ravel composed Boléro, a one-movement orchestral work in the 1920s, and the piece unintentionally became his most famous composition. Boléro is famous for a somewhat notorious reason: it repeats the exact same theme 18 times, over the course of about 17 minutes at the exact same speed, beginning very soft and ending as loud as possible.

Maurice Ravel was, essentially, a musical troll, pre-internet era.

Dear Monsieur Maurice Ravel, I am a devoted fan of some of your compositions. Jeux d’eau is a delightful song, with its flowing water-like passages. Your solo piano suite Miroirs is another one of my favorites, and I am particularly partial to Une barque sur l'océan.

But why, you may ask, am I not a fan of all your compositions?

Boléro.

I cannot, for the life of me, discern any reason for such a strange one-movement orchestral piece. I have no quarrel with the melody; I must agree with you on the point that the theme has a certain insistent and yearning quality.

I had high hopes for the premiere of Boléro, believing that it would be a magnificent work with beautiful development of its musical texture. In hindsight, I was sorely mistaken.

After the melody’s first repetition, I thought to myself: What a delightful melody!

There is, however, a very definite limit for how long any composer can repeat the same tune; that limit, I am afraid, was reached within the third repetition. And yet, Boléro’s melody proceeded, contemptuously, to repeat no less than 15 more times!

My final decree: Boléro is rubbish.

Sincerely, Cecile Bernard

My final decree: Boléro is rubbish.

Dear Madam Cecile, My dear woman, your review of Boléro is indeed impressive, and I feel obliged to let you know that you are exactly right.

It would appear that you have unraveled the mystery that is Boléro.

Sincerely, Maurice Ravel

NOV 2018||The penchant|12

PROSE

PERFECT RED, PERFECT SHAPE Margaret meant for this day to be a window-shopping sort of day. But when her eyes laid upon a small crafts shop, Margaret found herself within its confines in a matter of seconds.

The moment she entered, Margaret was surrounded by a pungent odor. Although the innermost parts of her mind begged her to leave, the daintiness of the pastel colors and cute dolls and toys strewn about beckoned her to stay. And so, Margaret took a few steps forward and ventured into the dimly lit store.

She walked for a few minutes until she reached what she believed was the center of the store, where something under a sole sparkling spotlight was on display. Margaret approached it cautiously, worried she might break the display with one wrong move. Once she was a few feet away, Margaret recognized the item in the display to be a spool of red yarn. At first she was confused as to why, out of everything in this store, yarn was on display under a spotlight and in the center of the store.

But as she got closer, Margaret understood.

This yarn was the very definition of perfect.

It was an exact spherical shape, its vibrant red color contrasted magnificently against the dull pastel colors that filled the rest of the store.

It was absolutely perfect.

This yarn was the very definition of perfect

13

by adrianna thant And she wanted it. Margaret wanted the perfect red sphere with all her being and found herself unconsciously reaching for it. When her finger touched the cold glass surrounding the lovely bundle of fibers, Margaret found that the case shifted under her pressure; The display wasn’t locked down.

She looked around and then proceeded to lift the display case. An odd noise was made when she lifted it but Margaret was too preoccupied to notice it. The red was all too captivating. She reached out to the yarn and when she touched it, it was as if all her anxieties melted away. Now Margaret was certain she had to have his yarn.

Slowly, she lifted it and brought the ball closer to herself. Margaret nearly dropped her new treasure when she heard someone saying, “My, my Miss, I see you’ve found our best seller! Would you be interested in purchasing this red beauty?” The voice was so very loud and so very close that Margaret instantly shifted away from the origin of the noise.

When she regained her composure, Margaret took in the freakishly doll-like appearance of the sales clerk. The sales clerk smiled sweetly, showing off pearly whites that shined so brightly, they gave reflected Margaret’s face almost perfectly in them. After a creepily drawn out blink from the sales clerk's large, glossy eyes, Margaret averted her own. Too afraid to speak, Margaret nodded dumbly.

“Great! Follow me please!”

They went back to the entrance where the sales clerk finally spaced themself from her. Margaret let out a sigh of relief that she didn’t know she was holding.

The purchase was a quick one and, fortunately for Margaret, also a silent one. She ended up paying a mere fifteen dollars for the yarn. Smiling as the purchase was completed, Margaret gently placed it in the bag given to her.

She looked up to thank the sales clerk but fell silent once more when her gaze met a startlingly dead pair of monstrously big eyes.

“Is there something on my face, Miss?”

The voice startled Margaret, who shook her head furiously. When she stopped shaking, the sales clerk looked different to her. Their eyes were smaller.

More proportional to the rest of their face? No. Wait.

Did they always look like that? Yes. Right. Of course they did. Faces don’t just change like that.

Moments later, she slipped out of the store, holding a newly acquired bag with her precious ball of red tucked in it.

PIXABAY, 2015

Before she officially left the vicinity of the store, Margaret could swear she heard someone murmuring about something getting hungry.

But whatever, Margaret didn’t care. After all, she now owned her dearly desired gorgeous spool of yarn.

When she got home, Margaret giddily took out the nicest pillow she had, put it on the coffee table, and then placed her beloved yarn on top of it.

Margaret got out her phone and contemplated whether or not she should send a picture of her marvelous yarn to her friend, and roommate, Ria. In the end, she sent only a short text hinting at the new treasure now residing in their home. Afterwards, her full attention was once again on the beautiful ball of yarn.

Of all its characteristics, Margaret would say its color was her favorite.

Under the light shining down on the yarn, it oddly enough twinkled beautifully. Plus, the rich dark red that was created from its shadow contrasted wonderfully.

It was the most magnificent shade of red, and what Margaret believed was the greatest color in the world.

And the yarn in general was the greatest work of art Margaret had ever seen.

In fact, the yarn was so wonderful Margaret didn’t even notice an hour had passed by as she sat on her couch staring at the spool. And when she did notice the time, it was now five hours that had gone by. She was only put out of her trance when an alarm in her phone went off, reminding Margaret that Ria would be home from work in an hour and that she should buy something for dinner. After deciding on getting pasta, Margaret returned to her spot on the couch to continue admiring the yarn. Then she noticed something was off.

There was something peeking out in the strings of the yarn. It was something shiny, not shinier than the yarn of course but shiny nonetheless, and it threw off the balance of the masterpiece’s perfectness.

A overwhelming anger overcame Margaret, who stormed over to the spot of the shining filth. Upon further inspection, Margaret identified it as some sort of ring. Maybe something caught onto the yarn when she was purchasing it.

Huffing, Margaret went to pick it out with her nails as to keep the shape of the yarn as unaffected as possible.

Everything seemed to be going well for a second, and in the next, Margaret could no longer see her fingers. Instead, she saw red strings.

Margaret panicked for a moment on how the yarn was being ruined.

The panic was soon redirected towards her own health when she found more of the red fiber slowly moving up her arm. Pain surged throughout those limbs, forcing an inhuman scream to emit from her throat. Margaret found her limbs to be stuck during her attempts to dislodge the yarn. Taking in a shaky breath, Margaret stood and rushed over to her kitchen pushing things around in the search of a knife.

THANT

When she managed to knock one close enough to herself, Margaret pushed the handle of the knife to the edge of the counter. Margaret then proceeded to bite and, as a result, hold the knife in her mouth.

Sitting down in a nearby chair, Margaret threw back her head. She inhaled loudly through her nose and then threw her head forward, the knife heading towards the yarn holding her arms captive.

Another feral scream emerged from Margaret when she felt the knife in her skin. Hot tears flooded her eyes as she got up and slowly wobbled back to the living room. She was so confused. How on Earth did the knife hit her arms? She knew she aimed directly for the strings. But before Margaret could think anymore on it, she fell to the floor.

Contact with the floor pushed the knife in deeper, and once again Margaret screamed for her life.

The strings moved faster than Margaret had anticipated and now they entangled and paralyzed her legs. In a last ditch effort, Margaret crawled to her phone. At this point, Margaret knew her chances of survival were low and decreasing by the second. She felt that with her last few moments of movement, she should at least try to warn Ria, who would soon be home. Margaret got close to her phone and because of the lack of arms, Margaret pushed her face into the screen, trying to press Ria’s number.

Two numbers in and Margaret went still.

The entire house was motionless, save for the strings inching up towards Margaret’s pale, wet face.

“I’m home,” Ria announced, after opening the front door of the house. All that greeted her was a dead silence. Weird.

Ria stood in the doorway, and called Margaret’s number. It startled Ria when she heard the ringtone playing, the noise coming from the living room. Stepping inside the house, Ria went to the source of the noise.

She found Margaret’s phone on the ground near their coffee table. Ria ended the call and picked up Margaret’s phone. A sense of dread filled her. However, the dread cleared in a matter of seconds when she noticed a breathtakingly beautiful color of red.

Ria crouched down to get a better look at the yarn, admiring its perfect spherical shape. So this is what Margaret had so excitedly texted her about.

She picked the ball up. It had a pleasant warmth to it. She hoisted it up towards the a nearby light source to better look at its color when she noticed something off.

It seemed as if someone had gotten an earring stuck in it. Ria mused how odd it was to find something such as an earring in a ball of yarn. She also noted how terribly it mixed with the red color of the yarn.

Upon further inspection, Ria noted it was an earring that belonged to Margaret. Ria decided she should take the earring out for her friend. But mainly, she couldn’t bare how imperfect the yarn looked with the earring lodged in it.

Not wanting to ruin the perfect shape of the beautiful red yarn, Ria approached it carefully with her nails.

Nov 2018||The penchant|14

PROSE

YANG, 2018

HOUSE UNRAVELED by felicia mo

“—REPORTS OF MISSING CHILDREN LAST SEEN ON HALLOWEEN. POLICE ARE INVESTIGATING THE SITUATION AND HAVE OFFICIALLY DECLARED THEM A CASE OF KIDNAPPING—” A blonde man reached over and turned off the radio. His partner, a lean man wearing a black police uniform with a golden badge on the right side, twitched slightly in the passenger seat.

“You good, bro?” the uniformed man asked, glancing sideways.

The blonde man withdrew his hand from the dashboard and breathed in slowly through his nose, closing his hazel eyes. He wore an elbow-length red jacket, in stark contrast with his partner.

“I’m fine,” he murmured.

The two men were sitting in their police car, which was parked in the shadow of an arching planetree. The evening sun hung just above the neighborhood rooftops and cast a red glow behind the blonde man’s closed eyelids. He turned away.

15

“Those reports will be replaced soon enough.” The blonde man could hear the forced smile behind his partner’s words.

“The kidnapping reports, I mean. Then the news will be buzzing with the kids’ rescue.”

“Don’t jinx it.”

“What?”

The blonde man opened his eyes. He was looking out the police car window at the two-story house just one block down. It was painted a stark white color with dark windows that seemed to be devoid of life for all hours of the day.

It was the oldest house in the neighborhood, yet the outer walls were smooth and clean. It had the most beautiful front yard, blooming with flowers, yet he had never seen anyone water them.

In fact, in all the years he’d spent growing up in this town, he’d never seen anyone actually step out of the house.

“I said,” he sighed, “don’t jinx it.” He opened the vehicle door and got out of the car.

The white house belonged to a

teenage boy named Dominic, who was currently the number one suspect on the blonde man’s list. His other police friends had been assigned to pursue more promising leads of the kidnapping—he himself wasn’t even supposed to be on duty. But he had a feeling about this house and its mysterious owner, whom he’d only seen once at a party that he and his sister had gone to. Tall guy, brilliant orange hair, icy blue eyes that sent shivers down the blonde man’s spine. He hadn’t thought much about Dominic after that.

But now his sister was missing, along with the rest of her trick-or-treating friends.

The image of his frantic parents discovering the news flashed through the blonde man’s mind, and he winced. Part of this was his fault. He was a police officer and couldn’t even take care of his own sister. He narrowed his eyes in the direction of the white house.

MO It had taken him two days to put the pieces together. In that time, he’d gone searching at his sister’s school, asking if anyone had seen a girl wearing a Red Riding Hood costume on Halloween. A group of boys said they had.

“Dominic’s,” one of them had answered, eyes widening. “She was going to trick-or-treat at Dominic’s.”

The blonde man was so lost in his own thoughts that he almost jumped at the slight touch of his partner’s hand on his shoulder.

“We’ll find her,” his partner said softly, nodding towards the house. He squeezed the blonde man’s shoulder.

“We’ll find all of them.”

The blonde man pursed his lips.

Almost randomly, something clicked in his mind, and he said, “We’ll knock when the sun sets.”

His partner frowned. “Why?” “Trust me.”

Darkness came an hour later, and at night, the house was completely changed. The white walls turned a slick black color, gleaming under the moon like a well-polished shoe. The buds of the flowers below closed as if shutting themselves off from the shadows. And, on the second floor of the house, a dim glow pulsed from the upper window, a glow that had not been there before. Inside the police car, the blonde man had been expecting the change. His partner had not.

“Are you sure about this?” his partner whispered as if there was something dangerous in the dark and any noise would draw its attention.

The blonde man didn’t reply and, much to his partner’s dismay, stepped carefully out of the car and began walking towards the house. His partner, feeling goosebumps in the absence of company, scrambled after him.

The porch looked normal enough, with a small lamp illuminating the front steps and a rectangular carpet in front of the door. The word “Welcome” was sewn on it using a red ribbon. The blonde man checked his watch. It was eight o’clock. He rang the doorbell.

There was no response.

The blonde man strained to hear any sign of movement inside but there was none. He rang the doorbell again and knocked twice. Nothing.

“Maybe we should—,” his partner began, but he was cut off when the blonde man took hold of the doorknob and simply opened the door.

It was pitch black inside. Both men hesitated for a moment.

“We need to go back,” the man in uniform whispered cautiously. “We’re not supposed to—hey, are you

even listening to me? Bro, you can’t just walk in.”

But the man in the red jacket was already three steps into the house. It took a while for his eyes to adjust to the dark; he was able to make out the shape of a table in the kitchen to his right and a TV in the living room to his left. Directly in front was a flight of stairs.

The only sound in the house was the faint ticking of a clock somewhere on the wall.

“You’re gonna get us both in trouble,” hissed his partner, who had tiptoed closer to him. “Why did I even agree to this?”

“You didn’t have to come.”

His partner’s eyes flashed in the dark. “And leave you to explore this haunted house by yourself? As stupid as you are, I’m technically responsible for your well-being.”

“And I’m responsible for yours,” the blonde man replied. His smile was hidden in the shadows. “I think he already knows we’re here.”

The blonde man thought for a moment. “C’mon.”

They climbed the stairs.

Outside, a cold wind rustled the branches of the planetree, and a few leaves drifted down to land on the hood of the police car. As the sound of the men’s footsteps slowly faded up the stairs, a hand reached out to close the front door.

“We’ve been walking for too long.”

The blonde man could hear the fear in his partner’s voice. He wouldn’t admit it, but he was feeling slightly uneasy too. Ever since they’d reached the second story, emerging at the end of a dark hallway, they’d been heading in the same direction for the past—he brought his watch close to his face and squinted—ten minutes.

And, from his observation of the exterior of the house, he was pretty sure it wasn’t that big.

The ticking of the clock seemed to get louder, and the blonde man knew the house was starting to get to him.

“Let’s head back,” he whispered, and his partner exhaled with relief.

But as they retraced their steps, the blonde man grew more and more sure that the ticking sound was getting louder.

Faster.

“You hear that?” he whispered.

“Yeah.”

As if in silent agreement, they broke into a sprint.

At first, both men were running at the same, sustained pace; level breathing, steady heartbeat, just like they’d been trained. Then the man in the

uniform began to slow down.

Something was wrong with his head. He could feel a numbness spreading across his temples and his face, a searing pain that streaked from ear to ear. It was as if his skin was being slowly peeled away from muscle and flesh.

Then the man’s head began to unravel.

By the time the blonde man looked back, his partner wasn’t there. He slowed to a jog and turned around.

“Collin?” he yelled his partner’s name. “Collin!”

No answer. He ran on.

He was feeling a queasy sensation in his legs by the time he saw the top of the stairs. The blonde man wobbled down, step by step, until he ended up on his hands and knees. He clawed his way across the floor, pulling himself forward with his arms. Then he was down to one arm. He reached for the doorknob.

The door remained closed for the rest of the night.

Dominic followed the black ribbon down the hall. It was long, speckled with gold here and there. A color close to that of a badge.

He chuckled to himself.

The black ribbon ended and a red ribbon began a few steps away. This one trailed down the stairs and lead towards the door. The end was a white-blond color. Dominic gathered both ribbons in his arms.

“Door decorations?” He ran a hand through his orange hair. Then he peeked out the window, at the nighttime neighborhood and at the planetree a block away.

He smiled.

“Free car.”

Nov 2018||The penchant|16

YANG, 2017

PROSE

PAIN. IIT WAS THE LAST FEELING she remembered as she entered into a state of absolute darkness.

The muscles around her arm tighten spastically. There was no one else in this dark void. No other souls to listen to her forced silence to the countless stories that she and no one else could tell. The place was almost amniotic, filled with a peaceful calm that only the love of a mother could bring among a child like her.

She was a forlorn little thing, destined to be no more than a speck in the elaborate painting that history has crafted through the blood and bones of those who have set foot. But in many ways, she had a little bit of hope—hope that was, perhaps, much much bigger than the speck that she was. Hope that spewed itself out of rattling kettles, conceived under the heat and stolid bubbling culminating from humankind’s desire to achieve.

But note how that was how she was.

It’s pitiful, isn’t it? To know that the most innocent, most deserving of life are stripped ofaway from their own shares by none other than ourselves. We, who live for no one and see naught but the equivalent of money and status as living, are the true killers. Our cleanliness and order that we bite at to justify our hunger for superiority and intelligence is, to say the least, marred with the unacknowledged ends to people like her.

Sarah was her name. She was just seven years old. I still find it hard to forget her, even though a mighty thirty years have come and gone, packing away the details in their suitcases and vowing never to return. But human life is much longer than they can or will ever hide. Thirty, fForty, fifty... eighty, ninety… perhaps even the coveted one-hundred, will follow the same route forever coming and going, deleting memory from memory and diminishing the voices and laughters of hundreds of passersby into faint overtones that no one will never truly dispose of.

Sarah was far more than just an iconic example of everything I’ve just said.

She was something else. Some would say she was special, and others would barely remember that she even existed. I beg to differ. There was and is only one thing I feel forabout her and it was that I fucking hated her. She was the one person that I couldn’t care less about.

17

You see, Sarah never went a day without wearing a new, carefully- crafted silk jacket her doting father could buy with the multibillion inheritance that flowed like water in and out of her kindergarten purse. In a neighborhood filled with children who barely ate more than a couple of cheetos during lunch and couldn’t remember the last time they wore (much less bought) something new, Sarah was the dream. She was the living epitome of all the good things that money can bring, of the much-needed food that the average poor kid’s imagination could hunger for, and the reminder that the life we could only fantasize about wais someone else’s reality.

It seemed like she was in a movie, and we were just spectators who were mismatched with the pristine perfection. This was easily apparent through the placement of her house: the only multi-acre paradise that never ceased to bloom with perennials within the slummy other bunch. Guarded with pale blue gates around its boundaries and decorated with golden statues attached listlessly on each post, most of us “regulars,”— plebeians, as my preschool friend Fabian would unfeelingly point out—, made sure to never be seen near the place, —almost as if we were afraid that our rags and unkempt exteriors werewas the physical apparatition of Satan among the heavenly realm that was Sarah’s house.

But, none of us youngsters could suppress our curiosity for the alternative package that life would so tantalizingly present us with. It was almost as a form of mockery, I would say, for it was perhaps the realest application to the “See, but don’t touch” that we were too familiar with in all other materialistic aspects of our lives. We couldn’t help but wantwhat to be something that we knew we couldn’t be, so, every now and then, Fabian and I, along with the other troubled plebeian children, would sneak between those bars, stretching our limbs to their full extent, grasping into the beautiful retreat, and reading the most that we could into the bounty of wealth that was so close and yet so far. And on days in which we managed to squeeze between the metal that was almost as thick as we were, we were given free reign to explore what it was like for Sarah.

These outings were, to us, even better than the towering rollercoasters of random amusement parks we could ride, and perhaps, even better than receiving a second helping of soup that we could rarely get even a single helping of.

SARAH by anonymous

Unseen are the thousands of buds that have already taken shape in the scars of the fallen.

POETRY

BEGUILING

LIPS by samadhi wijethunga Am I selfish for dreaming of things that don't exist?

For wanting to be kissed By lips that give me hope and happiness However, lips are deceiving They make illusions, thieving reality Lips are selfish, yet they show vibrant colors of emotion Enough to pretend for a short second Then, whoosh: the lips fly far, far away And we are left in a place full of utter disarray

Nov 2018||The penchant|18

POETRY

PIXABAY, 2017

THE PRICE OF POINTE

by verb 19

VERB Pale pink pointe shoes Pristine and perfect are how they start Not for long, once this dancer’s through with them

It isn’t a pretty sight hiding under a perfect pink exterior

She darns the toes to make them last (She’ll burn through the pair within a week) She stuffs them with paper towels for comfort (Living life on her toes has taken a toll on her feet) She bends them to make them flexible (Like how she bends and flexes her own body, twisting like a pretzel) She bangs them against the wall to soften them up (Even as she lands forcefully on the stage, they must remain silent)

cost of ambition

Beauty is pain, and this ballerina knows that best Some may see her bare feet and be horrified The blisters, calluses, swollen joints and aggressive arch Her feet have molded to her training, her thick skin like custom shoes

But it’s the price of pointe, the hefty

The ugliest faces hide behind the most beautiful masks And behind pink tutus and gleaming smiles lurks aggressive discipline From counting calories and inflicting injury To battered bodies and cruel competition This ballerina has learned to smile the more it hurts The pain has become a part of her, a constant companion Still, she steps foot onto that stage once more For no matter what, the show must go on And the applause is her drug—she needs one more hit

Ballet is all about being wound up tight From her flawless, shiny bun of hair to her stiff leg muscles in mid-air To releasing that pent-up energy, spinning ruthlessly round and round To leaping and thudding across the stage, making it all look easy But she has learned to let her hair down (She feels the tug at her scalp gone) Learned to hang up her shoes at the end of a long day (She wiggles her toes and feels free) Learned to blink away the blinding lights (She forgets about the flashing cameras) She unwinds Untwines Unravels Wakes up and does it all over again

NARUSYTE, 2016

nov 2018||The penchant|20

POETRY

OPULENT RED by vox nihili If an opulent red was to grace your mouth.

You would feel the striking brilliance.

Unravel underneath your tongue.

And as you felt the sheer excellence of it all.

You’d think of all that was unfolding.

The passion, love, and desire That an artist felt.

As he stroked his brush gently.

His unfulfilled dreams unravelling.

Seeping into the canvas, oh so quietly.

Or you’d remember the same deep red.

Painted on her lips.

And as she smiled, her brilliant white teeth Would hide all the insecurities she left behind.

And as the color begins to disappear from all your sense.

You couldn’t help but feel the emptiness It left behind.

PIXABAY, 2017

21

At first, I was a tangled mess of colorful string.

The world you showed me was what I desired, So neat and perfect, I would do anything.

With you, I was dangling on a high wire.

Wear this, wear that.

Cut this club, skip that class.

No longer tangled, but I’m just a copycat.

Shatter my freedom like a piece of glass.

My talents and characteristics all unraveled, And so-called flaws and imperfections sank to the bottom.

I was so baffled; Suddenly I realized I wasn’t the problem.

Untangle me with your manipulative ways, Unweave everything I ever accomplished, Untwist my style, my habits, my traits, Unravel me until every bit is demolished.

UNRAVEL ME by wanning lu

NOV 2018||The penchant|22