Prairie Ridge High School Literary Magazine 2014-2015 by Wolf Prints

Prairie Ridge High School Literary Magazine ~ Winter 2014-15

Artwork by Alexandra Barker

The Words We Follow The Prairie Ridge High School Literary Magazine Winter 2014-15 Edition Photograph by Robert Olsen THE ROSTRUM – A stage for public speaking Winter 2014-5 – Volume XIII 1

Doodling By Kelsey Collings What is it to make doodles out of words? Short thoughts summarized in a sweet clump A mash of real and impossible and unrealistic Here a smattering of sense, there a slosh of frantic, falling phrases All wrapped up with a bow and labeled a poem.

Artwork by Aurora Bis Markel

2 Â

Table of Contents Cover Artwork – Keiashia Moore Artwork – Alexandra Barker Photography – Robert Olsen “Doodling” – Kelsey Collings

1 2

Artwork – Aurora Bis Markel

Writing inspired by fall – Sarah Niksa, Jessica Bartucci, Emily Botto, Hannah Yantis “Fall” – Tiffany Marin “Fall” – Sarah Niksa

4 4 5

“Silvermist” – Emily Dillon “Most Nights, Some Nights” – Kayla Nicole Meadows; Photograph – Abbi Witt Photo – Alex Johnson; Art – Nikki Eckland Photos – Gabrielle Perruzzi; Elise Reiche Writing inspired by spring –Jessica Bartucci, Delaney Watson, Emily Botto “Spring in Bloom” – Tiffany Marin “Spring” – Tiffany Marin “A Poem” – Samantha Tucker; “With a Little Help from My Friends” – Marissa Pollastrini Photo – Alex Johnson; “The Recreation of Egon Scheile” – Megan Kachiroubas

34 35 36 37 38 38 39 40

“US” – Kelsey Zange

Artwork – Abigail Connolly

“Stress” – Gina Wozny

“We All Have Our Masks” – Nora O’Brien

Photos – Leanna Reimann, Rhys Zaremba

Artwork – Casey Thorpe “Going Home” – Emily Botto

7 8

“Censored” – BreAnne Fleer Photos – Ryan Kowalkowski, Elise Reiche

44 45

Photos – Delaney Watson, Gina Wozny

Art – Casey Thorpe

Photos – Josh Svehla, Abbey Grundy

Photos – Kaleigh Rado, Kira Berndt

Artwork – Rhys Zaremba, Emilie Erbland

“In an Instant – Brandon Sjodin

“Words” – Kelsey Collings

Photograph – Delaney Watson

“War Drums” – BreAnne Fleer

Photos – McKenzie Gurschke, Emilie Erbland Writing inspired by spring –Sarah Niksa, Jessica Bartucci, Hannah Yantis, Delaney Watson “Summer at the Beach” – Anna Gehring “Summer” – Anna Gehring

Artwork – Megan Kachiroubas

“Placing the Blame” – Emily Botto

Photos – Michaela Wolfman, Gina Wozny

“Red Rock Virtue” – Alex Piotrowski

“Stationary Places” – Emily Botto Photograph – Delaney Watson Writing inspired by winter –Gina Wosny, Delaney Watson, Jessica Bartucci “Winter” – Gina Wozny “Winter” – Hannah Yantis “Let It Go” – James Dimitriou Art – Nina Raemont; Photo – Delaney Watson “Generation ‘Me’” – Kelsey Zange “Nature Simplified” – Megan Kachiroubas “The Night Sky” – Jackee Schneider Art – Leanna Reimann; Photo – Abbi Witt

15 15 16

Photos – Alex Piotrowski, Casey Thorpe Photo – Zach Schirmer; Art – Casey Thorpe

51 52

“The Resident” – BreAnne Fleer

Photograph – Robert Olsen “Senses” and “Smell” – Emily Botto “On the Past” – BreAnne Fleer Photos – Josh Svehla, Alex Piotrowski Photos – Robert Olsen, Michaela Wolfman Photo – Elise Reiche; Art – Emma Porcaro Artwork – Emma Porcaro, Abigail Connolly

54 55 56 56 57 58 59

Acknowledgements

“The Locust of Apollyon” – Mitchell Sullens

16 17 18 19 20 21 21 22 2334

48 48 49

Leaves are leaving the trees Kids are jumping in leaf piles Gray skies for awhile ~Sarah Niksa and Jessica Bartucci There is something hopeful about fall, about the promise that what dies will not disappear forever, but bloom in our hearts as leaves do when they welcome back the Sun. ~Emily Botto

Staring at the vibrant leaves one cannot think of anything else but the dwindling moment before the frost bitten lips of Father Winter kisses the season to sleep. ~Hannah Yantis

“Fall” by Tiffany Marin 4

“Fall” by Sarah Niksa 5

US By Kelsey Zange We are the misfits the outsiders the weirdos the freaks

We are not loved are not beautiful are not fancy are not perfect

We are laughed at are sworn to are left out are forgotten

But we love to do we love to obsess we love each other we love what life has brought to us And we love that that is all that matters.

We are the ones who trust who stand up for who listen who accept

Artwork by Abigail Connolly 6 Â

“We All Have Our Masks” by Nora O’Brien

Artwork by Casey Thorpe 7

Going Home By: Emily Botto They wheel him out gently, so as not to jostle him. He wished they wouldnâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t do that. He wished they would run down the hall recklessly. He wished it wouldn't hurt if they did. Outside is a beacon, but as he finally feels the sun shining in his face, he squints into its glow and is reminded of the last time it fell on his skin. He recalls the shouting and screaming, the mothers shrieking for their children in a language he barely understood, the shrapnel that sent dust clouds billowing into the air and blinded his eyes. He heard, as if they were right above him, the whir of helicopter blades, and he vaguely remembers the relief of the men around him as they lifted him onto their shoulders, a burden they would gladly take because they were his brothers, and leaving him behind would be leaving themselves behind. He heard the beating of his heart slowing down until he couldn't feel it anymore â&#x20AC;&#x201C; until his soul was breathing by itself and moving away from a heart arrested in the moment of impact. The woman, blond and thin, lets go of the wheelchair and circles around it to kneel in front of him. She places her hands on his cheeks, and he flinches. A flash of pain goes off behind her irises, but she hides it well. "I know you're not talking. That you haven't in a long time. But you have to know, to feel inside yourself that it doesn't matter how long you stay cooped up in your head, how much time it takes for your eyes to shine with your soul again. I'll always be yours, and you'll be mine, and no war can take you away from me." Her hand lies on his knee, her other on the recently vacated armrest. She glances at his purposeful movement but says nothing. "I don't care who you are now or who you'll become. I love you, whoever you are at the moment." She places her hand on his chest, over the heart that stopped beating for three seconds in a helicopter halfway across the world. Then she stands up and starts to walk away. He can see the little boy, his son, his Seth, trying to run towards him, but his grandfather pulls him back. The man, the father, who was here now but had never been there before. The father who was too late to stop what had already happened. And Jenna, already walking away, but never really gone. "Jenna!" He calls, the first word, the one to start the life he never wanted to live, the one to prove he can still live."I came back." She turns around, and her green eyes are filled with tears. "I know, Jack. Just like you promised." Seth starts to run towards him again, and she scoops him up onto her hip. Somehow she knows that he's not ready, not yet, that all that he's overcome that day, that minute, that second, has taken every ounce of his strength. That he wants to hold her so much, to feel the curve of her shoulder blades and kiss the corners of her rose-colored mouth. But he can't, not yet. His body may have come back, but pieces of his soul broke off that day, scattered in the debris, and they're still being sent home.

8 Â

Photograph by Delaney Watson

Photograph by Gina Wozny 9 Â

Photograph by Josh Svehla

Photograph by Abbey Grundy 10 Â

Artwork by Rhys Zaremba

Artwork by Emilie Erbland 11 Â

Words By Kelsey Collings

‘’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’

There’s something sweet about the way words flow, how they tumble off and over from the lips, how the tongue tickles and trips and pushes them

into becoming something capable of peace or war… of love or pain or power. There’s something sad in the way we talk, tossing out syllables in the wake of sounds, uncaring of the hurt we are capable of creating simply by moving a little part of a whole… of a human body.

Photograph by Delaney Watson 12

War Drums By: BreAnne Fleer The die has been cast The deal has been struck Before they leave Wishing enemies luck Do you hear the drums again? They say it’s for democracy But this time there will be no revolt To quell the tide of hypocrisy

Artwork by Megan Kachiroubas

“Watergate 2014” by Megan Kachiroubas 13

Photograph by Michaela Wolfman

Photograph by Gina Wozny 14 Â

Stationary places By: Emily Botto I look around at the glue keeping everyone embedded in their comfort zone, and realize that I am the only one to whom it is known. Surrounded by people, I am so alone.

All those people stuck in stationary places, getting tired of seeing all the same faces. They just can't understand the concept of moving their bases. Despite the evidence I can't seem to believe that anyone is really satisfied having only an ordinary life to lead. I feel like my feet are glued to the pavement, keeping me from my wish to leave.

I'm begging hopelessly, can someone please join me in peeling off the glue? It is a slow process, but together we can free ourselves from these stationary places and flee.

Photograph by Delaney Watson 15 Â

Often we think that winter is a time for the dissolution of life. Little is it known that it is not; Look around as the breeze swirls around you, biting at the tips of our noses. Look at how the stars dance come night time. If you look hard enough, you can see the snow glittering as it smiles at you in the sunlight. ~Gina Wozny Winter sounds so quiet. Everything taking its last breaths and freezing so when they're reincarnated they can be something new Then, radio silence. The snow hardly makes a sound as it swallows the whole world in white, singing us the song of a day so cold the night shivers. ~Delaney Watson

Snow falling around Fires in the fireplace Feeling so cozy ~Jessica Bartucci

16 Â

“Winter” by Hannah Yantis 17

LET IT GO By: James Dimitriou i look into those eyes like always as if the sky has blown heaven into stars i see the pain you hold inside of them in so many ways i feel trapped in all the pain you’ve cause like a cage of metal bars even though you were always there the pain of losing you one day was enough to tear me down it suffocates me like a noose and i keep gasping for air …help me because i’m gonna drown help me help me help me please god only knows how long i’ll last please just bring me a moment of peace no matter how hard i try...i can’t let go of the past please don’t go whatever you do you’re the only thing that brings me a smile what do you expect from me because i don't have a clue something’s filled me with something so vile i feel like i’m on fire but yet i’m cold and gray you mean so….much i just can’t let go but i know i cause so much pain with the words i say when you leave i promise it’ll be my final blow help me help me help me please god only knows how long i’ll last please just bring me a moment of peace no matter how hard i try...i can’t let go of the past remember all the times we’ve talked about heaven all the times we said we’d make it so so far all the times you told me you were making more scars you block out all the pain and desperation in my sunless life we build up hope but thoughts flood our heads you’re my little angel and i’ll cherish you forever you ask me when i’ll leave, and i always just say never your beautiful face will haunt me till the day i'm done help me help me help me please god only knows how long i’ll last please just bring me a moment of peace no matter how hard i try...i can’t let go of the past let it go... 18

Artwork by Nina Raemont

Photograph by Delaney Watson 19 Â

Generation “Me” By Kelsey Zange As I walk down the halls that will form the rest of my life, all I can hear are the simple phrases of “me” “myself” and “I” and “what’s in it for me”. Why is that what's being heard? There are 7 billion other people in this world; l it is not just you, but you still seem to sit there thinking and speaking about one person out of that 7 billion. Did you ever even think to take a look around? A look into the long and shadowy alley that is life? There are people, a lot of people who need someone. anyone. And they may not know you, and they may not be asking for you to help them, but they need you. You’re sitting there, thinking, “why the hell should I help them?” because it was what is OUGHT to be done. Nobody deserves to be sinking while everyone else is swimming. Nobody deserves to be sitting in a dark and foul sewer while everyone else is soaking up the sun. There are people among us that despise themselves, and all they want, no all they need, is someone there. people who don’t eat because they think they could be thinner or people who are being called names because they are different and aren’t afraid to show it. People who hide every inch of their skin because they have gone as far as harming it. And all of those people are just waiting for someone to stop saying “me” and start saying “you”. We are the generation of me, but why can’t we be the generation of us?

“Nature Simplified” by Megan Kachiroubas

“The Night Sky” by Jackee Schneider

Artwork by Leanna Reimann

Photograph by Abbi Witt 22 Â

The Locust of Apollyon By: Mitchell Sullens My father always prescribed to the philosophy that you only truly saw what people were like when they died. “Death is both as freeing as it is limiting,” he’d say. The great oblivion’s presence had a tendency to remove one’s fear and inhibition. No fear of having to face the consequences of your actions. Then, you see what they’re really like. I never quite bought into what my father was saying. My naiveté was probably the cause of this. I didn’t like the concept that I didn’t know what my friends, family, and even enemies were truly like. Was it worth having those people in your life if you don’t even know them? Was it worth loving them, hating them, or protecting them? Back then, I didn’t like thinking about that stuff. I still don’t. It’s amazing to me now that it took twenty years for my father’s words sink, but it did -- on the day that Liz died. It was January twelfth of my sophomore year in college. The cold winds of winter were blowing through Chicago, and their power had begun to slowly chew on my unprotected hands. I never brought gloves when I went out. It just kind of slipped my mind. Liz would always chide me for forgetting, resembling my mother in those moments which filled me with dread, so maybe I subconsciously forgot in some quest to spite her. Though, for all my complaining, I did appreciate her for that maternal side. It was nice knowing that someone cares about you. Elizabeth “Liz” Nessat was the reason I had been freezing for the last thirty minutes. She asked me to meet her at the coffee shop across from the campus’ English Center. Well, a note she had left on the kitchen table of my apartment told me to. Liz only broke into my apartment when it was something important. Texting would have been simpler, but she didn’t like sending important information into the ether like that. I really shouldn’t have taken her breaking and entering in stride, but I got used to Liz’s antics after a while. Or maybe I’m just a masochist -- one or the other. Meet me at Chris’ Cafe. Threeish, preferably. I need your help. P.S. Burn after reading this. With some hesitation, I took out the lighter I kept in my back pocket and set the note aflame. I didn’t know why she wanted it destroyed, but if I could trust Liz with my life, I could definitely trust her with this. Later, sitting outside of that coffee shop impatiently grinding my foot into the ground, I ominously recalled the bodies that were torched alongside the bastion of Troy. Another gust wind came through the air and sank into my bones. I wrapped my fingers tightly around my coffee cup. It probably would burn me, but I decided being burned and warm was better than freezing. The stupid thought process of a younger man. “You forgot your gloves again, didn’t you?” came an exasperated voice. “And, you remembered to bring an extra pair, didn’t you?” I responded with a slight smile. I looked up and saw Liz slowly slipping her way through the cramped tables towards me. She was a petite blonde with long hair and icy, pale blue eyes, which oddly complemented the winter snow that covered most of the tables. She didn’t seem to aware of the gusting winds and biting cold. Aside from some redness in her cheeks, she seemed just a lively as she would be on a summer day. It was rather infectious. As I predicted, she pulled out a pair of gloves and tossed them onto the table in front of me. “You never disappoint.” I slipped the blue, furry gloves onto my hands. I referred to them affectionately as the “Cookie Monster” gloves, as their appearance reminded me of the Sesame Street character’s pelt. Liz thought I was weird for making that connection, but she eventually found some humor in it. We were both weird, just in different ways. I had a morbid sense of humor and was, at that time, involved in some Anarchic leaning groups. She was a quixotic idiot and wanted the save the world. We were a pair that never should have become friends. But the oddities in our demeanor both originated from the same place. At least, I always thought it was the same place. The blonde girl brushed off a pile of snow covering the seat across from me and then dropped into it with a little slushy plop. She grimaced as a little pool of slushy residue, left over from the wiped off snow, soaked into the bottom of her jeans. “Well, that’s a great omen,” she muttered sadly. I found that statement oddly cryptic, but I chose to remain quiet. She looked back up at me and gave me a sad, little smile. She reached into pockets and began to dump the contents onto the table. Car keys, a pack for cigarettes (a present from her father that I knew she’d never use), a crumpled copy of that day’s newspaper, a Gameboy Advance (odd), and, finally, some hand warmers. She pressed the hand warmers into my hands. “Here. My repayment for making you wait so long.” “Thanks,” I said gratefully. I looked at her, and I saw her leaning back into her seat. She seemed to be reveling in the chair’s comfortable form, almost as if she was a captain enjoying the eye of the storm before embarking into the maelstrom. I would have allowed her that moment, but I had grown impatient. “Why did you ask me to burn your note?” Her eyes flipped open, and she let out a small sigh. “I didn’t want anyone to know what I’m about to tell you.” “A little paranoid, are we?” Liz shot me a look and then continued.

“Quentin...I’m dying.” “What?” I said, a little confused and not quite understanding what she was telling me. “I’m dying!” she screamed. A couple of people nearby blinked at her sudden outburst. They weren’t sure how to react and chose to simply continue on their way. I wished I was one of them. I wished that I was an apathetic third party looking into the turmoil of a suffering stranger. But I’m not so lucky because the suffering stranger was my best friend. “H-How?” was all I managed to sputter out in response. “Dimethylmercury. It’s a chemical I was working on with Professor Moketta a couple months back in the lab. I guess when I signed up to work as his intern, I didn’t know what expect.” She laughed, clearly for my benefit more than hers. “It’s a powerful neurotoxin. I spilled a couple drops on my hand, and a few months later, I go into the doctor’s office, and he tells me I have a few more weeks to live. Same thing happened to Karen Wetterhahn back into the nineties.” “Why were you working with neurotoxins?” “That’s not important.” “Well, I think it’s important!” Now it was my turn to shout. “I just found out my best friend is dying, and I want to know why. What was Moketta thinking letting you work with that kind of stuff? I don’t even think those chemicals are even allowed on campus. What the Hell were you guys doing with it?” “Don’t blame this on Moketta.” “Why not? This is his negligence. He was supposed to keep you safe when you started working with him, and now you're dying. I’ll kill the man if I ever meet up with him again!” “No, you won’t! I’m the one who's dying, so I choose who's to blame for my death. Give me that courtesy. “ I glared at her for a couple of seconds. She stared back with her icy blue eyes. They were filled with sadness, an almost defeated look of confusion and fear. She was scared, and I wasn’t making it any better. “Fine, I’ll drop it. But, why are you telling me this now? I’m assuming you’ve known about this for awhile. “ “Yeah, a couple of weeks ago actually. Don’t worry, I told the folks. They’re ... dealing with it about as well as you’d expect. I asked you here because I need your help.” “Anything.” “No, I want you to understand what you’re getting into. What I’m about to ask you is something that I can only trust you with. You're the only friend I have that I can trust completely with this.” Her eyes were pleading with me. I had seen that look before. The pleading, desperate look only ever came onto to her face when she truly needed me. Her best friend. It could be even the most mundane request, but when that look bore into my eyes, I believed with complete and utter confidence that it was worth my time and effort. I know Liz had seen that same look in my eye’s before, too. She had never turned them down or left them unattended. It was only right that I couldn’t either. “Anything,” I said with a smile. “Anything you need.” She gave me a little pitying stare. Then she pushed the folded up newspaper across the table towards me. I gave her a questioning stare and then unfurled the paper. It was a local paper that focused on local conspiracies and other trite events around both the town and nationally. I actually wrote for it during my freshman year as a means for some income, but I still acknowledge it as a rag filled with hack writers. Liz in particular thought I was wasting my time writing for it, so I was surprised that she would hand me the paper. The cover story was “Killer Strikes Again in Local Chicago Neighborhood. Three Dead. Suspected to Have Connections to the Locusts.” The Locusts? I thought. What the Hell are the locusts? “Do you want to find this guy?” I asked jokingly. “Stop the big bad serial killer like you were the star of some cop show? You could be the female Magnum PI, though you couldn’t pull off the mustache nearly as well as Tom Sellek.” This is what I meant when I said Liz always wanted to save the world. She had spent her entire life glued to the TV watching Batman saving Gotham City from the Joker. I guess she never found her parents all that inspiring -- a plumber battling alcoholism and an apathetic housewife didn’t garner awe -- so she looked for other people to inspire her, even if they weren’t real. Life taught you that such ideals can’t exist, that most people need money, sex, or glory to get up and actually help people. The good Samaritan was dead. Liz had begrudgingly given into that mindset, but I assumed that in her final days, she wanted to attain that lofty ideal. I would give anything to have had it go that way. “No,” she responded. “I’m not looking for vigilante justice...quite the opposite actually.” She looked around to see if any of the other patrons were eavesdropping, and then she leaned across the table and whispered into my ear. “I killed those people.” There was silence between the two of us. I didn’t quite know how to respond. Then I laughed. “That’s funny, Liz. That’s really funny. A bit morbid, but still.” Yet, her face remained fixed in the same pensive, worried expression she had carried since revealing that she would die soon. I looked into her eyes. The pleading look was there. The look she gave when I was the only one in the entire world who could help her. I knew in that moment that what she said was complete truth, and I had been best friends with someone who was willing to butcher and kill innocent people. I wonder how most people would feel to have their entire view of someone crushed like that. I didn’t know if I could handle it. My mind simply shut down.

When I finally regained consciousness, I found myself gingerly laid out on the back seat of Liz’s rusty old Sedan. It was dusk now. I could see its mesmerizing orange light tinting the windows. In the driver’s seat, I could hear my best friend quietly musing over how she “probably could have delivered that better”. “What happened?” I managed to groggily croak out. “You fainted. Well, vomited and then fainted, specifically.” She was talking fast. She always spoke rapidly when her worries got the better of her. “Where are we going?” “Professor Moketta’s room. He has some supplies that should help us.” The conversation in the cafe flowed back into my aching mind. The emotions: rage, confusion, sadness, terror. They were a leviathan-sized tidal wave slowly obliterating the malleable integrity of my view on reality. “Is he...like you?” I couldn’t say the word: killer. “Yes, but he’s been doing this longer. A lot longer. He’s also far more dangerous.” Her tone almost sounded reverent. Disgusted, I moved into a sitting position in the back seat and bit my tongue to stop myself from shouting. “You’re angry, aren’t you?” she asked, clearly already aware of the answer. “Anger doesn’t even describe what I’m feeling right now. There aren’t any words that quantify it.” She nodded and adjusted her mirror slightly. I’m guessing it was so she didn’t have to look into my enraged eyes. “You mentioned something about a body.” “Yes, Martin Wollack. Twenty years old. He worked at a clothing shop I’d visit. Always would play his Gameboy during work.” My mind recalled the blue electronic device getting thrown onto the coffee, and I’m amazed I didn’t vomit again. “He’s at my apartment.” She lapsed into thought once again. Then she steered the car gently onto the side of the road. I guess she wanted to focus all of her attention into the conversation. “Quentin, you don’t have ever talk to me again after this, y’know. I know it doesn’t mean much, with how I’m not going to be around much longer, but I thought I should tell you that. I’d understand if you felt that way.” I let a broken, tired little sigh. “Jesus, Liz. This is a lot to take in, and I’m not sure what to do.” Most people would have probably leapt out of the car in that moment. They probably would have ran screaming and crying, doing everything in their power to escape from her. I don’t why I didn’t. “All I want is for you to help me hide the body. I...I don’t want people to know what I’ve done.” Her face broke into a little smile. “I remember Mom once grounded me for a month for staying out past curfew. Imagine what’d she’d do if she found out about this.” She let out a nervous laugh and waited for my response. She was trying to break the tension, but I didn’t appreciate it. “I just don’t want the name Elizabeth Nessat to be something parents tell their kids to scare them.” “And what about all your victims? Do you think it’s right for their names to be remembered as a bunch unsolved cases and unavenged victims?” “They’re dead! They don’t matter!” She snapped almost on a dime, and I wondered if this was the side her victim’s saw her in. It was in that moment that I realized how much in danger I really was. I cleared my throat and began to speak delicately. I couldn’t see her killing me in a rage but I didn’t want to rile her up. “Just tell me why? Why did the girl who’d spend all of her time talking about saving the world begin killing innocent people?! That’s not exactly a change that happens overnight!” The only sound that came from the front seat was the clicking of gears as the car was returned into drive. The thrum of the engine began to fill the terrifying stillness. I wondered how the now approaching night would go. Would I be dead by the end of it? And what greater horrors would I find? These predilections of doom filled my head as we continued down the highway. Though, I could have sworn Liz let out a single little mumble in the otherwise deathly silent drive. Something about being the “same little girl”. The skyline of the city was enveloped in darkness by the time Liz and I arrived outside of the chemistry hall that housed Professor Moketta’s lab. I spent more of my time on this campus than on my own. It was far nicer with more interesting architecture and better writing facilities. Though we had relatively identical grades during high school, all of the hours Liz logged in for community service let her squeeze into this fine establishment. The irony, of course, was that Liz ended up dropping her charitable activities to intern with Moketta. I assumed they were sleeping together during these “internship” sessions, which led to my instant dislike of the chemistry professor. Now, I realized the real horrifying things they were doing in that time, and I hated the man even more. We walked up the stairs side by side, and Liz produced a little key, which she used to open the locked door. She told me that Moketta would probably be in the innermost room in order to ensure no one saw any lights from the building’s windows. As we went through the halls, I was forced keep my hand on Liz’s shoulder so I wouldn’t get lost in the darkness. She seemed almost pre-programmed from all the months creeping through this building in the dark because she never even slowed her step to think about where she was going in the pitch blackness. The quiet between us in the Sedan remained like a stench when we moved into the building. I didn’t like being helpless and forced to rely on her like this, even if it was simply walking in the dark. I was terrified, leaping at shadows

and the occasional scratching of a rat’s nails as it ran across the halls. Then, the music began. A slow and sweet chorus that echoed through the hallways with great splendor. Little sister, don't you Kiss me once or twice Then say it's very nice And then you run Liz led me around corner, and I could see a lit up classroom in the middle of yet another long hallway. I gave Liz a questioning look, and she casually nodded confirmation before walking towards the door and throwing it open. I hesitated for a moment and then followed. Little sister, don't you do What your big sister done The sight that befell upon entering that room was something that haunts me to this very day. A woman, a cute brunette with tan skin and freckled complexion, was lying on her back tied to one of the chemistry tables. I couldn’t tell if she was alive or dead, though I prayed for the latter. A long stain of what I assumed was her blood went from the table on which she was tied to the teacher’s desk. Its trail only ended at a red hunk of still wet flesh. I quickly realized that it was the woman's arm, skin carved completely off with little chunks bitten out of it. Another table was set up with a little telescope and a large pile of skin sitting beside it. I looked back at the women and realized that the skin was hers, with little blotches all over her body from where the skin had been unceremoniously sliced off. He was examining the skin. Why was he examining the skin?! I walked up closer to her, desperate to see if she was still alive. She wasn’t breathing, and I realized she was gone. Only then did I realize that the ropes had been used to forcibly restrain her. I couldn’t take it. My stomach upheaved, and I vomited onto that poor woman’s corpse. The crimson vital fluid mixed with my yellow spew into a sickening color. “Two times in one day, my boy!” A booming voice laughed. “Clearly, you're the squeamish type.” I turned and saw Professor Moketta walking down the aisle of desks with Liz demurely following behind him. The Professor was well built man in his early forties. Students would joke about how he used to have long flowing black hair, but that he had decided to shave his head for fear of that the mane would catch on fire in the lab. His face was chiseled and charming with two long thin scars on his right cheek, which I had once assumed came from an angry ex lover, but now I suspect they came from a desperate victim. In one hand, he had a blood covered golf club. In the other, some wet and bloodied object. “Billy, right?” “Quentin McAllister, Professor Moketta.” He gave me a charming little smile and then, in the same flashing change that Liz had shown in the car, he raised the golf club and began senselessly beating the woman's corpse. Well, I dated your big sister And I took her to a show I went for some candy, along came Jim Dandy And they snuck right out the door The berserk veracity of Moketta’s assault only seemed to end one little splashes of blood followed each strike. He then took a long, deep breath and ran his blood soaked hands through his hair. He let out a quivering, aroused sigh. “You know, the funny thing is that most men I know would imagine they were beating Jim Dandy during this. I, on the other hand, stay clear headed and imagine beating the sister. What would you do, Bobby?” I didn’t bother to correct him. I could barely be bothered to control myself from soiling my pants. I knew I was safe with Liz; we had a friendship and history. With this man, on the other hand, I had no safety net. “Y-Y- Yes sir, I’d go for the sister, too,” I stammered. “Good man. We shouldn’t blame the boy when the girl offered herself to him.” He laughed and unfurled his other hand. Moketta deftly placed a chunk of skin back onto its original place. I vomited again. “As my students say, oh baby, a triple!” Moketta laughed. He placed his hands under my shoulders and slowly heaved me up from the floor. “Elizabeth explained everything to me my boy,” he continued, beaming at me and overlooking the puke that had drenched his shoes. “I’ll let her gather the supplies necessary for the body. Meanwhile, if you would be so kind as to aid me with the disposal of my own cadaver.” I only could give a shaky nod, and the Professor gave me the same almost artificial grin. He then moved to one end of the body and lovingly raised up her head. I, meanwhile, grabbed hold of her legs. Her skin was still warm, which horrified me, and I had to find some internal steel in order to avoid dropping her. As we left, I briefly glimpsed Liz. She was slowly, almost robotically going through the drawers looking for supplies. She seemed just as uncomfortable here as I was. I briefly could see the girl watching those superhero cartoons again. Well, I used to pull your pigtails And pinch your turned-up nose But you been a growin’ And baby, it's been showin'

From your head down to your toes My psychotic companion and I ended up bringing the body down several flights of stairs. He explained that the basement held a powerful incinerator because the building used to be a small factory before being repurposed by the college. He elaborated further by saying the school thought he used the inferno to dispose of chemicals and nothing else. I didn’t add any vocal input to any of these diatribes, which, by the third flight of stairs, got on the Professor’s nerves. “Come on, Brian, if you don’t say anything, this will be unpleasant for both of us. Surely, you have questions.” Despite my own personal disgust, I choose to make an inquiry for fear of angering the man. “Aren’t you worried that someone’s going to stumble onto you? A janitor or a security guard or something?” Moketta gave a proud smile. “I’ve paid the janitor to skip this building on nights that I have these little excursions. He’s convinced that I’m using the equipment to cook methamphetamine, however.” “Yeah, you're less of a Walter White and more of a Harold Shipman.” Moketta seemed offended, but then nodded his head in agreement with the statement. We moved down one more flight of stairs, and I decided to ask a question that I hadn’t asked Liz back in the car. “What are the Locusts?” Moketta looked up and let out a quiet little laugh. “Ah, Liz showed you that newspaper clipping of her kill, huh? Yeah, that’s the nickname that the media has given to my disciples.” “Disciples?” “Yeah, disciples. They call me the Apollyon killer in the database, after the angel of destruction. Greek version of the name at least. Don’t know why they didn’t give me the Hebrew version Abaddon. It’s not like anyone already had that nickname.” “Back to the point.” “Oh, yeah, well, you see in the Bible, Apollyon was also the King of Locusts. The cops started noticing that some killers shared similarities to me, so they realized that they were under me. Like some weird cult. My disciples, my locusts. Now, this isn’t true because my students act independently of me, but I like the imaginative naming.” “And Liz is one of these Locusts?” “Yeah, I managed to get Elizabeth to join me in about the middle of her freshman year. You can tell who will – Oh! We’re here.” The stairs had finally come to halt, leading to giant metal door. Moketta, almost like a father placing his baby child into its crib, placed his half of the ground. He opened up the door with another key, and we carried the body into the room. It was large, but relatively empty, save for a couple chairs and tables that chemistry students would sit at while using the incinerator as a fire for cold winter days. At the end of the room was the behemoth burner, jet charcoal black with a opening that looked like the jaws of a mighty beast ready to swallow whatever you feed it. “A viking funeral,” Moketta murmured with an unusual quiet tone, as if enamored by the aura of the burner. We loaded the body into the incinerator's jowls, and Moketta slammed its mouth down. He then pulled a lever. There was a brief sputtering from the machine, then a roar, and finally a series of crackling pops as the flames roared to life. Moketta leaned onto the wall in a manner reminiscent of an office worker at the water cooler. “So, as I was saying, Elizabeth joined me in her fresh-” An unearthly shriek sounded throughout the room. It was a sound that I cannot and will not describe. It was inhuman and otherworldly. The screams of someone being fed to the flames. “Well, I’ll be. It looks we’ve got ourselves a bonafide Tim Finnegan on our hands. Wait, what are you doing?!” I was seized by hope, and I placed my hands onto the incinerator's door. The girl was alive. I needed to save her! I wondered if this was what little Liz had felt every day of her life. I let out yell similar to that of the poor woman because of the door’s burning touch, but I threw it open like the huntsman pulling open the wolf’s jaws for little Red Riding Hood. And, like Red, something leapt out, but I almost wished I left it in there. She was barely human anymore. Her skin was melting, and the black hair had disappeared. Her lips were burnt into a recognizable mass so that it looked like an empty hole was screaming bloody murder. Only one eye could be seen as the other one had been completely covered by the slowly drooping skin. Once white, now charcoal, her black bones were poking out of the places where her skin used to be. Moketta roughly shoved me aside and tackled the woman onto the ground. He shattered her skull and lay on the floor, breathing heavily. “What’s your name again, kid?” he hissed. “Q-Quentin McAllister.” “Well, I’m going to refer to you now as Quentin Mc@%^#up!” He leapt up onto his feet and roughly threw the body back into the inferno, grumbling about how he would now have to clean up the mess down here as well. He then moved up the stairs as if to leave my presence. “Wait, you didn’t tell why Liz joined!” I shouted, but he didn’t respond. I didn’t want to hear the reasoning from Liz herself. I thought it would destroy any shred left of the girl I knew. I never found out that woman’s name. A week later, I saw an article for a missing person that had similar features to her, but I purposely avoided looking at the paragraph. I never want to find out the name of the woman whose murder I helped cover up.

I ran up the four flights of stairs and returned to the classroom in under a minute. Moketta had already begun cleaning the tables with a cloth and some type of chemical that I did not recognize. Liz walked towards me with a shopping bag full of supplies. “I’ll be waiting in the car,” she said before hurrying through the threshold. I briefly saw her face, and she almost seemed relieved to be leaving that room. I nearly followed suit, but instead walked over towards Moketta. “You know that she’s dying, right?” Moketta looked at me, clearly still angry about what occurred in the basement, and then muttered, “Yes, she mentioned that.” “Did you know that it’s because of the Dimethylmercury you were working with in the lab?” The professor eyes widened slightly at that, and his brow furrowed. “No, I was unaware of that. We were trying to formulate a poison for some work of mine.” I didn’t need to ask what this “work” was. “Do you feel any regret over killing her?!” “I didn’t kill her, boy. She knew what she was getting herself into. I think you’re just mad at me because you found out that you didn’t know your best friend as well as you thought. First tip off should of been when you realized she shared a name with the Countess Dracula!” “You disgust me!” I shouted before turning back to the door. “Boy!” I stopped for a couple of seconds. “Don’t think for a second that I’m not saddened by my disciple’s death. But, I am also jealous.” “Why?” I asked. But he didn’t answer, and I began to pass through the threshold again before stopping one last time and saying, “I won’t tell anyone about this by the way.” “I believed that was tacitly implied. Though, if you do, I will find you, and I will throw you into the furnace downstairs, yank you out, and I won’t be so kind as put you out of your misery like my victim tonight.” I nodded and then ran down the hall towards Liz’s car. The ride to Liz’s apartment was as silent as it was driving to the Chemistry building. She seemed as shaken as I was by going into Moketta’s offices, though I wasn’t sure why. Maybe she wasn’t used to that kind of brutality. I hoped so because I didn’t like the thought of her killing people in a similar way. I know that’s such an odd thing to say, but I was forced into having odd standards from this whole experience. We arrived at the apartment and began our work diligently while remaining mute the whole time. Martin Wollack’s body was thrown haphazardly, lacking the delicacy of Moketta’s work, into the closet. His throat was slit, but aside from that, he looked relatively undamaged. I was strangely relieved by that fact. I didn’t ask how Liz had lured him up here. It was just another addition to things I didn’t want to know. Liz took the messier job with Martin’s body due to my squeamishness. She had planned on using a small electric blade, almost like mini and quiet chainsaw, taken from Moketta’s lab to hack Martin’s body into little chunks. In this state she believed it would be less suspicious should anyone see her carrying the bag. She also planned on using three garbage bags wrapped around each other to stop the blood from dripping through. I began working on the less grimy parts of the work. First, I found Liz’s blood-covered clothes and threw them into a bag hoping to stop by Moketta’s tomorrow to burn them. I found the murder weapon, a kitchen knife, and began to use soap and water clean. Eventually, I took a couple of chemicals from Moketta’s that I used to make what was left of the blood vanish. I replaced it with the rest of the silverware. The blood on the carpet was a more arduous task. The chemical could not get rid of all of crimson liquid, so instead, we decided to pour grease where the blood stains were. This covered up the blood and gave Liz an excuse to get a new carpet, effectively hiding that evidence. It was around ten o'clock when I took my cellphone and put in a call to my cousin in a nearby suburb of Rockford. She was a high school senior, and I asked her to claim, should anyone ask, that Liz was staying with her three days prior and hanging out while she visited some family in town. I told her that Liz had been spotted by some cops at an underage drinking party and needed an alibi so that they wouldn’t bust her. My cousin, a crazy party girl herself, agreed full heartedly to the ruse, though I did feel a hint of sympathy for my aunt and uncle having to deal with someone that eager for mischief. Liz and I also planned on driving the Sedan around till we put on enough miles to make it look like she had actually taken the trip. It was eleven by the time we were done and slumped onto the couch with sodas in our hands and Family Guy blaring on the TV. I’d had always found an odd connection between myself and the character Brian whereas Liz jokingly would say I was more like Quagmire. “This reminds me of the Saturdays when we’d come back to your house after working at the school for the set crew,” my best friend mused to herself. “We’d always try out for the cast, but never make it, remember? I know you did it as a joke, but I know for a fact that I would have been a better Janet Van De Graaf then Lindsay Gable. I don’t care if she had same last name as a famous thespian; I was meant for that part.”

I smiled to myself as I thought of my audition to the 1978 Euro disco hit “Rasputin”. I even cossack danced, and the choir teacher threw me out of theater. It then dawned on me how comfortable I was at that moment, and it sickened me as I remember poor Martin, a dismembered pile of flesh, currently enclosed in a garbage bag in the kitchen. “Hey, do you still have that Game Boy Advance?” I asked. Liz raised an eyebrow but handed it to me. I strolled into the kitchen, opened the bag, and then tossed the Game Boy with its former owner’s cadaver. The poor guy deserved at least not to get robbed. “How can you do this?” I said quietly my voice shaking. “What?” Liz said, still lounging on the couch. “How can you do this?! How can kill some poor man who did nothing to you, cut his body into a little pieces, and hide his body in some unmarked grave? How can you even be associated with someone like that monster Moketta?” She looked at me dumbfounded, but I was on a roll. The leviathan of emotions had finally been released, and like the great flood, it was destroying all in its path. “And, how can you just sit there and justify it to yourself? How can you sit there joking and reminiscing like we can still be friends after everything that has happened tonight? Why can that girl whom I once would have taken a bullet for not even acknowledge for a second or have empathy for her victims? They’re people! Martin is a person, and that girl roasting in Moketta’s oven is a person. Why can’t you see that?” “I do!” she shouted back. She stood up and walked towards me in a huff. Stopping merely a foot away, she glared at me with her icy eyes and pulled up the sleeve off her shirt. Cuts. Dozens of the pinkish scars. Some were long lines, others single large marks where she had dug in with the blade. And, worst of all, some were words. Monster. Abomination. Devil. Fiend. Locust. “I remember each and every one!” She pulled the sleeve back down and hauled the bag holding Martin’s remains over her shoulder. With great veracity, she swung the apartment door open and began marching towards the elevator. I entertained the thought of going back to the couch and ending this forsaken night. But I needed to see it to the end. Our final stop was at a lake in a nearby subdivision of Chicago nearly twenty minutes away from Liz’s apartment. With traffic (and yes, there was still traffic at this hour), we ended up arriving at around roughly eleven thirty-five. Liz, still furious after our shouting match in her apartment, told me that we were going to toss the body into the lake through some of the holes that they cut for ice fishing. That would hide the body for at least two months, maybe more, and most fingerprints, what little would remain after all the sawing, should disappear. We set out across the ice, careful not to break through and send ourselves careening into the cold freezing water. It took us fifteen minutes to find a sizeable hole at which point we, exhausted, dropped the body down on the ice and sat there for a minute. The entire experience felt almost ethereal. It was finally over. I let out a little laugh as that dawned on me. Liz shared my reaction and laughed to. God, we shifted our demeanors so quickly. I would later notice that my children were the same way with their friends. One second angry and bitter at one another, the next cheerful and exuberant. In that moment, she returned to the forefront of my mind. The girl who wanted to save the world. I wondered yet again what happened, and I realized that if I didn’t ask now, I’d never find out. She would die, and I would be left with so many questions unanswered. The unknown would eat at me in those long cold nights for years afterwards. That aching feeling in my soul remained with me even when I did finally get her explanation, but I knew it would be far worse if I sustained my apathy and muteness. I leapt up onto my feet and dragged the bag with Martin’s remains several feet from hole in the ice. “What are you doing?” Liz asked exasperatedly as I groggily pulled the body further away. I dropped the body and shifted my body to face her. She hadn’t moved from the spot, likely too tired at this point to put in any effort. “We’re not getting rid of the body until you explain why you're doing this. Why did you start killing?” She glared at me, sick of all of the crap she felt I had put her through this night. “The same reason as Bathory or Shipman or Gacy: I like it. It doesn’t have to be something complex.” “I don’t believe that. Some heartless killer wouldn’t be horrified by the gore in Moketta’s room. A psychopath wouldn’t hack her arm to bits over the guilt from her actions. And, I don’t think a serial killer would really care about how people remember her name. So I’m asking you one last time. If I meant anything to you as a friend, tell me why you started killing people. Then...Then I’ll throw the body in the lake and never think about it again.” Liz glared at me for almost a full minute, her mind processing the next step to partake. Finally her visage of anger crumpled into one of dejected sadness. It was the same face her mother had whenever Mr. Nessat beat her. She had simply given up. She patted the spot next to her as if offering a seat. I decided instead to sit across from her so I could see her completely unobscured. “I killed my first person almost a year ago in Moketta’s lab. In twenty days, the first anniversary happens, to be exact. Moketta always likes supervising our first kills, the Locusts I mean. He told me that he combs through his students every year looking for people with the ‘spark.’ When he finds one, he then mentors them. He nurtures the darker desires

and allows the corruption to permeate their souls. Those who don’t show the competency become liabilities. The liabilities go into the furnace.” “Why would he want to recruit more people?” “He wants people to join his group. He says that it’s not a cult, more of a party. A group of individuals who subscribe to the same ideology and philosophy.” “And what is this philosophy?” “Life is meaningless, worthless.” I was stunned for a couple of seconds. Even after everything I had seen that night, I never expected Liz to say something so hopeless. So cynical. “Moketta used to have a wife. She was gorgeous and kind. He says she looked like me, and that is why he tried to recruit me. She never entertained a cruel thought about anyone. She even once used their house as a makeshift homeless shelter during weather like this. She was like the Holy Virgin reborn onto the earth. Still, her caring nature didn’t stop her from bleeding out during childbirth. The baby didn’t last much longer either. The midwife had lost a kid of own when she was younger, and I guess in that moment, she snapped. Threw the baby right out of the second story window.” I looked down at the ice, and I could see the smirking visage of Moketta reflected back at me. How could he act so cheerful after everything he had been through? “She thought she got away with it. Escaped the hospital and avoided the cops. But you don’t escape Moketta. He found her and he killed her, slowly and methodically. What you saw in that chemistry lab today, that’s him in a good mood. Now, imagine when he’s angry. Either way, he went back to the apartment, still covered in the midwife’s blood, and then took off his belt to hang himself. But it unfurled before his neck snapped.” “He told me he lied on the floor for hours, cursing the cruelty of the world and the God that ruled over it. How could someone so kind and beautiful like his wife die like that? How could some women be so insane as to toss a defenseless child out of a window? He hated the world and he hated life. He hated everything.” She stretched out onto the ice and looked up into the stars, oddly vibrant and lively in the Chicago sky. She looked how I imagined Moketta looked after he tried to hang himself. Desperately looking up into the stars, believing that by staring into them, he would find some value and goodness that was not present in our world. “I don’t think he ever left that place. That bottomless pit. How fitting. They called him Apollyon because of the whole Locust idea, but he’s also trapped in the abyss like the angel of destruction.” She let out a sigh and then returned to her story. “He told me he tried to kill himself because he couldn’t find any purpose in his life. Why live, make connections, fall in love, find value in the material world if it’s just going to be taken away from you anyways? But, the Professor didn’t try again after failing. He said that the one thing that he could think of that had made him happy while lying on that floor was carving into the skull of that wicked woman who murdered his child. And then it dawned on him: he had found a purpose to live, and he was going to save people. As you can probably guess, that got my attention. Typical me, right?” “How are you saving these people?” “By killing them! Don’t you get it? You were right. You were always right whenever you said I couldn’t save the world. I hate to admit it, but you were right. I can’t save people. I can’t stop the world from being malevolent and sadistic to them. I could save somebody one day, but it wouldn’t stop them from suffering and dying down line. All I’m doing is forestalling the inevitable. It’s even crueler because they have more to lose the longer they live. I just gave up. I just gave up and was willing to accept I can’t change anything, and I won’t help anyone. But then Moketta gave me a way to help. A way to make people’s lives better.” “Liz you’re being completely insane! That’s some nihilistic crap that you’ve convinced yourself is true.” “No, it’s not. Why can’t you understand that this is what I believe in now. Why can’t you understand that this is the only thing that makes my life even worth living?” “Because I can’t believe that the girl I used to know would ever justify something like this!” “Well, that girl believed in the same things that I do right now. She was an idealistic idiot, just like you always said she was.” I stared at her couple of seconds, then my eyes moved down into the water at the bottom of that ice fishing hole. I saw the little girl staring at the tv. I missed her so much, and I realized that the girl sitting beside me now wasn’t the same girl I knew before. That girl was dead. So was Martin, that girl currently burning in Moketta’s furnace, and countless others. All dead. All crying so vehemently for this girl to be punished for her atrocities. I heard them, and their voices began to grow louder until I wanted to scream. And then I snapped. I flew into the same manic rage I had seen in Moketta and Liz earlier. My first punch collided with Liz’s face. I could feel her jaw shifting out of place before she slid a couple of feet away from me. I attempted to move in and finish the job, but my feet slid on the ice and fell on my back. I could see Liz slowly getting up, eyes brimming with tears. Her broken jaw attempted to mouth something which I interpreted as, “So this is how it ends,” but ultimately came out as a jumbled mess. She was on top of me in a second, and I felt my chest concave in slightly as her weight suddenly landed on top of me. She returned my earlier punch with one of her own, though not quite as strong. I reached out and grabbed her hand. With all the strength I could muster, I crushed her fingers in my hand. I heard several large cracks as I broke

multiple bones. I then kicked her in the stomach and sent her falling onto the ice. I attempted to land on top of her this time, but I saw a flash and realized that she pulled out the knife that had carved poor Martin’s body into little chunks. I raised my hand in a vain attempt to protect, myself and the blade cut clean through my weak defense. I screamed in pain. My eyes were cloudy, and I could barely see the silver point of the knife going through my hand. Then Liz was on top of me again. Her fingers closed around my throat, and I could slowly feel precious oxygen leaving me. I briefly wondered if I was going any moment now. If so I was almost glad to be dying this way. Saving people, like she would have wanted to go. Then, I felt air returning to my lungs. I opened my eyes, and I saw Liz above me, illuminated in the moon’s light. Her tears almost sparkled as they fell onto my face. Adrenaline kicked in. This was my only chance. My still functioning hand wrenched the knife from its now wounded brother. Liz’s eyes widened as she realized what her moment of weakness had earned her. But it was too late. With all my strength, I plunged the knife into her side. Liz’s vomited blood onto my face and fell from her perch onto the ground. She was writhing and screaming in pain. I grabbed her by the hair and, seeing the ice fishing hole in the corner of my eye, forced her head down under the water. It took a couple of seconds. She convulsed and tried her hardest to break out of the cold wet depths that held her. Eventually, however, her body went limp. I pulled her face out of the water. Her eyes seemed as alive as they had been during life. But everything else was less so. Her skin was cold, no heartbeat, no breathing. Elizabeth Nessat, my best friend for my entire life, was dead. I was on autopilot. I needed to leave, so I acted fast. I went through her pockets and took out everything. Car keys, money, the supplies that Moketta had given us, the newspaper, and numerous other things. I then dropped Martin’s remains down the hole into the lake. I prayed for his soul. I ran to back to the car and managed to find a cinder block. Liz had used them earlier as a way of weighing Martin’s body down so he would end up at the bottom of the lake. I then returned to Liz’s body, muscles aching from carrying the heavy cargo, and tied the blocks to her legs. I was about to push her in, but then I remember the cuts on Liz’s arm. They would reveal her identity as a Locust as soon as anyone found her body. Even though I had avenged her victims, I was willing to let her stay anonymous in the crime. So I took out Moketta’s knife and slowly sawed off Liz’s scarred limb. Then I threw into the hole. I watched her descend until she disappeared from view. Her eyes were beautiful and ethereal in the icy water’s reflective sheen. They filled me with the same hope they always did. And then, they were gone. “A Locust cannot fly when its wings are wet.” I don’t if I said that or some dark twisted monster in my stomach, but I heard it. In that moment everything that had just happened dawned on me. I vomited into the hole’s water. It was the fourth time I had upheaved that day, but it was the only time that it was because of my own actions. The first hour of the day had passed when I reached my final step of this awful ordeal. The quiet was the same as it had been every other ride that night. But the lack of Liz’s presence was noticeable. Unnerving, in fact. That unease was not aided by the presence to whom I would be returning. The car stopped in front of the science building. I wasn’t sure whether or not Moketta still resided in the building at this hour. However, I had no doubt the mess in the lab would need many hours to be properly cleansed. I trotted up the front steps and unlocked the entrance using Liz’s keys. Luck was on my side, it seemed, for I quickly stumbled upon the stairway. I expected to spend several minutes fumbling around in the unending blackness. The musical stylings of Elvis still reverberated across the halls. The song was still fast and vibrant, but the song lacked the same upbeat tempo as before. You know I can be found Sitting home all alone If you can’t come around At least please telephone Don’t be cruel to a heart that’s true. I released a held in breath and swung the door open. The room was almost unrecognizable, the carnage thoroughly eradicated. The blood, gore, and flesh – gone. No one would have guessed it had been there before. Moketta standing in front of his desk, placing what looked like charred bones into a brown box. As to whom the bones belonged, it was fairly obvious. “Ah, Quentin Mc@$%#up! To what do I owe the pleasure of your visit?” “I’m returning the supplies that Liz borrowed.” “Ah, good. I’m no loan shark, but I do appreciate it when people repay their debts to me speedily.” I walked over to Moketta, eerily gazing at the table that the woman was tied to before and began to empty a bag into which I had thrown of all of Liz’s borrowed goods. The knife, the chemicals, and other tools that Liz had taken – “just in case” – covered the table. Moketta calmly surveyed the items and nodded, satisfied that everything was accounted for. “Liz is dead, isn’t she?”

I didn’t immediately react to his question. I had been to numb ever since seeing the light in my best friend’s eyes smothered out. “Yes,” I answered in a monotone voice. It was smarter not to lie to him. He’d have grown wise eventually. “May I ask how?” “She drowned.” “Drowned, huh? I’d have never thought Liz have fallen victim to some thin ice.” Did he already know? “I wonder if somebody might have put her in there.” Yeah, he knew. “How did you-” “Know? Intuition, I guess. When I was pulling these bones out of the furnace, I just had a feeling that some else would die tonight. Besides, your coming in here alone also made it fairly obvious.” He sighed in quiet resignation. “You’re not angry?” “No, I’m not. Locusts will die, but there is always enough for the swarm to sustain.” With the last of the bones in the box, he sat on top of his desk and swung his legs in the air like a child. “I’m almost glad actually. I suspect that she would have just become self-destructive at the end. Dying people have a tendency to do that. And she deserved a lot better than that with all the good she had done.” “Yeah, what a pair of good Samaritans you and she were.” He looked at me, not angrily, but with simply an irritated glance. “Elizabeth told you everything, didn’t she?” He didn’t wait for an answer. “I knew she would. Despite your mocking of my philosophy, you still accomplish it. You freed her from her suffering.” “I didn’t kill her to ‘save her from living’. I did it because all of the people she killed deserved some kind of recompense.” It was strange but, for a moment, Moketta’s mouth crinkled into what looked like a small grin, though I couldn’t understand why. “Well, I wouldn’t recommend trying to do the same shtick on me, boy. You’ll find that I am more of a handful than a nineteen-year-old girl. Besides, without my guidance, she would have died years ago, in the pit that all of my disciples descended into at one point or another. That point where you realize the cruelty and pointlessness of the world. Most would end it through the end of a rope or the barrel of a gun. But I showed them a purpose to keep on living. A way to make your existence matter, to be the hero Elizabeth always wanted to be.” “Would your wife have wanted to you to be that kind of hero?” His speech stumbled for a moment, but no more. “My wife is a non factor at this point. As much as I loved her, and still do, she is the problem. Her type more precisely is the problem. The unwavering optimist. The deluded fool that prolongs their own suffering and thousands of innocent people by believing that everything will get better. It doesn’t get better. Sure, the cards are dealt well to you every once in a while, but at the end of the day, the house always win. Everything is taken away, and we all become drunk bums starving to death in alleyways, mourning the funds we lost. And who is the house? Is it some divine deity?! I wish it was. It’s more comforting to think that some malevolent jerk is screwing us right out of the gate. But I think that’s just how life works. It’s cruel, evil, corrupt, and there’s no reason to slog through it. Hate me all you like, but I made Liz’s life better because of what I’ve done.” “No you didn’t!” I screamed, my numbness replaced with rage. “You killed her! The poison might have been killing her body, but you killed everything else. She didn’t have clarity; she didn’t have purpose. Her life was far worse than if she had simply kept on living a normal life that she think is so awful.” “And, how would you have known her so well? You, the boy who didn’t even know what his best friend was really like until this morning.” I didn’t answer. Actions spoke louder than words, Liz had taught me that. So, I swung the bag previously holding Liz’s belongings onto the table. A wet crunch followed the landing. I reached in a pulled out a large wrapped object. I unraveled the wrapping cloth and showed it to the leery professor. It was Liz’s left arm, the one into which she had carved all of her words of self hatred and that I had cut off her body as a final favor of discretion. I could see Moketta’s eyes focusing on one single word: Locust. “Is that the signs of somebody happy with the way she’s living?” I asked. It was nice, asking a question of him that I already knew the answer to instead of the other way around. Moketta looked at my eyes for a couple of seconds. They were observing his humanity, what little I thought he had left, at least. It was the same look he had given when I told him Liz was dying. And then, he began to laugh. The miniscule smirk from earlier had broadened into a manic grin. It quickly evolved from laughing to a maddening howl of laughter. “What’s so funny?” I asked, my horror only being masked by my complete and utter confusion. “It’s that look,” Moketta managed to say in between gasps of air. In his glee, he nearly rolled clean off of the desk and onto the floor. “It’s the same one that Elizabeth always told me about. Your self-righteous little glare you’d have whenever you thought you beat someone.” “Why is that so funny?”

“Because it made me think about those nights when all Elizabeth would do was incessantly prattle on about how amazing you were. It just proves my point; at least it does a little bit.” “How does it prove your point?” “Don’t you get it? What kind person would show their best friend all of this? All of the blood, all of the secrets, all of the murder. It takes something more than friendship to do all of that. Friendship isn’t as important as you think. You don’t pour your heart and soul out to a friend in that way. It takes something deeper than that for Elizabeth Nessat to reveal everything she has tonight.” “What do you mean?” “Quentin Mc@#$%up still doesn’t get it, does he? Well, fine. I’ll spill the beans. Elizabeth was in love you. That’s why she told you everything tonight. She found out she was dying, and she wanted to let you know everything because she wanted you to know everything. Because she wanted you to love her for who she truly was, not the lie she displayed, or some crap like that.” What little fragment of sense that had been left in my world had shattered in that moment. That little shred of the sanity that I had been holding onto so I wouldn’t fall into madness had been pulled out from under me. “Sh- She never should any signs o- or seemed interested or-” “And, why would she tell you? She thought like me, remember? Why would she tell you something that would only add one more thing to lose at the end for you? No, she would have stayed quiet. For your sake. It’s easier to lose a friend than somebody that you love. But that’s the thing that proves my point. Here comes naive and beautiful Elizabeth to finally show her true colors to her best friend, the boy whom she loved her entire life. There she went on her quest stupidly trusting that she knew you as well she thought and that you’d accept her. Maybe your perceptions would change, but accept her still. Because you want your crush to ‘love you for who are’ and all that. And what happened? It turns out she knew you about as well as you knew her. And then you drowned her.” I thought back to only thirty minutes ago on the ice. Liz had me pinned down, her hands around my throat. She could have killed me. She probably should have. I had already tried to kill her. But she relented. She couldn’t do it. And, I took advantage of that moment of weakness to kill her. I thought that she knew, deep down, she deserved to die. But now, I know it was because she couldn’t kill me. Moketta seemed to have settled down somewhat, but continued on with his mocking diatribe. “She gave into humanity’s greatest weakness: hope. Hope that you would find something worthwhile in her. But hope is never rewarded, and she wasn’t either. Maybe she wasn’t as perfect of a disciple as I thought she was.” The clock rang. It was two now. “Well, look at the time. I believe it’s time that we closed up shop, don’t you agree?” He leapt off of the desk and grabbed Liz’s arm, throwing it haphazardly into the box with the bone. “I’ll burn the arm for you tomorrow. In fact, I think I’ll be coming by to help you with cleaning up what was left of Elizabeth’s mess.” “Why?” “Because Elizabeth loved you. Even if you killed her, I believe that she died with that foolish sentiment in her heart. So I’ll help clean you clean up her crime and yours.” He grabbed me by the arm and guided me out of the classroom. “Besides, you killed your best friend. Whether you like to think it or not, you have the killer instinct in you. And seeing how you wanted to ‘avenge’ those stupid victims, clearly you care about people. Perhaps in the wrong way, but still. You have the potential to be my greatest pupil. I will bring you into the light one day, Quentin McAllister.” He closed the door, but I could barely hear him quietly saying, “For Liz’s sake,” before the door was completely sealed. I don’t know how long I stood in front of that doorway. All I knew was that I eventually found myself sitting in Liz’s car and staring through the front window into the night sky. I imagined her bright lively face brightening up the stars. My mind fell back into the memory of the little girl in front of the TV again. I imagined her sitting beside me in the passenger’s seat of the car and speaking to me in Liz’s sweet, kind voice. “Do you regret killing me, Quentin?” “I don’t know,” I answered. My voice sounded foreign. It had the same tone as when I was a child sitting beside little Liz all of those years ago. “Jesus, why couldn’t we have been like this forever?” “Because the world’s evil,” the little girl responded. Her voice had the same tone as Moketta. “No, no, it isn’t!” I said indignantly. “Just because life ends does not make it evil. Just because the draws don’t turn out your way doesn’t mean the cards are evil. Life can’t just be pointless and meaningless. If it is, then it’s our job to find a purpose.” “I thought my purpose was to become a hero. But I never did. Or at least, you don’t think I did. The funny thing was that I wanted to be a hero because of you. So that there would be a world worth living in for you. But then I realized that you’d just lose everything at the end. Moketta showed me what the world was truly like, and I adjusted.” “But you didn’t buy what he was selling, Liz! Those scars aren’t the only sign, but also me, too! If you bought his philosophy, you would have killed me because you loved me and wouldn't have wanted me to suffer in this ‘horrible world’. But you didn’t.”

She gave me a little smile. It was the same smile that I’d give her whenever she’d give me one her hair-brained save-the-world schemes. It was weird to be receiving it on the other end. “You can’t give a reason why Moketta’s wrong, though.” “Of course I can! Millions, in fact. Every person who gets out of bed everyday happy and willing to try their luck in the world. Moketta’s wrong; hope isn’t evil. You had hope in yourself, and that’s what kept you from being a monster like him. Maybe he is right about the world, but hope isn’t our enemy. We aren’t battling against it. It’s the reason that the world is worth living in. The brevity of life is what makes it so special, that unpredictability. I know that’s not the greatest answer in the world, but life doesn’t have any real answers. However, one day you just wake up, and you understand why life is worth living. Some people will never see that, but they’re not the majority.” She laughed and leaned her body against the seat. “So, this is how you felt all of those years ago,” she mused quietly to herself. “Yeah, but now I wish I had the same hope that little girl did.” “Do you wish I had never left that note in your apartment now?” “No, I don’t. Do I wish it went differently? Yes. But do I regret you showing what you had become? No. The girl with so much hope her soul isn’t dead. The Liz I met today wasn’t some monstrous Locust of Apollyon, either. She was just lost. But I hope to one day find her again.” “And, how will you do that?” “By living life how she always wanted to. By making the world like the one that she always dreamed of. Then I’ll find her again. In every day where I look at somebody living his life happily. And in myself a little bit.” Liz smile at me again, and then closed her eyes. She seemed almost as peaceful as she had been under the waters of the lake. “I hope you find her, too.” And then she was gone. Out of my life for good this time. Yesterday, that’s what I would have thought. Now, however, I could still feel her, somehow. It was hard to explain. At that moment I thought back to my Dad’s words for the first time in years, and I suddenly realized why he never said this with any cynicism or bitterness. He was glad for knowing the truth about those in his life, and I was glad to know the truth about Liz. The angel had become a Locust of Apollyon, but I don’t think the angel was gone. And as I started up the engine again and went on my way, I noticed, for the first time that night, the silence and pain were gone, and it actually felt like Liz was with me in that car.

“Silvermist” by Emily Dillon 34

Most Nights, Some Nights By: Kayla Nicole Meadows Most nights I fall apart but... Some nights I stand strong I fight the tears my mascara stays still

Most nights I fall apart the words hit me the feelings strike Most nights I fall apart I cry myself to sleep my mascara runs down my cheeks

Most nights I fall apart but... Some nights I stand strong I laugh with my friends I let the noise flow

Most nights I fall apart I shut everyone out I sit alone in silence alone

Most nights I fall apart but... Some nights I stand strong I let go of what I lost I dream of what will be gained

Most nights I fall apart I drown in what was lost I forget what was gained Most nights I fall apart but... Some nights I stand strong the words ricochet off me the feelings stay away

Yes, most nights I fall apart but... Some nights I stand strong.

Photograph by Abbi Witt 35 Â

Photograph by Alex Johnson

Artwork by Nikki Eckland 36 Â

Photograph by Gabrielle Perruzzi

Photograph by Elise Reiche 37 Â

Spring Spring is in the air Sun shines so brightly and warm Warm breeze on my face ~Jessica Bartucci

Spring sounds so new. The beginning of a song. The day sounds so peaceful as it opens its eyes for the first time, taking its first breaths. Like a newborn, its pure cry just lets you know it’s alive. Then it sleeps soundly through the night growing to be something new to the world. ~Delaney Watson

Spring is the time of in-betweens, when snow turns to rain mid-fall and struggling new buds fight to overtake the lingering bite of frost. ~Emily Botto

“Spring in Bloom” by Tiffany Marin 38

“Spring” by Tiffany Marin 39

A Poem By Samantha Tucker you’re in my head and in my dreams and when I close my eyes you’re still there I can’t imagine you being gone from my head but why why why do I bother because you’re unaware of my infatuation and so what’s the point of me wasting hours thinking of your eyes and your hands and your smile when you’re preoccupied with another girl telling her things I’d die to have you say to me and I don’t know why you’ve crept into my head but I think you’re here to stay

“With a Little Help from My Friends” by Marissa Pollastrini 40

Photograph by Alex Johnson

“The Recreation of Egon Scheile” by Megan Kachiroubas 41

Stress By: Gina Wozny I don’t have space to breathe. Right now, at this moment, there is a tension built up inside of me. Like someone is stretching my cords too tightly, and they’re slowly snapping, one by one. Some were cut, and some just broke, but if one more breaks, I’ll blow. It will flow out like a waterfall, and with so much pressure and mess, I won’t know how to sort out what. I’ll break down, I’ll want to be by myself, and I will want to be alone. Cords are tugging, pain worsening. Nothing can clear my head. Slowly, slowly, building until I finally burst open. As these cords are being tugged and the tension being tightened, I find fewer things to care about. There becomes no tolerance for anything. As I try to run away from the trouble, It follows me, like a lost puppy in the rain. I try to derail from the thoughts that hurt me And they follow too. Pulling, Tugging. Problems left unsolved, priorities a mess, A weight on my mind and heart, it won’t lift up. Running away doesn’t solve a lot, It only worsens things in the end. So I walk, carrying problems, thoughts, issues. Slowly, in hopes that they’ll solve themselves… They don’t. There are words that come from a wise man… He once said, “The loneliest moment in someone’s life is when they are watching their whole world fall apart, and all they can do is stare blankly…” - From F. Scott. Fitzgerald Well, that said it. 42

Photograph by Leanna Reimann

Photograph by Rhys Zaremba 43 Â

Censored By: BreAnne Fleer An ironic short story about two fictional characters with a secret “It doesn’t matter, Chiharu; it’s over.” They sat among the tall grass that so resembled the rye from back home. They sat as friends. Chiharu wore her shiny black hair tied back in a long braid, bound by a simple ribbon. Nadiya admired the flower pattern on her dress as she felt for her own hair, pulled back by a scarf, worn from many uses. It could have been a painting on the wall of one of those rich men from the city, only they’d never hang a painting of these friends. These comrades. They were real, and that was their flaw. “Nadiya, you’re such a pessimist,” Chiharu admitted, scooping a handful of red berries from her bag and popping a few of the brightest hue into her mouth. “Some?” she offered. The sun filtered through the benign afternoon clouds. “I’m just being honest,” Nadiya replied, picking out a berry. “There are certain things that have never really changed. We can’t change them. Not you and me. We might know what needs to change, but we don’t know how, and neither does anyone else.” She paused to fix the pin that held back her locks of sun-stained blond hair, tucking back a curl into the greens and blues of her scarf. “Of course, if someone does know, she is certainly doomed.” Chiharu pulled out a book. “That’s why I brought this.” The book was faded and certainly centuries old. Its worn red cover was stained with what looked to be coffee, the drinker long passed and the many readers now just ghosts trapped in the forbidden pages full of forbidden ideologies and impulsive, romantic notions. There was a rip in the hardback binding, exposing eroded cardboard in a crease that had been touched by many strong hands and even stronger wills. Nadiya’s eyes widened as she made out the title. She made a quick motion to grasp the old book and conceal it under the folds of her sweater, kneeling in the parched dirt and reaching her arms out forcefully. The brass buttons of her denim overalls shined as they caught the sunlight. “What are you doing? That’s dangerous! Like a weapon, Chiharu! It will give us away in seconds!” She threw her hands up toward her friend’s as Chiharu pulled away, raising the book up behind her shoulders. “Shh! They’re not here! They don’t know!” Chiharu explained, yanking the red thing and all of its ghosts up higher, further from Nadiya’s reach. She struggled to hold off her friend. “No! Listen now as they come!” She fell backwards back to where she had been sitting, under the shade of a short and tangled fruit tree. “We are traitors!” she cried, holding her head in her hands and covering her face between her knees. “They won’t come! Why would they put cameras out here? They don’t care about us, Nadiya. We are not their targets. They want the ones who talk, and we are just reading.” Chiharu reached out to her friend as she held the book in her lap. “It’s okay. I have something to show you.” Nadiya slowly looked up, her expression of the gravest fear, as Chiharu scooted over toward her, book in hand. The incriminating title, printed in glittering silver scroll, again caught Nadiya’s breath. This time, however, she offered no resistance. It might have been curiosity, or it might have been weary abandonment, but Nadiya seemed to want to know what was inside just as much as her friend had when she had snuck it out of the hidden shelf of the old town library. Chiharu opened the cover to reveal the book’s yellowing contents, weathering with age and weighted down with thought and philosophy. “Read this,” Chiharu said, flipping eagerly to a page she had carefully marked by folding the corner. The little black words seemed to defy everything these friends had been told. They burned as hot as molten iron and dug like a steel plow, and both Chiharu and Nadiya knew these words should not exist. Not in this society, not in this age, not in this world, not ever. Yet they somehow made sense. “-----[Censored by the NSA]-----” Chiharu read, “-----[Censored by the NSA]-----” 44

Photograph by Ryan Kowalkowski

Photograph by Elise Reiche 45

Artwork by Casey Thorpe Photograph by Kaileigh Rado

Photograph by Kira Berndt 46 Â

In an Instant By: Brandon Sjodin Inspired by Laura Hillenbrand’s Unbroken Young with abilities, tall with responsibilities so physically fit, filled with mental wit, Louie’s plane is getting hit. Up in the skies, with a close group of guys filled with fear, their fate is near, time for one last beer.

Photograph by McKenzie Gurschke

Was once so young but not today, his innocence forced away with so much life ahead, in just one instant they could all be dead.

Photograph by Emilie Erbland 47

Summer Sitting in the sun Drinking lemonade so fine Making key lime pie ~Sarah Niksa and Jessica Bartucci

The lazy haze of the drawn out days leaves me thirsty for the oasis of knowledge come fall ~Hannah Yantis

The summer sounds like a lullaby. The rain beats like a symphony one day and the next the sun wraps around us like a warm blanket until it’s time to tuck us in for bed. Then the world sings us to sleep every night because no matter how much we hate the world, it will never stop loving us. ~Delaney Watson

“Summer at the Beach” by Anna Gehring 48

“Summer” by Anna Gehring

Placing the Blame By: Emily Botto I know you feel as if I've betrayed you, and maybe that's true. Your dead eyes follow me everywhere, blaming me for leaving you there. Doesn't it count for anything that I came for you in the ending? I didn't leave you alone and morose when you needed me the most. Don't think I never cared that you were miles away and scared, that I didn't want to be here to help you with the fear. I hoped for so long that I would be wrong, and you would forgive all the sins you have accused me of being involved in. That even though I left, we would be able to close the cleft. But back to you I come, and find I am no longer welcome in your heart, having broken it so hard. I can't say I don't deserve the blame But you reserved some of the same when you didn't stop me from leaving. You see, I wouldn't have gone that morning at dawn if you had caught my arm and sworn that you loved me, too. That's all I wanted to hear from you.

“Red Rock Virtue” by Alex Piotrowski

“Trunk of a Giant” by Alex Piotrowski

Photograph by Casey Thorpe 51

Photograph by Zach Schirmer

Artwork by Casey Thorpe 52 Â

The Resident By: BreAnne Fleer I wrote this short poem while reflecting upon my experience visiting White Sands Missile Range in New Mexico, which contains the site of the first nuclear weapons test. I have a strong interest in the Cold War period, and I find fascinating the continuities between that age and the present day. The intent of this work was to describe these continuities through the eyes of a resident of Alamogordo, a town located near White Sands. It’s a long chain of those spring nights With no wind and no sounds Except the noise of stray cars in town Beyond shadows cast by silhouetted trees As the sun slowly sets So there I sit Watching pink-orange contrails Against the darkening sky.

What a world to be living in Though I am not scared of the empty streets But more so of the empty minds Whose lives are played to the rusty hum Of late-night buzzing fluorescent lights Somewhere out in the desert Planning for something impossible But as imminent for them as the rising morning sun.

The air conditioning whirs to a stop The silence penetrating the dry air Through uncanny, ominous, noiseless minutes The unrest of restless times I think about nothing but now Because I know not what tomorrow will bring I’m convinced we’re living on the brink.

I picture the offices, the clerks, the bosses The business that should not exist The worst corrupted hierarchy Of a doomed system that crumbles as it writes The checks of half a century ago Because the business is still going The corporation’s gears still turning The competition a disease That infects so many of its employees.

The TV’s on inside and I have to check the news Nothing going on But I’m stuck in the paranoia days A vicious cycle, I’ll testify Of conflict to calm Dusk then dawn But always the uncertain night.

Oh, they’re doing more and more each day I reflect in the evening dark They have abandoned all reason and gone awry I know it’s true by the way they think Their calculus of a different breed Their eyes like radium watches Fiddling with the second hand And playing with the sands of time.

How many times have I played it out The dreaded scenario in my mind I tell myself it’s not that way Those thoughts belong to another age But nothing will ever calm my fear Because how can we be truly sure That everything is fine?

They own this place like they own us Infiltrating our lives Constantly normalize their presence Among us like a band of spies Who take the past and laugh at it And gaze into the artificial crystal ball That says they’ll always win.

The more I know The more I’m scared Am I alone, I ask myself But I know that I am not This is epidemic time When hysteria runs deep It’s hard for me to close my eyes In a place like this.

The wind picks up and I know it’s time That I must take a rest From the conflict of a resident Of the town that’s on the edge I cannot help but feel the chill As I stare into the distance That any time the time is right These people are waiting to begin the end.

It’s just a matter of time, I think A matter of time before The worst conjuring of my gripped imagination Springs to life before my very eyes And the plagues of nightmares Manifest themselves in the depths of night Or just before the predawn hours.

I am just a resident But we all know of the precedent And every day my fear grows ripe Right around this time As the games begin for another night Each eve when in my own backyard The world plays truth or dare.

Photograph by Robert Olsen 54 Â

Senses By: Emily Botto

Smell By: Emily Botto

Listen to the quiet ones. They will only speak when there is something important to say. Listen to the calm at the end of the storm; it will tell you all that has transpired that day. Listen to your heart. Your head is smart, but it will not let you fly away.

the old books lying on a shelf, heavy with the memories of readers past. Read them, adding to their history. Smell your home, abandoned seasons ago, slightly dusty but carrying away all the words said so bitterly. Smell her perfume, intoxicated by her touch, the reason for loving her a mystery. Taste your mother's pie, so familiar you wish you could have it every day. Taste your own blood, as the reminder of the fight throbs. Every choice leaves hell to pay. Taste her lips, strawberry sweet, brushing across yours in the grass where you lay.

See the devotion on a mother's face. She will never leave you if she knows you need her there. See the sun blazing through, alighting on the earth so gray, laying those who walk in darkness bare. See love, in its true form, its fire strong and bright, so beautiful and rare.

Feel the coarseness of your father's palm as you walk hand in hand, young and without hurt. Feel the regret that fades too slowly, mistakes for which you are to blame sticking to your conscience like a burr. Feel the tears running down your face. Watch her as she walks away; there is no way to stop her.

55 Â

On the Past By: BreAnne Fleer The past is a billion-year-old fly trapped in amber, preserved but inaccessible, now a smooth stone tumbling helplessly down a mountain stream and away, far beyond our grasp, gone forever. The past is a melting icecap, draining away before our eyes, too somber and too sentimental to be viewed. We are not a world hopelessly adrift like the existentialists thought. No, we are an unrecognizable planet that advanced too quickly and severed all ties with the very elements that give us life, the elements of our environment. These elements remind us not to fall victim to our own greed. But we do not face them. These elements are what hold our fragile existence in place. And they have been obliterated.

Photograph by Josh Svehla

“View from the Summit” by Alex Piotrowski

Photograph by Robert Olsen

Photograph by Michaela Wolfman 57 Â

Photograph by Elise Reiche

Artwork by Emma Porcaro Â

Artwork by Emma Porcaro

Artwork by Abigail Connolly 59 Â

Acknowledgements Editors Seniors Sarah Niksa* Nora O’Brien Gabrielle Perruzzi Grace Vivrett Hannah Yantis*

Juniors Emily Botto* Tiffany Marin* Keiashia Moore* Marisa Pollastrini* Jordyn White*

Sophomores Emily Dillon Kiley Frederick Anna Gehring*

Delaney Watson* Gina Wozny* * denotes editors-in-chief

Kristen Pham, Faculty Advisor

We Extend a Very Special Thanks to: Dr. Steven Koch, Principal The District 155 Administration Mr. Zach Gimm, Humanities Division Leader Mr. Aaron Cummins, Art Teacher Mrs. Amy Bland, Librarian Mrs. Connie Kendall, Activities Director Mrs. Gail Penn Mrs. Alice Lales Mrs. Bonnie Stanton Mrs. Karen Treadwell The Prairie Ridge Humanities Division Charlie Klimkowski, President/Owner of Kwik Kopy Business Center Magazine printed by Kwik Kopy Business Center ▪ 125 S. Virginia St. ▪ Crystal Lake, IL 60014 ▪ 815-459-5066

“Fire in the Sky” by Alex Piotrowski