Spring 2018 Sisyphus

Sisyphus Spring ’18 Street Grid Cover: Jake Pineda, design by Matt Thomas Bicycle Cover: Front by Keegan Schnell, back

by Steven Mack, design by JosephWeber Inside Front Cover: photograph

by Joseph Weber, design by Andrew Wilson Inside Back Cover: photographs

by Joseph Weber and Andrew Wilson Masthead: photograph by Andrew Wilson, design by Jackson duCharme 3 Ella’s Song, poem by Collin Funck 4 pastel by Jackson DuCharme 5 My Mistaken Friendship, prose

by Noah Scott 6 collograph by Keegan Schnell 7 design by Ben Krummenacher 8 Middle of the Night, fiction

by Nathan Langhauser 9 photograph by Sean Anderson 12 photograph by Sean Anderson 15 photograph by Sean Anderson 16 A Man, A Boy, A Beast (Rubble), poem by Joe Mantych 18 Music for Grandpa, prose

by Paul Gillam 19 photograph by Sulli Wallisch 21 photograph by Sulli Wallisch 22 Labyrinth, poem by Gabe Lepak 24 The Modern Catacombs of Paris, prose by Fitz Cain 25 photograph by Joseph Weber 26 The Fall, poem by Joseph Dougherty 27 sketch by Sirius Song 28 Kepler, fiction by Peter Michalski 29 painting by John Burke 31 sketch by Nicholas Dalaviras 32 painting by Liam John 33 Ceiling, poem by Joe Mantych

34 Dreams of the Ardennes, 1944, poem

by Matt Friedrichs 35 painting by John Burke 36-37 photograph by Sulli Wallisch 38 photograph by Sulli Wallisch 38 The Duality of Man, fiction

by Matt Dorsey 39 Completely Human, fiction

by Matthew Quinlan 40 photograph by Sulli Wallisch 43 photograph by Sulli Wallisch 46 That Word, poem by Philip Hiblovic 46 photograph by Andrew Wilson 47 New Leaf, fiction by Noah Hayes 49 photograph by Liam John 51 sketch by Jackson DuCharme 52 The Art of Coffee, prose

by Liam John 54 Freedom Falling, poem by Joe Feder 56 Scintilla, Ignis, Favilla, poem

by Matt Dorsey 57 Spark, Fire, Ember, poem

by Matt Dorsey 58 A Moment to Remember, fiction

by Eric Schnelker 60 photograph by Joseph Weber 62 photograph by Joseph Weber 63 sketch by John Burke 64 pastel by Nick Koenig 65 The Hunting Property, prose

by Noah Scott 67 photograph by Daniel Fink 68 photograph by Jacob Palmer 69 Come Out, Come Out, Wherever You Are, fiction by Chris Schaefer 70 print by Matthew LaFaver 71 Devour, poem by Joe Mantych 72 Voice, poem by Niko Rodriguez

Ella’s Song Collin Funck So she was asked what she loved about it, Her short time in the interim. She said: The tastes of cherry and chocolate on Friday nights, Home-style pancakes for dinner, Soup du jour on lonely evenings in the cafe, And when we woke up, new fruits from the market, The sounds of cars honking outside While jets flew overhead but not loud enough To drown out the protesters, the strikers, and the cries of midnight drunkards, But I would never know of it anyway, The laugh of hers but not my own When a paycheck arrived or when he said he would support her, but he never did, nor would, Her tears when they said she couldn’t and her tears when she knew she shouldn’t, Her steps into the dark lobby and her walking back to the car; her steps I heard—I heard it all.

And now I would have loved to see it all so I could understand her, my mother.

But I never will and that’s what I would have loved, for her to know that I want to know.

I want to see Mom and tell her it’s not the act or the right, but the knowing.

I was with Mom and more understanding than she knew.

Yes, it is the knowing.

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pastel by Jackson duCharme

My Mistaken Friendship Noah Scott

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om Hinkamp was a friend of mine before I could put into words what that meant. It was my first day of kindergarten at Stanton Elementary, and a wide-eyed, brown-haired boy sauntered over toward me. Even then, his jaw was cut like the side of a cliff. While my eyes darted from side to side and my neck popped in a nervous tic, Tom looked straight ahead as he marched toward me. He talked with a steady voice, unfazed by the shrieks coming from the other kids. I was awestruck by his complete confidence in a new environment.

Tom would continue to amaze me in this way for nine years. I spent many summer days playing roller hockey outside his garage. Although I was tensing my muscles in order to keep from falling and bruising my tailbone, Tom glided from point to point, his hair flowing out from under his signature Polo cap. There was an aura of beauty to it, and I couldn’t help but be impressed by the intricacies of his game. With a subtle flick of his wrists, he would fire a shot that made me dive out of the way. Sometimes Tom’s brother Aaron would get in on our games, and he would inevitably have to join my team.

When I tired of losing, Tom would offer me some Fitz’s root beer, and we would just sit and talk on the white couch in his basement that my body would leave an impression in when I got up. His hazel eyes focused on me with great intent, as they had the day I met him. It was like they themselves were listening, too. We spent some of our days in Tom’s backyard, sliding around on the wet lawn until his mom called us inside to eat Italian ice.

Tom’s mom had that same intense gaze that he did, and I rarely saw her without a smile that nearly leaped off her face.

Gift giving was a subject of serious pride

for Tom. One time, when it was my birthday, he told me that I could not look behind the staircase of my house. So naturally, I did just that, and I immediately put my hands to my face when I saw the knee hockey set that he had given me. Although I was thrilled, Tom had that squinted-eye smirk; he knew he had done well. I got the same impressions from Tom in school. We would often joke around between classes, and he would make me laugh so hard that I would inadvertently begin to drool. He always made a point to greet Jack, the kid in my class that nobody else wanted to talk to. Even though Tom had a degree of popularity, he never hesitated, walking over to Jack with the same confidence that he had displayed on the first day of kindergarten. Although he certainly carried himself with swagger, Tom was not afraid to let his emotional guard down, as he did when his guinea pig, Pickles, died. I was at his house; and on his couch, he sat and cried right there in front of me. It wasn’t a controlled cry either. The tears streamed down his cheeks as he recounted his favorite times with his pet.

His sincerity struck me. I sometimes imagined him leaping in front of me as a bullet whizzed toward my chest, and me doing the same for him. I believed that with everything that I was.

During the summer before freshman year, while eating Italian ice in his basement, Tom and I discussed our futures. We reminisced on the times we had shared in middle school, and we wondered what would happen now that our paths were diverging.

“Will you still stop by my house every once in a while?” Tom asked.

“Yeah, I’ve got nothing better to do, being the bum that I am. Hey, we’re brothers, right?”

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“Hell yeah we are. And we will be until one of us dies.”

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t was the summer before sophomore year, and two girls were kissing Tom. I was at a small overnight party at his house.

Ally and Grace, two girls that I had never met before, were bunched up next to Tom on his basement couch. The kisses were not small, either. They were long, drawn-out affairs, with plenty of smacking sounds and hands that wandered up and down bodies.

I tried not to, but I scrunched up my face.

Sitting alone on the other side of the couch, I was in a rather awkward position.

“C’mon, Tom, I wanna try the weed,” said Ally.

“Hey now, there’s only so much of this shit, and you’ve gotta wait your turn.” Tom’s

collograph by Keegan Schnell

eyes were directed toward her, but they were sunken into their sockets. And his gaze was not the sincere, noble one that I was used to, but one of drugged-out lust. Tom had pulled his marijuana bag, acquired from his brother, out from under the food-splattered couch.

He then grabbed a bong and proceeded to inhale from it. As his face was engulfed in the musky-smelling smoke, his eyes seemed to sink even more out of reality. Ally and Grace were twitching with anticipation. They began rubbing themselves up against Tom, grinding on him as I sat a few feet away. That was about all that I could take.

I had entered the Hinkamp basement a couple of hours earlier. When I raced down the stairs, I expected some sort of welcome from Tom, as was customary for our meetings. Instead, he was lounging in a fluffy chair, playing Call of Duty with Ally and Grace, and he never bothered even to look up. As I made my way down, I was briefly paralyzed by the dimly lit, slightly dank environment. Beer bottles were scattered around the floor. Tom had put so much time and effort into making the basement a work of art.

Seeing its relative dilapidation nauseated me.

I recoiled at the sight of Tom as well. Usually fit and trim, his now pudgy physique was sprawled out in the chair, and his prized Polo cap was replaced with greasy hair that reached down to his shoulders but was short on top. The environment didn’t get any better as the evening went on. With barely a nod in my direction for several hours, Tom smoked and drank, leaving me alone on the couch. I just looked down at the floor and pondered what had happened in the few months since I’d last seen my friend.

As this went on, Aaron suddenly crashed through the basement doors, and everybody in the room jumped up before discovering the intruder. He was hunched over, clutching his hands to his stomach as he staggered towards us. Aaron’s head bobbed up and

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design by Ben Krummenacher

down ever so slightly, and his sweatshirt was stained green and yellow. He was a mess, and nobody said a word to him except for Tom, who was cackling. He laughed so hard that his face grew red, and he was shaking.

“You’re totally smashed!” Tom said.

“Leave me alone,” Aaron said, without looking up. “I’m gonna throw up.”

Without hesitating, Tom smacked his brother on the cheek, and Aaron proceeded to throw up right there on the floor.

Tom was now laughing uncontrollably.

Tears streamed from his eyes as he rolled onto his back. The rest of us just stood where we were, holding our breath, unable to move from the rigid position where we witnessed

our friend’s callous display.

Eventually, everybody broke from their stupor and resumed partying, but I scooted over to a corner of the room and sat there.

The cold floor encapsulated my emotional state. I felt no connection to the friend I had known for nine years. He was gone, replaced by a selfish jerk I barely recognized, inside or out. A friend of Tom’s whom I had never met gave me a raised eyebrow and eventually scooted towards me.

“You don’t look like you’re having a good time,” he told me.

I just nodded, keeping my eyes fixed on the floor.

“I guess you could say that.”

Middle of the Night Nathan Langhauser

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e slid his hand to the small of her back, feeling the warmth of her bare skin. She ran her fingers through the hair on the back of his head. She was perfect. Their foreheads pressed together, he looked into her eyes, almost blurred together because they were so close. It was dark, so the color was indistinguishable, but her eyes looked right back at his. She made him comfortable even though he had no idea where he was. There were no words exchanged, but the silence said enough. He never saw her full face, but he was convinced that he knew her, that they had known each other for years.

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averick woke up to the sound of his phone buzzing and the picture of his girlfriend flashing on the screen. Still in an intimate daze from his dream, he answered.

“Margo,” he said. “Why are you calling in the middle of the night?”

“I had a bad dream about you and wanted to hear your voice,” said Margo.

“Well, I had a dream about you, too,” he said.

Margo’s voice instantly changed. “Really? What was it about?”

“It was like the perfect date,” Maverick said.

He paused. He did not really know if the girl in his dream had really been Margo, but he could only assume so. Maverick had never been closer to any other girl. He didn’t like to lie to her, but she would never know the whole truth, so as long as it made her happy, Maverick was alright with it.

“It was perfect,” he said. “I’m not sure where we were or what exactly we were doing, but I felt so happy to be with you.”

“Aw Mav, that’s really cute that you were thinking of me,” Margo said with a tint of joy in her voice. “Can’t wait to see you tomorrow babe, goodnight!”

She hung up. Maverick lay awake, staring at his ceiling. There was nothing there for him to look at besides the indentations in the tile ceiling. He felt weird; something wasn’t right. Thoughts bounced around his head with no real direction, passing as quickly as they came. He moved around in his bed, adjusting the blankets, his pillow, trying to get comfortable again, but nothing was working because his mind kept racing. He wasn’t sure what exactly was bothering him.

Finally sleep caught up to him and he passed out again.

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t school, Maverick was on his way to his locker and spotted Margo standing there waiting for him. She was wearing her favorite navy leggings, his purple basketball sweatshirt, and her white headband. She smiled when she saw him. Maverick pretended not to see her, staring at the floor.

He took a deep breath, in through his nose, and along with the air came a scent.

The scent entranced Maverick. He instinctually stood up straight and quickly looked behind him. Through the waves of people he saw the bounce of light brown hair, highlighted with subtle, natural blonde strands that glowed in the light of the hall, put up in a messy bun, weaving quickly in and out of the faces coming towards him. He turned around again.

Margo wrapped her arms around Maverick, snapping him out of his daydream. She looked up at him with a smile. “Hey, Mav.” “Hi, Margo,” he said slowly.

He looked at Margo, and he felt something deep in his gut. Not a bad feeling, not sickness; something just wasn’t right. He hugged her back softly, with only one arm.

He looked down the hall over her shoulder.

Faces passed by, all blurred as his eyes started to water. As Maverick and Margo separated to go to class, he wiped his eyes with his sleeve and watched her as she bounced down the hall, almost in a skip. Her baby blue backpack went up and down in rhythm with her steps. Maverick turned around towards the hall where the girl had passed him. She was gone now, but the short memory of her walking away stuck in his mind. He wished that he could have seen her face or bumped into her, anything to clue him into who she was.

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averick sat on his bed, scrolling through his camera roll. Picture after picture of smiling faces, beautiful views, and sports. Maverick played varsity basketball, and his mother showed up to all his home games to take pictures. Maverick would load them onto the computer and save his favorites. His mother had set up several folders within the photo gallery, each focusing on a specific era or person in his life.

One of his favorite folders to scroll through was titled ‘Mav’s Boys.’ The most recent picture to be added to the folder was at Maverick’s eighth grade graduation: Maverick and his best friend Theo, arms around each other, looking off into the distance like astronauts. Maverick laughed every time he saw the picture. Since high school began, he had not been able to spend as much time

photograph by Sean Anderson

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with Theo as in grade school, where they were practically brothers. Theo and Maverick lived only a block apart and would always play basketball in Theo’s driveway.

They endured many scratches and bruises there, building a healthy rivalry that led them to be co-captains of the eighth grade team. The chemistry between the two on the court brought the Eaton High School varsity coach to many of their games. He spoke with the two after their last game, mentioning that there were spots available for them to practice with the varsity team over the summer. Maverick’s mother took a picture of that conversation, and he could see the excitement in their eyes and remembered the moment vividly.

Every once in a while he would select a few pictures to post on his Instagram page.

His account was all basketball, vacations, and school dances, most of which recently had been with Margo. The same pose in every picture with her; only the dress and tie colors changed.

Bringing Margo and Maverick together had been rather simple. They had met freshman year in dance class that counted for a PE credit. Maverick really wanted to take the regular PE class, but the head basketball coach refused to let his players mess around playing random sports with people of varying self-control: the risk of injury was too great, especially after his star shooting guard twisted his ankle so bad that he was out all of his senior year a few years earlier. In the dance class, the first unit was swing dancing. Margo and Maverick were paired up by chance as the teacher counted the class off by gender. They immediately clicked, dancing well together and enjoying each other’s company in class. They didn’t speak much, but their bodies worked well together when the music came on. Margo’s friends would comment to Maverick after class that they were so cute together. Maverick, subliminal-

ly noting these comments, thought Margo was cute, but he was awkward. He told one of his friends that he liked Margo but didn’t know what to say to her. His friend told one of Margo’s friends and she told Margo, who felt the same way about him. Their friends suggested that Maverick ask her out, so he did, and here they were now, just beginning their sophomore year together with almost a year of so-called “dating” under their belts.

Margo and Maverick went on their first date to the movies with some friends. They sat together, on the end of the line of seats the small group filled. Their mothers had dropped them off, and they barely spoke a word until their mothers picked them up again. The boys talked to the boys and the girls to the girls. They were awkward freshmen, hanging out for the first time. Many more group dates followed, but never alone together.

Margo and Maverick lived on opposite sides of town, making it hard to see each other without their parents driving them.

School was their meeting place. In the halls, Maverick felt weird showing affection towards Margo in front of everyone else. Margo was exactly the opposite, always wanting to hold his hand, hug him, be with him every second. It wasn’t until summer that Maverick felt that he could feel relaxed, out of the view of Margo’s friends, but he could also take a break from Margo since they barely saw each other outside of school. Sure he liked her, but he also wanted to spend time with his friends, his teammates.

He didn’t really like her friends. They were always talking about how lucky Margo and Maverick were to have each other. They always made them pose for quick pictures where Margo would kiss his cheek or jump on his back. Maverick rarely saw these pictures. He saw them only when Margo would post a slideshow of them on her social media. He never really asked for her to send the

pictures with him. He felt obligated to comment something about how pretty she was, even if he didn’t like the pictures.

Margo went out of town during the summer, a family vacation to their timeshare on the South Carolina coast. Margo kept saying that he should have gone with her, but Maverick politely declined. He said that he couldn’t go because of basketball practices.

While she was gone, Maverick could go out with the friends he hadn’t spent much time with since his relationship began, especially Theo, whom he still considered his best friend. On the first day of break, he played one-on-one against Theo in his driveway. It was their first game since the beginning of freshman year. He missed these friends and was glad to spend all of his free time with them because he had to turn them down so much during the school year, despite their living only blocks away. He felt free and relaxed, not worried about keeping Margo constantly updated on his whereabouts.

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braces. He looked for her on Instagram; he was already following her, but she rarely posted, so her pictures were all new to Maverick, who rarely checked. Her pictures were of her friends, her family, the common moments in her life, not just the special occasions. She wasn’t dressed up in every picture.

They weren’t all posed, but natural, showing her true self. It wasn’t her smile that caught his eye, because she wasn’t smiling in every picture. It was her eyes that drew him in.

Maverick continued to text Theo, asking about her, whether he was friends with her or not. Eaton was a small enough town for everyone to know each other’s names, but Nadia and Maverick had never spoken.

Theo liked talking to the girls in his classes, but Nadia never joined the conversations. He noted that she would talk quietly amongst her friends, never bothering other people. When she wasn’t talking with her friends, she drew. Theo didn’t know what she was drawing, but she gave her full attention to whatever she was working on. She smiled as she worked, looking satisfied in her creative world. Theo didn’t say anything bad about her, but there really wasn’t much else for him to say. He barely knew her, and Maverick knew even less.

averick continued scrolling, remembering each picture and the memory that went along with it. He reached his middle school years. So much had changed since then: his clothing choices, his physicality, and most of all, who was in the pictures. One picture in particular caught his “ mm hey Nadia, I was wondering if you attention. He saw her, the girl from the were going to the football game tohall. She was standing in the background of night,” said Maverick, standing behind Naa mixer picture, laughing with her friends. dia in the lunch line.

Her smile was so beautiful, even when she She slid her tray along the metal railings “ was younger. Maverick wanted to see that towards the desserts and said, “I’m not sure smile now. He wanted to hear her laugh. yet. I might not have my dad’s car to drive He texted the picture to Theo, who tonight.” identified the girl as Nadia from his math “Oh, oh, uh, okay, I was just wondering,” and history classes. Maverick pulled out his said Maverick. freshman yearbook and found her. Her hair “Well, maybe I’ll see you there,” said Nahad darkened since the time that the picture dia with a smile. was taken, the natural blonde tint slowly fad“Yeah, I’ll be there,” said Maverick. ing away to a lighter brown. Her facial strucMaverick watched her walk away, across ture had matured, and she no longer wore the cafeteria to sit with her friends. She had

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photograph by Sean Anderson

a certain confidence, walking tall and proud.

She stopped. Her eyes scanned the cafeteria and locked with Maverick’s from across the cafeteria. Nadia smiled. Maverick’s heart pumped a little faster, forcing some blood to his cheeks, and he took a few quick breaths before he picked up his own tray from the serving counter. Nadia’s friends smiled as she sat down next to them. She knew the look that they were giving her. The raised eyebrows, eyes darting between Maverick and her, a few giggling.

“Ha ha, grow up,” Nadia said sarcastically, letting out laughter of her own. “You’re such a bunch of little girls.”

Maverick tried not to stare as he walked to the other corner of the cafeteria, finding

Theo and the rest of his friends at their usual table.

“Guys, we should all go to the game tonight,” said Maverick still standing, out of breath.

“Mav, it’s not even gonna be close out there,” said Theo.

“I don’t care, we gotta go.”

“Why? Is Margo making you go?”

“No, actually, she’s not, she will be out of town visiting some family.”

“Well then, why do you want to go?”

“Don’t worry about it. You all can come over to my house before the game and my mom can take us. Deal?”

“Fine. Deal.”

M

averick sat in the bleachers, constantly glancing at the entrance gate. People in purple and gold slowly filed in, but not her. The first quarter ended, Cincinnati Christian Academy 21, Eaton 3. Maverick felt his phone buzz in his pocket: his mother, asking what time to pick him up.

The Eaton parents started yelling, making Maverick look up before typing a response.

The Eaton student section barely filled the first two rows of bleachers, but the parents in the next section over began to stand, cheering on their sons as the team ran down to the opposite end of the field. The Eaton running back broke free of the defense and had a clear path to the endzone. Maverick scanned the field and its surroundings, following the runner with his eyes. Nadia was standing on the opposite side on the track on her way to the concession stand, cheering in her purple Eaton jacket. Everyone else sat back down after the play ended, but Maverick made his way towards the stairs to the track. Theo followed him.

“Hey, where are you going?” asked Theo.

“Just want a snack. You want anything?”

“Nah, I’m good,” said Theo as he spun around and bolted up the steps back to the rest of the guys.

Maverick made his way over to the concession stand, walking with purpose, trying to catch up to Nadia. There was nobody else walking near him, so he didn’t want to appear in a rush, but he had to get to the concession stand before she was gone. She was at the end of the short line, her hair braided tonight, hanging over her left shoulder. She looked pretty without even trying. He stood behind her in line.

“Hey Nadia, happy you made it,” he said.

“Oh hey, Mav!” said Nadia. “Good to see you too.”

Maverick’s phone buzzed again in his pocket. He pulled it out and saw the picture of his mother on the screen.

“Sorry, I should answer this; it’s my mom. Hold my spot in line?” he asked.

“Yeah, of course,” she said.

Maverick’s mother told him to text when the fourth quarter was about to start so she could be there to pick him up by the end of the game. Maverick went back to the line.

“What did she say,” Nadia asked.

“She wanted me to text her when I was ready to be picked up,” Maverick said.

“I can drive you home, if that’s alright,” she said.

“Really? Are you sure?”

“Yeah where do you live?”

“Over on Willow, do you know where that is?”

“Of course, my house is just on Maple!”

Maverick rode home from school on Maple every day.

“Alright I’ll text my mom. Thank you!”

The game ended Cincinnati Christian Academy 42, Eaton 10. Theo called his mother to pick him and the rest of the guys up. He winked at Maverick as he walked towards the exit gate. Maverick and Nadia stayed seated in the stands, though. Nadia slowly turned as their conversation went on until she was completely angled away from the field and directly at him. Her body language was fully attentive to him, and their eyes were locked the entire time they talked. He finally got to see her eyes up close. There were a million things running through his mind. He would never do anything outside of his relationship with Margo, but he liked to have Nadia close and he didn’t turn away. His phone buzzed on the bleacher between them. A text from Margo. He didn’t even care what it said.

“What are you doing tomorrow?” Maverick asked.

“I don’t know. What are you up to?”

“I was gonna go get lunch if you want to join.”

“Yeah, I’d like that. Text me when you know for sure.”

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She picked up his phone off the bleachers. The text from Margo was still there. Nadia paused with the phone in her hand. Her head tilted and her eyes squinted slightly upon seeing Margo’s name appear on screen.

“Are you sure it’s okay? I know she’s your girlfriend and all.”

“Yeah, it’ll be fine.”

Maverick didn’t know what to do. He wanted to continue to get to know Nadia.

Nadia showed Maverick pictures on her phone of her drawings. They were recreations of her dreams, drawn directly from memory. He was fascinated by her creativity and attracted to her, but he couldn’t hurt Margo, especially by cheating. “

H

ey Mav, how was the game?” Maverick’s mother asked, barging into his room without knocking.

“It was alright. We lost,” he said, lying in his bed with his arms crossed over his stomach.

“Is something wrong? Is it Margo?”

“No, Mom. Nothing’s wrong with Margo,” Maverick said.

Because there wasn’t. There wasn’t anything really bad about Margo, and Maverick appreciated their friendship, but meeting Nadia brought a range of new emotions into him that he had never experienced with Margo. Nadia felt real to him.

He had to call Margo. He had to tell her what was going on because there was no going behind her back, there was no lying to her. He respected her, and to do anything less than to tell the truth would hurt him inside. Maverick picked up his phone and called Margo.

“Hey, Margo,” he said. His voice was slow, serious and sad. “We need to talk.”

“What’s going on, Mav?” Margo asked.

“You sound awful.”

“Okay, here it is. I don’t really know how to say it, but I think that it’s time to end our relationship. Recently, I haven’t really felt like we have been real; it doesn’t seem to me like a real relationship. We only hang out in groups, and I really enjoy that, but I don’t feel like we are boyfriend and girlfriend.”

“Alright. Fine.”

Margo hung up. Maverick set his phone on his nightstand, exhaled a heavy breath, and continued staring at his ceiling. He let his eyes fall closed and fell asleep.

In the morning he picked up his phone and there was a text from Margo timestamped 3:52 A.M. “I honestly can’t believe you. I was so good to you, but you obviously decided it meant nothing. Have fun without me. I know I’ll be happy either way. Bye Maverick.”

Maverick read the text a couple of times and breathed deeply. There was nothing for him to be sad about and he was happy that he had faced Margo with how he felt. He then went out of the conversation to start a new text message, smiling as he typed. “Hey Nadia, it’s Maverick, I was going to walk up to Dale’s Diner around one if you want to meet me there.”

Before he pressed send, he looked up and followed the streaks of light shining through his bedroom window. His eyes tracked some of the wrinkled orange leaves that had fallen early as they blew down the street outside his window. He heard his mother’s favorite song coming from downstairs, the song she always played when she planned to clean the house: “...Change is coming ‘round real soon, make us woman and man. Oh yeah, life goes on…”

Message Delivered.

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photograph by Sean Anderson

A Man, A Boy, A Beast (Rubble) Joe Mantych He squats in the dusty corner,

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Rubble everywhere, A man, a boy, a beast, The feast of Glinting massacres and Stark sadists.

Tatters of clothes, Bloody bare feet, Matted black hair, Trembling, inert eyes, The kind that know God But have Never met Him (The kind you never Forget, The kind that Stare at you long after You’ve stopped staring at them Back).

We pass him everyday, Strolling, Shuffling, Sprinting, On our desolate way to School with Stale meals and Long (too long) Math problems And broken spines of books, On our desolate way to

Work, A hub of labor and Sweat and Suits and ties and The dwindling waste of our rotting Lives, On our desolate way to the Bars, The neon, drowning bars, On our desolate way to Church, The bare, empty Church, On our desolate way to the Hospital, The sanitary, emotionally septic hospital, On our desolate way to Wherever we humans are Prowling.

We pass him, This man, this boy, this beast, This feast of Glinting massacres and Stark sadists.

His eyes beg, You could help me so much You could do so much for me But I know you’re busy So keep going It’s fine Somebody else will eventually Stop.

But he keeps begging as people Shade their eyes away from This man, this boy, this beast, This rubble of humanity Waiting patiently To be Cleaned up.

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Music for Grandpa Paul Gillam

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y family frequently notes how similar my grandfather and I were. They called us Renaissance men. We appreciated the simple things in life. During sunset we loved sitting on the porch of the old rickety double-wide at the Farm—a 300-acre plot of land in Warrenton he owned and tended for nearly 15 years—and always appreciated having a book in hand and a glass of gin— his, not mine—an arm’s length away while watching a thunderstorm roll in. Our hobbies included but weren’t limited to rooting for the Cardinals from the comfort of his St. Charles home, surrounded by family—he, unlike me, was a very fair-weather fan—and sneaking away at nearly every family gathering to settle down with a good book. We both were sticklers when it came to money.

I attribute all of my frugality to my grandpa, who hated to spend money and would reuse the same McDonald’s coffee cup for weeks on end and carefully ration the Thanksgiving turkey until Christmas. I learned from him that money doesn’t buy happiness and that when you truly do what you love, you don’t worry about the pay.

We also both loved music. While I have always been hesitant to sing in front of my family, nearly anyone could persuade my grandpa to sing a verse of “The Streets of Laredo” or “Danny Boy,” his deep, gravelly voice evoking peaceful feelings and emitting a sense of powerful authority, silencing any room he was in. At family gatherings, it was not uncommon to see him pecking away at a piano and, despite never having taken any formal lessons, easily picking out the tune to “Amazing Grace” or “Red River Valley,” one of his favorites, and singing along. Although he loved working at a simple melody, he loved to

hear others play even more. Whenever anyone played the small old wooden upright in his family room, he would be there, watching and listening in awe. He loved the piano and the beautiful melodies it could produce. Music brought him peace and comfort, and for the last few months of his life, as his health rapidly declined and his bedroom was moved to the family room because he could no longer walk up the stairs, music was one of the few pleasures he still had.

My obsession with music began well before the summer of 2017. I began taking piano lessons in second grade, but my skills did not blossom until the summer going into seventh grade, when I found inspiration from my favorite genre of music: film scores. That summer, my mom began playing soft piano music from Pandora during our dinners, and occasionally a film score, such as “Concerning Hobbits,” from Lord of the Rings, would pop onto her station. Instantly, I fell in love with the blend of the strings and woodwinds and the deep pounding of the percussion. The complex orchestral elements of classical music, coupled with more modern melodies, made a thrilling and passionate sound which I became obsessed with. Despite film scores’ wordlessness, I heard secret lyrics that tugged at my heart in a way foreign to my twelve-year-old self. I left behind all of my old pop music and adopted this genre—uncommon amongst my peers.

When my friends talked about One Direction and Snoop Dogg, I responded with the Boston Pops Orchestra and Harry GregsonWilliams. They relentlessly teased me, but I brushed the cynics off as uncultured swine.

Weeks after my obsession began, my family took a vacation to Yellowstone. I

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photograph by Sulli Wallisch

prepared my iPod for the twenty-two-hour car ride by replacing all of my old songs, like “Wake Me Up When September Ends,” “I Want It That Way,” and just about every Taylor Swift song, with my favorite film scores: “The Battle,” from The Chronicles of Narnia; “Tennessee,” from Pearl Harbor; and “Requiem for a Dream,” from the film of the same name. I spent the ride with film scores playing through headphones, gazing out the window while daydreaming about my crush and my future career as conductor of the Boston Pops Orchestra. As we drove past vast fields of wheat, I played peaceful tunes like “Waiting” from Rudy or “Main Title” from The Cider House Rules, and when passing by the violent geysers, towering mountains, and majestic canyons of the West, I put on impassioned songs such as “Arrival to Earth” from Transformers or “Strength of a Thousand Men.”

As I listened, I noticed many piano pieces I thought I could take on, and I decided that as soon as we returned home I would seek out sheet music to a few of my favorites. Finding that a quick Google search summoned any sheet music I wanted, I began to gobble up everything I could lay my hands on. Even after exhausting the list of songs I wanted to learn, I found I wanted more. My search for more film scores led me to discover many modern pianists, such as Ludovico Einaudi, Helen Jane Long, and Brian Crain, whose film scores spoke to my heart. With each new discovery, I moved further away from the strict, rhythmic works of Bach and Haydn and began to develop a voice of my own that reflected the joys and sorrows of high school. But I wasn’t the only one who found joy in this new music; I had many fans who asked me to play for them.

My biggest fan was Grandpa. He kept

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wanting more. He and Grandma encouraged me to bring music whenever I went to their house. Embarrassed by my new fame, I would conveniently forget my music and swear I would “for sure bring it next time.”

My relatives would gently smile and say it was okay, boosting my confidence in the lie.

At the end of my sophomore year, I learned that my grandpa had terminal lung cancer. He was already old, but he still seemed to have years of life in him. Nearly every day he would go to his coffee group at McDonald’s and then clear brush or do paperwork at his office out in Warrenton. He still played Scrabble like a pro, regularly scoring 400-plus points, and read every chance he got, but no matter how much he fought, the disease had its way.

Early into the summer my mom suggested that once or twice a week I go over to play Scrabble and, after losing to him, play the piano for him. Although I loved Scrabble and my grandparents very much, I resented having to stay alone with them for so many hours. Still, I reluctantly agreed. Much to my surprise, I found I loved to spend time with my grandpa. I began to go over three to four times a week, sometimes to watch the Cardinals, other times to play Scrabble, but every time to sit at that old wooden upright, pull out my binder of sheet music, and play songs as he lay, resting in bed. Although we never had any deep conversations—or, for that matter, much talk at all due to our intense Scrabble games—we formed a strong bond simply by being in each other’s company.

As his health declined, our relationship grew. The cancer soon caused my grandpa’s sharp and quick-witted mind to become slow and forgetful, and he became unable to keep up with my Scrabble playing. Sore loser that he was, our evenings were soon reduced to Cardinals games and the piano and then just to the piano.

Two weeks into my junior year, he was

put on hospice. Family who lived out of town came to visit and say final goodbyes.

Although the house grew fuller, our hearts began to feel empty. I spent every moment I could out in St. Charles, sitting at his old wooden piano, playing my music as people filtered in and out of the bedroom, saying goodbye for one final time. I was tasked with breaking the silence that had descended upon the house and on each of our lives. But none of that mattered to me. I was playing for Grandpa. I played in hopes that I could ease his pain and fear and tell him I loved him. With each gurgling, phlegmy cough, I forced myself to stay focused on my music and not waver. I had to be strong for him.

He was in a coma for his final two days.

Even though he couldn’t talk, move, or respond to stimuli of any sort, he could still hear. We all knew if he could still talk, he would tell me to keep playing. So I did. The first night of his coma I poured my heart into “Embers,” “Nuvole Bianche,” and “Memories.” Instead of crying tears, I wept through my music, trying to comfort my family with “An Inspiration,” “River Flows in You,” and “In Dreams.” I played until my grandma kicked me out of the house so she could go to sleep. I would regretfully pull myself away from the piano and promise to return the next day as soon as I could.

On the day he died, I returned to his bedside just in time to see the local parish priest anoint his head, chest, hands and feet. Each person there knew this anointing was it; his pain and suffering would end that night. With this heartbreaking thought in mind, I sat down and played the songs I had played so many times before, not able fully to focus on the music, but instead trying to beat down the emotions inside of me. I was afraid to cry. I was afraid to let go.

My fingers swept across the keys as two of my younger cousins came to say goodbye to a grandpa whom they, unlike me, had nev-

er had the opportunity to grow close with. I fought back tears as I reminisced about the time we spent together, but tears began to stream down my face, and I turned my head to hide them. I wept as my aunts and uncles individually came into the room to thank their dad for the childhood he gave them and the role model he was. After everybody said goodbye, we came together one final time.

My relatives filled the room as the sounds of “In the Garden,” “Danny Boy,” and “Sweet Hour of Prayer,” the last song I played for my grandpa, echoed through the small room.

With this final song, I got up from the piano, walked to Grandpa’s side, kissed his balding head, and, holding his feeble hand in mine, began to say my own goodbye.

I had known the moment was coming and had carefully planned what I would say.

Through the influence of movies and television, I expected death to be accompanied with heartfelt background music and an exchange of words before watching my loved one breathe his last breath. But I experi-

enced none of that. I never heard any music to ease my pain, and he never spoke to me with his dying breath. The music in my own heart had been extinguished, and no matter how much I searched my soul, I could not find it.

The silence stuck to the walls of the hot and musty room. I tried to thank him for our time together and tell him how much I loved him, but the words wouldn’t come. I could only stand there and let my tears dampen his bedsheets. I was scared to admit he was going to die. I tried again but could not bring myself to thank him for the past months, which had been the best months of my life. I kissed his head one last time and walked out of the room.

My biggest regret in life has been not being brave enough to say goodbye when it was time to. But I know that even though I never spoke the words to him, he heard every word loud and clear in his heart through the music.

photograph by Sulli Wallisch

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Labyrinth Gabe Lepak

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I Beware of snakes, they like the labyrinth too.

II I begin where I end.

My path is paved, and It is covered in ridges and cracks, A battle between nature and man, With the victor long decided.

III I know what the end is And I know what the end means, But what the end entails and how I will get there I cannot fathom.

IV The path is marred in love, Covered by it, drowning in it: A wave washing over all, A tsunami I’m not ready for.

V This is not something you walk alone This is not something I can do without help.

And yet I try.

VI I hate the most what I can’t control: The constant reminders that I’m not a god.

How they haunt me And flaunt my mortality.

VII Don’t cry for me.

Don’t you dare weep.

For this is of my accord, And if anything, is a promise I cannot keep.

VIII Why am I terrified of love?

IX Strip me to the bone, And you will find what But a coward?

X Do trees know when they approach death?

Can they see, feel their leaves brown?

Do they know more is oft dead than alive?

Are they afraid too?

XI A stone shepherd watches his flock Of spiders as they watch their flock of the dead.

The still with eyes on the living, The dead with eyes on the living.

XII What is left for me?

The pedestal wreaked— My pedestal wreaked.

Where do I go?

What do I do?

XIII What separates me from the dead, But a thin layer of dirt, a rock, And a line in a poem?

XIV I end where I begin: A path I truly don’t know With nothing but another step.

No more than another breath.

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The Modern Catacombs of Paris

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Fitz Cain

A

s the train winds through the dark tunnels, screeching and grinding at every turn, the only noise comes from outside the metal walls of the subway car. These external interjections curb the usual anxious desires to fill the silence. Sandwiched tightly between tweed coats and pastel scarves, passengers stand stone-faced, clutching metal bars and flexing their biceps in unison with the train’s aggressive jolts.

Blank gazes fix on advertisements and safety warnings plastered to the walls, complacent eyes not bothering to decipher the characters in front of them. Those who wear headphones act as if nothing is playing through them, unwilling to let the music part their lips or sway their heads. Apart from the muffled pardons murmured in throaty French as people push their way through the

sliding doors at their respective destinations, no one says a word. As more people board at every stop, the silence grows only more deafening. As the physical volume of the car increases, the audible volume declines eerily.

Occasionally, a white-bearded man in a thick coat and ragged beanie enters the subway car, piercing the stale air with his pleas for food or spare change. As he shuffles through the aisle reciting the speech he’s given so many times before, stares become blanker and necks become stiffer, for allowing one’s head to turn away breaks the seal of indifference. When the subway lurches to a stop at the next platform, he exits to give the same address to the next car, leaving nothing but a sea of internal sighs of relief in his wake. As the door latches shut, it vacuums up the only life left in that metal box.

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photograph by Joseph Weber

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The Fall Joseph Dougherty Clear and windy.

The trees beg my attention— Orange leaves of autumnal fire, Breeze sending tremors through the branches, The heights dancing like flame, Their faces shimmering by lone lamppost’s light.

The wind blows swiftly, Sending up a solitary leaf, curled inward, Skidding noisily along the ground.

Finally, it rises like an insect’s wings— Membranous, frail—caught on a gale.

Shadows fade with dusk’s arrival— Epilogue of purple twilight.

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sketch by Sirius Song

Kepler Peter Michalski

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T

he blast of the quantum engines woke me from my half-sleep. I could never quite keep myself awake during the early hours of my shift—a position on loading bay 42 of the Kepler Transport Belt, a shiny new space station at the edge of Earth’s orbit. Widely hailed as the greatest invention of the last millennium, the Belt served as the only link between Earth and its “twin,” the uninhabited Kepler-452b, 1,400 light years away. For the past decade, all kinds of Earthlings had been sending whatever they could to the distant planet, harnessing a stream of incredibly fast-moving particles that provided a direct link between the globes. Some called it a gift from God, a road to a new promised land and away from our dying Earth. And with the invention of the Belt, humanity could travel this road. However, the divine road was a oneway street. The particles in the stream only moved in one direction, all towards Kepler.

Even the greatest scientists barely managed to get a radio transmission back to Earth.

In short, if something was sent to Kepler, it was never coming back.

The Belt had been running for only about ten years when I first took my job sending cargo across the stars, but in that ten years, Kepler had managed to form a society all its own. In its first decade, the Belt carried millions of civilians down the stream, most desperate to escape the claustrophobia of Earth and looking for a sense of true freedom. These desires led the civilization to develop many similarities to an ancient time and place historians called the “Wild West”—a place where you could live

your life however you wanted without anyone giving a damn. This existence starkly contrasted with the systemic drudgery of modern life on the third planet. With every message sent back, the population of Earth heard about the endless fields of green, the taste of uncontaminated air, and the chill of non-artificial snow. To many, the planet was a heaven-off-Earth, but to others, it was more like hell. Kepler was by no means a safe place. Crime ran rampant on the ungoverned planet, with many leaving their morals behind on Earth. Some found refuge in towns or other settlements, but even there, anything was legal. Poverty burgeoned: the young civilization hadn’t had time to develop a stable economy. Most gave all they had to cover the price of the trip—the cost of freedom was never too high. Still, many were able to overlook this in favor of a new life on a fresh planet that hadn’t yet been overpopulated, overmined, and polluted by its dominant species.

Just because I worked in space didn’t mean I was off swashbuckling across the galaxy and having incredible sci-fi adventures. In fact, my 9-to-5 life revolved around one simple process. The quantum dissociators on the bay would fire automatically every fifteen minutes. For those fifteen minutes, my job was to load as many crates as possible and then get the hell away from the platform. Rinse and repeat every day. In the early days of the job, I often wondered why I hadn’t been replaced by some machine. After all, they were great at demeaning, repetitive labor. But I eventually came to the conclusion that humans were far less prone to catching fire or getting hacked, thus, a safer bet for the Belt.

Ironically enough, one of the reasons I took the job was to escape the endless routine of my former life on Earth. But the main reason I left Earth was to escape humanity. I had a pretty severe case of social anxiety,

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painting by John Burke

not the best condition to have when your home planet is overpopulated and you can’t leave your tiny residence capsule without physically bumping into someone. Life on the Belt allowed a bit of freedom from the population density, but the government ran the place, so it was still crawling with suits and scientists. I did my best to avoid them.

At the very least, I could work alone. The Belt provided each of the bay workers with a “strength suit,” an old biotech device that increased physical strength. Mine was decrepit and dusty, a relic of a time when human labor was more common, but it worked fine–I felt about ten times stronger whenever I put it on, and moving crates three times my size was no problem. Although it wasn’t as efficient as robotics, it made cargo loading a one-man job. So while my days were head-splittingly boring, at least they were peaceful. This isolation did result in a few side-effects, however. During my long hours, all I could do to pass the time was think, which wasn’t too bad for me at first.

My mind was my perfect companion. There was nothing we couldn’t discuss; we were always on the same page, and most importantly, it didn’t stress me out. This went on

for some time, each day my mind becoming less a part of me and more a part of itself.

It soon began responding to me in ways it never had before, devising ideas completely free of my control. This was all fine until it told me to flee to Kepler. It promised an end to my anxiety and my boredom, with the bonus of a fresh start on a natural planet. For the first time, I felt completely sure of what I wanted. That lasted a whole fifteen seconds. Before I knew it, my head filled with inhibitions and reasons to stay, and my mind began arguing with itself, completely free of my control.

I had innumerable reasons to stay. My family was on Earth, and I could visit four times a year. My mundane job had solid benefits and opportunities to advance. But most of all, I was safe. Earth, the Belt, and even the Mars and Moon colonies had become so strictly governed that safety was never an issue. Break your leg falling off a ladder? Surveillance sees it and a medical drone has you walking in a few hours.

Crime? Nonexistent. No one had the balls to go up against a seven-foot metal security bot. But Kepler had none of that. One half of my mind kept telling me I’d be eaten

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alive, and it was probably right. But the other half kept telling me that I’d be free from the boredom, the anxiety, and the claustrophobia. My imagination ran wild picturing the smog-free skies, the grass under my feet, and the smell of unfiltered air. But I could also picture the deep reds of a bloodstained ground, I could smell the rotting corpse of a dead junkie, and I could anticipate the regret of an irreversible decision. My mind started acting logically again. On Earth, we had no idea what Kepler was really like. No photos, no videos, only ragged audio transmissions from those on the surface. Hell, what if there was no surface? What if it was all just a government invention to send people to labor camps, or even just a death camp to thin out population density? Would they even do that? But the emotional side of my brain took hold again. It told me to risk it. If I left and Kepler was all a lie, I’d die.

Still better than this place, it told me. A win win. Logic flooded my head to tell me that I was crazy. It reminded me of everything I had to live for: my career, my family, my… Was that really it? I didn’t even like my job. I rarely saw my family anyway.

My mind shifted again. It told me about my endless freedom. How I’d never have to see another person again. How I’d be free from my anxiety, free to exist as myself. But was I really myself anymore?

BEEP! The alarm signaled the end of my shift. In an instant, the war inside my skull paused for a ceasefire. I could feel the sweat running down my shaking body.

I needed to get out of the bay before the next shift arrived. It was early evening, I’d do what I usually did: take a shower, grab some dinner and eat alone. Showers always helped me relax, and food was a good distraction. I hoped. The long hallway felt especially long that day. I wanted only to get a shower and away from people. I was

abnormally sweaty, so I looked and smelled like garbage, and I could tell that everyone who passed by noticed it. They’d probably start talking about me as that smelly guy from bay 42, and then they’d be laughing at me all the time behind my back, and then they’d— My depressive spiral was interrupted when my disgusting sweaty self bumped into my boss. Shit. A greasy kind of guy, he worked as a supervisor on bays 30-45 and always wore a suit just a little too big on him. He wasn’t really fond of me: I could barely mutter a word and he considered that disrespectful and rude, even though I can tell you for a fact he didn’t know my name.

“Ech, is this sweat? That’s disgusting!”

Everyone in the hall was now watching us in complete silence. I tried to respond but no words could leave my mouth.

“Well, are you going to apologize for ruining my suit and making me smell like crap!?”

All I wanted was for this to be over. I just wanted to take a shower.

“I-I’m S-S-S-S—” “Are you mocking me, retard? I am your boss, and you will apologize to me right now!”

My face got hot. He called me a retard, and I was not going to let that slide. Both sides of my mind kicked back on. One immediately advised me to beat the living shit out of him. The other reminded me that I’d lose my job and probably get arrested if I did that. It instead advised me to get an apology out just to end the altercation. As I tried to sort through the mess of thoughts, my boss continued his tantrum.

“Don’t just stand there like an idiot.”

He was getting closer as he yelled. He knew he had all the power here. “Look me in the eye and apologize!”

Silence fell for only a second as he waited for my response.

“Are you listening, or are you deaf and mute?”

He gave me a light shove, like a bully back on Earth trying to get me to fight back. Half my mind was eating it up. Why not fight back? He started it, and there were witnesses. I’d be able to get off scot free!

But he was also my supervisor, and these were the kind of situations people lost jobs and got sent back to Earth for. Pushing him would be a one-way trip to unemployment, claustrophobia, and depression. But he called me a retard; I couldn’t let that slide!

Maybe I could let it slide if it meant solid pay, benefits, and opportunities to advance.

While I was dealing with the fireworks under my scalp, my boss wasn’t pleased with my silence.

“You retarded piece of shit! If you don’t apologize right now, you’re fired!” With that he gave me a more forceful shove, and I staggered back. I had to fight back. You couldn’t survive with assholes like this pushing you around. However, neither could you survive without money or food or a place to live. He pushed me once more, this time with real force, knocking me to the ground.

My head was pounding. Did I hit it in the fall? It seemed to silence the more reasonable half of my brain. All I could feel was the unrelenting urge to knock this greasy wad into the next hangar. I stood up quickly, using the force from my knees to propel my open hand into my boss’s newly sweaty chest. As I made contact, I heard a sickening SNAP and watched my boss fly about ten meters down the hallway, bounce like a flat rock on water, and finally come to a stop, leaving a man-sized dent in the opposite wall. I’d forgotten I was still wearing my strength suit. I ran the other way.

I made it back into the bay without any resistance. I guess the people in the hallway didn’t want to end up like my boss. The next shift hadn’t arrived yet, so I pushed

the bay doors shut and set a few large crates up against them to keep them that way.

By my estimates, I had only about fifteen minutes before the whole station’s security would be breaking down the bay doors, so I did what any sane human person would do.

I started freaking out. I was going to rot in an Earth prison for the rest of my life and there was no way around it. Or was there? I was in a shipping area after all, and I could be on Kepler in the next few minutes if I had to be. The quantum engines were still warm enough to zap another load down to the surface... What was I thinking!? Shipping cargo isn’t like shipping people. For all I knew, I could materialize 100 feet in the Kepler air, or get completely vaporized or something. Was it worth the risk?

If I didn’t go, I’d definitely get arrested; my boss was richer and more powerful than

sketch by Nick Dalaviras

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me, and all anyone saw was me shoving him into the next dimension. I wasn’t going to fare well in court. Kepler was the way. But what if the feds followed me all the way there? After all, I was now an unstable assailant on the world’s most prized possession. That might warrant some permanent transfers. And was Kepler even as safe as a jail cell? For all I knew, as soon as I touched down, I could get shot by a gang leader, or stabbed by an addict, and then bleed out

painting by Liam John

for my first and last moments on the planet. And that’s assuming I even made it to the surface! Then again, I didn’t have much of a choice. I could hear the faint sound of alarms behind the thick metal doors. Oh shit. The alarms meant they’d be shutting off the power to the bays soon. Complete lockdown. I was running out of time.

I rushed onto the platform, hoping there would be another blast before the power went out. The second I stepped on I felt a splitting pain in my head. It felt like fire was being poured through my body from the top down. Suddenly I felt like

going to Kepler was the worst decision I could ever make. I began walking towards the door. Maybe they’d be more merciful if I came out with my hands up. I’d only made it a single step off the platform when I felt the force of a cannon firing into my stomach. My mind shifted once again. How could I live my life in a cage when freedom was only steps away? I turned back and the fire returned, the pain engulfing my skin this time. I screamed at the burning sensation, but my mind still forced me to think.

How could I risk my life on unknown odds to get to some dangerous backwater? I was trapped. Either way I went, I felt extreme pain, and if I stood still the two sides of my mind tore each other apart. But what more could I do? The pain came back, this time exclusively in my head but stronger than anything I’d ever felt. If there was a God, he had my skull between his fingers and was squeezing like it was a grape. My body couldn’t take it anymore. I fell back, my vision failing, feeling nothing as I hit the floor of the platform. I tasted vomit in my mouth and I could smell the blood running out of my nose. I heard muffled shouts from beyond the door, and just as I thought I was losing consciousness, escaping the burning, the pounding, the tearing, and the crushing, it all got worse. The sides of my mind weren’t even sending ideas anymore, just pure, white-hot energy, directed at the other half. This was it. The bombs were falling. They were killing each other and bringing me down in the process. My mind was devolving into a hell worse than any Kepler, Earth, Belt, or anywhere in the universe. A final blast of pain shot through my spastic body, and I saw a light appear directly above. I could hear the blast of the quantum engines as I lost consciousness.

Ceiling Joe Mantych A man can See into himself the most When he is Staring at a Ceiling, Under the heavy, Inert blankets at night, A hard pillow Stuck under his Skull.

He can’t really see the Ceiling, Can’t make out the Water stains or Paint marks or Light fixtures.

And he can’t really Make out Himself either, Not until he Sifts through the

Drowning perfume and Barreling deadlines and Dying dogs and Dying poems and Dying passions and Praying to an empty wall and Swatting at whining flies and Watching pooling blood and What shirt to wear and Oh God what shirt should I wear?

But as the Streetlights Burn outside and Sirens wail Somewhere In the City, He Engulfs His being.

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Dreams of the Ardennes, 1944 Matt Friedrichs I gaze at the stars twirling in the sky; The woods murmur gently, whispering tales; Soft moonlight sings a quiet lullaby; Lady Snow lies, all signs of man she veils.

Alas, the free dream flees with my dismay; To a prisoner of Mars I return.

Trees shroud the moon as fear my heart betrays, My strength and spirit, the somber cold spurns.

Day surges from shells that ring through the night, Like fireworks they paint the sky bright hues; Dark’s battered frame stands aflame with radiant light; They bend and twirl to the world, Death’s true muse.

I make one last wish looking to the stars: If I’m to see Him, make the road not far.

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painting by John Burke

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photograph by Sulli Wallisch

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photograph by Sulli Wallisch

The Duality of Man Matt Dorsey

C

ain walked into the basement, and Abel knew his time was up. It seemed to Abel as if he had spent an eternity running away from this moment, and now it had come. His life was over, at this man’s hands.

He mustered as much courage as he could before looking into the face of his usurper,

the destroyer of his very livelihood. Cain’s sneer was twisted, even monstrous, in the basement’s shadows.

Cain relished the moment, letting Abel squirm for a moment under his gaze before he pronounced the fateful sentence.

“Mom says it’s my turn on the Xbox.”

Completely Human Matthew Quinlan “

W

ho the hell do you think you are?”

Hot blood was gushing from Gus’s nose. The metallic taste invaded his mouth as the blood flowed down his face and chin. Ringing. Ringing filled his head. Gus’s opponent, a dark-haired junior from North Hills Prep, had just sent a strong jab right into Gus’s nose, which was now spewing the blood he was frantically trying to wipe off his face. Everything slowed down for a minute.

Gus leaned back in an effort to keep his balance, wobbling as if he were on the deck of some ship being tossed about by the waves.

His breathing was heavy, quick gasps in and out, and his arms were burning from trying to hold a decent fighting stance. His 16-year-old body was slumped as he struggled to stand upright. A sharp pain went through his stomach, the force of the fist traveling through his gut. Gus doubled over, his insides churning as if he had just taken a kick to the crotch.

Falling on the ground, Gus curled up to protect his aching stomach and bleeding nose.

“C’mon, you bitch! Get the hell up!” said the junior, standing over him and yelling. Gus started to cry, the pain too much for him to handle. Behind the tears, Gus saw a tall but meaty figure push the junior out of the way and yell over the noise of the crowd.

“Leave him the hell alone!” It took a second for Gus to recognize the voice, but by the time he did, he was already being pushed up the stairs of the basement.

“What the hell were you doing, Gus?!?” said the big kid, slamming the front door as they left the house where the party, and ultimately the fight, had gone down.

“I had it under control, Mike. I just got knocked down,” said Gus, calm but wary of his big brother’s rage.

“Gus, you were getting the shit kicked out of you! Is that under control?” said Mike.

G

us had been born into an active Irish Catholic family in the suburbs of Indianapolis. His parents emphasized the importance of family and staying close to one another. Gus was born two years after Mike, so growing up, the boys were absolutely inseparable. When they played sports with the neighborhood kids, Mike would always pick Gus to be on his team in the middle of the selection to avoid having him picked last. Gus’s physique made it obvious that he should have been picked last, but Mike didn’t want his brother to suffer the embarrassment and shame of obvious rejection.

Gus idolized Mike too, so if he didn’t pick him, Gus would be crushed.

As the boys grew up, Mike continued to grow and succeed as an athlete, and he spent more time with his buddies from the Hornets, his football club, leaving Gus under four and a half feet tall and with almost no friends. Occasionally Mike would invite Gus along to spend time with him and his friends, but even when that happened, nobody said a word to him as he sat silently on a couch in one of the kids’ basements, watching them play Halo on the Xbox.

The first day of freshman year came and Gus was in a cold sweat. The noisy and cramped hallways of Aquinas High were nothing like what Gus had experienced at St.

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Perpetua, his parish elementary school. Everyone yelled obnoxiously, whether it was a guy trying to slip in a quick joke to his buddy, or a ditzy girl trying to flirt with one of those big, important student-athletes. Gus never understood that dynamic.

“They’ve got no personality,” he said to his mother one time. “They just run around, collide with one another, and go lift weights every day.”

“Maybe it’s because that’s all that those girls want from a guy,” said his mother. “I remember one of my friends who was headover-heels for our school’s point guard. Even when he treated her like garbage, she still stuck with him.”

“But why doesn’t Mike have girls chasing him around like that? He’s got all of that, and he’s a nice guy who actually cares about other people!”

“Your brother doesn’t need a girlfriend in his life,” said his mother. “Just like you don’t either.”

Even as he went on into sophomore year, Gus still didn’t understand why it was that all of the cute girls chased the jocks. He was still nothing like Mike, standing at only 5’6” and weighing just under 120 pounds. Mike was then a senior at Aquinas, started at running back for the football team in the fall, and ran the 800-meter relay for track in the spring.

Everyone loved him, even people who went to other high schools, but everybody expected Gus to be just like him. Gus resented that.

T

he twenty-five-minute drive home was silent, as Mike clenched the steering wheel of the Focus, turning his knuckles white. Gus sat back in his seat, looking out the window at the passing light posts, waiting at any moment for Mike to launch into his lecture, but there was only silence.

“Why did I decide to swing at that junior?” Gus thought to himself. He wasn’t totally sure. Maybe because the asshole had started making fun of Mike. He also could

photograph by Sulli Wallisch

have been talking about some of the girls at the party, looking at only their bodies and not their personalities. Nothing pissed Gus off more than when a guy did that.

A sharp pain interrupted Gus’s thoughts.

That black flash and ringing actually was a concussion then, and not just him getting his bell rung. He wouldn’t go to the school nurse and get it checked out; too many questions would be asked. He’d just sneak a few Advil before he went to bed so that his mother wouldn’t ask either.

When the pain receded, a small voice came from the back of Gus’s mind. Maybe he hadn’t been defending his brother or standing up for the girls. Maybe it was that he needed to prove himself—prove himself to be bigger than his stature. He needed to find a way out of his brother’s shadow, a way to cope with everyone saying he didn’t live up to Mike. He couldn’t deal with the abuse he received for being small, or struggling a little more in school, or not being as attractive, so he lashed out if someone even brought it up to him.

But no, it couldn’t possibly have been that. He must have fought because he had a good reason. That bastard deserved what he got. Nobody made fun of his brother or objectified women and got away with it.

O

nce the boys got home, Gus went straight upstairs, sneaking past his mother who sat reading in the living room, waiting for them to return. He went into the bathroom and examined his beat-up face in the mirror. His nose was not broken, but there was plenty of dried blood all over it, and he could tell it was damaged. There was a solid cut above his left eyebrow that would take a while to close, but until it did, he’d just play it off that he had tripped on a curb and hit his face on the pavement. The massive black eye would be a little more difficult to explain. As he turned on the show-

er, he took off his shirt and counted at least five significant bruises around his ribs, and another one on his stomach. That junior could punch—that was for sure.

He let the warm water of the shower wash over him and draw the pain from away his muscles. He made sure to use the green bar of Irish Spring soap to wash away the blood and the cuts. Once Gus dried off and went back into his room, he saw his phone light up with a text. He checked who it was from and saw the name: Mom. “Come down here please.”

Gus put on some shorts and a clean tshirt and went down the hardwood steps into the kitchen. Mike had gone upstairs while Gus was in the shower, and Gus’s mother was sitting at the head of the kitchen table.

“Please sit down, Gus,” said his mother.

“Okay,” said Gus, slightly confused. It almost reminded him of when his dad called him down to the same spot to give him “The Talk” when he was in fifth grade.

“How’d your evening go?”

“Um, it was great, Mom. Really nice to get out of the house for a little bit and be with Mike.”

“That’s good.”

For a moment there was silence, as if Gus’s mom was thinking about what she was going to say next. The problem was Gus had no idea what she was going to say. It was very rare that she ever called him down to ask him about his nights out. It was also strange that she hadn’t asked him about the cuts and bruises.

“What happened while you were out, Gus?” “Well, we went to Pat’s house for a party—” “Was there alcohol there?” Gus’s mother cut him off unusually quickly and aggressively, which Gus wasn’t accustomed to having her do. He was slightly nervous but kept his composure.

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“No, of course not.”

“Okay. I’m sorry, what else happened?”

“So we got to Pat’s and we just hung out there. Jess and some of her friends came too, so Mike and I were with them for the most part.”

“And what happened to your face?”

“Oh, nothing, just an accident,” said Gus. “I tripped on a curb and face planted right into the sidewalk.”

“Is that really how it happened?” asked his mother, obviously expecting a different answer.

“Yes, that’s what happened,” said Gus. He couldn’t outright lie to his mother, but he also couldn’t tell her the truth. As he was growing up as a kid, it was emphasized in their home that you should never get into a fight with somebody, even if that person completely deserved it. It would break her heart if she found out that he had gotten into a fight.

“Gus, tell me the truth.”

“That is the truth.”

“Damnit, Gus! Tell me the truth!” Tears welled up in her eyes, tears of anger. “Tell me what happened tonight!”

He didn’t know what to do. He couldn’t tell her, but she already knew. “I got into a fight with a guy from North Hills. But I guess Mike already told you.”

Anger festered inside of Gus. Who was Mike to snitch to their mother?

He was the perfect child, that’s who he was. He was the son whom his parents wished Gus would be more like. He was the one who had everything worked out in high school, and who always had an answer for every question that was asked. He was the one who, when he walked through the hallways, everyone treated like a god, the most perfect human being ever created: attractive, intelligent, athletic, proud, and confident: all things that Gus was unable to measure up to.

“Gus, I just don’t understand why you’d

want to do that,” said his mother, almost pleadingly. “Why would you hurt someone else like that? Your father and I raised you to be better than that.”

“I don’t know, Mom,” said Gus. He struggled to stay calm. The more his mother questioned him, the angrier he got. “I lost control. He kept saying things to me, and I couldn’t take it anymore.”

“That’s bullshit,” said his mother. That sudden cursing took Gus by surprise, because of his mother’s piety and conservative nature. “Go to your room. Now. You don’t have a social life for the foreseeable future.”

Gus was roiling in rage. He stormed up the steps but paused at Mike’s bedroom. The light was on, but he heard no noise behind the door. Should he barge in? Start screaming his head off at Mike for what he had to go through now? Standing squarely in front of the door, Gus heard that little voice come back, and he lingered there for a little bit. After he cooled off, he went back into his room and climbed into his bed. After positioning himself so that the bruises on his chest and stomach wouldn’t hurt as much, he passed out.

G

us went to school the following Monday with three shades of violet and a tint of yellow underneath his left eye and the cut on his eyebrow still not completely closed. In every class Gus sat in, he heard rasping whispers behind him, but he couldn’t make out the words. Gus knew that the word had gotten out that he fought a junior from North Hills, but he didn’t care.

He was just trying to get through the week.

After school, Gus walked down to the parking lot, waiting to catch a ride home with Pat while Mike was at track practice.

Pat was one of Mike’s buddies who played football with him at Aquinas, and before high school, with the Hornets. They were best friends and often considered themselves

twin brothers. Pat was also the older brother that Gus wished he had.

“Heya, Gus,” said Pat, unlocking the car as he walked towards it.

“Oh, hey, Pat,” said Gus, throwing his backpack in the back seat and climbing into the front seat.

“I was honestly surprised that you could go that long. We all knew you were gonna get the crap kicked out of you, but it was just a matter of how much you could take.”

“Thanks, I guess,” said Gus, completely unsure of how to even respond to a comment like that.

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photograph by Sulli Wallisch

“I saw you on Friday night,” said Pat, rather flatly.

“Yeah?” said Gus, preparing to hear another lecture.

“You can take a freaking hit, that’s for damn sure.” Pat started the car and started to pull out of the school parking lot.

Gus was taken aback. He was pretty sure that that was a slight tone of admiration that he had heard in Pat’s voice, but he couldn’t be sure.

“You weren’t expecting me to say that, were you?”

“I honestly thought you were gonna lay into me like Mike. He actually didn’t this time, though. Guess he’s finally given up on me,” said Gus with a smug sense of satisfaction.

“Oh, he was so pissed with you,” said Pat. “He was texting me after it happened pretty much the whole night.” Pat laughed as he said this, which was even more confusing.

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Mike almost never forgot or moved on from something that made him that mad.

“Then why wouldn’t he say anything to me about it? He was completely silent.”

“He has his own reasons.”

“That’s not vague at all,” said Gus very sarcastically.

“It’s really none of your business, Gussy.

Plus, he’d probably kill me if I told you,” said Pat, completely dismissing Gus. Nobody had called him Gussy since he was in third grade, but even then, it was on the same level as being called a “pre-school toy.”

“Oh, c’mon Pat,” said Gus. “There’s no way he’d find out, and even if he did, I’d just say that I made you tell me.”

“There’s literally nothing you can make me do, Gus.” “I know, but we can just make it seem like I can.”

They had just pulled into the driveway of Gus’s house. His mother’s Equinox was not parked out front, so she must have gone out to run errands or pick up the groceries.

“There’re a lot of things you don’t know about your brother, Gus.” Pat’s tone had turned suddenly somber.

“Well, I know he’s Mr. Perfect,” said Gus resentfully, “and that’s pretty much all that matters to anyone who meets him.”

“You’re so wrong, Gus.” “On which part?”

“Mike is most definitely not perfect,” said Pat. “He’s struggled and made a lot of mistakes.”

“Like what? And why doesn’t anybody know about them? If there was any way he screwed up, everyone would know about it.”

Gus was getting mad with Pat now.

“Gus, c’mon now—” “No! Tell me, Pat! If you think that you know my brother better than I know him, and that he isn’t who everyone says he is, tell me!” Gus surprised himself with the tone that he had taken. He never went out on the

attack like that. Something had switched on inside him.

Pat paused for a second, thinking about what he was going to say to Gus. “Mike has made plenty of mistakes. You just never knew about them because you were too young,” said Pat. “You never heard about how popular he was when you were in middle school, did you?”

“No, not really,” said Gus. “But that’s because we didn’t know anything about high schoolers.”

“No, Gus, it’s because Mike was a nobody and a dumbass,” said Pat. “You never even noticed when he’d get home past one in the morning on the weekends, did you?”

“What?”

“Exactly,” said Pat. “I can’t even tell you how many times I had to drive Mike home after he had gotten shit-faced. He was trying to fit in with the other football guys because that’s what they all did. Get drunk, get high, and try to get laid.”

Gus didn’t really know what to say, so he just kept listening to Pat. “There was this one time when I pretty much had to drag him out of the house and back home,” said Pat, reminiscing. “We were at one of the captain’s houses, and his parents were out of town, so obviously there was booze there. So as soon as Mike saw it, he started downing beers.

“I was by his side pretty much the whole time, but once he put down at least six beers and two shots in those first two hours, he started walking around a little more and I lost track of him. You also have to keep in mind he was a little more reckless back then too, so if I wasn’t right by him, I never knew what he might do. So I lose him, right? But after a few minutes I finally spotted him.

“He was sitting in a circle with these seniors on the team and they were passing around a blunt, and it was gettin’ to be Mike’s turn to hit it, so naturally my brain kicked

into high gear. I ran over to him, looked him right in the eyes, and simply said, ‘No. We’re going home.’ The guys got all upset because I was messing with their fun and ‘bonding’, but I just started to lead Mike out to the car.

He could barely walk, man. I guess he drank some more while he wasn’t by me, but he passed out as soon we started driving. Once I pulled into your driveway, I woke him up and explained to him that I had brought him home. I took him inside and made sure he was in bed so that he wouldn’t throw up and choke, and left.

“The next morning I got a text from him that said ‘I f ’d up, Pat.’ I knew something was wrong from the get-go because I don’t think I had ever heard Mike use the f-bomb. This wasn’t his usual hangover text.

I guess something kicked in, but Mike knew that when he held that blunt in his hand, he’d gone into a new territory that he never wanted to explore. The good thing is that from that point forward he went completely clean.

So if you thought Mike never struggled and made mistakes, I hope you now know how wrong you are.”

T

he door slammed behind him as Gus went into his house. His parents weren’t home from work yet, so he went right up into his room. He sat on the edge of his bed, thinking.

He put his headphones in and opened Spotify on his phone. He shuffled one of his playlists, called “Moody af,” and sat there listening to Jon Bellion.

“I’m just so sick of being, I’m just so sick of being human, yeah yeah, I’m just so sick of being, I’m just so sick of being…”

The door slammed and there were heavy

footsteps on the steps. Gus rushed out of his room and saw Mike standing right there.

The silence between them was incredibly awkward.

“Mike,” said Gus, “I’m so damn sorry.”

“I heard Pat told you?” Mike chuckled when he said that, which was unexpected.

“Yeah, he did.”

“Ha, that’s fine,” said Mike. “You were gonna find out about it anyways at some point, and it may as well have been him telling you. I think I would have shaded it a little more in my favor.”

“I never knew.”

“You know that was on purpose.” Mike actually laughed at this.

“And you don’t care if people know?” said Gus, even more confused than before.

“When you do something like that, you get to a certain point where enough people know that eventually everyone knows, and you just need to not care what they think of you,” said Mike. “I just had to be able to move on and grow from that, and Pat was there to help me out a lot, especially to stop drinking.”

There was another awkward silence as Gus thought about what he would say next.

“I just really struggled with thinking that you were always the perfect guy, and I didn’t know how to deal with not being like you,” said Gus. “I’m still a work in progress,” said Mike, chuckling a little bit, “and I’ll be that way till the day I die, but know that no matter what happens, just holler and I’ll be there waiting for you.”

“Thanks, buddy,” said Gus. “Of course, man,” he said, smiling and giving Gus a big bear hug. Mike meant it.

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Wasted away in the dark of night pursued by swine in city lights.

That Word Philip Hiblovic

My birth-given shadow won’t suffice.

My color is the subject of every heist.

Or so they say‌ But my brothers know the truth.

Nowhere to run on the wrong side of town.

For fun, they scour up and down.

From head to toe, they make me pay for the word their grandfathers used to say.

Silence met with lethal blow.

Did the sheriff shoot me like he shot my foe?

No. But that slur had me paralyzed.

That Word is murder coming from you.

My brother can say it because he knows the truth.

photograph by Andrew Wilson

But you have no right to utter That Word.

You dismiss our lives when you utter That Word.

New Leaf Noah Hayes

A

long time ago in a far-away land lived a creature hated by mankind. That creature had spent its life under threat of man’s new revolutionary light source: fire.

The creature’s name was Svarthol—which means “black hole” in Icelandic—and he was a creature of pure darkness. His skin was black as the night sky and was engulfed in dark obsidian hairs all around. His beastly, six-foot-eight body had massive hands, ears, and feet. Svarthol was only built like a man: everything else about him was purely primal and bestial.

With sharp, bared teeth, he scrambled through the forest in fear as hunters trailed him angrily with their torches. Hopping over ponds and maneuvering through the thick, withering forest began to exhaust him, so he slowed to catch his breath and conjured a cape and cowl out of the shade from a nearby tree, climbing it to try and hide. The hunters stopped in search of him, waving their torches wildly in the air and speaking a language unknown to him. Svarthol held his breath so that he wouldn’t make a sound.

There was a moment of silence as the hunters searched for Svarthol. As minutes slowly passed, Svarthol’s huge ear twitched as it heard one of the hunters shout for joy at the sight of a bird fallen to the ground and unable to fly away. The other hunters gathered around it and began to mock it. Svarthol thought about using this as his chance to run, but he couldn’t remove his eyes from the bird. His vantablack heart wouldn’t let him run. He had to help.

Taking a deep sigh, he growled at the humans before taking off, catching their attention. The distraction caused them to ignore the bird and chase after him. However, Svarthol then realized the bird probably was going to be eaten by another creature anyways, so his sacrifice was for nothing. He was about to curse his foolishness when he felt a sharp pain hit his shoulder, causing him to fall from the trees and hit the ground hard.

He couldn’t move his body anymore: he was done. Now the man’s fire would soon come to rip him apart.

Thoughts of his inevitable demise plagued his mind until, out of nowhere, the branches around him began to cover his body, wrapping him tightly into a hidden cocoon.

Svarthol could only hear the footsteps of the hunters as they ran past him and evacuated the area. There was now only an eerie silence as Svarthol produced quick, rapid breaths.

The silence stayed for a couple more minutes but was broken by a sweet, delicate voice saying “Sleep: you’re safe.” Svarthol breathed a tired sigh before closing his eyes and blacking out.

S

varthol awoke the next day lying on his side. The ground under him was bumpy and felt old and thick beneath him. Rolling to his back, he bared his teeth in pain and grabbed his shoulder, remembering what had happened to him the previous day before something…else happened. He looked around him to see where he was. He hissed a small curse once he noticed a pair of big

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green eyes looking down at him curiously.

He scooted away from the thing before getting a closer look at it. His brow instantly furrowed as it studied the petite girl sitting in the hole of the dormant tree in front of him. She had pale green skin and big pointy ears like his. Her hair resembled a bunch of conjoined brown leaves above a long, palegreen nose a tint redder than the rest of her face.

She was uncannily cute, but the way she stared at him creeped him out.

“What?!” he growled.

The girl, her lips the color of bark, did nothing but stare at him before speaking.

“Why did you risk your life for that bird?” she asked.

“Reasons. Who are you?” he said with a rude tone.

The girl gave a short sigh before climbing out of the tree and onto a branch, which from there, lowered her close to him.

“I saved your life and removed the arrow from your arm. You answer me first. Why did you save the bird?”

Svarthol stayed quiet as he looked into her green, probing eyes with his own purple ones, only speaking after sitting up to give her a probing look of his own.

“Because I hate seeing things being mocked or harmed by humans,” he said with a straight face, only to have hers soften as she gave him a look of sympathy. “Who are you?” he then asked.

“Sycamore,” she said. “I am the liaison of the creatures of the earth and the protector of the living nature around it. And you?”

“Svarthol, the damned creature birthed from darkness,” he said.

“Svarthol….” she said to herself. “Why were the humans hunting you?” she asked.

“Because they fear the dark, and ever since they created fire I’ve been its main target,” he spat. “Those damn bastards just love nothing more than to destroy every little

thing different than them. Doesn’t matter if that creature had a family or….” His angry words trailed off as his anger turned into a sorrow that burned in his eyes.

“Did you have one?”

Svarthol stayed quiet as he crossed his arms and looked away from her.

Sycamore’s big eyes gave a look of sadness as she controlled a branch to pat him on the shoulder. Svarthol jolted from the branch and bared his teeth at it with a growl. Sycamore widened her eyes at his reaction while Svarthol looked upon her with confusion.

“Was that on purpose?” he asked.

She nodded.

“You looked sad,” she said innocently.

“Don’t do that” he said sternly.

“I’m sorry, I just wanted to comfort you,” she said gently with her small hands up in surrender.

Her care for him touched his heart.

“Well...thanks, but I’m not looking for comfort,” he said, scooting away from the branch. “If you really want to help, killing off the human race will make me the happiest beast alive,” he then whispered with rancor.

Those words creased Sycamore’s face.

His seriousness stunned her.

“All of them?” she asked.

He nodded, “Yes, all of them. I mean, the whole idea—the very concept of humanity—is evil. They’re nothing but a destructive, scary plague on earth.”

“I bet they feel the same way about the dark. That’s why they created fire,” she said softly, yet held a flinty stare towards him.

Svarthol froze. Never had he thought about it in that way. The anger from his eyes slowly dissipated as he took a deep breath.

Sycamore noticed this and wanted to change the conversation to a lighter subject.

“Follow me,” she said as she touched the branch she was sitting on, forming a leafy wall behind her.

Svarthol raised an eyebrow at her be-

fore watching her turn and walk through the wall. Curious yet hesitant, Svarthol followed her until he was no longer in the forest but rather at the edge of a farm. In the yellow fields he saw children running around with their father; they were playing, laughing, and simply enjoying life. When he turned to look at Sycamore, he saw that her face was at peace, watching the little kids frolicking with their father underneath the setting sun.

She looked…pretty.

“Watch this,” she said, looking at him and then the family, setting her hand on the cold earth to control the plants beneath her.

At first there was nothing, but then a small flower sprouted and shined a bright light around the family, catching their attention immediately. They gathered around and smiled at each other and the flower as joy filled their eyes. Svarthol couldn’t help but smile at the family, enjoying how the sight of them warmed his soul.

“You see, don’t let a few bad apples ruin how you look at the bunch.”

Svarthol smiled as he glanced from the family and at the ground they sat on.

photograph by Liam John

“It’s hard when even the good apples go bad around you,” he said sadly, “but it’s probably because I’m just too ugly.”

“There’s nothing wrong with you,” she said as she looked at him. Svarthol laughed before turning toward her.

“Have you not seen these ears, girl?” he said as he pointed to them.

Sycamore smiled before taking a deep breath and closing her eyes. Svarthol raised an eyebrow at her before watching her pointy ears wiggle from side to side. As they wiggled, they produced a light twinkling sound that made him laugh again. Opening her eyes, she then gave Svarthol a playfully offended look.

“So big, scary Svarthol does know how to laugh” she said playfully.

“That was cute,” he responded.

She blushed at him before scrunching up her face in pain.

“Sycamore?” Svarthol asked.

She cursed before lying on the ground.

“They’re hurting me!” she screamed.

“Who? How?” Svarthol panicked as he grabbed her shoulder.

She screamed again.

“They’re… cutting them down… the living trees!”she said.

“Where! Why?” “Over there… north of here. But I can’t get to them in time. I’m too weak. Help me please!” she begged, writhing in pain.

Svarthol growled from deep within his throat before standing up. Before he could take off, he felt her grab his foot.

“Svarthol!”

He looked down at her.

“Don’t… hurt them,” she begged before wincing again.

Svarthol made another growl before getting on all fours and scuttling through the forest as fast as he could. Dodging sticks and branches similar to the ones he had dodged the previous day.

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nce Svarthol heard the sound of axes hitting wood, he stopped and began to crouch around the area. Slowly peeking through the dead leaves that were in front of him, he cursed under his breath, realizing that he was in the presence of the same people who had chased him the day before.

Rage filled his eyes: he thought of killing them and then using their blood to water the Earth. As thoughts of their demise fogged his mind, darkness began to leave his body and permeate the area around them. His claws extended from his fingertips and he bared his teeth before approaching the man who was now cowering in terror. The whole area around them was pitch black. Nobody could see anything.

As the man began to freeze, he felt Svarthol’s breath against his neck and turned around to face him, only to see his glowing purple eyes swirling like a black hole. In that instant, Svarthol roared at the man with a mighty and terrifying roar that caused them to cry and cower in fear.

He was about to devour him whole until he looked into the man’s eyes and remembered the loving father he had seen earlier that day. He imagined both the father and his kids who cared for him dearly. Svarthol thought about this man’s children—if he had any and what they would do without him.

Those thoughts slowly began to soften Svathol’s heart as he took a deep breath and grabbed the man by the collar of his shirt.

“Leave the living trees alone!” he demanded in a deep, threatening voice.

The man understood him and nodded.

Svarthol made a curt growl before dropping him and letting him and his group flee from the forest, never to touch a living tree again. They simply waited for them to die and then cut them apart.

U

pon returning to the spot where he left Sycamore, Svarthol found her gone.

His heart sank as he called her name and heard no response. She had simply vanished.

Continuing to search to no avail, he stepped on a small, spiky brown ball that had a leaf attached to it. He picked it up and saw the leaf had the words Thank You etched in it.

But instead of making him feel good, it left him feeling empty in his heart. He wished to see his green friend once more.

A

s the months passed on, Svarthol continued to walk around the forest to give aid to the trees and creatures inside of it. Just as Sycamore had done for him, he would also do for them. One day, though, he took a little nap by a pond and enjoyed the sound of the birds chirping and the world around them that was gaining color again.

Wiggling his ears, he suddenly felt something pop him on the head.

He opened his eyes and looked at the object, which turned out to be a fig. Scratching his head, he grabbed it to see the words Look Up! written on its surface.

He did what it said and a big smile brushed across his face, and once he saw Sycamore looking down on him with adoration, his heart began to beat with joy at the sight of her. The redness in her nose was gone.

Instead, it was a vibrant, light green like the rest of her skin. Her leafy hair was no longer brown but a strong green.

Looking down at Svarthol for the first time that spring, she first puckered her lips before giving him a big smile and saying, “Hello, darkness, my old friend…”

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sketch by Jackson DuCharme

The Art of Coffee Liam John

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A

nother Friday alone at home. I had nothing to do except homework or sleep. I began my Advanced Algebra II homework when I decided not to stoop to the nerd level. My siblings were at college and mother in Arkansas. My friends partied together. My boredom mushroomed, so I let coffee fill my night with experimentation and tasting.

Three days earlier, I had purchased two new bags of coffee: one Ethiopian, one Kenyan. To probe for the perfect cup, I started with the Ethiopian. First, I changed the temperature of my water from 195° to 180° to 185°. Then, once I found the best water temperature, I moved on to finding the best grind coarseness. Very coarse was my first stop, as for a French press. I nearly barfed as the smoky nodes overpowered the jasmine.

Next, extremely fine—mocking the Turkish coffee grind. It tasted as acidic as a lime. Finally, I tried the medium grind. Now, cherries and lemongrass filled my mouth, transporting my taste buds to the cherry orchards in Spain. I continued to make my last two cups of the Ethiopian comparing the filters, while listening to the musical Come From Away trying to make those blends my own.

Now onto the Kenyan. I ground my beans roasted by Olympia, my favorite roaster, with a medium coarse grind size, while my water heated to 185°. Twenty-four grams the scale read, as I measured the ground coffee beans. Next, I pursued my bloom for 30 seconds, while meditating about how I became a seventeen-year-old boy making coffee on a Friday night.

My whole life, I have been an overachiever. Since sixth grade, I have crammed my schedule to a point where I have an hour of free time a week, usually finding a co-curricular to fill its void. Never do I stop. Never did I have something interesting enough to call it “Liam time,” as a mentor of mine once proposed. A period to relax. For some, television or video games enhance this time, but I had nothing of the sort.

Second semester freshman year, I launched into work at a gelateria called Gelato Di Riso, where they serve gelato and espresso drinks. I pulled shots of espresso.

Steamed milk. Attempted to create a rosetta on lattes. To me, coffee tasted disgusting. It was astringent. I wondered to myself, “Why would anyone even like this stuff ?” I convinced myself making coffee was a way to pay for college. Those shots of espresso meant nothing more than a $2 tip in my tip jar labeled “Thanks A Latte!” I continued my job for another year without drinking a shot or a cup of the Gelato Di Riso coffee blend and loathed people who enjoyed the coffees I made.

After school one day, I had to work until ten: the only way to stay up until ten was with the influence of that disgusting stuff, espresso. I had no customers that day, so I ground my beans. I took the stainless-steel tamper and pushed the recommended thirty pounds of force to cram the beans into a solid disk.

Finally, I put the portafilter with the disk in the espresso machine and let the water flow through the fine ground beans to make the three layers of the shot: the heart, the body

and the crema. Each layer looked different, as if they had their own personality. This was the first time I ever appreciated the coffee.

It was me and the espresso. I stared through the clear shot glass and witnessed art in front of my eyes. It was miraculous. The crema with its light beige pigment approaching the top of the glass. The body which looked like a Mio squeezed into a glass of water. Even the invisible heart of the espresso pleased my eyes, though it looked like a normal cup of coffee. I slurped and swallowed the drink.

Pulling that shot had a science behind it, making it beautiful. Those beans I ground had meticulous roasting, allowing them to produce almond and floral nodes to the shot.

Someone hand-picked those coffee beans before the roasting process. All of this played a role in that one-ounce shot of coffee. The process and observations made me rethink everything I took for granted with life.

My whole life, I had approached things at face value rather than researching them to the atoms. But, in pulling the shot, I realized that too much work went into a shot of espresso for a mindless slurp from a demitasse.

I stood over my precious Chemex coffee maker, an hourglass-shaped vessel, that lonesome Friday night in my empty home. I poured the 180° water in to my Kenyan beans with a bamboo filter. I did so until the scale read 384 grams, allowing me to test my ratio of water technique: 1 gram of coffee to 16 grams of water. The hourglass figure reminded me of the first time I really encountered coffee: pulling that shot of espresso in the empty Gelato Di Riso.

Suddenly, I grew depressed. Not because I was alone on a Friday night. No. It was my evolution from the simple world to the complex, from child’s point of view to the adult, from the ignorant to the knowing.

In David Foster Wallace’s speech “This is Water,” he mentioned young fish not knowing what water was when an old fish asked how the water was. Before I pulled the shot at Gelato Di Riso, I was a young fish, oblivious to the backstory of everything in my life, not just coffee. I knew things, yet I never noticed them.

I was scared knowing I could not go back to the not understanding.

After the shot, my mind was curious about how everything in life came to be. The shoes on my feet: what was their backstory?

Thereafter, I could not allow myself to use ignorance as an excuse when I wanted to avoid a situation. When I gained the breadth knowledge from the invigorating shot of espresso, I could not deny the reality it issued in me: the reality of adulthood.

My mind pestered me to think about the farmers of that Kenyan coffee I was brewing.

What type of life were they living? Were they paid enough for growing this wonderful coffee? Were they affected by the rioting that followed the presidential elections there?

My mind flooded with these thoughts causing me great stress. I did not want to think about others, but now it was my duty.

I judged eight different coffees throughout the night with examinations of the aroma and nodes. I ended up liking the medium of the Ethiopian with the bamboo filter at 185° because it had the most extravagant taste as well as the best aroma. This surprised me. All the instructions and manuals made by coffee experts said to brew coffee at 195° with a medium coarse grind. I had created my own changes and not mindlessly followed others’ lead.

Eight cups of coffee later, I felt dizzy from the coffee, and I was unfamiliar with this new person I had become. Was I on my way to adulthood?

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Freedom Falling Joe Feder

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Sometimes, I dream that I am a bird.

I do not know why this happens.

I do not know how.

I am walking down a crooked, cracked sidewalk Fleeing demands to clean my room Do my homework, be nice to my sister.

Until I am not, and I am jolted to a stop, Frozen, unable to think, incapable of words.

Panic ensues.

My heartbeat pulses into my ears, My fingers drum against my sides in anxiety.

My breath, quick and uneven, shakes.

My right eye twitches.

And then, I am a bird.

I try to scream, To let somebody know about my situation, But all that comes out is “CAW!” Please somebody help! It’s me! Joe! “CAW!” My mom opens the front door and peeks her head outside.

“Joe,” she calls. “Are you there?”

Yes! I am right here, calling your name, I shout.

“CAW!” She looks over at me, directly into my cold black eyes, My eyes, devoid of soul, look back until she closes the door.

What the hell, woman? Don’t you know your own son?

“CAW?” And so, abandoned, I take to the sky.

I leave my duties, my anger on the ground, My wings floating in the air Up and then down and then up, the power Lifting me above the cars, above the trees, Wherever I want to go.

I soar over my fellow birds, Roosting on powerlines.

Why would they remain grounded like humanity When they have the power to be carried by the wind Across nations, into eternity?

I am not bound by the legs and wheels, But by limitless air that travels forever.

I reach higher. And higher. And higher.

Until I reach into cold, violent jetstreams To be tossed and turned against my will.

How freeing it is to lose control, Not to be forced along a given path, Soaring uncontrolled, unopposed, With the power of the wind, of nature itself At my back, thrusting me forward.

The freedom of the air is all around me And inside of me.

And I let go of myself.

And then, I am a man again, Plummeting down to Earth, Wind whistling on my face.

I do not know why this happens, I do not know how.

I try to scream, To let somebody know about my situation But all that comes out is, “AHHHHHH!” Please somebody help! It’s me! Joe! “AHHHHHH!” I accept the finality of death.

I prepare myself for my end.

And then my eyes float open. I cannot move.

Petrified with fear, with relief, with happiness, with sorrow.

My breath is slow and steady in the silence of the darkness.

Adrenaline tingles my hands, toes twitching with excitement.

I have survived death once again. I have fallen from the heights of freedom, Down to the cacophony of the ground into the silence of sorrow.

Smiling, I shut my eyes once more, hoping to return to my life above the ground

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Scintilla, Ignis, Favilla Matt Dorsey

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I. Ego, remota nauta perditus insula, in tempore tempestatis tenebrarumque maculam ardentem et flagitantem luminis et spei procul videns, absum te.

II. Ego, ruens terens confirmatus desiderio, ut fur per aliquid sepulcrum inter vitam viam mortemque ambulat venans praedam, te quaero.

Omnes gazas, omnes gemmas candidas, omnes coronas regum abiciam.

III. Ego te innitor tandem.

Possum cantare, tamquam passer aquilam laetus auctus in nido iungens, contentus vivere dies terra.

Nam nullum caelum, nullum astrum, nullum sol igneus posset accedere hoc momentum, hoc aeternitatem.

Spark, Fire, Ember Matt Dorsey I. I, a ruined sailor on a solitary rock, in a season of shadow and storm, seeing a speck of light, of hope, blazing and beckoning, am separated from you.

II. I, emboldened by desire, rushing and thrashing, as a robber through some mausoleum walks the path between life and death in search of treasure, in search for you.

All other prizes, all dazzling gems, all kingly crowns, I will throw them all away.

III. I, at last, find rest in you, and can sing like a happy sparrow joining an exalted eagle in nest, content to live their days on the Earth.

For no sky, no star, no blazing sun could approach this moment, this eternity.

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A Moment to Remember Eric Schnelker

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H

er eyes continuously darted from the car back to him. Although upset he had to leave, she eagerly awaited the sweet embrace of both sleep and silence. She leaned forward slowly, and as her arms encircled him she could feel him shaking. She paused and stared at him for a moment, confused. Why’s he shivering? I get that it’s a bit colder, but he’s a big dude. I’m the one that’s always shivering. After a moment, she decided it was unimportant and resumed her hug, practically smothering him with her delicate golden hair.

Carefully she unwrapped herself from him and stared into his eyes for a moment, trying to get a glimpse into the enigmas of his thoughts before parting ways for the night. “Well, goodnight! Tonight was great, and it was so good to see you.” She smiled before turning to head back into the comfort of her house.

The boy took a step forward. She could hear him almost hyperventilating as he stuttered, “Hey, would… would you like to go to the baseball game with me next weekend?”

His eyes shot down to the gray concrete of the driveway, which glowed silver in the garage light, then back up to her.

Okay… this is… weird… why’s he so nervous?

He’s asked me to hang out plenty of times in the past few months. This, plus the shivering… this whole situation is just weird. Well, whatever. We’re weird. She turned back to him, her lustrous smile simultaneously illuminating her face

and hiding her confusion. “I’d love to go! I’ll need to consult the parentals first, though.

Text me later this week with more details?” the girl said, overjoyed that her friend wanted to spend so much time with her.

He froze. As she turned to continue to make her way back inside, the boy made his decision. “Before you go back inside—the game—it would be a date.”

I

ranian dubstep music flooded the warm, humid air of Tower Grove Park—the location of the annual Festival of Nations.

The smell of fried empanadas, General Tso’s chicken, and various other foreign foods wafted through the park, attracting thousands of passersby to enjoy the day’s festivities.

“Ooh, look at this one!” the girl said excitedly, motioning to her friend with an unrecognizable gesture. A vast array of woods, fabrics, glistening metals, and gemstones lined the Peruvian merchandise table. Her eyes were fixed upon a gleaming necklace laced with multiple onyx-colored stones that rested on a mannequin positioned near the other necklaces.

Without her even telling him which necklace it was, he walked over and carefully removed the piece of jewelry from the mannequin. “It really is beautiful. Black does go well with everything, doesn’t it?” he commented, turning the necklace over in his hands, feeling the coarse jet-black stone with

his thumb. A man behind the counter noticed the two high schoolers awkwardly hovering about the booth and waved them over.

“That necklace,” he paused, trying to adddramatic effect, “was hand-crafted by a group of indigenous people in Peru. Each one takes a great deal of time to make—almost three weeks!” he finished, showing the boy a card detailing the crafting process.

“That’s actually pretty cool.” He turned to the girl. “Not your typical piece of jewelry, huh?” he laughed.

Her eyes glistened slightly. Well, if I didn’t have to get food still, maybe I’d get it. Oh well.

Maybe some other time. “Apparently not,” she replied. Her head swiveled towards a distant stage suddenly. “Is that Irish music I hear?”

Her friend burst out laughing. “Do you have a freaking radar for these things?” he said, not trying to keep a straight face. After a moment he regained his composure.

“That necklace—is it something you could see yourself wearing? It’d look great on you.”

She contemplated the question for a moment, before replying, “Yes, I think I would wear it.” She turned and began walking towards the music, entranced by the Irish tune.

They made their way through the crowd, her friend leading the way because his size allowed him to easily cut a path through the people. Hundreds of people huddled around the countless booths, everyone attempting in vain to actually get close enough to see a majority of the items. A young couple, probably undergraduates at one of the many local colleges, perused the nearby Ecuadorian booth, arguing about whether or not to buy a hand-painted chess set. Their voices faded as the Irish music grew louder and louder.

An… Irish punk-appella group? Um… where do I…? Oh, shit! “Wait! I think I’ve actually worked with this group before!” the girl said loudly, trying to talk to the boy, who was pretty much her one-man entourage, over

the plethora of festival sounds. The previous summer she had attended an a cappella camp for an entire week and had the opportunity to work with multiple people in the industry.

She also was part of a local artists-in-training program, essentially a series of courses geared to teach high school-aged kids how to perform opera-style songs.

“No way, really? You got to meet with an Irish punk-appella group? That’s so damn cool! Where?” the boy asked, intently focused on her.

“A Cappellooza, last summer. Remember?”

“Right. I didn’t know you all got to work with that style of a cappella. I thought it was more traditional a cappella, like choral or barber shop. That’s super cool!” he said, smiling like an idiot and thinking back to when he went to see their performance at the end of the camp.

Wait, shit, I know this song! I haven’t heard this in forever. “Nope! Ooh! I like this song!” she exclaimed, starting to hum the tune of The Rocky Road to Dublin.

The group harmonized the final chords of the song, and the crowd burst into rounds of cheers. “Our next song will be an original from our first album. If you know it, feel free to sing with us. If not, you’re going to learn a bit of it before we start! Repeat after me—” As they began to teach the words of the song to the crowd, the boy whispered into her ear, “Hey, I need to go use the restroom.

I’ll be back in a few.” The girl nodded to acknowledge him and returned to focusing on learning the “repeat after me” section of the song.

S

hit, where was that booth? It wasn’t that far… the boy thought, stumbling along the path and trying to find the Peru booth.

After about five minutes minutes of wandering, he finally found it.

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The merchant looked up, saw he had returned, and greeted him with a smile.

“Back already? What did you decide on?”

“That black necklace around the mannequin. But do you have some sort of bag? My friend doesn’t know I’m getting her this, and I need a way to conceal it until a bit later,” the boy replied sheepishly. This is more awkward than I would’ve thought. I wonder if she’ll even keep it. It really is a beautiful necklace, and I’m sure she’ll like it, but… damn.

“Of course! I have a small box for it, and a bag to go over the box! Oh, and you can have the card to give her so she can remember where it was made. How does that sound?” the merchant flashed him a hopeful smile, knowing the boy was already sold on the handmade trinket.

Well, I mean, it’s not the cheapest, but she deserves something a bit nicer, so I guess I’m getting it. “I’ll take it. If you could be quick though, I have to get back to her at some point,” he said with a laugh.

W

here the hell is he? It’s been like fifteen minutes. He probably stopped to get food or something, knowing him. Oh, wait, there he is… she thought as he walked back into view.

“Took you long enough,” she muttered, hoping he wouldn’t hear.

“Yeah… sorry about that. I… uh… ran into someone I knew,” he lied, sporting a triumphant smile, elated that his ploy had gone off without a hitch.

After another two hours enjoying the festival, they returned to his car, getting lost twice on the way back. Heathers, Hamilton, and Newsies flooded the car as he drove her back home.

He pulled into her driveway. “Well, today was fun. Hopefully we can do something again like this soon,” she said, getting out.

The boy got out as well and walked her to the garage door. “I’m sure we will. We do something like every week, anyway.” He pulled the small box out of his pocket. “Oh… right. You remember how I spent fifteen

photograph by Joseph Weber

minutes ‘going to the bathroom’? Yeah, um…

I actually went to get this for you. I saw you liked it, so I thought I’d get it for you.”

Oh… shit. He actually did get it. I’m glad he got it for me, and I appreciate him doing so, but… why?

S

he stopped walking, planting her feet to take in his last words. A date? “Oh, um…

I don’t know if that would be a good idea…” she muttered, unsure of how to reply in a way that would spare her friend’s feelings.

Turning around, her unsettled stare focused on the boy’s once bright face. Her eyes darted to the gleaming mahogany-colored metal of her dad’s 1978 Mercury Cougar XR-7, which reflected light from the dim overhead garage light behind them.

“You might be right. Though, we practically do everything that people in a relationship do already, short of kissing. What would it really change?” he replied. Her fingers began to play with the tips of her hair as piles of multi-colored leaves danced around the driveway, a gust of chilly autumn wind pushing the tiny red and orange objects around.

Looking away, she took a moment to consider his words. Shit. He’s right. It wouldn’t change a thing, except in terms of titles. “Nothing.” She responded, averting her eyes from his expectant gaze. Did he have to be so damn forward? If he hadn’t said anything we’d both be far better off and at least kind of happy, she thought, exasperated by his candidness.

“Exactly! So, is it you’re concerned about losing me as a friend, or is it something… else?” he whispered. She could hear her heartbeat double as he continued the onslaught of questions—questions to which she hadn’t thought of preparing answers. The uncertainty in his voice was a bit clearer to her now.

The girl’s mind raced, jumping between possible responses, although none of them could really put into words what she wanted

to say. Did you really have to put me in this position? I answered your real question, so can’t we just go back to being just friends? You’re making this way more awkward than it should be. She recognized that at this point he was not going to get an answer he truly wanted to hear either way.

After a moment of silence, her stream of thought returned to the present. “Um... it’s the first one?” she said slowly, hoping her reply would end the conversation and things could relatively return to normal. She lifted her head so that her eyes met his, as she anxiously awaited a response.

Her small glimpse of hope for a return to normalcy was crushed in an instant. “I’ve known you for, what, two years, now? Barring something terrible happening, like you going on a murderous rampage without a valid reason,” he joked, “I wouldn’t even dream of ending our friendship, even if the romantic aspect of the relationship doesn’t last.”

The girl once again retreated to the safety of her mind. Jesus. Has it really been two years? Sure, he’s been a great friend. I already told him that I don’t see a point in having a boyfriend right now. I have too much going in my life to worry about a relationship, plus… well, I’m pretty certain I don’t think of him like he thinks of me.

She slightly nodded her head to acknowledge that there might be some validity to the statement, but remained silent.

His brown eyes shimmered slightly as they returned to her somewhat indifferent gaze. “So?” he asked, his voice returning to a whisper.

He seemed to sway with the breeze, shifting his weight from one leg to another in anticipation of her long-awaited response.

I don’t really know what he expects— His voice snapped her out of her thoughts as a silver sedan passed by her driveway, the driver completely oblivious to the amount of stress the boy standing in front of the girl had just put on her. She couldn’t meet his gaze as she

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stuttered “I… no. I... don’t want a boyfriend…

I’m sorry, but no.” She let out a defeated sigh.

Trying to maintain his composure, he managed to force out a cheerful, “Okay! I understand. Have a goodnight,” before moving quickly back to his car, the world spinning around him.

thought is caused by alcohol, not stupid feelings.

The girl just watched him stumble back to his car. He tried to open the dark bronze door, fiddling with his keys and wishing that his car had electronic locks so that he could leave faster. She took a step forward. “It’s not that I don’t want you… I don’t want anyone.

I don’t want to date right now.”

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photograph by Joseph Weber

S

tanding tall with the hope of remaining dignified, he attempted to get back to the two-door antique sports coupe. The moment of dignity was fleeting, and his feet betrayed him as he tried to do the only logical thing that he could think of—escape the situation. I knew what the answer would be as soon as she heard the question. God, my emotions are a mess right now. I can barely hear my own damn thoughts. I can only imagine that this is what being drunk must feel like, except the lack of

He broke free from his thoughts long enough to hear her, but promptly returned to his world of distress as the key finally turned.

The clicking of his lock was his saving grace.

“I don’t want anyone”… That certainly makes me feel one hundred times better. Yeah, I don’t want “anyone” either, I want you, he thought silently.

He desperately wanted to share his thoughts out loud and be unequivocal with her, but he decided against it. You’ve solidified the point that it’s not going to happen. Can’t you just let me

go so I don’t break down crying in front of you? Let me maintain what dignity I have left. He managed to say “Don’t worry, I completely get it. I have to go anyway—have a good night” before jumping into the driver’s seat, turning the key, and backing out of his friend’s driveway as quickly as he could.

He pulled out of the driveway and made a left onto the street in front of her house.

He drove a few hundred feet and stopped, shaking. Shit. I’m in absolutely no position to drive right now. Tears streamed down his face.

He could cry now. He was alone. He slumped down in the driver’s seat. I don’t get it. I guess I completely misread her. I was so sure she liked me. Maybe she does like me, but just… doesn’t want to date right now? Plenty of girls are just friends with me. Hell—most of my best friends are girls…

I never once got the just-friend vibe from her ex-

cept when she had a boyfriend and the few months after that. I just don’t get it. Apparently I don’t understand her, either. Shit. I don’t think I can stay just friends with her. Damn it. This sucks. She’s one of the only people I honestly love talking to, but…

No, I can’t do that to myself. Staying friends with her will hurt every single time I talk to, see, or hear about her. I don’t know what to do.

W

hat the actual hell? What just happened?

I mean, I knew he liked me, but… shit!

I guess I just assumed he knew I didn’t feel the same? I don’t… I mean, I don’t even know how I really feel. I just know I don’t want to date him right now. Maybe some at some point in the future, but… I just want to rewind time two hours so that this never happened. Shit… I don’t think this is something that we can easily fix. I don’t know what to do.

sketch by John Burke

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oil pastel by Nick Koenig

The Hunting Property Noah Scott

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I

knew that I was at the family hunting property when my dad’s Ford Expedition, streaked with mud so that the white finish was no longer visible, split the golden cornfields as it rolled toward the cabin. Deer would dart away in the distance, kicking their legs high into the air as they dodged the stream of headlights that pierced the black night. The hunting property was centered around the cabin, the unfinished base camp that made me throw everything to the side and hop into one of the soft chairs placed about the expansive room as I entered. The chairs were blotched with faded stains and scrawled with a little girl’s ill-advised drawings of dinosaurs and people, yet they were like clouds when I sat in them. When we would get hungry, we would set those chairs around the blue checkered folding table. It had been my grandparents’ first table, and since then, the color had faded, a thin fog over the once vibrant blue. The aroma of grandma’s chili was sure to make my mouth wet and my taste buds tingle in anticipation. Poker games were common features at the folding table, usually involving my grandpa, my dad, and his friends. They played for quarters, and each player had his own red Solo cup filled with his stash. The table was situated right in the middle of the large room that dominated most of the building. Compared to the expansive main room, the bathroom was just a closet, a shiny toilet the center-

piece of the cramped space. Turning around in the shower was always a precise dance, sliding and scooping every limb across the slippery sides to finally pop into an optimal position, as the walls tried to squeeze me in place. The two bedrooms flanked the bathroom on either side, and they were almost identical. One was for my dad, the other was for my grandpa, and each had a bed with no sheets taking up most of the room with a white shelf overlooking it. My dad’s was special, however, for two reasons.

For one, deer antlers were strewn across the top of the shelf, some chipped and cracked, some solid and branching out like trees. The other reason was that my dad’s room had my deflated football, a gift from my dad that I would throw to myself as I leaped and pretended to dive for it when dad and grandpa were talking about new plans for the cabin. Tools were overflowing from the high wooden shelves in the corner, and a broom dotted with wispy gray specks laid next to the axe lined with small chips and nicks.

I had used that axe many times. I would heave it down over and over, the sweat dripping from my face and my biceps pulsating, only to make a small spider-web crack in the seemingly unsplittable locust wood. I would then watch, my weary eyes wide with amazement, as my dad would come and split the wood without even a grunt. I would be slouched next to the outdoor fire pit, with its cracked and crumbling gray rocks that sur-

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rounded layers of ash, which whirled around in the air when a breeze blew through.

Many times we would sit under the dark green rectangular pavilion overlooking the pit, its columns stained with sap, and share nostalgic stories. Sometimes, we would call coyotes up to the pit, and they would get so close that we could see the silhouettes of their shadows as they scurried toward the tree line. The deer-hanging trees were situated between the fire pit and the cabin.

Two parallel trees, leaning like old men, were intersected by a limb that sagged from the countless deer that had been hung from it.

It was there that I worked for hours after killing my first deer, cleaning and cutting and sawing away. I would slice through the stringy white fat on the glistening hunks of meat, pulling at it with my blood-caked hands, and hearing the slight “tuh” of the fat snapping off. In the thick woods that engulfed everything and turned blazing orange in the fall, we had our deer grave, where the bones of my deer, and all the other deer killed on our property, would end up. The deer grave wasn’t a particularly defined area, as coyotes had dragged the remains, inedible to humans, in all directions. When I took a walk in those woods, I was bound to trip over a skull or rib cage. Some of the bones were faded and splintered, while fresh kills were adorned with hairy skin. Those woods would wash an entire sea of leaves onto the ground in the fall, so that the bones seemed to have left on vacation. In the spring, crabapples would crash from those trees, turning the forest into a bomb-riddled warzone.

I could watch it all from a distance on the back porch, with blue jeans torn at the thighs and sweatshirts patterned with spikelined burrs dangling off of the rail. On that porch, waves of trees laid siege to the field overlooked by it. In the winter, the snow was thick frosting smoothed over every inch of ground. Animal tracks would create archi-

pelagos in the snow, indicating where the natural highways were. I would roll like a barrel down the clear patches of a steep hill that was by the back porch. My surroundings were a blur, and by the time I slammed into the leaves at the bottom, sandpaper-rough leaves were nestled behind my ears and in my pockets, and I seemed to be more mud than skin. I would slowly raise my head, darting my eyes left and right to survey my surroundings. I finally would lift my lower half off the ground, sliding into a crouch, my knees bent and my body low to the ground. Stalking my way through the woods, there would be a break in the vast expanse of trees, and I knew that I was at the creek.

I would spend hours exploring the creek, sometimes stopping to gaze at the narrow, glistening rapids. When I needed a break, I would lie on my back, my arms stretched straight out on either side of me as my hands clutched a patch of sparkling gray sand, letting it flow between the cracks of my fingers.

Eventually, my dad’s voice, like a booming gunshot, would break through the trees and reach my ears, and I would hear that it was time to come back. I would push myself up, opening my mouth and raising my arms over my head for a long yawn that could have made it all the way back to dad. There is no way that I would go the easy way, so I would attempt to scale the hill that I had slid down over and over again. My chest would heave up and down as I strained my muscles to reach that one baby tree that would propel me to the top. After many body-shaking tumbles, my fingers would finally wrap around that tree. My fingernails, dirt and grime caked under them, would claw along the stiff bark.

I would lift my body up, scrunching my nose and baring my teeth as I sprawled out on top.

A job well done.

On hunting mornings, my dad would give me a shake to wake up, and I would look up at him with my eyes half open, my mouth

in a half frown, and my hair jutting out from my head in all directions. Grabbing the side of the bed, I would kick my legs up and over the side, landing barely standing up. I would shuffle outside, grab my clothes from where they were hanging, and proceed to shift and squeeze so that I could fit into the six layers needed to last four hours in the ice sickle-inducing temperatures. I would feel like a dodo bird as I walked in a side to side motion out of the cabin and into the woods. The walks to the deer stand would be long and arduous, as my dad made me watch every mechanical step I took. I had to drop the heel of my boot first to avoid a crunch that would pierce the silence of the night. When we got to the deer stand, my dad would always make me give him my gun before I climbed up the ladder. I would climb, my hands turning red

from the sharp cold of the metal, and then I would wait at the top as my dad climbed with two guns. We eventually would settle in, and the woods would wake in front of us. It would start when a lone bird chirped. Then a squirrel would sprint below our tree, followed closely by another that was squealing like an alarm for the woods. As the sun rose, I would hear the patter of the ice melting from the leaves and splashing on the ground.

Some hunts would be successful, but most were not. It was during those unsuccessful hunts, when nothing was moving, that I would rest my head on my dad’s shoulder. All I would hear was the wind flying by as my dad’s soft coat covered my ear, and my eyes gradually closed until dreams of the hunting property filled my head.

photograph by Daniel Fink

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photograph by Jacob Palmer

Come Out, Come Out, Wherever You Are Chris Schaefer

W

e’d always played hide and seek in our play clothes: shorts, t-shirts, tennis shoes. Mother watched us from the kitchen window while Father always had a grin on his face when he chased us around and lifted us and tossed us. My brother always had the best hiding places: on tops of trees and inside kitchen cupboards. I always have to give up and ask him to come out.

So why did Mother dress me up in my black suit, and why are they crying, and why won’t you come out of the box no matter how much I beg?

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print by Matthew LaFaver

Devour Joe Mantych

I. Let it be tamed by the wild, By the rough vines and bitter mist and coarse soil, By the Howls Of the night, The ones that tingle down your hide And lodge in your guts, The ones that pop your frozen eyes open And stifle your squeals; Let it be devoured, This ungodly sense of self Set loose in the jungle of Towering blades and Pungent air, Shivering amongst the ivy.

II. Or, Let it curdle In your bloodstream, Settling like dust on your Solo cups and Scars and Lukewarm showers; Let it fester, for An open heart Is an open wound; Let it manifest itself On the open plains and Beckoning fields and Rich terrain of your Battered soul, Bumping along to the Lawless corners of the Conscience, Where it may Devour As it pleases.

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Voice Niko Rodriguez

72 They say I need to find my voice, While others rasp their way to silence After weeks and months and years of words Fallen on deaf ears.

They say I need to find my voice, But there’s only so much air To go around, and how can I Deplete the supply When so many others Need it much more than I? They say I need to find my voice, But I’m still learning how to speak With half of it.

Dicen que necesito encontrar mi voz Pero no tengo confianza en mí mismo Cuando hablo la lengua de mi padre, De mis abuelos, de mi familia.

They say I need to find my voice, And I guess it doesn’t help That I’ve always been mute.

Happy to let others have their way, To tell me what to do.

They say I need to find my voice, So that’s what I am doing.