The Aster: An Arts Review Vol. 1

The Aster An Arts Review

Volume 1 2017

Table of Contents 4 5 6 7 8 10 11 13 15 16 18 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37

Letter from the Editors About the Cover, Emma Sharp Stopgap, Caroline McCance Over the Break, Caroline McCance Ballcap, Charles E. Terry, IV What to Wear the Day You Elect a Fascist, Linda Stack-Nelson Jailhouse Blues, Hannah Asfeldt But I Didn’t, Hannah Asfeldt Is Like, Hannah Asfeldt Time of Mistake, Kat Chang Quiet is Violent, Taylor Hickney December Dawns, A. L. Stone The Blackboard, Evan Schleicher Two, Two, Emma Sharp Ecstasy, Arman Rahman Untitled 13, Rebecca Curtis Lights, Catelyn Flack You, Norma Lilia Ruiz Cruz Lick, Arman Rahman Pathfinder, Rebecca Curtis Chair in Two-Point Perspective, Rebecca Curtis The Adventure of Wolfgangnabermonstroya, Jonathan Kim

Dear Reader, It is with great pleasure and gratitude that we present to you the first edition of The Aster. With the collection of fiction, poetry, and visual art gathered in this volume, we aim to open a small window onto the artistic activity so abundant on the campus of the University of Oklahoma. It is our first attempt, we hope of many, to produce the arts review our community and our artists deserve.

The inception of this project came during a year that shook us to the core.

With alarming speed, the politics of fear, hate, and greed reached a more unabashed expression at higher levels of influence than we had seen in our young lives. We were knocked back by the sudden realization that the future we imagined to be preparing ourselves for was a fragile dream. What’s more, our university community suffered the repeated blows of more intimate tragedy.

Over the course of a single year, we mourned the untimely deaths of three of our classmates.

It is precisely in times like these, times of grief, pain, and disillusionment, that we most need art.

Art comforts us, challenges us, emboldens us, and imagines new worlds for us. Above all else, art assures us that we are not alone, neither in suffering nor in joy, and provides us with beauty when the ugliness of life begins to feel unbearable. We at The Aster are driven by our belief in the indispensable power of creative expression and sincerely hope that you find in the following pages something you need.

We owe an enormous thanks to the staff of World Literature Today for helping make this publication a reality. Everything we have done has been made possible by their generous support and encouragement as well as the tremendous example set by their own work. This volume is dedicated to them and to the student artists whose creations surround us like so many blossoms at our feet.

-Editors of The Aster August 2, 2017

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About the Cover Emma Sharp Two Two–for me it’s always two–two contrasting ideas that invariably butt heads in my mind. Every time I create, I fall in the pattern. Two ideas, two decisions, two paths. This persistent, inner battle sparked my project Two. I•den•ti•ty / noun: 1. Being who or what a person is.

The purpose of Two is to bring life to the pattern of contrasting ideas that often hinder my creative process. I chose to capture the personal battle I face with finding my identity as a photographer.

The subject of these photographs portrays a person dealing with an internal struggle. Through photographic layering, also known as a double exposure, a brewing battle is expressed. We as artists feel pressure to create in a certain way. We feel pressure to create art that follows expectation, sometimes at the sacrifice of creating what we truly want. This battle in the photographs can be anything that has held you back from pursuing something that brings you happiness or true sense of self. It’s also the battle of indecision and feeling pulled in two ways.

I chose to develop these images as slowly as possible through hands-on, traditional film development rather than digital. By physically creating the double exposure technique by layering negatives together, I created a narrative detailing the struggle of two battling identities. These identities can cause havoc in one person, but can exist together if tackled head on.

Taken with my grandfather’s Minolta SR-T 202 film camera, 200 doubly exposed photos at 400ISO black and white film were reduced to a final 12 for this project. Each final image took 6 hours to traditionally edit from start to finish.

From the development of the film to the chemical processing, over 60 hours of work were completed in darkness.

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Stopgap Caroline McCance Put me in your heart for friend.

We lack

For each other’s names.

An ink sky and Cinematic gazebo lighting From that high-up tungsten glow.

The urgent silence, the poem recitation, The four-syllable words.

A lesson: I the student, you the teacher.

We learn that jagged edges do not interlock.

I must be the first to break the gaze.

Mine is no stopgap heart.

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Over the Break Caroline McCance I said it with tears in my hair.

You were looking very Friday In the driver’s seat.

Earlier, I had dinner with a mannequin Watching me sip death And eat a pretzel.

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Ball Cap Charles E. Terry, IV His head was almost bald.

Wanting no one to see the prickly hairs that stood up like a fresh “Army-strong” buzz cut, he tried wearing a hat to make himself feel tough.

By covering his dome he had the bravado to act black— inner-city rough.

His royal blue Kangol hat was like Mother Earth tilted on her 23 and ½ degree axis, constantly rotating in a counter clockwise fashion throughout the day, especially when he went to Pin Ball Pete’s to play his favorite arcade game, Centipede: The boy still trembles at the sight of this tall, dark machine.

The game literally scared the shit out of him — without a real father’s advice — his cold hands froze, afraid that if he moved the track ball in a similar clockwise fashion his choices would eclipse his father’s and the name on the high score would leave behind the shadow of a failure’s son.

Instead he was lost in the screen like hippies high on mushrooms chasing neon lights, startled by loud explosions that sounded out of sync.

He shot down his father’s advice that life is an endless circle of bullshit: “So always loop around, loop around, loop around like a concrete mixer because once you get laid you’re stuck.”

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Sick to his stomach the boy moved linear, wanting his orbit to revolve around his mother.

He left the track ball spinning, grabbed his father’s keys and asked to be driven home.

He was sick of enemies; He was sick of the trash climbing down dirt roads as he traveled toward the gravitational pull of his mother: As surfers feel ocean currents, he knew she wanted him ashore.

She was at home holding the remote like she should have been holding him.

Crying because her salary could not provide sidewalk chalk for her son to draw the whole world on concrete blocks with his hands.

Wiping away tears with marijuana and fast food fingers, she threw signals from her remote like a boomerang as she tried to find her Guiding light and feel her Passion because All My Children taped over her favorite soap As the World Turns.

Unlike the circular plots of her canceled soaps, unlike the false promises of a wedding ring, unlike his father’s endless circle of bullshit he would only turn his hat east, south, west and back towards her because he was her son— but she was his universe.

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What To Wear The Day After You Elect a Facist Linda Stack-Nelson Cute underwear.

Utilitarian boots, Goodwill price matched to your Dollar Spot socks.

Jeans you switched the price tag on while you were on study abroad because you were broke but you forgot to pack pants.

The shirt you kept from the first girl you kissed. You traded everything back except one shirt each, and every time you wear it you hope that wasn’t an accident. That she wears hers sometimes and doesn’t hate you. You’ve worn her shirt to three protests now and it always makes you feel strong.

The smoky quartz you got before you started college. It was given to you by the hippie dippy friend who got you through your senior year of high school with late night pancakes and honest belief. It’s beat up now, but the difference having it made for you your first semester gave you faith in crystals and plenty of other things again.

The locket your best friend bought you for one euro. It says bless and protect in Russian, her native language, and you hope that even though she doesn’t believe in God the prayers you’ve said while clutching it will be enough for both of you.

The sweater you’ve been safety-pinning together since 7th grade. It warms you with the 12-year-old’s idealism that never quite washes out.

The gloves your roommate knitted for you. They have the colors of your queerness woven into them and you want to fight everyone who sneers at them as they soak up the nervous palm sweat a globally warmed red state brings.

All black.

No makeup.

Unwashed hair.

Defiance.

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Jail House Blues Hannah Asfeldt A lot of people say their life fell apart as easily as the last block of Jenga had slipped sending bricks they had shoddily stacked around their half eaten brain crumbling to the ground.

They say it’s like Alice falling down her rabbit hole, one minute she’s upright, the next she’s been cast into a crazy conundrum full of kooks and cuckoo clocks and Queen’s that don’t stop with the chopping.

They say losing your mind is easy, because if you lose the thing that knows when you’ve lost something, how do you know you’ve lost anything at all?

For me it was different, For me, I knew.

I knew the direction I was heading but still I bit my lip and pressed on, Letting my crazy free was the hardest thing I’ve done.

It started out as years of pinpricks from expectations and fears and silence and telling myself it wasn’t that bad that I related to Angelina Jolie’s character from Girl, Interrupted.

And in time those pinpricks turned to scabs that rose up on my skin like the sins I felt pressed to commit when my heart turned to a pool of spit from the God I had once begged to convince me to keep it beating.

And so I picked.

I picked at those scabs And the more red I saw the more I began to salivate at the thought of curing my insatiable hunger for my own blood.

I think they call that cannibalism, I called it stuck in my own prison The one therapist that ever worked for me moved back from the place I called home to the place he calls home and while I’m happy for him, I miss him and the way my father paid just to find me someone who would listen without suffocating me to keep the awful words I spoke from coming out of my mouth.

There were years of my own mind planning a prison break without ever telling me until suddenly every cell had a hole under it’s bed but before I even followed those tunnels down I knew where they led.

I knew the space in my head that had bled the color red for dead instead of white for sacrifice.

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My mind wanted a fight for the right to be the suicidal juvenile found dead one fateful night, it was a fight I thought I’d lose, a fight I didn’t choose, a fight that made the news as a crime instead of a condolence.

But that noose has been found by too many families so lately I’ve been choosing to not make it one more.

I’ve been choosing to let those prisoners go free instead of locking them up where I think they should be and the people they’ve become surprisingly look a whole lot like me Except me as a real writer, a climber and a mountaineer, an academic, and someone who stays up late scribbling songs.

One of them became a runner, because every time she needed a fix, she fixed her eyes on the glory of the finish line and chose the high that comes from standing on the podium instead of using chemicals to convince her mind she’s fine.

In their freedom to go nuts, I’ve found that the scattered women I kept locked in my brain have chosen to plant trees instead of hang from them.

Now, don’t get me wrong, there’s a week here and there where the razors I don’t shave my legs with change their words from a whisper to a scream and I have to cling to the people around me in order not to listen.

I’ve been taking the time to stop talking and start listening, not to you, or anyone specific, but to the way the mountains roar when we abuse the fact that we stand upon their skin.

And their skin has given me the power and courage and love to roar at myself when I abuse my own skin.

The bad spirits still come now and again like I said but I’ve realized I’m better off as a tortured artist than I ever could be dead, so I will fight and I will write and I will climb and I will obsessively listen to music at night and I will continue to hope that those around me say something to affirm that their world is better when I’m in it.

My world is better when I’m in it. All of it.

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But I Didn’t Hannah Asfeldt Her teeth white and painful and fake My X-Ray the fuel for her finessed façade of interest “You nearly fractured your elbow,” she says But I didn’t “All the damage is here except for an actual fracture,” she says But I didn’t “You should have paid attention to your body,” she says But I didn’t “You should have listened to the pain, come in sooner,” she says But I didn’t “You should feel very lucky,” she says But I didn’t.

He sits in front of me with his turmoil dripping like melting ice cream The need outweighs the discomfort found in every pause “I wanted to,” he says But you didn’t “They say I am at risk,” he says But you didn’t “It’s heavy, it’s everywhere, I feel like I’m drowning in it,” he says But you didn’t “I want to end all of it,” he says But you didn’t 3:00 AM wears thin on my ceiling as I stare up into the morning darkness The paint of that hour dries faster than my eyes drift to sleep “You could choose stay,” I say But I didn’t “It would be safe, you should feel safe there,” I say But I didn’t “You could have found a boring, beautiful happiness,” I say But I didn’t “You could choose to not run away, just this once,” I say But I didn’t.

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God makes His plans known to his people by blowing kisses through gusts of wind He sits in a tall tree above an empty wooden swing “You could write beautiful things instead of sad things,” He says But she didn’t “Listen, the world is asking for you, don’t you want them?” He says But she didn’t “If you left Me, the whole world would applaud you,” He says But she didn’t “I think your sad things are also your beautiful things,” He says But she didn’t.

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Is Like Hannah Asfeldt Falling in love with you is like typing an entire Shakespearean comedy at 217 words per minute with my eyes closed and Tchaikovsky playing in the background and my hair growing at a rate of 2 inches per minute and disco balls descending from every light fixture and taking a bath in a tub full of Coke and Mentos but never once typing a single misplaced letter.

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Time of Mistake Kat Chang one day to learn weaving and let me tell you I did it because I can’t stand won’t stand all those sounds and songs and strains of sorrow I cannot withstand a music-voice-sound like that I cannot change how I live or breathe or shape the beat of my heart I have never been good with dealing with sadness or sorrow it is a physical weight of the most grievous kind on me one day to learn weaving and let me tell you I did because what else could I do in a place where tears hang heavy off the leaves like rain saltwater sweet busy hands busy mind no one talks to a weaving child I don’t know your grief, I didn’t say, because it wasn’t true I don’t know how to grieve with you, I didn’t say, because it was true I don’t know if I belong here, if I deserve to be here, if you even want me here, I didn’t say, because I was scared to one day to learn weaving and let me tell you they praised me because what else do you say when someone is new your selvedge so fine, they said, your mistakes so few! your grandmother would be proud, they said, and I nodded, ducked my head smiled and blushed please don’t talk to the weaving child one day to learn weaving and let me tell you I could because how else can you not when they show you her projects her first projects her bare start and look at you, weaving on linen lace, a borrowed loom, a story that’s not yours wondering if you even really belong she made so many mistakes, they tell you, and you have

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one day to learn weaving and let me tell you the mistake I made: wrong pedal wrong heddle lifted up the wrong line and left a mark right through the centerfold of a linen lace weave but time of death: unknown. uncertain. distracted. woven in. time of mistake: the same. the same the same the same. and you said leave it and it felt wrong wrong wrong because it was a mistake I made and a memorial should be more than a missed marking– one day to learn weaving and she would maybe be proud because she always was don’t talk to the weaving child, the grieving child, with no loom to hold in

their hands twin sticks make a poor poor substitute, grandmother, but I swear that I’m trying one day to learn weaving. get everything wrong.

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Quiet is Violent Taylor Hickney Inhale. Stroke, stroke. Exhale. Stroke, stroke. Hallie glides in the water, the stitch in her side making it hard to breathe. She doesn’t mind, though; she lives for this part, the part where every gasp fills her cells with a tiny shot of adrenaline and makes her feel alive. She is a car running out of gasoline.

This only lasts as long as practice does. An hour each afternoon, and then she returns to the steady beat of her heart and slow inhale/exhale of her lungs.

She crosses the parking lot in the frigid air to her car. Like Saran wrap, her wet, stringy hair sticks to her neck; she can almost feel it freezing. As she ducks into her small, green car, the one she’s had since she was sixteen, her numb fingers feel for her keys. The floorboards are covered with receipts and old towels and swim caps.

On the drive home, Hallie listens to silence. She likes the way quiet feels like pressure in her ears, the way the empty explodes and fills her head with nothing. It’s water in the air. Little bits of noise and chaos come with music, with voices; she prefers the nothing.

As she pulls into the garage, she doesn’t slow down enough, and the tennis ball hanging from a string slaps her windshield with a pop. Not enough to shatter it, of course, but enough to startle her. Her mother’s car is gone; she’s about to have the house to herself.

Hallie tosses her keys and her towel onto the granite countertop as she passes the kitchen, her hair still wet, but not dripping. Damp in her one-piece swimsuit, she continues up her white carpet staircase. The carpet has been recently vacuumed, so her feet leave tiny white footprints. That’s how her mother knows she’s home, if she can see the outline of these prints lingering on the stairs. Her mother only comes home at night because she often works late.

Sometimes Hallie’s father comes to visit, but when he does, he’s always picking her up to go to dinner; he doesn’t come inside. Dinner hasn’t happened in over a month. A lot of days, Hallie climbs up the banister so her mother won’t see her footprints, and she can really be alone.

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Her room at the end of the hall is spotless. Everything is white, including her bedspread. Colors hurt her head. On her desk rests a small fish bowl, with a goldfish named Harold. Hallie immediately sits in the white wood chair and watches him.

She knows that Harold is a fish and has no feelings, but she can’t help but personify him. Maybe Harold understands her in a way that no one else does, maybe because he can’t care. He knows what it’s like to be indifferent.

“Hi, Harold,” she whispers to the bowl.

The fish stares at her with wide eyes, saying nothing.

Hallie thinks about the darkness that consumes her mind sometimes. She loves the silence, but so often it produces something more sinister, escalating into pure nothingness, filling each nerve in her brain with numb. Harold doesn’t have to worry about that. Ignoring sound and color comes naturally to him.

There was a time before the darkness, but she wasn’t particularly happy then either. Her friends were shallow and materialistic, especially when they made her wear that tight black dress and red lipstick to a dance, and everyone kept looking at her and telling her how good she looked. She hated the attention and hasn’t gone to a dance since. It’s been months since she’s heard from those friends.

Sometimes, when the darkness is really bad, she writes about it. She writes whatever she’s thinking, so that she can go back and look and prove to herself that she had real thoughts during the moment. That she didn’t completely become a zombie. She has told only Clark about this, because he experienced the darkness for a while, too. He’s the only one who understands, the only one who makes it okay, more manageable.

But now he’s far away. He graduated last year and went to a university half an hour from Seattle. She visits him often. Now, she looks at the stack of college applications collecting dust on the corner of the pristine desk. Deep down, she knows she won’t be going, but it’s a nice distraction.

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She wants to text Clark. The last time she was hanging out with him in his dorm room, he’d freaked out. They’d been watching her favorite movie and shared popcorn in a big yellow bowl between them. She thought he was reaching for his phone on the back of the couch next to her shoulder, but then he kept his hand there. She tried to shake it off by stretching, thinking he surely hadn’t meant to leave it touching her. He didn’t move.

“What are you doing?” she’d asked, looking straight ahead.

Clark had looked over at her and raised his eyebrows. “What?”

Her heart had started to race—not in the good way. She motioned to his hand on her shoulder. “With this.”

“Can I not put my arm around you?” He slinked his arm back and placed it next to his body. Where it belonged.

I mean, no? Why would you?”

Clark sighed. Heavily. Oh God, she knew what was coming. “Listen, Hallie. I’ve been meaning to talk to you about something...” He trailed off.

“Say it.” She adjusted her legs so she was facing him on the couch, the movie still playing in the background. Clark took the remote from the coffee table in front of them and muted the tv.

“I think you know.”

“Say it, Clark.”

He paused. He ran his fingers through his messy brown hair. “I’m in love with you. You’re all I think about every day.”

Hallie said nothing. She allowed the moments to tick by in her entirely blank mind.

Clark moved the yellow bowl to the floor next to the bottom of the couch.

He put his hand on her leg in front of him. She tensed her muscles, on

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purpose. “I know you feel the same way, Hal.” He began to lean in, and right before their faces met, he closed his eyes; she didn’t close hers, and she felt his wet lips push into her own small ones and open. She didn’t feel this way about Clark. Or anyone.

She pulled away. “I can’t.”

“What?”

Hallie looked down at the ground. “How could you do this to me? You know that I need a friend and nothing else. Why would you ruin this?”

He took his hand off her leg. “Because I know you don’t just need a friend.

I want to be more than that to you.” She heard the determination in his voice.

Suddenly the already small room was too small for her. She felt the silence settling around her throat and moving closer, threatening to grow. “I have to go.” She gathered her things and ran out of the room before Clark could answer. The door shut behind her with finality. He hadn’t even gotten up. This happened a week ago, and she hasn’t heard from him since.

He is her only person. The only one who understands the darkness and helps her fight it. He is the only one she’s opened up to in longer than she can remember; she can’t lose him. The darkness has been hitting hard every night this week. She’s texted him, and he hasn’t responded. Without him, she’s alone.

She pulls out her phone and tries again. Clark, please. I need you. She doesn’t think he’ll answer her. His silence is choking.

In her half-open desk drawer, she glimpses a shiny metal razor. She thinks about it, but wonders if she’s too far gone for that to work. She holds the blade between her index finger and her thumb, and takes it to her wrist. The red comforts her; she’ll give it that. She likes the starkness against the white of her body and of her room. But it’s not enough to help her now.

Her phone buzzes next to her. Her hands shake as she picks it up. She feels the droplets of red dribbling down from her wrist, creating small splashes on the white wood. A different kind of raindrop.

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I can’t be this close to you anymore, Hal. If we can’t be more than friends, I need time to move on. I think you should see a doctor. I can’t be the only reason you’re okay.

She can’t breathe. She feels the muscles in her chest contracting, like they’re trying to push her lungs out altogether. Hallie stands from the hard chair and goes into her bathroom. The tile feels good against the bottoms of her pale feet. She stares at herself in the mirror. Starting at her brown hair, slick with the chlorine from the pool. Her green eyes, too close together. Her gaunt chin, her flat chest, her curveless stomach. She can see ribs sticking out of her swimsuit. The silence is deafening now. If she could feel anything at all, she’d probably be scared.

In the mirror she watches herself open the medicine cabinet on the side of the wall. Her ghostly hand reaches for the bottle. She never breaks eye contact with herself. Bottle in hand, she goes to sit on the side of her bed. She uncaps it: there are twenty pills left, probably. Hydro. She stole them from her mother’s medicine cabinet, leftovers from her foot surgery. It happened back when the darkness was really bad and she had to make sure she had a way out if she needed it. She’s better now, though; she has to be, because she knows what comes next if she’s not.

There’s a water bottle on her bedside table half full. She lets the numb turn her brain off as she sprinkles the pills into her hand. She stares at them for what feels like hours. It would be so easy.

Her palm is almost twitching, as if her muscles are willing themselves to bring her hand to her mouth. It’s taking everything in her to keep it still.

She’s fighting it. She breathes out, and drops the pastel pills onto her bed. She spreads them out and moves the sheets around until they’re lost in the sea of white. Like making a snow angel.

Slipping a dress on over her swimsuit, she walks downstairs. Her mother still isn’t home. She grabs the keys and gets into her car.

She finds herself at a grocery store. She craves the presence of people, of strangers. Inside, she knows she’s freezing, but can barely feel it. She wanders the aisles, not really looking for something, but welcoming any kind of sensory

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experience. She’s sick of the silence, of anything white and plain. The colors of the products make her feel alive and real and tangible.

Hallie sees a full cart and a middle-aged woman pushing it. Two boys, twins, no older than six, walk with her and the cart, one hand on the side. The woman stops pushing to look at a list in her hands, then back up at the different pasta options.

One of the boys touches the other on the arm and yells, “Tag, you’re it.” He takes off running down the aisle. The other boy furrows his eyebrows, lets go of the cart, and screams, “Hey, no fair!” as he runs after his brother. Hallie finds comfort in their innocence and youth. They don’t know what’s coming.

The mother looks up in exasperation. “Boys, come back. You know the rules.” But the boys probably can’t hear her; they are at the other end of the aisle now. The woman must catch Hallie staring, because she gives her a look and hastily pushes the cart the other way, after her twins.

It occurs to Hallie that she probably looks crazy. A tall, skinny teenager barefoot in a grocery store, wearing a wet swimsuit with a dress over it. The smeared, bloody scratch on her arm. She laughs to herself for the first time in a long time. It disappears as quickly as it comes.

She leaves the store. She gets back into her car, her keys in her lap for a moment. She needs to find Clark. She has to make him understand. She needs a reason to turn around. To stay.

Hallie decides to listen to music on the way to Clark. She chooses The Eagles. “Hotel California.” She doesn’t understand it, but she likes the way it makes her feel.

Her car pulls up to Clark’s dorm half an hour later. It’s dark outside now.

She doesn’t allow herself to be nervous. She knocks on the big black door to his room. She knows he’s home. He’s always home.

The door opens and Clark is standing there. He looks surprised. “Hallie, what are you doing here?” He looks down at her feet. “Where are your shoes?” he asks, opening the door all the way, inviting her in.

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“I need you.” She walks to the center of his room, looking at him. Imploring him to understand.

He sighs and gazes down. She wonders if he’s sick of her issues with the darkness. After a moment, he closes the space between them and takes her hand. He twitches at first, probably feeling the iciness of her hand. “I’m sorry.

I’ve been selfish and that’s not okay.” He pulls her in to hug her, the way he always does when she’s losing herself in the numb. It subsides a little when she’s with him.

But she can’t tell him what she almost did, what she could still do. He wouldn’t let her. He’ll tell her mother. She’ll be trapped in a psych ward; she’ll have to come home and everyone will know about the darkness and they’ll wonder if she’s crazy. She is, but only Clark and Harold get to know that.

She can’t keep fighting this. It’s quickly becoming darker, threatening to take her with it when it leaves. It envelops her and it wants to win and she’s going to let it. It’s going to hurt Clark, but he’ll be okay eventually. The two years they’ve been friends in comparison to the rest of his life is nothing. He doesn’t actually love her. He shouldn’t.

As they stand there hugging, she pulls away to look at him. She sees the hope in his eyes and the desperate ache in his heart, and she leans in to kiss him. At first, he doesn’t move, but then he’s kissing her back and it’s soft and slow and then hard and rough. For her, there are no sparks. She feels the space in between them. Then she’s taking off his clothes and they’re in the bed and she feels his soul there with her but knows they are not made of the same thing.

Clark’s arm is around her as they lie in the bed. Hallie is naked on the outside, but more hidden than ever before. His hands stroke her arm, gently turning it over. She hears a sharp intake of breath.

“Hallie…”

She jerks her arm over. “Don’t,” she snaps. She needs to be softer. She tries again. “I know it was wrong. I’m not going to do it again.” Clark doesn’t say anything, but he hugs her a little tighter. She just feels trapped.

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She gets up and puts her dress back on, leaving the swimsuit on the floor.

Part of her wants to feel bad about sleeping with him, but she doesn’t because she needed to feel something. And it made Clark happy. She wants him to think of her for the rest of his life as the girl that loved him back.

“I should go. I have a big test tomorrow.”

Clark sits up, leaning on his elbow. “Are you sure? Can I see you this weekend?”

“Sure, yeah. Friday night?” She forces a smile.

“Perfect. Text me when you get home okay?”

“I will.” She leans in and kisses him quickly.

She forgoes The Eagles on the way home. The small comfort she felt momentarily slips away. She didn’t find a reason to stay in Clark.

The garage is still empty. She tosses her keys on the counter in the same place, and pads up the stairs. She tries to put her feet in the same footprints still there from the afternoon.

Hallie lies back on her bed and stares at the white ceiling. Suddenly, everything is too white. It’s too clean. Too harsh, too there. She stands, taking the corner of the bedspread and throws it onto the floor. She likes the crumples it creates.

However, this is not enough. She opens the drawers to her dresser and dumps the clothes out all over the floor. Grey and red and blue and black. Color. She holds the stack of applications, sending them flying into the air. They land all different places. Chaos. She opens the medicine cabinet and uncaps every other bottle, spilling the pills all over the tile. Noise.

Then the emptiness hits her all at once and brings her to her knees. It throttles her. She hears Clark’s voice in her head, her mother’s, even her father’s. Do those voices matter? Does she matter?

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This fear and pain is crippling. It’s invading every cell in her lungs and pushing down, like she’s drowning on land. Choked sobs escape her throat as she hugs her bony knees. There’s a buzzing in her ears, like static. The darkness has crept into her room, into her brain. It encroaches on her sanity, a swarm of cockroaches going after food. It’s made a prisoner of her.

Hallie scrambles off her knees to her bed, searching for the pills. It’s an Easter egg hunt. She finds enough of them, and holds them in her palm once more.

If she takes these, all of this will stop. The darkness will be replaced with a good silence, the kind that invites peace and warmth and hope. The kind that takes up no space.

Suddenly she’s assaulted with the memory of herself standing in front of the mirror before that school dance. Her lips were so red. She’d smiled at herself, and it had been genuine. She misses that. She misses her friends, misses her life before the silence became darkness and it took that life away from her.

The pills feel heavy in her hand as she closes her eyes and tries to breathe.

Inhale. Exhale.

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December Dawns A. L. Stone December dawns And the cold crashes Down from the north, Sweeping across the barren plains.

The cardinals come to bring Good tidings; A joyous splash of red Against gray skies And leafless branches.

But my heart aches With the cold of missing you.

And I’ve not yet seen The warmth Of red birds.

Only heard the harsh cries Of Blue Jays Calling on the wind As December Dawns.

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The Blackboard Evan Schleicher Eraser marks whirl across the emptiness, Blurring the space between words written and unwritten, Spoken and unspoken, Thousands of words endlessly made and unmade, Fading into the flow of the winds and energy.

Wade into the winds and enter the flow of everything— That flow is cascades flung down mountain faces, carving out new expressions

in aging places.

It is smiles shared between people with no common tongue.

It is that which transcends language.

It is experience young and old.

It is waves that crash over each other even absent human eyes And geese flying south as the flow of seasons foretold.

The hills told you all of this long before I. It is everything beneath and above vand before the skies.

It is the mother walking to the grave where her son lies for the rest of her days And the sun shining on the shoulders of the boy who plays in an empty home.

Memories.

Moments.

One on the other Until the edges of the blackboard cannot contain the amassing mists and the

white winds drip thickly to the cold floor.

We are so much more Than words written Erased And replaced Re-placed in other places And re-defaced.

We are the marks dragged across the emptiness, Flung into life like paint splattered across Jackson Pollock’s easel.

There’s nothing peaceful about living, Giving over our entire beings to be a faded word or a blurred line in the infinite energy.

The faded outline of the word “White” catches my eye or yours And you or I wonder who Mr. White might have been.

It may seem that life reduces us to this, But living is not your enemy, Or mine, It is all we are.

The eternal blackboard bears us—its eternal scars.

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Two, Two Emma Sharp

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Ecstasy Arman Rahman

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Untitled 13 Rebecca Curtis

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Lights Catelyn Flack

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You Norma Lilia Ruiz Cruz

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Lick Arman Rahman

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Pathfinder Rebecca Curtis

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Chair in Two-Point Perspective Rebecca Curtis

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The Adventure of Wolfgangnabermonstroya Jonathan Kim “(Stoop) if you are abcedminded, to this claybook, what curios of sings (please stoop), in this allaphbed! Can you rede (since We and Thou had it out already) its world?”

-Finnegans Wake by James Joyce Introduction to a rather Harmonious World:

Once upon a time there was a little boy named Wolfgangnabermonstroya and he was a tundish-wielding apple-john. Every morning his mother made him say his prayers, and every morning he vitiated them by declaring the Sun and Moon to be the proud parents of war-mongering petty thieves and prayed that Leibniz would grant them sanctuary in the land of Nod. After this, Wolfgangnabermonstroya’s mother would hold him upside-down by the kneecaps and manually whip his buffalo-inspired hide until the boy cried out for his Uncle Suzy twice. Such was their morning routine.

Wolfgangnabermonstroya also had two fathers and a box turtle, but he was not on speaking terms with the biological father; the second father was, by all accounts, imaginary with the exception of the occasional inexplicable offer for a magazine subscription; and Box Turtle was busy traveling the world in search of an honest politician. Thus, Wolfgangnabermonstroya longed for companionship. He once asked for a sibling by ripping the talons off a silver-crested hawk and carving the request onto his buttocks which he promptly showed his mother and the only response he received was “Oh dear my daffodils,” and that is the story of how Wolfgangnabermonstroya came about having such a peculiar scar in such a peculiar place. It should be noted that he also asked his father, but since he was not on speaking terms with the man, Wolfgangnabermonstroya simply shouted the request into the shell of a garden snail and hurled it at his father whilst the man was taking tea.

One fine evening, as the stars began to poke their tender heads out from behind the abusive throes of daytime, Wolfgangnabermonstroya heard a calm whistling carried by the crystal-humping clearness of the East wind bagpipe that resembled a quintal harmonic diminished fourth interval. He deduced

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that the Queen was in town and decided he would save her from Capitalism.

He called a meeting of the leaders of the world, though the only one to even remotely respond was the deputy-in-waiting of the microstate commonly known as Fennelmotum, and all he did was sneeze on the memo before forcibly feeding it to the microstate’s resident proletariat.

Wolfgangnabermonstroya was so hurt that he found a silver-crested hawk and apologized for ripping the talons from its mother, and he professed that he finally knew what it felt like. He proceeded to cook the poor silver-crested hawk and then he ate it with a savage passion that told the world—and hopefully Capitalism—that he was resolved to do whatever was required to save the Queen.

The next day, Wolfgangnabermonstroya left his home with a sandwich in one hand and his bag of trick-or-treats in the other, leaving his confused mother to deal with the members of the Society for the Protection of the Silver-Crested Hawk, who demanded to know why her husband wasn’t responding to their offers of a magazine subscription.

The road was long and curvy and tan and wonderful, but Wolfgangnabermonstroya wasn’t taking the road. He was walking on Air and Water and the backs of fallen Angles (Euclidian geometry is an unforgiving entity), and his sandwich got soggy. The rage came first and then, in the gentle whisper of the storm, Wolfgangnabermonstroya summoned the first of eight spirits to his side. This is the story of those eight spirits, how they impacted the journey of Wolfgangnabermonstroya, and the way in which the complex relationship between Capitalism and the Queen factor into all this.

Spirit One: Ccooffee the Waitress from Beyond Wolfgangnabermonstroya needed a tundish so he could wield it with the passion and rage that came about from his soggy sandwich. The spirit he summoned (quite inadvertently by means of crushing one of his mother’s Sacredly Magical Daffodils of Whimsy) turned out to be Ccooffee who was a waitress, though Wolfgangnabermonstroya couldn’t tell due to her voluptuous napkin-sopping toenails and ruffled neckerchief. He demanded to know the meaning of things, which Ccooffee offered to him by declaring, “come forth and find out”. But Wolfgangnabermonstroya came fifth and received a toaster.

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It was a cheap toaster, the kind that could only do a bagel and a half, and Wolfgangnabermonstroya tried to pass it on by disguising it as one of Ccooffee’s voluptuous napkin-sopping toenails, but she noticed before he could even sputter out a Father Fortuna namesake. “Oh wallowing Wilfred” he cried as the toaster was placed back into his hand “I have no need for this toaster,” and not knowing what else to do, he tried shoving the useless toaster into a nearby bunghole (A bunghole is a hole bored in a liquid-tight barrel to remove its contents, shame on you), but Ccoofee stopped him and politely, though with a hint of insufferable savagery, asked why he had summoned her. Wolfangnabermonstroya went, “ROAR!” and then passed out.

Awaking to find a nasty boogermonster in his braided nosehairs, Wolfgangnabermonstroya whipped out a whipping whip from his bag of trick-ortreats and tried to whip the whippity whipsome out of the whippersnapper in his nose but Ccooffee intervened with an invisible hand and the whipping ceased once and for nevermore. “O tempora o mores,” Wolfgangnabermonstroya cried out. And Ccooffee was quite frankly sick and tired of her situation, so she asked the boogermonster why she existed. The boogermonster told her the whole story (he had been around for all of it as Wolfgangnabermonstroya never listened to Box Turtle’s lessons on personal hygiene), and at once Ccooffee was confused. But at twice she understood and decided that she should help Wolfgangnabermonstroya in his quest to save the Queen from Capitalism.

“Hic haec hockey pokey and we all fall down!” Wolfgangnabermonstroya called, invoking the intercession of a concession professional. As it turned out, Ccooffee as a waitress was a concession professional and she handed Wolfgangnabermonstroya a new sandwich. All was forgiven, and Wolfgangnabermonstroya calmed down long enough to eat his newly begotten sandwich and ask Ccooffee how the spirit system worked.

“I know not but knots and gnots you little snot pot.” She replied and Wolfgangnabermonstroya was forced to dwell on the curious fact that wordplay had suddenly become quite significant to the narration of his story. “Oh, fine. I shall explain.” Ccooffee began to recount the extensive mythos of the Sacredly Magical Daffodils of Whimsy, but Wolfgangnabermonstroya was rather bad at paying his attention bills on time. “…and that’s why a crushed daffodil…” Ccooffee had a bit of bad beef and a blot of mustard on her neckerchief. “…the old one goes and the new one

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comes…” A low-pressure system seemed to be building in the distance. “… must be careful when handling the sacredly…” Squiggle squiggle. “…and that’s why they are no longer a proper noun.” Ccooffee concluded. And Wolfgangnabermonstroya jumped up faster than he should have.

Irony must have been on his side because in the process, he crushed another of his mother’s sacredly magical daffodils of whimsy and thus Ccooffee was whisked back to her low-skilled, minimum-wage-earning, harassment-filled, totally degrading, unsanitary life (please tip your waitresses).

And Wolfgangnabermonstroya was left without a tundish. Vaguely recalling the words of Ccooffee he sat down and waited for a second spirit, which he presumed to be on its way.

Spirit Two: The Ghost of Leibniz The spirit was the ghost of Gottfried von Leibniz, seventeenth-century mathematician and philosopher. It was to him that Wolfgangnabermonstroya directed his daily prayers and such was the reason that the spirit appeared.

“Are you the boy who has offered me prayer these many days?” The Ghostly Gottfried inquired.

“NO!” Wolfgangnabermonstroya yelled, so the ghost left him.

Spirit Three: A Slightly More Irritated Leibniz Wolfgangnabermonstroya decided to continue on his merry way until he reached the tundish factory over the hills and far away. He marched on like a child whistling the tune of a bassoon until high noon when the ghost of Leibniz reappeared before Wolfgangnabermonstroya.

“You have deceived me child!” The spirit moaned “You are, in fact, the boy who offers me prayers every morning. You lying little apple-john.” And the ghostly Leibniz was not wrong.

And he, Wolfgangnabermonstroya, saw this thing and heard it. And when he had heard and seen, he fell down to worship before the feet of Bigfoot, who had been standing by awkwardly to ask for directions, but since he suffered from social anxiety he had just tried not to be noticed. The worship of Wolf

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gangnabermonstroya frightened Bigfoot away, and Wolfgangnabermonstroya began to walk in the assumed direction of the tundish factory.

The ghost of Leibniz hurried to catch up. “Where did you come from, where do you go?” he asked, but cotton-eyed Wolfgangnabermonstroya refused to answer a question that was missing a conjunction. The ghost was frustrated and yelled in a callous-walloping caterwaul, “Do you know who I bee?”

Pleased by the improved grammar of the ghost, Wolfgangnabermonstroya responded, “You bee anyone you see as needing being. You are also the ghost of Gottfried Leibniz, though why do you remain in the land of spoiled milk and honey badgers?”

“Well my boy I cannot depart for I remain troubled by History’s favoring of Newton, and the invention of the Calculus.” Acids and bases and saltwater joy, this was news to Wolfgangnabermonstroya who found his world crashing down from Olympic heights. He screeched, “But I always learned that Newton was a goody-good who turned figgy-figs into high fiber snacky-snacks.” And to prove his point, Wolfgangnabermonstroya reached into his back of trickor-treats and produced an apple. “I learned that Newton would drop figs onto his head until they became apples, which are so high-fibery that once I ate a tree’s worth and in turn my innards heaved and hoed and the misery flowed.

Besides, dear spirit, is something like the Calculus created or discovered?”

“Ah, the eternal question of whether verification of creation is the same as solving by discovery; q vs nq.” And with that, the spirit sat to ponder the nature of nature. Wolfgangnabermonstroya sat in silence with the spirit, and the sun began to make like a tree and stump. The clouds called a convention, and they swirled and spiraled from the far corners of Heaven’s waiting room into the sky, which rested on its fattened laurel-laden elbows above Wolfgangnabermonstroya. There were colors aplenty and sounds alot; with smells abundance and tastes anon. Wolfgangnabermonstroya reached out his wrinkly tongue in an attempt to intimately entangle himself with the world that was vomiting wonderment onto his head. He gagged and thus shattered the silence with his hackneyed hacking. For about three or four hours Wolfgangnabermonstroya coughed up the vile smog that had been vacationing in his lungs, and the spirit of Leibniz ran off in disgust.

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When the sickening sight of Wolfgangnabermonstroya became bearable, the ghost of Leibniz returned bearing a bear, and the bear had a tundish from the factory over the hills and far away. Oh, how the greatest of gifts are the dried flakes of skin from the chocolaty lips of altruism! Wolfgangnabermonstroya gleefully accepted the tundish and was giddy as a schoolgirl and Leibniz, having done a good deed, was absolved of the sins which he had never committed. Wolfgangnabermonstroya wielded his tundish uncontrollably. and he crushed another of his mother’s sacredly magical daffodils of whimsy. And whilst he was screaming, “Boondoggle!” the ghost of Leibniz left, and a new spirit became within the realm of probability.

Spirit Four: The Not-yet-departed Soul of Uncle Suzy Then there came a time of confusion for Wolfgangnabermonstroya; for his journey had been betaken by a bamboozlement of broken pathways and jumbled micro-journeys. He was, after all, on a quest to save the Queen from Capitalism and yet all he had done was acquire a tundish, and even then he was not sure if it would be necessary to wield in order to save the Queen. And thus, Wolfgangnabermonstroya entered into a great crisis of identity.

-was a commodious vicus of re-circumspection. A confusing tunnel with circles and tubular directions was the place in which Wolfgangnabermonstroya found himself. For indeed thereDark clouds loomed above in their typical archetypal fashion and the sky thus secreted its fluids until Wolfgangnabermonstroya was thoroughly moist.

Dripping and glistening with both water and sadness, he plodded through the mud until the weight of the world became too weighty for him to carry on.

And without waiting, he flopped face-first into the sloppy sludge of the ground.

In the flailing, a sacredly magical daffodil of whimsy was crushed within the folds of the bag of trick-or-treats. And, behold, a great light appeared before the motionless lump that was Wolfgangnabermonstroya and a figure cloaked in light and wrapped in an ethereal towelette was revealed. “Lo, my nibling, I bring you tidings of great joy!” The figure declared but the lump in the mud stirred not. Seizing the existentially occupied rascal by the mud-smeared collarbone the celestial figure forced Wolfgangnabermonstroya to meet his eye line. “It appears that what you need is a tidying of great joy! [rim shot]” The spirit chortled at his pun, though Wolfgangnabermonstroya remained unmoved. Disappointed at the lack of attention he was receiving for his comedic

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genius, the spirit let forth a mighty sigh and spake unto the boy: “Wolfgangnabermonstroya, are you unaware of who I am? Do not you know that I am your Uncle Suzy?”

And like a spastic clown unleashed from the grips of reality, Wolfgangnabermonstroya’s eyes flashed with liveliness and fixed upon the Bringer of Pug-Washing that was, in fact, the not-yet-departed soul of his uncle. Having fulfilled their symbolic duty, the clouds departed and sunlight showered down upon the couple. For a friendly face of familial familiarity was just what was needed to bring Wolfgangnabermonstroya back to the narrow path of nobleness. For what conundrum could hope to compete with the sixth great bond that is uncle to nephew?

“My dear Wolfgangnabermonstroya, you must not lose hope. For there are great things that await you and you must continue in your journey. Fore if you should cease in your quest, evil shall betake the land and smite all goodness.

Four you have the strength and backing of a prophecy.” And the spirit recited the prophecy: [This prophecy has been removed because its content violated our Terms of Service] With these words having been articulated, Wolfgangnabermonstroya realized the significance of his name. He thus re-wielded his tundish with a renewed vigor and set off into the sunset, waving valiantly to his uncle, who could finally depart the world in peace (though he decided to stick around for a while just in case).

Spirit Five: Destiny the Galactic Beauty His name was Wolfgangnabermonstroya and he had a date with Destiny.

It was strange how it had come to pass and yet it passed with flying colors. It happened in this way: Empowered by the prophecy orally orated by his (still not-yet-departed) uncle, Wolfgangnabermonstroya marched confidently, displaying his confidence in a manner so brazen you could cook a bull over the flames of his assurance. However, after about a day and a half of walking, it occurred to him that he had no idea where he was supposed to be going. Even though the

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prophecy stated that he would fight enemies, discover love, and save people, it was very imprecise in regards to where all these things should take place. He spewed a stream of oaths that were minced, sliced, diced, and sautéed. Why had he not voiced such a needed question to the spirit?

And Wolfgangnabermonstroya let out a long, lugubrious sigh and lolled about on a log while stumped at his conundrum. Seized by an idea, he tore into his bag of trick-or-treats and extracted a pair of mallets and began to beat out a smoothy-smooth rhythm on his conundrum. The beat was so sick, so ill, so morbidly infirm that the player of the east wind bagpipes heard the jamming and gelatining and decided to join in; soon a cacophony of Colly birds, hens, doves, and partridges added their melodies, and a silky musical was begotten.

The notes pulsated through the air and throbbed Wolfgangnabermonstroya’s eardrums. Deciding that he could play the eardrums just as well as he could the conundrums, Wolfgangnabermonstroya attempted to extract them by shoving his drumsticks into his ear orifices, but it didn’t work out so well and he was left jazzing around with drumsticks sticking out of his head. This frightened the musicians away, and Wolfgangnabermonstroya was left alone.

In the chaos, his bag of trick-or-treats had been turned left-side-right and a sacredly magical daffodil of whimsy was left lying on the ground. It looked beautiful, so Wolfgangnabermonstroya squished it between his toes. When his tootsies were satisfied, he lay down for a nap and off he leaped into the world of dreams.

While snores were being ejected from between the drooping jowls of Wolfgangnabermonstroya, a voice slid into his tear ducts (then promptly realized that it wasn’t supposed to go there and skedaddled into his ears). “Wake up Wolfie…wake up.” Smoldering with anger, Wolfgangnabermonstroya jumped up prepared to wield his tundish at whomsoever had had the gallstones to call him with a nickname in an imperative pseudo-sentence. “Dedicabo ego vos et irrigabo!” Wolfgangnabermonstroya belched haphazardly, only to be bedazzled by the source of the voice.

Her pores were clogged with beauty. The muscular outline of her shoulders shone with radiant joy. Her legs looked as though they had the yolks from Eggs of Gorgeousness running between their handsome hairs. She was what would happen if the essence of a goddess were left to fester in a garden; she was Destiny, the beauty of the galaxy. Wolfgangnabermonstroya’s senses overloaded; he gurgled.

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Giggling at the moldering dignity of the boy before her, Destiny extended her hand and Wolfgangnabermonstroya reached out, declaring, “It appears as though I’ve reached my destiny!” and the two fell on the floor snickering out loud.

When they had finished, an oddity occurred to Destiny: “How did you know to say that witticism when I have not yet introduced my name?” And Wolfgangnabermonstroya orated, “Wench, I was unaware of your name I simply…” But he was not allowed to finish, because Destiny punched his lights out for addressing her with such an archaic, disrespectful, and misogynistic title.

After Wolfgangnabermonstroya’s light bulbs were replaced (How many did it take? The world may never know), he apologized and promised to pay her the respect she was due. Having thenceforth and thusly been reconciled, the two decided to go outing.

For their outing, the couple decided first that they should try to bake love using the recipe of Wolfgangnabermonstroya’s quasi-extant father, but a sharp dispute arose over whether to use a dash or sprinkle of Worcestershire sauce and ultimately the endeavor was abandoned. They then decided to visit Builda-Baby but were promptly thrown out; Wolfgangnabermonstroya had forgotten that he was banned from the store for life plus twenty years after his last visit had led to an unfortunate event involving pasta. They considered other enterprises, like attending a Pro-Creativity political rally, replacing the produce at a local grocery store, and nailing hooks on the ceiling, before they became aware of the setting sun.

Removing his kneecaps and falling upon them, Wolfgangnabermonstroya anointed Destiny’s feet with his saliva and wiped them with his tongue declaring “I have chosen you by your feet Destiny, you must marry me.” Destiny smiled but gave her reply, “I cannot marry you unless you make me laugh. For though we snickered together, I cannot marry a mortal lest he should provoke laughter from my diaphragm.”

“In that case,” Wolfgangnabermonstroya flourished, pointing to a suitcase hiding in the corner, “What shall make you laugh!” And together Wolfgangnabermonstroya and Destiny opened the case and out flew a serpent, grasping a blood-red eagle. Wolfgangnabermonstroya induced that it was a sign.

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“Yours Destiny, what is this omen?” And the reply was this: “The sign is this: that only harm-joy makes me laugh, so I must be harmed before I can laugh.”

“Your mother must be harmed before she can laugh!” Wolfgangnabermonstroya yelped and the idea struck him: he should go after Destiny’s mother.

Spirit Six: Galaxia the Mother of Destiny and Part-time Galactic Nasty Wolfgangnabermonstroya wandered from the fold before the flaming tongue of Destiny could convince him otherwise. He would find her mother.

Her footprints were seen widely in the wood-paths. Wolfgangnabermonstroya followed them into a place of Cedars where the thorn bushes were matted together. However, the footprints ended up taking him to the cave of the socially anxious Bigfoot, who recognized Wolfgangnabermonstroya and fainted out of fear.

Owing primarily to the fact that Wolfgangnabermonstroya knew absolutely nothing about Destiny’s mother, he found himself falling down, flummoxed by his irrepressible urge to run off into the glorious future without knowing anything. Why oh why did his life appear to be dictated by an irrational entity with no sense of how to appropriately create transitions from one thing to the next?

A gaberlunzie happened to be traveling by and found the lost Wolfgangnabermonstroya. He greeted the boy and asked what a young lad was doing alone in the wilderness. Wolfgangnabermonstroya, sensing no ill-will from the troglodyte, gave an account of his journeys as the strange person began digging the ground with a spade (from some mystical hammerspace).

When the narrative was concluded, the digger ceased digging and gazed at Wolfgangnabermonstroya and spoke: “Ah you ornery oocephalus, why do you concern yourself with love? You should instead concern yourself with matters of eternal existence. For example, I pose to you this question: What has one leg in the morning, one leg at midday, two legs at high noon, three legs in the afternoon, five legs at dusk, and eight legs in the dead of night?”

Wolfgangnabermonstroya blew his stacks at this question, because it was stupid. He knew the answer to every relevant question and he knew not the

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answer to this question, therefore it was rigmarole. But the anencephalic asker merely smiled. “You cannot answer the question because you are out of touch with the things of this world. There are things known, and there are things unknown, and in-between are the windows of perception. Your windows are foggy and obscured when instead they should be so clear that birds break their neck trying to fly through them.”

Tripping over an actus cactus, Wolfgangnabermonstroya strumbled to his feet, eager to understand more. “Oh but you must know that I don’t know what I don’t know. Tell me, how can I expand my mind?” And the figure smiled once again and proposed another riddle: “What is the right time for every (equal and opposite) reaction? Who are the most unnecessary people? And what is the most important thing to doodle?”

Inspired by an urban legend about the wisest of all birds, Wolfgangnabermonstroya shoved his head in the sand to allow his brain juices to better sluice.

But in this position, he was unable to see the question-asker, who began to grow and twist and distort. Withdrawing his noggin and sputtering sand out of his nose-holes, Wolfgangnabermonstroya gasped for breath just in time to hear the beasty voice of the transmogrified traveler.

“YOU KLUTZY KERFUFFLE,” it screamed with a voice in caps lock, “THE ASNWER TO THE THREE QUESTIONS IS: SIX FEET FROM HEAD TO HEELS!” Gesturing with an amorphous appendage to the hole that was dug, “THERE IS THE ANSWER: YOUR GRAVE!” And a hailstorm of Merryweathers cascaded down. But Wolfgangnabermonstroya evaded this attack and leapt up into the trees. Motivated only by his extreme distaste for unnecessary capital letters, he wielded his tundish and clouted the enemy in the collywobbles. And the true form of the antagonist was revealed: Before Wolfgangnabermonstroya was a ❧  so ❧ ❧ that it could only be described in the nonsensical characters of Windings 2 (copyright held by Microsoft Corporation). It was Galaxia, part-time nasty of the galaxy! Wolfgangnabermonstroya knew her well, for legends of the galaxy’s nasty were told to every little boy from birth.

“Fiend, I have no time for you,” Wolfgangnabermonstroya shouted, “I must preserve my energy for battlement with the mother of Destiny!” But Galaxia smiled yet again and a horrible thought came upon Wolfgangnabermon-

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stroya shouted, “I must preserve my energy for battlement with the mother of Destiny!” But Galaxia smiled yet again and a horrible thought came upon Wolfgangnabermonstroya. “Don’t say it to be so! Have you deprived me of the task? Did you kill Destiny’s mother?” And the nasty replied: “No Wolfgangnabermonstroya, I AM Destiny’s mother.” And she swatted the boy from the trees.

Wolfgangnabermonstroya landed hard and his tundish fell out of sight, but he was unfettered. “Prepare to be Wilgefortized, blue-shifting menace!”

Wolfgangnabermonstroya eructated with egregious ecstasy. Taking a broom out of his bag of trick-or-treats, he went for Galaxia’s calves. The maneuver was successful and the brawling duo fell to the ground in a doozy of a discombobulating donnybrook. CECECEFEMHJESEHJVELENNOPESSUPPLUPPCSUPPVUPPISSUPPVAUPPVJAPPVSUWESSJUAPEXPTLEXPVUUJUUJUUSFIPIPVJASPAL! And the wrestling waged on.

Nicewhile, Destiny was tending to the unconscious Bigfoot and having a conversation with his wife, Wallace, about some topic which passes the Bechdel Test, when she heard the forest foliage fluttering with a feverish fury.

Running the hidden pineapple trails of the forest, Destiny arrived to witness her own mother going Kagato on Wolfgangnabermonstroya’s Jime. Seeing the horrified countenance of his beloved, Wolfgangnabermonstroya was reinvigorated and channeled the power of his sebaceous glands to squirt Galaxia in the eyes, effectively blinding her. She stomped about blindly and it looked as though Wolfgangnabermonstroya had won, but just as he was about to deal the finishing blow, a pair of sacredly magical daffodils of whimsy fell from his bag of trick-or-treats and were crushed by Galaxia’s trompling. Wolfgangnabermonstroya froze.

Sunlight swept across the forest. Galaxia attempted to escape but was touched by the light. She vanished in a puff of smoke. Arms stretched out to Wolfgangnabermonstroya. The pair’s streams of vision crossed briefly before the light like a happy dagger, pierced Destiny, and she was gone.

Wolfgangnabermonstroya knelt before the remnants of the flowers. “My poor Destiny’s dandelion!” he lamented as he pressed the withered petals to his withered lips. To the emptiness he whispered, “I love you as well Destiny, in all your dewy freshness.”

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Spirit Seven: Father Time, legally separated from Galaxia Indeed, the grass is always greener for the gobemouches. So great was the sadness of Wolfgangnabermonstroya that he came down from the seventh cloud and fell into the locker room of the low country. While the happy angels were dusting their stars, Wolfgangnabermonstroya was burned out of bliss.

How could anyone else hope to capture his affections like the joypopping jelly jiving Destiny? Without her, he felt like a broken blunderbuss.

Wandering about, Wolfgangnabermonstroya arrived at a Junction of Conjunctions. Suddenly, there was a sudden sneeze all of a sudden. “HATSKUSHOUM!” Wolfgangnabermonstroya whipped around and declared, “Bless you Father, for you have sneezed.”

And it was a funny thing because the sneezer was, in fact, a father. But not just any father. For he was Father Time! So it should be noted that he was in actuality legally separated from Galaxia. Yet he was not angry that Wolfgangnabermonstroya had meleéd her. Or, perhaps, he was simply unaware.

“Many thanks my young Cervidae,” Father Time said “Now tell me, why do you look as if you have lost something of great utility?” Wolfgangnabermonstroya sighed and provided an abridged version of his life story. Twenty minutes later, he was still talking. Another twenty minutes later, the story was complete, and Father Time began to laugh. “Young Cervidae,” he posited, “I understand your pain. But don’t cry boy; Destiny is not gone for good. You see, she was made out of Christmas snow, and Christmas snow can never disappear completely. You can bet your booty that she’ll return next December.”

These words of comfort made absolutely no sense to Wolfgangnabermonstroya. But, in a very strange way, they reminded him that he was on a mission and that cardiac affairs would only aid the doings of Capitalism and further threaten the Queen. Retrieving his tundish from whence it lay, it dusked on Wolfgangnabermonstroya that he needed pointing in the right direction. He was about to voice an interrogative sentence to Father Time when he saw strange things happening from within the robe of Father Time, so he decided to ask about that first.

From the foldings of his robe, Father time brought four children; they knelt down at his feet, and clung upon the outside of his garment. “These are

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my children,” he murmured “the Political Personifications of Holidays. They are: Santa the Libertarian, Baby New Year the Green, Cupid the Communist, and a Fascist Easter Bunny. Together they form a group I like to call the Drama Initiative!”

The children of Father Time stand and move to stage left.

SANTA: The free market drives my enterprises, and I manage my operations in the North Pole, where government regulation is the most minimal in the entire world.

BABY: (indignant) The management of your affairs should be in the hands of your elves; power in their hands would protect their rights and ensure a sustainable future as the greatest gift from the old year to the new.

CUPID: Indeed, the lowest organized class should have the power, so as to topple the oppressive forces which ensnare the masses! (Paces passionately) There is no truer example of love than that of a society in which the means of production are commonly owned.

BUNNY: (hopping and skipping while naked) Let us have a palm tree between our teeth, an egg in our hands, and an infinite pass over our hearts.

And the four argued long into the night. But the perky ears of Wolfgangnabermonstroya caught hold of the words of Santa. “Kringle, you are a proponent of the free market? Tell me, I am looking for Capitalism, you must tell me where I should go.” Santa Claus was postoccupied at the moment, but his mighty reindeer swooped down from the sky and informed Wolfgangnabermonstroya that he should seek the one called Duffy, Demigod of the Daffodils.

Deciding not to question the non sequitur appearance of the reindeer, Wolfgangnabermonstroya wrote down the address of this quasi-celestial being and crushed a sacredly magical daffodil of whimsy before setting out. He could sense that his quest was nearing completion.

Spirit Eight: Duffy, Demigod of the Daffodils Duffy lived at 1317 Oonxre St., but when Wolfgangnabermonstroya visited the house, there was no answer at the door. A note read: “The body of Duffy can be found in the blue house down the street.” So Wolfgangnabermonstroya

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traveled down the street. As he was walking down the street, he happened to meet Bigfoot, but the socially anxious Yeti jiggled with fear and away he went.

Arriving at the blue house, Wolfgangnabermonstroya knocked (with his Knockespotching fist) and again received no answer. Frustrated by the inconvenience, he barged on in and found the body of Duffy slumped over a rocking chair.

Deciding to remedy the situation, Wolfgangnabermonstroya hauled the body back up the street and barged into the house at 1317. “Just what do you think you’re doing with my body?” a voice demanded. And though the source of the voice was unseen, Wolfgangnabermonstroya was unfazed. “I don’t care what your situation is,” he shouted at the tippity-top of his little lungs, “I have dealt with seven spirits by now; one of which was my true love, and another tried to kill me. I care not about the fact that you and your body clearly have issues. Further, I care not about the oddity of a spirit even possessing a body. I am in great need of quest completion and hence, Duffy Demigod of the Daffodils (I presume), fix yourself!”

Duffy could not argue with an imperative sentence pronounced with an exclamatory mark, so the body of Duffy and Duffy were reunited. Wolfgangnabermonstroya was pleased, and he decided that he should attempt to make amends for barging into the house by retracing his conversation steps to ask some questions of basic formality. “Now tell me Duffy, are you a boy or a girl?”

“I am neither; from the moment of my birth I have rejected such mortal labels of binary gender, and I am living proof that a strong literary character may lack such designation.” And Duffy pronounced these words proud with hunself. “What do you mean literary character?” Wolfgangnabermonstroya inquired, and Duffy cursed hunself and hastily attempted to repair the damaged fourth wall.

“You fool!” Duffy clamored. “See what you made me do! Before anything else is damaged, will you tell me why you bespeckle my residence with your presence?”

“I was informed,” Wolfgangnabermonstroya began, “By the sled-pullers of St. Nick of the Uncharted Forest that you could help me save the Queen from Capitalism.” Duffy huffed and puffed and blew hun frustration out of hun nebulous nostrils. Hun began to speak. “Capitalism is an idea, and ideas are bulletproof; but ideas alone are meaningless without their cohorts, and cohorts

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are not bulletproof! Therefore, you must seek the cohort of Capitalism and destroy him! I can tell you this much: the cohort of Capitalism is singular, masculine, and 3rd person.” Duffy paused, “I will help you!” hun said producing a bottle of pills. “Here you are. These are placebos, and if you take them, you’ll be endowed with the power to find the enemy you seek.”

Taking the pills, Wolfgangnabermonstroya was very confused, because Duffy was a very strange spirit with a very strange turnaround and exhibited a very strange willingness to help. Almost too willing…but Wolfgangnabermonstroya had no time to dwell on potential plot convenience, let alone the misuse of ellipsis. He consulted a doctor before taking the pills (never take strange pills without direction from a medical professional), and the doctor concluded that he had no clue what was in the pills. So Wolfgangnabermonstroya seized the wing of a silver-crested hawk, recited a prayer to Leibniz, and downed the bottle in two swallows.

Chapter Next: A Confrontation with Box Turtle, Cohort of Capitalism Through the magic of suggestion, the placebos led Wolfgangnabermonstroya to a castle in a valley, dark with death’s shadow, and he feared the forces of goodness. Knocking on the door of the castle, Wolfgangnabermonstroya prepared for a battle, but the door was answered by a common politician. It seemed as though he had been mistaken in his search.

“Oh Wolfgangnabermonstroya,” a voice said, “I didn’t except to see you here.” It was Box Turtle, who had just finished interrogating the politician (and determined that the woman frequently lied on surveys; thus she was not the honest politician Box Turtle sought). Wolfgangnabermonstroya was incredulous. “Why Box Turtle, I didn’t expect to encounter you! Shall you aid me in my quest?”

The two began to walk away from the castle in no particular direction.

“Well Wolfgangnabermonstroya,” Box Turtle said, “I am in the middle of a quest myself. Perhaps we can help each other. Tell me, what is your quest?”

Puffing out his scrawny chest with pride, Wolfgangnabermonstroya told Box Turtle all about his realization that the Queen needed saving from Capitalism and that Duffy had pointed him to the castle and now he was seeking the cohort of Capitalism to take down.

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Box Turtle grinned a foxy grin but Wolfgangnabermonstroya thought Box Turtles had no lips and thus didn’t notice. “Wolfgangnabermonstroya,” Box Turtle said, “Do you happen to know what my quest is?” When the boy replied in the non-affirmative, the tortoise continued. “You may have thought that I was seeking an honest politician, and this is true. But, I am seeking an honest politician because I wish to make him/her/hun my co-cohort of Capitalism with whom I may destroy the Queen!”

Stringed instruments played the opening chords of some C-minor symphony as Wolfgangnabermonstroya realized that the one had been seeking had been there all along. Box Turtle! The Terrapene he trusted above all others.

Flabbergasted, Wolfgangnabermonstroya asked, “But why do you seek to eliminate the Queen through Capitalism Box Turtle? Why?” And Box Turtle spoke: “Because this world is a twisted world. Don’t you know? Every day the dirty pollute my bathing waters, confirmed criminals are married in my gazebo, ordinal numbers confess their love to me, and oily sick people eat at my supper table! I can stand it no more! I will create a new world!! You never listened to my lessons anyway; and if you are not with me, then you are against me!!!” Unable to further contain his rage, Box Turtle head-butted Wolfgangnabermonstroya in the clavicle.

Recovering from the blow, Wolfgangnabermonstroya produced his tundish. “Only evil deals in absolutes and excessive exclamation marks.” He said, “I will do what I must to save the Queen.” But making this bold declaration distracted Wolfgangnabermonstroya, and he was head-butted a second time by Box Turtle and thrown into a nearby river.

Box Turtle approached the river and surveyed the surface. Then, Wolfgangnabermonstroya jumped up out of the water and tried to swallow one of Box Turtle’s feet, attacking with all of his heart, liver, and gall bladder. But Box Turtle was prepared and parried the pounce. They were equally matched, and Wolfgangnabermonstroya found Box Turtle countering every up maneuver with a down maneuver, every top-notch with a bottom-notch, and every charm dance with a strange dance. “Hark!” The harrowed human hacked. “Be mine adversary untrouncable?”

Seizing the window of opportunity, Box Turtle revealed a poisoned rapier from within his shell and nearly wounded Wolfgangnabermonstroya, who accidentally executed an epic shoulder roll, evading the devilish assault. And

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then, just as he was about to wield his tundish upon Box Turtle, a pair of left feet came out of nowhere and tripped up Wolfgangnabermonstroya, who face-planted the ground and was out freezing cold. Box Turtle crawled over to the motionless body of Wolfgangnabermonstroya and, with an evil grin, drew back the seething blade to fatalize the boy.

“Sassiroo Monica!” a voice cried as a giant hammer flew out and deflected Box Turtle’s blade, which flew far away. The voice was that of Destiny! Against all ratiocination, she was there to save Wolfgangnabermonstroya. Box Turtle faced the galactic beauty, “Do not meddle in the affairs of not spirits.” He commanded; but Destiny was not one to follow commandments from reptiles.

From within his shell, Box Turtle unsheathed a cavalry broadsword of the largest size, but before he could use it, Destiny brandished a double fianchetto, and this zwischenzug blasted the Box Turtle.

The two fought onto a bridge over the troubled river, and it seemed as though neither side could be truly victorious. But good fortune streaked before Destiny, and she saw a random axe at the end of the bridge. Following an instinctual idea, the galactic beauty jumped onto the axe and, instead of impaling herself, everything blew up.

Finale: A Queen’s Farewell The dust settled down and started a family. The champion stood, the rest saw better: Destiny in a mud-stained cardigan. There was no remnant of the vanquished Box Turtle; not even a shell. The unconscious Wolfgangnabermonstroya became reconscious and began doubting existence.

“What happened? Where is Box Turtle?” He asked, his eyes aghast. Destiny smiled, “Fear not Wolfgangnabermonstroya, Box Turtle has been sent to the land of Saligia; a land from which he will never return. The Queen is saved.” Wolfgangnabermonstroya was elongated with the intoxicating aura of victory. Even though he himself technically failed, the quest was complete. Not bothering to ask Destiny about her role in the victory, Wolfgangnabermonstroya asked, “O, Destiny! Tell me, where is the Queen? I must inform her that she is safe.”

Though temporarily offended by the fact that her accomplishment was not even noticed, Destiny became quiet as a grave look took a journey across her

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face. “But Wolfgangnabermonstroya, don’t you get it? You were not told because it is the great Bohemian scandal, but there is no Queen; in reality, there is no Queen because the queen is us.” She paused, fearful for how Wolfgangnabermonstroya would interpret the news.

These are the words that bounced through the boy’s brain: “Of course!

It was the only apt explanation after all. ‘The folly of mistaking existence as individual and oneself as an island is inborn in us all,’ Mr. Pauly once said. The fellowship with one’s fellow person is felt by the eternal internality of queenship. The ungraspable phantom of liff, and this is the keyhole to it all.”

And Wolfgangnabermonstroya (finally) kneeled and said unto Destiny, “My dearest, I owe you my everything.” And the victory vibraphones sounded!

O framboise joust day! Speaker Henry Clay! It was time for a real party.

After partying their party parts off, it was time for the parting of ways.

Destiny and Wolfgangnabermonstroya decided to maintain the amicable nature of their relationship minus any commitment (for strings attached quickly become nooses), and Destiny disappeared to her home-world, Amicus, in the Crepuscular Zone, but Wolfgangnabermonstroya wouldn’t learn the whereabouts of this place until the sequel.

Quick as a fox jumping over the slothful adversaries of education boards, Wolfgangnabermonstroya began his journey home. He had seen and heard and feltlickedtasted a great number of brave new sensations; these experiences helped Usher him 4 steps closer to himself.

After trudging through the uncharted backwaters of his adventure, Wolfgangnabermonstroya was home just in time for supper. The quiet of the domestic setting was a welcome change from his wild, rump-roaring adventure.

So tired was he, that he sent himself to bed without dinner. “Wolfgangnabermonstroya,” his mother called out to him, “we are having venison for dinner.

Have you had your venison?”

“Yes,” he thought, laying down his tundish in extreme fatigue, “I have had my venison.” Yes I say yes I have yes

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Editors Ethan Holaday Carson Schatzman Grant Schatzman Hannah Grip Ashley Mihalick

Reid Bartholomew Holly Reason Anderson Hannah Grillot Victoria Morrison Monica Kim

A special thanks to World Literature Today for their patient guidance and support and to Provost Harper for his support. We also owe a debt of gratitude to the students who kindly shared their art with us, making this first volume of The Aster possible.

“If there’s a book you want to read, but it hasn’t been written yet, then you must write it.”

-Toni Morrison