Generic 17

1

GENERIC ISSUE 17

EMERSON’S GENRE FICTION MAGAZINE

G

17

Generic, Issue 17, Spring 2020 Copyright for all stories goes to their creators Generic is copyright of Undergraduate Students for Publishing, Emerson College Interior Design by Ana Hein and Morgan Holly Cover Art by Nicole Turner

This issue is set in Roboto and Avenir

Electronic edition published on issuu.com

facebook.com/GenericMag @GenericMgazine emersongeneric@gamil.com

TABLE OF CONTENTS

LETTER TO THE READER Unsung

Sadie Hutchings Reliving

Katie Lacadie

1 3 13

A Dragon’s Guide to the Many Uses of Ovens

Olivia Elle I’ll Be Seeing You

Jay Townsend A Simple Story

Ana Hein Moving On

Sophia Abrego De La Garza

23 33 41 49

GENERIC STAFF EDITOR-IN-CHIEF Emily McNeiece

MANAGING EDITOR Allison Sambucini

EDITORS Susan Matteucci, Haley Saffren, Allison Carevella, Kaitlyn Shokes

READERS Chloe Aldrich, Isabella Moreno, Gabi Jonikas, Camilla Fagen Guitron, Katharine Hanifen, Sadie Hutchings, Melina List, Cassandra Koenigsberg, Susan Kuroda, Athena Singh, Belle Tan, Jade Edwards, Mackenzie Denofio, Colin Criswell, Will Edwards

HEAD COPYEDITOR Abby Ladner

COPYEDITORS Olivia Williams, Sierra Delk, Bianca D’antonio, Madeline Wendricks, Katie Powers

HEAD OF MARKETING Sophia Abrego De La Garza

SOCIAL MEDIA MANAGER Anne Rinaldi

HEAD DESIGNER Ana Hein

ASSISTANT DESINGER Morgan Holly

COVER DESINGER Nicole Turner

PROOFREADER Libby Sweeney

Dear Reader, Welcome, and thank you for picking up the 17th issue of Generic Magazine! We are Emerson’s only biannual literary magazine exclusively dedicated to publishing genre fiction. Our magazine is completely written, edited, designed, produced, marketed, and managed by students who put a lot of time and effort into making Generic the best it can be. Inside this issue, you’ll discover stories told from a variety of perspectives, in worlds both familiar and alien.

This issue, of course, cannot be separated from the real-world events co-occurring with its publication process. Because of COVID-19, this will be the first electronic-only issue of Generic, the latter half of the publication process being conducted remotely and electronically. Times like these, in my opinion, are when we need genre fiction most. The stories we publish can offer an escape from the worries of reality, as well as provide a window through which to see our real-life experiences. That’s what’s so important about fiction and story-telling: In times of crisis, we can always find solace in the written word, in the various worlds of fiction. This collection contains six amazing short stories that demonstrate the breadth of creativity that genre fiction can contain, as well as its ability to relate to real-world situations.

Each piece offers a new world for us to explore, new characters to journey with, and new themes to grapple with and analyze.

The magazine you’re holding wouldn’t have been possible without the hard work and dedication of our talented authors and staff. I want to thank every reader, copyeditor, designer, cover artist, marketer, editor, and proofreader who contributed to producing this magazine. I appreciate all the time and enthusiasm put into this issue, even when classes, jobs, organizations, internships, and other commitments were all vying for your attention. Of course, many thanks to Undergraduate Students for Publishing for their constant support of this magazine. A special thank you to my amazing Managing Editor Allison Sambucini. Without her, this magazine would simply not exist!

Over the time I’ve worked with this beautiful little magazine, I’ve learned so much about editing, cooperation, and the entire publishing process. I’m so excited to share our staff’s labor of love with our readers, and I’m graduating knowing the magazine will be in good hands once I leave. Thank you again to my wonderful staff for taking me on this amazing adventure. I wish you all luck and love with the issues going forward, and with any other publishing ventures you all end up in.

- EMILY MCNEIECE EDITOR-IN-CHIEF

3

SADIE HUTCHINGS

FANTASY

UNSUNG Sadie Hutchings is a WLP major, concentrating in Publishing. Her love of storytelling stems from the memory of her mom reading fantasy novels to her before bedtime throughout her childhood. In her writing today, she strives to achieve the same wonder that characterizes those memories.

4

I

f scents were visible, the square would be blinding in color: a warm golden hue for the rows of fresh loaves at the baker’s; a mix of ginger-orange and canary-yellow spilling from a vendor’s collection of ground spices; and flashing bronze where the blacksmith forges tools to sell.

“Quality fabrics! Get ’em here!” A man gestures proudly to thick coils of rich fabrics. Another holds out jewel-colored hair ribbons and calls louder, “For your mother! Your sister! Your wife!”

Pockets are weighed down with smooth coins, and there is an air of plenty that encompasses the scene. The rhythmic moving of feet mixes with the sounds of easy conversation among the people.

Among the bustle, in the center of the square a bubble of quiet is growing. A brightly dressed woman moves to stand at the base of a large statue. As she reaches to pull a small lyre out of her embroidered bag, people begin to gather. They tuck their purchases in the crooks of their arms or under bended knees as they arrange themselves into sitting positions around the woman.

In this kingdom, when a bard sings, people listen.

The woman’s long, tan fingers strum out a couple of cords from the instrument, and she pitches her voice low to match the notes: “A prince, now king, a seventh child of seven, rises above older

Unsung

5

siblings, to assume throne and crown.”

Excitement and anticipation within the crowd grows as they collectively recognize the tune. It is the story of their king—of the man depicted by the very statue the bard performs under. They have heard this song many times before, enough to mouth the words, but it’s a favorite, and no one leaves as the bard continues to sing: “With the vibrancy of golden armor, silver swords, and bloodied hands, the prince sets off to find a fallen star in the realm of a foreign king, a wish made of light.”

The story is a common one, a dime a dozen, of a prince turned hero. He will succeed in grasping a whisper, a rumor of an adventure that could set him above his older sisters and brothers. He will come home victorious. Songs will be written. But there is more to the story that no bard nor historian knows. The prince was not alone in his quest. There was another man, a woodcutter named Noam, who had heard the same legend about the wish and set off to claim it.

The bard spreads her arms, and her billowing sleeves sweep over the audience—capturing them in her tale. Her fingers at the lyre pick up speed as the tempo of the song increases and builds.

Within her words are images of other lands, a young prince entering a foreign land, and the castle that receives him: “Gilded gates of the kingdom shift and open for him. By-passing the city, the prince rides straight to palace. He is given a feast of bread and lamb.”

••

N

oam’s entrance into the city goes unnoticed. Laden down with a threadbare pack, the woodcutter makes his way across a well-travelled footbridge. He leans on a hand-carved cane for support—unlike the prince, he hasn’t been a young man in a long time. Hasn’t felt like one for longer. The town is a quiet one, and few people are out in the streets. He has lived in places like this; places ruled by the selfish few, places where neighbors draw their curtains in tight and always lock their doors. His grandchildren live in a place like this—stifled and harsh.

Ahead of him, there is an upset in the quiet. A young man in armor whirls around a corner riding a horse recklessly down the road. People around the scene scramble, glaring as they push themselves against walls, out of the way. The rider, set on his course, doesn’t spare them even a glance. A slight figure stumbles,

6

Sadie Hutchings

thrown back from the turmoil, and Noam sees them spit at the ground as the rider continues on his way. As he reaches down to help the figure stand, bony fingers grasp at his arm. The figure—an old woman, he sees now—tightens her grip, pushes against his forearm, and rises to her feet. Sinking her long nails into his skin like a sort of violent thank-you, the woman releases her grip and starts to walk away.

“Wait! Maybe you can help me, I’m looking for some directions,” Noam calls out.

Turning back to look at him, a grin slowly spreads across the woman’s face. “I can help you,” she pauses, “for a price.” Her exposed teeth are surprisingly straight and glittering. “Come with ol’ Wren, and I’ll sell you whatever you need.”

“That’s really not necessary, I don’t need to buy anything. Just some information if you have it.”

Wren laughs and spit springs from her mouth, “Now, none of that. Everyone finds something they need in my store.”

Looking around, the woodcutter sees that everyone else has vacated the street and that the soft morning light is shifting into a dimmer afternoon glow. Another day is passing, and Noam sighs.

As if seeing the decision on his face, Wren’s grin gets wider, curling at the ends.

The street winds lazily in and out of lantern light as they travel deeper and deeper into the city. They pass by storefronts and residential streets until the woman finally stops at a small weathered green door in an uneven frame. She fishes out a ring of keys from a hidden pocket and turns the lock.

“Come inside, and we’ll see what I can do for you, hmm?” She reaches out her gnarled fingers, grabs his arm, and pulls him inside.

••

“S

eated with a foreign king at a foreign feast, the prince asks about a star. ‘Our kingdom has long told stories of such a thing, but the way is deceiving, and guarded twice,’ the king replies, brow lowered and hands twisting nervously.”

••

F

illed from floor to ceiling, Wren’s shop bursts with all sorts of objects. There are rows and rows of small vials, some holding

Unsung

7

thickly opaque liquids, others crammed with twisting roots and spindly creatures. Books are placed in haphazard piles throughout the narrow space.

“Let me get the light,” Wren says, guiding Noam into the store.

He narrowly avoids knocking over the first pile of books. He isn’t so lucky with the second; history tomes and storybooks crash to the floor, their pages crumble and bend.

“Oh! Sorry, here let me—” Light floods the room, and he’s cut off by Wren snapping her fingers. At the sound, there’s a flurry of ink and paper as the stack of books rights itself. The rest of the room teeters and shifts as a path through the disarray forms in front of the witch and the woodcutter.

Catching his wide-eyed stare, Wren moves to stand behind a counter, props up her elbows, and laces her fingers together.

“Now that that’s all sorted, see anything you’d like to buy?”

Laughing, she holds out a silvery-green vial and nods at his balding head, “I’ve got a potion that can make anything grow.”

“Really, ma’am, I just need information. I’ve heard of a...a star, one that’ll grant any wish. Everything I’ve found has led me to your city.” He runs a tired hand through his hair. “I don’t know where to go from here.”

“A fallen star,” she muses, “Now, that’s an old tale.” She unlaces her hands and turns one palm up, reaching it out towards him.

“But I’ve got a living to be made, and I don’t give anything away for free.”

Sighing, Noam pulls out two tarnished gold coins and places them into her open palm. Quicker than he’s seen her move all afternoon, her fingers snap closed and she smiles.

“Go through the forest on the edge of town, and you’ll get to a mountain. Through a hidden door, you’ll find your star.” She clicks her tongue inside her mouth and looks down at the money in her hand as if judging its worth. “And, I suppose, you’d oughta know that there’s a creature guarding the woods.” Clicks her tongue again. “And, and this is ‘cause I like you, there’s bound to be some sorta guardian within the mountain to watch out for.” She glances at the cane in his hands and the wrinkles under his eyes. “You don’t really seem like the adventuring type—” He cuts her off, “I’m going. It’s the last thing I can do for my family, getting that wish, a wish for a shot at a better type of life, it’s...it’s all I can do for them.” His old eyes grow distant as he thinks of his small grandchildren, of how he’s all they’ve got, and of how

8

Sadie Hutchings

they won’t have him for much longer. His voice falters before he continues to speak, “Thank you, Wren.”

The woodcutter turns to leave, making sure not to knock anything over on his way out. He swears things have been moving around just outside of his sight. Before he pulls open the door, Wren calls out to him. As he turns to her, she throws the silvery-green vial in his direction, and he manages to catch it before it hits the floor. Her old face looks almost sheepish.

“Maybe you’ll find some use for it,” she shrugs, “and don’t think that’s for free, I fully expect that on your way back you’ll give ol’ Wren some of that treasure if you find any.”

••

“T

he forest on the edge of town is eerie and silent when the prince approaches. A giant sun rises in the sky, its rays glinting off his armor, his swords, and his clear, clever eyes.”

••

T

he woodcutter makes his way unsteadily through the twisting trees. His cane sinks into the spongy underbrush, but the evening sun seems to have renewed in energy, and there is enough light to see by. Strange-sounding birds caw from the leafy-crowned canopy, and Noam pulls his cloak tighter around himself. Eventually, he arrives at the opening of a clearing. He had been careful to avoid making noise, hoping to pass through the forest unchallenged. It would not be so—in the middle of the clearing, what he thought to be a small hill begins to shift and stretch. The mound turns to face him, and its large moss-covered jaw opens to let out a loud, thundering yawn. Covered in grass and small sprouting plants, the creature appears to be a part of the earth it rests on. Two eyelids open to reveal slitted yellow-golden eyes.

It calls out in a lilting voice, “O, traveler. If you answer my question correctly, I’ll allow you passage through my woods. If not—” the creature purrs and bares its sharp teeth, “if not, I’ll eat you.”

The beast’s laughter ripples in waves, encompassing the space.

Shaking, Noam approaches the center of the clearing.

“Pose your question, and I will give you my answer.”

“Ah, a confident one then. Very well, what gift can you give me that I cannot easily take for myself?”

Unsung

9

The woodcutter racks his mind. What could he give? He had very little. Looking closer at the beast licking its lips in front of him, Noam realizes that he can see the outline of its ribs. That those yellow eyes appear shrunken—the creature is starving. So, Noam swings his pack from off his shoulders and rummages through his small rations. Pulling out a small browning apple, he holds it out in offering.

“Food. That’s what I can give you.”

The creature laughs and flicks out a long, rough tongue, “Tell me, what hunger would this apple satisfy that eating you would not?”

The woodcutter lowers himself to the ground, takes the apple in both hands, pulls, and splits the fruit in two. Scooping the juicedripping seeds from the core, Noam digs a small divot into the ground at his feet. Placing the seeds inside, he re-covers the hole.

The apple wasn’t the only thing he had retrieved from his bag— and the man upends Wren’s vial on the planted seeds. As the shimmering liquid hits the earth, sprouts begin to pop up from the ground. In the blink of an eye, the short stems grow; the clearing fills with trees heavy with small but ripe fruit. The creature pounces.

Within minutes, its jaw is stained from the apples’ juices, and it falls into a deep and satisfied slumber.

••

“F

ar into the woods, the prince travels. Coming upon a clearing, he encounters a sleeping beast within an apple orchard.

Silently approaches the prince, who slits the neck of the beast, and wears its earthen-coat as a trophy.”

••

E

vening turns to night as Noam clears the outside edge of the forest. There isn’t enough light for him to see where the immense mountain ends and the dark, clouded sky begins. And so, rather than searching blindly for a hidden door in the craggy rocks, he gathers his cloak tight around him to wait for the day.

The rising sun announces itself harshly, and Noam wakes covered in beads of sweat. Sunlight throws itself against the mountain, squirming into the cracks and crevices. With his cane in one hand, the woodcutter searches for anything that could be an entrance.

His fingers catch on a smooth crack. Taking a step back, he can see

10

Sadie Hutchings

the outline of a door. Grounding his feet, he places a hand on its surface, and pushes.

••

“I

n the dead of night, the prince-soon-king breeches the mountain.

Cloaked in the creature’s skin, armored in gold, armed with silver, the awaiting serpentine guardian is no match for him.”

••

T

he inside of the mountain is cavernous; smooth granite walls rise to form sloping ceilings. Noam closes the door behind him with an audible creak as the smell of blood reaches his nose. In the near distance stands a man with a red sword drawn. No, not red, Noam realizes, but rather silver metal dripping blood. At the man’s feet lies a beheaded serpent coiled in and around the vast piles of coins, jewels, and the other glittering items of the fallen dragon’s hoard. Cloaked in shadow, Noam isn’t seen by the prince, who is focused on wiping his sword clean of the ruby liquid. And then— there it is. Noam’s eye catches on a pale, blue light radiating from a small, spindly orb a close distance away from him. He prays that his feet remember the long nights of hunting quietly through the forest of his youth, and he sneaks toward the fallen star and quickly hides it within the folds of his cloak. Still the prince doesn’t notice him, busy beginning his search through the landscape of treasure.

But stealth is a fickle friend, and, just as Noam nears the hidden door, his left foot brushes against a small collection of coins; sending them scattering. The clinking sound of the coins falling echoes throughout the chamber. Noam begins to run. But it takes only a moment for the younger, more agile prince to reach him, and, within a second, Noam feels the cold of steel pressing into his back.

“Thief! What have you taken from the mountain?” The prince’s voice rings out clear and accusing, “I have slain the dragon, all she possessed is mine.”

And, before Noam can respond, he is betrayed again—as the light from the star chooses this moment to strengthen and shine through the fabric of his cloak. Keeping the sword brandished, the prince moves to stand between the door and Noam. The young man rips aside Noam’s cloak, and the star’s light immediately fills the space between the men with a glowing, blue light. The prince’s

Unsung

11

eyes reflect the pallid glow and dawn with recognition.

“Give me the star. It is my wish,” the prince demands and moves the sword’s tip close to Noam’s chest, “Old man, my wish is to change a kingdom. I will be a better king than my father, than any of my siblings would have been—that is a story that warrants the power of a star. You are not the hero of this piece. You must realize how this ends, yes? How it always ends in these stories? I will not leave without my wish, content yourself to the mountain’s other treasures.”

Noam looks down at his hands and then to the prince’s gripping the hilt. Noam’s hands have known hard work, have known the precision of a carving knife, the warmth of holding his 10 children’s fingers within his own, the act of burying those children. They have never known a sword. And so, without a choice and without saying a word, the old woodcutter hands over the luminous star. He watches the prince leave the cavern, leaf and dirt cape flowing behind him, leaving with the wish Noam had travelled so far to find.

••

“T

he prince returns, with a story, a star, a wish. He wishes that he’ll be king, that his kingdom will be filled with prosperity.

He wishes that his kingdom will be filled with song.”

As the last note of the bard’s song chimes, the crowd erupts in cheers as they rise to their feet. The bubble of attention breaks, and people gather their purchases of fruits, fabrics, and flour. The crowd disperses as they resume their previous activities. The woman shakes out her long sleeves and starts to pack away her small lyre.

She looks out into the crowd a final time. There is an old man wearing the trade-clothes of a woodcutter, surrounded by young children. The children are well-dressed, the youngest even wears an amber brooch, but the bard sees the toll age has taken on the man. He looks tired, and, when his eyes make contact with hers, there is something in them that makes her feel almost silly, and incredibly young, for singing the prince’s ballad. She wonders what stories lie behind his aged eyes. But the bard shakes off the thought. After all, there are few songs sung about old men, and even fewer about woodcutters. Soon forgetting about the small family, the woman closes her bag over the lyre and softly sings the final lyrics again under her breath. “...filled with song.”

13

HISTORICAL FICTION KATIE LACADIE FOLKLORE

RELIVING Katie Lacadie is a senior WLP with minors in history and environmental studies. She wrote “Reliving” while in Ireland, and based the fort Áed lives in on an abandoned fort she visited in the Burren. When she’s not writing she can usually be found yelling about her favorite books or knitting while watching a movie.

14

[Caoimhe pronounced Keeva / Áine Pronounced Anya / Áed Pronounced aid]

V

oices echoed over the hills, floating toward me in the air. I sat nestled against the fallen rocks, using the grass as a cushion, and dread settled in. Onto the ramparts they came, clambering over wobbling slabs of stone, trying not to turn their ankles in the spaces between. They stood on the ruins of my home with their peculiar clothes and spoke strange accents. I would not understand them even if I could hear every word over the howling wind. The man at the front with wisps of gray hair and a shawl that rustled like dead leaves suddenly spoke a few words just barely recognizable. But then he fell back into the staccato pattern entirely foreign to me.

I hated when they came here, droves hiking up my mountain, trampling through what they couldn’t have known was a graveyard.

Stabs of pain rippled through me as they stepped on mounds of grass where my deep memory could see my fallen neighbors. They always looked around for a while, seemingly unaware that this was once a home, but never made it a home themselves. Only to see, never to stay. I could not understand it. For how much they took in with their eyes as they stood atop what used to be walls of

Reliving

15

defense now crumbled into uselessness, they never noticed me.

A young girl did once, many years ago, but she spoke a smooth, lilting language I could not comprehend. When she reached out to take my hand, her arm passed right through me. It was the most devastating moment of my long depressing life. Or not-life, I suppose, since I’ve been tethered here to this landscape since the day my home was attacked and everyone I knew was ripped from the world.

Soon the unusual people were gone, laughing as they attempted to keep their balance among the limestone. The sun followed them shortly, as it always does, leaving me in a world of black I had no escape from. And, like most nights, my mind wandered. Scooting to the edge of the cliff, I swung my legs over the sheer chasm beneath. The ruins melted away, my mind clicking back through the years, the centuries. (Had it really been almost twelve hundred now?) Moss retreated, rocks lifted back up from their sad piles on the ground and added themselves to the ramparts, grass grew backward and was eventually replaced by the hard-packed dirt floor I’d known when there were only eleven years behind me.

My heart pinched, and my stomach grew heavy. I’d been watching this scene from my life-life every single night since the day I died.

••

“Á

ed! Get your skinny little ass over here!” Caoimhe shouted as she stirred the soup over the fire. “I need that meat hung up for drying before sunrise!” Little me (I still have the body of an eleven-year-old, even though now I’ve witnessed more than the tree growing just outside the fort—it only began its life about a hundred years ago) came running, iron knife longer than my forearm held precariously in my non-dominant right hand since the other arm carried a slab of meat.

Lirach, the disease as common as the rains, took my younger sister Áine from us just last month, as it did to so many of the people working in the kitchens. Not Caoimhe though, she was tougher than over-salted dried meat, and I thought if lirach ever tried to worm itself into her stomach, she would just use her breadkneading arms to punch it right out. Since Áine had been Caoimhe’s fastest runner, and the most diligent helper, it made sense for her brother—only a year younger—to take her place.

I really wanted to be with my father outside the fort, herding

16

Katie Lacadie

cattle and then slaughtering them for future meals, but I was still too young. Besides, I was shorter than most boys my age, it would have been far too easy for the cows to simply run me over and that would be the end of me. (Maybe I should have pushed the matter more, that seems like it would have been an easier way to go.)

But I was stuck with the burly Caoimhe, who enjoyed ordering me around like a sheepherder would to a member of their flock. I liked pretending I was more of a sidekick to her rather than some sort of indentured servant. It made me feel a little better about being left behind in the fort. Huffing and puffing under the weight of the knife and the meat (and probably the absence of my sister as well, though it was so long ago now, and there was still so much coming later that day, it’s difficult to remember), I waddled over to the thick wooden table to carve out slices thin enough to hang for drying.

The sun was peeking out from behind the cliffs in the distance when I finally wiped the sweat from my brow and left the gory knife on the counter. “Ah, ah, ah,” Caoimhe stopped me with the wave of her spoon. “Where do you think you’re going, Áed? I need you to do a run to the smiths. Tell Lon we’re expecting merchant visitors in the coming week, one of their scouts just arrived this morning.” This excited me, I’d seen the merchant enter the fort on my way to bring my mother her breakfast and I had hoped more would follow—visitors were always fascinating. “They’ll be needing changes for their horses and will likely need to trade for supplies.

Take these as well,” she shoved a basket of kitchen knives into my arms, “and put them in an order for the whetstone. They’re duller than the pile of rocks in your head, boy.” For some reason the older woman enjoyed insulting me on the excuse that it gave me a thicker skin. I think she just had a sour disposition that found landing on anyone who happened to be in her path the moment something irked her.

I didn’t mind so much, though, because it was always exciting to make a trip to the smiths. Lon Mac Loimhtha had his own stone cottage on the next hill, and it took half the day just to walk there and back, so I brightened at the prospect of getting out of the fort for so long. On top of that, merchants would be arriving the next week, and I always loved the traders from around the world that passed through our home. So, on the whole, I was having a wonderful morning. I carried the basket of knives out of the kitchens, passing a man outside his stone hut in the throes of lirach. Yellow leeched into his eyes and skin, and it reminded me

Reliving

17

too much of Áine, so I had to look away before the memory of her could seep into my mind. Adding power to my steps to get more space between me and the suffering man, I left the fort swiftly.

The limestone was slick from the night’s rain, but sunrise steamed most of it away quick enough, so I could skip between the stones without the worry of slipping. Bróg made of rawhide protected my feet from being cut by the rough stone or getting a rash whenever I attempted to jump over a patch of stinging nettle climbing up from between the stones and was a centimeter or two short. Though my mother would say I was too old for such antics now, as I skipped from rock to rock, I pretended to be a merchant from a far-off land, trudging through sands higher than my head and swinging a wicked sword through the air. This is the only part of my replayed memory that I watch fondly.

The pounding of hooves rumbled the ground to the left, and I looked up to see a flock of sheep. They stopped, eying me warily, and then a few ran in the opposite direction, shy of human attention.

It was nearly lunchtime when I saw the smoke rising from Lon’s hut in the distance. When I came up to the door, grunts and strikes of metal on metal greeted me. There stood Lon Mac Loimhtha, the strange man who seemed to have always been here. Stories from great-grandparents tell about him in this hut, looking exactly as he does today. His left hand held the iron fire poker he worked on in place, while his right hit it over and over again, sending sparks flying. The third arm protruding from the large man’s chest held a giant anvil in place. I knocked on the stone, causing Lon to turn my way. He only rotated his torso because all his weight was supported by a single leg. When he sent a smile my way, it stretched the long scar marring his face. (No one knew the origin of it then, and I certainly haven’t figured it out in my solitude since.) “Áed! Good to see you kid! Caoimhe send you over?” He asked, nodding to the basket in my arms.

I nodded. “Yes, sir. She asked to put this order in for the whetstone.” I lifted the basket as I said this. “And she wanted me to let you know there are merchants on their way that will be needing changes for their horses and that you’ll be able to peddle supplies with them as well.”

“Wonderful!” His gruff voice made the word sound more ominous than excited, but the man still had a welcoming quality to him despite the brutishness of his attitude and appearance. I wiped my woolen sleeve over my face, scratching my chapped cheeks

18

Katie Lacadie

more than mopping up the sweat. It was a muggy day, and the walk here had caused some sweat to drip down my back, but now that I faced the smith’s fire, the increased heat made me all the more uncomfortable. “Cup of ale?” Lon asked, and I nodded as I took the seat farthest from the fire and closest to the open door. I sipped the drink he handed me in silence as he got back to work, hammering away at the poker. When he finished with that, he started on the kitchen knives. I couldn’t stand the scraping of the whetstone, and I’d already finished my ale, so I went for a walk outside the cottage, continuing my imagined storyline from the walk there.

Curves of limestone hills and swaths of land cleared as fields for grazing and farming stretched out across the landscape. I always enjoyed the view from Lon’s cottage and felt an overwhelming sense of home when I took it in. The fort was important, it kept us safe, I knew that. But sometimes I wished I could just live out here among the rocks and the plants with only the hills and the wind as company. (What’s the saying? Be careful what you wish for?) The wind brought to me scents of the earth with a hint of the sea. I spent the next hour or two breathing in home, and I felt at peace.

Step. Thump. Step. Thump. Lon exited his cottage, using a hazel rod as a right leg as he walked over the limestone. “Caoimhe’s knives are ready.” He had the basket held between his left and middle arms.

“Thank you, sir.” My parents taught me to treat my elders with the utmost respect. I took the basket from him and was ready to head back to the fort before he stopped me.

“Oh, and Áed, let her know I’ll be coming down next week to sell to the merchants.”

“Of course, sir.” I nodded, he waved, and then I departed.

The sun made its steady slide to the west as I clambered back through the landscape. At this rate, even my father and the other cattle herders would be in for the night by the time I arrived home.

The darker it got, the more difficult it became for me to navigate a path back home, so my steps were even slower the closer I came.

Our fort was finally in sight, but the air carried a sense of wrongness. There weren’t the usual torches lighting the entire half circle of stones. Even from this distance, I could hear shouting and the faint ringing of metal despite the fact that the darkness should lead me to believe everyone was asleep. Creeping carefully, I got as close as I dared when I saw strangers on horses surrounding the east side of our fort. Were these the merchants? The horses looked

Reliving

19

far too well-rested for them to be nearly a week early. They also didn’t dress like merchants, and when the metal armor on their chest flashed in the moonlight, my stomach turned to iron. Vikings.

My eyes flickered between the fort and the people outside it.

They weren’t looking at the western entrance, and I couldn’t just sit here and do nothing. (I really should have, in hindsight.) I was the only moving figure on the hillside, so now the darkness was my ally. I left the basket on the ground, but took one of the newly sharpened kitchen knives, just in case.

Inside, the fort was just as dark without any of the torches lit along the walls. In the center of the ring of huts, I could see fire flickering, likely handheld torches. My first stop was my own hut, and that look inside would haunt me as I haunted the fort over the centuries. There on the floor were my parents, both with iron swords in their hands. Both with fatal wounds, blood turning the dirt into mud. Every part of my body shook, but I knew I had to keep moving. The kitchens. If anyone could survive this attack it would be Caoimhe. I couldn’t understand why the world went blurry until I felt a tear drop from my cheek. Shaking my head, I tried to blink back the deep sadness.

Strange and terrifying words from the throat of a soldier came from the left, so I ducked right. They couldn’t know this fort the way I did—a child who liked to find the most obscure hiding places. I ducked into a niche in the stones when three Vikings passed, their torches flickering over the gore splattered across their faces and armor like war paint. Cringing and shaking as if it was the middle of the winter, I pressed myself even further into the black of the stone until they turned around the next hut. Then I made a wild dash for the kitchen, trying to keep my footsteps as quiet as possible.

The fire from dinner was in silent embers, but it was enough light to see the carnage. There was Caoimhe, along with anyone who’d been helping her clean up after supper, slit from stomach to throat.

I wretched, spewing out the ale from Lon’s along with the dried meat I’d brought with me to eat on the day-long journey. But my body wasn’t done, the stench of death making my stomach cramp, knocking me to the floor. Nothing but bile and a bit of blood dripped from my mouth, but still I coughed and choked, trying to dispel the odor and the memory all at once. I knew I’d been loud enough for someone to hear, so I fled from the kitchen, trying to find anyone to tell them I was here to help.

A terrible thought nagged at the back of my brain: what if I’m

20

Katie Lacadie

the last one left? (This is when I should have run back across the hills, to Lon and the warmth of his cottage and the hospitality that oozed from him despite his brusque demeanor. But denial kept me going, thinking I just couldn’t, I couldn’t be the last one left. I wish I could slap myself in the face and say, you are.) I shook that thought away as fast as it came and made my way along the wall until I got to the edge of the cliff that we’d specifically built our fort on for its defensive advantages. (So much for that.) This is where the Vikings had chosen to congregate, yelling at each other in their language that sounded like stirring an iron bowl of rocks. I noticed the rider who had arrived at the fort to tell Caoimhe about the merchants soon to arrive, now dressed in the same armor as the rest of them. It had all been a trick to get a man on the inside.

The dread inside me congealed as denial melted away. If they’d had a man on the inside, it was even more likely I was the only person left to defend my home.

The Viking that seemed to be in charge threw his torch onto the roof of the nearest hut, the thatch immediately catching fire. His face was illuminated on one side by the orange glow but shaded by night on the other. The rest of the Vikings followed his lead, setting fire to the rest of the homes inside the fort. Smoke made my eyes water, or were they tears of mourning? Then the chief Viking bent down, lifting something off the ground. Bile burned again at the back of my throat when I glimpsed the hook in his hand and the head at the end of it. It was Dithorba, the man who organized our defense patterns and trained men to fight. He must have been the one to lead the attack against the Vikings, but not even Dithorba could save our people from a surprise attack. The Vikings cheered, and the chief dropped the head down the side of the cliff. Shortly after that, another Viking climbed up from the place he’d dropped it, making me think they had hung Dithorba’s head somewhere on the side of the cliff. (I’ve been down there, they left it in a small cave dug into the limestone. If I could have thrown up after death, I would have.)

I was frozen. The kitchen knife handle was slick in my sweaty palms as I watched my home burn. I had to take a stand, I was the last one left, the only defender of our fort. Running with the rage and sadness bellowing out of me in a war cry, I jumped up onto the nearest Viking and slammed my kitchen knife into the joint between his neck and shoulders. He went down with a cry, grappling for his neck, but my knife was already gone, back in my

Reliving

21

hands once again. The rest of the Vikings had been alerted, and they surrounded me quickly. I was vicious, a wild animal set loose, swiping my knife at anyone who came near.

But I was still just a child.

One of the Vikings came up from behind and stabbed me straight through. I looked down to see a weapon sticking out of my stomach before it was ripped back out. Pain ricocheted through my entire body, and I cried out with a scream so wretched, so full of anguish and despair, before collapsing. I fell forward into the already bloodsoaked mud, never to lay eyes on my murderer. I listened to the crackling fire and the raging of Vikings as they destroyed the fort.

The pale light of morning caught the corner of my eye, illuminating my fallen knife, given to me by Caoimhe just this morning and sharpened by Lon this afternoon. It all seemed so far away, so long ago. The absence of the people who slaughtered everyone I knew left the sounds of birds far too loud in my ears. I bled out before I could even see the sunrise. By the time I realized I was to leave my body behind, to walk aimlessly among the carnage, the sun was shining brightly above me in the sky. How cruel for the land of clouds and rain to decide to let the sun shine on the massacre of my people.

Everyone’s bodies around me were empty, their souls having risen and moved on. My soul tried to follow them, but my homeland— the limestone and grassy hills, the trees and sheep, and a fort of stone—held on tight. I was its last defender, and even though I failed, or maybe because I failed, it didn’t want me to leave. So, from that day forth, I remained tethered to this place, unable to meet my family, unable to wander the rest of the earth. Here I stay, my land’s friend and protector.

••

T

he night was already beginning to turn gray with the early tendrils of dawn light by the time I resurfaced from the terrible memory. I tried to tell the grasshopper jumping by my knee a few jokes to lift my mood, but it would take an hour or so for the stupor to truly dissipate. And then I would endure the same pattern tomorrow––but that was a problem for later. For now, I would enjoy the company of this grasshopper, and hope no foreigners came to desecrate my family’s grave. A week after the massacre, Lon showed up only to be greeted by carnage and silence. The big man

22

Katie Lacadie

with three arms and one leg spent three days burying everyone.

I saw him cry when he lifted my small body from the earth and placed me in a shallow grave—it is a memory I am glad not to be forced to relive every night.

I looked out over the chasm before me, legs still swinging over the edge of the cliff. The sunrise was beautiful, a bright orange unmarred by fog or rain as it usually was, eerily similar to the sunrise that day twelve hundred years past. As the last defender of my home, the land kept me here to watch over it forever. Perhaps it knew the abandonment to come and merely wanted someone to keep it company.

I smiled up to the sun knowing that had I still been alive, tears would have been streaming down my face, hoping that, having had so much time to heal, my people up in heaven were smiling back.

23 OLIVIA ELLE

MAGICAL REALISM

A DRAGON’S

GUIDE TO THE MANY USES OF OVENS Olivia Elle is a WLP senior who’s dream job is to one day have her own book or tv series. She self-published her book Tales of a Navy Brat: An Anthology, and also previously published her short story “Obsidian” with Generic. You can usually find her on her laptop, reading fanfiction or watching anime.

24

I

stumbled into the road, fangs aching from how tight I clenched my jaw. The exhaustion of the day’s journey had, it seemed, caught up to me at last. Heat flared across my back and wings as my Illusion Charm began to burn away and fall, like ashes, to the ground.

Between one moment and the next, my Magick disappeared. I was completely visible.

Turning my head side to side revealed a copse of trees on the far side of the road. I could hide there till my Magick returned, though I wouldn’t make it ho— An animal screamed on my right, but when I twisted to see what had happened, lights filled my vision. Behind them, I could just make out the dark shadow of a four-wheeled metallic beast at least a dozen times my size, barreling down on me while a human gaped at me from inside. I realized there was no escape. Then it met me head on.

If I had the soft skin of a typical animal, I would be dead. Instead, my scales saved me. The beast—a human mount—scraped along them with a screech even while some of my ribs caved inward, cracking and painful, and I skidded along the ground on my side for several feet, wings flared and out of harm’s way. Someone cried out from inside the beast, and the next thing I knew, a human

A Dragon’s Guide to the Many Uses of Ovens

25

cradled my head in its lap.

There was an overwhelming mix of scents coming off of it, sticking in my nose, masking everything else, and burning me with their stench, to the point that I couldn’t even hope to identify the human’s feelings through them. It rambled, though, in some human language I couldn’t understand, and one hand tugged continuously on a strand of hair while the other patted nervously at my head.

It was likely trying to soothe me, I decided, but I couldn’t let my guard down. I had broken the number one Dragon Law by letting myself be seen. I couldn’t continue to break the Law by remaining there—and I definitely couldn’t let the human continue to coddle me.

Shaking away the hand and struggling to my feet, I braced my body against the mount and stared at the forest. Apparently, I was old enough to venture out on my own, but my Magick wasn’t powerful enough for a daylong journey yet.

Traveling now would be difficult with both broken ribs and no Magick, which was… more than unfortunate. My mother had let me out of the nest on the condition I returned within forty-eight hours. If I didn’t, I didn’t want to think what she would do to the poor human who had injured me.

I took a deep breath, fought back the pain in my ribs, and put all my weight on my feet. But after only a few steps, something clicked behind me, and the human made another noise.

Twisting my neck around, I stared at it.

The human crouched next to the open door of the mount, stance open and fingers coaxing. Was it… trying to communicate? Even though humans hadn’t evolved enough to speak Dragon yet?

It repeated the noise.

Aiken? Was it trying to say my name? What was that “geh” sound?

It paused to make clucking noises with its tongue, continued making more useless noises, and then shook its head several times, which seemed counterproductive to anything it could possibly be attempting.

Though, admittedly, it was probably more helpful than the way it reached back up to tug harshly on its hair and drag its hand down its own face. But then it shook its head again, harder this time, and looked me straight in the eyes as it gestured towards the door and made more noises.

And at the end, there it was again. More like “Gaiken” than

26

Olivia Elle

“Aiken.” I didn’t know how it learned my name, and if I went with it and we got caught, my mother would mistake it for a dragonnapper and burn it for sure. But my side ached, and the cover of the mount was much closer than the cover of the trees. As much as I hated the idea of needing a mere human’s help…

Tossing my horns and letting out a warning growl, I stepped towards the human.

••

T

he human parked its mount next to a weird cave made up of right angles and wood. Stepping inside, I sniffed around, my nostrils wide to breathe in all of the scents. I had smelled them before, though not from up close, and not from a position in which I could see and investigate them. The Dragon Laws kept everyone safe, just not always satisfied. Especially so for a curious youth like myself. But this—this had the potential to be satisfying indeed, so long as everything turned out alright and no one died.

For now, if I wasn’t mistaken, I smelled something that might just give my Magick a push toward regaining power. I rushed through the thick, rich smell of mud and sweat in the cave’s first room, ignoring the human’s desperate yelp and the ache of my broken ribs, and headed for a more distant room. The square tiles cracked under my claws and the smell of food tickled my nostrils, but I focused instead on an even smaller cave. Shaped like a box, it squatted amongst a mix of different other boxes. Its sides had a number of nobs sticking out, all in a neat little row, and I could smell the four different places where flames had burst out sometime recently from on top. What I was interested in, however, was the interior of the cave itself, which had the sweet scent of burnt food and home wafting from it.

There was a small door with a glass screen embedded. I could see my own reflection in it and, unused to seeing myself except in calm rivers, came to an abrupt halt because of it: I was about the size of a sixteen week old wolf pup, my curved horns adding another good two talons to my height and the spikes running along my back and tail beginning to narrow into sharp points. Still, my spikes hadn’t reached the danger levels of an adult dragon, and I was nowhere near the size of a human’s mount like my mother. I had the distinct look of a lost, vulnerable dragon youth. Shivering at the thought, I eyed the most familiar place in this entire strange land.

A Dragon’s Guide to the Many Uses of Ovens

27

It was a simple matter to hook my horns under the handle attached and pull. The door fell open with a clang, and I stuck my nose inside.

The human made more noises behind me, high-pitched and frantic, and a hand landed on my shoulder and tried to pull me back before a quick warning snap of my fangs caused it to retreat.

Honestly, didn’t humans have manners?

For the moment, I would settle for allowing the human to keep all its limbs. This smaller cave within the cave called out to me of all the satisfaction to be found within. Unlike the human, it was impossible to ignore.

I checked the chamber to ensure no other dragon youth sheltered by this human had claimed it as their own and, once assured it was empty, clambered in without a second thought, circled once to confirm the strange metal grate would hold, and lay down with a sigh to soak in the heating power. It wasn’t much—perhaps it had been a while since a fire burned—but for now it was enough to help me regain my Magick. If all went well, I should be able to make it home in time to reassure my mother of my excellent health.

Minus the broken ribs, anyway.

Before I went to sleep, I made the mistake of looking out at the human. It stared back at me, eyebrows drawn together and eyes squinty. There were no wings or tail to help me judge its feelings, but if I had to guess… confused? That or mad. Its nostrils weren’t flared, so I would go with confused.

I curled my lip and let out a soft chitter to reassure it, then closed my eyes. My last thought before slipping into sleep was to wonder why the human was confused in the first place. After all, why build a perfect dragon bed if you weren’t going to offer it to a dragon?

••

I

woke up to a noise I knew well: howling. Fantastic. The human had a dog.

My Clan knew the animal from the human hunters they dragged along, seeking the cold-blooded scent of one hundred dragons.

Of course, the humans couldn’t smell us, and thanks to the Wards and Charms of the elders, neither the dogs nor the humans could see us, but they remained a nuisance all the same when they tore across our hunting grounds, scaring away prey and frightening the youngest dragons. And right now, there was no Illusion to hide me.

I did the only thing I could imagine in these circumstances and

28

Olivia Elle

banged open the door to my bed—when had it closed?—and tackled the beast head on. It yelped under my feet as I snapped my jaws close to its skull, and I barely had time to note that it was a scrawny little thing before something collided with my side.

Torn away from the fight, I scrabbled my claws against the floor. It didn’t stop me from colliding with the wall of the cave and sending splinters of pain through my insides, but it did mean it didn’t take me so long to get back to my feet. Hissing smoke, I hunkered back on my haunches and stared up at the human.

It had taken up a defensive position in front of the dog, some weird contraption of yellow, strange-smelling twigs attached to one end of the stick in its hands. That was what hit me? And the human had the strength to push me off? Me? The human snapped out more noises, pointed at the dog, then at me, and back at the dog. I just stared. Did it want something?

The human rolled its eyes and moved to the side, leaning on part of the cave wall that stuck out weirdly, but still hanging on to the pushing device. I kept staring. It was trusting the dog? With me? It actually trusted the dog to go against its natural instincts and not attack a dragon?

Granted, the dog was even smaller than me, so maybe it was younger than me too?

I did not like all of this questioning; I was used to facts. Then something yipped in my face, and I startled out of my thoughts to realize that in my moment of weakness, the dog had pranced right up to me. It stood there now, tail wagging and muzzle drooling while it stared up at me.

Its coat was red like my own, I realized. Not as bright, of course— nothing could beat a dragon’s scales when it came to brightness— but there were red undertones in that fur. I leaned forward to sniff at it, my tail swinging around to compare the colors.

The dog barked again, but this time I was somewhat prepared and stood my ground. I breathed a ring of smoke out and watched it encircle us.

The rough, steady rhythm of something being beaten drew my attention, and I looked up to see the human beaming at us as it pounded its two forelegs together.

I snorted and turned back to my… could I call it a new friend? It wasn’t attacking me, so it must be. In any case, paying attention to the dog was better than paying attention to the human embarrassing itself in the corner.

A Dragon’s Guide to the Many Uses of Ovens

29

I pointedly ignored my bed calling to me just a few feet away.

Dragons did not retreat. I could regain more Magick later, after I had finished investigating this curiosity of a dog.

••

A

fter a while of getting to know the dog, the human distracted me once again when it opened my bed, put meat inside, and closed it again. I rushed over to look at it, and the human laughed and flipped something on the cave wall. Light flared inside my bed to reveal the food sitting there.

I snarled at the outrage—whether or not I was more mad at the human for laughing at me or for invading my space, even with food, I wasn’t sure—and tried to open the door. The human yelped and slammed it closed before it could get too far.

I just stared. I had felt heat? Coming from my bed? I had sensed the presence of it earlier, yes, and known that it would hold my own heat well. But it hadn’t been this intense. By the Dragon Laws, it made me want to crawl back inside and bask in the heat, even more than I had when I first arrived at the cave.

Something wet nudged my flank, and I turned my head to snort at the dog. It licked my nose. The human giggled, and I whirled on it, head down in an optimal charging position and snarling. It raised its arms and murmured something, tone frantic but low.

I couldn’t understand it, but I knew the faint scent of fear permeating the air enough to raise my head and back off. As long as it knew I was superior when it came to Hunter versus Hunted, we would have no more problems.

Besides, a fight would take up energy that could be better spent turning into Magick.

And ok, maybe I felt a little guilty about possibly sentencing the human to death.

••

A

fter that, I returned to the other side of the cave. The dog stuck around the human, who pet it a bit even as it moved around, gathering other food supplies. Dinner, I assumed, though why that had required commandeering my bed for the meat, I had no idea.

But in the grand scheme of returning home, my bed only mattered insofar that I could use it to regain my Magick. And so the human

30

Olivia Elle

talked and talked, while I ignored it in favor of inspecting the cave.

It was rather small, probably not even big enough to fit two fullsized dragons—but then, as far as I could tell, it was just the one human and its dog living there. The only other humans I could see were all frozen flat in wooden frames. They were all set up high, around a human’s eye height, but I could make out the human in a weird gown and hat in one frame, arms around yet more humans in more weird gowns and hats. Another frame showed the human and the dog, and then another showed it—I squinted. Why was the human clinging to a cliff? Didn’t it know it could fall?

Shaking my head, I padded back towards the human and, laying down on the floor in a good position to watch it, considered my options.

Obviously, I would dine with the human and dog and would sleep in my bed. My main concern was after I had my Magick back.

If it had just been the low-level human watching me, escaping wouldn’t have been a problem. As it was, there was the dog to consider. I couldn’t just take it with me—despite considering us friends, now, the Dragon Laws forbade it. But that meant the dog would be watching me, and with its nose to track me even after a new Illusion Charm was in place… well. I had appeared out of thin air, and the human had taken it relatively well, minus the whole hitting me with its mount. I could only assume that, despite its lack of intelligence, it would identify me to be invisible with the dog all over me.

I huffed, but the smell of meat drew my attention away from my thoughts. Perking up, I watched the human extract the meat from my bed. Using some kind of weird cloth protection, of all things! I had known humans were fragile but that— I stiffened and made my way forward, nudging the curious dog out of the way to sniff the food. My bed had cooked the meat, just like my mother used her full-grown flame to cook mine. Except my bed wasn’t a dragon’s mouth, it was a bed, and I would like to think I would have noticed otherwise. Still, I trusted my nose, and my nose said that the meat had been raw when it went into my bed and was now cooked coming out.

A hand entered my field of vision, and I stared at the piece of meat hanging from it. What was—?

The human squatted down and smiled at me, still holding out the food.

I leaned forward, sniffing, and leveled a glare at the human to

A Dragon’s Guide to the Many Uses of Ovens

31

test it for any ill intentions. It just kept smiling. One hand was even on the dog’s collar, keeping it well away from the meat.

The food was mine, there was no doubt about it. I just had to take it.

Steeling myself, I pulled back my lips, parted my jaw just a bit, and snagged the cutlet between my teeth. And then, before the human had a chance to react, I opened my bed and darted inside to curl around my meal.

Even as I tore into the meat, my body relaxed into the hot metal below me and the ache in my side faded. It was inevitable; though nothing was cooking in here anymore and, presumably, the human had turned off the heating mechanism, enough heat remained to envelop me and remind me of when I was a mere babe, tucked into my mother’s side and forbidden to leave the nest. I should keep my guard up, make sure the human didn’t do anything idiotic while I slept, like get killed by my mother or try to harm me, but it was nearly impossible. And the human could only enter from one side…

Peering out of my bed revealed the human laying a bowl of some kind of pebbles down for the dog and then, perhaps sensing my gaze, turning back to me. It smiled at me, and I blew a ring of smoke at it in response. The human blew it back.

I stared at it, a bit startled. It… why had the human done that?

Was it playing? Did humans even know the concept? I supposed they must.

My eyes snapped to follow the human’s hand when it reached towards me. Smiling, though less than before, and holding a hand up. Was that supposed to be in peace? Anger? By the Dragon Laws, I wished humans had tails and wings. But I figured it must have been in peace, because the human simply pushed the door to my bed closed with a click, trapping all of the heat in with me.

And I knew I could still escape, because I had earlier.

I rubbed my cheek against the door to my bed, rumbling loud enough I hoped the human could hear it. It was all the thanks it would get, after all. I would be gone by the time morning came.

••

I

hated doors. Not the one on my bed; that one was fine. No—I hated doors like the one barring me from the outside, with its twisty knob so far out of my reach that, after leaping for it, I had crashed back down into the cloth hanging over it and taken out

32

Olivia Elle

that, the organized stacks of bound dead trees next to it, and myself all at once. In the time it took me to extract myself from the mess, both the human and the dog had arrived.

The former just stared at me, thankfully, but it did kneel down and clutch its arms around itself as it released a scent of sadness more potent than any fear it had shown around me. Surely it hadn’t expected me to stay? Even if there wasn’t the risk of my mother burning it alive, there were the Dragon Laws to consider. I had broken them long enough by relying on the human for one night.

The dog licked my chin and pranced around me, and I huffed smoke at it. The beast barked and licked me again, before running to the human when it made its way to the door.

The human smiled down at me while it opened the entrance, and I darted forward, my Illusion Charm falling into place as easy as breathing with my Magick restored. The dog yipped behind me, and the human breathed in sharply, but other than that there was no response.

I paused on the grass and looked back anyway, just for a moment, before I started running home. As much as I hated to admit it, the human had been helpful. Maybe one day, we would run into each other again, and I could return the favor.

Though I mustn’t forget it was the human who ran me over in the first place.

33

JAY TOWNSEND APOCALYPTIC FICTION

I’LL BE SEEING

YOU Jay Townsend is a sophomore WLP major who is wanted by several government agencies that Jay promises are totally real and not fabricated to make themself sound cool. They can be found by solving several mysterious riddles hidden in discreet locations around campus.

34

W

hen David first met Manuela, they were both closeted gay kids sitting in the back of their eleventh grade chemistry class.

They weren’t drawn to each other so much as pushed by a seating chart, which deprived Manuela of her normal friends. David was a textbook loner, and he’d looked it, down to the gray hoodie. He’d noticed Manuela and immediately pegged her as a social butterfly who wouldn’t have any interest in him, so he was surprised when she smiled and said hello.

“You were in my English class last year, right?” She asked, leaning forward. She had dark, curly hair that fell in her face often, and, as she finished the motion, a chunk flopped over her eyes. She brushed it back in place absently.

David blinked and nodded. “Yeah. I’m David.”

“Manuela.” She leaned over to look as his desk. “Whatcha doing?”

David glanced down at his notebook and automatically moved his hand to cover its contents. “Nothing.”

“Were you writing lyrics?” Manuela asked excitedly.

“Ye- why do you say that?”

“The lines were all short.”

David paused, trying to figure out what he was going to say.

“Yeah, I was.”

I’ll Be Seeing You

35

Manuela’s eyes lit up. “Really?” She barreled ahead without waiting for an answer: “Because I, like, compose music on the side, and I’ve been looking for someone who does songwriting.

You wanna come over to my house this weekend and try it out?”

••

D

avid packed up his belongings and climbed out of the ditch he’d been sleeping in to greet the highway, which stretched, empty and demanding, before him into distances he could not perceive.

All around him, the world was silent and still. He was away from major cities now, where most of the pilgrims were heading. And there weren’t too many pilgrims to start with.

There are so many apocalypses. Zombies, nuclear war, aliens, global warming, pandemics. People have a fascination with their own decimation. David watched one of those apocalypse prep reality TV shows one time sitting in a motel with his sister. The main man talked about how he was prepared for anything, as if the gentle scythe of death would pass him over if only he could stock up enough on canned peaches. As if a bunker could save you from the end.

No apocalypse preppers had been able to predict what really came for them.

David remembered the first death he’d seen: a girl in his psychology class, thought at first to be staring into space until someone finally checked her heartbeat. David couldn’t remember her name now. He couldn’t remember if she bled or if she smelled or what happened immediately after, but he could remember her eyes. They stared at him, open and grey and fathomless as the ocean.

More died after that. The college cancelled classes— too many dead or dying students. At first, the news stations tried to document what was going on. Then they shut down, and it was just government bulletins from the CDC, theorizing where the Disease came from, but every day it seemed to be something else. People wore hazmat suits and it stopped nothing. People carried oxygen tanks and drank water only after boiling it and near-destroyed food with heat or cold and it did nothing. It was as though millions of people’s bodies decided to give in, slowly, inevitably.

The government bulletins stopped, and the riots started. And the exodus.

Thankfully, David didn’t have to watch his roommate die since

36

Jay Townsend

his roommate had dropped out a few weeks before. Life had been strangely kind to him. Or strangely cruel, depending on your viewpoint. He’d survived a surprising amount of time. The Disease killed seemingly at random, and quickly. People just laid down and died.

David had outlived almost all his college friends and paid for it every day. He’d listened to his mother sob through the phone about his father and sister, and then listened to Manuela’s grave call about his mother. Electricity cut out shortly after that. Nobody to run the power plants, after all. It had been a week after David had seen his first death.

He’d considered killing himself, of course. At that point it was a popular course of action. He was scared enough to do it. He’d never had that before. David had thought about killing himself many times but never had a good reason. This was a good reason. He was no scientist. He couldn’t cure himself, couldn’t help anyone else, couldn’t even talk to the only people he knew who might still be alive.

At the time he made his decision, David had been sitting on the floor of his bathroom because the smooth whiteness of the place made him feel calmer. Outside, he could hear screaming. Lots of that now. Lots of despair, here at the end of the world.

And then he had the desperate thought: I can’t die like that.

I can’t die afraid.

The thought surged through him, pulled him to his feet.

I can’t die afraid.

I’m going to die happy. I have to die happy.

The next day, he packed some essentials— cooking pot, lighter, blankets— took some food and an atlas from a nearby drug store that hadn’t been completely raided yet, and started walking.

David was not going to die afraid. He would go back home. He would see his friends again. New York City to Northern Georgia?

He could make it.

That split-second decision saw him to where he was now, trudging along an abandoned stretch of highway in what he was pretty sure was Virginia, terrified of the ticking time bomb that everyone held in the pit of their stomach nowadays, but still moving.

Green enfolded him. Nature hadn’t yet begun to reclaim man’s creations— it had barely been a month— but there was a sense of anticipation. The trees at the edge of the road moved in a gentle wind, seeming to lean down over David, and the grass rustled like

I’ll Be Seeing You

37

an unending maw: the new Scylla and Charybdis. He found himself sticking to the center of the road, brushing his knuckles against the steel of abandoned cars as if for comfort.

David walked on. The scenery changed, but the road did not.

Gone were the trees, he was near an empty field; gone was the field, he was near a collection of gas stations at the edge of a town; gone were the gas stations; gone, gone, gone. Sometimes, in the towns, there would be another person, walking in a daze or lying on the ground. David did not stop for them. At the beginning of his journey, David tried his best to help. He boiled up fresh water, gave extra food supplies when he could.

David walked on. “Doesn’t matter,” he muttered under his breath at his survivor’s guilt. “Doesn’t matter.” He just had to get to Manuela. He’d missed her so much.

••

T

hat first weekend, David sat in a tiny, clean-swept cool room as Manuela gestured excitedly at her banged-up laptop screen, asking if he could try singing to it.

“Wh— now?”

“Yeah,” Manuela said, looking confused. After a second, realization stuttered across her face. “Oh, right. If you don’t want to, I can just try.”

“Um.” David stopped. What was he doing? He barely knew this girl. He wasn’t that good at songwriting, he’d never sung for anybody else before, and even if he did want to, you know, make stuff, there was no way… David steeled himself. “No, I can do it.”

He didn’t let himself look at her while he was singing. He stared at a smudge on the computer screen, at the walls, at the light blue sheets on her bed. When he finally did look at her face, just as he sang the last notes, he didn’t know what he was expecting.

Disappointment? Awe? Pained concern? She looked like she was concentrating, staring into space and biting her lip. When he finished, she nodded.

“Okay, I can work with that. I think if you use more skips in the chorus it’d help. Also…”

They talked into the evening, about music for the most part, but also about other things. David was surprised at how easy she was to talk to.

He’d expected it to be a one-time thing. Like, they’d make a

38

Jay Townsend

song together and go their separate ways, but Manuela kept being around him. She joked that David had a calming aura, but, when her uncle died, it was him she went to for comfort. That was when he realized that she trusted him. And slowly, David started to trust her too.

••

D

avid walked on. It was closing in on sunset, and the light made everything look dipped in butter. He wanted to stop but he’d only rested five minutes ago. There was another off-ramp heading towards a town. David gazed at the town name with weary eyes, then fished a beat-up atlas out of his back pocket to check his progress. Nace, Virginia. He was…

He was only halfway there.

David walked off the highway. He was so warm, and everything was spinning. David staggered to the side of the road, into the relative coolness of the grass, and did his best to make his buckling knees carry him a few feet further. He probably would have collapsed right there, if his gaze hadn’t settled on the corpse.

It appeared to have once been a young man, much like him; it was on its side, curled up as though in pain, but the decaying face was peaceful. Vultures and flies had already torn holes through the skin and clothes.

The stench hit David just a second after the sight, a smell still horrifying even after all the time David had spent in this dying world. He gasped and managed half a dozen more feet before folding against the weight of his own body.

The grass at the side of the road scratched at David’s cheek, but he didn’t have the energy to move.

He wasn’t going to make it.

David fought against the realization, but it hit him as inevitably as rain falls. He stared blankly at the weeds obscuring his vision, trembling and wishing that he’d made it just a little bit farther. He’d just wanted to see one person he loved. He’d just wanted to die without feeling scared.

There was a rustling off the side of the road. David’s head jerked slightly with the instinct to look, but his body was too weak to follow through. A pair of trembling hands sat him up, gripping him by the forearms. David looked up as best he could at the face of the traveler, who was muttering please be okay under her

I’ll Be Seeing You

39

breath like it was a prayer.

The sun behind Manuela’s head made it look like she had a halo. Her face was pale and drawn, with tear tracks tracing her cheeks, but it was her. David gasped. He found somewhere in himself the energy to laugh. “Are you real?” He said, half-smiling, half-crying.

“Are you?” Manuela leaned forward, resting her forehead against his. “I didn’t— this is so far from New York. What are you doing here?”

“What do you think?!” David shook his head. “I was coming to see you.” His breath hitched in his throat. “I— I love you. I wanted to see you one last time, before I. Before.”

“You— ha! I can’t believe we had the same idea,” Manuela said.

Her expression wavered. She was trying to keep from crying. “My family’s dead, David.”

“I’m sorry.” Slowly, pain-stakingly, David wrapped his arms around her.

“Yeah.” She shook. “I miss them.”

“I’m sorry.” He wished he could say more. “I’m sorry. You don’t— you helped me so much. I think… you were the first person I really trusted in a long time. You don’t deserve all this.”

“You don’t either.” Manuela was barely whispering. “You were always so steady. I could depend on you, I— I missed you so goddamn much. You’re my best friend.”

They sank into each other, both too exhausted to stay sitting any longer, and, after a few moments, they lay curled around each other, fingers tangled. They both knew they wouldn’t be getting up, but David didn’t care. He was not afraid.

41

ANA HEIN

FAIRYTALE RETELLING

A SIMPLE STORY Ana Hein is an undergraduate student at Emerson College pursuing a BFA in Creative Writing with minors in Comedy Writing and Performance and Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies. Her work has been featured in Blind Corner Literary Magazine, Wack Mag, Concrete, Gauge, Stork, and Generic, among others, has won multiple Editor’s Choice Awards from Teen Ink Magazine, and is forthcoming in Fearsome Critters and Terrible Orange Review. She can usually be found buying too many books, singing loudly, wearing red lipstick, complaining about the weather, staring into the void, and generally being very dramatic.

42

I

t’s dark here, and there is no escape. The trees are wicked things that ensnare a wandering foot or a stray lock of hair. The underbrush inflicts cuts and scratches on any unsuspecting sliver of skin it can catch. The sun doesn’t shine here like it should. Light warbles in the air, it doesn’t know how to descend in this harsh environment. The path can disappear in an instant, gone in a precious second spent scanning the area for predators. The animals that skitter about on the floor squeak and cry in quiet, agonized gasps that send shivers down the strongest spine.

The girl did not mean to go into the woods. She doesn’t disobey her sweet mother that smooths back her hair and works all day at the stove and with the broom until her hands bleed. The kind mother who, every night as the candle was just about to flicker out, read her stories about other little girls much like herself with round, red cheeks, and glossy golden-spun curls that went into the woods and never returned. And if they did, they were hardly recognizable as the girls they once were. In her retellings, her mother would tickle her in the stomach until she cried from laughter, then kiss her forehead before telling her, “This may be but a simple story, my darling, but there is power in such things. Never forget what lessons are to be learned.” Then the two of them would fall asleep

A Simple Story

43

wrapped up in a warm embrace and a quilt. The girl heeds the advice of her elders, listens to the stories of the wolves, knows to fear what she cannot see. She does not go into the forest.

She doesn’t know how she came to be in this perilous place. She saw that the fire was dimming in the hearth, heard the coughs of her mother from the bed they shared, and set out to collect more firewood, trying to create comfort for the sick. She doesn’t know how to care for someone who is dying, doesn’t know what the word entails, all the pain and misery and fading of self. She knows only that her mother will get better if the fire is stronger, if the room is warm and comfortable, and so she set out to look for wood.

She waited until her mother fell asleep. She sat by her bedside the entire time, stroking her wrinkled and scar-stained hand. She listened as her mother’s lungs rattled with unknown liquid as she settled into a fitful slumber. She saw her mother’s wrinkled eyes, the eyes of a woman twice her age, flutter close. Her mother gasped out, right before sleep took its hold on her, “My dear, my dear, how kind you are to sit with me. How sweet you are my child.

How precious.”

“Yes mama,” the girl said.

And then her mother was asleep.

The girl meant to go to the woodshed, only to pick up a few logs and return within a few moments, but the woodshed was empty. With her mother bedridden and the girl too weak to split a log, the firewood had not been replenished in days. So, the girl bundled herself up in her warm red winter cloak, grabbed the wicker basket by the door, and stepped out into the world looking for wood. She searched in the garden but found only twigs that snapped at the slightest pressure. She searched in the street but found dirty rainwater collecting in gutters. She searched on the outskirts of the village but found brittle dead grass that would burn up in an instant.

So, she searched, ever so briefly, for no more than a second really, in the forest. She needed something of substantial size, something that could last through the night, something she would not have to chop down, as whenever she tried, she could barely lodge the axe four inches deep into the log.

The second her foot crossed the threshold of that forbidden land, she was lost in the landscape, swallowed up entirely by the thicket with only the barest hints of distorted daylight seeping through the canopy of foliage above her.

44

Ana Hein

All the stories her mother told her in the fading candlelight surface in her memory, stories of girls torn apart by wolves or turned into birds or hacked into tiny little pieces of flesh to be served with steaming bowls of soup come supper time. She is not keen to wind up like them. She knows no one met in the woods is to be trusted.

She understands that no one who enters the woods returns, on those rare occasions one makes it back at all, quite the same as they were before. They return with scars along their faces, with limbs torn asunder, with clothes degraded into rags that barely cling to their emaciated bodies, with trophies of their kill dangling between fingers slick with blood, with dread permanently etched into their brows. The girl anticipates the plucking of her innocence like an apple from a tree. She swallows the lump of a sob rising in her throat, pulls her cloak about her, and steals herself for the journey ahead before taking a tentative step, the first of many such steps, forward.

After an hour’s walk through the tangle of barren branches with rotting leaves underfoot, she comes upon a clearing with a little pool that has not yet frozen over leading into a simple stream. She rushes into it, free at last of the clawing grasp of the woods. She sets down her still empty basket by the water and leans down to take a sip so as to quench her cracked lips.

Suddenly, at the very instant her guard falters, there is a crunch behind her that sends a primal surge of fear rushing through her blood. She bolts up, darts her head about looking for the thing that has made the sound.

“I did not mean to startle you, young miss,” a voice calls out from the forest. Into the clearing steps a man in a hunter’s cap with a musket strung over one shoulder, an axe in hand, and a kind smile dancing on his mouth. “I am not used to seeing other people in the woods. It seems I am the only one that looks for game here,” the hunter says as he approaches the girl.

“That’s because, sir, one mustn’t go into the woods if one wishes to remain alive,” the girl says by way of greeting. She cannot simply turn her head and will him away. One must be polite in these scenarios, for the beasts are less likely to strike if one participates in polite, if curt, conversation. “There are monsters and all manner of dangers lurking about. Did your mother not tell you as much when you were a boy?”

“Alas, I never had a mother. Died when I was but a month old, so they tell me. I used to think my father found me in the dirt of

A Simple Story

45

the fields when he was plowing, but I’ve since grown out of such childish fancies. Stories like that are nothing but rubbish spoon-fed to babes to make them eat their vegetables and go to bed before night falls in order to save candles. Have you ever heard of such things going on in these woods, young miss?”

“I-I… I’m sure I have heard of something terrible happening here,” she stammers as she eyes the weapons the man carries, thinking of all the ways they could do harm.

“The terrible thing,” the hunter says as he sets himself down on a small rock a few yards away from the girl, “is that no one hunts these plentiful woods for the rich game they provide. I’ve caught my fair share of deer and pheasant in my time. If more people took advantage of the resources in front of them, perhaps the village would not constantly be teetering on the brink of starvation.”

He laughs to himself under his breath; it seems more like an afterthought than a genuine expression of mirth. “But then again, I suppose that would mean less game for me.”

“I suppose,” the girl says for lack of a better response. But then an idea strikes her. “But still, those stories are valuable.”

“How so?” he asks reproachfully.

“For one thing, they teach young girls to be cautious of strange men met in strange circumstances, as any rational girl ought to be.” At this, the hunter bursts out laughing again, a jolly thing that has no place in the woods. “And what do you find so funny, sir?” the girl asks. “I wasn’t trying to amuse.”

“That is a very sensible thing to have said, is all,” replies the hunter. “I assume I am one such man in your view?”

The girl stands up, basket empty still, despite it all, tightly clutched in hand. “I must be going now. Good day.” She’s spent too long in pointless conversation with this man. This man who, despite his grin, is in the woods, which means he is dangerous. If she wishes to remain intact, best to leave as fast as she can. Her skin is prickled with gooseflesh; she shudders uncontrollably. She is seized by terror in its purest form. She is desperate for escape from the woods, from this man. She will not die here. She refuses that fate.

“That answers that question,” the man says. “I mean you no harm, miss. I hope you know that. I am a good and honest man, as any of my mates in the village will vouch for. I wish to offer you my services. I see your basket is empty. What is it you are looking for?

I will help you gather it.”

46

Ana Hein

The girl takes a few steps back. Now he has become interested in her. This is never a good sign. “I mean no offense, sir, but I don’t require any assistance, least of all from you.”

“If you would like,” the hunter says, “I’ll lay down my weapons on the floor.” Before the girl can utter a response, he sets his axe upon the grass and leans his musket against a tree. “Am I a bit less frightening, now?”

“A bit,” the girl admits as she takes a few tentative steps forward towards the now unarmed stranger.

“I am glad, for I truly mean you no harm. I wish only to help in whatever way I can.”

“Why?” This gives the hunter pause. He has never had his motives called into question before. He is used to people trusting his nice eyes and his cheeky grin. He has always been honorable, helping mothers locate lost children and farmers reign in their cattle. He has never given anyone any reason to doubt him.

“Because I am a good man, young miss. When I see someone in distress, I wish to alleviate their pain,” he says in a defensive rush.

“That is very kind of you, sir,” the girl says as she approaches him.

“But it is not necessary, I’m afraid.”

Quick as a blink, the girl grabs the axe lying on the floor, and she swings.

The blade glints in the distorted light, shiny as newly polished silver.

And then it is bloody.

The girl heaves from the effort. Her arms are not used to exerting such force. The axe has logged itself in-between the man’s ribs.

Flesh is softer than wood, she has discovered, much softer. It splits open as easily as the rind of a peach.

The handle sticks out from his chest. The wood is varnished. He must have loved this axe.

The man slumps over. The girl leans over him. Pokes at him with her foot. “Sir?” she calls out. Red bubbles gurgle at his mouth; spittle lands on her cheeks. She wipes away the mess with the back of her hand as the man breathes in for the last time. For the first time in her life, the girl understands what death is truly like.

No one met in the woods is to be trusted. No one who enters leaves quite the same.

The girl riffles through the man’s pockets. There must be something here that can be of assistance to her. And there, in his

A Simple Story

47

jacket pocket, right underneath the blade, is a compass splattered in red. The girl cups it in her tiny hands, opens it up, and follows the direction the pointed arrow leads her in, but not before grabbing his musket off the floor.

She comes upon the break in the trees soon enough. She is free.

She is out. She has survived the insidious woods. She looks back over her shoulder, and she tries to see what she saw before: the evil, the horror, the unknown terrible thing that destroys all that penetrate its borders. All she sees are trees with barren branches and dried, cracked leaves pasted to the wet earth. She sees a forest and nothing more.

She walks back to her mother’s house, bones weary and aching, heart heavy. But she does not regret. She is alive. She may be sorrowful, but she does not regret. She knew–oh she knew–that the man had meant her the most grievous harm, to rip her clothes from her still developing body before foisting himself on her, to use her in any way he wished. She does not regret avoiding that fate.

The house is cold, the hearth, dead. The girl takes off her red cloak, just the slightest shade darker from the blood, and hangs it upon the rack by the door. She goes to the fireplace, empties the musket of its ball and powder, sets the weapon inside the grate, dusts it with some of the gun powder for kindling, and strikes the flint stones against it, creating a blaze that rivals the sun. The metal warps and begins to melt; the wood chars. It is warm and comfortable in the girl’s cottage. The sound of the crackling sparks wakes up her mother, who has spent her day dreaming of times before her daughter was born when she was young and bright, before her body had been hardened and made ugly by housework.

“My precious child, what are you doing?” her mother coughs from the bed.

“I’m okay, Mama,” the girl says as she makes her way to the bed.

“I went out to collect some firewood and kept the fire going. I hope it pleases you.”

“Did you go into the woods?” her mother asks in a grave tone.

“No, I did not.”

“Good. The woods are dangerous. You never know what lurks in the leaves.”

“Yes, Mama.”

The girl slides into her mother’s bed and falls asleep. Her cheeks still have their youthful red tint, her curls are still glossy, her eyes are still sweet and delicate. But only in her sleep. When she wakes in

48

Ana Hein

the morning, she will notice there is a new look to her eyes, a hint of something fearful, of something primal and instinctive; she will forevermore look ever so slightly paranoid. It is something almost imperceptible to the average person, but not to her.

And not to her mother.

49

PARANORMAL/GOTHIC SOPHIA ABREGO DE LA GARZA

MOVING ON Sophia Abrego De La Garza is a rising junior for the Writing, Literature, and Publishing major at Emerson College. She is an avid reader, movie watcher, and lover of the dark and mysterious. You can often find her roaming the local cemeteries, with her nose in a book, and music in her ears.

50

I

never thought I’d die so young.

Throughout my life, I’d been constantly fed the “don’t drink and drive” lectures and the “don’t get in a car with someone who's been drinking” conversations. I never thought I would regret brushing off all the videos, presentations, and speakers whose lives were also ruined. But I do now. I regret that entire day, the entire night, the entire decision.

It’s Dad’s 40th birthday, and there’s another drink in his hand. He’s on his fifth glass of the night, and Mom is not so subtly attempting to tell the waiter that Dad has reached his limit. I don’t understand why adults decide that drinking excessively is a better idea than attempting to figure out how to solve the issues at hand. I guess the drinking could have been prevented if I hadn’t started the fight about having my curfew extended, although Mom didn’t help either by bringing up Dad’s demotion and asking how they would pay the incoming bills. It wasn’t the first time Dad drank too much; however, it was rare that he made it a public affair.

It may have been my guilt from arguing earlier or my assumption that he could handle his alcohol. I should have said something, anything, everything. Yet, I kept quiet and said nothing.

Remembering how Mom would always tell me to stay quiet and

Moving On

51

go to my room whenever her and Dad would fight at home. Those fights always ended with a smashed bottle on the floor, and the slam of the front door as Dad left for the night.

Mom tried to stop him, but he wouldn’t take no for an answer.

Yelling at the top of his lungs in an almost empty parking lot, his voice going hoarse as he snatched the keys from Mom, and that was that. If she had kept arguing, then maybe things would have been different. But she never argued for long. We all get into the car, Dad stumbling slightly as he slides in behind the driver’s wheel.

My hands begin to shake as he speeds down the road, our car never staying in a straight line. Driving down the winding, neverending road to get home from the restaurant in the dark is difficult when sober.

Dad doesn’t make it around the notorious turn.

Mom’s screams rip through the car as her seatbelt slams her against the seat. Dad attempts to turn the wheel to get the car back on the road. And me? I just close my eyes. No screams, no tears, just closed eyes, a pulsing heartbeat, and a body tense with fear. The sensation of the car as it spirals out of control is all I can feel. The burning sensation of bile rises to the back of my throat.

“Cassidy!” Dad yells, panic lacing throughout his voice. His panic causes me to snap into action as I pull against the seatbelt, adrenaline causing the tremble in my hands to grow stronger. My seatbelt snaps open, I reach out to take Dad’s hand. The crunch of metal against rock rings throughout the night.

I didn’t make it to the front seat.

The doctors said it was a miracle Mom and Dad survived, but they didn’t see it as such. I never wondered how I could see them, I just could. There’s no scientific explanation, at least none I had known about before the crash. I knew I was dead, but it didn’t make the pain of my parents' grief any less real. So, I watched them for a while. I saw that Dad threw out all his liquor bottles, and claimed he wasn’t going to drink again. It wasn’t the first time he had made this claim. Yet, mom seemed to believe him. I didn’t.

He lied.

“Please, just put the bottle down!” Mom pleads, her hands gripping the neck of a bottle. Dad’s hands are also wrapped around the bottle, the sloshing liquid rising up the sides.

“Leave me alone. I don’t need another lecture.” He snatches the bottle from Mom’s grip, and she relents. Tears flow down her face.

“She’s dead. Our daughter is dead because you couldn’t go one

52

Sophia Abrego De La Garza

night sober. She was fifteen, Michael! She had her whole life ahead of her, and you helped take it away.” She screams and more tears flow. Dad sits numbly as he brings the bottle to his lips, gulping down the copper liquid.

“You think I don’t know that? You think I don’t hate myself for what I did?” He looks at her, eyes void of emotion. “I know what I did, and I can’t fix it. So, get out of my face because I’m not having this argument again.” He takes another swig.

Mom walks to the counter, picking up a manila folder she tosses at Dad. She wipes her tears as she tells him, “I’m done. I lost my daughter and I didn’t want to lose you, but I can’t keep going on like this. You promised the drinking would stop after Cassidy. I should have known it was a lie.”

She walks away and Dad flips through the folder. They are divorce papers. Picking up a pen, he takes another swig and signs the dotted lines.

The night of their argument, I made a decision. I was going to keep a close track of my mom, not wanting her to be fully alone.

My dad kept drinking; I stopped wanting to see him.

It became harder to keep track of them both after the divorce, anyway.

••

T

here’s no white light after death. I think that people want to believe there’s a light because people plaster everything in darkness whenever someone passes away. People want to believe that when someone dies, they move on to a better place than the one they were in before. That’s not the case. Death has always reminded me of a kid afraid of the dark—they want to have a light on in the room but feel if they do so they aren’t as tough as they believed themselves to be.

My death was surrounded by darkness: the night of my death lit only by headlights and the red and blue flashing of cop cars, the dark imprint placed on my parents, now divorced, and my funeral a stark black against the midday sun. Darkness consumed the chapel that day. Every person who showed up wore black fabric, on top of black fabric, on top of black fabric. You don’t realize how many different shades of black there are until you are surrounded in a room with only that color. The table was covered in a midnight black tablecloth; my coffin was shiny obsidian. Even the flowers,

Moving On

53

which were supposed to be bright and vibrant, that day seemed to be a dull, soulless grey. I remember I watched everyone pass by and thought to myself that I just wanted one person to show up in neon pink—anything to liven up the room. The next person who came in was clothed in black fabric.

••

B

eing dead is the loneliest experience of my life. Living people constantly surround you; they talk, walk, and live around you. At first, I pretended that I was still alive and a part of their world. That lasted about two hours—and then a passing woman, frantically ranting on her phone while speeding down the empty sidewalk, went straight through me. It hit me hard—not the woman, but the realization I was dead. Full on, body-in-a-bag dead.

When you’re alive, you can get caught up in the big picture and forget to appreciate the little things. I never expected that one day I would miss the sound of an alarm clock, or the weight of my backpack thumping against me as I had made my way to class. You just get hit with the fact that no one can see or hear you, but you can see and hear them.

A few weeks following my death, I had been walking down a crowded street, everyone’s hair whipped around as the wind flowed through the air, and the scent of warm cookies filled the space as I followed a family into a local bakery. I stared at the thick, gooey chocolate chip cookies and memories of coming home from school on Fridays, cookies waiting for me in the kitchen filled my mind.

Walking through the door, I shout “I’m home,” dropping my bag onto the ottoman in the main hallway.

“In the kitchen.” Mom hollers back.

Weaving my way through the house, I swipe my hand across the freshly washed fur of our orange tabby cat, Simba. He stretches out, long and lanky, before trotting back to his nook of cat litter.

The aroma of chocolate and freshly baked goods fills the house, and the sound of Mom humming “Africa” by Toto floats down the hall. I join in with the song as I snag a cookie from the tray, quickly bouncing it between my hands in an effort to cool the heat.

“You’ll ruin dinner, Cassidy.”

I shrug before hugging my mom, stealing another cookie, and going to settle in on the couch.

I miss her and Dad. I don’t think I’ll ever stop missing them,

54

Sophia Abrego De La Garza

but I guess there’s a sick upside to death—eventually, your loved ones will join you. The hard part is being there when I do check up on them; seeing them and not being able to talk to them, to tell them I’m there and having to watch them move on. I wish I could communicate with them. Haunting wouldn’t be the exact term for it—although on second thought, maybe communicating would cause more damage than good. I don’t know if they will join me, but if they do, the loneliness will decrease, and I’ll go back to pretending that everything is okay, and we aren’t all dead. But then I realize that by that point, they’d have other people they would miss too, and the loneliness would creep back in.

••

A

s I walk along the gravel pathway, golden leaves spiraling towards the ground, I mumble out each name etched into the various stones buried in the dirt. I haven’t seen anyone like me since I died. No other wandering spirit searching for answers, no angry ghost seeking revenge. Just me, a girl wandering her graveyard.

When I arrived at my own name, there was a figure blocking the rounded cement marking the location of my body. Gasping, I stop, my heart aching as the face of my best friend came into view.

“Cassidy Marie, you did not just shove me off this couch!” Beth shouts at me as I jump over the couch back, sinking into the plush cushions. Beth sits back onto the couch, our attention turning to whatever true crime show she decided to turn on.

“I hear there’s a party happening Saturday. I think it could be fun. We haven’t gone to one yet.” I look over at Beth, raising an eyebrow at her mention of a party. Neither of us are exactly the party scene type, preferring movie nights and midnight Walmart runs to standing around a house with bass pounding through the air and being shoved in a room with a group of people who didn’t want to be there but didn’t want to be at home either.

“A party? Does this happen to be the party I heard the love of your life, Ashley, talking about?” I bump my shoulder against hers as a pink tint rises up her face.

“Oh, shush, she’s not into me!”

“Uhm, she totally is into you! Hello, y’all sat next to each other at lunch almost every day last week. You gotta ask her out, like, officially.” A plan creeps into my head as I play out the potential romance between Beth and her crush.

Moving On

55

“Dude, no.”

“Dude, yes! This party would be a perfect place to ask her. You and her and the fifty other sweaty bodies crammed in the room.

Oh my gosh, this is totally happening. I also better be a bridesmaid at y’all’s wedding, just saying.” I bounce excitedly on the couch, the motion moving Beth along with me.

“You are impossible!” She exclaims with a smile growing on her face.

“I know.”

Tears stream down her face as she gazes down at my grave. I sit down on the patch of grass in front of the stone and pretend she can somehow see that I’m here and that I’m not going to leave her.

“Hey, Cassidy. I’m—I’m sorry I haven’t visited you before now but I didn’t …” She sniffs, her hand brushing across her cheeks in an attempt to wipe away her tears. “I didn’t want to admit that you’re not here. Well, maybe you are, who knows. Um, I guess I could give an update on things. Ashley and I had our six-month anniversary two weeks ago,” a rough chuckle breaks through her words. “She’s the one who convinced me to finally come visit. She’s in the car right now; she said she didn’t want to impose, but I think she knew that I had to do this on my own.”

Beth slowly slid to the ground, head resting on her knees as her hands interlock around her legs. I scoot closer to her until our knees would have touched. I feel the sensation of tears sliding down my face, and my hands shake uncontrollably, though my gaze never wavers from Beth’s.

“You’re still my best friend, Cassidy. And I’m scared. Scared that I’ll somehow forget you or feel guilty when I make new friends.” I shake my head; she doesn’t need to feel guilty. I understand that she will need to move on, and that’s okay. Just because my life ended doesn’t mean hers needs to stop.

“If you could hear me, you’d probably tell me I have no reason to feel this way.” I smile, though my heart sinks lower as I face the fact that my best friend must move on. She starts to stand, shakes her head, and lowers back down to the ground. “I don’t know what to say. I tried writing you a letter, like in that one Jukebox the Ghost song. But I couldn’t do it. I got as far as ‘Dear Cassidy’ and next thing I knew my mom was shaking my shoulders, and I had sobbed all over the page. I miss you, Cassidy. I miss you so much, but...”

I knew what she was going to say before the words left her mouth.

I think I knew as soon as I saw her here.

56

Sophia Abrego De La Garza

I don’t want her to say what she’s about to, but I know she needs to let go. “...this is the only time I’m going to come see you. Just know, you’re still my best friend, and that’s never going to change. I love you, Cassidy, and I will never, ever forget you.” She stands, brushes off her jeans, and makes her way back to the car idling in the street.

I watch her walk away, calm darkness starts settling over me as her figure gets in the car and drives away, never to return.

“Bye, Beth.”

••

I

t’s been about two days of me sitting in front of my tombstone, gazing at the people who come and go, saying ‘Hi’ and ‘Bye’ to the loved ones they have lost. Tears adorn most of the cheeks of the faces passing by. Occasionally a laugh will echo in the distance, and I wince as I wonder who can laugh in a place enveloped by darkness. Yet, I also understand the need to laugh, to smile, to feel a hint of something that isn’t grief.

“Dad?” “What now, Cassidy?” My father sits at the kitchen table, a halfempty bottle of Jack Daniel’s cradled in his hands. I look at his face, his mouth drooping downwards, the bags under his eyes deeper than they had been earlier this week.

“Are you okay?” I sit on the stool next to him and tug my sleeves over my hands, fiddling with a loose string.

“Yeah, kiddo. I’ll be okay, just a tough week at work. But hey, I heard you laughing in your room earlier. Were you watching a movie?” He lets go of the bottle, pushing it aside as he turns to look at me.

“No, not a movie. It was this YouTuber, Shane Dawson. He released this video of him and his group of friends getting on firstclass flights, and it has some funny parts in it. You wanna watch the rest of it with me?” I start bouncing my leg, a smile forming on my face. Maybe he’ll say yes this time. Maybe he’ll laugh and the sadness will go away, even just for a little while.

“Sure, why not. Feels like I haven’t laughed in forever; I think it’s time for that to change.”

And, so, we sat watching YouTube for a few hours, laughing and smiling the entire time at the antics on the screen.

And for a little while, my dad was happy again.

Moving On

57

Happiness is a weird concept. People want to be happy all the time, and yet they’re aware that that’s almost impossible. But even short bursts of happiness can have a long-time impact on those who aren’t used to it.

Am I happy? No. I don’t think I can be happy, not stuck in this state of being here but not truly here—not having a place where I belong. But I’m not sad either. I used to be when I thought about how the last thing my parents and I did was argue over a dumb curfew. I was sad when my parents got divorced, but the sadness didn’t stay. Nothing ever really stays. I can be happy one moment, sad the next, and numb the rest of the time, my emotions just floating around not really being seen, just like me.

I’m here, and I’m waiting; patiently waiting for when my family will hopefully join me. Just waiting to not be alone. I don’t want to be alone anymore.

I lay down, my head almost grazing the base of the tombstone.

I cross my arms across my chest as I gaze up into the overcast sky.

I take note of the cloud shaped like a bunny, and the sun breaks through the clouds, casting a light on the grim cemetery. I breathe it in, my body relaxing against the grass, taking in the light and warmth.

No longer completely covered in darkness, I close my eyes.

G