Generic 19 by Generic Magazine

GENERIC ISSUE 19

EMERSON’S GENRE FICTION MAGAZINE

Generic, Issue 19, Spring 2021 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 Interior Illustrations by Jay Townsend

This issue is set in Roboto and Avenir

Electronic edition published on issuu.com

facebook.com/GenericMag @genericmagazine on Instagram @GenericMagazine on Twitter emersongeneric@gmail.com

TABLE OF CONTENTS LETTER TO THE READER New Moon J. M. Newton The Sea Anne O’Leary Venus Sickness Patrick Edinger Church Voices Connor Reich Gibson Natural Conclusions Jade Edwards

1 2 12 24 36 46

GENERIC STAFF EDITOR IN CHIEF Kaitlyn Shokes

MANAGING EDITOR Madeline Wendricks

EDITORS Chloe Aldrich, Allison Caravella, Susan Matteucci, Belle Tan

READERS Alex Alvarado, Will Edwards, Camila Fagen Guitron, Sisel Gelman, Clarah Grossman, Gabi Jonikas, Shannon Lawlor, Hancine Mok, Isabella Moreno, Angelina Parrillo, Cassandra Phan

HEAD COPYEDITOR Abby Ladner

COPYEDITORS Sierra Delk, Susan Kuroda, Taylor McGowan, Katie Powers, Athena Singh

HEAD OF MARKETING Sadie Hutchings

SOCIAL MEDIA MANAGER Anne Rinaldi

HEAD DESIGNER Ana Hein

ASSISTANT DESIGNER Morgan Holly

COVER DESIGNER Nicole Turner

PROOFREADER Emma Shacochis

Dear Reader,

Welcome, and thank you for picking up the 19th 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 that will transport you to other worlds, whether you’re ready to transform into a butterfly or prepare for winter in an apocalyptic Maryland. Generic is home to a wide variety of genre fiction stories, including fantasy, science fiction, horror, romance, and mystery. All too often, genre fiction is considered inferior to realistic fiction, as though genre lacks the same ability to connect with us on a personal level. At Generic, we know that storytelling should know no bounds. We encourage our authors to get imaginative, fantastical, and downright weird. This issue contains five striking stories that encourage you to explore new perspectives and imagine worlds beyond our own, each offering a dramatic escape into lives that transcend our reality. During times like these, when nothing in the real world seems guaranteed, genre fiction has never been more impactful. This magazine wouldn’t have been possible without the unending dedication of our talented authors and staff. Whether you contributed to this issue from a dorm room in Boston or your childhood bedroom in California, this semester has been a testament to how hard each and every individual always works to create this publication. We’ve powered through time zone conflicts, Zoom outages, and the stress of meeting deadlines during another unpredictable semester. I am so grateful that I could work alongside a group of such committed people. Thank you to Undergraduate Students for Publishing for continuing to support our magazine and offering your guidance throughout production. A special thank you to our Managing Editor, Madeline Wendricks, whose passion for Generic has been invaluable. I have no doubt that she will do amazing things with this magazine next semester. Saying goodbye to Generic has been difficult. Being Editor-in-Chief of this quirky, wonderful publication has been the experience I’ve always dreamed of, and when I first started as a reader during my first year, I never expected to end up here. For three years, I’ve been able to work with some truly inspiring individuals and stories. I’ve learned so much about the publishing process and what the Emerson community is capable of. I know that Generic is in good hands and will continue to do magical work. I hope you enjoy reading this issue as much as we enjoyed putting it together.

- KAITLYN SHOKES EDITOR-IN-CHIEF

J.M. NEWTON

SPECULATIVE

NEW MOON J. M. Newton is a writer based in Boston, where he studies the relationships between fiction, nonfiction, and poetry at Emerson College. His work has previously appeared in Black Swan Cultural Magazine and Sandpiper Journal.

fter the tribunal, I had forty or fifty days—give or take—to set my affairs in order, pay the court fees, say my goodbyes while explaining to my family what had happened, and stomach a ceaseless feast of sour paperwork. So all-consuming were my obligations that it was not until I found myself strapped down under three seatbelts and attached by the face to a respirator that the looming fact finally sank in: they were sending me to the moon. Yet when I took those first few steps off the shuttle, it felt at first as if nothing had changed. The ceiling of the spaceport was just as beautiful, just as dynamic as the blue sky I had seen each morning for years from my bedroom window. But subtle black lines webbed over the fluffy clouds that floated past, revealing it to be a mosaic of screens. A few moments later, most of them marked my arrival by short-circuiting and blacking out. The dead darkness they left behind turned out to be far more representative of the actual sky outside the spaceport, which was visible through the windows that populated the front half of the building. It was the blackest black I had ever seen. Not once had it occurred to me that there would be no sky in my new home. Exhausted from the flight, I watched my bag drift around the luggage carousel two or three times. It was made of brown leather

New Moon

with a nylon strap on the back as long as the bag was wide. It had no wheels and was not mine. It had arrived in a box on my doormat two weeks earlier with crumpled instructions taped to the top saying to fill it with whatever possessions could fit. Standard-issue. When at last I stirred to grab it, a sweaty-browed man in a long wool coat, who had been lingering on a bench by the carousel, swooped in to pinch my shoulder between his forefingers. “You were dreaming, hmm?” he said. “It’s not like that,” I said, trying to shrug his hand off unsuccessfully. “It was like that,” he said. “Do not worry. I am not here to judge you. Dreaming is good. Think of it like this instead, hmm? Look around you. You cannot get here without some measurement of dreaming. The moon, for crying out loud. I am sure you were dreaming for such a long time before you got on that shuttle, hmm?” “You could say that,” I said, eager to placate the man and leave. “Good point.” “The goddamn moon,” he said. “Why did you come here?” “Long story,” I said. “Private.” “I think I followed my dreams, hmm,” said the man. “Who can know? Can we know anything whatsoever? Is that the sky if you dream it so?” With his free hand he pointed at the feebly flickering blue pixels that still grasped at life on the ceiling. “I don’t want to be here,” I said. “I’m not on some dream vacation. I’m here because I have to be. There was no other way. It was my only choice.” “This is doubtful,” he said. “There are always choices. You walk down a busy street. Do you cross it here and now, hmm? Take your opportunity? Do you chance it in a hundred meters? Or do you choose not to choose? I sense you have crossed the street.” I shook my head. “You don’t understand. I’m a dangerous man. They weren’t gonna give me a choice.” “The street was three hundred eighty thousand kilometers wide,” said the man. “Did you know that?” I turned slightly, angling to walk away, still anchored by his talons latched into my jacket. “I didn’t.” “You are young, hmm,” said the man. A bead of sweat dribbled between his eyebrows, down the side of his nose. “When I was a child, there was no fancy elevator. No shuttles. Just a few poor dicks up on the rock, and a few rich ones down home dreaming up all kinds of ways to get more and more of ’em up there. Why?”

J.M. Newton

“Who’s a poor dick?” I said, my eyes fixated on the droplet, now positioned tenuously at the edge of his nostril. “You are,” he said, as if I hadn’t already come to that conclusion long ago. “Have you somewhere to live in our lovely city, hmm?” “Yes, obviously,” I said. This was a lie only insofar as the technicalities were concerned, at least until the bank processed the meager deposit I had been provided. “I am no detective,” said the man. The bead of sweat disappeared into his mouth as he spoke. “Who am I to know if you are telling the truth, gutter-boy or billionaire? We all have things inside us, and even if you tell me the truth, I am not to know the essence of what it is you are saying.” “That’s pretty depressing, wouldn’t you say?” I said. “By that logic, we haven’t communicated a single thing since you first grabbed my shoulder.” I shot his hand a pointed glare. “Not in the slightest,” he said, releasing me. “We have been dreaming together. It is different. It is all we can do, you and I.” He plucked my passing bag from the carousel and set its strap about my neck like it was some sort of medal of achievement. “How’d you know which one was mine?” I said. “Dreaming eyes reveal more than one might expect, ahem, hmm,” he said, and added after a pause, “And everyone else has claimed theirs already.” I blinked. “Take care not to let the nights go too long in the brain,” said the man. “They last thirty Earth days here. Did you know that, hmmmmm?”

••

slumped at a table in the food court for a long time, unwilling to visit the bank kiosk and trying not to imagine my new life, which would start shortly afterwards. My food lay, still in its foil wrapper, in front of me. A woman approached me as I sat, a lettuce sandwich drooping from her hands, both of which clutched it with nervous energy. I stared through the gap of her elbow, over the expanse of the sparsely populated spaceport floor, to the windows in the far wall, which seemed oddly small for such a large building, especially one that purported to imitate an airport on Earth. The ground and sky outside clashed in silent, ashen tones. My brain spun as it tried

New Moon

to reconcile them with the cheery pastels of what remained of the artificial skyscape inside. “Mind if I?” she said, already crouched over the seat across from me. “I’d introduce myself, but that would take too long. What’s your name?” I pulled back my focus from the windows and fixated on her face. My eyes flexed lethargically, rebelling against the strain. “Actually, I don’t care,” she said. “I just want to talk. Saw you on the shuttle and thought, hey, there’s someone whose two cents are worth four.” “Okay,” I said, feeling impulsive. “When does your contract start?” “Oh, I don’t work at the mines,” she said. “I’m to teach at the university. You ever find that weird, huh?” She waggled the sandwich. Crumbs fell on the table. “We’ve got a city here that’s so established it’s running its own university, but we can’t even get bots to work in the quarries yet.” “I suppose that’s weird,” I said. “It’s not that weird,” she said, nibbling a piece of lettuce with her front teeth. “The key that you’ve got to remember is that it’s all about the bourg—the bureau—the big men up top. The red tape.” She released the sandwich, which fell onto the laminate table with a stale plop. “They set priorities backwards, if you ask me.” “I didn’t,” I said. “But tell me more. I’m not in a hurry to get to where I’m going.” “Ever been to New York?” she asked. A fleck of lettuce flew from her mouth onto my own still-wrapped sandwich. “I’m from San Francisco,” I said. “Worked for an office. Never really had much time or money for travel.” “Houston myself,” she said, drumming her fingers on the table. “Sub teacher for all the good little private school kids. I haven’t been out east, neither. Doesn’t matter. They try to make this place look like the comforts of home. Newest York, if you like. Fresh York. That’s how they persuaded me to make the move. Turns out they forget about the actual stuff that makes it tick, like bots to work the mines so you don’t have to.” “I bet that’s by design, though,” I said, perhaps too quickly. My voice cracked. “What else are they gonna do with all the menaces to society like me?” She bobbed her head vigorously, took another bite, and continued, mouth full. “It’s all very deceptive. Check out this

J.M. Newton

sandwich. When I bought it at the SandKing over there, it looked just like the sandwich I know and love back home. But under the surface”—she peeled back the top slice of bread—“it’s empty. Just lettuce. I’ve never seen something so sad. And in hindsight, I’m thinking, what did I expect from a place that advertises Sand, not Sandwiches? Peel back the layers on this city and you see it’s just dust and rocks and the dregs of human civilization, and I’m not really talking about the little guys like you and me.” “Dregs, eh?” I said. “Could be me. Got shipped off over having eighty-four hundred bucks in the wrong pocket and I bet it cost them more than that just to put me on the shuttle. Wish it was New York. Then maybe I’d see my wife and kid once in a while. The goddamn moon.” “Damn right,” she said, digging her fingers into the stale bread. “I’m sorry to hear that. I’m with you all the way. Down with the man and stuff.” I tried to think of something to say, but by the time words had formed in my mind, she had plucked the remainder of the lettuce out of the SandKing sandwich and walked away, leaving two halfeaten lumps of bread on the table bathed in their own crumbs.

••

nderneath an unlit sign reading MMB was a tiny kiosk with a bank representative perched inside, who eyed me sideways every few seconds. I stood before him, slowly munching my food, as if I were contemplating a restaurant menu. That is to say, I stood close enough to take part of his attention, but far enough away that he would not hail me. He was rather mousy, a skinny man with a moustache much darker in color than his hair, which was a light brown. The last bite of my sandwich was flaccid with oil and mostly composed of bread. Nonetheless, I chewed it for as long as I could manage until there was nothing left to chew, and my body forced a swallow. “Number and passphrase, welcome to Major Moon Bank,” chirped the rep, cued, I suppose, by the finality of the swallow or perhaps my hand balling up the wrapper. I rummaged through my coat to find the card that the state lawyer had given me a week before my ignominious departure and set it on the kiosk countertop. “Not found,” he said, stretching out the words as if luxuriating in the buzzing nasality of their pronunciation.

New Moon

“It still hasn’t gone through?” I said. “They told me my account would be approved by at least two days ago.” “You’re worried.” “No shit,” I said. “If I can’t get my deposit in on the room, I’ve got nowhere to live.” “There aren’t any homeless people here,” said the rep. “Not like I’m not used to it back there,” I replied, jerking a thumb at the ceiling, where I imagined Earth might be. “Oh, I’m sure,” he said. “But they turn you out if you can’t pay; it’s illegal not to. And there’s always more coming here, just like you, looking for a better life. There’s always more money to be had from someone with a working MMB account.” “I really would rather not live outside on the streets.” “You can’t. No buts about it. Just impossible.” “It’s illegal?” I said. “It’s airless,” he said. With a finger, I slid the card further toward him, but he matched with a finger of his own and slid it back. “Don’t be so pushy-pushy,” he said. “You’ll get your account. You’ll get your room. You’ll get your new life. Just don’t come crying to me when it’s the end of the day and things aren’t what you thought.” “You don’t know me, man,” I said. “Why does everyone here keep making assumptions, thinking they got everyone else figured out? I’m a hardened criminal. Why else would I be on the goddamn moon? They’d have put me away for life if I hadn’t taken the contract.” He winked, a process that scrunched up half his face. “Hardened, yeah. You got busted for money stuff, right? Insider trading, embezzlement, heh. The classics.” Several sensations hit me simultaneously: the sinking feeling of reading an eviction notice, the mutual dejection of telling a child there was no food this morning, the adrenaline rush of changing the first of many numbers in a spreadsheet. “Assault and battery,” I said. Another wink. “I’ve been here a while.” “Where do you fit on the ladder?” I asked. “From the big men all the way down to the poor dicks, I mean.” “That’s for you to decide,” said the rep. “I’m not the one trying to fit people into an arbitrary hierarchy based on—what? How much regolith dust we’ve got in our pockets? How much cash? You can’t see my legs behind the kiosk, but—trust me—I haven’t even got pockets. I’m wearing a skirt.”

J.M. Newton

“Come on,” I said. “You’re a big banker. A month ago, when I talked to the guy renting the rooms on the phone, he mentioned he hadn’t ever even lived in an apartment. Now I’m like, what brought him here? What brought you? Not digging rocks in a hole, for sure. More like getting that sweet money value out of the desperate dregs of human civilization.” “You’re underselling yourself,” he said. “Moon life ain’t as bad as it looks.” “Do you like it here?” I asked. He looked away. “Here’s the thing,” he said. “I like it. Lots of freedom on the moon. But I work at the spaceport, and I see the way home every day. But none of the money in this bank is mine. Make of this what you will, in the spirit of blind assumptions.” “You’re not selling it very well,” I said. “But you don’t know what I had back on Earth,” he said. “Could have been way worse. In every digital cloud a silver lining, after all. I won’t lie—this would not be my city of choice, if I’d had one. But what is there to do about it but go on living?” “I may never see my family again,” I said. “They sent me to the moon for feeding my kid and you’re telling me to look on the bright side. Get absolutely bent.” A fleeting look of surprise flashed over the rep’s face, but he composed himself quickly. “My sincerest apologies,” he said. “But at the end of the day you’ll find that doing so may be the only way to survive.” I did not reply. He winked for a third time. The left side of his moustache remained curled up post-scrunch. “Want to hear a secret?” I leaned in. He bent down, whiskers almost brushing my ear. “Account online,” he said, breathily. “Your deposit went through two days ago, right on time.” I glared at him. “Again, I’m sorry,” said the rep. “Things are much less interesting when it’s all business.” Still, I said nothing. “Look outside,” he said, pointing to the windows behind me. The city was visible there, a collection of thin, tall buildings, all the color of steel and rust, and beyond them, endless dust, white as bones. “Moon nights last thirty Earth days,” I said. “Apparently.”

New Moon

“And the days are just as black. But they last just as long. You’re here now, Mr. Hardened Criminal, no backsies. You’re in for the long black days.” He gestured at the dysfunctional ceiling panels. “You’ve got to bring the blue.” “I suppose.” “Now you’ve got it,” said the rep. He pushed the card off the edge of the kiosk into my hands. “Let’s hope never to meet again, shall we? To new beginnings. New cities.” “Fresh ones,” I said, though in my head I pictured my old home, a small, mildewy apartment that felt, all of a sudden, much more vibrant. “Contracts come to an end,” he said. “Don’t forget it. Your wife and kid want to see you too, and you’re gonna be there to meet them when it runs out.” Still holding the card, I raised my hand as if in a toast. “Anything you can dream, my friend,” he said. “To the goddamn blue-skied dusty moon,” I said, fighting back tears.

ANNE O’LEARY

REALISTIC FICTION

THE SEA Anne O’Leary is a freshman at Emerson from the Bay Area, California. She is a Creative Writing major and is minoring in Global Studies. She loves to read and write stories and poems in her spare time.

he first thing I loved besides my mother was the sea. I was seven on Ocean Beach with her, wrapped up in a cheap, wool blanket. The breeze in my ears, a taste of saltwater and poor air quality. Hot sand melting away from my hands. My mother’s chestnut hair is held together by a large clip, two wavy strands framing her square face. She wore a comically large orange San Francisco Giants pullover belonging to the father she stopped letting me see when I turned twelve. He snuck into the cabinet where she kept the whiskey when I was blowing out my candles. He was supposed to take the picture. When she realized this, she discovered him laughing hysterically at their old wedding photos in the living room. She was furious and called him an embarrassment. That’s the last straw, she said. To this day, I’m still confused over that being the last straw. He’d shown or ended up at plenty of my childhood events drunk. But that time was the “last straw” as she put it. I never saw his long, sunbaked face after that. When I was seven, I learned that the sea protects you, that the sand comforts you, and a mother’s love is the only thing a boy needs to survive. She huddled me close, smelling of organic deodorant. Her long fingers gliding along my uncut hair, head resting against mine, feeling her cheeks formulate a smile against my skull. In those

The Sea

moments, we’d think about nothing but the sea staring back at us. Pale waves crashing, further and further. And in those moments, I believed my mother was the only person who existed in this life for me. My mother has one of those rags to riches, charismatic kinds of stories that’s able to tell you what kind of person she is without really even saying it. I learned her past in small increments, the times we shared quiet nights with a static television or a chippy jazz vinyl playing in the background. She revealed to me her past like it was a riddle. She was born in a tiny town on the border of California and Oregon. She was the youngest of five children; her father, a stern factory worker who regularly hit the boys with a dry palm, and a stay-at-home mother who hit the girls with wooden ladles. She was smart, got good grades, but had nobody to reward her accomplishments. She fell in love with art and literature and spent most of her adolescent weekends at the library or taking art classes at the community center. She got pregnant at 19, and, when her parents found out, her father told her she needed to start planning the wedding with the man who impregnated her. My mother panicked, scared that she was going to spend the rest of her life in a constant state of misery, of never knowing what could’ve been for her. A month later, she packed up her belongings and took a bus to San Francisco, leaving only a note, wishing her parents well. She spent the first months in San Francisco homeless, sleeping on couches and park benches. She had a childhood friend going to the state college who let her stay over sometimes. Her belly began to swell as the summer took over the foggy city. She applied to every book and record store in town, but nobody would take her. She spent her days hungry, pleading for strangers’ kindness. Some gave her money, others long conversations about philosophy, but most averted their gazes. One of the few things she brought was her portfolio, and she’d wander to Haight-Ashbury and sell some of her amateur pieces. On a good day, she could purchase a scone and a cup of coffee. When your mother is unconventional, you keep a lot of things to yourself. Until you reach elementary school and start to observe, you believe growing up without a dad and having an eccentric mother is normal. I learned how to ride the bus in the 1st grade because the art gallery my mother worked at was not in the same direction as school, and we didn’t have enough money to waste gas

Anne O’Leary

in San Francisco traffic. Trading peanut butter and jelly sandwiches for ham ones because she wanted us to “live a vegetarian lifestyle” despite ordering Chinese takeout every Saturday night. Adopting a stray cat with three legs she found on the side of the road and named him Mapplethorpe before he ran away a week later. Visiting her friends and colleagues in dingy apartments in Berkeley and Oakland. Sitting on dusty couches, asking me to walk around the neighborhood so they could smoke marijuana and complain about men. Familiarize yourself, one had once told me; we were in the Castro District. Having a mother that ran an art gallery meant spending time on the weekends with the kinds of people your classmates made fun of during the week. I never told my friends what I did instead when I didn’t meet up at the skatepark or baseball practice. I knew certain things weren’t normal. I knew my mother was eccentric, chaotic, and as abysmal as the Pacific Ocean. I knew she hurt, but she kept up fronts and pretended they worked. On the cold mornings of my baseball games, she watched from the bleachers in jeans with acrylic paint stains, cheering loud even when I was on the outfield. After the game. she’d pull me into her chest behind the bleachers, one hand on my head, another holding an American Spirit. Moms in khaki shorts would give harsh glances at her parenting choices. She’d never looked at them, but later she told me she cried in the bathtub. My mother’s emotions fluctuated to say the least. The day she put on a sock puppet show for the kids in our apartment complex was the same day I found her washed up on the bathroom floor like a baby beached whale. Sweaty fingers dialed 911, watching her hazel eyes on mine as the stretcher carried her out. I spent the night with the fifty-somethingyear-old photographer my mother was close with. She had pink streaks in her gray hair, her living room smelled of incense. “She’s going to be okay, Matthew. She’s as strong as they come,” she reassured me hastily. I didn’t like to be called Matthew. It was the name of my grandfather who never came to visit. I didn’t correct her. I said nothing. “You’re a good kid. Karie is lucky to have a boy like you,” she smiled. My mother’s name is Karie. My mother ended up surviving. That was the only suicide attempt, at least that I know of. We never talked about it after that. We don’t talk about much now because I’m sixteen. I tower over her and

The Sea

don’t wear the kinds of clothes she buys for me anymore. My hair is still unkempt, and I ride my skateboard to school instead of taking the bus. My mom is the same eccentric woman but washes down Zoloft with a cup of coffee. She runs one of the art galleries on Geary Boulevard, the kind people walk into for free and pretend they know the meaning of a painting before walking out satisfied with a preconceived notion of sophistication. When my mother was around six months pregnant with me, she was shifting through a dumpster at night when she was confronted by a flashlight. She jumped back in fear to see the man holding the flashlight. His name was Frank O’Brian. The dumpster she was diving from belonged to him, named Frank’s Diner. Frank was stubborn, hostile, and argumentative. But he found a soft spot for her obvious need of help. She began to cry and beg him not to call the police on her. One thing led to another, and he gave her a job as a waitress at the diner and even waited outside of the delivery room when she gave birth to me. For years, we lived in and out of Frank’s upstairs apartment and friends’ and boyfriends’ houses as my mother was getting her college degree as well as making money from art commissions. Eventually, she secured a job across the street from Frank’s as a co-manager of an art gallery. Despite Frank taking in my mother like a daughter, he never seemed to like me all that much. Perhaps it was because I quite frequently got into arguments with my mother with them usually ending in me slamming the door and going to the skatepark, not coming back after my curfew. Usually, in these instances, she would call Frank in tears, and he’d call me and yell at me like I was his son. It was a Sunday afternoon, and she was complaining about me leaving my bedroom a mess, as well as the frequent calls from school telling her I was missing classes and that if I continued to, my chances of graduating on time would be slim. “I just don’t get it, Matt,” she started, “You used to be such a good student.” I groaned and resumed my position lying on the couch, rolling away from her. She’d never understood that I didn’t want to go to college; that it was her dream, not mine. “You have to go to college nowadays,” she explained, “If you want a good job and life.” “Maybe I don’t want a good life,” I retorted, my voice muffled into the couch cushions. She sighed and sat down next to my feet, “Come on, let’s go out

Anne O’Leary

today, you and me. I have some business to do in Marin. We can go get some dinner afterward, maybe even go to the beach.” “I don’t feel like it,” I complained. “Why? What are you going to do all day then?” She asked concerningly. “I don’t know. I’ll figure it out.” She sighed again. I knew the sighing was the start of an argument, “You’re not just gonna ride around on your fucking skateboard all day and smoke pot, Matthew.” “It’s none of your business if I do or don’t.” I was upright now, staring into her hollow face. She cackled lightly, “Well, actually, it is Matthew because I’m your mother.” “Don’t call me Matthew. You know I hate being called Matthew.” “Just go with me today. You know I don’t like to be alone all the time,” she pleaded. “No. I don’t want to.” She sighed one last time, “You know what? Fine. Whatever Matthew. I thought you wanted to spend some time with your mother, but clearly I’m such a bad one that you don’t even want to spend time with me.” Her voice was haughty now. “Don’t do that,” I argued. “Do what?” She asked. “Make it all about you. Make everything about you. Never take responsibility for your mistakes.” “I did my best to raise you under my circumstances, Matthew.” “Well, maybe you didn’t try hard enough,” I said. Her face went into complete shock and she shut down. She always escalated things. She always shifts the blame, forces me to fix the broken pieces. I wasn’t having it this time. I said nothing—silent for a moment. In the grand finale, she huffed and got up to put on her shoes, her sweater, and a purse. She slammed the door, and I was left with an overwhelming feeling of dread for the argument I was to come back to when she got home. Twenty minutes later, I got a call from my cell phone. Frank, of course. I decided to ignore it. He called again. I was frustrated now. I picked up angrily. “What, Frank.” “Your mother called me again. This is the second time this week,” he sighed.

The Sea

“Okay,” I said, trying to understand the significance of this conversation. “She’s very upset, she thinks she’s a bad mom now.” “Why do you always take her side?” I asked. “Matthew, can you just apologize to her? She wanted to spend time with you today, and she feels bad.” “You didn’t answer my question Frank,” I repeated. “Why do you always take her side?” “I don’t always take her side,” he defended. “I’m really just sick and tired of this shit,” I complained, “You always come to the rescue. You’re not my fucking father, Frank.” My voice was booming now. “Hey! Hey! You cannot curse at me!” Frank’s temper was rising now. “You don’t control me. You aren’t my parent. Stay the fuck out of my life and tell my mother to stop calling you because it’s just pathetic at this point.” “Matthew—” “And don’t fucking call me Matthew!” I yelled. I had reached my boiling point. Suddenly I heard muffled cries. My mother was on the other line. “You gotta be kidding me.” I laughed and hung up my phone. I threw it across the room, and it landed in the hallway. I was too angry to stay at home. I couldn’t believe my mother and the lengths she would go to not take responsibility for her child’s issues. I quickly changed into some clothes and got my skateboard. I’d decided that maybe the both of us would be calmer if I were to come back later, and, hopefully, this stupid argument would end. I skateboarded around all day as well as into the night of San Francisco, gliding past the foggy air, feeling it on my exposed skin. I passed through neighborhoods, glancing at houses and apartments, formulating stories of the unknown people inside. Late night dinners, game nights, sighing at the news anchor. Clacking at the laptop for tomorrow’s meeting, quiet sex to not wake up the kids, grading papers, putting the baby to sleep. I got home around 11 PM, making my presence known with the clacking of keys and unlacing dirty sneakers. A moment of silence passed. I called out to my mom, announcing my arrival and still no response. That was not unusual of her to not be asleep by now or to be out with pretentious people, discussing new exhibition ideas over a glass of

Anne O’Leary

wine with a crackled vinyl playing in the background. Maybe she was manic again; maybe she needed time away from me. I let go of my anxious tendencies and distracted myself by boiling a pot of water and cooking mac and cheese. It would be to my mother’s dismay, Why don’t you eat a fucking vegetable for once, she said to my father when I was eight at one of the few times we had a meal together. She thought she was the model parent compared to my estranged father, and maybe she was. I occupied myself with some television and a warm shower before getting into bed at 1 AM. Still no sign of indication she was home. I called her and got sent to voicemail. I sent a text, Are you home? I stood up, my sore body from a full shift telling myself to get back into bed. I resisted the urge to pass out to creep in the hallway to peer at her door. It was closed, was it closed before? I couldn’t remember. I retreated back into my room, giving myself every excuse to occupy her absence. I knew it was irresponsible, illogical to lie under the covers. To wash down my impending fears, I grabbed my headphones and put on a video of beach noises, a tactic I learned to soothe myself from the restless nights. I fell asleep to the sounds of waves crashing through my eardrums. She was vacant again in the morning. The silence made my heart sink. I didn’t open her door. Instead, I put my ear to the wood, no sound. I knew the answer. My hands became clammy as my mind wanders to the possibilities of what happened to her. Marching to the bathroom and splashing water onto my face and neck, I assured myself that I could find her. The first place she would be is the gallery. If I wandered the city long enough, her face would appear in my vision. It was about 7:30 AM now. If I skated to the gallery and went to school, I would be late, but it was not unusual for me to be tardy. Changing into a fresh pair of clothes, I eyed the corner where the kitchen resided; a white fridge full of cheap gas station magnets, a wooden island holding a bowl of fruit, the unwashed pot I left on the stove. My mind was too full to consume. I grabbed my skateboard and treaded to Geary. I went faster than I normally did, pushing on my already sore legs, sweat dripping down my back. The houses and apartments I fantasized about last night ceased to exist, and all I knew was the road, oncoming cars and strangers who darted when they saw my impending force. When I arrived at the gallery, I was breathless and felt my knees about to collapse. Opening the door, I was greeted by one of the co-managers who

The Sea

ran the gallery, Gary Stevenson, standing eloquently in a crimson suit. He sensed my concern like a bloodhound. “Are you looking for your mother?” I nodded. He furrowed his brows. “She’s not here.” I croaked, “Do you know where she is? She didn’t come home last night.” He grew concerned, “Oh, Matthew. Are you sure?” I nodded again, feeling the sensation of my throat closing. “Don’t panic, You know your mother; she will turn up eventually.” You don’t know her. I thought, I don’t know her. “I will call you if she comes here. I will file a police report today,” he said, almost in a nonchalant tone. “When did you see her last?” I quivered. “Friday. She seemed fine.” “Okay.” “She’ll be here, Matthew. You should go to school. She wouldn’t want you to miss school.” I left the gallery but didn’t go to school. Instead, I skateboarded across the city of San Francisco, looking for her. I rode down every intersection she used to hold my hand at, entered every restaurant we laughed in, every Starbucks, every solemn coffee shop, the Westfield shopping mall on Civic. I took the train to every stop, peering at every shop window, every stranger, praying it was her hazel eyes. I fantasized at the Victorian houses, waiting for her to walk out of one with a swanky real estate agent, surprised at my showing. Matthew! Mathew! She would cry, I won the lottery, and I bought a Victorian! But the doors remained shut. I found myself at the Golden Gate Bridge in a flood of tourists, snapping pictures of themselves mindlessly. I walked about halfway, realizing she wasn’t here. Her body wouldn’t have been here either, and you weren’t allowed to jump off the bridge anymore. I was too sick to ponder the idea she would be at Ocean Beach, lying face down in the sand. The sun was setting by the time I got off the train. I was weary now, hungry and dehydrated. Despite coughing the majority of my pocket change from train tickets, I bought a hot dog and water from the concession stand and checked my phone. A text from a friend asking where I was, a voicemail from an unsaved number, probably Gary. I listened as I walked back home. He said that she

Anne O’Leary

was nowhere to be found, but he filed a police report for a missing person. A wave of worry entered my drained system again. Would social services take me away? Gary didn’t specify. I trudged up the stairs of the apartment and found it the same I left it, no sign of a social worker. Without warning, I collapsed, arms instinctively clutching my knees, rocking back and forth, releasing a breathless squall. Where was she? Where was she? Where was she? Did she leave me? Was I too much for her? I remembered how much I hurt her yesterday, and now she is gone. She is gone. She’s a horrible mother, I thought to myself vengeful. She’s selfish, she’s cruel, she pushed my father out of my life. I said this to make myself feel better. I didn’t because when it all came down to it, she was gone. A sudden knock at the door. My body instinctively sprung up. Was it her? Did she come back? I felt a chilling sense of relief, she would be at the other end of the door, and it would all be okay. We could laugh about it, cry tears of joy, take the car and go to Ocean Beach, head out the window and scream nonsense into the sunset. It was Frank. It had been a while since I had seen him in person. His posture was more slumped than I remember, as well as pudgy. He had on a white linen button-up, discolored from grease stains. The thick, black curly hair I had seen as a child was graying, and his hairline was fading. Frank used to tower over me, but now we were around the same height. He looked distraught, which was an emotion I had never before seen on him. “Matt, I was afraid you wouldn’t have been home,” he huffed. “Do you want to come in?” I offered weakly. “Your mother called me an hour ago,” Frank said, stepping in. A sense of relief fell over me. She was alive. “Where is she?” I had sprung breathlessly. “She was in the car when she called me.” “Where is she?” I asked aggressively. I could feel the tears beginning to start again. “Where the fuck is she!” I yelled again. “She left!” He shouted, which caught me by surprise, forcing me to jump slightly. “She wants you to stay with me for a while. She said she wanted to go back home and talk to her parents. Do you know if she stopped taking her meds?” He asked. I looked at my feet. I shook my head, and he sighed. “Will you stay with me for a few days? That’s what your mother said she wants. She’s worried about you being by yourself at

The Sea

the house.” “I don’t want to,” I objected. “You can’t be here by yourself. You don’t have a choice in this matter. She will be back, Matthew,” he reminded me. I felt weak again. All my walls were falling down now; everything was crashing now. I began to wail when I felt the weight of two arms wrap around me. Frank held me like I was his son. “She’s okay. She will be back. She will be back,” he soothed. I looked back into his hardened face and nodded, pretending I believed him.

PATRICK EDINGER

DYSTOPIAN

V E N U S SICKNESS Patrick Edinger is a practicing writer who enjoys all genres of entertainment, including literature. He finds himself specifically writing fantasy, science fiction, drama and horror the most. “Venus Sickness,” is his first published piece.

“H

elloo, Hildr City! It is Marie Hannel with V101 News and, boy, do we have one helluva story for you all! It has been nearly thirty years since the success of the Valkyrie Project that gave the human race a jump out into the unknown! Now, we have beaten yet another obstacle! I am here with Dr. Martin L. Graw, a practicing medical scientist of twenty-five years, who has successfully created a cure for V3-45! Firstly, I would like to say thank you very much for finding the time today to join us here amidst all of the chaos.” “Oh, of course! Thank you for having me.” “Now Dr. Graw, I don’t mean to jump right to the point but I believe the entire crew, as well as everyone back at home, is anxious to see what you have to say.” The reporter paused and cleared her throat while maintaining her plastic grin, “How do you feel about this decade-long pandemic finally coming to a close?” “In all honesty, I believe that those who are currently wearing their face masks can now feel more relieved,” The man chuckled along with the news anchor, “No—but honestly, this pandemic was quite treacherous. It was rough on us all and kept people on their toes until myself and a massive group of extraordinary scientists put our noses to the grindstone and, sophisticatedly, came out successful.”

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“And how do you think the general public will react to this information as we sit here live?” “Well, I know that the stress of the pandemic and having to change our daily life was not something everyone expected to have to do these past few years! But I do believe that those who are still fighting the virus will be back on their feet in no time, those afflicted will join outdoor activity as it continues, and most importantly...” The man smacked his hands on his knees to simulate a drum roll,“Sports!” “Oh yes, well, of course, our sports fans out there will be quite thrilled! It is as you say, the pandemic was quite the difficult one, but humanity has, once again, persevered. And, Dr. Graw, now that you have created this cure, do you have any idea as to how it will be distributed?” “Well, it was finished yesterday, with the first tests being on a few select volunteers of the practice who recently just contracted the virus. I was among them, and I can tell you this cure is fully effective, as shown in our studies.” “I hope you don’t mind me asking this one, but how did you create this cure?” “Well, it was quite the complex study. But in layman’s terms, we synthesized the blood of an immune—”

••

onnor sneezed as he stood in the corner of the large room with his head and arms peeking out of an open window. “Yeah Goddard?” He adjusted a small piece of tech that sat in his ear. “Hey, how are you holding up?” “I’m holding. Got anything to report for me?” There was a chuckle on the other end of the receiver. “What isn’t there to report? A few blocks from our turf, one of our cargo trucks was hit by U.n.c.o.r.e. Crazy bastards blew it to smithereens. Not to mention an hour ago one of our warehouses was raided. Few of ours were shot dead, the rest were hauled away. Not only are they storming buildings in broad daylight, but they are using the pandemic as a guise to directly attack the city’s underbelly.” Connor chuckled and took a long drag from his cigarette. “U.n.c.o.r.e is getting pretty damn brazen. They have balls, I’ll give them that…”

Patrick Edinger

“Yeah, well, U.n.c.o.r.e. isn’t the only problem down here. The issue of the different division leaders becoming too independent is growing. With Tomo locked away, we are missing our figure of leadership to keep them in check.” “Hah. If Thomas was here right now, he would smack you silly for calling him Tomo.” “Oh don’t you start with that crap. He may be a don now, but all three of us have known each other since we were little kids skittering through these shitty back-alleyways. I think I’ve earned the right to call him as I know him.” “Yeah, no, I get it.” Connor sighed deeply, “As for the division leaders, I already have a plan in motion. I’ll send you the encrypted file.” “Mhm, yeah…” Goddard paused. “Uh, hey Conny, you never really did answer my question. How are you holding up?” Connor listened to the silence that filled the earpiece. “I’m fine, why?” “Don’t just say you’re fine, I know you’re not. You sound stressed which also probably means you’re smoking. Am I right?” Connor looked down at the lit cigarette and took another drag. “It’s Amy again, isn’t it?” With a forceful breath, the smoke puffed out of the window before being dispersed by the wind. “Yeah.” “Is she getting better?” “No. In fact, she’s becoming more withdrawn from me...” “Wait, what about your meeting with the source you mentioned?” “No dice, they said my blood was incompatible.” “You think they lied to you?” “I haven’t the slightest idea. It’s a strong possibility since I’m an immune. Anybody would be willing to sell me out just for my blood...” “I see. Alright listen, I won’t tell you not to do something, cause you’ll do it anyway. So, listen to me, Conny. That woman is extraordinary; the only one I’ve ever seen with the ability to reel your ass in. I’ve known you for our entire lives, and even I don’t know how to do that!” Goddard chuckled. “But she’s more like you than you know. You both hate making your problems other people’s problems. It’s partly why Tomo put you both in charge of the same division to begin with! So don’t lose your nerve and get carried away by your worries because your girl is acting distant. That would be the worst thing you could do.” Connor laughed and wiped the weariness from his eyes.

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“I appreciate the pep-talk Goddard. Funny hearing it from you, seeing as you have bad luck with women, but your heart’s in the right place, so thanks.” He paused for a moment, “But I love her too much to not be worried. I’ll be fine, we both will. I’ll make sure of it...” “You know, for a guy with your reputation, you really are just a big ol’ softy. And that’s good, fantastic even! I wouldn’t imagine that same wild young kid dishing out words like ‘love’. Just make sure you don’t drop dead with a woman waiting on you, yeah?” A commotion sounded on the other end of the earpiece that stole Goddard’s attention. “Ok—ah, shit, I’ve got to go. Tell Amy I said hello, and, listen, you take care of her, you hear? You need her more than you think.” “Yeah, I got it. You be careful too, eh? Don’t go getting your good hand shot up like your other one did. I’ll need your skills for the days to come.” “Bah! No promises! It’s not like I look to get shot! It just kind of happens without me even trying! Anyway, I’ll see you later.” “Yeah, be seeing you.” The receiver beeped twice and then shut off. Connor stood there at the windowsill as he took the small earpiece out and tossed it to the side. “I’ll be fine, we both will. I’ll make sure of it.” Wish it was that easy. He took a few deep breaths and glanced around the room. Even though the entire room had been lined with chairs, he wasn’t in the mood to sit. All he wanted to do was lean out the window with a lit cigarette and bask in the warm breeze. It was easier to sort out his thoughts this way. Just being immune in itself puts a target on my back, which makes getting the cure for her through normal channels impossible. On top of that, I’m not compatible with her, so my immunity is practically useless. He paused his thoughts and glanced at the clock that hung on the wall. He sighed impatiently and struck the ash from his cigarette before taking another drag.

••

30 Patrick Edinger “—y

ou must feel proud of your fellow scientists! That is quite the accomplishment! Not to mention the U.n.c.o.r.e support you’ve garnered is quite remarkable!” “I can only speak for myself, but I can assume my team is equally enthusiastic as I am. We wouldn’t have been able to do this without the help of our city’s police force. They have recently been spread thin due to an increase in infection cases. But, even with this, they were able to lend our foundation a hand. This could open up a whole new slew of opportunities for the medical field in the future! With this breakthrough, and U.n.c.o.r.e backing us, the general population will be back to a healthy normal in no time!” Bullshit... He flicked the cigarette out the window and closed it. The broadcast went on, but he tuned it out and picked up a bouquet of flowers that lay nearby. What he wouldn’t ever tell people was that the cure only works within a timeframe. If the patient was too far along in the disease process, the vaccine loses its effectiveness. Talk about some cure. Giving everyone hope rather than just those recently infected is better than nothing right? Even if it’s false hope? Not to mention all of that noise about U.n.c.o.r.e… what a load of bullshit. There were no other signs of life with the sole exception of a metallic-looking human sitting behind a desk labeled “reception.” Not something Connor would consider as “living,” but he preferred it like this either way. The less human interaction the better. He glanced once more at the clock and headed over to the robotic receptionist. “Hello, And Welcome To The Boullard Emergency Health Center. Our World Renown Leading Scientific Five Star—” “Just shut up and scan my card already.” The robot stopped and took a moment to look down at the chrome card Connor had been impatiently holding out to it. It retrieved the card and scanned the slim rectangular piece of metal. But before it could hand it back, Connor had swiped it and headed down the corridor to the left. This place never changes... The entire building was stark white. Everything was white, the chairs, the TVs, the floor, the ceiling, even the bathrooms. It was such a fabricated and unnatural color to Connor. For everything to just be fully white without blemish, it made his gut uneasy. Not to mention the utter lack of humanity. General care had been replaced with robotics, meaning no human error. The funny thing about that was when robots broke down, human error at its finest. The lack of

Venus Sickness

humanity was precisely what the place was missing. The only thing Connor could tolerate was that the doctors themselves were human. Mostly, anyway. He walked briskly for the first few minutes as he passed door after door after door. But, as quickly as he began, he slowed down as he approached a door numbered 473. It was a plain white door with a chrome handle that beckoned him to enter. Simply looking at the door made Connor feel like a bull staring down a red scarf. He’d often think of this dislike of the color white and the bulls’ affinity with the color red. He assumed that his reasoning for hating such a color was similar to why bulls hate the color red. That his instinct simply directed him to it, to hate it. But, to his clarity, he’d found out that bulls don’t actually dislike the color red. It was the cape they hated, the way the scarf moved, what it stood for: to taunt. That is what agitated them. By the same notion, Connor realized there was the same truth between him and the color white. He didn’t hate the color for it being white. He’d hated the way the color was implemented to simulate an element of pureness. That is the truth he’d found, and that truth is what he’d stand by. However, unlike the bull, Connor found himself hesitating. He stood in front of the door and stared at a little crocheted tiger head wearing a white nursing hat that hung before him. That’s new… The sight of it stopped him in his tracks, and suddenly his feelings about the hospital, the color white, bulls, robotics, it all vanished. It was just him standing there as the tightness that had lingered in his chest swelled up. It’s just as Goddard said, I can’t let myself get dragged away by my emotions. I’m here for her sake; shelve your worries, Conny, and get it together. Enough overthinking it! Quickly, he shook his head and calmed himself. The longer he stood there and hindered himself, the more worked up he got. So, he suppressed it all as much as he could and cleared his mind. The way he dealt with things was by creed, the creed that you should commit to something fully or not at all. This rule he lived by, and this event was no different. His resolve would be strong enough for the both of them. It had to be. He entered the room, shutting the door carefully behind him. It was so clean, and the air was so extremely dry and sterile that it could’ve given him a headache. However, he didn’t pay heed to it. His focus was taken by the sight of a girl sitting at a windowsill staring out into the clouds below. As he studied her, he couldn’t help but notice the tubes that trailed from the girl’s arms and nose.

Patrick Edinger

He knew he would never be able to get used to the sight, and he never wanted to. The only thing he wanted was to move past it and allow the image to become a memory. However, sounds from the TV in the top right corner of the room tore him from his thoughts. It had been broadcasting live news. An irritation swelled up within him, and, without thinking, he swiped the panel on the wall, muting the sound. Suddenly, the girl’s attention broke from the window to him. “Connor!” Her smile greeted with a warmness that washed over him. He wanted to hold onto it, that warmness. But he couldn’t help but take notice of the circles under her eyes. “Hey. I’m back today.” He sat down on the windowsill next to her. “Sorry for taking so long. My card wasn’t good until this afternoon, and Goddard called so...” She looked at him with a drowsy satisfaction. “It’s fine.” She paused and waved her hand in front of her face, “Ugh, still smell of smoke though.” She spoke to him with a smile on her face, but Connor didn’t notice. He couldn’t break his focus from the shape she was in. “How’s Goddy doing? Has his hand been healing well since the incident with U.n.c.o.r.e?” He leaned forwards and looked at her closer. It was just as he thought. Her eyes were bloodshot, dark circles sat beneath them, and patches of skin were turning glossy and rough. She may have appeared to be in good spirits, but her condition told him the opposite. “He’s fine—hey, when was the last time you were able to get some rest?” Her expression didn’t change. In fact, she only seemed to glow brighter. To everyone else, she would appear to be content and maybe even happy. But, to Connor, that smile was just like this building: fake. “I’m fine! I’ve been able to crochet recently. Even though it’s extremely boring, it’s better than nothing.” She shrugged him off and seemingly dodged his question. “Amy…” His tone came out sterner, like a mother scolding a child. Her gaze didn’t falter. But, for a moment, her radiance did. “I haven’t been able to sleep for a while now. Yeah, I know, it’s not the best habit! But the moments I do get, I slip in and out of consciousness so much that I grow restless.” She paused to gesture to the window with her thumb, “So I figured it would calm me down by looking out the window. Maybe then I could sleep, though I’m fine, really.” She’s being distant again and bottling it all up.

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Connor sighed and brought her attention to the bouquet of flowers he got her. A variety of purple, blue, and violet; all her favorite colors. I can’t believe I am doing this... but here goes nothing. “Well, if you won’t close your eyes and sleep,” He paused for dramatic flair, “Then you may as well enjoy these!” He held out the flowers to her in a pose that resembled an awkward late-age superhero. His face felt like it was unnaturally contorted. It was hard for him, especially in this situation, to fake a smile. However, the chuckle he heard as a response immediately made the extra effort worth it. “Hold on! You, yourself, went to a flower shop?” She laughed from the diaphragm with a dryness that he found sounded painful. “Well, that must’ve been quite the sight! Let me guess, Goddard helped you, didn’t he?” “No! I mean he was there, but I picked the flowers!” The fake smile had faded into an earnest and defensive pout. “Seriously, you think I’d leave such an important task to Goddard? Psh! The guy can’t go one week without getting shot at, not to mention his ‘love’ life.” He’d waved her off but never took his attention away from her. He just watched her as she took the flowers and gazed at them. There was a deepness in her eyes that Connor could easily get lost in. There was so much to understand in one’s gaze, yet it was so hard to. “Well, thanks, Connor. These are pretty cool.” She stared at them longingly, but her tone didn’t match the tired look in her eye. She’s so fatigued she can hardly even act normal anymore. Goddard’s right; if I ignore it, she will only get worse. We both will. “Amy.” He set himself right before her so she couldn’t avoid his gaze. “I want you to tell me what’s going on with you.” “You already know that. I’m sick.” “Not physically. Emotionally. I want you to vent your emotions.” “Huh?” She seemed surprised at this, “Why?” “I know when someone’s holding back, bottling everything up. I know because I do the same thing. It’s not healthy to keep it all inside.” “Where the hell is this coming from?” “You are strong and very clearly have demonstrated that you know that. But strong people are weak sometimes too. And it’s okay to lean on others when you need it. At least, until you’re strong enough not to—”

Patrick Edinger

“Stop!” The way she looked at him made him feel an element of frustration. Frustration that she felt the need to continue to guard her feelings from him. “I’m fine...” She looked away from him, and he could tell she was starting to break. Connor buried his frustration and allowed silence to fill the room. That confirms it. I’m sorry that I didn’t push this sooner… Amy. “If you didn’t want me to know how you felt, you would’ve tried harder to hide it…” He gently guided her gaze to meet his. “Besides, you can’t hide certain things, no matter how hard you try.” She glanced at her shaking hands and the deformed patches adorning them and then chuckled. “I guess this stupid disease must be throwing me off my game, huh?” Tears began to well up in her eyes until they spilled over. The trails ran down her cheeks past a weak and pinched smile. “Must be, since you gave in so easily… god, you’re a piece of work.” He pulled her slowly in and hugged her as she sobbed. She allowed him to hold her; it was an embrace that told Connor everything he’d needed to know. “I’m here if you need me to be, don’t ever forget that, yeah?” He sat and listened to her sobbing as a knot formed so tightly in his throat that it could’ve choked him.“ No need to hold back anymore. It’s just us, no one around here to see. So just let it all out...” There was a period of time in Connor’s life that allowed him a small glimpse into her. At that time, he genuinely understood her, and, ever since then, he’d never seen her like this. Until now. “I hate this place. Its stupid walls, its stupid lifeless nurses! I feel so cramped and stuck! Surrounded by drones day in and day out. Being stuck with needles, tubes, and machines. I’m not even allowed to leave my own room! I can’t sleep because of the stress, the drugs, the fear! I can’t focus; I can’t enjoy anything normally because I know that I am going to die!” The last few words came out as a rasp and were accompanied by more tears. He held her tighter and ran his fingers through her hair. “It’s alright,” He bit his lip against stifled sobs, “It’s okay. You’re alright...” “The TV is always reminding me of the beauty of the city. How free and exciting it could be. How awful and grimy it can be, too. I miss it. I miss my life. I thought so much and wished so hard, but all I managed to do was burn out the hope I’d had. I feel so powerless to do anything about it. It’s so demoralizing, and I can’t take it!” There was a long pause of nothing but sniffling as Connor wiped the tears from both of their faces. “Now, I just feel empty,

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and sad, and tired...” He said nothing. Even if he wanted to speak, even if he had the words, he didn’t wish to. This moment, holding her, listening, it was enough. “You would hate it here.” Her words made him chuckle lightly. “Oh, yeah?” “Yeah, the food sucks.” The room fell silent, and the sun grew ever heavier against the evening sky. “Hey.” “Hm?” “My hands are cold…” He took her hands in his and cupped them. Her hands were small, cold, and frail. But yet, they carried so much with a strength he couldn’t hope to match. He’d been envious of her will. Her energetic and carefree personality too. That is also why he loved her so much. And to see someone he loved broken down to absolute zero, it hurt him and filled him with so much guilt and anger; he was sick of it. “I’m making a promise to you.” His voice wavered. Damnit… “I am going to get you out of this cursed place…” Why the hell… “I’m going to get you better, and when I do, we can go home…” Am I so useless? “I promise.”

CONNOR REICH GIBSON

HORROR

CHURCH V O I C E S Connor is a freshman studying creative writing and art history. In his spare time, he likes to explore Boston and bake bread.

only have one photo with my father.

He and I stand in the foreground, bottom left, him behind me with his left hand clapped on my shoulder, warm through the thin fabric of my blouse. His right arm hangs at his side, but I know the muscles are tense, ready to catch me if I were to slip on the wet grass and fall. Both he and I face away from the camera. I’m looking at the ripple in the water where the bobber on the end of my fishing pole bounces up and down, waiting for a bite. He’s looking—I think, I can’t remember—out across the lake. My mother took that photo, printed it out at Lee’s Drugstore, framed it, and forced it into my hands the day I left. I’ve looked at it so many times in the thirteen years since it was taken. It rested on a trunk in the living room of my childhood home, and now it sits in a tiny closet in my cramped apartment. I’m surprised it still holds together. His white short-sleeved work shirt billows out above where it’s tucked into his pants. Like most of his clothing, it’s a size too big. My mother always hated it, said it was just more to iron and that he looked like a bum. He insisted he felt more comfortable, it was

Church Voices

a habit from childhood, it was the only size they had left at the company store, it’s my damn shirt. I’ll wear it how I want. I remember tracing the satin-stitched K.B.R. logo on his breast pocket and asking what the letters stood for. He never gave me a straight answer. Guess, was his favorite response, or he would furrow his brow and tap his short crossword pencil against his lips and hmmmmm in a deep baritone. Hmmmmm, what do you think it stands for? Guess right and you can have dessert before dinner. My mother would scold him, setting whatever was in her hands—there was always something in her hands—down hard on the kitchen counter and sternly reminding me that dinner always came before dessert, that’s the rule, no exceptions. I remember a lot of always and no exceptions. If something was The Rule in my house, as far as I was concerned it was The Rule everywhere. I first learned that wasn’t the case from Liz Davis, my childhood best friend. Elizabeth Davis was her Christian name, but she managed to convince even our teacher to call her Liz. I had to plead with my mother for hours just to stay at Liz’s for dinner. My eyes damn near fell out of my head when Liz told me that “dinnertime” was whenever the pizza man rang the doorbell. Liz thought—and often told me—that I was crazy. Crazy for sitting at the dinner table with my hands folded on my lap while her whole big family dipped one at a time into the kitchen, grabbed a slice of pizza with a yell of Thanks, Ma! in the general direction of their mother, and ran off to wherever they pleased. Crazy for taking my shoes off and wiping them on the grass growing between her rickety porch steps before setting them neatly outside her front door. What if we go back outside to play? she wanted to know. Go outside? The sun’s almost down! I exclaimed, and Liz cackled so hard she almost toppled off the porch. Crazy for clapping my mouth closed and crossing the street when there was a policeman on the corner up ahead, for picking little pieces of pampas fluff off my shorts while she ran wild through thick marsh grasses and came home with her knees and fingernails caked with mud, for stiffening like a board when her Ma threw her big arm around me for a hug, and for staying that way until she let go of me with a towel swatted at my behind. When Liz calmed down, she asked me if I really did all that, all the time. I didn’t know what she meant.

Connor Reich Gibson

You know, sit at the table all through dinner all quiet and polite. Come inside at sundown. Church voices all the time— don’t you get sick of it? I had to think hard about that one. My mother insisted that Liz and her siblings wouldn’t ever amount to anything. Manners and God, she said, would get us as far in life as we needed to go—and in the eyes of my mother the Davises had neither. But Liz’s family smiled all the time and tossed around Love ya like Frisbees. I can’t think of a time when my mother said she loved me. It’s just how it is. My mother isn’t like your Ma. (I called Liz’s Ma “Mrs. Davis” once and she laughed, loud and raucous like Liz did. Do I look like an old lady to ya? Call me Ma, kiddo, same as Liz does). Anyway, what if you’re outside after dark and she wants you home? What then? She whistles for us, like this. Liz held her fingers together like she was pinching a bug between them and blew wet spit at me. I wiped it off with my sleeve and blew a raspberry back at her. Well, she can whistle loud enough to blow out the windowpane. I didn’t believe her until later that night, when her Ma’s whistle nearly blew my ears off. Liz lived less than two blocks away from me, but the chasm between us was so much wider than that. I always practiced my church voice walking home, reminding myself please, thank you, yes sir, no ma’am. The first night I came home from Liz’s house, my mother looked me over for less than an instant, then pinched my shirtsleeve—the one I had used to wipe off Liz’s spit—and bombarded me with Young lady, look at the grime on this, you think your father and I are made of money? You need to learn some respect for the clothes we put on your back or you’ll go to school wrapped in blankets like a savage—on and on while I bleached, starched, and pressed the cuffs and collars of that shirt, careful to avoid scorching it with the hot brand of the iron. I will never think about standing on the porch of my house without remembering the smell of bleach. It was pungent and insidious, burning the roof of my nasal cavity, wisps rising up to my brain and making my head spin. It turned my fingertips slippery and dry for days. The porch rail where I hung out the laundry was mottled with light brown patches, and the planks below it were speckled with dots like a cat’s back, where the bleach had eaten away at the wood.

Church Voices

The only time Liz came by, she said it looked like my porch was covered in ghosts. My mother saw us through the window and walked outside, knitting needles clicking and a scarf for me trailing behind her. She asked me who in the hell was this and what was she doing in our yard. This is Elizabeth, ma’am. She’s in grade school with me. She thought she might walk me home today. I didn’t dare say that Liz was my best friend and had been for nearly three years. Something wrong with your legs such that you can’t walk yourself home? Click click click, lightning fast, with the silver needles flashing in the last rays of the sun like lightning bugs. No ma’am, nothing wrong. Nice to meet you, Mrs. Corell, Liz tried, but my mother didn’t spare her so much as a glance. Click click click, eyes fixed on me. I felt like a slug drying up in the heat. Honey, come round and meet Elizabeth. My father rounded the corner of the house, wearing his canvas butcher’s apron and thick gloves. He smelled like laundry day, and I wondered, frozen with fear, if I had stained or spilled something that I would catch a whooping for later on. At the time, it was easy to call it fear. Looking back, I wonder if I stayed blind on purpose. Howdy, young lady. He fixed his eyes on her and stared. About time for you to be getting home to dinner, I would say? Your ma must be wonderin’ where you are. Yes sir, she said, and left, walking quicker than normal. My father watched her walk all the way out the yard and down the street. I remember his head never moved, only his eyes. Even when she turned the corner, he stayed, staring at her afterimage. I knew better than to speak. He pulled off his leather gloves—one stiff finger at a time—thumped them against his thigh, turned his back and walked around the side of the house. My mother walked inside, needles still click, click, clicking. Dinner was silent that night. The next day at school, Liz said she’d rather not come round again, and I didn’t blame her. I remember the scene in the photo with my father—him teaching me how to fish. I remember the clothes I was wearing at the lake. The shorts were faded blue chinos, a pair of old church pants with a hole in the knee that my mother cut and hemmed. The blouse was an old rose-patterned tablecloth that I had ripped under the armpits and stitched back up myself, another one of my mother’s tirades ringing in the backs of my ears and the long needle poking bloody pinpricks into my small fingers every other stitch. None of my mother’s thimbles would have stayed on, and she wouldn’t have

Connor Reich Gibson

thought to give me one, anyway. My white socks were dirt-stained from stomping through the grass and weeds to get to the side of the riverbank. I remember folding them and stuffing them in my waistband, then sneaking them in with the rest of the dirty linens to escape a lecture. My shoes were boy’s leather school shoes, hand-me-downs and too big in the toes. When I was getting told off, I would inch my toes forward as far as they could go until they touched the tips of the shoes, then slide my feet back to touch the heels, over and over until I got bored. Everything I owned was a hand-me-down. We seemed to have no shortage of second-hand clothes—whenever I fearfully pointed out to my mother that my elbows were wearing a shirt thin, or that something was fraying or torn, she just sighed and pulled something down from a box in the attic. I must have spent hours standing in the center of the living room, arms held straight out at my sides, naked from the waist up as she sewed and muttered. I wasn’t allowed to yelp when she stuck me with a straight pin. If I prick you, you were squirmin’, and that’s your own fault. Lord, this is hideous, said Liz when I came to school in one of my mother’s newest creations, a boy’s wide-lapelled striped shirt cut and hemmed into a dress. Who died and gave you this? Some family at church. Probably from the secondhand bin. The what? I asked. Liz picked at a loose button on my midsection. I slapped her hand away. The secondhand bin at church? For donations? Huh, I didn’t know we even had one of them. Years later, when I went back to our church for an aunt’s funeral, I learned that we didn’t. When I figured it out, it hit me like a fist in the gut. I was twentyone. I smoked about a pack outside the church, flicking cigarette butts into the bushes, the groan of the organ echoing through the old stone walls, until the kind pastor whom I had asked about the donation bin politely suggested that I should leave. On the flight back, I downed three of those small bottles of Grey Goose, before the stewardess put a kind hand on my arm and politely suggested that I should slow down. When she walked back to the end of the plane, I heard her whispering with the other stewardesses about me. I heard murderer. I heard kid. I threw up in the back of a taxi and was kicked out, the loud curses of the driver welcoming me back to New York. I threw up on the stairs in front of my apartment, and threw up in my rust-lined

Church Voices

bathtub, and sank into bed and heaved and cried. A week later, I had my last drink, retching as it passed my lips. And two weeks later, I started seeing a therapist. I only have one photo with my father. I imagine sometimes, if I had more, what they would show. If a National Geographic photographer had stalked the Corell family, hiding in the bushes outside our house or staked out on top of our roof, what might they have captured on film? My father chopping up chickens or whole legs of beef out behind the house with a boning knife and an old Bakelite bone saw that had been his father’s. Me hanging up linens to dry stiff in the sun when we could have easily afforded a Joske’s dryer. Now that my parents are dead, I wonder about those missing pictures, all the things I didn’t know—the locked boxes in our attic, under our floorboards, the locked secrets in my mother and father’s minds. I think about the dark corners of our house—the shed out back, the wine cellar, the space under the stairs. I wonder what they might hold. I wonder if my parents wanted me to know more about them. I wonder if they didn’t. I’ve been going back to that lake in my mind by staring at the one photo I have with my father. I trace the outlines of our bodies with my finger. I’m not sure exactly what it is I’m waiting for. For words to appear above our heads, maybe, spelling exactly what I had been missing—what I ignored—for years. For my father’s image to turn around and talk to me, tell me he’s sorry, tell me he would go back and change things if he could, tell me he loved me. The year that photo was taken, my mother was particularly paranoid. I remember her occasionally stopping dead in her tracks and muttering to herself about the neighbors, who she was convinced were watching us at night and plotting to rob us. God himself wouldn’t have been brave enough to ask her what of ours they could possibly want. I was terrified of her in those moments. Her hands would clutch whatever she was holding, a can of tuna or a photo frame, hard enough to turn her knuckles white and send tremors up her forearms. Her stare, though not locked on anything in particular, seemed in my mind to materialize as two beams of fire. Even my father avoided her when that happened, finding an excuse to go outside or upstairs or downtown, leaving me alone with her. She never struck me, though I imagine she wanted to.

Connor Reich Gibson

We stopped going to church the year after that picture was taken. People whispered about us then, but my mother was going deaf in one ear, thank God. Soon after, I left for college. I remember announcing it to my parents: my mother silently starting to cry, my father’s glassy eyes. I know she hated me in that moment: hated me for leaving (though she never seemed to want me around); hated me for moving to the North; hated me for starting college, where I would surely become a communist, a radical anarchist, or a lesbian. In her mind, every college student was one of those, or all three. My mother went to the trouble to print that photo out. My mother, who did nothing in excess, didn’t even put curtains on the windows because they’re a waste of fabric, and anyway, you should be getting up early, God didn’t make you to lie around all day, little miss. My mother, who smiled cruel and cold at me as I dragged my worn suitcase into the taxi to the airport. Somethin’ to remember us by, crocodile tears on her cheeks, my fingerprints smudging the polished silver frame. When I was twenty-two, the article came out. I tore it out of the paper—I don’t know why. Four years have passed, and I still have that scrap of newspaper. Officials suspect that Rand and Mary Corell, both recently deceased, hid six of the eight bodies in Medina Lake, near the aptly named Devil’s Bluff. The remaining two have yet to be found. The Corells lived in Mico their whole life. They had one daughter, Esther Mary Corell. Miss Corell studies journalism and psychology at Fordham University in New York. She declined to comment. I know I couldn’t have done anything to stop it. I know it wasn’t my fault. I know if my parents had ever heard news of me going to the police, or even confiding in a neighbor, that they would have beaten me bloody. But I remember the scene in that photo like it was yesterday. I remember every second, and I’m old enough now to know what it meant. A tug on the end of my fishing pole, the bobber dipping, and my father’s large hand, warm on my shoulder, steadying me. Holding me tight as I reeled a hand out of the water. A hand that I now know was split neatly off its owner with a concave boning knife. A hand that, if I had reached out and slapped it, would have fit against mine just about perfectly.

Church Voices

Although I can’t see my father’s face in the photo, I know he’s smiling.

JADE EDWARDS

DYSTOPIAN

N AT U R A L CONCLUSION Jade is a writer and narrative designer with a passion for hiking, coffee, and video games. She is from Georgia, where nature isn’t quite as deadly but just as gorgeous.

hen my mom peeks her head into my bedroom to say goodnight, blood still on her fingers and apron from the pig she’s working with, I hide the dream book behind my pillow fast enough for her not to notice. “You left your phone in the main room,” she says after a moment, “and it’s gone off every hour. I… I know you’re done with him, and you don’t owe him anything. But maybe Hunter will have an easier time letting you go if you call him back.” She hasn’t brought him up since we broke up three days ago. I’m honestly surprised it took her this long: she and him always got along, even when we cluelessly started dating at sixteen. He brought her old car parts, which she found nostalgic, from his job at the automobile plant. In turn, she thought he had a promising future ahead of him there, the kind that gets you closer to the city—closer to safety. She’s not wrong. But I know she’s suggesting this now not out of affection but out of mercy. The night of our breakup, she listened to him bang on our front door for an hour, begging for closure, while I hid in my bedroom. I say, “Okay,” but I don’t mean it, not at all, and Mom smiles and says, “Sweet dreams, Marrow,” which is exactly what I’m hoping for. As soon as she closes the door, I pull out the book.

Natural Conclusions

It’s a real book, from Mom’s collection, with paper pages that give me a nervous thrill each time I rub them between my fingers and remember this was once a tree. Now it’s so docile and tame and safe. It’s such a romantic object, and it makes sense to me why Mom kept so many of them, hidden-away relics from a time before. Once, while high off of aerosol (a substitute for alcohol, which, even when it could be found, had few people willing to trust it), she confessed to me that in a more merciful world my name would have been Willow. Crude now, but in her childhood, it was considered beautiful, like Daisy, Fern, Ivy, Rose. She told me my name was an homage not to the rich goo she scraped from bones for broth, but to her two favorite plants, the willow and the marigold. It didn’t make sense to me, to love something as dangerous as nature, to miss and mourn it. Yet somehow, I envy her. I stole the book to learn how to lucid-dream. I don’t want to fly or play god—I just want to remember. And as my mind floats up above my body, I will myself to sit up from bed, to walk past Mom in the front room. She’s collecting every drip of fat from the meat she’s preparing for tomorrow, the same way everyone on this block is no doubt doing right now. On the radio, the pollen count is reported at a whooping 416—“Higher than even a usual spring, folks, so stick indoors and, of course, watch your friends, family, and neighbors for sprouting.” And then I’m outside, passing houses pressed against houses, bundled together for warmth and safety. I focus on my feet and the feeling of concrete against them; the dream book said that focusing on each step of the journey will better lead you to the memory, to every detail of the moment. I pass mounds of earth, tilled and salted so that stray spores won’t grow. Concrete pillar after concrete pillar goes by—a “concrete jungle,” my mom once told me, yet another one of those phrases where the crudeness didn’t come until after the Great Vengeance. But now, in my lucid-dreaming, I walk to the real jungle, or “forest,” as it used to be called around here, but the name doesn’t matter because either way it’s the Badlands and I’m not allowed near it. I came here in person three nights ago, a few hours after Hunter gave up pounding on my door. I stood there at the border, my face pressed against the flimsy chain-link fence. Few towns remain as close to the Badlands as this one is, and fewer still have nothing but a fence dividing them from danger. But all our settlement is good for, as far as the rest of the continent is concerned, is cars and animal products. Regardless, I stayed at the border, staring and

Jade Edwards

barely breathing, for over an hour. I hoped that maybe if I absorbed every detail, I would never have to risk infection like that again. And for what? I couldn’t be sure what drew me to the Badlands— there’s no comfort in nature, not anymore, not in my lifetime. Like with everything, like with Hunter, I was lost, and I didn’t know why. I did a good job taking in the details—now, in my dream, I can recall every curve of a leaf or rope of a vine. I recall the fiercest silence. The rare rustle of leaves makes my skin crawl and instinctively I jump back, even though it’s a dream, even though the fence is taller than any stray gallow-branch could reach. I’m hoping that if I revisit this place, night after night, the memory will never leave. But already, I realize, a piece is fading. I wiggle my toes, but I can’t quite remember the sensation of dirt. This upsets me; my mom says she misses some of the food of her childhood, but more than anything she misses the sensation of walking on grass, before it sliced your feet to shreds and aimed for the Achilles’ heel. Out of all her sentimentality, I could never understand how that could matter so much to her, more than the fruit and wheat every adult her age pines over. Even three nights ago, I remember wiping my bare feet against the concrete, afraid that the dirt on my feet would give away my crime and, more than that, infect me. Seeds hide in the dirt, teachers and parents always said. Seeds breed plants. Plants hate people. Circle of life. In my dream I pick up my foot, hoping to at least see that brown, grainy residue. Instead, there are pointed seeds, burrowing their way into the flesh of my soles. I wake with a start, panting. Immediately I pull my knees up against my stomach and knead my fingers against the calloused bottoms of my feet. I feel nothing. Morning sun streams through my window, and I can tell from the quiet that Mom has already left for the slaughterhouse, where pigs are made fat on the spare parts of their kin, where I work alongside her every weekday except today. As relaxation sets in, I reach down my panties to scratch at an itch at my crotch. There’s something soft and strange there, and for a crazed moment I think of paper, the flat and deadened skin of trees. But then I throw away the covers and see the ivy poking from my underwear, the vines wrapping around my waist, tendrils crisscrossing my thighs and even up towards my stomach. White clover peeks out between thin leaves. I can’t process what I’m seeing. My mind flashes back to the images we saw in school—animals, picked apart by thorns. Bird

Natural Conclusions

bodies hung by constricting gallow-branches. And the one I saw with my own eyes, the one that haunts me still: a female dog lying on its side, still panting, as grass sprouted from its distorted belly. A wrench is brought down on its stomach, and it crumples, tearing open, flowers and sprouts tangled among the tissue. Again, again, the wrench. Still, it breathes. Earth’s Great Vengeance. I bite back a scream and dash to the bathroom, yanking the plants away with a towel. It hurts no more than picking at a scab, but angry purple indents remain where the vines stuck. I run my fingers across my skin, waiting to wake from another layer of dream. I slam my knuckles against the counter, and the pain I feel is real. Fear twists my gut. It feels as if something round and hard is sitting in my stomach, sinking deeper and deeper, pressing against my lungs until I can barely breathe. How could I be so careless? And more importantly: why? Staring down at my blossoming stomach now, I can’t understand what brought me to this moment. I press my fists against my stomach and groan. From the other room, my phone buzzes. On the fourth ring, I pick up, my fingers still running over the scars, like worms burned up on the sidewalk. I barely catch the words as he talks, but I know he says things like “understand,” “broken,” and “why.” I can tell he’s been crying. “I know you’re sick of me,” Hunter says. “I just—I need to talk to you, just one more time. Give me one more chance to—get where I went wrong.” Was he why I did it? Had the breakup—the one I instigated— given me a death wish? My mind flashes back to a moment a year before, when we sat on the roof of a never-used parking garage and stared at the drab, blocky buildings of the town. His arm was around me, and he still smelled of motor oil and meaty sweat from his shift at the plant. He pointed at the smoggy smudge of the city in the distance and told me he’d get enough money to take us there, where things were better. This was our town’s dream: to find a nice, industrious spouse, to keep them joined at your hip, to save enough money to flee to the safety of a city. For reasons I didn’t understand, then, now, or even when I broke up with him, the thought made my skin crawl. Now, on the phone, I hear myself say, “Okay.” When he says, “Right now? I’ll pick you up,” I say “Yeah, sure,” then hang up. For days now he’s been the last person I want to see, and that hasn’t changed, but I need someone right now, right? It doesn’t feel true, but surely it is. But I remember he isn’t my only option. I

Jade Edwards

type in Mom’s number, but before I hit the call button, a memory shoves into my mind. It’s the female dog, bounding through the empty parking garage, chasing a butterfly. Hunter and I were leaving when we saw her, and when she saw us, she froze, mid-play. He threw a hand over me and pushed me back. “It’s infected,” he said. He reached into his work tool belt, and before I understood, he was holding the wrench. It was the protocol we’d been fed for years, that the infection of the Great Vengeance was the deadliest part of it all. But this dog seemed safe. Free. I said no, wait, you can’t, but he did anyway, and it crumpled into flowers and flesh. I stare at the phone screen until it winks off. I know if I call, Mom will come home and console me. But what would she do? Hold me, probably. But that’s it. There’s no cure. There isn’t much risk of infection until my insides are completely overcome by flora, by things like daisies and ferns and ivy and roses. And then she’ll report me to the authorities, and they’ll come in hazmat suits take me to a sterile room where they’ll put me down, like a dog. They say it’s painless, and maybe it would be for me. But not for Mom. And there’s an even worse possibility than that, where she keeps me, locked in her house, until we both are infected, until a neighbor discovers us pillaging the trash for scraps and we’re executed in the street. No matter what, she’ll watch me die the way she watched so many others die when she was my age and woke up to a world that had lost its temper overnight. To see me consumed by what she once loved would absolutely destroy her. I pull up Hunter’s number again, thinking maybe I should call again, tell him to stay away. I think of the breakup in his parked car behind the plant. “Why?” he screamed. I don’t know, I thought. It seemed illogical, selfish. Hunter was willing to work for me, for us, to afford the dream life, away from here, away from these far-suburbs pressed against the natural world, the last line of defense for the overcrowded cities that I could never afford without him. To say no to that was stupid and selfish. And still I pine for something—no, somewhere. Somewhere lonely and beautiful, where nobody cares about me except myself. But I said none of this to him because I didn’t know how. Instead, I walked to the Badlands in the middle of the night, inhaled the deadly spores, and made a fucking arboretum out of my uterus. And I have no idea how many days I have left. No one ever lasts that long.

Natural Conclusions

There’s a knock on the door, and it’s him, face puffy and red from days of crying. Already, I want to shut the door, hide, and call my mom. Instead, I let him lead me to his car, and he begins to drive. The light through his sunroof casts a shadow over his face. He speaks, saying he’s thought it all over and he thinks he might’ve driven me away with his smothering, or maybe he didn’t appreciate me enough. I press against the window and say nothing, because suddenly I don’t know how to tell him what’s happening to me. More than that, I realize that I don’t want company at all. The thought of being alone—of dying alone—gives me that sense of peace I crave, the impossible emotion that drove me to break up with him. “Take me back home,” I say. “Please, Mar, I just need an answer. What did I do?” His face is obscured in shadow. “Nothing.” The need to be alone is overwhelming, and I feel an impulse, a craving, the strongest I’ve had in days, maybe months. “Can we go to the Badlands?” He gives me a look of alarm, but obliges, turning the steering wheel. My heart aches for him, and I scramble for an answer, a lie. Any kind of closure I can give him before I go. “Hunt, I’m sorry. I am. I’m mean, I’m selfish, and I’m stupid for not wanting you. I don’t know what’s wrong with me. I… want things that are hard to explain, that you can’t give me. That’s not fair to you, and I’m so sorry for that. You can hate me. I think it’d be better that way. Hate me and get over me.” “I don’t hate you,” he says. “And Mar, anything you want, I’d… I’d get it for you. I’d try.” We’re in front of the Badlands now. His bumper presses against the chain link fence, and I stare at the trees, intensely green in the sunlight. His voice brings me back to the moment. “Just tell me what it is.” I try. “I want to be somewhere else.” He opens his mouth and I cut him off. “Not the city. Somewhere…” The forest stirs, and with it, the hard heavy ball inside me bursts, permeating the air in the car like an earthy, sweet mist. And I finally know. “I want to stay here. Alone.” He’s quiet for a moment. “Mar, do you… do you miss me?” His hand is on my knee. I break, just a little. “I—I will. God, of course I will.” He leans in closer and without thinking I nuzzle against him, like I’ve done a million times. I know I don’t want him back, especially now. But I— the human in me—want to make peace, give him that closure he

Jade Edwards

needs. Once she finishes, the forest inside of me can find comfort in its kin. As I lean against his shoulder, my eyes wander across his sturdy back, illuminated from the sunlight through the windows. The sight is mesmerizing: the light filtering through the shifting leaves has this dappled, shifting appearance I’ve never seen before. I crane my neck and peek up through the sunroof. I can see the top of the fence, about twenty feet up. I think I could scale it. I don’t feel his fingers reaching up under the hem of my shirt until it’s too late. His fingers find the angry indents the vines left that morning. His whole body freezes, and then he yanks up my shirt. I yelp, but there’s no point in trying to hide them. Already there’s small white flowers beginning to sprout again. “You’re—” he says, and then he just stares at me, mouth agape. I nod. “I am. I came here the night we broke up.” The words come out in a rush. “Please don’t be afraid, I shouldn’t be infectious for another few days. But this is what I meant, about being alone, about being here. I know this sounds crazy, but I swear, there’s something about the Badlands. I get why my mom misses it so much. It’s so peaceful here, so natural. If you forget that it can hurt you, it feels like… the place we belong.” He doesn’t respond, glancing not at me, but at the vines crawling around my torso. Instinctively I cover them with my hands, hoping he’ll look at me instead. But he doesn’t. He turns away and reaches for the gear shift. “Wait,” I say. I grab his chin and make him look me in the eye, and when he does, I know what he’s thinking. I spin and reach for the car door, but he locks it before I can pull it open. “I can’t let you, Mar,” he says. “I’m sorry. Right now you’re safe but in a few days you’ll be dangerous, not to yourself but to everyone. I can’t—” “This isn’t your choice!” I scream, yanking the door handle harder, and when I hear the click of him putting the car into gear, I immediately unbuckle and jump over him, trying to reach the door lock. He wrestles against me, shoving my hands away from the panel, but I manage to smash the button that opens the sunroof. He doesn’t notice, instead managing to pin both my hands against the console with one arm while starting to steer with the other. With all of my strength, I yank away, stumble back, then throw my body out the sunroof. He realizes my plan and grabs one of my ankles, and as much as I squirm, I can’t shake him loose. “You’re insane!” he shouts. “You’ll die!”

Natural Conclusions

“I’m going to die either way, aren’t I!?” But my mind flashes back to the dog, filled with flora, but alive, bounding for butterflies, and I wonder if that’s even true. “Do you want to die alone?” “Yes!” I bring back my foot to kick him but feel myself slip deeper into the car. I stare at his face, but still, he won’t meet my eyes. Instead, his eyes travel to my bare foot. He screams and lets go. I scramble away, onto the back bumper of his car. I catch a glimpse of the bottom of my foot and understand why: like in my dream, there are seeds visible beneath my skin, on the brink of bursting from my sole. But I don’t feel a thing. I jump off his car and sprint for the fence, leaping onto it and climbing, putting all my need, all my nameless desire, into each pump of my arm. About fifteen feet up, far out of reach of the ground, I risk a glance at Hunter. He isn’t following, he’s just standing, staring. I see his hand in his tool belt, and it emerges with a hammer. I freeze, and we lock eyes. I’m certain what’s coming next. Instinctively, I put out my arms to catch it, but it misses, clanging loudly against the fence next to me. But with my arms out, gravity immediately yanks me down, headfirst. I shut my eyes, afraid to witness the impact of my head against the ground, but instead I feel a fierce tug at my pantleg and hear a rip—the cuff of my pants is snared. I’m hanging upside down, my foot twisting in the fence at an uncomfortable angle. By luck, it’s not broken. But my eyes meet Hunter, and I realize he’s holding another tool, his wrench. My shirt is hanging off my frame, revealing the vines to him but concealing most of my face except my eyes. “Don’t!” I cry out. He’s frozen, holding the hammer, staring at the plants sprouting from my stomach. The delicate, paper-thin leaves. The green, so strange and yet so natural. So much of his life is spent staring at gray metal and red rust. Has he ever seen this much green, warm green against the deep brown of my skin? “Hunt,” I say. “Let me make this choice. It’s mine, even if it’s wrong. Just go. You don’t know what will happen to me when I get over there, if some gallow-branch will hang me, or if the grass will slice me to pieces. Don’t stick around. You’ll regret it forever.” His face is puffy from days of crying, but somehow it looks sallow now, deflated. He puts the hammer back in his belt, nodding. And then he stares at me a moment longer, shuts his eyes tight, and

Jade Edwards

turns back to his car. I almost say goodbye, but don’t. I wait for his car to vanish into the concrete jungle before I pull myself up. I finish my climb. On the other side of the fence, I hesitate before dropping onto the ground. The forest stirs with a breeze, rhythmically, like breathing. Below me is a patch of grass. It looks spiky, but also thin, maybe like blades, maybe like paper. I think of the dog, still breathing, blossoming with fragile flowers. I close my eyes and let myself drop onto the earth. My seeded feet plant into the grass.

Natural Conclusions