F O R T N I G H T
Finalists’ Edition: Prose
LITERARY PRESS
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O cover
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by Christina Hu
Something Blue 3
by Miles Stephenson
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Wrong Way
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The Golden Years
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Dead Letter Office
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by Hannah French
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Climbing On
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by Jessica Kahn
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Stars in the Soup
by Ron Brady
by Emilia Prado
Congratulations to our Fall Contest winners! Editors-in-Chiefs
Anna Horton & Lars Johnson
Copyeditor
Haley Winkle
Layout Editor
Christina Hu
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Wrong Way by Miles Stephenson FOREWORD In 1910, Congress considered a plan that would bring hippopotamus ranching to the United States. Legislators believed this plan would fix two major issues: a national meat shortage and an invasive water hyacinth problem. They never went through with the plan, but if they had brought this gargantuan African mammal to the Louisiana bayou, we might have had the stories of “hippoboys” in the American South. Here’s one of their stories. *** Lee woke to the rumble of the tracks under him like he had for a decade. He felt around in the dark for his matches. He struck one. It showed the dim corner of his boxcar, his shoeless feet, and tattered denim pants. All his belongings were beside him in a leather trunk. Outside, he heard the train whistle and the brakes engage. He heard the booming voices of the bulls patrolling the railroad and the howling of their hounds in the morning dust. Lee’s hand was trembling and he thought of a jug of wine. A drink was all he needed to calm his nerves, he told himself. This was what living day to day did to a man. He swigged his flask. Then he crept to the boxcar door and looked through the crack into the light. A bull passed in his pressed uniform with a baton in his hand. When he reached the caboose, he dragged back the door suddenly, as if he was trying to catch a man with his knickers down. He searched through the straw and in the nooks between freight, any place where an American hobo might be sleeping. A pair of hounds sniffed by Lee’s boxcar on leashes. Bulls smoked and talked about a weekend on the riverboat. When they left for the caboose, Lee saw his chance. He slid the door back and ran with his trunk under his arm. 2
“Trespasser!” One of the bulls yelled in pursuit. They shook their batons. One fired a gun and ripped up a plume of dirt under Lee’s feet. But Lee ran. He slid under a freight car and crawled out the other side. He hopped over tracks and ran into a warehouse and escaped out the back through a drain pipe. Wherever this is, it’s hot as hell here, Lee thought to himself, waving mosquitos as he hid in a bush by the river. “Which way he go?” The bull huffed, planting his hands on his knees. The bullfrogs were croaking on the peat moss. “I saw him hit the storehouse, let’s check there.” They lumbered off. When his blood ran cool again, Lee crawled out and followed the river. Soon, he came to a one-horse town curtained by weeping willows. A snake oil salesman hawked his tonics to the passing wagons but didn’t offer one to Lee. From only a glance he decided Lee didn’t have the money. Lee pushed through saloon doors and settled at the bar, his forehead glistening with sweat. “Just a whisky,” said Lee. The barkeep poured. “And some work if you got it.” “You one of them railway boys?” “An American Hobo,” Lee raised his glass to that with a smile. “Ever since the South lost, I’ve been on the rails.” “Looking for that Big Rock Candy Mountain?” “My whole life.” The barkeep laughed. That’s the place where the coppers have wooden legs and the chicken lay soft boiled eggs. That’s the hobo’s paradise. “Well, Rancher Grooms been having problems with the lake cows. No man here will take the damn job ‘cuz it’s too dangerous. If you got nothing else...” “Lake cows. Hmm...” Lee spent the afternoon refilling his glass until he was loose enough to fall off the stool and coil up like a hose. When he got numb from drinking he thought of his father — the only person he had truly ever cared about. His father was the 3
last cowboy. Imagine that? A whole way of life going belly up in one generation. When Lee was young, his father had told him about the death of the cowboy. He was sitting among his steer in the smell of straw and dust when the final gold sun set on the Wild West. Big companies fenced their cows up in feedlots now and packed the cities with workers. Running steer across the plains just wasn’t profitable; it was time to move on. Lee’s dad told the rattlesnakes and the coyote. He told the prospectors sifting through sand in the canyon. He told the steer’s skull, its hollow eye sockets looking back in disbelief, and then he told the hawks circling above. No one seemed to care. How strange, Lee’s father thought. No one cared about the end of the cowboy. When Lee came to his senses, he was out back in a mud pile. The barkeep was standing over him waving his arms around. “What is it?” Lee squinted. “You don’t have any money to pay for those drinks, bum!” “Bum? That’s a city word. Where you from?” “Charleston.” “You can take my leather trunk. That’s all I’ve ever had.” The barkeep cursed him some and went inside for the trunk. “You alright, Mister?” Lee turned. A woman with a cowboy hat stood in the alley. She had hair of polished cinnabar and her hands rested on her hips.
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The Golden Years by Ron Brady PERSONALS-MIAMI SUN Mature older male, recently divorced, 86 years young. Moves like a mud slide. Seeks the companionship of a 50-60 year old blonde lady. Must like crossword puzzles,solitaire and wheel chair repair. Willingness to capriciously travel, at the drop of a hat, to foreign lands (last week I flew to Hong Kong to have my shoes stretched). I have had a hip replacement or a penile implant, I can’t remember which. Six million dollars in a safe deposit box, need help in remembering the combination. I buy a new car three times a year, sometimes the same model. The lucky, wrinkle free lady, will join me in expensive world travel and participate in the joys of depriving my children of their rightful inheritance. Colostomy, a definite plus. Send life size photograph. Sincerely, Lonely
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Dead Letter Office by Hannah French The DLO was a nowhere place, a nowhere address. It may as well have been “missing or defunct” itself. Helen had worked at the dead letter office for eighteen years. She could hardly name a single person or place that actually existed. Sometimes, as she sorted mail, she’d try her hand at playing Sherlock: the writing is large and confident — a young letter writer sending a note to Lucy: a grandmother? Or a friend? Lucy was a more common name in the 20th century, so grandmother, probably... but why wouldn’t she know that her grandmother was dead? More often than not, letters were double returned to the DLO, which was ironic — a “return to sender” returned to the sender. So the letters were burned. In the winters, insulation around the DLO was so bad that the workers would huddle around the incinerator, holding their hands up to the glow of forgotten words. A lot of good material came through the dead letter office. There were manuscripts here, after all, and Helen could spend hours perusing them. Some of them were quite good. Some of them, if they’d reached their destination, may have risen to rival Harry Potter. Dear Santa, I want a trained squirrel for Christmas. Hannah
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The walls of DLO were papered with letters like this, highlights in a particularly dense encyclopedia. It could get a little confining, Helen thought, the four of them in a 12x14 square foot room. They couldn’t bring in fans or blast the AC too high, because it made the walls flutter, and sorting became impossible. Instead, they permitted themselves four half hour breaks in the kitchen throughout the day. Some prankster had given each of them a milk carton for Christmas with their faces on it and the word MISSING. None of her colleagues would admit to doing it. Helen had tried to throw hers away — it gave her the heebie jeebies — but it had appeared in the same spot in the fridge the next day. “Probably it had a missing or defunct address,” Taylor had told her, watching her with blank eyes as she stared at the newly-replaced milk carton. She laughed, but stopped abruptly when his face didn’t change. Taylor didn’t make jokes. It was hard to picture anything concreteabout Taylor. She thought he always wore a vest, but she couldn’t be sure; he was so put together he became unnoticeable. Helen didn’t like the other two much better. Rudy was a funda-environmentalist, who lived and traveled around in his RV, but wore a string of shark teeth around his neck, whether to emphasize reuse and recycling or to appear “native,” she didn’t know. He liked to preach about the benefits of living life as a roamer, and was skeptical of anybody and anything stationary. Yes, Rudy liked the call of the wild. Helen liked the quiet creak of her office chair. Elena was shy and wore a Bryn Mawr sweatshirt every day. She had gotten the job the summer after her junior year in high school to get away from abusive parents. Helen couldn’t remember if she’d ever gotten into the school or not. Perhaps Elena was a part time student at the community college. She didn’t say much. “The weather’s nice today,” Helen said to her, as they began to sort letters. Elena glanced quickly at her and then away. Helen continued to watch her. Taylor continued to 7
watch the wall. “Bullshit,” said Rudy. Helen glanced at him, but didn’t reply. They sat, for the most part of the next hour, in silence, each of them at their own tables. The room was organized in fours. Each of them had their own long table with four bins and a high bar stool (the better to drop mail inside the bins). Consumerism, Life Updates, Reckoning, and Unrealized Dreams. The Dreams bin was often empty, not only because they were rarely received, but also because everyone in the office felt that it was better to eat or loot what was inside than to burn it. Sometimes, if they felt particularly kind, they would return it to the sender. “We forgot to go down to the incinerator last night,” Taylor commented. They all looked up. Rudy was the first one who spoke. “Let’s wait on it until today’s haul — have ourselves a bonfire.” He grinned. “Bonfires aren’t very environmentally friendly,” Elena murmured. “Bullshit,” said Rudy. Helen sat rooted to her chair. She had continued sorting while the other three talked,uninterested in the usual banter, but now found herself holding a very odd piece of mail. It was a Bed Bath & Beyond back-to-school magazine, organized into bright squares, each promoting its own piece of dorm furniture. “Hang out in style with this SWIVEL CHAIR,” said one square. “GIRLS--keep your feet warm in winter with a FUR RUG,” shouted another. Junk mail came through the DLO all of the time. The Consumerism bin was to Helen’s right, and as a consequence, her right arm was far more muscular than the left from years of throwing spam magazines out in bundles. Junk mail was never returned to sender. There had been no reason for Helen to notice the addressee on this particular spam, 8
except that a particularly vibrant BEANBAG CHAIR had caught her eye. Above it in small print was the name and address of the recipient:
Elena Ross 1995 Hawthorne Dr. West Chester, PA, 19380
Helen frowned at it. “Elena?” she said. The girl looked up from her table. Was it Helen’s imagination, or did she look paler than usual? Her dirty blond hair hung limply from her head, falling in odd strands into her sweatshirt hood. “What?” Elena asked. “Isn’t your last name Ross?” “Yeah. Why?” Helen handed her the advertisement. “Did your parents move and forget to register the new address?” Elena made a vague frown. “No,” she said. Helen scrutinized her face. She didn’t appear to be lying. But why, then, would the mail default? She must be lying. “Elena…” Helen said, in her gentlest voice. “You can talk to me.”
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Climbing On by Jessica Kahn She tumbles upwards, unknowingly drawn to the sun. It’s unsurprising that she doesn’t register her cells stretching and compressing to push her closer to the light. She doesn’t register anything. She climbs her entire home, getting imperceptibly closer to the sun each day. One day, she will reach the top of the roof, but it will not matter to her. She’ll grow stronger, and stretch higher. Her goals, although entirely centered around her wellbeing are not selfish in the traditional sense. Working only for herself, she strives to survive, but not at the expense of others. She isn’t certain that there are others to survive at the expense of, but if there were, she would not strive to compete with them. That would be distinctly out of character. No, she has always craved stability through balance. She competes only with herself. And so she tumbles upwards, day after day, lusting after the sun. She shines brightly in the glistening light, using only the sense of it to continue her winding journey to the source. Since she began, she’s grown strong and resilient. Climbing has made her large, but stable. She twists and turns, familiarizing herself with every space in her home, becoming ever more sure of her objective. Her beauty, although abundant, is not her primary concern. She does not have a primary concern, but if she did, that would most certainly not be it. She does not put effort into being beautiful, although there are those that do. She does not think any less of them because of it. She does not think of them. They do not think of her, either. She has never thought of anyone else, and nobody has thought of her in quite a long time. She directs all of her effort into her own growth, her own goals. 10
***
Reaching out to the light, she lifts her thin fingers skyward. She moves with a languid motion, gracefully and accidentally splaying her arms open, haphazardly leaning into the sun. Her fingers blend seamlessly into her arms, which blend equally as well into the rest of her. Her fluidity of motion depends heavily on the blurred lines between her appendages; she does not appear to have hands, or a torso to speak of, perhaps because of her constant upwards stretch. Every part of her branches out and up in a beautiful, steady extension of the self. Her movements have no sense of urgency about them, as she does not care when she reaches the light, only that she gets closer to the source. She does not understand that she will never reach the sun itself, but if she did she would not care. She would only want to move towards it consistently. She breathes deeply, taking in the air around her and sending it out, slightly changed. The old creatures used to breathe too.
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Stars in the Soup by Emilia Prado Before I could get my keys, the door to my apartment building was pushed open by someone heading out. I stepped back, and my foot slipped on the rain-slicked stoop. A hand shot out and grabbed the front of my sweater and pulled me back. I tried to blink away the rain from my eyes, but still found myself looking through a few drops on my lashes. Hunter had kept me from falling. He lived in the apartment below mine. Sometimes he played his guitar on the fire escape. I liked to open my window and watch the notes drift in on the breeze. Sometimes they were the colors of a golden sunset, sometimes they were a chilling shade of blue. He gave me the usual lopsided grin. “Did you seriously go for a walk in the rain?” I shrugged and wiped my eyes with the cuff of my soaked denim jacket. “It wasn’t raining when I left.” Hunter tilted his head, confused with stars falling off him like the water drops that rolled off me. As they hit the stoop, they shattered into millions of pieces before dissolving into nothing. “The weather channel said it’s been raining since four in the morning.” The rain was coming down in sheets, giving the world a silver haze. “Yeah, that sounds right. It started about an hour after I left.” “Jesus!” I was still watching the glittering drops when he tugged me inside. “You’re going to get yourself sick like this—or killed—walking around alone at night.” I let him take my jacket, and unzipped my sweater before he pulled that off too. “I can’t sleep. I keep having weird dreams. The walks help.” “You walked for five hours just so you could fall asleep for few before work?” I watched him look over my face trying to find something that would tell him I was fine. People always did it to Mom. 12
When she went to stay with the stars they needed someone else to look at. They looked at me. Hunter sighed, but it seemed like he found something familiar. “Where are your keys?” I held up my keys. He took the lead up the stairs. We climbed to the fourth floor and I let Hunter take the keys to unlock my apartment. He told me to go change into something dry, but I stood by to watch him lay my jacket and sweater over the radiator. I was still in the same spot by the door when he turned around. He was nice and just told me to go change again. As I headed for my room I heard some garbled noise from behind me, probably Hunter, but all I could focus on were the sounds coming from my room. I stepped into my room to find small hills of sand scattered about. But what surprised me was the fact that they were growing, fed by various threads of sand that fell from my ceiling. There was no sign that they were letting up soon. The nearest one was collecting on the foot of my bed. I moved closer, and reached a hand out to touch the stream coming from the chipped ceiling. The grains trickled over my palm, tickling the skin as they passed on their way to the pile growing on my sheets. It felt nice. “Hey, you decent?” I didn’t flinch at the sound of Hunter knocking on the wall to get my attention. I’d heard the landlady say he was a gentleman, so I figured he was probably waiting out of sight to give me privacy. I hadn’t bothered to shut the door. “Yeah.” I kept my hand in the sand. I listened as he came into my room and made a noise like a scoff and a laugh. “I thought you were changing?” I shrugged. I didn’t turn to face him. “I got distracted.” He paused then, to look me over again. “What are you doing?” “Feeling the sand.” It was better when I said the truth. Mom always said the truth was better. “Okay.” He dragged the end of the word out. I finally looked away from the sand slipping through my fingers when he stood next to me. He pulled an old falsa blanket off my bed, the pile of sand sliding off onto the sheets. 13
He went to wrap it around my shoulders, but I shook my head. “There’s sand on that.” Hunter nodded, and shook the blanket before looking to me for approval. I nodded, and let him wrap the blanket around me and gently nudge me to sit. “Stay put for a sec, I’ll find you some dry things.” I did as he asked and stayed on the bed. But then I heard her voice. It was faint and muffled, coming from the window. I stood and pulled back the curtain. The world was velvet, pin-pricked with diamonds in the sky. I heard the voice again, louder this time. “Come with me, please.” Mom’s honey voice trickled into my veins and filled me with warmth. I hadn’t even realized I was cold. “Hey, what’s in these prescription bottles?” Hunter’s voice was hardly a hum, and it faded out into nothing by the end. Hunter was gone. My room was gone. Everything went goodbye for now. I swung my leg through the window, and ducked my head as I stepped the rest of the way through. My feet sunk into the ground. Looked like I’d stepped into one of Mom’s paintings again. For miles, all I could see were blue-gray dunes with smudges of indigo shadows where the valleys dipped. It was like God had smeared some chalk over the sand with his thumb the same way I had seen my mom do many times when she worked. Her thumbs were always stained with the grays and blacks and blues of those shadows. “Feel the sand between your toes.” Her voice seemed to come from everywhere, vibrating in the air with a gentle hum. I did as she said, and slipped off my maroon Vans and socks. I watched as the little rabbits on my socks paired up and began to dance a cakewalk. I smiled, and laid them carefully over my shoes. They waved as I stepped away, letting the cool sand tickle my feet. “You loved taking walks with me to the beach.” “I liked how the sand felt.” I took a few more steps before I stopped halfway down the slope of a dune. “I used to help you look for sea glass to make jewelry for the shop.” “That’s right, you were always the best at finding sea glass.” I looked all around, but I couldn’t find 14
her. All I had was her voice. I wiggled my toes in the sand. “You liked to count how many of each color we found. Your favorite was green.” “I want to lie down.” My head felt creamy like pudding. “Go ahead, sweetie.” With her permission, I let myself fall back into the slope. I held out my hands to catch me, but I kept falling. Instead of landing against the dune, I plunged into the sand. It was cold, like jumping into the ocean. I didn’t try to stop myself. I just let my body go, and plummeted deeper and deeper into the sand. *** “Cassi!” Someone grabbed my waist and pulled me back. The Lovely were gone. Everything wet and gray. I slammed my fists against the arm around my waist. “Where’s the painting? The Lovely stopped singing. I need to get back to the desert!” Man. Won’t let me go. I needed to get back to the Lovely. Won’t let me go. “Cassi, you can’t go back, I know you want to but—” I screamed. It was like that God-awful sound infants make when distressed. I screamed again. The Lovely would hear me. The Lovely would come. “What the hell is going on out here?” Hag. Hag with the herb garden. I hate spaghetti. Hate the Hag. Hate spaghetti. Hate the voice. “Call Weill Cornell medical center, tell them that a woman is experiencing psychosis and hasn’t been taking her medication—we’ll be there in half an hour.” The Lovely began to hum again. Don’t be afraid. The voice is nice. Don’t hate the voice. The voice is Hunter. Hunter is good. Hunter will take care of you. Hunter will take you back to the desert and the soup. “I’m calling the police.” Hag. Hag with the herb garden. I hate spaghetti. Hate the Hag. Hate spaghetti. 15
“No, they’ll just take her straight to the nearest hospital. They won’t know what to do with her.” White walls and burning nostrils. Ticking. Everything goes tick tick tick. Cold and white. Burning nostrils. Mom won’t go there. Stars had to save her. The Lovely won’t go there. “Please, she needs to see a good psychiatrist, and she’s not going to get that anywhere in Flatbush.” I started my infant wail again. No more burning nostrils. “No! Let me go! Where’s the soup?” “Screw this, I’m calling the cops.” Hag. Hate spaghetti. Hate the Hag. “Cassi, please you need to calm down. If they take you in I can’t help you.” Hunter. Hunter is nice. Hunter will help. Stars in the Soup. The Lovely. Stop the crying. “I forgot how fast the voices could take someone from zero to ninety.” *** I was floating through a nebula of twinkling lights. They flocked around me as I passed, as though I were plummeting through some viscous sludge. But I was sliding as smoothly as a sinking stone. I drifted down through satin sheets that slowed my fall. It made the bottom less terrifying…less painful. “The only thing that could pull you away from me were the stars.” She didn’t even sound sad, just amused. “They sang to me.” I reached out a hand into a thick stream of stars. They felt just like a warm handful of sand. “The coats didn’t need to tell me anything—I knew the second I heard you singing in tune with the stars you went for tea.”
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