F O R T N I G H T
Vol.10.3 LITERARY PRESS
C
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Nice Stroll
by Haley Winkle
2
The Neighbourhood at Sunset
by Alexander Wagner
4
As You Wish
by Alexander Wagner
6
If the World Ends on a Thursday
by Alexander Wagner
8
On Their Way
by Alexander Wagner
11
Dusk During a Power Outage
by Alexander Wagner
13
Monologue by the River
by Annie Ning
Cavatappi (unknown title, Dale Chihuly)
by Haley Winkle
Editors-in-Chiefs
Anna Horton & Lars Johnson
Copyeditor
Haley Winkle
Layout Editor
Christina Hu
cover
back
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Love the Environment? Earth Day competition submissions due 12pm April 14! fortnightlitpress.wordpress.com | Brought to you by the Undergraduate English Association 1
By Alexander Wagner
Neighbourhood at Sunset
Beyond the sun-bleached brown railing of the porch, a dead tree with an owl house, stripped bare in front of the forest, stands alone, leaning toward the ragged home. There used to be a swing set here, says the small patch of almost-green-again grass that once held a sandbox, slide, and plastic telescope. The trees flesh themselves out the farther down the hill they go, spilling at last around the pond, where kindling fingers dip, occasionally, into the silent water. Behind the forest is a playground, probably meant for the kids who live along the road on its side, but mostly ignored except by those who discover it, for a moment, while walking their dog or child in a new part of the neighborhood. The sun burns low and lazy against the tops of trees, casting their shadows into pond water that peeks out from a circular gap in the foliage, right about where a soggy stump or clod of moss-topped dirt just big enough to hop to, if you’re brave enough, can be stood on. A tennis court lounges across from the swing set, fenced in and graying, and beyond that the woods, thick in this patch, mysterious and uninviting in its dark, ivy-filled underbrush. The ground beneath the swings has been kicked away, dug out into little dirt bowls of a dozen shoe sizes. 2
To the left of the tennis court, behind the playground, three rideable plastic animals of indeterminate species sway on the thick, rusted coil of their legs, the kind that creaks in two different pitches when you ride it, but only one when you kick it hard to test for wasp nests. Behind that still is a grove, a circle of trees and the fresh smell of pond water, a candlelight-sun getting lower by the minute.
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By Alexander Wagner
As You Wish
“Who do you know?” the large boy behind the card table said, a little louder this time.
Jamie blinked. Maybe it was the loud music and lights spilling out of the front door of the frat house, or maybe it was the small group of people who lingered behind him waiting for their turn, but for some reason his head wasn’t working properly. He was meeting somebody here, but her name wasn’t coming to mind. Jamie had already texted her on his way up the steps, but he’d gotten distracted when he saw the two frat guys sitting behind a folding table at the entrance to the party. He dawdled around the porch awhile, pretending to check his phone and watching what other people did at the table, just to be safe. It was pretty straightforward: swipe your school ID, they ask you if you know someone in one of the hosting frats, you get a Sharpie mark on your hand, and they let you in. So why was he standing here, staring at this guy and not answering?
Oh god, you’re still doing it, aren’t you?
The boy wearing a tank-top smiled up at him patiently.
“Margaret,” he said, at last remembering what he was doing. “She’s in a sorority that’s also here, I think.”
“Which one?” the boy said.
Goddammit.
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She must’ve told him a million times, but he always registered the name the way one reads a number too large to care about: when you see 1,945,362,744, the mind says “a lot.” When Margaret told him what sorority she was in, he heard some distorted Greek gibberish, but no memorable letters that he could tell this kid.
“I don’t actually remember which one,” he said.
“What was that?” the tank-top boy said, leaning forward.
He opened his mouth to repeat himself, but was cut off by a shrill voice.
“Jamie!” Margaret shouted through the door, phone in one hand, red solo cup in the other.
Thanks, god.
Oh god, don’t make me say it again.
Margaret hopped down the steps and hugged him before dragging him into the house. The large boys didn’t try to stop them.
Stupid. You looked so stupid back there. It’s not a big deal. You’re in now, it’s over. (Continued on fortnightlitpress.wordpress.com) 5
By Alexander Wagner
If the World Ends on a Thursday
Based on Joseph Louw’s photo of the assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. 6
If the world ends on a Thursday, it will not end at night. When everything goes dark, the sun will shine gray and tinny behind the smog and cold overcast, which will hold its breath just as still as ever.
The people, too, will hear the thunder of rustling newspapers and shuffle to work, which will continue. When the world ends, it will end with three friends pointing in unison to the sun, demanding it bow its head below the horizon, and a reverend will fall to his knees beside the dying King.
The castle walls won’t fall, as they never rose. The discolored apartment dry wall will leak not blood, but shower water from the room above. The curtain lying on the porch will not revoke its mildew, nor will it hang straight again. The plume of dust from the new hole in the wall behind Him will settle. The cerebral matter will wash out.
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By Alexander Wagner
On Their Way
Walter depressed the accelerator, and the car he’d stolen protested as it churned down the back country road as far as its almost-empty tank would take it. His heavy eyes flickered between the rearview mirror, the speedometer, and the long stretch of dirt in front of him. Every few minutes, he would break this cycle to glance over at his little brother, who leaned his head against the window, watching the glow of streetlights pass overhead. A ring of condensation had formed around his forehead, which vibrated against the hum of the car’s struggling chassis. It was a silver Acura, obviously not used to being on gravel. Walter had tried to grab the cheapest-looking car he could, but he was beginning to wonder about this one. It was old: the seats were worn leather, but upon second look it seemed like it had been taken care of pretty well. The fear that he had taken somebody’s prized possession began to work its way into his mind. Whoops. He adjusted the radio knob again to take his mind off of it. The late-night talk show they had been half-listening to faded into static that swelled and fell with the dial until it orchestrated itself into music, tinny and unfamiliar. He let his hand linger on the knob before draping his palm back over the steering wheel, the wood warm from where he’d been gripping it.
“How you holding up, Felix?” he said, his eyes still fixed on the road.
him.
His little brother nodded, his forehead rubbing against the cold glass. Walter peeked over at
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“Hungry?” he said.
Felix was silent. His pale lips were chapped. It didn’t look like he used them much. He shook his head.
“Are you sure?” Walter said. “We still have some left.”
As Felix watched the empty fields to his left, his eyes glazed over. The horizon was black in the distance, only a few wisps of cloud discernible against the night sky.
“And we can always get more,” Walter said, his voice lowering. “It’s ok.”
They drove in silence for a few minutes. The engine groaned through the few splashes of gas left in its tank. “There’s a truck stop a few miles up,” Walter said finally. “I have to run in to get some more stuff for the car, anyway. While I’m in there, you can eat.” Felix closed his eyes, drawing in a slow breath. His shoulders seemed to relax a bit. Walter smiled weakly and sped the car forward. Ten minutes later, they rolled to a stop beside an especially dim patch of road. The engine grumbled into silence and the lights flicked off. The keys jingled in the dark as Walter removed them from the ignition and opened the door, letting the hum of crickets enter the car for a moment as he got out. He closed it gently behind him and looked around, squinting against the darkness: a couple hundred feet in front of him, a small, dingy truck stop glowed on the roadside. Behind him was noth9
ing but an empty road and a lamppost about a hundred feet back. No cars in sight. Good. He circled his way back to the trunk, clicked it open, and began feeling around in the dark. His hands closed around a crowbar first: sharpened to a point. Then he felt the coarse fabric of their duffle bag, which held the few changes of clothes they possessed. A football-sized package wrapped in saran wrap crinkled when he touched it, and he hesitated, leaving his finger on it for a moment before pushing it out of the way and reaching further into the trunk. Finally, he felt the plastic cooler. Pulling it closer, he popped the top off and withdrew a thick plastic sack. It molded slightly in his grip as the lukewarm liquid contents shifted around. He replaced the lid of the cooler, shoved it back into the trunk, and closed it, circling around to the passenger side of the car. He tried to examine the bag in the distant light of the store, but he couldn’t make out the label: only the dark red contents became more visible through the transparent plastic. Pulled the door open, he handed the bag and the car keys to his brother.
“I can’t tell,” he said, “but I think it’s A negative. That’s fine, right?”
Felix’s silhouette nodded and took the items in his small hands.
“Alright, I’m gonna go get some stuff for the car,” Walter said purposefully. “Remember, stay in the back seat with your head down and don’t let anyone in unless you hear the knock, okay? I’ll be back in a minute.”
(Continued on fortnightlitpress.wordpress.com) 10
By Alexander Wagner
Dusk During a Power Outage
The toilet hisses to a stop, and it seems I might be the only thing left alive anymore. The refrigerator closed tightly, is voiceless, home plunged into stunned silence, and the world’s white noises, too, have lost their flicker. I sweat on my bed beside the deceased desk fan, looking out the window I usually keep shuttered, and notice how indigo the sky still is between the charcoal wisps of cumulus, how you can tell the sun is elsewhere by the nimbus of green seeping into the horizon, how the trees bustle against themselves, shadows tossed in the exhausted winds of a summer storm that’s done what it can.
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There is a streetlight there, across the street, winking its way between the branches. One of the older ones that buzzes if you get close enough to listen, the white plastic cover tie-dyed with grime and dribble of dead bugs amassing at its center. It’s still working, for some reason, and I think maybe I ought to leave my window open more, because it’s been there longer than I have, and it’s more prepared than I am for when the last green burns out of the horizon and the wind, too, comes to a silent halt.
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By Annie Ning
Monologue from the River
“Nurse, hey, Miss Nurse, could you do me a favor? If you’re not too busy, could you write down what I say? You should pull up a chair. This might take a while. “Why? Miss Nurse, don’t patronize me. Don’t pretend you don’t see these wires on the floor and tubes in my body. I’m already a dead man. These will be my last words. Humor me while I last, won’t you? “Let’s start from the beginning, from the very beginning. From further back than me or you or the Dead Sea scrolls or the people who wrote them. Let’s start from that ambiguous higher power itself, the one that we call the gods, or whatever you prefer, that power which has forsaken me—let’s start right there. Those gods who left me, an average man with an average story who lived an average life—they left me here without a care in the world and now sit back and laugh, not at just me but at you too. At us all. The futility of life, the absurdity of it all, they pour themselves their chalices of mead and give a boisterous toast to it. They say that suffering is given to us in order to teach us the value of life—they say it while sitting on thrones of gold, playing Russian roulette with our lives. Is it entertaining, I wonder? If I were a god, would I do the same? Pointless questions, I know, but I try to ask them nonetheless. No better way to stay entertained when you can no longer move a muscle. Besides, they may not even be laughing at all. I may just be a crazy man, making up stories because I’d feel even lonelier without the idea of something to resent. Either way, I will not pray to them. There is no point in praying to those who only take.
“For someone who tries to brush off the gods as mere divine annoyances, I think I’ve spent 13
too much time on them to be convincing. Let’s move on then, as it takes too much energy out of me to be bitter. Not much of that left. Let’s set our next destination as the world, this world of ours that belongs to the young and the strong. I’ve already forgotten it—the taste of the air on my tongue, the orange sunlight at three in the afternoon. All I know is this hospital room, this white ceiling and the constant beep of the heart monitor. Though I’m sure this place will be devoid of that sound soon. “Miss Nurse, don’t cry, don’t cry yet. Cry when this is all said and done, when this room is empty and it doesn’t smell like rot and rubbing alcohol anymore. But not yet. Wait for this dying man to use up the rest of his crippled, blackened soul. I have yet more words for you—more words about this grotesquely beautiful world that I only now am beginning to understand. “I wanted to see it all, you know, but I only got as far as the ocean—didn’t cross it. My toes touched that water and it was cold, so cold. The salt was in the air itself, and it burned at my eyes and the back of my mouth but I was young and alive then so it didn’t matter. I saw seals basking on the buoys in the harbor by the fishing dinghies, under the same sun that was soaking through my back and seeping into my bones. My nose was red and my toes were freezing, but it was warm there on that windy, foamy coast strewn with pointy black pebbles that stung when you stepped on them too hard—so, so warm. Even if it smelled like dead brine shrimp and the color of washed up seaweed, I can’t help but romanticize being there. At this point, I feel as if I have no other choice. Honestly, if I weren’t lying here right now, stuck in this cluttered hospital room, I’d probably still be standing on that cold, windswept coast. Perhaps I’d already be on the other side. I don’t know what I would see on that vista of the ocean, but I’ll shamelessly admit that I want to go anyway. At this rate, to all the places, all the wonders in the world, I want to go. To climb the sheer cliffs of granite mountains, eternal in the sky, then run my hands through swathes of clouds as they pass by my side. To hike seven hours up a tourist path that turns into a forest path that turns into a path only the monks remember, made 14
with ropes, wood boards, and the balls of someone who’s truly got faith in the world, hitched ten thousand feet up on the side of a jade pillar that will have no mercy should you fall. Nothing to stop you for the next two miles down. Or maybe I’d stay on the ground, breathe the cold morning fog of ancient forests that look like postcard Ireland, ankle deep in three leaf clovers and curling ferns, and trail my fingers through rivers so clear I’d have to wonder if I was just a kid again, because children never notice the silt. Or maybe, instead of all that, I’d just sit at a hole-in-the-wall café on the side of the road in some city of Nowhere and listen to the sound of people, the low murmur of passing lives that are just as colorful as my own. Lives that have absolutely nothing to do with me, that I will never know. Lives and sounds that I haven’t heard ever since I woke up to white lights glaring from a white ceiling, accompanied by this steady, steady beep that’s been slowing for the past ‘long-enough.’ I wonder what it felt like back then when my throat wasn’t crusted in a layer of medicine and I could walk on my own two feet. I wonder if the Sun is still as warm as it used to be, out on that chilly shore that I thought about crossing once. I wonder a lot of things, you see, because I’ve got no other way to go, and because I’ve got nothing left now but wondering. “Miss, you’re crying again. The ink will bleed if your tears spill onto your writing. But I must think it’s miraculous that you’re still here. You’ve got a pen, a paper, and my last words held in the palm of your hand, so I think that makes you the most powerful person in the world right now—I think that might just make you the strongest too. It takes a lot of courage to listen to a dead man, doesn’t it? So don’t cry for me, or at least, don’t cry too long. If it makes you feel better, I don’t regret living and, laying here right now, I’m not afraid of dying. I stopped being afraid a long time ago. When I realized that blaming those gods who I try to despise so much wouldn’t change a thing, I closed my eyes and began to wait for the day I cross that murky, black river and take the sound of my beeping, beeping heartbeat with me. Because I don’t believe in miracles. If I did, I wouldn’t be here, giving you my last words. I’d probably be praying to that incorrigible divine power or whatever it’s 15
called that maybe it would forget about the tragedy, about the morbid fun it’s had with my life, and I’d wake up tomorrow ready to walk across that ocean to the side I never saw. To the mountains and monks and uncountable mornings under a gorgeously indifferent sun. But I won’t pray; I can’t. The gods don’t care. And I can’t blame them either for the same reason. To blame them would be to make the incredible assumption that I’m actually worth something to them, and that is not a statement I can make claim to. I’m not so presumptuous as to believe the gods have ever known my name. Besides, there’s no reason for me to leave my fate in the hands of those who set it afire in the first place. Or perhaps I’m already being too arrogant, assuming that they even lit it to begin with. I am not worth so much as a blink, and so, Miss Nurse, I am not afraid of death. I have already come to terms with the idea of crossing that barren river. I just wish that I knew what it looks like on the other side. If I knew, perhaps there wouldn’t be so much apprehension inevitably trapped in this hospital room. I wonder, are there still oceans on that side? Is there still a sun? Are there valleys, caverns, deltas, skies, monuments…are there? Those great, big, inconceivable wonders that are somehow, somehow, built by worn, human hands, the ones that are so unbelievably grand that they make you think that our kind truly has always been insane—I wanted to visit them, you know, while I was still alive. I wonder, do they exist too on the other side too? I cannot know until I reach the place. And so, as it has always been, I’m left alone to wonder.
(Continued on fortnightlitpress.wordpress.com) 16
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