The Wasp - Volume I Fall 2017

The American Studies Center Student Journal University of Warsaw Volume I Fall 2017 ISSN: 2450-5676

wasp /wɒsp/ AmE /wɑsp/ noun [C] 1 a black and yellow flying insect which can sting you: There’s a wasps’ nest in that old tree! 2 when translated into the language of the country where the weather is schizophrenic and where even refugees do not wish to go (see: Poland), it becomes an osa – a place where all meanings collapse: Yesterday, I spent an amazing day at OSA! (here: an abbreviation for Ośrodek Studiów Amerykańskich, English: American Studies Center) LILLA ORLY Editor-in-chief ALEKSANDRA BARCISZEWSKA NATALIA OGÓREK Associate editors KAMILA MARIA WYSZYŃSKA PAWEŁ PAŃCZYK DTP MATEUSZ BOCZKIEWICZ Illustration: page 39 MAŁGORZATA DUDO Illustrations: pages 6, 15, 16, 25, 35 KLAUDIA WYPYCH Illustrations: pages 45, 47, 51 KLAUDIA WANAT Illustrations: pages 8, 13, 30 ANITA MAJEWSKA Illustrations: pages 48, 49 Caricatures: pages 52-54 MAGDALENA KRZEMIŃSKA Front and back cover MARTA RAPACKA Caricatures: pages 52-54 NADIA BŁASZCZYK DOMINIKA NADOLNA PR 2

The WASP | Volume I | Fall 2017

Genesis in Fresco Lilla Orly 4 ARTICLES POETRY Bowe Bergdahl: Hero or Traitor? Room4 Anna Sokolovska Sofia Voytukhova 6 44 10 Awesome Science-Fiction Movies Painting White Christmas Aleksandra Gołaszewska Maik Łomnicki 8 47 An Endless Galaxy, Not So Far Away... Smile Jakub Zieliński Karolina Borucka 11 48 Murder on the Orient Express – A Review The Way Out Joanna Nędzyńska Karolina Borucka 14 49 Reclaiming Words and Why Philosophy is Cool Full Stop Ada Rachfalska Amber Wazacz 16 50 FICTION One More Thing...

Amber Wazacz The Light Behind Our Eyes 51 Lilla Orly 20 Immobilizing Aleksandra Barciszewska 27 The Proof of My Existence Filip Kaliński 33 My Universe Mateusz Boczkiewicz 37 The next issue’s theme: Blue Velvet: Living a Lynchian Nightmare We’re still recruiting!

If you’re interested in writing for The Wasp, please contact us: thewaspjournal@gmail.com Facebook: facebook.com/thewaspjournal American Studies Center: asc.uw.edu.pl The WASP | Volume I | Fall 2017

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Genesis in Fresco In the deepest shade of obsidian, so dark it gobbles down any stray ray of light, a hum can be heard or, rather, felt. The obscurity muffles much sound, slowing it down so that the lagging waves chug along, warped and indiscernible. Yet, this noise is of a decibel that has not been heard in these muted domains for ages, the pitch is much higher and its voice seems multiplied, overlapped.

Abruptly, a pinprick of luminescence blinds any eye that has been perceiving without perception in this enduring blackness. Now, the certain brushstrokes of antennae and dark stripes on a golden rump make themselves seen, accompanied by the joyful buzz of lucent wings orchestrating the formidable entrance. The Wasp glides up to the viewer—whose silhouette relieved and aroused at the alluring interruption—is outlined in The Wasp’s beady eyes, its miniscule head tilts and its pincers stretch. A finger extended; a stinger curled; venom released; euphoria suffered; an epoch erupted; a particle voided.

Thus, The Wasp was reawakened from its summertime hibernation. Your favourite student newspaper is back with all of its hard truths, gruesome tales, and debonair verse. This semester, we’re excited to welcome a fresh batch of new writers, who poise their pens eagerly and allow no prudent phrase to remain within the confines of their ink barrels. For this issue, our contributors dove head first into The Void to bring you an article about the consequences of being a lone wolf, to enlighten you with a compiled list of SF excellence, and to tear you apart with moral-testing stories of love and destruction. These black letters on white pages will fill the cavity in your soul and make an existence in the void that much more bearable.

Our first Piece of the Month, to christen the academic year, is a fragmented compilation of jagged glass that will wound your very soul and stitch it back together again with love. It swallows whole every word ever written and regurgitates the remnant vowels-consonants into something that makes much more sense than the sensical term before. No alphabetical atlas can prepare you for the scattered stars and negative space that exist together within the page that holds this poem. Please fill The Void with a warm round of applause for Sofiya Voytukhova and her piece “Room4.”

As you read word after word of this issue of The Wasp, your void will become one particle richer. Let us be your existential companions in this stellarly barren universe.

Who knows? Maybe these clumps of constellations could turn into a new galaxy.

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Lilla Orly All-nonsense Editor-in-Chief subsisting from printed word to printed word. Enamored by the grim cavities of a too saccharine existence, and tracing half-truths in negative space. Digs meandering routes and gnarly tunes as well as the concept of an ever-expanding universe.

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ARTICLES

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Bowe Bergdahl: Hero or Traitor?

Below you will find the story of a man who Donald Trump criticized and attacked (mostly by the weapon of mass destruction with a strong name, Twitter) almost as much as Hillary Clinton. His name is Bowe Bergdahl, and his story gained a lot of public attention and provoked much controversy.

Bowe Bergdahl, a former prisoner of war, started his military career in 2008, enlisting in the army voluntarily.

In 2009, he was sent to Afghanistan. Just after a couple of months of his deployment, he left his base without authorization and got captured by the Taliban in Paktika Province, Afghanistan. Before the release of official documents and an interview with Bergdahl himself, plenty of reasons of why he left his post and just walked off had been presented, including an assumption from his former team leader that he might have done this in order to join the Taliban, which later turned out to be absurd.

According to the transcript of Bergdahl’s only interview with the Army’s investigator, the real reason for his decision was the leadership failure in the unit and the possibility of being sent on a suicide mission, because his “battalion commander saw [Bergdahl] and his platoon as a stain on his reputation.” Therefore, Bergdahl saw no other choice except getting to the senior army commander by reaching another post by foot. The attempt resulted in him being caught and held captive for five years, enduring tortures that he described in a two-page account including being chained to a bed and blindfolded for months while his muscles were undergoing atrophy. He was also constantly beaten by a copper cable or a thick rubber hose causing various infections to develop on the open wounds. Additionally, Bergdahl had been chained and locked in a cage alongside several more unspeakable horrors.

He tried to escape within a few hours of being caught by the Taliban. Unfortunately, he did not succeed. But he did not give up, and made a series of other attempts (approximately 12); however, they only resulted in harsher treatment by his captors. Setting him free was only made possible by the Obama administration. However, some people claim that the price for getting him back

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was too high. After years of negotiations, both sides agreed on an exchange of prisoners. So, in exchange for Bergdahl, the U.S. government had to send five Taliban prisoners to Qatar who were previously captured during an American military campaign in 2001 and had been detained in Guantanamo Bay ever since. Barack Obama made the decision to undergo this exchange without alerting Congress about it, and, by this action, he violated the law. His decision caused much controversy among those who considered such an exchange a toohigh price to pay for one captive soldier. To this, Obama answered: “...the United States of America does not ever leave our men or women in uniform behind.” He also addressed the issue of a release of such dangerous prisoners, saying that “[America] will be in a position to go after them, if in fact they are engaging in activities that threaten our defenses.”

On the evening of the 31st of May 2014, Bowe Bergdahl was handed over to several-dozen U.S. Special Forces near Khost, close to the Afghan-Pakistan border.

Once they put him in the helicopter, he wrote the letters “SF?” on a piece of paper, and broke down when the team answered: “Yes, we've been looking for you for a long time.”

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One can question how he survived for so long in such a hostile environment, but others think he did not actually suffer enough. After returning home from literal hell on earth, he faced charges with one count each of “desertion with quits his unit, organization, or place of duty with intent to avoid hazardous duty or to shirk important service” and “misbehavior before the enemy by endangering the safety of a command unit or place.” The trial was accompanied by Donald Trump’s tweets and public statements (at that time during his presidential campaign), where he called Bergdahl “a no-good traitor who should have been executed.” That is the nicest quote available among those containing stronger language.

Such criticism from Trump’s side was followed by the arguments of lawyers asking whether a fair trial was even possible considering the circumstances. Overall, the legal process took around 3 years, and, this year on November 3, Bergdahl was not sentenced to prison time, but received a dishonorable discharge from the U.S. Army. His rank was reduced from sergeant to private, and he is now required to pay a $1,000 fine from his salary for the next 10 months. Following the sentencing, Trump commented that the decision on Sergeant Bergdahl was “a complete and total disgrace to our Country and to our Military.”

Current president, Donald Trump, paid a lot of attention to the case of Bowe Bergdahl, but he chose not to face the issue of such a high suicide rate of U.S. soldiers in Afghanistan caused by lack of adequate leadership in the units and several other reasons. Bergdahl admitted that he had made a mistake by simply leaving his post without notifying anybody, but we can clearly see that he is not the only soldier who faced such problems in the unit—he just saw another way out of the situation.

As we constantly become witnesses of the hardships of soldiers in the army, it is clear that the situation with U.S. troops in Afghanistan should be set as a top priority, and suicide prevention should be the main goal. Meanwhile, after the trial, Bergdahl already got job offers from an animal sanctuary and from a military official who is designing survival training and wants to work with Bergdahl to give lectures to public on how to survive captivity. While everything is going more or less well for Bergdahl, he still has to face a life with the label “dirty rotten traitor,” which is definitely not going to be easy.

Anna Sokolovska A beginner journalist, shedding light on stories worth knowing. Stephen King addict, wishing she had even more time to read books. Loves to travel and explore new cultures, her biggest dream is to visit America soon. Obsessed with constant self-improvement, and if does not face challenges, easily gets bored.

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10 Awesome Science-Fiction Movies

What are we if not merely little blips in the entirety of the universe? The list does not include the greatest films of all time, but the ones I watched in the last few months and consider to be worth seeing. No spoilers—I do not enjoy destroying all the fun.

(1997) 1 -Contact Directed by Robert Zemeckis

(2016) 2 -Passengers Directed by Morten Tyldum

After making you go back in time with Back to the Future and its sequels, as well as forcing you to ugly-cry with the loveable goof, Forrest Gump, Zemeckis created this masterpiece. Is science really superior to religion? How far can we go to prove our rights? Does it pay to follow your dreams, even if everybody is against you? Does love really conquer all? Jodie Foster once again proves how great an actress she is. Despite some of the visual effects getting old (not in a good way, especially in one particular scene—you will know which one), the movie presents a more quiet and classy approach to science fiction.

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Despite my rather negative attitude towards Jennifer Lawrence, perception of Chris Pratt through “Guardians-of-the-galaxy” glasses, a really stupid ending, and essentially being a romantic comedy in space, I really did enjoy that film. It is so easy to judge a person onscreen for their actions, but I felt like I could totally understand Jim Preston (Pratt’s character) in the impossible choice he made. We are only human. The film visually pays great tribute to Stanley Kubrick, not only with obvious 2001: A Space Odyssey references, but also borrowing from The Shining. The visuals are one of the greatest things about Passengers. One of my favorite sequences is the one with the pool and the lack of gravity—but you have to see it yourself. Do not expect a great SF movie, because you will be disappointed. But if you watch it expecting a fun flick with awesome camera work, fine acting (and that is saying something if my Lawrence-hating-self admits she did well and did not irritate me), and an SF setting, you’re in for a nice surprise.

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(2014) 3 -Predestination Directed by Michael & Peter Spierig In this case, the void is time itself. Based on a 1958 short-story by Robert Heinlein, this movie deals with one of the most popular, but difficult to execute in terms of logic and continuity, SF topics of all time—time travel (also one of the most entertaining, if you ask me).

Although I managed at some point to figure out where the story was going and solved the final twist (could I be any more smart), it was still a lot of fun. Dark and beautiful visuals, space-jumping, and characters you can actually root for: Predestination has all of these. Despite being guilty of obvious loopholes and paradoxes—as most time-travel-connected works are—I dare to claim this one is one of the best in its genre.

(2009) 5 -Moon Directed by Duncan Jones You are alone in space and no one can hear you scream—or are you? The concept of an astronaut dealing with loneliness and madness while being the only passenger of a spaceship is explored by filmmakers very often. This movie is one of the well-executed ones. It is all about great pictures (yet again being a flick paying homage to Stanley Kubrick) and a good performance

by Sam Rockwell. Additionally, it was made in simpler times when you could enjoy the voice of Kevin Spacey’s GERTY, a robot computer, wondering only about the motivation of the character and not the actor himself.

The film strongly inspired the 2013 movie called Oblivion, starring Tom Cruise, but I cannot say how much of a resemblance the two movies pay to each other. All I can say is that Moon is not a movie you will quickly forget.

Lobster (2015) 4 -The Directed by Yorgos Lanthimos Arguably the strangest and most original film on this list, The Lobster by Greek director, Lanthimos, presents us a vision of the world in which lonely people are forced to find themselves perfect spouses they have something in common with. As you follow the whereabouts of David (Colin Farrell) and other people at the Hotel who are trying to find themselves partners, you get immersed in Lanthimos’s original vision. Cold, emotionless acting; animal instinct; desperation; attempts to live with dignity; trying to find love in a hopeless place (nothing beats a good Rihanna reference); an ambiguous ending. These are the things you find in The Lobster. Lanthimos proves again, after Kynodontas (2009) and before magnificent The Killing of the Sacred Deer (2017), that he is one of the modern directors that you simply cannot ignore. His originality and distinctive style make him truly worth your time.

Runner (1982) 6 -Blade Directed by Ridley Scott With all the fuss going on about Blade Runner 2049, we must not forget about the movie that started it all.

This extremely influential SF flick is considered an absolute classic of the genre, and, after all these years, remains a beautiful and entertaining piece of art. What does it truly mean to be human? Harrison Ford, as brooding as he always seems to be, takes us on another adventure, this time through the dangerous and exciting future of Los Angeles in 2019 (though "time is ticking", I do not anticipate LA being like that in two years’ time).

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Happening (2008) 7 -The Directed by M. Night Shyamalan First of all, I need to admit I am a sucker for M. Night’s movies. He absolutely ruled the cinemas with the perfect The Sixth Sense, made me love him even more with Unbreakable, not to mention the very good Signs and The Village, along with the most recent film, Split. Night only went on to break my heart with the worst film I have ever seen in my life: The Last Airbender. Yet, you cannot disagree with the fact that the man has original ideas, as stupid or ridiculous as they may seem at first.

The Happening appears on this list despite the fact you may hate it—I loved it. I loved how badly acted it was (Zooey Deschanel, Mark Wahlberg—what happened, guys?), the creepy ambience the film had, and the main twist—the explanation for all the disaster that happened since the plot is, in general, about mass suicides happening for no apparent reason. If you feel like watching something strange but enduring, get The Happening.

And later go to YouTube, find the “Honest Trailer” of the film and relive its best/worst moments. It is worth it.

of Men (2006) 8 -Children Directed by Alfonso Cuaron In my opinion, this the best film on this list. Absolutely gorgeous in its looks, containing magnificent long shots recorded with one take, and great ‘cold’ coloring, Children of Men presents a dystopian future where children cannot be born—therefore, the void starts lacking the small particles responsible for prolonging humankind. I will not say more to avoid spoiling anything, but it is one intense flick. One of the good parts is also a great cast—Clive Owen starring as the protagonist, Julianne Moore, the beloved Michael Caine, Charlie Hunnam, and many others, who give strong and convincing performances.

(1987) 9 -Predator Directed by John McTiernan

An absolutely iconic movie with a group of men running around with big guns, showing off muscles, and in general being as stereotypically manly as posDonnie Darko (2001) sible, in general. Arnold Schwarzenegger faces yet an- Directed by Richard Kelly other great, dangerous opponent, this time one from This is the second entry on this list concerning the another planet. Since The Predator, a new version, is topic of time-travel. This one stars Jake Gyllenhaal as scheduled to come out next year, I would recommend Donnie, a troubled young man whose life changes when watching the one that started it all. Although it is very he meets Frank—a human-rabbit claiming he came difficult to treat this one seriously, it is still far more from the future to fix the past. Sounds crazy? Then pre- probable to do so than in the case of Alien vs Predator, pare yourself for one twisted journey. The Director’s Cut which was absolutely ridiculous. Anyway, “get to the explains the movie plot well, whereas the theatrical ver- chopper” and enjoy. sion gives the audience more space to figure things out by themselves. I watched the DC version, but I believe both are probably great. The awesome ambience of the movie, great acting, fine soundtrack (with the magnificent “Never Tear Us Apart” by INXS as the opener), and crazy action all contribute to making Donnie Darko truly special.

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Aleksandra Gołaszewska Future filmmaker, greenhorn drummer, English philology BA graduate, sad feminist, Stephen King fan, whisky drinker, pizza eater, rock&metal listener, pastel lover, Shih-Tzu owner, lazy loaf. Currently attempting to expect all the unexpected.

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An Endless Galaxy, Not So Far Away…

When we think of Star Wars, the first thing that comes to our minds might be famous characters such as Lord Vader or Princess Leia. We may not only see popular images of countless space vehicles or imaginary locations, like the doubled-sun planet called Tatooine, but also hear the classic line, “I am your father,” resonating in our heads.

Or, even hum the iconic and thrilling “Imperial March.”

The options are endless and so is the Star Wars universe.

In 2012, when many people actually believed that the end of the world was near, that very same year turned out to be a new, fresh start for George Lucas’s vast franchise. Due to the purchase of the Lucasfilm production company by Walt Disney Studios, the already enormous world of Star Wars was supposed to get even bigger in upcoming years; we are experiencing that right now—here, in our galaxy, which is not so far away after all.

Six movies, two trilogies, and one story. That was the condition of George Lucas’s life’s work to which he said a final goodbye in 2012. Now, as the premiere of the latest Star Wars movie, titled The Last Jedi, is right around the corner, there are already eight films placed in the world created by Lucas, five more in the making, and many more yet to be announced. Once Disney got the rights to the Star Wars franchise, the works started immediately.

They began with the essential announcement that there will be another trilogy, which eventually would be a sequel to the classic Lucas trilogy from the 70s and 80s. For this reason, in 2015, The Force Awakens hit theaters and started off a brand new Star Wars trilogy, which enabled fans all around the world to continue the story with wellknown characters such as Luke Skywalker, Princess Leia, Han Solo, and Chewbacca. What is more, it was an opportunity to discover completely new characters which will continue a story that might be infinite and can be explored on and on and on.

However, Disney Studios do not stick to this ideology of continuity only. They have decided to go even further in the exploration of the Star Wars universe. In 2016, a movie titled Rogue One: A Star Wars Story had its premiere and started off a project of anthology films which would cover the untold stories of events and characters familiar to the audience from the main Star Wars mov-

ies. For example, Rogue One is actually the prequel to Star Wars, now known as A New Hope, and tells a story that was mentioned in the famous yellow opening crawl only.

On the other hand, another anthology film, which is hitting theaters next May, is called Solo: A Star Wars Story and will extend the story of a certain famous smuggler, Han Solo. Furthermore, it seems that the areas opened for exploration that were mentioned before are not vast enough for Disney Studios. Therefore, they took it another step further, and announced yet another Star Wars trilogy earlier this November. The details are now unknown.

However, it is confirmed that it will be a completely stand-alone trilogy, not connected with any already-released productions. As one may observe, the areas to explore in the Star Wars universe are so enormous and endless that even the studio cannot limit itself to take a single direction when it comes to a movie production.

Without a doubt, there would be no Star Wars if it were not for the movies. Nevertheless, the whole universe does not limit itself to the big screen only. There was an infinite number of Star Wars books and comics before George Lucas decided to pass his life’s work to Disney Studios. The “Expanded Universe,” as it was called at that time, was based on numerous varying stories placed in the vast Star Wars world. However, its content was extremely inconsistent as the authors were not able to know all of the already existing works or, simply, ignored it. For this reason, the new owner of Lucasfilm decided to avoid such chaos while creating new books and comics placed in the galaxy far, far away. The Lucasfilm Story Group was formed, and its main principle is to determine the new Star Wars canon so as to make it more of a single cohesive continuity.

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The “Expanded Universe,” however, was too vast and too loved by fans to be simply rejected. As a result, all pre-Disney books and comics are now entitled as “Legends,” which makes much more sense now, considering its inconsistent content. Besides, the old stories are not completely forgotten as a lot of its characters have already made their debut into the brand new and cohesive Star Wars canon. The writers and comic artists, who are now employed to create new stories, work in strict cooperation with the Lucasfilm Story Group crucial for the maintenance of the cohesive continuity of the Star Wars world. What is more, the group is not only responsible for supervising the paperwork but also the TV series, video games, and everything that is destined to be a part of the canon.

When George Lucas sold his company to Disney Studios, there was already an animated TV series called The Clone Wars. The new owners decided to go further in the direction of creating such a project and, in 2014, delivered a brand new series called Star Wars: Rebels. Both of these TV series are now part of the vast Star Wars canon, but, more significantly, Rebels has introduced completely new characters which made their way into the Star Wars universe. Naturally, the Lucasfilm Story Group’s duty was to look after the project because the show’s heroes were supposed to interact with numerous characters already known from the movies. Therefore, it was extremely vital not to make any mistakes while telling the new stories, because possible errors could mean repetitive chaos, well known within the old “Expanded Universe.”

It may seem that the Star Wars world is already so vast that the people who do not know any of it will have to spend long hours, days, months, or ever years to get familiar with everything. However, if the content of the space opera created by George Lucas is now unimaginably huge, it will only get bigger in upcoming years, according to Lucasfilm president, Kathleen Kennedy.

The world premiere of Star Wars: The Last Jedi is taking place next month. The movie will be the second chapter

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of the third Star Wars trilogy. Then, Solo: A Star Wars Story will hit theaters in May and will entertain the audience while waiting for the final piece of the new trilogy which is planned for 2019. As one may observe, the next 3 years are filled with Star Wars movies. Although, Lucasfilm has much more long-distance plans for the franchise. Kathleen Kennedy was a guest at The Star Wars Show where she said: "We’re sitting down now, we’re talking about the next ten years of Star Wars stories and we’re looking at narratively where that might go."

It seems that the demand for the Star Wars world is not cooling down and we are about to witness another decade of it in our cinemas, bookstores, and absolutely everywhere. There are exciting times coming up for the fans of Lucas’s saga, in which they will get more of the characters and places they love, but also completely new things that will be added to this enormous universe. Kennedy said: “Future stories beyond Episode IX, with these new characters, Rey, Poe, Finn, BB-8, but we’re also looking at working with people that are interested in coming into the Star Wars world and taking us to places that we haven’t been yet, and that’s exciting too because it’s a vast galaxy far, far away. The possibilities are endless.” For this reason, if one is getting bored or tired of Star Wars, then one has to be prepared for another decade of it, or maybe even more.

All in all, the endless galaxy of the Star Wars universe is not so far away from us as it may seem. Actually, it appears that the whole world has gone mad with the saga created by George Lucas. As a result, we are now experiencing some kind of a conquest of various cultural genres by the story placed in the galaxy far, far away.

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The main reason for its success is the fact that all the people who work with the development of the Star Wars world are not standing still. What is more, they are not afraid to take a step further and take the risks.

This is why the universe is so vast and it is only about to get bigger in a matter of time. The options for the producers are infinite, and fans all around the world cannot wait to experience it for themselves.

Jakub Zieliński 2nd year student of ASC with a deep passion for music. He has never learned to play any instrument, but strongly hopes to change it in the future. Apart from his love to sounds, he’s pretty much into movies, TV series, and English football.

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Murder on the Orient Express – A Review Hey guys! It’s been a long time since I’ve written something for The Wasp, but I’m back, baby. This time I will talk about a movie I saw recently. So, I was on a date with a guy whom I won’t even see in the future (most probably). He offered to go see the adaptation of an Agatha Christie novel, Murder on the Orient Express. As a bookworm, I could not have said NO to such an offer and, besides, the date wasn’t that bad (at least I didn’t have to pay for the tickets).

Although I wanted to read the novel before seeing the movie—that’s basically what I do with all adaptations—I did not want to know who committed the murder. I thought that it would spoil everything. So, the only knowledge that I had about Christie was that she was an English novelist, a goddess of detective novels, and the creator of Hercule Poirot, a Belgian detective, whose abilities to solve even the most complicated crimes are astonishing. He, along with Sherlock Holmes, slipped into our culture, and will remain in it forever as canonical characters. In the 21st century, the stories of Sherlock Holmes have been put on-screen hundreds of times. Poirot, however, enters the biggest screen for the first time. And I must say—he does make an impressive entrance.

Murder on the Orient Express was published in 1934.

During this time, Hercule Poirot coming back from his visit in Asia where he managed to solve another crime, returns to London via Orient Express. On the road, one of the passengers, Samuel Ratchett, asks the detective to protect him as he has made many enemies in his life of dirty business. A few days after Poirot’s refusal,

Ratchett is found dead in his compartment. Knowing that the murderer must be on the train, Poirot tries to solve a crime that becomes more and more complicated along the way. The result that his brilliant mind suggested turns out to be one of the most shocking in his career. But thanks to this revelation, the character finally learns that there is no balance in the world; there is no black and white division—everything that surrounds us is gray. Although it’s hard for him to accept that fact at first, he manages to move on and leaves the train only to start another adventure. That probably means that there is going to be a sequel…

I must say that I was skeptical at first, I always am, when I see that the main actor—here Kenneth Branagh—is also the director of the movie. The other skepticism occurred when I saw the list of names of the actors starring in the movie: Depp, Cruz, Pfeiffer, and Dench, to name a few.

I thought, “Oh God…another bad movie that’s trying to save itself and attract attention by using the BIG NAMES OF HOLLYWOOD.” Well…all the actors performing in that movie can now say, “In your face, Joanna!” Maybe it’s because I didn’t know the story that much—I only knew something about the character—and that there was a murder (well duh…), but I really liked the movie.

Although the acting of the rest of the crew did not knock me off my feet, I really liked how Branagh portrayed Poirot. The accent, the gestures, and the very neatly cut moustache were pretty much how I thought the main character would act and look like. I also liked how the plot was really thought-provoking and engaged the audience in solving the crime along with the detective.

Apart from that, what really caught my attention were shots that are hardly ever used in cinema. For instance, the still camera, or the certain overlapping of images

Joanna Nędzińska Graduated with a distinction from the ASC. But she has not said “goodbye” to studying yet. Right now she is in the middle of one-year postgraduate studies in political science. In her free time, Joanna likes to play guitar, sing or... read Harry Potter.

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(when you see the movie, you will know what I mean because it’s really hard to explain it without showing it). When I commented on how great both of those “things” were, my date only said, “Mhm yeah…” and the conversation was over. But I’m drifting off-course.

Overall, the movie is of course a must for any Agatha Christie/ Hercule Poirot fan, and for those who really enjoy detective stories.

Although the movie is pretty short (only about 100 minutes, and of course 30 minutes of advertisements), you will not be disappointed. It’s enjoyable, interesting, and smart (which does not happen often, especially now with all the dumb comedies that are being shot). What else do you need from a movie? I am probably going to read the novel now and compare it with the big screen adaptation.

And, now, my advice to you if you have not read the book before seeing the movie: don’t. You will ruin all the fun, and if you did, at least don’t tell your friends and especially don’t tell your date who the murderer was…

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Reclaiming Words and Why Philosophy is Cool The power of language is being vastly underrated.

What we say and how we say it obviously has a great impact on the world around us, as well as on our thought processes. Language has played a crucial role in our development as a species, as it transported ideas through words of different meanings. It is constantly evolving, because people have always looked for an easier way to express themselves, comprehend the world around them, and, ultimately, be understood by others. That’s why we tend to summarize and theorize, and put things in boxes.

These mental and linguistic “adjustments” have helped us organize the great streams of information bursting at us from our electronic surroundings. Really, they might be the reason why we have survived and are called homo sapiens. Stereotypes can, therefore, be partly justified— they help us stay sane. Mental shortcuts have been used for similar reasons; they’re an attempt at packing an idea into one compact word or phrase. One cannot blame people or the languages they use for transposing such adjustments. Sometimes, however, things get too far, and the words and ideas lose their primary meaning to something “other” that has evolved in the process of simplification. We can find great examples of such adjustments-gone-wrong analyzing some philosophical terms.

Let’s start at the very beginning—when we think about “philosophy,” what comes to our minds? Clearly, one shouldn’t generalize here, but the harmful yet strong stereotype has been that philosophy is this made-up, ridiculously impractical discipline far from reality, where people argue for the sake of arguing; the art of rhetoric itself being the central point of interests of philosophers.

Surely, that may be the case with some people, or some “denominations” of philosophy, but it shouldn’t stain the whole field. Philosophy can be very practical, helpful, and down-to-earth, too.

Examples of quite significantly misrepresented terms deriving from philosophy are stoicism and pragmatism.

Stoicism and pragmatism are philosophical movements divided by a great amount of time in the span of history, and they also both refer to reason. Yet, they’re also surrounded by a fair amount of unfair associations. I have never heard anyone being called “pragmatic” in a positive

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sense. It has become established that pragmatic equals extremely practical, deprived of fun, serious. There’s a similar case with stoicism—popular connotations are “emotionless,” “cold,” “calculated.” These stereotypes, as we can guess, didn’t come from nowhere but, the truth is, their meanings got twisted somewhere along the way.

The reason why this is so irksome is that we could all gain from the wisdom these movements are carrying.

Pragmatism and stoicism are great philosophies for all because they offer real-world solutions to problems of any kind. It’s striking how stoicism is full of untimely knowledge; one of its core beliefs is that a person is the master of their mind. Stoics believe that you can control your thoughts—to the extent you’re capable of—and anything that you think about in your mind should be actively approved by you. One of the conclusions it brings is that there is no point in constantly being in your head and being negative about yourself, because what you think about yourself is based on your personal take on the world, which is subjective. Also, stoics say loud and clear: negativity won’t get us anywhere. They refuse to worry or even complain about things they have no control over (like the weather or judgmental people). They preach values like equality and respect for everyone, and above all, having love and respect for yourself. No matter what your role or your occupation is, you should keep

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your head up because you are a valuable human being (and, again, negativity won’t get us anywhere). Stoicism encourages one to stay focused on their goals, to use every minute one has in this world to chase passions and not procrastinate—it values quality over quantity, be it the number of friends one has or the amount of years one is meant to live. And very importantly, it preaches that one shouldn’t get distracted by material things—if you lose something material, whining, cursing, or stressing out is not going to bring back anything or solve any problems. If you do so, you will only make yourself sad and/or angry and reinforce that attitude if you don’t let go of the negativity. For stoics, one of man’s greatest weaknesses is anger, as in losing your temper. But if you have to, at least do it for a reason (example: your friend has been late for a meeting for the third time this month; you feel like you have to make a greater impact on them this time so that they understand how much you dislike it and how bad it is; you decide to shout at them). The key to happiness is to stop worrying about things one can’t control, and instead focus on what one can control; it also requires good planning and reason… It all might sound very cliché, as if somebody took a few self-help books and put all the advice together in one. But actually, it was the other way around. We hold beliefs today that we don’t even realize come from stoicism.

Pragmatism’s center concern is “what difference does it make?”—“it” being an action or an idea one wants to implement, or simply put to test. The practical aspects of things are the criteria for whether an idea is true and whether it makes sense to implement it in real life.

Sounds pragmatic? Surprisingly, it has some spontaneity to it as well. My American philosophy professor used to give the example of the Netherlands as an originally pragmatic nation. If you study some the policies in the Netherlands, you can observe they are aligned with the pragmatic tradition. The Netherlands has been undoubtedly one of the most forward thinking countries in the world, with legalized possession and consumption of drugs, and the legalization of prostitution. A few years ago, the Dutch started seeing more and more tourists come into their country only to consume marijuana (i.e. party). The country looked into data and realized they might have a problem with tourist drug consumption. They responded by restricting the access to drugs exclusively to residents in almost all of the cities in the country. It proves that the Dutch are ready to put ideas to the test—even if those ideas are deemed as immoral or simply “bad” by

other governments—observe what difference they make in reality (all is good but there are too many tourists who only come to smoke, hence devastations of public property and smaller spending on other things like cultural goods), and repeat the process again and again so that the solution works best for the current times. Doesn’t it sound smart? And so practical in the best sense.

The point is not to make anybody obsessed with either stoicism or pragmatism; either way, it’s pretty eye-opening when you realize how sound the principles sound. The truth is that most philosophical movements simply try to find a way for people to make things around them better, and ultimately live happier, fuller lives. All these self-help books, all the articles that tell you about “how to live your life,” suddenly sound nothing but cliché. “Well, wait a minute, hasn’t Epictetus been saying the same things around I B.C.?” Sure, it requires great focus and never-ending practice to, for example, be a stoic—you have to control your mind and change some of your thinking patterns. I have tried to follow stoic rules and it wasn’t easy, but stepping out of your comfort zone never is. My stoic skills were really put to the test—in the last week, I managed to break my glasses, get sick, and spill coffee over a new laptop I had gotten just a month before. What difference does it make when you get upset? And so, I didn’t; I thought, for example, that buying a keyboard cover might make a difference in the future. However small and cheesy it seems, the mind-shift is really what matters.

So yes, philosophy is cool.

And don’t let anyone tell you otherwise.

Ada Rachfalska Music enthusiast – addicted to live shows, mostly travels to see her favorite acts. Loves to take pictures with analog cameras. Engaged in social justice matters. An economist-to-be-turned-humanist, she is finishing her bachelor's at OSA and figuring out how to stay in the academic circle. Always has her third eye open.

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FICTION

The Light Behind Our Eyes Nadine’s being shook in the backseat of the rumbling van. Two rows ahead of her, the host couple were throwing words of hatred back and forth, intermittently hurling a coiled fist or heavy slap, instead, when words didn’t suffice. In the seat just before Nadine, Annie the obnoxious half of another insufferable couple, had her nose laid against the glass of her cell-phone, moving her head back and forth as if in shame or disappointment (though neither, it can be assured, were being felt at that moment). Beside her, Carter, her significant other had one hand on Annie’s knee while she got her fix, his other hand scratching the scruff on his fiercely grinding jaw. In Nadine’s lap was the resting head of her boyfriend, Pierce, who decided to check-out of the endless rattling journey soundtracked by exchanges of empty profanity. She looked down at his flushed cheeks that were caressed by those dark amber lashes of his she’d always envied. As the van made a severe turn, Nadine wrapped her arms over his torso and pulled him close, knowing that there was no way he could still be asleep after such a jolt and hoping that he felt the strength of her grip through which she expressed so much affection she was unable to communicate with words.

Nadine braced herself as she saw Carter turning himself round to add a vertical jaw movement to the already severe horizontal one.

“You eat your glue instead of sniff it, kid?” he asked, the sneer on his face making evident how pleased he was with himself.

“I don’t have anything to add to the conversation is all,” she smiled back, her face dropping the second his back was to her once more.

Outside the air was charged. For the last two weeks, temperatures had skyrocketed and steadied at an unbearable thirty-five degrees Celsius. A sheet of charcoal grey had replaced the usual ecstatic blue from a few days ago, and held the promise either of torrential downpour or a permanent alteration of the atmosphere. Nadine, looking out the window into the night, saw the glow of every oxygen molecule; a brilliance so present and dense that the van—moving at a speed very close to that of light—cut through the wall of air, leaving behind a gaping shadow of swallowed luminescence, darker than the darkness the night delivered.

“Shit!” cried Michael, the newly-licensed driver of the vehicle and brother of the cheating boyfriend who made up the fighting couple. He had guided the car forcefully through a pothole.

Nadine was skeptical of his sobriety when Carter had made a stupid joke denying any inkling of its existence, earlier in the night. It had been hours since patience was launched from her attitude to trail behind the car’s red taillights, soon to be lost along the side of these forgettable dirtroads. They had made many a pit-stop already along their journey, picking up girls acquainted through an amalgamation of social apps only to drop them off in the next town over, or breaking in a spine-snapping fashion to pick up more stupefying substances. Their destination was a lake dozens of kilometers from their starting location—actually, a Plan-B from their original nighton-the-town agenda. It had only been when they stood face-to-chest with the bouncer outside a club who was telling them that Tristan, right-wing fighter in the passenger seat, wasn’t dressed appropriately for the club.

“Waddyamean boss?” Tristan sneered in a loud voice with arms raised like a balanced scale, Nadine picturing the amount of alcohol he had consumed on his left hand and his desire for attention on the other.

“You’re in sweatpants and a hoodie. There’s no chance in hell I’m letting you in,” the bouncer looked over Tristan at the rest of the group gathered, “If I were one of youz I’d drop this dead weight and have a good time,” he said and tempted them by unclasping the red rope.

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“Forget this place,” Tristan turned making a blasé hand gesture that brushed the cheek of the bouncer who grasped Tristan’s wrist with a no-bullshit reflex. “Don’t push your luck, boy,” he warned and released Tristan’s hand with a shove.

“Are you dreaming?” Nadine leaned down and whispered into Pierce’s ear. He nodded sleepily and kept his thickly-lashed eyes closed. This was what Nadine envied the most. Not his naturally dark, accentuated eyes, but his ability to dream. Nadine only ever saw blackness when she closed her eyes. She slept the most sterile sleep there was. Her brain would pump cerebrospinal fluid through every nook and cranny, clearing out toxins. It would document and file each moment of interest experienced throughout the day, sorting them within her twenty years’ worth of memories. Yet, during rapid-eye-movement, her motor neurons were unplugged in vain, for she never dreamt. She imagined an old fashioned telephone operator sitting in front of her switchboard, frantically linking and unlinking the nerve endings of Nadine’s mind—and a lone voice; the indecipherable, unidentifiable owner speaking desperately into a dead line, the stifling silence not even leaving enough room for an echo.

Once, Nadine became completely elated when Pierce had recounted a nightmare he had had the night prior. “It was so uncanny, I just couldn’t place my finger on it,” he said, grabbing her thigh as she sat on his lap at the kitchen table.

“Tell me again, everything. Close your eyes if you have to,” Nadine pressed, not understanding the formula, the chemical, the capacity her brain lacked for the performance; how others could lower their own lids and see an entirely second life while she remained immobile, suspended, and exiled.

“It was a house, but not the kind of house you’d see around here,” he meant in their country; not the kind of stucco-covered buildings with tapering red roofs that were built by those with enough money to purchase land; or the crumbling pre-war, low-rise apartments with narrow stairwells and elevators that shivered even in the summer; or the identical communist blocks that stood flat-footed and broad-shouldered along main streets. He meant the kind of homes you find overseas. “It had wood panelling that I could tell was once white but now turned a bluegray. Though, it didn’t make much sense considering the house occupied a deserted area with reddish, eroded ground.” Nadine nodded her head slowly, pretending to understand the logic of dreams. “It had a wraparound porch, too. I walked up the front steps and entered the house. It didn’t have a door. The rooms downstairs had no furniture, so I went upstairs. There was just one room at the very top of the stairs, there was no landing leading to the room. Just a door at the last step. I opened it and it was almost like this room had been piled with furniture to make up for the lack of it downstairs. It was piled high in a careless manner, almost like it had been thrown into the room.” Nadine was enthralled. How could one room possibly contain the furnishings of an entire house? Why did Pierce’s mind find a need to show him this? “But there was an alley between the furniture that led to a bed. The footboard was so tall that it hid whatever was in the bed. I walked up to it and peered over, there was a couple. A man and a woman, I couldn’t tell their age, it’s like they were old but, at the same time, very young.” This also puzzled Nadine, how could one be both? “That’s when I looked down at myself and realized I was wearing a tuxedo.

Then I turned around and saw that there was an entire line of people I didn’t recognize standing behind me. It was like a wake. I looked back at the couple on the bed and their clothes had changed too. They were holding hands and in their shared grip was a lit candle, the wick getting

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extremely close to their grey hands. The most horrific thing was the woman’s face. Half of it was rotten. At that moment it was like the scope of my vision became entirely the decaying flesh of her face. I could see every tear in the muscle tissue. I watched every maggot and fly feasting and orgasming in each foramen of fat. I could feel the cool wetness of the decomposition as it pressed against my own face in a clumsy kiss. The dank smell infested my thoughts and aroused me. I felt embarrassment, and that’s when I woke up.”

After that, Nadine recorded the dream in hundreds of different ways. She dot-jotted and summarized and collaged and reenacted. She created a blueprint of the dream house and employed a sketch artist to recreate the faces of the deceased couple, both whole and rotten. Pierce, though disturbed that Nadine should become so enraptured by his terror, was accepting of her need to create something she herself could not see. He wasn’t aware that sometimes when she stayed at his place, Nadine would remain awake longer than he and gently lift open his eyelids whenever they began their erratic side-to-side motion, expecting a beam of light to project whatever her lover was seeing on the bedroom ceiling.

“I need to take a piss! Stop this piece of junk!” shouted Annie, causing Carter to laugh hysterically as she slammed her head against the roof by standing up far too quickly. The van stopped without pulling to the side of the road, which didn’t worry Nadine so much as the thought of opening the sliding door and letting in the impenetrable air from outside. As soon as Annie thrust the door aside, Nadine saw the shift as gleaming molecules diffused into the vehicle. They stuck to Carter’s stubble and slowed the impending slap of Maria, the quarrelling girlfriend residing in the double passenger seat.

“She’s a lunatic!” cried Tristan finally receiving the delayed blow to his prominent cheekbone.

He opened his door and hopped out with such force that the van convulsed on its suspension.

His brother, the driver, followed out of loyalty.

“I’m going for a walk,” grumbled Pierce, lifting his head from Nadine’s lap, which consequently felt incomplete from a contact postpartum. Slightly drunk, his exit from the van provoked the just-subsiding tremor to return with vigor.

“I’m about to hurl,” wheezed Carter, stepping out into the night. Maria, still occupying the front seat in defiance to Tristan, to her swollen hand, and to the whole world, didn’t turn when Nadine spoke up, “I’m going for some fresh air, care to join?” So Nadine went alone.

If it weren’t for the strong wind carrying a radiance vibrant enough for vision, Nadine would have thought she stepped into a black hole. The night was so consuming that she couldn’t discern biotic from abiotic factor let alone where Pierce and the others had gone off too. She took a step forward to assure herself of her own existence and of the persistence of Earth’s gravitational properties. When she tripped over a tree’s root and hit the ground she was grateful for the pull that hugged her to the soil. She collected herself and continued her stroll. At some point she ran into Tristan.

“Sup,” he grunted, just a shadowy mass in the gloomy foliage.

“Not much,” “Yeah it always seems to be that way with you,” he chuckled, “Not-Much-Nadine” “It’s the opposite with you: Too-Much-Tristan,” she recounted playfully to shield a deeper sting.

“Too much? No such thing. ‘The more the merrier,’ and fuck all that, ‘less is more’ crap.”

“Greed and gluttony are your virtues then,” Nadine stated, poking his stomach.

“Hey, I’m a hunk. All the ladies want me. This pillow of love right here drives them crazy,” he said grabbing his blubber and shaking it.

“Yeah, that’s your problem, isn’t it. That’s why we’re standing here, right now,” the cumulated irritation from the car-ride oozing into her words.

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“Look,” he said, dropping his arms and humoring her, “You’ve known us, what, a few months?

I’ve been with Maria for nearly ten years.”

“On and off though, right?”

“On, off. Up, down. Left, right. Whatever. The point is we’ve been in each other’s lives. I was her first and her last. I’ve seen her through most of her memorable life. We’ve been close and we’ve been far and in that time I’ve changed and wanted to experience more as well. With her, and without her.”

“Both at the same time?”

“You can look at things black and white as you would at your age—” “You’re like two years older than me...”

“But the whole Italy situation wasn’t that simple,” he continued without hearing her. “We had been fighting for months. That trip was planned way in advance, before everything went down. Though, honestly the arguing was why we planned a group trip in the first place. There’s no way I would be able to stand being alone with Maria for a week in a foreign country. I was sure we were gonna break up—this time for good—and when Iza gave me a shoulder to cry on, I took a chance.”

“And that crying led to caresses, and kissing and off you fell down the rabbit-hole,” Nadine droned sarcastically, hating herself for paying so much mind to the love affairs of others.

“I think I changed my mind about you. You’re not Not-Much-Nadine. You’re Nosy Nadine.

You’ve gotta know all the ins-and-outs of everybody’s lives.”

“You’re really a man of opposites, aren’t you?” she said turning from him, tired of the conversation that seemed as long and pointless as their drive.

“I’m unpredictable is all. Always moving. Never staying in the same place,” he shrugged “If you run around in circles so much you’re bound to catch your own tail at some point.”

“Are we talking about me or you now, Nadine?” though his face was shrouded by the gloom, Nadine could tell he winked as a bold punctuation mark at the end of that sentence. He brushed past her as she stared at the afterglow of his silhouette. As the outline dissipated, falling into the shapeless container of open space, Nadine felt her marrow contracting within her; a tightening of every bone cell in her body, a sensation not painful but extremely uncomfortable and disconcerting.

When the crew gathered once again by the van after expelling every bodily fluid that screamed for its removal, Nadine felt even more irked and alone than before. When Pierce strided up beside her she grabbed his arm and pressed her face against his bicep, revelling in the welcoming pulse of love and comfort. They hopped back into the car, this time Nadine letting her head rest on Pierce’s lap and closing her eyes for a bout of tasteless sleep.

Nadine awoke to a loud bang, the noise sharp and direct in its nascency but short-lived in its longevity.

“I swear if these fuckers throw one of those cherry bombs an inch closer to my whip, they’re gonna regret they bought them in the first place,” Tristan hissed.

The scope of Nadine’s vision included only the tiny sliver of space between the car’s interior siding and the seat directly before her. Outside, it was still night and a severe drop in temperature caused the shimmering molecules of air to drift lazily into one another. With the heat from Pierce’s lap and the unwelcoming birthing cavity before her, Nadine felt a mixture of safety and reluctance towards exiting.

Carter slid open the door and hopped out, giving a great stretch, his back cracking at a volume that nearly matched the firecracker’s. Annie jumped out immediately after him and dragged him toward some general hubbub that was in motion beyond Nadine’s view.

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“You coming or staying?” Nadine could hear Tristan whispering to Maria in a final tone, who didn’t respond.

“Fuck this,” he concluded, Nadine felt the passenger door open and slam shut; a guileless, solitary part of her becoming more and more jubilant the less people occupied the van. Pierce began stroking her cheek in an attempt to wake her.

“Mmm?” she stirred, disappointed that he wouldn’t let her remain in safety any longer. As she sat up, he brushed the hair out of her face and kissed her before grabbing her hand and leading her out of the van. Immediately, Nadine became aware of her exposure in the new setting. Here the oxygen orbs were much more menacing and Nadine fathomed she could make out nano-blades protruding from every angle. They walked towards the noise, Nadine continuing to feel the shrinking sensation within her while the light of the moon tugged at a contradicting longing to be out and inhale those apathetic, glaring particles.

They arrived at the scene of the commotion; a makeshift dance floor of steel, plastic, and wood panels was crowded by the strangest aggregation of folk Nadine could have possibly seen shifting in rigid, rude motions in all directions. The music blasting was the country’s trite dance-pop more pertinent than the national anthem, complete with tinny hihats and bouncing melodies tied together by ridiculous lyrics—a genre that no one and everyone listened to.

Above the turbulent mass was an arbor equally as erratically built as the splintered floor below it. Behind the exasperating performance was the lake, still as a corpse, a reproachful backdrop that refracted the derisive mites of light into hundreds of angles.

As Nadine and Pierce stood observing, more people were pulled to the faceless and nameless huddle, being drawn like flies to honey. Pierce smirked and glanced sideways at Nadine, gently squeezing her shoulder as a silent nudge to just enjoy what was left of the night. For a time that couldn’t be measured, Nadine tried to move with the crowd, remaining wary of the molecules that congregated and altered colors in different cracks within the throng. At one point Nadine spun and came face-to-face with Maria, whose demeanor had transformed noticeably, a shimmering drink held above her head like a trident.

“Drink!” was shouted and swallowed by the cacophony, but Nadine stared in awe at the scrunch and release of Maria’s beautiful lips, lifting her own hand to take the cup from Maria’s.

Shortly after, Nadine was at the outskirts of the party witnessing Maria throw feeble punch after feeble punch at Tristan’s morphed and laughing face. Nadine laughed with him out of fear and boredom, and decided to walk past them. Now, the air had become lackluster, the molecules clinging together in streaks that gridlocked Nadine’s perception. She leaned against a tree and looked down at her limbs that seemed to stretch and unfasten from every socket.

They drifted away and Nadine followed, trying to keep herself together. She marched to the end of a pier that lolled like a tongue into the center of the brilliant lake that was hidden from the celebration by the wall of trees she had passed through. When her arms and legs were successfully reattached, Nadine turned to greet the stranger that had grabbed her hair and began tearing at her blouse.

Quitwrigglingyou’remakingthisharderthanitneedstobe, was the rush of breath that hit her face.

Her back was now against the wooden boards of the pier, her head dangling over the edge and her hair adhering to the surface of the water. Her upended view of her surroundings gave the illusion of daybreak as the shining light of the lake blinded her and all that was underneath it was growing, wild and entangled—just as she was entangled with him. In the reflection of the water she saw him, Carter, his image more tangible than his body pressed against hers. When her lips came close enough to the sparkling water, Nadine took a small sip at first, then a large gulp. She kept drinking until the entire lake was dry and she had consumed every last drop.

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*** In the progression of alpha and theta-band activity to slow-wave sleep, a snap occurred in the synapses of Nadine’s brain. The telephone operator sat at her station in triumph, having plugged the precise connector into the correct socket. An extra current jolted through every axon and skipped across each synaptic gap then cumulated into a beam of projected light.

On the screen was a young couple at an altar, not unlike the pair in repose and decay from another familiar chimera. They stood facing each other, their palms pressed together and their eyes locked. Nadine sat as the sole witness of their marriage in a black suit upon a wicker chair.

She peered down at her perfect hands, the digits and the flesh a healthy, warm color. The watch on her wrist had hands pointing to every hour and minute, and when Nadine looked up, the couple at the altar were looking at her, waiting. When Nadine looked down again she held a freshly-lit candle, the wick comprised of her own finger, the flame protruding from the nail. She walked up to the not-yet-newly weds and pressed the blaze of the torch to their connected palms. The fire licked along each of the pair’s respective arms before consuming them whole as they leaned in for the vow-sealing embrace.

Nadine stepped back and admired her work, the wind of the setting gathering and flinging words at her from every aspect: harderthanitneedstobe, harderthanitneedstobe, harderthanitneedstobe. *** As Nadine’s closed eyes flicked from side-to-side while her body lay fruitlessly on the pier that stretched into the dried-up lake, the fermenting grey skies above gave a rumble. All of the pestering molecules simply dissolved, and the rain began to dribble from overhead. As the downpour gained momentum, it drenched Nadine and pooled in the crater of the lake until the yawning mouth was filled to the brim.

Lilla Orly All-nonsense Editor-in-Chief subsisting from printed word to printed word. Enamored by the grim cavities of a too saccharine existence, and tracing half-truths in negative space. Digs meandering routes and gnarly tunes as well as the concept of an ever-expanding universe.

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Immobilizing Intoxicated with shame, she wobbled through mud-stained, dirt-spiced puddles, into which chiseled irregularities of her broken flared heels would puncture permanent vampire-bite tattoos. In the desperate solitude of breath, the burden of materiality of carbon dioxide flushed out of her system left marks on the path that led to dead-end nowhere. The only contestant in the impromptu 5K run, Kate reached the finish line on a rooftop that hovered over the city like a famished gargoyle carved into the osseous system atop the Notre Dame de Paris cathedral.

A dumpsite of all the unappreciated and unpurchaseable objets d’art begotten in an art gallery five stories below, the roof was a grotesquely saddening exhibition of abandonment.

Rain-impregnated oil paintings displaying nightmarish post-neo-cubist hallucinations, a dismembered mixed-media triptych with crumbled up prints of fascist symbols secured with neon hook-and-loop fasteners and enclosed in burgundy 69-shaped Styrofoam frames, non-weatherproof rotting wood sculptures of disfigured genitalia, and dozens of other personae non gratae among the true artistic revelations flashing the snobbish connoisseurs downstairs.

Pressed against the bitter-tasting memories, she had been struggling for quite some time with bewildering apathy that resulted in measuring the distance with luring ticks and unforgiving tocks—audio mockery that was perpetually tethered with the pressure of endurance to the fleeting canvas. A plethora of hallucinatory and excruciatingly ice-cold needles had been piercing her marrow till it reconfigured and transformed into an image-enticing void. Trying to fill it with meaninglessness that was supposed to inundate the heartache she had unwillingly befriended, only deepened the feeling of her existence’s pointless flânerie. Left, right; right, wrong—no step made her move forward. Each attempt was a stepping stone in the mind, but, somehow, they were all a mirage that led her into the evil-glaring, companionship-craving quicksand awaiting to softly drag its victim under the waters of despair.

Ever since she realized that her love was an inconvenient blister on his picture-perfect life—a damaged cyst that no antiseptic could heal and no adhesive tape could conceal—she lived her life like a babe in the woods full of bloodthirsty and flesh-craving wolves. Once she rejected everything she had hitherto believed in and accepted her innate naïveté, she remolded herself from the clay of newly unearthed distrust. An ever-present, essence-famished incubus atop her chest would administer smothering caress that kept her paralyzed—a state of tangible numbness that he would licentiously ogle with his crimson peepers, counting scarce breaths her struggling body begot. And even when the dawn crept through the drapes, eventually scaring the demon away, he would always find his ways to engineer wounds and bruises on her body with his razor-sharp claws.

“I never loved you. I never wanted your love. I never meant to give you any love,” was a mantra the reflection in her bathroom mirror borrowed from the letter and would use to mercilessly mock her. A candid photograph of two people clearly sharing an intimate moment amongst the room full of people; a picture taken on some getaway with a bunch of friends; a lousy objet d’art by a wedding photographer who caught some guests stealing the bride’s thunder by expressing a more loving union than the newlyweds—her brain would loop a slideshow of torturous images found by accident. Bewildered by the pain she would so willingly inflict upon herself, Kate would often track the trajectory that the doom-to-happen took. Nowhere could she find understanding for her neglect of the clear signs that something was clearly wrong.

Finding out about being ‘the other woman’ made her feel cheap and laughable.

Aiming to restore balance in her life, she approached the edge of the roof and rolled down her bare toes along the skin-cutting rusted metal slat. The climactic finale of the disastrous day

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would be a reverse dive into the tangled web of alleys. Yet, Kate just stood there and hysterically burst into tears and laughter, all interweaved with subtle undertones of a panic attack. All of a sudden—as if it had been scripted and rehearsed thousands of times to achieve necessary grace in the movement—she looked upon a marble sculpture in the far left corner. Upon discovery of, at that moment, a vague work of art, Kate noticed a glistening silver ribbon attached to her left foot, gently pulling toward the statue. Subdued by the force, she swayed toward the sadistic pun carved into the stone—the most estranging ivory assemblage of human features composed into presumably a masculine body.

An out-of-wedlock offspring of an angel and the Devil, the frighteningly abhorrent sculpture magnetized with sharp facial features, monstrous muscle disarrangement, and long claws that encrusted his slender fingers splayed hungrily around the thick, moist air. When Kate finally faced the repugnant creature seated upon a pedestal, she remembered those times when she would spend at least an hour admiring a painting as each subsequent millisecond revealed fresh details concealed within the canvas. Here, she first perceived meticulously carved eyes peeking under square-root-shaped brow ridges heavily gravitating toward oblong cheeks accentuated with almost skin-perforating zygomatic bones. Later, her eyes landed upon a sharpedged M-misshaped upper lip—a warning pointed toward his asymmetrically wide, crooked nose. A tormented crown atop disproportionally sizable head, his hair reminded Kate of broken wings of a raven trapped in too small a cage, flapping against metal bars with desperate hope to escape. The wicked chisel that created the monstrosity endowed him with preposterously distorted tri- and biceps—a mockingly coarse invitation into a frightening yet tempting embrace.

Not being able to handle the distance any longer, Kate stepped onto the steep pedestal right into the arms of the fallen angel. Once safely settled in his ice-cold wings, some inner mechanism unleashed tears that streamed down his rib cage only to mix with the downpour and disappear in the blood oozing from an inch-deep wound on her thigh caused by the now crimson statue’s claws. In unison, the osmotic alliance with the arctic body emitted particles of warmth that floated in-between raindrops free-falling from the maroon sky. Not in vain, the bodily sacrifice Kate had made stormed the gate to the sacred. Aware of the polypore hungrily glued to his chest, the statue cautiously shed the leftovers of suspended deathlessness and began to animate the frozen muscles, stretch the stiffened joints, and reliquefy the ever inexistent blood in his carved veins. Gliding his marble phalanges across her teardrop-painted cheeks, he impregnated her with the affection for which she had longed for so long.

“I knew you would find me, one day, once again.” *** Emerald translucent wings had been fluttering for freedom with an accelerated anxiety, fighting with scorching air that would thrust a scent of approaching demise inside the sage veins. The long-legged, short-tempered insect trapped in the train compartment had been intensifying both the heat and irritation among the fellow train captives for several hours.

Buzzing with hopelessness in an ostentatiously audible manner, every few seconds he would head towards the meadow outside the window just to bump on the glass obstacle as if hoping it would dematerialize in-between collisions. An eight-person compartment temporarily inhabited by six felt particularly crowded. Neither of the strangers sharing the journey possessed necessary skills to unjam the dust- and time-sealed window, and no one dared to kill the bug.

Perhaps the reluctance to commit the beneficial murder had its roots in a complete inertia of

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existence—Polish State Railways made sure all travelers would willingly suppress their will to live for the time of their journey. Scattered all over the corridor was a piss-scented fragrance mixed with stale cigarette-smoke leftovers—a staple of this transcendentally artistic showing.

People would enter the habitat—an audience-participation exhibition of human endurance turned into the art of survival—forced to suspend their disbelief concerning inhumane conditions for which they had paid unreasonably a lot.

Seated right across an obnoxious man most probably in his late 50s, Anna was trying not to stare for too long at a time, yet all she thought of was cutting him in half and counting the growth rings inside to solve the age puzzle. The half-bald individual with exceptionally hairy arms, one with a resemblance of a watch melted right into the furry flesh on the left wrist, emitted a sour-sweet sweat that intoxicated the passengers till a nauseated state of lightheadedness led to their actively passive neglect of his nose-picking accompanied by beer burps.

The harrumphing a capella canon performed by the five other travelers was, apparently, interpreted by him as an attempt to compose an elaborate symphony—a monosyllable libretto to a string opera played by the insect buzzing out loud against its confinement.

Moving to Poland seemed like a punishment from the omniscient entity Anna never believed in. Her mom Kate, a slightly faded away lady crushed by the ghosts of the past she was about to welcome with her reluctant arms, met Anna’s father in Warsaw during the 70s. She would often say that he had been a marbleous godsend that installed serenity and hope in her tormented life.

He easily and effectively swept her off her feet; the infatuation then quickly turned into love and, for eighteen years, it was the sole reason why Kate tolerated all too frequent instances of dozens of feet of which other women have been swept off. The straw that broke the camel’s foot, though, was an inhabitant of medium-width high heels that played a staccato melody on the dance floor of Kate’s doom. Anna was a witness to the fall of her parents’ marriage. The continuous blindness and deafness she would easily turn on and off each time she saw all-too-clear proofs of her father’s unfaithfulness, had made her master the malleability of her senses.

The call from the land of her ancestors, made by a familial hand Anna had never shaken nor even heard of, was a coincidence and a solution to the stalemate. As it turned out, Kate’s parents—who Anna met only a few times due to her father’s allergy to everything Polish, which, truthfully, explains why he would so often indulge in extramarital relations with pure-blood American females—had a serious accident that left the grandfather paralyzed and the grandmother traumatized. Kate’s sister practically begged her to take over the responsibility; she was a newly liberated woman that put her career over everything she had ever known. Not to mention, the numerous sexual relations she maintained all over Poland, as if collecting bonus points for each new city, in which she found a fuck buddy. If he happened to be married, she would get a mani-pedi to celebrate. Happily married? A detoxifying facial and a Swedish massage. Vive le féminisme de la Tricité.

The happy coincidence of the accident and the end of the illusion of her marriage brought Kate back to Poland. Her 17-year-old daughter was somehow forced to tag along as her father’s new life companion was too much to bear. Yet, the five months that she had experienced in a tiny village outside of Toruń made her realize that she could have given the woman a shot, even if, at that time, the only shot she could possibly think of—and planned—was a .22 Long Rifle right in the blond head of hers. It was tough; not only did she fail to understand the Polish culture, but her language inadequacies made her alien to the outside world. Back in the US, Kate would sometimes secretly speak Polish to Anna when her husband was not listening/at work/screwing yet another Manolo Blahnik enthusiast, but it was simply not enough. The land of the ancestors felt cruelly rejecting and cold.

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When they finally arrived in Cracow, Anna caught the insect inside her petite palms and carried it outside. Surprisingly, the disgustingly impatient insect was the first creature she identified and bonded with, which was why she freed it; she hoped someone would reciprocate all the empathy one day. Kiedyś. It was one of her favorite Polish words. A hopeful mixture and a semantic pun of future’s optimistic ‘one day’ and past’s nostalgic ‘once’ encompassed the present’s triviality and its overwhelming lethargy towards storytelling.

As Anna remembered it, all the fairytales of her childhood began with a once-upon-a-time formula—in no story was the presence present. This made her wonder whether happy endings were only possible in the past or future. Yet, this journey proved her theory childishly naive.

A few days before the train-namedheat voyage, another call disrupted the peace of nothingness in the life of Anna and Kate. Kate’s aunt, her father’s sister from his father’s first marriage, informed the family that her husband had just passed away and, as no one else could, wanted, nor bothered to attend the funeral service, Kate decided to be the representative and pay respects to the man she barely knew. Standing for some time in front of a white- and red-brick doubtful architectural marvel, the two seemed to prolong the moments before they absolutely had to come inside.

“What should I even say to this woman? I don’t even know her and, from what I know, her husband was a piece of shit. Being here seems fake and dishonest,” mishaps were the freshly discovered mother-daughter bonding ritual Kate exploited to the fullest. And her daughter’s absolute candor regarding the most cumbersome issues and questions was a comforting transference of authority and accountability.

“Well, just go with generic ‘I’m sorry for your loss’ clichés?”

“But am I?” “It doesn’t matter. Attending a funeral service is just a social convention and I don’t think you need to analyze the rules by which it is governed. Make a sad face, listen to whatever she has to say, and just be there,” Anna replied.

Between the first knock on the door and the last ‘I’m so sorry for your loss’ was a quick update on centimeters Anna has grown since the last time aunt Wanda saw her picture, the number of gray hairs on Kate’s head, and made-up reasons why Kate’s husband couldn’t make it to the funeral. The courteous chit-chat was then moved to the living room, where Kate was abandoned, for Wanda wanted to talk to the ‘young, beautiful lady’ alone, a request was met with Anna’s frightened look, but she didn’t oppose. After examining memorabilia from the past all over the room, Kate noticed an opened notebook lying on the end table by the sofa.

Normally, she wouldn’t snoop around and pry into someone’s belongings, but at that moment she was feeling particularly nosy and, simply, bored.

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She sat on the sofa and dived into the time-stained yellow pages of, what turned out to be, a diary of the deceased uncle. Most of the memoirs were a jibber-jabber on the masses he had attended and money he had donated to religious organizations that promised eternal prayers for him and people he listed (among whom were, surprisingly, Anna and Kate), and bitching about the neighbor’s dog who just wouldn’t shut up at night. Yet, there was a passage covering the entire day of October 14, written more sloppily than on other pages. Right next to the date was a small cross drawn above a handwritten annotation that said it was Janek’s birthday.

“Mom? What is it?” Anna and Wanda entered the room with a plate full of madeleines and residues of Anna’s discomfort painted on her face.

“I’m so sorry. I didn’t mean to read it,” Kate turned her head in an overtly apologetic way to Wanda and asked her in Polish, “but did you know about it? October 14?”

“I should have put it away, I see,” she didn’t seem upset, but clearly disapproved of Kate’s eagerness to go through her husband’s private notes. “But no, I didn’t till last night when I too read it. He kept the diary hidden in a box, to which he carried a key with him at all times.

I knew he was broken, but we met much later and I assume he just wanted to forget.”

“Can you, please, tell me what’s going on?” Anna was more than agitated with words that told her less than nothing.

“Can I translate it to her?” the question was answered with a bitter nod.

“I can’t see why not. I’ll leave you two alone for a bit then.”

Kate felt like an intruder inside someone’s ferocious battle with demons of the past. Trespassing, however, appeared a morally permissible endeavor if performed with her daughter and, so, she read out loud, (sparing Anna more shocking details): “The SS and the Gestapo robbed all of our possessions from the house we lived in and they took us along. Me, a 20-year-old boy at that time, and my brother who was just 13; we resisted, but we were taken to become subjects of their medical experiments.

“I have no idea what happened to my brother as I never saw him again. Me, I was used as a guinea pig for medical experiments of various forms of medications. Every single day, I experienced excruciating pain as they injected my body with drugs and chemicals I didn’t know nor bothered to know, but the vials with vibrant colors of venomous fluids haunt me till this day. More often than not, for the time I couldn’t measure but seemed like days, I was tied up to a chair and connected to tubes which inserted drugs into my body. I was numb with pain.

The only nourishment I had were the poisonous concoctions that flooded my body—a body that just couldn’t stand the pain so it became the pain itself, at some point.

“I prayed to God for it to be over, to take me home, but he never listened, he never responded. Do I blame him? No. I know now that I was being tested by Him and He wanted to see whether under these abominable circumstances I would lose faith in Him. And I didn’t. I have gone through a great deal of pain, I cannot give my wife children, and I suffer from liver and kidney agony every single day. Yet, in God I trust for He helped me survive, He gave me the necessary strength to endure and love Him even more. And I hope that you, my brother, have found the similar peace of mind and heart, wherever and whoever you are.” *** Intoxicated with shame, she wobbled through piss-stained, dirt-spiced clouds, into which chiseled irregularities of her broken hopes would puncture permanent vampire-bite tattoos.

In the desperate solitude of breath, the burden of materiality of carbon dioxide flushed out of her system left marks on the path that led to dead-end nowhere. Hours after the service,

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Anna—the only contestant in the impromptu 5K run—reached the finish line in the toilet on the train to the place she temporarily would call ‘home.’

Shaken to the core and befuddled by the unordinariness that characterized the post-diary events—the low attendance during the funeral, the freezing-cold goodbye embrace from the aunt, the burden of motherhood that unexpectedly crushed her mother and resulted in drifting apart from her very self and her very own daughter; she was numbly immobile in the too-mobile train.

Staring in the mirror on the bathroom wall, she detected unfamiliar phantasms creeping from underneath her skin, from within her eyelashes, from inside her mouth. Sent by the Holy Ghost of the unholy kind, bile alluvion coming from inside her womb transformed into gas fumes that bloated alveoli of Anna’s left lung. A chain of indistinguishable consonants ejected from her thorax formed a verbal annihilation that made the fellow fly’s wings wither and its tiny heart stop. Like a Stradivarius played by the forces that found her fit to be violated, Anna possessed the absolute awareness that identified its focus on one specific point.

The sole thing on her mind in that moment of crystal clear alertness was the abducted diary she safely located inside her backpack—she wanted to read it one day, just once, to fully grasp and memorize the unmemorable. At that moment—as if it had been scripted and rehearsed thousands of times to achieve necessary grace in the movement—to memorize the unmemorable, she broke the mirror which revealed too much, collected a triangular piece that landed inside the sink and, slowly, carved a miniature cross on her left forearm to remember it all one day, just once.

Yet, once she finished the oratorio on her skin, a freezing current slithered into each of her veins. Step by step, she was a witness to a paralyzing force that immobilized her limbs. An enslaving stillness filled her heart with marble, into which a benevolent inexistent artist carved a whimsical sloppiness of his chisel. And there, once the grotesque metamorphosis was completed, when there was still some hope of release, the train violently stopped; Anna’s marble head hit the already-broken mirror, the nose plunged into the soap, the right-hand pinky dived into the toilet bowl, and millions of microscopic pieces composed a Parrhesian carpet in the abject epilog to the gone-astray lived-happily-ever-after tale.

Aleksandra Barciszewska Former editor-in-chief. ASC-survivor. Vampiric psychoanalyst by nature. Extracting the sexual from the mundane, rejecting reality for the sake of the very-tale of momentary satiation of the urges for creation.

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The Proof of My Existence This story starts like many others: it is about a man who lost his purpose and meaning many years ago. It is about a man who lost his identity and faith in his own existence. For the sake of this short story, I will call him Rene. You see, back in the day, he was a simple, but certainly not average, young man. He had perspectives and was willing to pursue his happiness. Unfortunately, he was born in a certain period of time which made him experience the world in the most cruel and twisted way. Being only twenty-one years of age, he was drafted to the military to take part in the so called “Great War.” He didn’t think much about where he was going and what he would be made to do. Let me just reassure you…the war was great. It brought great destruction to humankind, and great chaos in the minds of the (then) young boys.

Rene had seen much more of this tragedy than anyone else. You want to know why? Simply because—unlike the study of history—he tended to look at the smaller picture. He didn’t see the glorious heroes going to countless battles with the name of God on their lips. What Rene had seen was much, much darker. Mutilated bodies; burned cities; parents crying over their dead children; cries of unimaginable pain echoing through eternity. So many voices, so much suffering, so many souls, and no one seems to hear them. It was then that Rene fully understood the words of Neville Chamberlain: “In war, whichever side may call itself the victor, there are no winners, but all are losers.”

Still, he would serve as long as the military would want him to. War was terrible, but even though he wouldn’t admit it, he didn’t miss his past life—if it wasn’t for the accident. One day, Rene’s scout team got caught up in a cross fire. They were able to fight off the enemy, but Rene got hit with shrapnel. Luckily, the wound wasn’t fatal. So…after five long years, he was finally able to come back to his beloved motherland. When he got out of the plane and took his first step, he was convinced that he would eventually forget about his past and make peace with his own mind. Rene believed solely that…until the first night he spent in his own cozy, soft bed. He tried to fall asleep, but there was something weird about the bed. He laid in it for hours until the sun had finally risen. Through his bloodshot eyes he shed a tear and whispered to himself: “I won’t ever be able to rest. This is not home…this is not my home.” Looking at this beautiful circle of light and warmth he understood that from now on, every night would look like this. He was sent to hell and back. His nature was irreversibly changed. He had come back to a place in which no one would understand him. You may leave the battlefield, but the battlefield will remain in you till the very end. If he loved anything about it, it was the fact that battle gave him purpose; it kept him more alive than ever. Fighting for your life in order to witness another sunrise becomes the very core of your existence. Now, when he didn’t have to fight, he felt that this morning was simply not deserved.

Months passed, but day-after-day Rene’s depression dug deeper into his mind. The world seemed…pointless. He looked at other people and felt disgust towards them. He used to torture himself with pictures of the so-called social media models. So many young, beautiful girls exposing their bodies—he knew what they were doing. All of them looked almost like clones, they had no names. They were just “InstaGirls” looking for some sort of a purpose in their lives.

In this case, the girls had found a satisfying answer…attention. Rene envied and hated them for finding their own cure for this sickness called life. Since he was unable to experience the beauty of the world, he decided to suppress that need with its cheaper substitutes.

It was just another cold and snowy December night. After injecting himself with another portion of vodka, Rene decided to leave the Golden Girl Club and stagger towards his place, hoping for some sleep that would not include any nightmares. For the last couple of nights,

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he had dreamed the same dream; it was about the universe. He watched as the light of every single star he had ever seen was being extinguished. He watched as the Sun died. At that point, he always woke up. The dream was disturbing, but it also contained a small portion of something that Rene considered calming. For those couple of seconds, the idea of the death of the universe seemed pleasant—as if he was reuniting with a long forgotten friend. Finally reaching his destination, Rene opened the door, turned on the light and left his coat on the armchair. He entered the kitchen and grabbed the bottle of water, knowing full well that he would need it tomorrow morning. He went back to the living room and that’s when he saw it.

Before him stood a monster with the body of an adult man and the head of an owl. Seeing him, Rene automatically jumped to the drawer and opened it in a search for a gun. He was positive that somewhere within it there lied his M1911—except it was nowhere to be found. He thought that the intruder must have found it before Rene got there. Only one solution remained: hand to hand combat. If I manage to make him fall, Rene thought, I could flee from the apartment and get help. While the owl-headed monster was moving slowly towards him, Rene decided to throw himself at the intruder, but, somehow, he went through the monster and landed on the floor head first.

“Who the fuck are you?” said Rene, still lying on the floor.

The Owlhead stood still in the same place, meaning it didn’t deflect the attack, it went right through it. “Show me the proof of my existence,” it said very calmly, but the voice of the thing sounded as if it came from beyond our world.

“The…proof. How the fuck I should know that?!” Rene was scared. Still, it didn’t mean it paralyzed him. He had been in life-threatening situations too many times. His head cleared itself from every feeling, and that’s when he rushed to the door. Only, the door wasn’t there, along with every window he should have been able to see from this standing position—they seemed to vanish.

“I’ve been watching you for quite some time, Rene,” said Owlhead, “I believe you are the one to help me find the proof of my existence.”

“But why me?”

“You, my dear Rene, experience the world empirically. You believe that everything you touch, smell, taste, and hear in this place is real. That is why you seem to ignore the possibility of the existence of somebody like me. You tried to escape from me, therefore I assume you are afraid of my existence. Does it mean that your fear constitutes me as a part of reality? How do you know that you, yourself, are real? Tell me…if you can answer my question, I’ll relieve you from your burden.”

“Why am I a real person? I don’t know, because I’m here, I feel the rain on my face, taste the food, breathe oxygen. That makes me pretty sure about my existence.” Rene replied uncertainly.

“I see, but what about the door? You were sure it was here all the time, ever since you moved in. I made it disappear. Does it mean they are still part of reality?”

“I don’t know, it’s just some sort of a trick, to toy with my mind.”

“Let me take you somewhere, so we can discuss some more on that matter,” the beast snapped his fingers and the whole apartment disappeared. Instead, everything went black, as if they were in a void.

Owlhead snapped his fingers once again and all around Rene appeared soldiers, marching through this endless darkness, but none of them had a face.

“As I said before, I have been watching you. I have seen the way this made your life matter.

You put yourself at risk, every single day was fulfilling. Until they forced you to come back, then

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you understood that there are no heroes. The term ‘hero’ was coined only to throw you in this faceless mass of people whose names were forgotten, long ago,” said Owlhead, “and your name is a whole different story, isn’t it? You don’t have any, do you? Rene...but it is not your real name and you don’t have a last name, either. Rene was only the invention of your mind trying to fit in. Therefore I ask, how can you think you are real if you possess no identity? Much like every single one of those faceless soldiers passing you by, you do not exist. Not to my logic.”

As the soldiers were marching, Rene kept hearing a sound of an explosion. This one was particularly familiar, but he heard so many of them there was no way to recall this exact one.

He watched the soldiers marching through infinity, he suspected that the monster could have been right, but did not want to believe. The only reply he was able to squeeze out of his throat was: “I don’t know, I just think I am real, but I don’t know why,” he said through tears.

“So, now let me show you something else,” the creature snapped its fingers, and in that moment, everything turned white. Then, he snapped his fingers again and faceless girls started appearing in this strange dimension.

“Do you recognize them?” the beast asked.

“I do. I’ve seen all of them on the Internet. I envied them because, for them, finding the reason to live was easy and trivial,” Rene replied with guilt in his voice.

“Exactly. So, now, let me ask you some more…but this time let me ask about your whole world. You humans transferred your lives and identities to this so-called Internet. Without social media you are socially irrelevant. The very idea of your existence lacks purpose. You seek attention through versions of yourselves which exist only on the Internet. So, now I ask, how do you know that the world that surrounds you exists?

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“I don’t know, I just assume it has to exist,” said Rene looking at the floating, faceless beauties and peeking at the neon light which had appeared underneath him. It said: “Am I Your Golden Girl?”

“You don’t know, okay. So, now, let us go to our final destination.”

The demon snapped his fingers again, and they witnessed the universe. They were both standing among the planets looking at the stars and at the Sun. “Wait a minute, I know this picture, I have already dreamed it, those stars will die. I am dreaming,” he said turning to the Owlhead.

“Yes, they will, but how can you be certain that it is a dream? You assume you have ever dreamed. You assume, then, that this world of yours exists. Now, I will ask you your final question. If you answer it, you will be free to go.

“What is the proof of my existence?”

Rene looked at the universe. The process had already started. He watched as the light of every single star he had ever seen was being extinguished. He watched as the Sun was dying.

“You made me question everything I took for certain. I don’t know if my world is real, as a matter of fact, I don’t know if I am real. I also see no point in answering your question, except for maybe giving you a reason to exist, if you do exist, at all. What is the proof of your existence? What is the proof of your existence?!” he kept repeating the question for a good few minutes until he heard the familiar explosion he had heard before, but this time he knew.

This time he remembered. “HAHAhA!” he laughed like crazy. “All this time I was misinterpreting the question, wasn’t I? I thought you wanted me to prove your existence, but you didn’t. The question wasn’t, “What is the proof of your existence?” Instead, it was, “What is the proof of MY existence?” You made me doubt and question, is that the answer? I doubt, therefore I think…I think, therefore I exist. You can make me think that the world around is fake, but you cannot do the same with my consciousness, can you? I am alive!” he turned to see what happened to the universe. It was absolutely fine. The way it was before the question was asked.

“I am alive, but this explosion…it was from the accident, wasn’t it? I am alive but I have never left the battlefield, I never came back.”

“No, we never came back.” The sound of his voice was so familiar it made Rene turn around and face…himself. Except half of his face was covered in scars. “But I wasn’t lying. This world of yours doesn’t exist and never existed. I promised to get us out of this place.”

It’s time to go home.

Through the darkness, the voice could be heard: “He almost slipped to the grave, as if he didn’t want to live, but now everything seems to be fine. Apparently, Mr. Renato Descartes is a hell of a fighter, even when he has to fight his own demons.”

Filip Kaliński World champ in creativity (Destination Imagination) from a small town of Giżycko. Always looking for another great story. Generally speaking, self-righteous artist and whisky lover.

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My Universe Her touch—as bright and warm as a beacon in the darkness. Impenetrable darkness surrounded them and clenched its fist. He felt choked by this unnatural phenomenon and knew she was suffering from it even more. The lust for hugging her closer was fighting in his head with fear of her getting crushed under his grip and the grip of the shadows.

Cold. Everything except her was cold. His legs and back were almost frozen while the chest, arms, and cheek were burning in the fire of their love. His body was struggling under this bipolar temperature, it was too much for a human to take.

But he took it. For her.

“Help me,” she whispered.

Her face was the only thing he could see, and he didn’t like the look of it. She was frightened, eyes full of terror, mouth shivering, breath heavy. And he couldn’t help. Her tears soaked his clothes and embraced him with their cold grasp. Trying to wipe them off was pointless—salt already infiltrated the skin.

“Help me!” she cried out. Terrified voice.

Helpless. He could not do anything, he could not think of a thing to do. His surface twisted in fear even as terrible as her. Fear of not being able to help the person you love was the ultimate fear. The man wanted to look in her eyes, trying to read anything from them, figure it out, but she would not let him. He simply wanted to take her face in his hands, calm her a little, let her know she is safe, but immediately there were resisting, violent movements.

“HELP ME!” A rapid rousing from a bad dream was sometimes worse than the dream itself. He found himself sitting in the darkness, drowning in his own cold sweat, shivering. The sleep was over, there was no time to waste. He was close.

At least he hoped that he was, he really wanted to be close. Three months of constant work, constant struggle, being on the road all the time. Now, he was finally upon them. The time for determined action had come.

The scream did not come out, even though it wanted to. Freezing water struck his body with the force of a mallet, squeezing him into a lesser being for a moment. Nothing was as good as a cold-ass shower in the morning. A quick breakfast with a big coffee as a finisher and he was good to go.

The city stank as every other city he visited in this area. The Outer Circle was a hellhole, absolute paradise for criminal scum. Sin cities, that’s how people used to call them. And now he had gotten into another one of these, but, hopefully, the last one. This place was an abstract of civilization, something one would not believe if one did not see it. He was walking the street with a gun in his hand—not even holding a hand on a gun, literally with a pistol ready to defend or attack in any moment. Around him there was every kind of human junk one can think of; whores, junkies, thieves. Being a regular person in this kind of city was another level of masochism.

Once his destination was reached, there was no time for fucking around. The guy pointed out by the last guy found his way to the ground very quickly, before he knew what was going to happen. Cold steel was biting the skin of the man’s forehead as his eyes filled with mortal terror. The man knew he could not trust in mercy, not here. Only giving up the information would keep him alive. Life was cheap, information was valuable.

“Where are they?!” intimidation and aggression—that was the way of negotiation. The old man started to choke out of stress, his entire body was covered with sticky, stinking sweat.

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“Speak, pork, or I’m gonna take a big chop out of ya!”

His eyes were burning in flames of fury. The guy knew, but, still, he was wasting time here.

That was a serious problem—if he had gone easier on the man, he would have gotten nothing.

And when he went all savage on this motherfucker, the guy clogged in stress and the deadlock continued. Every. Single. Second. Mattered. They might slip away or hurt her any moment.

“Don’t make me kill you! You know where they went, just fucking say it!” A few minutes of jerking with the disgusting, old reek paid off as he cried the location out loud, right before he burst into tears and shit himself.

The building where they were looked like it had been taken right out of a horror movie.

A lonely palace in the middle of a brutal, modern city, surrounded by a dead-like park—trees with little-to-no leaves, gray grass, and black birds all around the place. Almost as if they were trying to enforce an aura of threat. But he felt no fear, no doubt.

Guns were singing their violent song as some of their soldiers were trying to stop him. He went upon the bloodstained ground, covered with the bodies of his enemies. Even though their faces were twisted in agony, they seemed at peace now.

He felt a weird awareness of power. It filled him like an ocean of fire, and he embraced it with his whole ego. The last few months had changed him, driven by the love and hate he had grown—because he needed to do so—in order to save the one he loved. Nothing else mattered, not the deaths, not the crimes, not the suffering. Not when she was so close.

“Welcome,” the man said. His voice was joyful, the grin on his face was probably meant to be terrifying. The man was sitting in a big swivel armchair. Behind him there were two screens.

The first one was showing an aerial view of his home city. The second was showing a small cell, in which a woman was sitting on the floor.

That was her.

“Surrender now and tell me where to find her,” he said to the man, trying to sound calm, but it was obvious that his voice was full of hatred.

“Maybe I will, but it’s more likely I will not. Perhaps, soon, you will be holding her in your arms, but I think not. Because as you know, it is all about the game,” the man stood up and pointed his arm at the console, which he did not notice so far. They both approached it slowly, the gun was ready to deploy the killing blow to the kidnapper’s chief if needed. On the desk there were two buttons—green and red.

“Why me? Why her? What the fuck did we do to you?” he asked the man as soon as they were close to one another.

“Let me explain the rules of the game we gonna play. There is no winner—maybe except me, in some way. Let’s just say that you cannot win. But you still have to play,” the man tapped his fingers on the table, looking very confident on the surface. “Funny thing. Back to the story, the story of doom. You’ll get to choose between the life of your beloved girl or the lives of millions of citizens of your beloved city. Green goes for her death, red for the city. Let me be clear—you can be absolutely sure that if you press the button of one death, the other will be spared.”

With every word the man was looking more and more sure of his ‘victory’ and his genius, however it might sound. He was almost shivering from joy.

“I just can’t wait to see your struggle! How you will be valuing lives, how you will suff…”

He just smacked the red button. It was quick, precise. Smack! Just like that. The kidnapper turned towards the screens, his face shocked beyond imagination. The city was getting ripped apart with explosions and fire. Many, many bombs were blowing up in red inferno.

But she was safe.

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“Let her go” “But…but…how?! What?! NO!” the man had fallen to his knees and covered his face in his hands.

“What the fuck were you thinking?” he asked the kidnapper, “After all I’ve done, you were thinking what exactly? That I’ll provide you with entertainment by torturing myself with thoughts? By being confused between life of the ONE and lives of countless others?”

Flames were spreading, torching buildings, trees, and people.

“Then you were fucking wrong. Now, give her up. I was absolutely ensured that I’ll get her back.”

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“How could you sacrifice so many…” the man couldn’t believe it. He was broken, his master plan was broken.

“They are just particles in the big universe, while she is MY universe. I’ll live and die for her.

And I’ll burn the worlds and kill the gods before I let anyone hurt her again.”

He was waiting for her, covered in blood, breathing heavily. When she jumped to hug him, he couldn’t even react. Months of fighting, not sleeping, not eating, were finally over and his organism started protesting. His work was done. She was safe in his arms.

His gun had fallen to the ground and he liked the sound of letting it go a lot.

“You came,” she whispered. Her voice was literally healing his wounds—both physical and mental.

“Of course I came. I was in the area, so I decided to drop by for a moment. How are you, babe?”

“All this blood…You are wounded!” of course she cared about him more than herself, even though she was wasted away after months in captivity.

“Most of this blood is not mine, unfortunately…”

“Can we go home now?” she asked.

“Nah, there is no home, anymore. We need to create a new one for us.”

Mateusz Boczkiewicz “Hey, I’m Batman.”

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POETRY

Piece of the month Room4 Sofia Voytukhova

language is the chaos caused by the distraction of initial condition in alphabetical order and poetry is to continuously return the glossolalia unity

mirrorIm i

m

I

I

m

i

who

r

u &

u I

a[a]f[f]t[t]e[e]r[r]i[i]m[m]a[a]g[g]e[e] a i o u eai inCarnAdine aUrOra effErVesCent scIntIlla mEllifluOus epHonIoUs irrIdeScent chAtoyAnt aglInt liVely twInkly pEarly gEmMy fulgId beAmy stArry aUreAte lAmbEnt wordy DONE aio u e a

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i

LOVE LYRICS Sofia Voytukhova

flirty letters why are you looking at me so you still keep looking at me please stop you pierce me with your zealous eyes don't say i try to mesmerize i strip myself off punctuation i m naked raw and so fragile please leave me here i hysterize enough i turn to backest-guarde you will succumb after two lines kryptos will be your paradise genesis exodus leviticus aoidos agonistes continue please

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≈room4 square vertical room i round n table alike triangle colors stool dim light b l u r r e d down look up up toss the coin yes heads nxt no tails

success enteround room with a triangle table and a fail square stool in the middle of my room

things are so heavy changeable colors people around shades do some lights do some shades when happines s glued you comprehend toss it again fail is heads tails success there are no corners no shapes r q o o

n

i

s m

u

c

r

l

a t Sofia Voytukhova A logophile who tries to come to terms with their own voice and balance facts with value.

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The WASP | Volume I | Fall 2017

Painting White Christmas Maik Łomnicki

Glitter, Winter, Christmas, Critter Glitter, Winter, Christmas, Critter Painting on—canvases Spilling on—brushing off A familiar touch—a lovely face Painting is a disgrace.

Glitter, Winter, Christmas, Critter Glitter, Winter, Christmas, Critter A beam of light—such a delight Improving technique but it’s weak Tired of drawing yet crawling Feeling sadness, keep painting on canvases Glitter, Winter, Christmas, Critter Glitter, Winter, Christmas, Critter A star is born—tonight Hiding shame Feeling pain—draining brushes Fortnight—doing it again Missing aim—cover in white Glitter, Winter, Christmas, Critter Glitter, Winter, Christmas, Critter A painter by himself—books on his shelf Family ashamed—brushes covered in paint He faints—He faints—He faints Paint everywhere – going nowhere Glitter, Winter, Christmas, Critter Glitter, Winter, Christmas, Critter Millions died—never seen light Keep painting on—Christmas night Cover everything white Take fright—Critter Atone and leave’em alone Glitter, Winter, Christmas, Critter Glitter, Winter, Christmas, Critter God will never forgive my son

Maik Łomnicki An Erasmus student from Saarland University. Born to Polish parents in Germany, I wanted to reconnect with my roots. I chose UW because it is one of the prestigious universities in Poland. The ASC is a unique place where creativity is valued. I wish to be part of The Wasp family and continue writing.

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Smile

Karolina Borucka

I am constantly afraid That I'm coming on too strong Each simple hello that I say with a smile Makes me think you'll go And never come back I want to get closer to you To know what you think About even the most mundane of things But I've been hurt before So I will keep quiet Hide behind that smile And cherish every moment You choose to smile back

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The Way Out Karolina Borucka

Every kind gesture No matter how small Or insignificant to you To me represents a candle In a pitch black room It doesn't give much light But it's just enough To make me believe That I will find my way out Of this darkness surrounding my mind.

Karolina Borucka Perpetual daydreamer, hardly ever seen without headphones in her ears. Can't imagine life without travelling. Wishes Middle-Earth was a real place so she could travel there too.

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Full Stop Amber Wazacz

Everything ends, Nothing lasts forever, Or so we’re told, Maybe, Just maybe we live past our full stop, Maybe, Just maybe we don’t end, But, How are we supposed to know?

How are we supposed to know anything?

How are we supposed to know if we aren’t told?

Do you wonder?

Do you know?

Do we move on?

Or stand still?

What—?

That’s a good question, You didn’t let me finish, Must you go on?

Or do you end suddenly?

Mid-sentence—?

How will I know?

How do any of us know?

What happens if—?

Happens if what?

If we die mid-sentence?

Do you think?

Is it possible?

Is what possible?

Do you think we continue our sentence…?

And maybe, just maybe, Maybe what?

Maybe we are unaware of the fact…

The fact of what?

The fact that we can no longer be heard, The fact of what?

Hello?

Hello?

What happened?

Will I ever know?

Or do I already know?

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One More Thing…

Amber Wazacz

Do you ever feel like you’re missing something?

Like a piece of you will never be found And maybe, just maybe We spend our entire lives Chasing after dreams And love And lost memories Just to fill that hole Do you ever feel like you’re missing something?

Like all the chocolate and all the cookie dough won’t ever be enough Like all the love from friends and family and loved ones won’t ever be enough Do you ever feel like you’re missing something?

It’s so strange to be so blatantly aware of something we don’t have It’s so strange to be craving something you can never have or ever find Do you ever feel like you’re missing something?

It’s that one thing you’re sure will make you feel whole That one thing that will put a stop to maybes and what if’s Do you ever feel like you’re missing something?

Do you ever wonder if you will find it?

Do you ever worry it won’t be enough?

Do you ever feel like you’re missing something?

Like it’s there, just barely out of reach Like if you could pause time you would find your puzzle piece Do you ever feel like you’re missing something?

Something, just that one thing It’s so small but so heavy, so big, so much Do you ever feel like you’re missing something?

Like you should be, need to be doing more Like this can’t possibly be it Do you ever feel like you’re missing something?

Like a piece of you will never be found And maybe, just maybe We spend our entire lives Chasing after dreams And love And lost memories Just to fill that hole Just to feel whole

Amber Wazacz Enjoys banana bread and pasta, wintery mornings and hot chocolate, dancing in the rain, and squealing laughter.

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Contributors

Nadia Błaszczyk Her biggest passion is travelling, so she tries to travel as much as possible. She hates to sit in one place for too long so in her spare time she plans new trips and explores new places (even if they are just around the corner). Addicted to drinking tea, even in summer.

Her favorite piece of clothing is a smile.

Aleksandra Barciszewska Former editor-in-chief. ASC-survivor. Vampiric psychoanalyst by nature. Extracting the sexual from the mundane, rejecting reality for the sake of the very-tale of momentary satiation of the urges for creation.

Karolina Borucka Perpetual daydreamer, hardly ever seen without headphones in her ears. Can't imagine life without travelling. Wishes Middle-Earth was a real place so she could travel there too.

Mateusz Boczkiewicz “Hey, I’m Batman.”

Aleksandra Gołaszewska Future filmmaker, greenhorn drummer, English philology BA graduate, sad feminist, Stephen King fan, whisky drinker, pizza eater, rock&metal listener, pastel lover, Shih-Tzu owner, lazy loaf. Currently attempting to expect all the unexpected.

Filip Kaliński World champ in creativity (Destination Imagination) from a small town of Giżycko. Always looking for another great story. Generally speaking, self-righteous artist and whisky lover.

Maik Łomnicki An Erasmus student from Saarland University. Born to Polish parents in Germany, I wanted to reconnect with my roots. I chose UW because it is one of the most prestigious universities in Poland. The ASC is a unique place where creativity is valued. I wish to be part of The Wasp family and continue writing.

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Dominika Nadolna Addicted to rom-coms, Netflix, and coffee.

Can't live without cake, cookies, and chocolate – oh, and Nutella. Falls in love way too easily with – *sigh* –fictional characters.

Natalia Ogórek Singing is her biggest passion, but she does not connect her future with it.

Lover of TV series and Marvel. 70% funny, 50% weird, 100% organized.

Joanna Nędzyńska Graduated with a distinction from the ASC. But she has not said “goodbye” to studying yet. Right now she is in the middle of one-year postgraduate studies in political science. In her free time, Joanna likes to play guitar, sing or... read Harry Potter.

Lilla Orly All-nonsense Editor-in-Chief subsisting from printed word to printed word. Enamored by the grim cavities of a too saccharine existence, and tracing half-truths in negative space. Digs meandering routes and gnarly tunes as well as the concept of an ever-expanding universe.

Ada Rachfalska Music enthusiast - addicted to live shows, mostly travels to see her favorite acts. Loves to take pictures with analog cameras. Engaged in social justice matters.

An economist-to-be-turned-humanist, she is finishing her bachelor's at OSA and figuring out how to stay in the academic circle. Always has her third eye open.

Marta Rapacka 2nd year BA student. Apart from being utterly in love with TV series, she loves spending her free time discovering mysteries of Adobe Photoshop. Coerced into accepting the new goal of her existence, namely being The Very First Caricaturist of The Wasp – an honorable title she proudly bears and exploits (see: above and below).

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Anna Sokolovska A beginner journalist shedding light on stories worth knowing. Stephen King addict, wishing she had even more time to read books. Loves to travel and explore new cultures, her biggest dream is to visit America soon. Obsessed with constant self-improvement, and if does not face challenges, easily gets bored.

Sofia Voytukhova A logophile who tries to come to terms with their own voice and balance facts with value.

Klaudia Wanat A creative, amateurish artist, mainly relying on her imagination. In huge love with animals, concerts, and hair dyeing.

Takes on new challenges. Biggest wish: explore the whole world and be a happy owner of a mini pig.

Klaudia Wypych 22 year old who loves music, drawing, and cats. Favourite things to do? Playing the guitar, singing, and watching some good TV shows while eating pizza".

Amber Wazacz Enjoys banana bread and pasta, wintery mornings and hot chocolate, dancing in the rain, and squealing laughter.

Kamila Maria Wyszyńska Studies Graphic Arts at the Academy of Fine Arts in Warsaw. American Studies is her second faculty. Loves to travel. Wants to live and create across the world.

Jakub Zieliński 2nd year student of ASC with a deep passion for music. He has never learned to play any instrument, but strongly hopes to change it in the future. Apart from his love to sounds, he’s pretty much into movies, TV series and English football.

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The WASP | Volume I | Fall 2017