Kokopelli Issue 01 by Kokopelli

KOKOPELLI MACABRE

ISSUE I // FALL 2016

LETTER FROM THE EDITOR

What intrigues me the most about fear is that it is unavoidable. Someone can live their life without happiness or sadness, but no one can escape fear. But, we must ask ourselves, "Why?" As a kid, I always loved being scared. Whether it be roller coaster rides or scary movies, I always sought out the thrill. My mother started taking me to see horror movies at the age of 7 years old. We would watch the weekly Criminal Minds episode cuddling up on the couch with a blanket and some Milk-Duds. However, the fear of public speaking is unfathomable to me; a fear I would chose not to mess with. Why is it that some thrills intrigued me whilst others I chose to ignore? In this issue we attempt to debunk the ideas of fear: fear of new beginnings, fear of a new year, and fear in general. The theme is Macabre: representing death in a gruesome and horrifying way. So, what makes something macabre? Why do we crave it? Why do we hate it? Ultimately, I would like to say that this is the death of the old Kokopelli. Kokopelli is now resurrecting into something much greater, a transition from the old to the new. And that itself brings on fear.

-Peyton Gray Koch

Cover Photo by Gracie Buyers

Photograph by Peyton Koch

Table of Contents MACABRE PLAYLIST

6-7

MOVIES TO WATCH

8-9

THE VENT IS UNHINGED

10-11

ADDICT

12-13

THE HOUSE

14-15

FEATURED ARTIST

16-25

GALLERY

26-53

NEVERLAND

54-61

POEM

62-63

A 13TH FLOOR EXPERIENCE

64-65

HALLOWEEN COSTUMES

66-67

MANIFESTO

Contributors

Peyton Koch

Kole Hicks

Lucy Myers

Sophia Deahl

Ana Fucarino

Gracia Oâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;donnell

Anothony Fucarino

Lulu Geller

Rebecca Kite

Kayla Wolins

Quinn Taylor

Willa Dorgan

MACABRE PLAYLIST https://open.spotify.com/user/kokopelli-music/playlist/3NJwNKB4JYNr6gVFYvHwxt

Warning: This is a macabre playlist not a halloween playlist and therefore it will not include halloween classics such as “This is Halloween”, “Thriller”, and “The Monster Mash”. I’m sorry for the absence of these songs but will be instead playing songs more akin to the theme macabre, be it the eerie phone call of “Meisje In Auto” or the plucking strings found on “Burn the Witch” that give it a strangling feeling. There are also songs that give the playlist a relief, song like “Feeling Yourself Disintegrate” or Sufjan Stevens “They Are Night Zombies!!” which despite its horror theme name, is actually a fairly light song. Finally, you might hate these songs, you might love them. I for one love the majority of the songs, but you might not and I don’t blame you, the songs chosen for the playlist are weird but that’s OK because halloween is weird and Macabre is weird. Kole Hicks

-Liquid Swords- GZA -Guillotine- Death grips -Child Soldier- Oneohtrix Point Never -Demon- Shamir -Blood On Me- Sampha -Where Boys Fear to Tread - Smashing Pumpkin -Death Letter - White Stripes -1000 Deaths - D’angelo -Blackstar - David Bowie -They Are Night Zombies!! They Are Neighbors!! They Have Come Back From the Dead!! Ahhhh! – Sufjan Stevens -Swerve... the reeping of all that is worthwhile (Noir not withstanding) – Shabazz Palaces -Apocalypse Dreams – Tame Impala -Burn the Witch – Radiohead -Kill V. Maim – Grimes -Times to Die – Car Seat Headrest -Beware – Big Punisher -Feeling Yourself Disintegrate – The Flaming Lips -Never Dead (feat. M. Sayyid as Curis Strifer) – Viktor Vaughn -Meisje In Auto (Naar Prelude No. 20 In C Minor Van F. Chopin) – Kreng -Downward Spiral – Danny Brown

Photograph by Will Miller

MOVIES TO WATCH Morbid, grisly, repugnant, grotesque; in this list are the top film choices of Gwylym Cano, Ross Holland, and the film staff at Kokopelli for our Macabre theme. From Mexican-Italian avant-garde horror film Santa Sangre to the chilling documentary The Bridge, and everything in between, the films on this list are perfect for the Halloween season. If you are looking to be scared, shocked, disgusted, or just want to watch an incredible movie, check out our list. Enjoy!

ROSS HOLLAND'S LIST Rosemaryâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Baby https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PewtQs-

The Shining https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5Cb3ik6zP2I

Suspiria https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B7UefOfcly4

Dead Alive https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O8LIug1cP04

Under the Skin https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NoSWbyvdhHw

GWYLEM CANO'S LIST Santa Sangre https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VR6NeM3-wOE

Black Mirror https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zLZHdK6l55I

The Devil's Backbone https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=90o1YhN0vHY

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nsVproWjN6c

FILM STAFF LIST The Babadook https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k5WQZzDRVtw

Cabin in the Woods https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NsIilFNNmkY

Clockwork Orange https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SPRzm8ibDQ8

Prisoners https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bpXfcTF6iVk

The Bridge https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zwl-Pa_QT0M

The Vent is Unhinged The vent is unhinged. Mother must know of this at once. I walk over to the desk in the corner, fumbling with the stolen key for the locked drawer. Inside sits two items: Mother’s secret pack of cigarettes and a large revolver. I pick up the gun, making a mental note to come back for the cigarettes, and close the drawer. I turn the revolver over in my hand, feeling its weight. Keeping my focus on the vent, I curl my fingers comfortably around the weapon. “Mother,” I call. “Mother, the vent in the basement is open.” Footsteps echo through the house as mother runs to meet me. I ready the revolver, placing the vent squarely in my sights. “Jesus Christ,” Mother exclaims as she rounds the corner. “Put the gun down!” “But—” “But nothing,” Mother says. “How many times have I told you not to play down here? You’re going to give me a heart attack, yelling like that, waving your father’s gun around. Come with me right now, we’re going upstairs.” Mother angrily wrestles the gun away from me. After replacing the revolver in the drawer, she takes my hand and leads me away. But the vent is still unhinged.

– Adam Dorsheimer

Photograph by Emily Curran

Addict He’s an addict... Addicted to the love which touches Nothing Addicted to the rain Which keeps him dry, but An addict he will remain He’s an addict to the burn Which reminds him... Reminds him he’s alive And still missing life all the same He’s an addict to lost hope Lost with the wind and time An addict to a seed Which has grown into a weed An idea really.. It carries him up It supports his every move He’s an addict The long nights Hypersensitive to the scuttles And the creeks

The weeds hold his hand Pick him up like momma used to And gently tie his fine tie Remind him how beautiful he is Tell him everything will be... Ok They kiss him on the cheek And gently nudges him forward Proud of his choice Just like momma used to That last kiss... Rolls down his pretty, white cheek Down his chin And on his nicest tie Momma always had a strong heart But today it broke And her little boy... Finally felt her rain Her rain kept him wet while he constantly burned He is no longer an addict - Charles Thomas

Photograph by Anthony Fucarino

the child cannot stop walking his brother watches from the bed the child is gone his brother is gone the house is cold

-Grace Dorgan

Purple Apples: Featured Artist Maggie Jones

Written by: Rebecca Kite If you sit next to Maggie Jones in AP Lit or almost any other class like I do, you’ve probably seen her draw a face of a bald, wrinkled old man with blood shot eyes and a monstrous nose. When I went upstairs into Colorado Academy’s art wing of the currently in construction art building on Wednesday, October 26th, I thought I had an idea of the kind of art Maggie was going to show me because of these sketches she’s drawn on my reading quizzes in Mr. Mills’ class—let me just say that I was sorely mistaken. Before this, I’d looked through a sketchbook or two of Maggie’s filled with her infamous images made from a Pilot blue ink pen and a paintbrush marker filled with water—she uses this combo to create a watercolor effect—but when she pulled out a stack of white sketch book papers the size of a Norton Anthology,

I was shocked. As I paged through the images, she continued to pull out more art from various shelves for me to consider for our macabre theme. I looked through about 250+ pieces of art of all mediums and styles—some sketchbook style, others charcoal paintings, canvas paintings, and even self portraits. Maggie, 17, has been doing art since she was about two or three-years-old. Her artist grandparents, Francis and Velma (I know, great names right?), would take her and her sister Justine to the beach in Maine when they were young and the four of them would paint together. “My sister and I used to like to paint purple apples, and our grandparents would say, ‘You can paint them that way for now but some day you’ll have to paint them red.’” Her grandmother, Velma, let her imagination fly free when she was just a little girl. “I’d say I definitely an artist because of her,” Maggie explained.

As Maggie moved into her adolescent years, she and Justine would travel a lot with her family, and she remembers drawing on every single plane ride. “We used to draw pictures of celebrities like Jennette McCurdy (Sam for the Nickelodeon show iCarly) and submit them to Tiger Beat drawing competitions and we always thought we get them but we never did of course,” Maggie explained. “I also remember this one time we went to Greece with my grandma and she had watercolors and a huge bag of cherries that she bought from the s upermarket and we would just grab a cherry and draw it.” Jones said she owes her love for watercolor to her grandma, that she introduced it to her at such a young age. “I guess in 5th or 6th grade I started drawing pretty well,” she told me. In fact when Maggie was in 6th grade, one of her drawings got chosen to be the cover page of Red Rocks Elementary School’s yearbook—it was

a picture of a raccoon, their mascot. “Now most art I make is quick and thoughtful.” Maggie explained that she makes sure she designates time in ever day to doing some kind of art. “This is what makes me happy,” she proclaimed, “school is just not as important as art sometimes.” Maggie and I continued to screw around with pottery in her art room; I watched her masterfully sculpt a perfectly circular bowl, and she let me turn it into a glob (sorry Maggie). Maggie is applying to art school for college to places like Santa Fe University of Art and Otis College of Art. Maggie Jones is a shining example of how, before anything else, we as humans should do what feeds our soul, our passion, and are happiness, and personally, I am so excited to see what she does in the future. After writing this piece, I can say with the utmost confidence that Maggie Jones is my favorite artist.

Gallery

The Surface by Cosette Patterson

Willa and Grace Dorgan

Sophia Deahl

Jack Cahil

Willa and Grace Dorgan

Peyton Koch

Raquel Roman

Jared Miranda

Isabel Chander

Isabel Chandler

Claire Wright

Ali Altman

Neverland

By Kenneal Patterson

It was cold when I woke up. As I slept, I dreamt about the faint glimmer of sun outside my window. But the pale beams shining through my subconscious all but disappeared when I opened my eyes. It was impossible to tell that it was morning, for the sky outside was enveloped in darkness. And it was cold; cold from the blankets of thick soot in the sky, the dark shroud casting its deathly embrace over the last heat source we had left. We hadn’t seen the sun in years; most people couldn’t even remember the sky’s exact shade of blue. But sometimes, when the world fell asleep, and the day’s haze cleared from the sky, you could make out the weak glow of stars. They twinkled millions of miles above us, watching with sorrow, weakly calling out to us. The words they screamed were undeniable, we were just too afraid to accept their truth. “Leave before it’s too late!” they cried. “You’re all doomed!” But we didn’t leave. We all stayed, never truly knowing why. There was nothing left for us anymore, but we all felt that familiar pull on our hearts– the same force that bound us there for thousands of years. It wasn’t nostalgia; no– it was much deeper than that. Most of us didn’t even have memories of what earth looked like before. No, it was an instinct. It was our primitive instincts binding us to the ground; it was the murmurs of the universe as our souls resonated with our home. It was the beckoning call of our world; her cry of pain, her cry for help. Yet despite the bonds uniting us, we refused to listen to her weeping. It was years before anyone answered her prayers. In the pursuit of human accomplishment, we pushed on, pushed on and on until she was nothing but smoldering ash. We painted the sky black– we filled atmospheres with pollution’s grime– all in order to power cars we could no longer afford. We could barely afford any human necessities, because to accommodate for our sickly population we cleared fields of grain to make way for a concrete world. And as our grave mistakes dawned on us, we rushed to spend every last cent on the measly produce the government managed to provide. Yet millions still went hungry. And we woke up every morning gasping for breath, our lungs inhaling the thick filth in our skies, because we decimated our gentle forests– our only oxygen supply. And we struggled every day in the name of survival, ignoring the shared sensation of helplessly falling through an empty void. Before Nana died, she kept complaining that she was hungry. My family would rush to her side with meager leftovers, coaxing bits of bread or cans of beans into her open mouth. Yet she would simply turn her cheek and push it all away. When they all began to give up, locking themselves in rooms to neglect their human helplessness, Nana would call out my name. Every night, she would tell me elaborate secrets.

“I’m starving, Wendy,” she would admit. “I’m starving for life. I’m hungry for fields of copper and sunlight’s warm embrace. I’m hungry for the glistening gold reflecting off autumn leaves, for the reds and oranges and the fire of life. I can picture it now– illuminating the trees, awakening the world. I cannot satisfy my hunger in this hollow world.” I would ask her what autumn was, or what a forest looked like. But she never truly looked at me when I spoke. Her eyes would glisten in pain, like she was desperately trying to hold on to a memory she never really experienced. She was grasping at something she never really touched. In the days before her death, she seemed at peace. She was lost, always, in endless fields of thought. I used to sit by her bed, desperate for any stories of her vibrant past, but she already existed elsewhere, living in the glints of light between shadows. She paid no attention to me. It was like I was a mirage, a fake hallucination that was seemingly insignificant, a mere echo of a reality she couldn’t bear to care about. She was bottled up inside herself, already in a better world– a warmer world– than we could ever give to her. When the doctors came, they told us she had died from an overdose. I was only eight, but I could process what she’d done. When I asked my parents, their responses were bitter and blunt. They told me I was too young to understand. They told me I shouldn’t ask questions. But I couldn’t help hearing them at night, speaking in hushed voices, calling Nana a coward, saying she was weak. It was hard to disregard the pang of envy in their voices, as if their jealously clouded any trace of resentment. I understood more when I got older. You could see the wanted posters almost everywhere, glaring mug shots of young kids with sunken eyes. They were so young– they didn’t deserve their punishment– but the government was ruthless. Hook was ruthless. We were essentially at war; their drugs were rampant, tempting people into the void, tempting them to leave their cold lives behind and enter the light. When President Hook was elected, he had to take control of our country’s vicious disease. In the beginning, he inspired hope. He promised a better life, a transformation. He gazed over our wasteland, and his soothing voice flowed across our dilapidated towns and ricocheted off colossal cities of ghosts. “Imagine it,” he cried, flinging his hands towards the charred chasm around him, “Imagine them all. The surge of beauty we have long forgotten, the blanket of color consuming us. We have abandoned the meanings of these ancient words– red, orange, yellow, gold! These words that stir a sadness inside, these words that have been buried within our hearts– for too long! We can

resuscitate their overwhelming force– oh, I swear by it! We will once again see these colors. Before long, our eyes will adjust to forests of emerald and seas of poppies, to turquoise waters and animals roaming free! Nature will be rebirthed by us– her destroyers! We will build this world again, from the ground up; we will create a soft bed of grass for future generations to sleep on!” And he talked and talked and talked, golden words spilling out of his mouth; recreating a painting depicting the cherished land we burned to the ground. We trusted him. That night, the stars seemed to urge us on, encouraging us to wipe the smeared result of human productivity from the skies. That night, I even dreamt up animals that died out long ago, but I woke up crying from the absence of color that chilled me and the silence choking the empty cries of the extinct. The day after Hooks speech, the banners appeared. “Red, orange, yellow, gold. We already have them all. We have a better world waiting for you.” They always struck the right nerve, mimicking exactly what we told ourselves to dream about at night. The strange thing about the promoters of Neverland, the fantasy- inspiring drug, was that the dealers wanted nothing in return. They practically handed the stuff out to anyone who showed interest. They watched me from alleys as I moved through frigid city streets, and their eyes gleamed with a strange sadness– a pity for me. “We’re doomed anyway, darling,” They called sluggishly, their energy evaporating into the factory’s smoke. “We’re trying to help you, you know.” When I came of age, I served in my mandatory government service. The factory was huge and completely sterile. It was a mirror image of the faces on the street; the people whose life was sucked from them since the day they were born. In the mornings, the buzz of the city was like a harsh wind blowing through; at night, the silence encapsulated us all. The wheels of time cranked on and on, and we conserved whatever happiness we had left into a better tomorrow. We based our lives on Hook’s promises; we put our souls in a fateful possibility. Every day, we went through the motions, every day, pushing harder towards our goal. If this project didn’t work, we had nothing left. Our very existence would lose purpose, and our weak souls would collapse into oblivion. At the factories, people labored for hours on end. The trucks would bring in loads of our scorched world; the pathetic remains of a paradise lost. Our task was to sort through the charred earth in the hopes of discovering a tree’s seed. These seeds belonged to the great cathedrals once towering over us, the angels in the sky– bodies of shining emerald, arms stretching towards the

heavens, shedding feathers of fire and limbs alive with the swallow’s hymn. In those seeds, we placed the future. The future of a nation in a miniscule speck of life. The seeds were more precious than any treasures– they were our fragile existence in the palm of a hand. And when we started the project, we found buckets of them. And the creature of hope kindled a small fire in our stomachs, and wary eyes creased in the corners, and people would be found gazing upwards at an imaginary skyline of pine and cottonwood. The scientists tried, they really did. But when the word was released that the 26th bucket of seeds had not taken hold in our barren ground, people went mad again. Thousands had been dying in vain, everyday, searching through the radioactive chemicals of the earth in pursuit of the next seed, and they were all living on the words of a prayer. And as time grew on, the buckets became bowls, and the bowls became handfuls. And despair coated the land with its insidious slime faster than any chemical could take hold. As word got out about our inevitable damnation, the seeds began to disappear faster than ever. After an investigative search, Hook realized that the seeds were the primary ingredient in the drug Neverland. And that ingredient was what made it addicting. Apparently, the seed’s last spark of life ignited something inside you; illuminated memories of the past that were never yours to begin with. I worked in the factory for two weeks before I met Peter. Within the two weeks, I found nothing. Not a trace of a seed, not a tiny inkling of hope. The last star– the second star to the right– had blinked out from our existence. The stars had faded into nothingness, and our species was doing the same. However, Peter was unlike the rest of us. In a room of detached, soulless shadows, dissipating into soot, Peter was moving. Peter was fiddling with something in his hands. He was anxious, anticipating. I didn’t ask if he was okay, because every answer nowadays was the same– you and the other person met eyes, and the waves of emptiness transmitted through both forms. They wouldn’t respond, not really, but you knew what they meant, because every night the same thoughts kept you awake. You were too afraid to sleep, because you might crumble to dust, to nothingness, like the world around you. “My name is Wendy,” I said to the boy. “Peter,” he responded, glancing at me. Something in his eyes told me I looked like a wounded

animal. I didn’t know what that made him– possibly a nervous fox, hiding in the bushes. “Is it your first day?” I asked. “Yes.” “Do you need help with anything? I could show you how–” “I got it. Thanks.” The boy snapped. I didn’t have the energy to be angry in response. Like usual, a quiet sadness swept over my face, an endless exhaustion. The boy saw it, too, because he attempted to swallow the words he had said. “I’m sorry, Wendy. It’s just that I used to come here all the time, so I know the ropes. My sister worked here.” “Oh. That’s okay. Where is your sister now?” His expression didn’t change. It was almost like he had formulated the answer long ago; hid it in an empty corner in his head– a walled in room that couldn’t bleed out into the rest of his body. He spoke like a robot, his words forming on his tongue like he had spoken this so many times he was numb to the taste. “She’s dead.” “I’m sorry.” “Her name was Tinkerbell. She was eighteen. She breathed in too many harmful chemicals from the factory. This very factory, actually.” “I’m sorry,” I said. And the apology was more than that. The apology was an attempt to fill the space where an apology should have been, to somehow fill an absence where the remorse from generations past was missing. Our ancestors, who took and took and took until there was nothing. Our ancestors, who were tucked away neatly into coffins of gold and left us here alone, to suffer, with nothing but meaningless coins clogging the arteries of our city. Our ancestors, who led us blindly into our inevitable ruin. “So,” I continued. “Tell me about yourself.” And he did. We passed the time with stories. Peter loved stories– they were the fringes of ancient life continuously preserved in moments. They were the reawakening– the eternal breath of life flowing from transient pages. Everyday, Peter brought a book and read to me. He read me T.S Elliot’s The Wasteland, and I think we both would have laughed if we weren’t so tired. I told him that it took no imagination to create that fantasy– we were in the process of living in it. I also told him I hated books, because we killed off worlds trying to preserve worlds– we wiped out our forests in the effort to jot down what they looked like. But Peter told me that books didn’t end the world, humans did. I couldn’t really argue.

I always knew who Peter was, I think, deep inside. But in the end, it was my fault. I couldn’t suppress the wave engulfing me, the wave of cold that paralyzed my body. I could no longer stand the emptiness inside– the heart devoid of emotion– my fear and love and life and everything draining out of me. Drip by drip it leaked from my soul, as the sooty air swept in and poisoned me instead. I followed Peter home that day. I remember how we both looked up; I remember how we couldn’t find the glimmer separating the sun from the darkness. I saw families huddled on the streets, old people falling into death’s abyss while leaning against piles of trash, little kids being swept away in muddied rivers leading nowhere. When we reached his house, Peter led me to the basement. He told me he was going to give me a ticket home. Our real home, he told me. I saw the people there, like Nana, faintly smiling at concrete walls and reaching towards flickering lights. No longer able to connect with the world around them. “Why do you do this, Peter?” I asked. “Why not? It gives them peace. It gives them happiness. Do you even remember what its like to feel those things?” “But it’s not real,” I insisted. “Don’t tell them that.” From the corner, someone laughed. It was only a little kid, dressed innocently in bunny pajamas complete with fuzzy ears. He was dozing against the wall, giggling silently. I thought of my brother Michael, alone at home, fingers and lips blue from the icy winds and hair brittle with the ashes falling from the sky. He hadn’t laughed for years. When they took Neverland, these people went “home”– and they never returned. They died imagining reality as a place devoid of the cold, the darkness, the suffering, the disease– all caused by our doomed human nature. Peter quoted T.S. Elliot to me, reminding me how the world was bound to end. “With a whimper,” he whispered. “There’s no stopping it.” “We can still stop it,” I murmured. But I was lying to myself. Hook’s plan had failed– the workers hadn’t found a seed for months. “We can’t save ourselves.” Peter said. “Humans– we could never win the battle against our greed. We were doomed from the start. We thought we could push through the murky waters of our

filthy imperfections, that we would finally overcome ourselves and find the light. But our salvation doesn’t exist, Wendy. This is how it was always going to end.” I didn’t cry. Peter was the voice– my voice– the one that whispered in my ear every morning when the birds didn’t chirp, the one that screamed when the clouds of darkness blanketed our city. I heard that confirmation every day, but I could never bring myself to say it out loud. When Peter spoke, it became real. And reality was nothing but a wasteland. The world was nothing but our pitiful attempts to fix our mistakes, and then giving up and accepting our self- imposed fate. You can’t suppress something that comes from inside of you– you can’t fight against your own hands dragging you to the pit. And suddenly, we were falling, trying to grab onto nothingness, plummeting towards the hole we had dug for ourselves. I knew why Peter was nervous. He had found one. In fact, he had found the last one. The very last seed. Contained in that seed, was a chance. A chance of saving the world. The very last glimmer of hope, something that could have the ability to reawaken the stars. Peter ground up the seed and placed it in a transparent capsule. I couldn’t control my body– my hand reached out for it, my heart begged for relief. “To soothe your pain,” Peter prescribed, handing me the drug. “To remember what its like to feel alive.” “Will I see the colors?” I asked quietly. “You will,” he promised. And just like that, I robbed humanity of its last chance. ******** It is warm here. I see things I’ve never seen. I feel things that I’ve never felt. I think it’s happiness, it’s peace. The colors are unbelievable. The trees are blazing like a million suns, exploding across the sky like firecrackers. The sun hangs in the sky like a golden apple, daring me to bite into it’s shimmering light. I hear the birds– they are singing for us. Their song is a salute, honoring the species that lived and died; a species that burnt as fleetingly as a fragile matchstick. And when the flame faltered, they then blew themselves out, until only smoke ascended into the sky above. And now, we are a graveyard, spinning underneath the endless vastness of the starry night. And so the universe exhales, and the breath of existence carries away human life like a forgotten wind– fading out into self-created darkness.

Photographs by Raquel Roman

It was that song... It was that song which reigned supreme amongst the memories which echoed the decades past... It was that song which flew them high On hope It brought food to the table, Safety to the heart, And a lie designed to keep the young young and the old wise It was that song Which brought her home to the Shell of a former life, Where the past decayed, The future was a blank canvas, and time ventured blindly Unaware of itâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s mortal passengers... It was that song that raped her mind of innocence Killed her hope, and Threw her to the wind It was that song which was a rock A symbol and A lie Margo once loved, once Cherished, once Ventured forth, and once... Believed in that song, That song of life...

Photograph by Peyton Koch

A THIRTEENTH FLOOR EXPERIENCE WITH WILLA DORGAN

BOO!

The lights flash as my eyes try to adjust to the bright white blinding me. I grasp the sweaty hand next to me as we apprehensively creep around the next corner. A man in a Scream mask lunges out from a corner and we shrivel in terror. We run past him shrinking with every step,trying to escape his proximity. I look back and see the strobe light flashing from behind the ominous face stuck in a scream as he rears up directly behind me. I scream and whip my head around only to jam my tooth into my friend’s forehead. She screams out in pain while I’m still pushing her to run from the Scream character. The Thirteenth Floor is a haunted house located in Denver. Contrary to popular belief, it does not have thirteen floors but just one that you traverse through. It is a haunted floor of a hotel and each year it has different themes. This year, the themes were: chainsaw, witches, and the undead. All of them were very creepy and all were extremely effective in scaring you. You can totally wait in line if you want-- it does build the suspense. However, I highly recommend getting the fast passes so you can skip the line. It makes the whole experience better. You get to be more secluded from other people so they don’t ruin the jump scares. Another plus is that you don’t have to wait outside for hours in the chilly October weather. Whatever day you go on, if you chose to get the fast past, it adds 10 dollars to your ticket price. I walk in and the first section is a house. There are different rooms that I walked through like the dining room and the bedroom. When I got to the bedroom I didn’t want to walk through because there are dead bodies lying on the bed waiting to jump out. Although, I realized, finally, it was just a tacky fake body. All the strobe lights make it hard to see what’s real and what’s fake. When I got to the dining room, there was a clown. At this perfect moment in time, my friend next to me yells “I HATE CLOWNS!” Great. So now he comes over and starts targeting us just so we can simmer in our fright. She’s shriveling into me and I’m falling to get out of the room. The thing is, I’m not even afraid of clowns, but with all the news stories about creepy clown sighting and clown attacks, even I was a little

freaked out. After you finish the house section, you go through these pillowy black bags. They surround you from every side and press on your body. You can’t see where you’re going and it’s kind of claustrophobic. After the house, you get a small break and go in an elevator. It’s unclear where the elevator really takes you because a sense of direction is something you lose completely while you are in there. Regardless, when the doors open, you’re in another place. You walk out and there are cobwebs and hanging bodies that you have to walk through. There are so many cracksand crevices that you never know where people are hiding. Combined with the ambient dark lighting and the constant soundtrack of people screaming in the background, it’s an agonizingly slow walk. You walk along and all types of things jump out at you: werewolves, witches, and even zombies. Following that, you begin to walk onto some squishy floor in a hallway. This feels like you’re sinking into the ground and is the weirdest sensation especially when you can’t see where you are going. At the end of hallway, there is a tunnel with flashing colored lights. The screen around the tunnel spins so it makes it feel like you’re doing a three-sixty on the bridge which is super trippy. It’s a super sudden jolt when you come out of that into complete darkness. It’s like when you run on the moving pathway in the airport and you run back onto normal ground and suddenly you have to re-orient yourself. The next portion that you go through is the swamp. This is one of the coolest sections. You are surrounded by the same pillowy bags, but only from your waist down. This simulates pushing through underbrush. There is fog everywhere and they even lower the temperature to make it feel like a real swamp. They have green lasers cutting through the air which get broken up as you walk through them. The abundance of fake alligators seem extremely out of place in such a scary environment. They are almost laughable. You make it through the swamp without incident and enter a narrow hallway lined with stained glass windows. When I was in this part, I picked up the pace because there weren’t any places where people could jump out at us. Suddenly, there was a huge crash and all the windows went black. I collapsed on the ground in either fear or surprise; I couldn’t tell which. It took me a minute to recover and pick my folded body off the ground. The rest of the house was mediocre. We eventually got too close to the people in front of us and had to wait for them to move on, which kind of put a damper on the jump scares. We saw the outside world again and my first thought was, how did we end we end up facing this way? Regardless, thinking we’re in the home stretch, we started to casually strut out only to be scared one last time by a guy in a Saw mask that reared up on us with a chainsaw. I emitted one more bone-chilling scream as we ran past the guy. The rest of the people in line gave me a sideways glance but I couldn’t care less. If you love being scared, I would definitely recommend going to the thirteenth floor. The only thing that could’ve made it better was if the theme was clowns. Photograph by Peyton Koch

Halloween Costumes

KOKOPELLI'S MISSION Kokopelli, to southwestern Native Americans, is a symbol of fertility, trade and storytelling. In appearance and meaning, no two Kokopelli are the same. The frequent variation of his form in a language of traditinoal symbols gives him another connotation: CREATIVITY. The purpose of Kokopelli is to present to the Colorado Academy community a selection of writing, stuido art and images both moving and still in an artistically designed and professional publication. Because the magazine is a forum for artistic expression, the staff must be selective with regard to the artistic merit of the work included. Students run all aspects of the publication in a collaborative effort led by the editors.