The Brown Lady 2025

The

BROWN

LADY an academic magazine with a creative spirit Vol. 13 • 2025

The

BROWN

LADY an academic magazine with a creative spirit Vol. 13 • 2025

Published by: Honors College Student Association Printed by Chowan University Graphic Services i

The Legend of "The Brown Lady" Any university campus that’s been around for this long—Chowan University was founded in 1848—really ought to have its own myths, and so Chowan does in the legend of “The Brown Lady.” More than a hundred years ago, she was described in the school’s yearbook as the daughter of a wealthy family from the region who honored her parents’ wishes by attending Chowan, putting off marriage to her fiancé, but tragically dying during her sophomore year. A different version of her legend has her jumping to her death from the top floor of the school’s famous Columns Building after her husband (or fiancé) dies during the Civil War. But the main detail that remains the same in every version is her preference for wearing a brown gown made of taffeta, one that would rustle as she walked that has earned the name of “The Brown Lady.” Legend also consistently portrays her as a silent ghost, only recognizable by the rustling of her dress in the hall or on the breeze. But her legend continues to speak at Chowan, now honored through the magazine that you’re now reading.

ii

Editorial Board Timothy Hayes

Faculty Editor Associate Professor of English

Lenita Bryson

Criminal Justice Honors College Student Association

David Ballew

Professor of History

Bo Dame

Professor of Biology and Physical Sciences

Jennifer Groves Newton Assistant Professor of Graphic Design

Allyson Leggett

Graphics Production

Destiny Vaughan

Disability Services Coordinator

Catherine Vickers

University Copywriter

iii

Welcome Welcome to the 13th edition of The Brown Lady, a creative and academic magazine that celebrates some of the most impressive work created by Chowan University students during the past year! I invite you to explore and enjoy the remarkable collection of outstanding writing, art, and design in this issue. This year’s edition features the largest collection of graphic design that we’ve ever published and our first piece of original music since 2016!

This year’s issue starts with a splash of color and style. Isaiah Gause blends Bauhaus style with ‘80s nostalgia in his “Bauhaus Madonna.” Caryn Bowe gives a national icon an introduction to Memphis style in her “Liberty,” and Daisy Edwards offers her own dash of Memphis style with her “French Fries.” Next come two fascinating stories and a powerful song. Heidi Jensen adds to the lore of our very own Brown Lady with her compelling story “The Brown Lady Encounter,” while Isaiah Gause returns with a powerful story of survival and triumph in “King of the Forest.” In between these two tales, Elizabeth Waltz celebrates her new “home away from home” at Chowan in her original song, “North Carolina.”

In the middle section of this year’s issue, the visual feast continues. First is Erica Mock’s beautiful photo of Virginia Beach, “Relax Your Eyes.” Christian Oleaga’s intriguing and otherworldly design “The Alien” comes next. Then we find three striking works of design by Komari Clark. The urban energy of “Artistic Uprising 3” mixes with the fantasy and beauty of “Demon Slayer” in our centerfold this year. We close this section on a lighter note, with the sock monkey of Komari Clark’s “Artistic Uprising 1” sharing space with Kayleigh Roberts’s fun and reality-challenging “Shark in Space.”

Our final section begins with Erica Mock’s senior capstone project, “Life in the Trenches: The Depths of Hell,” which portrays in stunning detail the daily challenges and horrors that soldiers faced during World War 1. Next comes a showcase of four different works from Ulyses Ortega-Espino’s senior show, each of which explores the complex relationship that humans have with technology. You’ll recognize Senior Show 2, which is also this year’s cover image.

Next, Feidi Abreu Rodriguez’s poem “In the Labyrinth of Her Mind” ponders the world of a neurodiverse sibling. Then, Terri Stroud wraps up this year’s issue with a whimsical and charming story, “The Boy Who Cried Deer.”

On behalf of this year’s editorial board, I encourage you to spend some time with each of these fantastic works in the weeks, months, and years to come. I hope you are as proud of these amazing students as we are. Enjoy . . . and, as always, be sure to congratulate this year’s contributors!

Dr. Tim Hayes Faculty Editor

iv

Table of Contents

Bauhaus Madonna

Isaiah Gause. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9

Liberty

Caryn Bowe. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

10

French Fries

Daisy Edwards . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11

The Brown Lady Encounter

Heidi Jensen. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 12

North Carolina

Elizabeth Waltz. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 15

King of the Forest

Isaiah Gause. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 16

Relax Your Eyes

Erica Mock. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 22

The Alien

Christian Oleaga. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 23

Artistic Uprising 3

Komari Clark. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 24

Demon Slayer

Komari Clark. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 25

Artistic Uprising 1

Komari Clark. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 26

Shark in Space

Kayleigh Roberts. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 27

v

Life in the Trenches

Erica Mock. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 28

Senior Show 2 (featured on cover)

Ulyses Ortega-Espino. . . . . . . . . . . . . .

Senior Show 3

Ulyses Ortega-Espino. . . . . . . . . . . . . .

Senior Show 4

Ulyses Ortega-Espino. . . . . . . . . . . . . .

38 39 40

Senior Show 5

Ulyses Ortega-Espino. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 41

In the Labyrinth of Her Mind

Feidi Abreu Rodriguez. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 42

The Boy Who Cried Deer

Terri Stroud. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 43

vi

Bauhaus Madonna Isaiah Gause

9

Liberty Caryn Bowe

10

French Fries Daisy Edwards

11

The Brown Lady Encounter

The Brown Lady Encounter Heidi Jensen

In the moments leading up to their exploration of the Columns Building, Savanna’s excitement had been met with skepticism and disbelief from her friends. Daniel, Bruce, and Harley had always regarded her fascination with the paranormal as nothing more than a quirky hobby—a harmless eccentricity that set her apart from the rest of them.

"You seriously believe in ghosts?" Daniel had asked, his tone laced with amusement. "Come on, Sav, you can’t be serious."

Bruce had chimed in with a laugh. "Yeah, next thing you know, you’ll be telling us you can talk to aliens, too."

Even Harley, usually the quietest of the group, had raised an eyebrow in disbelief. "I don’t know, Sav. Ghosts just seem . . . far-fetched."

But Savanna had shrugged off their doubts, her enthusiasm undimmed by their skepticism. "Just wait," she had said with a grin. "You’ll see. Once we uncover the truth about the Brown Lady, you’ll be eating your words."

Despite their doubts, Savanna’s friends had agreed to accompany her to the Columns Building, if only to humor her. They had expected nothing more than a harmless adventure, a chance to explore the historic landmark and maybe share a few laughs along the way. Savanna had always been fascinated by the paranormal, and she had come prepared for their exploration of the Columns Building. In her backpack, she carried an array of equipment designed to communicate with spirits and detect supernatural activity. First, she pulled out a digital voice recorder, its sleek black surface glinting in the moonlight.

12

"This will allow us to capture any EVPs—Electronic Voice Phenomena," she explained to her friends.

"Sometimes, spirits can communicate through recordings, even if we can’t hear them with our own ears."

Next, she produced a set of EMF meters, each one equipped with glowing LED lights and a digital display. "These will help us detect fluctuations in electromagnetic fields," she said, handing one to each of her companions. "Supposedly, spirits can manipulate EMF readings, so if we see any unusual spikes, it could indicate paranormal activity."

Bruce raised an eyebrow, impressed by Savanna’s preparation. "Not bad, Sav. You’ve really done your homework."

Savanna wasn’t finished yet. From the depths of her backpack, she withdrew a spirit box, a device that scanned through radio frequencies, allowing spirits to manipulate the signals to communicate.

"This is the real deal," she said, her eyes sparkling with excitement. "If the Brown Lady wants to talk to us, this is our best chance of hearing her."

Finally, she pulled out a bundle of sage and a box of matches. "And, just in case things get too intense, we have some sage to cleanse the space and protect ourselves from negative energy."

With their equipment in hand, the group faced the Columns Building, their hearts pounding with a mixture of excitement and apprehension. They knew they were about to embark on a journey into the unknown, where the boundaries between the living and the dead blurred with each step they took. But, armed with their determination and their

The Brown Lady Encounter tools of the trade, they were ready to face whatever mysteries awaited them in the darkened halls. Each column seemed to hold a story of its own, etched with the memories of generations long gone. The entrance loomed before them like a gateway to another world, the heavy wooden doors creaking on their rusted hinges. The air seemed to become heavy with the weight of history. The sound of their footsteps echoed through the hall, each step a reminder of the building’s age. Cobwebs clung to the corners, their delicate threads shimmering in the moonlight like strands of silver. Shadows frolicked along the walls, contorting with each flicker of the light. As they climbed the creaking stairs to the top floor, the air grew colder, the darkness more oppressive. Each step seemed to echo with the weight of centuries, the sound reverberating through the empty corridors like a heartbeat in the night. As they reached the top floor, they were greeted by the full majesty of the building’s grandeur. At that moment, the building seemed to come alive with a sense of foreboding. Windows, long since boarded up, stared blankly into the night.

Dust encapsulated the furniture, and the once noisy hallway stood silent.

As the students ventured deeper, they realized that they were not alone—that something ancient and restless was waiting to be discovered. Savanna, the adventurous one with a penchant for the unknown, led the way with a flashlight in hand. Daniel followed closely behind, his skepticism masked by a facade of bravado. Bruce, the thrill-seeker of the group, cracked jokes to alleviate the tension, while Harley, the quiet observer, seemed lost in her own thoughts.

As they ascended the creaking stairs, the air grew heavy with anticipation, and echoes of their footsteps reverberated through the empty corridors.

"This place gives me the creeps," Daniel muttered, his voice barely above a whisper.

"Ah, come on, Danny boy, where’s your sense of adventure?" Bruce teased, though his laughter was tinged with unease.

Savanna shot them a reassuring smile. "We’re here to uncover the truth, remember? And who knows, maybe we’ll even catch a glimpse of the infamous Brown Lady."

They reached the top floor, where the air seemed to grow even colder, the darkness even more oppressive. The sound of their breathing echoed in the silence, each step echoing like a heartbeat in the night.

"This is it," Savanna whispered, her voice barely audible over the pounding of her own heart.

They stepped into the main hall, where moonlight filtered through stained glass windows, casting colorful patterns on the dusty floor. Cobwebs clung to the corners, and the faint scent of decay hung in the air.

Suddenly, a chill swept through the room, sending shivers down their spines. A soft whisper echoed through the hall, barely discernible yet unmistakably haunting.

"Do you hear that?" Harley asked, his voice just above a whisper.

The others nodded, their eyes wide with fear.

"It’s just the wind," Bruce said, though his voice lacked conviction.

Savanna shook her head. "No, it’s her. The Brown Lady."

They moved cautiously through the hall, their footsteps muffled by the thick layer of dust.

Shadows danced along the walls, and strange shapes seemed to materialize out of the darkness.

And then they saw her: a spectral figure standing at the end of the hall, her form bathed in moonlight.

Her eyes glowed with an otherworldly light, and her long, flowing gown billowed around her like mist.

The teenagers froze, their breath caught in their throats. They had heard the stories, but nothing could have prepared them for the chilling reality of seeing the Brown Lady with their own eyes. She materialized before the teenagers as a haunting apparition, her form ghostly. She floated before them with an otherworldly grace, her figure shrouded in the pale glow of the moon, her long, tattered brown dress floating around her like a cloud. Her features were indistinct, as if obscured by the passage of time, yet her eyes glowed with a light that seemed to pierce through the darkness.

There were pools of sorrow and longing, reflecting the pain of a soul trapped between the realms of the living and the dead. Her hair, once rich and lustrous, now hung in tangled tendrils around her face. Despite her ghostly appearance, there was an undeniable presence to the Brown Lady, a sense of power that commanded the attention of all who beheld her. She seemed to emanate an aura of

13

The Brown Lady Encounter sadness and despair, as if burdened by the weight of her own tragic fate.

"She’s real," Daniel whispered, his voice tinged with disbelief.

Savanna’s heart raced with a mixture of fear and excitement. With trembling hands, she reached into her backpack and retrieved the spirit box, a device she hoped would allow them to communicate with the restless spirit that haunted the Columns Building.

"Sav, what are you doing?" Daniel asked, his voice filled with caution.

"I’m going to try to talk to her," Savanna replied, her voice steady despite the tremor in her hands.

She turned on the spirit box and held it out in front of her, the crackling of static filling the air. The device scanned through radio frequencies, each sound punctuated by bursts of white noise.

"Hello there. I am Savanna," she called out, her voice echoing through the empty hall.

For a moment, there was only silence, the air thick with anticipation. Then, to their amazement, a voice emerged from the static, a faint whisper.

"I am here," she replied through the spirit box.

Savanna’s heart skipped a beat as she realized they were communicating with the Brown Lady herself.

The teenagers exchanged nervous glances, the weight of the lady’s presence hanging heavy in the air.

"Wh–why do you haunt this place?" Daniel muttered, his voice filled with fear and curiosity.

There was a moment of silence, and then words began to flutter from the spirit box. "I am trapped here, between the realms of the living and the dead.”

Bruce swallowed hard, his bravado faltering in the face of her ghostly presence. "What happened to you? How did you end up like this?"

The spirit box began to shout, "I await my love’s return!"

14

North Carolina

North Carolina Elizabeth Waltz Verse 1 I hate the pollen that drops from the trees, but I love the way that you look at me.

Hate the long drive by all them cotton fields, but I love the way holding you makes me feel.

Pre-chorus Cause I Can’t help but Chorus Call this new place home, My home away from home.

Although the road is long, I’m callin’ it hooooooooooome Callin’ it hooooooome.

Verse 2

Hate that the weather has no pattern here, but I love the way you take away all my fears.

Hate the cold mornin’ into hot afternoons, but I love the way you sing songs in tune.

Hate how the rain brings puddles everywhere we walk, but I love the way we can just sit and talk.

Pre-chorus Chorus Bridge I know it’s only for now, And I won’t be here long.

But as long as it lasts, I’m callin’ it home.

Pre-chorus Chorus Outro I’m callin’ it hoooooooooome.

Callin’ it hoooooome.

To hear a performance of this song, please scan the QR Code.

15

King of the Forest

King of the Forest Isaiah Gause In the solitude of my room, I found myself consumed by a tempest of emotions, each wave crashing against the fragile shores of my soul. The soft moonlight filtering through the curtains cast long shadows across the walls, a stark reminder of the darkness that had descended upon my life.

"Conrad," he said, his tone softened slightly by the weight of his grief. "I know things have been tough since your mother passed. I thought . . . I thought maybe a change of scenery might do us good. How about a hunting trip in the Appalachian Mountains?

Just you and me."

My mother’s absence weighed heavily on my heart, a gaping void that no amount of tears could fill. Her memory lingered in every corner of the room, from the faded photographs adorning the walls to the faint scent of her perfume that still lingered in the air. With each passing moment, the ache of her loss grew deeper, threatening to swallow me whole.

I blinked, caught off guard by his unexpected invitation. A hunting trip? In the mountains? It seemed like a world away from the emptiness of our small town, a chance to escape the suffocating grip of grief that had held us captive for so long.

Lost in my thoughts, I was jolted back to reality by a sharp knock at the door. With a heavy sigh, I rose from my bed and crossed the room to answer it, dreading the confrontation that awaited me on the other side. My father stood there, a stoic figure framed by the dim light of the hallway. His presence reeked of cheap vodka and warm beer.

"Conrad." His voice was gruff, tinged with a hint of annoyance, as he drunkenly slurred his words. "I need to talk to you."

My heart sank at the sight of him, a towering presence that seemed to fill the room with an oppressive weight. I braced myself for the onslaught of words, for the accusations and recriminations that I assumed would follow.

As he spoke, the words washed over me like a tidal wave, drowning out the cacophony of my own thoughts.

I stood there, my father’s words hanging heavy in the air like a dense fog. His voice, roughened by years of hardship and pain, carried a strange mixture of sorrow and determination.

16

But, even as the glimmer of hope flickered to life within me, I couldn’t shake the nagging sense of unease that gnawed at the edges of my consciousness. My father, drunk and unpredictable, was not exactly the most reliable companion. And yet, in his own twisted way, he was reaching out to me, offering me a chance to escape the darkness that threatened to consume us both.

I hesitated, torn between the desperate desire to cling to the flicker of hope and the nagging fear of what lay ahead. But, in the end, it was the memory of my mother’s gentle smile that gave me the strength to nod.

"Okay, Dad," I said, my voice barely above a whisper.

"I’ll go with you."

And, as we stood there in the dimly lit hallway, a strange sense of solidarity washed over us, binding us together in our shared grief and longing. But, after what felt like an eternity, my father stumbled his way back into the living room, and I locked myself back into the confines of my room.

I lay in bed, the darkness pressing in around me like a suffocating blanket. The events of the day swirled through my mind like a storm, each memory

King of the Forest a jagged shard of pain that threatened to tear me apart from the inside out.

sense of unease that seemed to grow with each passing moment.

The invitation from my father replayed in my mind, his words echoing in the stillness of the night. A hunting trip in the Appalachian Mountains, he had said. A chance to escape the grip of grief that had held us both in its clutches since my mother’s passing.

As we made our way downstairs, the air thick with the stench of alcohol, I watched in silence as my father gathered supplies and ammunition, his movements slow and unsteady. The clatter of metal against metal echoed through the house, a stark reminder of the trip I spent the night dreading.

But, even as the possibility of escape beckoned to me like a distant beacon of hope, I couldn’t shake the gnawing feeling of loss that coiled in the pit of my stomach. My mother’s death, ruled an accidental overdose, felt like a cruel joke, a twisted mockery of the truth that I knew deep down in my heart: she hadn’t died by accident. She had died to escape the pain, the abuse, the relentless cycle of violence that had plagued our family for as long as I could remember. Her death had been a purposeful act of defiance, a final act of courage in the face of unspeakable suffering. And, now that she was gone, there was nothing to shield me from my father’s wrath.

Outside, the morning air was crisp and cool, a sharp contrast to the stifling atmosphere inside. The truck waited in the driveway, its engine idling impatiently as if eager to begin the journey ahead.

I squeezed my eyes shut, trying to block out the memories that threatened to overwhelm me.

But, no matter how hard I tried, I couldn’t escape the truth that lay heavy on my heart like a lead weight. Tears pricked at the corners of my eyes as I whispered a silent prayer into the void, a desperate plea for the strength to survive the darkness that threatened to consume me. And, as sleep continued to elude me, I dreaded the misfortune life had in store for me to face. But, deep down, as long as I had the memory of my mother’s love to guide me, I knew that I would never truly be alone.

And, with that thought echoing in my mind like a whispered promise, I closed my eyes and prayed for dawn to come swiftly, chasing away the shadows that lurked in the corners of my soul.

The first light of dawn seeped through the curtains, casting a pale glow across the room as I stirred from my restless sleep. The sound of my father’s voice, rough and hoarse, shattered the fragile peace of the morning, jolting me awake with a sense of impending dread.

"Conrad, get up," he grumbled, his words slurred and disjointed. "We’re leaving for the mountains."

I blinked away the remnants of sleep, my heart heavy with the weight of his words. The hunting trip loomed before me like a specter, filling me with a

With a heavy sigh, I climbed into the passenger seat, the leather upholstery cold against my skin. My father followed suit, his expression haggard as he put the truck in gear and pulled out onto the road.

As we drove along the winding mountain roads, the silence between us was suffocating, broken only by the steady thrum of the engine. My father’s attempts at conversation only served to drive us further apart, his words like barbs that tore at my already wounded soul.

"You know," he mumbled, his words barely coherent.

"There’s a story they tell around here. About a giant bear that roams these mountains, hunting down runts like you for lunch."

His words cut through me like a knife, leaving me feeling raw and exposed. The thought of encountering such a creature filled me with a primal fear that I couldn’t shake.

But my father seemed oblivious to my discomfort, his laughter a hollow echo in the confines of the car.

"What’s the matter, Conrad? Scared?" he slurred, his words barely intelligible. "You always were weak, just like your mother. Can’t even handle a little ghost story, can you?"

The pain in his words was like a physical blow, knocking the breath from my lungs as I struggled to hold back the tears that threatened to spill over.

In that moment, I felt as though I were drowning in a sea of his contempt, unable to escape the suffocating weight of his disappointment.

With a heavy heart, I retreated into myself, seeking solace in the recesses of my own mind as the miles stretched out before us like an endless expanse of emptiness. And, as sleep claimed me once more, I

17

King of the Forest prayed for the strength to endure whatever trials lay before me, knowing that the road ahead would be fraught with danger and uncertainty.

rifle and followed him into the gathering darkness, the weight of his disapproval heavy upon my shoulders.

I woke to the sensation of the truck lurching to a stop, the engine sputtering to a halt as my father cut the ignition. Rubbing the sleep from my eyes, I peered out the window to find that we had arrived at our destination, a secluded campsite nestled deep in the heart of the Appalachian wilderness.

As we ventured deeper into the wilderness, the trees loomed overhead like silent sentinels, their branches swaying gently in the cool morning breeze. The rhythmic crunch of leaves beneath our feet echoed loudly in the stillness of the forest, a stark reminder of the solitude that surrounded us.

The air was crisp and cool, tinged with the scent of pine and earth. A sense of foreboding settled over me as I stepped out of the truck, the weight of my father’s disapproval heavy upon my shoulders.

Suddenly, a movement caught my eye, a flash of brown amidst the sea of green. My heart leapt in my chest as I spotted a female deer grazing peacefully in a small clearing ahead, oblivious to our presence.

With a grunt, my father began unloading our supplies, his movements brusque and impatient. I tried to help, but it seemed that, no matter what I did, it was never good enough.

Instinct took over as I raised my rifle, the metal cold against my trembling hands. My father’s voice cut through the stillness, urging me to take the shot, to prove myself worthy in his eyes.

"You’re doing it all wrong, Conrad," he snapped, his voice cutting through the stillness of the forest like a knife. "Can’t you do anything right? You’re as useless as your mother was."

But, as I looked through the scope, my vision blurred, and my hands shook with a strange sense of unease. The deer, so graceful and delicate, reminded me of my mother, her gentle spirit forever etched in my memory.

His words hit me like a ton of bricks, knocking the breath from my lungs as I struggled to contain the flood of emotions threatening to overwhelm me. I bit back a retort, the sting of his insult burning like acid in my chest.

But my father seemed unfazed by my silence, his tirade continuing unabated.

"I swear, you’re just like her," he spat, his voice thick with contempt. "Weak, stupid, and utterly worthless.

Can’t even set up a damn tent without screwing it up."

Each word was like a dagger to the heart, a painful reminder of all the ways in which I had failed to live up to his expectations. And, as I stood there, my hands trembling with suppressed rage and humiliation, I vowed that, no matter what he said or did, I would never allow myself to become like him.

The crisp air of the forest filled my lungs as I caught my breath from finishing setting up camp. With a heavy sigh, I surveyed our handiwork, the tent standing tall against the backdrop of the towering trees.

My father’s voice shattered the stillness of the morning, gruff and impatient as he urged me to hurry up. With a sense of resignation, I grabbed my

18

I hesitated, my finger hovering over the trigger, as a flood of memories washed over me, memories of laughter and love, of a time before the darkness had consumed us both.

But, before I could gather my resolve, my father’s hand closed around mine, his grip firm and unyielding. With a steady hand, he took aim and fired, the deafening blast shattering the silence of the forest.

The deer fell, its graceful form crumpling to the forest floor in a heap of tangled limbs. For a moment, I stood frozen in shock, the echo of the gunshot ringing in my ears like a haunting melody.

But, as reality came crashing back, so too did the sting of my father’s words. He turned to me, his eyes blazing with fury as he berated me for my hesitation, for my weakness, for my failure to live up to his expectations.

And, in that moment, something inside me snapped. The years of abuse and neglect, the endless cycle of pain and suffering—it all came crashing down on me like a tidal wave, filling me with a seething rage that burned hot and bright.

King of the Forest I wanted to scream, to lash out at the man who had tormented me for so long. But instead, I turned away, my jaw clenched tight with suppressed fury as I silently vowed that this would be the last time I allowed myself to be a victim of his cruelty.

I nodded numbly, the feeling of unease still lingering in the pit of my stomach as I ventured back into the forest. The trees seemed to close in around me, their branches reaching out like gnarled fingers in the fading light.

I couldn’t shake the feeling of unease that gnawed at the edges of my consciousness, the knowledge that I was venturing into the unknown with a man who had never shown me anything but contempt.

And then I saw them: bear tracks, large and unmistakable, imprinted in the soft earth like a warning from some unseen guardian. My heart thundered in my chest as I realized the truth. We were not alone in these woods.

But, as we walked, a strange sense of determination welled up within me, a desperate need to prove myself worthy in my father’s eyes. And so, I followed him deeper into the darkness, each step forward a silent vow to overcome my weakness.

As dusk began to fall, we trudged through the darkening forest back to our tents. The weight of the deer slung over my father’s shoulder seemed to grow heavier with each passing step. The shadows of branches stretched out around us like grasping fingers, the fading light casting eerie shadows across the forest floor.

A sense of unease settled over me like a heavy cloak, the feeling of being watched by unseen eyes sending shivers down my spine. I glanced over my shoulder, half expecting to catch a glimpse of some lurking predator, but the forest remained still and silent.

"Dad," I began tentatively, my voice barely above a whisper. "Do you feel that?"

But my father merely grunted in response, his attention focused solely on the task at hand.

I swallowed back the rising tide of fear that threatened to choke me, pushing the feeling of dread to the back of my mind as we continued on our trek.

As we reached the campsite, my father wasted no time in getting to work, the sharp scent of blood mingling with the smell of pine and oak. With practiced hands, he began to clean the deer, his movements violent yet efficient.

"Conrad," he called over his shoulder, his voice tinged with impatience as he cracked open another bottle of cheap liquor. "Go and fetch some firewood.

We’ll need a good blaze if we’re going to cook this meat before it spoils."

With a sense of growing panic, I turned and fled back to the campsite, trying not to trip over logs and branches as they fell from my hand, the fear driving me forward like a force of nature. My father looked up in surprise as I stumbled into the clearing, my breath coming in ragged gasps.

"Dad," I panted, my voice trembling with fear. "There’s something out there. Something big."

But my father merely sighed, the sound ringing hollow in the stillness of the evening.

"Nonsense, son," he scoffed, taking a long swig from the bottle at his side. "It’s probably just a bobcat or a cougar. Now, stop your senseless yapping and help me get this fire going."

I stared at my father in disbelief, the urgency of my words lost on him as he continued to dismiss my fears with a casual wave of his hand.

"But Dad," I insisted, my voice rising in desperation. "I saw the tracks myself. They were huge, three times the size of my boots. It’s the bear from the story you told me, I know it."

But my father’s expression remained unchanged, his features twisted into a sneer of annoyance as he rolled his eyes in exasperation.

"Conrad, for the love of God, will you grow up?" he snapped, his voice laced with frustration.

"It’s just a story, a myth. There’s no bear out there, I told you that already. Now stop being so foolish and help me get this fire going."

His words cut deep, a painful reminder of the vast emotional gulf that lay between us, a gulf filled with my father’s contempt and my own desperate need for validation. I wanted to scream, to shake him until he saw reason, but I knew it would be futile.

19

King of the Forest With a heavy heart, I turned away, the weight of his dismissal heavy upon my shoulders as I resigned myself to the harsh reality of our situation. The forest loomed dark and foreboding around us, a silent witness to the brewing storm of my father’s arrogance and my own simmering fear and frustration.

But, even as I busied myself with the task at hand, a sense of unease settled over me like a wet blanket, casting a shadow over the once familiar surroundings. And, as I glanced nervously into the darkness, I couldn’t shake the feeling that something was after us, with my father’s skepticism adding to the weight of uncertainty that hung in the air.

The crackling of the fire filled the air with a comforting warmth as my father and I sat in silence, the weight of our unspoken words hanging heavy between us. The scent of roasting meat mingled with the acrid tang of alcohol, a bitter reminder of the rift that had grown between us.

I stole a glance at my father, his features twisted in a drunken stupor as he clumsily tended to the cooking deer. I hated being around him when he was like this, the alcohol turning him into a stranger, a cruel parody of the man he once was.

But, before I could voice my thoughts, a sudden rustling in the bushes shattered the fragile peace of the night. My heart leapt into my throat as I froze, the hairs on the back of my neck standing on end.

"It’s the bear," I whispered hoarsely, my voice barely audible. "I knew it."

But my father merely grunted in response, his drunken haze clouding his judgment as he stumbled to his feet, rifle in hand. With a wild shout, he fired into the darkness, the sharp cracks of gunfire echoing through the forest like thunder.

I watched in horror as he disappeared into the shadows, his form swallowed up by the inky blackness of the night. The seconds stretched into eternity as I waited, the silence broken only by the pounding of my heart in my ears.

And then, a sound, a guttural roar that reverberated through the forest like a primal force of nature. My blood ran cold as I realized the truth: my father had not scared off the beast but instead had drawn its wrath upon himself.

20

I wanted to scream, to run to his aid, but fear rooted me to the spot as I listened helplessly to the sounds of his agony, the sickening crunch of bone, the desperate screams of pain, and the deep, menacing growl of the creature that had taken him from me.

The massive bear emerged from the shadows, its fur matted with blood and its eyes gleaming with a feral hunger. I was frozen in shock, my mind struggling to process the nightmare unfolding before me.

But, as the beast lumbered closer, a primal instinct kicked in, forcing me to act. With panicked hands, I grabbed my rifle and fired, the shots ringing out like desperate pleas into the night.

But the bullets were too small, too weak to stop the enraged creature in its tracks. Instead, they seemed to only anger it further, its growls growing louder as it charged towards me with terrifying speed.

With a surge of adrenaline, I turned and fled, my legs pumping furiously as I raced towards my father’s truck. The sound of my own panicked breaths filled the air as I fumbled for the keys, my fingers shaking as I struggled to unlock the door.

But, before I could even turn the key, the bear was upon me, its massive form slamming into the side of the truck with bone-shaking force. I stumbled backwards, my heart pounding in my chest as I scrambled to safety inside the cab.

I lay on the floor of the truck, my body racked with sobs, as the bear thrashed and roared outside, its fury unleashed upon the metal prison that stood between us. The sound of rending metal filled the air, each blow like a death knell echoing in the darkness.

And, as the truck rocked and groaned under the force of the bear’s assault, I knew that I was truly alone, trapped in a nightmare from which there was no escape. All I could do was huddle in the darkness and pray for the dawn to come and deliver me from this hellish ordeal.

As the bear’s furious onslaught continued, my mind was consumed with terror, my thoughts racing in a frantic scramble for escape. But, amidst the chaos, a voice broke through the darkness, a voice that sounded like my mother’s, soft and soothing, urging me to find the strength within myself to fight back.

King of the Forest With her words echoing in my mind, a spark of determination ignited within me, driving out the paralyzing fear that had held me captive. I knew that I couldn’t let this beast destroy me, couldn’t let it rob me of my chance to survive.

I glanced around the truck, searching desperately for anything that could give me an edge in this deadly game of cat and mouse. And then, as if by some stroke of luck, my eyes fell upon a faint glimmer on the floor, the flare gun that my father had kept in his truck for emergencies.

With trembling hands, I reached for the weapon, the weight of it heavy in my grasp. There was only one round, one chance to end this nightmare before it ended me. But I knew that I had to take it, I had to fight with everything I had if I wanted to see another sunrise.

For a brief moment, time seemed to stand still as the flare found its mark, its fiery glow illuminating the bear’s gaping maw with an otherworldly brilliance. And then, with a deafening explosion, the flare erupted in a blinding burst of light, engulfing the bear in a searing inferno of pain and agony.

I watched in grim satisfaction as the beast writhed and thrashed in the flames, its roars of fury silenced by the searing heat. And, as the light faded and the smoke cleared, I knew that the battle was finally over, the bear defeated, and my father’s legacy of cruelty and abuse laid to rest, once and for all.

With adrenaline coursing through my veins and determination burning in my heart, I knew that this was my moment to prove my father wrong, to show him that I was not weak, that I was capable of facing my fears head on. With a defiant roar of my own, I leaped from the safety of the truck and sprinted away, the pounding of my heart drowning out the thunderous roar of the pursuing bear.

I could feel the beast’s hot breath on my heels, its monstrous presence looming ever closer with each passing moment. But I refused to let fear consume me, refused to back down in the face of danger.

And then, as I reached a clearing in the forest, I turned to face my adversary, my heart pounding in my chest as the bear reared up before me, its massive form towering over me like a living nightmare. Its fur was matted with blood, its eyes burning with a savage hunger that sent chills down my spine.

But there was no fear left in my heart, only a fierce determination to survive. With a steely resolve, I met the bear’s gaze head-on, my eyes locking with its own in a silent battle of wills. In that moment, I saw the same look of hatred and contempt that had once filled my father’s eyes, a reminder of all the pain and suffering he had inflicted upon me.

With a sense of grim satisfaction, I took aim, the flare gun steady in my trembling hands. And, as the bear lunged towards me, its jaws gaping wide in a silent roar of rage, I pulled the trigger, and the flare raced through the air with deadly accuracy.

21

Relax Your Eyes Erica Mock

22

The Alien Christian Oleaga

23

Artistic Uprising 3 Komari Clark

24

Demon Slayer Komari Clark

25

Artistic Uprising 1 Komari Clark

26

Shark in Space Kayleigh Roberts

27

Life in the Trenches: The Depths of Hell

Life in the Trenches: The Depths of Hell Erica Mock Upon the start of the First World War, governments and military planners thought it was going to be a war of movement, with massive use of infantry and cavalry, since past wars had usually been fought like in this way.1 However, although soldiers may have been fighting over the same ground as in previous conflicts, the battles they were about to fight were unlike any ever fought before. The military was going to have to get out of its comfort zone and adapt to the changes wrought by technological advancements. The Great War was the first time artillery would dominate the battlefield. Soldiers no longer were placed into two ranks to fire their weapons at the opposing side, but they were going to need a new defense system. Originally, that is what the trenches were supposed to be, but they soon became a fundamental part of strategy with the influx of modern weapons of war.

The invention of such a powerful weapon turned an infantry attack into a mass suicide due to the highly explosive shells and accuracy. The military sustained a much higher casualty rate than they were expecting going into the war, since they did not calculate how effective the new weapons each side had developed were going to be. The new abilities unlocked by these advances kept both sides from achieving a breakthrough, and the war evolved into trench warfare that lasted throughout the whole war. While trench warfare was a logical innovation necessitated by the development of machine guns, hand grenades, tanks, and other technological innovations, it also created new and treacherous miseries that wreaked havoc on soldiers on both sides of the lines. These included extreme weather conditions, sneaky pests, death around every corner, and an unbearable stench.

Soldiers now had entirely new weapons at their fingertips, like field guns that had a range of up to five miles; smoke and gas bombs that blinded, incapacitated, and killed the enemy by spreading poisonous fumes; the tank, an armored, gunequipped vehicle that was capable of crushing barbed wire and crossing trenches; and, the best defensive weapon, the machine gun.2 Designed

by Hiram Maxim, the machine gun could fire up to 600 bullets a minute, compared to the musket that was used in the Revolutionary War, which took nine movements to reload.3 Heavy artillery now could fire a shell five miles with such destructive power that it produced the loss of limbs and lives.4

After several massacres on each side at the beginning of the war, the accuracy and power of modern artillery drove both the Central Powers and Allied Armies to seek shelter underground.5 All throughout France, Belgium, and Eastern Europe, soldiers found themselves mired in a frustrating stalemate created by trench warfare. Although the glory of historical trench warfare seemed to be a never-ending rain of bullet shells, the reality of it could be summed up by a common saying a soldier would hear in the trenches: “Ten hours of digging for ten minutes of rifle fire.”6 Then, a heavyduty artillery attack would destroy all the progress that the army had made, leaving the soldiers to

1 Tony Ashworth, Trench Warfare 1914-1918: The Live and Let Live System (New York: Holmes & Meier Publishers, Inc., 1980), 1.

2 Russell Freeman, The War to End All Wars: World War I (New York: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company, 2010), 53.

3 Freeman, 53.

4 Virginia Bernhard, The Smell of War: Three Americans in the Trenches of World War I. C.a. Brannen Series, V. 14. (College Station: Texas A & M University Press, 2017), 6.

5 Anderson, W. D. A. “Trench Warfare.” Scientific American 113, no. 1 (1915), 6–8.

6 Anderson, 6-8.

28

Life in the Trenches: The Depths of Hell trade in weapons for a shovel or a pick to repair the damage. At times, the soldiers felt more like earthworms, constantly digging, than soldiers fighting for their country.

The trenches were more than simple defensive fortifications from which the soldiers fought; they were actually quite complex networks of connecting ditches. If the trenches were constructed as straight lines, the enemy could simply set up a machine gun and fire down the trenches, creating horrific casualties for the troops. To avert this, the soldiers broke the trenches into smaller sections, and each section had zig-zag bays constructed specifically to ensure soldier safety.7 Typically, each trench was dug six to seven feet deep into the earth and reached up to six feet wide.8 A fully developed trench system was comprised of three trench lines running parallel to one another, the front, support, and reserve, all of which were connected by communication trenches. Through these trenches, soldiers, materials, and supplies moved up and down between the lines without having to go over open ground.9 The purpose of constructing separate lines was so that, in case an artillery shell landed in one of these bays, it was contained. The next line could fight back, and ultimately it would limit the number of casualties.

Another important feature in these trenches was the dugouts. The dugouts were constructed into the sides of the trenches, acting as a shelter for soldiers to burrow into when under attack.10 Yes, the trench itself allowed for protection from the heavy artillery, but the dugouts provided extra defense.

Not only did the dugouts provide protection to the men, but they also acted as an area for soldiers to live in while they served on the front line. Each dugout varied in size, comfort, and security. Some shelters had electricity, running water, and elegant furnishing for the officers in the reserved line of the trenches.11 Soldiers in the dugouts would eat their meals, arrange meetings, make their beds in the dugout they were residing in, and use the dugout as a storage unit for their weapons.

The land that separated the trenches of the opposing armies was known as “no man’s land”.

No man's land was a blasted and barren area that neither side controlled but would patrol and fire across daily.12 The distance between opposing trenches varied from 10 to 1,000 yards. In some cases, opposing armies were less than 10 yards apart.13 With the trenches so close, one could sometimes hear laughter, singing, talking, and other noises associated with everyday living from the enemy trenches.14 The proximity allowed soldiers to have such direct communication with the opposing side that friendships were not uncommon. Despite the fact that these men were fighting in a war, they occasionally created relationships that were too strong to kill one another. A soldier on the front line wrote, “Some of our straps are less than 10 yards apart. At first, we threw bombs at each other, but then agreed not to throw any more. . . .

If a Frenchman had ordered us to throw bombs several times during the night, we agreed to throw them to the left and the right of the trench.”15 Stories like this bothered one Allied general, making him question if his men truly knew the object of war: to eliminate the enemy both physically and mentally.16 General Jack and other military leaders considered it common courtesy not to interfere when the opposing side was delivering common goods and weekly rations on the front line; however, they did not consider being friends with the opposing side part of their duties in the trenches.

Though some of the trenches were close, others were up to 1,000 yards apart, making it difficult to gather intelligence about the enemy’s plans and movements. To gain the information necessary to be successful in the war and know the correct time to strike at the other side, soldiers were sent over the top into no man’s land. This task was to be completed after nightfall, or it would be a suicide mission, since they would be an easy target.

Crossing no man’s land entailed navigating a treacherous maze of barbed wire and hundreds of abandoned trenches, on top of the hail of bullets and shrapnel and poison gas, making the casualty number extremely high.17 Going over the top to

7 John Ellis, Eye-Deep in Hell: Trench Warfare in World War I (Great Britain: Croom Helm inc., 1976), 14.

8 A.E. Ashworth, The Sociology of Trench Warfare 1914-18 (The British Journal of Sociology 19, no. 4, 1968), 407.

9 Imperial War Museums, "Life in the Trenches of the First World War." 10 Anderson, W. D. A. “Trench Warfare.” Scientific American 113, no. 1 (1915), 6–8.

11 Jackson Marshall III, Memories of World War I: North Carolina Doughboys on the Western Front (Raleigh, NC: North Carolina Department of Cultural Resources, 1998), 90.

12 Freeman, 4.

13 Ashworth, 408.

14 Ibid., 409.

15 Ibid., 413.

16 Ibid., 410.

17 Bernhard, 92.

29

Life in the Trenches: The Depths of Hell collect intelligence was a job no man wanted. (To see no man’s land from the trenches, go to page 36). Fifty years after the war, Richard Tobin, who served with Britain’s Royal Naval Division, recalled how he and his fellow soldiers entered no man’s land as they tried to break through the enemy’s lines: As soon as you get over the top . . . fear has left you and it is terror. You don’t look, you see. You don’t hear, you listen. Your nose is filled with fumes and death. You taste the top of your mouth. You’re hunted back to the jungle. The veneer of civilization has dropped away.18 Though the dangers and terrors of no man’s land were immediate and life-threatening, the common soldier's greatest enemy was water and mud found in the trenches. It was common in the trenches for the water level to reach at least a foot, and it would often surpass a man’s thigh.19 Soldiers on some occasions found themselves standing with frigid ankles or even waist-deep mud for several days.

(To see the rising water in the trenches compared to the men in them, go to page 35). Between 1914 and 1918, the Western Front experienced unusually cold temperatures and torrential rains. It seemed like rain could fall from the sky at almost any time.

Between October 25, 1914, and March 10, 1915, the trenches saw only 18 dry days, 11 of which were below freezing.20 Newly dug trenches and tunnels filled with rainwater, muddy fields slowed the movement of troops during the day, and cold nighttime temperatures caused thousands to endure frostbite.21 One French soldier fighting in the Third Battle of Ypres wrote that the drizzling of rain continued, without a pause, throughout the entire month of August and some parts of September.22 Another Frenchman described the trenches as “nothing more than a strip of water.”23 Into this strip of water, the carnage of war added a mixture of water, blood, bones, and urine, filling the trenches with an unspeakable stench, and adding further to the men’s misery.

The men not only had to deal with the flooding that came with the constant heavy rainfall; they

also had to deal with the mud it created. The water mixed with soil and the aforementioned mixture, turning the ground into a thick, odiferous mud.

Some soldiers said their hardest trial of the war was this mud. A great danger while fighting in the mud was falling into a shell hole and slowly being sucked down. Unfortunately, many men drowned in the mud. Horses carrying weapons and supplies were caught chest-deep in the mud, with no way of getting out.24 In one month, the Guards battalion of the Central Powers lost 16 men through drowning in the mud. One of the men in this battalion was trapped with mud up to his neck for nearly 46 hours, and, though he was eventually rescued, he died 15 minutes later from exhaustion. Colonel Troyte-Bullock of the 7th Somerset Regiment noted in his journal how petrified he was to risk his own life to rescue men in the mud, knowing that they were near death anyway.25 Mark Plowman, who served in the trenches of the Somme, wrote about his nightmares from watching several men in his battalion drown to death in mud: The mud makes it all but impossible, and now sunk in it up to my knees, I have the momentary terror of never being able to pull myself out.

Such horror gives frenzied energy, and I tear my legs free and go on, but I am frozen. I am glued exactly where I stood, with little to nothing that I can do, but to give up.26 On a similar note, Alan Seeger, a Harvard College graduate who served on the France battlefields and who became most famous for his bravery during the Second Battle of Champagne, wrote to his sister Elsie on a regular basis. In one of his letters, he went into great detail about what the mud had the ability to do: When the bombardment seemed over, I noticed them all running back and commencing digging. I went over and joined them and helped disinter three men who had been buried alive. They had taken refuge in a deep trench that had been dug for this purpose. But a big shell had fallen right beside this trench and covered the unfortunate men

18 Quoted in Jasper Copping, “Unseen interviews with WW1 veterans recount the horror of the trenches,” The Telegraph, March 6, 2014.

19 American Geophysical Union, "Unusual climate conditions influenced WWI mortality and subsequent influenza pandemic."

20 Ellis, 45.

21 American Geophysical Union, 2.

22 Ellis, 47.

23 Ellis, 47.

24 Jay Winter, The Cambridge History of: The First World War (United Kingdom: Cambridge University Press, 2014), 642.

25 Ellis, 45.

26 Ibid.

27 Scott Berg, World War I and American: Told by the Americans Who Lived It (New York: Literary Classics of the United States, 2017), 193.

30

Life in the Trenches: The Depths of Hell with dirt. We dug and dug and finally came upon a piece of clothing. With difficulty, we understood one after another and pulled them out, but it was too late—they’d been smothered to death.27 For soldiers to be able to travel through the muddy trenches without getting hopelessly mired in it, they needed to lie flat on their stomachs. Doing so would distribute their weight more evenly and prevent them from sinking into the mud. Soldiers had to find different ways to maneuver their way around the muck in the trenches. With that being said, mud got everywhere. One trooper described how, when crawling through the trenches, his rifle became clogged and would not allow for his mechanism to work anymore. To make the weapon fire again, he (along with everyone else) would “piss in the barrel to clear it out.”28 Another soldier expressed how difficult it was to carry 60 pounds worth of dry equipment on his back. A majority of the materials the soldiers carried were not weather resistant and had the capability of absorbing 20 extra pounds of water and mud.29 This meant that, when soldiers traveled through the sludge in the trenches, they were picking up an additional 20 pounds with them.

In addition to mud getting into their weapons, mud filled each soldier's boots. This misery led to trench foot, the second leading cause of hospital admissions for the men who fought in the trenches.30 Trench foot is a painful fungal infection that an individual gets from standing in cold, wet conditions for days and nights while never having the chance to take off their field boots and socks. At first, this infection was mistaken for frostbite, due to similar symptoms; in both cases, the foot gradually goes numb and turns red or blue. Army doctors realized this was a separate issue once the warm summer months came along and the soldiers were still suffering from numbness in their feet. In extreme cases, where gangrene set in, the toes or the whole foot had to be amputated.31 To ensure the safety of soldiers, the military leaders ordered foot inspections for each person in the trenches to make sure their conditions did not bring them to the point of amputation. (To see an inspection

of trench foot, go to page 36). Throughout the course of the war, 74,711 British troops alone were admitted to the hospital in France with trench foot.32 A British war correspondent, Philip Gibbs, reported that “countless men were suffering from trench foot. Most of them could not walk back from the trenches but rather had to crawl or be piggybacked by their comrades.”33 Each soldier had a different outlook on getting trench foot or any other illness that spread through the trenches. Some soldiers knew that trench foot would not kill them, but, if their feet had signs of trench foot, they knew they would be sent home and out of the hell that living in the trenches brought them; therefore, many soldiers either faked their illnesses or even induced selfinflicted wounds to leave.34 Others, who had dignity, changed their socks and dried their feet as often as possible. In late 1915, the French military saw both of these outlooks and took action to stop the cowardly approach. The military ordered the men to carry up to three pairs of socks, with routine stops to change socks each day. During these stops, men would change into dry socks in addition to drying and lathering their feet with a coat of whale oil grease.35 While greasing one's feet was not an order, the whale oil gave the soldier a protective waterproof barrier from excess moisture in their boots. The men, as well as the military, had great success in this new tactic to fight the miseries of trench foot.

While enduring wet and subzero conditions, soldiers also faced attacks from several pests during their time in the trenches. Although the living conditions were not up to par for humans, the trenches were a perfect breeding ground for rats, lice, and flies.

Female rats become fertile at the age of three months and could have several litters per year, repopulating nearly 880 offspring each year.36 The population of rats rose rapidly in the trenches, and soldiers began to think of the rats as an enemy occupying their territory, the trenches. For the rat army to continue growing, the rats needed a food source, and the trenches provided plenty of food for the critters. Food scraps, litter, and corpses were irresistible to the rats. One Canadian soldier described the rats as “filthy acrobats” that were

28 Ibid.,167.

29 Ellis, 47.

30 Freeman, 68.

31 Ibid., 12-13.

32 Ellis, 49.

33 Freeman, 68-69.

34 Ault, Richard. "First World War Trench to be Dug in City Centre: Replica to be Recreated Near Museum to Boost Tourism and Education."

The Sentinel, Oct 18, 2014. 4.

35 Ellis, 49.

36 How the French Soldiers Wage War on Trench Rats (Scientific American 114, no. 16 1916), 399.

37 Ellis, 54.

38 Ibid.

31

Life in the Trenches: The Depths of Hell able to find and retrieve any food.37 The men tried to outsmart the rats and hung their food from the roof, hoping the rats would not be able to reach it. Unfortunately, the rats always found a way, and many men awoke or came back from duty to find either no food or a rat gnawing at their only ration for the week.38 If the rats could not find enough food from the land, they would collectively swarm a dugout, occupied or not, and raid it for all of its food.39 Another food source the rats had at their disposal was an endless supply of dead bodies.

As men walked through the trenches or buried the corpses, they saw bodies with no eyes or liver, since the rats especially enjoyed eating those body parts.40 A typical entry in soldiers’ journals reads: One evening on patrol Jacques and I saw some rats running from under the dead man’s greatcoats, enormous rats, fat with human flesh. My heart pounding, I got close to one of the bodies. The helmet rolled off the dead. The man displayed a grimacing face, stripped of his flesh, the skull bare, the eyes devoured.41 Accounts like this made the rat army, especially the brown rats, one of the soldier’s most feared enemies. Brown rats grew to the size of cats and ate human remains like it was their favorite snack.42 No matter how many times the men shot, clubbed, or bayoneted brown rats, their numbers only seemed to multiply.

Army units created and appointed a new job that arose from the massive number of rats living in the trenches: official rat catcher. In this duty, the catcher and a dog made their way through the trenches and killed as many rats as possible.43 (To see a successful clean-up day, go to page 35). Instead of leaving the carcass as another food source for the rats, catchers carried around a large sack for disposal outside of the trenches. Although this job helped on a small scale, the catchers could not hope to keep up with the number of rodents living and breeding in every hole in the trenches.

As if new troops were not already alarmed by the constant sound of gunfire, they had a new horror:

being eaten by a rat.44 The more experienced soldiers warned them that, in the trenches, it was not uncommon for wounded men to either be bitten or eaten alive by the rats, since they could not defend themselves because of their battle wounds.45 On the other hand, the rats did help the soldiers out once in a while. There is an account from Clarence Moore, who claimed a rat saved his life. While in the trenches nearly waist deep, an old rat ran across the top, making him duck down. As he ducked, a machine gun strafed the spot where his head had just been.46 If it were not for him moving because of the rat, he would have been killed.

The rats also did not believe in respecting humans’ personal space and saw anything the soldiers had as theirs. A constant complaint the soldiers had while putting on their clothes was finding that the rats had destroyed their clothes and put holes in them.47 Rats would burrow under blankets or find their way into a sleeping soldier’s pocket to keep warm for those several sub-zero days. They were also known to run across the faces of sleeping soldiers. Even when not biting or stealing food, rats still caused annoyance to the soldiers by sleeping on them for warmth.

As if living in the trenches was not already bad enough, having to share their clothes with rats led to those clothes becoming infested with lice. Their bites left itchy red marks on the skin of just about every soldier. Ninety-five percent of British soldiers coming off the line were victims of the lice infestation.48 Lice would lie on the collars of shirts and underwear, leaving the men to scrape them off with their fingernails. Soldiers were covered by millions of lice and endured the never-ending feeling of lice creeping over their bodies.49 Lice bites were not particularly painful, but the itch was intolerable.

Some men scratched their skin so hard they created open wounds, making them more susceptible to infection. A day-time march officer wrote in his journal about his daily struggles. A recurring complaint was itchy skin caused by lice bites.

One day while marching, he allowed the soldiers to remove their lice-infested underclothes for the rest of the march.50 The soldiers then had to carry

39 Ibid.

40 Harry Lauder, A Minstrel in France (New York: Hearst’s International Library Co., Inc., 1918), 182.

41 Berg, 332.

42 WWI Centenary: Soldier’s Medal of Honour (Checkheaton, UK: NLA Media, 2014), 1.

43 “How the French Soldiers Wage War on Trench Rats.” Scientific American 114, no. 16 (1916), 399.

44 Jackson Marshall III, Memories of World War I: North Carolina Doughboys on the Western Front (Raleigh, NC: North Carolina Department of Cultural Resources, 1998), 73.

45 Berg, 330.

46 Marshall III, 73.

47 Graham Seal, 'We’re Here Because We’re Here’: Trench Culture of the Great War (Folklore 124, no. 2, 2013), 195.

48 Freeman, 67.

49 Peter Hart, Experience: Voices From the Trenches (The Quarterly Journal of Military History, Winter, 2017), 18.

32

Life in the Trenches: The Depths of Hell their garments but they did not have to suffer the constant pain of being bitten under their uniforms.

As the war progressed, French soldiers found that it was more beneficial to run a burning candle along their clothes, killing all of the lice eggs, before putting them on.51 Unfortunately, this damaged many clothes in the process of removing the lice, but nothing was worse than getting bitten and having an unstoppable itch. To avoid the lice problem spreading, soldiers took steam baths, washed their clothes, cleaned up their dugouts, and cut their hair short. French troops had their barbers shave them to the very skull to ensure the lice had nowhere to hide.52 Along with the frenzied scratching that came with lice, they also carried disease. Trench fever or “pyrrexhia of unknown origin” was a disease that did not have a cure until years after the war.53 It was only in 1918 that doctors identified lice as the cause of trench fever, which plagued the troops with headaches, fevers, and muscle pain.

A perfect breeding ground for both rats and lice, the trenches also provided ideal conditions for flies to multiply. During the hot summers of the Great War, flies settled in the trenches by the thousands. The filth of war, the rotted food and decaying bodies just lying around, attracted these pests. A single fly could irritate a person, but imagine what a swarm of flies could do. J. Germain, a French soldier, counted the flies in his quarters every day. In the morning, he counted 72 flies just on his pajama arm from the wrist to his shoulder.54 He then analyzed the flies as they landed on him, his food, or his shaving water. Thousands of flies with blue and green under-bellies covered his quarters every day, and they seemed to grow in numbers.

The misery did not stop at the annoying presence the flies brought to the trenches; the flies also inhabited the dead bodies around the trenches.

The bodies were a prime food source for the flies, who feasted off the dead soldiers. Houseflies were scavengers seeking feces, food, and rotting flesh, all of which were available in the trenches.

Indeed, soldiers captured a photo of a dead body completely covered by a swarm of flies. (To see an average summer day in the trenches, go to page 36). The flies also used their bodies as a place to lay hundreds of eggs. The prime location for a fly to lay their eggs was on decaying organic matter such as moist garbage, animal manure, or rotting plant debris. The flies laid thousands of eggs, and the maggots feasted on the open guts of soldiers, rotting food, or the trash above the soldier’s dugout.

Sometimes, if the roofing on the dugout was not secured, soldiers would awake to a rainfall of maggots on their heads. Life in the trench was never monotonous with rats, crawling lice, and swarming flies tormenting the men in what was supposed to be their place of security.

Another misery that came from the rain, the mud, the rats, the lice, the flies, and the dead bodies was a stench like no other. Nothing could compare to the foul smell that the trenches gave off, a smell almost impossible to convey accurately. Each soldier had a different smell they associated with the trenches.

Betty Perkins, the daughter of a Dewsbury soldier, recounts that her father did not speak often about his experiences in the trenches, but one thing he mentioned multiple times was the smell. Officer Perkins told his daughter: “We had to get used to the reek of rotting carcasses and overflowing latrines, the odor of poison gas, rotting sandbags, sitting mud, and chloride of lime.”55 For a man of few words to have so many simply on the smell that came from serving on the Western Front shows the overwhelming effect it had on the soldiers, who already had to deal with the enemy and what came from the actual physical war itself.

What further added to the odor was that soldiers used different-smelling chemical compounds to fight off the rats, lice, and flies. To minimize the risk of infection spreading throughout the trenches, they scattered chloride of lime. Soldiers would use chloride of lime to disinfect objects in the trenches as well as to sterilize water. Creosol was another method the British soldiers would use as a disinfectant for themselves and their equipment.

Creosol was also sprayed to get rid of the flies

50 Ellis, 57.

51 Hart, 18.

52 Marshall III, 78.

53 Ellis, 57.

54 Ashworth, 19.

55 WWI Centenary: Soldier’s Medal of Honour (Checkheaton, UK: NLA Media, 2014), 1.

56 Ellis, 58.

33

Life in the Trenches: The Depths of Hell swarming around the trenches.56 These compounds were helpful in some trenches, while in others all they did was add to the stench the soldiers already had to endure.

Not only did the men have to deal with the smell of chemical compounds, but they also had to deal with the continuous smell of feet. Although the men’s feet did not smell good themselves, their wet socks and boots added to the striking mildew smell. This smell was a continual reminder that soldiers’ feet were slowly decaying and rotting off their bodies, yet there was nothing more the men could do to prevent the process of trench foot in the unhygienic conditions they were in.57 Henri Barbusse, a soldier on the front lines, remembered being woken up daily by the “sickening odor of men’s feet” marching down the trenches where his head lay.58 Sleep was hard to find in the trenches, since soldiers had to be active both day and night, so, when the men had time to find a dry spot and lay down to rejuvenate, they often slept soundly.

Waking up to the horrid smell of feet just added to the men’s hatred of the trenches.

The odor was almost unbearable, even when the soldiers tried to mask the smell with tobacco. Some soldiers wrote that everything they touched had a rotten smell to it, whether that be from the rotting vegetation, the bread they ate, the stagnant water they drank, or the decomposing bodies of men and animals that were literally stuffed into the earth around the soldiers.59 In most cases, men were buried almost exactly where they fell in the trenches; this hazard created an incredible stench for the men who had to fight and sleep in the same area.60 The foul smell left a lasting impression on each and every soldier that made it through the trench, due to the sad memories that were tied to those smells of the trenches.

Despite the natural miseries each soldier encountered, they still had to fight the enemies across no man’s land. In addition to fighting and digging, the military was constantly practicing.

Since they were facing fighting conditions for which they were unprepared, they had to be ready for

57 Alt, 18.

58 Ellis, 59.

59 Ibid.

60 Ellis, 59.

61 Ellis, 28.

62 Ibid.

34

anything. Not only were they adapting to trench warfare and not hand-to-hand combat, but they were also coming up with different attack styles for their new weapons. Behind the trenches, in practice fields, German soldiers implemented different fighting styles and tested better attack methods than the ones they were currently using.

Through this trial and error, each military was able to become better with the new weapons. Although the military adapted to the modern technological advancements that occurred at the beginning of this war, the military never attempted to change the environment the soldiers had to live in. Even though the soldiers complained daily, if not hourly, about the horrific situation they were placed in, the military never tried to change the trench but rather just told them to keep digging. The military thought the war, and therefore trench warfare, too, was only going to last a few months. The military did not look for a better alternative than the trenches, since they thought fighting in them was temporary.

Trenches were a new fighting environment for the soldiers and their respective armies. Previous soldiers merely had to worry about the battle going on and the enemy on the other side. During the Great War, soldiers not only had to focus on the enemies and the war going on above them, but they also had a second war going on in a place where they ate, slept, socialized, and ultimately could not leave. The military recommended that soldiers spend no more than 48 hours in the actual trenches. After time spent in the trenches, soldiers should have been given at least four full days at rest to be able to mentally recover and be fresh for the next battle. But that did not happen: on average, a soldier spent four days to two weeks in the trench systems.61 In 1915, a soldier in Loos Salient did one of the most grueling tours of all, suffering in the trenches for 70 consecutive days.62 Spending 70 days in the trenches without the proper rest added to the soldiers’ anger towards the war and the poor planning that came along with it.

During their extensive time in the trenches, soldiers had to face the treacherous natural miseries that no boot camp could have prepared them for. For

Life in the Trenches: The Depths of Hell the duration of the war, the never-ending rain mixed with the trash, urine, and earth created a soup-like muck. For the men to travel from one trench to the next, they crawled through the mud to ensure their own survival but still had to worry about drowning in the mud. As if the mud did not create an already unsafe environment for the men, they had to face the rapid repopulation of the rats. The men had to figure out a way to live in harmony with those beasts who would eat their rations, create holes in their clothes, scavenge on decaying bodies, and even eat wounded soldiers who could not fight back. Unfortunately, rats were not the only critters the soldiers had to face. During the summer months, swarms of flies infiltrated the trenches, laying eggs on all exposed trash, human waste, and pools of water. Lastly, a complaint that World War I soldiers had years and years after returning home from the war was the stench that came along with the poison gas, feces, exposed food, decaying skin and feet, and the never-ending smell of death. Regardless of all these natural miseries the soldiers faced, the military never tried to change the condition. They were more focused on defeating the other side than ensuring the safety of their own soldiers in the trenches.

in the soppy wet ditches that were created in the trenches. Military leaders should have listened to their common soldiers' complaints. If they had been more considerate towards the soldiers, the trenches could have been more suitable for the four-yearlong war. Instead, poor strategic decisions were made concerning trench warfare, which made many men endure havoc during the time they served in World War I.

https://rarehistoricalphotos.com/trench-rats-killed-terrier-1916/

Official rat catcher and his terrier, displaying their trophies for the day.

Although there is not a master plan when it comes to war, military leaders must be open to change.

Leaders in high position, especially in the military, have the ability to speak to many and have a lasting impact on the situation. Unfortunately, patiently waiting for the war to end was not the best plan of action the military could have pursued for the men serving in the war.

During this time of waiting, the soldiers had to face the horrors of the war in the place they sometimes had to call home. The soldiers were complaining and wanted to see a change in the living conditions, but those complaints were pushed aside. Sanitation in the trenches was not a priority to the military until trench foot started taking many men out of the lines. Even then, the military ordered foot inspections to help prevent the feet of soldiers from getting to that point, but this was insufficient, since the men were still standing countless hours

https://www.theworldwar.org/learn/about-wwi/trench-warfare

Soldiers traveling through communication trenches, with knee-high water and mud.

35

Life in the Trenches: The Depths of Hell Bibliography Primary Brooke, John Warwick. “The German Withdrawal To The Hindenburg Line, March-April 1917.” https://www. iwm.org.uk/collections/item/object/205194692.

"In the Trenches with Mr. Gingrich [FINAL Edition]." The Washington Post (Pre-1997 Full-text), Jan 31, 1995. https://login.proxy038.nclive.org/login?url=https:// www.proquest.com/newspapers/trench es-withmr-gingrich/docview/307840270/se-2. https://www.iwm.org.uk/collections/item/object/205194692

A soldier's point of view of no man's land from the front line.

WWI Centenary: Soldier’s Medal of Honour.

Checkheaton, UK: NLA Media, 2014.

Secondary American Geophysical Union. "Unusual climate conditions influenced WWI mortality and subsequent influenza pandemic." ScienceDaily, September 24, 2020. www.sciencedaily.com/ releases/2020/09/200924135323.htm.

Anderson, W. D. A. “Trench Warfare.” Scientific American 113, no. 1 (1915): 6–8. http://www.jstor.org/ stable/26022279.

https://www.iwm.org.uk/collections/item/object/205193429

Battalion M.O. inspection of soldiers’ feet, due to the rising cases of trench foot.

Ashworth, A. E. “The Sociology of Trench Warfare 1914-18.” The British Journal of Sociology 19, no. 4 (1968): 407–23. https://doi.org/10.2307/588181.

Ashworth, Tony. Trench Warfare 1914-1918: The Live and Let Live System. New York: Holmes & Meier Publishers, Inc., 1980.

Ault, Richard. "First World War Trench to be Dug in City Centre: Replica to be Recreated Near Museum to Boost Tourism and Education." The Sentinel, Oct 18, 2014. https://login.proxy038.nclive.org/ login?url=https://www.proquest.com/newspapers/ first- world-war-trench-be-dug-city-centre/ docview/1613616219/se-2.

Berg, Scott. World War I and American: Told by the Americans Who Lived It. New York: Literary Classics of the United States, 2017.

John Ellis, Eye-Deep in Hell: Trench Warfare in World War I (Great Britain: Croom Helm inc., 1976) 59.

Flies feeding on dead German soldiers.

36

Bernhard, Virginia. The Smell of War: Three Americans in the Trenches of World War I. C.a.

Brannen Series, V. 14. College Station: Texas A & M University Press, 2017.

Ellis, John. Eye- Deep in Hell: Trench Warfare in World War I. Great Britain: Croom Helm Inc., 1976.

Life in the Trenches: The Depths of Hell DeGroot, Gerard. Blighty: British Society in the Era of the Great War. Longman, NY: Addison Wesley Longman Limited, 1996.

Facing History & Ourselves, "The Brutal Realities of World War I," Last modified August 2, 2016. https:// www.facinghistory.org/resource-library/brutalrealities-world-war-i.

"First World War: Day Three: Life in the Trenches."

The Guardian, Nov 10, 2008. https://login.proxy038. nclive.org/login?url=https://www.proquest.com/ newspapers/first- world-war-day-three-lifetrenches/docview/244329072/se-2.

proquest.com/newspapers/poste r-evokes-mudrats-stink-first-world-war/docview/252339020/se-2.

Vance, Jonathan. "In the Trenches with Canada's Soldiers." The Globe and Mail, Nov 10, 2007. https:// login.proxy038.nclive.org/login?url=https://www. proquest.com/newspapers/trench es-withcanadas-soldiers/docview/383760653/se-2.

Winter, Jay. The Cambridge History of: The First World War. United Kingdom: Cambridge University Press, 2014.

Freeman, Russell. The War to End All Wars: World War I. New York: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company, 2010.

Greg Ansley, in Canberra. "Kiwi's Tale of Trench Life Goes to Auction." The New Zealand Herald, Nov 12, 2008. https://login.proxy038.nclive. org/login?url=https://www.proquest.com/ newspapers/kiwis- tale-trench-life-goes-auction/ docview/430274051/se-2.

Hart, Peter. "EXPERIENCE: VOICES FROM THE TRENCHES." MHQ: The Quarterly Journal of Military History 18 (Winter, 2017). https://login.proxy038.nclive.org/ login?url=https://www.proquest.com/magazines/ experie nce-voices-trenches/docview/1836566914/ se-2.

“How the French Soldiers Wage War on Trench Rats.”

Scientific American 114, no. 16 (1916): 399–411. http:// www.jstor.org/stable/26014279.

Lauder, Harry. A Minstrel in France. New York: Hearst’s International Library Co., Inc., 1918.

Marshall III, Jackson. Memories of World War I: North Carolina Doughboys on the WesternFront.

Raleigh, NC: North Carolina Department of Cultural Resources, 1998.

Seal, Graham. “‘We’re Here Because We’re Here’: Trench Culture of the Great War.” Folklore 124, no. 2 (2013): 178–99. http://www.jstor.org/stable/43297688.

Strachan, Hew. World War I: A History. Oxford, NY: Oxford University Press, 1998.

O'Neill, Jay. "Poster Evokes Mud, Rats and Stink of a First World War Trench; WITNESS TO WAR [FINAL Edition]." Edmonton Journal, Oct 19, 1996. https:// login.proxy038.nclive.org/login?url=https://www.

37

Senior Show 2 Ulyses Ortega-Espino

38

Senior Show 3 Ulyses Ortega-Espino

39

Senior Show 4 Ulyses Ortega-Espino

40

Senior Show 5 Ulyses Ortega-Espino

41

In the Labyrinth of her Mind Feidi Abreu Rodriguez In the labyrinth of her mind she finds her home,

where colors dance in spirals,

and whispers of the world fade away.

Her sister watches from the shore,

wondering what hides within her sister’s head, what secrets her silences hold,

and why suffering nestles in her gaze.

Nostalgia envelops the sister’s heart in memories of shared games,

where complicity had indestructible bonds,

and she longs for the smile she cannot coax.

Dreaming, she sees her sister running among the flowers without the shadow of dissonance on her shoulders, and she asks, amid tears of pain,

why did you deny her the chance to be like the others?

She tries to imagine her sister’s mind

in her own world of fantasies.

The stars answer, whispering secrets.

No judgments or looks of strangeness,

only the purity of a gaze without finesse, and, in that realm of dreams, her sister finds peace in an unexceptional routine.

42

The Boy Who Cried Deer

The Boy Who Cried Deer Terri Stroud “I’m telling you: it was a deer!”

“Once again, EJ, I’m asking you a serious question. I expect a serious answer.”

This had been going on for about ten minutes.

Edward Junior (EJ, for short), a twelve-year-old boy, had been relentlessly trying to convince his mother that he was not the reason his outdoor toys were missing. Over the past month, footballs, basketballs, baseballs, and their bats had gone missing from the family’s front yard. Everyone in the house was convinced it was EJ’s fault! EJ’s mother thought he failed to put them back in their place, in a toy chest beside the garage, and that they had either rolled away or been stolen. EJ’s older sister, Mary, believed he was secretly discarding the toys so he could get newer, more expensive ones. The baby of the family, Noah, thought EJ hid all the footballs because they were his favorite toys and hid the basketballs as well to allay suspicion. The father of the family, “Big Ed,” didn’t have much issue with the situation, as long as no one was yelling, and money wasn't coming out of his pocket.

“Mom, I’m telling you, it’s just another one of his ‘boy who cried wolf’ moments,” Mary said, walking into the kitchen where EJ and their mother were talking, not looking up from her phone.

“Only this time, he’s crying ‘deer.’”

Deer? This morning, when EJ went out to play basketball, as soon as he stepped off the porch, he saw a deer rummaging around in the toy chest. He was so amazed that he scrambled for his phone to snap a quick picture. When he finally pulled the phone out of his pocket and had the camera pointed in the right direction, he saw the deer staring right back at him. This was so strange that,

without taking a picture, EJ lowered the phone to stare back at the deer.

If an animal that usually runs at the sight of humans staring you dead in the eyes wasn’t strange enough, six feet in front of EJ, the deer in question had his last two basketballs wedged in each of its antlers.

As soon as EJ registered the scene before him and realized this moment was more than pictureworthy, he again raised his phone to capture the incredible scene. However, in his moment of shock and surprise, the phone tumbled out of his hands onto the pavement. Glancing up as he retrieved his phone, EJ saw that the deer had vanished. He only looked away for a few seconds. Right?

That’s one fast deer, EJ thought.

After the bizarre encounter, EJ went inside to tell his mother about what had just happened, which brings us to where we are now.

“You think EJ is telling another lie, huh, Mary?” said Noah, the baby of the family.

“Shut up, Noah! You just want to gang up with Mary to get me in trouble!” EJ yelled.

It was true. Noah found some kind of joy in seeing or getting his older siblings in trouble. Whether it was for entertainment purposes or some other reason, no one knew. He loved his big brother and sister more than anything, but something about being the reason for their punishment was enjoyable to him.

“Since no one thinks I’m telling the truth,” EJ started, “I’ll go find the deer myself!”

The room was silent for a few seconds. Then the three other people in the room with EJ erupted with

43

The Boy Who Cried Deer laughter. The children’s mother tried to stifle her amusement by turning her head and covering her mouth. Mary and Noah had no shame. They both had the most joyous belly laughs anyone had seen.

They were doubled over, holding their stomachs, with tears welling in the corners of their eyes.

“I’m serious! If he took my basketballs, it makes sense that he took the rest of my missing toys!” EJ exclaimed, over the laughter.

“Okay, son, okay,” EJ’s mother said, as she calmed her laughter. “You can try and find this mysterious deer. Just make sure you don’t go any further than the woods behind the house, and make sure your dad and I have your phone’s location. You hear that, Ed?!”

EJ’s father, Big Ed, simply raised a thumbs-up from the La-Z-Boy recliner he was sitting in, facing away from the family, not looking away from whatever two football teams were playing against each other on the living room’s big-screen television over the fireplace.

“Thank you! I’ll be back home before dark. And when I am, I’ll be back with proof!”

With that, EJ was out the door. As he was walking, he thanked the heavens for his recent growth spurt. His newfound height and longer legs made him feel as if he walked at twice the speed he had in the past.

Within about fifteen minutes, he found himself in the center of the woods. EJ became discouraged because, other than a few birds, he had not seen any woodland creatures, let alone a deer. Just then, the bushes adjacent to him began to rustle. Out of them emerged the very same deer from earlier that afternoon. EJ paused to see what would happen.

The deer then turned while looking at EJ over its shoulder, as if to tell him to follow. So, EJ did just that.

As EJ and the deer went deeper into the woods, he began to mentally prepare for the lecture his mom would give him for venturing too deep into the forest. EJ and the deer came to a wall of vines. The deer went through and disappeared behind the foliage. EJ used both hands to open the vines as if they were curtains.

Behind the wall was something EJ never expected to find on this little midday adventure. His family would never believe this. He hardly believed it himself.

Luckily, he had his phone, and it was fully charged.

44

~~~~ Back at the house, EJ was outside, happily shooting hoops on the basketball goal connected to the garage. Meanwhile, at the kitchen table, the rest of the family scrolled through the camera roll of EJ’s phone, mouths agape.

Because in those photos, not only was there the deer EJ had been going on about—along with all of his missing toys—but there was also a treasure chest full of jewels, antiques, and a slew of other valuable items.

The family could see how valuable the treasure was because EJ brought the same chest home, and it was sitting on the counter in front of them.

EJ said he would bring home proof, and, for once, he told the truth.

Contributors Caryn Bowe, Graphic Communications (minor in Graphic Design) (’25): In my free time, one thing I enjoy doing is spending time with my family and friends. I hope to one day have my own business and possibly work with a company doing animation.

Komari Clark, Graphic Design (’24) Daisy Edwards, Studio Art (minor in Graphic Design) (’25): For me, creating artwork, no matter what the form, has always been about sharing my inner self with the outside world. My intention with my work is always to connect the viewer with the passions that I hold most dear in my life.

Isaiah Gause, Graphic Design (’25) Heidi Jensen, Biology (minors in Psychology and Chemistry) (’24): I am currently in an MD program, hoping to become a pediatrician. When I am not stressing out about medical school, I do love to write. I wrote this piece last year in my creative writing class with some help from Mrs. Vickers. I think exploring the paranormal is so interesting, so I wrote a bit about it. I hope you enjoy!

Erica Mock, History (’24): Erica is a first-year student at the University of Mississippi School of Law. Here’s more about her two pieces: “Relax Your Eyes”: This photo was taken during a spontaneous trip with friends to Virginia Beach during senior year—an evening meant to unwind but that ended up opening our eyes to the quiet, breathtaking beauty of God’s creation.

“Life in the Trenches: The Depths of Hell”: This paper examines the psychological and spiritual toll of World War I, capturing the grim reality of soldiers’ lives amid mud, rats, lice, trench foot, and constant death. The piece was awarded “Best Religion, History, Education, or Integrative Studies Paper” at the 2024 Chowan University Student Research Conference.

Christian Oleaga, Graphic Design (’24) Ulyses Ortega-Espino, Graphic Design (’24): My work showcases a bit of my path into becoming the creative I am, from the journey to my breakthrough. Aside from design, I also enjoy sports & portrait photography.

45

Kayleigh Roberts, Studio Arts and Graphic Design (’25): I really enjoy doing art. When I am making or creating something, either through graphic design or painting, I always try to push the limits of one’s imagination. I hope that, through this piece, I can push your imagination just a little bit further.

Feidi Abreu Rodriguez, Business Administration, Marketing (’26): I’m a junior majoring in Marketing with a love for sports and storytelling. While I spend most of my time on the tennis court, sometimes I like to slow down and write out my thoughts. This piece is a small glimpse into that quieter side of me.

Terri Stroud, Psychology (minor in Criminal Justice) (’25): Family is very important to me, and one of my favorite things is whimsical forms of media and entertainment. So, why not combine them? This story is a loosely based caricature of my own family and one of the cartoons we loved to watch when I was younger.

Elizabeth Waltz, Business (’26): I’m currently in my second year at Chowan University. I’ve been writing my own songs for the past few years, and it has truly become one of my greatest passions. Last year, I wrote “North Carolina” as I began to embrace Chowan as my home away from home. The inspiration for the song came from the sense of belonging and connection I found here—something I’ll always carry with me. No matter where life takes me, Chowan and the people who’ve shaped my journey will always hold a special place in my heart.

46

Chowan University

The Brown Lady Magazine

Cover: “Senior Show 2” by Ulyses Ortega-Espino

Vol. 13• 2025

See the Brown Lady online: www.chowan.edu/BrownLady