Montage | Issue #4

MONTAGE l i t e r a r y

a r t s

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MONTAGE is a periodical of creative writing and visual art, edited and designed by students of the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. The journal’s goal is to publish the finest creative work that this school has to offer. We strive to recognize talented undergrads and to foster artistic creativity on campus.

In the past, Montage focused mostly on short stories and poetry. This year, however, we want to become a more inclusive arts journal, featuring photography and more creative graphic design. We have adopted this magazine format to better explore those possibilities. Enjoy!

SPRING 2009 STAFF EDITORIAL OFFICERS EDITOR-IN-CHIEF: Jeff Brandt PROSE CO-EDITORS: Kevin Smith and Justin Taylor POETRY CO-EDITORS: Alanna Hickey and Rafael Ibay LAYOUT EDITOR: Henry Del Rosario ASSISTANT: Brittany Serenbetz WEB EDITOR: Kelley Christensen ADMINISTRATIVE OFFICERS TREASURER: Sarah Phillips ADVERTISING & EVENTS COORDINATOR: Jen Denne SECRETARY: Chris Magiet EDITORIAL STAFF Nicholas Ambrose, Andrew Anastasia, Derek Beigh, Lizzie Blaine, Katie Blair, Adam Boczar, Jeff Brandt, Maggie Carrigan, Sarah Cason, Megan Cavitt, Sunanna Chand, Justine Chan, Eli Chen, Jeremiah Childers, Kelley Christensen, Jason Cruz, Lindsay Davis, Henry Del Rosario, Nikki Ethridge, Chelsea Fiddyment, Jeff Girten, Ethan Graham, Ellen Guirl, Jacob Heppner, Alanna Hickey, Monica Hofmann, Ann Holland, Kevin Hsia, Rafael Ibay, Samantha Imburgia, Candace Johnson, Kate Kinsella, Dan Klen, Andrew Krok, Miles Lincoln, Tim Lo, Mary McCormack, Zoheb Mohammed, Katie O’Brian, Mary O’Brien, Sarah Phillips, Raissa Rocha, Natasha Sachdeva, Ben Sands, Brittany Serenbetz, Kevin Smith, Melissa Steiner, Rachel Storm, Kasandra Swanigan, Justin Taylor, Brianna Walker Photographs on the this page, the table of contents, p.14-15, 18-19 by Brittany Serenbetz. Graphic design and drawings on p.20,27 by Henry Del Rosario. All other images used with permission from stock.xchng

EDITOR’S NOTE Dear Reader, This journal’s production has been a long time coming.

Consider, if you will, not just the editorial and design process in preparation of this, the spring 2009 edition—Montage’s first color issue. Not just the fundraising and the fliering and the classroom chalking. Not just the email checking and the attachment downloading and the typing and the copyand-pasting and the proofreading.

No. Consider this very book. The one you’re holding. Right now. This book’s pages were once chunks of trees—hacked down and shredded. This book’s ink was once a pile of soybeans—plucked from stalks and mashed. You’re holding an amalgamation of dead plants—collected and mutilated, pressed and boxed, shipped and unpacked, printed and bound. And now you’re holding the final product—creasing the binding, dog-earing corners in between reading sessions, the oils in your fingers rubbing away at the pages’ coating.

From the death of those plants rises new life: art.

This book is not just a book. It’s your weird uncle interrupting Thanksgiving dinner with bold, absurd claims. It’s an old man joking about death and sweating. A church lady poking you in the ribs. A waitress serving you a bowl of clam chowder while it rains outside. A balding English professor with dirty black shoes. A secondhand bookstore clerk stroking a cat and whistling Beethoven.

Some of the pieces within will greet you as a friend, spreading cheer. Others will rouse you from slumber with the cold nudge of a revolver barrel pressed into your throat.

Some will make you laugh; some will make you shiver; some will make you think.

In the Montage editorial staff’s opinion, the poems, stories, and visual art pieces collected here are among the best works U of I undergrads made this school year. We hope you agree and enjoy this free journal.

And who knows? If you’re not graduating this May or August, maybe you will submit your work or join the staff next year. Perhaps you will have some say in what brings these pulped-tree pages to life with soy ink and art. I hope you will.

Best, Jeff Brandt — Montage Editor-in-Chief montagejournal@gmail.com

TABLE OF CONTENTS ORANGE TREE

Christine Don

PISSING ON JOHN HARVARD’S LUCK FOOT

Jason Cruz

1

Brittany Metka

3

Nicholas Ambrose

4

ROMEO ET JULIETTE BOTTLED MRS. MARGARET BUTLER

cover

MARICHIKO

Andrew Krok

6

PAUL THOMAS GRIFFIN

Jeff Brandt

7

INTERRUPTIONS

Jeff Brandt

8

PENGUIN

Frank Puschautz

11

GRANDMA BETTY

Kelly Stonebock

12

Emily Thiersch

13

Ann Holland

14

Alexis Kadonsky

18

Natasha Sachdeva

20

Alexis Kadonsky

21

Anastasia Tumanova

21

CARPET DEAR ELAINE THUMBTACKS RITA AIRPLANE TYPE & SHOOT

CICADA SUMMER

Kate Brankin

22

MORE RAIN DUE FOR LONG ISLAND

Benjamin Kuzemka

23

RIDING UNDER THE ROTTEN GINKGO

Stanton McConnell

24

CROWNED SKIES

Christine Don

25

COLLISION

Ben Campbell

25

Kristin Mueller

26

DOORS

HYBRIDITY

Dan Klen

27

Kelly Enskat

28

Andrew Krok

29

THE BLOOD AND THE FLAMES

Bobby Hosseini

30

MARIONETTE

Alexis Kadonsky

33

CASSIS

Kelly Stonebock

38

Erin Murphy

39

Kristin Mueller

44

BIRKENAU DECEMBER REVOLUTION

THE ELEPHANT JOKE DUCK

Pissing on John Harvard’s Lucky Foot: Thoughts Upon the Taking of a History Final JASON CRUZ

“I dust a bit . . . in addition, I am at the moment writing a lengthy indictment against our century.

When my brain begins to reel from my literary labors, I make an occasional cheese dip.”

-Ignatius J. Reilly ONE Sneaking a peek over your shoulder, I catch a whiff of your raven untamed hair, mocha latte skin, passion-fruit perfume and think you smell odd, sort of like my grandmother. And, well, Marie, that just scares the shit outta me cause I’ve had plenty of dirty daydreams about the two of us having sex in the boys’ locker room during Homecoming or some other stupid dance like that where kids get schwasted beforehand yet still believe they can handle one more go around of the Cha Cha Slide like they’re fucking Baryshnikov.

But instead of doing the Charlie Brown, they’re ralphing the remnants of cheap cardboard pizza from Mangolio’s and the fourteen glasses of Mountain Frost they scarfed down to mask the smell of cheap watereddown whisky that they bought from that homeless guy who sneaks into the library once in a while for a quiet nap.

The janitors would come in and mop that shit up and then we’d all laugh when football jocks like Dan Brady and Kyle Laughlin would jump up on stage with the DJ and do that ass-slapping pantomime that has become the staple of every white guy’s dance routine for the past 10 years without realizing that they spent the last forty minutes in bathroom stalls sniffing white lines off of a herpes laden toilet seat while Johnny Edno stood outside waiting to shit and ended up pooping his pants. Poor kid. He’d be forever known as “the kid who shit his pants.” Even at our fifteen year reunion, four years after he committed suicide in the presence of Snowball, his cat, and God himself, we’d still say “Remember during Homecoming senior year when Johnny Edno shit his pants, wasn’t that fucking hilarious?

I wonder what good ole Shitpants is up to now . . .”

But you and me, Marie, we’re better than that.

The night would start with us in separate spheres. You being the kinda emo, kinda lesbo, kinda Wiccan salutatorian that you are and me being the quiet kid who wears nothing but black t-shirts and a shit-eating grin and sits in the back right-hand corner of our English class having only said one sentence in the past three years: “Mrs. Ammerson, Hemingway did win the Nobel Prize.”

Though there was the time I tried to stand up for you when you argued with Father Wright over whether God really is real but then I got distracted by Emily Wolcott’s unshaved legs and wondered if her bush was as wild and untamed as that tangled forest springing forth and if giving her head would be like stumbling across Dr. Livingston on the shores of Lake Tanganyika: “Dr. Vulvaston, I presume . . . Hey, what smells like Patchouli?”

TWO

Like all the other outcasts of Maristas High, my back would be against the bleachers with images of James Dean running through my head. You’d be guarding the punch like Guantanamo Bay, making sure that people take only one glass at a time and yelling at the jackasses who try to spike it with roofies and cheap liquor. Sammy Morenstein would ask you to dance and you’d politely say no, even though I heard you had a huge crush on him, because, well, you have no time for love. You’re a dedicated woman who wants to go off to either Harvard or Stanford, double major in Biology and English with a minor in Percussion, get into a top ten med school, probably Johns Hopkins, and become the best damn doctor the city of Oak Lawn, Illinois has ever seen.

Sammy, on the other hand, would whimper off to some lesser girl like Janice Everitt who still watches Hannah Montana and has never even seen an R-rated movie in her life. They’ll hit it off, go steady, go to separate colleges, he’ll show up at her room sometime during

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Spring Semester with a ring in his pocket, find her having sex with Jake, the RA who lives down the hall, they’ll break up to some schmaltzy song on the radio, try to be friends but it doesn’t really work out, co-exist awkwardly until Janice gets skin cancer, she’ll die at the age of twenty-eight, Sammy, at the funeral, will proclaim his love for her but spiral into a deep depression, get hooked on barbiturates and horse racing, die at the Betty Ford clinic six years later but not before purchasing the burial plot next to Janice, and then the star-crossed lovers will finally be together in that dingy graveyard ten miles from our high school. Isn’t that romantic?

Well, it’s not going to be traumatic for us, Marie, because I don’t wanna be your friend, I just wanna be your lover. And, thus, manipulation is the theme of our courtship. I’d be standing quietly to your left, trying to stare down your cleavage, coming up with the perfect line to woo you off your feet while you serve Emily Farish a second helping of punch. I think and think but nothing comes to mind. Then, in a flaccid revelation, I realize that this is, in fact, a daydream and I can do whatever the fuck I want if it doesn’t disrupt the stream-of consciousness. So, the first thing I do is freeze time, run down the street to the bank, walk behind the counter, unlock the safe, take a shitload of money, and stuff it in my pocket. Then, I go over to Chris’s house, play X-Box for a couple hours, teleport to Paris to walk under the flashing lights, and drive through the streets of Beverly Hills in my cousin’s BMW. Looking down at my watch, I realize that I should really get back to the gym just in case some sick fuck happens to enjoy listening in on other people’s daydreams and becomes deeply invested in what happens between Marie and me. I wouldn’t want them to get bored, now, would I? Picturing myself back in the gym, I walk up to you. Unfreezing time, I say, “Do you wanna dance and hold my hand? Tell me baby I’m your lover man. Oh baby, do you wanna dance?” You say yes and I’m so glad that I looked at your Facebook page while in Paris and saw that your favorite band is the Ramones, your favorite movie is Empire Records, and your middle name is Hussein. We waltz to the middle of the dance floor and the spotlight focuses on just us. I whisper sweet nothings into your ear to the tune of Moondance by Van Morrison just before Mr. Thompson tells us to leave enough room for the Holy Spirit to come through. The song ends and I take your hand and we head to the boys’ locker room.

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THREE The smell of jock straps and crotch rot infiltrate our nostrils as we sit down together on those cold wooden benches that decorate the plaid tiled floor. I start to undress slowly, seductively, like a stoned sloth trying to climb a Cecropia tree or a Chippendale’s dancer who kept on gaining weight until he was fired over the telephone and forced to work at that gay bar down the street for lousy tips and sleazy bathroom encounters with state senators.

My shirt comes off, revealing my erogenous man-tits and succulent beer belly that stand out even more sharply in the dim florescent light, and your eyes gleam with the pride one shows for a local sports team (Go Illini!). You start to take off your pink dress bought at that weird thrift store in between the China Buffet and the Taco Bell and reveal a yellow polka dot bra and bikini that catches my eye. Motioning towards the shower, we strip fully and become the first people in six years to actually take use of the facilities, and use them we did. We lathered and soaped and washed and soaped again and shampooed and exfoliated and washed and felt totally awesome afterwards until I realized that we didn’t have sex yet and all of that washing was just a waste of everyone’s time.

Wrapped in lint-glazed towels with year old skidmarks on the outside, we mosey over to Coach Gervan’s office. I knock all of his papers and pens off of his desk and put you on top of it. Fully naked, I lean forward with my erect member and impale you over and over again. Behind your head is a picture of Coach and Brock Lesnar shaking hands. I focus on it to last longer. Two minutes later and I’ve cum. Frustration abounds. I try again, but last only a minute longer.

“What the fuck?” I cry out.

You stare at me sadly. I try to force myself to endure, but nothing happens. Suddenly, the room starts to shake violently. Stalls struggle to stand, papers fly everywhere, you flee from the room in nothing but your nakedness. Everything starts to crumble and compact upon itself until there’s nothing but black space surrounding me.

Out of the darkness manifests an old, weathered head.

Grey hair, black glasses, wrinkled tan skin, a vision of my grandmother. Her cold eyes just stare blankly at me while she shakes her head from side to side in a disapproving fashion.

Romeo et Juliette BRITTANY METKA

MONTAGE 3

Bottled Mrs. Margaret Butler NICHOLAS AMBROSE

The stage has a wooden chair and table behind the window. There is a glass on the table.

MARGARET, late sixties, dressed in a typical southern belle outfit, a ruffled apron, and bonnet.

The sun spills into the room. A long silence, she takes in the room. Smiles smugly with light frustration.

MARGARET First, No hanky-panky.

I repeat.

Absolutely no! — NOOOOO! — hanky-panky.

If he asks for it, give it to him.

If he begs for it, blow him.

Remember your mother did this; your daughters will do this.

TODAY, You become a wife because some of you are new while others have failed.

You are to be at home by four, He will be expecting a homemade meal, that means you don’t work, you don’t leave the house.

The only job you need is pleasing him and keeping the house clean. (beat) If he cheats, you haven’t done your job.

If he leaves, like my husband Theodore did, you haven’t done your job. (this hits her) FFH— you haven’t done your job!

I did my job, I did it by the book.

(A long pause)

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I stopped smiling in pictures; I stopped when Theodore wanted me to have sex with prostitutes. He wanted it that way everyday— (notices a female in audience) Hey where is your brooch?

(She takes off hers and gives it to her.)

Back to the fundamentals of a woman: After three men, you are a whore, sex is not to be enjoyed by women and to be frank, I don’t like thinking about . . . [well you know] sex being fun. (goes to get her drink, she returns to us) And don’t even think about cheating or pleasing yourself, That’s a man’s job. (gets her glass, drinks it down.)

One of my students . . . My daughter, she looks just like you (gestures to same female above) Miss Missing Brooch . . .

She says her husband raped her.

I couldn’t believe it, the irony — irony — spewing from her mouth.

Your body belongs to him, it’s his property and he can do what ever he wants.

Simply put, if your husband rapes you . . . accept it. Then it’s not rape.

If a man rapes you, you, were flirting! (beat) Oh, dammit.

I know this may be your first day here, I understand that.

You carry feminist views and those do not exist anymore.

You —no we— We are not independent women anymore.

Blackout

MONTAGE 5

Marichiko ANDREW KROK The rain was soft that day.

Soft, pink, slow.

As the cherry blossoms floated to the ground, more delicate than any self-immolating leaf, the petals looked the perfect blend of the red and white checkered quilt beneath us.

Winter took the place of spring, the empty space between us moved aside only for those flowers, suspended in air.

She spoke to me with graceful haste, in a tongue I had studied years before.

We told stories through chopsticks, as if we manipulated the bones of our ancestors.

As mono no aware descended around us, I realized I must reveal my deceit, Just as the trees bare their stripped branches for us.

We sat cross-legged.

I leaned forward, admiring her strawberry-milk cheeks, and spoke with the rasp of an old soldier, occupying a space and time that was never truly his:

6 MONTAGE

ごめんなさい。 日本語を話しません。

Paul Thomas Griffin JEFF BRANDT Paul.

Paul, Paul.

Paul, Paul, Paul, Paul.

Paul, Paul — Paul Paul Paul Paul.

Paul Paul Paul Paul — PaulPaulPaulPaul.

Paul sat and waited and watched the door of the diner. Paul drummed his fingers on the wooden table’s polished surface. Paul added creamer and stirred his coffee and watched the brown swirling liquid turn tan. Paul crossed and uncrossed and recrossed his legs and wiggled his penny loafers to the sixteenth note frenzy of a recorded jazz trumpet. Paul liked how the leather shoe tassel clicked as he shook it but did not like how the sound never came at the same time his foot shook, always arriving just before or just after. Paul stirred and watched. Paul tapped and listened. Paul waited and thought. Paul stared at his watch and frowned and could not believe how long Edward was taking. Paul ____ed and ____ed and ____ed and decided that he was getting tired of doing different things in various combinations to pass the time while waiting for Edward.

Paul would not be consoled by the pep and cheer of his teenage waitress. Paul noted her smile — how it remained on the girl’s face even as she spoke quickly — and her ponytail — how it whipped as the waitress turned from one customer to another — and thought of her as a human blur. Paul felt himself become walled in by her questions as he sat and stirred coffee and waited for Edward.

“How are you doin today, hon?”

“Want some more coffee?”

“You ready to order?”

Paul.

“Some weather we’re having, huh?”

“Can I interest you in our daily special?”

“Would you like to start with an appetizer?”

“The soups we offer today are lobster bisque, New England clam chowder, and chicken noodle.”

“Sir?” Paul.

“Are you feeling alright?”

“Ohhh, OK. That’s good . . . I was worried there for a second. Heh. I’ll go get you more coffee.”

Paul tried to keep his eyes to his drink and his menu, but he could not. Paul marveled at the waitress’s fluid motion and her refusal to do one thing and then another but instead doing everything at once in a single movement without beginning or end. Paul felt alienated by this aproned ball of kinetic energy but also felt attracted to its pull.

Paul remembered that where there is an electric field there is also a magnetic field.

Paul drank and tapped and drank and waited for three quarters of an hour but did not eat, and Edward did not come. Paul decided after some time that he did not mind and at the same moment realized his lunch with Edward was not scheduled for that day but in fact the following Wednesday.

MONTAGE 7

Interruptions JEFF BRANDT

—Hello?

——Hey Paul, it’s Ed! —Oh hi, Ed! Funny you happened to call me now because the weirdest thing just hap— ——How are things, bud?

—Well, yeah I was just about to tell y— ——What? Speak up; I can’t hear you.

—OK, I was just go— ——I’m on a Greyhound, man. Lots of engine noise and people around me talking, so I can’t hear you real well. Can you speak a little louder?

—Yeah.

——What did you say? “Yes?” —Well, actually I said “yeah,” but bas— ——What? What are you saying?

—I said “yes.”

—— “Yes?” —Yes! ——No, what were you saying before that?

—I was about to tell you abou— ——Damn it, Paul. Quit mumbling.

—I’m not mum— ——You sound like you’re trying to talk with a mouthful of bread.

—I assure you, I’m not eating any brea— ——Seems like this always happens.

—What?

——Seems like every time I call you, unless it’s on a land line, I catch maybe two words out of ten and have to figure out the rest from context clues. I don’t get it. I— —Give me a break, Ed. Geez.

——Whoa, whoa, whoa. I’m just trying to carry on a conversation here, pass the time in this friggin bus. Got babies crying from every direction, this damn driver jerking to a stop at every light, shifty hobo types eyeing me like I’m a prime rib. Goddamn, I miss having a car. So whaddaya say. Gonna talk a little louder? ...

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——Well?

—You’re the reason you can’t hear me. You’re riding on a— ——Hey, you know what?

—What, Ed? ——I got another call coming in.

—Great.

——It is great. It’s Dave. He’s picking me up from the bus station in downtown St. Louis—when and if I ever get there.

—Alright.

——Alright is right. I’ll call you back later.

—Talk to you la— ...

...

...

—Hello?

——Hey, Paul. It’s Ed again.

—Hey, Ed. ——Just got to the station and now there’s no sign of Dave, though he said he’d be here early.

Tried calling him, but it went straight to voicemail.

—Weird.

——Yeah, I don’t know what that’s about. I was just talking to the guy an hour or so ago. So then I was gonna call you once I got inside where there’s A/C, but now it’s too noisy in there, too, so I came outside, and now I’m sweating balls. Christ. Forgot about how humid it is here in the summer.

—Huh. ——What was up with that earlier? I could barely hear anything you said.

—I don’t know. Honestly, I think you need to get a new phone, or else stop calling me when you’re in noisy places.

——Yeah, I don’t know what the problem is, but it seems like quiet is hard to come by in public.

You think of cell phones as such a convenience because you can use them anywhere, but then everywhere you go is noisier and less suitable for making phone calls.

—No kidding. I know what you mean.

——Anyhow. ...

——You were about to tell me about something earlier?

—I guess I was.

——What was it?

—Eh. It’s not important anymore. Just something weird that happened at O’Malley’s.

——At where? That restaurant?

—Yeah. I’ll tell you about it when I see you. But what about you? I heard something about you working in St. Louis this summer?

——You heard right. There aren’t many jobs for me in Piasa. No one really wants to hire a college MONTAGE 9

kid for just a summer, except maybe McDonald’s.

—I guess that’s true.

——God knows I don’t want to resort to that. I had enough food service experience for a lifetime at the dorm dining hall.

So I got a job at the Art Museum.

—Huh. What do you think they’ll have you do there?

——I’m not real sure yet. Hopefully just mill around, looking knowledgeable.

—You’d like that?

——Sure. Looking at paintings all day, making sure no one takes off with one? That sounds peachy.

—Sounds more like death.

——How? —Well you’d just be walking down rows of paintings, looking at one, and then another, and so on.

——Yeah, and?

—I don’t have anything against art museums. It can be relaxing to stroll through at a nice pace, look at this and that.

But when you’ve seen them all and then you start the loop again. And again. I just imagine that that’s what hell is like, if there is a hell. You know?

——I see what you’re saying, but I disagree.

—Oh. ——I think each time you look at a painting, you see something new.

—Explain.

——The closer you look, the more you see, until eventually your thoughts about a painting are nothing like your first impressions. You start to see the painting as not just a painting but a glimmer of the big picture.

—Hm. I supp— ——And then you come full-circle and think of it as a painting again and admire the artist’s brushstrokes that make the painting what it is.

—I never really looked that closely.

——Yeah. I feel like we’re always getting pushed around in different directions without any reason. Read this blog. Eat this burger. Watch this commercial. It’s always onto another thing, and usually before you finished the last one.

—OK . . .

——But in a museum, you can become just absorbed in one thing.

—I just don’t know if I have the attention sp— ——No, it’s not death at all, man. Being able to savor a work of art, just stand there and be sucked in . . . That’s living. ...

—If you say so.

10 MONTAGE

Penguin FRANK PUSCHAUTZ MONTAGE 11

Grandma Betty KELLY STONEBOCK I know the crabapple tree.

We ran, jagged short breaths, little steps while she watched we flung tiny palms against bark-safe.

I see the fireflies the intermittent blinking of Lite-Brites with severed cords.

Her glasses, tinged yellow, reached the cheekbones, spread the dull glow of those 40 watt shades to meet the mauve of Clinique lipstick she reapplied in her Buick Regal, a car with seats designed to hide kids’ loose change.

She’d reach into the lacquered black Kleenex box, blot, glance into the rearviewa smile through stained enamel.

She still left marks on our cheeks when she said goodbye.

My brother was born on her August first and was given her maiden name Kyle.

She gardened.

Once I took scissors, snipped off the heads of her marigolds and cried on the porch.

They grew back but I can’t forget.

There’s only guilt at remembering that I loved the clicks of an old fashioned TV dial almost as much as her.

12 MONTAGE

Carpet EMILY THIERSCH

MONTAGE 13

Dear Elaine ANN HOLLAND

The Boy carried a razor blade in his pocket. It was good for all kinds of things:

Cutting his name into trees and tables and benches

Stripping the bark off of walking sticks in the park

As a weapon (if he ever needed one)

Getting a good hole started in hard ground

Scraping gum off rails and the undersides of tables to make massive gum balls (which sometimes bounced, just a little)

Cutting rope and string And even other things that came up when they came up.

Two days ago Billy brought the Boy a razor blade out from under the bathroom sink, which was usually locked. There had been, he said, a ton of them down there, and more prescription bottles than you could imagine.

“I couldn’t figure out the labels so I looked inside all the bottles,” Billy said. “There were a lot of white pills, but there was one that had these huge blue pills in it.”

The Boy came up with the idea that Billy should bring back some of the pills for them to look at. “Better yet, let’s look around everywhere and bring back what we

14 MONTAGE

can and compare stuff. We’ll meet at the river so no one will see us.”

The Boy fingered the razor blade through the fabric of his jeans as he walked toward their meeting place.

There was a hole in the pockets of the pants, a very small one that the corner of the blade had worn away. He felt this corner nick the bare skin of his thigh, could feel the small wet spot where a drop of blood had soaked into the material. His mother did not know he had a razor blade.

Billy was waiting when the Boy arrived at the river, pockets bulging. Both of them had backpacks, and the Boy threw his to the ground as he approached.

“Ready?”

“Yeah.”

Without another word they started unloading their bags onto the ground, covering the weeds and grass and dirt of the riverbank with useless things:

Handfuls of Q tips

A nearly empty bottle of cheap aftershave

Maxi pads and tampons

A brush clogged with hair

Bars of brittle soap

Worn white socks rolled into balls

Paperclips

A stapler

Bottles of Tylenol and aspirin

A stack of old greeting cards

A lone silver key hanging from a rubber smiley face keychain

Ordinary things. Billy had the pills, digging them out of his front pocket after all the rest of it had been poured out. Two of them lay in his palm— oblong gel caps that glimmered sea blue in the mottled afternoon sun.

“I brought one for you.”

“You take yours first.”

“No. At the same time.”

“Count of three. 1 . . . 2 . . .”

They tossed their heads back and popped the pills into their mouths, palms pressed flat against their lips. As the Boy gulped down the hard knot of the pill in the back of his throat, he thought about the things he had found that he didn’t bring, didn’t mention to Billy:

A photograph of his mother younger and prettier on the beach, tucked in the back of her dresser drawer. The light of the bright sun washed out the picture and made her skin look a bleached out brown

A pack of cigarettes, mostly empty and smelling of stale tobacco

A nudie magazine in his father’s drawer, the woman on the cover bare breasted and wearing a tight leather skirt that showed her crotch

Condoms

A solitary sock, which smelled musty and was stiff to the touch

A creased letter which simply said, “I can’t see you again. I will think of you pressed against me in the dark every day. I will pick your favorite flowers and throw them away.”

It wasn’t signed. It wasn’t addressed. And it lay in a drawer of broken odds and ends he knew both of his parents shared.

There was also a roll of duct tape. He thought this could be useful too. More useful than rope for tying and binding things, for sure. He thought he could easily tape Billy’s hands together, winding the roll around enough times so Billy couldn’t escape. He could lay a strip of the tape on the backs of stray cats and the pull it off, bringing chunks of hair with it and listen to it screech. He could patch the hole in his pocket, could make a stiff, silvery handle for his razor by winding and folding the tape. He could wrap his hands in it and play Punching Bag. He could tape someone’s mouth closed, could wind it around

their mouth and nose and stick it in their hair. But this possibility frightened him, an idea that he tucked silently away with his other secrets, not to touch until he was ready.

He stole the roll of tape.

The Boy, once safely in his room, put the roll of duct tape in the very back of his closet in the same spot where he hid his razor. He hadn’t dared to take the photograph or the letter, but their images rubbed his skull raw. He could hear his mother in the kitchen below him, banging drawers and humming to herself. He started to compare, for the first time, the secrets they were keeping, and how his mother was not just a mother but also a woman. It felt like deceit. It was unfair of both his parents to keep their lives from him. He sat on his bed and started to compile a list of questions:

Who took the picture of his mother?

Where had she been before all of this (before him, especially)?

Had his father seen her looking like she did in the picture?

Who wrote the letter?

What did other people do with the things they found?

A humming noise started in his ears and sparked a tingling sensation that traveled downward, exploding behind his ears, tickling his neck, blooming out of his crotch, everywhere all at once, a feeling that paralyzed him. Concentrating on this buzzing in his body, he went back to his parents’ room, back to the top drawer of his mother’s heavy dresser. He pulled it open, pausing as it squeaked. A faint snatch of singing drifted into the room from downstairs, and the Boy let out a tiny rush of air.

He had been careful to put the picture back where he found it, nestled under and in between the odds and ends of broken jewelry, old receipts and loose change.

He pulled it out, wincing as the accumulated drawer-junk rattled. This time he made sure to memorize every aspect of it— the grains of sand, her wide stance, the tan of her legs rising to meet the thin covering of her red-orange bathing suit. Her stomach was flat, the same faded tan as her legs and round arms. Her shoulders were slender and strong, her neck upright and long, and her face was widened in a smile of complete, unfettered joy, eyes squinting into the sun. Her hair was pulled back, long strands tumbling out into the white-blue sky behind her. Again he wondered why this picture was in her drawer instead of his father’s, why this memory was precious enough to keep, to hide, and why his father was excluded from this moment. He thought about who had taken it, and he began to link the

MONTAGE 15

anonymous scrap of a letter with the image of his mother posing on the beach. It didn’t matter that he found them in different drawers; their importance was intertwined, their stories a part of one another. The Boy was sure.

It started with her voice, and then the image came into focus. A young woman sat in a city park at sundown in a dress that was crisp like a white paper bag. The setting sun tinged the white folds of her dress with its mellowing hues.

The woman’s hair was smooth and longer than the Boy had expected. The only thing he recognized was her face; otherwise she could have been anyone. A man sat next to her on the bench, a man that was not the Boy’s father, and he whispered something in her ear. Just one word: Elaine.

The Boy squeezed his eyes shut tight, trying to look past the city, past this woman who was his mother but not, past the figure of the young man whose face had not yet taken shape. Instead the stolen duct tape floated into the scene, hovering in front of the sitting couple, and started wrapping itself around the mouth of his mother, down her neck, then snaking around her arms and binding her to the bench. He felt the sharp sting of her pretense, which was an attack not only on his father but on him.

The man, whose face remained unfocused, hacked at the silver tape with the thin blade of the Boy’s razor. He wondered how they got so far away from his hiding place and if Elaine knew they were his. In trying to cut her free, the man only succeeded in slashing paper thin gashes all over his own arms and neck, even cutting into his fingers in his panic and haste.

Duct tape too could be a weapon, and the Boy realized there were two categories for things to fit in: things that hurt and things that saved. The fact that some things could fit into both categories did not trouble him.

He heard a faint call from his mother downstairs and the tingling sensation disappeared. He rubbed out the goosebumps on his arms and felt the terror and satisfaction of the dissolving scene. He thought how very much he loved his mother.

The next day Billy and the Boy met on a corner.

The Boy had his backpack with him, his soccer ball stuffed in the top.

“Maybe we could go down by the river again,” Billy suggested.

“And do what?”

“I don’t know. Throw rocks and stuff. Walk around. Can’t we figure it out when we get there?”

“We could kick the ball around in the lot.”

The Boy could think of other things to do, but they were the kinds of things he thought he might want

16 MONTAGE

to do alone. They were also the kinds of things he wasn’t sure about— things that hurt. He fingered the razor blade in his pocket, picked up a stick from someone’s front lawn and idly used the razor to carve notches in it. The corners of Billy’s mouth twitched in a frown, outlining sudden jowls in his cheeks. “Well?”

The Boy wanted to carve around those lines in his cheeks. He wanted to get rid of them.

“I don’t know. Let’s just go somewhere. Let’s just get off this fucking corner.”

He rolled the profanity around in his mouth; it left a lingering metallic taste on his tongue. The Boy took the soccer ball out of his bag, and shoved the roll of duct tape down to the bottom. They kicked the ball down the street, walking to an abandoned parking lot where the asphalt was cracking and grass grew up between its big black chunks.

The Boy’s mind was elsewhere, but Billy didn’t notice.

They kicked the ball back and forth in silence. He thought about the faceless man he had seen.

Who was he? Kick.

What did he look like? Kick.

What was so special about him? Kick.

How did they meet? Kick.

What did he have that his father didn’t?

He was kind He whispered Elaine’s name sweetly in her ear He could make her smile the way she did in the photograph The man’s face took shape: a charming smile, dimples. Wide eyes, strong arms, clumsy. The Boy thought his hands must be big but gentle; he thought of his mother counting the moles on the man’s arms, tracing the constellations they made on his chest and back. The Boy thought of the way they must have looked at each other when they were alone. He could see the man’s hand reaching out and stroking Elaine’s lovely smooth arm, which glowed in a way a photograph couldn’t capture.

And now this man had a name, and it was Charlie, and Elaine spoke it just as gently as he had spoken her name. The Boy thought of his father at home, of himself napping in the cradle, or maybe he wasn’t there at all yet, still split in the two halves of his parents. Who could tell how long ago this was?

“Hey, I’m tired of this. Let’s go somewhere else.”

The Boy looked up, surprised that Billy was still there. It was starting to get cold. Earlier that day it had smelled like the first day of summer, but now it felt how late September should feel, like a weekend off from school

instead of an endless string of open, warm days. The Boy yanked his sweater out of his backpack and said, “Yeah, let’s just go to the river.”

“We could go to Jake’s maybe.”

“You go. My mom wanted me home early anyway.”

Billy looked down and kicked at some loose gravel. “All right, well I’ll see you tomorrow? Or Monday?”

“Uh huh.”

The Boy stood in the parking lot for awhile watching Billy’s figure recede before slinging his backpack over one shoulder. It wasn’t early enough to go home, even though the sun was setting. It was the first time he noticed how it started getting dark early, and he wished that he had more daylight to himself. He walked in the direction of his house, kicking at loose stones and debris on the sidewalk. He thought of the things he could do instead of going home. He thought about showing up at Jake’s house anyway and saying he changed his mind, and then he thought about going to the park and watching the high school kids smoke in their cars. He decided to walk to the river and take a hike in the woods. At least he would be alone.

He sat down on a log. It was even colder here down by the water, and the sun perched on the horizon, throwing its last feeble glow onto the trees opposite the river. He felt suspended in the silence, trapped in the dying amber sunlight and the cooling air. He wondered when the raccoons would start to come out. He took the duct tape out of his bag. It lay heavy in his hand, as yet unused. He tried to think of things he could do with it.

The Boy walked down along the bank until he reached a shallow spot in the water, and then crossed to the edge of the woods. He chipped away at the bark of a tree, cherishing his own noise. What kind of tree, he wondered. He liked to think that he was hurting the tree, that ripping off its bark was like ripping off chunks of skin.

He wanted to wear away its protection, to pry at whatever meaty softness might lie beneath the bark. The wood underneath was hard, but something in its pale color made it vulnerable and satisfied the Boy, and so he imagined the anguish of the aging tree; he listened for its screams behind the sound of his hacking. Chips of bark scattered at his feet.

Now that the moon had risen, the rushing of the river seemed louder, as though it were going faster. He thought about how the bull frogs would be croaking in the pond in his backyard. He wanted to be home, just then, surrounded by sturdy walls and his mother’s scent, which was clean but sad. Like soap made from pressed flowers. Or

perfume left in an attic.

Part of him wanted to be Charlie, handsome and dimpled and wrapped up in Elaine’s scent. He didn’t know what that would feel like. Something pulled in his pelvis, his chest, the pit of his stomach. He knew that there were ways he wasn’t supposed to think of his mother, but this woman was not his mother. She was Elaine. He could go home and talk to her. That would be nice.

When he walked into the house through the garage door, it was warm with light and smelled like candles. When his mother went to hug him, he saw that her eyes looked worn and sad. She smelled faintly of dishwater.

She was not so extraordinary after all.

“Oh, you’re home. You’re later than I expected you to be.”

“Sorry. Billy and I just lost track of time. Where’s dad?”

“Upstairs changing. Go wash your hands. I ordered a pizza. I thought it would be fun, hm?”

The Boy was careful to keep his distance. Elaine smelled the same, her voice was the same, but now he wanted to associate these things with the young woman and not the old. He was afraid that if he came any closer to her she would get in the way. He went back up to his room to wash his hands and change clothes (she would notice if he didn’t). His father at the other end of the hall was doing the same thing. He pretended to be his father, older and more important, humming to himself and changing for his wife. He loved his wife; she was beautiful. Oh when they were both young . . .

He remembered other nights, before Elaine had been pregnant, how nice it was to come home after dark and see her there. She was very busy, though. So busy that sometimes she wasn’t home in the evening, off Godknowswhere doing Godknowswhat. But he didn’t question.

The Boy knew that if he were Elaine’s husband he would be angry at her absence. After all, didn’t he deserve her attention and her time? Didn’t he deserve the comfort of knowing she was there? He could not decide if he’d rather be Charlie or his father— if he‘d rather have earned her time or have stolen it. What about the things he had taken?

Candy bars from the convenience store.

Duct tape from his parents’ room.

Quarters from his father’s change jar.

He could have bought those things, or left them where they were. Just like Charlie could have done. He could have left Elaine where he found her, crisp and white

MONTAGE 17

Thumbtacks ALEXIS KADONSKY

on a bench at sunset; he could have easily told her to go back to her husband. But he didn’t. Something was there so he took it. Maybe this man was not kinder or better than his own father. It occurred to him that there were other categories besides things that Hurt and things that Saved, like Deserving and Undeserving. He could see now that not deserving something didn’t mean you couldn’t have it. He could have anything he wanted to, if he was only willing to take it.

The photograph

The letter

Elaine

Anything. Whether or not he deserved these things didn’t matter anymore. It was more important to grab hold of something before it was gone. Elaine might not be there tomorrow (had his father considered that?); he might only have tonight.

After dinner the Boy washed the dishes and left

18 MONTAGE

them to dry in the sink. His parents were in the living room watching TV. Was his father’s hand resting on Elaine’s thigh? He thought of Charlie’s hand touching the same spot, and his own. She was a liar, and she didn’t deserve the things she had, and if she could lie then so could the Boy. And he could take things he didn’t deserve.

He flicked off the kitchen lights and disappeared up the dark staircase, turning on lights as he went down the hall toward his parents’ bedroom. He dug through his mother’s drawer and took the photograph as though he owned it. He went into the nightstand and took the letter too. On the way back down the hall to his own bedroom he flicked off all the lights, one by one.

In his room he ripped off two ragged strips of duct tape and used them to stick the two pieces of evidence on the wall. He regretfully considered the uneven edge of the tape roll, wishing that it could be straight and neat again.

He looked at the evidence. It was proof of who his mother

really was: careless, a liar, clean but sad, undeserving. A stolen woman. She hadn’t belonged to herself in a very long time, and it was the Boy’s turn to have her now.

He plucked out of the back of his mind two well hidden thoughts: one for the blade and one for the roll.

He ran his forefinger down Elaine’s young, glossy arm and tried to smell her through the film. The two thoughts rolled around in his mind. They seemed more and more plausible as the minutes passed. The Boy waited for hours, sitting alone in his room with the lights off. He waited until he heard his parents coming up the stairs to their bedroom.

They must have thought he was already in bed. He waited until the nighttime noises coming from their room faded.

He peeked his head out the door to check; their light was off. He sat longer, waiting for the right moment, waiting until they were fully asleep. Perched on the edge of his bed, he did not move except to breathe.

After awhile, everything got quiet. He thought about standing up, about how he would be stiff from staying in one position for so long. The bones in his arms and back would crack as he extended them. He’d drop the two items to the floor, leaving them where they fell, and exchange them for the razor blade and the duct tape, which had lain next to him on the bed all the time he had been waiting. His footsteps would echo on the wood floors of the hallway; it was so quiet that he could hear the grandfather clock ticking from downstairs. He could almost feel the doorway in the darkness, imagining finding the wall and then edging his fingertips over until he felt the wooden frame. He’d slide his hand down the wooden ridges in the door until he felt the shock of the metal doorknob. Black static crowded around the edges of his eyes as he allowed the fantasy to swallow him up.

The knob fit snugly in his small hand, and he stood this way for some time. He couldn’t feel his fingertips; they were numbed by the metal knob’s perpetual chill.

He turned it and inched the door open. The sound of his father’s snoring was no longer muffled. He could barely make out the shape of their bed; their bodies were rumpled lumps in the center. He tightened his grip on the roll of duct tape, clutching it through the hole and feeling for the razor blade in his pocket with the other hand. He felt an almost audible click inside that told him there was no more delaying. He was here. He had the tools and the evidence.

They deserved this.

His father was lying on his back and Elaine was snuggled up against him on her side. He thought if he could just make one, decisive cut on his father’s throat without waking her he’d be in the clear. The Boy knew

that if he didn’t do this, his father would wake up and ruin everything. He firmly pressed the razor edge into his father’s throat and drew it across, pressing down as hard as he could. When the tip of the blade dug into the skin his father opened his eyes; he saw the Boy but could not speak.

There was no time. He died silently, blood seeping from the open seam on his neck. It had been easier than the Boy thought it would be.

Elaine moaned and nuzzled closer to her husband, nothing more. She didn’t know anything was wrong. Now came the hard part. How could he rip the tape and tie her hands without her hearing? He had to move fast or the blood would soak the pillow and start leaking onto her face. The sweet scent of her skin cut through the smell of the blood. He wanted to get closer.

He crawled onto the bed and over his father’s body. His hand sank into the soft, open flesh of the neck, the still warm blood thickly coating his hand. “Mom,” he whispered. “Mom, I can’t sleep.” As she lazily opened one eye to look at her son, she smiled and mumbled, “what’s wrong, sweetie?”

The Boy hesitated. He thought about how nice it would feel to curl up in her arms and sleep the whole night through that way. Instead he grabbed her wrist and twisted her onto her belly, scrambling for the other hand before she had time to struggle. At first she did not; her reaction time was slow. It was not until the sharp sound of duct tape being pulled echoed in the silent room, not until the Boy had a firm grip on her hands and began winding the tape around and around that the grogginess left her voice and something like terror started to sink in.

The grandfather clock downstairs banged out the hour, interrupting the delicate screaming in his head.

He felt exhausted from his imaginary exertions. The Boy pulled the photograph from the wall and gently removed its square of tape. He brushed the blade and the tape off the bed, feeling their thumps on the floor in the very center of his chest and lay down to sleep, clutching his mother to his chest and wrinkling the heavy glossed paper. The clock rang out another hour later, but the Boy didn’t hear it. Instead he heard the sweet begging of Elaine mingling with the first twitters of birds as he dreamt the sunrise. Her punishment could wait. She would still be there tomorrow.

MONTAGE 19

Rita NATASHA SACHDEVA

We pulled threads off the mattresses wondering if one would pull more than another silenced feather.

We talked, storing the words in our backbones until we had no choice but to lie down and wait for the whistling outside the window to catch in our throats and make us say a different word.

The lights were out hiding behind the static left by the TV, while the wind continued to blow it farther away.

We coughed our laughs, then caught them in our toes and buried them beneath the blankets so we’d have some left for when we finally fell asleep.

20 MONTAGE

Airplane ALEXIS KADONSKY

Type & Shoot

ANASTASIA TUMANOVA

MONTAGE 21

Cicada Summer KATE BRANKIN In the sun-stricken morning, in cicada heat condensing – folding – into pendulums drumming on a city street humming with black business coats and shoppers playing double-dutch in revolving doors I remember the past Now this is something that I could not have known then when on the on the walk to our homes Meredith whispered us safe in between air conditioner and insect songs sexed into the punctured deep water sky while sweating faster than the length of my forearm from stealing skin, spit, beer found in forgotten coolers, and a ride home on a freight to make curfew Quiet She said, listen I am moving away because I let him go too far. the cicada drone is also a dirge

22 MONTAGE

More rain due for Long Island BENJAMIN KUZEMKA

A buttered, warm bagel trembles in the widow’s fingertips.

Washed away memories, long lost,

Float aimlessly behind her eyes.

The buildings and parks glow with familiarity.

The aura is blinding, deafening.

More rain due for Long Island.

Cresting waves crash into the blackened rock shore,

Only some twenty blocks away.

Her feet tap to this beating rhythm,

One for only her to hear.

The East River must mourn, too.

More rain due for Long Island.

Drifting about its streets, Queens looks ever grey.

A morbid dampness of nineteen fifty hangs,

Compounds, with the destitute and the dead.

Her lips remember a delicatessen.

The city waves farewell.

More rain due for Long Island.

A stop at the florist for yellow daisies, a dozen.

How grey the Empire State can be!

Lightning crashes, far removed though.

Only a summer dew falls.

The cemetery emerges from red brick.

More rain due for Long Island.

Willows and oaks weep over the scattered graves, silently.

Alone in Mount Olivet Cemetery she walks.

The widow stops to see her parents.

No tears fall, she sets down yellow daisies.

Lightning crashes, the storm draws near.

More rain due for Long Island.

Whispering Russian prayers, wrinkled hands graze grass.

She remembers a July afternoon of her distant childhood.

As rain pours in the vision, drops brush her cheeks.

The silver in her hair flutters with the damp, midsummer air.

More rain due for Long Island.

For a moment, a perfect sunlight is born of the grey.

The willows and oaks rejoice.

Sweat seeps from the calmed clouds.

Colour blooms from the yellow daisies.

The city watches from the shore.

More rain due for Long Island.

MONTAGE 23

Riding under the Rotten Ginkgo STANTON MCCONNELL My bike turns tires over,

wheeling and plodding

squeaking over the swollen swabs

of Ginkgo biloba leaves.

The road is wiped with their

acrid butter slime,

putrid loam-coating.

The tires knead layers of leaves

and press staggering quantities

of virile juices upon a long barren road.

Each leaf leaks an instant hiss

under a heavy step’s twist, but When thousands of yellow bell leaves

are streaked under a tire’s perfect grip, They gasp with a thousand rotten throats like a chorus of slippery groans.

From stagnant faces, deflated eyes gaze at the wooden sky and slide up the long, fertile thigh.

24 MONTAGE

Crowned Skies

CHRISTINE DON

Collision BEN CAMPBELL The bird’s black wings fold against the frosted cold glass, two groups of feathers rubbing against mostly empty space. At the cellular level, the world is ending, but on the surface, everything else stays soft and warm and hardly different for a few quiet moments. The black thing descends at the speed of light, pirouetting delicately inward until it lands with a groan, merely the expulsion of remaining air from flesh meant to contain it. What was once elegant and weightless is now a mass of skin and bone, nestled against its ancestors and itself.

MONTAGE 25

Doors 26 MONTAGE

KRISTIN MUELLER

Hybridity DAN KLEN I dreamt I was a cosmonaut clinging to the fringe of earth.

The neutral noise of space matched standing in December darkness; watching the burnt paper pieces charred by the sky flung below. Split between two worlds and walking on the thinnest air, tempted by the planets sailing like warships with black flags drawn for battle. Orderliness and beauty in its morphing forms, but only one I can breathe in or else I’d be taken from the shore and crushed beneath their bows, sinking back to the blue where I should have lived first.

MONTAGE 27

Birkenau 28 MONTAGE

KELLY ENSKAT

December Revolution ANDREW KROK A scream bursts forth from the parapet, A farmer in danger of losing his land.

This is the darkest snowfall yet.

From the farmer and his loss, we tend to forget A child in the factory has lost his right hand.

A scream bursts forth from the parapet.

The unwed mother almost welcomes the spit, Ten yards above her, the whole village stands.

This is the darkest snowfall yet.

The town drunk is lost in another sad fit Trying to forget his life as a brigand.

A scream bursts forth from the parapet The farmer stands with his pitchfork lit, Rigid and ready for his next command.

This is the darkest snowfall yet.

With no one to witness, there was no regret As a glorious fire engulfs the farm stand.

A scream bursts forth from the parapet, This is the darkest snowfall yet.

MONTAGE 29

The Blood and the Flames BOBBY HOSSEINI

Stewart

My language is beautiful; it is not a language of words or symbols — no one can understand it but me. 7:26:00. Beep, beep, beep. Three times, three seconds. 7:26:03. Get out of bed, hit the alarm, go to the shower. Nine steps, ninety degrees counter-clockwise, four steps, twenty seconds. 7:26:23. I stop thinking here and let the warm water soak all over my body. It feels nice in the chilly mornings, but I count anyway. Nineteen minutes and thirty-five seconds. I soak it all in for five, then I shampoo and rinse for another five. Soap for nine minutes and thirty-five seconds. I start at my neck, because logically all the dirt and filth rinses down the body, all the way to the feet. If I started cleaning my feet first, it would get dirty again in a few minutes because of all the filth from my calves. Neck, shoulders, chest, back, arms, hands, abdomen, pelvis, legs, feet.

7:45:58. Get out of the shower, look at the mirror. Pick up the toothbrush and toothpaste. One squirt of toothpaste on the lower half of the bristles, and another on the upper half. The toothbrush goes in to the left side of my mouth and scrubs it twenty times. Twenty times on the other side and ten in the middle. Spit, rinse, spit. Back to my room and into the closet. White shirt, blue pants. I don’t like wearing colorful clothes too often — it creates the image that I try to represent myself through material

30 MONTAGE

:00

objects and diminishes my self worth. White shirt is pretty good. Down the stairs, twenty-four of them. I wonder the vertical distance I traveled on the stairs. Each step must be around half a foot, so approximately twelve feet. Cereal: third cabinet to the right of the fridge. Bowl: to the left of the cereal cabinet. Spoon: two steps left and behind the coffee machine. Milk is in the fridge, first shelf. That’s the most efficient path, I think. Fill the cereal to almost one centimeter below the brim. Enough milk to make the cereal float just above the brim. Five minutes to eat, chewing twenty-three times before I swallow. One, two, four, eighteen, thirty-four spoons and I am done.

Dad’s late as usual and he runs down the stairs for a goodmorninggoodbye. Kiss, kiss, twice, and runs out the door. Mom’s still up with the hair dryer, like every morning.

Okay, I can walk to school today because it isn’t raining like it was yesterday. Billy stole my umbrella but I didn’t tell Mom that. She’d just go out and buy another one but that’s a waste of money, I think. Mom always gets me the colorful stuff even though I tell her that’s for little kids. I guess I am still little compared to my other brothers who are in college, but high school is just the last step before that. It’s okay; Mom’s pretty nice to me.

They really don’t understand my language, not

34

20

even my family. It’s okay because they don’t need to. They have plenty of others to talk to and I’m pretty comfortable as it is. Time for school, and I try to keep the pace at approximately three miles per hour. The treadmill in the basement helped me memorize the speed and keep to it every day. I guess it is kind of fascinating how the brain remembers physical phenomena like this. I don’t really like the science of it though — it’s too direct and concrete. I like it when it’s philosophical and wavy, wavy like a little snake. One, two, four, forty, two hundred eighty-seven.

Six hundred sixty-five. That many steps to school in fifteen minutes and thirty-six seconds. School starts at eight thirty, so I have eleven minutes and thirty-eight seconds to sit down and read Rock Springs.

Billy I pull up into the spot, same ol’, same ol’. The 67’ Camaro was kinda wobbly today, so I think I gotta go down to the Pep Boys and fix ‘er up. Everyone’s staring all wowee like always. I think it’s the red red paint on the car.

So I’m rocking down the old black pavement when I see that pathetic son of a bitch Stewart reading that same book again. God, God, God he pisses me off. I just stay back a little and see what he’s doing today, face in the book, walking in circles like a moron. Man, I’d go punch that book right into his nose and get it all red with blood, but I figure I’ll just let him annoy the piss out of himself.

“Hey fatass!” I yell. Of course the kid don’t hear me cause he’s so into the goddamn book. His face is sorta stuck in there like glue like he’s really got a thing for some nice nasty porno. “HEY STEWART!” God, does he need a hearing aid, too? Oh right, he don’t talk much cause he got some brain problems or some shit. Yeah that kid’s head is all over the place, probably thinking about naked chicks, some nice nasty shit right there. They think just cause the idiot has some retard stuff going on, we gotta be all nice to him, like he’s big boss-man, king of the world, Mr. President, Big Brother. I pop out the lighter that I stole from the guy the other day and walk up to him with it.

“Remember this?” I poke the lighter into his stomach and it goes mush-mush from all the fat he has packed in there. The dumbass stops walking around in circles and pulls the book away from his face. He opens his palms up and I drop it in his hands.

“Now, now, bud. Don’t get carried away like you did the other day. Fuckin’ almost got all them flames all over the place! That’s not pretty, naw, not at all. Learn something beautiful, kid.” I kinda gave him a snide remark.

665

11'38"

That guy’s crazy with the fire. I remember last week he was flicking that lighter on and off and on. Mr. Robert comes by with his neck all up in Stewart’s face: “What the HELL are you doing, Stewart? We’re in school, not at a birthday party! Now you have to put that away or else I’m going to have to take it away from you.” So the kid clenches his fists and starts flailing around like he always does — flapflapflap. I really don’t know why he does that. Some kids say he just don’t got control of his arms and it just happens to be flapping all the time. We called him Lil’ Chicken back in grade school but the teachers got kinda pissed off at that.

Anyways he looks at me with those red red eyes, like he’s gonna light me on fire or something. His eyes are pretty narrow and his eyebrows are pushed really inward.

He won’t move his eyes from me and it’s kinda creepin’ me out.

“Alright bud, you just keep that and have a ball,” I wink at him and turn around to go to class. Of course, I look back to see what the moron’s doing and he’s flicking that on and off again, staring at the soft orange light that comes out of it and giving me sharp glances every few seconds. Man, that idiot will never stop being an idiot. I get kinda irritated looking at him doing the same damn thing over and over again. It’s like the kid is expecting something to come out, but it never will, and he’ll keep on trying anyway. The bell rings and the kid still stands there flapping his one arm like a little bloody chicken. I figure I’ll give him a little help moving his fat little feet, so I go up and give him a swift blow to the face. Smack and splatter.

Oh, the blood is beautiful when it’s fresh; it gives me a good sensation inside to see the color red. I can’t explain why it feels so great and all euphoric with words. Oh, that red red blood.

Stewart

8:29:07. Pain is something I’ve often experienced in high school, more so in a physical than emotional manner. Those who can’t speak my language often get annoyed with me because I cannot understand them, or they cannot understand me. It’s sad, really, that they have to resort to animalistic behavior to express their inner struggles, especially to a person like me. One, two, seven. I felt seven drops on my face, but I’m not sure if that’s the blood from my nose or the tears from my eyes.

It used to be that the physical pain was overwhelming, however recently I’ve felt a strong desire to be in unity with my environment.

8:29:07 MONTAGE 31

Some of the other students walked pass with nervous looks on their face as they watched me switching on the lighter and wiping my nose clean. Two, four, eight of them stand there, expecting me to reciprocate their questioning looks. I am not too different from all of them, but their interest lies in the quick snapping of my finger to release the fluid of the lighter and into the spark to create a small bulb of color. Humans have a strange interest in this phenomenon; is it because of its physical features or is it because of their fear of it? Immolation, conflagration, combustion: words both of our languages understand.

Billy I got my fix for the day slamming that kid’s nose in his face, but I’m still kinda upset about that look he gave me. I’m not scared of him or nothing, but they always say the quiet ones are the guys that go bat-shit in the end.

I walk into history class and Mr. Jefferson is continuing that stupid lecture from yesterday on the Constitution and Bill of Rights. The words ‘first amendment’ are scribbled on the front board, as though some drunkard fatass wanted to draw a painting, and I get a recollection of that free speech stuff.

“Hey Jefferson,” I interrupt him, “If there’s free speech, how come I can’t say shit in class?”

“Well, Bill, it is first and foremost rude and insince—”

“Well yeah, but Old Man Jones gets all grumblemumble on me when I say it. It’s not like I’m doin’ the action, right?” I get down in a squatting position and all the guys roar in laughter.

I don’t bother listening to the moron up there yap-yap-yapping away with his mouth. I just sit down and stare outside the window. Of course, big man Stewart’s still there, crying or something. The guy’s rolling his head around now, just sitting down and rolling his head around.

It looks kinda ridiculous, what with him and his bloody nose and his lighter. And he does this for about three minutes and then does something really nasty. From here it looks like he takes a big chompchomp out of his arm, but really really hard like he’s gonna find some gold or money or jewels in there. Then he does that rolling thing again for another three minutes.

I must give props to the kid, cause he might just be dumber than me. A couple of the teachers get a little concerned so they go see what all the hoo-hah’s about.

Nothing big, nothing big — just a few of the big guys in charge dealing with Stewart again. Probably gonna take

3 32 MONTAGE

3

him to the shrink or some shit to patch him right up real good and fix his ol’ head there. Oh, that’s beauty right there cause he’s boohoohooing at himself but he don’t care for the blood. That’s beautiful. Most of the kids start screaming and running around like the sky’s upside down when they see that red red liquid running out of their skin, but big man Stewart don’t care for that. He’s got something else in his fat head but I can’t figure out what it is. Very pretty and I’m impressed.

Oh, that’s beautiful. I go ha ha ha at myself for thinking that the kid is beautiful and everyone’s giving me looks like I’m a loony crazy kid. No, big man Stewart’s just like the rest o’ them. He’s no different, not one bit. They all bleed the same red red blood.

Stewart

9:01:01. No, not even the adults understand my language. They keep asking me questions to see what’s wrong with me, but they can’t tell that I got punched in the face. I don’t see any worth in explaining what happened about half an hour ago. They lift me up by my arms and walk me over to the dean, who also prods me with questions. I don’t really answer them because I’d prefer to answer in my own language, but since they don’t understand it, it’s illogical to do so.

The dean calls my dad and starts muffling his voice so I can’t hear. He doesn’t understand that I won’t comprehend him anyway, which makes me think he’s a little unfit to be dealing with these sorts of situations.

Three minutes and forty-nine seconds is the length of the conversation. One, two, five steps back to his desk and a ninety-degree swivel to the right on his chair. “Okay, Stewart. I told your parents what happened and they’re going to have a talk with you tonight,” he tells me with a big smile on his face. I generally don’t mark people with harsh judgments like “stupid,” but the dean was hardly going to solve any problems by having me talk with my parents.

Unless he can find someone that speaks my language, then I can’t truly be helped. But I did not want to be helped in the first place; I react with the environment and it does the same with me. As I leave the dean’s office, seven, nine, thirteen steps to the door, I feel the hard lump of the lighter in my blue jeans, just to make sure they hadn’t slipped it away from me.

7:29:23 PM. My parents say that they’re going to take me to see a friendly doctor that can help me with my problems, but they also don’t understand that I cannot identify any. I had to sign a few sheets which I didn’t bother

7:29:23

Marionette ALEXIS KADONSKY

reading, but my parents ensured that I would not be hurt, so I trusted their word. I lie down in my bed, thinking of all the possible events that can occur, but not one jumps up at me for being particularly plausible. Like always, I just sit and wait to see what’s going to happen the next day.

Billy I’m leaning on the ol’ 67 and staring as the sun sinks down right into the mouth of the ocean all gulp, gulp, gone. It’s the worst part of the day; I gotta say . . . it’s all orange and mellow outside. It’s not like the morning where it’s bright and blue and it’s got a lot of stuff to look forward to. And the night is the best time to go paint the ground red. I don’t really go after people I dislike — I go after the ones who are completely unsuspecting, just moseying around town with their noses in the air, like they’re all better than everyone else or some shit. Some guy asks me once, he goes all, “Hey man, I don’t see why you’re beating on these dudes when they did nothin’ to ya.” I got no answer for the guy cause I don’t got any motives. If I

ever get hitched by the pigs, they’ll send me right into jail forever cause I got no reason for why I paint the ground with the red red blood. I just do it to see the blood.

So anyway, I’m leaning on the ’67 waiting for this junkie to show up and give me the stash. I ain’t no junkie like the other goons around here are. No, I don’t even smoke or shoot it up or snort nothing. I like to give it to the guys I’m beating on right in their final little moments so they can enjoy getting their ribs broken all snap and crackle. I don’t wanna knock a guy into Hell or Heaven or wherever the guy’s goin’ while he’s down and confused. I want him to know exactly what’s goin’ on and I want him to enjoy it.

When it gets quiet around these times I get a little Edgar Allen Poe inside me, so I start to think what it’d be like out in someone else’s life. But you can’t really escape who you are; you just gotta live up to it and keep doing what you always do. So I see the ol’ rat coming to me, hauling all the shit in his paper bag. I’m supposed to give

MONTAGE 33

this guy three, but I only got one on me and if he don’t like it then he can just turn around and walk away. I’m suspecting some new guy from the city or something to show up, but it’s my old old pal Mikey from across the street. “Mikey?” I say, “I knew you’d get in deep deep deep, right in the hole there.”

He gets that bewildered look on his face like he just got picked up by the cops and he’s never gonna come back, but he kinda just opens his mouth and says something really frustrating to hear. “You . . . you’re the one they’re after, man!” So I’m thinking I got some bounty on my head or some shit, but I already knew that was coming up cause of all the junkies I killed — all the customers they got running around the city.

“Why’s that, Mikey, you come here to take care of me?” I grumble and give him a nasty look, kinda like when Mommy gave me the one that meant goaway notnow and if I didn’t obey I’d get a little slapslap later. But no, he doesn’t obey me and gets all defensive.

“I get good dollars and I’m just up there with them, you know?”

He sorta starts getting nervous and I see him licking his lips and wiping them pretty brows a lot. So I get up all straight like big-boss-man and puff out my chest and tell him pretty clear: “Alright, so I’ve got a proposition for ya. You give me the bag for free and walk away and I let you go off and have a couple o’ joints. How’s that sound?”

And he gives me this angered look like I’m just playing with him and I’m gonna burst out laughing in a moment or something.

“That’s three hundred, man! Are you crazy? I can’t just walk back with nothing — those guys will kill me! It’s your head or mine!” he licks his lips more now and the pink skin starts getting red and juicy cause he’s biting so hard.

“Well,” I say, “Looks like you’re going down either way. Which one sounds better to you? I’ll take care of you real good and pretty-like. They’re gonna do you in dirty, Mikey and I know you don’t like the guns and lead and sounds they make.”

Well the kid doesn’t know what to say and he’s standing there, mouth open with the drops of sweat going down his face and the saliva going dripdrip and splashsplashing on the ground. At this point the guy was doin’ nothing so I figured I’ll answer for him. I lunge forward and his eyes open up a little bit cause he knows what’s going to happen.

34 MONTAGE

8:18:24

Two knocks in the stomach and he bends down and groans and looks at me, all frowns and boohoo. That’s not beautiful though because I can’t see any blood when I hit the stomach, but it’s all in the face. So I go up top to the head and give him a curled fist right into his cheek and the waterworks start going. Sometimes it’s an explosion and I get it splattering everywhere but sometimes it’s clean and starts flowing down right into the mouth.

See, when I start at the top and move all the way down, it’s dirtier and there’s blood going downwards before I even have time to make my next move. Drip drip.

It’s all romantic and beautiful but I like to forget what I do to all these guys. All humans are the same: they groan and moan and go oww in the same way and they bleed the same way. I like to forget what I do each time because it’ll make the next guy seem like he’s a whole new thing.

They’re all paintings cause they’re red and colored when I’m done with them and the ground is soaked and they just sit there on the ground waiting for their God or science or philosophy to deal with the rest of their corpse.

Mikey’s pretty much knocked out now, so I give him a forearm slam in the temple and he falls down all smack-whack on the ground. They all go the same way — I handcuff their arms with my knife (three times), pretty deep for each one. Then I do it to their other arm, right by the wrist. If I don’t do it quick then the blood pressure drops too low cause of all the cuts and the coke won’t do it’s thing. I’m no smart guy but there’s a little science to the stuff I do to these kids that makes it interesting for me.

Guess I’m sorta like a police officer — fighting crime and all. There’s too many of these junkies just running around town with their heads in the clouds, little buzzes of happyhappy going in their body. I don’t know why the pigs like going after ’em if the coke makes the junkies so happy, but the pigs don’t like the drugs too much. Not too much. It kinda makes me seem like I got something against these guys, but they just happen to be in the wrong fist at the wrong time. I got nothin’ against nobody.

And they never catch me, do they? No, and it’s fantastic. I got some magic angel wings right on my back to let me fly away from the red red blood.

Stewart

8:18:24. I take it that the car was going forty miles per hour on average and we drove for approximately thirty-nine minutes. Twenty-six miles away from home, right about. Mom stops the car and nervously

opens up the door to get me out. Two, eight, sixty-seven steps and into the door. Mom sits me down and goes to a desk to sign some sheets, five of them. My eyes begin to wander around in a circular fashion and I spot one of the televisions right next to me is on and playing an opera, or an orchestra of some type. I instantaneously become fascinated with the sound coming out of the black box, but not because it is beautiful or soothing to the ears. It reminds me of the dream I had last night and I slowly begin to figure it out. The dream was like something I had never experienced before, but it gave me an awkward insight on my own disposition from the eyes of another person. I was another person in this dream looking on myself, but I still cannot remember what exactly occurred. It’s just a flash and then it disappears just like that. Odd.

Mom comes back and gives me a big smile, then kisses me on the cheek, one, two times and walks into a door around the corner. I sit here for two, eight, twentyfour minutes listening to the sound coming out of the box, but I’m still unable to recollect what exactly happened in the dream. Twenty-eight minutes and Mommy is back with another man, sturdy, built and tall. Probably in his early thirties. He walks towards me with a glaring, fake smile as though he feels like he understands my language and extends his arm right towards me.

“Hi, I’m Doctor Greene, and you are Stewart?” he keeps his arm out there for seven seconds and then retracts it, still smiling, “Well, I’m glad to meet you, Stewart! We’re going to take you in one of our special rooms and have you listen to some music. Does that sound okay?”

Instantly, I get a horrendous, terrific and spectacular feeling inside me that something terrible will happen in the near future. I scream as loud as I can and hold my ears but the doctor still smiles and pats me on the back. Mommy is confused by Dr. Greene, but he comforts her and says, “It’s normal . . . they all do this.” Where did the pain come from? I’m unsure, as I had never experienced this. His language couldn’t have meant anything to me, but it was the way he said it, and the hollow, deathly way he told me. He knows what’s going to happen.

The man drags me up and walks me downstairs, but I cannot count anything. I see the colors fade as we go down the stairs from green and cyan and turquoise to gray and black and white. It is not dark down here, but rather a blindingly bright light shines from above and perhaps brightens all the shades of colors so they appear colorless.

Room two hundred-seventeen. Mr. Greene sets me down

in a chair, the only thing in the room, and tells me to relax and listen to the music. He says “drink this” and walks out, still smiling. Well, the room is awfully quiet and I cannot hear what is going on outside.

Quiet, quiet . . . just like what I had anticipated.

I am assuming he is currently walking to go to his office to amplify the sound, so that I can hear it. Twenty-nine seconds in the white, bright room and the music goes on.

I could call it music, but I believe it’s better defined as a low, silent pitch that I can barely hear. The room darkens slightly to approximately ninety percent of its original luminosity, but now it is nothing noticeable. The pitch gets higher and now sounds almost like a squeal from an animal. I believe the drink Dr. Greene gave me starts taking effect and I see the room darker than it is, but that’s probably because I’m slightly drowsy. I start waving my hands around, because the pitch is getting too high and it is getting to a point where I cannot take it without having to cover my ears. Oh, gracious that’s a high pitch. The room darkens to a pitch black now, but the pitch goes higher and higher, seeming limitless in its quest to agonize me.

I suddenly remember that punch Billy gave me today on the nose and get a nervous jolt, which pushes me backwards and forces the chair to go backwards with me. That blackness I remember is similar to this one — unending, with no distinct qualities. And then I start to see my dream again and hear that music, that sound. I don’t see it in front of me like a television, but it is not in my head like an imagination. It is real and I am not Stewart, but something else. Something starts pulling at my ear, but I put my hand up and nothing’s there. And then it gets harder and harder, but it is not painful yet.

“Hey,” someone says, “How come you’re not running away? Do you like this?” It jabs my stomach and pulls harder at my ears, “So run! I know you won’t like this.”

I feel another pull at my ears but the force is exceedingly painful and I squeal out a little. It’s not a human squeal but . . . animalistic, feral. And then I feel something that I remember for so long. There is no heat, no light, no gassy fumes that I can sense, but there is a pinching and a sense that my nervous cells are screaming at the brain to react, so I instinctually jolt upwards and get a loud, obnoxious ringing in my ear. Now it’s hurting. But the pain and pinching continues, right down my ears and onto my back, right into my legs and arms and everywhere.

It hurts but I cannot move. Something is holding me down

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MONTAGE 35

or I am paralyzed completely.

“You look too happy right now! Let’s wet you up and see what happens.” I feel a sensation on my ears like a light splash of water, but it instantly burns up, and so does the rest of me. I know what the pain is because of its familiarity to me. No, the pain is not familiar, but the rapidity at which it engulfs my body and the odd directions it takes resembles my favorite fantasies and long-held guilty pleasure. A fire devours my body, but it is not there, only the pain. It’s too terrible now and I scream for help, but no one answers. No one is there to see me die, and I am not conscious to see who my killer is. Gasoline burns right into my pores and my eyes are shut closed from the intense heat.

“No, no death should be like this!” I scream out in angst and agonizing terror. But it doesn’t stop. By an act of God or Mr. Greene or my own consciousness, the lights go on, but I am not in the same room I was in before. A field of green lay before me, and in front of me a large man.

Oddly, I need to look up to see what it is, but he doesn’t look proportionally correct. And as the fire begins to seethe into me in my very last moments of life, I see that it is not another human, but it is a younger me. His laughter cackles and soaks in with the gasoline and the fire and the fumes and he says his words, and the final ones I would hear: “Bye bye bunny!” and he runs away into the field.

It’s like a sea of fumes that consumes my body, and I spin around dizzy, unable to see what’s going on (not because the lights are turned down — my perception of reality is completely distorted). The essence of heat sinks right down to the very pores of my skin and the gasoline lights up my blood. The veins and arteries serve as channels for the explosion to occur within me, but it is as if I am dying both from the inside and the outside. I’m prodded at the ears again, but this time by a sharp object, and I cannot describe what it is. My eyes soak with tears and I fall and clutch my stomach and weep for the dread to stop.

Madness, madness. I cannot see or taste or smell anymore and a fleeting sense of terror goes up my spine and wracks my nerves to their very depths and I scream for help.

Scream for the flames to stop and cease to exist.

I begin to feel that I am the essence of fire, but what I once thought of the phenomenon my affinity is now my destroyer.

I remember.

Billy So it’s been two weeks and I got something rollin’

36 MONTAGE

around in my mind like a fucking hamster. It’s just staying there and waiting for me to get it out, just pissing me off cause I can’t do nothing about it. Big man Stewart’s been gone for all this time, but I’ve been edging to find him to tell him something. I really don’t know why it’s so important that it’s bothering me so much, but I gotta tell him.

Man, two weeks.

I’m walking around school and everyone’s giving me nasty looks, all running away lickity-split when they see me with their big circle eyes. They probably hear about all the shit I’ve done so they think they’re next. They think I took care of big man Stewart just like that cause he’s been missing for some while. No, he ain’t been here for a while but that’s not cause of me. Kind of irritating — they think that fatass can paint the ground, but all the ground would see is his sore and black and blue body. No red, just a lump of coal on the ground. But wow, I keep thinking about him. Wow, wow, wow. This kid’s gotta come back quick cause I can’t hold it in anymore.

But something interesting happens just now like a sign from Big Man God up in the clouds. I turn the corner and see that orange flicker of light. That metal clicking sound and the shadow of the flapping arm. That little aura of solitude and quietness and sadness and anger. Yeah, I remember that real good. This feeling that I’m getting . . . yeah, this is good. “So Stewart,” I say, “Where the fuck you been?” I don’t really expect him to respond, so I start a “fuck you” to insult him a little, but it’s funny cause I hear him say something, like we’re thinking at the same time and all. No no no, big man Stewart don’t talk, that’s just a stupid stupid voice in my he—

“Get out of the way, please.”

“Well, well, well, well, well. Lookie here, Stewart learned how to talk! Is that what you were gone for all this time? Fantastic. Now we can talk, cause I got something important to tell ya.”

The kid tries to sidestep pass me all frustrated, like he’s got something big to accomplish, but I grab his shoulder and pull him over towards me and whisper all quiet into his ear, “If you want to see it all burn, do it real good.”

But the guy resists and pushes me away, gives me some wavy arm shit and runs down to class. That guy’ll never learn.

Anywho, I come to school today expecting I’m gonna see some real nice shit. I donno why, but I just

have that feeling that some really nice nasty stuff’s gonna go down and I’m kinda here just waiting for it. I get that feeling every time I see the red red blood falling out of some guy’s nose or mouth or something.

Yeah, something good’s gonna happen today.

Stewart 1:12:02 PM. He thinks he understands, but he really doesn’t. None of them do. So I’ll show them how it works and how they’ll work to understand it.

Seventy-eight steps right into classroom two-twelve.

Billy Yeah, something real nice and nasty. That bastard.

Stewart Glup-glup. Five gallons of it, fourteen times around the dark, empty room. I hate the smell because of its density and strength, but I do what I have to in order to see the orange and red and yellow go all the way.

The thrill engages right through my veins as I throw the container aside and pull out the lighter. Flick, flick, crackle and there it is. I stare at it for five, eight, ten minutes, flicking it on and off, waiting for the perfect moment.

“How ’bout I help you with that?”

Billy Now I’m standing here and the fatass is just staring at the light, turning around in circles and staring at that lighter. Man, if he keeps this up for too long he’ll run outta fuel to even do anything. I walk up big man Stewart and pull his arm down right into the sweet sweet liquid right by his feet.

Oh, and how it burns. How it burns.

Stewart

It’s lit up and the flames dodge my essence and take a path of their own. They run away from me, aghast with excitement or fury, or some sort of rage.

Terrible beauty, red with anger, yellow with glee, hot enough to bring the walls down, and tough enough to stand a barrage of water. I cannot move or react to the excitement I feel, but I just stand and watch as the fury augments beyond my power. Left, right, up, down, circles and backflips and it’s a circus! The air oozes with heat and starts to cry, that is, I feel the humidity skyrocket and the dark room before is now a spectacle of lights and sounds.

“Stand still for a second, there, buddy,” the voice says, “Don’t move there . . . yeah, that’s it. You’re good.”

There’s a pinching feeling on my arm and I’m pushed right into the flames by something behind me, something like the hand of a God, or the breath of an angel, or the pulling temptation of the Devil’s fork, or the ethereal gravitation

of the flames.

And it feels so good, the heat soaking through my skin, the blinding colors and the melting of my eyelids, victim to the steam from the conflagration. Finally, my language comes to life. Finally, my language will be seen by so many, and understood, and soaked in to their souls, just like the flames are supposed to do.

Billy So the kid’s in there burning to ashes, but he’s doing it all romantic-like, like he wants it to happen. And it does happen, I know it. He’s flailing his arms around, shot up, and his head rolling in little little circles. It kinda feels to me like he’s Jesus or something. Yeah, Jesus. No, it’s not how he looks, with his arms all stretched out and his head rolling and rolling in little little circles. It’s cause he don’t care one bit that he’s on fire. He don’t care for the pain, but I’m thinking he’s enjoying that little furnace in there. Yeah, he likes it. That’s pretty. Beautiful!

And now look what he’s done. All the firetrucks go woo woo woo and the kids are screaming and boohoohoo-ing and the teachers yelling and the waterworks going splash splash to stop this mess, but it’s already too late and they know it; however much they try, they won’t stop true anger, not the fake anger for the red red blood, but the one that wants them to all leave and figure out something when they’re walking out the big door to Heaven or Hell or whatever their future is. Oh, it’s beautiful.

And now they’re looking at me, right in the eyes.

Bam, bam, hit in the face and in the teeth. They’re all angry just like the fire, angry for some red red blood of mine cause they think I did it all. They don’t understand the beautiful language. All they see from the fire and flames are the death and destruction and the Hell inside it, but they don’t see where it comes from. Oh, that’s damned great. All my blood going right in front of my eyes. That’s gorgeous right there. Stealing my hair and going all “fuckyousonofabitch” and yelling and screaming all loud, big mouths, big angry faces.

And as I’m standing there getting the red red blood beaten outta me, I see Stewart in his little room, a burning little man spinning in circles and laughing and laughing and laughing. And I start laughing. Yeah, both of us laughing.

MONTAGE 37

Cassis KELLY STONEBOCK

Lips black from Argentinean wine that if swirled might produce a whiff of Cassis where if you go search the coast along the calanques for my friend’s towel we had climbed into the small car foreign, despite seeing it daily, peeled away sunbroiled bodies brûlé par le soleil from stuck leather gazed through tar-lung smoke past spotted windows at retreating coastline, smiles smeared like plaster left overnight to set. only then did we realize it was gone.

38 MONTAGE

The Elephant J OK E

12 ERIN MURPHY

“Master Daniel, your father wishes to show you something,” Morris called from the doorway of Daniel’s old bedroom.

Daniel looked up from his book with apprehension. “‘Show me something?’ Did he say what it was?”

The butler cleared his throat. “No, but I will say that whatever it was, he seemed very amused by it.”

“Oh, god.” Daniel flashed a look of mock-dread and rose from his seat. He’d had a suspicious feeling his father had been up to something lately, and while Edward Beauford may have made a living on his crazy ideas, that combined with his odd sense of humor had led to some very awkward moments. The last time Edward had called his family over to see something, he had hung a “dogs playing poker” painting along with the rest of his art collection, and they all politely laughed along with him. A year ago, he’d called to tell Daniel all about his murder-mystery weekend and how he had initially neglected to mention to the business associate he’d brought along that what they were witnessing was a performance.

Daniel followed Morris to the stairwell, dragging his hand down the glossy cherry wood railing. The Beauford family home wasn’t quite as ornate as some of their friends’ houses, but its sleek look, high ceilings and large airy rooms made it impressive. The living room’s ceiling was two stories high. Edward was already waiting there with Daniel’s sister, Hillary, who was also visiting home from college. They both looked up at Daniel as he made his way downstairs.

“Ah! There you are!” Edward said brightly. He suddenly forced himself into a more serious tone and clasped his hands behind his back. “Now, you two, I’ve been thinking a lot about what you’ve said about tonight’s party, and you’re right; I wouldn’t want your mother or our friends to be uncomfortable.”

Velma Beauford’s children had been trying to convince their father for several days that throwing a party for their mother, even a small one, was not a good idea.

Edward certainly meant well enough suggesting it, seeing as weeks had passed since Velma had last seen their friends.

In any other situation, the “Welcome Back” dinner affair would have been expected, even enjoyable.

But, Velma hadn’t been to a party since the week before she checked into Sunhaven Psychiatric Hospital.

She’d always hidden her anxiety from others well, keeping up a calm, prim appearance like any woman of her breeding should. Her husband and children were the only ones that saw her have a panic attack or two, her quickening breaths and forehead sweat before she had run and locked herself in the bathroom. Trying to comfort her through the door seemed to do no good; perhaps it made things worse. They’d had to leave her alone. They flipped through the channels but did not watch, pushed their forks around their plates but did not eat, or skimmed a page but did not read until she came out again with a pleasant smile locked in place.

She organized events for their country club, even though Edward had often suggested she’d have more fun at the gatherings if she left the stress of planning them to someone else. Velma always insisted on perfection, and until the last minute she’d always worry that nothing at the events would ever come together correctly. The last party Velma had hosted, a benefit for breast cancer research, was a disaster.

The band got stuck in traffic and showed up an hour late, and the caterer’s main course had gone bad. With her plans crashing down around her, Velma’s voice became more and more hysterical as she talked with the guests until finally she pushed an ice sculpture swan to the floor, the shattered pieces scattering around her high-heeled shoes. Staring in shock from a safe distance, the acquaintances used to seeing her so collected and proper had a front-row seat to her nervous breakdown. Velma was embarrassed later and, wanting to prevent further episodes, she made the decision to go to the hospital for rest and treatment.

Now, it was the day of the “Welcome Back” party, and a group of Beauford family friends from the club would be expected for dinner, drinks and uncomfortable silences within the hour.

Daniel and Hillary exchanged surprised glances

MONTAGE 39

at their father’s sudden willingness to reason. “You’re canceling? This late?” Hillary asked.

“No, nothing like that.” He crossed the room to peer outside the glass of the tall double doors leading to the backyard. “I just thought we could use something to lighten the mood. So, I’ve hired someone for the party!”

Hillary leaned over and whispered to Daniel, “You think he got a clown?”

“Oh, lord. He wouldn’t do that twice.”

“Come outside and see. Morris, you too,” Edward called to the butler, who had been heading back to the kitchen.

As he fumbled with the door handles, Edward’s voice began burbling with his own cleverness. “I just thought what better way to distract everyone from one proverbial ‘elephant in the room’ than with another!”

As soon as they pushed their way through the doors, Edward’s arms flew open in a “ta-da!” gesture.

There in the middle of the yard, between the plot of freshly trimmed gardenias and cherub-adorned fountain, stood a mustachioed man in a blue jumpsuit. He was holding a leash that led to a harnessed large figure that was definitely not a clown.

“You bought an elephant?”

“Don’t be ridiculous, Daniel. I rented one.”

“Oh, Daddy, you’re awful!” Hillary gushed, with her eyes lit up. She moved in closer. The elephant (a real elephant!) must have been fairly young still, as it was barely taller than the man holding it. “Where did you get it?”

Edward and the elephant’s handler, Mr. Alex Chacko, explained that the elephant came from a small but credible California company. Mahout, Inc.’s elephants were usually used for American Hindus’ weddings and exceptionally extravagant children’s parties.

“Adorable, isn’t it?” chirped Edward, still chuckling to himself. “If this doesn’t cheer her up, I don’t know what will.”

Daniel stood with his mind racing to figure what kind of damage control this would entail. Hillary tentatively reached out a hand to stroke the elephant’s head.

The animal seemed especially friendly, having been trained to enjoy human attention, and began nudging Hillary with her trunk. Mr. Chacko looked up with suspicion at the quickly darkening sky and muttered to himself about whether he had remembered to bring his umbrella.

Morris the butler did and said nothing, merely eying the elephant as if to say he didn’t know who was

40 MONTAGE

expected to clean up after the beast, but it certainly wasn’t going to be him.

“I don’t think Mom is going to think this is very funny,” Daniel said. “We need to be easing her back into normal life . . .”

“Oh, you worry too much. Your mother has a wonderful sense of humor. Morris, would you go get — oh, hold that thought, you go back to preparing dinner and let me go get her. I know just what I want to say before she sees the surprise.” He rubbed his hands together, and the two men went inside the house.

The Beauford children could hear their father’s set-up before the double doors opened. “. . . as long as you’re sure. I just wanted to make sure we had no problem with any elephant in the room. Now, sweetheart, what do you think of what we’ve done with the yard?” He pushed open the door, and Velma stepped out.

She had been looking pale and tired looking all through Daniel’s and Hillary’s visit, as if the nervousness had been wrung out of her. But, with her best dress on and her hair done up, she almost looked good as new.

Velma saw the elephant, and the family locked their eyes on her face, watching for anything: a smile, a tear, a tic. The Beauford’s knew their matriarch well, and they knew how to dissect any sign to tell if she was happy or angry.

As she stared, her eyes widened a bit; then she blinked hard. She was definitely not smiling. In fact, she was starting to press her lips into a familiar harsh, thin line.

Then, as swiftly as if someone flipped a switch, she tore her eyes away from the elephant and tensed the muscles in her cheeks into something resembling a smile. Recognizing the look, the Beaufords prepared themselves for the kind of sting only a W.A.S.P. can give.

“The garden,” she said with quiet reserve, “looks lovely. As it always does.”

Looking everywhere except the spot where the elephant stood, she turned away. “I’m going to rest a bit before the party.”

They watched her march stiffly back inside.

Stricken, Edward stared a few seconds even after she was gone. “Oh lord, I didn’t mean to upset her!”

“We know, Dad. Let’s just get this thing out of here.”

“I mean, really, I just . . . I just thought this would be a good way for everyone to relax about all this.”

“Oh, poor Mom.” Hillary sighed and headed

back in the house. “I’ll talk to her.”

“Maybe if we act fast, we can get it out before the guests arrive and we completely embarrass her,” Daniel said.

“I think if I just—”

“Pardon me!” The sound of Mr. Chacko’s thick Middle-Eastern voice broke through the confusion. “Little Nefertiti and I are unable to leave right now.”

Daniel scowled and rubbed his hand through his hair, biting back his annoyance. “Listen, sir,” he said evenly.

“We could have guests arriving at any moment. We will pay you for your trouble, but we need you to leave, please.”

“It is impossible.” Mr. Chacko gave a nod at Edward. “Mister Beauford insisted that my partner hide our truck and trailer until the party ended so that everyone would be surprised. We needed more fuel as well, and this house is far enough from town that the truck could be waiting at a gas station miles away. We cannot leave without it.”

And, as the three men stood there, wondering where one could possibly hide something as big as an elephant, the very first guest rang the doorbell. ~:~

Hillary rapped lightly on the door to the bedroom, barely able to hear Velma saying, “Come in.” She was sitting at her vanity, reapplying her lipstick. Velma turned around and smiled at her daughter. “Hi, sweetheart.”

“Hi, Momala. Decided not to rest?”

“Oh, that. Well, I figured with all these people coming over soon, I’d better make sure I was all ready instead.”

“Well,” Hillary murmured, “you look very nice.”

Velma thanked her, and Hillary sat at the edge of the bed and watched in silence for a minute as Velma fiddled with a few pieces of hair falling out of her bun.

There was no point bringing up her father’s inappropriate joke now. She seemed calm enough, and people would indeed be there soon.

“Hey.” Hillary got up, moved to lean over behind Velma and pressed her cheek into hers. “With all the . . . stuff . . . that’s going on, if you wanted to cancel the party, everyone would understand.”

Velma waved a hand dismissively. “Now why would I want to do that? I’ve been looking forward to this all week; I’ve missed going to all the parties. Besides, I have to face our friends sometime.” Slowly, she reached for her daughter’s hand and squeezed it a bit. “You know, at the

hospital, I really missed everyone. You, your father, Daniel, my friends…”

“Oh, Mom.”

“Sometimes I was so lonely . . . I—” Her voice broke.

“Mom, Mom, you don’t have to talk about it,” Hillary protested. She shut her eyes and put her arms around Velma. “It’s OK.”

Velma took a deep breath and was then silent.

They sat together for a moment, and when Hillary felt the crisis had passed, she kissed Velma’s cheek, hugged her around the shoulders and got up. “Come on,” Hillary said.

“We’ve got a party starting downstairs.”

Velma let out a deep sigh. Before rising to follow Hillary out the door, she checked her reflection one more time and wiped off a wet smudge of mascara from underneath her eye. ~:~

The beginning of the party went smoothly enough; as the socialites made their entrances, they beamed at the family and hugged them and shook their hands just as they’d always had. The guests, twelve in all, were overjoyed to see Velma back from “her little vacation” and said they hoped she got the rest she needed. They spent the first hour talking about what had happened within their circle for the past few weeks and about how the sky looked as if it might rain any minute.

Roger Lawrence was the only person to bring up Sunhaven Hospital by name; he had been there once before for his alcoholism. “Isn’t the garden there beautiful?” he said to Velma before his wife blushed and excused them both.

At times like this, Morris really wished the Beaufords had more hired help. Even though the dinner was almost ready, with the roast left cooking in the oven, he would have rather stayed put in the kitchen instead of rushing back and forth to the living room to make sure the guests were taken care of.

“May I offer you another drink, madam?” he asked Laurel Frosch, a dear old family friend.

She was staring out the double doors’ tall windows with a peculiar expression on her face. “I’m beginning to think I’ve had enough, actually. Look out there! Surely I’m seeing things!”

He peered out the windows. The elephant had wandered out from behind the gardener’s shed to investigate their peach tree, and Mr. Chacko was desperately leading

MONTAGE 41

the creature back.

Morris quickly pressed his back into the glass and whispered the whole story to Mrs. Frosch, much to her amazement and delight. (“Oh, that Edward!”)

“So you see,” he said, “We don’t want to upset Mrs. Beauford any further. She’ll be horribly embarrassed if we make a fuss over the elephant, so it would be for the best if we kept quiet about it, you see? We will pretend as if it were never here.”

Mrs. Frosch nodded. “Oh yes, the poor dear! I wouldn’t dream of saying anything!” she said. It was the wildest thing Mrs. Frosch had heard all month. And, of course, within a quarter of an hour every guest at the party knew about the joke elephant the Beaufords were hiding in their backyard.

A few people were daring enough to discreetly glance out the windows to the yard, but most just whispered about it whenever they found themselves out of a Beauford family member’s earshot.

How could her family be so callous?

Poor Velma!

Why couldn’t she just be a good sport about it?

I hear she burst into tears the minute she saw it and threatened to slit her wrists then and there!

How do you rent an elephant exactly?

Finally, a few sensible voices began to speak up to remind everyone that they were supposed to be keeping quiet about the whole thing — for Velma’s sake. The conversation drifted back towards meaningless chit-chat, which followed them all into the other room at the dining room table.

Velma sat at the head of the table, smiling politely at all her friends. With her staring them right in the faces, they dared not say a word to each other, but when they looked at her, all they could see was the elephant.

Sarah Michaels described the feeling to her husband as a kind of ache. “I’m afraid that if I open my mouth, an elephant will burst out.”

Soon the conversation dwindled. Not even the juiciest bit of gossip could compare to the elephant, and if they mentioned the source of her embarrassment at all . . . well, no one was really sure what Velma was capable of anymore. As far as they knew, Velma was a bomb that could be set off with the slightest touch.

The guests were served their salads, and that was when Mr. Chacko heard the first rumble of thunder. ~:~

Daniel was just starting to tell everyone about his plans for law school when they all heard the tall double doors open and the floorboards in the other room groan.

The guests suddenly looked up and stared at the wall as if they could see through to the living room on the other side.

42 MONTAGE

Exchanging nervous glances, Edward and Daniel excused themselves politely and made their way to the other room.

The elephant was shifting from one massive foot to another near the loveseat, and before anyone else could speak, Mr. Chacko launched into his defense: “It is raining!

We must come in!”

True, droplets of rain were just beginning to hit the windowpanes, and they were increasing in frequency, but this was not a good enough reason for Daniel. “It’s an animal. What difference does it make if it gets wet?”

Mr. Chacko drew himself up and narrowed his eyes. “Sir, not all companies treat their animals the way they deserve to be treated. They train them to adapt to life among humans, lock them up and then stupidly expect them to survive the same harsh conditions they might face in the wild or worse. Even if Nefertiti were raised in the wild, she would try to find shelter, and there is no shelter in your yard, sir! I refuse to let this magnificent creature sit in the rain and become sick.”

The elephant just stood there, looking bored.

Edward wondered to himself if the man was right in thinking an elephant really could get pneumonia from the rain, but even with his doubts, it was no use. He looked at the massive size of the animal; it would not be easy to move her, with or without Mr. Chacko’s help.

Whimpering to himself and resigning to his fate, Edward asked, “Could you please just try to keep out of sight and keep quiet?”

Mr. Chacko agreed, and he and Daniel made their way back to the dining room, with Daniel fuming.

“It was nothing,” Edward announced. “The wind blew the doors open.”

The guests nodded and smiled. Laurel Frosch let out a giggle, and Edward’s face turned red.

Daniel whispered to Hillary, “Do you think they know?”

“Of course not,” she said nervously, but from the expression on everyone’s faces, she was beginning to think otherwise. ~:~

Two dinner courses had gone by, and Mr. Chacko was beginning to get anxious. Had the evening gone as planned, he might have been able to slip away for a minute, but as it was, he had to stay with Nefertiti alone and keep his eyes glued to her. Already, she had almost run her trunk along the grand piano’s keys, and she had a tendency to want to wander around the room unless he stopped her.

He couldn’t risk her making any more noise or leaving the living room.

A wave of relief washed over him when he saw Morris enter the living room again to do a bit of straightening up.

“And I just had the carpet cleaned.” Morris winced and looked at the dirt the elephant had tracked all along the floor. “That had better be mud.”

“Oh, hello there! Ah . . . Morris?” Mr. Chacko began nervously. “Please, I need your help. It has been a few hours and I need to . . . ah . . . go.”

Morris raised an eyebrow. “‘Go?’”

“The lavatory. I need to use your facilities. Please, please, could you hold on to the elephant for just one minute?” Mr. Chacko desperately held out his end of the harness to the butler. “I will only be a moment.”

Morris shifted uncomfortably but agreed to take the leash and, for good measure, something that looked like a prod. As Mr. Chacko rushed off, he took a moment to look at the elephant. Oh, it was a messy animal like all the rest, but he supposed there was something majestic about it. If only something could take care of that smell . . .

Morris stopped for a second and sniffed the air again deliberately. That was not the smell of an elephant.

That was the smell of a burning soufflé.

Panic set in. Forgetting what he was doing, he dropped the leash and prod and ran toward the kitchen.

Then, realizing what he had done, he stopped and turned around. The young elephant was still standing there motionless. Convinced the elephant could stand still for the thirty seconds until the handler was sure to come back.

Morris continued his sprint to the kitchen.

But, there were all sorts of interesting sounds and smells coming from the dining room, and the elephant was curious. ~:~

The tall doors to the dining room were slightly ajar, allowing it to push its way in. Alexandra Willows nearly screamed before she caught herself, but the moment was so dreamlike that most people at the table could merely gape at the elephant sauntering into the Beauford’s grand dining room. The room that had seemed so large before was dwarfed by the elephant’s presence as it walked down a path mere inches away from the guests’ seats on one side and the portrait-lined wall on the other, curling its trunk as it went.

Edward bolted out of his seat to grab the elephant’s harness to lead it back into the other room, but his attempts were in vain. Hillary made a strangled noise in her throat and, thinking fast, said a little too loudly. “Well, Mom! Why don’t we go see a play this weekend?”

Velma’s face was turning red, and she stared down at her down at her nearly empty plate. “F-fine,” she said, almost inaudibly.

Two women gasped as the elephant’s trunk brushed by them, but they said nothing. The elephant found a bowl of cashews on a small table in the corner and

happily began snacking.

Daniel sat with his mouth open. He was stunned speechless, but he was also shocked by the behavior of the guests. Each one was looking down at their plates just like Velma was, pretending the elephant didn’t exist.

No one wanted to make things worse. No one wanted to add to the stress Velma was obviously already feeling, and no one wanted to acknowledge the joke that had brought the elephant to the Beauford household.

Mr. Chacko flew in, gasping for air, and gave a cry when he saw it in the corner.

“I am so, so sorry, Mr. Beauford! I was only going to be away for a minute and I . . . oh, there’s no excuse! I will take her away at once.”

“You’d better!” said Edward, using a handkerchief to mop the sweat on his forehead. “That elephant has caused more problems tonight—”

“That elephant!” Velma spoke up.

Edward rushed to her and bent down on his knees. “Darling, I am so sorry. I didn’t mean to upset you.”

The floodgates had broken, and he had to let it all out. “I just wanted to make you laugh and show you I didn’t care about all this mental hospital business. I wasn’t trying to make fun of you or embarrass—”

“An elephant!” she cried. “For heaven’s sake, I thought those people in the hospital had finally gotten to me! You mean you can see it too? Oh, God, I thought I was the only one!”

As this notion hit her family and the guests one by one, they all began to chuckle, hesitantly at first, then louder as they saw their neighbors do the same. They called out their reassurances to her that, yes, she wasn’t imagining it. Hillary reached for her mother’s hand and began to cry.

Daniel clutched his hand to his heart and began to laugh.

Edward peppered kisses all across his wife’s face.

Preoccupied with the bowl of nuts, the elephant ignored them all.

The End MONTAGE 43

Duck KRISTIN MUELLER

NICHOLAS AMBROSE is a senior-senior, dramatist, in Creative Writing. His work focuses on Avantgarde and non-naturalistic techniques.

KATE BRANKIN is a sophomore. She lives in Chicago with a chinchilla named Paisley unless she lives in Champaign where she gets her kicks from walking in bike lanes. Anything else you’ve heard is only partially true in most cases.

JASON CRUZ is an English / Rhetoric sophomore outta Homer Glen, Illinois!

When he’s not being sex incarnate, he relishes used books, pretentious music, pen chewing, “average” girls, and “drinking.” He despises drop towers, migraines, jackasses, Velcro®, and Walt Freakin’ Whitman.

KELLY ENSKAT is an Art Education major graduating this May. She received the highest time for the flexed arm hang in 4th grade and repeated her championship performance in 5th. She loves trees, tea, and Kraft original mac and cheese.

BOBBY HOSSEINI is pretty freaking awesome. He goes to the gym every day and benches two hundred— with one arm. Then he goes home, watches House, and solves the mystery before the old guy does. What a guy.

Single, too. 630-854-6944

JEFF BRANDT is writing a collection of interconnected stories and poems entitled Piasa Heights Anthology and aims to revitalize Edgar Lee Masters’s Spoon River Anthology concept for the 21st century. Visit JTBrandt.com to read more of his work.

BEN CAMPBELL is a senior double-majoring in Psychology and Philosophy. He enjoys carrots, Tetris, and Fyodor Dostoevsky. He dislikes seedless jelly, golf courses, and Ohio. He is afraid of roller coasters.

CHRISTINE DON gained a love for nature at an early age. From the diverse culture and rugged mountainous regions of Kunming in Southeast China, to the busy concrete city of Taipei in Taiwan, and to the idyllic countryside of Southern Illinois, Don has collected images that have marked her creative inspiration in her painting career.

ANN POTROAST HOLLAND doesn’t have anything to say for herself.

ALEXIS KADONSKY is a freshman that’ll hopefully land in a double major of Sculpture along with either Graphic or Industrial Design. She’s a fan of drinking yerba mate tea while drawing, sculpting, working with metals, mixed media, and printmaking of course.

DAN KLEN is a freshman from Naperville, Illinois. He divides his time between filling blank notebook pages and empty rolls of film.

BENJAMIN KUZEMKA is a sophomore Economics and English major. When not doing school work, he lives in Saint Charles, Illinois or wherever his readings take him.

BRITTANY METKA is currently finishing up student teaching in Art Education and will graduate in May.

ERIN MURPHY is a senior in Journalism, an aspiring novelist, and a native of Brighton, Illinois.

(Yes, she knows you’ve never heard of it.) She has always loved making up stories and creating characters, which is great for fiction writing but not so great for journalism.

NATASHA SACHDEVA is a poet with an affinity for the aesthetically unpretty. She’ll find those images that hurt like fingernails against your chalky bones, just to make you feel something. But it’s all not so harsh, so take a look.

EMILY THIERSCH enjoys art, writing, and traveling.

Her tendency to daydream often gets her in trouble: She recently neglected to get a visa to Vietnam, was denied entry to her connecting flight, and was stranded in Tokyo. C’est la vie…

ANDREW KROK cannot wait to graduate, mostly because he is out of groceries and is far too lazy to buy any more. His favorite woman in history is Martha Washington, and his favorite historical man is Johnnie Walker.

STANTON MCCONNELL is a senior songwriter and is currently casting for Jurassic Park: The Musical. Upon graduation, he plans on purifying himself in the waters of Lake Minnetonka and rewriting the rules to Purple Rain.

KRISTIN MUELLER is a sophomore in Industrial Design and realizes she took advantage of sleep before this major. She recently found a passion for photography, browses YouTube often, and can quote Arrested Development with ease.

FRANK PUSCHAUTZ is that guy.

KELLY STONEBOCK is a senior in Advertising from Peoria, IL. She firmly believes in word processors, human or otherwise.

ANASTASIA TUMANOVA is a Chambana native, graduating this Spring with a BFA in Graphic Design. If she isn’t on her MacBook designing, she is practicing the violin, making a delicious batch of black bean hummus, or riding her Bianchi somewhere nearby.

THANKS and Gratitude We would like to thank all those who donated funds to Montage. Without the help of these organizations and individuals, this journal would not exist. We are honored to be indebted to: Richard Powers • Cynthia Brandt & Beth Stover • Virginia Girten • German & Maruja Cruz • Tim & Beverly Taylor • Audrey Petty • Creative Writing Department • Student Organization Resource Fee • Jane & Dennis Brandt • Claire Billing

If you enjoyed this issue and would like to help the journal continue its important work in recognizing upand-coming literary and visual artists, we encourage you to write a check out to “Montage” and send to:

Montage Literary Arts Journal University of Illinois Department of English 608 South Wright Street Urbana, IL 61801

SUBMIT Prose Poetry Art If you are interested in contacting us or submitting your work email us at: montagejournal@gmail.com You can also reach us at our website, which has more information about us, past issues, and current news: http://www.uiuc.edu/ro/montage

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NICHOLAS AMBROSE JEFF BRANDT KATE BRANKIN BEN CAMPBELL JASON CRUZ CHRISTINE DON KELLY ENSKAT ANN HOLLAND BOBBY HOSSEINI ALEXIS KADONSKY DAN KLEN ANDREW KROK BENJAMIN KUZEMKA STANTON MCCONNELL BRITTANY METKA KRISTIN MUELLER ERIN MURPHY FRANK PUSCHAUTZ NATASHA SACHDEVA KELLY STONEBOCK EMILY THIERSCH ANASTASIA TUMANOVA