Pacific Ties Halloween 2024 Zine: Ghost Stories

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PACIFIC TIES NEWSMAGAZINE

asphodel Written by Rajana Chhin Designed by Julianne Le Illustrated by Nancy Tran

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ut of the corner of my eye, I think I see that person. Sometimes I imagine myself, watched by her.

As if she’s leering at my every action, watching with narrowed eyes.

She burns my eyes when I stare above the stars, reaching for an escape. She overtakes the hand that feeds me, coveting what I eat and devour.

Her appetite is voracious, stealing every When I walk the path home, I look back thought, every touch, every sound and — thinking I hear the ghost of her laugh, sight I experience. For the dead are hungry the quick gasp of air leaving her lungs. and unable to be satiated.

Sometimes, she hangs above my head, reaching her pale hand across my eyes.

Even more so because I was the one that starved her, the one that killed her. In the When I hear her name I feel stilted and depths and pits of my mind, she was there wrong. How do they know that person, as for a lifetime. if they can see her, too?

Then, gone. Ripped away. She doesn’t Is she not lingering on my shoulder as exist—not anymore—yet she plagues me. we speak, dancing across my vision to a I tore her from the muscles and tendons melody that I cannot hear? of my bosom, the sound of separating skin and tissue echoing in the back of my mind.

When I sleep, she rests next to me in my She didn’t scream as I separated our bond, dreams, holding my head in a vice grip. I but she lay lifeless, her spirit lingering, can’t tell if she’s angry, or sad, or happy. I clawing at my vessel to stay. doze and whisper to her that I am well.

And she did stay there. But she is as hollow In every word I write, in every step I as I am vigilant. take, she is right there alongside me. She’s watching the leaves blow past my hair, the Traces of her seem to haunt me and only late night cacophony of my sobs, and the me, as I pace the grocery aisles on a strained smile of my success. mundane evening, as I reach the check-out line and see glimpses of her bones in the “Her appetite is voracious, clerk’s face, as I head home and hear her voice in a song. She’s everywhere and in stealing every thought, everything, and no one minds but me. No every touch, every sound one knows that I am the haunted killer, the one who can’t escape what I had grieved. and sight I experience. For

the dead are hungry and unable to be satiated.”

I taste her when the salt of my tears reaches my lips. I seek refuge in the memory of us. I find myself wishing that it wasn’t me The one that slips off my face when the that had killed her and left her estranged. cold touch of her electrifies my thoughts.

I find myself hoping that she continues The coffin that holds my soul dear. The to haunt me a little more—savoring the bite-shaped wound in my heart. last wisps of her presence. Until there’s nothing left but the cool breeze on a winter The flesh spat out, wet and rotting. night, reminding me of what it was like to feel welcomed home.

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Where Did I

Leave My

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rowing up, I never understood buying winter clothes during summer just for the discount. All the clothes my mom would buy on sale would sit in my closet, forgotten till its season would finally come around. I always swore to her that, by then, I wouldn’t even want to wear whatever she had bought.

In the cold, icy days before Winter break started, I did find something special at the local Spirit Halloween store. It was one of those masks the spies in Mission Impossible would wear, lifelike, but just fake and grotesque enough that you’d know it was part of a costume. My friend was actually the one who called me over to see it, jokingly saying it looked just like me. The mask had scars drawn across its eyes with torn, patchy hair, and lips sewn shut, perfect for the next Halloween season, so I bought it at a discount. I swear it looked nothing like me then.

The mask sat in a dark corner of my closet until I was packing for college, left to settle with the dusty remains of old winter coats. Thinking it wouldn’t hurt to bring, I tossed it in with the rest of my clothes. As I shut my suitcase, I swore it looked scarier when I bought it.

After move-in, October rolled around quicker than I had thought. Forgetful, as always, my only fragment of a costume for the week long Hal lowe e n Written by Joshua Huang bender was the mask. I wore it with borrowed coveralls, like an off brand M i c h a e l Myers, and enjoyed the liquid trickor-treating of Halloweekend.

I swore to my friends, we’d come out of this bender as changed people.

I woke up on the floor of my dorm the next morning.

Designed by Amanda Chan The mask was propped Illustration by Chandni Srinivas up across the room, staring back at me.

The stitching on the mouth had been torn and the scars must have faded away during the night. It looked damaged now, lacking almost all detail that made it scary. I swear, it’s the most average, boring blank face now, but there’s another party tonight and I guess I’ll make do with what I have.

Like yesterday morning, I woke up remembering very little about last night.

However, this time, my memory began to gap when I put the mask on. How had I even gotten to the party? The room was spinning now and I wanted to throw up and everything was sore, and, and, an…my lips are sewn shut? I ran to the bathroom to look in the mirror and only the mask stared back. It looked like I dove head first into a window, had a sudden urge to use a sewing machine on my mouth and experienced male pattern baldness, but there was nothing to take off, no seam to pull at. I swear, taking this mask off has never been a problem.

As I was freaking out, pacing back and forth in my room, I found the mask, again, propped up, staring blankly at me. Only this time, it was my old face that stared back.

Mask?

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Entwined Tales Illustrated by Nancy Tran

05 FALL 2024 | VOLUME 1

Bo n e s t

h at C a n

B rea t he

Writte n by J uliann Design e Le ed by Justin e Lim

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’ve been tracking it for the past few weeks, and I’ve come to a realization: there’s a sort of pain that’s started to rot my chest. Perhaps it’s been growing for years, having sprouted during those childhood nights when I went to bed with my hair wet and straggly. I used to wake up with hair knotted enough for my mom to eventually stock up on watermelon-scented hair detangler.

The last time I was that careless was probably in middle school. I used to fall asleep in stained blue jeans and faces of foundation, waking up confused as to why the scent of B.O. seemed to linger or why acne began to rupture my skin. During my senior year, I adopted a three-step skin-care routine (due to a sense of biological responsibility rather than the joy of cosmetic rituals). Since I had spent so much time vandalizing my bodily temple, it only felt right to force myself into a sort of ascetic treatment.

I convinced myself that in order to feel more like myself (a feeling which only existed abstractly), I would have to become the purest form of myself. I donated literal pounds of makeup ranging from lipsticks worth less than a dollar to foundations that were funded by

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multiple weekly allowances. I gave them away to my friends under a casual guise– Aw, this actually goes so much better with your undertones. Yes, I’m sure! Take it now or I’ll just leave it behind. I became more radiant by transforming into a plain nubile, a process I believed to be a simultaneous interaction between growth and reversion. I worshiped a divine form of nothingness.

With my hair under a strict cleansing schedule and my skin used to biweekly exfoliation, the thing that grew during my years of detangler was forced into hibernation. It lingered right beneath my skin and taunted me every rare occasion I fell short on a World History project or was trapped in a car that echoed with my parents’ scoldings. That ugly warmth that arose with each pang of embarrassment or guilt was egged on by a rot prodding my ribs.

If I had thought my high school self to be a juvenile psychotic obsessed with physical appearances, then the person I became following my grandmother’s death must have been her god. Immediately after my grandmother fell ill with the flu and died six days later, I buried myself in a rigorous routine. I was 23 and determined to not miss a single meal prep, barre class, or therapy session.

were beginning to envelop themselves, resulting in various aches throughout the day. I called out sick from work, refusing to reply to carefully worded, well-intentioned messages from my boss and colleagues.

It was too much to ignore the gnawing anymore. Exhausted, I stopped berating myself when my posture slumped or my wrinkles deepened or my stomach expanded.

I indulged myself with delivery food and trashy reality TV, moving further from the routine I’d built for myself. The aches began to lessen, only coming on twice a day.

I tried turning my mother away when she came to check on me. I didn’t want to get better. I wanted to sit in the stinging pain of my dried and flaking

not totally unlike how many mothers plan to have children, to use my life to compensate for the parts of my grandma’s that were cut short. During this unique quality time, I’d end up forgetting that my bones had been grating against one another as they tried to keep us upright.

Eventually, any fuel I’d been using to power myself through my yearlong delusion extinguished itself.

The rotting began to encompass my life, and I’d find motivating notes for myself that I never remembered writing. I began to question my face in the mirror–my skin only needed a few days to revert to its naturally dry and porous state despite the multiple years I’d dedicated to a skincare routine. While the change in my appearance weighed on my mind, it felt like my stomach and brain

skin, to exist beneath my greased scalp because I feared what would be exposed when I washed these parts away. If I returned to the facade of productivity, I feared losing any bit of truth I’d achieved. I’d rather be burning and haunted than be naive again. I hated myself for living in extremes, hated myself for my inability to understand the world as a spectrum.

When I think of my grandmother, I feel the hurt beneath my skin like a seal’s growing layer of blubber. Perhaps this is what has always gnawed at me. I tried for a year to change my skin and flesh as much as I could, to reach the nirvana that’s promised by a consistent beauty regimen. My skeleton is still white and strong, but it’s impossible for my body not to recognize that it’s been carrying two people.

Photo Credit: cottonbro studio, Pexels

By dividing myself into someone who was able to accomplish enough tasks for two people, I felt like I could rebuild my grandmother. I convinced myself that I’d be a sort of Dr. Frankenstein, someone who had enough life for two beings to share.

I watched Anthony Bourdain reruns for her, made my own Caesar dressing for myself, went praying at the Buddhist temple for her (the nearest being 40 minutes away), bought European facial cleansers for myself, started making my guests take off their shoes for her, bought a juicer for myself, always left The Food Network on for her (and increased my electricity bill), and, occasionally, went to dinner with my parents for the both of us. I decided,

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