2018-2019 From the Fallout Shelter

About Us From the Fallout Shelter is the annual literary and arts publication of the Penn State Harrisburg campus, and it is also the name of the student club that produces the magazine. The magazine and club were known for many years as Tarnhelm (a magical Viking helmet). In 2008, club members updated the name to reflect a unique feature of campus, which is the fact that the basement of the Olmsted Building is designated as a fallout shelter, complete with a few metal fallout shelter signs from decades long gone. The building may have been built to withstand radioactive fallout because it used to be part of the Olmsted Air Force Base, and it is also near the nuclear reactors of Three Mile Island. The Air Force sold some land and buildings to the university in 1966.

The entire base closed in 1969, (Harrisburg International Airport now operates the old runways) and Penn State Harrisburg has been expanding ever since, with annual creative achievements showcased in this magazine.

All selections, including the winning pieces, are chosen anonymously (through blind judging) by the reading boards and the editorial board, comprised entirely of students. The only exception is the Academy of American Poets Prize, which was picked via blind judging by professors. Students who submitted work and served on the editorial staff at the same time did not evaluate their own work.

The print edition of the magazine is distributed for free on campus during the spring semester. Funding is provided by the Student Activity Fund, the School of Humanities, the Commission for Women, fundraisers run by club members, and private donors. The contributors, editors, and the adviser are responsible for the content of this magazine.

We can be reached via our website, www.sites.psu.edu/falloutshelter, or join our Facebook group, called From the Fallout Shelter – Penn State Harrisburg’s Literary/Arts Magazine. Find us on Twitter and Instagram @FTFS_PSH. Current Penn State Harrisburg students and staff may submit their work anytime via our online submission manager, where all the guidelines are also posted: https://fromthefalloutshelter.submittable.com/submit

2 • From the Fallout Shelter

FROM THE FALLOUT SHELTER PENN STATE HARRISBURG’S LITERARY ARTS MAGAZINE www.sites.psu.edu/falloutshelter 2018-2019

Genre Editors Poetry Editor: Kenneth Nolan III Fiction Editor: Sam Bixler Asst. Fiction Editor: Valerie Frigerio Visual Arts Editor: Jessica Mele Nonfiction Editor: Jessica Mele Evaluation Boards Rebecca Bestwick, Sam Bixler, Valerie Frigerio, Rachel Lenich, Kenneth Nolan III, Jessica Mele Business Manager and Online Editor: Rebecca Bestwick Faculty Adviser: Jen Hirt

Designed by Spectrum Printing.

Printing and binding by Spectrum Printing.

From the Fallout Shelter www.sites.psu.edu/falloutshelter Olmsted W356 Penn State Harrisburg 777 West Harrisburg Pike Middletown, PA 17057-4898

Featured on the cover is “New Beginnings,” a photo by Molly Dempsey.

All rights reserved, 2019.

All rights revert to the authors, artists, and photographers upon publication.

Penn State Harrisburg Literary Arts • 3

Table of Contents ESSAYS I Started Running by Kristina Stokes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8 What They Don’t Tell You About Car Crashes by Ariel Gardner . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 22 Kikko by Greggory Sullivan . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 36 What I Learned While Elbow Deep In A Deer by Valerie Frigerio . . . . . . . . . . . . . 50

FICTION Dead-People Eyes by Emily Dempsey . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 12 The Process by Mallory McCurdy . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 29 Montauk by Kenneth Gatten III . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 39 A Social Experiment by Kristina Stokes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 44 ...And the Six Dwarfs by Ayesha Martin . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 56 Haven by Sam Bixler . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 64 One Last Dance by Camryn Shope . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 69 Relapse by Kaitlyn Dillon . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 74

POETRY Bitter Cold by Cassidy Snyder . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11 Father Figure by Emma Bankert . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 15 Scarecrows Have Sticks Up Their Asses by Emily Dempsey . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 16 Medusa Speaks of Jealousy by Leisa Kilby . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 17 Where Do Forsaken Dreams Go by Elizabeth Bell . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 18 Achromatopsia by Rachel Lenich . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 19 Thoughts of a Flower by Devita Mohandeo . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 20 September 2nd, 2007 In Memory of Clyde Jabari by Kenneth Nolan III . . . . . . . . 25 The Garden of Two Eves by Kenneth Nolan III . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .26 Worth by Raymond Lehman . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 33 Burnt Out Christmas Lights by Austin Shay . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 34 Oxygen Therapy by Emily Dempsey . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 35 Dexter’s Jungle by Leisa Kilby . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 42

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Table of Contents Cherry Blossom by Kelleigh Stevenson . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 43 A Love Poem by Madaline Hoy . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 52 Awareness by Elizabeth Lynch . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 53 Don’t Say It: A Villanelle by Kristina Stokes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .54 小火鼠 (Xiǎo Hǔo Shǔ- Little Fire Rat) by Valerie Frigerio . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 62 Inside the Walls: A Sestina by Kristina Stokes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 68 My Child by Alex Hedley . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .72 Rebirth by Camryn Shope . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 73 Tillie Klimek’s Protégé by Leisa Kilby . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 78 We’re Open by Elizabeth Barrantes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 79

PHOTOGRAPHY AND ARTWORK New Beginnings by Molly Dempsey . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Front Cover Cream and Sugar by Kara Bachert . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10 Genuine Love by Molly Dempsey . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 21 Through my Eye by Kara Bachert . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 28 Leopard by Yen-Chih Lin . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 38 Busy Society by Yen-Chih Lin . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 49 Working Woman by Khadijah Okoya . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 55 The Hidden Tunnel by Mason Baughman . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 61 Flicker by Emily Witmier . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 63 Rapids by Camryn Shope . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 80 Urriðafoss by Camryn Shope . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 81 Winter at Penn State Harrisburg by Yanghong Zhang . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 82

Contributors’ Notes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 83-85

Penn State Harrisburg Literary Arts • 5

From the Editors Poetry Editor, Kenneth Nolan III: The collective artistic conscious on campus seems to revolve around the ideas of introspection, the macabre, and an awareness of the world around us. This might be due to the political unrest in the country, the raising recognition of minority rights, and/or the destigmatization of mental health; perhaps a combination of the three-whatever is the reason, students at Penn State Harrisburg are prepared to open communication on campus and discuss ideas that matter. The recipient of our Best Poem award, Cassidy Snyder, encapsulates these three ideas in her piece entitled “Bitter Cold.” Similarly, poems such as Kelleigh Stevenson’s “Cherry Blossom” and Alex Hedly’s piece “My Child” capture the introspection one needs in order to understand the world better. The poems selected for this issue urge readers to carefully consider their position on Earth, and to keep an open-mind to the people around them. As the poetry editor, it was heartwarming to see many different perspectives come together to form an outstanding collection that showcases many ideas, forms, and subjects.

Nonfiction Editor, Jessica Mele: Nonfiction, as a whole, depicts the literal experiences in which people experience things and the significance of them in their lives. The winner, “I Started Running”

by Kristina Stokes, exemplifies this. “I Started Running” proves to be a piece that is deeply personal and resonates with readers of all kinds. At some point, society’s expectations have encapsulated the lives of every one of us. The standards and expectations society puts on individuals is a factor that people of all ages, genders, or races can understand. That’s why this piece has universal relatability—everyone has been there at least one in their lives. On the other hand, there are more lighthearted pieces. With that, there’s also something to be said about the love you can give someone, especially if that someone is a cat. In Greggory Sullivan’s “Kikko” the reader experiences the immense love the author has for their cat and the sheer admiration is sure to melt the hearts of readers. The adoration strikes a chord and elicits a strong emotional response of love. Although different in their meanings and styles, both of these pieces are well-crafted and make the reader feel something as they read. It shows how although different, they are connected by the emotional responses of the readers.

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Visual Arts Editor, Jessica Mele: There is much to say about art in its different forms. Photography elicits connections on levels of emotion that many people take for granted. It also takes skill and expertise to stand out and be different. The winner, “Cream and Sugar” by Kara Bachert, does exactly this. The composition coupled with the lighting, framing, and colors makes the piece stand out. Photography also depicts the world as we know it. “Leopard” by Yen-Chih Lin does this remarkably well. Seeing the leopard as clear and close as it is lets us, the observers, see the life of an animal that we otherwise would never see that close. The world around us is constantly changing and is its own canvas. “Winter at Penn State Harrisburg” by Yanghong Zhang does just this by showing how beautiful the winter months can be. The snow against the warm, vivid colors elicits a reaction of awe. All of these pieces demonstrate the skill and dedication of the pieces within the magazine and come to serve as depictions of life.

Whether it be someone’s coffee being made in the morning to start off their day, to the wild animals we read about, and, finally, to the way the seasons change, one thing is certain: life encapsulates these pieces every step of the way.

Fiction Editor, Sam Bixler: From the Fallout Shelter has been fortunate enough this year to receive several noteworthy fiction submissions. The theme for this year seemed to be suspense, as many of our submissions – including our genre winner, Emily Dempsey’s “DeadPeople Eyes,” included shocking twists and spine-tingling tension. Honestly, I think there’s something to be said for the influence of our current social and political climate on modern writers. So rarely these days does one see a typical happy ending outside of children’s media, and even that genre has not managed to escape the clutches of gritty realism entirely. For many of us, the world is a terrifying place right now. You watch the news or read articles online every day about new and horrifying activities. There’s a sense of feeling out of control, especially among our generation, and I think – reading our fiction submissions – you can feel that. So many of our best submissions were heavy on the tension, the not knowing what’s going to come next. And it wasn’t in any particular genre, either. “Dead-People Eyes” by Emily Dempsey was more of a classic horror tale, but Mallory McCurdy’s “The Process” leaned more toward science fiction and Ayesha Martin’s “…And the Six Dwarves” went so far as to include elements of urban fantasy. Whatever genre you’re in to, there’s much to look forward to, and I’m excited to see the responses to this year’s short stories!

Penn State Harrisburg Literary Arts • 7

WINNER

Kristina Stokes

I Started Running “Running is the greatest metaphor for life, because you get out of it what you put into it.”

- Oprah Winfrey I started running because I’ve never seen a fat runner. The two looked mutually exclusive and I’ve struggled with body image for my entire life. It seemed like the logical conclusion. When I started, I was already deemed “fat” by the United States’ BMI scale, which pits height against weight in an unlikely, but somehow important, competition to be enough. Considering something like 65% of America is overweight, it felt like an extra low blow. Apparently, it didn’t matter that I could still fit in my vanity size 8’s. The United States said I was fat, so it must be true. *** I started running because it was free. Free is a loaded word. It could mean anything. Don’t we all long for freedom? We say we are free, but are we really?

When I am running outside, I really am free. I can empty my thoughts and dump them in God’s lap because I can’t deal with my worries and my breath all at the same time. I have to choose. And when faced with that choice, I choose life and oxygen every time. My mind is free in those minutes just like my wallet is free every time I choose to exercise outside rather than closed inside a gym, running on a treadmill like a hamster on his wheel. *** I started running because I wanted to impress my son. He is this athletic and muscular anomaly in the midst of our family. He stood alone in his uber fitness in our family of six and, even though I’m the mom who’s supposed to inspire change in her children, he inspired me. I wanted to be better for him. I wanted to be healthy for him. I wanted to be more for him. And so I swallowed some of my pride, asking him for help to learn how to run.

He taught me to breathe instead. I’ve been breathing without intervention for over 37 years, but I’ve apparently been doing it wrong all along. Who knew? There’s a rhythm to it. It takes focus initially, and when we started, it was the only thing I could keep in my brain. 1-2-3, breathing in, 1-2-3, breathing out...over and over again because it was as high as I could count as I tried to breathe. When my breaths got to only 2 in and 2 out, I knew I was in trouble. We would have to walk. We took 8 breaks over the course of 0.8 miles. It was pathetic. I was pathetic. And my son was so not impressed. ***

8 • From the Fallout Shelter

I started running because I had something to prove. When I saw that look in his eyes, I knew I had to run by myself for awhile and improve my ability. More than anything, I wanted something in common with this boy and this seemed like the perfect thing. If only I could learn to do it well. And so I started running on my own every morning after he left for school. I got up to a 4-count breathe in, breathe out cycle, and I quickly improved my distance ability. 1-2-3-4...1-2-3-4...

But my speed was still painfully slow. After running with me for a few months and developing shin splints, my son informed me he could no longer go along with me. His coaches would be angry, he said. He was running far too slowly and it was bad for him. I couldn’t keep up with the speed at which he needed to run and so I couldn’t run with him.

I once tried to run at his speed, urging him to “run as fast as he needed to and I’d try to keep up” but I blinked and he was gone. I didn’t even know legs could move that quickly-- mine certainly couldn’t-- so running at that speed wasn’t an option for me. This thing meant to unite us was quickly causing a divide. I could feel it. He could too. *** I started running again after a six month break in which I licked the wounds left by my slow reality. Life is cyclical and I’ve circled back to that same fear of overweight. I’m ten pounds heavier today than I was at this time a year ago. That number looms aggressively in my brain, taunting me and reminding me that I will always struggle. You see, I started running long before I really started running. If I can only outrun my own negativity, maybe I can find joy at the finish line.

“You’re not good enough.”

“You’re not fast enough.”

“You’ll never be enough.”

All the “not enough’s” race to keep up in my brain again as I slowly sink back into learning to run on my own again. Will I ever be enough? *** I keep running back to running because I am better when I run. I started for all the wrong reasons, but I can keep going for the right ones. Running slows the negativity tapes in my head. If I want to continue on for another mile, I have to tell myself that I am strong and I am capable. I may never stop worrying over my weight or become a fast runner, but I can get better. Better at running, yes, but better at patience, persistence, and self-acceptance, too. After all, that’s why I started running.

Penn State Harrisburg Literary Arts • 9

Cream and Sugar by Kara Bachert

10 • From the Fallout Shelter

WINNER

WINNER

Cassidy Snyder

Bitter Cold Glaring up from a spot on the frozen cement A sea of empty faces pass by.

Everyone moves too fast to care Or even stop and look.

It all becomes a blur of relentless noise.

The wind bites through flimsy layers of cloth Creating chapped, stinging skin And delicate flesh that yields to the slightest touch.

Blood dribbles across the barren landscape of cracked lips Finally quenching the aching thirst.

The burn of ruined skin poses no threat to The delicate flakes of frost that fall from above; Instead, the crystal liquid turns blushing red to deepest blue.

And though the shivers try to fight it off, The biting wind steals one last breath From a numb, gaping mouth Until everything goes still And at long last peace is found.

Penn State Harrisburg Literary Arts • 11

WINNER

Emily Dempsey

Dead-People Eyes

Sometimes the smell of embalming chemicals emanating from the bodies of Don’s customers sneaks upstairs through the floor vents. Rachel normally opens a window, but in the winter she patiently suffers through the suffocation. She can’t stand the way the chemicals seem to seep into the peanut butter on her breakfast toast. But Rachel is a patient woman and black coffee helps to mask the flavor of formaldehyde, so she always eats it anyway. Sometimes she wonders how much biohazard toast she must consume before she develops cancer. Sometimes she thinks her husband wouldn’t mind if she did. Maybe if she died he would offer her a second glance.

Don is a mortician and has a peculiar appreciation for the deceased. When he was 10 years old he went to his first funeral. As he stood on his tiptoes, leaned over the casket, and scanned the corpse of his aunt, he was entirely composed. In fact, he felt inclined to reach over and peel open her sealed eyelids to see what deadpeople eyes look like. He resisted, knowing his uncle probably did not share his curiosity. Now, with years of embalming experience, he has become quite familiar with the peepers of the perished and he wants to see himself in them. He wants his reflection to dance in the confines of their baby blues. He searches for his reflection in them, but like frosted windows, they only tease him with a silhouette of himself.

He always waits till the end of his cosmetic process to glue them shut.

“The Sunday Funnies, please.” Rachel reaches her hand across the small kitchen table where the couple usually shares a quiet breakfast.

“Ernest Crumbler. April 17, 1913 – June 5, 1998. Died just yesterday. Fresh,” he mumbles to himself, ignoring Rachel’s request. “Anyone call lookin’ for services?”

“No, Don. It’s Sunday. Would you give me the Funnies?”

“People don’t stop dying on Sundays.”

“Yes, but I stop answerin’ the phone.” She pulls the comic section of the newspaper out from under the obituaries.

Rachel’s mother was a doormat and her husband dragged his heavy mudded boots all over her. When Rachel was younger, she would watch as her mother gracefully accepted beatings and stood still, instead of flinching, while her father held his switchblade to her neck. It was strangely admirable. “Remember, Rach,” her mother would say, “it is a wife’s duty to sacrifice, serve, and submit.” When it came time for Rachel to receive the beatings, she never screamed and she tried her best not to cry. She wanted to be like her mother. She wanted to reach that level of acceptance and patience. She wanted to be a good wife someday. And today, in her eyes, she is.

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Her husband is the only person she’s ever worked for. She has tried to become a writer, but publishing companies can’t seem to comprehend her farfetched attempts at erotic novels and Don thinks being an author is a lousy profession. So, for the past forty years she has been a housewife and an unpaid receptionist for Don’s business. She’s cooked for Don, cleaned up after Don, suppressed her emotions for Don, and never asked Don to stop inviting dead people to his body shop in the basement. How could she ask him to stop? He pays the bills. She only asks him to love her, to kiss her good morning, and to look at her with the same adoration as he did years ago.

However, as his business picked up, his attention seemed to drift from her to the corpses. He used to hesitate releasing her from a morning kiss and would sometimes, in a spur of passion, carry the kiss down her neck and to the divot of her collarbone. Then one morning he decided a peck on the lips was good enough, then just the cheek, forehead, and now nothing at all. He used to look into her eyes from across the kitchen table and squint, so he could watch their corners turn upward as she smiled. But now, he just sits at the table and reads the obituaries while scraping underneath his nails to remove the skin glue that he uses to seal dead-people eyes shut. Rachel has tried to accept his disinterest in her. She knows she can’t expect him to feel the same after so many years. She must sacrifice.

“I should open an ad in the paper. Business has been slow. Did you drop off my cards?”

“Yes,” Rachel replies without looking up from her comics. Yesterday she volunteered at the senior living center with the secret intention of helping keep Don’s potential clients alive for as long as possible, so he might spend more time with her. He had handed her a stack of his business cards and requested that she leave them on the front desk. She wanted to toss them in the dumpster before walking inside, but she hesitated. She must serve.

The comics don’t amuse her today. She puts them down and swishes her dark roast coffee around her tongue before swallowing. Her stare jumps back and forth between her husband and her cancer toast.

“Would it please you if I died?”

“What?”

“Honestly Don, is that what you want?”

“No,” he responds promptly, but inside he’s always thought she’d make a beautiful dead woman.

“I won’t be upset.”

“Rachel, you’re being absurd.”

“No Don, I’ve been thinking about this.” She stands up and begins clearing the table, as though hesitating to release the thoughts she has pent up. After wiping down the counter and taking her seat again, Don watches as her hands tug the table cloth to straighten it before folding them and resting her palms on the edge.

~continued~ Penn State Harrisburg Literary Arts • 13

She hasn’t clipped her finger nails in over a week.

“I love you, Don. And I can’t think of another way to please you,” Rachel says, emotionless, as if rehearsed. “I want you to prepare me, just like your corpses.” She must submit.

The couple stares at each other. Rachel searches his expression and waits for some sign of body language that might indicate an answer to her request. Don studies her skin, deciding which concealer would best match her pale tones.

“I can’t embalm you,” he says.

“I know.”

He stands up and she follows him to the basement.

The table is cold and the fluorescent light does very little to warm her. Feeling her husband’s bare hands against her skin distracts Rachel from the frigid metal.

Don likes to work without gloves. He disinfects and massages her body with a light moisturizer. This would usually help to prevent his corpses from stiffening, but, since his wife is still alive, he only does this to stay true to his procedure. Rachel doesn’t mind and neither does he. He only wishes her eyes would stop blinking.

He clips her fingernails and then begins to numb her lips with an ice pack he brought down from the kitchen freezer. This is an added step, as he doesn’t want to cause her too much pain while he sews her mouth shut. As the needle pierces his wife’s chapped lip, her left eye only offers a single, heavy tear. Don hasn’t looked at her lips with such intimate attention in so long. Each time he pulls the suture string to set her mouth, her lips tighten and purse as if begging to be kissed. He cuts the end and tucks the excess into the corner of her mouth, caressing her face with his free hand. Rachel strains to form a smile as memories take her back to the first time his hand had so delicately embraced her cheek. On a school night in his father’s truck, when making love was new and exciting and her young heart could manage the rapid beating. Don turns away to switch on the radio, but the pounding of her heart is an inescapable distraction.

At this point he would normally begin the embalming process. Inserting a small tube into her right arm and another into the femoral artery of her left thigh then turn on his machine and watch as the blood is sucked from her body and is replaced with a formaldehyde solution. But this would kill her, so he cracks his neck and pulls out a silver case of cosmetic supplies instead. As he begins ruffling through the lip colors and face powders, Rachel’s eyes flutter to a peaceful close as the pain from her lips finally causes her to faint. He doesn’t notice at first, so involved in choosing the perfect colors. His favorite step, turning the bodies into art.

He turns back to face his wife and notices she has gone limp, her head tilted towards the opposite wall. Don walks over to the table and looks down at Rachel, his living corpse. He reaches over to reopen her eyes. Not like the dead-people eyes, but like glossy mirrors. He leans in close and stares directly into the left one, horrified to find his own two staring back.

14 • From the Fallout Shelter

WINNER AAP Prize

Emma Bankert

Father Figure The fourth stair on my steps is worn down It’s where I sit to listen Like the center of an auditorium I hear everything Crystal clear

Years spent studying you Trying to find patterns in the pitfalls but The inconsistency in your behavior Makes me feel like I’ve lost the rule book To a game I’ve never known how to play

I listen to your words And feel the walls recoil The loud cacophony of harpoons Aimed at our throats Sharp, and ready to snatch a kill

You said I needed a father figure But you weren’t volunteering And I went along voluntarily Only to find out You’re worse than my father

I envy the joy of children outside Their laughter twisting with leaves in the wind It had once swelled in my body But you made me feel Like it didn’t belong

Mom says Be the bigger person But being the bigger person Makes me feel so small Inconsequential

Happiness is now a foreigner to my lips My tongue is bilingual in hatred Poison dart words sit Poised at the edge of my teeth Waiting for their moment to strike If you don’t have anything nice to say Don’t say anything at all But keeping it in doesn’t make it nicer My stomach is so used to digesting my own venom I feel I am rotting from the inside out

This is survival of the fittest and My legs have carried me across continents But they quake in fear when you raise your hand I have never had a father daughter dance But I have waltzed on eggshells Around your temper Your aggression Your indifference I am different now But my stairs look the same

I question my every move Every word Gasping for the surface Desperately grasping at straws Anxiety to speak sits like a stone in my stomach

Penn State Harrisburg Literary Arts • 15

Runner-up AAP Prize

Emily Dempsey

Scarecrows Have Sticks Up Their Asses I wouldn’t be a scarecrow, if I had been given the choice.

A straw-stuffed frankenfarmer With a beetle-gnawed hole in my jaw, I fail to emote my fixed face, Smeared on with a tar-based roof sealant.

I’m graced with the holey garment of a beer-stained saloon shirt And crucified for the sins of raccoons and earworms.

The crows hide in their nests or camouflage In the shade of corn stalks and stand at parade rest Like the crop’s entourage.

The bold ones spit seeds at me And cackle as carpenter ants chew on my wrists, Shackling me like little black prayer beads.

If I had been given the choice, I wouldn’t be a scarecrow.

I would’ve crawled into the headspace of my creator, Sat on cracked stump throne as dictator And slaughtered the crows With an archaic pump action shot gun.

I’d make a mosaic of the shells of crow-killing bullets And bury the birds six feet closer to hell.

16 • From the Fallout Shelter

Runner-up AAP Prize

Leisa Kilby

Medusa Speaks of Jealousy Green jealousy grates, and festers.

Everything rots, decays Into writhing snakes and poisons The Grecian girl, Turns her into a marble-eyed monster.

Makes her mourn the time before Zeus took her, shook her up, Like all the ladies before; Envy squeezes her neck like a noose rope, Or a python, Swims up the veins Like slippery, green serpents Until it reaches the heart, Where it clots up like a pulmonary embolism, Strangulating the lungs.

A black feeling settles in.

As if the compassion-centers of the brain Have withered and temporarily died: An iron grey-matter corpse, A stern, slate-colored eye Seeing nothing but what’s lacking in itself.

Penn State Harrisburg Literary Arts • 17

Finalist AAP Prize

Elizabeth Bell

Where Do Forsaken Dreams Go A castaway dream walks into an intergalactic pub.

Jagged glass, Untouched and angry, Plummets from the atmosphere, Trying to stab its way inside.

The homeless dream takes off her tattered jacket, Generated from the fabric of space and time.

She asks for a glass of ethyl formate.

The bartender drops a burning ice cube into the glass.

A little flare for the derelict dream, The flames lash out in rebellion.

Raspberry flavor hoola hoops Around her tongue in a seductive cry for attention.

An intoxicating aroma of rum Spins into her nostrils with a sigh.

Laced with cyanide, She hopes, It will end her, Misery, but dreams are hard to kill.

Stepping into a zero-gravity bathroom, A supermassive black hole Is gobbling up a star, Rapacious, it grabs the star’s twin brother, Shooting him into its veins at hypervelocity.

Galactic cannibalism at its finest.

The dream holds its now leaking matter, And collides into a servant of the moon Another person on earth is ready to house her.

Maybe her vagrant days are over.

Maybe she will stop dying.

Maybe she will achieve actualization, finally.

18 • From the Fallout Shelter

Finalist AAP Prize

Rachel Lenich

Achromatopsia in yellow cicada memories I feel the path your mouth makes D O W N my spine, verdant field and orange sky our only witnesses. lost hues of carefree youth without red flags but warped from blue pills. then you traded me in for white lies and black tar. although you let the color seep out of you, I felt someone slinking silvery beneath your skin. this one made me green with envy, the way she picked your locks. but before the gray areas clear, I want to tell you those long sleeves never showed U the purple marks trailing P your arms.

Penn State Harrisburg Literary Arts • 19

Devita Mohandeo

Finalist AAP Prize

Thoughts of a Flower “I begin to grow. Someone cares enough to help me settle down. They shower me with love through the trickling of water. They bring this intimacy into my life and I am hugging the element of warmth. I continue to grow. They hold these expectations from me. And I blossom. And my color. They can’t even describe it. The beauty is overwhelming. My color captivates their attention the way the color of their eyes anchor themselves in my memory. Strangers admire me from a distance.

There’s always that one person who comes too close. Their hand is scratching to pick me. But they never do. They know if they pick me, I won’t last much longer.

They know I am not artificial and that sooner or later, if their sinful hands, their forbidding and indelicate hands, touch me, and snatch me from my roots, I will no longer be beautiful. I will start withering away. My once luscious, green leaves will become crispy, brown litterfall. And before it’s too late, you will look at me with concern, but you will continue passing me each day. Soon you’ll stop feeding me.

My warmth becomes the cold touch of death. One petal will fall, then another. Until I am left with a stem. My head is no longer protected. I am prone to anyone’s attack.

But now, the length of my life is a downward spiral. My beauty slowly disintegrates back to the land that birthed me. And you don’t want me anymore.”

20 • From the Fallout Shelter

Genuine Love by Molly Dempsey

Penn State Harrisburg Literary Arts • 21

Ariel Gardner

What They Don’t Tell You About Car Crashes What they don’t tell you about car crashes are the silent moments: before, during, and after.

It’s those initial moments. The ones they show on screen in slow motion. The driver’s head turning, with a questioning look on their face. The car coming straight towards them. The radio playing their favorite band which now seems noiseless in the background. Disbelief, lasting for half a second before the sound is turned back on.

No one knows the feeling. The sound. My family has never lived through it. Never heard it.

That blue metal beast rolling on the ground of man towards me, at a speed I could only describe as too fast. I saw him, and yet I didn’t. My foot was on the pedal, but I didn’t press down. I could have counted the seconds, except it seemed to last minutes. He was too close...I closed my eyes.

The impact was quick. The spinning lasted seconds. And then it stopped.

Opening my eyes from the depths of darkness gave me more fear than the disbelief I had felt moments before. I thought I was going to be broken, bleeding, or worse. The first thing I saw was the place I just was moments before, then white fabric and a cracked piece of glass. I looked down to glass strewn on my thighs. I saw his face...I said I was fine...she said she was dialing 9-1-1. I clicked MOM, and it rang.

In those next moments, minutes, and hours the sound and feeling lived on in the depths of my body. Shaking my core until I felt ridiculous sitting in the seventyfour degree hospital trembling as if it was forty-two. The moments of silence I had experienced loudly replayed in my head as if I were watching a movie in surround sound. My family was there wrapping me in embraces, yet I felt a million miles away. Hours later I was home, a place I was overly happy to be. My dog, kissing me and silently knowing.

Knowing. You can never know when something is about to happen. Something that is ultimately not your fault but you feel like there is something you could have done. Something that once it does happen, you feel like it could have been avoided.

Avoided. This is a thought which rolls through your mind, for the days to follow. If I had left school a few minutes from the time I did. If I had pressed the pedal down to the floor. If I had left via a different route.

22 • From the Fallout Shelter

If.

All of these thoughts and instances, all of these ifs. Yet, I wouldn’t want to change it. Then it would have been an innocent. Another unsuspecting driver, with a lower model car; and it could have been worse.

The hushed quiet of the bedroom, a dim green night light glowing in the corner.

The shadows that danced on the ceiling from the fish tank aglow with LED lights.

These are the things I saw that night. Not darkness, not peace. I closed my eyes and a second later they were open again. Dreaming was impossible. A dashing prince riding his horse through the woods...the crash. A family vacation memory hidden in the depths of my neurons...the crash. It was relentless. It was silent. It was fear.

8 hours of this battle. But tomorrow came.

What they don’t tell you about car crashes is the disbelief and PTSD. It was textbook. Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD): a disorder in which a person has difficulty recovering after experiencing or witnessing a terrifying event. You hear about soldiers. You learn about it in health class. It’s a disorder, a physiological reaction to something you experienced. To be honest, I never really thought about it. I guess you wouldn’t, until you experience it.

I still have it. Still struggle with it. As if it is an entity, like the little green monster, that I am just trying to get off my back. You think he’s gone, but something else brings him back. A constant reminder of what happened. The feeling...the sound.

The toaster popped. I was cooking toast the morning after and I like to eat it brown. It popped and I cried. I felt absurd crying over a toaster popping, but it had made me jump out of my skin and I didn’t know why. Every intersection, there are annoyed cars honking angrily behind you. No one is coming, but there could be.

That could is what locks me up, makes me have tears stream down my face. The first day was the worst; I cried in the school parking lot after the commute. No matter how many weeks pass the disbelief and fear is still there.

Every time a car is coming at the driver’s side door, a sensation of butterflies and tightening muscles takes over. Tears are constantly on the ready to flow from their sacs onto the skin of my pain. The worst part is constantly reliving it, silently and verbally. I am fine, becomes the top three words of your vocabulary with the occasional I’m ok in between. The insurance, the medical, your family, friends and teachers all ask the same questions. I feel like I could go on and on about the dramatics of it all, but at this point I just want it to be a part of my past that I survived. Something that will be a locked away memory, but one I can share with my kids about the dangers of texting and driving.

~continued~ Penn State Harrisburg Literary Arts • 23

A cliché. Don’t text and drive! Yet everyday you see it, driving down the road beside you. PTSD. I used to want to teach people a lesson, hit my brakes when they are behind me typing away to make them realize the danger they are putting others and themselves in. Now, it just pains me to see. “I only looked down for one second,” was what he said to the police. One second and I lost my car, my 16th birthday present. One second, and the silent moments will now affect my life for the months to come. One second. Could it have been worse? Of course. Am I grateful we are both ok? Yes. Yet, there is this piece of me that is permanently affected, permanently damaged from that one second.

What they don’t tell you about car crashes is the way it changes you. Changes the way you watch the road when you’re driving. Changes the way you feel when you see a car crash in the movies. Makes you feel sad or anguished when you hear about an accident in the news. The Canadian hockey team that has lost so many lives already and likely more in the days to come. The bus of kids from a local high school that went off an overpass on the way home from performing at Walt Disney World. The red lines on the map with backed up traffic from an accident, that you now want to avoid because of the reminders it will bring you.

The silent moments.

The disbelief.

The PTSD.

What they don’t tell you about car crashes is the tomorrows. Tomorrow: a place with more suns in the sky than you can count, a place not like today or yesterday.

A place where things are better. A place and time that contains a new you and new life, while filled with the memories of the past.

24 • From the Fallout Shelter

Kenneth Nolan III

September 2nd, 2007 In memory of Clyde Jabari.

“He must have loved you, you know,” the EMT remarks, her lips forcing a tight smile to bloom.

Crushed bones on black leather, & crimson blood thick on cool glass.

He couldn’t actually be gone, right?

I choke, grab at my

throat, tightening my grip until I almost faint.

“Was it your anniversary?”

We had promised each other happiness, unconditional love, but never death.

We were only teenagers.

“Because there were rose petals & chocolates surrounding his body.”

Killed after running errands to show his love, red petals surrounded his too cool skin.

Chocolates danced around his car, salted caramels doing the salsa on the dashboard unaware of the crime scene surrounding them.

“I picked up one of the flowers, if you want it.”

I stare at the petals as red as the gore clinging to the metal of his Buick & the tractor trailer that tore his body to shreds.

Perhaps it’s better to hold onto something tangible, delicate, & alive, than to strangle your pride in your too-tight fists.

Penn State Harrisburg Literary Arts • 25

Kenneth Nolan III

The Garden of Two Eves I am intensely kind, sure but you mustn’t mistake my kindness for weakness – akin to the breeze rustling the Ginkgo trees, I can become strong or gentle accordingly.

Your toxic masculinity may deter others, but, honey, that won’t work on me. And so I want to write an ode to the queer women who have shaped me. Who, after an ACT UP meeting say, “Why did this happen?” while chain-smoking with the windows rolled up the entire ride home.

I want to write an ode to the queer women who have shaped me, who created their own haven: Hands black with Earth, they patiently brought seeds to bloom, their very own garden of Eden.

The bright colors of the petals they grew were just as plentiful as the rainbow pins tucked upon their overalls.

“You just have to be patient,” Nancy says, as she tucks a new seed beneath the folds of the earth.

26 • From the Fallout Shelter

“It’ll be okay, you know.”

Glancing from her perch in the soil she smiles before continuing, “Vickie and I have been through so much: Look! Look at what we’ve created.”

I want to write an ode to the queer women who have shaped me. Who made their own garden and told me: “Gays make the best gardens.”

I want to write an ode to the queer women who have shaped me and said: “You know that guy who walks his dogs all over town? What’s his name again, Nancy? Tom? Jake? Total fag. You should talk to him, honey.”

another cigarette as if she didn’t just tell her grandson something entirely inappropriate. And so as I take a drag from my own cigarette, I look around and notice the stark contrast between the purple petals and orange wings of the butterflies surrounding the bush. I want to write an ode to the queer women who have shaped me, who tell me I’m okay. Who tell me “Just because you’re gay doesn’t mean you can’t have everything. And, hey, at least you have us.”

I want to write an ode to the queer women who have shaped me. Who, in between drags of their Marlboro Ultra Lights tell me, consolingly, “I was broken up with once, too. You know her. Susan? Yeah. Squat? Pinched nose?

Yeah she was real cunty. Big bush, too!

Almost as big as this guy.” She points to a buddleya, or butterfly bush, “but you know that was the 70’s.” She lights

Penn State Harrisburg Literary Arts • 27

Through my Eye by Kara Bachert

28 • From the Fallout Shelter

Mallory McCurdy

The Process

It happens the same way every year. No one knows quite why it happens, but they know about what happens. They even take part in The Process, struggle to swallow down the bile in their throats as they do. Others choose to turn a blind eye, pretend each year that it doesn’t happen. Maybe that makes life easier for them.

Allows them to believe they’re good people. People worthy of living happy lives. I imagine they think if they pretend they don’t take part in The Process, they won’t be accused as accomplices. As if anyone is brave enough to prosecute. We all know the consequences. They keep the whole town awake at night, away from the possibility of peaceful sleep. It even keeps me up at night. The adults in town pretend I am too young to have an opinion, that I have to wait until I go through The Process myself.

I think it’s all a bunch of crap. I’ve witnessed it and as a witness, I have an opinion.

I have a right to stay up at night, wondering if the lives of the people in this town are even close to being worth the lives they sacrifice each year. If you ask me, they aren’t.

December 30th, 1989

People flow around me as I stand on the street, feet glued to the ground. I feel as though I am a rock firmly planted in a river, willing anything, any current to push me forward. But do I want to be pushed forward? Or would I rather be stuck here forever as the currents of people flow around me?

Someone knocks me in the shoulder and out of my ridiculous reverie. Well, I asked for a proverbial current to push me and I got it, I think. The man who knocked into me turns back and gives me a sour look, a look that turns into pity as he realizes how young I am. I stick my tongue out at him. I don’t need pity from someone who’s about to potentially vote against me in The Process. I huff and force myself forward.

As much as I don’t want to go through with this, I have no choice. No one does.

I hear the booming of the mayor’s voice as I get closer to the town square. The only plus to getting picked in The Process is that I won’t have to hear his nasally, over-excited voice ever again.

“Ladies and gentlemen!” he exclaims, “Welcome to our annual Processing ceremony!”

The crowd cheers. I swallow down my disgust.

“This year’s Processing is a special one! Today is the fiftieth anniversary of

~continued~ Penn State Harrisburg Literary Arts • 29

The Process! Isn’t that exciting?!” He gestures to the crowd enthusiastically and they cheer and clap. It makes their regret every other day of the year seem ingenuine.

But who can blame their excitement? They get to live.

I rush to take my seat in the row closest to the stage as the mayor rambles on.

I scan the faces of the other children in my row; some of them are crying, others shaking violently, while one sits stoically, hands clasped tightly in his lap. I guess some are better at accepting their fate than others. As I sit studying them the mayor’s words trickle into my ears, snapping my attention back to him.

“This year,” he says, “I thought it might be fun to change things up, being the fiftieth anniversary and all! What do you say, folks? How about two children instead of one?! Two years of freedom from The Process!”

Bile sneaks up my throat threatening to spill out of my mouth, but I swallow it down as the crowd around me screams in joy. Two years of freedom for them, double the chance of me being picked. There’s only eight of us. If I thought my chances seemed bad before this, they’re even worse now.

- I understand how the other kids feel now. As they count up the votes, reality sets in. I can’t stop myself from violently shaking. I try to tell myself that it will be okay, that it won’t be me who dies tonight, but I know better than that. I look back at the crowd, scanning the faces until I find my parents. They’re looking down at their laps with pained faces. They feel guilty. Did they vote for me? I never was their favorite child.

“Alright everyone!” the Mayor yells, his voice echoing over the crowd. I reluctantly turn my attention back to him. “It is the moment you have all been waiting for! The votes have been tallied and we now have our two lucky contestants who are going to wander into the forest for us tonight! Are you ready, folks?”

The crowd whoops and screams. Some of them have already started the celebration. I look back at my parents as they timidly clap. I catch my mom’s eye, but she quickly looks away.

“The two lucky contestants who are going into the forest tonight are...Maggie and Lucy!”

I hear them say Maggie and suddenly I am paralyzed. I don’t know how to react.

I am stuck between wanting to violently sob and wanting to yell and protest. But before I can decide, I feel a sharp pain in my neck. I try to get away and stand up, but my legs turn to jelly and I collapse.

30 • From the Fallout Shelter

- I slowly come to, making the mistake of sitting up too fast. I lean over and retch on the ground. When I wipe my mouth, my hand comes back black and slimey.

What exactly did they inject in me? I wipe my hand on my jeans and look up at my surroundings. A chill runs down my spine. Something feels strange about the forest.

I have never been here before, was never brave enough to step foot in here, but it is not hard to tell that something is different. The energy is unsettling. It weighs down on me like a brick.

I rise to my feet and scan my surroundings, spinning in a circle. My heart rate picks up as I begin to realize exactly how dark it is. I never liked the dark. The only light in the forest is being provided by the moon. The light is too dull to aid my sight.

I spin around again, looking for anything, hoping my eyes might adjust more. As I keep spinning I stop in my tracks. Off in the distance, I see something glowing. I walk in that direction, hoping for...I don’t know what. Something.

The source of light is coming from a small pond. It has a fluorescent glow unlike any that I have seen. I step closer and lean forward to look under the surface, but all I see is my face staring back at me. I reach my hand out wanting to dip it in the water, but I stop myself at the last second. Considering what I have heard about the forest and what lies in it, putting my hand in the pond is not the best idea. I continue to look at my reflection in the surface of the pond. Just like everything else in the forest, something seems off with it. It’s me, but not quite me. I slowly lean closer to the surface and take in the details of my reflection. Suddenly my reflection reaches out and grabs me by the neck. Its grip tightens, but I force the hand off of me before it can do anything.

I gasp and jump back. I sit there, trying to get my breathing back to normal when I hear a scream off in the distance.

“Lucy?!” I yell out, hoping she hears me. “Lucy!”

She yells out again and I run in the direction of her screaming, “Lucy, I’m coming!

Hold on!”

The screaming suddenly stops. I look around frantically and notice movement in the distance. I race off towards it.

I find Lucy, but I’m too late. I have to stop myself from gagging at the sight of her. The life has been sucked out of her. Her eyes are glazed over, staring right through me. Her mouth wide, frozen mid-scream. And she’s limp. Oh god, I’ve never seen someone so limp before. There’s a gash in her throat that looks like a bite. I can see her bone. I have to stop myself from touching my own neck. The snow around her is soaked in blood and that’s when I realize her stomach is torn open, intestines hanging out, gnawed on and missing parts.

~continued~ Penn State Harrisburg Literary Arts • 31

It takes me awhile before I realize what’s been eating her intestines is still there and it’s staring right at me. My blood runs cold. It’s looking at me with a wide, comical grin as blood drips from its mouth onto the snow, splatting like watercolor on a canvas. It looks like a fox, but nothing like a fox at the same time. It has the frame of a fox, the same pointy ears and bushy tail, but its fur isn’t orange. It’s the color of an oil slick. It also has the same beady eyes, but the yellow color of them is so much more intense against its black fur. It’s also three times larger than an average fox. I have never been more terrified of an animal in my life. I should be running. Why am I not running?

It tilts its head at me and impossibly stretches its smile wider. “Well hello there, little one,” it purrs at me. “Don’t you look tasty.”

Without thinking, I take off into a sprint. My heartbeat pounds in my ears and my legs are already beginning to ache. I push past it and force myself to run faster.

I have no clue where I am going. I can barely see, but all that matters is that I am getting away from that thing. I keep colliding into tree branches, stumbling over rocks, but I keep running. I have to keep running.

Blood drips down my face into my eye. I am in so much pain that I am seeing spots. I ignore it, concentrating on living. I will not let it kill me. I feel like I’ve been running for miles, my lungs burning so intensely I am surprised I’m still breathing.

I check back to see if it is following me and see nothing but darkness behind me. No beady yellow eyes. I scrunch my eyebrows in confusion. “Wh-”

My foot catches on a rock and I tumble down the hill ahead of me. I hit every object possible on the way down. At this point I must be bleeding from every possible spot on my body. I reach the bottom of the hill and realize I’m heading head first into a rock. I stick out my arms to stop my fall, but my head still knocks into the rock. Hard. The world around me spins as a waterfall gushes from my forehead. I stumble till I’m standing and wait for everything to stop spinning.

I turn around to look back up at the hill and come face to face with the fox, his yellow eyes burning into me. I scream in horror, stumbling back and falling to the ground. I try to scramble away with the little energy I have left, but it’s no use.

It grabs my leg and pulls me back towards it.

It leans close to me and breathes in my face. Its breath smells like blood. It sticks its tongue out and licks my cheek. I try to twist away, but it’s much stronger than I am.

“Mmm,” the fox purrs, “I was right. You are a tasty one. You’ll be fun to eat.”

He grins at me, mouth growing wider and wider, until his jaw is completely unhinged. He lurches down at my neck, tearing it open like he tore open Lucy’s.

My eyes go wide and I fight to breathe. I claw at my neck, naively trying to stop the bleeding. My vision begins to fade and I look over at the fox. It’s sitting there staring at me, licking its lips while it waits for me to die.

“Goodnight, my child,” it whispers.

The world fades to black.

32 • From the Fallout Shelter

Raymond Lehman

Worth What is it worth?

Our hours of toil To study, to work Though our fate lies in soil We break down ourselves In search of fulfillment We fill our bookshelves To try to claim brilliance Why bother teaching?

Why try to inspire?

The people we’re reaching Won’t make our stocks higher Just focus on you Keep a selfish mentality Don’t try to improve Without an increase in salary The bare minimum is God The path of least resistance Future generation won’t applaud So just maintain subsistence Or am I wrong?

Are we about something larger To a grand story we belong A great purpose we harbor For it isn’t in vain our writings, paintings, and words The stress, loss, and pain are what gives our lives worth

Penn State Harrisburg Literary Arts • 33

Austin Shay

Burnt Out Christmas Lights My arms shake and my breath is out of time, staccato in and out puffs as I come down slowly from my high. I feel the aftershocks like burning out Christmas lights, tiny shocks of electricity contained within a transparent glass, flashes of white light fading into a peaceful silence.

34 • From the Fallout Shelter

Emily Dempsey

Oxygen Therapy Sometimes I cut the supply for half a minute And tease him with death.

His toes extend and a cough escapes, So dry you’d expect dust to burst from his lips.

A tear erupts from his volcanic ash-colored eyes And trickles down the canyons of his face.

Just as it curls and plumps beneath his chin, I force air up his nose and pull his soul back into himself So he can feel the tear fall and sizzle on his hand And remind him he’s still got time to serve.

Floors are thin in retirement homes, So the nurses can listen for death And organ music can bleed through the carpets like a fog, Giving deprived lungs a rhythm to breathe to.

People on the outside only visit because they should Or so that someone might do the same for them.

They squeeze time in their schedules And add family members to their list of appointments and chores.

“Go hug Grandpa.”

“Say you love him nice and loud so he can hear you!”

“Watch the oxygen tubes, sweetie, he needs those.”

Go ahead kid, rip me out.

He breathes on his own when you’re here, As if there’s some medicine in the company of loved ones.

Take him home with you and he’ll live half a year longer.

But there’s no room to spare, So the Hallmark cards will suffice and the caramel chocolates are nice, Even though he’s lost the taste for it And he can’t read your hurried handwriting anyway.

Floors are thin in retirement homes, So he can hear his family’s footsteps skipping down the hall, And the little bell on the door jingle as they leave.

Processed air is aluminum-scented artificial sweetener And he tries to spit it out in beads of drool.

My hollow tentacle is wrapped ‘round his face like a leash.

And my tank is an anchor, securing him to the Earth.

At eight o’clock the television shuts off And he lulls himself to sleep with thoughts of never waking up.

Tonight, he dreams of surgical scissors That snip my arm like an umbilical cord.

I scream and hiss as he’s carried out the window on an organ music mist.

Penn State Harrisburg Literary Arts • 35

Greggory Sullivan

Kikko

Atop the recliner, she compacts herself into a rudimentary shape: a blob of vanilla ice cream splotched with sandy peanut butter islands and hot fudge volcanoes, twitching bunny nose tucked beneath a Swiffer duster tail. Soft snowball paws are huddled under a squishy, furry mound. She is more décor than creature, enviable in the childlike simplicity of her form. Each tranquil breath gives rise and fall to her warm dumpling body.

At night, she pushes open my cracked door with the flat of her head and perches, lithe and elegant, as a sentinel atop the chair. Her ivory fur is bathed in the night light’s aquatic glow. Pointed ears swivel at odd angles, sensing sounds in the shadows from their watchtowers above vacant marble eyes. Her silhouette is a wordless question.

She often approaches me with malachite eyes, seeking answers in my form as I lie scrolling on my phone. Is it movement that she searches for, or something more? I extend a hand to her, and she meets it with a chilly black nose that flutters as it searches the crevices of my fingers for the lingering aroma of ham or chicken. My slack fingers are forced apart as she presses her face against my palm, demanding love.

Sometimes I approach her while she rests, wheezing, on my bed. The primal programming that should urge her to remain alert has apparently screened me out, and she no longer sleeps with cheating eyes. I often wonder if this means she trusts me. When my hand meets her melted marshmallow body, she starts awake, burbling with surprise. She chirps at me. I lower my face, greeting her noseto-nose. She gives me sandpaper kisses between my brows. In return, I kiss her forehead. Sometimes, I lick her back. Anything to bridge the gap – to speak her wordless language. Anything to communicate my love for her.

She is crafty. When I set down my controller to visit the refrigerator, my spot is taken upon return. Two olive eyes greet me with entitlement and defiance.

She has wasted no time in assuming a loaf-like form and getting comfortable in the residual heat of my body. I have been usurped. Any attempt to reclaim my throne is met with violence. First, she sounds a sad, pitiable mewl as I give her an adamant push. Then, her ivory mittens clamp around my wrist. Like a fluffy bear trap, she sinks tiny fangs into my hand, gripping stubbornly and batting at my wounds with clawless mitts as I retract. I lift and cradle her. She gnaws at my knuckles with both paws on my wrist like a teething child on a bottle. I set her down outside my room and shut her out. She has made herself an enemy of the state.

36 • From the Fallout Shelter

She passes the hours in the hall, eyeing the dog from the top of the steps and curling up on the bathroom rug. When at last I emerge from my room, clutching my vvwallet and keys, I shut the door behind me to deprive her of her favorite napping spots. I return bearing pizza. If I am lucky, the flabby sphinx does not hold vigil over the staircase, and smuggling my dinner to safety is without hassle. It is never long before her mitts appear beneath the door, pawing like the arms of a famished prisoner through iron bars. I open the door to see her lying on her side, spread out like a rug. She acts like a thief who was in the process of picking the lock on a door when its owner flung it wide. It takes her a moment to process what has happened, but she soon springs onto all fours and trots into the room as if nothing were out of the ordinary.

She lingers while I dine until she works up the courage to place her paws and chin on the edge of my TV-dinner table, like a child trying to see what his mother is cutting on the tall kitchen counter. Unapologetically, she stretches a paw toward the edge of my plate. It is beyond me whether she imagines herself stealthy or her prerogative is simply so bold. I pull her off a gooey corner of cheese and sauce, dropping it on the floor for her to rend clean with her tongue. When she is finished, she resumes her place atop the recliner, leaping from floor to arm to headrest like a ninja in the night.

I press my face to hers. She gives me sandpaper kisses on my forehead.

Again, I lick her back. Anything to bridge the gap – to speak her wordless language again and again. Anything to communicate my love for her.

She has been my companion for over nine years, has seen three sweethearts come and go. She is unlike the dog, who denounces each one until it warms up to them, at which point it clamors for their attention (irritating and pitiable in either stage). She extends an unobtrusive nose to all new faces, accepting head pats and plastic caps filled with water as they come. However, she is wise enough to remain unattached. She does not miss the ones who come into her life then leave. I often wonder if I am no different. I wish that I could see myself through those emerald eyes and take solace in the admiration I might find.

Penn State Harrisburg Literary Arts • 37

Leopard by Yen-Chih Lin

38 • From the Fallout Shelter

Kenneth Gatten III

Montauk

Montauk, Long Island: Bill Corius sat cross-legged on the bowed stair under the deck of his fishing shack. One hand steadied his pipe and the other, pressed openpalmed against the sea-salted cedar stair, steadied himself. The bay gurgled and foamed as it caressed the bulkhead before him. His exhales permeated the wind with smoke, tickling his unruly beard and clouding his vision until dissolving serenely in the grey-blue sky. Between puffs, he stared raptly at the bay. It reminded him of his father, who had died ten years ago that morning. And on every morning since, Mr. Corius had perched on the same stair, smoking his father’s clay calabash pipe, remembering his youth.

When he was a boy, he and his father went fishing on Sundays. They woke up an hour before dawn, devoured a breakfast of cockle shells and laverbread, and scampered down to the fishing shack, where the old fishing boat was moored to a dancing buoy just offshore. They climbed aboard with wet trousers. Billy (as his father called him), though, didn’t feel the chill: he knew that if he pleaded enough, his father would tell him warm sailing stories. And he always did. The bay winds would yield and the water steady while his father recounted acts of heroism aboard the U.S.S. Constitution, on which he had served as a cannoneer during the War of 1812. The British Guerriere was outmatched, he would say. There never was a crew as skilled or honorable, he would add. And it didn’t hurt, he would whisper as an aside, that we hauled onto the ship every goddamn cannon on the east coast. Laughing a deep hearty laugh, he would look with smiling eyes at his son. Billy was imagined himself on the Constitution. And he never did stop imagining himself there, during that battle—even after he contracted polio at age 16 and could never walk again.

So, when Bill had a son, Ellsworth Corius, he pushed him to become a sailor.

And he pushed too hard. Ellsworth grew stoic at home as his father would lash out at him; Bill drank too much, causing his wife, Mary, to run away without a trace. Bill was always drunk, and spoke sentimentally, declaring his love for Ellsworth, saying he was all he had. He would enjoy nothing more than to take Ellsworth fishing, Bill would say. But then, enraged, he would scorn Ellsworth for refusing to become a sailor. The house would fill with a singular, deep-throated rage, and Ellsworth would cower.

~continued~ Penn State Harrisburg Literary Arts • 39

Bill was sorry for how he treated his son. But he could never surrender his pride to tell him so. Nevertheless, his reason for regret was vague and, given the ability to redo it all, he would have been no better a father. His affliction had made him too bitter.

When he was a teenager, Ellsworth began spending extra time with his tutor.

He would eat dinner with his neighbors, who had no children but owned the most pleasant bird-hunting hound, which would leap with joy when Ellsworth entered.

(The hound knew to be composed during dinner, however, as he waited to be served secretly by Ellsworth whatever was left on his plate). But nothing compared, Ellsworth felt, to the time he spent alone at the fishing shack. He would read his favorite books his tutor had given him and gaze at the bay, captured by its beauty and mystery.

From his right, the bay opened narrowly from the ocean and widened against the fine shoreline, swinging in a wide arc and past the fishing shack. Seaweed lined the water’s rim during low tide, and two wedded swans rested offshore, bobbing above the waves with sleepy eyes. Sea-salted air, borne by the hushed crashing of waves, rippled the pages of his story and teased his stray wisps of hair. One time, he found a beached baby shark down the shoreline and grabbed an oar from the fishing boat, which was covered by a tarpaulin under the deck. He nudged it back into the water and, he liked to believe, saved its life.

At home, Ellsworth’s resentment rankled. He eventually repudiated his upbringing and rejected his identity. At the first chance, he thought he would leave home forever. So when Columbia College offered him a scholarship, he left in the fall.

He didn’t even say goodbye.

College proved a transformative experience for Ellsworth. He graduated with distinction and was accepted to the new Albany Law School before ivy had a chance to crawl up its exterior. He told himself he had become a man. An honorable man.

And when he graduated, he started a law firm in New York City. The community called him a leader. He served a quiet term on the New York State Legislature.

Having reached the age of 40, Ellsworth was used to having delivered to him every week the Montauk Times. He would flip through the obituary, expecting to see his father, Bill, featured some day. But when his father died, he felt a peculiar way. He hadn’t forgiven him, and he knew he never would—so he hadn’t expected to have any reaction at all.

A few days later, he found himself calling off work and crowding his family into the morning train. They rushed into a car as the driver’s whistle, warning of departure, rang through echoes of passengers’ tip-tapping footsteps and various shouts of question and confirmation. He had thought about home for a few years

40 • From the Fallout Shelter

before that moment. It had never really left him, but it hadn’t urged him, either.

Not until recently. He wasn’t sure exactly when—how many years ago, exactly— but one afternoon he noticed that the silence in his study was different. It had a slightly higher-pitched tone. And the time he noticed this was when he decided to have the paper delivered. He didn’t know it, but that was just the beginning: soon, he began to think about his childhood neighbors. He recalled his tutor. But he thought mostly about the fishing shack. So, when the train stopped at the livery stable in Bridgehampton, and his family boarded onto a horse-and-carriage for Montauk, he felt consternation.

When the carriage passed his childhood neighbors’ homes, he pointed them out with purpose to his wife, Catherine, and his son, who was especially confused by the whole business. Kicking up moist earth, the horses then trotted past the house where he often had dinner as a young teen. Ellsworth couldn’t help but scan through the bushes for a bird-hunting hound, leaping with excitement to see him. The hound was not there.

The carriage, as instructed, then passed his father’s house, and Ellsworth felt an inexplicable emotion welling up inside of him. The last stop was the fishing shack.

In the flurry of a hurried dismount, he tossed with averted eyes the driver’s fare and grabbed his son by the wrist, yanking him in a zig-zag down the wooded promontory above the shack. Halting before the beach, he stood speechless as memories overcame him: reading his favorite stories, following the swinging shoreline and the water’s seaweed-lined rim, the swans bobbing with sleepy eyes, the sea-salted air rippling his pages. And the shark? The shark! He darted under the deck of the fishing shack and threw aside the tarp covering the splintered fishing boat, flanked on either side by the oars which were worn smooth where his father had once gripped them. Ellsworth dragged the boat and oars into the water and raced back onto the beach toward his son, and placed his hand on his shoulder.

“Billy,” he said, “let’s go fishing.”

Penn State Harrisburg Literary Arts • 41

Leisa Kilby

Dexter’s Jungle After Jeff Lindsay, author of “Darkly Dreaming Dexter” The man who sits at the bar Is a very neat monster.

A monster who abides by a code: Never kill an innocent.

He holds a cool glass between his cupped hands And taps his foot to the music.

Drinking and smiling – the perfect masks For a predator.

From the parking lot, Enter stage left, the wife-killer, Wearing a jean jacket With a tear-drop tattoo below his eye.

This is a beast without ethics, Without a code.

He is anything but innocent.

Above the bar is a painting, Blankly-smiling monster has been eyeing it for twenty-minutes, Just killing the time until killing-time.

A party scene.

The room is so bright and artificially yellow, You might not even realize it’s night time.

The painted people, like him, are wearing masks.

Animal masks of all sorts.

It makes it very easy to spot the predators, Mingled amongst the housecats and rabbits.

While wife-killer downs his fourth shot of Cuban tequila And unsteadily rises to his feet, Aiming for the bathroom, Darkly-Dreaming Dexter fingers the syringe in his pocket.

The scene is set.

The players are ready.

And there’s a duffle bag of plastic wrap,

42 • From the Fallout Shelter

Kelleigh Stevenson

Cherry Blossom Her red hair tumbles down her back, her body strong, but her shoulders drooping like the heavy branches of the cherry blossom trees lining the streets outside the bar.

As her limbs tremble with the gentle thrum of the music, her petals fall and the patrons gasp, the pale pink of a summer blush scattered across the stage.

No one stops and asks how it feels, losing parts of herself so often, being stripped bare in public and applauded, viewed only for pleasure without anyone thinking of the roots underneath her skin starving for salvation.

No one asks because no one cares, as long as next spring her petals are back for the world to enjoy another show

Penn State Harrisburg Literary Arts • 43

Kristina Stokes

A Social Experiment

I lay still, eyes closed, breathing the even breaths of a sleeping person. I roll over, my back to the window and hear the click that indicates the Viewers are here. But when I settle again, still for more than two minutes, there’s another click and they are gone. I am alone.

I’ve lived like this for three years now, knowing that my every move is observed, recorded, analyzed, dissected. But I’m not the only one. The whole town of Fischglas is under scrutiny. 200 of us live together inside what is essentially a huge snow globe without the snow-- unless precipitation is delivered by the Viewers.

Giving up my sleeping ruse, there’s a click as I flick through the weather on my phone—sunny today and rain on Wednesday. Switching to Akvarium’s weather, I see snow awaits me in the next town where I work. With the glass around their town, they’re a true snow globe today. I roll my eyes.

“This’ll make dressing interesting,” I mumble to myself and head for the one cameraless room—the bathroom.

In my building’s lobby, I walk faster, noting the time and the fact that the train to Akvarium is always precisely on time. I beat the click of a camera as I pass and smile to myself; that small bit of control never gets old.

“Good morning, Joon.” The doorman nods, smiles, and turns back to the street. The same greeting every morning.

“Good morning, Arthur,” I reply and am out on the streets where I see all the same people every morning.

Sunny-- long blond hair, flowing tie-dye skirt, a skip in her step-- raises one hand in greeting and smiles. I raise mine too as she passes. Albert, in his black suit with close cut black hair and a briefcase in his right hand, walks by with only a nod, which I return.

Finally, Vera and Ginger-- identical twins with stringy brown hair and round gold glasses, wearing high-waisted pleated pants and sensible shoes. My eyes meet theirs, one after the other in quick succession, but as always, they press their glasses further up their noses and look down. I do the same as I reach the end of the building where the sun nearly blinds me.

The tunnel entrance on the corner is dark and cool as I descend. The train will arrive in just two minutes, so I pick up my speed, scan my ID at the gate, and join the small crowd at the edge of the track.

The train arrives at exactly 8:00am and is in Akvarium’s tunnel at 8:20am. Despite the heavy snow, the streets of Akvarium are as...different as ever. While everyone walks

44 • From the Fallout Shelter

with quiet purpose at home, always focused on the task at hand, people walk hand-inhand here, talking and laughing, no matter the weather. Two men walk toward me, arm in arm, one holding a travel cup. The sidewalk is tight, and I’m on the inside. I realize too late that the coffee-carrying man doesn’t see me as he plows into me, splashing coffee down my front. I plaster a forgiving mask across my features, as I know the Viewers require, withholding my angry words.

“I’m so sorry!” the man says, one hand on my shoulder. I smile, nodding my forgiveness, so he travels on with his companion. Examining the mess, most of the coffee landed on my coat. A small miracle.

It never would have happened in Fischglas where everything is so orderly and neat.

Schedules are kept and conversations are limited to necessary details. Myrtle, my fartoo-chatty coworker, springs to mind. She rambles on and on about her cat, her latest knitting project, the weather, and any number of bizarre facts about Victorian royalty. I’m exhausted just thinking about it.

She’s at her desk when I arrive, dark hair in a messy bun on her head, pink framed glasses on her face, and (probably) hand-knitted black sweater covered in various cat pictures-- cats drinking milk, cats cuddling, cats playing with yarn--ironic. Myrtle spins in her chair, her round face lighting up as her eyes land on me.

“Joonie!” she says, clapping her hands together. “Can you believe all this snow? I hope it stops before quitting time.”

What’s the point of weather talk? It isn’t random. But sometimes Myrtle plays stupid, cocking her head to one side and getting a confused look on her face when I mention it.

So I don’t this time, because I just can’t deal with it this morning. Instead, I nod and smile, hoping it will satisfy Myrtle.

Myrtle takes this as an invitation to continue our one-sided discussion. “You should have seen what Mr. Tiddlywinks did this morning!” she gushes and pulls out her phone.

“Here, look! I got it recorded.” And she pushes it into my hands.

I sigh and stare at the screen. An orange tabby with an irritated look about him sits on a brown carpet, his tail flicking quickly back and forth. “There’s Mr. Tiddlywinks,” Myrtle narrates. “And that’s just my hand putting the shoe box beside him.” I nod, keeping my comments to myself. The Viewers are always watching. Mr. Tiddlywinks squeezes into the waiting box and hunkers down inside, the edges bulging in opposition to his bulk.

Myrtle pulls the phone back and flips through. Hopefully she isn’t looking for another video. “Can you believe he squeezed himself in there?”

I can. But I don’t tell her this.

She hands the phone back. “I had to see what he would do with an even smaller box!” I watch Mr. Tiddlywinks as he’s lifted from the shoe box. An old tissue box with the top cut off sits beside him. I swear he glares at the camera as he gets up and settles himself inside.

Half of his body hangs out the top, but he doesn’t seem to care.

Myrtle claps and laughs at her oh-so-hilarious cat. “Isn’t he just the funniest?” She takes her phone back, turning to her desk and continuing to scroll, likely for another cat video.

~continued~ Penn State Harrisburg Literary Arts • 45

I turn to my desk too, turning my laptop on and hoping Myrtle gets the hint.

That evening, I lay motionless on the couch, reading a manuscript for work. Juley stares long and hard into the eyes of her AI housekeeper, Rosie, but she doesn’t even blink in response. Her face remains blank for several seconds before twisting into the same one Juley gives her now. When Juley gasps in surprise, Rosie pauses and then does the same. She’s learning, Juley realizes. And quickly too.

Do AI bots really learn from humans? I pull my phone out and enter it in the search engine, but there are no results. Weird. I try a different combination but still get nothing.

Switching to a different search engine with different words still yields nothing. Irritated, I enter “funny cat videos” and immediately get 2 million hits. Then, “How long does it take to hatch a chicken egg?” And another page of 3.2 million hits comes up.

Frustrated, I decide to show it to tech support at work tomorrow and head to bed.

I’m distracted by my search engine issues as I approach the lobby door in the morning.

“Good morning, Joon,” Arthur says with a nod, followed by a smile.

Still distracted, I don’t even look at him, just lift a hand and mumble, “hmm.”

I hardly notice any of the greetings of the usual people out on the sidewalk this morning as I watch the ground in front of me, still pondering more questions about last night. I glance to the left, across the street, and see an unsavory-looking guy leaning against the wall of a building, hands in his pockets, in front of a green dumpster in the alley. He makes direct eye contact with me, narrowing his eyes. Unnerved, I quicken my step and dart into the depths of the tunnel to get on the train.

At work, Myrtle wears another cat sweater-- this one is bright pink to match her glasses and is patterned with tiny black cats in columns and rows over the entire thing.

She’s on the phone when I arrive, so I slip past her and down to August, in tech support.

“Excuse me?” I say when I’ve arrived in the dungeon-like basement littered with old hard drives and other devices I don’t recognize.

He turns to me and smiles. “Hello. How can I help you today?”

“My phone’s having issues. Some of my searches don’t work in any of the standard search engines. Can you fix it?”

He nods and takes the phone. “Of course I can. One moment.” In less than five minutes, he’s handing it back. “Are you aware that your phone was full of spyware?”

I shake my head as I stare at my screen, opening a search engine.

“You also had a rather persistent filter installed. It was blocking quite a bit of content.

I was able to remove it,” August says.

I enter “can AI bots learn from humans?” into the search engine and get 2.4 million hits. I click one and read.

Humanoids, the next big thing in AI, have grown so lifelike in the labs that it’s nearly impossible to differentiate the human from the humanoid. However, there are clues that may prove useful if they’re released on the market.

46 • From the Fallout Shelter

1. Humanoids begin as blank slates. Upon activation, they quickly adapt and learn new information.

2. Humanoids are capable of learning to imitate human speech, gestures, mannerisms, and more. Within seconds, they take on what’s put into them and repeat it, giving the impression of connection.

3. Humanoids have perfect memories. Need to recall a conversation in order to end an argument? Your humanoid can repeat it back for you.

4. Humanoids will anticipate your movements as they learn to know you. Your humanoid will open doors, get your morning coffee, and even move aside to allow you safe passage.

Where do you get these amazing humanoids? They are currently in the final testing phase and will be released for sale in the coming months. Once on the market, there’s no end to their uses—

Something feels off, but I’m not sure what yet.

“And then Mr. Tiddlywinks dove on top of the twistie and flicked his little tail!”

Myrtle gushes, searching her pockets for her phone. “It was SO cute! I’m sure I have a video somewhere.” I’m not sure what I was thinking inviting Myrtle over, but it’s too late to take it back. Her mouth doesn’t stop, even when we emerge from the tunnel later. I look across the street and see the creepy guy in the same position, glaring in my direction. I look away, swallowing hard. Albert walks toward us and we nearly collide. He pauses on the sidewalk, steps to one side, and continues on with a nod as Myrtle rambles on about a cat funeral. “Only 14! Can you believe it? We lost Pixie much too young.”

“I thought 14 was old for a cat?” I say, surprising even myself.

Myrtle gapes at me for a moment as we reach the door to my building. Arthur is there, looking at his phone. I wave as Myrtle says, “I want to get Mr. Tiddlywinks a red bow tie!” Arthur lifts one hand and grunts in my direction but doesn’t look up. I look back at him, confused. He’s never been so stand-offish. And realize that maybe it’s Myrtle. I shrug and continue on, pressing the elevator’s up arrow.

As the doors open and we enter, the cameras click on.

“What was that sound?” Myrtle asks, looking around.

“What sound?”

More cameras click through the hall and into my apartment.

“Seriously?” Myrtle says again, looking around like a paranoid psycho. “You don’t hear that? It’s like a clicking.”

“Come on,” I say and put the coffees on the table. “That’s just the Viewers. You know that.”

“The Viewers?” Myrtle repeats. “What are you talking about?”

“Viewers,” I repeat. “They’re watching through the cameras?”

Myrtle gapes at me. “You have cameras...”

I nod. Now I know she’s insane. “It’s part of the experiment.”

~continued~ Penn State Harrisburg Literary Arts • 47

Myrtle is quieter than I’ve ever seen her. It’s unnerving. “No,” she finally says and walks out of my apartment, leaving me to wonder what else isn’t true about this whole thing.

The events are still running through my head when I reach the lobby in the morning.

I greet Arthur as usual, but he responds, “I want to get Mr. Tiddlywinks a red bow tie!”

Bewildered, I stumble outside. The moment I’m through the door, everyone is talking all around me...

“He was only 14!”

“Mr. Tiddlywinks--”

“Much too young--”

“--my cat--”

...about everything that Myrtle said yesterday. Albert approaches, smiling, as he talks about his own nonexistent cat, Mr. Tiddlywinks. I turn in place, focusing on each face as they pass. Every single one of them has Myrtle’s annoying jabbering lilt to their voice this morning.

And then it clicks.

I run across the street to test my theory, walking straight at the glaring, motionless man in the alley. I jab him in the shoulder. “Why are you always looking at me?”

His face goes blank as he stands tall before me and then his eyes focus on mine, his mouth screwing up and eyebrows pulling together. “Why are you always looking at me?”

I shake my head and he shakes his too. “There’s something wrong with you.”

“There’s something wrong with you.”

I turn, stalking across the street in the midst of the Myrtle monologue. “Stop!” I shout.

Silence.

Every eye is on me, faces blank. “You’re humanoids.”

A loud alarm shrieks to life and a blond, bespectacled woman pushes through the crowd flanked by two guards.

“Three years of research, gone!” she hisses, before turning to the guard on her right. “Take her to the lab. We need to wipe every humanoid memory, starting with her.” The guard nods, and she turns to the one on the left. “Get the human named Myrtle. Akvarium can’t be compromised too.”

Strong hands take hold of my arms and steer me down the street. I fight against him, but he’s too strong and I give up resisting. The guard marches toward a pawn shop door and enters a code in a hidden keypad.

We walk inside. A camera clicks.

48 • From the Fallout Shelter

Busy Society by Yen-Chih Lin

Penn State Harrisburg Literary Arts • 49

Valerie Frigerio

What I Learned While Elbow Deep in A Deer

I did not expect to be on the side of the road fishing a deer out from a ditch this weekend. Yet here I am, heaving this poor doe that got blindsided by a college student, who is morosely taking the reprimanding from Lesko, one of our local cops. It’s the thin line of road that takes you west off the campus, winding past the Capitol Business Center, and weaves its way to the Sheetz at the mouth of Route 230. It is pretty treacherous at night, and the deer seem to like it there. Thus, why we are here. The other cop, Tingle, simply smiles at me and the guys as we haul the deer up and over the guardrail, and into my virgin truck bed. The only thing that had been in that bed was stage props. As I stare at the doe, eyes open and tongue lolling out of its mouth, I did feel sorry for it. It looks to be fairly young with only one or two fading spots on its hide. I tell it sorry and thank you as we drive back to the fire station, where most of us live.

We get back, praying that the wedding party up the hill doesn’t decide to look down and see us slicing a deer open, and proceed to attempt to hang her up on the basketball hoop behind the station. None of us can lift her high enough, despite being a fairly small doe. After much debate, yanking the carcass back and forth, and some deer puns (Joe continuously mutters “oh deer” for the entire night), the doe ends up on the tailgate. As I stand by the hindquarters, holding the leg up and out of the way, the others cut a single shallow line from the rib cage down to the rectum. I don’t find myself as squeamish as I thought I should be. If anything, I’m morbidly fascinated, watching the thin membrane that keeps the body together slowly split apart. It is a little strange to see the steam float up into the cool air, reminding me that this deer was alive half an hour ago. I tell it sorry and thank you again.

Kenny, the one who originally rounded us up from a birthday party to go help find “Dory,” as he named her, is having difficulty scooping out the innards. His hands are too big, singularly grabbing at one organ and slipping past the others. The EMS lady, Amber, who has been hunting and gutting since her childhood, tells him to let someone with smaller hands give it a try. I step forward.

The first thing that strikes me is the warmth. With gloved hands, all I feel is a searing heat as I dig towards the pelvis, scooping carefully around the intestines, the urinary tract, and what I assume is the uterus. Amber tells me I should be able to reach around, find the butthole, and just start pulling everything out towards me. It is surprisingly tough.

But it’s also horribly easy. There is nothing holding the intestines in other than a few fibrous, gristly strings that hold everything to the spine. With every careful tug, another string snaps, and the organs start to ooze out, towards the bucket under the

50 • From the Fallout Shelter

tailgate. I find myself elbow deep, blood soaking its way into my sweatshirt, panting a bit as the lower stomach makes its way out and down.

I switch towards the front, finding the lungs and heart behind the rib cage. I feel the splintered side of her ribs, where she was hit by the car. I think it ripped my glove open a bit. With a final tug, a final snap, everything comes plopping out at once.

And misses the bucket. Oh well.

Amber praises me. Despite having nicked the intestine and let out some poop, she says most importantly I didn’t rupture the stomach. She says don’t forget the heart. So, I reach back inside the warmth, Jason’s knife in hand, and hack away at the aorta, the superior vena cava, and the pulmonary artery. Cut, cut, cut, and out pops the heart. It oozes blood as I accidentally squeeze it. I am holding what kept this animal alive. Amber and Kenny joke that I should take a bite of the heart, an old hunting tradition for many cultures. I wonder if I bit it, would I taste its fear? Kenny, Joe, Brandon, and Dylan dig in and start taking the meat from the deer. After a short while and many skilled knives, Dory is able to fit into two large cooking pots. I thank her.

I find myself torn between feeling entirely clinical about it and feeling remorse for the deer. While in the deer, I thought it was fantastic, being a tactile learner, to point out all the organs we have in common, feeling how her body was put together. But when collecting her from the side of the road, I felt sad. Life cut short because of a hereditary flight response. In the end, I choose to be grateful. I have seen more death that I could have imagined, and I always feel blank when it comes to people. People are panicky, give up too easily, and waste space in the ground because they want to be remembered. With Dory, she just wanted to live. And she died trying to. I am grateful for what she gave us.

I hope when I die I can be of as much use as she was, hoping my organs can be used to save another life.

I remember signing up to be an organ donor at 16, when I had gotten my driver’s license. I had finished all the paperwork, signed the dotted lines, took my awful picture, when the lady asked me if I wanted to be a donor. I had felt confused. A slight pause of possibly saying no held my tongue until I looked at my mom and asked if I should. She said it was my choice. I then wondered why I couldn’t have been if I was younger. Would driving be that bad that I would die on the side of the road? But I figured they’d be better used in a child who needed them than being buried with me. So, I signed my organs away.

When we eat her this week, I will remember what happened. I will remember the brief feeling of grief as she bleeds from her mouth into the rivets of the truck bed, slow rivers of red forever staining it. I will remember the steam rising from her chest, praying her soul likewise makes its way to a nice green forest up above. I will remember the heat seared into my arms, my heartstrings tugging as I tug hers away. I will remember that she will give me strength, and the courage to run like she did, even as she knew she was dying.

Thank you, my friend. I am sorry.

Penn State Harrisburg Literary Arts • 51

Madaline Hoy

A Love Poem Wait. A love poem?

Ugh. No thanks. Please.

You know, I’m not writing this Just to appease You, or anyone else.

Sorry, if I’m being a tease.

It’s just that a love story Is not what I need.

How about a comedy?

Because everyone loves to smile.

Satire to make you giggle.

A goofy character profile With a pointless plot line That captivates for a while.

Until the story needs more And romance is on speed dial.

What I need is action, An adventure to reminisce.

A benevolent hero, Whose sword can never miss.

And rejoices in his victory, In his moment of bliss; When the young maiden he saved Awards him with a kiss.

Fantasy’s a good way to go To get away from it all.

Delve into other worlds, Down the rabbit hole you fall.

A mermaid rescued from the sea By her knight, standing tall, And you get lost in their lives While reality is stalled.

Or maybe a mystery, A detective’s tale, Filled with twists and turns, Where the murder unveils.

And the man mourns Over a lone wedding veil, For his bride is now gone And he’s on her killer’s trail.

So, this is not a love poem, No matter what the title will say.

Because I’m in control here, and “Romance Free” is how I sway.

Too many clichés, too overdone.

Yet each and every day, No matter what I’m reading Love will get in the way.

Perhaps a paranormal thriller That keeps you on the edge of your seat.

With creatures and gore, And brave people to meet.

Suffering through it all, Surviving such a feat, By holding onto each other; A bond that can never be beat.

52 • From the Fallout Shelter

Elizabeth Lynch

Awareness It’s hard to admit That sometimes You submit, To the thoughts That degrade your health.

Your condition is not for attention.

Your condition is not that extensive.

You’re in the middle Of the spectrum somewhere.

But when you finally confess, That well, You’re kind of a mess, They dismiss it As “just a phase”.

Until finally you find the person That will listen Instead of worsen, You’re left alone to fight Your own thoughts.

Penn State Harrisburg Literary Arts • 53

Kristina Stokes

Don’t Say It: A Villanelle Apparently there are things you aren’t supposed to say, things that will earn you a dirty look or a death stare, and I’m great at finding the wrong thing to say.

“Wait. Weren’t you going to pay?” while eating the bulk of the pretzel you forced her to share.

Apparently there are things you aren’t supposed to say.

“Oh. So...you’re planning to stay?” when you were hoping this friendly threesome would drop to a pair and...I’m great at finding the wrong thing to say.

“Hey! I think I see your first gray!” to your husband, in public, but that one’s not fair.

Apparently? There are things you aren’t supposed to say!

“Well aren’t you just sunshine’s best ray?” as your daughter delivers snark, eye rolls, and sighs to spare-and I’m great at finding the wrong thing to say.

“One wash and it’ll totally fray.” at a pyramid-scheme-party for pants gets a huge glare.

Apparently there are things you aren’t supposed to say, and I’m great at finding the wrong thing to say!

54 • From the Fallout Shelter

Working Woman by Khadijah Okoya

Penn State Harrisburg Literary Arts • 55

Ayesha Martin

…And the Six Dwarfs

My brother, Happy, started his day with a traditional dwarven call. He could have sung the ‘call to work’ inside the apartment, like a civilized dwarven being, but he planted his feet against the frame of the open front door, inhaled until his chest was the size of a barrel and shouted into the morning: “HI HOOOOOO!”

And like clockwork: “Shut that racket up, you fucking weirdo! It’s 5 in the morning!”

From the pounding on the wall, it was our neighbor in 5D. I’d ask Sleepy to make him another tray of oatmeal bars to smooth things over.

While Happy was inhaling for round 2, I grabbed him by his collar and dragged him into the apartment, gently shutting the door behind us.

“You little shit!” I said before my getting my temper in check. Damnit, there’s only so much a tray of baked goods or a repaired sink can make up for. This was the third time this week!

“We’ve got to live here!” Happy’s smirk wasn’t doing much for my mood. “You wanna piss off the whole block, then get your own place! You wanna live with your family, you start thinking about the rest of us, too!”

His smirk turned into a full-blown smile and that was it. The little shit had been holding on to something ever since we got kicked off the mountain and now he was finally gonna let it loose. I’d been waiting. I’d been ready. And I’d been holding on to something too.

“Ahem.”

My brother, Doc, had this way about him that was like getting hit in the face with a bucket of ice water. The bucket made you mad as hell; the ice water took your breath before you could cuss him out.

“Good morning, brothers. Do either of you plan to go to work this morning?” he asked in that slow, clipped manner that made me wanna pull my sleeve back and make a fist.

Happy kept grinning, his eyes meeting mine. “It’s off to work we go,” he whistled softly, opening the front door. The soft melody followed him as he walked down the street.

“Come with me, brother,” Doc said. He moved with the steady gait of a monk or impoverished nobility. I guess in his mind, he was both. Once upon a time, we’d rubbed elbows with charming princes and snow-white princesses. But everybody’s fifteen minutes ends at some time.

“You must be patient with Happy,” Doc offered advice that I know I didn’t ask for.

“He’s having a difficult time adapting.”

“And – yawn - he’s taking it out on – yawn - everyone else.”

Of its own power, my arm pointed emphatically at my brother, Sleepy, who’d just made an excellent point. The boy stayed up all night playing those silly video games, but nothing got past him!

56 • From the Fallout Shelter

Doc tutted, “Please, brother Sleepy, focus on your task.”

Sleepy gave a tired shrug and went back to making coffee with half closed eyes.

“Happy’s always been more of an oak tree than a willow,” my brother, Bashful, said while flipping a skillet of eggs and hash with a flick of his wrist. He poured the cooked egg mixture into 7 flour burritos. “The wind’s been blowing hard and if we don’t support him, he may break instead of bend.”

“You get that outta one a those self-help books?” I asked. “We’re dwarves. Not trees.”

“It’s a metaphor,” Doc said in his slow, obnoxious drawl.

“It’s stupid. We lived on a mountain. Now we live in an apartment. Nothing’s changed but the location, so what’s all the drama for?”

“You can’t just, sniff, force someone to adapt when their, sniff, world has changed,” my brother Sneezy replied while folding the burritos into foil and tucking them into the stupid matching lunch bags Doc had bought for us.

“Oh, go snort a Claritin,” I replied, pissed off at being ganged up on.

“Well, if that’s the way you’re going to behave,” Doc looked down his snooty fat nose at me, “there’s little point in continuing this discussion.”

So off to work we went. *

Happy was at the train station when we got there and with a smile let us know we’d missed the 6:05. “Dwarfs,” he said, a giggle lingering in his eyes, “who are late to work.

Our father’s father would be proud.”

Just when I was about to let fly what I thought about this new sarcastic Happy, Doc put a gentle hand on my arm and spoke like a patrician metronome, “Our father’s father faced war, dragons, Orcs and the great wizard Merlin. He knew that there are times when one must light the sacred lanterns a few minutes late.”

Happy turned away and began reciting the “5 Rules of a Good Dwarf” from Dedicated the Dwarf, our father’s father and founder of our family line.

Sleepy glared at his back, found himself a seat, slumped into it and promptly began snoring.

Sneezy used his phone to search health blogs for homeopathic cures and check the side effects for over-the-counter medications (he said his Claritin made him itchy).

Bashful kept staring at a water sprite we’d gone to school with. I think he was working up the nerve to talk to her (so much for all those self-help books, huh?).

Dopey was watching an educational program on his phone. There were only a few we let him watch; this one had puppet monsters living in a boarding school solving mysteries about the alphabet.

Doc was reading the morning paper as if he were a lord of leisure sipping sherry in a mahogany study instead of a near broke dwarf riding a urine-soaked subway.

I glared out the window.

As the train left the city, it emptied until the only passengers were us and a sleeping form. I got up to kick the drunk awake and but stopped once I got a good look. Our mother, may she rest in Ontalvhar, would have boxed my ears and pulled my nose if I’d disturbed this sleeper.

“I’ve never seen a tree spirit in person before,” Bashful’s voice was quiet and awed.

~continued~ Penn State Harrisburg Literary Arts • 57

She was dressed like a human, in black leather boots, stylishly ripped shorts and a band t-shirt. She mostly looked human…except her skin was like rolling earth, shades of umber, wheat, clay and yellowing leaves. Her hair was a thick canopy of leaves, dotted with vines and rare flowers. A snake crawled up her outstretched arm, and a bird flitted into and out of the depths of her cleavage.

Then I blinked, and she was just a human girl with fluffy black hair and even brown skin. She reeked of cherry wine, apple cider, and soured fruits.

“Anybody got an offering?” I asked.

Dopey, without hesitation, held out his breakfast burrito like was made of gold and delicately placed it on her lap before tiptoeing away. Happy looked away. **

The worksite was a treeless mountain. A battered, rusty, red trailer sat on cinder blocks at its base. I used my key to open the door and let my brothers in ahead of me.

Even designed for human heights, it was crowded.

There was only one human who ever visited up here: a tall, broad-shouldered male with twinkling eyes. He didn’t offer much in the way of advice, or knowledge, or skill, or experience. But he left behind lots of brightly colored post-it notes with phrases like “The team that works together, wins together!” and “Only you decide your limits!” written on them.

Doc and I shared a look after reading the most recent post-it.

“Slay the dragon of mediocrity?” Dopey read. He looked at us, his normally gentle, blank face filled with confusion and worry. “I don’t wanna kill any dragons.

Dragons are our friends.”

Even Happy, normally wrapped up in himself, reached over to soothe Dopey.

“It’s a stupid human saying, Dopey. We ain’t killing no dragons,” and to head off the question I knew was coming, “and humans ain’t allowed to kill dragons either. Nobody can kill dragons no more.”

“Except dragons.” Sleepy added around a yawn. Dopey began wailing.

Sneezy sat at the only chair in the trailer, a stained, gray, creaky affair. With one hand, he reached for the phone, with the other he logged into the desktop PC. “Ah-ahah,” he held his breath before resuming, “I can call the haulers in early if that’ll help.” The sneeze over took him just as he put the headset to his face.

“Do that, please, brother,” Doc nodded.

After Sneezy called the haulers, my brothers and I took Dopey back outside; partly to work and partly to keep him busy. In the trailer, Sneezy used geographic imaging software to plan the placement of the charges. Bashful kept up a game of I-Spy with Dopey while they cleared the demo sites. After getting the “all clear” from me, Happy and Sleepy laid the charges and then Doc hit the ignition.

Normally, we’d do the whole process a few more times before calling in the haulers, but because a speciesist post-it note was left by our stupid human boss, Dopey was having a panic attack. So, the haulers were called in early.

The clutch of dragons hired by the company (wearing matching lime green vests and baseball caps) were happy to come in early and speak with Dopey. They rarely got the chance to see a demo from start to finish and were curious.

58 • From the Fallout Shelter

Flying ahead, an aerial honor guard for Dopey and Bashful, the fire-breathers scored a path to the next planned demo sites. As Sleepy, Happy, and I laid the charges, the lead dragon mentioned that their union had applied for the demo job but had been turned down because health insurance was part of their standard contract.

“Dwarfs don’t get sick much.” It wasn’t our fault they lost the bid, but what the hell else was I supposed to say?

The dragon, a red-scaled female with eyelashes longer than my hand, shrugged her shoulders. “It’s just business.”

The charge was detonated and when the smoke cleared, an older layer of earth reappeared. A reverent hush fell over the crowd; the dragons eyed my brothers and I, we eyed each other.

“What do we do?” Bashful asked, looking at the dwarven skeleton. Its petite (by human standards) body was surrounded by furs, an engraved pickaxe lay at its side, a gold chain crossed from its right shoulder to its left hip.

“They were required to ensure it was sepulcher-free,” Doc whispered. The dragons scoffed, rolling their eyes at each other: the company cut a corner to save money? Big surprise.

Rolling up my sleeves, I dropped down in to the grave. The etching on the axe seemed familiar but I looked at the chain to confirm: Grandfather Dedicated.

“Here’s what’s happening: You,” I pointed at Sleepy, “head back to the trailer and grab that big cooler. The one we used for all the soda and hoagies on Dopey’s birthday.

Bring it back here.”

“You,” I pointed at Dopey and Bashful, “get shovels and tarps. If you can’t find tarps, grab the curtains from the trailer.” Sleepy, Dopey, and Bashful ran off towards the trailer.

I buzzed Sneezy via the walkie-talkie. “Keep an eye on the road. Lemme know if Bossman shows up.”

“What’s ah-ah-ah going choo on?”

“Bash and Sleepy’ll explain.”

“You, you and you,” I pointed at the haulers, “you gonna narc on us?”

Two of the dragons, a blue and a green, looked at the third, the red. The red held my eye as she responded. “The company purchased this mountain. All it contains, by human laws, belongs to the company.”

I huffed, “Human laws.”

The red dragon nodded her head. “We’ll keep your confidence.”

I glanced at Doc, he gave me one of his patrician nods back, “Then let’s get to it.”

We started by gently lifting the bones of our ancestor from his burial ground.

“Wait,” Happy’s voice was a squeal. I looked back at him, confused that he wasn’t helping, then went back to caring for my ancestor’s bones.

“Wait.”

“Happy, there is a limited amount of time before our employer arrives for his daily inspection. We cannot wait.”

Happy rushed at us, stumbling into the grave, kicking our ancestor’s bones. “Wait!

Wait! Just wait! We shouldn’t be doing this!”

~continued~ Penn State Harrisburg Literary Arts • 59

“My brown furry ass!” I pushed him out of the grave. “This is exactly what we should be doing.”

Happy steeled himself, then threw a clod of dirt at me. “We need this job!”

Doc and I stopped scooping dirt from Grandfather Dedicated’s body and stared at Happy.

“I need this job,” he whispered.

Doc rose and, with a level of gracefulness that pissed me off, reached a hand out to Happy. “Brother, how can this job be more important than preserving our father’s father’s bones?”

Happy’s eyes flitted to me, then stayed on Doc. “Mr. Charleroi said if I do a good job, he’d get me a promotion. He said in 5 years I could be working in the headquarters in Morrowind. Morrowind!”

Had he lost his mind? Had he forgotten everything our mother had ever, ever taught us? These were our father’s father’s actual bones. Not a metaphor like it usually is, but the actual bones. Laying before us! Barely an hour from being blown up by the same company that he was hoping for a promotion from! Had he lost all sense of who he was? Had he lost all sense of what it meant to be a dwarf?

At some point, I realized I was yelling at him. And Happy was yelling back. Yelling that he was sick of us. Sick of sharing a room with farting, snoring dwarfs. Sick of doing the morning call when no one cared. Sick of sharing everything seven ways. Sick of having nothing for himself. He deserved something for himself. After everything was taken away from them, he was going to get something for himself and we were trying to ruin it. Over a dwarf that we’d never even met!

“You sound like a human right now,” I whispered.

Happy scoffed through a grin. “Humans own our mountain now, Grumpy.” He looked down the slope, where Bashful and Sleepy and Dopey had stopped, mouths agape to watch our final argument. “Maybe if we were more like humans, we’d still be there.”

“We’re taking the bones,” I said, stepping towards Happy.

Happy shrugged, no longer caring, a pariah already. “Take them and I’ll tell Mr. Charleroi everything.”

“We’ll get fired, for sure,” Bashful whispered.

“Worth it,” I declared to the crowd. I got on the horn to include Sneezy. “Anybody else care more about money than these bones?” No response.

I nodded to the dragons, “Tell the company we took what’s ours.” I looked at Happy, no longer my brother. “Tell ‘em to make our last pay checks out to Happy Son of None.”

60 • From the Fallout Shelter

The Hidden Tunnel by Mason Baughman

Penn State Harrisburg Literary Arts • 61

Valerie Frigerio

小火鼠 (Xiǎo Hǔo Shǔ- Little Fire Rat) A Coming of Age in 10 Haikus

In Chinese culture, everyone is born with an animal and an element that determines your personality traits and astrological luck based on when you were born. Many people go to fortune tellers and have their futures predicted based on these signs. I am a fire rat, born to a wood dragon and a water rabbit. I imagine this would be advice that my mother would give me, but I know that if I ever get lost, a great wooden dragon will come to take me home.

Cute little fire rat, Don’t get drawn to the pale light.

You’ll never find home.

Smart little fire rat, Linger here in the rice fields, Learn what will kill you.

Curious fire rat, Don’t wander from where you know.

Your mother will mourn.

Careful, young fire rat, You are not amongst friends.

They are the godless.

Fight, fight, dear fire rat.

Stronger, faster, you grow fangs.

Blood is all you taste.

Endure, dear fire rat.

The rain will cleanse the broken.

Raise your head and scream.

Enough, poor fire rat.

Can’t you see the ashes flare?

Retreat to its warmth.

Close your eyes fire rat.

Do you see the golden flame?

The fire calls to you.

Sleep, little fire rat.

There is no need to cry now.

Time to take you home.

Dream, little fire rat, burn and glow with gold embers.

The future shines bright.

62 • From the Fallout Shelter

Flicker by Emily Witmier

Penn State Harrisburg Literary Arts • 63

Sam Bixler

Haven

Thirty years ago, a man named Michael Sanderson disappeared. The police investigating his case believed he was last seen leaving a local supermarket with a bouquet of roses in hand. During questioning, the cashier who had been working that night described him as charming and jovial, claiming that when she had asked him who the roses were for, he’d given a wink and a mischievous smile, declaring, “For you, if you’d like.” This behavior was not abnormal for Michael. Those who knew him well would have described him as a harmless flirt, though at the time of his disappearance, he had been married to his high school sweetheart for more than twenty years.

What most didn’t know was that Michael’s flirting was never truly harmless. The police, in particular, had been lied to. I was the last person to see him alive. At the time, I was still going by my maiden name of Marina Lockhart. When Michael and I first met, I was eighteen, a recent high school graduate with no long-term plans for the future.

I spent my nights at home with my parents and my days at my father’s barbershop, where I had been given a throw-away job greeting customers and cleaning up messes.

When Michael walked into the shop that day, his eyes roved over me as he stepped up to the counter. I didn’t know he was married, and I never saw a ring. Later, he would make up an excuse, claiming he worked in construction and feared his ring would be damaged or tarnished. Regardless, I had no reason to decline when he asked me to join him on a beach trip the following weekend – just as friends, he assured me.

It was my first serious relationship. None of the boys I’d been with before had anywhere near the age or experience that Michael did. He was just as everyone described him – charming, witty, dare I say debonair. By the time he revealed that he was married, assuring me that it was an unhappy union, I was already hooked. In my mind, there was no reason not to believe him. He said he’d been planning to leave her for years, promised me that when the time was right, we would run away together and elope. He told me he loved me early on in the relationship and, despite my gut instinct, I quickly found myself swept up in his affections. He was the only thing I talked about, Sunday brunches with my friends spent gushing about the gifts that he gave me or the things he said.

Around the time of his disappearance, however, I began to question the nature of our relationship. Though he continued to insist that it was only a matter of time before he left his wife, I had seen them together enough times that jealousy had started to take root inside of me. I began to grow depressed. My parents noticed a marked difference in my mood. Apart from meetings with Michael, I rarely left my room and barely ate any of my mother’s cooking. I had stopped seeking steady employment, convinced that I would have a stable source of income as soon as he married me, and as time went on I spent less time in my father’s shop and more time alone, fantasizing about the future.

Things changed when I found out that I was pregnant. It wasn’t planned, of course.

I came from a good, Christian household. The idea that I might have a child out of wedlock would nearly kill my poor mother. Despite this, however, the positive results of the pregnancy test filled me with renewed energy and determination. This was what I

64 • From the Fallout Shelter

had been waiting for, after all – the push needed to convince Michael that it was finally time for him to leave his wife and be with only me. I wanted to tell him right away, but I was certain the occasion had to be special, romantic. The night he disappeared, I had set up a moonlit picnic on that same beach where he had taken me on our first date. I got there about an hour before sunset to start preparing.

When he finally arrived, salmon pink roses in hand, it became clear that he believed we were there for different reasons. I led him to my mother’s hand-me-down checkered blanket, all frayed edges and dull yellow squares, and by the time I’d set myself beside him he was on me. I couldn’t help but giggle as his lips caressed my neck, my body flushing instinctively as one of his hands rode up my thigh. Fearing I would forget my purpose if things went any further, I placed my own hand against his chest, putting distance and an obstacle between us.

“Before we go any further, darling, I have something important I need to tell you,” I insisted, but my words seemed to fall on deaf ears. Despite the arm stuck between us, his hand continued to push the fabric of my dress further up my thigh as he placed urgent kisses along my jawline. Still, I persisted.

“Michael, I’m serious. I need you to look at me.”

Perhaps it was the tonal shift that finally grabbed his attention. Hesitantly, he leaned back, brow furrowed as he studied my face. His gaze, like always, was somehow revealing. When he looked at me, really looked at me, it felt like I was standing, starknaked, in the middle of a crowd. He was the only one who could see me yet when he did, it was at my most vulnerable.

“I know that this is sudden,” I began, chest tightening as my purpose fully struck me for the first time, “but, well, it’s important. You see, I’m… pregnant.”

I couldn’t look at him. A stiff silence wedged itself between us as I tried desperately to focus on the waves kissing the shore, individual grains of sand suddenly seeming very interesting indeed. When I did look up at him, he was frozen, brows raised, mouth slightly agape. He looked almost catatonic, like I had stunned him, and I could feel frustration and fear bubbling up inside of me. As I began to open my mouth to release it, he let out a short, punctuated sigh.

“There must have been some mistake,” he declared, his voice dripping with honey and condescension. “You can’t be pregnant.”

This, of course, is not the reaction you want when you’re eighteen years old and pregnant with a married man’s baby. I was so certain that he would be overjoyed to hear the news. His wife had yet to give him a child, and here I was, offering myself and all that would entail. In my young mind, his hesitation and denial made no sense.

“I assure you, Michael, I am very much pregnant. I’ve made an appointment to see a doctor next week.”

At this, he flinched, lip curling upward in obvious disapproval.

“Cancel it. If what you’re saying is true, I’m taking you into the city tomorrow to get rid of the child, and that’s final.”

Just like that. No opportunity to protest, to reason, to try to convince him that this would be a good thing in the long run. He stood up, having not even touched the food that I had prepared for us, and turned to leave, his gait surprisingly steady for a man walking on sand.

~continued~ Penn State Harrisburg Literary Arts • 65

“Michael, you can’t be serious,” I cried, scrambling to my feet. “You can’t just leave me here and think that everything is fine. We have to talk about this!”

A few steps forward, and I had latched onto his arm, my mouth moving faster than my mind, declarations of love and a desire to be together spilling forth from within me. Though he had frozen once more, he refused to look at me, staring off toward the distant street lights. When he moved, I thought that was it. He would finally listen. He would understand. He would love me just as much as I loved him. I didn’t even have time to register his fist flying toward my face before it smashed against the ridge of my brow.

I remember gasping, then, like he’d knocked the wind out of me. As my body rocketed backward, heels losing purchase in the sand, I could only think that this wasn’t supposed to happen. No one had ever hit me before, and certainly not as hard as this. What could I do but allow the waves of unconsciousness to carry me out to sea?

When I slipped back into my body, I was being dragged. Wet sand grated against my cheek, stray clumps attempting to force their way into my mouth. I didn’t dare open my eyes, barely going so far as to squint in a vaguely upward direction, eyelashes fluttering.

From what I could tell, Michael was taking me to the water’s edge. I could feel the salty spray against my skin, my dress catching on rocks and seashell shards. A small voice inside of me was screaming, desperately trying to pull me up from the ground, to force me to fight, to yell, to tell him to get away from me. But I was so tired. The world didn’t feel real. I simply tried to convince myself that none of it was happening.

If anything was real, it was the water, a salty brine that seemed to slowly engulf me, soaking into the cotton of my dress, ridding me of the various detritus that clung to it. I don’t know what I expected him to do. I was a passenger in my own body. Around me, the world seemed to still. I couldn’t hear any shuffling of feet or shift of weight. All I could focus on was breathing through my nose as salt worked its way into my half-open mouth.

“How long have you been there? Where did you come from?” Michael’s voice erupted from the stillness, a distant echo bouncing off the walls of my skull. Was there someone else? Someone to rescue me, to make the earth stop spinning long enough for me to put myself right again?

Struggling to open my eyes, I tensed up. A low, distinctly feminine chuckle crashed over my body with the waves. Michael’s voice was indistinct but rose in volume and pitch in a way I had never heard before.

“You can still get away from here, you know,” he implored the unknown, his voice trembling with a mixture of fury and fear. “Forget what you saw and turn around and we both get away –“

Silence again, but only for a moment. There was splashing in the distance, but it seemed to surround me. I couldn’t tell where it was coming from. Beyond it, however, somewhere behind my head, there came a haunting, wordless melody. Soothing, almost, like the lullabies my mother used to sing to me when I was a child. I barely registered Michael’s pained, muffled scream being cut off as I began to drift away.

Emerging from the darkness, I found myself not quite dry but no longer submerged.

There was a gentle tugging against my scalp, not altogether unpleasant, as though someone were running a hand through my hair. Muscles shifted against my own, strong arms enfolding me and steadying my body as I gasped for air, my eyes flying

66 • From the Fallout Shelter

open. Swimming above me was a feminine face, soothing smile curling at the corners of the mouth. Her hair was stringy and wet, greenish-brown like seaweed, and as I directed my gaze lower, my mind only just managed to register the fact that she was fully nude, her flesh baring scale-like patterns and feeling cool and clammy against my own.

“You are awake,” she murmured, her fingers – blue-green and webbed – caressing my cheek. “This is good.”

Despite the peculiarity of the situation, nothing within me warned against remaining still, allowing her to hold me and to touch me.

“Where… what happened? Where is Michael?”

Not everything had come back from the night before. I had yet to process exactly what Michael had done to me, and this fact earned me a look of pity from my apparent savior. After a moment of contemplation, the same low chuckle from the night before emerged from somewhere deep within her, her features shifting to take on a more sinister expression.

“The man is where he needs to be,” she declared, voice reverberating through my skin. “You will have no more trouble from him.”

“But…”

“Hush now, dear. It is taken care of. You may rest now.”

The reality of the situation caught up with me then, engulfing me, filling up my lungs. Tears welled in my eyes as my body curled closer to the woman, and, for her part, she did not seem displeased by this. Her arms coiled tighter around me, a wordless reminder that the danger was past, that I was safe and secure and did not have to fear.

“Your child will rest, too,” she assured me, gesturing to the arms folded across my stomach. I had nearly forgotten I was not alone back there.

“You saved me.” It slipped past the filters of my mind, an involuntary response.

“Who are you?”

Her features softened and she gave a genuine smile, flashing a set of pointed teeth.

“You may call me Haven.”

Penn State Harrisburg Literary Arts • 67

Kristina Stokes

Inside the Walls: A Sestina Something sinister hides inside me.

It whispers truth wrapped in lies, Robs me of my peace.

I don’t know where to turn to Find what I have left to give.

Change cheers, chokes, and yet, it calls.

The fortress built around my heart calms, Surrounded on all sides by my own little army.

But inside my heart hears the truth- time to forgive These walls bring silence and false safety, I realize, Walls built and reinforced over twenty-two years must be knocked down in order to find true peace.

Pain, heartache, mistakes, disappointment- walls made of every piece burn red hot as the flames are stoked. One touch scalds.

Not just me but others too.

They come too close and bump up against a scarlet memory.

Hurt bubbles up, a harsh word flies And now I’m not the only one who must forgive.

On and on it goes, I have nothing left to give.

All I really want is a little piece of peace But I keep trusting all these liesThat silence behind the wall calms as it calls.

I slink inside and again, it’s just me.

What have I gotten myself into?

There’s no one left to turn to, Alone if I don’t forgive.

But again change beckons me, Cries out to me to choose true peace I hear the calls, But they’re muffled by all the lies.

I’ve listened to wrong voices for longer than I realize.

Change knows what needs done to Find that peace that calms.

Change whispers forgive, It offers peace To me.

Again my fortress calls me, Promises a parody of peace.

They’re all lies meant to trap; I need only forgive.

68 • From the Fallout Shelter

Camryn Shope

One Last Dance Maria’s skirt flared out from her hips in a glittering cascade of ombré fire as her partner twirled her around. Abandoned was the choreography she had spent months designing in preparation for the final dance; instead the thrill of improvisation overwhelmed her. What harm could it be after all? They were already disqualified from the competition. Completing the twirl, Maria snapped back into her partner’s arms and pressed her torso to his. She’d never seen this look in his eye before. Something about the way Emil looked at her through his lashes made her heart flutter. Emil ran his hand down the white lace on her side to rest on her waist, and her breath hitched.

Emil could barely breathe with the vision Maria made in her sparkling dress.

The white lace on her upper body contrasted the deep tan of her skin, and her skirt blazed as it transitioned from crimson to orange to canary yellow. Her chocolate curls rested in a loose braid decorated with marigolds. In that moment, nothing rivaled her beauty. Emil began the dance with its steps in mind, having watched Maria practice and perform with her previous partner numerous times. He counted and swayed with the beat, and she followed his lead. When he spied the necklace she wore, however, he decided to damn the choreography. He spun her, and he could see the surprise in the arch of her brows, but she followed anyway. The stage lights caught the glitter on her dress, and Emil smiled. She was a fire meant to burn him, scorch him, and he wanted the audience to be consumed.

Maria could read Emil like a manuscript, the straightening of his spine like text highlighted on a page. She settled under his direction as the music vibrated against her skin. She let it soak in and move her, and Emil and she both succumbed to its desires. The slightest shifts of his body had her compensating and surging to match him. Emil’s hand moved to the small of her back to draw her closer as they remembered the way the other’s body moved. Emil’s own outfit glimmered in the spotlight. While Maria was the Sun, he was the Moon, contrasting her firestorm with icy blues, blacks, and violets. The distance between them was more than just physical. She was the Equator to his North Pole, and the distance between them was an ocean. Maria pressed herself closer, and a waft of peppermint brought on a fit of nostalgia. He had always smelled like this. She had thought it strange when they had first met, but now she caught her lip between her teeth to suppress a laugh. Only Emil would still smell like his favorite treat after all this time and all they had been through.

Her fingers glided across his exposed chest, down the embroidery on his sleeves and to his own fingertips, goosebumps left in their wake. His fingers hooked hers

~continued~ Penn State Harrisburg Literary Arts • 69

so she couldn’t escape, and he yanked her back almost desperately. Their bodies clashed with the same frenzy as tectonic plates, hands flinging out to the side and feet quaking the stage. Maria tossed her head back, arms lifting as her wrists twisted into the feathers of wings. Emil wrapped his arm around her middle and swept her down into a dip. When their eyes met, Maria lost herself in the deep blues of his. They reminded her of the road trip they had taken together around his home country. She’d never seen glaciers before that trip, but their color reminded her of Emil.

Emil swept her back up and around, holding her close. He lifted her by her hips and spun, her petite frame making it easy. A smirk taking hold of his lips, Emil tossed her into the air. Maria gasped but hid it from the audience with a delighted smile. She twisted around midair with her arms poised to facilitate the spin. As she came down, her eyes clenched, and her jaw tightened. Emil was there to catch her in a dip once again. Maria’s eyes popped open to see his face smirking down at her.

Every time she fell, he would always be there to catch her. Returning the smirk, Maria hooked a leg around him as he straightened them both. The music picked up, and confidence radiated from Emil like the Northern Lights of his homeland.

Having Maria in his arms gave him a strength he had never possessed before, and he never wanted to let her go again. He held Maria’s leg around him as he swept her around and backed up. Maria’s toe was a pivot point, and it dragged as Emil carried her back in long, confident strides. She leaned into him as they started their own tango.

The passion between them grew and bloomed with the upbeats of the melody, their movements painting the picture of young love rediscovered. Fire and ice swirled together, blending to create something more, something beautiful. They traveled and explored and grew together in ways neither could have predicted. In the dance, Emil became the framework, and Maria added the delicate flare. They were two worlds colliding, and they celebrated the union. Soon they raged on, their longing strained by tempestuous movements. They prodded and jabbed each other into a heated battle. Maria gripped her skirt in one hand and swished it violently as she danced with him. Emil stood to his full height and dominated her twirls, lifts, and holds. Maria’s heels stomped the ground in challenge, and Emil matched her fury step for step, one arm around her and the other held to the side to welcome her confrontation. Their tempers engaged in warfare, their fuses lit and burned to cinders under the pressure of competition.

Pushing herself away, Maria hung her head. Her movements slowed to a sulking crawl, and she wilted, transforming from an inferno to the embodiment of La Llorona herself, forever weeping. Her sways mourned the loss of her lover. Her emerald eyes glistened with tears as she poured herself into her solo performance.

No one could console the ache in her chest, how her heart and ribcage collapsed in on itself without Emil’s presence.

70 • From the Fallout Shelter

His own head lowered, Emil watched her express her sorrow. His heart lurched as he remembered what he said to her before the first round of the competition began all those months ago. He had hurt her, made her unsure of herself, made her seek another dance partner. Though he was her polar opposite, Emil was drawn to her still, just as he had been when they met, and he knew he needed to rekindle that love they’d shared. An invisible string tugged him over step by step to wrap his arms around her from behind. They were magnets, connected by an invisible yet powerful force. He spun her back to face him. He held her close to shelter the wounds he had caused. They rocked together, and Emil leaned down to rest his forehead against hers. As they moved, his hips whispered apologies against hers while her hands rubbed forgiveness into his biceps. Their lips brushed to seal the cracks in their armor. Emil pulled her up into his arms and off her feet, hand tangled in her hair, as the song ended.

There was only silence as their breaths mingled in the space between them. A moment later, the room erupted in applause, whistles, and cheers. Both their faces split into wide grins. They had just created something rare and magical, and it had only been made possible by sheer circumstances of fate. Maria cupped his jaw as he set her down, and Emil bowed his head.

“I’m so sorry,” he whispered.

Maria shook her head. He had nothing to be sorry for. “Why? Why break choreography?”

“You were wearing the lava rock necklace I gave you,” Emil said. He fingered the necklace, remembering when he had first given it to her as a token of his affection, when she had promised to never take it off. She hadn’t worn it since their fight, not since the competition started.

“I wore it for you. I still cared after all this time. It was the least I could do to thank you for coming today and dancing on such short notice. Even though the dance won’t count, I finally got to dance with the only partner I’ve ever wanted. You.”

Emil tipped her chin up to kiss her. “You’ll never have to dance with anyone else again. I promise.”

“Good. You’re all I’ll ever need.” Maria laced their fingers together as they prepared to face their disqualification together.

Penn State Harrisburg Literary Arts • 71

Alex Hedley

My Child My child I chew you up and spit you out Devouring the idea of you Before it can even exist You are not meant to be mine I pluck your skin from your bones Your eyes from your head Your teeth from your mouth Your nails from your hands I lick my fingers clean And place the remains in a locket Near my heart Forever My child You are dear to me But my womb is not meant for you to call home My bones are not meant to bend and stretch to make room for you My skin is not meant to sag from the memory of you You are not meant to be held in my arms To be protected by me To be loved by me To be cared for by me I do not have the ability to love you The way you should be loved I do not have the ability to hold you The way you are meant to be held My child I am not meant to be your mother I am not made to be your mother I cannot possibly do this I am sorry, my love I am sorry I can not carry you on my back Or protect you from harm Or pick insects from your scalp

Or offer my food to you

I am sorry, but we are not meant to be together Not in this lifetime So I will become another species Who consumes their young

72 • From the Fallout Shelter

Camryn Shope

Rebirth Nighttime sighs when Daytime breathes.

In... Out. Deeply.

Day is born and cries in shades of orange Streaking across the sky.

He grows and scorches the Earth below, Flames swollen in his glory.

Until he dies.

Day shrivels in bloody crimson, Purple bruising the swelling night with shadows.

Then Nighttime is born to crickets chirping.

She caresses and soothes the restless Earth, Relieving the Daytime carnage.

Night holds the Earth against her breast, Rocks gently with the rolling tides of the sea.

And then she sighs once more.

In... Out. Deeply.

Penn State Harrisburg Literary Arts • 73

Kaitlyn Dillon

Relapse “You’re doing great, Brian. Keep going.”

Sweat trickled down my forehead, running along my nose and dripping onto the mat below me. I gripped the wooden bars on either side of me, using what little strength I had to keep myself suspended in the air.

“Try putting more weight on your legs,” Dr. Gardner said. He stood in front of me, ready to catch me if I fell.

“I can’t… do this.” It was difficult to get the words out. The past six months in the hospital had left me weak and exhausted. I wasn’t capable of this. I wasn’t ready.

“Help me down, please,” I said. Dr. Gardner placed his arms under my armpits and lowered me into my wheelchair.

“It will get easier, Brian. You’ve made great strides so far. I’m sure within the next few—”

“I’m not getting better, doc. Physical therapy isn’t going to change this.” I tapped the plastic that replaced the spot where my legs used to be.

“The first couple of weeks after the operation are the worse.” He squeezed my shoulder. “How about we try again tomorrow?”

I nodded in agreement. What else did I have to do? It’s not like I had classes to go to, or friends to hang out with. I didn’t have a life outside of these four walls.

Those things all ended the day I found out I had cancer again.

Nurse Becca, the nurse assigned to me for most of the day, wheeled me back to my hospital room. She’d been here for me nearly every day since I arrived at this hellhole, constantly giving me my medicine, shaving my head, and making sure I was still alive.

“Ey, Brian! How was PT?” I barely made it through the door before my obnoxiously enthusiastic roommate began snooping into my life.

I ignored him and focused on maneuvering myself out of the chair and into my bed. Nurse Becca fluffed up the pillows around me, asked if I needed anything, and left with a brief wave. I turned my attention towards Tommy.

“I thought you were starting chemo again today,” I said, moving my prosthetics closer to the center of my bed. Tommy was bald, like most of the cancer patients in the University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center. It was supposed to be the best ranked cancer center in the country, but it just felt like any other stupid hospital to me.

“Well, you thought wrong.” He launched himself off his bed, dragging some of the scratchy sheets with him. Unlike me, Tommy had four limbs. I couldn’t help the pang of jealousy that coursed through me seeing him walk around. I had always taken my legs for granted, up until they were amputated five weeks ago in order to remove the cancer that sprung up only four months before that.

74 • From the Fallout Shelter

“The doctors cleared me today. They killed all the cancer cells in my brain. I’m officially in remission,” he said.

Remission. It was a word I had heard all too often the last seven years of my life. Cancer wasn’t a new thing to me. I was first diagnosed when I was ten. During a soccer game, my opponent accidentally tripped me, I fell to the ground, breaking my tibia on impact. That’s how they found the bone cancer in my right leg. Of course, one of the many nasty things about cancer is that it spreads. Within the first year, cancer popped up in my left leg as well. What followed was six more years of being told I was cancer free, only to be right back in the hospital a few months later. Even so, I’d always been ecstatic to hear that after months of chemotherapy, I was finally in remission.

But hearing Tommy say he was in remission made me more pissed than happy.

“Whatever, man. At least I won’t have to be stuck in the same room with you anymore,” I said, refusing to meet his gaze. He chuckled, a reaction not unlike Tommy at all. Always laughing, smiling, and telling me that everything’s going to be okay.

“Don’t miss me too much. I’ll come visit, of course. And once you’re back on your feet, we’ll—”

“Shut up, Tommy!” I threw the first thing I could grab across the room. The pillow smacked his face. A look I’d never seen replaced his usual bright smile.

“I’m just trying to help, Brian.”

“Well don’t. You don’t understand what I’m going through.”

Tommy tossed the pillow back onto my bed.

“You’re right. I apologize.”

His apology made me grip the sheets around me until my knuckles turned white. Why couldn’t this kid just shout or curse or do something that would give me reason to hate him? He always took the high road, which probably made him think he was better than me. What a stuck-up jerk.

“Did you catch the game yesterday?” Tommy asked, quick to start another conversation. I grabbed some headphones from my bedside table and pressed them into my ears. I turned up the music to a deafening volume, hoping he’d get the message.

Not even an hour later my mom came to visit. Her gentle knock on the door perked up Tommy’s ears. He ran over to her like a puppy when its owner comes home from work.

“Mrs. Rivers! How are you today?” he asked. My mom smiled widely.

“Tommy, so great to see you! I am very well. I was just talking to some of the nurses about you, and they said you’re in remission. Congratulations!”

“Thanks, Mrs. R. I’m bummed I have to leave Brian, but I’m sure he’ll manage without me. I bet he’ll be walking in no time too.”

My mom absentmindedly approached my hospital bed. She tidied up the sheets around me, pulling them tightly up over my prosthetics, almost as if she thought my legs were cold or something.

“Aw, well I’m sure he’ll miss having you as a roommate,” she said, casting a

~continued~ Penn State Harrisburg Literary Arts • 75

quick glare my way. She knew exactly how much I disliked the guy, and yet she didn’t see how anyone could. She would always describe him as a “pleasant young man who was raised right.” Sometimes it felt like she wished that he was her son instead of me. At least he was able to stand up to greet her at the door.

Later in the day, Tommy finished packing up. He left a little letter on his bedside table for his nurse like he did almost every day. He probably thanked her for saving his life or some crap like that.

“Well, Brian, my parents are here. I guess this is goodbye.” He held out his hand for me to shake. I’ll admit it wasn’t one of my proudest moments when my own self-pity caused me to refuse his handshake. I just couldn’t bring myself to do it. Why was he able to walk out of here cancer-free, when I couldn’t even walk?

His hand dropped to his side. Without another word, he left me alone in the room.

I was moved into the other wing of the hospital a week after Tommy left. This wing was designated for those in PT who weren’t sick anymore, and honestly, it was a pretty pathetic group. Everywhere I looked there was some person that was incomplete: a missing arm, a leg, a part of their torso even. I wheeled past a young girl who was missing half her leg. She wore a light pink ballerina tutu, with a tight bun pinned on the top of her head.

“Mommy, I don’t think this is going to help me dance,” she said, running her fingers along her own prosthetic leg. Her mom quickly dissipated her doubts, telling her that this leg would be even stronger than her last.

I looked down at my two “legs”, consisting of plastic covers and long metal rods extending from my mid-thigh down to my feet. No bones, muscle or blood.

Another burst of anger and frustration boiled in my chest. Why me? Why did this have to happen to me? I didn’t deserve this. Anything would be better than this.

Dr. Gardner helped me back onto the parallel bars. He fixed the positioning of my legs on the blue mat and held his hands out in front of me.

“I’ll catch you if you fall, okay? This time really focus on transferring the weight from your arms to your legs. Your prosthetics are strong, Brian, you just have to trust them.”

I already felt the muscles in my arms straining. I had yet to actually move across the entire bar since I started therapy all those weeks ago. Looking at the end now, it seemed so far away. I was half a man. How was I supposed to rely on my legs when I didn’t even have any?

I let out a frustrated grunt just as my left foot moved forward. I rocked my hips back and forth, managing to take another step. My eyes widened as I got into a rhythm and continued on, shortening the distance to the end.

“Well done, Brian, keep going.” Dr. Gardner’s eyes lit up at my progress. Even I could feel a flutter in my chest. I couldn’t tell if it was nerves, exhaustion, or excitement, but I think I was actually walking.

It was hard to stay balanced, and I knew I would fall without the parallel bars, but eventually I reached the end. Dr. Gardner helped me back into the wheelchair, beaming from cheek to cheek.

“That… was pretty cool,” I said, allowing myself a small smile. Dr. Gardner chuckled.

76 • From the Fallout Shelter

“Very cool. Give it a few more weeks, and you’ll be running around this place.”

“I don’t know about that, doc.”

“Just you wait.”

Nurse Becca entered the training room to take me back to get some rest. She wheeled me out the doors, and down the hall to where a receptionist sat. Two nurses stood talking, one of whom I recognized as Tommy’s nurse when he was here. I couldn’t help but overhear their conversation.

“It’s so sad. His poor family. And so soon after entering remission.”

“He was always so positive too. He used to always leave me thank you notes.”

My heart dropped in my chest. I grabbed the wheels of my chair and forced Nurse Becca to stop pushing. Blood rushed to my head, making me lightheaded and dizzy.

“Tommy?” I asked, my voice cracking.

The two nurses turned their attention towards me. The look in their eyes answered my fears.

“I’m sorry, hun,” Tommy’s nurse said. Nurse Becca squeezed my shoulder.

I didn’t even know what to say. I never liked Tommy, I won’t deny that. But the kid had a bigger heart than anyone I had ever met.

“But he got out. He was better.”

“It was the side effects from the chemo treatments. He had liver and kidney failure, as well as problems with blood circulation to his brain.”

I shook my head in disbelief. He was dead? All I ever did was complain to him about my own problems. I never showed an ounce of kindness towards him, and now he was gone. Honestly, the kid deserved so much better.

Nurse Becca wheeled me back to my room. She explained to me more in depth what happened to Tommy, but I hardly listened. My hands trembled, and my thoughts ran a mile a minute.

In fact, my thoughts ran back to the last encounter Tommy and I had. Me sitting in my bed. Him standing beside it, his arm stretched out towards me.

Damn. I didn’t even shake his hand.

Penn State Harrisburg Literary Arts • 77

Leisa Kilby

Tillie Klimek’s Protégé The train’s leather seats are shot, Mustard-yellow stuffing bulging out like Fat, jaundiced tongues. I pick At them incessantly while I wait.

The edge of my sleeve is still a little stained And I have the stench of arsenic Stuck in my nose.

The other passengers are so loud.

Like a hive of wasps Or a revving buzz-saw in my skull.

The urge to scream at them to shut up Is so strong it hurts my throat.

I swallow it over and over until My stomach turns sour.

Tillie always said, “It’s rude to yell.”

The train attendant is a pair of blue high-heels Because I won’t look at her face.

“Can I get you anything, Miss?” she asks.

I coldly stare ahead until she clicks away.

Finally, finally, the train lurches And rolls forward, wheels picking Like beating drums on the railway.

I breathe out and sag my weight Into the ripped seat like a shot And bleeding doe.

I count my pulse as the train picks up speed.

I had almost forgotten what this feel like.

But this kind of fear is preferable by a long shot.

I prefer the open rail to a closed cell, waiting To see my gaunt reflection in a steel meal tray.

They deserved it, by the way – The guards I killed to escape.

They deserved it so much, I promise.

Tillie saw it in her dreams.

78 • From the Fallout Shelter

Elizabeth Barrantes

We’re Open I rise early, a night owl out of place.

Sleepy people reside in the fluorescent light of their cubicles I see from the street, Reluctant to take on the day.

Others still warm, sunken deep in their beds.

Disregarding the waking city noises.

Blue hues cast through their bedroom windows.

They’re the ones I envy most.

Penn State Harrisburg Literary Arts • 79

Rapids by Camryn Shope

80 • From the Fallout Shelter

Urriรฐafoss by Camryn Shope

Penn State Harrisburg Literary Arts โ ข 81

Winter at Penn State Harrisburg by Yanghong Zhang

82 • From the Fallout Shelter

Contributors Notes Kara Bachert is a communications major. Her photo “Cream and Sugar” won Best Photo.

Kara says, “I just love being able to capture an emotion, not only with photography but anything in that realm, like graphic design and cinematography, Creating something out of nothing is my specialty.”

Emma Bankert, this year’s winner of the Academy of American Poets Prize, is earning her teaching certificate and hopes to help students in grades 7-12. She says, “I currently volunteer as a Girls on the Run coach, helping build esteem for young girls, something I wish I had when I was their age.”

Elizabeth Barrantes is a communications major. “Some of my hobbies include photography, reading, playing guitar and making jewelry. I hope you enjoy my innermost thoughts as I navigate life as a ‘kidult.’”

Mason Baughman is a graduate student in Applied Behavioral Analysis who says, “I have recently started walking as a way of getting out and exploring things and the camera is a good medium to capture these experiences.”

Elizabeth Bell, a finalist in this year’s Academy of American Poets Prize, is a sophomore geoscience major who was previously published in TheBurg.

Rebecca Bestwick a sophomore marketing major. For this issue she was the Business Manager, Online Editor, and was on the evaluation boards. Her writing previously appeared in Fission, From the Fallout Shelter, and TheBurg.

Sam Bixler, fiction editor for this issue, is a junior majoring in Creative Writing. They live in Grantville, Pennsylvania with their mother and three cats (Toby, Levi, and Tali).

When not writing or attending classes, they spend most of their time playing video games or Dungeons and Dragons.

Emily Dempsey is a sophomore Creative Writing major who won Best Short Story and was a runner-up this year and winner last year in the Academy of American Poets Prize.

She works as both a Theatre Technician and Stage Manager for the Mukund S. Kulkarni Theatre. She is involved in the Capital Players Theatre Club on campus, enjoys drawing and journaling, and used to swim competitively but has now probably forgotten how.

Molly Dempsey is majoring in Human Development and Family Studies. Molly says, “I have two sisters, Courtney and Emily, who both go to Penn state Harrisburg with me. I have a deep appreciation for nature and love spending time outdoors. I also really enjoy listening to music, especially Bon Iver.”

Kaitlyn Dillon is a sophomore civil engineering major who previously had a prose piece published in the Mordechai Anielewicz Creative Arts Competition.

Penn State Harrisburg Literary Arts • 83

Valerie Frigerio, the Assistant Fiction Editor for this issue, is a junior mechanical engineering major and “an aspiring writer who enjoys creating fiction and fantasy. I like to think my style is lighthearted humor coupled with heart wrenching with vivid descriptions. I am a firefighter and currently live at a station near you! I have a loving pair of parents and two sisters. They help with my ramblings.”

Ariel Gardner is a junior biology major, “pursuing my dreams of becoming a veterinarian.

I am from Hershey and currently work at ZooAmerica. I have a dog named Shanti and a cow named Squirt.”

Kenneth Gatten III is a sophomore English major and the Vice President of the Student Government Association. Several publications have featured his essays covering art, politics, and literary theory, but this is his first published work of fiction.

Alex Hedly is a sophomore English major with a minor in theatre. She is commonly found in either the Kulkarni Theatre or the Black Box Theatre, but in her free time, she really enjoys writing poetry and creative nonfiction. Writing is her passion and what she really loves to do.

Madaline Hoy is a creative writing major from Harrisburg who loves books, music, animals and video games.

Leisa Kilby was a finalist in the Academy of American Poets contest who has also been published in TheBurg, Inked, and Fission.

Raymond Lehman is a first-year student studying English and communications. “My dream job is to write articles for National Geographic. I also make the best cacio e pepe in the world (unofficial).”

Rachel Lenich is a junior majoring in English. She was a finalist in this year’s Academy of American Poets Prize, and she was on the evaluation boards and copy editing staff for this issue. Her biggest goal in life is to have cool stories to tell. When she isn’t writing, you can find her hiking Pennsylvania’s peaks, cuddling with her cats, or chugging coffee.

Yen-Chih Lin is a computer science graduate student from Taiwan. “I like to capture the moments that touch me as real as possible and share them with others. A photo I took in Philadelphia won the first place in Penn State Harrisburg photo contest last year.”

Elizabeth Lynch is an undecided major who says, “I’m exploring the worlds of marketing, advertising, and film. I never imagined myself writing poems, but here I am. I am immensely invested in the world of fantasy, and from that comes some of my writing.”

Ayesha Martin is a Continuing Education student from Harrisburg, PA who was first published in Inked last semester. She writes, “I have a few nieces and nephews who I adore and spend all my money on.”

84 • From the Fallout Shelter

Jessica Mele is a sophomore English major who in this issue was the Visual Arts Editor, Nonfiction Editor, and copy editor. She’s had two works published previously in From the Fallout Shelter and she was a runner-up in her high school’s poet laureate contest.

Mallory McCurdy is an English major and a writing minor. “I write some poetry, but prefer to write short stories. I spend way too much of my free time watching every movie I can and taking pictures of my pets, Ally, Marie, and Sadie.”

Devita Mohandeo, a finalist in this year’s Academy of American Poets Prize, is a junior political science major.

Kenneth Nolan III, who was the Poetry Editor for this issue, is a junior from Marietta, Pennsylvania. Majoring in Creative Writing, his hobbies include reading, writing, painting, and listening to Kate Bush while looking solemnly outside his window.

Khadijah Okoya is a major in Business Marketing from Lagos, Nigeria. “My interests include community service projects catered towards less-privileged children and women. My hobbies entail Afro Beats dance and videography. My photography has been featured in the Chatham Hall literary magazine, Iris.”

Austin Shay earned his M.A. in Humanities in December 2018 with a creative thesis that focused on culture and infectious diseases.

Camryn Shope is a second-year biochemistry major from New Bloomfield. She is a past winner of the Best Essay award, and she’s been published in Fission.

Cassidy Snyder is an English major with a minor in creative writing who is this year’s winner of Best Poem. “I have been passionate about reading and writing for as long as I can remember and hope to be an author one day. I also adore tarantulas and want to own seven of them.”

Kristina Stokes is a non-traditional honors English student entering her senior year.

She is the winner of Best Essay for this issue. She lives in Hershey with her husband and four children. More of her work can be seen in TheBurg, Moms Always Write, Fission, and From the Fallout Shelter.

Greggory Sullivan is a senior English major with a creative writing minor. He was awarded Best Short Story for his submission to the 2017 issue of From the Fallout Shelter, and he’s a previous fiction editor.

Emily Witmier is a communications major from Pottsville. “I am a part of Kappa Beta Gamma, a sorority on campus. I enjoy baking and spending time with family and friends. I plan to work in higher education after I graduate.”

Yanghong Zhang is a first-year student who says, “I enjoy doing simple, everyday, smart phone photography.”

Penn State Harrisburg Literary Arts • 85

86 • The Fallout Shelter