SCC Vortex Magazine 2017

VOR TEX 2017

Vortex

2017

A collection of Art, Essay, Plays, Poetry, Scripts, & Short Stories

A vortex is spiraling energy, like a whirlwind or a tornado that exists throughout all of nature. The Milky Way, our greater home, spirals.

Moving water spirals as it flows over and around things.

Our bones spiral.

The Maricopa County Community College District is an EEO/AA institution and an equal opportunity employer of protected veterans and individuals with disabilities.

A Publication of Scottsdale Community College

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Artist and Author Acknowledgment Poetry Montana Lorente for “Suitcase Family” ©2017 Robert Lewis for “That Night” ©2017 Jessica Warfle for “Numbers” ©2017 Stephen Rubin for “ UnWavering” ©2017 Rosario Escarcega for “The Whirlwind From Hell”

Script/Play Garrett Iannarelli for “Post Traumatic” ©2017 Arthur Spina for “Showcase” ©2017 Robin Hartwell for “Hell for the Company” ©2017 Aaron Wilson for “Me or Her” ©2017 Serena Primeau for “Carol the Cat Lady” ©2017

©2017

Native Voices and Visions Daniel Tullie for “Nihígaal bee Iiná--Walk for Existence” ©2017 Chelsea VanWinkle for “The Unforgiven: My Story” ©2017

Sammi Mathur for “Saffron Dragonfiles” ©2017 Short Story Stephen Rubin for “Perspective” ©2017 Antha Perkins for “Ignes” ©2017 Sammi Mathur for “The Medic” ©2017 Ryan Severyn for “The Quarry” ©2017 Sustainability Delvan Gonzales for “Homeless Hunger” ©2017 Itzel B. Caire for Untitled Photo ©2017 Creative Non-Fiction Meghan Saul for “Gran Torino” ©2017 Robert Buchanan for “Mutual Assured Destruction” ©2017 Sammi Mathur for “Murky Waters” ©2017 Kevin Abblett for “Bi Not So Curious” ©2017 Cholly Robertson for “Joy Writes Checks to Airport Janitors”©2017

Cover -

Bonnie Lewis, “Walking to Nowhere” 16x16 Mixed Media ©2017

Art Stephen Hoffman for “Phoenix Rising” ©2017 Melissa Schleuger for “Confirmation” ©2017 Barbara Goldberg for “Untitled” ©2017 William Goren for “Alloy” ©2017 Wallace Duncan for “Apocalyptic Certainty” ©2017 Joyce Erbach for “Flowers and Stripes” ©2017 Peter Brandeis for “Fog” ©2017 Ethan Haddad for “Deconstructed Melody” ©2017 Eleanor Babbitt for “Illuminance” ©2017 Kathy Dioguardi for “Lost in Lust” ©2017 Judy Feldman for “Morning Shadows” ©2017 Gloria Langer for “Spirit and Matter” ©2017 Bonnie Lewis for “The Poblano Sisters and Their Dog Chile Pepper” ©2017

Back Cover - Harry Rahawarin “Flower of Hands” Photography

©2017

I want to thank all of our student writers and artists here at Scottsdale Community College! It is because of them that we are able to create such an eclectic and high quality anthology. The writing and art in this journal represent a wide range of subjects, styles, and experiences that allows us to think, question, and feel. Without our artists’ visions and revisions, without their insights and sensitivities, without their devotion to art, we would all be diminished as a community of learners and as human beings.

I am deeply indebted to our very smart and dedicated executive administrative assistants! Buffie Diglio manages all Vortex contracts, processes winners’ awards, ticket sales, designs and prints award certificates and guest name badges, and maintains the website. Kathryn Kinney-Foe processes all of the paperwork with contest participants, fields questions and organizes the RSVPs. Michelle Blake assists all of us whenever and wherever she is needed.

I also want to thank Shachi Kale, the graphic designer of Vortex, for her beautiful spirit, artistic innovations, and remarkable skill in the design of Vortex.

Still, none of this would be possible each year without the endorsement from our president, Dr. Jan Gehler. Her far-reaching vision for what makes an academic institution a strong community has touched every part of SCC. I am also immensely grateful to Dr. Stephanie Fujii, SCC’s Vice President of Academic Affairs, for her support of Vortex and its significance to our students.

I also want to thank Susan Moore, Chair of the English, World Languages, and Journalism Division, for her continued enthusiastic backing, and Dr. Larry Tualla, Chair of the English Department, for his support.

My gratitude also goes to our amazing judges: Dr. Cameron MacElvee, Robert Mugford, Joshua Rathkamp, and Mark Young, all of whom sacrificed a portion of their Spring Break for art’s sake! I also want to thank my wonderful colleagues at SCC who continually encourage our students in their writing and artwork!

Sandra Desjardins, Vortex Coordinator

Support the Arts!

We need your support to keep the fire of creativity burning in all of our talented students for many years to come.

Please consider a tax-deductible donation to Vortex.

Your support helps to pay for supplies, special programs, annual events and the very book you’re reading.

For more information on how you can show your support for education and the arts, please contact Sandra Desjardins at (480) 423-6415 or visit our website at:

https://foundation.maricopa.edu College: Scottsdale, Designation: Vortex Student Publication

“It is in Apple’s DNA that technology alone is not enough—it’s technology married with liberal arts, married with the humanities, that yields us the results that make our hearts sing.”

Steve Jobs, in introducing the iPad 2 in 2011

“In my own philanthropy and business endeavors, I have seen the critical role that the arts play in stimulating creativity and in developing vital communities…the arts have a crucial impact on our economy and are an important catalyst for learning, discovery, and achievement in our country.”

Paul G. Allen, Co-Founder, Microsoft

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Vortex Donors 2016 - 2017 Anonymous Artist

Kathryn Kinney-Foe

Dr. Judy Balan

Val Kossak

Danielle Boyd

Robert Lewis

Robert B. Buchanan

E. E. Moe

Sirio Calogero

Robert Mugford

Sandra Desjardins

Richard and Ann Pihl

Stanley P. Desjardins & June Rudyk

Janet Robinson

Friends of Vortex Pledges

Jennifer Watson

Dr. Jan Gehler

Joyce Erbach

Doris & Martin Hoffman Family Foundation I am deeply grateful for and indebted to you, our donors! Because Vortex depends on donations, we exist entirely because of your generous support of the arts. Albert Camus once said “Real generosity to the future lies in giving all to the present.” So I thank you for giving our students a glimpse of what is possible through encouraging their passion for writing and art.

A Special Thank You to the following for their contributions for the Vortex Awards Event: Barbara Olsen for her extraordinary table floralscapes Vases Courtesy of AJ’s Purveyors of Find Foods Embassy Suites by Hilton Scottsdale Resort and Shelley Brown for their support of Vortex Nancy Neff, Executive Director, Institutional Advancement and Community Engagement, for her generous support of Vortex.

Ronald Zhang, for his design of the online contest submissions and his technical support.

About the 2017 Vortex Graphic Designer Shachi Kale Shachi is an artist, graphic designer, and children’s book illustrator.

You can see her work at www.shachikale.com

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Table of Contents Creative Non-Fiction Essay “Gran Torino” Meghan Saul - First Place. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 13

“Spirit and Matter” Gloria Langer. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 20

“Mutual Assured Destruction” Robert Buchanan - Second Place. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 21

“Morning Shadows” Judy Feldman.. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 25

“Murky Waters” Sammi Mathur - Third Place. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 26

“Bi Not So Curious” Kevin Abblett - Honorable Mention . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 31

“Lost in Lust” Kathy Dioguardi. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 36

“Joy Writes Checks to Airport Janitors” Cholly Robertson - Honorable Mention. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 37

“Alloy” William Goren. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 40

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Table of Contents Short Story “Perspective” Stephen Rubin - First Place. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 42

“Illuminance” Eleanor Babbitt. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 49

“Ignes” Antha Perkins - Second Place. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 50

“The Medic” Sammi Mathur - Third Place. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 58

“Deconstructed Melody” Ethan Haddad. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 64

“The Quarry” Ryan Severyn - Honorable Mention. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6 5

“Untitled” Barbara Goldberg. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 71

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Table of Contents Sustainability “Homeless Hunger” Delvan Gonzales. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 73

Unnamed Photo Itzel B. Caire.. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 75

Native Voices and Visions “Nihígaal bee Iiná—Walk for Existence” Daniel Tullie.. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 78

“The Unforgiven: My Story” Chelsea VanWinkle.. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 79

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Table of Contents Poetry “Suitcase Family” Montana Lorente - First Place.. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 87

“ The Poblano Sisters and Their Dog Chile Pepper” Bonnie Lewis. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 88

“That Night” Robert Lewis - Second Place. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 89

“Numbers” Jessica Warfle - Third Place. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 91

“Confirmation” Melissa Schleuger . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 92

“ UnWavering” Stephen Rubin - Honorable Mention. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 93

“The Whirlwind From Hell” Rosario Escarcega - Honorable Mention.. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 94

“Phoenix Rising” Stephen Hoffman.. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 99

“Saffron Dragonfiles” Sammi Mathur - Honorable Mention. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 100

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Table of Contents Plays and Scripts “Post Traumatic” Garrett Iannarelli - First Place. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 103

“Fog” Peter Brandeis. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 108

“Showcase” Arthur Spina - Second Place. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 109

“Hell for the Company” Robin Hartwell - Third Place . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 114

“Apocalyptic Certainty” Wallace Duncan. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 138

“Me or Her” Aaron Wilson - Honorable Mention. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 139

“Carol the Cat Lady” Serena Primeau - Honorable Mention

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“Flowers and Stripes” Joyce Erbach. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 161

Writers’ and Artists’ Personal Statements 10

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The National League of American Pen Women We gratefully acknowledge the contributions to SCC writers, artists, and musicians made by the Scottsdale Branch of The National League of American Pen Women– the oldest women’s arts organization in the country. We appreciate the continued support of these dynamic and creative women!

Awards Each year, the Scottsdale Branch of American Pen Women honors a winning female student in writing, art, or music at the Vortex Awards Reception.

This year’s award is in art.

Bonnie Lewis is the recipient of this award

for “Walking to Nowhere.”

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Vortex 2017 Creative Non-Fiction Essay An essay is a thing of the imagination. If there is information in an essay, it is bythe-by, and if there is an opinion, one need not trust it for the long run. A genuine essay rarely has an educational, polemical, or sociopolitical use; it is the movement of a free mind at play. ~ Cynthia Ozick

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Gran Torino

Meghan Saul - First Place The hospital air tonight feels particularly dense, hall lights dimmed dark for a few motionless hours in a corridor that earlier was buzzing. Our soft voices atop the nagging hum of machines are the only sounds. I wonder if even the nurses are napping as Dad and I sit awake in Room 34. It’s past midnight, our faces lit slightly by the glow of monitors and my laptop. We’ve been here more than eighteen hours. I know he’s exhausted and misses home, so I offer a movie as a distraction. Green Mile or Gran Torino are his requests. I am not particularly enticed by either. My arrow hovers over the Rent button for Green Mile. I don’t know what it’s about, just that it’s intense. Three hours and nine minutes, I acknowledge, as Dad perks up from behind me, changing his mind. “Gran Torino, Gran Torino instead.” I laugh aloud. This is typical of his paradoxical character, didn’t care, wouldn’t decide, makes a decision, then steadfastly changes his mind.

My dad was a ‘70’s bad boy; he broke into cars and ditched school to get high in the park near my grandparents’ house. He loves classic rock and riding motorcycles, jet skis, building computers, and simpler times. He also led me to Jesus, tried to be a strict father, and provided all that I could want. Tonight, he’ll watch Gran Torino only if I promise to watch it, too. He’s invited me to watch movies often in the past, yet only on occasion would I oblige. I can watch movies at my own house, I’d always thought selfishly.

I recognize now that he had probably been let down. Sharing a movie with me was an enjoyable experience to him. It didn’t require the complexity that came with conversation, just a commitment of time.

Dad’s terminal diagnosis came ten months ago, cutting his six-month remission celebration short, and elevating his Stage Three disease up to a Four. He sought financial security amidst the cost of cancer and a distraction from thoughts about life’s end. Dad had been a semi-driver for nine years. He enjoyed the time spent alone on the highway, traveling the nation. Prideful and stubborn, like the family line he comes from, Dad refused to stop working until God made it impossible. Two weeks ago, this happened.

Creative Non-Fiction (Essay)

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Fluid filled the lining between his skin and stomach, a result of his liver breaking down.

His belly grew so large it pushed against the steering wheel for the final five hours of his drive home. Grateful to have made it, he checked himself into the Emergency Room and admitted he could no longer be on the road.

He sits shirtless, monitor stickers attach to colorful wires which decorate the dark curls on his olive-skinned chest. When the nurses check in, he shimmies his gown on quickly because he “doesn’t want them getting any funny ideas.” As he smiles, I notice that the skin on his face looks thicker than it used to, drooping from his bones like soft leather.

Stiff white hairs grow from over-sized pores and look prickly to the touch. His remaining hair is unkempt and stands in all directions, except over the balding center.

Each small progression of cancer leads to me caring more fully for Dad. I take notes, ask questions at appointments, and scour the internet for resources that Boomers aren’t inclined to search for. Compassion is my only motivation; there will be no inheritance or grandiose thank you, only the opportunity to offer companionship to the first man I was privileged to love.

His wife stops by sporadically these days, never staying more than an hour or two. She sits in a plastic chair in the corner and alternates between speed reading and anxiously rocking herself back and forth with a stiff body and little to say. She stares into nothingness. Her contributions are stale jokes uttered to nurses about my dad’s demeanor and eye rolls at his requests for Skittles or a Coke flavored Slurpee. Recently, she’s mixed up prescriptions, misplaced medical information, and called me to clarify things she must’ve heard wrong only later to scold me or vent to my father that I’m too involved. Fortunately, her insecurity does not stand in the way of my time with Dad when we’re at the hospital.

Something always beckons her away-- a shower, the need for rest, or time with the cats.

Her logic is idiotic, yet I’m glad when she makes her exit. He also shows relief.

Gran Torino plays on the crowded bedside table, sharing space with three barf bags, a Styrofoam cup of ice chips, and a family-size bag of Skittles we both snack on. My dad lies on his side in the hospital bed. I sit two feet behind on the couch with linens I brought from home. I’m comfortable, even enjoying myself, like I have my own row in a theater, and Dad is part of the show.

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Creative Non-Fiction (Essay)

I have never seen Gran Torino, and I’m captivated by the complexity and emotion as the story develops. Dad tells me that he identifies a lot with Eastwood’s character, Walt. I see the parallels: both men have a rough exterior, they are short-tempered, no nonsense owners of guns, vintage cars, and the occasional off-color remark. Society misunderstands them, labels them jerks, but that’s not the full picture. Within both men is an abundance of integrity and wisdom, loyalty, courage, and heart. Silently, I take in the film with forceful optimism, the lens through which I view my own life, a blend of innocence and faith, hope, and denial in a self-preserving manner which allows me to press on despite any challenge. Still, the movie’s serious subject matter weighs heavy on my fatigued spirit. As tension on the screen builds, my internal monologue grows so loud, I can barely hear the score. He’s the main character, he can’t die, I reason. Becoming more frantic, I console my thoughts about what’s coming next, pushing them from my head.

Nothing bad is going to happen. No one is going to die. Though I know how unlikely this is, I refuse to budge from denial.

I’m so attached to Walt as he falls to the ground at the end. In this instant, I feel fully, and for the first time, that my dad is really going to die. An ambulance appears on screen, and I wonder if Western Medicine will save him as my tears begin to build. I try to console myself momentarily. The following scene opens to a funeral. I am not okay.

I realize that soon I will have to address this reality in my own life. and no form of compartmentalization will save me. Fear renders me immobile. Thick tears make it hard to see the screen. The ending is lost on me. I’m unable to clear my mind; it’s fixated on Walt’s lifeless body in the street. The unexpected introduction to mortality swallows me, and my body begins to shake.

Dad reads through most of the credits before he registers my crying. Surprised, he looks over his shoulder with concern. “Are you okay?”

“No,” my lower lip protrudes into the same sad face I gave him as a six-year-old. “It’s a really sad movie,” I exhale, melding sobs with muffled laughter as I consider how ridiculous I must look. I felt captivated by the story, grateful for the current experience, and overwhelmingly sad about the future.

Creative Non-Fiction (Essay)

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“Come here.” He motions for me to join him, opening his thinning arms in my direction. “It’s just a movie, baby.” I rise from the small leather couch and approach the side of his bed. “I’ve seen it eight, maybe ten times. I wanted you to see it.” Careful to avoid the web of cords, I take a seat as he continues, “It’s a good story,” I nod quietly.

My dad is going to die. The words repeat, nagging my brain like a busy signal. There’s no escape.

Misconceptions about the future now cast away, I try to succumb to the jarring realization in my mind as Dad continues to speak, “I thought you’d appreciate the story, the characters, that’s all. I just view it as art, baby. I didn’t mean for it to make you sad.” His tone is so gentle and warm, it transports me back to my youth when Dad hugs were the preferred cure for bad dreams and scraped knees. I wonder if he grasps the parallels I’m experiencing--watching death as entertainment in a hospital, while we sit pondering his own. My own anxieties begin to subside as I see his ability to muster concern and compassion for me amidst the most pain filled moments of his life.

“I love you,” I say as I hug him, squeezing tighter than ever before, trying to memorize every detail: the way his hands feel, the texture of his skin, the warmth of his hugs.

Why had it not always felt like this? I wonder, thinking of wasted time in adolescence when we hadn’t been so close.

“I love you too,” he whispers.

“This is scary,” I say as we release. I pause to take in the sterile surroundings, “I’m worried about you.”

“Don’t be worried about me.” After a few beats of silence, he continues. “There’s nothing to be scared of, it’s only temporary.” The last word leaks out in a barely audible whisper. My dad’s faith is as strong as his will. He is not afraid to die; he only fears how painful life might be at its end. I admire the perspective and thank him for instilling determination and faith in me.

His face softens as I continue, “I’m just scared of how much I’ll miss you.” The words fall one after each other slowly, separate sentences that do not register in my head because they’ve been written by my heart. This sliver in time feels precious immediately; we pause

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in silence to chisel it in. The growth I feel is immediate, imminent. Death is inevitable.

I know this as science, yet despite hearing tags like stage four, chronic, and terminal for months, only now do the repercussions sink in. I count on my dad’s unique perspective, the way he makes me laugh, and tells me I’m neat. I feel scared to live without that, as if I will be less completely me. I want to have him here longer. I need him. I also want him to be comfortable, free of the pain.

With heightened awareness, I feel this evening is sacred, as if it might be my last chance. I vow to leave no words unsaid. We sit atop the silence and share every thought, and memories of lake trips and jet-skis, Bryan Adams concerts, and surprise Father’s Day trips make us both smile and laugh. I agree wholeheartedly when he states, “The hospital is some of the best bonding time we’ve ever had.” It’s four am. There have been a lot of hugs and a few dozen tears when Dad finally decides it’s time for a nap. He drifts off slowly, eyes not quite closed, mouth hanging open. On the couch, I type notes of the night in my phone before nodding off to the soundtrack of his slow, throaty breaths.

The doctor arrives at 8:00 am and reports that the chemo did “more harm than good.”

He suggests we “set something up with Hospice and enjoy what time is left.” Dad doesn’t care for more details. He’s anxious to be released and back in his own bed. His wife and I handle the arrangements. I get to bring him home. Bittersweet excitement propels us through the familiar halls to the elevator. I wheel my dad through the lobby to the door of my car parked on the curb. After returning his wheelchair, I slide in the driver’s seat.

“Ready?” I ask, enthusiastically.

He looks beyond me and says, “I’m sorry, baby,” as liquid gathers in his yellowing eyes.

“For what?” I ask, unable to recall the most recent joke or snappy comment that had taken place.

“For leaving you.” I reach over the center console. Foreheads resting on each other’s, we allow ourselves sixty seconds of emotion. Another slice of magic; I don’t remember ever seeing him cry.

“Okay, enough of that.” He closes the moment and gestures us onward to QT for a Slurpee then home to live out his life.

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Over the next three days, we watch a few seasons of Rules of Engagement, one movie, and a Rodney Carrington stand-up special. We keep the mood lighter, in and out of sleep, both comfortable under the cozy cafe colored blanket covering his elevated king size bed.

A hospice nurse visits every other day. She is heavy handed with painkillers, which Dad appreciates. Though he’s done well taking oxy, occasionally breakthrough pain exists. She switches him to Morphine which seems to create an absence of feeling, even in his brain.

The second day on Morphine, Dad’s consciousness is more sporadic. His balance wavers, as if he’s orbiting his own center of gravity, never quite touching down.

“Do I seem out of it to you?” he asks, after three minutes of nodding off with a spoonful of red Jell-O in hand.

“A little bit,” I respond gently. “Do you feel out of it? Do you want some help?” I motion to the Pyrex of Jell-O he has yet to eat from.

“I do feel out of it. I don’t like it. For a minute, I’m here, then I’m just…” He brings his right hand near his head, and motions a spaced-out gesture, “Off.” I call the nurse, who assures me this is normal. “It just needs to get into his system, then he’ll feel better.” I don’t take time to consider what normal could mean. Over the next three days, he becomes chronically restless and increasingly numb until his body gets tired of fighting, and his life on earth is done. I hold his hand as his soul ventures above us; I know that he’ll never really be gone.

In need of a hug, I pull Dad’s pajama pants from my drawer. They were the last thing I saw him wear. Royal blue and black plaid, the fleece pants are a men’s medium with a missing drawstring. The legs are as soft as they are wide. With my phone in my pocket, they nearly slide off, but I pay no attention. The excess material folds over my legs when I sit down, the closest I come to a dad hug.

Gran Torino is a good story, Dad, I think, but so is the story we wrote. I want to call him, to schedule lunch, or hear him laugh.

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Living with grief is exhausting. It’s raw and ever present. Yet because of it, I feel more connected to the earth beneath me, rooted like a tree. I have seen the depth of my own character and my father’s before me. Though my branches may blow in the wind, they will never give way in a storm. I feel like a woman now, an adult, a force of life driven onward by Gran Torino and the realization of treasured time.

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“Spirit and Matter�

Gloria Langer

Medium: Mixed Media, 45x28x6

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Mutual Assured Destruction Robert Buchanan - Second Place

My friend, a retired Israeli general, stopped our gray Toyota as we approached a demolished Syrian T-62 tank, covered with rust and close to a concrete building pockmarked with machine gun bullet holes. The two of us were at the north end of the Golan Heights just below the Syrian border in an area the Israelis call the Valley of Tears. The wreckage of war was everywhere, mostly the result of an Israeli battalion desperately defending against a surprise attack years ago by about 500 Syrian tanks. My friend pulled his Glock from a battered ammo box, and we climbed out to investigate.

I was in Israel as a defense contractor at the urging of a senior U.S. official hoping to acquire software that used lessons the Israeli Air Force gleaned from the harrowing Yom Kippur War. Despite a strong record of success throughout my career, I had struggled with buried feelings of guilt at making my living developing better ways to use weapons of war. I had wanted to be a medical doctor, to be someone who heals people, but there was no way for me to afford graduate school, much less years of medical training. Still, I had other career options, albeit with lower pay, and I take responsibility for the choices I made.

Perhaps my choices were strongly affected when my father took me, as an eight-yearold boy, through the Museum of Atomic Energy in Oak Ridge, TN. This was only four years after we annihilated Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and before most adults had even a faint comprehension of what the advent of nuclear weapons really meant to the world.

I came away with haunting visions of incinerated Japanese cities and memories of white concrete guardhouses, armed soldiers, and tall chain link fencing surrounding a closed city where our bombs were made. They also gave me a radioactive dime that made Geiger counters crackle like crazy, a hazardous souvenir for me to carry in my front pocket day after day.

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Some people understood then how the advent of nuclear weapons fundamentally changed the world. On July 16, 1945, as the Trinity nuclear fireball shattered the predawn New Mexico darkness, J. Robert Oppenheimer, a central figure in developing the bomb, recalled that a few of the observers cried, a few laughed, and most were silent.

In his anguish, Oppenheimer quoted a line from Hindu scripture, “Now I am become death, destroyer of worlds.”

At the height of the Cold War, in the early part of my career, I helped develop ways to hide our bombers from Soviet radar, so they could deliver nuclear weapons closer to their targets without being shot down. I tried to focus on beating Soviet radar, rather than the millions of people who could die if we succeeded.

The utter madness of all this is captured in the 1964 movie “Dr. Strangelove: Or How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb”. I’ve watched it more times than I can remember, and I can still bring to mind the last scene with Major T.J. “King” Kong (Slim Pickens) whooping and waving his cowboy hat as he rides a hydrogen bomb to oblivion through the open bomb bay doors of his B-52. A long montage of fireballs and mushroom clouds follows, backed by a soothing string orchestra and the World War II vocalist, Vera Lynn, singing her original version of “We’ll Meet Again.”

But this was the end of the world, they would never meet again, and neither would we, should the bombs be unleashed. For me, the gentleness of the song intensifies the savage irony.

During the next phase of my career, I helped develop ways for our strategic systems to hopefully withstand the effects of Soviet nuclear weapons. Imagine trying to focus on the extreme physics of nuclear warheads hitting a Minuteman Missile site, while shutting out thoughts of what happens to South Dakota farmers and everyone downwind.

Who can keep such pain in tidy mental compartments without at least subconsciously craving anesthesia? But, in the total insanity of the Cold War doctrine of Mutual Assured Destruction, if our missiles could survive a surprise attack to then return destruction on the Soviets, presumably rational Soviet leaders wouldn’t attack us in the first place, and the poor farmers and towns would be protected. What could possibly go wrong?

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Later, I helped develop technology to find Viet Cong tunnels and to sense North Vietnamese trucks hidden deep in the jungle on the Ho Chi Minh Trail, so they could be killed before they delivered weapons and supplies to our enemies. I always defused the painful truth by saying my job was “killing trucks”, but it ultimately involved killing people, many of them peasants just trying to survive while trapped in an endless war they neither started, nor could they finish.

For decades, I felt caught up in shared human tragedy, with survival depending on killing that collided with my personal values. This was nowhere near the intensity felt by soldiers who have had to kill directly and close at hand, but my conflict was real and relentless. The Golan Heights experience stirred up buried feelings, and I found myself in Old Jerusalem, where Jesus and his disciples lived Holy Week. Perhaps I had a subconscious hope that devout Christians there might have discovered some way to live the teachings of Jesus, even while surrounded by the never-ending “eye for an eye” violence of the Middle East.

After carefully walking through the Christian Quarter, I stood before the Church of the Holy Sepulcher...hallowed ground, venerated as Golgotha, where Jesus was crucified in agony, buried and resurrected. Hundreds of souls walked past the Church -- black-garbed monks, tourists of all sorts, soldiers in uniform, youth in T-Shirts -- just as they have for over a thousand years.

Inside the Church, I felt like I was in one of the world’s prominent museums -- the Smithsonian, Louvre, or Prado -- stimulated, connected with the past, feeling a sense of privilege to be there. But standing before the Golgotha Altar and entering the candlelit tomb of Jesus were also deeply numinous for me.

Crusader graffiti on the Church walls made the Christian soldiers fully human to me. I imagined the clanking sounds of their battle gear and their acrid unwashed smell, much like World War II GIs scribbling their own graffiti, “Kilroy Was Here”, all over Germany. Before that moment, the Crusaders had been bloodless cartoon figures to me, or abstract chapters in history books, minions of Pope Whomever. But, real people, body and soul, have tortured and killed in the name of God or Allah throughout history.

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In the courtyard outside, I saw the Immovable Ladder standing on a narrow second story ledge above the main entrance Nobody knows who left the ladder over a century ago, perhaps a workman. However, the ladder can’t be moved even an inch without the unanimous agreement of all six Christian communities who share the Church, the main denominations being Eastern Orthodox, Roman Catholic, and Armenian Apostolic. The Christian groups often handle disputes with violence and fistfights: eleven hospitalized in 2002; police attacked in 2008; lesser brawls can be found on the Internet. Even the Pope has called for peace and tolerance to little avail.

The relentless tension ultimately led to the irony of the Christians entrusting two Muslim families with the only key to open the only door to the Church, an arrangement that has endured for over a century. Originally, there were two keys, but one of them is now broken. Without fail, two Muslim brothers, one from each family, open the door at the start of the day and close it at the end of the day.

Seeing the Immovable Ladder in the very shadow of Jesus, I lost my hope that men and women could possibly build institutions that would ensure a world without violence. As long as there are wolves, the world needs sheep dogs. As long as there are madmen, especially when technology gives them apocalyptic power, the world needs protection, which can’t be had without involving groups of technologists. I came to true acceptance, especially of the dignity and value of my own contribution leading groups trying to help protect our nation.

But, more than that, remembering the countless times I’ve been privileged to witness love, grace, and compassion in the midst of great disasters, I came to see that the Immovable Ladder was sustained by human pettiness fueled by institutional pride and fear, not some irrevocable human nastiness. When madmen are restrained from creating hellish apocalypse, spiritual leaders and ordinary people can bring love, grace, compassion, and hope.

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“Morning Shadows”

Judy Feldman

Medium: Oil, 36x30 Art

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Murky Waters Sammi Mathur - Third Place

I was born in east India where my father was a lieutenant in the Indian military that was modeled after the imperial British army. It was a culture of old fashioned notions like those of the officers of Lawrence of Arabia, with aspirations to go out in glory for country and people. The Indian military had been through two brutal wars since India’s independence from Britain, and there were also a few states dealing with terrorism and the ongoing strife with Pakistan on the borders for decades. The many losses of lives had made death a sad event more than a tragedy. Jokes about dying were rampant in the Indian military, and everything in life was considered transitory. Life’s ups and downs were not treated with the gravity that they deserved.

This fatalistic attitude was reinforced when my father was posted in terrorism ridden states, and I would see dead bodies on the way to and from school. Some were dried by the sun to look like pigs’ ears, snacks for dogs, when the blood stopped flowing in their veins and pooled closer to the ground. Sometimes I saw fresher bodies, blue with the onset of rigor mortis and others well on their way to being decomposed, teaming with flies and insects. At times, I discovered them by the stench of rotting corpses in a pile of overflowing trash being pulled at by vultures, ravens, and dogs. I saw death everywhere.

For weeks, I could not escape the vision. I was twelve then, and from this ongoing experience, I came to believe that life was trivial, and this became a part of my psychological make-up.

Father happened to be one of the few officers who got transferred more frequently than usual as he rose fast through the ranks. India has as many cultures and traditions as there are states, and more languages than is comprehensible in a country smaller than a third of the United States. For this reason, moving around in India for me was an especially distinctive experience as every new state felt like a new country. But it wasn’t just the places that father was posted to, it was also the diverse background of the families and military men within the battalion. I had the privilege of participating in festivals and customs of many different religions. At that time, I did not understand the unique26

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ness of this experience, neither did I give it much significance. In later years, I realized that this upbringing helped me accept people of different backgrounds and cultures without trying to analyze them or pass judgment on their traditions. However, as I was still too young to see the complexities and nuances that differentiated people, my ability to see the variability in people was also dulled as the experiences began to meld together in one large memory, giving them a uniformity that did not exist in reality.

By the time I graduated high school, I had attended ten different schools in as many different states and attempted to master as many different languages. Learning the local language was ordained by the education board in each state. By upper middle school, I was adept at walking into a class full of strangers and, without an ounce of self-consciousness, introducing myself, and forming friendships. Use of social websites was not so prevalent at that time, especially during my school years in India that had a closed economy. So, even as I made new friends, I knew that these instant friendships would not last, and I would eventually lose them. In my younger childhood years, I wanted to maintain lasting friendships over snail mail, but over the years of constant loss, that hope was driven out and replaced with an expertise at saying goodbyes. At the end of one school year or two, my schoolmates would sign my yearbook, and we would make promises of writing to each other. Their promises were true while mine were lies because I was a well trained child of the military. I knew those promises would come to nothing very quickly after only a few letters, as I would be forgotten to make way for permanent friendships.

A side effect of moving around so much was that I never truly got a sense of belonging to a place or formed the concept of home. With father constantly away for military exercises and mother busy fulfilling her social obligations, I did not have a feeling of what a home was, so I didn’t miss it. One cannot miss what one has not had. I became molded by the life I lived and well suited for the life of a military brat. I was able to discard with indifference what I left behind. As I got older, I basked in the freedom from entanglements because it allowed me to experience new exciting things, places, and people. It is a feeling of absolute freedom when your emotions are not invested in anything. Even now, years after I have had a stable home, family and friends, I crave that sense of not being tied to any one place but belonging to the world in larger ways at the same time.

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A year after high school, I moved with my parents to America, to the city of Houston to be with extended family. This was supposed to be a place of permanence, but it was an alien concept for me until I began to form attachments, the weight of which I had never had to bear before. So after I had been in Houston for two years, the yearning to move on and shed the weight struck like a fever that I could not get over nor succumb to. I was committed to attending college and had a boyfriend along with expectations from family that I would live close to them, though I tried to delude myself that I was still unbound simply by moving from one side of town to another. After graduation, I found a job that allowed me to travel extensively, and I thrived in that life for nearly ten years. My life was almost the same as it had been in the military: meet and leave people, and move on to another project, another country and another adventure. I even risked ruining my marriage for an opportunity for a project in South-East Asia just so I could continue to travel.

Everything changed when I had my first child. I remember crying uncontrollably with the heartbreak of letting my baby out into this world, someone I wanted to protect and cherish within me. I was terrified that life would show her things that I had seen. Later, I cried with joy when they placed her in my arms, unable to figure out why I was crying. She was the decisive first strike against my utter detachment from life and the shackles of immeasurable love when she wrapped my pinky in her fingers tightly, as if comforting me as I cried. Her birth shocked me to my core when I discovered emotions that I never knew I was capable of feeling. I was awed by the fact that my touch and voice would calm a ferociously vocal frail being whose neck was too weak to support her head, yet she made me so vulnerable that my happiness depended on that newly alive and barely intelligent life form. I discovered a fierce protective love and willingness to sacrifice everything for my child.

I realized that I needed to anchor myself to a place and build a home and family for her. Most of it was maternal instincts, but there were times I had to actively force myself to give importance to the details of living that were irrelevant to me, but important to others. I had been someone who travelled constantly and who was extremely ambitious, but I was now a housewife. It was an unsuitable role for me, but I did not realize it at the time. My heart was not fully anchored, but my head knew it was the right thing to do, and I did what was expected of a mother who stays at home to take care of children.

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Mentally, I continued to strive to be normal. Everything was perfect: a rich husband, a big house, a great city, and caring friends. But it was a struggle. The way I saw it, comets we see from earth, traverse a minuscule part of this universe, yet in their one orbit many generations of lives are lived, species evolve and become extinct. The earth is a speck in the comet’s travels, and we are less than even that. The space and time occupied by a human life is so brief in relation to just one comet’s journey that a life may as well be nothing, a negligible quantity. How does one find significance in living with a thought process like that?

While I struggled to redefine my perspective, my emotionally and physically abusive marriage became a battleground for my will to stay. I was trained to be tough and not give up, and so I stayed in the marriage when I should have left, and even had two more children in the hopes that things would improve. I detached myself from my home again, going through the motions of fulfilling my role to ensure that my children would have a home. For years, I felt like a sailboat anchored in shallow waters, craving to open its sails--especially, since the crystal blue waters I had anchored my boat in had grown murkier over the years in the storms of a volatile marriage. It took ten long years of trying to make a home with both a father and mother for my children, for me to finally give up.

I have three children, and with each I thought it would be impossible to feel more love. As they grow, they show me how to be fully be alive by allowing themselves to have a hundred heartbreaks and recoveries each day. Seeing them so open to life, questions began to plague me. Growing up, I had developed a sense of wonder and Zen for traveling and exploring everything that our small speck in the galaxy has to offer, but I also learned to never really invest my emotions in anything or anyone. And if one cannot let oneself feel anything, does that not make a person slightly less human? Was I less of a human because I could not allow myself to feel deeply? Did I really do justice to my friends and strangers when I accepted them for who they were? What good is acceptance without understanding?

From all the innumerable people I met and lost, I had arrogantly surmised that there were just a few basic tenets for human happiness. I thought people only wanted safety and security in developing countries, and in the privileged developed societies where safety and security are taken for granted, acknowledgement of their struggles of being Creative Non-Fiction (Essay)

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human. I learned to accept people, but having grown up surrounded by so much death and by moving so often, I had also reduced people to things that existed momentarily.

But staying in one place for so long allowed me to provide a stable home for my children forming long-term friendships and attachments to a place because it had become home. I began to care for others which increased the depths to which I understand, esteem, and value relationships and their longevity.

The constant and expanding love I feel for my children and their unconditional love for me, untainted by anything I do--good or bad--has found a way to get past the barriers of a seasoned military brat’s defenses. They allowed me to discover my own depths which I did not know existed but were hidden behind an iron wall of detachment. My friends, who have stood by me through all my eccentricities and my tendency to wander away, have taught me how to form affections for those not related to me by blood.

I learned that not only is it vital to accept others, but one needs to be willing to be accepted as well to form meaningful friendships. My children showed me what home really is and how incredibly crucial it is to understand that before one can understand humanity. They feel deeply, and I am sometimes envious of their inner passion and natural instinct to live and love. I now have the capacity to see the world from a much wider, deeper, and happier perspective. I realize that it is not the permanence but the depth of a moment which is greater than the eons in time and light years in space that a comet will traverse.

To live life, we have to let it affect us, completely; we have to see its beauty and endure its brutality. Having a wonder for life without diving into its depths is living on the surface. No matter how small all our lives may be in this multi-verse, even if they are nothing more than a moment in time, the cosmos is not large enough to contain the one thing that remains constant now and for all eternity: our capacity to feel and love.

Human life may be transitory, but every moment and every experience is extremely significant and needs to be valued and cherished, even more if our lives are just a speck in time.

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“Bi Not So Curious” Kevin Abblett - Honorable Mention

“God damn-it Kevin, stop standing around with your mouth open like that! You look like a fucking faggot!” These words didn’t mean much to me at six years old, but coming from my dad with that look in his eyes, the words seething through that drunken slur, I knew that whatever a “faggot” was, I didn’t want to be one. This wasn’t the only time I’d heard him speak these words or similar ones; whenever I’d done anything that he didn’t approve of, that same admonition followed. It makes me wonder whether, if he hadn’t put the word in my head so young, if I would have ever struggled with my sexuality at all. But as things turned out, Dad’s words and the question of who I was would plague me for the next twenty years. During my childhood, I lived in a fantasy world, where everyone accepted me for who I was, and saw me as normal and just like them. But every breath I took and every thought that ran through my head threatened to tilt the scales on the balance between who I was and the “faggot” my Dad feared I’d become.

The first sign that I wasn’t one of the lucky kids with a clear picture of my sexuality was when I was about ten. My parents were rounding out the edges of a difficult divorce with Mom in and out of the hospital constantly and my dad working so much that I hardly saw him. My sister was my only companion in the movement from our childhood home to Dad’s new apartment in Pomona, seemingly a world away. It was much more racially diverse there than anywhere we’d lived before. It’s the first place, I had never lived where white people were the minority, and it was frightening. For a long while, my sister and I struggled to make friends. Dad put us both in an after-school program at the local YMCA, in one of the oldest buildings in the state. There were six stories of ancient looking bricks, capped with gothic spires at each end and a humongous yard that captured its looming shadow. The bottom floor was a cavernous maze of green pipes that stretched out along a network of hallways, surrounding the locker rooms and the communal showers in back. Beyond all of this was the Olympic sized swimming pool where we’d swim each day. I was part of a group of about thirty boys, all marching

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through the mildewed hallways into the showers, huddling in shivering lines waiting for our turn beneath the steaming water. Each day the pastor would have us strip, then watch the entryway as we washed ourselves, and ran either to or from the pool.

Most boys seemed comfortable with the nudity, laughing and playing in the water, not seeming to notice the intimacy of our situation; I envied their naiveté. My own experience was torturous. My own experience was torturous. Standing there, surrounded by two dozen nude boys, all howling in the throes of puberty, I became incredibly uncomfortable. My gut wrenched with the painful realization that I was not like them.

I had long ago become curious about sex, but up until that day, my feelings had been directed towards the opposite gender. However, these feelings were different, and they gripped me with a terrifying and confusing fear. I was too young to identify that I was feeling an attraction to these boys, but I was decidedly interested in them, and I grew uncomfortable whenever I thought someone might have caught me looking at them. I knew that these thoughts weren’t what I was supposed to be feeling, and I could hear my dad’s words echoing through the shower stalls, calling me out in front of everyone and making me wish I could hide. “Kevin, you look like a fucking faggot!”

Those words clung to me like a parasite, casting a shadow on every experience.

Haunted by those showers and the doubts that came with them, my childhood trudged on. For years after that first experience, my sexuality seemed to be evolving in the normal ways. From twelve to fifteen, I met several girls and had wonderfully affirming encounters with them, but through them all, I still nursed that same lingering doubt that my feelings weren’t real and that something insidious lurked beneath the surface of my sexuality. In my fifteenth year, during a night of fumbling explorations, I lost my virginity to my best friend Amy. Following this were a handful of other encounters that continued to ease my fears about who I was becoming. I was living “straight,” finally, and for the first time in my life, I was growing comfortable in my sexuality. Although, for that moment I was happy, it would be a long time before I would feel that way again, as a new breed of experiences soon arose that left me feeling closed off, frightened, and hopelessly confused about who I was.

Late in the fall of that same year while enjoying my first taste of the working world,

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I met a young man whose charisma would help shatter the image of normal sexuality that I’d recently cultivated. His name was Edgar, and he was my co-worker. He was tall and dark-skinned, with brown eyes and an infectious smile. He was one of the most well-kempt men I’d ever met. We quickly developed a friendship walking the streets of southern California together, working some but spending most of our time talking and sharing stories with one another. I’d never experienced this type of ease before talking with another man. It was wonderful. Too often when I speak with my gender, I get the feeling that we’re in a competition, a perpetual game of one-upmanship that each party is aware of, but is incapable of escaping. There was none of this with Edgar; the words flowed freely between us, and the smiles and laughter were a breath of fresh air. I recognized that my feelings for him were very different from how I felt about the rest of my fellow co-workers, and it frightened me, but I couldn’t break away from his eyes and that rapturous smile.

We left work together late one night on the pretext of grabbing some food and hanging out. I think I thought that we might go to my place and hide out in my room, smoke a bowl or two, and just chill outside of work for once and this is more or less how it began. We sat on the edge of my tiny twin bed, a carryover of the adolescence that I was just growing out of. The sun was setting, and a pale-orange light had crept in through my blinds. He sat across from me, and our eyes locked. His smile, our breathing, the light of the setting sun all seemed to stand still for several moments as a rising heat filled the space between us. “I’d like to kiss you,” he said, his voice low and deep, never taking his eyes off me. My stomach was in knots, and I was so nervous that I was shaking. “Okay,” was all that I said as I leaned forward trembling, waiting for him to kiss me. His chiseled arms raised him off the bed and our lips met; I remember being surprised at how soft and full they were. His beard was course, and it scratched my face as we kissed more deeply. I felt small for the first time in my life, and I wanted to be swept up and held in this embrace forever. He lay me back and pressed his body against mine, but my lust was interrupted by confusion and fear. I was caught up in a whirlwind of feelings, and just as suddenly as the kiss began, it was done.

Gently, I pushed him away and began catching my breath. He leaned back smiling, and I reciprocated, putting on a good show to spare his feelings. I could feel my father’s Creative Non-Fiction (Essay)

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gaze staring down at us both, hating me, but hating Edgar more, for corrupting and poisoning his son. I felt a rage building towards him for kissing me and towards myself for enjoying it. I wanted the experience to end, to go back ten minutes prior and wipe it from my memory. At the same time, I wanted so badly for him to wrap me up in those massive arms again and make me feel like he had a moment before.

We hung out more that evening and for a time continued to be friends at work, but that was the only time that I would feel the intimacy of Edgar’s touch. He had a falling out with our boss shortly after that night and left the job. We spoke one more time, nearly a year later, and then he was gone from my life forever, shattering the fragile confidence in my sexuality in his wake. Was I a fag? Were my father’s greatest fears now realized in me? It seemed like they must have been. I knew that I liked women; I’d had enough experiences to back that up, but I also knew that I couldn’t deny the feelings I’d felt when Edgar kissed me, and so I continued experimenting Over the ensuing year, I had encounters with other men, and though they were fun, and sometimes exciting, they only served to fuel my confusion. Consistently, even annoyingly, my body insisted on being attracted to women. This frustration was compounded by the fact that homosexuality was coming more into the mainstream, with movies and famous figures beginning to discuss the issue of sexuality in more open ways. But where so many of them asserted their sexuality with bold confidence, I still felt so confused. In my own close-minded communities at home, and at school, it seemed that I could find acceptance if I came out as “Gay,” or “Straight,” but a stigma still existed surrounding those who, like me, didn’t fit wholly into either camp. Eventually, I learned to stop trying to fit in. I learned to accept the experience of my sexuality on its own merit, to love people for who they were, and to accept the feelings that grew within me without the fear of judgment that had plagued me for so many years. With persistent effort, I grew more open about myself and my passions with my partners and found increasing acceptance from them as well.

Since my earlier fumbling experiences, I have belonged to two long-term romances: one with a man which lasted five years and one with a woman that is going on its tenth year this January. In that time, I’ve challenged every perceivable aspect of my sexuality,

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seeking out and ultimately rejecting every label I’ve ever encountered. I confronted my father about his venomous words and my relationships with men and women and stopped all communication with him for nearly ten years when he rejected me. But since that time, we’ve rekindled our relationship. We’ve weathered our difficulties with one another and have developed a cordial, if not slightly estranged, friendship. His disgust of homosexuality was a symptom of his upbringing, as my struggles with sexuality were a symptom of mine. His words are still here with me of course, but softer than they once were, tamed by the evidence of my own sexual experiences, and the social stigmas that came from them. I’ve learned to stop grasping at labels and have grown comfortable with who I am essentially, and he has learned to accept me for who I am as well, respectful, if not completely accepting of the man that I’ve become. I just might be a “faggot,” or “bi,” a “closet case” or a “queer,” but no matter what the label says, I will always be me.

Creative Non-Fiction (Essay)

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“Lost in Lust”

Kathy Dioguardi

Medium: Oil on canvas, 16x20

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Joy Writes Checks to Airport Janitors Cholly Robertson - Honorable Mention

Joy invites herself to dinner parties, visits temples and tells herself to go easy on the vodka tonic because she just woke up. She lives out of orange suitcases nine months out of the year and wakes up near mountains according to autonomous time zones. She gets lost at zoos with people who can laugh at her, with her, who also understand life is an adventure. Joy agrees the journey is more valuable than the destination.

She comes to lost children sleeping under bridges disguised in songs of morning by stray birds. She smiles when she sees misfits sing wildly in passenger seats, unaware she is watching. Her childlike amusement helps strange places feel like home. Being late, making an entrance or standing up for herself when people cut lines to ride rollercoasters is one of her strengths, She tweedles in invisible pitches appealing to the ears and alchemy responsible for all the great TV sitcoms is her. She is a million stars in a black orphan’s palms.

A synonym for puppy breath and an adjective used to describe service. Joy isn’t fond of human dictionaries. Her favorite word is soul, she remembers your birthday for a three lifetimes, at least, and writes checks to Sky Harbor janitors when no one else but the Universe can see her. Cheerfully walking her dog, skipping, and whistling to her mantra, “Tis better to give than it is to receive,” heals her entire being.

Joy is magnetic, has worn hands like Mother Teresa, always has batman band-aids on hand and carries an extra supply of worry-proof umbrellas with waterproof sequins. Joy is more “big umbrella” than she is “cold rain.” She draws pictures guided by intuition and has every color Sharpie imaginable. She is so sincere that she’ll lose meaning if you talk about her behind her back to fools who don’t understand beauty. She is brave, loud, walks toward microphones and isn’t afraid of dying. She doesn’t climb trees and has been waiting for a man to ask her to dance at midnight instead of getting down on one silly little knee. Sweet but also salty, she enjoys her solitude and doesn’t mind seaweed in her hair. She is a sea of purple wildflowers near the desert in November. She’s the most beautiful creature I’ve never had the privilege to touch.

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Joy plays hop-scotch in dangerous barrios, empty ballrooms and is well studied in manners and etiquette. She asks the maid how to speak proper Spanish and wants to know what “angel” means in Sanskrit nwr (messenger) and tells no one but the Stars that her middle name means, “Unheeded prophetess.” Treasures like white and black Chanel ballet flats framed above her air mattress, polaroids of sailboats next to vintage photos of her parents dancing adorn her walls. Joy brings hope to soldiers, firefighters and forgotten angels.

She realizes how wonderful it is to feel understood but prays more to understand.

She lights a match of smiles for all those who are brave enough to open their two hands and catch “a whiff of her Divine joy.” Joy braves the battle of change with an enchanting attitude, knows the difference between a wish and a volition, and goes at her own pace and isn’t ruled by clocks or deadlines, time or technology. She learns the rules in order to break them. Joy doesn’t lasso calves and will never wear fur to bed unless it’s faux.

There is nothing more real than the impression of Hope she leaves on the headboard with her silent signature of faith in the morning. She leaves you speechless not with pain but with patience.

Joy uses her voice instead of her hands, rolls her hips but not her eyes. She literally turns her back on evil, pays the mortgage late, leaves love notes on hot pink post-its in strangers’ mailboxes and appreciates the little things. She laughs at herself for failing, falling and feeling sorrow. She is the most resilient girl I’ve ever known. She is deepest walking inside the sincere smile of a stranger ushering past you in Aisle 11 next to the pitted dates and caramel candies.

Never motivated by money, she studies clues left behind by saints and just wants to be wonderful. She looks at life as a scavenger hunt. She wears nothing to bed but smiles and a white silk bandana. Her memory is so sharp it forgets those who have offended her. I hear her dance when someone says “Inspiration” out loud and reminds me of my childhood muses from my wander years. She has long blonde hair, a collection of red and brown curly wigs, and fancies playing in the mud. Joy doesn’t need a round brush and the smell of hair spray makes her dim. She stands next to me in the mirror just to tell me, “You are a gift to this world.” She has the best laugh of all laughs.

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Joy stands in the rain just to stick her tongue out and taste the earth cry. She is more snowflake than she is tongue. Joy carries a clutch to hold her wand, has beautiful toes and undiplomatic courage. She is the most honest human being I’ve ever had the privilege to meet. Pillow and food fights are the only kind of fights she is tall enough to stand for. Joy’s real gift is Her presence when you’re not lonely and alone. Joy is colored.

She shows up at the perfect time and gives you hugs, hope and a better ideal for harmonious endings. Joy is timeless. She is new and everlasting. Joy never grows stale. She is so much fun.

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“Alloy�

William Goren

Medium: Bronze and aluminum, 32x19x6

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Vortex 2017 Short Story

I find it satisfying and intellectually stimulating to work with the intensity, brevity, balance and word play of the short story. ~ Annie Proulx

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Perspective

Stephen Rubin - First Place The city life of Chicago was all I had known for my first fifteen years, except the time my mom sent me to the YMCA camp somewhere in the country near a lake. It was supposed to be for two weeks, but I had a bout of anxiety and was sent home after only one. Knowing only a few friends and some indifferent relatives, I was a reclusive teenager living as a shadow where only a small room with a closed door provided solitude and quiet against the ceaseless noise and commotion of a claustrophobic maze of narrow streets, a webbing between aging, dirty brownstones and towering protracted glass and steel structures that obliterated any blue the sky could hold, and shards of parks that were wedged into areas too cumbersome and expensive for development. I had no roots in Chicago.

So when my parents told me we were moving, I was energized by the prospect of a new beginning, like a little kid playing war with his friends who pretends to be a casualty one minute, and then pops up to declare himself a new man and continue with the same game. We would be living in Iuka, a rural town in Mississippi, the county seat, population maybe eight hundred if you counted the passing interstate traffic and weekenders from Memphis. Like most southern rural towns, it had grown around a railroad depot, and soon, businesses began to line the street side by side in a square, around the adjacent common where community and church gatherings were held. All of this was on one side of the tracks, so a passing train would not split and disrupt business or social activities.

Dr. King had recently been murdered, probably a motivation for my father to move as the black impoverished neighborhood in which he and other white business owners had their businesses was razed in angry retribution. Mississippi took advantage of the situation by enticing white business owners to relocate, bringing jobs, revenue, and economic growth in trade for security.

The first day of school I was observed, studied from a safe distance like an exhibited 42

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animal at a zoo, no shelter in which to hide. But during lunch Billy and Terry saw me eating outside alone, introduced themselves, and we struck up a conversation while having lunch together, laughing and joking-- the beginnings of friendship. The two had known each other since first grade, and, in a short time, we became a triad. Soon, summer arrived bringing us the gift of a 3 month break. Summer heat in Mississippi wrapped around you like a constrictor squeezing your breath, with hot humid gusts that whipped thick dusty air, coating sweaty hot bare skin with grit; even in the shadows it was hot.

This morning I was headed to Billy’s in my sweet little straight six 62’ Fairlane. The three of us had made plans to do whatever came up. I had been to his house only once, so I was hoping to remember all the back roads and turns to get there. The day would soon heat up, but it was still early enough that the chill of the past night lingered.

Topping the hill, I could see Terry’s old Chevy pick-up--spots of gray sanded Bondo throughout the body--parked in Billy’s yard. The dust had not yet settled, so I knew he hadn’t been there long. The smell of one of Mama’s country breakfasts drifted through my car’s open windows--eggs she had gathered that morning, bacon, ham, and the best larded biscuits ever, flaky and sopping with butter. Mama was a devout Pentecost, five feet tall if on her toes reaching to the top shelf in her kitchen for the flour. I had begun to call her Mama immediately following her first hug. No one sat in her house with an empty stomach which was always fine with me. Mama’s way was the only way, and everyone in the room would migrate away from the person who dared to disagree with her. But she was one of the kindest individuals I would ever know. She was full Cherokee, as round as she was tall, her laugh or smile always hidden behind her hand.

She was seldom angry, but when she was, her face flushed a rose red, her jaw locked, lips clenched, and those beefy arms crossed tightly over her ample, sixteen children, bosom.

I would prefer walking into the blades of a bush hog than face an angry Mama.

Her house always smelled of a previous meal and burning hickory wood in the fireplace. It was no more then three hundred square feet, built some time in the early 1800’s. The floor was so worn, I could stand in the middle of the room and watch the chickens running under the house through the gaps between the boards. Upon entering

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the house, I found myself in the main room which accounted for most of the house; a quilting rack hung from the ceiling, lowered when in use by Mama and her lady friends who gathered to quilt and catch up with the latest gossip, and when they quit for the day, it was again hoisted up and out of the way. An old wooden cantilever table folded down from a side wall for dining, and ironing was done in front of the fireplace where the metal irons were laid to heat over the coals and swapped, a hot one for the cooled.

Until recently, they lived without electricity; here they used it sparingly, for a few lamps at night. At the end of the day, a mattress was unrolled for the night, to the left of the fireplace was a door that led to a bedroom where a handmade down mattress large enough for two adults stretched almost wall to wall, and the third room was in the back of the house entered through a doorway in the main room or the house’s back door that led to the yard. This was the kitchen, Mama’s kitchen.

Breakfast eaten, Mama sent us out to the porch while she cleaned up. It was insulting to her to offer help, this was what she did, how she cared for hers. When she finished, she came to the porch with three large glasses of sweet tea for her boys.

That was when Billy made me his offer. “Let me show you my new 22. We can go down to the creek bed and shoot some.” He was excited about his new Marlin rifle, a recent birthday present from his parents. Of course at fifteen, a southern boy hid his excitement behind a veil of masculinity, as did most southern men: excitement was for women and small children. So he sauntered into the house with a nonchalant air, hiding his giddy up, to fetch his gun, soon returning with rifle in hand the new wood finish glistening in the sun.

Generally, the only time we would see a new gun was at Whitmore’s Western Auto.

Billy’s pride glowed betraying his manly pretense. Pride was serious stuff to a fifteen year old southern boy, so Terry and I gave him the requisite “Damn!” and manly expressions of awe which he enjoyed.

Just about all of Mama’s four hundred acres were untouched hardwood trees, generations old, and large spreading pines, and many trees had seen hundreds of years of history. Just enough of the property had been cleared when the house and original barn were built, maybe half an acre. The creek bed was a little over a mile into the woods, and

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as we entered the shade of the tall full canopy, the moist coolness chilled me through my sweat soaked shirt. We could hear little else but the shrill sounds of the fervid clamor of clattering birds in the intertwined branches of the deciduous hard wood trees, thick sinewy vines corkscrewing up, crisscrossing, twisting to the lofts, branch to tree to branch. The raucous birds sent leaves twirling to the ground. I swatted a cloud of gnats, and they parted like water around a rock in a stream converging once again on the other side. Bees calmly, methodically harvested pollen, and butterflies floated and skimmed from plant to plant, leaf to leaf, in search of the soft tender ones on which to lay the eggs of the next generation. Quivering beams of sun filtered through the swaying tips of the tallest trees, blown by mid day gusts. Each of my steps sank into the moist decay of forest mulch releasing its distinctive rich smell to blend with the sweetness of Honeysuckle and a composition of fragrances whirling from young blooms teasing a sneeze, as if walking through a group of young girls each dabbed with different perfume. We followed a path, rough cut by large animals, for quite a ways stopping at a point where it split and fanned into multiple paths. Billy pointed to the right.

“There’s a hollow that way about three ridges over just to the other side of the wash.

Last week I spotted a washout in the side of the ridge with signs that something set up to shelter with some young. I’m pretty sure it’s a bobcat with some little ones. Let’s go have a look.”

Terry and I looked at each other, knowing we were about to get into some real shit.

We shrugged, and off we headed. About a mile down the path, Billy stopped behind a thick copse of scrub pine and honeysuckle vines, took a knee, and motioned us to do the same. He pointed to the ridge where, behind a mound of fallen leaves and a thick tangle of honeysuckle and blackberry hedge, we could make out a hollow cut into the ridge like a shallow cave. From our perspective, it appeared vacant, but we couldn’t be sure since our view was obstructed by thick vines and intertwined bushes. In reality, any animal, even a slug, would have sensed our approach long before we got this close.

We bravely surrendered our position to sneak up and checkout our destination. A thick cushion of moist forest debris nested the floor of the cave, still warm from where it had recently been laid upon and the strong scent of urine. They had run off into the nearby thicket, motionlessly watching our trespass. Drops of a sudden summer squall began Short Story

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to filter through the high foliage and tap us on the heads and shoulders, so we crawled into the lair for cover. Summer showers passed quickly, but Billy, never one to be idle for long, began to fiddle with his gun while Terry and I watched the bushes, whispering alerts each time they swayed or rustled with a gust.

“There!” Billy exclaimed, satisfied, having accomplishing a total dismantling of his rifle and neatly laying out the parts on the ground in front of him as if to be photographed for an owner’s manual--every nut, screw, and spring. How the hell did he do this with only his pocket knife?

Then we heard a rustling, seventy, eighty yards off—a noise and movement too large to be caused by wind or our imaginations. I choked on a swallow of fear and had an overwhelming urge to pee. We glanced at one another, and when we heard another loud rustling, we broke into wildly grabbing at the gun parts on the ground in front of Billy as if they would provide some protection. We loaded our pockets taking no time to distinguish parts of the gun, rocks, twigs, or dirt. The rustling was coming toward us. I was the slowest runner of the three, and I knew I was going to die.

When the bushes and thicket began to shake furiously, and leaves flew through the air, I broke from my crouch, plowing, stumbling almost falling multiple times, and ran for my life. With my pockets weighted down, I immediately regretted my habit of not wearing a belt as my pants began to slide down my legs. I clomped through the woods, one hand pushing branches out of the way and grabbing whatever there was to keep from falling, the other wrapped into the waistband of my pants holding them in place. I ran through thorn laden branches and vines tearing at my face and arms and into spider webs, spread between trees, large enough to catch a bear. Half blinded by monster webbing and the stinging salty sweat running into my eyes, I staggered, performing an inspired fall avoiding dance, jamming my ankle, all the while tugging at my pants, knowing that soon I would be torn to shreds by a hysterically angry mother bobcat with four inch carnivorous fangs and razor sharp claws.

I burst from the woods, hysteria exhausted, a convulsing heart beat pounding my ribs.

The thicket at the edge of the woods began to shake; she was there, coming for me. I hadn’t the strength to run any further; I was at the edge of my life. I made a last attempt

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to run forgetting about my pants which immediately fell to my ankles. I tripped, my face mashing into hardened red Mississippi earth. I rolled over and threw up my hands and arms to cover my face, closing my eyes to avoid seeing my evisceration. It leaped onto my chest, forcing the air from my lungs, I choked, gagging for air. I sensed its head hanging over mine, staring at me deciding where to tear away my skin. I was nauseated by the reek of its hot breath, and quickly brought my knees up as a shield against the attack, but I suddenly felt its tail slapping between my thighs. Drool dripped on my face, and with a slobbering lick, she cried for attention, nipping at my nose and ears. It was Cleo, one of Mama’s yard dogs. She and I used to be good buds before she scared the bejesus out of me. As if by an unspoken code, Terry, Billy, and I disregarded our display of terror, as if it had never been, yet unable to present a manly façade, we became consumed with uncontrolled laughter, rolling on the ground, pointing an unsteady finger at one another as if voting on who had been the most absurd. We had been fooled by ourselves and found little to redeem, but we were thoroughly relieved with the results.

Later that night, I lay on my bed staring into the darkness, exhausted but too full of the day to sleep. The evening breeze of cooling summer air pushed softly through the screen of the open window, and I listened to the persistent repetitive calls of Whippoor-wills as they swirled and plunged through the clouds of sumptuous May flies and the interminable chorus of love struck crickets. I realized that life at fifteen can be chronically inconvenient, expending too much time and effort tatting emotional slipknots. I rubbed at a new scratch on my arm thinking of my day and of having laughed more completely than I ever had--no sounds of the city, voices, buses, or sirens.

It took two or three trips back to find all of the gun parts that had fallen out of our pockets and scattered in our abrupt exit. The last time, an early morning venture, we happened upon the lair’s residents. Wrapped tightly around her spotted fawn, a deer raised her head in our direction, nodded, and snorted her disapproval of our interrupting her child’s nap, her eyes fixed, alert to our every motion, she was magnificent. No doubt, having watched our previous vaudeville foray in the woods, she was not overly alarmed. We slowly backed away, and although we never saw them again, there were always signs that they were around. We laid out the occasional salt lick and some corn.

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My house backed onto a large forest which I began to frequent regularly. The creatures there were apprehensive at first but in time made their adjustments to my presence and went on with their lives. People were still people, and I found no comfort in their presence, but found I could make adjustments and get on with my life, though frankly, the life in the woods was so much more fulfilling. The sky was clear, the air unmolested, and I felt welcomed. That closed room never again had the appeal it once had, and the quiet was annoying. I had stepped out of the shadows and become accustomed to the sounds of life.

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“Illuminance”

Eleanor Babbitt

Medium: Oil, 30x36

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Ignes

Antha Perkins - Second Place The resource officer sitting outside his office door was the only thing that stopped elementary school principal Ian Gordon from pulling a cigarette from the hidden compartment in his desk and lighting it with one of the matches he had confiscated from fourth-grader Ignes Madsen.

Outside, the school playground was empty. Gordon was used to seeing it like this— he worked after school hours most days, but today the sun was far too low in the sky for the vacancy to feel natural. If he allowed himself to look through the blinds that covered his window, he knew that he would find the patch of singed grass on the field near the old art building where, just hours before, second-grader Pompey Florence was carried out on a stretcher by a team of paramedics.

Gordon viewed himself to be a relatively fair man. Though he had never been particularly good with children, he genuinely liked them, and he deemed the level of compassion he showed to special needs students appropriate for a man in his position.

“Problem children,” as he called them in the private confines of his own mind, were the ones he felt needed his help the most; dealing with their often equally troubled parents was the downside of his job.

(The parents of problem children: problem children themselves who, never growing out of it, became problem adults.)

In his fifteen years of experience, Gordon had perfected his well-mannered demeanor in the face of even the most devilish young delinquents, and his congested schedule of meetings with combative parents was always dealt with in a timely fashion. They met with him on grounds of uncomfortable issues ranging anywhere from fist fights to on-campus masturbation, but nothing had prepared him for the sheer malice behind Ignes’ actions earlier that day.

Ignes was troubled to a degree so that even the class bullies left her alone, feeling that their childish taunts were not worth the risk of inciting one of her violent tantrums.

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They, along with concerned faculty members, had witnessed her demented actions firsthand, stabbing at bugs and dead things with sticks while threatening to do the same to people who upset her.

Her mother, Dormance, was another matter. No other parent had a knack for unsettling him quite so thoroughly as the quiet, disfigured woman he was forced to meet with on a near-weekly basis. Gordon found Dormance to have an uncanny resemblance to her daughter—not in appearance, but in the way she spoke, something predatory creeping under the surface with every impatient word from her missing lips.

Gordon glanced at the clock, feeling the tick of each second squeeze his chest with agitation. Dormance was meant to be here over an hour ago, as he had made the dire nature of Ignes’ actions clear over the phone. He had never known Dormance to be on time, but, given that she was unemployed and living on disability, he could never imagine the reason for her delays.

After what Gordon knew to be too long, voices rose from outside the door and the shadow of a person melted into the blurred glass. The door opened, and the familiar figure of Dormance emerged.

Before he’d grown used to it, the sight of Dormance had once gripped Gordon with a festering nausea that corroded his stomach. Skin grafts and meaty scar tissue merged like crayon wax melting down her face and neck; they covered her left eye socket like a thin, hollow blanket and replaced what once was an ear with a stub of lumpy flesh. Like a human patchwork quilt with too many re-stitchings, this skin was not her own, and Gordon used to take it home with him at night, the after-image of her grotesque form smoldering behind his eyelids like the inferno that had congealed Dormance’s cheek to her neck.

It was with arthritic slowness that Dormance lowered herself into the blue chair on the other side of Gordon’s desk, each limb placed onto the plastic as if her brittle bones might snap from the barest pressure. She didn’t speak; she never did. Instead she waited, her single eye wandering around the room as if the uncluttered walls and fake potted plants would somehow allow her to flee the conversation.

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to take the first word. He had grown so used to this that the strangeness of not being offered even a simple hello no longer struck him, but today the silence made his body blister with feverish heat as he watched her eye dodge him; the circumstances of this meeting were far from normal, and he hated the lack of variance in her actions.

Gordon picked up a wooden pencil resting on the surface in front of him, squeezing it between his fingers until the grooves of splintered wood made his hands ache.

“Would you like to know how the child is?” Gordon imagined each word being thrust like the point of a newly sharpened pencil; he wanted to spit them at her, as if that might somehow shake the indifference from her face.

Dormance’s gaze peeled away from the wall like slow-moving magma—leisurely, deliberately. She rested her eye on him, her body still.

“She was outside the door when I came in,” Dormance said.

While Gordon had grown used to looking at Dormance’s mutilated body, the sound of her voice was something that always struck him with rattling alarm. Though not particularly deep, there was power behind it in a way that Gordon found almost threatening; illogically, the forcefulness of her voice gave him the sense that she was far less fragile than people were led to believe.

Gordon gripped the pencil wood tighter, which was now slippery with a light sheen of sweat.

“Do you honestly believe,” he began, voice pricking with needle-like severity, “that I am referring to Ignes?” Each word was filtered through clenched teeth, a cage to keep his sizzling frustration from bursting out.

“No,” Dormance admitted. “How is Pompey Florence?”

Gordon could only stare, his outrage outweighing all other emotion. She was playing with him—he could tell, but he could only imagine as to why. He didn’t want to think about why. The image of Dormance hiding a sickening smile behind her toneless expression struck Gordon abruptly, her mouth filled with hooked chimera teeth too disproportionately large to fit in the small cavity of her jaw.

Gordon took a short breath and closed his eyes, pushing the image from his mind.

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“I don’t even know what to say, Dormance.” As if his intention were to puncture wood, Gordon shoved the eraser-end of the pencil into his desk as suffocating heat flooded his body. “Your daughter tried to burn Pompey alive.”

Dormance’s eye shifted toward the clock as the muted tick of the second hand amplified the silence that fell between them.

“You said that over the phone,” she said, as if hearing the statement repeated was a waste of her time.

Gordon rubbed his hand over his face and took a breath, looking at the accusing box of matches sitting just a few feet away. “Yes, I did. And Ignes is extremely lucky that he wasn’t injured too badly.” He curled his fingers in an attempt to retain his polite tone.

“Where would she have even found matches in the first place?”

Dormance crinkled her nose, creasing the skin that was not her own. “Where does any child find matches?”

Her question was asked as if it were rhetorical, as if children bringing matches to school to burn their classmates was behavior that happened every other week. Gordon shifted his eyes toward the ceiling.

“I don’t know, Dormance,” he said through a deep exhale. “I don’t know, because most children her age—when they find matches—they know to leave them alone.”

And Ignes, of all people, should be the first person to understand the importance of fire safety, Gordon was tempted to add, but he would not allow his mask of politeness to be dissolved so thoroughly. His desire to retain a pleasant demeanor also stopped him from bringing up that he was quite sure Ignes had known exactly what she was trying to do to Pompey Florence when she set him ablaze.

“I doubt she was trying to hurt anybody,” Dormance said. “She’s only a child.”

Gordon could almost smell the bullshit in her tone. They both knew what Ignes was like; Dormance’s most recent meeting with Gordon had been just the week prior, and it had involved an argument about whether Ignes had murdered a rabbit or if it was already dead when she found it. Gordon had felt strongly that it was the former, but in the end he had let Ignes off with just a few days of detention and a warning. His Short Story

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colleagues always looked at him with disapproval when he chose not to go easy on Dormance, so it was for the sake of reputation that Ignes was often allowed to leave unpunished. Gordon would never dare to say that Dormance did not give off the impression of a woman who needed any pity; on the contrary, their meetings would often end with him feeling like he was the toy being played with.

Gordon cleared his throat. “People can be bullies at any age. Children come into my office every day because they’ve intentionally hurt others,” he said. “Your daughter is perfectly capable of it.”

“My daughter is not a bully.”

There was a clipped, dangerous edge to Dormance’s voice, a kind of predatory stillness that clattered against his ribcage. It was when Dormance used this tone that Gordon could not look at her and see the helpless victim of a serial arsonist’s attempted murder; it was this tone that reminded him of Ignes, mocking and wicked. Every nerve ending in Gordon’s body shrieked not to be alone in the room with her.

Gordon pressed his hand to his forehead, exhaustion beginning to creep up and gnaw at his mind. “Then what is she?”

Dormance made a slight gesture towards the door where Ignes sat with the resource officer outside. “Have you asked her?”

Gordon crinkled his brow. “I’m not going to ask a kid whether they think they’re a bully; their actions speak for themselves.”

Gordon chose not to mention that he enjoyed talking to Ignes as much as he enjoyed children vomiting in his hallway. Her strangeness went beyond what was ordinary for other kids who struggled to fit in; she didn’t care to speak much to others, just as they didn’t care much to speak to her. In the barest of terms, Ignes creeped people out.

Dormance’s breath was audible as she slowly slid one arm across the other. “Then I guess you won’t know why she did it,” Dormance said.

“Do you know why?”

“No.” The mutual glare between them sizzled like fireworks ready to burst, the static 54

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buildup before a lightning strike holding them captive. It only took a few moments for Gordon to realize that Dormance wouldn’t be satisfied until he gave Ignes a chance to explain herself, so finally he relented. Dropping both hands down onto his desk in defeat, he said, “Fine, let’s bring her in then.”

The tension in the room did not seem to ease; rather, the exhale of held breath made the sound of a too-tight violin cord getting plucked—a brief release before springing back to its original position.

Dormance’s eye followed Gordon as he moved the matches from the top of his desk to the compartment where his cigarettes were held. He felt it was safer to keep them out of Ignes’ sight, despite his supervision. Standing, he went and opened the door to retrieve Ignes.

Ignes Madsen sat on the hallway bench with the resource officer as Gordon presumed she’d been doing for the past two hours. Her dangling legs were too short to touch the ground, and she swung them back and forth restlessly as the officer rested his chin in his hand. Any fourth-grader would have trouble with sitting still for so long, and the resource officer had the face of a man who wanted nothing but to go home. Gordon understood the feeling.

“Come in, Ignes,” Gordon said, making a gesture as if waving her into his office.

“Your mother and I want to speak to you.”

Ignes looked at him with a playful smile, her upper lip pulled back so her teeth were visible. “FWOOSH!” Throwing her hands up as if imitating the flames of a large bonfire, she burst into a fit of childish giggles, hands clutching her sides like she was being tickled by an invisible hand. Gordon took an instinctive step back as his stomach clenched around itself, blinking at her as if to focus his vision. Her wild laughter stopped almost as soon as it began, and her eyes settled on him with intense focus. “Just kidding,” she said.

The resource officer simply closed his eyes and gave a small sigh, as though these antics were not new behavior. Gordon didn’t feel like there was enough air in his chest when he heard himself say, “Don’t do that, Ignes.” His voice was foreign, hollow, not his own.

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Ignes hopped down from the bench and rolled her eyes. “I said I was kidding.” She bounded into his office.

By all outward appearances, Ignes seemed to be the exact opposite of her mother— rampant with a wild energy that seemed to surge through her body, driving her speech and what he assumed to be her morbid curiosities. It was only after he’d seen Dormance and Ignes interact together in the same room that Gordon identified that they both seemed reminiscent of some feral thing, ravenous and ready to lunge.

Ignes whispered something in her mother’s ear as she pulled up a chair next to her; her words tugged one corner of Dormance’s mouth slightly upward, as if the pair had found amusement in some aspect of the situation. Gordon leaned back in his chair; it was now he who had a darting gaze, watching as Dormance whispered something in return that made Ignes nod.

“Ignes,” Gordon started, uncomfortable with the idea of a hushed conversation taking place right in front of him. He would be concise, get straight to the point; the Madsens’ presence in his office was nauseating. “Why did you burn Pompey?”

If the question made Ignes feel even the slightest twinge of regret, it didn’t show on her face. Instead, she merely took a brief glance at her mother and shrank ever so slightly in her chair.

“Does she have to be here?” Ignes asked, gesturing toward her mother. Her voice was now quiet, as if filled with the genuine nervousness of any regular fourth grader.

Gordon wondered if there was something wrong with him for getting the inexplicable feeling from her tone of voice that she was silently mocking him.

If Dormance was bothered by her daughter’s request, she didn’t show it, absently picking at pieces of lint on her clothes.

“No,” Dormance said, her voice obnoxiously uninterested. “I’m fine with leaving.”

She stood and looked at Gordon, as if to assert that he had no objections to her absence. Seeing no real reason not to allow Ignes to speak with him in private, Gordon gave a curt nod.

“Okay,” he said. Once the door had closed behind Dormance, Gordon turned to

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Ignes and pressed his hands together. “Your mother is gone. What was it that you couldn’t tell me while she was here?”

Instead of responding, Ignes slid out of her chair and walked over to his desk.

“I wanted to make people be nice to him,” she whispered, leaning in as close as she could. Her breath smelled like rancid food and was hot against his ear. “Like my mum.

They’re all nice to her. She says it’s because of her face.”

Ignes paused and Gordon jerked away from the contact, only for Ignes to mimic the action.

Ignes eyed the drawer that contained the box of matches, though Dormance was the only one who had seen where Gordon had hidden them; logically, there should be no possible way for Ignes to know that they were there without having been told. She pressed her lips even further against Gordon’s ear. “It was also really fun.”

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The Medic

Sammi Mathur - Third Place The rain had finally let up after two days of torrents and drizzles. Lieutenant Stephen Burt sat huddled in the very shallow three sided trench that his squad had hastily dug into the face of the mountain during a lull in the ambush. They had been caught unaware on their sortie into the Nuristan province of Afghanistan. It was supposed to have been an easy exploratory mission, meant to gather a lay of the land and find an easier path to the village on the other side of the mountain. The ten men squad had walked right into the ambush set up from the high ridge they had been trying to get to.

The enemy had obviously watched them for hours, letting them make their way to the right spot that protected the ambushers perfectly but with no natural elements for the squad to use as armor against the bullets.

The attackers had the higher ground, that gave them the upper hand. Five soldiers had been killed immediately, including the one that had fallen and rolled down the slope with the sat-phone, the only one that could be used from the mountains to communicate with the base. Burt’s own backpack had blasted open and spilled its contents when one of the hand grenades blew up behind him. He had passed out for some time and when he woke up, he was in the lee of the excuse for a trench in the middle of the fire exchange. Moments later, the last member of his squad had been shot even before his befuddled mind had fully grasped the situation.

“Just the one fucker left!” Pvt. Malik had said right before getting thrown backwards from the mortar round that landed right above them.

Burt could barely make out the bodies of the first five casualties in the foliage further down the slope. The rain water had washed some bodies lower and he wondered if the river had taken any.

“Are you dead yet?” Burt called out to the lone survivor of the ambush party.

“Why don’t you come and find out?” a labored voice returned in a polished educated 58

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English accent with Pashto cadences.

“My leg’s busted,” Burt lied.

There was no reply. Burt looked at the four bodies around him. At this point hunger was quickly overcoming his conscience that opposed looking through their pockets for food.

He took his rifle, put a helmet on the muzzle and lifted it over the rim of the trench.

No shots. He brought the rifle back down and crawled slowly toward the body of Pvt. Malik, only nineteen years old but his face looked old, caught in a grimace of pain as he died.

Burt was cold; his finger tips had started turning blue and numb. The pain from the cold toes and fingers had been normalized in his brain. He could not feel his fingers any more when he grabbed Malik’s shoulders firmly to pull him up. No shots. And nothing in the dead private’s pockets. The other body was further down from the him. Burt scooted lower, trying not to disturb the bushes around him. No shots.

Pvt. Lopez had been a well built tough guy, brought down by a freak bullet to the back of his neck, just under his helmet. Burt tried to pull him closer by his ankles staying within the protection provided by the steep slope above the trench. Lopez’s weight finally gave way, but the bushes around him thrashed around wildly with the sudden movement. A series of shots rained down without a clear mark. Yet one hit Lopez squarely in the torso. Besides a slight jerk and the squishy thwack of the bullet piercing the mortified flesh, there was no other reaction from the body. Burt kept pulling Lopez, grunting until he reached the safety of the trench again.

“Would you chill? Just trying to get a snack,” Burt yelled.

“Throw some here,” the response came back.

“Where did you go to school?” Burt asked.

“Aitchison.”

“Pakistan?”

“Yes.”

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“Shit. Good college. What are you doing here?” Burt asked impressed yet angry and frustrated.

There was no response for some time, then, “Do you have family?”

Burt didn’t reply right away. He took out the photograph of him with his wife and son, taken when his son had just been born. The first and only photograph of them together before he had been deployed. His wife looked tired, but he still thought she looked more beautiful than ever. Burt shook his head.

“Yeah. I’ve got family. A six month old son.” He said, “You?” Burt put the photograph away.

The reply came after a long pause.

“I had a son and daughter. Twins.” Pause. Burt caught the past tense.

“What happened?”

“They were visiting family in Nuristan. Drone strike.” the man didn’t have to say anything else to explain why he had become the enemy.

“Fuck!” Burt muttered as he realized that the ambusher had nothing left to lose or fear. Nothing that Burt could work with to convince him to let him go. Not that he really had expected any form of negotiations. The silence of the wind and trickling water surrounded them again. Burt kept his ears open for any rustling that might indicate movement as he quietly searched Lopez’s rations and found a small bag of peanuts. He opened the wrapper and began to eat a nut at a time, making each last, trying to avoid feeling like he was robbing a grave. Then he stuck his tongue out under a dripping leaf to get a few drops of water.

When he searched Lopez’s belongings again, he found only a grenade, probably unauthorized, in one of his packs. A plan began to form in Burt’s mind to end this stalemate.

“Knew you would have my back L,” Burt said in a low grateful whisper.

He waited for the light to fade. He had no way of being sure that there was only one ambusher left, but he was running out of options. His ammo was down to his side-arm.

They could have backup coming while his would have a hard time getting to them. It

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had taken his squad a good day and half ’s hike to get here. The base would not have sent anyone out the night before when they did not report back over the radio last evening. He could sit here and wait it out, of course. But it came down to statistical probabilities in the end; the longer he waited, the longer he was under a gun, the more his chances were of not making it out. He begged forgiveness from Malik as he shoved the body till it rolled down the hill.

No shots.

Burt cursed again. The other guy was clever or he could be dying too . . .

“You there?” Burt called out. No response. He waited nearly fifteen minutes then shook his head thinking he may regret taking action. He took a long fortifying breath and began to slowly and cautiously make his way toward the ridge, moving horizontally across and upwards. He rested behind a tree closer to the ridge and wondered again if the enemy was cunning or dead. About five yards from the ridge, he broke into a dead run, his barely complying fingers gripping the grenade, about to pull the pin. On the ridge he froze, there was no one there.

A click from his left further downhill made him turn slowly to face a man in a long shirt and turban. One hand was holding a rifle pointed at Burt, a Kalashnikov of sorts, modified it appeared, the other hand was pressing against a large red splotch of blood on his side. Time seemed to slow down for Burt, and he began to feel it in nanoseconds, expecting every one to be his last. Sure he was about to die; his whole life flashed in front of his eyes in one big slide of memory settling on the faces of his wife and son when he had left them at the airport.

The injured man lumbered up to Burt’s level. He didn’t ask Burt to raise his hands or get on the ground. He came to rest against a tree to support himself and Burt felt the roar of blood in his ears begin to quiet down till he could hear his thoughts again.

Burt popped his lips and made a regretful sound, “I should have waited.”

The man nodded. “Sit.” He waved at the ground.

Burt sat down slowly.

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down the tree, clearly in pain. “That is our way, isn’t it?”

Burt kept his eyes on the man’s as that was where the decision to shoot would be first revealed.

“Put the grenade down and roll it downhill.”

Burt complied, each heartbeat a loud gong in his ears, an increasing certainty of impending death.

“Show me the photo of you family,” He ordered, assuming correctly that Burt had one.

Burt did not move.

“Please.” He paused for the catch in his breath, then, “Please do me the honor.”

The deep plea in his voice made Burt take out the picture slowly and hold it out for the man to see. His other hand surreptitiously went to his side-arm.

“You won’t have to use that.” the man lowered his weapon, “I’m dead already.” he smirked, “I know. I used to be a medic.”

Burt raised his gun and leveled it at the man’s face, unwilling to take any chances. But the man let go of the rifle, took out a picture of his own and waved for Burt to take a closer. There were four of them in the photograph, including the man.

“Mine.” There was pride in the medic’s voice. “Khalid.” He patted his chest.

Burt had moved closer now. He kicked the rifle out of Khalid’s reach then moved back again.

“I’m sorry,” Burt said.

“Please, may I?” Khalid asked for the photograph of Burt’s family, still in Burt’s hand.

He hesitated then reached forward, handed it over. His sharp focus was on Khalid in case he had aspirations of martyrdom.

Khalid smirked again, the two photographs held in one hand, next to each other.

Then he drew a line in the ground next to him. “We all die for lines drawn in the sand.

Drawn by us to create differences. Excuses to kill each other.” Then in sharp gesture of

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anger, he raked his hand over the line to wipe it out.

“Cigarette, my friend?” Khalid asked a little later.

Burt shook his head. He sat a few yards from the medic, watching, while Khalid’s eyes stayed on the two photographs till he finally rolled to his side and lay still. His eyes still looking.

Burt waited twenty minutes for any explosions before walking over to Khalid. He picked up the two photographs, then went searching until he found the sat-phone in a backpack with all the squad’s comm equipment and reported in to the base. Then he gathered all the dog tags of his fallen teammates, grimly grateful to have found all nine bodies. He left a GPS marker in the trench and began to make his way to the base after gathering supplies from the backpacks of the dead. It took him three hours of walking at a fast pace to make it to a much higher vantage point. It was only then that he sat to rest and look at the vast expanse of mountain peaks silhouetted against the dark blue sky littered with stars, in the silence of the wind. He took out the two photographs and held them in his hands in the dark. One had more of Khalid’s blood on it than the other. He dug a hole in the ground about half a foot deep, put the photograph of Khalid and his family in the hole. About to fill it with rocks, he paused, looked at his own face in his family’s photograph and sat in silence contemplating that stranger from six months ago. He ripped out the part of the photograph that had him in it and threw it in the hole before hastily filling the hole with dirt and rocks. The other part, he put back in his pocket. Done, he began to make his way back to the base again, having buried who he used to be along with his photograph. He did not look back, it was already done.

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“Deconstructed Melody”

Ethan Haddad

Medium: Silver Gelatin Double Exposure, 8x10

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The Quarry

Ryan Severyn - Honorable Mention Elliott held his breath and listened with his eyes wide in the suffocating darkness of his confined hiding space. His boney hands, smelling of sweat and iron, enveloped his nose and mouth in hopes of filtering the sounds of his breathing, which in this moment, seemed to boom from behind his ears and not his chest. Please don’t cough, he prayed to himself. Please don’t let Mr. Hickson hurt Papa again.

“Don’t get up. God Almighty,” Mr. Hickson’s throaty voice sarcastically started again, “what have you been up to? I don’t see a goddamned fuckin’ thing to haul back to Mr. Tracy.”

Thock.

Elliot knew that sound. Mr. Hickson made a point of hitting their table with his cleaver whenever the need to intimidate and interrogate Papa came (twice monthly).

“Eh—” Elliott’s father started, before erupting in a coughing fit of phlegm and blood.

A softer Thock.

“Any day now,” Mr. Hickson teased impatiently. The coughing fit continued, and Elliott felt anxiety pulling his lungs into his belly.

The cleaver sounded like it was skipping along and licking at the notches in the table.

Elliott’s father wheezed, spat, and sat higher in his chair, making the chair bark as it slid under his shifting weight.

“There’s nothing. I ain’t got nothing left to give,” he droned weakly. “Nothing grows no more. Livestock all dead, game all gone. I can’t recall the last time I’ve seen a bird fly…”

Thock.

Both Elliott and Mr. Hickson waited for him to continue as his stuttering, short breaths would eventually allow him to spatter more to his defense.

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gon’ cut it this time. I’ve told Mr. Tracy you got something. Where’s your boy?” shouted Mr. Hickson. Mr. Hickson’s voice got loud, and Elliott’s now shut eyes imagined his spit spraying his father’s turned head.

No answer. Elliott’s eyes danced around in the dark nervously to the sound of circling footsteps.

“S’funny. Every time I’m here to collect, your boy’s gone. Never seen ‘im. Maybe I burn this cabin down so he come runnin’ back or comes screaming from under the floorboards!” proclaimed Mr. Hickson. Elliott was holding his breath again.

“He’s in the grove looking for any pecans left on the ground for Mr. Tracy,” retorted Elliott’s father quickly and to their surprise. “There ain’t been no sun for months. You know them trees died? You took our dogs! Our good dogs that never hurt nobody! We been living off acorn meal and bleedin’ roots. We’re starving and, like I told you, we ain’t got nothing left! Might as well just leave us be to die.”

Elliott could hear his father’s shallow exhales from pursed lips as he tried to calm himself. His coughing returned. Elliott started to cry.

“You done? All right, I’ll go fetch him then.”

“No! Let me get him and we can sort this out,” pleaded Elliott’s father in a hurry.

Elliott almost jumped out of his skin in that moment. The clang and thud of the cleaver hitting the floor meant that his father must have grabbed Mr. Hickson’s arm unexpectedly. A large, able-bodied man like Mr. Hickson would never drop his prized cleaver out of mortal clumsiness. Elliott’s teeth and eyelids clenched tight in fear for his father.

“Get your hands offa me.”

“You’ll scare him. Please, let me—” “Get your shit-covered hands offa me!”

A smack followed by a thud. A defeated whimper grown men do not utter haunted Elliott. The cleaver scraped the floor as it was retrieved by Mr. Hickson.

“I can get ‘im, lemme get ‘im. Please…” Elliott’s father begged in a tone Elliott had not heard since they were both collapsed at his late mother’s bedside last winter.

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“You ain’t got but one damn leg. You gon’ crawl through them trees?” spat Mr. Hickson as his boots crunched the leaf covered floorboards towards the open door that spewed in biting wind and dust.

“Take the other leg as well then! It’s meat, good meat! Leave the boy!”

“Nah”, quipped Mr. Hickson. “You taste like shit.” His footsteps creaked off the porch and then started to stir the gravel of the drive farther and farther away towards the grove.

Elliott’s neck hair stood at attention and adrenaline reached out from his spine into his limbs. He wanted to pop out of hiding, but knew better to wait on his father’s say so.

“Elliott, quietly now.”

The seat of the pine boot bench slowly rose and Elliott’s face peeked out; his tears had paved clean paths through his dirt laden cheeks.

“Good boy. Hurry now” said his father as he pulled himself upright with the aid of the sturdy, albeit scarred table. “Grab your coat.”

Elliott stood up straight and threw down the broken pieces of water-stained drywall that were entrapping him inside the guts of the boot bench. The familiar smell of mildew and wet dog hit him then, and he missed the musty, moth ball scent of his hiding place. He grabbed his father’s old bomber jacket that was years too big for him and wrapped it over his shoulders. His fingertips peeked out the sleeves when his arms were outstretched.

“Where can we go, Papa?” sniffed Elliott, wiping his face with a jacket sleeve.

“We’ll go to the old quarry. There’s water down there, maybe some duck potato. They won’t find us there. Get the ‘barrow. You’re gonna have to push me.”

Elliott hurried around back and grabbed the wheel barrow. It had two solid rubber wheels, but a rusted pan beneath the chipping red paint. Elliott grabbed the splintered handles, turned the wheel barrow, and flew with it to the front door where he then waited. Elliott’s father hopped out bracing one arm against the door frame and the other arm clutching some length of damp pink wall insulation.

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“C’mere. Help me.”

Elliott laid the insulation onto the pan of the wheel barrow and instinctually threw his shoulder into his father’s underarm and grabbed his waist. Elliott tried to lower his father into the deep mouth of the wheel barrow. A canvas bag of essentials resting on his father’s lower back cushioned his awkward slump into their makeshift wagon.

“Go, Elliott, go,” saif his father while coughing and nervously looking back towards the grove.

Smoke could be seen rising above the barren pines and joining the gray fog that was their routinely bleak sky. A great pit in the earth lay before them like an excavated ruin.

Blasted rock walls jutted out like crooked teeth. A steep, gravel path led down in circles.

They could not see the bottom.

“There’s the drive down to the quarry. You be careful now, Elliott. Nice and slow, all right?”

“Yes, Papa. You think they’re comin’ after us?”

Before his father could reassure the boy that Mr. Hickson was long gone, they heard a sharp whistle pierce the air. It shook them both. Elliott pissed himself.

“Run for it, Elliott! Go, now!” his father ordered while looking over his shoulder, eyes wide and mouth hanging ajar. He tried to climb out of his seat. A quarter mile back, Mr. Hickson and two others were jogging towards them, following the bipedal trail left by the wheel barrow.

Elliott grabbed the handles, dug in his toes, and pushed the wheel barrow towards the steep driveway leading into the quarry. His father fell back and gripped the sides of the pan tightly.

“What do you think you’re doing? They’ll catch you, Elliott!”

His father wasn’t coughing now. He probably wasn’t even breathing. It felt like they were flying. The wheels hit the drive, the wheel barrow dipped, and gravity sent it rolling down the steep drive in a rage. Elliott’s legs could not keep up, and he felt the tops of his feet dragging in the gravel and stealing the shoes from his feet. Tunnel vision set in. Down the way was a sharp turn impossible to navigate as it turned away from a cliff 68

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dropping off into the abyss of stone fathoms below.

“Let go, Elliott! You can’t stop in time! Let go!”

Elliott’s eyes were tearing and his legs were losing the knees of his jeans and their skin.

The wheel barrow bounced on a jutting rock, skipped, turned sideways, and spilled Elliott’s father onto the drive where he continued his violent descent alone. Elliott soared over the wheel barrow, landing on his wrist and exposing bone. As the drive plateaued at the turn, Elliott’s body crashed with a thud and the air was knocked out of him. He helplessly peered over his toes and saw his father fall silently down into the quarry.

Sliding rocks and skidding boots were coming down towards him. Elliott climbed to his feet and turned, facing the drive that threw away his father and saw the men almost upon him. He stumbled, then took a step back. His hearing changed, and he felt like his ears were on opposite ends of the quarry. He stepped back again, cradling his arm that was biting him with pain. Mr. Hickson was upon him breathing heavily. He was larger than Elliott had pictured. His face was sweaty and cruel with an overgrown beard that hid his lips.

“C’mere, boy,” Mr. Hickson huffed with one massive paw pulling up his jeans and one outstretched towards Elliott. His face changed and his tone softened, “Don’t be scared.

We’ll get that arm fixed, get you some food. Comeon.”

Elliott stepped back, sand and rock gave, and his body fell. Mr. Hickson dove and with his barrel chest against the drive managed to catch Elliott by the collar of the bomber jacket he was swimming in. His slender frame slipped from the jacket, but his fingers caught the open zippered pocket of the jacket front. The brass teeth dug into his fingers.

“Don’t let go, boy,” said Mr. Hickson. His voice crackled around them like thunder.

Elliott’s feet danced in the air, and his heart was pumping behind his eyes. Every beat shook his core and loosened his grip. Mr. Hickson’s teeth were bared, and his sweat rained down into the quarry. Stitches stretched and popped. Fabric started to tear. Mr. Hickson grunted and yellow spittle jumped from between his teeth landing on his beard. His eyes were bloodshot red with madness.

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A soft warble struck the air and echoed back from the quarry. A bright blue grosbeak flew playfully past Mr. Hickson’s head. Elliott’s eyes followed the bird as his body swayed and at that moment, his heartbeat ceased and all he could hear was the bird’s song. He thought all the birds were gone. He prayed his father could see it.

Elliott let go and his eyes continued to follow the bird’s flight as he fell.

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“Untitled”

Barbara Goldberg

Medium: Acrylic, 48x30

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Vortex 2017 Sustainability

Climate change is destroying our path to sustainability. Ours is a world of looming challenges and increasingly limited resources.

Sustainable development offers the best chance to adjust our course. ~ Ban Ki-moon

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The Sustainability Action Council Creative Writing Scholarship The Sustainability Action Council plans, develops and sponsors strategic initiatives and activities in pursuit of the triple-bottom-line of sustainability: environmental awareness, social responsibility, and sound financial stewardship.

Community, diversity and inclusiveness, ethics, human rights, and health and safety, constitute principle aspects of the social responsibility bottom line.

Each year the Sustainability Action Council offers scholarship opportunities for students who creatively illustrate these values.

This year, the Sustainability Council’s Scholarship Awards go to Delvan Gonzales for the poem “Homeless Hunger” and to Itzel B. Caire for the unnamed photograph.

Homeless Hunger Delvan Gonzales

My body smells like hot garbage, a pack of wolves inside my stomach.

Newspapers, my blanket on a winter’s night Lice and fleas make my hair their home, hair stuck with sweat, dirt and street grime.

Rats, mice and roaches-- my companions, a life of belongings in one push cart.

The streets – my entertainment, a dumpster locked so no one steals what’s inside.

A fat rat chases a skinny cat its food on the run.

Acceptance or normality?

No.

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Vortex 2017 Native Voices and Visions Never has America lost a war ...

But name, if you can, the last peace the United States won. Victory yes, but this country has never made a successful peace because peace requires exchanging ideas, concepts, thoughts, and recognizing the fact that two distinct systems of life can exist together without conflict.

Before any final solution to American history can occur, a reconciliation must be effected between the spiritual owner of the land--American Indians--and the political owner of the land--American Whites. Guilt and accusations cannot continue to revolve in a vacuum without some effort at reaching a solution. ~ Vine Deloria Jr. 76

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Native Voices and Visions

“Honoring our Native Voices and Visions� was created to allow an opportunity for American Indian students to share their stories, culture, history and/or experiences. Each year, Ana Cuddington, Director of the American Indian Program at SCC, awards two scholarships in writing and/or art to winning students.

If you are a member of a federally recognized tribe and attend SCC, you can submit artwork and writing in the Vortex competition. For more information contact Ana Cuddington at ana.cuddington@scottsdalecc.edu or call the American Indian Program at 480/423-6531.

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“Nihígaal bee Iiná—Walk for Existence”

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Daniel Tullie

Native Voices and Visions

The Unforgiven: My Story Chelsea VanWinkle

When I was two years old, I remember sitting in the emergency room with my mother. She was angry and crying as I was placed on the examination table where the doctor’s cold hands told my mother to undress me. I was confused and afraid of what was going on. I stared up at the lights in the clinic thinking, “When we can we leave?” The doctor told my mom to lay me down and talk to me while he did his examination. My mom asked me small questions and I replied. Then I felt very uncomfortable when the doctor was feeling my private parts, so I began to cry. I told my mom I wanted the doctor to stop, but my mom kept saying, “You’re going to be okay. It’s almost over,” as she held my small hands tightly. But I urgently wanted the doctor to stop probing me, so I screamed like the scared child I was. Two more nurses rushed in to restrain me, and I remember looking at that long needle the doctor had in his hand; my mom and the nurses had to lay me on my back. I didn’t want to listen; I didn’t want that shot. When it was finally all over, my mom hugged me while I wiped all the tears off my face. She kissed me and put my clothes back on. Then she and the doctor talked in hushed voices.

For years, I had blocked this from my memory. And it wasn’t until I was older that my mom finally told me the truth about why I was at the emergency room that night.

I was sixteen years old, having a breakdown in school, and sitting in the counselor’s room waiting for my parents to show up. When they arrived, my counselor, Ms. Jackson handed my mom the composition book that I had been writing in for months, maybe years, and as she began to read it there was a frightening silence in the room. As my mom read through the pages, she began to cry. My step-dad took the book from her and began to read it.

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At first my mom was silent and would not look at me. Then she finally told me, “I knew. Since you were two years old, I knew. I just didn’t know it was still happening to you.” She started to choke on her words then said, “Remember that night in the ER in Shiprock? That night when I came home from work, I opened the door and you didn’t run up to the door to meet me like you usually did. Your uncle who was supposed to be watching you wasn’t there. So I thought you were sleeping or your uncle took you somewhere to eat.

When I put my stuff down, I heard a whimper coming from your bedroom. I opened the door, and you were lying naked on your side on your bed. The sheets were covered in blood and excrement. I ran up to you, picked you up and tried to ask you what happened, but all you said was , ‘Uncle did it, he said it was a game and I lost.’ I wanted to kill him, your uncle, so bad I wanted to kill him. But I put clothes on you and rushed you to the hospital. I got you checked and you didn’t catch anything. That’s why you got that shot. The doctor told me your uncle had raped and sodomized you. That’s why we were there that night.”

When my mom finished telling me what happened, I couldn’t believe my uncle did that to family, to a two year old, but he wasn’t the only person who’d sexually molested me. There was so much more that happened to me growing up than that two-year-old incident. Flashes of everything came to me all at once, every horrible memory had a story. I remembered when I was four, my biological father used to drink everyday with his friends, and when he would pass out drunk, his friends would have their way with me. My biological dad never heard my screams or knew what was going on around him because alcohol was his baby. He never protected me. At this time, my mom was gone often as she was going to school and working two jobs to support my sisters and me.

When I was seven and eight years old, my mom’s best friend’s dad used to babysit my two younger sisters and me, and this man, who was probably in his 50s, used to finger me and make me suck his penis. I never wanted him to touch my sisters, so I would lock them in the bedroom and tell them not to come out, and I would sacrifice myself to keep my little sisters safe because I knew what he wanted to do to them. I hated every day and every minute with him. I never said anything to anyone because I was scared. I

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didn’t know how to explain all of this, and I didn’t want my mom to get angry with me or call me a liar. I felt so ashamed.

There were many more incidents like this, but my darkest most painful memory was about my first cousin. When I was fourteen, he raped me while I slept when no one was home, and he continued to rape me.

The last time he raped me, I had just turned eighteen. He threatened me by telling me that if I told anyone, then it would be my fault for breaking up my family. It’s a memory that will not leave me.

During the summer of 2012, all of my cousins would get together at my grandma’s place in Window Rock, Arizona, so we could spend time together before we went back to school. But I didn’t want to be there because my cousin, Cedric, was there, but I wanted to see my younger cousins, so I stayed. Luckily, his girlfriend was with him, so I thought, he wouldn’t dare try anything, that sick fuck. I didn’t let anything get in the way of spending time with my little cousins; they are so funny when they all get together, and I enjoy them immensely. But I kept my guard up the entire time.

We have a tradition that we do with the little ones when it gets night time; we watch the scariest movie we know and turn off all the lights and make homemade popcorn.

So we were enjoying the night until my grandma called me to her room. She asked me, “Chel, can you go to the store for me and pick up my medicine? Take Cedric with you too.” I replied, “No! He’s drinking and smoking outside with his girlfriend and the boys.” Grandma pleaded, “Please? Just get the stuff I need because Cedric knows my card number. But don’t let him get anymore alcohol. Go on now.” My grandma reached for her debit card and handed it to me. I wish she had trusted me with it, but he was her first and favorite grandchild. My heart raced as I walked away from the bedroom and outside. I asked Cedric, “What’s Grandma’s pin number? She wants me to go to the store, and she said you know her card pin, so I need it. What is it?” He drunkenly said, “Oh! I’m gonna go with you, I need to get another 30 pack and snacks.” I shouted, “No! You’re drunk. I just want the pin. I’ll get the stuff you need for you.” Then he said, “No. You’re not even 21 yet. Plus you don’t know the pin number anyways. So I’m go-

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ing with you.” I was disgusted and afraid as I watched his drunken ass get up and move toward me. He slammed down one more beer and told his girlfriend and our other cousins he would be back. I tried to ask his girlfriend to come, but he told her to stay because she was too drunk, and of course, she obeyed.

He staggered over to Grandma’s Chevy Tahoe and got into the passenger side, and I got in behind the wheel. I drove about 30 minutes to the main highway on the bumpy dirt road. There was a huge silence between us: I didn’t speak, he didn’t speak, the music on the radio was the only sound. But I heard him drinking beer, and my heart pumped loudly in my ears. I was trying not to shake; I was scared, but I tried to stay cool and keep my focus on the road. After what seemed like hours, we finally made it to the store safely. I got my grandma’s medicine, he gets his 30 pack of Bud Light and snacks, but as soon as we got to the register, we were not allowed to buy anything because I was not 21. So the store refused to sell us the alcohol. He got very angry and began arguing with the cashier, and the store manager threatened to call the police if we didn’t leave. My cousin started yelling at me in the SUV, but I didn’t argue back. When he calmed down, he said to me calmly, “Let’s go to Gallup. That’s where the only store is that’s open, and Grandma needs her medicine. So let’s go.” The last thing I wanted to do was to go to Gallup with him, but it was getting late, and my grandma needed her medicine, so I had to go there. It was another 30 minute drive, so I told myself I was going to speed to get it over with quicker. Fortunately, there was silence between us again, all the way to Gallup.

When we got to Gallup, we stopped at Walmart. He brought the medicine first and told me to wait in the SUV. As I sat nervously in the vehicle, I desperately wanted to leave him there, just leave his stranded ass there. Suddenly, I started the vehicle, put the gear in drive, and just as I was going to break free, my first cousin came out of Walmart.

I put the vehicle back in park and waited for him. He got into the vehicle with his 30 pack and grocery bags, and I drove off back to Window Rock. I swear the 30 minute drive seemed like an eternity because this time he kept trying to talk to me. I wanted to ignore him, but he wouldn’t shut up. He opened his 30 pack and his fifth of Southern Comfort and drank it. He tried to offer me a shot, but I said, “No. I’m driving, you dumbass.” I think I may have made him angry, but he talked the whole way back to 82

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Window Rock. I didn’t say a word.

I was so relieved when we reached Window Rock, but I also had another 30 minute drive on the dirt roads back to my grandma’s place. I became impatient. As I made my way on the dirt roads, I drove faster over all the bumps and ridges in the road, and the car bounced and jerked. He was spilling his whiskey, and he yelled, “Slow down!” I wouldn’t listen, so he pulled the steering wheel from me and caused the car to run off the road in the middle of nowhere. He yanked the keys out of the ignition and yelled, “Slow the fuck down!” I agreed with him and said I would be more careful. Then he said, “I’m going to take a piss. Are you sure you don’t want a shot?” I said, “No. I just wanna get home.”

He had been gone for about ten minutes, and I started to become impatient when suddenly, my door flew open, and my first cousin grabbed me by my hair and threw me out of the driver’s side into the dirt. I tried to get up, but his strength was greater than mine because he was a large man. He picked me up, and tossed me into the backseat of the SUV. I screamed, but my screams didn’t matter because no one lived nearby and no one was driving on this dirt road this late at night. He climbed in the vehicle on top of me and grunting, pinned me down. His stinking breath blanketed my face as he said, “I won’t do this if you take a shot with me, okay?” I was crying and screamed, “No, I don’t want to. I want to go home! Stop it.” His last words were, “Take a shot with me. Or I will shove it down your throat for you.” I yelled, “No!” Then I spit in his face. He held both my arms up above me with one of his hands. Then he grabbed the Southern Comfort, drank it, and brought his face down to mine and spit the Southern Comfort in my mouth. As I choked, he kissed me harshly. It hurt. He kissed me over and over again, around my neck and my breasts. I was terrified and powerless, I used all the strength I had but I couldn’t shove him away. I felt weak. I cried. I bit his lip when he tried to kiss me again, and he slapped me so hard, I felt dizzy and dazed. There was a loud ringing in my ears. I stopped fighting. In that moment, he quickly unzipped my pants, pulled them off, and roughly shoved himself into me. My mind was screaming “When will this be over? I can’t move. I’m trapped. My head is pounding. My body is tearing apart.” I prayed to God to make it stop, but he didn’t; my poor prayer was not answered. I cried

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the entire time he violently rode my body.

Then all of a sudden he stopped, he was panting, and he slowly let me go, and rolled off of me. I kicked his face as he staggered out of the vehicle. I slammed the door and locked it hard. He banged on the vehicle to let him back in, but I hurriedly dressed myself and sped off in a huge cloud of dust. I drove so fast back to my grandma’s that I forgot about the bumps in the road. When I arrived at my grandma’s, everyone was asleep.

I sneaked into the bathroom and showered for a long time, trying to wash off all of him.

I couldn’t sleep, and I lay awake until morning and everyone got up. By that time, he was back at the house, and I could not bear to look at him. I left that afternoon.

Ten weeks went by, summer was over, and school had begun. I was excited to be back in school, but during my class periods, I started to feel sick. My boyfriend at that time was becoming very concerned. So, one day, we went to the Phoenix Indian Medical Center to see what was going on with me. Turns out, I was pregnant. My boyfriend and I were shocked. Deep down, I knew it wasn’t his because we always practiced safe sex. The whole time he was confused, trying to put things together. Then he asked me, “Did they say how far along are you?” I said, “No they didn’t.” For a few days, we talked about it, and eventually we had to tell his mom. She was so happy, but my boyfriend wasn’t. The three of us talked for a few hours about what we were going to do. Then my boyfriend said, “I just can’t have a baby now. I don’t want a baby at all. I don’t want this child to be born. I’m not ready to be a father.” My boyfriend’s mom was saddened, but it was up to him and me. And as much as I wanted to keep the baby, I couldn’t. I had to agree with my boyfriend. The next few days, my boyfriend found an abortion clinic, and I had three checkups there. By the last visit, I was no longer pregnant. The experience of it is too much to explain, and I will never forgive myself.

After that happened to me, I couldn’t function well in life, and I started drinking, smoking, doing drugs, and even tried to commit suicide. I dropped out of school because I had no focus. For two years, I struggled to get past it all, but I couldn’t continue to live this way any longer.

So I finally got help for myself. I spoke up and with support, pulled myself out of the

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dark and harmful place where I was stuck. I went to counseling and group sessions. I eventually got strong enough to report the rape to the police, and they are taking care of the case. I stopped taking anti-depressants and learned to live without them. And most important, I am back in college. I am not all better, but I am slowly getting there.

For me, it is literally one day at a time. When I think about everything that happened to me growing up, I still remember the faces of those men—every single one of them.

I still carry the memories and pain they have all caused me—my own uncles, cousins, grandpas, friends, and friends of family. The horrible part is that there were no strangers. I knew all of those men. And not only did they rape and molest me, they also did the same thing to my sisters and cousin-sisters. From two-years old to twenty-one, my life has been an unending cycle of fear I could not escape from. But finally, I was able to do what needed to be done. I took control of my own life, and each day I appreciate being alive and left alone—safe. Each day I live with the memory of all this tragedy, I choose not be the victim anymore. I choose to be strong.

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Vortex 2017 Poetry

A poet’s work is to name the unnamable, to point at frauds, to take sides, start arguments, shape the world, and stop it going to sleep. ~ Salman Rushdie

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Suitcase Family Montana Lorente - First Place I was a child bound to the road by a leather suitcase strap.

A small family made of boxes piled in the back of my father’s truck, only stopping for gas.

My desperation for a home covered me like sweat.

My brother and I dreamed of staying in one place longer then three months. Or even six. A home that abandoned wheels and a broken sunroof.

During the day I was motionless, a tiny forehead pressed against landscapes that escaped my Crayola imagination, marshes with trees draped in Spanish moss that summoned us with their wiry long arms, acres of grasslands pressed smooth under the overwhelming blue, the occasional cow pasture we could smell long after we closed our windows. At night, a bushel of brown hair matted against that same window, I dreamed of a bed, a place to call home.

We were a suitcase family. Dirty and worn, jumbled into a truck and lugged down a road so long we drove for years, an address book of names but no place to go.

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“The Poblano Sisters and Their Dog Chile Pepper”

Bonnie Lewis

Medium: Mixed/Collage, 12x12

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That Night Robert Lewis - Second Place That icy night in his room, Father half frozen, eyes swollen shut. Wind and snow beat against the red brick row house of the psychiatric ward.

I am eight.

The familiar cigar odor buried in his white shirt, sleeves rolled up baggy grey pants tie loose at his bull neck.

Behind his resting head his law school graduation books stacked on a small wooden shelf.

It’s hard to breathe in this thin room, a single cot, desk chair and shelf, the dark closet with no contents.

I am afraid to ask, afraid to know.

But no one speaks to me, as if I were deaf.

They cannot tell me lies; my eyes are witnesses.

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I listen to the hushed murmurs while staring at his battered face.

Pieces of that night are missing like a hockey player’s front teeth.

I strain to fill in the spaces: what did he want, what did he need? What happened?

Years later in a college classroom far from home, I am handed a note: “your father is sick.�

I remember his violent eruptions, his cursing and throwing objects.

I protected myself by not being visible.

A lonely bus ride through the night brings me home to his death.

He found relief from his head in the fumes in our garage.

No more excuses to explain, embarrassment or shame.

Just guilt about losing the pain.

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Numbers Jessica Warfle - Third Place My life has been reduced to numbers; The number of pills each morning (five).

The number of pills each night (ten).

The number of hours I lay awake each night (at least two).

The number of calories consumed daily (redacted for my sanity).

The number of hours I have for self-flagellation (four).

The number of words I try to get written each day (five hundred).

I wonder when I reduced myself to numbers, I wonder why I reduced myself to numbers, I squeeze and count before they can, Measuring myself on a scale.

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“Confirmation”

Melissa Schleuger

Medium: Mixed Media, 48x60

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UnWavering

Stephen Rubin - Honorable Mention Just behind the edge of shore lies a slim island of ancient sediment, a sandbar sliver within the tumultuous waters of the passing river. Cool denseness squeezes between my toes and around my feet as they sink into the sands. The sun, no longer with the intensity of the younger day, leads the sky beyond the shadows of silhouetting ridges of the far mountains.

A hawk drifts in the drafts of whirling evening winds circling. Swallows swooping then diving through opaque clouds of mosquitoes that shift across cooling air. Leaves of tall trees clatter, branches rattle filled with the chatter of chasing birds.

Frothing white caps of murky waves roll and splash into troughs then swirl to peak again. The arrogance of my presence, that of all men, diminished as if purged by the rushing waters.

The day ebbs into a fading crimson veil, I wade into warming sentiment, the unwavering essence to just be and with that the absolute of life.

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The Whirlwind from Hell Rosario Escarcega - Honorable Mention

I. The Myth

Around campfires and moonlight exhortations I’ve heard tales of a demon who searches for peccable innocents.

In the guise of a whirlwind it travels the earth seeking mischievous children to claim.

Children ignorant of sin, dumb to the counsel of elders.

Mama Lola, my grandmother, a teller of tales first told me, in warning, of this demon from hell.

NiĂąos pecables she called the children los que no saben y no hacen caso.

I still taste the words she spoke. Acrid and dire they painted terror across my awareness.

II. The Tale

A disobedient girl swept up by pleasures emotions she did not understand.

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A whirlwind raising dust and evil on its pathway to hell.

Beguiled and seduced by the devil, It’s just a dance, nothing more.

She followed not knowing her sin or her peril.

Solomente un baile nada más.

They found her body impaled on a cactus, Mama Lola told this tale and others as we toiled in her garden down in the earth with the beetles, the ants and the odious grubs.

III. The Garden

My grandmother’s pride and her joy the visual impact that it had on her friends.

Rain coated our street in bright hues, everything sparkled anew.

Our home, a garden kaleidoscope of color.

Rain muddied the sides of the streets and the garden.

It pooled in the ruts and amid the roses and lilies.

Mama Lola blessed rain a heaven sent gift for my garden.

My brother and I DIRT CLODS! A gift from mars (we had our own god).

Mama Lola read our intent, she admonished, don’t make trouble, don’t throw stones, don’t damage my garden.

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Don’t tempt the wrath of the devil.

Si Mama. We promised.

But the honor of Spring Street was ours to defend.

IV The Challenge

The enemy, my brothers’ first grade school mates, marched down our street, a detour, to sample the mud.

Across the street the challenge was set by our enemy, a row of trash cans a bastion to stave our assault.

The battle field drawn, the soldiers were ready, my brother, myself, Danny and Mike.

Our uncle our captain, just 20, our hero.

The courage of youth, street wise and smart.

Eye on the can, see the rock with your mind, follow through.

Wear two pants, two shirts, your goggles and helmet.

They will hurt you, don’t show it, don’t give, press them and they’ll run like babies.

We sighted the enemy as they rounded the corner onto our street, they marched to their bastion and readied for action.

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V. The Battle

Our army was ready with goggles, helmets and side bags of dirt clods.

No one was better, no one was truer at hurling our missiles and hitting the marks.

The battle ensued and the battle was over, the enemy fleeing back to Sesame Street.

Elated in victory we started for home, spattered with dirt clods, boasting our wounds.

VI. Dirt On Our Promise

We witnessed the carnage our battle had wrought.

There was dirt on the sidewalk, the driveway, the white picket fence Dirt on our grandmother’s flowers.

Oh shit!

The fear not apparent during battle now tainted our faces fixed there by the thought of our grandmother’s ire.

Don’t tempt the wrath of the devil.

Then, we spotted it, spinning at the end of the street raising dirt and debris, coming straight toward us at an ungodly speed.

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VII. Our Devil

The whirlwind, the demon coming to get us.

Across the street, up the driveway and into the carport we sped, but the back door was locked and the devil was on us.

We made the sign of the cross and prayed for salvation.

My brother’s fist shattered the window.

He opened the door.

We jumped into the house.

The carport was filled with dirt and debris and everything was tossed in a mess.

VIII. Redemption.

We stood in front of our uncle, his mother behind him.

Our only defense the devil made us do it.

Complicit, we knew his dilemma. He knew our plight.

He winked, we smiled, our grandmother frowned.

We were repentant, Mama Lola forgave us, but our food wasn’t as sweet for awhile.

We lost our war gear and our bikes for a week, and our battlefield in front of the garden.

We cleaned up our mess, an eye on the sky looking for signs of the whirlwind from hell.

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“Phoenix Rising”

Stephen Hoffman

Medium: Acrylic Size: 24” x 20”

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Saffron Dragonflies Sammi Mathur- Honorable Mention I was very young when we lived in Siligudi in an elegant bungalow, old British with large potted plants on a second floor veranda.

My handsome father, a Lieutenant Colonel in the Indian Army, and my beautiful mother were arranged in marriage. He was detached. She was devoted to our home and family as a superficial show of perfection. They both left me without leaving.

At six, my older brother was sent off to an eminent boys academy , and I was forbidden by father to leave the house after school.

For years, alone, I existed and read. Finally I ventured out onto the hidden road behind our home. It lead into the forest, the thick dark of Sal Khasi and Bihul trees. I was excited by the possibility of magic and danger beyond the mundane death of my lonely reality.

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The river traveled along side me as a companion, and a snake drove me into a pool of leaches as it threw its poisoned arguments in my path like a warning. Leaches attached themselves to my legs but saffron dragonflies walked on the river and steadied my mind as I stepped across rushing water on unsteady rocks.

Like a fugitive, I dreaded the walk back home, reluctant to come out of hiding, to arrive before I heard the Jeep in the drive. I removed the leaches with salt and blade and planned my next escape from my own anger that they never noticed I was gone, from the oblivion that was my childhood. Hoping to get caught, so that they would be present, even as jailers bringing me home.

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Vortex 2017 Plays and Scripts Writing for theatre is certainly different from writing an essay or any other kind of fiction or prose: it’s physical. You’re also telling a story, but sometimes the story isn’t exactly what you intend; maybe you uncover something you had no idea you were going to uncover. ~ Sam Shepard When people ask me if I went to film school I tell them, “No, I went to films.” ~ Quentin Tarantino

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POST TRAUMATIC Garrett Iannarelli First Place

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FADE IN: INT. CLASSROOM - FIRST DAY OF SCHOOL - MORNING Students sit attentively as their teacher, MR. JOHNSON, takes attendance on the first day of class.

One at a time students raise their hands as their names are called out.

A few students engage in side conversation while Mr. Johnson reviews his attendance log.

Suddenly an alarm sounds. An alarm for lockdown.

Mr. Johnson looks up confused. There was no lockdown drill scheduled for today. The students stare at him puzzled.

ADAM and JUSTIN are sitting closest to the door.

Adam is well dressed and clean cut. Underneath the desk, a glimpse of his Levi’s touching the top of new, bright white Nikes. Next to his feet sits his military style backpack. Justin sits next to him dressed in similar attire. They share a look, then Adam gets up to peer out of the window next to the door.

EXT. CLASSROOM - HALLWAY - MORNING Students are running around in a panic. Gun shots ring out in the distance.

INT. CLASSROOM - MORNING Adam and Justin both jump up. They lock the door and close the blinds before ushering their peers and teacher into the corner. Justin signals for everyone to be quiet.

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Gun shots continue to sound outside of the classroom. Students stare at each other quietly in fear.

Following the shots, it remains quiet outside for what feels like an eternity. The only noise is the deafening sound of the lockdown alarm.

Suddenly there is the sound of the classroom door trying to open. Someone on the on the other side jiggles the handle. With no answer, the stranger on the other side of the door softly knocks in a mocking manner.

Students inside hold their breath. It is silent for a few moments. It appears that whoever was trying to enter has left.

The ACTIVE SHOOTER outside the classroom begins pounding and kicking at the door in an attempt to get in. He pounds and kicks and works the door handle doing everything he can to break in.

Adam and Justin run quickly to the door. They begin to barricade it in order to protect their classmates. They motion to one another, but they do not speak. They push desks in front of the door and apply their body weight to add more pressure.

The door becomes still again.

Then gunshots. One. Two. Then more. Both Adam and Justin hit the floor in fear of the rounds coming through the door.

In slow motion the door clicks and begins to open.

The barricade has failed.

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The Active Shooter steps through the door way.

Adam looks to his left and Justin is gone. This doesn’t make sense.

Without hesitation, Adam bum-rushes the doorway, slamming into the Active Shooter and sends them both tumbling outside of the classroom. The gun fires off one round.

There is a long beat as students stare at one another.

Adam stumbles back inside, the sound of the lockdown alarm still blaring. He reaches out for a desk and collapses.

INT. - ADAM’S BEDROOM - FIRST DAY OF SCHOOL - 6:00AM Adam snaps awake to his screaming alarm clock. He’s sweating bullets in his bedroom at home. Bottles of prescription pills sit on the bedside table. A post-it note lies next to the bottles. The note reads: “Good luck on your first day. I love you.”

Adam smacks his alarm clock to shut it off. He sits up in bed and puts his face in his hands.

Adam takes a big sigh of relief.

INT. - ADAM’S KITCHEN - FIRST DAY OF SCHOOL - 6:15AM Adam starts the pot of coffee in his kitchen.

INT. - ADAM’S LIVING ROOM - FIRST DAY SCHOOL 6:20AM (POV shot from behind Adam) Adam stares at a wall covered with awards and medals. The camera focuses on pictures of his fallen Army buddies, one of 106

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which is Justin. The focus returns to the back of Adam’s head as he sips his coffee and stares intently at the wall.

FADE OUT.

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“Fog”

Peter Brandeis

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Showcase Arthur Spina Second Place

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109

FADE IN: EXT. HIGH SCHOOL CAFETERIA - DAY Above the cafeteria in a meek middle class high

school, a large recycled banner reads “Artistic Arts Competition.”

CUT TO: INT. CAFETERIA - DAY There is mostly open space except for a few tables set up that are numbered and labeled, no chairs and few people.

CU

Feet entering the doorway.

CUT TO:

CUT TO:

STEPHEN, appearing suddenly, smartly dressed, pauses momentary as if to make a dramatic appearance.

Project in hand, he arrogantly walks past the tables indifferently.

CUT TO: INT. CAFETERIA - DAY 110

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Upon reaching his space, STEPHEN notices his sign is crooked.

INT. CAFETERIA - DAY STEPHEN takes a moment to compare his sign with the others and straightens his out. Looking upon the

neighboring exhibit with disdain, STEPHEN snickers at what looks like an abstract, consisting of ordinary objects including a package of blue tape.

STEPHEN’S label proudly reads “CONTEMPORARY.” He gently begins to assess his package, which is some

sort of shipping container. Once opened, he peers into the elongated box.

CUT TO: POV - inside the box.

CUT TO: STEPHEN still with great care gently taps the box.

After a patient ordeal, it becomes evident that his coveted piece might be missing.

WIDE SHOT - WITH CONSIDERABLE DISTANCE Exasperation quickly turns to panic as STEPHEN peers

back inside the box, then to the table, and finally on the floor. No luck.

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CUSTEPHEN is completely out of control as he smashes and crumples the box with repeated beatings.

CU-

STEPHEN’S manicured hair becomes undone.

CU-

His bow tie comes off and his shirt is now untucked.

CUBox completely destroyed, STEPHEN looks up and around

without any regard for onlookers. He looks back at his box now on the floor and contemplates his WORK. CUT TO BLACK. WIDE SHOT-CAMERA PANS Slowly we see the neighboring display, slowly the

camera pans to reveal STEPHEN’S label crooked again.

His sign that read “CONTEMPORARY” is now crossed out and replaced by the words “MODERN ART.” ZOOM OUTThe box is now haphazardly blue-taped back together above the marker.

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CU-

Box? CU-

STEPHEN, somewhat embarrassed but smiling, is satisfied.

In this moment STEPHEN is delighted and his true nature is revealed.

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Hell for the Company Robin Hartwell Third Place

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Cast GRACE:

Young woman, early to mid-20s, passionate and rowdy.

SAMMY:

Young woman, early to mid-20s, laid back and caring.

JUSTICE:

Young woman, early to mid-20s, sensible and determined.

DEVIL:

A demon on the job. Male, but could be played by either sex.

GOD:

The powerful, male-sounding voice of God, only heard, never seen.

Place Hell.

The overall area is red and threatening, but the clearing the women are in is safer looking, possibly being lit with cooler or more neutral lights. At rise, Sammy sits patiently, waiting for her sisters to wake. Her sisters, Grace and Justice, lay next to her.

GRACE (slowly waking up) Ugh….

SAMMY Hi, Grace!

GRACE Sammy? Is this place on fire?

SAMMY (soothingly) No, don’t worry. We’re fine…probably.

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Justice wakes with Grace’s shout, and when she sees where she is, she scrambles to her feet.

JUSTICE Where am I? Sammy, Grace, what’s going on?

GRACE I don’t know. I just woke up and everything’s on fire.

SAMMY Now, don’t panic, but I think we might be in Hell.

The two sisters stare at Sammy.

GRACE Don’t panic?

JUSTICE Hell?

SAMMY (holding brochure) See, the thing that tipped me off was the flames, and also I found this brochure that says: “Welcome to Hell, Please Don’t Enjoy Your Stay.”

Justice and Grace take the brochure and look at it.

GRACE (reading from brochure) …a hundred and one not-so-fun things to do in Hell…

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SAMMY Can either of you remember how we died? I vaguely remember being in a car, but otherwise I’ve got nothing.

JUSTICE We can’t be dead dead, can we? I don’t feel dead.

GRACE (throwing the brochure over her shoulder.)

Forget that, why are we in Hell? I thought we’ve been pretty good people.

SAMMY Yeah, I won’t pretend I’ve been perfect, but I’ve tried to lead a good life.

JUSTICE Is there something we’re forgetting? None of us has ever, like, murdered people, right?

GRACE (thinking) No, I think I’d remember that. Maybe it’s like a guilt-by-association thing? Maybe we accidentally helped a murderer once.

JUSTICE And we got sent to Hell for it? That seems harsh.

SAMMY Maybe it was a clerical error.

Grace and Justice stare at her.

JUSTICE

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(teasingly) Shut up, Sammy.

GRACE You’re so stupid.

SAMMY (defensively) What? I don’t know! Do you guys know how Hell works?

GRACE (to Justice) You know what’s weird, though?

JUSTICE (sarcastically) No, what about this situation is weird to you, Grace?

GRACE If we’re in Hell, there’s a distinct lack of, like, torture happening.

SAMMY Well, I for one am thankful for that.

JUSTICE Yeah, this is a lot more laid back than I would’ve expected. Maybe there’s been a mistake. Do you think there’s someone we could talk to?

GRACE Is it a good idea to call attention to ourselves?

SAMMY

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Well, we’ve got nothing to lose at this point.

JUSTICE I suppose they can’t send us to Hell twice. Is there a reception desk or something?

GRACE I’ll handle this.

(Grace takes a deep breath and yells.)

Can we get some service over here?

Devil enters carrying a clipboard.

DEVIL Can I help you?

SAMMY (amused, gesturing to Grace) She used to do that at Applebee’s, too.

JUSTICE Maybe you’re in Hell for harassing waiters.

GRACE (crossing to the Devil) Hi, yeah, are you the Devil?

DEVIL Goodness no; I’m just a lowly demon.

GRACE

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Okay, but my sisters and I are definitely in Hell?

DEVIL Yep! JUSTICE We think there’s been some sort of mistake.

DEVIL What seems to be the problem?

GRACE We’re not feeling particularly tortured.

SAMMY I’m actually having a great time.

DEVIL (frowning and looking at the clipboard) Hmm. That is unusual. What demon was assigned to torture you?

JUSTICE None.

SAMMY We just woke up here.

GRACE Can we talk to your supervisor?

JUSTICE Is your supervisor the Devil?

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GRACE Can we talk to the Devil?

DEVIL Well, I’m afraid the Devil is much too busy right now.

SAMMY That makes sense. (to Justice) He is a running a business.

DEVIL I could get you on the line with God, though.

GRACE (turning back to her sisters) Do we want to talk to God? SAMMY Yes, please.

JUSTICE Yeah, could you get God on the line for us?

DEVIL Not a problem! Wait here for just a second.

Devil exits stage.

GRACE Are you going to bring us a phone, or…

(Realizing he can’t hear her, she turns back to her sisters.)

The customer service in this place is terrible.

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JUSTICE Well, it is Hell.

SAMMY How long do you think it takes to call God? GOD (a disembodied voice) Hello, my children.

The moment the voice is heard, the women are illuminated by a holy beam of light. It can also be accompanied by a brief musical cue. The sisters jump and look toward the light.

SAMMY (startled) Oh my God! GOD Yes, I Am. GRACE You’re God? GOD I am, who I am.

JUSTICE It’s just that you sound exactly like our dad.

GOD I am everyone’s dad.

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SAMMY No, I mean, our real, earth dad. The biological one.

GOD I sound like everyone’s father.

GRACE Wait, so, no matter who you talk to, you sound like their dad?

GOD Yes, my child.

GRACE Well, that’s bullshit.

JUSTICE Grace! Don’t swear at God! GRACE Oh, he’s heard it before. (to God) If my girlfriend and I adopted a kid, whose voice would they hear?

GOD It was humankind that decided I needed a voice. It was they who decided that voice should be male.

GRACE Okay, so what, you’re just whatever people believe you are?

GOD If that’s what you believe.

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GRACE Are you messing with me?

GOD Do you believe I am?

GRACE (deeply annoyed, stepping forward) I swear to God I’ll— GOD Yes, you do.

Justice and Sammy quickly grab her and attempt to soothe and restrain her with soft shushing sounds, like you would with a dog afraid of fireworks.

JUSTICE Grace, you can’t fight God! GRACE I can and will! We’re dead and in Hell, Justice! I’m long past both the frying pan and the fire; I’ve got nothing to lose! And I’ve got some beef with God! SAMMY (to self ) I think a part of me always knew it’d end like this.

GRACE He sent us to Hell, which I’m not thrilled about, and it’s not the 1950s, so I really don’t think I can let the whole “mega-dad” thing slide, and he’s really let us dick up the earth lately.

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JUSTICE Grace! You’ve lost your talk-to-god privileges.

GRACE Oh, come on!

SAMMY Let us handle this, okay?

Sammy gives Grace an encouraging double-thumbs-up. Grace makes a face and goes to the back to sulk.

JUSTICE So, um, hello Mr. God, it’s nice to meet you. I’m Justice. These are my sisters Samantha…

SAMMY Hi! Big fan of your work.

JUSTICE (con’t) …and Grace, who you’ve met, and we were just wondering, uh, why we’re in Hell?

SAMMY I’m kind of disappointed that there is a Hell, honestly. I was hoping it’d be more of a “que sera, sera” sort of deal.

JUSTICE (to Sammy) Well, depending on the theology…

GOD You aren’t meant to be in Hell.

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JUSTICE Excuse me?

SAMMY Could you say that again, Sir? GOD You were not the ones meant to be sent here.

GRACE Then we’re in Hell because?

GOD It appears to have been a clerical error.

GRACE (exasperated) Oh, come on!

GOD Do not be afraid, my child. It’s a simple matter of paperwork and can easily be fixed.

Devil re-enters.

DEVIL Hey, you three, you talked to the big guy yet?

GOD Yes, they have.

DEVIL (Devil looks up) Oh! Hey, champ.

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(to the sisters) So, it’s the man driving the car that crashed into you that’s supposed to be here. You kids are meant to be upstairs.

JUSTICE The car that…then we really died?

DEVIL Them’s the breaks.

GRACE Do you want to maybe show a little more respect for the dead here, buddy?

DEVIL (taking a careful step back) But on the bright side, at least you aren’t supposed to be down here.

SAMMY How did it happen?

JUSTICE I can remember… I can remember being in a car and…

DEVIL You’ll have a lot of time to remember the details. Don’t try to force it now. It’s a lot to process, and your heads will just explode.

Justice reacts very badly to this.

DEVIL (con’t) I didn’t mean literally. Just calm down, okay? The important thing is, it wasn’t legally your fault.

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GRACE (deeply sarcastic, still ready to fight the Devil) Oh, thank God we didn’t break the law, for a second I was almost worried.

DEVIL Look, I just work here, okay?

JUSTICE (on the edge of freaking out) I really don’t know how to deal with this. I’ve experience dealing with death from, like, the other side? The living side. (to Sammy) You seem to be doing all right.

SAMMY I sort of came to terms with things when I woke up here, honestly. I thought we were dead and in Hell, so if anything, things are looking up.

GRACE Could you stop being so Zen for once in your goddamn life? Look at your sisters; we’re having breakdowns. Can’t you just have a nice, friendly existential crisis like a normal person?

DEVIL There’ll be all the time in the universe for existential crises when you reach your eternal resting place, which, you know is not here, and I’ve really got work to be doing, so if you don’t mind…

GRACE We can go?

DEVIL Yep!

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SAMMY We can just walk out of Hell?

DEVIL (pointing to offstage right) Door’s over there.

GRACE There’s a door out of Hell?

DEVIL Yep, with the big neon exit sign.

JUSTICE (taking a deep breath) Okay, there’s a lot going on right now, so I’m just going to skip to the final stage of grief here.

Grace, although rather annoyed by the ‘neon exit sign’ thing, goes to comfort Justice.

Sammy crosses to talk personally to the devil.

SAMMY Hey, I don’t think we ever caught your name?

DEVIL I’m Gary.

SAMMY (with a friendly wave) Hi, Gary! I was just wondering, what’s going to happen to the person who crashed into us?

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DEVIL He’ll come down here instead of you three.

SAMMY Then we’re sending someone to Hell?

DEVIL We have to keep the books balanced.

A pause. The sisters look at each other.

SAMMY I… I really don’t feel good about that.

GRACE But he, like, deserves it, right? The accident was his fault.

DEVIL Technically, yes.

GRACE Technically? You’ll put someone in Hell for a technicality?

GOD (interjecting suddenly) If that’s what you belie— GRACE (interrupting) Oh, do NOT start with me! When I get up there, you and I are having some words.

GOD The person in question believes he is to blame for your deaths.

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DEVIL I’m as sympathetic as the next guy. Mistakes happen. But if someone thinks he deserves to be down here… I mean, I’m certainly not going to argue, you know?

SAMMY So because the three of us died in an accident that was only technically his fault, he’s going to send himself to Hell forever?

GOD It wouldn’t be forever.

DEVIL An eternity is generally overkill, if you’ll pardon the expression. And really, having everyone since the dawn of time down here forever is a logistical nightmare.

JUSTICE How long would it be?

DEVIL (checking his clipboard) Well, it was only an accident on his part, and this is his only major grievance, so it’d only be about three human years.

GRACE Great, we’re worth a year each.

SAMMY Just three years?

DEVIL Yup.

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SAMMY What if I— GRACE and JUSTICE (interrupting in unison) NO! SAMMY (to the Devil) If we just did, like, a swapsies…

JUSTICE Samantha!

SAMMY It’s only three years!

JUSTICE In Hell!

GRACE Sammy, you’ve had a lot of bad ideas, but this one might be the worst.

SAMMY What am I supposed to do, just let someone go to Hell because of me?

JUSTICE We’re not saying that, we’re just not going to let our sister stay in Hell for three years!

DEVIL (to self, underneath the arguing) Yikes!

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SAMMY That’s exactly what you’re saying! That guy was already going to send himself to Hell for our deaths, don’t you think that’s punishment enough?

GRACE That’s not your decision! It’s up to…

(She points at the Devil and upward toward God.) …these clowns. And as much as I’d love to piss them off— JUSTICE (interrupting) It’s not going to matter what we want when Grace gets us sent to Hell for calling God a clown!

SAMMY (to Grace) Come on, it’ll be just like when I went to detention for you in fifth grade, remember?

JUSTICE Yeah, and you shouldn’t have done that either! Look how Grace turned out, she’s in Hell now!

GRACE Okay, sassy-pants, we’re all in Hell now, and that wasn’t technically my fault.

GOD (loud, with an almighty echo) IF I MAY INTERRUPT! The women freeze.

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DEVIL Oh, thank God. GOD If you wanted to do this— GRACE (interrupting God) Don’t encourage her!

(She points toward Him.) You’re on thin ice, buddy.

SAMMY Then I could do it?

GOD If it’s of your own free will, then yes, you may serve the three years in his place then rejoin your sisters when they’re done.

GRACE This is unbelievable. (to the Devil) Don’t you have anything to say about this?

DEVIL No, I’m into it. This is Hell; we appreciate a good loophole down here.

JUSTICE Okay, Sammy, listen, how about this. What if instead of three years for one person, it was one year for three people?

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Her sisters turn to argue but she continues without pause.

JUSTICE (Cont.)

Now hear me out. It’d be pretty weird going to heaven knowing we’re the reason some guy’s in Hell. And we obviously can’t let Sammy stay here alone… (pointing to Sammy) Don’t argue, Sammy, we aren’t doing it. But a year…we can manage that, right?

GRACE (to the Devil) How bad is Hell?

DEVIL Have you ever worked retail?

The three women inhale sharply.

GRACE Okay, well, if that’s the worst, but one year? That’s not bad. We can manage a year.

JUSTICE Then you’re in?

GRACE Well, obviously. Don’t get me wrong, I think this is a dumb idea, and you’re both dumb for suggesting it, and I will, quite literally, give you hell for it. But no way am I letting you morons stay down here alone.

While Grace and Justice talk, Sammy retrieves the brochure.

SAMMY It won’t be that bad, guys. Look, they’ve got mini-golf down here.

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JUSTICE Oh, that’s fun.

GOD Are you three decided?

The sisters look at each other.

GRACE Yup. JUSTICE We’d like to stay here, please.

SAMMY Thank you.

DEVIL (gesturing to offstage left) Well then, if you’d like to come this way, I’ll show you to your rooms.

JUSTICE (as she exits) Oh, we get rooms, guys.

GRACE (following Justice) Do you think it’s too optimistic to hope for bunk beds?

Justice and Grace exit. Sammy starts to follow.

GOD Samantha?

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Sammy stops and looks upward toward God. SAMMY Yes, Sir? GOD It’s a very selfless thing you and your sisters have done. I’ll be watching over you three.

SAMMY Thank you, Sir. GOD Goodbye, Samantha.

Sammy exits after her sisters. The Devil looks up at God with a mischievous smile.

DEVIL Got your eye on another one, huh?

GOD Perhaps.

DEVIL Don’t get ahead of yourself, big guy! I’ve got them for a year. I might convince one of them to stay.

GOD (with a hint of a challenge) I don’t think so.

The Devil laughs good-naturedly and, going back to his work, exits left.

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“Apocalyptic Certainty”

Wallace Duncan

Medium: Digital Photography

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Me or Her Aaron Wilson

Honorable Mention

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INT. WHITE VOID

DR. PRICE (V.O.)

When you first came to me, you had the worst case of Dissociative Identity Disorder I’d ever seen.

Twenty-seven distinct personalities, all sharing your body.

The blinding light lifts to reveal CLARA’s crumpled

form on the floor. We ease in on her as the voice-over continues.

DR. PRICE (V.O.) (CONT’D)

Now you’ve gotten to know the roommates, they’ve grown to trust each other, we’ve addressed their issues, and now they’ve merged back with your core self.

All but the one.

CLARA (V.O.) DR. PRICE (V.O.)

Has she come out since we last met? Ivy?

No.

CLARA (V.O.)

DR. PRICE (V.O.)

You think we could get her to come out and talk? (nervous beat)

We’ve got to talk to her sometime Clara. She’s been carrying something for a very long time.

It’s time to let it go.

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Clara’s eyes open. She painfully lifts herself to her feet. As she turns, a sound rises slowly from behind: Footsteps! She whips around to see a dark figure

approaching. Clara draws back a step as her mirror image is stopped by an invisible barrier: It’s an actual mirror.

Where am I?

CLARA IVY

Where are you? Only where you’ve imprisoned me. You think you can just keep me in here? After all I’ve done for you?

CLARA

Where’s Dr. Price? Why can’t I hear him?

IVY

You’re still seeing that quack? See, that’s why you need me at the wheel. If I’d been in control, he’d never have sent the others away.

CLARA

They’re still here! They’re a part of me, and so are you!

You? How could I be you?

IVY

You’re weak, disgusting! You don’t deserve to be the dominant. I carry all your burdens. Always have! And believe me, you’re the biggest burden of them all.

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CLARA

Is that why you try to kill me? Why every time I wake up, having lost hours, days? Every time covered in cuts and bruises?

IVY

Bruises are your father’s department.

Clara swings at Ivy’s indignant face, stopped only by the mirror.

CLARA

How dare you! Yes, my father had his faults, but he’s changed. More than I can say for you. He was just as broken as I was after mom died.

IVY

(undercurrent of menace) Careful there. You have no idea what you’re talking about.

CLARA

(deep concern) What do you mean?

IVY

Ah! No, no, no. You’re not ready for that one.

CLARA

What are you keeping from me, Ivy? This isn’t about the abuse. This is something else.

IVY

(looks back with a cunning smile)

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Maybe you are ready. This one I can’t take back. If I tell you, you’ll beg me to take control.

CLARA

Just tell me.

IVY

Fine.

You were five years old. Asleep in your bed. You woke to screaming. Afraid to go look, but it only got louder. So you snuck downstairs.

The screaming was unbearable. Somehow you had to stop

it!Then there was mom standing in the kitchen, and dad standing in front of her. He didn’t see you, but you stood and watched, as your father took a knife from the drawer and murdered your mother.

Clara reels from shock.

IVY (CONT’D)

This was where we met. Your whole world shattered

before your eyes, nowhere to run. So you just left,

out of your body, into the wall, somewhere else, and then I was born. I stood there as he dragged our

mother across the kitchen. There was nothing I could do but remember and wait, until a time when I was strong enough, a time when you were ready. A time like now.

CLARA

(glances up shocked and overcome) IVY

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you unless you knew why.

CLARA

(still numb with shock) Wait, what are you saying?

Revenge, Clara!

IVY

You knew where this was going. I’m going to do to him, what he did to our mother. It’s the only cure to the pain. I’ve carried this my entire life. Now finally, it’s time for some justice.

CLARA

I’m not going to kill my dad!

IVY

You think you can just live with this? You still live at home. You think you can even look the man in the eye? You don’t have to kill anyone. But I can.

I could run.

CLARA IVY

Typical Clara! Always running away. You and your quack doctor want to solve this thing? This is how you do

it. You won’t take any of the blame. This one’s all on me.

CLARA

Look. You may think I need you, but I don’t. I’m not killing my father, and I’m sure as hell not letting

you do it. This is something I’ve got to do on my own.

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Clara turns and walks away leaving Ivy behind. She has a growing look of relief and contentment on her face.

Smack! She hits an unseen barrier. A figure steps into frame on the other side of the glass. Ivy lets out a vindictive grin.

IVY

Just because you made me, doesn’t mean I need you.

Goodbye, Clara.

Ivy walks out of frame, leaving Clara screaming behind the glass. She draws her arm back in a fist and hits the glass forming a large CRACK.

FADE TO BLACK.

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Carol the Cat Lady Serena Primeau Honorable Mention

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Character List CAROL:

the cat lady

ALLISON:

Carol’s friend

MUFFINS:

mean kitty

PONCHO:

other mean kitty

OLIVER:

sweet kitty

DYLAN:

Carol’s love interest

PRIEST:

a priest Scene 1

Lights up as Carol enters her apartment.

CAROL I’m home! Where are my babies?

Three cats enter the living room while meowing.

CAROL There you are! Are you guys hungry? Of course you are! Here you go.

Phone rings.

CAROL (picks up phone) Hello?

ALLISON (voice over) Hey, Carol. I have great news! So you know that online dating website I signed you up for?

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CAROL What? No. ALLISON Well, anyways the page you set up.

CAROL You mean the one you set up?

ALLISON Whatever. Anyway, someone said he’s interested and…well… I kind of set you up on a date!

CAROL What? I don’t want to go on a blind date!

ALLISON It won’t be blind if I send you a picture of him. He’s actually really attractive and—

CAROL (interrupting) I don’t care. I’m not going. I don’t need to go. I’m fine.

ALLISON Carol, you’re thirty-years-old, and your only motivation to get up in the morning is to go to the store to buy the new One Direction albums. And you’re twice their age and they’re not even that good.

CAROL Excuse me. They’re not just for me. My cats love them, too!

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ALLISON You act as if your cats are people. This is just one more reason why you should go out on that date.

CAROL (sighs) Even If I did decide to go on the date, which I probably won’t, when was he thinking of going?

ALLISON This Saturday.

CAROL But that’s Muffins’ birthday!

ALLISON Oh my God, Carol. Just go on the date!

Call ends and Carol hangs up phone.

CAROL (to cats) I guess one date couldn’t hurt, right? I still love you guys more!

Scene 2 Lights up in Carol’s apartment. All three cats enter the living room.

MUFFINS She’s getting on my last nerve.

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PONCHO Same.

MUFFINS Really, a birthday party for me? Like seriously?

OLIVER What do you mean? I love her. It’s so nice that she’s celebrating your birthday, don’t you think?

PONCHO It’s not even the actual day he was born on, moron.

MUFFINS Ugh, I just want to get away from her. She’s way too obsessive toward us.

OLIVER It’s just because she cares about us.

PONCHO Yeah, a little too much.

Poncho and Muffins exit.

OLIVER I hope this guy she’s going out with doesn’t take too much of her time.

Scene 3 Lights up on the interior of a restaurant as Carol enters.

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CAROL (to herself) Okay, just be cool. (walks over to table) Um, are you Dylan?

DYLAN (stands to greet her) Yes, and you must be Carol. Have a seat.

CAROL Thank you.

Scene 4 Lights up as Carol and Dylan enter her apartment. They’re laughing.

CAROL I actually had a lot of fun tonight.

DYLAN Me too. Did you think you wouldn’t?

CAROL No, it’s just I haven’t gone out with someone who’s made me so happy in such a short period of time.

DYLAN (stepping closer to Carol) I know exactly what you mean.

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Oliver enters through a cat door. Dylan and Carol lean in for a kiss, but Dylan sneezes.

CAROL Bless you!

DYLAN (pointing at Oliver) Thanks… uh, is that a cat?

CAROL Yes, this is Oliver. Oliver, meet Dylan.

DYLAN Hi… (sneezes) …Oliver.

CAROL Are you coming down with something?

DYLAN No, no. It’s your cat.

CAROL Cats. I have cats. Three of them actually. Muffins, Poncho, and Oliver.

DYLAN (sneezes) Well, I don’t know if you could tell, but I am very, very allergic to cats.

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CAROL Oh no! I didn’t realize. I’m so sorry. I knew this was a bad idea.

DYLAN No it’s perfectly… (sneezes) …fine CAROL See! DYLAN Really, Carol, it’s not a big deal. But I would really like take you out again.

CAROL Okay. I’d like that, too!

DYLAN Goodnight.

Dylan exits CAROL (waving after him) Goodnight.

Scene 5 Lights up as all three cats enter the living room.

OLIVER I don’t like him.

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PONCHO I think he’s great for her.

MUFFINS Me too. Soon enough we’ll be out of this house, and she’ll be out of our fur!

PONCHO Finally!

OLIVER What do you mean?

MUFFINS I mean if she falls in love with him, she’s going to have to get rid of us. Didn’t you see the way he sneezed when you got near him? He’s too allergic to us. If they’re going to take their relationship to the next level, then we can’t be around them.

OLIVER He said he was fine though.

PONCHO For now.

MUFFINS He won’t be able to keep it up. Sooner or later he’s going want us gone and we will gladly do so!

PONCHO I’d like to watch him try!

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Muffins and Poncho exit laughing.

OLIVER But I don’t want him to take her away from me.

Scene 6 Lights up as Carol and Dylan talk in the living room.

DYLAN Carol, there’s something I want to tell you.

CAROL Yes? DYLAN We’ve been together for a while, and I think it’s time we should be together together.

CAROL What are you saying, Dylan?

DYLAN Carol, will you marry me?

He kneels down and pulls out a box, opens it. It’s empty.

CAROL Oh, Dylan! (looks in box) Um, Dylan. It’s empty.

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DYLAN What?

Oliver is in the background and appears to be choking then he spits up the missing ring.

CAROL Oliver! Bad! DYLAN That… (sneezes) ...stupid… (sneezes) ….cat! I can’t stand them! I can’t take this anymore!

CAROL I’m sorry it was an accident.

DYLAN It isn’t your fault, Carol, but those cats of yours… (sneezes) …if you’re going to marry me, I’m afraid they’re going to have to go.

CAROL (looks at Oliver then back at Dylan) But… DYLAN Yes or no?

Allison’s voice can be heard saying: “Come on Carol. You know what you need to do. You’ll be so much better off without those cats. Besides he’s good for you.

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You know he is. Just listen to me. I haven’t been wrong so far.”

CAROL (sighs) Yes. DYLAN (hugs Carol) I love you!

CAROL I… love you, too.

Oliver walks off sad.

Scene 7 Lights up in the living room as the three cats come in.

OLIVER I can’t believe she’s giving us up.

PONCHO Well, believe it because it’s happening!

MUFFINS I can’t wait. In less than twenty-four hours, she’ll be getting married, and we’ll be on our way to a new home.

PONCHO Whoop, whoop!

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OLIVER It’s not fair! I thought she loved us.

MUFFINS Loved.

Scene 8 Lights up with Carol standing in her wedding dress in front of mirror.

CAROL What am I doing? Is this really what I want? Don’t be dumb, of course it is. I… couldn’t be happier…

Allison walks in.

ALLISON They’re ready for you. Goodness, Carol. You look beautiful!

CAROL Thank you.

They exit.

Scene 9 Lights up on the Priest, Carol, and Dylan at the altar.

PRIEST Do you take this woman to be your lawfully wedded wife?

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DYLAN I do.

PRIEST Do you take this man to be your lawfully wedded husband?

CAROL I… I… can’t! I’m so sorry!

Carol runs off stage DYLAN Carol!

Scene 10 Lights up as Oliver sits alone in a different apartment.

PONCHO Get over it already, Oliver. It’s not like she’s the only person who can give you food.

MUFFINS Just forget it. He hasn’t meowed since we left. Let him dwell on it if he wants.

What do I care? I’ve got everything I need right here. Everything has gone just as planned.

Carol runs in.

CAROL My babies, come to Mama!

Carol brings cats in for a hug.

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OLIVER I knew you’d come back!!

MUFFINS and PONCHO (in unison) NOOOOOOO!!!

Lights off.

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“Flowers and Stripes”

Joyce Erbach

Medium: Oil, 29x24

Art

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Writers’ and Artists’ Personal Statements Kevin Abblett I am a 38 year old returning student, and I am in my final semester here at Scottsdale Community College. I am majoring in Religious History and will be transferring to a university in the fall. I am a writer and a visual artist and hope to someday have a job teaching at the collegiate level. I dropped out of high school in my junior year, and getting back in school has proven to be one of the most rewarding and reinvigorating decisions that I’ve made in my adult life. I submitted art and writing to Vortex in my first year, and I am honored to be submitting my work again this year.

Eleanor Babbitt Even though I have an extensive educational background in fine art, I am a most fortune person being an artist of painting who enjoys and grows everyday that I paint.

My aim is to recreate images that effect uplifting, magical, unique paintings, which have a vivid and colorful intensity: this captures the viewer and transforms a room.

Peter Brandeis How does one transition from the stressful New York City business environment to a laidback Arizona lifestyle? I picked up a camera and spent 10 years in Roger Palmenberg’s portrait photography classes (perhaps Roger will give me a passing grade one of these years), and I learned how to capture that magical moment. I make those around me happy by sharing the finished prints.

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Robert Buchanan I am a creative writing student at Scottsdale Community College. I am happily retired from a career as a business executive and now develop my craft to write on my life experiences.

Gloria Langer “Spirit and Matter� is a 3D assemblage. My idea was to express the multidimensionality of both worlds and their interactive relationship. Both Spirit and Matter exist in the same space and time, are connected, interdependent and ambivalent. My artwork is a reflection on the present, the world we live in, and the fabric of our individual lives where harmony and conflict coexist.

Kathy Dioguardi I find that the most interesting part of creating a painting is thinking about the impact it might have on a viewer. Although the technical aspects are always a challenge, I enjoy considering what story someone might tell themselves about the piece. How will it impact someone looking at it? What feelings or memories might the piece touch upon? And, from a personal perspective, what thoughts are in my mind as I consider the elements I ultimately choose to include? Is there intent or is it a series of serendipitous choices? It is very hard to say. Inspiration comes from many sources: my own experiences, the stories people have told me, what I have read, music I have heard, places I have been and experiences with nature have each contributed to the art I create.

Wallace Duncan I am an ex-landscape photographer who has spent the past few years exploring and photographing the great outdoors of Arizona. Since last August, I’ve been exploring the fascinating aspects of portrait and fashion photography by taking classes at Scottsdale Community College.

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Joyce Erbach I would like my art to uplift the spirit and emotional needs of the artist and those who observe my work. Now more than ever, we need a bit of cheerfulness in our lives.

Rosario Escarcega I enjoy the memories of my childhood and my picturesque grandmother, Mama Lola.

Judy Feldman When imagining and creating a painting, I want to create a cozy place where viewers would like to spend some time. Often, these places are influenced by memories of my visits to France, as well as travels to other countries. Sometimes, my dog Cleo or another four-legged friend will find its way into a painting!

Barbara Goldberg My art reflects my love of color and minimalistic abstraction. I paint with acrylics as well as multi media elements. Each piece can take months to produce as they have thick textures and multiple layers. “When I face the canvas, I know exactly where the journey will start. Although my plan is clear from the beginning, I always end up in a different place: just like our lives. Although not intentional, you can see the common thread in all of my pieces. There is always turmoil or movement, and the colors are mixed in a way that they can never be reproduced. The work is simple yet complicated at the same time. Like our lives…”

William Goren I am a senior citizen who has taken art classes at Scottsdale Community College for more than ten years. I received my BS in Mechanical Engineering at the age of 22 in 1967 and worked as an Aerospace Engineer for 45 years. Now that I’m retired, I can pursue my passion for sculpture. I am a SCC Phi Theta Kappa and proud of it.

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Ethan Haddad Many people I have spoken to believe that photography is a simple art, thanks to digital images being so prevalent and accessible. With my film work, I try to create images that are outside of the norm, with effects from chemistry that are next to impossible to achieve with Photoshop. What I have submitted is a good example of my work with traditional film images, and the alternative process known as Mordancage. Each image I make with this process is a unique experience and has made me think about my photography from a different angle. After removing emulsion by hand, I doubt that I will ever see photo manipulation the same.

Robin Hartwell I have been writing for as long as I can remember. I first learned how to write scripts in high school, and instantly fell in love with the format. My dream for my future is to be able to create and tell stories professionally.

Stephen Hoffman To participate in life is my thrust each day, exploring, understanding, expanding, creating adventures in discovering all that the world of art has to offer. After spending 40 years in the art of dentistry creating beautiful miniature, precise, smooth, and complex works of art, I have found a passion for large and textured sculptural pieces influenced by Giacometti. I am combining my work in metal with that of the painter Egon Shiele. Through classes given at SCC, my work becomes multidisciplined.

Garrett Iannarelli I am currently pursuing my Associates in Motion Picture Production with a certificate in Screenwriting here at SCC. I’m on track to graduate this coming December, and plan to continue on at the university level to complete my BA.

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Bonnie Lewis I am deeply honored and extremely excited that my mixed media artwork “Walking to Nowhere”, has been chosen for the cover of Vortex 2017. My work is usually narrative, sometimes whimsical, sometimes surreal, and sometimes mysterious. To be honest, the stories they tell are often mysterious to even me!! I love the challenge of blending the processes of painting, drawing, photography and collage and then re-mixing and rearranging these layers of visual elements to create something interesting as well as artistic. I hope my work continues to evolve and change but continues leaving the viewer with a sense of intimacy, wonder....and often times a smile.

Robert Lewis I am a retired ophthalmologist who was brought to The Valley in 1969 to serve at Luke AFB. I established a large flourishing practice in Tempe, taught at U of A medical school, and was past president of the Phoenix Ophthalmological Society. I had many unique experiences, and I feel that now is the time to explore and expose how they influenced my feelings and life’s decisions through writing. With the freedom of retirement, the skills and support of SCC and its remarkable creative writing courses, I am able to dig deeper into these experiences and release the pent up questions, sadness, love, and regrets I had buried under daily chores. “Later,” I kept saying. “Later.”

Montana Lorente Hi, I’m a first year college student. I’m 18 and have been writing for a little over four years now. Let me tell you, it is the most difficult thing I’ve ever done.

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Samreena Mathur I am a student in the Creative Writing Program at SCC. I have three children, and I was a stay at home mother for ten years. I joined the program when my youngest child started school. I have been writing for decades but never thought I would do anything with that interest. Since joining the program, I have developed a passion for the craft and aspire to stay in the creative writing arts arena, as a student, and one day as a professional writer.

Antha Perkins I am a computer programmer with a passion for horror stories and writing. When not behind a computer I also enjoy calligraphy, inventing written languages, and biking.

Serena Primeau I am a Music Business/Music Production major at Scottsdale Community College.

I absolutely love what I study and being a full time student takes a lot of my time.

But with the time I do have I like to dabble in writing one acts. In high school, I was involved in music and theatre. I do have a special place in my heart for theatre and I miss it. So, sometimes I just like to reminisce by making my own form of art related to theatre. It is another way for me to let my creative thoughts go. I thought this piece would be a great opportunity to share this passion of mine. I hope you enjoy reading it as much as much as I enjoyed writing it! Thank you!

Harry Rahawarin I am an international student from Indonesia sponsored by the U.S Department of State. I am studying Information Technology. I love taking pictures, and that is what I love to do in my free time. When I am able to capture all the beautiful things around me, it makes me respect them more. Besides studying information technology, I also take Fashion Photography classes at Scottsdale Community College. I am grateful to have the lifetime opportunity to study here in the U.S. especially at Scottsdale Community College.

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Cholly Robertson I am in love with this writing community, and the support they’ve given me is worth more to me than any contest. I am blessed to be a part of Vortex. It took me ten years to believe in myself enough to show up for class for more than two weeks. Now, I want to see how far I can take this writing craft. I want to be unrealistic with my aspirations and use failure as a success. Oh, and I love crickets in Tuxedos, and my Lab Minka. And extra love to Sandra Desjardins, my mom for editing my work at all hours when I ask, my dad for being a proud parent, and Brother Balananda who have all effectively helped me transform my own life and keep my wings flapping.

Stephen Rubin Hi, I’m a writing addict. It entered my life in January 2016 when, with the encouragement of my wife, I took an Introduction to Creative Writing Class, and my “candy woman”, that teacher person gave me the gateway assignment: a personal essay.

It’s been bleeding on the paper ever since.

Meghan Saul I live to explore the world, seek adventure, and learn about myself and those around me.

Creative writing is a newly tapped passion that I enjoy being able to explore.

Melissa Schleuger I had myself convinced that in order to be a successful artist, I should focus on a specific medium, that it would be a disservice to spend time learning more about drawing, sculpture, photography, even creative writing. But in reality I learned more about the theory of color, mark making, forethought, and problem solving.

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Ryan Severyn I enjoy creating dark stories set in dystopian settings. I find science fiction to be the most engaging of genres and love to create my own worlds limited only by my imagination. I am heavily influenced by Neil Gaiman and aspire to be a writer of his caliber some day.

Arthur Spina I am a student at SCC and an up and coming filmmaker. I have a passion for story telling.

Daniel Tullie Yá’át’ééh! Kin Yaa’a´anii nishli´, Ta’neeszahnii bashishchiin. To´tsohnii dashicheii, To´’aheedli´inii dashinalí. Hello! My clans are Towering House, born for Poles Strung Out at the Water, Big Water are my maternal grandfather’s clan, and Water Flows Together are my paternal grandfather’s clan. I am a Diné (Navajo – Native American) Designer and Photographer; my work is a reflection of my cultural heritage and a modern translation of the traditional philosophy of my ancestors.

Chelsea VanWinkle Hello. I’m from the Navajo tribe and born in Shiprock, NM but my family is originally from Cove, AZ. To identify myself, I am of The Folder Arms People Clan (Bit’ahnii), born for The Red-Running-Into-Water Clan (Táchii’nii). The Red Bottom People Clan (Tł’ááshchí’í) are my maternal grandfather’s clan and The Mud People Clan (Hashtł’ishnii) are my paternal grandfather’s clan . Growing up was a very rough road for me, but I survived. My life isn’t perfect, but I know I can make the best of it. I attend Arizona State University and Scottsdale Community College. I’m doing my lower division classes at SCC and my upper levels at ASU. I’m the only one in my family who’s going to college. I’m also the oldest of all my siblings. I have been writing since I could spell my name. In my story, I explain a piece of my life and a significant hardship I overcame. I push myself to move forward and try not to live in the past.

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Jessica Warfle I am a twenty-something true crime addict. When I’m not writing, you can find me taking random classes at SCC, reading, or taking naps with my two furbabies.

Aaron Wilson I am a film student at SCC, and I will be graduating with an Associates in Applied Sciences in Film Editing this May. I’ve wanted to do something in film ever since I saw Star Wars when I was 5 years old. Originally I wanted to go into doing Visual Effects, but as I’ve gotten older I’ve developed a passion for storytelling which I pursue through my 3 favorite film-making roles: Writing, Directing, and most of all Editing.

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VOR TEX

2017