The Wasp - Volume II Spring 2018

The American Studies Center Student Journal University of Warsaw Volume II Spring 2018 ISSN: 2450-5676

wasp /wɒsp/ AmE /wɑsp/ noun [C] 1 a black and yellow flying insect which can sting you: There’s a wasps’ nest in that old tree! 2 when translated into the language of the country where the weather is schizophrenic and where even refugees do not wish to go (see: Poland), it becomes an osa – a place where all meanings collapse: Yesterday, I spent an amazing day at OSA! (here: an abbreviation for Ośrodek Studiów Amerykańskich, English: American Studies Center)

LILLA ORLY Editor-in-chief ALEKSANDRA BARCISZEWSKA NATALIA OGÓREK Associate editors KAMILA MARIA WYSZYŃSKA PAWEŁ PAŃCZYK DTP BASIA SZUKAŁA PR ALEKSANDRA DĄBROWA Illustration: page 27 KAROLINA JAKUBIAK Illustrations: pages 20-21, 35 KLAUDIA WANAT Illustrations: pages 34, 39, 41 ANITA MAJEWSKA Illustrations: page 4, 16 Caricatures: pages 44−47 MAGDALENA KRZEMIŃSKA Front and back cover MARTA RAPACKA Caricatures: pages 44-47

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You Can Count On Me to Misbehave Lilla Orly 4 FICTION ARTICLES Queen of Corona: Excerpt A Scandal, A Tragedy, An Institution EsterHazy Teresa Bakalarska 6 38 Hooked On Recycled Cinema Aleksandra Barciszewska Jakub Zieliński 15 41 Theory Anna Oleinic 20 Casting Out Lilla Orly 22 POETRY The White Circle Sofiya Voytukhova 32 Untitled Mateusz Boczkiewicz 34 Heavy Amber Wazacz 35

The next issue’s theme: TO BE ANNOUNCED We’re still recruiting!

If you’re interested in writing for The Wasp, please contact us: thewaspjournal@gmail.com Facebook: facebook.com/thewaspjournal American Studies Center: asc.uw.edu.pl The WASP | Volume II | Spring 2018

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You Can Count On Me to Misbehave Scandal and drama are what have made the existence of humankind on this godforsaken orb slightly more interesting. Since the beginning of time, envy, evil eyes, and elopement have been the manifestations of climactic moments in the lives of peasants, royalty, and millenials alike. The frivolous or fatal rash decisions of thy neighbour was the source of marketplace gossip and accompanied the tinkling chime of tea sets. However, this enticing information was not always found in abundance. This is what gave rise to the Drama Queen™. Borne of a Mary, blessed with the audacity of Madonna, and abstaining from modesty like a true Virgin, the Drama Queen™ was the impetus behind much of history. Over the centuries, she has taken on many names: Mary Antoinette, Diana Ross, Monica Lewinsky. From intentionally revealing unspoken truths, to effortlessly commencing wars as true descendants of Helen of Troy, the methods of these prima donnas have grown and changed along with the rising demand in the world for names disgraced and fits of petty rage.

Today, we live in a world hailing the culture of the Drama Queen™: shows like the Housewives franchise and Keeping Up With the Kardashians are on their umpteenth seasons; gossip sites reign in terms of readership and paparazzi photos go for millions; Instagram, Snapchat and their numerous equivalents have facilitated the spread of various theatrics. One of the masterpieces of contemporary cinema is none other than Mean Girls, a film surrounding a whole institution of Drama Queens™.

Encapsulating the methodology of evolved melodrama, presenting the biblical nature of the Burn Book, and producing a whole suburban dictionary crammed with credo that will be spoken for decades to come—grool, right?

The film is a near-documentary of the high school environment; the present-day breeding ground for Drama Queens™ of the highest pedigree, groomed to perfection, and graduating with blue ribbons in dramatic excellence.

This issue’s piece of the month surrounds a character having a hand in a tremendous high school scandal squared to a traumatic degree. In excerpts from Queen of Corona—a novel by ASC alum, EsterHazy—our royal run-away, Roza, escapes from Bill Cullen High School to return to the motherland of her family following a graduation ceremony turned heinous. The clever, opinionated consciousness ruminates on everything from standardized tests, to gun violence, to natural disasters. She draws attention to the political drama that plagues the land 4

of the tea and home of the misbehaved; a nation that pledges allegiance to disharmony and hypocrisy. Trying to grasp the struggle of an ancestry mixed and muddled, Roza’s navigation of her comingof-age in a world that has barely managed to mature is a ferocious read. So bring out your claws and tear in.

Alas, with this issue of The Wasp, it’s time for us to fade into black for this academic year. As the credits roll, I’d like to thank all of the contributors who donated their words, art, time, and effort to produce this year’s miscellany. Without your artistry, The Wasp would have no gold in its stripes. Special thanks, to Mother Wasp, Aleksandra Barciszewska, as always, for keeping the publication alive and buzzing. Now, the gramercy has reeled, the lights have come on, but don’t worry—we will be revived soapstyle faster than you can say doppelganger. Fin. During the summer print-hiatus, The Wasp migrates to .offduty the official site of an off-Wasp project.

Visit thewaspjournal.wixsite.com/offduty for more.

Lilla Orly All-nonsense Editor-in-Chief subsisting from printed word to printed word. Enamored by the grim cavities of a too saccharine existence, and tracing half-truths in negative space. Digs meandering routes and gnarly tunes as well as the concept of an ever-expanding universe.

The WASP | Volume II | Spring 2018

FICTION

Piece of the month Queen of Corona EsterHazy

There comes a day when you go looking for your roots and you realize they’re all gone. You grope about in the dark and find nothing. Nothing but bits and pieces of a legacy gone astray like a dog that was never loved in the first place. No matter where you come from, the day you become an American is the day you lost it all. No matter if you were born here or made it over by plane, train, bus or banana boat. Just like that, thousands of years of memory vaporize like the plane that hit the Pentagon. You forfeit miles of spindly roots planted into the earth by your ancestors from way back when. Slowly, painfully, you squander your family recipes and all them heirlooms, memories, traditions go slipping through your fingers. You figure you’re living the dream, but something’s off. Something’s missing.

Something you didn’t even know you needed. You lose track. You lose your ground. The connection with the earth that made you. That dust that hardened into your bones and softened into your skin. You think you can go on making the tamales, the pierogis, the same old samosas your grannies made for generations but they’re not the same at all. The flour here is different.

The water is different. The proportions are all out of wack. And you know it’s just a dumpling and dumplings don’t always come out right, but for some reason you’re bawling your eyes out.

Because you know it’s not just a fluke. It doesn’t come out right no matter how many times you try. Because it just ain’t in you no more.

A sourness that tastes like shame comes up in your throat. Shame that flips on itself, turning on the past, turning on your parents because they’re the ones who made you and brought you here. Your loving parents are now the bullseye for your shame. Their accents and their crazy foods. It was their brilliant idea to ship you all the way across the ocean before you had anything to say about it. So now you do all you can to keep them at home, hidden behind closed doors.

You never invite anyone over. You do what you can to become like everyone else. You want to look like the girls in the videos. The selfie-stick chicks on the ‘gram. Then you start dressing like the guys in the videos so the dudes round the way no longer feel obliged to tell you that your ass is too big or your ass is too flat. You convince yourself that you’ve been here all along.

The past fades like the last wisp of smoke after a dumpster fire. But the stench of it lingers, you know. There’s nothing you can do to make it disappear for good. It’s a blemish that won’t go away.

An ugly little blackhead of guilt. This is the tragedy of assimilation. The old folks give up trying to talk sense into you. They throw their hands up and let you be what you always thought you wanted to be. An apple-pie-eating, baseball bat-swinging brat. You try telling them that shit ain’t really you at all. So they ask you, so who is you then? And you try to tell them but it’s like snakes crawling up your throat. You can’t spit out a syllable. So, you figure maybe they’re right. You start grasping at straws, the frayed threads of history, shreds of a native realm.

There comes a day when you finally realize you have no idea who you is or even who you are,

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and where you came from. So maybe you get on a plane and try to take a good hard look at things from a distance. Try to take in the bigger picture and all. Back to the future. Though the truth is I’m not really doing it for the right reasons. My story ain’t all high and mighty like that.

There’s more dirt I’ll have to dig up at some point, for sure. I’ll get to it when the time is right. No point in rushing things. We have all the time in the world.

It was only about a week ago that I was in class, minding my business. One of 36 dopes sitting in a classroom at Bill Cullen High School. One of 36 dopes wondering whether anyone really even cares about the Cold War, the Iron Curtain, the dusty remnants of a time long gone. Drifting back and forth between bleak daydreams powered by the windmills of our petrified imaginations. I’ve got my social studies textbook open, but my eyes are glued to the ceiling.

The still, stifling heat of summer in an age of global warming but no air conditioning. This is what the undeserving students of underperforming schools call reality. My t-shirt sticking to my ribs. My baby hairs curling in the humid nebula that wraps itself around the room on the first day of school and refuses to leave until Halloween. Until winter hits us so hard we don’t dare take our jackets off from first period to dismissal.

We never had the patience for it. Who cares about the Cold War when there’s North Korea at our doorstep right this minute? They never tell you the truth anyway. Everybody only cares about their own chicken nugget of history, if they even care at all. We confuse the details but the juice is there. Our ills, our suffering. That’s what we pride ourselves on. Our painful histories, desperate for drama to show that our people have been fighting for freedom, too. That we have our own heroes. To be gangster for real.

Nobody in this class really has ever cared about the capital of Kyrgyzstan. Nobody can bother to worry about rotten World Bank policies that brought the so-called third world down to its knees. Who cares that kids in China have restricted access to Google? Who gives a shit?

Sometimes some of us give a shit, I guess, but we keep our heads down. I leave it all on the low.

Because if you try speaking up about this stuff in class, you better get ready for sneers and moans.

They think you’re an idiot if you actually try to use your brain sometimes instead of sitting back and letting it all roll past you like a cloud of kush.

I’m always trying to lay back in the cut, but my brain just won’t listen. I am fully entitled to sit with my feet up because I’m just days away from graduation. And by some fluke of computing, my name is right there on the honor roll. Even though Ms. Liptsky can’t stop telling me I’m never going to amount to nothing anyway, glaring at me with those beady eyes until it’s time to look away in a dramatic gesture of disgust.

That honor roll business must be a fluke or the rest of this school is full of bigger morons than me. Day after day, my brain just keeps on reeling with everything I don’t know. All the mathematical formulas and historical circumstances that I just never got around to. Most days, I just can’t focus because I just spend too much time thinking about all the stuff that’s going wrong.

About all the wars, about all the garbage in the world piling up on our beaches, how there aren’t enough recycling bins, and even when I throw a bottle in the bin, how can I be sure it’s really going to get recycled?

I worry all day long. I worry about where all the trash in the world really ends up and where the next earthquake is going to be and how many people are going to die and how many poor kids there be out there with machetes in all those hundreds of pockets of conflict across Africa and the Levant. And how the Maasai are nearly all gone because some idiots convinced them they need Coca-Cola and Levi’s and smartwatches to be happy. And how they dynamited the

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Piece of the month oldest temple in the world last week, destroying a whole collection of five-thousand-year-old Mesopotamian artifacts in a single poof and then they shrug their shoulders and say oops like a bunch of unruly kindergarteners.

So I guess we made the choice to just look the other way as the world sweeps the remains of every ancient temple into the dust. How do you explain to kids how much warfare goes into trying to maintain peace? We just don’t get it. Because it doesn’t make any sense no matter how you try to dress it up. Relax, they say. There’s no point in worrying about things you can’t control. There’s no need to worry so much about something going on so many thousands of miles away. We’ve got bigger fish to fry. Such as figuring out how many poor kids we got out here with guns waiting for the right moment to go all Columbine on our asses. So we thought we’d try and regain some control, of our lives, our school, our destinies.

Nobody else in this place seems to give a shit. Because when the loudspeaker comes on and the principal gets started on all that junk about how we should keep the people of Japan, the people of Turkey, the people of Egypt, the people of Syria, the people of Haiti in our prayers you can always hear the relief in his voice that it isn’t us this time. Thank God that the latest tragedy happened to them people way over there. They’re the ones who have to dig their families out from under crumbling buildings or pile up in a shelter when their world comes falling down.

He’s always asking us to donate whatever we can to help those kids who are just like us get back on their feet. But even if we do scrounge up that quarter we been saving for one of those shitty juices in the corner store, how do we know it’s really going to save somebody all the way on the other side of the world? How do we even know those kids are real? How do we really know about the other side of the world when we’ve hardly been further east than the five boroughs?

Those hurricanes got us shook, though. Look around, we’re almost in the same boat. We’re on an island, surrounded by water this way and that. It’s just a matter of time before one of Sandy’s nasty cousins swoops in and throws a massive pool party for all the hurricane homies in our backyards. And then it’s time for them to start up their famous collections again and next time I don’t think I’m going to give them any money because I can’t see how it’s really going to help anybody. The people who make it out of shit like that is people who know how to fend for themselves in a crisis. Nobody’s really depending on FEMA to fish them out of the swamp. It’s your neighbors not the government who are going to come out and do right by you. I swear Chance the Rapper will do more for people in a crisis than the goddang president of the USA. This time it’s Harvey and his girlfriend Irma who’ve made a real mess of the coast. The hmmmmmm of Principal Goldman’s voice is weighing heavy on my head so I can barely keep my chin off my desk. I guess I fall asleep at some point and end up jumping out of my seat like you do when you’re copping a nap at your desk. Everybody starts laughing ten decibels louder than necessary and Goldman gets to hollering at them to quiet down and listen for once but the commotion goes on forever. Thank God the bell finally rings and we jet out of there with the quickness. We all turn into trained monkeys at the sound of that bell. We could be talking about a goddang peace accord for the Middle East, but the moment the bell rings we’ll stop midsentence and sweep out of that classroom like somebody’s paying us to mop the halls with our saggy jeans.

I’ve got to say that out of all these trifling teachers, Nash is a pretty good egg. It’s cool that he’s not afraid to toss that crap curriculum out the window once in a while and tell us some real shit.

I slide into my seat as he’s tracing out the sensitive geography of Tibet and the imperial threat of Asia. All those petty issues you got between countries big and little all trying to have their say too without getting a nuclear bomb shoved in their face. It’s just like me and like three other kids listening. The rest got their earphones in real slick like under their hoods. I feel sorry for Nash but

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I stay low because, like I said, nobody likes a bitch who’s too eager.

I tune out when he starts trying to explain the difference between tundras and savannas because we all know it’s pointless when the planet’s all going to shit anyway. Give or take a couple years and climate’s going to be a thing of the past. No point in knowing the difference between things that are on the outs in less than a minute. Dude to my left named Gheri pipes up under his breath, “I’m gonna tell him.”

“Tell him what?” I whisper back.

“Tell him we don’t want to hear nothing about that.”

“About what, Gheri? What don’t you want to know nothing about?” Nash asks in a cold, flat voice that’s nothing like the breezy air of a minute ago.

“Why you telling us about birth rate in China and India, man, when you see we don’t give two fucks? It ain’t relevant to the state we in right now, bro.”

“Well you should care, Gheri. Because it means pretty soon we as Americans are going to be outnumbered.”

“Outnumbered how?” Gheri dares to ask.

“The economy. Jobs, technology, hacking, real estate. Get with the program, kids.” Nash’s voice getting more wooden with each word. And then, of course, he’s got to mention the biggest, slickest sin of all.

Oil. Motherfuckinoil, stinking goop, dripping oil, the fucking fabric of our lives, the purp that drives our progress, drives our cars, drives all them white kids to soccer practice.

I can’t believe they’ve got Nash on the us and them bandwagon now. It’s like a disease, man, ripping through people like Ebola. Always blaming somebody else for our troubles. When we’re just as bad as the next guy. Only we ain’t been caught out yet. No joke, the truth is that we’re all in this life together and if you think different, then you’re just fooling yourself. When people suffer, we all suffer. That’s why you’re always feeling so down on yourself. How can we be happy for a minute when you’ve got kids dying for no reason all over the world? Even if it’s thousands of miles away, you can feel that shit in your soul.

But we all do our best to deny it, act like it’s all good. Not even ten minutes into class and you’ve got most kids sliding down in their chairs as far as they can go. Just their noses poking over the tops of their desks. It’s not like the movies where you’ve got brave white ladies like Michelle Pfeiffer saving a whole bunch of kids from one collective life fail because this is no gangster’s paradise, it ain’t no crucible.

We’re pretty damn polite most of the time if you ask me. Some kids start acting act out sometimes, but most of the time we stay in our seats like we’re told. Some heads straight up euphoric courtesy of a blunt snuck between classes. We’re just trying to get by, which is sad as fuck if you really think about it (but do we ever really think about it) because we’re supposed to be enjoying the best years of our lives. Isn’t that what they say? That magic window when you’re still a kid but get to do adult shit. Like drive a Honda Civic round the hood and hang out at the mall and mess around and eat as many fries as you want. But they’ll never just let you catch a break.

But you could always feel there was a storm brewing. Sparking up that niggling feeling that five, six, seven hours a day in this room is a waste of a life. And when you’re trapped like a rat in a cage, there ain’t no other way to break out. That’s why sometimes some of us crack and lose it.

I guess the teachers got it rough too, stuck in the system like the rest of us. Bullied by that petty board of regents, who think filling bubbles out on a page is the be-all-end-all of a human’s worth. Waste our time memorizing the answers instead of learning something useful. Nash is the only one who’s really riding for us. But even he’s too scared to do more. All he’s got is forty minutes three times a week to skim over the tragedies and triumphs of the past century. Telling

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Piece of the month it to a room full of kids with so many tragedies of their own, and not nearly enough triumphs.

A school of untouchables who can’t be taught a damn thing. Bill Cullen H.S. has never been anything but a prep school for the American prison machine for over a decade. Right from homeroom straight to Rikers. All those admins here and there rubbing their hands together, drooling at the returns once they got all us lousy inmates coming their way. Slavery got a whole new lease on life in the corporate correctional complex. You don’t believe me? We’ve been trying to tell it for so long but our voices are always too small to be heard over the roar of greed and deception.

Then the Fly Filsophers came in the building. The Fly Filosophers wanted to fight. We all wanted to fight. To break out from under that stifling shroud they got us under, making us think for a quick minute that we’re magic like Harry Potter and his gang when we never had no kind of power. No magic, no say in a school system that churns out nothing but dopes, thugs and nobodies like us. We the people leftover. After the lucky ones with so-called potential get sifted out, transplanted into the promised land of charter schools. To save them from the miserable fate of the general population that we stay stuck in.

Man, I guess I should just come straight out with it. I haven’t got anything left to lose.

Shit went down at graduation. A couple of us split like fucking cowards because it got to be more than we could handle. We never thought in a million years it would end up in blazes with that kid who never hurt nobody lying in a pile of his own blood behind the bandstand. I know that part isn’t my fault. I mean, not technically, but we can’t help blaming ourselves because if we hadn’t started this shit, the world wouldn’t be falling down around us like some crack-ass dominoes.

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That kid would still be alive and I wouldn’t be on this airplane crossing the ocean to get away from all the madness. Before it got ugly. Before the media and the police and the FBI got on the trail. So now I’m hauling my ass out of the country and as far as possible from that criminal fucking justice system that just might decide to toss me into the hatch, slap me with a record and never give me another thought as I shuffle through the rest of my life with that burden weighing me down like I’m the fucking hunchback of Notre Dame. Pariah for life. My mama wasn’t going to let that happen. She sent me off to keep me safe.

That ticket must have cost her an arm and a leg for sure. And three hundred bucks of spending money. I know she’s going to be rubbing it in for the rest of time. Three hundred bucks goes a long way in Corona if your game is tight. Let’s hope it’s enough to get me through a few weeks, a month or two or three out there. Out where though? All I know is that I’m going as far from the drama as possible. To my auntie Halina’s spot. It’s either as far as you can possibly get or in jail is how things tend to go around here. People always disappearing around these parts. Homies might miss you for a few days and then they’ll just have to get on with their lives. It’s just the way it goes.

I’m heading overseas. To where my mama’s from. I’m about to get dumped in the belly of an underworld I never knew existed. It’s like some sort of reverse immigration. My head’s a mess. I must still be in some state of shock. My heart pounding and my head swimming every time I think of it. Against the white noise screen behind my eyelids, I see it like it’s happening time and time again. Time, yes, is heavy on my temples, heavy on my shoulders, heavy in my hands. The road to blessed forgetfulness is unpaved, full of sharp objects cutting into the soles of your feet and the palms of your hands, digging into your elbows and your kneecaps when it gets so bad that you end up on your hands and knees, crawling towards the future. Man, I’m getting corny as fuck right now. I’ve got to try to lean back, enjoy my flight. Just like the captain of the aircraft is suggesting we do as he welcomes us on board flight LO 27 on this fine summer day. As I sink way down into this double life. A deadbeat escape from the consequences of my actions.

My mama said I should make sure to be the last one on board so I don’t have to wrestle all them babushkas toddling down the aisle with their stank bags of pickles. I find seat 24C and slide back against the stiff plastic, which smells faintly of hash browns. I start clicking and unclicking the buckle of my seatbelt to keep my hands busy. Otherwise, they start to shake again and people look at me funny. I stay staring down at my lap until this babushka with cotton candy hair reaches across the aisle to touch my hand and I can feel the marshmallow texture of her skin. I pull away when it becomes clear she’s not planning on going anywhere. She’s got something to tell me, firing one of those questions at me that isn’t really a question. Most people asking you questions don’t really care about what you’ve got to say. They ask the questions so that they can tell you the answers. To prove that you don’t know jack, but that they know it all.

Her crackling voice comes through, a heavy accent sprawling over its back. “What a boon it is to be flying with Captain Wrona today, isn’t it? Now I can sit back and do my crossword. You know, I can’t stand flying. I’m all nerves. My hands. They are shot, as they say. Nothing is as it was.

But with the captain in charge, we are in good hands,” she declares, sweeping her arms around in every direction, presumably to get some of the other passengers to pay attention to her rambling. A few people look up from their smartphones for a second or two, then bow their heads back down, not really interested.

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Piece of the month I try shaking off her words as the typical batshit crazy rant from a batshit crazy babushka and go back to minding my own business. I coax my eyeballs back into my lap and open up my purse.

I feel around for my headphones. When I find them, I have to twist all the knots out. I try to make it look like I’m concentrating real hard, but there’s no stopping this lady. She moves closer. Her lavender bouffant bobbing playfully in the air blowing in through the miniature fans above her head. Her cloudy eyes go wider than you’d ever think was humanly possible. I try to look away but I can’t. I give up my full unadulterated attention and she grabs it like a PlayStation on Black Friday. She licks her fuchsia lips with glee and clears her throat. She wants to clarify her previous outburst. The whirr of her voice running through my eardrum like a tractor in a field of rye.

“Captain Wrona. Father, Son and the Holy Spirit of the blue skies!”

A splice of memory breaks through the fog in my mind. I nod with as much enthusiasm as I can muster up. Granted, it’s not much and she’s waiting for more. Yes, I watched that video online a few years back, of a pilot bringing his plane safely back down to earth, despite the failed landing gear, with no more than a few sparks tickling the runway, without a single casualty.

So if what she’s saying is true, that dude sitting in the cockpit of this very airplane at this very moment is the best in the business. I have to take it as a good omen, even though I don’t really believe in omens. I try smiling at the her in gratitude but it comes out a scowl because that’s just how my face works. It never does as it’s told. Always cringing like a maniac at the most inconvenient times. It drives my mama crazy but I can’t help it. The old lady gives up trying to get a reaction out of me and flips open her inflight magazine instead and starts nodding away within minutes. She’s asleep before we’ve even cleared the runway. Her eyeglasses slipping off the end of her nose. I feel an urge to poke them back up gently with my finger, but I stop myself when I imagine her waking up to see my finger in her face. I don’t think she’d appreciate it.

I sit back and stare at the clouds floating past my little plastic window. After you’ve flown a few times, you forget about the miracle of human flight. The fact that you can sit back and live out Leonardo da Vinci’s biggest dream while giant cotton balls roll past. No one else seems to care. I look around and see they’ve all got their eyes glued to their tablets. Looking so busy, but how busy can you be really?

We’re always so busy with other shit we think matters. Only to come to one universal conclusion. Nothing matters at all. Or very little anyway. What matters to me right at this very moment is getting to the other side of the ocean in one piece. Which may sound whiny or whatever, but when it’s your first time flying, you start to wish you’d done some research on the laws of aerodynamics. I just take a deep breath and try to relax. I’m taking it bit by bit. First, I need to get there and then I’ll start worrying about what’s going to happen next. One step forward, just to find myself all the way back to the start like a game of Sorry. Back to the Old World, as they say on TV. Back to something like home for the first time since I was born.

It’s pretty terrifying to leave everything you’ve ever known and start from scratch, miles away from where you come from. My mama lost it all because of something she wrote in a newspaper.

Because she wanted a change. She knew it was coming. All her journalist homies were gradually getting carted off without warning. It was her uncle’s quick thinking that saved her from detention via a swiftly-dispatched letter that travelled through some top-secret channels. For real. That made the impossible possible. A shiny new passport, a visa, and a one-way ticket to NYC. The start of a brand-new life in a brand-new world. She was wheels–up within minutes of the government’s freshest accusations of slander, defamation, treason – the works.

Flash forward three decades and some change. I’m up and running in the opposite direction.

Running to escape the shit storm I helped orchestrate. I fucked everything up and not in that good way. All for something that was supposed to be all heroic and shit. I had good intentions,

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but you know what they say about that. My mama got sold out by her own talent. Her writing was so good that it was just no good for the regime. She was lumped into that bad news bunch and struck off the roster of respectable correspondents. When she didn’t stop writing, they upped the ante. They went after everything she had. Not that she had much. She didn’t even have me back then. All she had was the clothes on her back and a toothbrush. And her freedom.

Something she wasn’t going to let them snatch away like everything else they’d taken from us for the past hundred years.

I guess you could say the apple doesn’t fall far from the tree. We both ended up running, but that’s where the similarity ends.

I’m no hero. All I ended up doing is showing the world what a big coward I am. I’m no writer either. I just jot down whatever dribbles onto the page. Thoughts from the dusty pits of my useless mind. All the structure, the backbone gone. Nothing but the unpolished roughage from deep in the gut. It’s not worth much. Sure, I graduated with a decent GPA and got into Hunter College on scholarship. But let’s not fool ourselves, they let a bunch of dimwits like me in every year. It’s part of some ghetto quota system that works for some and not for others. Should I turn my head and ignore the fact that the system makes no sense just because I was one of the lucky ones? It doesn’t matter anyway because I’m about to fuck that up too. Freshman orientation is right around the corner and I’m about to be just over 4,000 miles across the world. They’ll call my name a few times, take a look around the room, wait a minute or two and then cross my name right off that list of incoming freshmen. They won’t call to ask why I didn’t show up. They’ll never find out that I’m on the run and they’ll never know why.

But let me tell you why. I’m running because the land of opportunity closed its doors on me right when I needed it most. This might sound ungrateful, but it’s true. Nothing’s ever come easy.

Everything we’ve ever had is because my mama worked her fingers to the bone and still it wasn’t enough. I remember all those times I used to cry that my mama bought me the wrong jacket for winter, with polyester filling instead of goose down. So I went out in just a sweater for the whole winter. Even when the temperature got below freezing and the blizzards were in full effect. That’s how stupid teenagers can be.

I lost my mind for three whole years. Like my brains fizzled out and dripped out my ear one night when I was sleeping. A selfish, hardheaded zombie took over my body. I gave my mama hell for three years. I never went so far as to do drugs or fuck around with dudes but that’s only because I was always too much of a pussy for that shit. I was just a pest, a bore, a scallywag of the worst possible sort.

Every moment spent in my presence was misery, I can only imagine. The real me was still in there somewhere trapped inside this horrible teenager. I could sometimes spot the error of my ways through a crack in the armor, but I was too numb to stop it. There were times when I wanted to reach out and give myself a good slap. I can’t imagine how my poor mother coped. An absolute angel, that lady. There were months when we didn’t even speak at all. It was like something had broken inside her and she gave up on me. But as all mothers do, she came back around once she’d regained her resolve to make something of her eldest daughter.

Even when she wasn’t speaking to me, she kept dropping books on my bedspread for me to find when I got home from school. Sometimes, I would get so caught up in the saga of Heathcliff and Catherine or that I’d end up staying home from school the next day. Holed up in my bedroom until I soaked up the very last word. She never knew about my habit because she was at work all day and half the night.

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Piece of the month So even when we weren’t speaking we still had a lifeline of literature. And when I finally came to my senses a few weeks after I turned 16, I told her how sorry I was for what a shit I’d been. She just smiled and said, it’s all right, as if nothing had ever happened. As if I’d never gotten her so angry she’d actually torn some of her hair out. As if we’d never screamed at each other so loud the neighbors pounded their broom handles against the ceiling in unison. And when it was done it was done. Although the books kept on coming.

Now when I think all those hundreds of books I’ve read, it’s like they’re all jumbled up in my head as one big mash. A quagmire of facts and literary figures. There comes a time in a young person’s life when practical terms suddenly seem way more important than the rest. As if growing up makes you forget that the most important things in life are the things you can’t see.

I can’t explain why things took a wrong turn. It just felt like it was time to do something of substance. Something that really mattered. But boy, were we wrong. It was a mistake to think that we could make a difference. And now we just might have the police on our asses. My mama figures I’m better off hauling ass out of the country. I don’t know if it’s prudence or paranoia but she didn’t give me much of a say. Just handed me a printout with my flight info and some cash.

I bet what she wanted to say was, get out before the shit hits the fan because you never know how it’s going to go.

Everything’s so arbitrary about the way these things work, the legal system and whatnot. At least that’s what it seems like to the average person without a law degree. Like I said, it’s arbitrary.

To use one of the words we had on the English final in a sentence. I crammed that shit like nobody else and got 99%. How is that useful for the predicament I’m in right now though? Thanks to my mama, I’m miles away but I am nonethefuckingless terrified as hell. Funny thing about my mama is that she never wanted to leave her city and come to America. It’s like she always felt some insane duty to represent for her people, for her city, no matter what. Even when the world is laughing at you, even when they done shamed you down to your knees. When they took your city and reduced to nothing but rubble and then covered it all up with concrete. After two decades in America, in spite of all the lights and skyscrapers and Bloomingdale’s and bling, my mama never wanted nothing else but to be back in the cold concrete wonder of her childhood.

Back to that world smack between east and west. The final frontier between the past and future.

A rest stop on the relentless quest for progress.

It’s just the place, I guess, for a mixed–up chick like me. A chick with all that fight inside but too stupid to know how to use it. Too naïve to know any better. I helped plant the seed, set off the spark, and ran off because I couldn’t take the heat. I wanted to prove that I wasn’t a coward, but I suckered out in the end.

Some people might say that my mama was a coward for taking off when she did. Are we a family of cowards, after all? Traitors?

All my life we’ve been struggling to prove that we’re no cowards.

That we could stand up for something we believe in. In the end, I failed both of us.

EsterHazy Graduate of New York University (B.A. in Comparative Literature) and University of Warsaw (M.A. in American Studies). Translator of art books and children’s book from Polish into English.

Winner of the Educational Writers’ Award in the U.K. 14

The WASP | Volume II | Spring 2018

Hooked On Aleksandra Barciszewska

The purchase confirmation was printed on a company paper with the Hector & Sons’ logo in the upper right corner. Reproducing the classical F-shaped reading pattern honed by the mind while meticulously choosing the right addressee of the transaction, she skimmed the paper and noticed there was something not quite right.

“We established it was going to be 20, right?”

“Yeah, but I assumed I would maybe wanna spend some more time with you, you know. So, I got more, just in case,” he smiled and the muscle spasm—a quite charming and alluring gesture, or so he thought it would be—revealed two rows of partially rotten teeth with leftovers from what appeared to be chicken tikka masala. Just think of Paris, she thought to herself. “Although, I have to say, it’s an unusual form of payment, you know? And Paris? It seems like a lost cause.”

“I thought this one would go well with you; a Paris to your Hector. And as for the idea itself, well, let’s just say it’s my kink.”

“You’re into doing, um, that with them?”

“God, no! Uh. Let’s just go to your place, okay? This confirmation really got me all hot and wet, you wouldn’t want that to go to waste, would you?” she grabbed his frayed leather belt and allowed her palm to slide further down. “Come, Hector,” she moaned to his ear and slowly sucked on the lobe till she felt a familiar, desired bulge pressing onto her hand.

An exciting preamble to the grand opening of her sexuality, he played a tune that gave a pulsating rhythm to the steps he would take. When they entered the room, he grabbed her hand in the most delicate way his lust allowed him to, and let Beatrice wrap her arms around his neck. A swaying foreplay to the instrumental version of a song heard thousands of times on the radio—a song that would always be the soundtrack of her cravings—she crashed and burned in the pit of his schemed parade. Damien was the kind of guy you know your entire life; a guy who gradually creeps his ways into your life by meandering through the friendzone, just to swoop in during the most vulnerable moment of your life.

They had just found a puppy, a tragic victim of a hit-and-run accident; a broken-legged, howling-for-life furry ball covered with blood and human indifference was carried home. Unfortunately, the car appeared to have smashed much more than a leg, and just as they were about to call the vet, it simply stopped breathing. Bea was just 15 at that time and Damien wanted to spare her the trauma, so he buried the little fella in the backyard alone, right beside the rosebush his mother loved so much.

When he put aside the shovel and cleaned the dirt off his hands, he walked to Beatrice and simply hugged her for something between six and seven Mississippis.

“You okay?” he asked while removing a strand of hair caught in between her lashes.

“He was just…so small. I could feel his heart beating so fast when I was holding him,” looking in Damien’s eyes, she was trying to find an explanation, understanding, “and then, it just stopped.

I know it’s gonna sound weird, but I could feel a cold breath, death’s kiss coming from him.”

“Don’t think about it anymore, Trix,” she was so dangerously close to him; he could smell the coconut shampoo on her hair, taste the saltiness of her tears, and kiss the pain away from her lips.

“Come on, let’s go to the living room. I wanna play you something. I always listen to it when I’m blue. It doesn’t make me feel any better, but it makes the world less quiet.”

When they started dancing slowly to the song, she calmed down. The violin transferred her thoughts into another register, lowering the pitch of demise, introducing a cheerful sinusoid of notes that found their ways into Bea’s body. When Damien recognized that the storm had ended, he pulled her closer. Swaying into the song changed into swaying to the newly invented rhythm—a fe-

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rocious oscillation of two famished bodies around the yearning born out of tune, accentuated with heavy breathing that substituted the bass. His right hand found Bea’s burning cheek; her hips, as if following a path unknown to the owner, were pressing hard against his; his teeth savagely violated her lower lip; her nails made marks on his back, desperately trying to pull his body closer to absorb it, to merge the two in a unison of passion. Even when he was unbuttoning her blouse, ripping her skirt and later her panties, she didn’t quite realize what was happening; she wasn’t even quite sure when he thrust his tongue between her legs, when he entered her, when he was moving inside her, or when he finished on her thigh. The script was impeccably satiating—bruised and slightly bleeding, Beatrice felt more alive than ever. Yet, she felt nothing for Damien. A second after she left his house, she couldn’t even remember his name; she only remembered clearly the peculiar sensation begotten by the air of famished particles accompanying the scene of how he kissed her breasts, how his wet tongue penetrated her, how he moaned while fucking her.

She spent years searching for this kind of excitement, yet it became arduous—she couldn’t possibly find the same thrill that night gave her. The quest ended one day when she blew some guy on a train. After she was done, he handed her a $100 bill. Since she didn’t care about such trivial things like finances, Bea stopped by the local shelter and gave them the money. And, in that particular moment, she understood—it was never about the sex itself; donating the blowjob money to furry misfortunates revived the excitement she had been yearning for so long.

You see, Beatrice was not the kind of a promiscuous woman that just for fun, blow

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by blow, collected STDs from random people on trains. A cheater? Perhaps. A seeker? Most certainly. Yet, each day she castigated herself alone in her room, whipping the guilt out of her body; the guilt that just a few hours before was the flooding passion delivering oxygen to her frail, restless limbs. Being a part of a harem founded by the sole man in her life was difficult. Always forgotten, always the victim of his silent treatment, always seeking approval. The love for him, however, made up for all the daily suffering she would experience.

After all, the relationship between God and his bedside pets, nuns, does have certain characteristics of polygamy and, thus, Beatrice allowed herself to extend the leash she was given the day she took the vows. Every now and then, when other sisters were finally asleep, she would sneak out and meander through the forbidden deeds of the flesh. Once she discovered what rocked her boat equally as vigorously as her faith, she started an online account. There, she advertised her services with her legs spread wide open, slutty lingerie barely holding her breasts, and a cross used in a manner possibly disapproved of by the Almighty. A shocking and quite peculiar form of payment, for an hour of some good ol’ lovin’, she would charge each customer with 20 pounds of Purina dry food sent to a chosen dog at a chosen shelter. A blowjob cost 3 towels, 3 different toys, and 3 wet food cans. The kinkier stuff sponsored vet visits, vaccinations, deworming, treatments of urinary tract infections, surgeries, and whatnots—the pricelist was being constantly updated with dogs’ current issues and needs.

It was never about the act of prostituting herself, though. What made her feel complete was delivering some goodness to the world and making up for all the nastiness her god had made.

A drop in the ocean, a blow in the tornado; the petiteness of the contribution didn’t matter. As a matter of fact, the act of being able to redesign God’s plan, reweave his vile threads of negligence—simply put, cleaning up his mess—that’s what counted. Bea saw herself as his most devoted lover. The perfect realization of his imperfectness. The greatest submissive working within the impotence of the omnipotent God. The cog that surpassed the machine. The imagined outcome of the transaction justified the sinful means used to achieve the Greater Goodness.

Ever since she became cruciTrix666, the envelope icon with incoming messages never ceased to blink red. Yet, on that rainy Tuesday night Bea sensed, not without a stinging premonition, that there was something diabolic about the shade of red the envelope was dressed in. After twelve hours of serving soup at the local shelter, she cleansed her bruised body (the last client had a serious calf-biting fetish and left hers severely marked) off of shame and guilt. When she got into her room, she found a crimson ‘A’ cut out of a delicate satin fabric, spread neatly on the pillowcase. Long live Nate, she thought and tossed it right into the trashcan. Practical jokes were Sister Danielle’s favorite habit in-between serving God and reading Harlequin novels in the garden. A fan of American classics, she would surprise her sisters with rosebuds hidden underneath the plates, raven feathers stuck in the door frame, or light bulbs painted green to shed a nostalgic emerald light across the main hall.

Even if no one actually directly addressed the issue nor in-between the lines condemned her behavior, Bea knew that people knew, or, at least, suspected something, about her secret project.

Sister Mary Ellen, her mother superior, had been onto her for months. She had to be. Her chamber was right above the back door and each time she heard the squeaking sound of someone sneaking through that door around 3 or 4 a.m., she knew Bea was out again. She tried to mind her own business and mentioned nothing to Bea, but, from time to time, she would give the harshest tasks around the house to the “[Father, please give me enough strength, or else I’m gonna kill that motherfucking slut of a] girl.”

That particular day, when the inbox screamed 4 new messages, she was already ready to find a client who would help manage gastrointestinal and pancreatic conditions Mikey was suffering

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from. The 3 first ones were from old clients, who would not be interested in the kind of transaction Bea had in mind. Not only did Mikey need surgery ASAP, but someone would have to help him get through the recovery period. Fortunately, the fourth one was a new customer who, thank God [sick!, sic!], was into some hardcore practices.

The instructions were simple: transfer the money to this or that account, buy this or that thing, and bring a confirmation to the meeting. Mikey was a lucky furry pal that people in the city indulged in perversions, for which Bea could call a ridiculously high price. The new client wanted to meet the next day, at midnight, by the drug store on 5th, just two blocks from where she lived.

She too had to fulfill precise and very specific conditions he dictated. The body hair had to be closely shaved, nail polish removed, nails neatly trimmed. She was forbidden to put any makeup on, her clothes were supposed to be “modest and fresh,” and she was ordered to be fasting the entire day. The skin was supposed to be shrouded with dogwood oil aroma and her feet bare.

Having meet with a wide array of psychos during her career, Bea was even slightly amused with how bizarrely exciting people’s wishes were. Even rubbing the essential oil on her skin had an aura of mysticism. Delicate razor movements on the labia, around the perineum, and in-between butt cheeks brought upon a wave of titillating chills. The mere act of preparing herself for the service was the kind of foreplay she freely allowed herself to have.

April was definitely way too soon to be walking barefoot. Fortunately, the night was exceptionally warm and the only aspect slowing the stride were pebbles and trash getting stuck in the soles. As she was getting closer, Bea saw a contoured penumbra standing in the established meeting point.

“You must be, um, Poine? I’m not sure how to pronounce it correctly,” she said to a figure that didn’t even move an inch, motionlessly staring at the shop window.

“You said it right,” still facing the store, the figure spoke. The voice was strangely familiar. A deep, mahogany shade of a female voice, tired of its existence. “I’m really glad you came, Beatrice,” Sister Mary Ellen was oddly calm when she resurfaced from the shadows, looking deeply in Bea’s eyes with a hint of relief.

“I should be more surprised it’s you, shouldn’t I?” Bea was laughing to herself, even if not out loud. “But I do have to ask you: how?”

“This one client of yours, Rick something? He traced you down. I had a little talk with him—annoyingly whiny man, if you ask me—and he told me about your little business. Showed me your profile. Told me what he was doing with you,” she grabbed Bea’s hands into hers, kissed them softly, and whispered, “and I felt so jealous. I kept asking God to release me from all that jealousy I’ve been experiencing, but He didn’t, He couldn’t.” The teardrop drizzle turned into downpour and found solace in the hem of Bea’s black V-neck, long-sleeve blouse. In-between drapes of her coat, mother superior was sobbing like a little girl who just found out her hamster had been eaten by the neighbors’ cat.

“But why did you write me and pretend like you were interested in what I’m providing?” Bea asked. In a perfect world, she would be embarrassed, confused, and/or guilt-ridden, but at that moment, she was seriously pissed. All this just to teach her a lesson? Now that she thought she found someone who would pay for Mikey’s medical expenses? An unnecessarily cruel waste of time “Pretend?” with still tear-filled eyes, Mary Ellen looked at Bea, “Oh, I didn’t pretend. I do want it. I have enough money to cover Mikey’s treatment. All the other future treatments. Anything this freaking fleabag wants, I assure you, it’ll get it. Here,” she handed Bea a money transfer confirmation flashing with a number that surpassed quite a few times the asked price, “this is nothing. I can provide him with anything he wants. Ever. There’s just one tiny adjustment to what I need from you.”

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Never before had she felt anything like that, it was incredible. A stream of sticky liquid was running down her shivering legs, her palms were sweaty from anticipation, and she couldn’t stop smiling. Sister Mary Ellen laid Bea down on the table at the altar in the church where she and all her sisters would have the dialogical conversations with their god. She methodically removed her clothes, caressing the fibers of the fabric, and placed them folded on the floor. When the smooth skin was deprived of physical barriers, she slid her index finger in one, undisturbed gesture from Bea’s left foot right to her bottom lip. On the way up, it made delicate circles on her clean-shaven mons veneris, soared over the navel, made subtle pressing motions on the right clavicle, and landed safely on Bea’s hungry tongue that absorbed it. She cleaned Bea’s palms with a moistened cloth, re-applied dogwood oil that her hunger gathered from Bea’s body, and told her to wait.

The expectation was a blissful state, in which Bea complexly lost herself. To enjoy it even more, she closed her eyes and simply waited for the grand finale. Even the turmoil around her with two workmen hired to help Sister Mary Ellen didn’t disturb the girl; she was the greatest submissive, the most ardent slave for Her Master. “Come, my child,” she heard from afar. Finally.

To muffle the inevitable screams, Mary Ellen put a cloth in Bea’s mouth. When the first nail was driven through the left wrist, the two-beamed rosewood cross—the one she had always admired from the third bench on the right, along with Sister Danielle—swallowed the sweat from her forehead and drank the urine her convulsed body spilled. The immense pain along with paralysis of the entire arm was barely bearable. Uniting with the cross with her left wrist, right wrist, and then the legs turned from excruciating pain to numbness in all of her limbs. Breathing became impossible and she could almost feel herself suffocating with dogwood oil mixed with blood and sweat. As if through the fog, Bea saw the two, or three, perhaps more men dragging the cross to its rightful spot. She felt nothing. Simply a slight wobble of the cross accompanied by one of the man’s tears and prayers directed to whoever was sitting up there.

When, with one smooth motion, the cross was finally placed in an upright position, the agony made her faint for a second, yet Mary Ellen splashed her with ice-cold water to keep her awake.

Back in the living hell, she felt her shoulders being gradually ripped out from their sockets and a flesh-tearing sensation in her wrists. After she got used to the numbness and finally could lift her head up, she looked down and saw no one. Everyone was gone. There was no one to admire her sacrifice. No one to see this crucifixion as the act of love, goodness, faith she had. She was the perfect martyr who had to redeem herself. She was the slave who walked here on her knees to free others from the sinful lives they had. Even now, with her blood-covered body, with her nail-encrusted wrists with oozing wounds, with her chest alarmingly racing with each inhalation that led to death, with her arms wide open—she embraced the pain of the world and, for the last time, prayed to God and asked him for forgiveness.

Aleksandra Barciszewska Former editor-in-chief. ASC-survivor. Vampiric psychoanalyst by nature. Extracting the sexual from the mundane, rejecting reality for the sake of the very-tale of momentary satiation of the urges for creation.

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Theory Anna Oleinic

As usual, we started the morning with mediocrity and a lack of ability to put words into sentences—that is what we were like. Towards evening we floated above being: dreaming of learning new cultures, automatically reading each nonverbal message of each other.

Finding the simple in the complex and the complex in the simple…

Such winters were rare here, and the virginity of winter never left us indifferent; it ran away and left only the good in us. Waking up on a beautiful winter morning (for me these are the days when the sun shines brightly, and the blurry atmosphere is accompanied by the crunch of snow), we went to the balcony, where from the window of our cozy apartment, we saw a strange snow figure. This figure, in all likelihood, was a creation where the main goal was not to form something of quality, but to simply achieve some result. Such is the rudiment of the Soviet Union whose roots have so strongly grown in the mind that they continue to bear fruit in people born 20 years after its disintegration. Probably, the ultimate aim upon the rolling of this simple snow boulder was for it to be the lower part of the torso of a creation that, in some parallel universe, resembled a snowman.

True, we found something sacred in it, albeit not immediately…

This “roll” was too provocative, for he allowed himself to disrupt the harmony of winter and all its cleanliness, leaving strips of bare chernozem behind him—he opened the veil of falsity covering the ideal world, demonstrating that every action affects not only the object, but also everything external.

His creator, for sure, did not suspect the ideological scale of his creation for us. It seemed that the evidence of the “roll’s” existence stretched beyond him, like a slug, revealing only the ugliness and vulgarity expressed by the nakedness of the Earth. But She, for example, saw naturalness in nakedness, and, having come home, tried first to get rid of everything that could restrain Her or limit Her. On this note, the story of the mound of snow could be completed with the fact that he showed us how it is possible to exist in spite of all the rules. It is foolish to endow such qualities upon a natu-

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ral element, but, then again, you can see your reflection in water. And the fact that water at freezing temperatures becomes snow is a fact that everyone knows.

In restrospect—which was the only way we could now see our neighbor, the “roll”—we were able to discern a transformation of our personalities. This figure was the principle that arose from the internal revolution of man. The principle that appeared as a result of sudden enlightenment, awareness, and purification (like how falling snow overnight, dramatically changes the interior of a whole city). The principle that breeds the desire to make use of it in order to change yourself.

This was the first experience of this kind, these trials were so painful that they left traces of enormous sizes behind them, tearing away the thick skin of social blindness, just like the “roll,” exposing the bare ground. Despite the fact that this concept was born in Her head, he (the “roll”) described Her state of mind. Every morning, beginning with tears and dragging It into the depth of depression. This was represented by the lower earth layer of the “roll,” which consistently covered itself with snow-white internal practices, systematically leading it to development and strengthening of freshly-evolved principles.

Spring came, and all the snow, except for the “roll,” melted away. He, as it were, showed the true power of the internal, the power of what was created by the efforts of man. However, with the spring and the warming up, entered courage, and a new era for the “roll” as he began to change. Again, under the influence of the external, he had to transform himself (this time smoothly): he grew smaller in size, and the light in him diminished… It was a fear of change, a fear of uncertainty to which, in the end, he submitted, and, leaving all the pain of the Earth, all dark and suffering, he merged with the spring to come to us again in some dry, summer, crystal-clear rain. A rain in which you can see your true reflection.

Anna Oleinic Allows herself a mess in her closet less often than in her head.

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Casting Out Lilla Orly

“Shit,” Wyn breathed looking down at her foot that was plunged shin-deep in a puddle at the corner of the curb. She had stepped down hastily, and the jerk of her body weight, as her foot descended farther than she had anticipated, caused her heart to flutter. The image of the red streetlights rippled in the cold water, flickering into a crisp mirror of their three-dimensional projectors amusingly indicating her clumsiness. The black, paved street glimmered with all of these warm, glowing lights. Wyn held her foot in the plashet half a second longer, slowly shutting her eyes in defeat, her face flushed both by the traffic signals and the pricking sense of humiliation. She finally yanked her soaked, velvet boot out of the crevice and stomped sloshily to the other side of the street. Not another soul was on the scantily populated lane, her only witnesses were parked cars, matte and muddy from the wet, rainy winter. She adjusted the strap of her shoulder bag and looked up at the apartment building in front of her that was partitioned by metal gates in a chipped coat of paint.

Every time she came here she felt that she shouldn’t be doing this. In fact, she felt like it wasn’t her at all, the girl who travelled across town, taking a route that was always full of interchanging buses, endless traffic, and revolving walks. Now this stranger raised her pale, frostbitten hand to press the glowing numbers on the intercom, 109. The electronic ringing sounded a few times before being interrupted by a long, admissionary beep and the buzzing rattle of the gate. She entered, and quickly shuffled across the courtyard, home to proud, neatly trimmed hedges, and entered the stairwell, all without taking her eyes off of the ground. While waiting for the elevator, she pulled a small key out of her pocket and opened the fullest mailbox among the collection of cold shelves.

Advertisements, bills, one letter without an address caught her eye which she was careful to put at the bottom of the pile. Shoving the envelopes and flyers under her arm, she stepped into the elevator, closed the grate behind her, and pressed the button for the fourth floor.

While the flooring and ceiling of each level slowly rolled past the elevator window, Wyn took the time to adjust what was adjustable of her appearance. She slicked back the frizzy, damaged hair extending from the front of her hairline. Her caked and cracking face makeup seeped into the creases around her mouth that she wiped at desperately, while her mascara darkened the purple circles below her eyes. Wyn was a strange sort of beautiful. Her light complexion contrasted her naturally dark hair that peeked through at the roots of the otherwise perniciously-peroxided ‘do. Her dark eyes always looked askant and were never happy with the answer they received. Her mouth was alert, and often sat pursed in expectation. Her cheeks weren’t particularly defined and were rather speckled by the course of post-adolescent acne. The expanse of her face was interrupted by the sharp peak of her nose. In isolation, her features were somewhat atrocious, but in conglomeration they conflicted to present an intriguing, asymmetrical charm. Wyn was painfully aware of her near-beauty and, thus, every stray hair, every crooked, unblended line of makeup, and each piece of lint that sat atop her sleek formalwear was, for her, the appearance equivalent of nails on a chalkboard.

When the elevator finally reached the fourth floor, it unfastened onto another open door that was agape and awaiting her entrance. As she stepped through, the heat of the apartment hit her cheeks with a receptive kiss. She slipped off her shoes—grey, knee-high boots that barely clung to her slim thighs—and left them leaning against the door. She had turned around to hang her jacket in the closet when a voice addressed her, following all the sensory welcomes from delicious smells and singing pots, “Your silent entry already tells me it’s a good thing I made my own personal potluck. If I turn that corner and see that you’ve dropped another ten pounds then I’m going to have to give you a triple portion.”

The exposed brick wall that divided the hall from the kitchen obscured the owner of the voice from view, though the yellow glow that slanted across the floor held an animated shadow leaping

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in a mirage of steam. “Let me just go to the washroom and adjust the rocks in my pockets, then,” Wyn shouted back, smiling to herself. She turned left at the end of the hall and headed for the toilets. Along the way she passed a bedroom and halted, unconsciously clenching and unclenching her fists at her side, before continuing to the door at the end of the corridor. In the bathroom, she slid out a few drawers and peered into the medicine cabinet, looking for some sign of change, new prescription bottles, a diminishing level of cologne. Closing the toilet seat she sat down and pulled out the letter that had peaked her interest earlier. It was more tattered than the others and she noticed, after flipping it over, that it had been resealed a few times, the point of the envelope torn and wrinkled in several places. She used the nail file on the cabinet next to her to slit open the sheath that bore her name in an all-too familiar hand.

Wyn, I know. Listen, I don’t blame you. My mom’s a great dame. Her cooking’s great and her advice is even better. She’s discrete too. I didn’t know about these ‘sessions’ until I found traces of you all over the place.

I saw your chipped nail polish on the kitchen table...and your hair. Things must be bad if you’re pulling again, huh. Look, Pooh, if I was a dick I would pretend to never have noticed. But I felt that some acknowledgement on my part was required. I mean, you’re walking into my home and all—every few months from what I’ve gathered—eating dinner with my mother, talking to her as if she was your own.

She loves it, I’ll bet. You’re giving her all the attention and opportunity for maternal love that I haven’t been about for years. Child support stopped last year, as of my birthday (I sent you an invitation by the way, I hope it just got lost in the mail), and it was the last inch she needed to make ends meet.

She’s always been uncomfortable when it comes to her own plight, so I’m sure that your venting gives her a chance to patch up a quilt she can sew with an objective needle (I know I’m filled with analogies, recently, must be all the Hemingway I’m reading). I’m not asking you to stop. I’m just asking you to reconsider. Maybe start seeking some professional help. You know, this spiritual stuff can only take you so far. If you’d ask me I think it only adds fuel to the fire, layering fancy over fact and deepening things that should be let out. Now, I’m not gonna turn up out of the blue to interrupt any séances of yours, so don’t worry. I’m just providing a word of caution. My two cents, if you will. Alright, Pooh Bear.

Take Care x Milo.

She hated him. And then loved him. She was flattered that he would recognize her frazzled locks, considering his own mother’s hair was a similar shade of platinum. She despised the fact that he was reading Hemingway. When they had been together, she had left her own copies of his books laying around Milo’s place for him to read. He never did, saying offhandedly that it was ‘fodder for the minds of idle dreamers.’ If he had finally decided to take a chance on Ernest now, then it must have meant that someone convinced him to—maybe someone new. Mostly she was glad that she, Wyn, was finally defying him; invading his space, making him feel uncomfortable with the clues of her presence. She was ecstatic that he knew. She felt less like a wailing banshee dispensing her sorrows, and more like a discrete, willful spirit plaguing this haunt that used to be her favorite. She slid the letter back into its jacket and headed for the kitchen.

“I was just about to see if you were alive and breathing,” Prudence said mock-scornfully, setting down a casserole dish and wiping her hands on her apron. She kissed Wyn on both cheeks and hugged her tightly. “Grab some wine glasses and I’ll hop to the pantry for something satiating.”

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She winked as she went. Wyn reached up to the cupboards to grab two large-bowled glasses and turned to set them on the table before noticing a photograph on the fridge. It was Milo with a petite, dark-haired girl. She giggled into Milo’s cheek as he smiled broadly at the lens, his eyes crinkling in absolute glee. Hearing Prudence’s footsteps getting louder, Wyn set down the glasses and placed herself on one of the white vinyl chairs at the table. The spread was delectible and far too much for the pair of them, alone. This was Prudence’s style: over-the-top, abundant, edacious. As Prudence came nearer, Wyn noticed that she had changed her slippers into a pair of gold sparkling pumps and had taken her hair down from its loose top-knot.

“This Shiraz is one that Richard brought back from some exotic business trip he once took. I never opened it because it always reminded me of that sense of betrayal and uncertainty. You know, a husband abroad and all that. Now, I look at it and think, gosh, I was just a sad housewife, HA!” she said, accenting her curt laugh with the pop of the cork. She splashed the red drink into the wide-bellied glasses, leaving only half the bottle for later. “Alright now, eat up,” she gestured at the dishes, “We’ve got Yorkshire pudding, three different kinds of salads, some cabbage and mushroom pierogies, those are all starters of course…” They began helping themselves, Prudence always slopping an extra spoonful onto Wyn’s plate as soon as she had set down the utensil herself.

After a few mouthfuls, Prudence initiated the conversation. “So how have you been?” she said, smiling and chomping happily on her green beans.

“Well last time I was here you forbid me to say, ‘Fine.’ So I’ve been doing swell, thank you. And you?”

“Your nose is going to swell if you don’t start telling the truth, Miss Wyn,” Prudence said looking down her own nose at the girl, with wine glass in hand.

Wyn sighed, pushing her roasted potato wedges around her plate. “Work’s the same. I know just enough, but by my standard it’s not enough. I’ll push myself more, whatever, that’s my own ambition talking. What else...I’ve been hanging out with people in my free time. Slept with a few more guys I met online. Managed to actually pay my rent on time this month. Overall, I can see some progress.”

“Right. So everything, or at least most things, from a societal level seem fine. You’re checking those boxes… What about the crux within you? The infantile nucleus that drives you. What about Winnie?” Prudence’s voice took on a mock-shrink heaviness.

“Winnie...she’s there. She wakes, sleeps, eats. She’s probably friends with the nagging feeling.”

“Nagging feeling?”

“Every morning I wake up, and there’s that nagging feeling.”

“The worry, yes?”

“Yeah, I mean, now, I don’t even consider it a feeling really, it’s almost like another entity. A voice, a body, that sits on top of me and bashes me, telling me I’m not allowed to get up, I’m not allowed to go to work. Why bother doing all of these things. I’m worthless and disruptive. I ruin things. I don’t deserve what I have, it’s all been a fluke.”

“It’s the negative spirit. The part of yourself that is essential for balance but can topple over the brighter side of you.”

“That’s normal I mean, the feeling was. But now...I don’t know how to explain it...it’s become almost material. I can feel it on my skin. Instead of being something within me, it’s seeped out of my pores and found its own hide.”

“Emotional pain can often feel as tangible as physical pain. When my father died, I must have booked about forty doctor’s appointments trying to find the root of the chronic agony I experienced in nearly every inch of my body. Wanna know what finally helped? I went to my father’s grave and told him everything. The next morning, I woke up and tossed out the Valium. I didn’t

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want to turn into one of those opioid-obsessed homemakers,” Prudence finished with a brilliant, cheeky smile.

“Well that’s why I’m here. To talk. And, this is going to sound insane. But I need to ask you if I’m just hallucinating.”

“How do you mean?”

Wyn put down her utensils, slowly leaned back in her chair, and lifted up her shirt. Across her stomach were scarlet scratches and purple bruises.

“Oh God, Wyn!” Prudence dropped her fork and knife with a clatter and ran to Wyn’s side, examining the wounds with a motherly concern. “What have you done to yourself?”

“That’s the thing I don’t know if I did this to myself. It wasn’t there when I woke up this morning.

It’s not like I’m doing this to myself in my sleep. It just appears. Throughout the day. Not always on my stomach,” Wyn rolled down the rim of her turtleneck where the lacerations looked almost like rope marks.

“My goodness,” Prudence said, holding Wyn’s head to her breast and gently touching the scratches. “Wyn, I swear, if one of these men from the Internet has been doing this to you.”

“Prudence, I’m telling the truth.”

Prudence slowly walked to the other side of the table, sitting back down while her face remained distant. She finally leaned forward and looked at Wyn with a severe countenance. After searching Wyn’s face for an uncomfortable moment, Prudence stood up with a jerk and grabbed both her plate and Wyn’s. She tossed them into the sink with a clatter and began clearing the table in a similarly loud manner. When she ran out of room on the kitchen counters and the surrounding flat surfaces she began placing dishes of veggies, bowls of sauce, and plates of cheeses on the floor.

Wyn hadn’t shifted from her spot, watching Prudence perform the duty with a glassy stare. When she finished, Prudence brushed the hair out of her face and looked at Wyn with hands on her hips, “Get on the table.”

Wyn stood up abashedly and put one foot on her chair to help heave herself onto the grand, mahogany dining table, not questioning or scoffing at the command. She stood, her head grazing the crystals of the dangling chandelier above. Prudence in the meantime, looked among the wreckage of food for her glass of wine and took a long swig. She looked up at Wyn as though she were an exotic decorative piece that Prudence was trying to place inconspicuously among her other home decor. Wyn, peering down at the landscape of platters, felt vulnerable in her tabletop dominion.

“Those crystals above you,” she began, “aren’t made of fake glass, or plastic, or anything. They’re real singing quartz crystal.” Wyn turned her head and tried to look, cross-eyed at the minerals grazing her cheeks. “And now,” breathed Prudence, “Sleep.” With this final word, the crystals haloing Wyn’s head repeated the order in a whipping whisper, SLEEP. *** “Shit,” Wyn mumbled, staring down in frustration at her mutilated boot, the cracked heel laying a few centimeters from its root. Abhorred by her bad luck, she tugged off both shoes and held them by their suede necks; with each barefooted step, they swung like dumb, strangled rodents.

A constant, cool breeze gushed through the circular under passage she wandered, the cold of the stone ground amplified by the thin tights she wore. Every few paces, a kiosk window glowed with browned pastries in rows of baskets, or greeted with the scent of coffee wafting from behind a counter. People scuttled about, many knocking into Wyn, too intent on their destination to notice their surroundings. Wyn felt affection, being jostled about.

She saw a man holding tight to the hands of his two daughters. The little girl to his left licked a

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large lollipop in delight while the girl to his right jerked away at her father’s grip, her face beet-red with tears flowing down each cheek. A group of gangly teenagers hooting and laughing to one another filled half of the walkway. An old woman standing by the wall squinted into the cellphone her shaky hands were trying to operate. Wyn tried to remember the street she was to exit onto. It began with a B, no a P—she would recall it once she saw it. So she kept walking.

The electric heat emanating from the endlessly illuminated signs proclaiming, “Cigarettes! Newspapers! Alcohol!” pressed itself through Wyn’s body. The shuddering of trams overhead caused her heart to flutter arithmetically and her blood believed it to be love.

Watch your step!” someone yelled, ramming their shoulder into Wyn’s back, causing her to tumble to her hands and knees. Coming face-to-floor Wyn noticed some red smears mapping the walkway ahead. A set of bloody footprints roamed in a near perfect curve round the center-point of the circular passage. Wyn, upon rising to her feet, considered the strawberry pink blush seeping from her heels and toes. I missed my exit, she thought. And she kept walking.

To her left passed the two girls with their father, this time both of them calm, staring blankly ahead. The troops of teenagers were rowdier than ever, some throwing punches at one another, leaving behind teeth and splatters of blood. The old woman had given up on her phone and had resorted to carving her message into the wall with a yellowed, curled nail. The ground beneath Wyn’s feet turned rusty and the pace at which the trams rushed above multiplied. She rummaged in her bag for the slip of paper with directions, the contents of the purse missing—still, she continued to search. Giving up, she realized she had also misplaced her shoes. She continued to walk.

This time when she passed the little girls, they were struggling, each yanking at the arm of their father, dragging his unconscious carcass along. Wyn rushed over to help, grabbing the hand nearest and pulling vehemently. Trudging under the glaring signs, they now read, “Can! Never! Absolve!”

The weight of the man’s body seemed to grow to an unbearable degree, Wyn looked about for the girls in anger, but they were gone. Returning her gaze to the man, she realized that the corpse hand turned into the wrinkled body of the old woman by the wall. The group of teenagers huddled together off to the side of the passage, moshing about as though they were in attendance of a punk concert.

“Hey! HEY!” Wyn cried. She pushed through the throng of people, the amount of flailing torsos increasing. Breaking through the other side, she saw that they were gathered around a message etched into the wall. Their cries were chants of worship and their discarded limbs were sacrifices.

The chicken-scratch hieroglyphs screamed, “GIVE UP!” Her breath caught in her throat. Wyn turned to the resurrected body that had risen from the floor and looked herself in the eye. Her misshapen features were exaggerated, the arms and legs gaunt, the stomach bloated and the eye sockets concave. The pointed finger was lifted high, then higher. The nail dug into Wyn’s neck and lanced a flooding gash. *** When Wyn came to, Prudence was washing the last of the crystal dishes in the sink. “I’ve packed some leftovers. That should hold you for the week,” she spoke in that absent-minded way mothers do when they enumerate the list of duties undertaken for their kin. Looking directly above, Wyn saw a smattering of blood across the suspended crystals, one of the dangling ornaments was broken off and lay, bloody, next to her face—Wyn seized her throat in shock. No blood oozed, no stitches protruded, only when she was getting ready to leave, putting on her jacket, did Wyn notice in the mirror a faint line crescenting her neck, slightly darker than her natural skin tone. “Don’t forget this,” Prudence handed Wyn the opened letter from earlier.

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“Thanks,” answered Wyn, her voice scratchy, as though it hadn’t been used in months. Prudence’s face frightened Wyn, it held a shrewdness verging on contempt that she had never seen on the woman’s face before.

As Wyn got in to the elevator, Prudence called out, “Don’t forget to give up, Wyn!” “Sorry?” Wyn cried out incredulously, her arm frozen having drawn the grating halfway.

“I said don’t forget to zip up! It’s pretty chilly tonight!”

“Right,” Wyn replied—too quiet for Prudence to even hear—caging herself in the lift and beginning her descent.

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*** For a number of weeks, Wyn went back to her routine, dragging herself to work then back to her apartment. The weeks were divided by their end cards; Friday evening with Blond Hair Band Guy; Saturday night dancing with Club Guy Nice Crib; Sunday dinner with Do NOT Call—Potentially Second Cousins!! One pivotal change that had taken place was that whereas, before, Wyn dreaded the moment she woke up, now, she was terrified of laying her head down to sleep. Closing her eyes and drifting away inevitably meant images flickering too fast for Wyn to see, but sounds and feelings so frightening, they tortured her. The nightmares were accompanied by a pain that Wyn couldn’t feel physically, but that was trapped in this dream-sphere—inescapable and excruciating.

Whenever she stood zipping up her dress after one of the weekend denouements, she was often met with a, “Aww, don’t tell me you’re one of those girls that doesn’t sleepover to stay for breakfast…”

One Friday morning, as Wyn sat at her desk texting with her potential guy of the night, her supervisor came over and sat on her desk. “Hey Wynnifer! I just wanted to thank you for coming to the off-site last night. I know you weren’t really down to come, initially, but I’m glad you found the time to make it. It really boosts morale when the whole team is together.” Wyn, exhausted from avoiding sleep and preoccupied with her weekend plans, blanked.

“Huh?” her uncouth, hanging mouth questioned.

“I can tell you haven’t been feeling your best, so I appreciate it when you go that extra mile. I’ve gotta say though, I had no idea you were so sarcastic! Guess even the quiet ones get louder after knocking a few back,” he chuckled. “Let me know when those final reports will be ready, will ya?” he said, sliding off her desk and walking off with his hands in his pockets.

Wyn, brow still furrowed, clicked open her weekly schedule. Sure enough, Thursday evening was blocked out for after work beers, a quarterly event she always conveniently forgot. With the amount of sleep deprivation she was in, Wyn didn’t fear questioning her sanity for a second. She spent a minute rationally taking into account if and how many glasses of wine she had had the night prior. Then, she reluctantly dove into her bank of terrors from her sleep, trying to decipher whether one of them could be analyzed as some sleepwalking simulation. The solution for each equation came out to a definite ‘No,’ and the buzz of Wyn’s phone meant that the odd comments from her supervisor were discarded as pointless office small talk. *** It was only a month later, when one of Wyn’s high school friends, Nina, called her after nearly a year of not speaking that Wyn began to get paranoid. Nina and Wyn had drifted apart when both had found boyfriends, a fact that Nina tried to ignore until she stopped reaching out to the lovedrunk, blind-and-deaf Wyn. “Hey! Did you get home safe?” Nina asked, much to Wyn’s surprise.

“Hi, um, yeah I did, about an hour ago, bu—” “Good! I was a bit worried what with the rain and all. It was sooo good to see you again! Felt just like old times. By the way, don’t worry about giving back that dress, I know I said that I would lend it to you, but honestly, after having kids, my body hasn’t been the same.”

Wyn waited for the audience’s laughter; Nina had to be calling the wrong person.

“Speaking of those little devils, Rory just woke up from his nap. Oh, one more thing! I’m SO glad you went back to your natural color, Wyn. The blonde was so passé. Buh-bye!”

Dumbfounded, Wyn looked down at the screen of her phone, the glowing surface possessing a

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quality that felt as though it knew more than Wyn did, herself. Wyn knew for a fact that she hadn’t seen Nina in ages. She didn’t sleep at all last night so there was no chance of comatose travelling, instead she had taken the extended day as a chance to catch up on her work. All of the work she had completed along with emails and calls that still remained on her laptop were evidence enough for her that her personality hadn’t split either.

So how the hell did Wyn end up all the way in New Hampshire? *** Wyn performed an experiment. It began by missing a doctor’s appointment on purpose. The next day, she called the doctor’s office to ask if she could reschedule. “Reschedule?” answered the receptionist, “But by attending yesterday’s visit you already fulfilled the amount covered by your insurance for the month.” Wyn quickly thanked her and hung up the phone.

Next, Wyn stopped reaching out to anyone she knew. This shift took slightly longer to notice, but, sure enough, from time to time her phone would buzz with a “Great seeing you!” or “That dinner was amazing!” when Wyn had been at home cleaning her apartment. She was surprised by her own indifference. She accepted whatever this force was for taking over where she had lost track.

Somewhere along the line of keeping afloat—living day-by-day and practically paycheck-to-paycheck—to eventually reach the place she saw herself being in ten years, she had accumulated a conglomeration of people, responsibilities, and memories that she wanted no part of. It all felt like a subplot to the main storyline that she so desperately wanted to live, but it was the peripheral characters and interweaving chapters that actually made up the majority of her experience.

For months, Wyn had stopped going to work. Her salary came regularly so she didn’t think twice about going back. She spent the whole first month laying in bed watching old movies on her computer, leaving the house solely to restock on chips, bananas, and peanut butter—her diet during this enjoyable reversion to adolescence. Yet, as each day passed it became harder and harder to roll out of bed. Every muscle and bone in her body ached. At one point, Wyn woke from a particularly bad sleep, choking violently. She heaved and coughed, until a few of her teeth that had been lodged in her throat landed on the floor beside her bed. Wyn didn’t even have the energy to fear what was happening. Her nails grew brittle and she shivered at the slightest breeze—the windows of her apartment remained shut for weeks. Every blink of the eye and gasp of breath felt like a labor so terrible. Then something woke her.

Milo Peters is in a relationship, read the status. Wyn rolled her eyes, “No shit.” She hadn’t thought of him in months, but this digital announcement sent a crash of anguish that rode on the wave of her motor memory. Wyn clicked on his profile out of habit, and scrolled down to the post. Her breathing stopped.

Smiling back at her, with long, dark hair, and radiant, tan skin, was Wyn. Wyn peered at the image, her heart thudding, trying to rouse her from the shock. Her first rational thought was that Milo had a very specific type, but the longer she stared, the more she noticed the slight downturn of the nose and the scar at the collarbone that she had only ever seen in the mirror, otherwise. The metaphysical instinct that had been nagging at her for the past many months was now screeching in her ear, shaking her for her ignorance. Wyn stood up and ran to the bathroom, staring at her reflection, yanking at her hair and staring at some of the blonde tufts the lay limp in her palm. She looked ghastly.

Wyn thought back to Milo. When he had broken up with her, he had told her in his blunt manner from before that he didn’t believe in people changing; he didn’t see them ever getting back together; they were through. Wyn went to her nightstand in her bedroom and pulled out the letter

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from Milo that she hadn’t read since that night. Taking out the sheaf of paper, a second card tumbled to her feet. Lifting it up and turning it round, Wyn didn’t even flinch at the realization—it was the photo of Milo and the girl from the fridge that Wyn had been so envious of. Looking at the dip in the nose and the scar on the collarbone, Wyn was certain. It was herself. *** The rain thudding down onto the hood of Wyn’s raincoat felt like a million wasps slamming into her skull. She stood, calling the number over and over: 109, 109, 109. Finally, the gate buzzed and Wyn rushed through, speeding into the building and slamming the elevator shut. When she reached the apartment’s floor, the door stood defensively shut. However, upon her foot hitting the doormat, it swung open and Prudence stood smiling in an apron, holding her finger up to her lips, the apartment dark.

“You’re soaked,” she whispered, glancing behind her, “You didn’t warn me you were coming, Milo’s here. I would invite you in to warm up, but—” “What. Did you do,” Wyn demanded, breathing heavily.

“Sweetie, what—” “Prudence, that night, when you did your reiki, voodoo, whatever. What did you really do?”

“Honey, I just expelled you from the negative energy. It was holding you down.”

“Was it an exorcism? Is that what it was? Was I possessed? That still can’t explain what’s happening,” Wyn said shaking her head and grabbing her stomach, nauseous from the unreality of the whole situation.

“Wyn I really can’t talk. Milo is going to get suspicious.”

Wyn stared down at Prudence’s feet—one was tapping. Wyn’s eyes slowly rolled over the woman before her, the pants and the slippers, the cardigan and the frilly apron. Prudence looked like a wretched Stepford wife with hard glossy cheeks and a porcelain pointed nose.

“No he’s not,” Wyn said.

“What, Wyn?” Prudence sighed.

“If Milo was here, you wouldn’t look like that. You wouldn’t dare let him see you looking any less than perfect. You wouldn’t let him know that anything got to you.

You’re lying to me,” Wyn pushed past Prudence before she even had a chance to react. The apartment was completely submerged in darkness safe for a soft green light that oozed from the kitchen. Wyn followed.

On the table below the chandelier—where many months before, Wyn had felt the shift—laid a black crumpled thing. Its spine was ragged and the stringy hair hung from the scalp like the branches of a willow. As Wyn approached, it turned around and leered. Wyn blinked and the figure had stood up, transitioning continuously in a cinematic fade-in, fade-out fashion between the grotesque thing and a healthy version of the weakling it hovered before.

Prudence walked up beside Wyn and placed both hands in a nurturing fashion on Wyn’s shoulders. The figure drifted down from its height, its noseless face inches from Wyn’s own. The complicated Lilla Orly mechanism of its jaw unhinged and opened.

All-nonsense Editor-in-Chief subsisting from “What is it?” Wyn asked, tears rolling down her cheek, printed word to printed word. Enamored by as she dispersed into vapor and was swallowed. the grim cavities of a too saccharine existence, “Why, Wyn, my dear,” Prudence whispered, “It’s you.” and tracing half-truths in negative space. Digs meandering routes and gnarly tunes as well as the concept of an ever-expanding universe.

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POETRY

Sofiya Voytkukhova

s q u a re

is

w h i te

is

s ay

g re y

a

c i rc l e

a ny

color

the white circle

a

s q u a re

a n d t h e w h i te c i rc l e i s

the white circle

the white circle

Sofia Voytukhova A logophile who tries to come to terms with their own voice and balance facts with value.

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sky into

splinters appears

line a

two

ir to m s

p here linter s the white circle s tar to develop invisible begin s here end somewhere else

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Untitled

Mateusz Boczkiewicz

Eeny, meeny, miny, moe Who is going to break ‘em all?

Who will play with hate and love Make ‘em feel like they’re above Easy to catch, one gaze it's what it took And now they dribble and swing on a hook The goddess will tell and fools will serve None disobeys ‘cause none has the nerve I long for One who would For now it’ll do to toy with the rest Set little bait, they'll come to my nest All will whine and beg for more Eeny, meeny, miny, ‘hoe

Mateusz Boczkiewicz “Hey, I’m Batman.”

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Heavy

Amber Wazacz

It’s like I’m a dam Waiting to explode All of it, everything It all just wants to be free My dam has leaks The streams of tears will flow free Here and there It happens from time to time Big girls always feel heavy We walk lighter and slower We consider every step and every move But, carrying the weight of the world on her shoulders She becomes heavier And steps become harder Movement slows She gets lost in the hubbub The load gets bigger and bigger And she slows more and more Then she’s gone One second for you A thousand years for her She freezes and disappears into the crowd Lost forever to herself and you A second for you A thousand years for her The leaks free her For seconds the weight gets lighter Her steps feel graceful once more And then Seconds for you Thousands of years for her Invisible once again She suffers just beyond the veil Holding it all in Praying, hoping She is a burden to herself She need not be dead weight to those she loves So she hides She watches and she listens Just behind a shadow Her back breaks and bends with the weight She becomes stronger Weeks for you millenia for her She’s strong enough to hear the weight But it leaves her just beyond help

She loses herself Abandons herself Wishes beyond hope, she could drop it Let it go But she’ll die a traitor’s death Drowned by her own baggage She cannot be saved And you lost her months ago Once upon a time she was with you And once upon a time she was just gone

Amber Wazacz Enjoys banana bread and pasta, wintery mornings and hot chocolate, dancing in the rain, and squealing laughter.

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ARTICLES

A Scandal, A Tragedy, An Institution Teresa Bakalarska

A Scandal It is fairly easy to measure a scandal in numbers: 1 medical professional, more than 20 years of repeated sexual abuse, sentenced to up to 175 years in prison, more than 150 women and young girls delivering victim impact statements during the 7 day trial, and over 260 victims who have come forward with their testimonies.

All these numbers mark the case of Dr. Larry Nassar— now, a convicted serial child molester—a case that will probably be known as the biggest sexual abuse scandal in the history of sport.

It all started to unfold in the summer of 2016 when local newspaper, The Indianapolis Star, published the results of their investigation into sexual harassment in the world of gymnastics. The investigation was centered on USA Gymnastics’ (a national governing body for gymnastics in the US) failure and neglect to deal with and report allegations of sexual abuse to authorities. Although The Indianapolis Star focused solely on coaches as perpetrators, they received a letter from an athlete, Rachael Denhollander, in a response to the published article. “I was molested by Dr. Larry Nassar, the team doctor for USAG,” read the letter. Denhollander filed a criminal complaint against the doctor, accusing him of abusing her when she was only 15 years old, in the year 2000. For a long time, she was the only one who agreed to be named and to stand against the doctor, but, as time passed, more and more young women and girls started coming forward with their testimonies.

Some of them were very well known female gymnasts—Olympians, gold medalists—but the vast majority consisted of young, female athletes and students.

Nassar was the national medical coordinator for USA Gymnastics from 1996 to 2015, but he also held the position of assistant professor at Michigan State University (from which he was fired in 2016). Almost all of the assaults were performed by him during work.

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A Tragedy Many of the testimonies are strikingly similar. The assault was performed under the guise of medical treatment when girls came to get treated for training injuries.

In many cases, their parents were present in the room, not aware of what was happening. Nassar was considered by parents and coaches to be the best of the best in the field of sports medicine. Girls were told that they were lucky to have him as a doctor, to have him help with injuries that very often could mean the end of a gymnast’s career. More than just a doctor, he presented himself as a friend, forming relationships with girls and parents to win their trust. He encouraged his victims, gave them presents, Olympic memorabilia, promises of a career—as the USAG Olympic team doctor, he was very well connected—and discounts on treatment. In the competitive world of gymnastics and college sports, he presented himself as the only one who could understand, console, and treat young athletes.

All these grooming techniques made girls confused and self-doubting. Nassar was assured that no one would speak against him, or, if they did, they would not be believed. For a long time, he was right. Everything worked in his favor: his victims’ youth, the competitiveness of the environment, and the stigma attached to sexual abuse.

Although the public’s main reaction was one of anger, disbelief, and sorrow, there were also voices raised against the young women speaking up. Aside from calling the victims liars, fame-seekers, or consensual accomplices, some voices also sympathized with Nassar.

An Institution The general public and the victims’ outrage are not directed solely at Nassar, but also at institutions that are believed to have enabled and protected him for years.

Among those institutions, the chief three are: Michigan State University, USA Gymnastics, and the US Olympic

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Committee. It is said that the first accusations appeared as far back as 1997, but were either ignored or silenced.

Allegedly, on multiple occasions, phone calls had been made between Nassar and authorities—phone calls that are suspected to have concerned accusations or complaints. The outrage is even more fueled by the fact that, in 2015, Nassar abruptly and silently retired from USA Gymnastics; the institution was extremely slow in contacting authorities about complaints they received.

USAG and MSU explained that they were conducting a so-called internal investigation. During that investigation, USAG signed a non-disclosure agreement with Olympian, McKayla Maroney, supposedly to uphold discretion of the investigation. Maroney, who feels as though she was forced to sign the agreement, sued to invalidate the deal with USAG in December 2017.

Unavoidably, the scandal caused huge fallout in the institutions mentioned. The president of MSU resigned, although, in her apology, she claimed to be a victim of the political hunt. Urged by the Olympic Committee, the entire board of USAG resigned upon the sentencing of Nassar. There are separate cases against MSU and USAG in court, at the moment. Furthermore, victims as well as the public have called for the trial of Kathie Klages, former head gymnastic coach at MSU, who reportedly discouraged victims from filing reports and showed her support for Nassar.

Many point out that this systemic issue is partially responsible for the tragedy of young athletes. They argue that gymnastics’ competitive, intense, and restrictive environment is to blame for enabling abuse and putting young athletes in an extremely vulnerable position— where everything from their diet to their schedule is dictated by coaches and members of staff. The battle to reach the Olympics, to win medals, and to strive for perfection rule the lives of “elite” gymnasts—as well as ruling the work of USAG. In addition to that, the selection of gymnasts for the Worlds or Olympics’ national team, up until 2016, was decided almost exclusively by the US National Team Coordinator, Martha Karolyi. Prospective gymnasts were required to attend training camps at The Ranch—an actual ranch and gymnastics camp facility privately owned by Martha Karolyi and her husband, Bela. While at camp, gymnasts followed strict schedules and were privately assessed by Martha. They could not be chaperoned. Reportedly, the nourishment and sanitary standards were lacking. In contrast, some things were provided in abundance; that is hours of training, unavoidable injuries, and Larry Nassar’s “treatment.”

Upon Karolyi’s retirement after the 2016 Olympics, the Ranch was sold to USAG. Following the trial against Nassar and with respect to gymnasts’ wishes, USAG cut ties with The Ranch in January 2018.

The Future Following this, the general public hopes that deeper changes will be introduced to the operations of the institutions mentioned. Expressing regret and apologies are not enough. What is most important in the aftermath of a tragedy, is to assure that such incidents will never happen again. For that, we, as a society, have to create an environment in which victims of assault feel safe to speak up. Not only in order to bring the offender to justice, but also to make potential victims less vulnerable in the first place. Recent events, such as the outpour of reports about sexual abuse in Hollywood circles and the following viral spread of the “#MeToo” movement, suggest that the number of victims is far greater than expected. However, to a certain degree this outpour is also a sign of positive change—reporting and speaking openly about sexual abuse is becoming more acceptable. There is strength in those numbers; now, we have to work so that the same strength will be found in each individual.

We are obviously still very far from creating that necessary, safe environment. If we can create it, we can make sure that society will stop failing victims and potential victims—stop failing them like the system failed over 260 young people.

Apart from the disappointing institutions and authorities, there are also those who stood up for the victims.

One of them is Judge Rosemarie Aquilina, head judge of Nassar’s trial. Many praise her for showing empathy for the survivors and allowing them to deliver victim impact

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statements, as well as for properly handling the media pressure. Her adamant and confident attitude served as a clear sign that such crimes cannot and will not be tolerated. “I just signed your death warrant,” said the Judge while delivering the final sentencing. Early this year, Nassar was sentenced for 40 to 175 years in prison for felony criminal sexual conduct. When combined with a prior sentence of 60 years on federal child pornography charges (the cache with pictures was discovered during the investigation; none of the pictures revealed images of victims) it means that he will not be released earlier than in 2069. For Nassar, this is basically a life sentence.

There are many concerns surrounding the future of gymnastics in the US after the scandal. If the institutions and organizations are not held responsible, if the changes are not implemented, if the faults are not acknowledged, if there is no open dialogue instead of fighting in court, it will be impossible for the US gymnastics community to heal and regain lost trust. Just like Aly Raisman, gold medalist and abuse survivor, said in her statement: we cannot stop until the last trace of illness—the illness of the predator, but also the illness of neglect and the illness of acquiescence—is diagnosed and treated. Right now, we are fighting the battle—not only for the future of thousands of young gymnasts, but also for the future of all girls, boys, men, and women who are, have been, and will be in danger of becoming victims.

Bibliography Bernstein, Mark. "10 Tips on Writing the Living Web." A List Apart: For People Who Make Websites, 16 Aug. 2002, alistapart.com/article/ writeliving. Accessed 4 May 2009.

Graham, Bryan Armen. “'I was molested by Dr Larry Nassar': how the gymnastics sexual abuse scandal unfolded.” The Guardian, 27 Jan. 2018, www.theguardian.com/sport/2018/jan/27/larry-nassar-trial-gymnastics-sexual-abuse. Accessed 20 May 2018.

Hanna, Jason. “The fallout from Larry Nassar's sexual abuse is just beginning.” CNN, 1 Feb. 2018, https://edition.cnn.com/2018/01/26/us/ larry-nassar-investigation-fallout-march/index.html. Accessed 20 May 2018.

Jenkins, Sally. “Aly Raisman: Conditions at Karolyi Ranch made athletes vulnerable to Nassar.” The Washington Post, 30 Mar. 2018, https:// www.washingtonpost.com/sports/olympics/aly-raisman-conditionsat-karolyi-ranch-made-athletes-vulnerable-to-nassar/2018/03/14/6d2dae56-26eb-11e8-874b-d517e912f125_story.html?noredirect=on&utm_ term=.a66da305bd36. Accessed 20 May 2018.

Kirby, Jen. “The sex abuse scandal surrounding USA Gymnastics team doctor Larry Nassar, explained.” Vox, 16 May 2018, www.vox.com/ identities/2018/1/19/16897722/sexual-abuse-usa-gymnastics-larry-nassar-explained. Accessed 20 May 2018.

“Larry Nassar sentenced: I signed your death warrant, judge says.”

YouTube, uploaded by CNN, 24 January 2018, https://www.youtube. com/watch?v=e-nYRmU_Gxo. “McKayla Maroney says USA Gymnastics paid for her silence on sexual abuse.” The Guardian, 20 Dec. 2017, www.theguardian.com/ sport/2017/dec/20/mckayla-maroney-says-usa-gymnastics-paid-forher-silence-on-sexual-abuse. Accessed 20 May 2018.

“USA Gymnastics cut ties with Karolyi Ranch following sexual assault allegations against doctor Larry Nassar.” Independent, 18 Jan. 2018, www.independent.co.uk/sport/olympics/larry-nassar-sexual-assault-allegations-simone-biles-usa-gymnastics-team-doctor-karolyi-ranch-a8167201.html. Accessed 20 May 2018.

“Watch Aly Raisman confront Larry Nassar in court.” YouTube, uploaded by CNN, 19 January 2018, https://www.youtube.com/ watch?v=HWWFB6RZwgg&t=185s.

Teresa Bakalarska A human, crisp, professional whiner. Writes everything from poetry through prose to god-awful rap lyrics. Thinks that Buffy The Vampire Slayer is the greatest achievement of humanity.

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Recycled Cinema Jakub Zieliński

According to popular beliefs, we are experiencing a steady decay of cinema. The contemporary cinematic business is based mainly on repetition, “sequelization,” and rebooting. To illustrate the matter at hand, let’s look at cinematic screenings during the first quarter of 2018. The comic-based Avengers: Infinity War is already the 19th movie linked with the so-called “Marvel Cinematic Universe.” Next, Tomb Raider is the second attempt to adapt a popular computer game. What is more, cinemagoers can also choose Ready Player One—a book adaptation—or the fifth chapter of the Taxi franchise. These are only a few examples of what audiences can observe in the cinemas every month. Although big screen adaptations of popular video games, comics, or books are quite understandable, attempts to make movies based on board games seem ridiculous…but are they? Without a doubt, contemporary commercial cinema is focused primarily on making money, and the repetitions of already established texts are the best way of doing so.

To some degree, cinema has always been based on bringing “almost everything” to the screen. Since the very beginning, filmmakers have presented multiple popular stories in their movies. As early as 1902, Georges Méliès made Voyage to the Moon, a movie inspired by the work

of Jules Verne. Other examples of page-to-screen adaptations are two films released in 1939: Gone with the Wind and The Wizard of Oz, both directed by Victor Fleming.

As we can see, the idea of transferring novels onto the big screen was at its finest. What is more, already in 1905, the Edison Manufacturing Company released The Whole Dam Family and the Dam Dog directed by Edwin S. Porter. What is so significant about this less-than six-minute short, is that it was actually an interpretation of popular souvenir postcards. The purpose of the movie was to create a moving and “living” version of a humorous family that people could only see in a postcard image at that time. With this in mind, it is not surprising that so many contemporary productions are derived from other texts or even items. This is why, in 2012, there was a place in Hollywood for a film like Battleship to be produced.

“Loosely based” on the Hasbro board game, the movie has received negative responses solely for the very idea of making such a project. Moreover, many people believe that it denuded filmmakers’ inability to tell original stories and create memorable characters. Nevertheless, the drive for money is perhaps the most important thing that prevents filmmakers from coming up with new ideas.

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The easiest way to make profits is to make what sells best. For this reason, cinemagoers can see familiar titles in the cinemas each year. If a movie does well at the box office, it will probably get a sequel…or a prequel…or both.

It is no coincidence that franchises such as Star Wars, Indiana Jones, Jurassic Park, Transformers, Pirates of the Caribbean, Marvel’s Avengers, and many more, all consist of several movies and nobody is able to predict when or on what numeral they will finish. Although these brands were fresh and innovative at some point in cinematic history, filmmakers decided that it was necessary to exploit them to the fullest. For this reason, as long as they attract millions of watchers, there will be more of them in the movie theaters. However, over the last few years, audiences have been able to witness some striking failures too. There have been several attempts to breathe new life into some enormous titles, for example Terminator: Genesis, Alien: Covenant, or Independence Day: Resurgence.

While considering their numerous negative reviews and lower-than-expected results at the box office, it is quite unlikely we will see further continuations of these movies in upcoming years.

Finally, another phenomenon that mainstream cinema has caused is an emphasized importance on the size of a movie’s budget, rather than what it has to offer for the audience. The perfect example of such thinking is the Avatar franchise. There is a huge debate whether we need to see more of it in the future, but the fact is…we certainly will. Director James Cameron was already speaking about several possible sequels shortly after the release of the first film, but the plans seemed to have halted. However, now it has been made known that there are four other movies to be filmed under the Avatar brand. The second chapter of Cameron’s movie is scheduled for release in December 2020, and will be followed by the third in the following year. Nevertheless, the fates of Avatar 4 and Avatar 5 depend on how well the previous ones will do at the box office. One might ask whether the scriptwriter has any concrete ideas for all these movies, or if it is simply another example of how to fully exploit a successful franchise.

Above all, the drive for profit of the contemporary commercial cinema is unquestionable. As long as there is demand for countless sequels, prequels, or reboots, they will be produced for the pleasure of the audiences.

On the other hand, many people still accuse filmmakers of not being able to create fresh stories, but the fact is, they simply are not forced to come up with original ideas. Movie franchises, best-selling books and comics, or even popular toys all produce income each month. Since filmmakers were able to produce five installments off the toy-based Transformers, is there anything they would not be able to present on the big screen? One might look in vain for the endpoint of the sequelization and adaptation processes. Nonetheless, there is no need of dramatizing it. There are still millions of people who go to see these movies with great pleasure! Including me.

Jakub Zieliński 2nd year student of the ASC. Has a special fondness for rap music. Apart from that, he loves science fiction, especially the one in the galaxy far, far away.

May the force be with you.

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Contributors

Teresa Bakalarska A human, crisp, professional whiner. Writes everything from poetry through prose to god-awful rap lyrics. Thinks that Buffy The Vampire Slayer is the greatest achievement of humanity.

Mateusz Boczkiewicz “Hey, I’m Batman.”

Aleksandra Barciszewska Former editor-in-chief. ASC-survivor. Vampiric psychoanalyst by nature. Extracting the sexual from the mundane, rejecting reality for the sake of the very-tale of momentary satiation of the urges for creation.

Aleksandra Dąbrowa 5th year student of ASC, addicted to science-fiction movies and TV series.

Can’t live without Adobe After Effects and Photoshop. Future motion designer and creative web developer.

EsterHazy Graduate of New York University (B.A. in Comparative Literature) and University of Warsaw (M.A. in American Studies). Translator of art books and children’s book from Polish into English. Winner of the Educational Writers’ Award in the U.K.

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Karolina Jakubiak Always sleepy, always hungry, and always creative coffee addict.

Anita Majewska Addicted to basketball, drawing, and Netflix. I think with images.

If I look depressed, I probably just ran out of hummus.

Natalia Ogórek Singing is her biggest passion, but she does not connect her future with it. Lover of TV series and Marvel. 70% funny, 50% weird, 100% organized.

Anna Oleinic Allows herself a mess in her closet less often than in her head.

Lilla Orly All-nonsense Editor-in-Chief subsisting from printed word to printed word. Enamored by the grim cavities of a too saccharine existence, and tracing half-truths in negative space. Digs meandering routes and gnarly tunes as well as the concept of an ever-expanding universe.

Paweł Pańczyk Graphic designer and emotional experience seeker. Just be yourself!

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Marta Rapacka 2nd year BA student. Apart from being utterly in love with TV series, she loves spending her free time discovering mysteries of Adobe Photoshop. Coerced into accepting the new goal of her existence, namely being The Very First Caricaturist of The Wasp—an honorable title she proudly bears and exploits (see: above and below).

Basia Szukała Travel girl who always keeps a weather eye on the horizon. In love with chocolate and pineapple. Play her Hans Zimmer or reggaeton. Do not disturb while she is taking photos and you will get lots of hearts.

Sofia Voytukhova A logophile who tries to come to terms with their own voice and balance facts with value.

Klaudia Wanat A creative, amateurish artist, mainly relying on her imagination.

In huge love with animals, concerts, and hair dyeing. Takes on new challenges. Biggest wish: explore the whole world and be a happy owner of a mini pig.

Amber Wazacz Enjoys banana bread and pasta, wintery mornings and hot chocolate, dancing in the rain, and squealing laughter.

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Kamila Maria Wyszyńska Studies Graphic Arts at the Academy of Fine Arts in Warsaw. American Studies is her second faculty. Loves to travel. Wants to live and create across the world.

Jakub Zieliński 2nd year student of the ASC. Has a special fondness for rap music.

Apart from that, he loves science fiction, especially the one in the galaxy far, far away. May the force be with you.

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