WNW Summer 2012 Edition by caffeinepresse

LETTER FROM THE EDITORS Our first issue is finally here. Thereâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s a lot that went into getting this magazine out. When we first got this idea of starting a literary magazine together, we decided we wanted to publish pieces of writing that showcased the craft in both a positive and influential way. I believe we succeeded. This first issue features a little bit of everything: excellent poetry, fantastic flash fiction, and a stellar short story. Weâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;d like to thank everyone for the support in getting us this far! With that said, all of us here at Wednesday Night Writes would like to present our first issue!

TABLE OF CONTENTS Emily Nakanishi

Heather Johnson

Jessi Moore

Emma Berman

Genevieve Rushton-Givens

Gabriel Barker

Thomas Fitzgerald

Rachael Day

Whiskurz

Jessi Moore

CODENAME: FAIRYTALE ENDING EMILY NAKANISHI The woods were dark, nearly silent. It was as though all of the animals had hidden away, no crickets, no raccoons, nothing, and the lack of living things unnerved Agent 018. The only sound was a gentle breeze through the virtually bare trees, rustling the few dead leaves that were left. It was just barely loud enough to cover her footsteps, practiced and catlike, as she darted among the foliage, drawing closer to the dark house in the middle of the woods. She paused at the edge of the clearing, still hidden among the brush, and drew out a pair of binoculars – equipped with night vision, infrared, and a convenient GPS system, all standard issue for a GRIMM Operative Agent. “Control, this is Goldilocks,” she murmured, just loud enough for the tiny, sensitive microphone around her neck to pick up. It read the vibrations of her throat, allowing her to whisper and still be picked up by Control. “Training drill number fifteen commencing. Beginning approach.” “Roger, Goldilocks,” a smooth voice replied through the receiver nestled in her ear. “You have level 2 clearance, proceed with caution.” Goldilocks grinned, slipping the binoculars back into the utility belt at her waist. “It’s cute when you talk all techy to me, Charming,” she purred. She stepped into the clearing, sharp eyes taking in her surroundings. No movement, no lights on in the house, no sprinklers, just a dark lawn with a few flowers and a fountain featuring a naked baby peeing. Classy. “Hey, now, we’re working.” Charming was his newest codename. Thanks to a little incident involving the price of tea of China and the world economy (classified information, details withheld), he’d been forced to change it. He was now the agent formerly known as Prince. “Not really.” Goldilocks took the path up to the front door, opting to pick the locks instead of climbing the ivy up the side of the house. “It’s a training drill. Besides, the flirty banter is what makes the missions fun.” “Well, excuse me if the adrenaline rush of lethal missions doesn’t get me going like it does you,” he deadpanned. “And I don’t think Baby Bear would approve.” “This mission isn’t lethal, sweetheart.” Goldilocks pulled the lock picks out of her belt and set to work on the door. “It’s exciting. Training drill, remem-

ber? No one dies. You know he doesn’t care as long as the job gets done.” “There is a two-point-three percent chance of you dying during a training drill. So while improbable, death is possible.” “I’m in,” she said, pushing open the door quietly, just a crack large enough that she could squeeze inside. She closed it behind her, hearing a tiny click that signified the start of the timer. She smiled. “They make these training drills easy. I was expecting a simulated explosion.” “Don’t get cocky,” Charming replied. “And why are you talking? If this were real, you’d have been discovered by now. Flirting with me isn’t worth dying. Head left, go into the kitchen. There should be porridge.” “There is in fact porridge.” Goldilocks eyed the bowls. “What’s the point of this?” “It’s a simulation of the latest series of tests designed by the Big Bad Wolf to eliminate agents. One of them will be safe, the other two will be poisoned. If you lift the wrong one, it speeds up the timer. He’s always watching the building too – you have to drink the porridge, or the house goes up in flames, along with whatever you were sent to retrieve.” “So if you pick the wrong one, he’s pretty much making sure that you’re dead, poison or otherwise.” “He sends a coded email to the handler, and we have to crack it before you move on.” Charming was typing quickly. “…It’s a really difficult code.” There was a long moment of silence. Goldilocks licked her lips, figuring that the timer was probably at about eight minutes now. “Charming, is it too difficult?” “Of course it isn’t,” he snapped. He was getting defensive, which meant that it was. Goldilocks took a calming breath. “Just calm down. It’s a training drill, no pressure.” “I think I’ve got the password. ‘Too hot, too cold, just right.’” “Too hot, too cold, just right,” Goldilocks repeated. “Which one’s the safe one?” “Uh… I think it’s the middle one.”

“You think?” “You need at least six minutes to make it through the rest of the house, we’re at seven, so pick it up and drink it,” Charming replied. “Charming…” Goldilocks started. “Trust me,” he said. A pause, and then, “Baby Bear says it’s right.” There was a beat where Goldilocks wavered – she trusted Charming, and she trusted Baby Bear’s expertise even more - before she sighed, and reached for the bowl. She gave a distasteful shiver before downing the contents of the bowl and putting it back onto the counter. “Yuck,” she said, moving to step away from the counter. The room around her started to shift and she stumbled as a sudden bout of dizziness overtook her. “Goldilocks?” Charming said, alarmed, the near-constant sound of typing coming to a stop. The kitchen was spinning, her vision was edging black. “I think…” She tried to grasp at the counter to stand, hoping to at least get to the lawn before the effects of the poison rendered her helpless. She failed, sliding down to the linoleum, unable to gather the strength to rise again. “…think you were wrong…” she managed just before the world went completely dark around her. The sound of Charming shouting her name through the communication-link was the last thing to fade away. Funny how she found it comforting. * Goldilocks woke to birds chirping outside the window and the feeling of a thousand tiny dwarves with jackhammers behind her eyes. She stirred slowly, reluctant to leave the soft bed and face the fact that she had screwed up on a simple training mission. Never mind that it was Charming that had ultimately made the mistake – they were a team, a unit, and when one stumbled the other fell (usually off of a cliff and into a big babbling brook or down a chimney or something). She was a big girl, though, and this wasn’t the first time, or the last, that they would have to face the music. So, after a moment of preparing herself, she finally peeled herself away from the warm nest of blankets and comfortable.

Her apartment was small but comfortable, tastefully decorated by someone Charming had hired when they had first been assigned as partners. Goldilocks had never actually seen Charming in person. He was her handler, her

partner, the one person that Goldilocks was forced to trust with every aspect of her life despite the fact that she had been taught to trust absolutely no one. There was the possibility of a very thin line between their business relationship and their personal one, one that was far too easy to cross if they weren’t careful. Charming was just a dark figure behind a computer screen, hidden in shadows and a shroud of intrigue, a familiar voice that guided her through dangerous situations unscathed. Occasionally, she liked to think that someday they might be more than friends, but she was more likely to die before then, or be carted off to a different assignment with a different handler. At least, that’s what he liked to say. “Good morning, Goldy,” her mentor and closest friend, Baby Bear, greeted as she entered the kitchen. Baby Bear was the result of some government experiments in a small town when he was still just a twinkle in his mother’s eye. Instead of being fully human, he was a hybrid of a grizzly bear and a child, a walking, talking bear cub. His real name, like Goldilocks’, was classified information that few were privy to, so everyone just knew him as Baby Bear. He had trained her, and was about as close to her as two agents could be, platonically, anyway. He did, however, have a key to her apartment that he kept in case of emergencies, like failing a training drill and getting knocked out by porridge, and, on one memorable occasion, a one-bear surprise birthday party. She sat down at the island, waving away his offer of pancakes. Her stomach was still turning, an aftereffect of whatever she had been whammied with, she assumed. “I hear you had a bad day at school.” “Charming screwed up,” Goldilocks replied. “The test code was too hard, he couldn’t figure it out and it all got shot to h-e-double-hockey-sticks.” “Watch your language,” Baby Bear advised. “You sure you don’t want pancakes? They’re delicious. Breakfast is the most important meal of the day.” He waved the plate under her nose, and she caught the faint scent of nuts. She wrinkled her nose in response. “I don’t like nuts, remember?” “There aren’t nuts in ‘em.” Baby Bear replied, pausing. “I can smell them,” Goldilocks said. She put her head in her arms on the counter as he carried the plate away. He was oddly quiet, and she felt guilty. He was just trying to take care of her, after all. “Maybe I should take the

day off and get my head together.” “That’s a good idea,” Baby Bear said from behind her. “You probably need rest. You could sleep like the dead.” “Tempting,” Goldilocks said. There was the soft chiming sound of her communication-link when it wasn’t on silent from the table by the door. She swiveled on the stool to hop off, only to come face to face with Baby Bear. She yelped, shifting back just in time to avoid hopping off the stool and straight onto his knife. “What are you doing?” He held up the knife and the plate of pancakes. “Cutting up my pancakes?” “Those are the ones covered in syrup, not honey,” Goldilocks pointed out. He had grabbed the wrong plate. She moved past him to pick up the headset. “Who’s there?” she asked. “It’s me.” Goldilocks’ brow furrowed. “What’s wrong?” “I just wanted to make sure you were okay.” “I’m going to go ahead and go in,” Baby Bear said, donning his coat and hat. “Cheer up, okay? Eat some pancakes.” He patted her on the shoulder with a heavy, furry paw and hustled out the door. She spared him a glance and a smile, locking the door behind him. She and Charming were both silent as Goldilocks busied herself with cleaning up the kitchen a little, noting with a worried frown that Baby Bear hadn’t eaten his pancakes. “I’m sorry, Goldilocks,” Charming finally said. “I shouldn’t have rushed… if I hadn’t, we wouldn’t have messed it up and…” “Relax,” she said, leaning against the sink. “It was a training drill. No real danger, so no real pressure, okay?” “But what if it had been real?” Goldilocks shrugged, not able to find anything consoling to say to that, before remembering that he couldn’t see her. If it had been real, she would have been dead within six minutes, and that certainly wasn’t a particularly comforting thought.

There was another long, drawn out silence as they pretended not to listen to

the other breathe. Finally, Charming sighed. “Uh, we have another training drill to run tonight,” he said. “Same scenario… I think I’ve figured out the rest of the code, though.” She nodded. “I guess Baby Bear will just have to deal with me working.” Charming spoke sharply. “Baby Bear? He was here? Did he say anything about the drill?” Goldilocks shook her head. “Not really, no. Why?” “He designs the drills to work like the Big Bad Wolf ’s. I was thinking maybe he’d given you some hints or something…” “I would have told you if he had.” The Big Bad Wolf, aka Charlie Albert Wolfe, was the bane of the agency’s existence and the biggest baddie that they had ever gone up against. He had a startlingly accurate knowledge of the inner workings of the agency and was known as Baby Bear’s arch nemesis. There was a scar over his eye that Baby Bear had carved into him with his bare claws, as the stories went. No one really knew for sure why they hated each other so much, but there was speculation all throughout the GRIMM Agency. “It’s okay,” she said. “Let’s go to work.” * When Goldilocks stepped out of the shadows this time, there was something about the house that rubbed her the wrong way. It looked the same, no movement, lights, or sprinklers, naked baby still peeing among the flowers. Still, there was something, a hunch in the back of her mind that just caused her stop. She attempted to shrug it off. “Goldilocks to Control,” she said. “Target is in sight, beginning approach.” “Hold that thought,” Charming said quickly. There was no ‘sweetheart’ tagged onto it, nothing that echoed of his usual flirty humor. “There’s something wrong with the schematics of the house…” “What do you mean?” Goldilocks demanded. She crouched behind a shrub, still watching the house. “I mean that this mission may have been upgraded from exciting to lethal. I

don’t have clearance to tell you to-” Charming said in a rush, then cut himself off, like he was listening to someone else speak. “I have command in here, they’re saying proceed with caution. Entry point should be the same.” Goldilocks crept across the yard. There was a blinding flash as lights suddenly flooded the area. She found herself pinpointed by a spotlight and barely moved in time to avoid fire from a motion-triggered turret. She took cover behind the naked baby statue, chunks flying around her. “Poor naked baby,” she said in response to Charming’s demands that she say something. “I don’t think going in the front door is gonna work.” “There’s the ivy,” Charming suggested. Goldilocks grimaced a little. She braced herself for the acrobatic act of dodging spotlights and turret fire, zipping like a cheetah until she reached the side of the house, where there was only a tiny sliver where the spotlights couldn’t hit her. Scaling the wall wasn’t easy, but she’d had plenty of training. She hit the second floor and slid in through an open window. Once inside, she found herself face to face with the barrel of a handgun. “I was hoping you wouldn’t get this far.” It took her a moment to place the voice, during which she didn’t dare breathe. “…Baby Bear?” she managed. He took a step back, furry finger still over the trigger and gun still aimed at her. “I didn’t want to have to be the one to do this, you understand? I didn’t want you to know that it was me. But you have that trap set around your bed, you wouldn’t eat the poisoned pancakes… You couldn’t even just let me stab you from behind, could you?” His voice was wavering. “You were supposed to get to the chairs last time, Goldy, that’s where it was supposed to go wrong, not at the sleeping potion.” “Son of a witch,” Charming whispered. “That’s why I couldn’t crack the code. It was undecipherable.” “Baby Bear, what… why would you…?” Goldilocks managed, hands still held up where Baby Bear could see them. Betrayal was burning like acid in her gut. “You were my mentor… like my brother…” “I needed an easy target,” Baby Bear said. “I needed something to spur the agency into catching Big Bad Wolf.”

Realization dawned on her. “The traps aren’t designed by him, are they?”

“You always were a smart girl,” he said. “No, they weren’t. They were all my design. You were supposed to be the casualty, the catalyst… I was going to make you a hero, Goldy, don’t you see? Now… now I’ve just got to go get him on my own.” He stepped forward, coming closer as his expression steeled. “Close your eyes, Goldy, it’ll be quick. I promise I’ll get him for making me do this.” He made the mistake of coming just a step too close. Her hand shot out, forcing the gun up just in time to shoot a hole in the ceiling. He was strong though, muscle of a bear showing as he forced her back. “I don’t want to kill you, Goldy, don’t make me do it with my claws, I don’t want to feel it!” He yelled, trying to fire again. This time she moved, leaping out the window and hitting the ground with a roll. She was up and running again in an instant, the sound of Baby Bear shouting becoming lost in the rapid, deafening turret fire that she avoided by pure instinct and skill. She made it to what was left of the naked baby statue, breathing harshly in the quiet. “Abort!” Charming was yelling. “Goldilocks, can you hear me? Abort!” “I can hear you,” she managed. “I’m alright. I just don’t under-” She was cut off suddenly by the head of the naked baby rolling off of the fountain and crashing down upon her. She groaned, stars bursting behind her eyes. Even more lights came on as agents swarmed the house, one reaching down to help her up and pulling her to safety. * This time, Goldilocks awoke in a bed in the infirmary. There was no sunshine through the window, no birds singing happily in the background. There was an IV in her arm and silence around her, save for her own breathing and the soft exhales of someone else. She glanced over to find an unfamiliar man sitting in the chair by her bed, watching her with dark, worried eyes behind half-moon glasses. He was pale, abnormally so, even in the harsh overhead lights, and he had messy dark hair that looked to desperately need a cut. There was scruff on his chin that spoke of a few days gone without shaving. Goldilocks didn’t recognize him. “He’s gone rogue,” the man said after a moment. His voice was smooth and soft, as familiar to her as her own. “We’ll find him, Goldilocks, don’t worry.” Charming. It was Charming. She studied him for a long moment, finally

putting a face to the voice she had heard so often. She had never really been able to pin down an imagined look for him, unable to find a style or facial feature that she was sure really fit. He had always been faceless, a shadow in her mind, even on the rare occasions that he popped up in her dreams. It took her a moment to speak as the weight of everything crashed down upon her, suddenly. The betrayal, how close she had come to death in her own kitchen, everything she had thought she’d known ripped away from her. “Charming, I…” She trailed off, unsure of everything. She couldn’t even trust her oldest friend, couldn’t trust Baby Bear, of all people. Could she even trust this man in front of her? “Andrew,” Charming said, cutting her off. “Swear to Godmother, you can trust me. If we’re going to go off on a wild bear hunt, I need to know I can trust you too.” She chewed on her lip for a moment before nodding. She had to start somewhere, again. “Andrew,” she said, trying the name out. It fit, and a ghost of a smile crossed her face. “…Claire.” Charming – no, Andrew nodded in return, holding out a hand for her to shake. “This isn’t over,” he said. “Not by a long shot.” She couldn’t agree more.

QUICKSAND HEATHER JOHNSON The beaten leather shoes of the scraggy boy splashed on the pavement of the deserted alleyway, the dirty puddles of water from yesterday’s downpour splattering on the grimy walls of the decrepit houses that lined the alley, hidden in the eyes of those fortunate enough to live in a proper household, unlike the boy who desperately ran towards his destination before the clock tower struck twelve, the given hour when his classes were supposed to start, which was his only hope of bringing his own family up from poverty and the other difficulties of life -- by educating himself, by crawling through the polluted backstreet in order to reach his class room, and by gaining the necessary tuition that the school demanded by begging was what he thought the only ways to pull his family out of the quicksand of destitution that threatened to rapidly suck the happiness and hope from them; unfortunately, this dilemma of the boy was unknown to his fellow classmates, so one could only imagine the taunts and jeers that the young boy endured as he appeared in each class, muddy and penniless, taking down notes on a torn piece of paper with an old, whittled pencil, reading the needed materials on his soggy textbooks, and eating just a meager piece of burnt bread he happened to see with the other food scraps on the dark and ominous alley that he passes by almost every day of his poor life.

THIRTY MILES AWAY JESSI MOORE

Racing through the turbulent streets of her own mind, and wishing -- wishing on the first star that had appeared just there on the horizon, and wishing on everything that could possibly be considered eligible to wish on -- for the boy who lived over thirty miles away and only saw her on weekends at the gym to turn his thoughts toward her just once and perhaps decide he missed her, Lessa, stranded in her cramped room, and sitting on an office chair facing a little window, picked up a ballpoint pen from the corner of her desk and began to subconsciously scribble words onto a lined sheet of notebook paper with the intent of writing that same boy a letter, which would perhaps, one day, in a very, very long time, when she was old and he was old, and neither of them had thought of each other for many a year, be delivered by an impatient, rude-mannered mailman to the boyâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s -- orÂ manâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s, by then --house for him to read and finally realize that all these years she had loved him from thirty miles away in the little window of her cramped room, and yet had never gathered up the courage to tell him and find out whether or not he too, loved her in return.

PUBESCENT METAMORPHOSIS EMMA BERMAN

I had never considered my sisterâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s beauty as a woman before, never looked at her ringlets and noticed their luster as lustrous, never considered her plum lips and how they might be able to kiss, but now it is all I can see; the bounce in her walk and the span of her hips had recently been drained of much of their girlish charm in favor of a charm far more ripe and floral- a look that would serve her in a different way than did her previous appearance- and I wondered if her opinion of me had been likewise transformed; I wondered if she still considered me to be miles ahead of her, if she could still ask me questions and listen to my answers with wonder and amused disbelief, or if she had been drawing information from different sources lately- sources that would have me cringe at their incredibility, and sources that would inevitably and unfortunately taint my sisterâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s fragile person beyond repair- yet I knew that the passing of time and passing of stages would build walls between us and that the only chance at breaking them would be trust, trust that had worn away long ago.

VICTORIAâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;S LONDON GENEVIEVE RUSHTON-GIVENS

Take me back to when top hats were like business suits When the white moths had become black with filth When the Thames was brown like the rotted teeth of beggars And not just because of the mud When the Irish and the Slavic were exotic When London was Birmingham When Birmingham was Liverpool When Liverpool was a country village When there were millions And yet they were still so innocently oblivious Take me to the city clothed in black For there was always a funeral somewhere London The noisy factories And crowded slums The fear that the cold brings The pain that disease brings The real London The honest London The dark, deadly London of my nightmares Every narrow, dimly-lit alleyway dripping with piss and blood

Full of criminals and drunks Ominous dark brown bricks The suffocating stink that follows you wherever you go Cursing, begging Lifting, cuffing, gaffing, looting, nicking, pinching, swiping, thieving, pilfering, pillaging Hundreds of words for stealing Where the poor are painfully poor Where every woman that smiles at you is a prostitute Corpses lying in the streets Next to gas lamps The only beacons of light People packed into bedrooms like chickens Sleeping on the string

Highly disturbing But itâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s best not to interfere For someone else will deal with it Industry and decency will save us all

There is no trace of that now Except the noble stone buildings Commissioned by the corrupt

This is my fear and obsession

Take me back there Not to stay Not to smell Just to look

Because curiosity killed the cat

ACHERON GABRIEL BAKER

We sit aboard the bank of the river The water teases the land it flirts with the mud and sand The chilling breeze makes your body shiver

The stars above seem to spell out your name Time is stood still atop our secluded hill We’re free from misery, we’re free from blame

The calmed river playfully laps your toes Your lips can’t hide your teeth We say nothing, only breathe I want this never to end, and it shows

But the tranquil, humble earth turns to ash The mud and sand; to air The river bank laid bare But lonely nostalgia, like time, passes and feelings remain there.

MARUIS! THOMAS FITZGERALD

A beautiful creature of magical light, Snatched from his motherâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s hands, Without warning or alarm or goodbye, A son though man, my dark angel.

The protector of the ancient ones, True, spirited and yearning for peace, A lover of those powerful few, A loving heart of a killer, my killer.

Never even, what dies was innocence, Not human for decades, how peaceful, A diet of blood for eternity, A cemented block in timeless age.

My lover, my priest, my teacher, A tormented soul of the soulless, Laughing screams of children, An immortal with mortal dreams.

THE MONSTER AT NIGHT RACHAEL DAY

From the depths of the forest the beast came about, twisting its limbs and snarling its snout.

Ripping and tearing and shredding with ease it blazed a trail through the deep, dark trees.

The children all dreamt of this monster at night, of it leaping from the dark to give them a fright.

And their parents all said, “don’t be silly. It’s fine. There’s really nothing scary about night time.”

But what they didn’t know was how the monster got in, and how it waited outside with a pointy-toothed grin.

Then when all was quiet, and everyone asleep, it would snatch up the children it wanted to eat.

With the greatest of ease, they’d be gone in a flash, gobbled down fast like baked beans and mash.

Into the black night, the beast galloped away, droplets of blood glistening on a coat of ash grey.

The only sign of its presence, the empty beds it upset, and upon morning’s sunrise, the parent’s regret.

GLASS WEDDING WHISKURZ She sits all alone in an empty room And silently watches it rain She draws with her finger, a bride and groom In her breath that’s on the pane Only twelve years old, and already grown The chemo caused her to age She’ll never grow up and live on her own She feels like she’s trapped in a cage She searches the window for locks of gold Her reflection announces her shame Her hair is all gone, she starts to look old The cancer alone is the blame Her breath once more, covers the glass As a tear escapes to her cheek She draws with her finger a stone in the grass Her body keeps growing so weak With one last breath she closes her eyes And listens once more to the rain She doesn’t exhale, the little girl dies Overcome by her horrible pain A groom stands alone, frozen in glass His bride was laid in the ground Beside him stands a stone in the grass Where the bride on the window is found

THE POET’S POEM JESSI MOORE Stabbed for a poem, murdered for a rhyme, You thought you had me but time was mine, I ran away with my dried-up fountain pen. You’re the only friend of an ancient art, You took my soul and you stole my heart, You played your magic like it was a number. I know you’ll find me wherever I run, You’ll force my hand ‘til my fingers numb, There’s no escape your clutches or charisma. Insane without you, you twisted my will, I tried to be master, I’d drunk my fill, You refilled my glass, shoved me back on the chair. My knuckles were white, my hands only shook, You sat on my lap, asked for a hook, I gave you one because I had no answer. I remained on that chair an aeon or two, Creating a masterpiece for you, The finished product was my magnum opus. Yet I had become old when I looked in, In the glass a corpse where I had been, You kidnapped my youth like a thief in the night. I would have lain my life down on my desk, To give any word you asked for next, Your charms had rescued me from reality. Now I give you one word you asked for not, My word is this: I will not be caught In your illusions to veil me from the world.

I tried to leave you and promptly went mad, I returned, you tied me to my bed Of airy white immersed in inky smudges.

Thus, this now be my compromise to thee, Half my soul be yours and half be me, So here I go, Iâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;m off to conquer the world.

BIOGRAPHIES EMILY NAKANISHI is currently attending Southeast Missouri State University with a double major of English and Mass Communications. She has been writing since she learned how to hold a pencil and telling stories since she learned how to talk. She spends all of her free time writing, painting, and lovingly pushing her cats away from her turkey sandwiches. HEATHER JOHNSON is the pseudonym for a teenage girl living in the Philippines. She started writing short stories during her early high school years. Living with her family, she still attends school in order to finish her education. JESSI MOORE is a student at Santa Fe Christian Schools in Solana Beach who is passionate about reading, writing, and storytelling. In her spare time, she tries her hand at fantasy, poetry, and fiction, and is currently working on a fantasy novel for publishing EMMA BERMAN will enter her freshman year of college in 2012. She intends to study English and Psychology. Emma would love to become a professional writer one day, and she writes and reads very often. GENEVIEVE RUSHTON-GIVENS is a university student majoring in Music (Voice), with an English minor at Wilfrid Laurier University (Canada), going into her fifth and final year of study. She is from the rapidly growing town of Milton, Ontario, Canada. She has been writing poetry and prose most of her life and it is her favourite hobby. Rushton-Givens mostly writes poetry, but she also writes short stories, flash fiction, lyrics and song parodies. GABRIEL BAKER: I am a poet from the UK. I currently live in Darlington and I love to write. I have been writing for a little over a year. My greatest inspirations are Ted Hughes, Sylvia Plath, Wendy Cope and John Keats. THOMAS FITZGERALD: I’m a 29 year old Irish man, a published poet since the age of 11 with a healthy appreciation for supernatural/horror fiction. My favourite author’s are Anne Rice and Brendan Behan. I’ve run two restaurants as the day job for about 7 years. I live in a very “country” side of Ireland, I adore my family and friends and take my responsibilities to them very seriously. Poetry fro me is a very personal thing that can release emotion and give you peace

RACHAEL DAY is a 19 year old, college student currently living in California. She enjoys writing anything that will send a chill down your spine and keep you afraid of the dark. She also loves coffee, good books, and is dangerously addicted to sour patch kids. If you would like to contact her, send an email to rachael_day@charter.net