Mallet`s New Literary Magazine

the Highlander
Mallet’s New
Literary Magazine
April 27, 2016, Issue 1
Hi.
My name is Peyton Winstead. This is Mallet’s new literary
magazine: The Highlander. If you’ve been on campus for a very long
time, you might remember Mallet’s old literary magazine, Maxwell’s
Crossing. The Highlander exists, in part, to honor that legacy. But we
also want to express something new. We want to show you what writers
and artists are doing on campus right now. We want to show case the
creative breadth that we know students at UA have.
It has been a rocky couple of months for me and the others who
have worked on this magazine. What you’re looking at is the humble,
humble beginnings of something that will maybe—one day—be worth
the trouble.
That said, please read on. These pieces, whether they represent
someone’s daily release, their craft, or their way of life, are so important.
Thank you. I hope you enjoy, and I hope you submit next semester.
Peyton Winstead
Editor-in-Chief
Staff
Peyton Winstead
Katharine Conaway
Jessi Simmons
Jack Bernardi
Theodore Monk
Kaylyn Fox
Alexis Unger
Contributors
Bronwyn Mullen
Charlie Mitchell
Liz Adair
Brian Kraus
Kait Rudney
Ben Donaldson
Alyssa Hubbard
Moon Yang
D.C. Swayne
Jacob Sims
Michael Dawson
Tyler Campman
Annemarie Lisko
Paige Pheifer
Madison Craine
Jordan Belcher
Lyle Lee
Katharine Conaway
Theo Monk
Angie Bartelt
Haley Sheehan
Liam Ward
Tanika Powers
The Highlander
Issue 1, April 27th, 2016
Table of Contents
Cover PieceHaley Sheehan
Poems
“The Healing Process”
Bronwyn Mullen 9
“Wine on the Desert”
Charlie Mitchell 10
“Club Market DP”Liz Adair11
“Strawbery Sauce”Liz Adair12
“Starsand People”Liz Adair12
“Phone Tag”Brian Kraus13
“Big Bang”Kait Rudney16
“Flower and Flour”
Ben Donaldson 19
“The Telltale Heart”
Alyssa Hubbard 21
“Anticipation”Moon Yang22
“Camellia”Moon Yang23
“When I Go”D.C. Swayne26
“Easter”Jacob Sims27
“The Carousel”Michael Dawson
28
Prose
“In Memory Of”
Tyler Campman 30
“Patchwork of Dust—
Lost Days in New Mexico”
Annemarie Lisko 32
“Where Failed Things Go”
Paige Pheifer
38
“Confessions of a Ghost Child
-Living Unseen and Unheard-”
Madison Craine
39
“Then, Why I Realized It Was Jordan Belcher 47
Most Certainly NOT a Happy
Mother’s Day (Nor would it ever
be again) plus, Why I Want To Die
Like a Cockroach”
“Our Wednesdays”Lyle Lee50
“Summer in the Foothills”
Katharine Conaway 61
“Hide”Theodore Monk
74
“Controversial Casting”Angie Bartelt80
“Fight or Flight”Angie Bartelt82
Art
Haley Sheehan86-88
Liam Ward89
Tanika Powers90-92
“What is Mallet?”94
Poems
Bronwyn Mullen
Charlie Mitchell
Liz Adair
Brian Kraus
Kait Rudney
Ben Donaldson
Alyssa Hubbard
Moon Yang
D.C. Swayne
Jacob Sims
Michael Dawson
Bronwyn Mullen
The Healing Process
Slow sips, so you don’t overwhelm the system
inhale, exhale
settle the stomach, the bad is finally out.
Yes, it seems poison is well known for
overstaying its welcome
until one day
you open the blinds, the windows, the doors
and the sun is shining
and you light a candle
and you say no, this is my house
this is my heart
no longer will I ignore you, an ugly stain
on my soul.
Piece by piece, you separate yourself
carefully at the hinges
and cleanse.
Wash your hair, wash your hands
soap out your mouth and eyes
take an acid bath
until you forget his breath
his cold hands
his empty words.
There isn’t always a because, there isn’t always a why
Sometimes there just is
and sometimes there just isn’t
and you learn to live
and you learn to be loved
by those who are.
9
Charlie Mitchell
Wine on the Desert
It was hard for me to tell
By the end of the day
If the distant snow peaks
Were still so far away
As they had been
When I woke with the sun
And toward their cold embrace
I urged my horse to run
The desert sands were wide
And so hot for my feet
At my side I carried just
A solitary canteen
It rang on my hip
My gun beside
I’d drank till the last
Of the Mexican wine
I cut open my tongue
And sank to my knees
And for wine on the desert
The buzzards were pleased
10
Liz Adair
Club Market DP
The building is wedged indefinitely
between the county-line pit stop and the decommissioned railway.
There’s peeling paint, punctuated by hungry, green vines who
Rage.
The tiny, browning petals gape,
tilted up by aluminum jaws as they sink deeper
below stagnated ink,
a man-made moat styled with saccharine Twinkies, exp. date AUG 15 2013
They do not know they cannot beat their world into submission
so pipe constriction predilections pre-date the puny, flickering stars
titanium transmutation –
become sticky oil to gum up our engines –
brains, livers, intestines and all-around meat
putrefaction.
Tiny people with tiny hearts
drive by in electric cars with ECO engines and they scan,
out of yawning eyes at a ruin
squelching into spontaneous
radioactive sludge.
We cruise by.
Cowering behind the tint of our 2016 Lincoln MKZ Hybrid
worth $35,190, period.
Every penny counted. But not for oil soiled vines.
Or the two-headed lizard in the $5 DVD bin.
All that remains is you and me,
driving by the reclaimed Club Market DP.
11
Strawberry Sauce
The first man he killed was ten years his junior with a clean face
and skinny hands- no callouses, no blood-blisters.
The rider’s gun left raw holes in the man-boy’s chest and arm,
the skin was frayed, and his skinny-clean fingers looked like they were
dipped in strawberry sauce.
Starsand People
Like fireflies or errant
fairies, Starsand people are drawn to the abyss
as wanderers without feet. We are in search
of home, of wood smoke chimneys, sweet
honeysuckle juice, our eyes wild like violent
flowers.
Air bubbles gasp
we pop and burst with brilliant
flashes of colored light
and we are the night-fires of the valley
submerged in an ouroboros
tangle of fire and water.
Turn your gaze on the wretched, the disbanded
exiles of the world of light.
We
beings of dust and blood – forgotten sky
walkers wait in the valley of the fallen
stars, withered and scorched as the red
earth swimming in our
veins. Loved and left
behind – abandoned
light-bringers wait still.
12
Brian Kraus
Phone Tag
Cheers! This is your ticket to a brighter future!
I’m calling to inform you of a golden opportunity—
All you have to do is answer three simple questions,
After which my script will inform you of big news—bigger than you expect!
Are you ready? Do you promise you represent
an unbiased segment of the American political landscape?
Do you mind if, in the next few sentences, things get
a little
personal? Good, but those weren’t the questions I meant to ask!
First, and this is a short one:
Tell me how you feel about the burgeoning bureaucratic
blasphemy that “organizes” the educational environment at your
University of Choice.
Who does our tuition pay?
Second, Can you highlight, from preschool to now, your evolving conception of
race in the United States?
Does this topic make you uncomfortable? Uninformed? I don’t think your concerns are valid.
In fact, I think that was a nice response.
OK, it’s a good time to take a break. Can I call you back in fifteen minutes?
Lastly, and I’ll make it worth your while once you’re done:
I want a catalog of your purchases, any transaction worth a dollar or more,
and if you could mail me a spreadsheet with each entry (store, amount, items
chiefly sought)
13
in its own row,
going back from last December up to this week. Please don’t forget anything,
because we need to be fully informed who we’re dealing with!
After all, this could be a brand new day for you!
Who would we be to waste such a gift on a person
without the wherewithal to keep track of expenses?
I’m sure you understand. I’m sure you have started gathering receipts already.
This is a contest, in fact. We’re gathering the
single wisest answers
in all of our GreatCountry. Because
without a generation of people that know,
students and pursuers of the truth,
How do you Think we’ll remain Number One?
And the one most deserving
will not have bought too much fast food in 2015.
We—
I mean, myself and the others
who pull all the strings and are deciding,
six-handedly,
how to govern the future—
are in something of a bind.
We lost our spokesperson!
You’ve seen the news. I can’t help but guess
that you couldn’t help but notice
That our political systems,
from uppermost to least-worth-considering, are all in a state
of chaotic and unprecedented downfall.
14
So I’ll ask: What would you like to manage?
Who would you like to be?
Where do you see yourself as a leader within the next five
years?
months?
minutes?
Because we at Data Systems Incorporated
Are asking you to be the last great savior of our once great nation!
That is, if you agree to mail along those proofs of purchase you’ve been organizing. It’s a small trade, right?
With our influence, we’ll put you behind the wheel, covertly.
No one has the public potential to lead well,
openly, graciously.
But we have puppets abound, and you’re welcome to begin whenever your two-weeks-notice comes through.
What organization
do you see failing most rapidly?
Where would you place limits on your own capacity for governance?
Is there hope for the sovereignty of human communities?
So along with your sales-tax anthology, and considering your
first two answers,
I ask that you mail in with your submission a chosen position to “hold”
and you’ll hear back by the end of the month whether you’ve been accepted.
After all, it is a wonderful time to be alive!
15
Kait Rudney
Big Bang
One day at 4 am
I will ponder the cracks in the ceiling
instead of
pondering the possibilities of your skin
& the crevices I never had the chance to
explore.
One day at 5 pm
I will sit in the sun thinking only of
the warmth it brings to my face
not of the coldness I feel with your
absence.
One day I will be okay with seeing your
face light up when you see her
while I pass
like a ghost of your past with no
recognition.
But maybe one day
I wont
because my mind is plagued with the
time I was your sunshine and
possibilities,
and she is a mere speck of dust in the
galaxy of me and you .
But the big bang exploded,
our world fell apart
and this new speck of dust was shiny
and… well new
while I was just broken
and who wants something as twisty and
16
broken as that old oak we spent our
days seeking shade under?
I ask myself this everyday as I
mindlessly attempt to
erase you from my heart,
but instead I leave smears of you
all over my body
and every time I look in the mirror
I am reminded of your touch
and our love
that was so hopelessly destroyed.
If I would’ve known what I know now
one second of us wouldn’t have been
spent in the shade
but in the sun
so maybe our memories would have
been soaked into you
like the sun leaves its mark
in me
so you wouldn’t have left me here in your shadows
They always said love was the most
beautiful thing in the world
but my mascara stained face
would beg to differ,
follow my tears
as they slide down the cracks you inflicted upon my
heart
and tell me that love is beautiful
17
One day you’ll realize
the sun shined on you
from my very eyes,
and by that day
you will freeze to death
as the sun will be gone because with
every kiss you implant upon her
a part of me dies inside
and you will come back to an empty
carcass of
wasted love
One day I will stop loving you
and maybe one day
I will stop lying to myself
18
Ben Donaldson
Flower and Flour
Think, for once think a thought of rippling,
Of wrought iron,
Carved wood with shavings fluttering around,
Creating a perfect canvas on the cement.
Doubt has its place in everything but truth. Truth has its place in everything,
even doubt.
flower in your hand or flour in your hand, one feeds the soul and the other
nourishes again and again until the gravy is sopped up
by the biscuit,
the cornbread, both nourish,
yet another over one,
an oven can cook and a stomach can thrive off of flour,
But cornbread. The falling apart of the fatback enriched, fire-licked
Bread whose ingredients cost no more than five cents.
A thought, maybe of the dependency, straining relations of neighbors, separated
by a holler and the hollowing and harrowing tale of poverty.
The one feeds his family on whatever he can
The two find a path to nourish their dependents again and again.
The one stuck with cornmeal and buttermilk in the fields, the chicken cooked
crisp to keep a clean soul, the body a vessel made by more than a human,
The one hoping the evident plan changes,
Not for riches, not for gold, oil or myrrh,
But girth of the belly of the love he has reared.
The two on a path of ease and retreat, with propped feet,
A finger stirring the mint in the bourbon, a washed foot finding comfort on
the burlap sack that holds another’s dream.
No rings, diamonds, crude oil or myrrh, just one dollar more than he holds.
A dollar that would buy,
Could burden,
And should be his.
19
She has put in the work, slaving day after day, servitude not a word known,
Or at least heard. If spoken, ignored, if repeated, a new connotation be given.
The plight of the field, tobacco and cotton crowding all hope of self-sustainment.
Where to go? Where is there to grow?
The man with his feet, cleaned, propped on the burlap sack that just a dollar
more could have been the one’s pedestal, yet the two guard ferociously, fierce
that the one would try to rise to anything above. Maybe the two felt fear at the
growing of one, no pedestal one receives could flip his world.
There is hope that the trees hold dinner that night,
A crack in the crepuscular covered layer, holler and all, valley’s can’t stall
the need to fill a hole, a goal yet thought up, then quickly diminished as the
wrong game hits the ground,
No meat, just cornmeal.
No wheat for hungry stomachs to fill.
“its jus’n more night, tomorrow we’re kings,
we ne’er even wont yur pity, oil or rings.”
20
Alyssa Hubbard
The Telltale Heart
Clot, clot, clot,
The heart,
The artery,
The left and the right,
Stuff the trunks and the arches,
Cave in the vena cava,
Slip into the segment where the secrets are,
Where the paling pulmonary:
Beats, beats, beats.
Batter the beating heart until it bleeds,
Bleeds out the secrets and the tales,
Hidden deep, deep down in the apex,
Echoing in the atrium.
Pump, pump pump,
Pump out the secrets,
Buried in the telltale heart.
21
Moon Yang
Anticipation
Утро ли, вечер ли был, пятница, воскресенье ли было ­все было все
равно, все было одно и то же: ноющая, ни на мгновение не утихающая,
мучительная боль; сознание безнадежно все уходящей, но все не
ушедшей еще жизни; надвигающаяся все та же страшная ненавистная
смерть, которая одна была действительность, и все та же ложь. Какие
же тут дни, недели и часы дня?
­VIII Смерть Ивана Ильича
Unkindly circles go, round and round again.
The sun rose and fell twenty of three hundred times;
The petals brighten
Only to droop in darkness after a while.
What sort of inclination endowed have they
That drives them to drive their darlings to that same fate?
Look.
Petty on the side of the road, in that crack,
Covered by dust. Kicked and crushed, cornered to that brink of death,
In pain no little. None quick.
Look.
And indeed, there is time! There is too much time!
These petals rise, up and up again,
Painting, in preparation, to face the faces they must face,
Only to meet the soles of that cruel fate instead, again.
Yes, time is there, much indeed.
By night sobbed the child
Like a fish submerged, grasping for air.
Thrice it called
“Mother!”
22
But alas! she, elsewhere, trampled herself, deaf, was.
Then Decay is there, rotting and greeting
That sinking death it should have met before its birth.
So tell,
What sort of inclination endowed have they
That drives them to drive their darlings to that same fate?
Camellia
23
I died the day the thunder clapped. The light
Had struck me down. Until that kind, wee sprite—
Its stick, the wand, quite stiff and brown, in hand—
In swiftness, rode the early breeze to land.
“A darling soul! A dreamer! Dear, a dove!
Let Peace be unto thee, an act of love!”
It shook the stick and swung it—strength, with which
It cast the spell, gave me, the dead, a twitch.
And then the itches irresistible
Erupted like the flames of hell, quite null
At first, but soon, in vigor, licking near
This body mine already rotting here,
The frozen sidewalk, damp with melting snow.
********
I see my phone by me. She sinks in, slow,
Innate, and now below my soul, I see.
No. She sank not. The one that saw is she.
She sees my soul, at easing stillness, high
Above her buzzing body. With her, cry
The text alarms, indifferent to my
Departure, only dreading those things I
Have left they must take care of now. I twist,
Then sprout a branch. Around my wrist
The leaves are green, a deep, dark, blackish green,
And shine like nails I painted as a teen.
My face! The face! The many faces worn,
The ones I had to wear and much adorn—
Oh, them, the colors I have used, too bright,
Too bright to be the real!—are now so light.
The thinning faces, colored like the blush
I once did have when I was young, was lush,
In layers after layers clothe my soft
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And tender, weak sincerity that oft
Was wounded thus I hid behind the veil.
Now dressed, the blossom blushes new, the pale
And sickly self before forgotten just yet.
********
I died the night the thunder clapped. The wet,
Sharp bullets struck me down. Unlike the kins
Of snow, those frozen yet, like friends, with grins,
Who floated down, in gentle form, and kissed
The many faces mine, their cousins hissed
As he in fierceness rained and seeped inside,
Beyond the faces many, pushed and pried.
My head of many faces fell on that
Same sidewalk on its muddy soil. The rat,
Instead of the child sprite, came forth and ate
The faces, gnawed them off my heart in hate.
The empty body—what has changed then? when
It merely is, ah! rotting once again.
25
D.C. Swayne
When I Go
When I go
I will leave a piece of me with you
And I will be at peace.
Spread my ashes
on the people you meet
So they will know who I am.
Introduce them to me
And let them know that I once was
and will continue to be.
Don’t use words
But use your existence
Because though my body is gone
My impact is left in you,
And I will live on.
26
Jacob Sims
Easter
they didn’t hear
I’m not sure
24/7
both beg boldly
what could check
in counter
from a distance
of threshold
all would bear testimony
y’know Jesus
can faith for you
certainly
that often seems hopeless
does today positive
far deeper than
life and light
hope
it’s a really big deal
free
under bondage
follow or not follow
everyone’s gonna die
kind of idiot
amazing
through a doorway
a Lone Ranger
teaches community
there’s power
as individuals
share
kindness in the
resources serve different
celebration of who we are
27
Michael Dawson
The Carousel
That which is remembrance is what
has not turned to grain and that
which sticks out like ivory on
the blackest of spaces curled
around stars like twine.
It comes in shifts dropping
plum-like in
rhythm
of a cloudburst!
setting a wet glaze to the carnival carousel
that we used to remember.
That carousel, which you and I would
ride with its glitter of rainbow
lights
now unravels
slowly
as fog does before sunlight,
until what’s left is standing
on the lip of memory.
28
Prose
Tyler Campman Jordan Belcher
Annemarie Lisko Lyle Lee
Katharine Conaway
Paige Pheifer Theo Monk
Madison Craine Angie Bartelt
Tyler Campman
In Memory Of
Robert J. Stevens
November 1, 1941- April 2, 1970
Private Stevens was killed in the line of duty in Vietnam
after having bravely served his family and country for two
months. He is survived by his mother Connie, his father
Collin, and his wife Laura.
Officer’s Report: Personal Possessions of Private Stevens
• A turtle shell helmet
• A change of clothes or two
• A rifle un-shot, brand new
• A half-empty water bottle
• A box of foot powder
• A bundle of worn, handwritten notes from wife
• A hair brush
• A blanket
• New Testament
30
• The badge of his regiment
• Three granola bars
• A copy of Cannery Row
• A fork, spoon, and knife
• A pen
• A scribbled-in journal
• A page ripped out
• With lots of things
• Scribbled over
• But one thing is left
• “I have no time to say this but I have to tell you that-”
• A pair of Army-issue combat boots
31
Annemarie Lisko
Patchwork of Dust—
Lost Days in New Mexico
Gallup is a tiny little town, resting sleepily out in
the high desert of New Mexico. It sits on the very western
border of the state, practically in Arizona, and nothing
much ever happens there. It is quiet, and it is plain, and it is
where I lived during the summer that I was eight.
On an early morning, we’d go hiking with our friends,
in a state park maybe fifteen miles out of town. We trotted
along dry brown dirt paths stamped out of a landscape
of unbroken dust and juniper bushes and the occasional
scraggly tree. At the end of the trail rested a little canyon,
solid tan rock standing out against the never-settling dust
that led to it. We usually stopped there and drank water, and
our parents sat on the rocks and watched us play. Once there
was a snake. After that, I didn’t really want to go hiking
anymore.
So I would go shopping with Mom instead. In Gallup,
if you needed something—any something—you had one
option, and that was Wal-Mart. There was a local joke that
ran along the lines of, “If you need to buy a pair of socks,
then you have to go to Albuquerque.” That was the big city
two hours’ drive east of us. Maybe a bit of an exaggeration,
but just barely.
I would come along on our weekly grocery shopping
trips, and I would push the cart for a few minutes, or pick
out apples and lettuce in the produce section, and then
afterwards I’d help pack the groceries into the car trunk. I
stood in the warm dry desert heat, moving plastic bag after
plastic bag from the grocery cart to the car while all the
shiny black ravens and dusty-colored pigeons that lived in
the parking lot eyed us skeptically.
32
Most days during the summer, I would play outside
with my sisters. The light cotton shorts and t-shirts that
my mother bought for us (like little uniforms, all identical
patterns but in different colors) were cool and comfortable,
and the concrete of the front driveway felt hard and hot
under our bare feet. On lucky days, we were allowed to play
in the hose. We would open up the spout and then take
turns, one of us holding the hose up into the air, and the
others running around beneath the spray that tumbled back
down to earth. “It’s raining! It’s raining!” It did not rain
very often in Gallup.
Other times we would go into the backyard instead.
Amidst the hard-packed clay dirt and the occasional
scattered sunflowers (the bright green of their leaves
contrasted startlingly with the monochromatic brown that
you got used to if you lived in Gallup for very long), we
would create camps and cities and worlds for ourselves and
for our plastic toy dinosaurs and our stuffed monkeys. Other
times, we would act out the stories that we had learned
about in school...Greek mythology, and pirates, and the
American Revolution.
For a while that summer, the 2004 Olympics were
on, and in the evenings all of us would pile onto the lumpy
yellow couch in the living room and watch the competitions.
Our television was a huge lummox of a thing that had been
in the house for years...a relic of the early 1970s, at least.
We were lucky that it even showed the picture in color. The
Olympics stirred up inside me, temporarily, the certainty
that I would one day stand upon a podium, crowned with
laurels, clutching a gold medal as “The Star-Spangled
Banner” echoed throughout the stadium. The same
aspiration struck my sisters too, and for a time the backyard
became our training camp. But water for practicing
swimming was not easily found in Gallup, and the long
jump turned out difficult. As hard as you tried, you always
33
came back down to earth before you meant to, whacking
hard against the ground and flinging up a great cloud of
that brown clay dust that was always so restless during the
summer.
If it was ever just too hot to play outside, or if we were
tired, or if we were sunburned and Mom commanded us to
get out of the heat, we would retreat back into the house,
to play in the basement instead. During these months, the
swamp cooler was often running, and it filled the house
with cool air that smelled strongly, achingly of summer... a
fresh tingling straw scent that stung your face a little bit.
Our favorite indoor game was Trains. A few years
earlier, our now-grown-up cousin had given us his old set of
wooden train engines and boxcars and long pieces of tracks
that connected together at each end. We would carry the
heavy train box out from the pantry where we kept it—a job
that always took two of us—and we would spend hours and
hours down in the cool, comfortable basement, building
elaborate structures of railroad that arched, wound, and
twisted all around the room. Gallup was a railroad town:
the train station was at the very heart of the place, and
many times an hour, even from our house several miles
away, you could hear the piercing, mournful wail of the
BNSF locomotives as they barreled past on their way across
the country. Maybe that was why we liked the toy trains so
much.
The train station—the real one, in the downtown—
always held a mysterious appeal for me. It was a two-story
building, all painted in shades of turquoise and sandstone,
and on the second floor someone had put together a
little museum that traced the history of the New Mexico
railroads. I would stand on tiptoe for hours, staring in
through the glass at the dioramas with their intricate model
trains and tiny figures of workers and passengers. I often
34
longed to be able to play with those figures. They would
make such marvelous toys, but I knew that it was out of
the question, so I contented myself with just imagining the
games instead.
A little restaurant that served coffee, soup, and
sandwiches was tucked away on the lower story of the train
station. Beside the tables, a long glass window looked out
onto the railroad tracks. A rusty, locked fence separated
the cracked cement platform from the tracks, until the
blue-suited conductor stepped off the perpetually late
7:05 Amtrak and opened the gate just long enough for the
handful of passengers to get on or get off. I used to keep
count sometimes; the train never stayed longer than six
minutes before speeding away west to Los Angeles.
My father played the guitar, and he was in a band
with some of the other doctors who worked with him at
the hospital on the hilltop in the Red Rock neighborhood.
On the second Friday of every month, the band played
in the corner of the train station restaurant. Restaurant
patrons and railroad travelers, waiting for the Amtrak that
was never on time, would wander in and take a seat in the
carved dark wood chairs or linger along the walls, tapping
their fingers against their coffee cups. The band played jazz
music, and Dad sat in a folding chair upholstered with red
and white checkered vinyl that had been a present from
Mom a few years before. I liked to huddle away beneath the
water fountain and watch his fingers flying up and down
the strings of his mahogany guitar, the one that had little
turquoise hummingbirds on the fretboard.
The late summer sun would finally slip away around
nearly nine o’clock, and through the tall glass windows
I would watch the hazy blue dusk fall on the distant red
mountains. The wailing notes of the saxophone would
mingle with the sorrowful whistle of a passing train, and the
35
sound would go drifting up into the fading, empty summer
night.
Near the train station was a donut shop, called Glenn’s.
You could see the railroad tracks from there, too, but the
walls didn’t rattle when the trains came by. That place sold
donuts, coffee, and breakfast burritos with red chili. I never
ate more than a bite of those burritos (I preferred to stick
with a maple-iced donut), but my dad liked them. Though
the scrambled eggs and sausage wrapped up in a tortilla
did look nice, I always regarded the burritos rather warily,
because of the red chili. It had too sharp and bitter of a taste,
and it hurt my mouth when I tried it.
During that summer, Glenn’s acquired a tortilla
machine, and whenever we went down there, my sisters
and I used to stare goggle-eyed and amazed at the machine
as it portioned dough and flattened out each lump into a
thin circle and sent the raw tortillas down a slow-moving
chute that cooked them and deposited them neatly in a heap
at the bottom. We didn’t often eat at restaurants—that was
another case where, to find a really good one, you would do
better to go to Albuquerque—but on the few occasions when
we did, these were the places we went.
We didn’t need restaurants, though, because my mom
could cook better than any chef. During the long summer
evenings, I used to sit on the linoleum of the kitchen floor
in my blue and green pajamas and talk with Mom while
she mixed spices in bowls on the counter or sizzled meat in
frying pans or boiled pasta water on the stove. Chili, posole,
steak fajitas, spaghetti, eggplant parmesan, jambalaya, fried
fish with green beans, pad Thai, chicken Pakrikas...my
mother could cook them all. I would set the table while she
sliced vegetables for a salad every night, and then I would
linger at her side and snatch raw cucumbers out of the
ceramic dish when I had a chance.
36
But my very favorite moments of that long, dry, dusty
summer were the evenings when Dad would read to us.
It would be after dinner, and I would drag the pillow and
blankets from my bed out into the living room. I would
make a cozy little nest out of them and curl up there, and
my sisters would do the same thing. And then, in the middle
of the living room floor, with us spread out all around him,
my dad would sit there and read to us. The Jungle Book,
The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes, The Swiss Family
Robinson...there were so many books that summer. The
back porch screen door was open, and evening sounds
echoed in—crickets chirping, a dog howling across the
arroyo behind our house, the never-ending train whistles. I
sat on the floor and thought, curiously and longingly, about
how it would be to go far, far away, to India or London or
a tropical island in the middle of a lovely blue ocean...to
places where there were jungles or old cobblestone streets or
the waves of the sea washing up against a sandy shore, and
where things actually happened.
The chilly evening breeze drew in through the screen
door—up in the mountains, summers are cold once the
sun goes down—and I shivered, snuggling deeper into my
blanket, back in the living room of our house in Gallup. No,
I didn’t really want to go anywhere else. I edged closer to
Dad, and I listened to his deep voice gently reading those
stories. The world was big and scary, and I didn’t really need
that, did I? I was glad to be right where I was, safe in the
dusty, sleepy little town where I lived the year that I was
eight.
37
Paige Pheifer
Where Failed Things Go
Have you ever passed by a failed shopfront? The
windows shuttered, the owners gone. The paint on the
windows advertising “Haircuts 15¢,” or “Hot Dinners Daily”
peeled and worn. People glance and look away, immediately
forgetting the fate of the building. Have you ever been to the
circus? A full, lively, big top circus, complete with elephants
and bearded ladies and men who could swallow fire. If you
can, imagine that full, lively, big top circus as a cold, dark,
empty village with ghosts in the shadows and vulnerability
coating the open spaces. Perhaps the owner couldn’t bring
in enough guests to generate revenue.
Have you ever passed by a house with the windows
boarded shut? When you know not a soul resides in that
house, taking the notion of ‘home’ away from the structure.
I’d bet you’ve been to a cemetery. Everyone has been to a
cemetery. You know how there’s people down there, under
the earth, trapped in their coffins with stories and memories
soon to be forgotten. Whole lives that you will never know
about. Maybe they died prematurely, maybe not. There is a place where these lost things exist. They exist
here in their failed state, but do not be fooled; these shops
and circuses and houses are occupied. Those people with
stories and memories soon to be forgotten take care of these
neglected spaces, they thrive in them.
There is a place where these lost things exist, and we
cannot glance and look away.
38
Madison Craine
Confessions of a Ghost Child
Living Unseen and Unheard
I imagine being born all the time. My mother in my
fantasy is sweaty, her tiny body wracked with pain, and
holds my screaming squirming bundle close.
She brushes a strand of damp hair from her forehead.
“She’s beautiful,” she would say, and my sobbing father
would nod vigorously.
The false memory hangs in the air for a minute before
I let it go. Back in reality, in my tiny dorm room, I look
over at the wall where my college corkboard hangs. There
are dozens of pictures of my boyfriend, my roommates,
and some theatre tickets are haphazardly pinned in the
center. A goofy sketch of the Disney characters Wall-E and
Eve takes up the most space, but there’s a conspicuous
gap. Corkboards are scary places—without realizing it,
everything that is important in our lives in on display.
Corkboard real estate tells you who you are.
Right now in this moment, without looking, I can tell
you exactly what’s missing from mine—two handwritten
notes from my mother, along with three Polaroid shots that
display her in shocking likeness. I stuffed them in a box and
hid it in drawer two days ago, after realizing that I couldn’t
breathe until her words and piercing hazel eyes were no
longer watching me.
Abuse is frightening. I hesitate to use that word—
abuse. People attach the a-word to the horror stories Fox
runs each night, the ones where a crying toddler is led
from a horrifying home life or a teenage girl with wide
eyes is rescued from her perverted stepfather. Herein lies
the problem with the a-word; each abusive moment is a
39
snowflake, only existing for a cold moment, alive in its
uniqueness. People decide their opinions of abuse based
on the amount of discomfort they feel when speaking
to the survivor. The amount of quiet pity that is felt is
another piece of a fucked up mathematical equation that
is proportional to the amount of fidgeting and solemn
apologies.
Emotional, verbal, mental abuse—these are scary words
too. I notice that people feel uncomfortable when they
can’t see things. Bruises can be iced, cuts can be stitched
closed, and malnutrition can be treated. But how do you
heal someone whose main symptom is anxiety, depression,
or no sense of meaning? You can fix the physical; you can
heal slashed wrists, and pump overdosed stomachs. Doctors,
however, have yet to find a way to dissect a normal looking
brain and find the invisible black ghosts that haunt their
victims. Invisible abuse is a wolf in sheep’s clothing that
devours the innocent with little warning.
Which is how I got there, sitting on a tiny couch,
holding a Styrofoam cup of room temperature tap water. A
woman with curiously shaped glasses stares at me, and nods
for me to continue talking. I think to myself that she’s nosy,
before remembering she’s a therapist and that I paid her to
do this.
I was six years old when my mother told me to stop
eating. We were in Target, and I was holding the edge of a
grocery cart. I had just come from a ballet class, my favorite
place; I was wearing my stretchy cover-up pants and a black
jacket with the logo of my dance studio embroidered on the
right pocket.
My mother looked over at me while my father paid
for groceries, and told me that if I didn’t start “eating in
moderation”, that she would pull me from ballet entirely.
40
She told me I was gaining weight, and that ballerinas were
very thin. I was devastated.
This was my first reality; I was told I was fat, and fat
girls don’t succeed. Even earlier, when I was five and in
kindergarten, each day for lunch my mom would pack me
a peanut butter sandwich. She knew I hated them, and that
peanut butter made me sick; I don’t doubt that she also
knew that after several months of eating them anyway, I
had started tossing them in the trash, choosing to wait for
dinner and eating only once a day. My peers avoided me; I
was shy, afraid of my own shadow, and apologized too much.
I read books during lunch and wasn’t allowed to have many
friends—participating in after school activities besides Girl
Scouts was forbidden.
The other adults in my life smelled a rat.
The mothers in my Girl Scout troop started asking
questions. The troop leader—who happened to be my
Aunt—confronted my mother. All of a sudden, I had to quit
Girl Scouts and Aunt Barbra and Mother weren’t speaking.
As I grew older, I was told that the Girl Scouts were “too
liberal” and “creepy feminists”; my mother didn’t tell me
the truth until I was seventeen, and even then I pretended
like it was no big deal. She would insist that she only made
me lose weight so she could hold onto her tiny golden curled
daughter for a little while longer.
The web only widens from there. Children are easily
groomed, and I was no exception; adults frequently
commented on my detailed obedience, my eagerness to
please, and most disturbingly my “old eyes”. A bus driver
once told me that she recognized an old soul in me, and that
I looked like I had seen a war.
I was isolated. I didn’t have close friends or sleepovers
until I was too alienated from my peers to enjoy them; my
41
mother said that she didn’t trust other parents, and that
she wanted me safe. When I ventured from home I was
unofficially punished—I was given the decision to attend,
but upon my return Mother would pick something arbitrary
as an excuse to spank me or ground me from to talking to
anyone. I was told that she spoke to my teachers, and that
they were to monitor my conversations and Internet access
to keep me from straying. I was also rewarded for staying
home; pizza, ice cream, movies, and sometimes even the
rare shopping spree. I followed the usual pattern of looking
for love in the wrong places and started wearing makeup
and dating when I was eleven years old; this is when I
learned that my mother was beautiful.
I kept a picture of my mother in my locker at school;
at least once a week, boys would make obscene comments
about her. My mother had me as young woman, barely
twenty-one, and was thin and petite with bleach blonde hair
and a trusting smile. I accepted it, because I heard it at home
too; abusive mothers often compete with their daughters,
especially in matters of attractiveness, dating, and sex.
My mother dated everyone. She claimed to be a
Christian woman, and always told me that sex was should
be saved for marriage, but her sexual exploits were varied,
copious, and anything but private. The men she chose often
had children of their own, whom I had to watch while the
lusty couple “had a sleepover”. Once when I was around
eleven, three brothers—one my age, one four, and one two—
slept on the floor in my room in sleeping bags while our
parents fucked downstairs. The man’s name was Brandon,
and he was my brother’s little league baseball coach.
While I was wearing Old Navy jeans from the bargain
bin that were three sizes too big and so loose that kids on
the playground told me they were “tired of seeing my asscrack everyday”, my mother had an expensive and beautiful
42
wardrobe. She wore Banana Republic, Vineyard Vines, Kate
Spade, Victoria’s Secret, Anne Taylor and more, always
crisp and pressed. She carried an array of Coach designer
handbags and wore different jewelry everyday; she had a
fondness for pearls. Meanwhile, her children were hungry
and dirty; I was taught how to wear makeup at eleven, but
wasn’t told how to use deodorant until my first gym class.
I got my brothers ready for school each day, making sure
all of us children were clean, our hair was combed and our
teeth were brushed. My father helped when he could, but
as he lost more and more custody, I was left to fend for my
brothers and myself more often than not. We wore ill fitting
clothing with holes worn into the hems while our mother
ironed each Lilly Pulitzer dress twice before hanging it in
her closet, like a fabric diamond. I met my stepfather-to-be when I was twelve. My two
younger brothers and I were scrubbed up for once, and
my mother put the fear of God in us; we were terrified to
misbehave. She pleaded, her lips tensed in a way that told us
to be scared, all the way up to the door of the restaurant.
I distinctly remember her saying, “Do not mess this up
for me.”
Jeff was a man with few emotions who liked control.
He came into my life like a whirlwind, enforcing stricter
rules than I was used to—a feat I had imagined was
impossible. I resented him immediately. My mother tried to
aggressively make him my new father and even tried to force
me to call him “dad”. I had grown responsible, and obedient
to a fault; I made mistakes, but was largely self-sufficient.
He helped my mother in her goals, isolating me further; I
had curfews on everything, even phone usage, ranging from
eight thirty to ten until the day I moved out.
43
I would later learn he told my mother that I asked too
many questions and that I didn’t respect authority, even
though I desperately wanted to make him happy. I made
great grades and tried to be more outgoing, all in an effort
to please him. When I was almost eighteen, he told me that
the reason we had never had a relationship was because
he “couldn’t forgive me for things I had done wrong in the
past” despite my apologies and strict punishments.
Mother and Jeff expected utter compliance with no
privacy. Once my mother got angry for writing in a diary.
She accused me of being inappropriate with a boy, and
reached for the little blue book. I pulled it away, and she was
shocked. She reached again, saying, “But I’m your Mother!”
She told me that to repent for my sins I should burn the
offending pages and pray, and offered to help.
Different tactics, gaslighting and manipulation
continued. Gaslighting—a kind of mental abuse in which
information is spun and twisted, or omitted to favor the
abuser, in order to force the victim to question their own
sanity—was her favorite tactic. I knew something was
wrong, although I never knew what; I always told myself
I could get better. When I graduated high school, my
leash was tightened; I couldn’t get birth control unless
they approved, I couldn’t go to the doctor on my own, I
couldn’t drive my car without asking for approval, and they
demanded absolute control over all of my finances.
I had to escape.
I developed anxiety disorders, panic disorders, and
never trusted anyone. I hated the person I saw in the mirror;
I only regarded my reflection when absolutely necessary. I
pinned bed sheets over my mirrors and shattered the tiny
reflective ones in my makeup compacts. The whirlwind of
lies continued; I believed that I was crazy, and that I would
never be loved.
44
My biological father was still very involved in my life,
seeing my brothers and I as much as my Mother would
allow. She was given primary custody after the divorce,
and never let us forget it. I felt pressured to dislike my
father, and her snide comments about his income or morals
followed me well into adulthood. It took my until nearly my
eighteenth birthday to see the wedge she had driven into our
relationship.
One day, when sitting on my father’s couch after a
particularly bad explosion, I realized I had a choice. My
response to the Mother and Jeff special—an angry tirade
about how deceptive and manipulative I was, and how I
had ruined the relationship of the divorced and remarried
parents—was a lot of crying, vomiting, and shaking. My
father looked at me, and said simply “You can’t keep living
like this.” I had a rare moment of clarity—what was I afraid
of?
My father borrowed a game from a popular book series
called Real or Not Real. I listed my fears, and he told me the
truth.
“If I leave, I’ll have to drop out of college; I don’t know
anything about the money!” I gasped.
“Not real.” He would say.
“I won’t have any medical insurance, a cell phone, or a car.”
I countered.
“Not real!” He would say.
“My family will hate me…” I said.
“They know your mother—Not real.” He would say.
So I left. I took control and became free. I had a lot of help
45
from my dad. It wasn’t easy, and it took me three days on my
own to realize I had no idea who I was. But it’s okay.
I make small steps of independence each day. I
rearranged my room from her preferred design. I threw
out clothes she had chosen for me. I drink non-diet sodas
and relish the taste. I got my own cell phone. I freed my
corkboard and put away the subliminal messaging that has
controlled me for years.
I imagine being born all the time. My mother in my
fantasy holds my screaming squirming bundle close.
She brushes a strand of damp hair from her forehead.
“She’s beautiful,” she would say, but this time I know it’s a
dream. It’s a feeling she planted, one I fleshed out to feel like
I was loved.
In reality, she only held me for a moment, saying
nothing and refusing to breast feed, before passing me onto
my sobbing and happy father. She would tell me later that
that moment ruined her life—“In a good way.” I gave her
more credit than she deserved; she was a terrible mother.
We are the silent victims, the ghost children floating
in a warped reality; our muteness is conditioned with an
alarming accuracy.
But I have found my voice, and I’m learning to break
my forced silence.
46
Jordan Belcher
“Then, Why I Realized It Was Most Certainly NOT a Happy
Mother’s Day (Nor would it ever be again) plus,
Why I Want To Die Like a Cockroach”
Posted a Facebook status, hopefully conveying how
much I love the ladies in my life in a manner that remotely
makes sense, given the level of sleep in me at the time.
Processing all that, and acknowledging my bodily need
to pee, I decide to get that out of the way. Turn on the
bathroom light to a sight that, now that I think about it,
scared the pee out of me (figuratively? literally?? Por que no
los dos? [I really forgot I had to pee for the time being]). Of
course, it’s the largest Periplanta Americana I’ve seen within
the walls in months. Being more human than I like to admit,
I allow my body approximately .37 seconds to recoil in
surprise, and hop a calculated 20 cm back into the hallway.
Being just as much of a fool as I like to present, I take up
my best Mortal Kombat fighter pose and prepare to defend
myself.
I laugh.
I recognize that this foe may already be vanquished,
as is the fate of many of its kind who wander within these
walls and become intoxicated on the exterminating sprays
which lace the labyrinth within.
Oddly, I feel it is only fitting that I at least take a knee.
Certainly a near-perfect biological machine such as
this one would not prostrate itself before me in such a
circumstance without good reason!
It must be dying. It has to be.
47
Through my studies of biology, I’ve gained an
appreciation for life in all its forms, in particular the
cockroach dissection I had to perform in lab this semester,
because once you’ve had to take apart a creature and keep its
digestive tract in tact from mouth to anus, you won’t see it
the same way.
And now that I know that it is dying, I realize also that
the creature knows that it was dying.
At the very least, it was making quite a show of it. On
its back, flailing its six limbs, not quite able to right itself in
the midst of the toxic chemicals it had been exposed to.
After some struggle it relaxes, and simply moves it’s
antennae about. I notice the creature has oriented itself
with its head toward me. I also notice a couple of the tiniest
of cockroaches making their way across the vast hardpan
that is the tile of this bathroom floor. One of them actually
touches the leg of the large creature before skittering away.
It hits me all at once: this roach is female! Being female, and
an insect (particularly one of such size), makes it quite likely
that she’s a mother as well.
A mother, dying on my bathroom floor, on mother’s day.
So now I know why I was kneeling already. Here was
a creature feared, hated, despised, by so many of my own
kind, being given an almost literal spotlight and stage for me
to consider, right then and there.
The very least I could do was give her my undivided
attention in these last moments. So I took it all in,
appreciating that the universe has allowed me the
opportunity to see such a beautiful thing. Appreciating that,
even as she lay dying she put effort into dying on her feet.
48
Appreciating that, even as she lay dying she was taking
in as much information as was possible about her world.
Recently I’d come to terms within myself that I’d be fine
with dying as long as I can die learning something new. I
now realized that I would die extremely happy if I got to
make a show of my own dying. It would be quite a bonus.
And thus I appreciated this cockroach in the final seconds of
its life.
Expiration date: 5-10-2015 6:14 am (?)
I lack the means to memorialize this in a way I would
really like so, hopefully this will do.
May the spirit of that lovely mother cockroach rest easy
knowing I got this message out in some form.
49
Lyle Lee
Our Wednesdays
When he met her Wednesday, Nat was lingering in the
convenience store, wondering if he had enough to buy an
umbrella. If he did, would it be light blue? Or maybe another
color.
The rain was drumming lightly on the window panes.
There was a sleepy-looking cashier at the register – other
than that, alone. He looked out to the streets and saw his
own weary reflection staring back. A college student that
looked twice his age.
“Anything I can help you with, sir?” The cashier asked.
“No, nothing,” Nat said quickly, and walked over to the
register. “I’m just about done anyway.”
The lights flickered. He heard the hum of the A.C.
kicking in.
“Warm day to be raining, isn’t it?” The cashier said.
“Yeah. It’s pouring hard out there.”
The cashier’s hands worked swiftly. Turkey sandwich,
$5.49. Bottle of orange soda, $1.49. Pet brush – he stopped.
“They’re for my wings,” Nat explained.
“Ah, right,” he said, as if seeing them for the first time.
Straight white feathers over a tan downy coat. “Do you ever
need to shampoo them?”
50
“Only a little.”
He bagged the purchases and said goodbye and Nat left.
He felt the drops hit his head and regretted not purchasing
an umbrella. He sighed and tightened his grip on the bag.
He saw her then – a girl, sitting against the wall of the
store. She had scooped up her knees with her elbows and
there was a roll of newspaper folded out over her head.
Around her, thin splashes of red.
“Hey,” Nat called out. She didn’t answer.
He stood there and looked her over. White t-shirt,
black skinny jeans. A brown belt looping around her waist,
noticeably damp. He wondered where she came from. Why
she was out in the rain.
He walked over. “Hey,” he called again. “Hey!”
He pushed aside her arms and crouched down to her
level. She looked like she was sleeping. But then he noticed
that her eyes were the slightest bit open, watching him.
Dark as God could make them.
“Are you waiting out here for someone?”
“…”
Nat removed the newspaper from her head. She
flinched.
He pursed his lips. “Come with me.”
They went to a library at the heart of the city. Two
stories tall, with the riverfront on one end, and Market
Street on the other. Even at night it was packed with people,
who read with the moonlight on their backs and their heads
51
buried into the pages.
Nat took a table in the far corner of the room, where
the light barely reached and all the old books were stocked.
“Sit here,” he said, and took the opposite seat.
They sat. The girl raised her head slightly. “Thanks for
the umbrella,” she said, voice cracked. “I’m sorry you had to
go back into that store to get it.”
“No problem… Do you like light blue?”
“It’s okay, I guess.” She wet her lips. “I’m guessing that
you saw something that you liked.”
“I wouldn’t say ‘like’.” He reached over. “Can I…?”
She nodded. He parted her cropped hair, revealing a
pair of horns, red as lipstick. They were round and emerged
only an inch out of her skull – still, he eyed them with
concern.
She fingered the nubs on her head.
“What do they look like?”
“They’re decent. They’re small.”
“Small isn’t decent. There’s a big difference.”
She pressed them again and frowned. They felt like
bone polished with the slick of beetle shells. Nat pulled out a
notebook and pen from his pocket.
“You’re with the church?” she asked.
He chuckled. “The wings and halo gave it away?”
“Maybe. Do they pay you much?”
52
“Not really, considering I’m almost full-time. Worked
thirty hours last week, on top of classes. Got priests
hounding me, looking for the smallest mistakes in my
work.”
“Is that so? Um—”
His foot bounced up and down. Tap tap tap. It was a
rhythm that put her on edge.
She held her arms. “I’m dangerous, you know.” Her
nails dug into her skin. “I’ve killed people. I could kill you.”
He stopped. “I know.”
“Is that why I look like this now? Why I look so
different from everyone else?”
Nat scribbled down a few things in his pad. He looked
up at her and held out his thumb.
“What are you doing?” She leaned forward. “Hey.”
“Oh, sorry.” He rubbed the back of his head sheepishly.
“I’ve never seen one of you in person before. I didn’t know
you lived so close—”
She eyed him. “What do you mean?”
He looked at her and tucked the notepad back into
his pocket. Clicked the pen twice. “You’ve got black blood
flowing in you. You’re not acting upon a sin. It’s instinct. We
rarely get to see this – uh, consider it a metamorphosis of
sorts. The horns and everything.”
She bit her bottom lip. “I’m changing,” she said. Her
nails scratched pits into the table. “What was I supposed to
do…?”
53
He watched her scratch her nervousness into the wood.
“I’ll help you,” he blurted out.
“Huh?”
“Every Wednesday. Meet me here, late afternoon.
Before I start work.”
She laughed. “Aren’t you scared?”
“I am.”
She stopped laughing. She stood up and pushed in her
chair. “Thanks for the umbrella,” she said. Then she turned
and walked down the stairs and out the door.
Nat came late and she was already there at the library.
Children had crowded around her and were tugging at her
clothes and asking where she came from. She didn’t smile
but she tried. Her skin was flushed pink.
“They’re friendly,” she said, once they had dispersed.
She held out a hand. “Help me up.”
He grasped her hand. She stood and arched her back.
“Thanks.”
“Don’t mention it. Uh… same table as usual?”
“Yeah.”
They took their seats. Outside, the water stirred.
The market dimmed down in anticipation for night. One
window to the other. The sunlight slid from their bodies like
melted butter.
“How are you feeling?” Nat asked.
“Fine, I guess. Nothing big has happened since we last
met.”
54
“Mmm…” He flipped through the pages of his notebook
and highlighted a line with his finger. “You’re name is Lacy,
isn’t it?”
“What?”
“You’ve been by the church before. ‘Lacy. Twin
brothers, 12, dead. Needs prayer.’” Flip. “‘Lacy. Single
mother, 31, hospitalized.’” Flip—
She interrupted, “Yeah, I’ve been there a few times.”
“Why’d you stop?”
“Same reason why you hate work.” Then she shook her
head. “No, that’s not true. It – well, it became more evident
that something was changing about me. These weren’t just
accidents that could be forgiven so easily. They could see
that I was experienced.”
There was silence. She somberly picked at her nails.
“How does it feel to kill someone?” Nat asked.
She feigned shock, but she had anticipated the
question. “Well… I guess it feels about as normal as taking
out the trash, or chopping onions. I like to take to take a hot
shower after I’m done. To get all the…”
They stopped. Nat turned his attention to a couple
wandering the bookshelves nearby, picking out books
with tattered spines and pushing the pages back in. They
whispered sweetness to each other.
“Was the last time you killed last Wednesday?”
“Yes. A little girl. Maybe just over twelve.” She put
her head in her hands. “She was smiling, even at the last
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seconds of her life. I thought the rain could wash the blood
from my hands.”
“You could’ve caught a cold,” Nat said.
“Yeah.” She smiled. “I could have. I would’ve deserved
it, wouldn’t I?”
Nat sucked in air through his nostrils. He sighed and
patted down his body and pulled out an orange canister of
pills. He passed them over to her. “Take one of these a day,”
he said. “Doesn’t matter when, as long as you’re consistent.”
She held the canister between her fingertips. “And
these will make me better?”
“Maybe.”
She looked them over. Then she popped one out and
dry-swallowed it. As she did Nat said, “I’ll be out of town for
the next two weeks to visit my parents. But the next time we
meet, I want to see your house.”
“Fine by me.”
He tore paper out of his notepad and scribbled on it.
As he walked past he handed it to her. “My number,” he
explained. “If you see any developments – wings, a tail,
something odd – you can call me.”
“Sure.” She put away the number and pills. “What if I
want to talk about other things?”
He paused. “…Well, I guess we could talk about that
too.”
It was morning and the sun made the air warm and
sticky. It smelled like rotten fruit and garbage left out for
56
too long. It wafted from house to house, bringing with it a
swarm of flies.
Nat coughed and held his nose shut. His wings lay
folded against his back. He held in his hands a brown paper
bag, and he was worried that the smell would soak through
the paper. The bricks here were faded – the windows, either
broken or boarded shut. A face sneered at him from the
crack of an open door.
He checked his phone. Latest text. 117 Eagle Lane.
The house itself had vines growing on chipped blue
paint. He rattled on the door and it opened immediately.
Lacy was breathing hard and something had scratched her
face and bled onto her tank top.
“Come in,” she said.
Nat stepped into the living room and placed the bag in
a mess of magazines on the coffee table. He saw architecture
and interior design and also fashion and gossip. “Are all of
these yours?” he asked.
“Most of them. Some are my mother’s.” She showed
him a mug. “Coffee?”
“Sure.”
Lacy filled two cups and gave him the nicer one. A blue
cup, a shade darker than the house, with curves of foam
lapping onto it. “Sorry we don’t have any sugar, though
there’s some milk if you want some.”
“This is fine. This is how I usually drink it, anyway.”
They each took a long sip. Nat took a look over her
wounds. Something sharp was poking out of her abdomen.
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“You’ve been hurt,” he said.
“Yeah.” Lacy went quiet. “I went to the grave of the
twins today. There was some drunk and he cussed me out
and we got into a fight with me and he hit me here.” She
circled the wound to her stomach. “Broke a beer bottle over
my head and got me here deep.”
Nat reached. “Can I try to remove it?”
“No, don’t.” She brushed him aside. “It’ll hurt.” She
drank some more coffee and then stood up and poured the
rest into the sink. “I think he was their father,” she said
sadly.
Nat looked her over again and opened the bag. “I got
you some more medicine,” he said. “Some liquids this time,
maybe they’ll calm you down a little.”
He arranged them all in a row like a dealer. “So this is
how we’re going to do this,” Lacy said with a small laugh.
“You’re just gonna pump me full of drugs. Am I some sort of
lab rat to you?”
“Lacy, I’ve seen the effects of these firsthand—”
“So what? You said I’ve got dark blood in me. It’s been
with me since birth. You think that you can just dilute that
blood with this?” She slammed her hands on the table and
put her head close to his. “Is this something that can be
treated, Nat?” she cried. “Has anyone actually recovered
before?”
He massaged his temples, pulled at the corner of his
eyes.
“Any single person?”
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He sighed. “No – but I know it can be done for you,
Lacy, you’re not that far gone, you’ve still got a chance to
make things right again—”
“Don’t say that.” Lacy looked at him. Her eyes were
moist. “It hurts when you say that.”
“Lacy.”
“You don’t understand, it’s so hard, Nat. Everything I
think of, the devil makes me do. I have no control. I can’t
help myself.” She swallowed. “I see people begging for mercy
every night in my dreams, and I can’t stop myself from
closing my hands around their throats and—”
She ran her hand across her nose.
“Hey. Don’t cry.” Nat looked worried. “Come sit over
here.”
Lacy stood up. “Left or right?” she asked weakly.
“Doesn’t matter.”
She sat, and he put an arm over her. Under her eyes and
the tip of her nose flushed red.
“You don’t mind?”
“No.” He rested her head on his shoulder.
“Comfortable?”
“Mmm… Yeah.”
She lay limp like a mannequin. She turned and
breathed onto his neck. It was smooth, warm.
“What are you doing?” he asked.
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“What does it feel like I’m doing?”
Lacy breathed again. He closed his eyes. Sirens played
out somewhere in the neighborhood.
“Remember when we first met.” She nudged him. “You
said you were scared.”
“Yeah. I said that.”
“…Well, if you’re still scared, do you think I can be
scared too?”
She quivered. Nat rested his hand on her head. He felt
the form of her skull, counted the threads that adorned her
crown. He thought of the umbrella he bought for her, and
imagined that it had acted as a shield against the man at the
grave.
He stroked her hair and hid her horns underneath
his palm. He felt the tears running down her cheeks,
dampening his collar.
60
Katharine Conaway
Summer in the Foothills
Lily’s father opens his car door immediately after
parking the station wagon. She hears him go around to the
trunk and start taking out their bags. Her mom turns from
the front seat to look at Lily and her younger brother . “Now
remember to be nice to your grandmother and your cousins.
And remember to stay near the house. Your aunt practically
lives in the wild.”
“Okay,” Lily says. It is easier than pointing out that her
mother has given them this same speech about ten times on
the three hour drive up.
“Do you understand, Dorian?” she addresses Lily’s fiveyear-old brother. “Stay nearby and don’t mess with your
aunt’s pets.”
“She’s got pets?” Dorian cries.
Her mother sighs and gets out of the car. “Yeah, she
does,” Lily says, “I’ve seen some of them before. Lizards,
snakes, parakeets.”
“Can we see them?”
“I don’t know. Maybe Mom’ll let us.” Lily opens her car
door and jumps out into long grasses that almost come up to
her knees. While her brother stumbles out of his side of the
car, she looks up at her aunt’s house. It is much taller than
her home in southern Georgia, with washed-out walls and
sharply sloped roofs, windows looking out from the gables.
Her aunt is waiting for them on the veranda. Her
brother runs to Aunt Alexandra, short legs teetering up the
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stairs, and Lily follows more slowly, looking around at the
dancing grass and up at the thick blue sky. She stops at the
top of the stairs and looks up at her aunt, who smiles back.
“Hello Lily.” Her aunt looks very similar to her
mother—they both have permanently tan skin, dark auburn
hair, and square-ish jaws—but Alexandra’s face is older and
her mouth is wider.
“Hi Aunt Alexandra.”
“Your brother was telling me he’s starting Kindergarten
this fall. What grade are you going to be in?”
“Fourth.”
“Are you excited?”
Lily shakes her head. “No.”
“Ah. I understand.” Alexandra puts a cold hand on Lily’s
shoulder. Lily looks down at her toes and then looks behind
her for her parents. They are walking up the veranda’s steps
laid down in luggage. Alexandra removes her hand and Lily
is happy she didn’t try to hug her.
Alexandra helps her sister up the few remaining steps,
then hugs her. “Cathy, it’s great to see you. I’m glad you
finally accepted my invitation.”
“You too, Alexandra. Is Mother here?”
“I believe she is finishing up lunch.”
Lily’s mother nods. “Is there somewhere to put our
bags?”
“I’ll show you to your rooms.” Alexandra walks over
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to the front door and turns the heavy doorknob. She walks
inside, followed by Lily’s parents and Lily, dragging Dorian
behind her.
Aunt Alexandra’s house is furnished with rich colors,
mostly dark browns, dark purple, and crimson. All the
furniture is old, possibly original. The large four-poster beds
and clawfoot bathtubs are strange to Lily, who has grown
up in a house almost exclusively designed by IKEA. All the
rooms in the house have elaborate molding that collects dirt
and cobwebs.
After lunch, Lily and Dorian play hide-and-seek while
the adults are still visiting in the dining room. There are
far more rooms in her aunt’s house than hers, but most of
the doors are locked. They do discover that Alexandra’s
bedroom has a plethora of hiding places, with thick drapes
and an adjacent office filled with books.
That night, as she’s getting ready for bed, Lily asks
her mother about the locked doors. Her mother frowns,
although Lily understands the distaste isn’t directed toward
her. “You don’t want to know, Lily. Really, you don’t.” Lily
isn’t sure why she doesn’t ask Aunt Alexandra about them,
but when she thinks about doing so, images of dark rooms
and her aunt’s small mysterious smile pop up in her mind.
The next day, Lily is playing in her aunt’s large front
yard. Her brother is out there too, under the supervision of
her parents, who are watching from rocking chairs on the
veranda. She is lying on her stomach, propping her head
up with her hands. The grasses blow in the faint breeze,
tickling her face.
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There is a large fire ant bed off to her right. She watches
ants crawl out of the hill and through the grass forest, their
red heads standing out against the ground’s greens and
browns.
She sees a flash of movement on her left. She turns her
head and searches for the cause. She finally spots a small
lizard blending in with the ground. She pulls her knees
forward so she is crouching and cups her hands together.
She tries to sit perfectly still.
The lizard moves again, away from her and towards
the house. She lunges after it and misses. The lizard stops
again. She stares at it and slowly starts crawling toward it.
Her mom yells something from the veranda, but Lily doesn’t
hear it. She grabs at the lizard again and this time, she
doesn’t sit up empty handed.
“Dorian! Dorian! Look what I caught!” She runs over to
her brother, who is walking perilously close to the ant bed.
She opens a wide enough hole between her thumbs that the
lizard can poke its head out.
“Wow!”
“Daddy’s told me that this kind of lizard is called an
anole. They’re like chameleons, but they can only change to
green and brown. The regrow their tails too, like skinks!”
Dorian looks up at her with wide pleading eyes. “Can I
hold him? Please?”
“No. You’ll squeeze too tight and kill him.” She turns
away and runs up to the veranda. She climbs up the stairs
and stops in front of her father’s chair. “Dad, look what I
caught!”
He bends down so he is face to face with the lizard.
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“Very good, Lily. They’re so fast that they’re normally really
hard to catch.” He pets the lizard’s head. “You’ll let him go?”
“Of course but—”
“Lily,” her mother calls from the other side of the
veranda. She is sitting next to Lily’s grandmother and
Alexandra. “Come show us what you have.”
Lily hesitates, but finally says, “Okay.” She walks over
to her mother slowly, then holds out her hands so the three
women can see.
Her mother sighs. “Lily, what have I told you about
playing with wild animals? They’re dangerous. You could
get bitten and then infected.”
Lily turns away. “I’m going to let him go now.”
“Wait, Lily,” Alexandra says, putting a hand on her
shoulder, “May I get a closer look?”
“…Okay.” Lily turns back around and shows the lizard
to her aunt. Her aunt bends down and kisses the lizard’s
head.
“He’s beautiful. Are you going to keep him?”
“No! Daddy’s taught me that it’s bad to keep the ones
you catch. They’re home is the wild.”
“Good.” Alexandra smiles up at Lily. “If you get your
brother, I’ll show you all my pets.”
She looks at her mother. “Mom, can I go?”
Her mother looks at Alexandra then at Lily. She relents.
“Okay.”
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Lily smiles and bends down, letting the lizard go.
It scrambles across the floor and down the edge of the
veranda.
Lily has never seen so many animals in one place,
except on a few trips to the Atlanta Zoo. Her aunt has
brightly colored birds, birds that she says are native to
Georgia, but Lily has only ever seen drab colored birds,
like hawks and sparrows. She has hedgehogs and fluffy
chinchillas. Her brother wants to hug the chinchilla but
Alexandra stops him, tells him this chinchilla is nasty and
will bite him. He looks so disappointed that she hands him a
guinea pig to cuddle for the rest of their tour.
Alexandra has multiple species of salamanders, even
the poisonous kind. She has frogs and an iguana. She even
has several snakes: a coral snake, a boa, and a rat snake,
which she lets Lily pet. It is surprisingly soft and smooth.
All the animals are kept in some kind of cage: the
birds and mammals behind metal bars and the reptiles and
salamanders in separate terrariums.
When they leave the room, Alexandra locks the door
behind them.
Lily’s vacation adopts a routine. She wakes up early,
after her aunt and grandmother but before Dorian and her
parents. Then she gets dressed and tip-toes down to her
aunt’s bedroom. The door is cracked open and she walks
through the bedroom to the bookshelves in the closet.
Alexandra has more books than anyone else Lily knows.
Her eyes travel to classic children’s books, books such as The
Secret Garden, Alice in Wonderland, and The Wizard of Oz. Her
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fingers travel down their spines. When she eventually picks
one, she pulls the book down and leaves the closet without
glancing at the adult section, where sits books such as Lolita,
The Catcher in the Rye, and A Clockwork Orange.
Then Lily wanders downstairs and reads, either on
the front porch or in the kitchen depending on whether it’s
raining. About ten o’clock the family sits down for breakfast.
Afterwards, she usually goes either hiking with her father
and brother or to Blue Ridge, the biggest town in the area,
with her parents and grandmother.
The family reunites for supper at six and stays at the
dining room table for family time. The first couple of nights,
Lily finds “family time” unbearable, but on the third night,
Alexandra starts bringing out dominoes, cards, and board
games, which makes family time a little better, especially as
Lily usually wins.
Lily is sitting in the kitchen, reading The Lion, the Witch,
and the Wardrobe at a small table. Everyone except her and
her aunt has gone to town, and Lily hasn’t seen her aunt
since breakfast four hours ago.
Aunt Alexandra walks into the kitchen, barefoot and
dressed in a flowy brown dress. She beckons with her hand.
Lily thinks she is beckoning her and starts to lower her
book, but two more people walk in.
Alexandra notices Lily watching and smiles, dark red
lips against white teeth. “Gentleman, this is my niece Lily.
My sister’s family is visiting, though the rest of them are out
for the moment.”
The men turn toward her and nod, but Lily feels that
they aren’t really seeing her. She instinctively turns around,
but when she doesn’t see anything behind her, she turns
back. “Hi.”
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“Lily, these men are some of my clients.”
“Umm…”
Alexandra looks amused at Lily’s puzzlement. “Your
mother hasn’t told you what I do, has she?”
Lily shakes her head.
Alexandra addresses the men, “Y’all don’t mind if she
sits in, do you? Since we’ve already made the connection
once, it’ll probably be faster this time.” One of the men
shrugs, while the other makes no discernible movement.
“Wonderful. Lily, would you please follow us? And leave
your book in here too, dear?”
Alexandra smiles at Lily. Lily looks down at her feet for
a moment, then looks back up, smiling at her aunt. “Okay.”
Lily stands up and closes her book, placing it on the table.
Her aunt walks out of the kitchen, followed by the two men
and Lily. They walk down the first floor hallway until her
aunt stops at a door on the left, the door to one of the rooms
Lily has never been in. Alexandra takes a key from a chain
about her neck and unlocks the door. She opens the door,
flicks on the overhead light, and walks inside.
The room is decorated like the rest of the house, but
even more so. All the furniture is made from mahogany or
covered with various colors of velvet. There are thick drapes
keeping all natural light out, and the only source of light is
a hard fluorescent ceiling light. Alexandra has pulled out
a matchbox and is lighting the candles on the table in the
center of the room.
Lily is conflicted. She learned years ago that ghosts
don’t exist, that there aren’t monsters under her bed,
but the room feels like it’s from the scary movies she sees
around Halloween. Her fingers find the hem of skirt and
start worrying its edge.
68
When all the candles are lit, Alexandra turns off the
overhead light. She invites the two men to sit down at the
table. She invites Lily to as well, but suggests that, if she
feels uncomfortable, she can also go sit in the corner of the
room. Lily walks slowly to the corner of the room and sits
down, next to where the dark carpet is starting to peel away
and reveal linoleum underneath. Alexandra sits at the head of the table and takes one of
the men’s hands. After minutes of silence, she starts talking
to someone else, someone who isn’t there. Lily guesses she’s
a woman, because her name is Alice. Alexandra is talking to
Alice like she is coaxing a wild animal and is referring to the
men as Alice’s husband and brother, who still miss her, who
still mourn her.
One of the candles blows out. Alexandra smiles. “She is
here.”
Lily strains her eyes but she doesn’t see anyone. She
runs her fingers down the carpet’s edge, listening to the
oohs and ahs of the men. From the sound of it, they see Alice
while she does not. She wishes she was back in the kitchen
reading her book. She wishes she had gone to town with
her parents. She wishes she was back home. She wishes she
wasn’t here, watching her aunt mouth words, listening in to
these men trying to communicate with some woman they
loved.
She stares at one of the candles, watching the wax drip
down its sides, watching the flames dancing around the
wick. She suddenly feels cold and curls herself into a ball,
still watching the candle. The candle blows out and Lily
blacks out.
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Alexandra wakes her some hours later. The overhead
is back on and the two men are gone. Her aunt tells her that
her parents called; they are on their way back to the house.
Her aunt is smiling.
Lily blinks. She does not remember falling asleep. She
stares up at Alexandra’s smile uncertainly. “Is something
funny?”
“No. Did you enjoy the séance?”
“Say-aunts?”
Alexandra shakes her head, still smiling. “The séance
was intended to forge a connection with Alice, even though
she has passed on. Did you feel Alice’s presence?”
Lily shakes her head. “No.”
“I’m sorry. You look a little pale, Lily. Maybe you should
go outside and get some fresh air?”
“Why?”
“It might...I think it might help you feel a little more
like yourself,” Alexandra smiles. “I’ll go with you if you
want.”
Lily stands up a little too fast and has to put a hand
against the wall to steady herself. “No. I’ll go by myself.”
Lily walks out through front door and jumps off of the
front veranda. She runs across the large front yard to the
edge of the road, an unknown highway with inconsistent
lanes and pavement. Wind pulls at her long brown hair
and the skirt of her green dress. She looks around her and
breathes in the overcast weather. Across the road, there are
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woods and a path that travels through to a cliff overlooking
a valley and a small rural community living there. Lily has
already traveled down the path with her father and brother,
with her father narrating the hike, detailing every plant or
footprint they passed.
Lily looks both ways, then crosses the highway. She
runs to the edge of the woods, throwing up the heels of her
tennis shoes.
The woods are quiet. The only things Lily can hear
are the wind in the trees, her footfalls, and her breathing,
which gets heavier as the path starts going uphill. She
suddenly wishes she had waited for her parents to return
before going out. She doesn’t know Aunt Alexandra that
well, doesn’t know if her suggestion to go outside was made
with the best intent.
Lily keeps on going, her heartbeat thumping in her
temples. She hopes she will see an animal. A snake, a deer,
a rabbit—she doesn’t care. She tries her best to be quiet,
slowing her footsteps, controlling her breathing.
She reaches the edge of the forest and steps out from
under the canopy. It doesn’t get any lighter, and everything
around her has smooth edges, the colors of the sky and the
grass and the red cliffs all blend together. She steps up to the
edge of the cliff and looks down.
Her eyes are sharp—neither of her parents needs
glasses--and she can make out the clustered houses and
barns, the church, the graveyard, the gas station. She lies
down on the dewy grass, not caring about the lecture she’ll
surely get later. She closes her eyes.
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You are drowning. You are drowning in dirt and rain
as the red earth fills up your mouth, your eyes, your nose.
You scream and you think you hear someone else screaming,
screaming your name, faintly in the distance. You cry out
to them, to your husband, your brother, your father, who’s
been dead for thirty years. You cry out for God, even though
it’s been ages since you’ve prayed in church, since you’ve
thought of it as something other than a social visit.
You can tell by the scratchiness at your knees that you
are wearing that awful dress your sister-in-law gave you
and by the pinching at your toes that you are wearing your
favorite pair of heels, the ones your sunken arches will no
longer fit. Your fingers reach up. They touch your face and it
is plastic. You pull at your nose and it grows into a beak. You
pull at your eye until it is big, as big as your face. The skin
on your face starts melting, falling down away from your
skull, down into the earth.
You hear a wolf howl. You hear birds sing. Suddenly,
there are snakes flooding the darkness. Their scales are
sliding over you, around you. You remember the pet boa
your cousin had, the boa that terrified you as a girl, the boa
that terrified you as a woman, the boa that killed your cat.
You remember finding the body, unnaturally twisted and
bloating as the sun rose over the valley.
I am having a nightmare, you say, Alice says. I am
having a nightmare and I can’t wake up. My nightmare will
go on forever and there’s nothing I can do to make it stop.
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Lily sits up. It has rained; her dress is sticking to her
skin and her hair pulls towards the ground. She isn’t cold,
even when the wind blows against her. She stands up and
walks through the forest entrance. Her footsteps are silent.
There is a procession of animals following her, creating loud
disturbances in the brush, but she does not look back.
She crosses the field of tall grass. She crosses the road.
Alexandra’s driveway is full again and the family is sitting
on the front veranda, in spite of the clammy weather.
“Lily! Lily!” her mother calls. She runs down the
veranda’s stairs and hugs the sopping wet girl. “Thank God
you’re alright. I was so worried. Alexandra wouldn’t tell me
where you went.”
“Mother,” Lily says, looking up. “Can I have a pet
snake?”
Her mother doesn’t answer. She stares past her
daughter, at the menagerie on the front yard.
73
Theo Monk
Hide
Darina had made it routine to visit the silversmith’s
grave every few days. He’d been such a sweet man when she
knew him, and so few people had come to his funeral, it only
seemed right.
Sometimes she sat there quietly, absently picking at
grass or gazing at clouds. Other times, she would talk to the
grave as if the silversmith were there listening. She once
spent a whole afternoon discussing various creatures she’d
caught at the riverside, and another afternoon tearfully
explaining how that cute boy with freckles and curly hair
had been kissing that bitch Ralie McCaffey.
Darina actually wasn’t sure what a ’bitch’ was, but her
mother kept using it when she was angry, so it probably
wasn’t good. It seemed appropriate to Ralie McCaffey.
Darina grew accustomed to the lonely visits, and found
herself reflexively agitated at seeing a gathering of boys
around the silversmith’s tombstone. She stepped off the
path and toward the grave, eyes furiously darting from one
lad to the next. “What are you doing here?” she asked.
The boys visibly tensed as Darina approached. They all
looked ready to speak, and none did for an awkwardly long
period of time. It was as though they all had a script ready in
their heads, but the opening lines wouldn’t come out right.
“… Is it true you’re a witch?” ventured one, the largest one -Barsan, she thought his name was?
Darina froze, equal parts puzzlement and offense
mingling within her. “What?”
“We heards from Sloan,” said another boy, sitting
on the tombstone, “That you was a witch. That you made
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potions out o’ lizards’ eyes, and casted curses, and talked to
ghosts.”
“I... I don’t... what?!” Darina stammered, defaulting to
indignation.
“You come here all the time,” added another, turning to
Darina before continuing, “Sloan’s even seen you talking to
ghosts here.”
“... Who the f--” Darina bit her tongue. “Who is Sloan?”
“Why d’you care?” chimed in a third boy.
“Because what he’s telling you is -- bullshit,” said
Darina, feeling particularly grown-up with her word choice,
“Now, please: leave me alone.”
Silence. Perhaps they were ready to do ask she asked,
when one murmured suddenly, “Oh, I bet she’s putting a
curse on Sloan when we get home.”
Darina was fuming, and made a very bold, very
stupid move. “Maybe I will!” she bellowed, fists clenched
and brow furrowed, “And I’ll put one on all of you if you
don’t get out of here!” She took deep breaths, thinking
herself threatening. To her credit, the boys looked suitably
frightened. To her detriment, they no longer had any
intention of leaving.
“D’you hear that?” asked one boy to another. Darina’s
brow unfurrowed.
“Sloan weren’t lying after all. She is a witch.” Her fists
unclenched.
“We gotta tell someone…” Her cheeks turned from red
to pale.
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“I wonder what the guard would do to her…” The boys
began a slow advance.
“Should we burn her?” Darina ran.
Darina lay on the floor of the mausoleum, weeping
pitifully as blood ran over her head and hands. Scampering
through a broken window had not been an example of
strategic brilliance, one mistake in the hopeless endeavor to
fix another.
Her head throbbed. Her hands and knees were torn
to shreds. Darina could hear the boys gather outside,
discussing and discounting the possibility of the window.
Not only were they too big, but only a fool would crawl
through jagged glass. Darina, ever the fool, had considered
that too late.
Please let them go, she prayed, maybe to a god, maybe to
spirits, maybe to a great void, Please let them go, let them leave
me alone, I want to be alone.
BOOM.
The sound tore a squeal out of Darina’s still-burning
lungs. It was like the hammer and anvil of a god, echoing
across the stone chamber in perfectly deafening fashion.
BOOM.
They’re breaking the door down, Darina realized, eyes
widening in terror. After a second, she laughed madly, one
hand remaining on her head to stanch the blood flow. They
were children, hardly older than her; how would they break
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down an iron door?
BOOM.
Unless they found something sturdy enough to break
the lock.
BOOM.
Or went back to town, and told everyone how she’d
“confessed.” A guard or two, or even a few curious adults,
would have no problem against that lock.
BOOM.
Nor would they have any trouble dragging her back into
town for the burning.
BOOM. BOOM. BOOM.
Darina began to cry anew, hugging her knees tight
enough to leave marks. Thoughts spiraled out of control,
though the pain of fire was a recurring feature, and she
wailed.
“I just wanted to see the silversmith!” she shrieked
helplessly, “I wanted to see my friend! I wanted to…”
She sniffed, and wiped her nose.
“I wanted…”
She looked up at the door.
“I want… you gone.”
Immediately, something changed in Darina. Her tears
ceased, as did her tired breathing and terrified shaking. She
looked back and forth along the coffins in the mausoleum
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with serene contemplation, then turned again to the door.
That lock no longer seemed so sturdy.
“C’mon, Barsan, try it again!”
Trying again, Barsan slammed the fist-sized rock
against the mausoleum door. He contemplated how
much easier it would be to go back to town and get some
adults to help them, with proper tools and such. He
also contemplated how much respect he’d lose for that
suggestion, and so continued beating fruitlessly away.
“Is it working yet?” called another of the boys
impatiently.
“Trying,” Barsan grunted, sweat beading down his
nose, “Just… give it some ti-”
He was interrupted by the doorframe breaking -- no,
exploding, stray chunks of rock and iron flying in his face. He
would have credited the heretofore unknown depths of his
strength, had his hand not been a solid foot away from the
door.
In shock, everyone dived back. The doorframe exploded
again, and again, and then finally did the door open so
slightly. Fingers reached out from inside, wrapping around
the edge of the door and pushing out.
The digits were a flawless silver, the boys’ panicked
reflections visible on the skin. Then there was a hand, an
arm, and a face and eyes, everything as exquisitely silver as
they had ever seen. “All right. You… wanted a witch.” Its voice
was a shredded, hateful timbre, bearing no resemblance to
any sound Darina had ever uttered.
Barsan wailed and pissed himself, sure that he was inches
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from a demon.
“You wanted a witch,” it repeated, as though speech was still
something it had to test, “Fine. I’ll give you a God.
“Damned.
“Witch.”
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Angie Bartelt
Controversial Casting
The American entertainment industry often casts
leading actors and actresses to play men and women
of many different cultures and races, no matter that
entertainers own ethnicity or culture. This happens so
often, it has historically gone unnoticed by the white
audiences whose interest in the films lies mostly in watching
their favorite actors and actresses perform.
A Mighty Heart, for example, a 2007 major budget
Paramount film detailing the account of the search for
a Wall Street Journal reporter in 2002 in Pakistan. The
criticism fell when the filmmakers cast Angelina Jolie as
the protagonist’s wife, a woman who in real like is of mixed
race. Jolie herself is of European decent, hardly comparable
to the Afro-Cuban-Chinese lineage of the character she
portrayed in the film. This is important, because although
major film’s main goals are to make money and win awards,
by white washing the cast there is no realism or justice
towards the differences within America’s people that
have their stories told on the silver screen, no matter how
beautiful or not they may be in real life. This also furthers
the problems associated with colorism, and the idea that
white is good and black is bad. By allowing this in our
media, we continue to perpetuate this terrible stereotype.
Currently across media spheres in relation to this
issue came the official casting for the biographical motion
picture of Nina Simone, a famous civil rights activist and
musician from the 1950’s through the 1970’s. Zoe Saldana,
an thin stunning actress from Latin decent who’s light skin
far from resembles Simone’s own dark coloring. The outcry
after the announcement came hard and fast from all areas
of social media, from YouTube to Facebook, all pleading that
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reinforcing the core problems within colorism are offensive
and serve no respect towards Simone’s own courageous
life. In the trailer for the film, Saldana as Simone is seen
to have had her skin darkened an afro wing put on her
head and her nose widened for the role, a modern day
blackface that is somehow acceptable if the film’s budget
is large enough. Saldana’s own features and complexion
more closely resemble that of the classic beauty standards,
slightly caramel skin tone, a long, lanky body, and a thin
straight nose. Her transformation for the role is particularly
offensive to women of color as they constantly face struggles
with the acceptance of their own beauty as it is not the
“correct” beauty, white beauty.
Femininity in American culture and beauty specifically
are defined by their closeness to conventional white beauty.
The darker the skin, the wider the nose, and the more
textured the hair, the farther away from beauty the Black
woman falls. Blackness is written onto the body based
on the appearance of the skin’s darkness and that leads
to immediate discrimination based on the social contexts
of what that blackness means. Inferiority, dating back
hundreds of years, can still be read on the body of the Black
woman. Her skin color determines her worth and how
attractive she is to society in direct comparison to her white
female peers.
Colorism is a huge issue in America, and frankly the
world, but especially so in the depiction of people of color in
the media and in film. The negative social values associated
with the darkness of one’s skin alone is oppressive, but when
Hollywood is allowed to supplement the divide caused by
colorism by cast white or non-Black actors and actresses
to play people of color, the prejudice becomes kind of
acceptable. After all, the major studios will argue, the point
of their films is to tell stories that will make money, and that
requires casting people who society has become normalized
to accept as the most attractive and beautiful. And that
means, and has always meant white.
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Angie Bartelt
Fight or Flight
I recently had a meeting with my favorite professor to
discuss the D+ I got on her midterm. I had already briefly
talked to her about it, cried and then scheduled a meeting.
So this morning my heart is racing, and I’m sweaty all
over because I really like the professor and respect her so
much. She is the first adult in my life to look me in the eye
and tell me I should go to law school and honestly the first
person ever to tell me I am good enough to get more than
my bachelor’s degree. Nonetheless, I panicked walking in to
talk to her.
I spilled my guts to her about my fears and my
conclusions as to why I did so poorly on the exam. I am
constantly comparing myself to my like-minded peers, and
all it has been causing me is insecurity and distress.
I am finally graduating. I know many of my fellow
students have either done it already or will be doing it soon,
and it’s no big deal because that’s the whole point of being
here, to finish. But personally, it’s so much more than that. I
was homeless, hungry, massively depressed and completely
alone, and after having to take a year off to work full time
to pay back my tuition debts, it seemed like the graduation
everyone expects to be inevitable just wasn’t in the cards
for me – not for lack of trying, but because sometimes you
just get dealt a bad hand in life, and there’s nothing you can
do about it. Those with opportunity will succeed, and those
without will not. I’ve seen it happen to people around me
my entire life.
So now that I am doing it – actually becoming the first
person in my family on my mother’s side to make it past
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high school – I am petrified. What if I have now hit my peak
and trying to push further education onto my life is a bad
idea? What if I am not good enough, and it is only because of
my ignorant inability to quit that I’ve even made it this far? I
am worried that because of how difficult undergrad was for
me I am kidding myself that I could go to law school.
Here’s the thing though: I know there is a logical reason
why school has always been harder for me. Children who
come out of traumatic circumstances score lower on tests
across the board than children who do not. With only 3
percent of foster kids attending college nationwide, not only
was I probably never going to get a 4.0, or above average at
all, I was pretty much destined to drop out.
I didn’t. I beat the statistics. I am not a product of
my circumstance. But my crisis continues. It is almost as
though I cannot knowingly cut myself any slack. I do know
though that doesn’t mean I have no excuse for struggling
inside of the classroom. Every student, every person, will
do that from time to time – re-evaluate their worth based
on comparison to others. It is unfair, but almost addicting
to want to be the best, and yet all confidence is lost when
you constantly fall behind again and again. I have been
wired for “fight or flight” in every moment of my life out of
instinctual survival mode, not “relax, learn, focus, study, do
well, come home, you’re not going to die ... “ like many of
you (okay, maybe not all of those but it really messes with
your psyche to be afraid someone is going to murder you all
of the time for your entire childhood). I don’t know.
But what I do know is I’m not stupid, and I’ve made it
this far, and frankly, I am tired of beating myself up for not
being like people who have parents. I have worked really
hard to get to where I am, and I am tired of not giving
myself credit and being so hard on myself. I need to take my
own advice and get some perspective. Life is full of roller
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coasters – some big and some small. I have always found the
age-old quote, “it’s not about the destination, it’s about the
journey,” to be frustrating, yet a little true. I’ve learned that
the roads are rough but when you get to the end, you’ll have
grown whether you wanted to or not. To me, that is worth
every moment.
Sitting there realizing all of this in my professor’s
office in a sort of trance, I look up. She is giving me the
opportunity to retake the midterm. In her words, I know
the material, and I had just talked myself out of being right
while scribbling my answers, glancing around nervously
at my calm and cool classmates. I had allowed my sense
of academic inferiority to cloud my brain. Luckily, good
professors know this happens. I am glad I went to her and
confronted my fears. Once again, she tells me to go to law
school.
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Art
Haley Sheehan
Liam Ward
Tanika Powers
Haley Sheehan
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Haley Sheehan
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Haley Sheehan
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Liam Ward
“Precious”
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Tanika Powers
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Tanika Powers
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Tanika Powers
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Thank you for reading.
What is Mallet?
The Mallet Assembly is a residential, self-governing honors
organization for UA students. Considered a living-learning
community, we discriminate against no one, and all members
are invited to live in-dorm to familiarize themselves with, and
learn from, our diverse membership base.
Mallet is a strange, magnificent group that you should join up
with, right now. We were founded in 1961 by John Blackburn,
as a pro-integration group on campus. Since then, Mallet has
continued to strive for brilliance, diversity, and fearlessness in
all that we do. Our list of achievements includes:
• Seeing Malleteer Cleo Thomas be elected the first AfricanAmerican SGA president in 1976.
• “Smash Auburn, Smash Hunger,” a fundraiser in the spirit
of “Beat Auburn, Beat Hunger,” based around the video game
Super Smash Bros.
• A large part of planning and participating in the 2013 Stand
in the Schoolhouse Door protest.
• A Mad Max-themed float for the 2015 Homecoming parade.
Seriously, it was in the news, look it up.
… And more! We continue our adventures from day to day,
with Bog Bowls at 3 a.m. on rainy nights; War Games, where
Malleteers use NERF blasters to hunt the deadliest game;
ProgLucks, where organizations from across campus are
invited to our dorm to eat and commiserate; monthly Open
Mic nights, where performances of all kinds take the stage;
and whatever else suits our fancy — and yours! At Mallet,
everything we do is suggested and carried out by our members.
Don’t just take my word for it — come see for yourself! If you
have plans to visit the Capstone, let us know; we’d be glad to
show you around the dorm and answer any of your questions
in-person. If you’re unable to come to campus, please contact
us at [email protected], or visit our website at
www.mallet-assembly.org, for more information, pictures of
our events, and application materials.
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