Fiction

SORRY GIRL, NO PHONE MEMORY LEFT, the truck’s hand-painted license plate read in a sideways flirt. Two rainbow bunches of streamers bounced from the sides of the jalopying vehicle. A bundle of sugarcane sticks fell out of the open back. One side of the truck read I LOVE GANDHI, the other, LIFE IS BEAUTIFUL. Our car looked like a toy in comparison. I pretended not to be afraid of it toppling over onto us. I pretended we weren’t stuck in traffic in the middle of India, on our way to the hills.

The driver of our car glimpsed backwards every so often with his clean fatherly eyes. His face was ruddy, stubbled from going without shaving for a few days, and patchy from old pimple bruises. When we would ask him how much longer or to stop for a bathroom, he’d reply in a low obedient mumble. When we would stop for tea, he’d put one arm behind his back in a servile stance and drink from the hot steel cup in long thirstful sips—staring at the Indian sun. He had small children and got nervous when my grandfather told him we were going to the hills. How many days? he asked. I don’t know! my grandfather would say. Nobody tells you how many hairs on your head you’re gonna be born with!

I was a sardine—jammed with six sleeping souls bouncing up and down as the car continued through the rock-laden roads. Time became a big blur of jet lag— since we’d flown from the U.S. to my grandparents’ house in a quaint, forgotten town. I tried to wriggle my phone out of my pocket to listen to music, but my sister’s heavy resting head jerked when I made the slightest move. I sighed and wiped the fog off the window with a spare unicorn-speckled sock.

My cousin, Charlie, woke up and yelled, “I’M SO HUNGRY!!!” She rolled the window down all the way and stuck her head out, searching for food like an impatient animal. A cold breeze and smell of something fried and crunchy, mint and spices, and piping hot cardamom tea blew into the car. The rest of the troupe slowly awakened and shook the siesta from their eyes.

“We can’t get off anywhere now,” said my aunt, yawning. The cars in the jam were motionless like a bad Salvador Dali painting.

My other cousin, Alicia, poked the back of my head. “How’s life?”

“Cheeky,” I replied.

“Cheeky?” she questioned.

Outside, there was a man clad in orange garb wandering with a walking stick. He looked like a wise man of some sort—a turban wrapped around his head, clay beads hanging from his neck, holding an iPhone up to his foggy eyes. Maybe he was Socrates. Maybe he was a social sage. I imagined him sitting criss-cross on a great mountain—the high sun illuminating his wrinkled face—maybe taking a selfie. He tripped over a stone and howled in silent pain. Why didn’t he just cry it out loud? He felt around the ground frantically, feeling for his walking stick. The people that came and went passed him. Some gave him a sorry glance; some perhaps debated with their own conscience if they should drop everything and help him. In the end, he wiped the blood off his knees and picked himself back up alone.

Everybody in the car began talking about everything under the sun—loudly. It was as if the pressure building in our ears from going up was making us hard of hearing. My mom and aunts talked about cleaning up our poop when we were little babies, my older cousins talked to each other about their friends getting engaged, my sister and younger cousin argued about YouTubers, and my grandfather ranted to the driver about there being no phone service now. The noises clashed and tripped over each other and the honking cars passing by sounded in a cacophony. The driver shot a tense glance in the rear-view mirror, distracted and confused how to switch lanes.

A beggar quietly palmed my window like a ghost. “Give. Please give, madam. I am hungry.” I looked at the woman’s rough hands, then at her dirty face and dark eyes half covered by a scarf. She could’ve been known as beautiful if it were raining—if the water washed away all the dirt and suffering.

My grandfather rolled down the window and barked at her in the same Hindi tongue. “GET AWAY! BREAD IS ONLY BUILT BY HARD AND HONEST WORK…THE HILLS HAVE EYES!” He rolled up the window, angry. The woman palmed at his window. My grandpa cursed and the car jumped forward.

Everybody continued talking, but a loudspeaker on top of a small church ahead suddenly overtook all of the noise in my mind. There was chanting—verses, hymns, a maybe truth. I say maybe because I couldn’t understand all of it. I looked around the car to see if anybody else was hearing what I heard. Nobody. I looked out the window to see if anybody else in the city was hearing what I heard. It was impossible to tell.

 

~

I’d heard the chant before, upstairs in my grandparent’s house—when I locked myself in the bathroom and sat on the toilet seat to cry. I was wearing my winter jacket then, and my butt was frozen from the cold seat even though I was wearing two pairs of pajamas. I held my head in my hands and wiped the frustration out of each burning eye. Why are you so serious? asked my aunt. You’re not fun anymore! complained my cousin. You’re too sober, said my uncle. I could hear my younger sister and cousins laughing loudly in the room next door—they were watching a scary movie and eating spicy potato chips.

I stood up and went over to where the noise was coming from. I looked up at the window that was too high to see out of and continued listening to the chant. After each verse, a small congregation echoed a response back. I imagined them sitting in a small circle in the temple two blocks away. What kind of people would sit in that little temple on a Tuesday night? I wondered. Don’t they have anything better to do? What were they saying? They sounded like holy ghosts.

            Pain and suffering are the remedies; pleasure and comforts are the diseases. 

What did this mean?

 

~

My grandfather cussed out a toll guy and told him to fear the hills. My mother fell asleep again, probably praying. The last time we came here, the priest gave us flowers. She had been wanting us to come back here for years. She was running to the hills in full speed, and my father—he couldn’t wait to run back to my grandparents’ home. He was in the other car and was nauseous. He had been acting strange and childlike since we landed, running to my grandparents’ home with an open embrace, like he was going to hug the giant house, jumping up and down on the terrace when he saw kites flying, requesting a cup of warm milk only from the hand of my grandmother. Milk, milk, milk, he would always sing. I loveeeeeeeee milk.

There were patches of fog and smoke then. The cars and people that passed by were apparitions. There was a woman in a fancy car, staring at me with her pierced nose turned up. She looked like she’d been royal or something in a past life. She looked like she used to have smiling old woman’s eyes. But now, she had the eyes of a politician’s wife. There were men with horses decorated in flowers and garlands lined up on the sides of the road—waiting to take the next pilgrims up the hills. There was a woman in a yellow lehenga dress sleeping on a cot—flies settling on her unconscious face. There were two men crouched by a fire that ran only on dead grass and straw—no shoes, thin hats, both sharing a rough blanket, tapping at their iPhones in one hand. There was an infant and a mother with half her breast out—the milk dripping down to the ground—an injured wild dog lapping up the tiny puddle. Animal or human, out on the street or in the quiet of a hidden bathroom, there must’ve been some meaning in our suffering. Our living was incomplete without it.

I could’ve sworn these hills had eyes. How could they be blind to this all? No, the hills understood. The hills saw all.

“We are hereeeee!” my grandfather sang. We were at the bottom of the mountains. The tall giants loomed over us like bright green gods in the cold air. The driver was tired now. Everybody huddled their stuff together, took their phones off the chargers, and fumbled to put back on their shoes. My mother got out fast; ready to run to the hills at full speed. I got out of the car and tilted my head up high again at the wonders. My father came out last, eager to get the pilgrimage over with and run back to my grandparent’s house. The lights of the hotel went out.

“Uhh the light will be back shortly. Please come in,” said the doorman.

I don’t think we needed that artificial light anyway. A flock of black birds cawed over the burning orange Indian sun. It didn’t matter to me; I was running to wherever the sun was.

 

 

Arja Kumar is a human, writer, and nineteen-year-old college student from Illinois. Her work has appeared in literary magazines including KAIROS, Sweet Tree Review, Literary Orphans, Portage, Blink-Ink, and Bop Dead City. When she is not writing, she likes to cook, paint, and stargaze.

Three minutes before I picked up my medicine from the pharmacy, I stopped by the cereal aisle. The rows of colorful boxes seemed endless under the bright CVS lighting. Who in the world needs this much cereal?

I picked up a box. Cheesy Pops! “A slow drift into disassociation,” the mascot promised. Serving size: one whole box. I put it in my cart.

I moseyed over to the pharmacy in the back. It was five o’clock on a Sunday. The only people there were me and a little old lady. She reminded me of my grandmother, but not quite.

I nodded at her and she nodded at me. Polite, but no more than what was necessary. We both looked ahead towards the desk. A woman in a white doctor’s coat was puttering around in the back.

I don’t like doctor’s coats, or pharmacies really. They remind me of why I’m here.

Every time I refill my prescription at a new pharmacy, the pharmacists ask “Dilaxoiantrone? What’s that?” and I have to tell them, “It’s new. It’s an experimental drug for retrograde amnesia.” And then they say “Dilaxoiantrone? What’s that?”

And then I finally get my stupid pill bottle, and then I walk home, and then I go to the medicine cabinet and put it next to all of the other bottles of Dilaxoiantrone, and I put my Cheesy Pops! next to all of the other boxes of Cheesy Pops!, and then I remember that I have to go refill my prescription at the pharmacy before it closes.

 

 

Alex is in ninth grade, and  was born and raised in New York City, where the inspiration is endless. When she is not out running (preferably in the rain), she can usually be found drawing, writing, or reading, with a cup of tea in her hand and a cat in her lap.

A glob of water slams against the living room window when my dad declares we’ll be eating out tonight.

“What for?” I say, staring at the downpour. “We have more than enough ramen to go around.”

“No. We’re going to Sichuan Bistro.” he says. Before I can protest, he tosses me a large umbrella from the closet and my raincoat. “Zip up. You can stand a few raindrops.”

As he drives towards our destination, I’m still mystified about the source of his newfound resolve. He didn’t demonstrate any peculiar interest in dining nor seem mindful of my activities in the prior days. After sharing a nightly meal, we would head towards our usual activities. I recall recent evenings in my bedroom, packing for college and chatting with my classmates over social media, while my dad sat in his office, engrossed in a meeting. I rack my brain for out of the ordinary events, but nothing warrants his adamant gaze, fixed on the clear space between the windshield wipers and rain.

The restaurant is tucked between a DMV facility and a tiny convenience store. After we rush inside, shoes splashing through puddles in a largely empty parking lot, my dad’s troubled expression melts into the yellow light. A young waitress a few years older than I am, seats us and hands us our menus. Around us, a few other diners, who probably arrived before the rain started, peer at us curiously.

My dad seems oblivious to this. He folds his arms and asks me excitedly, “Remember this place? We used to come here all the time with mom.” Of course I do. When I was in middle school, we frequented the place for authentic Chinese cuisine, a rarity in my suburban town. Our usual order was a large bowl of Dan Dan noodles, an aromatic dish with minced pork, chili oil, herbs, and onions. Sichuan Bistro was my favorite restaurant at the time.

“Yeah, it’s been a long time since we’ve come back.” When my parents’ work ramped up and a relative became sick after my eighth-grade graduation, it became more difficult for us to dine as a family. When we did, we usually visited fast food places, and Sichuan Bistro eventually fell off our radar. The situation with our relative has been resolved since, but work still carves off ample time from my parents’ schedules. Currently, mom is overseas on a business trip, leaving me to spend my last days at home with my dad. I wonder how Sichuan Bistro resurfaced in his mind.

“Too long,” says my dad, shaking his head. He grabs a menu, and his eyebrows furrow. “They changed owners,” he says, as he flips through the pages. “Ah, at least they still have the classic noodles. What a relief.”

He waves the waitress over and orders the item, then adds magnolia tea for us to share.

When she leaves, he turns to me. “Terrible weather, huh? Hopefully it’s not this way when we leave for the airport.”

I suddenly become conscious of water soaking into my socks. “Why are we here?”

“What do you mean? You’re leaving for college soon and we haven’t visited one of your favorite childhood sites in years. You’re never going to come back, you know. Might as well make the best of the little time we have left.”

The nonchalance of his language pains me. “I’ll come back to visit,” I protest.

He sighs. “Infrequently. As it will be, for a long time.”

I get the feeling that this visit to the restaurant is more for him than for me.

—

The waitress brings us a teapot and two teacups. “Enjoy,” she says. My dad pours the steamy liquid into cups and hands me one. I fan it with my hand, then take a sip.

The tea travels down my neck like a ball of warmth. I shudder, feeling it seep into my muscles and organs, filling my insides with its mellowness.

Simultaneously, my dad sets down his teacup, his forehead wrinkling in disgust. “They diluted this! This poor excuse for tea tastes more like water than magnolia. Probably used a few pinches of leaves to make a liter.”

“It’s nice though.”

“Really? I know you have higher standards than that. This is disappointing.”

I shrug and sip my tea again. When I drink, I forget the feeling of dampness on my feet.
___

“You’ll call us, right?” My dad is staring at the TV at the back of the restaurant, where a news anchor is discussing the damages of the storm to the nearby city. The words slip out indifferently.

“Of course I’ll keep in touch. It’s going to be a huge adjustment for me anyway, so I’ll probably call often in the initial days.”

“You’ll be fine. Don’t you already know quite a few of your classmates? Tell me about them.

“Well, there’s Kabir from Texas, as you know, who’s going to my roommate. We met over the Facebook group for admitted students. He shares a couple of the same interests as me, like computers and outdoorsy-stuff, so I think we’ll get along well. I also know a few people from the class Discord chat, like Fumiko, who’s from California and Alexander, who lives all the way in Great Britain. And of course, there’s Steffie and Manuel from my school, so I won’t be completely alone.”

“That’s good. Very good.”

“Dad, you know you’ll still be in my life, right?”

Thunder rumbles in the distance, and I pick up my teacup to avoid his gaze. Have I gone too far, bringing his emotions to the table?

“Yes.” he says softly. “You’re right. It probably won’t even make a difference.”

“What do you mean?”

He stares directly at me. “I haven’t been present in your life the past few years, have I? Always at work or taking care of someone else. You don’t demand much, but I haven’t been much of a father.”

I’m startled by his confession. When I was younger, I admit, I resented his prolonged absences. I returned from school everyday to an empty home, where I played video games, watched TV, and occasionally, worked on homework until my parents came back later at night. Often, my father would adapt a disciplinary role when he saw me, as he endeavored to limit my screen time and fit rigorous standardized test preparation into my schedule. His distant, authoritarian parenting did not sit well with my adolescent self. I yearned for caring company.

Yet as I see him now, with his salt-and-pepper hair, thick eye bags, and lined skin, I understand that he weathered through his own storm in the past years. He is a tired man, lifeblood diminshed by late nights and stress. When I realize he has aged, a rock drops into my throat, sending ripples throughout my body, then sinking into the deep end. I remember the scenes of my childhood: birthdays, playgrounds, skipping stones, bike rides, barbecues, fireworks, and restaurants. Each memory is imbued with love.

“You were never a bad father,” I say.

He blinks away something in his eyes. “Thank you, son.”

The waitress arrives with a large bowl of Dan Dan noodles. We thank her, and I split it between two bowls, passing one to my dad. When I inhale, I’m overwhelmed by an all-too familiar aroma of a decadent, spicy sauce. I pick up a large chunk with my chopsticks and devour it.

My mouth is aflame. “How do you like it?” my dad asks.

Desperately, I gulp my remaining tea and pour another cup from the teapot. “I think I chewed on some peppercorns.”

My dad laughs softly. “Yeah, they really added a lot more spice than usual in this dish. Quite opposite to the tea in terms of flavor.” He watches as I continue my ritual of drinking tea and refilling my cup. “Sorry for dragging you into this.”

The fire in my mouth subsides, but it leaves a lingering warmth. “No, this is the best experience at a restaurant that I’ve ever had.”

 

 

Jodie Meng is a member of the Class of 2020 at the Illinois Math and Science Academy. This work is inspired by a restaurant she frequently visited in her childhood and her recent experiences with college admissions.

Rena had never felt so exhausted.

It wasn’t that she was doing much of anything–in fact, quite the opposite. She had grown listless counting the fissures in her stoic cement walls, grown weary as days blurred into weeks of hearing nothing but the voices in her head.

As the evening air drifted in through her cracked-open window, she found herself padding towards its sill, staring out into the frozen ghost of a metropolitan jungle.

Sure enough, that telltale wisp of steam snaked towards the twilit sky, a beacon in the growing night. Looked like the Underground was in full swing.

Hesitantly, Rena inched open the door as the murmur of the RoboScreen drifted up the hall, a ceaseless hubbub spewing its ugly message. “97 new plague deaths reported today,” it intoned. “This is a reminder to practice social distancing. Those attending public gatherings are subject to imprisonment under Emergency Order 1204.”

Social distancing. God, how she hated that phrase.

She had one foot out the door when a withering voice sprung from the walls. “Where do you think you’re going?”

Rena winced. “Sorry, Grandma.” She swallowed, throat thick with her lies. “I just wanted to get some air, walk outside. You know I’ve been cooped up all week.”

“Better cooped up than dead,” her grandmother muttered over the intercom. “Be careful, Rena. I’m getting weaker, and with this recession I can’t afford for you to get arrested.”

“I know,” was her only reply as she swept through the entryway and into the alley, her silhouette bleeding into the inky shadows.

To her relief, Rena only passed a few RoboCops as she navigated the labyrinthine streets, maintaining a cloak of darkness all around. As she approached the line of steam, she found herself in front of a series of nondescript garbage bins.

Left of the steam and down, Glenn had messaged her. Tinged with incredulity, she opened the rightmost bin, a rusted metal heap.

To her surprise, it had no bottom. A chute emptied straight into the earth, the ingenious work of teenagers with more of a rebellious streak than she could ever quite fathom.

After a brief fall, her landing was soft enough, cushioned by a wide net strung across the chasm. As Rena clambered up, a sweaty hand pulled her to safety.
“Welcome to the Underground,” came the raspy voice of a gangly man-child. “Behind those doors you’ll find the only party in the city.”

Rena nodded her thanks, quickly extricating herself from his slick grip, as she crossed the narrow strip of rock to the set of doors. Already, she could feel rather than hear the reverberations of earsplitting techno music pummeling the rock walls like a feral animal. Her own palms dampening, Rena pushed open the doors, and entered the pounding beast.

It wasn’t the pulsating music that hit her so much as the heat. It was like a furnace, a churning, angry inferno tingling with electricity. A massive throng of tangled bodies twisted in sync to the raging beat, a mess of limbs and lips and wildly thrown-about hair. While everything above was strict and contained, circular masks and shut curtains, the Underground was rugged. Dirty. It was a blur of movement cast in primary colors, a primitive scene of bold youth.

Rena’s heartbeat began to merge with the pulse, as a mad grin danced its way onto her face. Almost feverishly, she found herself edging into the crowd, when out of the heat came that decadent voice she’d been waiting for. “Rena!”

“Glenn!” He was as tragically handsome as ever, ruddy color brightening his devilish face. “It’s been too long.”

He smirked as he snaked an arm around her. “If you weren’t such a rule-follower, we could’ve been down here a lot earlier.” With one swift movement, he pulled them into the frenzy, dancing away amidst the circle of feral teenagers.

His hands on hers were like furnaces themselves, insatiably burning. Something within her had yearned for this for so many days shut up in her room, had clawed and screamed at her to venture out or risk suffocation. With bodies jostling them on all sides, she found herself pressing closer and closer to him, so much that their breath mingled as they talked.

“Do you think it’s safe to be down here, with all these people?” Rena’s eyes slid to his.

Glenn’s face twisted into a frown. “No plague talk. We party to forget, to escape–not to discuss.”

Gripping her palms tightly, he spun her around him, a whirl of color and movement inundating her senses. By now the heat had seeped into her until it melded into a glowing core within her heart, keeping her moving, round and round. As Glenn dipped her back, she felt the world lurch before her, then come flying back, a delirious rush of vertigo coursing through her veins.

But not only did the ground come rushing back to her–so did his arm. And on it, a blistering splotch of decaying purple skin.

Suddenly, the cavernous room seemed cast in cold tones of blue and grey. The pulsating music, the voices around her, were lower, muffled, as the room swirled in slow motion.

“Rena? Rena, are you okay?”

Her voice was faint, weak, not at all her own. “Glenn–Glenn, look at your arm.”

His face blanched. He began to yell something, but her ears had stopped working. All around her, the dancing petered out into a growing mass of spectators, jostling each other to catch a glimpse, wide eyes blinking with trepidation.

And suddenly, the party was extinguished. Perhaps someone had called the authorities, because the disease control droids were swooping in from all sides, spraying a stinging mist into the humid air, their metal frames sinister and artificial against the wild color of the Underground.

“Please remain where you are,” came the droids’ nasal voices. “It is reported that Citizen 0368 is exhibiting signs of the plague. As we vacate him from this illegal gathering, all citizens present will be imprisoned in the Quarantine.”

The Quarantine.

“No, no, no,” Rena muttered, petrified.

And as she gazed around the room, every face mirrored her own. Terror mingled with outrage was etched across each tragically prideful youth, as murmurs gave way to a trembling fervor.

Group by group, the teenagers crept toward the exits, until huge droves were clambering madly up the ladders. The droids sprayed their mist, spouting frazzled reproaches, yet they were no match for the sheer number of youth struggling their way out.

Rena watched in growing horror as the cavern emptied around her.

They could all be infected. Every last one of them. Yet still they continued up into the city, real-life sewer rats wreaking invisible havoc on an unsuspecting population.

And as much as Rena hated to admit it, she ached to follow them. Ached to escape into blissful ignorance, that teenage drug of unadulterated self-absorption.

She couldn’t face being locked up, forced to acknowledge the truth of the increasing horrors around her. Couldn’t live in this constant nightmare of death and fear, without even the possibility of escape.

Rena took one last sweeping look around the cavern, and shoved down the voice of morality clawing up her throat. For a fleeting moment, her eyes met Glenn’s as the droids raised him onto a gurney, locked in a raw second of bitter loss. And then she turned, following the last of the partygoers up the ladder.

#

Rena awoke the next morning to the grossly cheerful chime of the RoboScreen’s news alert. For a brief second, normalcy reigned, before the memory of the night before slammed into her like a truck.

“Breaking news,” it recited. “425 new plague deaths reported last night.”

Rena moved to shut it off, but the RoboScreen wasn’t done. “There appears to be a new pattern. All deceased persons housed a teenager aged 15 to 19 in their dwelling.”

Drop by drop, Rena felt the color drain from her face, as a muffled cough echoed from downstairs.

She had known this would happen. And she’d left anyway.

Rena sank onto her bed, numb, as the tide washed in, wave upon wave of guilt crashing into her. Minutes bled into hours, a timeless, endless expanse as the rising water slowly pulled her under.

Eventually, Rena’s broken gaze drifted back to the window, and she stiffened, sick to her stomach.

After its brief respite, once more the tendril of steam curled ominously, tantalizingly, out from the Underground.

It was almost boastful. Shameless. A snake threading its way through the reddening sky.

Despite everything, the party continued.

 

 

Anna Kiesewetter is a high school junior from Issaquah, Washington. Her work has been recognized by the Scholastic Writing Awards and is published or forthcoming in Skipping Stones Literary Magazine, the Lumiere Review, and Kalopsia Literary Journal, among other magazines. When she’s not scribbling down stories, she plays the violin and enjoys eating anything matcha-flavored.

When my mother left us, I asked my father why she couldn’t come back. He leaned over me and whispered: “She don’t love us anymore.” He smiled, but I could see the sadness in his watery eyes. “She just don’t.” His breath smelled of whiskey and in the low lighting of the room, he looked old and sickly. I became cold and rigid, after hearing his words. I felt empty. He kissed my cheek and left, and soon after, the sound of his sobs seeped through the thin wall that separated us.

Three months later he announced that his great aunt, who had no children, had died, and he had inherited her old beach house. My sisters both began to cry; they didn’t want to leave their friends behind. And slowly I realized what moving meant. How it meant I had to leave the house in which my mother had raised us. All my memories of her would slowly leave me. I could never again look at the back deck and think of when I painted it with her, never again look at the door and remember her holding me after it closed on my fingers, never again look at the mirror in her bathroom and imagine her smiling back at me in the glass, hairbrush in hand. So I left the room, and I crawled into my bed, and I cried, but I tried my best not to make a sound. I wanted the Earth to swallow me up and the world to forget I existed.

Dad didn’t care. We moved, and for months I couldn’t forgive him. I stopped talking in an attempt to punish him for what he had done to us. For fifty-three days I didn’t say a word. I drew out plans to run away, and live freely, relieved of all my troubles. I wrote stories of a young girl who fell off a boat and realized she could breathe underwater. She found her mother, a beautiful mermaid, and she lived alone with her, deep in the depths.

But my mother was no mermaid.

Dad couldn’t afford a psychologist, so he begged. His begging eventually evolved into punishment. But he soon realized he had nothing to take from me.

The school would hand me detention after detention, for refusing to answer questions, until finally they suspended me for insubordination. Dad had to work, so for four days I was home alone.

On the third day, the phone rang. Not many people knew our new phone number. The caller began to speak immediately after I answered, “I know you told me I shouldn’t call, and I know I fucked everything up, and I’m so, so sorry, dear God, I’m so sorry, but you have to forgive me baby, please–”

“Mom?”

There was a long silence.

Then she hung up.

That was the first word I’d spoken since we moved. I was glad my mother was the only one to hear it.

I ended my mute phase after that. I’d grown out of it.

She died a few months after that call. Dad wouldn’t tell me how. He wouldn’t let us go to the funeral.

Guilt clung to my back for a long while, hanging on my shoulders with its claws deep in my flesh.

 

————

Every night, whenever I reached that state of mind in which I was neither fully awake nor fully asleep, I’d sneak outside and visit the fairies that lived in the leafless trees of our backyard. I would lay down in the sand, and face the sea, and they would come and dance on my shoulder and my side. I’d wake up in bed the next morning, with sand still in my hair.

Sometimes I would rub my eyes, and the fairies would transform into clueless lightning bugs, flying aimlessly in the cold night air. They were trying to hide themselves from my conscious state of mind.

Some days of the week, I’d remain in that state between sleep and wake, even while I drew, or studied, or chatted with my teachers, and the only thing that’d wake me up was a good night’s sleep. I feared that one day the sleep wouldn’t be enough, and I’d be stuck in some kind of perpetual limbo, never to be fully conscious again.

I became obsessed with my mother. I felt I had to learn how she died, why she died, where she died. If I was at fault for her death. I wished I could talk to her. Every night I prayed to God to let me speak with her again, a full conversation, one that started and ended with happiness and love. But God stopped listening to my prayers after a while.

I felt entirely hollow, as I had that night the year before. I spent my days sitting on my bed, facing the wall, thinking of different stories and narratives and characters to keep me company. My body grew smaller; food all tasted the same. It was all the same, and I was stagnant, like a festering body of water.

I spent my nights on the beach.

Her name was Frances. Dad wouldn’t tell me her maiden name.

Like my spoken word strike, my search for answers ended abruptly, when I no longer had the energy to search for her ghost. But she never stopped haunting me.

————

The fairies danced on my shoulder, I laid in the sand. I watched the ocean. A figure rose silently from the water. The moonlight bathed her silky skin. Slowly she walked to my body. She wore a long white dress, unsullied by the sea’s predative waters. I watched from outside myself as she bent over and dragged a ghostly hand along my cheek. She walked around me with great caution, then lay down behind me, her body against mine. I closed my eyes.

These nights, I could not tell where the sky began and the sea ended.

When I woke the next morning, tears stained my white sheets. I realized that I no longer felt isolated. I felt whole again.

————-

Years later, when the fireflies were no longer fairies, and the sand was no longer cushion, I looked through an old family album. By this time, Dad had died, my sisters had married good-looking men, and I had started college.

I recognized my mother, not from my early childhood, but instead from the night she had taken everything undesirable from my mind.

I drove back to the house I grew up in, the summer before my senior year in college. Someone had repainted the back deck, but the house did not belong to anyone. I let my fingers graze the door, let my mind wander in the old bathroom mirror.

I took this trip alone, as I felt that going with someone else would ruin the sanctity of the experience. I felt that no one could understand how much these hallowed buildings had meant to me.

Night arrived once I reached the beach house, and the moon colored the sand blue. After I moved out, my oldest sister sold it as a vacation home to a wealthy family in New England, and split the money between the three of us.

The home was empty.

I went out back and lay down. I closed my eyes and let the tears drift quietly down my cheeks. It felt as if my youth was ending. I didn’t want to move on, I didn’t want to leave the fragmented memories of my mother behind. I wanted her ghost back.

So the fairies danced on my shoulder.

Slowly, they healed the scars my guilt had left behind.

And I was at peace.

 

 

Max is a senior at Pope High School in Marietta, Georgia. He likes to spend his time reading, listening to music, watching an ungodly amount of Netflix, drawing, and writing novels he’ll probably never finish. This is his first time being published.

My bunker is safe, I know that. I built it myself, buried it deep in my backyard, stocked it with food and water and guns and ammo, everything a grown man needs to ride out the end of the world in comfort. I had hoped for my wife to join me, naturally, but she walked out just weeks before it all hit the fan. She called me crazy, didn’t believe me when I warned her that the end was near.

I bet she believed the sirens.

Even alone down here, I knew I was safe. I had fresh air, clean water, the radio said the detonations were in Maryland and Georgia (before it cut out, anyways), so I’d only have to wait a year or so for the fallout to clear away enough that the surface would be safe again. Everything up there is gone. I heard the trees being ripped up, I heard the houses blowing by in pieces, I heard cars and trucks being thrown hundreds of yards, but I was safe down here in my bunker. I never told anyone about my hideaway, except my wife, but she’d left the state to move back in with her parents. I hid it well, deep in the woods, dug it out myself and rented the tools in cash. I made every precaution to be sure absolutely nobody would go finding out that I was prepping, lest they try and take my bunker from me.

And yet, someone’s started banging on the door. At first it was just for a minute or two, every few days, but now, it’s gotten more and more constant. It’s been weeks since the nukes dropped, there’s no way anyone’s living out there, and if they are, there’s no way I’d let their irradiated asses into my vault! That’s their own fault for not being ready; politicians had been organizing furniture in a burning building for years. I could see it, but nobody believed me. Looks like I got the last laugh after all. Take that, Rodger.

For a week now, it’s been nothing but constant banging on the metal door, a nonstop whack, whack, whack, I shout at them to go away and they don’t listen. I threaten to grab my shotgun and make ‘em leave, they don’t listen. One day, I’d had enough, I threw open the door and swung my twelve-gauge towards the ladder, but there was nothing there but the tunnel. I closed the door, sealed it up all tight, sat down and the thumping started right back up like nothing happened.

Now, I ain’t the superstitious type, never believed in ghosts or god or nothing, but whatever’s out there ain’t natural. I’ve tried all sorts of things to get it to leave, even sat in the tunnel for a few hours one day, but it just started banging from the inside of the door. I tried one of those rituals from TV, drawing the star on the ground and whatnot, but it just kept on smacking on my door.

Lately, I think it’s been coming closer to me, like it’s playing some game. Saw something in the corner one night—looked like a person, just standing there—but soon as I turned the lights on, it was gone. Sometimes I see it out of the corner of my eye while I’m eating or checking the radio, I thought to start keeping the shotgun with me just in case it gets any ideas.

Sometimes I talk to it. Folks might think I’m crazy, talking to a ghost, but it’s hard being alone in the bunker, and this ain’t no ghost. It’s real, even if it don’t talk back too much. It still bangs on the door all the time, never does want to shut up. I’ve put a few more shells into the door than I’m proud to admit, trying to get it to stop. The knocking’s driving me mad, it never stops unless I open the door, but I can’t open the door too much or the radiation gets in. Between the knocking and the rads, though, there are some days I choose rads. Is radiation even real? The government makes up all sorts of things, radiation’s probably a lie to keep us away from the stuff they’re trying to cover up. Leaving the door open hasn’t hurt me yet, and it makes the knocking stop. It makes the knocking stop.

—-

A wanderer pushes back vines covering a manhole in the middle of the woods. Plants had flourished in the years following the nuclear Armageddon; radiation did wonders to help plants grow bigger than ever. The masked figure pulled out a machete and wedged it beneath the heavy manhole, prying it open with great effort, before carefully slipping down the ladder presented. This was how they survived; looting the remains of old bunkers for food and water, since just about everything left was either poison or rad-filled.

Ever so cautiously, they descended. Despite several years having passed, sometimes there’d be a living person still hiding out in some homemade bunker, and they typically weren’t too keen on visitors. This one seemed quiet enough; the overgrowth covering the entrance was a good sign that whoever once occupied this hideout hadn’t left in quite some time.

Reaching the bottom of the ladder, the survivor pulled a flashlight from between their teeth and shone it ahead, revealing a heavy metal door resting slightly ajar. Had some other scavenger beat this one to the stash? Undeterred, the looter slowly pulled the door open, wincing at the screech the rusted metal produced. Taking a small breath, they shone light into the room, and were greeted by a scene unlike any they’d faced before.

A corpse rested facedown in the middle of the room. That much was common. There was a worn and rusted shotgun sitting atop the decayed body, and as the wandered inched closer, they began to make out a faded pentagram beneath the cadaver. The walls were covered in drawings; some of them were identifiable as various satanic images and glyphs, while the vast majority were a complete mystery. The shelves in the back hadn’t been picked clean, so a careful trek to the other side of the concrete space revealed a trove of cans of non-perishables and cases of bottled water. This place would almost make for a good temporary shelter, if not for the fact that it looked like someone had been sacrificed in the middle of it.

As the masked traveler began carefully collecting cans and depositing them into a bag, a small sound echoed from the opposite end of the room—a faint pat, like a tiny foot against some floor. The survivor paused, shining light across the room, yet there was nothing in the empty doorway, only the sun shining through the manhole entrance above. After a moment, they passed it off as the wind, and resumed looting, albeit with a little more haste. This place was putting them on edge.

Not a moment later, the door slammed shut with a terrible echo. Darkness enveloped the room, leaving the vagabond with nothing but a flashlight. They quickly rose, aiming the light towards the door with one hand while the other reached for a handgun. The beam searched for the culprit, scanning across the painted walls of the bunker in frantic streaks, arms quivering as they backed towards the back wall of the small one-room holdout. The tin cans in their duffle bag rattled against each other as their back pressed into the concrete.

In the tense and fearful silence, a faint knocking could be heard from the other side of the bunker door.

 

 

Ricky Martin is a senior with a side passion for creative writing, especially flash stories and poetry. Fascinated by fantasy and science fiction alike, he does his best to find inspiration in every aspect of life, and aims to one day go on to be a professional author.