Fiction

America’s Storm

By Joel Troutman

Smoke hung like a storm cloud over the southern part of the city, thunderous blasts rumbling underfoot. Abandoned cars clogged the road, doors flung open as a pack of looters dug through glove boxes and suitcases. They wore black and gray, careful not to mark themselves with colors. Stuffing garbage bags full of watches and forgotten cell phones and GPS systems, they moved through the blocked stream of cars, smashing windows and whispering. Their eyes twitched toward the south, where flashes lit the dark morning.

“How’s it look?”

“Clear enough. Let’s go.”

Ben reached back and took his wife’s hand. Together, he and Shanna crossed Ridge Avenue, toward the east. They passed posters pasted on old stone walls, pointing to the ports on the Delaware River. UN SHIPS LOADING EVERY MORNING: 7-9, they read. Beneath them, others said MY BLOOD RUNS RED! DOES YOURS? and THEY BLEW THEIR CHANCE, SO GO BLUE! Ben and Shanna ignored those. They had been there for months, all over the city, plastered on top of each other until the walls encroached upon the sidewalk. Nobody thought much of it at first. The war was in other cities, not here in Philadelphia. Until it was here, in Philadelphia, and the UN’s posters covered the walls, helping people escape.

“We need to get to the river and follow it north,” Shanna said. “Then we just go to the first ship we see with people.”

“Almost there.”

“Almost.”

They continued heading east as the sun rose over the colonial buildings, shining on the narrow windows of empty homes. Distant gunfire popped and echoed through the streets. The stench of decaying trash became all too familiar, as was the scent of smoke. It stung their eyes and sent them into fits of coughing as the wind pushed the smoky storm cloud farther north and the gunfire and explosions didn’t seem as faint.

Crossing Broad Street, they saw the cracked clock tower of City Hall, crumbled and coughing smoke from its ornate, cream windowsills and mansards. They saw bodies. Corpses, dozens of them, their arms wrapped in red or blue tags, strewn between cars and near buildings whose walls were pocked and blackened from battle. They were splayed unnaturally, contorted and drooping like forgotten playthings. Some corpses had no red or blue identifications, but were mixed with the fighters, nonetheless. The traffic lights blinked red, but no one was alive to see them. Shanna covered her nose to mask the stench of death. They didn’t linger for long.

The couple passed under a bridge and by a park; they saw the sunlight bounce off the Ukrainian Cathedral; they watched a blue car tear by shouting slogans from its speakers; they saw tracer rounds chase it; they stepped over pamphlets and they stepped over torn, charred American flags. It was an hour of careful, watchful walking– surveying each street, eyeing potential exits– that brought them to Delaware Avenue and the river. Here, the sun twinkled on the dark water while the waves lapped the docks, the scents of war drowned by the odors of fish and seaweed. Ben took a deep whiff.

“Smell that, honey?”

“Dead fish never smelled so inviting,” Shanna said. She filled her lungs and looked north, upstream, where a single ship sat in the water. “There it is! The boat! See it? It has that light blue UN lettering on the bow.”

“Oh yeah, that must be it.”

Shanna beamed.

“We’re almost there.”

“Almost.”

It took another twenty-five minutes before they came to the dock. An old set of railroad tracks ran behind it with dozens of faded loading crates on the other side. The ship in the water was a civilian ship, about eighty feet long, with two main decks that were painted with the UN’s markings. Sailors walked the decks with UN helmets and light blue vests. None of them carried rifles or looked ready for a fight. They unloaded cases of bottled water and pallets of non-perishables. A half dozen people with guns did stand at the cement dock as the UN workers unloaded, but they weren’t wearing the UN’s helmets or light blue vests.

“Shit,” Ben said. He watched them, crouched in a grove just south of the port.

“Who are they? Red or blue?”

“What does it matter?”

Shanna didn’t respond.

“What do we do, now?”

“I mean, we still have to go, don’t we? It doesn’t change anything,” Shanna said.

“But-”

“But nothing. That boat is still our only way out and we cannot stay here. Not any longer.”

“Yeah. You’re right. You’re always right.”

Shanna kissed Ben on the cheek. They shared a shaky smile for a second.

“I love you.”

“I love you, too.”

They emerged from the woods, their palms open over their heads. The crunching under their feet transitioned from leaves to the crackle of rocks and pebbles, but the fighters didn’t notice. As the couple got closer, they saw a camera crew on the sidelines, filming the unloading of goods. A reporter stood a few feet away, practicing a monologue while she looked at her makeup in a mirror, “– and they deliver the goods to those still trapped in the city, risking their lives in order to help the civilians in danger from the approaching opposition–” Their attention was so acutely spent on watching the north, that they failed to noticed the storm cloud lingering nearby.

One of the fighters spotted the couple. A blue band wrapped over his arms, another one tied to his combat vest. He raised his rifle and called out, “Stop where you are! Don’t move!”

“Is this the ship for the refugees?” Ben asked.

“Quiet! Bernard, help me search them.”

Another fighter came to his side. They were stone-faced, chalky from soot as they patted Ben and Shanna down with rough, heavy hands and threw their phones on the ground before declaring they were “clean.” All the while, the reporter giggled and dragged the cameraman closer to the couple, careful to frame the scene so the fighters were in the background. She touched up the powder that caked her nose and wiped her bangs away from her eyes before swallowing her smile and drooping her shoulders as though carrying a heavy weight.

“Here we are,” she said. “With two refugees from the war, fleeing into the arms of our boys in blue. Tell us, what atrocities have you seen in the streets that have made you run from your home?”

“I don’t want to talk about it,” Ben said. “I just want to get out of here, okay?”

“Things are that bad, are they? The city defiled by the red horde and their traitorous ways. It is despicable, don’t you think?” she jabbed the microphone back at them.

“Lady, we just want to leave. Can you let us go?” Shanna said.

“Of course, of course. First, just tell me, have either of you experienced any personal turmoil from a family member or perhaps a friend taking the side of the enemy in this fight? A brother at odds with the family or a coworker who took up arms? That would be devastating and the country would be there for you if it happened.”

“Alright, that’s enough. Come on, Shanna,” Ben pulled his wife past the camera.

“Wait, can I ask for a statement of clarity on your current–”

A blast cut the reporter off. Past the railroad tracks, to the west, there was another explosion, followed by rattling gunfire. The fighters reacted like fighters, rushing towards the battle, pressing themselves into cover and shooting their rifles at the sounds of gunfire and the puffs of smoke, into the hazy fog of combat where figures were deformed and unidentifiable, simply silhouettes like the targets they practiced with, raining down shots with thunderous, echoing blasts from their rifles as the storm intensified. The reporter did her own shooting, directing the cameraman to keep rolling, plugging her ears with her fingers and shouting over the roar of the firefight. In the chaos, Ben and Shanna scrambled across the cement like ants caught in a rainstorm, making for their colony that was the ship. They clung to each other as bullets whizzed and snapped past. One of the soldiers called out in pain. The reporter wasn’t talking anymore. There were fewer gunshots and more cries. The bullets still whizzed and snapped. They could smell the sharp, burning air. UN workers shouted for them to hurry. Gunshots got closer. Another explosion. Rocks and debris fell like hail. Then a punch. It felt like a punch, but it was wet and hot and made Shanna scream when she saw the blood draining from her husband’s ribs. She got quiet when a punch landed on her, too. As her consciousness faded and darkness found her, the UN ship left the port and beyond it, across the Delaware, she saw an American flag tearing in the wind.

Joel Troutman is a young student who is far too interested in manga, anime, and hip-hop for his own good. He likes wearing sweaters and ties that make him feel professional, more writerly. His greatest achievement, up until now, is being the only player on his varsity soccer team to have never scored a goal.

Shapes

By Julia Gagliardi

The only drama in Poughkeepsie occurred at sundown. Chronic silhouettes of clouds were herded towards the steel cantilever deck of the High Bridge on the Hudson River. Rose-tinted film sketched outlines in the sky. Light scattered blue, hitting the river water and reflecting red-yellow, salmon and apricot. The shoulders of white pine, hemlock and black birch sat on the other side of the river and hummed the colors. Mesmerized passersby could not look away from the spectacle of cloud and color and sky.

Nora Bray sucked on her thumb, nursing a split fingernail, and decided that the sunset was a pathetic imitation of blood and thunder. The colors were foggy liked stained glass or the tracks of her bicycle in the dirt path. She kicked a rock into the water. Good fucking riddance, she thought as the sun folded itself on the wefted face of the Hudson River. She leaned back into the wooden bench, her limbs loose and her skin smoldering in the heat, and wondered whether her twin brother Nick would show up late again.

The twins met at the park down by the Hudson River every afternoon after Nick finished rounds of tennis with the varsity team. Sometimes he appeared seconds before the falling sun hit the water. Other times, he missed it entirely, the spotlight on his bicycle wobbling towards Nora in the night and his voice rolling off apologies for being late. This time, as Nora picked at her nail, Nick came flying around the corner, a racket on his back and sweat bleeding through his white shirt. His bicycle stopped short of the bench, and he drew long gulps of air.

“How was the show?” He asked. One forearm rested on the handles of the bicycle, and the other wiped his forehead.

“It just ended,” Nora replied dryly. She kicked the wheel of her bicycle, lying helpless on the ground next to her, for a melodramatic echo.

Night was blanketing the sky. The sun had finally crept below the surface of the river, fading into the water as though pulled underneath by a dark hand. Streetlights mumbled and chattered above their heads.

Nick yawned and gazed at the Hudson River. “I wish I’d seen it,” he said. Nora couldn’t hear if he was disappointed; she only wanted him to be guilty.

“You didn’t miss anything,” Nora spat. “But you usually miss them, anyway. It was a perfect sunset, just like all the other sunsets here.” Nora nodded towards a bench down the dirt pathway. A young man was pointing a camera lens at a copse of trees to capture the last of the sunset poking through. “Why do people take photographs of a phenomenon that happens every day? The sunsets aren’t going to go away. Only people do that.”

Nick paused and looked at his twin. Her arms were crossed over a black t-shirt, holes littering the bottom hem where her fingernails lingered and pried threads loose. Even if she wore blue or green or yellow, her shirt would have looked dark in the night anyway.

Nick couldn’t quite understand this about his twin sister. The lingering anguish. The immovable dissent. The lamenting. He stared blankly at her during her melancholy outbursts, tinted with cries of Woe is me! She complained when there was only crunchy peanut butter in the cupboard, and refused to try it, accusing their dad of buying it to spite her. Asked a smiling Nick, What are you plotting? Was convinced that a poor grade in European History meant she could never be a museum curator. After fifteen years, he was sick of the pessimism. The misplaced superiority. Happiness was a choice, wasn’t it? Nora, Nick believed, had exercised her right to vote.

“Why do you say that as if it has to be a bad thing?” he asked, leaning away from the handles of the bicycle.

Nora whipped around to face her brother. Stringy dark hair muddled her creamy complexion. Nick thought of the coffee their father drank in the morning, as he tipped too much half-and-half over the rim. Their father was probably sitting in the dimly lit kitchen, placemats and glasses of warm milk spread out on the table, across from three absent chairs. Two were accounted for in the park on the Hudson River. He would be wondering where his children were.

“Don’t you think it is?” she asked.

Her knuckles gripped the edge of the bench seat. They paled to bleach white as the air thickened to black around them, the night absorbing everything around the twins. The river and Nora’s bicycle lost their outlines and fused into the blackness of the night.

Years earlier, sitting upright in her bedroom, Nora once asked her mother where the furniture goes when the lights turn off. Six-year-old Nora pointed to a chest of clothes across from the bed, sheets and blankets swaddled her legs. Her mother sat near her feet.

“They go to sleep,” Nora’s mother said plainly. Her eyes were rust-covered pennies behind her wire-rimmed glasses. Nora forgot if her mother’s eyes were blue or green. She hadn’t seen them in years. “Things just curl up and go to sleep.”

Nora jumped from the bench, brought her bicycle upright, and hit the kickstand.

“Are we skipping family dinner again?” Nick asked. His eyes and shirt were luminous. Nora clambered on the seat of her bicycle.

Nora and her bicycle were rushing away from her brother, near the riverbank, and up the slope towards the High Bridge. Nick echoed her name. Nora! First uncertain, then hysterical. Nora! Nora!

Nick realized he could not bear to lose another.

Nora could not turn around. She could bear to hear his voice, but would not look at his face. She felt weightless. She felt like she could fly. Nora shut her eyes, the wheels and screws of her bicycle cawing in protest. The air enveloped and enclosed her. She hoped the air around her would calcify into an oyster shell and drop her at the bottom of the Hudson River. Her balance faltered as she moved her hand to wipe away the tears that had dried into her skin, forming grooves on her cheeks. She opened her eyes.

But her eyes weren’t on the road. They were in the sky. Her bicycle had mushroomed from the paved road and was sailing above the heads of cars. She was flying westward. Nora sunk into the seat. Her feet and the pedals of the bicycle were in rotation. The wheels were like a band of light, depositing debris of gravel and dirt to the dark frontier beneath her feet. She heard the clatter of remains hitting the Hudson River. Nora flew above the High Bridge, past the tollbooths and above the city of Poughkeepsie.

A thousand feet below, Nick wheezed underneath the belly of the bridge. His bicycle slept sideways on the ground. He saw his sister’s silhouette fluttering like a burnt-black curtain against the mascarpone moon, and then dissolve out of sight.

Julia Gagliardi is a senior studying English and Sociology at Fordham University and has recently joined as a concentrator in the Creative Writing Program. She organizes live storytelling programs and researches storytelling curriculum as a form of civic engagement and emotional competence. She has been previously published in the Comma and Willamette Writers.

Into the Trenches

By Leah Mikulich

This morning was fine and dandy. The sun had popped out of the clouds after disappearing for so long. The air buzzed with heat and bugs hidden in the swaying grasses near the trench. I sat with my rifle leaning against my shoulder, sweat dripping down my neck. My captain lay next to me all quiet, as did my friend, Willis. They didn’t say much today. When I first met Willis, he taught me how to properly stab a guy with the bayonet. Good man. I enjoyed talking to him better than the other boys. The other boys now, they were up top, doing whatever it was you did when you had free time in this goddamn war. Oh the war was going splendidly! I’m sure we are going to win within the next few months. At least, that’s what they told us. I kicked my tired legs out, dirt spraying up. Just above, I was surrounded by miles of grassy plains overtaken by war. We were practically near no-man’s-land. A few cracks sounded in the distance.

I lied. I’m a lying liar who lies. This morning is not fine and dandy. In fact, it is god-awful and miserable. My rifle may rest at my shoulder, but I have no bullets. The blade at the end of it is caked in dried blood, some of which may be mine. Our captain lays in a crippled position, flies swarming. Maggots grow in the wound in his stomach. Willis, bless him, is dead. He succumbed to a head injury. Most of our men are gone, too, blown to bits by grenades thrown into the trench in the earliest hours of daylight. The cracks in the distance are artillery fire, they are close. So close.

I am deaf in one ear, but I cannot tell if it is the right or left one. I don’t remember the difference between right and left. The sunlight stings my eyes when I slide away from the captain to climb out of the trench.

“Good night,” I say to him.

“Sleep tight,” I say to Willis.

I am the only remaining man of my company. They were all gone. I’d thought that Castor may have still been alive, but now I see that the upper half of his body is stuck in burnt tree. That was a new one. I gag as I pass more men, eventually bowing to vomit in the swaying grasses that hide the little bugs. My only mission is to find ammunition. Until then, I have to make it up the hill. Pop! Pop! Pop! go the bullets in the distance.

I hike up past the half of Castor in his burnt tree to see if I can get closer to the other side without getting shot.

“Don’t let the bedbugs bite,” I say to Castor’s body.

He’s just another dead guy among thousands of dead guys. Just like me. I could be a dead guy, too. It didn’t matter, nothing did. We have to die one day or another, and I’m glad I could die doing something useful for once. To think that I walk the exact ground as the kid whose eyes are missing from his sockets. Those could be my eyes. They were probably the same shit-colored ones I have. That man slumped over against a rock over there could probably pass as my brother.

They said it would just be a few months. They were wrong, it would be a few years. Sweat slid down my back, the fatigues nearly soaked. What I wouldn’t give for a real bath and change of clothes. For the last week, our rations had been shortened and I can’t recall what food tastes like. I’m talkin’ warm bread with some butter, not stale crackers to choke down. I want to go home.

Where am I going again? Oh right, to find more bullets. Turns out, finding them was fairly easy. Always search dead bodies for ammunition. I snatch up a spare cartridge from corpse and load my rifle up.

“Thank you,” I say to the dead man.

“You’re welcome,” he does not reply.

There are more gunshots farther ahead. Too close for my liking. There’s bad men up there. They shot the captain, killed Willis, and blew up Castor. The only place to go is their trench. After all, I can’t do anything else. I’ve got no friends, no food; but what I do have it my rifle. I’d almost died more times than I can count on both hands, considering I lost a finger or two, this past week. I don’t seen how almost dying a another time could hurt. I mean, it could hurt a lot, but that’s not the point.

The earth below me is ravaged with deep holes, the swaying grasses are crispy and destroyed. I stop behind a bush, frowning as its pointy leaves dig into my exposed skin. Someone’s leg lays near me. They’ll be needing that. What am I doing up here? I’m going to be killed. This is stupid, a stupid idea, but one of the best I’ve had. Willis would be proud; not sure what the captain would think. I’ll be okay at the end, won’t I?

The sun beats down. No longer are the bugs hidden as they fly at me. They are the only ones that find my sweat appealing. There is shouting, there is yelling. I need to remember those soldiers are not on my side. They killed my boys. My boys are dead because of them. That is why I came up here. It won’t make a difference to them, but it will to me.

I move away, but on my stomach this time. I crawl along the rough dirt, feeling the shrapnel jab at me. I’m close, so close. Oh hell, this is it. Bodies litter the area around me. I can’t tell if they are my boys or not. Then I spot a withering form up ahead. When I crawl past the man, he yanks at me. I turn to face him, but he has no face.

“Morning,” I say to him.

A groan in response before he rolls away to another place to die. That was rather rude if you ask me. It’s not like anybody did, but I expected a simple greeting.

I smell their trenches before I see them. And I thought our latrines were bad.

Then again, maybe it was the stench of death that loomed in the air. I couldn’t imagine how many bodies were sprawled out around me. There were too many. Machine guns spray bullets that most likely caused the end of these men. Hand grenades soar into the sky, only to burst in the ground.

This is as close as I can get. Everything is loud and hot and sweaty. Please, I just want to go home. See, I even used my manners. The captain would have been proud. With shaking hands, I pull back my rifle and shoot blindly. Again and again I do it until they notice. I’m going to die I know. It’s time to go I know, I know. I turn to run, nearly tripping over myself. I run past the bodies, past the faceless, no longer withering, form. I pass the rock where the leg is. Nobody has claimed it yet.

Almost home–no not home. Almost back into the trenches. Back to my boys.

“I’m coming,” I say. I’ll be there soon.

But they’re after me. Metal bits whiz by my face. Gotta go, gotta run. The trenches are right there! Then there is pain in my chest, blood on my fatigues, my knees giving out. This ruins all my plans. I realize I never did get to change my clothes and I suppose I do need that bath now. Maybe I’ll choke down some crackers even though I want bread with butter.

“Fine and dandy,” I say to my corpse.

He agrees.

Leah is an aspiring author and this is her first published story. When she is not writing, she enjoys reviewing books, listening to music, and practicing French.

Carver Mountain Road

By Jessica Fanczi

Here I was again, crouching in a relatively clean bathtub with a taco in one hand and a novel in the other, waiting for rescue. Knowing it would be a while, I decided to settle in and enjoy my food despite the chaos just outside the locked bathroom door.

Which was evidently not locked after all, because I was halfway through the taco when a very drunk someone stumbled inside, humming a Taylor Swift song and chuckling. I could see enough through the plastic shower curtain to ascertain that the invader was large, male, and so impaired that he had neglected to close the door behind him, allowing the roar of ugly music and drunken laughter to follow him inside. Even the sounds of the party, however, could not drown out the most chilling and ominous noise ever to enter my ears- the whirrrr of a descending pants zipper. No. I could only pray that he had consumed nothing but illicit liquids in the past few hours. If he takes a dump here, I will die.

The fragrant smells of pee and beer drifted through the room and assaulted my sinuses. Gagging, I dropped the taco and ducked my head and hands inside of my sweater, creating a scent-proof chamber of respite from the toxic atmosphere. I shot off another S.O.S. text to Nate, dialed his number, and got sent straight to voicemail. When is he going to get here? I counted down slowly from twenty to keep myself sane. Human Niagara Falls was still peeing.

It had definitely been over a minute, and the stream of pee was going strong. It was inhuman. Just when I thought my lungs would give out, my phone buzzed with a text from Nate: here. I indulged in one last safe breath from the inside of my sweater and flung the shower curtain aside, keeping my burning eyes firmly fixed on the doorway, even as the Pantless Wonder strolled away from the toilet towards me. He attempted to greet me, and, failing to form a complete sentence, decided to take up residence in the tub I had just vacated. Kanye blaring on the speakers behind me, I lunged my way up the basement stairs three at a time, reaching for the light above like someone buried alive.

When I emerged into the cool October evening, the first thing I saw was Nate’s baby blue Jeep Grand Cherokee pulled up by the curb. Ugly and dinged up as it was, I had never been so happy to see that lump of metal. Nate rolled down a window and smiled.

“Hey, Del. Nice evening, hmm?”

“Let me in, Nate.”

“Not yet. I think some thanks would be in order first, don’t you?” He batted his eyelashes at me. I knew Nate, and I knew we weren’t going anywhere until I played along with his little game.

“I Delilah Thomas, lame and loserly nerd, hereby attest to the boundless and magnificent greatness of Nathan O. Brinkley, the most dazzlingly attractive and intellectually dominant man of all time!” I cried with the zeal of a TV preacher, banging a fist on the hood of the car. “Now let me in, idiot.”

“Beep. Beep. Beep.” Nate shook his head slowly, with the utmost regret. “Terribly sorry, Del, but my sarcasometer is detecting a slight lack of authenticity in your praises. Perhaps if you tried some more flattering adjectives? A salute? An interpretive dance?”

“Nathan O. Brinkley, so athletically stunning!- beep– utterly hilarious! –beep!- unparalled in wit and charm!- beep beep beep– the shining beacon of-,”

“BEEP BEEP BEEP. The sarcasm is off the charts! I’m afraid you’re going to be stuck out there for a very long time if you can’t find it in your heart to-,”

“Nathan, you let me in that ugly tin can of a car this second or I swear I’ll tell your mother about your little…camping incident.” I raised my eyebrows in what I hoped was a menacing expression. “I’m sure Susan would be delighted to hear about the creative way you put out the fire.”

Pouting, Nate popped open the lock on the passenger side of his dinged-up Jeep and let me inside. I collapsed into the cracked leather seat, tossing my purple paisley Goodwill tote bag onto the floorboards, where it joined the ranks of a greasy Wendy’s bag, a stained basketball sock, and approximately fifty pages of cello sheet music.

“That was even worse than I thought it was going to be,” I muttered, pressing my flushed forehead against the cool glass of the window. “No one talked. The only time people opened their mouths was to chug Coors. And they were playing Kanye.” The stale warm air trickling from the vents smelled like an Island Breeze Febreze plugin. Susan must’ve bought it. Nate would never have thought of something like that by himself.

“Del, you knew you were gonna hate it. Why do you keep going to these things when you always end up bailing in the first hour?” Nate took his eyes off the road for a fraction of a second to give me his best why-don’t-you-just-listen-to-your-reasonable-best-friend look. His slanted eyes were a warm toasted brown, like a mug of coffee in the morning.

I picked at a loose thread on my sleeve. “I dunno. I think it makes my dad feel better when I go out. Otherwise he thinks he’s a screw-up father raising a screw-up kid who only leaves her room to play FIFA at the neighbor’s house.”

Nate reached over to flick my knee. “You do only leave your room to play FIFA at my house.”

“Not true! I go out. To school. And the library. And Fro-Yo Jo’s.”

He snorted. “Ah, yes, aren’t you just the picture of social competence! Be honest, now- how crazy do you get with those librarians on Friday nights?”

“Oh, shut up.”

“Well, that’s not a very nice thing to say to someone who just saved you from certain death.”

I twisted a few strands of my hair into a braid, noticing for the first time the fraying split ends at the bottom. Mom always used to make my haircut appointments for me. “Sorry. I’m just worried. Dad has been really down lately. He hasn’t eaten anything but Goldfish and orange Fanta in two weeks.”

Nate nodded. His freckles were invisible in the dark, but I knew the one at the corner of his eyebrow would be twitching, the way it does when he’s thinking hard. “Poor guy. But you gotta give him some time, Del. It’s only been a year. It’s normal for people to take that much time to recover, after…you know.”

“It didn’t take me a year. I’m fine.” I stared out the window, catching a glimpse of the one and only street sign for miles: Carver Mountain Road. Nate loved driving back roads, but they freaked me out. No lights, and nothing but pine trees and dead deer lining the street. Creepy.

“Well, you’re not exactly normal, are you? Don’t look at me like that. I didn’t say it was a bad thing.”

Rather than answer him, I turned up the radio. Tim McGraw’s Live Like you were Dying crackled out of the speakers.

“Hey, no playing that country crap in my car!” Nate punched the power button with his pointer finger. I hit it on again, defiant for no other reason than to be annoying. Laughing, he turned it off. I reached for the button again, but he caught my hand in his cello-callused one and lowered it, firmly but gently, to the console between us, like it was the most natural thing in the world.

I stared at our hands, mouth suddenly dry.

Nate saw me looking and smiled. “Del. I wasn’t exactly planning on having this conversation tonight. Maybe it’s not the best time, but I’ve been trying to say this for weeks.”

Oh.

I had waited for this moment for so long, had wanted it so badly, but now that it was happening my intestines churned like I might throw up. My knees jiggled madly like that time I drank a Monster and an espresso in the same hour. I swallowed, tried to keep my voice from wobbling.

“Nate, I don’t-,”

He squeezed my hand, cutting me off.

“I want you to think about this before you answer, Del. Really think.” I nodded, mute. I swear I could feel the swirls of his fingerprints on my skin.

“I know this has been a rough year for you. Our families have been through so much together. So if you’re not ready, or you just see me as a neighbor and a best friend, I get it.” His eyes were so brown, his dark eyebrows scrunched so far together they almost touched.

“You can say no, and we can forget this conversation ever happened. But if you want to try, I mean, if you think we can make this work…” He paused, pushed a hand through his too-long black hair, and exhaled. “Well, that would make me really happy.”

I looked down. If I looked him in the eye, I would break. I could feel him staring at me.

YES! screamed a voice inside my head. YES, I’LL DATE YOU! I LOVE YOU, YOU MORON! I’VE LOVED YOU SINCE WE WERE EIGHT!

Shut up, I told the voice. I needed to think about this logically. Nobody ends up with their high-school sweetheart, right? Was I willing to risk a lifetime of friendship for the crappy odds that our relationship would actually work out? I couldn’t afford to lose Nate.

“Del?” But there he was, holding my hand so tightly, looking at me with those annoying, beautiful eyes and smelling like Old Spice shampoo and Susan’s laundry detergent.

If I let this chance go by, would he ever ask again? The air between us seemed to tingle and pop like the air just before a lightning strike. Yes, I tried to say. I felt the word form in my throat, opened my mouth to say it.

I was still looking at our hands when it happened. I never saw the other car.

What I saw instead was the fast glint of headlights on my chipped glitter nail polish.

I saw Nate’s knuckles turn white as his hand tightened in mine.

I saw a thin line of black weep down my pale forearm and pool in my palm, dripping over into Nate’s.

The smell of blood, rich and nauseating, bloomed like a red rose in the humid evening air. Nate was making sounds, tearing, screaming sounds that rattled in the back of his throat with each exhale.

“I’m sorry. I’m sorry, Nate, I’m sorry, I’m so sorry, I’m sorry, sorry, sorry, sorrysorrysorrysorrysorrysorry.”

I was still saying it when the paramedics arrived. I was still saying it when they took my hand out of Nate’s.

Jessie is a Creative Writing student at Reinhardt University. Her work has appeared in Copia, Sanctuary, and the Georgia Historical Quarterly, as well as onstage in Waleska’s third annual 24-hr Play Festival. She is currently on the editing staff of the James Dickey Review and runs StreetSigns, a faith-based blog.

Space Punk

By Worlanyo Mensah

I knew a girl who listened to space punk.

“What’s that?” I asked her every Monday. She always had a different response. Terry bet that she kept a list of random definitions in that thick notebook I mentioned she had tucked under her arm all the time. “She just wants to mess with you,” Terry assured me. Its cover had a picture of the galaxy taped onto it. She told me it was to remind us that space was always there, whether we could see it or not. Her name was Comet.

“It’s on my birth certificate,” she claimed. I believed her.

Terry asked me why I always talked to Comet. I told him because she reminded me of the stars. He furrowed his eyebrows and shook his head, but his response left me unaffected. He wouldn’t understand; he never met her, anyways. As I laid awake almost every night, thinking of Comet and the galaxy and Terry’s disapproval, I watched the stars and hoped they’d take me to a cloud. Maybe I could sleep there. Melatonin sure never helped.

The next Monday I asked her about space punk again, expecting a different answer. “You can’t hear it?” she questioned. “It’s everywhere.” My heart skipped two beats; she gave me that answer the first day we met on the city bus. She was bobbing her head to the music, each beat hypnotizing her soul and connecting her to the shining solitude of the moon.

“You told me that before,” I remarked.

Comet grinned. “I did.”

Terry was positive she was an escapee from a mental institution, but I wasn’t sure about that speculation. Her mind was Harvard-bound. She spoke of philosophy and abstract mathematics like it was child’s blabber. She told me about the origin of the stars and the moon and the sun with such simplicity a toddler could understand. The Earth is our mother; we get our emotions and human nature from her. “And if they could, Earth and Neptune would become one,” she taught me on our way back home from school. “Nothing is more alluring than something we can only see from a distance.”

One night, on a Tuesday this time, Comet stared at me with a beam on her face. It was as if the moon possessed her lips, its radiance pushing through to challenge the light of the sun. Her straight brown hair was doing gymnastics on her head. Each strand was in a different pose, creating a massive mess above her wrinkled forehead. She was elegantly insane.

“I’m going to the concert,” she announced.

She had never mentioned one to me before. “What concert?”

“Space punk.” She buried her face in her hands, the soft squeals emitting from her mouth and giving me chills.

“I thought space punk is everywhere.”

“Everywhere originates from somewhere. Can you come?”

I reminded her that I don’t sleep. She told me to meet her the next day at midnight near the school. The first minute of Thursday. According to her, I’d meet Saturn and Mars. I wondered what they looked like the rest of the day.

Comet didn’t come to school that Wednesday. She was preparing for the concert, I assumed. I went out and bought myself a galaxy shirt and black shorts the color of the darkest night. That evening, my fingers quivered as I made my way to the school. I was wide awake, about to hear space punk in ten minutes. If only Terry was invited.

Comet sat on the concrete ground ten feet in front of me. She looked so alone as she hummed along to the music. As I approached, she turned her head and acknowledged my presence.

“You’re here,” said Comet. “It’s time. Close your eyes.”

My eyes shut, revealing the pitch black underneath my eyelids. I heard Comet’s soothing voice whispering in my ear. “Feel the coolness of the stars and the heat of the moon. Get to know them and listen to the beat.” I did.

What I heard, in the thickness of my euphoric apprehension, was a sensational array of celestial rhythms and heavenly lyrics. The words were in a tongue only ones connected to the night could understand. Each beat — the ticks and the dits and the zooms — was followed by a different reverberation: meteors crashing, the destruction of supernovas, the loving words of the planets. Melodies striked my eardrums from every direction. Space was everywhere.

“I hear it. Space punk is beautiful,” I told her. There was no response. Comet had disappeared and so did the music. I didn’t realize until I opened my eyes.

Comet never came back to school. Terry guessed she was brought back to the asylum, but I know she was brought back to the stars, her mission of gifting me with the galaxy that cursed me of wakefulness fulfilled. Now when I close my eyes, the cosmic experience vibrates through my body and sends my mind to the skies. Space punk is my method of slumber. And when I lift my eyelids and the harmonies escape me, I admire the neverending galaxy. There, I can see Comet dancing in the sky, entranced by the infectious rhythms. It’s so alluring to watch from afar.

Worlanyo is a seventeen-year-old cinephile from New Jersey. You can find her absorbed in a classical movie, writing stories on her laptop, or gazing into the night sky long past midnight. She has been published on Voices of Youth.

The Silver Dragon

By Chandler Wakefield

Alan hadn’t wanted to spend his last free Saturday at an amusement park, but Hui Jie had insisted on it. They would be in different branches of Singapore’s army after conscription next week, after all—Hui Jie would be training for police service and Alan would be in the infantry—and he argued they needed to have one last celebration. Alan didn’t want to start a fight, so he paid for a train ticket and came along.

The amusement park they arrived at had been built by an American company. There was supposed to be Asian food there, but all Alan could see was the neon signs and loud smells of Western restaurants. Not that it mattered: Hui Jie wouldn’t stop to eat, even though Alan had skipped breakfast to catch the train. Instead, he ran straight to the nearest roller coaster, a massive one called Silver Dragon. Alan struggled to catch up with him.

They wove through the long line in front of the coaster slowly, Hui Jie cracking jokes and Alan nodding along while the sun beat down on his neck. The line reminded him of his military medical exam from a few months ago. He’d lined up with countless other teenage boys outside the local doctor’s office, filed into the examination building, then walked out in a half hour with a promise that they’d be conscripted in Singapore’s army. Alan secretly hoped that the doctors would find something wrong with him and he’d be prevented from joining the army’s ranks, but his assignment to basic training came in the mail anyway.

Eventually they made it to the front of the line and got their first glimpse of the coaster cars. Alan had hoped they would look like dragons from Alan’s childhood stories, noble creatures that flew in the sky above the small, petty humans. But they were just old pieces of metal, a dull, earthy gray instead of the silver he had been promised.

The two of them clambered into one of the cars as an employee read through the safety rules. Hui Jie was grinning as the announcer finished and the ride clambered upwards, but Alan stayed straight-faced. He wasn’t a fan of roller coasters, so instead of focusing on the ride, he let his mind get lost in the blue ocean and the buildings on the other side of it. For a moment he thought he had sailed off the rails and was flying across the island, but then he realized they had just stopped at the end of the ride. His safety restraint lifted and he clambered back onto the main platform, disappointed.

After they went on a few more rides, Hui Jie announced he was starving and ran to the food court to buy chicken rice. Alan got a cheap burger, but Hui Jie teased him for it, saying that he should be ashamed to eat food that didn’t come from his Chinese ancestors. “Just because your parents gave you a Western name doesn’t mean you should okay with Western food,” he said between big bites of rice.

“What’s wrong with burgers?” Alan asked. “And you took us to a Western amusement park today, you know.”

Hui Jie waved his hand dismissively. “That’s not what matters. It’s about representing your heritage wherever you are. That’s why want I want to enter police training and become a bureau chief. I’ll make my father and the Yang family name proud!” Hui Jie took on a soldier’s posture and made an exaggerated salute. Alan laughed but didn’t salute with him.

They got back into more lines for more roller coasters, and Alan quickly got sick of them. They were just glorified trains, really: they picked people up, drove them around in a loop, then dropped them off right back where they started. It felt uncomfortably similar to what Alan had heard the military service was like. He’d spend two years doing drills and exercises and learn to shoot a gun he’d never use, just because his country forced him to. And then what?

“And then what?” Hui Jie asked Alan, who was sitting down by a water fountain after asking for a break.

Alan watched the fountain sputter ungracefully and shrugged. “I want to go to college, but my family doesn’t have enough money for it, and I don’t know what I want to study.”

“If I’m police chief by then I can help cover some of your expenses.” Hui Jie laughed loudly, then grabbed Alan by the shoulders and grinned. “I’ll probably have a family to take care of, too, but I’ll help you out.”

As Hui Jie gripped his arm, Alan finally understood that Hui Jie was blustering. He was about to be stuck in the military for two years, so he tried to fight his fear by showing a fake enthusiasm. But at least Hui Jie was bold enough to try to look excited. Alan had stopped bothering to hide his dejection months ago.

Eventually the sky got dark and the park cleared out. Hui Jie was tired, and so was Alan, so they made their way to the train station by the park entrance. But before they left, Alan turned around to look at the first roller coaster they had gone on.

Silver Dragon was still running for its final few passengers. As the metal coaster car slowly climbed up an incline, Alan longed for it to be a real dragon, one that could carry him away from Singapore. He would clamber onto its shimmering back and let it take him to places that didn’t have security threats or conscription or roller coasters.

But that was just fantasy and nothing more. Alan turned back to the station where Hui Jie was waiting, showed the conductor his ticket, then sat down and let the train take him all the way home.

Chandler Wakefield is an undergraduate at Yale University. His nonfiction has been previously published at Forty-Eight Review. He blogs at thealbedo.wordpress.com and tweets at @WhitenedInk.