Fiction

The raging desert current blew through the Colliers’ geodesic tent’s fragile silicon film layer, ripping a gash of light into its dusky interiors. Sand and ash blasted through the hole in the tent panel and fell, soundless, like catkins, onto Lichong’s blanket. He sighed. It was no use pretending to be drowsy. He pulled himself out of the tattered cot and peered down at the light beside his feet, listening to the wind’s bellowing outside and the myriads of snores and mumbles of his workgroup beside him, deep in their slumbers.

Why can’t he sleep? It was the fourth time of the week that he’d woken up, tussling and turning from a dream he never seemed to recall. He stood, briskly wrapped himself in his old cherry-red puffer, fitted his head into a filter, and left the warm confines of his shelter.

The bone-chilling desert air found his exposed neck first, and for a second, he couldn’t tell if it was freezing cold or searing hot, but common sense told him it was the prior, and experience made him pull the rubber flap of the filter down his nape. He inspected the gash in the tent, at the broken threads around it from the two times where he had tried to sew it back together. If only his needlework was as proficient as mother’s, he would’ve made a strong enough stitch. But then again, his family practiced embroidery, not patchwork. He trotted out into the open bled, halfheartedly rubbing the rigid letters on his puffer’s left pocket. It spelled his name, “立春,” the first day of spring, a gift from mother on the parting day.

The twin moons of Hermes II were especially bright that night, and as Lichong strode to the top of the great dune overlooking their mining colony, he couldn’t help but wonder what his family was doing. His baby sister Guanxi would be…two, no, three by now. Soon, she’ll be old enough to swing on the tire swing father had fashioned for him when he was her age. His nephew, barely seven, would be wading through the shallow waters of the lotus pond by the county magistrate’s Siheyuan, catching tadpoles to feed the hens. Mother would be by the loom, and father would be…well, he’d be where he always was: atop the outcrop overlooking the entire village, peacefully watching over all of them. Lichong smiled, wondering if he still watched over him even now, twenty-five trillion miles away in the Alpha Centauri star system. That smile vanished as fast as the sand blowing across the dunes when the beeping of the activity monitor on his wrist pulled him back into reality. He switched it off, sighed, and craned his head to the sky again. The two moons had conjoined, the one closer to Hermes II blocking the second behind it. Yet the night remained just as bright, the sands bathed in the thin, silvery veil that seemed to have crept silently atop it.

“Ma, can you hear me?” he whispered despite the rising feeling of foolishness in his chest. Of course, she couldn’t hear him. Hell, with a single message from Earth requiring six whole months to reach Hermes II, he didn’t even know if she was still alive. If any of his family was, in fact, still alive. That was one of those thoughts he kept at the very back of his mind, always trying to forget but to no avail, like the nail poking out of the floorboards of the gymnasium where the lion dancers practiced. Unlike the dancers, he’d never managed to make peace with it.

“Oh, ma. Can you hear me?” he repeated, mouthing a silent prayer. He was an atheist, and he still is, but some time after his arrival on Hermes II, he realized that the only way to remain sane on this isolated piece of rock is to indulge in faith—blind faith. There was nothing much else he could do, anyway.

He sat down atop the dune and ran a hand through the fine sand. He scooped up a palmful and watched as the wind slowly blew more sand into the hole he made until it was filled. Then he opened his fingers and observed the same winds that had filled the hole carry the sand away—to fill other holes. He reached down, scooped up another fistful, and, nearly instinctively, threw it to his right. The gesture felt familiar. Ah, of course. A flash of pain coursed through his chest. He used to pull this prank all the time on mother. She hated it, getting the grit on her clothes, but allowed him to indulge in the stupid fun anyway. Then his nephew started doing it to him, and he had finally gotten a taste of his own medicine one day when he stormed home, a bucketful of grainy sand in his trousers with the little guy howling with laughter behind him. He had no doubt that if that little beach by the pond still existed, his baby sister would come to throw sand, too. It was almost like a ritualistic tradition in that sense. But now, sitting below the frigid moon with all the sand in the world under him, he had no one to throw it towards.

And even if he had someone—a friend he made in the colony, for instance—it wouldn’t be the same. He’s here, and they’re there. Trillions of miles away, on a planet in a solar system whose star he couldn’t even spot out of the thousands in this night sky.

He shivered, his open palm clenching into a fist, then into his puffer’s pocket, where his needle and thread resided. Lichong knew that sometime in the future, this moment would replay itself. And he would allow it to continue.

 

Zanchao Hao is an aspiring writer and high school student at United World College, Maastricht, He is the editor of the PVLSE teen magazine under Inkswell.

“Did you close the windows near the laundry?” Umma¹ asks.

My contemplations wash away when I realize a fatal error in my jangma² preparation: I forgot to close the outer layer of the intricate Korean windows. When I enter the living room to lock the larger windows, the floor is already a gushing river. Rainwater soaks the fresh laundry I had just hung up on the dryer, submerges my favorite cotton slippers, and drowns my cacti. I hurl myself against the wind and wrap my arms around my clothes, tucking them safely underneath towels. When the window finally clicks into the latch, I dread turning around. Umma tells me to act with nunchi – read the room.

I look at the mess I have created. The rain has birthed giant puddles on the cherry wood floor that no longer boasts its gleaming brown polish, and the water reflects a decade’s worth of chipped paint. Through the puddles, I spot a reflection of myself, revealing my distorted face in the murky water. In hindsight, because I dismissed Halmoni’s³ rules for her cherished floor and furniture, I know I’m the decade-long culprit of the excessive wear-and-tear, so I dig my nails into the heels of my palms as I remember every time that I had recklessly played tag or furiously swept on Halmoni’s most prized possession. I rush to the kitchen before every memory cascades onto the ground and pools together in a muddy puddle of guilt and regret, infinitely expanding like the universe laughing back at me.

I grab a frail, ripped rag and desperately pat my mess. My mom calls me pathetic, and I grit my teeth in acceptance. I watch as the rainwater seeps between the cracks in the hardwood floor inside a room that I refuse to claim as mine. Maybe Halmoni treasured the floor because Korean floors are so intricate, designed to be kept cool during the summer and warmer during the winter. She used to lay the yo, or the mattress, on the ground and tuck me in my blanket woven with vibrant florals and embroidered with techniques passed down in my lineage for centuries– until my birth. In the heavens, my ancestors probably wallow in grief that their family traditions, so intricate and glittering and worth being shared and celebrated with the world, have been butchered by their clumsy, callow teenage descendant: a true case of involuntary manslaughter. My soggy fingertips sting from the holes I’ve punctured in my skin instead of the fabric. I wonder if Halmoni will ever forgive me for neglecting her embroidery and polished floor, and for yearning to leave this house to escape from the perennial evidence of my petty crimes. I plug in Halmoni’s old hair dryer to the nearest outlet and let the warm air blow at the ground until some of the puddle evaporates. Although the water on my hands dries, my stubborn guilt will never evaporate.

The floor is not completely dry yet and looks like a mosaic of old, yellowed rags, but I move on to my slippers. Drying them with Halmoni’s hair dryer, I regret that I peered outside, drumming my fingers to the chirping tunes of the cicada flocks on the birch instead of listening to her. My mother’s family never had a dialect, and yet the Korean language still traveled in monotone fleets, swimming between the pitches and inflections of the English tones that I understood, perpetually stuck in the vacant space between the Anglican treble and bass clef notes. After five years of piano lessons, I felt like I had an unfortunate, peculiar abnormality of two left hands and music note dyslexia, and I couldn’t bear to decipher the furious annotations on my music sheets or the connotations behind the Korean language. How could I understand or play the same tune if I couldn’t tell which fingers should press the keys?

“Don’t wear these outside the house, okay?” Halmoni said when she first handed me the soft slippers eight summers ago. The same week, I carelessly wore them outside to a bingsoo store with her and Haraboji.⁴ I grabbed my grandparents’ hands and obliviously ate the frozen dessert, unaware of why my grandmother suggested going outside when I asked about her absence every Wednesday. I dug through flakes of ice, ravaging the decadent rice cakes and red bean paste, in search of everything but the truth. The raindrops drip off the slippers and onto the ground, creating another puddle. Is this actually working?

I walk into the dimly lit bathroom, holding my cacti, and pour out water into the sink. The leaves droop and fall off the sickly and almost dead stem, and soggy spines bend against my fingers. Although I don’t bleed, I would rather be pierced by adamant thorns instead of sad pricks. Cacti evolved spines as a survival mechanism to prevent water loss in arid deserts at the expense of losing their ability to withstand floods. Cacti are supposed to be low maintenance, to be taken care of with ease, and yet, I had ravaged a succulent pot of this thriving living organism. However, Halmoni’s favorite small fuchsia-shade flowers on the tips of the branches are still alive and in full bloom. My spine curls over the sink, watching the flowers sag, sitting in giant puddles of futility in the vase. When the plant dies, the flowers will wilt as well.

Eight jangmas ago, no one was inside Halmoni’s house when the sun filled the room with its radiant morning light and gushed into my vision. I secretly listened to Umma’s call with Haraboji when she returned home hours later. As tears rolled down my cheeks, I sat in silence until they became choking sobs. My fingers locked into each other and around my mouth like a tight clasp until I choked back words that never existed. The rain should have poured in buckets from the heavens, the air should have suffocated and crushed with overbearing humidity, the atmosphere should have erupted from the storms it was holding, and the sun should have refused to shine. Yet, the sun beamed in the blue sky and I heard laughter from the neighborhood playground; it was just another beautiful day for everyone outside Halmoni’s house.

As I walk back into the room, sunlight pours through the windows, drying the rag-covered floors and slippers while I drown in grief. Eight summers have passed, but I am still alone in the shadows of my grandmother. The sunlight has not reached me yet.

Translations
1.Umma – mom
Jangma – monsoon
Halmoni – grandma
Haraboji – grandpa

 

Jiyoo Choi is a high school junior from Seoul, Korea. She aspires to encapsulate her relationship with grief, sense of identity, and experience moving ten times throughout her life into literature. Jiyoo has been recognized by the Scholastic Writing Awards and the Creative Communications Poetry Contest. In her free time, she writes for her blog (i’m)mutable, creates digital art, and listens to Steve Lacy.

The bell above the door chimed as the girl stepped inside. Water dripped off her coat and pooled on the coir mat, the word “welcome” illegible under a thick layer of dust and grime. The air was thick with the scent of mildew and something sweet, like vanilla and nostalgia. Shelves lined the walls, cluttered with delicate glass jars, each containing a swirling, glowing mist. Some jars were small, while others were large enough to hold memories of an entire lifetime.

“Can I help you find something?” asked the old man behind the counter.

“I don’t know,” she said, her voice barely a whisper. “I saw the sign outside. Is this where you can buy memories?”

The wrinkles on his forehead deepened from fine lines into grooves. “Not buy,” he sighed, gently correcting her. “You can only borrow them.”

“Borrow?” The girl furrowed her brow, confused.

“Memories don’t belong to you in the same way things do,” the man explained, reaching below the counter to retrieve a small jar filled with a soft silver light. “They are slippery and fragile – always changing, forever fading. Here, you get to experience them as they once were. But like all things borrowed, you must return them.”

The girl stared at the jar, its silver contents glittered like a meteor storm. She felt her chest tighten with longing, an overwhelming force drawing her toward it, the desire to relive her long-forgotten memories.

She hesitated. “Can I borrow a memory?”

“Of course,” the man replied, nodding. “What would you like to remember?” he gestured around the store.

There were so many old memories she wanted to relive – her grandmother’s baking when she visited the countryside, her mother’s warm hugs and soft voice, her father’s callous yet gentle hands as they held hers, the sound of laughter building pillow forts that felt like they would last forever. One memory came to the surface, as if it had been waiting all along.

“One of the summer picnics by the lake,” she said softly. “The cool water, the sunlight on my skin, the sickly sweet popsicles – I want to feel it all again.

“Good choice,” the man said as his steady hands uncorked the jar, releasing the wisps of light that danced in the air. He handed it to her, and as her fingers wrapped around the cool glass, his clouded obsidian eyes empty of human emotion bore into her innocent brown ones for the first time. “Take it,” the old man murmured, the warmth in his voice replaced by a haunting chill. “But remember, once it is over, you may not be the same person who borrowed it.”

The girl nodded and closed her eyes. As the memory flooded her senses, she felt herself transported.

She felt the warmth of the sun on her skin first, before inhaling the fresh, earthy scent of the dirt and trees. Her mother squealed as her father splashed water at her. The girl sat on the shore, a bucket hat perched on her head, her hands sticky from a melted orange popsicle. It felt too real. She could almost taste the slight saltiness in the air, and hear the soft hum of critters in the afternoon heat.

But a moment later, the edges of the memory began to fray. Her mother’s voice became muffled, and her father’s face blurred. The sunlight began to flicker like a dying light bulb as her vision contorted into grey. The more she tried to hold onto it, the faster it slipped through her fingers, dissolving into the silver light that surrounded her thinly like smoke.

When she opened her eyes again, the shop was dim. The old man was gone, the jar she had held now ash dusted on her palms. The bell above the door chimed once more, with its signature distant tinkling, and she found herself outside.

The store had vanished. The street was quiet, empty. Her memory was gone.

 

 

 

Chloe Lim is a medical student and writer. When she’s not studying, she loves reading, baking, and dabbling in various hobbies.

In our one-digit years, we’d gallop around the house. We’d fly down the stairs and swing around the end of the banister to hear it wheeze, and the mirrors would witness our pigtailed head cackling with joy. Occasionally, I would look at you and you’d look at me, eye to eye, and we’d beam at each other, crooked baby teeth and all. We knew and loved each other then, and we were only saddened by the sheet of glass separating your left hand from my right.

The dawn of two-digit years brought attentiveness. Suddenly, frog-hopping and sock-sliding weren’t our preferred methods of transportation. We noticed other people, first how not everyone was an easy friend, then their distinctivenesses, their features. High contrast mode highlighted our pores, grandma pointed out our tummy, hormones made it all worse. It was exposure, visibility, a sudden nakedness.

The years ticked upwards. You became a tool for popping pimples and a shadow to hide from. I would bow my head over the sink to cry, and you would cry with me, but when we looked up, we’d both be met with disgust. Some nights, we’d curl up in our bed, and feverishly beg the universe for an answer; why was that in the mirror every time we walked into the bathroom? No amount of concealer and sexy pouting made you better.

But life sped past, and eventually the grooves of our face were familiar. There came days where we couldn’t tear our eyes off ourselves and days where we wallowed in the muck of self-pity. I’m not sure if we ever fell back into not knowing and not caring. But there is a net positivity now, resignation coupled with respect.

 

Alina Sidorova is a student by day and a writer by night. She likes to hang up fairy lights and squish her fat cat.

Mama hasn’t cut my hair since my turtleneck days, yet here we are in the kitchen, scissors in her hands, and a bowl of orange slices in my lap. The juice is bitter and I like it that way. I eat as Mama says something that sounds like rubber and Dad is nowhere to be found.

“The strawberry bush is large today,” she says, and I agree.

The bush has encased the backyard in shade and gnats. I see Brother climbing up the side of it. He crawls in and disappears, just like he did when he was little. Mama rants about the seeds he’ll track in, gesturing to little white blossoms stretching through the floorboards. I try my best not to sneeze as split ends tickle my nose.

Hours later, when my hair is shorter and choppier than before, Brother walks through the back door dripping red pulp.

“I saw the cat again today, the big calico,” he says as Dad grabs a towel and wipes him down. “I think she’s still looking for her daughter.”

Dad wrings out the towel into little jam jars. “Aren’t we all?”

We sit around the urn and eat yarrow stalk soup from porcelain I’ve never seen before. It tastes like sandalwood and Pacific. We eat in silence until Dad asks Brother if he’s ever been in love. Brother says it’s not polite to ask that, and Dad nods in understanding. The soup has gone cold by the time he speaks again, this time to compliment my haircut. I look at Mama, who’s smiling.

“I did what I could with the garden shears, his hair is just so thick.” She scratches the nape of my neck with affection, but I don’t feel it. I haven’t felt it since December.

Mama and Brother go outside to watch the North Dipper play chess. Dad and I are still around the urn, which is now a vase with four bluebells. He picks up the porcelain and turns it over in his hands. I see a small eye carved in the bottom. It blinks at me and I blink back, Dad shakes his head and puts it down. He’s gentle about it, though.

“You know how this conversation ends.”

I nod. He repeats himself until the breeze becomes too humid. I get up, kiss him on the forehead, and walk out the front door.

“I wish you were kinder,” is the last thing I hear before the click.

Mama is smoking cherry bark on the porch, which seems to wrap around the house for miles. I know she’s not really smoking cherry bark, but I don’t have the heart to change it.

“You’re more alike than you think,” she says.

“That’s what I’m afraid of.”

She laughs, and against my better judgment, I laugh too. She offers me the stick, and I take it to cleanse my aura. We watch the sheep in the front yard chase the fawns. One of them, the fawns, gets caught in tangled magnolia roots. The sheep running after it lets out a cry like a human child, and a buck with horns adorned with bone and jade comes to the rescue.

“Nothing like a mother’s love,” Mama says as her eyelashes fall out. She doesn’t flinch at the sound of them hitting the deck, but I can’t stand it. I run for the field as the sheep continue to bleat with desperation.

I run until my lungs burn and my eyes sting and I’m in the middle of an orchard. I don’t notice I’m crying until a tear falls into the corner of my mouth. Blackberry floods my tongue and when I wipe my eyes, my fingers are pruned and stained. I hear shuffling and when I turn, there’s a man holding out a handkerchief. I trust him because he looks like someone I passed in a grocery store once. I take the cloth and thank him. He holds both my hands, looking for something in my palms.

“That’s the problem,” he says, tracing my knuckles. “You think marigolds and lavender mean something.”

I lean into the warmth, and the more I relax the more it stings. He runs his fingers through my hair, and every strand he touches grows down to my ribs. My shoulders bear the weight. He twirls the darkness between his fingers and looks at me with something close enough to love. I swallow and smile without teeth like Mama taught me.

“When the sun comes up, I’ll be gone.”

I cry again because I am in love with him. I feel my knees shake and he helps me to the ground. I curl into the Earth and cry as dawn melts the stars. The ground, in response, provides a pair of old sewing scissors at my feet. I take them and cut my hair even choppier than Mama did, watching the clumps turn to hyssops where they fall.

When I enter through the backdoor, Mama and Brother are in the kitchen catching dragonflies. One of them hovers between my eyes. He’s red and lucky and I want to crush him between my fingers. Something tells me this is Dad now, so I sigh and step aside. Dad the Dragonfly kisses my nose before flying up and out to the ravens waiting for him. They’ll bring him back as a man, but only if they get something out of it.

As I look out to the strawberry bush, I see a speckled cat emerge with a stained mouth. Its whiskers twitch as it sees me. It starts to convulse. The door won’t open and it doesn’t matter, the cat stares as it coughs up clumps of brown and orange. It turns to glass as it hits the ground, sending fractals all over the yard.

 

Ren Johnsue is a Queer writer who believes in storytelling as a form of love and poetry as devotion. His work can be found in TRANSliterate and is forthcoming in Breakbread Magazine.

The smoke stuck to the humidity in the air as it trailed up toward the night sky. The clouds obscured the moon, but they slowly divorced each other, forced apart by the whims of the wind. The flames engulfing the dilapidated barn cut through the blue hue of the sun’s counterpart. The wood crackled and popped as the fire gnawed at the rafters, and the hollows of the building creaked as the wind blew, shaking the burning panels. Despite the humidity, the flames only grew, nourished by old wood and fresh air.

As the flames flourished, their light overpowered that of the moon and created shadows of the tall grass. The trees. A man.

Elijah stood in front of the barn, the fire reflected in his blue eyes. Blue like the moon. A weariness weighed down his bones, but still, something buzzed in his gut. The taste of stale cigarette smoke stuck to his tongue, but it was made fresh by the new smoke he had created. Burning wood tasted different from tobacco. Cigarettes were just a lousy imitation of the real thing.

Cigarette smoke or not, the smell of ash made him want a drink.

He reached into his pocket and procured a flask. Metal covered in hide. It had been his mother’s.

Bringing the drink to his lips with a trembling hand, he took a healthy sip. The burn reminded him of childhood. His mama had given him a sip of Bourbon on his tenth birthday. Double digits, she had said, were something worth celebrating. He sipped it until it was empty, thinking about what else the burn felt like. His mama’s backhand. Cigarette butt kisses. Matches burning down to his fingertips.

As he downed the liquor and watched the barn burn, he didn’t notice the second shadow of a man emerging from the forest.

“Firebug, huh?” A voice interjected, smooth like a fine wine. Elijah didn’t like wine. With the speed of quicksilver, Elijah pulled his revolver from the holster on his hip, the mouth of the flask still flush against his lips.

“Mind if I throw this in there?” The man, seemingly unbothered with a gun in his face, gestured to the bag slung over his shoulder. It was black, lumpy, and quite large. “I need to get rid of some old things.”

“You need to leave.” Elijah’s eyes flickered from the bag on the man’s shoulder to his eyes. He found two dark voids smiling back at him.

“I think we both need to leave before someone shows up for this fire you set,” the man reasoned. He shifted the bag from one shoulder to the other with a grunt. Elijah was surprised that his willowy frame could support something that massive. “Mind if I set this down? Preferably, in the fire?”

“Why d’you gotta ask me? I’m not your keeper,” Elijah grunted.

“It’s nice to ask before framing someone for a crime they didn’t commit.”

“But I set the fire. You saw me,” Elijah said as he promptly cocked the revolver.

“Right, but what they’ll find in the bag will frame you for something you didn’t do.” The man smiled coyly. “So I’d put that gun away. Unless you want two dead bodies on your hands.”

Elijah did not lower the revolver. The moon illuminated the man’s too-white smile and corn silk hair. Elijah watched as those grinning lips parted, somehow maintaining his smug look.

“You can’t afford to trust a single thing I say, can you?”

“I’m not afraid of a little debt,” Elijah chuffed.

“Here’s some insurance. Name’s Silas,” he revealed, “Not a common name around here, is it?”

“I don’t know no Silas, and I know everyone ’round these parts. Insurance is invalid.”

Silas’ smile didn’t waver. Elijah wondered if his cheeks hurt.

“Dr. Silas Young,” the man in question bit out through gritted teeth. It made Elijah laugh, the sound punctuated by the popping of burning wood.

“A doctor, huh? Medical malpractice?” He gestured with the barrel of the gun. The metal glinted in the firelight.

“Nobody’s died as a result of my therapy,” the doctor assured. “This was plain old homicide,” Silas tilted his head, and Elijah watched as his eyes flitted to the flames. The heat had only intensified while they spoke.

Elijah followed Silas’ line of sight, finding the barn engulfed in flame. Breathing through his mouth, Elijah shivered as gritty ash laced his tongue, gooseflesh rising on his arms despite his covered skin and the heat of the raging flame.

“Always been fascinated by fire, have you? Did you often set them when you were a kid?”

“Don’t psychoanalyze me,” Elijah snapped, yet he didn’t look away from the burning barn. His elbow of the arm that was holding the gun had buckled. His wrist, now relaxed, caused the gun to point towards the ground. Elijah watched in his peripheral as Silas stepped closer with a raised hand, the other supporting the body bag over his shoulder.

Elijah’s gaze returned, and his arm straightened out, which included his aim.

“Do you smoke?”

“I must admit, cigarettes aren’t my preferred poison.”

“But have you smoked one?”

Silas nodded so minutely that Elijah almost didn’t catch it.

“Remember what the taste is like? They have a particular tang to them, something you can’t describe. So you take another drag to figure it out. Then another. And another until you’ve smoked the whole pack, and you’re hackin’ up your lungs, and you think, ‘Hmm, maybe it’s tar?'” Elijah paused, then let his arm drop to his side. “Remember that, now breathe in. Deep,” he ordered. Silas complied, his nostrils flaring and his chest rising.

“Can you smell it?”

“It’s different. Natural,” Silas noted. The corner of Elijah’s lips curled up.

Silas opened his mouth, only to be interrupted by sirens echoing in the distance.

“Go on,” Elijah gestured with his gun. “Throw that in the fire.”

“They’ll think you’ve escalated and only search harder.”

Elijah shook his head.

“Don’t worry about me. If you need to know anything about me, it’s that I can handle myself.”

Silas nodded hesitantly but carried the bag over to the fire. Elijah watched as his slender figure approached the burning barn, getting as close as he could without giving the chance to lick him to the flames. Elijah tilted his head as Silas maneuvered the bag and threw it through the barn doors and onto the scorched floor. The barn would collapse, and the rubble would bury Silas’ victim in a heap of burning wood.

Elijah’s stomach flipped at the thought.

 

A New Jersey native, Silvana Corrales Cantelmi currently attends Case Western Reserve University and is a candidate for a B.A in Classics, World Literature, and the French language. Their hobbies include learning languages, reading, and of course, creative writing.