Fiction

The Last Bus to Trayton

By Katie Sarrels

I pride myself on being an observer. The beautiful things in this world, natural and man-made, have never ceased to amaze me. I love watching winter transform into spring, seeing a train pull into the station, smelling chocolate chip cookies fresh out of the oven, and listening to the dialogue of two sparrows at the crack of dawn. I love it all, but I enjoy observing people the most.

On this particular day, I was sitting at the back of a near empty bus traveling from Otega Bay, a seaside tourist hub, to Trayton, a rural town on the other side of the mountains. The bus had just made its last stop on the edge of town and it was now making its way towards the mountain road. On a normal day, this trip would take an hour and seven minutes, but it was raining and the bus was expected to arrive later than usual.

I watched as water droplets ran down the window to my right. Some of them fell straight and fast while others took their time, sometimes getting swept up in another droplet’s path to the bottom. Looking past the rain, I could see the road start to slope upwards and the roar of the bus’s engine signaled the start of its climb up the mountain.

This trip was the last run of the day and there would be no other bus until the next morning. The bus driver was tired and ready to end his ten-hour shift. He was looking forward to spending his weekend off with his wife and watching the fifth season of Mad Men, one of their favorite shows. Since it was raining, his wife would expect him a little later than usual and have a nice cup of tea waiting for him upon his return. Though it would be eleven o’clock and well past dinnertime, a warm meal would be placed on the dining room table, because his wife insisted that he eat a proper meal, not one from a paper bag. The bus driver was especially excited for tonight because he had finally saved up enough money for he and his wife to go to Hawaii and was planning on surprising her with the plane tickets over dinner.

This bus trip was not popular by any means and functioned primarily as a commuter route for the residents of Trayton. However, on this trip, a tourist couple sat two rows back from the bus driver and their six-year-old daughter lay sleeping across their laps. After much disagreement, they had elected to stay with relatives in Trayton rather than pay for a costly hotel in Otega Bay. The woman insisted that the long bus ride was a small price to pay for saving a hundred dollars a night and the man soon gave in.

The woman didn’t want to stay with her relatives either, but she realized too late that she had underestimated the cost of the trip and they could not afford to stay in a hotel for the next week and a half. She knew that if her husband found out, he would want to end the trip early and she would have to tell their daughter that she couldn’t see the dolphin show that she had very much been looking forward to. The woman planned on telling her husband about their financial trouble after the trip was over and then working longer hours so they didn’t have to worry about the money that they had overspent.

The man might have noticed their savings slowly disappearing had he thought to check, but he had other worries on his mind. He had been fired two days before the start of their trip, but by then, the trip was already planned and paid for. He knew that his wife needed a break from work because her accounting firm had just finished a busy season and she was exhausted. If she found out he had been fired, the man knew she would cancel the trip and insist that she work even more. He also didn’t want to disappoint his daughter who had been looking forward to seeing the dolphins for weeks. When planning the trip, his wife assured him that they had saved up enough money and he decided that they would be fine until he could find a new job. He resolved to tell his wife that he’d been fired after their vacation, and had already lined up several interviews for when he returned home. For now, he just wanted the three of them to enjoy their family vacation.

The bus was nearing the top of the mountain and the rain had started to pick up. The bus’s headlights forged a path through the shadows that clung to the rock wall and the mountain’s inhabitants vanished into small crevices to avoid the bright light. I found myself thinking that I might like to follow them and explore the mountain, but the thought was fleeting and vanished altogether as the bus rounded the corner.

There was a person, a woman, sitting at the middle most row on the left side of the bus. She had been there since long before I arrived and was a mystery to me. She sat quietly, gripping onto the backpack in her lap, and stared out the window into the rain. I did not know where she came from, why she was here, or what business she had in Trayton which was unusual for me, but I wasn’t one to give up easily. I managed to gather, from the pins on her backpack, that she loved marine animals and, from the faint song fragments coming from her earphones, she loved listening to classic rock.

It wasn’t much, but I was content with knowing that and turned my attention out the window. We had reached the top of the mountain and a view of the town of Trayton was barely visible through the rain. Lights from the town shone through the darkness in place of the moon and the stars which, on this night, were covered by the storm clouds. Most of the residents had gone to bed, and the few that hadn’t were either on this bus to Trayton or waiting upon their return.

At the last stop before the mountain, a lone man got on the bus. He had a tough appearance complete with an unkempt beard and weathered clothes. These features caused most of the passengers to shy away from him in discomfort. Noticing their gazes, the man had chosen to sit towards the back of the bus as to not disturb the others. It was amusing to me, their weariness of this sailor, because out of all those on the bus, he was perhaps the most kindhearted.

The sailor had been traveling up and down the coast of Peru with his shipmates bringing aid to civilians after a devastating earthquake. His disheveled appearance was a result of a mild storm he and the rest of the crew ran into on their way back up the coast. He had battled the storm all through the night and was looking forward to reuniting with his wife and son after three weeks of separation. After a good, long sleep, he was planning on taking them camping at a little cove in the mountains. There, the sailor would point out the different types of trees and, just like every time they had gone before, he would listen to his wife tell them about the different species of birds, and watch as his son attempted to catch squirrels that got too close.

The bus driver, who had paid special attention to the sailor to make sure he paid his bus fare, would never know that the sailor also loved watching Mad Men with his wife or that he too understood the allure of a warm meal waiting at home. The couple, who shifted in their seats as he passed, would never exchange pleasantries with this man, or ask about his family waiting at home. They would never consider that this man could understand the selflessness behind the secrets they kept from one another, or know that he had a child the same age as the little girl who lay sleeping in their laps.

The bus started its descent and I turned my attention to the pine trees whose tops barely reached the edge of the road before dropping off down the side of the mountain. The rain was almost blinding and the once tiny droplets were now buckets of water pounding the side of the bus. The rain weighed on the branches of the pine trees, dragging them down, and the wind, which was starting to pick up, made even the strongest of trees sway. The bus’s metal walls had previously hidden the wind’s presence, but now the windows shook and the roar of the bus’s engine was lost in nature’s fury. It would be a stormy night in Trayton, but even then it was beautiful.

Otega Bay, where I had just left, was full of hazards, crime, and drunken mistakes. Though I visited often, I knew I would not like to live there. Maybe I was biased. I often visited larger, more chaotic cities, so maybe I relished the peaceful, isolating nature of towns like Trayton where nothing ever happened that would make headlines. Or maybe these small towns really were more beautiful. They always seemed more peaceful and inviting. Their sky always looked clearer, their birds more cheerful, and the people less burdened. Maybe one day I’d have to stick around and find out, but as for tonight, I had work to do.

The storm had by now turned violent with claps of thunder and streaks of lightning. The little girl had awoken with a cry and now sat wailing on her mother’s lap. Her father stroked her hair softly, whispering words of reassurance in her ear. The mysterious woman clutched her backpack tighter and was now looking at the road ahead. Maybe she often got car sick, or perhaps she wasn’t used to taking bus rides, especially in such conditions. I couldn’t tell. The sailor seemed the most at ease. He had been through many storms on open water and the events outside didn’t seem to faze him. Instead, he looked towards the couple comforting their daughter until he caught the attention of the little girl. The girl stared back at the sailor, rubbing her left eye with her fist. The sailor grinned, making silly gestures with his eyebrows, until the girl laughed and smiled back. The girl’s father looked back at the sailor and nodded his thanks before turning back to his family.

The bus driver had done his best to stay vigilant, but the ten-hour shift, combined with his restless sleep the previous night, slowed his reflexes. Lightning cracked above them on the cliff, illuminating the night sky for a fraction of a second. In the next instant, a large tree, with burn scars across its trunk, dented the road fifty feet in front of the bus. The driver slammed on the brakes, but the road, wet from the rain, refused to grip the tires. The bus slammed into the tree and was forcefully turned towards the guardrail. The little girl was crying again and suddenly, we were airborne. The family’s suitcases flew down the aisle towards the back of the bus where I was sitting and hit the wall to my right. The mysterious woman and the sailor gripped the seats in front of them, but slowly, they began to rise up off their seats. The bus driver was knocked out cold from the impact with the tree and would not wake.

After the bus hit the ground, it was about twenty seconds before it stopped rolling. By the time the bus had reached the bottom of the mountain, it had been completely destroyed. The windows were shattered, the right side was dented in, and the passengers lay scattered across its interior. I got up from the floor, though technically I was standing on the roof now. I walked over to the little girl and tapped her shoulder. She stirred and looked up at me.

“Who…who are you? I didn’t see you on the bus.”

“I’m sorry, the bus crashed. Come with me,” I replied and held out my hand. She hesitated, but finally placed her hand on mine and I pulled her to her feet. I said, “Let’s go get the others,” and began walking towards the front of the bus. The same thing happened each time I approached the others. They’d ask, “who are you?” and, “what happened?” and I’d tell them, then reach for their hand.

The bus, twenty-three minutes from town, would never arrive. The little girl would never get to see the dolphin show. Her parents would never know each other’s secrets, nor care to remember their own. The warm meal waiting for the bus driver’s return would eventually grow cold. The sailor had, unbeknownst to him, already visited his family’s camping site for the last time four months earlier. And despite it all, each of them would take my hand smiling.

That’s the strange, beautiful thing about death. Everyone, when their time comes, accepts it. They grab my hand and only a few ever look back upon themselves. If they do, it is only for a moment.

As I was leading the group of people away from the bus, slight movement to my right caught my eye. The mysterious woman was lying outside the bus and stirred as if waking from a troubled sleep. It all made sense to me now. I was not meant to know her story, at least not yet. Sometime in the near future, I would return to Trayton and see the mysterious woman again. On that day, her story would become clear to me, but not before.

I turned back to my companions. For today, my duty was to them. In life, people never stop and notice the little things. In death, I’d like to think they start to understand the beauty I see in the world, and I always take a little time to show them. I show them the beauty of the howling wind, the chilling rain, and the flickering lights of town from up above. I show them, then I move on, to another town, another group of people, and a new, beautiful day.

Katie Sarrels is a freshman at California State University Long Beach where she majors in both Film and English. She hopes to work as a producer for a major TV show, but her biggest dream is to one day write an original crime novel.

Paralysis

By Deborah Rocheleau

As she tumbles down the jagged mountainside, I see her bend in extraordinary ways. A rent arm here, a dislocated clavicle there. I look down at the path where moments before she had stood beside me, then at the willowy pine that stops her fall. It shudders on impact, scattering snow from its quills in a circle around the trunk and over her body.

She doesn’t move.

“Claudia!” I hop over the railing, feet sliding on the snowy incline. I take my precious time in choosing my steps, though the darkening sky presses upon every moment. Hurry, don’t hurry. Hurry.

I slide down beside her, using a nearby tree for support.

“Claudia, what happened?”

She is curled fetal around the trunk, one arm stretched out, a snow angel’s broken wing. Her gloves were torn off in the fall. The fresh sprinkled snow lays white over that below, like blood over old scars. When I touch her swelling face, a scraped eyelid lifts.

“Stop yelling,” she says. “I’ve got a splitting headache.”

It strikes me in the silence that follows that she used “splitting” for my benefit, a verbal tic plucked straight from an Austen novel. Humor by juxtaposition. It strikes me, also, that she hasn’t moved anything below her collarbone.

“Wriggle your toes,” I say.

“Adam.” She gives me a look, the one she uses on her freshmen students in her lectures on logic. I liked to sit in the back sometimes and watch the students squirm, reveling in the knowledge I would never face her professorial gaze.

Perhaps I spoke too soon.

“Wriggle your fingers.” I stroke her hand, probing the frozen bones.

“I can’t.” She is quiet a moment, motionless. Though really, who knows what kind of exertion is going on under the surface? She could be dancing a jig in her mind, or ramming my nose in, everything registering on the synaptic level. But paralysis has found a way to silence her as my arguments never could.

“Adam, I have class on Monday.”

“Don’t move.” I press her fingers between my palms, hold them avalanche-still. “Don’t try to move. Moving will just hurt you more.”

I don’t tell her it could be worse. I don’t say, as I increasingly fear, she may never move again. What was that she called it? Jumping to conclusions.

Besides, who am I to say she won’t recover? What do I know of anatomy, medicine, mountain climbing, power of will?

The angles of her limbs appall me.

Her fingers tense around my hand when I reach for my pocket, the muscles constricting in confused knots as they strain over their injuries.

“I think I need to call somebody,” I say, taking my phone out.

“You think?”

I ignore her, glancing at my phone. No bars. Of course. You chose the most remote mountain in the U.S. for your vacation, ergo… “Listen. I’m going to have to climb back up to the path to make the call.”

I pat her hand, but she doesn’t let go.

“How long?” she asks, though not casually. As if her life depends on it. I remember finding her last week—only last week?—after her talk with the dean. He’d talked with me too, all but begged me to take her away for a weekend, a month, a semester. When I’d asked what was wrong, he’d brushed it away, though he’d explained in no uncertain terms she was “in danger of losing her position.” Stronger wills than mine might have pressed further. I had a different strong will to deal with.

I entered her office, feeling the part of a trespasser. She lay buried behind a white Everest of papers, red hair unraveling from her neat bun. She’d glanced up when I opened the door, her face like a photo whose development is interrupted by a shred of light. Premature. Stunted. Half-formed.

The air was supposed to do her good.

I let go of her hand, turned my back on her.

“Hurry,” she calls as I pick my way up the delicate slope. Instead, I choose each step more carefully, not wanting to join her in her fate. Hurry, don’t hurry. Hurry. Don’t.

The sunlight is fading by the time I return down the mountain, shadows slipping underfoot. I blunder around in the darkness, sure and yet not so sure I am coming down the same mountain. There are ways to tell which way is north, what time of day it is. There is moss, growing on one side or the other of a tree, the sun off-center of its apex. But how does one, when confronted by wilderness, locate an injured lover?

“Claudia?” I yell. No answer. She could at least answer, let me know where she is. Even a paralytic could do that.

There is the tree, crooked against the sunset. I don’t need her help after all. There is her face, cheek down in the snow, her arm (and every other part of her) unmoved.

“Claudia.” Underneath my hand, she stirs, eyelids fluttering open.

“Did you call them?”

“Yes. You’re still alright.” My words don’t curve at the end as they ought to, to form a question. Perhaps because I know the answer. She’s worsening; even I feel certain saying that, her eyebrows bulging. Lips blue, and not just from the cold.

“Adam, how did I fall?”

I stoop down, trying to peel some of the frozen hair off her face.

“You don’t remember?”

“I remember standing on the edge. Looking for something.”

We’d come here for a couple’s retreat. I’d planned it, knowing how much she hated spontaneous trips. She’d told me so on several occasions. And each time I’d plucked her from her lecture stool, thrown her over my shoulder and carried her off anyway. She needed to get out of that office, away from the school email.

She’d outwitted even me, though, with this mountain escapade. Dragged me out in the swirling snow that ought to be ambience, not experience. We packed for a spa, not a hike out in air so frostbitten it hallucinated the Milky Way. On a clear night, you could see Venus. We hadn’t come all this way to see stars, though.

“What were you looking for?” I ask.

“I—I don’t remember.” She manages to pull her hand from under her. Touching it to her head, she feels for the first time the gash, too frozen now to bleed. “Why aren’t they here, Adam?”

The medic on the phone had said forty minutes. It’s been fifty-two.

“We’re pretty high up,” I say. “There’s not a building in sight. It could be hours.”

“There’s a cabin over there.”

“What? Where?”

She tries to point toward the darkening east. Needle quill trees point out from the ashen landscape, stitching the patchy horizon back to the sky.

“It’s there, somewhere. I saw it.”

I nod my head, give her my most convincing believer face. If she says there’s a cabin, there is one. Let the logicians figure that one out.

“It hurts.” Her face lies half smashed against the snow, half taut with pain. Unbalanced, like a stroke victim’s. “What am I supposed to do for hours?”

“Try singing.” I say.

“Adam…”

Though I can’t see her face through the dark, nor feel it move below my hand, I know she’s glaring. We have an unspoken code. Not body language, exactly. Someone looking from the outside might think nothing had happened. It’s a look over steamed coffee, eye contact during a lecture. I’d glance at her, make her pause in her lecturing. By the end she’d be glowing, even if nobody else noticed. So much of a person seems paralyzed, until you know them.

“You have a pretty voice,” I say. I hear nothing, feel nothing, and that nothing tells me so much. We haven’t had a moment like this in months, and sitting here, I think, perhaps this is good for us, freezing our extremities off, too numb to let words or movement get in the way of what we have to say. I know by her silence she feels it, too.

Or maybe that’s just paralysis.

I hear something: a sob, a sniff, a leaky bagpipe. Bending down, I almost miss her trying, trying to sing with what air she has.

“Just hear those sleigh bells ring-a-ling, ting-ting-tingling too.” She grows louder, more confident. “Come on it’s lovely weather for a sleigh ride together with you. Giddy-up, giddy-up, giddy-up let’s go. Hmm, Hmm, Hmm.” She hums out the rest. She couldn’t keep a song in her head if her life depended on it. I shiver with the morbid thought that, in this instance, it just might.

“Adam,” I hear the exhaustion in her voice. “Do you love me?”

“Of course I do.”

“Then why did you let me fall?”

“What?” I laugh. She’s always had a twisted sense of humor. Half her students come out of her lectures appalled, the other half ready to report her to the dean. It’s happened more than once. She can always reason her way out, though. Come up with an excuse. She knows the ethical codes, backward and forward. Knows the fault lines. Knows the weak points.

Maybe that was my first hint of something off.

“You let me step up on the rail,” she says. “You let me lean forward.”

“I tried to stop you.”

“You didn’t even help me.”

“I tried to steady you. I put my hand on your back.”

“And pushed.” The words hang, muffled by snow. Then, she laughs, delayed like she’s missed her own punch line. “Oh, what am I saying? I must’ve hit my head harder than I thought.”

I stare at her, shivering in the harsh wind like a needle on the verge of falling from the tree. I’d read the public announcement poster in the lodge, the ones about the dangers of mountain climbing. People could lose themselves up here, mental processes deteriorating till they don’t even know they’re dying. So how come I feel like I’m seeing her clearly for the first time?

There is no cabin. There isn’t even a logician here. Just a scared college professor and her bendable mind. And the man who can do nothing to help her.

“Adam?” She reaches for my face, pawing my chin. “It’s so cold.”

“Take my jacket.” I take it off and fling it over her. The wind creeps up my back, stinging like shackles where it touches my exposed skin, my wrists, my neck.

“But now you’ll be cold,” she says.

“You wanted my jacket.” I slam my frozen knuckles against the ground, and they bleed. “So there. Now you have it. What more do you want from me?”

“I want this to be over,” she cries. “It was never this cold before.” She lets out a little chuckle, dislocated, like her hip. “I used to want to live here, in the cabin. It was so fun on vacation in the summer. I guess I thought it would always be that way. But now, it’s just so cold. It’s too cold.”

I reach for my pocket self-consciously, feeling for the ring, then remember Claudia has my jacket. Fear paralyzes me—no other word will suffice—until I see her eyes close, hear her breathing settle. I relax; wait until she slumps against the snow, face no longer twitching, eyes no longer roaming side to side with dreams. When she is motionless, I reach my hand into the propped open pocket, careful not to disturb her. I feel the ring in my fingers, but as I pull out my hand, it slips and falls. I bend down, stomping my hands full force into the snow, though my skin’s already numb with cold. I can’t risk missing it, must find it, come frostbite and all else that follows.

It is gone.

Her breathing grows labored again, seeming loud against the muffled air. I put a hand on her side, but she doesn’t move.

“Claudia,” I whisper. “Claudia.”

“It’s cold,” she murmurs, and freezes.

“Claudia!” The wind rises, a flutter-flutter like a sickly heartbeat. The trees to either side of us bow low, and a dark spot challenges the moon. A helicopter’s floodlights trail us as it soars overhead, stays locked on our location as the aircraft lands on the path further up.

“Too late,” I rock back, wiping the melting snow from my forehead. Of course they’ve come now. Just my luck. Of course they’ve come just after the critical moment has passed.

A paramedic comes down the slope, rushing toward Claudia.

“You’re too late,” I intercept him. He shoves me out of the way with his medical pack, casts me aside like some rancid tumor residue. I charge after him, but another medic catches my arm, leads me up to the helicopter.

They give me a blanket, take my temperature, like I’m the one on the verge of a breakdown. Stop wasting your time, man. She’s the paralytic.

Hurry, don’t hurry. Hurry.

Claudia follows shortly, carried in on a stretcher. I try in vain to decipher the medical jargon the paramedics swap before the helicopter takes off. I can hear nothing after.

We rise off the mountainside, wind from the rotors and mountain air blasting my face. Looking out the open door, think I spy a cabin for one second in the shifting evergreens. Just a tiny thing, humble and hiding. I lean out of the copter, trying to get another look, but the paramedic snaps me back. No use, anyway. My chance of seeing it again is as slim as finding a ring in a mountain of snow.

Deborah Rocheleau is an English major, Chinese minor, and all-around language fanatic. Her writing has been published by Tin House, 100 Word Story, Flights, and the Boston Literary Magazine, among others.

Bad Dream

By Patrick McDonald

Setting:

Sandman’s crammed and messy office

Characters:

Dave
Sandman

Scene fades in with SANDMAN in his office. SANDMAN is clicking furiously on a video/dream editing software, while admiring his many Oscar dream awards sitting on the ledge above. DAVE enters room by throwing the door open. SANDMAN quickly turns around.

Dave: Hey, Sandman! Can you explain what the hell just happen?

Sandman: Oh! Morning, Dave! You’re up.. (looks at watch) rather early.

Dave: Oh? So you’re surprised?

Sandman: Well, yes. I thought the dream I produced last night for you was awfully interesting. Rather abstract too. I spend a lot of time on it in post-dream production.

Dave: It was awful! Worse than a nightmare! What the hell man?! Why did you haunt me with that garbage?

SANDMAN pulls out a huge list titled “Dream schedule.”

Sandman: I’m confused here, Dave. Last night was supposed to be an adventurous narrative, along with a teeny bit of romance and gore. You’re not scheduled to have a nightmare until..

SANDMAN points at list and shows DAVE. DAVE looks closer at the date.

Sandman: Next Wednesday! That should be one to keep you up all night! Involves a lot of clowns. I really put a lot of time in the camera angles and mo-

Dave: It doesn’t matter what the dream was about! People don’t really remember dreams when they wake up, you know.

Sandman: It sure is a tough job in the dream film department…

Dave: It’s that girl, Sandman! Why the hell is she in every single dream?

Sandman: Oh? The girl named Isabelle? She was barely in it. Just a small cameo.

Dave: It doesn’t matter what she did, she was still in it! And she’s been in practically every dream I’ve had for a month.

Sandman: Well sometimes you have to put in things to appeal to the audience.

Dave: I’m your only audience! And I’m telling you now I hate it!

Sandman: Not according to your subconscious. That guy is requesting her in every production. Especially last month.

Dave: Well, can you cut it out? You know subconscious always comes up with the stupidest ideas.

Sandman: Say… What’s your deal with this person in particular?

Dave: Nothing! She’s just out of place. It’s stupid.

Sandman: Last night’s dream production was about a giraffe teaching trigonometry to an amoeba. She did nothing but stand in the back of the classroom and was in the dream for about four seconds. I’m calling bullshit on this one, Dave. Something is up with her.

Dave: She’s just a problem and nothing more.

Sandman: Spit it out, Dave. Or I’ll boost up the amount of nightmares you’ll have next week so that you’ll become an insomniac.

DAVE wanders around room for a bit and avoids eye contact with SANDMAN, and SANDMAN leans forward.

Dave: She was my girlfriend.

Sandman: You have a girlfriend?! Why didn’t you tell me? No wonder that’s all your subconscious wanted. I’ve never made so many romantic dreams in my life, and why the hell is she just a cameo?! She should be starring in them wi-

Dave: Was my girlfriend, Sandman. I’m using past tense. And don’t make a big deal out of it.

Sandman: What happened? I want to hear your story of heartbreak and woe. It’s for inspirational purposes.

Dave: Sandman…

Sandman: Was it a bad break up? One with harsh words? The rivalry of two old lovers?

Dave: Sandman…

Sandman: Did she move away? Get drafted for “the war”? Did the separation and lack of letters in the mail break your heart? Was it because she lost her arms?

Dave: Sandman…

Sandman: Did you two have a fight? Not perhaps with words, but with violence? Boxing? Karate? The violent, action-packed dreams always turn out to be more popular than the artsy and serious dreams.

Dave: Sandman! It’s not that big of a deal! This is so tacky! Just get rid of her in my dreams, dammit!

Sandman: So it was a bad break up… Okay…

SANDMAN writes in notebook “The Bad Breakup” and begins to write a script of a brand new dream.

Dave: No! No. No. No… It… Wasn’t at all as a matter of fact.

Sandman: Then none of this adds up, bud.

Dave: It’s… not that important to know.

Sandman: Then she’ll be in every single dream, and she won’t have arms and be an expert at kick boxing. Boom. We got a screenplay.

Dave: Fine, fine, fine, dammit! I’ll tell you! But can you promise me that you’ll take her out of my dreams? For good?

Sandman: Tell me your narrative story built by overwhelmed emotions and sadness..

Dave: Okay, so I met her at a bookstore, and we talked about our favorite novels, movies, and other things just out of that small interaction. We started as strangers, then friends, then best friends, and soon we were… A couple.

SANDMAN is writing in notebook while DAVE is turned away. As soon as DAVE turns to SANDMAN, SANDMAN hides notebook behind and smiles.

Dave: Everything was going great, you know? Seemed like we were flawless together. Then one day, she just told me she was no longer interested in me. No no, she told me she was “bored”. But she then came up and said she wasn’t in the right place in her mind for any relationship with anyone. I felt bad, but not as bad as when I saw her with a brand new guy slung around her a five days later.

Sandman: That’s rough, buddy.

Dave: I mean, I don’t really care about it anymore. Just want to forget that she existed. That’s why I’m pissed she’s still in my dreams. She doesn’t have to be doing anything, she just has to be there. Just her being there makes it tougher to forget.

Sandman: Well. If that’s your true request from me, I will make sure she doesn’t appear in your dreams again. Thanks for letting me know, Dave.

Dave: Thanks, Mr. Sandman. It was making things tougher, but also creeping the shit out of me that she was still haunting my life.

Sandman: Creepy?

Dave: Yeah. You know. Kind of weird how she’s still a weird part of my life when she left. It’s uncomfortable.

Sandman: Interesting.

Dave: What?

Sandman: Oh! Nothing, Dave. Don’t worry a bit. I’ll take her out and ignore your subconscious. She won’t bother you anymore.

Dave: Thanks! Talk to you later!

DAVE walks out of room, and SANDMAN turns back to his desk. SANDMAN begins to giggle, and scribble furiously in his notebook.

Sandman: Change in the script. Instead of clowns in Wednesday’s nightmare, it’s going to be a clown Isabelle! He’s never going to see this coming, and it’s going to scare the skin off of him! This is my best idea yet!

Fade out

Patrick is a normal kid who enjoys camping, boxing, cooking, making videos, and all types of humor.

We Laughed For Some Reason

By Nisha Klein

It is me and Maria and Susan. Susan’s mother called last night and my mother answered, and then, in the morning, I got in the car and was dropped off at Susan’s house, and then driven into the city.

We are skipping down the street, and it is sunny and bright and crowded, but we don’t mind. Susan’s mother said to meet her in front of the store on the corner, so we are marching there, so she won’t get worried like last time. And Susan grasps my arm tightly so I won’t get lost, because I get lost a lot, and Maria strays behind us, but close enough that we can feel her. And Susan is pointing in windows, shouting I want that, and that, and that, and that, and that. But we all know it is only a wish, because we know Susan’s mother can’t afford that. And so we keep walking. And I see things—clothes, toys— that I want, but I don’t want to say anything because I know that my mother can’t afford them either. And then my stomach knots up and I feel awkward and weird, embarrassed that I can’t have more, though none of us has enough money and Maria is wearing her shoes from last fall again.

And by then our ice cream is gone and we are kids, only nine years old, and free in a big city, alone but not at all scared, and we want to just cheer and dash away, but we are trying to be big kids, to be older, like Susan’s older sister. And Maria taps my shoulder. What are you thinking about? … Oh, nothing. I’m just tired…. You’re not sleeping again?… No.

It’s then that we see him, and we stop where we are. Crouching on the curb, dressed in rips, and hugging the top flap of a cardboard box. He stumbles towards us, his hands cupped, eyes empty, pockets empty. Do you have any money?

Susan shakes her head. No. Sorry.

Please, the man begs. I’ve got a family. Please. Anything.

No. We don’t have anything. I’m sorry.

Please, I have two children. Please, we haven’t eaten in three days. Please. Please.

He’s big but small, crumpled and curled up. I clutch Maria’s arm, and he’s so close, so close he can hear the blood pounding in my ears, my head screaming, telling me to run away. I bet he can hear all that. And my heart is pounding, pounding, pounding, and the man is so broken, so ruined, shattered like a pane of glass. And his gaze shifts to meet mine, and I can see it in his eyes, that despair and grief, and I’m sure he can see fear in mine, so I just look back at my shoes, my ripped and ugly shoes, the ones I cried about, a couple weeks ago, screaming that I wanted new ones. The ones I slammed the bathroom door about, and screamed I hate you at my mother because she wouldn’t take me shopping. And I can hear it in his voice when he asks again, asks if we have anything, anything at all, and his desperation makes me tremble.

Susan shakes her head, I’m really sorry, but we really don’t have anything. When she says this, his shoulders drop, arms fall to his side, and his head drops, drops down, almost touching his chest. And we all want to give him something, but we have nothing, so we keep walking, quickly though, as if being chased, chased by our guilt, perhaps, I think to myself, but I don’t really, and then we are sprinting as fast as we can and a woman shouts, Look where you’re going! —as we knock into her, and her bags take wing, bursting into the air like pigeons let loose from a cage, and then back to Earth as slowly as paper, yet they land so noisily. And I wince, and she cries because we broke a plate or something. Look out! —a man warns as we come racing around, inches from the street, but we don’t stop, we don’t want to think about what we left behind, watching us scuttling away, and knowing why. We don’t want to turn around and, even from a distance, we’ll be able to recognize that man, stretched out on the corner, waiting for someone to have a heart. We don’t want to look behind us and once again behold that cardboard sign, the one that’s asking for help, the one that’s ignored, the way we ignored it. We don’t want to glance back and see cardboard sign, watching us with sad eyes, calling us, pleading, please come back and help, kneeling alone on the curb. But we know he and his sign are there, we can picture it in our heads. That’s why we don’t stop running, until we see Susan’s mother. Holding shopping bags and putting away her wallet. Us, gasping for air.

What’s the hurry? She giggles.

Susan and Maria and me, we all look at each other, and then, for some reason, we laugh. We burst out and we can’t stop. Loud, in your face cachinnation that scares the poor dove sitting on the railing, the kind that used to wake me up in the middle of the night when my parents were watching comedies and would keep me awake long into the night. The day and the image in our heads of the man and his sign slowly crumble around us, and the janitor sweeps it up and throws it away and we can’t remember why we were so upset, why we were rushing so. For some reason, we laugh.

Nisha Klein is currently a sophomore in high school. Her first publication, Sticks and Stones, appeared in the July 2013 issue of Stone Soup. Her short story, We Laughed for Some Reason, was written while Klein was in eighth grade.

Pelage

By Emma Camp

Violet was nearly thirteen when her mother committed suicide. They found her dead in the bedroom of the old, empty house, gone before the paramedics even arrived. Her mother had never liked that house, the way it ached and whined under her feet, as if her weight was one step from breaking it. She hated the way cold wind whistled through its bones when the windows weren’t shut tight enough, how the white paint of the brick was cracked and crumbling, something her father had sworn he’d fix, but never did. He bought the thing right after they got married, a wedding gift her mother had tried her best not to hate.

“It’s a nice neighborhood, Kathrine,” she imagines her father saying, slamming the door of the car just a little too hard behind him. “And you like old houses, don’t you?”

“Yeah, but it’s falling to pieces,” her mother might have responded as she twisted the diamond on her finger, and tried not to sound like an ungrateful child. Her father might remark that it was his money that they were spending, and his job that they were moving for, keeping her silent. She might have touched her belly then, almost absentmindedly, feeling the child stirring inside, and reminding her why she married him.

The funeral was louder than Violet expected. Relatives whom she had never met flocked around her, chirping how much she had grown, and how old she had become. Aunts buried her in their perfume soaked shoulders and pinched baby fat, grasping their cold, claw like hands in hers. Their sympathy seemed to suffocate Violet, crushing her with pity, their heads shaking in disapproving sadness: poor thing, they said, to grow up with a mother who killed herself. Their small, beady eyes bored though her like awls. By the time they had finally buried her, Violet almost felt like she was choking under the weight of the people around her: all crying, all looking at her with insuperable pity. Her father’s face was set and solid. His hands firmly gripped Violet at her shoulders as they lowered her mother into the ground. It was a closed casket, cold and white, adorned with artificially pale lilies. Violet felt out of her own body, like it was someone else’s mother being buried, and someone else’s father grappling them so tight they couldn’t breathe. Like it was someone else being pinned down by grief and whispers.

Her mother always wanted a garden. Her father would never let her, claiming that she knew nothing about plants, and that it was too expensive anyway. She settled for windowsill pots instead, filling ceramic planters with forget-me-nots and sprigs of basil. She doted on them constantly, carefully watering the soil and pruning tender foliage until the flora flourished delicate and green. Soon, more plants followed, filling the house and porch with enough vegetation to meet her mother’s ambitions.

Violet remembers the sticky summer days she spent with her, standing over the sink, transplanting supermarket seedlings into brightly painted terra cotta pots. Her mother would press Violet’s hands into the wet soil, teaching her how to handle the mass of dirt and roots, her voice gentle and patient with Violet’s untrained fingers.

“See, when you pull it out of there, you have to be careful not too lose too much dirt,” she said, pulling a shrub of mint from its soggy carton.

“Okay, so how to I hold it?” Violet asked, taking a heavy plant from the countertop.

“Here, don’t grab it by the stem, or you’ll tear the leaves,” her mother said, placing her gloved palms at the base of the container. “Now get it from the edges.” Violet eased the mint from its casing, stringy white roots holding the heap of black soil in place. She pushed it into a planter, awkwardly compressing the soil.

“That looks great, sweetheart,” her mother said, peeling off her gardening gloves. “Soon enough, I bet you’ll be doing this all on your own.”

“Thanks, mom,” Violet said, warming under the praise. Her mother smiled and squeezed her shoulder.

“Alright, help me clean this up. You know how your father feels about all this dirt getting everywhere.”

Violet sat on the porch when the relatives had finally gone, the soft whine of the too-old swing groaning in her ears. She was sore from crying: her chest tight, her eyes red, her lips cracked and nearly bleeding. Inside, her father did the dishes from the casserole the neighbors brought, the yellow light from the kitchen painting warm shadows onto her thighs. She looked out at the street, mostly deserted at night except for the drone of an occasional car. The streetlamps did not work, and Violet thought they looked like skeletons, tall and sinewy against the empty road, casting black and blue shadows like bruises.

The air was heavy with leftover heat from the day, and Violet wished she had changed. She was stuck in tight pantyhose and a ladylike dress, too-small Mary Janes crushing her feet. Without thinking, she kicked off the pinched black shoes and watched as they clattered to the splintered floor. She sighed, a great weight shifting and releasing from her chest. She hadn’t been able to breathe in days, not with the constant motion of mourning and the tightness of loss. Her father had barely spoken to her since her mother’s death, keeping himself locked away at work, coming home only to retreat back to his bedroom and lock the door tightly behind him. He was a bowed man, hunched over from years of deskwork, and bent permanently from crunching numbers and looming deadlines.

Violet flicked a blade of grass from her knee and watched as it floated to the floorboards. The slice of lawn clipping too light for its own good, managing to transcend gravity for a few feeble seconds before trembling back to the ground. She couldn’t remember how her mother’s voice sounded anymore, what was once so constant, now gone with the slightest slip of memory. The realization hit Violet deep in her chest, and for a brief second, she was unable to think. The loss was so tangible, so real that it felt almost sacrilegious. All of the times her mother had sung to her after concrete-skinned knees, all of the stories told during the transplantation of a blossom, all of the promises whispered after childhood nightmares were now silent and empty. Her mother was fading even from memory and Violet was scared by how easily she was forgetting.

A breeze picked up, sending shivers down her bare arms. She stood up to go inside, but suddenly remembered the two terra cotta pots of mint her mother had planted on the wooden porch, somehow missed by her father’s raid, and tacitly hidden under the wicker coffee table to keep relatives from trampling. As she pulled them up, heavy and dense with dirt, she was surprised to find them still green and full, rather than shriveled after the days without water or sun. Violet pinched off a leaf, putting it in her mouth as her mother had taught her so many years before, the faint sting of mint settling on her tongue. She went back inside, rocking her bare heels on the threshold, the door closing like a whisper behind her.

She stepped into the yellow linoleum kitchen, the faucet still running from the dishes her father washed. Violet turned the cracked porcelain knob. The water trickled down to a quiet drip. Her father had started doing the dishes by himself, his big fingers working away at grime leftover from frozen dinners or scrubbing at the stained rings leftover in coffee cups, always up to his forearms in suds because he used too much dish soap. He was nowhere to be seen, now locked away in some corner of his office, not wanting to look at her.

Violet was always told that she looked like her mother. Aunts would cluck their tongues and pat her cheeks at family reunions, declaring that she had her mother’s eyes, her mother’s nose, her mother’s hands. They’d beam at the woman as she held Violet at her side as if she might fly away and told her how lucky she was to have a beautiful girl like her. Violet’s father would always interject at moments like this, putting a hand around his wife’s waist to remark how they were both lucky to have a beautiful girl like her. The women would chuckle and press dollar bills or hard candies into Violets’ palm, saying how they were sure he spoiled her rotten. Her father would laugh then, a forced smile awkwardly crossing his lips, and look to his wife, who said nothing.

The next morning, Violet began to notice the feathers. They were small and brown, cresting her forehead and stomach with down. She found them in an unexpected brush of her hair in the morning, in her finger’s grazing while she put on a shirt. They alarmed her, and in the hope that she could quietly rid herself of the plumage, she rummaged through a bathroom drawer to find a pair of tweezers. She took the little grey instrument between her inexperienced fingers, and plucked slowly in front of her bedroom mirror. The pinpoint feathers pulled without blood, instead leaving raw red bumps behind. She winced with each rip, but didn’t stop until there was a small pile of the quills in her lap. Violet let out a shuddering breath, touching her pinked skin lightly. She stood up, her shirt rippling back down her abdomen, the cotton brushing up against the stinging wound. She went downstairs to the kitchen, the white Sunday-morning light filtering through the windows. Her father was gone, leaving a hastily written note on the refrigerator:

Had to go into work this morning—I’ll be back around three or four. Scrambled eggs in the fridge if you want them. Make sure to clean your room. Call if you need anything.

-Dad

Violet opened the trembling refrigerator, and stood in front of it for a long time, letting the wave of cold roll over her. She closed her eyes to the fluorescent glow, the near-constant hum of the electrical appliance droning in her ears. Eventually she found the plate of eggs, the sulfuric yellow knobs resting cold inside. She didn’t bother heating them up. She sat on the swollen living room couch and ate silently. From across the room, the door to her parents’ bedroom caught her eye. It was slightly ajar, unlocked for the first time in weeks. Violet thought of the unspoken rule that prevented her from entering, but her father was gone, and he would never know that she had invaded.

Violet opened the door softly. Inside, the room was dark, and from it wafted a deep, animalistic stench. She flicked on the lights and stepped inside. The carpet was thick with dust and dirt. Plastic bins of withered feathers lay on the floor, some were covered in rusty blood, others seeming to be ripped out in troves. The smell was overwhelming, something base and primal bringing tears to Violet’s eyes. Instruments ranging from nimble tweezers to clamp like pliers rested on the bedside table, a layer of grime covering them. She picked up the biggest pair of pliers, the thick, rubber-coated handle molding into her palm. Its jaw was coated in torn fragments of down, now old and paper-thin with age, layers of grime that once rested between the feathers caked onto the metal. Violet began to feel bile rise hot and raw in her throat, the acid burning in the back of her mouth. She dropped the pliers, the steel digging into the carpet with a sickening thud. Dazed, she stumbled out of the room, shocked and gasping for air. Her throat tightened, the skin on her stomach and forehead burned.

A few weeks before her death, Violet’s mother stopped tending to the plants. She began shutting herself in her bedroom and only emerging at night. Despite Violet’s best efforts to care for them, the plants eventually withered without her mother’s careful hands. One afternoon her father ran through the house with a heavy black trash bag, dumping the contents of the planters inside.

“Dad, what are you doing?” Violet asked, horrified as she walked in the kitchen to see him shaking out a vase containing a once-beautiful calla lily. “You can’t throw those away.”

“If she’s not going to take care of them, I don’t see why I should have to deal with all the mess they make,” he replied, slamming the empty vessel on the kitchen table.

“But those are Mom’s,” Violet said, her voice fading as her father grabbed yet another plant from the windowsill.

“Take it up with your mother, why don’t you,” her father said as he flung another blossom inside, the bag straining against the weight. “See what she’ll do about it.”

That night, her father heaved home later than expected, pressed down with an insurmountable weight. Violet had spent the day locked in the bathroom, spending hours examining her body for new growth, trying to predict when the feathers would come in next. She pinched skin and combed through limbs, trying to feel the spines on their ascent though the epidermis. The smell of her mother’s room would not leave her. It seemed sunken into her, tattooed onto her cells. When she heard the tremor of the garage and the whine of his car, Violet stopped, giving one last scour over her arms before going downstairs to meet him. He already had his laptop out, the dull, digital glow lighting his tired face.

“Hey Dad,” Violet said, walking into the kitchen. Her father looked up from his work,

“Hey. Sorry I got in so late. The meeting ran long,” he said, shuffling through a folder swollen with yellowed papers. “Did you eat dinner?” Violet watched as a wilted feather slipped out of the folder and sank to the floor.

“I haven’t eaten yet,” Violet said, quietly. Her stomach turned. “I was going to fix some of that leftover lasagna Mrs. Phelps brought over.”

“Good, good,” her father responded, distracted. “Hey, could you make me some of that too? Remind me to thank her for it. It was nice of her.”

Violet took one the ceramic dishes out of the refrigerator, stuffed with neighbor’s condolence dinners, all in various stages of being eaten. Her hands trembled as she forked squares of it onto plates and put them in the microwave.

“Hey, I know you’ve been through a lot lately,” her father said as she waited by the tremoring appliance. “I just want you to know that you can still tell me anything, okay? You can talk to me about anything you’re feeling right now.”

“Okay,” Violet said, shifting where she stood. “Thanks.”

Over days, more and more feathers began to appear, this time thicker on her arms and legs. Violet began to wrap them in elastic bandages, compressing the new plumage underneath. She took to spending more time alone, and being more active at night. Her father hardly noticed, too wrapped in the cadence of work and habit and grief, keeping himself hidden from his daughter out of instinct.

One morning, the sky just beginning to pink with sunlight, Violet sat on the front steps of the porch, the brick cold and damp on her bare feet. A blue plastic watering can sat next to her, bulbous with water and begging to be emptied. She meant to water the mint, as the black dirt had gone dry in the sun. Violet pushed herself up from the steps, taking the overfilled watering can in her hands, the unnatural bulk sinking knots into her knuckles. She poured into the pots, unable to control the liquid rushing out so fast. It overflowed, ribboning like silk down the side of the terra cotta, puddling at her downy feet. Violet watched the water run, setting the can down onto the floorboards, rubbing her spent fingers as it fell away, slipping through cracks and settling into the fissures in the brick.

Violet wasn’t sure how much longer she could hide before her father would begin to tear out the plumage that now coated her body. Violet looked out at the sky, and felt the quiet white breeze settling on her face. She pushed herself up from the brick and began to walk.

She found herself along the holiday streets of her lily- white neighborhood, blending in with the flock of middle school kids as they trudged towards street corner bus stops, awaiting a day of gym sweat and algebra. She passed houses so neat and clipped that they could be gingerbread, and walked her bare feet over slabs of sidewalk that dared not crack. Her feathers were uncontrollable now. Her wings would come in soon, pelage that could not be plucked without blood or bound without breaking. Violet ran a hand under her jacket sleeve, feeling quills as they pricked behind bandages. She came to a fork in the street, now narrowed and childless, where she could no longer see her impassive and miserable house looming behind her. Violet thought to turn back, she thought to recede to the place where her father would soon be waking, would soon find her gone. She shook away the doubt in her stomach and moved on, letting the roads become an unfamiliar blur around her; determined not to fade out but to fly away for a thousand years.

Emma Camp is a sophomore Shakespeare nerd in the Alabama School of Fine Arts Creative Writing department, whose work has been featured in Canvas, Cadence, and Girlspring as well as being the recipient of honorable mentions in the Nancy Thorp Poetry Contest and the Gannon University High School Poetry Contest. She is an avid intersectional feminist whose ultimate life goal is to direct a production of Romeo and Juliet performed entirely by cats.