Fiction

Yesterday, our English teacher told us that phrases are incomplete sentences and independent clauses are complete, standalone sentences. She gave us an example that day, scrawled it on the board, the chalk raking against the surface in a way that shaved through me and made my insides coil.

I’ve changed.

She wrote this on the board, these two words, and told us to identify whether this was a phrase or an independent clause. I shot up my hand. Phrase, I called out.

She smiles tightly through white teeth arranged so perfectly I wonder if she got dental surgery. I wonder how expensive that was. I wonder why she’s teaching at this school if she has enough money for dental surgery. If I had as much money as she did, I’d already be on a bus out of here.

 No, you’re wrong, she says and her sharp voice yanks me back to the chipped walls, the crowded desks, the stench of sweat and mint gum stuck in the air. It’s an independent clause. The class snickers and I want to glare at them, but instead I sink deep in my seat, the soft fabric of my jeans sliding down the metal chair until my torso is slumped under the desk and only my chin rests on the cold plastic table. Sit up, she says. I don’t. I slump further down, until I’m basically lying down on my chair. It’s an uncomfortable position, and the hard, icy metal of the seat rods press into my shoulder blades but I don’t sit up.

The teacher looks at me for a moment, and then turns away. I’m not surprised. Everyone gives up on me at some point.

I look back to the board. The words are still there, unforgiving in their careless scribble. I’ve changed. It seems like there should be more. I’ve changed isn’t enough. It’s never enough. There has to be more.

I think back to the evening before, when I walked into the jewelry store and slipped an emerald necklace into my hoodie pocket. The teenage cashier, lost in her phone, didn’t notice a thing. When I went back outside to the chilling winter air, I fingered the sharp facets of the emerald. I wanted to yank it out of my pocket and drop it in the sewage drain. I looked at the silver chain in my hand, the evening sun twisting it into a kaleidoscope of color. It felt like a gun.

Even more than the necklace, my thoughts scared me. If I didn’t watch out for myself, who would?

I’ve changed. I have changed. Or maybe I’m changing. I didn’t drop the necklace into the drain. But I thought about it. I almost let go. And next time, maybe I will.

I’ve changed’ should be a phrase. It’s incomplete.

 

 

Tara Prakash is a sophomore at Sidwell Friends School in Washington, DC. Her work has been recognized by the Daphne Review, the New York Times, Bow Seat’s Ocean Awareness Contest, and other literary journals and magazines. She has won a national gold medal along with 5 Gold Keys, 7 Silver Keys, and 5 Honorable Mentions in the Scholastic Art and Writing Awards. She received an honorable mention for a poem in the Gabriela Minstral Poetry Contest and was a panelist in Writopia’s Essay Conference. Along with flash fiction, she also enjoys writing creative non-fiction essays and poetry.

In between swaths of clouds, where space meets sky and Earth fades from view, a clock lays—ticking.

Its gears stretch for miles in a sea of gleaming bolts, and rust flakes underfoot. There is the groan of metal in the air—the gasping breath of ancient machinery. It is a familiar tune to the Timekeeper. He shuffles across moving cogs with light, practiced feet.

As he walks, a distant shape emerges from the cloud cover. The second hand–lurching closer, pausing, struggling on again. The hour is just past eight, the minute stretching off to six; his shift is close to being over, the Timekeeper notes. Thank God. At times, he crouches near interlocking gears or examines the great width of a clock hand, but there is not much to be done at this hour. And he is only one person, barely a speck of dust against this grand design.

The second hand drags on, nearly upon him, and he ducks to avoid its path. Balanced on a spinning gear, the Timekeeper is mindless of the dizzying drop–the emptiness that reaches to envelope him. Time feels almost slower than before. The whine of metal vibrates something deep in his chest as he watches the start-stop-start of the clock, and with a scowl, he rubs at his knees.

Blasted thing. Piteously groaning, the noise of the clock is practically too much to bear. The second hand staggers back and forth like some massive, injured thing, and the Timekeeper blinks, shifting closer.

He does not stand–it is a few feet from him now. But the clock itself seems to fight it, gears pushing and pulling, with rust like fallen blood. He squints. The Timekeeper has worked his job for forty years, but never has he seen something quite like this. Broken cogs, yes–oiling and soothing little aches and pains, but this–

The second stretches. His knees ache from crouching. And with a striking sigh, the churn of time stops dead.

The Timekeeper stares. Cloud is thick in front of him, but the sight, the silence, speaks true. The clock has stopped. The gear he’s on is motionless while the world holds its breath, and a hum builds. The smell of iron builds with it–it is raining, crying, red as it turns 8:32.

The clock shudders, and then the second hand resumes its path. Only–

It is traveling backward, now.

The Timekeeper rubs his eyes, bewildered. His tools are small at his side, his hands calloused, but not skilled. This is above his pay grade. And he is not affected, so he only turns away as the world reverts–as the cries start from below.

 

 

Lynne Inouye, 17, is a queer fiction writer with an interest in all things unnatural or otherworldly. She runs her school newspaper and enjoys acting, spending time with her cat, and using far too much imagery.

It was a beautiful-sunny day at school in the year 2012 in the downtown area of Los Angeles.

My elementary school, “Union Avenue Elementary School,” was a somewhat big red-blue colored building. Everyday, the school filled up with about 2000 students. I was only nine years old in the third grade. I have always enjoyed school and was always recognized with many awards by my teachers. I’ve always attended my elementary school with my best mind to learn more. The best part was the vendors that sold tamales and pupusas to hungry students in the morning before attending class.

My dad picked up my brother and me from school, and drove us to the tamale vendor. I picked a green-salsa tamale, while my brother picked a red-salsa tamale. I ate my tamale and got dropped off in front of the play area where students would enter and go to their assigned classroom lines to wait for their teacher. I went to my line and waited for my teacher, Mr. Carlos. He led us to the second floor to our classroom, where my classmates and I hung our bags to the backpack-hanger closet and went to our assigned desks. I unpacked my pencil bag and journal.

Mr. Carlos, was starting a lecture on our writing prompt from a book we were reading a week before. Then students in their hyper-activeness started to converse and began to get noisy. Mr. Carlos got up from his teacher’s chair to quiet down the classroom.

During all the commotion, my classmate, who I hardly knew, out of nowhere raised her hand at me and told me, “Poke me here in this spot of my hand with your pencil.”

I didn’t respond. I looked at her and pointed my pencil towards where she told me. I didn’t know if what I was doing was right or wrong. My classmate screamed out in pain like if a knife had stabbed her.

Mr. Carlos directs his tone to my classmate and in shock remarked, “What happened. The pencil lead went through your skin.”

My classmate then points her finger at me in agony, “It was him Mr. Carlos. He poked me with his pencil.”

My heart accelerated. My thoughts went everywhere. I have never gotten in trouble. I thought to myself in desperation, what would happen if my parents found out? What would Mr. Carlos think of me? Would he think of me as a bad kid instead of a good one? Ever since I was little, I have gained a reputation with my parents and teachers as being a very well-behaved student. Getting in trouble was a new experience for me.

Mr. Carlos looked at me in a very disappointing and furious way, “I never thought you would do something like this. Go right now to the principal’s office.”

I felt a hot sensation going through my whole body. All the way from my feet to my head. I was filled with shame. I felt unstoppable tears coming out of my eyes as I walked past the classroom to the hallway towards the stairs. I walked down the stairs to the principal’s office. I didn’t know where the principal’s office was, so I just entered the main office of the school. I told the first adult I saw that I got in trouble. I told her everything I did.

“I don’t know why I poked her. I’m truly sorry. I would never do something like it again,” I cried to the office lady.

“Okay. I’ll walk you to the assistant principal,” she replied, looking at me in a very sensible way.

She walked me to the assistant principal’s office. I remember the office lady telling the assistant principal that I was truly sorry for what I did. She also said that I openly admitted what I did wrong. The assistant principal looked at me and asked me why I poked my classmate.

I was quiet for a moment looking down at my hands but then replied, “I don’t know why I did it.”

The assistant principal didn’t ask me many questions. She just sat me down at a table with three other kids who had also gotten in trouble. I sat there for hours. I looked at the other kids who sat around the table I was at and remarked to myself in my thoughts saying, I shouldn’t be here. I’m not like all these kids who have done worse things than me. In all those hours before lunch time, I reflected on what I had done. I realized how ignorant and foolish I was to just listen to the evil instructions of my classmate. I was allowed to go to lunch and afterwards to class. I didn’t get a call home from my parents, which was a huge relief and a surprise for me.

From that day forward I realized the importance of the idea of “thinking before you act.” I made sure what I did wasn’t going to gain me any regret and consequences which I had to deal with if I were to act upon them. I made sure to not listen to any instructions related to bad behavior from classmates.

Finally, I learned to never have communication with my classmate that fooled me into shame.

 

 

Joel Ramirez-Zelaya is a student that attends POLAHS in the harbor-beach town of San Pedro, in the state of California. He loves writing about music, about animals, and science-fiction. He’s very motivated to go to a four-year university and study for a pre-med major, to go on to study medicine. His dream career is to become an orthopedic surgeon.

Everyone has a mother somewhere—it seems a safe enough assertion. But there is no mother at dinner with us. And one is left to wonder: What about the mothers of Meetinghouse? What about the evaporated mothers, the disintegrated mothers? What about the cremated mothers, spread and fractured throughout the ocean, through the sea? (The Sea, the Sea.)

I remember very little of my mother. It seems a false comfort to imagine her Somewhere. And like my children, she has never been a guest at my table.

I will admit I do not know what suffering my mother endured. Or where she is hidden so well that I’ll never know the place I cannot find her. But there is one picture that belonged to my father. And since he died it’s belonged to me.

In the frame: an empty vase on a simple rectangular table—We appear to be in the kitchen—a window behind the table; Dusk—I’ve imagined the vase’s color to be blue—a woman sitting at the table’s edge, staring at the vase, her hands blurred; and nothing else on the table.

The last time I looked at that photo it fell apart in my hands, and I spent many hours that day trying to put my mother back together, before I realized too many pieces had already blown out the window, off to sea. (The Sea, the Sea.)

 

 

Dante Antonio (@dante_s_antonio) is a musician, writer, and actor based in Brooklyn, NY. He writes plays and poetry, fiction and non, and is spending quite a bit of time these days researching for a novel. He’s also exploring the worlds of microtonal and electronic music (setting some of Eliot’s poetry). You can find his literary work in Sheila-Na-Gig Online, Blue Marble Review, and New Note Poetry.

We are postcard people: the sun shines like a celestial diamond, so bright the exposure bleaches the entire image. One day we will send this postcard to Mom’s ex-husband who she still is friends with, miraculously.

I dig my body into the sand pretending I’m a crab. It’s a warm blanket over me. It’s golden and smells like triumph. I asked my mom, “Mom let’s go to the beach and hide like hermit crabs,” a couple hours ago in her office. She skimmed her fingers through the top of her hair. She sighed. “I have to finish writing this paper,” she said and got up to close the door on me. She reappeared in different rooms, pacing, her hands entwined behind her back and her head down. Soft shuffle of her socks on the hardwood, and then the jingle of keys. “Let’s go to the beach,” she announced. Triumph.

I splash into the water. Then I circle back and reach for her. She’s frowning at me like she doesn’t trust me, her pale white legs propped up and she’s leaning on them, the towel underneath her baby blue. I touch her and her skin is rough, grainy. I try to grab her arm and it crumbles into sand.
My mother slumps into a pile of sand on the towel. So does everyone else on the shore, and the salty breeze shifts them away, recycled into natural things once more.

“Don’t swim into the deep water or the sharks will get you,” she had said in the beginning when I pulled off my shirt so I was only wearing my trunks. My hair is the same color as the sand. Bleached blonde. Maybe I am just a sandcastle again. Maybe I was imagining us ever really being there in the flesh. We are creatures of the earth. We fall back into it when we get too far from it.

One night my mom had a date. She dressed all in white like she was getting married. Lacy white dress with long sleeves and a skirt that cut just above her knees. She looked unrecognizable. “Make up,” she explained when I pointed to her face. The babysitter told me the story of the nativity scene; it was around Christmastime. I listened and looked at her picture books. The angels were dressed like my mother. They fly down from heaven.
Many times in our life together Mom tried to leave. She started the car and left me in the house at midnight only to come back hours later with apology ice cream and a Nirvana record. Other times she announced she was going on a long solo trip out East somewhere. She made plans, calculated hotel costs, and traced routes through major highways until these scraps of paper were left unfinished in a drawer. She once told me my dad was an angel. We listened to Nirvana in the living room, silently, heads bent, as if we were praying.
At my mom’s wedding she was literally dressed like a bride, and by then I knew much more about angels. They always wanted to fly up to the heavens and you had to either watch them go or you could tie them down like balloons. When my mom was saying her vows I wondered what would happen if you grabbed on an angel while it was flying back up. Earth would pull you down, I decided. Earth always pulls you away from the angels. That’s what gravity is.
Later I learned my mom was a professor of theology. At first I heard “sea-ology.” I simply thought she studied the sea. Saltwater realms.
She told me about salt pillars while driving to the school. When Lot’s wife looked back, my mom explained, she was turned to salt and you can see her in the Dead Sea. I got chills thinking about that saline graveyard. The hot white shoreline, the water evaporated into dry air above.

 

When I woke up from my nap on the beach Mom was nowhere in sight. Her towel and things were gone, there were hundreds of footprints in the sand. I waited. I found peace. After this meditation she was back, and she held out her hand with an unreadable face and I took it and I didn’t even wonder where she’d been. We drove home. We got Wendy’s on the way and I was allowed a medium vanilla cone.
She published her research paper in that same month and several journals rejected it. Years later I read it. It was about the maternal roles in the Bible, heavily centered on Lot’s wife. She made a rather striking metaphor about the mother being trapped, solidified in salt, caught making her escape. Wearing a crystal wedding gown.

 

 

Satori McCormick (she/her) is a seventeen- year-old high school senior from Denver, Colorado. Her work has been previously recognized by the Adroit Prizes, 805 Lit + Art, The Center for Fiction, and more. She was born in Minneapolis and is a tribal member of Red Lake Band of Chippewa Indians.

The gas pumped through the hose in a smooth rhythm. I closed my eyes and waited for the soft click. In the front seat the last of the Chex Mix had fallen and settled in the stitching of the rough fabric. I brushed it away before continuing my drive.

Five hours to go. Dad offered to drive with me and fly home after move in, but I didn’t want the tearful goodbye in front of strangers I needed to befriend. I promised myself a new start; a new, independent start.

The highway was a wasteland of billboards and truck stops. My audio jack stopped working a few months ago, so I was stuck listening to whatever played on the radio as I passed through each state. I liked moving through places and hearing the static over the music pick up and fade away.

The sky darkened ahead, signaling rain. I rolled down my window and placed my forearm against the cool metal of the door. The air was thick and wet, electrified by the coming storm.

Dad and I used to stand by the screen door when it rained and count how many lightning strikes we could spot. He usually bested me, and I would whine about how he was taller and older, and it was unfair. When the thunder would pound so hard the doorframe shook, Mom would yell at us to close the door. She didn’t like how stray rain drops would splatter through the screen and dampen the new hardwood floor. Dad would laugh and say alright kiddo, let’s listen to your mother. Behind the closed door I would still stand and watch the water beat against the glass.

The rain was coming down in sheets now, and I could hardly see past my windshield. The lights of the truck in front of me blurred into fuzzy red bulbs. My grip on the steering wheel tightened as I eased my foot off the gas pedal. Traffic was moving slowly and my heart rate was picking up, so I decided to turn off at the nearest rest stop. I found shelter at a Wendy’s inhabited with other refugees of the storm. The smell of fry oil mixed with the metallic scent of the rain.

Dad and I used to go to places like this after my soccer games. In early September, when the summer heat was still waning, he would let me get ice cream with my hamburger. It would drip onto my grass-stained knees, and Dad would laugh at my mess.

After a few minutes the rain let up to a quiet drip. I ventured back to my car and was off once again. When I crossed the border of Massachusetts a wave of anxiety rushed over me. In my head I rehearsed the greeting to my roommate which I had perfected the night before with Dad. He was nervous for me, but thought it a bit silly to practice saying hello.

Ten minutes away from school I pulled off of the highway again and parked outside of a Starbucks. My hands shook against the steering wheel. I reached for my phone in the cupholder and pulled up Dad’s contact. I hesitated to press call, and I couldn’t figure out why. Why I had done this alone, why I thought I didn’t need him anymore. I watched all the movies and saw the protagonists go off on their big adventures, leaving their overbearing families behind. I wanted to be on my own like them. But why did it already feel so lonely?

I pressed call and held the phone to my ear. Two rings later he picked up.

“Hey, kiddo? You at school?” His voice was loud and cheerful. Picturing him on the other side of the phone made me smile, and my stomach ached a little less.

 

 

Allison Titus is a recent graduate of Boston College. She writes as much as she can in her free time and loves sharing her work with the people around her.