Category: Creative Nonfiction

DREAM LIFE DECAY

I run around Diamond Park under red glow, a gentle stirring in the air like steam rising. Pink clouds floating by me in sluggish lanes, and my eyes never settle on one spot; a black-eyed golden retriever with devil horns, the moon reaching below skyscrapers, the ground torn in and replaced by ebony-colored rubble. I hear a round of shots echoing from above, I’m opening the eyes I didn’t know were closed.

—And still, I’m only half awake. Every blink is bathing me in red glow.

But every moment I’m opening my eyes again, finding a white grainy ceiling, and
shifting above torn leather. Then a brown face peering down at me, sagged under tired lines heightened with fright, to a closer, louder cry of gunfire, until the leather couch beneath me becomes oak flooring, until the looming brown face becomes my crying mother, arching her body over mine as glass distantly shatters.

My eyelids slip shut, the red glow fragments.

My hips swaying in navy blue, and worlds expand like I’ve eaten the wonderland cake. I’m smaller, in uniform, a white stained polo and a pleated polyester skirt. My hair has regressed half a decade, the swarm of coils split into two and braided on either side, white flower barettes poke my cheeks whenever my head moves. I see my third grade playground and a crowd of kids without faces to linger on. I hear the recess bell extending well beyond it’s scheduled four-second ring, and suddenly it’s all I hear, suddenly every kid is running to somewhere behind me but I can’t move my feet. My sight is fixated on the oak trees coating the hills. The flurry of feet trample my own.

—And I rise again to a soft voice repeating my name. My skin nipping and breaking in

the creases of the oak floors.

My mother’s fist clenched around the hem of my nightgown, and dragging me through the living room, to the kitchen. My toes clamp down as well, and I try not to flinch when a nail snags off from one of the jagged tiles. The shots are closer, there are doors somewhere opening and closing. Brandon’s face is frozen in the doorway. He looks surprised, but not startled, and I know he’s been awake the entire night. He is saying something to my mother. My mother’s face is becoming bothered. Their voices are raising, to yelling, firing, yelling, silence. With my face on the floor, I see his blue striped socks move swiftly away from the kitchen.

In the back of my head, a dream still spinning. I close my eyes for one minute, two, three.

I’m with my father now in the old silver pickup, turning in the roundabout. Brandon and Breah ride in the back with the groceries, laughing at Iyla across the street as she gapes at the floating kids. Dad yells something out the window, and they immediately sink back down. I’m thinking about my red and white bicycle. I’m hoping Mom will let me blow up the kiddie pool for the second time today. I’m picking which Barbie to bring with me to bath time, and a thick, hot breeze smothers my face. Dad lifting me out from the car seat, Brandon and Bread lugging in the bags. I smell potatoes in the kitchen. Gospel music stubbornly pours out of every speaker.

A red glow in every corner of the house. The walls bend back.

—And the hot breeze turns cold, and Mom is hugging me tightly from behind, yelling over my shoulder and in my ear. Brandon opens the front door, and I swear I hear bullets thumping along my porch. He’s yanking himself away and throwing the door back into it’s hinges. He’s on his knees, crawling to the slump that is my mother and I, and his voice is half wonder, half dread, going on about some guy with an Ak-47, about never seeing a gun that close before, and I am watching my brother for the first time become somebody else.

I’m fully awake and waiting hours for the sirens. They rarely come here. I’m looking out the window and seeing neighbors uneasily do the same. A man across the way is talking loudly, saying all the cars got fucked up, and Mom is praying on the edge of her blow up bed that her car is still in shape to take her to work in the morning. Brandon’s excitement for the night has trickled out, and he shuffles back into the bedroom. I’m sitting on the black leather couch, as my cat, Dyson, purrs against my ankle.

The cops come when all has already become final. They knock on the door and ask my mom a few questions. I squirm when one’s eyes falls on my tense shoulders, and they’re saying words, but my mind can’t form the sentences, sounds become an auditory collage, “gang,” “suspect,” “dead,” “dead,” “gang,” and I’ve been up for too long. I go back to my spot on the couch and drape the quilt over me, I feel a weight pounce over my legs and settle at my feet. I think of faraway things, and picture the red glow in only a corner of the ambiguous dark of my eyelids.

And I’m there in Diamond Park, in navy blue, leaning out the window of the old silver pickup. I hear a gentle stirring become the clangs of a school bell, I smell heat in the air, threatening to surround and smother me. And I’m waiting for a body to form, feet to somehow carry me like they never have before.

Amaya Jones is a junior and English major at NYU, with a minor in creative writing and media communications. It’s her third year living in New York, though she grew up in Northern California and spent most of her childhood living in Oakland and Sacramento. While her writing tendencies lean more toward the poetic side, she’s recently widened her creative scope to short fiction and nonfiction pieces. If not writing, her time is spent working on the editorial board for one of her school’s undergraduate literary magazines. This will be her second publication in a creating writing journal, and her first nonfiction publication.

Detachment

Living freely in a body estranged from the mind, the couth of a lovely soul weakens, wearing thin of its profoundness; attributed one of a kind.
Exploited for its resistance, the soul wanders in search of its true calling, a vessel of hope to be determined.
Here lies the docility of the soul along with the outer body, needless to attach itself, independent of its purpose.
Allowing the mind to align, factors a balance of control between the turbulence of the soul’s mental capacity and its bodily composition.
The disposition of mind and inner body reconcile given time to manage and navigate the depths of a soul, lacking attachment to the outer body.
A sappy experience uncovered by the soul, absorbing the feats of the world, remaining invulnerable to the turbulence caused by disorder.
A mania that grows stronger, collapses, forcing the mind to take over the body, leaving the soul defeated; hollowed in chaos.

Did You Know? [Sentiments]

Did you know?
Did you know that—

I yearn for your devoted attention,
an impromptu love drenched in golden teardrops from the stars above.

Did you know that—

You are the lingering passion that conceptualizes the world of my existence,
an enticing presence that duals the fire set to my raging spirit.

Did you know?
Did you know that—

The serendipity I’ve become acquainted with keeps me afloat, you are the
rhythm to my flow, the remedy to my pain; I deem you as my greatest asset—
my sunshine in the presence of rain.

Did you know?
Did you know that—

My grace for you is everlasting; the adoration I harbor for you in this
fashion may not be tarnished or ravaged. It would be the world’s greatest
travesty if my keenness for you diminished for a lifetime.

Did you know?

Deviyani James is a senior at New York University studying sociology with a double minor in philosophy and creative writing. She is an avid reader and writer, as she enjoys indulging in literature, poetry, and prose simultaneously. Insofar as she finds the utmost solace in writing and being able to express the depths of her emotions, she is currently working on her very first book, a memoir/anthology that will better establish her unique writing style and rhetoric, to be published in August 2024.

Loose Change

You must know by now that your past experiences shaped you into who you are today. You graduated high school. At some point, you found the freedom of driving your own car. You moved out of your hometown and started a new life free from the bad memories of the past. Memories of parents splitting, your life being reshaped, losing friendships. Memories like that November night you didn’t go to Walmart.

As you climbed into Blake’s mom’s SUV you were so excited to go there. You finally would have a new pocket charger for power outages. You could get that special flavor of chips that stores walkable from your place didn’t offer. Jeffery had the idea to go to Walmart. It would have been the perfect night for it. But you weren’t even going close to there. You realized this a bit after Blake broke the engine-filled silence.

“Did you get the tools, Jeff?”

Jeffery produced a pair of bolt cutters and a small crowbar from his bag in response. “Hell yeah brother! It’s finally time.”

The event you were sure was going to follow wasn’t entirely new to you. When you first met Jeffery you both went to a private Christian school in the eighth grade. He tried giving you the idea that since your caregivers sheltered you so much you could get away with anything. You two snuck out plenty of times at his parents’ house during sleepovers. You would ring the neighborhood’s doorbells and leave oranges on their mats, imagining their reactions as you ran to hide. Eventually, you thought this type of attitude was okay. How could it not be when it was so exhilarating? You had met Blake once or twice before. He and Jeffery liked to make elaborate plans and play them out like they were hardened ninja-criminals.

“Time for what?”, you ask. You didn’t want any part of this. At this point you were too far from home to be dropped off and walk back.

“Blake and I have been eyeing this warehouse. We think it’s been completely abandoned; we never see any cars parked outside of it. It looks like it used to be a mechanic shop so we’re looking to score something cool,” replied Jeffery without remorse, “Sorry, I should have let you know we were doing this.”

From there you decided to stay quiet and try riding this one out. In the years you’ve known Jeffery he built an insane fixation on cars, trucks, basically anything with wheels that one could mod enough to “turn heads”. Blake shared this same love. An old mechanic’s shop was where they needed to be. They would get tools for free without a statement on Jeff’s Grandma’s credit card. This had been an issue for them before. They surely didn’t want that to happen again. Plus, Jeffery had now gained quite the experience in thievery. For him it was almost natural. It was something one in their right mind was meant to do.

When you arrived, you could see many other warehouses lit by moonlight. No other signs of human activity were seen. It was around one in the morning. The air around you felt cold as you stepped out of the heated car. Jeffery handed you one of the tools and even that had an ice-like chill. You thought back to a time when you were watching a show about ghost encounters with another friend of yours. The host said there always seemed to be a noticeable drop in temperature when spirits were around. The ghosts of mechanic’s past must have been surrounding you on that hill, trying to signal you to do anything but disrupt their territory.

You felt petrified in fear when you stood and watched your friends struggle with busting the lock to the warehouse’s entrance door. You stood there, crowbar in hand, initially suppressed to the fact that they were trying to get your attention.

“Hey,” Jeffery said as he shined his flashlight directly in your face, exposing you to whatever eyes, electronic, ghastly, or human, could have seen you in that dark night. “If you’re not gonna do anything, can you at least hand me the crowbar? You can keep watch out here if you don’t want to come in.”

Reluctantly, you did as he said.  You then receded back to your frozen position and waited a few minutes after the halo of their phone lights faded away. You were certain the cops would come. The exact second you’d hear sirens you would run as fast as you could up the adjacent hill. They would never find you in such a desolate wasteland of forgotten private property. But the sirens never sounded. The darkness remained unchanged by alarming lights. You were okay. You decided you’d all be fine. You then went in, curious to see what they were finding.

You were met with an immensely open room lit by one small bulb. Jeff and Blake must have flipped a switch when they broke in. Monotone colored desks were arranged around the center of the room. Scattered documents and parts were strewn across them. An old RV sat in the back-middle of the garage. It had been jacked onto stilts. You saw that each of the wheels had been taken off and the parts of the axel that had made ergonomic travel possible were showing rust. Webs fell from the undercarriage of the mobile home as a skirt would from a royal princess. Her prince must have taken her apart and sold the parts of her away that he still thought valuable.

You jumped when hearing a loud clatter of tools coming from the room parallel to this one. It must have been where the others were. You knew then that you would never be like them, prowling through the belongings of others to find some piece for your loosely afforded puzzle. You would work for what you wanted. There must be a way to thrive without the need for crime.

You followed the noise into the room they were digging through. It was the big man’s office, the general of motors, the mason of mechanics, the father of all fixes.

“Air tools! I found air tools man! We gotta take these.” You had never heard Blake so excited. He had seemed constantly sedated in situations beforehand.

“Alright, cool! I found a sweet ratchet set I want too. This must have been like $300 new. Maybe I could even resell it,” Jeffery then turned to you with a ridiculous smile on his face, “Manny, why haven’t you grabbed anything? Don’t be lame, all this stuff is forgotten about anyways.”

“Nothing really matters to me here though, Jeff. Don’t you think they’ll come back for it someday?” You say this to him in truth, you didn’t care about tools or cars, you were close to seventeen and didn’t even have a license. You didn’t end up getting one anytime soon either.

Jeffery stared at you with a look of confusion you had only seen in your father when you told him your life’s career would involve video games, “Just look around. You’ll find something.”

So, you did look around. After all it was an office, maybe you could find something in there to use. You walk up to what must have been the boss’s desk. Documents were neatly organized into a miniature shelf on the left side. To the right of those was a stack of empty clipboards, followed by empty space, then finally a small cylindrical tin with an inch long slit in the lid.

Around its cylindrical form were repetitions of fantasy-like pictures, one of a chicken with an apron full of easter eggs, another with a white rabbit playing an egg-colored drum, another with a girl petting her bunny, and the top one showing three more white rabbits coming out of a bed of grass. It must have been bought during Easter, a holiday that you remember to be full of church sermons and violent egg hunts. You were the one who would go straight for the egg that looked different than the others. You knew that egg always had to be the one with the money.

You picked up the tin and realized that it held weight. Giving the thin metal a shake, you heard coins, and looked up to see Blake and Jeff standing in awe at what you had found. Their smiles had morphed into wonderous expressions. You had found the one thing more valuable than any free air tool or ratchet set. This treasure could be whatever you wanted it to.

You wanted this feeling to last forever, but as the three of you tried to find more money you were abruptly stopped by a set of red lights you failed to notice before. It was an LED alarm clock with the time and date set exactly. Clocks had to be reset all the time because of county-wide power loss. The ghost who had told you to leave before were remnants of the people who had still worked there daily. You rushed the news to Blake and Jeffery, who processed it in a flash. You all were gone within two minutes. It took a few moments after the surge of escape-induced adrenaline dispersed that you realized you still had the tin.

* * *

As years pass, you continue filling the tin with loose change you got from the rare times you use cash. It floats around the various surfaces of your room. Sometimes it sits on top of your dresser. Here it catches rays of sunlight that give it an amber glow at dusk. When you close the drawer after grabbing your jeans it will frequently fall and cause a loud rattle as it hits your bedroom floor. You’d then move it to your desk, where it will get caught on your mouse while you take your anger out on video games or difficult homework assignments.

You continue changing but the tin stays the same, frozen in time as if the magic of Easter never ends for it. The bunnies sit still in silence watching you try and find your own eggs. They look at you in shame. You took them from their home, snatched them from the existence they were meant to endure. Your coins were not meant for their vessel.

Though for some reason you see it as the imposter. Every time you add change a sense of clarity that your stash is growing washes over you, but you are quickly left with the pain of knowing you can’t let the tin go. It sits within your belongings as a scar you can afford to remove. You are afraid of the pain you might feel when it’s finally gone.

You wonder what memories it held before. You wonder more about the moments you took from the mechanic that would have happened if you had just let it be. Perhaps the mechanic was saving for the coming holidays. What could have been a few ice-creams for his grandchildren was a bag of Doritos and some Hostess cakes for you. Did that junk food form a meaningful bond? Did those scratchers you spent months of change on give you any benefit?

At one moment you’re working back in the place where this all started. Yards away from where you got in the car and didn’t go to Walmart. You’re bussing tables for a summer gig, trying to save up money for your move.

That restaurant had become like a recital to you in the years you’ve worked there. You bus the tables like performing a synchronized dance. Every pattern stays fixed in your muscle memory, wiping the table with an elegant curtsy, carrying trays of drinks as if they were a ballerina twirling on your fingertips. You moved to the Spanish music fluently, not fueled by words you didn’t know but by the passion the artists had when recording their songs. Your coworkers sometimes call you robotic in the way that you process and complete tasks in rapid succession. Now you see Jeffery there at table eleven, sitting in the same spot where you’ve hid from your boss’ cameras to roll silverware at your own pace. Seeing him caused an error to appear in your choreography.

He looks older now, more mature, more like the truck he drove to the restaurant in was from his own money that he worked hard for. At first, he doesn’t recognize you. You make yourself known when asking if the table needs refills. You were excited about seeing him, but he looked to you as if he were hiding from the shameful misadventures you had before. You don’t remember much of the small conversation you two had. But you do remember the last line of advice he gave.

“Keep your head on straight, bud.”

It felt as if he took your face in both of his hands and spit directly in your eyes. You never saw him after this. You still hope it stays that way.

Eventually you’ll forget about Jeffery, or Blake, or even the tin as it sits in your storage unit when you’re twenty years older than you are now. You’ll grow into a full career with more important things to worry about than Easter or power outages. Maybe you’ll even get your own mobile home and treat it like royalty as you travel the kingdom with your family. Later your own children will go through adolescence, finding their own Jefferys and Blakes and tins that you may not ever learn about.

As you meet your death your belongings in that storage unit will be auctioned off to the head mechanic’s grandkid. They would be so excited when looking through your forgotten loot to recognize their Papa’s coin tin. They’ll wonder how it got there, and if maybe their grandfather would have liked to see it again before he too had passed. Now they’ll learn that for most of their life, and until you could no longer exist enough to help it, you held on to that tin.

Emmanuel Loomis is an English major at California State University Chico, active in the writing of both personal and academic work. He strives to create worlds that give a sense of escape while commenting on themes that deserve more attention. Emmanuel has before been published in Butte College’s student newspaper with his poem “Ode to Meat” and is currently working on a composite novel of fictional stories titled Siblings, Friends, and Those Who Need Them. He stays active in campus activities and enjoys the feeling of being around friends, family, and people who cherish writing as a creative expression.

The Runt

Butch was, effectively, my family’s mascot. Born from a mid-size poodle father and a very small Boston Terrier mother, he was sadly predisposed to looking like a gremlin, with wavy hair, a half-snout with a prominent underbite, bulging terrier eyes, and a poodle’s frame without the curly hair to provide extra bulk. He looked half-feral, and was so flea-ridden he had chewed the hair off around his own tail. But what better pet than a Gremlin for a family of half-Orcs anyway.

Butch began life as the runt of a litter of four. He had no name, he was “the runt, y’know, with the spot” on his head. None of Fletcher and Lizzie’s progeny had names then, as they were not planned or expected right up until they were born. We were going to get them up to weaned and then give them away. But one day, all the puppies were chasing each other through the upstairs of my grandmother’s split-level, and all the older children were chasing each other through the bottom level, until it boiled up into the top level, and because no innocent act goes unpunished, my cousin ended up stomping on the runt, with the spot on his head. 

He was dead, we all knew. But we took him to the vet, we being someone in the family that was not me, being seven and all. He came back, was given six months, “or until his brain grows into the indent of the skull” and hemorrhages, to live. I volunteered to care for the doomed creature, as it was wrong to give someone a puppy that was likely dead before it could know its name. My dad, ever insistent on doing right whatever dumb thing you were doing, rigged together a baby-bottle with a straw-nipple I or my sisters could tape to our finger to let him suckle. He grew, and within a few weeks was on to solid food, and as his siblings disappeared, he got more and more. After a long debate within the family, the only constant of which was “Je-sus not Spot” we landed on Butch, named after a Boston Terrier TY Beanie Baby, as was the style at the time. 

Butch quickly became our mascot. He was loud, mean to strangers, constantly hungry, and he communicated in headbutts and scratches more than verbally. His favorite pass-time was to chase the cat up the stairs until she turned and chased him down, where at the bottom, he’d turn and remember he was bigger and chase her back up. When we moved to the townhomes, he was perpetually angry at the wall for making noises, but he had access to The Woods. My older sister, Stevie, would often volunteer to walk him, just to hang out with a boy, usually. But for weeks, every time she took him out, he’d return with a stick. Once, I went with her, and my 11-year-old self had to hear my 16-year-old sister’s newest “boy-who-is-a-friend,  leave-me-the-fuck-alone-mom” warn her about the “and-a-condas” in the Kentucky woods, after which I decided to just wander away and play fetch with my dog for what I assume to be rather obvious reasons. 

I had tagged along only to witness the phenomenon Stevie had laughingly related a day or two before, when she’d told a story about our “dumbass” dog to drown out a commercial– or maybe Joe Buck, an equally abysmal thing to listen to. I threw the stick Butch had kept in the kitchen by the door for a day now, and he ran straight past it and out of sight, and then came stumbling back with an entirely different stick. This happened almost every time Butch went into The Woods, until one trip with my younger sister, Samantha, and me, the stick he brought back was about 3 feet long and a little over an inch in diameter, roughly. This branch was about twice as long as Butch himself, but he was insistent on bringing it home. He made it to the door, carrying it proudly at the halfway point, trotting confidently, when it hit both sides of the doorway. As Samantha and I laughed at the cartoonish display, he backed up, tried again, and failed again. Then, he backed up, tilted his head in confusion, before he seemed to have a tiny dog eureka moment and strutted in confidently. After a few days, my youngest sister, Carol, hit Samantha in the back with the stick, and it was confined to the patio. Butch was so distraught that he sulked until he became an Outside Dog. 

When they put Butch down, I was sixteen, maybe seventeen. I was digging in the garden, installing the pond Mom wanted and Dad was willing to maintain when she ultimately abandoned it. The metallic beige minivan pulled back up the drive, past the tree I can still smell blooming, that I can still remember screaming with cicadas, cicadas Butch would eat until he got sick the year we moved in, on up the drive to where our family had put handprints into concrete to celebrate the permanence of a house we lost within six years. My mother got out first and approached me. Dad came around from the back of the van, the long way, past the cargo door. I didn’t stop working and I didn’t let that tiny spark of what wanted to be hope breathe at all. My mother started off tearful, explaining he was in pain, it was what was best for him, there was nothing that could be done. My lack of response was rude, I’ll admit, and cold, and I took no small revenge in watching her fingers twitch in restlessness. But the problem with a well-intentioned lie is that it is still a lie. And so I continued digging her pond as she lied to me about my dog. When she finally got fed up and left, I glanced up to my father, who had the decency to look away. 

“The worms had gotten to the point they were digging holes in his gut.”   “It would’ve cost a thousand to put him through the treatment to force’m out,”   “another who knows how much to patch up the damage already done,”   “and then we’d have to deworm the whole front and back yard.” He put his hand on my shoulder. “He was a good dog.” He wasn’t. I nodded anyway, wondering if it was pity or envy that burned where his human hand had sat on my shoulder. Dad walked inside. I let the Orc rage take me, when I felt my face leak against my will. The hole for the pond was about a foot too deep, and I had to fill it back in a bit the next day. 

The people that bought the house removed it.

Jeremy Ray is an aspiring educator, a conflicted veteran, an escaped Kentuckian, and a feral child, listed in reverse chronology. His work aligns itself against light and its encroachment upon the dark while still attempting to explore the dark himself. He also takes himself just a bit too seriously and should probably calm down. Someday. 

What Does it Mean to be Crazy?

Let me be clear, my intention is not to praise nor scorn anyone’s cause, but only to provoke examination into a controversial topic. Having said that, the modern day definition of “crazy” is used as an umbrella term for anything out of the ordinary that is not considered normal. Many scholars and laymen agree with this summation, but not everyone knows that with cultural insight the concept of normalcy and insanity is found to be relative to its context. So this is to say that what is categorized as sane versus crazy is all in perception of the perceiver; aka “eye of the beholder”. For example, a handshake when greeting others in the Western Hemisphere are deemed polite and appropriate. While in Asian nations physical contact is deplorable and bowing is more acceptable. I want to explain that in evaluating these two opposite ends of the perceived behavioral spectrum, the observer should include all relevant data no matter how ambiguous. Not taking in the whole picture from a situation can lead to clouded judgment; like prejudice, bias, and bigotry.

 When a person is misunderstood by others based on different livelihoods, this is called ethnocentrism. It means judging another’s life based on the values of your own. This is misguided and should be avoided through approaching a foreign encounter with a clean slate. For our minds to be opened one must make a conscious decision to not close ourselves off from new things. We have to concede the fact that we will never know everything and can always learn more. If we presume to know enough about a topic, then we cannot grow. The quality that I believe prevents this the most is hubris, but humility clears a path for us. Let us not aggrandize our egos, but rather be at peace with our own strengths and weaknesses.

The two ubiquitous labels, “normal”, and “crazy”, put behavior in either favorable or derogatory categories, with the former being inclusive and the latter feeling shameful. With this I mean that one brings people together while the other tears them apart. It is not fun to be ostracized from a collective, that you previously were a part of or wanted to be accepted in. My guess is that the average Joe would conceal their ignorance on an act through labeling it as “crazy”. Peer pressure has a critical part to play in this as nobody I know wants to publicly appear dim-witted. Since incomprehension is an awkward mental state and gives off vulnerability, it is thought as more convenient to place a characterization. All of this is done in order to mitigate discomfort and maintain the status quo.

 Everything I have put forth in this paper should not be judged as people are weak-willed, but only that they prefer to avoid conflict and have things be copacetic. Confrontation is stern, black-or-white, not necessarily effective, and always brings up pain. I have reached the notion that terms, “normal” and “crazy”, were made as archetypes with one goal in mind; to ensure survival by avoiding disorientation through eliminating misinterpretation. As you have pored over my paper though, I hope you have not found my prose to be long-winded or pedantic, for I am just trying to explain my purpose adequately. I meant to delve deeper into this area of stigma and add some clarity to it. It is not enough for only myself to retain this knowledge, but I must spread it as far as I can as well. For as former Vice-President Al Gore once declared, “If we want to go far we must go together”. Even though his cause was different his message still rings true, for we must start thinking differently if we are going to move forward. If I have succeeded, then maybe I have given a little solace to the anguished, and made my readers a bit more enlightened.

Doug Harris is in his fifth year at CSUSM, and is pursuing his bachelor’s degree in literature and writing studies. He loves reading and writing as a way of expressing himself, and exploring life, all at once. He is a proud twenty-eight-year-old introverted and highly sensitive young man, with a mild case of autism as well perseveres through several mental health issues. Overall, he is thankful, fortunate and glad to have the opportunity to thrive at this wonderful school, and pave the way for me to have a worthwhile life going forward.

Narcissist

Content Warning: Mention of Suicidal Ideation

I was my mother’s emotional support animal. As a child, I would bring her tissues from the bathroom to blot her eyes and blow her nose when she cried and I would hold her until she stopped. She cried a lot and I never knew why, just that I could sometimes make her stop. Once, when my mother was crying, I told her that the angels said she shouldn’t cry. She wasn’t an avid Christian―she didn’t have it in her to be dedicated to anything but bad habits―but for some reason this stuck with her. I think it made her believe I was some kind of prophet or medium; that I had an ability to commune with forces unseen and she took comfort from it. In reality, I was a child that needed a larger and more magical entity than myself to comfort my mother and decided the alleged words of an angel speaking through me was something my mother would listen to. She did. I never received the same comfort. My mother never kissed, hugged, or told me she loved me. One night, I went to her room, hugged and kissed her goodnight and told her I loved her. For a long while, I did this every night. When I realized it was never going to be reciprocated, I never did it again. 

When I grew older, she would keep me home rather than allow me to go to a friend’s house. She would tell me no, and when I asked her why she would say, “Because.” I grew frustrated with this and took initiative. I started planning everything precisely with no obligations for my mother. I planned a ride there, I planned a ride back, I did my chores and then some beforehand, I finished my homework, and then I would ask her. She would tell me no, and when I asked her why she would say, “Because.” I stopped taking no for an answer, and found that if I became a thorn in her side, and if I kept asking why, and if I kept telling her all of the things I did to be able to go, and all of the arrangements I made, and if I got loud, and if I got persistent, and if I pestered, she would break and let me go just to get me to stop. I didn’t care what I had to do, as long as I got out of that house. I realized later she didn’t want me to go because she didn’t want to be alone. She didn’t want to spend time with me, she didn’t want to have dinner together, she didn’t want me to help her clean. She just wanted the peace of mind of having me in the same house; the peace of mind that if she was going to be alone, I was going to be alone along with her. The more she tried to keep me close and caged, the more I fought to get away. I would leave the house for months at a time, washing my underwear in a friend’s bathroom sink until the spell broke and I was dropped off at home and I went back to devising a way to break free again. She blamed me for this later, telling me I left her in that house alone when she needed me, but I had lost interest a long time ago in preening and tending to her preservation as if she were a troubled plant determined to rot.

She would tell me things that other parents knew to keep to themselves. I asked her if she loved me and she told me she didn’t because I was being annoying. She would complain about my father not paying child support and sent me as a collector for my father’s debt. She would tell me of all the things she could possibly take him to court for and all of the petty ways she could possibly do to make his life worse. She would tell me that she was struggling to pay bills and that we were going to lose the house. She told me it was my fault I didn’t hide my Christmas and birthday money better and that’s why it was stolen by the drug addict “friend” she let roam the house unsupervised. She told me if I didn’t start behaving she would send me to live with my dad. Then―when she realized I would go live with him of my own volition―she told me she would kill herself. She told me I was a selfish, heartless bitch. I asked her who she thought I got it from.

Haley Smith (she/her) is a fourth-year Creative Writing major with a certificate in Copyediting and Publishing at the University of Cincinnati. She was a poetry editor for the Fall 2023 issue of Short Vine, the University of Cincinnati’s undergraduate literary journal. She wants to be an editor and author in the future. She loves fiction, poetry, and is recovering from her life being swallowed whole by the Sarah J. Maas universe. In her free time, she likes to spend time with her daughter (who also happens to be a puppy), read, and find reasons to buy “a little treat.”

My Father’s Daughter

           Ask any girl that looks like her father and she will tell you there is nothing less flattering than being reminded of it. I can confidently say it first-hand. It’s something I have been told for a long time, particularly by my mother. There will be times she’ll look at me, stare for a moment, and say, “Eres igualita a tu papa.” You’re just like your dad. I’ll be honest when I say it used to bother me quite a bit. Especially when she’d say this to me after they divorced when I was 15 years old. In the beginning of their divorce, saying I was just like my dad wasn’t about the physical aspects–it was an insult. Something she usually said during a fight or an argument we were having.

           Eventually, she stopped using my dad as an insult. But the damage had been done. I hated being compared to him. Hated the idea that I looked like him. I was adamant that I was nothing like him. It took a long time before I could accept the way she would gaze at my face, smile, and say those familiar words: You’re just like your dad.

           But there’s really no denying it. I am… just like my dad. I have his face. The same round face ridden with moles. The same giant forehead I hide behind my hair. I look in the mirror and the female version of him stares back at me.

           Our similarities transcend our looks. I’m left-handed like he is. We have the same mean, crude sense of humor. When I was little, our favorite activity was seeing who could pick on each other more. I still fondly remember the way we used to tease each other, trying to one up the other. We even have the same taste in music. We listen to bands like Led Zeppelin and The Doors–a coincidence I didn’t even know about until long after we stopped living in the same house.

Maria Zaragoza is a writer based in San Diego, CA. She enjoys writing historical fiction and supernatural stories. Her favorite genre to read is magical realism. She has her associates in Media Communication and is also getting her associates in English. She expects to move on to her bachelor’s degree next year. She loves television and her ultimate goals are to obtain her Master’s, write a novel, and write for TV. Aside from writing, movies and tv, her passions include books, animals, and music. Music often has helped her create ideas for her stories. She also hopes to one day travel. 

The Pond

Summer in Virginia is what my mother would call “stinkin’ hot.” High praise coming from a Texan that loves nothing more than sweltering heat. Virginia brings additional layers to the oppression: suffocating humidity, gnats, and mosquitoes the size of pterodactyls. Vacations were spent escaping bugs and heat. No one who owned a pool associated with folks from our side of town. We didn’t have a way to get there if they did. 

My best friend Chris and I shared a love for all things Iron Maiden and annoying the hell out of his sister. He had air conditioning, heat, and cable television in his house making his place the preferred place for hanging out. On rare occasions, we would do stuff at my house. We took off to the woods whenever the heat became insufferable. Our goal was to reach the pond far back into the woods in front of my house. The danger was passing through the initial opening of the trail that started just as we crossed the street.

We lived in the woods and at the pond for the better part of ages ten to thirteen years old. While the neighborhood had a lot of kids our age, there were also a lot of angry teens in the 16-18 age range. This was a recipe for an ass-beating. We were always certain that the older boys were going to kill us or that we would be kidnapped just for being on their turf. The leader of this group was a 16-year-old named Kevin. He lived in the house next door to mine.  

We feared Kevin and were convinced that he was the shittiest person on the planet. He wore Army fatigues. His haircut was the unfortunate style known as the Mullet; we called it the Kentucky waterfall. I’m not trying to shame the guy for having acne, but it looked like someone set his face on fire and stomped it out with golf cleats. He kept a loose stash of beer, cigarettes, and an odd variety of his father’s magazines at the entrance to the trail camouflaged by a row of bushes. All within eyeshot of the dead-end street right where Jesus could see them. Chris and I had never been within 10 feet of Kevin without a beating. Kevin was the “he who shall not be named” level of evil.

One step off the road into the trail initiated paralyzing anxiety. We knew the perils that lie ahead. Stinkweed, honeysuckle, and rotting earth assaulted our smell. Balance was thrown off by decaying leaves and soggy Virginia red clay earth. We stood at the top of a tiny hill that marked the beginning of the trail, shaking at the thought of passing the next 50 feet. A quick visual scan assured us that there was no one there to hurt us. Chris takes the first step, the ground giving way busting his ass backward into the slop. The tension subsides as we laugh to tears. I gather enough nerve to proceed and perform a videotape replay of Chris’s performance. Our laughter ceases as we turn to notice Kevin’s stash. He wasn’t there but had been there recently.   

We walked in a single file along the path to the left. Low hunter-green bushes framed our track. The canopy overhead shielded us from the blazing radiance of the sun reducing the agony of the mid-day July heat. Our footing improved to the level of a wet sponge as we trekked our course. We progressed further to the final section of the path, overgrown with kudzu and bushes armed with surgical needle thorns. We pushed through the gauntlet of nature hell bleeding from every limb, arriving at the pond. The treetops opened allowing rays of sunshine, focusing attention on our Shangri-La, the pond.

The pond wasn’t always a pond. In its normal occupation, the pond was a slow-flowing creek with a beginning somewhere near Chris’s house filled with crawdads and tadpoles. It flowed through a grate and on to the James River. Every year or so, teenagers from God knows where would tie a rope to a piece of plywood, damming the creek. Evidence that we were not the only people who have sought respite from the oppressive heat. Pabst Blue Ribbon cans, burned-out campfires, and cigarette butts littered the shallow banks of the pond. It didn’t matter. We were thankful they supported our love of the pond.

It never failed. At some point, some evil jackass would pull the plywood, draining the pond to its natural state as a creek. The death of both plants and animals hung in the air. Shoes were lost in the grotesque pudding that was once the bottom of the pond. We were livid at the thought of anyone who would fail to recognize its wondrous beauty.  

We enjoyed the Pond when there was one to be enjoyed.  

We spent less time at the pond as we grew older. We went two years where we did not go into the woods and longer since we had gone to the pond. My time was spent seeking out opportunities to make poor life decisions. We were 15 when we made our last trip to the pond. We were bored from watching too many movies that we weren’t supposed to watch and growing stir-crazy from being inside Chris’s house for too long. Rarely did we start our walk to the pond from Chris’s house. I have no idea why. It was an easier path to walk. There was nothing scary from his direction.  

We set off down his steep backyard towards the creek. From this direction, it was shallow enough to walk in the creek itself. There were branches, old appliances, and tires strewn across its width.  

We crossed over a fallen birch with rotted plywood laying across it. 

The gentle gurgle of flowing water changed pitch.

A black cast iron pipe terminated at the floor of the creek

An intentional hole was cut into the side of the pipe.

Soggy white and brown tinged paper hung loosely out of the hole

“What was that?”  I said.

“I don’t know.”

“Oh God, Oh God, Oh God,” I mumbled.

I had a panic attack. The breath was knocked out of me. We jump the tree, walking on water all the way back to Chris’s house.  

I lost a lot of innocence that day. Hope in nature and humanity was lost. We never spoke to anyone about the creek or pond again. Life was painful enough without alerting the world that we liked to swim in a pond full of sewage.

Joseph Towles is a writer based out of Chula Vista, California. He found writing while in recovery from multiple brain injuries, PTSD, strokes, and seizures. Writing saved his life. When not writing, he enjoys snowboarding, playing drums, and spending time with his family.