Warm Smoke in November

Visual Art by Kumi Sweely

It had to happen. Eventually, it had to happen. You knew it, and I knew it, and last week it finally did. You made it seem so easy, so flawless, so… perfect. I do hope it was easier for you than for it’s being for me. You were always so scared of that moment, but when it finally came you performed as if you had been rehearsing for it your entire life, behind everyone’s back. But I know it was as unexpected for you as it could have been for anyone else. I know because I could see the turbulence in your eyes when you knew it was going to happen; I could see it as clearly as the fog that used to escape your mouth when you sang to me in the cold. It sometimes seemed as if it were your soul, which you were singing out. But it was just water vapor, and the turbulence in your eyes was nothing more than tears pouring out. I tried to dry them, but they only kept coming back. So eventually I just held you in my arms and wished that you would give me some of your grief; that we could maybe split up the sorrow so that you wouldn’t have to deal with all of it, because like the groceries that you brought home everyday and the way that you so incessantly insisted in carrying all the bags at the same time, it was too much. And when you looked into my eyes and said thank you, a brief moment of happiness came over me like a lonely patch of blue in a cloudy sky, because I knew that was your way of letting me know that I had helped, with some of it, at least. Still, the tears kept pouring out.
After that, you tried to be brave. You stopped showing your fear. I could still see it, but I guess that is only because of all the years I have spent with you. In some ways I understood why you did this. You had, after all, quite some pride. But on the other hand, the whole world would’ve understood if you had cried yourself dry, and they would’ve brought you buckets filled to the brim so that you could keep going. Because at night, when you lied in that white bed thinking that everyone else was asleep, I could see the glistens of the drops that roamed in your face, sliding from your eyes as if they were cars driving full speed towards the dead end of your hand wiping them away.

You used to wonder how they were able to do it. Breaking it to someone, just like that. And not just anyone, either; we had been going there for at least 6 months before he told you. Before he told us. But those 6 months meant nothing when he walked into that sterile room to announce that the ghosts of those cigarettes before, during, and after the concerts had finally returned to haunt you and we didn’t even need to ask when before he said that that November, that cold November in which the trees had lost their shame and had grown nude in the bone shattering cold, that November would be the final twist, the demolishing epilogue for the novel that your life had become.

Now you’re buried 5 feet under the soil on which I stand, and I would’ve cried myself dry had God not sent this rain so I could keep going.

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He Who is Birthed from Suicide’s Loins

 Visual art by Yulia Kuan

VIGNETTE ONE

 

Dear Mom and Dad,

Please pardon the smudges, as writing this is making me tremble.  In a few hours from now, you will walk into the house like always.  “Honey”- you will call- “Darling we’re home.”  Without my response, you will tip-toe around the house, assuming I’m already asleep.  However, No-Doz has put me in an eternal slumber.  I know this news will bring you great misfortune.  Please recognize that this is not your fault, but his.  You have always been the happiness in my life.  Let my ashes swim with the dolphins.

Love Eternally,

J

 

THE PILLS

She looks at us with her lusty eyes.  Lightning tears make war with us, melting us into her.  Slowly, we become her, one by one.  As we individually make our way down her larynx, we are greeted by the residues of her dinner.  And like sugar cubes, we dissolve into her hot lava blood stream.  We float through her, changing her, polluting her.  We graffiti our chemical identities in her brain.  In her, we exceed maximum occupancy of “one every three hours”.  Our colony over-populates her adolescent form.  Slowly, we kill her.

 

No-Doz

Mom’s overdose

Hospitalized

Pumped clean

Saved from her ghost

The hospital- where she met my dad

Alchohol- induced psycophrenic

Tragic

Iliad

Dad’s disease made him call himself Jehova

Mom and Dad fuck

Backseat

Toyota

Positive test

Deciding what’s best

Mother torn

Adoption, abortion, life

Baby me born

VIGNETTE TWO

 

Please refrain from judging my following words, as exposing my soul to a stranger comes with great reluctance.  I pray your promises of confidentiality are legitimate, as only the night sky knows my secrets.  I am writing this in the solace of my four-walled bedroom. I would have no need to write this if not for he, the cause of my recent metamorphosis from lover to single mother.  Looking out my window, I can see the leaves are turning that venom piss color, not unlike the hue of his booze.

Seasons change with love’s rolling tides.

And within my soul, a lost identity hides.

Unwillingly Yours,

J

 

MARAJUANA

We are the shit that turns fathers into criminals.  We tempt the youth generation with our promises of social acceptance and popularity.  We produce burnouts, high school drop-outs, addicts, abusers.  We produce users.  We live in their lung lobes and modify their brains.  We are the writers of tragedy and the murderers of identity.  We bomb their brains with false imagery.  We develop synthetic serenity and plastic euphoria.  Encripting dream-like visions.  Phantasmagoria.

Dad chooses drugs.

The real one he loves.

Paper wrapped green.

Crumbled love dream.

Scream.

Dark.

Moon beam.

 

VIGNETTE THREE

 

Every day, I disappear deeper into my bed of petunias and daffodils.  My tattered comforter provides no comfort at all, as these feelings of inadequacy are becoming me.  These feelings are engulfing me.  Perhaps even killing me.  My caccoon is inhibiting my true-nature as a butterfly. This sorrowed bedroom of lavender and gold suppresses my identity with the passing days.  My son’s eyes are searching for his inadequate mother trapped in hybernation.  And my little boy fears that he’s the cause of my tears.

Unwillingly Yours,

J

PROZAC

We inhabit the bodies of mental hospital patients and housewives.  We create mannequins out of men and fabricated females.  We are the craze of the crazy.  We are guilty murderers with innocent labels.

Tin-foil wrapped wishes

Hershey’s Kisses

Codependent candy dishes

It’s daddy she misses

Diamond tears

I fear those diamond tears

 

VIGNETTE FOUR

 

     Perfect specimen

Absent father, bound with aggression

Bed-trapped mother, lost in depression

Shit births obsession

Compulsion

Disorder

Whorish hands

OCD demands

Tapping

Brain trapping

Checking the lock on the door

“Go do God a favor”

“Die”

“Gay whore”

Peace no more

Afraid of loss

Tap the possession

Anxious obsession leads to depression

Meditation versus medication

Prozac

Remeron

Abilify

Chemical shit gets me by

 

 

 

Now, I’m becoming what’s prescribed to me.  Truth be told, the apple doesn’t fall far from the family tree.

 

 

 

 

 

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The Rebellion

Visual art by Caine Wong.

The nurse closed the hatch and sped away. You aren’t supposed to touch things in museums. But she had. Rebellion. A psychologist would say that it’s because she didn’t do drugs in high school and she lost her virginity on her twenty-fourth birthday. But she knew why, it was because things made by humans were meant to be touched and used. In a thousand years, the scale in the ER she worked in, that hundreds of people stepped on everyday, would be placed behind glass as a valuable untouchable thing. The old footprints on it were history and the new ones would be destruction. And yes, ruining that fifth century BCE artifact even just a little bit made her feel bad. Who knows what she might do next? She smirked and wondered if she could get a way with masturbating while lying down on a sarcophagus.

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No Place Like Home

Visual art by Jing Li

People have a tendency to forget things. They forget things they learn, they forget things they say, and they forget the friends they’ve made. In a world where materialism is the norm, the more we have, the easier it is to forget.

Lately this thought had been rambling around my head a lot. It’s funny, how when you think about something for a long time you start seeing it everywhere you go. In reality, that something has always been there, but it’s not until you think about it that you actually start acknowledging its existence.

Lately I have been noticing people forget. Sometimes they forget who they are, or where they come from. They forget about their true friends and end up abandoning them. Other times they forget about a nonsensical love, or a broken heart. A myriad of people have told me about the feeling one gets when one finally forgets someone who has caused pain, of someone who has harmed. They said they had finally realized how idiotic they were, how, if given the choice somehow, they would never repeat their actions. I nod and agree; only really interested in the landscape passing by the window. Now, don’t get me wrong, I enjoy stories passionately, but after a while of hearing the same things over and over again, even the most interesting fables can turn into tedious sermons. People, for some reason, have a tendency to trust me, which I do not understand. Is it that they pity me? Is my face a trustworthy one? I don’t know. All I know is I’ve been a runaway for about 5 months now. I have hitchhiked about 1,200 miles, and every time I get into a car, or van, or truck, I have had to listen to someone’s story. I haven’t shaved, but thanks to my wondrous age of 15, my facial hair can easily be mistaken for the dirt on my face. I guess people aren’t used to seeing someone as young as me hitchhiking, so they feel sorry for me. I believe they use pity as an excuse to unburden themselves onto someone, anyone, even this dirty 15-year-old kid.

This last ride has left me in the middle of a highway right before a road division, somewhere in the state of Nevada. The sun’s heat has made me regret taking my fur-lined leather jacket. But it has served me well. After all, when I left Milwaukee it was still winter, and the snow and cold would have been a problem if it hadn’t been for this jacket. And to be honest, it wasn’t like I had any other type of clothing I could have packed. But now my long-sleeved shirt smells of sweat, and I finally decide to take it off, not giving much importance to sunburn.

A car drives by, the driver ignoring my signal for him to pick me up. As I walk, I think about the last person that let me hop in.

She was a middle aged woman, with skin as white as milk, like an angel. She drove a green pick-up and spoke with a beautiful southern accent. If I hadn’t been in a different place mentally, I could have had a crush on her. She told me the story of her life, of how her two boys grew tired of her and abandoned her. She told me, with light in her eyes, how she used to play with them when they were younger and all the fun they had. She told me how on stormy days, they would stay inside watching movies, putting quilts over the windows, making forts out of pillows, pretending they were in a theatre. But it all changed when her husband left them. He had grown tired of his daily routine. He thought that if he managed to escape his boring life, he would be happier. She told me how later she would walk with them to the town square in a futile effort to forget what had happened, and she began crying when she remembered how they could escape their reality on those afternoons as they ate ice cream on Main Street. But her boys had grown up to be very independent and had moved away. Although they had kept in touch with her for a while, they eventually stopped talking to her. According to her sons, she was the reason their father had left. She would never be forgiven. But something had come up, and her first son had called her. She was ecstatic to hear her son’s voice, but the happiness didn’t last long. Her smaller boy was in the hospital, and from what she told me, it was really bad. Pneumonia or something like that. Real sad. I had a cousin who once died of pneumonia. Her death shocked me; I had never had anyone close to me die.

     A sudden breeze of cool air snaps me back from my wandering thoughts. Drivers keep passing me by, but my arm aches so I stop making signs. As if they would actually stop to pick me up again. As if anyone really cares I am here. As if anyone really cares for me. Is that reason enough to run away? I don’t know. It was for me, but someone else might swallow it and learn to live with it. But I refuse. I want to live somewhere where people care. Where they care about what happens to me. I want to matter. I wanted to matter. To make a difference. I don’t care now. Things change, people forget, people forgive, and people die. People find a way, or they lose themselves. People have a way of making things different.

My friends all vanished, disappeared under a thin veil of nothingness. Some found a passion in underage drinking. The adrenaline of being above the law combined with alcohol filled them with euphoria. Others moved. They wanted to become rock stars and photographers, but I knew, as everyone did, that it was just a waste of time and that their trip to Hollywood was nothing but misused money. My dad vanished too. He got a promotion, and stopped coming home for weeks at a time. Since it was just me at home, I had to survive on Mac ‘n Cheese and Cocoa Puffs. I started skipping school, and the more I got away with it, the more I enjoyed my new freedom. My mom died when I was very young. I can’t quite remember her, but my dad used to say she was wonderful, so I just believed him. Suddenly, I wished I had known her. A feeling of loneliness began to soak me, but the paradoxical thought that this might get me attention from someone somehow, made me not want to dry it off. After a while I grew tired of this, and figured that if I could make it here, without a father, I could make it anywhere else. And I had made it all the way to this hot, wild, tomb-like desert.

The heat is overbearing. Sweat falls to the road and quickly disappears. Cars do not pass by anymore. Or at least that’s what I think. I have stopped paying attention to the road. The rock I was sitting by lent me her shadow, but it’s noon, and all the shade is gone. I put my sweaty shirt over my head, hoping it will ease my heat. My shoes are destroyed. The only reason I have kept them is because the ground would cook my feet. “Oh well, I’ll take them off when I’m hungry.” I say out loud, and surprise myself. Am I really going crazy? I must be. I must find a car. I have lost the strength to get up, and honestly I don’t think I would get picked up anyway. Maybe I should put my shirt back on. I traveled 1,200 miles with my shirt on. But the heat is suffocating, so I decide I’ll put it on later. For now, I’ll just stay here, next to this rock. A loud car passes by, it’s roaring engine driving my attention back to the road. But the more attention that I give the driver, the more he seems to ignore me. Drivers probably think I’m dead by now. Abandonment. The story of the milk-skinned woman hits me, and I suddenly realize my situation. The human body can only stand a number of days without water. My sweating like a pig will only make dehydration quicker. I only hope death will be brief.  All motionless, all beat up. I made it all the way to this desert but what has changed? Why has luck suddenly flown away from me? Or have these past six months been only a dream? Could this be just a nightmare? I wish it were. I wish I were still home, with the people I loved. What have I done?

People have a tendency to forget things. We forget things we learn, we forget things we say, and we forget friends we’ve make. We forget the love others feel for us, and we forget the love we feel for others. We forget the good times, but we keep the bad times, as if they were an excuse to justify our actions. People forget. I forgot. I forgot all the warmth of my home. I forgot about my dad, and how he always called me when he was away. I forgot my friends, how they phoned me worried when I skipped school and how they cried when they had to move.  I forgot how they wrote home every day. I forgot about all the parties I attended myself. All the fun I had had with my friends. I forgot about my place on earth, and now it’s too late. I forgot about home. I forgot that there’s no place like home.

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Culinary Arts & the Cost of Creativity

Visual art by Chloe Kim.

There was a time, that when I could no longer draw pleasure from the repetition of daily life, I turned to food for a sense of satisfaction. For most, food was a necessity. I begged to differ. It had long since intrigued me as to why culinary arts courses were not included in schools and universities, when visual arts and music were. Perhaps what separated the culinary arts is the fundamentality of food. Food is the most basic prerequisite for survival, unlike music or art, both of which provoke thought yet do little for starving children. Ironically, the importance of food to our survival appears to have lowered our opinion of culinary culture. The word “food” too often brings proletarian connotations, conjuring up images of ravenous youth mindlessly devouring plates of their daily bread, whereas “music” or “art” seem to be reserved for the elite; those who have the luxury to explore spirituality, away from the monotony of everyday life.

There was a time when every meal brought a surprise, and I would walk away from the dinner table relishing aftertastes of pleasure. Amidst the humdrum of day to day family life, I changed things up by introducing new items of food to our dining repertoire. I could not understand why people would make claims such as “I don’t like tomatoes” or “I don’t eat cheese”. What do you mean by “I don’t like tomatoes”? Tomatoes and mozzarella topped with Pesto sauce in an Italian Caprese, or Chinese Ji Dan Chao Xi Hong Shi (Fried tomato and eggs)? May I also point out that there are infinite varieties of cheese. Do you not like blue cheese, cheddar cheese, cream cheese or goat cheese? Every type of raw produce meant infinite possibilities for creative expression. Every dish became a product of creativity, a testament to human will power to utilize, explore and create. To generalize these products of creativity was a crime, for sure. For me, a gourmet dish was a work of art, a masterpiece half complete. The other half, of course, was eating it.

I saw dishes as latent emotions, waiting to be released at the tongue. As spicy fish danced provocatively on my taste buds, and dark chocolate lulled my numbing tongue, I could not help but become affected by the empathetic nature of dining. Each tasting became a sensual experience of another world, an opening trapdoor to escape into that other realm of the imagination, defined by tastes and colors. Colors, splashes of colors. There’s nothing quite like the euphoria I gained from seeing a dish for the first time, and being shocked into awareness by its brilliantly imperfect array of bold colors.

Now I see it differently. I cannot enjoy Coq Au Vin without the deafening realization that my pleasure must be derived from the death of another being. The deep, colorful hues and rich aromas of the dish no longer entice me with their aesthetic appeal; rather, I find myself insensitive to its artistry.  I am preoccupied with images of chicken, struggling to escape the grasp of a man’s hand that brandishes the fatal butcher’s knife as if it is an insignificant toy. Or worse-they could be silently awaiting their preordained executions, acknowledging that their sole purpose in life was to become part of culinary “art”. The knife strikes timely-as it should, for the chicken’s life is subservient to the needs of humans. Then the next chicken is brought up for slaughter. The ensuing bloodbath may simply be erased by a blood-stained mop. Yet not even the knowledge that nutrition is the basis of my survival can erase the daunting images of blood and death. It only cements the irony that one’s life must be derived from the death of another’s.

Perhaps I opt for vegetarianism, and abstain from consuming mammals altogether. Vegetables don’t protest, they don’t flutter their wings like chickens, so I should eat them instead-I can hear the argument formulating already.

There are mushrooms on my plate, supposedly to “enhance the flavor of the chicken”. Suddenly I am flooded with visions of mushrooms, scores upon scores of them, rooted robustly into the firm earth. Their watchful existence brings a sense of peace, providing me with some of nature’s rare moments of tranquility. Then the peace is disturbed-as it always is-by humans plucking up the mushrooms, children tugging away at their roots. What they leave behind is a scarred field, with the pits serving as remnants of abducted lives. Some see vegetarianism as a compromise; I see murder as murder.

What frightens me is the notion that the necessity of food is irrelevant, the possibility that even if we as humans did not need to eat, we would still continue to do so. This is a thought that pesters me day and night, for I am forced to recognize the plausibility of said argument. The mere concept of high-end restaurants, luxury food marketing and the existence of so-called food critics demonstrate that food is no longer restricted to serving our most basic needs, but has also become a source of satisfaction and often a symbol of prestige. This is an observation that I once welcomed with joy, since it meant the elevation of the status of food from a commodity to a luxury good, comparable to that of art or music. I had championed cuisine as a stimulus of emotions and creativity, ardently defending my beliefs in the name of art and pleasure.

The origin of my transformation is an episode of the reality TV series Masterchef USA, in which a Hindu woman is forced to kill a crab in order to advance in the cooking competition. The contestant-who had never killed an animal in her life-was presented with a dilemma; she would either kill the crab, neglecting her religious beliefs, or save the crab, which would bring her emotional satisfaction but result in her elimination. It was with tears that she finally flung the wriggling crab into the boiling pot of water. Upon tasting the completed dish, Judge Gordon Ramsey praised the dish for its unique flavor and seasoning, and then proceeded to comment “I am sure this crab would have been happy to give its life for this dish.” The reasoning behind his justification of killing the crab is fallible, to say the least. The crab would have been happy to give its life for what, a transient taste of pleasure on our tongues? Does the honor of the crab’s death rest on the flavors of its corpse, now? The assumption that any living being would be willing to sacrifice its own life in exchange for another’s creativity is bizarre logic that I cannot comprehend, and it is this bizarre logic that led me to question the morality of cuisine.

I now see chefs as dead animal processors, pondering over how to best present a piece of corpse. My appreciation of culinary dishes is tainted by blood, and my once purely aesthetic satisfaction is marred by the awareness that I am chewing carcasses of the deceased. It does not matter that I do not physically partake in killings; by eating their products I have become complicit in the murderer’s crime. Every meal is now a vicarious experience of another murder. As if the world did not have enough murders already! I can sense the gradual deterioration of my sensitivity to death, numbed by the repeated acknowledgements of plant and animal slaughter.

I feel compelled to view the murdering of animals through the grander perspective of life and death. Nature dictates that certain living organisms feed off other living organisms in order to survive. On the life-death continuum, the killing of a couple of chickens and crabs appear as insignificant events bound to occur sooner or later. Yet it is when the production of food surpasses our most elemental requirements for survival, when I try to view dishes through a less animalistic perspective, that I am bombarded by these recurring portrayals of gore and violence.

The only conclusion I can draw from my experiences is that creativity comes with sacrifice. These animals-aren’t they victims of our ingenuity? This phenomenon of sacrificial innovation occurs imperceptibly everywhere in our daily lives. Chemical products may only be deemed “safe to use” for humans if they have undergone rigorous testing on lab rats. Even humans are sacrificed; the advancement of technology is often based upon the previous products’ adverse effects on humans. More tragically, the potency of military technology must be determined from weapon tests in war. The irony of us imposing deaths on others is that we ourselves are also victims of the omnipotent death. Perhaps we derive gratification from imposing death on others, but one day, it will be imposed upon us, as if mocking our attempts at recreating it. And aren’t our lives solely dedicated to serving the grand scheme of human society, just as the chicken’s life is dedicated to serving us? The question of whether it matters to the chicken if its corpse was cooked beautifully or thrown away is as pertinent as whether we are affected by societal developments after our deaths. My meals no longer stand as a testament to creativity, but as a testament to the cruelty of this world, a testament to death. And that is why, when I see the familiar hamburger I had once grown to love, I have no choice but to shudder in fear.

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Boyd Fortin

When I own a gun I can shoot the snakes right off the ground. Pick them off when they slither out of the grasses, collect their bodies and sling them over my shoulders like belts of ammo. I’ve been in Texas forever, collecting rattlesnakes like clues, but they’ve never told me anything. Creeping up on them where the grass grows high, jump on their backs and slice off their heads before they can twist around and bite you. Stick the knife in and rip through the scales, direct as silver, though you’re only using steel. I carry them home in the red dusk, when it’s too dark to see the snakes flicker in the grass. More likely they get you than you them if you’re killing in the dark.

When I was six, my dad bought me a plastic toy gun. Orange-tipped, with rounds of caps like plastic flowers. He bought it at the hardware store, and whenever he went back for replacement drill bits, he’d buy another pack of caps. I’d shoot almost all of them, until I had one round left, which I’d save until he bought another set or left for good.

I’ve killed a lot of rattlesnakes. I don’t know how many. I started when I was eight and haven’t stopped since. I’m thirteen now. You can’t see them when you look out at the grass from the porch. It looks like a wasteland, flat and lifeless. But I haven’t run out of snakes in five years. I don’t even have to walk far to find them, behind my mother’s house where their thick bodies coil in the dust. I thought they would be gone eventually. I thought if I just killed enough of them I could wipe out the species. Or at least scare the rest of them out of Texas. But I guess I should know by now that you can’t make anything go away. Things leave if they want and stay if they don’t. Doesn’t matter what you do.

My dad left when I was seven and three quarters. Nearly two years after he bought me that cap gun. Nearly two years of saving the last round, but it was only a precaution, really. I never thought I wouldn’t get any more. But then he packed his worn-out shirts and jeans in two plastic drugstore bags, the red Thank Yous gleaming absurdly down the bulging sides as he slammed out the front door, screaming “Fuck you!”

The first time I killed a snake was at the 1974 Rattlesnake Round-Up. Everyone in Sweetwater goes to it. A hundred some people in white aprons with dark purple blood smeared across their cheeks, hands clutching the limp carcasses of snakes like ice cream cones. I killed my first snake, sliced its head clean off and gutted it with the same knife. Tore its body straight down the middle the way the barber from Main Street instructed, as he stood over the cooler of beer and 7Up, cleaning the dried blood out from under his nails with a toothpick.

After my dad left, my mom lost about half her body weight. Looked like a stork with her skinny legs and a throat that always looked too tired to eat even if she tried. Flaps of skin hanging from her chin to the tendons in her neck, which always seemed over-stretched, like it might collapse, crushing her windpipe till she gasped like a fish out of water and died contorted on the floor with her face mottled blue. I dream that a lot. My mom dying like a fish.

I can’t imagine dying though I’ve tried till it made my chest ache. The closest I came was the summer of 1978, when a snake bit me on the inside of my arm. It was the only time I got bit. Jumped on its back, but my grip on the knife was loose, and the snake swung its head round at me before I could cut it off. I screamed till my voice cracked and cried though I was twleve years old. My mother came running ‘cause I was only a few yards out from the back porch and got me to the hospital in my dad’s old pick-up truck, so I never saw my life flash before my eyes like they say you do. Or maybe I did, and I just couldn’t tell the difference between the grass plains and red dust sliding past the car windows and that lightning synopsis of my life, since they’re really just the same thing.

My parents moved to Texas from Nevada, where my dad worked at a hotel in Las Vegas. He said it was no place to raise a kid, so they went to Lubbock while my mother was pregnant, then Sweetwater once I was born, though she didn’t want to. I think about how the Texas dust is ingrained in my skin in a way that soap and water can’t wash off and how the desert has curled up inside me with the other things that eat me from the inside out. But my parents aren’t even from here, and still the place is in my DNA as much as they are. No one ends up where they were born, but somehow I don’t think I’ll ever get out.

When I was bit, I had to stay in the hospital four days. Rolling Plains Medical Center, second floor. I mostly just remember it being dark and feeling like I was in a movie. People think of hospitals as white, but this one was a disappointing beige, with blankets the sick yellow of pus. It was the same hospital I was born in, and I thought it would be symbolic to die there too, but I didn’t. I wrote my name on the bed post, ‘Boyd Fortin’ in silver Sharpie, then wished I hadn’t. I didn’t want to trap myself in there. Maybe I had a premonition of my return without realizing, and that’s why I wrote it. But when I went back a year later it was gone.

I found my old cap gun the night before I left in my closet. I wrapped it in the apron from my first Round-Up, the one I wore every time I killed snakes, but didn’t need anymore. I wanted to do something symbolic, burn or bury it like a corpse, but those things are always meaningless. I look for symbols everywhere, but mostly I just believe in chaos. Everything’s a mess, spinning in space towards a black hole, a great empty cavity like the one in my liver that forced me back to this hospital. And the whole universe is moving so fast, the earth spinning and the cells disintegrating in my guts, but you wouldn’t know it, in this cinderblock room where everything seems still. They repainted the walls. Still beige.

They found the tapeworm three months ago, a few days before my thirteenth birthday, which I spent in an X-ray machine. I’d been nauseous for weeks, living on ginger ale and children’s Tylenol ‘cause my stomach hurt too bad for anything else. At the time, I thought it felt like needles stabbing my side, but now I imagine tiny teeth chewing at my liver. There’s a hole there, and lots of pus. The doctor showed me the slides. Gray smudges of organs around a skinny white slash that dictated my future. That’s the worm, he said, watching my face as I nodded.

If everything really is pointless, and I think it is, I wonder why the snakes are still here. If I look carefully, I can see them out the window from my hospital bed. It hurts, propping myself up on my elbows enough to look over the sill, but if I’m sick anyway, it hardly matters. They blend in with the dust, but I’ve learned what to look for. Flickers of sunlight on the scales, slight stirs of grass. And if they’re out there, alive, and I’m in here, dying, I could prove that the world is ruled by chaos, ‘cause I could kill them. I could slice their heads off and gut them. I could if I could only lift myself from this bed. But sometimes, I think that worms and snakes aren’t so different, and then I wonder if there is such a thing as fate.

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DOOR 29

Visual art by Shusu Hsu.

You are a rat in the machine. You are running.  Run you bastard rat run. You have always been running like this. Always been scrabbling along the constantly turning wheel, claws slipping on the grease. Can you even remember how it was before you started running? Oh how they taunt you. They wave success before you. Münster success. Dangling on fraying rope. You can almost taste the sweat dripping from the cheese. Taste it between your razor sharp incisors. It will be delicious. Then they inject you again. It hurts. It burns. It burns like… It burns like the last shot they gave you. The last boost of steroids they sent coursing through your blood.  That is all you know anymore. The way your muscles tense. The way they spasm. The searing in your chest as you run. One day these shots will let the military men in the middle east shoot one more civilian before they curl up to die in the dust. But how could you know this? You are a rat.  Why should I tell you this story? I do not want to talk to a rat. You do not care.

 

Run. Cheese. Run. Run. Cheese.

 

Now you are Mrs. Brown. This will be much more fitting. You are as simple as your name. You are of medium height, medium stature, and moderate temperament.  Your hair is brown. Short cut. So you do not burn it off in a cylinder of hydrochloric acid.  You like to keep your hair in relatively nice condition and are hoping to seduce a man that works in communications. You never will. I can tell you this because it is a given. It is no surprise. You wrap your coat around yourself. It is white and reaches down to your ankles. Something else to do with hydrochloric acid. The safety procedures are all that matter anymore. If you keep safe then you will be able to spend another evening defrosting a Kids Meal while watching Desperate Military Wives. You feel empathy for them, but you are more desperate than any of them, Mr. Brown will never come home.  He will shit himself dead in a small outhouse in Afghanistan. Gonorrhea. A warrior’s death.

 

Maybe you now know who you are. Know the semantics of Mrs. Brown, and thus can be told your relation to the story.

 

You wake up and brush your teeth. Tom’s All Natural toothpaste. It tastes like acid rain but you do not care. It is healthy. You edit that statement. It tastes like Hydrocloric acid. The PH of rain is not nearly high enough to affect the taste buds. But, acid on the other hand. Oh how you love the acid. You hang your chemical proof trench coat over your shoulders. Safety first kids.  On the walk down to your car you pause. Today feels like a good day to stay home. To sip a mug of cocoa in front of the telly. Your intuition is usually very good. But. You have never missed a day of work before. Your car is a grey one. It is made by Toyota and promised to be able to handle in the snow. A pair of small fluffy dice dangle above the dash board and the oil hasn’t been changed in months. You have only crashed it twice. A record. The dents barely show anyway. Neither do the coffee stains on the upholstery. You fire up your car and drive to work. Poor Mrs. Brown. You should have stayed home today.

 

You walk into the laboratory. Everything is starch white. It reminds you of a movie  that played last night on the SyFy channel. Everyone except the main character died. The main character then realized he had become part of the system and hung himself in the starch white laboratory. The movie made you cry for three hours. You walk down the hallway and notice a sharp smell. It must be a new cleaning solution. Gleaming before you is the number 29. That is your office. You open the door and scream.

 

That is all you need to do. Scream.

Run. Cheese. Run. Cheese. Cheese. Run.

 

Now, and you will like this part. This part is exciting. We look back roughly two hours. 120 minutes. 7200 seconds. You are now a man named Paul Schneider. I will call you Paul. Not because you have any more right to a surname than Mrs. Brown, but the name Schneider catches the tongue. Catches it like a noose. You have a bristly mustache, much like your father did and live a slightly more exciting life than Mrs. Brown. But you do not need to know this. All you need to know of yourself is that you are very timely. You have a small green Swiss Military Watch. Not only does it tell you the time in 30 different countries but it also tells you the temperature in Mumbai and whether there will be rain or fog next week. It is a shame for you that it does not tell the future. You just had to come early didn’t you Paul?

 

You wake up at 6:30 in the morning.  Still rubbing sleep from her eyes your wife complains about you getting up so early. She looks beautiful like this, trapped in a cocoon of sheets. You pause momentarily to stare at her, feeling a momentary pang of guilt. The guilt passes. You remember what she looks like. Who she is. She is only beautiful because you can not see her through the royal crimson sheets. You had hoped the sheets would add spice to your crusting sex life. It only gathered more dust. You had married her for convenience anyway. You have been splitting the rent with her for the past two months, but she will leave you soon. It is not even a guess. It is a given. Your savings have been exponentially decreasing. You even  drew out a small graph of the practical half lives of your wealth. It did not help you save any money. You can attribute the impending poverty to the bike insurance you have been paying out your ass.  BUT. You had to have the Kawasaki. It goes so fast. And the looks women give you are so fresh.

 

You take an hour long jog, checking your cardiometer every 10 minutes. You want to be in top condition. After your jog you fire up the Ferrari. It rumbles in the most pleasing way. You drop by the florists briefly on the way to work. Despite the protests of the florist, you buy a bushel of aging roses. You deny the discount she offers you for the wilted flowers. A matter of pride. You do not know much about flowers anyway. You don’t think Mrs. Brown does either. You know courting Mrs. Brown will only serve to damage your relationship with the wife further. I can not fathom what it is, but you see something special in the stupid scientist.  You don’t have very good taste in women do you Paul?

You drive to the laboratory. You unlock the sliding glass doors at the front of the building. You want to go through the front door today. Stride in your moment of triumph. If only you had taken the side entrance. You would have noticed that the side door was slightly ajar. Would have saved so many lives.

 

You walk down the gleaming hallway to a door marked 29. You remark how unimpressive the bronze numbers look. They haven’t been polished in days. This is Mrs. Browns office. It is also where they keep the rats. You hate the rats. You and Mrs. Brown both. You work with them in the name of science however. The stupid creatures could rot otherwise. The door is locked. Mrs. Brown has not been here yet.  The keys work for all the doors however. An oversight of the management. You step into the office. Something is wrong. You know it but you haven’t placed it yet. You set the roses down on Mrs. Brown’s desk and stare at them briefly. Maybe one day the two of you will call it love. Spine still crawling, you look upwards at the ceiling of the dark room. A single empty noose recedes from the gloom. The rats are in a frenzy. You tense.

 

The chloroform works so fast.

Run. Cheese. Run. Cheese. Cheese.

 

You might be confused at this point. Might wonder of the fates of Paul and Mrs. Brown. Neither of them mattered. But you are empathetic. Human. You are not the only one that is confused. Detective Ramiro is confused. You two must briefly inhabit the same space to understand the minutia of the next part. You are Detective Ramiro.

 

You pour over your notes and try to ignore the bustle and commotion of the scientists around you. None of it makes any sense. You never wanted to work in Criminal Investigation. Hell. You wanted to be a pilot. You were nearsighted. Your notes are written on a small pad of carbon paper. The lab provided it for you. You have been trying to work on your organization. They say it is a necessary trait for detectives. You still forgot your pen, however, so your notes are scrawled in a glaring yellow highlighter. Three names are written on the page with a single phrase next to each. Brown: Death by acid burns. Schneider: Death by hanging. Revere: Death by hanging. It looks like suicide. You want it to be suicide. You know it is not suicide. As a detective you rely more on your instincts than intuition. You fancy yourself more of a Marlowe than a Sherlock. You do not realize that you are neither. You are a failed CU Boulder student. Your parents provided for you since. They even bought you your position into the police force. You are a trust fund detective. You hadn’t wanted that. You had wanted to fly. Wanted to spread your wings and soar through the desert skies, raining destruction from above. You had dreams of glory back then. They had kept you going those aspirations, gotten you through all the doldrums of your mediocre high school education. But then they had dubbed you 20/70. Blind, naive child. Now, you think you are Marlowe. You think you are a fictional character and nothing anyone says will convince you otherwise.

You consult your notes one more time. The murders must have come from within the company. There is no evidence of a break in. There are too many people around to concentrate. You begin to pace, lost in thought. You turn a corner into a deserted hallway. A figure appears at the end of it. You squint at them but cannot make out a face. A true detective needs no glasses. The figure begins to walk towards you, pulling an indistinguishable object from its pocket. You squint. A shot rings out. It begins. But you do not care.

 

You are in too much pain to care.

It begins.

Run. Cheese. Run.

 

But it begins to soon. So many more voices need their say.  How can you truly understand what happened if you do not listen to the screams?

You must now go back in time roughly four hours. Mrs. Brown and Paul have already fulfilled their respective destinies. You are now MR. Revere. Do not worry. This one will be short. Rather like Mr. Revere’s life.

 

You are part of the cleaning crew. You get spit on just like the rest of maintenance. You hate everything about your job. It has aged you prematurely. A scraggled beard clings to your face and your skin is simply asking for skin cancer. You think you will die of said cancer. You are wrong. But had things gone differently, you probably would be right. You are planning to quit today. To slam your papers down on your managers desk and begin your life anew.  Maybe you will go to Hawaii. Buy a small yacht. Live a life of leisure on the high sea. Doesn’t that sound majestic? Yet, some things are just not meant to be. You believe in heaven however. Subscribe to all of the churches whims. You even have a small Jesus that dangles from your third ear piercing. By your beliefs, this will be the greatest favor you have ever received.

 

The sun has yet to rise. It is maybe 8:00. Fuck winter. You walk up to the front of the laboratory. Something catches your eye. A massive luminescent sign pulses slowly above the doorway. It reads Los Alamos Laboratory. A dark shape swings peacefully from it, framed by the neon light. You take a step closer. It is a body. You panic. You run. It is what any animal would do. You needn’t be ashamed. But. You run into the laboratory. That is stupid. You should be ashamed. Panic has such a persuasive voice. You practically run into my arms. It is as though I have beckoned you to me. I do not want to kill you. You hate the place as much as I do.

 

Sacrifices have to be made.

Run. Cheese. Cheese. CHEESE.

 

Can you see yet? You with your all seeing eye? you who has seen through the eyes of the murdered? Can you hear how the swine squeal? Do you not loathe them as well? These men of the new millennia. These fathers of a new era of science. You have seen pathetic lives. They are just a few examples. The first few brave raindrops that spatter against the pavement before the storm. Don’t you want it to rain? I promise, it will be refreshing. But first. You must see I am not heartless. I gave them a chance to repent. You must walk now as my herald. You are Gerald “Jerry” Graves. Your story starts the evening before the unfortunate demise of Mrs. Brown.

 

You can not sleep. The Nyquil, the sleeping pills, the crying, the masturbation, none of it will sate you. But why should it? You have been spared. You know you have been spared. He had come up to you, the only man who had really, truly, been  your friend. He had told you of the day you would die. You toss again, entangling your legs in your sheet. Sleep will not bless you tonight. You have been spared. You have been warned. But it brings you no solace. Somewhere in your body you yearn to be the savior. Too be idolized as the hero. You are not to fault. For your whole life you have had more nicknames than friends. AT first you considered them one in the same. It was all In jest. A cruel jest, where you were forced to play the clown. Yet you feel no resentment.  You feel no need for vengeance, you only want acceptance. That is where we differ. You run your eyes over the assorted The Amazing Spider-Man first comics you have treasured since your childhood. They are devoid of their usual entertainment. Dead to you. You never really grew up did you Jerry? I suppose you never will.

 

You rise from bed the next morning and report to the lab an hour later than usual. Exactly as instructed. You wear all black. You turn your Cartman and Kenny shirt inside out to hide the logo. You would never do that. But you are not really yourself anymore are you?  Your compatriots barely notice you in the bustle of the day.  They barely even register the events of the morning. To wrapped up in their own personal agendas to take their eyes from their work for but a moment to feel mourning for Mrs. Brown. True humanitarians. It strikes you as strange, that they are still working. Working as though nothing happened. It does not matter. You know how they will die. Miss Beryl, a woman you have always felt a strong attraction to walks by. She is wearing tight shorts and a tank top. You feel a tear on your cheek. She will die at twelve o’ clock. This knowledge terrifies you. Harold. Smugs. Peter. You watch them all walk by. You knew each of them personally. You want to do something about it. You want to go up to them and warn them. Tell them to run. Fear paralyzes you. You cannot move. Your tongue lies limp in your mouth. It reminds you of one of Doctor Octopus’s severed bionic arms. You wish you were a superhero in this moment. Wish you were more than a boy trapped inside a man’s body. You wish you could scream and tell them to run. Beautiful Miss Beryl will die at twelve 30 and 48 seconds. You begin to break down. The clock rings the hour. 
In thirty minutes and 46 seconds Miss Beryl will die. You can almost hear the thunder in the distance. You raise your hand to stop her. To tell her. You can be brave. You can be the hero. BUT. You are a coward.

 

Miss Beryl will die.

Run. Cheese.

 

Now we must dance in the rain together. You must be me. You must be me after I have rolled in the blood of the fallen. Be my Joy. Be my victory. My friend. We are the murderer. We are glorious, glowing, a practical deity. Is our power not astounding. Just look at all we have accomplished.

We sit cross-legged in the chemical closet of room 29. The dark drapes over us. It is cool and quiet. Rats are nuzzling at a corpse beside us. We begin to shake.

They have mistreated us for so long. Us, and the rats as well. They hired us to care for the rats. To administer the steroids into their heaving skin. To hear them squeal in pain. The rats hadn’t yielded the results they needed however. They turned to us. At first they offered us small reparations, good medical insurance, the kind of things that any sane man would take a shot or two for. How easily a shot becomes three however. Then four. Then five. Then the payments began to drain away, replaced with zealous chatter. With idealistic expostulations that, We, We were the new age of science. We were the new frontier. We had had enough. Now we sit beside their corpses. The world comes full circle. Beautiful justice.

We are triumphant my friend. Immortal.

We have followed them all for so long. Planned for so many days. Watched their movements. Calculated their breaths. When they come for us. With their guns and their badges. They will ask why we did it. And when they do we will smile and we will tell them why. We will say. Because They Were Mortal.

 

Run. Cheese.

You are confused. You are running away. You are not sure who you are. You can remember having a family. All you want is to get back to them. To find them to protect them. You hear more gunfire and run around a corner. You hide. Door number 29 stands before you. You know where you are. If you turn left you will find an exit. You remember your daughter. Lilly. She likes videogames. A real tomboy. You want to play videogames with Lilly. You still cannot remember your name. But you remember Lilly. You hear a door opening. Run. Your body screams at you to run. You freeze. A torrent of rage and fur comes pouring from door 29. Rats. You tell yourself they are just rats. There are hundreds of them. They stream around you, a wall of teeth and claws. They are not just rats. They are Armageddon. You hear the gunfire coming closer. You Scream.

 

That is all you get. A single scream.

RUN. CHEESE.

 

That is your first thought. There it is before you. Cheese. You have been running for that cheese your whole life. There it is. There are hundreds of you. Loud noises are booming around you. Rats everywhere. Your sensory organs go into overload. You cannot think straight. Run. Cheese. Sex. Run. You begin to quiver. Clawed feet scraping against the varnished floor you run, spattering through the thin veil of blood that settles in crimson pools around you. And there is the cheese. It smells delicious. You rear above it and bite downwards. Sink your teeth deep into its succulent flesh. It is delicious.

 

CHEESE.

 

 

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Foreign Policy

Hey, you. Yeah, you. Stop the car. What are you doing?

You’re in America. You shouldn’t be here. What, you think this is some sort of joke? We know who you are, and we don’t want you here.

Get out of the car. I said, get out of the car. You heard me. What’s the matter? You don’t speak English? You understand me good? Get out. Now.

What have you got there? Bags? What’s in the bags? Set them down here. Of course they’re your bags. I don’t care how long you’ve had them. I don’t care if they’re special. Don’t give me that look. Look at your jewels. They’re fake. You think I’m stupid? In America, you could buy this piece of junk for five dollars.

Open them up. Lipstick, bracelet, books in your language—what is this trash?

What’s this? A wallet? Are these supposed to be dollar bills? How do you fit all those bills and quarters in there? And who are these people in the back seat? Are those your thug friends? They look awfully small. You say they’re your children?

Quit your begging—I’m not going to let you go. You poor people are pathetic; you’re always begging us to feel to sorry for you.

Show me where you’ve got it. You know what I’m talking about. I need to see your green card. Green card. Your proof of citizenship. Give it here. I said, give it here. I don’t want to hear what you have to say about this. You have no say; you’re in America, and you follow our rules.

Just as I thought—you have no green card. You’re no citizen. You have no right to be here, filling our classrooms with your kids. You’re not allowed to contaminate our land with your people. You’re just an illegal alien. Illegal.

I am neither a racist, nor a pre-judger. I am a proud officer, and I am rightfully doing my duty in keeping this country as American as apple pie. Now put your hands behind your back—you’re under arrest.

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Home

Visual art by Seung Min Oh.

You’re new here. You live in the blue house. With the yellow flowers on the freshly shorn lawn and white shutters. And the Japanese trees. Your mother bought it because she thought it looked like the Brady house. It doesn’t. She was wrong. You’ve watched that show a thousand times. . It looks nothing like the Brady house. You like the Brady house. You hate this house. You think it’s tacky. You think it looks like it belongs in some coloring book about the 60’s. Tacky, Tacky, Tacky.

Your room has white lacey curtains. The window looks in to Suzie Kincaid’s house. You can see her older brother’s bedroom. The walls have pictures of athletes and playboy bunnies on it. He sits there and reads things on his computer. You watch him sometimes. Just sit on your bed, on your computer, and watch him on his bed, on his computer. You never allow yourself to be naked in your room.

Your kitchen has pink and white checker tile. Your little sister crawls across it. Her fat little fingers grab at the grout. Your mother reaches down to scoop her up. She drools on her your mothers shoulder, ruining her silky blouse. Your mother pouts her large pink lips at the baby. She clicks and gurgles and makes like an idiot. You watch in disgust over your bowl of cheerios and milk. Stupid woman.

You wish you could move back. Pack up all the boxes, turn the car around and go back. You don’t like anyone here. They all have big dogs that bark at the mailmen, slobber and leave their mark on your lawn.

You don’t like the dogs or the people. They are all so obnoxious. You want to go back, you tell your mother, but she tells you this is home. No more apartment building where the third step on the third flight of stairs squeaked. No more hearing the comforting screech of police cars and ambulances outside of your window. No more having to look both ways when crossing the street, because if you didn’t it could be bloody. Now you live in a one-story house. Now the air is always heavy with silence .Now ,you could lie in the middle of the street, sleep there if you wanted to, and you wouldn’t get hit. You want to go back. This was boring you to tears. Your mother said it was what the family needed. Something stable and reliable, a place where there would always be home cooked dinner on the table and then she made another reference to the Brady’s. This is nothing like the Brady’s. You’re not blonde and there aren’t eight of you plus a maid under one roof.

The cement out front has been marked forever. You wonder who Jeremiah and Tammy were. And if they ever lasted. They probably cracked as soon as the cement did. The sidewalk has cracks and tiny weeds fighting their way up through them. They fight for sunlight and the overflow of the hose. You spoke to him once here. In this exact spot. Where the freshly mowed lawn meets Jeremiah and Tammy’s sidewalk. He was playing basketball. Tripping over his overgrown feet. He lept and threw the ball toward the hoop and its ratty net. He watched it in anticipation. His hands out stretched, hanging where the ball had left it. The ball hit the backboard. It rolled from his yard. He followed it, and noticed you. He grunted a hello, picked up his ball, started at your chest and then walked away. You said nothing. You didn’t know what to say.

You sit in the backyard on the tire swing with the cicada’s singing in the warm summer air. You kick your legs in front of you. Kick and retract, kick and retract, till you swing full force toward the suburban moon.

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