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A Beautiful Day to be a Tree

2011
12.01
Holden Whitehill
12/7/10

A Beautiful Day to be a Tree

    Ah, what a beautiful winter day to be a tree. The cold winter wind ruffles my branches and my bark shivers in delight. Oh how I enjoy being coniferous and how others enjoy my presence too. They look at me, pointing and squealing at how tall I am, how wide I am, how thick my branches are. The four all nod in my direction and leave to tell their friends. Oh how happy I am to bring such joy to all who look at me and gaze upon my perfection.
    Here they come now and two happy men carrying big stick’s with stones at the ends are approaching me. I greet the two joyfully with my evergreen foliage, grander than that of all around me. The two lift up their stone sticks in praise and tell the family they made a good choice. What am I being chosen for I wonder. Maybe I shall be given a prize and be the envy of any tree that already isn’t.
    But the other, older trees just look at me sadly, blowing their leaves back and forth. Is it jealousy that I detect in their expressions? No, I see only pity. But why would they feel pity for the beautiful tree who has been chosen for greatness.
    And then I feel the pain and my stump. A searing blow from a stone stick that peels away my bark. The two do not register my shrill plea’s for them to stop but they continue hacking again and again and again until sap oozes from my grievous wounds. The men are singing a song about joy to the world while the yellow liquid coats their face and hands. The world around me dims, I can feel my life force fading as the children laugh cruelly at the death of all things beautiful, mocking my death.
    And for what? I try to call out in vein. Because you want to put me in your house, to capture my essence of cheer and magnificence in your house forever? No. You have killed me. Murdered me. And I will be gone, wilted and forgotten, in a ditch near the houses you build out of my dead comrades. Your kind embrace the joy I give you and because of your love for us you destroy us, granting yourself a few moments in the grace of our presence instead of letting us grow, to stay there for you to enjoy for generations.
    I am lifted up by them and carried away to die. When the world fades to black and I am falling into the unknown the only thing that chases me into that chasm is the small ones hideous laughter at my murder.

Tags: Category Fiction - General |

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When I’m Ready

2011
11.01

By Maryssa Deville

I lie in the green fluffy grass pondering on what’s to come in the afterlife. I stay motionless in my comfortable state as I look up at the white puffy clouds wondering of what’s to come as I imagine myself with them ascending to this place we all dream of. This magical place that they say is the one place where we are pure again, whole, a perfect being. While closing my eyes I see this place. The tunnel leading me in, its dark depths keep growing darker until the strong light is reached. When I see the angel St. Peter, smiling in front of me as his graceful angel wings flutter in the clouds below us that I was once looking up to. Those high white gates that I’ve dreamed of for so long creak open and I see a colorful rainbow in front of a clear, purple castle. I see miles and miles of golden poppies in front of the castle’s door.

I always wonder, does it even exist, I know and always will believe that there is a greater good somewhere after we’ve strive to achieve this greatness of being worthy enough to accept it into our lives. It takes years and years of being trapped inside this body, this retched body, rather it be beautiful and strong or if the sight of it repulses you it still is an obstacle in obtaining this greater good in which we all speak of. We must let go of the world to gain access into this exclusive place of magical wonders. The world is confusing and strange. Sometimes we all believe we want to just escape it at one point or another. Many challenges and tests are thrown at us in our lifetime and our choices only make us who we are. Some things though are very enticing, yet they are evil and we all know it. We tend to want to keep a hold of these things. Money, lust, fame, we may not all admit to it, but we’ve all fallen into their deep shadowy enticing roars that seem to lure us so far that we’re never sure if we ever want to leave them behind. You tell yourself its wrong and yes, you do know better. They say it’s harder for a rich man to enter into the gates of heaven then for a camel to fit through a pinhole of a needle.

Yes, it is hard and these things in which you say are very true, so I am not ready to enter this tunnel to these gates of white and no I love my earthly treasures and maybe one day I will learn to love that greater good and let go and enter into that world we all dream of being worthy for. But, for now I lie here looking at the shining stars that seemed to have changed so suddenly from once puffy clouds and time may move quickly, but there is a lot of quickly moving time left for me to still experience.

Tags: Category Fiction - General |

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The Little White Lie

2011
10.20

By Jenna Oberg

The night before the spookiest night of the year, Jeff sat thinking he would do nothing on Halloween. He thought that Halloween was dumb and would never dress up or go anywhere; he always sat at home and watched television. His friends always told him that he was lame and needed to be a kid and not try to act like an adult all the time. But Jeff stood firm. Halloween was dumb.

Jeff’s friends would bug him to try to go to a costume party with them and then go trick-or-treating. Jeff answered with a quick and firm “NO!” They never understood why he disliked it so much. They asked why he refused to hang out with them every year on this one night. He replied with “I just don’t want to go. I have other plans.” But they knew he just sat on the couch and watched reruns of “That 70’s Show.”

Only Shelby James, his friend since kindergarten, knew the real reason Jeff wouldn’t go out of the house on Halloween, but she knew she would never be forgiven if she shared the secret. His sister Hailey didn’t even know. She made fun of him, because she loved that day and would always dress up and scare him if she could.

Last year, Jeff decided to tell his best friend John the story about the dreadful night of Halloween in 2004, he was eight years old. “What happened on that night?” John hammered him.

“Fine, I will tell you. But if you tell anyone or laugh at me I swear I will hurt you. Before that night I loved Halloween more than any holiday. I would always go trick-or-treating with my family and with Shelby. I was getting ready for the best Halloween ever. I was home alone getting ready. My family was getting candy for the other children. I was dressing up to be a very scary ghost. While I was working on my costume, I heard some noises. I just figured it was my parents, so I paid no attention. Then I heard a creepy voice say my name, my whole name, and then ‘Don’t ever leave this house on this date at night.’” Jeff told John he still wasn’t convinced that the sounds were real. “But as I went down stairs I kept seeing white little clouds all around me. I realized it was a ghost flying around me! It scared me to death, I almost peed myself. He threatened to kill me if I ever went outside on the night of Halloween. I know it’s crazy but I believe it.”

John stared at him with a scared look. “I would believe it to, that’s really creepy. Stay safe, I’m leaving before I get haunted by a ghost.”Jeff chuckled as he left.

“I knew that story would work.” Jeff truly just hated getting dressed up, he thought it was childish. He hoped he wouldn’t have to retell the story this year.

Tags: Category Fiction - General |

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A Memory

2011
10.17

By Chris Schmidt

“It’s almost time,” I thought as every breath became harder, weaker, and painful. Every second seems to stretch longer than the last. Reality is ending. The little light on the street darkens the color blur away, and then darkness engulfs me.

I awake, but I am just looking at a house unable to move. “I recognize this house, it was my first home … it’s where I grew up,” I thought before realizing that I was looking directly at a kid. It seems like I have experienced this, a déjà vu᷉. That’s when I recognized the kid was me 40 years ago.

I continued to look at myself. This was one of my favorite things to do, just sit on the front porch of my house and just think about life. The house was just as I remembered it, blue walls, red window sills, and a thick, black front door. Oh, the memories.

Just as that thought ran through my mind there was a wisp of air and everything blurred. Colors smeared, then reformed into a high school campus.

It was morning, cars coming in and out, a bus rolls in numbered 23 filled to the brim with kids. It pulls up and, one by one, the kids get out and gather in their cliques across campus. The last kid to get off the bus is the one who has few friends. I know because that’s me again, all these are just long past memories of, well, me. It’s saddening to recollect how boring and dull growing up was. No friends, relationships, nothing.

I just watched myself go from class to class, room to room, then back to the bus. It’s like I watched my whole high school life in fast forward. Every day, every hour, every minute that passes, the school just seems to slip slightly farther and farther away until eventually it was just a spot on the horizon, when everything in sight flooded with yellow sunlight.  The light dims, I’m on a beach gazing on a beautiful sunset and I am a beholding witness to my wedding. It was the best thing that ever happened to me. As they were exchanging the “I do,” the world started to spin. Bright lights flashed and I was in a room face to face with myself.

The room had little to no light, I was alone, my wife left me, and I was depressed. I was just thinking. This time I was thinking about how unfortunate my life was, I was thinking about what would have happened if I made a few good friends, if I did something with my life and not just sat there.

Then there were two yellow lights barreling at me with great speed, this is what would end my misery. With a crash, a thump, and squealing of tires …  I relaxed. I saw the images of a great life. Then nothing.

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Amphitrite

2011
10.05

By Meg Korf

No one knows about Amphitrite. To most, she is just the woman who married Poseidon, the mother of his son Triton. No one knows what she really does, how much she really works. Rumors say she’s evil and killed many humans; others say she died in a terrible ocean accident, but what no one knows is what really happened to Amphitrite.

It was to this day, November 2, some year no one knows, that Amphitrite died a slow, painful death. She woke up from a late night and still found herself sleepy this very morning. As she got out of bed she heard a big, thundering wave and immediately went into her “water kitchen” (if that’s even possible) and found her husband, Poseidon, making some of his nastiest waves.

“Honey Salt, what in Zeus’ name are you doing? What’s wrong?”

Poseidon just looked at her and shrugged, probably clueless about how to answer.

“Fine, if you don’t tell me then I will walk right out of this house and never come back. Do you understand me?” Finally, he gave her the attention she wanted and answered rudely.

“Who do you think you are? I am the god of the sea. In my opinion most powerful of them all and you think that you can just talk to me with that tone of voice and threaten to walk out on me, well, you are wrong, woman, way wrong.” Amphitrite just looked at him with awe, surprised at what he had said to her.

“Well, yes I can, and you know what? I will!” She started toward the door, not grabbing anything, seeing as she is a mermaid. But right as she grabs the door knob, Poseidon grabs her.

“What are you doing to me?” She screams, as Poseidon shoves his hands in her gills.

“Making it so you can’t breathe, you don’t want me then you shall die.” Amphitrite gives him a good kick in the goggle and puts her back to the door.

“You little rotten piece of seaweed,” Poseidon screams, chasing her then choking her again.

“Please,” she cries “Just let me go, I’ll stay if that’s what you want.”

“It’s too late for that now,” he says.

Tags: Category Fiction - General |

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The Game

2011
10.01

By Donald John Winfield

The Connecticut Committee met Thursday evening. They decided that immediate action was necessary. Barbara O’Reilly caught the next plane to Australia. A week later, she was still in Sydney, lunching al fresco at the Bondi Trattoria Café on Campbell Parade.

People moved along the sidewalk toward Bondi Beach or headed back downtown. Few took notice of the tall, well-dressed brunette eating a seafood salad in the open air. Barbara watched each pedestrian carefully, her sapphire eyes alert to every detail. Blending well, she was just another 30 something businesswoman having lunch.

Her waiter returned with Barb’s check. She carefully laid out the exact change for the meal. Tipping is considered rude in Australia, and she didn’t wish to stand out. Her watchful eyes soon landed on what she had been hoping to see. The swarthy waiter standing by the cafe’s side door nodded almost imperceptibly to an old woman shuffling along the opposite side of Campbell Parade. He dropped his cigarette, stepped on it, and quickly slipped inside the cafe’.
Barbara took one last swallow of Perrier and stood. She slowly arranged some items in her purse, smoothed her skirt, pushed her chair in, and casually stepped into the light flow of sidewalk traffic. Barb and the ancient woman were both heading downtown.

Barb strode gracefully along the street, keeping her subject in sight. The crone seemed unaware that she was being followed, but Barb knew better. Ten blocks and five direction changes later, Barb was standing in a dank alley, her back against the rear entry of a closed haberdashery. After moving ahead of her subject, she’d stopped in a public toilet and disposed of the chestnut wig and dark business suit she’d been wearing. Now, she was a tall statuesque redhead, wearing a white turtleneck, yellow vest, and designer blue jeans. Her right hand held a small silver revolver.

The target entered the alley from the street. Her now youthful pace quickly carried her to within a few feet of Barb. Suddenly the door of the abandoned store burst open, slamming Barb into the alley’s opposite wall. She managed to stay on both feet. Instinctively, Barb raised the Colt and fired. The waiter froze in mid swing, the stiletto’s long blade missing, Barb by less than an inch. The dark hole that appeared in the center of his eyebrows looked like a third eye as he crumbled to the damp bricks. Barb’s gloved left hand deftly retrieved the waiter’s dagger. The young man disguised as an old woman had no time to change his course. The thin blade slipped silently between his ribs and through his heart. His last few seconds were wasted trying to understand his fate. “Allah Akbar” he whispered.

The untraceable Colt was placed in his lifeless hand. His plot would be exposed and his bombs destroyed during the investigation. Amin’s jihad was over.

Jimmy Buffett music from her iPod filled Barb’s ears as the 767 lifted into the warm Sydney night. “Next week,” she thought. “Another game.”

Tags: Category Fiction - General |

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Stormy Night

2011
08.18

By Sarah M. Keyes

Essa sat up fast breathing hard. She sighed, just the storm. The rain pattered on the roof, the wind rattled her shutters trying to pry them loose. She strained her ears; she was just barely able to make out the crashing of the waves from the drumming of the rain.

It was normally a peaceful sound but tonight it sounded savage and angry. What had woken her? Surely it wasn’t the storm; she slept through storms like this all the time. She stuck her feet out of the blankets that she were her bed by the fire place. She hurriedly drew them back in shivering. At last she got up put on an extra pair of socks and rapped her woolen shawl around herself.

It was earlier than when she usually got up but she wasn’t tired. Carefully she crept to the door. She pushed it open ever so slowly, wincing every time it creaked. Then slipped out and shut it behind her. The storm was probably loud enough that she could yell and stomp her feet and they wouldn’t even stir, but she wanted to be sure. She could keep from getting caught by the downpour if she pressed herself hard against the stone wall of the house. Her breath was tight and sharp in her lungs; she ignored watching the storm in wonder.

There was something wildly beautiful about it, a powerful creature that roared and fought with itself. Tears came to her eyes but she immediately shook them away. It was no use crying. That wouldn’t help anybody. But, oh, if she had the courage, the courage to run away.

She had always been a slave but it had never bothered her because she was almost free, living with the woman she called her mother but knew she didn’t have a mother. Doing her best to please her master, living in happiness, until he ran out of money and had to sell her. Of course, she had been first to go, she was just a child then, sold and bought at a cheap price. Now she would do anything to get away from this place; To run from the dying house and the dying people.

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Nothing’s Safe in a Storm

2011
07.12

By Mark Juric

It started, he thought, with the telegraph. “Technology strips luxury from language,” he could be heard saying on the days we could still understand him. “It squeezes thought into ever-shrinking spaces, so how and where you listen and watch,” he’d say before pausing and buffering “ha — ha — hahahahhahas — has become more important than content.”

On cloudy days, in rainstorms, and during heavy sunspot activity, static would stripe his voice in screeches like a misdialed fax, and his color would gather itself into great homogeneous squares in a shifting approximation of the man himself. “Oh no,” he’d wail on these days. “This just won’t d-d-d-d-d-d-do-EEEEEEEEEEEeee. I am quality! I will not be compromised for convenience.” But eventually, he would give in and carve the opulence from his words just to be heard. “Qlty!” he’d say. “nt jst somit 4 csual cnsmptn. lolz.”

Then one day during a terrible storm the power went out completely. His barstool was suddenly empty and we realized no one had ever backed up the pixilated man. Everything he’d ever done and everything he’d ever said disappeared completely. Once someone asked “whatever happened to…” But then the popcorn came by again and everyone grabbed another handful.

Tags: Category Fiction - General |

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Fly on the Wall: A Story of Insanity

2011
06.05

By Savanna Fierstein

Patient 431- Steven

A recording of his ramblings on in his cell, two years into treatment.

Insanity, psychosis, madness that’s what they seem to think I have. All of them! Every last one but in all reality I am the sane one I have the most sanity here, they went to school they have degrees, degrees that give them a right to determine whether or not I am insane, shouldn’t that be left up to me?

Danger to myself and others they say, I say, No, no, no! I am no danger to anyone, not even me. I… I wouldn’t hurt a fly. Give me a fly, put it in this box with padded walls and you will see, yes you will see I won’t touch it! Although his buzzing around would pester me, oh I’m thinking about it now, his buzzing. It’s buzzing in my head! Make it stop! Someone please make it stop… Buzz, Buzz, Buzz… It’s still there, why? Why is it still there, why isn’t anyone helping me? Kill it, kill the fly! Kill it now!  Please just make it stop, stop this infuriating buzzing in my head.

Huh? It’s gone, the noise is gone. It’s gone. Did I kill the fly? Did I squash it? Oh, if I did, I’m sorry… I… I’m so sorry, fly. I didn’t mean to hurt you, I swear I didn’t. It’s just you wouldn’t stop. I asked you to and you just wouldn’t. I’m sorry, fly.

I am not insane, I am not insane, I am not insane! Please listen to me… please.

The patient began to smash his fists against the wall of his padded cell.

Nothing … nothing … nothing. There is nothing left of me. Where am I? Why am I here? Where is my wife? The walls — the walls are so white, why are they so white?  They are blinding me, the walls are blinding me!  Why are they so horribly white, where am I?

Manic, unstable, dangerous, that’s what they think I am. They are wrong. No, no, no I am sane, I have sanity…

Patient 431- Steven

Has been in a padded cell since his arrival and has made no improvement, nor has he shown any attempt to cooperate in his diagnosis and treatment.

 

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Wrapped in Burlap

2011
06.01

By Devin Wirgart

At dusk, a young man walked along a path in a park. He was walking to figuratively whittle away his troubles with the fresh air and the essence of nature around him. But soon, he grew tired, and sat down next to an old woman on a bench. This woman held a large burlap bag, which appeared to be empty.

The man asked, “What’s in the sack?”

The woman turned to look at him and a smile appeared at the corner of her mouth, “Are you sure you want to find out?”

“Not really, but I’m intrigued,” retorted the man, and he too began to smile.

“I’m not really sure that is your business, but if you want you can look.”

The man politely shook his head and continued to sit on the bench, doing nothing. The temptation grew and he couldn’t resist asking again.

“What’s in the sack?” he inquired once more.

“The secrets and wisdom that comes with great age,” replied the old woman.

Now, the man was taken aback by this answer, and was silent for a little, immersed in his thoughts. But he eventually came to the conclusion such things couldn’t be stored in something as simple as a burlap sack, if in anything at all.

So again, “No, really, what’s inside.”

“Things so terrible you would die if you saw them. And if you lived, you would be tortured forevermore with their images,” growled the old woman.

This answer puzzled the man more than the last one, so he took a little more time to think. Being a sensible man, he knew such things did not exist, and if they did, they could never be stored in a burlap bag.

“I really doubt your previous answers have much truth in them. They are not very logical. So, I think it is safe to say you are lying.”

Satisfied with that, he stood and began to walk off.

“Come back, young man, and I’ll let you see inside the bag,” whispered the woman.

The man doubled back and sat back down on the park bench, happy he would finally find out what was in the blasted sack that had kept him mesmerized for the past half hour. He shifted on the bench as the woman untied the string at the mouth of the bag and then slowly opened the sack.

The man peered closer, and saw nothing.

“Why, there’s nothing in th-“ his sentence was cut off as he was sucked into the opening of the bag and out of our world.

The woman retied the bag and settled back into the bench.

Not five minutes later, a young woman sat down, cocked her head and asked, “What’s in the sack?”

The old woman smiled.

Tags: Category Fantasy |

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