Cover drawn by Alice Rogers

Glass Bottles 

By: Jocelyn Gou

In her room, lining the shelves on her gray-blue walls, are glass bottles.

She cannot remember a time when she lived without glass bottles. She cannot remember when she filled her first one.

But she remembers stabbing pain and aching grief and quaking rage and searing hate, then a numb relief as she drew her feelings away from her heart and into her glass bottles. Such powerful forces confined within walls of fragile glass.

She watches the glass bottles every day, waiting for them to crack. She waits without the heaviness and panic of anxiety that is bottled away. She waits with a calm, deadened heart. She waits with an empty smile on her face.

She tells herself she is happy, but her heart knows bliss is a lie. The moment she culled melancholy from her heart, joy disappeared like a dream lost to oblivion.

But one day – one day they come to her door. They come with forlorn expressions that her placid face muscles have forgotten how to shape. They come to tell her her family has died. For a moment, there is silence.

Then the glass bottles begin to quake.

They tremble on the shelf, performing a jittery dance of torture while her bottom lip quivers and her hands fly up to clutch her chest. Her chest, where a heart is beginning to feel the stabbing of hundreds of needles.

She sees fissures climbing on the inside of her glass bottles.

Her heart pounds for the first time in years, jolting her fragile shell of a body – she collapses to the ground like a rag doll. Her hands fumble for the glass jars, and she clutches them tightly, as if the force of her hands will hold the glass together – keep the emotions inside.

But her mind is a flurry of memories – memories of her childhood, of the family that could stick her broken pieces of psyche back together. The family that cradled her heart in the palms of their hands and pressed it to their lips and kissed it with love too wonderful and pure for any universe. The family that is gone. Forever.

A bottle bursts into hundreds of glass shards, cutting her flesh. Blood is dribbling from her palm onto the carpet, and she cackles with mad laughter – the manifestation of a heart that can no longer handle pain and grief.

As all the glass bottles burst one by one, like a symphony of coordinated chaos, her heart suffers each like a stab in the chest.

It is raining glass. It is flooding pain.

She laughs and laughs and laughs until her heart breaks.

Until all her anger and sadness and disappointment and fear, all her frustration and jealousy and loneliness and guilt, all her shame and disgust and contempt and misery, and all her aggression and doubt and pain and hate pool out of her heart like her blood around her lifeless, emotionless body.

At least she died laughing.

The Perfect Family

By: Annabelle Luo

I had a perfect family. A beautiful wife, two children, and a large house. We ate dinner together every night! It was very peaceful. My wife cooked and cared for the children, while I worked. Then, I came back and my children would turn their heads toward me and greet me happily. There was one thing I never understood though. Whenever I saw them, they were always, always, sitting at the dinner table.

Today, I came back from work, and set my things down. My children cheered from the table. “Dad’s back!” they said happily, throwing their arms up. My wife smiled at me. The food was already done, steaming contentedly in front of me. I smiled back, and sat down on the table. I dug my fork into the meat on my plate, heartily taking a bite. Though…why was it always meat?

My wife slid her hand onto mine. “Enjoying the meal, dear?” she smiled again. Something was wrong, though I couldn’t quite put my finger on it. Her lips curled unnaturally, the smile expired sugar.

“Yes, very, thank you, dear,” I replied. Gently, I brushed my finger against my wife’s face. My fingers smeared something wet and sticky. Huh? I slowly flipped my finger over to examine it. I saw red. “Dear, your face–!” I whispered, clutching my bloodied hand. From the looks of it, the blood on my hand was at least a week or more old…I glanced back at my wife. I almost vomited. More of the sticky, old, rotting blood was streaming down the cheek where my fingers had caressed, oozing out in disgusting, brown clumps. Her twisted smile remained in place, eyes glazed and empty. Her skin had begun to rot and shrivel into brown and magenta.

“What’s wrong, darling?” she asked, looking at me with those empty eyes. I screamed in horror, and glanced at my children as well. They were rotting too. There was blood too. More blood. More rotting, old, nauseating blood. The same distant, lifeless smiles plastered onto their faces.

“What’s wrong, Dad? Have you realized…that it’s your fault yet? Look at your plate,” my children croaked through their chapped, purple lips.

“Wha–what are you talking about?…” My throat went dry, a distant thought tickling the back of my mind. My eyes lowered to my plate. There was the meat I had been eating. The missing chunks of my family’s flesh.

“You killed us all. It was your fault. This is your fault.” my family chorused. Were they my family?

My vision blurred, and all I could see was red and brown and gray and their faces staring back at me. It was my fault it was all my fault I was the one who murdered all of them and they’re dead and they’re not my family I was living in a dream a lie a delusion–

I fell to my knees and tore my eyes away from the three corpses, and the bloody plates of their flesh on the table. Tears streamed from my bloodshot eyes as I crawled over to the kitchen, picking up a knife. My fingers, clenched on the blade, bled. “It was me…it was all me…they’re dead…” I laughed quietly to myself, drunk on delirium. I raised the bloodstained blade toward my chest. It plunged down. And the last thing my eyes landed upon was the grinning faces of my family.

Masks

By: Niyantra Mohan Babu

Why do we need to pretend to be monsters? Why do we find hilarity in acting

Like our worst fear isn’t ourselves?

Kids skipping over lamplit walks

A second plane hit the second tower.

Giggling at their candy haul.

Barbed wire fences trap men like pigs.

That house gives out the king-sized Milky Ways! Et tu, Brute?

Wow, her costume’s so scary!

What was she wearing? She was asking for it. Isn’t that your mom? What, no.

I’m sorry, Mom. I love you.

Look! He’s wearing a bear costume!

A man or a bear? Definitely a bear.

Oh my god, is she dressed as a monster? There will be more of your children dead tomorrow. Hi, Sadako!

Little Boy. Fat Man.

He’s dressed up as a general!

In war, there are no winners. Only widows.

A giggling shriek. Those horns had looked too real. A terrible shriek. Tear gas was spilling into the trenches. A hop, skip, and jump.

Hold the line, boys! Hold the line!

Their hands are clasping.

Doc! He’s dying!

Their smiles are shining.

Leave him! Save yourself!

They knock on the door.

Gunshots rattle through the fog like hellfire. Hi, kids!

Every man for himself!

Trick or treat?

God, save us!

Treat!

I love you, Mom.

Be safe out there!

I’m coming back.

The boogeyman’s gonna get ya!

Cap…they got me.

Don’t worry, we will!

Don’t worry, cadet. It’ll be over soon.

Forever Late

By: Jessica Yu

Susie checked her watch. 8:30. 30 minutes of class left. Susie adjusted her posture and stared at her teacher’s desk. Her eyes keenly observed the shiny brass clock on the desk, its golden hands glittering in the sunlight. The numbers were too faint to be seen, but she could just barely make out the time: 8:25. The clock was old, but only a few minutes slow. It had been sitting on her teacher’s desk for as long as Susie could remember: worn, delicate, forgotten.

Yet today, something about it felt…different.

The ticking was louder than usual, softly echoing in the quiet classroom. Susie glanced around. Everyone else was intently focused on their work, their pencils scratching on empty paper. No one seemed to notice the clock.

Susie checked her watch again. 8:35. Then, the clock. 8:25.

The hands hadn’t moved.

Susie blinked and looked again. The clock was still there.

And the hands still hadn’t moved.

The ticking continued, steady and unyielding.

Susie shook her head, trying to dismiss the odd feeling creeping up on her. It could just be her imagination.

She glanced down at her wrist and froze. There it was: faint but clear. A circular mark with a pattern of thin lines, rotating like clock hands.

She felt a cold breeze on her neck, even though the classroom windows were shut tight. Her heart raced as the clock hands twitched- slight, barely perceptible.

Tick.

Tick.

Tick.

The teacher’s voice glitched, an eerie echo vibrating around the room.

Susie’s breath caught.

Something was very, very wrong.

Every head turned towards her, in perfect silence. No blinks, no breaths. Just the fixed silence of the frozen students’ eyes, hammered into Susie. The ticking was growing louder, pounding inside her like a heartbeat.

Susie backed towards the door, but her legs moved like she was walking through quicksand. Each step felt like an eternity, each breath like a century.

The mark on her wrist was glowing bright. The golden clock hands etched into her skin spun faster and faster until they merged into a golden circle of light.

“Susie,” a haunting voice whispered. But, the voice came from inside Susie, a chilling whisper.

“You missed it,” the raspy voice continued. “You could’ve had them. Your dreams. At the cost of just one day. But you ignored the chance. And this is the price you will pay.”

Susie shuddered and closed her eyes. Time slipped through her fingers like water. The classroom walls melted away, the desks sucked into the deep pit of time.

Tick.

Tick.

Tick.

That was it. One final, metallic, ringing click.

And then…silence.

When Susie opened her eyes, she was alone.

Dust hung in the air.

No desks. No students. No sound.

Just darkness. The mark on her wrist.

And her.

Standing still.

Too late.

Forever late.

The Flames

By: Anonymous

What can imagination hold?

A spark dancing,

Jumping and suddenly gone.

A mesmerizing stage

Of colors and warmth

Spilling out into the darkness.

A child, stumbling in a dark room.

Candle in hand,

It seems as if all fear has subsided.

The shadows leap and soar across the pale wall.

The shadows.

One can see many things from the same shadow.

Isn’t that interesting?

She sits down on her bed, deep in thought.

A chilling wind blows outside,

The silver moon glares down to the ground.

As time passes,

With the eternal tick-tocking of the clock,

The child is enthralled by the shadows,

The shadows that the candlelight threw upon the wall,

The shadows that are growing bigger and bigger.

 

It seems as if nothing else mattered.

The tick and tocking grew louder,

And the floorboards creaked to the melancholy howling of the wind.

The dark shapes gracefully leaped across,

Now spreading to all sides of the walls.

The small girl seemed even smaller.

A gentle sizzling and a crackling.

The silhouettes threatened to spill outside the walls.

A moth!

A series of moths jumped up from the darkness,

Rising to the ceiling.

A sweet smell of burnt sugar drifted around the room,

Light as smoke yet heavy as wood.

Inaudible screams surrounded the child.

Still, she paid no attention.

Get up, the whispers said,

Hurry and run!

Her legs remained as glued as her eyes to the wall.

As clouds of moths floated up,

She silently followed them with her eyes.

 

She felt a fiery kiss on her cheek.

A burning, not warm, touch.

It was a kiss of good night and goodbye.

As if drenched in cold water,

The child’s eyes widened.

The red orange and yellow flames,

Reflected in her pupils,

Surrounded her.

Out in the night,

The fierce glow of fire cast a shine in the navy sky.

Although the winds whipped against it,

The fire only spread, as if competing

With the crashing waves below.

Swarms of moths,

Gray and white and black,

Rose into the night sky.

Blown in twirls by the cutting wind,

Into a swirl against the navy background.

The shadows bloomed out from the house,

Against the gradually subsiding tapestry

Of gold and red.

All that remained was a silver sconce,

Defiantly piercing through the black ashes.

Artwork

The Stalker – Weichu Ma

Rufus Roars – Vidhaan Jain

The Reaper in the Blue Mist – Ankith Burki

Geisha – Anonymous

If you made it this far, comment what you dressed up as this Halloween!