Issue Three

what they meant to her, and especially
not now, now that Luke Harris was The
One.
Mr. Harris was extremely late, and as
the dust and butts and ashes continued
to gather, Janie began to fret. Maybe
he got into an accident or maybe he
forgot or maybe he got lost! After three
hours without a call or a show, it was
obvious that Luke wasn’t coming, and
as much as Janie hated him, she hated
herself more. Her fingers grew hot
under the friction of her frustration and
the skin was buffed away, making her
bleed. She surprised herself with a yell
and threw the emery board, backlashed
by all the pain she tried to inflict on The
One. And those lights! Those
maddening, mocking lights! To hell with
it all; she’d shut them off herself!
Janie stomped toward the hill, her heels
clacking fiercely and the hem of her
candy red dress rippling about her
thighs. She slipped on the slick road
and skinned both of her knees. She
crawled the rest of the way up to those
lights that mocked her and blamed them
for everything. At last she rose at the
top of the hill, bloody and bedaubed with
dirt, cheap mascara running down her
cheeks like ink. She smeared it with her
hands like war paint, snarling and feral,
and went inside.
Eli Sykes of 32 Orchid Street was
drenched in a cold sweat, recovering
from the violent throes of a horrific
nightmare when the lights illuminated
the cosmic patterns of his bedroom
curtains. In his dream he was chased
by a polka-dotted clown with black
beetle eyes and a serrated mouth
dripping with liquid guts. Its laugh was
like a wind-up toy and its big floppy red
shoes squished as though they were full
of water as it ran after Eli in fast forward,
its crablike demon claws outstretched
and clacking. Being mute since birth, Eli
had been as unable to scream in the
dream as he really was in real life, his
throat squeaking like a clogged trumpet
as the devil clown snatched him with its
crab claws and lifted him face first into
the jagged, acrid hole of its maw.
Eli sat upright, trembling with the
aftershocks of his nightmare, dark hair
sticking to his forehead in sweaty
commas. The bubbly squishing sound
reverberated in his mind as the little boy
mopped his forehead with a pillowcase
and breathed through his mouth,
wishing a sound would come out,
wishing he could cry for his mother. As
usual nothing sounded but the ragged
whisper of his breath. How he wished
he could say just one word, any
word! Even if that word was toilet, even
if Eli was allowed to say it just once for
his whole life, he would die the happiest
person on Earth.
When he couldn’t answer with head or
hand motions, Eli communicated with a
whiteboard and marker. It was
humiliating having to scribble out a
response instead of speaking it, having
to be afraid that the other person would
get bored and leave after a few small
exchanges, which they always did.
THE UGLYLIGHTS