2019 Ralph Munn Creative Writing Anthology

Ralph Munn
Creative Writing
Anthology
2019

Ralph Munn
Creative Writing
Anthology
2019
Committee Chair
Sienna Cittadino, Carnegie Library of Pittsburgh, Allegheny
Committee Co-Chair
Jessica Smith, Carnegie Library of Pittsburgh, Main
Editorial Committee
Emily Fear, Sewickley Public Library
Marian Streiff, Carnegie Library of Pittsburgh, Mt. Washington
Matt Zeoli, Carnegie Library of Pittsburgh, Brookline
Molly Kuhn, Carnegie Library of Pittsburgh, Carrick
Rebecca Whalen, Carnegie Library of Pittsburgh, West End
Book Design and Copyediting
Connie Amoroso
Cover Illustration
Nahla Quazi

Copyright © 2019 by Carnegie Library of Pittsburgh.
All rights revert to the individual authors.
Printed and bound in the United States of America.
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Contents
About the Ralph Munn Creative Writing Contest 7
The Judges 9
Short Prose
(First Place)
Jacklyn Caulkins Heart of an Angel 13
(Second Place)
Jacklyn Caulkins Buried 20
Allison Stein Time Enough 27
Aria Eppinger Hair’s Why I’m Satisfied 31
Bilal Elkas The Man 34
Bilal Elkas The Antenna Towers 41
Denise Woods Do Not Forget Your Father 42
Erin Mahoney Falling 44
Evie Jin The Things We Reach For 45
Evie Jin Enceladus 52
Jo Pastorius Rosie 60
Makalya Wach Stars 67
Mia Naccarato Swing Set 75
Natalie Cohen Stop 80
Natalie McGee By the Fence 86
Qingqing Zhao Kindred Spirits 89
Renee LaGrosse Lost Souls 95
Skyler Bruno Snapped Guitar Strings Can Be Repaired 97

Poetry
(First Place)
Madeline Ficca Blood Pressure 109
(Second Place)
Maya Berardi The Female Body Is 110
Aaliyah Thomas Trespass 111
Alexander Scott Emma 113
Angel Gibbons Monster 114
Anonymous Afterbirth 115
Daevan Mangalmurti A Fissured and Broken Freedom 116
Destiny Perkins Apologies Smell Like Old Spice 117
Eden Auslander Analyzation of Procrastination 119
Evan Koepfinger No Molly 122
Faith Nguyen Paper Stars and Folding Hands 124
Ilan Magnani Self-Portrait as Cluster Munition 126
Kenny Lambert The Dog 127
Madeline Bain Fruitful 128
Madeline Figas Fortune Cookies 130
Margaret Balich bunk bed 131
Noa Becker I Live Inside Me 132
Peyton Dempsey 6 O’Clock 133
Riley Moore Burn 135
Roan Hollander Sweet Home Alabama 137
Samaree Perkins Bullets 139
Sarah Price A Different Battle 142
Stephanie Shugerman A Dwelling Family 144
Tara Pieper August 15, 2011 146
Theoni Richter The Spider in a Burning Neighborhood 147
Vickie Knoll I Don’t See Angels 149
Acknowledgments 151

About the Ralph Munn
Creative Writing Contest
Born in 1894, Ralph Munn started his library career as a reference librarian in
Seattle in 1921, became Flint Public Library’s Librarian in 1926 and then on
to the Directorship of the Carnegie Library of Pittsburgh in 1928 until 1964.
During that time, he held the positions of Director and Dean of the library
school at the Carnegie Institute of Technology, now Carnegie Mellon University,
until it became part of the University of Pittsburgh in 1962. An endowment
fund created to honor his legacy now provides support for creative writing
opportunities for young adults through the Library.
Thanks to research by Sheila Jackson and the Development Office, we know
that the original use of this endowment, contributed by friends of Ralph Munn,
began in the 1960s for a lecture series on librarianship and transitioned to use
for creative writing workshops in the 1970s, under supervision of the Carnegie
Institute, which oversaw the fund. After a hiatus in the 1990s the contest was
revived in 2007 with additional help from other bequests. Library staff and
volunteers led workshops and formed an editorial board to judge entries to the
contest and find professional writers to choose contest winners. In the first year,
the contest took off, receiving nearly 300 entries, and it has not stopped being
a popular and anticipated part of Teen Services.
Since the creative writing contest joined forces with the Labsy awards under
the Teen Media Awards banner, it continues to evolve as a way for Allegheny
county teens to be acknowledged, published, and awarded for their work and
creativity. The libraries in the county are proud to support this creative work
and provide spaces, mentors, and resources toward that end.
Tessa Barber
Chair, Ralph Munn Creative Writing Committee (2015 – 2016)
7

The Judges
Poetry
Cameron Barnett
Cameron Barnett is a poet and teacher in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. He’s an
editor for Pittsburgh Poetry Journal, and his recent work has appeared in Superstition,
Rattle, and IDK Magazine. His first collection, The Drowning Boy’s Guide
to Water was a finalist for an NAACP Image Award. He is the recipient of a
2019 Investing in Professional Artists Grant Program, a partnership of The
Pittsburgh Foundation and The Heinz Endowments. Cameron’s work explores
the complexity of race and the body for a black man in today’s America.
Prose
Adriana E. Ramírez
Adriana E. Ramírez is a Mexican-Colombian writer, critic, and performance
poet based in Pittsburgh. She won the inaugural PEN/Fusion Emerging Writers
Prize in 2015 for her novella-length work of nonfiction, Dead Boys (Little
A, 2016), and in 2016 she was named Critic at Large for the Los Angeles Times
book section. Her essays and poems have also appeared in the Los Angeles Review
of Books, Guernica/PEN America, and Literary Hub. Once a nationally ranked
slam poet, she founded the infamous Nasty Slam in Pittsburgh and continues
to perform on stages around the country. She and novelist Angie Cruz founded
Aster(ix) Journal, a literary journal giving voice to the censored and the marginalized.
Her debut full-length work of nonfiction, The Violence, is forthcoming
from Scribner.
9

Short Prose
First Place
“Heart of an Angel”
by Jacklyn Caulkins
Second Place
“Buried”
by Jacklyn Caulkins

Jacklyn Caulkins
Grade 12
North Allegheny Senior High School
Short Prose
Heart of an Angel
(Fiction)
Sophie likes to think she has her life together. She owns a house in Palingras,
complete with a white veranda and professionally done interior design. An
accomplished violinist and all-around art enthusiast, she has an impressionist
painting of tulips in her hallway that was a gift from her best friend who owns
an art gallery downtown. She graduated from Yale with honors and does clinical
research as well as treating patients from her home office. All in all, Sophie
considers herself to be on top of things.
Except, of course, for the marinara sauce all over the kitchen floor.
She hasn’t gotten around to cleaning up the broken jar, because she’s too
distracted with the noodles aggressively boiling over onto the stove, hissing as
the water spills against the burner. Frantically stirring, her eyes are wide in near
panic since the smoke alarm is going off, bringing her attention to the charring
meatballs in the frying pan next to her left elbow.
Then the phone goes off.
Cursing with all the sophistication she picked up in her years at Yale, Sophie
turns down the heat for the noodles and pulls the pan of meatballs off of the
stove, putting them in the sink and dousing them with water.
Angrily swiping her hair out of her face, she readjusts the hand towel tossed
over her shoulder and stalks over to the offending phone. Her obstinate gait
is somewhat lessened by the fact that she has to go in a wide circle to avoid
the marinara, carefully walking on the balls of her feet and dodging shards of
broken glass.
Picking up the phone, she takes in a deep breath and lets it out slowly,
collecting herself so she won’t angrily bark “what” into the receiver. She’s a
professional. A professionally behaving professional who has her life very much
together. She does, actually. It’s just been a bad day.
“Hello, this is Dr. Williams speaking. How may I help you today?”
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Ralph Munn Creative Writing Anthology 2019
She makes her voice smooth and collected, in a good mood but not quite
touching on chipper. At the same time, she opens the sliding glass door that
leads out to the backyard, shooting the pool a glare even though it did nothing
wrong and waving the hand towel around to try and shoo smoke out of her
kitchen. Hopefully the person on the other end can’t hear the fire alarm going
off.
“I’d like to make an appointment.” The voice on the other end says, momentarily
pausing Sophie in her flapping. The voice was smooth, bourbon in a glass
tumbler smooth, with just a hint of amusement curling up the ends of the
words. She doesn’t know why, but she gets the automatic impression that the
amusement is at her expense. The voice, also, is decidedly masculine.
Dropping the hand towel onto the counter, Sophie pulls a chair over underneath
the fire alarm and climbs onto it, pulling the batteries out while she
replies, “Office hours are from nine to seven, Monday through Saturday. Which
slots are and are not available is all listed on the scheduling and registration
portion of my website, where you can also find all of the paperwork for medical
insurance. Is there a particular day you were interested in, sir?”
“Yes, the 8th.”
Sophie climbs down, setting the batteries down on the hand towel and
narrowly missing one of the shards of glass on the floor. Brows furrowing, she
glances across the room to her wall calendar.
“Do you mean next month?”
“No.”
“. . . well, I’m sorry, but it’s already 8:30 in the evening and I belie—”
“I’m already in the neighborhood, it would really be no problem to stop by.”
“I see, but there’s paperwork which needs to be filled out an—”
“It’s a home office, Ms. Williams, you can hardly say that you’re closed when
you’re on the phone with me.”
“It’s Dr. Williams. Or Sophie, Mr. . . .” Sophie pauses, waiting for the man
on the other end of the line to provide her with his name. He doesn’t. So she
just keeps going, irritated at him telling her she can’t close her home office and
this time letting it seep into her voice. Once again, she gets the impression
that he’s making fun of her but has no evidence beyond a gut feeling. “And yes,
business hours are done for the day. I have a slot tomorrow around 1 which I
can pencil you in for.”
“I’m afraid that won’t do.” Sophie’s eyes narrow at his clipped response,
fighting the urge to stamp her foot. Instead, she channels her aggravation into
cleaning up the marinara sauce, she’s dealt with worse patients before.
14

“Well, I have a few more times th—”
“Tonight, Ms. Williams. Oh, my apologies . . . Sophie.” Hopping to her feet,
she opens her mouth to argue, at the same time cutting her eyes over to the door
she had opened into the backyard. The line “I’m already in the neighborhood”
runs through her head and she wonders if he meant figuratively or literally.
Either way, it gives her a chill. Before she can get her argument out, he’s talking
again. “I’m a rather busy man and it’s either now or never.”
“Excuse me, sir, but ultimatums are hardl—”
“I believe your spaghetti is boiling over again.”
Sophie immediately looks to the stove, swearing under her breath and
rushing over to pull the pot off, eventually just thunking it into the sink next
to the dejected looking meatballs. She could have sworn she turned down the
heat on the burner b—
“Wait, what the f—” Sophie starts, dropping the phone and spinning
around, just now questioning how on earth the person on the other line knew.
Her eyes scan the backyard, going over once quickly and then once again slowly.
Her chills have broken out into goosebumps and she sees no one. Suddenly
terrified, she feels as if someone must be standing behind her but looks and
sees no one.
This time she scans inside the house, once quickly and then once again
slowly as her pulse jumps into her throat and the hairs on the back of her neck
stand up. She’s spoken to schizophrenic children about non-existent people in
the room, listened to patients explain in detail how they wanted to cut open
their best friends, and seen the uncaring eyes of a psychopath unapologetic of
murder. The last one was on a research trip to a prison and not in her own
office, of course, but the point remains that she’s certainly had patients give her
chills before. She has never, however, had someone invade her home. Her little
slice of peace in Palingras.
Seeing no one and nothing, eventually she picks up the phone again. On the
other side of the line, she can hear his smooth voice still talking. “I do apologize
for scaring you, but quite frankly, I haven’t the time to spare with your normal
formalities. As I said, I’m a rather busy man. Now if you wouldn’t mind opening
your front door, I would like to get started on the session. I’ll pay generously to
compensate for being after hours, of course.”
Sophie pulls the phone away from her ear, stares down at it for a moment,
then stares out the door into the backyard and around her kitchen disbelievingly.
This simply cannot be happening. Dimly, she hears the doorbell ring. Then
she hears it again.
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Ralph Munn Creative Writing Anthology 2019
The second time breaks her spell of stillness and with a shake of her head
and tossing her hands up in the air, she thinks to hell with it and tosses the
phone down on the counter next to the batteries. Stepping around the puddle
of marinara, she makes her way over to the front door.
The bell rings again.
“Alright, alright! I’m coming, Jesus. No need to get all impatient about
it.” Opening the door, her eyes widen just slightly, but she quickly schools her
expression. Everything else is falling apart, but at the very least she can remain
professional.
“Wrong. Not Jesus, that’s funny actually.” The man says with a grin. From
the silky timbre of his voice she had been expecting someone in a suit, but he’s
simply dressed in blue jeans and a black hoodie. His hair is blonde and neatly
cut, but it’s easy to see that it’s naturally wavy. Tall, he holds himself with a
confidence that speaks of athleticism. Most of all, however, her eyes are drawn
to his face. Aristocratic nose, square jaw, cheekbones she could cut herself on.
The features are all symmetrical and well-defined, perfect to the point of
being unerring. He’s too attractive that it looks photoshopped, save for the fact
he’s standing right in front of her. It’s disconcerting and, rather than the natural
reaction Sophie would have to most attractive people, it makes her want to close
the door in his symmetrical face. It’s too flawless; it screams deceit. Snake.
Then there’s the eyes. A brilliantly piercing blue, a blue that sees all, a blue
that’s framed with well-shaped brows. One of which is skeptically raised. He
has the expression on his face that she could hear in his voice, mild amusement
at her expense. It shakes her from her reverie.
“I don’t appreciate you coming to my home without invitation.”
“Look, I need a therapist.”
Sophie lets out a very professional snort of laughter. “Yeah, you do.”
“So, let me in then.”
With a sigh, Sophie can feel her conviction fading. She doesn’t know why.
This man, with his too perfect bone structure and radiance, scared the living
daylights out of her when she was in her kitchen. She still doesn’t know how,
but he’s standing politely outside her threshold and she gets the impression
that if she were to say no right in this moment, he would actually leave. That
impression, the gut feeling that he would go if she said to, is what finally has
her stepping back and opening her door.
“Alright, come on in. The living room is through to your right, you can sit
wherever you feel comfortable.” Sophie says, grudging at first and then shifting
back towards a warmer demeanor at the end. By letting him in, she’s taken him
16

on as a client, a client she got off on the wrong foot with. “Like I said earlier,
you can call me Dr. Williams or Sophie, whichever makes you more comfortable.
And your name?”
He steps inside the door and for a second, out of the corner of her eye, she
could have sworn he ducked to do so. Once she’s looking straight at him again,
of course that wasn’t the case. He’s certainly tall, but not so tall to have to duck
through the doorway. Nobody is.
She shakes the thought from her mind while closing the front door. Following
him into the living room, she sits down in her typical position with proper
posture and legs crossed.
Except she’s wearing grey sweatpants and a soft, faded blue t-shirt with
canary yellow puppy pawprints on it instead of her usual pantsuit. It feels a little
ridiculous, so rather than keep forcing a professional air, she leans back into
the chair and just pulls her legs up under her to a more comfortable position.
The man walks over and sits across from her on the couch, tossing his feet
up and using the coffee table to rest them on. When Sophie doesn’t even blink,
he says ‘huh’ softly, glancing around again at the impeccably furnished living
room and the couple of succulents on the table.
His eyes pin for a second at the great fern by her windows before he starts
talking, his voice settling into a mocking drawl. There’s mockery, but for the
first time Sophie doesn’t feel like it’s aimed at her. And underneath it all is
a tiredness, an undercurrent of absolute exhaustion which belies all of his
mannerisms.
“Serpent, Genesis 3:1. Adversary, Job 1. The anointed cherub that covers,
Ezekiel 28:14. Devil or accuser, Matthew 4:1. Tempter, Matthew 4:3. Beelzebub,
Matthew 12:24. Ruler of the demons, Matthew 12:24. Wicked one, Matthew
13:19. Matthew really had a thing for me, as you can see. God of this world,
2 Corinthians 4:4. Belial, 2 Corinthians 6:15. Prince of the power of the air,
Ephesians 2:2. Roaring lion, 1 Peter 5:8. Dragon, Revelation 12:9 and 20:2.”
The man pauses for a moment, shifting his attention away from the great fern
and instead looking at Sophie. “Lucifer, Isaiah 14:12.”
He then pauses and the room is silent while he watches Sophie’s reaction.
For the most part, she doesn’t have one, just nodding her head slightly as she
mentally categorizes him as disillusioned. Where the illusions of grandeur come
from, she isn’t yet sure. Schizophrenia certainly causes them, but so do some
other mental illnesses, so it’s still too early to tell. She doesn’t say that, of course.
“Well, that’s a whole lot of things to go by. What do you want me to call
you?”
Short Prose
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Ralph Munn Creative Writing Anthology 2019
“Satan’s a bit accusing . . . so Lucifer is fine. It means morning star. This is,
apparently, the part where you don’t believe me.” He smiles, his face and voice
turning patronizing. “I’m not God, you can ask me to prove it.”
“I don’t need you to prove anything.”
“But you don’t believe me.”
“Well, how long have you known you were Satan?”
“Lucifer,” he corrects, though now the patronization has left his face,
vaguely annoyed by the patronization that he doesn’t hear in Sophie’s tone, but
knows is in her mind. “And it isn’t as if I’ve been living some mortal life and
then up and decided that I was the devil incarnate or some similar foolishness.”
“Of course not, I’m sorry I insinuated that,” Sophie apologizes, and he looks
down, realizing that he had stood up at one point and the therapist is now sitting
more upright, more stiffly, than she had been a minute ago.
Slowly, apologetically, he lowers himself back into his chair.
“Right. This is the part where you don’t believe me,” he repeats, as if
reminding himself. Looking around the room, he debates for a moment in his
own mind before smiling in Sophie’s direction. “I’ll prove it.”
Reaching a hand out, he curls it into a fist. It’s slow, but not careful, and
with the same leisurely attitude he unfurls it. A green flame is dancing in his
palm, growing, casting his face in eerie shadow.
Sophie’s eyes widen and her breath catches, watching as suddenly she can
see why he had to duck in the doorway, surely he must have. He’s taller, savagely
beautiful to the point where she has to look away, and there’s a shadowy looming
outline of something behind him, her mind equally whispering that it’s wings
and shoving the foolishness aside. The shadows in the room turn inky, their
sinuous liquid stretching and flexing as they begin to pool and explore, pushing
into the light and beginning to take over the room. There are whispers behind
the silence and things behind the nothingness, bending, bending, coming forth
out of nowhere and into being from not and the world seems slightly sideways
and entirely wrong an—
“This is the part where you get scared.” Even as he speaks the words, the
man who isn’t any man at all drops his hand down and everything disappears.
“Oh, okay,” Sophie voices without thought, sitting in her chair and staring.
The transition from a glimpse at the other worldly to the painfully normal state
of her living room has her head reeling. The man in front of her, not a man
at all, shouldn’t exist. Couldn’t. But he’s sitting right there and Sophie doesn’t
know what it means. If the devil is real, is hell? Heaven? God?
It’s a weighty question, a weighty thought for a proud atheist to wrestle
18

with. Sophie stares for a moment, taking in a collecting breath and compartmentalizing.
There’s time to question the heavens and the earth, the very nature of
creation itself. A whole lifetime for it. Now, right now, she just needs to gather
her shattered view of reality to hold a therapy session with the devil. She can
go crazy after.
“Normally people scream. Or try to run or something,” he comments, a bit
of amusement on his face. This time a lot of the mockery is gone and Sophie
wonders if earlier, when she had gotten the irritating impression of him laughing
at her, if that had been because of her struggles in the kitchen and not because
of herself as a person.
“Oh, sorry. My bad,” Sophie apologizes reflexively, but she’s starting to relax
again, repositioning herself to lean against one armrest of the recliner. She’s settling
into the wake of normality’s death, falling into conversation and marveling
at the impossible ease of it. “Is that how you knew my pasta was boiling over?”
His mouth twitches. The impression of him laughing at her, without actually
laughing at all, comes back in full force. “Sure, you could say that.”
“Okay then. So long as you don’t have cameras installed in my house or
something creepy like that.”
“Um, Sophie, I think you’re missing the point.”
“Well, I know, I suppose you could see all the goings-on anyway, but
cameras would just be creepier.”
“Creepier than Satan?”
“I watch way too much Criminal Minds.”
“Noted.” Lucifer turns and lies down on the couch, stretching out on his
back and propping his shoes up on the armrest. He bends an arm and tucks
his head into the crook of his elbow, his other hand resting neatly on his chest.
“Now that the whole business of realizing who I am is out of the way, shall we
get on to the session?”
“Of course,” Sophie agrees, though her tone is no longer the emotionless
autopilot of not knowing how to process. It’s professional once more as she
resumes her role as therapist. This is what she does, who she is. “Why don’t we
start with why you decided to come to therapy?”
“Oh, you know. Daddy issues.”
Short Prose
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Ralph Munn Creative Writing Anthology 2019
Jacklyn Caulkins
Grade 12
North Allegheny Senior High School
Buried
(Fiction)
Finn lost one shoe back on Elm Street and his shirt is somewhere on Jessica’s
floor, but his pants are mostly on and he didn’t break his neck launching out
of her window, so all in all it’s been a good night. He hikes his jeans up a bit
and glances back over his shoulder in the direction he’s come from, still reeling
from what just happened.
Sneaking into girls’ houses isn’t new, he’s got the reputation of a scamp
which he’s earned through some very hard work thank you very much, but his
exit tonight was one for the books. He won’t ever forget the mental image of
Mr. Smith bearing down on him, pure fury in his eyes and a sadistic intention
with that baseball bat. Finn’s pretty sure the bat knocking a hole in the wall
where his head had just been was the life-saving delay that gave him time to
make his great escape.
Slick, if he says so himself (which he does), but their roof sucks. Not that
most architects are designing their masterpieces with the safety of delinquent
teenagers in mind, but it still has to be one of the worst he’s ever seen. The
terracotta tiles had grown a slippery coat of moss, and Finn slid in a desperate
scramble down most of it, barely catching himself in time before falling off.
He imagines if he had landed and broken a leg, Mr. Smith would have come
barreling out to finish what the roof started. Thankfully he never had to find
out, because he used the porch banisters to shimmy to the ground and bolted
before Jessica’s father stopped screaming long enough to pull his head out of
the window and exit the house through a door like a civilized individual. A
civilized, baseball-bat-swinging individual.
Now, he calls their roof terrible, but really the Smith house is pretty nice.
It’s two stories with hibiscus in the garden, a pool in the backyard, white-washed
walls, and all of the windows have panes. The roof in and of itself, Finn grudg-
20

ingly admits, isn’t terrible. It has all of its shingles. None are cracked or loose.
It’s just slippery as all hell and a far cry from the roof he grew up on.
Not that he was raised on a roof, just that he and his little brother used to
spend a lot of time on it.
It had always been a refuge for them, a safe haven of sorts. When he was in
middle school, he found a quote by Oscar Wilde, “We are all in the gutter, but
some of us are looking at the stars.” After he told it to Liam, his little brother
scraped it onto the brick by the chimney with a chalk rock. It’s faded since then;
it has been years after all, but the sentiment remains.
It’s a warm night, not as suffocatingly humid as the day and almost bordering
on cool, but pleasant, nonetheless. Finn glances up at the stars, thinking
about when he and Liam were younger and they would watch them together.
He doesn’t remember the first time he did it, but one night he started telling
stories about the figures in the stars—not constellations, mind you, just made
up ones that they’d pick out—to separate their world on the roof from the
shouting below.
Then they grew older and eventually Liam grew out of his older brother’s
made up stories and started to correct him with a tiny smile while pointing
out what the real constellations were. He had always been obsessed with space.
NASA, the moon, galaxies far away, the nature of stars. If Finn were to be
entirely honest, he’d have to admit most of it went right over his head. The stars
were pretty, for sure, but he didn’t really care about something so distant. He
just loved to listen to how much Liam cared, and he carved out a special place
in his heart for the astronomy he didn’t give a damn for. Maybe, if so much
didn’t go over his head, Finn would have thought to ask just why it was space
that captured his little brother’s heart.
But they eventually grew out of that too. Finn doesn’t remember why they
stopped. It’s not like there was ever a clear-cut date and he can’t imagine what
the reason would have been. He just knows they don’t do it anymore.
By now he’s gotten to his house, at the end of the neighborhood, where
the green lawns grow less manicured and more closely reflect the outskirting
swamps. Their house is nestled in the back, at the end of the road, and as Finn
walks down the sidewalk with his leftover shoe under one arm, looking at the
lime paint peeling off on the edges and the empty driveway, he sighs.
It’s a shitty home, but he’s tired and it’s good to finally be there.
But Cindy is out, the driveway is evidence of that, so Bill is probably sitting
on the couch in front of the TV and Finn doesn’t feel in the mood for any interaction
with the man. So while he’s still a good ten or so houses out, he just cuts
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Ralph Munn Creative Writing Anthology 2019
across a yard to the small trail of packed dirt in the back of the swamp—worn
in from years of neighborhood kids tromping through the waterlogged trees
in different games or miniature adventures, heedless of parental warnings of
alligators and snakes.
The dark, damp soil squishes up through his toes as he goes, while the
dark spaces between the trees fill with the night insects’ dissonant chirping
and the mostly still water’s quiet presence. Finn doesn’t want to head back to
the road. It’s soothing here, where he probably should feel on edge but instead
simply feels nostalgia for home and its swamp in the back. The murky pools
and bent-knuckled roots were more sheltering than the building itself ever was.
Finn’s about to hit the backyard—can already see the orange and blue glow
of the TV where Bill must be sitting—when a motion of a silhouette out of the
corner of his eye has him pause. He turns, slightly, and creeps a bit closer, then
almost bursts out laughing when he sees that the person who made his heart
skip was just Liam.
Finn bites back an impish smile, eyes suddenly glinting with the start of a
practical joke, as he starts to creep up on his younger brother. He’d undoubtedly
be able to make him jump; Liam was never as comfortable in the swamp. In fact,
Finn can’t imagine what he’d be doing out here, when it’s an ungodly hour of
the night and Liam’s the one to either be up reading with a flashlight or going
to bed early like a non-scamp.
Finn straightens, the smile falling from his face as he edges closer, brows
furrowing in confusion because he can hear the distinctive sound of a shovel
biting through soil, occasionally catching a rock or root, before upturning earth.
Now, Finn can’t imagine why Liam’s out here digging a hole; there’s no good
reason to be burying something in the middle of the night. An uncomfortable,
slightly sick feeling of premonition settles in his gut.
He watches with a grim fascination as Liam leans over, jabbing the shovel
in and shoving it deeper with his foot before tossing the dirt away. Some of
his darker curls fall over his forehead and his face is tight with concentration.
Looking at him now, sharper features and defined shoulders, Finn is suddenly
struck with the fact that his little brother isn’t a baby anymore. He looks more
like a man than a boy as he digs, and as Finn stares all he can do is picture
the reedy little kid with the wild hair and the smile with one dimple, excitedly
rambling in a low tone about the book under his arm.
By now the hole is about as deep as Liam’s thighs, the shovel coming up
with a dark sheen of water as the soil is more mud than dirt and he’s hit water.
22

He steps sideways a bit, hoisting a garbage bag up and dropping it into the hole.
Then another. And another.
Finn’s heart sinks as internally he screams, over and over, “Don’t do this,
Liam! Don’t be this, don’t be a bad person! You’re the better one, the smart one.
You’re the one who’s going to be successful and get out of here, don’t do this!”
But whatever Liam did that’s terrible enough it must be buried has already
come to pass. And Finn already lost his window to step forward and pretend
he had just arrived. So instead he just watches, numbly, as Liam fills the hole
back in. He’s staring at his brother’s face, searching for some explanation, but
the achingly familiar features hold an expression he’s never seen before. Grim,
dark, and cold. Goosebumps rise on Finn’s bare arms, heedless of the balmy air,
and he leans his back against a tree for support as he stares.
Once Liam has filled the hole in, he packs the dirt down and then scatters
leaves back over top. Straightening, he wipes some sweat off of his face and
leaves a ghastly smear of dirt across the top of his cheek. Grabbing the shovel,
he turns to walk back towards the house and Finn peels himself off from the
trunk of the tree, freezing as Liam pauses.
Liam turns back, leg freezing midstep as he hesitates and looks over his
shoulder, brows furrowed as he scans the woods. There hadn’t been a sound, not
really. Just some sensation on the back of his neck that he was being watched,
that the swamp had eyes and the horror had a witness. Then Liam shakes it
off and turns back around, to quietly slip back towards the garden shed of their
house with no garden, to stow the shovel away and pretend that nothing had
ever happened.
Finn waits until his brother has disappeared through the backdoor to
tentatively edge forward, crouching on the edge of the freshly filled hole. He
should go fetch the shovel, but as much as everything in him is screaming to
run, he can’t pull away. He’s tethered here, until he knows what secret Liam
has buried, because once he leaves, he is never, ever coming back to this spot or
cutting through the swamp again.
So he leans forward, digging his hands into the soil and scooping it aside.
Stuttering at first, then his crouch turns to kneeling and he braces one hand,
unearthing the dirt in an almost frantic motion with the other. His jeans are
damp with the water that seeps up from the ground, but he doesn’t care. At
some point he lost his shoe, but he doesn’t even notice. He’s just consumed
with the digging.
“Please be something stolen. Something broken. Something that Liam needs
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Ralph Munn Creative Writing Anthology 2019
to hide . . .” Finn begs, muttering to himself because a thought isn’t enough
in his desperation, then all too quickly for the depth of the hole his fingers
are scraping against plastic, and he can feel a give to the garbage bag but
something solid beneath. Yanking his hand back with a gag, he stares, before
with trembling fingers he unties the knot at the top of the first bag and allows
it to fall open.
“Please be—” Finn starts, but he doesn’t finish, before he’s reeling away and
retching in a nearby bush. Sightless, milky eyes. Matted, bloody hair. Detached,
sawn off, just lying there with no body to it at an unnatural angle and stillness
and slackness and a face. A face. A bloody, broken-in face, but a face nonetheless
and a person—a real human being with consciousness and a life—now laying
sodden in blackish water and congealed blood.
Finn gags again, until he’s thrown up the contents of his stomach and dry
heaved more. Then he looks at the outline of their house, at the closed curtains
of their shared bedroom, and Finn begins to cry.
This isn’t Liam. Liam, who would pick the seeds out of his fruit to try and
plant trees in little Dixie cups with soil in them. Liam, who pasted glow in the
dark stars on the ceiling. Liam, whom he took punches from Bill for because
he didn’t know how to get hit. Liam, who went through a phase in sixth grade
when he would steal Finn’s shirts even though they were way too big. Liam,
with the slightly crooked smile and the ringing laughter and the light in his
eyes and Liam . . . Liam, who isn’t a murderer.
Who once bottle fed abandoned kittens he found on the side of the road.
Who volunteered to help tutor struggling elementary school kids free of charge
or service-hour benefit. Who always listened better than anyone else. Who just
wanted, more than anything, to go to college and become a scientist. Who isn’t
a murderer.
This isn’t Liam.
Finn rises to his feet and staggers away from the scene, feeling dizzy and
out of touch. He moves through the backyard feeling as if he is moving through
time, its thickness contorting around him, until he’s freezing with his palm
wrapped around the handle of the backdoor. Sirens play in his head. Red and
blue lights, questions. Hate filled news reports and court proceedings. Abusive
guards, a cramped cell, the cell mates with mean eyes and records stretching
through the door.
No.
That won’t be Liam.
So Finn turns, hand limply falling from the door, and drags himself back
24

to the swamp. Back to the putrid smell and the black bags and the hole and
the water at the bottom and the face without a body and the glassy eyes and—
The trees, draped in slowly swaying blankets of moss, observe and judge
while whispering quietly to themselves. They watch the boy brokenly murmur,
“This isn’t Liam.”
But that’s Mamory.
Finn stares, at the broken and bloody face of the corpseless head, eyes
sliding dazedly over the arm bent at the wrong angle and the exposed bone at
the end of it. Idly, he wonders where Liam could have cut her up, because he
can’t think of a place and the fact that he knows her, that the girl in pieces in
the bag is Mamory, has broken the last rational part of his brain until all that
remains is autopilot.
On autopilot, he reties the bag. Drops it back into the hole. Pushes the dirt
over top. Packs it down. Scatters some leaves. Stumbles away.
He stops, for a long time, to sit with his back leaning against their house
and listening to the faint murmur of the television inside as he tries to process
the unimaginable he just witnessed. Pulling together the scraps of his sanity,
he washes his hands and feet off in the garden house before stripping off his
muddy jeans. Those he tosses in the hamper as he slinks down the hall to his
room, carefully avoiding the notice of Bill.
He lingers outside the door before entering their bedroom, shutting it
behind him as his eyes land on the form of Liam, hidden beneath his comforter
in his bed by the window. Finn walks over to his own and sinks down onto the
mattress, eyes never leaving the outline of his brother as he simply stares and
tries to mesh the image of Liam pushing back his hair that’s falling in his eyes
as he digs a hole for a dead body, with the image of him working on homework
at the kitchen table with his tongue slightly poking out between his lips in
concentration.
“Hey, you awake?” Finn asks, voice low, without thinking.
“Yeah.” Liam replies, rolling over and letting his arm fall across his forehead
as he looks sideways but doesn’t sit up, voice thick as if he had just woken. Which
gives Finn pause, wondering if he’s faking or if now his mind is just playing
tricks on him. “What’s up?”
“Nothing, I was just wondering . . . just got back is all.”
“Oh, okay.”
Somehow, in Liam’s tone, it almost sounds like he’s the one who’s been
failed.
Then the younger rolls back over to face the wall again. Finn stares, keeps
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Ralph Munn Creative Writing Anthology 2019
staring, trying to reconcile years with Liam to the horror hidden in the swamp
out back. He can’t. They don’t exist together, can’t exist together. So Finn just
keeps staring, trying to feel for which Liam is the one curled up in the blankets
across the room. He’s lost him. Whichever version he is now, whatever kind of
Liam he is now, Finn has lost him.
If he hadn’t stumbled across the burial in the swamp, if he had left Jessica’s
just ten minutes later, would he have known? Would he have picked up
something wrong in the air? Or has he already missed everything?
“Goodnight.” Liam says softly and Finn starts, realizing how obvious his
staring is.
Finn remains silent for a moment, swallowing a burning why down a choked
throat. There must be a reason, there has to be a reason. But no explanation
could justify or make the horror right. He loves Liam, he always will, but it will
also never be the same again.
“Goodnight.”
26

Allison Stein
Grade 10
Mt. Lebanon High School
Short Prose
Time Enough
(Fiction)
If you had asked John and Betsy back in June of 1979 when they thought the
world would end, they would have answered you, in between wild laughs like
the bellows of Betsy’s accordion: never. They were fourteen years old, still growing
sluggishly, their bones interspersed with stars that shone out after a long
walk or late at night, and in an eyelash-blink it was August, the last smudges
of orange summer and their whole lives ahead of them in dimly wavering lines
(time stopped that summer, clocks ticking everywhere half as fast or shattering
completely), and they were in love, for the first time, real love, they said.
Fourteen. On a park bench outside of a Dairy Queen holding tight-clasped
hands like they were clenching themselves together, keeping the universe from
wrenching their bodies vigorously apart. The girl with the black-dark hair
in loose curls and the lipstick and the bubblegum, looking like a fallen angel
in her white blouse and silver nails beneath the vivid neon; the boy with the
dimples and the pure smile and the shirt from Yosemite and the bare feet and
the tapping fingers and the hair always catching in the wind. Talking, because
that was all they could do, and all they needed to do.
“Bets, your face when I finally won a poker hand, god . . . ” John said,
elbowing her, words beating their wings and rising into laughs.
Betsy opened her mouth to say something, exposing peony-pink bubblegum,
but instead she laughed too, wild, tossing her head back and stamping
her feet on the damp, streetlight-glittered concrete. Their laughs had the same
galloping cadence, like cicadas in the woods, only brighter, louder, longer-drawn.
“Bah, lies,” she finally gasped out, head back so far her neck should be
crunched but it wasn’t. She could see the reflection of a car’s headlights thrown
up on the silvery backing beneath the overhang of the store. Her breaths came
out in wheezes, tossing daisy petals into the wind. (John and Betsy used to
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Ralph Munn Creative Writing Anthology 2019
drip flowers, would see them swirl in the bottom of the tub after showers in
velvet-deep morning.)
Betsy stood up on smooth-running joints—she was a dancer, performed
in musicals and ballets on a spotlight-scalded stage, getting soft pink sunburn
from their brilliance—and pulled on John’s arm, the weight of him heavy as he
sprawled on the bench and let his laughter wisp off into vague fireworks. There
was a mourning dove singing on a branch just across the parking lot, and they
knew that everyone else thought their songs were sad (mourning was in their
name, after all) but they’d heard the whistles a thousand times on sun-bright
walks and had never heard them as anything more or less than beautiful.
“Come on, John, I’ve got the cards on me, rematch?” Her words spilled out
fast, tumbling over one another like children tripping down a hill, entirely opposite
of John’s well-measured phrases, sought-for words, soft poetry memorized
in an instant of mediated emotion. His fingers were tight in hers, pressing in,
and Betsy tugged one more time on his arm before John stood up close beside
her, smiling, not with all his teeth bright in the blue-red neon of the OPEN
sign, but only halfway.
“I’d love to, Bets, really I would, but I have to go home. It’s getting so late,”
he said, pinning a flimsy smile on his face.
“Yeah, I get it, lots to do, and summer will be over soon anyway, we need
our sleep and all, yeah, bye, I’ll see you tomorrow, maybe?” Betsy’s words spilled
out faster than usual, and for a moment she was worried she might explode into
shards of bone and blood and thin cloth from their force.
“See you tomorrow, Betsy!”
John walked off already, tall and leaning forward and fingers reaching for the
Rubik’s cube in his pocket, when they both shivered on their feet and turned to
one another, smiles like dying, wilting, browning roses. They pressed together
for a too-quick kiss and then John veered off one way and Betsy the other like
planets torn apart by gravity, frenzied orbits.
By the end of September, they had drifted apart. The pressure of time was
too much, crushing their bones, leaving hairline fractures all through their
bodies that weren’t discovered until years later.
“We’re too young for love,” Betsy had said, mumbling, voice finally slowed.
“No way it can last,” agreed John.
And with that they flung themselves apart forever. Because it might not last.
In fifteen years, they lived one in Los Angeles and one in Maine. Betsy
had four kids, wild things she couldn’t hope to control, and she was so tired
anymore and she couldn’t remember how long ago she stopped loving her hus-
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and. During one of those torturous pregnancies, she started hating the taste
of bubblegum (it tasted only of dead grass and missed opportunities to her)
and ever since she had been lonely, empty. She walked through her house in
the mornings before driving an hour and a half to her accounting office and
murmured, “This must be real life.” Words slow like ancient, crystalline honey.
Eyes blinking, tired, and shoulders hunched and crinkled beneath a halfwayironed
blouse (black, of course).
John had no one. He was a doctor, and he lived alone in a too-big house
that rang with echoes that sounded like summer and popping bubblegum and
mourning doves. He’d given up on the lie that was true love back in high school,
and he was fine with that. Sometime between college and medical school (the
days all bled together horribly) he’d developed a debilitating phobia of playing
cards. John attributed it to the one time he’d gotten a papercut shuffling them
to play solitaire in those days.
They were broken and run-down, and, in 1994, Betsy celebrated her fiftieth
birthday, and John his forty-eighth, despite the fact that both of their birth
certificates read 1965. Neither of them could remember the feeling of sunshine
or the even more particular brushing sensation of starlight.
On a Monday that year, Betsy had left work early to take care of not one,
not two, but three kids who’d caught the flu at school. They whimpered in
their bedrooms, and she fitted in tight earplugs. They tramped down the stairs
draped in worn blankets like the togas of dying gods to watch something inane
on television, and Betsy ran out to the porch and locked the door behind her.
The wind was blowing her already-graying hair over her face, touching her like
fingers, and her eyes were closing like waning moons, she was so tired. Betsy
leaned against the railing over the street, pressing it into her stomach until she
felt sick.
On that same Monday, John was driving home from work. He was exhausted,
kept dozing off at the wheel, but he’d press his hands tight tight tight
around the leather covering and will himself to hold on. The clock in the car
was wavering, and he was crossing a wind-buffeted bridge over roiling water,
and then he felt his hands slip from the wheel and the car jerk beneath him,
creaking and crying like a collapsing house.
Betsy’s kids screamed, the neighbor’s dogs barked, the sun was too bright in
her eyes, her clothes felt too big, she thought she might float away, wondering,
wondering, wondering: if I could jump. Over the railing. Down two stories to
the street. Let go, oh. Quick, quick, quick, she’d fall.
John closed his eyes and thought he might cry, but there was no emotion
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Ralph Munn Creative Writing Anthology 2019
left. Nothing. In the space of seconds-long eternities, the car skidded across
two lanes to the bridge rail, blue blue blue terrible blue beneath, and his hands
were flailing on the wheel, but they couldn’t hold on.
All in an instant they thought of mourning doves, grief and noise, that
too-brief, bubblegum-scented summer when they’d been JohnandBetsy. They
felt themselves clenching onto the names, mouthing them to the apathetic air,
everything else plunged into silence. If only they’d had more time. If only they’d
seen how maybe love could last.
John and Betsy shook the memories off like dirty water, don’t need those,
not now. Betsy plugged her ears with her fingers and stood on the rust-weakened
railing, wobbling. John took his hands off the wheel and leaned towards the
windshield and memorized the cloud-stricken sky.
They were back in the Dairy Queen parking lot. Fourteen again, white
blouse, Rubik’s cube. Nothing had changed at all. John had just let Betsy pull
him to his feet.
There’s time enough, said the whispers of the trees, like dazed ocean waves
in the growing dim. This can last, read the flecks of light in the asphalt, scribbled
between yellow parking space lines. Their souls were rocketing together
like colliding stars.
He curled an arm, careful, around her shoulder, and she leaned into him,
their skin heating up and glowing white where they touched. Thigmotropism:
turning, growing towards touch, the need to hold on.
John was still laughing, little hiccups of it, and Betsy started again, leaning
their heads back to the sky.
“Bets, look at the stars, there’s a million of them, they’re so neat!” John
breathed.
“They are, god, look at them.” Words fast again. Heartbeats thundering
loud, alive.
John tumbled his foot along the ground, feeling himself brighten in the
wind. “Nights like this don’t happen much, do they, Betsy?”
“Doesn’t matter. All we’ve got is right now. Let’s stay here, yeah?” Betsy blew
a bubble and it bloomed like a headstrong rose into the cool air of the night.
“Here? In the parking lot?” John pulled away, staring at her beneath the
orange streetlight with a smile.
“Yeah, why not? The cars won’t run us over.”
30

Aria Eppinger
Grade 10
Winchester Thurston School
Short Prose
Hair’s Why I’m Satisfied
(Non-Fiction)
Nothing is more frustrating than scrolling through Instagram pictures of professional
models and social media influencers—seeing their perfectly-styled,
beachy curls with subtle braid details and not a single hair out of place—and
realizing that will never be me. This is not a new revelation: I remember sitting
in the back of the third-grade classroom and admiring little Talia’s caramelcolored,
sleek-straight locks. All the girls after gym class would marvel over how
easily she could float her brush, bedazzled with pink and purple rhinestones,
through her perfect hair. “Feel how soft my hair is, guys!” she hollered. We all
knew it felt like freshly zambonied ice: smooth as silk, soft as cashmere, and as
heartless as ice. My hair, on the contrary, was no Talia’s: no matter how hard
I tried, it was never curly or straight but always frizzy. If there were aesthetics
back then, mine would be bedhead-chic. Trust me, years of gym class taught
me not only how to throw a frisbee, but that according to locker room talk,
my hair was definitely not on trend. When we judge others’ hairdos, we are
often too hasty to realize that hair is more than an ornament atop our heads.
Regardless of its color, shape, size, texture, or style, it is part of our identity and
self-expression: our own slice of human history. Each head of hair tells a story
from the subconscious perspective, and mine is the story my hair has tried to
tell for seventeen years; my slice of human history from a scientific, ancestral,
and personal perspective.
Originally, I just thought of my hair as the scraggly stuff that grows out
of my head. When I yank my comb through my hair each morning, I do not
marvel at the archeological dig-site it truly is. There is more to hair than initially
meets the eye from a scientific perspective. We evolved to have body hair to keep
us warm. Biologically speaking, having long, luscious locks is evidence of good
nutrition and alludes to being a fruitful multiplier. Through mate selection,
hair acquired its flashy nature and attractive quality, which still holds today. In
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Ralph Munn Creative Writing Anthology 2019
addition to serving both the purpose of a warm winter beanie and an attractive
feature, hair also serves as a garbage removal system for our body. I met a doctor
who prescribed metal analysis for hair samples. Apparently, chemicals that we
are exposed to are secreted through the hair follicle or root. This removal of
substances from our bodies makes each half inch of hair an archaeological digsite
of a month of our chemical history. Yet, while I yank my comb through
each strand, I do not appreciate my hair’s scientific roots. I do not stand in awe
of the natural creation at hand, as archaeologists would at a dig-site. I may not
appreciate my hair’s evolutionary roots, but my hair definitely embodies them
when I awake with the coif of a primitive ape.
My hair is just like that diva that can’t decide whether she wants to be curly
or straight. Hence, a third of the time I have a head of ringlet curls, a third
sleek, straight locks, and the other third it is who-really-knows-what texture.
Other than the daily annoyance of my hair’s indecision, why does my hair’s
texture-vacillation matter? It represents an undeniable part of my heritage and
identity: my cashewism. I didn’t coin the term, but according to what people call
me, I am a cashew: a mix between Catholic and Jewish family lineage. Like my
hair’s uncertain texture, I could never figure out which ethnic group I belonged
to because they both made me and my awkward hair. Picking one always made
me feel like I was being untrue to the other half, and I learned from quite a
young age that, according to others, I was not a pure-breed. Instead of having
two cultural identities, I felt like I had none because I was told that I was not
really “Italian” or “Jewish.” It’s hard to disregard what others tell me about
myself when I believe what they say to be true. My hair reminds me of this
identity struggle when I roll out of bed and see which texture it decided on for
the day. Not being pure vanilla, but Neapolitan choc-van-straw, takes the cake
in my opinion. My hair has helped me to understand the value of my diverse
heritage; I just wish I could embrace both it and my hair.
However, my hair doesn’t make it easy for me to embrace it. In other words,
to add to my hair’s self-identity crisis, my locks have a frizz complex, which I
have become self-conscious about. I despise walking into a holiday party with a
frizzy messy bun because frizzy hair is not a good look with a holiday sweater, a
party dress, or really anything, and the Eau de Chlorine perfume is not exactly
the cherry on top. I started competitive swimming at the age of three and
after fourteen years of floating in a chlorinated hair-frier, the frizz has begun to
show. I’m not the best swimmer, but day after day I get up at precisely 4:39am
for morning practice and trench back in the evening all in the hope of getting
goal times. The Olympics may not be in my future, but gumption has helped me
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stroke to new levels while making my hair puffier than a Pomeranian. Endless
years of frizzy hair represents my resilience, and its puff, like a Pomeranian’s,
can be cute in its own quirky way.
While most times I laugh about my hair’s texture and frizz, sometimes I
enjoy styling it into fancy braided and twisted dos that are no laughing matter.
As a tween with new found technology-use freedom, I enjoy watching YouTube
tutorials of Dutch, French, fishtail, and lace braids and trying to replicate the
designs on myself. However, it is difficult to contort myself into the proper
position to hold and grab strands to incorporate them into braids. One do I
was particularly proud of was the transformation of bed-head, frizz ball to a
glamorous double crown braid updo with a few locks delicately placed to frame
my face. I felt like a TV show warrior-woman riding into battle, except my
battle was a math competition. Ready to slay my competitors, I was shocked
that my own teammates, a gaggle of male, teenage nerds, called me “shallow,”
“basic,” and a “Starbucks-drinking popular girl.” They told me that I needed
to look more like a real competitor and the whole put together hair style was
too “Barbie” and not enough “brain.” Worse than the remarks themselves, I let
them make me feel shallow. This is one of my biggest self-deprecations: I care
too much about the opinions of others that I cannot let them go. Just because
people criticize the effort I put into my hair in order to look a certain way, does
not mean that I am shallow or that my appearance is all that I care about. Yes,
when I stare at myself in the mirror, see my frizzy locks, and feel unsure about
whether to style them, I think back to the math competition and grapple with
what to do with my hair.
I am still learning to accept the opinion of others as just that. Perhaps these
criticisms are so difficult to ignore because they are not just a critique of my
hair, but also of what the hair represents: my identity. From my Homosapien
roots, to my diverse cultural heritage, to my personality, my hair is part of who
I am because it is more than just the keratin on my head. I dream of a parallel
universe where we all see that people are wearing diverse identities on their
head. Instead of judging or commenting about people’s hair, we embrace both
the locks on their head and the mind inside it. Because travel to this parallel
universe might require some spacecraft innovation and the discovery of a new
gas combustion reaction, I hope to no longer rely on the opinions of others to
feel content with my hair and my identity; I must accept myself. And, while I
recently had a trim to reduce my frizz, self-acceptance isn’t so cut and dry.
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Ralph Munn Creative Writing Anthology 2019
Bilal Elkas
Grade 10
Homeschool
The Man
(Fiction)
Ding-dong. The doorbell rang, echoing through the silent house as it interrupted
the conversation Benjamin and his mother were having. It was an odd time
for someone to be at the door, this late at night, but Benjamin refused to turn
anyone down. Excusing himself, he rose from his seat and walked through the
hallway to the front entrance, peering through the blinds to see who had arrived
at their door. There was a new moon that night, and the closest street lamp of
the few that were dispersed along the street barely emitted any light, definitely
not enough to illuminate the subject in front of the door. Unable to see anyone,
Benjamin decided to ignore it.
Ding-dong. Ding-dong.
But it rang again, this time twice in quick succession. He ran back to the
blinds and squinted through them, straining his eyes to make someone out. As
they adjusted to the darkness blanketing the front porch, he began to faintly
discern the outlines of a tall, slender man. Not wanting to leave him hanging,
he opened the door.
Benjamin was immediately unsettled by the man’s appearance. His body was
thin, and he was tall and wore a black suit, not too formal yet not too casual,
with a black hat. At first, Benjamin could not see his features, because the faint
lamp from the street, although very dim, was just bright enough to prevent his
eyes from adjusting, but once he shifted himself and placed the light behind
the man, his visage became all the more visible.
The man was smiling, but disturbingly. It was the smiling one sees on the
face of someone intending harm. The smile that fixes its way into one’s soul and
refuses to be dug out. The smile that procures a shudder when thinking about
it many, many years later.
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His face looked humane and normal, yet inhumane and abnormal. He
seemed lost, yet not. He seemed a variety of things, all of which seemed to have
a counter and ended up balancing out.
But what was most striking of all was the man’s demeanor. His physicality
was off-putting and upsetting, and his presence complemented this. He seemed
to absorb goodwill, compassion, and dignity from Benjamin, beating them into
submission and dragging them into the murky depths of his soul, where he
consumed them and quenched his ever-present thirst.
“How do you do?” the man asked, interrupting Benjamin’s train of thought,
his voice raspy and shrill.
Benjamin shrunk back.
“Oh, don’t be shy,” the man assured. “I’m merely here to offer something.”
Without waiting for a response, he procured an old box from his jacket
pocket. It was worn-out and used with scratch marks and missing areas of paint
scattered all over. He lifted up the tin cap, taking out some cookies wrapped in
a clean, white cloth. They looked delicious and fresh, with their chocolate chips
still a little melted and their dough crisp and crunchy. Benjamin was enticed.
The man leaned toward him and whispered into his ear, “If you would like,
I can lend you these cookies.”
Benjamin’s eyes grew wide.
“But on one condition,” the man paused, licking his dry, cracked lips. “You
hand me that new shawl your mother’s been working on.” He pointed at the
couch where it lay. “That one.”
Benjamin sat down in front of his mother with his newly acquired cookies,
licking the tips of his chocolate-covered fingers. His mother had a perplexed
expression on her face for a few seconds, but she brushed off whatever was
bothering her, and they resumed their conversation that had been so suddenly
interrupted.
Later that night, as Benjamin was getting ready for bed, a nagging feeling
overcame him, as though there were something wrong. He couldn’t quite lay a
finger on what it was, so he ignored it and went to bed.
But it seemed his nagging feeling unveiled itself, as when he was lying in bed
in the near pitch-black bedroom with his eyes closed, a sudden BANG! startled
him, making him throw his hands over his ears and shut his eyes. He worked
up the courage to release himself from his tense state and looked around the
room, trying to distinguish what had caused the loud noise. There appeared to
be nothing out of place at first, but upon further inspection, he discovered that
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Ralph Munn Creative Writing Anthology 2019
there was a bucket lying sideways on the ground. It seemed to have fallen from
the shelves above, but what bothered him was that he did not recall placing it
there and did not think that he would have any reason to do so.
It was a strange happening and disturbed him, so he ended up having
trouble sleeping.
The next night, around the same time that the bucket had fallen, Benjamin
was lying in bed, thinking of how he’d approach his current school project. It
was then that he began to hear some talking, or so it seemed, and what sounded
like music. They were barely audible, and their faintness made him question his
own senses and think that he was just imagining them. He tried to shake them
off, but they persisted, evidently still there. And so he rolled around in his bed,
still believing that they were a figment of his imagination, but when that didn’t
work, he got up and moved around the room, covering and uncovering his ears,
hoping to knock some sense into his brain.
And yet the sounds were still perceptible. Now convinced that something
else was going on, he attempted to determine their origin, so he listened attentively,
trying hard not to fidget.
It sounded like a party. He assumed that one of his neighbors must be
hosting a late night karaoke party, or something of that sort, so he opened
his window to hear the source. But the sounds did not have an outside origin.
He shivered as it dawned on him. The reason they sounded faint yet did not
raise in amplitude when he opened the window was because they were issuing
from his house.
They were coming from the basement.
He was too terrified to venture down there and lay his worries to rest—
because he knew there couldn’t possibly be an actual party—so he went back
to bed, praying that his fears were not legitimate fears.
On the third night since the strange man’s untimely visit, Benjamin was,
yet again, lying in bed. The sky outside was clear and the night was fresh. The
sounds of crickets chirping and frogs croaking, with the occasional cheerful
chirp of a bird, bounced through the trees behind their house and amongst the
neighboring homes. The trees were rustling in the soft breeze, swaying back
and forth meditatively. It was a quiet, peaceful neighborhood, and there had
never been any altercations or major quarrels. Crime was completely absent,
too. None, as far as anyone could recall, having been committed in a long, long
time. Forever, it seemed.
It was then that an unwelcome screeching was heard, a horrific screeching
that paralyzed Benjamin and clenched his body, locking him in place. The sound
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was unlike anything he had ever heard, seemingly penetrating the walls of his
house and scattering throughout. Grating and scratchy, like a broken record left
unattended for years, it was a cacophonic concoction of sounds that reminded
him an awful lot of the crispy voice of Donald Duck.
But he was too frightened to be lightened by the thought of Donald Duck.
Upon this realization, he abruptly leapt to another conclusion: the Jersey Devil.
Before, he would’ve brushed its existence off, but now, he was beginning to
sympathize with those that had supposedly witnessed it.
The screeching came and went, as though its possessor was hurtling across
Benjamin’s backyard, chasing something—or running from something.
Finally, it faded into the hum of the forest and vanished, not being heard
again for the remainder of the night.
The next day after school, Benjamin, preoccupied with the events of the
past few days, was staring out the living room window with a view of the west.
It was routine for him to sit idly there and watch as planes flew overhead. And
it was now, by happenstance, that he saw something different in the sky. As all
planes did, it was heading toward the airport.
But it was not a plane.
Circular in shape, it was black with no propellers, engines, or wings, and
it quite clearly resembled what he and the public would assume to be a “UFO.”
But Benjamin knew there must be a logical and reasonable explanation for this,
and he recalled that the object was flying in the direction of the airport, which
also happened to contain a military airspace. With this conclusion in mind, he
realized that it must be some sort of military aircraft, though what kind, he
could not lay a finger on.
After watching it vanish behind the distant trees on the hilltops that lay
before him, he quickly ran to a computer and searched for an object of its nature.
He came up with nothing and very well knew that an object like that, which
had no visible means of propulsion, was not yet technologically feasible. Sure,
he considered the possibility that the military was abstaining from releasing
new technology to the public, but he was astonished to discover that there was
nothing on the internet similar to his sighting. He searched for what must’ve
been half an hour, only to hit an abrupt end when his searching was terminated
by the harsh realization that he would now be labeled one of those “crazy”
people, those lunatics.
That same night, as Benjamin was on the main floor of his house, the first
floor, performing his nightly supplication, the screeching from the night before
arose from the shadows, filling the empty air. He was in a corner room, and the
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sound was coming from right outside the walls, just a few meters away. Shaken
to his core, his insides were quivering, his heart was skipping beats, and his brain
was unable to react. The screeching came and went like last time, but vanished
more quickly, only to reappear and terrorize Benjamin once more.
Then it faded away into the distance as it had done so before, evanescing
until it was no longer present, until the soothing nightly hum took over its
unpleasant presence.
But Benjamin was not allowed comfort yet.
A distant screaming was heard. A blood-curdling, heart-wrenching screaming.
It resounded through the trees, filling every crevice and cranny with peril
and insecurity. It sounded like a torture victim’s agonizing shrieks.
It was a torture victim’s agonizing shrieks.
During school the following morning, Benjamin told his friends of his
strange experiences, only to be mocked and laughed at. Most of them ridiculed
him, blaming him for being the root of lunacy. Some of them said that it was
misfits like him that contaminated society with their impure blood. They all
called him out for different things, and none supported him.
It was with a heavy heart that he trudged home, dragging his feet across
the wet pavement, eyes downcast, the rain pattering on his head and dripping
from his hair, soaking his backpack and clothes. And it was with a heavy heart
that he began to feel queer, as if someone were watching him.
The heavy heart was replaced with anxiety. He observed his surroundings,
but no one was visible. Quickening his pace, he abandoned trudging and welcomed
walking, his head raised and his eyes alert. A sort of dread overtook him,
forcing him to change his walking to a jogging, and his jogging to a running as
the apprehension, the feeling, did not disperse. It seemed as though whatever
he was fleeing was faster than him, or maybe it wasn’t faster, but rather present,
always there, or maybe he was approaching this in the absolute wrong way, and
he was actually heading straight toward it.
There was his house around the corner! His haven, his solace, his refuge
from the disconcerting eyes of his watcher. It was so close, yet so far. Without
another glance behind him, he sped up even more, his heart racing, his brain
straining to ignore the creepy stare of his onlooker, his shoes pounding the
wet sidewalk, then the muddy grass, then the moist wood of the porch, then
the . . . SLAM!
He shut the door behind him, erasing the fear of those eyes that had just
been so prominent in the forefront of his brain.
Peering out the blurry window, he didn’t see anyone, but just as he was
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about to turn away, his eyes caught some movement, only to miss its catalyst
by a fraction of a second.
The day had been difficult and taxing, so Benjamin decided to take an
afternoon nap and then get straight to his homework.
It was night now. The rain had ceased and there was a fresh coat of water
over the world, giving everything a glistening texture.
The refreshment he had felt after his nap had enabled him to begin his work
pleasantly, and while doing mathematics, that vague feeling of being watched
returned.
He ignored it, because he had often had this feeling when inside and alone.
But when it persisted and lingered in his mind, he decided to see what was the
matter.
As soon as he began raising his head from his papers, he noticed something
staring through the shut window across from him. There was a face. A
grayish-white oblong face. It was extremely smooth, resembling a plastic mask,
but it was very much alive and natural. Its eyes were dark and circular, sunken
slightly into its unsettling face. There were two tiny white pupils beset inside
the sea of darkness. The face had a mouth fixed in a disconcerting smile, with
no nose, just those gaping, freakish, uncanny eyes that were staring straight
into Benjamin’s soul.
Only its face could be made out, but as it rose, its long, stiff, immobile
neck exposed itself. As rigid as a metal pole, the neck simply contained two
joints, one connecting it to the body, and the other connecting it to the head.
It swayed and trembled as the creature stood, giving way to its abdomen and
lower body as it continued to rise above the ground. Spindly, bent legs appeared
first, like those resembling an insect’s curved legs, only without the follicles and
fragility. It had six of them, and they seemed to serve as arms as well, because
the creature lifted up its two front legs and grasped the roof of the house and
the porch, raising itself even higher.
Its head was no longer visible and its neck was slowly departing Benjamin’s
field of vision, so now its relatively small, oval abdomen revealed itself. The
creature was a lumbering giant, yet it seemed so agile and flexible.
Benjamin was frozen in fear, shivering internally.
The creature’s agility proved to be authentic as it suddenly pierced the
window with one of its legs, stepping back as swiftly as a bird and lowering its
head and shoving it through the large, broken window.
Benjamin screamed. The monster hurtled through the window, hardly
fumbling as its legs punctured the walls and thrust forward, its head in front
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Ralph Munn Creative Writing Anthology 2019
of it like a battering ram, its mouth smiling eerily. It moved like an octopus on
ground, but terrifyingly, not gracefully. He got up and ran for his life, daring
not to look back at that monstrosity that loomed behind him like a towering
wave, that had come into existence so suddenly like a jack in a jack-in-the-box,
that had petrified him like a deer in front of headlights, that had . . .
. . .
Benjamin woke up. All was silent. He was lying in a hospital bed. His
family and friends were all around him, but none rejoiced at his awakening.
They looked on in somber silence.
He turned his head and looked out the window. There, on the roof of the
building adjacent to the hospital, looking back at Benjamin, stood that same
strange man who had offered him those cookies.
The man, smiling, tipped his hat, turned around, and walked away.
40

Bilal Elkas
Grade 10
Homeschool
Short Prose
The Antenna Towers
(Fiction)
There were two antenna towers a little ways away from his house, resting atop
the distant hills that rolled on for as far as his eyes could see. He had never
understood their purpose, why they had been erected, but this didn’t deter him
from enjoying their presence. Often, he would sit in the dark of night, long after
the creatures of the world had closed their eyes, to stare at their blinking lights.
The two lights’ asynchronous habit was mesmerizing to him, as he would wait
patiently for the moment they would blink in unison. He connected these lights
to the moods of man, the haphazard and ever-changing moods that plagued
all men, the moods that, despite their notoriety, often aligned like the stars to
cause some momentary joy.
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Ralph Munn Creative Writing Anthology 2019
Denise Woods
Grade 11
Pittsburgh Creative and Performing Arts 6–12
Do Not Forget Your Father
(Non-Fiction)
After Kyle Gets’, “Do Not Let a Boy In After the First Date”
Do not forget how your father gently kissed your mother’s rose petal lips before
her illness overwhelmed her. He was at her bedside from the moment the sun
rose from the horizon to when the sky became an empty abyss of darkness.
On days when her legs weren’t strong enough, he’d carry her. He’d help bathe
her, spreading soap all over her body and reminding her he was doing it out of
genuine love. He’d tell her that she didn’t look a day over 21 even though her
skin was pale, and chunks of her hair had fallen out. If you was to forget this,
you’d forget how a man is supposed to show his love unconditionally.
Do not forget how your father would walk through the door feeling defeated
and tired. He’d come home every day full of stories to tell you. He’d spew them
out his mouth like his back didn’t ache and his muscles weren’t sore. He’d lift
you up in the air as if you hadn’t gained a pound since birth. He’d kiss you
on your forehead, just slightly scratching his chin stubble against you but you
didn’t mind. He’d get paid the next week and ask you when you wanted to eat.
The first time you two went out to eat, you were only 11 years old. He told you
to order what you desired and not think about the money in his account. If you
was to forget this, you’d forget how a man is supposed to make your happiness
his priority.
When you get older, you’ll meet a boy who’ll love your curls but not your
’fro. When your hair is wet your curls would fall to your shoulders gracefully,
sway in the wind freely. He’ll come in and wrap his arms around your waist as
you brush out the knots. His calloused hands will run smoothly through your
hair, alongside the bristles of your brush. He’ll tell you he loves your natural
hair but once it dries and your hair stands up on its own two feet, he will tell
you to straighten it. He won’t help you pick out the kinks, not even when you’re
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unning late and your arms are tired and your back is killing you. You’re afraid
of heat-damage so you braid it up and tuck every strand underneath a wig. He’ll
tell you that you look sexy. That boy won’t value your ’fro.
When you get older, you’ll meet a boy who’ll love your body but not respect
it. At parties he’ll gawk at the rhythm in your bones and how your hips sway
about. When your body is tired he’ll swoop you in his arms and whisper keep
moving. He’ll spend his money on hair straighteners and perm kits, concealer to
conceal your hyper-pigmentation, and tight clothes that fit snug on your chest
and rest perfectly upon your hips. He’ll kiss your lips and hide his bag of chips,
he won’t believe in midnight snacks. He’ll buy you tons of razors to shave your
legs. With just the slightest stubble, he’ll tell you to go shave.
“But baby I’m tired.”
That boy don’t care.
Whatever you do, do not forget how your father kissed your mother’s lips
and was her strength when she was weak. Do not forget how your father took
you out to eat and held you in his sore arms. If you do, you’ll meet a boy who’ll
stare at your aching bones and tell you to tuck away your kinks if you cannot
slick them down. Do not let this boy break your heart. Do not let this boy come
in and distort the image of love you have in your head. You’ll meet someone
else, a man who’ll remind you of your father through his gentle touches. You’ll
walk down the aisle with him in one hand and your father in the other. He will
tell you how beautiful your hair looks—untucked and free—while your father
tells you how much he sees your mother in you. Let this boy become your man.
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Ralph Munn Creative Writing Anthology 2019
Erin Mahoney
Grade 11
Sewickley Academy
Falling
(Non-Fiction)
Katie died last week. She lived across the street. The trees in the neighbor’s yard
dropped their red leaves in mourning.
But I just saw her walking the dog!
That was six months ago, says my mother. Before she got sick.
We pull up to the corner where the school bus stops. One of Katie’s boys
kicks the dried-up leaves as he walks home.
A few years ago, I dreamt that the parents of my crush had switched their roles.
The father was alive, while the mother was dead, and so was the sister. Sadness
rose in my sleeping throat as I gasped, like a tsunami pulling the ocean away
from the sand, only to crash back down in a flood of terror that spewed out in
an agonized groan. What if my love was dead too! But I looked up, and there
was that beautiful figure, that kind face, and we hugged for the rest of eternity,
crying for sorrow and joy.
I woke up in a panic with the realization of mortality piercing my chest.
I wear black every year on the day we lost Abraham Lincoln. It was customary
back then for widows, like Mary Todd Lincoln, to wear black for years after
their husbands died. Men would commonly wrap black strips of fabric called
mourning bands around their upper arms for a few days. Several years ago, I
asked my mom to sew a band for me, so I could join the nation in mourning.
As we drive by, I glance at Katie’s house. I expect it to be draped in black,
to look like a house of death, but it’s the same as always, framed by barren trees
and piles of red leaves.
44

Evie Jin
Grade 12
Winchester Thurston School
Short Prose
The Things We Reach For
(Fiction)
When I haul myself over the edges of the broken tiles and onto the roof, he is
already awake, crouched against the wall of the adjacent building with a can of
spray paint in his hand. His long hair is tied back into a bun today, and his black
jacket hugs his shoulders. “You’re up early,” he says without turning around.
“Had to make sure you were alive,” I reply, only half-joking.
The light is too pale for me to see him clearly, and his outline is fuzzy. He
jerks his head toward the wall. “What do you think?” he asks.
He’s drawing a woman today, and she’s just taking shape. She’s stretched out
across the length of the wall, leaning on one elbow, gazing out toward the east.
Her hair pours down around her shoulders, and her eyes are huge and hopeful.
Once the sunlight hits her, those eyes will light up, sending hope scattering in
every direction and into the hearts of the people below. I can already tell it’ll
be one hell of a masterpiece.
Drawings isn’t exactly the right word for what he does; they look more like
paintings that should be worth hundreds of thousands of dollars and hung up
in some trendy modern art museum. But I can’t tell him that, or else he’d never
pick up a can of paint again, so I just nod. “It’s nice,” I say. “She looks good.”
There’s no end to the things he can paint. Birds, faces, people—anything
and everything, and they all look as real as if they’re about to start moving at any
second. Once, he drew two boys kissing on the side of an apartment building on
the shabbier side of town. Their eyes were closed, and their mouths looked like
they were fused together. The taller boy—the blond one—had his hands buried
deep in the other boy’s hair. The brown-haired boy gripped the other’s shoulders
as if he was trying to keep himself from drowning. He looked a bit like Sam.
“Who’s the blond?” I asked.
“They’re not supposed to be specific people,” he said without looking at me.
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Ralph Munn Creative Writing Anthology 2019
I glanced over to see him chewing his lip. “They represent . . . everybody who
loves someone but can’t show it. Anyone who has to hide.”
We went back a couple days later, and they were scribbled out, with huge,
dripping X’s over their eyes and fangs, forked tongues, and devil tails. Somebody
had scrawled FAGGOT in big, angry letters over their faces, covering them
completely, so that all you could see was the anger toward these boys and the
overwhelming sense that they didn’t belong.
When Sam saw them, he stood and just stared for what seemed like forever
without moving. For a moment, he looked like he was about to cry, but then
he squared his shoulders and clenched his jaw. “Hand me the paint,” he said.
He drew the boys again, but on two different buildings that time, looking
across at each other, stretching their hands toward the gap between them.
They were only one building apart, but the look in their eyes and the way they
reached for each other suggested otherwise. He hasn’t tried to recreate the
original drawing.
It takes him the rest of the day to finish the woman, fill in her hair with
broad gold strokes and her eyes with careful sprays of turquoise. It’s evening by
the time she’s done, and yet, he still paces back and forth in front of her, hands
tucked behind his back, looking for spots to correct.
I sit with my legs dangling over the side of the building, straight out into
open air. I can’t see individual faces from here, but I follow the movement of
the cars, the way they twist and snake through the streets like segments of a
caterpillar or something, all jammed together. There’s so much honking going
on that I can’t even imagine what it would be like without it. There’s the sound
of people talking, too, but it sounds distant and far away, muffled like the
memory of an ocean playing in your ears.
They’re so small, milling around down there. The cars, the people, all of
it. It would be easy to destroy us all, simply wipe us out like extinguishing
a candle flame. We’re so fragile, so easily broken. Something could fall from
the sky or the earth could crack open, and we’d all be gone. We’re so proud of
ourselves, but once you get high enough in the air, you realize that nothing
you do really matters.
Then, I feel something hovering against my back, immediate and pressing
and not at all insignificant, and I know without looking that Sam is behind me.
His hand is warm on my shoulder. “You’re wondering something,” he says.
“How’d you know?”
He only laughs in response. “Well, spit it out.”
Instead of telling him what I’m thinking, I say, “I’ve never asked why you
paint.”
46

I count to ten before he answers. “It’s a way for me to get it all out there.
The things I’m feeling. Everything I want and can’t have. Everything I can’t
say.” He sighs. “Now I’m starting to wonder if it’s really worth it.”
“We’re all searching for something like that,” I say. “It just depends on how
high you reach.”
“I suppose.” But he goes quiet anyway, fixing his eyes over the edge of the
building and onto the streets below. He takes a breath before speaking again.
“We’re sailing aboard a sinking ship, Pierre. Sooner or later, we’re all gonna
drown.”
I can tell he’s getting sad, and besides, I’m restless from staying on the
roof for so long. I reach out and touch his arm. “Come on, let’s go somewhere.”
As usual, we don’t specify where we’re going. We simply lose ourselves in
the wide avenues and right-angle turns of a vast, endless metropolis, forgetting
where we came from, letting the street names blur together and the city swallow
us whole, wrap around us and take us away. It’s fine when you don’t have
a destination.
We pass restaurants overflowing with golden light and smiling people,
stores that spill their perfume and sales ads all over the sidewalks. It’s a Friday
night and people are out in droves, eating, laughing, getting drunk like they
have nothing on their minds aside from this minute, this hour, this night. They
either don’t know or don’t care that time is a speeding train carrying them along
far too quickly, that one day it’ll be gone and they’ll all be left scratching their
heads, wondering where it went. Life makes fools out of us, and I’m just the
same: powerless, too poor to fight the circumstances, trapped in this bubble of
a life every day. Sure, it’s romantic, living in a city like this one, but romance
only gets you so far.
As we walk, I start to remember all the places where Sam pointed things
out to me, things nobody but he would notice—a rainbow pattern in a puddle,
a multicolored vine crawling up the side of a building. We’d look for these
things, and it would become a treasure hunt, both of us competing to find the
next interesting object. He was an artist, and so he saw everything—the good
and the bad.
Once, he cupped a sparrow in his hands and stood up to show me, but I
was looking at him instead, his long eyelashes and straight nose and those soft
pink lips that were telling me about the sparrow, marveling at the tiny life he
held in his hands. He stroked its head gently, and I wanted to be that sparrow.
“Why?” he asked, and I realized that I had said it out loud. I couldn’t say
that it was because I wanted him to hold me like that, tenderly, almost lovingly.
I wanted to feel his hands on me. Instead, I stammered the first thing that came
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Ralph Munn Creative Writing Anthology 2019
to my mind. “I . . . just want to be free, I guess. Able to go wherever I want,
whenever.”
He opened his hands, and the sparrow flitted away, chirping. “We all want
to be free,” he said. “Some people drink. Some load up on crack until they go
blind with joy. Others run away.”
His eyes lingered on my face. “Like us.”
“And the people who don’t?”
“They’ll survive. Not happily, though. I know I wouldn’t be. In twenty
years, let’s say, what’ll I be doing if I don’t make it?” He smirked, laughing at
himself. “I’ll wake up every morning with a sour taste in my mouth from the
night before. Drown myself in coffee just to stay awake, read the news about all
the people who died overnight. Go to my nine-to-five desk job and come home
and go to bed wondering how on earth I’m still alive.”
He looks up at me. “Do you ever wish . . .”
“What?”
He shakes his head, hands shoved deep into the pockets of his dark jacket.
Everything about him is dark, his hair and his humor and his visions for the
future, and right now, with that expression on his face like he’s lost something,
he looks like a sad, forlorn little boy left behind in a supermarket or on top of
a hill somewhere, knowing he was forgotten and will never be remembered.
I feel slightly out of place next to him, lumbering along in this huge, hulking
body I have, while he’s small and slim and so light on his feet that he barely
touches the ground at all. The top of his head reaches to my earlobe, but he’s
strong and surprisingly quick, and you’d never guess by looking at him that he
carries a knife tucked into his sleeve and can pull it on you faster than you can
apologize for whatever you did or said that offended him. You have to defend
yourself here, because nobody’s going to do it for you.
I feel sad for him sometimes, going around in his black jeans with the rips
in them and black high-top sneakers and the ragged look of a boy who’s been too
lonely for too long. He won’t accept my pity, though. He’s tough. He has to be.
Our hands brush slightly, and I have to clench my teeth to keep from
gasping. He says, “I kind of wonder sometimes. About what the city would be
like if people just cared a bit more about each other.”
“It’ll be a grand day when people start caring,” I mutter.
He sighs and almost seems to shrink a little, a wilting flower curling in on
itself until it goes crumbly and dry. “Maybe you’re right.”
He catches me watching him and gives me a small smile. “At least you’re
here with me, yeah? Maybe we can change the world together.”
48

For a moment, I think he might kiss me, and I hold my breath. But he
only shakes his head and turns away, and after a while, so do I. Just one more
thing I want and can’t have.
We’re both quiet as the night settles in around us and we forget ourselves in
the never-ending streets and eternal lights of the city, and I don’t realize how far
we’ve walked until the buildings start glaring suspiciously at us and the streets
aren’t the ones we left behind.
There’s barely any light here, because all the bulbs in the streetlights have
been shattered. They stare down at us, a row of empty, jagged eyes. The sidewalks
are rough with broken glass and fragments of crumbling brick.
The lingering traces of a sharp and bitter smell hang in the air. I immediately
know what it is—I’ve done it often enough myself. But there’s something
else under it this time, low tones of a slightly sweet, threatening scent that
nearly makes me gag.
“Jesus,” I hear Sam mutter, somewhere off to my left.
“Where are we?”
He doesn’t know. How would he? There’s so much in the city that is
impossible. He’s lived on the streets for so long that it’s easy to forget he doesn’t
know everything.
I take a step forward, and my feet crunch white shards. “Sam.”
Then the shots shatter the night, so loud and so close I can almost see
them in this deranged darkness. Instinctively, I curl up and cover my head with
my arms, squeezing myself as small as I can against the wall beside me. One
bullet, and I could be dead in an instant. I want to hold on to my life, small
and insignificant as it is.
But then I look up and catch a flicker of the expression on Sam’s face: brows
furrowed, eyes focused somewhere far away. Serious, solemn, sad. It sends a pang
through me, sharp and aching.
I shift slightly so that my arm presses against his, and for a moment we
stand, he and I, together in solidarity against the blind, ravenous night.
Another shot, right beside me this time, comes so suddenly that it rips a
gasp from my lungs. I don’t know where they’re coming from or whether the
shooters are even aiming for us, but the skin prickles all over my body and my
heart jams up in my throat and some innate force is telling me to move, hurry
up and get the hell out of here or else we’ll both be dead.
My breath comes in short, shallow gasps. My blood pounds hard and fast
in my ears.
I grab Sam’s hand, and I start running.
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I have no idea where I’m going, and he knows it. But he trusts me anyway,
and the feel of his fingers in mine nearly makes me lose my mind. We match
each other stride for stride through the crumbling streets, our bodies casting
huge, looming shadows onto the buildings behind us. It’s the best I’ve ever felt
in my life, and I realize I’m laughing—strange as it is, to be laughing with the
wind screaming in my face and my feet sore from pounding the sidewalk, but I
laugh anyway, because of the wind rushing into me and the night filling me up
like fizzing champagne and the freedom the freedom the freedom.
We hurtle around a corner, and there’s a fire escape up ahead, a twisted
contraption of rusted metal clinging to the side of a building. I leap up, close
my fingers around the cold iron, and swing myself over the side, Sam right
behind me. We blaze a crazy, drunken path to the roof, where my knees immediately
give out, and I collapse. Sam falls on top of me, rolls away. We lie there
side by side, panting and sweating, chests heaving from sheer exhilaration and
exhaustion.
When my heartbeat calms to a softer throb, I push myself up and look over
at him. He’s sitting up, too, staring at me with a strange look I can’t comprehend.
“All okay?” I ask.
At first, he looks at me like he thinks I might be mad. But then a smirk
twists his face, and his expression becomes more devilish, more daring—a look
that immediately sets my heart racing again. His eyebrows arch; his eyes take
on an almost wicked tint. A slow laugh bubbles up from him, filling the space
between us.
“You’re insane, Pierre Johansson.”
And I don’t know why I do it; maybe I’m just so exhausted that I can’t think
straight, or maybe all the longing I’ve felt for him up until now is choosing this
moment to burst out of me and spill all over him. But the only thing running
through my mind right now is, fuck this. Give us a month or two, and who knows
where we’ll end up. The city could yank us apart, tear us away from each other,
wipe away our shared recollections and the time we’ve had together until we’re
strangers in each other’s eyes. I may never have this chance again.
I inch closer to him until our shoulders brush, the barest whisper of a
touch. The crazy grin fades a little from his face, and he’s looking at me now, all
confused, but his eyes are wide-open and expectant, and the trace of a smile still
lingers at the corners of his mouth as if it’s waiting to see what will happen next.
I slide an arm around his back, and he tenses. His lips part, about to ask
a question, to say something, and that’s when I pull his face toward mine with
my other hand and kiss him like the world is burning down.
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Which it is, I guess. It’s burning down every day.
For a moment, he’s frozen, and I start to worry that I’ve moved too quickly,
too soon. But then he launches himself at me and hooks his arms around my
neck, pulling me down with him. He crushes his mouth against mine, slides a
hand under my shirt, and I turn to jelly in his arms. He kisses me until we’re
both breathing hard and the only word I can manage is his name.
Afterwards, we lie tucked against each other, staring up at a sky brimming
with stars. He’s tired, I can tell, and not only from running. He’s tired of fighting,
of constantly being sucked under by a city that doesn’t care, of thrashing
with all his strength just to stay afloat. Maybe one day, we won’t end up as
corpses rotting away in an alley somewhere, forgotten.
“Tomorrow,” I say, “we’ll go back to the lady you drew. We’ll watch her as
the sun rises, and we’ll think of something.”
He doesn’t answer, only curls his head into my shoulder and lets out a weak
sigh. He’s asleep, and his breath flutters soft and slow against my neck.
He is so warm and so alive, the only thing warm and alive in this cold,
dead shell of a city.
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Ralph Munn Creative Writing Anthology 2019
Evie Jin
Grade 12
Winchester Thurston School
Enceladus
(Fiction)
We left them down there.
We asked them to come up with us, but they wouldn’t. Even Arche tried,
and he could persuade a tree to pack up its roots and move if he wanted to, but
they still refused. Finally, we had to go back without them, leave them there
alone under miles and miles of ocean, so deep the water was black and so lonely
that the smallest sound was immediately swallowed by a starving darkness
desperate for company.
They were going to play on the moon, or so they said. They were the biggest,
hottest, most loved and lusted-after band that year and a long string of
years before that, too, stretching back as far as we could remember. The four
of them—top of the charts every time.
First, there was Ezra, the drummer. Every bit as loud, every bit as boisterous
as his title suggested. Steady, yes, and always there when the others needed him,
but unpredictable at the same time, with his slick crimson mohawk, sporadic fits
of drumming, and outfits that showed just enough skin to be surprising. Ezra.
Then there was Lester, master of the keyboard. Cooler than a blizzard,
smoother than ice cream melting on the tongue. Looked good in any color, but
usually chose black for concert nights, when his hands would stand out against
dark cuffs as his long, pale, languid fingers stroked the keys. What talented
fingers, and what magic they could make! Tumbling waterfalls of arpeggios,
chords that echoed in your ears long after they were played, individual notes
like stones skipping over a pond.
And let’s not forget Chaz, who whipped his long hair back and forth and
attacked his guitar like it was the end of the world; who ground his coffee too
early, played his radio too loud, and laughed for so long that everybody else
laughed just so he wouldn’t be alone.
Finally, there was the backbone of it all, the voice of the band’s soul, the
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one without whom there would be no Enceladus—Phoenix, ring through his
lip, green-and-black flames licking up and down one arm, the rascal who made
it his goal to conquer the world armed with nothing but a microphone and a
heart full of dreams. When he screamed, the ground shook under him; when
he sighed and crooned in a voice sweeter than summer and sadder than tears,
the world put down its anger and cried with him. His voice would slide effortlessly
from note to note, rising from a hoarse whisper to a tortured scream in a
matter of seconds. Sometimes gentle, sometimes stretched thin with rage and
ragged with despair—such was the voice that soothed the lonely, bolstered the
weak, mended the broken, and showed the world’s grieving souls that they
were not alone.
The day before they were due to leave, they threw a goodbye party so grand
that half the world saw stars in its sleep that night. All evening and through
the night, they pounded out the best of their songs on a golden stage lit with a
thousand flashing bulbs. The fans stretched as far as heaven on all sides, straining
forward with the endless force of a tidal wave. They screamed—how they
screamed!—for this band that was nearly untouchable: Chaz and his devilish
let’s-burn-something grin; Ezra with the long lashes and the sweet, slow smile;
Lester, who hardly ever smiled but didn’t need to because all he had to do was
glance and the girls would fall swooning into his arms.
And when Phoenix, handsome enough for tears, burst out onto the stage
and shouted a greeting, the fans exploded into a fresh fever of throat-wrenching
screams. They grabbed for him, a sea of upturned faces and desperate fingers
stretching up, up, as far as they could, and he leaned down and brushed their
hands, just briefly enough to leave them wanting more. The crowds with their
kisses and posters and flowers tied up with ribbon—they screamed themselves
hoarse before dawn.
The next day, a rocket containing the boys, an elaborate drum set patterned
in red and gold, a four and a half thousand dollar keyboard, and a guitar lined
with silver was prepared for takeoff. Broadcast live to the entire world, monitored
closely by a team of flight directors, the rocket prepared to launch as the doors
slammed shut, the engines fired, and the world counted down.
Three, two, one—and they were off.
Last they heard, the launch had been successful, and everyone laughed and
clapped each other on the back in celebration. Last they heard, the rocket had
cleared the atmosphere. Last they heard, the rocket was on its way.
Then the signals cut off, the video feed went black, and they didn’t hear
anything at all.
They thought—a wildly tentative theory—that the rocket had crashed into
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Ralph Munn Creative Writing Anthology 2019
the sea, and for years, search parties combed the ocean floor—not resting, they
declared, until they brought Enceladus home again, dead or alive. Others dared
to let themselves hope, waiting with bated breath for the day their idols would
emerge, dripping and dazed but otherwise unharmed, from the depths of some
unimaginable, watery hell.
Five, ten, fifteen years slipped by with no sign of them, and by then, the
world was losing interest. What use are singers who don’t sing, a band that
doesn’t play? Headlines turned to fresher, more recent news; search efforts lost
support and dwindled. A funeral was held, prayers were said, and four spaces
were marked in a cemetery near the site of the launching, all for four bodies that
weren’t there. Eventually, the fans stopped mourning, the songs dropped from
people’s lips, and Enceladus, once worshipped to the point of reverence, faded
from the forefront of a music scene they had dominated for so long.
Phoenix, old buddy, old pal. Ezra, Lester, Chaz. Enceladus. Alone, at the
bottom of the sea. Why wouldn’t they come? Why wouldn’t they?
We found them on the third day, Arche and I. We had been down there
for hours and were about to head back up, but then Arche jerked out of his seat
and his eyes went wide. “You see that?” he asked, pointing.
“Sorry,” I said. “You’ll have to be a bit clearer, Arche.”
“That—there, where I’m pointing, you dolt! That whiteness there.” He was
nearly leaping out of his seat.
I chided Arche for his language, and he smirked, “Sorry, Captain,” but
he was right, and I saw it, too—the dull gleam of a white, curving surface.
Our searchlights pried open the dark water, sweeping over a clouded window,
a crushed hull, crumpled steel—the remains of a rocket wedged on its side in
the silt.
“We found it!” Arche breathed. “Christ, we actually found it!”
It was mostly crushed, as far as we could tell, beat up like a child’s toy,
but luckily, the airlock was still accessible. In no time, we had wrenched open
its door, aligned it with our own airlock, and slipped into our diving suits. We
secured the sub, slid into the rocket, and heaved the door shut behind us, all in
a feverish, heart-racing frenzy, and as we pumped the water out, there followed
a fierce, silent exchange of expressions and gestures.
Raised eyebrows. They still in there, do you think?
A shrug. Should be. Where else could they have gone?
Alive? A hard stare.
Slight shake of the head, lips pressed together. Unlikely.
I still can’t believe—
The water was gone. We stopped, looked at each other for one brief moment,
then yanked opened the inner airlock door.
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And there they were, four of them, but who were they? These four strange
men—didn’t know them, never seen them. I looked among them, heart jumping,
for Ezra’s head of fire, Lester’s cool, sidelong glance. Chaz, was he there?
Phoenix, then? But no—it was only the four old men, seemingly older than the
mountains, the canyons, and the wind and waves that sculpted them. Pale as
death, beards hanging down to their knees, and as they stared morosely out of
hollowed eyes—but then one drummed his fingers absently and another gave a
cool flick of his eyebrows, and I realized—this is it. Here was Phoenix and Chaz
and Lester and Ezra, right here, in the flesh! This was Enceladus—but how?
“Ah,” one of them sighed, “what do we have here? Heroes.”
I looked him up and down, wildly, desperately, searching for something
to recognize him by. His voice scratched and crackled, a handful of dry leaves
crumbling into dust. The face was hopeless, far too altered to be of use, but
then—there. The flames still danced on his arm, though the piercing through
his lip was long gone. Phoenix.
“Saviors,” another said, rather scornfully, and I thought I recognized Lester’s
slow, deep drawl.
They stared at us, and we stared back, unmoving. Nobody seemed to
breathe. It should have been impossible, and yet, somehow, it was true.
Enceladus: completely, truly, wonderfully alive.
I swallowed, opened my mouth, swallowed again. “What happened?”
“It’s been so long,” Phoenix said with a sigh, “so long. I’ve forgotten . . .”
“Just tell us what you remember,” Arche prompted.
“Black skies,” said Phoenix, and he sounded sadder than I had ever heard
him. “Lightning, or so it seemed.”
“Then we fell, and fell, and fell, and time started to burn.” This was Chaz,
once so spirited, once so alive. Where was that young man now?
Lester turned toward us with his cold, cold eyes and said, “Afterwards, the
wreckage fell like snow.” He didn’t look at us. Ah, Lester. So distant, so aloof,
even there, even then.
A glance at Arche confirmed that we were thinking the same thing. A
waste—a complete and devastating waste—of these four glorious men. They
were on their way to immortality, with their golden melodies and unrivaled
talent. A few years more and history would have been honored to write them
into her books. And now, all of that—gone. A shame. An utter, crying shame.
Arche butted his way into my thoughts, almost wailing. “Aw, whyd’ja have
to go up there anyway?”
“To play, of course!” Phoenix cried, surprised. “We were going to chase
the night away.”
“But, but,” Arche stuttered, “why the moon?”
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Ralph Munn Creative Writing Anthology 2019
And they all began to talk at once, over and around each other, each dying
to tell the story first.
“When you can’t get any higher, where do you go?”
“First band to play on the moon.”
“The sky’s the limit? Not for us!”
Phoenix nearly smiled; at the very least, his mouth wobbled, and he seemed
to bite something down. “We were going to make the sun gasp and the stars
cry. The planets would turn for us.”
“And then, on to the others!” Chaz exclaimed. “Every moon, every planet!
Enceladus and the Celestial Tour!
“You can see how well that worked,” Lester sneered.
“And now,” Phoenix said, looking almost amused, “here we are. From
the highest of the high to the lowest of the low. Now, doesn’t that tell you
something, boys? Doesn’t that just speak for itself?”
“I suppose it does,” I said, at the same time Arche asked, “Well, what do
you do all day, then?”
“What else can we do? We play! Like this.”
He raised his hand and gestured. Ezra gave four quick taps of his snare
drum, and Enceladus began to play. It was an old song, one I recalled hearing
time and time again. I remembered the way they used to sound, playing this very
song, back when they had commanded the hearts of millions—the pounding
of Ezra’s deep, steady drumbeat, Lester and Chaz working their magic in the
background, weaving their music with Ezra’s in one glorious web of sound. They
would breeze through the song as if it took no effort at all, and at its climax, the
moment when blood pounded hot and furious and the music pulled so tightly it
seemed like it would snap, Phoenix would tilt his head back and send his voice
flying upwards, straight to the peak of what he was capable of. He’d hold the
note steady, unwavering at the top of his vocal range: four beats, then eight—
sixteen, even. Then the note would break; he would stagger back, clutching his
chest, and the song would descend again into a wild panic of crashing drums,
soul-shaking rhythms, notes so heavy they made hearts tremble and shatter.
Now, as Phoenix swayed in front of the rest of the band, head bent, hands
tucked behind his back, waiting, I found—to my surprise—that I was holding
my breath.
Right before he opened his mouth—no, I thought, surely not. Twenty years,
down here, in the dark, still the same? Impossible.
Then Phoenix’s voice slid smoothly into the music, fusing with the background
so well that it was impossible to believe they had ever existed separately.
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I closed my eyes, drinking it in, and when I opened them again, the dark,
curving sides of the rocket were gone; there was a stage and a young Phoenix
standing on top of it, pouring his silken voice into the great, wide expanse of a
star-studded summer night. Borne on his own tide, he rose higher and higher
until the crowds dropped away, the stage was his alone, and it was only him,
only him, only him, gripping the microphone with both hands as he gave his
soul to a sky that he would never breach.
Tears rose to my eyes; I cursed and shoved them away.
He sounded exactly the same.
They all did. Lester’s fingers had lost none of their dexterity; Chaz and Ezra
were as impassioned as they had always been. This was Enceladus, back from
the dead. But no—they had never been dead. They had been there the whole
time, miles below the world, playing their music, only for it to go unnoticed by
the endless, black waters.
A final, lingering note, then silence. Arche and I stood frozen, trying to
speak but unable to.
A few beats longer, and Phoenix raised his head, eyes still blazing, chest still
heaving. In him, I saw the old Phoenix again, and my heart twisted painfully
in its cage.
He looked at us, and his eyes lost some of their hard luster. “Sometimes,”
he said, “we think we can still hear our fans cheering. Still see the moonlight
dancing through the water.”
“You can’t,” Arche said simply, “it’s too deep here.”
“Quiet, Arche.” I turned to face them. “Come back up with us,” I said.
“Oh, no,” Phoenix said. “We couldn’t.”
“You could,” I insisted. “We have a submersible. Enough space for all of you.
We’ll get you in, and up we’ll go. It’ll be so easy.”
“I’m afraid we can’t do that,” Phoenix said. “We’ve already established a
kingdom for ourselves down here, see? A loyal fan base, here with the fishes. It
would be a shame to give that up.”
“I can’t tell if you’re joking,” Arche said, “but if you are, now isn’t exactly
a good time.”
“Come up with us,” I repeated, and Phoenix turned away, as if the words
themselves hurt him. “We’ve searched for so long. Now we’ve found you. We
can’t leave you here.”
Behind him, Lester coughed into his hand. “Pointless,” he rasped. “Gonna
die anyway.”
Chaz asked, “What was that, Lester?”
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In response, Lester dragged his hand across the lowest notes of his keyboard.
A slew of bass notes tumbled out, each hollower and more morose than
the last. He glared up at us through a storm of deep, echoing thunder.
“He’s right,” Ezra sighed. “We’ve been forgotten, anyway. Might as well
stay.”
“You haven’t been forgotten.” This came from Arche. “That’s why we’re
here, isn’t it? That’s why we’ve all been searching. Twenty years. You haven’t
been forgotten.”
“Never mind,” Phoenix said, almost impatiently. “Took us a while to realize,
but it’s better here. Up there, you’ve got your wars and your fighting. All
the senseless arguments you blow yourselves to pieces over. Down here, there’s
peace.”
They were putting their instruments away, cradling each one with gentle
hands before letting it go, giving each a brief pat before withdrawing. It seemed,
from the way they did it, that they wouldn’t be returning to them for a long time.
“You won’t survive here,” Arche was saying. “It’s only a matter of time. How
have you lasted so long, anyway?”
“That’s the question, isn’t it?” Chaz asked. “That’s what we’d all like to
know.”
He snapped his bass case shut with a hollow clang. Phoenix hauled it up
and away, then glanced at us.
“Go back up there,” he said. “Go back up to the light. And when the world’s
got you down, just think of us down here, all alone, nowhere to go, waiting to
die. Think of that,” he said, “and be grateful, yeah?”
He looked at both of us as if waiting for an answer, a reaction of some sort,
but we had none to give. We only stared at each other, mouths gaping uselessly.
“God,” he said at last, smiling, shaking his head. “Jesus.”
He stepped forward and took my face in his hands. I felt his lips touch my
forehead. Arche received the same, and Phoenix stepped away, still shaking his
head.
“Remember us,” he said, “and thank the Lord. You lucky, lucky sons of
bitches.”
He looked so solemn, so sorrowful, that we took a couple steps. Then we
stopped. Together, we turned back. Phoenix was still watching us.
“Go,” he said.
There was nothing we could do, and we knew it. The four of them stood
there, unwavering—arms crossed, stances solid. I nudged Arche, and together
we walked away from their serious, sad gazes. They had already turned away
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from us when Arche stopped and swiveled back around. “Hey, you sure you
won’t come back with us?”
“. . . sure . . .” was all that echoed back, bouncing hollowly against the walls,
rattling in our ears. Neither of us could tell who had spoken, and the longer we
stood there, the less certain we became that anybody had spoken at all.
We retreated in silence back toward the airlock, where we slipped into our
suits without a word. Away we moved—through the airlock and the deep murk
of water beyond, back into the submarine.
“‘Remember us,’ he says,” Arche snorted. “They’ll be haunting me for the
next month, that’s for sure.”
“I suppose that was what they wanted,” I said. “Think of that next time
you boast, Arche, and you won’t be so proud anymore.”
We dropped into our seats and strapped ourselves in. I threw a switch, and
the submarine began to rise through the dark water, through the freezing, lonely
world of shifting shades of blue and toward the warm embrace of the breathing,
living world above, back up to the light.
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Jo Pastorius
Grade 9
Pittsburgh Carrick High School
Rosie
(Fiction)
April 17, 1929, a baby girl with wide brown eyes is born at home into a crowded
household.
She was an unplanned pregnancy, but it was too far in motion by the time
her parents had found out. They made sure to find a nice shelter, but the girl
was out of the home as soon as she was out of the womb.
Harriet Rosemary Charleston, five pounds, seven ounces.
She giggled and cooed as her parents dropped her off, and for a second, her
mother almost took her back, almost picked her baby girl back up and walked
away, without so much as a “thank you for your time, but I think we’ve made
the wrong choice.” Inside, though, she knew that this was the best choice, that
they couldn’t afford to feed her, that someone else would do a much better job
at caring for her.
It took ten years for a family to decide they wanted Harry. She had frizzy red
hair and too much energy, she was always deemed a “future problem child” by
any potential parents. It was crushing, to be repeatedly called undesirable at
such a young age, but things would change soon enough.
On a sunny spring afternoon, a tall woman with a warm voice told Harriet
she would be going home with her. Harriet’s eyes lit up, went wide and twinkled
as the woman told her the words she’d waited years to hear. She was going to
have a family: people to care about her, to hold and reassure her, to support her
more than just making sure she stayed alive. She felt a sort of warmth come
over her and settle softly in her belly. This would be good; she could feel it in
her gut, and she trusted her gut more than anything.
The tall woman with the warm voice, who Harriet would learn was named
Caroline (“But you can call me mom!”), held the girl’s hand as they walked
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home, and explained that her father was rather busy most days but would come
up to tuck Harriet into bed. And he did.
Harriet wasn’t used to having her own room, so the slightly larger bed was
disorienting to her; however, so was having parents to tuck her in. Alongside
Caroline, a man came in wearing a suit. His hair was slicked back, and his nose
stuck out very prominently from his face. He said his name was Joshua, and that
she wouldn’t have to call him dad if she didn’t want to. She smiled as they both
kissed her on the forehead, and she fell asleep the most easily she had in her life.
Short Prose
After six months in the family, it was like she was born into it. Caroline was her
mother and Joshua was her father. Nothing felt strange or out of place.
She was what one would call a “daddy’s girl,” and she spent every moment
she could at her father’s side. He spent most of his time in the family’s basement,
explaining to his daughter that he had a disease and being in the sun could kill
him. Harriet thought that sounded strange, but she trusted her father more
than anyone else she knew.
He called her Rosie, short for Rosemary, because she was “as pretty as a
dozen roses.” It always made her smile, when he lifted her off the ground, held
her to his chest, and said how lucky they both were to find each other, and how
they were such a happy little family. It was true, this was the first time she’d
been happy so deeply within herself.
One night, while tucking Rosie in, her father asked a question that startled
her.
“Rosie,” he whispered, as if trying to keep his wife from hearing, “. . . do
you know about vampires?”
“Vampires?” she asked wide-eyed in a gasp, and her father rushed to shush
her. “What . . . what about vampires?”
He frowned. “You think w— they’re bad, don’t you?”
“I dunno,” she mumbled. “I’ve never met a vampire; I’ve just heard things.
Not good things—but that doesn’t mean they’re bad! People say bad things
about sharks, but sharks only hurt you when you’re where you’re not supposed
to be. Sharks don’t come onto the land and hurt people.”
Her father nodded, gently taking her hand.
“That’s absolutely right.” He looked to the floor, then back to his Rosie, and
gripped her hand a bit tighter. “What if I told you that you have met a vampire?”
Rosie made a noise of confusion, and her father grinned wide, bearing all
of his teeth. Rosie just then realized he had never done that before.
“Oh . . .”
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Ralph Munn Creative Writing Anthology 2019
“Oh?” He frowned and pulled away, but Rosie very quickly pulled him back.
“It’s okay, Pa. I’m not scared of you.” He looked at her and smiled, then got
up to sit on the edge of her bed.
“There’s one sad thing about being a vampire, besides everybody being
scared of you. Vampires don’t get old and die the way regular people do. We
stay the same and have to watch our families leave us when there’s nothing we
can do to stop it. Unless . . .”
“Unless?” Rosie sat up, grabbing at her father’s hand again. “Unless what,
Pa?”
“Unless they were vampires, too!” He beamed brightly, grabbing her hand
tight. “I know it’s scary, but it’s not as bad as people make it out to be.”
Joshua hadn’t known another vampire since he’d been turned, and he didn’t
even know if that man was still alive. He wanted someone to bond with, someone
he could share his experiences with, someone who understood, and Rosie had
been the first person he let himself love in decades.
Rosie stayed silent and played with her hands. Becoming a vampire? That
sounded terrifying! She didn’t know anything about vampires!
“You don’t have to say yes.” His voice was quiet. “I didn’t mean to scare you,
Pumpkin, I’m sorry.”
“No, Pa, I . . . I wanna. I don’t want you to be alone! If we don’t get old, then
we can be together for forever and ever, right?” Her eyes twinkled in childhood
innocence as she looked up at him.
“Yes! For as long as we can imagine.” Rosie grinned. She liked the way that
sounded, her and her pa, for as long as she could imagine. “Tomorrow, okay?
So, we can make sure that you’re sure. How’s that sound?”
“It sounds perfect, Pa. G’night, though, I’m very tired.” He nodded, kissed
her head, and shut out the light.
“Goodnight, Pumpkin. Sleep well.”
The next night, in Joshua’s room downstairs, Rosie snuck to meet her father
after her mother had fallen asleep.
“It’s going to hurt,” her father told her gently, placing a hand on her shoulder,
“but you won’t get sick, and you won’t get hurt, and you won’t have to grow
up and be miserable like the rest of us grown-ups.” Rosie giggled at that, but
she didn’t agree just yet. He understood. “It’s alright if you don’t want it. You
can say no now and say yes later, or you can never say yes and just live your life.”
“I want it,” she mumbled, clearing her throat to answer again. “I want it. I
want to stay with you, Pa, I don’t want to be hurt or sick or die.” She looked to
the ground, then back up to her father, and nodded. “I promise.”
“Alright, alright. Then I’ll do it for you.” He moved her shirt collar out of
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the way but hesitated. “You’re a big girl, right, Rosie? You won’t cry too much?”
Rosie shook her head, already biting her lip. She never had the highest tolerance
for pain. With the pierce of her father’s fangs, she winced, but blinked the tears
from her eyes as quickly as she could. Even as she became weak and scared, she
never cried; she couldn’t stand to make her father upset.
When she was too weak to continue to stand, her father let her lay on the
ground. With a fingernail he sliced open his forearm, then pressed it gently to
his Rosie’s lips. Hesitantly, she lapped it up like a kitten, watching her father
to make sure he wasn’t in pain. After a minute, her head lolled to the side and
she was unconscious.
When she awoke, she was tucked into her father’s bed, sick to her stomach.
“Pa!” she called out, her arms wrapped tight around her abdomen. “Pa?”
Tears came to her eyes, but she blinked them away quickly. She was a big girl,
she wouldn’t cry.
“Rosie?” Her father came around the corner and knelt down at her bedside.
“It hurts, Pa,” she said softly, tears coming to her eyes again. He wiped her
eyes with a smile. “How long is this gonna last?”
“The night,” he sighed, combing his fingers through his daughter’s hair. “It’s
going to be painful and disgusting, but you’re doing so well, you know that?”
Rosie smiled. And then immediately, she turned on her side and whined.
“I don’t like it. I feel like I’m dying.”
He paused.
“You are, in a way, but it’ll be alright. Then you’ll be stronger than you are
now, you won’t get sick or old.” Rosie nodded and shut her eyes. She trusted
her father more than anyone.
For the rest of the night, as Rosie died, she held onto her father’s hand.
They would be a family for as long as they could imagine now, and everything
would be alright, even if it hurt right now.
Short Prose
Rosie and her father only got closer and closer after that. They hunted together,
walked in the night, and she curled up and slept at his side during the day. He
taught her, since they couldn’t keep her enrolled in formal school anymore.
Caroline often called them Siamese twins. Rosie cried when her father was gone
from her for more than an hour at a time.
Eventually, Caroline decided she wanted another child. Because of Joshua’s
vampirism they were still unable to conceive, so they took to adoption once
more. Over the course of several years, they adopted six children other than their
Rosie. Thomas was the youngest at eight, and Birdy was the oldest at seventeen.
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Eventually, they all joined Joshua and Rosie. They were a happy little family,
and they would never be broken apart by sickness or by death.
Years had passed now, and suddenly Joshua received a letter. It wasn’t signed,
but the handwriting made his heart drop. It was from someone he hadn’t talked
to in as long as he could remember: the man who made him.
He was scared to read the contents of the letter at first but was pleasantly
surprised to see it was an invite to a vampire dinner party. He hadn’t interacted
with any vampires outside of his children in so long. His first instinct was to
invite Rosie, as she had never so much as met a vampire that she was not related
to, and she was the closest to her father out of all the children.
On the day of the dinner party, the two of them spent what seemed to be
hours getting ready. They wanted to impress the strangers, and Joshua wanted
to prove to his old friend that things were going well for him.
Joshua carried Rosie on his hip through the doors, and the two of them
looked around in awe. Rosie hadn’t been in a house this nice in all her life.
They were shown to the dining hall, where several vampires had all started to
gather. They both chatted, Joshua never setting his Rosie down. After half an
hour had passed, a man Joshua had never seen approached them.
“Sir, I think that it’s very nice that you brought your daughter with you,
but—” He lowered his voice a bit. “This is a vampires-only event.”
“What?” Joshua almost laughed. “She’s one of us! I should know.”
The man murmured softly. Several people were looking.
“I see. Do you have any idea who . . . made her like that?”
“Well I did, of course!” The room went silent, not even the blowing of the
wind outside could be heard. Silence turned to mumbling and mumbling to
shouting. Someone threw a glass at Joshua’s head.
“Pig!” someone yelled. “Monster! Ruiner!” Joshua didn’t have time to process,
someone had already taken Rosie from his arms and the man was dragging
him away.
“Pa!” Rosie shouted amid the chaos. She squirmed in the grip of the woman
who held her. “Pa! What are you doing with him? Let him go!” The woman held
her still as she watched her father being dragged off. The woman attempted to
soothe her, but Rosie snapped at her like a rabid dog.
“Joshua Springer,” she heard from a booming voice in the next room over,
“you have ruined an innocent one, corrupted a child. This is a capital crime,
and you willingly and openly admitted to it.” Rosie scratched the woman with
her fingernails, and in shock, the woman dropped her.
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Rosie ran, ran like her life depended on it.
“What do you have to say for yourself?”
A wall of people. She shouted for them to let her through, but they were
all trying to shield her from what they knew was inevitable. She shoved and
scratched until she made her way to the front of the crowd.
It was too late.
With a long sword, an old man had sliced her father’s head clean off. His
body collapsed, and his head rolled across the floor, landing at her feet. She
shrieked.
“What have you done?!”
Oh, her brothers and sisters.
“He’s dead! You’ve killed him!”
Oh, her mother.
Oh, their happy little family, severed at the neck.
“You’re monsters! They were right about you, all the school teachers, all
the priests—You’re all animals!” Another woman picked her up, and she was
too weak to resist. All she could do was sob into the woman’s chest. They were
supposed to be a family for as long as they could imagine. None of them was
supposed to die.
Rosie was taken home quickly before the sun rose. She refused to answer
any questions that anybody had for her. They had just killed the person that
meant the most to her, and they expected her to be compliant? Yeah, right.
“Caroline Springer?” asked the man who had knocked at the door. Caroline’s
eyes went right to Rosie as she bit her lip.
“Who are you? Where is my husband? Is everything alright?” She reached
out to take Rosie from whoever was holding her. All three of the vampires
frowned.
“May we come in, Ma’am?” Caroline agreed reluctantly, sending Rosie to
her room to get some rest. They would talk later.
“Ma’am, were you aware of your husband’s . . . condition?” asked the second
vampire, her tone solemn.
“With the sun? Well yes, I—”
“No, Mrs. Springer, the . . . the vampirism,” the vampire sighed and looked
toward the ground. “Your husband was a vampire.”
“What? That’s insane!” Caroline laughed, a stale sort of laugh, like she was
closer to trying to convince herself.
“I’m afraid so, Ma’am. We know how involved you are in your church, so
we would expect him to keep it hidden from you.”
“I would never marry a monster. Get out of my house.”
Short Prose
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“Ma’am—”
“Out!”
“Let us speak with your children? Just briefly. Then we’ll be gone.”
Caroline let them go but followed. The children sat around sobbing, sitting
outside of their father’s locked bedroom. The vampires didn’t even have to ask
to realize that each one of them had been infected. Hesitantly, they broke the
news to their mother.
Caroline was outraged and stormed upstairs to the kitchen. She screamed,
begging for her God to “get these demons out of my house!” The older vampires
approached the mourning children and told them to pack what they could. It
would all be explained later.
It was all explained later, but Rosie was the only one who had known the whole
truth. Their poor father didn’t know that what he did was wrong, and now they
were all left orphans again.
A group of vampires offered to take them in, and not wanting to be separated,
they all went together. However, Rosie wasn’t one to forgive and forget.
She, along with Birdy and the oldest boy James, packed her things once more and
ran. Nobody would report them missing. They found shelter from the sun and
preyed on animals for several days until they could find a more suitable home.
An abandoned house, falling apart at every turn, right at the edge of town.
Surprisingly, they made themselves at home rather quickly.
Then, they planned. They trained in stealth, and frequented libraries, trying
to learn a vampire’s every weakness.
Rosie wouldn’t forget her father’s head at her feet.
She wouldn’t let anyone else live to remember it.
66

Makayla Wach
Grade 10
North Allegheny Intermediate High School
Short Prose
Stars
(Fiction)
I was just trying to protect him. Sirens wail in the distance and I know I should
leave. I should disappear before they arrive just like I’d done all those times
before. But I can’t move. I’m trapped, kneeling in a puddle in an alley with a
body clasped in my arms, and I can’t move.
It’s so cold.
The street lamp flickers a bit before plunging me into darkness. I look up
at the empty expanse of night sky, and I wish—no, pray—that the clouds will
part, just for a second. Just enough for me to see the stars.
Of course, they don’t. They never do—not when I need them to.
15 years earlier
“Ben!” I knew I wouldn’t get there in time—that typical circle of kids jeering
had already formed—but I ran anyway. I shoved my way to the front, screaming,
“Stop! Leave him alone!” But no one listened.
Ben was curled up on the ground, trying to shield himself from the two
boys kicking him. I shoved one of their shoulders and threw a punch that sent
him tumbling to the blacktop once he turned around.
It seemed to me that the teachers never got involved until I did.
One broken nose, two black eyes, and a set of bloody knuckles later, we
were waiting for Mom to come out of the principal’s office. Ben wouldn’t stop
yanking at his hair, so I pulled some fidgets out of my backpack for him to play
with. A matchbox car, some green army men, and a slinky were always good
to have on hand. He jumped out of my arms and began running around the
hall, zooming the car on some invisible track and making his usual grunts and
squeaks. I stayed in my seat.
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Mom came out of the office. She looked tired but smiled when she saw me.
“Let’s go home, honey. Can you grab your brother?”
I stood and made my way to Ben, who was now banging the car on the
underside of a desk. I gently took his shoulder and led him over to Mom. He
moaned when he saw her, a high-pitched noise in the back of his throat.
“No, you’re not in trouble,” I told him. “It wasn’t your fault. Remember
that, okay?”
Sometimes I could tell when he understood, and sometimes I couldn’t. So
I just handed him the rainbow slinky, which seemed to make him feel better.
He played with it the whole car ride home, which was silent except for his
mumbling. Finally, I spoke up.
“Mom?”
She caught my eye in the rearview mirror. “Yes?”
I’m sorry. I had to.
I promise I’ll do better.
Are you mad?
I couldn’t decide on what to say, so instead I asked, “Could we go to the
library?”
She was quiet for a moment before giving me another small smile. “Sure,
honey.”
An eleven-year-old checking out a stack of books on self-defense and fighting
was probably quite a sight to behold. But I might not always be there for Ben,
and if they were going to fear and attack what they couldn’t understand . . . well,
we’d just have to give them a reason to be afraid.
5 years later
It was hard to explain the bruises to my coworkers and manager, but I think
I eventually convinced them that it wasn’t domestic abuse. Because that’s not
what it was, not really. Ben didn’t mean it; I knew that much. And if it meant
he’d be able to protect himself while I wasn’t around, then I could stand to
be a punching bag. After all, I’d taught him everything he knew, so if anyone
deserved to be hit, it was me.
I was just glad he wasn’t whaling on Mom and that she didn’t notice. She
was sick in bed a lot lately, so I dropped out of school to look after Ben and I
got a couple of jobs. She probably didn’t notice that, either.
I unlocked the front door and set the groceries on the counter. “Ben? Where
are you?”
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I heard squealing and shrieking coming from his bedroom. I wanted so
badly to check on him, but my black eye throbbed and reminded me not to
interrupt one of his episodes. Instead, I decided to make Mom some chicken
noodle soup. Soup always seemed to—
A green army man dug into my foot, and I cursed. The kitchen floor was
littered with them. Biting my tongue to keep from yelling, I scooped them up
and took them to Ben’s room.
“Benny? You alright?”
He was lying on the ratty carpet and staring at the ceiling, whispering to
himself. I set the army men on his dresser and lay down beside him.
Mom had put glowing green stars on the ceiling when we were little, back
when Ben and I shared a room and Dad was still around. She knew how much
I loved the stars. And it turned out to be one of the few things Ben and I had
in common.
We lay there for a while; Ben twisting and thrashing, me forming imaginary
constellations in my head. And for a few moments, I could forget.
For a few moments, everything was perfect.
Short Prose
10 years later
Ben got one call, so of course he used it to order pizza.
Thank goodness it was Patrick’s shift, because he recognized Ben’s voice
and called me right away. I arrived at the police station and was greeted by an
extremely angry officer.
“We can’t keep doing this,” he snapped through the ice pack he was holding
to his face. “All this disturbing the peace and now attacking an officer?”
“He didn’t mean to—”
“Yeah, yeah, you say that every time. Just like you say you’ll keep a closer
eye on him.”
I felt a tight scribbly feeling in the pit of my stomach. “I had to get another
job. I’m working graveyard shifts. I can’t watch him every second of every day,
and believe me, I would if I could.”
He took a deep breath. “I understand that. All I’m saying is, there are places
for people like him. Might be something worth looking into.”
“People like him?” I crossed my arms and stared him down. “What’s that
supposed to mean?”
He didn’t respond. Just stood, grabbed his keys, and unlocked the cell.
“C’mon, buddy. Your sister’s here.”
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Ben untangled his arms from the bars and ran to me, spouting gibberish.
I hugged him.
“No, I didn’t get the pizza,” I told him. “But we can grab some on the way
home.”
Three hours later, I had all of our belongings packed. Ben nibbled on breadsticks
in the passenger seat and sang along to the radio in off-key screeches as I
drove and drove and drove, trying to find a town where no one knew our names.
It was our seventh move in the past two years.
6 months later
“Get out of the road, freak!”
I spun around, relieved my search for Ben was over. He was in the middle
of the street, oblivious to the taxis swerving and honking around him and the
pedestrians shouting obscenities. He bent down to inspect a penny, allowing
me to catch up. I grabbed his shoulder and led him to the sidewalk, scolding
him under my breath.
“Ben, we’ve talked about this. You have to stay where I can see you.”
He grunted and squeaked, eyes still fixed on the penny. I gave him a quick
hug before ushering him down the sidewalk. A heavy-set man with a huge
beard and an even bigger beer belly said, “He don’t belong on the streets. Get
him outta here.” I flipped him the bird and kept walking.
People were staring, whispering, heckling, glaring. I ignored them—it
wasn’t anything I hadn’t heard before. Still, it hurt to catch a little kid pointing
before their mom could shush them. The innocent comments are always the
hardest to swallow.
We made it to the diner. Ben, excited that it was a place he recognized, ran
inside. As I closed the door behind us, the crowd’s mocking applause burned
my ears.
I slid into our usual booth, where Ben was already digging into a slice
of pumpkin pie. He was nuts for pie. Roni appeared with a pad and pencil.
“Anything I can get for you, sweetheart?”
I shook my head and smiled. “No, thank you. We won’t be long.”
She winked and bustled off to the kitchen. I looked around at the familiar
decor; neon signs and black-and-white photographs. I caught the eyes of a few
other regulars, who smiled and waved at me and Ben. Gosh, I’d miss this place.
We left a decent tip for Roni—it was the least I could do, after all she’d
done for us these past few months. I didn’t bother trying to explain to Ben that
we wouldn’t be coming back.
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We stopped at a gas station in the middle of nowhere for Ben to go to the
bathroom. I waited on the bench outside and looked up at the sky.
It was comforting, really. That no matter how many times we moved, no
matter how many times we ran away, we always had the stars.
Short Prose
1 year later
I should’ve known it was all too good to be true.
I’d landed a decent job, an office job. I’d hired a part-time caretaker to look
after Ben while I was working. Everything was looking up.
Until she burst into my cubicle screaming, that is.
“I quit!” She flung Ben’s bag of fidgets at me, cars and soldiers spilling
onto the floor. “Don’t bother sending my paycheck. I wouldn’t go back to that
hellhole for a million dollars.”
“Wait! What are you—what happened?”
“He attacked me, that’s what happened!” Her face was red. “When you said
‘episodes,’ you didn’t mention violent outbursts of damn insanity!”
“Clara, please—”
“No! You’re lucky I’m not suing!” She took a deep breath, smoothed down
her hair. “Listen. I’m sorry that you have to live with that . . . that . . . thing.
But he’s your problem now, not mine.” She turned and stomped off, just like
the three before her had.
It took me a moment to process what had just happened, and before I could
react, my boss stepped out of his office. He gave me a stern look and gestured
for me to enter.
Justin came over from his cubicle as I was gathering my things in a cardboard
box. “Leaving already?”
“Not my idea,” I said, aggressively unpinning calendars and sticky notes. “I
guess my home troubles are a little too ‘disruptive’ for this job.”
“He actually fired you?”
I sighed and turned to Justin. “Thanks for being so nice to me these past
few months, but it’s okay. You don’t have to pretend anymore.” I brushed past
him and headed to the elevator.
I pushed through the revolving doors one last time, keeping my head high
and avoiding eye contact with the people on the sidewalk. I was almost a block
away when I heard someone shouting my name.
I turned around to see Justin running up behind me, a cardboard box in
his arms.
“Justin? What are you doing?”
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He was sweaty and panting but grinned at me. “What? You didn’t think
you could get rid of me that easy, did you?”
My eyes widened. “Please tell me he didn’t fire you, too. Just for talking to
me? Justin, I’m so sorry! I didn’t mean for any of this to happen.”
He shrugged and began walking alongside me. “Nah, I quit. Who needs to
work with a jerk-faced boss like him, anyway?”
My heart skipped a beat. “You quit . . . for me?”
He laughed. “Guess I can stop ‘pretending’ now, huh?”
I felt my face flush. “I, um . . .”
He bumped my shoulder with his. “I’m kidding. Hey, I have a cousin who
owns that Italian restaurant down the street. You any good at waiting tables?”
The sun was setting by the time we got to the bus stop. The box in my
arms wasn’t nearly as heavy. And the stars were just beginning to poke through
the rose-colored clouds.
3 months later
Ben grabbed the board and flung it at the wall, shrieking. Game pieces went
flying across the room, and Justin shot me a concerned glance. I gave him an
apologetic look and grabbed Ben’s hand, trying to calm him down.
“Benny, it’s just a game. Games are fun, remember?”
He started thrashing and backhanded me across the face. It was an accident,
I know it was, but Justin still grabbed me and pulled me away.
He led me to the balcony and shut the door behind us, leaving Ben in the
other room to finish his fit.
“I’m so sorry,” I mumbled. “He’ll stop in a few minutes.”
Justin took my face in his hands until I met his eyes. “Hey. It’s not your
fault.”
“But it is!” I was crying now, which was even more embarrassing. “I’m the
one that taught him to fight. I gave him lessons every day before school when we
were little, because I wanted to make sure he could protect himself . . .” I trailed
off, wiping my nose on my sleeve. “But now he uses it as a coping mechanism. He
can’t stop. When he gets frustrated or afraid . . .” I shuddered. “He can’t stop.”
Justin wrapped me in a hug. I heard things breaking inside the apartment.
The sky was dark and cloudy, the moon a blurry haze. And I couldn’t see the
stars.
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2 weeks later
My heart was pounding as I dialed Justin’s number. My mouth tasted like blood,
and the gash on my forehead was stinging something awful.
“Hello?”
He sounded half-asleep, groggy. But I didn’t know who else to call. “Ben’s
gone.”
I could almost see him bolting up in bed. “What? What do you mean?”
“I mean he’s missing. Took off about an hour ago.” I heard rustling on the
other end, and I knew he was grabbing his coat.
“Alright, I’ll be over in a few. Keep looking for him, you know what type of
places he’d hide,” Justin said. “I’ll wait at your apartment in case he comes back.”
I took a deep, shaky breath and nodded, forgetting that he couldn’t see me.
“Don’t worry. We’ll find him,” he said reassuringly. “Call me if you find
anything.”
He hung up, and I ran out into the rain that was just beginning to fall. I
checked every playground, every toy store, every pizza parlor and bakery. This
couldn’t be happening. Not again, not now.
Running away wasn’t so hard back when I had nothing to lose.
Short Prose
24 hours later
I’d been out all night and all day, and now it was night again. I was still scared.
It was still raining. And I still couldn’t find Ben anywhere. The police hadn’t
gotten any reports, but I couldn’t decide whether that should come as a relief or
a concern. He could be anywhere in this city, he could be hurt or he could be
. . . I pushed the thought down and kept walking, scanning the streets.
My phone buzzed. “Justin? Is he back yet?”
“No, I was just checking up on you. No luck?”
“Not since the last time you called,” I said, squeezing my eyes shut so I
wouldn’t start crying. “I’m heading back now. We’ll figure something out once
I get there.” Figure what out? Print some missing posters? I was kidding myself.
There was no way this was going to end well, and once again, it was on me. If
I hadn’t screamed when he hit me, he wouldn’t have gotten upset and run off.
This was all my fault.
By the time I got to my street, the rain had slowed to a light sprinkle. My
clothes were still drenched, though. Just before I entered the apartment, something
caught my eye in the light of a dying street lamp. It was a matchbox car.
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“Ben?” I called, picking it up. “Ben, where are you?” A few feet away, in the
opening of a small alley, I could just make out a rainbow slinky.
“Ben!” I was running now. “Benny, please come out! I’m not angry, I promise!
It’s not your fault. Remember that!” I stepped on a small group of green
army men. I looked around the alley—I still couldn’t see Ben. On the wall three
stories up I could make out my open window, curtains fluttering in the breeze.
But I didn’t remember opening the window.
I whipped out my phone to call Justin. I dialed his number and waited.
My heart dropped when I heard his ringtone, clear as day, coming from
the back of the alley.
“Justin?” I inched forward, my eyes slowly adjusting to make out a large
shape huddled on the wet cement. Shards of glass littered the alley. A cell phone,
cracked but still ringing, glowed in the darkness. But all I could see was the
familiar brown coat and the color red. So much red. “Justin?”
I was just trying to protect him, my head screamed as I knelt sobbing in a
puddle in an alley with a body clasped in my arms. I was just trying to protect
him. I didn’t mean this. I didn’t mean any of this.
But it didn’t matter, did it? I’d failed. I had one job, and I failed.
I hadn’t protected Ben from anything. Just like that thin glass windowpane
hadn’t saved Justin.
Present
I know I should tell the officers the truth. I know that Ben is still out there and
that he’s dangerous. But I won’t, because no matter what he’s done, he’s still my
little brother. He’s still my Benny.
It’s selfish, but I’m tired of running. I’m tired of disappearing. And I’m tired
of this responsibility that’s been crushing me since he was born.
Even if I did tell the truth, what then? There’s nothing waiting for me out
there, anyway. Not anymore.
At least through the bars on my cell window, I can see the sky.
At least I can see the stars.
74

Mia Naccarato
Grade 10
North Allegheny Intermediate High School
Short Prose
Swing Set
(Fiction)
The ideas are swirling in my head. Viggo says that I have a big spirit but an
even bigger imagination. I never know how to respond when he tells me this.
Currently, I am perched on a rusty swing in the old park by the old toy
factory in the old part of town. I can practically smell the rot and mold.
My pen hovers over my paper. All my thoughts claw at the wall of my brain,
willing for an escape through the ink in my pen. I close my eyes, feeling the
cool breeze tickle my eyelids. Write, I urge myself. Write.
I breathe a bit. The somewhat-fresh air never ceases to inspire me. But what
really inspires me is Viggo.
I knocked on his door earlier today. His mama answered, bags under her
dark eyes.
“Viggo can’t come out today, darlin’,” she said. “He’s pretty busy with
homework.”
Then she shut the door. If that isn’t finality, I don’t know what is.
I sigh and lean backwards on the swing now. It creaks under all one hundred
and two pounds of me.
Viggo and I used to come here quite frequently as kids. The playground
was a lot nicer a decade ago. We would have so much fun swinging from the
monkey bars. I remember thinking that it was the coolest thing when Viggo
hung upside down. I would be frightened, too.
“Get down!” I would shriek. Viggo would laugh and laugh and tell me not
to worry. He said that his muscles could take the strain of going against gravity.
He always tells me not to worry. But I am worrying now. Because something
is wrong.
Is Viggo mad at me? He rarely misses our little escapades, and he has never
skipped out on me just to do homework.
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Worry settles in my gut like a dumbbell. Viggo Viggo Viggo. I wonder how
he would look on my page.
Viggo. I think as hard as I can. There are so many things that come to mind
when I think of him. But the one thing that stands out the most is the same
word that scares me beyond anything. Love. I try not to write this word down.
If Viggo were to flip through my book one day on a whim . . . Love.
Before I know what I am doing, that same word is etched in ink. Permanent.
Unmoving. I stare at it for a while.
I’ve never known Viggo to be anything besides my friend until a few years
ago when we sat on the very same swing set that I am sitting on now.
He pumped his legs back and forth as he went ever higher, the set groaning
beneath him. His mouth was open and his eyes were closed and he looked as if
he was a young kid again.
“Come on!” he shouted. “Don’t be a loser!”
So I wasn’t a loser. We swung side by side. The wind pushed my hair back
and chilled my teeth. I laughed with him.
And when I opened my eyes against the unwavering breeze and looked to my
right, Viggo’s eyes met mine. Something shifted. I didn’t realize what, exactly,
until later when I was in my room listening to Green Day.
It knocked the wind out of me as a brick would, hitting me over and over.
Eventually, I was forced to think about this revelation. For hours I lay there,
thinking about Viggo.
The sound of crunching leaves startles me out of my reminiscing. A flash
of bright red converse and faded blue jeans come into view as the footsteps get
closer. I know not to look up. He knows to get down low to meet my eyes.
“Hey,” he says, tapping my chin.
This is a game that we have. Just a small dance in the elaborate tango that
is our friendship.
“Hey,” I reply. I try my best not to lift my chin and give him the satisfaction.
A pause.
“I’m sorry.”
At this, I look up. Viggo’s piercing brown eyes meet my gaze. He never
apologizes. Ever. Not when he accidentally drove my new bike into a thick stump.
Not when he chucked a baseball through my bedroom window, shattering the
glass. And certainly not when he ignored my stares of longing and waved me
off with a swift hand.
“For what?”
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“For leaving you this morning. I should have let you know what was going
on,” he says.
“Yeah,” I reply, trying to keep my voice steady. “You really should have.”
Viggo nods, though I know he doesn’t fully understand my hurt. I barely
understand my hurt.
“Listen,” he begins, his voice soft and supple. It is like he is talking to a
baby. “I think I need to tell you something.”
“You think you need to tell me something? Or do you actually need to tell
me something?”
He chuckles humorlessly, stands, and rubs the back of his neck like he
always does when he’s nervous. But usually the neck rubbing is reserved for his
friends when they call me names, or for his mama when she asks where the hell
we were for the past four hours.
“I can’t . . .” he starts, his Adam’s apple bobbing as he gulps. I nod encouragingly
up at him.
“I can’t hang out with you anymore,” he says. He spits it out like it’s a bad
taste in his mouth.
His words hit me square in the chest like a bullet gone rogue. I can’t breathe
and my palms become clammy.
“I’m sorry,” I stutter, shaking my head in disbelief. “What?”
Viggo turns his head away, and I can sense the nervousness within him.
“Look, I know that we’ve been friends for a while—”
“Try fifteen years,” I say, cutting him off. To me, saying we’ve been friends
for a while does not do our relationship justice. If he wants to bring up time,
he needs to face the facts.
“Okay,” he tries again. “I’m sorry. I just . . .”
Silence falls over us like a heavy blanket.
I look at Viggo for a minute. I didn’t notice those little freckles on his
nose until a couple years ago, but now they are the first things that my eyes are
drawn to. There are about thirty of them on his light brown skin. His mama
calls them angel kisses.
I don’t know what I should call them.
Viggo sits down on the swing beside me. I want to say something, but my
mouth refuses to open. Viggo just lets the silence drag on with a ball and chain
attached to its ankle. Never in my life have I felt this disconnected to my best
friend.
I tap my pen absentmindedly on my notepad.
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“Whatcha writing?” Viggo asks, trying to break the silence. I’m not really in
the mood for pretending that everything is okay, but I go along with it anyway.
“Oh,” I say. I move my hand, remembering too late why I had my hand
clamped over the page in the first place. Viggo stares at the word written in
my handwriting.
I could cover it again. I could make excuses and say that I was just writing
a cheesy love story.
But he knows. I see it in the way his eyes glisten.
“Oh,” he says. His voice reminds me of a feather floating in the breeze.
My stomach coils itself into a knot. Bile rises in my throat. Viggo just stays
beside me on his swing. Neither of us move.
Why did I let him see that? So stupid.
“My dad,” Viggo says suddenly. “I told my dad that I would never have a wife
and kids. I told him that I would rather eat nails than pretend to love someone.”
He pauses and bows his head. I stop breathing, and my mind becomes foggy.
“He said that . . . that I couldn’t be around you anymore. That you are a
bad influence on me.” Viggo clears his throat. “Papa says that you’re the reason
that I’m different.”
He says the last word quietly. He says it like a secret. He says it like it’s
something to be ashamed of.
Different. I’ve been different all my life. Viggo’s always been the normal one.
When football tryouts opened up in sixth grade, Viggo’s name was the first on
the list. For any school dance, Viggo would be the one to turn down hordes of
dates, while I would be hiding in the library. Viggo is sports and fast cars and
cigarette butts. I’m just rotting pages and an unfinished story. Viggo is like the
preppy older brother to my messed up younger one.
“You’re not different, Viggo.”
“Tell my old man.”
“I will,” I say, turning to him with the desperation that comes with losing
someone. “I’ll tell your dad. I’ll tell anyone in the world. You’re normal. You’re
no misfit.”
“And you think that you are?” he asks me.
“I think that I am what?”
Viggo looks at me dead in the eyes. My already knotted stomach seems to
fall away.
“You’re not a misfit, Elias.”
He has not used my real name in forever. It’s always been Eli. Never Elias.
Elias always seemed so stern.
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I don’t know how to properly respond to this, and I don’t even try. There’s
no point. After today, he’ll probably hang out with his jock friends doing jock
things. He’ll probably get a girlfriend.
God, what torture that will be. I’ll be forced to see Viggo and his stupid
girlfriend cuddling by the lockers every day. I’ll have to see Viggo wrestling
with his buddies in the hallway. But the most awful thing is that I’ll have to
see Viggo at all.
I’ll see him and I’ll know that I can never have him.
I feel my fists clench as the full weight of the situation weighs down on me.
I am losing my best friend and my first love. And it hurts more than I could
have ever imagined.
With a grunt, Viggo lifts himself off of the swing. I watch helplessly, hoping
with all of me that he will stop walking and turn to face me once more.
His feet that were once so freely moving now drag on the ground. His body
slouches as if it is being pulled down by an all-consuming burden.
Eventually, I realize that he won’t turn around. He won’t do anything. It’s
up to me to be brave.
“Viggo!” I shout, hating the way that my voice cracks. Tears well up in my
eyes.
He turns around, his eyes dark and sad.
“Viggo, I love you,” I tell him, my voice thick with every feeling that I have
ever harbored for him. “I love you so much. You have no idea.”
“I know,” he replies. His chin quivers like it always does when he’s trying
to hold in his tears. “I know.”
And with that he spins back around and walks away. I should run and stop
him. I should tell him to stay with me.
But I don’t move. I don’t call out again. I just stay helplessly and watch the
guy that I’m in love with walk away from me.
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Natalie Cohen
Grade 10
Commonwealth Charter Academy
Stop
(Fiction)
The rumbling of thunder woke me up—a deep rattle that shook my bones as
much as it shook the half-empty glass of water that sat on the wooden desk
beside me. A sudden chill ran up my spine as I slowly adjusted the thin woolen
blanket that lay on top of me. I could only guess what it must have been like
outside on that late August night: humid and damp, warm rain pattering against
the rooves of houses with just a faint cool breeze coming in from the east to
indicate the beginnings of autumn. I could almost hear it all in my mind—the
satisfying crack of lightning, the drum-like beat of the fat drops hammering
the pavement, the ominous rustling of the large maple leaves that were only
beginning to show their true colors.
But, instead of all of the beautiful sounds of nature that I had learned to
appreciate over the years, all I could hear was static.
It started with a subtle ringing in the morning, the Buds that were forcefully
implanted into everyone’s ears almost making the sound seem like a normal
occurrence. Just a little ringing of the ears. It would probably go away after
breakfast.
It never did.
Instead, it got louder, deeper, more powerful. The ringing morphed into
a high-pitched whine that would make my ears feel like they were bleeding (I
always double-checked in the mirror that they in fact were not before clocking
into work).
This noise would hit its crescendo at noon and then seem to become quieter—mellower—as
it deepened in pitch. In reality, it was always set at the same
volume—the highest—but the lowered tone made it a little more bearable.
That is until midnight. Midnight up until 6 AM was the worst of it. The
baritone sound transformed into pure static. It started off slow, as it always did,
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ut by the minute it became faster and more imprinted into the senses—you
could almost see the static in front of you, taste imaginary sparkling water on
your lips and feel your limbs go numb with sparks that seemed to engulf your
entire body. It swiftly went from the mild sound of a malfunctioning TV to
an excruciating noise that could’ve been a combination of two abrasive sides of
a sponge roughly scratching against one another and a machine gun’s endless
barrage of bullets banging against the rusted side of a silo.
You could call me somewhat of an expert when it came to how the Buds
worked—I could tell you the exact hour, minute, second of the day when a
specific change was made to the noise in my ears. I could tell you how many
individual changes—no matter how subtle or drastic—were made to the Buds
every 24 hours (203 for your information). I had even written multiple songs
that incorporated 3-5 minutes of the noise as a soundtrack and used to find
myself murmuring the lyrics to some of the jingles during the long, dull hours
of the day.
The only thing I could never figure out—could never tell you—was how
to end the Noise.
I’d tried everything, from trying to yank them out of my ear canals, to
pushing pencils, pens, knives and various other sharp tools in order to jangle
them out, to punching my ears until black spots swarmed my vision.
Once, I even attempted to carve my own ears out.
But we never ever discuss that.
Despite my efforts, it would always end with being subjected to this torture
24/7. At some point over the years, I did get used to the static that started up
during my REM cycle so I managed to get at least 6 hours of sleep every night.
But, recently, I found myself being awoken by the Noise earlier and earlier. If it
wasn’t the static, then it was the beautiful sounds of nature teasing me awake,
mocking me for never again being able to hear them, to truly appreciate them.
Just like tonight.
For a moment, I struggled to grasp the memory of a thunderstorm. This
happened sometimes: I found myself forgetting certain sounds—one day I would
wake up and forget how the clacking of computer keys or the sizzling of meat
on a fiery grill sounded. Sometimes the melodies of a flock of birds singing me
awake or the monotonous buzzing of bees escaped me. Sometimes sounds that
used to be so regular and routine now felt so indescribable, so foreign.
Sometimes I feared I would wake up one day and forget it all.
I felt something wet against my cheek and realized I was crying at the
thought of losing this part of my humanity all to the stupid Buds. A device that
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Ralph Munn Creative Writing Anthology 2019
was implanted in every person’s ears to keep us in line—to make us behave. If
something tragic ever happened—a robbery, a shooting, a rape—the person or
people were punished with Deaf Death—a newly-discovered method of torture
in which the Buds would release an agonizing screech unlike anything anyone
could bear that would leave the person unable to hear forever.
Maybe it sounds more like a gift after what we were all put through and it
certainly is . . . but only for those few seconds.
After that, the gunshots that brutally tear through the perpetrators’ bodies
seem to come out of nowhere.
And after that, I imagine, it’s nothing but Light.
Some people faked being deaf so they wouldn’t have to get the Buds installed,
but this rarely succeeded. The government took a precaution by mandating that
everyone got the Buds implanted. The people who claimed they were deaf were
monitored 24/7 (more than the rest of us anyway) for any indication that they
could hear the Noise.
And it was usually quite obvious from the beginning.
However, there are Exceptions. People who truly are deaf. What the government
does to them, nobody knows. It is widely accepted that all genuine
deaf people have been wiped off the face of the planet but, recently, there have
been theories that the government has some sort of concentration camp that
imprisons all of those who cannot hear.
It imprisons all of those who cannot be controlled.
Unfortunately, I wasn’t one of these people. I was pathetically subjected to
this cruel torture like the rest of the population. Subjected to this attack on
the senses. Subjected to a strict, monotonous schedule that everyone had and
followed obediently. Eat, work, sleep. Breakfast, work, lunch, work, dinner,
sleep. There were no more hobbies, no more televisions, no more books. The
government had deemed all of these too “distracting” and had, in turn, obliterated
every piece of entertaining media that had accumulated throughout human
history. Computers and phones were used strictly for work purposes and the days
of calling and talking to family, friends, and coworkers were, obviously, over.
You could never contact anyone else directly, not by text nor email. Everything
was first submitted to computerized Bosses who were in charge of your work
progress. Anything else that had to be submitted to another human being went
through the Detectors—a system of supercomputers that scanned your message
for anything remotely off-topic or “resembling any sort of rebellion.”
Security wasn’t always this tight: in the beginning, people were able to
message each other in “underground” servers where they would be able to
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freely rant, ask questions and share theories about the newly-instated laws and
mandates. Almost every server was eventually discovered and taken down in
the months following the new laws but, to this day, there are still ways to get
around security if you do it right. Backdoor entrances and secret codes were
how I found out about the new theories surrounding the Exceptions. I had
even used several servers in the weeks following my Bud Implantation Surgery
years ago, mostly to observe and to pick out information about how we’d all be
apparently spending the rest of our lives. Locked in box-like households. Fed
undercooked slop. Chained to the same job, the same schedule, for the rest of
our days. People weren’t even paid anymore—work was mandatory and meals,
clothes and other necessities were provided for us anyway. This way was better,
according to the government: the obliteration of money caused less prejudice
and segregation between those who had more or less wealth and the necessities
that were provided to us—generic soaps and toiletries, standard black-andwhite
pants, skirts and chemises, as well as ready-made meals—made for less
decision-making and conflict of interest that would only “sidetrack” the public
from their oh-so-important jobs.
Though what we were working on and who we were all working for, nobody
knew.
My hands were shaking and I didn’t know if it was from the cold or the
sheer anger that seemed to blend rather nicely with the repulsive Noise in my
ears. Tears dripped off of my earlobes and onto the thin cotton pillow case
beneath my head. Sadness, rage and utter fear clouded my thoughts and knotted
together in my gut. Sadness at the unfairness of it all, the opportunities and
miracles of life that were being taken away from us. Rage at the people who
subjected us to this torture and had so clearly lost their sense of humanity in
favor of the tyranny with which they imposed onto the public. Fear for the
future generation, if there was any to speak of, and the fate of the planet that
was being unapologetically drained of its resources all for the enslaved working
class and the monsters behind it all.
I remembered a time before the Buds and the Noise.
Memories of a young child laughing and jumping around in a field of
daisies—the sounds of flowers rustling against each other in the breeze and the
chirping of bluebirds in the distance—permeated my thoughts.
Memories of birthday parties with the sounds of groups of people singing
“Happy Birthday” filled my ears, the smell of grilled meat lingering in the air
and the taste of ice cream cake on my lips.
Memories of high school parties with music that rattled your bones (in
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a good way) and stolen kisses behind abandoned bleachers that would always
leave me dizzy with glee.
The memories became weaker and weaker by the day. I could barely grasp
the ghost-like image of cake or imagine the sounds of laughter. I couldn’t
remember the last time I had laughed or so much as cracked a smile. The only
thing I could taste remnants of on my lips was the standard bland meat and
undercooked, cold vegetables that were provided to us every night for dinner.
Despite the yearning that I felt for the smell of rain, all I could smell was the
stale air that was recycled over and over in each and every household.
I couldn’t take it anymore—I sat up, the blood momentarily rushing to my
head from the sudden movement. I could feel my breaths hitching in my throat
and I struggled to calm down, to breathe.
The more I tried to control my breaths—in and out, in and out—the
harder I sobbed and the closer I felt to a full-on panic attack—my third one of
that month and certainly not my last. I had no way of knowing how to handle
myself in these situations, doctors never came by to take care of people if they
were ill and there was no way of looking treatments up on the internet anymore.
You either lived or died by your uneducated decisions and we were constantly
reminded in our jobs that we were in fact expendable.
After all, the government could always replace us with computers.
These thoughts only sent me even more off the edge. I kept combing my
hands through my unkempt hair and sitting up and down, tossing left and right,
not knowing what to do with myself. My lips quivered, my fingertips trembled
and the ugly tears kept coming in streams.
All I wanted . . .
All anyone wanted was for it all to . . .
“Stop,” I whispered it. One word. Stop. I couldn’t even remember the last
time I had used my voice—there was no need for it anymore in this world of
unemotional emails and limited human interaction. Yet the urge to speak was
so sudden that I might not have said anything at all: I couldn’t hear myself,
obviously.
I hadn’t been able to hear the sound of my own voice in a long, long time.
I was answered with static. The same static that was playing yesterday, the
same Noise that would keep me up all night, the same buzzing that would play
into tomorrow and the next day and the next day and the next day until the end.
Until I died.
The tears came faster, harder, stronger. I was choking, unable to catch my
breath. I tried to sit up and grab the glass of water beside me but ended up
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twisting in bed awkwardly and knocking the glass over, the water spilling onto
the carpet. The sight of the cracked glass and the wet rug set something off in
me and I just kept crying in bed, hoping for Death to take me away from this
madness as I hysterically whispered that word over and over.
“Stop, stop, stop . . .”
That’s when I heard it.
A click. At least I think that’s what it’s called. It was such a shock—such a
deviation from the ear-splitting rhythm of the static—that my eyes widened in
disbelief and I gasped out loud.
Soon after the click had come and gone and the static had taken over once
more, I heard something else.
A beep.
Then, a voice. A robotic female voice.
“Buds 2105603 terminating in 3, 2, 1 . . .”
After that, for the first time in decades, I heard nothing at all.
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Ralph Munn Creative Writing Anthology 2019
Natalie McGee
Grade 9
Mt. Lebanon High School
By the Fence
(Non-Fiction)
Fair are grown-up people’s trees, but the fairest woods are these;
Where, if I were not so tall, I should live for good and all.
—R. L. Stevenson
The lunch bell clanged, bursting the doors wide open as waves of clamoring
children poured outside. They formed joyful rapids, small clusters peeling off
left and right toward their favorite activities. From the door, the race looked
like one of those maps of the Amazon River we were so eager to leave, pinned
to the classroom wall, tributaries branching off in every direction.
Within seconds, the crashing river dwindled into a stream, and then a
panting, red-faced trickle as we few remaining children finally reached our
destination at the far end of the field. We slowed to a dramatic stumble and let
our knees buckle as we turned around, dropping onto the untrampled grass.
The rest of our peers were fanned out far behind us like characters in a muted
film, leaving us alone in our oasis.
We remained there, the four or five of us jumper-clad third graders, engulfed
in the scent of the clover and the rare quietness of midday. Being early May,
the sun was still somewhat of a new companion, and it baked the hair on the
tops of our heads. As our breathing slowed, one of us must have stood up, as
the rest followed suit, and we crossed the last few yards towards the sagging
chain-link fence.
It was overgrown with honeysuckle and berry bushes and a curtain of
harmless vines that no one bothered to identify, its rusted joints creaking in
welcome. The greenery cantilevered far enough out over the grass for two of
us to stand upright beneath it, side by side, and still remain in the dappled
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shade, partially hidden from view by intertwined branches overhead. It was our
beautiful little secret.
At first, it seemed to be forgotten by the outside world. Dead branches
dangled from their stumps; nearby a waist-high grove of mysterious red-spotted
weeds ruled the sunny side of a small hill. But we soon adopted it as a little
home of our own. The dead branches we carefully removed, replacing them
with hanging packets of twigs thoughtfully positioned to separate our kitchen
and lobby from the hospital wing. The weeds were christened “polka-dot plant,”
and it was discovered that if broken open, they offered an abundance of sticky,
stringy flesh and sweet-smelling juice. We began caring for the bugs that we
found under stones and leaves, lending Bug Town its name.
Maybe at first, we were just searching for a place to escape the constant
watch of our teachers and peers, for Bug Town’s placid remoteness truly made
an excellent escape. But our years of careful attention slowly transformed it into
something more.
“How about we make soup today?” someone suggested, swirling the halfmoon
of rainwater collected along one edge of our cockeyed mosaic birdbath.
“I think I saw some of those prickly berries over by the nature trail.” We briefly
contemplated this idea, mostly for show, as we learned long ago that rejecting
ideas made the game no fun.
As two of the girls ran off to gather berries, concocting a recipe along the
way, I ducked under a bundle of sweet-smelling twigs, wafting their perfume
into the hospital. My fellow doctor was perched on her toes on the cool grass,
crouched over a small potato bug that didn’t seem able to unroll.
She looked up and tugged her pigtails over the opposite shoulder with a
small, slightly muddy hand.
“He still won’t wake up,” she said, “I put him on the moss patch and everything.
Do you think he needs medicine?” She placed the tiny gray creature on a
maple-leaf stretcher, and I examined it, tilting the leaf slightly to watch it roll.
“I see the problem, Doctor,” I said, nodding sagely. “Yes, I think he’s sick.
We should definitely make him something.”
“Okay. I’ll start on it. Should we use polka-dot extract or crushed pine
needles?”
“How about both?” I suggested, twirling closer to the fence to check up on
a malnourished earthworm.
Our little group learned to work as a seamless unit, each of us a valuable
part of our town. It didn’t mean anything different to us if a girl helped in the
kitchen, or the workshop, or the hospital. Though we knew that no one would
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ever understand what it truly meant to us, we did what we could to make Bug
Town a success. When the field monitors scolded us for sampling our berry
harvest, or the fifth graders teased us for digging up bugs, we reported our
struggles back to the group. We supported each other and took the attacks in
stride, further strengthening the bond that we had forged years ago among the
vines and the clover.
Spring passed in a blur of warmth and color. A busy summer came and went.
It was the first recess of our fourth-grade year, and we burst out the heavy
doors, jubilant in this familiar rush that we never expected to leave.
We couldn’t wait to begin Bug Town’s preparations for the coming winter,
but we had hardly reached the field when we stopped short, jostling each other
with the sudden halt. We stood motionless, our shoes sinking slightly in the
putrid mud of the swamp by the entrance.
Before us now stood proof that everything had changed.
The far end of the field—the semi-wilderness that had been our refuge for
years—looked as fresh and clean as a brand-new housing development. The air
quivered with the scent of freshly mowed grass, and the expanse of green was
all but bereft of marshmallowy clover flowers. Chalky orange dust from the
resurfaced baseball diamonds stung our eyes and throats as we slowly made our
way towards the new, stiff fence.
Bug Town was gone.
It seemed like years before our silent procession came to a stop. The friendly
verdure that had protected our magical sanctuary for so long was hacked into
submission behind the fence. Our carefully cultured groves of polka-dot plant
and our patches of wild strawberries were uprooted and drowned in foul-smelling
mulch.
With the loss of the town, several of our numbers moved on to different
activities. The few of us that remained gathered up our tenacity and tried to
scout out a new location. Bug Town was briefly reincarnated at several different
places, but it remained homeless and transient, a lovely flower pulled up by the
roots.
By the time of the first real frost, its days were over for good.
Bug Town remains with me as an image of the sunny days of childhood—a
blissful wilderness of purity and purpose. Perhaps everyone has a memory like
this one; a singular joy that was ended prematurely and against their will. We
despise it, but maybe it needs to happen this way, so we can move on. Maybe
this is simply the nature of progress. For it is never realized at the time, but its
demise, however unintentional, marks the beginning of a new era.
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Qingqing Zhao
Grade 11
Shady Side Academy
Short Prose
Kindred Spirits
(Fiction)
Prologue
When I was transported back to the guest bedroom of my house, my head had
been shaven of all its hair. On top of that, I had lost twenty pounds which added
to my changed appearance. My brother was studying in the same room and was
surprised to see that after my nap, I woke up bald. I was covered in dirt from
sleeping on the floor of the house I had stayed at for two years of my life. If I
hadn’t contracted the lice, I would still have my hair and there wouldn’t be that
much of a noticeable difference.
I didn’t know how to explain to him my sudden arrival into reality. I had
just appeared on the bed in the guest bedroom, and that startled him.
“Who gave you such a weird haircut?” asked my brother Anker. I looked
over at him sitting at the cluttered desk in the corner and touched my head to
find that I wasn’t completely bald. I could still feel random patches throughout
my head that hadn’t been cleanly shaven off.
“Anker, you saw me on this bed the whole time, right?” I asked him.
“No, I went out to have soup for dinner, then Jack came over and we played
on the Xbox for around three hours. I assumed you were napping this whole
time. It’s already 10:30! Don’t you have homework?”
“That’s not important right now. I’m really tired.”
“But didn’t you just nap for like six hours?”
“I wasn’t really napping . . . ”
Anker didn’t know about the seemingly infinite trips I’d gone on in just
the last week. I was glad my brother didn’t see me physically disappear from
the room, but I didn’t know how to respond to his questions about my hair. I
just avoided answering him. However, my mom knew about it, and I needed to
find her to tell her everything.
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“Anker, where is mama?”
“She’s taking a shower. She should be done in five minutes.”
I hopped out of bed and ran upstairs.
“MAMA!!” I shouted. Still in the bathroom, my mom heard me and opened
the door.
“What is it? Can’t you give me at least ten minutes after my shower?”
“It happened again. One minute, I was taking a nap, then the next I was
back in China and saw Yun again. I have good news this time! Yun is alright,
and I don’t think I’ll be going back again.”
“What have I told you? No more naps!! Your Chinese has gotten a lot
better on those trips, but I think it’s good that you won’t get into any more
dangerous situations to protect your Grandma Yun. Look at what’s happened
to your hair. And you have scrapes and dirt all over your body. Let me help get
you cleaned up.”
The Hunger
I’m sixteen years old, maybe a little too old to go trick or treating, but I was as
excited as ever to go trick or treating with my best friend, Rosy, on Halloween
night. My birthday had just been ten days earlier, so it was like two birthday
celebrations in one month, but on that night I’d be collecting mountains of
candy to gorge on for weeks. As I was getting myself ready, I heard the doorbell
ring, and it was Rosy.
“Change of plans, we’re going trick or treating, Rosy,” I said to her.
“What? I thought we were going to stay in. We went trick or treating last
year, and I don’t have a costume.”
“Oh, no problem. Just paint your face like I did.”
“No, I’ll just go like this. I’m dressed as a teenager in a sweatshirt and jeans.”
“Haha fine. Let’s go now. We’re already 30 minutes behind schedule. We
need to run to get the good candy.”
We walked through my neighborhood, ringing doorbells of as many houses
as we could. We reached the bottom of the hill on the main street when I started
to feel dizzy. It was like my surroundings were fading away. I looked down at
the asphalt I was standing on and quickly moved to the grass so I wouldn’t hit
my head on the hard ground as I fell down. I heard Rosy gasp, heard her ask,
“What’s wrong?”
I couldn’t see clearly and blinked several times to try to see through my
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increasingly blurry vision, but the street, Rosy, my neighborhood—everything
vanished.
Suddenly, I was in the inside of a cold, small room. Before me was a girl
about my age sitting at a table with a platter set on top. She was picking at the
crumbs, and her emaciated body showed that she was starving. I was still grasping
my basket of Halloween candy, and I approached her and offered her a few
handfuls of the candy. Not only was the packaging foreign to her, the English
that I was speaking was also foreign. I didn’t know where exactly I was, but I
helped the girl open the candies first and waited until she was finished eating
to ask questions. I don’t think I’d ever seen anyone munch on a lollipop and
devour it as fast as she did. Then, an elderly woman walked through the door.
She was holding knitting needles and yarn.
“Yun! Ta shi shei?!” she shrieked.
I understood what she said in Chinese. She wanted to know who I was.
The girl’s name was apparently Yun. I remember my mom telling me that
my grandma’s name was Yun and that she grew up in a very big village called
ShanDong. This was most certainly the same Yun that my mom told me about.
She even looked a little like me. The elderly woman looked too old to be her
mom, but I didn’t have time to think about that anymore. I noticed she was
walking towards me very fast, and when she started to stab me with her wooden
knitting needles, I didn’t know what to do. I was going to die if she kept at it.
Then, the woman and Yun disappeared before my eyes.
I was lying on the grass at the bottom of the hill again. Rosy was a few
feet away from me.
“Rosy?”
“Oh my god!! Where were you? You just disappeared for like 30 seconds.
Are you ok?”
“I don’t know. Let’s walk back to my house first.”
I sat on the couch in my house, trying to process everything. I had traveled
through space over 7,000 miles to China and met my grandma as a 16-year-old
teenager, which would have been about 80 years ago. Rosy was confused about
what had happened to me, but I didn’t know how to tell her about it without
confusing her even more. We just did our homework and chatted a little until
her mom came to pick her up. After she had left, I got the chance to tell my
mom about everything.
“But how is that possible? You couldn’t have met your grandmother.
Although what you told me is accurate, your grandma died ten years ago. I
don’t know how you would’ve met her.”
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I showed her the stab marks that Yun’s grandmother had given me and
explained that they were what had brought me back.
“Look, it was real. I met Yun, and she was starving to death. There was
an older woman . . . I think it was her grandma. She stabbed me with a pair of
knitting needles to try to drive me away from her granddaughter.”
“I don’t see how you could lie to me about this, and everything you’re saying
did really happen to your grandmother. She struggled with getting enough food
to eat as a child. If you get pulled back there again, then that woman will know
you mean well since you offered her granddaughter food, right? She won’t feel
threatened by you again.”
“I hope so.”
The whole thing was becoming more and more of a blur. I tried to forget
about the scary image of the starving girl I had seen and the trouble I had
gotten into with her grandmother. The present was more important than ever
because my mom’s business was failing, and it was making life difficult for my
whole family.
The Family Business
From our house, my mom ran her tutoring business. I kept up with how it was
doing now and then, and my mom would give me the rundown. I was used
to hearing good news about how the business was doing well and how it was
growing, but one day things started to change. The number of students that
were coming to my mom’s business was steadily declining, and the business
wasn’t bringing in as much money as it used to.
“Mama, what will happen if your business runs out of money?” I asked her.
“I’ll have to sell the house. And we’ll need to move to Louisiana where I
got the offer to teach at a college.”
“I don’t want to move though. What can I do to help the business?”
She lowered her head saying, “I don’t want you to worry about this. If you
want to help, maybe walk over to the library and find some books that would
be good for my younger students.”
“Ok, I’ll go today.”
It was around nine in the morning on a Saturday when I had had that talk
with my mom. I decided to pack my lunch then walk over to the library to see
what I could do to help. I began to search for books in the catalog on the library
computer, but I could no longer focus when I felt the same nauseousness I had
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felt on Halloween the Tuesday before. I was staring blankly at the computer
screen one second and the next I was sitting on the ground facing a furnace. I
was in the one-room house again, and I felt a tap on my shoulder. It was Yun,
and she pointed at the furnace and barely whispered out, “Zhe ge huai le.”
I was pretty confident she said that the furnace was broken. That must’ve
been the reason why the room was colder than it was the last time. I didn’t know
how to fix the furnace, but I used my library card to pry a compartment open to
see what was wrong. I located where a pipe had fallen over, and I put it upright,
and the furnace was fixed! It must’ve been broken for quite a long time for Yun
to have pulled me back to her again. She was clearly freezing, not to mention
hungry too. With no food Yun would surely die of starvation, but she was too
cold and weak to find food. My work wouldn’t be done until I found a permanent
solution, but how was I going to make sure that Yun wouldn’t go hungry ever
again? I had an idea, but I’d have to stay around a little longer to oversee the
implementation. I would start a farm! Yun and her family would finally gain
control over their own food source. Of course, this would take time—time that
I was willing to devote to helping out my ancestors.
The old woman walked through the door, and I thought that she could
help. I confirmed with Yun that the woman really was her grandmother. Yun’s
grandmother was grateful for the candy I had brought on my last trip and for
fixing the furnace. I was just glad she didn’t lash out at me again when she saw
me appear in her house. I could finally talk to her seriously about the ideas I
had to solve her and her granddaughter’s hunger.
After an afternoon’s talk with her, she understood the concept of starting a
farm to grow and produce food. For the following two years, I worked with her
and Yun once she got stronger to create the farm. It was a slow process at first
because we couldn’t buy much with the little money that we had. We collected
whatever we could find, and with a few seeds and stray chickens, we started a
farm from scratch. I worked every day on the farm for a very long time. I didn’t
know when I was going to go back home. This had become my life, so I just
focused on it for the time I was there. One of the jobs I had was getting the
water from the well to water the crops. It had become routine for me, so the day
that I carelessly dropped a whole bucket of water was not normal. My hands felt
weak, and I just couldn’t carry the bucket anymore. There was something wrong
with me. I went back to the house and had Yun’s grandmother check up on me.
“Ni bin zhong le,” she said.
“I’m sick? That must be why I felt weak everywhere.”
She looked at my head, and upon closer inspection, she saw the lice. She
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told me that the lice had led to my illness. I needed to have my head shaved to
get all of the lice out since my hair was so thick. I stayed in bed the following
days, but it didn’t seem that I was getting any better. I had trouble breathing
because something felt like it was residing in my lungs. The illness was really
taking over, and I wasn’t sure if I was going to live through it. In a coughing
fit, I was getting less and less air and as I was on the verge of suffocating, I was
pulled back to reality. My reality!
I was lying in the bed at home again. This was when I encountered my
brother. I went to my mom to tell her everything, and shortly afterwards, it hit
me. I knew how to save her tutoring business.
“Mama, can we start a new class at your tutoring business? I know you
mainly teach math and reading, but ever since that Kumon opened down the
street, not many students are coming here anymore.”
“What class? Besides math and reading I only know chemistry.”
“I think we start a horticulture class.”
“I don’t know anything about horticulture though.”
“Mama, I learned so much from my two-year trip. It’s really interesting,
and I think it will appeal to a lot of high school students. I can contact the
service-learning club at school to see if anyone is interested. We could donate
the food we harvest through this class!”
“Okay, I will put you in charge of this. Hopefully, my business can spring
back to what it used to be.”
I was so glad my mom approved of my idea. For a month, I researched,
planned and advertised in preparation for the new horticulture class. I found
enough land to start planting on behind the house. All that was left to do was
wait for people to sign up online. The first student signed up 30 minutes after
I opened registration. Then, there were two more students signed up the next
day. In just two and a half weeks, one summer class was full. I reassured my
mom that her business would be fine after all. I was reminded everyday of Yun
and how she indirectly changed the course of my life in reality.
My mom was grateful for my help.
“I don’t know where you got it from, but I suspect it’s from your grandma.”
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Renee LaGrosse
Grade 9
Bishop Canevin High School
Short Prose
Lost Souls
(Fiction)
Vignette 1: Lost Boy
It was a dark night. Nothing could be seen except the red blood of the dying
sun. You could not even see the white ranch house, nor could you see the young
boy sitting inside. You cannot see, but you can hear as the world around you
starts to fall. But the boy inside hasn’t moved at all. A dying sun, a screaming
Earth, and a young boy ready to be heard.
You want to ask who this young boy is, but he doesn’t have a name. He’s
just a lost soul. Does he matter? Of course he does but he doesn’t think so. He
thinks he’s alone. He thinks he doesn’t matter. This boy was so lost in his own
self-built prison that he called a mind that he didn’t think he’d ever get out.
“Please!” screams out the young boy. “Please, will someone help me. Please!”
But no matter how loud the boy screams, no one will ever hear him. They can’t
hear him over the cries of the screaming Earth. You want to help him. You want
to hear him, but you can’t. For your voice is cast out upon deaf ears. You can’t
save this boy. You can’t even save yourself. This young boy is just a lost soul,
and no one can save him except himself.
Vignette 2: Lost Girl
A young girl walks out of the white ranch house masked in darkness. The girl
doesn’t notice the boy. Nor does she notice the red blood of the dying sun or
the screaming Earth. No. The girl has way bigger problems. She doesn’t have
time to just stop and notice. She keeps on walking. Walking past what is.
Walking into what isn’t. Just walking. She doesn’t see, nor does she hear. All
she can do is walk.
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You want to ask who this girl is, but she can’t tell you. She’s lost in her
own self-built prison. She doesn’t know who she is. She doesn’t even know she’s
walking. She needs the young boy, and the young boy needs her. She doesn’t
know who this boy is. She doesn’t know who she is.
“Please!” screams out the young girl. “Please, tell me who I am. Please!”
But no matter how loud she screams, no one will ever hear her. You want to tell
her who she is, but you don’t even know. Do you even know who you are? This
young girl is just a lost soul, and no one can save her except herself.
Vignette 3: The End of It All
You can only watch as the world falls apart, as your identity is taken away, as
you become a variable. This is exactly what happened to the boy and girl as they
got caught up in the stress of the world. You can only watch as the boy screams
out in agony, wishing to be heard. You can only listen as the girl tries to find
herself in this dark antagonizing world.
“Please!” screamed out the young boy. “Does anyone hear me?”
“Yes,” murmured a timid girl. “Yes, I hear you.”
The young boy was so overjoyed. Someone finally heard him, and not just
anyone it was his new best friend.
“Please,” said the timid girl. “Do you know who I am?”
“Rosa. Your name’s Rosa. Do you know who I am?”
“Your name’s Mathew, and I hear you.”
The two lost souls who thought they had to save themselves ended up saving
each other. The final drops of the sun’s blood vanished from the sky and the
Earth was covered with a blanket of silence. This is the end of it all.
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Skyler Bruno
Grade 9
Upper St. Clair High School
Short Prose
Snapped Guitar Strings
Can Be Repaired
(Fiction)
Jason entered the apartment and slung his bag off of his shoulder, dumping it
near the door. His partner, Robin, was draped over the couch with her earbuds
in.
He slowly came up behind her and wrapped his arms around her waist,
pulling her off the couch.
She shrieked loudly and grasped at his hands and immediately recognized
who was currently holding her hostage. “Jason, you jerk, put me down!”
“Love you, too,” Jason chuckled and set her down on the couch. He kissed
her forehead and sat down on the ottoman across from her position.
“Hey, my parents called today,” Robin said in mock excitement. “I told them
what was going on in my life, told them that I’m living with you and Oliver,
and guess what? They don’t believe me.” She sighed and brushed some of her
hair out of her face. “They’ve only met Oliver. Therefore, they don’t think that
you exist. Or should exist, for that matter.”
Jason chuckled. “That’s great. Seriously, we’ll take your parents out to
dinner.” Robin groaned loudly. “C’mon, what’s wrong with that?”
“You want to invite Mr. You-Can’t-Have-Two-Boyfriends and Mrs. You-
Can’t-Be-Both-Genders to dinner?” Robin let out a sarcastic laugh. “No thanks.
Plus, with my luck, I’ll wake up feeling more male than female and ta-da, pain.”
“Aw, poor you,” Jason joked, wrapping his arms around her. “We don’t have
to meet with your parents.”
“Thanks, Jason,” Robin smiled. “Alright, I’ve got something.” She reached
over the couch and lugged her guitar case onto her lap, quickly pulling out her
guitar and pick. She strummed an E-flat chord and started singing through
lyrics.
“If I’m quiet, it means I’ve got nothing to say. If I’m smiling, it’s masking the
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pain. So instead, I’ll sing and let the truth free.” She stopped playing. “It’s, uh, all
I’ve got. Sorry.”
“Hey, it’s a work in progress,” Jason shrugged. “I like it. Maybe a little E-flat
or B-flat riffs from me?”
“That’ll work,” Robin grinned. “Get out your guitar; we’ll see how it
sounds.”
Jason went into their shared room and returned with his own guitar. “Amp
or no amp?”
“No amp, we’re just practicing.”
Jason nodded and strummed his chord. “Heck yeah for harmonization.”
“Robin? Jason?” Oliver entered the apartment later that evening. He glanced
around. The silence was unnatural; usually their home was bustling with loud
guitar chords and singing.
“Hey, you’re home,” Jason mumbled from the couch. He and Robin had
managed to fall asleep in the two hours Oliver had been gone; their guitars
lay abandoned on the floor. Robin was still asleep, and her beanie had partially
fallen off, revealing her mess of wavy dark hair. “Robin, wake up, Oliver’s home.”
Robin replied with a frustrated groan. “Nope, I’m asleep.”
“You can’t talk if you’re sleeping, Robin,” Oliver said with a knowing look.
She glared at him. “C’mon, get up and put your guitar away.”
She shook her head. “Jason, help?”
Jason sat up and put one arm under her thighs and another on her back,
lifting her off of the couch bridal-style. “And we’re up. On your feet, please.”
Robin angrily groaned and reached for her beanie, left abandoned on the couch.
“Stand up first.” Jason set her down gently. “See, that wasn’t so hard.”
Robin grabbed her beanie and pulled it back over her head. “Hey there,
Ollie. I totally haven’t been sleeping.”
“Oh, really?” His voice even sounded like he was rolling his eyes. “C’mon,
I brought food.”
“Hooray for food,” Robin cheered, adjusting her jacket and walking into
the kitchen.
After the beautiful disaster that was dinner, Robin declared that she wanted
to go to bed, so she went into their bedroom and got changed into a light hoodie
and a pair of shorts.
“Robin, we’re gonna watch a movie if you wanted to try and stay up,” Oliver
offered.
“Or if you wanted to at least sleep with us,” added Jason. That statement
got Robin on the couch between her two boys.
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“You both are jerks,” she murmured. “I love you.”
“Love you too, Robin.”
Short Prose
When Oliver woke up, he smelled bacon cooking in the kitchen. He was also
alone on the couch, a blanket draped over his lap.
“The sleeping beauty awakens!” Jason joked with a grin. “Morning.”
“G’morning,” mumbled Oliver. “Where’s Robin?”
“Getting dressed,” replied Jason. “I started making food ‘cause I knew you’d
be awake soon.”
Robin emerged from the bedroom with his hair mostly covered by a navy
blue beanie. He typically wore beanies even with his short hair to feel more
masculine. He was also wearing a dark green hoodie, which Oliver was positive
belonged to Jason, and a pair of jeans.
Robin noticed the food in progress and smiled. “Thanks babe.” He kissed
Jason on the cheek affectionately.
“Morning, Robin,” Oliver called from the couch, managing to pull himself
up to give his boyfriend a hug.
“Hey,” Robin replied. “You somehow slept in longer than Jason; how’d that
happen?” Oliver stuck his tongue out at him and slid into one of the barstools
against the kitchen counter.
The phone on the counter started ringing loudly. After a few seconds, the
monotone voice said, “Call from Disaster Parentals.”
Robin groaned and picked up the phone with a very fake smile. “Hola.
Yes, I’m eating real breakfast . . . no, Jason’s making it . . . because he’s a good
boyfriend?” He rubbed the bridge of his nose. “Yeah, sure.” Robin held the
phone out to Jason. “Have fun.”
“Oh crap,” Jason muttered. “Hi, Mr. and Mrs. Marsden . . . yes, I do exist.”
There was a quick pause before Jason cringed slightly and said, “Yes, I do take
good care of your . . . daughter.” He glanced at Robin and mouthed, I’m sorry.
“Yeah, I practically raised my younger sister, so I’m fairly good at making food.
No, no I was not back-talking you; I’m sorry.” Robin chuckled. “Yeah, Oliver’s
here too . . . of course.”
Oliver’s face paled as he was passed the phone. “Hello . . . I love him too,
yeah. She’s not cheating, I promise you that . . . yeah, I’m bi like Jess.” His
facial expression seemed like a mix of heavy anxiety and panic with a dash of
sympathy for Robin. “Yeah, my parents support me . . . absolutely, here she is.”
Robin held the phone back to his ear. “See, I told you I had another boyfriend
. . . I’d love to, but this week is booked.” He quickly glanced at the blank
calendar with a smirk. “Absolutely, I’ll text you a good date when I find one
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. . . love you too. Bye.” He clicked the red button and let out a deep sigh. “That
was incredibly painful.”
“I’m sorry about that mess,” Oliver sighed.
“We don’t live in a perfect world, so I’m not all that surprised,” Robin
scoffed. “I tell them I’m bi? Goes over well. I even brought a girlfriend home
once; they loved her. The second I mention my girlfriend and I share a boyfriend
as well? Bam! Judgement. Only gets worse when they find out that those days
when I only wear hoodies and men’s jeans are the days when I’m trying to pass
as a guy.
“At least I’ve got my boys.” He sunk frustratedly into the couch.
Robin’s parents eventually forced a dinner meeting, much to Robin’s disappointment.
Luckily for her, she woke up feeling like their daughter rather than
their screwed-up son.
She fumbled frustratedly with the zipper on the back of her dress. “Honey?
A little help please?”
“I’ve got it,” Oliver called, rushing over to help. He quickly zipped the back.
“You’ve got a necklace that I can put on while I’m here?” Robin silently nodded
and handed him a silver chain with a small diamond and a star. “Oh, this is
pretty. Did we get it for you, or—”
“My dad,” Robin interrupted. “When he found out I was bi.” She didn’t say
anything else as Oliver clasped it around her neck.
“Gorgeous,” he said with a small smile. She had decided against excessive
makeup and instead just wore lip balm.
Her dress was a dark red, and it billowed out around the waist, hemming
just below her knees. She had paired it with silver heels and a light gray cardigan
with the sleeves rolled up.
Oliver was wearing a gray suit with a white button-up and a red tie to match
Robin’s dress. Jason had a similar tie, but with a navy suit instead of gray.
Jason entered the room and smiled. “Hey there sweetheart; you look great.”
“As do you,” Robin replied with a smile. “Let’s go torture my parents.”
Robin saw her parents in the restaurant and sent them a strained smile. She
approached them lightly and accepted the tight hugs from both.
“Mom, Dad, this is Jason,” Robin said gently, gesturing to the man in
question. “You spoke over the phone a while ago?”
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Robin’s mother nodded. “Yes. Hi, I’m Debra, and this is my husband John.”
“Pleasure,” Jason said a bit too quickly, taking their outstretched hands
and shaking them.
“And you both remember Oliver,” Robin added. Oliver waved silently from
behind her.
“Absolutely,” Debra nodded. “C’mon, sit down.”
After the wine was ordered and served, the typical awkward family dinner
questions were asked: how work is, if everyone is treating everyone right, the
works. Until the beautiful bomb is dropped.
“How’s your music business working out for you?”
Robin froze. “Um, it’s going well actually. We’re going to try and put out
another album in a few months. We’re calling it 99, because that’s the year Jason’s
mom died.” She continued quietly nursing her glass.
“Oh, honey, I didn’t know your mother was dead,” Debra said with the same
sympathetic smile that Jason always received in response to his mother’s death.
“Yeah, it was maybe fifteen, sixteen years ago,” Jason replied. “Tragic house
fire. It’s just lucky my dad and sister and I got out alive.”
“Is your dad still around?” John asked.
“No, he died a couple years ago in a car crash.” Robin squeezed Jason’s hand
tightly underneath the table. “It’s fine, I’ve had time to adjust. My dad and I
weren’t super close anyway; he was more of an absent father figure. Didn’t help
when I told him I wanted to bang dudes as well as chicks.” Robin’s heel came
stomping down on Jason’s toes. He bit his lip, almost drawing blood, and smiled
tightly. “Sorry.”
“Yikes, you’ve practically got Batman levels of tragic backstory,” joked John.
“I’m really sorry.”
“It’s fine,” Jason said. “I’ve got my sister and my gorgeous partners.” Both
John and Debra bristled at the thought of “partners.”
Oliver sensed the heavy tension and quickly changed the subject. “So, what
do you both do for a living?”
John was distracted by Oliver’s question and took the bait. “Oh, I’ve taught
second grade math for the past 36 years. Debra’s taught high school biology for
around the same amount of time.”
“That’s very interesting,” Oliver remarked with an underlying tone of sarcasm
and I want to leave; please let’s go home. Robin subtly rubbed Oliver’s thigh
underneath the table.
“Yeah, I kinda strayed from the math and science field to do my own thing,”
Robin chuckled lightly.
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“Because the best thing to do with a music education degree is to waste it
on a band,” snarked Debra. Robin’s nostrils flared, and the boys exchanged a
knowing look. This wasn’t going to end well.
“Well, when I didn’t have anywhere to live, trying to teach kids and grade
papers without proper living conditions didn’t seem like a great idea.”
“We weren’t going to have you living at home!”
“I wouldn’t have lived at home! I was going to live on campus, but you cut
my funding!”
“Robin.”
“It’s a bit hard to get a stable job and keep up my health when I’m living
out of my car!”
“Robin!”
“What?” Robin glared at Jason, obviously frustrated. Whenever she got
upset, she was barely rational until one of the boys pulled her back down to
earth.
“We should get going,” whispered Oliver.
Robin stood up, grabbing her purse. “Thanks for the invitation to dinner,
but we’d rather eat from home.” She hurried off, forcing herself to hold back
the tears until she was in the comfort of the car.
Jason got up and pulled Oliver along with him. “Good evening to you both,”
he stated before briskly following after Robin.
Robin beat both boys to the car by a few minutes; she was remarkably fast for
being 5’4” and wearing three-inch heels. Rather than taking her normal spot
in the passenger seat of Jason’s car, she had curled up in the backseat with her
earbuds in and her eyes closed.
Jason sighed and silently slid into the driver’s seat. Oliver panicked and
glanced at Jason, mouthing, Back or front?
Jason shrugged. Oliver decided it was best to leave Robin alone, so he sat
beside Jason in the passenger seat.
Neither of them could tell if Robin was crying, which wasn’t a surprise.
She’d mastered the art of hiding her tears from her parents, her brother, and her
previous roommates, purely so she wouldn’t be a burden. Even after Jason and
Oliver had told her that she could feel comfortable revealing her vulnerable side
with them, she didn’t believe them and still kept to herself most of the time.
Jason left the radio off on the way home, listening only to the barely audible
bassline of Robin’s music through her earbuds.
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*
Robin brushed past her boyfriends on the way into the apartment, carrying her
heels in one hand and her purse in the other. Her previously impeccable hair
was starting to look more like she’d just rolled out of bed.
She knew the boys were following close behind her, so she’d left the door
open and just locked herself in their bedroom.
By the time Jason and Oliver reached the apartment, they heard the loud
thuds of Robin’s heels hitting the wall. Jason tried the door, realized it was
locked, and knocked lightly on the door.
“Robin? C’mon, let me in,” he said gently. “We’ve talked about this; it’s not
healthy to lock yourself in there.”
“Give me five minutes,” she muttered. Based on the sound of her voice, Jason
could tell that she was sitting against the door, her head in her lap.
“Okay.”
After Jason and Robin had both opened up about their mental health
issues, all of them agreed that there was to be no forcing anyone to talk about
depressive episodes or panic attacks.
Short Prose
Jason had actually opened up about his issues first. He had long-term depression
and anxiety caused by his abusive father and lack of a maternal figure through
his teenage years. He had a few panic attacks that were finally questioned by
Robin and Oliver, which was what caused him to open up in the first place.
But the second after Jason opened up, Robin shoved their issues deeper
down than they already were. Their suspicion that Jason had it worse had been
absolutely confirmed, and they continued to tell themselves that they’d be a
burden.
It took a complete mental breakdown before a performance for Robin to
explain their diagnoses.
While Jason’s mental health problems had seemingly probable cause, Robin’s
were simply caused by a mistake of a relationship between a younger and more
naïve Robin and a jerk of a teenage boy. At that point in their life, Robin hadn’t
discovered their true identity and still went by a different name.
Robin’s ex, Hunter, had continuously cheated on them and denied any
accusations that Robin attempted to make. He even went so far as to invite his
current side girl to Robin’s birthday party and then proceeded to disappear with
her about halfway through.
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Hunter was also verbally abusive through the six months they were together.
He managed to convince Robin that their ability to love was flawed and that no
one but him would ever love them.
As it turned out, a few of Robin’s boyfriends after Hunter had caused some
lasting damage as well. Ben had left the idea that their issues were nothing
compared to those of other people; Colin had left the idea that they were weak
enough without the depression; and William had left the idea that no one would
truly accept them for who they were. Most of the damage was unintentional,
minus William who left at the first sign of Robin’s masculinity.
Jason had gently explained to Robin that there was absolutely no reason to
believe that their depression would be a burden on Oliver or himself, especially
since he understood what Robin was dealing with.
That night’s performance had been immediately cancelled, and the two boys
instead stayed home with Robin wrapped in their arms.
Jason and Oliver were talking quietly on the couch, still in their suits, when
Robin finally left their room. They were wearing a pair of dark leggings and
their binder, as well as a dark purple band around their wrist.
“Hey Robin,” Jason said in a hushed tone. “How’re you feeling?”
“Like a piece of crap,” spat Robin, sitting silently in the center of the room
rather than sitting between the boys.
“Anything we can do to help?” Oliver added.
“Hot chocolate and Friends, please,” Robin murmured. Jason agreed and
picked Robin up off of the floor and wrapped them in a blanket, quickly setting
them back down on the couch.
Oliver hurried into the kitchen and lit the stove to start boiling water while
Jason turned on Netflix to start up Friends.
“Anything else you need, sweetheart?” Jason asked gently. Robin shook
their head. “Remember what we said: we can’t help unless you talk to us.”
Robin nodded, trying their best to hold back the very obvious tears pouring
down their cheeks.
“I know,” Robin murmured. “And it’s really nothing, my parents just get
on my nerves, and I know I should ignore them, and—”
“Slow down,” Jason cut them off. “It’s okay to be pissed at your parents.”
“But my therapist said I’m not supposed to be! I’m supposed to ignore the
people that get on my nerves; those are the rules,” Robin complained, the tears
streaming down their cheeks.
“Hey, hey, hey, relax,” Jason reassured, placing his palms on Robin’s cheeks.
“Take a deep breath.”
104

Robin instead squeezed their eyes shut and shook their head. “I’m fine.”
“Robin, c’mon. Deep breath.”
“No, Jason, you can’t force me to—”
“Deep breath.”
“Let me deal with this my way.”
“Robin, you’re not being rational.”
Robin drowned out Jason’s voice but still kept a firm hold on his suit jacket
that he’d yet to take off. Jason eventually stopped trying to talk to them and
instead pulled Robin into him, resting their head on his chest.
Oliver re-entered the room with hot chocolate for Robin and smiled at the
scene before him. Jason, still awake, was gently stroking Robin’s hair as they
snored lightly.
“No more sleeping on the couch,” Oliver joked quietly. “C’mon, let’s get
them back into the room.”
Short Prose
105

Poetry
First Place
“Blood Pressure”
by Madeline Ficca
Second Place
“The Female Body Is”
by Maya Berardi

Madeline Ficca
Grade 10
Pittsburgh Creative and Performing Arts 6–12
Poetry
Blood Pressure
Malala, you stared into the eyes of
the security camera for the entire bus ride.
The streets moved undecidedly beneath us.
You inhaled and exhaled to the rhythm
of unexpected potholes.
You talked about how you felt naked
wearing a backpack, how strange it was to hold
your education on the outside of you.
Your hands gripped tightly on the straps.
Malala, were you startled? When you were walking to school
and a man stepped suddenly
from an apartment entrance.
Did you thunder jump?
What do you think, when we complain
about nine flights of stairs? One time,
a lemon lightbulb burst in the staircase
and everyone screamed.
Malala, identify your nearest exits.
When the PA system becomes the curriculum,
you can lock the door. Columbine is why we lock
from the inside. How long can you hold your breath for?
We might be under the table a little longer, stay patient.
Malala, if you wipe away the fear
is bravery always shining red beneath?
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Maya Berardi
Grade 12
Avonworth High School
The Female Body Is
a composition of negative space.
either marble or splinters, depending
on the architect. a canvas distorted
over its frame. a cellar to hide in
during the storm, or the storm itself
boiling in the distance. a heatmap
of hands. the contents of
a cupped palm. a field groomed
to yield crop. a game of pick-up-sticks,
bones splayed in careful disarray.
a water pump of life. the mouth
of a cave tunneling into blackness.
a daughter’s love, then a mother’s
spilling of hips. a swipe of lip. the way it folds
and folds over itself, like the far away hook
of the Earth. something I’ve tested.
a dare.
110

Aaliyah Thomas
Grade 11
Pittsburgh Creative and Performing Arts 6–12
Poetry
Trespass
A lady bug
landed on my
elbow and trespassed
into my sleeve
where its tiny
legs scrambled up
my frail arm.
I watched its
silhouette
moving and
focused on the
slow movements of
its feet and
giggled at the
strange comforting touch.
Touches weren’t often
like the ladybugs.
Some were rough,
fingers like shards of broken
glass plates, shattered wine glasses.
Cutting into skin,
gnawing at soft tissue inside my mouth,
sharp dagger tongues
cutting at the lids of my eyes,
snipping off the tips of my fingers.
Unwanted touches,
like my older cousin’s,
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Ralph Munn Creative Writing Anthology 2019
A boy—a man who couldn’t keep himself
composed.
His touches not just
physical but mental blows, stroking of
brain matter with words laced with threats
of my head and much more,
all could disappear with a dash of silence.
I have unwoven the strings in my lips,
and watch the ladybug heal the scars
riddled on my bony baby arms.
112

Alexander Scott
Grade 9
Westinghouse Arts Academy
Poetry
Emma
The enemy that has lived inside my head grows,
Her voice is a beacon that fills my fragmented emotions with disgust.
Her name is Emma.
The force that pushes the reality of this body that trapped me.
It has trapped me.
The screams of how my chest is not yet flat,
The tears she uses to push my tears out from my eyes.
All because I can’t be proud of a manly goatee or use the bathroom.
At least not the one I need.
The fractures of my self-esteem.
They fall to the ground with a paper that was forced upon me at birth.
She screams that I may never be me, how could I ever be me?
How could the world forgive me for my “sin” and ways?
I’m sorry Emma,
But I had to kill you.
We had to kill you because you,
Killed us.
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Ralph Munn Creative Writing Anthology 2019
Angel Gibbons
Grade 11
Westinghouse Arts Academy
Monster
I lie intertwined with you,
my fingertips running through your mouth
and along the tops of your rocky teeth.
The ones that rip and tear me open continuously.
I want to rip through your skin,
to run my claws straight through
the sockets of your eyes
and tear them out again.
I want to clean up the mess
to scrub pieces of you
out from under my nails.
I want your hands to be as
cold as they truly feel
and for your heart to beat just as
often as I believe it does.
I want to lay your body down beside mine
while it is still warm,
to feel your life roll away from you and into me.
I lie intertwined with you,
my fingertips running through your mouth
and along the tops of your rocky teeth,
the ones that rip and tear me open continuously.
114

Anonymous
Poetry
Afterbirth
I have not eaten
in three days.
I skipped
history class
because
my teacher’s
gentleness makes
my ribs tighten
with the injustice
of it all. Here you
have a girl with
the ghost of her
father’s fingers not on
but inside her. The
ghost of him twists
in her quietest places,
a phantom child. And
soon this girl will
deliver her stillborn
secrets, a mess of blood
and water, into the hands
of yet another waiting
nurse.
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Ralph Munn Creative Writing Anthology 2019
Daevan Mangalmurti
Grade 11
Barack Obama Academy of International Studies
A Fissured and Broken Freedom
Ajay, in Udaipur, sitting with his sister,
the other on her way, around the radio,
on the dirt floor at 39 Fatehpura,
while the city around him
catapulted across the Thar
Pushpa, in Indore, all alone
mother dead, father gone,
just an aunt, no cousins yet
in the old kingdom of the Marathas
couldn’t see the human river outside
Surendra, in Nagpur, eating with his brother,
his father stern and staring, from his mind
to the destruction of his country
the falling of the kingdom his fathers
and fathers before them nurtured
the future already lost and beggared
Alaka, in Mumbai, only two years old
asleep with her mother beside her
as millions boarded boats and trains
for the country they did not know
but could no longer escape, trading palaces
of stone for passage to a floating castle
It’s been too long for anything to be done
Just enough time for
My mother to shatter and reforge
In weaker pieces of a whole hole
Love is no glue when the world is pulling
116

Destiny Perkins
Grade 12
Pittsburgh Creative and Performing Arts 6–12
Poetry
Apologies Smell Like Old Spice
Week six of my body folded
neatly on the floor of your closet,
I unfold only to pray.
In 7-11, I reach out to touch the haze
of burly women hoarding Slim-Jims at midnight.
Inhale, as I finally ease back into my body.
For a moment, I let your bed sheets carpet the cola caked
tile floor and prepare to expose my ghoulish new form but
I inhale . . .
This woman, this vision, doesn’t smell of Old Spice.
I sit by the phone, my fingers wrapped
around your sheets, guilt a clamp around my neck.
I should’ve called sooner,
I shouldn’t have fled when your father
came to reap your soiled sheets.
Week umpteen, my trembling fingers press into the worn dials
on the telephone for the third time today. I listen to your dial tone ring,
the distant hum of the trap music booming
next door has come to sound like the saddest symphony.
Your mother picks up the phone.
She asks who I am, my kidneys
burned as I refined
myself to just a friend.
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Ralph Munn Creative Writing Anthology 2019
She says you’re sick,
went to go live with your Auntie Ida
down in Idaho, as if I didn’t know,
as if I didn’t watch your beautiful blue body
sink into the virgin snow.
Your bed sheets still smell of Old Spice.
At night, bog bodies resurface in my dreams.
Blue faces ascend their unrestful slumber perfectly
preserved, stories still bubbling at their chapped lips.
I wonder if when you arise, will I still recognize
the round slope of your face?
Will you recognize me, draped in your faded sheets with grains
of rice embedded into the ash that cakes my knees, the true apparition?
Will I recognize you
when you no longer smell of Old Spice?
The summer heat lures me out of your closet.
In the mirror, I see myself, a large brown cicada breaking into the sun.
The snow has defrosted and has given birth to the wailing of my new wings
stifled by your sheets wrapped tightly around my body, drained of Old Spice.
All I can do is inhale . . . and sink into the burly
plot in your backyard where the grass will no longer grow.
118

Eden Auslander
Grade 11
Upper St. Clair High School
Poetry
Analyzation of Procrastination
Some say procrastination
Is an abomination
Emotional taxation
Progress in stagnation
Early bird violation
Failure flirtation
Parental agitation
Causing endless oration
Teacher induced frustration
From student desensitization
Fear of ruination
Resulting in damnation
Guilt infestation
Remorse formation
Work ethic on probation
Productivity desecration
No relaxation
Heart palpitation
Credibility cessation
Increasing humiliation
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Ralph Munn Creative Writing Anthology 2019
Limbo fixation
Anxiety inflation
Ease of task exaggeration
Equals time miscalculation
Perceived misinterpretation
Of utter disorganization
Full of desperation
To complete each obligation
Accomplishment deprivation
Needing behavior modification
Others say procrastination
Leads to inspiration
Providing stimulation
Like a standing ovation
Leisure augmentation
Temporary vacation
Focus intensification
Brain synchronization
Boosting innovation
Concept incubation
Time manipulation
Schedule emancipation
Allowing for contemplation
And serious deliberation
120

Poetry
Adding to negotiation
Extending collaboration
Deadline activation
Enhancing motivation
Duty prioritization
Importance elevation
Rushing sensation
Brews intoxication
Life skill formation
Solution modification
Efficiency optimization
In critical situation
Upon job summation
Conquering sensation
Genius rejuvenation
Bestowing self-gratification
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Ralph Munn Creative Writing Anthology 2019
Evan Koepfinger
Grade 10
Achievement House Cyber Charter School
No Molly
After “Molly” by Lil Pump
I’m amateur, so I come off a joke
I’m insecure, so I tend not to crow
I am no tenor, I like my bass low
I’m instrumental, my tunes tend to glow
You’re on the molly, I’m on the beat
You’re full of folly, misusing heat
You’re feeling jolly when you’re on lean
I’m on no molly, I’m on the beat
You’re Miami junky, I’m artsy Yankee
You like to be funky, I rather be me
You sip on lean, I sip raspberry tea
Lame does that seem, but you know I’m no fiend
I’m rather bitter, so don’t call me sweet
You like to litter, while I like the beat
You mumble ‘bout dope, got no strategy
That’s not how I cope, as I got subtlety
Sick of all the chitty-chatter, cancel out the druggie rappers
Kicking down the money stacker, putting out the firecracker
Don’t need any firepower, I don’t need a money tower
Damn, I sound so very sour, I must seem a stupid coward
I’ll share my feats, diffidence will not cease me
Arrange all your beats, and I burn them on CDs
Deck up your hair, Oliphant with the holly
You could rap with care, but you’re tripping on molly
[×2]
122

Poetry
I’m amateur, so I come off a joke
I’m insecure, so I tend not to crow
I am no tenor, I like my bass low
I’m instrumental, my tunes tend to glow
You’re on the molly, I’m on the beat
You’re full of folly, misusing heat
You’re feeling jolly when you’re on lean
I’m on no molly, I’m on the beat
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Ralph Munn Creative Writing Anthology 2019
Faith Nguyen
Grade 10
North Allegheny Intermediate High School
Paper Stars and Folding Hands
when i was younger,
we made an emergency trip
to falls church,
virginia
because my great grandmother
was sick.
as temporary consolation,
my parents took my sister and i to
the red
and gold
vietnamese market
and let us each choose
one thing.
i chose origami fortune stars,
small, piddling strips of color
that asked for vibrant
consideration.
after,
we visited my buoyant cousins,
who taught me how to fold them
and said if i made
a thousand
i could make a wish.
so i mindlessly
made as many as i could,
greedily
wanting
to wish for something
extravagant.
124

Poetry
the next day
we got news that my great grandmother had
passed away.
i was not there
to see her in her final moments,
but instead folding
paper stars in
the hospital waiting room.
my family did not want me to see her
when she was taken out of the room,
in fear that
i would be too scared
to see
reality in honesty.
so i sat
alone
in the empty room,
angrily folding
until the rigid hospital tables spilled with
creased papers
and even the thin shadows of the
waiting room door
pleated into stars
but i was
still so bitterly
alone
as their delighted colors grew
galling.
125

Ralph Munn Creative Writing Anthology 2019
Ilan Magnani
Grade 11
Pittsburgh Creative and Performing Arts 6–12
Self-Portrait as Cluster Munition
Canister of tendon,
ligament:
once
lemonsized,
and I
disperse—across
years un-lived, bloodless
soil: landmines, helicopters I mistake
for warplanes, siren swerving past the public bus:
epigenetic detonation, stray limbs I catch in my
teeth: memory finger- flicked to life. How slow pesticide
bursts
breath: each body
sowed deep—child’s hands, bomblet-blown—fingers,
knuckles. Yes,
I was
born—yes,
I—
126

Kenny Lambert
Grade 9
Pittsburgh Brashear High School
Poetry
The Dog
Dogs can be trained but really don’t care.
Turn your back they sit in your chair.
Been to obedience school know how to mind.
Visitors come they seem to unwind.
Put them on a leash they can be led.
Next time you look they’re on my bed.
Do everything wrong but somehow they win.
Our hearts and home we share with a grin.
127

Ralph Munn Creative Writing Anthology 2019
Madeline Bain
Grade 12
Pittsburgh Creative and Performing Arts 6–12
Fruitful
Shrill pipes of wind
shoot like slide whistles
through the warehouse.
The industrial complex
on twenty-second,
ringing still with emptiness,
crumbling and spacious,
filling with rain in autumn,
and algae by June,
sits tremendously desolate,
cracked open to the sky.
Beyond the broken hole
of a window’s remains,
hangs a branch heavy
with Concorde pears.
Once, operatives pined
for the tree; its nectar,
its cool, smooth trunk.
Ironically it’s now,
amidst stillness
and reverberating reticence,
that the fruit’s within reach.
Sixteen hour shifts
on the assembly line,
staggering home,
tipsy with fatigue,
metatarsals pushing
into the Earth below.
128

Poetry
Nights rocking the baby
to the rhythms
of its own colic,
pocketed coins
falling out onto the floor.
Company money,
fiscal sway,
expenditures and revenue.
Soon the coins will be swept
into the corporate safe,
and next week’s schedule
postponed indefinitely,
‘til pockets sag only
with insomnious injustice.
A whistling wind
blows through the warehouse,
empty and aching.
If these walls could speak
they’d cry hymns of apologies
singing prayers to those
robbed of full pockets
and the pear tree’s fruit.
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Ralph Munn Creative Writing Anthology 2019
Madeline Figas
Grade 11
Pittsburgh Creative and Performing Arts 6–12
Fortune Cookies
16 studies latte machines
over Renaissance. Knees pumping
to elevator music. Fingers pecking
keyboards. Breathing exercises. 16 tries
again but runs low on years
left to impress. At 16, I compare flights
to Bangladesh from my comforter.
My computer littered with apartments
I dream of. Forking paths
diverged woods. 16 swallows sourbreathed
customers, heavy palms,
and news headlines. 16
isn’t lucky like all my fortune cookies
promised. It’s crunching nails
and takeout tins. Rice sprouting
in the seams of my mattress.
It’s forgetting an umbrella,
a computer, a part
of myself at the doormat. On my sweet
sixteen, I ask each candle for more
and less at the same time. I’m sleepwalking
to Rite Aid in the sleet, dreaming
the sidewalk is an empty stomach.
130

Margaret Balich
Grade 11
Winchester Thurston School
Poetry
bunk bed
bottom:
the suicidal frenzy of leaving before he’s ready.
i never sleep over, i turn friends
to lovers with tinnitus passed on from crunching tires.
cries of beauty bounce off of the sinking dirt.
endless twigs fill a burn barrel
and feed old working men’s aspirations.
he shoots crushed aspirin mixed with stale air
into crimson and i dip my legs in.
i did not need any more raspberry jam,
smelling of acetone and severed screams,
hippie incense ignited in the wake of feathers.
top:
three bodies in one narrow tower,
hushing dull classical concertos as gold dims
to onyx and doors slam, frames on the edge
of entropic release. gaining some type of cathartic speed,
pounding on the new white sidewalk.
chalk dust, spilled cat food,
and the dead couple’s carved initials.
R.I.P.
tiny terrors at twilight set my bedsheets free
as divinity. crossing the line between elementary
innocence and persecution.
131

Ralph Munn Creative Writing Anthology 2019
Noa Becker
Grade 10
Pittsburgh Allderdice High School
I Live Inside Me
I live inside me
Between the small crevices of broken bone
Along the tight knots in my stomach
Behind the purpled bruises forming on my skin
I live inside me
I feel the tears forming inside my eyes
I feel the tightness in my own lungs
I feel everything I have tried not to be
I live inside me
I bloom deeper with every heartache
I build with every thought
And grow stronger with every pain
I live inside me
But I do not create the hurt
I am simply the one to create a barrier
I live inside me
And I am the one, when I am broken
To swell inside me
And whisper, breathe
132

Peyton Dempsey
Grade 12
North Allegheny Senior High School
Poetry
6 O’Clock
She is in love with the taste of time
The kind trapped in glass bottles
Like hourglasses
Filled with sand that
Move like an ocean
She engulfs the small grains
And stops all ticking
And ringing clocks
Another
Instrumental silence spills
It lingers and moves in her being
Another
Glass that holds death
Like a vase filled with
The yellow-tinted waters of
Wilted flowers that were
Smothered with shadows
Another
Shade of yellow to us
But to her
Gold
Another
Translucent bottle
That only her
Lost and troubled soul
Can blindly search
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Ralph Munn Creative Writing Anthology 2019
Past her teeth and
Through a distorted lens
Like a broken telescope
For an answer to
Her madness
Another
Another answer
No one will ever find
134

Riley Moore
Grade 12
Pine-Richland High School
Poetry
Burn
Nymphing back into your skin is the worst feeling.
You used to be able to fly, your limbs and wings free,
gloriously able to bend until your heart fell.
Now you’re just limp tendons, frozen femurs, and swollen lymph nodes.
The blood loss should have killed you,
said the doctors, patronizing.
You’re lucky to be alive.
But is it lucky to be immobile,
Paraded around like the beacon of Western medicine?
Feeling like this is more of a punishment than a blessing?
God you’re lucky.
You’re so lucky to be just like you were
only not,
only you lost your wings,
only you lost your shell,
only you lost your center.
God you’re lucky to be alive
when you don’t want it,
when you wonder if you
even wanted it in the first place,
when you’re not alive,
but sustenance.
You can’t even breathe,
You can’t even speak,
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Ralph Munn Creative Writing Anthology 2019
You can’t even tell them that you’re thirsty,
or the bedpan’s full, or that you
feel like being in that pile of cinders would provide
more comfort than this.
Your thoughts are trapped in this
fetus-like body,
and the gates out of the mind are shut.
The nurse tells you that they bought you flowers,
but the pollen is too dangerous while you’re in recovery,
so she threw them out.
You can’t even have pity,
but thank god,
thank satan,
at least you’re alive.
136

Roan Hollander
Grade 9
Pittsburgh Creative and Performing Arts 6–12
Poetry
Sweet Home Alabama
“Sweet home Alabama,
where the skies are so blue.
Sweet home Alabama,
lord I’m coming home to you.”
We sing to the melody,
wind streams through my hair
like song notes, the only country song
my family will sing to
smells like banjo and wood shavings
on the road.
Something about this song
is like soil. Maybe it’s the tune,
crow of Lynyrd Skynyrd—
Alabama, Alabama, Alabama,
the only words I know.
My family
doesn’t share in the band’s celebration
of the South, confederate flags;
we’re northerners.
My mom dislikes the South,
she seems wary—
a roll of her eyes, “I like it up here.”
Manicured gardens, empire of sunshine,
there’s something underneath.
Southern drawl and sunburnt necks,
Alabama, Alabama, Alabama.
137

Ralph Munn Creative Writing Anthology 2019
My memories seed in Pennsylvania,
pressing the ‘vote’ button with my mom
and newspaper print like sunrise.
The crinkle of autumn, cider and syrup,
and spring buds that line tree branches
like flames on a menorah.
So when Pittsburgh begins to feel
like a piece of me that’s chipping away,
“Sweet Home Alabama” rambles
onto the radio
and maybe it’s Alabama
that reminds me
of where I’m from.
138

Samaree Perkins
Grade 9
Barack Obama Academy of International Studies
Poetry
Bullets
From chains and whips
To guns and hoses
The bullet is the final resting place.
For Mothers and Brother
For Fathers and Daughter
To shed their final tear
For their brother in fear.
Media narratives
On Our Fate.
The KKK reads
As they complete dirty deeds.
Robots sit and learn
“Don’t speak out of turn.”
Imagine this, better yet go to any news station and watch
“It’s gotten better.”
For whom may I ask?
The white man with the American dream
Or us as the Dream Team?
For whom, the domestic terrorist?
Yes, I said it,
For EVERY SINGLE WHITE BOY who is mentally ill
But ours rot in cells and that’s no big deal
America wasn’t made for us
I’m so angry I might cuss
Built and rebuilt
But y’all carry no guilt.
139

Ralph Munn Creative Writing Anthology 2019
I’m that angry black woman
And deservingly so
I put in my time
But now it’s a crime
Don’t hunch in y’all seats
Don’t be scared of the truth
Someone telling y’all right
So now you put up a fight.
No, no . . . no interruptions
It’s my turn to talk
We been quiet for long enough
And frankly it’s really been tough
How many of us have to die
For y’all to be satisfied?
How many mothers cry,
As y’all hang us out to dry?
How many of us must sit in jail,
Cause we can’t post bail?
When are the dads going to grow up?
Or even step up?
And when y’all kids gonna learn,
You must work for what you earn
When is humanity going to get it together?
Oh, when earth is light as a feather?
See we don’t like to talk about what’s relevant
In a room with too many elephants
When y’all pack up
Don’t forget what I said
Cause I’m going end up dead
I don’t know about you all
All I need is one fatal call
See this right here
Tells me death is near.
140

Poetry
No no this isn’t a suicide call
No need to bawl
I’m telling my truth
I’m speaking all facts
Without no cap
Since y’all culture claims
Give me their name!
141

Ralph Munn Creative Writing Anthology 2019
Sarah Price
Grade 12
Upper St. Clair High School
A Different Battle
Freyr was happy, for it was raining.
I was on my way to a battle.
Riding in a metal, yellow wagon
With my friends, we play music
To help lift our spirits before the war.
We all wear our armor. Gray shirts and shorts,
Because we are meeting our enemy
In their home. They wear white,
To symbolize the dominance of their land.
No weapons are needed, this is a battle based off points.
When time runs out on the
Giant neon board with the score,
The warriors with a higher value
Will get to call victory theirs.
At the start of this battle,
An unbiased fellow, with a device that makes
A high-pitched noise, will use it to have
The warriors face off and when both
Teams are ready he will throw a
Leather-clad ball into the air for one of the warriors
To hit it to their teammate.
I won this ‘tip-off’ and hit the ball to
One of my sisters joining me in battle.
The eagle took off flying to the basket.
No one on the other side could stop her
For they were not ready for such speed.
It’s their turn to have possession,
They make a folly and give it to their tallest
Girl, she is nothing compared to the
Giant guarding her. I smack the
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Poetry
Ball out of her hands as
She was starting to shoot. It seemed to
Go on like this for forever.
I would block the enemy’s attempts
At scoring and help my teammates
Increase the difference between points.
I dominated everyone on the floor.
My teammates and I won the battle.
You would not be upset if you had
Placed a bet on us to win.
Singing, swinging, sounding like victors. We
Stepped back into our yellow tank.
Unyielding, unforgiving, unified in our understated win.
We could not be defeated if we stood together.
Everyone back in our village will be elated.
Hoping to be hoisted in high regard for how we honed our skills.
Our victory is short-lived, however,
Because we had to practice for our next opponent.
Beginning to battle under the boards,
Striving to get better with every second we
Put into our craft. Readying us for the next
Enemy that thinks they can defeat us.
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Ralph Munn Creative Writing Anthology 2019
Stephanie Shugerman
Grade 12
Winchester Thurston School
A Dwelling Family
A dead-end street makes a perfect place
To learn how to ride your bike.
Rarely visited by other cars,
And feels kinda like a race track.
Figure eights, narrowly missing each other.
“No hands, mom. I can fly.”
A house so cozy, though some may call it small.
Full of memories made
If the house could talk
It would never run out of good things to say.
Smiles caught in wallpapered paint,
Twinkling eyes, lights in chandeliers that never burn out.
The sound of silence never heard,
Laughter a constant noise
Resonating through each room.
At dinner, no rules against talking with your mouth full
Just be careful as you chew,
Conversations only interrupted for your next bite.
Backyard games, swings and bonfires.
You’d find that same set of swings
to stand there still today. After all the years of use,
they finally get to rest and watch as the children
once small enough to call them a mountain
Now look fondly down at their frail swaying rope.
Driveway concrete perfect for foursquare,
Even though we only ever used two.
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A game played on a hill is still subject to gravity,
Chasing our ball down the street as it rolled away.
Half the fun of every game, was who could get it first
Before the ball could beat us at its own game.
A lacrosse field out in the front yard
Certainly started with innocent intention
Never ended well, a broken window, a dented door
But of course, all worth the game.
Things like that are easily fixed
Small enough payment for big enough memories.
Sturdy roof, more than just shelter.
“The wi-fi actually plays music better up here.”
Where summer skies are best to watch,
When we’re far above the ground.
Catching neighbors off guard, waving from above
Their heads, laughing when no one notices.
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Ralph Munn Creative Writing Anthology 2019
Tara Pieper
Grade 12
Pittsburgh Carrick High School
August 15, 2011
Youngest of four. The only girl.
Seen by family as a mirror to grieve on.
“She looks just like her, don’t you think?”
She is stubborn, strong; a doe & her fawn.
A ship waiting to sink.
Drowning in comparisons.
Given the mirror, “look at that face!”
It’s her burden now, lived life as an heiress.
Your mom is gone, so you take her place.
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Theoni Richter
Grade 11
North Hills High School
Poetry
The Spider in a Burning
Neighborhood
Place deprived of time, paused like a black and white movie
Heat, here, deep in my chest as the spider appears
Flashing, fleeting lights, it makes its way along
Crossed wires and embossed walls that never end
It hides away until far past dusk
To his webs, he must tend
Pink, blue, and purple drip down the sky like ink
Sparks and sirens crowding the neighborhood
Gulping down cider doesn’t slow me, it doesn’t slow the spider down
They wait for me to help, correct, amend
Save others without thinking about myself
His webs, he must tend
Coming back to find webs corner to corner
Hide and seek, the spider only plays games
Struggling with what I created, what he conceived and created
I brush stray webs away, ‘Wonderful webs,’ I commend
Working far past dusk until only one is awake
To his webs, he must tend
The embers sizzle and sear through the night
‘In too deep,’ my mind whispers, pulling me from my dreams
Broken heart racing, spider pacing, as my vision darkens
Black arachnid crawling down my arm, legs like thorns, distend
Along my palm, maneuvering down my fingertips
The spider spins, ‘Tend’
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Ralph Munn Creative Writing Anthology 2019
Small at first until it grows to consume
Fire tearing their homes like sharp combs
Trapped here with the wiry webs engulfing my hands
Fingers shake, stiff, and unable to bend
‘Rescue me first,’ voice muffled through the cobwebs, ‘In too deep’
The spider spins, ‘Tend’
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Vickie Knoll
Grade 11
Quaker Valley High School
Poetry
I Don’t See Angels
I don’t open my eyes with the sun
and breathe in a new miracle with the coming day.
When you wake, you fill your lungs and want to share.
I don’t want to share,
because your anesthesia is my blissful ignorance.
I don’t see the angels you say are dancing,
the ones who leap and twirl for you.
Does that make me blind?
I can’t hear them singing in the clouds,
whispering sweetness in your ear.
Are my ears broken?
When I wiggle my toes in the damp soil and moss,
I can feel my head drop
against the sturdy shoulder that is the earth.
When you reach out to glide your fingertips
across the stars and the moon,
I am buried by the heavy feeling of numbness.
Please don’t worry,
this doesn’t mean my world is dark.
I may not be able to see the twirling angels,
but I can see you.
I may not hear their joyous songs
or feel the comfort you find in the universe,
but I can hear you,
like I can hear my alarm in the morning.
I can feel you,
like I can feel the brushstrokes on a painting.
Perhaps, we are walking through two worlds,
or maybe we are watching the same one,
just with different lenses.
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Ralph Munn Creative Writing Anthology 2019
So tell me about your mornings
and what opens your eyes.
Tell me about your magical universe,
while I sip my morning coffee.
I like to hear about your world,
because you are mine.
I want to hear stories, yours,
and then I’ll tell you mine.
Tell me, do you know despair?
It’s that heavy brick that lies across your chest
and drags you off the edge of the cliff.
Tell me, have you felt love?
It’s the rope tossed down with you,
either pull yourself up or hang with it.
I too know despair and love,
I know pride, and pain, and hope.
They sit in the front of our minds
and in that way, we’re all the same.
Things are different now.
The lines between right and wrong, good and evil,
they’re all blurred now.
We are all saints.
We are all sinners.
We are all children today
Covering our eyes when things get scary.
The world is not dark
You just have not opened your eyes.
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Acknowledgments
Each year, I begin work on the Ralph Munn Creative Writing Contest with the
expectation that the writers will submit moving, powerful work that exhibits
their knowledge, compassion and unique perspectives on today’s world. Each
year, my expectations are met and then exceeded. I am continually impressed by
and grateful for the depth of their inquiries and the strength of their convictions.
So, my first thanks goes out to the authors. It is always an honor to celebrate
your work.
The work that goes into creating the anthology and holding the Teen Media
Awards cannot be overstated. Neither would be possible without the dedicated
assistance of all the Ralph Munn Committee members, who spend hours reading,
discussing and meeting. I am always grateful for their passion—evidenced
by the detail accompanying their evaluations and the intensity with which they
advocate for pieces. As always, thank you to Connie Amoroso, who carefully
edits and designs the anthology. Many thanks as well to the Labsy Committee,
whose members ensure the Teen Media Awards goes smoothly. Behind the
scenes, the continued support from our event planner, marketing team and
Library leadership make Ralph Munn possible each year.
A huge thank you to Adriana E. Ramírez and Cameron Barnett for judging
the contest. Choosing winners is a difficult task, to say the least. The care in
the feedback they have provided and the seriousness with which they took on
their roles are what make the contest worthwhile.
Although their work is oftentimes invisible, I am incredibly thankful to the
educators, library staff, families, and mentors of the youth who submit to the
contest. Anyone who believes that youth deserve a platform is doing important
work. The time they spend encouraging, editing and listening to our writers
is so valuable.
Sincerely,
Sienna Cittadino
Chair, Ralph Munn Creative Writing Committee
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