(That’s it, that’s the joke, please don’t sue me for making a punny reference, Disney) By Sarah Cooley —–        I suppose it was my own damn fault.  That’s just what you get for sticking your nose where it doesn’t belong, you would think I’d know better by now, but I guess when I stopped maturing physically it also stalled my mental improvement.  I was never a brains guy anyway, was always ready for a fight, less so for helping with math homework. Eh, I’m getting ahead of myself though. I suppose I should start at the beginning, when I first met Gloria, and defied everything my common-sense told…

by Johanna Kumpula The first time I heard Don’t Fear the Reaper by Blue Oyster Cult, I was sitting in a dingy hospital waiting room riding the tail end of 1982. Hospitals were my entertainment at the time, a whole bunch of sick folk in one area waiting for death knocking on their door to finally get fed up with waiting and break the door down. It was a playground for someone in my profession. Come on baby, don’t fear the reaper. Shuffling through the fluorescent hospital halls that smelled of blood and cleaning supplies, I glanced into each room, looking for my next unsuspecting victim. Room 313 had a…

By Orion Waters   You are awoken by the sound of the alarm on your phone. Still half asleep, you hit nap on the phone and close your eyes, only to be awoken again from the second alarm you set the day before with a message on it,” Don’t hit the nap button this time!” You wake up after cursing the past you for knowing exactly what you would do after the first alarm, so you get up. Still groggy and annoyed, you now sit up and get yourself get out of bed, only to immediately bump your foot on the clothes bin knocking it over. “Fuuuh… of course.” You…

by Kyle Mayer I guess it started when my dad mowed up a baby rabbit. I was swinging under the apple tree from the wooden tower that doesn’t exist anymore, the one that would lift up in one corner if I swung too high, where the ants made a nest every year no matter how many times my father poured poison down the holes that left our lawn looking like worn pumice. The post had rotted through and a more modernistic viewpoint would have marked the entire tower as ‘not safe for children’ but in those days things weren’t unsafe until someone got hurt, and so I was swinging as…

by Johanna Kumpula This woman was different. Her eyes were alit with thousands of fires, yet somedays the smoke was all too apparent. The late night whispered words held more meaning to me than any heartfelt poem but her calloused hands wrote symphonies I couldn’t hear. She wove her way through my mind like a serpent, feeding on every doubt until, one by one, they all disappeared. I saw her – the beauty in her soul and the flaws on her sleeves. I was a ghost compared to her, wallowing in the shadow of her brilliance. When I finally decided to acknowledge her constant presence, I was unaware of the…

by Allison O’Leary After it ended, Laura would sit on the bed in her room, eyes closed, fingers gripping, mind quiet, quiet, quiet. Being a practical person, Laura understood the negative consequences of psychological repression and allowed herself at most three minutes a day to sit and think as every muscle in her body yearned to scream. Calmly, she would go about her day: washing the laundry with a cupful of lavender soap, filling out job applications, wondering whether she should take the old cat into the vet. Decisively, she would will herself not to think about it, not to let her mind wander to places that would prevent her…

by Aurelia Gonzalez The first time I heard “Tell Your Heart Heads Up” by Mutemath, I was in an abandoned cabin, half a mile from the AK-1 highway, just north of Wasilla. I was looking for food. I was with Em, the only other living person I’d met between Peters Creek and Wasilla. We had thought we were still in a dead zone, where even lightbulbs didn’t work, and when we heard the noise we jumped. Em went straight for her gun. I ducked under the table in the kitchen. We realized after a minute that there wasn’t really anybody else in the house, and we both felt pretty stupid.…

by Sarah Cooley One fine day, a young girl went skipping through the woods. This girl had an adoration for all wildlife, but her mother had always been careful to warn her about bears. Bears, her mother said, were terrible, carnivorous beasts that would eat anyone that bothered them. The little girl promised her mother that she would be wary of the dreadful bears, but being a very optimistic child, decided that acting friendly couldn’t hurt. She hopped along the woodland path, and came across a cave. She stopped near the entrance and called, “Is there anybody home?” A low voice rumbled, as a brown furry face appeared in the…