Tag: ENGL 221

Lily Staricha

 

Don’t jump down the rabbit hole. You don’t want to go there. Alice did, and she never came back. Not the Alice you know with her blonde hair and blue bell dress. The Alice you don’t know. Alice was small, petite, and smart. She always had a creative mind. Soon she disappeared. No one understood how she did, but I knew. She went down the rabbit hole. Though the rabbit hole is not in the woods, it is in your homes. There is always one place you can find the rabbit hole, the basement if you have one. If not the rabbit hole will find you.

Beware though the rabbit hole may not like you. If you fall through, you will hear.

“Tick tock, Tick tock. Time has stopped. Tick tock, Tick tock. Your sanity is about to drop.”

Look around and you may understand why. Hazel tree walls threaded with gold. Chestnut and Pine grandfather clocks. Large and small. Silver and gold. The hands of the clock make no sounds. The chimes don’t chime, they whine. Time never changes. The clocks are frozen, on what time you can never tell. The hole will remain for a minute, and then drop you into a colorful abyss.

Eventually the colors will become a world. A world of wonder. You will be lying a large chessboard. Black and white figures stand tall. They never move. They sing:

“8 Pawns, 2 knights, 2 Bishops, 2 Rooks, 1 King, and 1 Queen. Pawns are to die. Knights, the silver warriors, will also die. Bishops wave the flags. Rooks are the castle towers left to crumble. The King isn’t the ruler, he is the slave. The Queen looks over everything, and remain safe. Or at least until she is checked.”

Their song will make no sense. Try to ignore it. Flip over onto your back, and look up. A sky of blue and white fluffy clouds will stare back at you. Roll to either side and you will see an endless field of bright yellow sunflowers. All of them will be staring back at you. Roll to your left and you will see a small object. It will be sitting near the end of the chessboard.

Go closer and take a look. Bend down and pick it up. Soon you will hold a purple velvet and black thread hat. Around the hat wraps a orange ribbon. On the inside of the ribbon will be yellow flowers.  On the left edge will a multitude of things. A piece of paper with 10/6. Five pins ret in front of the paper. One is blue, one is red and gold, one is gold with a red tip, one is a gold circle, and finally one is purple bead.

Place it on your head. Then turn around. The white squares and pieces will bleed red. The black squares and pieces will thread with white webs. The yellow sunflowers dye black, and glisten purple. The blue sky will paint grey. Instead of a song you will hear a chant.

“Welcome to your new land. Your sanity has gone. Welcome to your new land. Where everything is gone. Welcome to your new land. Where the moon has eaten the dawn. Welcome to your new land. Where you are now insanity’s pawn. Welcome to your new land.”

Indeed. Welcome to your new land… Mad Hatter.

Madison Monette

 

Waves crash down on the wall of rocks guarding Maine’s most eastern shore. The Atlantic’s greedy tongue laps at the remaining parcels of beach that meet its frigid waters. The towns folk avoid the monotonous pleas of the sea. The birds and seals refuse to be a part of its taking. What lurks beneath the pounding waves, like never-ending fists, is waiting. Seldom seen by those fortunate enough to relay the tale, it waits for an unsuspecting bird, or seal, or little girl to fall mesmerized by its symphony. Lore of sailors plunging into the chilling darkness, hypnotized by a siren’s song, flood the local newspaper and marketplace talk. The facade of algae covered boulders protects beach goers from sharks and jellyfish, but the unrelenting waves grow to make their presence known. The sea’s jealous waves erase footprints left in the sand by those able to stroll the endless beach. The children are warned to stay away from the sea, especially on nights where the full moon demands the tide. Romantics often walk along the moonlit beach on clear nights where spray glistens as it rains down the western edge of the jagged rocks. Adventurous sightseers climb the wall to glimpse the moon shining off the cataclysmic waves before they meet their demise.

There is no blood, only a shriek soon diluted by a flood not even the wall can keep out. After every encounter the beach becomes more vacant. Now, as the little girl looks out her bedroom window, only a ghost town lies before her. The feeling of the sand, the cool water contrasted against a hot summer’s day, it begs her to join in the delight.

The tide pulls her in. Her flashlight, offering little use in the full moon’s glow, bounces off the dripping rocks. She walks towards the end of the breakwall, where the calming lullaby reaches sand. The sweet serenade grows louder. There is no turning back.

A sudden realization, her feet are submerged by a chilling blanket, flowing towards her then away, never remaining still.

A webbed hand seizes her ankle. It pulls her to the icy depths before she can utter more than a yelp.

Emerging from the crashing waves is a little girl, dripping saltwater and seaweed. She walks along the weakening rocks, singing with a stranger’s voice, before returning back into the sea. The little girl’s body crashes into the wall with repetitive urgency. A glistening tail dives into the black waves, waiting to walk once more.

Paige Cavaness

 

The water glistens on top, reflecting a slate grey sadness that only comes when turmoil is brewing under the surface. It is frigid, yet men sail it. A vast expanse to be discovered off the coast of Scotland where only mist and drunkards dare navigate. The North sea, nearly as terrifying and starved as he who lurks beneath the surf. . . nearly. Boats coughing up smoke and gasoline fumes that only add to his ravaged home. Sailors guffaw and inhale nicotine from their deathly pleasures as they totter along the sea, unsuspicious and unsuspecting. They’ve heard the stories, ignored the rumors, discarded the lore. Twenty deaths in the last two months must not have been a coincidence surely? One speaks. The other, intoxicated on spirits or his own arrogance lets loose a guttural laugh. No coincidence, he chortles. Just sheer stupidity on the water. Waters like these can gobble a person up, if they don’t keep their wits about em’, he states, all knowing. For they are human, how could they not be all knowing? How could they be wrong about what lurks in the depths and dances with the icy current? Deemed top of the food chain by none other than themselves, how could anyone mistake them for trivial? They know they are almighty, for they tell themselves so. They do not put stock in the thought of me.

In far more than twenty deaths, chalked up to the brutality of the salty brine or the razor of a thunderous storm slitting the throats of many.

Light another cigarette and throw down the anchor, another voices. The fishing looks good here, an older fellow chants. If only he knew what so desperately pined for their anchor.

Meanwhile, deep under where even the slimiest of urchins refuse to travel, I sit. I wait. My scales caress the threads of chilled seaweed as I slither forth, following the bubbles protruding from a cast anchor. Knotted and oil-sodden rope suspends in the water and draws taut. I’ve found them. Then again, they announced themselves by delivering the crusted weight to my seafloor. Moronic, foolish, irresponsible– a whole list of vile invectives flood my mind.

I expand my great wings and push forward in the water. It used to be so peaceful here. Quite, unobtrusive. And then the water started to taste rancid, like fish infected with rot. When my forked tongue assaulted the atmosphere, I learned to quickly halt my instincts. The once delicious refreshment of my environment had been soured. Toxified. Molested.

It took me years to discover the source. And it now hovers not three miles above my horned head.

Almost lovingly, I coil myself around the anchor. The putrid odor of oil and pollutants singes my nose. Glancing up, my eyes tearing unnoticably in the murky filth around me, I see myself reflected on the bottom of their vessel.

Great, black talons attached to great black hands. A long, ravishing tail, pointed with a blade-like embellishment, perfect for shredding and stabbing. Massive, orderly alignments of scales down my body. Enormous golden eyes resembling liquefied gold, shocking against the obsidian shadow of the rest of my body. Wings, so long in length that they dwarf the sail-ship above me. I have lived millennia only to watch ramparts from frivolous battles rain down and crush the creatures who have been here since the first dawn of the first day; I have tasted the flesh of Vikings who raped and pillaged as man now does onto my very dwellings. I have been asphyxiated by both the blood of men and the blood of boats for far, far too long.  How inherently preposterous humans are to believe a creature as ancient and wise as I does not exist and loath them.

Slowly, my reflection on the boat’s bottom magnifies my horned head as I speed closer. Above, the chatter continues, piercing my ears. Talk of more boating trips that will not happen, of more pollution dumped upon my home, of more plague sickening the very place that has been mine from the beginning, of cocky insults stating nothing like myself exists. How dare they, how dare they, how dare they…  

I break the surf and capsize the boat.

Sea foam sprays around me as I let myself be seen, watch the horror in the men’s eyes as they realize I am real and I am here. Without hesitation, I bite one man in half. He screams; I smile. The water bloodies.

When it is finished, I submerge myself once again amongst the nebulous bottom of the sea. With a full belly and satisfaction at another poison terminated, I settle down to rest.

In the distance, the buzz of a motor approaches.