The Electric Boogaloo
Day 1
March 23rd, 2020
Though today’s theme is “no theme,” we have to admit we gave the writers some guidance. We wanted to echo the original Decameron’s spirit, and to us that meant a love for the silly and the smutty, and a goal to not write anything that will make us sadder than the baseline sadness we all feel amidst a “global public health crisis.”
But of course, that crisis looms in the background of all these stories. It’s made us all a little bit lonely, a little bit disoriented, a little bit antsy, a little bit desperate to go out and a little bit scared of what will happen if we do. And, now as it did for our forebears hundreds of years ago, it seems to have made a few of us very, very horny. Some things never change.
Enjoy!
-Amy & Cassidy
AJ McDougall
James Bean
Anna Keating
Jack Becker
Carly Rose Roy
Amy Muller
Evan Montgomery
Vivian Qiu
Joey Rupcich
Cassidy Jackson
MARGIE DAVIES, she of the recent divorce, occasional supermarket outburst, and eternal patience, didn’t acknowledge the scarecrow sitting at her kitchen table until she had poured herself a second cup of coffee. Her son Charlie, obstinate and pimply, waited for her, his arm flung across the offending mannequin’s shoulders like a challenge. Finally, Margie seated herself across from the couple, arranging her bathrobe under her considerable rear end so it didn’t bunch uncomfortably.
“I thought I smelled hay from the upstairs landing,” she said agreeably.
Charlie scowled. He had been filching the self-help books off her bedside table for weeks now—the covers always graced with oversaturated stock photography of petulant, grieving children and their overwhelmed but understanding parents—and had practised responding to the stock phrases he’d expected she’d use when confronted with the reality of Delilah. She’d diagnose this as a coping mechanism, and he’d counter nimbly that her three nightly scotches could be considered much the same. She’d call it a cry for help, and he’d let out a loud, ghoulish screech. There’s your cry for help, he’d reply smugly. That’d show her. Instead, he had to contend with this — “I thought I smelled hay.” How was a well-adjusted child of two amicably-separated soybean farmers expected to contend with that?
“Mom, this is Delilah,” he said cautiously. “I’m taking her as my date to the freshman dance.”
This confused Margie. Was this a coping mechanism? A cry for help? Better to not use those stock phrases, she decided. He was normally a pretty savvy kid. The coffee machine dinged behind her, letting her know she had at least one ally in this fight. Without responding, she pushed her chair back and stood to pour herself another cup. She was unable to remember having drained the last one, but her nasty orange ceramic mug was empty, so she must have.
Lauren chose that moment to breeze in, backpack hoisted coolly over one shoulder. She clocked the scarecrow and nodded curtly to her brother. “The Offermans know you’re using their scarecrow as a blowup doll, Chip?”
“No,” he barked, jerking forward. “I mean — She’s not a blowup doll.” The motion tilted Deliah forward. One of the two melons he’d shoved up her checkered shirt plummeted down and hit the floor with a dull thud.
“Yeah?” She upcapped her lip gloss. “I heard you last night, freak.”
“That was just regular masturbation, jerkass,” he snapped back.
Idly, standing by the coffee machine and gazing out at the soybean fields, Margie thought about how long it had been since she’d been fucked properly. Not since Sheriff Argyle had driven Lauren home after he’d caught her in the passenger seat of a senior’s hotboxed Oldsmobile. High as a kite, Margie’s daughter had vaguely registered her mother inviting the lawman in for a “hot bubbling cup of something.” The thought that Mom didn’t make soup tonight sprawled across her mind before curling away in the hemp-scented wind of her mind’s admittedly usually pretty empty landscape.
The school bus’ honking snapped her out of her reverie. Over Charlie’s protests that Delilah had to be treated properly, like a real guest, for the rest of the week until the dance rolled around on Friday, and that his mother had better not ruin this for him by being awkward around his date or anything, and that he’d ordered his corsage to match the color scheme of Delilah’s shirt, which was really just a castoff from Emma Offerman’s maternity wardrobe, Margie hustled her two kids out the door.
She pressed a sack lunch to Lauren’s chest. “Keep an eye on him today,” she hissed in her daughter’s ear. “The football team’ll kill him if they catch wind of this.”
Lauren cut her eyes at her brother, who was still shouting about true love. “That’s a really reductive assumption to make about today’s high school social hierarchies,” she hissed back, before grabbing Charlie’s shoulder and frog-marching him down the driveway.
Margie closed the front door and gazed balefully at the scarecrow. She’d heard rustling past her door early that past evening, but she’d just assumed Lauren was attempting to summon demons in the basement again. “Why a scarecrow?” she asked out loud.
In response, Delilah fell flat on her straw-stuffed face. Margie walked over and straightened the scarecrow up. “Why you?” she asked again.
“Why not me?” Delilah replied. Her tone was slightly hurt.
Margie didn’t relinquish her grip on the scarecrow. “No offense, honey,” she said. “It’s just that—when I pictured Charlie asking out a girl for the first time, I’d always assumed it would be a… y’know, human girl. It’s not that I don’t approve of you. I’m just a little caught off-guard, is all.”
“I guess I can understand that,” Delilah said, patting Margie’s hand and removing it politely from her neck. Margie went to sit down, only to notice that her cup was drained once again. Who kept doing that?
“Coffee?” she asked the scarecrow. Delilah nodded. Coming back with a second steaming ceramic monstrosity that Lauren had made for another Mother’s Day, Margie sized up her guest.
“You know, your son wasn’t exactly my first choice either,” Delilah said, taking the coffee from Margie with a grunt. “No offense, but he’s kind of strange.”
“You don’t have to tell me twice. He’s always had trouble making friends, but with Alan’s moving out, the behavior’s just gotten odder and odder.”
“Such as?”
“Oh, I don’t know… collecting animal bones, up at all hours yelling strange little rhymes, trying to slip arsenic in my macaroni when he thinks I’m not looking.”
“Teenagers,” Delilah rolled her eyes empathetically. She took Margie’s hand.
Margie simpered. “Speaking of which, aren’t you a little old for him?” She cast her mind back. The Offermans had moved in next door thirty years ago, give or take. Delilah had been erected soon after.
“The kid hardly gave me a chance to say no to his invitation, if that’s what you’re asking,” the scarecrow replied, smiling. At least, Margie assumed the lifted crinkling around Delilah’s sack-mouth was a smile. It was a sweet, lopsided grin, she thought, even if it was a little unnerving. She found herself staring at Delilah’s mouth, though it wasn’t a grotesque fascination that drew her gaze. Margie felt odd.
“Nah, he’d pulled me off my pole and dragged me half a mile down the road before I’d even realized what was happening. Made me think of frontier times, y’know, when men just cast a rope around the nearest woman and claimed her as his bride.”
Margie frowned. “I thought I raised him better than that.” She wanted Delilah to think she was a good mother. Wanted the scarecrow to think very highly of her. She wasn’t sure why.
“Oh, I don’t mind. It was kinda sweet. And I figured I’d go as a pity-type thing. You know, like one of those instances where a celebrity goes on a date with a dying child?”
“Yeah. I know those.” She didn’t. The Make-A-Wish Foundation was still twenty years away from existence.
“He’s not even my type.” Delilah looked pointedly at her.
Margie laugh-snorted awkwardly, pulling her hand back to rub at her neck. “Mine neither.” Stupid. Stupid. Why did she say that? Her coffee cup was empty again.
Margie stood abruptly and went to the coffee machine. She poured herself another cup. She felt straw hands on her waist, and felt weak in the knees.
“You’re trembling,” Delilah breathed in her ear. A stray strand of hay brushed Margie’s neck, eliciting goose-pimples.
“It’s the caffeine,” she said weakly. Turning to face the scarecrow, she was startled by the passion she found blazing in those beautiful button eyes.
“Margie,” Delilah said. “Despite the fact that you aren’t normally a four-cup-a-day kinda gal, I know it isn’t the caffeine that’s got you jittery. And I think, somewhere deep inside, you know it, too.”
Margie allowed herself to be led upstairs to the bedroom that, for so long, had been the bed she had stoically shared with Alan. She and Delilah dispatched that lingering spirit of sexlessness hastily. Hay went everywhere. Margie discovered within her an innate capacity for power-bottoming.
Hours later, Lauren walked through the door. She saw the trail of straw going up the stairs and groaned. This was so not in her job description as Older, Wiser Big Sister.
“I’ll be in the basement, champ,” she told Charlie as he came in after her, patting him on the head.
The teenage boy delicately clutched the patchwork corsage he had just picked up from the town florist’s, like one might cup a baby bird. As the demonic screams began to arise from below and intermingle with the human cries from above, he knew one thing for sure: high school was going to be a wild ride.
The Form, Function, and Frequency of Harassment Within the 2019 Seventh Grade Class (Part One)
By James Bean
The Form, Function, and Frequency of Harassment Within the 2019 Seventh Grade Class
Robert Scott Manheim
The Autumn Hill School
Abstract
What follows is an investigation into and documentation of the patterns of interpersonal, inter-group, and self directed abuse naturally as they manifested in the social relationships of the seventh grade class at the Autumn Hill School in this most recent academic year. All ensuing data has been accrued by a dedicated team of school faculty, staff, and administration, and has been compiled and presented here by myself, acting as Head of the Intermediate School, and four other administrators with whom I have worked closely these past four months.
The purposes of this study are to 1) identify the lines of identity along which students are bullied or ostracized, 2) identify where and when harassment occurs on school grounds, and 3) generate ideas for new community standards, social education, and methods of securitization to prevent high rates of abuse in the future. This document will primarily serve as an internal resource at the Autumn Hill School but may also be sent out to other local academic institutions as a methodological reference.
Introduction
The Autumn Hill School is a private K-12 academic institution situated on a 27 acre lot in the Maryland suburbs outside of Washington, D.C. Established in 1959, the Autumn Hill School has a long and proud history of excellence in academics, athletics, and the creative arts and sciences. We are known for our rigorous educational program, as well as our diversity of extracurricular activities, which have caught the attention of many elite colleges and universities. This past spring we sent graduating seniors to such institutions as Stanford, Yale, Duke, and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
The Autumn Hill School is divided into four periods of educational growth, each with their own respective buildings and faculty. Said periods are Lower School (grades K-3), Middle School (grades 4 and 5), Intermediate School (grades 6-8), and Upper School (grades 9-12). Beginning in Intermediate School, all students are required to participate in our anonymous health survey, which assesses both the physical and mental health of the student body at the end of every calendar year. To the surprise and dismay of the Autumn Hill School’s administrative staff, in the fall of 2019 we witnessed a significant drop in our mental health scores as compared to the year before. The most disturbing numbers came from our seventh graders, a class of 74 students who experienced the highest levels of distress, with 49% of the class expressing that they felt some level of anxiety about coming to school everyday, and 20% of the class expressing feelings of loneliness, hopeless, or numbness/apathy. Only 18% of seventh grade students stated they felt a “fairly strong” or “very strong” sense of belonging at school, whereas an abysmal 41% of students stated they felt “little” or “no” sense of belonging at school, the remaining 41% of students indicating no strong sense either way. 69% of seventh graders claimed they have experienced some level of bullying or harassment, and 25% of seventh graders admitted to having perpetrated some level of bullying or harassment themselves.
This investigation was conceived of and outlined in response to these statistics during the interim between fall and spring semesters. The investigation was initiated immediately upon the students’ return from academic holiday.
Method
Teacher Participation
We asked each member of the seventh grade faculty to be on high alert to any instances of bullying, harassment, or exclusion. We conducted thorough searches of and kept eyes and ears present in areas on school grounds where students congregate and socialize, including bathrooms (both the upper and lower floors of the Intermediate School, located on South Campus), bleachers (by the soccer field, South Campus), the Quad (outside the Upper School, North Campus), the locker rooms (outside the gymnasium), and the school buses. We derived several key findings from graffiti, lost objects, and overheard conversations in such locations.
Student Participation
We invited any and all members of the seventh grade class to schedule appointments with the Dean of Student Life, Arthur Dewy, to communicate directly their personal experiences of bullying on campus. For a brief duration we also encouraged the submission of anonymous tips to Mr. Dewy’s office mailbox, but soon found this method to be ultimately unproductive and generative of unacceptable behavior from some of our more audacious students.
Primary Source Research.
However, critical to our success in this investigation was one such anonymous tip in the form of a diary, which was submitted in mid January. It was identified as the “Diary of Lila Robinson. Found under the bleachers where she was probably giving Vinny T. another handjob, skank.”
While reading the private property of a student without her express consent would be, under most circumstances, unethical and illegal, the allegation that Ms. Robinson engaged in sexual activity while on school grounds satisfies the demand that the search of a student’s property be accompanied by a “reasonable in inception” suspicion that said student has violated school policy, as established by New Jersey v. T.L.O., 1985. Our stance on the matter is substantiated by Ms. Robinson’s less than perfect permanent record, as she has demonstrated a tendency toward spunk, argumentation, and outright dismissal of school rules. We were therefore allowed to proceed with reading through Ms. Robinson’s diary, which provided critical tips about where student harassment is prevalent on campus.
By Anna Keating
THIS IS A STORY about a dog. The best dog. The goodest doggie. He sits. He waits. He watches. He lifts one paw towards his mom. She has cheese. The forbidden fruit for puppies. He hopes some might fall. He carefully places his paws all next to each other in a perfect sit. An award-winning sit. He watches his mom, the one who provides the food. He hopes she is watching his sit. He watches the cheese go from the plate to her mouth, slowly disappearing. His eyes lead his head, closely following her hands. He waits.
Suddenly, there’s only one piece of cheese left. He scoots closer making sure he’s noticed. His mom looks at him and he stares back into her soul. He begs harder than he ever has in his life. She picks up the last piece of cheese. Breaking it in two, she eats one and then looks back at the puppy. “One for mom, one for puppy,” she says. He wags his tail as she puts the cheese within striking distance. His eyes light up and he inhales the cheese as fast as he can. He licks his chops and lays down. Finally content with all his hard work. He closes his eyes and breathes. Then he burps. His mom looks down. Oh no. Doggy farts.
By Jack Becker
MICHAEL'S FIRST TIME having sex was going well until he ejaculated glitter-glue. His girlfriend, Tyra, gasped when he came. Not from terror, really—she was just surprised.
“Did I do something?!” Michael said. “Fuck, I should’ve given you more warning, I’m sorry—”
“No, no, uh—you’re fine, it’s just…” Tyra looked at the cum that had gotten on her hand, saw how it shimmered in the pink light of her salt lamp. “It’s just—does this, like—always happen?”
Michael leaned up in Tyra’s bed to see the fuchsia-colored cum on his stomach. He screamed, and unlike Tyra he was terrified. He sprung out of the bed, got dressed without cleaning himself off, and was out Tyra’s front door before either of them could say or do anything else.
The damp Indiana evening stung his ears as he walked home.
The next day after basketball practice, Michael’s friend Adam came over to him in the locker room, slamming his hands against the lockers next to Michael’s. “So I heard you finally had a good time last night?” said Adam, all grin and freckles like always.
Michael didn’t say anything as he stepped out of his underwear and reached for a towel.
“Oh, my bad,” said Adam, “I guess I should be congratulating this guy down here.”
Adam reached out and gave Michael’s penis a quick tug. Michael slapped his hand away and tied the towel around his waist.
“Fucking jagoff.”
“Jagoff,” said Adam, staring into space. “Haven’t heard that one in a while. Getting your cherry popped really turn you into some kind of oldie.”
Michael pushed past Adam on the way to the showers. “At least I’m not saying oldie.”
“Touché.” Adam watched Michael’s bare shoulder blades before they disappeared along with the rest of his friend’s body around the corner.
An hour later, the two of them are in Adam’s mildew-smelling basement that they both had spent most of their lives in.
“So,” Adam said as he plopped down on a beanbag next to Michael. “You gonna tell me what’s on your mind?”
Michael brought his eyes back into focus, realizing that he’d been squeezing one of Adam’s Playstation controllers as if he were trying to staunch a wound. “Nothing’s wrong.”
“I didn’t say anything was wrong,” said Adam, “but now I’m curious.”
“It’s nothing,” said Michael.
“Yeah, I’m not buying it.”
“Would you just shut the fuck up and turn on the PS?”
“Dude,” said Adam, “if something bad happened last night, you know you can tell me.”
“Nothing bad happened last night.”
“Yeah, that’s bullshit.”
“I’m serious.”
“Dude, if something really bad happened, then… like, if you hurt her, then you’ve gotta come clean and do the right—”
“For fuck’s sake, I didn’t hurt her.”
“Okay, okay! Fine.” Adam leaned back and put his hands behind his head. “Just tell me how it was, then.”
Michael scoffed. “You’re such a perv.”
“Yeah, call the New York Times, we’ve got ourselves a shocking discovery.”
Nobody spoke for a moment. Michael looked at the controller in his hands, then at his fingers, then at the chipped wood paneling where the basement’s carpeted floor met the wall.
Adam sighed. “You don’t want to tell me, fine.” He got back up from the beanbag to turn on the Playstation. “I’m just your best friend or whatever—”
“My cum was weird,” said Michael, screwing his eyes shut as soon as the words came out.
Adam turned back around, his finger hovering beside the on button. “What?”
“My cum, semen, jizz, whatever. It was—weird.”
A burning sensation started up in Adam’s cheeks as he tried to keep himself from laughing. It didn’t work.
“Are you fucking laughing at me right now?” said Michael.
“No, it’s, okay, um, yeah,” said Adam. “But like, dude, why do you think your jizz was weird?”
“It…” Michael rubbed his eyes as he weighed honesty’s worth. “It was like… sparkling, okay?”
Adam laughed harder. “Sparkling?” He fell to the floor, clutching his stomach as he rolled side to side on his back. “Did you just say your stuff sparkles?”
“Shut the fuck up, Adam.” Michael stood up and started pacing. “I think I really freaked her out, and then I just left, no like I fucking ran, and she’s gonna tell everyone I have glitter-cum or whatever the fuck and it’s just—”
“Dude, I think you were just hallucinating or some shit.”
“No,” said Michael, “I wasn’t.”
Adam collected himself and stood up to put his hands on Michael’s shoulders. “Look, it’s normal to be kind of zonked after your first time.”
“How the fuck would you know?” Michael said while pushing Adam away. “You’ve never had sex before.”
“True, but I watch a lot of porn.”
“I don’t think that counts.”
Adam laughed again before taking another step towards Michael. “Seriously, man—I’m sure you’re fine.”
Michael shakes his head. “You don’t believe me.”
“Not really.”
“Fine.” Michael pulls his phone out and shows Adam a picture. “Then what about this.”
It was a mirror-selfie of Michael with his shirt off and what seemed to be glitter-glue smeared all over his stomach. Adam looked at it closely, spending what he hoped wasn’t a noticeable amount of time examining Michael’s six-pack, which was cultivated in Adam’s garage this past winter break as they both tried to get shredded before their high school senior spring.
Adam adjusted the way he was standing as he chuckled. “You squirt a bunch of crafts shit on yourself, or—?”
“No,” said Michael. “I mean, kind of? But, like, it was from my dick, man, my literal penis.”
Michael’s literal penis was something that Adam had seen plenty times before in the locker room in between gym classes, or that one time during a sleepover when the two of them stole some of Adam’s father’s whiskey and ending up masturbating together in this very basement, on those two very beanbags, Adam trying not to look but unable to stop himself—
“Does it, like, happen all the time?” asked Adam.
Michael blinked, looked at his friend closely. “So you believe me?”
“Yeah, Mike, dude,” said Adam, “shit’s weird and sounds impossible, but yeah, I guess I believe you.”
Michael took a breath and nodded. When he met eyes with Adam again, there was something in Adam’s gaze that he couldn’t parse out, something shockingly sobering and a little bit hungry. He remembered seeing that same pair of eyes in that same exact way during that previous winter break after one of their days bench-pressing in Adam’s garage. They were talking about girls, Michael had just mentioned that he was going to ask out Tyra, and Adam told him Go for it, man, but there was a lilt to how Adam said it, a tremor in the voice that sounded both hopeful and hurt. It was the same night the two of them masturbated on adjacent beanbags, but Michael hardly ever thought of that, he didn’t, no—
“But, like,” Adam continued, bringing Michael out of his head. “Has it happened again?”
“You mean have I jizzed out glitter again?”
“Yeah,” said Adam.
“I, uh,” said Michael. “I’ve been, like—too scared to check?”
“Okay,” said Adam, “how bout this? Why don’t you stick down here and ‘check,’ and I’ll go upstairs and see what my parents got locked in the top cabinet. How’s that sound?”
Michael felt a twitch between his legs. “I dunno, that sounds—”
“You don’t have to,” said Adam quickly, “but, like, if you’re nervous about it, I could be, like… emotional support, or whatever the fuck it’s called.”
The right corner of Michael’s mouth goes up; it’s the first time he’d smiled since last night when he and Tyra first got in bed, shirts off, warmth-to-warmth, groping each other’s softness, but Michael wasn’t fully there, fine, he’ll admit it, he was somewhere else. But Michael can’t think about that, he doesn’t want to.
Truth is, last night wasn’t just his first time cumming glitter—it was also the first time he slipped up and let himself think about Adam. He imagined kissing Adam’s mouth, imagined tasting Adam’s breath that always smelled like milk and potato chips, pictured his hands on Adam’s thighs. How fucking disgraceful of him, thinking of his best friend instead of the person he was with. And Tyra deserved to have his attention—she was the best math student in the school, was planning to become an engineer, had tons more friends than Michael could ever dream of making, was a firm example of what it means to be one’s own person. She didn’t deserve to have Michael slip away from her.
Yes, Michael thinks, that’s why he’s guilty. That’s the part he can’t explain. That’s what he should focus on. He should focus on feeling guilty about being a misogynistic, ego-centric prick instead of how he imagined himself fucking his best friend. His annoying, semi-deodorized, jock’s-mind-inside-a-nerd-body friend. Adam. The person whom Michael was thinking about when Tyra jerked him off, the face Michael was picturing as he came.
Adam is still watching him, waiting for an answer. All the while Adam’s mind is alight with self-flagellations: you stupid motherfucker, you uncontrollable horny piece of shit.
But then Michael is leaning, and they are kissing, and feeling each other’s six-packs, hard dicks, collar-bones, nipples.
And then they come, one after another. Michael’s glitter is fuchsia as before, Adam’s is orange. They laughed. It was too spot-on, too sappy, and they weren’t sappy guys. They just came glitter-glue for each other, that’s all. Nothing loving about it. Even if Michael’s favorite color is orange, and Adam’s—though he’d never admit it—is fuchsia.
By Carly Rose Roy
I ALWAYS THOUGHT that death would be more sour than sweet. I never even considered that it could be bitter. But here I am gagging on the bitterness of my own death. It isn’t even a beautiful one. My limbs hang at nauseating angles and my insides have finally seen the light of day. Good for them. I have always kind of felt like my body wanted out. Like my bones wanted to flee my flesh.
That’s what I was doing; before my insides became outsides. Running away from my own flesh: my parents. They’re lovely people. Old but in a palatable way. Hard-working but in a white way. They never stop talking and they never say anything. They talk about the neighbors and the real estate market and the color of the walls. They forget to use I feel statements in arguments and I feel bitter. And I’m running away from the noises they make at each other and the walls that have colors (apparently) when a car, (you know the kind) that is green, (of all the wall colors in the rainbow) knocks into me with force. I’m knocked off my feet (the ones I was using to run) and subsequently run over by this very green car. You can imagine, I’m sure, that this hurt. Not because of the weight or force or color of the car; no, because the sun wasn’t shining and my Taylor Swift
Fearless concert t-shirt was stained with some kind of oil and that wasn’t even her best album. It did not hurt long though. Bitter death found me crumpled on the parkway at fifteen.
“Karen?”
I do not open my eyes. I have no name here. I try to breathe (feat. Colbie Caillet).
“I’m not a princess this ain’t a fairytale,” I tell death.
“Ok. Miss?” Death does not give me a break.
“Shhhhhh,” I whisper because it is a secret, “I’m dead.”
“You’re not. Karen, you just got out of surgery. You’ll be fine.”
I open my eyes to see a hospital room (you know the kind) and a man (you know the one). I sigh.
“Red was better.”
By Amy Muller
SHE WAS AN INTERESTING CREATURE; one mostly known as “Megan” but curiously known to some as “Toot.” She had several friends but mostly a phone, decent style but mostly sweatpants from a bar mitzvah she’d never attended, and a love for Totino’s Pizza Rolls that seemed to be, like so little else about her, sincere and real and a true passion of her heart.
These, at least, were Dottie Primrose’s observations of the sweet girl who needed the lower rent and so took the “haunted” apartment in the middle of the transit desert. “The poor thing,” Dottie thought, “but I suppose I’m glad to have been able to help her,” reasoning that without her presence in the creaking floors and mysteriously opening cabinets, this place would be going for at least a hundred dollars more a month. She never considered herself cause for a discount, but having (according to official record) died of “hysteria,” she understood that maybe the things she believed weren’t always the things that were true.
Megan had moved in back in April with little more than a few boxes of IKEA furniture and a bottle of wine that inexplicably had an American Flag on the label, despite its stubborn insistence that it was “basically from France.” All night Megan had tried to build the furniture, frustration driving her to the bottle which, of course, didn’t make the assembly easier. Dottie watched it happen in much the same way as she watched The X Files with her previous tenant: refusing to debase herself by enjoying it, but refusing to deny herself by not watching it.
By the time the clock struck midnight, Megan’s room contained a bed, 75% of a bookshelf, a small pile of ominously unused screws, and the empty bottle of Uncle Pierre’s So-Called Bordeaux. She went to get a glass of water and realised that she had no such thing. As she stuck her wine bottle under the kitchen sink faucet, drenching her hand and sleeve as she struggled to center the narrow bottle opening in the stream, Dottie resolved that she wouldn’t stop at the lower rent, she would help this girl for as long as she lived here.
Since dying in this apartment 187 years prior, Dottie had become an avid student of the evolving state of human living. To paraphrase from Farmers Insurance, she’d learned a thing or two because she’d seen a thing or two (including, but not limited to, lots of insurance commercials). She marveled at the parade of lives coming through her home: industrial-era factory workers, young men just returned from war, student activists and, generation after generation, single ladies just trying to “figure it out.”
A spinster herself, Dottie felt particularly connected to these girls, and felt something of a pull help them out. In Megan's case, and unlike those who had come before, that pull was so magnetic that, for the first time, it disconnected Dottie from her meticulously tempered judgement. Untethered from her antihysteric practices, she resolved to do what she could for her new tenant. It was clear that she needed the assistance.
While Dottie had been dazzled by the development of instant mac and cheese, seeing Megan pat herself on the back and self-identify as a culinary genius for having added chili flakes to hers, while also having forgotten the milk, was disheartening.
The trouble didn't stop in the kitchen. Dottie was amazed by how quickly technology could summon men to the apartment, and ever the romantic, she would get excited whenever one would come over. But alas, he and Megan would always stay at least six feet apart. And these were in the days before the quarantine.
This was where her interventions began. Frequently, a devastatingly marriageable young lad called “Danny” would come over, and frequently, Dottie would feel that he and Megan could stand to be a little closer. She would float between the two of them, bringing what they naively named a "draft." Megan only owned one blanket, so Dottie found that if she did this enough times, she could reliably get those two fine little thangs under one blanket and close enough to snuggling to satisfy her lust for, well… lust.
For Megan, the “work-life boundary” consisted of sitting on one end of her bed when answering emails, and the other when answering texts. When this got too upsetting for Dottie to watch, she liked to horse around in the refrigerator. Since death had ruled out stickball and spinning, she had taken up other hobbies. Namely, getting the fridge to make one of those classic Sounds, the ones that invariably make people double check to see if there’s something in there. What a thrill, that it was now also doing good!
Like magic, a little clink-clank in the fridge always got Megan out of bed. What did she think was happening? A cat snuck into the fridge? The dairy products were hosting a party and didn’t invite their landlord? The living always talk themselves out of “troublemaking extracorporeal spirit” before thinking through the evidence. In a word: adorable.
As spring bloomed into summer and summer eased into fall, Dottie saw the loose fibers of Megan’s life start to come together into a more coherent thread. All those emails eventually turned into a job that got her out of the house a bit more, and while Dottie missed her, she was excited to see her fly. Well, as close to flying as body-types can get.
Dottie grew to know and like Megan’s friends, baving been initially put off by them calling her cherished project “Toot,” even though she farted a perfectly normal amount. But in the end (or near the beginning, to tell the truth), their charm, confidence, and ability to live free of worry about their dwindling dowries won their spectral skeptic over. She eventually started to consider herself part of the squad, even though the squad didn’t acknowledge her existence.
Danny kept coming over, and while nothing romantic blossomed from it, Toot stopped crying when he left. Even though Dottie wasn’t over him, she supposed it was good that her friend was, what with all she’d been learning over the decades about “women’s” supposed “independence.”
All the while, Dottie kept helping out where she could. Rattling the lid of the garbage can before Toot headed to work so that she would take it out before it got too, in others’ words, “stanky;” fluttering the curtains when there was a cute dog walking by so that she would look out the window; and causing brief power outages if Toot was up too late watching reruns of Designing Women when she had important meetings in the morning.
Toot and Dottie slid into a happy symbiosis, with Dottie righting Toot’s path where possible, and Toot giving Dottie a sense of purpose and aspiration. One night, when the squad was over, Toot’s friend Daya made a joke about their other friend Bree’s ex and everyone laughed so hard they cried.
“Daya! You are hysterical!” Toot exclaimed, trying to catch her breath.
“WATCH YOUR MOUTH!” Dottie replied, reflexively, forgetting that times had changed. Luckily, all that came out was a whistling wind.
But that whistling wind prompted a question all too familiar to those in Dottie’s ontological state: a quiet but urgent “what was that?” It was Bree who asked it, and Toot who dismissed it.
“This apartment is always making weird sounds, I’ve just gotten used to it.”
Katy, decidedly squad member number four, took the discussion where it was destined to go: “wait, but isn’t this place haunted?” Ugh. Dottie had always prickled at that word.
“Yeah, supposedly,” Toot replied, “but I don’t really believe in ghosts.”
The words should’ve hurt, but they didn’t. Dottie rested her hand on Toot’s shoulder and whispered in her ear.
“That’s okay, my friend,” she breathed, “because I believe in you.”
But all that came out was a whistling wind.
By Evan Montgomery
DEAR CO-WORKERS,
I am writing this letter to inform you that for the foreseeable future I will not have legs. I know this may come as a shock to many of you, as it has for me too. It’s hard to think that Just the other night we were on the couch watching Mr. Poppers Penguins while eating a bowl of popcorn seasoned with garlic salt… it was just the way they liked it. And now they are gone. To make matters worse they took my favorite pair of pants with them. Oh, how I will miss the way my Levi’s perfectly swaddled my legs. In another bout of misfortune my phone and wallet were in those pants. I know what you all are thinking. “Can’t you just use find my iPhone to track them down?”. While my legs might not be rocket scientists, they aren’t dumb either. They swapped the SIM card.
In a way, this isn’t as bad as my divorce because I don’t have to give them half of my fortune when they leave. But I guess that’s just good ol’ glass half full Jeff talking. You all know I always like to put a positive spin on things, but if I’m being honest with you all, these past few days without my legs have been tough for me. Everyone is telling me that if my legs didn’t want me then that’s their loss, but I can’t help but to miss them even just a little bit. They have been with me through thick and thin. Skinny and slim. Blue and lighter blue. I didn’t just lose my legs; I lost my friends. And even worse, I now have no use for the copious amount of underwear stored in the airplane hangar I call my closet.
As for how I will go about working without my legs, it should be business as usual seeing as I sit at a desk all day. Please keep in mind that it is still a very sensitive topic for me, and I will cry at work most days in the coming months. I have always treated you all with the utmost respect and I expect you to reciprocate that for me in these trying times.
Best wishes,
Jeff Bezos
Founder, CEO, & Fearless Leader
Amazon Inc.
Phone: 911 | Email: nolegbezos@amazon.com | Amazon.com
By Vivian Qiu
RODNEY WAS MINDING his own business. He had decided that there was nothing more he wanted at that very moment than to wander about the room and take a break. Experts did say that getting 10,000 steps daily was beneficial to one’s health, and as his wife had been concerned about his cholesterol intake, he figured this would be the perfect excuse to get himself away from said wife, and out and about instead. He had exited his place, and made his way down some wide pathways when he heard laughter and chatter in a nearby store. Curious, he slipped through the gap in the door, and found himself in a brightly lit room.
Four figures sat on chairs, facing an audience. They were talking, tennis ball of conversation bouncing between them, and the listeners were laughing in response, keeping score. Rodney wanted to hear better (he lost the better part of his hearing in the war, years back), and inched forward, crouching down to avoid being seen by others in case they’d kick him out of what was clearly, a ticketed affair. Next thing he knew he was right next to one of the speakers. It was a miracle he hadn’t been spotted yet. He was getting tired, well over 10,000 steps at this point, so he found a smooth surface to rest on.
Taking the moment to rest, he could finally see clearly the four speakers. The man currently talking was dressed sharply, in a three-piece gray suit, with his hair slicked back and tidy. Rodney could appreciate that this man was handsome, and was just becoming engrossed in his story about vampires when he slipped off his seat and fell down and sideways.
He didn’t have time to catch himself, but also didn’t thud onto a hard floor the way he expected. Instead, he found himself falling into a deep, red, liquid. Upon impact, he started flailing about, bashing his arms and inadvertently swallowing down mouthfuls. He felt woozy - the liquid wasn’t the water he was used to but something more potent. It smelt floral and tasted ripe and sour. His mind raced from panic to pleasure, while he heard shouts echo around him.
“There’s a fly in my wine!”
He was drunk, he was slipping, he was losing it, when a lady he swore was Nanny McPhee snapped a large green leaf off a plant and reached into the glass to scoop him out. He was saved, he was drunk, and now on the way home to his wife Marianne. He was never leaving his house again.
By Joey Rupcich
ONCE UPON A TIME there lived a college Freshman by the name of Paul. As was customary for one precariously perched on the precipice betwixt adolescence and adulthood, Paul sought nothing more than to plunge himself wholly in his scholarly pursuit and drink deeply from the fountain of knowledge which the Lord hath shown to him. That was but a jest, he wanted to fucking bash some gash, slay some cooter, and just generally engage in a lot of absolute poon plowing.
“Veni, Vidi, Vici”-(Julius Caesar 47 BCE)
“I saw, I came, I conquered
Or should I say, I saw I conquered, I came” (Pitbull ft. John Ryan 0:48)
Yet UW Sheboygan was not the land of milk and titty which the Lord hath promised to Paul. Rather, Paul foundith himself involuntarily celebate as the fair maidens of yonder province Sheboygan detested the titles of “slam piece” or “thicc bitch.” Night after night at thy respectable tavern Applebees, Paul attempted to woo the fair princesses, but none showered him with a token of adoration such as a handkerchief scented with their perfume, or a feet pic. His heartfelt sonnetts, both petrarchan and pick-up artisan, fell upon silent ears. Post hence, Paul braved the rancid wasteland of Tinder, yet despite his most sincere attempts at courtship and only choosing portraits of himself which showed off his totally tight bod, he never succeeded in finding the Isolde to his Tristan, the Francesca to his Paolo, the Pam to his Jim. Noble knights verily doth find themselves in last place.
“The LORD is my shepherd, I shall not be in want. He makes me lie down in green pastures, he leads me beside quiet waters, he restores my soul” (Psalm 23)
“I keep on hoping there’ll be cake by the ocean” (DNCE 0:52)
Post hence, Paul found himself many a cold and weary fortnite by his lonesome, offering praise to God in his indulgences in the pleasures of the flesh, aboluting beating the fuck out of his meat daily. Each daybreak before the cock crows, Paul denied himself 3 times, often in consultation with the illuminated manuscripts of the Milf tag on Pornhub. After each divine revelation of God given grace Paul received by his own doing, Paul would proceed to cleanse himself with an extra towel he kept especially for this sacred purpose. After one especially sacred communion with the Kingdom of Heaven involving a sacred herb, Paul looked upon his towel to find his seed hath taken form in the shape of Jesus calling out to him. Awestruck, Paul feared with great fear as the brightness of God shone round about him.
Then the cumstain said to him “Fear not, for behold, I bring you good tidings of great joy. For this day I’m granting thy deepest desires in reward for thine fervent and tireless devotion” And verily within an instant the crispy, unwashed towel transformed in a bodacious babe with a rocking set of honkers and a massive can. For God so loved Paul that He gave Paul a totally hot woman with insane bazoombas, so that he who believes in Him may have an eternal big titty gf. Taking her in his embrace, Paul placed his bride upon his noble steed, and together they rode off in his 1999 Honda Accord to the nearest constabulary in Sheboygan to officiate their entwinement. As a sign of his new covenant with God, Paul changed his name to Tex, or at least he tried to get people to call him that because it sounded cool but you can’t really force a nickname. From thence doth end the tale of Paul the Chaste, and hence begin the tale of Tex and his betrothed Crustine Daaé. Thine moral: Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for pussy, for theirs is the pussy of God.
“Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. It is not rude, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs. Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth. It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres. Love never fails” (Corinthians 1 13:3-8)
“Taste and see the goodness of the Lord”-Traditional hymnal
“If you're horny lets do it, ride it, my pony
My saddle's waiting, come and jump on it”-(Ginuwine 1:15)
By Cassidy Jackson
IT'S 11:30PM ON THE FIRST WARM DAY. You know, the day when all the dogs come out for the first time since that last warm day back in November. I spent that last day (the one in November) ungrateful for the sun, holed up in the library, bent over my computer screen. But not today. I spent today pretending I had nothing to do but lay in the grass and look past branches towards the clouds in the sky. And in a way I had nothing to do, at the very least nothing better to do.
The world felt a thousand percent more alive today than it has in months. On the walk from my winter home to my patch of grass, the breeze was decorated by voices of people who’d been locked away for too long. Their jokes and laughs twinkled through the air like little jewels, making the sun seem to shine a little brighter. (Disgustingly wholesome and somehow still true...) When I got to my patch of grass I laid a blanket down and claimed it as my brand-new-very-open-concept-studio-apartment-where-I-will-live-while-I-figure-this-whole-thing-out-or-at-least-until-the-sun-stops-shining. (“This whole thing” being life in my twenties). Despite the crushingly pressing business of Figuring It Out, I couldn’t help but smile the sort of smile that opens you up and lets the sunshine hit your insides. I wanted to be warm from the punching bag at the back of my throat, all the way through my big intestine, and right down to underneath my big-toenails.
That kind of smile makes you feel like you’re blossoming, stretching out to either side so wide you split right down the middle. There I was, laying on my patch of grass, guts out for the world to see. Not in a gross way, just in a big-wide-open “Hello World! I’ve missed you!” kind of way. And oh boy, world, I had missed you.
It was a painfully long, cold, and snowless winter. I think there’s just about nothing as fucked up as a snowless winter. Snow is the only thing that reminds me that I’m alive when it’s 20 degrees and grey in a concrete city with wind that sounds a whole lot like police sirens. The sun broke through first, about a month ago, the first inkling that it might be done soon. And after that came the daffodils. All the sudden, pricks of green in the flower beds that become breeding grounds for nothing more than tossed Big Gulps and cigarette butts from November through March. I’m not sure there is anything more beautiful than the bud of a daffodil when the ground is still chilled but the sun has started to shine. It sits poised on the verge of Becoming when no other living thing has mustered the courage of hope for spring. And then, one day, when the first warm day has finally been thrust upon us, we look around and notice that the daffodils are fully bloomed and have been for days. That even when we were too cold to notice, the daffodils predicted spring.
So I spent the first warm day like the daffodils, predicting spring, for the world and perhaps for me too. With my face turned towards the sun, I layed in the grass and let the day pass. I photosynthesize sunshine, dog walks, and jokes between friends on my way towards a Becoming of my own. When the sun started to set and the earth began to cool again I gathered up my guts and my blanket and began to head inside again.
It's 11:30pm on the first warm day. My bones hold the heat of the sun and send it inside, out. I wonder if this is what it feels like to glow, to grow from the light of the sun. I crack open the window of my winter home to make the air in this room feel alive. Outside, I can hear the cracks of skateboarders reveling in a comfortable cool. Far away, Manhattan hums, somehow quieter than it’s been in months. The park on my block is still full of little kids, bed time pushed back in favor of extending this perfect day. They howl at the full moon. They are celebrating.
