Tag: story

Imitators

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by Chey Dugan

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I was admiring the aristocratic Grande Dame portrait on a Tuesday afternoon; a day when the Abruzzo Museum of Art History is hauntingly inactive and I’m free from the perturbed looks I get from the usual late-week crowd. I’m reluctant to admit, but somewhere along my embryonic development my Pavlovian wires got crossed and because of these ritual Tuesdays, I could just exist in my oddity. I would thank myself at the end of the week for getting this out of my system.

I was deep within myself and sure I was alone until you interrupted and said, I like what you’re doing with your face.

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Ten Years (and why I still talk about Nico di Angelo all the time)

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by Daisy Solace

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It’s 2013. I’m 11, living in Saudi Arabia, and anticipating House of Hades’s release with bated breath, counting down the days. It’s all I talk about, my best friend is getting sick of me. I’m insufferable, and I like it. I haven’t been into Percy Jackson for very long — just about a month by this point, but it’s found its space in my head and settled there.

As a kid who had always felt ALONEALONEALONEalonealonealone, it’s nice to read about a boy who’d changed schools so much that he has no friends, except for the one whose job it is to protect him. It’s nice to read about a boy who knows the truth: that the best people have the rottenest luck. It’s nice to read about a boy who, despite this, fights. After rows upon rows of pleasant protagonists, there’s a certain level of solace (pun intended) in Percy Jackson. He’s not easy. He’s not agreeable. He’s angry, rowdy, and, as Percy would come to say in the musical, impertinent. As a fellow impertinent child, I’m delighted.

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The Real Willy Wonka

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by Blaire Baron

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It is still dark and the early morning cacophony has yet to greet the day. The others have already left and Washington knows they aren’t waiting for him, not this time. With no Mum to wake him, he’s getting better at finding his clothes in the dark. Washington scoops up a sticky ball of yesterday’s ugali and pops it in his mouth before rushing out of the ramshackle maze. He zig-zags past sleeping mothers and babes. Everything here is laid bare, there are no doors and there’s nothing here to steal.

Some might call it a labor camp but to Washington, it’s home. Out of the maze now, he runs toward the line of humming shadows holding machetes. Washington grins up at one of his uncles.

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Seed

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by Kylie Wang

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Boom.

The creatures in the underbrush scattered as another tree fell, her arms cracking when she hit the ground. The giant had stood tall and proud despite— or rather because of— her age, with her leaf-crowned head facing up to drink in the sunlight, but that didn’t change the way she keeled over and collided with the forest floor: heavy, like a vault door slammed shut.

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Schroon Lake

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by Bill Foley

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Dale stood frozen in the parking lot of the Essex Nursing Home like a decorative plant. Where am I? He felt the strong grip of a hand on his elbow leading him back inside.

“Come on, Mr. Malone. It’s time for Bingo in the recreation room,” the attendant said.

Dale tried to resist but the man holding his arm would not be deterred.

“I want to go home. I have to feed my dog, Teddy.”

“This is your home Mr. Malone. You don’t have a dog.”

“No one’s home. I gotta feed him.”

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