Flower Lady in Galway

By Madison Morin

Staircase to Asphodel

By Zoe Krueger

Rupture

By Florence Yu

Insomnia

By Avery Cox

Do tell me if tomorrow comes too soon

You know that I’ve been talking to the moon

She says she knows what’s wrong and right

But not to search

and not to fight

Just dance around as if you know the tune

Case Study 348

By Olivia Modica

Day 18,

I usually don’t sleep at night, and when I do I drift off into the nothingness and do not dream. I always chalked it up to the fact that I wasn’t creative. I had never enjoyed the arts and found myself a more scientific man. I like the facts, what is true and easy to believe in.
Three weeks ago I was told about a new insomnia sleep study at the research center two towns over. I thought, ‘what the hell? I rarely sleep as is, might as well make a couple bucks off of it.’ We were marched in here three weeks ago and told by some scientist that it would last a month. I had nothing better to do, so I took the chance. They asked us to keep a journal during our stay here, record any changes in sleeping patterns or odd behavior. Along with the journal they introduced me to the drug that would be the center of this entire study. It is said to not only aid with sleep but intensify dreams.
For the first two weeks everything was normal. It wasn’t until three nights ago that the dreams started. The first time it happened I opened my eyes prepared to see the room I had been provided during my stay but I was instead met with a dark sea of clouds. There were people all around me staring at me. Their faces were distorted and stretched as if someone was pulling their flesh in two different directions. Their mouths were gaping open, and although they were open no sound came out.
One of them was crying, but she still remained silent and unmoving. It was unnerving to me that tears were just puddling on the dirt around her shoes but she said nothing. Then I woke up. Days after I’ve had this dream I can still remember every single detail.

Day 21,

I was asleep for fifteen hours yesterday. I’ve never slept longer than five and somehow my body took it upon itself to put me out for fifteen hours! If one of the researchers hadn’t come to check on me I don’t think I ever would’ve woken up. Somehow I dreamed the entire time. Every detail is etched, no carved, into my brain. I remember the faces. Every single one. I remember the sound of my screams mixed with their screams mixed with more screams.
Some of the faces were familiar too. Perhaps my brain doesn’t have the bandwidth to create new faces and is using my fellow participants as inspiration, after all they are practically the only people I interact with. However, when I wake and I attempt to search for these people from my dreams I come up empty handed. It appears as if maybe these faces are coming from a different place. They want to evaluate my psyche and make sure I won’t become a danger to the other patients. But I’ve seen things, I know I’ve seen things. Just yesterday I saw them dragging someone away (information has been redacted for your safety and the safety of others).

Day 25,
Since my last entry I have been evaluated and they’ve put me under what is essentially house arrest. I have been stuck in this fucking room for days with nothing but the infuriatingly bright lights that sit on hour after hour blinding me. I promise I’m not crazy. I’m as perfectly sane as any person can be.

Day 27,
I haven’t slept since that day. I have been sitting, staring at the wall blindingly awake. I think I’ve stopped blinking, hell I think I’ve stopped breathing! I’ve begun to occupy myself with watching. I take in every move of every person I see. I’ve started to notice that some of them haven’t been leaving their rooms. I asked the researchers and they said that those people were part of a shorter project. I don’t believe them. I’ve seen things, I’ve seen everything. No one has left, no one is leaving. They’re all still here! (information has been redacted for your safety and the safety of others).They’re somewhere I know they are. Sometimes I hear them scream, but no one is there. There has to be someone, they have to be somewhere! I know they are, they have to be, they have to be, they have to be.

Day 31,
This morning the nurse came in and gave me the sleeping pills. They’ve said that I’ve been awake for an unhealthy amount of time. They said they just want to help me. I didn’t want to take it, I don’t want to sleep. They had to tie me down to keep me from screaming (information has been redacted for your safety and the safety of others). I tried to vomit up the sleeping pills to no avail. I’m trying to fight it, the sleep I mean. The researchers must truly want me to sleep because the screamings have stopped and no one has come to see me all day. Perhaps, if they are so insistent, I should stop fighting it. To be honest, I’m beginning to have trouble fighting sleep. Even as I write my eyes are being forced open and I can barely think................

Important Notes;
After two weeks of exposure to the drug, patient 35890 has finally become susceptible to the influence of the proposed drug dgkdjfgdfgdg (information has been redacted for your safety and the safety of others). The patient shows signs of the vivid dreams we’ve seen in action and should wake up in six to eight weeks, if at all. According to the current statistics, about 5.0% (information has been redacted for your safety and the safety of others) of patients wake up from comatose. If the patient does not wake up the protocol is provided on the next page. In addition to this, you can find documentation to provide forged death certificates on page 92 of your packets.

Receipt

By Nightshade Lily

Plastic landfill
wasteland burying
bodies and
tormenting creatures
we don’t
see at
the bottom
of oceans
too deep
for us,
but killing them

Afternoon Tea

By Annika Terry

Untitled

By Alba Medina

Utopia

By Alexis Kublin

My hand finds the button before the alarm clock even has a chance to sing out. I used to get eight hours every night, but now I keep waking up a few minutes early. No matter, I suppose. The cool shower water wakes me up, as does my morning cup of coffee. The machine hums a little louder today as the coffee drips out.
‍ ‍What about this place? you had asked me when you saw the ad in the paper after three days of the two of us saying we had to get out of there. You showed me the photo and I knew it was perfect; I would have cried right then and there but we both knew there was no time.
I put my mug in the sink and, for the first time, I notice a fleck of paint has chipped off the wall. I reach out to trace the edges of the gash, and when I pull my hand away, paint crumbles, ever so small, sleep on my fingertips. And when I walk down the hallway, a corner of the carpet, right over there by the bedroom door, has lifted up, as if waving. Or maybe smirking.
‍ ‍I’m in love with the air here, you said as we carried in the last of our boxes. We had left so much behind that we were settled in on the same day we got the key. The sweet air filled my lungs with notes of ripening berries and soil after it rains. We called each other by our new names and laughed because of how ridiculous they sounded, but our laughter stopped when we remembered how necessary they were.
‍ ‍We’ll be safe here, you had said, wrapping an arm around my shoulders and pulling me in. A fresh start. Leave everything behind us. Nothing to worry about now. And I felt the corners of my mouth tug up and I beamed so fully for the first time in a week just looking around at our house that glowed neon with hope.
But this morning, I’ve forgotten to get the newspaper from outside like I do every day before drinking my coffee. I leave the bedroom for the front stoop but stop short right before it—the front door is gone, torn right off the hinges, leaving a gaping hole I fear would suck me in if I take just one more step. The front yard is now another room but it’s much, much larger, with a bed and a dresser and a TV so enormous that they feel like monsters and for a moment I stop breathing. I feel myself falling backwards and I wait for you to catch me but I remember you left early this morning and I hit the ground and the fall knocks air back into my lungs. I quickly turn around to see the living room, except the house is different. The candies in the bowl on the coffee table are now chewy plastic. The air is suddenly hot, too hot, and I try to open a window but I can’t, it’s just a painting on the wall. And the wall is made of cardboard. Flimsy, shaking cardboard. Nothing but cardboard.
I’m in a dollhouse—all plastic and cardboard. It’s nothing stable. It’s nothing that can support us.
Then I remember you’re not here.
It’s nothing that can support me.
‍ ‍Nobody needs to know had become your motto when we suddenly realized how far away we had to
move.
I see the water stains on the ceiling before brown water begins to pour down, and I think maybe a pipe has burst or maybe it’s me who’s erupting now. I run through the hole where the doorway used to be and bend down for the newspaper because it feels like the only stable thing. My hair is soaked with pipe water and it spits onto the front page of the newspaper, blurring the photo, the one that takes up half the front page, the one that, even through the water, I can tell is of me. I scan the words but you’re nowhere to be found. And then I remember you never told me where you were going so early today. Or how I could find you. Or why you double-checked the box under the loose floorboard last night.
Looking at the inky me bleeding out over the page, I can imagine well enough the color of my own face draining out. The ceiling cracks under the panic of this storm, and I’m not sure how or when but my knees find the floor and then all of me finds the floor as the dirty pipe water runs over me and floods my face, or maybe those are tears, or maybe it’s my ink pouring out.
I know it’s only a matter of time before they find me here and you manage to escape again while my cardboard house caves in.

Hound Dog

By Violet Russell

Skin—snub velvet tightened around an Irish harp—
Every movement is weary of the next, limp dog limp.
The brook is beaten brass, the color of warm cola.
Lap it up, paw print in the mud, all four fingers
and a thumb, I left a bit of myself a ways back,
on the steamy cement, my ghost limb has memories,
denaries of rorschaching ravens savaging what little I was.
It’s quickly forgiven, the violence, the scrapping,
the plucking of soft tendon cords, there is a small blush,
a kick from the heart, something had wanted you.
Here comes a van, rubber rumbles against the road.
I’m waiting for Godot, this hounddog is shameless,
Flattened ears, hanging gray tongue, penduluming tail.
This isn’t the first time they’ve come around here,
and I can’t help myself, going back for my routine beating.
Cough up my stuffing, warm, sticky, red behind the ear.
Tonight, I’ll swallow up all that missing sawdust,
Self-cannibalizing, hopeful to turn into something new,
and leave no one seconds, like a good beggar should.