Xue Ch'en: Part One

By Jem Morgenstern

Although the voices were gentle, they startled Xue, and woke him with a jolt. He slowly became aware of his surroundings: a slight chill, quiet chattering, an uncomfortable metal surface. A pulsating headache. He still hadn’t opened his eyes, knowing the he had been captured and worrying that his captors might be waiting for him to awaken to torture him. Xue realized he hadn’t been hiding his awareness very well and attempted to calm his body before anybody could notice, but it was too late.

“We’ve waited too long. Look at the scanner,” the voice was feminine and sweet.

“We’ll just have to give another dose of sedatives and wait a few minutes. It’s fine,” this voice was also feminine, but deeper and monotonous.

The sweet one replied, “we’re running low. Do we have some in the box?”

“No, but I know we have some more down in the supply room. When we’re done with this, I’ll go get some.”

Xue heard the click of buttons and then a whispery release of air. He could feel a mist fill the room and he began to drift away again. The headache faded. The voices grew distant and low. Becoming less and less aware of his surroundings, every sense weakening. His brain tripped over thoughts and became unable to form new ones. Xue could no longer contemplate the situation and he soon fell back into a deep sleep.

A drop of rain woke Xue from his deep sleep. He was kneeling - thighs not quite reaching his calves - and leaning forward, held up by his wrists tied to a tall wooden pole behind him. A dark-haired man was crouching next to him. He was mostly dressed in black and grey, the only exception being the thin bright-yellow frame of his glasses. His eyes were the same green as the meat of pistachios. Xue craned his neck to get a better look at him, he hadn’t seemed to notice Xue had awakened until then. His eyes flashed with surprise. Their eyes met and they both paused.

He reached back and took a knife from his pocket, then brought it to the ropes holding Xue to the pole and began rubbing its blade against against the strands. Before he cut through, he stopped and pulled the knife back.

“You may not run away, walk away, touch me, or harm me. You will follow me, until I instruct you to do differently. If you ignore this and do any of what I have just specifically asked you not to do, there will be consequences, and you would not like those consequences”, his voice was deep and sounded as if he had just recovered from a sore throat.

At first, Xue was at a lost. It took him several seconds to think it over and reply, “Why? What is this? Where am I? Please, I need to know.”

“This is what you signed up for, Ch’en. Further explanation can wait”, he took the knife back to the rope and continued cutting.

“Please, tell me where I am.”

He glanced upwards at Xue, ignored his words, and looked back at the ropes. He cut him loose, took his hand, and helped him to his feet. They stood in an a small cylindrical stone building, dead leaves covered the floor, the roof had deteriorated enough for the outside weather to penetrate the building. The doorway was arched and pointed at the top. The man settled his knife back in his pocket.

“My name is Paul Ellery, I am your Pathfinder and Representative Councilor. You are not the only Cast Member under my supervision, so do not expect me to always have time for you. Welcome to The Ring.”

The Ring - with its vast walls stretching across the horizon and towering over the sky - was built by the morose and savage Nameless Necrosian Nobility. Contained within, is a synthetic collection of our world’s most dangerous landscapes. It was first built to serve as a destination for thrill-seeking tourists, who would climb the rocky cliffs, walk for days in the barren desert, and flee from fierce predators. Seeing that The Ring itself was not overtly grim, many people questioned the motives of the NNN. The Ring stood and served its original purpose for twenty years before the NNN publicly announced its true purpose, in a way that was grimly satisfying for the rest of the world. All those inside at the time were left there to survive or rot away and their struggles were broadcast for the world to see. After a year, those remaining in The Ring were each given a list of challenges they would have to complete in order to be released back into the real world. Since then, those in the ring have been referred to as Cast Members and are heavily marketed to the public, as if they are contestants on a gameshow. After the first Cast Members had either died or completed their lists, recruitment has mostly been voluntary. With each Cast Member who completes their list, the NNN adds a new component to The Ring that makes it more difficult for future Cast Members to complete their own lists, which has since progressively made it nearly impossible for Cast Members to survive long enough for them to complete their lists. Because of this, The Ring is now mostly filled with people who already wish to die. Xue Ch’en is not one of these people. He did not volunteer to enter The Ring.

Conceptual Piece Three

By Late Night Writings

Move again, reinvent again, become again, be again, begin again. Time passes so quickly. I feel like I only spend minutes here and there, before leaving again to start my life somewhere new. Even with all the time I have, I still achieve nothing. I have infinity, but I still feel like there’s not enough time for me to get anything done. There are things I’ve wanted to do for hundreds of years and I still haven’t done them. I don’t have a good excuse for why I haven’t. I never have had a good excuse and I never will have one. Thousands of years from now, I will still not be doing what I want to and I still won’t have an excuse for why I haven’t. That’s just how I am and it’s how I always will be. Truly forever, I will be lazy and inadequate. I haven’t explored the world. I haven’t gained an expansive knowledge of all things. I haven’t learned to play every instrument or even one. I have lived hundreds of lifetimes and I have not done anything that is worthy of even one.

Isaac Day, Infinitus Denizen 108, the one and only young of the immortals, aged to just 23 years; inaugurated to The Society of the Infinite in 1403 under the Oath of the Commoner.

Will

By Jem Morgenstern

Will

She's so stupid. She's so fucking stupid. I'm disgusted. I really am. None of it's valid. Single mothers are in completely different situations. They have nothing to do with gay parents. She's completely biased against women because that's what her religion has told her is right and it's disgusting. She didn't even bother arguing against male gay parents. I'm sure somebody would have brought it up, if she hadn't wasted the entire half hour bashing women raising children together. Kids don't need a man to lead them. Women can be leaders. That's something that she talks about all the time. She's so active, when it comes to women's rights. How could she not trust women to raise children? Her argument is so full of holes and contradictions. She's just trying so hard to find things to backup her shitty views on gay couples. I'm so fucking pissed. She...

Michael

She's stupid, I know, you've said. She is so fucking stupid. We're still in the South.We're in fucking Texas. You're in Texas, you can't really expect much.

Will

I'm disappointed. I thought she...

Michael

She's not different. She's nice, but she's not different. She's just as bad. It's disappointing, I know, you've said that. You've said just about everything you can about this and every similar thing to have ever happened before. I know how you feel. I feel the same way, but you have to understand that it just is that way.

Will

It needs to...

Michael

Yeah, it needs to change, I know, Will, we talk about this all the time. You say the same things. I know. I want it as badly as you do. I want it to be normal. I want to talk about love without lying about who I want to love or who I do love, Will. It will change. Maybe not soon, but it will.

Will

We need to leave. I don't want to be here. I can't stand it. I really can't.

Michael

We can't leave yet. In a few more years, we will. We will, Will.

Will

We Michael, Michael.

Michael

Yep, as soon as we can.

Afternoons at Jackery Lake

By Jem Morgenstern

I would watch them from beneath the water, as they rode by in their little row boat. The paddles gently sunk into the once-still surface of my lake and pushed them along the surface. They were the only ones to have come by in years, so I always knew it was them. I became familiar with their voices. The bigger one, who steered the boat most of the time, had a deep humming voice that was comforting and warm. The smaller one spoke so softly, as if always whispering. They looked at each other with admiration and sincerity. They spoke to each other as themselves, instead of fabrications displayed to impress the world. They were so entwined in each other that they never noticed me; not even when I swam so near that I could reach them. Their love was so infectious, seeing them together made me feel as though life could never be more pleasant or hopeful. I never became jealous. I would only hope for their love to continue for as long as it could. For a short time, I had even considered granting them an infinity to share together, and hoped that in all that time, they would still come to float across my lake, talk, and laugh.

I had always been taught to expect the worst. In my own experiences, through centuries of history, I had never been given a reason for why I shouldn't. When the novelty of their perfect romance had worn off, I solemnly began the wait to see hearts broken, lovers murdered by a disapproving mob, or any sort of pain to arise from their love. That day never came. Years passed. Their visits to my lake continued. More years passed. Their visits became less frequent. The lovers were aging. More years passed. Their visits were only once a month. Their love still as present as ever. Still as infectious. Still as pleasant and joyous. Seeing them together still brought me so much happiness. The time came when their visits did come to an end and I knew what their absence implied. I wished them well in death and would remain eternally in debt to the love that graced Jackery Lake and proved to me that good does come and bad does not always follow.

Aquanauts

By Leiani Brown

“Can I ask you a question?”
 Jared's fingers played tug-of-war beneath the ledge protruding from the pew in front of him. He stared down at his shoes, fidgeting uncomfortably. His soft, messy hair seemed to be the only part of him that survived this grownup version of dress-up: his legs were covered in slightly wrinkled slacks, his neck strangled by the discomfort of a paisley tie he'd bought only two days prior. 
 A total of sixteen people were there. He, his mom, the preacher whose name he never learned but would always remember for his lisp, the little girl who walked up and down the aisles with her rose-colored face and white-yellow curls, and his grandfather, whose limp body looked like the morticians had molded out of wax and stuffed in life-sized doll's clothes—these were the only people Jared would remember. 

"Can I ask you a question?"

His ears felt plugged and kept ringing at the same frequency as his persisting headache. The preacher's mouth was moving. Presumably he was saying something holy, consoling the congregation about Jared's grandfather and some bullshit ascent to a "happier" place. But Jared couldn't think of a time when he'd seen his grandfather happy.

He could remember the first time he met his grandfather, mostly because it was the day he moved in, but also because it was only a year and a half ago, three days after Jared's sixteenth birthday.
 “Your grandfather is coming to live with us. He'll be here in a couple of hours, so clean up,” his mother had said, abruptly turning off the TV show he and his sister had been watching—the word “grandfather” as foreign to her tongue as it was to her kids' ears.  
 “Well, where's he gonna sleep?”
 Ella, nineteen at the time, and sensible beyond her years, always asked the practical questions. Their mother could've said all the mannequins from town had suddenly come to life and were pillaging houses and eating babies, and Ella would've asked, without a moment's hesitation, which mall they had come from and whether or not the parents had baby monitors. 
 Turns out their grandfather didn't even need a bed. He rarely slept, and when he did it was seated in an old recliner in front of the TV, the light of muted infomercials lullabying his tired eyes shut. Jared had never talked to him much, mostly because he didn't know what to say. 
 “Jared,” his grandfather would sometimes say, quietly. 
 “Uh, yeah?”
 Then he'd move his arms or jerk his head, silently signaling Jared to either grab the remote or give him the newspaper.
 Now as he stared at his grandfather's makeup-smothered, waxen face and lifeless limbs, propped up by cream-colored cushions and surrounded by bouquets of flowers, Jared wondered why he had understood the man's wordless talking as though it was a language he'd learned long ago.
A nudge from his mother seated next to him pulled Jared from his thoughts. Pallbearers were shuffling toward the casket, and Jared quickly, clumsily stood up to join them. As they carried his grandfather out the side door, he stared down at his thumb, which stuck out awkwardly from its position on the handle.

Music played as the procession followed. But everything seemed muted, as if Jared was hearing it from far away, underwater. 
 “Can I ask you a question?”
 Jared played out the scenario in his head as they made the ten-minute walk to the cemetery, imagining his sister's look of innocent ignorance. He knew he should still be thinking of his grandfather, or his mom; it was a funeral, after all, and isn't that the decent thing to do? But he couldn't stop picturing his sister's face, wondering what she'd say. Wondering what he would do to keep the contempt from crawling up his throat when the time came. Wondering if she'd brush aside the seriousness of his tone, the heaviness of his looming inquiry, as she so often did. 
 It was only two months since he had last spoken with his sister. They'd been at the bus stop, the only one in town. He had sulked even then, quietly hoping the bus driver was feeling rebellious or had developed Alzheimer's and lost his keys. Quietly hoping he'd never see those big grey wheels stumble up the hill, pumping its black exhaust without remorse into the surrounding blue. 
 “Did I remember to grab my glasses?”
 “They're in there,” he had replied, irritated. 
 Ella had worn her blue sweater, the wool one with holes and fraying edges. Jared knew it was her favorite, but right then he wished she hadn't worn it. Mostly because it reminded him of the night a month before, when he had woken up screaming (again) and found her in his bed, arms wrapped around his bare chest—wearing the sweater, soaked in rainwater, and squeezing him as though she feared he might fade. 
 Normally on the bad nights she would shake him until he came to himself, then tell him everything was fine in her soft, knowing tone. But that night, Jared remembered, was the first time she'd had no words. She had situated herself behind him, folded her arms around his shoulders, crossed over his chest, and buried her face in his neck. She had rocked him slightly, tiny sobs escaping her muffled mouth, and hugged his rough, sweaty neck. And Jared had, once the lucidity of his night terror faded, heard the rain slamming against their bedroom window, and almost asked her why she'd been outside. But he couldn't bring himself to speak.    
 Later Jared would learn, through piecing bits of information together, that she had just come from her boyfriend Michael's house, where they'd argued about the future and plans and decided to end it because, in Ella's words, "long distance relationships are setups for breakups." But Jared knew his sister—always two steps ahead of her own feet—and, walking home in the rain, she must've already known she would leave. 

The graveside service ended (and with it Jared's nagging guilt for not paying attention), forcing him back into the role of mournful grandson and grateful neighbor as strangers blundered through their mandatory condolences. He shuffled home with his mother attached to his arm, her body weightless and empty. They stumbled inside the house. Jared stood, immobilized. He walked out of the kitchen and down the hallway to his room. He looked over to the side of the room where his sister’s mattress lay shoved into the corner—dusty and untouched—grabbed his dirty pillow, then threw himself onto her bed. But did not sleep. 

Hours went by and Jared didn't move. Just stayed in bed, staring at the wall. 
 “You know you can’t do this. You can’t just lie in bed waiting for everything to be okay.”
 He heard his thoughts in Ella’s sensible tone, and he knew she was right, but he couldn't bring himself to move.

“Hey.”

His mother was standing at the door. She turned on the lights, and Jared groaned, shielding his eyes in protest. He must have dozed off; he couldn’t see any other way it could’ve gotten so dark outside without him realizing it.

“We need milk.” 

“So why don’t you go get it yourself?” Jared mumbled inaudibly into his wrist. 

“What?”

“Nothing. I’ll leave in a minute.”

“Okay. I’ll leave the keys on the counter.”

“No… I’ll just ride my bike.”

“Are you sure? It’s dark out,” he imagined his mother saying. But she hadn’t expressed concern in his well-being since before he cared to remember. It wasn’t that she didn’t care about him, she just didn’t know how—at least that’s what Ella had always told him. 

Their mother had suffered from severe depression since before either of them was born. It worsened when Jared came along, and, out of necessity, Ella quickly learned the sporadic patterns and reasonless currents that colored their mother's moods. She was the expert of the depression that sometimes manifested itself as anxiety or sometimes a pile of pitiful tears or sometimes an immobilized empty bottle, or whatever shape was its present obsession. And she tried her best to shelter her younger brother, to give him as normal a childhood as she could, but some things she just couldn't prevent. 

Jared slammed the door, immediately hit with a wave of cool night air. He zipped up his thin grey jacket and pulled his rusty bike from its designated spot in front of the house. The metal was cold, the semi-ripped seat of his eleven year-old bike slightly itchy. He pedaled fast, wind whipping at his face, rousing his sleep-crusted features. The local grocery store was only a few blocks from their house. He took the long route, the one he and Ella had walked, rode, and drove down on countless occasions.
When he reached the store, he stopped in front of the sliding doors, the lights from inside illuminating the darkness of the night. A few people meandered to their cars in the small parking lot decorated by stray carts and displaced empty grocery bags. Jared stopped, halfway on his bike still, but standing on the asphalt just before the curb. He watched a little girl through the giant store windows, tugging at her mother's shirt, mouth moving in the shape of whining. 

“Can I ask you a question?”

The bus stop was a fifteen minute ride from here. Jared knew the way. He rubbed his fingers against the crisp five dollar bill in his jacket pocket.

He thought of his mother, who was currently lying in bed, waiting for a gallon of milk or maybe a reason to live. 

He thought of his grandfather, not as the silent, solemn stranger he had been, but more so as the big, goofy golden retriever six year-old Jared had found and named Chet. Their friendship had lasted a day and when the dog died, his sister had taken his arm and explained that things and places and dogs and even people get old sometimes and death is just what happens. 

He thought of his mother, how she had stayed locked in her room for days after Ella left. How he hadn’t seen her smile. How when he was younger he had wondered if some people just didn’t have the muscles to do so.
 He thought of his sister, and wondered why she hadn’t explained that things and places and dogs and even people sometimes are too weak to take life's incessant beatings and die inside before their bodies finally give up the fight. 

“Can I ask you a question?”

Jared crumpled the money in his pocket and hopped back onto his bike. He pedaled as fast and as hard as he could in the opposite direction. In just under ten minutes he could see the bus stop in view, and within twenty he had stacked his bike on the front of bus and climbed the stairs to a seat in the back corner. 

“It’s only three hours away, really,” he heard Ella’s words in his mind. “I’ll be able to visit a lot.” She had repeated the sentiment over and over in the weeks before she left, as if trying to convince herself she would. But they had both known she wouldn’t. She would find something to keep herself busy, she always had. And Jared knew that a three-hour trip to the disconnected, slightly less exciting version of hell that she had grown up in was not something even Ella would make the time to do just out of the blue. 

The ride was quicker than Jared had imagined. He drifted in and out of sleeplessness, his head against the window. He knew he had reached his destination when he could feel the lights of the restless city seeping through his lightly shut eyelids. He followed the directions on the GPS on his phone to the address Ella had texted him a week after she moved away. 

Their apartment was dumpy, like most things in that part of the city. Jared approached her door, the painted 6061 positioned slightly off-center and peeling. 

“Can I ask you a question?” He closed the map on his phone and shoved it into his jean pocket. Quickly, quietly he rapped his knuckles on the door.

Minutes passed, and he wondered whether he’d gotten the right address. At last the sound of shuffling and unlocking spiked his heart rate, and he shifted in anticipation.

The door opened, revealing a groggy-eyed Ella, and Jared cursed silently for not thinking of the time; it was almost one in the morning. 

“I’m sorry,” he began to mumble. 

“Jared, oh my god, what are you doing here?”

His body went numb. His chest felt heavy, the way it did when he awoke some mornings, as though someone was weighing it down, daring him to breathe. “I’m sorry, I don’t know what I was thinking, I just wanted to… I’m sorry I’ll just go—”

“No, don’t be ridiculous. Come inside! I just wasn’t expecting you, did you call?”

He followed her, mumbling answers to her confusion barely loud enough to hear. She led him to a spot on the couch, and he sank into its folds gratefully. 

“Is everything okay?”

“Yeah, yeah. Everything’s fine.”

She sat in a chair opposite him, looking concerned, but not as confused as Jared imagined most people would be had he shown up on their doorstep at one in the morning. His sister had always been the sensible one, even when nothing made sense.

“How’s mom?”

“Fine.”

“Were you guys able to figure everything out with grandpa and the funeral okay?”

“Yeah,” Jared's mind was buzzing. He could’ve sworn his mother had told her when it was. It wasn’t like Ella to be forgetful. His thoughts kept spinning, but it was like someone shut off the power in his tongue. Like someone had sped up time to fast forward, leaving his vocal cords with no power to make any of the sounds his mind had wrestled with  for the past 48 hours.
 “That's good…”

Whatever words came next came out muddled and fuzzy; Jared could hear nothing but the sound of his own heavy breathing.

Her phone went off, and she excused herself from the room. When she returned it was to say that Michael was working the night shift at the hospital and forgotten his badge at home.

“I’ll just go drop it off, it’s like a five minute drive. You wait here. You look exhausted, you should get some rest,” she said as she hurriedly grabbed a sweater and car keys.

The door shut behind her with a gentle thud, and Jared stared at the space where his sister had been just moments before.

“Why didn’t you come?” he whispered to himself.  

Wilfred

By Jem Morgenstern

Janette

Wilfred is the one good thing that’s come from me. I haven’t given charitably, I haven’t helped one person selflessly, and I have never swerved or hit the brakes for a dog in the road. No, sir, I just keep driving; if they don’t get out of my way, they are going under my tires. I’ve hit too many dogs for me to count, just with the car I have now and it’s brand new. Wilfred is the one good thing that’s come from me and all I did was give birth to him. I didn’t treat him nicely, I didn’t teach him good manners, I didn’t make him a good kid; all I did was give birth to him and I hardly struggled with that one bit. The nurses there said it was the easiest birth they had ever assisted. I was only in labor for one hour: took half an hour to get to the hospital, took ten minutes to find parking, took ten more minutes to get into the room, took five minutes to get me all adjusted, then it just took him five minutes to pop out of me like a cannonball. I didn’t feel one thing when he flopped out of me; I just sat there heaving and pushing for five more minutes, until I finally caught  one of the nurses was saying, ‘Stop! You’re done! You’re done! The baby’s out! If you don’t stop pushing, you could shit all over the place’ and what happened? I shit all over the place. I looked over to the nurse and she had this face on with a frown and a sigh. That nurse had been through this too many times and she was sick of it. After it was all done, my first instinct was to just get out of the bed and walk out of the hospital. I didn’t even think about the baby. I sat up and started scooting myself off the bed and the nurses weren’t paying much attention to me, so I could have gotten myself out of there with no problem, but I started feeling all woozy and I decided it would be best to lie down for a bit. I fell asleep. Next thing I remember is the nurses waking me up to show me my baby. I kept saying, ‘No, I want to sleep’ and I slapped their hands away, but they kept insisting that I needed to wake up and hold my damn baby. I sat up, took a glance at my baby and said to them, ‘yeah, that’s great. That’s my baby, thanks.’ The nurses all rolled their eyes at me and told me to hold my damn baby. I took him in my arms and the nurse - the one who told me not to shit all over - asked me what I wanted to name it. Her voice was all monotonous and you could tell she had a long day.

Dr. Eve

Continue, what did you choose to name your baby?

Janette

You know very well what I chose to name my baby, I’ve told this story a thousand times. The only name I could think of was Wilfred because that’s the name of the dog I had when I was little and I don’t know why I was thinking of him, but I was, so I said ‘Wilfred’. The nurse asked me, ‘is that spelled with an i or an e?’ At that moment, I couldn’t believe her. Who would ever spell Wilfred with an i? I thought about that for years after that, but then I met another kid named Wilfred and he did spell it with an i. Anyway, then, after all those boring hospital procedures and formalities, I took my baby home.

Dr. Eve

Tell me about Wilfred. Why did he leave?

Janette

His father wasn’t going to be raising a fag in his house, so he kicked him out.

Dr. Eve

Have you been able to contact him since he left? When did he leave?

Janette

No, I haven’t heard from him since. He was only about thirteen, so a little more than ten years ago, I think. You know, from a very young age I should’ve known he was gay. On special occasions, we would go with his grandma to this jungle themed restaurant that had all these fancy decorations, people dressed up as jungle animals, and some chiseled high-divers in speedos. Wilfred would always want to go watch the divers. I’d always be talking about crushes I had on celebrities like Keith Urban and Toby Keith and Wilfred would say to me ‘those boys are ugly. Why don’t you like cute boys like Duncan Sheik or Gavin Rossdale?’ That kid knew what he was talking about. He always did. I should have known that it was coming. When he told me and his father that he was gay, I didn’t really care. I was fine with it. I didn’t care what he did, as long as it didn’t cause any trouble for me. His dad, on the other hand, did care. His dad was furious. He told Wilfred to leave the house. I didn’t do anything about it. Wilfred left and I didn’t say anything to him. I watched him pause at the door and stare at the knob for a good while. He was thinking. He knew that he would never be coming back, if he left. He knew that he could be hurt bad, if he stayed. He left. He didn’t have anything to stay for. I didn’t give him anything to stay for.

Dr. Eve

Would you like to see him again?

Janette

More than anything.

Conceptual Piece Two

By Late Night Writings

Light echoed off the walls of the dimly lit cave, shadows hid in the crevices between the rocks. Complete silence, not even the beating ring that comes with the lack of noise. No movement but the lights creeping forward to the entrance of the cave. There was a lingering sense that too much time had passed. Each minute that passed seemed like only seconds; each one wasted. Then, a footstep rustled the dirt, and another. As they drew nearer, time’s pace quickened and returned to its regular flow. Sound returned, but it was still quiet. A shadow crept up the wall of the cave and grew with each step. The light inched out of the cave, it was bright and made it difficult to see in. A figure now stood at the cave’s mouth, made into a silhouette by the blinding light. It said nothing and did nothing but stand and look outwards. Even though it couldn’t be seen, it was obvious that the figure was evaluating the situation and was thoroughly disappointed.