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The Quiet Lessons
The Quiet Lessons
(Willow Burruss)
(Willow Burruss)
He entered her life quietly. Not in a way she expected. It was sudden, but not dramatic and it didn’t come with any promises or certainty. Just one simple conversation that turned into something more.
“You don’t talk much in class,” he said one afternoon as they walked to their next class together.
They had all their classes together. She never noticed, but he always did.
She shrugged, “I don't really have anything to say.”
He smiled that small smile he always flashing, “I think you do. You just don’t say it out loud.”
That was the first time she felt like someone noticed her. She actually felt seen.
They started talking more after that. Sometimes at school, sometimes late at night when the rest of the world fell asleep. Their conversations weren’t always deep, but they felt important to her. He texted her one night,
“How was your day?”
“Long,” she responded.
“Want to talk about it?”
“Only if you’re not going to disappear tomorrow."
There was a pause. A certain silence.
“I’m here right now,” he said.
And that was enough for her.
She didn’t fall in love all at once. It happened slowly. For the way she waited for his messages. When she felt calmer hearing his voice. When her heart would start beating as soon as she saw him in the halls. Even getting butterflies in her stomach whenever he touched her even a little bit.
“You’re different with me,” she noted when they were on a late night facetime one night.
He laughed quietly, “That’s because you make it easy.”
She believed that meant something. She thought it meant a lot…
The first time he stopped answering, she told herself she was overthinking it. People got busy. Life happened. ‘He’s probably exhausted.’ She thought to herself.
When he finally replied days later, he said, “Sorry, I’ve just had a lot going on.”
“Oh,” she said. “It’s fine.”
But it wasn't.
Yet still, she stayed.
He came back when she started pulling away. He always did. One night he called her up and told her to come outside, and there he was sitting in his tinted out car waiting for her. She opened the door, music was low, smelled like the good cologne she remembered the first day she saw him and after they exchange their hey’s and hugs he said,
“I missed you,” after they stopped talking for a week.
“You always say that,” She replied.
“Because it’s true.”
“Then why do you leave?” She asked. Not desperate, just real.
“I don't mean to,” he said. “I just… can’t stay.”
That sentence stayed with her.
One night sitting beside him, she finally asked the question she has been trying to avoid this whole time to not get her feelings hurt.
“What are we doing?” she asked.
He looked down, “I don’t know,” he sighed, after taking a big deep breath.
Her chest tightened, “Do you want this?”
“I want you,” he confessed. “Just not the expectations.”
She shook her head. “You don’t get one without the other.”
Silence filled the space between them. After a moment she finally said,
“I think I care more than you do,” she said quietly.
“That’s not fair,” he said finally.
“No,” She replied on the verge of tears. “What’s not fair is giving me just enough to keep me hoping.”
He didn’t argue. He knew she was right.
That was when she understood. He wasn’t cruel. He wasn’t trying to hurt her. He just wasn’t meant to stay.
“I keep waiting for you to choose me,” She said as her voice cracked.
“And I keep hoping I will,” he answered.
She opened the car door, one foot out the door. She turned back one last time.
“That’s the problem,” she said. “Hope isn’t enough anymore.”
The last conversation was short. He called her the next day.
“Are you really done?” he asked over the phone.
“Yes,” she said and meant it.
“Did I mean anything to you?”
“You did,” she replied. “But it seemed like I didn’t mean anything to you, and I mean way more to myself.”
She ended the call before he could respond.
Walking away hurt more than staying ever did.
Over time, the pain slowly went away.
She stopped checking for messages that would never come.
She stopped wanting the almost parts. She stopped waiting on someone who only showed up halfway.
She learned that love should feel steady, not uncertain. That someone who belongs in your life doesn’t keep leaving.
When she thought of him later on, it wasn’t with anger. Just clarity.
Some people are meant to pass through your life, not to stay, but to teach you when to let go.
He was a lesson. Not a loss.
And this time, she didn’t look back.
A Rainy Day
A Rainy Day
(Destiny Crockett)
(Destiny Crockett)
Jane stood by the window in the living room watching as the rain fell on the glass. She turned her head to see her rain coat and boots and giggled. Jane then slipped on her rain boots and threw on her blue rain coat to go outside. The wind was light but fresh and the breeze made her smile. The rain fell and Jane ran to jump on the wet grass as it squished under feet. Jane then started walking on the sidewalk without a care in the world just enjoying the weather, then she heard a small cry coming from towards the drain in the road up ahead. It was a kitten soaked and stuck in leaves and branches from the trees. Jane then began to help the kitten by being gentle so the kitten wouldn't get scared. The kitten meowed and crawled into her hands which made her smile. All of sudden she heard a car speeding from around the corner. The tires shook and splashed the water on the wet pavement. Jane's heart began to pound hard. She clenched onto the kitten and jumped back into the grass in time before the car could hit her. A sigh of relief left Jane's lips. She then took the kitten home to warm up and herself. She made the kitten a warm glass of milk and made herself some hot coco. They sat in warm blankets in the living room by the fire and just were grateful for getting out of that situation.
A Hint of Mint
A Hint of Mint
(Emory Grate)
(Emory Grate)
It was a cold winter morning, snow was falling, the air was crisp and it just felt like a perfect December day. It reminded me of when we would run outside and just play all day until it was time for us to come back inside and drink hot chocolate to warm ourselves up. We were on our way to school when the smell hit me, that nice peaceful minty smell. The memories of going Christmas shopping with my mom when I was a kid came rushing in. The smell of the trees and the candy canes as we walked around just enjoying the time we had spent together. It brought a smile to my face, it made me feel happy and like a kid again. Then it hit me, I wasn’t a kid anymore, and I wasn’t ever going to be walking around a Christmas store without a care in the world with my mom ever again.
She was gone, my mom passed away three whole years ago. And I’m a grown man now, I’m 23 years old thinking about driving to school and going Christmas shopping with my mom all over again. I miss her dearly everyday, especially during this time of year. Christmas time was always the time I spent with my mom, but now it’s just empty and less meaningful.
Joy Ride
Joy Ride
(Ryann Diaz)
(Ryann Diaz)
The radio sputtered as the dial on the dashboard was being fidgeted with; a nervous feeling was shared through the car, “Go slow,” Danielle said, half serious and half playful. "You're going to pass it.”
Inside the small coupe were 5 people squished in, everyone knee to knee, shoulders layered on top of each other, The air was thick with sweat, cologne, cheap weed, and gas station coffee--the smell of youth. Elbows dug into ribs, but no one complained. They all leaned forward on the edge of their seats, fidgeting with anticipation. They were waiting to hear their song on the local radio, their city’s station. This felt like their big break from the noise they needed to finally gain some traction. The dial spun around too far. Static sputtered, spun back. Static again.
“Fuck,” Bruce muttered as he sat in the driver's seat, his knuckles pressed against the wheel, turning pale. The road in front of them was empty and dark, the one street light flickering showing barely any limbrance.
Then through the static srchhh, they heard it. Their upbeat baseline building up out of the noise. A rhythm they all knew by heart. It was their song The car froze.
“Th-there! That's it!” Ruben said in a tone of straight delirium.
Bruce let go of the dial and put the volume to the max and dropped the windows. The song poured in the sound cracking from how loud the bass was coming through. The city felt alive. Bruce took the car out of park and in drive and started speeding down. Danielle hopped out the sunroof, blunt lit in her hand, hair blowing back from all the wind screaming the song and laughing hysterically.
The car bursted not into flames, no, not yet, but into motion as Bruce sped faster and faster, cutting through the neighborhood. The chorus hit, and they all sang passionately, screaming it back at the radio like they were performing. Bottles clinked. In the back Ruben was rolling up and lighting it up with his hands shaking out of excitement. They felt alive. Like the night would never end. The song felt like proof that they were exactly where they needed to be.
Bruce sped faster and faster going 80 in the 25 zone. “Wee-woo wahhh wahh wee-woo!” the police sirens wailed.
“Fuuuucck” Bruce said in a nervous tone
“Go faster dipshit!” Gunner in the backseat yelled. “I got a warrant on me. I can't get arrested!”
“Yeah me too,” Hubert muttered. “They got me for assault”
Bruce listened and sighed, he let his foot touch the pedal harder speeding his car to its limits, hoping he could get away in his busted 2011 Honda Civic. Behind him, tailing were the cops, and they were catching up fast.
Bruce cut turns and alleyways, trying to make it to the highway. As he was reaching the turn to make it, he turned too fast, and suddenly the car spun and hit another car and flipped.
The laughter in the car lessened to none. The song playing indifferent as the guardrail connected to them.
Metal folded, glass shattered and exploded everywhere. The radio cut in the middle of the last chorus, replaced by the heavy slam of impact and the sound of bodies slamming into each other.
Silence followed. The thick ringing gazing through their ears, broken by only the hiss coming from the hood of the car.
Danielle cried and grunted, making an animal-like noise that she couldn't even recognize as her own. Ruben wasn't moving, blood dripping down from his head. All of them cut and scarred severely, blood mixed with the broken glass, spilled beer, and ash. The car seemed quiet now like the night reached its end.
The radio ticked and flicked once more. Srchhhhh. Static. The song hummed for a second, then cut back into static, the ghost of the song that played, failed to come back. Gone for good, it seemed.
Black Kids Don’t Skate
Black Kids Don’t Skate
(Bryce Bennett)
(Bryce Bennett)
A conflicted young black teen finds freedom and creativeness through skateboarding, challenging his community’s expectations and redefining what identity looks like to him in his own terms.
This is Justus. Rolling over, waking up, stretching so far as if he's reaching for something in the air. No thought in his mind, not even the thought of his job interview in 15 minutes. He opened up one eye to see a paper on his nightstand.
***OPEN INTERVIEWS 10:15 - 2:00***
Looking up at his alarm clock, he panicked.
He jolts out of bed and sprints towards his closet scavenging for an outfit. He finds something but a gut feeling tells him he's missing something. He knows he's missing something. Flipping over his bed sheets, tossing his pillows until he uncovers his charished, bright blue iPod paired with a slick pair of white beats.
Running out into the living room he flies past his mother.
“Where do you think you’re going this morning?” She yells out to him.
“Just some business to take care of. Will update you if it goes well!” He yells in reply.
His mother questions what he meant by “if it goes well,” but she lets it slide because she thought maybe he’d be out doing something productive with his free time instead of sitting around the house just listening to music all day on his iPod.
So, she didn’t question any further.
Justus flips open the oven door and sees a plate of food. He snatched a piece of bacon and a slice of bread off the plate then slammed the oven door shut, feeling as though he shook the house. He checked to make sure his mother didn’t hear that, because if there's two things he does know: One, his mother doesn’t play about slamming any type of door in this house. Two, nothing that should be outside comes inside.
Running out the door, down the stairs into the hallway picking up a skateboard while running past the exit. He throws the board down while in the sprint and rides down the block.
Kick. Push. Kick. Push. Kick. Push.
As the pavement hums beneath his wheels, with the gentle vibration of his feet, Justus stops at a corner store to catch his breath. He walks in only to feel the man at the counter’s mug tracking his every move.
“You plan on spending any money in here?!” The man at the counter asked sharply with a throaty Italian accent.
“I was,” Justus replied as he glared back at the man.
“What are you even doing with that skateboard?!” As he picked his face up out of his daily newspaper.
“What’chu mean? Why can’t I have a skateboard?”
“Don’t you know that black kids don’t skate?!” yelled the man. “And leave your bag in the front!”
Justus felt the man's gaze chasing him throughout the store feeling as if it were a heavy blanket on his shoulders.
Justus looked up and noticed. A familiar heat rose from the soles of his feet to the tip of his head. He left the store without saying another word.
Skating away, pushing hard against the concrete, slamming his foot down as if his intentions were to shatter the ground beneath his feet with every push. With each kick forward, his head cleared. Tensions became loose.
He regains control, and he notices that this is his form of escape.
As he came to a stop, heart pounding but mind steady. He noticed in that moment he was extremely overwhelmed and skateboarding was almost like his therapy in that moment.
In his final push up that hill to the office building, he didn’t just go in there with new found techniques of expression but a better understanding of himself.
The Final Report
The Final Report
(Benjamin Graves)
(Benjamin Graves)
This will be my last and final report. We of the Hercules crew found a promising planet, but it’s in our best interest to stay away. It is a lush planet with a livable atmosphere full of fauna. It seemed like the perfect planet, or so I thought. I should have been more selective this time. I should have listened to my crew; I should never brought that thing onto our ship.
It seemed harmless. Just a stone with some holes in it. Seemed researchable enough, but the thing that hid inside of it was better left undisturbed. We could have just flown away.
When the crew in charge of cutting the rock began, I watched from the reinforced glass high up with a good view. As they cut, something began to make noise, and liquid poured from the rock. Then, as the creature emerged, it was covered in a mucus-like substance, the living ten tendril-like hairs starting to unstick from its tough, flexible body of appendages like long, thick petals, and a head in the center of its mass with two narrow eyes suggesting poor eyesight. It was slightly translucent with a pinkish hue.
The cutting crew began to step back, attempting to create some distance. The alarm sounded when the button was hit by the head of the cutters. It seemed to provoke the creature. Things got messy as the creature choked the man, its tendrils pulling the man open from the shoulder, the others trembling as they watched the man die.
The bulkhead opened, and the alarm alerted the combat force of the ship. As they came in, they yelled at the cutting crew to hurry up and get out. As they pointed their guns at the creature, I had noticed its rapid growth. It had used the poor man's own flesh and bone and molded it into its body to use as its own. The men used violent force, firing their guns at the creature, which I watched, unable to pry my eyes off as it began to shriek.
Parts of the creature stolen from the man began to get shot off. The creature began to tighten and tighten until it sprang on one of the men. The gruesome view of it stealing from him what it would soon steal from all of us. The beast grew and grew, and I no longer could see hope for my crew, unable to move.
When it finished, the noise stopped. It was quiet. The thing had broken through the 6-inch bulkhead like it was nothing; not a thing could stop it. I was dragged out of the room and guided to the head of the ship, as the chaos continued. I thought of nothing other than to watch and report this, my eyes fixed to the screen as I listened to the screams of the crew and watched this beast grow into a monster.
The ship's functions began to fail as it began to dig, its own path through the ship. More and more of the remaining survivors attempted to escape, but any hope of escaping was destroyed by the tunneling. I knew this, so I remained watching, of course. I came to understand something as the number of holes grew, that it’s not just doing this as a defense mechanism or because it feels like a cornered animal. It’s trying to make a new home, just like the rock it was cut from.
This is all just about the nature of the creature; we had poked the bear first, and this is what we get for it. Soon, I will be the last person alive. I don’t know what happens when I become a part of the creature. I only hope it's death. Even if I somehow got away, I doubt I would live long on a planet capable of creating something like this. Whoever receives this message must make sure no one sets foot on this planet again.
Please inform the public that the Hercules crew is no more. The donation of all our findings will be sent along with this final report, so the entire universe knows that I, Professor Hicks, and the entire crew fought valiantly until the very end.
THE RED BUTTON
THE RED BUTTON
(An Adaptation by Jorge Jimenez)
(An Adaptation by Jorge Jimenez)
A red button appeared one morning in the middle of New York City. The button was inside a white room with a single door and no windows. Just a red button on a metal stand in the middle of the white room. And words were glowing on every screen on the planet at the same time.
One press rewards you with one million dollars.
One press also kills one person.
Every button press was being broadcast to the world on live television. Everyone would know what you did.
At first, nobody pressed anything.
People watched the news in silence. Leaders told people to stay away. Others said it was all a joke and claimed it was a work from the Illuminati or that it was an elaborate prank.
Then a man walked up to the button, knowing what would happen.
He stood there for a long time. His hands shook. He told himself it's only one person dying. There are tons of people who die, he thought. What's this one person going to matter. Eventually, he pressed it once.
Nothing happened; it was only one person who died.
But somewhere, in a random place on Earth, a human died because a button was pressed. A family crying, asking why this person, why not somebody else? Meanwhile, the man’s bank account? One million dollars. Legit. Instant.
The world froze. Then, it broke.
People ran to the button from all around the world. People were coming to get their one million dollars.
Some people came for the money. Some people came in fear that if they did not do it, someone else would do it and take their life for the money. Some people said one death meant nothing if it meant saving their family from hunger and homelessness. Others said they were already going to kill themselves, so it didn’t matter to them.
The button did not stop them.
Every press was live to the whole world. Every death mattered and numbered. The human population plummeted.
Nations dropped every important thing they had to do to get the most money. Cops resigned. Armies fought. People knew that with a couple of presses, their problems would be gone.
The news started to display every person who has died to the button by showing first and last names.
People started recognizing names. Teachers. Singers. Friends of friends. Parents. Kids.
Still, people pressed the button.
The room was full of people shoving and pushing against each other, pressing the button over and over again. Some people screamed. Some people cried. Some people laughed like it didn’t matter anymore.
The human count went from billions to millions. Then to thousands.
When there were only hundreds left, the room went quiet. Everyone in the room knew that each press killed someone they might actually know.
The button presses slowed down.
People fell to their knees begging others to stop. People walked away. Some still pressed it in anger because they were the only ones left in their family and wanted to get revenge on the people who killed their family, because they were still standing.
One by one, the room emptied and got quieter.
Human population: 1
The last human stood in the white room. The red button was still there. Clean. Bright. Waiting. The money didn’t matter anymore.
There was no one to spend it on, no one to talk to, no one to enjoy it with.
The last human remembered the first press. How small it had seemed. Just one. Just a button.
He remembered how everyone had known the cost and still done it for the money.
The last human hit the button in an instant, killing himself because he could not live with the fact of knowing how many people he killed, and he wondered why he had to be the last person to witness all the horrifying deaths.
The screens showed the human population one last time.
Human population: 0
The button remained red. The room remained white. But there was no one left to see it.
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