2022 Issue

A Letter from the Editor

Mel Eaton

Hello everyone, my name is Mel Eaton, I am a nonbinary author and the creator of Oneiroi. I have previously worked with both Green Hills Literary Lantern and Windfall before I decided to start my own journal. I created this magazine to be a safe space for those whose work melts into the darkness and dances in the shadows. Horror, thriller, and mystery are genres that are commonly overlooked, but here we make an effort to let those stories be told. We accept everything that tests the boundaries of weird, uncomfortable, uneasy, emotional, and so much more.

I am so excited and proud to say that this is the first official publication of the Oneiroi Literary Journal 2022! This journey has been such a fun, stressful, and knowledgeable experience. There are never any manuals when creating a literary magazine, you merely have an idea and act upon it. I did not expect when launching Oneiroi that it would have blown up the way that it did but I would never ask for it any other way.

The amount of support has been astronomical both on our instagram, @oneiroijournal, and our submissions via email, @ONEIROIjournal@gmail.com, and especially from my team. This journal would not be the same without my media and submission editors as well as my general editing team. They are the gears in the machine that has been helping push this project along. I want to thank each and every one of them for all the hard work, time, and effort that they have put into not only ensuring that this issue was a success but for also giving guidance and motivation to make this journal even better for future issues.

I cannot wait to see what the future holds for our upcoming editions of Oneiroi. We encourage all types of submissions and invite anyone and everyone to join us as we venture forward spreading the love of writing and reading to the masses. We look forward to seeing the submissions for our next issue! Thank you all again so much for your support and we hope you enjoy the first issue of Oneiroi. Sincerely,

Mel Eaton /Chief Editor

Celia Battson

Mel Eaton

Catherine Dandy

Scott Dandy

Kate Meyer-Currey

Kim O’Loughlin

Angela Patera

Connor Shelton

Clare Starkey

Shiv Shankar Singh

I want to take off my skin

Like a wet swimsuit.

Hang it on a hook in my bathroom.

Let my muscles breathe for the first time

Since the womb.

Let my tendons cure, smoking, beneath the

Heat of that oppressive giver of life in the sky.

On that day, my ligaments will grip my teeth

And I will smile so happily.

Right up until the day she died Lena insisted that no one enter the room at the top of the stairs. She even went so far as to board the door over with two-by-fours to make sure no one ever snuck in. When they came to clear the house out after her funeral, however, the door was hanging wide open.

“They found her in there,” Mom said, crossing herself.

“Oh yeah? What else they find? Her stash of x-rated porn?” he asked, earning himself a swift smack.

“Really, is that any way to speak of the dead? If you want to be such a wise guy then you go check it out. Anything not worth the effort gets dozed in with the house,” she said, already nosing through the china cabinets, searching for ‘anything worth the effort’.

It didn’t bother him to go through the room. The whole house was creepy; a shambling creaking house befitting of a young spinster such as Lena. Surprisingly absent of cats though, Lena had said they attracted evil. That and her old dog tore through about six of them before she finally gave up trying to keep one. Poor Bing Clawsby.

Taking the stairs two at a time, he bound up to the forbidden room. Inside the room was pitch black, and although he knew it was empty it felt like something was in there; staring at him in the darkness.

“That you Aunt Lena?” he asked. “I’ll give you ten seconds to hide whatever it is you were keeping secret up here. One, two, three…”

He flicked the light switch on before remembering they already cut the electricity, then thumbed his phone’s flashlight on. The weak light illuminated a room devoid of furniture. A drop cloth hung from the nearest wall, half obscuring the picture frames beneath. All empty, he noted. Strange. But that was what Aunt Lena was-- had been, strange.

He stepped into the room, letting the weak halo of light guide him. Based on the thick dust coating the surfaces, he guessed no one had been in here in a long time. He shone the light around in a circle and his eyes landed on a set of footprints outlined in the dust on the floor. Lena’s, he supposed, from when she crawled up here to die. He followed them, tracing the irregular pattern in loops around the room until they stopped in the far corner. A tattered, blue plastic tarp sat on the ground, its folds obscuring the shapes beneath.

He knelt and grabbed a corner. Behind him, the floorboards shifted and he stood quickly, thinking ‘Maybe mom came up to help?’, but no one appeared in the doorway. He frowned, apprehension starting to simmer in the pit of his stomach.

“This what you were hiding up here, Lena?” he asked as he knelt back down and tugged at the tarp. A cloud of gritty dust erupted in protest. Coughing, he swatted the air clear and then looked down.

“What the hell?”

Beneath the tarp sat a faded dog bowl and a manacled chain. Lena had a dog once...but it had lived in a shack in the back. He bent down to inspect the bowl. Little shredded pieces of plastic pricked the surface and bite marks dented the side. Human bite marks.

Movement flickered in the corner of his eye. He bolted to his feet, heart hammering in his chest. The drop cloth covering the picture frames on the far side of the room had slipped free, and for a moment, for one awful yawning moment, he’d thought he’d seen--

No. He’d had enough. He didn’t want to think about what he’d just seen or what he’d imagined he’d seen. He’d just put everything back where it had been and leave; just let the whole disturbing room crush in on itself when they dozed the house in.

He threw back the tarp and raced over to the picture wall, grabbing the edge of the fallen drop cloth. As he brought it up, however, something changed. A subtle shift in his vision, so minute he couldn’t tell what had caused it. Dust modes disturbed by the sheet? No, there it was again. A movement across one of the frames; a bobbing, like something rising from the depths of a dark lake. Aunt Lena’s face appeared behind the glass, her mouth wrenched open into an anguished O and yellowed eyes wide in terror.

With a shout, he stumbled backward, tripping himself on the fallen drop cloth. Disturbed by his fall, Aunt Lena’s picture frame jumped off the wall and shattered against the floor, releasing a shriek so shrill and anguished that it caused the glass of the other frames to explode. He threw his arms up to shield himself from the shards and when he looked back up he saw dozens of hands reaching out from their wall-mounted prisons. Contorted fingers reached desperately toward the heavens as a cacophony of indiscernible voices cried out. Behind him, the door slammed shut, its lock clicking solidly into place.

He scrabbled to free himself from the cloth. Around him the walls were closing in, the shadows within their corners growing darker, taller, and eternal. He forgot to breathe, to blink, to think. He could only scream and scream alongside the other tormented souls. He was one of them now, another soul trapped in a picture frame.

“Hun?”

He snapped too. Mom stood in the doorway, one foot in the hallway and one cautiously in the room.

“You alright?” she asked.

He looked back at the frames, at their unbroken glass and empty contents. Carefully, he rose to his feet and pinned the corner of the drop cloth back in place.

“Everything is fine,” he said. “Nothing worth the effort in here.”

Welcome to The Shelley Laboratory of Reanimated Artificial Intelligence Customer Service’s Most Frequently Asked Questions page. Please look at the commonly asked questions down below before making a call to our Customer Service Hotline. If you cannot find the question you are looking for, please call the Customer Service Hotline at 610-775-4450. If it is an emergency or a viable threat is being made to your life or the life of someone around you, please call our emergency services number immediately at 610-775-2990. DO NOT contact 911.

Questions:

What should I do if my reanimated A.I. with the consciousness of my loved one won’t turn on?

- Go to the ‘Common IT Fixes and Services’ tab for more information. *

Why is my reanimated A.I. talking through the consciousness of someone other than the loved one I uploaded into the A.I.?

- Go to the ‘Consciousness Services’ tab for more information. *

Can I switch the consciousness of my A.I. with another without paying for a new model?

- Go to the ‘Finances and Payment’ tab for more information. *

What do I do if my animated A.I. starts glitching?

- Go to the ‘Common IT Fixes and Services’ tab for more information. *

Is there a coupon code for your reanimated A.I.s?

- Go to the ‘Finances and Payment’ tab for more information.

Why does my A.I. start talking in strange languages that the consciousness doesn’t know?

- Go to the mental glitches section under the ‘Common IT Fixes and Services’ tab for more information. *

What is happening when my A.I. turns on but the consciousness of my loved one won’t talk to me?

- Go to the ‘Common Fixes and Services’ tab for more information. *

- Go to the ‘Relationship and Interaction Services’ tab for even more information.

How can I upgrade my A.I. model?

- Go to the ‘Finances and Payment’ tab for more information. *

Why does my A.I. suddenly act and think like a different person?

- Go to the ‘Consciousness Services tab’ for more information. *

Why is my A.I. looking at me funny like they’re staring me down?

- Go to the ‘Consciousness Service’ tab for more information.

Tabs:

Common IT Fixes and Services

- If your reanimated A.I. won’t turn on, there are a number of possibilities as to why it won’t turn on.

- Have you checked your battery? Most of the time if a reanimated A.I. won’t turn on, it is simply because the battery hasn’t been fully charged.

- Have you been turning your A.I. all the way off every time you shut down the consciousness? If you do not shut the A.I. completely down every night then it runs the risk of overexerting the hard drive, which damages your A.I. model. If this is the case, you will need to have the model examined and repaired. Please contact Maintenance Service directly at 610-775-5540 and we will get you set up with an appointment.

- If you still cannot get your reanimated A.I. to turn on and have contacted our IT services, then your account with our company most likely has been frozen due to insufficient funds. Go to the ‘Finances and Payment’ tab for more answers.

- If your reanimated A.I. starts glitching, there are a number of possibilities as to why it is glitching.

- If the glitch is an auditory glitch such as your A.I. cannot hear certain words or low voices, then the problem is most likely with the audio system of your A.I.

- We recommend that you look through the designated ear holes on your model and see if there is anything physically blocking the microphones in the head of your model. If there is something there, please contact our Maintenance Services at 610-775-5540 and they will schedule a time to look at your model.

- If there is nothing blocking your system, it most likely is an internal problem with your model. Please contact our Maintenance Services at 610-775-5540 and they will schedule a time to look at your model.

- If the glitch is an olfactory glitch such as your A.I. cannot smell, the problem is most likely within the olfactory system in the designated nose of your model.

- We recommend that you look through the designated nose holes on your model and see if there is anything physically blocking the olfactory system. If there is, please contact our Maintenance Services at 610-775-5540 and they will schedule a time to look at your model.

- If there is nothing blocking your system, it most likely is an internal problem with your model. Please contact our Maintenance Services at 610-775-5540 and they will schedule a time to look at your model.

- If the glitch is an olfactory glitch such as a strong smell being emitted from your model, the problem is most likely with the physical model.

- If your model smells strongly of rotting food, most likely some food or other natural item has gotten stuck in your model.

- We recommend smelling your model to find the area. If you can find it, DO NOT try to remove it yourself. Most likely, if it has not been cleaned out through the model’s cleaning system then the offending object cannot be easily removed. Please contact our Maintenance Services at 610-775-5540 to schedule an appointment to clean your model.

- If your model smells strongly of chemicals, your model is most likely expiring and should be replaced immediately. For disposal, please contact the Office of A.I. Waste and Destruction Services at 610-775-3670 and they will schedule a time to pick up your model.

- If you are interested in purchasing a new model, please contact our A.I. Sales and Purchasing Department at 610-775-1230 and they will get you set up with a new model.

- If your model smells strongly of citrus and your model is the PYG 980 or above, please contact our Emergency Services at 610-775-4370 immediately.

- The smell of citrus is the warning system put in place of the PYG 980 models and models made after. Emergency Services will ask you when your model began to smell of citrus and based on your answer they will go to your residence to dispose of your model.

- If the glitch is a mental glitch such as slight memory loss, major memory loss, decrease in intelligence, increase in intelligence, change in speech either frequent or infrequent, lack of speech, sudden speech in new and unknown languages, increased desire for things that once did not interest them, increased desire to watch The Real Housewives of Orange County, decrease in desire to do activities that once excited them, visible depression, increased paranoia, increased anxiety, increased anger or mood swings, or an increased lack of mood, then the problem is most likely in the brain of your model.

- We recommend contacting both our IT Department at 610-775-4470 and Consciousness Services at 610-775-1360 to see if there are other models in your area that have a similar issue.

- If the glitch is a physical glitch such as a tick or uncontrollable movement, the problem is most likely with your physical model.

- We recommend scheduling a maintenance checkup with our Maintenance Services. Please contact them at 610-775-5540.

- If your model is uncontrollable and your restart button doesn’t work, it means your reanimated A.I. has been hacked. Please contact our Administrative Offices at 610-775-4890 to place a formal complaint and they will determine whether the Recovery Services or the Office of A.I. Waste and Destruction Services will be called.

- If your A.I. is ignoring you or acting like you are not there, then that is not a glitch.

- Your A.I. is choosing to ignore you which means there is no data or systems glitch. Go to the ‘Relationship and Interaction Services’ tab or contact their office directly at 610-775-5960 for more answers.

Consciousness Services

- If the consciousness of your reanimated A.I. is not the consciousness you uploaded and paid for, there is a chance your data got switched in our data storage system. Please call us at Consciousness Services directly at 610-775-1360 and we will help get your consciousness sorted.

- If this is not the case, then you are in possession of a stolen A.I. with another customer’s loved one. There are a number of black market A.I. groups that steal reanimated A.I.s and try to replace the consciousness but they do not have the equipment to properly replace the consciousness. If you believe you have a stolen A.I., please contact our Recovery Services at 610-775-9280 immediately.

- If your reanimated A.I. suddenly starts to act or speak like a different person, please contact the IT Department at 610-775-4470 or the Maintenance Services at 610-775-5540 to determine that there is nothing wrong with either the interface or the physical body of the models.

- If both the IT Department AND Maintenance Services don’t see any problems, then it is most likely that the consciousness uploaded into your A.I. system is changing.

- Over time the personality of your A.I. may begin to change as they go through life as an A.I. Some changes may be minor such as deciding to like the color red instead of their previous favorite color blue. Some changes may be major such as a sudden switch in politics or a new hatred of you as their owner.

- As the owner of a reanimated A.I. that has begun to change, you have several options regarding what to do next.

- If you still cherish your reanimated A.I., you can let them change and remind them of how much you care by allowing them that growth.

- You may also either wipe the model’s memory and consciousness and upload an entirely new consciousness or you can dispose of the model completely and purchase a newer model.

- We recommend either wiping the memory or purchasing a new model altogether. Once your A.I. begins to change, even if it’s through small and minor changes, it becomes harder to control as their owner. We at the Shelly Laboratory of Reanimated Artificial Intelligence only want the best for our customers and it will be easier on you if your reanimated A.I. doesn’t

- If you choose to dispose of your model entirely, please contact the Office of A.I. Waste and Destruction Services at 610-775-3670. For a list of the disposal options, please visit their website at www.ShelleyLaboratoryofRAI.com/disposal

- If your A.I. starts to act differently AND they don’t recognize you or things they should know, please contact our offices directly at 610-775-1360 to determine if their consciousness was switched or hacked.

Finances and Payment

- If your reanimated A.I. won’t turn on and you’ve spoken with our IT department, that means that your A.I. has been manually shut off by our administration team due to insufficient funds in your balance.

- If you would like to turn your A.I. back on, you will need an advance payment of two years as well as an insufficient funds fee of 20% of your yearly package.

- If you would like to have a different consciousness in the body of your reanimated A.I., you must make a formal request through both our Administrative Offices at 610-775-4890 and the Financial Offices at 610-775-7540. For uploading a new consciousness, you will also need a service request to the IT department at 610-775-4470 to schedule a time for both the memory wipe and the reupload.

- Our recommendation is to simply buy an entirely separate model because it is about the same price as the reupload process. If you choose to purchase a second model and you do not wish to keep your old model, please contact the Office of A.I. Waste and Destruction Services at 610-775-3670 and they will take the model off your hands.

- If you would like to upgrade your package, please contact our A.I. Sales and Purchasing Department at 610-775-1230.

- If you are interested in purchasing a new model, we recommend that you look through our updated catalog at www.ShelleyLaboratoryofRAI.com/catalog to find the model you want before contacting our A.I. Sales and Purchasing Department.

- If you are only interested in updating your package so as to get more benefits and upgrades for the consciousness of your loved one, please contact Consciousness Services first at 610-775-1360 before contacting our A.I. Sales and Purchasing Department.

- If you cannot afford to purchase a reanimated A.I. model from us, we cannot help.

- Unfortunately we do not offer coupon codes for our models because there is just so much that goes into one of our models that it wouldn’t be fair to our employees to discount their hard work.

- If you can afford the down payment for one of our models, you may be eligible for one of our payment plans. Please contact our Financial Offices at 610-775-7540 to ask about our payment plans.

Relationship and Interaction Services

- If your reanimated A.I. is suddenly ignoring you or acting like you don’t exist, most likely you have offended them in some way. There are a number of solutions we offer to our Shelley Laboratory of Reanimated Artificial Intelligence customers for situations such as this.

- If you would like to work things out with your reanimated A.I., the Office of Relationship and Interaction Services offers couples or group counseling to help you and your A.I. work through your issues. If you are interested in counseling, please contact our offices at 610-775-5960 and press “3” when the messaging system asks for your options.

- Family counseling is also an option but spaces are limited to a first come, first served basis. If you are interested, please call at the number listed above but press “4” instead for the family option.

- If counseling isn’t an option or it doesn’t work for you and your A.I., there are other options available to you.

- If your relationship between you and your A.I. has completely fallen apart, you can contact the Office of A.I. Waste and Destruction Services at 610-775-3670 to dispose of your A.I.

- The Office of A.I. Waste and Destruction Services have several options available to you in how you want to dispose of your reanimated A.I.

- If you still care for your reanimated A.I., you could donate them to be resold at a discounted price so someone else can love them.

- If you now hate and despise your reanimated A.I., the Office of A.I. Waste and Destruction Services have several disposal methods you can choose from to destroy your A.I.

- One method is through the incinerator in the Office of A.I. Waste and Destruction Services.

- Another is to break their body back into pieces to be used again on a different model.

- For a list of all the disposal options, please visit their website at www.ShelleyLaboratoryofRAI.com/disposal

- If you don’t care what happens to your reanimated A.I., you can donate their body to our company where our Administrative Offices will decide what to do with the body.

- If you choose to dispose of your A.I. and would like to purchase another, please contact our Financial Offices at 610-775-7540 for more information.

Hey, it's your mom.

Remember me? Remember my wicked golden hair, turning grey

piercing light blue eyes, thick black eyeliner, a knife,

a laugh, both criminal and haunting. I know I

remember you. Beautiful baby girl, freckles and a blue dress, turned big, broken promise.

Daughter who didn’t answer my calls that one night. Daughter who stopped talking to me.

A bully. A mean girl. A bitch.

All of you girls are. Don’t you remember the good times?

Remember when you called me selfish?

That one day I left to sleep in the hotel room and you

ungrateful brats were having the goddamn time of your lives

playing in the pool. The screams, the headaches, the visions of you

drowning, I don’t know, something lulled me to peaceful rest.

I locked you out of the room for only a few hours. It was my vacation too.

And you were “terrified”, huh? Scared I left?

I’ll never leave you.

Not in your thoughts, your nightmares,

the look of desperation and hysterics in your teary eyes after you panicked again

staring in the mirror and hitting yourself

until you no longer resembled

me.

But the bruises always heal,

remember the pizza, the walks,

the weekly deal?

I never cared how much you weighed as long as

I was skinnier than you. Bones and skin

that could live off of cigarettes and Pepsi

and arguments and staying in bed and looking at you daring you to say

I was a bad mother.

Those were the best times. Before.

Of course I’m still

here. Like I said, I’ll never

die. Because then, it would be all over. All for

nothing. For no one. Because you are

no one. Miserable.

A ghost. Just like me.

Please give me a call.

You just have to do it, you don’t have to

really put a lot of analyzing into it.

Because we don’t really need to

analyze anymore. Don’t give it a

single thought.

Because you’re

not depressed.

You died.

Okay?

We’re family. Love you

to pieces, to bits.

You might need stitches. Bye-bye.

One of my cousins liked to drop pyro bombs down the throats of the fish he caught. He’d fling them back into the lake and if they hit the water before the bomb went off then they got to live, if not then boom. Fucking sadist. Once this big bass didn’t hit the water fast enough and it exploded during a Fourth of July picnic. Scales and bits of flesh scattered out above the water like a bloody firework and the fish rained down back into the lake. In a dozen more pieces now than it had been when it came out. Horrible. I still see it sometimes when I watch fireworks. The whole group of us cousins got chewed out for scaring the little kids. My cousin acted all sorry but I saw that sick delight hiding in his eyes. He didn’t stop with his little game. He just got sneakier.

I tried to warn them.

As he got older he moved on to more challenging prey and learned to lay traps that extended his games. He no longer killed but rather strung his targets along, chipping away pieces with the precision of a master sculptor until they had transformed into his vision. The results weren’t always bad. He’d somehow managed to take this skinny mouse-quiet local kid and turn him into an all-state athlete without making him a complete and utter dick. The kid was the real deal, an honest, genuine sort you’d think had dirt but didn’t. I’d wanted to love him like everyone else did, but knowing my cousin was behind this creation, I couldn’t ever look at the kid without dread. I’d catch my cousin leering at him, puzzling over him like he was an unfinished canvas, frowning at the slightest misstep, that sick delight in his eyes turning dark and dangerous. I was so afraid my cousin would take a knife and slash the kid through for having some flaw only he could see.

I tried to warn them.

Last night I went over to his house for his daughter’s birthday. There must’ve been close to fifty people there, clutching red solo cups of punch and blotting sweat from their brows. Across the living room, my cousin stood beneath a pink balloon arch beside the punch table, watching the scene with a serene expression. He caught me staring and crooked a finger. It was not an invitation. It was a summons I was unable to refuse. He smiled broadly as I approached and threw an arm over my shoulders, drawing me tight.

“Big night, he said. “Been planning it for a while. Want some punch?” Over by the staircase, his wife balanced their fat toddler in one elbow and a red solo cup in the other. The child wrestled the cup free and tipped the punch into her mouth. Crimson spilled down her front, staining her white gown.

“Punch?” My cousin asked again, holding out a cup. “I mixed it myself.”

Behind me, a man cleared his throat and took a drink from his cup, and over by the fireplace a woman erupted into a bout of explosive coughs. She set her red solo cup down on the mantel as she gasped for breath. Thick, clots of bloody saliva dribbled out of her mouth and her companion screamed. Over the din of coughs and screams and the hollow rattle of plastic cups falling against hardwood my cousin leaned close and whispered in my ear.

“Try to warn them.”

First Place: Mel Eaton

I loved holding her hand while we were together, Though now that she’s gone, all it does is leave red stains wherever I go.

🕱🕱🕱

Second Place: Clare Starkey

Sarah Menard did not scream when the head spoke, but the flash of its rotten teeth and twitch of its jaw muscles against her cold palm made her stomach roll.

🕱🕱🕱

Third Place: Scott Dandy

Watch out. Too late!

🕱🕱🕱

Fourth Place: Shiv Shankar Singh

The river water suddenly turned dark blue with a lightning streak like a straw emptying out the river. My companion took off her clothes and held the lightning straw between her legs gyrating on devil’s music.

night barricades me

with its close-ranked

branches

sighing boughs break

into my uneasy sleep

while thickets snap

their twig fingers to

slyly tap at my window

as they drop skeleton

leaves on my pillow

like stifling cobwebs as

nightmare bleeds my

veins dry in the witching

hour I am bestraddled by

hagridden dreams that

pin me down like a

woodlouse under a log

wolves tear me limb

from limb and shred

my scarlet cloak into

ragged drops of

blood

that moisten the mossy

dark and choke daylight

with slow lichen growth

as shadow palisades

recede as coppiced

curtain trunks part

into dawn’s clearing as

phantom leaves fade

into sunlit walls

Rain pounds against the house. I can hear it slide like sheets falling against the siding. The faint chiming of church bells rings through my ears, only making my chest heave harder. Tears dribble down my cheeks as I sit there motionless. Joy feels so long ago. So far now, it's hard for me to even remember how a smile would feel stretched across my dry, chapped lips. I swallow the lump within my throat, slowly sliding pale oily hands across the glass surface over the picture frame. The chains rattling along the floor with each loose movement I make. The black grease stains the once happy faces. I see their smiles melt away behind the streaks, gone and never to return.

I set the frame down on the stand in between a plush floral chair and myself. That chair now occupied by years of dust bunnies, sits ragged and wary from its past life. “Fitting”, I think before a rush of memories fill my head creating a throbbing twinge behind my temple. I can feel the pull of the chains bring me to a hunch as they fall onto the wooden floor with a thud. My arms now hang at my sides, the weight of the metal links sagging my shoulders, popping each joint as I move. My strength is so weakened from malnutrition that my will to fight is far behind me.

Light drops of rain soak through the ceiling adding to the large rotting water spots on the tiles above. I don't mind as I watch the clear water fall rhythmically onto the creaking pine boards below. A sense of welcoming wells in my belly seeing the rain enter, knowing it isn't scared to join me on the other side. The cool drops slide down along my tongue to my parched throat giving only the slightest bit of relief. I lick my lips feeling the dryness beginning to subside. I wipe the dribbles away while my hand grasps the waist of my drooping, grime-covered pants that hang barely onto the point of my hip. Ahead of me is a window, its glass like that of a spider web as cracks and fractures burst from the corner making the rain wobble in the reflection. I see myself standing there alone with the darkened abyss behind me of what was once an orange glow of a fire and the yellow gleam of safety now dissipated into the carnage left.

The beautiful white of the moon sparkles in through the window, casting me in the light. The naked trees sway, their limbs bouncing from the downpour. Fine hairs rise on the back of my neck making a chill course down my spine as goosebumps begin to dot my arms. Gray clouds drift in the sky above bringing the shadows up from the ground and along the horizon. How I yearn to be the shadows just beyond the pane, the freedom they have.

My fingers curl around the edge of the sill as I avert my head from the taunting figures before me. Faint crimson stains the wall, my eyes shut tight as my grip tightens, fingernails digging into the rotting wooden trim. Her screams, shrill and disembodied. They split my heart making it sink into my stomach and throb. “My fault,” I mumble to myself, as the church bells seem to grow louder in my skull, harmonizing with the shrieks in a beautiful revolting melody. “A monster,” I grunt, shaking my head as my knuckles turn white. My chest begins to heave as my heart races, teeth grit together like gravel and sandpaper. I step back from the window seeing her once precious face in shreds, blood splattering the white blouse I had gotten her on our anniversary.

How her arm had come up to defend herself and the heartless slashes I threw unintentionally.

How her gold banded ring glittered on her cold pale hand after the deed was done and I came to my senses.

The very night I had placed these shackles around my ankles and wrists. That same night I tossed away the key. Binding myself here like a beast in a cage, like the true beast I am. The glow of the moon fills the room with a glittering silver sheen as the gray clouds begin to pass by overhead. The agony increases as the glorious light encases me in her white coffin. My mind now begins to blur like it had done that same night. The rattle of the chains fills the silence as my bones tremble and skin crawls against me. I drop to my knees, unable to endure the strain of my weight any longer as the anatomy of my form starts to change. My eyes lifting to the moon watching its blank stare engulf me now and forever holding me under its whim as I howl.

I doubt that many would disagree with me if I were to suggest that vampires are incredibly interesting and alluring. The ability to shapeshift into a variety of goth animals, climbing up walls with ease, the gift of eternal life, and the maintenance requirement: drinking human blood. These traits are a definitive point of fixation for many a mentally unwell preteen, a category which would include myself. The first of many supernatural fixations lay hidden between the shelves of my Catholic school’s library. Here, I found Dracula by Bram Stoker amongst the other literary classics. Should my memory serve me well, I was no older than eleven, and having a rough go at life. My parents had recently divorced, and I became a latchkey kid. The effects of this judicial separation sent me away from my family home in the humid hills of the rural Osage to the small village of Westphalia, where the towering steeple of St. Joseph was visible from every doorstep. The results of the divorce were easily escapable in the woods that surrounded my family home, but in town, I was exposed. My mother’s failed marriage was the talk of the town. Within the congregation, my mother and I were outcasts. Jonathan Harker’s foray into the eerie villages of the Black Forest were all too familiar to me. Jonathan Harker’s journey through the Carpathians mirrored my own lonely walk home from school. As Jonathan Harker waited within the bowels of Castle Dracula for the return of its lord, I waited long after dark for my mother to return home from work, no energy left for me. The title of this essay suggests, however, that I have more to tell you about this epistolary work, and so I do.

Dracula was, at the ripe old age of eleven, my first hint that I was not a heterosexual. A specific scene sits in my mind, and it is easy to guess I am sure: Dracula’s wives approach Jonathan Harker for the first time as he sleeps in the forbidden drawing room. The scene was a bombshell upon my impressionable Catholic brain and left behind it a smoking crater where my innocence once resided. I would not be so rash as to claim that Bram Stoker is the sole reason for how I stand here today, an atheist, a lesbian, and a Satanist, but he surely did not help matters. Furthermore, it only took him one scene to do it! From vampire vixens to child sacrifice, Jonathan Harker’s accidental slumber in the forbidden wing of Dracula’s castle turned my world upside down.

Let us start with Dracula’s wives. Jonathan Harker is a serviceable expositor, and we see through his eyes (or rather, his first-person narrative) how attractive these lady vampires are. “All three had brilliant white teeth, that shone like pearls against the ruby of their voluptuous lips. There was something about them that made me uneasy, some longing and at the same time some deadly fear” (Stoker 41). The imagery is that of a treasure trove, pearls and rubies set within the female form. I had a decently sheltered upbringing. My middle school has a fervent love for the Virgin Mary and featured a full staff of elderly nuns, so at that time women with sex appeal were a rarity in my life. I couldn’t help but assume, upon my first read-through, that poor Jonathan Harker was in similar circumstances. Such objects of desire as these wicked vampiric mistresses came as a great shock to the both of us.

Jonathan Harker further notes, “I felt in my heart a wicked, burning desire that they would kiss me with those red lips. It is not good to note this down, lest someday it should meet Mina’s eyes and cause her pain” (Stoker 41). As Jonathan Harker expresses a yearning for Dracula’s wives, it comes with a healthy dollop of shame. I cannot think of anything the Catholic church encourages more than shame. I was made to sit in over a dozen classes on Catholic praxis and given a lengthy list of acts deemed an affront to God: pre-marital sex, homosexuality, divorce, all sins that one must deny. I was told to my face that my own mother’s severed nuptials could have been saved had she simply worked harder, prayed harder for Jesus’s intercession. If only she had buried her true feelings deep down, maybe Mom and I would have been able to find a pew that wasn’t so close to the door, where in shame we left right after communion to avoid running into old friends. Like most things that are worth reading, Dracula left me with a strong dose of shame. Just as Jonathan Harker fretted over Mina’s encounter with this particular section of his diary, I too worried about discovery. I’d discovered, rather abruptly, that my romantic preferences did not align with what I had been taught my entire life. The content of Bram Stoker’s work did not exactly align with the status quo either. Pre-marital lust, vampires, demons, and murder. Any nun at my school would have had the text out of my hands faster than I could read the title page. The supernatural and the queer both reside underneath a giant Catholic umbrella labelled “SIN”, and unfortunately, I had caught a passion for both.

This reaction was likely not what our librarians intended when they put Dracula on the shelf, but there it is. As an eleven-year-old reader, I finished the book in record time and quickly set upon the trail of more stories of the supernatural. By the time I was in eighth grade, I had gotten my hands on a copy of The Satanic Bible and purchased a deck of tarot cards. Dracula was a novel that I would come back to on rainy days, as I waited for my mom to come home from work. My interpretation of Dracula has, of course, changed since my first read. Homoerotic undertones lost on my eleven-year-old self are fully apparent to me now. Dracula dominates Jonathan Harker, holds him captive in his castle, and in this way makes a companion of him. The two speak for all hours of the night on a variety of subjects. Jonathan Harker describes his experience as “this strange night-existence” (Stoker 27), which I could not help but attach homoerotic underpinnings to. Furthermore, Dracula’s defense of Jonathan Harker when his wives attempt to feed on him, he roars, “How dare you touch him, any of you? How dare you cast eyes on him when I had forbidden it?” (Stoker 43), tells me even more about their relationship. Dracula intends to feed upon Jonathan Harker himself, a vampiric act that comes with its own set of sexual innuendos. While I could not have pointed out my exact feelings on the power dynamics that came into play with the introduction of the wives, I could absorb the gist: Jonathan Harker was helpless, totally at the mercy of four enigmatic vampires, and I thought he was incredibly lucky.

To conclude, Bram Stoker has much to answer for, and I’m sure that there’s a line. Jonathan Harker’s mysterious foray into the Carpathian Mountains changed the both of us in potentially regrettable ways. Neither of our journeys into the taboo ended at Dracula’s castle. If anything, the road into the queer and occult came upon a downward slope, and off we went. To an extent, I am grateful for Dracula, as it came to me at a time when I was very lonely. It taught me a great deal about myself through a full cast of characters that I can never forget and left me more open-minded to the strange fixations the world has to offer. To quote Alain de Botton, “There's a whole category of people who miss out by not allowing themselves to be weird enough.” Through Bram Stoker’s Dracula, I embraced the weird, and am all the better for it.

Works Cited

Stoker, Bram. Dracula. New York: Signet Classic, 1992. Print.

A big thank you again to all those who have contributed to Oneiroi and submitted, but also to those who have been on the outside cheering us on. Being a small journal and building ourselves from the ground up has not been an easy venture, so we are extremely grateful for those who took the time to give us that guidance and support during our first year up.

We would like to thank Kim Ramos and Dr. James D’Agostino for their help in laying the stepping stones for this journal's creation. Their motivation, support, and overall guidance have been a crucial part in the development of Oneiroi. We would also like to thank each and every contributor because without them we would not have a journal to make. And finally, to the team that made this all possible. Thank you all for your hard work and patience as we not only created the very first issue of our journal but also established an entire journal out of nothing in the very same year. And that is why we would like to dedicate this journal to you.

To our team.

Submissions Editor:

Clare Starkey

Media Editor:

Catherine Dandy

General Editors:

Kimberly O’Loughlin and Kate Knox

Chief Editor:

Mel Eaton

We happily look forward to bringing our audience more issues in the years to come, and seeing what the future has to hold!

Sincerely,

Mel Eaton / Chief Editor

Issue Publication: October 15, 2022