☀ Brendan James Johnson ☀

Chemistry: The key to any love story and the prerequisite to making a scene turn hot. The thing that makes a reader turn every page and feel a pit of fire in their stomach, panting with jealousy as they picture every moment of passion.

Luxurious is not a word Brendan would use to describe his room at the resort. In fact, it looks like his dorm, almost, if it were stretched out just enough to fit a double bed rather than a single, and had an actual closet rather than some wardrobe pressed up against the wall. Even the walls are the same boring off-white, so barely beige that Brendan can't quite tell if the room is meant to be this colour or the walls are just really dirty. He's not sure which would be better, either; someone would have to be horribly bad taste to choose this colour.

Briefly, his mind flashes to the people who arrived to the resort in pairs. Do they each have their own rooms, or are they stuck together, sharing a small room just like this one. The thought of couples, cramped together in a double bed, invites a twinge of jealousy into his heart, but Brendan chases it away. It's only a matter of time until he finds true love. Or at least, he thinks it is.

"Alright, BJ," he mutters. "Time to write. That's what you're here for, isn't it?"

He sits at the corner desk and pulls out his laptop, opening the document labelled Hoe Down and stares at the blank page before him. None of the facilities interest him; BJ has always written his best work by himself. All he wants is a new view from out his window, and the ocean outside is doing wonderfully. He's no expert, but it looks much better than the brick and concrete of London, despite the millions of stories that could live in each building. He's imagined them, already. Now, he wants an infinity before him, his to define. His to tell.

The words unblock themselves, and the western love story falls onto the page without Brendan having to do anything. This is how he likes his writing to happen, as though he weren't there. As though he's sitting, watching the story unfold before him, and he's doing nothing but witnessing it, jotting it down as it unfurls before him. He's a voyeur, looking into the romances of the couple before him, and sharing them with the whole world.

"What's your name, kid?"

"Bryce Jamieson, but most people call me BJ. I just moved here from the city."

"Fittin' name."

"Thanks. What's yours?"

"John Woods. 'Course, most people call me Long John Woods, or they call me nothin'. Which do you plan on bein'?"

"The former, definitely, Sir. I mean Long John. Bet that's fitting too."

"Trust me, boy, it's more fittin' than you can handle."

Brendan sees him standing on his bed – Long John, that is. He looks just like in BJ's imagination, tall and covered in rippling muscles, the type that could bounce his chest when the mood takes him. He wears blue jeans and a cowboy hat, and a messy kind of stubble that coats his face and would definitely scratch against any skin it might rub. Beard against bare flesh, hands gripping into pristine white sheets, gasps and moans ringing into the midnight air. It's the kind of mess that fills a bed, the kind of chaos that knocks down a wooden shack – but it stands. Somehow. It'd mesmerize him, if he could think about it, but his mind is elsewhere. It's in each nerve, electrified and tingling. It's in Long John's skin, too, which feels like part of his own right now. He can almost feel both their pleasure, both their thrill. He can feel everything, at the same time, and yet it's so overwhelming that he feels nothing, too. It's as though he's escaped his body, but he's never been more aware of it either.

"Well, are you comin' or not? Because I'm ocmin' either way."

Brendan blinks. When he thinks of his stories as coming alive, it's never this literal. He closes his eyes again, and opens them back, but Long John is still there. In front of him. Every inch of him, perfectly crafted by his own hand. He understands, suddenly, why Frankenstein would want power over life. Why Frankenfurther would want power over sex. And somehow, he has both. He reaches out, incredulous, but his hand doesn't cross through the image like Brendan expected. It connects, rather, feeling bulging biceps and a hairless chest, firm beneath his fingertips. He swallows.

"What are you waitin' for?" asks Long John. "You're gonna make me blue."

"I...I've never done something like this before," Brendan stutters.

"What, do you mean with a man, or in general?"

"Either. Both. I mean –"

But before he can say anything else, Long John shuts him up with a kiss. His lips are chapped, rough against Brendan's own, and yet there's something about that that drives him wild. He's always told himself he'd wait for someone right, but what could be writer than this? He created him, after all. This is the object of his fantasies. And this – well, this is his chance.

Brendan freezes. He's right, of course: this is the object of his fantasies. His creation. A fiction, really. And, the second he realizes that, it all falls apart. Suddenly, there's nothing hot or thrilling about Long John. It's like kissing a set of dead, cold lips, like feeling cadaverous hands paw up and down his shirtless torso – God knows when that disappeared. But Long John continues, nonetheless, unaware of Brendan's hesitation. How could he? He has no reality, no thought; he is nothing but action and sex. A character, not a person. Still, it'd be so easy, and God knows it'd feel good. It always feels good, in the stories.

But, in the end, there's still one thing that prevents him from getting lost in the story. A lack, really. An absence that holds him back from deepening the kiss, from deepening the lie. Something he could never share with a mere fiction:

Chemistry.

  ☀ Ida Jean Gallager ☀  

Ida Jean was a poor writer. The problem was not her own experience—she had written fiction for nearly sixteen years, ever since she had been able to place letters on paper. Her first short story had been about a featureless man named Mr. Williams who'd dreamed of building his own carnival (strict parents had forbidden her from visiting carnivals, so this venture was entirely a fantasy). The Mr. Williams story had been poor due to a lack of experience, but it had not lacked passion; Ida Jean's sentiment towards carnivals had been packed into every shakily-etched word. Mr. Williams overcame every obstacle and achieved his lifelong goal, erecting a Halloween-themed carnival right in the center of the town. "I hope everyone likes my carnival," he'd said. Ida Jean had hoped readers would like it, too. What a wonderful idea, a man fulfilling his own aspirations for his friends to enjoy. Happiness bred happiness, and Ida Jean had imagined that the story would uplift her family, bringing them contentment.

Back then, Ida Jean had lacked the experience to flesh out the carnival tale. Mr. Williams experienced no character development. The narration cut between Mr. Williams, proud owner of the carnival, and a family visiting the fairgrounds, partaking in various Halloween-themed activities. Mr. Williams possessed no real flaws except for his prior inability to bring his dreams to life. But passion had elevated Ida Jean's story, beyond the beginner's missteps and the heavy-handed narrative flow. Passion caused her to think about that story still, whenever she stared at a blank manuscript, fingers listless. Ida Jean had cared about Mr. Williams and his carnival, and that had made a difference.

Ida Jean was still a poor writer, but not for lack of experience. Over the years, Ida Jean had honed her style and voice so that readers could understand her work. She had read books from every genre, noting the rhetorical structures their authors used; she had planned and partially completed several full-length novels. Looking behind her, Ida Jean had taken pride in the work she had completed and the folders of typed words she had to show for it.

But as Ida Jean had mounted in skill, her passion had diminished. It had been a symptom of of the disease—Ida Jean could pinpoint exactly when her love for stories had begun to fade away. Luckily, it had been one of the last attributes to leave her. First had been her passion for her family, dissipating until she only viewed them as a biological unit; then had been her passion for learning, a trait that would have helped her through years of high school; after these went her creative interests, including both writing and music composition. She'd toiled over novels and original instrumentals without ever feeling it was work, until, slowly, her fingers had begun to slow, and her eyes had glazed over. At that point, she'd viewed herself as something of a husk, a gnarled, wooden girl who felt nothing and lived for nothing. Toward the end of the process, when she'd finally detected that something had gone wrong, she'd tried to care about the passion leaving—read through her old works over and over, listened to her compositions until the harmonies had grated—but the efforts hadn't restored her. Still, she'd listened, and she'd read, and she'd sat hollow-eyed late into the night, knowing that something had failed within her but not understanding how to fix it. Even then, she'd begun to give up on her old works. Instead of dancing the same tired routines, she'd simply stopped dancing. Either way, nothing would resolve itself; it was better, Ida Jean had thought, to let time absorb her than to stare at words she no longer cared for. No one would mind, no one but the old Ida Jean; and she'd died, hadn't she?

Ida Jean was a poor writer because she couldn't write at all.

Ariston's Resort was supposed to change that. Even before flying to the island, Ida Jean had begun to prepare for her own writing renaissance. Recent treatments had been successful, after all—where modern medicine had failed, applied neurofeedback had restored some of the personality she'd lost. Over the course of two summers, psychologists had seated her in front of a TV screen and played movies of her choice (she'd chosen blockbuster young-adult films, disappointing the action-oriented psychologist behind the computer). As she'd watched, electrodes glued to her head had monitored her neural activity, feeding it into the computer; in response, the computer would alter the movie, blurring or clarifying the picture so that, in order to best perceive the world, Ida Jean's brain would need to work as efficiently as possible. The first summer had eradicated her anxiety, leaving her a slightly less tense husk. The second summer had placed a dent in her depression, and this allowed her to function somewhat as she once had.

Passion was still missing, but Ida Jean could perform tasks anyway. The neurofeedback had raised her baseline contentment level—even if an activity sparked nothing within her, she would feel all right doing it, and the anxiety would be more passive in stopping her. As that second summer had ended, she'd found herself able to write again, less burdened by the nervousness that had once consumed her.

But her writing felt hollow. The skillset was still there, a bit rusty from lack of use but developed nevertheless. Yet Ida Jean found that her words lacked the appeal they'd once held, both as she wrote and as she read. Previous works had captivated her from the beginning, dragging her through two-hundred-thousand-word plotlines as she'd scrabbled to bring her characters to life. Current works barely existed, firstly because a good writer knows that successful debuts are not two hundred thousand words, secondly because that feeling of captivation had left her. She could barely foster any passion when reading her old boarding school romance, let alone when writing the fantasy adventure she'd been planning for years.

At Ariston, though, Ida Jean would write the novel regardless. She'd drafted the first chapter of her Nutcracker retelling three different times, she'd planned the world, she'd drawn maps with little etchings of mice. The time had arrived for her book to exist, not as pages of questions and answers, but as a readable, writeable novel.

The instant she arrived at Ariston's Resort, therefore, Ida Jean wasted no time rolling her suitcase straight to her room. She'd taken flights before, so the airplane had presented little stimulation; she'd also vacationed at tropical beaches several times with her family. Still, the island seemed to relax her from the moment she stepped foot on that white sand. The air was less muggy than it had been on the mainland, rocked with a balmy breeze, and the palm trees towering overhead cast a welcome shade onto the boarded path below. Memories returned to her of hazy trips to Florida, afternoons spent in the glow of a yellow sun and the surf of a gentle sea. She'd liked the beach, when she'd been younger.

Ida Jean's suitcase clunked across the trail as it rolled, and she scanned the area for anyone who might hear it. A ways down the beach, a shaggy-roofed pavilion stood, under which a few adults sipped drinks from an open bar. Two teenagers were laughing and batting at one another from two separate towels in the sand, notebooks splayed across the terry cloth. Further up the path, an elderly maid was pushing her cart between two stilted huts; when she spotted Ida Jean, she raised a hand in greeting. Ida Jean smiled and continued on.

Her room was in the Coral House, a structure she spotted as she crested a low hill. Though the roof seemed to be made of the same straw as the bar pavilion, the underside seemed to be sturdy wood, and a solid-looking white door stood at the entrance. Ida Jean stooped and lifted her suitcase up the steps, pushing the door open. Cool air drifted through the gap, and Ida Jean eagerly wandered inside.

Her room was number 3. As soon as Ida Jean had fished out her key from the main building and elbowed her way inside, a breath of relief escaped her. She'd been nervous about the accommodations ever since seeing the price tag—fifty-dollar rooms were ludicrously cheap, cheaper than most mid-range motels. But the bed appeared clean, a dark wooden desk leaned against the wall, and the windows on the far side opened to the beachfront path. Ida Jean's mother would be so comforted once she'd sent pictures.

But first came the writing. Ida Jean had arrived early in the afternoon, and she'd spent the entire plane ride world-building for her Nutcracker retelling. Four hours remained before she would head to the beachside restaurant for dinner, but she'd promised herself to write at least two thousand words that day, and her current count was zero.

Ida Jean retrieved her laptop from her bag and unwound the cord, plugging it into the outlet below the desk. When she opened her computer, the only window open was her word processor, the document title reading "Nutcracker 4." The screen was blank except for the blinking cursor on the first line. The only task remaining was to begin writing.

Beginning chapters was a struggle for Ida Jean, but, strangely, today she tackled the task immediately. The first line spilled from her fingers, vaguely underwhelming—she'd added no symbolism, and the syntax wasn't particularly exciting—but she kept going anyway, which delighted Ida Jean. Usually she would spend ten minutes rewording the first few lines in order to achieve maximum impact, but her writers' vlogs had advised her not to edit as she wrote. Perhaps the confidence with which she'd arrived at Ariston had enabled her to proceed boldly, never looking back.

The entire first page was born in the same manner. Ida Jean would think of a sentence, and she would write it down immediately, no hesitation needed. Even if she started a sentence in a way that didn't fit, she found herself finishing it and continuing on. The speed of the process energized her—the word count on her screen was climbing faster than it had in years, and, though she'd need to edit later, at least she'd created some raw material. Maybe this was what real writing felt like.

Oddly, Ida Jean never stopped to consider what might come next, not even once she'd finished a paragraph. Usually she would think about how best to integrate an idea, particularly at major transition points, and then she would write it down. Now, however, Ida Jean did not falter at these junctions—she would type the first sentence that entered her head. At first, Ida Jean was glad that she had shed her anxiety. By writing in a more stream-of-consciousness style, she was ignoring the possible pitfalls of her actions and allowing herself to make progress.

But after about an hour, Ida Jean came to a sinking realization. While her word count was massive—Ida Jean had written 1500 words, twice as many as she usually did within that time period—her scene had not moved forward. Her main character, Clara, was hosting a Christmas party, and the chapter had begun with Clara waiting for family friends to arrive. Yet even as an hour had passed in real time, seemingly only fifteen minutes had passed for Clara. She'd mingled with the guests already present, restocked food, and checked her own outfit in the hall mirror, but nothing of real consequence had occurred yet. The family friends had been supposed to arrive almost right away, after a brief introduction to the scene; instead, the scene had become that introduction.

Screw the word count—Ida Jean needed to fix the chapter. She wouldn't make cuts yet, but she could at least stop and think about her transition into the Srivats family arrival. Resolved, Ida Jean finished her last, long-winded paragraph...

...and launched into another one.

Ida Jean's eyes widened. She hadn't meant to keep going—she'd wanted to reassess the course of the chapter, see how the Srivats could smoothly enter the scene. But here Clara was, cracking a joke to one of her parents about the Christmas tree decorations. She couldn't afford another dialogue scene, not after the one previous had consumed twenty minutes of real time with useless banter. But even as Ida Jean prepared herself to stop writing, the words continued to come. Her fingers danced across the keyboard, almost as if she were playing a piano piece from muscle memory; the smallest and most rudimentary of thoughts were translating themselves into sentences, regardless of Ida Jean's decision to stop.

Something was wrong.

Ida Jean lifted her leg. The movement came easily, following directly from Ida Jean's mental command. But when Ida Jean tried to retract her hands, nothing happened. The fingers continued to clack, spurting out hackneyed lines of dialogue from Ida Jean's baseline mental processing.

"Stop," said Ida Jean, her pulse quickening. Her lips moved, and the word came out; she moved all the muscles she could at once, nodding her head, kicking her feet, swinging her elbows from side to side. Though the elbow movement at least changed her hands' vantage point, the fingers continued to collide with the keys, even as the same dialogue scene had trailed across two pages of her manuscript. Good Lord, her fingers were broken, or her mind was broken, or her neurofeedback—the same neurofeedback that her local sports team used to improve performance—had cross-wired her brain.

She tried moving her elbows far away from the keyboard, too far for her hands to reach. It was as if an invisible wall blocked her movement in a sphere around the computer—her elbows could not stray far enough for her fingers to miss the G and H keys. Ida Jean could lift her legs, and she could brace them against the back wall, but she could not kick outward, hard enough for her chair to fall back and her hands to free themselves. She could not even stand.

This was not what she'd wanted. Ida Jean had dreamed of a vacation where she could write anything, her productivity boosted. It seemed as if, somehow, her wish had been granted in the most horrible of ways; she could produce because she was not given the choice not to. With this realization, Ida Jean closed her eyes and shrieked.

Ida Jean was a poor writer, but poorness, at least, was better than strandedness.

    ☀ Sona Mishra ☀    

No Entry

    ☀ Becca Montgomery ☀    

No Entry

    ☀ Lukas Ryan ☀    

No Entry

    ☀ Marlene Rhodes ☀    

No Entry

    ☀ Matthew Saitou ☀    

Matthew leaned back on his elbows with his eyes closed, listening to the bubbling roar of the waves lapping against the sand. It drowned out the background noise inside his head. For the first time in what felt like a very long time, his muscles relaxed. They lost their tense frigidness that came from the alert state that war had placed him in. He lost himself in the cadence of the waves rolling back-and-forth.

Soft footfalls echoed behind him. A shadow loomed above him, so he glanced up to see an upsidedown, but beautiful smile on Mystee's face. Her long strands of brown hair was whipped by the soft breeze. "I didn't want to bother you, but... I missed you." She collasped down beside him, spraying sand onto his lap.

Matthew closed his eyes, breathing in the salty brine of the sea. "The ocean calms me. I - I don't know why... It's been a long time since I've felt this way."

He felt Mystee lean against his arm and he heard her sigh. Her breath warmed up the bare skin of his arm as she clutched him tightly. "I wish we could just pause this moment..."

Opening his eyes, Matthew kissed her lightly on her head and then gazed back at the setting sun. "Me too. But... I have writing to do." He rose to his feet and stretching out his muscles, wincing from the ache in his wounded shoulder. Reaching down, his fingers intertwined with Mystee's, helping her stand.

She hopped up as the wind increased, blowing her white and blue skirt around her legs like a dance. The way her hair blew in her face, it looked as if her hair was trying to strange her. "Ugh!"

Laughing, Matthew reached over and helped untangle her hair, lightly kissing her nose. "Come on." They made their way across the beach and back into their hut. It was breathtakingly nice, with a view like nothing Matt had ever seen before. They left the door open and even from inside the main room, he could still hear the waves crashing against the shore.

They had a small bathroom and kitchen, though they didn't need one - the main resort supplied all their meals- which was connected to the main room. Matt considered it more of lounge than a living room. The stairs led to their Master Suite, with a balcony that overlooked the rest of the resort.

He grabbed a notebook, which was his preference when writing, and settled in, leaning against the open doorway.

"Is that going to make your shoulder ache?" Mystee asked. Before he had a chance to reply, she grabbed one of the pillows from the couch.

Matt leaned forward and waited for her to tuck it in behind him. When he was comfortable, he nodded. "Thanks."

She smiled and said, "Do you want me to leave you alone so you can concentrate?"

Kissing her on the lips, he shook his head. "No. You can stay. Please?"

In response, she took a seat on the couch and placed in her earphones. They buzzed with music that was loud enough to hear and yet too soft to make out the words. Taking a deep breath, Matt skimmed over what he had last written:

The Boshon War of Japan in the 1860s left the samurai era behind. The newly reformed Meiji Government banned the use of swords, even to the point of turning on their own men.

Matthew tapped his pen against the page and thought back to what he knew about the war. Then, he began to write.

These men had been loyal to the Meiji, even made themselves traitors to Japan in order to help start the new government. In the end, it was the loyal samurai, the ones who had dedicated their lives to warfare and the Emperor, who were killed by the traitors. It wasn't long before the traitors were betrayed themselves.

Deep inside, a part of Matthew wanted to pause and think for a moment, or read the samurai book from his suitcase, but for some reason, the pen kept moving.

Their swords were banned, and the samurai way of life was all but destroyed.

He continued writing about the new Meiji government and eventually the attack on Pearl Harbor. From there, he wrote about his grandparents on his mother's side - the American soldiers who were sent to Hawaii.

I remember my mom telling me stories about grandpa, of how he and his friends had originally thought it was nothing more than a vacation. The entire fleet of ships were there, anchored systematically around the harbor. All they wanted to do was relax and flirt with the nurses. Little did they know that their vacation was about to become much more deadly.

"Hey, Matthew, maybe you should take a break," Mystee said. "You've been writing for hours and you need to give your shoulder and hand a break."

Matt couldn't respond; his concentration was on his writing. More words flowed onto the page. Desperately, he tried to stop, but his aching hand just kept going. Stop. I need to take a break! Why won't my hand stop? Panic surged inside his chest as his heart pounded. He completely ignored Mystee. Something was very wrong, but this wasn't combat. There was no enemy he could see; Matthew couldn't fight this.

Before long, his writing began to mirror his thoughts, unconsiously. Unwillingly.

I wanted this to be a vacation too. Maybe I have more in common with my ancestors than I thought. I'm a warrior. In that way, I'm like my grandfather who flew a Japanese plane, who planned to die attacking Pearl Harbor that day. At the same time, like my other grandpa, I'm here on vacation, expecing peace and relaxation. Yet everything's going wrong - things are so wrong.

How did things spin so far out of control?

It was the question Matthew had no answer to, one that had plagued him ever since he'd left the 'States. How did this happen? Why is this happening to me? Perhaps he was asking because he couldn't stop writing, but maybe...

Matt was asking about something far, far deeper.

What led me to this? Maybe I shouldn't have come home. Was I stupid for leaving the hospital in London? All I wanted was to see Mystee. She'd been worried about me after hearing about my injury. Even though phyiscal therapy on my shoulder was going well, the doctors in London noticed that my PTSD was worse than ever.

So why did I go home? Why did I go see Mystee?

Tears brimming his eyes, Matthew clenched the pen tighter. His hand burned and ached as his heart pounded; his chest heaved with panting breaths.

Did she notice that something was wrong with me, that something had broken after the IED exploded? I keep wondering, but there's no way to find that out now.

I don't even remember what we fought over that night. Maybe... Maybe she wanted me to try to go out. I think I yelled at her when I felt like she was pushing me too far. Her friend... I don't remember her name, wasn't she there? Didn't she try to talk to me for Mystee?

"Mystee isn't your caretaker, Matthew! She deserves better than you, so if you aren't going to try, then why should Mystee stay?" her friend screamed.

"Just because your love life is going nowhere, doesn't mean you have the right to interfere with ours!" I was so angry, clenching my fists.

Her friend smacked me in the face. It didn't hurt, but it surprised me. Was that what set me off? Maybe a car backfired, or maybe someone was shooting off fireworks.

I honestly don't know.

Matthew closed his eyes, squeezing them shut as tight as possible. Desperation became panic when the pen, his hand, the words, still didn't stop.

No one believes me, then again, no one knows the truth. If they did, they probably wouldn't believe me. The truth is, no one can fully understand how horrifying it is. I blacked out - completely. So much that there are still holes in my memory.

There isn't anyone on earth who could imagine what I felt when I came out of it. I remember blood.... So much of it. How can a body so little have so much blood? It was smeared all over the walls, on the floor, in the bathroom where Mystee and her friend tried to hide. Their phones were smashed, and...

None of this is what Matthew wanted to write. No, no, no, stop! Stop it! Matthew mentally screamed at himself, at his hand, at anything, begging it to stop writing. He didn't want to think about what happened. No part of him was ready to face this. All he wanted was to stay wrapped up in his armor of denial that kept the pain from hurting him too badly.

The words and his hand continued, as if it had a mind, no, a will of its own.

Her friend's body was lying on the floor, her throat slashed. I had no idea where I'd even gotten the knife. Mystee's... Hers was facedown with my belt around her throat. She'd been stabbed seven times from what I could count. I ran out of the room as fast as I could, crying like a little baby. My hands shook, my mind... God, even now I can't fathom, can't understand what happened.

Mystee's blood was on ME! I killed her. I snapped, and I killed her. I ran... I ran as fast as I could, knocking over a lamp in the process. I guess the place burned to the ground. At the time, I didn't care. All I thought about was just getting away and pretending that it never happened.

I got on a plane and headed straight for my real home. Japan. Maybe my parents can help me. Maybe I should have turned myself in. All these maybes, all these questions, and no answers.

Now I'm here. Mystee is here with me. Why? Why is she here, when I killed her?

Matthew wanted to look away from the page, wanted to call out to her, but the words refused to let him stop. Mystee, he mentally cried. Mystee, help me! Mystee please... Come back. Make this stop, make it end. I just want it to end! Furiously, he pounded his left hand against the floor, yanking and kicking... anything to change what had happened. Glancing down, he noticed crimson blood staining his hands. Is this my blood? No... it - it's Mystee's blood. His thoughts blurred, and the words blurred with them. Nothing made sense, nothing except one thing that he couldn't escape...

Writing the truth shattered his dream and worse, his denial. Mystee wasn't there with him. That was his truth, that was something that he couldn't escape, even more than the constant writing that he couldn't stop.

Matthew had killed Mystee.

The blue-green ocean waves continued to lap against the shore, none the wiser. Their bubbling roar was no longer relaxing. Instead, every crash shattered any hope of peace Matthew had. Each wave seemed to say Mystee's name. Mystee. Mystee. Mystee. Crash. Crash. Crash. What had once drowned out the background noise of his thoughts, had now become the background noise, mentally torturing him. The ocean no longer calmed him, the cadence no longer comforted him. Now, it was the bitter reminder of what he had lost.

  ☀ Leo Lenoir ☀     

No Entry

  ☀ Shaun Henry Wayland ☀     

Dropped

  ☀ Lake Attuckus ☀     

Two things happen as soon as I buy that ticket.

1. A really hot boy pops out of nowhere, proclaiming his love for me,

and

2. No, that doesn't really happen.

That was actually quite disappointing. Way to go, my over imaginative brain. You just ruined my day with your unreal boys that have really nice faces and pretty, sparkling eyes. . . damn it.

A wave of some unidentifiable emotion crashes over me. My sugar-high dies and I sigh, flopping gracefully on my back and pull my laptop up my body to rest on my chest (and, yes, it is possible to flop gracefully). The screen flashes white and grey light across my face, and the smooth keys emit soft, pleasant clacks. I type my way through the browser, opening my word documents with a practiced ease. A bright page with only a smattering of little blue marks pulls up when I select the file that's titled "Only 4 When Ur Bored". Inside this barren document is a link to a website. A random story idea generator website.

Call me cliche as much as you like, but some of my better ideas have come from the last place you'd think, such as this website. Most, however, come from my imagination as I trek through the adventure most people call "life". Boring car rides become a caravan line where I must track through the hot, hot desert to deliver news of invaders in the south to the kingdom's capital in the north. A meeting my parents had no choice but to take me and my sister to when we were younger turns into a torture room where I must endure all measures of hardships so I am not suspected as the spy I am. Sometimes, when my mother has called me to do my chores in the middle of a good book, I pretend that I am a princess in disguise as a servant in my own castle so I may listen to the gossip around the staff for the barest hint of my assassination by one of them. I amuse myself with this one more now then I have before; living alone has its perks. I can make an absolute fool myself trying to act realistically so I can describe my movements better when I record the events on paper and no one will question me.

My earbuds thrum with the steady beat of deep drums as I stare at the website I've moved to in a new tab. Getting lost in my music while I write is something not uncommon, but today my thoughts thread through the song chords and I find myself unable to concentrate. My thoughts and the rhythm of the song playing blur together until I can't decipher which words are my own or a random lyric breaking through the fuzzy but not unpleasant fog coating my mind.

The heat of my laptop's battery bleeds through my thin shirt though. That I am aware of. It warms my body pleasantly, so unlike the vicious way my eyes begin to burn from the glaring screen. The single word I've mustered no longer makes sense within my own brain; it feels like I've misspelled it or used it incorrectly but I know that to be false. I eventually fall asleep, my laptop screen dim and the black text swimming across my vision until I close my eyes and shut out the world for one night of peaceful dreams. Who knows? Maybe a great inspiration will hit me.

:-:-:-:-:

I've had second thoughts on many things. Roller coasters, performances, try-outs, even signing up for clubs at school brought me apprehension as soon as I had walked away from the table. Buying gifts for people and then watching as they opened it was also really nerve wracking.

I am famous for one situation of "oh my gawd, this was a really bad idea" in particular, though.

My best friend was dating a popular wide receiver for our school's football team at the time. She got along well with his little clique easy so her reason for inviting me was definitely not because she needed a friend. Actually, it was around this time that Baylor started hanging out more with them then me, which is why our friendship shredded.

The only reason I tagged along was because Baylor had forgotten we had scheduled a Starbucks date to study (note: both of our grades were near perfect so studying was only an excuse for our parents). When I asked about our meet-up time, her boyfriend chimed in real smugly and said, "We're going to the movies that day."

"You should come watch it with us!" Baylor had said. She glanced up at her boyfriend, Kadence, with the biggest puppy-pout face I've ever seen her pull and cooed, "Would that be alright, babe?"

No one is immune to her pouts, least of all her lovers. The answer was clear in his eyes before another sound from his mouth was heard.

That weekend we all go to the movies, we have a good time, I get a few new friends, end of story right? Uh, no.

We get to the movies and I hear Kadence ordering tickets for the horror movie that just came out. The horror movie that is supposedly the scariest thing since humans discovered death is a permanent disease. Before I continue, let's get this fact straight. I. Do. Not. Like. Horror. Movies.

The worst part? The place was literally crawling with kids from our high school. Everywhere you turned, you recognized someone from a class, club, or sports team you're both in together.

"Hey, Lake!" or "What's up, Lake?" or maybe even "Move, Lake!" were flying in nonstop. That last one was probably Thomas, the jerk.

"C'mon, Laker Lee!" Baylor said, tugging on my arm. I let her drag me down the dark hall before I finally planted my feet and stopped at the the entrance.

She turned to look at me questioningly. "What's wrong?"

"I can't do this. Bay, you know I don't do scary movies!"

Baylor laughed and pulled me into a side hug. "It'll be fine! It's not even that scary!"

I glared petulantly at her. "This is supposedly the scariest thing since the idea of flesh-eating zombies became a thing!"

Kadence brushed past me hard, knocking my shoulder almost 90 degrees around while he barely flinched, the food he had cradled in his arms sloshing a little. "Are you afraid of a stupid movie, loser?"

He disappeared behind the theatre door before I could defend my dignity properly.

Baylor eyed his back through the tight fitting shirt approvingly, a disgusting fond look on her face. She finally turned back to me after the darkness had completely swallowed him and out came the puppy-pout.

"I have a bad feeling about this, Bay."

One thing led to another and the next thing I knew I was sitting in that movie with my white knuckles gripping the arm rests. Another thing led to three and I was seen bolting out of the theatre and to my car when the first arm was torn off all while my lunch threatened to make another appearance.

I know the feeling that comes with second thoughts very well. However, as I set my suitcase down in the nice room I had booked and took one look at the huge bed before a flying leap saw me bouncing happily on the poofy mattress, these feelings never reared their ugly heads.

What? You really thought I had a meaningful reason for telling you that particular story? No, I just like talking about myself.

Which is exactly why I'm not the author I could be. I write and write and write about an event in my character's life, but by the time I have finished, I realize I don't have or don't remember the point of it all. Lots of my previous works have been scrapped because I can't connect anything together. It's sad, really. My English teachers always rant about my potential; I just can't seem to bring that potential out.

I hope this resort will help me improve with no life distractions to stop me.

Settling in was no problem. Half of my clothes are hanging off cabinet doors where I tossed them lazily. My laptop took some coaxing to fire up, but it's now resting on my desk, a pleasant hum emitting from its battery. Toiletries lay where I scatter them across the bathroom counter. Other miscellaneous things sit either in a nag on the chair in a sunlit corner or shoved haphazardly in any nooks and crannies I can find.

My notebook is propped open under my nose. A pencil twirls idly in my hand and I imagine the scenes I wish to describe and share with others play out on repeat in my head.

And then I begin to write.

I'm a prisoner. My crimes are unknown to the reader and my cellmates all shrink fearfully away from me at the slightest twitch of my body, but an air of awe rolls off them in waves. But I am confused. Why am I here? What have I done? Who am I? Why are they afraid of me? Where is Lukas?

A throbbing at the back of my head stops me from inquiring my identity and purpose in the King's royal dungeons but I doubt they would have answered regardless.

A shaky hand raises from the cold, cold dungeon floor. The other occupants flinch violently. Their startled movements do not escape my sharp eyes and my hand stills midair. The chain connected to my hand clicks almost musically on the hard ground. The tune my weak quivering produces is pitiful and sadistic, fear dripping from every new note. I let my limb fall back to my side, my eyes squeezing shut as my body slumps against the chipped wall. I pull my knees up to my chest and rest my head against them. The warmth from my body has long since been leeched out by the freezing floor and I shiver.

They say the Kong's royal dungeons are the best kept out of all the kingdom's small town and city prisons. I snort humorlessly at the thought. The floors may be clean, but the cells are dark and cold. The chains may not be rusted, but they cinch tighter. The cellmates may be few, but they are vicious and afraid. The cell locks are better, the guards are unfamiliar and hostile, and the food. The food are scraps from the Royal Table, for we are the scraps of this kingdom. Unwanted, scorned, potential-less in the eyes of the higher-ups. We are right where we belong. In the wastelands.

It is around here that my heads falls forward and my notebook pages crackle softly in response. But my hand cramps satisfyingly and the lead of my pencil is hot from use. My eraser is peeling just a little and the music that usually feeds my inspiration is no where to be heard. I came up with this idea all in my head. I cannot stop painting stories with words inside my head even as I sleep.

I feel like I am improving as an author, and the thought sends a smile to my lips.

    ☀ Billy Driscoll ☀     

His fingers ache with overuse - an ache that remains except for when the joints are in constant, unfettering, use. In front of his bleeding eyes, is a landscape of waste and uselessness - on an island once advertised as paradise.

Palm trees catch ablaze, and bombs drop like coconuts. Weedy grass catches around his goulashes like reedy serpents, and each heavy step on the sponge-like soil squeezes out carmine puddles which are quickly reabsorbed. General Potag lugs around a recently emptied rifle, fingering the dead trigger with both an over-the-top obsession, and an unattentive cool. If someone put a typewriter in his hands, he would write a novel without realizing it. Click click clack.

If someone put a rifle in Billy's hands right now, he would waste so many lives. It wouldn't even be his mind or nothing, just his fingers, which won't stop running off. Clack clack click. He's aware to some extent that the clacking is coming at a feverish clip, but a lucidity clogs up his consciousness, and prevents it from really clicking.

Quique Cruces walks two steps behind Potag, as he likes to, and witnesses puddles twice as deep creep up his boots with slithering, exhilarated, breaths. His tongue flicks out into the heavy Ibigos air like an electric eel, and returns coated in kerosene aromatics - which he swallows with savor. A palm that made it past Potag with nothing more than a graze, now drops to the earth, a rib carved from machete slashes flays along the back of its bent-over trunk. Ash and carrion splash airborne according to the laws of physics and chain reaction processes.

Billy's doing worse. The way he's going through pages, he'll use up the Amazon, and their underdeveloped web services. Then the morning paper will have to write this huge obituary on their beloved company, and that will take down, at the very least, two trees. Probably more. He continues to pound the keys of his laptop, not because he doesn't care about the implications on the environment - though he really couldn't be bothered - but because he is a corncob of his former self. People are always going on about husks. Just another example of human arrogance, really.

Want to know how consumer-side retailers slandered all of the cornhusks in America? Here's how they did it: the crux of it, is that people judge things not on an absolute scale, but based on an item's usefulness to themselves. A corncob without a husk is vulnerable to human control and manipulation, yeah? Husks are actually good for the corn, just bad for the people who want to eat it - tear it apart like wolves - so grocery establishments sell cobs in four-packs, wrapped in cellophane rather than their natural skin, and upcharge it by a dollar or two. Nothing quite sets the value of an item as well as the price does. In terms of the national ethos, like.

He really can't think of a better metaphor than a corncob without a husk. His identity and his mind persist, but they can't desist what's eating at him no matter how they insist.

Two parakeets take flight from their own volition. Even though their home was just cut to the stump, and death was otherwise a likelihood, it was still a choice they made with their own autonomy. Potag sees them fly away, and the explosion of unsavory soil that tickles at their talons, and he wonders if they feel the effect of battle. When your shoulders sag, and your toes curl, and riding a tree to your death starts sounding somewhat seductive. He wonders if Quique ever wonders stuff like that. The kid's a good soldier - almost too good - usually they bristle at his orders and approach them with apprehension, so he adjusts and says things he doesn't exactly mean so his real wishes can be posed as a compromise, but Quique does whatever he says within reason. Still, they can't talk, like actually talk, because, as he correctly recites, emotions and all that crap are precisely opposite from reasonable. 'Logos all the way, man,' he likes to say, 'mascots, big block letters, and arguments that are more than puppy dog eyes and snot-soaked tissues.' He's quite fond of physos as well, which is a term he made up, because it sounds more intellectual than decapitation and stuff. It's the intellectualism that makes him unsettling. If he were a ribeye with sausage arms and a gym membership, it would make sense how he savors the tilt, but he's a languid slinky of a man, and his best skill is enthusiasm.

Potag is better known for talking at people, anyway, but when he can do it under the guise of being drunk or bleeding to death, it behooves him to express himself to the more emotionally in-tune members of his squadron. That way, they secretly respect him as a human underneath their open distaste, just as they are fooled to think he does as well. He hikes up his weapon and splatters imaginary bird-shot at the migratory couple before they fly into the cloud of haze toward the cherry sun. An assuming look over his shoulder picks up the crinkling nose and breathless laughter of Quique.

He couldn't help himself, notes Billy, clacking down on his laptop computer. The keys turn his fingertips red and warm with friction. A human scream knifes through the eggshell walls of his hotel room and makes a nest in his albatross comforter; It almost sounds like the screech of a sea-fowl. It brings him back to the California coast and unfair animal abuse citations, and takes him to The Ibigos, where two verdant parakeets fly from a battlefield just in time. It makes him think, but he just writes instead.

Somewhere within the ferns, which appear denser and healthier than ever before after gorging themselves on human nutrients, something sounds off. Another whoosh over there. The brush prickles. Potag fishes a matchbox of pellet projectiles from his cargo pocket and pours it into his muzzle, though half of them dive into the bog below, and bob like buoys. He mashes the gun back together and again, spitting out excess ammo. Finally, it engages. Quique moves the machete to his mouth, biting down hard on the sappy steel, pulls a tomahawk from a loop in his belt with a readying heft, and snakes the aforementioned belt loose from his trousers with a preparatory crack. Haze sinks down upon the jungle, and the sun shines carmine. Two enemy soldiers hop out of the brush with pop-guns and oversized helmets. For the shortest time, everything stops.

Billy writes an entire paragraph in like fifteen seconds. Rapid Fire.

General Potag looks over his shoulder to check if Quique is alright - the kid's covered in their blood, and at peace with that. Potag plucks his handkerchief from his breast pocket, holding it far away from both the grime on his body and the squalor at his feet, as he deliberately folds the embroidered eagle to the inside, such that three layers of muted white cotton are protecting it on both sides. He uses it to wipe the other men's blood and snot from his eyes, and for the first time, he sees them - one cuddling up to a date palm and gnawing down on the bark to do something for the pain, another sucking on a thumb that's gone missing. "Good God," he says. "Y'all are just a bunch of babies."

They nod in agreement.

Billy's eyes fluctuate like something sinusoid. He recognizes someone is screaming, and that they stopped a little while ago, all at once. Everything is quiet, still, and clean, but sweat drips from his brow down to the hotel-chic hardwood. His fingers ache with overuse - an ache that remains except for when the joints are in constant, unfettering, use. In front of his bleeding eyes, is a landscape of waste and uselessness - on an island once advertised as paradise.  

  ☀ Kirk Hoffman ☀     

The smell of salt drifting in from the beach is refreshing. After so long cramped in the three-block radius of his house, Kirk has been eager for something more. He forgot how much he loved new sounds and smells, and how each one could wash over him like the waves lap at the shoreline. They've been calm all day, but he watches just in case they decide to do something else. Maybe a tsunami will come or a shark shall leap from the depths. Unrealistic and yet he hopes.

"Are we finding a table or just watching the ocean?" his brother asks, elbowing Kirk in the side - not enough to hurt but enough to make him yank himself away with a sharp pain jolting through his ribs.

Reluctant as he is, the boy peels his hands from the wooden railing that scraps his fingers in a gentle way that makes Kirk want to run his hand up and down the wood without a fear of splinters. It's nice. Everything here is constructed so delicately. Beyond the wooden platform they stand on is the resort. The structure beams down and glows when the ocean glows back. Its shadow falls upon the awning stretched above the pair's heads.

Tugging Neal's beanie to the left, Kirk nods. "We are." The laptop tucked under his arm shifts. It almost drops to the planks below. He needs to be more careful with the thing considering it's the only one he brought - or has for that matter - but his mind needs superglue to be attached to his head. A sigh breaks his lips when he catches the impatient hazel eyes watching him. "I'm going," he insists, stretching out the syllables. To prove his point, Kirk starts down the boardwalk.

His brother follows, rather amused. "You're even bringing that to dinner?"

The computer is set down on the plate that's already laid out on the nearest table. Most of the others are empty, too early for the dinner rush. "Yes, I'm trying to finish this scene before the workshop tomorrow." His brief response is accepted with a huff, and Neal watches as Kirk begins to stack all his dishes off to the side or shove them one way or another to make a smooth surface for the device. With the click of the front latch, its pried open. An irritating bloom of sound comes from the start screen.

It opens to an empty document. The whiteness stares back, all but setting a headache right between Kirk's eyes. Writing... that'll be easy.It's been since the accident that he's touched the keys for anything other than looking up a bad youtube clip. Fingers flex, hesitate, and pull back. "Maybe once I get something to eat?" Kirk suggests halfheartedly. They both know that won't solve anything.

The menu flips over in Neal's hands. "How far are you?" He asks only because he has an obligation to, eyes finding the horizon the sun hangs over far more interesting. Kirk doesn't blame him.

A painful sigh expels from his lungs and his head smacks into the edge of the table in self-pity. "Zero words."

"Any clue what you're writing about?" his brother chuckles.

"Not a clue." The words are muffled as Kirk lets his cheeks fall into his palms and begins to squish and stretch his face, wiping all the oil from his sunscreen onto it. All that's going to lead to is pimples, but the thought doesn't occur to him; he's too caught up in his existential dread. "I had an idea but..." He makes an empty popping sound with his lips, signaling that his genius was lost to the wind.

"Let me help." With a scrap of his chair against the wood, Neal pulls it around to sit behind Kirk. Neal leans over his shoulder, breath brushing his neck. His eyes skim the empty document a few times. He reaches out, grabs Kirk's hands, and forcibly places them on the keys. "Write about something you know to start. I hear that's easier."

The short boy's nose scrunches up. "Like what?"

"How about us at the overpass?" Neal offers. He has a genuine smile on his lips and that makes it all the worse.

"No." Throat tightens, shoulders hunch, body closes off. He's too stiff to breathe. "Not that." The words squeak out painfully. He hates the lake. The smell of salt water filling his nostrils. He hated it. Hated the way the waves licked at the beach, but it was different than here. The sand was not soft and slipped between one's toes but clung in gritty clumps and was littered with jagged seashells and rotting seaweed that stunk up the air and churned his stomach. There was nothing more he hated than that old overpass where you could pull out and head down to the beach. It was useless. "The opposite of that," he mutters, moving the beanie to the right.

Without intending to, his fingers start working. Anything to get away from the idea that is now clogging his brain. Every detail is stitched in there, too tight to remove, some too small to see. he'd love to yank the stitches out on by one and forget that goddamn place. Kirk isn't even watching what he's typing, but it doesn't matter. It flies out of his fingers as a distraction. Two girls from the South Bronx? Sure. An adopted dog with a missing leg? Go ahead. The words aren't even mapped out like a play yet, just absent minded scribbles to will the blank page with black ink. Over time, the screen gets brighter and the world grows dimmer.

"Kirk?"

He barely hears his brother enough to turn his head, but his fingers don't pause. "Hm?" is the offered response.

"It's dark out." Kirk's eyes yank away from the keys. Waves that lap at the shoreline now are longer, deeper. The smell of salt has strengthened in the air, filling his nose and clinging to his skin. Where the sun hung in an empty expanse of sky with a few pinpricks of bright light. It's been so very long since he has written.