American Turtles Read online

  Wendla was still very suspicious of her surprise guest, but decided that no harm could come from a few sparkles being dusted over her head. She knew better than to take a drink from a stranger at a party, but no one had ever warned against a mere sprinkle of dust.

  She hesitantly agreed and the young man swiftly sprinkled the pixie dust over her head. He escorted her to her bedroom as she began to stumble drowsily. She leaned on him for support, genuinely surprised at the fast pace at which she was drifting off to sleep, to her good dreams, and tomorrow, to Neverland. The young man placed her head on her pillow while Wendla sleepily murmured a small “Thank You” as she closed her eyes and drifted further away.

  The young man looked back at her as he closed the door, safe in the knowledge that his Wendla would never grow up. The young man continued his stride to the street and walked swiftly towards the next house with toys strewn about the yard, clues as to who its young residents were.

  As he turned to enter this house he tore down a sign with his face and the words “WANTED Dead or Alive: ‘The Sleepy Slaughterer,’” as he prepared to perform as Peter Pan yet again, and claim his next victim.

  * * * Author’s Note * * *

  This story was largely influenced by Gaiman’s retellings of fairytales, his misleading titles, and his tendency to place just one aspect of the story out of the norm. Gaiman fills his retellings with twists and dark nuances to break the expectations that his audience has of their beloved heroes and princesses. In this modern “retelling” of the story of Peter Pan, the boy who never grows up is merely a farce. The readers of this version of Peter Pan face a possible reality in which both the story and the fictional being exist. Influenced by the Gaiman trend of adding a touch of darkness to such beloved stories, our Peter is not a young boy who can fly and never grows up, but a crazed young man that takes advantage of the naivety of children and young adults and swiftly commits a series of murders. He is not the hero that the audience has come to expect, but instead an unlikely villain.

  This story also utilizes the strategy of a misleading title, so as not to give the reader an idea of the story they are about to be retold, similar to Gaiman’s “Snow, Glass, Apples.” The audience is left to go on the path of the story with the protagonist, and is thus undistracted by their preconceptions of what the story of Peter Pan should be. The last main Gaiman influence is changing just one aspect of the story to make it out of place. Much like Gaiman’s short story “How to Talk to Girls at Parties,” the overall scenario of the story is rooted in a relatable reality that could easily be the audience’s reality, yet there is still an aspect that is out of the ordinary. The reality in which Wendla and “Peter” meet is one that the audience can relate to, yet the instance of a home-intruder claiming to be Peter Pan strains that reality, and pushes the story into a universe all its own. Gaiman is an unparalleled author that can easily inspire new pieces through his narrative and writing techniques, much as he influenced the direction of this short story.

  The Moments That Haunt Us

  Shabnam Tabesh

  She stood at the edge. And as she stood she remembered. After all, what was the harm in that? She had already come too far to turn back now. She knew that she had to jump in order to leave this place and forget.

  But before that she remembered. She remembered the first time that she had seen him. His raven hair caught the afternoon sunlight and shown almost as brightly as his clear, blue eyes. He was even wearing a Byrds t-shirt and she just knew that it wasn’t in an ironic way; he genuinely liked their music too. It suited his tall frame perfectly. He had an authentic alternative rock vibe around him, but it was in contrast to his bright and humorous tendencies. This contrast made everyone gather around him with intrigue. The mischievous glint in his eyes is actually what caught and held her attention in the first place, and no matter how hard she tried her eyes would no longer deviate from him.

  From then on, she followed him everywhere. It was merely an obsession. And even though all of her friends and family told her to stop, she could never do such a thing. It was out of her control. He had her heart and she was bound to follow her heart wherever he took it. She followed him everywhere from the park to the beach and to the zoo with its bird sanctuary. She followed him all day and night, for every day and night. She even waited outside of his window for him to go to sleep every night and wake up every morning. She would wake up at the crack of dawn just to ensure that she could watch him get up too. On those mornings, she felt like she was the only thing in the world that was awake, apart from the earthworms in the soil of the garden under his window. She would often kick the dirt up and force the worms out to keep her company as she waited for him to wake up. On most mornings she would even try to sing him a lullaby or a wake up song outside of his open window in hopes that he would hear it and fall deeply in love with her. However, she knew that her singing voice was no good. Her friends likened it to the sounds of a dying animal, but it didn’t stop her from trying. She even went as far as to leave little gifts outside his door so that he would take notice of her. They were nothing crazy, just little bits and pieces of nature that she had found and admired: a luminous pearl from the beach, a polished stone, and a shiny hairpin that someone had dropped in the park. All just beautiful odds and ends.

  However, he never noticed. Not even once.

  And eventually, the months and months of being ignored got to her. Her love started to shred her heart into pieces and she lost her will to live. No amount of consolation could save her. She was an empty shell while he walked around casually toting her heart around with him. And he didn’t even know it. She needed to put an end to the misery she was feeling. She needed to leave this place and forget everything about him.

  This is what had brought her to the edge. She inhaled deeply as she looked at the bustling city street below her. People walked all around below her. They reminded her of the ants that she always saw from far above, marching in a line to and from work. She could see that life was moving on without her already, so what impact could her death really cause anyway? She wondered if her friends or family would miss her when she was gone. She wondered if she’d regret her decision to leave. But ultimately, she wondered if he would feel even the tiniest twinge of anything after she left this place for a better one. It was all for him. Maybe this way he would know that.

  She took one final breath.

  And she jumped.

  And she flew, fast and far.

  After all, she was just a raven. She was never destined to love a man in the first place.

  A few days later, he noticed that something was different. The constant presence he had felt for the past few months was gone. So was the endless cawing outside of his bedroom window in the mornings. The shiny objects had also stopped appearing outside his front door. However, he really didn’t make any of these connections since he wasn’t all that bright. He just noticed that something was off. And then he went about his daily business while listening to the Byrds on his way to work.

  * * * Author’s Note * * *

  There were quite a few things that I incorporated to make my story Gaimanesque. First, I feel that my plot twist at the end, where I revealed that my protagonist is a bird, would make Gaiman proud. I also think that he’d really appreciate all the hints that I left in my story: the title, the raven hair of the boy, the Byrds T-shirt, the singing that sounded like a dying bird, the zoo with the bird sanctuary, the shiny gifts that were left outside of the door, and the fact that she often saw ants from far above. I think that Gaiman would also applaud my reference to the Byrds as well, since he is a believer in incorporating music groups into his literature. I also tried to literalize the saying “the early bird gets the worm” with the scene outside of his bedroom window in the mornings. Gaiman often does this switching of the metaphorical/figurative into the literal. Finally, I tried to incorporate as many random details to create imagery as I could to try to match Gaiman’s descriptive writing style.
r />   Lunch with the Gardens

  Erik Knall

  Gentle shimmering obscured a giant white koi as he danced morbidly through the pond.

  “Today’s the day,” he thought to himself, drifting apathetically through his small enclosure. He eyed the shadowy light as it streaked through the surface. “Morning Joe,” White Koi nodded at a passing turtle. Joe’s on his way across the pond. He’s so well travelled. He’ll probably stay there for a couple days and come back with a new poem about spring.

  White Koi looked at his watch, and realizing his tardiness, he picked up his gate and swam underneath it to the main river. Just then, Joe’s son came careening around the corner and slid under the gate. “Morning Joe!” Mr. Koi yelled over his shoulder as he dropped the gate. Entering the streamway, his spirits lifted. He was less apathetic at least. He always feels better after a couple of Joes in the morning.

  Mr. Koi lives at the midpoint of an artificial stream. Of the 400-foot stream, he lives 200 feet from either mouth. Every day, the stream flows from south to north, emptying a small reservoir in the south and filling a similar reservoir at the north end of the garden. It does this from midnight until noon. Then, it flows from north to south from noon until midnight, emptying the reservoir in the North and filling the reservoir in the south. When it flows north, the residents of the garden refer to it as the Nile and when it turns to the south it is called the Mississippi.

  Every day, Mr. Koi swims south to work, and every evening, he swims north to go home. Mr. Koi hates his commute. This morning, he growled to himself as he fought upstream to get to work. A crayfish drifting in the opposite direction caught a branch and shouted at the white koi,

  “Waht’s da prawblem mahn!”

  “The problem sir? I have no problem, but it seems I am always swimming upstream.”

  “Well if ya don like it, then stahp swimmin’.”

  “I can’t stop swimming, I’ve got to get to work!”

  “Dat’s Da Nile Mahn! Ya jus gaht ta go wit da flow,” and as he said “flow,” he released the branch that held him in place and drew out his last syllable. “Oooooooh,” he sang as he drifted to the north. Meanwhile, White put his head down and swam South.

  After a dreary morning, lunch arrived with the usual afternoon pellet hail. Mr. Koi collected his lot and went to a bench on the bank to relax and enjoy his food. As he munched his pellets he dwelled on his coming retirement. “Today is the day,” he thought again. He had put in his thirty-five years, and despite the daily drudgery, he was sad to let it go. He thought about the goodnight he would bid to the night custodian Mrs. Yipee that evening. A final good night to close his career. Before he could stop himself, Mr. Koi felt tears welling in his eyes. The sun was at its zenith now and the heat was heavy in the air. Sweat from his brow mixed with his tears. Mr. Koi leaned into the bench and stared into the blue sky.

  The gentle babble of a small waterfall drifted through the air as it conversed quietly, incoherently with an onlooking robin. The waterfall appeared to be describing a terrible tumble he took earlier. As he pantomimed cascading down a short flight of steps, the robin began to lose interest. “A bit too stream of consciousness for me,” chirped the robin to himself as he took flight in search of better lunchtime company.

  As Mr. Koi wept, sleep overcame him. The sun beat down, and his gills swelled. The salt from his tears cracked his parched lips. Before he woke, his mouth gaped and his eyes bulged. His scales flaked and his eyes stared unseeing into the blue. Belly up, the heat dried him and his watch stopped.

  A raven, flew overhead. It cawed, bidding the garden good day before rushing off to work after his lunchtime break.

  * * * Author’s Note * * *

  In writing my short story, I did my best to embody the aspects of Gaiman’s writing that most naturally suited my writing style. In this way, I made my characters unusual personifications, littered the writing with wordplay, and included superfluous imagery and description. I also included non sequitur humor and allowed for a reader-motivated theme. I left the storyline sufficiently open ended such that any themes are provided by closure from the audience. Still, I kept it specific enough to satisfactorily end the story.

  A Flash and a Pop

  Alexander Kim

  He opened his eyes for the first time in a long time. There was light. It was so deep and so thick that it looked pure white. He reached out to run his fingers through it, and felt it expand. It spread outwards, dissipating. He nearly drowned in it.

  It was an ocean, and then the light spread out so thin that he only saw blackness. Then, smaller bursts of light. They were brief flashes, appearing localized from his perspective. More and more sprung out of the darkness, like a firework’s dance of magnesium sparks flaring outwards just before the sound wave catches up.

  Then, it became very, very dark. And as the darkness became increasingly intense, it was thicker than curdled blood. It was so roaringly intense that it squeezed and compressed everything around him; he reached out a hand but was swallowed in black. Nothing.

  He opened his eyes for the first time. He knew nothing. He saw everything. He saw light become discrete as the process repeated itself. In a particular flash this time, he noticed a particular spark. The spark looked like a ball of fire. It was a nuclear explosion, so large and so dense that it outweighed itself. Not a flash, really, but a prolonged burning. It looked as if it were nearly frozen in time, half a degree above absolute zero.

  There were colder spheres, too. Smaller. He watched millions of seeds, all different shapes and varieties, rain upon the ground, and, as if sending their momentum of impact back towards the sky, they shot flowering stems of life blossoming toward the sunlight. A billion times over, the outgrowth rose and fell, each time imperceptibly altered, somehow more beautiful and more knowledgeable.

  Things, too. They crawled and squirmed and glided and soared and trotted along. A thousand legs, turned eight, turned six, turned four. As the Sun changed, the Earth changed, and as the Earth changed, the things.

  All this light, it fed this wet rock. He watched parts turn white. Turn green or brown. Then gray. Gray with two-legged things. Did they look up? Did they…see him?

  • • •

  Albert was an average male. He got out of bed and he brushed his teeth and he went wherever it was people his age went during the day. He didn’t think he would ever make it in the history books, but he fancied himself, to one degree or another. Albert wasn’t special, no, but he couldn’t accept being an ant, either.

  Albert was a religious man. He knew God was behind the making of all this. Some god. He had studied many religions in the books of Wikipedia. Occasionally, Albert would answer, with a shrug, that he was simply agnostic. But God was behind the making of all of this. All 470 square miles of his hometown, all 13 square miles of Europe that Albert had visited on that one trip. And all 0.000001% of the ocean that Albert could see up to the horizon. He didn’t need to fill in the blanks. God was a wonderful creator.

  God had a plan for Albert; he knew this somehow. So Albert had a lot of weight on his shoulders, because he knew there was a certain person he was meant to be. His story mattered, and not just for the five hundred and twelve people Albert met in his lifetime. Albert had to follow his true path. It was the proper fulfillment of destiny. Even after Albert continued on to Heaven, his story would remain with the others’ for whoever it was that read them. Of course, Albert didn’t believe in Heaven (as seen on TV). Obviously, Heaven wasn’t right there up in the clouds over his head. Probably more like the thermosphere. But wasn’t it dark up there?

  • • •

  It was always dark until he opened his eyes again. Maybe it was just his imagination, but Aeon had to be sure—Aeon, Bennu; He had many names. Aeon Google-earthed the little thing looking up at him and studied it closely. Why did it not crawl about? The things with two legs were somehow different. For one, they constructed exceedingly thorough nests. And they had all sorts of convolu
ted behaviors that did not make sense to him. Perhaps the things had no more nests to build…

  Still watching, Bennu began to blink. Each time with a colossal thud, the world before him appeared again and again. He watched, and the thing flickered through nearly identical scenes like a broken film reel. Albert was a small-time lawyer; a pauper; a guy with a desk job; a guy with a desk job again; a tragic accident. But eventually, Albert morphed into someone else. As the reel kept flickering, Albert blended into the people around him, faces all the same and interchanging, all variations of the same cycle. The things were indistinguishable, like a colony of ants. They would create some of the most magnificent anthills Bennu had ever seen, if he could only remember.

  All in the debris of this stellar birth, on this mossy rock, at some distant corner of the universe, these things had looked up. They looked up, they wondered, and they sought out answers. They were beginning to figure it all out.

  Bennu paused, forgetting what he was doing here, and feeling a bit embarrassed. What was he looking at? Earth was gone now, and he could feel the darkness pulling him in. Once again Bennu had no memory of before, but the whole situation felt eerily familiar. Though he didn’t ever know what all this was, Bennu grasped the dimensions that confined him. He found it ironic that space was so barren and quiet, there being in certain places firestorms that could swallow up all of Hell in a single, delighted gulp.

  Cosmic bodies continued to drift in Bennu’s direction. He did his best to slow everything down, but it was always difficult towards the end. As the abyss took its last breath, Bennu wondered about the things he saw. In that fleeting moment, briefer than a blink of an eye, those things had recognized him. They knew him. Him, for Christ’s sake. And He closed his eyes, relieved, for He was not alone.