Joshua Sisk

Jay Knowles

Chris Baroody

Sean King

Jacob Sherman

Benjamin Chandler

English

All is I. Solve: reality. So Math is fact... Right? 

Hook period?

Motion i's point;period.
Passion chemistry is methodology of connection.

So why love to evolve; solve Math?

GENERAL RELATIVITY... G EZ E(=MC^2) RAL RELA-TIVIT-Y

I in gral 20i22i20 in relay.
Pi3 LiFe = Monkey

These are the incoherent mumblings of a madman strapped in a straitjacket in a padded cell in a mental asylum on an island far away from any civilisation. He talked with seemingly imaginary friends, and would yell and scream for no reason. One day, the door to the cell opened up.

Madman, hunched over and cross-legged, hears his cell door open. 

Squatting close by, rawboned, and pale as a grub, madman’s phantom companion rasps: “enemies.” But he knows the companions sometimes lie.

The visitors: two in white, one in black. Doctor, orderly - priest?

Or maybe they are two choir singers and a goth? Two members of Polyphonic Spree and Trent Reznor? Wait, wait! They are chess pieces: 2 white, 1 black. But which pieces?

Accounting for all possible combinations it adds up to a six squared, times six less the taken white piece, which is five, or a nice 180. Using my detective work I was able to narrow it down to six possibilities. What is the remaining black piece, though? I didn’t quite know yet…

It was my little Lulu who inspired me with an answer. She sat next to me, singing "Ba Ba Black Sheep" while combing her doll's hair. Yes! The black piece was an abstract sheep. I placed it in place & the Piet Mondrian farm puzzle was complete! Then Lulu knocked it onto the floor.

Two if by black sheep, one if by white wolf

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Phil Harwell

Damaskox

TurtleGameMaster WhyWon'tItLetMeNotHaveALastName???

Sunny Anomaly

Sam Becker

The Wordplayer

“Are you of the intelligent sort? I suppose not.” “Well, I can assure you that I am a distinguished gentleman and scholar.” “Is that so? What, then, is the sum of the numbers nine and ten?” Why, that’s an elementary question! I spent no time figuring it out and loudly proclaimed,

“The sum isn’t what’s important! It’s the constituent parts. We mustn’t forget where we—“
“Admit it. You don’t know.”
I sighed. “Nine, then ten?” I uttered at last. “That’s easy. The next one is eleven.”
My interlocutor facepalmed. “No, you idiot. The answer is

22! We use base 5 in my culture. You count on one hand, while the other hand holds your tool. Or your sword! We’re lots of fun at parties.

Tools & swords. Ha! We also love to use innuendo—if you know what I mean—like going to a basketball game & yelling about guys playing with their big orange balls. Haha! Cracks me up even thinking about it. There was a time, though, that a little TWSS moment got me into hot water.

Innuendo? Well there’s a real pane in the glass in yo window! Anyways, I digress. I was in the shower and a naughty thought intruded into my mind. Maybe I should play with the handle a bit? Would be kind of funny. And that was when the shower sprayed hot water on me. Kind of hot.

I gotta be careful with the handle or it will burn me reeal good. Or badly? Grabbing the sponge, adding some soap, maybe croaking a song while at it? The water feels good on the skin...scrub here, scrub a little of there...but the naughty feeling lingered. What to do, how to...?

It babbles and coos, even in the deep private of its mind. I, less dense than steam; thinner than air - I am at my leisure always and at all times, to hear, see, whisper. Scene: human animal in soap, slick with it. Bloat toad, pet, I carry needles for shame and nooses for guilt.

And then, I woke up. That was sure a weird dream. As I struggled to remember what I even dreamed about, I got ready for the day like any other. I can't help but wonder what that was all about.

Halfway through putting my shoes on, my alarm went off, and I snapped my eyes open to find that I was still in bed. I had only dreamed I’d woken up. Now the dream was buried two dreams deep, and even harder to recall. I cursed and turned off my alarm, then closed my eyes again.

21ception

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Digging through the back shelves of the pantry I found the last jar of pickles that grandma made before she died. "Well," I said to myself, "someone's got to eat 'em sometime." I assembled a sandwich, piled some chips beside it, & popped open the jar only to find that there was a

single pickle with a face on it. I must be smoked out of my mind. Then the pickle started speaking. “I turned myself into a pickle, Morty!” the pickle exclaimed, “I’m pickle Rick!” That must have been some good kush, because that, was perhaps, the funniest stuff I have ever seen.

To be fair, you have to have a very high IQ to understand Rick and Morty. The humour is extremely subtle, and without a solid grasp of theoretical physics most of the jokes will go over a typical viewer's head.

She rolled her eyes as he bloviated about a prime time cartoon. How did she get cornered by this clueless guy? The only way to escape was the Deanna Troi Manuver:

With that she disentangled herself. The boy, floundering in the tumult and bile of his psyche, hid away and watched the others. He soothed his ego with the very poisons that made him repellant: self-importance, rage, envy. All but one person successfully ignored the sight.

The boy's mother, the only one who knew the depths of his damage, came forward. "Don't blame him," she said. "It it my fault—take me." The Spider Queen rushed over with her spindly legs and consumed the mother with her wet mandibles. The boy, too weak to intervene, quietly wept.

Nerd Mother's Sacrifice

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Robin Devereaux-Nelson

Robin Devereaux

Denise approached the wide, rapid river with an apprehension like none she’d ever known. Behind her, the rest of her party watched as she knelt on the bank and raised her palms to the sky. She was glad her back was to them so they could not see the fear on her face as she began

to sing, "Ol' Man River, that Ol' Man River..." The water rushed along, sloshing over rocks, hauling sun-bleached driftwood. Denise hoped the river was loud enough so the others couldn't hear her as she'd forgotten the lyrics & began to improvise. "Ol' Man River keeps on riverin'

Denephew caught wind of what she was singing and completely chastised her for getting the whole song wrong. “Denise, you know that’s not how the song goes!” Denise simply did not care. “Oh, Ol’ Man River, shiver me timber, lah di dah…” Denephew wanted to shove her into the river.

She responds to his irritation by infusing her song with a warbling lilt. “Old maan river-a! We know how old, him were-a! He ado and not do a-did! Ia!” Denephew’s slack-jawed incredulity nearly sunk her in a fit of giggles. 

“Jesus, you aren’t even trying. It’s no joke, Denise!”

Denise segues into a wavy armed soft shoe, slowly moving into jazz hands. “I get no thrill from-ah Cham-pag-nay!” She sings in bassy tones while she taps. Then she cartwheels off the stage and into the dressing room.

Then she rolled out in the open and kept rolling. She rolled all the way down the road, and that was the last we see of her. The road goes ever on, my friend.

Broadway Anywhere

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Jessica Gaston

Andy Boerum

Fool me once… Shame on you 
Fool me twice… shame on me.

This is what he kept repeating to himself as he scrubbed the worn paisley wallpaper with fresh grass clippings. Before long night fell and the neighborhood disappeared before his eyes.

Unfortunately he couldn’t see in the dark. He could, however, hear howling in the distance. He shuddered in fear as he tried to find his way home.

He stumbles, rights himself, and drives through the thorns and briars of the forest. In moonlight, he sees only the shimmer of his blood and the silhouettes of thickets. Howling - closer. Panic throws coils round his heart: his gasping now too shallow to give him real breath.

He scrambles up a thick oak tree, climbing as high as he can in the dark. He straddles a thick branch with his back against the trunk and tries to calm his breathing. Wolves can't climb trees, can they? And can he wait them out?

An ear-splitting screech sounds from above & the wolves run. Dread filling his heart, he looks up to see the largest owl he has ever seen. It is Φ, the Ur-owl, Grandfather of the Night's Children. The bird's eyes, large as windows, blink slowly, but its claws move like lightning.

The Wolves & The Owl

Marta P

Paz Waz

Chris Dodds

zeej qooj

Zoe Becker

A long time ago,
In a land called Kentucky,
There once lived a man,
Who wasn't very lucky,
And one day he fell,
Right into a well,
And his situation was very yucky.

‘Twas a lovely spring day, with confidence I say, and the well was crumbling apart. His woman had said, “Our love is now dead,” and this statement broke the man’s heart.

It turned into fall, and she built up a wall, to keep the poor man away. He gave out a call, asked her out to the ball, he just wanted her to stay.

She was appalled, as he was completely bald, and nothing he did could hide it. That is why on the floor she was sprawled, and completely enthralled, by the shine his hairless dome could emit.

“Yes, Madam,” he said. “I am proud of my smooth shiny chrome dome. I embrace my hairless head. My secret? Moisturizing sunscreen applied four times a day.”

"Just what I wanted to hear," she said. "I'm a photographer & I have a series in mind: art's greatest sculptures reflected in a shiny bald head. It will involve lots of travel, but I'm willing to pay every expense. Will you work with me?" He nodded, sun gleaming off his noggin.

This man must be crazy! In fact she was so shocked by this proposal that she immediately accepted it, and off they went snapping photos of great works of art reflected on his shiny bald head all over the world. It went viral on social media, with many replicating the duo’s deeds.

The idea was so outlandish and funny that as originators they made millions. Before long he was spending thousands of dollars a week getting his bald head waxed and shined so that the reflections remained sharp. On the downside the skin on his scalp was now thinning.

As it thinned, the capillaries in it slowly began bursting. This initially left him looking a bit like a young Mikhail Gorbachev, but as time went on the red deepened in color and the entirety of his scalp from his eyebrows up was the color of port.

The colouration didn’t stop there. Over the following weeks it permeated downwards, the pigmentation changing colour every day. Some muted, some pastel, some lurid. Eventually, when two small circles of original skin on the balls of his feet finally closed up the process was over

Full-sheathed in kaleidoscope skin, heart throbbing painful under coils of panic, he steps forward but staggers, slips - now lands, one knee in mud. Like this, he stays. Day becomes like a flashing strobe. In time, his skin becomes keratinous and jagged, but ever more vibrant.

He sheds his crusted skin in a flurry of motion, and all at once his creamy center is exposed. He is now a squishy baby, ensconced in a slimy finish, with wide, wondering eyes, and mouth agape. His metamorphosis is complete.

The Art of the Bald Head

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Megamanisgod

Aan Oberoi

Alex Ramir

Once upon a time (which was actually 2 weeks ago) I had woken up to the sound of explosions, and I look out the windows to see someone robbing a bank!

“Everybody hands up! Get on the floor!” The scene would be so much different were it on the dancefloor. But this was no dancefloor. A masked man brandished his pistol. “Give me all your money! All of it!”

"I don't mean to be a troublemaker," said a woman in the back, "but how can we give you our money while we are laying down with our hands up?" Others slowly agreed, "Yeah! How can we do all 3 at once?" "This is bogus!" yelled a kid. "Totes bogus," agreed the woman. The robber did

curse out loud while pulling one of the captives up.
"Keep a lookout, men!" he yelled to his team of other robbers.
"Show me where the money is, do it quietly, and no funny business, or you won't be able to see how far my shotgun will make your head fly!" he threatened a captive.

The bank teller directed the robbers towards the safe. “Okay, now open it!” “I can’t, I don’t have the password! Only the guard knows the password!” “Don’t you play with me, boy! Open the safe!” Sirens blared across the hallway. Turns out someone pressed the button. “For Pete’s-”

Coffee you have some pretty serious security!”, the robber said. “Sir, this is a bank! And is that gun you’re waving a nerf toy?”, the teller asked. The robber’s eyes went wide, he cursed, and sprinted for the exit, only to find…

There was a large crowd of police outside the door, all wielding water guns. The robber was wearing his most expensive ski mask, so he surrendered immediately. At the holding cell, he was alowed to make one phone call, and the robber called...

his mother, sobbing with tears in his eyes, he exclaimed to her, “Mom you were right, I was not destined to be a robber, See Mom, I have been caught and am at the mercy of the policemen,”he lamented. He knew in his heart of hearts that his last attempt at robbery had been foiled.

The kid’s pursuer, still some ways off, slowed. Tilted an ear. A sound - to him, like a pig’s whimper when time for butchering come. Unmistakable. Lawman hadn’t savored sound like that since ages ago. Time to hunt; time to catch. Then, time enough to make a sinner learn to shriek

until it turns to breathless silence. Lawman’s toes curled in his boots at the mere thought. Pleasure stormed his veins. His mouth twisted up into a sinister grin as he savored the imagery for another fleeting moment. And then, just as quickly, he was off.

Nerfs Up

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Rietje Becker

The Metapodmemes

Long ago, before television or even radio, your great-great-great grandmother crafted a story into this quilt. See the images? Here's an acorn. Here's a cardinal. Here's a bowl of goulash. It's time you learned its tale...

of the intricate tapestry depicting a cardinal holding an acorn and a bowl of goulash. He wasn’t just any cardinal, he was Cardinal Ordinemus of the Holy Roman Empire. While performing the Eucharist the wafer turned into an acorn and the wine into goulash. It was a great miracle.

Cardinal Ordinemus is my neighbour. He’s a life-changer, miracle-arranger, wine to goulash, he's a drink exchanger. And he cried for our sins. His acorn, now blessed with the holy goulash, grew into a mighty goulash tree that graced the courtyards of this cathedral.

Thus the Cardinal went about his saintly work. But where there are saints, sinners follow. Another neighbor watched the goulash tree grow and conceived a resentment: “Only a devil could make such a thing happen.” From the thought, a plan germinated: to cut down the goulash tree.

Not once did he stop to think about the implications of destroying something unique. He just got a chainsaw and felled the goulash tree at midnight. He left it where it fell, dropping its varied fruits as it died.

He woke up the next morning to see a dozen trees surrounding the stump. It appears the tree is of those fast growing hydra-type varietals, and the fruits impregnated the ground upon their fall. To the old man’s surprise, he was managing a goulash orchard come the next season.

The Heirloom Patchwork of the Holy Acorn & its Goulash Orchard

They just announced the lineup for this summer’s Clangfest and it’s straight fire! The Seagull Sisters are headlining. Easy Peasy Squeeze Cheese is performing. Sneak Squeak has gotten back together for one night only. DJ Doofus is spinning in the Stress Tent. We need tickets!

Hey, hey chillax bro! We’ll get some alright. Let’s just say I know a few people in there. Best of all they’ll give us the tickets for free. Oh and I didn’t forget to bring the good stuff. Wink wink. A giant gate stands in front of us. “Clangfest”. Time to get this party started.

“Alright, bet” I say, and hold steady as I can. A strobe light pulses somewhere deeper in and electric bass pounds in sync with it - I know the chemicals’ve slid in past the blood-brain barrier by now. Something else: lank, gray man moving choppy, like claymation. Is it real?

Oh yes, it is real. Slenderman is carefully approaching me, carrying a stack of papers with unintelligible scribbles on them. Stranger yet, it looks like they're addressed to me.

Slenderman puts the papers in my hands & their scribbles slowly coalesce into words. "Went to school with no pants on," reads one line. "Tried to kiss Anita Flores, but a green owl flew between our lips," reads another. "Candy teeth," reads the next. "Are these my dreams?" I ask.

Devoid of any emotion, he gave a blank stare. “Well I suppose they are, they seem a little too familiar.” No response from Slendy. He then put down the eighth piece of paper. I immediately grabbed all eight and ran off into the horizon. “Seeya sucker!” I yelled, not looking back.

Candy Teeth on the second stage

Mako Allen

My cell phone suddenly crashed. When it started up again, there was only this long binary number on the screen:
010100110111010101100010011011010110100101110100.

Then the car wouldn’t start. The same number scrolled across the digital dashboard. 

What the hell was going on?

In the control center a red light flashes. The technician reads through some data then immediately calls the head engineer. “We have a code 3: faulty simulation, subject is noticing the failures. Initiating protocol 7.”

The engineer enters the control room & begins tapping on an illuminated keyboard. "When the subject begins to doubt reality, make them think it's all a dream." A pink gas floods the simulation room & the subject drops asleep. With a nod, the engineer orders the simroom redressed.

“Did we have to be so literal with our gaslighting? I mean, there’s actually gas in there and that annoyingly bright lamp. It’s a little on the nose, don’t you think? Or is that a heuristic to filter out the more resistant subjects?”

“Naturally, my boy. The science of psychic infiltration is not yet advanced enough - thus, the corporeal metaphor must unsettle those minds who are yet too perceptive for our present study. I would, also, advise you to take care with your critiques - engineering is always alert.”

The amount of technobabble was too much for the poor kid. The words the “scientist” said infiltrated into his psyche and incorporated into his corporeal form to destabilise his cerebral wavelength, triggering a negative reaction from him. “What a load of baloney! I’m going home.”

Malarkey Containment Failure

LyraMadeline

KotarouKun

ayesha wells

I can’t stop thinking about the boy next door. He moved into town a few weeks ago and hasn’t said one word to me. He seems to live by himself and doesn’t talk much. I often see him playing with his golden retriever in his front yard or reading on his porch while the sun sets.

One night, I saw him looking at the sunset that evening, that of which was a vibrant explosion of purples and oranges. I imagined that I wanted to jump into the sunset with him, but then I realized that he doesn’t even know me.

I thought “one way to change that!” I walked over and introduced myself, then showed him my favorite card trick. Nothing like a close-up illusion to break the ice!

The first trick worked like a charm. With bated breath he awaited me to show him another one, and this time I decided to step it up. Halfway through one of my more impressive feats of prestidigitation, it hit me. I'd forgotten the doves for the grand finale.

The doves though, had not forgotten me and filled the room in an angry cloud of white and grey. As they began to claw at my face, I realized what a mistake it had been to not feed them for these last few days.

"I'm sorry! I'm sorry!" I cried against their battering wings and needle-like beaks. The birds settled & one lone dove approached me. It was the queen. "Are you truly sorry?" she cooed. "Are you ready for pigeon penance?"

“Oh God, my God! Please don’t!” The words quick and involuntary. But the dove queen, her eyes’ve got no mercy in them, no mercy for me. “I’ll swear on my kids, my parents, anyone: let me live, and I’ll live only to tell the world about the glory of pigeonhood!”

The dove queen cocked her head to one side and stared down at me. “Brrt brrt,” she began, and ruffled her gowns up and then down from her throne. “Your children? You’d trade your children for your, brrt brrt,” she continued, “for your life?” I glared up at her beady eyes and said

“No,” I said patiently. Now was not the time for anything else. “What I said was, I would trade my life for my children.”
“Oh, brrt brrt, I see. I like my version better. Guards! Seize the children!”

The guards lured the kids in one by one with promises of free candy, then grabbed them like a mousetrap. They wriggled and wriggled but they couldn’t break free. Then suddenly the guards took out some sweets and gave it to them. “Happy Halloween!” They all left the haunted house.

The Boy Next Door

Jerry glanced down at the photograph in his hand, then back up again at the woman sitting alone at the back of the cafe.

Hands clasped and pressed down onto the tabletop beside an untouched mug of coffee, the woman gazed straight without seeming to see. Her lips alone showed signs of movement, even if ever so slight - as if they were involuntarily giving form to her thoughts

All at once a blinding light coursed through the space. Jerry and the woman froze. And then a creature appeared, seemingly from the air itself.

Jerry had sought it out - so long, drawn towards this moment. He knew the need and the path - winding thought it was - without knowing how. The photograph came to him and then he knew: the thing inside had led him to her. “The gate is human, my God - my God.”

Chris Baroody
@chrisbaroody

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Chris Baroody@chrisbaroody

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