Unknown ...

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Juan Sebastián Escobar

Sean King

Diana Tobey

Sam Becker

Rietje Becker

Benjamin Chandler

English

There once was a girl. A girl who was just 16 years old. She was walking home alone, all she could her is her charm bracelet moving around as she kept picking up her phone. She heard only a couple cars driving by. She was a bit alarmed, she had the thoughts of someone watching...

She turned around looking back, and saw a man getting out of his car, she was very scared, she didn't know what to do at that moment. This man was coming towards her, he was getting closer and closer.

She tried without success to surpass him, he finally got to her and said with an empty voice: "Good morning, would you like to learn about God today?". She didn't know how she felt, it was a mix of relief and annoyance, mostly the second. Then the Jehovah's witness ...

coughed and said "Excuse me, I misspoke. Would you like to learn about Dog today? They are furry and playful and fun. Some can fetch, some can herd sheep, some can lead the blind, and some even help firefighters. Would you like to know more?"

I furrowed my brow and bit my lip. Every bone in my body was telling me to get the hell out of there, but I couldn’t fail this mission. I sucked in a breath of air and said, “Yes, the Dog. That’s what I’m looking for. Now show me to the back.”

The bouncer in the red leather jacket turned her back to me. "This way," she said over her shoulder, leading me down a damp hallway with flickering lights. "Doubt we have what you're looking for." Before we got to the back a door burst open and something slobbered on my face.

Pickles, my childhood golden retriever. But how could it be? I turn around and to my utter disbelief there are hundreds more! I glance at the menacing lady in red and whistled a tune from memory. Within moments she was overrun and I was back with my herd where I belong!

FEAR

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emily wahl

Lynsie Lucas

Emma Mazzucco

“MEMORY LANE, All Trips Non-Refundable” read the sign on the door. I walked inside to find a clean white room with only a front desk, no chairs or ferns or any of the normal strip mall clutter. An old man appeared from a door just behind the front desk. “Welcome to

The Memory Lane. What brings you here, son?” I suddenly felt uneasy. What kind of name of business was this? The old man waited for an answer, but I could hardly breathe. What had taken over me? I then realized... I should not be here.

It was too late for such thoughts, of course. Whether it was right or wrong, I was there. And I was sweating.

Those thoughts were eating my head, I had to pretend to be fine to avoid attracting attention of others

It had been an hour and I was bout to cry I had to find a distraction or something I love. I went into my room and found...

my trusty diary. I quickly scanned for the date in question: August 8, 1988, the fateful night of my alien encounter. I quickly begin reading my frantic handwriting, words jumping out at me: steamy, silent, spheres of illusion. The last line written was a street address.

Damn it, was this a Tinder memory or something more? Perhaps a memory implanted by my abductors to make me doubt myself. I grabbed my jacket and hopped into my old truck, dead set on finding answers at whatever I would find waiting for me at that address.

Finally there I wasn't sure if I wanted to know what's behind the door. My legs are shaking, I'm now hoping for the implanted memory alternative. I grab the door handle, where a playful necktie is hanging, and slowly open the door, just to see what I was hoping not to see

with my unwashed eyes. My grade school sweetheart and my college best friend were playing two-person twister right there on the living room floor. They were both reaching for red when I fainted onto the beanbag chair.

Memory Lane

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LifezVictory

Sunny Anomaly

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Once upon a time in a isolated island, where a small but prosperous kingdom existed, there was a king who was a kindhearted man, everybody loved him, except one person...

a grumpy old man who worked as a carpenter for his majesty, he usually dreamed of making use of his ancient craft to get revenge from the King he knows he hate, but doesn't remember why. One night, after dinner, an idea came to his head ...

The royal carpenter went into town and bought all the necessary supplies: twine, beeswax, two springs, and arsenic. That irritating, unjust king was going to get what was coming to him, and the princess too!

It would look like a beautiful cuckoo clock, but it would shoot a poison pellet into their mouths at the stroke of midnight.

it was an extremely unorthadox way to murder someone, but that also meant it would be less likely for the cops to find the one responsible for commiting the crime.

Perfect genius, if I do say so myself. And to take things just a step further, I pulled some strings with my buddy at the local donut shop. Any time the cops got close, he’d call the precinct and tell them they’d won free donut day. Needless to say, we were never discovered.

Carpenter’s revenge

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Today is the cheerleading tournament. I am so nervous! I know we practiced a lot...the jumps, the dance...the moves...but still I can’t feel at ease. If we win this we will be able to go to the finals in Whynot, NC, I am so excited!

Me and the girls are walking to the event, what a beautiful day! the sun is reflecting on the roofs, flowers seem more alive than any other day, it feels like the whole world knew this is an important day. We are chatting and laughing when suddenly I get a call.

"Is this Riley Cole?" the voice inquired. Immediately, I feel a cold sweat spreading across my brow. How could someone still know me by that name? I looked down at my girls with a nervous smile. "Who wants to know?" I ask into the phone. Mentally, I begin packing for a long trip.

I was the heir to the Cole family business, and raised to be a Cole Slaw Queen. But I turned my back on that life. If you knew what I knew about commercial cabbage farms, you'd understand my choice to go underground.

But you don't. So now we are all happily in our own places, with all of you eating Cole Slaw and me eating hushpuppies. They go better with fish, anyway.

I ate the hush puppies, all thirty-five of them. Turns out I had discovered the limit of what my stomach deemed acceptable. I spent the night in agony.

The Cole Slaw Chronicles

Kimberlie Pengelly

Logan Pengelly

One day, when I was walking home from coding class....a zombie stopped me and asked me for directions. He was trying to get to

the department store attached to the mall. Apparently, there is a big sale and he was meeting someone at a buffet. He apologized for bothering me and explained he had developed a poor sense of direction after his brain was eaten by some other zombie. I explained

that I was a zombie too and my job (I was hired) was to H.O.Z (help other zombies) so I HAD to help him to get money

it was a little difficult though, he was always losing his head. I finally got him a job, driving other zombies to the road restaurants, he was so close to getting fired, being one of the oldest zombies, the so called primordials, didn't make him an easy task

It was really depressing. You work, work, work, your whole life. Then you don't even get to enjoy retirement for very long before you get zombified. Then as a zombie, you need a job? I thought being a zombie was a job. Shambling, lurching, moaning... those are your only skills.

I found myself sitting across from an undead CPA. “I don’t like the look of this,” she said, scanning my 401k. We each moaned. “Reckon you’ll be working another 20 years. Have any skills?” My jaw dropped. The CPA facepalmed and her nose fell off. Guess living’s the easy part.

Zombie's hurdles

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"Well, that settles it," I said. "I am never doing that again!"

I said, but still I kept doing it, it was non-stop, like an obsession, I kept missing her, but at the same time I hate her for all the evil she has caused me.

I promised myself to change everything after my return, I'll have to get the strength from anywhere, I don't have an alternative. I remember vividly when we were together at the Circus, she said to me that ...

No matter how much public we have we should wear the best clown makeup ever!! So I decided I was going to be the best circus clown ever, even if the show was done for one person! She was my inspiration so I wasn’t ready to let her down

My audience was two senile old people, a puppy, and a parakeet. And I was going to put on the best possible show for my audience. First, I'd need 2 cream pies and 6 dozen skinny balloons.

I walked to center ring, the spotlight at my back. This wild crew may have lost their minds but they were my audience and I wouldn’t let them down. At the end I took a bow—my face covered in cream—and let the applause wash over me. A clown’s oath, I thought, must never be broken.

A Clown’s Oath

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Justine Hood

It took me a minute to fully register what I was seeing. Why was the apple in my hand PURPLE?

Maybe it wasn’t an apple after all, maybe it was a huge grape! And all of this was just a weird dream...it was like stepping into Barney the dinosaur nightmare.

Oh f..., I shouldn't have thought
about it, the last thing this dream needs is a bloody purple dinosaur with psycho eyes and a soft voice. I try to and finally manage to wake up, I get out of bed, and to the bathroom, I look up to the mirror and almost scream to death when I saw

my face. Mascara and eyeshadow streaked across my cheeks, making me look as bruised and battered as a bar fight, and my fake eyelashes drooped down like in a Cubist portrait. “That’s the last time I take Ambien when I’m drunk.”

I sat there by the toilet, throw up formulating in my mouth. I had no motivation to get up due to my pounding head and jello legs. "Why would my friends let me drink?!". I laid down on the bathroom floor contemplating...

the provincial life left behind. Why had I moved to the big city? The farm had provided everything. I longed for my sturdy community, my fiancé whom I’d never speak to again. I thought about my new false friends and committed myself to a new chapter, better than the last.

Ambienance

Matt

I had just arrived at Evelyn’s 4th birthday party, balloons in hand, when all hell broke loose. Nothing changes the power dynamic between an adult and a child faster than a pressurized garden hose.

Jasper Barnaby had pulled the hose out of the small fish pond that birthday girl Evelyn’s father cared for meticulously. The spray of water first hit the golden retriever begging for birthday cake near a group of gossiping mothers. Then it hit the mothers themselves. My balloons

caught a draft of wind, and I purposefully loosened my grip to let one fly away, thinking to myself,

Whyyyy?! Not that one! Then I remember I had two more of those in my backpack...what a relieve I felt

So I started eating those last two cheese sticks while I sat in the cliff watching my other stick floating in the immeasurable size of the ocean thinking about life and the future, I felt sad for a moment until i realized ...

that this wasn't the end, but my new, fresh beginning. A time to let go of the past and let my new life come into affect. Now my "New Year, New Me" had finally come and was here to stay.

Let Go

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Milo Pittman

Paz Waz

Dawn Rasmussen

KadKad Kad

Annabelle annabellechase333@gmail.com

An anthropomorphic whale sat by itself on the beach. It admired everything around: the waves, the cliffs nearby. What a lovely world it had created. That was, until that stupid creature found it’s way out of the water. The whale was supposed to be the only god around here.

But there it was, a self-proclaimed King/God Octopus, a ten foot tall blue cephalopod with 10 times the egocentrism of Kanye. Waiting for the encounter, the whale kept pondering why on earth could this be happening to it, then, the greatest idea came to its head.

“Dance off!” Shouted the whale. For a moment the octopus looked confused. Then, recognising the need for decisive action, it reared up on 6 of its legs and began a sequence of furious locking and popping moves with the other two.

Noticing the whale’s squint, the octopus paused. “Ok. You’ve heard of armageddon, well this is tentaclegeddon” and without breaking pace launched into a four way floss with an Astley head roll fusion. The whales relatively tiny jaw dropped, releasing a cloud of relieved krill

which swam off as quickly as they could. The octopus, striking a ridiculous ta-da pose, grinned at the whale expectantly. But the whale, still slack-jawed, was still attempting to process what he’d just seen. The octopus held the pose, continuing to grin, though the grin

was becoming more strained. Finally, the octopus dropped its tentacles and sighed in exasperation. "Why," it asked the whale, "is this so hard for you to comprehend? I have done a glorious thing!"

"What one creature sees as glory is gory to another," said the Whale. "It is the nature of things for it to be so."

But their own life is cherished by only them and not the other. A fox and rabbit underwater would hate each other for pushing each other in before they drown even if the fault is of no one but the tide.

The bear would not eat meat from other parts than what he would hunt, and so on, but for these small scraps their lives have a meaning in this world. These animals would have only loved for themselves and have no more love for other creatures if they would have survived.

The fully nourished bear would be destined to plumply roam the forest, day after day, until it too was hunted. And not just by anyone, but by Larry Van Hoorn, who needed to feed his family that wretched winter, especially Larry Junior who would one day invent ursine taxidermy.

Juan Sebastián Escobar
@juansebastianescobar

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