It was spring break, I was an MFA student in NYC, and I had escaped the city for Key West, of all places, where the crowds of carousing college students helped distract me from a slew of questions I had been asking lately: What did I value in stories and literature? Why was I getting an MFA at all? Did I even enjoy writing anymore? For the first time in my life, I didn't know how to answer these questions.

On my final night, I was prepared to suck it up and return to MFA life, to writing the insipid stories of slight domestic “offness” that had seemed the only route forward, when I began reading a book I’d picked up the day before - St. Lucy’s Home for Girl’s Raised by Wolves, by Karen Russell. Because of a very early flight, I had camped out on the floor of the airport, a heavy covering dragged off some baggage carts as a makeshift blanket, and I began the book intending to read just the first story, yet each tale propelled me into wider awakeness. In these stories, among other things, brothers hunt for their lost sister among schools of ghost fish. A sister is in love with a ghost boyfriend who possesses her. The residents of an arctic community gather to “sing down” a glacier. All I could think as I read was, “Wow, this is allowed?!” My perception of what stories could do and the effect they could have began to shift. These stories weren’t just playful and beautifully-written, they exposed the inherent strangeness of being human without trying to over-explain or provide neat answers. I found myself puzzling over them long after that cold night in the airport (a strange night, in itself); long after I turned in more half-hearted stories for workshop, which slowly would begin to change.

That epiphanic first encounter with Karen Russell’s stories led me down a rabbit hole that can only be described in math terms as Strangeness Squared. I discovered Angela Carter, Italo Calvino, Kelly Link, Aimee Bender, among others. I began thinking in “What if?” questions. As my reading (and writing) choices grew weirder, I felt I was following a breadcrumb trail toward the bold, deep truths I wanted to read and write about.

An idea I began contemplating around this time: We need stories because we are flawed beings, in a flawed world. If our lives didn’t involve struggle, if we were somehow more realized versions of ourselves, a narrative arc - characters, changing, over time - wouldn’t hold the same resonance and meaning. So, stories are moving, breathing representations of our attempt to grasp certain truths about ourselves and the world, of our striving toward betterness. They are also moving, breathing representations of the answerless strangeness that surrounds us - the weirdness of our very presence on this planet. I thank Karen Russell for her comfort with this strangeness, and for having so much fun while at it.

You can't leave!

You are the only reason I come to school!

I'll miss you so much!

I can't imagine school without you!

All my best friends are leaving me, not you too!

Please don't go!

But I need to . . .

Why don't you take easy classes next year?

You won't even come for the cheap college credit?

Have a half year schedule!

No one understands . . .

What are you going to do?

Where are you going to college?

What are you planning on studying?

What do you want to be when you grow up?

I don't know!!

I'm not graduating early to go to college early

I'm not graduating to get on with my life

I like school

I just can't do this anymore

The stress is too much

I'm not leaving you

I'm leaving the situation

I can't stay to help others anymore

I need to put my oxygen mask on first

I need to destress, take a year off

Learn how to enjoy life again

Wait, you have anxiety?

You always look so put together!

There's no way you are that stressed.

Ohhh but I am.

I wear my mask of confidence very well

I've trained myself over the years.

But I can't hold it up much longer.

I need to go.

Well, I'll miss you!

I'll miss you too!

But even for you, I can't stay

I'm sorry

In the corner

of a circle.

Round & round.

(round & round)

Stood a sad

& lonely couple.

All alone.

(all alone)

Standing close

but never touching.

On their own.

(on their own)

Crying tears

of shattered day-dreams.

Never grown.

(never grown)

Then they turned

& took a journey.

Round & round.

(round & round)

’til they met

back in the corner.

Met anew.

(met anew)

& their love

met in the corner.

Then it grew.

(then it grew)

In the corner

of a circle.

Round & round.

(round & round)

Copyright 2021

“This is highly irregular, isn’t it?” The female in the white lab coat asked, more as a statement than a question, her flaxen hair in a knot as severe as the furrow in her brow.

The male stood beside her busied himself with a clipboard. “You really have to stop making molehills out of nothing, doctor.” He sighed, saying the last word as if it was an inside joke. “This is just the next step in the process. We’re doing something good here. Can we focus? What readings are you getting?”

The female bristled. Voicing concern over the morality of unfreezing a cryogenically preserved corpse was hardly making molehills. Was that even the right expression? She was pretty sure molehills were small. She shrugged it off. A battle for a different day. She studied the monitor and confirmed the reading with her handheld. “260 millijoules and rising. 270. Holding steady at 280.”

“Are you sure? It’s never been that high before.”

The female fought to keep her voice even. “Yes, I’m sure.”

They both watched in silence as the body on the exam table twitched ever so slightly. It happened so quickly it could have been their imagination. Was that a clenched fist? A flicker of an eyelid? The body was still slick from the cryoprotectant solution. It could be a trick of the light.

The male’s knuckles were white from holding the clipboard too tightly. He was now staring at the monitor. “Holy shit. Look at the signals we’re getting. I can’t believe it, we never thought…”

Something was not right. The female felt it first. She involuntarily took a step back, her body a tight coil, ready to sprint. Her hand automatically reached for the red alarm button on the wall. She hovered over it hesitantly, stubborn doubt flooding her brain, her thoughts merciless: The emergency alarm, really? This is hardly more than a frozen cadaver. Here you go again, making molehills out of—

No, no, no.

The body was now sitting up. It’s eyelids fluttered open slowly, agonizingly, as if the neurons were struggling to remember how to fire synchronically. It’s mouth gaped open then closed, the lips quivering like it was trying to speak.

“I’m getting the fuck out of here.” The female slammed her fist on the alarm button and pulled on the glass door. It didn’t budge.

A chuckle from behind her. “Where are you going, doctor?”

The male had an eerie smile on his face. He looked positively ecstatic. “What, you don’t want to talk to our new friend here?”

“Did you lock the fucking doors?”

“Oh, for God’s sake, calm down, I knew you were going to freak out so I took some… measures.” The male reached over to the body and pushed on a syringe connected to an intravenous cannula. “It’s funny, isn’t it? Like how this sedative will be circulated throughout this body. The heart is not beating, so we have to electrify it artificially. And then…”

The body slumped back onto the exam table like a freed marionette.

“Voila.” The male looked as if on the verge of laughing. “Exciting, isn’t it? Just think of all that we can do with this.”

The female counted her breaths. She predicted this would happen eventually, didn’t she? After all, she was the one who invented a way to reverse thermal stress in cryogenically frozen tissue, repair the tiny fractures from the freezing process. But no, there was something very wrong here. The body…. it was trying to tell her something. She struggled to remember the way the mouth moved.

The male was excitedly tinkering at the controls. “We have so many calls to make. I can’t believe we just made this much progress so quickly—”

Help. The female realized. That was the word it was trying to say. But how? As a biologist she knew there was absolutely no way the brain could have survived the freezing and revival process. The purpose of the experiment was just to see if they could reverse the vitrification of individual cells, regenerate tissue, maybe whole organs, but not a whole person…

Get yourself together. The female scolded herself, her eyes never leaving the exam table, her right hand still grasping the glass door handle. The body was already dead when it was cryogenically frozen. Already dead. The repair should only occur at the cellular level. There is no way it could cause a corpse to… what? Come back to life?

--

Her name was Alice.

She was twenty-five when she died. It was quick, or at least that was how she remembered it. If remember was the right word.

It was late Spring, flowers were in full bloom and the sun hit her skin in all the right places. The air smelled of lilacs and honey and she was happy. A reckless, youthful, giddy type of happy. Why wouldn’t she be? She was a cellist in the making. The moment before she died, she remembered humming a tune softly, her heartbeat a metronome.

Suddenly, the metronome stopped. Then… nothing.

The doctors would later call it a ruptured arteriovenous malformation. Alice would have deemed it a nice death. Poetic, really. There was no pain, only music and lilacs.

As luck would have it, her parents were wealthy. Obscenely so. The type of wealthy that can throw a billion dollars at a cryonics lab without making a dent in their expense account. In their world, money could buy anything, so they foolishly believed they could cheat death and buy their daughter’s life as well. Like Death was someone they could negotiate with. Just another shady business deal. It sounded fair, didn’t it? A billion dollars for their daughter.

The body on the exam table, however, was not their daughter. Oh sure, there were fragments of her in there, a memory of lilacs blooming, a line from her favorite song, the distinct sound of the stubborn wolf tone of her cello. But it was not Alice. Not really.

Far from the innocent happiness Alice felt just before she died, the body on the table awoke in unadulterated agony. It was angry and confused, like a feral animal in a cage, desperate to be freed.

The male scientist grinned ear to ear at the monitors beside the body, the rhythmic pulsation of his carotids thumping hypnotically like a siren’s song. If Alice were here, it would have reminded her of a metronome. Unfortunately for the scientist, the corpse that was once young, beautiful, musically talented Alice, was now just blindingly, single-mindedly, very, very hungry.

I couldn't have been more than 2 years old when I felt my first touch of anxiety. I vividly remember walking into a huge grocery store. Now, I was pretty small, but I'll still swear that this store was bigger than any I've ever seen. Looming above my head was this monster. A giant spider 60 feet in the air! I'd never seen anything like it. Its sinister smile faced me and its sharp teeth glared in the yellow light. I panicked. I didn't know what to do. Could I make a run for it? I tugged at my mom's pant leg and in my smallest voice I said "Mommy, that spider is making me nervous."

@QuietSilence

i think i was about 5. maybe younger.

my uncle was proud beyond words. he got his first car.

i don’t know which make or model, but i think this is my earliest bad memory.

he took me with him, cruising along the coast. he was so cool he even let me sit in the front seat-a thing that was of the forbidden realm .

what interested me, was not the open road, or the things that we could see, or even ocassionally curious passing cars.

what interested me more than anything, was the roll up button.

you see, back then, windows were most often crancked up and down down. which was just boring.

me and my uncle shared a fascination with jet fighters. sitting there, i felt my hand on the door handle , thumb on the button, the car speeding, pushong the throttle, ready to engage the Migs...

so i open and close, open and close. my uncle tells me to stop, and i take it as a suggestion-only.

i open and close, open and close.

my uncle askes me again...

open and close..

SLAP!!

we drove to an ice cream parlor, and i never rode shotgun with my uncle again.

---+++++++++++++

i guess i had the bad luck to be born in december. the kindie planned the budget for birthday presents less rationally than you expect. so by my birthday, most of it is gone, swallowed up in parties, and holidays and presents for everyone that cones in that budget years.

so the other guys got widup cars, and robots and stuff. i got a small metal car.

but it does not matter, because i eas in love.

there was a girl in my class called cindy or rachael (versions differ..) and i was trying deseperately to impress her. but she was not an easy person to get on with. she had terrible tantrums, and no patiance at all. and so, that birthday was my big chance!!

so we are sitting in a circle, singing. it is then that i decided to make the greatest, most romantic gesture in my life. i got up, took the little metal car in hand and walked all the way around , to where cindy was sitting. i handed her the car, to the shock and amazement of everyone. i could not say much, and don’t remember if i said anything at all. after saying (or not) what was the reason for my giving my present , i went back to my place, and we started singing again.

which is when the car hit me, with great velocity in the forehead. cindy was a great shot. apparently she saw through me, and didn’t like neither me or the toy. it was tiny but dense enough, to make a hard impact. there was blood, and stitches. and even today, there is a tiny scar. it used to be mostly hidden by my ’fro. but those days are gone. the bay is wide and deep enough for supertankers lay anchor.. only they need to steer clear of the tiny , pesky shoal, that is cindy’s birthday present.

Dear Chinese Rocket Core Stage,

I have a lot of questions. Like “what’s a core stage?” and “why?” But mostly, I’m curious if God sent you.

I know it seems antithetical, the whole notion that a mythical deity in the sky would send a sophisticated machine made by scientists to Earth to smite us all, but when you think about it, it’s pretty poetic right? You helped build a part of a space station called “Heavenly Harmony” and then decided to take a detour to a planet where the closest thing we have to harmony is everyone agreeing that Ted Lasso’s a really nice guy. Half of this place’s inhabitants don’t believe in God while the other half don’t believe in science, so kudos to you for an inventive way to cover all the bases.

And if it’s not some sort of divine plan, then what? If you’re just doing this for attention, I hate to tell you, but this is the worst time for a captive audience. Sure, a 21-ton piece of space junk the size of a ten-story building might have seemed like big news in 2019, but we’re in the 2020’s now, bitch. We can easily thrive under the constant threat of impending doom as long as someone has a good sourdough starter we can use. The Zoomers have probably already declared you canceled. Somewhere on Reddit there’s a meme where you’ve been photoshopped donning a pair of skinny jeans and a middle part. 

But I digress.

If I am right and you’re supposed to bring some form of reckoning, may I suggest a more targeted approach? I hear Florida is lovely this time of year. In fact, we have a beacon ready-and-waiting to guide your way. It’s orange and wearing a red hat that was made in your home country.

Eagerly awaiting your cosmic justice,

KM Cassidy

Here in Prose, I am known as 1912Writer, while some call me writer. As simple as it sounds, it came from me writing simple poems here, and 1912 was the year the R.M.S. Titanic sunk, as I am a fan of ships in the past.

But in real life, my name is Enrico Miguel Nievera Salvador. The first two names are the ones that really matter, as Nievera was my mother's maiden surname while Salvador is my father's surname. Onwards with my first two names.

My father is a fan of basketball, so Enrico came from a famous basketball player in our country, Enrico Villanueva. Meanwhile, Miguel came from the Archangel Michael. In school, I was called Mikko (some misspelled it sometimes as Miko), and some others called my Enrico.

On a side note, me and my sister share the same initials (EMNS), until of course, when she gets married. Also, my family's names all start with the letter E (E family?). Finally, Enrico's English equivalent is Henry, so I technically share names with Henry VIII, the "splitter of churches, and ladies" (Yikes!)? Well, that's all.

Mothers' missing monthly, marvelous misadventure! Multicellular miracle! Mythological maternity, masterful manoeuvre. Midwifery ; mathematical. Male miniature !

Monstrous miscreant, masterful mite. Meowing, maddening mother. Maladjusted mates, making misfortune.

Mustaches multiply, muscles measurable. "Mom, my money!!!" - moody moments. Morally mixed, mostly mouthy. Manipulative misogynist masturbating manically. Melodramatic martyr materializing : Man.

Miracle man, muscular male, meeting mistresses midst mechanical, mismatched marriages. Minimal mind, masculine misery, maddening mother-in-laws. Massive mediocrity, masked malice, misleading magazine-mien.

Mother's mastectomy, mandatory morphine, murderous mortality. Modest memorial, momentary melancholy, moderate mourning.

Meanwhile, megalomania maximized, much meaner Monday morning....