Mrs. Turner’s Dinner

    His mom kissed him hastily on the forehead. She knelt down, her light blue uniform creasing and folding around her hips. “Love you, honey, behave." She smelled like perfume and coffee, and breathed impatience and work onto his forehead. His mom stood up and looked at his sitter: “I should be back around 10:30, thanks for watching him, Ms. Turner.” He never understood why his Mom always had to leave him here. It seemed like a weird thing to do. Here, it smelled like wet carpet, and the chemicals his mom used to clean the kitchen. How could she not tell this place was bad? His mom left, rushing into the night. Mrs. Turner stood in front of him like an impossibly large wall of flesh; wherever he looked, there seemed to be more of her. Fat and skin rolled down her face, spattered with boils and white wiry hair. “Timmy, how are you today?” Her lips smacked audibly as she spoke. She had a scratchy, high voice for someone of her size. “Fine, Ms. Turner” he said as he stared down at his feet. He heard the slam of his Mom’s car door outside and as the engine lurched to life he knew he was stuck.

    Timmy spent a couple hours watching T.V. on Mrs. Turner's old stained couch. Whenever he shifted his weight on it squeaked and moaned. Before long, it was time for dinner. Mrs. Turner stared at him as they sat down to eat. She cut into her steak, and Timmy into his. Mrs. Turner didn’t just cut her steak, she attacked it. She sawed though it with her steak knife with incredible power. At one point her knife reached the bone, and sawed clear through it. As she pulled the slice to her mouth, Timmy saw it almost completely raw on the inside. He tried not to stare, and he looked down
at his plate. “Something wrong, boy?” As she opened her mouth, Timmy saw all her teeth were sharp. A single bead of blood trickled out of the corner of her mouth, slowly making its way through the folds of her face. She chewed more with her mouth open, staring at him intently with one eye. “I'm just not that hungry,” Timmy said. Before long nothing but a puddle of blood was left on her plate. Mrs. Turner still looked hungry, though, as she stared at little Timmy.

By: Webb Hinton 

Ms. Riorden’s Room

I saw you at the top of the stairs

A vision of the past

With your white buck teeth

That had a slight over bite

As you approached me

It was different.

We were once there

in Ms. Riordan’s

room, where it smelled

of old cigarette butts.

Knowing that

Mother Time

Has changed this

World that I’d once known

Made me feel

Eccentric.

By: Nyan Min

Photo By: Connor Sheehan

Photo By: Juwan Kearson

Kaylon Johnson - Not to Listen

You tell me not to listen,

--not to listen,

The heartbeat is loud every sound will be written

In my periodical chronicle of life, love Passion

--don't listen, 

But As I flip through the pages, I forget that nothing is written

Equality of life in a sense; nonsense

Its 2:10 and I’m tight

Past-tense

--I listened

Photo: Juwan Kearson

Vassili Fassas- The Beginning

Excess

hopes, dreams

energy

Ample

ambition, motivation

time

All drown in a sea of distractions.

Leaving my reach

gone.

Photo: Juwan Kearson

Zach Crosby- "Supercomputer"

“232-9979,” was the flashing green answer the supercomputer gave. Lars typed his question in again, knowing his question would be floating anonymously among the other million or so questions being asked around the world. He knew the damned computer wouldn’t know it was he, back again for more futile answers from the all-knowing computer. Every day when he logged into the system, and asked a simple question, such as “Where am I located?” or “How many others are currently on the Double Y system?” the computer immediately answered with the dreaded termination code, “232-9979.” A blip appeared on a map, showing the exact location of Lars, complete with coordinates and address. Lars waited for the sharp prick of the drive, entering the USB port, but it never came. Every time, he waited and waited for them to burst through his thin, army surplus, wood door, and bowl him over. It never happened. He even accessed the system through his external drive, still the computer located him, and still nothing showed up. Lars began to doubt the government’s threats, and soon he moved back into his old abandoned habits. He hacked through the ever-changing Eden firewall, and stole precious data, but still in the back of his system, AISC haunted each of his processes. He knew it was watching each of his hacks, recording everything thing he calculated.

            Years passed while Lars remained untouched, until AISC exacted its revenge. Lars booted back up AISC’s system and went through his normal procedures, until two blips showed up on the map. One was steadily moving closer to the other, that one was blue, while the other one was red. After a minute of this screen, the whole system shut down, and Lars remained dumbfounded. He sent a process to the Internet, and brought up a search engine. He still remembered that the termination code had showed up before the map, so he searched it. “232-9979.” It turned out that the termination list had finally reached his IP address. He sent one final code to the AISC as he felt a drive being inserted into the USB port on his side, and he promptly shut down.

Photo: Juwan Kearson