NEW VOICES

I work in a large city, and take a train many miles home. The sky is dark when I leave and return and although I share my travels with hundreds of others, I speak to none of them. At my home awaits my invalid father, whom I hate. His vision has been impaired for nearly a decade and so he asks me to be his eyes. I relate to him a false world, telling him of things that never existed or do but aren’t of any importance to him. I never want him to see what I see, so it is justified. Years ago, he cursed my mother with whispered words, made her believe in demons and magic, inducing a premature senility. There is power in his words. He tries to whisper to me, wanting me dead too. When he does I cover his mouth tight, yet somehow he breathes. I keep the only picture of my mother in my breast pocket, close enough to my heart to ward off my father. Now he just rests in his chair and traces the large shadows of the trees, waiting for something. Leaving the city, I ride the train on the highest level watching the land fall away from me, my back to my home. One evening, an old woman walked the side stairs. On each of her arms, tens of bracelets pinged and clattered. Stopping suddenly, she looked at the empty seat across from me and sat. “I don’t like sitting alone,” she said immediately, “there’s no one to listen.” Around her neck, several aged necklaces hung low, lost in loose garments. She appeared homeless and smelled of something rotting, an arid foam churning beneath her skin. A man sitting in the seat behind her moved farther down the car to avoid her foetid stench. “I’m going to Albania,” she said. I gave her a quick, careful gaze. “Not right now, of course. But soon. Someone is waiting for me.” I looked out the window to avoid her words but she spoke in a loud, commanding voice. For a time she continued while I sat in silence. The train passed a large backyard where a child played on a rusted jungle gym.  Years ago, my mother took me to the park at night. She’d sit on one of the swings, and I’d watch her mooned features move between the chains. When the sky was covered, the chains disappeared. Sometimes, I put my fingers on her hips, following her from afar, and pretended to touch her as she swung. The woman had stopped. Solemnly, her cloud-calm eyes rested on my chest. I shifted in my seat and as her stare met mine, she straightened her back, arousing the air of a queen. “Tell me where you’re from,” she ordered. Her voice had changed. I spoke, “No.” “Tell me,” she repeated louder. “Where are you from?” “Nowhere. I am an angel,” her gaze lay vacant and piercing. She seemed unaware of her madness,

Alexandre’s blood ran down the balcony railing. First it looked black, then red as it caught the light. I blinked as a drop landed in my eye and half the world went dark. When I wiped it away, a faint, pink blemish was left on my otherwise white skin. The clouds passed the horizon, dark and churning like another sea. The wind, roaring, caught Alexandre’s cloak and made it writhe away from his corpse. It flapped through the railings, obscuring my view of him. The crowd began to flee down the boulevard–they had listened to Alexandre’s speech and feared that they too might face persecution–but there was someone still beside me. I said to him, “It looks like a flag, doesn’t it? The way his cloak moves in the wind.” “What?” I nodded to the balcony, bit off a bitter laugh. “Don’t you see it?” It rained. A drop of blood bloomed on my white robe. I looked at it in distaste, unable to wipe the stain away. I took a step back, and his blood made strange patterns on the ground before it was washed away by the storm. Now everyone was running past me, but I remained. There was nothing to fear: Alexandre was dead. The constables had done their job, and would soon arrive to clean the mess they had made. I, having come to terms with Alexandre’s death long ago, was the least of my own concerns. Here they come now. Rushing past me. Dressed sternly, guns saluting the air. “Hello? Monsieur? Pedestrians need to evacuate,” one said. I looked over my shoulder. He noticed who I was, paled, and said, “ Monsieurpraefect…” I waited. “Yes?” “Is there—uh–something you require, Monsieur praefect?” “Nothing you can give me.” I looked away, and the constables, uneasy, ignored me. When they took him down and destroyed the cloak, his words, once floating on the air, were silenced, though the sky was loud. It was the second time I had heard him speak. The first was at a government-funded dinner, hosted as a last-ditch campaign effort by the oligarchists. I went only because attendance at government functions is mandatory for officials such as myself. When I entered Gulliver’s Hall, it was obnoxiously crowded. I sniffed the wine in which I was not allowed to partake publicly, I tried not to watch the dances I couldn’t learn anyway, and I kept a pretty face for all the aristocrats, sycophants, and oligarchic lackeys who decided to make my acquaintance. The fluorescent bulbs on the ceiling made me squint. I prefer those dark, cramped places where our sins are hidden, where my brothers dull the world with black market gin and smuggled laughter, and spit and curse like criminals and thieves while discussing the disgusting politics that no good soul would contemplate. I was in a dark mood, also, because I had not dreamt recently, and I was wondering if my God had forsaken me. The lights burned my sensitive eyes, and I

Winner of the Hear Here Emerging Authors Contest His name is Dakota. He’s the boy I’m thinking about, the boy who wears loose denim jeans and old sweatshirts that wrap around his body to cover bruises. It’s not just his father that does it; his mother completes it just as well to his neurons. So do some of the kids in school, which I guess taught him everyone abuses you in life. Well, at least everyone but me. His red hair is a little longer than how most boys wear during the warmer weather, but that’s okay. I don’t like people based on how normal they are. Tracing his freckles in my mind, I close my eyes and see pale skin with popping green eyes staring back. When you’re peeking into them, they cure anything wrong stirring inside. It’s funny how they do that, even when demons circle him like vultures. My legs press tighter against myself in the light cut room. The door is bolted but none of us are complaining, even though most days we long for that wood to let us escape. The teacher is even using a paper to cover the tiny window the way they do in drills, the way you don’t expect to ever have to see in the real event. This one girl’s not very popular but she still dresses in skimpy shorts and see-through shirts; well, her panic has made her throat tighten and she’s choking as silently as she can. Her best friend is staring harshly next to her. I can see her fingers digging into her own skin before she suddenly snaps and slaps her best friend’s face. “Shut up, Nelly,” she says in a rough whisper everyone can still hear. The door knob suddenly rattles and gasps echo. The girl crying screams in a short moan before she throws her head to the floor. It’s quiet enough to hear the heartbeats, all pounding under the paucity of air being inhaled to pretend like we’re not here. But, we are. Even the faithful know that. The shaking stops and heavy footsteps walk away gradually, all of us still scared for fake safety. After a minute, a few people’s glares pull from the door and look to one another’s. ‘We’re okay? He’s gone?’ Their thoughts practically resonate like telepathy in my brittle head. A booming crack rings complementary to the screams and the glass panel shatters through the red pulps of fiber opposite us. Another bullet goes to the handle, making it fall off as the door’s kicked in. Just like that, I expect lives to dissipate fast but in slow motion, like any disaster. The shooter walks through the door in a black hoodie; it’s pulled up so his face is impossible to find in the darkness, leaving only his gender distinguishable by his build. Through hectic shuffles and whines, his gun lifts, and he scans the room with it likes eyes. The trigger stops in the middle section. He