Fiction

When 10-year-old Nancy discovers a diary in her parents’ attic, she sets out to find answers that might bring peace to their constant fights… Nancy can walk the length of the attic in eight-and-a-half steps. That would include carefully dodging the old storage boxes or the jutting-out chair legs and keeping her neck bent as she reached the edges where the roof had slanted. To add to the difficulty of her walk, only one yellow bulb lit up the space, casting disfigured shadows on the walls and the ceiling while leaving the edges and corners in a creamy darkness. Nancy had discovered this attic when she was seven. That was three years ago when she could still jump in here without the fear of cracking her head. It was a moment of silent elation as she had just unveiled a new world inside her home, but the shadows would still scare her and she would occasionally bump into stuff and scrape her knees and elbows. Explaining that to her parents used to be even scarier. It’s different now. For one, she can walk blindfolded in this claustrophobic space without fear. Two, her parents don’t bother questioning her over a few cuts and bruises. They are barely home these days, and when they are, they are busy arguing and yelling at each other. And when Nancy’s room gets too loud for her liking, she climbs into this quieter world instead. Today as she steps inside and turns on the dim yellow light, it’s a sunny summer day outside. The day she was supposed to go to Yellowstone on a road trip with Ma and Dad, which was canceled only a night ago. As she closes the door behind her, the noise from downstairs fades away, and she slips into her world quietly. She crouches over to an archaic wooden cupboard and opens the door to get what she came for. An old diary. Brown cover, aged and worn, with intricate flower and star inscriptions in golden color. The sort she’d seen in movies that contain clues to hidden treasures. Only this diary belonged to Ma and no sea explorer. Yet, the heavily creased and dense pages feel coarse against her fingers. And heavy. As she flips open the cover, she sees the two curious sentences again. Written using two different pens and most likely by two different persons. “Personal Diary!!” “Open only if you know the code.” The second sentence makes Nancy giggle every time because the drawstring that was supposed to tie the pages together is now gone. Only its trace remains on the cover. And there is no other secret mechanism built into this traditional diary to prevent unwanted readers from prying into it. So she goes on. The first entry was from 1987, when, if her maths is correct, Ma would be only one year older than she is now. Nancy often wonders what Ma looked like then. Did she have long hair? Did she tie them into braids? Nancy will never be able to fill the void in her imagination with an exact figure, but she goes on. After that first entry, which was only about Ma’s sheer joy at owning this diary, the entries never became daily or even monthly. Sometimes, there would be consecutive entries on the same page as if Ma was worried about running out of paper. Then there would be months of no new entries, but whenever something major, whether good or bad, happened, she’d come back to write about it.  Like when she won the interschool chess championship in eighth grade or when she burned her favorite lab coat in high school. She had an entry for her prom night, for the day she got accepted into CalArts, and for all of her first dates that never went well. Nancy would skip some entries because it felt wrong at times but there was also an excitement in knowing things she would never be allowed to. Sometimes, she just wondered about those young boys who didn’t make it beyond those first dates. Are they all married? Do they fight like Ma and Dad too? These fights worry Nancy more now. Josh, a red-haired freckled boy in her maths class, says that if parents start fighting over small things too often, it means they don’t like each other. And they want to leave. This thought makes Nancy shudder. Leave? Where? What about me? Often, she has no clue what they are fighting over, only that they do it every day now, and it makes her sad. She doesn’t disbelieve Josh either. His parents had separated last year, and that’s how he says he knows. She also wonders how people who love each other can fight so much. She remembers Ma’s entry when she first met Dad in college. “Tall, a tad too muscular, kinda stupid, but when he looked over at me and smiled during lunch, it felt like someone finally saw me.” In the pages of that brown diary, Nancy saw her mother grow up. Leave home for college, move to a different city for her first job, and to a new city for the second. She cried at the entry when Ma wrote, “Where are my roots if not…” and never finished that sentence. Is this what growing up looks like? Losing your roots and leaving sentences unfinished? Josh also says he has grown up a lot this year. Not only has he gained two inches but he is also strong enough to carry groceries on his own. He also says that if parents are fighting, you can try to interrupt them by crying or yelling about the first thing that comes to mind. Nancy has tried that a few times, and last week she got yelled at and sent back to her room instead. Carrying groceries or doing homework on your own is easier than convincing parents, Nancy has decided will be her first entry when she buys a

In a world where emotions are bought and sold, a young girl stumbles upon a hidden underground where genuine feelings still exist. What happens next? Anomaly 3193 crouched under the fire exit of a dilapidated building, tucking in the bruised skin of her legs within her skirt. Splatters of cold December rain on the dinghy alley hit her face and bare arms, pricking her skin like the words of Mama, Anaz, and Stephanie. Anomaly 3193 was eleven years old, and they were the only people she knew, or rather, who knew of her. Until the message came… Now, she had left them behind. Forever. This made her feel SAD – a reminder of what she was – an anomaly. The thunderstorm slowed into a drizzle almost an hour later. Anomaly 3193 came out in the open and looked deep down the two roads ahead of her. On her left, the alley narrowed, the shadows deepened, and the stench seemed to find its source, To her right, the alley led to one of the supersonic highways, crammed with high-speed cars, neon lights, and glass-door shops. One final look at the distant lights that trickled into the dinghy alley, and Anomaly 3193 chose to enter the shadows. Anomaly 3193 walked in the drizzle for another two hours before the moon fought its way through the clouds, making the walk easier. She had always been prone to tripping. She was seven years old when she tripped, tumbled down the stairs, and broke a bone in her left leg. Mama couldn’t take her to the hospital fearing the doctor or the nurses would find out her truth. In a world where every child at birth is injected with a serum to neutralize the part of the brain that generates emotions so that the trade of these emotions could proliferate, she was an anomaly. One, whose brain had survived the serum. Anomaly 3193, her big brother, had named her after Anomaly 3192 was discovered by the Kingsmen and ‘brought to justice’. Before the break of dawn, Anomaly 3193 had crossed the city limits and entered a disbanded railway station. For the morning, a rail car with moss and fungi growing out of it would be her shelter. *** Anomaly 3193 stood before the gate that was camouflaged between two jagged rock faces. She laid down a knock as hard as her failing body would allow her. If not for the detailed map that she found inside a teddy bear left in her backyard, she would have never found this door. When her knocks turned to loud bangs and the door stayed shut, she felt DESPERATION creep in. The map had come with a letter that promised her an underground world where Anomaly 3193 could finally be Celia Goldhart. With hopes draining out from her eyes and the ground slipping from underneath, Celia heard the hinges move. “We were waiting for you,” a woman spoke and a thick shawl wrapped itself around her. Celia succumbed to the warmth of the shawl. Hours later, Celia woke up and a woman named Nanaeve left her warm food and drink. When Celia could walk again, Nanaeve held her arm as she walked down shadowy underground hallways and chambers of the utopian world of uncaged emotions. Men, women, and children of all ages, shapes, and colors greeted her with radiant smiles. Some had tears of JOY on seeing another living soul like theirs. Celia cried too. The secret world felt too good to be true. Once Celia could think more clearly, she turned to Nanaeve and asked, “Can we ever get outside? Into our real world and show them what it means to feel happiness, anger, sadness, guilt, glee, and hope – all together and without having to pay for it?” Nanaeve lost the color of her face and her gaze bore into the damp concrete floor. “No, Celia. That world above us doesn’t deserve you, me, or anyone like us,” a young male voice reverberated in the hallway behind them. A voice familiar to every ear in this world. Celia swiveled around. A boy, barely in his teenage, walked up to her. The KING.  “It was my great-grandfather who built the Emotion serum and changed the world. Today, I carry out his will in the day and my own will in the shroud of the night. But I wouldn’t change a thing.” Young Celia held herself together on the verge of breaking down. “Why? Why wouldn’t you fix the world? WHY?” “Because in these dungeons, we are not anomalies. We are Gods. We are the Source. We are priceless.” Poetry cannot ward off storms, but it can hold your hand and be your guiding light as you sail through one storm at a time. From a survivor of childhood trauma and life-shattering heartbreaks comes an anthology of poetry and prose that is all about helping you find the light in the dark. A blend of free verse, sonnets, and narrative poetry with interwoven personal essays to suit your every mood and make you feel whole again.