Blood
by Elizabeth Curran
First Place; Prose Winner
Scott and Jack were such bros that they got nearly synchronized nose bleeds.
Guaranteed, every time Scott got a nose bleed, Jack’s would open up within the next hour. It
was almost comical.
In fact, it was comical, to the girls on the light crew at least, who would giggle about
how Scott and Jack had “synced nose menstruation” because apparently, that’s something that
happens to vaginas when girls hang out a lot.
Scott and Jack ran a “red sound booth”, as the tech crew called it, in a failed attempt at
Game of Thrones humor. Scott would start bleeding while running XLR cables backstage, then
Jack would start bleeding 45 minutes later while throwing old Pop Pop Snappers at Amanda
from the catwalks. Scott would start bleeding while packing up tools for the night, 30 minutes
later Jack would start bleeding on the snow in Amanda’s front yard. One night they almost
broke the pattern, Scott got a nose bleed during rehearsal and Jack got nothing, that is, until he
blew his nose later that night and discovered dried blood flecks in the tissue.
The play that they were working on was the Scottish Play. And I know what you’re
thinking: “So the theatre is just cursed! Some stupid ignorant person said Macbeth and now our
trusty sound managers are afflicted with bloody nose drips. End of story. And the moral is that
Shakespeare doesn’t need a sound crew.”
Well, not quite. About the nose bleeds at least...
You see, as time went on, this occasional nasal phenomenon started occurring more and
more often. Soon it happened every day:
Nose bleed. 20 minutes. Nose bleed.
The light crew bought the sound crew scented tampons for the lols.
Nose bleed. 15 minutes. Nose bleed.
Props joked about how they could use real blood instead of synthetic for the children.
Nose bleed. 10 minutes. Nose bleed.
Amanda became desensitized and stopped running for tissues every time blood
happened.
Nose bleed. 5 minutes. Nose bleed.
The crew started to wonder.
4 minutes.
What would happen
3 minutes.
when
2 minutes
they
1 minute
synched?
By the dripping of my nose, something wicked this way goes.
It happened during dress rehearsal. As the three witches performed a mad dance Scott
and Jack simultaneously felt a familiar thick wetness in their nostrils.
As they looked to each other, the booth began to lurch beneath them as their vision
swirled and warped. They collapsed from their chairs as a new reality emerged between them.
If Amanda hadn’t turned around at the sound of the thump, no one would have noticed
the boys’ distress in time. They were unresponsive, sprawled on the floor, eyes wide and
unblinking as their noses released more blood that was typical. It ran down their cheeks and
pooled on the floor, dripping through the floorboards and onto the equipment below, the
brilliant scarlet stickiness. The tampons were ironically unsheathed in an attempt to staunch
the bleeding while the ambulance was called. Panic filled the seconds, blood filled the cotton
and escaped around the edges of the oversaturated feminine products. Amanda pinched
Scott’s nose, yelling for someone else to do the same to Jack. Blood seeped into their mouths as
their noses were restricted, gargling in their ragged breaths, and soaking their lips and teeth.
Whatever the two of them were seeing or experiencing, it didn’t seem to be as horrible
as what their friends were witnessing. The two boys wore juvenile smiles, their eyes dancing in
their heads, taking in everything that the crew and thespians couldn’t perceive around them.
An existence and a truth so strenuous that it cost everything to behold, if just for a moment. A
moment of blood and silence.
“It provokes the desire, but it takes away the performance.”
Nom de Plume
by Shane Pelletier
First Place; Poetry Winner
To me, there’s no better love than words
passed through a page. Creating art is a passionate action
and every sentence I write is a batch of freshly cut
Shane fragments sewn together like some kind of fucked up flesh necklace.
My love celebrates its anniversary daily with disgruntled, guttural grunts
because words don’t do that fuzzy feeling justice. My love reads
the work of another artist and illuminates like veins of night time city street lights
from an airplane window. In first grade, my love shot its hand up in front of the entire class
and proudly proclaimed that one plus one was eleven.
My love is adrenalized love. My love is flashing lights on the corner yelling
not to walk but to run type love. My love is not knowing what to do with your hands,
gargling pre-written lines, and blurting out “I love you” during a first date
handshake type of love. My love is the massive amalgamation of every “umm,”
“uhhh,”
“anyway,”
“I don’t know,”
and “whatever” type of love.
My love tells everyone that its spirit animal is an emperor penguin,
and not because of winter tolerance or multiple mile long treks
to take care of their future family, but because they look like they’re wearing little tuxedos
and my love kind of digs that. My love is a Rolling Stones fan in a sea of Beatles with no shelter.
My love grew its hair out in high school and started wearing black
because it thought “chicks liked the look of a brooding poet” not realizing it was digging the
ditch
under its feet a little deeper. My love stood home with its boys during the homecoming dance
because it thought school functions “weren’t its scene”, but kept asking who its ex was sitting
with.
My love stays up ‘til midnight with its phone tucked to its chest
even though it never gave you its number. My love is long-sighted and stands back
just to read your name on the chart. My love held old love poems and wilting wild flowers in its
hands
so long the sores are still festering, and there is ink under its fingernails, and under its eyes,
and under its skin leaking from the hole in its chest where I placed my pen and pulled the
trigger.
My love is a nom de plume on a worn novel on your bedroom end table.
A freckle on the cheek like paper snowflakes.
The name on your lips like melted candies.
Introverted
by Elizabeth Channell
First Place; Art Winner