Trick or Bweats
- The Blue and White Magazine
- 2 days ago
- 10 min read
By The Blue & White Staff
Goldfish Have Teeth
Every Friday after school Tim ushered the family into his bedroom to take our pick from the pet shelter. He presented his stuffed animals to us in a row, sometimes sorted by genus, other times by temperament, but never without some organizing principle. If my gaze lingered for more than a second, Tim would wrap his sticky kid fingers around mine until I was firmly grasping the adoption leash, still coated in layers of dandruff and matted fur. At the other end was whatever stuffed animal Tim thought I wanted to adopt that day. Dad usually ended up with Your Own Personal Jesus. Tim had an expansive conception of the ‘stuffed animal’.
My parents thought this game was Tim’s way of coping with our dog’s death. I felt that my brother needed to make friends.
One Friday afternoon, I noticed a gap in the lineup between Tim’s four-foot stuffed earthworm and Ovie Raptor. Before I could examine any further, Tim forced the leash into my hands. His palms were wet. He gestured like he was grabbing something from that empty space, and upon the floor at the end of the leash he revealed the unnamed goldfish I had won a week prior for my grand achievement in Whac-a-mole. Mom let out a strangled gasp. Dad assured her that Tim simply didn’t know the difference between real animals and toys. He was only seven. That same night, I delivered a eulogy to the tile on my bathroom floor: “Naked came I out of my mother’s womb, and naked shall I return thither. When he hath tried me, I shall come forth as gold.”
Each Friday thereafter, Tim presented us with animals of increasingly questionable origin. Toads from the backyard made frequent appearances. On special occasions they’d be alive. Once we even had a mourning dove, whose bloodied carcass Tim positioned between a stuffed jackal from our trip to Egypt that summer and a caterpillar that, if turned inside out, morphed into a monarch butterfly.
It was over when Mom and I returned home to find her $400 throw pillows gashed and gutted on the living room floor. I shed my backpack and skulked upstairs. Dad’s elbow pierced my side as he blundered down the steps to quell my mother’s hysteria.
I continued on my mission.
Knock knock.
Tim cried out, with no hint of concern in his voice, “The pet shelter isn’t open yet.”
I entered anyway. Tim was sitting on his heels facing away from the door. He rolled his head back until his eyes met mine. Positively beaming, he pronounced, “We’re not open yet silly. You’re too early.”
In each of his hands were tufts of down and feathers. On the floor in front of him were two piles of our neighbor’s cat Spooky. One pile was Spooky’s insides. The other was Spooky’s outsides. Tim was stuffing Spooky’s outsides with Mom’s pillows’ insides.
I crumpled next to my brother in silence. My parents’ voices echoed louder and crueler from the living room below. The tips of my ears burned. I wrapped my arms around my brother and sobbed softly into his shoulder, and we waited there together for the pet shelter to open. — Ava Lattimore
Seeing Double
My new Meta AI glasses arrived at the mail center in between my Tuesday sections of Principles of Econ and Anime Effect: Japanese Media. I ran over to Wein and immediately ripped open the box. Donning the chunky black frames made me feel like Clark Kent. Or maybe Neo, if he had glasses. “Hey Meta, what is the name of that genius guy from that spy movie?”
I stepped out into the oozy glow of the lamps on 116th Street. The sidewalks were practically empty, save for one student exiting from the law school. They passed me in a rush. You’re not going to fail, you’re not going to fail, you’re not going to fail … The words appeared suddenly in my right lens. I supposed the AI was in mantra mode. Groovy.
I had returned to my McBain double and was texting with the wrist band gadget when my roommate arrived.
“Hey.”
“Hey.” It smells like rat feet in here, doesn’t he ever shower? The words hung fixed and translucent before my eyes. Chills ran down my back. I gave an excuse and hurried downstairs to get some air.
The shadows outside had grown deeper. The scream of an ambulance siren stretched down the street. I drew my jacket closer to my body. I wish I could leave. I wish I could go home. Seeing the pleas in my lenses reminded me that I was still wearing my glasses. This time, the thoughts on the screen were mine.
Feeling sick, I started to run toward the end of the block to go somewhere, anywhere, that wasn’t here. As I drew in labored breaths, my glasses flickered back to life. Here are the top five Spotify running playlists from this week … — Evan Rossi
The Conjuring
I don’t know my own power. It’s just that I think of people and then they appear. It’s unnerving. I need to watch my mouth—or my thoughts. Sometimes it happens and I haven’t even uttered the person’s name out loud. I’m being vague, but purposely so. I’m treading lightly. Who might I run into on my walk home? Or on my way to Avery? There’s always someone in Avery. I talked about it with a friend—the conjuring. It’s not some kind of witchy practice; nothing about it is “on command.” I just think of someone, say their name, and they appear: sometimes walking down the street towards me, rounding the same corner, in the grocery store we meet in the frozen foods aisle. It’s as simple as that. I’ve got to be more careful. — Kate Sibery
Dead Silence
It all started because I dropped my book.
I whipped my head around the silent library to spew apologetic stares for the disruptive echo, only to realize that nobody noticed—noise-cancelling headphones. Phew. Technology killed the trope of the shushing library.
But before I could rejoice, something hard smacked me across the head.
I woke up on the floor, foggy and confused, and there he stood above me: the only person who wasn’t wearing headphones. His anger had built under the strain of all the sounds that people no longer noticed. My book was his last straw.
I immediately got up and started running, but the man followed me with a heated glare. At first, I thought myself lucky because I was nearing the largest area in the library where safety in numbers could protect me. I was screaming, flailing my arms, and banging every desk I could, but each person I passed was glued to their screen, unfazed and unaware. The headphone revolution had made me invisible in an arena of students.
The man chuckled at my attempts to distract them; he’d once hated how oblivious they were, but now their blindness was his greatest weapon.
We were reaching the end of the large hall, and there was no exit in sight. I turned into any row of bookshelves I could find, trying to form a maze between me and my opponent, completely blind to the corner I was trapping myself in. I could hear him getting closer, but I had nowhere else to turn. With each step of his, I crouched further into the bookshelves, closing my eyes, preparing for my demise.
By the grace of God, I heard a girl call out, “Do you need help?”
“Yes!” I cried.
“Okay, where are you?”
“I’m in the bookshelves! Row twelve or something!”
“Okay, I’ll be there soon …”
I caught a glimpse of the girl pacing out in the hall. I frantically tried to get her attention, but she didn’t seem to notice me. She paused and said, “I want us to finish the p-set tonight.”
She turned to the side, and hidden in her ear was an AirPod: She was making study plans with a friend. My heart dropped to my stomach. My last chance was gone.
I let out one final scream as the man grabbed my neck. It was the last sound I ever heard. — Marianna Jocas
Open Wounds
“What the heck!” Sally chucked her phone at the solid ground beneath her which, thankfully, ended up being the soft green grass of Furnald lawn, protecting her phone and her sanity. Exasperated, she hung up from yet another stressful phone call from back home—there seemed to be too many these days—and laid her back against one of the large trees on the edge of the lawn closest to Joe Coffee.
Frustrated, Sally looked for a piece of paper and pen in her tote bag to write out her negative thoughts and tear them up—that was the only way she could cope with her toxic mother’s harsh words. Having found none, she settled for a lone red Sharpie instead. With no paper to write on, Sally uncapped her marker and rolled up her sleeves, drawing broken hearts with sharp edges and writing her mother’s hurtful words until her left arm was filled with unintelligible red letters and squiggles. She colored her nails absentmindedly as she replayed the explosive fight with her mother—was she really that bad of a daughter for refusing to come back home for three years?
Exhausted, Sally picked herself up and dragged her feet over to her dorm room on 113th Street and quietly got ready for bed, heart still heavy. Her mother tried to call her again that night, most likely to add salt to the many emotional wounds she had inflicted on her for her entire life, and so Sally shut off her phone. She wouldn’t be tolerating disrespect anymore.
The next morning, Sally’s body felt warmer than usual. It was as if a hot iron was searing into her skin, the pain so intensely blistering it almost felt strangely cold. She immediately peeled her grey fuzzy blanket away from her chest just to see that it was soaked in sticky, fresh blood that oozed out of her arms. Every single mark of red ink on her arms was an open wound; every single letter carved deep to the bone. Dizzy, Sally thrusts her blanket completely off of her bed—why the hell does she have red talons for nails? But before she could call for help Sally heard a loud ping from her phone, grabbing her deteriorating attention. It was her mother. Her message read, “You can’t run.”
Sally looks at her wounds once again. A mother would never curse her own daughter, would she? But the answer laid right before her on her fresh, open wounds. The letters rearranged from the words of malice she wrote the night before into one last threat:
I’m always watching. — Sara Omer
Editor-in-Treat
If one had their ear to the ground, they could hear the vermin writhe in my hand as I gripped them. They attempted to gnaw at the last scraps of my century-aged meat, but I was all bone by now. Pulling myself up, I thrash at the overgrown earth. Almost standing, my skeletal body could not sustain any of the corpse-clothing my tasteless relatives had chosen. My moss-covered tombstone had fallen to the side, and one could barely read: SYDNEY TREAT. I gazed at the words—son, husband, dearly missed. I couldn’t believe it. My unlearned relatives, in their infinitely crude literary choices, failed to include my most important title: EDITOR-IN-CHIEF of the BLUE AND WHITE, 1890-1893.
I stumbled cadaverously past the cemetery gates—the German winter hammered me so furiously that oblivious pedestrians believed me to be covered in snow. Yes, avid readers, this frighteningly delicious news is true: The great Sydney Treat, the birthing parent of our dearest magazine, hath returned. I have decided to return to you as your Emeriti Editor. I have relinquished myriad postmortem possibilities—some divine voice informed me that my reincarnated self might have joined another magazine? If I had not been denied alumni access at the 116th gate, I might have seen those many copies laying around. But no matter! I have come back for a much greater purpose. Through what other supernatural force did you think this ingenious magazine could appear on your little screen? In-Design? NEIN! His Editorness has sacrificed himself in order to provide us with such a delicately pixelated Boo&White edition.
I have no choice but to quote myself. From the beloved December 2, 1890 edition, I very tastefully contributed: “The knife has been applied, and all that was not pleasing to the eye has been cut away.” Enjoy your paperless delicacy! — Duda Kovarsky Rotta
BEWARE THE BASEMENT VAMPIRES
“Did you see that?” I hissed quietly, turning to Marie. But the quip was too loud and Michael shhhhed me under his breath. This will be so much fun, I thought, popping three chocolate squares in my mouth before getting in the Uber, and then again as I ate two more while the three of us cackled out the window of the car, speeding expeditiously over the Brooklyn Bridge. Yet when we arrived, surrounded by faceless mannequins dressed in black, snaking around the empty pavement tucked between warehouses and 24-hour bodegas, not a soul snickered (God only knows what would happen if someone laughed).
We all took a collective step forward in the line, and my consciousness took a step closer to enlightenment. I was a ticking-time-bomb with an impending implosion set twenty minutes too early. Marie and Michael appeared unfazed by the other attendees—not even when the whispering began. Though unnoticeable at first, a carnal hostility crescendoed with each step we took closer to the door, where a small woman with sharp red microbangs held each person for a minute at a time to stare into their eyes before pointing to either the underground entrance or the exit to her left.
Pssspspspspsppspsps, grew louder as the mannequins shifted amongst themselves. I had expected the all black uniform–a cultural thing I was sure–but not the soulless grey figures wearing them! “You need to stop tweaking,” whispered Marie, as I spun myself around thrice looking for some type of lively facial expression. “Seriously, stop, everyone’s looking at you!”
And they were! One by one they turned to me. And though I thought the figures were faceless, I realized it was only a trick of the witch’s hour light! Oh, they have lips! And eyes! Aw, they look tired. And hungry? Is that a fang? Oh, God! They want me! Or do they just WANT me? No, no, they WANT ME. They did not, in fact, want me. They wanted Michael, who was standing just behind me, and looked a lot better in his black tank top than I did.
Damn, I must not have been cool enough, I thought, as Marie and I walked past the small woman with the sharp red microbangs into the techno dungeon, leaving the vampires to feast on Michael in the line behind us. Though, he found us later in the tunnel system of the compound with a glow in his eyes and a newfound appetite! — Rocky Rūb