The Novella Life of Illuscia Nester Himawari

When I was younger, my grandpa and I would watch those medical mystery TV shows. You know, the ones with six-legged cows or skinless babies that still manage to live. Weird allergies, genetic mutations, and even the somewhat comical “Well the doctor made a really big oops and left medical equipment inside of you and you’ve been living with it for 5+ years” stories. They were educational and gross at the same time, something that I fed off of as a young teen. Grandpa would always joke around that he should be on those shows. I knew he wasn’t serious - he hated drawing attention to his issue. I would occupy myself with what they would title an episode of his, and always came back to the blunt, retro movie title of “The Man with Two Voices”. Ever since any of my family can remember, grandpa’s had “two voices”. The only way for me to describe it is to compare it to having phlegm in your throat when you’re sick, and how it sometimes creates a split in your voice. There’s your normal speakin...

One of the freakiest things that I’ve ever heard of happened to my mom, when she was carrying me she had a lot of problems (she almost got a miscarriage and I was born 2 months earlier) and when  I was born she also had a lot of problems. So while she was all drowsy on her bed because of the drugs and of blood loss a nurse came in, and asked her for the roses on her bed stand because there was a priest that came to bless the kitchen and my mom was all like “Whatever, no harm’s done so be my guest”. After a while the nurse came back and gave my mom the roses. Some minutes later another nurse came in to clean and do the usual nurse stuff and my mom told her “Thanks but another nurse came in some minutes ago”, to what the nurse replied: “No, no one was supposed to come in, unless one of the interns mixed up the schedule no one should be here” And my mom: “No, the nurse came in here some minutes ago” she described her and the nurse told her “there’s no one with that description working...

During my senior year of high school I got a job working at a large department store that I will not name (but if you think for even half a second about ‘large American discount department stores’ you can probably guess what it was). I ended up working in the deli. You know how things go when you first get plopped down into a group of people who’ve known each other for a long time: it’s pretty uncomfortable because they have lots of in-jokes or catchphrases that you have no hope in hell of understanding. That’s what I thought the Army Man was, an in-joke. You see, whenever there was some sort of accident — like, say, a woman working in bakery knocking over a stack of boxes, or one of my coworkers in deli dropping an entire eight-piece chicken on the floor on the way to the fryer, it was customary to jokingly grumble “The Army Man did it” and then restack the boxes or throw away the chicken or whatever. I never bothered asking for an explanation since the only thing that makes you fee...

Recently I begrudgingly made my annual visit to my aunt’s farm. I hated every minute of it. I got scared of almost everything there. When the horses neighed, I squealed and jumped. When I saw the cutlery they used to shed meat off of the bone, I couldn’t sleep for the entire night. When I spied the scarecrow in the field, I could have sworn it turned and looked back at me. They made fun of me constantly for that. I couldn’t even taste the steak without thinking of the poor thing that had to die to provide it. I hated the screams the livestock made when they were butchered, I always felt like they should have been killed beforehand. But the absolutely worst part of the whole trip was finding enough people to come along with me to begin with- it’s getting tougher finding a new harvest with each passing year. — Credits to: fonzihippo

The blaring sound of seven in the morning jars you violently from sleep, shoving dreams away like rocks off a cliff, never to be seen again. You stir and make morning noises as you reach from beneath your sheets and blindly search for the Snooze button. Once silenced, you convince yourself not to rappel back down the cliff of slumber and reluctantly get up to begin your day. Yawning widely, you shuffle from your room to the hallway, wiping crust from your eyes and drool from your mouth. You never were a very pretty sleeper – part of the reason why you are still single. The thought makes you smile randomly. You eventually find the bathroom and, after a few seconds of grasping in the dark, turn on the light. You flinch back like a frightened vampire before shaking your head at your own immaturity and stepping inside for a meeting with the porcelain head. Concluding the meeting with a flush, you move to the sink to wash your hands. Your eyes wander up to the mirror, looking at your own s...

I helped my mother move out of her apartment today. She had been living there since I was born, and it was about time for her to find somewhere better. Her furniture was heavy, but I managed to get it in my truck alone, easily enough. Her television was a pain, but it fit cozily between my front and back seats. The pictures of the family were placed in my passenger seat, so that I could look at them while I waited for street lights to signal. There was one of me drenched in mud in the park nearby, way back in the 90s, that gave me a slight chuckle. Another photo of me and my mother, embracing each other at a football game after the final touchdown made our team victorious. I couldn’t stop smiling as I placed them in the seat. Moving her mattress was a little tougher, but after throwing away the sheets, it was easier to handle and slid nicely into my truck bed. There was some dirty kitchen ware that she had no need for in their state, so I had to throw those away along with the sheets. ...

We had a mouse problem at the Pink Ridge Inn. A set of double doors to the boiler room were pretty warped and banged up, so there were plenty of spots that mice could come wriggling inside from the small soybean field that stretched north from the rear parking lot of the hotel. I had just started at the Pink Ridge Inn a few weeks ago at this time and was still working the 3:00 pm to 11:00 pm evening shift. This was late November, so the Indiana winter was settling in rapidly. We had a long-term check in on a Thursday night: the Crockers. The Crockers were a bit odd. The mother was a portlier woman—not fat, but robust and saggy from the stress of raising a family on her own. There was no Mr. Crocker present. She had two children. The older of the two was her son Michael. I gauge he was around 15 or 16 and in the grips of teenage angst. He had his ears pierced with black rubber studs, he had the remnants of black polish chipping off of his nails, his hair was heavily gelled and ...

My dog never barks. When he was a puppy, and first getting to know the world, he developed a case of neighbor’s cat to the face prompting an emergency visit to the vet. Through all of their poking and prodding, and even the initial attack he never made a noise, not even a whimper. A year ago, my old house caught fire. I woke to his face at the edge of my bed. He was pressing his nose against me repeatedly as he pawed at the covers, but even in the rush to get out, even as I heaved him through a window, he remained silent. I joked he was my barkless dog - that maybe he was just waiting until he had the right thing to say. He’s staring at a point over my left shoulder, and his bark is deep and guttural, his hackles up. My dog never barks. — Credits to: nerdheroine

The term “synthetic drug” refers to a new type of drug on the market that has been created to skirt existing laws on illicit drugs. Thousands of psychoactive compounds are regulated by the law of the Federal Controlled Substances Act. However, in creating synthetic drugs, manufacturers alter the chemical structure of an illegal drug, modifying it to create an “analog” or derivative of that drug, to, essentially, make it quote unquote legal. Synthetic drug manufacturers are devious in marketing their goods. This is known. Furthermore, it’s also known that synthetic drugs induce a variety of side effects which can vary from person to person—often lack of pain response, hallucinations, and a severely hindered judgment. I don’t know how much of those facts and statistics are relevant to me, and what happened to me, but… I need answers. Answers to dangerous questions. Questions I shouldn’t be asking. I work nights. I’ve only ever worked nights at Sunshine America—a dingy 24/7 gas station s...