The Novella Life of Illuscia Nester Himawari

“I never wanted this.” The words come because they have to. I’m holding a gun slumped in my hand, my legs bent and draped haphazardly over the stool underneath me. The room is dark; my eyes haven’t moved from her face in what seems like an eternity, and slowly she has come into focus, more real. Somewhere in this place I hear rhythmic tears of water echoing against steel piping. “Fuck you.” “I don’t…” I choke down a sticky sob. “You don’t know. You don’t know what it’s like…” I tap the top of the gun against my forehead, my shaking fingers making the motion a rapid staccato. “in here.” I draw two quick hiccups of air between the words. The movement is the first acknowledgement I’ve made of the gun’s presence in the last hours. Has it really been hours? Jesus. I look at the metal in my hands and try to think, but there are no thoughts to be had that aren’t already here, filling the little room with disgusting perfumes that cloy at my nostrils and tug gnawingly at my senses. I’m sweatin...

I was never blessed with an abundance of friends. The few friends I did have were truly wonderful, and I was content. Aiden was like me. Quiet, shy, intelligent and introverted. We became best friends as children, and have remained as close as brothers our entire lives. As all young boys do, we grew up. We graduated college, got jobs, and Aiden even got married! He has a young son, Jared, who refers to me as Uncle Eric. It’s the cutest thing when he comes up to me to show me some new and fascinating thing that he’s discovered, like the wonder of a firefly, or the beauty of a colorful flower. Children teach us to reevaluate things that we’ve learned to take for granted. Aiden has been having a tough time lately. He and his wife separated and he’s been having financial difficulties for some time, between paying for full-time child care, his rent, and all his other bills. I’ve been helping as much as I can, but it never seems to be enough. Luckily, after thinking things over...

“Do you know where we’re supposed to park? Ingrid. Hey, did she tell you where to park?” “What?” I turned away from the window and flashed Lloyd an apologetic look. “Sorry, I was just watching something…out the…” “Ingrid.” “Sorry! God, it’s been a long week. No, she didn’t say but since we’re the last ones there, I would assume we just park next to everyone else.” “Actually, we’re not,” Moss piped up from the back seat. “Ben just texted that he’s still on the 87.” “Guy sells two songs to Maroon 5 and now he thinks he can make us wait around like he’s a damn celebrity,” Lloyd mumbled. “Please, Ben’s never been on time to anything in his life. Isn’t that half the reason the band broke up?” Moss laughed. “Nah, the band broke up because Ash got deployed and Ben was always too good for it anyway.” Moss smiled and sat back in his seat. Lloyd and I had been together for four years and he’d been unemployed for three of them. He’d put everything he had into his band and for awhile it look...

My mother moved into this one storey, white house on a corner when I was about four years old. I vaguely remember visits there, but nothing of importance. Then, my mom got pregnant with my sister. For the sake of the story, let’s name my sister Olivia. Until Olivia was about two years old, nothing really happened in the house. As we both got older, and more active around the house, things began to start that still scare me fourteen years later. It started with the dog, Daizy. The doors would always open randomly and let her outside, or she would somehow become unclipped off her chain, but I was always told it was the wind, and that Daizy had figured out to unclip it herself. We also had a huge, brick fireplace, with a concrete slab on top that held all the photographs in frames of various sizes and shapes. I remember sitting in the living room, on many separate occasions and watch all the photographs, and there was about 15 of them, all fall down at the exact same time. ...

I live in a house that was never quite finished when it was first being built, and so there are a couple of things in it that are out of place. For example, the spare bedroom has an unfinished wall, the 2-by-4s and insulation left exposed. The bathroom floor is just cement with no tiles and unpainted walls. And, in my own room, nobody had put a door on my closet. Now, I’m not superstitious and I’ve never been too afraid of the dark, but it freaked me out to sleep next to what looked like a gaping void of darkness at night. Maybe it was the childhood fear of ‘monsters in the closet’, but I’d gotten used to sleeping with my back to the door, so I wouldn’t have to open my eyes in the middle of the night and see the black hole that was my closet, half expecting to see glowing eyes or a looming shape in there at any moment. This was especially annoying in the summer months, when the side of the bed I slept on got hot quickly, so I finally decided to do something about it. The...

The Suicide Room. That’s what they called room 733 - as if I didn’t have enough to worry about on my first day as a freshman. We had assigned to dorm room 734 which, it turns out, wasn’t one of the nice add-on rooms in the south hall. No, we found ourselves in the older wing of the building on the 7th floor. I wasn’t too bummed out, though; at least they’d honored my request to room with my best friend. Lydia and I spent most of the morning moving ourselves in. By the time our Resident Advisor came by I was taping up posters and Lydia was reading. “Hi girls, I’m Beth!” chirped the bubbly blonde girl as she bounded into our room. “I’ll be your RA this year.” “Hi,” I nodded at her. “Wow, you girls really work fast,” she said taking in our made beds and hung up clothes. Beth picked up a drawing of Cthulhu that Lydia had done over the summer. She turned it sideways, studying it. "Is this the kraken from Pirates of the Caribbean?” Lydia glared at her over the top of her book. “So anyw...