The Novella Life of Illuscia Nester Himawari

The green pills were vitamin supplements, which were important because they didn’t get to go outside for exercise and sunshine. The white ones made them calm, and the blue helped them sleep. Katie hated it there—the bolted-down beds, unopenable windows, cafeteria food. The worst was “Sharing.” They all told their stories, basically the same, brimming with violence. "Remembering engenders rehabilitation," the doctors said. Whatever. Her parents were clueless. “Frustration is normal…blah…blah…right trajectory…blah…blah…blah…stay on course….” That was her dad. “I hope you appreciate how fortunate you are to be here,” her mom would say. “Things could’ve gone very differently.” One day, Katie overheard her mother’s voice, just before the door clicked shut. "If I’d known this would happen, I would’ve aborted her." Astonished, Katie decided to investigate. That night, she pretended to take her meds, then spat the bitter red pills into the toilet. She feigned sleep un...

Three weeks ago my fiancé, Jenny, and I moved into a beautiful old home in the outer suburbs of Boston. Jenny and I met ten years ago at Boston College and have stuck together as I toiled through medical school and she supported the two of us with her job as a paralegal. I bought this old house to celebrate finishing my residency and as a way to thank Jenny for working so hard to provide for us while I chased my dream of becoming a doctor. The house is more than one hundred years old, has been sitting empty for more than ten years, and needs a lot of work. I probably paid more than I should have for a house needing so much extra work, but I could imagine Jenny and I raising a family and living here for the rest of our lives. Well, that changed soon after we moved in and I found something terrible living in our attic. The first few days in our new home passed in a blur as we coordinated furniture deliveries, stocked the house with food, and planned for future renovations. By the fifth n...

I have an odd gift that I’ve never been able to explain, but it’s helped a lot of people, so I don’t complain. Too much. The very first time it happened, it was a cup of coffee. I don’t drink coffee. Hate the stuff. But in my dorm room, I had the urge to go to the student center and order a cup of coffee. I distinctly remember telling the barista, “Whatever. Just as hot as you can make it.” A few minutes later, as I was walking back to my dorm room, I heard a scream. A woman, someone from my dorm, in fact, was being attacked. I took the lid off of the cup of coffee and threw it in her assailant’s face. His face was horribly burned; my hand got some of the coffee on it, too. I still have a surprisingly wicked scar to this day. Whenever I feel the urge to make one of these purchases, I always use it within about ten minutes. I always save someone in the action. Either a prevented rape, or an abduction, or a murder… But there’s always a cost. I’m injured in the process. Every...

Exhaustion is my constant companion. Every single day, I am forced to grip the wires, as they bite greedily into the flesh of my palm, leaving a pearly tapestry of scars. Gloves don’t help any, as they leave the wires slippery, hard to tame. I bend my back to the point of breaking, as every fiber of my being wails in agony. If it were just the physical exertion, that would be fine. I can ignore the fatigue turning my limbs to jelly. But no, in this line of work, the true killer is the complaining. Every person I help wants something more, demands a different level of service. They insist they could do better, in my position. It never bothered me at first, all of their complaints. I let it wash off my back, and held the wires sturdy. But, as long as I’ve been in this position, a fog of fatigue has blanketed my mind. The little nagging voices have crept in, doubt crippling my every action. Yet, still, I do my job. Though those I help are ungrateful. However, I’m starting t...

I know that’s a horrible thing to say, but it’s true. My class is a teacher’s worst nightmare, because my students are IMPOSSIBLE to control. They scream at me and spit in my face. They hurl insults at me and laugh cruelly if they see that they struck a nerve. They even get violent sometimes, pulling my hair and knocking me to the ground, where they pin me down and describe in great detail all of the awful, inhumane ways they’d love to kill me. It’s absolutely terrible. But I still work up the courage to go back to what is left of that burned, abandoned school building every year. It’s the least I could do for them after the tragedy they underwent years ago. I sometimes bitterly think it’s the electrician who should be coming to pay this debt every year on the anniversary of that sad day, taking the abuse that these kids yearn to inflict on the cause of their agonizing deaths. After all, his faulty wiring is what caused the fire. But, then… I remember how angry I had bee...

I died yesterday. I know I did. I  know  I did… I was walking across the street when suddenly a horn started blasting out of nowhere. The next thing I knew, I was laying on my back staring up into a cloudy sky. All the noises around me began to fade and soon enough, I was enveloped in calm silence. It was almost peaceful. I could feel a surge of warmth and, right as I closed my eyes for what I knew would be the last time, I heard a voice as clear as day. It resonated in that silence as it said, “Remember our deal.” So, you see, I know I died. I know that the events that caused my death yesterday actually happened. I know they did because, when I woke up this morning alone in my bed, I felt as though I had been hit by a truck. I looked over my battered body. I had lumps and bruises and cuts that I knew were the result of the accident that killed me. Yet, here I am. Alive, breathing. I checked the online news and there’s a report of an “unidentifiable man” being str...

It’s a Saturday morning, just like any other. My father and I are sitting side by side at the kitchen table in our apartment, eating breakfast. Coffee for him, juice for me. Toast for him, cereal for me. It’s still early, but the sun is already high in the sky, illuminating my father’s newspaper with muted rays of light as he reads today’s business section. As usual, we eat quietly, our silence broken only by the small clinks of glassware and the rustling of paper as my father turns the pages of The New York Times. I get up to pour myself another cup of juice, and my father watches me over the metal frames of his glasses. “Sleep okay?” “Yeah, but I’m still kind of tired,” I reply, grabbing the O.J. from the refrigerator. “Did you?” “Not bad,” says my father, stretching in his seat. His hair is all messed up, matted down in the front and sticking up wildly at the crown of his head. His upper lip is slick with Vick’s Vapo-Rub. “But your mother was tossing and turning all nigh...

I’m a very nocturnal person. I tend to stay up until very late just browsing the internet or playing games on Steam. Last night, at around 4 AM, something weird happened. I own a desktop PC that is located underneath my desk. I also own a pair of speakers which are slightly old and don’t always work properly. Sometimes they stop working and I have to plug them out and plug them back in. It is a tedious an annoying task because you can’t see anything at night underneath my desk. Thus, I have a flashlight always handy with me. Anyways, this happened last night and I did the usual routine. When I was done, I pointed my flashlight at the window (which is to the left of my desk, just a meter away) and started fidgeting with it. I am a nervous person and I was waiting for my speakers to start working again, so I was just playing with my flashlight turning it on and off. That’s when I noticed something. Right in front of my building there was a light being turned on and off in ...

My parents never believed me when I was 2, when I would wake them in a state of hysteria, trembling and covered in sweat. Instead, they put me back to bed. My parents never believed me when I was 5, when I would frantically try to explain the incomprehensible noises I heard coming from underneath my floor. Instead, they told me it was the sound of the floorboards shifting with the wind. My parents never believed me when I was 7, when I relayed to them the messages the voices would say to me. Instead, they told me I just needed some more sleep. My parents never believed me when I was 9, when I would wake up with cuts on my arms and legs and chunks of hair pulled out of my head. Instead, they told me it was something I merely did in my sleep. My parents never believed me when I was 12, when I made eye contact with a grinning creature in my doorway, never breaking it for what seemed like hours until he slowly shut my door. Instead, they told me it was my imagination. I nev...

Excuse the formatting, I am typing quickly on mobile. I have to be quick, I need to sleep before the night comes. My mother is schizophrenic, and when she used to come see me at my grandmother’s house, she would hear voices in the vents; she saw people in the basement. This happened when I was younger, maybe 10 years ago. Anyway, lately as I have been staying with my grandmother more often, I have been hearing things at night. I need to tell someone about this. In case I do not survive the my investigation I am planning for tonight. The voices from the vents have been getting louder. I cannot sleep at night, I stay up till the sun rises. I can hear them, and I am afraid soon I will see them. I am beginning to think my mother wasn’t being as crazy as it seemed. Under the staircase downstairs, there is a closet, one with one of those chain locks so you can lock it from the outside. I have asked my grandma about it and she said it had been there since she moved in. The voices seem to come...

Now, this is not going to be a particularly scary story, but it is very unsettling, I think. Here’s what happened. When I was six, I used to spend a lot of time at my grandparents’. They moved around quite a bit- money issues, I’m sure. During this time they were living in an extension of another family member’s house. I wasn’t related to the family that owned the house, so I don’t remember much about them. I do remember one of the members was a very old man who was always in bed, hooked up to an oxygen tank. But that’s all. So, the way the house was set up, the section that my grandparents inhabited didn’t have a bathroom. We had to walk through the rest of the house to get to it. Normally, my youngest aunt, Maya, would walk me to the bathroom. I don’t remember why, exactly, but I figure it’s because I was a ‘fraidy cat and couldn’t do anything on my own. Anyway, on this one particular night, I had to use bathroom, so I asked Maya to take me. The kitchen was on the way, ...

My mother grew up in a coal-mining town. That sounds like a bad opening line to a country song but it’s true. She’s one of the reasons I love to tell stories; I grew up listening to hers. My mother has a lot of stories. I hope I tell this one right. Did you know in some mining towns, they build houses over the mines? Then they strip the mine clean, dig out everything of any value, and move on. Years go by and the mines collapse. The houses on top of the mines, they crumble like sandcastles into the gaping hole in the earth. Anyway. Just trying to set the stage. My mother lived at the bottom of a big hill in this coal-mining town. She had a nice house and a large grassy yard to play in. Her father worked at the steel mill and her mother was a homemaker. She had three sisters and two brothers. Summers were the best, she says. She’d spend all day out in the yard, playing with her sisters, making up stories and games until the light got low and the fireflies came out. Then her mother would...

In my tortured ears there sounds unceasingly a nightmare whirring and flapping, and a faint distant baying as of some gigantic hound. It is not dream - it is not, I fear, even madness - for too much has already happened to give me these merciful doubts. St John is a mangled corpse; I alone know why, and such is my knowledge that I am about to blow out my brains for fear I shall be mangled in the same way. Down unlit and illimitable corridors of eldritch phantasy sweeps the black, shapeless Nemesis that drives me to self-annihilation. May heaven forgive the folly and morbidity which led us both to so monstrous a fate! Wearied with the commonplaces of a prosaic world; where even the joys of romance and adventure soon grow stale, St John and I had followed enthusiastically every aesthetic and intellectual movement which promised respite from our devastating ennui. The enigmas of the symbolists and the ecstasies of the pre-Raphaelites all were ours in their time, but each ne...

Shortly after November 18, 1978, a tape emerged from the ruins of Jonestown. It appeared to be an audio recording of the actual death scene. This transcript is made from a tape recording produced by the International Home Video Club, Inc. of New York, an operation which has since ceased to exist. It is not clear how IHV got the tape in the first place. This transcript was made by Mary McCormick Maaga in Hearing the Voices of Jonestown (Syracuse: Syracuse University Press, 1998) JIM JONES: How very much I’ve tried my best to give you a good life. But in spite of all of my trying a handful of our people, with their lies, have made our lives impossible. There’s no way to detach ourselves from what’s happened today. Not only are we in a compound situation, not only are there those who have left and committed the betrayal of the century, some have stolen children from others, and they are in pursuit right now to kill them because they stole their children. And we are sitting ...