Rabbit

By Swoop
Based on True Events

1985

It’s a beautiful California summer evening. A few miles east of Venice beach I drive slowly along a winding street patrolling the Mar Vista Gardens Housing Projects.

“Hey Sanchez, got any baseball cards?” Children plead loudly from across the street. I hand a couple to the little boys that run up to my window.

A chorus of “Thanks Sanchez” from the kids as they run back to their play area.

I like working this beat with its unique mix of people. Not too many other places in this area where I find Mexicans, Blacks and a few Whites hanging out together every day. Many have lived here a long time and have grown fairly close if for no other reason than being forced to live together in poverty. Yet, because of the gangs in the area, this living situation is precarious at best.

The projects consist of identical units painted with cheap governmental surplus pale green paint. Between each of the buildings are rusted poles for clotheslines, some without the wires to hang the clothes on. The area in front and along side the units consist more of dirt patches and litter than grass.

Mar Vista Gardens is always abuzz this time of day, this time of year. In front of the units kids are playing. Adults are sitting on worn out patio furniture and plastic buckets turned upside down, talking, drinking cool drinks and smoking cigarettes. Music is blaring from various units throughout. At the end of the block, a group of teenaged Latin boys have congregated.

They are gang members, Culver City Boyz; they spend most of their days here slinging rock cocaine. Each of them is wearing the gang uniform. Neatly pressed Dickies, sagging off of their waist, wife beater shirts and bandanas, pressed and folded, hanging from their pants pocket.

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Passing Bye

by Renee King

Sean had fair skin, café au lait it was called, and green eyes. She, or the queen, (how she thought of herself) was an amalgam of races. Her mother could boast Irish, Native, and African American ancestry. Her father was unsure of the specifics, but knew he was Caribbean of African and European descent. Truth is, one only had to look at those blue-green eyes fighting against the wide nose and plush lips to know that someone had gone visiting amongst slave row long back. She realized one day as she stood in the mirror viewing her soft fair skin that, “With makeup, I can pass.”

When Sean stood outside she was conscious of the rules, even more conscious because now she had to learn to forget them. She had to be more like the other, to blend in, to hide so well that she did not even recognize herself. A chameleon. But doubts crept in, “They can tell by your hands,” they’d warned. “Your features are a bit hard,” a successfully passing ‘friend’ had sneered. Continue reading »

Adam and Eve: The First Love Story?

by Scott A. Klepach, Jr.

In the beginning, there was Adam and Eve, as we have been told. They are a couple that confuses and captivates us, delights us and deprives us. Packed into just the first several chapters of Genesis, Adam and Eve nonetheless are situated as the first human characters of the world, and their compact, complex, and often vague representation sets the stage for the rest of the Bible and the morals, ethics, and relationships that follow in the chapters and books to come. Perhaps it is more telling what is not said, or at least not answered, in the first several chapters of Genesis, which focus on Adam and Eve. What are we to make of them? Are believers to believe in them literally, or as some suggest, should they view them more as Everyman and Everywoman? What would it mean either way? More importantly in either case, from the believer’s perspective, what do these few passages say about the nature of the Divine, humankind, and relationships between humans and God and humans with each other? These are compelling questions that will be explored in the next few pages, first by exploring the biblical text, and then expanding the search to consult the more contemporary voices of Mark Twain and Elie Wiesel. We shall discover that by looking beyond the text, but not neglecting it, perhaps there is more to say positively about how humans treat each other than how God treats humankind, and thus we can possibly make the case that Adam and Eve can be viewed as the first love story of humankind.
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The Worst Break-Up

by Tiffany Kildale

He left before I even knew he was going. He left without saying goodbye or anything at all. By the time I grasped what was happening there was nothing I could do or say to change the outcome. Pins and needles of panic stabbed my face, I felt like I was going to throw up. I sat down, put my head in my hands and cried a desperate cry. It was the worst kind of desperation, the desperation that knows he’s not coming back. Hopeless and terrified, for the very first time in my life I didn’t know what to do.
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“Can I Fit in Your Genes?”

Ty Brenneman

Once I’ve had the chance to thoroughly described the process, most people will exclaim “Oh, how magnanimous of you!” or “You must really got a heart of gold!” On the other hand, the more curious conversant will say, “I’ve always thought about doing that… how much did it pay?”

Depending on her genetic uniqueness an egg-donor can charge anywhere from $5,000 to $15,000 per donation and may receive “severance” pay if the preparation process—the incubation stage–fails to produce a minimum number of viable eggs, usually ten. For receiving the flat rate payment, or “donor’s fee” as it is called, the egg-donor is taxed as a private contractor at roughly six percent the fee.
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Home

by Kristi Curtis

They say that home is were the heart is. But what if that just so happens to be in more than one locale. It was certainly one of the more difficult decisions I have had to make. I left the man I love in one state to move to another. I moved back east to be closer to my family.

The time had come. I need them. They need me. My mother, twelve years into nursing a heart condition, which shows no signs of subsiding, was sounding different to me. Even over the phone I could tell. Something was different, wrong even.

She had been slipping into a deep depression. I know now that being within close proximity to the matter is the only true way of assessing a situation such as this. What do you do when you get that feeling in your gut? The only decision is to go with your instinct.

I had been struggling witht the decision to move back. After an accident three years ago, physically, I was forced to give up my business. I lost my husband. My home. Everything. Or so I thought at the time. I would always have my family. I felt too ashamed to come home with “my tail between my legs”. I thought being with my family would only prove to make me feel more like a failure.

Then I stopped to think for a moment. Maybe this wasn’t about me. Maybe they needed me as much as I nedded them. I miss the love I left behind, but am comforted by the idea that our relationship may be able to endure the 1800 mile distance. Only time will tell.

I can say this for now…I am home and it feels right.

Mary’s Secret

By Ashley Murrell

Children’s laughter and screams of joy drifted through the air around the playground on a warm spring day. Little hands flew up into the sky, expressing their hopes and dreams of the game that was most important that day. Lilly, the teacher chosen to supervise the kids’ outside time sighed as she circled around the playground for Larchway After School Enrichment Rooms. Keeping an eye on thirty children was never an easy thing to do. But today was her day to open the outside to assure the kids wouldn’t explode from not digging into the woodchips or bouncing the basketball off the hoop in attempt to hit her car.

“So how’s your day going?” David, her boss, called as he sauntered over to where she was standing.

“It’s fine as always David, how about you?” She asked, never letting her eyes wander away from the playground.

“Good. I’ve been working on one of my paintings and have been so inspired that I can’t sleep much.” His low laugh rolled like a ball down a hill. “So I’ve been hearing some plans from your portable.” He continued, ending with a smirk.
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Made a Discovery

by Sysiphus

Can’t get enough reading, discussion and debate? Well we here at Flask and Pen came across a wonderful Literary website: Literature Network Forums Very cool, very interesting.

Among the threads I came across a personality quiz where you learn which of 64 books you are. I’m Vrigina Wolff’s Mrs. Dalloway. Fun, check it out. Book Personality Quiz

Memoirs of a School-Age Killer

By Jennifer Boyden

If my parents ever found the pile of blood-soaked intestines decaying in the front yard, they never mentioned it.

I had found the toad buried beneath some rotting leaves on a warm day in July. A chubby thing, it didn’t move as I rustled through its home. Even when I picked it up, one tiny eight-year-old hand on either side of its fat body, it remained frozen; only its throat moved in the rhythmic pattern of breathing.

Without a smile, I threw it. The toad’s body arced gracefully in the air, mimicked by its shadow, its stubby legs reaching out for something, anything, to prevent its inevitable fall, a mesmerizing cycle of gravity and anti-gravity. It landed with a soft thud in the grass and rolled a few feet down the hill. I followed. I picked it up and threw it again. The violence fascinated me for ten minutes. Bored, I kicked the toad into the side of my house, grinding it against the cement foundation.

By September, I forgot about the toad. I had more important things on my mind. At the start of third grade, my parents sent me to St. Thomas Aquinas, a Catholic school in the next town. They hated the public school in my town. They hoped a private school with its private teachers and its private funding might consider skipping me ahead to the fifth grade. I only hoped I could make friends.

But at my new school, it took more than grades to pass the third grade. It took a Christian soul, a desire to become faithful amid the faithless: it took Confession.

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Cheating Death

by Kaliki Akana

looking back now six years at my first year in cold new england, i ponder about september eleventh two thousand and one. it was eleven forty five AM for me, the moment in time etched into my brain stem forever, and i had just finished going for a row on the charles river in cambridge mass. i was full of life and energized for that new day. sky clear, leaves turning,my soul churning with life…

in minutes however, that feeling and optimism dissolved from my conscious state of mind and body, as i stared in disbelief at the events unfolding on the tely.. the twin sisters had been downed by two jets, both originating from boston. crumbling and collapsing, a catastrophe unlike anything else i had ever witnessed. a bloody sick feeling came over me similar to the feeling of losing a loved one, or going over the falls at pipeline headfirst, or finding out something ghastly has happened in one’s delicate life. i had no control. my mind dove into a whirlwind of thoughts and emotions, and memories, and images, that relegated me to the simplest and most naked state of the humancondition. my inner core and spirit would determine the outcome of my behavior, and my brain organ would support the conscious actions that found me digging in the pit at ground zero later that evening.

my first mind fact was the smell of sweet burning flesh. the oily,proteinaceous stench that triggers some mammalian olfactory complex deep in the brain…that jars the mind, one that is the most primitive and animal-like, yet cognizant and driving and evolutionarily sophisticated. swimming in the stench of burnt flesh. digging and breathing. eyes hidden behind the high tech oakley goggles i was given. my breathing muffled by the respirator on loan from a friend and mentor professor. what in god’s name was i doing? was i diving into hell? was i being stupid and taking risks likened to those of a dope fiend?

i think not. i was digging in the rubble searching for survivors, finding body parts, pieces, remnants, shreds. a ribcage, a girl’s face, a leg, an arm, a torso. caught in the 1200 foot death traps dragged down into the earth and dust. ground zero’s inception modernized by synthetics, asbestos, gasses and structures manmade. it was a sickening feeling that spun my mind, and toxified my brain and altered my behavior. i was placed on the edge. the fringe with all the others who were searching. hoping to find a survivor, listening with the sound devices, looking into the noodle cameras, relying on the barks and whines of the canine search and recover units.

we were all cheating death. by the second, by the minute, by the hour, by the day. i was a cheater getting away with life. i could not believe what lay before my little existence. the coughs of people without proper respiratory equipment becoming more regular as each moment passed. rescue volunteers passing out and falling down. hearing their lungs and breathing in and filling their inspiratory volumes with more and more toxins. further raising the odds of death and lessening the odds of the cheat. the cheat that i was and still am. alive and healthy. breathing and still athletic, and still able to return home to hawai’i to surf pipe and get held under by the beauty and power of mother earth’s ocean. and the death cheats are being caught one by one. succumbing to death. their lungs still heaving only now heavy with dead and dying tissue. im still cheating…our president and the current administration is still cheating. will we get ever get caught? caught in the act. for me i hope not. for them, the petrocrats, i hope so. i love cheating death.

this cold november night in two thousand and seven, do you?