Table of Contents
Table of Contents
Tiger Lily
Tina Li '15
The MST of Dorian Gray
Ruby Struble '14
Gargoyle
Tina Li '15
Shakespeare Cat
Natalie Krowitz '16
Gatsby and Ahab Crossover
Ruby Struble '14
Untitled
Natalie Krowitz '16
Sax
Katy DiMuzio '15
Town Forest
Katy DiMuzio '15
Trees Perspective
Katy DiMuzio '15
Frozen Fanart
Marielle Sabbag '14
The Hiccups
Marielle Sabbag '14
Dewy Deck
Alyssa Bogosian '15
Ornaments
Alyssa Bogosian '15
6 Summer Scenes
Katy DiMuzio '15
KJoy the Horse
Katy DiMuzio '15
Ben
Carolyn Vanasse '15
Mechanical Pencil Fight
Marielle Sabbag '14
My Hands
Marielle Sabbag '14
A Birthday Surprise
Marielle Sabbag '14
Anchor
Tina Li '15
Upon the Soft Dandelion
Isabel Murray '16
King Lear MST: Nothing Will Come of MST-ing
Ruby Struble '14
A Day Out in the Park
Marielle Sabbag '14
A Singing Lesson
Marielle Sabbag '14
WALL-E and EVE
Marielle Sabbag '14
Roz
Marielle Sabbag '14
Mister Pencil Face
Ruby Struble '14
Ship
Katy DiMuzio '15
White Flower
Katy DiMuzio '15
Mystery Forest
Katy DiMuzio '15
Apple Vs. Pear
Carolyn Vanasse '15
Rich Red Apple
Katy DiMuzio '15
Goneril's Death Soliloquy (Fanmade)
Ruby Struble '14
Autumn Scenes
Kelcey Hardy '15
Untitled
Katy DiMuzio '15
The New Old New Currency
Carolyn Vanasse '15
Two Sides of the Same Street
Alyssa Bogosian '15
Untitled
Carolyn Vanasse '15
Macbeth Comics
Julia Melius '17
Morgan Neff-Gatchell '17
Niles Singer '17
Julia Squires '17
Matt Baynes '17
Tiger Lily
Tina Li '15
The MST of Dorian Gray
Ruby Struble '14
Gargoyle
Tina Li '15
Shakespeare Cat
Natalie Krowitz '16
Gatsby and Ahab Crossover
Ruby Struble '14
Untitled
Natalie Krowitz '16
Sax
Katy DiMuzio '15
Town Forest
Katy DiMuzio '15
Trees Perspective
Katy DiMuzio '15
Frozen Fanart
Marielle Sabbag '14
The Hiccups
Marielle Sabbag '14
Dewy Deck
Alyssa Bogosian '15
Ornaments
Alyssa Bogosian '15
6 Summer Scenes
Katy DiMuzio '15
KJoy the Horse
Katy DiMuzio '15
Ben
Carolyn Vanasse '15
Mechanical Pencil Fight
Marielle Sabbag '14
My Hands
Marielle Sabbag '14
A Birthday Surprise
Marielle Sabbag '14
Anchor
Tina Li '15
Upon the Soft Dandelion
Isabel Murray '16
King Lear MST: Nothing Will Come of MST-ing
Ruby Struble '14
A Day Out in the Park
Marielle Sabbag '14
A Singing Lesson
Marielle Sabbag '14
WALL-E and EVE
Marielle Sabbag '14
Roz
Marielle Sabbag '14
Mister Pencil Face
Ruby Struble '14
Ship
Katy DiMuzio '15
White Flower
Katy DiMuzio '15
Mystery Forest
Katy DiMuzio '15
Apple Vs. Pear
Carolyn Vanasse '15
Rich Red Apple
Katy DiMuzio '15
Goneril's Death Soliloquy (Fanmade)
Ruby Struble '14
Autumn Scenes
Kelcey Hardy '15
Untitled
Katy DiMuzio '15
The New Old New Currency
Carolyn Vanasse '15
Two Sides of the Same Street
Alyssa Bogosian '15
Untitled
Carolyn Vanasse '15
Macbeth Comics
Julia Melius '17
Morgan Neff-Gatchell '17
Niles Singer '17
Julia Squires '17
Matt Baynes '17
Lily
Tina Li '15
Tina Li '15
The MST of Dorian Gray
Modig: Aaaaand… We’re back!
Tolan: We got sent to England.
Aescheron: I know. Bet it was a fun vacation, boys.
Seamere: Surprising amount of mad people there, you know. First Clown in Hamlet was right.
Tolan: How were the newbies?
Aescheron: They had a lot to learn. One was the Devil and one was a Sumerian prankster god. The third one was human.
Modig: You jest!
Seamere: Fantastic.
Tolan: Neat. What are we riffing this evening, my friend?
Aescheron: The Picture of Dorian Gray, chapter eleven.
Seamere: Not that! Not that! Please!
Modig: Huh?
Tolan: Let’s just start.
For years, Dorian Gray could not free himself from the influence of this book.
Tolan: Influence motif! I get twenty dollars.
Seamere: We’re not doing that game again, Tolan.
Or perhaps it would be more accurate to say that he never sought to free himself from it.
Modig: It had come with free stickers and glitter tattoos in its pages. No dandy could resist.
He procured from Paris no less than nine large-paper copies of the first edition, and had them bound in different colours, so that they might suit his various moods and the changing fancies of a nature over which he seemed, at times, to have almost entirely lost control.
Seamere: If I didn’t know any better, I’d say he was being decadent.
Modig: And dandy!
The hero, the wonderful young Parisian, in whom the romantic and scientific temperaments were so strangely blended, became to him a kind of prefiguring type of himself.
Tolan: He didn’t get compared to a rose nearly as much, though.
Seamere: And his hair was ten times less pretty.
And, indeed, the whole book seemed to him to contain the story of his own life, written before he had lived it. In one point he was more fortunate than the novel’s fantastic hero.
Tolan: He had a zillion pounds of exotic jewels and his novel wasn’t afraid to talk about them on and on.
Seamere: Jewels are to Dorian Gray what gold was to Beowulf.
Modig: ‘Twas like complementary bags of peanuts in that latter tale.
He never knew—never, indeed, had any cause to know—that somewhat grotesque dread of mirrors, and polished metal surfaces, and still water, which came upon the young Parisian so early in his life, and was occasioned by the sudden decay of a beauty that had once, apparently, been so remarkable.
Seamere: ‘Cause there’s no way anything will ever happen to Dorian’s beauty to make it decay. Not at all.
Tolan: Heh heh.
It was with an almost cruel joy—and perhaps in nearly every joy, as certainly in every pleasure, cruelty has its place—that he used to read the latter part of the book, with its really tragic, if somewhat over-emphasized, account of the sorrow and despair of one who had himself lost what in others, and in the world, he had most dearly valued.
Modig: That happened to Lord-Henry-I’m-a-Hedonist-and-I-will-never-shut-up-about-it, right?
Tolan: Pretty much.
For the wonderful beauty that had so fascinated Basil Hallward, and many others besides him, seemed never to leave him. Even those who had heard the most evil things against him,
Tolan: Like the horrendous rumors concerning his crippling addiction to shiny things.
Seamere: Or the disgusting accounts of his grotesque, evil deeds that couldn’t be detailed because the Victorian Era wouldn’t allow it.
Modig: I feel cheated!
and from time to time strange rumours about his mode of life crept through London and became the chatter of the clubs, could not believe anything to his dishonour when they saw him. He had always the look of one who had kept himself unspotted from the world.
Modig: They really thought he was too pretty to do bad things? Really?
Seamere: Precisely. Beauty equaled goodness in the 1800s a lot.
Men who talked grossly became silent when Dorian Gray entered the room.
Tolan: It was probably because he wore tons of jewelry and it clanked too much for conversation to be heard above the din.
Seamere: And his rich ruffle-shirts and breeches awed them too much for speech.
There was something in the purity of his face that rebuked them. His mere presence seemed to recall to them the memory of the innocence that they had tarnished.
Modig: They thought him too pretty to be a man and it puzzled them into silence.
They wondered how one so charming and graceful as he was could have escaped the stain of an age that was at once sordid and sensual.
Tolan: With the idolatry of a painter, Lord Henry saying some bad stuff, and a magic painting.
Seamere: Basically.
Often, on returning home from one of those mysterious and prolonged absences that gave rise to such strange conjecture among those who were his friends, or thought that they were so, he himself would creep upstairs to the locked room, open the door with the key that never left him now, and stand, with a mirror, in front of the portrait that Basil Hallward had painted of him, looking now at the evil and aging face on the canvas, and now at the fair young face that laughed back at him from the polished glass.
Modig: Heavens to Hrothgar! Stop that sentence before it runs too far on!
Tolan: Whoa! Couldn’t get a word in edgewise.
Seamere: Dorian’s bogeyman of old age appears again and it pleases him to look at it. Just say that!
He grew more and more enamoured of his own beauty, more and more interested in the corruption of his own soul.
Tolan: Corruption mentioned! Ten dollars for Modig.
Seamere: I said we weren’t doing that again.
Modig: Drat!
He would examine with minute care, and sometimes with a monstrous and terrible delight, the hideous lines that seared the wrinkling forehead or crawled around the heavy sensual mouth, wondering sometimes which were the more horrible, the signs of sin or the signs of age.
Modig: Sensuality motif! Seamere would get twenty-five bucks.
Seamere: Hush.
He would place his white hands beside the coarse bloated hands of the picture, and smile. He mocked the misshapen body and the failing limbs.
Tolan: He would dance a sprightly reel and giggle like a schoolgirl behind his manicured hands.
There were moments, indeed, at night, when, lying sleepless in his own delicately-scented chamber,
Modig: Well, of course.
Tolan: Bet it smells like iniquity and lilacs.
or in the sordid room of the little ill-famed tavern near the Docks, which, under an assumed name,
Modig: Glorbian Phray would be a good one for him.
and in disguise, it was his habit to frequent, he would think of the ruin he had brought upon his soul, with a pity that was all the more poignant because it was purely selfish. But moments such as these were rare.
Tolan: He would make himself a strawberry drink and go out for more vague debauchery to console his mind.
Seamere: And smell some flowers along the way.
That curiosity about life which Lord Henry had first stirred in him, as they sat together in the garden of their friend, seemed to increase with gratification.
Seamere: As did the descriptions of the trinkets he collected.
The more he knew, the more he desired to know. He had made hungers that grew more ravenous as he fed them.
Tolan: He was only hungry for cakes of pure sin. With frosting of selfishness.
Modig: And pies of evil with crusts of aestheticism!
Yet he was not really reckless, at any rate in his relations to society. Once or twice every month during the winter and on each Wednesday evening while the season lasted,
Seamere: He would bring his painting to dinner with him and spend the whole meal laughing at the covered canvas and looking in a mirror.
Tolan: While fixing his hair.
Modig: Dandies are so easy to make fun of.
he would throw open to the world his beautiful house and have the most celebrated musicians of the day to charm his guests with the wonder of their art.
Modig: The Swedish band Decadence was included, I presume.
Seamere: That and Aesthetic Perfection.
His little dinners, in the settling of which Lord Henry always assisted him,
Tolan: Babbling all the while about how great it is to be self-absorbed.
were noted as much for the careful selection and placing of those invited, as for the exquisite taste shown in the decoration of the table, with its subtle symphonic arrangements of exotic flowers, and embroidered cloths, and antique plate of gold and silver.
Tolan: I’d almost guess that Dorian was really rich or something.
Seamere: Opulence! Excess! We get it.
Indeed, there were many, especially among the very young men, who saw, or fancied that they saw, in Dorian Gray the true realization of a type of which they had often dreamed in Eton or Oxford days,
Modig: A phony!
Tolan: Old Dorian seems like one. He really does.
a type that was to combine something of the real culture of the scholar with all the grace and distinction and perfect manner of a citizen of the world.
Seamere: And all the grace and charm of the soulless, naturally.
To them he seemed to be of the company of those whom Dante describes as having sought to “make themselves perfect by the worship of beauty.” Like Gautier, he was one for whom “the visible world existed.”
Modig: Did we mention that Mr. Gray’s into superficiality? Because he is.
Seamere: You’d think Lord Henry would have slammed that philosophy into our heads enough by this point.
And, certainly, to him Life itself was the first, the greatest, of the arts, and for it all the other arts seemed to be but a preparation.
Tolan: The excessive treasure-collecting was merely a phase.
Seamere: For art’s sake! Don’t remind me of that passage.
Fashion, by which what is really fantastic becomes for a moment universal,
Tolan: I’m just picturing a fashion universe, with frilly ties floating around in space around a giant gold pin.
Modig: Sounds about right.
and Dandyism, which, in its own way, is an attempt to assert the absolute modernity of beauty, had, of course, their fascination for him.
Seamere: “No. Art shouldn’t be didactic at all! Now watch as we impart numerous philosophies to you in this book.”
His mode of dressing, and the particular styles that from time to time he affected, had their marked influence on the young exquisites of the Mayfair balls and Pall Mall club windows,
Modig: His dandy levels became dangerously high and broke the national standard set by Lord Henry.
Tolan: Oh no!
who copied him in everything that he did, and tried to reproduce the accidental charm of his graceful, though to him only half-serious, fopperies.
Aescheron: It soon became a trend to put one’s soul in a painting and grow discontented. You’re done for the night, you guys.
Tolan: And they all lived happily ever after. Except for Basil Hallward.
Seamere: At least we stopped before the real unnecessary description porn of Dorian’s stuff came in. I’d probably make soul paintings for all of you and then stab them in rage.
Tolan: You were merciful, Aescheron! You stopped us before that part.
Aescheron: I try. You three work so HARD, after all.
Modig: We really do.
Aescheron. Right. Sign off, guys.
Seamere: Bye! Don’t forget to live only for pleasure!
Tolan: Art for art’s sake!
Modig: Aesthetics are God!
All: Bye!
Ruby Struble '14
Modig: Aaaaand… We’re back!
Tolan: We got sent to England.
Aescheron: I know. Bet it was a fun vacation, boys.
Seamere: Surprising amount of mad people there, you know. First Clown in Hamlet was right.
Tolan: How were the newbies?
Aescheron: They had a lot to learn. One was the Devil and one was a Sumerian prankster god. The third one was human.
Modig: You jest!
Seamere: Fantastic.
Tolan: Neat. What are we riffing this evening, my friend?
Aescheron: The Picture of Dorian Gray, chapter eleven.
Seamere: Not that! Not that! Please!
Modig: Huh?
Tolan: Let’s just start.
For years, Dorian Gray could not free himself from the influence of this book.
Tolan: Influence motif! I get twenty dollars.
Seamere: We’re not doing that game again, Tolan.
Or perhaps it would be more accurate to say that he never sought to free himself from it.
Modig: It had come with free stickers and glitter tattoos in its pages. No dandy could resist.
He procured from Paris no less than nine large-paper copies of the first edition, and had them bound in different colours, so that they might suit his various moods and the changing fancies of a nature over which he seemed, at times, to have almost entirely lost control.
Seamere: If I didn’t know any better, I’d say he was being decadent.
Modig: And dandy!
The hero, the wonderful young Parisian, in whom the romantic and scientific temperaments were so strangely blended, became to him a kind of prefiguring type of himself.
Tolan: He didn’t get compared to a rose nearly as much, though.
Seamere: And his hair was ten times less pretty.
And, indeed, the whole book seemed to him to contain the story of his own life, written before he had lived it. In one point he was more fortunate than the novel’s fantastic hero.
Tolan: He had a zillion pounds of exotic jewels and his novel wasn’t afraid to talk about them on and on.
Seamere: Jewels are to Dorian Gray what gold was to Beowulf.
Modig: ‘Twas like complementary bags of peanuts in that latter tale.
He never knew—never, indeed, had any cause to know—that somewhat grotesque dread of mirrors, and polished metal surfaces, and still water, which came upon the young Parisian so early in his life, and was occasioned by the sudden decay of a beauty that had once, apparently, been so remarkable.
Seamere: ‘Cause there’s no way anything will ever happen to Dorian’s beauty to make it decay. Not at all.
Tolan: Heh heh.
It was with an almost cruel joy—and perhaps in nearly every joy, as certainly in every pleasure, cruelty has its place—that he used to read the latter part of the book, with its really tragic, if somewhat over-emphasized, account of the sorrow and despair of one who had himself lost what in others, and in the world, he had most dearly valued.
Modig: That happened to Lord-Henry-I’m-a-Hedonist-and-I-will-never-shut-up-about-it, right?
Tolan: Pretty much.
For the wonderful beauty that had so fascinated Basil Hallward, and many others besides him, seemed never to leave him. Even those who had heard the most evil things against him,
Tolan: Like the horrendous rumors concerning his crippling addiction to shiny things.
Seamere: Or the disgusting accounts of his grotesque, evil deeds that couldn’t be detailed because the Victorian Era wouldn’t allow it.
Modig: I feel cheated!
and from time to time strange rumours about his mode of life crept through London and became the chatter of the clubs, could not believe anything to his dishonour when they saw him. He had always the look of one who had kept himself unspotted from the world.
Modig: They really thought he was too pretty to do bad things? Really?
Seamere: Precisely. Beauty equaled goodness in the 1800s a lot.
Men who talked grossly became silent when Dorian Gray entered the room.
Tolan: It was probably because he wore tons of jewelry and it clanked too much for conversation to be heard above the din.
Seamere: And his rich ruffle-shirts and breeches awed them too much for speech.
There was something in the purity of his face that rebuked them. His mere presence seemed to recall to them the memory of the innocence that they had tarnished.
Modig: They thought him too pretty to be a man and it puzzled them into silence.
They wondered how one so charming and graceful as he was could have escaped the stain of an age that was at once sordid and sensual.
Tolan: With the idolatry of a painter, Lord Henry saying some bad stuff, and a magic painting.
Seamere: Basically.
Often, on returning home from one of those mysterious and prolonged absences that gave rise to such strange conjecture among those who were his friends, or thought that they were so, he himself would creep upstairs to the locked room, open the door with the key that never left him now, and stand, with a mirror, in front of the portrait that Basil Hallward had painted of him, looking now at the evil and aging face on the canvas, and now at the fair young face that laughed back at him from the polished glass.
Modig: Heavens to Hrothgar! Stop that sentence before it runs too far on!
Tolan: Whoa! Couldn’t get a word in edgewise.
Seamere: Dorian’s bogeyman of old age appears again and it pleases him to look at it. Just say that!
He grew more and more enamoured of his own beauty, more and more interested in the corruption of his own soul.
Tolan: Corruption mentioned! Ten dollars for Modig.
Seamere: I said we weren’t doing that again.
Modig: Drat!
He would examine with minute care, and sometimes with a monstrous and terrible delight, the hideous lines that seared the wrinkling forehead or crawled around the heavy sensual mouth, wondering sometimes which were the more horrible, the signs of sin or the signs of age.
Modig: Sensuality motif! Seamere would get twenty-five bucks.
Seamere: Hush.
He would place his white hands beside the coarse bloated hands of the picture, and smile. He mocked the misshapen body and the failing limbs.
Tolan: He would dance a sprightly reel and giggle like a schoolgirl behind his manicured hands.
There were moments, indeed, at night, when, lying sleepless in his own delicately-scented chamber,
Modig: Well, of course.
Tolan: Bet it smells like iniquity and lilacs.
or in the sordid room of the little ill-famed tavern near the Docks, which, under an assumed name,
Modig: Glorbian Phray would be a good one for him.
and in disguise, it was his habit to frequent, he would think of the ruin he had brought upon his soul, with a pity that was all the more poignant because it was purely selfish. But moments such as these were rare.
Tolan: He would make himself a strawberry drink and go out for more vague debauchery to console his mind.
Seamere: And smell some flowers along the way.
That curiosity about life which Lord Henry had first stirred in him, as they sat together in the garden of their friend, seemed to increase with gratification.
Seamere: As did the descriptions of the trinkets he collected.
The more he knew, the more he desired to know. He had made hungers that grew more ravenous as he fed them.
Tolan: He was only hungry for cakes of pure sin. With frosting of selfishness.
Modig: And pies of evil with crusts of aestheticism!
Yet he was not really reckless, at any rate in his relations to society. Once or twice every month during the winter and on each Wednesday evening while the season lasted,
Seamere: He would bring his painting to dinner with him and spend the whole meal laughing at the covered canvas and looking in a mirror.
Tolan: While fixing his hair.
Modig: Dandies are so easy to make fun of.
he would throw open to the world his beautiful house and have the most celebrated musicians of the day to charm his guests with the wonder of their art.
Modig: The Swedish band Decadence was included, I presume.
Seamere: That and Aesthetic Perfection.
His little dinners, in the settling of which Lord Henry always assisted him,
Tolan: Babbling all the while about how great it is to be self-absorbed.
were noted as much for the careful selection and placing of those invited, as for the exquisite taste shown in the decoration of the table, with its subtle symphonic arrangements of exotic flowers, and embroidered cloths, and antique plate of gold and silver.
Tolan: I’d almost guess that Dorian was really rich or something.
Seamere: Opulence! Excess! We get it.
Indeed, there were many, especially among the very young men, who saw, or fancied that they saw, in Dorian Gray the true realization of a type of which they had often dreamed in Eton or Oxford days,
Modig: A phony!
Tolan: Old Dorian seems like one. He really does.
a type that was to combine something of the real culture of the scholar with all the grace and distinction and perfect manner of a citizen of the world.
Seamere: And all the grace and charm of the soulless, naturally.
To them he seemed to be of the company of those whom Dante describes as having sought to “make themselves perfect by the worship of beauty.” Like Gautier, he was one for whom “the visible world existed.”
Modig: Did we mention that Mr. Gray’s into superficiality? Because he is.
Seamere: You’d think Lord Henry would have slammed that philosophy into our heads enough by this point.
And, certainly, to him Life itself was the first, the greatest, of the arts, and for it all the other arts seemed to be but a preparation.
Tolan: The excessive treasure-collecting was merely a phase.
Seamere: For art’s sake! Don’t remind me of that passage.
Fashion, by which what is really fantastic becomes for a moment universal,
Tolan: I’m just picturing a fashion universe, with frilly ties floating around in space around a giant gold pin.
Modig: Sounds about right.
and Dandyism, which, in its own way, is an attempt to assert the absolute modernity of beauty, had, of course, their fascination for him.
Seamere: “No. Art shouldn’t be didactic at all! Now watch as we impart numerous philosophies to you in this book.”
His mode of dressing, and the particular styles that from time to time he affected, had their marked influence on the young exquisites of the Mayfair balls and Pall Mall club windows,
Modig: His dandy levels became dangerously high and broke the national standard set by Lord Henry.
Tolan: Oh no!
who copied him in everything that he did, and tried to reproduce the accidental charm of his graceful, though to him only half-serious, fopperies.
Aescheron: It soon became a trend to put one’s soul in a painting and grow discontented. You’re done for the night, you guys.
Tolan: And they all lived happily ever after. Except for Basil Hallward.
Seamere: At least we stopped before the real unnecessary description porn of Dorian’s stuff came in. I’d probably make soul paintings for all of you and then stab them in rage.
Tolan: You were merciful, Aescheron! You stopped us before that part.
Aescheron: I try. You three work so HARD, after all.
Modig: We really do.
Aescheron. Right. Sign off, guys.
Seamere: Bye! Don’t forget to live only for pleasure!
Tolan: Art for art’s sake!
Modig: Aesthetics are God!
All: Bye!
Ruby Struble '14
Gargoyle
Tina Li '15
Tina Li '15
Shakespeare Cat
Natalie Krowitz '16
Natalie Krowitz '16
Gatsby and Ahab Crossover
[Gatsby and Ahab are standing in line at a shop, Gatsby turns to Ahab behind him]
Gatsby: What a line, eh?
Ahab: Waiting is not the acutest agony I know. How do you go, sir?
Gatsby: Me? Well, old sailor, soon I am off to my good man Nick’s lodgings to meet my fate head on. My pursuit is almost at an end, you see. May I ask what a seaman like yourself is doing ashore when there are such water-beasts about to slay?
Ahab: ‘Tis only for the briefest visit.
Gatsby: You have a family, then?
Ahab: No. Not for forty years, I am greeting lifeless supplies today only.
Gatsby: You have my pity. [He shakes Ahab’s hand] Jay Gatsby.
Ahab: And you have my interest, young chap-of-wealth. I am Captain Ahab. Pray tell, what is that pursuit that you will be released of soon?
Gatsby: A feverish one.
Ahab: Ah, I know the feeling well. Both of us are men entrenched in the fire of the chase. Let us compare burns. A whale has not done thee ill, I conjecture from your wholeness of being?
Gatsby: A whale? Certainly not. My struggle is unconnected with brutish creatures, old sport. Quite the opposite, a beautiful sort of life is what I chase. I will be born again into that life when my visit today is done.
Ahab: Your hope stirs something in Ahab’s old soul (if it can still be called by that term). I too am reaching for the life to befit me. Once the white whale is dead, the life of a god will be set before me as a crown.
Gatsby: A white whale, eh? How odd. I don’t know about godhood, old man, but my own personal “reaching” is far less fantastic.
Ahab: Fantastic? You call my dream fantastic? And what high and mighty, airy goal can the rich dandy before me be reaching for?
Gatsby: Love, old sport. Something nobler than the whale-hunt, that blasphemous and barbaric practice.
Ahab: Blasphemous, you say? ‘Twas blasphemy when the white whale took this god-man’s leg! Talk too much like my chief mate, ye do!
Gatsby: No need to rile yourself, ancient fellow.
Ahab: I apologize. I have heard that word “blasphemy” enough times as to drive me mad.
Gatsby: [aside] Madder, you mean. [to Ahab] Don’t trifle yourself. It’s alright, good captain. Just how important is this Great White Whale to you?
Ahab: He is my past. As I search for him he is my present. To kill him and take my place above his puppeteer is my future. I cannot forget him, for he is all that exists in my past and I cannot stop pursuing my past.
Gatsby: I can’t argue with that, old sport.
Ruby Struble '14
[Gatsby and Ahab are standing in line at a shop, Gatsby turns to Ahab behind him]
Gatsby: What a line, eh?
Ahab: Waiting is not the acutest agony I know. How do you go, sir?
Gatsby: Me? Well, old sailor, soon I am off to my good man Nick’s lodgings to meet my fate head on. My pursuit is almost at an end, you see. May I ask what a seaman like yourself is doing ashore when there are such water-beasts about to slay?
Ahab: ‘Tis only for the briefest visit.
Gatsby: You have a family, then?
Ahab: No. Not for forty years, I am greeting lifeless supplies today only.
Gatsby: You have my pity. [He shakes Ahab’s hand] Jay Gatsby.
Ahab: And you have my interest, young chap-of-wealth. I am Captain Ahab. Pray tell, what is that pursuit that you will be released of soon?
Gatsby: A feverish one.
Ahab: Ah, I know the feeling well. Both of us are men entrenched in the fire of the chase. Let us compare burns. A whale has not done thee ill, I conjecture from your wholeness of being?
Gatsby: A whale? Certainly not. My struggle is unconnected with brutish creatures, old sport. Quite the opposite, a beautiful sort of life is what I chase. I will be born again into that life when my visit today is done.
Ahab: Your hope stirs something in Ahab’s old soul (if it can still be called by that term). I too am reaching for the life to befit me. Once the white whale is dead, the life of a god will be set before me as a crown.
Gatsby: A white whale, eh? How odd. I don’t know about godhood, old man, but my own personal “reaching” is far less fantastic.
Ahab: Fantastic? You call my dream fantastic? And what high and mighty, airy goal can the rich dandy before me be reaching for?
Gatsby: Love, old sport. Something nobler than the whale-hunt, that blasphemous and barbaric practice.
Ahab: Blasphemous, you say? ‘Twas blasphemy when the white whale took this god-man’s leg! Talk too much like my chief mate, ye do!
Gatsby: No need to rile yourself, ancient fellow.
Ahab: I apologize. I have heard that word “blasphemy” enough times as to drive me mad.
Gatsby: [aside] Madder, you mean. [to Ahab] Don’t trifle yourself. It’s alright, good captain. Just how important is this Great White Whale to you?
Ahab: He is my past. As I search for him he is my present. To kill him and take my place above his puppeteer is my future. I cannot forget him, for he is all that exists in my past and I cannot stop pursuing my past.
Gatsby: I can’t argue with that, old sport.
Ruby Struble '14
Untitled
Natalie Krowitz '16
Natalie Krowitz '16
Sax
Katy DiMuzio '15
Katy DiMuzio '15
Town Forest
Katy DiMuzio '15
Katy DiMuzio '15
Trees Perspective
Katy DiMuzio '15
Katy DiMuzio '15
Luck of A Nightmare
Marielle Sabbag '14
Chapter 1
"Sabrina... help, you have to save everyone, Sabrina!"
Sabrina couldn't stop hearing the voices through her head as she ran down the sidewalk. Suddenly she stopped, realizing that she was inside a gateway. She turned around to find herself in the gateway of the White House. The gateway was chained up; there was no way out unless she could climb over.
Then, through the gateway, appeared three girls who had the scarred faces of a skeleton. They looked right through Sabrina, saying nothing, only staring at her, trying to make her soul melt.
Suddenly there was a noise that shook the earth which made Sabrina fall to the ground. The White House exploded and the flames were spreading across the land instantly before her eyes.
Before she could be touched Sabrina awoke thrashing around in her bed, screaming for help and yelling for someone to get away from her.
Her parents came running into her room and took hold of her flailing arms. "Sabrina wake up, wake up! You're only dreaming!" her mother yelled.
"Get them away! I'm burning!" Sabrina screamed still kicking the bed constantly. Her father finally shook her hard and Sabrina snapped out of it, shaking in her mother's arms.
"The... girls... everything burning..."
"Shh, it's all over, everything's alright."
"Everything's not alright! Something is wrong with the White House!" she screamed.
"Nothing is wrong with the White House. We've told you before, you're just dreaming," her father said to her, trying not to sound annoyed like the past nights. The recurring dream about the burning of the White House had been happening for almost a month since the Callahan's moved to Washington D.C.
"Call them!" Sabrina yelled.
"Call who?"
"The White House! We have to warn them about the bomb!"
Before Sabrina could get out of bed her parents pulled her back and made her look into both of their eyes. "Listen to us well Sabrina. What makes you think that there's a bomb inside the White House?"
Sabrina went back into her mind so she could remember every detail from the dream.
"These three girls are showing me a bomb and all I know is that it's going to explode. We have to call and tell them."
"What makes you think that we're going to do that?" her mother snapped. "This dream has been happening for a month and now you're telling us to do such a stupid thing?"
Sabrina blinked. She knew it sounded bizarre herself but she didn't expect her parents to say how stupid it was.
"I think we need to get you help, Sabrina," her father said to her, rubbing her shoulder. "We're really beginning to worry about you."
"No," Sabrina spoke, feeling her heart melt. "It was just a dream."
"Good. If you ever talk to us about the White House again we are taking you to a doctor. This has been going on for too long and it needs to come to an end."
Her parents left the room without another word leaving a broken hearted Sabrina. She knew the dream meant something and she was going to find out. Those three girls had something to do with this as well. She had to find out who they were and what they had to do with the White House.
Chapter 2
"So today, class, we'll be starting a new topic about the atomic bomb. We'll be watching a movie about it so pay close attention, take notes and don't fall asleep." the teacher said tapping a dozing Sabrina's desk.
Why did history have to be her last period class of the day? It was so boring and barely anybody in the class could stay awake.
The video began playing and a history about the atomic bomb started with a whole bunch of blabbing. Sabrina looked at her teacher who was at his computer watching football videos.
He wouldn't notice if she fell asleep.
"Sabrina."
Those three girls were standing out in the hallway. Her heart began to pound as she looked around trying to see if anyone else noticed them. Everyone was focused on the movie and didn't even notice her walk out of the room.
The three girls disappeared from sight once she walked out into the hallway.
Only she was in a different corridor.
This hall was filled with rugs and pictures of past presidents hung all across the walls.
She walked down the corridor looking all around her to see if anybody was around. Was this some kind of prank the school was trying to pull?
"Go into the basement, Sabrina..."
She couldn't see where the source of the voice came from but up ahead there was a door ajar. As she walked closer she could hear the faint voices of two men bickering.
Slowly Sabrina opened the door and walked down the stairs only to find a match being lit to light a bomb.
"NO!!" Sabrina screamed as the bomb exploded.
Sabrina screamed and opened her eyes to find herself on the floor of her classroom. She sat up shivering and looked around at the eyes staring at her.
The hallway was empty and the rugs and wallpaper were gone.
"We don't know what's happening, she's been having these nightmares ever since we moved here a month ago."
Sabrina sat and listened to her parents talking with the principal and her guidance counselor. After her outburst she was sent down the office where she relayed the story to everyone. It was decided that both her parents needed to come in and chat.
This recurring nightmare never happened in school before. How embarrassed she was to have so many people stare at her. She hardly knew anybody and now it was going to be a lot harder to try and make friends after the scene she caused.
But this time the dream told her more. The White House explosion was caused by two men. Only she didn't know what it meant.
Was she supposed to tell someone to stop it from happening?
The door to the office opened and her guidance counselor bent down to her. "Sabrina, we think that it's best if you stayed home for maybe a week or so."
"Why?" Sabrina asked puzzled.
"We think it's best so you can relax and get better." the principal spoke.
"But, I'm not sick."
"Moving to a new state can put a lot of stress on a person," her father said to her with a smile. "Maybe that's what's causing these nightmares."
Sabrina agreed in her mind that stress may be the case of all this. It was a tough time leaving Wyoming and moving into a new school.
For that moment she accepted what she was told but the dream about the White House still didn't leave her thoughts.
Chapter 3
As the months passed Sabrina was back to normal and her dreams stopped. She didn’t have any more instances of seeing three girls or having visions during class.
During the months of her freshman year she made new friends and joined the drama club. She never thought that she'd have so much fun. Her parents were happy that she was having a great time in Washington. They were relieved that she didn't have any more of those nightmares because they were really beginning to scare them.
Spring break finally came along. Sabrina and her family decided to go for a walk downtown in Washington for a day. They shopped around and went out to eat. Sabrina couldn't remember the last time she spent this much time with her parents because of all the activities she'd been doing in school.
Her heart sank once the sun began to set realizing that the day with her parents had to end. They were having such a wonderful day as they started walking down the road towards home.
They began walking passed the White House and that's where everything went wrong.
The White House always stood out whenever anybody went to Washington D.C. and Sabrina couldn't help but stare at the beautiful building.
Sabrina stopped.
The three girls from her dream were standing up ahead of them. They were staring into her eyes when they suddenly turned to look at something.
Two men entered the gateway and were holding a box.
They were the men from her vision and they were going to light a bomb killing everybody in the state!
"Arrest those men! They have a bomb!"
Everybody turned and looked at her and panic set in as they all looked at the two men. Police men ran over to the scene as her parents tried to calm their daughter down. Sabrina was shaking as she approached the men. "These are the men from my vision! They're going to kill us all!" she kept shouting.
The police ordered the men to open the box which they obeyed without any reluctance. "These are just clocks," one of them said. "The president wanted new ones because his old ones broke."
The policemen looked at the items inside the box but showed no trace of alarm. "Do you want to explain these to us young lady. Why would you make up a lie to cause so much trouble?"
Sabrina didn't know where to start. Everybody, including her parents, were looking at her as if she was crazy. "These three ghost girls are telling me that these men are trying to light a bomb in the basement of the White House."
"Do these clocks look anything like bombs?"
The police showed her the clocks once more.
Only this time they were sizzling bombs.
"Run! They're going to go off! They're bombs!" Sabrina screamed throwing the box onto the street, smashing the clocks.
Sabrina felt a smash over her head and suddenly everything went dark.
Chapter 4
"... How long has this been going on for?"
"... For some time now. Ever since we moved here. We thought she was getting better but it's clear that she's getting worse."
Sabrina awoke in a small dark room with a window covered in bars. She was now wearing a nightgown instead of her regular clothes. There was a mirror near the door and when she looked at herself, a tired girl looked back at her with crazy hair and bags under her eyes.
Where was she?
She looked through the bars to see a sign way below in the dark night.
'Washington D.C. Mental Institution.'
"I'm sure we can cure her out of this bomb image she has been seeing..."
Sabrina walked over to the door and touched the handle.
It was locked.
"…I don't know if anything is going to cure her." That was her mother talking as if she was about to cry.
"Mom? Dad?" She knocked on the door.
"Now don't say that Mrs. Callahan, we're just going to keep her here for a little while and I'm sure she'll be much better." The doctor reassured them.
"No, something is taking over her mind. Look what she went and did today. Nobody is ever going to look at her the same way again. They're never going to take her seriously because the scene she made is all over the internet.”
"What are you saying, dear?" her father asked.
"She's a mental case."
Sabrina backed away from the door feeling her heart break in two. She sat down, staring off into space feeling tears in the corners of her eyes. This was her punishment for what she's caused?
The door to her cell was opened and a nurse walked in holding a needle.
"What are you going to do to me?" Sabrina asked standing up and trying to back away somewhere.
"I just need to take some blood for a few tests. Hold still so this won't hurt a bit." the nurse said nearing her with the needle.
Sabrina was trapped between the corner of a wall and had no place to run. She screamed and kicked at the nurse trying to get away from the woman. A stabbing pain went through her arm as tears fell from her cheeks once the nurse left.
"You're not doing a good job succeeding in your mission."
The three girls were standing in the room giving Sabrina their usual stare that made her heart throb.
"What do you want me to do? From what it looks like you just set me up!" Sabrina screamed. "Now everybody in the world thinks I'm a mental case after the scene I made today."
"We're sorry for making you see the wrong thing. We were just trying to get those men caught. Now they'll be back soon to put the bomb in the basement.”
Sabrina just looked up at the girls through her tear stained eyes. "Who are you and what do you want me to do about it? Why are you doing this to me?"
They only just stared at her, hiding something behind their eyes.
"Get out!" Sabrina wailed. "Get out! I never want to see you again! You ruined my life!"
Sabrina turned away and cried in the lonely dark room as she listened to the thunder outside. Were they really telling the truth? Was that dream real or was it a trick? How was she ever going to find out the truth?
Chapter 5
The door opened the next morning and in walked a doctor who smiled at the scared girl.
"You didn't eat your breakfast," he said in a kind manner.
"I'm not hungry."
"Nonsense, everybody is hungry in the morning."
"Not when you're trapped in a mental institution for no reason at all," Sabrina spoke.
The doctor sat across from her with a clipboard and something to write with. He kept looking her over as if he hadn't seen a girl before.
"What do you want with me?"
"I just want to ask you a few questions, that's all," he told Sabrina. "First, tell me your name and why you're here."
Sabrina glared at him for a moment knowing what this was. He wanted to see how smart she was. "My name is Sabrina Michelle Callahan and my parents put me in this asylum."
"Is there a reason they put you in an asylum?"
"I see ghosts."
"Ghosts?" The doctor repeated. "Are these ghosts telling you to do anything?"
Sabrina knew that he wasn't going to believe her, he'd just write it down and tell the other doctors how crazy she was.
"They're telling me to save the world from what's about to happen."
"Sabrina, are you sure that you're not just seeing things? These ghosts could all be something that's a part of your imagination."
"No!" Sabrina shouted. All though he may have been right she did not want to be treated as if she was a crazy person. "I'm not seeing things, they're real and they showed me something that's...."
Sabrina shut her eyes, wishing she hadn't said anymore. She knew she had to keep talking because the doctor wanted to know.
"... In the White House..."
"What's in the White House?"
Was the bomb really inside the White House or was it all her imagination? She couldn't lie to the doctor since he already heard the story from her parents. The ones who called her a mental case.
"It's a bomb."
The doctor only blinked.
"There's a bomb in the basement of the White House and it's going to kill us all," she spoke.
The doctor just kept staring at her not showing anything in his eyes. Sabrina wished he would say or do something. If he didn't say anything for the next minute she knew she'd scream from the unbearable silence.
"Sabrina, you know that it's never a good thing to make up stories..."
"I'm not making it up! It's the truth!" Sabrina screamed standing up from her seat. "On the day I was committed here there were two men carrying a box full of the bombs and were about to enter the White House! They disguised them to make them look like clocks!"
The doctor sighed. "Sabrina..."
"You have to believe me! I'm not crazy! The ghosts are trying to warn us and save ourselves from the hands of death!"
"That is enough," the doctor said raising a hand up. "This is nonsense. You're just seeing things and you've let them go to your head. The White House is being protected by many trustworthy officers. It's safe and always will be. Clearly we need to keep you for further examination to see what is wrong with your mind."
Sabrina just stared at the doctor as she sat back down. What kind of doctor was he? "You know you believe me," she said to him quietly as she slowly rose up from her seat. "You just don't want to believe me because my parents called me a mental case!" Sabrina shouted making her voice echo through the whole building.
"I need to go now."
The doctor quickly got up and disappeared out the door.
"Wait, no!" Sabrina lunged but landed against the locked door. She began pounding the door and screamed at the top of her lungs trying to get any other doctor's attention to hear her cries for help."
"Let me out! Let me out! I have to save the world..."
Sabrina slumped against the door and cried. She was alone. She was alone in the dark world where everybody treated her as if she was crazy.
"We're all going to die and you know it! You'll believe me after we all turn into ghosts! You'll see!" she screamed whacking the door once more and crying again.
"You're not doing a good job making them believe that you're sane."
Sabrina groaned and turned around the meet the eyes of the three girls. This time their faces were more calm and understanding than their usual stare showing nothing.
"Who are you? Please tell me!" Sabrina sobbed.
The ghosts looked at each other and then sat down with her. "We're your distant relatives."
Sabrina blinked and looked more closely at each of their faces. She could see some resemblance once she looked closer into their eyes.
But now they had the same eye color and their noses were in the same shape as hers.
"How are we related?"
"When George Washington became president I started having visions of men putting a bomb in the White House. My parents put me in this asylum. The vision never came true and I died after the electric shock."
"That's what happened to me too. They put me in a straitjacket and forgot about me."
"And I hung myself to end it all," the third said.
Sabrina looked at them all. They weren't so scary now. She could see something in their eyes finally, they were unloved.
"Is this going to keep happening as time goes on?"
"No, you're the last of them to have visions. The bombers will be back tonight." One of them said.
Sabrina put her head to the floor. "I guess that means I will die tonight."
"No, everybody outside the asylum will die tonight. The bomb won't destroy this hospital."
Chapter 6
"Everyone on the outside is going to die? So, my parents will die?" Sabrina spoke after her heart quickly dropped.
“Sadly yes,” one of them said. "That's why we wanted you to try and get someone to believe you. After the bomb explodes the doctors will want to keep you for further examination."
"At least you will live."
"No," Sabrina spoke. "I would rather die out there then be trapped in here. My parents don't deserve to die."
"But they're the ones who put you in here, you never deserved this, so why help them?" one of the ghosts asked.
"I know what they did was wrong, but they're my parents. Do you think you can help me?" Sabrina begged.
The girls looked at each other and agreed. "Take our hands. You'll be able to turn invisible and we can take you through the walls."
Sabrina held hands with the girls and walked towards the window. She closed her eyes and then found herself flying through the sky. A smile creased along her face as she watched the ground fly by below her. She had to remember what her mission was once she felt the prickly grass touch her feet.
The White House stood over her, trying to make her feel scared. She wasn't turning back now as she walked with the ghosts into the White House and walked through the hall of past presidents.
Bickering voices came from down the hallway. Sabrina let go of the ghosts’ hands and walked to the door that lay ajar. Slowly, with a sound, she walked down the stairs where the match was lit.
"Don't you dare!" she screamed, startling the men.
The match flew out of his hand and was falling right towards Sabrina who slipped and banged her head.
She lay unconscious as the whole room caught fire.
Chapter 7
"Sabrina! Sabrina, wake up!"
Sabrina slowly opened her eyes to find fire all around her as she felt her head bleeding. The two men were shouting at each other at the top of the stairs trying to get the door unlocked. It must have accidentally closed when she was coming down the stairs.
"How do we get out of here?" Sabrina whispered slowly getting up and trying to balance herself.
"There's a back door that isn't locked. You need to get out of here fast!"
The fire was spreading quickly around the room and was starting to block her escape. She swayed around, bumping into things, feeling faint from all the fumes.
The fire blocked her way out and she had no other place to run towards.
"Jump through it, Sabrina! It's the only way!"
Sabrina looked at the boiling flames that would eventually kill her if she didn't do anything. "Do you think we could all go together? Hold my hand and maybe I could turn invisible!"
"Hey you!" the two men came running down the stairs towards Sabrina who backed into the flames.
She screamed from the pain but was able to walk up the stairs with little energy as the fire burned through her skin.
She could feel her hand grab the handle but it felt as if she began to collapse on the stairs and felt somebody grabbing her.
A bright light flew up in the corner of her eye and a noise of a gun was heard.
Men in white were crowding around her as she was dragged out to the lawn.
"Sabrina? Sabrina?! Where's my baby?!" Someone was lifting her up into their arms.
"Mom?" she could barely speak.
"We're sorry, we're so sorry! We should have believed you!"
Sabrina couldn't feel anything, her vision was in and out, but she had an idea of what was happening around her. There were news people, and cops were taking away the men.
"Sabrina, please forgive us! We were wrong!" her father sobbed cradling her head. "And it was wrong of me to call you a mental case," her mother apologized.
"Thank you. I love you guys," she whispered.
"Young lady," a man's deep voice approached. "Thanks for saving the world. You’ll get a medal of honor for what you did to help us."
Sabrina looked to her side where the three girls stood, smiling at her before they waved.
The girls disappeared into the heavens.
The curse was broken.
Marielle Sabbag '14
Chapter 1
"Sabrina... help, you have to save everyone, Sabrina!"
Sabrina couldn't stop hearing the voices through her head as she ran down the sidewalk. Suddenly she stopped, realizing that she was inside a gateway. She turned around to find herself in the gateway of the White House. The gateway was chained up; there was no way out unless she could climb over.
Then, through the gateway, appeared three girls who had the scarred faces of a skeleton. They looked right through Sabrina, saying nothing, only staring at her, trying to make her soul melt.
Suddenly there was a noise that shook the earth which made Sabrina fall to the ground. The White House exploded and the flames were spreading across the land instantly before her eyes.
Before she could be touched Sabrina awoke thrashing around in her bed, screaming for help and yelling for someone to get away from her.
Her parents came running into her room and took hold of her flailing arms. "Sabrina wake up, wake up! You're only dreaming!" her mother yelled.
"Get them away! I'm burning!" Sabrina screamed still kicking the bed constantly. Her father finally shook her hard and Sabrina snapped out of it, shaking in her mother's arms.
"The... girls... everything burning..."
"Shh, it's all over, everything's alright."
"Everything's not alright! Something is wrong with the White House!" she screamed.
"Nothing is wrong with the White House. We've told you before, you're just dreaming," her father said to her, trying not to sound annoyed like the past nights. The recurring dream about the burning of the White House had been happening for almost a month since the Callahan's moved to Washington D.C.
"Call them!" Sabrina yelled.
"Call who?"
"The White House! We have to warn them about the bomb!"
Before Sabrina could get out of bed her parents pulled her back and made her look into both of their eyes. "Listen to us well Sabrina. What makes you think that there's a bomb inside the White House?"
Sabrina went back into her mind so she could remember every detail from the dream.
"These three girls are showing me a bomb and all I know is that it's going to explode. We have to call and tell them."
"What makes you think that we're going to do that?" her mother snapped. "This dream has been happening for a month and now you're telling us to do such a stupid thing?"
Sabrina blinked. She knew it sounded bizarre herself but she didn't expect her parents to say how stupid it was.
"I think we need to get you help, Sabrina," her father said to her, rubbing her shoulder. "We're really beginning to worry about you."
"No," Sabrina spoke, feeling her heart melt. "It was just a dream."
"Good. If you ever talk to us about the White House again we are taking you to a doctor. This has been going on for too long and it needs to come to an end."
Her parents left the room without another word leaving a broken hearted Sabrina. She knew the dream meant something and she was going to find out. Those three girls had something to do with this as well. She had to find out who they were and what they had to do with the White House.
Chapter 2
"So today, class, we'll be starting a new topic about the atomic bomb. We'll be watching a movie about it so pay close attention, take notes and don't fall asleep." the teacher said tapping a dozing Sabrina's desk.
Why did history have to be her last period class of the day? It was so boring and barely anybody in the class could stay awake.
The video began playing and a history about the atomic bomb started with a whole bunch of blabbing. Sabrina looked at her teacher who was at his computer watching football videos.
He wouldn't notice if she fell asleep.
"Sabrina."
Those three girls were standing out in the hallway. Her heart began to pound as she looked around trying to see if anyone else noticed them. Everyone was focused on the movie and didn't even notice her walk out of the room.
The three girls disappeared from sight once she walked out into the hallway.
Only she was in a different corridor.
This hall was filled with rugs and pictures of past presidents hung all across the walls.
She walked down the corridor looking all around her to see if anybody was around. Was this some kind of prank the school was trying to pull?
"Go into the basement, Sabrina..."
She couldn't see where the source of the voice came from but up ahead there was a door ajar. As she walked closer she could hear the faint voices of two men bickering.
Slowly Sabrina opened the door and walked down the stairs only to find a match being lit to light a bomb.
"NO!!" Sabrina screamed as the bomb exploded.
Sabrina screamed and opened her eyes to find herself on the floor of her classroom. She sat up shivering and looked around at the eyes staring at her.
The hallway was empty and the rugs and wallpaper were gone.
"We don't know what's happening, she's been having these nightmares ever since we moved here a month ago."
Sabrina sat and listened to her parents talking with the principal and her guidance counselor. After her outburst she was sent down the office where she relayed the story to everyone. It was decided that both her parents needed to come in and chat.
This recurring nightmare never happened in school before. How embarrassed she was to have so many people stare at her. She hardly knew anybody and now it was going to be a lot harder to try and make friends after the scene she caused.
But this time the dream told her more. The White House explosion was caused by two men. Only she didn't know what it meant.
Was she supposed to tell someone to stop it from happening?
The door to the office opened and her guidance counselor bent down to her. "Sabrina, we think that it's best if you stayed home for maybe a week or so."
"Why?" Sabrina asked puzzled.
"We think it's best so you can relax and get better." the principal spoke.
"But, I'm not sick."
"Moving to a new state can put a lot of stress on a person," her father said to her with a smile. "Maybe that's what's causing these nightmares."
Sabrina agreed in her mind that stress may be the case of all this. It was a tough time leaving Wyoming and moving into a new school.
For that moment she accepted what she was told but the dream about the White House still didn't leave her thoughts.
Chapter 3
As the months passed Sabrina was back to normal and her dreams stopped. She didn’t have any more instances of seeing three girls or having visions during class.
During the months of her freshman year she made new friends and joined the drama club. She never thought that she'd have so much fun. Her parents were happy that she was having a great time in Washington. They were relieved that she didn't have any more of those nightmares because they were really beginning to scare them.
Spring break finally came along. Sabrina and her family decided to go for a walk downtown in Washington for a day. They shopped around and went out to eat. Sabrina couldn't remember the last time she spent this much time with her parents because of all the activities she'd been doing in school.
Her heart sank once the sun began to set realizing that the day with her parents had to end. They were having such a wonderful day as they started walking down the road towards home.
They began walking passed the White House and that's where everything went wrong.
The White House always stood out whenever anybody went to Washington D.C. and Sabrina couldn't help but stare at the beautiful building.
Sabrina stopped.
The three girls from her dream were standing up ahead of them. They were staring into her eyes when they suddenly turned to look at something.
Two men entered the gateway and were holding a box.
They were the men from her vision and they were going to light a bomb killing everybody in the state!
"Arrest those men! They have a bomb!"
Everybody turned and looked at her and panic set in as they all looked at the two men. Police men ran over to the scene as her parents tried to calm their daughter down. Sabrina was shaking as she approached the men. "These are the men from my vision! They're going to kill us all!" she kept shouting.
The police ordered the men to open the box which they obeyed without any reluctance. "These are just clocks," one of them said. "The president wanted new ones because his old ones broke."
The policemen looked at the items inside the box but showed no trace of alarm. "Do you want to explain these to us young lady. Why would you make up a lie to cause so much trouble?"
Sabrina didn't know where to start. Everybody, including her parents, were looking at her as if she was crazy. "These three ghost girls are telling me that these men are trying to light a bomb in the basement of the White House."
"Do these clocks look anything like bombs?"
The police showed her the clocks once more.
Only this time they were sizzling bombs.
"Run! They're going to go off! They're bombs!" Sabrina screamed throwing the box onto the street, smashing the clocks.
Sabrina felt a smash over her head and suddenly everything went dark.
Chapter 4
"... How long has this been going on for?"
"... For some time now. Ever since we moved here. We thought she was getting better but it's clear that she's getting worse."
Sabrina awoke in a small dark room with a window covered in bars. She was now wearing a nightgown instead of her regular clothes. There was a mirror near the door and when she looked at herself, a tired girl looked back at her with crazy hair and bags under her eyes.
Where was she?
She looked through the bars to see a sign way below in the dark night.
'Washington D.C. Mental Institution.'
"I'm sure we can cure her out of this bomb image she has been seeing..."
Sabrina walked over to the door and touched the handle.
It was locked.
"…I don't know if anything is going to cure her." That was her mother talking as if she was about to cry.
"Mom? Dad?" She knocked on the door.
"Now don't say that Mrs. Callahan, we're just going to keep her here for a little while and I'm sure she'll be much better." The doctor reassured them.
"No, something is taking over her mind. Look what she went and did today. Nobody is ever going to look at her the same way again. They're never going to take her seriously because the scene she made is all over the internet.”
"What are you saying, dear?" her father asked.
"She's a mental case."
Sabrina backed away from the door feeling her heart break in two. She sat down, staring off into space feeling tears in the corners of her eyes. This was her punishment for what she's caused?
The door to her cell was opened and a nurse walked in holding a needle.
"What are you going to do to me?" Sabrina asked standing up and trying to back away somewhere.
"I just need to take some blood for a few tests. Hold still so this won't hurt a bit." the nurse said nearing her with the needle.
Sabrina was trapped between the corner of a wall and had no place to run. She screamed and kicked at the nurse trying to get away from the woman. A stabbing pain went through her arm as tears fell from her cheeks once the nurse left.
"You're not doing a good job succeeding in your mission."
The three girls were standing in the room giving Sabrina their usual stare that made her heart throb.
"What do you want me to do? From what it looks like you just set me up!" Sabrina screamed. "Now everybody in the world thinks I'm a mental case after the scene I made today."
"We're sorry for making you see the wrong thing. We were just trying to get those men caught. Now they'll be back soon to put the bomb in the basement.”
Sabrina just looked up at the girls through her tear stained eyes. "Who are you and what do you want me to do about it? Why are you doing this to me?"
They only just stared at her, hiding something behind their eyes.
"Get out!" Sabrina wailed. "Get out! I never want to see you again! You ruined my life!"
Sabrina turned away and cried in the lonely dark room as she listened to the thunder outside. Were they really telling the truth? Was that dream real or was it a trick? How was she ever going to find out the truth?
Chapter 5
The door opened the next morning and in walked a doctor who smiled at the scared girl.
"You didn't eat your breakfast," he said in a kind manner.
"I'm not hungry."
"Nonsense, everybody is hungry in the morning."
"Not when you're trapped in a mental institution for no reason at all," Sabrina spoke.
The doctor sat across from her with a clipboard and something to write with. He kept looking her over as if he hadn't seen a girl before.
"What do you want with me?"
"I just want to ask you a few questions, that's all," he told Sabrina. "First, tell me your name and why you're here."
Sabrina glared at him for a moment knowing what this was. He wanted to see how smart she was. "My name is Sabrina Michelle Callahan and my parents put me in this asylum."
"Is there a reason they put you in an asylum?"
"I see ghosts."
"Ghosts?" The doctor repeated. "Are these ghosts telling you to do anything?"
Sabrina knew that he wasn't going to believe her, he'd just write it down and tell the other doctors how crazy she was.
"They're telling me to save the world from what's about to happen."
"Sabrina, are you sure that you're not just seeing things? These ghosts could all be something that's a part of your imagination."
"No!" Sabrina shouted. All though he may have been right she did not want to be treated as if she was a crazy person. "I'm not seeing things, they're real and they showed me something that's...."
Sabrina shut her eyes, wishing she hadn't said anymore. She knew she had to keep talking because the doctor wanted to know.
"... In the White House..."
"What's in the White House?"
Was the bomb really inside the White House or was it all her imagination? She couldn't lie to the doctor since he already heard the story from her parents. The ones who called her a mental case.
"It's a bomb."
The doctor only blinked.
"There's a bomb in the basement of the White House and it's going to kill us all," she spoke.
The doctor just kept staring at her not showing anything in his eyes. Sabrina wished he would say or do something. If he didn't say anything for the next minute she knew she'd scream from the unbearable silence.
"Sabrina, you know that it's never a good thing to make up stories..."
"I'm not making it up! It's the truth!" Sabrina screamed standing up from her seat. "On the day I was committed here there were two men carrying a box full of the bombs and were about to enter the White House! They disguised them to make them look like clocks!"
The doctor sighed. "Sabrina..."
"You have to believe me! I'm not crazy! The ghosts are trying to warn us and save ourselves from the hands of death!"
"That is enough," the doctor said raising a hand up. "This is nonsense. You're just seeing things and you've let them go to your head. The White House is being protected by many trustworthy officers. It's safe and always will be. Clearly we need to keep you for further examination to see what is wrong with your mind."
Sabrina just stared at the doctor as she sat back down. What kind of doctor was he? "You know you believe me," she said to him quietly as she slowly rose up from her seat. "You just don't want to believe me because my parents called me a mental case!" Sabrina shouted making her voice echo through the whole building.
"I need to go now."
The doctor quickly got up and disappeared out the door.
"Wait, no!" Sabrina lunged but landed against the locked door. She began pounding the door and screamed at the top of her lungs trying to get any other doctor's attention to hear her cries for help."
"Let me out! Let me out! I have to save the world..."
Sabrina slumped against the door and cried. She was alone. She was alone in the dark world where everybody treated her as if she was crazy.
"We're all going to die and you know it! You'll believe me after we all turn into ghosts! You'll see!" she screamed whacking the door once more and crying again.
"You're not doing a good job making them believe that you're sane."
Sabrina groaned and turned around the meet the eyes of the three girls. This time their faces were more calm and understanding than their usual stare showing nothing.
"Who are you? Please tell me!" Sabrina sobbed.
The ghosts looked at each other and then sat down with her. "We're your distant relatives."
Sabrina blinked and looked more closely at each of their faces. She could see some resemblance once she looked closer into their eyes.
But now they had the same eye color and their noses were in the same shape as hers.
"How are we related?"
"When George Washington became president I started having visions of men putting a bomb in the White House. My parents put me in this asylum. The vision never came true and I died after the electric shock."
"That's what happened to me too. They put me in a straitjacket and forgot about me."
"And I hung myself to end it all," the third said.
Sabrina looked at them all. They weren't so scary now. She could see something in their eyes finally, they were unloved.
"Is this going to keep happening as time goes on?"
"No, you're the last of them to have visions. The bombers will be back tonight." One of them said.
Sabrina put her head to the floor. "I guess that means I will die tonight."
"No, everybody outside the asylum will die tonight. The bomb won't destroy this hospital."
Chapter 6
"Everyone on the outside is going to die? So, my parents will die?" Sabrina spoke after her heart quickly dropped.
“Sadly yes,” one of them said. "That's why we wanted you to try and get someone to believe you. After the bomb explodes the doctors will want to keep you for further examination."
"At least you will live."
"No," Sabrina spoke. "I would rather die out there then be trapped in here. My parents don't deserve to die."
"But they're the ones who put you in here, you never deserved this, so why help them?" one of the ghosts asked.
"I know what they did was wrong, but they're my parents. Do you think you can help me?" Sabrina begged.
The girls looked at each other and agreed. "Take our hands. You'll be able to turn invisible and we can take you through the walls."
Sabrina held hands with the girls and walked towards the window. She closed her eyes and then found herself flying through the sky. A smile creased along her face as she watched the ground fly by below her. She had to remember what her mission was once she felt the prickly grass touch her feet.
The White House stood over her, trying to make her feel scared. She wasn't turning back now as she walked with the ghosts into the White House and walked through the hall of past presidents.
Bickering voices came from down the hallway. Sabrina let go of the ghosts’ hands and walked to the door that lay ajar. Slowly, with a sound, she walked down the stairs where the match was lit.
"Don't you dare!" she screamed, startling the men.
The match flew out of his hand and was falling right towards Sabrina who slipped and banged her head.
She lay unconscious as the whole room caught fire.
Chapter 7
"Sabrina! Sabrina, wake up!"
Sabrina slowly opened her eyes to find fire all around her as she felt her head bleeding. The two men were shouting at each other at the top of the stairs trying to get the door unlocked. It must have accidentally closed when she was coming down the stairs.
"How do we get out of here?" Sabrina whispered slowly getting up and trying to balance herself.
"There's a back door that isn't locked. You need to get out of here fast!"
The fire was spreading quickly around the room and was starting to block her escape. She swayed around, bumping into things, feeling faint from all the fumes.
The fire blocked her way out and she had no other place to run towards.
"Jump through it, Sabrina! It's the only way!"
Sabrina looked at the boiling flames that would eventually kill her if she didn't do anything. "Do you think we could all go together? Hold my hand and maybe I could turn invisible!"
"Hey you!" the two men came running down the stairs towards Sabrina who backed into the flames.
She screamed from the pain but was able to walk up the stairs with little energy as the fire burned through her skin.
She could feel her hand grab the handle but it felt as if she began to collapse on the stairs and felt somebody grabbing her.
A bright light flew up in the corner of her eye and a noise of a gun was heard.
Men in white were crowding around her as she was dragged out to the lawn.
"Sabrina? Sabrina?! Where's my baby?!" Someone was lifting her up into their arms.
"Mom?" she could barely speak.
"We're sorry, we're so sorry! We should have believed you!"
Sabrina couldn't feel anything, her vision was in and out, but she had an idea of what was happening around her. There were news people, and cops were taking away the men.
"Sabrina, please forgive us! We were wrong!" her father sobbed cradling her head. "And it was wrong of me to call you a mental case," her mother apologized.
"Thank you. I love you guys," she whispered.
"Young lady," a man's deep voice approached. "Thanks for saving the world. You’ll get a medal of honor for what you did to help us."
Sabrina looked to her side where the three girls stood, smiling at her before they waved.
The girls disappeared into the heavens.
The curse was broken.
Frozen Fanart
Marielle Sabbag '14
Marielle Sabbag '14
The Hiccups
Margaret: Time to... [HIC!]
Stage Hand: Shh!
Margaret: On no, not hiccups!
Stage Hand: Where are you going?
Margaret: I need... [hic!]... water!
Stage Hand: You're almost on!
Margaret: I can't... [hic!]
Stage Hand: You can...
Margaret: They're too loud! [hic!]
Stage Hand: Make it work!
Margaret: Stop pushing!
Stage Hand: Get out there!
[Margaret enters the stage.]
Sean: Stephanie, there you are.
Margaret: Hello Ry- [hic!]
Sean: Uh... want some lunch?
Margaret: Water first?
Sean: Water? What about olives?
Margaret: Later. Water now!
Sean: Fine, here pushy. [Margaret gulps the water] Better?
Margaret: Yup. Pass the o-[hic!]-Lips!
Sean: The olips?
Margaret: Olives!
Sean: You want to kiss?
Margaret: N- wait, what?
Sean: Well, I would.
Margaret: I just... [hic] you do?
Sean: Do you like me?
Margaret: Uh... yeah, I do. [hic!]
Sean: Be my girlfriend?
Margaret: Uh huh. [hic!]
Sean: Awesome. See you tonight.
Margaret: Wow.
[Margaret leaves the stage.]
Stage Hand: See, it worked.
Margaret: That was good improvising. [hic!]
Stage Hand: Now here's my advice.
Margaret: [hic!] What?
Stage Hand: Get water!
Margaret: Okay pushy!
Marielle Sabbag '14
Margaret: Time to... [HIC!]
Stage Hand: Shh!
Margaret: On no, not hiccups!
Stage Hand: Where are you going?
Margaret: I need... [hic!]... water!
Stage Hand: You're almost on!
Margaret: I can't... [hic!]
Stage Hand: You can...
Margaret: They're too loud! [hic!]
Stage Hand: Make it work!
Margaret: Stop pushing!
Stage Hand: Get out there!
[Margaret enters the stage.]
Sean: Stephanie, there you are.
Margaret: Hello Ry- [hic!]
Sean: Uh... want some lunch?
Margaret: Water first?
Sean: Water? What about olives?
Margaret: Later. Water now!
Sean: Fine, here pushy. [Margaret gulps the water] Better?
Margaret: Yup. Pass the o-[hic!]-Lips!
Sean: The olips?
Margaret: Olives!
Sean: You want to kiss?
Margaret: N- wait, what?
Sean: Well, I would.
Margaret: I just... [hic] you do?
Sean: Do you like me?
Margaret: Uh... yeah, I do. [hic!]
Sean: Be my girlfriend?
Margaret: Uh huh. [hic!]
Sean: Awesome. See you tonight.
Margaret: Wow.
[Margaret leaves the stage.]
Stage Hand: See, it worked.
Margaret: That was good improvising. [hic!]
Stage Hand: Now here's my advice.
Margaret: [hic!] What?
Stage Hand: Get water!
Margaret: Okay pushy!
Marielle Sabbag '14
Dewy Deck
Alyssa Bogosian '15
Alyssa Bogosian '15
Ornaments
Alyssa Bogosian '15
Alyssa Bogosian '15
6 Summer Scenes
Katy DiMuzio '15
Katy DiMuzio '15
KJoy the Horse
Katy DiMuzio '15
Katy DiMuzio '15
Ben
Carolyn Vanasse '15
Carolyn Vanasse '15
Mechanical Pencil Fight
Dylan felt another sharp tap on his back. He shot around giving Janie another angered look.
"What?" she asked as if she did nothing.
"Stop stabbing me with your pencil!" he shouted in a whisper so he wouldn't disrupt class.
"I'm not doing anything!" she whispered back.
Another few minutes passed when another sharp tap was felt on his back. This time Dylan burst around in his seat and tried to take away her pencil.
"Excuse me, what is going on back there?" the teacher asked, angry that the lesson was interrupted.
"Dylan tried to take my pencil!" Janie shouted first.
"I was trying to take it away because she keeps stabbing me in the back with it!" Dylan fought back.
"You are both in sixth grade, not kindergarten. If I hear another sound from either one of you, both of you are going to the office."
During the rest of class, Dylan sat seething in his desk from getting in trouble. The good part was that Janie never stabbed him with her pencil once. The bell ran and as he packed his things up, Janie put a note on his desk.
Meet me after school near the main entrance, it read.
At the end of the day Dylan did as he was told and went looking for Janie and found her.
"What is your problem? Why do you keep poking me in class?"
"I..."
"It's not funny, so why do you do it?"
"Well..."
"It's very nasty to keep poking me; I probably have holes in my back..."
Janie kissed his cheek.
Dylan didn't know what to say as he stared into her eyes.
"I like you, okay. I know it wasn't the nicest way to get your attention, but I had to. It's okay if you don't like me, I just wanted to know.”
Janie began to walk off when Dylan caught up to her and took her hand.
"Let's go for a walk."
They both smiled and walked off.
Marielle Sabbag '14
Dylan felt another sharp tap on his back. He shot around giving Janie another angered look.
"What?" she asked as if she did nothing.
"Stop stabbing me with your pencil!" he shouted in a whisper so he wouldn't disrupt class.
"I'm not doing anything!" she whispered back.
Another few minutes passed when another sharp tap was felt on his back. This time Dylan burst around in his seat and tried to take away her pencil.
"Excuse me, what is going on back there?" the teacher asked, angry that the lesson was interrupted.
"Dylan tried to take my pencil!" Janie shouted first.
"I was trying to take it away because she keeps stabbing me in the back with it!" Dylan fought back.
"You are both in sixth grade, not kindergarten. If I hear another sound from either one of you, both of you are going to the office."
During the rest of class, Dylan sat seething in his desk from getting in trouble. The good part was that Janie never stabbed him with her pencil once. The bell ran and as he packed his things up, Janie put a note on his desk.
Meet me after school near the main entrance, it read.
At the end of the day Dylan did as he was told and went looking for Janie and found her.
"What is your problem? Why do you keep poking me in class?"
"I..."
"It's not funny, so why do you do it?"
"Well..."
"It's very nasty to keep poking me; I probably have holes in my back..."
Janie kissed his cheek.
Dylan didn't know what to say as he stared into her eyes.
"I like you, okay. I know it wasn't the nicest way to get your attention, but I had to. It's okay if you don't like me, I just wanted to know.”
Janie began to walk off when Dylan caught up to her and took her hand.
"Let's go for a walk."
They both smiled and walked off.
Marielle Sabbag '14
My Hands
My Hands,
Are powerful,
Are full of creativity,
Are strong,
They hold together,
Other hands,
That hold love,
That can hold a kiss,
That hold strength,
The hand,
Creativity,
Warmth,
Strength,
Loves,
A hand loves,
The hand holds strength,
Hands hold creativity,
A hand that holds tightly,
Give me your hand,
To give me your love,
Give me the strength of your love,
And hold me tightly,
To give me power,
Hold me strong,
And hold my love,
For your hand gives me strength,
To overpower with creativity
Marielle Sabbag '14
My Hands,
Are powerful,
Are full of creativity,
Are strong,
They hold together,
Other hands,
That hold love,
That can hold a kiss,
That hold strength,
The hand,
Creativity,
Warmth,
Strength,
Loves,
A hand loves,
The hand holds strength,
Hands hold creativity,
A hand that holds tightly,
Give me your hand,
To give me your love,
Give me the strength of your love,
And hold me tightly,
To give me power,
Hold me strong,
And hold my love,
For your hand gives me strength,
To overpower with creativity
Marielle Sabbag '14
A Birthday Surprise
Annie danced along the stage making each step as graceful as she could, forgetting that there was an audience in front of her. This was her last time dancing on the stage before she went off to college.
Just thinking about her mother made her dance every step with beauty. She hadn't seen her mother since she was fourteen and every day Annie missed her even more. She got cancer and sent Annie away so she wouldn't have to see her suffer every day.
They wrote to each other so much that they could make a novel with all the letters they wrote back and forth. They never talked of her illness, it always spoiled the moment so she didn't know if she was in a great or bad condition.
A roar of applause echoed through the auditorium and Annie took her bow getting in place for the judges to ask questions.
"Why are you crying?" one of the judges asked.
Annie finally realized she had tears falling from her eyes. "My mother taught me how to dance and she always told me I could do anything."
"Where's your mother now?"
"Right now she's in the hospital getting cancer treatment and I have not seen her for four years. I really wish she could be here to see what this night really felt like."
The judges were smiling and her father stood up from the front row. He spoke through one of the microphones. "We have someone very special to present your medal, Annie."
A light shined over to Stage Right.
Her mother slowly walked out of the dark with a medal.
Tears fell from Annie's eyes as she ran into her arms holding her so tightly.
"Sorry I didn't answer your last letter, I wanted this to be a surprise. You were fabulous."
"Thank you so much Mama."
"I'm so proud of you, and guess what."
"What?"
"I'm free."
Annie hugged her mom even tighter as the audience applauded the loving scene.
"Happy birthday, by the way."
This is the best gift anyone could ever give her.
Marielle Sabbag '14
Annie danced along the stage making each step as graceful as she could, forgetting that there was an audience in front of her. This was her last time dancing on the stage before she went off to college.
Just thinking about her mother made her dance every step with beauty. She hadn't seen her mother since she was fourteen and every day Annie missed her even more. She got cancer and sent Annie away so she wouldn't have to see her suffer every day.
They wrote to each other so much that they could make a novel with all the letters they wrote back and forth. They never talked of her illness, it always spoiled the moment so she didn't know if she was in a great or bad condition.
A roar of applause echoed through the auditorium and Annie took her bow getting in place for the judges to ask questions.
"Why are you crying?" one of the judges asked.
Annie finally realized she had tears falling from her eyes. "My mother taught me how to dance and she always told me I could do anything."
"Where's your mother now?"
"Right now she's in the hospital getting cancer treatment and I have not seen her for four years. I really wish she could be here to see what this night really felt like."
The judges were smiling and her father stood up from the front row. He spoke through one of the microphones. "We have someone very special to present your medal, Annie."
A light shined over to Stage Right.
Her mother slowly walked out of the dark with a medal.
Tears fell from Annie's eyes as she ran into her arms holding her so tightly.
"Sorry I didn't answer your last letter, I wanted this to be a surprise. You were fabulous."
"Thank you so much Mama."
"I'm so proud of you, and guess what."
"What?"
"I'm free."
Annie hugged her mom even tighter as the audience applauded the loving scene.
"Happy birthday, by the way."
This is the best gift anyone could ever give her.
Marielle Sabbag '14
Anchor
Tina Li '15
Tina Li '15
Upon the Soft Dandelion
Upon the soft dandelion
I found a bee long defiant
he tried in vain from its white wisps
to gather sweetness in his grip
The more he tried the more he lost
and sweetness does not have a cost
but he had strained himself so long
that all the feath'ry wisps had gone
So long he'd toil'd away his time
that with every fainting rhyme
his sweetness lost, and lost his time
this poem gone and so his pride
Isabel Murray '16
Upon the soft dandelion
I found a bee long defiant
he tried in vain from its white wisps
to gather sweetness in his grip
The more he tried the more he lost
and sweetness does not have a cost
but he had strained himself so long
that all the feath'ry wisps had gone
So long he'd toil'd away his time
that with every fainting rhyme
his sweetness lost, and lost his time
this poem gone and so his pride
Isabel Murray '16
King Lear MST: Nothing Will Come of MST-ing
Aescheron: Well, boys, after you MST-ed that horrific scene from Ethan Frome, I’ve decided to give you something more lighthearted to work with. No more downers.
Modig: Oh boy! Like Candide?
Tolan: Or Pride and Prejudice?
Aescheron: Nope, King Lear.
Seamere: I’ve missed the subtle joy of Shakespearean tragedies.
Modig: Bring it on! May we start?
Aescheron: Be my guest. Begin your mocking sojourn.
Lear
Meantime we shall express our darker purpose.—Give me the map there.
Tolan: ‘Darker’ isn’t quite adequate to describe the tone of this play, methinks.
Know that we have divided in three our kingdom, and ‘tis our fast intent to shake all cares and business from our age,
Modig: Fie! He just wants to be free to party with Kent and Gloucester, I bet.
Seamere: This decision is not going to end badly at all.
conferring them on younger strengths, while we unburdened crawl toward death.
Modig: Crawling because they’re going to be partying so hard, no doubt.
Our son of Cornwall and you, our no less loving son of Albany, we have this hour a constant will to publish our daughters’ several dowers, that future strife may be prevented now.
Tolan: I wonder how he’s going to feel using pronouns other than the royal “we” when he steps down.
Seamere: It’s going to be difficult for him to get used to, to say the least.
The two great princes, France and Burgundy, great rivals in our youngest daughter’s love, long in our court have made their amorous sojourn.
Modig: “They just won’t take the hint and leave!”
Tolan: “Fen-sucked freeloaders!”
And here are to be answered. Tell me, my daughters—Since now we will divest us both of rule, interest of territory, cares of state—Which of you shall we say doth love us most,
Seamere: “My ego requires sustenance, beloved daughters!”
Modig: “Tell me how awesome I am!”
Tolan: “I’m the most wonderful king ever, am I right?”
that we our largest bounty may extend where nature doth with merit challenge. Goneril, our eldest born, speak first.
Tolan: “We would like to apologize again for naming you ‘Goneril.’”
Goneril
Sir, I love you more than word can wield the matter,
Seamere: “Now allow me to wield a truckload of flattery to demonstrate my point.”
dearer than eyesight, space, and liberty,
Modig: Eye motif! Two points to Goneril.
beyond what can be valued, rich or rare, no less than life, with grace, health, beauty, honor; as much as child e’er loved, or father found;
Modig: There are a lot of words here, but I’m really not feeling any love in them.
Seamere: That’s the point, you know.
a love that makes breath poor, and speech unable. Beyond all manner of so much I love you.
Tolan: It makes speech so unable that she could barely get out that last bit of flattery.
Cordelia (aside)
What shall Cordelia speak? Love, and be silent.
Seamere: It would be appreciated far more than Goneril’s rambling, I can assure you.
Lear
Of all these bounds, even from this line to this, with shadowy forests
Tolan: “There may be a few witches about in the forest talking about eyes of newts, but just ignore them.”
and with champains riched, with plenteous rivers and wide-skirted meads, we make thee lady. To thine and Albany’s issue be this perpetual.
Modig: Great idea, Lear. Why bother hearing what the other girls have to say? Just give her the land and get it over with.
Seamere: Fantastic decision-making, Mr. King. We applaud thee.
—What says our second daughter, our dearest Regan, wife of Cornwall? Speak.
Regan
I am made of that self mettle as my sister and prize me at her worth. In my true heart I find she names my very deed of love; only she comes too short,
Tolan: Ooh, jabs taken at Goneril.
that I profess myself an enemy to all other joys which the most previous square of sense possesses, and find I am alone felicitate in your dear Highness’ love.
Modig: The flattery levels are off the charts! This love battle is heating up.
Seamere: And Regan drops Goneril with a declaration of Lear’s love being her only joy. I can barely watch, folks!
Tolan: Can Cordelia possibly out-flatter her sisters at this point in the game? Let’s find out!
Cordelia (aside)
Then poor Cordelia! And yet not so, since I am sure my love’s more ponderous than my tongue.
Tolan: Good, you might end up saying something with substance. Go for it!
Lear
To thee and thine hereditary ever remain this ample third of our fair kingdom, no less in space, validity, and pleasure than that conferred on Goneril.
Modig: He’s just giving away nice land like the love test doesn’t really matter.
Seamere: Even Oswald the Steward could get a share at this point if he flatters Lear enough.
—Now, our joy, Although our last and least, to whose young love the vines of France and milk of Burgundy strive to be interessed,
Tolan: Lear really likes bringing up Cordelia’s love rivals.
Modig: Maybe he’s betting on which one will marry her.
what can you say to draw a third more opulent than your sisters’? Speak.
Seamere: It’ll be difficult. Goneril and Regan already took all the best exaggerated praise.
Cordelia
Nothing, my lord.
Lear
Nothing?
Tolan: “Is that your final answer?”
Cordelia
Nothing.
Lear
Nothing will come of nothing. Speak again.
Modig: All he wants to hear is “My dad is awesome!” She made a good choice against ego-stroking.
Cordelia
Unhappy that I am, I cannot heave my heart into my mouth.
Seamere: You wouldn’t want to see that, Lear. Wandering organs never make for pleasant sights.
I love your Majesty according to my bond, no more nor less.
Lear
How, how, Cordelia? Mend your speech a little, lest you mar your fortunes.
Modig: “This is a flattery contest! Don’t you get it?”
Seamere: I’m rapidly losing sympathy for Lear. Cordelia should mar his fortunes with a poisoned sword.
Cordelia
Good my lord, you have begot me, bred me, loved me. I return those duties back as are right fit: Obey you, love you, and most honor you.
Tolan: I hope you’re taking notice, Lear. Actual sincerity might just fly right over your head, though, considering how much you love being flattered.
Why have my sisters husbands if they say they love you all?
Seamere: Because they’re insincere people.
Haply, when I shall wed, that lord whose hand must take my plight shall carry half my love with him, half my care and duty.
Seamere: Coredelia’s getting very mathematical.
Modig: To calculate the remaining love, you have to take the percentage of parental love left over after the marriage, plug it into the right triangle formula, then find the square root and reduce any fractions or imaginary numbers.
Sure I shall never marry like my sisters, to love my father all.
Lear
But goes thy heart with this?
Cordelia
Ay, my good lord.
Tolan: “But are you absolutely certain you don’t want to lavish insincere devotion on me?”
Lear
So young and so untender?
Cordelia
So young, my lord, and true.
Seamere: To sum up, Lear still doesn’t get it.
Tolan: He’s clueless to the fact that Cordelia is a good person and his only true-hearted daughter.
Modig: Next!
Lear
Let it be so. Thy truth, then, be thy dower, for by the sacred radiance of the sun,
Modig: Hey, you don’t get to invoke the divine just for your temper tantrum!
Tolan: Bad king!
The mysteries of Hecate and the night, by all the operation of the orbs from whom we do exist and cease to be,
Seamere: You, sir, hail from the crappiest orb in the skies; the orb of immature rashness.
here I disclaim all my paternal care, propinquity,
Tolan: He banishes his most loyal daughter for truth-telling.
Modig: Our king and hero, folks!
And property of blood, and as a stranger to my heart and me. Hold thee from this forever.
Seamere: He’s certainly furious.
Tolan: I bet if he could hear us right now, he’d try to banish us too.
The barbarous Scythian, or he that makes his generation messes to gorge his appetite, shall to my bosom be as well neighbored, pitied, and relieved as thou my sometime daughter.
Modig: So now he’s saying savages and cannibals are dearer to him than Cordelia.
Seamere: That’s not very nice.
Aescheron: And so we must end our excerpt there with Lear’s impulsive rage fit. Good luck to him and his family. Did you enjoy it?
Seamere: You know us. We love riffing on human misery.
Modig: I wanted to know what mean things Lear said next! Oh well.
Tolan: Do you have anything happier for next time?
Aescheron: We’ll see.
Ruby Struble '14
Aescheron: Well, boys, after you MST-ed that horrific scene from Ethan Frome, I’ve decided to give you something more lighthearted to work with. No more downers.
Modig: Oh boy! Like Candide?
Tolan: Or Pride and Prejudice?
Aescheron: Nope, King Lear.
Seamere: I’ve missed the subtle joy of Shakespearean tragedies.
Modig: Bring it on! May we start?
Aescheron: Be my guest. Begin your mocking sojourn.
Lear
Meantime we shall express our darker purpose.—Give me the map there.
Tolan: ‘Darker’ isn’t quite adequate to describe the tone of this play, methinks.
Know that we have divided in three our kingdom, and ‘tis our fast intent to shake all cares and business from our age,
Modig: Fie! He just wants to be free to party with Kent and Gloucester, I bet.
Seamere: This decision is not going to end badly at all.
conferring them on younger strengths, while we unburdened crawl toward death.
Modig: Crawling because they’re going to be partying so hard, no doubt.
Our son of Cornwall and you, our no less loving son of Albany, we have this hour a constant will to publish our daughters’ several dowers, that future strife may be prevented now.
Tolan: I wonder how he’s going to feel using pronouns other than the royal “we” when he steps down.
Seamere: It’s going to be difficult for him to get used to, to say the least.
The two great princes, France and Burgundy, great rivals in our youngest daughter’s love, long in our court have made their amorous sojourn.
Modig: “They just won’t take the hint and leave!”
Tolan: “Fen-sucked freeloaders!”
And here are to be answered. Tell me, my daughters—Since now we will divest us both of rule, interest of territory, cares of state—Which of you shall we say doth love us most,
Seamere: “My ego requires sustenance, beloved daughters!”
Modig: “Tell me how awesome I am!”
Tolan: “I’m the most wonderful king ever, am I right?”
that we our largest bounty may extend where nature doth with merit challenge. Goneril, our eldest born, speak first.
Tolan: “We would like to apologize again for naming you ‘Goneril.’”
Goneril
Sir, I love you more than word can wield the matter,
Seamere: “Now allow me to wield a truckload of flattery to demonstrate my point.”
dearer than eyesight, space, and liberty,
Modig: Eye motif! Two points to Goneril.
beyond what can be valued, rich or rare, no less than life, with grace, health, beauty, honor; as much as child e’er loved, or father found;
Modig: There are a lot of words here, but I’m really not feeling any love in them.
Seamere: That’s the point, you know.
a love that makes breath poor, and speech unable. Beyond all manner of so much I love you.
Tolan: It makes speech so unable that she could barely get out that last bit of flattery.
Cordelia (aside)
What shall Cordelia speak? Love, and be silent.
Seamere: It would be appreciated far more than Goneril’s rambling, I can assure you.
Lear
Of all these bounds, even from this line to this, with shadowy forests
Tolan: “There may be a few witches about in the forest talking about eyes of newts, but just ignore them.”
and with champains riched, with plenteous rivers and wide-skirted meads, we make thee lady. To thine and Albany’s issue be this perpetual.
Modig: Great idea, Lear. Why bother hearing what the other girls have to say? Just give her the land and get it over with.
Seamere: Fantastic decision-making, Mr. King. We applaud thee.
—What says our second daughter, our dearest Regan, wife of Cornwall? Speak.
Regan
I am made of that self mettle as my sister and prize me at her worth. In my true heart I find she names my very deed of love; only she comes too short,
Tolan: Ooh, jabs taken at Goneril.
that I profess myself an enemy to all other joys which the most previous square of sense possesses, and find I am alone felicitate in your dear Highness’ love.
Modig: The flattery levels are off the charts! This love battle is heating up.
Seamere: And Regan drops Goneril with a declaration of Lear’s love being her only joy. I can barely watch, folks!
Tolan: Can Cordelia possibly out-flatter her sisters at this point in the game? Let’s find out!
Cordelia (aside)
Then poor Cordelia! And yet not so, since I am sure my love’s more ponderous than my tongue.
Tolan: Good, you might end up saying something with substance. Go for it!
Lear
To thee and thine hereditary ever remain this ample third of our fair kingdom, no less in space, validity, and pleasure than that conferred on Goneril.
Modig: He’s just giving away nice land like the love test doesn’t really matter.
Seamere: Even Oswald the Steward could get a share at this point if he flatters Lear enough.
—Now, our joy, Although our last and least, to whose young love the vines of France and milk of Burgundy strive to be interessed,
Tolan: Lear really likes bringing up Cordelia’s love rivals.
Modig: Maybe he’s betting on which one will marry her.
what can you say to draw a third more opulent than your sisters’? Speak.
Seamere: It’ll be difficult. Goneril and Regan already took all the best exaggerated praise.
Cordelia
Nothing, my lord.
Lear
Nothing?
Tolan: “Is that your final answer?”
Cordelia
Nothing.
Lear
Nothing will come of nothing. Speak again.
Modig: All he wants to hear is “My dad is awesome!” She made a good choice against ego-stroking.
Cordelia
Unhappy that I am, I cannot heave my heart into my mouth.
Seamere: You wouldn’t want to see that, Lear. Wandering organs never make for pleasant sights.
I love your Majesty according to my bond, no more nor less.
Lear
How, how, Cordelia? Mend your speech a little, lest you mar your fortunes.
Modig: “This is a flattery contest! Don’t you get it?”
Seamere: I’m rapidly losing sympathy for Lear. Cordelia should mar his fortunes with a poisoned sword.
Cordelia
Good my lord, you have begot me, bred me, loved me. I return those duties back as are right fit: Obey you, love you, and most honor you.
Tolan: I hope you’re taking notice, Lear. Actual sincerity might just fly right over your head, though, considering how much you love being flattered.
Why have my sisters husbands if they say they love you all?
Seamere: Because they’re insincere people.
Haply, when I shall wed, that lord whose hand must take my plight shall carry half my love with him, half my care and duty.
Seamere: Coredelia’s getting very mathematical.
Modig: To calculate the remaining love, you have to take the percentage of parental love left over after the marriage, plug it into the right triangle formula, then find the square root and reduce any fractions or imaginary numbers.
Sure I shall never marry like my sisters, to love my father all.
Lear
But goes thy heart with this?
Cordelia
Ay, my good lord.
Tolan: “But are you absolutely certain you don’t want to lavish insincere devotion on me?”
Lear
So young and so untender?
Cordelia
So young, my lord, and true.
Seamere: To sum up, Lear still doesn’t get it.
Tolan: He’s clueless to the fact that Cordelia is a good person and his only true-hearted daughter.
Modig: Next!
Lear
Let it be so. Thy truth, then, be thy dower, for by the sacred radiance of the sun,
Modig: Hey, you don’t get to invoke the divine just for your temper tantrum!
Tolan: Bad king!
The mysteries of Hecate and the night, by all the operation of the orbs from whom we do exist and cease to be,
Seamere: You, sir, hail from the crappiest orb in the skies; the orb of immature rashness.
here I disclaim all my paternal care, propinquity,
Tolan: He banishes his most loyal daughter for truth-telling.
Modig: Our king and hero, folks!
And property of blood, and as a stranger to my heart and me. Hold thee from this forever.
Seamere: He’s certainly furious.
Tolan: I bet if he could hear us right now, he’d try to banish us too.
The barbarous Scythian, or he that makes his generation messes to gorge his appetite, shall to my bosom be as well neighbored, pitied, and relieved as thou my sometime daughter.
Modig: So now he’s saying savages and cannibals are dearer to him than Cordelia.
Seamere: That’s not very nice.
Aescheron: And so we must end our excerpt there with Lear’s impulsive rage fit. Good luck to him and his family. Did you enjoy it?
Seamere: You know us. We love riffing on human misery.
Modig: I wanted to know what mean things Lear said next! Oh well.
Tolan: Do you have anything happier for next time?
Aescheron: We’ll see.
Ruby Struble '14
A Day Out in the Park
Grandpa: Hey there sonny boy!
Jared: Hi Grandpa, how are you today?
Grandpa: I’m doing just fine. It’s nice to meet you in the park today.
Jared: Same. I've been busy.
Grandpa: How’s school?
Jared: Pretty good. I joined the wrestling team.
Grandpa: The wrestling team… I was on the wrestling team back in my day.
Jared: Really? You?
Grandpa: What, you don’t believe me?
Jared: I just don’t see you as a wrestler so much.
Grandpa: Want me to give you a few pointers?
Jared: You? No thanks. I’ll leave that to my coach.
Grandpa: Get up.
Jared: Why?
Grandpa: I want to show you how tough I can be.
Jared: Okay.
Grandpa: Wrestle me.
Jared: Won’t I hurt you?
Grandpa: Run towards me and wrestle me!
Jared: Okay.
[Jared run towards his Grandfather and ends up getting thrown off his feet by his Grandfather who tosses him over his shoulder]
Grandfather: Now, want a few pointers sonny boy?
Jared: Sure, I’ll never doubt you again.
Marielle Sabbag '14
Grandpa: Hey there sonny boy!
Jared: Hi Grandpa, how are you today?
Grandpa: I’m doing just fine. It’s nice to meet you in the park today.
Jared: Same. I've been busy.
Grandpa: How’s school?
Jared: Pretty good. I joined the wrestling team.
Grandpa: The wrestling team… I was on the wrestling team back in my day.
Jared: Really? You?
Grandpa: What, you don’t believe me?
Jared: I just don’t see you as a wrestler so much.
Grandpa: Want me to give you a few pointers?
Jared: You? No thanks. I’ll leave that to my coach.
Grandpa: Get up.
Jared: Why?
Grandpa: I want to show you how tough I can be.
Jared: Okay.
Grandpa: Wrestle me.
Jared: Won’t I hurt you?
Grandpa: Run towards me and wrestle me!
Jared: Okay.
[Jared run towards his Grandfather and ends up getting thrown off his feet by his Grandfather who tosses him over his shoulder]
Grandfather: Now, want a few pointers sonny boy?
Jared: Sure, I’ll never doubt you again.
Marielle Sabbag '14
A Singing Lesson
Freddy: Alright Gladys, are you ready for your first day?
Gladys: What are we doing again?
Freddy: You’re singing with me, remember?
Gladys: Oh, that’s nice. What are we singing?
Freddy: I thought you were told. Didn't they tell you?
Gladys: About what?
Freddy: The song!
Gladys: Oh, I love singing. I had lungs in my time.
Freddy: Yeah, and they didn't tell me you’d be old.
Gladys: What’s that, dear?
Freddy: Oh, nothing. Why don’t we warm up?
[Freddy starts the music]
BOTH: [SINGING] Cantate Domino, Cantate Domino...
Freddy: Wait, wait, hold on.
Gladys: What?
Freddy: Sing on key!
Gladys: I did. You weren’t!
Freddy: I was on key!
Gladys: No, it’s you who was singing the wrong notes.
Freddy: How do you know?
Gladys: I was a forty year voice teacher. When I’m right, I’m right.
Freddy: Alright, let’s start over.
[He starts the music again]
BOTH: {SINGING] Cantate Domino, Cantate Domino....
Freddy: Stop! Why do you sound like that?
Gladys: Like what?
Freddy: Like someone drowning in the ocean after the Titanic sank.
Gladys: That’s an awful way to describe someone’s singing.
Freddy: Well that’s how you were singing.
Gladys: And you call yourself a singer.
Freddy: Yes, I've been singing for ten years now.
Gladys: And who taught you? A barbed wire fence?
Freddy: Okay, I thought old people were supposed to be nice.
Gladys: That’s your presumption.
Freddy: Can you just sing it right? You need to sing it like...
Gladys: I know how I’m supposed to sing it. I’ve sung this song many times. Who taught you how to sing?
Freddy: Myself!
Gladys: Your singing is atrocious!
Stagehand: Freddy and Gladys. You are up!
Freddy: Great, we've had no time to practice. What do we do?
Gladys: You tell me, you’re my director.
Freddy: I’ll follow along with you.
Gladys: How do you know my way? We just started singing together.
Freddy: Would you stop being difficult!
[They enter the stage and the piano starts playing]
BOTH: [SINGING] Cantate Domino, Cantate Domino..... [Singing continuously]
[The audience stands and applauds]
Freddy: Thank you! Thank you!
[Someone comes up on the stage with flowers]
Freddy: Thank you very much...
[The flowers are handed to Gladys]
Freddy: Don’t I get any flowers?
Person: For being off key?
Freddy: I was not off key!
Person: You were singing as if you were drowning in the ocean after the Titanic sank.
Freddy: Harsh.
Gladys: I’ll tell you what. I’ll give you singing lessons if you don’t want to be insulted any longer.
Freddy: Fine.
Gladys: Good. Here, have a flower for dealing with me.
Freddy: Thanks.
Marielle Sabbag '14
Freddy: Alright Gladys, are you ready for your first day?
Gladys: What are we doing again?
Freddy: You’re singing with me, remember?
Gladys: Oh, that’s nice. What are we singing?
Freddy: I thought you were told. Didn't they tell you?
Gladys: About what?
Freddy: The song!
Gladys: Oh, I love singing. I had lungs in my time.
Freddy: Yeah, and they didn't tell me you’d be old.
Gladys: What’s that, dear?
Freddy: Oh, nothing. Why don’t we warm up?
[Freddy starts the music]
BOTH: [SINGING] Cantate Domino, Cantate Domino...
Freddy: Wait, wait, hold on.
Gladys: What?
Freddy: Sing on key!
Gladys: I did. You weren’t!
Freddy: I was on key!
Gladys: No, it’s you who was singing the wrong notes.
Freddy: How do you know?
Gladys: I was a forty year voice teacher. When I’m right, I’m right.
Freddy: Alright, let’s start over.
[He starts the music again]
BOTH: {SINGING] Cantate Domino, Cantate Domino....
Freddy: Stop! Why do you sound like that?
Gladys: Like what?
Freddy: Like someone drowning in the ocean after the Titanic sank.
Gladys: That’s an awful way to describe someone’s singing.
Freddy: Well that’s how you were singing.
Gladys: And you call yourself a singer.
Freddy: Yes, I've been singing for ten years now.
Gladys: And who taught you? A barbed wire fence?
Freddy: Okay, I thought old people were supposed to be nice.
Gladys: That’s your presumption.
Freddy: Can you just sing it right? You need to sing it like...
Gladys: I know how I’m supposed to sing it. I’ve sung this song many times. Who taught you how to sing?
Freddy: Myself!
Gladys: Your singing is atrocious!
Stagehand: Freddy and Gladys. You are up!
Freddy: Great, we've had no time to practice. What do we do?
Gladys: You tell me, you’re my director.
Freddy: I’ll follow along with you.
Gladys: How do you know my way? We just started singing together.
Freddy: Would you stop being difficult!
[They enter the stage and the piano starts playing]
BOTH: [SINGING] Cantate Domino, Cantate Domino..... [Singing continuously]
[The audience stands and applauds]
Freddy: Thank you! Thank you!
[Someone comes up on the stage with flowers]
Freddy: Thank you very much...
[The flowers are handed to Gladys]
Freddy: Don’t I get any flowers?
Person: For being off key?
Freddy: I was not off key!
Person: You were singing as if you were drowning in the ocean after the Titanic sank.
Freddy: Harsh.
Gladys: I’ll tell you what. I’ll give you singing lessons if you don’t want to be insulted any longer.
Freddy: Fine.
Gladys: Good. Here, have a flower for dealing with me.
Freddy: Thanks.
Marielle Sabbag '14
WALL-E and EVE
Marielle Sabbag '14
Marielle Sabbag '14
Roz
Marielle Sabbag '14
Marielle Sabbag '14
Mister Pencil Face
Maya was bored. There wasn’t much to do at home. Mom was at work. Amanda and Serena had claimed the TV to watch their own dumb shows, and Matt and Jared had gone to a movie she wasn’t allowed to see. Maya’s best friend was out shopping with her own best friend for video games and Maya hadn’t been invited. She was too bored to be hurt by any of it. It seemed like she’d already done everything her mother suggested to keep her from boredom. It seemed she’d played all her video games, read all her books and had already hosted enough stuffed animal tea parties. So she’d gone to school on a Saturday to be alone and find fun. The day didn’t matter, since it was summer vacation anyways. She was still hungry. Lunch had been hours ago, and when she’d gone to the trouble of microwaving a soft pretzel for snack, it had been snatched. She had left it to cool on the counter while idly sitting on the porch steps. When she came back inside, most of the pretzel was gone, picked away and eaten up, probably by her mom or her sisters. She’d thrown the remains away in consternation. This always happened when she left her snacks unattended, but it never ceased to cause intense frustration and she never learned to guard her food carefully. She had better things to do anyways.
So Maya sat in the empty parking lot behind her elementary school, scuffing sneakers that had once been Jared’s on the asphalt and playing with the shoelaces, untying and retying them, tangling them up. As the youngest child in the family, she was used to hand-me-downs. Her outfits were a patchwork of her siblings’ former belongings. It felt like she was practically made of them. Her tennis racket had belonged to Matt, the brown-checked sundress she was currently wearing (and most of her clothes) to Serena, and her shoes to Jared. The black barrette in her long brown hair, her favorite accessory, had once been on Amanda’s dresser. Maya tried to think of things to do. She’d played on the run-down, abandoned playground next to the school for only a minute or two before getting bored and dropping off the monkey bars with a sigh and returning to the parking lot. The lot was surrounded by the brick wall of the school’s back and hills covered in dry grass and rocks. It looked like a desert, with the hot wind blowing across the burning pavement. The late-afternoon light cast an orange glow over the flat expanse of the lot. Maya swung on the rusted metal bars of a broken soccer net. She slapped at bits of dry grass in the pavement cracks with a piece of wood from an old neighborhood fence. She threw down her wood plank and stared with glazed eyes at the soccer net, still bored. Maya had just turned away from the net, considering going back to be bored on the playground again, maybe on the swings, when she saw the strangest thing she never expected to meet. A pencil just a bit taller than her was standing up on its point a few feet away, swaying in the warm breeze. It looked like an ordinary-although-abnormally-sized number two pencil, except for the face on it. The face had bulging blue eyes, a wide grin full of shiny square teeth, and puffed cheeks. The face was growing right out of the yellow surface of the pencil on the upper half, about where a face should be on a human. It looked strangely natural. Maya wasn’t afraid. She liked scary things, and she was delighted at this exciting turn of events. And no one was around to ruin the moment. This was her exciting event alone, only for her to see. The pencil’s gaze visibly moved downwards to look at her, and Maya stared back up at it. She certainly wasn’t bored anymore.
“You’re Pencil Face, and I think you’re a boy,” she decided aloud, keenly feeling her own authority in naming so decisively. Pencil Face didn’t respond, but he seemed to grin wider as he stared down at Maya.
“Can I draw with you?” Maya asked the big pencil, trying to be polite “I don’t have any paper, but I can pretend. I hope you don’t mind. I guess drawing’s probably your purpose. You look like you’ve been sharpened recently, too.”
It was becoming a very strange one-sided conversation. It could’ve been a trick of the bright sunlight, but Pencil Face seemed to lean slightly in her direction. Without another word, Maya stepped forward and picked up Pencil Face, grasping with her left hand and holding him steady under her right elbow. She stood for a moment with the giant pencil’s point up in the air in front of her, considering what to trace first. She had a feeling that this strange pencil-person wouldn’t require a drawing surface. She drew a sloping line, and, sure enough, a curved black line appeared floating in mid-air. She grinned and continued drawing with a set of stepped lines, then a flat one, and then steps down the other side of the plateau shape. She’d been to her cousin Kate’s wedding just a week ago, and remembered vividly the elaborately tiered wedding cake. Pencil Face swiveled his attention from the drawing to her. She stepped back to look at her vaguely cake-shaped line drawing hanging in mid-air, tilting her head to one side. It wasn’t very detailed. But all of a sudden, the drawing lines solidified and the shape filled in. A gorgeous three-layered cake with opulent pink, purple and white frosting materialized, appearing suspended in the air for a moment before landing on the pavement with a plop. She let go of Pencil Face and he stood balanced on his point again, focused on her. She looked at him, incredulous, before kneeling in front of the cake and reaching her fingers into the top layer, tasting a bite of sugar frosting and decadent vanilla cake. It was delicious, and all hers. No more swiped food! If a family member showed up to steal this cake, maybe she could just draw a catapult to fling them away from her. She was still hungry, but got up to test Pencil Face again. Maya thought of a kite-flying field trip her class had gone on last year. Her kite string had gotten tangled in the string of the boy she liked. Her kite had been ruined and unusable after that. All it took was a simple, unembellished kite shape, and a perfect white kite with red and blue ribbon tails dropped out of the air-drawing. Maya ran across the parking lot, flying the kite with Pencil Face tucked under her arm. She stopped in the parking lot after running twice around the school to catch her breath. She was still hungry, and let her imagination wander her town’s candy store. Maya thought of the big spiral lollipops that were always propped up in clustered bouquets on the main counter. She hoisted Pencil Face up for a third time, meticulously tracing a perfect spiral in the air. She didn’t bother adding the stick. After all simple shapes took less effort and still gave her what she wanted. The spiral started to spin, and Maya stared at it after setting Pencil Face down again. He stood straight and stared at Maya as usual. With a strange noise like a muffled, distorted bell tone, the spiral morphed into a hollow, pulsing hole. It was black and shaped like a long, hollow ice cream cone, and Maya was looking into the open end. Maya looked at Pencil Face and then back to the hole, wondering what was inside. She must’ve created a portal to another world by accident, she realized, ecstatic. This is it! Here comes my very own adventure! she thought. She’d have to remember the details to write a story about it later. This was a portal that would take her to some kind of magic, supernatural world where she could have great adventures and get whatever she wanted. She could save the world and be an important hero, not just an annoying younger sibling with nothing of her own. As she considered the possibilities, she felt a weird tugging at her feet, a pull coming from the black portal. She heard a dull thudding and a metallic creaking sound coming from it, along with the sound of wind. In a split second of confusion, she realized she really didn’t like disturbing things all that much. Before she could register what was happening, the hole sucked her in completely, devouring her feet first. And then Maya wasn’t even sure if it was feet first, it was impossible to tell which way was up. And then she stopped thinking. Pencil Face alone stared at the black hole, still grinning and swaying in the breeze.
Ruby Struble '14
(Inspired by the short film Pencil Face, URL here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4MjTb5A68VA)
Maya was bored. There wasn’t much to do at home. Mom was at work. Amanda and Serena had claimed the TV to watch their own dumb shows, and Matt and Jared had gone to a movie she wasn’t allowed to see. Maya’s best friend was out shopping with her own best friend for video games and Maya hadn’t been invited. She was too bored to be hurt by any of it. It seemed like she’d already done everything her mother suggested to keep her from boredom. It seemed she’d played all her video games, read all her books and had already hosted enough stuffed animal tea parties. So she’d gone to school on a Saturday to be alone and find fun. The day didn’t matter, since it was summer vacation anyways. She was still hungry. Lunch had been hours ago, and when she’d gone to the trouble of microwaving a soft pretzel for snack, it had been snatched. She had left it to cool on the counter while idly sitting on the porch steps. When she came back inside, most of the pretzel was gone, picked away and eaten up, probably by her mom or her sisters. She’d thrown the remains away in consternation. This always happened when she left her snacks unattended, but it never ceased to cause intense frustration and she never learned to guard her food carefully. She had better things to do anyways.
So Maya sat in the empty parking lot behind her elementary school, scuffing sneakers that had once been Jared’s on the asphalt and playing with the shoelaces, untying and retying them, tangling them up. As the youngest child in the family, she was used to hand-me-downs. Her outfits were a patchwork of her siblings’ former belongings. It felt like she was practically made of them. Her tennis racket had belonged to Matt, the brown-checked sundress she was currently wearing (and most of her clothes) to Serena, and her shoes to Jared. The black barrette in her long brown hair, her favorite accessory, had once been on Amanda’s dresser. Maya tried to think of things to do. She’d played on the run-down, abandoned playground next to the school for only a minute or two before getting bored and dropping off the monkey bars with a sigh and returning to the parking lot. The lot was surrounded by the brick wall of the school’s back and hills covered in dry grass and rocks. It looked like a desert, with the hot wind blowing across the burning pavement. The late-afternoon light cast an orange glow over the flat expanse of the lot. Maya swung on the rusted metal bars of a broken soccer net. She slapped at bits of dry grass in the pavement cracks with a piece of wood from an old neighborhood fence. She threw down her wood plank and stared with glazed eyes at the soccer net, still bored. Maya had just turned away from the net, considering going back to be bored on the playground again, maybe on the swings, when she saw the strangest thing she never expected to meet. A pencil just a bit taller than her was standing up on its point a few feet away, swaying in the warm breeze. It looked like an ordinary-although-abnormally-sized number two pencil, except for the face on it. The face had bulging blue eyes, a wide grin full of shiny square teeth, and puffed cheeks. The face was growing right out of the yellow surface of the pencil on the upper half, about where a face should be on a human. It looked strangely natural. Maya wasn’t afraid. She liked scary things, and she was delighted at this exciting turn of events. And no one was around to ruin the moment. This was her exciting event alone, only for her to see. The pencil’s gaze visibly moved downwards to look at her, and Maya stared back up at it. She certainly wasn’t bored anymore.
“You’re Pencil Face, and I think you’re a boy,” she decided aloud, keenly feeling her own authority in naming so decisively. Pencil Face didn’t respond, but he seemed to grin wider as he stared down at Maya.
“Can I draw with you?” Maya asked the big pencil, trying to be polite “I don’t have any paper, but I can pretend. I hope you don’t mind. I guess drawing’s probably your purpose. You look like you’ve been sharpened recently, too.”
It was becoming a very strange one-sided conversation. It could’ve been a trick of the bright sunlight, but Pencil Face seemed to lean slightly in her direction. Without another word, Maya stepped forward and picked up Pencil Face, grasping with her left hand and holding him steady under her right elbow. She stood for a moment with the giant pencil’s point up in the air in front of her, considering what to trace first. She had a feeling that this strange pencil-person wouldn’t require a drawing surface. She drew a sloping line, and, sure enough, a curved black line appeared floating in mid-air. She grinned and continued drawing with a set of stepped lines, then a flat one, and then steps down the other side of the plateau shape. She’d been to her cousin Kate’s wedding just a week ago, and remembered vividly the elaborately tiered wedding cake. Pencil Face swiveled his attention from the drawing to her. She stepped back to look at her vaguely cake-shaped line drawing hanging in mid-air, tilting her head to one side. It wasn’t very detailed. But all of a sudden, the drawing lines solidified and the shape filled in. A gorgeous three-layered cake with opulent pink, purple and white frosting materialized, appearing suspended in the air for a moment before landing on the pavement with a plop. She let go of Pencil Face and he stood balanced on his point again, focused on her. She looked at him, incredulous, before kneeling in front of the cake and reaching her fingers into the top layer, tasting a bite of sugar frosting and decadent vanilla cake. It was delicious, and all hers. No more swiped food! If a family member showed up to steal this cake, maybe she could just draw a catapult to fling them away from her. She was still hungry, but got up to test Pencil Face again. Maya thought of a kite-flying field trip her class had gone on last year. Her kite string had gotten tangled in the string of the boy she liked. Her kite had been ruined and unusable after that. All it took was a simple, unembellished kite shape, and a perfect white kite with red and blue ribbon tails dropped out of the air-drawing. Maya ran across the parking lot, flying the kite with Pencil Face tucked under her arm. She stopped in the parking lot after running twice around the school to catch her breath. She was still hungry, and let her imagination wander her town’s candy store. Maya thought of the big spiral lollipops that were always propped up in clustered bouquets on the main counter. She hoisted Pencil Face up for a third time, meticulously tracing a perfect spiral in the air. She didn’t bother adding the stick. After all simple shapes took less effort and still gave her what she wanted. The spiral started to spin, and Maya stared at it after setting Pencil Face down again. He stood straight and stared at Maya as usual. With a strange noise like a muffled, distorted bell tone, the spiral morphed into a hollow, pulsing hole. It was black and shaped like a long, hollow ice cream cone, and Maya was looking into the open end. Maya looked at Pencil Face and then back to the hole, wondering what was inside. She must’ve created a portal to another world by accident, she realized, ecstatic. This is it! Here comes my very own adventure! she thought. She’d have to remember the details to write a story about it later. This was a portal that would take her to some kind of magic, supernatural world where she could have great adventures and get whatever she wanted. She could save the world and be an important hero, not just an annoying younger sibling with nothing of her own. As she considered the possibilities, she felt a weird tugging at her feet, a pull coming from the black portal. She heard a dull thudding and a metallic creaking sound coming from it, along with the sound of wind. In a split second of confusion, she realized she really didn’t like disturbing things all that much. Before she could register what was happening, the hole sucked her in completely, devouring her feet first. And then Maya wasn’t even sure if it was feet first, it was impossible to tell which way was up. And then she stopped thinking. Pencil Face alone stared at the black hole, still grinning and swaying in the breeze.
Ruby Struble '14
(Inspired by the short film Pencil Face, URL here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4MjTb5A68VA)
Ship
Katy DiMuzio '15
Katy DiMuzio '15
White Flower
Katy DiMuzio '15
Katy DiMuzio '15
Mystery Forest
Katy DiMuzio '15
Katy DiMuzio '15
Apple Vs. Pear
Carolyn Vanasse '15
Carolyn Vanasse '15
Rich Red Apple
Katy DiMuzio '15
Katy DiMuzio '15
Goneril's Death Soliloquy (Fanmade)
Goneril
Ask me not what I know, mild husband. I cannot arraign myself of but what pride has allowed in solitude. My sister has drunk her medicine greedily and is justly killed. Yet what of Regan? Shall I still want Gloucester, or he me, now she is poisoned for his sake? I fear he might have favored her. He would surely have no cause. But Regan may have beguiled him, surely as that unknown who gave him wounds. If he has died of them, they are together hereafter. Alack, I cannot suffer it; it is not to be born quietly. Shall I join them? Ere I do, I’ll likely be found in my cowish flight. The milk-livered fool named me and my sister tigers. Do I now act as one, husband? Disbranched and fleeing recompense, so inclined toward self-slaughter? I am less beast than hesitant woman, sinned against and ever bound to a fool. They must not mark me. [She draws out a knife] This is the curse of my father. By the malediction of his temper am I rightly struck with an upwards-crawling heart. I have no babes but a child of spleen indeed. A degenerate bitterness and blood are all I will ever birth. Who is Goneril? What has she done? What do I need of her? All sisters, my obstacles, are gone, my foolish father too. But still there are more present who would stop me. There are not enough of Fortune’s smiles for me to strike down the rest. What will she do now, superfluous woman? Her very life’s an excess. By my mother’s name, I shall do it, with nothing more to say. [She stabs herself and dies]
Ruby Struble '14
Goneril
Ask me not what I know, mild husband. I cannot arraign myself of but what pride has allowed in solitude. My sister has drunk her medicine greedily and is justly killed. Yet what of Regan? Shall I still want Gloucester, or he me, now she is poisoned for his sake? I fear he might have favored her. He would surely have no cause. But Regan may have beguiled him, surely as that unknown who gave him wounds. If he has died of them, they are together hereafter. Alack, I cannot suffer it; it is not to be born quietly. Shall I join them? Ere I do, I’ll likely be found in my cowish flight. The milk-livered fool named me and my sister tigers. Do I now act as one, husband? Disbranched and fleeing recompense, so inclined toward self-slaughter? I am less beast than hesitant woman, sinned against and ever bound to a fool. They must not mark me. [She draws out a knife] This is the curse of my father. By the malediction of his temper am I rightly struck with an upwards-crawling heart. I have no babes but a child of spleen indeed. A degenerate bitterness and blood are all I will ever birth. Who is Goneril? What has she done? What do I need of her? All sisters, my obstacles, are gone, my foolish father too. But still there are more present who would stop me. There are not enough of Fortune’s smiles for me to strike down the rest. What will she do now, superfluous woman? Her very life’s an excess. By my mother’s name, I shall do it, with nothing more to say. [She stabs herself and dies]
Ruby Struble '14
Autumn Scenes
Kelcey Hardy '15
Kelcey Hardy '15
Untitled
Katy DiMuzio '15
Katy DiMuzio '15
The New Old New Currency
Carolyn Vanasse '15
Carolyn Vanasse '15
Two Sides of the Same Street
Catherine is walking on the right side of the street. She is wearing a baby blue dress with ruffles around her wrists. The lacey hem softly hits her kneecaps when the wind blows. Her socks are perfectly white and folded at her ankles with extravagant ruffles that match her dress. Her shiny, brand-new shoes reflect the bright sun. Her chocolatey-brown banana curls held together by a long blue ribbon bounce against her back as she walks, almost skips. In her hand she clutches a book, bright red, with blue and purple binding.
Along the left side of the street, Phoebe ambles down the sidewalk, one sparkly purple shoe in front of the other. She wears tomato-red pants with a tie-dye shirt that she made herself at summer camp. The wind carries the sparkles from her shoes as it blows, adding its own pizzazz to the drab cement sidewalk. Her bright red hair is parted in the middle and tied up like bunches of grapes on either side of her head. Her hand is gripped tightly around the handle of her rainbow-striped tote bag, which she swings in circles as she walks.
As the two girls near each other, Catherine steals a glance from across the street. Phoebe does the same. Something red catches her eye. The book. A smile wider than any ocean spreads across her face as she reaches into her bag and pulls out her own identical book. Catherine smiles back.
Behind her, Catherine hears her parents’ not-so-hushed voices. “Oh, my, look at those sparkles.” “That’s certainly quite the rainbow.” “I wonder who let her walk out of the house like that?” “Parents must be those hippie-types.” Followed by a cackling “Huh!” and another “Oh, my.”
On the other side of the street, Phoebe hears her father’s dismissive “Ugh..” She feels her mother’s eyes roll. “How much do you think that dress cost?” “I couldn’t guess. And for someone who will grow out of it in a year?” “Who spends money like that?” “What a waste.” “What a shame.” Followed by a pair of disapproving sighs.
The girls’ smiles fade and their glances shift. Their paces quicken. Each girl stares at the ground in front of her and continues on the path she started.
Alyssa Bogosian '15
Catherine is walking on the right side of the street. She is wearing a baby blue dress with ruffles around her wrists. The lacey hem softly hits her kneecaps when the wind blows. Her socks are perfectly white and folded at her ankles with extravagant ruffles that match her dress. Her shiny, brand-new shoes reflect the bright sun. Her chocolatey-brown banana curls held together by a long blue ribbon bounce against her back as she walks, almost skips. In her hand she clutches a book, bright red, with blue and purple binding.
Along the left side of the street, Phoebe ambles down the sidewalk, one sparkly purple shoe in front of the other. She wears tomato-red pants with a tie-dye shirt that she made herself at summer camp. The wind carries the sparkles from her shoes as it blows, adding its own pizzazz to the drab cement sidewalk. Her bright red hair is parted in the middle and tied up like bunches of grapes on either side of her head. Her hand is gripped tightly around the handle of her rainbow-striped tote bag, which she swings in circles as she walks.
As the two girls near each other, Catherine steals a glance from across the street. Phoebe does the same. Something red catches her eye. The book. A smile wider than any ocean spreads across her face as she reaches into her bag and pulls out her own identical book. Catherine smiles back.
Behind her, Catherine hears her parents’ not-so-hushed voices. “Oh, my, look at those sparkles.” “That’s certainly quite the rainbow.” “I wonder who let her walk out of the house like that?” “Parents must be those hippie-types.” Followed by a cackling “Huh!” and another “Oh, my.”
On the other side of the street, Phoebe hears her father’s dismissive “Ugh..” She feels her mother’s eyes roll. “How much do you think that dress cost?” “I couldn’t guess. And for someone who will grow out of it in a year?” “Who spends money like that?” “What a waste.” “What a shame.” Followed by a pair of disapproving sighs.
The girls’ smiles fade and their glances shift. Their paces quicken. Each girl stares at the ground in front of her and continues on the path she started.
Alyssa Bogosian '15
Untitled
Carolyn Vanasse '15
Carolyn Vanasse '15
Macbeth Comic
Julia Melius '17
Julia Melius '17
Macbeth Comic
Morgan Neff-Gatchell '17
Morgan Neff-Gatchell '17
Macbeth Comic
Niles Singer '17
Niles Singer '17
Macbeth Comic
Justin Tu '17
Justin Tu '17
Macbeth Comic
Jessica Squires '17
Jessica Squires '17
Macbeth Comic
Matt Baynes '17
Matt Baynes '17