Introduction by the Unique editors


Posted Sunday, April 1, 2007, The OG, creative writing

HERE'S A PREVIEW of what you can look forward to reading when Unique comes out at the end of the year. Not all of what we have accepted for publication so far will be featured in this supplement (more installments are on the way), so don't fret if you don't see your piece. Just enjoy. And remember we are still taking submissions for the end of the year.

Norton Protection

Jackie Hedeman

When I lived in France I kept a picture of the Norton Virus Protection man taped to the side of my dresser. His face was what greeted me every morning and was sometimes the last thing I saw before I fell asleep. Sometimes I was looking at my large, crinkly poster of the Beatles, and sometimes at the various pictures I drew of my first fictional character crush, placed there to facilitate good dreams. Not once did I dream of Mr. Norton, despite his Godlike position bracketing my sleeping hours.

His presence in my room (one of three in our cramped, Parisian apartment) had nothing to do with an overweening affection for antiviral software, which may afflict other people but has never particularly troubled me. On the contrary, I had cut his visage and shoulders from the cardboard box encasing his product on a whim. My parents had gotten the software on Christmas, seven days before they moved several boxes and me, their truculent 10-year-old daughter, to Paris for a semester.

I taped Mr. Norton to the side of the dresser even before I unpacked my clothes and hung my dresses in what appeared to be a zip-up wardrobe; fascinating for the first week, then just annoying and smelling of cheese. I can't say with any certainty that I thought of him for more than a second or two after that, except for when my friend Sophia, rightfully questioning his presence, asked if he were my grandfather.

“No,” I replied (although now, thinking about it, there was a striking resemblance), “just some guy I cut out from a box.”

Some things make so much more sense in fourth grade.

Poem of a lover

Rachel Cascio

My dear grapefruit, how I love to strip thee

I love to rip each piece of skin off you.

My sweet, I feel that we were meant to be.

You are naked, what am I now to do?

But bits of skin still stick to your flesh.

Ever so gently I will remove them

and grip you softly. Your scent is so fresh.

I peel you apart to make you more slim.

Each piece is so tender, I need it, now.

Your juices fill my mouth, sour yet sweet,

every piece leaves me feeling a new wow.

I taste the acid even to my feet.

Darling, I love you, but you are too much

You're powerful. You've left me feeling such.

Esperanza

Ruth Welch

To hope.

To wait.

Esperanza.

She watched detachedly as the two meanings of her name engaged in muted battle on the windowsill.

Hope's blood mixed with the blood of Wait. A glistening crimson pool formed upon the sill. Esperanza resisted the urge to drink it.

She closed her eyes and let her forehead rest upon the windowpane. ¿Por qué estoy esperanzando? Her breath condensed on the cool glass. ¿Por qué estoy esperanzando? Her forced laughter echoed through her ears. ¿Por qué estoy esperanzando? The beautiful vacuum of meaningless repetition sucked the air from her lungs. ¿Por qué? She waited because she hoped.

And she hoped because she could deceive. Her soul deceived her, turning his disconnected and irrelevant words into poignantly awkward displays of affection. She allowed herself to be satiated by his hands when his speech fell short. She fought through the emptiness because she believed that he too was fighting to save what had been theirs.



She sacrificed who she was for what she believed he could be. She never realized that he did not believe in her.



Esperanza stood up, exhaled, and succumbed to the urge to scrape off and swallow the blood that had congealed on the window sill. It tasted like inadequacy. What she did not swallow she used to paint her face; the blackened blood accentuated the fullness of her mouth. Tears coursed down her sullied cheeks. She did not realize that she was crying. Qué bonita está ella. How beautiful and how broken.