"take some time and explore your feelings in your writing. don't worry about beautiful metaphors or incredible writing. this week, the point is to aid yourself & your internal world through writing."

"Apologies... I'm running on two hours of sleep."

Shiraz gave Neuma a reassuring smile. "No worries!"
She guided her tired friend from the kitchen to Neuma's bedroom, gently nudging her by the shoulders to sit on her bed.

"Did you dream last night?" Neuma sleepily inquired, her gaze slowly climbing up to Shiraz's eyes. She winced as she readjusted her posture.

"Stupid shoulder brace." She instinctively moved a hand to her left side. It felt like her ribs were on fire.
Raising a finger, Shiraz walked back to the kitchen, and came back with a tall glass of cool tap water.

"I did," she replied, handing her host her drink. "I saw him take part in half a pomegranate. I watched the juices dribble down his chin. It looked - and sounded - like a carnage. I couldn't move..." she sighed, taking a seat on Neuma's desk chair, "I've never been envious of a fruit before."

Silence ensued, only broken by Neuma gulping down half the glass of water. She gave Shiraz a polite chuckle, but her face quickly dropped back to a wince. She looked down - her eyes followed the glass as she set it onto her knee, holding it by her fingertips - before cautiously speaking:

"Shiraz, I'm going to say this very slowly: he could tell. You █████ ██████ ███ ███ ███ ██ ███ ████ ████ ███ ███████ ████ ████████."

She could tell that her words fell on deaf ears. Her friend seemed to almost look through her. Neuma patted the empty spot next to her, and Shiraz mechanically made her way to it after taking the glass from her host's knee to the desk.
They sat like this for a moment before Neuma spoke again:

"Are you feeling alright?"
"Yes," her friend blurted out, clearly unwell.
"Can I help?"

These words seemed to flip a switch behind Shiraz's eyes. She looked at Neuma, wide-eyed, and whispered:
"If that's okay..."

Neuma leaned back a bit, resting her weight on her left hand. She caught Shiraz staring at her navel, and tugged her tank top down with a playful smile. Her friend quickly snapped her gaze away.

"Of course." Neuma tilted her head. "How can I help?"
"Hug me?" The answer seemed to come out before Shiraz had even the opportunity to articulate it fully.
Neuma looked down.

"I know, I know," continued Shiraz, almost pleading, "but when the trauma response kicks in from getting touched, my mind goes blank, and it's so loud right now... please?"

"It'll hurt later," Neuma tentatively spoke.
"But that's later."

Neuma raised her bad arm and pinched the bridge of her nose. "I spos' this beats the usual substance abuse you indulge in."

Shiraz gave her a big, squinty smile. Neuma took the weight off her left arm and held it open. Shiraz launched herself into her embrace, and they both fell onto the mattress, laughing.

Neuma wrapped her arm around Shiraz, who seemed to jolt back a bit, her body entirely tensed up, but as Neuma held her tight and rubbed her shoulder, she melted into the embrace.

"this week, recycle an old piece (or several) for this club into something new! patch lines together, ideas together, images together. frankenstein it!"

But of course, Bel didn't stay in her office all day. Every now and then, she'd step out to get a refill of her usual yerba mate; she would usually only need some warm water to pour over the mound of herbs in her gourd, and Iris always reserved her a steaming kettle.
As she made her way to the bar, a strange intonation, dripping with an accent Bel couldn't quite place at first, caught her attention.

"You get me?" It was Sam, seemingly lecturing someone. His warm Scouser lilt didn't quite match the bite in his tone.

Sam took a drag from his slender, ivory cigarette. "The game's always the same, love. Being true to yourself brings you no advantage in a conversation. You get no extra points for honesty." His voice dripped with sweet mockery. "You've got to get out of your own head, feathers."

"Mathématiques," came the monotonous whisper from behind the plant. Raph, it appeared, had decided to engage.

The game of mental chess continued. They went back and forth, roleplaying potential conversations. Raph fought through her stutter, stumbling through sentences at first, but soon enough, even her accent's sharp tempo had smoothed over.

"Darling, God is a serpent, a pure soul, an egg and an explosion, and God's story is of a flood and a short trip to the underworld: in the corner of my eye, I see where our mortal realm ends and God's throne begins, where all the pretty colours are."

Sam chuckled softly, obviously pleased with the riposte. The familiar words horrified Bel: this entire conversation was a play.

But when Bel’s gaze returned to the duo, she found herself trapped. Sam flashed a grin at her - a warning. She knew that grin. The archives had enough to say about it.

Kettle. Door. Peace. She reached for the handle, turned off the heat, and didn't look up.

"write something that pulls from both a childhood memory (or something nostalgic to childhood) and a recent memory! explore how the two connect and differ."

The smell of chicken permeated the kitchen no matter how wide Neuma kept the balcony door open. She paced near the sink, occasionally glancing at Jacin who was devouring a chicken thigh the way a dog would after stealing it from someone's plate. Despite the hell he’d been putting her through all week, she still felt a little sorry for him. Whatever. It was too much to think about right now, and she could use the company.

She directed her steps towards her room and reached under her bed to pull out a bottle of gin.

"Still drinking that garbidge?" Jacin wrinkled his nose at her as she came back in.

She gave him a deep, frustrated sigh that bordered on a growl. "All I've got is garbage."

"Serves you right." He rolled his eyes at Neuma's raised brow, and continued through another bite of chicken: "If you didn't shop so much, you'd be able to afford proper bottles, nya."

"Nah." Neuma tapped her phone, "I haven't been shopping. Friend borrowed my card."

She opened the fridge and leaned against the door. "She'll pay me back. I don't really care."

"Friend?"

"New friend, ya. Said her name's Ran. Forgot if it's short for anythin'."

She shuffled through the vegetable drawer and pulled out a bottle. "What..."

Jacin, whose face had dropped the moment Neuma spoke of Ran, stood up to look over her shoulder. Neuma turned around, shutting the fridge door with her shoulder.

"Dude." She waved the dark purple glass bottle at him. "Mulberry syrup."

Jacin's eyes widened as he scanned the label. "Jelleb?"

Neuma nodded. With the biggest smile he'd given in weeks, Jacin rushed to grab two cups.

"This is gonna go so hard with the gin. Trust. Trust."

"Does that feel familiar to you?" Neuma asked as she poured the syrup. "Minus the alcohol, I mean."

"Uh, yeah, we drink that stuff every summer. Jelleb on ice, with nuts on top."

"Huh." Neuma frowned. She couldn't recall. She finished pouring the gin and raised her glass after giving everything a good stir. Jacin clinked his against hers with a small "cheers". They took a solemn sip.

"Still garbidge," Jacin lamented.

Neuma smiled. "Ya, but it's nostalgic garbage."

Jacin nodded vigorously. Messy bleached strands clung to his mouth, and he aggressively pushed them aside with the back of his hand. "Oh yeah. Y'know what? This would be even better as shots."

"Wow." Neuma slammed her fist on the kitchen counter. "You're a genius, man."

They moved to her room, sat on the floor, armed with as many shot glasses as Neuma could carry in one hand, as many snacks as Jacin could find in the pantry, and the determination to forget how to speak proper English before midnight.

"Bro." Neuma slammed her glass onto the floor. "How come you look like a thirteen-year-old girl?"

Jacin looked at her with a straight face. Half of his face was lit by Neuma's desk lamp, the other half entirely shrouded in hair and darkness. Neuma opened her mouth to attempt an apology, but Jacin's smile interrupted her train of thought. He laughed.

"I literally went through divine punishment, man. I was starved through most of my formative years." He leaned forwards to line up the shot glasses again, his entire face now obscured in darkness.

Before she could stop herself, Neuma's next question slipped out. "Ya, but like, were you born a man?"

"Were you born a fucking idiot?"

Neuma raised her hands. She couldn't tell if he was upset - she was too drunk to apologise properly, anyway. "Wow. Ya, I was. Sorry."

Jacin's nasal shortle filled the room. "What kind of teen girls do you hang out with, bro? I'm one ugly fucker."

Neuma froze, mid-reach for the gin. "You're kidding, right?"

"Always." He swiped the bottle from under her hand and took a swig. "How come you gave your credit card info to a stranger?"

"She's a friend."

"You aren't even sure of her name."

"I don't really care about names."

The room grew quiet. Every few shots, Jacin would speak up and talk about something that happened summers ago. Neuma thought that there was something stupidly sweet about this whole thing: the syrup, of course, but also the way everything got calmer a few shots in, instead of descending into drunken chaos. She savoured the syrup, feeling the warmth of summer memories she never had. She knew Jacin would dunk on her if she thanked him for sharing what his childhood summers were like. On her next shot, Neuma figured that nostalgia's about who you share it with - much like jelleb. And much like jelleb, nostalgia seemed to be enough for Jacin to ride out the garbage gin.

"living in california, it's hard not to be thinking about fire right now. think about a moment you've had with fire or explore how fire can be beautiful, dangerous, natural, harmonious, destructive, growth-inducing, tragic, etc"

It was after a long night out with people Raph had met online. Her heavy boots dragged across the floor as she entered her bedroom, trench coat barely clinging to her shoulders. She slumped onto the kitchen stool she'd claimed for her room, deliberately avoiding to look behind her, at her bed. The hallucinations had become routine - tonight, she was too tired to face them.

But a familiar outline sat in her peripheral vision.

"When the light leaves your eyes, where does it go?" she tested, her voice unwavering despite her dread.

"To the Asphodel meadows where the moon waits her turn." The response came, soft but cold.

"Sam," she turned slowly."How come you're here?"

He took a minute to answer. She noted the ridiculously oversized black sweater that swallowed his slender body - undoubtedly borrowed from Jacin - paired with gray sweatpants that didn't seem to be his either. Despite the unbearable cold in her room, his feet remained bare, and she faulted herself for not seeing his shoes while walking in, which would've saved her the fright.

"I figured I would remind you to take your medication." He extended his arm, a small box of pills dangling between two fingers, rattling the blister packs as he waved it in front of her eyes.

Raph frowned. "A text could've sufficed."

"Ah, you know I get bored."

She caught the box with one hand and reached for the dented water bottle she'd been carrying in her backpack since last week's movie outing with a few classmates. It was nearly full, as her mother's warnings about plastic containers echoed in her mind each time she considered drinking from it. As she swallowed the first pill, Sam's gaze settled on her neck like his eyes were feeling for a pulse.

They talked for a while, about friends, travels, college plans, as if nothing was strange about this visit. When Raph finally moved to take off her coat and kick off her boots, vertigo suddenly struck her. Her vision blurred as she looked toward the pill box, now empty, the foil seals of the pills scattered across her desk like dead flies. Slowly, she turned toward where Sam had been sitting, but the bed was empty, with no wrinkles in the covers as evidence that he'd been there at all.

"Why... why didn't you..." She lifted her hand to reach for her phone before her body collapsed onto the floor with a soft thud.

--

Light footsteps echoed through Raph's apartment. Jacin, her neighbour, had noticed the door was left ajar. A chilling feeling spread from his stomach, and as a man that always trusted his gut, he stepped inside to check on his best friend. It was dark, save for the bright white light coming from her bedroom at the end of the corridor.

She stood there, facing away from him, dressed as if she had just returned home. The air felt thin, freezing, and he could swear he could somehow smell his roommate's suffocating peppermint shampoo. He shook off that thought and stepped forward.

"Feathers?" he called out.

He watched, paralyzed, as she mechanically bent her right arm, index finger pointing toward the ceiling. A dirty black bandana was wrapped around her wrist. Before he could speak again, the click of a lighter cut through his thoughts, and rapidly, to his horror, her hand erupted into flames.

Every second stretched the distance between them. Raph remained motionless as the fire spread down her arm. When he finally lunged forward, seconds too late, he did not feel Raph against him.

Instead of colliding with her body, he found himself standing in her place, the flames now devouring him instead. His surroundings seemed to peel away like charred skin, and the room dissolved into an opalescent uniformity. He screamed something - he wasn't quite sure what - as a shadow stained the brightness before him, an ink-blot silhouette shaped like his roommate Sam. He could almost see facial features on the thing, as if his eyes were adjusting to the darkness, but they looked wrong, with eyes too dead and a mouth that bent downwards too much.

He could hear it like it was being carved into his brain:

"Don't interfere."

The command crashed through his body. He gritted his teeth, forcing his knees to lock, fighting to remain upright. When he finally collapsed and pressed his fists to the ground to push himself back up, the floor rippled beneath him. Iridescent earth swallowed his wrists.

Had he gone lucid in a nightmare? He found himself kneeling on a mound of rocks in the center of an endless field of lavender, his hands stuck in the stone.