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dumb joke. I could tell she didn't find it funny but she didn't call me out on my blatant dance around that subject. We chatted for an hour or so until she cut the conversation short. "Ugh, I forgot I'm supposed to have dinner with my mom tonight. I gotta go, I love you Danny. Byeeee!" She sang before hanging up. Her "I love you" rang in my head as I stared at the now blank monitor. I felt my pocket buzz a few minutes later and I pulled out my phone. Melody's name lit up my screen with a message below: "I'm happy I got to see your face, even if it was only for a little. I love you." I grinned ear to ear. She always made me feel like the luckiest guy alive. I don't know how I ended up with a girl so out of my league. She was perfect in every sense of the word, but I could tell she was slowly getting frustrated with me and it made my heart sink. I knew at this point that my time with Melody was limited, and I wanted to cherish every moment I could. She became more vocal about her frustrations with me avoiding the visit. Every conversation seemed to blur into a mess of excuses and angry sighs. "I don't know if I can get off work, Mel." "I'll hang at your place until you're off work. We wouldn't have to be together every minute of every day." "Well, my car has been having a lot of problems lately. I don't know if it'll make the trip to the airport and back." "I'll rent a car or something, Danny." gabrielle vincent is a senior at Capital area school for the arts Charter school (Casa). to read the complete story, visit www.theburgnews.com. captured bY JeSS WILSoN S he scanned the entire room in two seconds looking for an escape, beads of sweat forming on her forehead. Her abductor, a tall, pallid man with the darkest sunken eyes, entered the room and removed her restraints. "Please… Why are you doing this?" "Don't talk. Here," he said, handing Randi a scalpel, "Your next task is to cut a slit in your eye." "I've done everything you told me to do… Please, just let me go… I won't tell anyone!" "DO IT!" Randi picked up the scalpel, hand shaking, pleading and crying as she brought it closer to her eye. e words, "e slower you do it, the more it hurts," creeped out of his mouth with a grin. With one swift motion, Randi peeled her eyelid open and slit her eye, shrieking in pain, blood pouring from it. "at's two. ree more, and you're out of here." He re- tied her, laughing as he left the room. "I'll be back soon." Randi struggled in her chair when she heard a knock at the door. She found a way out; she just needed to free herself before her abductor checked the door. e more she struggled, the tighter the ropes became. Her abductor walked through the doorway into the kitchen and peered through the peephole. "Don't do anything," he warned Randi, facing her, his voice muffled. Turning back to the door, he opened it a crack, enough that the man standing on the other side could see her and the look of absolute terror in her eyes. "What do you want?" he demanded. "Oh, hi. I'm your new neighbor, if you can even call it that since the houses are so far apart—" As her abductor was about to close the door in the neighbor's face, he said, "Anyway, I just wanted to get acquainted and invite you over for dinner some time." "I'm busy." e door slammed shut. "Where were we? Ah, yes. I have something for you." He grabbed a nutcracker from the cabinet and shoved it in her face. "Put your big toe in it and twist." Randi flinched away from the nutcracker. "Or I'll do it for you." She snatched the nutcracker up and quickly broke her toe, wincing in pain. e abductor gave her a glass of water, and sat down in the chair next to her, but she refused to look up from the floor. He told her that she made the right choice because if he would have done it, it would have been much more excruciating. "Who was that at the door?" she said, sifting pain through her teeth. "Nobody. Some dumbass neighbor that shouldn't have come here." "I heard him invite you over; are you going to go?" He sprang to his feet, banging his fist on the table. "Mind your damn business. You think I'm dumb or something? Like I'm just going to leave you here alone? Nice try." "You can take me with you—that way you know where I am." He hesitated, but then said, "Anything you do, you ask me permission first." Dinner went smoothly until cleanup when the neighbor asked Randi to assist him in the kitchen. She looked to her abductor to see if it was okay, but was given a look of warning so she politely declined and said, "Would you please show me to the restroom, actually?" "Sure, right this way. By the way, what happened to your eye?" he asked as they headed down the corridor. She had to choose her words carefully with her abductor around, so she said she had a freak "accident." As Randi stepped into the restroom, she whispered to him, "It wasn't an accident." In the restroom, she left a note on the toilet paper with the toothpaste sitting on the sink. "Help me, he's going to kill me." Jess Wilson is a junior at Capital area school for the arts Charter school (C asa). to read the complete story, visit www.theburgnews.com. donate Your BodY to someone Who needs it bY ALIX gregorY I am a maggot, a decomposer, a consumer of the dead, and most importantly, I am the last witness of a dead body. My family is excited to move me and my brothers into our new home. I overheard this at this woman's funeral, that Elyse Gabel was a psychology professor at the college nearby. "She'll be great for your first," Mom says "She's smart. e smartest ones have the sweetest brains." We take her advice. My brothers and I slither through the edges of Elyse Gabel's casket. I inch my way across Elyse's shoulder and into her ear and start gnawing. Sweetest remains I have ever tasted. I feel the pressure of my brothers sinking into Elyse's flesh and eating her torso. She gets heavy with us on top of her, then lighter as we eat her. I imagine this is how breathing is. It's like we're giving the dead another life, a new purpose. What a life it is—providing a feast and a home to smelly bugs. I know she wouldn't understand this. Humans move. ey switch houses to get a new start. ey travel for jobs, for freedom, for their families. Maggots only change our places in search of the next meal. Elyse is fresh. We won't have to move for quite some time. Dirt starts to fall through the edges of the coffin. I slide out of Elyse's ear. e earth sprinkles atop of the family. I curl my body around her pearl earrings. Something bangs on the coffin, hard. ere's a click. Elyse Gabel's dead body lights up. I've never seen an "alive" human until now. It's strange to see someone's mouth move on its own, and to finally connect a voice to a face. "Jackpot." I know he can see us, smell us, chewing leftovers of something he'd saved for himself. "He must think we're disgusting." My brother creeps behind me. "So then why's he here? To stare?" I say. I've never seen a human open their eyelids by themselves either. e only times I've looked into a human's eyes is when I've eaten them. But the eyes never moved. It's unsettling to realize how much control you really have over someone. "Nah. He's one of those—" my brother says. "What?" I uncurl to look at him. "Grave robbers." "Aren't we technically the grave robbers?" "You could think of it that way, but we're after the guts and the skins. It's ethical. We need death to live." "And this person?" "Grave robbers use death to get a thrill and some money. Why do you think they put bodies in the ground? So the living don't get greedy." He looks up. "See?" e grave robber kneels on Elyse's knees. Some of my other brothers start to crawl atop him, but he smashes them down. Dying in another's coffin seems rude. But we have no control. e living human squirms about. A noise escapes his lips. I've heard this noise before, at burials. It's shock. People don't accept death the way that maggots do. ey get scared, sad. I hear it in their trembling voices. It sounds like the noise that comes out of my mouth right now. is body is my home. He removes her shoes, picks out a ring and dumps it in his front pocket. He moves his hands up her body, shaves some of my brothers off her legs along the way. Her tights already have holes from where the other maggots have bitten through. A different noise from the grave robber. is is not a scared, shocked or sad noise. His arms circle Elyse's waist as he moves up her dress. Maggots wiggle under the fabric, but he puts his arms under anyway. He palms Elyse's chest and pulls a gold chain from her neck. en he gets to her ears. He works carefully, as if avoiding piercing Elyse and getting formaldehyde all over his clothes, even when he's already got smashed maggots all over them. alix gregory is a sophomore at Capital area school for the arts Charter school (C asa). to read the complete story, visit www.theburgnews.com. 07.16 | theburg | 49

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