Category: 2025 – Spring

Author: Lady Spraxic

I don’t like soups that are just perfumed water.
I like the dense and murky ones, for example, the spring pea soup – less renowned than the butternut one but just as glorious – which mysteriously tastes like rosemary. Dense soups contain not yet explored secrecies, not quite visible wonders. There is something majestic about them, a humility conscious of its greatness.
I like my soups how I like my friends: full of surprises. I have one who tasted goat cheese fondue before me although hating cheese – all kinds – is one of her life mottos. More than extreme jealousy, I felt complete astonishment. A hundred or two years ago – depending on if you think which one, from lived impressions and objective facts, is closer to Truth – one of them said that she preferred red wine because it was more contemplative. I object. Red wine is foul and prone to stains. I learned that it was not the color of the grapes that gave red wine its colour, but the maceration of their skins in the liquid. I am not entirely against maceration as a concept, just
not in my glass: I completely support the use of maceration in perfumery. Though that might be because I approve of the Odorous Science as a whole. In the perfume world, another
unsettling concept occurs: the fragrance pyramid. It is composed of three degrees: the top note, the heart note and the base note. I think it might be a little simplistic to reduce perfume,
the physical manifestation of invisible essence, to static notions such as maceration and pyramids, but the damage is done.

I want the top note of my perfume to smell like sparkling wine, the heart note like peas and zucchini soup, and the base note to taste like leaving my parents’ home for the first time.

Author: Erika Castrillón Morales

[Content Warning: Drug abuse, Domestic violence, Mentions of sexual abuse.]

“Open the door, you whore!” He has been giving kicks from the other side of the door, trying to get into the house. May is sitting behind the door, covering her ears to ignore his shouts. She cannot take this anymore. He fled five days ago, and nobody heard from him until now. Every time he leaves, he always comes back home in a frenetic state. May can only imagine the worst. He has been wandering around trying to get his hands on anything strong enough to make him pass out. Being the big sister weighs heavily on her.

After half an hour, the screams stopped. May peeps through the window and sees John’s weak body lying unconscious on the floor. There is not a single noise at the deepest of nights. Her heart is divided between thinking her brother is nothing more than a piece of garbage and feeling a bit of pity towards him.

May remembers how John was always wicked. As a kid, he was restless and disruptive. In primary school, teachers never ceased to complain about his behavior. Once, during a break, some younger kids followed him into the bushes near the playground. When the teacher came looking for them, she found John showing pictures of naked women to the little kids.  On another occasion, he stole a neighbor’s cat and smashed it into a wall. He then burned the poor creature on the house’s terrace. By the time he was a teenager, it was clear that John was rotten and utterly mean.

His relationship with May was highly problematic as well. He never liked her. He used to bother his sister by physically harassing her. He started to pick on her and call her names when they were about seven years old. Luckily, May had long nails and would scratch him like a cat. John would end up crying and exaggerating his wounds. But their mom, Anna, a woman weak in character, took it against May and would beat her ass up. She could see the scratches on John, but there were no signs of the so-called violence in John would have inflicted on May.

May is the eldest of four siblings. She is followed by John, Edward, and Michael.  For some unknown reason, Anna spoiled John rotten. She let him do whatever he pleased. He was her golden boy, and John became a mommy’s boy. Anna hid all of John’s faults from her husband and the father of her children, Thomas. A rivalry grew between John and May. The latter was well-behaved and got along well in school: Always getting good grades and compliments from the teachers. But at home, things were cold with their mother, when Anna refused to see John’s faults. If May dared to cry, their mother would force her to stop.

The father was a cobbler who used to work offering his services on the corner of a main downtown street. They lived from day to day. Thomas gave Anna the money he earned the day before to prepare lunch. John, being the oldest of the brothers, was in charge of bringing lunch to their dad. He was a school drop-out and was always at home. Because May was a girl, it was considered too dangerous to have her walk long distances in the streets full of strangers. Also, she had school. But John was always reluctant to do it. Instead, he would walk to the kitchen to eat his father’s lunch and then would take a guiltless nap.

Seeing him through the window, May’s mind recalls the multiple times John returned home from one of his getaways. With time, May could distinguish what kind of substance he had taken that day.  His arrival was the announcement of a new cycle of confrontations with a hectic John, saying he was going to murder them all. Sometimes, neighbors had to call the police to break up the fights. Anna was unable to acknowledge her son’s troubles. John could not stand anyone looking at him. It used to freak out his demons. He wanted to fight and was a real danger to the family. He used to threaten his younger siblings if May didn’t leave him alone and stopped sticking her nose between him and their mother. If May ran into to him on the streets, he used to throw lustful looks at her and told her that if she kept bothering him, he was going to “screw her” with his buddies. 

May scratches her legs and forearms. Her accelerated heartbeats are mixed with an increasing headache when remembering the past. When Thomas died, things escalated for May. Rumors came to her saying that Anna was calling May’s friends asking for money, that she would later give to John.  He would demand too much from his mom, and she would do everything for him. The two remaining younger brothers had emotional and economic needs that May ended up filling. On many occasions, John would call from jail. He would be caught with drugs in his pockets or high in the streets. Anna would beg May to take her beloved son out of that place. Eventually, May was known in every police station in the city. May would bring him some food and would take him back home, sometimes even bribing the inspectors with money that was not much of a surplus.

John went through long years of drug abuse and, at some point, was able to complete rehab. He got a decent job for a few years and became a counselor for young boys flirting with substances.  A time of apparent peace and optimism ran in the family.  But John’s addiction was so overpowering that he went back to it, trying hard drugs this time. It’s been more than fifteen years since the first time John came, kicking the door and destroying everything. May decides to pray and searches in a secluded space in her interior for some faith. She begs her forgotten God to take him. She wants to be free from the burden he is. She wants him dead, for everyone’s sake.

May closes the windows and goes to her room to try to get some sleep. She discovers her mom, Edward, and Michael nervously peeping at her in the corridor. She can see in their looks of distress, she asks everyone to return to bed. “We’ll deal with this in the morning” she says to them as she has so many times before. Lying in bed, May bursts into tears.

Mr. Robert, the next-door neighbor comes first thing in the morning looking for May.

“Is John home?” He asks her with a concerned look.

“We really don’t know, we haven’t heard anything today.”, answers the young woman.

“I have something to show you, May.” He hands her today’s newspaper. The photo shows the body of a young man bleeding, lying on the floor. The headline reads “John Doe dies during police break-in in drug den.”

“I think it is him”, states Mr. Robert.

“It is him.” Confirms May with a calm voice, after having recognized John’s shirt.

“Exit but Make It at a Five-Star Hotel”

Author: Leah Didisheim

I sigh, pull my suitcase and open the door of the five-star hotel. I still don’t understand why we’re doing this. Does she even want to be here? Oh, but yes, I know about our dear traditions. More important than life, apparently. Every year we come here. It’s always the same. To use our heritage together. As a united big happy family. How true it is this year is unreal.

“Hi! So good to see you. How are you? Oh, you know…, fine…”, we basically all say at the same time after checking in at the reception desk. It all started with a phone call from my dad not even two weeks ago. I think in some ways, I knew it was going to happen eventually. Yes it was a shock. But I can’t say I was surprised to learn about it. What I was surprised at however, is that the plan to come here hadn’t been cancelled. That it was still an option – and a wished-for option at that – to come here. With her. For the last time.

My cousin is already in the room when I open the door. It is nice to be together in some ways. To share our sadness together. I can’t think of what the staff is going to think seeing us cry together every day in the lounge though. “I cried a lot when I learnt about it. Now I’m ok… it depends on the days I guess,” I answer my cousin. I didn’t know yet that I was going to cry every day. Seeing the others cry or hurt won’t help. Or you could say that in some ways it will. She hasn’t cried once. But she wants to. She feels her body wants to, she tells me while I unpack.

We talk a bit while we get ready for the evening. Am I happy with who I drew for our Secret Santa? Not really. She’s fine with hers. “Imagine the person who got her though? How horrible is that? I thought about it last week,” I tell her. We ponder on this while we finish getting ready. Our room is beautiful, as always. Outside, it had started to snow. And it won’t stop for the next two days.

I look at the mirror in the lift. My cousin went downstairs already. You know what, I’m sick of being sad. When someone dies, you’re sad because they’re dead, because you didn’t know it was going to happen. You couldn’t plan it and act accordingly. But when someone lives with an expiration date, you’re sad because they’re still alive. And everything they do. And everything you see them do. Well, you can’t shake the feeling that it’s the last time. Yes it’s great. We’re all here together. As this big family. But every picture taken isn’t taken because of that. It’s taken because, deep down, we know it’s the last one. I sigh, wipe the tear on my cheek, glue a smile on my face, and the elevator opens on to the first lively evening of our stay.