Every year the Varma Prize recognizes Dalhousie University English students who compose original works of gothic fiction or poetry. Funds for the prize are donated by Bill Blakeney in memory of Dr. Devendra Varma, former professor emeritus of Dalhousie and former honourary vice-president of the Vampire Research Society. Submitted for the approval of The Midnight Society, here are 2015’s winning entries.
Self-Absorbed
by Jenny Urich
Under the waning super moon, she made a wish at midnight,
“Let me be with my sister soon,” she asked the ruby moonlight...
When morning came, of course, her twin was still on exchange in Dublin, and wouldn’t be home until December (though she did send a text describing how the lunar eclipse looked from across the Atlantic). The wish wasn’t given much thought to begin with, and as the day stretched forward, it faded from her memory the way a dream does if never written down.
She attended her evening lecture as usual, in the old stone building veined with ivy. Her attention wavered between the professor and an uneasy rhythm in her heart. Steadily, unsteadily, the palpitations swelled until she thought she could see movements under her sweater, like small fingers rapping against her collarbone and sternum. Lifting a cautious hand up to her chest to stop the muscle spasms, she felt a weak force grasp onto her index finger—something feeble and malformed. When she jerked her hand away, faint indentations formed along her finger, and a moist, foamy warmth spotted through the fabric of her top. Clutching her backpack to her chest, knuckles and face equally pale, she hastily excused herself from the class. She rushed into a dark and empty washroom, and lifted her shirt—
There was no day so opportune for Mom to let them see,
The two lives growing in the womb had at one time been three...
The Creature Gives Some Retrospective Relationship Advice
by Jacqui Deighton
You see, I take the parts that I remember and stitch them back together
to make a creature that will do what I say
or love me back.
Forget your father’s knee,
forget the words of your mother, forget
politics and economy and
the simple binding ties of family. Forget
loyalty, and the blinding pain
of your daughter’s tiny body, silent
and still in her swaddling cloths.
Forget your flame of a husband,
his heart on the funeral pyre,
so sea-swollen the fire couldn’t eat it up.
I learned early how beautiful
things can burn. You saw to it
I should. Sometimes,
children are born already dead.
Wandering this barrenness
since first you pieced me back together,
stitching up muscle and memory,
tissue and trauma, I have tried to learn
the human trick of dying.
All I have discovered
necessary I pass to you now:
Let go.
Lillian, Lilith, Lily
by Taylor Lemaire
She must not cut
towards
herself,
the pious palm that
Mary stands beneath
in throes, must go
unbled. The blade
pares the skin away
from the pome,
perhaps,
just
once,
towards
herself.
She must leave
the yellow paper be,
no matter the sin
it commits. Its sick,
uncertain curves.
How it must feel to
plunge off
at outrageous angles.
She must rid the attic
inside
herself,
of red shoes, gorgons,
unshorn hair—relics
of the angelic inverse.
Fill in the loathsome
dark with lilies,
milk, old
Patmore’s passive
iambs. Bright rot
to waste
inside
herself.
She must not hold
Zofloya to the
light. Her lids
pinched, rounding his
body to the nearest
red. Never close
enough to know
his hot breath smells
of emeralds,
of cloves.
She must not chase
after
herself,
the gentle glow of
an empurpled cheek
fast devoured
in violets. The certain
little bunch sits
unstirred in linens,
untouched,
as she continues
to tidy up
after
herself.
She must speak
soft as the moth’s wing.
We get no Christ,
no poet from her—
a voice ground up
in sobs. Sob still,
else bare her
whetted edge.
She must put him
before
herself,
the Romney, the
Rochester, regardless.
Bone of his bone,
the skinless apple
of his milky eye,
she peels away,
but never
towards
herself.
